Is This Apocalypse Necessary? - Wizard of Yurt - 6 (37 page)

It was only then that I realized that my leg was completely healed.

As the exalted savior of the western kingdoms, I had been given my own tent. There I lay awake for hours, missing Naurag's comforting warmth, even missing Maffi, next to whom I had slept on the whole trip back from Xantium, and feeling less like an exalted savior than I ever had in my life.

A miracle had been worked on my behalf, a miracle I didn't dare tell anyone about, but which made me feel that everything I did from here on had better be worthy of such a great concession. Joachim I could have talked to about the saint, but the bishop wasn't here. I rolled over for the dozenth time, trying unsuccessfully to find an angle where I could close my eyes without seeing the overwhelming burning goodness—and irritated frown—of the Cranky Saint.

The dawn reveille woke me from an uneasy doze. I rolled out of my tent and nodded in response to the respectful greetings of the guardsmen, wondering how even more respectful they would be if I told them I had been talking to a saint. The early morning sky was dark and lowering, heavy with stormclouds.

I shivered, looking around the encampment. The rows of tents and banners stretched far in all directions. Knights were scrambling from their tents, rubbing their eyes and shivering. I had sent a message to King Paul when I got back last night that Elerius would not listen to reason, but I was afraid the kings would take that as an excuse to start the war at once.

If I couldn't find some way to stop it, the brute strength of thousands of men would be thrown against the spells of a handful of wizards. Even if Elerius wasn't demon-assisted, I felt a queasy certainty who would prevail.

Unless— Unless I could find some way to fight Elerius's undead warriors without involving human soldiers. I leaned against a flag pole, tapping my foot and thinking hard. I had never tried making any such warriors of my own, had never before even contemplated doing anything of the kind, but I might—might—be able to do so. My predecessor as Royal Wizard of Yurt had once made a creature from dead bones which would move of its own volition, and I still had his notebooks.

This thought cheered me enormously, until I remembered that Elerius, in happier times, had once visited me in Yurt and systematically read through those very notebooks. He would thus be able to find any flaw in the magic propelling the creatures I made, and then dismantle them—after all, even
I
had been able to improvise a way to stop my predecessor's monster, after it had killed him.

And it was no use trying the same approach I had used then on Elerius's warriors, because his would be substantially improved, imbued with some of the dark spells Elerius had picked up from eastern wizards during his years in the kingdom next to the mountains—even picked up from Vlad.

Vlad's own monstrous creations had eventually been stopped, when they had showed up in Yurt years ago, but Elerius would have had ample opportunity to develop spells to overcome any weakness there as well.

No use, then, matching him spell for spell, where I was bound to lose.

My only chance lay not in dismantling his warriors, but rather in using entirely different magic to make even better warriors of my own.

And I had just had an idea.

King Paul was drinking tea from a tin mug when I found him. "Do we have any alternatives, Wizard?" he asked me soberly. "If Elerius won't agree to stop this war, do we have any choice but to start it?"

He was not quite so eager, in the early morning's chill light, to start killing people as he once might have been. Nothing like facing real bloodshed, I thought, to make a restless young king rethink the fun and glory of going to battle— not to mention the responsibility of being treated as the chief king among them all. Now I just had to make sure that the bloodshed he was facing in his mind stayed hypothetical.

"I have a plan," I said with more confidence than I felt. "I'm going back to Yurt today, to look at my books, but I think I can make some soldiers that will match those inhuman creatures of Elerius's. If the unliving destroy each other first, it should make things substantially easier for the living."

Paul gave a sudden grin, though his emerald eyes remained serious. "I knew you would find a way to stop renegade magic!" He offered me a rather stale piece of bread, all he was having himself, which I wolfed down.

"You didn't really return from the dead, did you?" he added thoughtfully.

"This was all a ruse, though I must say a very good one!"

"Have you been talking to Gwennie, sire?" I asked though a mouthful of dry crumbs.

