Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

by C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 06

  Who would think to look for the heiress to one of the largest of the Western Kingdoms working in a tavern in Caelrhon?”

  Elerius might. He certainly knew where Hadwidis had gone when she announced her intention of becoming a nun, and he could even now be checking to be sure she was still safely there.

  When he found out she was gone—especially if he got any hint from the abbess that the Cranky Saint might have his own plans for this girl—she would be in as much danger as I was.

  “Well, Hadwidis,” I said reluctantly, “you may need to postpone your career in the tavern. Because I’m going to take you with me.”

  Her head came up so fast that she bumped Naurag on the nose. “Really, Wizard? You mean it?” she cried in delight, though the firelight still reflected on rivulets of tears running down her cheeks.

  “I mean it,” I said, even more reluctantly. “But you’re coming as my daughter, not my lover. In fact, it might be good if we had a chaperone.” I could feel her tensing angrily under my arm, so I hurried on. “You need to think this through, Hadwidis. Whether you end up as queen or as a nun again, you’d be better off as a pure maiden. For that matter,” with a very forced effort at a chuckle, “don’t you think the taverns in Caelrhon would be more interested in hiring on a fresh young girl than someone a wizard had discarded?”

  She was starting to make angry muttering sounds, so I pulled myself away from her and leaned my head against Naurag’s warm flank. “Try to get some sleep. We’ll be starting before dawn, and we have one important stop to make before we leave this region.”

  I could hear her settling down behind me. Just as I was starting to doze she suddenly said, “By the way, where are we going?”

  “To the East,” I murmured sleepily. “To find an Ifrit.”

  “This will be great,” said Hadwidis definitively.

  Dawn was just washing out the eastern stars when Naurag swept up the hill toward the royal castle of Yurt. I left him and Hadwidis in the old king’s rose garden outside the walls—the late roses were all past, even the famous blue rose, but it was still too dark to have seen the colors anyway.

  Invisible, I flew over the battlements and down the courtyard, to where a few stone steps led up to Gwennie’s chambers. I paused outside her door, listening, but everything was silent. Cautiously I tried the handle. Gwennie had slid the bolt across inside, but a small spell quickly slid it back. Slowly I opened the door, almost silent on well-oiled hinges. Letting my invisibility spell dissolve, I snapped my fingers and said the two words to light the candle on her bureau.

  She stirred at the sudden light on her eyelids.

  “Gwennie,” I whispered. “Wake up.”

  She was awake in an instant, as any good castle constable should be, ready to face whatever emergencies arise. “What is it?” she said, blinking and sitting up.

  Then she recognized me. I saw the scream coming and stopped it just in time, with a tiny paralysis spell to her vocal chords. I didn’t dare use too much magic, for fear of alerting Elerius if he were still around, but I also didn’t want a dozen knights crashing in on us.

  “I’m not a ghost,” I said quickly. “I’m not even dead.” I let her have her voice back. “But I need your help.”

  Her breath came fast, but she managed to answer fairly steadily. “Then if you aren’t dead, why did your air cart come back all covered with blood and dragon bites?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said, listening again to hear if anyone else was stirring. “If you come with me I’ll tell you the whole thing. In fact, that’s why I’m here. To ask you to come with me.”

  “Come where?” she asked suspiciously. I knew what she was thinking, only half a minute awake and facing a man whose funeral she had just attended. I had heard the same stories when I was a child, of the spirits who return in the darkest part of the night, just before dawn, to draw the living away with them—

  “Take my hand,” I said, offering it. “Feel how solid I am. It was all a mistake.”

  And then she leaped up, smiling radiantly, and not only took my hand but hugged me hard, a startling experience since she had nothing on but a thin nightgown. “Theodora’s right here in Yurt! You’ll want to see her at once, though maybe you should try to surprise her less than you did me. And the bishop too! He’ll be so pleased—”

  I was starting to feel a desperate need of haste.

  Even after as exciting a day as yesterday, not everyone in the castle would linger long in bed, and I wanted to be out of here before anyone else arose. But Gwennie had pulled on a dressing gown and was dragging me out the door, toward the guest chambers where my wife and daughter would be staying.

