Is This Apocalypse Necessary

by C. Dale Brittain

  But then I heard a trumpeting call. Someone else had joined the chase. Not Whitey and Chin, doubtless still snuggled down in their blankets. Not any of the warriors, itching to fight but with weapons useless against wizardry. It was Naurag.

  The purple flying beast chased after the air cart, faster than I could fly, his wings beating mightily. And as he flew he called.

  And the air cart hesitated. It responded to school spells, but the cart was the skin of a flying beast, and the call of its own kind was even stronger than the spells that the original wizard Naurag had shaped to control flying beasts and air carts. The purple flying beast trumpeted again, whether in warning, in greeting, or even in yearning I did not know. Did he even realize the cart was not alive?

  But it didn't matter. Caught between summons to fly in opposite directions, the air cart came to a dead stop, hovering. Thirty more seconds, and I dropped into it, between my wife and daughter.

  "I'll block Elerius's spell," I gasped even as I hugged them both. "Try to get us out of here."

  Naurag flew around and around the air cart, bringing his head in close as though sniffing it in surprise. But I had no time to wonder if my flying beast was startled to find the object of his amorous pursuit so unresponsive. Working fast, I started countering the spells coming from the castle. At this distance, even Elerius was not too powerful for me to oppose. Antonia again gave the magical commands, and the air cart turned obediently and started slowly toward the encampment.

  For a moment Naurag hesitated, hearing that magical summons himself. But I couldn't rescue him too—it was all I could do to keep Elerius's spells from reaching the air cart.

  Twenty yards we flew, forty, a quarter mile. Naurag turned toward us, flew a few strokes, stopped to look back over his shoulder, flew another short distance after us, and stopped again. As a living creature, he had a choice the dead air cart did not have, but the old wizard who had first created those spells had known flying beasts extremely well. Was Elerius going to fight us every inch of the way? I wondered as I muttered spells through clenched teeth.

  But then the spells of summons stopped abruptly. Were we out of range, or had Elerius decided to conserve his energy for something even worse?

  No matter. The air cart surged forward, then flew down in a stately spiral to land triumphantly in front of King Paul. Naurag came in next to us and started nuzzling the cart again. I jumped out and threw my arms around his neck, telling him what a fine and brave, what an excellent flying beast he was, and how many melons he deserved. Antonia was immediately interested, and sprang from the cart to look at Naurag from all sides and reach up to pat him.

  But Theodora, climbing out more slowly, just took my hand a little shakily, with only a faint curtsey toward the king. She did not burst into tears, which I might have done in her place—in fact I felt like sobbing now myself in relief.

  I turned to King Paul. "Excuse me, sire," I said, my voice unsteady. "I had hoped to be well on my way by now, but I'm afraid I've run into a bit of a delay. It may be tomorrow before I'm back from my trip—because I'm going to wait a little while to leave."

  Paul nodded, a bit wistfully, but then after a few seconds straightened his shoulders and said, "Of course, Wizard," in hearty tones. "I should be able to keep the rest of the kings from getting too restless for at least another day."

  And with my arms around Theodora and Antonia I went off to try to find a quiet spot in the bustling camp to talk to them, but mostly just to hold onto them.

  III

  I flew on Naurag toward Yurt, my heart lifting at knowing I was going to see the kingdom again after all. The flying beast, carrying me rapidly eastward, seemed to be trying to convey the suggestion that he had never been the slightest bit interested in a dead air cart. Autumn colors had come on while I was in the East, and the hills over which I passed were tinged with red and golden, almost luminous on this cloudy day. The queen would be surprised at my return from the dead; I just hoped she hadn't had my rooms cleaned out and given to someone else.

  But even before consulting my books I had to check for something else: dragons' teeth.

  It had been my first year in Yurt when a dragon attacked the castle on Christmas Day. I had managed to kill it, through the assistance of my predecessor as Royal Wizard and also a fair amount of sheer dumb luck. I had tried not to dwell on that hair-raising adventure, and time and other dramatic events—including my own recent experiences in the dragons' valley in the north—had pushed it toward the back of my mind, but the memories were still uncomfortably clear whenever I stumbled across them. One never forgets one's first dragon.

