That wasn’t exactly what I meant, but at least they stopped, the sweating horses jostling each other, as Paul’s command was shouted back rank by rank through the army.
My warriors—with one exception—were off with Basil’s spell, heading without anger or fear, only
emotionless violence, toward the monsters Elerius had made. Theodora said something, and the last of my warriors, freed of her binding spell, sprang after the rest. Thuds, dull clangs, and scrapes marked the meeting of forces, but creatures without mouths cannot shout.
“My spells for automatons work but poorly on these creatures,” commented Maffi in disappointment.
Better than anything of mine worked when my brain wasn’t functioning at all. “Thank you for what you did,” I said, attempting, without much success, to speak normally. The field before us was dark away from the torch light. “Can you see if they’re destroying each other?”
He shook his head. “I perceive them not.”
I tried a magical flash of light, but Elerius must still have his defenses against school magic very well in place, for the spell dissolved ten yards from where we stood, doing little more than deepen the shadows around the undead warriors.
I glanced over my shoulder. Most of the knights had lifted the visors on their helmets and were watching me intently, expectantly. Clearly to stay quietly here, waiting to see if any of the creatures Elerius and I had made would come this way, was not an option for Daimbert, glorious savior of the west.
Antonia and Hadwidis would be back in the crowd somewhere. I didn’t need to see their faces to know they would be watching just as expectantly. “Come on,” I said to Maffi, convinced I was heading toward my own death but almost too tired to care. “Let’s go find out.”
I stumbled with exhaustion and had to lean on his arm as we started across the rough field. Unable to fly in the area governed by Elerius’s spells I realized how easy magic had always made life for me. Normally I didn’t worry about walking into danger—I could always fly out. But now if Elerius’s warriors broke through mine, or he took control of mine with his spells, Maffi and I would have no recourse but running, and I didn’t think I would be able to run very far.
Close at hand I heard a rapid clicking noise—Maffi’s teeth were chattering. I looked toward him, but he merely shrugged with one shoulder. “It is colder than I had anticipated in your western realms,” he said, his flashing smile unconvincing. The creaks and clanking ahead of us grew quieterrather than louder the closer we got—maybe there was something wrong with my ears. There seemed to be something wrong with my eyes too, for even as we approached, slowly, cautiously, ready to flee at any moment, I couldn’t resolve individual warriors, but saw only vast untidy masses of darkness. The night air blew damp and piercing toward us.
Maffi stopped, and I stopped with him. “They are no longer fighting,” he said quietly. Had they formed their own monstrous alliance, the voice in the back of my mind asked, to destroy their makers, both Elerius and me? It took a moment of terror and despair to realize what had happened. But then I felt a second’s wild exhilaration. My plan had worked.
Writhing on the ground, pressed as tight together as welded pieces of steel, were Elerius’s warriors and my own. His, stuck fast to mine, were still trying to march toward King Paul’s army. Mine, powered with Basil’s spell, were trying just as determinedly to march toward Elerius’s castle. The net result was mounds of creatures kicking ineffectively but not—at least for the moment—about to kill anybody. Use of the stick-fast weed, an old bit of simple magic out of herbal lore, something I had picked up years ago when a very new graduate of the school, had stymied both Elerius’s carefully-wrought spells and my own much more ad hocdragons’ teeth.
“We’ll have to dismantle them,” I said, suddenly feeling confident again. “What do you use when you no longer need an automaton?”
“Daylight,” said Maffi firmly. “These spells require daylight.”
I actually doubted that they did, but I could see his point. “Maybe we could erect some sort of magical shield around them for tonight,” I suggested uncertainly, “if such a thing would work here.” I didn’t want Elerius coming out after I was asleep and finding a way to separate them and reactivate his.
But putting any further activity off until morning was suddenly not even to be imagined. From Elerius’s castle came war cries and the harsh clang of swords being beaten against shields.
