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