Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 (8 page)

“Find a chair,” said the old wizard with a vague wave of his hand. The word “find’ seemed wel chosen; it took a moment for me to identify which of the shapeless masses around me might be a chair at base.

“I’m afraid the place has gotten a little messy.”

I let this understatement pass and shifted a pile of dead leaves and a plate with the remains of what might once have been a fried egg. Having thus uncovered a chair, I puled it up next to his rocking chair, the only piece of furniture not covered with debris.

He sat down and arranged his long white beard over his lap. It seemed ful of twigs and bits of food, at which he picked as he rocked. Even his ring, shaped like an eagle in flight, was dirty and tarnished. But nothing here suggested he had been using diabolical power to bring dead rabbits back to life.

The old wizard had already been wel past two hundred years old when he had abruptly decided to resign as Royal Wizard of Yurt. He was starting to feel himself old and even incapable two years ago, when he moved down here from the castle. I wondered uneasily if his decline might have been accelerated by living alone, with no one to talk to besides his cat.

He kicked half-heartedly at the broken glass and

continued to rock in front of his cold hearth. He seemed wiling to let the silence stretch out until I finaly decided to break it. “I need your advice,” I began, “on how I might be able to shift the wood nymph out of her grove.” If I started with her, I might be able to work around to the rabbits—and whatever had made that inhuman footprint. “I gather she’s been there for generations. Is it even possible to shift a nymph?”

The old wizard smiled, quite pleasantly for him. “Are you sure you want to move her? Leave her where she is, treat her gently and with dignity, and she may agree to come down out of her trees so you can see her.”

“I did see her,” I said. “She was down from the trees at least for a moment, but when I tried to speak to her she disappeared at once, without saying anything.”

“A nymph’s conversation takes time,” he answered, again with a reminiscent smile. “But it’s worth it in the end.” He leaned forward abruptly. “Why do you want to move her out of the grove?”

“Wel,” I said uneasily, “the bishop had asked the Royal Chaplain to ask me what I could do. The church considers that grove a holy grove, and they don’t like having a nymph in it.” The old wizard stopped smiling and snorted as though thoroughly disgusted. “I thought I’d warned you about becoming too good friends with that chaplain. Why should you do errands for the Church anyway? They’ve always done their best to discredit wizardry, so we certainly don’t owe them any favors. Why should a wood nymph have to leave the grove where she’s always been happy, just because some bishop becomes fastidious about her proximity to an old hermit? Afraid she’s going to corrupt him, is that it?” I did not try to deny it. Clearly I would get no help from the old wizard here. I almost agreed with him

anyway and would have agreed completely if Joachim had not seemed so troubled.

“I’m sure you’re right, Master,” I said hastily, trying to recover something from this conversation before he threw me out. “But I have another question for you. Some strange magic creatures have started appearing in the kingdom, and it looks as if they were made with wizardry.’

“Strange magic creatures,” he interrupted with another snort, “and you, a supposedly competent wizard, can’t even deal with them yourself?” I pushed ahead. “I had merely hoped, since you’d been in Yurt so long, you might nave seen something similar before and would have some suggestions. They look like rabbits, but big rabbits, and they have horns.’

“Horned rabbits,” he said, looking at me thoughtfuly. “So there are horned rabbits in the kingdom and you don’t know what to do about them. I hope you weren’t going to accuse me of making something so sily. Unless you created them yourself, eh? I suggest you talk to your fancy school. An apprentice wizard in the old days wouldn’t have had these problems!” I expected in fact that an apprentice wizard of a century or two earlier would have had just as much trouble, but I didn’t say so. Rather, I decided I ought to leave before I did any more damage to our dubious relationship.

“And how many horned rabbits have you seen?” he asked as I stood up to go.

“There are at least three of them.” I wondered if there had been great horned rabbits in Yurt before or if the old wizard was just pleased to see me facing—certainly not for the first time!—a problem I didn’t know how to handle.

The old wizard smiled grimly. “If you’ve got a renegade wizard here in the kingdom making horned rabbits—rabbits!—there may be a lot more before you’re through.” I left with this discouraging comment. As I flew

back home, I thought that at least the old wizard himself didn’t seem to be creating great horned rabbits, or anything else at the moment, and certainly not with diabolical assistance. But that left me back at the beginning. Where had they come from, and why had they now appeared in Yurt?

