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

His father stared.

“My presence does.” Theissen let go of his hair. “He really hates me, and it is stupid.”

The carpenter let out a weak smile. “Yes. You do. And it is. But we have to live with it.”

But Theissen suddenly formed a determined glint in his eye. “No. No, I don’t. I don’t have to live with it.”

He drew in a breath and nodded to himself. Theissen then turned to look at his father. Indeed, this was no boy. He was a man now.

“Ok, I am ready now. I know what I have to do.”

The carpenter nodded, yet was still hesitant. “And what is that?”

Theissen turned his head and met his gaze with a narrow smile. “We go to court.”

“What is the meaning of this?” the magician pulled from the grips of the sheriffs who had explained themselves for the umpteenth time that he was summoned to stand before the village elders on charges of disturbing the peace.

They set him into the circle for the accused.

Fuming red like a charred pot that had fallen into a fire, the magician whipped around to look at his accusers who should be standing in the other box. When his eyes fell on Theissen Darol Mukamar the carpenter’s son his fury his anger puffed him up to his imperious height and he exploded into a verbal tirade.

“…you! Of all the contrived and confounded imbeciles listening to that deceitful and disreputable scalawag! This is impertinent and uncalled for!”

Several of the village mothers covered their children’s ears though some of the villagers also cowered, never even considering taking the magician to court for what he could do to them with his spells alone. Only Theissen and his family seemed to stand tall, though the bailiff managed well with his staff in hand, practically guarding the village elders from him.

“All the same,” the head sheriff said, gesturing over to Theissen. “This boy has a claim against you that must be addressed.”

Puffing himself up larger, the magician suddenly seemed nearly a foot taller, looming over the men of law. His towering figure intimidated more of them, including the carpenter, though Theissen merely rolled his eyes and folded his arms with a tired look of impatience that a boy his age normally did not have for a man of that status and stature.

“That boy is an infernal abomination! I told you he would be trouble when he was born! He has no right to accuse anyone!”

“Oh, shut up, would you!” Theissen snapped. “Are you saying that you are above the law of Jatte?”

The magician whipped around, towering over Theissen. With a wave of his arm, the room darkened except for immediately around him with the effect of making him look ten times more intimidating. However, Theissen reached up into that darkness and the light in the room went back to its usual cozy hue. The magician suddenly was back to his regular height, no bigger than the carpenter if that. Everyone could see the flustered look on the magician’s face as he tried to gather his bearings, looking here and there before glowering at the carpenter’s son. Theissen matched him with a squared jaw and a set glare.

“Alright then,” a village elder said, gesturing to the bailiff. “This court is now in session. Addressing the case of Henren Mobis Gulland Magician.”

The bailiff marched to the center of the room then nodded to Theissen. “Your case. You may speak.”

“Utterly—” the magician started to object, but the bailiff banged his stick for silence, reminding the magician he would use his staff on him if he misbehaved in court.

“Thank you,” Theissen said to the bailiff and then the village elders with a nod. Then following custom, he began to lay his case. “Honest elders of our village, please listen to all I have to say in its entirety, for the situation may sound strange at first.”

He glanced at his father as he stepped to the center of the room next to the bailiff.

“The events started a while ago, but I will try to keep it brief. A few months ago the sheriff came to me about a missing platter my aunt Bakerswife owned that had gone missing. The magician here had informed him that I might have stolen it, and he searched our carpentry shop for it, yet found no such platter. Later I had, well, conjured it up inside her kitchen and all was well.”

The magician suddenly gained a stony expression. Though it made him look firm and confident, it also told Theissen that the man understood now what had gone wrong with that part of his scheme. The eyes of the magician twinkled despite the formidable look on his frozen face, a look of triumph that undoubtedly showed his choice of words once Theissen would be done exposing the problem.

Theissen did not stop there, however. He continued with a nod to the sheriff. “Also that day I helped the sheriff locate several other missing objects of which he can attest to as well.”

The sheriff nodded frankly.

“But what I had not told the sheriff about, and what had occupied my mind this past few months, was about this little demon I have seen scampering about the village lately.”

There was no change in the magician’s stony expression though the other villagers gasped and gossiped with a tremor of fear. Theissen noted it and continued, glancing once at his father for encouragement.

“Well, I attempted to catch this little thing, but it was too fast for me.” Theissen shrugged. “I even tried to use magic to call it to me. Nothing worked. And worse, things started to go missing again. That was when I decided that this little demon was what was stealing things around here.

“But that is not all. The little creature, which I eventually was able to identify as being sort of half cat half a squirrel—” Gasps that it was a kirrel echoed in the halls loud enough. The magician grinned to himself, waiting with a more comfortable look for his turn to speak. “—was leaving things in places, which troubles me to say, where I often go.”

