Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

by C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 06

  I wondered briefly if I ought to reappear now just to save everyone all the embarrassment of going through this unnecessarily, but I stayed invisible, leaning against the door jamb.

  Very soon I was going to have to take off for the East, or in whichever direction my so-far stubborn brain eventually came up with, and unless I was very lucky this funeral would indeed be necessary—just premature.

  “We are gathered here,” Joachim said when the general rustling had died down, “to remember the life and commemorate the death of Daimbert, Yurt’s Royal Wizard. But he was much more than the wizard here, though he filled that function well for over thirty years. He was a teacher, a husband, a father, and a friend.”

  I looked quickly toward Zahlfast, who sat looking sober and unsurprised. Elerius must have filled him in on my family situation when they were invited to my funeral. Any disapproval Zahlfast might have felt had been erased by my supposed death.

  “It is with heavy hearts,” Joachim continued, “that we commend Daimbert’s soul to God. His strength and his abilities were always great, but he also gave them a moral dimension that meant he never sought power for its own sake. And his abilities were heightened by his friendship—his reaching out to others. He made friends, real friends, more easily than most, and those friends were as great a source of strength to him as his spells. Wizards, he often told me, live much longer than ordinary people. So I never expected that I should one day be here, officiating at the memorial service of the man I loved most in all this world.”

  The bishop stopped as though not trusting his voice to continue. There was a faint sniffling from several spots on the benches, but otherwise the room was silent. I felt both guilty to be putting them all through this and enormously gratified.

  “When an old man dies,” Joachim continued after a minute, “we grieve for ourselves, because of how much we miss him. When a man dies in his prime, we grieve also for all he might have done on this earth, which must now remain forever undone. But none of us can predict the day of death—ours or another’s. Nor can we speak with assurance of the status of anyone’s soul, for that is known only to God. But in this case we can have little doubt that Daimbert, approved by mortals and by saints alike, has gone to a better place. He has left us behind in the world of flesh, where power such as that he wielded so gracefully can too easily lead to greed and ambition, to sin and false desires.”

  Actually I hadn’t gone anywhere, but I was interested to notice Elerius and Zahlfast shifting uneasily. From them my eyes slid to the gilded statue of Saint Eusebius, Yurt’s patron saint, beside the altar. He was depicted here as in the days before a marauding dragon ate every part of him but his toe: dressed as a hermit and leaning on his staff. I still didn’t like it that the saint had sent Hadwidis looking for me, especially as I wasn’t totally convinced that that meant he approved of me, as the bishop seemed to think all saints must.

  Joachim opened the Bible and read, his voice low and somber. “Man is born to trouble as the sparks to fly upwards… As for man, his days are as grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more… He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.” He lowered the book and looked out across the congregation—directly at me, but his eyes were unseeing. “So the Prophet, in his despair, spoke of humanity unredeemed.”

  The sniffling on the benches had grown louder. It was not from Theodora, sitting in the front next to the king, for her pale cheeks were dry. Nor was it Antonia, her chin wrinkled in what looked more like anger than grief. My principal mourner appeared to be the Lady Maria.

  Joachim flipped forward in his Bible. “But that was before the coming of Christ,” he said, and he read again, his voice stronger now. “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live… O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? … I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered… For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face… And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death.”

  He turned slowly then and lit the candles on the altar. Their light flickered and glinted on the crucifix and the gilded statue of the Cranky Saint.

  But when he turned around again, Joachim looked old, his hair more streaked with gray than I remembered and his cheeks lined. Only his eyes, enormous and deep-set, burned with the same fire that had always been in them. “Christ came to redeem us from sin and death,” he said slowly, “to tell us that the grave is not the end, that we may all yet meet again. We can only pray to believe this.”

  When the bishop fell silent and looked unlikely to speak again, King Paul rose from his place. “I think it would be good,” he said, his voice rough, “if those of us who knew Daimbert best were to say a few words in his memory, so that the good he did may not be forgotten. I shall always revere him as the man who saved the castle of Yurt from black magic more than once over the years. I rewarded him with the Golden Yurt, slight recompense for the mortal danger he put himself into for all our sakes. And all the men who receive that reward in future generations will know that they have a difficult model to emulate.”

  Paul turned toward the wizards then. “It is because of my respect for wizardry that I have invited these two old friends of his from the City to be here.” He spoke firmly, as though refuting some argument against their presence—had either the bishop or Theodora tried to exclude them? “In Daimbert’s honor, I have rejected any insinuation that wizards should not be governors of men. Nor shall I participate in any force joined to oppose wizardry. But it is not for Daimbert’s use of magic that I shall principally remember him. I shall remember him as a counselor, a companion, and a friend.”

  Something was going on here that I had clearly missed— was he referring to Elerius’s role as regent of his kingdom?

  Gwennie rose then when the king stopped speaking.

  “Daimbert was my friend as well,” she said, a quiver in her voice. “Man or woman, great lord or servant—it made no difference to him.” She took a deep breath as though intending to say more, but instead put her handkerchief over her eyes and sat down quickly.

