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

“Well then,” she said with a returning swagger. However, she did not stand as tall or as condescending towards Theissen as she had before. “The rooms are ten coppers for the night. The stable is twenty.”

“That’s robbery!” One of the molemen shouted. “The last inn only charged two coppers for a stall in the stables.”

“What can I say?” she added casually, strolling towards the opening of the inn. “That’s city costs for you. You can seek out another inn, but you won’t find any better prices. They’re all the same up and down the road toward the mercantile district and the wharf.”

Narrowing his eyes, Theissen glanced at the others before speaking. “I’ll pay you fifteen for the stables. Five for the room.”

She laughed, her old melodious tenor returning. “The price isn’t under negotiation.”

His group broke into grumbles. Already Theissen could hear Karo murmur that they ought to just pay her what she asked and go from there.

However, Theissen smirked and said with a narrow look at him, “All prices are under negotiation.”

“You can sleep in the streets,” she answered with her own sneer.

Grinning, Theissen bowed. “On your curb? It’d be my pleasure to keep any other customers from you then, until you agree. After all, I am not a magician, but a wizard, and I will do whatever it takes to protect my friends’ interests.”

Her sneer transformed into shock. “A wizard?”

He nodded, not removing his eyes from hers so that that she understood he was not lying. “Yes. But do not fear. I have no desire to lodge in your inn at all. I have other plans, and the day is still young.”

Theobold turned towards him, already looking concerned. “You—”

“Hold on!” The woman stomped down her steps towards Theissen. “You don’t think my inn is good enough for you?”

It was Theissen’s turn to look smug. He lifted his chin higher, standing much taller than her and everyone else on the street. “On the contrary. It is good enough for what we need for now. But I’m not looking for an inn. I’m looking for a home.”

“I’ll go with you,” Theobold said with a sharp nod.

Theissen turned with a face that spoke volumes, starting with volume one about now was not the time to interrupt. “I want you here with the carts, Theobold.”

The birdman opened his mouth to protest, but the other former birdmen drew him back, nodding and whispering that if Theissen was to go off they needed him there for protection.

“But who’s to protect me from her?” Theobold shouted at the others with an honest pout.

“So,” Theissen said to the woman, ignoring his friend’s tantrum. “Fifteen for the stable and five for the room.”

The woman had not yet gotten over what Theobold had just said. She also was still coping with the fact that Theissen was now turning her dress back to that dusty red color. His little reminder that he could use magic against her really did the trick.

She quivered and then nodded. “Ok.”

“Into the barn!” Theissen called out with his usual playful mood, waving out his arms to the others to hurry up. “You, Karo, pay the lady.”

“Why me?” Karo snapped, but he was already getting out his coin pouch.

“You picked the inn,” Theissen said. He walked over to help get the carts inside the stall. Secretly, he made all the ore and gems sink down into the stone as soon as the carts were parked. He told a pair of the molemen and instructed them to fill the carts with straw to keep the heaps inside them tall. The feathers he also had stuffed into the rock for safekeeping. During all this time, Karo counted out the fifteen coins for the stall and then the five for the room.

“You are all a bunch of nasty cheats bringing in a magic man like that,” the woman grumbled, clutching her coins like a miser.

Karo looked up at her, narrowing one eye. “Us? Cheats? You’re the one charging ten times a reasonable amount for a room. We hired him to help us settle in this city and set up business. I think it was the right thing to do.”

She gave him a good hard look. “You know, this city’s got three magicians of its own. Three masters of magic. What can one wizard do against them? The last wizard that lived here died, crumbled under his own house after hiding from them. The magicians will set this foul kid to right.”

Others turned hearing what Karo heard. Theobold was one of them. He flapped, rushing into the barn to inform Theissen immediately.

“Three magicians, huh?” Theissen scratched his chin for a moment before shrugging. “I suppose every large town had one of them. Liptan had two.”

“But she said they had dealt with a wizard. She said the wizard was hiding from them.” Theobold wrung his hands, glancing out the door with worry. “What if they hear about you and try to curse you?”

Scratching his chin harder, Theissen frowned. One magician that had hated him was bad enough. Three? That definitely would be worse.

However, Theissen’s mind went back to the letter he had gotten from Jonis when he was among the birdmen. If there could be any defense against cranky magicians, it was this useful pen pal. The magicians in Liptan Town didn’t seem to like the kind of magic Jonis practiced, and more than ever, Theissen decided that he needed to find a translation for his letters. This was another part of his plan he had yet to decide on. Once he had established a home, he needed to resume his magic studies. He needed to get in contact with Jonis.

