Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

by C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 06

“I shall accompany you back to the West,” Maffi announced as we ate a late supper of cold eggplant and lentils.

  “I have never seen the fabled Western Kingdoms, with their unusual customs, exotic foods, and strange magic. But if I am to become a great mage, perhaps even as great some day as my most revered master here,” with a quirk of his lips and a sideways glance at Kazalrhun, “then I need to expand my knowledge of all of God’s creation. And besides,” smiling toward Gwennie, “there are other attractions in the West as well!”

  Gwennie and Hadwidis, exhausted from their ordeal, leaned against each other, taking occasional bites of lentils, They gave no sign of having heard this last, but then Gwennie had already ignored Maffi’s earlier suggestion that she lean her head on his shoulder. Since the women were also ignoring me and seemed intimidated by Kazalrhun, they stayed pretty much out of the conversation.

  I had hoped that by the next day they would feel sufficiently recovered that we could start back toward the West. But instead the next morning I woke with my leg burning like fire, and Gwennie, solicitious now, announced that I had a fever and could not travel. The one good thing about being wounded, I thought somewhat groggily, was that one got forgiven. I sent Maffi off to the market with as explicit instructions as I could, to find a certain kind of herb that should help against fever and inflammation. But in the meantime it looked as if we were staying in Xantium a while longer.

  The first day wasn’t too bad, other than the pain, which persisted even through broken sleep. Maffi returned with a variety of herbs, none of which looked right to my bleary eyes, and an offer to bring a doctor, which I refused. Gwennie, announcing that no self-respecting household could function properly if run by automatons, took over the responsibilities of the constable Kazalrhun apparently hadn’t known he needed. The first thing she did was to order new drapes and new scrub brushes, telling the mage to expect the bill and that, once she had had a good look at the kitchens, she expected to be placing quite a few more orders.

  Maffi, trying to persuade me that the obviously worthless herbs he had procured were really what I wanted, also told me that the automatons who normally did the cooking were huddled in the courtyard behind the fountain. Gwennie did not wait for whatever new pots she thought the kitchens lacked to get started there. It was not for nothing she was a cook’s daughter, I thought, slurping down the best chicken soup I had had in months. Maybe soup could count as still an additional form of magic.

  But by the second day the leg was much worse, impossible to put weight on, and I was too fevered to take any more soup. The spells against pain were hard to work, because I kept getting lost in the middle, and they only seemed to transfer the pain from my leg to my head. “The bone is cracked, not merely strained,” Gwennie pronounced and had Maffi go for a surgeon whether I wanted one or not.

  He was a wizened little man, gray-haired and dressed in black, with enormous strength in his hands. After probing delicately around my leg for a moment, he took hold of it briskly, ordered me to cling to the bedpost, and gave it a yank that felt as though he was ripping me in two.

  But once the red pain had finished pouring through, I felt strangely light-headed and comfortable. The surgeon strapped the leg to a splint with a few quick motions. “God be praised, the bone is sound and had not started to knit in the cracked position,” he told me, gathering up his things. “Rest in bed a few days, and keep from walking more than a few steps for two weeks.”

  For a second as he moved the light chain around his neck swung free of his shirt. I had expected to see a cross on the chain; instead it was a six-pointed star. He was one of the Children of Abraham.

  Quickly, before the comfort of having the bone set could fade, I levered myself up on my elbows and scribbled on a piece of paper. “Here,” I said, showing it to him. “What do these symbols mean?”

  I knew I hadn’t drawn them very well, but I had had to do it from memory, because the face of King Solomon’s seal was still tight across the mouth of the Ifrit’s bottle and I wasn’t about to pry it off for a better look.

  The surgeon squinted at my drawing in surprise.

  “They are not symbols but letters, the writing used by Moses to record the first account of humanity’s creation and sins, and of our ancestors’ covenant with God. Did you know you have written all the letters backwards? The words, however, are meaningless whether read backwards or forwards—are you sure you have written all the letters in their correct arrangement?”

