“Master of Magic,” proprietor of “Wizard Stuff” on Moss Street, just south of the market square. (Silas wishes it on record that the name of the establishment is not his doing.)

I have given a woman who runs a general store the better part of a page, and a dwarf who bends steel a page more, and thought each of them well earned. Then I crossed Moss Street to do the same for the wizard, and I have sat here with a dry pen for the better part of an hour.

The sign says Wizard Stuff. The room – if I am to be generous and call it a guild – is set down in the town rolls as “wizard guild. what did you expect.” I have read it three times. There is no capital letter and there is no full stop, because the man could not be troubled to finish his own sentence about his own life's work. And inside sits Wizzy. That is the name. Not Wizzael the Thrice-Bound, not Wizzimar of the Ashen Tower. Wizzy. The Wizard. The kindest and only accurate account anyone has managed of the man himself is that he is “a goofy looking wizard. not what you expected.”

He speaks, when he must, in a flat and level line, as though each sentence were a coin he resents spending. Nothing moves him. Tell him you have slain a beast and he says “neat.” Tell him the world is ending and he says “sounds like a lot.” In a town packed to the rafters with people convinced they are the hero of some grand tale, Wizzy is the one soul who has plainly, profoundly, and permanently declined the role. He is the straight man at the center of everyone else's saga, and he would like you to wrap it up.

Here is what keeps me at this desk. I cannot for the life of me decide whether Wizzy is the single laziest soul ever to hold a spellbook, or whether a man who truly commanded the arts would see any reason at all to dress them up. Ellie polishes her counter. Gorin braids his beard. Perhaps real power cannot be bothered – perhaps it buys itself a stupid name and a bad hat and a monotone and dares you to laugh. I watched him sell a scroll of identify with one hand while every candle in that miserable room guttered out and relit itself, all at once, and he did not so much as glance at them. He looked, if anything, mildly put out that they had made the effort. That unsettled me more than any wyvern ever has.

So I leave the entry unfinished, which he would no doubt take as a professional courtesy. Go to Moss Street. Buy your scrolls. Learn your first spells from him – he is, whatever else, the only one in Mosgaard who will teach them. And do not, whatever you do, ask him to prove anything. On the slim chance that he can, and the far slimmer chance he can be bothered.

Things Wizzy says, in the same flat voice, such as they are:

• “Welcome to Wizard Stuff. That's the whole greeting. I'm not building to anything.”
• “You want to learn magic. Sure. It's mostly reading. Everyone's disappointed by that part. You'll be disappointed in about ten seconds.”
• “Scroll of identify. One silver. It identifies things. I don't know what else you want from me.”
• “Fireball? No. You'd set your hair on fire and then I'd have to watch that happen. Hard pass.”
• (to a hero mid-speech about destiny) “Wow. Sounds like a you thing.”
• (if anyone remarks on the name) “It's short for Wizzy. …Cool talk.”
• (quietly, to no one, as the door shuts) “Not what you expected. …Good.”