PART FIVE - THE DUCHESS
I
A duchess should not be riding unaccompanied through the countryside. "Come on down. Hurry," I called sharply to Evrard. He floated down from the tree, and we flew over the waterfall and along the trail to meet her, while I imagined all sorts of alarming possibilities. Neither Nimrod nor Dominic was with her.
"There you are," said Diana with satisfaction. She reined in her horse and dismounted. "I thought I might find you here. You look as though you've been sleeping in the woods for days." I glanced down at myself and realized that I had been wearing the same clothes for three days now.
Evrard hurriedly tried to comb his hair with his fingers; he looked even worse than I did. I wanted to ask Diana what had happened, if she had really eloped with Nimrod, but I could not make myself do it. "The grove has powers of attraction I don't fully understand, my lady. We've been meaning to go to your castle for two days, and somehow we've never gotten there."
"Well, we weren't there anyway," she said absently. In her stained riding cloak, she appeared nearly as little like an appropriate member of an aristocratic court as we did.
"But where were you? Is everyone all right?"
"Of course everyone's all right," she said, surprised. "But you're correct about the grove," she continued. "It's always had the power to draw people toward it. And not just the pilgrims who come to worship at the shrine of Saint Eusebius or to seek the hermit's wisdom. The story is that a wood nymph lives here. Thousands of years ago, back when everyone was still pagan, people came to worship her."
"She still lives here, my lady," said Evrard, speaking for the first time.
"Is that so?" said Diana slowly, as though understanding more than he had meant to tell her. He reddened under her steady gaze.
She turned back to me. "My father, the old duke, wanted to cut the grove down when I was a little girl. He even started making arrangements for the hermit to move somewhere else. My father said having a nymph's grove just encouraged women to practice secret rituals—fertility and the like, I presume. I think it was his chaplain's idea."
"But what happened?" If Dominic had murdered Nimrod she seemed to be taking it remarkably calmly.
"King Haimeric wouldn't let him cut down the trees. I was just as pleased myself, though of course I couldn't say that to my father. The king adjudged that the grove was in royal territory, not ducal territory. I don't think he cared one way or the other about the wood nymph—or even the hermit. But he hated to see the beeches cut."
"You still haven't said why you're here alone, this early in the morning."
"Saddle your horses," said the duchess. "Nimrod should be down at the lower end of the valley by now. We were following what he thought was a trail left by a great horned rabbit up on the plateau. It just looked like an ordinary rabbit track to me, but he's even better at hunting than I am. The trail went straight down the slope into the valley, and so did he, but I preferred to come around by the road. We caught one horned rabbit yesterday, so this one is the last." So my paralysis trap would never be tested—probably just as well.
Evrard and I retrieved our saddles and packs from the stone hut. There was no sign of the apprentices, but I scribbled a note thanking them for their hospitality. Our mares, content and well-fed after two days of eating the rich valley grass, looked at us grumpily as we approached but allowed Evrard to catch them.
"And where is Dominic?" I asked Diana as we rode down the valley.
"Last I knew," she said with a shrug, "he'd gone off to see the old retired Royal Wizard."
"I don't understand, my lady. I'd have thought Dominic would be more interested in where you and Nimrod had gone than in the old wizard."
The duchess burst into laughter. She seemed in an excellent mood this morning. "We hadn't left yet when he did. He was going to try to force the old wizard to dismantle his monster."
My heart gave a hard thump. "What?"
"A message I slipped under his door may have helped him decide he ought to go," said the duchess. She chuckled as she spoke, then turned to look at us gravely. "If you two plan to deceive either Nimrod or me, I'm afraid you're going to have to do much better. It was clear from what you said at dinner the other night that the former Royal Wizard of Yurt had created a new and terrifying creature."
My stomach knotted. I put a hand over my eyes, realized this probably wasn't safe when riding a narrow road immediately next to a river, and instead glared at Diana. "So you sent him off to the old wizard's cottage, to do goodness knows what, maybe even set the monster loose through his bumbling, just to make sure he didn't realize that you and Nimrod were leaving together?"
