The Wood Nymph & the Cranky Saint

by C. Dale Brittain

  The creature rose with a crash, stones and pieces of its body both flying from it. It flung out an arm toward me, started to take a step, and collapsed into a heap of bones—but not before the largest boulder that had lain across it had struck Evrard.

  V

  I had the boulder off him in a second, but he did not move, and his eyes were closed. Trembling all over, I dropped beside him and tried to listen for his breathing.

  Two wizards gone in three days, and I couldn’t save either one of them. I had a sudden, vivid, and very painful vision of telephoning Zahlfast and telling him that Evrard was dead.

  If I had been more systematic, if I had tried to instruct Evrard in a rational way instead of first assuming that he would be better at magic than I had been two years ago, and then scorning his quite real abilities when it became clear that he was not, he might have had a long and happy career.

  But he was breathing, shallowly and rapidly. As I tried to brush back the hair from his face, darkened from red to brown by sweat, he moaned and opened his eyes.

  “Daimbert,” he whispered, “I couldn’t hold it. What happened?”

  “It’s gone. I’ve turned it back into bones.”

  He closed his eyes again and weakly held out his arms. I was terrified that by shifting him I might kill him, if he was not killed already, but I could not hold out against that appeal. I pulled him toward me, trying to make reassuring sounds. I did not want to hold a dying wizard in my arms ever again in my life.

  “It’s my leg,” he said faintly. “And I can’t fly. All my magic has been knocked out of me.”

  “Your leg? Just your leg?” I said with dawning hope. Maybe I wouldn’t have to make that telephone call to Zahlfast after all.

  “I was trying to hold it down with that spell, and suddenly it seemed to rise up and hurl a boulder at me. It hit me right below the knee.” He stopped as his teeth began to chatter in spite of the warmth of the day.

  “You’re in shock,” I said calmly, as though I knew exactly what to do. I let go of him for a moment, peeled off my now ripped and filthy velvet jacket, and put it over him. “Lie here quietly and get warm. In a short while, when you’ve rested, I’ll figure out a way to get you up to the castle. Then we can send for a doctor to set your leg.”

  In a moment, Evrard gave a breathy snort and either fainted or slept. I looked up then for the first time at the pile of white bones that had once been the monster.

  If the old wizard’s magic had been a little more powerful, if he had found a way to hold the monster physically together and to transfer his mind into it at the same time, then those bones might have been the wizard’s body. The creature would never now be able to receive the human life it had spent its short existence seeking.

  At the edge of my thoughts I became aware of voices. I glanced up to see a group of riders emerging from the trees, led by Prince Ascelin, Dominic, and Diana.

  The duchess was still wearing her wedding dress, the skirt of which had become all bunched up by riding astride. She gave a cry of dismay as she saw Evrard and leaped from her horse.

  “It’s all right, my lady,” I said, trying to smile. “He’s still alive, and we’ve destroyed the monster. It wounded him as we overcame it, but I could never have succeeded without him.”

  After Gwen and the cook had worked feverishly to have the wedding feast finished on time, it turned out to be delayed over four hours. The old cook was furious, but Gwen, recovering from the shock of meeting the monster in the great hall, used her nervous energy and the extra time to make cinnamon cookies. She had made them for her own wedding and had sent every person off afterwards with three wrapped in gold foil, and she thought it would be a nice touch to do the same for the duchess.

  In spite of the cook’s dire remarks that the dinner was spoiled, everyone seemed to enjoy it hugely. It turned into a combination wedding feast and triumphal dinner in honor of the monster’s destruction. Once Evrard’s leg was set, he talked the doctor into letting him be carried into the hall to be hailed as a hero.

  Late that afternoon, when the sunlight lay golden and heavy in the center of the courtyard but the shadows of the walls already stretched long, I went up to Joachim’s room. Evrard was asleep in my bed, and the rest of the castle was sitting around lazily, talking in some amazement of the day’s events, feeling they had already eaten too much, and nibbling on cinnamon cookies.

  Joachim threw his casements wide open and looked out into the courtyard. I had something important to ask him, something that I had managed to forget during the past few days.

