Is this Apocalypse necessary

335 Pages·2016·0.74 MB·English

by  Brittain C Dale

Is This Apocalypse
Necessary?
C. Dale Brittain
Part one * The Master
I
The midnight knock came sharp and hard. I had no way of knowing
that the knock meant that in two minutes I would be kidnapped and in
three weeks dead.
I rolled over, too sleepy to bother with a spell. It had to be someone
from here in the castle, so eager for my wizardly wisdom that he couldn't
wait until morning. "Mmm?"
The knock came again. "Come in," I mumbled, not recalling for the
moment how rarely my wisdom was sought this eagerly. "The door's
unlocked."
It slowly creaked open, letting in a cool, damp wind but at first nothing
else. It was the darkest hour of the night, the hour when it seems that the
sun must this time be gone for good, and the furniture has taken
advantage of its absence to metamorphose into something large and
predatory. I sat up, abruptly wide awake. Through the doorway stepped a
pair of hooded figures, barely visible in the shadows.
Just inside, they paused to light a magic lamp, but their hoods hid their
faces from the lamp's glow. The aura of wizardry emanated from them like
heat from a stove. Two strange wizards, in a kingdom where I was the only
one? My heart slammed against my ribs as I scrambled belatedly for a
spell.
"Don't struggle, Daimbert," said one, "and don't make a sound." His
was no voice I recognized, though he seemed to know who I was. "Is
anyone here with you?"
"No!" I said loudly and stretched out a hand, adding the two quick
words that should have knocked them flat. The words had no effect.
Instead a loop of air around my chest suddenly became solid. They were
using a binding spell on me.
I struggled to free myself, but with two of them joining their magic
together I didn't have a chance. The binding spell held me tighter than any
rope and kept my mouth closed, so I could do no more than thrash and
make inarticulate grunts as they advanced toward the bed.
"We told you not to struggle, Daimbert," said one reprovingly. "And
stop making that sound before we have to paralyze you, too. Good thing
we practiced our binding spells before we came!"
So they wanted me alive. I stopped grunting and rolled around so that I
could look at them. I could see their faces now but still didn't recognize
either one. The first wizard's hair was snowy white above a pink and
youthful face that looked as if he usually wore an expression of
enthusiastic good-humor, though now he was frowning and shielding his
eyes from the glow of the magic lamp. The other had a prominent cleft
chin which he carried with pride. It was he who had addressed me. Young
wizards, I thought, with the complacency that comes from having
carefully-practiced spells work right the first, time, but without the
experience to know that no wizard's command of magic is ever flawless.
And I had better find the flaw in their magic, and fast.
The one with the chin said the words of the Hidden Language to lift me
slowly into the air and move me toward the door. I let him do so, lying still
as though in resignation but probing furiously at the binding spell that
held me. It was very tidily done, just like in the book—a spell right out of
the wizards' school.
A student prank? I wondered as the cold night air hit me. The last time
I had been at the wizards' school I seemed to remember spotting a
white-haired, pale-skinned young man among the students, but I didn't
get to the City very often and had not paid much attention. And I had
tended to avoid the school ever since Elerius had joined the faculty.
In my own student days I had carried out a certain number of pranks,
and Whitey looked as if he would enjoy a joke at someone else's expense,
but it seemed unnecessarily elaborate for them to have flown two hundred
miles, from the great City to the tiny kingdom of Yurt, just to play a trick
on its Royal Wizard, me.
They extinguished their magic lamp and looked cautiously from side to
side, but the castle courtyard was dark and quiet. Everyone must have
long been asleep; there was no sound but the whispering of the wind. The
only sign of life was a faint glow from the watchman's lantern, near the
gate.
I considered trying somehow to attract his attention, but he would have
had even less luck against these wizards than I was having.
