The stranger was slightly taller than me, considerably taller than Shoogar. His skin was lighter than ours, and hairless but for a single patch of black fur, oddly positioned on the top half of his skull. He also wore a strange set of appurtenances balanced across his nose. It appeared that they were lenses of quartz mounted in a bone frame through which the stranger could see.
The set of his features was odd and disquieting, and his bones seemed strangely proportioned. Certainly no normal being would have a paunch that large. The sight of him made me feel queasy, and I surmised that some of his ancestors had not been human.
Magicians traditionally wear outlandish clothing to identify themselves as magicians. But even Shoogar was unprepared for the cut of this stranger’s costume. It was a single garment which covered most of the stranger’s body. The shape of the cloth had been woven to match his own precisely; and an oddly bulging shape it was. There was a hood, thrown back. There were high-flared cuffs on the pantaloons to allow for his calf-high boots, and over his heart was a golden badge. Around his middle he wore a wide belt, to which were attached three or four small spell devices.
He had also set up a number of larger devices. Most of them had the blue-white glimmer of polished metal. (There is little metal in our village — it rusts quickly — but I am a man of the world and have traveled much. I am familiar with the sight of metal, having seen it in the highlands; but nothing so finely worked as this.)
These devices stood each on three legs so that they were always level, even where the ground was not. As we watched, the stranger peered into one of them, peered across the canyon at the sacred cairn of Musk-Watz, the god of the winds, and then into his device again. Muttering constantly to himself, he moved across the clearing and adjusted something else. Evidently this was a long and complicated spell, though just what its purpose was neither Shoogar nor I could fathom.
Occasionally he would refer to a large egg-shaped nest, black and regular of shape, sitting on its wide end off to one side of the pasture. As there were no trees in the area large enough to hang it from, he had set it on the ground. (An unwise course, to be sure, but the shell of that nest looked like nothing I had ever seen — perhaps it was able to resist marauding predators.) I wondered how he had built it over-night. His power must be formidable.
The stranger did not notice us at all, and Shoogar was fidgeting with impatience. Just as Shoogar was about to interrupt him, the stranger straightened and touched his device. The device responded by hurling red fire across the canyon — directly at the cairn of Musk-Watz!
I thought Shoogar would suffer a death-rage right then and there. The Weather gods are hard enough to control at best, and Shoogar had spent three long lunar configurations trying to appease Musk-Watz in an effort to forestall another season of hurricanes. Now, the stranger had disrupted one of his most careful spells.
Redder than ruby, eye-searing, bright and narrow, straight as the horizon of the ocean (which I have also seen), that crimson fire speared out across the canyon, lashing Shoogar’s carefully constructed outcrop. I feared it would never end: the fire seemed to go on and on.
And the sound of it was dreadful. There was a painful high-pitched humming which seemed to seize my very soul, a piercing unearthly whine. Under this we could hear the steady crackling and spattering of the cairn.
Acrid smoke billowed upward from it, and I shuddered, thinking how the dissipating dust would affect the atmosphere. Who knew what effects it would have on Shoogar’s weather-making spells? I made a mental note to have the wives reinforce the flooring of our nest.
Suddenly, just as abruptly as it had begun, the red fire went out. Once more the silence and the calm descended over the mesa. Once more the blue twilight colored the land. But across my eyes was a brilliant blue- white afterimage. And the cairn of the wind-god still crackled angrily.
Amazingly enough, the cairn still stood. It smouldered and sputtered, and there was an ugly scar where the red fire had touched it, but it was intact. When Shoogar builds, he builds well.
The stranger was already readjusting his devices, muttering continuously to himself. (I wondered if that were part of the spell.) Like a mother
I cast a glance at Shoogar; I could see a careful tightening at the corners of his mouth. Indeed, even his beard seemed clenched. I feared that a duel would start before the stranger could offer Shoogar a gift. Something had to be done to prevent Shoogar from a rash and possibly regrettable action.
I stepped forward boldly. “Ahem,” I began. “Ahem. I dislike to interrupt you while you are so obviously busy, but that bluff is sacred to Musk-Watz. It took many cycles to construct the pattern of spells which…”
The magician looked up and seemed to notice us for the first time. He became strangely agitated. Taking a quick step toward us, he made a straight-armed gesture, palms open to us, and spoke quick tense words in a language I had never heard. Instantly, I threw myself flat on the ground, arms over my head.
Nothing happened.
When I looked up, Shoogar was still beside the other bicycle with his arms outstretched in a spell-breaking pattern. Either the stranger’s spell had miscarried, or Shoogar had blocked it. The stranger threw no more spells. Instead, he backed toward his oddly shaped nest, never taking his eyes from us. He continued his strange words, but now they were slow and low pitched, like the tone one uses to calm an uneasy animal. He disappeared into his nest and all was quiet and blue.
Except for the crackle of cooling rock which still reached across the canyon to remind us that Musk-Watz had been defiled.
I turned to Shoogar, “This could be serious.”
“Lant, you are a fool. This is already serious.”
“Can you handle this new magician?”
Shoogar grunted noncommittally, and I was afraid. Shoo-gar was good; if he were not sure of his skill here, the whole village might be in danger.
I started to voice my fears, but the stranger abruptly re-appeared carrying another of his metal and bone carved devices. This one was smaller than the rest and had slender rods sticking out on all sides. I did not like its looks. It reminded me of some of the more unpleasant devices that I had seen during the dark years.
The magician watched us all the time he was setting it up on its three slender legs. As he turned it to face us I tensed.
It began to make a humming noise, like the sound of a water harp when a string bow is drawn across its glass tubes. The humming rose in pitch until it began to sound disturbingly like that of the device of the red fire. I began gauging the distance between myself and a nearby boulder.
The stranger spoke impatiently to us in his unknown tongue.
“You are discourteous,” rumbled Shoogar. This business can wait, surely?”
The spell device said, “Surely?”
I landed behind the boulder. Shoogar stood his ground. “Surely,” he repeated firmly. “You violate custom. In this, my district, you must gift me with one new spell, one I have never seen. Were I in your district —”
The spell device spoke again. Its intonation was terrifying and inhuman. “New spell gift — never known — surely.”
I realized that the stranger had spoken first. His device was attempting to speak for him, but in our words. Shoogar saw it too, and was reassured. The device was only a speakerspell, and a poor one at that, despite its powerful shape.
Shoogar and the speakerspell and the stranger stood on that wind-swept mesa and talked with each other. Or rather, they talked at each other. It was infant’s talk, most of it. The thing had no words of its own. It could only use Shoogar’s; sometimes correctly, more often not.
Shoogar’s temper was not improving. He had come to demand gift or duel from an intruding warlock only to find himself teaching a simpleminded construct to talk. The stranger seemed to be enjoying himself, unfortunately at Shoogar’s expense.
The red sun was long gone, the blue was near the horizon, and all the world was red-black shadow. The blue sun settled behind a clump of deep violet clouds. Suddenly it was gone, like a taper blown out by the wind. The moons emerged against the night, now in the configuration of the striped lizard.
During certain configurations Shoogar’s power is higher than during others. I wondered if he were master or
