The Flying Sorcerers

by David Gerrold

  And still the nest was bouncing. As it left the village, other patches of flame were spreading. They led in a straight line, west toward the mountains where Shoogar waited.

  The nest bounced uphill, like a ball in reverse. I could see it, a glowing white speck moving erratically up the mountainside. It ultimately disappeared behind a ridge.

  The wind followed it, crackling with the presence of the one god who had not yet spoken; then it too faded into the west. A semblance of calm crept over the landscape, leaving only the sound of water dripping from the trees and branches.

  I stood up and looked off across the black mud to where a pillar of greasy smoke still rose from the center of the village. Brushing at the mud which permeated my clothing, I wondered if my first wife had survived. I would regret it very much if she had not. She was a good woman, obedient and almost as strong as a pack animal.

  It occurred to me then which god had not yet spoken.

  I sat down.

  There was a slow and deathly silence now. Only the crackle of the mud, the hiss of water trickling into pits of melted rock disturbed the night. The wind died to nothing. The last of the moons was dropping toward the west. Darkness would soon be creeping across the land. It would not be safe to be about.

  Could Shoogar have been mistaken in this one aspect? After all, He was an unpredictable god, known to have fits of pique — and also known to have failed when most expected to perform. Perhaps the experimental nature of Shoogar’s spell had not been enough to arouse him …

  Behind me the east began to hint at deep blue instead of black. I stood, cursing the stiff cold weight of my clothes … Then an eye-searing flash of white filled the world …

  My eyes clenched in pain. But in the after-image, burned into my skull, I saw a great ball of fire, like one of Shoogar’s but magnified to the size of a mountain. Then my eyes could open, and I saw a great rising mass of flaming cloud, a toadstool of red-lit fury — fiery smoke standing up behind the mountains, reaching, ever-reaching into the sky —

  I was slammed backward, slapped rolling across the mud as if struck by a giant hammer made of air. And the sound — oh, the sound — my ears seemed to cry with the pain of a sound so loud.

  If I had thought the sound of Musk-Watz earlier sweeping through the village had been loud, he was only a whisper compared to this. It was as if Ouells himself had come down, and clapped his mighty hands together in a sudden howling wind. But the sound continued — mutated into a continuous rumbling thunder that rolled up and down the hills. It grumbled and rumbled, rumbled and grumbled across the world. It echoed and re-echoed in a never-ending wave. I was sure I could hear it long after it actually had died away. That great bass roar went on and on and on. Small rocks began to fall from the sky.

  Elcin had spoken.

  I found my wife huddled in the crotch of two branches, beneath an uprooted tree.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, helping her to her feet.

  She nodded.

  “Good. Then find some bandage and tape up my ribs. I am in pain.”

  “Yes, my husband.” She began dutifully to tug at her skirt.

  I recognized that; it was one of her favorites. I put out my hand, “No, do not tear that. Find something else. That is all that you have left in the world. Keep it intact.”

  She looked up at me, grateful tears flooding her eyes, “Yes, my husband …” She paused, and I knew she wanted to say something else, but feared.

  “Go on …” I urged.

  She fell to her knees, unmindful of the mud, and clasped fiercely at my hands, “Oh, my husband, I feared so for your safety. My heart is filled with such gladness at the sight of you, I cannot bear it. I could not bear the thought of life without you.” She kissed my hands, buried her face against my waist. I stroked the fur on the top of her head, mud-smeared though it was. It did not matter; we were both soaked through.

  “It’s all right…” I murmured gently.

  “Oh, tell me it is, tell me. Tell me that the danger is over, that all is right with the world again.”

  “Stand up, woman,” I said. She did. “I have lost everything. My nest is gone and my tree has been uprooted. I know not where any of my children are, nor where my other wives have fled to. I have nothing. Only the clothes I am wearing. But I am still not a poor man .. .”

  “Not …?” She looked at me, brown eyes wide with wonder.