"This way," said Chin quietly. He seemed to be the leader. "Back over
the wall." They sailed me up over the castle battlements while I silently
cursed myself for not having magical spells in place that would have
alerted me to any invader. I had placed such spells at one time, years ago,
when Yurt was attacked by unliving warriors made of hair and bone, but
the spells had been too hard to keep going during the peaceful years that
followed.
Beyond the moat I could make out a squat, winged shape, which in a
second I recognized as an air cart. It was the skin of a purple flying beast
which, even long after the beast had died, would keep on flying if given
magical commands. The school's air cart? I thought in amazement. Could
Chin and Whitey have stolen it? Either these two young wizards had
gotten themselves involved in a student prank so serious that expulsion
from the school would be a pathetically weak punishment, or else others
were involved, faculty as well as students.
As they tumbled me into the air cart and Chin gave the command to lift
off, I thought I knew, with a cold certainty that chilled me much more
than the night wind. Elerius. He had to be behind this. When I looked
toward Chin and Whitey, darker silhouettes against the dark sky, I seemed
to see not them but an older, black-bearded wizard, contemplating me
from under peaked eyebrows with thoughtful, tawny eyes.
And all the time I kept on probing their binding spells, weakening them
a tiny bit at a time, first here, then there, so small a change in any one
spot that they might never notice that the solid air that held me was
gradually diffusing back to its natural state, until—I hoped—it would be
too late.
The air cart's wings beat steadily as it carried us away from Yurt and
through the night. The rain had ended, but clouds half covered the stars.
It was impossible for me, lying at the bottom of the cart, to determine our
direction, but my guess was that we were heading toward the coast and
the great City. I hoped that by staying perfectly quiet I might lull the two
young wizards into an unguarded conversation that would allow me to
learn where we were going and why, but they too were silent, except for
occasionally giving a low command to correct the cart's course. At one
point Whitey seemed about to say something, but Chin shushed him.
The last of the binding spell that held me came apart. But I remained
still, eyes shut, breathing very shallowly.
Whitey bent over me and this time did speak. "Did we knock him
unconscious?" he asked, sounding worried.
"He's only realized it's no use struggling against superior magic," said
Chin, sounding unconcerned. "Isn't that right, Daimbert?" addressing me
derisively. "I told you this would work," he continued to Whitey. "I looked
up Daimbert's old academic records once, the time I got into the main
office at night, and, you know, he nearly flunked out of the school. He
never stood a chance against the two of us—in fact, one alone could have
done it."
Don't check your binding spell, I thought desperately. Whatever you do,
don't check your spell.
He didn't check his spell. Much too unconcerned, I thought. If these
were Elerius's agents, he should have trained them better. I might indeed
have almost flunked out of the wizards' school, but that had been over
thirty years ago, and I had picked up one or two magical tricks in the
meantime. Chin was going to pay for that remark.
Very slowly, so cautiously that even an experienced wizard might not
have noticed, I started putting together a transformations spell. The
danger of having one's magic work perfectly, as I had learned from
experience over the years but hoped they hadn't, is that it makes one
careless: even a spell that comes out just like in the book may not be
sufficient. Chin and Whitey, thinking me securely tied up, must have
forgotten that I still had a great deal of magic available to me. Being
turned into tadpoles would remind them. Once they were safely
transmogrified, I would give the air cart my own commands and get back
home to Yurt.
But I hesitated with my transformations spell incomplete. It might be
better to wait until actually brought before Elerius. I had always known I
would have to face him sometime, even though I would have preferred not
to do so wearing crumpled yellow pajamas. Much as I would have liked to
distance myself by several hundred miles from him and his schemes, I
knew that if he wanted me he would keep coming after me. Better to
confront him now and learn his plans at once than to go home and wait
for his next attack.
Especially if I confronted him carrying his two treacherous agents
wiggling in a jar.
