C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 02

by The Wood Nymph;the Cranky Saint

  "I'm sorry, Daimbert," said Evrard, still laughing and sounding not at all penitent, "but you've been acting so serious about everything that I thought I should—"

  He did not finish the sentence. He rose straight up from the saddle to a distance of about ten feet, shot sideways, and dropped. I managed to set him down quite lightly.

  Now it was my turn to laugh, so hard that my mare turned her head around to look at me. After dusting himself off and giving me one truculent look, Evrard joined in.

  Dominic and the duchess, I told myself, could take care of themselves. I was the wizard of this kingdom, and my concerns were magical, not social.

  "Let's call a truce," I said to Evrard. This was as good as being back in school. "If we keep binding and lifting each other, we'll never get to the wood nymph's grove."

  "Truce it is," he said cheerfully. Just like back in school, I immediately and surreptitiously started preparing a new lifting spell, just in case. He approached his startled mare, making reassuring sounds, and remounted. "Did you ever hear the joke about the nun, the nixie, and the wood nymph?"

  II

  In mid-afternoon we reached a fork in the trail. Turning one way would take us duchess's castle, and the other way up onto the high plateau, toward the valley of the Holy Grove. The day had turned hot and the road dusty. I hesitated, taking a pull from my waterskin.

  Evrard interrupted my thoughts. "Which road gets us to the wood nymph's grove the fastest?"

  "This way," I said with sudden decision. It would be shadowy and refreshing down in the limestone valley where the hermit and the wood nymph lived. The duchess could wait.

  The wind blew up on top of the plateau, drying the sweat on our foreheads, as we approached the low wall where one could look down into the valley. Evrard looked thoughtfully at the view. "I didn't get a chance to ask the duchess when we were up here," he said. "Were there once castles in this valley?" pointing toward the rock formations. The white limestone, emerging in tall, tumbled shapes from the trees that clung to the valley walls, did indeed look like ruins.

  "I think those are all natural. The stone weathers like that over the millennia." It was such a responsibility being burdened with Evrard's continuing education.

  As we continued along the valley rim, I was surprised to see some raw wooden scaffolding, partially erected. It looked as though the entrepreneurs were going ahead with their plan to build a giant windlass to lower pilgrims to the Holy Grove. I had almost persuaded myself that it was all a façade, designed only to irritate Eusebius, the Cranky Saint, enough to make him leave. But it looked as though both Joachim and I were wrong on this point.

  The young man in the feathered cap came out as we approached his booth. The sign was still there, proclaiming, "See the Holy Toe! Five pennies on foot, fifteen pennies in the basket." But there was something different about the booth. On the little shelf in front, small shapes were clustered. As we came closer I could see that they were ceramic figurines.

  "Greetings, Wizard!" said the young man cheerfully, recognizing me at once. "Have you changed your mind? Do you want to join us? As you can see, we've got our figurines and brochures, including the story of how someone prayed to the saint to be healed of the pox after years of mocking him, and the saint only healed him along one side to teach him a lesson. We're going to add vials of water from the holy spring this week. And we're almost ready for the basket, though we still think it would be better if people could be raised and lowered by magic—certainly it would be more impressive!"

  "And it might even be safer," said Evrard, looking dubiously at the scaffolding.

  "Are you another wizard?" the young man cried in delight, noticing the moons and stars embroidered on the jacket slung over Evrard's saddlebag. "I knew it! The Royal Wizard has brought you here, hasn't he, to join in our enterprise. It's a wonderful opportunity, I assure you! Once the hordes of tourists and pilgrims start to arrive, the silver pennies will just pour in."

  I had dismounted for a closer look at the figurines, but I froze when Evrard did not answer. I swiveled around toward him. Could he possibly be taking such a proposal seriously?

  Still mounted, he turned his blue eyes ingenuously toward the young man. "I'll have to take it under advisement," he said gravely. "You realize, of course, that unless you were able to pay me at least five hundred silver pennies a week, it wouldn't be worth my while. That's what the duchess is paying me. And of course I'd need a month's advance before I could even consider beginning."

