The Flying Sorcerers

I found out about the battery when I went to tell him about the housetree blood. Purple was sitting on a log outside his house, turning the flat, bulging case over in his hands. From the way he looked, he might have been holding his own death.

I sat down beside him, without speaking, and waited.

“It’s dead,” he said presently.

I said, “How? Did you starve it?”

He pointed up. Hovering above his housetree were seven man-sized aircloth bags. They hung upward from ropes. “I have been experimenting, Lant — I grew carried away.” He waved up at the village. “And I did not want your people to fear the airship —”

A group of young boys came running by, each trailing a shiny aircloth bag behind him on a string. The bags were about the size of a man’s head, maybe bigger. “Useless patches of extra cloth,” Purple explained. “Not tight enough for the airboat, but I thought if the children could see — that is, if the adults could see that even children could handle the spell —”

I understood. Purple had seen our terror on the night of the riot. He was trying to lessen that by showing this was a simpler spell than we had thought.

Now, he mourned over his battery and stroked it sadly.

“Is there no way you can make a new one ?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking!” he exclaimed. “My whole civilization is based on the kind of power that was in this battery. I am not a — a — magician of that type, I don’t have that training. I am only a student of how savage men can live together!”

I ignored the insult, for clearly he was upset. I forced him to sit down and would not let him say another word until he had drunk off a bowl of Quaff. His face twisted into extraordinary shapes.

“I’ve been an idiot,” he told me. “For eight months I shaved my face with the electrissy I needed to get home!”

“But what about those airbags?” I pointed at his house-tree.

Those wouldn’t be enough. Besides, by the time we finish the boatframe, those will be empty again. The gas leaks out, Lant. Very slowly, but it still leaks.”

I handed him another bowl of Quaff. “But surely, you can make some kind of power source to separate the water.”

“No. That was it. You don’t have the tools to make the tools to make the tools.”

“Is there nothing else that would activate a flying spell?”

“Hot air. Hot air is lighter than cold air. That’s why smoke rises. The cursed trouble is that hot air gets cold. We’d sink into the sea and stay there; we couldn’t possibly get far enough north in a hot-air windbag.”

I sank down onto the log next to him and poured myself some Quaff. “Surely there must be some way, Purple. It was not so long ago that you thought an airboat was impossible. Is there nothing you can do about your battery? There must have been a first source of electrissy some time. How was it done?”

He looked at me, bleary-eyed. “Oh, no, Lant —” And then his eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute — I did make something in school once! A spinning motor made from paper clips and copper wire and a battery. But —”

“But you don’t have paper clips —” Whatever that was.

“Oh, that’s no problem. The paper clips were only for structure.”

“But your battery is dead —”

“That’s no problem either. In that — spell, I was using the battery to make the spinning section go round.” He grabbed me excitedly — we tumbled backward off the log; he didn’t notice. “It will work just the same the other way! I can reverse the spell and make a spinning section to recharge my battery!”

I grabbed the Quaff bladder before too much spilled. I took a drink. “You mean, you can restore its power?”

“Yes, yes!” He began dancing about, paused, took the bladder from my hands and drank. “I can make as much electrissy as I need. We can even make some for you too, Lant —”

“Uh, no thank you, Purple —”

“But it is great magic! It can help you! You’ll see. And I won’t need to take it all with me — oh, my goodness — we’ll have to turn the spinning section by hand, won’t we? Well, we can use a crank and — gears! Migosh, yes — we can gear it up and —”

Abruptly he stopped. “No, it won’t work.”

“Huh? What’s the matter?”

“Lant, it was so long ago. The thing I built was so small. I’m not sure how to do it any more, and I don’t know if it would make enough electrissy.”

I poured him some more Quaff and sat down on the log again with the bladder. “But you’re going to try it, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” he said. “I have to — but I hardly remember —” He sat down on the log next to me. “Making an airship isn’t as easy as I thought.”

I nodded. “It’s been nine hands of days since we started. I thought this would take only a few at most, but it has gone on and on.”

“And on,” he added.

I took another swig. “You know,” I said, “I’ve got some more bad news for you.”

“Oh? What?”

There won’t be any more aircloth. We’ve run out of wild housetrees. The weavers can keep weaving, of course, but unless the threads are dipped, it won’t do you any good.”

“Wonderful,” he said. His tone suggested that he thought it was anything but. “Of course, it hardly matters, if we can’t make more gas.”

