WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Wizard's Memoir ◈
Chapter 19: Death
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Knights, mercenaries, and adventurers all carried swords, but they were different professions. The same was true of those who practiced magic.
Mages like Etran worked in the field. These days, magic rings were their symbol, and many worked as adventurers.
Wizards, as their name suggested, lent their wisdom to others. They often served kings or feudal lords, though some taught at magic colleges.
In older terms, Sorcerers could be called spirit mages, necromancers, or totem mages. They cast magic using reagents, offerings, symbolic objects, and the like.
“Is there really a difference?”
“What’s the difference between a knight and a mercenary?”
“Uh... Status? Honor? Who they serve?”
“It’s much the same.”
The title of Wizard commanded more respect than Mage, but it wasn’t exactly a higher profession, just as knights did not outrank mercenaries by profession alone.
Etran could also cast magic with a staff and often offered advice based on specialized knowledge. In fact, Etran had even been invited to become a court wizard. Accepting that offer would have meant becoming a Wizard. The same principle applied to Sorcerers.
“Basically, we’re all magic users, or magicians. But we have different specialties. You need the right knowledge to use reagents or totems.”
Etran could perform simple rituals too, such as making flames with saltpeter and charcoal, or driving away evil spirits with salt and silver objects. That alone, however, was not enough to be called a Sorcerer.
“So they’re all sword fighters, but someone with high status who gets respect is a knight, someone who goes looking for battlefields is a mercenary, and someone who needs all sorts of knowledge is an adventurer?”
“It’s not a perfect comparison, but you can think of it that way.”
Having explained what a Sorcerer was, Etran moved on to the next point.
“You need to be especially careful when facing a Sorcerer. Unlike Mages, whose casting follows set patterns, you never know how they might activate their magic. In this case...”
“Necromancy?”
“They’re the most difficult kind of Sorcerer to deal with.”
Unlike spirit mages, who had one foot in alchemy, or totem mages, who had one foot in the priesthood, necromancers used uncommon magic.
As Etran continued the lengthy warning, Rolf drew a short sword, checked its edge, and slid it back into its sheath with a Click!
“A sword through the body will kill them all the same. But there’s another problem we must deal with first.”
“Finding the Sorcerer?”
First of all, the dwarves were not responsible. They had no reason to damage their own ancestors’ graves, but even if they wanted to, their race had no connection to magic.
Elves were skilled at magic, but their nature made necromancy impossible for them. Halflings were not worth considering either. After ruling out the other possibilities, humans were the most likely suspects.
“Honestly...”
The shorter races gave them scornful looks. The three humans reacted according to their personalities: one grew angry, one ignored them, and one felt apologetic.
“Have any humans visited the village recently?”
“Well... Not that I know of...”
“No, that’s wrong. The Markus Trading Company came by.”
“Oh, right. There was that lot.”
Grom and the militia member narrowed down the suspects on their own.
“The Markus Trading Company?”
“Human merchants who bring food and trade it for farming tools. They come once in early summer and once in late autumn. They were here not long ago.”
“They left right after arriving, as usual. I didn’t even see their faces.”
The merchants visited every year, but the dwarves weren’t particularly close to them and knew little beyond their name. It was a truly dwarven approach to socializing. The word “nosy” did not exist for these people.
“Which dwarf handles the trading?”
“The village chief, of course. That’s what we elected the fellow for.”
“We’ll need to meet the chief.”
Grom’s expression soured. It seemed the coup would have to wait until this case was solved. Not that Grom had seemed serious about it anyway.
A little later, the white-bearded village chief folded their stubby arms and gave a short sneer.
“Knew it. Humans were behind it after all.”
Grom protested on the party’s behalf.
“They used magic, so of course they’re human. We all know that. Why are you acting like you’re so clever?”
“Grrr!”
“Enough nonsense. Tell us about those Markus people.”
“They’re good humans who’ve traded with me for over twenty years!”
“That’s the most suspicious part. Means they’re not normal either, doesn’t it?”
Olivia and “certain other” adventurers hoped to see a proper dwarven brawl, complete with collar-grabbing and rolling on the ground. But the seriousness of the situation led the dwarves to exercise superhuman, or rather, superdwarven patience.
“Come to think of it, there were more of them this time.”
“Oh, really?”
“Seven came last year, but this year there were ten.”
“Was there a mage among them, by any chance?”
“How should I know? It’s not as if they walk around with ‘mage’ written on their foreheads.”
A staff or ring might have given them away, but on second thought, those could be hidden.
“Do you know where they went?”
“Of course I don’t!”
“Oh dear...”
“But I know where they came from.”
Dwarves valued their homes and origins, so they always made sure to ask about such things. Grom and the party brightened.
“They said they were from Schwein down below. It’s a human village you reach by following the Silver River down the mountain. A pig-farming village, I think?”
A pig-farming village called Schwein, meaning “pig.” Clearly, place names really were chosen in the simplest way possible.
@
Olivia’s party took a moment to hold a quick meeting.
Twenty-odd days had already passed, so catching up with the trading company was impossible. Rather than searching every village in the area, it seemed better to visit the pig village where they had a lead, even if it was a little farther away.
“How long would it take to go all the way there and back?”
