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

They stared.

Stepping up towards the magicians’ door, Theissen said, “Do you have any idea how hard it was to travel this far? I was waylaid by bandits twice. Nearly attacked by a demon in the woods, as well as a lustful mistress of some landholding in the south, her husband now on my heels for what she did rather than what I did. Liptan is the closest thing to home for me right now. Why would I want to go back out into that?”

“But you won’t find a woman here,” one of the others said to him with a nod. “Admit that. It bothers you.”

With a shrug, Theissen stopped at the door, almost putting his hand on it. “That’s true. But what you don’t know is, I’m already somewhat engaged. All I have to do is call for her. That’s whom I’ve been writing. I just haven’t decided whether I want to do it yet.”

They stared at him.

“You’re engaged?” one of the men said aloud. Several heads turned. The women’s ears perked with particular relish. “But then what was all that with Lilissa last year?”

Moaning and grabbing the door handle, Theissen said before going in, “I said only somewhat engaged. Besides, Lilissa is a beautiful woman. She is like a thorny rose. Luckily I learned about her thorns before I was truly hurt.”

“But your fiancé?”

Theissen gave a small smile, standing in the doorway. “Milrina? We’re just friends.”

He closed the door after, knowing the aftermath of gossip would explode all over the town after the hour.

The cook looked over. The maid ducked into the other room. Both seemed to have also been listening in. He really had kept Milrina a secret. Usually he just talked about her as a friend if he mentioned her at all. That she was his fiancé was news.

“Are magicians Undi and Padoros in?”

The cook stuck her head into the doorway. “No, Carpenter. They haven’t come back yet.”

He nodded.

“Alright then. Do you think they’d mind if I waited for them upstairs?”

Giving a nod, she said, “Go on ahead. I’ll just add more stock to the pot.”

“Oh, I’m not staying for supper. I just have a question for them,” he said, already heading up the stairs. He did not hear the cook’s response.

Up on the top floor, Theissen glanced at his letter and then at the room full of shining and strange instruments. They didn’t like him touching their magical items, almost as if they were afraid he would inadvertently undo the spells on them. He kept trying to tell them the spells on the items were not like the knots in demons. Most of them had to be enacted by a word to work anyway, and the effects were generally temporary much like the items mentioned at the end of the Jonis scrolls that the writer called Tempered Objects. Of course all the writer mentioned were demon hunting paraphernalia, a bit about herbal tools, and then demonic items. He seemed to think the other items were not important.

But there was one of these tempered objects that Theissen was looking for. He had seen it on the desk. Undi used it once.

Setting his letters on the desk, Theissen probed around. Then, remembering with a snort at his stupidity that he had a faster way of finding things, he set his palm on the desktop and felt inside the wood for the item. Almost immediately he found it in the top drawer. He drew it through the wood straight into his hand. The spell was etched in the flat magnifying glass shaped disk with gold and silver writing in clear crafted Jatten. Grabbing the envelope, he began at once to open the foreign letter, laying each page out flat on the desk. Setting the glass on top, each foreign scripted word was amplified. Turning it so that the spell faced in the correct cardinal points, he recited the spell written on top in order.

“Exposed in the north. Open in east, Bare down south, Unbound in the west.” From here there was no instruction. However, he knew that all he had to do now was make a request and use a command word, so he invented it, hoping the spell would work. “Make clear this language to my eyes. See.”

He tapped the glass.

It flickered with a ripple of light. Through the glass, Theissen saw the writing turn, twist and shape into letters he recognized.

Dear Friend,

I had not expected a letter from so far away. I am not familiar with the country of Jatte, not in all my studies, but then the maps of Brein Amon really are rather pathetic. They usually don’t show much more than our country and a little of Perri and Maldos, just calling it the south. Be grateful for that though. If any of my countrymen knew such civilized people existed south, they’d be bound to try and take it over.

Theissen nearly laughed. It worked. However what was this Brein Amon he was talking about? He had never heard of it.

I have much I would love to ask you. But first, I wish to express my thanks for your response. I sent out as many copies of those scrolls ages ago in the hopes of quelling the demonic resurgence in the world. I had not expected the scrolls to make it very far into Minor Gull at all. It had been years since I wrote that first edition, and I was starting to get worried that was reaching nobody. I don’t know how it is down in your country, but in Brein Amon, we get no help at all from the government in dealing with demons. They pay greedy magisters that seem to want to prolong demon plagues to maintain a status quo of business, never mind how many people are dying. These days I feel like I have been going at it alone. I had only hoped if I had taught somebody the basics of what I knew, I could change things. I know. It proves I’m naïve. My fellow demon hunters tell me so.