  The stable boys had sawed up that dragon's carcass and buried it down in the woods below the castle, and in a few years the ivy and saplings had grown thick over it. But in the very oldest spells, dragons' teeth were the first ingredient for unliving warriors.

  Or so I had heard, though nothing in my predecessor's notes had ever hinted at such an ingredient. He had never used them himself, nor, I believed, had Elerius. After all, dragons had not been found in the west for a very long time. Previous to the one I remembered so vividly, probably the last to visit Yurt had been the one who had eaten almost all of Saint Eusebius, leaving only the Cranky Saint's big toe.

  But the primer of dark magic Count Basil had given me spoke quite confidently of dragons' teeth and the uses to which they could be put. The count was right that the only way I was possibly going to be able to oppose Elerius was to try a form of magic that he knew nothing about—now I just hoped I could get that magic to work.

  * * * *

  A cold rainstorm met me as I flew, but I managed a spell to keep the rain off, and the darkest clouds had slid away from the sky by the time I saw the white towers of Yurt's royal castle on a hilltop before me. One would never know from the peaceful scene that, down in the cellars, was a hole that led to Hell—a hole dating from the same period as the dragon. An arching rainbow stood for a moment over the highest spire, which I took as an excellent omen.

  The woods below Yurt's royal castle had begun to shed their leaves. I could catch glimpses of the castle's whitewashed outer walls through their branches as I hunted for dragons' teeth. The air bore the sharp, autumnal scents of rain, earth, and dead vegetation, but along the woods' edges, where fields ran up to the trees, late asters still bloomed.

  It took me half an hour to find the right spot, probing magically for bones that might still bear some of the imprint of the great creature to whom they had once belonged. The first time I thought I had found the dragon's remains the aura seemed somehow wrong, and when I dug with a stick in an earthy mound, which my magic told me was full of bones, I brought only beef bones to light.

  Beef bones? Some long-forgotten garbage pit, I decided, dropping the T-bone I had picked up and wiping my hand on my trousers. The dragon must be somewhere else.

  I found it at last, the spot well away from the castle. Again I started digging with a stick, decided that was too slow and too undignified for a wizard, and recklessly used powerful spells to throw cubic yards of dirt aside at a time.

  It had been thirty years, and there was not much left of the dragon other than the bones—even its scaly skin survived only in patches. But anyone coming across this skeleton, tumbled about as it was, dug up and chewed by foxes and badgers over the years, would have known that this was no garbage dump—unless the dump of monstrous giants. The massive ribs still survived at least in part, the long leg-bones, the thin, lightweight bones that would once have supported the wings, the long claws—and the teeth.

  I tugged at the teeth, longer than my hand, working them loose while being careful to avoid the still-sharp points. I didn't like the way the skull's empty eye sockets looked at me, or how the dead jaws gaped, disarticulated. Even Elerius, I told myself, could not suddenly reclothe these bones with flesh and skin and put a living, ferocious brain back into this empty skull. But I still felt better once I had assembled a pile of teeth and could throw dirt bac
k across the dragon's remains.

  Now that I had the teeth, all I had to do was figure out what to do with them. Lifting them with magic so I wouldn't have to handle them any more, I headed up the hill and home.

  * * * *

  Between my funeral, where everyone had spoken so well of me, and this homecoming to Yurt, where everyone in the castle, from the queen to the stable boys, was first stunned and then overjoyed, I could be in serious danger, the voice in the back of my head commented, of thinking myself something special. Even the flying beast received a great deal of attention and some of the melons he so richly deserved.

  But I had no time to enjoy hearing how much everyone had missed me. It was already late afternoon, and I still had to figure out how to make warriors out of a pile of sharp and dirty teeth, how to control them, and how to get them to a castle two hundred miles away—all before either Elerius attacked the royal encampment outside his castle, or the kings got so restless they decided to attack themselves.

