I took a deep breath. "I've finally realized something, sire," I said. "The entrepreneurs on top of the cliff— You authorized them."
For a second the massive regent looked like a boy caught out. "Why do you say that?"
"You reminded us all that this is royal territory, not part of Diana's duchy. You would never have ignored something like this money-making enterprise, and yet you seemed very uninterested when I first told you about the booth and the basket. I'd been wondering where you would get your income if you left Yurt. The entrepreneurs told me they needed half their income for ‘overhead,’ and I realize now that that meant paying a backer's share to you."
I held his eyes as I spoke and could see embarrassment and anger struggling for precedence. "Don't worry," I said quickly. I had enough problems without further worsening my relations with the regent. "I won't say anything. Even the chaplain says it's not actually illegal, as long as people can still go around by the road for free."
"I never imagined," he said coldly, "that you would try to tell me what was and was not illegal."
"I hope you have other sources of income lined up as well," I said. "Even if they get their basket working, they're never going to get very many paying pilgrims."
Dominic twisted his mouth into a hard line but turned away without answering. In a moment I saw him talking to the duchess. She had a much friendlier expression than I could possibly have foreseen an hour earlier.
"So it looks as though she will marry Dominic after all," commented Evrard. "I guess a woman's desire to preserve her honor must overcome everything else."
This explanation didn't seem right, but I didn't have time to worry about Diana. If we could find the monster quickly and somehow subdue it, we might arrive in time for the last of the nuptial feast, and then we would hear how it all had come out.
As Evrard and I went to get our mares, he asked, "Do you think I have time to slip back and say good-bye to the wood nymph?"
"No," I said firmly. I felt an almost overwhelming need for haste, and the slightest delay was now intolerable. "The knights are mounted already. It's time we—"
From the corner of my eye, I spotted someone moving on the top of the cliff. I jerked around so sharply I could feel the muscles in my shoulders popping. It was a human form, but I could not see if it was true human or monster. Before I could find the words of the Hidden Language to shape a far-seeing spell, the figure stepped to the edge and jumped.
Evrard gave a sharp cry. I threw together a spell that I hoped would slow the figure's descent, then realized it was already falling far slower than it should have been.
In fact, it was not falling at all but flying down the cliff face. With a start, I recognized the old wizard.
Leaving my indignant mare half-saddled, I myself flew to meet him. Evrard was right behind me, flying surprisingly well.
My predecessor stood calmly at the bottom of the line of toeholds. I expected to find an obvious renegade wizard, out of control, perhaps even emanating evil, but he looked no more out of control than when we last saw him.
"So you young whipper-snappers are here, too," he said, straightening out a sleeve that had folded back during his descent. He looked toward the group of priests and knights for a moment, then dismissed them. "You might even be useful."
He seemed to have forgotten—or at least be willing to ignore—how rude I had been the last time I saw him. I was not going to remind him. "I know what's happened," I said instead. "Your monster's escaped."
His eyes flashed at me from under genuinely shaggy eyebrows. "Not escaped. And not a monster, but a living creature. I let it loose deliberately, but I'm having a little more trouble binding it again than I anticipated."
"But, Master, why did you even make it in the first place?"
"To confound young wizards who think they know more magic than they do," he said absently, looking down the valley. I attempted, very delicately, to reach his mind, but he had it well shielded. "I think it's down here in the valley somewhere. It may have gone around to the far end and be working its way back upstream."
"Coming, Wizards?" called the duchess.
"No," I called back. After trying so long to leave, I now had to stay. "Down here" could be anywhere, could be at the far end of the valley, could be the Holy Grove, could be the bushes beside us.
A branch above us bent suddenly, with a faint creak of wood and fluttering of leaves. I staggered backwards, but as I looked up I saw that it was the wood nymph.
The old wizard saw her too. His stern expression changed at once. He called to her in the Hidden Language, not the spell I had derived from the old ducal wizard's books but something comparable. "How would you two young wizards like to meet a nymph?" he asked as she came further along the branch toward us, then looked over our heads.
"In fact, we've met her and even—" Evrard began, but he never had a chance to finish.
Someone screamed. I spun around. The creature I had wanted to seek for so long had come to me.
Or rather, not come to me, but come to the knights of Yurt. I could see it now much more clearly than I had seen it in the glimpse through the old wizard's door.
As tall as a man but twice as broad, it had a large blank oval for a face, its only feature its rapidly-moving eyes. It rose from behind a bush almost directly in front of the duchess. Over its shoulder was flung a ragged form which I identified as one of the apprentice hermits. From his choking cries, he was, for the moment, still alive.
The duchess's gelding reared with a scream of its own. Diana fought for and lost her seat. As she sailed off, the monster threw the apprentice hermit away like a bag of flour and snatched her instead out of the air. Before any of us could move, it had raced up the track toward the grove.
After a horrified second, everyone moved at once. Nimrod grabbed his bow; Dominic forced his horse toward the waterfall with the knights behind him; the dogs foamed up the track; and the old wizard, Evrard, and I flew after the creature.
