Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 (33 page)

The priests’ eyes came back into focus and they went from looking dreamy to looking highly irritated: with Joachim, with the hermit, with me and, most of al, with the Cranky Saint. But there was little answer they could give. The youngest priest began blowing out the candles that had not been extinguished in the wind.

I glanced around the grove, mentaly catching my breath, and suddenly realized who was missing. ‘Joachim,” I said, taking him by the arm, “where is he? Where is EvrardP”

“The other wizard?” said the youngest priest. “He went off in that direction a while ago.” He gestured vaguely, but there was no question of the direction. He was motioning toward the cave.

I turned from the priests and began walking as fast as I could, cold with fear, toward the cave. I realized I had not seen Evrard since the leader of the apprentices had begun scaling the cliff.

He had wanted al along to try to catch the monster on his own. He must have taken advantage of the rest of us being distracted, first by the apprentices’ confession and then by the Cranky Saint, to slip away to the cave. If he thought I was being too deeply drawn into the affairs of the Church, then he might think it was his duty as a wizard to look for the monster without me.

Joachim caught up. There was no need to explain to him what had happened. “I’ve got the old wizard’s staff for light,” I saia.

We reached the cave entrance and looked in. I did not sense the immediate presence of the monster, but there were fresh sooty marks on the limestone showing that someone had come this way very recently with a torch.

I iluminated the silver bal on top of the staff and

we hurried, bent double, down the first stretch of tunnel and into the great chamber. I had no time to waste admiring the wals glinting like jewels in the light. I went immediately to the passage on the far side which the old wizard and I had taken. Lying on the cave floor, almost invisible among the gravel, was a pale line of kinked thread.

“He paid out the thread yesterday,” said Joachim, “and then wound it back up as we ran into each dead

end.”

We hurried along the tunnel, the wizard’s staff tipped forward so that the silver bal showed the faint line of the thread we folowed.

“Evrard!” I shouted inside my mind. “Where are

you?”

I heard his answering mental voice at once. “I’m

fine. I’l see you shortly.’

I was only slightly reassured and we hurried on. But in less than ten more minutes we saw a light flickering ahead of us that was not the light of my wizard’s staff and Evrard came around the corner, carrying a torch.

“Sorry if I worried you,” he said, almost nonchalantly. “But with al that business about the saint, it didn’t seem as though I was needed. I just wanted to explore the cave a little more. By the way, Daimbert, I did find your magic marks. Did the Cranky Saint ever make it clear what he wanted to do?”

Joachim told him briefly what had happened, Evrard tidily winding the thread back up while we walked. I tried addressing him sternly, mind to mind, but he now had his thoughts wel shielded. I shrugged and gave it up. We knew, at any rate, that the monster was stil deep within the cave.

Back in the valey, the three priests were grumpily packing, preparing to go. There was no sign of the hermit or his apprentices.

“I think we’d better go, too,” I said. “I need to get

back to the royal castle to bury my predecessor as quickly as possible.’

“It’s already late,” said Joachim. “We can’t possibly make it there tonight.”

“I am leaving this valey,” I said as distinctly as I could. “I can use the magic light to show our way after dark.” The chaplain looked at me in assessment and shook his head. ‘You’re already exhausted, in body and in spirit. And even your magic staff won’t cast enough light for the horses. Let’s go to the duchess’

castle tonight and on to the royal castle tomorrow.”

As we rode down the valey, the wizard’s coffin strapped to the priests’ pack horse, I wondered uneasily if my desire to be free at last of the valey had distorted my judgment. I had stayed even when I knew my duty as a wizard was to go in search of the monster. Now I had a duty to bury my predecessor at home and to catch the monster here and my strongest drive was to get out of the valey, not necessarily because it was the best choice, but because I had been unable to do so before.

I told myself that a saint who could summon lightning from a clear sky would not let a creature of magic and bone hurt those who served his shrine, that the monster might now wander aimlessly in the cave for weeks. But I also told myself that Tbarring miracles, and miracles by their very nature could not be counted on, religion was primarily useful for dealing with the supernatural and the hereafter. The priests might try to explain to wizards the deep metaphysical significance of the forces of the material universe, but they always seemed to leave us with the ful responsibility for dealing with those forces.