  I turned my back to hide a sudden grin and picked up a figurine of a toe.

  The young man gasped behind me. "But five hundred silver pennies—" He paused briefly. "Well," he continued then in a calculating tone, "if we charged them twenty-five pennies each for a magic ride, and were able to get at least twenty pilgrims a week, we would gross that much. And although we'd been thinking of twenty-five pennies for the round trip, we might be able to charge them fifteen pennies to descend and twenty more for the ascent. But by the time we divided it . . ."

  "How many ways were you planning to divide the money made by my magic?" asked Evrard.

  I held my breath, listening.

  "Well, five, counting you, although we need half the receipts for ‘overhead,’ and we'd also promised . . ." There was a long pause. "And we'll have to negotiate on the month's advance. Look, why don't you give me a chance to talk to the others, and we'll be in touch. You say you're working with the duchess now?"

  "Who are the others?" I demanded, turning sharply around. Joachim had said three priests were coming, and I suddenly wondered if they might be this young man's still unseen associates.

  His answer did nothing to dissuade me on this point. "Just some friends of mine," he said vaguely. "Keep in touch, Wizards!"

  He stepped back under the shade of the big tree across from his booth, without even trying to persuade me to buy the ugly figurine of the Holy Toe I was still holding. I put it back down next to a rather misshapen dragon and remounted.

  When we had ridden a hundred yards from the booth I turned to Evrard and said, "Try telling the duchess she's paying you five hundred silver pennies a week. You may be surprised at her answer."

  The walls of the narrow valley stretched their shadows over us as we followed the river upstream toward the holy grove. The cooler air and the murmur of the flowing water took away the incipient headache which had been growing during our dusty ride, but I also realized how late in the day it had become.

  "First we should set traps for the horned rabbits in case there are still any in the valley," I said. "How did you catch them before?"

  "The first time," said Evrard with a frown, "I used a calling spell, flew up to them once they came near, and grabbed them. I had to get them by the rear end, or they'd bite—and even so they kicked. I didn't try a trap for fear they would disintegrate. But these past few days, they were moving much faster and seemed much more cunning, so I'm not sure grabbing them will work anymore."

  The results of the old wizard's improvements, I thought. "Well, let's try a trap now," I said. I found some string in my saddlebag from which I tried to weave a net.

  "That doesn't look very effective," commented Evrard.

  He was right; city boys never learn much about nets. But I wasn't going to say so. "It will be fine," I said loftily, "once I attach a paralysis spell."

  I had actually made myself fairly good at attaching spells to objects. In a few more minutes, I had my net arranged under a bush, where I hoped a rabbit might hop. Anything that entered the net should immediately become paralyzed. I doubted the spell would last more than a short time, so any other creature that blundered in would soon be able to escape again, but with any luck the spell would cause a horned rabbit to disintegrate. "We can check later," I said, "and see how many we've caught."

  Evrard gathered what he told me were especially tempting herbs for rabbits and dropped them into the net, from a height of several feet so as not to imprison his own hand.

>   "But since they're not alive, they don't eat," I objected.

  "I think they still have the habit of eating," he said gravely, "laid down in the bones. I saw them nibbling on plants like this before."

  As we started up the path toward the waterfall and the grove, I said, "Remember what I warned you. Even if we don't actually see the hermit, we shouldn't make any remark about the Holy Toe that he might overhear—we don't want to insult him." To sound less like a schoolteacher, I added, "It may be hard. It is awfully silly."

  "From what you say," said Evrard, much more seriously than I expected, "the saint, the wood nymph, and a succession of hermits have all been living here together for generations. The hermits—and for that matter the saint himself—must have gotten used to the nymph. She can't always have made respectfully pious remarks, yet by now they must be able to get along."

  I glanced back toward the rough stone huts among the trees. Today I saw no sign of the hermit's apprentices. "But maybe some of her remarks have helped keep the saint cranky. And that still doesn't mean they are used to the comments of young wizards."