  My study was disconcertingly neat, and for a moment I really did fear that the queen had been cleaning out my effects, until I remembered that Theodora had gone through my papers. She didn't seem to have removed anything, other than the old Master's letter naming me his heir, but she had demonstrated a flair for organization generally lacking amid her cloth scraps and pattern pieces in Caelrhon. All my books were shelved in rational order, my own notes placed tidily in folders in the drawers, and my pens and pencils lined up, ready for use.

  I immediately destroyed the pristine order by piling my desk with books: old Naurag's register, Count Basil's primer of the gruesome magic of blood and bone, my predecessor's notebooks, even the books belonging to a long-dead ducal wizard who had died well before I even came to Yurt. I slapped the two volumes of Ancient and Modern Necromancy on top of the pile in the hope that a little school magic could give at least a semblance of calm and order to the old undisciplined magic—and to Basil's dark spells. The Cranky Saint could not foresee the future, I reminded myself, could not say for certain what I might or might not do, but he was clearly worried that I would find the enormous power of evil too tempting in my fight against Elerius, and I didn't want to take any chances.

  Ancient and Modern Necromancy did indeed talk about dragons' teeth—I knew I had heard about them even before coming to Yurt as a young wizard. However, the reference was buried in a chapter on outmoded, messy practices interesting chiefly for their historic value, to show how far organized wizardry had come. No wizard today would ever dream of making undead warriors, the book announced dismissively, not like some of those misguided wizards back before the Black Wars. Besides, it asked rhetorically, wouldn't a wizard who had successfully killed a dragon for its teeth have enough power already that a restless army that would not listen to reason would be more of a hindrance than a help to him?

  I didn't like the part about a restless army that would not listen to reason. My dragons' teeth were supposed to create a force to go up against Elerius, not wander dangerously through the Western Kingdoms. Ancient and Modern Necromancy pointed out in a final note that such warriors could not bear the light of the sun, which would decrease their dangerousness but also their utility. Oh, right. I knew that.

  The queen herself knocked on my study door to ask me to accompany her into dinner, finding me with my fingers in my hair, staring at the much more upbeat discussion of dragons' teeth in Count Basil's volume. Here at least was a spell to transform and activate the teeth, which Ancient and Modern Necromancy had failed to provide, but he too was quite discouraging about the effects of daylight.

  Dinner thoroughly distracted me, at least briefly, from thinking about dragons' teeth. A roaring fire kept the autumn chill away, the brass choir played, the steaming platters held the most delicious food I could remember eating for months, and the chaplain led everyone in a prayer of thanks for my miraculous safe return. "Next time, Wizard," said the queen with a smile and a twinkle in the emerald eyes she had passed on to Paul, "if you're planning to die, warn us that you're also planning to come back to life, so that we can skip the mourning period and go straight to the celebration!"

  But as soon as I had finished dessert—raspberry pudding, my favorite—I rose to return to my books. So far I had managed to avoid having to give a speech, but I didn't want to press my luck.

  I turned now to my predecessors' notebooks, thick with references to herbs I didn't know, and dotted with cryptic references to some other spells he had worked out, which I didn't understand either. But he had determined, over long months living by himself after I had replaced him as Royal Wizard in the castle, that it was possible to make a creature from old bones that could endure the sun. The more I read the more it seemed that I ought to be able to do this—improvise a combination of old herbal magic and eastern magic to make my own warriors who would fight Elerius's.

  But I liked the idea less and less the more I read—even the most optimistic reading of Basil's spells suggested they would be almost uncontrollable, once given motive force, and I didn't want to have to kill Elerius's knights. Especially since they were really Hadwidis's knights.

  No way to tell unless I tried. The castle was dark and silent as I made my way out into the courtyard, carrying a magic lamp. The light made a yellow stripe across the cobblestones that reached Naurag: asleep, floating a few feet in the air, his head under one wing.