  I managed to stop her. “Please, Gwennie, I don’t have time to explain, but I can’t tell Theodora I’m alive. It would put her in horrible danger. I need you to come with me.”

  “Why?” she demanded, starting to be suspicious again.

  “There’s a princess who needs someone to supervise her— and not the Princess Margareta!” I added hastily, seeing Gwennie’s face begin to go hard. There was no good way to explain it. “Please,” I said desperately. “Get some clothes on and come with me. I’m going to the East to find an Ifrit,” hoping this would be as appealing to her as it was to Hadwidis.

  “And we’d be gone a long time?” she said slowly.

  “It might be a very long time,” I agreed dully, wondering how long it would take to find Elerius again even if I did somehow manage to make an Ifrit obey me. All the stars were gone now, and from the kitchen, at the opposite end of the courtyard, I could hear the first faint clanking of pans.

  Gwennie gave a sudden wicked grin. “Then His Most Royal Majesty King Paul will just have to deal with life without a castle constable for a while. Give me five minutes.”

  She closed her door behind her, leaving me standing on the steps. Far across the courtyard I could see a small figure advancing rapidly toward me.

  I donned my invisibility spell again at once, but a voice spoke inside my head. “It’s no use trying to hide. I’ll just spot you again with Mother’s magic ring.” It was my daughter.

  She raced across the courtyard and sprang into my arms as soon as I was visible again. For a moment I just rocked back and forth, oblivious to everything else in the pleasure of holding her again when I had thought I never might. But then I pulled my face away from her soft hair to look at her. “Antonia,” I whispered, “how did you know I was here?”

  She smiled quickly but proudly as she whispered back, “I figured out how to set up a spell to detect someone entering the castle, and then I calibrated it specifically for Elerius and for you.” She must have felt my start of surprise, because she added as I released her, “He’s not here, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “But how did you do that?” I asked, low and urgent. “Detection spells can’t be calibrated for people.”

  She shrugged and gave me a saucy look. “Just shows that your school doesn’t know everything there is to know about magic. I’ll tell you sometime how I worked it out. And I was so glad yesterday to find out I was right about you! But did you really see a dragon, even if it didn’t eat you? Are you going to stay in Yurt now?

  Is it still a secret? And why are you here, outside of Gwennie’s chambers?”

  “I need her to come with me,” I said lamely, not wanting even to begin explaining about Hadwidis. “Nobody else can know yet that I’m alive. I’m trying to find and stop Elerius.”

  “Then I’ll come too,” said Antonia promptly.

  I put my hands on her shoulders, disconcerted to realize how tall she had become. “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” I said quietly. “Your mother would never forgive me.”

  “Then take her too.” Even in the faint dawn light my daughter’s eyes were bright. “We can both help you find Elerius. We’ll do a much better job than Gwennie could.”

  I shook my head. What was supposed to be an extremely brief stop at the castle seemed to be
dragging out forever.

  Any minute now Hadwidis on Naurag would come flying over the wall to see what was keeping me. “If both of you suddenly disappeared, Elerius would guess immediately that you must be with me. He’d know then I’m still alive, so I’d lose any element of surprise.”

  “So that’s why you let us think you were dead,” said Antonia approvingly. “Good idea. But,” suddenly troubled, “I hope I didn’t give you away, by saying in front of everybody that I was sure you were still alive.”

  “Elerius may have some suspicion, but as long as your mother appears convinced I’m gone, he won’t know for sure.

  That’s why we have to keep this secret from her—as well as everybody else. Would you want your friends here in the castle to be subjected to torture if Elerius discovered you’d gone, and thought the rest of them must know where we were?”

  But Antonia wasn’t worried about the rest of the castle. “Mother’s sad,” she said accusingly.

  “Then you’ll have to try to comfort her—” I started to say, when I heard the click of Gwennie’s latch.

  Just as the door opened Antonia thrust her hand into her pocket and disappeared. Gwennie came out, dressed for travel, and thumbtacked a note to her door. “There. I’ve said I’ve decided to spend some time with an old friend. It’s even true!”

