The Flying Sorcerers

by David Gerrold

  “But, I saw you open the door —”

  “Lant,” he said wearily, “you are a fool. I know how to use the spell — but I do not know why it works as it does. You saw what trouble I had with the light device. No, Lant — unless you know something else about the way that door works — and I know you don’t, for I peered into your mind — it’s going to stay open.”

  “But the curse —”

  He cut me off with a gesture, “I don’t know — it must be waiting. It needs something to activate it, probably the closing of the door. Without that…” He shrugged, let the sentence trail off into silence.

  The suns crept westward, the blue now visibly ahead of the red. I peered uneasily across the hill. How long would that curse wait before it went bad? Only the gods could help us if this, the greatest of Shoogar’s spells, were to go foul — and if it did go foul, there would be no gods left who could help us. They would all be against us.

  Slowly the shadows lengthened; the chill of the dying day crept across the world while Shoogar and I stood helplessly by. The black nest waited, grim and forbidding, yellow light poured from its door.

  The world waited. We waited. The nest waited.

  The curse waited…

  And then, abruptly, a sound. Footsteps crunching up the side of the hill. We dropped down behind the bush.

  Seconds later, Purple came into view, striding up over the rise — I wondered if he had satisfied his yearning — then down the slope toward his waiting nest. He could not see the open door from the direction he approached.

  He rounded the curve of the nestwall and stopped. Then he stepped hurriedly forward and peered within. For the first time we saw Purple react to Shoogar’s magic. He screamed like a hunting banshee-bat.

  No doubt a translation would have been most instructive, but the speakerspell was silent. Purple clambered into the door; the jamb caught him across the forehead, knocking the glass appurtenances from his nose. (How had Shoogar managed that?)

  We heard his voice from inside the nest; great anguished cries, hardly recognizable. Occasionally, words would come from the speakerspell, booming across the hollow, “My god in …! How the … did they get in? Stung me! Get off my foot, you … son of … Why isn’t the pest killer working?!!”

  “The sting things are giving him trouble,” I whispered.

  “God-damned sting things …!” Purple’s booming voice corrected me.

  “But the sting things are not the spell, Lant,” Shoogar hissed. “They would sting whether they were part of the curse or not.

  Shoogar was right. The curse had not yet been activated. Anguished, I tore at my fur. What were the gods waiting for? Would they wait so long that Purple would have time to nullify the elements of the spell and turn it back on Shoogar?

  More words came hurtling across the slope. “Eggs! … Eggs?”

  “At least you have ruined his composure,” I whispered to Shoogar. That’s a beginning.”

  “Not enough. … The gods should be tripping over each other in their eagerness to destroy him. … It must be the door! It must be! Lant, I fear….”

  He trailed off ominously. I felt ice melting along my spine..

  “Savages!” boomed Purple’s voice. “Primitive savages! This damned gray paint — Where the hell is the …? Incest, love-making, illegitimate, compound incest, excrement, excrement, excrement, oral-genital contact, rectum, castration, diseases passed by lovemaking, primitive anal lovechildren! I’ll kill the lovemaking offspring of dogs! I’ll burn this lovemaking world down to the bedrock!”

  Purple may have been incoherent, but he certainly sounded sincere. I readied myself to run. I could see him moving about within the nest; he was stabbing furiously at the various bumps and depressions that we had painted over. Savagely Purple twisted the knobs, one after another, trying to nullify Shoogar’s spells.

  “And as for that fur-covered animal, Shoogar —”

  The heavy curved door slid shut and cut off Purple s last raging howl.

  A gentle breeze tugged at the leaves the bushes and the cuffs of our robes. The shadows had lengthened until they stretched eastward into darkness.

  The blue sun twinkled and vanished, leaving only the bloated disk of the red. Below us the hills lay like the folds of a crumpled red cloth. All was deathly silent.

  Slowly Shoogar and I crept out of our hiding place. The black nest sat quietly in its depression. The door, closed now, was only an orange oval outlined on its smooth featureless surface.

