Is This Apocalypse Necessary

by C. Dale Brittain

  Someday I really had to stop feeling my whole mind go blank whenever someone mentioned technical magic. I took a step into the room. "What's it doing?"

  Zahlfast frowned, probing. "I think he was using it to augment his own powers, first to keep any spells from working within the school, then, unsuccessfully, to strengthen the school's defenses against dragons. Now—" He frowned again. "I don't know what it's doing now."

  "Nothing any good," I said firmly. "How do I turn it off?"

  The one advantage of technical magic is that, even if you don't understand it, you can usually operate it fairly easily. With a few suggestions from Zahlfast, and only one pinch when I got my fingers too close to the copper rods, I managed to turn off the apparatus. It sighed, and the swirling colors subsided. Now it was only a collection of metal cogs, rods, and tubes, dead and without motion.

  Far down the corridor, I heard a shout of fury.

  "Maybe he had a second basilisk, and it's bitten him," I said hopefully.

  Zahlfast shook his head. "There was only ever the one."

  But Elerius must still be down here. With his apparatus turned off, maybe the two of us might even stand a chance against him. I took Zahlfast firmly under the elbow, and this time he did not try to shake me off. We walked quickly, down one corridor and then another—and saw a door standing open.

  We stopped, looked at each other, and looked toward that door, slightly ajar, a faint light emerging from inside. I didn't dare even whisper—but then it would not have been difficult for Elerius to spot us, even silent as illusions. I pointed toward the doorway and lifted an eyebrow, inquiring if my old teacher knew what had been stored in there.

  But he seemed to interpret my question differently. He slid his elbow out of my grasp and handed me the basilisk.

  In my surprise I almost dropped it. Its wings were stiffer and sharper than I expected, and it seemed to weigh as much as something ten times its size. No hissing—Solomon's binding spell held it tightly. By the time I had recovered, and made sure the face was aimed away from me, in case of any slippage of the rag over its eyes, Zahlfast had started forward.

  He had thought I was asking who of us should go first, and he was volunteering.

  He walked straight to the door and swung it all the way open. "You know better than that, Elerius," he said in his school-teacher voice. "Put that down and come out."

  Put what down? Curiosity overcame reluctance. Still holding the basilisk in front of me, I took two steps forward. Zahlfast stood in the room's doorway, leaning against the frame. "Without the augmenter working, you'll never be able to make that function," he said crisply. "It's designed for two wizards."

  I had no idea what he had there, even after I stepped up next to Zahlfast. It looked like nothing more than an old clay cup, sitting by itself in the middle of the floor. But there was something about that cup that seemed almost unbearably sinister. And behind it, clutching a crumbling leather-bound ledger, stood Elerius.

  He had changed, was my first thought. He no longer looked like the most fearsome wizard in the West. Deprived of his kingdom, deprived of his lover, deprived of the respect of the wizards' school, his black hair stood wildly on end, and his hazel eyes were not calculating but wild. But if he no longer thought he was acting for the best, the voice in the back of my mind pointed out, there was no telling what he might do.

  "You will notice," said Zahlfast, his voice calm on the surface though I could hear the enormous strain underneath, "that Daimbert has the basilisk. You do not want him to have to remove the rag from its eyes. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that when it turns you to stone, even I, with all my abilities, will be unable to transform you back. Now, come out and give up this mad plan. Neither one of us will act as the second wizard."

  "If I don't try to channel it," Elerius said, low and harsh, "then I don't need a second wizard." He opened the ledger, keeping a wary eye on us.

  I had no idea what they were talking about. My first thought was that he had somehow gotten hold of old Naurag's ledger, but I realized then that this was a different book. Not a library book, clearly—it must be something stored down here along with whatever that cup represented. When I probed, I could see the magical influence it cast without understanding it at all. It seemed more sinister than ever.

  Zahlfast stiffened. "This is the way of despair, Elerius," he said quietly. "I know you don't want to end your life as well as those of all the people in the City—and all the wizards in the West."

