Devil

They call me the King’s “Rhyodan”. That means “charlatan” in my native language, but they don’t know that. It’s what I called myself when I performed sleight-of-hand in the streets. I’d never heard of wizards then, but I played along when one of the princes happened along and got the wrong idea.

Taking my reticence for bashfulness and professional secrecy, never having seen a real wizard themselves, they never suspected that I was a fraud. Perhaps I wasn’t even a fraud. Without access to magic, I had to do everything the hard way. I invented poultices and poisons, drew star charts and made prophesies. Hard work, but it was better than living hand-to-mouth in the dirt. At first, I was the prince’s pet, but soon even the King grew to rely on my sage advice and arcane insights. He never suspected that the finely spun gold wire that he supplied at my request was melted down to pay for the network of spies that kept me informed about all things, large and small, which I repeated in feats of mind-reading and scrying.

Imagine my fear when I learned of the arrival of a real wizard. No charlatan was he, this was the great Penrose himself, the conjurer of Black Mountain. He would not be fooled by my tricks. Escape wasn’t possible — I was too much of a celebrity, so I did the only thing I could. I arranged to meet him in private before he showed up at court, and told him everything. Having been shown this trust, he pitied my precarious position. While he did not approve, he promised not to betray my great secret.

This two-fold debt of trust was the key to what followed. No man expects betrayal from someone so trusting and vulnerable. Perhaps an ancient wizard, so used to seeing the Aether, forgets that the mundane contains elements just as subtle and powerful. In any case, one small vial of liverscorch poison in his evening wine put him in my power. I did everything I could to cure my generous benefactor of his sudden illness, providing an endless supply of potions and curative massages. I sat with him when the chills came in the night and held him up during strengthening walks. Meanwhile, the condition of his corrupted liver worsened irreversibly. In the end, when he felt the end of his days, he gave me the Grimoire.

This spellbook, the Grimoire, was the seat of the wizard’s Aetheric power. With his fading breath, Penrose taught me how to open it and how to read the script. He showed me how the Grimoire recorded everything that it saw and heard, writing new text even as events unfolded. He taught me the use of a Mirror, and the Glyph of First Focus. That night, I cast my first real spell, making a lie of the name “Rhyodan”. That night, Penrose passed from the mortal coil.