  We edged forward, curiously, cautiously.

  “Has it begun yet?” I whispered.

  “Shut up, you fool! Every god in the pantheon must be listening!”

  We moved closer. The black egg waited there, motionless. Shoogar put his ear to its surface and listened.

  Abruptly, the egg rose noiselessly into the air, throwing Shoogar back. I threw myself flat on the ground, began praying for forgiveness. “Oh, gods of the world, I cast myself upon your mercy. I plead to you. Please, do not let me —”

  “Shut up, Lant! Do you want to foul the spell?!!”

  I lifted my head cautiously. Shoogar was standing there, hands on hips and staring up into the red twilight. The black nest hung unmoving and patient a few feet above his head.

  I climbed wearily to my feet. As a curse this spell was turning out to be a dull bore. “What is it doing?” I asked. Shoogar didn’t answer.

  Abruptly the nest turned from black to silver and began sinking back toward the ground as gently as it had risen. The red dusk glinted across its surface, the color of blood.

  We stepped back as it touched the ground; it continued sinking downward without so much as slowing. Now, at last, there was sound, a churning crunching grumble of rock being forced aside. The nest moved downward, inexorably. The rocks screeched with the sound of its passage.

  In moments it was gone.

  The crackle of rock sank to a distant mutter, then died away entirely. Dazed, I walked to the rubbled edge of the hole. Darkness swallowed the bottom of it although an occasional distant rumble of movement could be felt.

  Shoogar came up beside me.

  “Brilliant,” I said, and I never meant anything more. “It’s gone, Shoogar. Completely, totally gone. The world has swallowed it up as though it never existed. And —” I gasped breathlessly, “and there were no side effects at all.”

  Shoogar harrumphed modestly. He bent to pick up the glass appurtenances which had fallen from Purple’s nose. He pocketed them absent-mindedly. “It was nothing,” he said.

  “But, Shoogar! No side effects! I wouldn’t have believed you could do it! I wouldn’t have believed anyone could do it. Why didn’t you tell us you were planning this? We wouldn’t have had to leave the village.”

  “Best to be safe,” Shoogar mumbled. He must have been dazed by his triumph. “You see, I wasn’t sure … What with the tidal equations acting to pull the nest down instead of… and with Eccar the Man tending to — well, it was highly unusual; experimental, you might say. I —”

  The whole mountain shook under us.

  I landed jarringly on my belly looking downslope. Two hundred feet below, the black nest erupted out of the hillside, shrieking in agony.

  It plunged up and southward, screaming with an unholy sound — we had hurt it terribly. The egg wailed its pain — a rising and falling note — piercingly loud even as it moved away from the mountain.

  Some weird side effect had pulverized the very substance of the hill beneath us, turning it to sliding dirt and pebbles. The entire slope was sliding, shifting, carrying us majestically downward. We were powerless to move; we rode the rumbling avalanche, a massive churning movement of dust and sand. The black nest was a speck of shrieking red brightness fast disappearing into the southern horizon.

  The sliding mountain came gradually to a stop. Whether from caprice or Shoogar’s magic, it had not buried us. We had been fortunate enough to be standing at the top of the affected area, and had ridden it d
own unhurt. Now I found myself on my belly, deep in soft sloping dirt. Shoogar was several yards below me.

  I climbed to my knees. The black nest was no more than a dot above the horizon: rising and dwindling, rising and dwindling. It was going almost straight up when my eyes lost it.

  I scrambled down the slope to Shoogar, each step creating tiny echoes of the bigger slide. “Is it over?” I asked, helping him to his feet.

  Shoogar brushed ineffectually at his robe, “I think not.” He peered into the south, “There are too many gods who have not yet spoken.”

  We were ankle-deep in the newly pulverized dirt, and would have to walk softly lest the slope be jarred loose again. We began to work our way down cautiously. “How long must we wait for the curse to complete its workings?” I asked.

