Is This Apocalypse Necessary? - Wizard of Yurt - 6 (16 page)

The sun broke through the cloud bank on the eastern horizon, and, invisible or not, we cast shadows. Dozens of yellow eyes were open now.

With snorts and jerks of leathery wings, the dragons heaved themselves to their feet, swiveling their massive heads to pick us up. One drove its talons straight through our shadows, but another had spotted disembodied bits of purple and launched itself toward us.

Razor sharp fangs glittered in the dawn light, only a few feet away. And Naurag dove. Down to within inches of the massive skull of another dragon that was slower getting started, then upward again at a sharp angle. Just as the first dragon, mouth still wide open, struck its companion with the force of an avalanche.

A horrible roaring rose behind us. Naurag turned south, propelling us onward far faster than I could possibly have flown myself. The purple neck to which I clung, the purple wings beating on either side, were becoming visible again, even to eyes streaming from the force of the wind. My staff was long gone. I glanced back over my shoulder. Two of the dragons were fighting, tearing into each other with fang and talon, their bellows ringing out across the rocky landscape and black blood spurting.

But at least one other still had us in view, as the tattered remnants of my invisibility spell fell from about us. The dragon—this one a brilliant crimson—gave an almost lazy stroke of its wings and covered a third of the distance that separated us.

Illusion, I thought, panic making the words of the Hidden Language that I had known for forty years suddenly seem strange and incomprehensible. Illusion is a lot easier spell than invisibility. And I made us into a cloud, a dark, fast-moving cloud, certainly not a human clinging to the back of a purple flying beast.

The crimson dragon behind us paused as if puzzled. But past its shoulder I saw other dragons coming to join the pursuit. At least one of them must have enough brains in its bony skull to associate this suddenly-appearing cloud with the suddenly-disappearing tasty morsel they had been pursuing.

And I realized we were leading the dragons straight toward the elves'

grove.

"No!" I screamed at Naurag. "Not this way!" But neither tugging nor commands in the Hidden Language could alter his direction. He was flying back in the direction of the melon-fields where I had originally found him as fast as his wings would carry him. And the way there led straight over the silver-haired community.

The knife-edge ridge that marked the border of the dragons' valley was a blur below us. I darted a quick look back again, hoping against hope that the dragons would stop at that boundary. No such luck. Dragons of all colors, scales glittering in the early morning light, flames snorting in all directions, raced after us. They might not be able to recognize a wizard and a purple flying beast in an illusory rain cloud, but they saw something moving fast and were as eager to catch it as a bunch of cats. And the distance between us was rapidly vanishing.

I said a quick prayer in case any saints paid attention to those in the land of wild magic. With luck, we would be past the elves' grove before the dragons caught up to us, and they would have so much fun playing with and eating us that they wouldn't bother the people who, after all, had for many years lived almost on their doorstep.

But
why
had they never bothered them? the voice in the back of my mind asked, still curious even when only moments from death. And then through bleared eyes I saw a tiny, white-robed figure on the ground before us, and heard a voice, tiny and piping at this distance. It was Gir.

And this time, even at a distance, I could tell he held something high in his hand. My flying beast altered course to fly toward him like a frightened child toward his mother.

The dragons behind us were so close I could feel the heat of their breath on my back. But they stopped abruptly at whatever command Gir shouted to them, jostling together in the air, great wings smacking against each other.

As Naurag slowed, panting hard, and drifted down toward the groves, the dragons turned, greatly reluctant but turning all the same, taking a few frustrated snaps at each other's wings as they headed back toward their valley.

I fell more than dismounted from the flying beast's back, my arms and legs feeling as if they had no strength at all. "I wish you had allowed me to accompany you," said Gir gravely. One hand was concealed in the folds of his robe, as it had been after he stopped the gorgos. "When you spoke so determinedly of going to the dragons' valley, I had assumed that you, like old Naurag, had wizardly ways to bend them to your will."

"I thought I did," I said, sitting on the ground with my head between my knees. Several things had become clear to me, about one day too late.

