The Last Wizard

by Jane M. R.

  His New English is getting better. “Her family was murdered because they were on your side.”

  His body stiffens. “Which family?”

  “Isendell.”

  He does not move for a good moment. He clears his throat. “I art nary worth that,” he says quietly to himself which I have the unfortunate chance to overhear.

  He’s not moving. I know what’s going on. This I can fix. I step closer to compel him with touch that he has shown so far is one of the few things that can bust whatever grip reality has on him. But my hand is still reaching forward when he jolts and steps away.

  He doesn’t need to explain why. The knowledge is already wedding-ring-finger deep in my chest of hurt. I call instead for Joseara.

  A light tromping through the forest growth approaches. Joseara stops and stares at Zadicayn, who watches back with narrowed eyes beneath his hood.

  “He is real,” she breathes, looking like she wants to reach forward and touch him to make sure. “But you are nothing like what Brine described you.”

  “Ye art correct. Brine hath described meself as a monkey.”

  “I did n–!”

  “He even speaks like he’s from the Middle Ages!” Joseara gushes. For a brief, misplaced second I’m jealous that another girl would make eyes at the man who’s not going to court me and who I’m not going to marry. This emotion makes no sense.

  “Ye maketh me sound like I wast born over three hundred yore.”

  “Oh! Terribly sorry. That’s just what Brine said.”

  “Joseara, he was born over three hundred years ago.”

  Joseara looks back at Zadicayn and then me. “Oh!” She laughs. It’s got to be the first time I’ve seen her do so.

  I stand next to Zadicayn. “We’ll have to talk on the way. I had to sneak out of my house and if anyone finds out that I did… my future is basically ruined.”

  “I see. Well, I thank thee for thy sacrifice. Ye mayest lead the way.”

  I do, though Zadicayn walks beside me and Joseara on his other side, peppering him with all sorts of questions which I’m certain he only entertains to be polite. It’s a good thing Joseara isn’t the one who freed him. Zadicayn might have crawled back into the vault to flee her deluge of curiousness.

  Zadicayn’s strides are longer than mine, so I either have to jog to keep up or look ridiculous trying to match the stretch.

  Joseara manages to occupy the whole three miles into town through the dark with all her questions to Zadicayn. We stick to the trees. The graveyard is behind the chapel, so we’ll eventually have to abandon the trees in favor of dark alleyways and building niches in case the parish constable rides by.

  Joseara quiets as we come into the shadow of the first buildings. From here, she leads the way.

  I count two constables as we meander among the buildings. I’m the only one worried about getting caught because of my stupid yellow dress. I should have just gone all the way and brought a bon fire with me. That way when the constables find the Silverman’s daughter skulking around the dark parts of town after curfew and not tied, I can burn myself to ash, which would be less painful than the ostracization from society and the disapproving look from my father.

  Joseara stops, her left shoulder pressed up against the brick of the building, staring out to the graveyard behind the chapel. On instinct I want to hold my breath.

  We wait for several minutes, counting our heart beats, and then Joseara says, “I don’t see anyone on graveyard watch from this angle. And I don’t hear anything either so I believe we are in the clear.” She raises her arm for us to follow, which we do as a mad dash across the road to the spiked fence surrounding the graveyard. She hauls her agile body over as deftly as she scaled the wall to my house. Zadicayn looks at my dress.

  “I’ll wait here.”

  “Bloody hell you will!” hisses Joseara through the fence. “Zee, hoist her up and I’ll help her down on this side.”

  “No! I am wearing a dress.”

  “Yes. And it is yellow and will be spotted as soon as the constable rides by.”

  “I’ll go back to the tree line.”

  “Just climb over the bloody fence. Zee?”

  Zadicayn rests his crossbow against the fence, ripping away some ivy to drape over it for some concealment.

  “No!” I back away.

  “Brine,” Zadicayn spreads his hands, “I promise nary to look.”

  A dog barks nearby, alerting a second and a third dog to respond and I finally step close enough to where he can put his hands on my waist.

  “Don’t look,” I remind.

  “I shan’t.”

