Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (librera reader txt) 📕

“Can you see every spell?” another asked.

Theissen drew in a breath. “On most occasions, yes. It depends on proximity mostly. I can even hear it, taste it, and touch it. I can smell the presence of every demonic curse in this room, even if I can’t see them. And that statue, when I saw it yesterday, reeked of a demonic curse.”

“Objection!” Leoner shouted.

The bailiff banged his staff. “You had your say. It is his turn.”

Leoner backed away, glaring hatefully at Theissen.

Nodding to him, Theissen continued. “As I was saying earlier, I went with the former-molemen to the guild to do two things. First, to see if I could assess whether they really did have another source of jewels as they had claimed to my friends over there, and second, to see if we could hire jewelers to work for us from the guild at better pay. So in a way, Leoner Jeweler is correct is saying we came to sabotage their business.”

“Ha!” Leoner thrust out his chin.

The bailiff near him banged his stick to silence him.

“However,” Theissen continued. “They tried to poison me once when I was in their office. And then later attempted to turn me into a jeweled statue with a cursed stone—undoubtedly the same cursed stone that transformed their guild’s founder into precious stones.”

“Lies!” Leoner shouted. But his bailiff banged his stick and bellowed back at him to be silent.

The room murmured a great deal. The head bailiff had to bang his stick for attention before Theissen could continue his testimony.

An elder raised his hand. “Query. How did you know you were being poisoned during your visit?”

A smile for him, Theissen nodded. “My brother-in-law is a silversmith in Pepersin Town. The day I left on my carpenter’s journey he gave me a silver teacup, telling me that it discolored whenever it touched poison. In the jeweler’s office I had a silver teaspoon. And while stirring the tea they had given me, it discolored the same way the teacup did when the birdmen had been trying to poison me.”

The birdman doctor flushed. Ruffling his feathers, he cast a glance at the others with embarrassment at the past being brought up.

“And how did you know the stone was demonic?” one of the elders asked.

With a somewhat terse nod, Theissen replied, “As I said before, I can see the demonic knots in everything.”

“I think what he is asking is how did you yourself not turn into stone,” the chief elder said.

Bowing to him, Theissen smiled. “Oh, it tried. But I refused to let the curse take control over me. Because I am a wizard, I could forestall the infection of the curse onto my body. It took some effort, but I did it.”

“And how did you know you would really turn into stone?” another elder asked.

Theissen was starting to get annoyed with all the interruptions. “I can see how magic works. Besides, we touched at chicken leg to it back in the tower. Its flesh turned into what looked like amber. When I undid the curse on the stone, the curse on the chicken leg also ended.”

“Can you show us this cursed stone?” that elder asked.

Theissen shook his head. “It was stolen back with a spell I am unfamiliar with, the same spell that kidnapped me that very evening.”

Another gasp. The bailiffs banged a great deal out of the floor, so much that Theissen checked to see if this floor dented like the one in Lumen. So far, no.

“Kidnapped you?” one of the elders asked.

Theissen bowed to him. “If I may be permitted to give my statement without being interrupted, I would very much appreciate it.”

The elders drew themselves up with affront.

However the chief among them smothered a smile. He nodded. “Continue. We will wait until after you are finished.”

“Thank you.” Theissen glanced over to his friends, looking particularly at Tippany who was biting her lip while anxiously leaning on the railing. With an assuring nod to her, he said, “When I returned home with the stone, I gathered those with me together and did the test with the chicken leg. Then, when I undid the curse on the stone, we discovered that it was a child’s heart.”

The crowd gasped.

“That was the first scream the constables heard from the tower.” Theissen nodding to the constable who had reported it.

That constable smirked then nodded back.

“Then we discussed what to do about the heart, since we couldn’t possibly have a child’s heart sitting in our tower without some kind of explanation or solution. I went upstairs and set the heart aside, intending to put it into a box for safekeeping, but I ended up taking a nap after, well, rather rough afternoon. Seeing someone’s heart bleeding in my silver teacup can unsettle a man.” Theissen drew in another breath with a look to Tippany. “I was called down to dinner. And just as I was about to meet a new acquaintance, herbal magic sent to steal back the heart and the man supposedly turned to stone came out of the floor and took me away. That, I suppose was the second shout the constables heard—when I vanished.

“I awoke, finding myself on the floor of the master jeweler’s office with both masters and Ruban standing over me with a strange woman I had never seen before. She called herself Trista.”

The room burst into gasps. Bailiffs banged their sticks.

“She gave me something to wear, since somehow I found myself without clothes and for that matter without a memory. I also heard her demanding pay for her services from these men here, though at the time I couldn’t recall how I knew them since I didn’t even know who I was.”

