Wizard of Jatte - Rowan Erlking (year 2 reading books txt) 📗

made much sense. In fact, thinking about wooden things—tables and furniture in general made the muddle untangle a large piece from his mind. He was a carpenter.

Theissen nodded. “I see.”

“You were ill,” the stern man turned and said after paying Trista. The woman snorted as she walked out the door, giving Theissen a wink while blowing a kiss despite his rejection. “She came to make you well.”

“Then why was I missing my clothes?” Theissen tugged the robe around himself more.

Crossing over to him, the stern man said. “You were overheated. She cooled you off.”

Glancing at his body, Theissen could only feel cold. In fact, the flow showed that he had been cold for a while. He frowned. The odor in the room was unpleasant. It smelled of animosity.

“I will take you to your room,” the stern man then said. “Get up.”

Theissen looked up. He then obeyed, standing taller than this man. He was still feeling extremely dizzy.

“Follow me,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Theissen did not budge.

Turning, the man said, “You will call me and the other gentlemen Master. Understood?”

Frowning, Theissen lowered his head. “Not entirely.”

“Are you talking back to your masters?” the stern man bit back. The reek of animosity increased.

Pulling back, Theissen shook his head. “No, I—”

“From now on, you will only speak when you are spoken to,” the man said.

Theissen cringed. He wasn’t sure he had liked working for these men.

“Now follow me.”

He did. He had no choice, really.

They led him down into the depths of the building, taking him to a room. The room was a dark hall full of dross, which, they said, was work he had yet to finish. The stern man made Theissen shovel the dross into bins, setting a taskmaster on him for several hours. When the taskmaster was to go home, they locked Theissen in the room, dumping in some bread, an old raw potato, and a cup of water on a barrel he could use as a table.

Sitting down on the heaps of dross he had yet to shovel, he peered at the lamplight, thinking. As Theissen munched silently, his eyes glancing at where his hands had rubbed, starting blisters. These were in different places than the calluses on his palms.

“They’re a bunch of liars. I don’t know who I am, but I certainly don’t belong here.”

Theissen stood up, but then dropped down again. Exhausted, he leaned up against the wall.

“It must be really late.” He exhaled. “I think, it was late when I woke up in that room.”

The lamp oil continued to burn, flickering light against the walls and the dross piles. Naturally feeling into the flow of the dross, Theissen shifted the piles with a mere touch. Moving it all was second nature. He didn’t even realize that it was unusual until after he was done.

“A wizard, huh?” He closed his eyes, muttering to himself, “Where am I?”

*

“He’s not in there!” The taskmaster that had made Theissen work the night before cowered under the stern man’s eye.

“Did you leave the door unlocked?” the stern man snapped.

Shaking his head, the taskmaster cowered lower. “I didn’t. I swear it!”

“He’s a wizard. Somehow he must have magicked himself out,” the middle aged man said to him.

Theissen observed it all from around the corner. He had actually opened the wall up and walked through it the moment he awoke, which was about the time he heard people coming into the building, chatting about the day before with hushed voices though he could hear them clearly. All of them mentioned the Wizard of Jatte.

The stern man frowned. “Send some guards outside.”

“We can’t. They’re watching,” the middle-aged man said with a growl.

“If they’re still watching, then he couldn’t have possibly gotten out,” the stern man hissed through his teeth.

“Not the dirt demons. The police. They’ve been out there since last night when the statue started to bleed.”

“She said she’d fix that!”

“Well, she didn’t any more than that man coming here made out of stone.”

“He undid that curse. You heard her say—”

“Ruban! Come quick! They found the robe in the changing room!”

The stern man ran over to the man in blue uniform. Theissen crept back, now walking along the wall towards the stairs. He knew they had come down from the room he had been in, so he assumed he had to go up to get out. His head still felt dizzy. It was hard to think. But he could now grasp hold of some pieces of the flow without any trouble. Somehow, though, it felt wrong that he could not grab onto all of it readily.

Hurrying up the stairs, Theissen backtracked the way the stern man, Ruban, had led him down. As he walked up, Theissen found part of the fog in his memories clear. He remembered Ruban now. He also remembered his distasted for Ruban’s contempt and superior attitude. There was no way he had been that man’s servant.

A woman shrieked, dropping a tea tray. Theissen turned, blinking at another familiar face. The woman backed away then ran. “He’s up here!”

His heart jumped in his chest. Theissen rushed up the rest of the way, dashing to the first room he had found himself in, and grabbed the knob to the door. It was locked. Feeling into the metal, he turned the mechanism and opened the door. Rushing inside, he ran to the broad window, peering out as he felt the window for a catch.

He stopped searching. Looking down through the glass he could see an open area below with a roundabout and a statue in the center. There were also several carriages down below. Some were marked with royal blue banners. Several men accompanied them outside, a cluster climbing over the fence to the statue with a ladder.

“There he is!” a guard with a spear ran into the room. Ruban tromped in after.

Theissen whipped around just as the stern man backhanded him hard. The wizard toppled over against the chair, trying to hold himself up. On the back, he recognized a carved insignia. He then looked up.

“Dalance. My brother sold—”

Ruban kicked him in the gut then kicked Theissen again.

