Is This Apocalypse Necessary

by C. Dale Brittain

  Hadwidis started to protest, entirely unconvincingly, that she thought descending into a black hole under a tomb would be exciting, but she didn't have a chance to finish.

  Kaz-alrhun's hands darted out, and he seized Hadwidis and Gwennie by the arms. "I do not intend to risk angering the Ifrit for nothing. If you will not lead the way down, Daimbert, then you shall follow." Before I could react, the two young women disappeared before my horrified eyes, and the mage was instead gripping two black dogs by their collars. With a quick motion, he tossed them down the staircase, where they disappeared with loud yelps.

  The last edge of the sun still lingered below the horizon. The mage hadn't left me much choice. I snatched up the torch and leaped after the dogs. The trapdoor slammed shut above me.

  * * * *

  I flew downward, holding the flaring torch over my head, with a sick feeling that in a moment I would see the black dogs stretched out awkwardly across the steps, their backs broken. If they were killed as dogs, there was no way my magic could bring them back to life as women. But I descended the entire staircase without seeing them. Near the bottom, a soft light began glowing around me, apparently from the walls themselves. The stairs ended in an empty marble hall, set about with columns of jasper.

  I looked around wildly, then jumped as a wet muzzle came up behind me and licked my hand.

  Both the dogs were there, looking at me with frightened human eyes. Both had smooth black fur and alert ears. On one the fur on top of the skull had been cut very short.

  I dropped the torch and wrapped an arm around each of their necks. "It's just a transformation spell," I said, trying to be reassuring. "I have no idea why the mage wanted to turn you into dogs, but I can get you turned back in just a minute. I've known how to work these spells since I graduated from wizards' school."

  Or at least since not much later than that. But before I could start picking apart Kaz-alrhun's spell, different from anything ever taught to western wizardry students, the dogs put their heads up, and one gave a short bark. A large black cat came strolling, white-tipped tail in the air, across the empty hall toward us.

  The two dogs wiggled in interest, collars clinking. I kept a tight hold on them and made calming sounds, halfway between what I would have said to them in their own forms and what I would have said to real dogs. The cat froze, all the hair on her back going straight up.

  If I was going to have to use magic that involved this cat, she had better not scoot away, or we could spend the rest of eternity beneath Xantium's cemetery. With a last firm word to the dogs—I resisted telling them Stay!—I moved cautiously toward the cat. "Come on, puss puss puss. Don't be frightened." This had better not turn out to be some enchanted princess whom I had just mortally insulted.

  But the cat relaxed after a moment, and my ensorcelled companions stayed at the bottom of the stairs, where they both kept wagging their tails. I held out my hand for the cat to sniff, then she allowed me to pick her up, still making soothing sounds. "There's a good puss, don't dig your claws into my arm, that's right, just relax while I stroke you, while I run my hand down your tail, while I pluck out three hairs—" At that she did dig her claws into my arm and shot away, but I had the white hairs. I returned in triumph to the guttering torch. "Stay back," I told Hadwidis and Gwennie. "Kaz-alrhun said that if I burned these hairs I'd see some marvel, and if it's an Ifrit you'll want to be out of the way." And not in human form, I added to myself. I had once known a woman an Ifrit had considered his wife; she in fact had enjoyed living with him, but it had still been clear that it wouldn't have made any difference if she hadn't.

  I dropped the hairs into the flame and waited. They burned with a cat-like hiss, twisting and shriveling for a second before disintegrating. And then, somewhere in the distance, a low note began sounding, like an enormous organ playing at the bottom of its range.

  At the same time, tendrils of smoke began wafting out from between the jasper pillars. As I watched, heart pounding, trying desperately to remember what little eastern magic I had once known—all the spells I had been going to review this morning before Kaz-alrhan and I together went in search of an Ifrit—the smoke began to coalesce.

  The eyes were the first to take solid shape, blood-shot eyes the size of my head. The black dogs behind me whimpered once. The smoke continued to thicken and take shape, now in a man-like form, but a man bigger, far bigger, than any human ever seen: a man with dark green skin, pointed ears, and clawed hands, whose enormous form nearly filled the marble hall. This is what I had come to the east to find, I told myself, backing until the first step of the staircase caught me in the leg. This was an Ifrit.

