The Wood Nymph, the Cranky Saint woy-2

by C. Dale Brittain

  “Well, I certainly could have caught it much faster than that,” said Evrard self-righteously. “But the duchess told me this time that she didn’t want them caught with magic. She wanted to use them as a test for her new huntsman.”

  No wonder she had refused my assistance back at the count’s castle. Between having her wizard make horned rabbits and her huntsman hunt them, Diana seemed very busy lately testing the people around her. The queen had commented once that the duchess always did exactly what she liked.

  “So you think she asked you for rabbits specifically as a test for him?”

  “I doubt it,” said Evrard with a shrug. Proud as he was of his rabbits, he was starting to find my questions about the duchess a little dull. “You saw how surprised she was when he first appeared, and I had started making the horned rabbits over a week earlier.”

  “Did you break the spell when Nimrod finally shot it?” I asked.

  “I didn’t have to. The spell only keeps all the different parts together as long as nothing happens to any of the parts. Even with Elerius’s help, I couldn’t make a rabbit that would hold together once it was trapped or shot.”

  “Who is Nimrod, anyway? Do you know?”

  Evrard shrugged again. “Just some hunter. I guess she wanted to see how good he was before employing him.” This didn’t seem right, but Evrard didn’t give me a chance to respond. He stretched his arms and smiled. “But that’s enough about the duchess! You and I hardly had a chance to talk properly last week, and I’ve been eager to catch you up on all the news from the school.”

  I suddenly felt I had let this whole ridiculous matter, of saints and horned rabbits, become much too serious. I forced my hands and shoulders to relax. “Fine-but first, let me have my dressing gown back. If you don’t have one of your own, tell the duchess you need money for ‘personal purchases.’”

  For the rest of the afternoon, Evrard and I swapped stories: exploits in the wizards’ school, exams for which we had never studied, near escapes from the Guardians in the City down below the school, jokes played on other students and, in Evrard’s case, even once on Zahlfast. After dinner, we decided to share a last glass of wine, which somehow became a whole bottle. I had not laughed so much or so long for two years. It was well past midnight by the time we turned out the magic lights.

  But as I fell asleep-on the pillow with feet, which Evrard had switched back at some point-I remembered again the footprint, man-like yet inhuman, that I had seen in the Holy Grove.

  Early the next day, Evrard and I rode out of the castle on old white mares. I’d assumed a fellow city boy would want a placid mount. We rode down the hill, past the cemetery, into the woods. Our saddles and harnesses creaked, and the horses’ hooves rang hollowly on the bricks of the road, but otherwise the summer morning was nearly silent.

  “He’s a fairly irritable old wizard,” I told Evrard, “so try not to say anything that will upset him. For example, he doesn’t like the wizards’ school-he was trained under the old apprentice system himself, long before the school first opened.”

  Evrard stifled a yawn and grinned at me. “Now I’m going to be afraid to say anything.”

  “And call him Master. He likes that.”

  “But the Master of the school-” He stopped, laughed, and shook his head.

  I gave Evrard an encouraging smile and wondered why I felt it so necessary to explain everything to him. I had come down alone to meet my predecessor two years ago, without the slightest idea what I would find, and managed fine-well, no, actually I hadn’t managed very well at all.

  “He’s getting old,” I said. “And he’s started to lose control of his personal life. He no longer keeps his house tidy, and I think he was even more offensive to me last week than usual, though it’s hard to tell. If he’s lost control in one area, he may also have had his magic get away from him.”

  Evrard glanced toward me, worried this time. “Then why are we going to see him?”

  “Because I think something has gotten away from him. At the same time you were using some of the old magic to make horned rabbits, he may have been using similar spells to make something almost human.”

  He did not answer. We continued along the road in silence.

  A half hour’s ride through the fresh green of the forest brought us to the track, marked by the little pile of white stones, which led off from the main road and into the old wizard’s valley. The trees hung low enough here that we walked our horses. After a few turns of the track, we could see the branches thinning up ahead, and then we came out by the bridge.

