The Lavender Tavern

A Plague of Reason

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Episode notes

There was a land, long ago, that had been scoured of magic.

It is strange to say, it is strange to believe, but there it was: a world without runes, without sigils and even without potions.

How did this happen? How it usually happens. With a decision by one man...

Even though magic has been dead for a century, Edric, an old student of Clover Academy wants to convince his professor Sorrel that he's rediscovered it.

Sorrel, however, wants to convince Edric that the magic he's performing is all in his mind.

Written by: Jonathan Cohen

Narrated by: Joe Cruz

A Faustian Nonsense production.

To read the full transcript for this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/a-plague-of-reason

Content warnings: mentions of homophobia, murder

Transcript

There was a land, long ago, that had been scoured of magic.

It is strange to say, it is strange to believe, but there it was: a world without runes, without sigils and even without potions.

And yet the sun and moon continued to rise, and the rains fell and the crops grew. Nothing lay beyond the vale they called reality, except for more reality.

How did this happen? How it usually happens. With a decision by one man.

That man saw mages and witches and warlocks grow strong and powerful across the land. He witnessed wars between armies with magic in their ranks, laying waste to entire castles and even mountains. And he decided that this would end.

The man stirred fear and anger and hatred in the breasts of his fellow men and women, and one night – when the mages and witches and warlocks slept the sleep of the magical – they slaughtered them and their families. All of them: men, women and yes, children. In the books and scrolls that came to be written, this great day was known as the Restoration.

There was a School at the northernmost tip of the land that stood in a field of clover, and so it was called the Clover Academy. Before the Restoration, the Clover Academy had taught flight and invisibility and fireballs, and all manner of spells. After the Restoration, the instructors started teaching how to read and write glyphs, how to tell which plants were edible and which were not, and how to cure those with maladies of the heart and the mind. The miraculous blinding light of magic was replaced with the constant warm illumination of science.

And a hundred years passed. It is always a century, or a millennium before anything momentous occurs, for the gods like round numbers, just as we do. 

Great wet flakes of snow fell in spirals around the Clover Academy. In a chilly turret that student wizards had once used to unleash their magical projectiles upon the commons, a portly man in professor’s robes opened the small door and let a younger man in.

The portly man’s name was Sorrel, and he had taught physical sciences at the Academy for the last twenty years. He had the spectacles and narrow eyes of a scholar who had spent too much time reading by the light of a flickering candle. The young man, thin and so tall that he had to duck under the transom to enter, was named Edric. He had been Sorrel’s student eight years earlier. He wore no spectacles, and his eyes were clear, but the years had already begun to etch lines of intellect into his forehead.

And now I step back in silence, for it is their words that tell this story, not mine.

“It has been a long time,” Sorrel said, and settled his frame into the leather hide-covered chair behind his desk. “I received your letter.”

Edric nodded, head bobbing up and down atop a long neck. “Good, good,” he replied, then nothing.

Sorrel knew the ways of students – and former students. How they became shy in the presence of their professors. “Come now,” he coaxed. “You wrote to me and asked if you could visit and seek advice?”

The lump in Edric’s throat lurched up and down as he swallowed. “Yes. Yes, you have been on my mind of late.”

To Sorrel, this came as no surprise either. Many young men had had infatuations with their professors over the years, and the school masters always warned of the foolishness of indulging such nonsense. Sorrel knew that he was not an attractive man, nor a commanding man – though even he had received his share of propositions over the years. So long after graduating, though?

“I am partial to men,” Edric said after a while. Yes, Sorrel thought, I have the professor’s gift of anticipating the student’s train of mind. But this was awkward, and even though years had passed, Edric was still, and would always be his student.

Silence was Sorrel’s best response, and he waited. “I like men,” Edric said, then elaborated: “I am attracted to them. Fond of them.” He blushed. “And I do not wish to be!”

