The Flying Sorcerers

But later that day, in the heat of double daylight, a time when most of the villagers were sleeping, Shoogar took me aside. “Lant, you’ve seen how he has revalued my magic!” he said bitterly. “You must come with us, Lant. I will need you to help with the spell against him —”

“Spell? Oh, no, Shoogar —”

“I will be free of my oath when we leave this locality. But I will need you for a witness that I have killed him. You are the Speaker. Your word is law.”

“Shoogar, can you not leave well enough alone? Purple is leaving. You will be the only magician here — and this is the greatest village of all! There may be as many as 5,000 men living here, maybe more! Never has there been a village of such size! Why must you risk it all be starting another foolish duel?”

But at that Shoogar snarled and left me. He grumbled off down the dark slope, scattering villagers and women alike.

Later, after the blue sun had winked out, Wilville and Orbur came to see me. As soon as I saw them, I said, “What nonsense have you been telling Purple? He says that you want me to come along on this fantastic journey.”

They nodded. “Father, you must! You are the only one who can control Shoogar. Surely you must know that he is planning another duel as soon as we are out of this region.”

“Yes. He’s mentioned it.”

“Well then, you must come along to stop it. We will never return if you don’t; even if we should be lucky enough to survive this time. He’ll insist that we put on the sails again. He’s still not convinced! Father, you must come or we’ll never get home.”

“I’m sure you can manage without me, sons — you did all right on your test flight —”

“Yes, but that was only a test. Shoogar knew no more about the flying machine than anyone else. Now that he has been up in it once, he is convinced that he is an expert. Surely you have heard the tales he has been telling of his exploit.”

I nodded. “But you have all been telling tales — and no two of your tales agree. The villagers don’t believe any of you. That fact alone should keep Shoogar from dueling. If he has no credible witness along —”

“Father, he is not interested so much in a credible witness as he is in killing Purple.” Orbur lowered his voice. “You don’t know, do you, what he tried to do on our test flight?”

“Huh?” I shook my head. “I have not heard —”

“That is because Wilville and I have kept it quiet. We do not want to start even the hint of a rumor that there is trouble between our magicians.”

Wilville nodded in agreement and said, “Shortly after we took off, they got into an argument about whether or not we needed sails. Shoogar got so mad that he tried to throw a ball of fire at Purple —”

“A ball of fire?!! But — the airboat? The hydrogen?”

“We were lucky,” said Orbur. Purple screamed when he saw it. I thought he would jump out of the boat-; but Wilville was thinking fast, and he threw a bucket of water on Shoogar.”

Wilville said, “And then Orbur jumped on Shoogar and held him down. We drenched him all over with another bucket of water and then made him strip. We made him throw away all of his fire-making devices. Purple was as white as a cloud —”

“I can imagine.” I was thinking of a blackened stump of a housetree.

“But that’s not all,” said Orbur. “Later, he tried to push Purple out. Purple was climbing on the rigging — you know, father, for a man like that, he is remarkably brave; he climbed across those ropes as if he had not the slightest fear of falling.”

“He did slip once, though,” said Wilville. “Fortunately, it was only a few feet, and he fell into the boat.”

“Well, we all had to get used to it,” Orbur said to him. “Nobody has ever been in an airboat before. There is no one to teach us what to do —”

“Except Shoogar,” said Wilville. He looked at me imploringly, “Father, Shoogar is convinced that only he knows the vagaries of Musk-Watz the wind god, but somehow his magic doesn’t seem to work right in the upper sky. His sails didn’t work, his fireballs almost killed us —”

“My sons, you survived that experience, didn’t you?”

They nodded reluctantly.

“Good, then I have faith that you can survive another. From what you have just told me I am all the more sure that I am not getting into that airboat.”