The Wood Nymph & the Cranky Saint

by C. Dale Brittain

  “Surely you know,” said Joachim quietly, “that fallen man is always capable of doing evil on his own, without invoking the supernatural powers of darkness. Tell me what else frightened you.”

  “This is something Evrard doesn’t know about.” I paused. The castle seemed nearly silent. Elsewhere, people were doubtless laughing and talking, but their voices did not carry to us. “I touched the old wizard’s mind, very briefly. It’s got a bend, or a twist—or at any rate something I’ve never seen. I hadn’t tried before today communicating with him mind to mind, so I don’t know whether he’s always been like this, or if this is related to whatever mental breakdown he may be experiencing.”

  “Could it be a manifestation of an evil will?” asked the chaplain, his dark eyes burning.

  “I just don’t know,” I said, thinking irritably that priests always seemed to want to turn magical problems into part of the struggle between good and evil.

  Joachim said nothing more for a moment. “Something six feet tall, with human eyes,” he repeated at last. “If it’s not alive, or was never alive, it won’t have a soul.” That might reassure him somewhat, but I didn’t find it much help.

  “The old wizard does seem to have it very well locked up,” I said. “Certainly there’s a danger that it could turn on him, but at the moment I’m hesitant to do anything that might distract him from what appears to be an excellent binding spell.”

  We were both silent for a moment. “But I still don’t understand why he would do it, Joachim,” I said then. “He’s retired, highly respected. He has nothing more to prove. I know he’s been acting rather peculiarly, but why should he want to make a monster?”

  “Pride,” said Joachim as though it explained it all. “Jealousy.”

  “Jealousy? Of whom? He’s never had anything but scorn for my abilities, and he thinks even less of Evrard.”

  “Isn’t that a little strong?” asked Joachim with a slow smile. “I thought he’d been happy to teach you herbal magic.”

  “He’s always been quick to point out my failings. I think he was only willing to teach me a little because he felt my school training had been so inadequate.”

  “I still think he is jealous of you,” said Joachim, not smiling any longer. “At first he was jealous of your youth, your ability to learn rapidly, the fact that you were Royal Wizard, a position in which he no longer felt competent. And then the one problem he couldn’t solve, the one that made him decide to resign so abruptly— You came in with your own courage and wizardry and solved it.”

  I shivered. “With your help,” I said. That experience was something else I didn’t like to think about.

  “And now there are not just one but two young wizards here in Yurt. He needs to do something to demonstrate, both to you and to himself, the superiority of his magic. And that’s where he has been captured by the sin of pride.”

  Joachim, I thought, could bring any conversation back to sin.

  “I know wizards have spells to give them long life,” he said with a quick look in my direction. “But even a long life may not give a man the opportunity he needs to come to terms with his own mortality.”

  “But what does this have to do with pride?” I asked when Joachim paused.

  “Since you’re a wizard too,” he said after a moment, “I don’t want to say anything that would sound like an accusation against you. But I think it must be even harder when one is used to wielding enormous power all one’s life to realize that, at the end, one has no more power over one’s life than does a new-born baby.”

  I was probably supposed to be gratified to hear that wizards could wield enormous power.

  “Although one cannot live forever oneself,” Joachim went on, “someone may try to create something that will live on beyond one’s short span. In one form, this desire for creation is God’s power reflected in His creatures, the impetus to produce and cherish children, the basis for philosophy and art—even wizardry. But carried too far it becomes pride, the desire to become God’s equal. In trying to duplicate God’s act of creation, your predecessor endangered his soul.

  “When facing his own death, when facing a young wizard with surprisingly good abilities, he needed to demonstrate that his powers of creation had not faltered. And he went beyond the limits ordained for mortal men, because he tried to make a new living creature, to imitate God Himself.”

  “You’ve got all the answers,” I said grumpily.

  “You asked for my opinion,” said Joachim reasonably.