Elerius was the best wizard to come out of the school in my generation,
or probably any generation since it was founded. He had long played a
waiting game, readying himself for the day when he could take over the
leadership of organized magic and reshape it to suit his own vision. His
ideas and mine on the purposes and goals of institutionalized wizardry
differed enough that I doubted he had sent for me to ask my opinions. But
he had—rather inexplicably, I always thought—concluded some years ago
that I was a better wizard than I actually was (though he had neglected to
tell his agents this), and must have decided to silence me before I could
disrupt the plans he was even now putting into effect.
But he couldn't be planning to kill me, I tried to reassure the cold fear at
the pit of my stomach. Chin and Whitey could have subjected me to much
worse had they wanted; clearly I was required intact. Of course, the logical
conclusion struck me with depressing force, it was also possible that
Elerius wanted to kill me himself to make sure there were no
mistakes—and no survivors.
I jerked my mind from the question of my personal safety to the
question of what might actually be happening at the wizards' school. All I
could conclude was that Elerius had managed to embroil some of the
students in his schemes, but that was not nearly enough to go on.
For starters, what were his schemes? It was no secret that he intended
some day to become the new Master of the school, but so far he had been
content to wait. He had always been enormously ambitious, and because
he was smarter than anyone else he had quite early decided that whatever
he thought best actually was for the best, but so far his self-assurance that
he would always work for the benefit of everyone had restricted his
ambition. But had he now thrown aside waiting and assassinated the old
Master? Was he bringing to the City, one by one, any other wizards he
imagined might be rivals and killing them too?
"I don't even know why he's so interested in Daimbert," Chin
commented in an irritated tone, startling me out of my train of thought.
"You'd expect he'd trust us enough to tell us why he wants him. What's so
special about this wizard anyway?"
Oho, jealousy, I thought. I wasn't going to learn Elerius's plans by
eavesdropping, but might I be able to play on that sense of aggrieved pride
enough to swing these young wizards over to my side?
Of course it would have helped if I could talk. But doing anything
beyond grunting would advertise that I was no longer held by a binding
spell. And this time Chin might make his threat good and paralyze me, at
which point I wouldn't even be able to think.
Time to take action. We had been flying long enough that the eastern
sky, behind the air cart, was gradually lightening from black toward gray.
The clouds had rolled away, and I could see the stars fading out. The two
wizards' faces were just visible as I peered up at them from behind
lowered lashes.
"There's the City on the horizon," said Chin quietly, gazing ahead and
giving the final magical commands that would guide the air cart to a
landing at the school. I waited until they both were looking away, then
muttered under my breath the words of the Hidden Language to make me
invisible.
In the space of one second my body disappeared, and I was up and over
the edge of the air cart and flying along beside it, the wind whipping at my
invisible beard. It might be interesting to see how they explained my
absence to Elerius.
"He's gone!" gasped Whitey. So they still taught them at the school to
recognize the obvious.
Chin sprang forward, feeling around the bottom of the air cart as if
thinking I might have just rolled to one side and been hidden by the
shadows. Before us in the west the sky was still dark and star-studded, but
the yellow lights of the never-sleeping City, ahead of us and a quarter mile
below, made an island of brightness at the edge of a dim landscape.
Beyond, still black and unfeatured, stretched the sea.
Both young wizards were on their feet now, looking around wildly, with
the desperate expression of those who realize they have just made a major
mistake and are wondering what they can possibly do to correct it. I
recognized that feeling; I had had it often enough myself.
"He can't have gone far," said Chin in sudden resolution. "I should be
able to detect somebody working magic. In fact—"
He was just too late. He discovered and was dismantling my invisibility
spell as I turned him and Whitey into frogs.
I collapsed back over the edge of the air cart, whose wings kept
resolutely flapping, and wiped my forehead with a pajama sleeve. The
frogs looked at me with human panic in their amphibian eyes. One of
them was mottled green and brown, with an unusually prominent lower
jaw for a frog, but the other was the color of chalk. I slowly caught my
breath and waited for my heartbeat to return to normal before trying
anything else. Flying was hard enough physical and mental work by itself
without having to do so while invisible, much less transforming young
wizards into frogs at the same time.
