Prologue

I don't know if you were aware of this but, wizards are immortal; or nearly so. I'm smiling at your response but let me guess anyway. The first question that popped in your mind was, 'So, why aren't we overrun with wizards?' Was I right? Well, other than your skepticism about the existence of wizards, I was right, wasn't I? The answer to why we aren't overrun with wizards is actually twofold. We can talk about the existence of wizards later if you are really that much of a skeptic.

First, wizards don't die after 80 or 100 years like normal people, but wizards can be killed. If you were to lock a wizard in a room so he couldn't be shot, cut, crushed by a land slide, or a thousand other ways a human can meet a violent death, he would live for a very, very, VERY long time.

He might go crazy from boredom, but he would live. We really don't know how long wizards live because there are no records of wizards dying of old age. There were hints in ancient Hebrew writings that Methuselah was a minor wizard which was the reason he lived so long. We do know that wizards can be killed. Wizards are immune to most diseases, but not all. It is rumored that wizards can be killed by a strain of the bubonic plague or the Black Death as it was called in the middle ages. There is some evidence that the Black Death during the middle ages was a wizard's version of germ warfare except it was a little more effective than they had planned. The wizard that spawned the disease was killed along with the wizard the plague was aimed at. There were no wizards left on the European continent to control the plague, if it could be controlled by wizardly means, and millions died.

The second reason we aren't overrun with wizards is harder to answer. A simple answer would be that wizards have usually lived in isolation, but that doesn't really explain much, does it? I don't mean wizards don't have people around them. They do, and usually a lot of them. It is a question of the quality of the people, not quantity. The kind of wizard also plays a role in this second part. There are two kinds of wizards. The way I understand it, being born on the summer or winter solstice determines what kind of wizard he or she is and the difference is so great that most cultures have names for both kinds of wizard.

You've probably read or heard about the studies of the psychological difference in a chimpanzee raised in isolation, with no touching at all, and a chimp raised with a lot of contact with other chimps; the isolated chimps are angry, violent, and extremely antisocial. Some would even categorize them as psychotic. The chimps raised with a lot of contact with others are more loving and outgoing which creates a more stable chimp society. It also makes them more vulnerable to the unstable chimps. The results of the chimp studies have been applied to humans, and the parallels are so close to being exact that psychoanalysts accept them as mainstream thought.

Now, consider the wizard as a human; a person isolated from birth because of the strange things that happen around him, or her. Yes, there can be female wizards. It is an equal opportunity skill set but I'll get into that later too. Many babies called 'devil children' were killed down through the ages because of strange happenings around them. Many of the ones that survived to young adults had lived their lives isolated from the common, loving touch of a mother, or father, or friends.

Imagine what they felt like, growing up with everyone afraid to get near them, or voluntarily touch them. Imagine how psychotic they were when they reached their prime. Often they took what they wanted, when they wanted it, with no thought of the damage and human misery they left behind. Wizards never lacked enemies that were willing to sacrifice their own lives to kill the wizard. At the end of every discussion about wizards there is one fact that supersedes all others. Wizards are human. Granted they are very special humans, but humans none the less with all the flaws and failings of the human condition.

I'm not saying all wizards were evil. I'm just pointing out that many of the wizards that survived their first year of life were evil because of the way they were raised and for some their circumstance of birth. Remember the point of this discussion was to explain why we aren't overrun by wizards. There have been some good wizards, but they had their enemies too. Wizards, either bad or good, accumulate wealth easily. Any time a person accumulates wealth, another person will envy that wealth. That fact applies to wizards and people in the normal population. Unfortunately, there is a substantial portion of the human race that prefers to take what others earn rather than strive for wealth themselves. The bottom line is that successful people have enemies. Wizards are able to bend the rules in their favor, so they are often near the top of the success ladder, and their enemies are increased proportionally.

Now do you understand why we aren't overrun by wizards? It is a perilous lifestyle and profession.

I still sense that you aren't buying into the whole wizard existence thing. That isn't a problem and is perfectly understandable. I'm sure no one would say you are wrong for not believing in wizards. A lot of effort has been expended, both wizardly and mundane, to keep wizards out of the mainstream press and serious history books. Of course the fictional genre have been allowed to portray wizards anyway they wanted, because no one really took them serious. After all, it was just fiction, wasn't it? I think an explanation of what a wizard is would clear up some of the doubt, and if it doesn't, well, that's okay too.

The first requirement to be a wizard is being born on the right date, specifically, the summer or winter solstice. I'll go into that more in the story. The second requirement is having a combination of normal talents. How often have you seen or heard of someone that is referred to as having a talent? It could be someone with a singing talent, or a talent for mathematics. It could be a painter. It could be a blacksmith. How about the horse or dog whisperers we have heard so much about in recent years in 'fiction' and maybe in reality shows, too?

You can name any human endeavor and, someplace in the world you will find a person with a talent in that endeavor. Now, consider talent as strengths. You can compare two people with the same talent, and one will be stronger than the other. For example, if you compare two people with a talent for singing, you can select one over the other as having the stronger talent.

Now, ask yourself what a talent in a person really is. What is the difference, physically, between a person with a talent to play the piano and a prodigy that can play classical piano at age four? There is some combination or alignment of cells in the brain of both individuals that allow them to play the piano exceptionally well. No one really knows where in the brain that alignment occurs or where in the brain that skill resides but both individuals enjoy the results. The prodigy has something extra built in from birth that allows him or her to excel in their talent. There is an alignment of brain cells that create something unique in that individual.

A wizard is simply a person born with multiple strong talents that have been combined in such a way they literally create a new talent. Advanced chromosome and DNA studies have shown a person with a talent for playing the piano, and a wizard with the piano talent would have the same gene expression on that part of the DNA strand. The same wizard may also have a talent with numbers, and the same gene expression could be found in another person that had a talent limited to math. Many people would fall into the category of the single talent but the wizard has multiple talents in varying strengths. No genetic evidence has been found that identifies the wizard to be unique among humans. All evidence points to the unique combination of talents, combined in such a way that a portion of the mind is energized so it grasps the world around it in a unique way. In this explanation about wizards, I referred to them as simply a person, but they are anything but simple.