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

brown fur with stripes and large bushy tails. Almost immediately Theissen recognized these purring bushy-tailed creatures. Kirrels. But he had never seen so many together at once. Fact was, he had only seen one before back in his village. All of the animals seemed lost. Or rather, as they rubbed up against him with familiarity, they were claiming him as their master. Several purred, crawling under his legs. Many were rubbing their heads against his hands for him to scratch them behind the ears. The fanged dog-like beast with wings did as well.

 Their master.

Theissen blinked as his mind fixed on that thought, then got onto his feet. He batted the dust and the animals off of him so he could move about. Then he peered around at the ruins again. Their master was the wizard. That was why they were drawn to him. And probably somewhere in the rubble, the wizard was buried…or rather crushed in the collapse.

Bending down, Theissen touched the ground and closed his eyes. Feeling into the piles of stone, rotten wood, broken glass, shattered ceramics, and bent pieces of metal, the ripples of flow connected to him and spoke to him.

Behind him, in audible voices, the passersby and locals in the area began to murmur. Their voices rose in wonder as they clustered together in gossip.

“What is he doing?” “Look at those demons. They like him.” “What is he?”

The rocks shifted in the direction Theissen urged them in. He moved most of the debris aside, lifting up also the fallen, rotting beams. He shifted over other particles of rubbish long since rendered useless. There, where he felt them, Theissen unearthed a crushed pile of bones still dressed in a woolen suit which was now rotten from time and weather. Most of the pieces of bone were still whole, but the body obviously long biodegraded to the point of dust.

Seeing them, Theissen walked over with a sigh to peer down at the end of this man. This was the only wizard he had ever heard something good about. Was this also how he would die? Crushed by his own magic? It certainly didn’t bode well.

“Oh my heavens!” A woman behind him gasped. “It’s him! How did you unearth him?”

Theissen inspected the ruin more, ignoring her. There was barely anything left of the building. Rain, exposure, and all that had destroyed most of the things in the rubble. No books would have survived. Wizarding knowledge would have died with the wizard. If there was anything to salvage, it was probably something made from metal, something he could buy in a shop anyway. A seeing glass would have been shattered in all that mess. In a desperate dream, Theissen had hoped the wizard would have had one on hand, but now it didn’t matter if he did. Finding a Hann tradesman really was his only option in getting that letter translated now.

Turning to the woman, a local he figured by the way she was dressed, Theissen asked, “Do you know what happened here? Did you see it?”

“Me? Did I see it?” She seemed to be reading his face, looking for some mysterious expression or answer. “No, I was at the market at the time.”

Frowning, Theissen scratched the fanged creature’s head again, mostly to stop it from growling at the woman. All the little demons from the wreckage swarmed around him protectively. But Theissen used an influencing touch to encourage trust with the fanged dog.

“But, do you know if the magicians did this?” he asked the woman, gesturing to the sunken home, also trying to calm the kirrels with a nudge. He hadn’t been able to influence that kirrel back home, but these ha to have been the wizard’s kirrels, so he hoped it would work.

The woman’s eyes widened at him with increased astonishment.  “The magicians? No. No, of course not. They may have driven him to move to the outskirts, but they did not make his house fall down.”

“It was like an explosion,” one man in the street said, nodding. A scruffy faced fellow, he wore a greasy apron over his shirt, with a leather jerkin to stave off the cold. He smelled faintly of clove oil and tannic fluid.

“I saw it,” a plump woman with generous proportions called out from across the street. She had been watching him from the start. Her face was kind, but behind her eyes Theissen could see wisdom and experience.  

Theissen nodded to her. “How did it happen?”

She shrugged her rounded shoulders. “No one knows, really. One day I was doing the wash and then, BOOM! Pretty much all my clothes needed washing again. Dust everywhere, and the house had flattened as if it were pressing itself into the ground.”

Flattened as if pressing itself into the ground? It was a poorly orchestrated spell. Theissen knew it now. The wizard was attempting something unnatural, and it backfired. That was plain enough. Poor man. Poor foolish man.

Sighing, Theissen walked from out of the rubble back onto the street. The demons followed him, whimpering.

“Why are they doing that?” A young boy pointed at them, retreating to the far side of the road. The fanged beast trotted alongside Theissen, staying with him like a loyal pet.

Glancing back at the poor beast, Theissen let out a sigh. He could not understand why a wizard would ever make a demon. The stink was fetid, like someone had taken a dump right on his shoe. Though, as Theissen gazed at the animal, he realized that not all wizards could smell what he could. There were, after all, different degrees of talent in the world.

Gazing into the face of the doggish demon, he took its fanged muzzle in his hands. “Do you want to be cured?”

He didn’t know how they understood, but all the kirrels scampered from the wreckage straight towards him, chittering with meows. More rubbed his legs, begging nearly.

It was a mercy, really. The old wizard was dead anyway. And demons ought not to have been made in the first place anyway.  