  I paused, struck by a new idea. "But maybe it does! After all, both my predecessor and the old ducal wizard seem to have known the wood nymph quite well, a long time ago. If the hermits, the saint, and the nymph have made a threesome for generations, then maybe the wizards of Yurt have been a consistent fourth."

  "Well, who else would keep a nymph entertained?" asked Evrard with a mischievous sideways glance from his wide blue eyes. "A hermit's not going to provide her with much action—and even less so a disembodied saint, when all that's left of him is his toe!"

  But when we reached the grove, he seemed suitably respectful. "So—there it is," he said in a colorless voice, looking at the shrine of Saint Eusebius. If the detailing on the golden reliquary matched the saint's toe accurately, he had had an ingrown toenail. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he was cranky. "I don't see the hermit. Should we call him?"

  "He's probably praying," I said. "We shouldn't disturb him. Last time I saw the nymph beyond those trees. Let's start over there."

  We picked our way across the damp ground, following the faintly marked trails between the little springs. There was nothing in or behind the first dozen trees we looked at. In a short distance the thick foliage and the smooth, silent trunks had managed to confuse me, so that I was no longer sure where I had come when I was here before. I was however fairly sure the nymph was teasing us deliberately. Several times we nearly lost our footing in the mud.

  I had almost decided we should start for the duchess's castle before it became any later when I heard Evrard catch his breath. I turned my head very slowly.

  She leaned against the pale trunk of a beech, as I had seen her before, her enormous violet eyes fixed on us but no expression on her face.

  "Good day," said Evrard tentatively, which drew no response.

  But I began at once with the words of the Hidden Language. When I finished the spell I paused, watching her. Her expression altered like ice breaking up in the spring. She began to smile, a smile both delighted and delightful.

  "The spell worked!" I thought and just managed not to say out loud.

  "Greetings, Wizards!" she said. "It's been a long time since a wizard has been here, much less two!" Her eyes twinkled. "If I'm not mistaken, one of you is the new Royal Wizard of Yurt, and the other the new Ducal Wizard."

  "Greetings, Lady," said Evrard, apparently perfectly at ease. "Daimbert has been Royal Wizard for two years, but he hasn't had a chance to meet you before. I'm Evrard, the duchess's wizard. I've just recently arrived in the kingdom."

  She turned swiftly, smiling at us over her shoulder, and stepped behind a trunk. When we followed her a second later, we saw no one. But almost immediately a voice called from the branches above. "Come up!"

  I put together the flying spell and rose slowly upwards. Evrard bit his lip, frowned, and then followed, without enough hesitation to make it worth commenting.

  Forty feet up, a number of branches growing close together formed a hidden platform, on which were spread rugs and cushions. Rustling green leaves formed a partial roof, but from the platform one could also look out and up, toward the magnificent crown of the tree, the white limestone cliffs of the valley, and the deep blue of the sky beyond.

  The wood nymph was already seated in the green shadows. As we arrived, she held out a wooden bowl toward us. "Have some raspberries." As she leaned toward us, offering the bowl, her hair fell over her shoulder and brushed my hand. It was just as soft as it looked. I almost expected the berries to vanish, but they stayed real and delicious all the way down my throat.

  Evrard looked around thoughtfully. "Is this all there is to your house?"

  She smiled. "It's all I need. It's humans, not wood nymphs, who try to build and create."

  "What do you do when it rains?"

  The nymph laughed, a charming sound like wind through the leaves. "I thought the necessary magic would be obvious to a wizard."

  Evrard shook his head, almost blushing. "You live and breathe magic, Lady. We wizards have to learn it, and I'm afraid I'm still learning. Have you lived here long?"

  "I've lived here all my life," she said with another smile. Even Evrard knew better than to ask her how long that had been.