The sheriffs stared at Theissen wondering if he was in fact making a confession. Certainly the look on the magician’s face was saying it was so. However, Theissen’s expression was nothing like that at all, standing with the confidence of innocence as he continued to speak.

“So, as soon as I discovered the things it was stashing, I sent them back to their homes straight away.”

That did not faze the magician one bit. His smile was firm. He seemed to be enjoying the moment before triumph.

Theissen then smiled, looking right at him. “But the thing is, I had noticed something else first. The smell. Then the wake.”

“The what?” an elder said blinking at him.

Theissen nodded to the watching crowd beyond the gate. “If you ask the doctor, he can tell you how I can smell things most other people cannot see. Especially demonic things.”

That ruffled the magician.

“I also can hear things most people cannot hear. Noises when others perform magic.” Theissen nodded to the magician. “This man reeks of magic ill-gotten, and he has kept me up most nights performing very loud, very dangerous magic. I say the kirrel is his, and he has been trying to frame me of theft for the past year.”

“Nonsense!” the magician shouted at last, defying the bailiff to hit him. “Kirrel making is witchcraft! I do not dabble in witchcraft!”

“That is true, young man. Magicians do not do witchcraft,” one of the elders said, looking down with concern at Theissen.

Theissen nodded. “Yes, I have come to understand that. And yet, with what I have witnessed this past few months, I can only conclude that the magician has set what magic he knows against me—even to dabble in witchcraft.”

The magician threw back his head with a laugh. He then turned to the village elders with a broad smile. “See? I told you he was this kind of rabble. Not once have I ever broken the law, but he has done much lawbreaking several times, though caught only twice. May I speak in my defense now?”

“Are you done, boy?” the bailiff asked Theissen, his eyes fixed to be impartial despite his obvious fondness for him.

Theissen side-glanced at the magician and shook his head. “No. I’m not.

“I already know what the magician will accuse me of. And I call the doctor to the floor to attest to one, and then I will share the rest of the story if the village elders have not yet been informed of the situation, if I may.”

The doctor and the magician blinked at one another. The doctor looked at Theissen through the wooden partition, mouthing with a questioning look to ask what he wanted from him. Theissen glanced at his father and then smiled like a man in charge. The doctor was reluctantly entering the front portion of the hall, let in by the younger bailiff.

Theissen said, “Tell us, doctor, what you and I have been up to in the evenings after the sun has set.”

A look of shock crossed the magician’s face. He stared as if he had taken a fatal blow.

The doctor looked the same. “I…I…honestly boy, do you really know what you are saying?”

Theissen nodded to him, his eyes somewhat steely. “I do. You got me into it. The magician considers it a crime. The elders then must hear of it.”

Shaking his head, the doctor pulled back towards the gate.

Giving him a dirty look, Theissen stepped up to the elders and said, “The doctor has been having me help him with his medical research. He has been looking at the deceased in the graveyards. He has been using me to take the bodies from their resting places, assuring me it isn’t illegal since we were putting them back.”

Several village elders stared. Then the entire room exploded in protests. Even Yuld looked flustered, though when called for the Scribeson just shrugged and agreed with Theissen. “Technically, there is no law about taking a body from the graveyard and then putting it back.”

“But it is desecration!” someone shouted.

Theissen gave the doctor an I-told-you-so look, but then he turned to the village elders and said, “As for the other thing the magician will accuse me of, yes, I did interfere with Lord Baron Kirsch’s mistress, making him leave our town with a fake corpse and sneaking the real woman out of our village to a safe place to recover. Plenty of people know about that, though he would accuse me of thieving in that case even though I saved her life.”

He smiled at the magician who was looking doubly put out.

“But the real issue is that the magician has stooped to witchcraft to try and get rid of me. He made that kirrel, and he also has been dabbling in worse magic. Magic which—”

But Theissen suddenly felt a force thrust him across the room. It was not the same as a gust of wind but an air pressure just as powerful. Crashing into the men standing behind him so that he fell over, it took a second to shake it off and right himself while the others scrambled to their own feet trying to regain some sense of balance. Looking back, Theissen stared into the center of the room where the magician stood. The man had swelled back up to his intimidating height, glaring at all around him though his eyes veered around and fixed on him as if to squash him like a bug.

“You! Why do they listen to you?”

Getting to his feet, Theissen balled his hands into fists and turned around. “What you are doing is not clean magic! It is demonic. I can smell it on you.”

Theissen saw the force come again. This time he braced for it, digging his feet into the ground, pushing back at the magician with a fresher air gust he conjured from outside. The windows banged open as the air swooped in. Darkness oozed