  She took my arm with a smile. Smells of cooking were wandering down the courtyard now, and the sun would be up any minute.

  “Goodbye,” said my daughter’s voice inside my head. “Don’t go anywhere interesting without me.”

  Neither Antonia nor Paul would forgive me if they found out I had gone to look for an Ifrit and not taken them along.

  But then my chances of coming back successfully seemed so small that I was willing to risk their wrath. “Goodbye,” I said silently to Antonia. “Let’s go,” I said aloud to Gwennie. I took her firmly by the arm and rose into the air, over the battlements and back to my flying beast.

  Time to go seek help in the ancient magical lore of the East, accompanied by the suitably-chaperoned princess whom the Cranky Saint somehow thought could replace Elerius’s son.

  III

  The last time I had journeyed from Yurt to the East had been on horseback. The trip had taken months, through the Western Kingdoms, across the high mountains, through the constant wars and dark treachery of the Eastern Kingdoms, by ship to Xantium, overland again to the Holy Land, and finally beyond to the vast, uninhabited deserts where Ifriti still lived, almost as old as the earth.

  This trip was far shorter, even though Naurag could not fly nearly as fast with three on his back as he had flown coming south from the Land of Wild Magic. We followed the major rivers at first, paralleling the great pilgrimage and trade routes, south through the Western Kingdoms to the Central Sea, and then along its northern shore, east toward Xantium. From the air one could see hundreds of square miles at a glance, and without the waterways to follow we would have been lost at once. Autumn had been advancing rapidly in Yurt and Caelrhon, but as we went south we caught up with the summer, and found again, to Naurag’s delight, melons that were ripe.

  Gwennie accepted Hadwidis’s presence with only mild surprise. I introduced her as a princess who had once been a nun and now had no home, without going into detail about how Saint Eusebius had driven her from the nunnery in order to help me.

  Hadwidis now knew that I was Yurt’s royal wizard, but since Elerius couldn’t—I hoped—get to her while she was with me, her knowing my identity scarcely mattered. With another woman present—and several times Gwennie mentioned that I had a family as if this were perfectly normal and well-known—Hadwidis made no more impassioned attempts upon my virtue, which would have been a relief if the voice in the back of my mind hadn’t complained that her giving up so easily might have been a comment on my desirability. Gwennie, for her part, seemed to find it entirely natural that I should journey to the storied East with a runaway nun, which told me more about her attitude toward Yurt’s Royal Wizard than I felt I really needed to know.

  The two young women quickly became friends, but both maintained a certain reserve. It occurred to me that it was ironic that, although neither told the other this, both were running from the possibility of becoming queens: Hadwidis the queen of her father’s kingdom, by exposing her brother’s parentage, and Gwennie the queen of Yurt by marrying Paul. The thought crossed my mind as we followed the curving coast of the Central Sea that perhaps the Cranky Saint wanted King Paul to marry Hadwidis. She was, after all, a suitably high-born princess, with a much more exalted ancestry in fact than Paul’s own, and her time in and out of the nunnery could, with luck, all be excused as a girlish escapade.

  Then I glanced at Gwennie’s face, where the enjoyment of the adventure could not entirely conceal a constant low level of indignation and sorrow, and decided not to bring this up.

  We came at last to Xantium harbor, an expanse of water as big as the biggest lakes of the West, almost completely cut off from the Central Sea by high rocky cliffs. On the ends of the twin promontories guarding the narrow passage into the harbor stood high towers, watching with both human eyes and magic. The harbor teemed with ships, commercial vessels, pleasure barges, and fishing skiffs, most with their sails rigged differently than those in the great City back home. Mixed with the salt in the air came the scent of oranges, halfway between tangy freshness and rot.

  “The Princess Margareta said she wanted to visit Xantium for the silk dresses and ointments,” said Gwennie, clinging to my belt and leaning past me for a good look. “Should we maybe bring her home a present?” I couldn’t tell if she were being sarcastic.