IV

That evening, as I’d hoped, the telephone cal came from the castle, halfway to the great City, where the queen’s parents lived, teling us that the royal party had arrived safely. Dominic spoke to the king, but standing at his side, I could see the king with the queen and the baby prince behind him, tiny figures in the base of the glass telephone.

“Yes, we’re al wel,” said the king. “Any problems yet you can’t handle, Dominic?”

Tne royal nephew and regent took this comment entirely seriously. “Nothing I can’t handle, sire.”

I thought that, on the contrary, there was a great deal happening in Yurt over which Dominic had no control. I wondered if it could be pure coincidence that Nimrod and the great homed rabbits had both appeared in the kingdom at the very time the king left. I even wondered for a moment if Dominic himself might be responsible, if he had arranged for the kingdom to be invaded by magic creatures in the king’s absence to demonstrate his ability to deal with them.

But this seemed a little far-fetched. There was no question, however, that Dominic was throwing himself into the role of royal regent. When we had reached home the day before, we nad found him sitting on the throne in the great hal, gripping the arms and staring grimly at nothing in particular.

Hearing from the king made everyone more cheerful, except for Joachim, who was stil waiting to hear

from the bishop. He had hoped that an answer to his message of the preceding day would be here when we reached the royal castle yesterday, but no pigeons had arrived. The cathedral had never put in a telephone, probably afraid that to do so would be a concession to the forces of institutionalized wizardry, and Joachim could do nothing but mutter about pigeons being lost or caught by hawks—al of which was quite possible—before going up to bed early.

Perhaps the most cheerful person in the castle was Gwen, the assistant cook. She and I had been friends since I first arrived in Yurt, when she was stil a kitchen maid. Not only was she glad the royal family was safe, she was pleased that they were at least temporarily out of the way. She ana her husband, who played in the castle’s brass choir, were the only people in Yurt who did not consider the baby prince the most important person in the kingdom. That honor they gave to their own baby daughter.

“I think she’s going to start crawling soon,” Gwen said to me. Her daughter was lying on a rug on the flagstone floor of the great hal. “Look at her kicking!” The little girl, four months younger than the royal prince, was indeed kicking with great enthusiasm and pride of accomplishment.

I sat down on the floor next to her and patted her on her diapered bottom. She gave me a wide, toothless smile. “I nke baby girls,” I said to Gwen. “She’s so ful of energy; are you sure she isn’t going to get into trouble once she starts moving around?”

Little Gwennie grabbed the hem of my trouser leg and tried to pul it toward her mouth. Gwen disengaged her. “There is a lot she could crawl into in the kitchens—they’re much more dangerous than anything the little prince is likely to get into,” she added pointedly.

We were interrupted at this point by Dominic coming toward us. I frequently had the uncomfortable feeling that, despite bis silence and apparent slowness, he saw and recognized every one of my inadequacies—and probably a lot of inadequacies I didn’t even have. But he was also capable of surprising me by speaking to me on occasion as though he had no doubts of my competence.

“It sounds as if the count and the duchess are having a great deal of trouble in their neighborhood these days,” he said as I scrambled to my feet, “what with treat horned rabbits and a troublesome nymph.” I ad, of course, given him a sketch of our trip as soon as we returned. From the stony look I had received then, I was rather surprised now much of it he’d understood, even though he didn’t now mention the people trying to restrict access to the holy relics. “Do you think it would help if I rode over to that side of the kingdom tomorrow with a few knights?”

“Not for several days, anyway,” I said. “Brute force won’t be any good against the nymph. If any of our knights are good trackers, however, I m sure the duchess would appreciate their help tracking the horned rabbits.”

Dominic considered, as though wondering again why his uncle the king had even taken me on in the first place. “And are you doing anything about these strange events?”

“I’m checking what my books of magic have to say about such things,” I said with dignity. Since I had been meaning to get to my books very soon, I didn’t feel this was too great a prevarication.

