Is This Apocalypse Necessary? - Wizard of Yurt - 6 (13 page)

But my heart contracted at the thought of having to put Theodora through the sorrow that all of us at the school were now feeling at the Master's death.

There was no time to hesitate. The teachers would shortly rally to start teaching their wizardry classes again and realize they needed to choose a new Master; the cathedral priests were already well behind schedule in electing their new bishop; and I thought the mayoral election was coming up shortly. Elerius was already regent—for the son no one but I knew was his—in the largest of the Western Kingdoms. The longer he held the other offices as well the harder it would be to overcome him. Now I just wished I had the faintest idea how to do so.

"I've decided to try to find the Dragons' Scepter," I told Elerius. A partial truth is more believable than an outright lie, I reminded myself again.

He had moved back into his own office from Zahlfast's— he had been careful not to appear overeager by taking the Master's study immediately.

He looked up at me with calculating tawny eyes from the book he had been reading. "Is this to assist me, Daimbert, or to begin an assault against me?"

"Oh, to assist you, of course," I said, passing smoothly from partial truth to total falsehood. "That's why I'm volunteering to go find it—to show you my good faith. I'm still not at all sure I'd be any good at running the school, but I've been doing a lot of thinking the last few days, and here I think you're right. If wizardry is going to expand its authority, we need all the magic we can get. And I understand that the man who made this Scepter taught the wizard with whom our Master originally apprenticed."

He nodded slowly but did not seem as convinced as I would have liked.

"I understand the Master used to have some sort of ledger or book about the Scepter," he commented.

"Really? Have you seen it? Is it in the library!?"

It sounded forced in my own ears, but he seemed unsuspicious. "I've never seen it myself," he said, shaking his head.

"It's not in the Master's study now, but you might ask the librarian for assistance—if he's coherent again."

There was the slightest touch of irritation in his voice; Elerius had planned for a period of grief, but in his view that period should be over now. I also noted the admission that, even though he had not presumed to move in, he had taken the opportunity to see what the Master's study might provide.

It wasn't clear to me whether he believed my sudden profession of support for him, or whether he was letting me go as some sort of test. But it didn't matter. Once I was dead he could have no power over me.

I took my air cart north, flying with the augmented speed I had taught it with Naurag's spells. With few supplies beyond his book, I followed the coastline toward the land of dragons.

Summer was nearly over, and low clouds and fog hung over the coastal hills. And autumn with its cold and its dank rain came to meet me as I moved north. I was kept busy as the days passed trying to keep the cart in clear air, but we repeatedly ran into clouds where it was almost impossible to see, and where beads of cold water formed on my hair and beard, making the whole cart clammy. Much of the trip I sat shivering, trying to stay out of the wind.

And all the time I was flying I kept thinking of excellent reasons why I should delay my trip into the lairs and open jaws of the dragons. While the mangled remains of my body would certainly provide convincing proof of my death, there would be the distinct difficulty that I wouldn't be alive to take advantage of the opportunity.

The last coastal towns had long disappeared behind me, and even the last fishing villages, when I reached the range of mountains that separated the land of wild magic from the lands of men. To the east, the mountains rose as much as three miles up to jagged, ice-covered peaks. Up there the school maintained a watch station, to monitor magic creatures trying to head south into human realms—and presumably wizards heading north.

But here the mountains sloped down into the water, before continuing out into the western sea as a series of empty, wave-drenched islands.

The air made me feel cold down to my bones, but it carried with it an exhilarating sense of power, of magical ability that gave me the courage to keep trying—and even the belief that I might still succeed. Elerius couldn't possibly have tracked me this far unless he was flying invisible behind me, which I doubted—it would severely restrict his activities back at the school. It was time to appear to die.

First I landed and found a sharp stone to hack at the side of the air cart, making plausible-looking teeth marks, such as a dragon might leave.