At the last moment I had decided against tadpoles. I had no jars of
water with me, and if they had dried up and died while transformed they
would have been just as dead when turned back into wizards. It seemed a
bit excessive to put them to death for kidnapping me.
Besides, they were not my real enemies. Elerius was, and he was waiting
just ahead.
II
The air cart began spiraling down, toward the sharp spires of the school
on the highest central point in the City. The school was not one building
but many, built or added to over the last two centuries and all connected
together, glittering both with magic lights and with illusion. Below the
spires, below the maze of offices, meeting rooms, lecture halls, and library,
were storerooms, the rooms where the teachers had once kept a very small
dragon (strictly for instructional purposes), and silent rooms closed with
magic locks where, the new students told each other, demons lived, though
I had always found that unlikely. I expected the cart to settle, as usual,
into the school courtyard, but instead it tucked its wings tidily and
dropped like a stone the last thirty feet, to land on a balcony jutting out
from one of the towers.
The frogs were catapulted upward by the force of that bone-jarring
landing. I grabbed one in each hand and stuffed them into my pajama
pockets. Maybe there was an additional magical command one was
supposed to give to make the final approach easier, a command I didn't
know because I would never have presumed to bring the air cart down
here— this was the balcony of the private suite belonging to the Master.
Which meant that Elerius must indeed have already disposed of him. I
took a deep breath and climbed out. The frogs were giving their calls,
which I had thought frogs gave only to attract mates, but presumably they
had no other way to scream in terror—or warning? I paused for a second
to cover my pajamas in illusion: a white linen shirt with lace at the cuffs,
dark red velvet jacket and trousers, embroidered all over with the moon
and stars, a golden pendant around my neck, and a long black cape over
all. Then I stepped through the tall open window and inside.
A voice spoke from somewhere ahead. "Did you bring the wizard?"
The corridor before me was dark, but a magic lamp's glow came from
an open doorway. In two strides I was at the door. "No thanks to your
assistants," I said, "the wizard brought himself."
But something was wrong. That had not been Elerius's voice, and this
was not Elerius before me. It was the old Master of the school, lying in bed
propped up with pillows, looking up at me from frost-blue eyes.
I was so flabbergasted I didn't know what to say, and instead gave him
the full formal bow, first the dip of the head, then the widespread arms,
and finally the drop to both knees. Even if he'd ordered me kidnapped, he
was still the head of organized wizardry in the west, and had been for forty
years both my superior and the closest thing I had to a father.
"Is that illusion, Daimbert?" he asked. "No offense, but you usually don't
dress this ostentatiously. And where are my assistants?"
My finery was already starting to fade. I stood up, snapped my fingers
to end the illusion, and drew the frogs out of my pockets. "I decided they'd
be safer like this," I said. "Less likely to paralyze me and drop me out of
the air cart by mistake while it was flying. Think how upset with them
you'd have been."
He looked at them thoughtfully, stroking his snowy beard. Whitey's hair
was white because he had been born without pigmentation; mine had
turned white overnight due to certain hellish experiences shortly after I
graduated from the school; but the Master's was white because he had
lived far longer than any wizard ever known: at least four hundred years
by most accounts, though some said five hundred or even six.
"I told them to bring you at once and to bring you quietly," he
commented. He spoke with his accustomed assurance and authority, but
there was a tremorous undertone to his voice I did not recall hearing
before. "Perhaps they went beyond their orders. Could you turn them back
into themselves?"
A year ago he would have worked the magic himself in a second. I made
no remark but set about undoing my spells. If Chin was jealous because
the Master considered me special— certainly more special than he
was—but wouldn't tell him why, he might well have chosen to
misunderstand his orders. But why was I, Royal Wizard of one of the
smallest of the western kingdoms, suddenly so special?