  "I don't care," said Elerius, and he looked past our old teacher's shoulder straight at me. "As long as Daimbert dies, I really don't care what happens to me or anyone else."

  Zahlfast addressed me without taking his eyes off Elerius. Almost casually he said, "It is time to use the basilisk."

  It was impossible to hold it upright using only one hand. I had to balance it against me, its sharp wing feathers digging through my jacket, to free up a hand to start unwinding the torn sheet.

  But when I commanded my hand to move, it stayed inert, clutching a corner of rag.

  Had the dark powers of the basilisk leached onto me somehow, freezing me in place? But the rest of me could still move. Or was Elerius somehow paralyzing me? But all his attention was aimed toward Zahlfast—and toward that ominous clay cup.

  It wasn't Elerius who was stopping me. I was doing it myself. I couldn't cold-bloodedly turn him into stone anymore than I had been able to set the Ifrit on him. I cursed myself for a sentimental fool with no strength of character. It didn't help.

  But he had far fewer scruples. With a last scowl for me— and perhaps a sneer for my weakness—Elerius started on spells. He had to go slowly, marking his place in the ledger with a finger as the syllables rolled from his lips. As I listened to him I knew, from experience, that in several places he was improvising his way across gaps where unusual herbs were designed to go.

  But the spell was working. Still clutching the basilisk to me though its cold had numbed all one side, I realized what he was doing. The magic that had been embedded, untold centuries ago, in that clay cup would slowly open a hole in the earth a thousand feet across and a thousand miles deep— a hole that would swallow not just the ruins of the wizards' school, but the City around us.

  * * * *

  No spell is unique, and all magic has recognizable elements, even though some of the old herbal magic is very far from the technical magic of glass and steel. I spotted similarities, only slight but similarities still, between the spell Elerius was working and the spell Zahlfast had used to get us down into the cellars.

  The difference was that my old teacher's spell had not required the layers of old magic laid down in the clay cup— magic that Basil would have described as the magic of blood and bone—and had opened a passage only three feet across and a few dozen feet deep. That, and the fact that Elerius was trying, by himself, to work a two-wizard spell, that even in the most capable hands required one wizard to help shape and position the chasm as the other's magic created it.

  I struggled desperately to unwrap the basilisk, to freeze Elerius before he could complete the spell. This time the strip of sheet became all tangled, blinding the monster worse than before.

  Zahlfast gave up waiting for me. He had seen the similarities in the spells as well. And slowly, his voice quavering, he sought to find the words of the Hidden Language to oppose Elerius.

  This was no magic that I had ever learned. I set the basilisk down, facing into the room, and tried again with both hands to remove the rag. Now my fingers were almost completely numb, and I fumbled helplessly as I tried to take hold of the strip of cloth. Zahlfast beside me was speaking louder and louder but slower and slower. The tension between the two spells became sharper, until it was almost visible.

  Elerius, his nose buried deep in the ledger, was almost shouting his own words of the Hidden Language. The clay cup slowly began to rise, spinning as it left the floor, and its center was a spinning vortex.

  I abandoned
the basilisk and tried a few spells of my own, but I was so exhausted that nothing I tried seemed to work. Zahlfast never stopped, however, forcing out each syllable. His voice was now no more than a croak, but he kept on going. I gave up on being a wizard and wrapped my arms around him, just trying to keep him from falling.

  The clay cup was spinning so fast now that it hummed, and the vortex at the center, when I dared look at it, seemed ready to suck us into oblivion. Zahlfast's one advantage was that he knew his spell, whereas Elerius was constantly having to consult his book and improvise ways to get over the book's gaps.

  Zahlfast's voice was growing fainter. I reached out to him, mind to mind, and for one second could hear his thoughts. "There, Daimbert, and there—"

  And I could in that instant see it, the structure of the spell built into the cup which was now creating the vortex, and the way Zahlfast had constructed his counter-spell to oppose it. With a desperate effort, I forced myself into magic's four dimensions, pulling bits of spells together that I had learned from half a dozen wizards and mages in both East and West. My voice echoed in my ears, and before my eyes, blurry now, I could see the cup's smooth rotation changed into jerky motion.