  We both fell silent again. I forced myself to consider what the chaplain had said.

  It made sense. Stripped of the comments about sin, his explanation accorded fairly closely with what the school had taught us, one of the few lessons, in fact, that I had learned so well that I could no longer consciously first remember hearing it. Those who try the mightiest spells, delving deeply into the forces of magic, always do so at peril: theirs and others’ both. And when such a spell is worked from base motives, from pride and envy, the peril is far greater.

  Maybe I should try to explain to the old wizard that he had no reason to be jealous of Evrard and me—but I could think of no way to phrase it that wouldn’t sound patronizing, and, besides, he seemed to be in the process of demonstrating beyond any question that his magic was indeed much stronger than ours. I realized that everything Joachim had said could also apply to Evrard and the horned rabbits, but I dismissed this. My own attempts to impress my new employers were too recent for me to be able to think of another young wizard as driven by pride.

  “Will you call your school?” Joachim asked. “Could you dismantle the creature? Is it likely to escape?”

  “I don’t know at the moment how to dismantle it, certainly not if my predecessor wanted to stop me. And I’m very reluctant to call the school. I don’t get along very well with the old wizard as it is; if I brought in representatives of the school he despises to take away his magical creation, he’d never speak to me again. And it wouldn’t do much good anyway. The spell was out of the old magic of earth and herbs, unlike anything in modern scientific magic.

  “At the moment, the creature doesn’t seem at all likely to escape. In the next few days, I’m going to talk to the wood nymph, now that I know how; I’ll try to find out more about Nimrod; and I should probably catch the rest of Evrard’s idiotic rabbits. Once I’ve gotten all the other distractions out of the way, I’ll try to work out how to break the spell that holds my predecessor’s creature together. What do you think?”

  “You’ve already told me twice that this is a problem for a wizard, not for a priest.” There was a hint of a smile in the angle of Joachim’s cheekbones. “I think you’re enjoying having another young wizard here.” In spite of everything, he was right. “This seems like something the two of you should be able to handle between you.”

  “What do you think are Dominic’s intentions with the duchess?” I asked abruptly, wanting to change the subject. Since half the castle was probably discussing the pair, I thought we might as well too.

  “I must admit to being surprised,” said the chaplain. “To every indication, he has begun to court her in earnest, but one must wonder why his affections have become suddenly engaged after so many years of acquaintance. I would have hoped either one or both would have come to talk to me about their wedding plans, before these plans became so open.”

  For an intelligent and highly educated priest, Joachim could sometimes be startling obtuse. “I don’t think Dominic has any wedding plans,” I said, “and I’m sure Diana doesn’t either. My own guess is that his courting just started today, and it has no more serious goal than keeping Nimrod and the duchess from carrying out what Dominic considers inappropriate flirtation.”

  “That could be,” said Joachim, as though he found it highly unlikely. “But some of his gestures and comments were too explicit for him not to have had previous encouragement.”

  I laughed, glad to find something worth laughing at. “That’s
just Dominic. He’s never had much finesse in his dealings—he has even less tact than you do.” Joachim frowned at this. “I won’t keep you longer,” I said, standing up. “Have you heard anything more from those priests about the Holy Toe?”

  “I won’t hear anything more until they arrive,” he said gravely.

  Evrard was already back in my study, once again settled in my best chair. At least he wasn’t wearing my dressing gown. “Why did you bring up the old wizard over lunch?” I asked him shortly.

  “You didn’t want me too?” he asked, so much remorse in his wide blue eyes it was almost comical.

  “Certainly not,” I said, sitting down in my second-best chair and refusing to be mollified. “Several people have already realized that if something was bad enough to make you squeak with terror, it was more than illusion. As soon as Dominic realizes it—or has one of the knights point it out to him—he’s going to organize a military expedition to roust the creature out of the old wizard’s cottage.”

  “But he couldn’t do that,” said Evrard, concerned. “The old wizard’s magic would stop him.”

