The Wood Nymph & the Cranky Saint Read online

  I caught glimpses through my rain-streaked windows of figures hurrying across the courtyard and realized it must be noon. But I was not hungry. I opened the book again but was interrupted almost immediately by a knock at my door.

  It swung open even before I had a chance to speak, and Dominic’s massive form stood blocking the doorway and dripping water on my floor. He closed his streaming umbrella. “I would like a word with you.”

  “Of course,” I said in surprise and pulled up a straight wooden chair for him, not sure it would support his weight but not wanting him soaking through the cushions on my bigger chairs. “Is it about the great horned rabbits?”

  He glowered at me, pulled off his jacket, and sat down. The chair creaked but held. “It’s about that huntsman with the duchess.”

  “Nimrod?”

  “Clearly a false name,” said Dominic without hesitation.

  “What about him?”

  Dominic looked out the window at the indistinct courtyard, then turned to glare at me again. If he had any confidence in my abilities, you couldn’t have told it from that look. “Before the king left, he told me to consult with you or the chaplain on all important matters. I’m not sure why he wanted me as regent if he didn’t even trust my judgment, but I shall obey his commands, of course.”

  What a disappointment. And I had imagined the other day that he himself actually wanted my advice.

  “And what important matter has come up now?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, even to you?” said Dominic with a scowl. It crossed my mind that far too many people had been scowling here in my chambers lately, including me. “Duchess Diana acts toward that low-born giant like a flirtatious girl, and he’s eating it up.”

  It had not been obvious to me, but then I had been too pre occupied with the question of how someone was making great horned rabbits to pay much attention. “Don’t you think the duchess is old enough to take care of herself?” I asked.

  Dominic made a sound that was half a snort and half a growl. “All I know is that she met some hunter out of the woods, took him home to her castle with her, and now has brought him here. If she wants to play fast and loose with her dignity at home, that’s one thing, but as regent of Yurt I can’t have her doing it here in the royal castle. That’s why I want you to have a quiet conversation with her, tell her that her behavior has gone beyond respectable bounds.”

  “Me?”

  “Of course you. Why do you think I came to talk to you? She’s always seemed to like you, for some odd reason, whereas I’m afraid she might deliberately do the opposite of whatever I suggested, just to irritate me.”

  He had a point. “I’ll try to find a chance sometime today,” I said reluctantly.

  “What’s wrong with right now?” demanded Dominic. Being regent certainly seemed to have put steel resolve into his usually lethargic personality. “It’s lunch time. You can observe her behavior at the table for yourself and talk to her immediately afterwards.”

  There seemed to be no way out of it. My wish for new challenges was certainly being granted. I closed the battered volume and got my own umbrella off its hook.

  PART THREE - THE OLD WIZARD

  I

  The chaplain and a few of the ladies had chambers from which one could reach the great hall without going out into the courtyard, but everyone else arrived for lunch dodging through the rain, and a line of wet umbrellas stood against the wall.

  I still wasn’t hungry and took only a little soup and none of the meat pie. Gwen gave me a concerned look from the servants’ table, but I had no attention to spare for her. I was trying, as I had promised Dominic, to pay attention to the duchess and Nimrod.

  I had to admit that Dominic was right. Nimrod and Diana sat with their heads bent together, talking about topics unrelated to whatever the rest of the table was discussing. In pauses in their conversation, when the duchess was addressing a remark to someone else or just busy eating, I saw the giant huntsman’s blue eyes fixed on her almost caressingly.

  The duchess had flirted with me as well when we first met, and my first thought was that this was just more of her teasing. But if so, it didn’t seem fair to Nimrod, who was taking it quite seriously. She had never married because, as far as I could tell, she had never met a man who could keep up with her. I had sometimes wondered if Diana realized that her tendency to keep those around her off balance, to do or say things just to see the reaction she got, was in its own way highly predictable.