  Zahlfast spoke again, a whole string of words in the Hidden Language. With both our spells working together, the cup abruptly broke free of Elerius's spells, rose toward the ceiling, and exploded into dusty fragments. Elerius was left crouched on the ground, his face and beard spattered with dried clay, and even the ledger he held disintegrating into powder in his hands.

  But I had no time to enjoy the triumph, for Zahlfast had gone limp in my arms.

  "Zahlfast? Master? Are you—" I couldn't ask if he was all right because he very clearly wasn't. He drooped with no sign of hearing my voice.

  I tried mental communication, and found a flicker of consciousness. He was trying to say something but could not speak, and even to speak mind-to-mind was an enormous effort. Close to his thoughts, I could feel darkness coming up around him, and reflexively jerked back my own consciousness, but not before I thought I had understood his final words.

  He had told me, "Good-bye, Master."

  Slowly I sank to the cold floor, trying to position Zahlfast in a comfortable position across my lap. His thoughts had slipped away beyond forgetting. For a few moments more, his chest still rose and fell. But then he stopped breathing.

  II

  I sat without moving for several minutes, my head drooping. Zahlfast's body gradually grew cold in my arms, and both the floor and the basilisk beside me could have been solid ice. Zahlfast had known, I thought. He had known that going to match spells with Elerius would kill him. But he hadn't cared, because the safety of the City was more important to him than his own life. I hadn't been able to save my old teacher— at most I had been able to help him where unaided he would have failed. And now I had to try to finish what he had given his life to do—stopping Elerius.

  I pushed myself to my feet and furiously wiped a sleeve across my eyes, aching in every joint. I began to lift Zahlfast's body; I couldn't just abandon him here in the cellars. But where was Elerius? I hadn't heard him leave—for the excellent reason, I saw when I turned, that he was still here in the room, working on something, his back to me.

  And then he spoke: "By Satan, by Beelzebub—"

  I had thought nothing could make me move rapidly again, but I was wrong. I slung Zahlfast against the wall and threw myself bodily on top of Elerius's glowing pentagram. Wildly I rubbed at the chalk lines, while giving Elerius the best glare I could. "I thought the saint told you he would not tolerate demons," I said, and I was so tired that my voice came out an octave too low and without inflection—a voice from the tomb.

  Elerius sagged backwards. He was, I saw, as exhausted as I was. I gave a quick glance over my shoulder in case the Cranky Saint with his staff and blazing eyes was right behind me. He wasn't, but I'd better press my advantage while I still had it.

  "How do you do it, Daimbert?" Elerius was babbling. "How did you turn my son against me and destroy the queen's love for me? How did you summon the dragons without my detecting the spell? How did you defeat the basilisk and the most powerful objects out of both modern and ancient magic?"

  Some of that had been Zahlfast, not me, but I didn't say so. I sat up in the middle of the half-effaced pentagram, letting my voice stay deep. "You told me yourself," I said, hoping this wasn't so big a fib that the Cranky Saint would turn against me. "You yourself said, Elerius, that I have powers you do not comprehend." Powers of integrity and friendship, I told my conscience.

  He was panting now. "Well, you and all your saintly friends may keep me from working with a demon, but I don't need a demon! Come with me, Daimbert. I have something to show you."

  I rose slowly and leaned over him, glowering. "Something with which you intend to kill me? As you already killed Zahlfast? Do not look so surprised, Elerius. I can read your plans in your face." I could barely see straight, much less read a plan in his expression, but it hadn't taken a very astute guess.

  There was a limit to how far bluff would take me. Very faint, far above us, I heard scrapes and creaks. Clearly the school's ruins had not yet finished settling. "You come with me!" I said urgently. When this was all over, I thought, whoever tried to take over running organized wizardry had better figure out what actually was down here under the rubble and see about deactivating it. "We must leave before the final destruction of the school above us blocks these tunnels. We don't want to starve here while cursing each other."

