Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

by C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 06

  When up and down had reasserted themselves, I opened my eyes gingerly. It was light again, and we were no longer in the strange, empty hall beneath Xantium’s cemetery.

  Instead we were on a sunny hillside, amid the tumbled ruins of what might once have been a temple. A few statues still stood upright—next to us a carved creature with the body of a woman but the head of a dog. A hundred yards away, sheep grazed on sparse grass. A sharp peak a few miles distant thrust into the sky. The Ifrit set us down, relatively carefully. He looked even bigger here, out in the open, than he had in the hall to which I had inadvertently summoned him. My legs collapsed under me, and the two black dogs rushed to press themselves against me.

  “Time to start amusing me,” said the Ifrit. “I think I shall have you work magic. You mages always claim to know so much magic, though I have never been particularly impressed by anyone since Solomon. Go ahead. Make this hillside dissolve into the sea.”

  Part Six The Ifrit

  I

  This was all Kazalrhun’s fault. At some point in the last twenty years he had tried to master the Ifrit and had reached a standoff: both respected the other, and neither would bother the other, even though the mage still had a means to summon the Ifrit if he wished. So he had decided to let me try western magic, with the thought that if I succeeded, then he would have an authority over an Ifrit no other eastern mage had ever had, and if I failed, then at least he wasn’t the one who ended up dead. And to think that I had told Hadwidis and Gwennie that Kazalrhun was “well-disposed” toward those from Yurt!

  “Um, why exactly do you want this hillside to dissolve into the sea?” I asked, when the Ifrit seemed to be waiting expectantly. What he had just suggested was far beyond my powers, probably beyond the powers of all the wizards at the school working together. If I sold my soul, the supernatural forces of darkness could doubtless dissolve an entire mountain if they felt like it, but I doubted my soul would bring that much on the market these days. “How about if I do some tricks for you instead?”

  “What do you mean, tricks? I do not appreciate being tricked by you little mages.”

  I rejected the idea of tricking the Ifrit by transmogrifying him into a frog. It probably wouldn’t work any better than it would with a dragon. “I mean I’ll create exciting things for you to look at,” I babbled. “See, I can make this dragon—” I was working fast, and my illusory purple dragon looked a lot more like Naurag than a real dragon.

  I didn’t get a chance to finish it anyway. The Ifrit stamped an enormous green foot onto my illusion. “You aren’t listening, little mage. I do not want to see dragons! I want to get rid of this hillside and all its sheep.”

  “Just tell me why,” I said, stalling, “to be sure that I get rid of it in the way you wish.” The hillside, dotted with stones and sheep, seemed perfectly innocuous in the morning sun.

  The Ifrit picked me up between thumb and forefinger and dangled me in front of his face, where I had anexcellent view of his great yellow teeth. “You talk a lot for something so little. I want to drive the roc away, of course.”

  “The roc? What’s that?” If something would just make sense for a moment, I might be able to think of what to try next.

  “You’re awfully stupid for a mage,” the Ifrit commented. “The roc is a very big bird, of course. He makes his nest on top of that peak. These are the sheep on which he feeds.” He pointed, in case I had as little idea what a sheep was as what a roc was. “If his sheep were gone he’d have to go elsewhere, and I could find out what he’s gathered in his nest. Rocs like to collect things, and I expect some of what he has belongs to me.”

  How could an Ifrit be intimidated by a big bird?

  But then I spotted motion off toward the peak and stared. I should have realized that if an Ifrit called something “very big,” it would have to be truly gigantic.

  The bird soaring toward us must have had a wing-span of fifty yards. It flew with startling speed—faster than even the greatest dragon. The wind from its wing-beats, reeking with carrion, blew even the Ifrit’s greasy hair around. Still held in the Ifrit’s grip, I looked up at it in horror. It was a dull black except for its naked head, colored bright orange. It screeched at the Ifrit, then dove and hooked one of the sheep in a single talon. The rest of the flock scattered in panic from under the enormous shadow.

  Then it was gone, flying back toward its nest. I realized I had been holding my breath and slowly let it out again. If anything could successfully tangle with an Ifrit, I thought, this creature could. Kazalrhun might have had more success recruiting its assistance than he was likely to have with mine.

