Is This Apocalypse Necessary

by C. Dale Brittain

  It was pitch black, and all my magic was gone. A brief attempt to reach Evrard's mind was as unproductive as if I had never studied any wizardry at all. The magic lights were, naturally, not working. As soon as the door closed everything had gone completely dark, so that without sight or magic I would not have known if Elerius were two paces from us.

  What was Elerius using to power his spells? He had needed a cohort of young wizards in his castle to keep my magic from working, and here he was by himself, opposed by the best wizards in the West, and he was still neutralizing their spells. No wonder I hadn't been able to find any trace of the school teachers' magic from outside: Elerius had stopped all their spells before they began.

  And was continuing to do so, even with the very same young wizards who had once been his assistants now outside probing for flaws in his magic. The one bright spot was that in these conditions most of the magic Elerius knew would be as inaccessible to him as it was to me.

  The queen was not about to let a little darkness deter her. I kept on her heels as she stormed down the passage that led from the front door. "There are two steps up here, my lady," I said, "and the passage then curves left."

  She must have heard me because she avoided tripping on the steps or hitting the wall, but all her intent was focused on finding Elerius.

  If the magic lights weren't working, I thought, and Elerius didn't want to show himself at a window, he might well be operating out of the big lecture room, lit by skylights, up toward the top of the school. It was a long climb up there, especially in the dark—student wizards worked on their flying spells in part to make the ascent more easily. But I had never become particularly proficient at flying until after I left the school, and I still knew every step, though my student days were now decades in the past.

  Where were the student wizards? I wondered as we scrambled up the steep stairs. There had been a number of students at the school when the old Master died, but no one had mentioned them recently. The problem with being thought dead was that one lost all track of current events.

  The teachers must have sent them home, which at least meant they were out of the direct line of fire.

  We came up the last flight of cracked stone steps, seeing faint light in front of us. Other than turning where I told her to turn, the queen had given no sign of even realizing I was with her. But as we entered the large, unnaturally quiet room, with its rows of seats carved with the initials of generations of wizardry students, and the chalk dust hanging in the air, she turned toward me. She was breathing hard from the ascent but still had enough breath to say sharply, "Thank you for showing me the way, Wizard, but I would prefer to speak with Elerius in private."

  "So would I," I said. "First we have to find him."

  In the twilight shadows lurked in every corner. Normally, as well as the noises made by students creaking in their chairs, whispering, coughing, flicking pages in their textbooks, and scribbling notes, there was a constant faint sound from the skylights: the whistle of the wind, the rattle of a dead leaf on glass. But except for the sound of our own breathing, everything now was dead silent. The room was full of memories of lectures, by Zahlfast, by the old Master, by other teachers— even a few by me. Surely, it seemed, all that magic must be accessible here, but my spells still didn't work.

  Into the silence came the faint sound of a footfall. Both the queen and I whirled, to see Elerius up on the dais, stroking his black beard and looking at us from under peaked eyebrows.

  "Just a moment, my dear," he said to the queen, one palm held out. His voice sounded almost normal, but not quite— his confidence had been broken by the double blow of the saint and the Ifrit, and he didn't have it back yet. "There has been a brief detour on our path to triumph, but I can explain my new plans to you as soon as I am through with Daimbert. Could you leave us?"

  "I," she said, very cold, "shall not leave without first receiving satisfactory answers."

  "Very well. But this may possibly prove unpleasant."

  He took two steps down from the podium, now looking only at me. I was right. His confidence had been broken. His thoughtful tawny eyes held something I had never seen in them before—pure hatred.

  He was still trying to sound normal, especially with the queen there, but was rapidly becoming less successful. "If you have come with one more of your pathetic attempts to make me yield to your authority, Daimbert, I am afraid it is much too late." He had gone far beyond jealousy that the Master preferred me. Telling him it had been my daughter, not me, who had used the Ifrit to drive him from the castle would only make things worse.