“It’s the company leader’s hometown, not the Sorcerer’s. If the culprits are the people who weren’t there last year, I doubt we’ll gain anything.”
Their positions had reversed since leaving the Guild Pub. Olivia wanted to see the job through now that they had started, but Dahlia and Rolf objected. It simply wasn’t worth the time and effort.
Three thousand dena was a large sum, but rather than wandering around with no end in sight, they would be better off completing several jobs worth three hundred dena each. In the halfling’s case, there was also a little resentment at not being welcomed by the villagers. Honestly, more than a little. Like a proper mage, Etran offered a compromise.
“Let’s ask in the pig village whether anyone knows the Sorcerer. If we don’t learn anything useful, we can return to Northern Ridge from there.”
“What about the reward?”
“We know the trading company makes its rounds in summer and autumn, so we can come back around the end of the harvest. Or we can ask Grom to send word to the Guild Pub if there’s any new information.”
“Hmm. So we make it a long-term job?”
Olivia, Dahlia, and Rolf were all satisfied. Impatient as ever, Grom threw a fit but could offer no better suggestion. Without Etran, they would never even have discovered the clue about the Sorcerer, so Grom couldn’t blame them either.
“Then that settles it?”
Olivia’s party set off west along the Silver River.
They had guessed that a river with “silver” in its name might have a silver mine nearby, but they were only half right. All that remained was an abandoned mine that had been exhausted ages ago. In truth, it wasn’t much of a river either. By human standards, it was a stream they could splash their way across.
The weather remained unusually pleasant for the season.
Warm sunlight shone in the morning, and a cool breeze blew in the afternoon. Gray clouds hung in the distance, but judging by the wind, there was no danger of running into them.
There was even a well-kept road wide enough for carts, though it was not one of the ancient kingdom’s paved roads. The gentle downhill slope made it easy even for Etran, with their poor stamina, to keep up a good pace.
All in all, it was fine weather and terrain for traveling. Still, a few small complaints were inevitable. The mixed stew that appeared without fail was one of them.
“This isn’t what you promised!”
“Ahem. Ahem.”
They hadn’t so much as glimpsed the chicken Grom had promised. The full-course dwarven meal clearly existed only in legends, like the Hero and great wizards.
Etran stared blankly at the sky with a half-finished bowl of stew. Worried about their frail companion, Olivia quietly approached. But Etran had not lost their appetite from exhaustion, nor was it a late case of altitude sickness.
“Why did they use the corpses?”
“Huh?”
Olivia was caught off guard by the sudden question. Their eyes had met, so pretending not to have heard was out of the question. Olivia put that brain full of iron filings to work and went back over the case.
“To steal the grave goods? According to Grom, there’s gold and silver worth hundreds of thousands of dena buried there. They’d need helping hands to carry all that, even dead ones.”
“How did they know?”
“Know what?”
“That there were hundreds of thousands of dena in the ancestral cemetery.”
That was what troubled Etran.
Rolf, who was gathering the bowls, and Dahlia, who was fighting to claim the cooking pot, both looked over. Etran met their eyes in turn and explained.
“We only know because Grom told us. If this hadn’t happened, we’d never have found out. Outsiders aren’t allowed into the cemetery, so we couldn’t even watch a funeral.”
“...That’s true.”
The Sorcerer had raised the corpses to steal the grave goods. Then how had they known the grave goods existed? Through the Markus Trading Company? That seemed unlikely. Their relationship with Graystone was strictly business.
“Wait. Are you saying a dwarf spilled the dwarves’ secret?”
“Well, it’s not exactly a secret...”
But like the hiding place for a house key, it wasn’t something they went around announcing. The chances of an outsider discovering it alone were extremely low. In other words, a dwarf from Graystone was close to the criminal Sorcerer.
“A traitor! There’s a traitor!”
Grom jumped up and down. Unlike humans, dwarves were known as a race free of greed, but generalizations were never a good idea. Still, Etran was not worried about what had already happened. It was what might happen next.
“What do you mean?”
“They might... They might still be exchanging news.”
For example, the dwarf might have sent word that a group of adventurers had begun pursuing the Sorcerer.
A chill ran down the back of Olivia’s neck, and they rubbed it without thinking. The eerie wind they had felt at the ancestral cemetery seemed to blow again.
Was it just a feeling, or a warrior’s instinct? If adventuring had taught Olivia anything, it was that the worse a feeling was, the more likely it was to be right.
“The sun...”
“Be careful!”
Rolf flung aside the bowls they had so carefully gathered and sprang to their feet. When it came to things like this, the seeker was even more sensitive. Dahlia drew a dagger and raised the cooking pot like a shield.
“Etran! Light!”
The sun set early in the mountain’s shadow. It was not completely dark yet, but dusk had already settled over them. Etran hurriedly formed a magic circle. A Light Orb blazed brightly, lighting up the riverside camp.
Where there was light, there was darkness. Put another way, light created darkness. As the Light Orb rose, the shadows of trees and rocks grew deeper, and darkness began to pool.
“Is this what you call Precognition?”
“I don’t know how to use that magic.”
Love and death had one thing in common: both arrived without warning and interrupted everyday life. This was just such a moment. Death had paid them a sudden visit. Olivia drew a mace and named their uninvited guests.
“Undead!”
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