  “Well?” the Ifrit demanded. “Are you going to do it? Are you going to stop asking foolish questions and dissolve this hill into the sea?”

  “I have a better idea,” I said brightly.

  “Better” was probably an overstatement, but at least it was an idea. “Rather than driving the roc away by destroying its sheep, I’ll slip up in secret to its nest. That way I can find anything of yours it may have taken.”

  The Ifrit gave me a sour look. “I know your plan. You tricky mages are all alike. You’re intending to keep everything the roc has for yourself.” For such a stupid creature, he had surprisingly good insights sometimes.

  He thought for a moment, absently-mindedly squeezing me tighter, then slowly started to smile. “But if you go up there, and a nasty place a roc’s nest is, too, then I won’t have to! Well, little mage, I’ll let you go, but I’m keeping your dogs until you come back. That way I’ll be sure there’s no trickery!”

  He bent over to set me down and stroked the heads of the terrified dogs with one finger. “My wife used to like dogs,” he added, almost sentimentally.

  I looked again toward the peak and saw the roc starting this way again, clearly visible even at the distance of several miles. It must have young birds in its nest, with gigantic appetites it had to satisfy. With a sinking feeling I wondered if it also had a mate someplace near, perhaps one even bigger.

  “Gwennie! Hadwidis!” I called, trying to make it sound as though I were addressing hounds, so the Ifrit wouldn’t suspect. “Round up those sheep and get them out of the way!”

  Gwennie and Hadwidis, delighted to have an excuse, fled from the Ifrit. Barking wildly and racing back and forth, inefficiently for sheepdogs though not doing badly for young women, they managed to stampede the sheep, which had just started grazing again. They all disappeared over the hill together while I wrapped myself in a spell of illusion.

  “This is fairly amusing,” the Ifrit admitted, admiring the effect. “I didn’t know you little mages could look like sheep.”

  Covered with illusory wool, I flew toward the center of the hillside, below the ruined temple, where the sheep had been a moment before. The roc screeched again at the Ifrit as it stooped toward where its sheep should be. I was the only one there. It decided to take me. I managed to time my jump so that the talon, thick as a spear, passed under me rather than through me. Hanging on desperately, I was swept up into the air with a few great wing-beats, as the roc headed back toward its peak. If such unnatural creatures as rocs and Ifriti, I thought, would just stay in the magical lands of the north rather than cluttering up civilized lands and making trouble for well-meaning wizards, life would be substantially easier.

  I smelled the nest before I saw it. A reek compounded of carrion and birdlime wafted toward me. The roc sailed over some towering cedars, no more than small bushes to it, and then, wide wings fluttering, settled toward its nest. It was a tangle of huge logs, some with the leaves still on, stained yellow and white and draped with the remains of sheep, goats, and other animals I didn’t care to identify. Stones and metal objects glittered from the interstices, but I had no time for close examination. Amid the bones and branches were three baby rocs. Nestling birds, all eyes and beaks and disordered pin-feathers, are always ugly. Newly-hatched rocs proved to be as much uglier than standard as their parents are bigger than standard. Squ
awking fiercely, they jostled each other and opened their beaks for a bite of sheep. I turned myself invisible just in time. The parent roc opened its talons and dropped me toward those open mouths. With a quick spell, I kept myself from falling and darted over to the edge of the nest. The baby birds screamed in frustration when the “sheep” vanished from in front of their beaks. The adult roc settled itself, sending the whole nest creaking and swaying, and looked around in surprise. Then it started examining its nest, a log at a time, turning over the branches and slicing at them with its great hooked beak. It appeared as if it were hunting me by feel and by smell. In which case, invisibility wouldn’t work for long. I waited until the roc’s head was turned the other way and dropped my invisibility spell for a new illusory appearance. When the roc turned toward me again, there were not three but four baby rocs in its nest. It was not the most realistic illusion I had ever done, but it was the best I could manage on a few seconds’ notice.