Elerius might no longer be opposing us with undead warriors of hair and bone, but he had plenty of living warriors of flesh and blood.
I spun around and shouted for King Paul. I tried magically amplifying my voice, but Elerius’s spells against magic kept my spells from working. It didn’t matter. Paul heard me.
In a few seconds Maffi and I were surrounded by the warhorses of our army. Men gripped flaring torches in mailed fists as they galloped toward the enemy. The horses screamed and reared to avoid us and the mounds of unliving warriors, and for a moment iron-shod hooves flashed by our unprotected heads. Then the horses jostled, found their footing, and shot away toward the enemy.
I put my hand over my eyes. I didn’t need to see this. Distant sounds of battle indicated that the armies had met. The Black Wars, the wars that had so sickened the West that there had been nothing been minor skirmishes between kingdoms ever since, were going to fade in comparison to the massive blood-letting about to take place.
After a moment I said to Maffi, “We’re going to have to move or drag these warriors further from the castle, somewhere we can get a little light. Did Kazalrhun teach you any lifting spells that Elerius might not be expecting?”
Maffi took a deep breath. “Perchance I can work without light. If I am to try spells, let them be the spells to deactivate an automaton.”
The two masses of unliving warriors still struggled in each others’ grip, so we stood well back as Maffi started mumbling spells. From the distant battle came what sounded like shouts of triumph among the screams and the clashes of metal on metal. Somebody must be winning, I thought dully, looking at the ground at my feet because it didn’t seem worth looking anywhere else.
And that winning somebody, the thought struck me, should be the armies under Paul’s command. Hope made me lift my head, though I still couldn’t see anything. There were thousands of men in the army that had dedicated itself to my memory, whereas Elerius couldn’t have fit nearly that many into his castle. He would not have been concerned about the size of his human army because it was supplemented by his undead warriors, not to mention his own spells and those of whatever wizards he had with him. But his magical warriors were out of action, and the forces he had erected against my spells worked equally well against his.
“Ha!” said Maffi suddenly, and one of Elerius’s warriors collapsed into bits of stinking bone. But, freed of the obstacle in its path, the dragon’s teeth warrior against which it had been bound started forward again—marching this time not toward a foe, but toward the rear of Paul’s army.
I stumbled after it, snatching at spells. As long as I could avoid school magic, something must still be working. Maffi had managed to disassemble something made by another wizard, made with spells that had only a tangential relationship to the magic he knew himself, and yet he had succeeded. Exhausted as I was, I ought to be able to deal with a warrior I myself had made.
The third almost-random series of commands in the Hidden Language worked, and the ferociously advancing creature stopped, quivered, and became nothing more than several long, razor-sharp teeth, lying in the dirt churned up by the cavalry.
“Let us coordinate our efforts, Daimbert,” said Maffi, taking me firmly by the arm as though I were a recalcitrant student. I stood beside him meekly, working to remove the semblance of life from my warriors at the same time as he worked on Elerius’s warriors. The two sets of creatures were not perfectly balanced—sometimes one of mine would start slowly pushing its way successfully forward, toward the clashing armies, and sometimes
one of Elerius’s would make a break toward the camp of the assembled kings. Scurrying around the writhing, dark mass of undead bodies, we were just able to stop those who threatened to escape and to break the spells that gave them motion.
It was excruciatingly slow, because our timing had to be perfect to destroy both warriors at once, and Maffi told me in disgust that no two of Elerius’s creatures was put together precisely the same way—doubtless to foil somethng like what we were now doing. But somewhere in the back of my brain was the thought, which would have been joyful if I had had the energy to pay attention to it, that even Elerius’s best spells could not stand against the combination of herbal and eastern wizardry.
We kept on working, slowly, carefully, knowing that if exhaustion made us sloppy we would not live long enough to get away. I tried to calculate when we might finish rendering all the warriors inactive, mine and Elerius’s both, and reached the conclusion that it would be sometime tomorrow afternoon. “That can’t be right,” I thought, shaking my head, but felt too muzzy to try the calculations again. Besides, they might still give me the same answer.