  Now that it appeared that Evrard was certainly going to live, and indeed according to the doctor would be able to walk easily again in six weeks, I had begun to feel that I might someday soon be cheerful again. Even the memory of the old wizard’s death could not remain constantly before me, though I continued to feel I was more responsible than the chaplain seemed to think. But Evrard would be moving to the duchess’s castle, which would leave me again as the only wizard at the royal castle. And even if Evrard stayed here, it would not be the same. Frustrating as Joachim sometimes was, he was still the closest friend I had ever had.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked his back. “Does the bishop still want you to go to the episcopal city and join the cathedral chapter? How soon will you have to leave Yurt?”

  He turned around, looking genuinely distressed. “Didn’t I tell you, when I met you down in the valley? That’s why I felt so peaceful then. I know I said I’d talked to the bishop, that he’d reminded me that God does not give us burdens heavier than we can bear if we turn to Him. But didn’t I tell you the rest?”

  “What didn’t you tell me?”

  “I told the bishop that I hoped I had not fallen into the sin of pride, but that it seemed he might be preparing the way for inviting me to join the chapter. And if he was, I told him, I must request that he not do so. I explained that I felt I could do more in Yurt as Royal Chaplain than serving in the cathedral, where there are already many far better qualified priests.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Joachim smiled. “It’s not a desperate matter, Daimbert. He told me he understood and must agree with my decision.”

  I could see it all, even if the chaplain’s humility kept it from him. The bishop was willing to let him remain in Yurt for now, but sooner or later, when they wanted a cathedral officer or even a new bishop, they would come looking for him again.

  But that should be many years in the future. Almost reassured, I asked, “And he didn’t try to tell you that you should guard against the untoward influence of friendship with a young wizard?”

  Joachim smiled again and shook his head. “I think he’s become reconciled to the idea. I should introduce you to him sometime.”

  I had one last question. “Could I possibly have been as callow as Evrard when I first came to Yurt?”

  The chaplain smiled slowly but thoroughly. “Yes,” he said.

  I put my hand in my pocket and found Gwen’s foil-wrapped cookies. “I’d thought after that feast we had that I wouldn’t want to eat again for days, especially since I wasn’t even hungry at the time. But these suddenly seem appealing. Shall we split them?”

  The duchess and her new husband left early the next morning for her castle and were gone for a week. In the meantime, I went down to the village to find the young couple whose chickens the monster had killed and to compensate them.

  They seemed delighted to see me and to talk about the resolution of the earlier quarrel, even before I had a chance to ask them how much a new flock would cost. I decided not to mention that what ever cousin or uncle had been dug up and hidden in the woods as part of that quarrel had probably formed the bones of the monster.

  At the end of the week, Diana and Ascelin were back at the royal castle. Prince Ascelin was now going home to his city, taking his bride with him, to tell his people about his marriage and to make the arrangements for the city to be governed by someone els
e for the six months of each year he and the duchess would live in Yurt.

  In the morning, the duchess went into my chambers with Evrard. She talked to her wizard for over an hour before coming back out into the courtyard. “So, do you think you can keep an eye on Dominic by yourself?” she asked me.

  “Of course I can. Now that he’s decided that the big change he needs is a year in the City once his regency is over, rather than a wife, he seems fairly contented. He’s so relieved that he didn’t have to marry you after all that he shouldn’t give us any trouble.”

  The duchess laughed. “If it had been up to me, I would have waited to go until the king and queen came back, but Ascelin is understandably in a hurry to get home himself.” He came across the courtyard toward us, and she looked at him affectionately. “It will be interesting seeing his city.”

  I was not fooled by her comment about waiting for the king and queen’s return. Diana had always done exactly what she liked, and what she liked right now was making her new husband happy.

  In a few minutes she and her knights rode out over the draw bridge, Nimrod—as I still couldn’t help but think of him—striding beside her saddle as he had the first time he came to Yurt. I wondered if they would ever find a horse big enough to carry him.

  In my chambers, Evrard was hobbling back and forth, making a pile of some of my books by my best chair. “As long as I won’t be able to move around much for a while,” he said with a smile though not meeting my eyes, “I thought I should make use of the time and learn some of the magic the teachers at the school think they’ve already taught me.” But then his freckled face became sober. “After all, it will be embarrassing always to have to ask them things I ought to know.”

  I sat down rather abruptly. “Wait a minute. I think I’m missing something.”

  “I’ve resigned,” said Evrard, much too seriously to be joking. “I told the duchess just now, and she agreed.”

