"Grand Re-entry"

[Jacques Citadine]

...wherefore the Court sentences the Convicted, Dr. Iacobus Maris, Magister Emeritus Magis, to Complete Reversal of all his knowledge pertaining to the Art of Magic and also to permanent exile from this City and all other places subject to its sovereign jurisdiction, to be acheived within seven days, on Pain of Death. Furthermore, the Court orders that all graven likenesses of him within this City be dismantled, his works be gathered together and burned, and his name be expunged from the City Archives and from the Register of Citizens. This is the lawful dictum of this Court of Justice, declared candidly before all eyes. Long live the Republic!

Jacob had lived a year with the farmers on the river. He had never spoken with them except as was required to obtain food and other necessities. He had not lifted a finger to assist them in their labors either, being absorbed in his. This suited them well, though, as farmers were naturally distrustful of people from the city. They called him "le Citadin" in conversation among themselves.

Jacob was studying in his cottage. His incompetent persecutors had brought him into the school to administer the Memory Reversal and he had, with a thought, teleported a cloak of disguise from its location in a forgotten storeroom into the woods, where he recovered it later. It was in magical guise that he had attended classes at the College for a year.

It should be noted here that the Memory Reversal administered by the city mages was very poorly executed. City mages had been generally incompetent since the days of the great mages, like Renée, Montjoy, Leander, and, of course, Jacob. And, of course, they were all dead, or, in Jacob's case, exiled. The Reversal was powerful, but not thorough. It did indeed purge all his magical knowledge, but it left behind certain patterns and synaptic connections that pertained to the Art. Furthermore, the Reversal was very inaccurate and had obliterated many unconnected memories and damaged others, incurring a partial amnesia that Jacob found irritating in the extreme. His once star pupil, Antoinette, whom he detested and who detested him, had been the cheif caster in administering the Reversal.

Thanks to her poor job, Jacob was, within a year, able to acheive full six years of magical learning. The new professors had lauded him greatly, and he graduated with Greatest Honors, receiving his Master's diploma from Antoinette, the Magister Magis. Needless to say, this was hardly satisfactory to Jacob, who was still more than two centuries behind where he once was.

In the course of his re-acquisition of the Art, memories filtered back in through those in-tact synapses of the Isle and its patrons. Jacob therefore abandoned his old country for RhyDin wherein he located a group of musicians in need of a keyboardist (luckily, the Reversal had left his musical learning untouched) and from them and various stints as organist in more than a few RhyDin churches accumulated enough money to purchase, in full, a studio and bedroom in the inner city. He then attached himself to the municipial magical authorities in order to continue his magical studies.

Having thus established himself (as a man far more humble in status than he had once been), he sought the inn, and the portal to the Isle