  Someone had once told me birds can’t count, and I prayed it was true. The roc’s enormous yellow eye fixed me, and I tried waggling my immature wings to give an air of verisimilitude. The monstrous orange head bent down, and for a horrified second, as the great hooked beak came closer, I thought my illusion hadn’t worked at all. But the roc instead seemed to feel parental concern for me. I had been perched on the very edge of the nest, and it now used the side of its beak to jostle me back toward the center, where I would be safe from falling. Concentrating on keeping my illusion going, I let myself be jostled. As half-decayed—or possibly regurgitated?—meat smeared against me, I thought that at least I must now smell like everything else in the nest.

  Since there seemed to be no sheep here and the three genuine baby birds were still protesting, the parent roc rose again. The backwash from its wings pressed all of us down. As it soared away, I scrambled through the tangle of branches in search of what I had seen glittering there. I had a few minutes to find whatever the Ifrit wanted before the roc came back.

  It looked as though it had, like a magpie, picked up anything shiny that caught its eye. I ignored the swords and bits of armor that were scattered throughout the nest but filled my pockets with shiny rocks—hard to tell, crusted with birdlime as they were, if they were precious stones or just flecked with mica. I tossed scraps of colored cloth aside, rejected a collection of bronze amphoras, and then saw something that winked like gold. It was under a heavy log. Letting my illusory nestling appearance dissolve from off my back, I applied a lifting spell to the log, just enough to use magic to snatch the object up.

  There was a squawk directly behind me. I whirled around to see the three young rocs glaring at me suspiciously. Each of them was appreciably bigger than I was. They might be too young to fly, but those beaks were sharp. Madly I tried to reassemble my disintegrating appearance of a newly-hatched bird. They did not seem impressed. The one in the lead lifted a foot where the baby talons were already sharp and pushed. I lifted into the air just too late to keep my leg from being wrenched between branches of the nest. I gave a completely un-roc-like cry of pain, finding it impossible to keep my illusion going as I jerked the leg free and moved rapidly backwards. I was still trying with magic to hang onto whatever object I had just picked up, plus the theoretically valuable stones now starting to work their way out of my pockets. The nestlings advanced again. Human or baby roc, they didn’t want me in their nest.

  My rather limited knowledge of the natural history of birds flashed through my mind. I had the vague memory that in many species the nestlings would drive from the nest any of their number that seemed small or weak. As a baby bird I must seem remarkably defective. All three aimed their beaks at me.I sprang back again, just in time. “That’s fine,” I told them from a safe distance. “If you don’t want me in your nest, I don’t want to be here either.” I took a quick glance over my shoulder and saw, off in the distance but quickly coming closer, the roc returning. It must have found one of its scattered sheep—and I fervently hoped not one of the black dogs.

  The Ifrit was just going to have to be satisfied with what I’d already collected. I shot away from the nest and hid among the cedar trees until the roc’s great shadow had passed overhead. I tried moving my leg experimentally to find out if it was broken or just strained, but it hurt too much to tell. Then, the squawks of the now-satisfied baby rocs ringing in my ears, I flew as fast as I could back toward the ruined temple where I had left the Ifrit.

  But what was this I was holding? I looked down as I flew at the golden object, the last thing I had picked out of the nest. Alone of everything I had grabbed, it was clean of filth. It seemed to be a circular plate, about six inches across, carved with symbols I didn’t recognize, and attached at the back to a sturdy handle. It looked like nothing so much as an oversize signet, for impressing a seal in wax. The Ifrit was seated cross-legged on the grass when I returned, seemingly absorbed in two tiny creatures. As I landed on my good leg a short distance away I realized they only appeared tiny in contrast to his size. It was the black dogs.

  “Now roll over,” the Ifrit was saying. “Sit up! And beg! Good girl. Speak! Roll over again.”

  Gwennie and Hadwidis were rolling and sitting for their lives.

  I shuffled the contents of my pockets quickly and flew forward. “I brought back everything of yours from the roc’s nest,” I said loudly and confidently. I sat down in front of him as casually as I could, not about to let him see I was injured. “You may want to clean these up a little, but here they are.” I spread the stones I had gathered out on the grass by the Ifrit’s foot, retaining only the gold signet.