  “No, I am not. I still have one woman, a good woman.” I looked into her eyes, wide and glowing with love. “A woman with a strong back and a willingness to work. And it is enough. I can rebuild. Now go and find that bandage. My ribs ache with the pain of standing.”

  “Oh yes, my husband. Yes.” She began moving cautiously across the mud-covered landscape. I lowered myself care-fully to the ground. To rest, to sleep …

  Before leaving the village we searched through the mud to see if anything of value remained intact. We found little. I had hoped to find my bicycle, but that had been smashed under a falling tree. I ached to see that finely carved machine crushed to sodden pulp. Truly, I had been right when I had said that we had nothing but the clothes on our backs.

  We stood in the ruins of the village and surveyed the disaster.

  “What will we do, my husband?”

  “We will move on,” I said to her. “There is nothing left for us here.” I turned and looked at the distant blue prairie. There,” I pointed, “we will go south. Probably most of the others have had the same thought.”

  She nodded in acquiescence and shouldered her miniscule pack. Painfully we started the long trek.

  The suns were high in the sky when we saw a single tiny figure on a bicycle hurrying to catch up to us from the west.

  There was something familiar about that — no, it couldn’t be.

  But it was! “Shoogar!” I cried, “You are alive!”

  He shot me a look and climbed off the bicycle, “Of course, I’m alive, Lant. What did you think?” He paused, looked at the dried mud caked on our clothes, “What happened to you?”

  “We were in the village. We saw the end of Purple’s nest. But it headed toward the mountains to die. We thought that —”

  “Nonsense, Lant. I won the duel. Only the loser gets killed. I saw the black nest return. It attacked the village instead of coming up into the mountains after me. If it was going to destroy the village anyway, there was no longer any reason for me to stay up in the hills. So I dug out the other bicycle.”

  “The nest must have just missed you.”

  Shoogar nodded, “I saw it coming. When it finished with the village, only then did it go for the mountains. Only I was no longer there.”

  “Shoogar, that’s brilliant!”

  He shrugged modestly, brushed a speck of dirt from the sleeve of his robe. “It was nothing. I had it planned that way.”

  There was nothing more to say. We watched as he mounted the bicycle again, his dignity and reputation were tall and triumphant. Once more he began pedaling into the south. It made me proud to know him.

  Blue twilight had faded and flashed into red dawn before we found a place to stop. We were on a rocky outcrop over-looking a series of rolling hills, a black wooded slope, and beyond that we could make out the vague distant shapes of a village of brooding housetrees.

  Behind us, what had been a desert was fast becoming a sea.

  It was not necessary to give the order to halt. Instinctively we knew we had done enough traveling for one day. Exhausted, the women sank to the ground, discarding their heavy packs and burdens where they fell. Children sank immediately into fitful slumber, and men stooped to massage their tired legs.

  We were a sorry, shabby crew. The healthiest of us was in none too good a shape. Many had lost most of their body fur, and the rest had lost their grooming. (The knots and tangles in my own fur would be there until they grew out; they were too far gone for repair.) Open and running sores were not uncommon, and too many of our ailments did not respond to Shoogar’s mi
nistrations.

  My number two wife, one of the balding women, began to lay a meager meal before me. Under any other circumstances I might have cursed the poor quality of the food and beaten her for there being so little of it — but under our present conditions I knew that this was a hardwon feast. She had probably spent many hours searching for these pitiful greens and nuts. Still, it wasn’t what I was used to and I forced myself to eat it only with the greatest distaste.

  As I sat there, silently chewing the tough vegetable fibers, a figure approached. I recognized the now nearly hairless Pilg; once our village crier, now a homeless vagabond, as we all were. He was thin and wan and his ribs made an ugly pattern under his skin.

  “Ah, Lant,” he cried effusively, “I hope I am not interrupting anything.”

  He was and he knew it. I pretended not to hear him at first, and I concentrated on a particularly tough root instead.

