Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

by C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 06

  Not threaten me, just threaten Antonia?

  “Although the creatures like this that you and I initially encountered,” he continued, “were indeed made for war, I have shaped mine quite differently. For one thing, I have no dragons’ teeth, which all the old books agree work best for such creatures. They’re modeled on the same spells, of course, but mine are made for peaceful purposes. My intention is to teach them agriculture.”

  “Agriculture!” Maybe Elerius had lost his mind—but he sounded entirely rational.

  “Of course, it’s possible that I’ll have to use them as soldiers a few times while establishing peace throughout the West—or even try them out in the Eastern Kingdoms. But wizardry has less messy ways of stopping armies than creating other armies: that’s why I have additional plans for my creatures. The farmers in all the kingdoms always have to work so hard during harvest time. Once I’ve perfected the spells on these I can use them as additional field hands during busy periods. They’ll work without pay, of course, and even without food and rest. Think what a boon to the farmer this will be!”

  The metaphysics of making undead creatures from old bones, then turning them into slaves, was much too complex for me, but I had a pretty good guess what Joachim’s reaction would be.

  “I— I see,” I said slowly.

  “Maybe if you don’t want to help me with the Dragons’ Scepter,” Elerius suggested, turning to fly back to land, “you could at least give me a hand with my creatures. I know you studied the old magic yourself at one point, so you’re just the person to assist me. So far they’ve been a bit harder to govern than I had hoped, even violent, which is why I’ve had to keep them isolated on this island until I’m quite sure they’re safe.”

  Undead soldier-slaves who were in revolt even as they were created. The metaphysics didn’t seem complicated after all.

  “So you see I’m being perfectly open with you,” Elerius said as we landed back on the docks below the school. The harbor had become quiet now, other than distant notes of sailors’ songs. I leaned against a bollard to catch my breath. Sick horror had drained the strength from me. Useless to oppose him if I couldn’t even stand upright trying. “No secrets, merely an invitation that still stands. Perhaps you just need more time to think it over. After all, we don’t know how long—”

  He was interrupted by the sound of a bell ringing, a steady dark note tolling again and again. One of the City’s churches? But that didn’t sound like any church bell I knew.

  Then Elerius and I whirled to stare at each other in the faint light, both recognizing it at the same time. That was the bell that hung on top of the school, the bell that was rung only, and then for just three notes, when a group of wizards was graduating. The steady ringing could mean only one thing: the Master had died.

  And as we both jumped upward to fly back to the school I realized something else. I wasn’t going to defy his dying wishes after all.

  III

  The school gave the Master a Christian burial. There was no precedent for the funeral because he was the only Master the school had ever had. It was Elerius’s idea: part of his effort, I thought, to persuade the cathedral chapter that the wizards were a respectful and tractable group whose opinion ought to be consulted before they elected their new bishop. We laid him to rest not with the great dignitaries of the City, in the cathedral yard, but rather in a little patch of earth behind a church that stood in the shadow of the school. Elerius made me do the negotiations with the church’s priest over what kind of pious gift would be suitable in the circumstances. The priest pronounced the liturgy over the Master’s body, and the sexton planted white wooden crosses at his head and feet. I had no idea what the Master’s own wishes would have been; as a matter of professional pride, he and the other senior teachers at the school had always avoided any speculation on the afterlife or anything else that might imply that the Church’s authority was greater than theirs. But I thought that Joachim would have concurred.

  It was a horrible week. The students, most of whom had never had a chance to develop much feeling for the Master beyond fear and awe, milled around uncertainly, unsure what to do with the sudden freedom granted by cancelled classes. I came across Whitey and Chin, however, sitting in the library surrounded by piles of books that were probably for a project he had assigned them, weeping unrestrained. Many of the teachers too seemed overcome, disappearing into their studies for days at a time, emerging hollow-cheeked to find something to eat and then disappearing again.