The king poured me a mug of scalding tea. "She told me one or two things about your trip, after you left for the castle last night," he said stiffly, not looking at me. The lovers' reunion, I thought, must have hit a snag—doubtless the same snag that had hung up Paul's original proposal, to say nothing of Gwennie's justifiably wounded feelings at knowing that the king had followed up his proposal to her with one to the Princess Margareta.

"But how long will you need to be in Yurt?" he asked then, putting the fate of the western kingdoms firmly ahead of his own love-life. "I can stall the other kings for a day or so, but some of them—especially Lucas—are pretty hot-headed. And if the kings who already tried to face the undead monsters get into a quarrel over their manly courage with those who arrived later, I don't trust them all not to start fighting each other. That would certainly help Elerius!"

"I'll be back tonight," I said, swallowing the last of the tea and feeling more confident by the moment. It must have been twenty-four hours since I had last had something to eat—facing a saint was always bad enough, but I had had to do so on an empty stomach.

And tomorrow evening the truce I had sworn to Elerius would be up, and I could try attacking him with the Ifrit— assuming, of course, I figured out how to do so in the meantime.

"Then I'll see you tonight," said Paul and grinned again. "It's good to have you back, Wizard."

But I didn't leave at once after all. I had just lifted into the air to start flying inland, intending to stay well away from the castle where Elerius's magical defenses kept flying spells from working, when I spotted something purple, flying fast toward me out of the cloudy eastern sky.

Where could Naurag have possibly gone? The last I had seen the flying beast, he had been with Maffi and Hadwidis, being closely observed by several curious knights. He had flown so far and so fast on our trip west from Xantium that I had thought to leave him here today, but it looked as if he had gone somewhere on his own.

Quickly I shaped a far-seeing spell, and then realized it wasn't Naurag after all. It was an air cart. And riding in it were my wife and daughter.

I laughed out loud with surprise and joy. I should have known that the two of them would want to join me, for all my firmly telling Theodora last night to stay safely in Caelrhon. Antonia had become quite proficient in the spells that commanded the cart, during her trips back and forth between Yurt and the cathedral city. My search for creatures out of the old magic could wait a little longer.

But as I flew to meet them, I realized something was wrong. Theodora was gesturing emphatically, but not toward me. The air cart had altered direction, and its wing beats were no longer taking it toward the kings'

encampment.

Instead it was heading straight for the castle. And it was picking up speed.

My insides went cold as I madly doubled my own speed. I tried shouting encouragement, but my words were carried away by the wind. Agonizingly slowly, I drew closer, but not close enough. The air cart flew on steadily, its head with its mseeing eyes and wired jaws held high. With my far-seeing spell I could tell that both Theodora and Antonia were trying new commands to regain control of the cart, but it was no longer listening to their spells. Theodora looked down, over the cart's side, but they were several hundred yards up, much too far to jump, and neither of them had an entirely reliable grasp of flying spells when they were under pressure.

That cart was governed by school spells, and the world's greatest practitioner of school magic was drawing them toward him. I had faked my death in the first place to avoid something just like this, but it appeared I had made everyone sad needlessly, only to have Elerius use my family as a pawn in the end.

What would he
do
to them? My imagination provided half a dozen horrible answers, from painful dismemberment to killing them outright and using their dead bodies to make new warriors. And he wouldn't even have to carry through with any of it—all he had to do was threaten. At this point a demon was unnecessary for his victory. In five minutes I would be back at the castle, promising any assistance he wanted and giving him the Ifrit, just to assure my family's safety.

But then I heard a trumpeting call. Someone else had joined the chase.

Not Whitey and Chin, doubtless still snuggled down in their blankets. Not any of the warriors, itching to fight but with weapons useless against wizardry. It was Naurag.

The purple flying beast chased after the air cart, faster than I could fly, his wings beating mightily. And as he flew he called.

And the air cart hesitated. It responded to school spells, but the cart was the skin of a flying beast, and the call of its own kind was even stronger than the spells that the original wizard Naurag had shaped to control flying beasts and air carts. The purple flying beast trumpeted again, whether in warning, in greeting, or even in yearning I did not know.