  “Of course. The most Dominic could accomplish with his knights would be to distract the old wizard enough that he would let down the binding spells containing his creature, and it would escape.”

  I hadn’t thought of this possibility until I said it, but it immediately seemed disturbingly likely.

  Evrard smiled at me. “You’re even more frightened of that creature than I am! But you don’t need to worry about the old wizard. He has a powerful binding spell to hold it down.”

  “And what do you know about binding spells?”

  “I can do many spells,” he replied in a perfectly sober voice, in spite of the twitching corners of his mouth. “Watch this.”

  I jumped up and interrupted the binding spell he started to put on my foot. “I don’t think I need a demonstration. Besides, you have a word wrong in the Hidden Language—right there.”

  “Oh,” he said in chagrin. “You’re right. You would have gotten your foot free in no time.” He smiled up at me, and I sat down again. “At least now I know my mistake. You see, I almost never make the same mistake twice.”

  “That’s good,” I said, sounding surly even in my own ears. Since I was irritated with Joachim for being a priest, and irritated with Evrard for being a young wizard, maybe I should be irritated with myself for being me.

  “Even aside from his binding spells,” Evrard continued, “I’m certain the old wizard could stop Dominic. ‘A competent wizard should always be victorious against an armed knight.’ They taught us that in thaumaturgy class.”

  “And would you always be victorious?”

  Evrard leaned forward and dropped his voice, though there was no one to overhear us. “Don’t tell the duchess, but I was never very good at those spells. But I’m working on them!”

  I tried to decide if I was good at the spells to stop armed knights. I had never had occasion to try. But Evrard was certainly right in one respect: a wizard who could grow thirty feet tall in the middle of a whirlwind would not find Dominic a problem.

  PART FOUR - THE WOOD NYMPH

  I

  Since I had told Evrard I really would turn him into a frog if he brought up the old wizard and his monster again, I expected dinner to be more quiet than lunch. Once again, Dominic seated Diana next to him, and I ended up next to Nimrod.

  The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that she must have known the huntsman earlier. For that matter, from his polished language and behavior he himself must be other than what he at first seemed. It might explain a lot, even her surprising lack of ease when they first met, if she had last met him, say, in a very different context. I tried again to question him when dinner was almost over.

  “So I understand the duchess is enjoying catching horned rabbits,” I said casually. “Tell me, have you tried to track them down in the valley of Saint Eusebius? The valley seems to have strong powers of attraction for creatures of magic. I’m planning to go there tomorrow, to explore its magical properties more thoroughly, and I was wondering …”

  But I never got a chance to say more. At that point, Dominic rose to his feet. He looked pale, unusual in someone usually rather ruddy, and highly determined. He started to speak, got as far as “My lords and ladies—” and his voice cracked. Evrard smiled, but no one else dared.

  Dominic tried again. “My lords and ladies of Yurt! I would like your attention. I have a special announcement to make. As you know, I have served King Haimeric of Yurt, my uncle, for most of my life, at present as his regent. But recently I have been thinking of doing something rather different.”

  There was a murmur of surprise. Dominic was as much a fixture of the castle as the king’s rose garden.

  “In fact, once the king and queen return and release me from my regency, I think I shall leave Yurt. I have not yet decided where I shall go.”

  My first startled thought—the thought of a city merchant’s son—was to wonder what he would live on. He had all a prince could want as long as he was in Yurt, but his wealth was based on the revenues from the castle’s own lands—really nothing more than a glorified allowance from the king.

  The silence was broken by Hugo, the youth who had been training in knighthood under Dominic’s direction. “You can come back to the City with me at the end of the summer if you like,” he said. “Mother and Father won’t mind.”

  Dominic smiled, almost affectionately. “I’ll consider it,” he said, then became determined again. “Before I go, there is something very important I want to settle.”

  He turned toward the duchess, on whom a horrible realization seemed to be dawning, and went down on one knee before her on the flagstones.