  He turned toward me, irritated. “These dogs are much more amusing than you are, little mage,” he said accusingly. “They’re very smart and understand everything I say.”

  They were also going to kill me for leaving them as dogs for so long, even though I had a very good reason. They flopped down, panting, in the shadow of the Ifrit’s knee.

  “You are also filthy,” added the Ifrit. But he bent, interested, over the stones and stirred them with a stick. After a minute he gave a disgusted snort. “Diamonds and rubies and emeralds. Is this all you could find?”

  “The roc had some brightly-colored cloth,” I offered. “And there were weapons and armor, some of it pretty rusty.”

  “Nothing of mine,” said the Ifrit dismissively. “Are you sure I have to keep you safe? I told you to work the simplest magic, and you wouldn’t, and now you have tried to keep me from getting back my rightful property from the roc. I ought to just crush you, Yurt or no Yurt.”

  II

  The sound of barking interrupted us before I could find out whether the Ifrit was just threatening or was deadly serious. Real sheepdogs tore up the hill toward us, furious. I was just thinking that if they were supposed to be guarding the sheep they had been doing a remarkably poor job, when they launched themselves at Gwennie and Hadwidis.

  Hadwidis, the dog with the nearly bare scalp, was totally unprepared. The sheepdogs’ rush knocked her from her feet, and one sprang for her throat. But Gwennie recognized the danger and reacted at once. With a great growl she leaped in front of Hadwidis, barking defiance. For one moment, surprised by her fierceness, the sheepdogs fell back, then they growled and went for her.

  It was impossible to sort out the snarling tangle of fur and fangs. The only way to stop the fighting was to stop them all. In a second I had paralyzed all the dogs. The Ifrit cocked his head, as though deciding that this might prove amusing after all.

  Madly I started disentangling their inert forms.

  Paralyzed, they could move no muscles other than to breathe. There were six sheepdogs to my two; Gwennie’s brave defense couldn’t have held up more than a few seconds longer. She and Hadwidis both had cuts, but hers looked more serious.

  I freed the two of them from the paralysis spells and turned back to the real sheepdogs. But before I could decide what to do, or even begin to guess why they had attacked us, I heard voices, and three men, car
rying shepherds’ crooks, came over the hill.

  They stopped dead on seeing the Ifrit—as well they might. Their swarthy faces became paler, and they staggered as though their legs would scarcely support them. But the Ifrit ignored them. He instead picked up the two black dogs in his hand and held them close to his face, making soothing sounds. If he thought he was making the dogs feel less distressed, I could have told him it wouldn’t help.

  But with them out of the way I could safely free the sheepdogs from my spell. In a moment they bounded up, looked around for the missing enemy, and seemed to focus on the Ifrit for the first time. They gave startled yelps then, and, spotting the men, raced to them, barking frantically. One dog was limping where Gwennie had gotten his foot between her jaws.

  I flew to meet the shepherds and tried to land casually on both feet, though it required magic to keep me vertical.

  Compared to seeing the Ifrit, meeting a wizard didn’t seem to bother these men at all. “You’d better get out of here,” I said quietly, looking back over my shoulder. “The Ifrit’s totally unpredictable. And there’s a roc that comes to this hill to take sheep. No telling when it will be here again.”

  One of the men recovered from his shock enough to frown at me—or maybe at my filthy clothes. “Of course. It is our roc.”

  “Your roc?” I felt hopelessly inadequate. These men were not magic-workers, yet they could speak proprietarily of a bird the size of a whale. I noticed that, for shepherds, they wore very expensive clothing—far nicer than mine had been even before I was dragged through the roc’s nest.

  “Well,” said another shepherd, keeping a wary eye on the Ifrit, “not ours the way these dogs are ours.”

  That was a relief to hear. “But we make sure there are always sheep on this hillside—we bring out the dogs periodically to keep the sheep from straying, and to keep anyone else from pasturing their flocks here. That way we can be sure that the roc does not site its nest anywhere else. And that means that in the winter, when the roc abandons its nest for warmer climates, we can freely climb up its peak and search it for treasure.”