Did he even realize the cart was not alive?

But it didn't matter. Caught between summons to fly in opposite directions, the air cart came to a dead stop, hovering. Thirty more seconds, and I dropped into it, between my wife and daughter.

"I'll block Elerius's spell," I gasped even as I hugged them both. "Try to get us out of here."

Naurag flew around and around the air cart, bringing his head in close as though sniffing it in surprise. But I had no time to wonder if my flying beast was startled to find the object of his amorous pursuit so unresponsive. Working fast, I started countering the spells coming from the castle. At this distance, even Elerius was not too powerful for me to oppose. Antonia again gave the magical commands, and the air cart turned obediently and started slowly toward the encampment.

For a moment Naurag hesitated, hearing that magical summons himself. But I couldn't rescue him too—it was all I could do to keep Elerius's spells from reaching the air cart.

Twenty yards we flew, forty, a quarter mile. Naurag turned toward us, flew a few strokes, stopped to look back over his shoulder, flew another short distance after us, and stopped again. As a living creature, he had a choice the dead air cart did not have, but the old wizard who had first created those spells had known flying beasts extremely well. Was Elerius going to fight us every inch of the way? I wondered as I muttered spells through clenched teeth.

But then the spells of summons stopped abruptly. Were we out of range, or had Elerius decided to conserve his energy for something even worse?

No matter. The air cart surged forward, then flew down in a stately spiral to land triumphantly in front of King Paul. Naurag came in next to us and started nuzzling the cart again. I jumped out and threw my arms around his neck, telling him what a fine and brave, what an excellent flying beast he was, and how many melons he deserved. Antonia was immediately interested, and sprang from the cart to look at Naurag from all sides and reach up to pat him.

But Theodora, climbing out more slowly, just took my hand a little shakily, with only a faint curtsey toward the king. She did not burst into tears, which I might have done in her place—in fact I felt like sobbing now myself in relief.

I turned to King Paul. "Excuse me, sire," I said, my voice unsteady. "I had hoped to be well on my way by now, but I'm afraid I've run into a bit of a delay. It may be tomorrow before I'm back from my trip—because I'm going to wait a little while to leave."

Paul nodded, a bit wistfully, but then after a few seconds straightened his shoulders and said, "Of course, Wizard," in hearty tones. "I should be able to keep the rest of the kings from getting too restless for at least another day."

And with my arms around Theodora and Antonia I went off to try to find a quiet spot in the bustling camp to talk to them, but mostly just to hold onto them.

I flew on Naurag toward Yurt, my heart lifting at knowing I was going to see the kingdom again after all. The flying beast, carrying me rapidly eastward, seemed to be trying to convey the suggestion that he had never been the slightest bit interested in a dead air cart. Autumn colors had come on while I was in the East, and the hills over which I passed were tinged with red and golden, almost luminous on this cloudy day. The queen would be surprised at my return from the dead; I just hoped she hadn't had my rooms cleaned out and given to someone else.

But even before consulting my books I had to check for something else: dragons' teeth.

It had been my first year in Yurt when a dragon attacked the castle on Christmas Day. I had managed to kill it, through the assistance of my predecessor as Royal Wizard and also a fair amount of sheer dumb luck. I had tried not to dwell on that hair-raising adventure, and time and other dramatic events—including my own recent experiences in the dragons'

valley in the north—had pushed it toward the back of my mind, but the memories were still uncomfortably clear whenever I stumbled across them. One never forgets one's first dragon.

The stable boys had sawed up that dragon's carcass and buried it down in the woods below the castle, and in a few years the ivy and saplings had grown thick over it. But in the very oldest spells, dragons' teeth were the first ingredient for unliving warriors.

Or so I had heard, though nothing in my predecessor's notes had ever hinted at such an ingredient. He had never used them himself, nor, I believed, had Elerius. After all, dragons had not been found in the west for a very long time. Previous to the one I remembered so vividly, probably the last to visit Yurt had been the one who had eaten almost all of Saint Eusebius, leaving only the Cranky Saint's big toe.