I was, of course, mistaken. He smiled for a moment, shaking his head, then became serious. The seriousness looked more like a normal expression on him than it ever had before. “The war’s over, Wizard, thanks to you. All of Queen Hadwidis’s knights have accepted her, but she will be busy for weeks going around her kingdom reestablishing order and loyalty. There was no reason for us to stay there—to try to make glorious the remnants of a hideous war in which men had to die, some by my hand.”
Other people poured out of doorways up and down
the street, some fully clothed, some still in their dressing gowns,
and all of them delighted to see me: the teachers from the school, the young wizards, most of the royal party from Yurt, Maffi, and my family.
Someone, I thought one of the teachers, came to take Zahlfast’s body from me. At first I wouldn’t let go—I had been carrying him so long, it didn’t seem right to let someone else have him. The realization that he had died in the pursuit of Elerius took the smiles, pretty tentative anyway, off the teachers’ lips, but everyone else was too happy to see me to be very deeply bothered by the death of an old man they barely knew.
Antonia danced around me. “Dragons!” she cried. “That must have been so exciting! I wish I’d seen them, but we got here too late. Can Walther come live with us? He has to be with his sister now, and I know he hates it. And do you know what we’ve been doing, Wizard? Maffi and I, we’ve decided we’ll trick the Ifrit back into his bottle, and have him give us even more wishes.
Now all we have to do is to find him in the East and get the bottle back from him.”
I didn’t have the energy to discourage her. I put my arms around Theodora and my face in her hair.
“You know,” she commented, “several times recently you’ve raced off, every time without me, and every time you’ve reappeared battered and worn, lucky to be alive at all. To put it delicately, you look like you’ve been through Hell. Now, you’re fairly smart, so I’ll ask you to ponder this: aren’t you starting to notice a pattern?”
The teachers were huddled together in the street, even the older ones looking to me as if they expected some sort of guidance. “Zahlfast died defeating something out of the old magic which Elerius was trying to use against us,” I told them over Theodora’s head. “Something that involved a clay cup.”
Several of them blanched. “We destroyed the cup together, but I’m afraid it was all for nothing. Elerius is still alive. He burrowed his way out of the cellars, and if none of you spotted him when he emerged, the saints alone know where he’s hiding now.”
“How are you going to find him?” a teacher asked.
I had no idea. The responsibility, I noticed, seemed to be firmly mine.
“While you and Zahlfast were gone, Daimbert—”the teacher added, then paused as if what he was about to say was distasteful, but pushed on anyway. “While you were gone, we decided it was well past time to elect the Master’s successor. So we decided— We voted that if you came back you would lead us.”
He paused again. “I do need to be frank and tell you that, while you got far more than a majority of the votes, it was not unanimous.”
My heart, if possible, sank even lower. Several of the teachers, including doubtless this one, agreed with me that I would be a terrible leader. By electing me, however, they had assured that I, and not any of them, would go chasing off after Elerius.
The only thing to do was to pretend I had not heard him and try to distract the teachers onto a different topic.
“Elerius will be hiding very thoroughly,” I said, “especially since he’s got some sort of spell augmenter to keep us from finding him—and to help him spot us if we try to sneak up on him. If there was some way we could trick him into revealing his position …”
If there was, I couldn’t think of it. Gwennie came running up the street from a house a little further down. She had pulled back on the bedraggled clothes she had worn on our trip to the East but had at least made an effort to comb her hair.
“Did you think we wouldn’t all follow you, Wizard?” she asked with a smile. “It’s not as fast as flying, but horses can travel rapidly if they have to! Hadwidis can manage without her new countess for a while.”
Her new countess, I thought dully, thinking this ought to make sense. Then I noticed that Gwennie had gone immediately to stand next to King Paul—close enough that, without appearing to intend to do so, he could take her hand. The seriousness that, I had just started to think, looked good on a king was gone in an instant. She turned her head slightly toward him, and there was a sparkle in her eyes.
