The 44th Wizard of Us - V

 

The 44^th Wizard of Us – Part V

from Brazil Times blog of June 20, 2013

Once more taken up is the tale told forty-three instances beforetime -- this episode of the story being the 44th Wizard of Us. The first of this tale some day to be told -- the last as yet unwritten.

The Wizard had, as they all do, long since learned no magic wand was issued to any Wizard. The problems would not solve themselves, and there would be no instant solutions to any issue making its way to the Royal Round Room. Wizards also found that taking on of the Cloak of Authority yielded no supernatural abilities. In the course of events each Wizard receives in his turn both admiration for good he did not conceive and antagonism for things done by those he would never know.

The anniversary of the year of Jubilee was again upon the Land of Us. All due honor would be done for those who so long ago laborious scribed the Dogmas of the Dominion, which must ever be honored. That the Dogmas no longer met most, even many, of the needs of the Land would again be varnished over.

It was nowhere written in the Dogmas, but everyone knew it was incumbent upon all Wizards to impose these divine truths of the Dominion on all other lands. Many Wizards before he had gone forth to battle in order to so impose. Naturally neither Wizards nor they of the Circle of Demagogues actually went themselves; preferring to send to their death sons and daughters of proletariat.

Demands for action, any action, in someone else’s land, anyone else’s land, came both from they who had chosen the Wizard and they of the Pfabricators sect. The latter fully and readily prepared to cast aspersion on the Wizard whether outcome be good or ill.

Wizards are inevitably admonished by declaration of Pfabricators, “Here, this faction of disputants is the side of righteousness on which the Land of Us must stand, and not the leading Demigod. Simply remove him and all that land will ascribe to the Dogmas. Failure to send to their death sons and daughters of proletariat would dishonor the sons and daughters of proletariat already having died.”

Such incursion, without benefit of right or law, had been undertaken before by earlier Wizards, of course. And, having far superior legerdemain, such lands quickly overrun. Unfortunately, as no Wizard seemed to learn, if the forces of the Land of Us were to stand a thousand years in these conquered lands, all would be as before on the day after those forces withdrew.

Only such as Squire Charles and those who would hear out truth understood incursion of another’s land must reap the whirlwind. But, it seems it is impossible for a Wizard to fail to do what all other Wizards had failed in doing.

So, as the tale is told, the Land of Us chooses some side in some existing battle (there is always one, somewhere). As it is with lands and humans in turmoil, each existing faction hated the other almost as much as each hated whoever happened to be Wizard of the Land of Us.

Alas, it is a tale told, with certain variation, these forty-three instances beforetime – the end not now assured by wizards or prognosticators or storytellers.