  But now her behavior seemed oddly out of character even for someone as determined to be outrageous as Diana. There had always before been limits. She enjoyed being a member of the aristocracy, as much as she enjoyed behaving like no other duchess in the western kingdoms, and would no more have given up her castle and her authority than I would have given up magic. Dominic was right that Nimrod could not possibly aspire to be her social equal, despite his surprisingly cultivated speech and good manners. For that reason, I tried to reassure myself, whatever the regent might think, her obvious affection for a hunter without status or family would never lead to any permanent liaison or even anything seriously harmful to her reputation.

  As everyone stood up from lunch, I went over to her chair. It was one thing dealing with magical challenges in the king’s absence, but it really would become complicated if I had to deal with everyone’s personal problems as well. “Could I have a private word with you, my lady?”

  Diana agreed at once. Nimrod smiled at her and walked away—I assumed things hadn’t proceeded so far that they shared their chambers. Dominic caught my eye and nodded, an abrupt motion with his chin. For once he approved.

  The rain had let up enough that the duchess and I, our umbrellas spread over us, were able to walk rather than run to the door of her chamber and arrive relatively dry. “Have a seat,” Diana said, taking off her cloak. “It’s chilly enough that I’m going to start a fire.”

  She knelt at the hearth, put some twigs and wood shavings together against the front of a large log, and soon had a small blaze going—the duchess would never bother calling a servant for something like this. She added some slightly thicker twigs, and in a moment the log was glowing red. Sitting down next to me, she said, “There. That should take the chill off the afternoon.”

  The fire had provided only a momentary distraction. I pushed aside my reluctance to speak. “I’d like to ask you something, my lady, and hope I don’t offend you.”

  “You haven’t managed to offend me yet,” she said cheerfully.

  “You seem to have become very friendly with Nimrod, considering that he just appeared out of the woods a few days ago. What have you learned about him?”

  Her gray eyes narrowed slightly, but she was determined not to be offended. “I haven’t been quizzing him about his ancestry and family wealth, if that’s what you mean,” she said, smiling to keep the comment mild. Something about the way she phrased it made me wonder if she might already have a good idea of his ancestry and family. “I know he’s very intelligent as well as very handsome, and he’s a far better hunter than anyone I’ve ever seen. You probably haven’t had a chance yet to see him use that enormous bow of his, but he’s an absolute dead shot.”

  I had heard too little of Nimrod’s conversation to be able to tell if he could keep up with her humor and often biting wit, but as a hunter I was sure she had met an equal.

  “In fact, I even—” She stopped without finishing what might have been a very interesting sentence. Instead she looked at me with a frown. “Your question doesn’t really sound like you. Did Dominic tell you to talk to me?”

  I nodded ruefully, rather glad in fact that she’d guessed the truth.

  Fortunately, she seemed to find this highly amusing. “So he’s worried that a member of the high aristocracy, the queen of Yurt’s own third cousin, is flirting outrageously with a nobody? I ought to become really outrageous about it, just to teach Dominic a lesson.”

  “I’m sorry, my lady, I wouldn’t hav
e said anything if he hadn’t insisted. In fact— Well, Dominic himself has been acting a little strangely lately.”

  “In what way?”

  “After the royal family called the other night, he was talking about the baby prince and asked me if I’d ever thought of getting married!”

  She unexpectedly became serious. “So it’s bothering Dominic too,” she said, which made no sense. But then her eyes twinkled. “I presume you told him that even an adorable little blond prince wasn’t going to make you forget that wizards never marry?”

  I took a deep breath. “The regent’s going to ask me what you said.”

  She looked down her aristocratic nose. “Tell him,” she said with a smile twitching the corner of her mouth, “tell him that I was deeply offended at your insult to my honor, and that I told you I would always behave in the most honorable way possible, and that, since I was sure of that point, I would always do exactly what I wanted.”