Oh. Yes. Hadwidis had ennobled her. It all made sense after all. “Did someone telephone the bishop?” Paul asked. He and Gwennie turned together, hips touching, hands locked, to look down the street. “I think that’s him coming,” she said.
I fumbled in my pocket. After thousands of miles of travel, I still had Paul’s diamond ring. I pulled it out from under King Solomon’s golden signet. Maybe some of its binding power would rub off on the ring, to make a union of hearts that would last for a lifetime. “Here you go, sire,” I said, handing it to him. “You probably were wondering whatever happened to this.”
Paul took it with a pleased grin. Gwennie, however, turned up her nose in an unconvincing attempt at saucy disdain. “Haven’t gotten over your fixation on rings yet, Paul,” she asked, “after all that’s happened?”
I had always thought Paul and Gwennie would make a good couple, if only there were not such a social gulf between them.
It had taken a trip to the East with a runaway nun who turned out to be a queen, but Gwennie had come home with the roc’s treasure and a patent of nobility, as well as stories of fabled Xantium. Theodora gave me a squeeze. She too knew—we didn’t need to worry anymore about a queen for the king of Yurt.
But the only comment on the situation came from Maffi. He sighed deeply. “I traveled all the way from Xantium with two of the West’s most lovely young ladies,” he said in a low voice, “protected them and enriched them, and at the end one of them announces she’s going to live like a nun, even though she’s a queen, and the other one chooses some benighted local kinglet over me.” At least he didn’t suggest waiting for Antonia to grow up.
Joachim by now had reached us. Somehow the bishop’s presence always made me feel calm, in spite of the spiritual intensity which surrounded him as palpably as magic had once surrounded the wizards’ school.
“The old Master of your school,” he commented, looking in the cold light of morning at the rubble, “would be surprised to hear that your rule as his successor had begun with the school’s destruction. But you might take heart, Daimbert, to learn that not everyone in the City is blaming the wizards for all this excitement. I spoke last night with the priests of the cathedral, and they are convinced that they themselves are to blame, that God is punishing them for first being divided so long in electing a new bishop, and then for electing an unsuitable candidate.”
“I need your help, Joachim,” I said, still holding Theodora tight to me. I had had an idea. “Elerius is still alive, still plotting all our destructions. Now that he’s out the cellars we don’t need to wonder what artifacts of destruction he might get his hands on, but he’s still the best living wizard in the West. He has all the advantages of natural magic on his side, so, short of the supernatural—”
The head of the demonology faculty interrupted. He had been standing with the rest of the teachers, watching my reunion with my family and friends from Yurt, but now he put his hand on my arm. “Daimbert, I know what you’re thinking. Don’t do it. It’s not worth it.”
Startled, it took me a second to realize what he meant. “No, I’m not going to summon a demon,” I said hastily. “I’d have to give myself to the devil, body and soul, for him to agree to find Elerius for me, and at that point I wouldn’t trust myself not to become so drunk on power that I would become even worse than he is.” I’d had this discussion with myse
lf too often in the past. The Cranky Saint was right. I wasn’t going to get out of this without being tempted, and the idea that one could somehow serve a wholesome, useful function through the exercise of evil was the greatest temptation of all.
My plan was quite different. It was probably the most foolhardy idea I had ever had in a long career of them, but at least it was something that Elerius would never, ever anticipate. Other than being the product of a deranged mind, it was in fact an excellent plan, because it would make Elerius himself, all unsuspecting, bring me to where he was. “I’m going back to Yurt,” I said.
“Giving up, Daimbert?” another of the teachers asked coldly. Another one, I thought, who had kept the vote for me from being unanimous. “Abandoning the problem of Elerius to us? I must say I’m not sure what the Master was thinking when he suggested you as his heir.”
I smiled and looked past him to meet the bishop’s eyes. “Neither do I. But at least he never imagined that I would give up.” Going to the land of dragons hadn’t worked, and neither had capturing an Ifrit, or even befriending a saint. But sheer stubbornness kept me going. “Elerius himself first gave me the idea on how to find him. I’m going to catch him if I have to go through Hell to do it.”