In a moment I had turned my frogs back into young wizards. They
staggered for a moment, then straightened themselves up, heels together.
A minute ago I had thought of them as the power-drunk agents of Elerius.
But if these were indeed the Master's assistants, I had to change my
opinion of them. I saw them now as thoroughly humiliated students a
whole lot younger and more inexperienced than I was, even if they might,
given a chance, someday turn into better wizards. Though they now were
grasping at dignity, they knew perfectly well that they had been showing
off their newly-learned spells by trying to bring me here forcibly, and not
only had they failed to do so, they would now have the shame of trying to
explain why they had thought it such a good idea. The Master shook his
head almost imperceptibly in their direction. "I'll talk to you two later," he
said, and they turned around and shot from the room, slamming the door
behind them without waiting for further dismissal.
"By the way," I commented, "when you talk to them, ask them about
breaking into the office and looking at old academic records."
The Master's eyes twinkled, and for a second I allowed myself to think
that he was in bed merely because it was still before dawn, a time when all
sensible wizards should be sleeping off last night's dinner and wine. "I
expect that in that case they discovered the results of that disastrous
transformations practical exam of yours," he said, "where you had all that
trouble with the frogs. Perhaps it will be educational for them to realize
that wizards can keep on learning even if they're past thirty."
They were never going to let me forget that incident here at the school. I
managed a small smile. But I was distracted from humiliating memories
by seeing a little pile of silver bells lying on the table. They brought back
much happier memories, of learning the spells that would make such bells
rise and fall in a constantly-repeating waterfall of soft and musical sound.
An elegant touch for a wizard's chambers, but these were dusty and still,
as though their spells had not been renewed for a long time.
"But I didn't bring you here in such secrecy, Daimbert," the Master
continued, suddenly completely serious, "to joke about frogs."
I hooked a chair closer with a foot and sat down beside him. I was still
recovering from the shock of discovering I would not have to face Elerius
after all, but now that I thought about it, it seemed very strange that if the
Master had something to say to me he had not simply used the magic
telephones.
He held my eyes for a moment. "Daimbert, I'm dying." My immediate
reaction was to think that this must be one more prank. The Master
couldn't possibly be dying. He had founded the school—it was his school. It
was neither morally nor physically possible for him not to be here. He
must have meant something quite different.
I found myself speaking. "Are the doctors sure?" Dawn was breaking at
last, and the first light came in through an eastern window.
He smiled a little, but I could see clearly now the pallor of his cheek. His
face had been lined as long as I knew him, but the lines had deepened and
multiplied. "It's no use asking the doctors. All they have are the herbs and
simple spells we wizards gave them generations ago. I'm sure. After all
these years, I know this body better than any doctor ever could. Magic can
slow aging, as I would have to be the first to affirm, but it has no ultimate
power over the cycles of life and death. As long as one lives old body parts
keep wearing away, and there are only a certain number of times one can
renew the material."
The blow hit at last, the realization that this was not a joke gone wrong,
or any kind of joke at all. I put a hand over my eyes; he didn't need to see
my sudden tears.
"You are," he said quietly, "the first I've told."
I lifted my head. Again, why me? "I'm terribly sorry, sir."
"You needn't be sorry on my account," he said with something of his old
energy. "I've had a much longer and much richer life than any man could
possibly expect to deserve, though all those priests with whom you're such
good friends will probably tell you I should have spent more time thinking
about my soul."
"I am not," I said crisply, "good friends with 'all those priests.' The
bishop of Caelrhon is my oldest friend, but that has nothing to do with
him being a priest."
Sorrow made me speak more sharply than I intended, but he let it pass.
"Well, if he asks you can tell him I'm still not particularly worried about
the afterlife. Instead I'm worried about the school."
So was I, though it was still a secondary concern, much less important
than the idea that I would never see him again. I nodded and waited for
him to continue.
"When I established the school a hundred and fifty years ago," he said