"It worked," she said mildly. "Besides, I'd already told him we were going hunting again."
Diana didn't care who she irritated, but if she continued to flirt with Nimrod even after Dominic had proposed, Joachim and I would have to deal with a furious and humiliated regent for the rest of the king's absence—assuming he lived through his encounter with the monster. If I loved the people of Yurt, as I had said to Evrard, then I could not pick and choose between them. To love Yurt meant not just the king and queen and baby prince, the chaplain and the constable and Gwen and little Gwennie, the queen's Aunt Maria and all the knights and ladies, but even—somehow—Prince Dominic.
But then I shook my head and tried to restore a little rationality to my thoughts. Considering how easily my predecessor had dealt with Evrard and me, two theoretically competent wizards, the regent would never be able to get past him and set the monster loose.
We rode several miles down the valley, farther than I had ever gone, to where it opened out into flowering pastureland. "By the way, Wizard," said the duchess to Evrard, "there's some sort of booth on the plateau at the head of the valley, and the man there said something very odd about how you might be working for them . . ."
Evrard interrupted her. "Excuse me, my lady, but might you have any food with you?" He had not, I realized, had anything to eat for nearly two days but the wood nymph's berries, and even then it had only been stale bread and lettuce. In spite of my breakfast with the hermit, I was not much better off.
"I've got some hardboiled eggs you can have if you're hungry," she said, not quite grudgingly, and reined in to reach into her saddlebag. Neither Evrard, who ate three, nor I, who ate two, took time to worry about her tone.
Here where the valley widened a wind blew steadily, and the flowers and shrubs swayed beneath a bright sky. Beyond, the valley walls closed in again, leaving only a very narrow gap, just broad enough for the river to rush through and disappear with a faint roar. Through the gap the hills were distant and blue; the plateau itself must drop off steeply here. It would have been nice to go on looking at the scenery, but I had responsibilities.
"Listen, my lady," I said. "The king asked me to keep on eye on the kingdom for him. I cannot have you upsetting the whole court while he is away."
Diana's expression softened. "Yes, you're certainly right. Nothing should happen that will distress Haimeric when he comes back. He's an excellent king, but he is an old man, and he doesn't need shocks. Nimrod should be near here," she went on cheerfully. "I wonder if he's had any success yet."
A bush only a few feet from us suddenly stirred, and the tall huntsman unfolded himself from behind it. "Didn't think I could hide behind such inadequate cover, my lady?" he asked with a grin.
Diana, who had jerked with surprise, burst into laughter. "No, I didn't. What luck have you had?"
"Nothing yet, but the track's still very fresh. I wouldn't be surprised to see that magic rabbit in my nets within the half hour."
"Take my wizard with you," said the duchess, "and go back to your nets. The Royal Wizard and I will stay here, in case the rabbit gets by you."
The duchess and I sat our horses, watching Evrard and Nimrod in the distance. Now was my chance. If I was going to deal with the old wizard's monster, whether loose or locked up, I had to try to clear away every thing else t
hat kept distracting me: the Cranky Saint, the entrepreneurs, Dominic's strange behavior, and especially what the duchess was doing in asking her wizard for horned rabbits and then carrying on with a hunter who appeared out of the woods to hunt them.
But she spoke before I could. "Tell me, Wizard," she said with a flash of gray eyes, "why this sudden prudish interest in my affairs?"
"You don't need to assure me of your honor, my lady. I just want you to realize what you're doing. Even though you put Dominic off with vaporings about maidenly uncertainty, the entire court, including the regent, knows you've never been uncertain in your life."
She did have the grace to look embarrassed then, but she let me keep on talking.
"And for you to refuse one man, and then immediately leave on a hunt with another— And you camped out with him, I presume, if you weren't at your castle? You distracted Dominic by sending him down to the old wizard's cottage, but that doesn't mean you can forget him."
