The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

*

-15 years prior-

“You’re distracted today.” Marigold spoke delicately. It was neither question nor accusation. “Perhaps we should return to this lesson another time.”

She stood beside Iris atop Black Crux’s inner wall, watching her apprentice out of the corner of her eye. Iris gazed out over the parapet, arms crossed, her brow and eyes hard as she took in the view of the town below the black cliffs upon which the old fortress-turned-manor stood.

“One in my position always has a full plate, Mage-Matron,” Iris stated. She turned her head slowly, casting her eyes from one side of the town to the other and then to the abundant golden fields stretching beyond it to the horizon. A soft and cool breeze swept through her long tresses and tugged at the skirt of her richly embroidered dress. “I am used to making decisions while other responsibilities press upon me. So, I am likewise capable of casting Barriers while considering other things, as you well know. What would you have me try today?” Her eyes never strayed from the view beyond the parapet.

Inwardly, Marigold knew she was right. Lady Iris excelled at Barrier-Casting and, in pure skill at least, was beginning to show an ease in magic usage that presaged her being ready for Journeyer’s status. However, she gave little regard to Marigold’s assertion that she must devote her entire self to her spell Castings and to living a mage’s life. So, the more Iris’s skills grew, the more the lessons had become like this one, brusque and fraught with fruitless bargaining. Marigold would find herself beseeching Iris to adhere to the exact nature of her lessons, only for Iris to show herself capable of casting the spells she was directed to without the motions or state of focus asked of her. “If I don’t need your teas and concentration exercises to cast my Barriers, then I simply don’t,” she had once said, and Marigold could think of no argument.

“We waste our time here,” Iris declared, facing her teacher at last, impatience lining her brow. “Tell me what Barrier I must cast to prove to you I have kept up with my studies and I will cast it. Or don’t. My husband has a meeting with a foreign delegation soon and I will attend it.”

“If you want to beg out of today’s lesson, just say so, girl.” Marigold realized her words had come out harsher than intended. She attempted to inject some humor into them by adding, “Or are you worried that what I have in store for you will be too advanced? Are you scared you can’t cast it?” Challenging the young woman was typically the most effective way to get her to focus. When it didn’t set off her temper. “And such confidence! Are you so certain you won’t be dropping instantly into Slumber after today’s little test? Hard to attend a meeting in that state.” That was another thing. Iris could delay Slumber with an aptitude nearly unheard of in an apprentice. No mage could stave it off indefinitely, but skilled Masters, and even some Journeyers, could learn to resist it for a few hours. Sometimes, that made all the difference when it came to saving Slumber until the time of greatest convenience. That Iris could do so as an apprentice was a testament to her raw skill.

“Test?” Iris queried, raising her brows.

Marigold had her attention now. She clasped her hands behind her back and smiled. “That’s what I said. You are to cast a Barrier across the top of the wall here. It must have a Permission to allow Siegert through it when he passes by here before noon on his patrol, but! ...” Marigold held up a finger, smiling wider. “After the sun has passed into afternoon, that Permission must expire, leaving him unable to walk through when he comes back.”

“Siegert?”

Marigold sighed. “One of your inner keep guardsmen, Lady Iris. The tall one, with the dirty blonde hair and the little mole on the tip of his nose. He has been in your service for years; you should really know his name.”

Iris waved her hand. “Yes, yes, I know him. Let him pass through the Barrier before noon, but keep him out after noon. A Permission and a Condition of time.” A smile appeared on her face. “This is a complex Imbuement.”

Marigold credited herself for the snap decision to make this test more difficult than she had originally intended. It wouldn’t even matter if Iris was ready to pull it off yet, only that she was intrigued sufficiently to throw her full concentration into trying.

Then, as if suddenly reminded of something, Iris scowled. “But if I must cast it and stand here waiting for the sun to crawl across the sky, I will miss the meeting. That won’t do. And, look.” She gestured up and down the wall. “Do you see a single guard? What if he’s late in his patrol? Why are there not more men-at-arms here? There should be more. This is yet another thing I must bring up with my husband, one that he probably will not listen to me about. If Black Crux were to be attacked—”

Marigold lifted her hand. “I’m certain the amount of guards and patrols are sufficient. Lord Marcus—”

At the mention of Lord Marcus, Iris’s scowl deepened. “My husband,” she emphasized, “is not the only one who rules here at Black Crux. And he clings too much to old habits. One of us needs to look at the state of things as they are and determine how to improve upon them. Evidently, that always falls to me.”

“Lady Iris, I did not mean—"

“Speak of my husband no more.” Iris spoke stiffly, making it a command from a noblewoman, rather than a request from an apprentice mage. “You are here to teach. I don’t want to hear how you believe he has the entire running of this hold under control without any input from me.” She looked around her, appearing at once to recall what they had been speaking about before her ire was raised. “This test you have set me would take much too long and cause me to miss the meeting. I’ll do it in a quicker way, one that will still satisfy even you, who seemingly doubts my abilities in much the same as my husband does.”

Before Marigold could voice a word against that, Iris—her expression taking on a calm determination—swept her arm up and outward over the parapet. Instantly, a rectangular Barrier formed in the air just beyond the wall, like a short platform of golden-hued glass.

Then, as Marigold watched in horror, Iris nonchalantly kicked off her slippers, stepped up onto the parapet, and walked onto the Barrier. She stood there on it, with the open air gaping beneath, nothing between herself and a perilous fall onto jagged stones except for the thin, ethereal Barrier.

“Iris, please, come down from there,” Marigold gasped, her heart in her throat.

Iris turned and looked down upon her teacher with a triumphant and challenging grin on her face. “There! You see?” She stamped her bare foot on the Barrier, demonstrating its solidity. “Did you not think I could do it? Well, here it is, Mage-Matron, as you asked. The Imbuement for the guardsman’s Permission is sound, and it will change at the strike of noon. You are welcome to wait on him in order to test it.” She held out her hand. “Come. You can stand on it, too. Or are you worried I’ve got it wrong, so when the sun reaches its zenith, you will fall through to the rocks below?”

Outwardly, Marigold kept her composure, but inside, trepidation roiled. She chose not to dignify the taunt. “If you mean to attend meetings with foreign envoys, my lady, you’d be smart to give up that dark humor.”

Iris voiced a soft sound through her nose, as though her fun had been spoiled. She hopped gracefully down from the Barrier back onto the solid stone wall. Sliding her feet back into her slippers, she said, “If there is nothing more today, Mage-Matron, I go to the meeting now.” With that, she swept past Mage Marigold and strode away.

Marigold didn’t watch her go. When the sound of Iris’s footsteps had receded, she went to the parapet and looked at the Barrier. Its shimmering gold hue was already dissipating. The sun traversed the sky toward its apex. On the warm stones of the walkway, Marigold’s shadow gradually shortened, until it was only a black spot beneath her feet.