“Let’s call a truce,” I said to Evrard. This was as good as being back in school. “If we keep binding and lifting each other, we’ll never get to the wood nymph’s grove.”
“Truce it is,” he said cheerfully. Just like back in school, I immediately and surreptitiously started preparing a new lifting spell, just in case. He approached his startled mare, making reassuring sounds, and remounted. “Did you ever hear the joke about the nun, the nixie, and the wood nymph?”
II
In mid-afternoon we reached a fork in the trail. Turning one way would take us duchess’s castle, and the other way up onto the high plateau, toward the valley of the Holy Grove. The day had turned hot and the road dusty. I hesitated, taking a pull from my waterskin.
Evrard interrupted my thoughts. “Which road gets us to the wood nymph’s grove the fastest?”
“This way,” I said with sudden decision. It would be shadowy and refreshing down in the limestone valley where the hermit and the wood nymph lived. The duchess could wait.
The wind blew up on top of the plateau, drying the sweat on our foreheads, as we approached the low wall where one could look down into the valley. Evrard looked thoughtfully at the view. “I didn’t get a chance to ask the duchess when we were up here,” he said. “Were there once castles in this valley?” pointing toward the rock formations. The white limestone, emerging in tall, tumbled shapes from the trees that clung to the valley walls, did indeed look like ruins.
“I think those are all natural. The stone weathers like that over the millennia.” It was such a responsibility being burdened with Evrard’s continuing education.
As we continued along the valley rim, I was surprised to see some raw wooden scaffolding, partially erected. It looked as though the entrepreneurs were going ahead with their plan to build a giant windlass to lower pilgrims to the Holy Grove. I had almost persuaded myself that it was all a facade, designed only to irritate Eusebius, the Cranky Saint, enough to make him leave. But it looked as though both Joachim and I were wrong on this point.
The young man in the feathered cap came out as we approached his booth. The sign was still there, proclaiming, “See the Holy Toe! Five pennies on foot, fifteen pennies in the basket.” But there was something different about the booth. On the little shelf in front, small shapes were clustered. As we came closer I could see that they were ceramic figurines.
“Greetings, Wizard!” said the young man cheerfully, recognizing me at once. “Have you changed your mind? Do you want to join us? As you can see, we’ve got our figurines and brochures, including the story of how someone prayed to the saint to be healed of the pox after years of mocking him, and the saint only healed him along one side to teach him a lesson. We’re going to add vials of water from the holy spring this week. And we’re almost ready for the basket, though we still think it would be better if people could be raised and lowered by magic-certainly it would be more impressive!”
“And it might even be safer,” said Evrard, looking dubiously at the scaffolding.
“Are you another wizard?” the young man cried in delight, noticing the moons and stars embroidered on the jacket slung over Evrard’s saddlebag. “I knew it! The Royal Wizard has brought you here, hasn’t he, to join in our enterprise. It’s a wonderful opportunity, I assure you! Once the hordes of tourists and pilgrims start to arrive, the silver pennies will just pour in.”
I had dismounted for a closer look at the figurines, but I froze when Evrard did not answer. I swiveled around toward him. Could he possibly be taking such a proposal seriously?
Still mounted, he turned his blue eyes ingenuously toward the young man. “I’ll have to take it under advisement,” he said gravely. “You realize, of course, that unless you were able to pay me at least five hundred silver pennies a week, it wouldn’t be worth my while. That’s what the duchess is paying me. And of course I’d need a month’s advance before I could even consider beginning.”
I turned my back to hide a sudden grin and picked up a figurine of a toe.
The young man gasped behind me. “But five hundred silver pennies-” He paused briefly. “Well,” he continued then in a calculating tone, “if we charged them twenty-five pennies each for a magic ride, and were able to get at least twenty pilgrims a week, we would gross that much. And although we’d been thinking of twenty-five pennies for the round trip, we might be able to charge them fifteen pennies to descend and twenty more for the ascent. But by the time we divided it …”
“How many ways were you planning to divide the money made by my magic?” asked Evrard.
I held my breath, listening.
“Well, five, counting you, although we need half the receipts for ‘overhead,’ and we’d also promised …” There was a long pause. “And we’ll have to negotiate on the month’s advance. Look, why don’t you give me a chance to talk to the others, and we’ll be in touch. You say you’re working with the duchess now?”
“Who are the others?” I demanded, turning sharply around. Joachim had said three priests were coming, and I suddenly wondered if they might be this young man’s still unseen associates.
His answer did nothing to dissuade me on this point. “Just some friends of mine,” he said vaguely. “Keep in touch, Wizards!”
He stepped back under the shade of the big tree across from his booth, without even trying to persuade me to buy the ugly figurine of the Holy Toe I was still holding. I put it back down next to a rather misshapen dragon and remounted.
When we had ridden a hundred yards from the booth I turned to Evrard and said, “Try telling the duchess she’s paying you five hundred silver pennies a week. You may be surprised at her answer.”
The walls of the narrow valley stretched their shadows over us as we followed the river upstream toward the holy grove. The cooler air and the murmur of the flowing water took away the incipient headache which had been growing during our dusty ride, but I also realized how late in the day it had become.
“First we should set traps for the horned rabbits in case there are still any in the valley,” I said. “How did you catch them before?”
“The first time,” said Evrard with a frown, “I used a calling spell, flew up to them once they came near, and grabbed them. I had to get them by the rear end, or they’d bite-and even so they kicked. I didn’t try a trap for fear they would disintegrate. But these past few days, they were moving much faster and seemed much more cunning, so I’m not sure grabbing them will work anymore.”
The results of the old wizard’s improvements, I thought. “Well, let’s try a trap now,” I said. I found some string in my saddlebag from which I tried to weave a net.
“That doesn’t look very effective,” commented Evrard.
He was right; city boys never learn much about nets. But I wasn’t going to say so. “It will be fine,” I said loftily, “once I attach a paralysis spell.”
I had actually made myself fairly good at attaching spells to objects. In a few more minutes, I had my net arranged under a bush, where I hoped a rabbit might hop. Anything that entered the net should immediately become paralyzed. I doubted the spell would last more than a short time, so any other creature that blundered in would soon be able to escape again, but with any luck the spell would cause a horned rabbit to disintegrate. “We can check later,” I said, “and see how many we’ve caught.”
Evrard gathered what he told me were especially tempting herbs for rabbits and dropped them into the net, from a height of several feet so as not to imprison his own hand.
“But since they’re not alive, they don’t eat,” I objected.
“I think they still have the habit of eating,” he said gravely, “laid down in the bones. I saw them nibbling on plants like this before.”