  He jumps me up until I can grab the top of the fence. His hands reposition to the bottom of my boots so I can use them as a step. He’s gotten stronger since he left the vault. I hook my toe into the fence and maneuver over to the other side. Joseara and I make an awkward tumble of arms, legs, and yellow dress to lower me safely to the ground.

  Zadicayn jumps and latches on, climbing up with more grace than I did. Once at the top, he drops down to the ground, his long coat fluttering. I hear the clop of horse hooves on cobble. Zadicayn grabs me before I can take my next breath and unceremoniously dumps me on the ground beside a long stone coffin cover before laying on top of me.

  I must have made my complaints audible because he whispers in my ear, “Thy dress.”

  I quiet, conceding to myself in silence not to like this arraignment. The sound of horse hooves on the street become louder and stop. I can feel Zadicayn’s chest rise and fall against my back, crickets chirping to fill in the silence There’s too much at risk here. Why did I agree to this? One slip up and I could become the next Valemorren whore for being caught outside a tied dress and after curfew.

  He wants to see is mother’s grave.

  And that is reason enough.

  It’s not until the hooves move onward and fade down the street that Zadicayn stands. The night air catches up to me and I shiver.

  He helps me stand, and then backs away while looking at me critically. Undoing the buttons on his blue coat, he slips it off. “Put this on.” He’s wearing a long sleeved blue cotton shirt beneath. I put on his coat. The cuffs on the sleeves nearly swallow my fingers and the raised collar at the back of my head is screwing up my hair which now shifts forward to bother my face. It’s practically a dress on me. I try to ignore his scent he left inside the warm fabric.

  He begins weaving among the weeping angels, weathered crosses, cages hulking over individual burial spots, and I follow, making a point to go far out of the way to avoid meeting Durain’s headstone.

  I don’t know where Joseara has wondered off too. I hope she’s keeping watch. Zadicayn stops abruptly. It’s not until he kneels that I walk faster to join him. There are three headstones side by side: Makrick, Havannah, and Elshina all with varying birth and death years but all bearing the last name of Eldenshod.

  I hear the breath hitch in his chest. I’m going to give him a moment to himself. I turn.

  “Stay with me.”

  I kneel beside him, staring at the harshly weathered headstones. I don’t have a lot of practice in comforting people in their sadness. When I’m sad I just want to be left alone.

  Zadicayn repositions to sit instead, resting his elbows on his bent knees. Seeing now we are going to be here for a little while, I follow suit.

  “My father.” He points to Makrick. His voice is especially pinched. “He wast also a wizard. His amulet the church shattered tis laying center of his chest beneath us.” He takes three, full breaths. “There art two types of magic users: wizards and Black Magicians. Dost ye wit the difference?”

  “Wit?”

  “Wit… to know?”

  “Do I know the difference? No. All I know about wizards is what the bible has said about them, saying they are evil.”

  He’s silent for a moment. A hundred bodies in this graveyard and only three are breathing. At least, I hope there are only three. There have be
en cases in London where people have been buried alive. I pray to God I don’t hear anyone screaming beneath the dirt. I won’t be able to help them. Because then I will be caught after curfew and not tied into a dress.

  “Have ye heard of the ninety-five Theses by Martin Luther?”

  “Yes.” Though, I’m not sure why I’m surprised that he does. Martin Luther was right around Zadicayn’s vault imprisonment if I do my math right.

  “Hast ye read them?”

  I shake my head, not really listening. Really, I’m just enjoying sitting this close to someone I can call a friend again. I didn’t realize how much my soul had shrunk since Durain’s death. It doesn’t even matter that we are sitting on his family’s graves.

  “Wizards hath been around for centuries. Fae art the holders of magic. We communicate with the Fae to borrow this magic. The Fae also regulate it. If they think we art abusing the magic in anyway, they shan’t grant us the magic. Then there art Black Magicians. These art people who learnt to speak with the Devil’s demons and the demons perform magic tricks upon the Black Magician’s biddings. The demons oft doeth terrible harm to people and there tis no regulation to halt them. Sometimes these demons infect the body of the Black Magician.”

