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

Lifting a hand, Theissen waved. “Uh. Pardon me. But I just don’t like walking in rain. Can I go back now?”

“Aren’t you afraid of us?” the demon chief bellowed, his voice echoing against the cave walls.

Glancing back at the spear holding group, Theissen shrugged. “I don’t like getting stuck, if that’s what you mean.”

The demon chief broke out into a laugh. His laughter rolled like gravel down a hill, cracking and thumping from his stomach. The others started to join in. Someone slapped Theissen on the back. He could barely feel its claws poking into his shirt.

“You don’t think we’re going to eat you?” the chief asked with a chuckle.

“Are you?” Theissen looked up wonderingly at their teeth. They were more chisel like, beaver kind of teeth.

The demons laughed more. Their chief clutched his belly and snorted. “A first rate fool! He asks! He asks!”

“How many humans ask if they’re going to be eaten?” one said at his right.

Theissen recognized that voice as his annoying antagonist. That demon’s face was as pinched and mole-like as the chief’s only he didn’t wear any jewelry except one earring on his rather tiny looking ear.

“Do you know what we eat, human?” the chief asked Theissen, gesturing at a guard to make their prisoner straighten up a bit.

Forced to kneel upright, Theissen cast the spear holding demons a look before turning to answer their chief. “No, I don’t.”

With another laugh, a brief one, the chief said, “We eat dirt.”

Theissen blinked at him. “Dirt?”

The chief nodded, chuckling again.

“Does that taste good?” Theissen asked.

“No,” one of the demons replied. “It tastes awful.”

“Salty.”

“Acidic.”

“Bitter.”

There was general murmur from the crowd, all agreeing that it was terrible existence.

Theissen looked back to the chief, cringing somewhat. “Does this mean you are craving meat?”

The chief broke into laughter again. “No. No.”

“We can only eat dirt,” one demon said.

“Can’t eat anything else,” another chimed in.

“How come?” Theissen asked, blinking at them.

One of the demons broke into a laugh again. “Hear that chief? We’ve got a sympathetic listener here!”

The chief’s laugh rolled out again as he beckoned Theissen to sit rather than kneel. “Alright. You want to hear, huh? You don’t mind talking to demons?”

“I’ve never exactly done it before,” Theissen answered, getting into a more comfortable position by crossing his legs.

Many of them laughed, but Thiessen could tell that they all settled down and got comfortable. The chief leaned in with a smile that was not at all threatening.

He said, “I’m going to tell you our tale of woe. No other human has heard it, because no other human is as stupid as you to sleep in the woods unprotected. And if we let you go, if we like you, then we want you to tell the world the truth. We’ve been maligned, you see.”

“Maligned?” Theissen’s mind really was back on the phrase, ‘if we let you go’, but he didn’t dare repeat that.

The chief nodded. “Have you ever heard of the Birdmen?”

Theissen shook his head.

“Not a word? Even about their feathers?” the chief asked.

A faint recollection of feathers passed his mind. Demon feathers were valued as good writing quills and down for pillows, coats and beds. Of course, he never exactly knew where such feathers came from. All he knew was that they were excruciatingly expensive.

Theissen shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“Either he is a liar or he’s an idiot,” one of the demons said.

“He could be both,” another put in.

Looking sullen, Theissen bit his tongue. The chief smirked at him.

“Well, they are our sworn enemies. Flying birdmen. They are the ones that have maligned us.”

Theissen still had not heard of flying birdmen. They weren’t in Jonis’s magic book. He shrugged again. “The only demon birds I know about are those crow parasites.”

The chief cringed. “Yes, those are everywhere.”

“Not this forest,” Theissen said.

All the demons stared at him, looking surprised.

He glanced at them, nervously. “That’s why I felt safe to walk here.”

“You’re not from the western town?” one of the demons asked.

Theissen shook his head. “No. I’ve been traveling from the Pepersin Peninsula for the past three years. I’m a journeyman carpenter.”

They stared even more.

The chief gave out a laugh. “So, only an ignorant fool. That’s what you are.”

He didn’t like being called ignorant any more than stupid, but Theissen grimaced for their benefit.

“Alright then, I’ll tell you it all from the beginning,” the chief said. And he settled back into his throne for a comfortably long story.

“We were originally miners, mostly iron ore and coal, but we expanded to gold and jewels when our craft was at its peak. Our village was at the foot of the Jadoran Mountains, though sometimes we mined in the Dondit Mountains when the rains were in one area rather than the other. It was a good life, but with some, if not several, disadvantages. Mines collapsed at times and killed people, and at other times the mines produced little for profit

“The miner owners were often cruel and unfeeling, and our families sometimes went hungry, or so my grandfather tells me. We are many generations beyond the first miners of these mountains, and this story is as old as the hills themselves.”

