The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [110]
A full squad of men—twelve or more, in gray leathers—patrolled the gate, inspecting each traveler entering, each occupant or citizen departing.
“Master Wizard, you’ve traveled our way once again?” The Serjeant’s voice was firm, respectful, but not subservient, matching the trim gray leathers of his vest and trousers and his well-kept heavy boots.
Of the other soldiers, two were moving bales and baskets in a produce wagon pulled by a single donkey, while a third held the harness. Another was watching as a peddler emptied the contents of his pack onto a battered pine table set by the edge of the gate.
On the wall overhead, barely visible behind the parapet crenelations, a pair of crossbowmen surveyed the stone-paved expanse outside the walls where the inspections occurred.
“Wizards do travel,” replied Justen.
“And this young fellow?” asked the Certan serjeant, inclining his head toward me.
“Serving as my apprentice—for now, at least.”
“That wouldn’t be an apprenticeship of convenience, Master. Wizard?”
Justen turned his face directly upon the serjeant, his eyes weary with age, conveying experiences best left unrepeated. That was what I saw.
The serjeant stepped back, then nodded. “Sorry to bother you, gentlemen.” His face was pale.
When I lifted the reins, my hand brushed my unseen staff in its lance cup. Briefly marveling at my newfound ability to cloak small objects by wrapping the light around them, I swished the reins and Gairloch carried me up to the farm wagon.
One soldier had ripped off the wagon seat and was lifting small bags from the narrow space underneath. The blond-bearded young driver trembled in the grasp of the other inspecting soldier.
I glanced back at Justen.
“Hempweed.” Flat, unconcerned.
“No!” screamed the man.
One of the guards looked at me and I swished the reins again, letting Gairloch carry me past the granite walls and into Jellico, then slowing to let Justen and Rosefoot draw abreast.
“Will they execute him?” I asked.
Justen eased Rosefoot along a narrow side street bearing left from the main gate highway. “No.”
Even less than fifty rods into Jellico, the viscount’s control was evident. No street peddlers, no beggars, no litter, no refuse. While the streets were brick, they were level, even on the side street down which we proceeded, even in the narrower alleyways we passed.
“What will happen to him? That farmer?”
“He’s no farmer, just a young idiot hired to drive the wagon. They’ll brand his forehead with an ‘X’. The guards turn back all branded people. If ever he is found within Jellico again, he will be executed in the main square.”
“Just for smuggling?”
Justen shook his head slowly. “The inn is just ahead.”
“But why?”
“For disobeying the viscount. Except for beer and wine, drugs are forbidden. So is the practice of magic without the viscount’s seal of personal approval. So are begging and prostitution, or selling goods without a seller’s seal.”
I looked at the space, where, with effort, I could see the staff that no one but me or another good magician could see. I shivered.
“We’ll stable Rosefoot and Gairloch first.”
The Inn at Jellico—scarcely an original name, but Jellico didn’t seem a town for originality.
“What sort of magic gets the viscount’s seal?”
“As little as possible. Healers, mainly of the orderly kind.”
“There are white healers? Chaos-healers? How could they?”
Justen shook his head, and even Rosefoot tossed hers. “Healing takes two forms, Lerris. One is helping restructure and re-order the body, knitting wounds and bones, using order to create natural splints and heals, or strengthening the body’s resistance to infections. All that is order-based. That’s basically what we did with the sheep. It’s