Is This Apocalypse Necessary? - Wizard of Yurt - 6 (12 page)

"I'm not arranging Antonia's marriage to anybody," I muttered.

Irrelevantly I wondered if young Prince Walther would be interested in marrying Gwennie.

"And I do need your help, Daimbert," Elerius continued, not feeling that the marriage he planned between Prince Walther and my daughter needed any further discussion. "You've probably heard that I'm a candidate for mayor here in the City, and between running the school, ruling my kingdom as regent for at least a few more years, and supervising the city council, I'll have more than enough responsibilities for one wizard to handle."

"And I hear you're trying to influence the election of the new bishop as well," I said in a flat voice.

"That's
especially
where I'd like your help, Daimbert. You've always gotten along well with that bishop in Caelrhon."

"Joachim," I said coldly. Nobody was going to call him "that bishop."

He didn't respond to my coldness but continued as though we were just having a friendly chat. "My candidate for bishop here is someone who also seems willing to accommodate himself to wizardry, but you're much more experienced at influencing priests than I am, so I'll leave him to you."

Joachim had never 'accommodated' himself to wizardry, and to the best of my knowledge I had never influenced him in anything, but it hardly seemed worth bringing up.

"I realize you've spent very little time at the school since you graduated, but I don't want you to hesitate because you feel unsure about taking up supervisory tasks," Elerius continued, in apparently full confidence of my agreement—and also apparently not caring if he sounded patronizing again. "Let me give you an example of how you could help me right away.

The Master once told me about a Dragons' Scepter, hidden up in the land of wild magic. Retrieving it, so that we could use its powers for the good of the school, is exactly the sort of task for which your improvisational brand of magic should be well suited."

I made the slightest affirmatory noise, trying to cover my surprise with nonchalance. Did he then know all about my last conversation with the Master?

"So, what do you think, Daimbert?" I could no longer see his features, but as he turned a gleam from the lantern on a fishing boat far out to sea seemed to flash in his eye. "This is finally the opportunity for wizardry to do what it has always had the potential to do: mold mankind in the direction it ought to have taken all along. You and I are at precisely the right point to do it, both at an age where we've acquired experience and wisdom, an age where many men start to find their strength waning but which we as wizards find to be but an extension of vigorous youth. Even now, school wizards have been able to end most warfare in the Western Kingdoms, but you and I together can also bring peace to the Eastern Kingdoms. We'll end corruption and petty bickering in city governments and ensure that their economies are well managed. By working with the bishop of the City, we'll quickly be able to end the foolish superstitions that distract people from practical considerations. And though we rule absolutely, with an authority that will make our names legendary for millennia after our deaths, we shall always know that we are improving the lot of humanity through our rule. Don't you find this a tempting offer?"

At one time it might have been tempting. But if I had learned one thing as a wizard, it was that it is impossible for someone, beneficent as he might imagine himself, always to know exactly what another needs, much less arrange for that to appear. Naurag, brash as he might have been, had recognized this well before he died; in fact, I thought, this might have been what he intended to spell out in the "Afterword" to his ledger which he never wrote.

Ending warfare was fine, but not if we replaced the tyranny of kings with tyranny of our own. Trying to regulate the economy, however, beyond assuring access to opportunities, was outright impossible. Elerius and I would never know what was better for hundreds of thousands of people than they did themselves. Ending 'foolish superstition' was not just impossible but highly dangerous. If we decided to tell people what they could and couldn't believe we might as well declare ourselves gods and make the people worship as well as fear us. "I'm sorry," I said, very quietly.

"I won't be your co-ruler."

I couldn't see his face, but his breath came short and sharp. I had surprised him then. He had thought the combination of bribe and veiled threat would be more than enough to bring me to his way of thinking—especially since he himself was genuinely convinced he was right. "Are you going to fight me, then, Daimbert?" he asked after a moment. "Is your plan to wrest control of the school for yourself?"

It might have been the Master's plan, but it most certainly was not mine. "I have no interest in control over anything," I said as clearly as I could. I was defying the Master's dying wishes, but there was no way I could either join in absolute authority over the West, or try with my limited resources to oppose the man who would wield that authority.

"This is, of course, exactly what you would say if you did plan to oppose me," Elerius commented after a moment.

"That may be. But it's nonetheless true. Do whatever you like as head of the school and head of whatever other institution will have you. I'm going to stay quietly in Yurt."

The Master wouldn't be alive to know about it, and Theodora wouldn't be surprised to hear that Elerius had been elected. But how, I asked myself in dismay, could I possibly tell Joachim?

After a moment Elerius said in a tone of forced cheerfulness, "If you really mean that, I'll be very sorry not to have your assistance. It would have been good to have your ideas and your magic working beside me.

This won't, of course, change anything in my plans to bring women into the school. Antonia can begin her wizardry studies this winter, or even earlier."

A hostage for my good behavior. But how could I keep her away from the school without making Elerius think I was plotting against him?

"Well," he added, "there was something I had planned to show you after you agreed to work with me. I might as well show it to you anyway. It should help reassure you that my motives are only for the best."

I'd never had any doubt about his motivation. The fact that he was convinced he was acting for the best only made it worse.

He rose, flying, over the shore and headed out to sea. I followed him, wondering if he really did have something to show me or was leading me into a trap.

But this didn't seem to be a trap. He flew out about a mile to a low, rocky island, circled by phosphorescent breaking waves. A half moon hung in the sky, casting just enough light that I could see that the island's surface was pitted and without vegetation. And coming out of the pits—

"No," I said, and my heart went tight and cold. "No. You can't have done this, Elerius. Not if you claim you're acting for good."

