Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

by C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 06

  Hadwidis, at least with a scarf on, now looked more like someone who had had a disastrous haircut than a runaway nun, but I still would have had trouble explaining why a wizard and a man with the olive skin of the East were wandering westward, without any apparent means of transportation, accompanied by two young women. Fortunately he didn’t ask. His servants showed us to small but gracious guest rooms where we could hear the river rippling below and told us that our baths would be ready in just a few minutes.

  “Let me show you something, Wizard,” said the castellan proudly as the other were getting settled. “I’ve recently had a telephone installed!”

  I made polite sounds; magic telephones had been common in the Western Kingdoms for over fifty years, but a remote castle like this, which didn’t have its own wizard, might be well behind the times.

  “I had the Royal Wizard come out from my king’s court this summer to install it,” he continued, showing me a very ordinary glass telephone sitting on a red velvet cushion.

  “I believe he had just graduated from that wizards’ school of yours. A very serious young man he is. His name, I believe, is Levi.”

  The name was familiar. I didn’t know very many of the younger wizards—other than Whitey and Chin, and I wouldn’t say we had ever been properly introduced. But the name Levi teased my memory— Then I remembered. Levi was one of the few of the Children of Abraham ever to study western wizardry.

  Most of the teachers at the school had probably been brought up as nominal Christians, but since they made a point of being above issues of the Church, Levi’s religious background would not have concerned them in the slightest. I wondered without much curiosity whether it still concerned him.

  “I made sure,” the castellan continued, “that he put the Daimbert-attachment on my telephone.”

  “Daimbert-attachment? Oh, yes, yes!” With difficulty I managed to turn the surprise of hearing my own name into a burst of approval. Most telephones these days had a far-seeing attachment, such as I had invented when first out of school, but I had not before realized it was named after me. The time when my major concern about the school was whether they were going to let me graduate—or retroactively take my diploma back—seemed impossibly distant.

  “Do you happen to know,” the castellan asked with a frown, “if it’s named for the same wizard Daimbert as the one they’re all talking about these days?”

  All talking about these days? I made a noncommital murmur, doubtless confirming his opinion that I was mostly inarticulate. Who was talking about me, and what were they saying?Clearly in the time I had been gone more had been happening than a skull and an ensorcelled map were likely to tell me.

  I excused myself and started toward the guest rooms, hoping that a hot bath would restore some rationality. Behind me I could hear the glass telephone ringing.

  The castellan caught up to me at the door to my room. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name—is it Daimbert too? It’s a more popular name among wizards than I realized!”

  Elerius had found me, I thought. Well, too late to wonder how he knew where I was or to try to evade him again. Nothing to do but face him. I licked my dry lips and squared my shoulders.

  “Yes, I’m Daimbert.”

  “You have a telephone call.”

  But the base of the glass telephone showed not the black-bearded wizard but rather Joachim. The bishop of Caelrhon was smiling as I had seldom seen him smile as I gasped out, “Hello?”

  “Welcome back to the living, Daimbert.” It would have been gratifying to see how extremely pleased he was to be talking to me, if I hadn’t been so startled.

  “Um, well, I’ve never actually been gone,” I mumbled.

  “So I gather.”

  “But how did you know?” I burst out.

  “How did you find me? I hadn’t know myself that we would be stopping here until an hour ago.” If the bishop could find me, Elerius surely would be next.

  “Your daughter told me.”

  “Antonia!” She had seen me alive and well before I left Yurt for the East, but I had never expected her to start telling everybody.

  But the bishop said, almost apologetically, “She did not feel she could lie to me when I asked her. I do not believe she has told anyone else—not even Theodora. You see, Daimbert,” he went on when I did not respond, “I was worried about my god-daughter. Death is always particularly difficult for children to accept, yet if they do not accept it the healing cannot begin. And Antonia continued to act as though she thought you were coming back. She did not mourn, she did not seem distracted from her normal activities, she did not come to ask me why God had taken you or if I was sure you were in heaven—which, in fact,” he added dryly, “I was, in case you were about to ask.”

  I hadn’t been about to ask him anything.

  “So I requested that she come to my office in the cathedral for a discussion today,” Joachim continued.

  Today. That meant that Theodora and Antonia were still safely in Caelrhon, not with the armies besieging Elerius’s castle.

  “She and Theodora have been living in the cathedral this last month, you see, at my invitation. I hope you don’t mind, Daimbert. But I thought that even Elerius would not attack them there. They have gone out only for errands and for Antonia’s schooling. It was when I talked to her today that she informed me that you were hiding from Elerius but had a secret plan.

  “I am sorry to tell you, Daimbert, that at first I did not believe her. This is not because I have ever suspected your daughter of being less than truthful, but rather because the force of my own sorrow seemed so strong against the faith of a child. As a bishop, I should have known better. This evening I prayed to Saint Eusebius, prayed between sorrow and hope that I might know the truth. And I must have slept, exhausted with uncertainty, for the saint appeared to me in a vision.”

  For a moment a shadow passed across his image in the glass telephone. I had never seen the Cranky Saint face to face, and I could only be glad that it had happened to the bishop, not to me. A feeling like tiny footsteps went down my spine. What plan could the saint have, and why did he persist in being so interested in me?

