Is This Apocalypse Necessary

by C. Dale Brittain

  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. "Kaz-alrhun 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!"

  So his calculations on how long it would take had come out the same as mine. "What do you mean, he is not done?" I demanded.

  Maffi lifted a muddy arm. "Look."

  Again streaking the sky, the Ifrit had reached the castle. I wished desperately for a far-seeing spell and suddenly found that I had one. School magic was working here again.

  Hadwidis, I thought, was not going to like it at all if the Ifrit destroyed her castle—and neither might the Cranky Saint. I held my breath, waiting to see the towers torn from the castle like a toy ripped apart by a peevish child. Even with a reliable spell working for me again, it was hard to see through the dimness, but the brightly-lit windows of the castle stayed solidly in place.

  Instead, I saw the Ifrit's fiery shape abruptly shrink and pour in through one of the windows. The castle vibrated with a note like an enormous bell, swaying as though floating on a wave rather than built on solid rock. And then all the windows and doors were flung open.

  The battle that had been raging at the castle's feet ceased. Had I been that close to the castle I would have been in total panic, but the blowing horns sounded as though they were giving rational orders.

  Rational orders to get as far away from there as possible. In a second all the armies turned, Paul's and for all I knew Elerius's men as well, and galloped back toward the royal encampment at a furious pace.

  The thundering hooves would be on us in just a few moments. With reserves of terror-driven strength I thought I had exhausted hours before, I half-lifted, half-dragged the royal family as fast as I could toward the safety of the tents and the still-burning campfires. Maffi on their other side helped pull them along.

  "Did you know something like this was going to happen?" I shouted at him. "Were you experimenting with the Ifrit's bottle while I was gone?" But he seemed not to hear.

  I turned back toward the castle once I was sure Hadwidis had recovered enough to be in charge again. With my far-seeing spell I could see people pouring both in and out of the castle's gaping doors—mounted knights jostled wildly to enter, but emerging were two dozen wizards.

  I shouted to them, my voice magically amplified to boom over the broken and muddy field like
the sound of the doomsday trumpet. "Get away from there! Escape while you still have your lives! Come to the camp, and you will be pardoned! It is I, Daimbert, who calls you!"

  As long as I was supposed to have returned from the dead, I thought with a small smile, I might as well get some use out of my supernatural status.

  The next moment I had to lift myself into the air with the last of my strength, to avoid the army rushing toward me. I tried unsuccessfully to find Paul in the great confusion of armored men and horses racing below me. For all I knew they too thought they were obeying the call I had sent toward the young wizards.

  Hovering, I looked again toward the castle and thought I could see the wizards, strung out in an untidy line, moving nervously across the broken, empty fields. Good enough. If they had once turned their backs on Elerius, they would not suddenly run again to him.

  But where was Elerius, and how was he reacting to the Ifrit's destruction of all his defenses? For that matter, why hadn't the Ifrit just started killing everyone in his path the moment he broke free of the bottle?

  It was all far too confusing for me to work out in my present state. But as if in answer to my question, just as I was ready to turn away and drop the far-seeing spell, light flared at the top window of a tower—Elerius's study. And out through the window shot the Ifrit, his body swelling to its normal enormous size the moment he was through the opening. In one great green hand he held Elerius.

  And he threw him: threw him like a boy throwing a ball but far faster, far higher, so that he shot up and away and disappeared into the night sky.

  The Ifrit turned, slapped his hands together as though satisfied, and flew directly toward me.

  This was it, then. At least I had gotten Elerius out of the castle before I died, so maybe the teachers in the school would have some luck now tracking him down and capturing him.

  I closed my eyes for a quick prayer and opened them again. But the Ifrit was now aimed in a direction that would, by a small measure, miss me. My own despairing readiness for death gave way to new horror, as I realized that he was not in fact after me. He was instead heading for the camp.

  * * * *

  He and I reached it at the same moment. The camp was in complete chaos, as the men and horses who had fled from the Ifrit suddenly found him among them. His giant bare feet set down on top of tents as men dove for safety, and he strode among them, avoiding the fires but nothing else.

  "I have fulfilled your commands, Mistress!" his voice boomed above me. "And I have come back for my bottle."

  Mistress! Who could he be talking to? But in a second I spotted the person standing in front of him, not substantially taller than one of his green toes. I should have known. It was Antonia.

  "Have you really fulfilled all my commands?" my daughter demanded, looking up with her braids tossed back over her shoulders. Tucked under one arm was the bronze cucumber-shaped bottle in which the Ifrit had been imprisoned. "You said I would get two wishes, and so far I don't think I've gotten more than one."

  The Ifrit bent to scoop her up in one gigantic hand. She balanced easily, holding onto his thumb. "You may have freed me, little Mistress," he grumbled, "but you cannot change our agreement so easily! First, I destroyed all those undead warriors. That was one wish. Then I nullified the spells of the chief mage in the castle and expelled him from it. That was two wishes. And finally, I accomplished all this without killing anyone, not even the trickster mage who imprisoned me, whom I had sworn before God to rip into tiny shreds, so slowly that he would live far beyond the normal short span of you mortals, but so painfully that he would pray each day for death. That is three wishes."

  "That wasn't a third wish," said Antonia briskly, her voice high and tiny compared to the Ifrit's. "It was a condition of the first two wishes. Now that you mention it, I guess you really did grant me two wishes, but I still see no reason to give you the bottle."

  The furrows in the Ifrit's massive forehead deepened. "And I see no reason to refrain from killing the trickster mage, who I see is conveniently handy."