I could see now what crept around the island: creatures manlike yet not human, creatures made of hair and dead bone but given the simulacrum of life by spells out of the old magic of earth and blood. They turned their misshapen heads up toward us, and their eyes glowed in the darkness. The eyes were the only features in those heads.

"So you recognize them, Daimbert," said Elerius, pleased. I could see his face now, without color or expression in the pale light. "As you'll recall, I first encountered creatures like this in your kingdom."

"I recognize them all right," I growled. They had come very close to killing all the inhabitants of the royal castle, including me. "You must have made them yourself, but I can't have forgotten where you found the model.

You're planning to attack Yurt if you think I'm opposing you, is that it?"

He laughed in what sounded like genuine amusement. "You have the strangest sense of humor sometimes, Daimbert. Of course I'm not planning to attack anyone's kingdom." He seemed easily capable of simultaneously chatting and maintaining his position high in the air over the island; I on the other hand was fighting to maintain mine. "And you misjudge me badly if you think I would threaten you in any way."

Not threaten me, just threaten Antonia?

"Although the creatures like this that you and I initially encountered,"

he continued, "were indeed made for war, I have shaped mine quite differently. For one thing, I have no dragons' teeth, which all the old books agree work best for such creatures. They're modeled on the same spells, of course, but mine are made for peaceful purposes. My intention is to teach them agriculture."

"Agriculture!" Maybe Elerius had lost his mind—but he sounded entirely rational.

"Of course, it's possible that I'll have to use them as soldiers a few times while establishing peace throughout the West—or even try them out in the Eastern Kingdoms. But wizardry has less messy ways of stopping armies than creating other armies: that's why I have additional plans for my creatures. The farmers in all the kingdoms always have to work so hard during harvest time. Once I've perfected the spells on these I can use them as additional field hands during busy periods. They'll work without pay, of course, and even without food and rest. Think what a boon to the farmer this will be!"

The metaphysics of making undead creatures from old bones, then turning them into slaves, was much too complex for me, but I had a pretty good guess what Joachim's reaction would be. "I— I see," I said slowly.

"Maybe if you don't want to help me with the Dragons' Scepter," Elerius suggested, turning to fly back to land, "you could at least give me a hand with my creatures. I know you studied the old magic yourself at one point, so you're just the person to assist me. So far they've been a bit harder to govern than I had hoped, even violent, which is why I've had to keep them isolated on this island until I'm quite sure they're safe."

Undead soldier-slaves who were in revolt even as they were created. The metaphysics didn't seem complicated after all.

"So you see I'm being perfectly open with you," Elerius said as we landed back on the docks below the school. The harbor had become quiet now, other than distant notes of sailors' songs. I leaned against a bollard to catch my breath. Sick horror had drained the strength from me. Useless to oppose him if I couldn't even stand upright trying. "No secrets, merely an invitation that still stands. Perhaps you just need more time to think it over. After all, we don't know how long—"

He was interrupted by the sound of a bell ringing, a steady dark note tolling again and again. One of the City's churches? But that didn't sound like any church bell I knew.

Then Elerius and I whirled to stare at each other in the faint light, both recognizing it at the same time. That was the bell that hung on top of the school, the bell that was rung only, and then for just three notes, when a group of wizards was graduating. The steady ringing could mean only one thing: the Master had died.

And as we both jumped upward to fly back to the school I realized something else. I wasn't going to defy his dying wishes after all.

The school gave the Master a Christian burial. There was no precedent for the funeral because he was the only Master the school had ever had. It was Elerius's idea: part of his effort, I thought, to persuade the cathedral chapter that the wizards were a respectful and tractable group whose opinion ought to be consulted before they elected their new bishop.

We laid him to rest not with the great dignitaries of the City, in the cathedral yard, but rather in a little patch of earth behind a church that stood in the shadow of the school. Elerius made me do the negotiations with the church's priest over what kind of pious gift would be suitable in the circumstances. The priest pronounced the liturgy over the Master's body, and the sexton planted white wooden crosses at his head and feet. I had no idea what the Master's own wishes would have been; as a matter of professional pride, he and the other senior teachers at the school had always avoided any speculation on the afterlife or anything else that might imply that the Church's authority was greater than theirs. But I thought that Joachim would have concurred.

It was a horrible week. The students, most of whom had never had a chance to develop much feeling for the Master beyond fear and awe, milled around uncertainly, unsure what to do with the sudden freedom granted by cancelled classes. I came across Whitey and Chin, however, sitting in the library surrounded by piles of books that were probably for a project he had assigned them, weeping unrestrained.

Many of the teachers too seemed overcome, disappearing into their studies for days at a time, emerging hollow-cheeked to find something to eat and then disappearing again. Once I came upon Zahlfast, who as second in command at the school should have been ensuring that some modicum of organization was maintained, standing leaning against the courtyard wall, staring at nothing with red-rimmed eyes. I did not think he even noticed me.

Elerius alone remained calm and in control. He moved into Zahlfast's office, from which he contacted the rest of the wizards around the Western Kingdoms to tell them the sad news, dealt with the tradesmen who supplied the school, and reassured students that classes would be starting again very soon.

And I realized that I too would have to die. As long as I was alive Elerius would keep after me and, even worse, keep after my family, trying to ensure that I would help him or at least not work against him. If I merely disappeared he would search me out and for all I knew threaten to do horrible things to Antonia until I agreed to reemerge. If I didn't actively want to assist him in running the world I had to thwart him. The only way I could possibly work against him would be to have him think I was dead.

Staging my own death convincingly was going to be difficult. Elerius himself had once helped another wizard disappear by pretending to blow himself up, so he would be alert to the slightest hint that this might be a trick. I couldn't let even Theodora know that I was still alive, much less King Paul, because the burden of having to keep a secret from Elerius, intent on worming it out of them, would be too great.