Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

by C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 06

  A test would have been useful, but I didn’t dare try it any more than Levi did. “Thank you,” I said, standing up. “You have helped me enormously.” I thought of asking him not to tell anyone I was still alive, but it didn’t seem worth it. I doubted a junior wizard at an out-of-the-way kingdom was spying for Elerius, and if he was, well, Elerius would know the truth very soon anyway.

  Levi frowned. “Tell me again how you knew that I could help you read this spell.”

  “I’m acquainted with one of the castellans in this kingdom— the one for whom you installed a telephone this summer.”

  “So you were just passing through, and you just happened to stop there, and he just happened to mention that one of the few Children of Abraham trained as a wizard lived right down the road.”

  “That’s right,” I said, starting to feel uneasy. “Just a coincidence.”

  “Doesn’t that seem to be ascribing a lot to coincidence?”

  It did, now that I thought about it. “There’s only one explanation,” I said at last, not liking this at all. “The Cranky Saint. He’s maneuvering me.”

  Levi rose to see me out. “You realize, of course, that we do not believe in the powers of saints.”

  It wasn’t until I was half way back to the castle where I had left the others that it occurred to me to wonder whether by “we” he meant the wizards or the Children of Abraham.

  Back at the castle, the swans swam peacefully. This corner of the Western Kingdoms, I thought, might still escape destruction if war broke out, because the rest of us would have killed each other off long before the fighting spread this far. Now all I had to do was to make sure Yurt escaped as well.

  The castellan and his family were plying my party with questions about our adventures. With Hadwidis worried about her mother and Gwennie thinking about King Paul, it was mostly left to Maffi to relate some of the marvels of Xantium.

  I shot through the breakfast-room, tossing off an excuse, and gathered up our luggage for departure. The Ifrit’s bottle was exactly where I had left it, sealed with lead inscribed with the words I now could read. Maffi hadn’t touched it after all, and I felt guilty for having doubted him.

  “It appears that I chose the best possible time to visit the West,” he told me as we left at last, refusing the castellan’s offer to lend us horses. We walked over the hill to where we had left the magic carpet and the flying beast. “Kazalrhun will regret having missed the excitement.”

  I could have missed the whole thing without regret myself. But I didn’t seem to have much choice. We flew on west as fast as Naurag could fly.

  We kept on as the sun sank, burning in front of us, casting the shadows of the hedgerow trees below far across the stubble of the fields. We kept flying as the sunset flared, then slowly faded, and the stars began to come out above us. And at last we saw the bulk of Elerius’s castle, shimmering with spells, rising against the dark sky, with enemy watchfires burning all around.

  An encampment of that many men will never be silent, but at this time of the evening it was fairly still, the clearest sounds being the occasional whinneys of the horses and the calls of the watchmen to each other. I flew Naurag directly next to the carpet and shaped an invisibility spell to cover all of us.

  I had never tried to make so many different things invisible at the same time before, and the fringe of the carpet and the flying beast’s wings kept emerging from the spell. But Maffi realized what I was doing and added his own magic to fill the gaps in mine. We didn’t want to be shot full of arrows as we came in over the encampment.

  The spell worked fine against the watchmen among the army’s tents. We flew, unseen, over their heads, aiming toward the center where King Paul’s standard flew. But if the armies didn’t spot us, the wizards did.

  IV

  The carpet abruptly buckled, losing height rapidly. The women screamed—Maffi may have too. I abandoned the invisibility spell in preference for a lifting spell, in a wild effort to keep the carpet from crashing. My invisibility spell was being ripped from us anyway; only Maffi’s spell on the carpet’s fringe and on Naurag’s wings remained.

  Responding at last to my desperate magical commands, the carpet recovered itself ten feet from the ground and landed fairly gracefully, though Hadwidis’s packages of new clothing tumbled off. Naurag folded his wings and came in smoothly, looking around with interest at the firelit camp, doubtless wondering if anyone had some melons.