Someone came racing toward us from the camp, surprising us so much in the middle of a spell that two warriors nearly got moving again before Maffi was able to bind them.
It was Hadwidis. “They’ve escaped!” she cried. “I saw them coming!”
“Who? What?” I managed to say from between parched lips.
“My mother and brother! I used that magic skull thing again to see what was happening in my castle, and I saw them slipping out through the postern gate! Come with me, Wizard! I have to go to them!”
I looked helplessly from her to Maffi, but the latter gave me a shove. “I would rest a moment from these spells,” he said. “Go, and we shall resume on your return.”
Hadwidis took my arm and almost pulled me across the broken land, toward the clash of armies. But not quite toward them. She angled around the base of the castle, running tirelessly while I staggered along behind. The ground was rough, dotted with rocks and little streams that would have made for difficult going even in daylight, even it had not been heavily trampled by mounted men, but she led the way through the darkness in perfect assurance: this was, after all, her kingdom.
We were close to the castle now, whose dark walls rose sheer above us. Elerius was up in there—but he might not be able to see us magically with all school spells still blocked. A delicate stairway, only wide enough for one person, curved down the castle’s side. Between us and that stairway, through the shadows, I could see two figures approaching.
Hadwidis skidded to a stop, abruptly shy. Almost she hid herself behind me for a second, though I couldn’t imagine what protection or wisdom I could offer at this point. “Hello, Mother,” she said stiffly.
The figures stopped abruptly, then the smaller one took a few steps forward—I would have guessed it was young Prince Walther, except that he walked erect, with no hint of a limp. “Who is there?” he said in a voice that would have been haughty had it not come out so high.
Her answer was low and expressionless. “Your sister.”
“Hadwidis!” It was Walther after all. I could make out his features as he sprang toward us. “The saint has answered all my prayers! You’re back to help me as I prepare to become king, and look! My leg is healed!”
The Cranky Saint had become way too active for my tastes, especially since he seemed more interested in making Hadwidis queen than in stopping Elerius’s ambitions. I stood quietly aside while the brother and sister embraced, and she turned, awkward again, toward her mother. No one paid the slightest attention to me.
“You have left the nunnery?” the queen asked, her voice sharper than I would have expected from a woman being reunited with her daughter after years of separation. She was, as well as I could tell through the shadows, still a very attractive woman, much too well dressed to be scrambling around a muddy field at night. “Was leaving deliberate on your part,” she added, “or did the abbess find your conduct unacceptable?”
II
A strained silence hung between mother and daughter for a minute, broken by the distant sounds of battle. But then Hadwidis laughed. “I’ll tell you the whole story when I’ve got you safe,” she said briskly, taking charge. “Come on! We’ve got to get you further away from Elerius while he’s still distracted.” She took each by the arm and dragged them away from the castle, while I tried to keep up.
“What do you mean,” the queen demanded, breathing hard at the pace Hadwidis had set, “by saying you need to ‘get us away’ from Elerius?” “He sent us away,” provided
Walther, “for our protection. Although I do think …” His voice trailed off without finishing the sentence. He still wanted to believe in Elerius, I thought, in spite of what he had seen, and that wizard must have given him some sort of innocuous explanation for why he had tried to summon a demon, but there were definitely doubts in the boy’s mind.
“What—?” Hadwidis almost stopped for a moment, then shook her head and forced her mother and brother to redouble their speed. I started falling behind. Trumpets sounded from the field of battle. Rallying the cavalry, I thought—or sounding retreat.
But what could Walther mean by saying that Elerius had sent them away? The queen had once been—and presumably still was—his lover, and Walther was his son. Was he planning to destroy Paul’s army, now at his very gates, by blowing up the entire castle?
