Is This Apocalypse Necessary? - Wizard of Yurt - 6 Read Online Free PDF Page A

here," said the Master, enjoying my surprise, "someone to whom I've taught the spells to activate the bird from outside. Melecherius brought it back years ago from the East, where I gather the mages make such automatons. Didn't I give you his book to read once? Come in!" he called.
    The door opened and Whitey came in, carrying a tray which he placed on the bed. He stood silently, doing his best to pretend I didn't exist, until the Master nodded dismissal.
    "Have some breakfast with me, Daimbert," he said when we were alone again. He pushed himself slowly and carefully to a sitting position and then poured tea. "Were you thinking I was about to expire this morning?"
    he asked, looking at me sideways in amusement. "You found me lying in bed because that's where all sensible wizards spend the night, not because I'm completely incapacitated. You'll still have several months to get used to your new position."
    I shook myself and took the cup he offered. I appreciated his effort to make light of his approaching death, but I didn't believe him. The hot tea did only a little to take the chill from my insides. "By the way," I said, "do you think Elerius can hear us?"
    He drank tea thoughtfully for a moment. "I do not believe so. Of course, he could theoretically overhear any conversation in the school if he wanted to, but not even he could be paying attention to what every single person is saying at all times. I brought you here in the dead of night, telling no one beyond my two young assistants, to make sure he would have no reason to pay attention right now."
    The Master was eating dry toast with his tea. I forced myself to eat a piece, but it crumbled and seemed almost impossible to swallow. I had been wakened in the middle of the night, kidnapped, brought two hundred miles, and told I was going to have all the administrative responsibilities for western magic as soon as I stopped a wizard who would transform me into a tadpole without a qualm if he thought I stood in his way.

IV
    "Are you sure, sir," I ventured slowly, "that it would in fact be truly terrible for the school to have Elerius at its head? After all, he really does always try to act for the best..." And a few years back, I thought, he had summoned creatures of wild magic to attack the City, as part of one of his schemes. Well, I never had been able to prove that one on him definitively.
    But there were several other incidents I could think of in which he had sought to gain power, ranging from having a fanged gorgos attack the cathedral of Caelrhon, to working closely with a king who had sold his immortal soul, to digging up a dead body for his experiments ...
    "Elerius's rule would be the end of wizardry as you and I know it," the Master said soberly, looking at me from under shaggy eyebrows. "You know the old expression: There are three who rule the world, the wizards, the Church, and the aristocracy. And I suppose one really ought to add a fourth, the mayors and city councils of the commercial centers throughout the Western Kingdoms. Elerius doesn't just want to be the head of the wizards' school. He wants to be the head of everything."
    I stared at him a minute without comprehension. "Nobody can be the head of everything ."
    With breakfast inside him, the Master seemed to have revived a little.
    "You haven't been out of your little kingdom much the last few years," he said, "or you'd know what's been happening. You perhaps heard that the king whom Elerius had long served died last year?"
    My immediate reaction was that Elerius must have killed him. But that would be a little too much for someone who prided himself on working for everyone's benefit. "Yes, I knew. My own king traveled to the funeral."
    "As did many of the western kings. His was one of the wealthiest and largest kingdoms. Perhaps you didn't know that Elerius had continued as Royal Wizard there even after joining the school faculty?"
    When I had earlier been offered—and refused—a position on the