  I wasn’t, but even more likely was that Solomon’s words of power which he had inscribed on his great seal were not the sort of words someone would recognize without already being a magic-worker. Maybe Solomon had first regularized the magic that was still studied in the East, the same way that Naurag, many centuries later, had done the same in the West—only using a different language. I thanked the surgeon and let him go; no chance there of learning the magic inherent in this seal for myself.

  Enough for now that I had the Ifrit captive. I kept the bottle under my bed, not trusting either Kazalrhun or Maffi not to take it, the former to gain the Ifrit’s power for himself, the latter to show off to Gwennie. As I slept fitfully I still thought I could hear the Ifrit ranting, though he was now starting to repeat himself in his threats.

  The following day I sent Maffi off to the market with new instructions for herbs to find. He still couldn’t locate precisely what I wanted, thus further reducing my respect for a thieves’ market that couldn’t even produce the simple plants that grew on western hillsides. But several of the herbs he did bring back had enough potential that by evening I was able to rally both my strength and my knowledge of herbal magic to activate a spell against inflammation. I was starting to feel nervously that the longer I stayed out of the Western Kingdoms the worse the situation there would be.

  We ended up staying in Kazalrhun’s house in Xantium for over a week. I saw our host very little; I didn’t know whether, sick, I simply failed to provide diversion, whether he was trying to stay out of Gwennie’s way, or whether he was off discovering new and interesting details about the affairs of the world, which he had no interest in sharing with us.

  Maffi, however, took to coming and sitting by my chair, once I could sit up for long periods, trying to persuade me that he really enjoyed Gwennie’s cooking, even though the word “bland” kept appearing in his praise for her dishes, and getting me to teach him school magic. Some of it, especially the elaborate illusions, produced effects which fascinated him. But in many other cases he would say offhandedly, “Oh, I already know a better spell for that.”

  That was fine with me. “So what spell did Kazalrhun teach you for this effect?” I would ask casually, and Maffi was more than happy to demonstrate. I had always known my knowledge of school magic was inadequate beside Elerius’s. My only hope might lie in learning kinds of magic of which he had never dreamed.

  Gwennie stayed busy, supervising the household the way she thought it ought to be supervised, and Hadwidis followed the older woman around. By the time I was able to hobble unaided into the kitchen, Hadwidis, demonstrating the useful skills taught her in the nunnery, had tied an apron around her waist and taken over much of the cooking, though she was much better on vegetable dishes than on anything with meat in it.

  The two women also went out every day to see something of Xantium. Gwennie arranged, through Maffi, to sell just one of the jewels from the roc’s nest, and she and Hadwidis found themselves with more than enough money to buy whatever they wanted in Xantium’s markets.

  Hadwidis came regularly to sit with me in the evenings and tell me about sailing over the city with Maffi on the flying carpet, or shopping in the bazaars, or watching a pageant put on in the plaza, or a professional sword fight there, or having a glass of wine under an arbor in an inn’s courtyard while a flute player played in the background. Maffi paid most of his attention to Gwennie, but he was certainly not above complimenting Hadwidis on her appearance when she put on something new. One day
she came in to see me wearing big hoop earrings and with her eyelids painted iridescent blue. It would be very hard after this to get her back into the nunnery.

  On the other hand Gwennie, in spite of all the excitement of being in an exotic place, seemed to be thinking wistfully of Yurt. Or at least I was. So I was very glad when one morning I awoke to find my leg feeling much better and announced that we were heading home.

  Kazalrhun reappeared as we were packing. The last thing we did in his house was to seal the Ifrit’s bottle properly, with lead, stamped with Solomon’s seal and strengthened with the mage’s spells. Even Kazalrhun could not read the words of power on the seal, though he certainly knew how to activate them. It didn’t seem to slow the Ifrit down, and indeed he seemed to be inventing even more horrible things to do to me, but I felt at least slightly more secure. And with the seal off the end of the bottle, now I could study the letters carved into it.

