The Wood Nymph, the Cranky Saint

I laughed. “She’s an illusion, young wizard.” I paused, wondering why I had called him “young wizard,” which is what the teachers tended to call us. “She fooled me the first time, too. Don’t waste your time with someone that insubstantial.”

He scrambled back up into the saddle, laughing himself. “If that’s a sample of your crazy old predecessor’s magic, I’m impressed! No one I’ve ever known could create a woman who looked that real, even the perfectly sane members of the illusions faculty. I wish she was real. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Wait until you meet the queen,” I said confidently. The lady and the unicorn had disappeared, and I started on down the valley.

But Evrard had stopped, and his brow was wrinkled. “Daimbert, I think I ought to tell you something before we get to the old wizard’s house.”

I pulled up my horse, wondering what could be the problem now. “Yes?”

“You know you asked me if I’d made anything else besides the horned rabbits? Well, I did.”

I took a deep breath, trying not to be angry. Having another young wizard in the kingdom was not turning out to be quite the help I’d hoped it would be. “You made a creature that has almost human footprints.”

“Well, yes,” said Evrard, not nearly as embarrassed as I thought he ought to be for having lied to me. “But it wasn’t a very realistic creature. So if your predecessor’s magic is this good, I thought I’d better mention it to you before you accuse him of creating it.”

“Would you like to tell me why you made it?” I asked very quietly.

Evrard gave his broad smile. “I was hoping to impress the duchess, of course. She laughed at my horned rabbits, even when I got the horns to stay on, and then she was angry with me for letting them escape, and then for only catching two of them again. I decided I had to do something, or I would be out of my first job almost before it had started!”

I had to smile back, caught between irritation and sympathy. I recalled several of my own desperate magical improvisations two years ago, when my new royal employers had assumed I would know how to produce certain effects, where actually I had no idea. The duchess seemed to be expecting more of Evrard in his first two weeks in Yurt than had been expected of me in my first two months.

“So I decided to make something totally different to surprise her,” he continued, his good humor restored, “something that might even be frightening. The duchess had gotten me rabbits’ bones and sheep’s horns, but I didn’t have any human bones, of course. So I used some sticks and tried to extrapolate from the spell I’d learned in school.”

“And what happened?” I asked, envious in spite of myself. It had taken me a long time to discover that such a spell was even possible, much less to make it work.

He shook his head ruefully. “I’m afraid it didn’t work out very well. My creature wouldn’t stand up straight, and bits kept falling off. The legs and feet weren’t bad, but the rest only looked human if you squinted right. And then when I’d given up, I couldn’t get the spell to dissolve again!”

“You didn’t try shooting it? That seemed to work with the rabbits.” But as I spoke I remembered the pillow that still had feet.

“Well, no. After all, it did look sort of human. And besides, I’d tried to make the spells a little stronger this time. But I certainly couldn’t show it to the duchess! I decided I’d better just get it out of the way, and it would soon fall apart on its own.”

“So you took it up on the plateau and set it loose,” I provided when he seemed unwilling to continue, “where it went down into the valley and managed to terrify me thoroughly.”

Evrard laughed. “It did? That’s even better than I expected.”

I forced myself to laugh as well. “I even thought someone in the kingdom was practicing black magic.” Evrard, I thought, seemed much more than two years younger than I. But then, I reminded myself, he had not gone through the experiences of my first six months in Yurt, which I felt had aged me considerably.

“Come on,” I said. “Since we’ve come this far I might as well introduce you to the old wizard. He’s the most senior wizard in the region, and you really should call on him anyway. And then I guess we’d better go over to the duchess’s end of the kingdom and catch your creature before it terrifies anyone else.”

III

We scrambled down a steep incline, leading our horses, and I paused at the bottom, looking ahead down the valley. Usually at this point a shower of arrows began to fly across the path. But today there were no arrows, and some quick magic probing found no sign that they had ever been there. This made things easier, because it meant we neither had to crawl under the arrows’ flight nor fly over them ourselves, but I felt suddenly uneasy. If the old wizard was no longer doing the spells to maintain his defenses-especially since the arrows were also one of his best magic tricks-to what was he giving his attention?

But then I reminded myself that the strange magical creatures in the kingdom had been Evrard’s all along. I relaxed and decided this was just one more instance of the old wizard letting everything go.

Evrard, who did not realize there ever had been arrows here, strolled casually on in front of me, leading his mare. The grassy track led us around a few more turns and then out into the clearing where stood the enormous oak which sheltered the old wizard’s house. We dropped our horses’ reins and walked slowly forward. I tried to decide if the ominous appearance the rather innocuous little green house seemed to have acquired in the last few days was only my imagination.

I jumped as the door swung open with a crash. The old wizard came out as though catapulted and slammed it behind him. Even at a distance of twenty yards, I could see he was breathing hard.

But he tried to appear casual. He looked shortly toward Evrard, then gave me his customary scowl. “So I see young wizards are multiplying as fast as the great horned rabbits,” he said. “And they’re still as happily convinced, I’d say from this one’s fancy jacket, that they can control the powers of darkness.”

Evrard stepped forward and went into the full formal bow. “Greetings, Master. I am the duchess’s new wizard.”

The old wizard lifted shaggy eyebrows at me over Evrard’s head. “What does the duchess want a wizard for? I’d have thought your example would have taught her that young wizards these days don’t know any magic. But then the old duke’s wizard, back over thirty years ago, was so incompetent that maybe she’s thinking nothing could be worse.”

Normally I would have been interested in his tacit admission that even a wizard trained under the old apprenticeship system could be incompetent. But I was distracted by wondering if the wizard had simply rushed out of his house to keep us from seeing whatever he might have inside, or whether something in there had physically thrown him out.

Evrard was still in the full bow, his arms outstretched. “Well, greetings, Wizard,” the old wizard said to him grudgingly. “I doubt you’ll like Yurt.”

“But I think I’ll like Yurt very much,” said Evrard with a cheerful smile, standing up again. “It’s a charming little kingdom.”

The old wizard snorted. “Somebody used to the vain pleasures of the City won’t be satisfied with country charm. Tell the duchess I warned her she won’t have her fancy young wizard for very long.”

“Oh, no,” said Evrard seriously. “I’m planning to stay with the duchess for years and years.”

“Maybe she’ll learn a lesson at last, then.”

Evrard was either working hard to maintain the old wizard’s good temper, or else he was too good — natured to take offense easily.

“But as for you, young whipper-snapper,” said the old wizard with a glare for me, “I’d like to know what you think you’re playing at! First you came around here casting spells to reveal the super natural, as though after all this time you thought I might be practicing black magic, and then I find out you’re doing something similar yourself!”

I took a deep breath. “What are you talking about?”

“That creature made of sticks,” he said brusquely. “Thought I wouldn’t find out, did you? What happened,