Is This Apocalypse Necessary Read online

  He had caught me unprepared; I had expected open threats. "Why do you think the school's policy is suddenly going to change?" I inquired warily.

  He turned then to look at me, eyebrows peaked over thoughtful hazel eyes. "Come now, Daimbert. You don't feign ignorance very well. As soon as the old Master dies— and you yourself just told me he finally realizes himself that he is dying—the wizards here at the school will need to elect a new head, and it will scarcely be a surprise to you that many have already told me that I will be their choice. The older wizards know that it is time to turn the reins of authority over to a new generation, and it is not boasting for me to say that I am generally regarded as the best of our generation. Welcoming women into the school—starting with Antonia— will be one of my first official acts."

  The last place I wanted my daughter was under Elerius's control. "She's much too young," I said hurriedly, not meeting his gaze. "She's only twelve. I was past twenty when I started my own magical studies."

  Every time I looked back toward him it was to see his eyes fixed on me. Maybe I should be flattered that he found me so fascinating. "Perhaps one of the mistakes of school training has lain in waiting so long to begin," he said slowly. "After all, if one is to study a foreign language one learns it most readily as a child. Should the Hidden Language of magic be any different? Even aside from Antonia—who learned spells more easily when she was five than do most second-year wizardry students—I could point to the days before the school, when would-be wizards often started their apprenticeships as boys."

  "The last place for a twelve-year-old girl is all by herself in the middle of a group of unruly young men," I said firmly.

  This wasn't what I had planned to argue with Elerius about, but it would do for now. And it was a point from which, I thought, nothing was going to sway me.

  "Not by herself," he said, nodding slowly. The last burning rim of the sun lingered on the horizon, but very soon it would be dark, and the air was rapidly growing cold. "I propose giving her a study companion, another twelve-year-old who has also demonstrated an early flair for magic, who is far too serious-minded to be easily distracted from study, and whose abilities deserve to be trained and developed by the world's greatest teachers of wizardry."

  "And where are you going to find another girl like this?" I asked suspiciously.

  "Not a girl. A twelve-year-old boy. My son."

  II

  This was why he had brought me here, I told myself, thinking furiously. This was why we had strolled for miles along the shore away from the school, to where we couldn't possibly be overheard, even with magic. Elerius stood with the sea air stirring his beard, waiting for my reaction to a secret that even the Master, who thought he knew about all of us, had never uncovered.

  And I thought I understood why he had told me that secret. The gesture would, he believed, guarantee to me that he would not spread the story of Antonia's parentage if she did come to the school, as well as tying the two of us together in a bond of fatherhood.

  I had no intention of being tied to him by any bond. "What's the boy's name?" I asked as if casually.

  "Prince Walther."

  It took me a second. But then I spun around to stare at him through the dusk. "Prince Walther? Prince of what? Where did you find a princess?"

  "Prince of my kingdom, of course," he said, not at all embarrassed, "and heir to the throne. He will be a king as well as a very good wizard—the first kingly wizard, I believe, the West has ever had. And I didn't 'find a princess,' as you rather coarsely put it. His mother is the queen."

  For one second I felt a surge of jealousy; the queen of Yurt had never been the slightest bit interested in me. Yet Elerius had somehow lured the queen he served out of the royal bedchamber and into his, even while his king was still alive. No wonder his queen had been happy to have him acting as regent while their son was still a boy! Elerius and young Walther would rule the City and the wealthiest of the Western Kingdoms as father and son, and neither wizards or nobles would stand in their way.

  Out of several things I might have said I chose, "Does the boy know you're his father?"

  For second there was a crack in his confidence. "Well, no, not yet. We could not tell him when he was very young, of course, for no child could be trusted with a secret like that. And now— Well, he's at a delicate stage, at the threshhold of manhood, having lost the king he'd always thought of as his father not long ago— The queen and I shall find a suitable time to tell him in a few years. But in the meantime I am teaching him a little magic; he has quite a flair for it!"

  "So you're waiting until he's eighteen," I said, mostly to myself, "until he's been crowned king, so that neither he nor anyone else can raise embarrassing questions about his hereditary right to succeed until it's too late."

  Elerius didn't answer, although I couldn't tell if this was because he felt uneasy about misleading his own son about something this important or because he didn't deign to share any more of his plans for the young prince with me.

  "Why did you risk telling me this?" I burst out. "Aren't you afraid that even if I don't tell the nobility of your kingdom I'll tell all the wizards at the school? They are shortly supposed to be electing you Master, yet you've broken the oldest traditions of institutionalized magic by a liaison with a woman!"

  "I'm telling you this because I trust you, Daimbert, and I know no surer way to show it. I keep no secrets from you because I trust that you will keep none from me, once we are established as co-rulers of the Western Kingdoms."

  This whole evening had taken on a nightmare tone. Maybe the seafood had been tainted and I was hallucinating. It sounded as though Elerius had just said that, rather than ruling jointly with his son, he wanted to rule jointly with me. The sky above us was still pale, but the broken shapes of hulls and spars had dissolved into formless shadow.