  Paul turned to look at Theodora, as though inviting her too to say a few words. She shook her head, almost imperceptibly, and the king murmured something low and put a sympathetic arm around her shoulders.

  The duchess rose then. “I’ve worked with at least four different wizards over the years, both royal and ducal, and Daimbert was by far the best. I’m horribly sorry he’s gone now.

  If it hadn’t been for him I might never have married,” with a tender look for her husband, “so I have a personal reason to thank him, but there was always more. Daimbert had spunk.”

  But I was distracted from listening by watching Theodora and the king. I wasn’t at all sure I liked him sitting with his arm around her in such a proprietary way. Gwennie, looking toward

  them with narrowed eyes, her handkerchief forgotten, had noticed too.

  It meant nothing, I told myself sternly, being only an expression of Paul’s affectionate nature. But the nagging voice pointed out that Theodora was now, as far as she knew, a widow, while Paul was the same man who had already proposed marriage to two different women essentially back-to-back. Maybe he thought the third time would be the charm. Well, I thought with a small smile, he’d have to ennoble her first, and I guessed that Theodora’s reaction to that would be the same as Gwennie’s.

  A number of people looked toward the two wizards when the duchess had finished, clearly expecting to hear from them next. They glanced at each other uncertainly, hesitating, but instead the Lady Maria bounced to her feet.

  “I knew the wizard Daimbert before a lot of you were even born,” she announced, “back when I was just a slip of a thing myself.” She had actually been a mature woman at the time I first arrived in Yurt, but I
was certainly not going to correct her. “When he came I was at a difficult stage, but he acted as my knight, polite and gentle, guiding me both in the ways of judgment and the ways of the heart.” I remembered this somewhat differently. “And everybody’s been talking about their sorrow and the hope for a better place, but I want to say that it’s just terrible that he’s dead! And I want to find out why, how he let his guard down, what kind of dragon ate him, and if somebody sent him up there on purpose to get eaten!” It sounded as though my ruse with the air cart had worked perfectly, though I wasn’t sure I liked the direction her ideas were taking.

  Lady Maria suddenly gave a little scream, cutting off the flow of her words and making everyone jump. “Look! Look there!” she cried. “Saint Eusebius is telling us the real culprit!” And to my amazement I saw that the statue of the Cranky Saint had taken one gilded hand off his staff and was pointing. “It’s that wizard who killed our Daimbert!”

  Maria shrieked. And indeed the saint was pointing straight at Elerius.

  The chapel was filled with startled exclamations as everyone started to push forward for a better look, then stopped, overcome with awe. I myself was so surprised that for a moment I almost lost track of my invisibility spell. The air was suddenly heavy with the odor of roses—months out of season.

  Elerius was so taken aback that open shock showed on his face, though I didn’t think anyone but me noticed. He would have had little contact over the years with the supernatural, only with natural magic: he had dealt with a demon once, but never with saints, who might interfere less than did the dark forces in human affairs, but whose power, when they used it, was such to make all the might of wizardry laughable.

  The bishop alone approached the statue, cautiously and reverently. “The saint, the patron of this kingdom, has indeed sought to tell us something important,” he said at last.

  “Perhaps he is merely admonishing the wizard Elerius always to remember the self-sacrifice and the rejection of absolute power which Daimbert demonstrated in his life. We must pray to understand the saint’s true meaning.”

  “I just told you his true meaning!” snapped the Lady Maria, completely uncowed. “That wizard told us himself he sent our Daimbert up north to the land of dragons, on some ‘secret’ mission. Why else would he have done it if not to make sure the dragons would eat him?” She whirled toward King Paul. “I’ll never understand why, sire, you thought it appropriate to invite the obvious murderer to our Daimbert’s funeral!”

  But before either Paul or Joachim, must less Elerius, could answer her, a high voice piped up, quavering with shyness and emotion, yet absolutely determined. “Maybe the saint is just telling us to ask Elerius where my father has gone,” my daughter exclaimed. “Because I know he’s not dead.”

  Elerius, his composure fairly well recovered, spoke then for the first time. “I most certainly did not kill your father, Antonia,” he said smoothly, “as I had hoped he would help in the difficult task of making the transition from the old Master’s governance of the wizards’ school to whatever new order we decide upon. As acting Master, I require all the assistance possible.” Still only acting Master, I noticed; maybe the other wizards wouldn’t be as pliable as he hoped. “But I am interested to know why you think he is still alive.” There was more in his words than an adult’s kindness to a bereaved child. Could he somehow have detected my presence?

  “Because I’m a witch,” Antonia answered, between pride and mortification. “Witches can tell what’s happened to people they love—though I must say my mother has given up awfully easily!”

  “Antonia, dearest, we saw the blood and the toothmarks—” But Theodora did not have a chance to finish.