Evrard and I rode in front and, as we started up the steep road, a tree branch before us suddenly dipped. For a second we saw the wood nymph, who smiled and gave us a cheerful wave before disappearing again among the leaves.

She had caled the saint’s name as the wind had whirled around the shrine and, although I refused to speculate about whether that might mean she had a soul after al, I guessed that her old friend Eusebius had spoken to her at last.

At the top of the cliff, the wreckage of the booth and the windlass stil sent thin plumes of smoke into the late afternoon air. As we approached, I was surprised to see the young man in the feathered cap. He and three others, whom I recognized as the men I had thought were pilgrims, were poking through the ashes. So far they nad found half a dozen unbroken ceramic figurines.

The “pilgrims” stepped back rather self-consciously, but the young man looked up and gave his customary smile in spite of the ruins of his plans and, for that matter, Dominic’s. “Greetings, Wizard,” he said to Evrard, ignoring the rest of us. “I know I told you I’d get back to you about your offer to come help us with your magic, but I’m afraid we won’t be able to start until later this summer and maybe not this year at al.”

“Oh?” asked Evrard impassively. “As you can see, we had a little accident. And the people who were sponsoring us seem to have puled out. We aren’t going to be able to make our ‘overhead’ costs, much less any profit at this rate. We haven’t even quite made up our minds yet whether we should continue to try to set up here.” None of us were fooled by this comment. ‘ But if we need a wizard for another project, we’l be sure to keep you in mind!”

“Thank you,” said Evrard gravely. “Just remember my fee scale.” It was not until we were another quarter mile down the road that he began to laugh.

Shadows were long when we reached the duchess’ castle. So far, it appeared, no one there had married anyone, but both Dominic and Nimrod were stil at the castle, neither speaking to the other. Joachim hurried to the pigeon loft to send the bishop his message, but the rest of us sat down in the great hal in something of an exhausted daze.

Diana was melower toward her wizard than I had expected. After she had set her constable to finding accommodations for al of us, she sat down to listen to his account of what had happened in the valey in the two days since she had left. Evrard told her most of the story, even though he had missed the Cranky Saint’s miraculous demonstration of his intention to stay at the grove and had gotten the details from Joachim and me. As for any information about the death of the old wizard, other than the bald fact that the monster had kiled him, I had not told anyone and did not intend to.

I hardly heard their conversation, giving al my attention instead to hot soup and new bread and butter. But I did rouse myself at the end of the meal to address the duchess.

“My lady, do you think it would be possible for you to send some food on a regular basis to the hermit and his apprentices?” Diana actualy looked embarrassed. “Of course. I should have thought of that myself. The valey is surrounded by my duchy,” with a sharp look toward Dominic. I’l arrange for them to get fresh bread from my kitchens every week, starting tomorrow.”

When Evrard and I went up to the freshly repainted wizard’s room at the top of the duchess’ castle, I fel at once into exhausted sleep. But some time after midnight I awoke with a gasp, drenched with sweat and feeling my heart pounding with nightmare terror.

Listening to Evrard’s peaceful breathing, I tried to persuade myself that it was indeed only a nightmare, that Saint Eusebius, after al that had happened, was unlikely now to send me a true vision.

Slowing my heart with long, deep breaths, I settled back down, but as soon as I closed my eyes against the room’s darkness I could see it again: the monster roaring, wide-mouthed, as it had when it had kiled the old wizard, but this time, standing helpless before it, were al the people I loved in Yurt.

n

We buried the old wizard at the royal graveyard of Yurt late in the afternoon of the folowing day. Joachim read the service while the rest of us stood silently, including the priests of Saint Eusebius who now threatened to become as cranky as their saint, and the duchess, with Dominic and Nimrod on either

side of her.