  I whirled, furious, to find the wizards who had come so close to getting Gwennie and Hadwidis killed. And there stood Whitey and Chin, the old Master’s pet pupils, looking inordinately pleased with themselves.

  “You didn’t think you’d fool us twice with the same trick, did you, Daimbert?” asked Chin proudly. “Ever since you slipped away from us that time by making yourself invisible, we’ve been working on detecting invisibility spells in action and disabling them. Is that a real flying carpet?”

  “You knew I was coming?” I demanded. Perhaps I had been wasting my time pretending to be dead.

  “We found out just this morning,” Whitey chimed in. “And nobody knows but us. Do you remember Levi, who graduated last summer? We’ve patched a phone connection through from the school to here, and he phoned us from his kingdom. Somehow, though he sounded rather incoherent when we talked to him, he’d found out you were alive—and all the time we’d thought you were dead!”

  “If you were just trying to spot me,” I said, unmollified, “why did you almost make the flying carpet crash?”

  “That wasn’t us,” said Whitey without concern. “Elerius and the wizards with him are blocking all spells from working, next to his castle walls, and I’d guess he is doing the same for anything in the air. He hasn’t touched our magic, though.”

  “And,” said Chin with badly-concealed pride, “we’ve been working on very special magic, something the old Master first gave us as a project last year—to make illusions that will last a very long time.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “So we’ll send illusory armies against Elerius’s quite real warriors.” Maffi was looking around, intrigued; Gwennie strained to spot anyone from Yurt; and Hadwidis became suddenly shy, discovering herself in the middle of a crowd of interested soldiers, including many emerging from their tents clad only in their long shirts, to find out what was happening.

  “Um, while you were dead, Daimbert,” added Chin, abruptly much more serious, “did you happen to hear that Elerius has defied the masters of the school and declared himself the true head of all wizardry? And indeed of the Western Kingdoms?”

  “But you’ll be able to stop him!” said Whitey enthusiastically, without giving me a chance to respond.

  “After all, the Master made you his heir. That’s why we didn’t go along with the rest of the younger wizards and join Elerius. When Zahlfast took ill we knew it was up to us. So we’ve been working on our spells, and we’re going to be able to assist you. We’ll stop him together.” He really was, I thought with an inward groan, a very young wizard.

  Before I could find a way to break it to him gently that just because the Master had wanted me to succeed him didn’t mean I had the slightest idea of what to do, I was distracted by a murmur moving through the crowd. “Daimbert! Daimbert lives.

  Daimbert has come back from the dead. Daimbert lives!”

  Shivers went through me at the sound of the voices, first a few, then many, first spoken in terms of surprised acknowledgment, but then within a few seconds turning into a triumphant chant. “Well, wait!” I tried to say. “You see, I wasn’t really—”

  It was no use. The chant almost immediately had nothing to do with me. Sleepy soldiers crawled from their tents and took it up. Several began banging their swords on their shields in rhythm. Even without magically amplified hearing, I thought wildly, those with Elerius in the castle must surely hear and understand.

  And then I saw King Paul, striding through the encampment with his helmet cradled under one arm and his bre
astplate flashing in the firelight. He seemed somehow taller and more mature than when I had last seen him—maybe it was the armor. He saw me, stopped short while a smile of disbelief and joy lit up his face, then tossed his helmet aside to crush me in his mailed arms.

  “You’re solid flesh and bone! You’ve come back from the dead to save us!” he cried, letting me go but continuing to grin. I cautiously checked my ribs for cracks. “I always knew that Yurt had the best Royal Wizard in the West, but now all the other kings will know it too!”

  It was going to be difficult to get anyone to believe I hadn’t really been dead. In fact I had returned from death once, years ago, something that very few people outside of Yurt had ever known; I seemed now to be getting the credit for it a generation too late. My ruse with the air cart appeared to have worked all too well.

