Chapter the First: In Which We Meet Bill and Bill's Mumsy

Submitting to standing on a stool while his mother pinned and hemmed his robes was one thing. Submitting to being stuck with what he was sure was the twelfth pin in a row was more than he could bear.

“Mother,” he whined. “How much longer is this going to take? Minore the Magnificent is unaccustomed to being subjected to this sort of torture.” He huffed. “I feel certain the other wizards have professional robe makers to tend to this sort of thing. Professional robe makers don’t stick their customers with pins.”

“Oh you with that Minore nonsense,” his mother said mildly around a mouthful of pins. “Why you can’t just be content to use the name your father and I gave you, Ayanna rest him, is beyond me. You could be Bill the Brilliant, or Bill the Bold. You're not an elf, you're a human, and you come from a good family that loves you.”

“But mother,” Bill whined. “Minore just sounds so much more majestic. I've been licensed to practise magic for two whole days, and I haven't had so much as a whiff of a job. I need a professional image that will really sell me, and sell what I can do.”

Bill's mother snorted, dislodging a couple of the pins from her mouth in the process. “What is it you can do? I watched you sit your examinations. You turned a chicken into a toad that still had feathers, and when you tried to conjure water out of nowhere, it came out as tea.”

Bill stood, silently seething with humiliation, on the stool.

“Still I suppose that's a talent to have,” his mother mused. “Tea, out of nothing! Makes me want to keep you here at home with me, and trot you out at parties. Think of it! My son, the teapot.” She laughed then, and Bill struggled to get down from the stool.

“I won't be made the butt of the joke, Mother,” he sulked.

“Oh settle down. If you can't take a bit of teasing from your dear old Mumsy, then you won't last a day out there in the real world. There,” she said, standing back to look at her work. The hem was even, and the robes brushed the tops of Bill's worn, shabby old boots. “I wish we could afford new boots for you,” she mused.

“I wish we could have afforded a professional robe maker,” Bill grumbled ungratefully.

“Well if I could afford to send you to a professional robe maker I would, but I can't. You're either going to have to make do with Mumsy's sewing, or sew it yourself.” Finally losing patience with her son, Phyllis stood and spat the left over pins into her hand. “I don't know why you're such a grouch. Your father, Ayanna rest him, gave everything he had so that you could have a good education, and have we heard so much as a thank you?”

“Thank you Mumsy,” Bill mumbled. “I do love you, you know.”

“Yes, well you've got a funny sort of way of showing it. They should call me Phyllis the Patient, for putting up with you,” she grumbled back, but she was smiling. “Right, take them off so I can finish them up, then go down to the inn and check the board. You never know, something might have been pinned up since you checked this morning.”

~*~

After shucking his too-big robes, Bill grabbed his wand and shoved it in the pocket of his trousers, running out of the house toward the inn. That morning when he had checked the village notice board, there had been nothing but ads wanting help around the house, and that was no job for a wizard. He wanted something with a bit of pizazz, a bit of prestige. He wanted a job that would take him out of Hifeld and let him see the world.

Unfortunately for Bill, when one finishes wizard academy firmly in the lower half of their class, there are not too many jobs being handed out. Most people, when hiring a wizard, prefer to hire one that won't accidentally blow up their castles.

The walk to the Sage and Flagon was a short one, but it took Bill past the Alchemy District and the pet store, skirting around the edge of the market place. The buildings in this part of town were all the same, really, with only slight variations in their design. They were almost uniformly shabby, and made out of the same cheap materials, bricks and wood from the surrounding countryside outside the Hifeld walls, and the roofs of thatch obtained from nearby Babin.

But Bill wasn't really taking any of this in. His eye scanned the buildings around him with the attitude of someone who has seen them a million times before, and will likely see them a million times again. Hifeld was a humdrum, boring town.

As he reached the marketplace he could hear the usual hustle and bustle of the midday traffic, of stall owners bartering and peddling their wares. For a town that produced almost nothing of its own, Hifeld somehow managed to be the center of trade and commerce in West Lorien. Perhaps, Bill thought, the mayor of Hifeld was the greatest wizard of all. Perhaps he would do well to seek education from him, instead of the substandard wizarding education he had already had.

When Bill arrived at the board, there was a thrum of activity surrounding it. He cursed under his breath. Had he missed the new jobs being posted? He had to shoulder his way through the other people examining the postings, but finally he could see. There was nothing new, not really. Either the activity was for nothing, or he was too late. And he didn't want to clean houses or take care of small children. Discouraged, Bill turned away from the board and headed for his house.

