to push at it, occasionally clambering over the body of a fallen comrade. The water was pink. Angry mud-skunks swarmed along both banks of the river. It was a heartening sight. The crowd continued to cheer wildly, and began to chant a chorus of praise to Shoogar. Pilg the Crier was leading them.
Down below, their anger spent, some of the rams were already climbing back up the hill, slipping and skidding in their own blood and falling back down the mud-slicked surface. Two or three slipped beneath the water and failed to surface.
The mud creatures too were beginning to calm — and the shepherds once more dared to work their way carefully down the slopes to tend their wounded flock.
“A beautiful spell, Shoogar!” 1 congratulated him, “Beautiful! And so powerful!”
Indeed, as the churning foam of the river continued to subside, revealing the full extent of the devastation, several of the villagers even began to mutter that perhaps the spell had been a bit too powerful. One of the members of the Guild of Advisors remarked, “Look at all this destruction! This spell should be banned.”
“Banned?” 1 confronted the man, “And leave us defenseless before our enemies?”
“Well,” he amended, “perhaps we should only keep Shoogar from using it on friends. He could still use it on strangers.”
I nodded. 1 would accept that.
At least eleven of our sheep lay dead in the churned mud of the slope, mud creatures feeding indiscriminately on their stilled or still heaving flanks. Four of the rams were trampled into the landscape; others lay with their heads at oddly twisted angles, their necks broken from butting against Purple’s nest. Three more bodies lay below the water with their mouths open.
What remained of the flock would show countless mud-skunk bites upon their legs and flanks. Many of those bites would undoubtedly become festering sores and probably more of the rams would die later.
The vermin of the mud would be vicious for days to come. It would not be safe to bathe for a while, and probably the sheep would not dare to return to the river for a long time; they would have to be led to the mountain streams to drink.
The frog-grading ponds had been completely obliterated and would have to be completely resculptured elsewhere. Ang stood moaning and wringing his hands as he surveyed his mud-churned slope.
And finally, the wreck of the mad magician’s nest now blocked the river. Dammed water spilled over the south bank in a torrent. Already it was carving a new course for itself.
And none of it mattered. These were all small prices to pay for the damage done to the stranger. Considering the magnitude of the task, it was one of Shoogar’s less expensive efforts and we were proud of him.
Then why was the scene so utterly silent?
I looked to my left and saw Purple standing on the crest of the hill.
He stood there with his devices floating behind. Every eye was on him. His hands were on his hips as he looked thoughtfully down at his nest. How long had he been standing there?
“Fascinating,” he said. And he started briskly down the slope. His devices followed.
The nest sat like a great egg in the middle of the river. Water backed up behind it, flowed in great torrents past its bulging flank, splashed angrily up and over the trampled shore. Angry mud creatures clambered over its dull black surface, scratching determinedly at the spell designs. Gobbets of mud and bloody fur streaked its sides, but still the spells of Shoogar were visible, almost etched into its surface. It stood perfectly, almost arrogantly upright.
That made me uneasy. My eyes searched for the dents in the stranger’s ruined nest, the dents surely put there by the horns of the rams. I couldn’t find them.
Purple strode straight down the slope and into the water. Not a droplet of mud stuck to those peculiar boots of his — in contrast to Shoogar’s legs and mine, which were mud to the hip. A pair of mud-skunks attacked the magician as he entered the water. Purple ignored them; and they couldn’t seem to get a grip on his boots.
He stood under the bulge of the nest, and we waited for his scream of fury.
Carefully, with a small edged tool, he began scraping off bits of Shoogar’s curse signs and putting them into small transparent containers. His mindless speakerspell continued to translate his ramblings. “Fascinating … the power of these fluids-secreted-for-the-control-of-bodily-functions is like nothing I’ve ever seen before … I wonder if these effects could be produced artificially?”
Twice he sniffed at what he had scraped off, and twice muttered a word the speakerspell did not translate. When he finished, he dipped his hands in the river to wash them, incidentally offending Filfo-mar, the usually gentle river god.
Purple turned to the egg-shaped door of his nest; it was flush with the curved wall, but outlined in orange to make it visible. He punched at a square pattern of bumps on the nest. The door slid open and Purple disappeared inside.
We waited. Would he continue to occupy his nest, living in the middle of our defiled river?
The flying nest hummed and rose twenty feet into the air.
I screamed with the rest, a wordless scream of rage. The nest turned in an instant from black to silver; and it must have become terribly slippery, for every particle of mud and blood and potion from Shoogar’s spell slid down the sides, formed a glob at the bottom of the nest and dropped in a lump into the river.
The nest turned black. It moved horizontally across the land and dropped gently to the ground — just a few yards west of where it had stood an hour ago. Only now it rested at the edge of a region of churned mud where the rams and mud creatures had fought to destroy it.
I could see Shoogar sag where he stood. And I feared for my village, and for Shoogar’s sanity and my own. If Shoogar could not defend us from the mad magician, then we were all doomed.
There was an angry rumble from the villagers as Purple emerged from his nest. Purple frowned and said, “I wish I knew what’s gotten you people so angry.”
Somebody threw a spear at him.
I couldn’t blame the lad. No sound, no pattern of mere words could properly have answered the magician. But the young man, enraged beyond sanity, had hurled his bone spear at the stranger’s back — without a blessing!
It struck Purple hard in the back and bounced off to the side without penetrating. Purple toppled, not like a man, but like a statue. I had the irrational conviction that for a single instant Purple had become as hard as stone.
But the instant was over. Immediately he was climbing to his feet. The spear, of course, had done no harm at all. One cannot attack a magician with an unblessed spear. The boy would have to be brought before the Guild of Advisors.
If the village survived that long.
The suns rose together, the blue sun silhouetted off-center within the other’s great fuzzy-edged and crimson disk.
I woke at noon. The evacuation was already well under way. My wives and spratlings had already done a good deal of the packing, though the fear of disturbing my sleep had slowed them somewhat. With my supervision, however, and the necessary discipline, the packing progressed quickly. Even so, we were very nearly the last family to leave the village. The lower rim of the red sun was already near the mountains when I dropped behind the procession of my wives to tarry at Shoogar’s nest.
Shoogar looked tired, but curiously determined. His eyes were alive and dancing, and his fingers moved with a life of their own, weaving spell knots into a leather strap. I knew better than to speak to him while he was in the midst of a duel.
For though no formal declaration had yet been made by Purple, this was a duel. Perhaps Purple thought that so long as no duel was declared, Shoogar would sit peacefully by and allow him to continue with his duel-mongering actions.
But I knew Shoogar better than that. The fierce glow burning in his eyes confirmed what I — and all of the rest of the villagers — already knew: that Shoogar would not rest until there was one less magician in the village.
