Is This Apocalypse Necessary? Read online

  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, an
d 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?