Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 by C. Dale Brittain, Brittain Read Free Book Online Page B

gaze for a second and looking away again. “He knows as wel as anyone the perils of dealing with the forces of evil.”
    ‘Do you want me to talk to him?”
    I actualy considered this for a moment. It was certainly appealing to contemplate someone else going down to the little green house at the edge of the woods to confront my cantankerous predecessor. But he had never liked Joachim; “young whippersnapper” was about his most flattering term for the chaplain.
    “I’m afraid he wouldn’t say anything to you,’ I said. “It wil have to be me.”
    “But isn’t it my duty, as Royal Chaplain, to talk to someone who might be imperiling his soul?”
    This was the difficulty of having a conversation with Joachim. Sooner or later I always ran up against the fact that he was a priest. I shook my head. ‘This is a magical problem.”
    ‘Then let’s get under way.”
    We had ridden only a short distance down the valey when a young man suddenly ran out from behind the trees toward us. Between the nymph and the great homed rabbits, my ability to see sudden motion without jerking convulsively was limited.
    Joachim, however, reined in and turned calmly toward the young man. “What is it, my son?”
    He was very young, not much more than a boy. His head was shaved and he wore scraps of rough, dark cloth held together by safety pins. He dropped on his knees before the chaplain, holding up clasped hands. “Oh, Father, please forgive me, and please tel me. Are you going to take our holy master from us?”
    “The hermit?” said Joachim in surprise. “I have no intention of taking him from you. Why did you think I might?”
    The young man flushed but pushed on determinedly. I noticed, back under the trees near the stone huts, several others with shaved heads watching warily from a distance. “Ever since those people built their booth at the top of the cliff, we’ve feared that someone from the cathedral would be here sooner or later,” he said breathlessly.
    “At least for now,” said the chaplain gently, “I see no reason why the hermit should leave Saint Eusebi-us’s shrine, at least until God summons him home.” The boy’s face was transformed by a sudden smile. “Thank you, thank you!” He jumped up and ran like a deer back into the trees. As we turned back down the valey, I could see him and the other ragged young men talking excitedly.
    Apprentice hermits, I thought. Wizards, too, used
    to be trained as apprentices. It would have been hard enough being trained under my predecessor; these young men’s apprenticeship must be made even more difficult by the fact that a hermit rarely speaks to anyone, including his apprentices.
    Joachim suddenly seemed to remember he was in a hurry to send the bishop a message. He slapped his legs against his horse’s flanks and, in a moment, the apprentices were far behind. We rode at a trot until the road started the steep climb out of the valey.
    “What do you think?” I asked as our horses slowed to a walk. “Is it just coincidence that the entrepreneurs decided to set up their booth at precisely the same time as somebody wrote the bishop to ask for Eusebius’s toe? And why do you think they don’t have their basket or their souvenirs ready yet?’
    Joachim looked at me sharply, but the ghost of a smile was on his lips. “You have a suspicious mind,” he said. “I thought of it, too. Since Eusebius is widely considered to be a, wel, troublesome saint, one could suspect that those priests in the distant city thought the easiest way to get his relics was to be sure ne became irritated with life in Yurt.”
    “Do you suspect it?”
    “I don’t know.” His dark eyes grew troubled. “According to the bishop, the priests were very positive that the saint wanted to move his relics to their city, yet the hermit here is equaly positive that the saint wants to remain. The difficulty is that I don’t know which came first. Did Eusebius appear in a vision to the priests