  * * * *

  "You have broken our pact, Kaz-alrhun!" he roared with a voice that shook the jasper columns. "By what death shall I slay you? We agreed that if I would not disturb you if you would not disturb me. But you have summoned me from my sleep at the hour when dreams are sweetest!"

  He snatched me up in one clawed hand, bringing me up to eye level to stare better. "But I'm not Kaz-alrhun," I said as clearly and politely as I could through my panic. No use even trying a spell against a creature whose magic was so powerful that mine might not even have existed. All I had were my wits. "I have made no pact with you."

  This technicality did not immediately register with the Ifrit. The fingers slowly started to close around me. I caught a look of horror from the black dogs, pressed under the stairs together. It appeared as if Gwennie wouldn't find it necessary after all to push a pin into my body to make sure I was really dead.

  But the Ifrit didn't kill me at once. Instead he loosened his fingers again to turn me this way and that, peering at me as though I were some intriguing insect, and he was hoping I wouldn't sting him before he decided to go ahead and crush me. I smelled his sour breath and looked at the huge pores in the green cheek next to me. There was a very distinctive green mole on the side of his green nose. Just as I feared. It had been over twenty years, but it wasn't the sort of thing one was likely to forget. This was the same Ifrit I had met before.

  "You're a mage," he said accusingly. "How am I supposed to keep track of all you little mages? Especially when you anger me?" with a snap of teeth the size of boulders.

  "I am not a mage, but a western wizard," I managed to croak out fairly firmly. "And you can't hurt me. I'm from Yurt."

  It had worked before. I held my breath, waiting to see if it would work again, and imagining what I would do to Kaz-alrhun if I got out of here alive—preferably something much worse than the Ifrit might do to me.

  The Ifrit seemed to be thinking this over for a moment. Ifriti live an extremely long time, and I didn't know if that meant that an event of twenty years ago would seem as fresh as yesterday to him, or whether millennia of memories would keep any one particular incident from staying with him.

  But the enormous hand still did not close around me. "Why did you think I wasn't supposed to hurt people from Yurt?" the Ifrit grumbled, as though my words had struck a chord and his slow, dangerous brain was genuinely trying to remember.

  "Another one of us little mages," I said as confidently as I could. "He freed you from a bottle, where you had been imprisoned under the dread seal of Solomon, son of David."

  "You aren't Solomon, honored be his name," the Ifrit interrupted angrily. "And neither was that other mage."

  "But Solomon bound you, remember," I said, knowing I had to spell it out for him. "The mage I mean is the one who freed you. And in return you gave him two wishes. The first wish was that you would keep safe everyone from Yurt."

  It was deeply ironic that the "mage" who had, over twenty years ago, found the bottle with the Ifrit in it, and dared to loosen the lead seal, was Elerius.

  He had been trying to lure us into the eastern deserts for reasons of his own. As part of his plans, he had ordered the Ifrit he freed to take us captive but not to hurt us. Since he had, as usual, convinced himself that he was acting for the best, he wouldn't wish to actually damage us bef
ore he got what he wanted from us.

  As it turned out, he'd never gotten what he wanted, which was part of the reason he now seemed convinced that I was a potentially dangerous opponent. But he had most indubitably ordered this Ifrit not to harm anyone from Yurt, and I wasn't going to dwell on the detail that Elerius had expected the Ifrit to keep us safe by keeping us captive. Instead I hoped that, if my luck just held longer than the five minutes it had lasted so far, I would be able to use Elerius's own wish against him.

  "But that was before," the Ifrit objected. "That mage couldn't have meant I was supposed to keep people from Yurt safe forever."

  "Quite true," I said, extemporizing wildly. "But you granted him two wishes, and until he asks for the second you have to continue to honor his first one."

  "Are you sure Kaz-alrhun didn't tell you to wake me up this early?" the Ifrit growled, frowning again.

  "Quite sure," I said, which was in fact true. "I had no idea even that you had made a pact with him, and I certainly didn't know I would meet you here in this hall."