  "This is my school," he continued from between clenched teeth. "Neither the saints with whom you claim friendship, nor any magical creatures from the East, shall take it from me. You have disrupted my plans for the last time! Even if I do not succeed in persuading the West that everyone would be better off in yielding to my leadership—something of which they will see the wisdom much more clearly once you are gone—I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that you will never lead them either."

  So much for my first plan, of making one final effort to talk him out of here. Stalling for time while I tried to come up with a second plan, I said, "Magic's stopped working here. We both know you could defeat me if it came to a contest of spells, but until you break your spell against spells, we may be reduced to the undignified alternative of wrestling on the floor. I'm not sure the queen would enjoy the spectacle."

  He glanced quickly toward her and made no effort to tackle me, though I flexed my newly-healed leg to be ready, just in case. He answered quietly, but the threat of violence gave a harsh undertone to his words. "A contest of spells will not be necessary. You are now utterly alone, and this time none of the friends of whom you're so proud will be able to help you. In a few minutes you shall accompany me to the school cellars, and what we find there shall destroy you utterly."

  My heart, still beating hard from the climb, hammered wildly. He's summoned a demon, I thought. And the saint, having answered my prayers once, was leaving the rest of this up to me.

  "Dear God, Elerius!" I burst out. "If you kill me—" Was he really planning to kill me in cold blood? It was hard to doubt his ability to do so. "—how will you ever persuade any of the teachers to follow you?"

  "When you are gone," he said, even more harshly, "they shall have a final chance to agree to my authority, or they and the entire school shall be destroyed as well."

  Back when the Master said he wanted me to succeed him, I had tried to object by pointing out that I had no idea what the school kept in all those locked rooms down in the cellars. My objections had been even more pertinent than I realized. It looked as though I was finally going to find out.

  I pulled back my lips in a desperate effort at a smile. "Goodness, Elerius, you almost had me believing you there for a minute!" I knew very well he wasn't joking, but maybe if I suggested he was, it might still give him a chance to back down. "But I am sure you aren't planning to sacrifice yourself." He bent toward me, glaring through the dimness. "It would be worth it, if I took you with me."

  The queen interrupted—for a second I had almost forgotten her, and her voice behind us made me jump. "Perhaps you are not the man I thought you were, Elerius," she said, speaking clearly and loudly from one of the student seats. "Threatening to kill a wizard who you imagine has been responsible for your own failures, preparing to destroy the wizards' school you had told me you would be so proud to head—all this sounds to me like an admission of failure!"

  That stopped him as nothing I could have said would have. "No, no, of course not. I said I would explain," he said hurriedly, again with a faint pleading note. "This is triumph! Don't you understand?"

  "I understand nothing," she said in a voice toneless with anger, "but that you have betrayed my affection."

  Maybe I could get out of here while she distracted him. Half a dozen steps, I thought, and I would be at the top of the stairs. I was sure I could run down them faster in th
e dark than he could. And when I reached the door, the door he had somehow magically sealed—

  "Don't try to run, Daimbert," he said as my foot quietly began to move. "You will never get the doors open." He wasn't looking at me, but he didn't have to—he would have been running himself under the circumstances.

  So what was I supposed to do? I thought, looking at the back of his head. Something he wouldn't think of doing himself, like throwing myself headfirst down the stairs so that I would be dead of a broken neck before he had the satisfaction of killing me?

  He might accuse me of a penchant for self-sacrifice, but I had a powerful penchant for survival. I would somehow have to reach the teachers, wherever he had sealed them. Zahlfast was in the infirmary, according to Whitey and Chin—that at least I thought I could find in the dark. With several of us working together, we might be able to find a way—

  So, the voice in the back of my mind asked sourly, did I think that if the teachers couldn't break through Elerius's spells by themselves, my own patchy knowledge of herbal and eastern magic would be enough to do the trick?