  If I had determined to propose marriage to a woman I had already decided six years ago I didn’t want to marry, then I would have done it in private. But that apparently wouldn’t do for the royal regent.

  He took a ring out of his pocket. From where I was sitting I could see the firelight glint on the diamond. It was an enormous stone. We had in the castle treasury the jewelry that had once belonged to Dominic’s mother, and this must be from the collection.

  Diana looked, for once in her life, completely nonplussed. I had the sickening feeling one sometimes has when seeing a bad accident about to happen, that everything is taking place very slowly but one is too paralyzed to do anything about it.

  “My lady, I offer you this ring as a token,” said the regent gravely. “A token of my love for you, which I dare to hope you may return. A token of my wish that you and I should become man and wife.”

  This had gone far beyond paying court to a woman to keep her from making a spectacle of herself with somebody else. Dominic, I thought, had simply lost his mind.

  Diana took a deep breath. “Prince Dominic,” she said in a high, clear voice, “you have set my maidenly heart aflutter.” She did not take the ring held out to her.

  I glanced toward Nimrod beside me and found his face stiff with tension.

  “While I fully appreciate your sentiments,” the duchess continued, “your proposal is so sudden that I will need at least a week to give you my answer.” She gave a sudden, saucy smile. “After all, I’ve been single nearly as long as you have—that is, all my life—and it’s hard to contemplate such a complete change so suddenly.”

  “Of course,” said Dominic, watching her face as though searching for a hidden meaning.

  I caught the chaplain’s eye across the table. If he said, “I told you so,” I would deserve it.

  Diana rose to her feet with a swirl of the skirt she had put on for dinner. “Right now, I still need to concentrate on catching the last of those great horned rabbits. If you don’t mind, Prince, I shall go to my room and plan tomorrow’s hunt.” Dominic nodded shortly.

  As the duchess moved toward the door, she stopped as though she had just thought of something and turned back. “Since I’m planning a hunt, I need my chief huntsm
an. Nimrod, could you join me?”

  Nimrod smiled like the sun coming up and jumped to his feet so suddenly that his chair crashed over. He strode across the hall, and he and the duchess left together. The rest of us retreated rapidly, almost in panic, not daring to look at the regent.

  “We’d better stay out of Dominic’s way for a while,” I told Evrard that evening. “And it sounds as though the duchess won’t want your help hunting the horned rabbits. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the Holy Grove of Saint Eusebius so you can meet the wood nymph.”

  The next morning, I sent Evrard to the stables to supervise the saddling of our mares while I went to find the regent. If I could sort out the magical problems associated with the Holy Grove in the next day or two, and if the duchess would just start behaving herself, then I could turn my full attention to the old wizard and his creature. Maybe by then I’d even have some ideas.

  I would have liked to leave the castle without telling Dominic we were going, but he was, after all, regent. I squared my shoulders and hoped that by now he would be calm enough that I could talk to him coherently.

  I expected to find the royal nephew in his chambers having breakfast, or already seated on the throne in the great hall. But I could not find him. When I returned to the stables, wondering uneasily where he could be, I noticed a number of horses were missing.

  “That’s right,” said the stable boy I asked. “It seems like everyone has already gone somewhere this morning. The chaplain, Prince Dominic, a lot of the knights, the duchess and her new huntsman, they’ve all left.”

  “So what do you think?” asked Evrard, who seemed to find the situation hilarious. “Have the duchess and Nimrod eloped, and Dominic gone after them?”

  As we rode out across the drawbridge, the clear sky promised another day of perfect weather. I asked myself how normally rational adults could act like this. And where could Joachim have possibly gone? I had enough to do solving magical problems in the kingdom without being responsible for everyone’s emotional crises. For Dominic abruptly to decide to get married after all these years, for Diana to hire a wizard, commission horned rabbits, and flirt outrageously with a huntsman—