  I cringe at that image, holding his blue coat tighter around me.

  “Wizards came first. Then others wanted to wit how to work with magic so they spakest with the Devil and the Devil granted magic to them. Throughout the years they hath been called many things: sorcerers, necromancers, and the title wizard hath also, unfortunately, been lumped in with them. Wizards nary hath problems with the rest of the populace until Black Magicians tried to mimic us. When that happened, people started getting us confused and word spread that Black Magicians wert of the Devil – which tis true – but they started to believe we wert, also.”

  He takes a breath, and I do too, the chill night whispering against my face. Already two hours into the night and we haven’t started looking for the amulet. But Zadicayn needs this. I hope it helps him heal from whatever vault his mind is still locked in.

  “But those who wist the difference tolerated us and continued to lean on us to help them with various tasks, like assist in building the Tower of Babel and the Trojan Horse. But Black Magicians couldst nary doth the same tasks as wizards. They believeth all our magic came out of our amulets. So they started killing us and stealing them. But I hath already told thee this.”

  “When the wizard dies, the amulet dies,” I recite.

  “So this twas causing hate and discontent, and it mightev hath been why Martin Luther wrote his ninety-five Theses or maybe twas just bad timing, but on October thirty first, fifteen seventeen, Martin Luther posted his ninety-five Theses on the door to the Wittenburg Castle church in Germany. This moment sparked a religious Reformation throughout Europe. Twas Theses number ninety-four that spelled doom for both wizards and Black Magicians. Ninety-four says, Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell. So people, wanting to diligently follow Christ, started reading the Bible with clearer focus. And since the Bible states that all wizards and the such art evil, the church maketh a decision on the matter. They believed it twas our magic that twas causing people to murder us, so to ‘purge’ us from this evil magic, they started breaking our amulets. But of course –”

  “When the amulet dies, so does the wizard.”

  “Yea. So dost the wizard.”

  The wind always moans when it spins around the stone crosses and weeping angels. I don’t know why. Zadicayn points at the stone cross of his father’s headstone. The date of his death is almost a full year after the ninety-five Theses was posted.

  “And if all the wizards art dead, the Faewraith cometh and devour humanity. After the church broke me father’s amulet, they lay his body in the crypts beneath the chapel for two days so if any evil remains upon him, it wouldst continue to be expelled. After the two days they buried him here and set a cross on his head so if there be any evil magic still lingering upon him, it wouldst stay there.” I see him roll his eyes at the obvious ridiculousness of it, but I have no comment. There are a lot of superstitious things we believe in that I know are superstitious but I take marks to avoid them anyway because, well, you never know.

  “Then why go through the trouble to keep your amulet if they can just become Black Magicians?”

  “The Devil’s magic tis nary stable. Dangerous to the user. But most people just dost nary want to make deals with the Devil.”

  I’m looking at his sister’s grave. Elshina lived to be forty-five, with a nice inscription about being a much loved mother and grandmother. Zadicayn’s mother lived to be fifty-two.

  Something on his mother’s stone makes me turn my head to look at it better. I suck in my breath when I see Zadicayn’s name carved amid the Latin words.

  “Zadicayn…” I point.

  He leans in closer to me. “I saw it. Omnia tandem vale, Zadicayn. It means, all shall be well in the end. My mother left that for me.” He sits back straight again. “My mother hath this saying she made almost scripture in our castle. All shall be well in the end. She hath this fantasy that, no matter how bad anything got, t’would all still end well. She clung hard to this saying after my father…” He clears his throat. “I wast nary there when my father died. My mother telleth vague details but I understand to some extent the church held him bound whilst they drove a pike through his amulet to see if the devil wouldst fly out of him. My father died instead. Instantly. Tis how we art such connected to our amulets. So when I remindeth my mother that father’s life didst nary end well, she said, ‘death tis nary the end.’ Essentially she wast being selfishly optimistic and telleth me that heaven wast guaranteed to be that happy place even if all of mortality turns out to be one giant soiled codpiece.”

  “A what?”