They offered me the shovel to toss the first load of dirt onto the coffin. I was stil young enough that even though I might fear violent death, I had no idea how I would react to the prospect of slowly growing old and weak. I couldn’t be sure what I might think in another two hundred years, but I hoped fervently I wouldn’t be tempted to try what my predecessor had.

The royal constable, who had nearly despaired of seeing any of us again after the knights of Yurt had come home with wild stories of the monster and of the duchess’ two suitors, had been overjoyed when we rode up to the castle. He promised to have the old wizard’s books and effects brought to the castle in the next few days and to find a home for the calico cat.

Dominic fel into step beside me as we started up the hil from the cemetery. I glanced at him in trepidation, wondering if I was going to be fired even before I had a chance to pursue the monster.

But the regent only seemed thoughtful. “Wizard, have you ever suddenly wished you could go somewhere and start over, leave al your problems and responsibilities behind, but discover you’ve said and done things which commit you far too deeply even to try?”

I felt a sudden and completely unprecedented burst of affection for the royal nephew. “I’m glad you understand,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “That’s exactly how I feel.” The three priests refused the regent’s offer of hospitality for the night, expressing the intention of putting ten more miles behind them before nightfal and of being in the episcopal city the next day. Joachim saw them off with mutual blessings and expressions of spiritual good felowship that sounded sincere if not enthusiastic.

He urged them to give his personal greetings to the bishop. Since the bishop would already have received the chaplain’s message, via carrier pigeon, that the relics of Saint Eusebius would stay in Yurt after al and that the wood nymph posed no problems for the sanctity of the grove, it was too late for the priests to tel him a different story.

Evrard and I also had somewhere to go. I was trying to decide if we should start back for the valey at once or if it would be too irresponsible to sleep in a real bed one more night before beginning our search for the monster when Dominic, fuly back on his royal dignity, decided for me.

You and the chaplain started this,” he said, “when you claimed to be competent judges between Prince Ascelin and me.” In fact, I thought, he and the duchess had started it much earlier by both deciding they needed their own real households. “You may have forgotten about the integrity and purity of the kingdom, but I have not. Tomorrow, the duchess must be married.”

“Fine,” said Diana, who was standing nearby. “It’s even more dignified to be married in the royal chapel than in my own castle chapel. It’s a good thing I thought to bring along my best dress.” After dinner Joachim asked me up to his room. He lit the candles, then sat down on one of his hard

chairs. “Would you like to tel me,” he said, giving me a long look, “what realy happened in the cave?’

Even though I had earlier decided not to tel anyone, it was a relief to do so, a much bigger relief than I had expected. The act of teling moved the events into the external world, made it less of a continuing nightmare that affected only me. But, unfortunately, I knew that the monster was also part of the real world.

Joachim said very little while I told it. “Maybe I should never have become Royal Wizard,” I finished. “Al I’ve done is make other wizards act foolishly in trying to show off to me how wel they can do magic. The old wizard, once he was retired, may have started making a monster in part to impress me. And you saw Evrard in the cave yesterday. He’s going to get himself into trouble by trying to convince me he can have good ideas of his own.”

“If it hadn’t been you, it would have been another wizard.”

“For the two years I’ve been Royal Wizard, I’ve always had in the back of my mind the thought that if I ran into a problem too difficult for my own abilities, there was another wizard to cal on. Even though it didn’t worked out like that, the thought was reassuring. And now there is no one to cal on in the kingdom but me.” The chaplain shook his head. “I’ve already told you: Each person must answer for his or her own soul before God. We have to do our best not to lead others astray but, ultimately, we must alow them to sin or do good on their own.”

Although I hadn’t been talking about leading anyone into sin, Joachim’s words were oddly comforting. Then I thought of something. “Wait a minute. When I first came to Yurt, you said that you’d had to take responsibility for my soul with the Dishop.”

Joachim looked at me as though I was speaking non-jnse. “But that’s different. I’m a priest.

sense.

There was one more thing that bothered me, that I had not before dared bring up. “It doesn’t seem fair, Joachim,” I said at last.