  But his head popped out as I approached. I rubbed his forehead and swung onto his back, carrying the dragons' teeth in a bag. "So far," I told him, "you've seen dragons, an Ifrit, and great armies. How would you like to watch me make dead creatures move without life?"

  IV

  Far from the royal castle I flew, up toward the high limestone plateau at one end of the kingdom. Cut into the plateau was the narrow bed of a river, flowing out of a cave sheltered by a grove of trees. That grove was both the home of a wood nymph and the site of the shrine of the Cranky Saint.

  Neither was in evidence, late on a dark November night. The hermit who served the shrine always used to have a group of apprentice hermits, I remembered, but it was too dim to make out their huts. This valley still held some of the intense magical forces left over from the world's creation, which was why the wood nymph lived here—and which was why I hoped my spells might work if I tried them here. Leaving Naurag and the magic lamp at the edge of the grove, I lit up the moon and stars on my belt buckle and made my way cautiously between black rivulets of water.

  I came around a beech tree's ghostly white trunk and saw it: the shrine of Saint Eusebius. On a rough stone altar sat his reliquary, shaped from gold into a giant toe. Even on a moonless night it glowed.

  Down on my knees in front of the Holy Toe, I murmured a quiet prayer—quiet because I didn't want to wake up the hermit whose hut backed up to the shrine. I asked the saint, as fervently as I could, to keep his eye on the undead warriors I was about to make, and to destroy them and keep them from hurting anyone else if they ended up killing me at the moment of their creation.

  Back under the night sky, a few hundred yards from the shrine, I shook the teeth out of the bag and considered them by lamplight. I doubted that God, looking at the muck from which He formed Adam, had felt anything like my reluctance. But this was no divine creation—and I was fairly sure that, if I asked Joachim, he would tell me that humans should not try to make themselves like God by doing what I was about to do.

  Was this what the saint had warned me against? I didn't have much choice. I lined up the teeth and started on my spells.

  Count Basil's spells worked spectacularly here in the Cranky Saint's valley. As I spoke the slow, heavy syllables of the Hidden Language, the teeth stood up, transforming themselves with startling speed, from something I had wrenched out of a dragon's dead jaws into something which—at least when viewed through shadows—looked almost human. I added the spells my predecessor had worked out, to keep such creatures from dissolving in the morning sun. As the magic infused them they all shook, but then
went still again.

  They stood silently as though watching me, unliving, unbreathing, unmoving but ready to move. I shivered and stopped my spells, leaning against a beech and watching them in return. Basil had run together in his primer the spell to shape the creatures and the spell to activate them, but his version of the Hidden Language was close enough to what they taught at the school that I had spotted the transition point and emphatically stopped when I reached it.

  Almost indestructible, Basil's primer called them. But if mine were indestructible, then Elerius's warriors must be as well. Arming them would thus only make them dangerous to the castle knights, not to other creatures like them. And the whole point of risking my life and soul to make these creatures was to stop Elerius's.

  Well, if they couldn't stop the undead warriors now guarding Hadwidis's castle, then maybe they could immobilize them. Primordial muck was going to be necessary after all.

  I raised gobs of mud from along the edge of the river and slathered it all over my man-like dragon's teeth. But the mud would dry out. Stick-fast weed, that's what I needed. Down along the stream I went, looking with the lantern until I found a patch of weeds, still growing tangled and robust this late in the season. I plucked a double handful and hurried back, half-afraid the creatures would be gone, but they still stood silent and waiting. Again using magic, I ripped up the weeds and flung the pieces against the mud. A few words made the combination of leaves and mud not just sticky but very sticky—almost anything that touched it would be trapped.

  Again I paused, catching my breath after working so much magic so fast. The next obvious step was to march them down to the coast, but I felt a deep reluctance to put them into motion. Maybe the Cranky Saint had good reason to worry about me—I couldn't help but think how much easier all this would be if I could just use a demon's power to blast Elerius and his castle to smithereens, rather than having all the mess of trying to make a viable army out of dragon's teeth.