  Once I came upon Zahlfast, who as second in command at the school should have been ensuring that some modicum of organization was maintained, standing leaning against the courtyard wall, staring at nothing with red-rimmed eyes. I did not think he even noticed me.

  Elerius alone remained calm and in control. He moved into Zahlfast’s office, from which he contacted the rest of the wizards around the Western Kingdoms to tell them the sad news, dealt with the tradesmen who supplied the school, and reassured students that classes would be starting again very soon.

  And I realized that I too would have to die. As long as I was alive Elerius would keep after me and, even worse, keep after my family, trying to ensure that I would help him or at least not work against him. If I merely disappeared he would search me out and for all I knew threaten to do horrible things to Antonia until I agreed to reemerge. If I didn’t actively want to assist him in running the world I had to thwart him. The only way I could possibly work against him would be to have him think I was dead.

  Staging my own death convincingly was going to be difficult. Elerius himself had once helped another wizard disappear by pretending to blow himself up, so he would be alert to the slightest hint that this might be a trick. I couldn’t let even Theodora know that I was still alive, much less King Paul, because the burden of having to keep a secret from Elerius, intent on worming it out of them, would be too great. But my heart contracted at the thought of having to put Theodora through the sorrow that all of us at the school were now feeling at the Master’s death.

  There was no time to hesitate. The teachers would shortly rally to start teaching their wizardry classes again and realize they needed to choose a new Master; the cathedral priests were already well behind schedule in electing their new bishop; and I thought the mayoral election was coming up shortly. Elerius was already regent—for the son no one but I knew was his—in the largest of the Western Kingdoms. The longer he held the other offices as well the harder it would be to overcome him. Now I just wished I had the faintest idea how to do so.

  “I’ve decided to try to find the Dragons’ Scepter,” I told Elerius. A partial truth is more believable than an outright lie, I reminded myself again.

  He had moved back into his own office from Zahlfast’s— he had been careful not to appear overeager by taking the Master’s study immediately. He looked up at me with calculating tawny eyes from the book he had been reading. “Is this to assist me, Daimbert, or to begin an assault against me?”

  “Oh, to assist you, of course,” I said, passing smoothly from partial truth to total falsehood. “That’s why I’m volunteering to go find it—to show you my good faith. I’m still not at all sure I’d be any good at running the school, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the last few days, and here I think you’re right. If wizardry is going to expand its authority, we need all the magic we can get. And I understand that the man who made this Scepter taught the wizard with whom our Master originally apprenticed.”

  He nodded slowly but did not seem as convinced as I would have liked. “I understand the Master used to have some sort of ledger or book about the Scepter,” he commented.

  “Really? Have you seen it? Is it in the library!?”

  It sounded forced in my own ears, but he seemed unsuspicious. “I’ve never seen it myself,” he said, shaking his head.

  “It’s not in the Master’s study now, but you might ask the librarian for assistance—if he’s coherent again.”

  There
was the slightest touch of irritation in his voice; Elerius had planned for a period of grief, but in his view that period should be over now. I also noted the admission that, even though he had not presumed to move in, he had taken the opportunity to see what the Master’s study might provide.

  It wasn’t clear to me whether he believed my sudden profession of support for him, or whether he was letting me go as some sort of test. But it didn’t matter. Once I was dead he could have no power over me. I took my air cart north, flying with the augmented speed I had taught it with Naurag’s spells. With few supplies beyond his book, I followed the coastline toward the land of dragons.

  Summer was nearly over, and low clouds and fog hung over the coastal hills. And autumn with its cold and its dank rain came to meet me as I moved north. I was kept busy as the days passed trying to keep the cart in clear air, but we repeatedly ran into clouds where it was almost impossible to see, and where beads of cold water formed on my hair and beard, making the whole cart clammy.

  Much of the trip I sat shivering, trying to stay out of the wind. And all the time I was flying I kept thinking of excellent reasons why I should delay my trip into the lairs and open jaws of the dragons. While the mangled remains of my body would certainly provide convincing proof of my death, there would be the distinct difficulty that I wouldn’t be alive to take advantage of the opportunity.