With a touch and a tug, Theissen pulled on the threads of energy he saw tangled in the kirrels, tending to them first. They were more insistent anyway. The winged, fanged dog waited obediently, panting eagerly for its turn. It was like peeling a banana skin in a way. The two parts separated, cats running one way, squirrels scampering off another. The squirrels hurried into what wild areas they could. The cats chorused in meows and jogged to the shade to stretch their legs and tails, feeling them again. But then all cat eyes turned to watch the wizard finish the job. There were so many after all.

The people on the street stared, wide-eyed. A hushed awe settled over the people until Theissen untangled every demonic mess. When he finally undid the knots to the strange flying, fanged dog, pulling out of that animal mix-up a long green snake about as thick as his arm and as long as he was tall, a brown eagle with a wingspan longer than his own arm-span, and a sharp looking wolfhound panting with joy, the crowd gasped.

The dog pounced on Theissen immediately, lapping the man’s face with his tongue. It took everything to shove the dog off.

“Goodness sakes! Enough!” But he was laughing.

 Rising, he wiped off the dog spittle and happily was able to discard it, though the dog still barked its thanks. Theissen also dusted off his hands, feeling the snake slowly wind around his ankle as if to beg him no to go. But the eagle flapped once and lighted off the ground, just to perch on his shoulder. Theissen winced when the talons met his skin. He glanced up at it, though at the same time the dog rubbed close to him with equal adoration.

“How did you do that?” A man murmured from the crowd.

Remembering he had an audience, Theissen turned with a shrug and tried to walk to the curb without stepping on the snake’s tail. He attempted to urge the eagle to leave his poor shoulder alone, though it hung on, nuzzling his cheek with its beak. “I’m a wizard.”

They all drew in breath.

“Have you come to meet our wizard?”

“Are you here for revenge?”

“You aren’t going to hurt us, are you?”

Feeling just as sick as he had looking at the mess of animals and the leftover bones of the old fool, he said to the gathering crowd with an insistent gesture for the eagle to find another perch, “I’m just looking for a place to stay. I came here for a bit of help and a few answers, but obviously this man won’t be able to help out.”

“You’re looking for a place to stay?” the plump woman who had witnessed the wizard’s demise repeated, tasting the question almost.  

He nodded briskly.

A genial grin spread between her cheeks. She gestured to the empty rubble. “Move here then. This spot belongs to the Wizard of Jattereen. Since he’s gone and you are here, the land can easily transfer over without any problems since you are a wizard.”

Theissen grimaced. “I am not going to register in this city as the Wizard of Jattereen. My profession is carpentry.”

The crowd stared even more.

“Carpentry?”

“You don’t see my tool belt?” Theissen asked. He lifted up his cloak to make sure they could see the leather and the tools.

Of course they only stared more, many bending over to get a better look.

“You’re a wizard carpenter?”

Cringing, Theissen rolled his eyes then glanced back at the devastated building. Maybe he could keep it. After all, it was basically free. It was clear no one else would feel comfortable living on land that a wizard used to inhabit. For that matter, no one here would care if he used magic to build it up. He could see they were not as scared of him as most others had been.

“How do I go about claiming this land? Is there a fee?” Theissen asked, turning towards the woman who seemed to know what was going on in the neighborhood.

With another smile, she said, glancing at the many cats that now perched on the rocks and the squirrels that peered out from the holes they had ducked into, “You need to go to the governing hill to the municipal office. There you register as a citizen for whatever station or profession you claim. And then you go to the land office to register for the property you own. If land is unclaimed and you register for it, it is rightfully yours.”

“The city doesn’t own it?” Theissen asked, his mouth opening since he could not quite believe his luck.

Several people chuckled, murmuring, “The city own land? What an extraordinary idea.” and “He must be a country boy.”

“No.” The woman passed him another kind smile. “The city doesn’t own land. The land is owned in part by lords and merchants who regulate their properties.”

“We rent from the lords,” one man said with an unmistakably disgruntled noise.

Theissen noted it with a nod. “I see.”

“But the wizard’s land was his. He bought it,” the woman said.

“And did he have a will?” Theissen asked, ducking his head away as the eagle finally launched off of his shoulder for a perch like Theissen had wanted.

The people shook their heads.

“Not unless he buried it with him in the house.”

Paper would have rotted into dust, Theissen figured.

“So, then, how does the land stand per the law?” Theissen peered back at the bones of the old wizard. “In Lumen, the land goes back to the possession of the magistrates if there are no successors. Then they sell it through auction.”

The woman looked amused. Leaning back with a playful grin, she said, “It sounds like your town is quite orderly. Why did you ever leave it?”

“Did you say Lumen? As in Lumen Village?” a bearded man asked. He rushed over to Theissen. The cracks in his hands were blackened with grease and dirt, his pores pronounced on his lined face. He smelled faintly of sulphur and oil. But also