The Flying Sorcerers

Shoogar was peering into the sky, a frown on his face.

Both suns were still high; broad red disc and blue-white point. The blue sun was poised on the edge of the red, ready to begin the long crawl across its face.

“Elcin’s wrath!” he muttered. “I cannot use the suns — all is unstable. That leaves me only the moons — and the moons are well into the mudskunk.” He hurled a fireball across the clearing. “An eight-mooned mudskunk at that!” He put his hands on his hips and shouted into the sky, “Why me, Ouells! Why me? What have I done to offend you that you curse me with such unusable configurations? Have I not sworn my life to your service?”

But there was no answer. I don’t think Shoogar expected one. He turned back to his spell devices. “All right, then. If it is a mudskunk you have given me, then it is a mudskunk I shall use. Here, Lant, hold this,” and he thrust a large pack at me.

He continued to rummage through his equipment, all the while muttering under his breath. A fearful collection of cursing devices began to grow around him.

“What is all this for?” I indicated the pile.

He appeared not to hear me, continued checking off items in his head, then began loading them into the pack.

“What is all this for?” I repeated.

Shoogar looked at me, “Lant, you are a fool. This,” he said and hefted his kit meaningfully, “is to show the stranger that one does not trifle with the gods of the full belly.”

“I’m afraid to ask. What is it?” I asked.

“It’s the spell of…. No, you’ll just have to wait and see it in action, with the others.” He strode purposefully toward the frog-grading ponds. I hurried after him; it was amazing how fast Shoogar’s squat little legs could carry him.

There was already an uneasy crowd of villagers standing on the rise above the flying nest. None dared approach it. When Shoogar appeared, an excited murmur ran through the crowd — the word of Purple’s insult had spread quickly; the villagers were tense with expectation.

Shoogar ignored them. He pushed through the milling throng and strode angrily to Purple’s nest, ignoring the mud that splashed up and over his ankles and stained the hem of his robe.

He strode around that nest three times without pause, looking at it from all sides. I was unsure whether he had already started spelling, or whether he was just sizing up the situation. For a long moment he stood looking at the land-ward side of that nest, like an artist contemplating a blank skin.

Then, abruptly, he made up his mind. He stepped quickly forward and with a piece of chalk he inscribed the sign of the horned box on the side of Purple’s nest.

An interested murmur of speculation rose from the crowd, “The horned box … the horned box …” This spell would be under the domain of Rotn’bair, the sheep god. Members of the crowd discussed it busily amongst themselves. Rotn’bair is neither very powerful nor very irritable. Most of the Rotn’bairic spells deal with fertility and food gathering. Few things will anger the sheep god; but if Rotn’bair could be angered, Shoogar would know how. The crowd buzzed with an excited curiosity, each speculating on just what form the final spell would take.

Shoogar finished the sketch. Absent-mindedly wiping the chalk from his hands, he strode down to the mudbanks of the river. He paced back and forth along its edge, casting about for something. Abruptly he spotted what he was looking for, something Just below the surface of the water. He grabbed quickly for it, his hands dipping into the river with no splash at all. When he straightened, the sleeves of his robe were dripping, but there was a brownish-looking slug in his grasp, and after a moment I caught the repellent odor of mudskunk.

The scent reached the rest of the crowd at the same time, and a murmur of approval went up from them. The antipathy between Rotn’bair, the sheep god, and Nils’n, the god of the mud creatures, was known even to laymen. Evidently Shoogar was constructing a spell that would play on the mutual antipathy of the two gods.

My guess was right — I pride myself on a fairly good understanding of the basic principles of magic — Shoogar slit the belly of the mudskunk and deftly extracted its anger gland. He placed this into a bone bowl. I recognized the bowl, having carved and cleansed it for him myself. It was made from the skull of a new born lamb and had been sanctified to Rotn’bair. Now he was defiling it with the most odious portion of the mud creature. No doubt, he now had Rotn’bair’s attention.

He laid this to one side and returned to the mudskunk which lay writhing in a swampy pool. He picked it up and deftly sliced off its head without even offering up a prayer for its soul. Thus he defiled its death. Now, he had Nils’n’s attention.

Using the bladder of the slug as a mixing bag, he began to construct a potion of powdered ramsbone, extract of hunger, odeur of sheepsblood, and several other elements that I could not identify; but I suspected that all of them were designed to arouse the wrath of Nils’n, although in what manner was not yet clear.

Shoogar surveyed the nest of the mad magician on its riverward side. Then he began to paint his soupy potion in broad lines across its black flank in a pattern of eleven stripes by eleven. Having finished, he sketched in the sign of the deformed changeling, the favored son of the sheep god. This half of the spell would anger Nils’n. Shoogar had defiled a mud creature in order to celebrate the greatness of Rotn’bair. To complete the other half of the spell, Shoogar would now desecrate his earlier celebration of Rotn’bair, the horned box sketched on the other side of the nest.

He returned to the bone bowl, the one containing the anger gland of the mudskunk, and using the leg bone of a ram, he crushed the gland into a sick-smelling paste. This he mixed with ramsblood, defiled water and a greenish powder from his travel kit. I recognized that powder — it was an extract of fear, usually used where potent action is desired. It is derived from animals of the cloven hoof. Six sheep must have been sacrificed just to provide the small amount Shoogar was now mixing into his spell.

Stepping to the landward side of the nest, and chanting a song of praise for Nils’n, Shoogar began painting a familiar symbol across the chalk sketch of the horned box. It was the sign of Nils’n, a diagonal slash with an empty circle on either side.

The crowd gasped appreciatively. Such originality in spell-casting was a delight to behold. No wonder he was called Shoogar the Tall. Rotn’bair would not allow such a desecration of his sheep to exist for long. And Nils’n, the god of mud creatures, would not long be complacent while mud-skunks were being sacrificed to Rotn’bair.

The antipathy of the two gods is demonstrated every time the sheep are led to the river. Sheep are careless and clumsy. As they mill about on the banks, they trample scores of frogs, snakes, salamanders, lizards, chameleons, and other amphibians that live in the mud. At the same time many of the more dangerous mud creatures, the poisonous ones, the fanged ones, the ones with venom lash back at the sheep, cutting their legs, ruining their wool, infecting them with parasites, giving them festering sores, leaving them bleeding from angry cuts and slashes. The two gods hate each other, and in their various incarnations, as sheep and mud creatures, they work to destroy each other at every opportunity.

Now Shoogar had inscribed insults to both upon the same nest. He had defiled creatures of each in order to celebrate the greatness of the other. If Purple did not make immediate amends, he would have to suffer the wrath of both simultaneously.

Purple had said he did not believe in the gods. He denied their existence. He denied their powers. And he had stated that he was above Shoogar’s magic.

I hoped he would return in time to see the spell take effect.

I followed Shoogar down to the river, and helped him with his ritual purification. He had to cleanse himself of the odeurs of offense against the gods, lest he be caught up in his own curse. Sometimes the gods are nearsighted. We bathed him with six different oils before we even let him step into the river. (No sense in offending Filfo-mar, the river god.)

Even before we finished with the cleansing we could hear the curse beginning. We could hear the cheers of the crowd; and beneath that was a dull sort of booming. Shoogar wrapped his robe around himself and hurried back up the hill, me trailing excitedly in his wake.