The Flying Sorcerers

Purple tried his calling thing three more times. On the third try the red light flashed. It began winking steadily.

Purple screamed with delight and threw the device joyously into the air. He capered about wildly, singing and dancing. “I’m going home, I’m going home — I’m going home.”

He flung himself on the ground and rolled and kicked. He jumped up with a holler and ran furiously in all directions. Back and forth, in a great circle about me, he pranced and yelled.

At last — it seemed like days — he tired and came gasping up to me. “Lant, I can hardly believe it. It has been so long,” he panted. “But it’s true. It’s happening. My mother egg has heard.”

I glanced nervously at the hill where Shoogar still worked. He was sitting and chanting now. “Uh, how long will it take before your egg gets here, Purple?”

He frowned. “Who cares? It’s coming — that’s all.”

“I care!” I almost screamed.

He gave me a peculiar look. “I hadn’t realized this meant so much to you.”

“Well, it does,” I said, in a slightly quieter tone. “How long will it take?”

“Maybe a day,” he said. “Maybe a little longer. The egg was on standby. It will have to activate itself, come to full power, take bearings, check its systems, plot a course, make an approach — it will take time, Lant. The egg could not possibly be here before blue sunset.”

I groaned.

“I know how it must pain you, my friend. But fear not. I have waited this long. I can wait a little longer.”

I groaned and trudged away, clutching at the ache in my stomach.

I went down to the shore. The sea surged restlessly at the slope where Wilville and Orbur worked.

“Father, you look ill,” said one.

“I am,” I said. “I am tired and hungry and I hurt all over. I long for a decent bed and a decent meal —”

“Wilville has found some cavernmouth eggs,” said Orbur. “Do you want one?”

I groaned. But it was better than nothing. I took the heavy sphere and bit at its rind. A salty-sweet taste flowed into my mouth. “Oh, that’s awful,” I said. I took a drink of water from a ballast sack.

“Don’t let Shoogar see you doing that.”

“Curse Shoogar!” I said. “Do you know what he’s doing? He’s trying to call down a moon!”

Orbur snorted. Wilville didn’t say anything.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?”

“We heard you,” said Wilville. “Shoogar is trying to call down a moon. At least it will keep him out of our way.”

“Oh,” I said. Apparently they were so intent on what they were doing, they were oblivious to what was going on around them. “What are you working on?” I asked. I squatted down on my haunches to look.

They explained. One of the pulleys had worked loose from a bicycle frame. But they had almost no tools at all to work with. Purple had thrown them all overboard. They were working now with rocks and sticks and shreds of aircloth. “If we can get this working again, we can use the boat to get away from here, whether we have windbags or not.”

I nodded and offered my help, but Orbur said I would only be in the way. I gathered up the cavernmouth eggs and took them off a ways. I found some driftwood and made a small fire to roast them. They were still awful, but they were food.

I took one up to Purple, but he had spread out a piece of aircloth from the ripped balloon and was snoring blissfully and peacefully; it was the first time that I had seen him completely relaxed since I had known him.

I let him sleep and trudged across the slope to Shoogar. He shook his head at the sight of the egg, “I will have it later, when I finish my chant.”

I looked at his gigantic spell pattern. “Why don’t you draw it around Purple?” I asked.

“Why bother? If a moon falls on him, it won’t matter if it hits him directly or not — it’s going to make another Circle Sea.”

“Oh,” I said. I went back to my sons and watched them work.

They worked for most of the day, stopping only to chew on a piece of roast cavernmouth egg or to swill down some water. By the time night had fallen and the red sun was seeping into the west, the bicycle pulley was working again as well as it would ever be.

The day was rapidly nearing its end. Purple’s egg had still not arrived, and Shoogar was still on the hill chanting.

My sons stretched out tiredly on their blankets and chewed gratefully on the rubbery eggmeat. Had they had their tools, they might have finished the job in less than an hour, but encumbered as they were, it took nearly all day. They were exhausted from the frustrations involved.

I lay on my back and stared into the sky. Already one of the moons had emerged in the darkening east, and others would join it shortly. I watched with a helpless feeling. I had been unable to dissuade Shoogar in his spellmaking. Warning Purple would do no good; I knew what he thought of Shoogar’s magic.

I tried to guess what pattern the moons had assumed. Two of the three big ones made a diagonal across a line of four small ones, so tiny they barely showed their colors.

The sign of the Bent Cross?

No matter. Whatever sign it was, Shoogar would think of a way to use it —

He came running over the hill then. He pulled me roughly to my feet, “Come on, Lant. It’s time to retreat.”

“Huh?” I said sleepily. “What —?”

“I’ve finished my spell. All we have to do now is wait.” He pulled at my arm.

I followed him down to the boat. He was grabbing things at random and throwing them into the craft where they splashed into the water. “Come on, Lant, come on — we haven’t got any time.”

I woke my sons. They were just as confused and upset as I — and twice as grumpy. “If Shoogar’s spell really does work,” I insisted, “this is no place we want to be.” They allowed themselves to be pushed down the slope. Wilville pulled the plug to drain the water from the boat — it was no longer needed — the airbags were so limp they could no longer hold up even the rigging.

Orbur gathered the last of the aircloth shreds we had been using as blankets, and the remaining cavernmouth eggs. We pounded the plug back into the hole, and shoved the boat roughly into the water.

“Hurry, hurry,” snapped Shoogar. The moon will be falling soon!”

“Does Purple know?” asked Orbur.

“Of course not. Why should I tell Purple?”