III
I hadn’t planned to take anyone else with me. But it soon appeared that I had no choice. “I don’t trust the staff not to have made a mess of the accounts without a constable to keep track of them,” said Gwennie, but the way she looked at the king suggested something quite different: her mind was less on paperwork than on planning their wedding.
I left the teachers to try to make sense in the morning light out of the school’s destruction, and to see about Zahlfast’s funeral, and headed back to Yurt. I rode on Naurag, Theodora sitting behind me with an arm around my waist, while Joachim, King Paul, Gwennie, Antonia, and Maffi rode the magic carpet.
My purple flying beast was irritable. He had been badly frightened by the dragons and seemed to have decided it was my fault. Several hoots he gave suggested unflattering comments about my ancestry, my morals, and my personal hygiene. Since I had to agree with him that it was indeed all my fault, I could do nothing but try to soothe him with soft words.
Whitey and Chin had insisted on coming along, saying that now that I was Master they needed to assist me as they had assisted the old Master. I had still, even after working with them on the undead warriors, not entirely forgiven them for their midnight capture of me on their one previous trip to the royal castle of Yurt, and made them fly along behind.
I was in something of a mental haze as we sailed over the kingdoms between the City and Yurt, half-dozing against Naurag’s neck. What I was contemplating would have been appalling if I had not been so tired. With vague curiosity I wondered what would happen to my soul once I was dead.
I wanted to start at once, as soon as we arrived, but first everyone wanted to hear how Daimbert’s War had turned out, in more detail than Paul had given the assistant constable on the telephone; then they had to marvel at the flying carpet and an exotic eastern mage, who immediately demonstrated how exotic he was through a series of spectacular illusions; then Gwennie had to start finding out just how badly castle organization had disintegrated in her absence; then there was covert but intense speculation among the staff about her and the king. Somewhere in the middle of it, while the cook was preparing a great feast and I was still ineffectually trying to have a private conversation with Joachim, Theodora wrestled me into my own chambers and into bed.
When I awoke again, a damp and colorless dawn was just breaking outside my windows. I sat up abruptly, knowing that if I was going to do this I had better do so before my nerve failed completely—or before it was too late. Theodora had been asleep with an arm across me, and I woke her too in sitting up.
“You still haven’t told me what this plan of your involves,” she said, leaning on an elbow and watching me dig through drawers for the luxury of clean clothes. “But I hope you realize I’m coming with you.”
“You can’t,” I said, speaking briskly but without meeting her eyes. “The bishop won’t let you.”
“We’ll ask him,” she retorted. “He’s in your study, asleep on the couch. You forget I had the opportunity for a number of conversations with him while you were off pretending to be dead. He’s my friend too.”
Joachim was already awake when we went into the study a few minutes later. Still exhausted, I didn’t bother to light the magic lamps, and the bishop’s enormous dark eyes merged with the shadows, making it impossible to tell what he was thinking as I told him what I intended to do.
“It’s been thirty years,” I said, “and Zahlfast and the old Master covered over the hole in the castle cellars and surrounded it with a triple pentagram. But it should still lead straight down to Hell.”
The castle was silent around us. Everyone else must be sleeping off the triumphant feast that I had missed. But as a curtain shifted in a breath of air, the darkness at the room’s edges appeared ominous. “I heard you tell those teachers,” said Theodora warily, “that you weren’t going to summon a demon.”
“And I won’t. But Elerius will. He didn’t dare for a long time after the Cranky Saint appeared to him, but he tried again yesterday.” Yesterday? The day before? I was losing track. “I rubbed out the pentagram before he could, somehow managing to intimidate him in the process—at least temporarily.
But I observed that the saint did not appear to stop him this time, and he will have noticed that too. The only reason I’m sure he hasn’t tried summoning a demon again in the last two days is that I’m still alive. But sooner or later Elerius is going to decide again that he needs the forces of darkness to get his vengeance on the teachers—and on me.”