As soon as Theissen was sure his caravan was safe in the inn, their cargo hidden and protected, and the owner calm enough not to go running for a constable as soon as his back was turned (that took Theobold to schmoose up a bit, but it worked), Theissen hurried back off towards the old city to find out where they might establish themselves for business. He also wanted to ask about the magicians and the old wizard.

He had heard of the wizard from the two magicians Pandoros and Undi on occasion when he was in Liptan Town, but all they ever said of him was that he was old. So far, that was the general consensus when he asked the locals about him.

“Wizard? Yes, old feller. Lived on the skirts towards the road to Serjiev City before he died. Go to the magicians. Their home is over yonder. See that dome over there. Their home is about a block down from that.

“Wizard? Sure, I heard of him. Died about two years ago. House crashed down on him. Some say the magicians did that.”

“Wizard? Yep. We had one once. The man just about blew his roof off. Made demons, you know. Even the magicians don’t know what to do with them.”

“Sure I heard of the wizard. He’d dead though. Why don’t you go see the magicians instead? They charge a lot, not as nice as the old man was, but their magic is legit and good.”

That was the other thing. The magicians. Everyone had accepted that the magicians had fully replaced the wizard. The magicians had also been well involved with what had happened to the wizard. Apparently most considered the magicians and the wizard beyond regular governance by the law. Not one person mentioned a trial or investigation into how the wizard died, even if many suspected the magicians had caused the wizard’s house to collapse.

Theissen walked down the road that connected to the highway leading towards Serjiev City. His hands were in his pockets. A small thought wandered through his brain wondering to how his oldest brother Dalance was doing in the capitol. The locals hardly noticed Theissen as he went along, though a few nodded and tipped their hats. He asked once or twice for directions to the wizard’s old house, but each person gave the same response: ‘Walk down the road. His home is ruined. You can’t miss it.’

For a lengthy while, he walked. Apparently it was a long, long way down the road. Already the sun was getting low in the sky, and turning back seemed wiser. Theissen knew it would be dark when he returned to the inn. But then he had said that he had no intention of staying there. So shrugging to himself, he kept walking.

But the locals were right. There was no way he could miss the ruins that had once been the wizard’s home. The first thing Theissen noticed was not the pile of rubble that left a huge hole between a pair of two-story homes. It wasn’t even the torn up cobbles that cracked all the way up the street for at least a block. No. It was the combined stinks of over a dozen demons in the area. It reeked throughout the road, concentrating right on the pile of rocks.

Walking up to the rubble, Theissen stared.

The home was not collapsed. It was flattened. The air around it had an odor of an old curse that still lingered. Reaching out to the threads of flow above the debris, Theissen tugged on it, unraveling the stink like he would an old sweater.

Almost immediately the road underneath him sealed, cracks closing. Peering over at the wreckage, he could see it was not as bad as he first thought. It looked more like the house merely caved in. The added curse seemed like something done on accident. Though, according to the Westhaven magic book, there was no such thing as accidental magic. Then again, the writer probably had not known many wizards.

Something whimpered among the stones that had once been a respectable home. Then he saw eyes, glowing out from the shadows in them. They peered out at him. It reeked of demon. But Theissen did not want to jump to conclusions.

“Are you lost?” Theissen asked it, walking nearer with care, hoping it wasn’t one of the carnivorous kind.  

A pair of wings lifted from the back of the creature in the shadow. They flapped, propelling whatever it was straight at Theissen. He raised up his arms to protect himself. But the demon pounced like a dog, knocking Theissen onto his back—and promptly licked Theissen’s face between a pair of long sharp fangs.

“Holy demons! What are you?” Theissen attempted to shove it of with a gentle wind, but that only made the thing want to lick him more. It took every effort to sit up. When he finally got the animal off his chest, Theissen scratched between this strange animal’s ears, peering at it.

Tan, narrow nosed lupine creature, with a long scaly tail and a smooth coat of fur, Theissen stared at its limpid-green reptilian eyes. The fanged thing could have been considered cute with how it panted with joy, yet it barked with the strangest rasp. It sounded like a cross between an eagle’s cry and hiccup. There was no malice in whatever it was.

At that moment, several other critters scampered from the rubble towards him. Reddish