  “Did we really have to get up this early?” asked Evrard, yawning again, but he had not yet seen what waited by the bridge. I smiled to myself and waited.

  Then he turned his head and saw the illusory lady sitting on the bank, her golden hair spread out across the grass and the unicorn resting its head in her lap. He was off his horse in a second and down on one knee before her. “Lady, let me put myself in your service. I am Evrard, the ducal wizard of Yurt.”

  As she always did when someone tried to talk to her, the illusory lady lifted her sky-blue eyes to him without answering, then rose and started down the valley, an arm around the unicorn’s neck and her hair floating in a cloud behind her.

  “Wait, Lady, I didn’t mean to offend you!” Evrard called, still on his knee.

  I laughed. “She’s an illusion, young wizard.” I paused, wondering why I had called him “young wizard,” which is what the teachers tended to call us. “She fooled me the first time, too. Don’t waste your time with someone that insubstantial.”

  He scrambled back up into the saddle, laughing himself. “If that’s a sample of your crazy old predecessor’s magic, I’m impressed! No one I’ve ever known could create a woman who looked that real, even the perfectly sane members of the illusions faculty. I wish she was real. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “Wait until you meet the queen,” I said confidently. The lady and the unicorn had disappeared, and I started on down the valley.

  But Evrard had stopped, and his brow was wrinkled. “Daimbert, I think I ought to tell you something before we get to the old wizard’s house.”

  I pulled up my horse, wondering what could be the problem now. “Yes?”

  “You know you asked me if I’d made anything else besides the horned rabbits? Well, I did.”

  I took a deep breath, trying not to be angry. Having another young wizard in the kingdom was not turning out to be quite the help I’d hoped it would be. “You made a creature that has almost human footprints.”

  “Well, yes,” said Evrard, not nearly as embarrassed as I thought he ought to be for having lied to me. “But it wasn’t a very realistic creature. So if your predecessor’s magic is this good, I thought I’d better mention it to you before you accuse him of creating it.”

  “Would you like to tell me why you made it?” I asked very quietly.

  Evrard gave his broad smile. “I was hoping to impress the duchess, of course. She laughed at my horned rabbits, even when I got the horns to stay on, and then she was angry with me for letting them escape, and then for only catching two of them again. I decided I had to do something, or I would be out of my first job almost before it had started!”

  I had to smile back, caught between irritation and sympathy. I recalled several of my own desperate magical improvisations two years ago, when my new royal employers had assumed I would know how to produce certain effects, where actually I had no idea. The duchess seemed to be expecting more of Evrard in his first two weeks in Yurt than had been expected of me in my first two months.

  “So I decided to make something totally different to surprise her,” he continued, his good humor restored, “something that might even be frightening. The duchess had gotten me rabbits’ bones and sheep’s horns, but I didn’t have any human bones, of course. So I used some sticks and tried to extrapolate from the spell I’d learned in school.”

  “And what happe
ned?” I asked, envious in spite of myself. It had taken me a long time to discover that such a spell was even possible, much less to make it work.

  He shook his head ruefully. “I’m afraid it didn’t work out very well. My creature wouldn’t stand up straight, and bits kept falling off. The legs and feet weren’t bad, but the rest only looked human if you squinted right. And then when I’d given up, I couldn’t get the spell to dissolve again!”

  “You didn’t try shooting it? That seemed to work with the rabbits.” But as I spoke I remembered the pillow that still had feet.

  “Well, no. After all, it did look sort of human. And besides, I’d tried to make the spells a little stronger this time. But I certainly couldn’t show it to the duchess! I decided I’d better just get it out of the way, and it would soon fall apart on its own.”

  “So you took it up on the plateau and set it loose,” I provided when he seemed unwilling to continue, “where it went down into the valley and managed to terrify me thoroughly.”

  Evrard laughed. “It did? That’s even better than I expected.”

