The Flying Sorcerers

The search for fiberplants and wild housetrees had been extended even into the wilderness hills. Four teams left the village each blue dawn to search for materials, and they often did not return till long after Ouells had winked out in the west.

Too often they came back with their gathering baskets and urns only half full.

The fiberplants were not as big a problem as they might have been. They grew fast and the cropmongers had begun experimenting with planting them for the weavers. Already the new shoots were springing up and it looked like we would have fiberplant all year long.

It was the housetree sap, though, that was really slowing us down. We were running out of trees. Shoogar had consecrated all the trees in the region, except three — and those three were nearly tapped dry. Indeed Purple didn’t want to bleed them any more for fear of killing them. Already they were losing their leaves.

There were wild housetrees of course, but the effort involved in dragging the filled urns back from the wilderness hills was prohibitive. They were great heavy things, and it took eight men to move them. Bellis had made them out of oaken barrels lined with aircloth, then reinforced them again with extra bindings.

He’d made larger ones as well to be used as vats. These had been made out of heavy bricks of reinforced clay. They were beautiful.

But we did not have enough housetree blood to fill them.

Meanwhile the piles of untreated cloth continued to grow. We had only enough sap for the spinning, not enough for the second dipping.

And the boatframe was rapidly taking shape on the peak.

The first boatframe had become much too heavy and had to be scrapped. The boys had taken it apart and thrown out everything heavier than spirit pine. Then they threw out the spirit pine too, leaving only one length of it for the keel.

Instead, they used bundles of bambooze, bound together and made rigid by judicious hardening. Shoogar had helped them on this, although we rarely saw him otherwise. He was too busy with loomblessings and other spells.

The second boatframe was almost entirely bambooze. But, so far, it was only a framework.

The boys abandoned their idea of aircloth-covered balsite. It turned out that the balsite was unnecessary and that they could use the aircloth alone. The hull could be made of many stiffened layers of it stretched tightly over the bambooze frame. Wherever possible, the aircloth would be used instead of lumber. It would be hardened later by the application of many layers of housetree blood to make it watertight.

Once the boys began thinking about it, they came up with many ways to keep the airboat as light as possible. Instead of wooden planks for seats, they used stretched cloth over simple frames, and Purple would sit on those. Instead of planking on the sides of the two cabins — one a storage compartment, the other a sleeping room — they would use air-cloth again.

The boys were ecstatic over their work. It would be watertight; it would be strong. Best of all, it would be so light that Purple could afford to be extravagant with the rest of his weight allowances.

The only part of the boatframe that had to be wood were the deck slats along the floor. The boys had already tied and glued them into the frame; it was a narrow walk running the length of the boat. The rest of the hull was still open to air, but eventually the rigid structure would be covered and firm.

It made me wonder — could aircloth be used in other ways as well?

For instance, could one use it to make a nest? Instead of weaving a home out of fiberplants and stretchvines, one could use aircloth instead. It would be easier and faster and lighter-and it would keep out the rain too.

H’m — perhaps one could stretch large pieces of the cloth across a rigid framework and use it as a rainshelter for the flocks — or to dam a stream. Many thicknesses might be required for the latter, but there was no reason why it shouldn’t work. H’m, we might be able to store large amounts of water in aircloth-lined pools as well It would not drain away. If we put aircloth across the top of the water, not even thirsty Musk-Watz could steal it.

I was willing to bet that there were a great many uses for the cloth that we had not thought of yet. Perhaps I had been too easy with Lesta. No matter, I could renegotiate the terms of our deal after Purple’s flying machine was finished.

The finished framework looked like the outline of a boat. It was so light that it had to be tied down against the winds of Idiot’s Crag. One man could move it, and two could carry it without difficulty.

The Keel was the single length of spirit pine they had saved. To make it even more effective, they had slung it below the boatframe on several spars of rigid bambooze. Then, to hold the boatframe and keep the keel from snap-ping, they had built a cradle to stand it upright.

Now they were adding rungs to the struts that supported the outriggers. Why rungs? Because, Wilville told me with a happy smile, they would need to be able to crawl from the hull out to the airpushers.

I didn’t ask. In time we would know.

The boys continued to work on the outriggers. Soon they would begin stretching the cloth over the frame. Then the only thing holding up the launching of the airship would be the sewing up of the windbags.

And that was being held up by three things.

We needed more aircloth. For that, we needed both fiberplants and housetree blood.

We needed more housetree blood just to treat the cloth we had already woven.

And thirdly, we needed another way to separate water. Purple’s battery had died.