I paused and looked at Joachim. “I still don’t understand why he hates me so much.”
“Jealousy,” said the bishop simply. “You are loved, and he is not. God binds us to each other with the same love that ties us to Him, and Elerius has enormous power but no love. You must remember the words of the Apostle, ‘Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and have not love, I am nothing.’”
“Yes, of course,” I mumbled.
“When we arrived at the City,” Theodora provided, “his queen was there. It was fairly clear that she didn’t love him anymore.” She started to smile and frowned instead. “You still haven’t said what you’re planning.”
“Whenever Elerius does call a demon,” I said, speaking slowly because in the morning light this was even more horrifying than I had originally thought, “anyone in Hell would know exactly where he was, and would be able to follow the demon straight to him.” This part of the plan was still remarkably vague, but I thought I could probably improvise an appropriate spell when the time came. “We’ve got a hole in the cellars of Yurt that leads to Hell. It’s been sealed for years, but there’s no reason to think it’s not still there. Where I need your help, Joachim,” turning back to the bishop but almost unconsciously putting my arm around Theodora, just for the human contact, “is to know how I can venture, living, into Hell, and living, out again.”
I had been afraid Joachim would find this humorous, as he did so many incomprehensible things; or that he would just announce that Hell was the land of the dead, not the living; or say that these mysteries were not for those as spiritually backwards as wizards.
But instead he took me seriously, pondering with his chin in his hand. “There are stories, of course,” he said at last, “usually told of those who later became saints, of visions of Hell: of a man or woman taken bodily into the infernal regions, for a sight of the torments of the damned with which to warn the living. I do not recall that these saints normally chose to make such a voyage.”
“Suppose someone wasn’t a saint,” I said. “Suppose he did choose to make the trip himself. Could he come out again alive—with his soul intact?”
“Christ brought many souls out of Hell with him when He r
ose on the third day,” commented Joachim, “but of course both they and He had been dead when they entered.”
It wasn’t a lot to go on. “In these visions,” I asked thoughtfully, “is Hell very large? That is, would I be sure to notice when a demon was setting off to answer a summons from Elerius?” “I wouldn’t want to get lost,” I mused. “If I couldn’t spot the demon, at least I’d hope to find again the place where I’d gone in.”
Theodora had been sitting silently, but now she stirred in the circle of my arm. “You’re not serious, Daimbert. You have a strange sense of humor sometimes, but this has got to be the strangest manifestation yet.” She was not laughing.
“I’m serious,” I said, afraid that I really was. “Elerius is gone, maybe a few miles away, maybe a thousand. We won’t find him until he and his demon appear to destroy us. That’s why I have to do this. Even if I can’t find my way back out of Hell, I’d rather go in there trying to do what is best, than to end up there anyway after Elerius has his demon kill me slowly and painfully. Especially—” I paused, then decided there was nothing for it, and pushed ahead. “Especially since this way it’s only me, but when he shows up bent on evil he won’t just hurt me: he’ll go for you and Antonia.”
“In that case,” she said, speaking rapidly to cover a crack in her voice, “I’m coming with you.”
I looked helplessly toward Joachim. He lifted his head, so that for a moment the faint light of morning illuminated his face. “As am I,” he announced.
My first thought was intense gratitude that I had lived to experience such excellent friends. My second thought was that I couldn’t possibly endanger anyone beyond myself in such folly.
“You’re the bishop,” I protested. “You have to stay here and take care of the twin kingdoms of Yurt and Caelrhon.”
“Also the City,” he said offhandedly.
“The cathedral priests offered me the episcopate when I arrived there, following you. I have not yet accepted. To leave Caelrhon for the City, with its responsibilities and burdens, could be hellish in itself. But you need me with you, Daimbert,” and the angle of his high cheekbones suggested he had found something humorous in this after all. “I’m the only one of us who’s read all the saints’ visions of Hell!”
Is This Apocalypse Necessary? Page 41