  The last coastal towns had long disappeared behind me, and even the last fishing villages, when I reached the range of mountains that separated the land of wild magic from the lands of men. To the east, the mountains rose as much as three miles up to jagged, ice-covered peaks. Up there the school maintained a watch station, to monitor magic creatures trying to head south into human realms—and presumably wizards heading north. But here the mountains sloped down into the water, before continuing out into the western sea as a series of empty, wave-drenched islands.

  The air made me feel cold down to my bones, but it carried with it an exhilarating sense of power, of magical ability that gave me the courage to keep trying—and even the belief that I might still succeed. Elerius couldn’t possibly have tracked me this far unless he was flying invisible behind me, which I doubted—it would severely restrict his activities back at the school. It was time to appear to die.

  First I landed and found a sharp stone to hack at the side of the air cart, making plausible-looking teeth marks, such as a dragon might leave. Thinking about Naurag and his purple companion, much less about the Master, who had given this cart to me, started to make me sad and sentimental, but I gritted my teeth and hacked on ruthlessly. When the air cart was looking fairly tattered it was time to think about blood stains.

  On the way north I had considered and rejected a dozen ways to imitate the look of real blood. None of them were likely to fool Elerius. Reluctantly I took my knife and forced the point against a finger tip. A single drop of blood appeared. I smeared it carefully on the inner side of the cart, but it didn’t even show. Several times during the trip, gathering wood for a fire or slicing up the dried meat I had brought along, I had scraped a hand or an arm, but the scrapes appeared all to have healed, not even leaving a scab I might pick. I could kill an animal and spread its blood around, I thought, but this region seemed devoid of animal life—even the plant life was limited to something with large, dusty-green leaves growing close to the ground. Besides, I didn’t trust Elerius not to be able to distinguish human from animal blood. After considering various parts of my body and trying to decide which one I might be able to spare, I finally worked up the nerve to make a cut through the skin of the back of the left arm. It took fifteen minutes and a lot of squeezing, but I managed to extract enough blood to spread thinly but fairly artistically over the air cart, creating a suggestion of someone struggling unsuccessfully against a dragon. A bloody hand print added a nice touch of verisimilitude.

  I gave the cart the magical commands to return it to Yurt and watched it flap away, feeling both sorrow and triumph. They would be grief-stricken at home when they thought me dead—or at least I liked to think they would be—but I was underway at last. Before Elerius became master of the world he would have to deal with me.

  Then I turned, set my jaw in determination, and started northward. Flying, I thought, would warm me. Before me, though still hundreds of miles away, lay the great valley of the dragons and, if Naurag’s spells had continued to work for all these centuries, the Scepter that would control the dragons. I had no idea how I would worm it out from under the dragons’ noses without being eaten first, but I was going to try.

  And as I flew, into the heart of great, unfocused magical forces, I began to imagine it might not be so difficult after all. I had Naurag’s spells—what more did I need? And if for some reason I couldn’t get hold of the Scepter, I told myself, then I always had a fallback position from which to oppose Elerius. I was fairly sure I could find an Ifrit in the East again, and, half-drunk on the magic through which I flew, I decided that I could surely persuade him that he owed me three wishes.

  I had flown for about an hour and was starting to feel like trying some spells to practice the greater and greater abilities I could feel coursing through me, when I abruptly paused and rubbed my eyes. Something bright purple flapped toward me, rapidly coming closer. Either I was hallucinating from loss of blood or else my air cart was approaching from before me, from the north.

  Had it somehow looped around by mistake and gotten ahead of me? I hovered in the air, trying a far-seeing spell— which worked far more easily than it ever did at home. I thought I had given the commands to the cart quite clearly: did this mean, I thought with an abrupt loss of the confidence I had felt seconds earlier, that Elerius had seen through me and was already blocking my plans before they started?