Thinking about Naurag and his purple companion, much less about the Master, who had given this cart to me, started to make me sad and sentimental, but I gritted my teeth and hacked on ruthlessly. When the air cart was looking fairly tattered it was time to think about blood stains.

On the way north I had considered and rejected a dozen ways to imitate the look of real blood. None of them were likely to fool Elerius. Reluctantly I took my knife and forced the point against a finger tip. A single drop of blood appeared. I smeared it carefully on the inner side of the cart, but it didn't even show.

Several times during the trip, gathering wood for a fire or slicing up the dried meat I had brought along, I had scraped a hand or an arm, but the scrapes appeared all to have healed, not even leaving a scab I might pick. I could kill an animal and spread its blood around, I thought, but this region seemed devoid of animal life—even the plant life was limited to something with large, dusty-green leaves growing close to the ground.

Besides, I didn't trust Elerius not to be able to distinguish human from animal blood.

After considering various parts of my body and trying to decide which one I might be able to spare, I finally worked up the nerve to make a cut through the skin of the back of the left arm. It took fifteen minutes and a lot of squeezing, but I managed to extract enough blood to spread thinly but fairly artistically over the air cart, creating a suggestion of someone struggling unsuccessfully against a dragon. A bloody hand print added a nice touch of verisimilitude.

I gave the cart the magical commands to return it to Yurt and watched it flap away, feeling both sorrow and triumph. They would be grief-stricken at home when they thought me dead—or at least I liked to think they would be—but I was underway at last. Before Elerius became master of the world he would have to deal with me.

Then I turned, set my jaw in determination, and started northward.

Flying, I thought, would warm me. Before me, though still hundreds of miles away, lay the great valley of the dragons and, if Naurag's spells had continued to work for all these centuries, the Scepter that would control the dragons. I had no idea how I would worm it out from under the dragons' noses without being eaten first, but I was going to try.

And as I flew, into the heart of great, unfocused magical forces, I began to imagine it might not be so difficult after all. I had Naurag's spells—what more did I need? And if for some reason I couldn't get hold of the Scepter, I told myself, then I always had a fall-back position from which to oppose Elerius. I was fairly sure I could find an Ifrit in the East again, and, half-drunk on the magic through which I flew, I decided that I could surely persuade him that he owed me three wishes.

I had flown for about an hour and was starting to feel like trying some spells to practice the greater and greater abilities I could feel coursing through me, when I abruptly paused and rubbed my eyes. Something bright purple flapped toward me, rapidly coming closer. Either I was hallucinating from loss of blood or else my air cart was approaching from before me, from the north.

Had it somehow looped around by mistake and gotten ahead of me? I hovered in the air, trying a far-seeing spell— which worked far more easily than it ever did at home. I thought I had given the commands to the cart quite clearly: did this mean, I thought with an abrupt loss of the confidence I had felt seconds earlier, that Elerius had seen through me and was already blocking my plans before they started?

But this wasn't my air cart. It was not tattered, and overall it just didn't look right—especially its head. The head had been left attached to the skin of the dead flying beast back when it was made into a cart, but the eyes had been sewn shut and the jaws wired together. Yet this head seemed alert and watchful, looking from side to side as it came. It jerked up sharply as it spotted me, and for a moment its wing-beats held the creature steady in one place, then it approached, slowly but as though very interested.

This wasn't my air cart, but something I had never seen before. It was a living purple flying beast.

The flying beast made an interrogatory noise, apparently as surprised to see me as I was to see it. I dropped to the ground so as not to appear threatening. It circled me slowly in the air, its long neck craned for a better look. These creatures were born flying, I had been told, and from below I could see that its feet were extremely rudimentary; no wonder the wizards had had to attach wheels to them in making them into air carts.

This creature had long fangs hanging from the corners of his jaw, which looked as if they could do serious damage if he wanted to bite me, but so far all he seemed to want was to look at me—and at the patch of vegetation in which I stood. I glanced downward and suddenly realized what these low-growing plants were over which I had been flying. They bore wild gourds, newly ripe.