  III

  We sat on her cushions, eating raspberries and drinking spring water, while the blue slowly faded from the sky far above us. Tiny breaths of wind fluttered the leaves and touched our faces as gently as a caress. The water—or maybe the wood nymph's conversation—went to my head like fine wine. Sheltered as we were by branches above us and on either side, the broader world soon seemed very inconsequential.

  The worrisome affairs of the duchess, Nimrod, and Dominic shrank in importance, becoming something trivial they'd work out for them­ selves. It was clear that Saint Eusebius would never really want to leave such a lovely place—I could have stayed here forever myself.

  The nymph asked us questions about the royal castle of Yurt, listened to our answers with her full attention, laughed approvingly at our jokes, and kept our water glasses full. Her own wit both kept us teasingly at bay and invited further confidences. Every movement was graceful, every look and word from her as sensuous as a sun-warmed breeze.

  If I had not already been in love with the queen, I would have been in love at once. I tore my eyes away from the nymph long enough to look toward Evrard. He had never even met the queen, and he didn't have a chance.

  With a start, I realized it was evening. I glanced upward to find that all the branches above us had lost their detail in darkness, and the sky beyond was only a somewhat lighter shade of gray. When I looked again toward Evrard and the wood nymph, they were invisible, hidden in shadows. I had been able to see perfectly until a glance upward, to the world outside of the nymph's cozy nest, showed me that it was so dark I shouldn't have been able to see for the last hour.

  The nymph too knew it was late. I could hear her standing up. "Come see me again tomorrow," she said, the smile clear in her voice.

  We floated slowly down toward the ground. Evrard was silent as we groped our way through the grove and then, once free of the trees, lifted to fly over the waterfall towards our mares, slightly paler gray shapes in the darkness. As we mounted, he gave a long, contented sigh. "She wants us to see her again tomorrow. I'd like to see her every day of my life."

  "You can't bind yourself to a wood nymph," I said reprovingly. "She'll live forever, or at least for many more centuries, whereas a wizard isn't good for more than two or three hundred years. And you know wizards don't marry anyway."

  Evrard's laugh came out of the darkness. "You're being a school­ teacher again, Daimbert."

  He was right, but at the moment I was more concerned about our horses' footing. My mare stopped, unwilling to go further on the uneven trail. I was not even sure we were still on the trail. I looked up toward the sky, a slice of stars between the darkness of the cliffs.


  "We need a light," I said. What we really needed was a magic lantern. I tried lighting up my mare's bit and bridle, which worked quite nicely to light up the path, but made her jerk her head so violently that I ended the spell at once.

  "How far is it to the duchess's castle?" Evrard asked. "Do you think we'll be able to make it?"

  I had been wondering the same thing. "Her castle must be nearly ten miles from here, and the old count's isn't much closer. I think we'd better stay here."

  "How about going back to the nymph's tree?"

  I'd known he'd suggest that. "We can't very well impose on her. Besides, I don't want to grope around the grove, trying to find her. It was confusing enough in daylight."

  Evrard gave another happy sigh. I realized with a shock that I had no clear idea what we and the nymph had discussed for the hours we had been in her tree, only the warm feeling that it had been a delightful conversation. If my purpose in coming to the valley was to persuade her to leave the Holy Grove, I was no closer to doing so than I had been before—in fact further, because I had as little wish as Evrard did to see her leave Yurt.

  From the corner of my eye, I suddenly thought I saw a flash of light. There was a faint whispering sound that was not the whispering of the leaves. I probed quickly with magic and found several people moving toward us. After a startled second I remembered: the old hermit's apprentices.

  The young men approached us, carrying a torch. One stepped out of the shadows next to my mare, making her jerk hard against the bit. The torch light gave his badly-shaved head the unreal quality of something out of a bad dream. But his voice was both polite and frightened.

  "Excuse me, Father, but we heard your voices. Has something happened to the hermit?"

  I realized he must think I was Joachim. "I'm not the royal chaplain," I said, "but the wizard who was with him when we saw you before. I've come to the valley with another wizard on a different mission entirely. As far as I know, no one is planning to take your master away from here."