  I forced myself to laugh as well. “I even thought someone in the kingdom was practicing black magic.” Evrard, I thought, seemed much more than two years younger than I. But then, I reminded myself, he had not gone through the experiences of my first six months in Yurt, which I felt had aged me considerably.

  “Come on,” I said. “Since we’ve come this far I might as well introduce you to the old wizard. He’s the most senior wizard in the region, and you really should call on him anyway. And then I guess we’d better go over to the duchess’s end of the kingdom and catch your creature before it terrifies anyone else.”

  III

  We scrambled down a steep incline, leading our horses, and I paused at the bottom, looking ahead down the valley. Usually at this point a shower of arrows began to fly across the path. But today there were no arrows, and some quick magic probing found no sign that they had ever been there. This made things easier, because it meant we neither had to crawl under the arrows’ flight nor fly over them ourselves, but I felt suddenly uneasy. If the old wizard was no longer doing the spells to maintain his defenses-especially since the arrows were also one of his best magic tricks-to what was he giving his attention?

  But then I reminded myself that the strange magical creatures in the kingdom had been Evrard’s all along. I relaxed and decided this was just one more instance of the old wizard letting everything go.

  Evrard, who did not realize there ever had been arrows here, strolled casually on in front of me, leading his mare. The grassy track led us around a few more turns and then out into the clearing where stood the enormous oak which sheltered the old wizard’s house. We dropped our horses’ reins and walked slowly forward. I tried to decide if the ominous appearance the rather innocuous little green house seemed to have acquired in the last few days was only my imagination.

  I jumped as the door swung open with a crash. The old wizard came out as though catapulted and slammed it behind him. Even at a distance of twenty yards, I could see he was breathing hard.

  But he tried to appear casual. He looked shortly toward Evrard, then gave me his customary scowl. “So I see young wizards are multiplying as fast as the great horned rabbits,” he said. “And they’re still as happily convinced, I’d say from this one’s fancy jacket, that they can control the powers of darkness.”

  Evrard stepped forward and went into the full formal bow. “Greetings, Master. I am the duchess’s new wizard.”

  The old wizard lifted shaggy eyebrows at me over Evrard’s head. “What does the duchess want a wizard for? I’d have thought your example would have taught her that young wizards these days don’t know any magic. But then the old duke’s wizard, back over thirty years ago, was so incompetent that maybe she’s thinking nothing could be worse.”

  Normally I would have been interested in his tacit admission that even a wizard trained under the old apprenticeship system could be incompetent. But I was distracted by wondering if the wizard had simply rushed out of his house to keep us from seeing whatever he might have inside, or whether something in there had physically thrown him out.

  Evrard was still in the full bow, his arms outstretched. “Well, greetings, Wizard,” the old wizard said to him grudgingly. “I doubt you’ll like Yurt.”

  “But I think I’ll like Yurt very much,” said Evrard with a cheerful smile, standing up again. “It’s a charming little kingdom.”

  The old wizard snorted. “Somebody used to the vain pleasures of the City won’t be satisfied with country charm. Tell the duchess I warned her she won’t have her fancy young wizard for very long.”

  “Oh, no,” said Evrard seriously. “I’m planning to stay with the duchess for years and years.”

  “Maybe she’ll learn a lesson at last, then.”

  Evrard was either working hard to maintain the old wizard’s good temper, or else he was too good — natured to take offense easily.

  “But as for you, young whipper-snapper,” said the old wizard with a glare for me, “I’d like to know what you think you’re playing at! First you came around here casting spells to reveal the super natural, as though after all this time you thought I might be practicing black magic, and then I find out you’re doing something similar yourself!”

  I took a deep breath. “What are you talking about?”

  “That creature made of sticks,” he said brusquely. “Thought I wouldn’t find out, did you? What happened, somebody made the horned rabbits under your nose, and you got so jealous of your position as Royal Wizard of Yurt that you decided you’d try something of your own, eh?”

