Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

by C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 06

  “He just seems like a serious boy,” I answered, “who wants to learn magic but has a pretty clear sense of magic’s limitations.” I was most certainly not going to tell her about Elerius’s efforts to summon a demon—or his false agreement to swear, on Walther’s life, not to summon one. The saint had definitely shown up just in time.

  “This is going to be terrible for him,” she said, not looking at me. “But I know now that the saint’s purpose for me all along has been to make me reveal what I know, to keep my mother from going to her grave impenitent, with her sin unconfessed. She must already be realizing the magnitude of her error, seeing her former lover turn to evil.”

  I must say that I had never before considered that the queen’s adultery might be the problem behind all this.

  “Why did you never tell me about Maffi?”

  Antonia interrupted by asking from my other side, I smiled at my daughter and gave her a squeeze. I really should be starting back toward the valley of the Cranky Saint with Chin and Whitey, in the hope that advanced wizardry students would do where I really needed another competent wizard. “I hadn’t known you would ever meet Maffi,” I said to Antonia, “and I’m afraid at some level I assumed he would always be the boy I had known before—don’t tell him that!”

  “He is not a boy,” replied Antonia, in her best I-am-not-a-little-girl voice. “And he knows lots of magic. We were talking about different kinds of spells while you were gone.”

  He was going to be jealous that I didn’t use him, but it couldn’t be helped. I needed someone with whom I could easily work mind-to-mind because he had been trained in the same school I was. “You know,” I said to Theodora over the girl’s head, “I’m not sure this is the best place for any of you. An army encampment is a dangerous place for women at any time, and now that—”

  Hadwidis broke in, still not removing her eyes from the castle. “I’m not leaving, Wizard, with an enemy in the castle where I should be queen. Gwennie shall stay with me.”

  I turned to look at her properly, the blond hair starting to grow in thickly now, the determined set of her jaw, and realized that she had picked up more on our trip to Xantium than some new clothes and blue eye-shadow. When she left the nunnery she was ready to become a bar-maid rather than let herself be made queen; now she was determined to take over the rule that was rightfully hers.

  She might almost have heard my thoughts, for she added, “You helped me, Wizard, when I had no one to trust, and I shall not forget that.” I noticed she was delicately passing over her attempt to seduce me—something I too preferred to leave in the past. “But I need no more help in reclaiming my rightful castle—no more than the help that I know Gwennie shall provide at my side. The easy solution, I knew, would be to marry one of these royal warriors assembled here and spend the rest of my life at his castle, but I want my own back. Get that wizard out, and I shall do the rest.”

  Gwennie gave me a worried glance. Worried about the girl’s well-being, I thought, since Hadwidis didn’t seem to be competing for King Paul, unlike most of the other well-born young ladies of the West. I shook my head and turned back to Theodora.

  But she put a hand over my mouth before I could speak. “If a runaway nun can stay in an army encampment, a witch can too. I hope you weren’t planning to tell us to take the air cart, and nearly get captured with magic again!”

  “Well, no—” Time to stop stalling. I pushed myself reluctantly to my feet. “I’m going to need the cart anyway, to help get my undead soldiers here.”

  V

  The air cart was scarred and battered, covered with the imitation dragon bites I had carved into it, up on the borders of the land of wild magic. I had to admit the fang marks were pretty authentic—looked like they’d cleaned up the blood, however. Still, the cart was ready to fly wherever I commanded it.

  Naurag, whose will was his own, was showing signs of incipient grumpiness, especially since he no longer wanted to have anything to do with the air cart, but a few gourds restored his good temper. With Whitey and Chin I flew off toward the kingdom of Yurt again, this time to get my warriors.

  Elerius made no attempt to stop us. He must be watching my every move, I thought, but he was too far away to overhear conversations, even with the best magic—besides, I told no one, even the young wizards, what we were doing. Let Elerius worry himself, I thought with jaw set, as to what I could possibly be planning.