It ran far faster than I had expected, darting at much greater than human speed toward the grove. It dodged in and under the trees, where Evrard smacked into a trunk and sank to the ground, but the old wizard and I veered desperately as we tried to keep up. At least, on the basis of Diana's wild kicks, she was still very much alive.
The creature came to the pool at the center of the grove, splashed straight through while the duchess yelled, made a wide detour around the shrine of the Holy Toe, where the amazed hermit stood watching open-mouthed, and shot out again into the sunlight.
Flying as fast as I could, I could barely gain on the creature. The duchess was in deadly peril, and both the old wizard himself and this creature he had made, with a magic much more powerful than any thing I could imagine wielding, filled me with horror. I even tried a prayer to Saint Eusebius on the off-chance he might listen.
Nimrod had his bow drawn, but I was very glad to see him lower it again. From what Joachim had said no arrow could harm the monster, but one of the huntsman's stag arrows would certainly have a devastating effect on the duchess.
The creature ran toward the cliff face without even slowing down, altering its course at the last second. And then it headed straight toward the old wizard and me.
I threw both a binding spell and a paralysis spell at it, but my spells had no effect on the creature. Diana, however, stopped shouting and instantly became rigid. Wonderful. Now I'd made it easier for the monster to carry her. It held her motionless body high over its head while the dogs barked hysterically and snapped ineffectually at its ankles.
If the old wizard tried any spells, they had no more useful result than mine. Ten feet from us, the creature turned again, giving me a quick look from eyes I could have sworn were alive, and started scrambling down the tumbled rocks a short distance from the waterfall.
Dominic's horse had fallen and him with it, but Nimrod, who had dropped his bow, sprang to intercept the creature. It dodged yet again as it reached solid ground, but he ma
de a desperate leap and seized it by the leg.
The creature lost its balance for a second, and Diana dropped with a hard thump from its hands. It righted itself immediately, but Nimrod clawed his way up the creature's body and seized it around the neck. The two crashed back to the ground, rolling and grabbing at each other, Nimrod shouting and the creature absolutely silent.
The dogs caught up again and began biting both of them. The old wizard and I reached them only a second later. Leaving my predecessor to deal with his monster, I snatched at words of the Hidden Language in a desperate attempt to break the spells I had inadvertently put on the duchess. If she could run, she might escape.
I didn't know what the old wizard hoped to try, but he never had a chance. The creature lurched to its feet, thrust Nimrod effortlessly away, and raced up again toward the grove.
Diana came back to life with a start. "Christ!" she burst out. "What happened?" Dominic reached us at that moment, fell to his knees, and tried unsuccessfully to take her into his arms. Rather than tell her that I had paralyzed her myself, I took a quick five seconds to reassure myself that she was not badly hurt, then shot after the monster and the old wizard.
Evrard joined us near the shrine, rubbing his head somewhat woozily. But the creature was gone.
It was completely silent within the grove. Not even the leaves moved. "It came straight through here," Evrard said, showing no desire at all to pursue it further. "It was following the river."
I knew then where it had gone. I flew along the banks of the little river, out of the grove, and to the bottom of the cliff. The water poured sparkling out of the cave mouth as though nothing in particular had happened there, but there were a few deep scrambling marks in the gravel. A steady, whispering wind blew from the cave. I dropped down, looking into blackness, and probed with magic.
There was no question. My predecessor's monster had gone this way.
"He's back in the cave," I said as the old wizard and Evrard came out of the trees. Let them chase it now. I flew back down the valley to make sure the duchess really was all right.
She had pushed Dominic away and was sucking a barked knuckle. "I would have been able to rescue myself, without help from anyone," she said angrily, "if it hadn't put some sort of spell on me." As Diana was usually a rational person, I knew that this boast was a sign of how really frightened she had been.
So far we had been enormously fortunate. The creature had let both the apprentice hermit and the duchess go without killing them, or even badly wounding them. Next time we might not be so lucky. Had it deliberately chosen these two out of all of us in the valley, or would it seize randomly at different people—and maybe, or maybe not, let them go again—until it found some specific one it sought?
Nimrod—or rather Prince Ascelin—actually was in worse condition than the duchess. The priests and the knights had all come up, and he sat in the middle of an attentive circle, picking grit out of a bloody knee. There were several marks of canine teeth in his lower legs. "None of those dogs had better be rabid," he said in irritation. "Don't you knights of Yurt train them better than to bite the person they're supposed to help?"
"But that's exactly what we do train them to do!" put in young Hugo with a wink.
The dogs now sat happily panting, not at all repentant. Diana was sitting beyond Nimrod, and I was surprised to intercept an amused glance she aimed toward his hunched shoulders.
The apprentice hermit whom the creature had originally seized did not look physically damaged as a result of his adventure, but he sat a little apart from the others, his knees up to his chin and his eyes enormous. The youngest of the three priests unbent far enough to go sit beside him and say things which I hoped were reassuring.
For a brief moment, like the pause between two claps of thunder, peace had returned to the valley. "I always forget a wizard can fly," said one of the knights to me in what I hoped was admiration. In times of peace, which was now most of the time, Royal Wizards might do little more than illusions for months at a time. I didn't point out that flying had so far been useless against an undead monster running across the ground.