  Back in my own chambers, I found Evrard wearing my best dressing gown and sitting in my favorite chair with his feet up, leafing through the first volume of my copy of Ancient and Modern Necromancy.

  I sat down across from him. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Fine,” he said brightly. “I was just reading again about the Black Wars.” When I cocked an eyebrow at him, he continued, “Surely you remember the end of the Black Wars.” He waved the book in his hand. The first volume of Ancient and Modern Necromancy, which I’d never read very closely, was almost entirely devoted to history.

  “I’m afraid I’ve never given very much attention to the history of wizardry,” I answered. I was trying to remember if the Black Wars had come before or after the period in which Saint Eusebius was eaten by the dragon—after, I decided.

  “You haven’t? But I love history! Didn’t you want to study all about how the wizards ended the fighting in the western kingdoms? Isn’t that what made you decide to study wizardry in the first place?”

  “No,” I said sheepishly, thinking that maybe I could skim the book this evening after he was asleep. But I didn’t want to be distracted by history. “You’ve taken courses at the school more recently than I, and some of them were different. I want to show you a spell I found this morning and ask if you’ve ever seen anything similar.” I pulled the heavy volume onto my lap and found the place. “I don’t think it is written down entirely correctly, but this gives the general outline.”

  “What is this book?” asked Evrard, sneezing from the dust.

  “It used to belong to your predecessor, the old ducal wizard, thirty years ago,” I said with a sideways glance. “There are four volumes. If you want them, you can have them, once we’re done.”

  “I guess so.” He wrinkled his forehead at the handwriting. “I’d rather have a nicely printed book, but—” He stopped, and his forehead cleared. “But this is the same spell—”

  “Yes?” I prompted.

  “Nothing,” he said quickly. “Nothing. I thought I recognized it, but of course I don’t.”

  He sat back with a cheerful smile. I looked at him in silence, putting several things together. “In fact,” I said at last, “I think you do.”

  At that moment we were interrupted by a hard knock on the door. Dominic, I thought resignedly, rising to my feet. “Yes, I talked to her,” I started to say even before I had the door fully open.

  But it was not Dominic. It was the chaplain, standing under an umbrella. In his hand was a small white square. He must have heard again from the bishop.

  He turned to me without seeming to notice Evrard. “The priests are coming here to Yurt.”

  “Which priests?”

  “Priests from the church of Saint Eusebius, the church that asked for his relics.” These were the ones, I recalled, whom Joachim almost suspected of trying to make the Cranky Saint cranky enough that he would leave the hermit’s grove. “They want to examine the situation at first hand, according to the bishop.” He glanced at the paper in his hand. “They’re already on their way. The bishop has still given me no specific instructions, but the priests will be here in three days.”

  “It really does sound as though the bishop is giving you a free hand in all this,” I said, just managing to meet the intense look on his face. “Clearly he trusts you.”

  Evrard, behind me, cleared his throat.

  “Let me know if I can help, but I don’t know if I can,” I said to Joachim.

  “Of course. Sorry to interrupt you.”

  “So the chaplain’s your very good friend?” asked Evrard as I closed the door again. “It sounds as though he’s got plenty of problems of his own, what with bishops and priests and who knows what else. I guess it must be hard out here for you to find someone intelligent and interesting to talk to.”

  Although I had more than once thought the same thing, I didn’t like the implications of what he had said and decided not to answer.

  “He looks very dour,” Evrard continued. “Somehow it’s hard to imagine wild old Daimbert making friends with a priest!”

  He would realize Joachim’s merits when he got to know him better, I reassured myself. “Right now,” I said, “I want to ask you why you made the great horned rabbits.”

  II

  I had anticipated several reactions, from denial to angry pride. But instead Evrard laughed. “I should have known I couldn’t hide it from you indefinitely,” he said with a broad smile. “When did you figure it out?”

  “So you did make the horned rabbits?” I said, wanting to be sure of this point.

  “Of course I did. Pretty good, weren’t they?”

