everything.
A wagon rolled into the courtyard from the city streets, drawn slowly by a pair of oxen with what looked to be a father letting his young daughter drive from the board in front of a bed full of kegs. The pretty dark-haired girl pulled the reigns and chirruped the oxen to a snorting halt to wait for the drawbridge to be lowered in a few minutes. The girl noticed Phin on his perch a stone-throw away and beamed at him, clearly pleased with her own abilities as a teamster. His baleful stare from the depths of his hood went unchanged, and she stopped smiling and joined her father in pointedly ignoring the sour-looking Wizard.
Technically Phin’s shift had ended with the sunrise, but his relief had been growing increasingly late each morning. With a sigh for his numb hindquarters Phin uncoiled from his cross-legged perch and shook his long legs out of the folds of his garment carefully before standing up, for stepping on his own robe and sprawling headlong would not have been in accord with the dignity of the Circle. He picked up the staff lying in the weedy basin and set the spike on the cobblestone ground. Phin was tall but the crystal globe was higher than his own head until he inclined it toward the wagon, spoke a few words in the lilting dialect of Old Tullish, and wiggled his fingers purely for effect.
The father and daughter were both looking at him now with their eyebrows identically raised, but of course nothing happened. The beer or ale or whatever was in the kegs was clearly not magically active, and more the pity. Phin did not feel like sitting down again and so he leaned on the staff as though he were a man much older, and stared off into the middle distance at no one and nothing.
Two more fellows arrived early for the Gate opening. Phin’s shadowed eyes narrowed and he would have frowned had remaining expressionless not been a part of the unofficial curriculum at Abverwar. Despite leading a thin brown mule the younger of the two newcomers looked like nothing so much as a knight, being tall and broad of shoulder with a calf-length blue traveling cloak meticulously draped to one side of a shining silver breast plate. The man wore trousers and boots for the road rather than leg greaves, and with his hood thrown back fair hair of middling length shone in the rising sun.
It was the blonde hair that made Phin want to frown, for that and the steel breast plate marked the fellow as the very picture of an Exlander. That province still for some reason called itself The First Kingdom, despite having been Codian for a hundred-seventy-odd years. Longer than Tull, or Thol for that matter. Phin’s native country had in fact been an independent kingdom for another thirty years after Exland’s Codification, but the Thols didn’t go around calling their country The Last Kingdom. That would be idiotic. But try telling it to an Exlander, as the expression went.
Long before the Code arose in Beoshore the kingdoms of Exland and Thol had fought a war or two. Or three. Phin however assured himself that whatever resulting prejudice had been acquired in his youth had been removed from him at Abverwar, where all new prejudices had been painstakingly instilled.
The Exlander and his rat of a mule accompanied a balding man in the same sort of blue calf-length cloak, though the older man’s chest was protected only by a belly paunch, not a breastplate. He walked with a plain staff for pace rather than support, as the years that had taken the hair from his crown and put the salt in an otherwise pepper beard had not yet bent him. Phin saw the sigil of the Bridge stitched in silver on the chest of his blue tunic, and sighed. Builder Priest.
The pair rounded the beer wagon and both gave the father and daughter small bows that were returned with a nod and a wave. Words were exchanged and the girl quite possibly blushed at the handsome knight. It was hard for Phin to tell from his distance, but she certainly tittered. The knight looked around the courtyard and saw Phin leaning on his staff. He tapped the priest on the shoulder. The wizard willed them to stay where they were, but they came over with their pack-bearing mule.
“Greetings, Circle Mage,” the priest said with a raised hand but nothing like the bow he had shown the civilians. He had the swarthy look of the local Doonish living under the warm Channel sun. Phin was as pale as a corpse. Up close the priest’s escort was even more annoyingly handsome, with a clean-shaven, lordly jaw, wide forehead over sky blue eyes, and strong features that looked like a bust of some ancient king done by some fawning sculptor who had left off all the imperfections.
“Father,” Phin muttered, and added “Egg-lander,” toward the Exlander. If either man noticed they let it go. The priest eyed Phin’s staff.
“Thou art charged with monitoring for thaumaturgy, I take it?”
“Thou art knowing it.”
The priest spread his hands, waiting. Phin had no duty to examine a priest, and probably not even the authority. But the dolt wanted a show. Phin stopped leaning on the staff though he remained in a slouch. He dipped the globe, spoke his words, and blinked as a white light flickered within the glass like a trapped firefly.
“Just the shield, I am sure,” the Exlander said, and turned around to show Phin his back. Slung over his shoulder was a great iron mace and on top of that, worn almost like a backpack, was a medium-sized shield with a triangular bottom rim, shining steel that matched his breast plate. At present there was a faint, white nimbus of light in the air around the shield, answering that shining in Phin‘s staff. It also bore the same sigil as the old priest’s tunic, not the ornate standard of a knightly order or family but rather the simple, curved line known as both the Bridge and the Arch. It was the holy symbol of the Imperial Church of Jobe the Builder, First God of the Ennead.
“You’re both priests?” Phin said, not bothering to conceal a sneer.
The younger priest turned back around as the light in the air and in the globe quickly faded. The only sign that he had noticed Phin’s tone was a slight lowering of his blonde eyebrows.
The older priest spoke. “I am Father Luis Corallo, and this is the Brother Kendall Heggenauer, Both of Jobe. As such, I suppose we are beyond the oversight of your Circle.”
Not this morning, Father.
Phin shook his head and waved a beckoning hand. “Afraid my charge is a bit more involved than that.” He turned to Heggenauer. “Acolyte. It is acolyte, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Hand over the device for inspection.” Phin snapped his long, tattooed fingers a few times. The priests exchanged a look but the young one finally shrugged and went about unfastening the straps securing the shield to his back, though doing so spoiled the artful hang of his traveling cloak. Shame, really.
Phin set the staff back down in the weedy basin and took the proffered shield in both hands. Though made entirely of steel it was very light, which was after-all the point. Phin held it face down to reveal the double set of straps for either use or transport. Under the straps in the upper left corner was an embossed symbol of a shield shape with a stylized, swirling S stamped in the middle.
“This is the standard Shanatarian spell of strength and lightness, correct?” Phin asked, tapping the sigil. “Common to all Empire-issued shields, be they Legion towers, footman’s kites, or in this case…what, a horseman’s shield? You don’t ride that donkey, do you Brother?”
“No, I do not.”
“Because this is a spell worked by the Shieldmaiden’s faithful, correct? Not Jobe the Builder, as you guys don’t know that one, yes? Now, if we were building an outhouse…”
“It is not a…what?”
“A courthouse. If we were building a courthouse, I expect you would put your own spell on that. But not on a shield. Not your bailiwick, as it were.”
“It is not a spell,” Brother Heggenauer finally finished a sentence. Phin blinked as though befuddled, and tapped the symbol again.
“I am pretty sure that it is, acolyte. You see, without this mark your shield would be a lot heavier. Altogether less wieldy.”
“It is a blessing,” Heggenauer clarified. “Not a spell.”
“Well, that’s like saying it is a hen but not a chicken, but I take your point. A blessing then. Very much like a spell, but performed only through the vehicle of godly power. Whereas the power of a spell comes from the caster himself.”
Phin tossed the light shield back, and it clanged against Heggenauer’s breast plate even as he caught it. Almost as though the sound had been a signal, rumbling came from the northern side of the yard as the drawbridge began to ratchet down.
“There’s your door, acolyte. Move along.”