  Shoogar shrugged, “I cannot guess. We called heavily on too many gods. Lant, I suggest you return to the village now. Your wives and children will be waiting.”

  “I would stay here with you until the curse is complete.”

  Shoogar frowned thoughtfully, “Lant, the black nest will probably return to attack the one who injured it. I dare not return to the village until that danger is past, and I would not want you here with me when that happens.” He put his hand on my shoulder, “Thank you, Lant. I appreciate all you have done. Now go.”

  I nodded. I did not want to leave him. But I knew that this had to be. Shoogar was not just saying good night; he was saying good-bye. Until he knew for sure that the black nest had been destroyed, he could not return.

  Dejectedly, I turned and trudged down the slope. I did not want him to see the tears welling up in my eyes.

  The village was as I had left it. Silent, deserted, and bearing the scars of Shoogar’s preparations.

  I had been fortunate to find one of my bicycles half-way down the hill. Now I parked it beneath my own nest. Miraculously, both bicycle and housetree had remained undamaged.

  My number one wife was curled up on the floor sleeping when I hoisted myself into the nest. She awoke at the swaying of the structure and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

  “Where are the others?” I asked.

  She shook her head, “They fled when Purple came to the village this morning.”

  “Purple came to the village?” I was aghast.

  She nodded.

  I seized her by the shoulders, “You must tell me what he did! Did he curse Shoogar’s nest? Did he —”

  “No, it was nothing like that. He just walked around for a while.”

  “The fire device? Did he use the fire device?”

  “No. He wanted something else.”

  “What was it, woman?”

  “I cannot say if I understood right, my husband. He did not have his speakerspell with him. We had to use gestures.”

  “Well, what did he want?”

  “He wanted to do the family-making thing, I think.”

  “And you let him…?”

  She lowered her eyes, “I thought it would help Shoogar’s part of the duel if the mad magician were distracted for a while …”

  “But, how could you? He is not a guest of ours! I should beat you!”

  “I am sorry, my husband. I thought it would help.” She cringed before my upraised hand, “And you did not beat your third wife when Purple talked to her.”

  She was right. I lowered my hand. It would not be fair to beat one and not the other.

  “He is built most strangely, my husband. He is almost completely without hair, except for —”

  “I do not want to hear about it,” I said. “Is that all that you did?”

  She nodded.

  “And then he left the village?”

  Again she nodded.

  “He did not touch anything? Take anything?”

  She shook her head.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, “Thank the gods for small favors. The situation could have been very bad. Fortunately you say nothing was damaged.” Gratefully, I lowered myself to the floor. I had not realized how weary I was. “You may serve me a meal,” I said.

  She did so, wordlessly. If she had to exercise her jaw, there were always my dinner leavings. I had taken two bites, when abruptly from overhead came a weird kind of shrieking whistle.

  It was a sound of disaster, of emergency and panic. I dropped out of the nest and ran for the clearing. Through the treetops I could see —

  The flying nest! It had returned to the village. It was no longer silver. Now it was yellow with heat. It hurtled across the sky, then circled and returned for another shrieking pass.

  Shoogar’s words flashed across my mind, “… the black nest will probably return to attack the one who injured it…” Could the nest have confused me with Shoogar? I stood there in the central clearing, too panicked to move.

  It stopped jarringly a few yards above the treetops, as if it had hit a soft wall. Its door was missing, ripped away. The opening showed black against the orange glow of what could only be heated metal.

  The nest turned, questing. I imagined eyes in the blackness behind the doorway. I waited for them to find me.

  The nest turned, faster.

  Suddenly, it was spinning, terribly fast. All details blurred and vanished; the surface seemed a liquid red-orange. I heard the drone of it rising and I covered my ears. A wind swept through the trees.

  As it spun, the nest was carrying the air with it. Great gusts spun through the village with a rising shriek, different from the agony-cry of the nest, but terrifying all the same. It was a great whirlpool of wind with the nest at the center. I clung to the trunk of one of the nearby housetrees.