“He’s a demon hunter,” Theissen murmured aloud. Now it made sense. All of it. No wonder he spent so much time on describing how to deal with demons, spells against demons and potions for the same purpose.

But since you wrote me, obviously you have questions like I do. I noticed, after I hunted down a Hann who would give me a straight translation without lying, that you sounded a little desperate. To answer your one question in thanks for the information about knots in the magic flow, which I will put in a new edition after you have read it all and given me your input, you asked why wizards are so frightening. That is a question anyone with natural magic skill asks. Why me? Why don’t they understand? But to help you in way that has helped me, just imagine life without your gift. Imagine how unexplainable the world we live in must be. Imagine how defenseless most people must feel. That’s why they gather in villages, towns and cities. They’re frightened.

“But why are they frightened of me?” Theissen said, wishing the pages would answer.

Unfortunately, people like you and I are among those that they’re scared of. People are terrified of the unknown. They are also scared of those they feel defenseless against. Growing up, I had to pretend that people still had some advantage over me. It had to make them think I had weaknesses they could use against me. It draws out the dirty element in some people, but this way you know who your friends are.

Frowning, Theissen knew this was not a problem for him. Everyone knew his weaknesses. He wouldn’t hurt a flower. This man sounded more like someone who would and has killed. Demon hunter. It only led to the conclusion that the writer was demon killer also.

I trust you are not as dire of circumstances as I am. You did mention that you have a trade as innocuous as carpentry. That’s a good sign the people don’t see you as dangerous as all that. Keep with it. Stay respectable. The last thing you need is for people to want to hunt you down. There are too many stories about wizards gone bad for power and greed. Of course, if memory serves me right, most stories are meant to scare for entertainment or to teach children to be good, and I have yet to meet a wizard that is all bad. It is like meeting an herbalist that is entirely wicked or a magician whose schemes are all selfish or a magister only obsessed in killing demons. They are things for folk tales, not real life. Magic users are a highly misunderstood lot.

My guardian, Mr. Farren used to tell me that he wished there were more of them in the world. He said a lack of them and growing of skeptics in science—

“What are you doing?”

Theissen lifted his eyes from the page. Undi and Pandoros stood in the stairway. Undi stomped forward, reaching out for the glass.

“That is fragile!”

Lifting it out from his reach, Theissen stepped back. “I’m reading a letter. Can’t I just used it for a moment?”

Undi looked down at the papers. His eyes started to go wide, immediately he gestured to Pandoros to come over. “Look at this! It’s Westhaven script.”

Nodding, Theissen set the glass back on the pages. They were magnified again, but it only showed the funny script larger rather than the translation. “Oh. Look at that. You ruined it. Now I have to do the spell again.”

Undi picked up one of the pages. “Where did you get this?”

Taking it from his hand, Theissen gathered the other ones also. “It flew in this afternoon with a letter from my mother. Now, can I use the glass? I read half of it already.”

“But how is someone writing you from Westhaven?” Pandoros said, pointing at the papers.

Sighing, Theissen set the glass down on the desk. “Alright. I didn’t tell you because you both have been a little testy whenever I mention other kinds of magic, but I found this book in the shop last year about magic from Westhaven. And since it wasn’t one in your library, I bought it and took it home.”

They stared at him. Theissen could smell a growing odor of animosity, though he didn’t know if it came because he mentioned the book or because he had acted behind their backs.

“So, you read this book?” Pandoros asked.

Theissen nodded.

“All if it.” He paused and sighed more admittedly. “Actually, I studied it. The thing is full of spells, herbalist magic and things about magisterial—”

“You bought a magister’s spell book?” Undi seemed to explode rushing over to him with clenched fists.

Backing up as he collected the pages, almost tucking his letter into his coat to hide it with how the man shouted, Theissen bumped into the desk. “Is that what it is?”

Pandoros’s looks were also going dark. He gestured to his coat pockets where Theissen was now really trying to hide the letter. “And you wrote to the magister?”

Theissen nodded again. “The day I bought it.”

“You contacted this person?” Undia