Tales of the Dead Wizard

I. The Wrathful Wraith

My spells were justly famous.
Men spoke my name in awe.
Kings and princes hired me
to tilt their wars with sorcery,
cast darkness on their enemies,
and concoct subtle potions
to command the latent passions
of the ladies they found fair. 
I once changed a river's course. 
I made the clouds rain fire. 
I've turned some men to swine
and taught others how to fly. 
Yet even my greatest magics
could not dam the flow of time. 
The years had their way with
me and death laid me down.

Yet before I traveled on
to leave this earthly plane,
to inhabit another world
or be shuttered like a flame,
I had three scores to settle
with those who still remained. 
My spirit clung tenaciously
with all its motive force
to a kind of life in death
until my tasks were done. 
My sorcery served me well
until revenge was spent and
all accounts were summed.

II. The Ignoble King

When Axer was a callow youth
and first ascended to his throne,
I saved his faltering kingdom
and assured his future reign. 
I made his subjects love him
with a blind unwavering love,
though he'd yet to do a thing
to display the common virtues
one should look for in a king
to warrant even simple trust. 

They endured a costly war,
driving back a superior foe,
to defend young Axer's lineage
and secure his regal claims. 
Yet in the years that followed
he proved nothing but a despot
who repaid their bloody sacrifice
with a reign of terror and pain. 
He taxed their every breath,
their eyelids and their bones,
until his royal coffers swelled
and burst with wealth beyond
what any man could spend.

No longer bound by mortal vows
I'd pledged to honor while alive,
I stripped away illusion from
the eyes of those beguiled.
At last they saw their ruler
for the tyrant he had been
and perceived his evil ways.
Once they overcame the shock
of the horror that was their lot
they began to plot against him
with the same fierce dedication
that had once made him king.

Unrest was like an avalanche
careening on a downhill spree,
gaining force as it tumbled
and clearing a path behind
for revolution on its heels.
In weeks the palace burned. 
The monarchy was razed. 
I clapped my ghostly palms
and watched with ghastly glee
as Axer's crownless head
flew from the chopping block. 
I danced a spirit dance on
the bloodied cobblestones.

III. The Faithless Lover

In my own distant youth,
in the far land of my birth,
I loved the maiden Kara-Lyn
who fed my naive passions
with like passions of her own.
She swore to love me always,
beyond the ruins of time,
until the mountains settled
and the seas lost their tides.

Then she left me for another
who could offer more than I. 
She chose a wealthy merchant
who possessed the gold and
servants to sate her every need. 
He draped her shapely limbs
in rare furs and precious silks.
He placed a wedding band
upon her hand and clasped
an emerald choker around
the pulse I'd often kissed
in the column of her throat.
It was Kara-Lyn's betrayal
that set my path on wizardry
and a scholar's life of solitude.

Though my love had been
pure as youthful love can be,
it was tainted by rejection
and the loss of what I craved. 
The intervening years had
transformed my fiery passion
for the maiden Kara-Lyn to
a cold and smoldering hate. 
And now I sought revenge
to pay her back in full for
her vain and faithless ways.

I found her worn and gray,
not a maid but just a crone,
her beauty long since past. 
Deep wrinkles lined the face
I once thought so sublime. 
I delved within her mind
and discovered with surprise
I still occupied her thoughts
as much as she did mine. 

I learned that her betrayal
had left her scarred for life. 
She had not fled my arms
to satisfy her selfish needs
or please her youthful vanity,
but to meet her father's debts
and rescue him from prison.
Her marriage without passion
was a burden filled with strife,
a cross far heavier to bear
than my years without a wife.

The need for revenge was
extinguished in my chest. 
An ember of the love I'd felt
soon rekindled in its place. 
Though my magics could
not restore her youth
or give us back our lives,
they could erase the worries
that preyed upon her mind.
I made her memories dwell
on what there was to cherish
in a life that offered little
of what most of us desire.
I made her errant children
so attentive once again,
they eased her waning years
with companionship and care.