Unexpectedly, Dominic’s frown turned into a smile. “It was good to hear the royal family is wel,” he said, “especialy the little prince.” I agreed wholeheartedly, although somewhat surprised, since Joachim had felt Dominic might be jealous.

“His hair is so light blond it’s almost white,” continued Dominic with a sentimental smile. “They tel me mine was just the same color when I was his age. Tel me, Wizard,” with a sudden sharp look, “have you ever thought of getting married?”

“Me? Of course not,’ I said, startled by this sudden change of subject. “Wizards never marry.”

“That’s right,” said Dominic and turned abruptly away, leaving me wondering what was realy bothering the regent.

The next morning, I dug out the massive old books of spels that had once belonged to the wizard employed by the duchess’ father. I had had them some time without ever looking at them and had almost forgotten about them, but meeting Evrard reminded me.

If there was no demon-assisted wizard in Yurt bringing dead bones back to life with supernatural power, then maybe it was possible, with unaided wizardry, to create new animals and give them the semblance of life if not Me itself. I knew they had taught us nothing of the sort in school. But the night before, in reading through the books I had brought with me to Yurt, I found a brief mention in the first volume of Ancient and Modern Necromancy which hinted tantalizingly that such things might be possible.

The old ducal wizard, one of the last to be trained by the apprentice system, had retired thirty years earlier, even Defore Diana inherited the duchy, and when he went, he left a lot of his books behind. I had found these books and unabashedly stolen them on a visit to the duchess’ castle a year and a half ago. Now I turned to them in the hope of finding something that the clean, printed pages of my books of modern magic did not cover.

The ink had faded and the spels were written down in no particular order, sometimes interspersed with what appeared to be chess puzzles or laundry lists. But the magic was fascinating. For two days I did little besides eat and work my way, page by page, through the volumes.

Much of it was herbal magic and rather ineffective herbal magic at that. I had learned enough of the magic of growing things from my predecessor during the last two years, during the interludes in which we were fairly friendly, at least to recognize spels that were unlikely to work. The spel to summon a swarm of honeybees looked as though it had promise, as did the spel to help heal a cow with a sore udder, but I did not have much faith in the spels which purported to be able to turn the moon black or put a burning cross on the forehead of a previously unsuspected murderer.

In the third volume I found a mention of the wood nymph. What started as a rather dry, scientific description of her attributes quickly disintegrated into a personal account. I smiled as I deciphered the cramped and faded handwriting. It seemed the old ducal wizard had thoroughly enjoyed himself. I remembered my predecessors softening at the mention of the wood nymph and thought that she had certainly cut a romantic swath through the wizards of the kingdom of Yurt a generation ago. I wondered if the look she had given me when we met presaged a similar set of plans for me ... an intriguing possibility ....

My thoughts were interrupted at this point by a knock at my door, and Joachim came in. He threw himself into a chair and came as close as he ever did to scowling. “Look at this.”

“This” was a tiny square of paper. A quick glance showed that it was finaly a message from the bishop—if you could cal it a message. “Continue investigations. Gain more information. Pray for guidance.” I scowled, too. “So what does the bishop expect you to do?”

“I wish I knew.” Joachim stopped, as though remembering that he probably ought not to be grumbling about the bishop to a wizard, and passed a hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry to bother you with this,” he said and stood up to go. “I don’t want to interrupt your research.”

“Sit back down,” I said. “I’m glad to take a break from reading.”

I watched him make a deliberate effort to stop worrying about the bishop. “So, have you found anything useful so far?” he asked.

“Some of these books that used to belong to the old ducal wizard should help. I think I’ve figured out at last how to talk to a wood nymph. But I d like to wait until it’s clear whether the saint’s relics and the old hermit wil stay or go before I try to move her.”

Joachim nodded slowly without answering.

‘I already told you there’s no indication that my predecessor is practicing black magic. I think, however, it might be possible with the old magic to make a horned rabbit that would move as though it were alive, even though it wasn’t. I didn’t see any immediate sign of the old wizard making anything, but he could have hidden al sorts of bones under the rubbish. It would mean he had lost his mind, rather than his soul—I guess that could be an improvement.”