  "You were right, I realize now," I heard him babbling to the queen, "to point out that it was silly of me to worry so much about the school these last few months. Once I have destroyed it I shall no longer be distracted, and you and I shall set ourselves up in a much better kingdom than the one your daughter has so rudely seized. In fact—"

  He never had a chance to finish. The floor under our feet gave a sudden jerk, as though for a second Elerius's spells had faltered. I reached for my magic, but it still wasn't there.

  But something was different. Had Evrard and the rest of them found a chink, no matter how small, in Elerius's protective spells? I looked up at the skylights, where the last of the day's light still lingered.

  And saw a flash of flame, a yellow set of talons, and an enormous eye. The school was under attack by a dragon.

  III

  The floor jerked again, and just for a second sounds reached us from outside: a dragon's roar, the scrape of mighty claws on the roof, and, faint in the distance, what could have been shouts of triumph.

  Elerius gave a strangled cry of dismay and sprang for the stairs. If dragons were about to come down through the skylights, I could see his point. I grabbed the flabbergasted queen by the elbow and pulled her after him.

  "Coward!" she shouted after his retreating back as we stumbled down the dark staircase. "Will you save your skin and abandon me?"

  "He's not abandoning you, my lady," I said, though I couldn't have said why I still felt compelled to defend Elerius. "He's hurrying down to the school cellars to work on the magical defenses."

  She ignored me. We could hear his footsteps, moving far faster than hers, growing far and faint before us. If he had sold his soul to the devil in return for protection, it must not have commanded a very high price, or else a dragon would never have gotten within miles of the school.

  Could Evrard have possibly summoned a dragon? He had never had what I considered particularly good sense, but this went far beyond what even a marginally competent wizard with an over-active imagination should come up with. And how had he gotten a dragon down from the land of wild magic so rapidly?

  We were most of the way down to the level of the front door when all of the magical lights suddenly went back on, and whatever powerful spell had blocked my knowledge of the Hidden Language dissolved away. "Hah!" I shouted, from the sheer pleasure of having my magic back. With the lights on I could see again, but the feeling of opening my eyes from blindness went far beyond vision.

  The queen stopped, blinking in the sudden glare, but I pulled her on with new speed. Elerius must have shut down his spells to keep magic from working here in order to use the force to power his spells against dragons. But that meant it might be possible to find and rescue the teachers.

  The front doors were locked, but I had learned the spells to unlock them back when I was still a student, sneaking in after a long evening down in the taverns. A few quick words in the Hidden Language, and they swung open. The horse the queen had ridden in on was still there, but the street, that had been empty when we came in, was now packed with citizens staring upward, open-mouthed. Below us I could hear the city's alarm bells ringing wildly.

  "Straight down the hill, my lady," I said, giving her an unceremonious shove. Above us I heard new roars and scrabbling sounds. My view was blocked by the bulk of the school itself, but I saw a red tail, a green wing, and flames shooting from several different points. How many dragons could Evrard have possibly summoned? "Get as far away from here as you can!"

  "I shall not—" the queen started to announce, but I had already slammed the door, leaving her outside. Now to find the teachers before the dragons dismantled the school.

  It had been a while since I had lived here, and I had never spent much time in the infirmary, but my feet knew the way. Some of the other teachers had become my friends over the years, but Zahlfast had been my true friend since I graduated—and, although I had not realized it at the time, even before. I shot down the halls, down turnings and steps, past offices and seminar rooms, past the entrance to the cafeteria, and skidded to a halt at the white door that marked the suite of rooms where sick students and members of the faculty rested and were treated.

  I wrenched it open and burst into rooms smelling strongly of alcohol and medicinal herbs. A row of narrow beds were lined up, empty mattresses bare—except for one. Far overhead came crashes and thundering roars. The floor shook and shook again. If Elerius was trying to set up spells against dragons, they weren't working.

