The Wood Nymph, the Cranky Saint

The count’s constable took our horses, and the count came out to meet me with his jolly smile. “Did you even get up onto the plateau, or did you spend all your time tracking the horned rabbit?”

“I saw the horned rabbit, or rather two of them, in the valley cut into the plateau,” I said, puzzled.

His smile dropped away. “That means there are at least three of them. I’d hoped there was only the one. Almost immediately after you left, one of my men reported seeing a great horned rabbit just west of here, and we spent several hours, without success, trying to pick up its trail. We were actually rather surprised not to see you there too, because we’d assumed you would have spotted it.”

The expression, “Multiplying like rabbits,” flitted through my mind, but it seemed best not to say it.

Joachim came back down from the tower. “It took three pigeons for my whole message to the bishop,” he said. He looked relieved. He did have one advantage over me in not being a wizard, though I wasn’t going to tell him this. Once he had told the bishop about his visit to the Holy Grove, it was, at least for the moment, out of his hands. But there was no one to whom I could pass the responsibility for the wood nymph, the great horned rabbits, and whatever had made that footprint.

As we came into the great hall for dinner, I saw a slim woman’s figure silhouetted against the fire. She came toward me, holding out her hands to take mine. It was the Duchess Diana.

I had always liked the duchess. She had ruled in solitary splendor for over twenty-five years, ever since the old duke, her father, died when she was still a girl. When not treating my wizardly abilities with respect-something that didn’t happen very often-she enjoyed teasing me as if I had been a friend’s favorite younger brother.

Duchess Diana prided herself on the knowledge that a number of people considered her outrageous. She was wearing a long dress the color of marigolds, which even I could recognize as hopelessly out of fashion. She and the queen were distant cousins and had the same midnight black hair, but Diana was some ten years older, and other than their hair the two women were very dissimilar.

“I’m delighted to see you,” she said with a wide smile. “I’ve got a surprise for you!”

“A surprise?”

“Well, you know you’ve been telling me for over a year that I ought to hire my own ducal wizard. I finally decided to do so!”

“About time, my lady! How will you find one?”

“I found him by writing to your wizards’ school, of course. After all, I’d met the Master of the school the other Christmas. I said that I wanted someone as much like you as possible.”

“You don’t really want someone like me, my lady,” I began, but she wasn’t listening.

“My father always kept a wizard, back when I was little, so I decided it was high time the duchy had one again.” She smiled up at me, her gray eyes dancing.

“This is very good news,” I said, wondering if the school would send her one of the young wizards I knew. They would not send a wizard who had been first in his class to a post in a small ducal court, but then I had been far from first in my class myself. “What made you decide at last?”

She stopped smiling for a moment. “I think it was the baby prince. If my young cousin the queen can have a baby who’ll be walking soon, I should certainly be able to set up a proper establishment myself, and the first thing I needed was my own wizard.”

I was oddly reminded of Dominic. But I didn’t want to worry about why the baby prince should make apparently sensible people feel discontented.

Abruptly, I found myself looking forward enormously to the arrival of the duchess’s wizard. Even though Joachim and I managed to be friends much of the time, the differences between us kept coming up and always would. Another wizard would not continually be disturbed by deadly serious moral dilemmas that wouldn’t bother me for a moment. And he should have more recent memories than mine of some of the lectures in the advanced courses and might have all sorts of ideas on what spells would work in the problem of the great horned rabbits Since Diana had asked the school for someone like me, her wizard should even have a sense of humor.

“When will he be coming to Yurt?”

“That’s the real surprise-here he is!”

She turned and beckoned, and someone broke away from the small group by the fire, who I had assumed without looking were all members of the count’s court. This one was no young lord-this was a wizard.

I was struck first by his hair. It was so thoroughly auburn that it glowed nearly carrot-colored in the firelight. His cheeks were spattered with freckles below wide-set and very light blue eyes. At first I thought he was clean- shaven, as are most wizardry students, but then I spotted a few rather half-hearted red wisps on his chin. He wore a black velvet jacket, embroidered all over with moons and stars.

“Evrard,” said the duchess, “I’d like to introduce you to Daimbert, Royal Wizard of Yurt.”

He turned to me with an amazed grin and wrung my hand. “You’re Daimbert? Of course you are! What an honor! We learned all about how you invented the far-seeing telephone, and within just a few months of taking your first post-let me tell you, it’s a real inspiration to the rest of us!”

I smiled modestly.

“Especially you’re an inspiration to all of us who’ve never worked very hard, because we know that you spent as much time in the City taverns as with your books. And of course in transformations class old Zahlfast always uses your experiences that time with the frogs as a warning!”

My smile faded.

He looked at me with his head cocked for a minute. “I knew who you were-or thought I did-when you were still at school, even though I’m not sure I ever talked to you. But I don’t know if I would have recognized you now. You look a lot older than the person I thought I remembered.”

“I remember sometimes seeing you in the halls,” I said, “but I’m afraid that’s it. You probably don’t recognize me because of the white beard.”

He tugged in disgust at one of the wisps on his own chin. “Your beard looks very wizardly. Mine is coming in red, so I’m afraid I’m going to look more like a bandit than a wizard. If it ever grows in, maybe I’ll try bleaching mine too.”

My hair and beard were in fact not bleached; they had turned white overnight, six months after I first came to Yurt, but I didn’t want to go into that rather harrowing episode now. “How is Zahlfast?” I asked instead.

“Doing fine. He and the rest of the teachers always seem to be above the problems and the worries of all the students. He warned me, which I’d expected, that I was on my own now, that I couldn’t expect the school to come help me with ‘every little problem.’ He did ask to be remembered to you and said you’d probably see him later this summer.”

Every year or so, one of the teachers would visit the young wizards at their posts throughout the western kingdoms. With luck, I would be able to present Zahlfast when he arrived with a tidy solution to the problem of the great horned rabbits.

“You know,” Evrard continued, “I’ve always rather liked old Zahlfast, but after what happened to me in the transformations practical I didn’t dare meet his eye for the rest of the semester.” In spite of being highly curious about what had happened to him, I didn’t dare ask for fear he’d allude to the frogs again, and in more detail. “Therefore I was shocked when he called me in to tell me he had a post for me-I’d been afraid he was going to tell me the school had decided to take my diploma back!”

We both laughed. “But I did pay more attention in my classes this last year,” continued Evrard. “Did you know, Elerius came back to teach a course?”

“Elerius? You mean they’ve put him on the faculty already?” Elerius, three years ahead of me, was generally rumored to have been the best student the school had ever had.

“No, no, he’s still Royal Wizard in that big kingdom way off at the base of the eastern mountains. He just taught the one course. It was very interesting, some of the old-fashioned magic of earth and stone the school doesn’t teach any more. He said he’d learned it from an old magic-worker who lived high up in the mountains, and who taught it to Elerius just before he died.”

I was jealous at once. I had thought I was rather unusual in learning herbal magic from my predecessor at Yurt, and here Elerius had not only learned some of the old magic, but was actually being invited to teach it.

But I couldn’t say that to Evrard. “So have you just arrived here in Yurt?” I asked.

“No, I’ve been here for two weeks.”

I turned to the duchess, who was following our conversation with her hands on her hips and a pleased