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figure robed in white jumped back nearly five feet and crouched.
    The speed with which it moved shocked Nicodemus. He was about to cry out when it stood and lowered its cowl to reveal a woman’s tan face.
    Her wide eyes gleamed green even in the bleaching white moonlight. Her smooth olive skin and narrow chin resembled those of a twenty-year-old girl, yet she held these youthful features in a calm expression of mature confidence. The waves of her raven hair spilled down around her face to disappear under her pale cloak.
    To Nicodemus, she seemed oddly familiar.
    “What is the meaning of this?” the woman asked sternly. “I am Deirdre, an independent emissary from the druids of Dral. I was told I had license throughout the fastness during the convocation.”
    “Your pardon, Magistra Deirdre. I didn’t know you were a druid.” He bowed.
    “Do not call me Magistra. Druids hold no titles.” Her voice was calm, but her eyes flicked up and down Nicodemus like flames lapping at a dry log. She walked toward him. “Are you a wizard?”
    To her right, the air shimmered. A warm blush spread across Nicodemus’s cheeks. “Hoping to become one soon,” he replied.
    “An apprentice, then. Who is your mentor?”
    “Magister Shannon, the well-known linguist.”
    The druid seemed to consider this. “I have only recently become aware of Shannon.”
    Nicodemus nodded and then smiled. If he could impress this woman, it might help Shannon’s status in the convocation. It was a small thing, but perhaps then Magister would sooner forget the misspelled gargoyle.
    “May I assist you?” Nicodemus asked the druid and then bowed to the shadow on the druid’s right. “Or your companion?”
    Deirdre’s full lips rose into a sly half-smile. She examined Nicodemus, then nodded. “Forgive the subtext,” she said. “Kyran is my protector.”
    The shadow beside her welled up out of the ground and coalesced intoa human figure whose cloaking subtext fell away, causing the moonlight to shimmer.
    Nicodemus nodded to the newcomer. Standing several inches over six feet, the man cut an imposing figure. He had undone the wooden buttons running down his white sleeves to better expose his muscular arms for spellwriting. His complexion was fair, his lips thin, his long hair golden. No wrinkles creased his handsome face; however, among spellwrights, that was not necessarily an indication of youth.
    In his right hand, Kyran held a thick oak staff. Nicodemus eyed the object; supposedly the druid’s higher languages gained special abilities when cast into wood.
    Deirdre was gazing about the Stone Court. “We wish to make devotions to our goddess. A wizard told us there were standing stones here, but these rocks are arranged neither in circle nor grid.”
    A nearby crocodile-like gargoyle crawled away, perhaps to find a quieter sleeping spot.
    “And you wizards have covered the stones with these strange stone lizards.”
    Nicodemus bowed. “Please excuse the disorder. The standing stones were a gift from a Highland lord. We do not know how they should be arranged. As for the gargoyles, they’re not lizards but advanced spells we call textual constructs. You see, Magnus, one of the wizardly high languages, can transform its textual energy into stone.”
    The druid smiled slightly as if he had just said something amusing.
    Unsure what to do, Nicodemus offered more information: “These are janitorial gargoyles. We’ve written an affection for stone into their minds. So they climb all over the occupied towers, tending to the roofs, searching for crumbling mortar, and keeping the birds away.”
    Deirdre continued to watch him in smiling silence.
    “But if you want to make devotions,” Nicodemus added awkwardly, “you might feel more comfortable in one of our gardens. Magister Shannon has just taken quarters above the Bolide Garden, but it’s still being renovated.”
    The male druid spoke. “Why is this place so empty? Where are the other