Ah. This was simpler than infatuation, but more complex in its own way. “Edric, fetch me that bench from the corner,” Sorrel ordered. When Edric had complied, he asked the young man to turn it so that his back was facing the professor’s desk. Sorrel had found that men and women of all ages were more likely to speak their minds – and the truth – if they did not have eyes directly upon them.

Sorrel saw Edric relax slightly, and then asked him to tell him more.

“It’s as I said,” Edric stammered, and Sorrel could see the flush on the tips of his ears and back of his neck. “When I was a child, all of my friends were boys.”

“That is not unusual.”

“I only wanted their company,” Edric went on. “I had no interest in girls. Or women, when I grew older.” He looked at the snow falling behind the window with what seemed like longing. “I felt more for my male friends than they did for me.”

“Did you…follow your inclinations while you were at the Academy?” Sorrel probed.

Edric shook his head. “No, no. I heard Master Pritcher’s talk. The one he gives every year. I was a good boy.”

Then, laughing bitterly: “Until I graduated and went home. Then I met a young man. Marcus.” His voice took on a thoughtful quality. “We were of like minds.”

And like bodies, no doubt, Sorrel thought. “Did he break your heart?”

“If it were only that easy!” Edric’s hands gripped the arms of the bench. “No, my parents found out about us. Found us. Together.” He shook his head. “We were in love. So foolish, taking risks. They bade me leave their house.”

“You have not been wandering the land all this time, I hope?” Sorrel asked.

“I have an aunt Nell. My mother’s sister. She is a strange one. Strange but sweet. She asked me to stay with her. Now it’s her, me and her faithful friend, the Lady Charlotte.”

“And Marcus?”

Edric placed his hands in his lap in seeming resignation. “He wants to be a priest. Nobody could know. He had to choose between the temple and me.” 

And it was the temple, Sorrel concluded.

The professor sighed. “I have seen male animals coupling with male animals in the farms and barns of this world. As a professor of the physical sciences, I say that this seems to be a natural occurrence, though a rare one.”

“There is more,” Edric said. Sorrel waited and waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. 

Finally, he used the voice he reserved for wayward students and commanded Edric: “Tell me.”

“I think...” Edric said weakly. “I am certain...I believe that…that I have the ability of magic.”

Oh. Partiality to men was nothing serious (and quite common at the Academy, if Sorrel was to admit it to himself), but…this?

“You know, Edric,” Sorrel said gently, “there is no such thing as magic. There has been no magic in the world since the Restoration.”

Edric shrugged, looking as if he wished he could turn around. “I did not study the Restoration. I know what anyone knows of it. But I still wonder. Could there be --? Might there be --?”

“No,” Sorrel said flatly. Now his own hands gripped the front of his desk. A delusion such as this…

“Could some have survived?” Edric mused. “Gone into hiding, a century ago?”

“Perhaps we may both take a step back and examine your case together,” Sorrel said, not unkindly. “I shall keep an open mind.” This, the smallest of lies. “Why do you believe you have the ability of magic?”

The dim light through the window had begun to slant across the small room, and it fell across Edric’s drawn face. “Signs. Signs and portents. Let me tell you. Can I turn around?”

Sorrel sighed. Now that the dam had broken, Edric seemed enthusiastic to speak. “Face me, and tell me.”

A minute for Edric to swivel the bench around and seat himself again. Then, with an earnest expression on his face: “I received a letter.”

“A magical letter?” Sorrel asked.

“You jest. Of course. But the writer of the letters. Name of Berand. He sent six of them. He predicted things. And they all came true.”

“Go on,” Sorrel said.

Edric looked up at the ceiling and to his right, a sign that Sorrel knew meant he was recalling a memory. “The first was a storm the following week. A terrible storm we had. Unlike any other. First storm of the summer.”

“Storms are not uncommon.”

“The second letter. A merchant would visit from another land. This was a rarity in our town. But it happened, three weeks later.”

Sorrel was starting to see a pattern. “And the other four letters?”

