Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 by C. Dale Brittain, Brittain

after these entrepreneurs decided to make money off him and that’s why the priests have written the bishop now? Or did the priests first decide they wanted him and then tried to ensure by devious means that he’d be happy to go?”
    “We’d better speak again to the man at the booth,” I said. “We’l find out how recently they set up and if they realy plan to put in this elaborate basket-on-a-puliey contraption—it sounds horribly dangerous to
    me, I must say. If the talk of baskets and souvenirs is no more than talk, then we’l know it’s only a fagade, designed to make the saint angry.” But when we reached the top and rode back along the rim of the valey, we did not see the man in the feathered cap. The sign on the empty booth stil invited us to see the Holy Toe.
    “I hope I can get my whole message to the bishop on a smal enougn piece of paper,” said Joachim.
    n
    We came over a rise and saw the count’s castle before us, its shadow stretching long over the grassy meadows around it. As soon as we were inside the wals, the chaplain hurried up to the pigeon loft in the tower to send his message.
    The count’s constable took our horses and the count came out to meet me with his joly smile. “Did you even get up onto the plateau, or did you spend al your time tracking the horned rabbit?”
    “I saw the horned rabbit, or rather two of them, in the valey 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 01 my men reported seeing a great homed rabbit just west of here and we spent several hours, without success, trying to pick up its trail. We were actualy 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 returned 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 tel 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 hal 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 stil 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 ofiash-ion. She and the queen were distant cousins and had the same midnight black hair, but Diana was some ten years older. 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?”
    “Wel, you know you’ve been teling me for over a year that I ought to hire my own ducal wizard. I finaly decided to do so!”
    “About time, my lady! How wil you find one?”
    “I found him by writing to your wizards’ school, of course. After al, 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 realy 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