  Until the very moment we left I kept expecting Kazalrhun to demand Solomon’s great seal from me. As near as I could tell, he had maneuvered me into meeting the Ifrit at least in part to obtain the seal, and yet he seemed slow to claim it. I even checkedit with probing spells as we finished loading the last of Hadwidis’s purchases onto the flying carpet, fearing that the mage might have stolen the seal from me and substituted something different. But its strange, ancient magic was unchanged. The only explanation was that the mage had some subtle, long-range plan that involved me keeping it.

  We left Xantium with me on the purple flying beast and Gwennie and Hadwidis on the flying carpet with Maffi. I didn’t entirely trust his presence, feeling fairly sure he was prepared to send all sorts of interesting information about us back to Kazalrhun, but I could use all the help I could get.

  As we soared from the courtyard of the mage’s house, Kazalrhun waving jovially after us, I felt a fierce exhilaration. Broken leg or not, I had come to the East with the wild-eyed plan of mastering an Ifrit, and it appeared I had done so.

  Now all I had to do was figure out how to use it against Elerius without getting myself killed in the process.

  IV

  We flew faster on our way back toward the Western Kingdoms than we had on our way east. Naurag flapped along briskly with only me riding, and the magic carpet seemed easily capable of keeping up. I stretched out my leg— merely strapped now, rather than attached to a splint—along the flying beast’s back.

  We followed not the route along which we had come, which would have taken us west along the Inland Sea and then up the rivers that lead north into the heart of the Western Kingdoms. Rather we took a more direct route, across the Eastern Kingdoms that lay inland, between Xantium and the high mountain range which we in the Western Kingdoms considered the beginning of the East. Here the castles were more heavily fortified than anything seen in the West since the Black Wars; dust clouds along the roads marked marching troops of armed men; and the prevalent scrubby woodland suggested that most of the rural population not directly under the protection of a fortress had either been killed or else had given up and moved away.

  I had been gone from Yurt for close to a month.

  Anything could have happened, and I needed information. It was only an idea, and even finding the place was not easy. The last time I had crossed the Eastern Kingdoms had been on horseback, not flying, and everything looked different from the air. My memories of the location were also more than twenty years old, and I was not even sure what I sought would be visible. But after two frustrating days of criss-crossing the rocky upland where I was sure it must be, I spotted it: a black obsidian castle, rising jagged from a hilltop, its windows glowing dully like eyes and its great doors an open mouth. The sun shone overhead, but the black stone seemed to throw its own shadow in all directions, sheltering the land from the light.

  With a quick word I paused Naurag, hovering, above it. I could have sworn I had searched this very hill the day before.

  But then the flying carpet had been with me, whereas this afternoon I had told Maffi to take a break from the tedious and unprofitable search—Gwennie had said she and Hadwidis might try to find a stream in which to bathe, which possibility Maffi had found intriguing.

  And if the castle had indeed been here yesterday, but hidden, then that meant that someone was interested in meeting me—but not anyone else. The autumn air was already chilly here in the Eastern Kingdoms, but suddenly it seemed even colder. I rubbed my sore leg absently, working up my courage.

  Twenty years ago the dark wizard Vlad had made this castle the center of his principality. He was gone now, but it looked as though another wizard had taken up residence here—doubtless another eastern wizard imbued with the magic of blood and bone. I had known less magic two decades ago than I knew now, I reminded myself, and I had not had a friendly flying beast to help me get away fast if necessary. But I had still escaped alive, which ought to mean I could always escape again.

  Besides, I needed an artifact which might still be in the castle. I touched my heels to Naurag’s sides, and he flew us down to land in front of the gates. The spikes from the raised portcullis could have been teeth, ready to snap me up as I entered the castle’s maw.

  Reluctantly I left Naurag outside. With his wings he would have been a very tight fit in the dark corridor which stretched beyond the nail-studded doors. He looked around dubiously, clearly regretting this entire trip and wishing that we had stayed in the valley by the little lake up in the land of wild magic, along with the melons and the butterflies. I could see his point.

  A ditch so deep I couldn’t make out the bottom gaped immediately before the castle, but the drawbridge was down.