"You speak as though you thought I had become scandalous in my old age," the duchess said, coldly and evenly.
I had certainly never spoken to her like this before, but I did seem to have gained and kept her attention. "You know the royal court must be rife with speculation and rumor. It's well known that Dominic felt he would have to marry you, to continue the royal line, back before the king met the queen, and that he dropped the plan with relief when the king's marriage made it unnecessary. For him to propose to you now, without the slightest bit of encouragement in the years between, shows that he's willing to let himself be insulted and humiliated if he thinks it's necessary to stop the rumors."
"So that's your explanation?" she said icily. "That Dominic doesn't really want to marry me, he only wants to preserve the kingdom's reputation?"
"What's your explanation?"
She looked at me thoughtfully, her anger draining away. "Dominic's been living in the royal castle, as royal heir, since he was four years old and his father died. I'm not at all sure he really wanted to be king, but it was all he'd ever known."
For two years I had thought of Yurt as my kingdom. Yet at times like this I was reminded that both the kingdom itself and the people in it had lived and had plans and agreements and quarrels long, long before I arrived.
"Dominic is a little slow sometimes," Diana continued, "but this last year it's finally sunk in that he's actually free, for the first time in his memory. But being Dominic, his first thought is to tie himself down again. He says he wants to leave Yurt, but he can't imagine doing so by himself." She laughed. "I guess even I look better to him than some girl from down in the village."
"But how could he support himself and his new wife?"
"I don't imagine he's thought that far," she said with a shrug.
This might answer some of my questions about the regent, but it still left the duchess's behavior inexplicable. She outranked me far too thoroughly for me to force her to tell me anything; all I could do was make her angry enough that she'd keep talking. "But how about Nimrod? You've been encouraging him, my lady, encouraging him as blatantly as any village flirt. When he finds out that you had no real interest in him, that you were only using him to provoke the regent, isn't his reaction going to be highly scandalous itself?"
The duchess's frown cleared unexpectedly at what I had thought was my worst accusation. But before I could react, I caught a sudden hint of something moving.
"The great horned rabbit!" Evrard shouted to us.
We rode quickly to where a net, almost invisible under some bushes, thrashed wildly. Nimrod, wearing enormous gloves, reached into the brush and pulled the net out.
Struggling against the cords was a real rabbit.
Nimrod laughed and freed it carefully. But as it flashed away, the duchess turned to Evrard with a look of irritation. "So your magic couldn't tell you the difference between a magical creature and an ordinary one? I'll tell you what. We're in a hurry, so why don't you try a wizardly calling spell to bring the great horned rabbit into our nets?"
Evrard flushed deeply but started at once on a spell. It wasn't one I recognized; I wondered if it might be something else he had learned in Elerius's course.
The chirping of birds, which had been a constant background sound, was suddenly intensified. A flock of sparrows congregated from all over the valley and settled, with madly flapping wings and incessant chirps, on Evrard's head and arms. "Been taking some tips from the wood nymph?" I said sarcastically. Even I had never attracted sparrows by mistake. Evrard disappeared under a wave of brown feathers.
Laughing over the birds' voices, he said the words to end his spell. No longer drawn by magic, the sparrows hesitated, then shot off. Evrard reemerged into view and tried to brush off his sleeves. "But it should have worked—" he began, then stopped short.
Something was thrashing in the nets a little further down, something highly charged with magic, yet not alive.
A cry came, a cry that could have been an owl and could have been a soul in torment. It was no less bone-chilling because I knew what it was. My normally calm mare reared, setting all the bridle bells ringing, and even Diana was for a moment hard-pressed to stay on her gelding. I kicked my feet out of the stirrups, dropped the reins, and flew forward.