  Naurag’s steady wing beats took us across the harbor to the city itself, which sprawled for miles behind its walls.

  Faint wailing reached us from the minarets below; it must be the hour at which those who followed the Prophet were called to prayer. I looked down at the tangle of streets, plazas, and alleys, the tall white spires and huts built virtually on top of each other, the palaces, inns, lawcourts, churches, and tenements, and decided it would be hopeless trying to find Kazalrhun’s house after twenty years.

  “Kazalrhun is—or used to be—the greatest of Xantium’s mages,” I told Hadwidis and Gwennie.

  “Oddly enough, he’s always been well-disposed toward those from Yurt. He used to operate out of the Thieves’ Market; I’m going to see if I can find him there.”

  The Thieves’ Market I could locate even if I couldn’t find Kazalrhun’s house. Over the hill from the harbor, toward the back walls of the city, was a wide open area, packed thick with booths. We hovered high over it, looking down at a web of striped awnings stretched over booths where it seemed everything possible was for sale, from food to jewelry to weapons to clothing to peacock feathers to brightly-colored birds in cages.

  I wrapped all of us in an invisibility spell as we descended, not wanting to cause a panic. Voices speaking in a dozen different accents rose to meet us, accusing, cajoling, reasoning, and shouting. A swirl of magic rose too from the booths, spells to improve the appearance of the merchandise and counter-spells to detect hidden flaws, all of it with the wild strangeness that eastern magic has to anyone trained in the West. Hadwidis had been silent since we first reached the harbor, but now she said, “I’ve changed my mind, Wizard. I’m not going to work in a tavern in Caelrhon after all. I’m going to be a thief in Xantium.”

  I set Naurag down in a somewhat open spot in a corner of the market. Heat radiated up from the paving stones. “It would be best for you two to stay here,” I said a little uneasily, with visions of slave-traders trying to snatch two attractive young women. “I think I can make the invisibility spell last a while—”

  But they were having none of it. “We didn’t come to Xantium to cower in a corner,” said Gwennie firmly.

  Though I couldn’t see her, I could imagine her frowning with fists on her hips. “We’ll take Naurag with us—nobody will bother two women who have what looks like a small
purple dragon flying right over their heads! And besides, didn’t you tell us that the Thieves’ Market is one of the few places in Xantium properly patrolled against pickpockets? I don’t know about you, but I’m not leaving Xantium without doing some shopping!”

  Reluctantly I let my spell dissolve. There were startled shouts around us as the purple flying beast abruptly became visible, and a number of people left their booths to rush toward us—then, when Naurag yawned, showing his fangs, to press back.

  “What marvel is this?” “Where did it come from?”

  “Is it real or illusion?” “No illusion, but is it an automaton?”

  We stayed close together, next to Naurag. I was ready with the words of the Hidden Language to get us out of here in case the crowd proved threatening. In a moment, however, our novelty wore off. The boys who had been at the front of the crowd, staring, were the first to leave, playfully throwing pebbles at each other.

  “It’s just one of those western mages,” someone pronounced. I realized he meant one of the wizards from what we called the Eastern Kingdoms, though they were still west from here. “He’s probably trying to sell it. They all have shoddy merchandise.” It took a lot, I thought, to impress the thieves through whose market funneled much of the treasures from around the Central Sea.

  After a few more minutes I let Gwennie and Hadwidis go, pushing their way through the crowds, exclaiming over the merchandise in the booths they passed and ignoring the looks they received. Naurag floated lazily ten feet above them. I meanwhile set off to find a booth that sold automatons.

  Xantium’s greatest mage had always specialized in self-propelled magical creatures, some so realistic it was hard to tell them from creatures of flesh and blood, except that Kazalrhun’s tended to be larger and more brightly colored than life. Others, however, were little more than simple self-propelled tools. If he was here, the appearance of a strange flying beast had not been enough to rouse him from his booth. When I heard the nightingale’s song rising melodiously over the midday babble of the market place, and saw the bird perched on a silver-plated bough, eyeing passers-by with a jeweled eye, I knew I had found the right spot.