  "I do not like Kaz-alrhun," the Ifrit commented darkly. "And I do not like that other little mage, either. There's a good reason why I never granted him his second wish." His voice trailed off, as though he were trying to remember.

  I remembered perfectly, though I wasn't about to remind him. "But until you do, his first wish is still in effect," I said brightly, hoping to change the subject while I was still ahead. "And now—"

  "You talk too much, little mage," said the Ifrit, with a scowl that dug a crease in his forehead like an eroded ditch. "And your talk is not amusing. As long as I'm supposed to keep you safe, you're going to grant me wishes."

  Wishes? How was I supposed to grant wishes to an Ifrit? Slowly the outer parts of his body started going all misty again, though the head and the hand that held me stayed disconcertingly solid.

  "Wherever we're going," I said desperately, "I need to take my dogs along!"

  The Ifrit saw the two black dogs then, and his expression softened. They did not however seem reassured and cowered under his gaze. "Dogs don't demand wishes," he said agreeably and snatched them both up in his other hand, ignoring their startled yelps. Then he turned and shot through the jasper columns, which dissolved around us. Air like a hurricane rushed past, and it was impossible to see. The world went black and seemed for a second to turn upside down, then slowly stabilized and grew quieter again. I tried not to retch and clung desperately to the Ifrit's thumb.

  When up and down had reasserted themselves, I opened my eyes gingerly. It was light again, and we were no longer in the strange, empty hall beneath Xantium's cemetery.

  Instead we were on a sunny hillside, amid the tumbled ruins of what might once have been a temple. A few statues still stood upright—next to us a carved creature with the body of a woman but the head of a dog. A hundred yards away, sheep grazed on sparse grass. A sharp peak a few miles distant thrust into the sky. The Ifrit set us down, relatively carefully. He looked even bigger here, out in the open, than he had in the hall to which I had inadvertently summoned him. My legs collapsed under me, and the two black dogs rushed to press themselves against me.

  "Time to start amusing me," said the Ifrit. "I think I shall have you work magic. You mages always claim to know so much magic, though I have never been particularly impressed by anyone since Solomon. Go ahead. Make this hillside dissolve into the sea."

  Part Six:

  The Ifrit

  I

  This was all Kaz-alrhun's fault. At some point in the last twenty years he had tried to master the Ifrit and had reached a standoff: both respected the other, and neither would bother the other, even though the mage still had a means to summon the Ifrit if he wished. So he had decided to let me try western magic, with the thought that if I succeeded, then he would have an authority over an Ifrit no other eastern mage had ever had, and if I failed, then at least he wasn't the one who ended up dead. And to think that I had told Hadwidis and Gwennie that Kazalrhun was "well-disposed" toward those from Yurt!

  "Um, why exactly do you want this hillside to dissolve into the sea?" I asked, when the Ifrit seemed to be waiting expectantly. What he had just suggested was far beyond my powers, probably beyond the powers of all the wizards at the school working together. If I sold my soul, the supernatural forces of darkness could doubtless dissolve an entire mountain if they felt like it, but I doubted my soul would bring that much on the market these days. "How about if I do some tricks for you instead?"

  "What do you mean, tricks? I do not appreciate being tricked by you little mages."

  I rejected the idea of tricking the Ifrit by transmogrifying him into a frog. It probably wouldn't work any better than it would with a dragon. "I mean I'll create exciting things for you to look at," I babbled. "See, I can make this dragon—" I was working fast, and my illusory purple dragon looked a lot more like Naurag than a real dragon.

  I didn't get a chance to finish it anyway. The Ifrit stamped an enormous green foot onto my illusion. "You aren't listening, little mage. I do not want to see dragons! I want to get rid of this hillside and all its sheep."

  "Just tell me why," I said, stalling, "to be sure that I get rid of it in the way you wish." The hillside, dotted with stones and sheep, seemed perfectly innocuous in the morning sun.

  The Ifrit picked me up between thumb and forefinger and dangled me in front of his face, where I had an excellent view of his great yellow teeth. "You talk a lot for something so little. I want to drive the roc away, of course."

  "The roc? What's that?" If something would just make sense for a moment, I might be able to think of what to try next.