  Slowly I crossed, my feet echoing, then passed beneath the portcullis. I took one step inside, then another, forcing myself not to limp. It was now as silent as though I were a mile underground, not on top of a hill. Even the sound of my steps was swallowed up at once.

  But if this castle had been invisible yesterday, then there was an active mind at work here. I lit up the moon and stars on my belt buckle; they made a faint glow that gave me the courage for a few more steps. So far, then, spells of light were still working. A spell to reveal the presence of the supernatural indicated no demons nearby either. And if I glanced over my shoulder I could still see the open doors, a short distance behind me, but before me all was blackness.

  I realized I was listening for the regular tap-tap of approaching feet. But the man I half expected to see was dead and dismembered, many years and a great many miles from here. If he was coming down that corridor anyway, the voice in the back of my head commented, I should be on Naurag’s back, heading out at top speed.

  Now I was a dozen yards down the corridor, trying to remember exactly where I had last seen the artifact I needed. One of the rooms down this corridor, I thought. If whoever had taken over this castle after Vlad’s demise didn’t want to show himself, then maybe I could snatch what I needed and be gone before he was any the wiser.

  A sharp creak cut the air behind me. I whirled to see the great doors slam shut, cutting off both light and escape.

  And then I did hear footsteps, coming briskly, still far off but approaching rapidly. My first thought was to smash the doors open with magic and flee wildly, but I hadn’t spent two days looking for this castle to run at the first hint of danger. I put my back against the cold stone wall and waited.

  I saw the candle flame first, a soft yellow glow that seemed lost amid shadows that were nearly solid with lack of light. Then the dimness above the flame resolved itself into a face, long and white, a face that was smiling. The lips were strangely red in the candlelight.

  This was a much younger man than Vlad, I told my wildly beating heart. And it looked as if he had been born with all the body parts now attached to him. He couldn’t be as bad as that half-dead prince. And then the man before me smiled, showing dozens of needle-sharp teeth. “A western wizard, as I hoped,” he commented, as though speaking to someone else. His voice was cold and flat in spite of th
e smile, and it echoed up and down the corridor around us. Another few steps, and he was staring into my eyes. His were purple and completely round. “Might I query, might I guess, that you are Daimbert of Yurt?”

  There didn’t seem to be any use in denying it.

  “Yes, I am,” I said, just managing to keep the tremor out of my voice. “But I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

  I saw then who he had been addressing before speaking to me. On his shoulder perched a lizard, dead white and three feet long, including the tail. Just like having a purple flying beast for a companion, only smaller, I tried to reassure myself. It cocked an eye at me and flicked a long tongue.

  “I am named Basil, but you may call me Count,” the man said, slipping his lizard a slimy morsel of something. “And this is my pet, Bone.”

  A pet, I told myself. A man with a pet couldn’t be too bad. I would offer to buy the artifact from him if he still had it; I had never been comfortable anyway with the idea of stealing it. In half an hour I would be safely on my way again.

  “Bone prefers to eat human corpses,” Count Basil continued conversationally. “But unfortunately we’re all out at the moment.”

  So much for feeling reassured! The lizard was staring at me again, doubtless contemplating whether it would be difficult to turn me into a corpse. Dead white as if it and its kind had never seen the sun, with its master’s eyes round and dark as though for seeing in the night, neither of these were creatures of day. Surreptitiously, behind my back, I flicked a quick flame into existence, just long enough to scorch my fingers and reassure myself that the magic of light had not yet deserted me.

  But it had been Vlad who had been overcome by spells of light. This was a different wizard; I couldn’t expect to escape from him the same way. And very oddly he was, it appeared, trying to be friendly.

  “I would offer you refreshment, Daimbert,” Basil said politely, “but I fear you would not like what I eat and drink.” Even without knowing what it was, I had to agree with him. “I am so delighted to meet you after so many years! I would introduce you to my other pet as well, but little Blood does not come out during daylight. Besides, he usually terrifies my visitors. Come and sit with me a moment.”