alternative, which came with immediate if irrational conviction: that she had decided to treat this blessing as some sort of renegade marriage ceremony.
I shook my head. This was ridiculous. On top of everything else, I seemed to be losing my good sense. Diana and Nimrod thanked the hermit for his blessing, rose, and came to join us.
At last, I thought, we could start for the castle. But now Nimrod appeared very interested in the spring, where the river shot out of the side of the cliff. He folded up his tall frame to crawl along the narrow, damp shelf at the edge of the river, back into the cliff. The rest of us watched and waited as his feet disappeared from view into the blackness.
In a moment we heard his voice, echoing hollowly. “I think it opens up a little back here. It’s too dark to see well, but-” A splash cut off whatever else he might have intended to say. In a moment he reemerged, laughing and wet all along one side. “Whew, that water’s cold,” he said as he stood up and wrung out his hair. “You’d need a torch to explore the cave properly. Even in the dim light from the entrance, the first big room looked as though it was festooned with colored icicles.”
“There can’t be anything in there very interesting, besides rocks,” said Evrard impatiently. “Come on, and you can meet the nymph.”
Nimrod’s short visit to the Holy Grove seemed to be growing longer and longer, but I felt powerless to do anything about it. For two days the valley had beguiled me; now I only wanted to get out of it. I tried to persuade myself that Dominic had paid a short, friendly visit to the old wizard and was now safely back at the castle.
Evrard led the way, along the little pebble-marked paths through the grove, to the tree that I thought was the nymph’s tree. But here he hesitated. “I don’t see my footprint.”
“The ground’s damp anyway, and it’s rained recently,” I said. “A footprint won’t last long.”
“Or maybe it’s the wrong tree.”
Now he had me confused. “You should know better than I,” I said pointedly. We moved back, looking at all the adjacent trees, then at other beeches further away. I caught the duchess giving Nimrod an amused smile.
“No, I think it must have been the first tree after all,” said Evrard after ten minutes. But somehow none of the trees now seemed like the tree we had stood beneath only a short time before.
“Try using the spell to call her,” I said in a low voice. The duchess would not find this amusing much longer.
Evrard frowned, bit his lip, frowned again, and started on the spell. He finished with a flourish and looked up expectantly. There was a long silence, broken only by the soft murmur of the leaves and the rushing of the river.
“I thought you were going to introduce us to the wood nymph, Wizard,” said Diana testily.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to so many people at the same time,” I said, then realized that by speaking for Evrard I was giving the impression that he needed my protection.
“Daimbert,” said Evrard, who seemed to realize this too, “how about if you and Nimrod go back to the horses, and I’ll see if the nymph will come out for the duchess and me alone.” He moved to another tree and, with a good show of confidence, started on the spell again as Nimrod and I left the grove.
“The horned rabbits must have been frustrating prey,” I commented as we scrambled down the path beside the waterfall, “since they disintegrate as soon as you catch them.” I was no longer interested in the horned rabbits, but if he talked I hoped to be able to see more of the edge of tension I thought I could feel running under the huntsman’s apparent good humor.
He smiled unexpectedly. “For me, they’ve provided highly satisfactory hunting,” he said. “But I must say, it’s been more comfortable since I worked out they were neither monsters from the land of dragons, nor creatures made with black magic, but only something my lady the duchess requested from her ducal wizard.”
I turned to stare at him. “Did she tell you that?”
“No, but I’m good at guessing,” he answered easily.
We sat down on the grass near our horses. I glanced toward the grove, wondering if Evrard had had any luck. It was rapidly growing late, yet I hated to call him away from an opportunity to show off his magical abilities to his employer.
I turned back toward Nimrod’s well-chiseled profile. He seemed deep in thought. “You still haven’t told me why you came to Yurt,” I said.
He took a sudden, sharp breath, and then his eyes twinkled at me as his shoulders relaxed again. “Maybe I have private reasons for being interested. And, as I told you before, hunters keep track of what needs hunting.”
“But you seemed to know about the great horned rabbits almost before we did.”
He only smiled and shook his head.
If he wanted to be mysterious, I could do some guessing of my own. If he had known the duchess before, perhaps some years earlier when she had spent several seasons in the City, he might have wanted to enter the kingdom to reestablish their acquaintance, and have preferred for reasons of his own to come incognito. The appearance of the great horned rabbits would have provided a useful excuse for an excellent hunter. But I was still not sure what, if any, connection there might be between Nimrod, the Cranky Saint, and the money-making enterprise at the top of the cliff.
“Had you learned about Saint Eusebius of Yurt before you came here?” I asked cautiously.
“The duchess told me a little about him,” he replied, equally cautiously. “Why?”
His answer seemed deliberately to leave in doubt whether he knew anything beyond what she had said. Before I could formulate a response, I was distracted by movement on the road down into the valley.
My first wild thought, in spite of all my attempts at calm rationality, was that it was the old wizard’s monster, but then I saw it was instead a group of horsemen. Nimrod had seen them too and stood up. With the aid of a far- seeing spell I could tell that there were four mounted men, all dressed as priests and followed by a pack horse. The man riding at the head was Joachim.
III
I jumped at once to my feet, vastly relieved. With Joachim here, I could turn over the hermit, the Holy Toe, and the entrepreneurs to him. I realized that, somewhere in the back of my mind, I also hoped he would be able to help deal with the old wizard’s monster, even though, as I had often told him myself, magic was much more efficient than religion if one had to face magical creatures. I only restrained myself from flying to meet him by the recollection that the priests from the church that wanted the Cranky Saint’s relics might not look kindly on magic being practiced only a short distance from the Holy Grove.
“Who’s coming?” asked the duchess behind me. I had not heard her approach.
“It’s the royal chaplain and the priests he was expecting.” I turned to see Evrard flash me a grin of triumph.
None of the others seemed interested in the arrival of some priests in the valley. Diana started telling Nimrod about the nymph, who had apparently spoken briefly with them. Leaving them behind, I started down the road to meet the riders.
I prepared myself for a formal, even distant greeting. Joachim might not want to advertise his friendship with a wizard.
But then he lifted his head, gave a highly unexpected but quite genuine smile, and swung down off his horse. “I’m delighted to see you, Daimbert,” he said, wringing my hand. “I’d assumed you were off chasing horned rabbits across the fields of Yurt. I didn’t dare hope you might be here.”
He turned to introduce me to the other priests who, as I expected, had come from the distant church where Saint Eusebius had originally made his vocation. I looked quickly at their faces, wondering if they might be the purported pilgrims who had climbed down the cliff to the grove. But they were completely unfamiliar. They did, however, all give me highly suspicious looks.
Joachim looped his horse’s reins over his arms and walked beside me, while the priests, still mounted, rode behind. He appeared much more at peace than when I had last seen him.
“I decided two mornings ago to meet these priests at the cathedral city,” he said, “in order to have a chance