  He threw himself down in front of me. I closed my eyes. “Lant,” he said, “it appears that we are nearing our journey’s end. Doesn’t that gladden your soul?”

  I opened one eye. Pilg was eagerly eyeing my dinner bowl. “No,” I said, “it doesn’t.”

  Pilg was uncrushed. “Lant, you should look on the joyous side of life.”

  “Is there one?” I choked down the root and bit off another, smaller chunk.

  “Of course. You should count your blessings. You still have four of your children and two wives and all your hair — and your first wife is with child. That is far more than I can claim.”

  That was true. Pilg had lost his only wife and all but one of his children — and that one a girl — no credit there. Yet what I had lost was greater than what I had saved. I could not help feeling bitter.

  “We have lost our whole village,” I said. I spat out a bitter shred at Pilg’s feet. He eyed it uncertainly, but pride won out over hunger. He would not eat it unless it was offered to him.

  I would not do so. I had fed him three times in the past three hands of days and I had no intention of taking Pilg any closer into my family than that.

  “But in no time at all, we will have won a whole new village,” Pilg exulted. “Surely, Shoogar’s reputation as a magician must have preceded us here. Surely, they will honor him and us alike.”

  “And surely they will just as soon wish us elsewhere, Pilg. Look behind us. Look at where we have come from. Boggy marsh! And beyond that, water! The oceans are rising almost as fast as we can travel. The darkless season is upon us, Pilg. Hard times for any village. Surely they will have harvested their crops by now, and stored up only enough food to last them through the wading season. They will have none to spare for us. No — they won’t be very happy to have us join them.”

  My mention of food had caused Pilg to salivate; the spittle ran down his chin — but social protocol held him back. He glanced again at the discarded bit of root near his foot. “But, Lant — look at the lay of the land here. This village that we are approaching is on a slope overlooking a great plain. They will have at least another twenty or thirty days before the water menaces them.”

  “Granted,” I swallowed the mass I had been chewing.

  “Perhaps we will be able to exchange some of our skills for some of their food.”

  “And what skill will you trade them for?” I grunted. “Rumormongering?”

  Pilg looked hurt. Immediately I felt sorry, it had been a cruel and unkind thing to say. Pilg had indeed suffered more than I, and it was unfair for me to add my mockery to his already heavy burden. “That was cruel, Lant,” he said, “if you want me to go, I will.”

  “No,” I said, and immediately wondered why, for I did want him to go. “Don’t go until you have at least had something to eat.”

  Curse it!

  He’d done it to me again! I had sworn I was not going to invite him to partake — but he had annoyed me until I had insulted him, and then to assuage the insult, I had to prove to him that he had not annoyed me. I wondered if I was going to have to start eating my meals in secret just to avoid Pilg.

  But he was right about that one point. Perhaps we would be able to trade some of our skills for some of their food. Probably my own trade of bonemongering was not as skill-fully practiced this far south as it was in the land we had journeyed from.

  But so much of it depended upon the magician of this village. Would Shoogar be willing to swear an oath of truce for the duration of the wading season? Would the new magician even want Shoogar around, considering the strength of his reputation? Would you feel safe if a magician of such power wanted to move into your neighbourhood? If this new magician could not match Shoogar’s knowledge and skills, would Shoogar deign to treat him as an equal? Was there a magician anywhere who could match the powers Shoogar had already so dramatically demonstrated?

  Shoogar might, just might, consider dueling this village’s magician for the right to rule the magic of this area. If he lost (an unlikely chance), we would have to keep moving — only this time without our magician. More likely, if he won, we would incur much ill will in this area, for is it not said that a new magician must take nine generations to be accepted by a tribe?

  I feared for the inevitable meeting with these villagers and their Guild of Advisors. Hopefully, we would have time to rest before that meeting, but probably not. As soon as they became aware of our presence here on the slopes of their mountain, they would send an emissary.