  Evrard, I noticed, was wandering off in the direction of the old wizard’s cottage with an air of not hearing our conversation.

  “At least you made it with plain magic,” continued my predecessor, almost grudgingly. “Nothing demonic about it, which may be why it was a pretty pathetic excuse for a magic creature.”

  “No, I didn’t make it,” I said loftily, stopping myself just in time from saying that Evrard had. “I know all about it, of course. But how did you find out?”

  The old wizard glanced in Evrard’s direction and snorted. But he didn’t say what he seemed to have guessed. “I found it, of course. When you told me there were magical creatures roaming through the kingdom, and that you didn’t know what to do about them, I figured there ought to be at least one wizard here in Yurt acting responsibly. I spotted the duchess and that giant chasing the horned rabbits-where did she find him, by the way? — so I decided to let them have their fun. I did improve the spells a little, though, to give them more of a challenge.” He gave a malicious chuckle.

  “But you brought the man-like creature back here with you,” I said. Could Evrard’s stick-creature have been what threw him out the door?

  “What was left of it,” said the old wizard. “It had dropped most of its sticks by the time it got here.”

  Then it was not Evrard’s creature inside the house. That meant-

  “So you decided to make a few improvements,” I said with a glare to match his own. I pulled my eyebrows down into a frown that I knew would have been more impressive if they had been as shaggy as his. “When I came here today,” I continued sternly, not giving him a chance to deny it, “I had not expected to find a wizard from whom age and isolation had taken his reason. But now I learn you’ve been giving old bones the form of life! You know only renegade wizards try to create life. As Royal Wizard, I demand that you dismantle the thing you’re making!”

  The old wizard was, for a few seconds, too taken aback to answer. I had never talked to him like this before-or, for that matter, to any older wizard. Then he bent over sharply, making creaking sounds. For a second I was afraid I had sent him into a fit. But then I realized he was laughing.

  “It isn’t funny,” I said, trying to preserve at least some of my dignity.

  The old wizard straightened up, wiping spit from his mouth and still chuckling
. “You’re certainly amusing, young wizard, trying to act as wise as though you were four times your age and actually knew some magic, and trying to face me down in my own valley.”

  “You have to tell me what you’re doing,” I said, refusing to be distracted. “I’m responsible for the over sight of any wizardry practiced in this kingdom. It’s horribly complex magic. I would think a wizard of light and air had better things to do with his time than mutter long spells over dead bones.”

  The old wizard had started to turn away. Now he shot me a sharp, sideways glance from under his eyebrows. “And what do you know of complex spells and dead bones?” he asked.

  “Look,” I said, speaking to the old wizard directly, mind to mind, which I had never dared do before. I probed for magic, as I had down in the valley by the Holy Grove. And here, as there, were magic forces channeled by a powerful spell. “Don’t deny it now!”

  I felt rather than heard reluctant assent. But then the wizard turned his own mind toward me, and I staggered back, my own spell disintegrating.

  Anyone else’s mind is always profoundly strange when met directly, even the mind of a friend. The old wizard’s mind revealed both powers beyond what I had expected, as much as I had always respected his abilities, and a strange twist I could not identify but which terrified me.

  Back in my own body, I stared at him. What had I felt there? Was it depravity, insanity, or just the strangeness of the old magic? His eyes held mine for five seconds, then he started to laugh again.

  I tried to slow my heartbeat with calm breaths. “So you can’t deny it,” I said, speaking aloud. “You still haven’t told me why.”

  Before the old wizard could answer, I heard a thin, sharp squeak. It sounded almost inhuman, but as I spun around I realized it was Evrard.

  He had opened the green door of the wizard’s house a crack and was staring within. A second squeak was forced from him as he took a backward step, and the door slowly began to swing open.

  The old wizard leaped forward with a cry. He threw his body against the door and threw a powerful binding spell around the entire house. The door slammed shut again.