  “He told me where I might find you,” said Joachim, smiling again. “I remember that little castle well from our quest with old King Haimeric. A pleasant resting spot on a dangerous trip. Are there still swans in the river outside the guest room windows?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yes, the swans are still here. But what’s been happening in the West? I—I understand that armies are gathering in Elerius’s kingdom,” not wanting to get into long explanations about the magic skull. “How many wizards does he have on his side? Is it going to be open war?

  And what’s this about everyone talking about me?”

  Joachim abruptly looked more sober, though he still kept smiling as though he couldn’t help himself, every time our eyes met. “Your information is correct. Half the kings of the West have declared war on Elerius, including King Paul of Yurt.

  Because you served him, he is in fact considered the leader. I understand that at least one of the principal teachers of your school is opposing him, but Elerius also has wizards who support him. It all began at your funeral—were you really there, Daimbert, as Antonia says you were? If I had known you were listening, I might have tried to say something laudatory about you.”

  Years ago I had decided Joachim had no sense of humor. More recently I had concluded he had one after all, but I could never predict what he might find amusing. “What’s this about Paul being the leader?”

  “Well, once it became clear at your funeral to that old teacher of yours—Zahlfast, is that right?—that the school’s late Master had designated you as his successor, and we thought Saint Eusebius was telling us that Elerius had killed you, it was decided that all opposition to Elerius would be carried out in your name. I might,” looking somewhere over my head, “have had something to do with the decision. So Paul, as the king most closely associated with the
martyr Daimbert, has rallied the other kings. Oh, you’ll also be pleased to hear that any differences between Paul and King Lucas of Caelrhon have been healed, now that Lucas realizes that the enemy is not wizardry in general but one wizard. And I’m sure you’ll also be pleased to hear that the new bishop of the great City has realized his association with Elerius has stained him, and he has already resigned.”

  Since I really didn’t care who was bishop of the City and had never had much use for King Lucas, I wasn’t as pleased as he seemed to think I should be. Especially I didn’t like the idea that the grim army I had seen gathered around Elerius’s castle was preparing to make war in my name. “It can’t be allowed to come to fighting, Joachim,” I said quietly. “First the warriors will kill each other, then the wizards will start, and no one anywhere in the West will be safe. The war must be stopped before it begins.”

  He nodded, his enormous dark eyes holding mine. “That is part of the reason I am so happy to see you, Daimbert, even aside from my joy in knowing that our years of friendship have not ended after all. Because I know that you will be able to stop Elerius without bloodshed.”

  III

  That last, I thought as I numbly replaced the telephone’s receiver, was not something the saint had suggested to him. A saint would have had too much wisdom to suggest that a single, mildly competent wizard was going to stop a war that might be breaking out at this very moment. That was Joachim being wildly convinced, on the basis of whatever Antonia had told him, that I had a plan.

  I didn’t have a plan. All I had was a flying beast, a couple of books of spells, the rightful heir to Elerius’s kingdom, and an Ifrit who was planning to dismember me the moment I opened his bottle.

  When I emerged from my bath, the door to the women’s room was closed, and Maffi was snoring peacefully on the far side of the chamber the castellan had given us. I set the candle on the table and took a few bites of the cold meat on the tray. Maffi had eaten most of the roast beef but left me all the ham.

  Then I pulled out the ancient book of magic that I had carried to the dragon’s den, to the Ifrit’s lair, and back to the Western Kingdoms. Someone who had mastered dragons must have an idea how to overcome a supremely capable wizard.

  Or, I thought, also setting out the volume Basil had given me, maybe eastern magic, repellent as it seemed, might give me some ideas. I finished the ham and started reading.

  I awoke with my face pressed against parchment pages, my neck stiff, and the candle guttering by my hand. I pinched out the flame and rolled into bed for a few hours’ sleep. Basil’s spells were written in letters that had taken some deciphering, and as far as I had gotten they appeared better designed for someone like Elerius, who was not too squeamish about processes, than for me. And the old wizard Naurag seemed to be entirely silent on the topic of overcoming superior wizards, because he himself had been superior. In his day, I feared, even though he had apparently reminded the old Master of me, he would have been one of the wizards assisting Elerius by setting up powerful protective spells against King Paul and me.

  But when I awoke again, before dawn, it was with an idea. I scribbled a note, tiptoed past Maffi’s bed, eased the window all the way open, and flew out over the river. A mist obscured the riverbank, and a soft splash could have been a muskrat or the swans.

  I flew straight up, over the mist, climbing into the morning sunlight until the air in my lungs started to thin. Using a far-seeing spell, I scanned the countryside in all directions. It was as vivid as Vlad’s map of the Eastern Kingdoms when seen through the skull, but this was no product of magic, only itself, a landscape just awakening from sleep. From this height I could see for scores of miles and pick out several castles and manor houses, but only one big enough to be this kingdom’s royal seat.