  “It was something you learned in that class you took with Elerius,” I said casually, not mentioning that it had taken me the better part of a week to work it out. “That class on the old magic. Did all the students make horned rabbits? I don’t like to think of the western kingdoms overrun with those things.”

  “No, we all made something different. I thought of the rabbits myself,” he added proudly. “It’s hard magic, too! Elerius had to work with us individually to make sure we got the spells right, and as it is the horns kept falling off mine. So when the duchess said she wanted me to make her magical creatures, I thought of the rabbits at once.”

  “Wait,” I said sharply. “The duchess asked you to make them? You mean she’s been chasing them across the kingdom these last few days, but they’re something she wanted specifically?” I knew Diana loved hunting, but making something magical just for the purpose of hunting it seemed excessive, even for her.

  “And she and I had to chase them earlier, too,” Evrard said with a rueful expression. “I’d made three and gotten the horns to stay on fairly well. I wanted to test them to see if they’d move and hoot properly out in the wild. This was several days before I met you. We went up to a plateau a few miles from her castle, and they moved so well they escaped!”

  “Escaped? And what did you do?” If strange magical creatures had been loose in the kingdom even longer than I thought, then I had clearly been derelict in my responsibilities as Royal Wizard.

  “The duchess was terribly upset,” said Evrard. “She said she didn’t dare let anyone see them for a few more days—I don’t know why. We managed to catch two of the three horned rabbits, though it took all afternoon. They’d gotten down into that deep valley that’s cut into the plateau.”

  The valley of the Holy Grove. This must be what had made Saint Eusebius cranky enough to want to leave. The king had gone on vacation, the duchess had asked Evrard for horned rabbits, Nimrod had come out of the forest offering to hunt them, and the Cranky Saint had decided to leave Yurt, all within a very short period of time. At least some of these events had to be related.

  But the more I thought about it the less sense this made. The saint, with his relics in a grove shared with a wood nymph, must certainly have seen stranger magical creatures than Evrard’s rabbits during the last fifteen hundred years. And I didn’t think there had been enough time, between when the rabb
its escaped and when Joachim first heard from the bishop, for the priests in the distant city to have had a vision of the saint, write to our bishop, and for him to write the chaplain.

  Another thought struck me. “You didn’t make any other magical creatures besides the great horned rabbits?”

  “Of course not,” said Evrard, his blue eyes round in innocence.

  “But what did the duchess want the rabbits for?” I demanded.

  “I wish I knew,” said Evrard. For a moment, he actually looked troubled. “She never told me. Since they were my first assignment from my first employer, I didn’t want to ask a lot of questions. Then, the afternoon before I met you at the count’s castle, she said I should set free the ones we’d caught.”

  The day the king and queen left Yurt, I thought, the day before I had seen them hopping through the nymph’s valley. The duchess had already told me she had wanted to wait until after King Haimeric had gone on his trip before letting the royal court know she had a wizard of her own. I hoped her only motive was not wanting to distract the king from his vacation.

  “The count had sent us a message the same day, saying he’d seen one—the one we couldn’t catch. So I guess she decided we might as well have all of them loose.” Evrard smiled again. “When I first met you and we were talking about Elerius, I could barely resist telling you about my rabbits! But the duchess had said it was supposed to be a secret.”

  “A secret which I’ve now guessed. Don’t worry. I’m not about to tell everybody else. But why,” having a sudden thought, “if you were able to catch two horned rabbits in one day the first time, has it taken you three days to catch just one?”

  “Well, I certainly could have caught it much faster than that,” said Evrard self-righteously. “But the duchess told me this time that she didn’t want them caught with magic. She wanted to use them as a test for her new huntsman.”

  No wonder she had refused my assistance back at the count’s castle. Between having her wizard make horned rabbits and her huntsman hunt them, Diana seemed very busy lately testing the people around her. The queen had commented once that the duchess always did exactly what she liked.