  With Naurag flying fast, in the hope of more gourds, and the air cart magically speeded up, we were able to reach the kingdom in only a few hours. The two young wizards had been properly obedient—at least most of the time—ever since learning that I was the old Master’s choice as successor.

  The saint’s valley was as quiet as when I had left it the night before, and my seal across the cave entrance was intact.

  Elerius hadn’t followed me here, then, I thought with relief, pushing aside any lingering doubts whether Whitey and Chin might secretly be thinking that Elerius would have made a better choice as the Master’s heir. I had to trust them because I had no alternative.

  When I used my palm print to release the magic lock and broke the dried mud seal, the warriors stood as I had left them, unmoving, unbreathing. That was a relief. I hadn’t told my young helpers, but I had been turning over in my mind all the way up here the possibility that they might decide to come to life by themselves.

  “Let’s get these out one at a time,” I said, “without letting them stick together. And no mock battles with them!” when I thought I saw an overly-enthusiastic expression on Chin’s face. “These aren’t toy soldiers.”

  Just what I needed, I thought. Supposed helpers who were ready to play. But the two became very sober as they helped me transport the warriors out onto the grass at the base of the cliff. The creatures were short but solid, their arms heavy and powerful, their faces unfeatured except for lifeless eyes. They stood in silent rows, absolutely motionless but giving the impression that at any moment they would burst into action, as ferocious and implacable as the dragon from whose teeth they were made. “By the way,” I said to the two young wizards, as casually as I could when my own heart kept pounding hard, “after you graduate, don’t give up when you discover how little you actually know. There will still be plenty of time to turn you two into half-decent wizards.”

  Now came the hard part. For this we needed Naurag and the air cart for more than comfort in flying. We weren’t going to have enough attention to spare from the soldiers to be able to fly properly ourselves. Instead we needed all our magic to lift the soldiers.

  We had to link our spells, working mind-to-mind. It was horribly difficult because we had to keep the warriors separated from each other. One tipped over while we were trying our first lift, and it rose covered with leaves and pebbles. Two swung too close at the second attempt and bonded firmly and irrevocably together. But at last, concentrating and sweating in the cold air, we had them all raised up about thirty feet, in a reasonably stable configuration, and started the long flight back toward Elerius’s kingdom.

  As I gritted my teeth, willing the dangling warriors to remain together, the wind to remain gentle, and the student wizards to stay attentive, I thought I saw one of the warriors blink. No. Impossible. My imagination. I bit back an exclamation that would have broken the others’ concentration and ended up with all the warriors tangled in the brush below. The creatures’ stares were all blank and unseeing. I steadied my breathing, never letting up on the spells, and hung on tight to Naurag’s neck.

  We flew slowly, avoiding villages and castles, staying far enough up that the creatures did not become tangled in the trees, low enough not to tax our thinly-stretched lifting spells any further than we had to. Twice I could have sworn I saw from the corner of my eye one of the warriors blink, as if the magical currents within the hermit’s valley had somehow brought it to life. But each time that I spun around to stare, aghast, I saw nothing but a stiff, unliving creature, and Whitey and Chin gave no sign of
seeing anything unusual. It seemed as though I had been flying back and forth over this route dozens of times in the last few days. This time was the hardest. The clouds overhead became lower and darker all afternoon, leaving only a thin clear area off to the west, where the sky toward evening turned as green as the sea. It had still been morning when we left for the valley; and now, four hundred miles later, we arrived in darkness. We set the warriors down carefully at the inland edge of the army encampment, away from the castle. I didn’t dare go any closer, for fear that Elerius might again try to seize control of the air cart. Soldiers with flaming torches came out to stare and exclaim over what we had brought.