"But it turns out that you have what I was looking for."

Gir sat next to me, his chiseled features concerned. For a second he bit his lip, as though trying to reach a decision, then he tossed back his silver hair and spoke briskly. "We prefer not to discuss Naurag's Scepter with outsiders, but yes, of course we have it. We have had it for centuries.

Otherwise we would never be able to maintain life in our peaceful and beautiful grove. But did you not know? When Naurag gave it to us, he said he would describe the final disposition of the Scepter in the same ledger in which he had, years earlier, recorded the spells by which he created it. We could not, of course, have duplicated his spells, but we had always assumed that some of the apprentice wizards he trained might do so."

I sighed, not looking at him. "No one else ever duplicated his spells," I said, more to myself than to Gir. "They're too hard to work anywhere but right here—and, I believe, too hard for even the best wizards of our age."

Could Elerius create a Scepter of his own, given a chance? I wasn't going to give him that chance. "All I could do was work the finding spell that was supposed to reveal the Scepter hidden in the greatest dragon's lair. Old Naurag set out to write an Afterword to his ledger, but I think he died before he could."

Gir contemplated this. "Then you wizards have assumed all these years the Scepter was still there? And the others sent you to find it?" I nodded; he was close enough, and it would be too complicated to explain properly.

"But what," he added, "did they intend to do with it?"

I let his question hang unanswered. Something he had said caught my exhausted attention. Elves could not work spells.

A wary sideways glance showed him sitting relaxed, one arm across his knees, frowning as he looked north toward the dragons' valley. With a far-seeing spell I could make out the sun flashing on their scales as they circled, preparing to land again. All my spells worked easily here. In less than a second, far before Gir realized what I was doing, I could have him wrapped in a quick binding spell and the Scepter out of his hand and into mine.

I thought this over while my rapid breathing slowed. The other elves weren't here—presumably still back in their chambers in the great trees of the grove, this early in the morning. But sooner or later they would realize that Gir was gone and come find him, about the time that my binding spell would be disintegrating. By then, of course, I would be far away, already having raced back to the dragons' valley to round them up, to command them to return with me to the City. There I could quickly force Elerius to capitulate, before going on with my terrible winged forces to overcome the evil princes of the kingdoms beyond the mountains, to free the slaves in the East, to annihilate every fanged gorgos in the land of magic...

And suppose the dragons didn't all go with me? the nagging voice at the back of my mind wanted to know. Several, or even one, could easily stay behind, then fly over the ridge and devour elves at its leisure, now that they were no longer protected by the Scepter. Well, I thought uneasily, I would just have to be very sure that every single dragon followed me.

So did that mean I was going to have to spend the rest of my life surrounded by dragons, making sure that not even one ever returned?

Brief and completely implausible images floated through my mind, the castle of Yurt surrounded by a great circle of quiescent dragons; a fleet of dragons hovering in the air, wings flapping slowly, high over Theodora's house while I visited her; or dozens of dragons, collared and obedient, sitting like colorful statues on the turrets of the wizards' school.

I shook my head at the thought, which got me a questioning glance from Gir. No, I told myself, it was sad but inevitable that some elves would have to die. They had already had very long lives, and even though Gir had now saved my life a second time, it would be justifiable to sacrifice a few of his people. It was merely sentimental to think otherwise, I tried to persuade myself. After all, my principal goal was to protect the world as a whole from Elerius.

Elerius also believed that the end justified the means, that if a few people died in the pursuit of his own obviously worthwhile goals, then their involuntary sacrifice was well worth it.

Gir spoke suddenly, breaking a long silence. "If you cannot tell me your need, I must respect your reticence. But if your wizards' school needs the Scepter, of course—" His melodious voice began strong but suddenly threatened to break. I sat up straighter and looked at him fully. "Although I wield it, I am not the leader," he continued in a low tone. "We have had no leader since we came here. But I can speak with the others. It might require a certain amount of time to make our preparations, but perhaps we could leave our grove, find some other place where—"

I spoke before I had a chance to consider further, but it was the only answer I could have given. "I came to find the Scepter if no one were using it. Since it was Naurag's and he gave it to you, we of the wizards' school cannot decide eight hundred years later that his gift was wrong."

