Chapter 1: My Inept Adept

PINARUTI WAS A BRIGHT lad with the common malady of being unable to stay focused on any one thing for long. Except sex. Pinaruti never had a problem focusing on sex. I’m sorry to say that, for Pinaruti, his focus on the act of sex was so single-minded that he never figured out how to actually get there. So, he spent some time as a shepherd, some as a bricklayer, some as a winemaker—which was nearly his undoing—and eventually ended up as the apprentice to one of Minoa’s finest magi.

The inability to focus and a weakness for the wine he’d bottled meant that many of Pinaruti’s spells went slightly—or even seriously—awry. That was, in fact, how his venerable master met his end. Pinaruti was practicing a simple spell to turn a sacrificial sheep into a blood sausage, when he inadvertently sucked the blood out of his master into the sausage. From that day on, he worked his spells only in isolation.

I once told Walt about what happened and while he agreed that it was a fitting end to the careless magician; he didn’t see that he could put the apprentice killing his master into his movie. Oh well. There’s no accounting for taste.

Also, from that day on, Pinaruti was the inheritor of his master’s business and, most importantly, to his precious books of spells. I suppose I need to clarify that I mean “scrolls,” or people get confused. There is always someone who will argue that a scroll is not a book. Upstarts. Pinaruti took his small library to Knossos, where neither he nor his master were known, and set up shop in a small but comfortable house where he worked charms and enchantments for a few coins and a supply of wine.

And that is how he happened to come to the attention of King Drakomaxos of the southwest quarter of the eastern half of Knossos. There were so many kings in Knossos at the time that each had to carefully define his kingdom and dared not claim both sides of the streets at his borders. Pinaruti came to the king’s attention because the house he built lay inside the Kingdom of Drakomaxos.

I have found that anytime one comes to the attention of a king, or any other ruler, it is at least going to cost money if not servitude or even life and limb. So it was in this instance.

“You have taken residence in the Kingdom of Drakomaxos,” the king declared. He was backed up by his entire army, which consisted at the time of two hired thugs who accompanied him when collecting taxes. “You owe a silver drachma in taxes for my royal protection.”

“From what?” Pinaruti naïvely asked.

“From what I might do to you if you are not under my protection,” Drako stated as though it were the most obvious thing.

“I have no more than a couple of copper coins,” Pinaruti said. “I normally trade spells for what I need.”

“Hmm. A magus. In my own kingdom,” Drako said, slapping his hands together. “I, too, am willing to take taxes in kind. I will forgive your taxes for five years if you will cast a spell to air condition my house. My house is too hot. Just look at the sweat rolling off our bodies. Steam is rising from the laundry. I want my home air conditioned.”

Of course, I picked up the term ‘air conditioned’ centuries later. But in general terms, that’s what he wanted. Pinaruti agreed. What else could he do, with the king’s army at his doorstep?

“Your royal majesty, this is a complex matter. I would not want to cast a spell that mistakenly froze your home and everything in it. I beg your leave to search my books and practice a spell so that I might cast the perfect spell to keep your house at the perfect temperature all year round,” Pinaruti begged.

“I will give you one year to research the problem, then you shall come to my house and air condition it, or I shall cut off your head,” Drako said, magnanimously.

It was a miserable year. Pinaruti read the scrolls. He came across different things that might work, but there was no spell for cooling a king’s home. So, Pinaruti turned to a higher power. If he summoned a demon, he reasoned, he could simply command the demon to cool the house and all would be well. Reaching that decision called for a drink to celebrate.

He climbed to the roof of his home and poured himself a bottle of wine from his glass. From the roof, he could see into his neighbor’s courtyard where the wife of the neighbor and her women servants were often scrubbing laundry or preparing meals. Or changing clothes or scrubbing each other. Pinaruti kept watch over them, benevolently stroking his magic wand as he drank his wine and had visions.