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

was high time the duchy had one again.” She smiled up at me, her gray eyes dancing.
    “This is very good news,” I said, wondering if the school would send her one of the young wizards I knew. They would not send a wizard who had been first in his class to a post in a smal ducal court, but then I had been far from first in my class myself. “What made you decide at last?”
    She stopped smiling for a moment. “I think it was the baby prince. If my young cousin the queen can have a baby who’l be walking soon, I shoula certainly be able to set up a proper establishment myself, and the first thing I needed was my own wizard.”
    I was oddly reminded of Dominic. But I didn’t want to worry about why the baby prince should make apparently sensible people feel discontented.
    Abruptly, I found myself looking forward enormously to the arrival of the duchess’ wizard. Even though Joachim and I managed to be friends much of the time, the differences between us kept coming up and always would. Another wizard would not continualy be disturbed by deadly serious moral dilemmas that wouldn’t bother me for a moment. And he should have more recent memories than mine of some of the lectures in the advanced courses and might have al sorts of ideas on what spels would work in the problem of the great horned rabbits. Since Diana had asked the school for someone like me, her wizard should even have a sense of humor.
    “When wil he be coming to Yurt?”
    “That’s the real surprise—here he is!”
    She turned and beckoned, and someone broke away from the smal group by the fire. I had assumed, without looking, they were al members of the count’s court. This one was no young lord—this was a wizard.
    I was struck first by his hair. It was so thoroughly auburn that it glowed nearly carrot-colored in the firelight. His cheeks were spattered with freckles below wide-set and very light blue eyes. At first I thought he was clean-shaven, as were most wizardry students, but then I spotted a few rather half-hearted red wisps on his chin. He wore a black velvet jacket, embroidered al over with moons and stars.
    “Evrard,” said the duchess, “I’d like to introduce you to Daimbert, Royal Wizard of Yurt.”
    He turned to me with an amazed grin and wrung my hand. “You’re Daimbert? Of course you are! What an honor! We learned al about how you invented the far-seeing telephone—and within just a few months of taking your first post. Let me tel you, it’s a real inspiration to the rest of us!”
    I smiled modestly.
    “Especialy you’re an inspiration to al of us who’ve never worked very hard, because we know that you spent as much time in the city taverns as with your books. And of course, in transformations class, old Zahlfast always uses your experiences that time with the frogs as a warning!”
    My smile faded.
    He looked at me with his head cocked for a minute. “I knew who you were—or thought I did—when you were stil at school, even though I’m not sure I ever talked to you. But I don’t know if I would have recognized you now. You look a lot older than the person I thought I remembered.”
    “I remember sometimes seeing you in the hals,” I said, “but I’m afraid that’s it. You probably don’t recognize me because of the white beard.” He tugged in disgust at one of the wisps on his own chin. “Your beard looks very wizardry. Mine is coming in red, so I’m afraid I’m going to look more like a bandit than a wizard. If it ever grows in, maybe I’l try bleaching mine, too.”
    My hair and beard were, in fact, not bleached; they had turned white overnight, six months after I first came to Yurt, but I didn’t want to go into that rather harrowing episode now. “How is Zahlfast?” I asked instead.
    “Doing fine. He and the rest of the teachers always seem to be above the problems and the worries of al the students. He warned me, which I’d expected, that I was on my own now, that I couldn’t expect the