To kill time, and to put off the moment when he would have to tell his mother that there was again, no work available, he took the scenic route home past the court of Hifeld. This area of town was much more opulent than his own and the sight of the buildings here was much more a feast for Bill's eyes, hungry for something new. These structures were not of brick, grass and thatch �" no, some of these buildings were even made of marble, gleaming white in the midday sun!

“Oi you. Kid. State your name and business,” came a voice, and Bill turned to see a guard looking him over suspiciously. He straightened himself up to his full height and attempted to keep his voice from breaking as he answered.

“I am Minore the Magnificent, a wizard and your better, and I am tending to my own business,” he said officiously.

The guard, unfortunately, didn't take him any more seriously than his mother had.
“Where's your robes then? And your beard? Seems like a better name for you would be Kevin the Kind of Shite,” he sniggered, much to Bill's displeasure.

“I could turn you into a toad for saying that to me,” he threatened with narrowed eyes, but the guard didn't seem overly worried.

“Food’d be a lot cheaper,” he shrugged. “Go on then. Do your worst, or bugger off.”

For a moment it seemed like Bill might actually follow through with his threat, but eventually he deflated. He’d been ill the day they went through turning people into toads, and the likelihood was that if he tried it, he’d show himself up badly.

“Right then,” he said finally. “I’ll let you away with a warning, but let this be a lesson to you not to speak with such disrespect to your betters.”

The guard’s laughter rang in his ears as he scuttled away down an alley and out into the sunlight in front of the marketplace again. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and kicked irritably at a stone as he trudged homewards.

“I could have done it,” he told himself. “I just didn't want to.” And as if to prove to himself that he was just as powerful as he said he was, he pulled out his wand, flicked it in the direction of the stone, and was gratified to see it turn into a clod of earth. Just a small thing, to be sure, but he’d done it, hadn't he? Just went to show that that guard didn't know what he was talking about. “Kevin the Kind of Shite?” he repeated, under his breath. “I'm Minore the bloody Magnificent, that’s who I am. Though they ought to call me Minore the Merciful for not taking my revenge on that prat.”

He still didn't want to go straight home, so he doubled back to the Sage and Flagon and went inside. At this time of the day it wasn't busy. There were a few die hard regulars dotted around the tables, nursing their flagons of ale, and a few older couples who had come for the lunch special, all you can eat for the low price of two silver pieces. Bill walked up to the counter, puffed out his chest and made sure he was standing up straight, and ordered an ale.

“What you want an ale for, to give to your daddy?” the barkeep laughed. “Come back when you've got a few hairs on your chin. I don't sell ale to kids.”

“I have got hair on my chin!” Bill protested. “Look!” He pointed to the solitary hair that had sprouted from his chin a few days previously. It was small, and thin, and sort of lightly colored which made it a bit hard to spot, but it was there. “So can I have my ale or not?”

“Not,” the barkeep said with a tone of finality. “Tell you what though, you can have a goat's milk on the house, I'm that sorry for you. That do you?”

Bill pushed his way back out of the bar, ears burning at the sound of cackles and titters that followed him.

So of course, given the already bad day Bill was having, it was inevitable that Trevor should be waiting outside the inn with a smirk on his face. Trevor, who called himself Trevor the Triumphant. Trevor, who was realistically no better than Bill was in school, but who had consistently scored a couple of points higher than Bill on almost every test, and then gloated over those points ad nauseam.

“What were you doing in the inn? Buying ale? You know they won’t sell to you,” he sneered.

“It isn't as if they’d sell to you, either!”

“Bet they would. I look older than you. At least I have hair on my chin.”

“I have hair on my chin! It’s right here!” Incensed, Bill took a step forward and shoved Trevor in the chest, hard. Or rather, he thought he’d pushed him hard. Trevor barely swayed, now laughing derisively.

“You’re a wimp, and a loser,” he pronounced. He shoved back, sitting Bill firmly on the seat of his pants, defeated. “And that’s what you get for messing with your betters!”

There was no way Trevor could have known that his choice of words was almost exactly what Bill had just finished saying to the rude guard, not twenty minutes ago, but Bill couldn't help the feeling that Hifeld and all who dwelled within it were against him today. His eyes stung, but he rubbed at them ferociously. Minore the Magnificent did not cry. Especially not on the edge of the marketplace where anyone could see him.

Picking himself up and dusting himself off, Bill made for home finally. Even if she was annoying and a pain, at least his mother would make him a hot meal.

“Bill!” she called, right on cue as he walked in the door. “Come and peel the potatoes, darling. We’ll have shepherd’s pie for lunch, shall we? And I’ll put the cheese on the top, just the way you like it.”