In which case, I thought grimly, he would blow up a lot of young, misguided wizards along with it. And there was nothing I could do about it.
“You look quite disreputable, Hadwidis,” commented the queen, panting in an undignified manner. “I do hope you are not about to tell me that you have become a camp follower for the invading armies.”
“What’s a camp follower?” asked Walther, but no one told him.
Instead Hadwidis laughed again. “Of course not,” she said, leaving out of the story her brief plan to become a tavern wench in Caelrhon. “King Paul has treated me with every courtesy since I arrived here.”
“King Paul? Is he the one commanding this invasion? If so, I need to speak with him at once.”
“Excuse me, my lady, but I don’t think you’ll want to wade into that battle in search of him,” I said, managing to catch up again. “Paul will be in the front ranks.”
We all paused and looked a minute toward the torch-lit battle that still surged around the base of the castle.
“Highly improper,” the queen pronounced. “The life of a commander is more important to any war effort than some boyish dream of glory.” I wasn’t going to say so but I had to agree with her.
Hadwidis squinted at her mother through the darkness. The distant flare of torches beneath the heavy sky gave everything a lurid quality. “I hope,” she said quietly, “that you are acting as Elerius’s ambassador, come to offer terms of surrender. I don’t know what he’s told you, but he can’t possibly resist much longer. After all, we have Daimbert on our side.”
My name did not seem to register. Elerius had told his son about me, I thought, but perhaps he had not told the queen. Or else she did not deign to pay attention to a wizard she considered so much inferior to her own. She lifted her head with the same stubborness as her daughter and said, “I am indeed an ambassador, if any ruler survives to whom I might speak. But I come to offer terms for the invaders’ surrender.”
A slightly different story, I thought, than Walther’s version that they were sent away for their own protection. I had a sudden doubt whether the queen was acting entirely on Elerius’s behalf or might have some deep plan of her own.
Hadwidis, continuing to tug her mother forward, focused on a different issue. “Do not call these invaders,” she said fiercely. “This is my army, for I am the rightful queen here!”
The queen started to say something and changed her mind. Walther looked wildly from one to another. But before any of them could continue the topic, they were interrupted by a great roar
from the sky. Something streaked above us, flaming like a comet, then altered course and plunged straight down before us.
Right where Maffi and all the undead warriors had been. I stumbled forward, wildly calling his name, temporarily forgetting Hadwidis and her family. Had Elerius summoned a demon to destroy the one wizardly ally on whom I could rely? But it was not a demon. It was the Ifrit.
Freed from his bottle, even more enormous than I remembered, he dropped from the sky surrounded by a sheet of flame, straight into the middle of where my warriors and Elerius’s struggled against each other. How had he gotten free? A great boom shook the land, and even through my fear I could feel the magical currents swirling madly, as powerful spells were broken up. I staggered backwards as scraps of hair and bone and broken shards of dragons’ teeth exploded in all directions.
Then with another great roar, the Ifrit rose and shot away, toward the castle. He was loose but, for the moment, he had let me live. I didn’t have time to wonder about it. None of the bits that had flown by me had looked like pieces of Maffi. I groped forward cautiously. Off in the distance, the shouts from the battlefield had changed their tone. Behind me, their differences forgotten, the queen, prince, and princess of this kingdom clung desperately together.
Maffi lay flat in the mud, unmoving. But when I touched his shoulder he jerked and lifted his head, his teeth a white flash in a filthy smear. “Kazalrhun warned me that I might find your Western Kingdoms rather dull,” he commented. “I must remember to chide him for this, for he was quite mistaken.”
“That was the Ifrit,” I said in amazement. “He destroyed all the warriors but left you untouched. All those spells we were working on—he dissolved them in five seconds!”
“And he is not done,” said Maffi, gingerly pushing himself to a sitting position. “By the Prophet, I am glad I need not spend the next eighteen hours taking apart another’s automatons!”
Is This Apocalypse Necessary? Page 32