  King Paul sprang to his feet. “You have deceived me, Wizard!” he almost shouted at Elerius. “I did not want to believe it, for I knew that Daimbert had always thought well of his friends at the wizards’ school. And I did not credit King Lucas of Caelrhon and his stories about how all the wizards are now planning to eliminate all the kings, or how we have to fight them—Lucas came up with some story like that a dozen years ago, and it was all nonsense then. But this time he may be right!”

  Is that what I had seen in Caelrhon? Troops massing to march against Elerius’s kingdom—or even against the wizards’ school itself?

  “For Daimbert warned me,” Paul continued darkly. “He made a veiled suggestion that ‘something’ might happen at the wizards’ school, something that would require me to hire a new wizard. At the time I paid little attention. But I see now that he knew he was going into mortal danger when he returned there.”

  Zahlfast answered for Elerius, who seemed more surprised than angered at this accusation. “But wizards do not kill each other,” he told the king. “Not since the Black Wars has there been a single instance of one wizard murdering another, as much as we might sometimes quarrel. What possible motive could Elerius have for wanting to murder his friend?”

  Paul, deflated, did not answer, but Theodora spoke for him. “There was in fact a very good motive. I have told no one of this before.”

  “Except me,” put in Antonia. “And in fact I was the one who found it!”

  They had the full attention of everyone in the room— including me. Theodora reached into her pocket. “Here I have a letter from the late Master of the school, naming Daimbert as his successor. He was too modest to tell any of us—the letter was hidden in the back of a drawer, where Antonia and I found it as we were going through his effects. But Elerius must have known—and killed him because of it.”

  “Except that he’s not dead,” put in Antonia, but no one was listening.

  For the first time that I could remember, Elerius was genuinely dumbstruck. This revelation that he had not been the Master’s favorite, coming so close after the pointing statue, hit him unprepared. Zahlfast snatched the letter from Theodora, and several other people craned over his shoulder to read the Master’s shaky hand.

  That’s done it, I thought. I had faked my own death knowing that Elerius would want to manipulate me in life. But with this letter he now had a genuine motive to find and kill me.

  The bishop spoke into the silence. “The statue of Saint Eusebius is no longer pointing,” he said. “He seems satisfied that we have received his message.”

  Everyone had shifted away from Elerius, even Zahlfast, leaving a wide empty space around him. “The statue means nothing,” he said harshly. “Maybe the lady just imagined she saw it move. Or maybe somebody moved it by magic,” with a scowl for Theodora.

  But then he took a breath, straightened his shoulders, and I could see him becoming calm and reasonable again through sheer will. “And this letter is not the startling document you all seem to think it is. I’m sure the Master was only here confirming something I had already determined for myself: that Daimbert and I should jointly head the wizards’ school. I know that my own abilities are such that no other candidate will presume to present himself to oppose me, but I also wanted Daimbert, with his flair for improvisation, to assist in my tasks. Doubtless the Master worried that the other wizards might feel uncomfortable with having someone as their co-head who had as weak an academic background as Daimbert did, and that is why he thought this letter was necessary.

  Didn’t Daimbert tell you he had agreed to rule jointly with me?”

  “No,” said Theodora and Joachim together, clearly not believing a word of it—though I could have told them that parts were true.

  But Zahlfast’s reaction was the most pronounced.

  “You cannot decide for yourself, Elerius, that you are going to head the wizards’ school, with or without a co-ruler! We have yet to elect the man to replace the Master, and you cannot simply assume it will be you!”

  Elerius’s peaked eyebrows gave a sharp twitch; he had miscalculated, something he rarely did, and he knew it.

  “I have been second in command at the school for years,” Zahlfast continued, almost in a growl, his face close to the other’s. “Yet you
do not see me making any such presumption!” With an open quarrel between powerful wizards, this was going to be the liveliest funeral Yurt had ever seen. “I would have thought your position as regent for your kingdom would have disqualified you for the permanent leadership of the school—especially since you have been widening your activities lately with your campaign for City mayor. I cannot speak for the other wizards, Elerius, as you seem to think you can, in believing that they will all choose you: but I can certainly speak for them in saying that you are presuming far too much!”

  Antonia, watching them, was again playing with something in her pocket. She took it out, and it glinted a moment in the candlelight. My attention was momentarily jerked away from the two wizards, for I recognized it. Antonia was holding her mother’s old ring of invisibility.

  And then she slipped it on. Normally one invisible person cannot see another—in a room full of wizards practicing their invisibility spells one would see nothing but shadows. But I could still see my daughter, seeming to shimmer slightly around the edges as she tossed back her braids.

  Everyone else was staring at the two wizards.

  Antonia looked straight at me and slowly started to smile.

  I raised a finger to my lips. Theodora’s ring not only made the wearer invisible but, because it had a spell to reveal that which is hidden carved into the gold, it allowed the wearer to see through others’ spells of invisibility. Antonia smiled wider and nodded, a finger to her own lips.

  Then she slipped back into visibility, just as her mother took her sharply by the arm, muttering, “Give me that ring, now! I told you not to play with it.”

  While I had been distracted, Elerius and Zahlfast had clearly exchanged further remarks, because both were now flushed.