  Whitey and Chin collapsed where they stood. It was almost a physical relief to break contact with their minds, which had struck me all day as sloppy and greasy. But as I leaned against Naurag’s flank I realized I was not through yet. I still hadn’t worked out how I was going to control the warriors, but they had better be out in front, ready to march in the vanguard, because I very much doubted I could get them to detour in an orderly way around the camp, and I didn’t even want to think about them, alive, marching through its center. With no energy to try more than one at a time, I slowly started moving the warriors through the air, over the royal encampment, to set them down in a line facing the enemy. I had to work fast, before the last of my own strength went. If there were any chance they were going to come to life during the night, then even more reason for them all be on the same side of the camp, the side toward Elerius.

  From the corner of my eye I caught motion, a small, slim person running toward me. “Let me practice my lifting spells,” said Antonia. I nodded, concentrating too hard to speak, and she immediately began, using the same skills she had used on a volleyball in the castle courtyard, in a distant time that could have been years earlier. Teeth set in her lip, she lifted one of the warriors, carried it through the air in a great arc a quarter mile long, over the soldiers and horses and tents and watchfires, and set it down on the camp’s opposite side, on the edge of the trampled no-man’s territory. She gave me a quick grin and started the spells for another. After a moment I realized she was moving hers faster than I was moving mine.

  “They’re impressive, Wizard,” said King Paul behind me, which made me jump. But it was good, I thought as I nodded to him, for the commander of this camp always to know what was going on in it. “Dragons’ teeth, you said? They’re almost like—you remember that time.” I did indeed. “But why are they so still?”

  “Not activated yet,” I said shortly.

  Antonia was now experimenting with two warriors at a time, carefully keeping them spaced so they didn’t stick together. I gave up trying to help her and just took deep breaths.

  “Well,” said Paul, looking out toward Elerius’s castle, “I’ve told King Lucas and the rest that they can expect to attack at dawn. Do whatever you need to do to get these creatures activated, and I’ll match your magical monsters against anyone’s!” He turned his back on the castle and the warriors then, his head cocked to listen to a distant challenge; it sounded as if someone had just ridden into the camp. The king hurried off to investigate. But I had no time to wonder who it was or what message he might bring. In the flare of the torches I was quite sure I had just seen one of my creatures move.

  A quiet voice spoke beside me, Theodora. “That one’s trying to wake up.”

  I was so tired that for a moment my mind went blank. Would a paralysis spell work? Would I have to disassemble it altogether? If it woke up would it bring all the rest of the warriors to life?

  It stopped twitching abruptly. Startled, I checked with magic. It had a very tidy if rather unorthodox binding spell wrapped around it.

  “There!” said Theodora. “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t send the two of us away?” Sometimes it was very useful being married to a witch.

  I hugged her, weak with relief as well as exhaustion. “Then as long as you’re here, could you help Antonia and me shift the rest of these?” which really meant, help Antonia. “And for God’s sake, stay back out of their way!” In a few minutes we had finished moving the last one. Antonia told me she had checked, and none of the others were showing any signs of life. I was too tired to do anything but take her word for it. “First thing in the morning,” I said, “we will give them life, and we’d all better hope they charge in the right direction.”

  There was a murmur behind us, and I turned to see, picking their way through the tents by torchlight, King Paul, accompanied by the bishop.

  The bishop! For a moment I was too delighted to do anything but gape. Joachim had been my best friend for years, even before I met Theodora, and when I decided to oppose Elerius it had been with the bitter knowledge that I might never see him again. And though he might never know it, according to Saint Eusebius it had been in part the bishop’s prayers that had brought the saint to the castle just in time to save Elerius’s soul and my life. “Good to see you, Joachim,” I said, too overcome to be able to produce anything beyond a platitude.

  But he, much less disconcerted than I, stepped forward and seized me in a hard embrace. “Thank God we are together again!” he said. “Don’t ever pretend to die again, Daimbert, without first warning me!”

  “I’ve tried to tell him the same thing,” said Theodora.