“That an animal would die. The bishop’s cow passed away. Then, that a couple would fight at the tavern. Then, an apostate in the temple. And last, that the sun would be blotted out at midday. All of which came true.”

“Did the writer of the letter seek anything? Gold, property, promises?”

Edric shook his head violently. “Not a thing. I answered each letter. Told Berand they’d come true. So he said I had a gift, and that he would visit me.”

Sorrel could see that Edric yet retained his limbs and clothes, so Berand could not have made off with much, but still… “Shall I tell you how he accomplished this wonder?”

“Magic?”

“Some may think it so,” Sorrel said. “I call it the magic of numbers.” He stood and went over to the green-black slate on the wall. He rubbed it clean with the sleeve of his robes, then picked up the chalk and began to draw, talking as he did so.

“You mentioned six letters,” Sorrel said. “In fact, there were many more letters.”

“I do not understand.”

“The first letter he sent to thirty-two people, yourself included, in thirty-two separate towns or villages. This might have cost him a bit of gold, though I wonder that he did not have an accomplice in this scheme.” Sorrel wrote the number thirty-two on the slate.

“Perhaps half of the recipients saw a storm within a month. To those who wrote back to tell him of this successful prediction, he sent sixteen letters, predicting the merchant’s visit. I wonder if this merchant might also have been an accomplice, but I shall not speculate.”

Sorrel wrote the number sixteen after the number thirty-two. “Regardless, perhaps eight of you witnessed a merchant visit your town. To those eight he sent a letter that an animal would die. Perhaps half of those readers were unlucky enough to have a cow or horse pass away in their towns. To those four, a letter predicting a fight in a tavern. And to the two who saw such a fight, a story of an apostate in the temple.”

“True. Those are all common events,” Edric said, and Sorrel was glad that the young man had remembered some of his teachings. “But what of the sun? Blotted out at noon, as I said.”

“Every few years, in different places in the land, the sun is darkened for a while. We do not know the reason, although some suspect it is snuffed out momentarily like a candle, or that it is hidden by another object. Regardless, it is a predictable phenomenon. There are tables that have been drawn up, which show when these events occur. Your Berand planned this series of letters to end with the blot on the sun.”

Sorrel smiled and shook his head. “My boy, I am afraid that of the thirty-two recipients of the letters, you were the only one fortunate enough – or unfortunate enough – to see a summer storm, have a merchant visit your town, witness the bishop’s cow pass away, and all of the other events this man pretended to predict.”

Edric nodded slowly. “Very well. Very well. But that was only the start.”

Then his belief ran deeper than he had contemplated, Sorrel thought. This was troubling. “I shall endeavour to assist you in the interpretation of any event you care to describe.”

“You mock me,” Edric said with a smile. “But I appreciate your logic.” He drew in a breath. “I dreamed that my mother’s mother would die. She did so. Only four days later.”

Sorrel closed his eyes briefly. “Had you seen her recently?” he asked.

Edric nodded. “She lived with us. Shared a room with me. Since I was born.”

“Had she seemed…different of late? Ill, perhaps?”

“Not at all. It was very sudden. The dream worried me. I did not sleep for a week before she died.”

There it was, Sorrel thought. “Do you know why you could not sleep?” he asked.

“Because of my ability for magic? That I knew she would pass away?”

“You said that you could not sleep,” Sorrel explained. “I suspect that she was indeed ill, at least for the week before her passing. In my time of studying the ill and enfeebled, I noticed that those who were about to pass away often breathed heavily, or more lightly, or differently in some manner.”

He exhaled and inhaled dramatically to demonstrate. [Inhale and exhale here] “You who slept in the same room with her from your birth had accustomed yourself to her method of breathing. Once she began her slide towards...the next life, her respirations changed and you could no longer sleep.”

“This is possible,” Edric admitted. “I admit it is possible. But not all of my stories can be explained so easily.”

So he was not immune to reason! Sorrel thought. There was hope yet. 