  "You're awfully stupid for a mage," the Ifrit commented. "The roc is a very big bird, of course. He makes his nest on top of that peak. These are the sheep on which he feeds." He pointed, in case I had as little idea what a sheep was as what a roc was. "If his sheep were gone he'd have to go elsewhere, and I could find out what he's gathered in his nest. Rocs like to collect things, and I expect some of what he has belongs to me."

  How could an Ifrit be intimidated by a big bird? But then I spotted motion off toward the peak and stared. I should have realized that if an Ifrit called something "very big," it would have to be truly gigantic.

  The bird soaring toward us must have had a wing-span of fifty yards. It flew with startling speed—faster than even the greatest dragon. The wind from its wing-beats, reeking with carrion, blew even the Ifrit's greasy hair around. Still held in the Ifrit's grip, I looked up at it in horror. It was a dull black except for its naked head, colored bright orange. It screeched at the Ifrit, then dove and hooked one of the sheep in a single talon. The rest of the flock scattered in panic from under the enormous shadow.

  Then it was gone, flying back toward its nest. I realized I had been holding my breath and slowly let it out again. If anything could successfully tangle with an Ifrit, I thought, this creature could. Kaz-alrhun might have had more success recruiting its assistance than he was likely to have with mine.

  "Well?" the Ifrit demanded. "Are you going to do it? Are you going to stop asking foolish questions and dissolve this hill into the sea?"

  "I have a better idea," I said brightly. "Better" was probably an overstatement, but at least it was an idea. "Rather than driving the roc away by destroying its sheep, I'll slip up in secret to its nest. That way I can find anything of yours it may have taken."

  The Ifrit gave me a sour look. "I know your plan. You tricky mages are all alike. You're intending to keep everything the roc has for yourself." For such a stupid creature, he had surprisingly good insights sometimes.

  He thought for a moment, absently-mindedly squeezing me tighter, then slowly started to smile. "But if you go up there, and a nasty place a roc's nest is, too, then I won't have to! Well, little mage, I'll let you go, but I'm keeping your dogs until you come back. That way I'll be sure there's no trickery!" He bent over to set me down and stroked the heads of the terrified dogs with one finge
r. "My wife used to like dogs," he added, almost sentimentally.

  I looked again toward the peak and saw the roc starting this way again, clearly visible even at the distance of several miles. It must have young birds in its nest, with gigantic appetites it had to satisfy. With a sinking feeling I wondered if it also had a mate someplace near, perhaps one even bigger.

  "Gwennie! Hadwidis!" I called, trying to make it sound as though I were addressing hounds, so the Ifrit wouldn't suspect. "Round up those sheep and get them out of the way!"

  Gwennie and Hadwidis, delighted to have an excuse, fled from the Ifrit. Barking wildly and racing back and forth, inefficiently for sheepdogs though not doing badly for young women, they managed to stampede the sheep, which had just started grazing again. They all disappeared over the hill together while I wrapped myself in a spell of illusion.

  "This is fairly amusing," the Ifrit admitted, admiring the effect. "I didn't know you little mages could look like sheep."

  Covered with illusory wool, I flew toward the center of the hillside, below the ruined temple, where the sheep had been a moment before. The roc screeched again at the Ifrit as it stooped toward where its sheep should be. I was the only one there. It decided to take me.

  I managed to time my jump so that the talon, thick as a spear, passed under me rather than through me. Hanging on desperately, I was swept up into the air with a few great wing-beats, as the roc headed back toward its peak. If such unnatural creatures as rocs and Ifriti, I thought, would just stay in the magical lands of the north rather than cluttering up civilized lands and making trouble for well-meaning wizards, life would be substantially easier.

  I smelled the nest before I saw it. A reek compounded of carrion and bird-lime wafted toward me. The roc sailed over some towering cedars, no more than small bushes to it, and then, wide wings fluttering, settled toward its nest. It was a tangle of huge logs, some with the leaves still on, stained yellow and white and draped with the remains of sheep, goats, and other animals I didn't care to identify. Stones and metal objects glittered from the interstices, but I had no time for close examination. Amid the bones and branches were three baby rocs.