  He was still panting, but he seemed to have recovered at least a little of his composure. "Don't mind what I said to Zahlfast. I was just overwrought; I never really wanted you dead, Daimbert. Maybe I should simply surrender to the teachers—assuming any are still alive." This was exactly what I wanted to hear him say, but as he spoke his eyes were calculating.

  I took his arm and pulled him to his feet with a jerk. "First, find the stairs to get us out of here. You go first." I lifted Zahlfast's body over my shoulder, and for one moment Elerius did look genuinely repentant. He really had not meant his old teacher to die: unlike what he planned for me.

  As soon as we were into the corridor, out of the room where Elerius had found the clay cup, I pushed the basilisk inside, slammed the door, and locked it with a magic lock, keyed to my own palm print. Let Elerius try to break that lock.

  He looked surprised but said nothing. Instead he started down the corridor meekly and obediently. Suspecting a trick, I followed close behind. He might be heading straight toward other dreadful creatures or artifacts of dark destruction. I was barely able to stagger under Zahlfast's weight, and I doubted I could have matched spells with Elerius any better than could a kitten. But he didn't seem about to attack me either. We proceeded through the cellars like the friends we once had been.

  Elerius led me first to an open door—the room where he had had the machine of technical magic with which he could augment his spells. "If these cellars are likely to collapse," he told me innocently, "the rest of the teachers will want to preserve at least this."

  "I think I had better carry it," I said sternly.

  "Do you want me to carry Zahlfast, then?" he asked, still all innocence.

  I clutched my teacher's body closer. "No." I didn't trust Elerius not to try some horrible black magic with his inert form. "But don't turn the machine on."

  He nodded meekly, not giving me an argument—either too frightened of a possible appearance by the Cranky Saint, or already thinking of a better plan—and led the way again, carefully carrying the awkward collection of tubes, rods, and wheels out in front of him. Turned off, it gave no hint of its magical powers.

  "I have to keep walking," I told myself, because I would have fallen asleep if I had sat still. Intermittently, when I remembered, I murmured the words to break an illusion, in case Elerius was again trying to confuse me by altering the appearance of the cellar corridors. But the long stretches of white corridor and identical doors were d
isorienting, illusion or not. I wondered vaguely if it was yet morning outside.

  At last Elerius stopped by a door that at first glance looked like all the others. "This is the way to the stairs," he said with a completely unsuccessful attempt at a smile. "If you rebuild the school, once you're Master, you might want to have the exit better marked. See? The door is unlocked." He pushed it open, and beyond I could indeed see a corridor with, far ahead in the shadows, a staircase.

  "I wonder how badly the stairs are blocked," I said, keeping one eye on him as I tried to peer down that dim corridor.

  "I know these cellars better than you do," Elerius said. "And you're burdened with Zahlfast. I think I had better go first, just in case there's any problem."

  There was always reason to be wary with Elerius, I thought. "Oh, no, you don't," I said firmly. "I am going to take the lead here."

  It was not until I was half way down the dim corridor toward the stairs, and heard the whirring of the magic augmenter behind me, that I realized I had not been wary enough.

  I spun around, just in time to see Elerius shooting upward, working a variation of the spell Zahlfast had used to get us in here in the first place. The magic apparatus hummed and poured waves of colors across the dim white corridor.

  "You, Daimbert," he shouted in fury, "can go to Hell!" And then he was gone, burrowing effortlessly through tumbled building stone and bedrock. Behind him the opening to his tunnel closed as tightly as if it had never been there.

  I looked toward the stairs, partially blocked, but my only way out. I didn't have any apparatus to make it easier for me, I thought with a groan, trying to find the strength to work a few simple lifting spells. Even if the roof didn't collapse, it would take me hours to get out of here, by which time Elerius would be long gone.

  * * * *

  The sun's rim was just rising into a sullen sky when I finally emerged from the rubble that had once been the school. I sat slowly down on a bit of stone that had probably once been a parapet. I was so tired I could hardly see, and my entire body felt scraped from repeatedly using magic to tunnel through tons of unstable stone and plaster.