“Oh, no reason,” Orbur said as he pulled himself out of the water and onto his outrigger. “Except that he might have died of fright, and then you wouldn’t have needed to go through with the spell.”

Shoogar snorted and climbed into the boat. I followed. Our robes were wet from our thighs down. We had had to push the boat out past the breakers before we could climb in. Wilville was the last to mount. He swung the boat around so that its stern was toward the sea — it would have taken too long to try to turn it the other way.

He swung himself up on the bike frame, and the two boys unslung their airpushers and began backpedaling furiously. Within moments we were moving away from the shore. Purple, up there in the dark with his many-eyed calling device, did not notice at first. But by and by he came strolling across the sand to call, “What are you doing?”

“Testing the boat!” Shoogar called across the black water.

“Good idea,” Purple called back. He went back up the hill. There was sufficient light from the moons and the still westering sun to see him as a puffy form on the crest of the slope.

Wilville kept backpedaling then, while Orbur began pedaling forward. The boat swung around to head away from the Teeth of Despair. Bow forward, we moved across the water.

We made little progress though. The wind was headed shoreward and hampered our efforts.

“Pedal faster,” Shoogar urged them, “lest the falling moon destroy us!”

“This is nonsense,” Orbur complained. “Shoogar can’t bring down a moon!”

“Don’t you believe in magic?” I demanded.

“Well —”

“You’ve flown, you fool! How can you not believe in magic?”

“Of course, I believe in magic!” Orbur whispered to me. “It’s Shoogar I don’t believe in!”

“I notice,” I said, “that despite your skepticism you still thought enough to whisper.”

“I don’t care. He’s not the magician Purple is. Even Purple never claimed the power to bring down a moon.”

I didn’t answer. The boys continued to pedal, but without conviction. Ssss — the bicycles droned, and the water churned.

The boat was a fragile frame with limp bags hanging above it. The sea was restless, like an endless vat of ink; the water was a greasy black oil, flecked with foam. The shore was dark, and Purple was a motionless silhouette on a blackened hill.

I looked at the moons — two were disks, pink on one side, blue-white on the other. Four were too small to show as disks — and there was something wrong up there, something dreadfully wrong.

he boys felt it too. The ssssss of the bicycles rose frantically. The boat bounced across the water.

I continued to stare, frozen.

One of the little moons, the tail of the crooked cross, was drifting out of alignment.

I looked toward the shore. Did Purple suspect?

He was a doll-sized silhouette capering wildly on a darkened mound. Yes, he must be trying to force it back into the sky. Even now as we watched, he was jumping and crying — but this was Shoogar’s home ground.

I glanced over at him as he leaned out the back of the boat. His teeth gleamed as he watched. My sons pedaled furiously, frantically. Our wake was a churning froth.

The moon grew larger.

At first it was a bright dot against the black sky like the other moons — but moving, always moving — faster than any moon had a right to move! Then it was a clear disk like the major moons, red on one side and blue on the other. It was the largest moon in the sky now.

And still it grew!

It should have been sinking toward Purple — should have been. Instead, it seemed to hover overhead growing steadily.

The blue-white side suddenly darkened, now dimmed to almost black. The moon grew faster, and the red side commenced to dim also.

In the middle of the nearly black globe a yellow eye stared down at us.

And the moon grew huge, huge, and huger still!

“Pedal! Curse you! Faster! Faster!” Shoogar and I were both screaming.

He had miscalculated, the blithering toad — a moon is too big a thing for one man’s revenge! Its weight would destroy a world for one man’s pride!

And then it was drifting down, down like a monstrous soap bubble — Shoogar hadn’t miscalculated — down to where Purple capered on the black-scarred hill.

It stopped over Purple’s head — and directly over Shoogar’s design.

“Well, don’t stop now!” Shoogar shrieked. He practically leapt out of the boat. “Crush him! Crush him! Another two manheights, is that too much to manage? Arrrgh!” For the moon would fall no further. Instead, Purple was rising, rising toward the yellow eye. He disappeared into it.

“It ate him!” Shoogar was flabbergasted. “Why did it do that? It wasn’t in any of the runes.”

“Maybe it was in Purple’s runes,” said Wilville.

“Yes! He’s right,” I said. “I see it now! Your moon and Purple’s mother egg are one and the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s going home in it,” I said. “Home. I’m glad.”

“Purple? In my moon? He can’t I won’t let him! Boys, turn around!”

“Do it,” I told them. As the boat swung slowly around, Shoogar stamped toward the bow. I followed to reason with him.

“He’s probably going to wait for us,” I said quietly. “He told me he’d make sure we could get home before he left. What are you going to tell him?”

“Tell him? I’ll tell him to get his hairless rump out of my moon! What else would I tell him?”

“And what do you think he will answer?”

“What do you mean ?”

There’s only one thing Purple can say if he wants to keep the moon. He’ll have to say that this is his vehicle; that he brought it down; that you had nothing at all to do with it.”

“But that’s a black lie!”

“Of course it is, Shoogar. But he needs the moon to get home. He’ll have to say it. And as your only witness,” I explained softly, “I’ll have to tell the villagers that Purple denied your claim that you brought down a moon.”

“But it’s a lie, a black outrageous lie!” Shoogar was flabbergasted at the mad magician’s perfidy. “I did too bring it down! And they’ll know it, too! Who will the villagers believe, me or that insane bald magician?!!”

“They will believe their Speaker,” I said.

For a moment Shoogar glared at me. Then he stamped back to the stern to sulk. We were twenty minutes pedaling back to shore.