“Preposterous!” Leoner bellowed. But his bailiff was right on him, banging his stick to shut him up.

“Ruban paid her. And then, since they decided they couldn’t have a corpse on the lot because someone was watching them, he took me down to some place on the main floor—though at the time I thought I was in a basement. He put me in a room, made me do some stupid job until I was exhausted, then locked me in for the night. I awoke early, snuck out—”

“How did you—?” an elder started to ask, but the chief elder waved to silence him.

“Using magic.” Theissen peered with annoyance at the man that had interrupted him. “I found something to wear in exchange for the robe the woman had given me the night before,” he gestured to his present clothes, “Snuck around to find the way out of the building, still assuming I was underground. Then I went upstairs back to the office hoping to escape. I still didn’t know who I was then or why the jewelry masters were holding me captive, but I had overheard enough to know they wanted me dead. I didn’t even remember I could do magic at first, except they kept calling me the wizard when they didn’t think I was listening. Besides, my head was so fuzzy it was hard to see the flow enough to grasp it correctly, so really I was stumbling about until I got into their office and looked out the window.

“There I saw the police in their carriages and out in the roundabout taking down the statue. After that Ruban found me and basically tried to beat me to death.”

“Objection!” Ruban shouted, pointing at him. “He isn’t even the least bit hurt!”

The bailiff near him banged his stick, but that bailiff also stared at Theissen with doubt also.

Nodding, Theissen said, “I can heal my own wounds.”

He lifted his arm, pulling up his sleeve.

“When I was a child I was punished for brawling, an offence by Jatte law that requires that my hand get severed from my arm, which would be a tragedy for a child wishing to become a carpenter like his father. But our elders allowed me to reattach my hand and then hand of the boy I was fighting with, mostly because we were very young and much of our fight was a great misunderstanding. The point is, Ruban kicked the life out of me. I defended myself by making floor underneath him move. That is why he has two broken legs. He fell through the floor to the one below.”

The crowd gasped.

More murmurs and more stick banging echoed in the room.

“But I was already unable to move by myself. And I would have been killed by the guards Forntbas summoned if my friends had not come for me. They saved my life, helped me regain my memory—also helping me clear my head enough to see the flow that allowed me to heal myself from all the wounds that had been inflicted on me.”

Theissen lifted his arms and turned around. There was a hole also in the back of the jumper; one the crowd had been staring at as he spoke. They had not seen the one in his chest any more than the judges had seen the one in his back. “I have not changed my clothes at all since I left that room. The constables can attest to the fact that I had not changed my clothes after I had left the guild house. I was stabbed in the chest. And I would have died if my friends had not come and woken me from the stupor I was in. You see, if I was clear-headed when Ruban attacked me, I could have conjured a tornado and torn up their entire building—if I willed it.”

His stare went dark.

“I could have closed each one of their throats with a touch. I could have sealed up their hearts and taken it out of their chests at will—if I really intended to kill them.”

Theissen then tossed back his head with a smile, losing all his dark looks. “But I had no intention to kill anyone. I only came there to get for my friends what they deserved after all the hard work they put in, breaking their backs, trying to get themselves to this city.”

He turned to the head elder. “I realized way too late that I had stumbled onto a murder dealing with that jewelry guild. And now they are trying to blame me for their bleeding statue. Well then, fine. It is easier to blame the wizard for the unexplainable anyway. But I was only six years old when that man was murdered, living in Lumen Village, doing nothing more than dreaming of becoming a carpenter someday. And I refuse to have the death of their former master pinned on me.”

“Is that all of your statement?” the chief elder asked him.

Theissen shook his head. “No. I’m sure they used that red stone on others within this city, doing the same thing to others as they tried to do to me. I submit that if you wait, you will discover bleeding jewels in the same way as that bleeding statue, because they would be pieces of people they had cursed to keep control over their market.”

Leoner went white, unable to shout.

His partner did shout though, shrieking, “Lies! Lies! If any such thing happened, he did it!”

“Sure, blame the wizard,” Theissen said. He then nodded to the head elder. “Now I am finished.”

The head bailiff banged his stick. “Now we will hear questions and rebuttals!”

The bailiffs next to Leoner, Forntbas and Ruban urged them to speak. Ruban nodded, lifting and arm for the chance.

“The wizard claims that we tried to kill him. His only proof is clothing. No scars—”

“Let a bailiff come closer, and he will see a scar. I can’t heal things perfectly,” Theissen said. “Only according to the natural flow.”

Ruban clenched his teeth. He watched a bailiff go up close to inspect Theissen.

The bailiff looked at Theissen’s chest and back. He then nodded to the elders. “There is a scar. Slight, but on both sides. It looks as if a spear was indeed thrust into his chest.”

“But he has several scars on his body like