  King Paul looked past me to my companions. Naurag he seemed to take as an air cart in the flickering fire light. “This is Hadwidis,” I said, pushing her forward, “a princess who is the rightful heir to this kingdom.” I left out entirely her career as a nun, and the issue of her rightful inheritance seemed to pass Paul by. I could see him preparing to introduce himself and to welcome her to this encampment, on the assumption that if she were with me then she must be an excellent person.

  Then he saw Gwennie. The grin stayed on his face, but for a second it looked completely unnatural. She hesitated herself, half-hidden behind Hadwidis, an arm around Naurag’s neck.

  Then Paul’s smile became altogether genuine again as he sprang toward her. “Spending some time with an old friend!” he said with a great laugh. “You might at least have told me it was the wizard we were all mourning!” He grabbed her in a bear-hug as he had grabbed me and whirled her around.

  Gwennie gave an undignified squawk as all the air was squeezed out of her, but she was smiling as widely as the king. The soldiers watched with approving interest.

  Paul set Gwennie down and abruptly became uncomfortable again. “I am delighted to see you in good health,” he told her formally. I realized I still, after all this time, had his diamond ring in the bottom of my pocket, but the middle of a military camp was not the place to produce it. “Won’t you introduce me to your friend?” Paul continued. He looked properly at Maffi for the first time, a handsome and rather exotic-looking man the same age as Gwennie, and his eyes narrowed.

  I had no time to worry about anyone’s love life but my own. If everyone—including, very soon, Elerius—knew I was back, then I could not let Theodora go another night without knowing too. “Where’s that telephone you set up?” I asked Chin. “I have to call my wife.”

  King Paul of Yurt, King Lucas of Caelrhon, and a dozen other western kings sat in a circle around a watchfire, talking. On one side was the encampment, starting to settle down again after the excitement of my arrival; on the other was an empty mile that separated their armies from Elerius’s castle. Firelight reflected from the kings’ armor, and the shadows dancing across their faces made their expressions impossible to read. They were ready for a battle which I knew would leave the fields of Elerius’s kingdom scattered with their bloody corpses.

  Coming back from talking to Theodora, I squeezed in next to Paul. Hadwidis, Gwennie, and Maffi sat behind him. For a moment I wondered if this kingdom had ever before had so much royalty gathered outside its castle, but then remembered—of course it had, at the time of the old king’s funeral. But then the kings had assembled to mourn the passing of the man who had ruled here, and now they were gathered to oppose the man who had set himself to replace him.

  Zahlfast, I gathered, had been overcome by the excitement, which meant that the only wizards here were Whitey and Chin, who hadn’t even graduated yet. Leadership of the army was thus in the hands of the kings. They were arming several, including Lucas, convinced that an immediate midnight attack was the best course, while others urged caption.

  “He’s got those things fighting for him, Lucas,” one king said darkly. “You weren’t here yet when we first attacked,” and for a second I could hear all sorts of other unresolved quarrels behind his words, “but I for one don’t want to face them again—and many of my best men will never have a chance to fight anyone again. Let’s give the wizards a little more time to disable them with their spells.”

  “I don’t trust those wizards,” Lucas retorted. “How do we know they won’t turn against us given a chance—or join Elerius the way they tell us so many other wizards have. We wouldn’t be hearing so many things about how Elerius is ‘stronger’ than they are if they just had their minds on their magic for a change.”

  I looked around surreptitiously for Evrard, King Lucas’s Royal Wizard, to see how he was taking this, but didn’t see him. I hoped this didn’t mean he had joined Elerius. But he might well have, the voice in the back of my mind pointed out. He had always admired him. In which case I wasn’t just fighting against Elerius, who I knew as my enemy; I was also against Evrard and doubtless many other wizards whom I had always considered my friends.

  “If you are so rash, Lucas,” said one of the other kings roughly, “as to want to try unaided steel against black magic, I shall not be ashamed to wait here for you.”