Trying to pull himself together, his fuzzy thoughts still inhibiting his grasp on the world around him, a grasp that had always been in his reach before, Theissen called up a wind. Doilies and the lace on Ruban’s cuffs flapped, but the man’s gloved-fist struck Theissen in the jaw, sailing him into the wall with a hard thud.

Lifting Theissen off the ground by the front of his shirt, Ruban rammed him against the wall, seething through his teeth. “You just couldn’t let everything alone! Could you? You just had to stick your nose into our business!”

Ruban thrust another fist into Theissen’s gut.

Inside, Theissen could feel his ribs crack. He shuddered, reaching out to anything that could help him. Immediately he started to sink into the floor.

“Oh no! You’re not getting away after all that!” Ruban heaved him back up through the ground, shoving Theissen firm into the chair. “You’re staying until I kill you!”

“That’s wrong,” Theissen gasped out. Blood choked up from his stomach.

Raising his fist, Ruban clenched his teeth for the final blow.

It didn’t come though. The floor acted as liquid on Theissen’s command, and swallowed Ruban up.

Ruban’s voice echoed down below as he fell.

“Ruban!” The middle-aged man ran into the room. He stared at the floor before Theissen.

The wizard panted, unable to move as his whole body hurt.

Turning to the guard, the middle-aged man ordered, “Kill him.”

The guard nodded and rushed into the room. Two others followed. Then three more people ran in after, screaming loud.

“Theissen!” “No!” “Stop them!”

It was a blur in front of his eyes. Theissen’s own mind muddling again, but for different reasons. His energy exhausted itself just from trying to sit up and breathe. Inside, he was going cold. Even the new sharp pain his chest was like a dream. The images that moved in front of his eyes, the tall muscular man from Westhaven throwing off the three guards as if they were children, Milrina sobbing against the arm of the chair, half her face bruised, her lip split. Tippany pulling on the spear that stuck out from…he looked down. It was in his chest.

Tippany’s cries were painful. Tears ran down her beautiful face. Blood splattered onto the cloak she was wearing—though it was his own traveling cloak that he was sure he had left at the tower.

“Don’t die! Don’t die! You’re a wizard!” Tippany shouted.

Theissen reaching a weak hand to her face, he smiled. As he did, the net of magic around him broke apart and the old fog over his mind lifted. He could see the flow again as it ran through her genuine tears, wept in love for him.

“I have no intention of dying.”

Forntbas the Jeweler stared in horror as he watched the Wizard of Jatte reach up and pull the spear out from his own chest. Theissen sat up. The blood on his clothes seeped back into the wound. The bloody hole, the bruises on his face, his broken jaw, all of them fitted back to where they had been originally, healing and sealing up. All that remained was the furious, tall wizard whose hair whipped about as a gale stirred in their enclosed room.

Theissen dropped the spear. He reached out to Tippany who stared up at him. “I’m leaving.”

He then walked straight to the Jeweler.

That same moment, Forntbas’s guards ran up the stairs in chase after Emrit. All of them halted, watching Theissen raise a hand and point at the jeweler.

“If you ever try anything like that again,” Theissen said. “I’ll sink this entire place into the ground. Emrit, Milrina, Tippany, we’re leaving.”

Tippany nodded. She rushed to the hand extended to her and pulled him towards the stairs. Emrit beckoned to Milrina who ran straight to his side. All four of them passed by the guards and the master of the jewelry guild unharmed.

They marched down the stairs, looking only once when they passed Ruban who was on the floor below, clutched his broken legs, moaning. Two guards were helping the man.

“You there!” One of the guards shouted after them.

Halting, Theissen turned with a dark look.

They pulled back.

Going further down, the four friends passed everyone who would have stopped them earlier. Together they went all the way to the main floor and through the front guard station. They walked out, unhindered. On the open steps, Theissen drew in a breath, peeking back before going down the marble stairs to the roundabout.

“Stop where you are,” a constable ordered from below, drawing his sword and pointing it at them.

Emrit growled, stepping immediately between Theissen and the police.

Anticipating trouble, Theissen rested a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. “It’s okay. Let’s hear what the constable wants.”

He then turned to face him.

But the constable’s eyes dropped to the bloodstains on the work suit Theissen was wearing. He blinked at the hole in the suit front, mostly taking in the bare skin where a faint light patch showed a new scar. “You…you are under arrest.”

“For what?” Theissen asked him with a tired gaze, descending the rest of the way to bottom.

Raising his sword higher, the constable beckoned to the others to come forward. “For the murder of Kontis Jeweler.”

Theissen blinked at him then glanced at the roundabout. “You mean that statue guy?”

Several constables were heaving the statue over the pikes. Blood ran down their arms as they hefted it.

Theissen cringed.

Most of the jewels that had encrusted the statue were gone. There were only a few left, and they were in the clothes the dead man was wearing and the red stone in his hands.

“The same curse,” Tippany murmured.

Theissen nodded. “It looks like he was cured when I undid the curse on the heart.”

“You no want him.” Emrit shoved up toward the constable. “You want men in building.”

“That may be.” Another constable strode up to the foursome. He looked like the chief yet no one that they knew personally, which was a relief. “But you seem