If I took the Scepter, either by force or else—after a wait that allowed Elerius to consolidate his position—by persuasion, then I would be responsible for at least some of these elves' deaths. I might be able to overcome Elerius by attacking him with dragons, but all I would have overcome was the man, a man that at times I had rather liked. Elerius's plans for world dominance, on the other hand, the self-assurance that his way was the best possible way, those would be alive and well. They would live on in me.

As I rose slowly to my feet all sorts of other reasons why it would never have worked anyway occurred to me. Arriving in the City with a horde of dragons at my back would have been much more likely to begin a devastating battle between the wizards of the school and the dragons—and me—than to make Elerius abruptly reconsider his agenda. Especially since there was an excellent chance that Elerius, with his much better abilities, would snatch the Scepter from my hand as easily as I had snatched it from Gir.

And might the dragons, no longer intimidated by the Scepter, start erupting into the land of men after I brought them back here, even if I succeeded? The wizards' school has always had the announced mission, dating back, I realized, to programs of Naurag's, of keeping dragons well up in the north; and yet keeping them there had never been a particularly onerous task. Gir and his people—and the Scepter—I now suspected, had for centuries been unacknowledged allies in the wizards' efforts to keep humans safe from wild magic. There might be an excellent reason that there were a lot more dragons in the old stories than were ever now seen in the Western Kingdoms.

"No need to worry about moving, Gir," I said with a rather unconvincing effort at nonchalance. "The Scepter would be dangerous for us to use anyway." An understatement. "It was just an idea one of the old wizards at the school had had, but I realize now it would be impractical.

There's somebody who's got a plan to take over the world. His name is Elerius. But I realize now that bludgeoning him into submission by trying to wield a Scepter I don't even know how to use just wouldn't work. Keep it here, and keep the dragons—and the other creatures of wild magic—in control."

Gir sprang up with as much youthful vigor as Paul. Looking at the relief and gratitude all over his face, I realized that he had just been having as big a moral struggle as I had. I was relieved that I would not be responsible for his death after all.

"If you have completed your visit to the dragons' valley, then," he said cheerfully, "we should have breakfast. I do not believe you had any blackberries yesterday."

I stayed two more days with the elves. That evening, rather than entertaining me with their music, they had me tell them stories, how old Naurag's original dream of a wizards' school had finally been put into effect centuries later, once the devastations of the Black Wars had made the wizards, fractious and touchy as they were, realize they had to start working together for the good of all humanity. My own grasp of the history of wizardry was always a bit shaky; I hoped the parts I had to make up weren't too far from accurate.

During the day I flew on my purple flying beast over the giants' farms and, carefully avoiding the lair of the fanged gorgos, on to explore other areas of this wild northern land. It might, I thought, be my only chance to see the creatures that I had assumed ever since I grew up were just imaginary: and to find out they all existed here. Some were beautiful, many strange, many dangerous. I thought rationally that I should be bitterly disappointed to have made this trip for nothing, but in fact I knew it was not for nothing. And it was hard to be downcast when the magic flowing through me felt so glorious.

But if there was nothing for me here, then I needed to return to the City.

I had to find out how Elerius was doing in his plans to take over all of western society. "Or how would you like to visit the East?" I asked my flying beast. "I'm sure you've never been there, and they do have good melons, though not as good as the elves'." The power of an Ifrit, if I could find and master one in the wild eastern deserts, would certainly be enough to outmatch even Elerius.

Naurag flew south reluctantly on the third day, making sure that I noticed him casting lingering glances toward the elves' gardens and orchards. I hoped he realized I was planning to take him much farther from those orchards than the borders of the land of magic where I had found him. It would, I tried to explain to him, be an exciting new experience for him to see humans.