Theissen glanced at the other demons, noticing that they had settled as if it were story time and the chief was their main storyteller. He sighed and got more comfortable too, glad they no longer made him kneel.

“After a while,” the chief said, “they decided to seek out a wizard to find a solution to their difficult work and lack of food.”

He said that with some bite, especially grating on the word wizard. Theissen could feel his hands go clammy.

“There was one that lived on the foot of the Jadoran Mountains. He did favors for the villagers for rather small fees. Most people brought him food for payment, and the man seemed the kind that might be persuaded to help them out.” The chief then drew in a grave sounding breath. “Little did they know what a mischief maker the wizard really was.”

Theissen now was sure they would mince him into little tiny pieces if they found out he was a wizard. His own inclination toward mischief made this story sound too familiar.

“When they asked him to make mining easier, to make digging easier even with our bare hands, to make it easier to see in the dark, the wizard first refused. He said it was a bad idea and told them to just go back to regular mining.” The chief sighed. “There are times I wish our forefathers had listened to that. However, they continued to beg him, even saying that they’d be willing to eat dirt if necessary, if that is what it took.

“My grandfather said that the wizard got this wicked glint in his eyes and he asked them, ‘Are you sure? Even if you have to eat dirt?’ Well, the miners agreed, begging him for the favor. So, at last, the wizard agreed, and beckoned them to bring in all those that wanted the change. Nearly the entire community, including wives and children went in to undergo the so-called amazing transformation that would enable them to save their livelihoods. But what it did was make it so they couldn’t stand the sunlight, they got all lumpy and inhuman like, and worse. Worse is that they not only could eat dirt, that was all they could eat.” The chief huffed and clenched his paddle-like hand into the best possible fist. It looked a little painful actually.

“When they went back to the wizard, demanding to have his prankish curse fixed, the man denied them, said he couldn’t anymore and then flapped off with wings that came out from under his robes. And the dratted wizard, with all his family and friends, flew off to live in luxury ever since.”

Theissen stared from his hunched position at the chief, squinting in the dim light. “He just flew off?”

The demons all around him nodded.

Leaning back, Theissen tried to figure out what had gone wrong. The wizard had wings. No human has wings. It was unnatural.

Opening his eyes wide, Theissen nodded to himself. “So that’s it. He couldn’t have fixed those men anyway. He was demon himself by then.”

The demons stared at him.

“What do you mean?” the chief asked.

Sitting up, Theissen answered with frank gravity. “A wizard cannot use his magic if he has turned himself into a demon. Once he is a demon, his wizard abilities are gone. In order to manage the flow, you have to be pure and even with the flow yourself.”

That really did explain a lot. The wizard in the carnival could not touch and manipulate the flow much. He could only see it. That is why he did not understand how much Theissen could use the flow to his advantage. He had never touched it himself. It was also why the smell of demonic knots made Theissen so nauseated. Such knots would be detrimental to his own health if he ever tangled up one in him. His own magic touch would cease.

“I knew it,” one of the mining demons said in a resonating voice with an inkling of triumph.

Theissen turned, wondering if what he knew was the same thing he had just figured out.

But a demon jabbed him with his spear. “He’s a wizard! No regular human would just walk about unprotected in a demon forest!”

Cringing, Theissen glanced up at the demon chief. That demon was nodding with knowing snort.

“I figured as much. Too brave for his own good.” The chief stood with a gesture to a side tunnel. Five of these mole-like demons hurried out with spears.

“Now, wait a minute!” Theissen held up his hands to show that he was unarmed. However, they could see his tool belt full of chisels, an awl, and sharp carving tools along with a sturdy claw hammer. “I’m just a carpenter.”

“Doesn’t matter if you are,” the chief said with another gesture. “Doesn’t matter at all if you are also a wizard, which is too obvious.”

“How’s it obvious?” Theissen stood up in a crouch, glancing about himself. “I’m dressed just like everybody else.”

Several mole men snickered.

“You have that smell,” one said.

“What smell?” Theissen even sniffed himself. The only thing he smelled was that he had not washed in a while.

“Quit teasing the idiot,” another demon said.

“We know what you are because no other human would talk to us like that unless he was a tradesman in jewels, and even they tremble in their boots as they lie to us.”

“Besides, you can walk in the dark without seeing!” another shouted.

Theissen felt sick. “Blind men can do that.”

“You ain’t blind.”

Groaning, Theissen reached out, trying to feel for some way out of the demons’ den. So far, above and below in tunnels were hundreds of them.

“Just admit it,” the chief said with a shrewd grin.

“And what?” Theissen turned to look at him as he tossed up his hands. “And get skewered?”

The chief walked straight to him from his throne, standing not even as tall as Theissen’s chin. It looked up at him and poked him the belly with his sharp fingertip. “Come on, wizard. You can do stuff for us.”

Theissen looked around the luminescent space. “Like