  It was just barely late enough that one could decently ask for admittance when I reached the castle gates. I tried to straighten up a bit so as not to look too disreputable and finally had to add a layer of illusion to hide my worn and travel-stained clothing. Illusion also made my beard look tidy and brushed, since my comb was back with the luggage. The drawbridge of the royal castle was just being lowered for the day. Plenty of knights here, I noticed; we must still be far enough away that this king saw no reason to lead his troops into battle, either against or in support of Elerius. I crossed into the castle courtyard and asked to see Levi, the Royal Wizard.

  He was eating breakfast in his study, tea and cinnamon crullers, when the castle constable announced me. A wave of homesickness hit me. I had done the same in Yurt for thirty years.

  He looked up, smiling, and for a second I hoped he was going to offer me a cruller. But instead he froze in the middle of lowering his cup, slopping tea onto his flagstone floor. “You’re Daimbert! You’ve risen from the dead!” Slowly, he started inching his chair backwards across the floor.

  “I never actually was dead,” I said crossly, not having time for this. “And I’m not a ghost,” I added when his eyes stayed wide and round. “I need your help.”

  I brought out King Solomon’s seal, where the words of power were written in symbols I could not read. “I gather these are the letters originally used by Moses?”

  Levi recovered a little after a moment, when I did not burst into spectral manifestations, and put his teacup carefully down. “What do you have there?”

  I hooked a chair with my foot and sat down at the opposite side of the table. It took a little explanation, and I was starting to feel a desperate urgency. We needed to get to Elerius’s kingdom immediately, and I also started wondering uneasily what Maffi might be doing back at the little castle. I had left the Ifrit in his bottle there among my luggage, worried that if I could learn from Levi to read the words of power on Solomon’s seal, I might accidentally release the Ifrit while practicing. I didn’t entirely trust Maffi not to start experimenting with the bottle on his own.

  “So you see,” I concluded, “to an ordinary learned person, even one who recognized the symbols, these words are unreadable, just as someone who had never learned the Hidden Language couldn’t pick up a book of our western magic and start reading out spells. So I need someone who both understands the ancient writing of the Children of Abraham and is trained in magic.

  That is, I need you.”

  Levi still wouldn’t touch the seal. The idea that it had belonged to King Solomon impressed him more than any spells that might be inherent in it. But he let me put it on the table and looked at it thoughtfully. Rather belatedly, he offered me tea and a cruller. Not enough cinnamon, I thought, biting hungrily into it. I noticed he was watching me out of the corner of his eye, to assure himself my spectral body really was eating.

  At last he took a piece of paper, leaned closer to the gold seal, and started drawing. I was interested to note that he worked from right to left in reproducing the seal’s symbols. His drawing was very careful and meticulous—just what you’d expect, I thought, of a wizard fresh from his training in the school’s technical division. “The forms have changed over the centuries,” he muttered, more to himself than to me, “but I am unlikely to mistake this one, or this one. And if this is indeed a vowel mark, and not just a scratch—”

  “The signet is unscratched,” I said. “Look at it. As smooth and clean as the day it was made. The spell’s a binding spell, designed to hold fast whatever is sealed with the signet, if that’s any help. I assume it’s related to the binding spell they teach us at school, but this one will hold even against wild creatures of primordial magic.”

  But he was still drawing. I waited for several minutes, watching him try several different transcriptions. At last he looked up with an expression of triumph. “I think now I understand the words inscribed here, but I hesitate to speak them. After all, Solomon was the only man who ever filled all three functions, of king, of priest, of magic—” He broke off in the middle of a sentence, staring. “Daimbert, you are dead!”

  My chair crashed to the floor as I jumped up and swung around,
prepared to see Elerius. But the room was empty except for Levi and myself. “I’m as alive as I ever was,” I said in irritation, turning back.

  “The illusion of life is falling away,” he mumbled with an expression of horror.

  I looked down at myself and snorted. “Not the illusion of life, but the illusion of clean clothes. Take my hand. Feel me. Why are you so convinced that I’m a ghost?” “You were eaten by a dragon at the instigation of Elerius,” he said faintly.

  “Then where are the teeth marks?” I demanded. The voice in the back of my mind wondered if the Cranky Saint, who had been eaten by a dragon, had identified with me because of the way I faked my death.

  Levi took several minutes more of persuasion, but finally he returned to the seal. Young wizards, I thought in disgust. We teach them enormous earthly power, but any whiff of the supernatural still gives them the willies.

  “I hesitate to speak the words,” he finally continued, “both out of respect for Solomon son of David, and for fear of what might be bound by them.”

  “Good point,” I said. “It would be nice, for example, to be able to get the door open again during our lifetimes. The crullers wouldn’t last us nearly that long.”

  He gave me a dubious look, then seemed to decide if I was capable of joking I really wasn’t a ghost after all. “But I believe the words, transcribed into the characters of the Hidden Language, would read like this.”

  I studied his piece of paper, stopping myself just in time from murmuring the words to myself. It wasn’t any spell I recognized, though it suggested a much more powerful version of the magic lock we used in the west, and it had certain affinities to the spell I had twice heard Kazalrhun use. With this, if I ever got Elerius cornered, I might be able to bind him.