  "Me," I said slowly at last. "You want me as your co-ruler." First the Master had thought I was capable of leading organized magic, and now Elerius. I wondered wildly if they had somehow confused me with some other wizard, much more skillful, also named Daimbert. "You're twice as good as I could ever be, and yet you want to share your authority with me?"

  "You've spent the last twenty years thinking you had to oppose me," said Elerius, a smile in his voice. "And somehow, I've never known how, you've always been successful. Won't it be a relief to give up the struggle? Instead you can work beside me, making sure that I always keep wizardry's moral principles in mind if that is your concern, rather than having to fight me in secret. You notice that I am not just offering you a position of some authority under me, but rather suggesting that we ask the school's wizards to make the position of Master a joint one. You and I will train our children to be even better wizards than we are, and when they grow a little older and marry each other—"

  "Marry!"

  He chuckled at my shock. "Don't you think by that time someone besides you will have been able to overcome the old notion that wizards are married only to magic? And I know you still think of Antonia as a little girl, but she's going to be a lovely young woman, and it's not too early to start planning. She'd be a charming queen. You don't think I'm going to be fussy just because she lacks royal blood!"

  "I'm not arranging Antonia's marriage to anybody," I muttered. Irrelevantly I wondered if young Prince Walther would be interested in marrying Gwennie.

  "And I do need your help, Daimbert," Elerius continued, not feeling that the marriage he planned between Prince Walther and my daughter needed any further discussion. "You've probably heard that I'm a candidate for mayor here in the City, and between running the school, ruling my kingdom as regent for at least a few more years, and supervising the city council, I'll have more than enough responsibilities for one wizard to handle."

  "And I hear you're trying to influence the election of the new bishop as well," I said in a flat voice.

  "That's especially where I'd like your help, Daimbert. You've always gotten along well with that bi
shop in Caelrhon."

  "Joachim," I said coldly. Nobody was going to call him "that bishop."

  He didn't respond to my coldness but continued as though we were just having a friendly chat. "My candidate for bishop here is someone who also seems willing to accommodate himself to wizardry, but you're much more experienced at influencing priests than I am, so I'll leave him to you."

  Joachim had never 'accommodated' himself to wizardry, and to the best of my knowledge I had never influenced him in anything, but it hardly seemed worth bringing up.

  "I realize you've spent very little time at the school since you graduated, but I don't want you to hesitate because you feel unsure about taking up supervisory tasks," Elerius continued, in apparently full confidence of my agreement—and also apparently not caring if he sounded patronizing again. "Let me give you an example of how you could help me right away. The Master once told me about a Dragons' Scepter, hidden up in the land of wild magic. Retrieving it, so that we could use its powers for the good of the school, is exactly the sort of task for which your improvisational brand of magic should be well suited."

  I made the slightest affirmatory noise, trying to cover my surprise with nonchalance. Did he then know all about my last conversation with the Master?

  "So, what do you think, Daimbert?" I could no longer see his features, but as he turned a gleam from the lantern on a fishing boat far out to sea seemed to flash in his eye. "This is finally the opportunity for wizardry to do what it has always had the potential to do: mold mankind in the direction it ought to have taken all along. You and I are at precisely the right point to do it, both at an age where we've acquired experience and wisdom, an age where many men start to find their strength waning but which we as wizards find to be but an extension of vigorous youth. Even now, school wizards have been able to end most warfare in the Western Kingdoms, but you and I together can also bring peace to the Eastern Kingdoms. We'll end corruption and petty bickering in city governments and ensure that their economies are well managed. By working with the bishop of the City, we'll quickly be able to end the foolish superstitions that distract people from practical considerations. And though we rule absolutely, with an authority that will make our names legendary for millennia after our deaths, we shall always know that we are improving the lot of humanity through our rule. Don't you find this a tempting offer?"

  At one time it might have been tempting. But if I had learned one thing as a wizard, it was that it is impossible for someone, beneficent as he might imagine himself, always to know exactly what another needs, much less arrange for that to appear. Naurag, brash as he might have been, had recognized this well before he died; in fact, I thought, this might have been what he intended to spell out in the "Afterword" to his ledger which he never wrote.

  Ending warfare was fine, but not if we replaced the tyranny of kings with tyranny of our own. Trying to regulate the economy, however, beyond assuring access to opportunities, was outright impossible. Elerius and I would never know what was better for hundreds of thousands of people than they did themselves. Ending 'foolish superstition' was not just impossible but highly dangerous. If we decided to tell people what they could and couldn't believe we might as well declare ourselves gods and make the people worship as well as fear us. "I'm sorry," I said, very quietly. "I won't be your co-ruler."

  I couldn't see his face, but his breath came short and sharp. I had surprised him then. He had thought the combination of bribe and veiled threat would be more than enough to bring me to his way of thinking—especially since he himself was genuinely convinced he was right. "Are you going to fight me, then, Daimbert?" he asked after a moment. "Is your plan to wrest control of the school for yourself?"