  “But she thought you were a hero when we overcame the monster!” I protested, but Evrard wasn’t listening.

  “She never really needed a ducal wizard in the first place, and she’ll need one even less now that she’ll be gone from Yurt for half the year. And let’s be realistic, Daimbert. You and I both know that I’m really not competent to be out trying to practice magic on my own. I only graduated by the skin of my teeth, and I could never have stopped the monster without you.

  “There are always a lot of young wizards who stay on at the school for a few years, helping out as demonstrators and the like. Many of the City merchants also employ wizards, at least part time. Maybe Dominic will even want some magical assistance while he’s there! It won’t be a disgrace to go back to the City, and maybe with a few more years of experience I’d actually be qualified to serve some duke or count somewhere.”

  I was caught between agreeing with him and feeling that he was much too hard on himself. “So you’ve fully recovered from the monster knocking all your magic out of you—” I asked tentatively.

  “Oh, yes,” he said as though surprised. “I’d forgotten I said that. The monster didn’t suck my abilities out of me, or anything so dramatic.” He would have put a binding spell on my foot to show me how well he could still work magic if I had not stopped him in time.

  “I think you’ll be a very good wizard someday,” I said, hoping I did not sound patronizing.

  “I don’t want you to feel you’ve failed me,” he continued, looking down at the closed book in his hands. “I’ve learned a tremendous amount from associating with you, Daimbert. And of course, if I’d never come to Yurt, I would never have met the wood nymph!”

  “I’ll miss you,” I said, entirely truthfully.

  “There’s one thing I do feel badly about,” he said, looking at me fully for the first time since I had come in. “When I go, you won’t have anyone here to talk to but the chaplain. Who will you tell your jokes to? Who will put illusory frogs on your pillow?”

  I smiled, glad he could not stay serious for long. “I’ll be all right. Joachim and I have been friends for a long time. Though I haven’t taught him how to do illusions, I have hopes of giving him a sense of humor someday. But if you can get away from the school sometimes, I’d very much like you to come visit.”

  Evrard opened the first of the books and frowned at it as though he had never seen it before. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay here in Yurt until my leg is a little better. With all those young wizards, the school is no place for the wounded. And maybe by the time I go back, my beard will have grown out properly.”

  “Of course, of course. Stay as long as you like.”

  “I’ll telephone the school, to tell them what’s been happening, and find out if there’s a particular branch of magic they think they’ll need there so I can brush up.”

  But before Evrard could call the school that evening, our glass telephone rang. It was King Haimeric, calling us.

  The constable answered, and the king asked first about his roses, but then we all gathered around to talk to him. “I just got the message the duchess sent from her castle, via the pigeons, that she’d gotten married!” said the king.

  “She and her husband left for his principality today,” said Dominic. “But they plan to be back in a month or so.”

  “Well, then,” said the king cheerfully, “I can look forward to meeting him when they return. Has anything else happened?”

  Dominic and I looked at each other. “The retired wizard, my predecessor, has died,” I said.

  “Oh, dear,” said the king, sounding genuinely sorry, while also conveying the sense that this news would not trouble him for long. “Well, he’d already served, what was it, five generations of kings of Yurt?”

  “He left me the ring you gave him,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not, Wizard. Well, is that all the news? I hope things haven’t been too dull in Yurt for you while we’re gone!”

  There was a short pause while Dominic and I looked at each other again. The regent, for one minute, came very close to smiling. Before either of us could speak, the queen appeared beside her husband in the tiny image in the telephone’s base. She was even more beautiful than I remembered. She held the baby prince by the hand; he clung tightly but was indubitably taking steps on his own.

  The queen’s Aunt Maria smiled from behind them. “Did we tell you Baby Buttons has started to walk?” she asked.

  “Dromnick! Gizward!” said the little prince, looking toward us with a broad smile. I hoped he never found out what chaos his birth had caused here in Yurt.

  “Yes, sire,” said Dominic, when the king’s face appeared again, “a few other things have happened, but we can tell you all about them when you’re back. Do you know yet when that will be?”

  “Probably another week or two,” said the king. “So nothing’s happened that you can’t handle?”

  Dominic nodded slowly. “Nothing that the wizard and I can’t handle.”

  Table of Contents

  Start