Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint- Wizard of Yurt - 2 Read Online Free PDF

harnesses where they should be and the stirrups readjusted, we continued on across the plateau.
    In another mile, the road turned abruptly to the left. Ahead of us was a low stone wal. Rather than turning, Joachim rode his bay up to the wal. “Look at this.” Although one could not see it until almost on top of it, before us was a narrow and very deep valey. I puled my mare’s head up more sharply than necessary when I realized we were standing at the very edge of a cliff, with only the low wal between us and an abrupt drop. The morning mists stil lingered below in the shadow of the valey wals. Beneath the vertical white cliffs, an intensely green valey curved away, a narrow river rushing down its center.
    “Directly below us,” said Joachim, pointing downward, “hidden by those trees, is the hermitage, built at the source of the river. There is a direct path down or, I should rather say, steps cut into the cliff just a little farther along, but the road itself takes two more miles to get down to the valey floor.” Off to our left, at a spot where the cliffs were not quite so steep, I could see the white line of the road winding its way sharply down into the valey, appearing and disappearing among the beeches.
    Joachim shook his horse’s reins and started along the road. I folowed after one more look down. I could

    have flown down myself easily enough, but I would not want to tiy it carrying the mare.
    We had gone less than a hundred yards when Joachim stopped again, puling up the reins so hard that his normaly gentle bay half reared and gave a protesting whinney. Wondering if it might be the mysterious horned rabbit, I hurried my Horse to join him, then stared with equal surprise.
    Before us was a little wooden booth. No one was inside, but a large brightly colored sign proclaimed, “See the Holy Toe! Five pennies on foot, fifteen pennies in the basket.” I was trying to work out what this could mean, if perhaps whoever had painted the sign was offering us a chance to see the holy toe on someone else’s root, and why a toe in a basket should be more valuable, when there was movement under a nearby tree. A young man in a feathered cap stood up and came out from the shadows.
    “Greetings, my fine gentlemen!” he said in the hearty tones of someone manning a booth at a fair. “Are you here to see the Holy Toe of Saint Eusebius the Cranky? I’m afraid we don’t have the basket ready quite yet, but if you want to go down on foot, it’s not a bad climb—and cheaper, too!”
    Joachim dismounted and looked sternly at him. “So you’re charging people just for the privilege of climbing down the cliff to the Holy Grove?” The man gave a start, as though feeling the impact of the chaplain’s eyes, but he recovered almost immediately. “Excuse me, Father, I didn’t notice your vestments at first. If you’re worried that we’re restricting access to the relics, you needn’t be; people can stil go around by the road for free. We’re just providing an extra service.”
    “Charging them to climb down the steps is an extra service?’
    “Ah, but we’ve improved the path!” said the man proudly. “And our real service is going to be the
    basket. As I said, we don’t have it ready quite yet, but we should in a few weeks.”
    “What is this basket?” I asked.
    The man looked at me properly for the first time. “Excuse me,” he said with a delighted smile, “but are you a wizard? You are? This is wonderful! You have no idea how much we’d been hoping to be able to attract a wizard.
    “You see,” he went on, “the basket is al very wel, but it would be so much better if we could have a wizard working with us. Wouldn’t it be more exciting and appealing to have people carried up and down the cliff by magic than lowered in a big basket at the end of a puleyr I’m sure we could charge more, too. We’d give you a fair cut of the profits; you needn’t worry about that. You wouldn’t even need to be here!