  He shakes his head. “Forgive me. Anyway, those wert the last words she sayest to me when they took her away so they couldst throw me in the vault. And she hast the gall to carve it on her headstone.” He growls in the back of his throat, but I think he missed something vital.

  “Zadicayn… she had it carved on her headstone for you to read it. If she didn’t think you would ever get out of the vault, why would she carve it here specific with your name on it?” He stops making noises and leans his head back, exposing a large adam’s apple. I drive on. “So, I think maybe she is right. All will be well in the end. Your imprisonment ended.”

  “But what about on the morrow? Next week? Next year?”

  I can’t disagree. How will my own life end well with Jaicom as my husband? Will he finally become attracted to me? What about Joseara? How can her life possibly end well?

  “I don’t know. Maybe we just have to choose at what point we are going to decide to be happy despite it all.”

  He leans back on his elbows. I’m still cold despite his coat, but he’s not even shivering in his thin blue shirt. Then I remember he slept in a cold stone crypt for a long time. He’s probably too warm right now.

  He looks at me, gold eyes shining. “Thank ye for sitting with me. I art still broken inside, but this helps. It helps much.”

  “Of course. I am glad you find me a comfort.”

  He slides a smile at me and worms tangle in my stomach. “Why do your eyes turn gold sometimes?”

  “Tis the surest mark of a wizard. Tis the way the Fae mark us to keep us certainly different from other Mimics.”

  “So… you can change back and forth at will?”

  He seems to contemplate. Then he nods. “Yea. Sometimes I forgeteth to hold it and it slips through. Like in moments of great emotion.”

  Great emotion. Which reminds me of all those times in his castle when I saw his gold eyes and trying to remember what triggered them. What a sensitive secret to share, exposing your feelings outwardly for others to criticize. I will hold this secret dearly for him.

  I really like sitting here like this, relaxing with a kindre
d spirit, talking about whatever comes to mind. It takes me a second to remember why I crawled out of my window in the first place tonight. “We should probably get going. I wish I could have three days to help you look but I don’t even have all night.”

  “It tis close.”

  I’m tempted to ask him how he knows. But then, it is his amulet.

  He makes it to his feet before I do, offering down his hand. I take it and he hoists me up. I teeter a moment with the rush of bloody leaving my brain.

  “Joseara!” he shouts as quietly as he can.

  We wait in silence, watching the graveyard for movement, chirping crickets spying our every move. The thief slips among the statues and headstones like the plague. “The constable hasn’t passed this way again,” she says when she joins us. “I don’t know how often they check this area, but I feel it is safe to go.”

  We cluster together as we walk through the graveyard. We jump the fence the same as last time – for me, still not elegantly – and Zadicayn reclaims his crossbow. We follow Joseara to a spot behind a building that conceals us from any road.

  It’s Zadicayn’s turn to lead.

  He drops the nose of his crossbow into the cobblestone next to his boots and rests the body against him. He pulls back the sleeve on his shirt and draws a knife on his belt. He rests the tip of the blade against the white skin on his forearm. I look away. Whatever involves cutting one’s skin, I don’t want to witness it.

  “Ye remembers me note about this being dangerous?”

  Still not looking at what he’s doing with the knife, I nod.

  “Did ye tell Joseara?”

  No. I look up at the thief.

  “I’m in danger every day,” she says. “This will make no difference to me. But, entertain me, why is it dangerous?”

  I hear the drag of wood on stone and look over to see Zadicayn has put his knife away and shouldered the weapon. “Rememberest when I told ye about the Faewraith eating magic?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Faewraith stay away from our realm because they art scared of a higher magical power. Currently that tis me amulet. If I wert to die or leave this realm, they wouldst come rushing in and feast because that magical protection wouldst be gone. And so, contradictory to that, they are also drawn to the greater magical force because that greater magic is what they crave most. So that moment when I get closer to me amulet, me amulet will start to wake up, sending off magical vibes that wilt trigger in the Fae Realm and, ultimately, the Faewraith. They wilt sense that influx of magic and come rushing in hopes to devour it before it chases them away, which I shall be able to do once I hath it in hand. They art brave cowards.”