  But this wasn’t my air cart. It was not tattered, and overall it just didn’t look right—especially its head. The head had been left attached to the skin of the dead flying beast back when it was made into a cart, but the eyes had been sewn shut and the jaws wired together. Yet this head seemed alert and watchful, looking from side to side as it came. It jerked up sharply as it spotted me, and for a moment its wing-beats held the creature steady in one place, then it approached, slowly but as though very interested.

  This wasn’t my air cart, but something I had never seen before. It was a living purple flying beast.

  IV

  The flying beast made an interrogatory noise, apparently as surprised to see me as I was to see it. I dropped to the ground so as not to appear threatening. It circled me slowly in the air, its long neck craned for a better look. These creatures were born flying, I had been told, and from below I could see that its feet were extremely rudimentary; no wonder the wizards had had to attach wheels to them in making them into air carts.

  This creature had long fangs hanging from the corners of his jaw, which looked as if they could do serious damage if he wanted to bite me, but so far all he seemed to want was to look at me—and at the patch of vegetation in which I stood. I glanced downward and suddenly realized what these low-growing plants were over which I had been flying. They bore wild gourds, newly ripe.

  I reached down, plucked an especially large one, and tossed it upwards. The creature shot forward with one stroke of his wings and snapped it out of the air. Two quick crunches and he swallowed, then licked his lips with a long purple tongue and looked toward me expectantly. Apparently for a flying beast these gourds were fang-smacking good.

  Picking another, I rose into the air and cautiously approached. The flying beast opened his mouth wide, beating his wings hard in eager anticipation. I tossed the gourd from a distance of only a few yards, and again it disappeared into his maw.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked, keeping my voice low and friendly—the way I had often heard King Paul talk to his horses. “You love these gourds, and you’ve come here now that they’re ripe, but with your tiny feet do you find it hard to stand on the ground to eat them? Would you like me to pick you some more?�
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  He grunted at me and licked his lips again. I doubted he could comprehend human speech, but so far we understood each other just fine. I picked two more gourds, tossed him the first one, then slowly approached. He backed up a little, but after I tossed him the second and he had swallowed it down, he came slightly toward me. Again I picked a gourd and again I approached, wary in case he charged if feeling threatened, until I could reach out with one hand and touch his scaly purple neck. He gave a quiver but neither retreated nor attacked. I made friendly murmuring sounds, gave his neck a pat, and with the other hand put the gourd directly into his mouth. He backed away with great startled wing-beats that almost knocked me out of the air, but he swallowed all the same.

  It took the rest of the afternoon before I felt I had fully tamed the flying beast—or maybe he figured out that as long as he continued to play coy I would continue to pick and give him gourds. Antonia, I thought, would love him—I just hoped we all lived long enough so I could introduce my daughter to the purple beast. At last, when his belly was as round as a gourd itself, he gave me what I could have sworn was a friendly wink from one yellow eye, settled himself into a slow flying pattern a few feet above the ground, and went to sleep.

  I sat among stripped gourd vines, contemplating my “purple companion.” Naurag’s had flown even faster than dragons—at least until the larger and less maneuverable dragons had gotten up to speed. So far I hadn’t tried on this beast any of the commands in the Hidden Language which the long-dead wizard had detailed for me—and which we still used for the air carts. But I couldn’t help looking ahead, imagining myself zipping under dragon noses—even between dragon teeth as their jaws closed fractionally too late—shouting in triumph and waving the long-hidden Scepter. And then I would return to the City wielding it, a battalion of dragons at my back, and then I would explain to Elerius in words of one syllable that he was going to retire from active life instantly, and then—In the meantime, it was growing cold. I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself. This plan wouldn’t work very well if I froze to death before getting properly under way. There was nothing here with which to make a decent fire; green gourd vines wouldn’t cast much heat. I tucked my hands into my arm pits, stood up, and began to pace, thinking I might have to do so all night.