  I would have yelled up to Antonia except that my voice didn't seem to be working. Besides, I didn't know what I should yell. I found Solomon's golden seal in my pocket and considered brandishing it, but it wasn't going to do a lot of good unless the Ifrit were already inside a bottle, which he most indubitably was not.

  Antonia considered coolly. "All right. How about if we make the agreement this way. You grant me three wishes— the three you've already given me—the first two in return for freeing you from the bottle, the third in return for letting you keep it. But remember! Before I'll hand the bottle over, I'll have to have some assurance that you won't kill the wizard or anyone else here!"

  "I have lived," the Ifrit growled, his voice as deep as the grumble of an earthquake, "since the earth was first formed, and yet you, a mortal whose life I could crush out in a second, dare ask me for assurances?"

  "Yes," said Antonia. Her voice had gone up an octave, but she did not hesitate.

  The Ifrit stamped one gigantic foot, scattering the soldiers who had started creeping closer, and brought his cupped hand up toward his face. A gigantic yellow eyeball glared at Antonia from only a few feet away. "I hope you are not next to tell me that you are from Yurt."

  "Caelrhon and Yurt both," she said, pressing herself back against his fingers, as far from that eye as possible. "Aren't you supposed to protect and not harm people from Yurt?"

  The Ifrit growled again, and his fingers twitched as though he really was about to crush her. But instead, after a second that seemed to last for hours, he nodded his massive head. "You are my mistress no longer. But I swear to you on the dread name of Solomon, son of David, that I shall not slay the trickster mage with the slow death he so fully deserves."

  "Good," said Antonia. "After all, he's from Yurt too."

  Slowly he lowered her back to the ground. From the corner of my eye I saw the young wizards who had been working with Elerius straggling into camp. Antonia hopped from the Ifrit's hand, then slapped the bronze bottle into it. "Good to meet you!" she called up, on her best manners.

  The Ifrit did not return the courtesy. Instead, with a final great stamp of his foot, he launched himself into the sky, and shot away in a fiery blaze, streaking eastward like a comet across the dark sky until we could see him no more.

  Theodora and I reached Antonia at the same time and dropped to our knees beside her. With four arms wrapped tight around her, she looked from one of us to the other. "Now aren't you glad I'm here?" she asked proudly.

  III

  All I wanted to do was sleep. Even asking Antonia how she had possibly been able to master the Ifrit could wait, though my bones felt like water as I thought about how close we had come to having an infuriated Ifrit destroy this entire corner of the Western Kingdoms. But the young wizards were all looking at me, their eyes round in the firelight. I noted that Evrard, Royal Wizard of Caelrhon, was among them.

  I pushed myself to my feet with Theodora's help. Joachim appeared beside me and supported me with a strong arm under mine. The knights of the royal armies made a great circle around us. To my enormous relief I spotted King Paul among them, apparently unhurt. I had lost track of Hadwidis and her mother and brother, but they must be back in the crowd somewhere. With the bishop on one side of me and Theodora on the other, and Antonia standing proudly in front, I beckoned the young wizards forward.

  They hesitated, some shame-faced, some trembling in fear. Evrard spoke at last, in a shaky voice unlike his normal good-natured tone. He had been my friend for years, and he seemed the only one of the wizards worried about me as well as about themselves. "Are you—are you dead, Daimbert?"

  At this point I probably looked a lot like a walking corpse. But I shook my head. "I am alive as you"—surely something of an overstatement—"and indeed was never killed by the dragon." Elerius must not have told the wizards who had joined him that he knew my death was faked—an indication, I thought, of how little he t
rusted them, or still feared my potential influence. "But I would not be here were it not for Saint Eusebius." Better give credit where it was due.

  Evrard looked back uneasily at the rest of the wizards, but he was the most senior one there, and the rest of them shoved and nudged him. "Well," he said with false heartiness after a moment, "we knew the Master intended you to head up the school after him, but Elerius told us that the old man must have been losing his judgment in his final months. Elerius was clearly mistaken if you've got an Ifrit and a saint working for you!"

  "Also two witches," provided Antonia, politely including her mother in her boast.

  "I'm sorry, Daimbert!" Evrard continued, his tone more genuine. "I must say I never thought of you in years past as a particularly good wizard. That's why I thought I'd better follow Elerius. I know now I was wrong!" he added as two of the other wizards poked him in the back. "Especially since you've overcome him! Is it too late to join you?"

  They were all looking at me expectantly now. My next duty, I realized, was to find a diplomatic way to reintegrate these wizards into organized magic, in a manner that would make them realize the extent of their folly in allowing Elerius to create a rift in the school, which had almost led to a new outbreak of the Black Wars: only worse, because instead of stopping the fighting the wizards would have been abetting it. I also had to find a way to make the teachers of the school receive these properly penitent young wizards back, to start healing the rift Elerius had created.

  I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. If I were the kind of wizard the old Master thought I was, I would have been able to start the diplomacy at once, in spite of my exhaustion. Instead I just shook my head. "You can't 'join' me," I said, having to force myself to speak above a whisper. "There are no more sides. There is only organized wizardry. You'll have to be penitent, and you'll have to ask the forgiveness of the masters of the school. Talk to the bishop. He'll explain it to you."

  Theodora kept me vertical as I staggered off toward my tent—fortunately one of the ones the Ifrit's giant feet had missed. Whitey popped out of the crowd to say, "We're telephoning the school now, Master. Do you want to talk to the teachers first, or should we tell them the news ourselves?" But I waved him away, too tired even to correct him for calling me Master.