Wizard of Jatte, Rowan Erlking [latest novels to read .TXT] 📗

of connection that suits them.

Theissen could feel his hands tingle. He was the kind that could see, smell, and taste magic. What did that make him? He read more.

Wizards are not all powerful. They can lose their ability, which will be discussed in a later scroll.

Theissen stared at those last words. He can lose his ability? How?

For a brief moment, Theissen wondered how great it would be if he didn’t have magic. It was only a moment though. Already he knew that living without magic was very difficult, and regardless of how lonely it made him, he knew he could not just give it up. Glumly, he read the last piece of the excerpt on wizards.

 Wizards tend not create demons, since they can see the impact of such creations as stifling to the magic flow in this world. Wizards’ largest failing is pride, and second, laziness. They tend to take their gifts for granted when their life gets easy from using magic.

Nodding, Theissen closed the book. This man did know about magic. Chillingly so. And despite his wordiness, he didn’t seem to leave anything out if he could help it. Whoever the author was, whatever magic craft he practiced, if any, Theissen decided it was best to find out more from him. So far, he seemed to be the only one who had an inkling of what it was like to be a wizard, and Theissen was getting tired of being only used for experimental amusement by the magicians. Eventually he’d read up their entire library of books and they would have nothing left to teach him. And then what? Would they suddenly turn on him like the magician of his hometown? Theissen did not want to find out.

Whipping out another paper, Theissen began to write:

 

Dear Sir or Madame,

I found a translated copy of your Jonis Scrolls in a bookshop in Liptan Town of Jatte, and I have started to read it. Forgive me for not finishing it before sending you this letter, but you seem more knowledgeable about magic than most people I have met. I am a wizard. I see, hear, smell, taste, and feel magic all around me. Always have. Though I have a loving family and I was raised in the respectable trade of carpentry, I have found myself the target of prejudice and skepticism since as early as I could remember. I’m seeking correspondence with anyone who can level with me. What really is so frightening about being a wizard?

Oh, and another thing, I’d like to already add a correction, or rather a small change to your introduction. In your third magic law you merely said that the flow stifles and makes demons. You never say how. I’ll tell you. The flow knots up. It gets tangled. Demons are smelly, rotten pockets of nature, messed up by meddling with the natural order of things. Just for your information and all that.

Please write. I don’t care how long it takes. Copy my address or send it to my home village of Lumen in the Pepersin Peninsula and I’ll pick it up with my usual letters.

Yours, and hopefully a friend,

Theissen Darol Mukumar Carpenterson

 

He held it in his hands for a moment, hoping hard he could send it right. All he had was a continent for a location and address he couldn’t read. With a touch, Theissen copied the address perfectly onto the back of the letter, adding a Jatte stamp just in case it had trouble when it got into the country. He had learned a simple sending spell from the magicians that ought to do it. Sealing it with wax and waterproofing it like the last letter, Theissen held then it up in the wind of the open window.

“Out from the North. Right from the East. Down from the South. In from the West. Go to Westhaven as written in the outside address, my letter.”

Letting it go, he snapped his fingers. Almost immediately the letter stiffened. He then said, “There.”

It snatched out onto the flurrying wind, not graceful or floating like his letter to Milrina, but direct as if shot it out like an arrow. He could not even see the direction it had gone.

“What are you doing?” Tomis had stuck his head through the door. “It’s cold in here.”

Theissen cast him a tired look. The other problem with his apprentices getting used to him was that they had also gotten too casual when they talked to him. “What is it?”

Making a face, Tomis said, “The master wants a word with you. Says you need to quit mooning over that hatter’s daughter.”

Before Theissen could throw something at him, Tomis had skipped off, snickering. And he had first thought Boid was bad.

But Theissen went back down the stairs to the shop. There he saw Lordri talking to a wealthy looking couple, already bowing and scraping. Of course, Theissen was there to negotiate price. They weren’t looking for simple furniture. They had a project for him. He could tell from the expectant look in the woman’s eyes, already eyeing their prize pieces in the front shop.

With a dignified bow, Theissen raised his eyes in a smile. “How can I help you?”

Chapter Twenty-Two: What Did You Think Learning Carpentry Would Be? Magic?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If anyone had said Theissen had been mooning over the hatter’s daughter, they were proven quite mistaken. He danced with her friend at the winter festival and hadn’t even batted and eye at her the entire night. The gossip was the hatter’s daughter was so jealous she pitched a fit on the way home and flung herself into the arms of one of Munden’s apprentices to get even. Unfortunately for the watching crowd, Theissen did not seem the slightest bit miffed, flirting with three other girls by making flowers bloom mid winter.

