Photo by Amandine BATAILLE on Unsplash
I first became aware of the Charlatan several years ago. I'd started drinking with a few acquaintances in a public house just off Circle Plaza called The Magister's Mistress, a disreputable place under the guise of respectability like so many of the shops and businesses in that part of the city. Circle Plaza has always been the place where the gentlemen and ladies go to dip their toes into the underworld of the city, with opium dens and illegal poker games and prostitution and all manner of debauchery taking place in secret parlors behind legitimate storefronts tailored to the wealthy of the city. The Magister's Mistress was one of the rowdier and raunchier establishments on the Plaza and one of the few places in the city where a dockhand might bump elbows at a bar with the gentry seeking the thrill of "downliving" as they were known to call it.
Of course it was also a prime location for gathering specific types of information- with such varied patronage it was possible to hire someone to do almost any type of work in the Magisters Mistress, illicit or otherwise, and due to this it was a hub for rumor, scandal, spying, and yes even politics. It was in the interest of tapping in to this wealth of information that my acquaintances and I began our patronage. We were all young writers, authors of news sheets and scandal letters for the gentry looking for information or inspiration or to seek a little scandal of our own. Regardless of our individual reasons we could often be found gathered around a table raucously discussing the current news with tankards in hand, scribbling on reams of paper while listening in to conversations around us or furtively engaged in conversation with one or other of our various contacts.
It was on my way to join my compatriots in the Magister's Mistress early one afternoon that I saw something that astonished me. The Magister's air carriage itself was pulled up outside a perfectly ordinary looking shop across the Plaza. It gleamed in the sunlight, a solid disk of gold that floated serenely on a crackling field of thaumaturgic energy several feet above the ground. It was completely unattended but that hardly mattered- no one in the entire city could summon that kind of raw magical power and keep it contained- except the Magister himself. Despite the attraction of such huge amounts of solid gold it would be safe from theft anywhere in the city. As head of the Magicians guild and the most powerful Thaumaturge in the city no one would risk his wrath. But what was it doing here in Central Plaza? Especially parked outside an Alchemist's storefront?
I hurried inside to discuss this nugget of information with my friends only to discover that they already knew! Apparently the shop was run by a disreputable quack wizard. Some sort of generalist that dabbled in all forms of magic but excelled at none. The man was such a failure in the arcane arts that he even stooped to basic alchemy after all. At least that was how my companions described him. It did not take long for them to lose interest in the discussion and return to their previous conversations or writings.
I had my doubts. If this quack was such a failure what business could the Magister himself possibly have at his shop? I decided I would investigate a little myself and began to ask other patrons of the public house what they knew.
"That old Charlatan? He's a fraud, couldn't even cure my poor Tanya's fever last year! His shops full of potions and not one of them helped! He sent me to a Doctor instead! A Doctor!" An older woman told him as she sipped from her tankard at the bar.
"His shops called the Fool's Gold, if you ask me the Magister is a fool for ever going there. Not that I like bloody magicians and wizards but nothing good's ever come from alchemy!" A grizzled dock worker spat on the floor as he spoke.
"E's a miracle worker! Saved me, he did. Fell in the tannery I did, the Hedge Wizard saved me. Healers and Magicians wouldn't heal me. Doctor couldn't even if he wanted to! The Charlatan did though! The Charlatan did what no one else could!" The speaker was drunk, scarred, and had only one leg. He looked like a beggar but his clothes were not nearly filthy enough.
"I thought he was an alchemist?" I asked the ruined man. No one else had called him anything other than an alchemist. What on earth did he mean by Hedge Wizard?
"'Sjust what it says on the sign. Alchemist yes, Wizard? Yes! Healer? Yes! Doctor even!" The man waved me on and turned back to his tankard.
But what could that possibly mean? Anyone that knows anything about magic knows that the different schools of magic are incompatible. Wizards pick one magical discipline and master it. They pay the price to achieve that mastery- and all magic comes at a cost. The man must have been drunk.
I made my way back to the table and my friends, intending to put the mystery out of my mind. The chances of that were slim as I saw the Magister himself through the window leaving the Fool's Gold storefront. He waved his hands and the gleaming golden disk settled lower for him to step up onto, the crackling cloud of thaumaturgy compressed itself to a thin glowing strip of pure energy that allowed the disk to sink nearly to ground level. The most powerful man in the city stepped to the center of the disk and then turned, his sightless eyes seeming to look back into the shop through the windows, and bowed at an unseen figure within!