without a monster.
The old wizard took me aside, wringing out the hem of his cloak as he spoke. “It’s far back in there now. We’d better get all these people out of the valley, and then you and I can go in and get it.”
His voice was quiet, and he kept his eyes lowered. I was surprised and gratified he wanted my help, considering his usual opinion of my abilities. But I wondered how he could speak so calmly of catching a monster we had just pursued entirely unsuccessfully around the head of the valley. And then he looked up sharply, and for one second I thought I saw a glimmer in his eye as twisted as the glimpse I had had before of his mind.
IV
I was afraid that Dominic or Nimrod or both would insist on leading the hunt for the monster, but they both seemed eager to escort Diana back to her castle, and her own normal enthusiasm for hunting was greatly diminished.
Joachim and the priests, however, were still determined to stay in the valley. And although I tried suggesting to the hermit that he might want to leave, it was clear that even the dragon that had eaten Saint Eusebius would not budge him or the apprentice hermits.
“We came to assess the will of the saint, and to remove his sanctified relics to a safer place, if necessary,” said the thin priest. “What we have witnessed today may make our task even more needful. Those who fear the righteous wrath of God do not fear the terror by night, or the destruction that wasteth at noonday.”
My predecessor gave a snort and stamped off to watch the entrance to the cave, and the hermit and his apprentices retreated to the shrine. Evrard and I unsaddled our mares again as the others rode up the steep road out of the valley. Dominic seemed badly shaken. I wasn’t even sure if he would insist, now, on the duchess marrying him immediately.
But I didn’t have time to worry about that. The spells of three wizards had so far proved useless in catching the monster. Only brute force, Prince Ascelin’s size and strength, had had any effect at all, and even that had been pitifully slight. I had known all along that catching the creature would be difficult. Now I was faced with the very real possibility that, even with the old wizard’s help, it might be impossible.
For the sake of the priests’ safety, I wished they had gone too, but I was almost ashamedly glad that Joachim was staying. I needed all the support I could get; I felt that I would even welcome a discussion of sinful mortals or of complex moral dilemmas.
“You must be very grateful to have another young wizard here to help you,” said Joachim. I didn’t have the heart to tell him how wrong he was.
The knights, their horses, and the monster had torn up the ground both above and below the waterfall and had broken branches from trees at the edge of the grove. I had just turned away from watching the duchess’s party disappear when a branch creaked and dipped just above me. The wood nymph sprang lightly down, with a swirl of long soft hair, and began to attend to the broken branches.
The priests stared. They had clearly not expected to see a dusky-skinned girl dressed in nothing but leaves in their saint’s grove. Evrard started to speak, but I motioned him to silence.
Not even seeming to notice us, the nymph worked quickly and efficiently on the broken branches. Although I could not see quite how she did it, and she certainly had no pruning shears, she trimmed off dangling twigs quickly and evenly, passed her hand over the wounds so that they stopped dripping sap, and whistled to the birds until they came down from the tree tops and perched again near her. She was in constant motion, moving from branch to branch, springing lightly to higher ones with a flash of graceful legs, dropping to lower ones with no more than a dip and a swish of leaves.
Her violet eyes passed across us as though we were no more substantial than a bit of mist. But as she leaped up to a high branch, seemingly finished repairing the damage to her trees, she suddenly stopped. Her face changed as I had seen it change the first time she had heard my spell, but neither Evrard nor I had said any spells.
And she was not looking at us. She was looking at Joachim.
She swung down again, and hung by one hand from a branch so that her face was at the same level as his. “Are you a hermit?” she asked with a delighted smile.
The three priests of Saint Eusebius seemed shocked beyond the ability to speak, but Joachim answered her calmly. “No, I am a priest. But like a hermit, I serve the will of God.”
She dropped to the ground and looked at him as though puzzled. The rest of us might as well have not been there. “Are you a wizard?”
“No,” said the chaplain. For one second, he caught my eye over her head. “Wizards work with the earth’s natural powers, but I deal with the supernatural.”
The wood nymph thought this over. Evrard frowned at me, and I wondered if he was jealous.
“Would you like to come back to my tree with me?” she asked. “I would like to learn more about priests.”
Now Evrard was definitely jealous.
“I don’t think I had better, my daughter,” said Joachim. No one who didn’t know him as well as I did would have realized he was smiling.
“But I have strawberries and the sweetest honey,” she said, looking at him with dancing violet eyes. Soon, I thought, the round priest would explode, which would leave only two priests trying to appropriate Saint Eusebius’s relics. “We could eat my berries and drink spring water while you explained the supernatural to me. Only humans, out of all of nature, have access to eternity, but only a few of you know very much about it.”
“A visit with you sounds delightful, but I still must refuse. Thank you very much for an offer I am sure you have extended to few men.”
“Isn’t it only hermits who will refuse an invitation to a nymph’s tree?”
“Priests too, my daughter,” said Joachim gently.
“And you aren’t even in love with anyone,” she said thoughtfully.
“I have taken an oath to forsake all sins of the flesh.”
Her eyes danced again. “But Saint Eusebius explained that to me! Because I am not human, I have not fallen, and therefore cannot sin any more than I can be saved.”
It sounded to me as though she had a point. But the chaplain did not hesitate.
“You cannot sin, but I can.” She nodded slowly but looked puzzled again. Joachim paused and then asked what I would have asked the nymph myself if there had been the slightest indication she would listen to anyone but him. “Is there a way you can help us catch the inhuman monster that is now in the valley?”
She shook her head so hard her hair swung in an arc behind her. “The magical creature that broke these branches? No! Trees I know, and hermits, and wizards, and now priests. But I do not know inhuman monsters.” She leaped up and caught a branch. But just before she swung up and out of sight, she leaned forward, kissed Joachim lightly on the forehead, then was gone.
I watched the three priests fighting back a number of things they might have said. Disconcerting as they clearly found the bishop’s representative, they just as clearly did not dare irritate him.
“Shall we join the hermit up at the shrine?” he said to them, perfectly soberly.
If they had business at the shrine, I thought, squaring my shoulders, I had business with an inhuman monster which the wood nymph might not know but my predecessor knew all too well.
The old wizard was still standing by the cave entrance. “Was your creature drawn here by the magic forces of the valley, Master?” I asked. I didn’t tell him he had just missed the wood nymph, not wanting him as well as Evrard jealous of a priest with no interest in what she offered.
“There certainly are magical forces here, as I thought you knew,” he said grumpily. “In most of the western kingdoms the forces that created the world in the first place are not very evident, unless wielded by a wizard. But in a few places they’re still very strong: the northern land of wild magic especially, but also in a few pockets like this valley. That’s why the wood nymph is here. And that’s why I thought I’d better come here when my creature got loose.”