He did not need to prompt Edric to continue. “Berand arrived, three weeks later. He had the air of a mystic about him.”

“Airs are not evidence,” Sorrel reminded him.

“No,” Edric said. “But he knew everything of me. As if he’d been a friend since my childhood.”

Sorrel nodded. “May I attempt to divine what Berand told you about yourself?”

“Sir, with all respect…you do not claim the ability of magic.”

“Neither did Berand,” Sorrel said. “And I shall prove it.” 

Still standing, he paced before Edric, waving a hand at him as he declaimed: “You are sometimes unsure of yourself, especially with those you do not yet know. When you were a child, you had an accident where water was involved. You need others to like you, but you are often critical of yourself. And you are left-handed.”

Edric looked startled. “He did not – did not say exactly this. But some of it. How did you know? And how did you know I use my left hand?”

My dear Edric, Sorrel thought. Eight years out of school and still the innocence of a student. “Everyone is sometimes unsure of themselves, particularly with strangers. Everyone seeks approval and blames themselves. It is the rare child who has not had an accident in their life – I would not be surprised if water was involved in some way or another.”

“And my left hand?”

Sorrel laughed. “There I confess to cheating. I remember you well from your days at Clover Academy. When you would write a test or paper, the writing would always be smudged from your left hand passing over the fresh ink.”

“Berand told me I’d broken my right foot jumping from the roof when I was six. That is why I limp,” Edric said. “He could not have guessed this so accurately.”

“I suspect that Berand spoke with someone in your town on his way to visit you,” Sorrel said. “I would be unsurprised if, when he asked about you, someone did not tell him this notable story.”

Edric seemed crestfallen. “I trusted him.”

Sorrel wondered – was Berand a handsome man? Had there been other reasons in the young scholar’s mind to trust him? Did a stab of envy prick at him for a moment? “What did you give him?”

Edric shook his head. “I gave him nothing. He sold me something. A magical kit.”

Sorrel nodded. He had seen such kits before: wands, pendulums, black velvet inscribed with runes and glyphs, incense and candles that sparked and smoked. “Did he do any ‘magic’ with it?”

He hoped that Edric did not sense any mocking in his words, but the man seemed sincere in his reply. “No. That was for me to learn. He showed me something at the tavern that night, though.” He shook his head in wonder. “A man became a woman.”

Perhaps, Sorrel thought, there was a master list of trickery that every rogue consulted before proceeding on their campaign of deception. It would not surprise him. “How was this accomplished?”

“I know not. The bearded man stood in a far corner as we drank ale. Then I turned my head. A moment later I turned back and he was a woman. Wearing still the same clothes and cap.”

“You are aware that men often costume themselves as women in plays, and women as men,” Sorrel said. “Long hair hidden under a cap, perhaps a beard made of wool. These are magic tricks, but those of a magician, and not a wizard.”

Edric smiled suddenly. “Master Sorrel, you were always of quick wit. Students were helpless against you. But I yet think I am of magical ability. And I yet plan to convince you.”

Then play on, Sorrel thought. Teaching was a lonely profession, and he maintained a professional distance from his students. A young, handsome, thoughtful man in his rooms was not unwelcome, even if the jousting was reasonably one-sided.

“Berand left the next day. I set up the kit in my room. That night, I concentrated on the pendulum. Thought and thought.”

“And it moved,” Sorrel finished for him.

“It started slowly. Back and forth, then round and round. I could feel the power of my mind moving it,” Edric said.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Sorrel asked.

Edric frowned. “Three brothers, but –”

The professor cut him off. “I note that only you have been sent to Clover Academy, and not your brothers.” He reached forward and lifted the frayed cuff of Edric’s tunic. “Your family struggles with money.”

Edric sputtered: “I do not – that is not –”

Sorrel was kindly. “And that is why I suspect that your house is not well-built nor well-maintained. That there are holes and cracks to let the wind in. And that a summer of storms such as we