I took another drink. So did Purple.

“Of course,” he said, I do have enough aircloth for a small airship — one that would carry me alone —” He trailed off. He hiccuped and said, “If I have to make a hot-air flying spell, I’ll do it. Just so that Shoogar can’t call me a liar. I promised.” He drained his bowl and held it out. I filled it again.

“I’d sell my hope of flying for a quart of good Scotch right now. Well, if we can’t bleed the wild housetrees any more, let’s bleed the tame housetrees!”

“Blessed housetrees,” I corrected him. “Consecrated housetrees. If you try that, they’ll burn you for sure. Tampering with a wife is one thing, but a housetree is quite another.”

“Can’t bleed consecrated housetrees,” said Purple. He was having more trouble than usual talking. “Can’t bleed consecrated housetrees.” His face lit up. “We can deconsecrate them first!”

“Nonsense.”

“Why? Shoogar deconsecrated the other villages’ weaving patterns. Shoogar deconsecrated the womens’ names. Why don’t I get to deconsecrate something?”

He was right. “Why not?” I agreed.

“Because I don’t know a deconsecration spell,” he answered.

“Nobody does,” I said. “There are no spells for de-consecrating housetrees.”

“Nobody’s ever needed one. I’ll make one up. Am I not a magician?”

“Certainly,” I said.

“Best magician in this whole spiral arm, and two more besides.” He was trailing off into gibberish. What he needed was another bowl of Quaff. Me too.

We trudged up to the Upper Village, and climbed into my nest. I dug out a fresh bladder.

Purple took the first swig. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his bowl, so he drank it straight from the bladder.

“How are you going to deconsecrate the trees?” I asked.

Purple lowered the skin from his mouth. He gave me a dignified look of reproach and staggered to his feet, “Let’s go look at one and see.”

Somewhat unsteadily, he lowered himself from my nest and together we tottered through the village to one of the largest housetrees — that of Hinc the Lesser. Purple took another swill of the Quaff and surveyed it thoughtfully. “To which God is this tree consecrated?” he asked.

“Um, this is the tree of Hinc the Lesser. I believe that it is consecrated to Poup, the God of Fertility. Hinc has fourteen children — all but one of them girls.”

“H’m,” said Purple, “I would need to deconsecrate it with potions of sterility then, wouldn’t I? H’m, Quaff being alcohol is a cleansing medicine. Yes, Quaff can be used to make things sterile. Quaff should be used in the deconsecration spell. And let me see, we should use the petals of the prickly plant which blooms only once in fifty seasons, and …” He mumbled on and on like this. I took another drink of the Quaff and followed him back to his nest.

He disappeared up into it, still mumbling. A hail of objects, vials, potions and other magical devices began falling out of the nestdoor. “Junk!” Purple bellowed. “It was all Dorthi’s junk. I had to learn the names of each and every — Damn, I’m out of prickly plant petals. Can I substitute?”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Do you want to wait fifty family-making years?”

“No.”

“I don’t either. I’ll substitute.”

After a bit he dropped out of the nest himself, landing unsteadily on top of the by now large pile of spellcasting items. He started gathering them into a large pack. “It’s obvious to me, Lant, that we need to research this a little further. Let’s return to the village and look at the trees again.

Again we surveyed Hinc’s tree. The sun was red in the west. We had perhaps an hour before blue dawn. “Is this a I nighttime or a daytime spell ?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s make it a dawn spell, a five o’clock in the morning spell.” He took another drink of Quaff. The bladder was badly deflated by now.

He hiccuped and pulled out a clay mixing bowl. He began mixing a potion, changed his mind abruptly and discarded it. He started another, but poured that one out too — it sizzled on top of the first. Finally he started mixing powders and things in his pottery bowl.

Pottery. I wondered if I should be insulted.

Purple sniffed his mixture and wrinkled his nose. “Ugh! Almost — almost. This should do it, Lant. All it needs is —” Abruptly he straightened and announced, “I have an urge.” He lifted his robe and looked around for a bush to step behind. There were none. He looked at the bowl before him, shrugged, “Why not?”

There was a hot spattering into the bowl.

“Purple!” I cried, “That is sheer genius — defiled water will make the spell twice as powerful — defiled magician’s water! Yes, yes.”