He was the most eligible bachelor by spring when the ladies primped up for spring holidays. Famous now for his skilled carving and his hand made wood flowers, he was the catch of the town. Strangely, though, he stopped looking among the ladies. Those days he just shrugged off their giggles and flirtatious chatter with a greater devotion to work, both in wood and in magic. And what was worse was that with the following year he had busied himself a great deal in making some of the most famous pieces of woodwork Liptan Town had ever seen, not paying any attention to the ladies at all except to tip his hat at them as he walked by. Somehow he had prevailed upon his master to let him continued with decorative wood carving despite Lordri’s inclination towards utilitarian craftsmanship. Some said Lordri allowed it because it brought the big spenders into his shop. That and Theissen was very persistent.

All throughout summer Theissen worked hard, sending letters home weekly if not sometimes oftener corresponding with Milrina about pretty much everything going on in their lives. His work and those letters seemed to be all he ever cared about. When fall came, Lordri Carpenter’s business had tripled. Because of that, they took on more new apprentices. Of course that kept Theissen even busier training the young boys, but by that time Tomis and Boid were capable enough to take over most of the training themselves.

“Hey! Did I see you drop that tool on the ground?” Boid shouted at the thirteen-year-old boy, one the same age as him. “Pick it up!”

The new apprentice looked likely to challenge Boid, but with one glance at Theissen who was off in his corner carving a top to a vanity the boy just grumbled under his breath and picked it up.

“No good carpentry can be done if you disrespect the tools.” Boid continued to snap. But really he was just doing it for show. He liked how Theissen entrusted him with the job, and he wanted to do good work.

Tomis was working with another boy with his planing. “Come on. Smooth. Like this.”

“But this takes too long!” the new apprentice said.

The three older ones in between the first two and the new four were smirking, working on their own projects. It seemed ages ago when they had joined, now working well just as Boid and Tomis had done after Theissen took over the back shop.

“What did you think learning carpentry would be? Magic?” Tomis said.

Some of the boys glanced up at Theissen.

“There is no magic here,” Tomis said, peeking also at Theissen with a smirk. “It is nothing but practice and hard work. Now come on, or the journeyman of Lumen will put the wood back on and make you do it over.”

None of the apprentices liked that. It saved on wood, but it was humiliating watching Theissen repair the wood with ease and nod with his watching eyes that said, ‘not good enough. Do better.’

The new apprentice went slower, following Tomis more carefully.

“Ah, don’t worry too much about the boring stuff,” one of the older apprentices, a boy named Sims, said. “After the shop’s cleaned up, the wizard will show us how to really work with wood.”

Theissen smirked. That was the only time the phrase ‘the wizard’ didn’t sound like an epithet. His apprentices, once they got used to him, seemed to take pride that they were learning from a man with magical hands. They often called him that outside the shop—the man with magical hands. But then they also bragged about their own hands becoming magical too. Of course with all their hobby woodcarving, it was nearly true. Their hand-carved toys were just as famous as the furniture they produced.

But as the days continued on from fall to winter with the winds blowing hard, Theissen started to wonder what he was doing in Liptan Town. Despite being the most eligible bachelor in town, none of the girls appealed to him like Lilissa had, and she was now far from his thoughts, married to an out-of-towner from Himmerzon over the mountains. His letters to Milrina were not what people suspected though. It was just one friend talking to another. Though he had a financial future in Liptan, the rest of it seemed rather dull.

He had at last read all the books the magicians owned, and it seemed more like he hung out with them as part of a men’s club rather than for learning magic. They still did their experiments, and Theissen learned spells and spell construction actively from them, but really, most of his magic knowledge came from somewhere else.

Theissen had devoured every word of the Translations of Westhaven Magic book. It was divided in three parts: the magic scroll, the demon scroll, and the spell scroll. The magic scroll was the shortest part. It focused on defining everything from what magic was, to the law of magic, to who could use magic and how. It also made plain how spells really worked, something the magicians had failed to explain in any precise terms.

Basically all a spell did was call upon the four quarters of the earth to gather and motivate the flow of life around the spell caster with a command. That was what made spells more direct than his kind of magic. His magic was more like coaxing, asking the flow of the world to work. It explained the booming noises spells made. They