  For a second I did not recognize Zahlfast, whom I had always thought of as a figure of strength and authority. He was out of bed but leaning on the headboard. The tall red hat that was always on his head was nowhere in sight. He wore a nightshirt and looked in it much thinner and more frail than I remembered. His fingers on the headboard went white with tension as he struggled to keep his feet while the whole school swayed around us. We are wizards! I shouted mentally. We're not supposed to get old!

  Zahlfast's eyes had been downcast, as if in resignation, but then he looked up and saw me.

  "I'm alive. I was never actually dead," I said hastily, seeing the shock building. Faking one's death really was more effort than it was worth. I didn't want an old man, especially one already made ill by the unsuccessful struggle to keep organized wizardry together, pushed into apoplexy by seeing a ghost apparently welcoming him into the afterlife. "Elerius has lost control of the school's defenses, and we're under attack by dragons. I've got to get you out of here before the whole structure comes down around us."

  I lifted him with magic and transported him toward the doorway, trailing a sheet. That last crash sounded closer. Zahlfast shook his head hard and seemed to recover momentarily. "I can walk," he said shortly, then unexpectedly smiled. "I should have known, Daimbert, all the way back during that disastrous transformations practical of yours. Saving the school by attacking it with dragons was exactly what you would think of first."

  I had never, even for a minute, planned to attack the school with dragons, but there was no time to go into that now. "I'll get you to safety, then try to find the rest. Do you have any idea where in the school they are?"

  He was on his own feet now and wrapping the sheet around his shoulders like a cloak. "In the library. They had all gathered to try to decide what to do next, after the telephone message came through that Elerius was out of his castle. So when he showed up here instead, it was easy for him to capture them all."

  "I'll get them as soon as you're safe," I started to say again, but he cut me off short.

  "Aren't you surprised, Daimbert, that they haven't already come rushing down the halls, now that Elerius is distracted from most of his spells? I'll have to go with you. The library has its own set of protective spells—I put them in place myself, years ago, with the help of an especially bright student named Elerius. He's turned the spells inward to prevent the faculty's escape
, and even now I'm sure they are struggling to derive a countervailing spell, starting from first principles. I never let the knowledge of my protective spells spread, thinking the library would need to be defended from any wizard who went renegade—never realizing the worst renegade would be my own star pupil."

  We hurried as best we could back up the stairs and toward the library, though several times we were thrown against a wall by the force of the building's swaying. It couldn't hold together much longer, I thought. Once all the magic lights went out for ten seconds, then came back on. Scrapes and creakings came from below us now as well as above, and a deafening roar suggested an entire tower had toppled. It should have been full dark outside, but whenever we passed near to where a window had been—and glass now lay in shards—sheets of dragon-fire lit up the sky. Twice parts of the ceiling fell into a corridor through which we had just passed.

  "I've given my whole life to this place," Zahlfast was mumbling.

  "To the teaching of wizardry. Not to the building," I said firmly, though my own heart felt wretched at seeing it being pulled to pieces around us.

  The library, however, seemed untouched, the corridor leading to it free of rubble, even the sounds of disaster and collapse sounding more distant. Zahlfast sank to the floor by the door and for a moment leaned his head against the wall, his face gray.

  "Master," I said quietly, bending over him, "if you can just tell me the spells I'll try them, you shouldn't—"

  He looked up at me with a glint of anger from under shaggy eyebrows. "I'm not as far gone as you seem to think, and I'm not the Master. You won't saddle me with that! If we survive you'll be the Master here, Daimbert—or should I say, Frogs?"

  Stung, I stepped back, and after a brief pause he started on spells. In a moment I stopped being indignant enough that I began to try to help him, working mind-to-mind.

  But what did he mean by using that old teasing nickname I had hoped had been forgotten for decades? And where had he learned magic like this? I didn't know about the rest of the faculty, but it would have taken me many months to try to work out the spells he had set up around the library—the spells Elerius had used to capture the teachers.