  Lucas growled and reached for his sword. He had always been touchy, but this went further; it seemed to me that the fierceness and pride he was at such pains to demonstrate were not really his but the product of what he thought a warlike king should be like. It was much too late now to go back and tell his childhood nurse not to let him hear such stories.

  Paul put a hand on his arm. “Let’s hear what Daimbert has to say.”

  That stopped Lucas, as indeed it stopped them all.

  They turned faces suddenly still with awe toward me. In the ten minutes I had been on the phone my legend seemed to have matured.

  From snippets of conversation I had heard while walking back, the Cranky Saint had redeemed me from death so that I might free the West from the scourge of Elerius and his minions. At least so far, I wouldn’t have to cleanse the populace of their sins while I was at it.

  How could I possibly lead all these powerful kings? I hadn’t even had much luck leading Maffi. But I did know that neither charging headlong against Elerius’s castle, nor waiting for Whitey and Chin to come up with better spells than those of the wizards inside, was likely to work.

  “The Cranky Saint has sent you a wizard to lead you,” I said, thinking that soon I might have to believe it myself. “The wizards in that castle have been misled by Elerius, the same way that his knights have been misled. But when we win,” just barely not saying, “if we win,” “then we’ll have to make our peace with all his followers, wizards and warriors alike.”

  “So what are you planning to do, besides defend the good name of wizardry?” demanded Lucas, just barely keeping his tone from being insulting. I probably should have been gratified that not everyone was awestruck by my miraculous appearance here, but I wasn’t.

  “I’m going to go talk to Elerius,” I said, firmly and clearly, wondering even as I spoke what I could possibly say to him. “He’s always claimed that he wants to rule in order to benefit humanity, and it must have occurred to him that there cannot be any benefit in a repeat of the Black Wars.”

  “How are you going to get in?” one of the kings asked. For a moment we were all silent, looking off toward the castle, just visible against the evening sky.

  “I’ll find a way,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “And he’ll have to listen to me.”

  “If you think you can reason with him, Wizard—” the king started to say.

  “Not reasoning,” I snapped back.

  “Threats. I shall threaten him with my powers. And I hope you don’t imagine that I came back from the dead to betray you all!”

  The one time I actually had come back from the dead, it had not been with any startling new powers, but none of these kings would know that. I stood up. “I’ll go tonight—now. He may have thought he could defeat your armies with
his spells and his undead warriors, but he reckoned without me.”

  With the Ifrit’s bottle in my pocket, I rose from the ground and flew toward the distant glowing lights of the castle, wondering what I could possibly do to match my bold words.

  The spells against flight which Elerius had erected around his castle caught me a quarter mile away. Fortunately I was ready for this and was only a few feet above the ground when all my flying ability evaporated.

  It wasn’t a true magical shield, I thought, picking myself up and trudging across the dark ground toward the castle gates. It would have no effect, for example, on an army. But—It might slow down dragons. Elerius must fear that I had obtained the Dragons’ Sceptre after all.

  I allowed myself a small grin. Let him imagine I had a hundred dragons lurking a few hills away. I wondered briefly why the spell hadn’t affected Naurag’s ability to fly, but then Naurag wasn’t a dragon. If Elerius was so concerned about dragons, I might be able to work them into the conversation even while trying to reason with him. In spite of what I had told the kings, I did intend to try reason first, but I was certainly not above threats if I thought they would succeed.

  And if that didn’t work, I was putting an alternate plan together in my mind. I didn’t like it at all, but at least it was a plan.

  The ground under my feet might once have been a wheat field. Now it was trampled and ruined. A battle had already been fought here, I reminded myself, and for all I knew I was walking across the graves of some of the west’s bravest and most foolhardy warriors.

  The castle bristled with magic, and I paused, wondering how I could possibly get past protective spells far more powerful than anything of mine. But I need not have worried. The drawbridge swung down and the portcullis, creaking, rose before me. Clearly I was expected.