"I'm impressed you were able to get the better of the monster," I said to Nimrod, "even if only for a moment."
"I never did have the better of it. Wrestling it was like trying to wrestle a boulder! All I could do was throw it off balance for a second. Did you have any better luck with magic? Where is it now?"
"It's crawled back into the cave where the river comes out." He looked up briefly and nodded. "My predecessor and the ducal wizard are pursuing it." But the pursuers appeared a few minutes later, dripping wet and without a monster.
The old wizard took me aside, wringing out the hem of his cloak as he spoke. "It's far back in there now. We'd better get all these people out of the valley, and then you and I can go in and get it."
His voice was quiet, and he kept his eyes lowered. I was surprised and gratified he wanted my help, considering his usual opinion of my abilities. But I wondered how he could speak so calmly of catching a monster we had just pursued entirely unsuccessfully around the head of the valley. And then he looked up sharply, and for one second I thought I saw a glimmer in his eye as twisted as the glimpse I had had before of his mind.
IV
I was afraid that Dominic or Nimrod or both would insist on leading the hunt for the monster, but they both seemed eager to escort Diana back to her castle, and her own normal enthusiasm for hunting was greatly diminished.
Joachim and the priests, however, were still determined to stay in the valley. And although I tried suggesting to the hermit that he might want to leave, it was clear that even the dragon that had eaten Saint Eusebius would not budge him or the apprentice hermits.
"We came to assess the will of the saint, and to remove his sanctified relics to a safer place, if necessary," said the thin priest. "What we have witnessed today may make our task even more needful. Those who fear the righteous wrath of God do not fear the terror by night, or the destruction that wasteth at noonday."
My predecessor gave a snort and stamped off to watch the entrance to the cave, and the hermit and his apprentices retreated to the shrine. Evrard and I unsaddled our mares again as the others rode up the steep road out of the valley. Dominic seemed badly shaken. I wasn't even sure if he would insist, now, on the duchess marrying him immediately.
But I didn't have time to worry about that. The spells of three wizards had so far proved useless in catching the monster. Only brute force, Prince Ascelin's size and strength, had had any effect at all, and even that had been pitifully slight. I had known all along that catching the creature would be difficult. Now I was faced with the very real possibility that, even with the old wizard's help, it might be impossible.
For the sake of the priests' safety, I wished they had gone too, but I was almost ashamedly glad that Joachim was staying. I needed all the support I could get; I felt that I would even welcome a discussion of sinful mortals or of complex moral dilemmas.
"You must be very grateful to have another young wizard here to help you," said Joachim. I didn't have the heart to tell him how wrong he was.
The knights, their horses, and the monster had torn up the ground both above and below the waterfall and had broken branches from trees at the edge of the grove. I had just turned away from watching the duchess's party disappear when a branch creaked and dipped just above me. The wood nymph sprang lightly down, with a swirl of long soft hair, and began to attend to the broken branches.
The priests stared. They had clearly not expected to see a dusky-skinned girl dressed in nothing but leaves in their saint's grove. Evrard started to speak, but I motioned him to silence.
Not even seeming to notice us, the nymph worked quickly and efficiently on the broken branches. Although I could not see quite how she did it, and she certainly had no pruning shears, she trimmed off dangling twigs quickly and evenly, passed her hand over the wounds so that they stopped dripping sap, and whistled to th
e birds until they came down from the tree tops and perched again near her. She was in constant motion, moving from branch to branch, springing lightly to higher ones with a flash of graceful legs, dropping to lower ones with no more than a dip and a swish of leaves.
Her violet eyes passed across us as though we were no more substantial than a bit of mist. But as she leaped up to a high branch, seemingly finished repairing the damage to her trees, she suddenly stopped. Her face changed as I had seen it change the first time she had heard my spell, but neither Evrard nor I had said any spells.
And she was not looking at us. She was looking at Joachim.
She swung down again, and hung by one hand from a branch so that her face was at the same level as his. "Are you a hermit?" she asked with a delighted smile.
The three priests of Saint Eusebius seemed shocked beyond the ability to speak, but Joachim answered her calmly. "No, I am a priest. But like a hermit, I serve the will of God."
She dropped to the ground and looked at him as though puzzled. The rest of us might as well have not been there. "Are you a wizard?"
"No," said the chaplain. For one second, he caught my eye over her head. "Wizards work with the earth's natural powers, but I deal with the supernatural."
The wood nymph thought this over. Evrard frowned at me, and I wondered if he was jealous.
"Would you like to come back to my tree with me?" she asked. "I would like to learn more about priests."
Now Evrard was definitely jealous.
"I don't think I had better, my daughter," said Joachim. No one who didn't know him as well as I did would have realized he was smiling.
"But I have strawberries and the sweetest honey," she said, looking at him with dancing violet eyes. Soon, I thought, the round priest would explode, which would leave only two priests trying to appropriate Saint Eusebius's relics. "We could eat my berries and drink spring water while you explained the supernatural to me. Only humans, out of all of nature, have access to eternity, but only a few of you know very much about it."
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