Snippet #1865566

"Are you lost, son?" an eerily familiar voice asked as Leofric passed an enormous copper sundial in the center of the town square.

Vertigris deposits formed a crust at the base of the gnomon and around the die cast symbols representing the hours and eight celestial signs of the zodiac in a nearly perfect annulus. Sha had barely peeked out from behind the clouds, casting a vague shadow along one of the hour marks, which, if accurate, put him in the middle of town close to evening. Still, the cloud cover made it difficult to tell.

"You hard of hearing boy? When he looked toward the sound of the voice, it was not the farmhand, but a wizened man with a crown of gray hair, wielding in his left hand a carved juniper walking stick with feathers and etchings in the knotted and burled wood. He had one leg propped atop the stone slab on which the sundial was embedded. Curving his left foot over the edge, he pressed the toe of his laced hiking boot onto one of the eight arcane symbols on the face of the dial. "I asked you if you were lost."

As Leofric passed an eye over the dusty ground, he noticed trampled footprints in the dirt. Most of the passersby headed in straight or slightly veering lines away from the center of the square, leaving prints on top of the others, but he could make out the distinct, circling pattern of a set going round the sundial several times and ending right underfoot.