Nimrod was there before me. The netted creature's tiny red eyes stared from beneath its sharp horns in what looked like living hate, and long fangs snapped at him. I dropped to the ground and threw a binding spell onto the horned rabbit. I scarcely dared hope it would work, but the creature fell heavily to its side.
Nimrod leaped onto the still form at once, adding a cord to the binding properties of my spell. "Good work, Wizard," he said over his shoulder. "We've got it now."
But even as he spoke it began to disintegrate. The eyes went lifeless, and first one and then the second horn dropped from its head. The spell that had given the rabbit the appearance of life was breaking up. My binding spell was too much for something that was only held together precariously in the first place. In a moment there was nothing but horns and skin and the smell of decay.
Diana came up, leading my mare. "So you caught the last great horned rabbit?" she said to Nimrod. "Pretty good work, Hunter!" She seemed assiduously to be ignoring Evrard.
Nimrod smiled at her mischievously. "If you do decide to marry Dominic, the two of you will have a household even the royal court will envy. Not only will you have your own castle and your own wizard, but you'll have your own giant huntsman, something even the king doesn't have!"
II
Nimrod and Diana started winding up their nets. There were many more of them than I had at first realized, all carefully knotted from thin cords, almost invisible once in place although the spaces between the cords were so small that only a very powerful creature would have been able to escape. They were certainly much better constructed than my own attempt.
Nimrod moved off, getting the nets he had laid down further away. Evrard went with him, carefully not looking at the duchess. They were soon well out of earshot.
The day had become hot, and the sun made me squint. I eased nets free of shrubs and twigs, leaving the winding and packing to Diana and watching her out of the corner of my eye as we worked.
"My lady," I said suddenly, and she gave a start as though her thoughts had been far away, "I know something you don't realize I know. The great horned rabbits were made by your ducal wizard, at your request."
"He told you?" she said, stopping and putting her fists on her hips. I didn't know if her steely glare was for me or Evrard.
"I'd worked it out for myself. But he doesn't know why you'd wanted them. Nimrod clearly thinks he knows. You heard him just now. He's treating the rabbits as a test—a test which he's now passed—with you as the prize at the end."
Diana had given up any pretense of winding the nets.
"And you don't know this either, but Evrard's horned rabbits—and something else he tried to make—were what decided the old wizard to shake off his lethargy and create a man-
like creature. You've got to tell me: why did you want horned rabbits? I would even have thought you had known Nimrod before, and were going to use the rabbits as an excuse to call on him for help, except that you were so surprised when he first appeared."
Her fury dissolved in one breath. Hands still on her hips, she slowly began to smile. "You know, Wizard, you're smarter than you like to appear."
I would try to appreciate later what was probably a compliment. I kept staring at her, trying to look severe and compelling.
She still did not answer my question, but began again winding up the net she had dropped a minute before.
I tried another approach. "How about the old count? He was terrified by your horned rabbits."
"We stopped by his castle yesterday," she said with an amused look. She could be as stubborn as I. "We'd already caught the second rabbit and told him we'd soon have the third. He seemed relieved."
We were interrupted at this point as Evrard and Nimrod came back with the rest of the nets. The huntsman moved easily through the brush, like a giant cat.
I made a sudden decision. I had no more time to waste on the duchess and her games. "Evrard, you and I have to get back to the royal castle at once, to see what's Dominic been doing and find a way to make the old wizard dismantle his creature. Nimrod, I'd like you to come with us. If by any chance it gets loose, I'll need your help in tracking it."
"Of course," he said, with a smile for the duchess. "My lady enjoys watching me track things. But I should tell you, Wizard, that if the creature gets away from your predecessor, it may head this way. When I tracked those soldiers of hair and bone I told you about, up in the eastern mountains, we caught many of them on a peak that was locally reputed to be magical."
He paused, and when he spoke again there was a hint of tension in what seemed an offhand request. "But before we go, as long as we're here, I'd like to see the Holy Grove."
"The Grove?" I wanted to act now, not be a tour guide.
C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 02 Page 15