IV. The Wicked Wizard

Zagan's spells were infamous. 
Men shuddered at his name. 
If you had the gold to pay
he would champion any cause
regardless of its worth and
with no concern for its ends. 
He was a clever conjurer
yet his powers were derived. 
They lacked creative force
and were no match for mine.

Each time we fought in life
and I gained the upper hand,
he retreated like a beaten dog. 
He cast childish spells behind
that I quickly tossed aside,
yet they hindered my pursuit
until he'd reached the safety
of his ensorcelled domain.

While I was flesh and bone
I could not broach the shields
that surrounded his terrain
like a coat of tempered mail. 
But a ghost can enter anywhere,
so I quickly stepped within
while he was lost in sleep. 
I rewrote all his notebooks
in a hand just like his own. 
I turned his formulas to
gibberish and I intermixed
his potions to leave them
rotting on the shelf until
the only thing they conjured
was the stench of death itself.

When Zagan awakened from
his dreams and found the
chaos that I'd wrought,
he tried to set it right and
searched in vain for its cause. 
And each time he returned
to sleep or left his castle walls
to pursue his villainous ways,
I wreaked my havoc once again
until I made him cry and rave
and reduced his agile mind
to a state with no more reason
than some rabid cat or dog.

When I last saw Zagan he had
abandoned magic of all kinds. 
I left him as a beggar who
tramped the roads alone,
in search of an answer
he was destined not to find.

V. The Wandering Wraith

Each of us has a special door
through which we finally pass
that leads the way from death
to whatever follows after that. 
But I had tarried far too long
stitching up the threads of life. 
The door that once awaited me
closed just like my tomb
and will never open again.
So I wander disembodied
like a wraith across the land,
without rest or resolution,
neither living nor fully dead,
with eternity on my hands

As the years run to centuries
and millennia take their place,
I watch as nations rise and fall. 
I see religions share their fate. 
I travel across the continents
and over the open seas with
no need for wheel or sail. 
I observe the pangs of history,
the convolutions of the race
as it cycles and repeats itself
and forever seeks new twists
on the same familiar themes.

Yet I've filled my empty hours
in a way you might expect
from a man who spent his life
casting spells and changing lives.
Throughout the countless years
my magic has not failed me.
Far more than a mere spectator,
I've made myself a judge and
a meddler in the world's affairs.

Some men call me Fortune. 
To others I am known as Fate.
Some mistake me for a lady
with the strange name of Luck. 
Educated men have studied
my effects, compiled lengthy
tomes on my strange vicissitudes,
and concluded without doubt
I am nothing more than chance
and the laws of probability.
No matter what you call me, 
I don't give a wizard's damn. 
My own once-famous name
has been buried and forgotten
in the landslide of the past.

VI. The Idle Meddler

If your days flow smoothly
like a river straight on course,
if the sun is always shinning
on your bright and smiling face,
then all of this comes crashing
down like an unexpected storm
and the wreckage of existence
leaves you crying in its wake,
it may be my wayward spirit
amusing itself for awhile
by playing God with your life.

If your fortune is unfortunate
and darkness seems to trail you
beyond the realm of night,
if every choice you make turns
and slaps you in the face,
then all at once this changes
and you've found a comely mate
and children born to please,
and wealth comes knocking 
for an unexpected stay,
perhaps my spirit countenance
has smiled on your plight.

Don't think about it twice. 
There's nothing you can do. 
You can bless me like a saint
or you can curse me like a sin. 
You can court me like the
object of your ultimate desire. 
You can fill your head with
numbers and calculate my game. 
Still it will not change my ways
and it will not force my whims.

Just remember as you pass me
on your journey beyond death,
as you make your certain way
to the afterlife you've claimed,
you will leave me far behind. 
I will bother you no longer. 
I cannot follow in your path. 
For I am condemned to wander
this amorphous interim land,
with only ghosts for company
and nothing left to do but
play with human pawns until
life breathes its final breath
and the human story ends.

Appeared in Beyond the Rose, Ireland