I reached down, plucked an especially large one, and tossed it upwards.

The creature shot forward with one stroke of his wings and snapped it out of the air. Two quick crunches and he swallowed, then licked his lips with a long purple tongue and looked toward me expectantly. Apparently for a flying beast these gourds were fang-smacking good.

Picking another, I rose into the air and cautiously approached. The flying beast opened his mouth wide, beating his wings hard in eager anticipation. I tossed the gourd from a distance of only a few yards, and again it disappeared into his maw.

"What's the problem?" I asked, keeping my voice low and friendly—the way I had often heard King Paul talk to his horses. "You love these gourds, and you've come here now that they're ripe, but with your tiny feet do you find it hard to stand on the ground to eat them? Would you like me to pick you some more?"

He grunted at me and licked his lips again. I doubted he could comprehend human speech, but so far we understood each other just fine.

I picked two more gourds, tossed him the first one, then slowly approached. He backed up a little, but after I tossed him the second and he had swallowed it down, he came slightly toward me. Again I picked a gourd and again I approached, wary in case he charged if feeling threatened, until I could reach out with one hand and touch his scaly purple neck. He gave a quiver but neither retreated nor attacked. I made friendly murmuring sounds, gave his neck a pat, and with the other hand put the gourd directly into his mouth. He backed away with great startled wing-beats that almost knocked me out of the air, but he swallowed all the same.

It took the rest of the afternoon before I felt I had fully tamed the flying beast—or maybe he figured out that as long as he continued to play coy I would continue to pick and give him gourds. Antonia, I thought, would love him—I just hoped we all lived long enough so I could introduce my daughter to the purple beast. At last, when his belly was as round as a gourd itself, he gave me what I could have sworn was a friendly wink from one yellow eye, settled himself into a slow flying pattern a few feet above the ground, and went to sleep.

I sat among stripped gourd vines, contemplating my "purple companion." Naurag's had flown even faster than dragons—at least until the larger and less maneuverable dragons had gotten up to speed. So far I hadn't tried on this beast any of the commands in the Hidden Language which the long-dead wizard had detailed for me—and which we still used for the air carts. But I couldn't help looking ahead, imagining myself zipping under dragon noses—even between dragon teeth as their jaws closed fractionally too late—shouting in triumph and waving the long-hidden Scepter. And then I would return to the City wielding it, a battalion of dragons at my back, and then I would explain to Elerius in words of one syllable that he was going to retire from active life instantly, and then—

In the meantime, it was growing cold. I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself. This plan wouldn't work very well if I froze to death before getting properly under way. There was nothing here with which to make a decent fire; green gourd vines wouldn't cast much heat. I tucked my hands into my arm pits, stood up, and began to pace, thinking I might have to do so all night.

And then I almost jumped out of my skin as something hard and damp touched me in the small of the back, giving a snort that shot hot air up inside my shirt. I whirled around, seizing wildly at spells. It was, of course, the flying beast.

He had descended and was looking at me somewhat quizzically through the dimness. I realized that in his concern for me he had actually set his feet, or at any rate his broad belly, on the ground. In spite of his scaly skin, he radiated heat. I took a step closer and put one cold hand on his warm flank. He gave a sharp wing-beat that knocked me over, and I tried to make apologetic noises as I struggled back to my feet. But then I realized.

He hadn't been trying to drive me away. He was trying to pull me closer.

The wing beat again, and this time I let it drag me to him. The skin under the wing was rough, and the odor would not have been my first choice, but it was certainly warm. Tucked up against the flying beast, I relaxed and closed my eyes. As long as he was with me, I might be eaten but I would not freeze in the land of dragons.

When I awoke in the morning it took me a moment to realize where I was. I was stiff and constrained, my arms pinned to my sides, and everything in front of my eyes was indistinct and purple. Besides, it was starting to feel as though I was tipping—