Yesteryear Fiction

Charlatans All
By Jerry Hadrick


You think you know wizards.
you think wizards,
you think fire
you think ice
you think long beards and long staves
and wide hands hurling lighting
summoning spheres
of glittering light.

You don't think of wizards
like Gharantha the Great
who conquered an empire
with an army of wooden dolls
animated, armed with tiny blades
all grinning quiet death in the night.

You don't think of wizards
like Yu-Jusha of Farenthiel
whose summoned sounds
laid waste to an army of orcs
flattened them
flattened the king he'd sworn to protect
when that king
went mad
became cruel.

You don't think of wizards
like Jene ze Oflun, Scourge of Tarenis
whose cactus bone dance
slew thousands in an instant
or Firzben Yolmurk,
whose lavender gloves
raised armies of wriggling roots
capable of pulling down cities
grinding keeps and castles
into rubble.

No,
when you think of wizards,
you think of men with robes
with staves
with flung bolts
of elemental light
but let me tell you
(and I may be the first)
that the men you think are wizards
are nothing more than tricksters
magicians
charlatans all.


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Biographies are for sissies.