  “And you,” he said to her with a smile, “don’t leave the cathedral again without warning me either. One minute you and Antonia were safely under the Church’s protection, and the next I knew one of my priests told me you had gone running out and were seen flying away in the skin of a purple winged creature!”

  “We had to come help him,” said Antonia. “Do you see all those warriors over there? I put them there myself!”

  The bishop contemplated them thoughtfully. Arms upraised, mud and weed stuck all over their thick bodies, they waited for the command to attack and kill. Joachim was going to chide me for making creatures of war, for presuming on the creative powers of God. I just knew it. But when he turned toward me again, deep eyes shadowed from the firelight, it was to say, “So was it to learn the secret of making these that you disappeared?” I looked for a frown and it wasn’t there. Instead he was smiling again. Some time, I thought, I might have to explain to the bishop that just because he liked and respected me, he didn’t have to assume that everything I did was for an excellent reason.

  But not now. “Well, in some ways they were an afterthought—” I started to say. First I had been going to use the Dragons’ Sceptre against Elerius, then the Ifrit, and dragons’ teeth had been my fallback position when nothing else worked. But it was too complicated, and I was too tired. “Yes, they represent my secret plan.”

  “And Elerius will be very surprised in the morning!” added Antonia.

  “Could you shrive us all at dawn, Father, before we go into battle?” Paul asked quietly.

  We started walking slowly back into the center of camp. One of the knights from Yurt hurried up to say that a tent had been made ready for the bishop. Had he ridden here alone, I wondered, without any of the priests and soldiers who were supposed to accompany a bishop everywhere? I would ask him in the morning. But all the plans for what we would do in the morning were wrong. Suddenly there was a shout behind us, and exhausted as I was I spun around, fearing to see my soldiers springing to life and running wildly across the trampled earth. It was worse. Elerius hadn’t waited until morning. His own unliving warriors were upon us now.

  Part Nine The Princess

  I

  Trumpets sounded behind me in the camp, and men poured out of the tents, falling over each other as they scrambled into their armor. Shouting, clanging, trying to find their fellows by torch light when sleep still lay in their eyes, the armies of the west prepared for battle. The war cries of a dozen kingdoms rose above the tumult.

  Elerius’s unliving warriors, which I had last seen on a deserted island offshore from the great City, marched toward the camp. They were made of hair and dead bones, and their only
features were their glowing eyes. Ungovernable and violent as when Elerius first made them, they were only a hundred yards away and moving inexorably toward us.

  What was that spell of Basil’s? And where was his book? In my pocket? In the air cart? Able to see nothing but those advancing warriors, I wildly slapped my pockets, found the book, realized it was going to be impossible to read Basil’s handwriting by torch light if I couldn’t stop shaking, yelled for Whitey and Chin—And heard a voice speaking next to me, words almost but not quite the Hidden Language that I knew. At those words, all the dragons’ teeth warriors began to twitch.

  Maffi stood beside me, concentrating hard on creatures made with no magic he had ever learned and giving them movement. All but the one that Theodora had bound spread their arms and stamped, but they made no move to attack. Maffi added another spell, which made the creatures whirl their arms wildly but still stay where Antonia had put them.

  I blinked and was suddenly calm again. The sound of Maffi’s words had nudged my panic-stricken brain. If Elerius had carefully created his warriors without the use of school magic, so that they could advance across the deserted fields where he had stopped all school spells, then Basil’s spells should work here aswell. I rattled off his activating spell, and the dragons’ teeth surged into motion.

  A war cry came almost in my ear, and I whirled. King Paul, riding his stallion, had gathered the cavalry around him. Horses reared, and drawn swords flashed in the firelight. In a remarkably short time, the knights of the western kingdoms had armed and were ready to face whatever Elerius sent toward us.

  “No! Wait!” I cried. “Sire, listen to me! Don’t charge— not yet!”

  I couldn’t see the king’s face behind his helmet, but he pulled up his stallion at once. “Daimbert prepares the way for us!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Wait for Daimbert’s signal!”