He lowered his robe modestly, “It was nothing, Lant. It comes naturally.” He reached for the Quaff, explaining, “I may need more later.” He drank, then returned the bladder to me.

He hefted his spell-potion bowl carefully. “Now, there is only one thing left to do.”

I lowered the skin and said, “What’s that?”

“Why, try the spell of course!” Immediately he began singing and dancing in a circle around Hinc’s tree. On his second round, he almost tripped over his robe, but fortunately he caught himself before he fell into his bowl. Quickly he divested himself of the robe, and picking up the bowl once again began dancing around the tree and singing, “Here we go around the prickly plant, the prickly plant, the prickly plant — here we go around the prickly plant at five o’clock in the morning.”

I wondered if I should tell him that it was not a prickly plant he was deconsecrating, but a housetree, when suddenly Hinc shoved his head out of his nest and shouted, “What is that terrible noise?” He wrinkled his nose, “And what is that terrible smell?”

“It’s nothing,” Purple called as he came around again. “Go back to bed, Hinc. We’re only deconsecrating your house-tree.”

“You’re what?” Hinc’s neck-fur bristled. He dropped angrily out of the nest.

“Calm down, Hinc,” I said. “Have a drink of Quaff while we explain.” He did and we did. We told him how we were short of housetree blood, how Purple needed it desperately in order to complete his flying machine and leave this world. We told him how desperately Purple wanted to go home, and how he was doing Purple a great favor. We told him how it would only be for a day or two, and then Shoogar would be glad to reconsecrate the tree.

By the time we finished telling him, Hinc was almost as drunk as we.

He nodded agreeably as Purple gathered up his bowl again and began singing and dancing around the tree, sprinkling it gently with the potion. We watched for a bit and couldn’t help laughing.

Purple called out, “Don’t stand there laughing. Help me.”

We looked at each other and shrugged. Hinc dropped the robe he was holding about himself and easily joined Purple. After pausing for a moment to finish the Quaff I did too.

When we had finished deconsecrating Hinc’s tree, we found we had potion left, a lot of it, so we moved on to the tree of Ang the Fish-Farmer and Net-tender. He peered out of his nest at the noise and shouted, “A festival? Wait! I will join you.”

Almost immediately he dropped out of his tree, stripping off his clothes, but Purple had stopped singing. “No, it’s no good — we’re out of Quaff.”

“No! No, we’re not!” cried Ang. He disappeared back into his nest and reappeared almost immediately with another full bladder. “Here, let the celebration continue!”

After we had danced about his tree five times, Ang suddenly turned to me and asked, “By the way, Lant, what are we celebrating?”

I told him.

“Oh,” was all he said. Whatever the magician wanted was fine with him. We kept on dancing.

The noise awakened several other people nearby, and they joined us, with Quaff. We de consecrated their trees for them too, and were about to start on mine — when abruptly we were out of potion. “It’s not fair, Purple. You’ve deconsecrated everybody else’s tree — you’ve got to deconsecrate mine!”

So we made some more potion.

This time, though, we all provided the defiled water.

By this time the sun was close to rising, we could see the blue-black glare of it behind the horizon. Most of the men in the village were awake now and eagerly joining the line to put defiled water into the potion pots — of which there were several now. We passed around the ever present Quaff bladders. As soon as one was emptied, another full one seemed to appear from nowhere. The new arrivals kept bringing them. The wives watched nervously from the nests.

And then we were ready to resume the dancing and singing. We danced and sang around every tree we could, until the sun flashed over the horizon. We danced and sang in the harsh blue light until it disappeared behind a cloud bank and abruptly we were in the midst of a raging rainstorm.

“Hurrah! The deconsecration spell has worked!” We skipped down the slope and began to dance around Purple’s housetree and the seven giant airbags hanging over it. “The Gods are angry! The Gods are angry!” We sang, “It’s raining, it’s pouring! All the Gods are roaring!”

Lightning and thunder shattered the sky — the warm drops felt good against our naked fur.

And then —

A crackle of shattering brightness — our hair stood on end — a giant KKK-R-R-R-ummmmppp!!! And a ball of orange flame enveloped Purple’s airbags, housetree and all.

For a moment I stood petrified — had we gone too far? Was Elcin about to destroy this village too?

And then it was over, and silence reigned. Only the quiet spattering of raindrops.

“Well,” said Purple in the stillness. “I guess that’s how you deconsecrate a magician’s tree.”