Had anyone else been around to see, Bill might have made some remark about how Minore the Magnificent was too important to be peeling potatoes, but after the day he'd had, he wasn't feeling all that magnificent any more. He walked over to the pile of potatoes to begin peeling them, but stopped on the way to give his mother a hug.

“What was that for?” she asked him, surprised but pleased.

“Nothing,” Bill mumbled awkwardly. “I just like you, that's all.”

Nothing else was said as the two worked together to prepare the lunch. Nothing, that was, until Bill's mother decided to ask her son the inevitable question.

“Did you look at the board?”

Bill grimaced and sighed. “I did, but there's nothing there,” he said. It was sort of true: there was nothing there that interested him. But Phyllis saw right through his half truth.

“It's funny, I was there last night and there were at least half a dozen ads wanting people for odd jobs or childcare,” she said pointedly.

Bill stared at the table, gritting his teeth. “Mum... I just went to school for four years to become a wizard. Do you think Dad would have wanted me to waste those four years on mucking out someone's stables, or changing dirty nappies? I think he would have wanted me to hold out for a job where I can use what I've learned, and maybe have adventures at the same time.”

Phyllis pushed her plate away. “And I think your father would agree that I can't keep running this family by myself! Sewing doesn't bring in much. We just ate at least an afternoon's work worth of food, and that was one meal. One meal! You can't just sit around waiting for wizard work to fall in your lap. I need you to help me!”

“I'm trying!” Bill exploded. “But I can’t… I won’t just settle for menial labor when I could be doing so much better!”

“Lunch is over,” his mother said, whipping his plate out from under him and dumping it in the sink. “Perhaps you need to think about just how proud you are, Bill, and whether or not you’re too proud to eat.”

Bill scowled, but said nothing as he stood up and walked out of the house without a word. He moved to slam the front door behind him, and that was when he saw the glossy, rich looking envelope pinned there neatly. “Minore the Magnificent”, it read in red calligraphy. Underneath in parentheses it said “Bill” in the same red writing.

Of course, he looked around before detaching the envelope from the door. No one caught his eye or struck him as being the person who might have left such an envelope for him. It was made of the sort of paper that people like him could never hope to afford. He’d certainly never held a piece of paper this expensive in his hands before, and he trembled slightly with excitement as he sat down on his front step and carefully tore it open.

“Minore the Magnificent (Bill),” he read.

“Your presence is requested at the home of The Collector tomorrow morning, ten o'clock sharp. You will come alone. You will pack a bag ready to travel. You will bring nothing but what fits in said bag. You will make your arrangements before arriving. You will not speak unless spoken to, and you will observe the proper deference in the presence of The Collector.

“Your services are being engaged for the purposes of one (1) quest. Payment will be discussed at the aforementioned time. If you do not accept this engagement, do nothing. If you agree to the terms as written, leave your name and rank on a piece of parchment on the steps of The Collector’s home by no later than ten o'clock tonight.”

Bill had to read the message three times before he really took it in. Of all the coincidences, right after he had fought with his mother about money and his lack of a job, one really had fallen right in his lap. He leapt up and punched the air in glee, letting out a whoop of excitement.

“I'm going out, Mumsy!” he yelled, forgetting in his excitement that he was really too old to be calling his mother “Mumsy” any more, and sped off toward the well known home where The Collector lived.

When he got there, there were five slips of parchment present already, four weighted down by stones and one pinned right to the door by a small dagger. That one read “Lyne of Caham. Thief.”

Bill was just about to leave his own name next to the others but he paled. “I didn’t bring any bloody parchment,” he swore. “My big break and I forgot the bloody, bloody parchment.”

“Oi kid,” came an all too familiar voice behind him. Bill rose from the step and turned, prepared to have to justify his presence. The guard gave him a not unfriendly smirk, and shoved a piece of parchment and a stick of charcoal at him. “Looks like we can change your name from Kevin the Kind of Shite, to Larry the Lucky,” he cracked.

“Why would you help me?” Bill asked curiously. “You were so rude and surly.”

“Cos I ain't a toad yet, am I?” the guard shrugged. “Figured I been spared by your gracious whim.” He grinned and walked off, whistling.

And Bill, after watching him leave in wonderment, quickly scribbled “Minore the Magnificent, Wizard” on the parchment and studied the ones already on the step. “Daneli of Beofalls, Ranger”. “Aramdir of Arley, Bard”. Bill placed his name between “Khali of Haburh Stronghold, Fighter” and “Nainarv of Hearda Keep, Cleric (Servant of Helfert)” and let out a shaky breath.

Trevor the Triumphant could eat his heart out, because Bill’s name was on The Collector’s front step, and Trevor’s was not.