  It might have been the Master's plan, but it most certainly was not mine. "I have no interest in control over anything," I said as clearly as I could. I was defying the Master's dying wishes, but there was no way I could either join in absolute authority over the West, or try with my limited resources to oppose the man who would wield that authority.

  "This is, of course, exactly what you would say if you did plan to oppose me," Elerius commented after a moment.

  "That may be. But it's nonetheless true. Do whatever you like as head of the school and head of whatever other institution will have you. I'm going to stay quietly in Yurt."

  The Master wouldn't be alive to know about it, and Theodora wouldn't be surprised to hear that Elerius had been elected. But how, I asked myself in dismay, could I possibly tell Joachim?

  After a moment Elerius said in a tone of forced cheerfulness, "If you really mean that, I'll be very sorry not to have your assistance. It would have been good to have your ideas and your magic working beside me. This won't, of course, change anything in my plans to bring women into the school. Antonia can begin her wizardry studies this winter, or even earlier."

  A hostage for my good behavior. But how could I keep her away from the school without making Elerius think I was plotting against him?

  "Well," he added, "there was something I had planned to show you after you agreed to work with me. I might as well show it to you anyway. It should help reassure you that my motives are only for the best."

  I'd never had any doubt about his motivation. The fact that he was convinced he was acting for the best only made it worse.

  He rose, flying, over the shore and headed out to sea. I followed him, wondering if he really did have something to show me or was leading me into a trap.

  But this didn't seem to be a trap. He flew out about a mile to a low, rocky island, circled by phosphorescent breaking waves. A half moon hung in the sky, casting just enough light that I could see that the island's surface was pitted and without vegetation. And coming out of the pits—

  "No," I said, and my heart went tight and cold. "No. You can't have done this, Elerius. Not if you claim you're acting for good."

  I could see now what crept around the island: creatures manlike yet not human, creatures made of hair and dead bone but given the simulacrum of life by spells out of the old magic of earth and blood. They turned their misshapen heads up toward us, and their eyes glowed in the darkness. The eyes were the only features in those heads.

  "So you recognize them, Daimbert," said Elerius, pleased. I could see his face now, without color or expression in the pale light. "As you'll recall, I first encountered creatures like this in your kingdom."

  "I recognize them all right," I growled. They had come very close to killing all the inhabitants of the royal castle, including me. "You must have made them yourself, but I can't have forgotten where you found the model. You're planning to attack Yurt if you think I'm opposing you, is that it?"

  He laughed in what sounded like genuine amusement. "You have the strangest sense of humor sometimes, Daimbert. Of course I'm not planning to attack anyone's kingdom." He seemed easily capable of simultaneously chatting and maintaining his position high in the air over the island; I on the other hand was fighting to maintain mine. "And you misjudge me badly if you think I would threaten you in any way."

  Not threaten me, just threaten Antonia?

  "Although the creatures like this that you and I initially encountered," he continued, "were indeed made for war, I have shaped mine quite differently. For one thing, I have no dragons' teeth, which all the old books agree work best for such creatures. They're modeled on the same spells, of course, but mine are made for peaceful purposes. My intention is to teach them agriculture."

  "Agriculture!" Maybe Elerius had lost his mind—but he sounded entirely rational.

  "Of course, it's possible that I'll have to use them as soldiers a few times while establishing peace throughout the West—or even try them out in the Eastern Kingdoms. But wizardry has less messy ways of stopping armies than creating other armies: that's why I have additional plans for my creatures. The farmers in all the kingdoms always have to work so hard during harvest time. Once I've perfected the spells on these I can use them as additional field hands during busy peri
ods. They'll work without pay, of course, and even without food and rest. Think what a boon to the farmer this will be!"

  The metaphysics of making undead creatures from old bones, then turning them into slaves, was much too complex for me, but I had a pretty good guess what Joachim's reaction would be. "I— I see," I said slowly.

  "Maybe if you don't want to help me with the Dragons' Scepter," Elerius suggested, turning to fly back to land, "you could at least give me a hand with my creatures. I know you studied the old magic yourself at one point, so you're just the person to assist me. So far they've been a bit harder to govern than I had hoped, even violent, which is why I've had to keep them isolated on this island until I'm quite sure they're safe."

  Undead soldier-slaves who were in revolt even as they were created. The metaphysics didn't seem complicated after all.

  "So you see I'm being perfectly open with you," Elerius said as we landed back on the docks below the school. The harbor had become quiet now, other than distant notes of sailors' songs. I leaned against a bollard to catch my breath. Sick horror had drained the strength from me. Useless to oppose him if I couldn't even stand upright trying. "No secrets, merely an invitation that still stands. Perhaps you just need more time to think it over. After all, we don't know how long—"

  He was interrupted by the sound of a bell ringing, a steady dark note tolling again and again. One of the City's churches? But that didn't sound like any church bell I knew.

  Then Elerius and I whirled to stare at each other in the faint light, both recognizing it at the same time. That was the bell that hung on top of the school, the bell that was rung only, and then for just three notes, when a group of wizards was graduating. The steady ringing could mean only one thing: the Master had died.