  There wasn’t much left of our Guild — we would be a sorry group of representatives: myself, of course; Hinc the Weaver, Pilg the Crier, Damd the Tree Binder, the one or two others. Ran’ll the Quaff-Maker had drowned in one of his vats, Tavit the Shepherd had been lost with much of his flock, and none of the remaining shepherds was yet old enough to replace him in the Guild. Some of the others had not survived our long trek south.

  But the two Guilds would meet and hopefully we would work out some kind of agreement whereby we could camp on this land until the waters should withdraw. Then we would either seek a new area to plant our village, or petition for the right to remain.

  But again, so much depended on the magicians.

  Later, as red sunset/blue dawn approached, our tired group of Advisors trudged across the slope to the lower village and the obligatory meeting with them. We had spent most of the red day bathing in the cold stream that ran through the pasture, and allowing the women to massage us and rub precious oils and fats into our skins. The oils and fats had been saved specifically for such an occasion as this. Had we not had this eventual confrontation continually in mind, we would have eaten them long ago.

  We had exchanged our traveling skins for other garments. We would not be presenting ourselves as poorly as we really were, for we had stripped nearly every member of the tribe naked in order to assemble enough fine clothing for our Advisors to wear to this all-important council.

  Shoogar stayed behind, to meditate; the time was not yet right for the other village to cast its eyes on his magnificence.

  As we walked, Damd the Tree Binder remarked on the fine quality of woods in this area. There were thin strong shoots of bambooze, the fibrous tubular plant that could be used for building, or that could be eaten as food or fermented for Quaff. There were tall slender birts, stippled in gray and brown; there were sparkling aspen, white spirit pine and sturdy red vampire oaks. There was rich, dark shrubbery, and wild houseplants, stunted and twisted for lack of a magician’s blessing and a proper Binding. There were streams aplenty, and as we walked we trudged through a thick carpet of crackling discarded leaves.

  Yes, this was a rich wood. One which had been finely cared for, but had not yet realized its full potential. Before we were half-way through this thick arm of forest, it was obvious that this was as fine an area in which to live as anyone could hope for. Froo, the eldest shepherd, exclaimed over the grazing grounds; Jark, who had some moderate skill at quaffmaking, expressed delight over the quality of the bambooze. Hinc the Weaver munched throughtfully on a fiber plant as he walked. If they a
llowed us to stay, we would be lucky indeed.

  I speculated that there must be more work here than any one village could hope to do. If they had had a good harvest this year, they might be in an expansive mood. It was our hope that we could trade our labors for some of their food, or for the right to use some of this land.

  Their village was on the crest of a hill, lowest of the range below the wooded slopes. It was larger than our own had been, but not impressively so. Most important, many of their housetrees appeared unused, and those that were had considerable distance between them. Where our village had had a solidpacked floor of dirt from the extensive comings and goings of commerce, this village had a gentle carpet of black-grass, cut through only here and there by dirt paths.

  Clearly they did not trade on the scale we were used to.

  As we approached, we could see their Advisors gathering in a clearing near the edge of the village. We raised our hands and gave them the finger gesture of fertility. They returned it.

  A tall man covered with sparse curly fur, brownish red, stepped forward. “I am Gortik, Speaker of this village. These are my Advisors.” And he introduced them. There were more than thirty — traders, weavers, fishmongers, Quaffmakers and craftsmen were amply represented. To my ill-concealed delight, they did not introduce a bonemonger. Could it be that this village lacked one of my skill? If so, I was sure to find much work. Or — a dampening thought — could it be that they did not consider a bonemonger important enough to belong to the Guild of Advisors?

  I thrust that thought away. A bonemonger was as good as anybody.

  Gortik finished pointing out the last of his Advisors, then turned to us. “Who Speaks for you?”

  That was a poser. We had not yet designated any of our number as Speaker. We had buried Thran, our old Speaker, only two hands of days previously. His memory was still too warm for us. There was much shuffling and whispering amongst ourselves. Finally Pilg pushed me forward, saying, “You, Lant. You Speak for us. You have been an Advisor as long as anyone.”