  Was Musk-Watz attacking the stranger’s egg? Or was the latter attacking the village? The wind roared through the trees, through the leaves and branches and nests; it tried to pluck me from where I clung tightly to one of the root limbs. I wrapped my arms and legs about the branch and buried my face in the trunk. Leaves, bark, bits of wood sprayed me. It went on and on and on….

  After a while, I became aware that the sound was lessening. I raised my head. The wind was dying….

  Not a tree in the village carried a leaf. Every nest had been knocked to the ground. Many had been shattered against the trunks of their host trees. Others lay yards from where they should have fallen.

  Purple’s great black egg, still spinning, had moved southward toward the river. It was above the new course of the rushing waters when it began to drop. Filfo-mar, angry and implacable, was pulling the black nest down to destruction.

  I had to see. I followed the nest, unmindful of the possible danger. I had to know if Purple’s nest was truly being destroyed.

  The nest was spinning ferociously, as if it were trying to escape the power of the river god. When it touched the water a great cloud of steam burst into the air. At the same time, the river and its muddy banks all rose up in one huge wave of earth and water. It blackened the sky, covered the moons — I tried to run — it splashed across the world in one vast wave. A scream forced itself out of my throat as the rushing water swept me back through the village. Filth and mud flooded my mouth, my nostrils..

  Abruptly I was struck a jarring blow from behind, found myself caught between two limbs of a tree. Water rained down in fat drops and mud in stinging gobs.

  The water began to recede then, flowing back toward the river in a great mud streaking wave. Churning debris left in its wake.

  Shoogar had miscalculated. The nest had not returned to attack him. Even now I could see that there was nothing left of the village: just a few blackened trees, naked against the night.

  I lowered myself from the branch. My back twinged warningly and I wondered if I had cracked a rib. Painfully I limped toward the river. If I were destined to die, I would first know the fate of my enemy.

  Black mud squelched beneath my feet as I plodded. The bare trees dripped muddy goo. It was as if the whole world were uninhabitable, drowned in a rain of earth and water. It was tricky going; often the viscous mess beneath my feet hid
shards of debris.

  Under the shadowless light of seven of the moons, I began to cross the old course of the river. The mud and the smooth wet rocks all worked to slow me. Probably they saved my life. I had forgotten that one god had not yet spoken.

  I cursed as I balanced on the slippery surfaces. The nest lay ahead. In its spinning it had churned a great dish-shaped cavity for itself. As I topped the lip of that cavity I saw the nest, black again and lying in shallow silvery water. Its spin had stopped, and — finally, finally — it was no longer upright.

  It rested on its side with water pouring into the hollow around it, flooding into the doorway. Garish light reflected in that opening and across the surface of the water.

  No doubt, that final awry tilt of the egg was the work of Fine-line, the god of engineers. Perhaps in his last moments, Purple had finally believed in the power of Shoogar’s magic. I worked my way closer, eyes open for one glimpse of the mad magician’s body. Nothing could be left alive within that nest.

  I was not one quarter of the way down when the interior of the nest began to sparkle and flash. This was not the steady yellow which had lit the compartment earlier. This was a sick sputtering sparkle, the color of lightning. I paused, unsure. I could hear crackling sounds and the hiss of water turning to steam. I began to inch my way back up the mud slope. The nest was still dangerously alive.

  The blue flashing grew brighter behind me — and then a thick puff of black smoke erupted from the gaping door. I reached the mud lip of the churned-out hollow none too soon and dropped behind it. Cautiously, I raised my head.

  The nest seemed to pause, as if wondering what to do next.

  It decided.

  It leapt upward, up and out of the pond. It rose in a steep arc, glowing white, paused at the apex, and fell back. It landed right in the middle of the village. Instantly it bounced, leaving a clutch of burning trees behind it. A hot wind fanned my face. It bounced again.

  The nest had forgotten how to fly. Now it moved by bouncing, and it glowed with a terrible heat. Each time it struck it would give off one enormous spark, and the land would burn. But only momentarily: the village was too much a swamp to support a fire.