The Flying Sorcerers

from the air … houses are structured spheres, suspended from the limbs of tremendous trees … must be at least. … Wait until … hears about this! Where should I park?” he asked suddenly.

“Anywhere …” I gasped weakly, “Put it anywhere,” and made an appropriate arm-sweeping gesture. I looked around myself to see if we had any trees strong enough to hang such a nest from. There were none big enough that were not already occupied; but if this magician could make his nest fly, then he could surely hang it even from a sapling.

But even this the stranger did not do. He landed it on the ground.

And not just on any ground. He swept through the village toward the river, and brought it to land on the crest of the slope overlooking the frog-grading ponds. The ponds were dry now, drained for their ritual purification and reseeding spells, but I was appalled at such callous disregard for the property of the village. I winced as the magician’s nest sank into the ooze with a loud squishy phloosh.

I did not sleep well at all. By the time the smoky rim of the red sun began to appear over the horizon, I was already up and about. I felt better after my cleansing and purification, but still haggard and drawn. The events of the night before had taken their toll.

A glance out the door of the nest was enough to confirm that the stranger was still in our midst. Pilg the Crier was already moving through the trees moaning of this new development. Disaster was all the more certain now that the strange magician had moved his nest into the village. Even from here I could see a curious crowd gathering around it — though keeping a respectful distance.

Ang, the frogmonger, was wringing his hands and moaning over his frog-grading ponds. He would have to repurify them again after the stranger left, and if that were not soon, he might miss the spawning season altogether.

Shoogar and I went out to watch him, that first day. As soon as he saw us he straightened from his examination of a local herb and disappeared into his nest. He returned almost immediately with an object in his outstretched hand. “A gift.” he said. “A gift for Shoogar, the magician.”

Shoogar was caught by surprise. He had not expected the stranger to produce the required gift. Now he had fulfilled his obligation as a magician, and had the legal right to remain in the district. By the same convention, Shoogar was bound to respect the rights of the new magician as well as his spells. Guild rules are quite specific.

Shoogar, as resident magician, had the seniority. The stranger could do nothing to interfere with Shoogar’s practice or previous spells; but aside from that, he was free to do as he chose.

Shoogar examined his gift. It was small and light, easily held in one hand. One end had a glass lens mounted in it.

The stranger demonstrated how it worked. When one pressed forward on the thing’s sliding nerve, the glass lens made light.

It was a trivial thing. I could sense that Shoogar was disappointed, and insulted that the stranger had not given him something more spectacular. Shoogar had other ways to make cold light. But there was little he could say. It is extremely bad form to test a gift spell in the presence of the giver.

The only advantage to the gift was that its light was of a shape we had not seen before. By twisting a knob on one side the shape could be varied from a bright narrow beam — like the stranger’s red-fire device, but nowhere near as damaging — to a broad glare, wide enough to illuminate half a countryside.

Using the sliding nerve, the brightness of the device could be adjusted too. It could be muted down to a dim glow, no brighter than a lightmoss, or it could be pushed up until it was too bright to look at. Purple-Gray advised Shoogar not to use the spell too much in this latter form, or its something would drain away too fast. The speakerspell didn’t translate the word.

Shoogar turned it over and over in his hands. He had had his heart set on the flying spell or the red fire device. Yet manners compelled him to accept this gift graciously. I could see he wanted to ask for something else, but couldn’t figure out how to do so without the risk of offending the other magician.

Purple-Gray was saying, “I cannot understand why your world has life at all. Your evolution patterns don’t seem right: yet who would have settled here? We certainly wouldn’t. For one thing, the dust clouds hide you from space. For another, you don’t really get yellow, dwarf, sunlight.” Much of it was like that: coherent sentences trailing off into strings of unrelated words. “Though I suppose the red and blue suns do combine to give the same effect… the plants all look black because there’s so little green light, but the something in plants doesn’t use the green anyway, so that’s all right. It’s these double shadows that would drive anyone insane.”

Shoogar waited through this stream of gibberish with commendable patience. Purple-Gray’s words about different colors seemed to hint at something very important, and Shoogar wanted to know what it was. “You speak of this world. “ he said. “May one assume that you know of other worlds?” I wondered if Shoogar was baiting the stranger.

“Oh. yes. My world —” He looked up, considered, then pointed into the empty sky. “My world is in that general direction … I think. Beyond the dust clouds.”

“Dust clouds?” Shoogar peered up into the sky. I looked also. So did the crowd of onlookers. “Dust clouds?” The sky was an empty blue. What was he talking about?

Shoogar looked at the other magician, “Do you mock me? I see nothing. No dust clouds. No other worlds. There is nothing in the sky.”

“Oh, but there is,” said Purple-Gray. “It’s just too small for you to see.”

Shoogar raised an eyebrow — threw me a look — turned back to the other magician. I could sense some of the onlookers trying to restrain their mirth. Some of the lesser women were already giggling and had to be herded away. “Too small?” repeated Shoogar, “Too small …?” His patience was growing thin. Shoogar has no temperament for children, fools or madmen.

“Oh, no — you misunderstand,” said Purple-Gray quickly. “It’s too small to see because it’s so far away.”

“Oh …” said Shoogar slowly. Purple-Gray still had not explained the dust clouds — or the lack of them.

“Yes. In fact, it’s so far away that if you tried to get there on say, a bicycle, it would take you many generations. You would grow old and die before you had covered a significant fraction of the journey.”

“I see …” said Shoogar. “Then how did you get here By pedalling faster?”

Purple-Gray laughed, “Oh, no, no. Even that wouldn’t help. I …” The speakerspell hesitated, then said, “… went around …”

Shoogar shook his head in confusion. Several more of the women had to be led away. It was not good for them to see a grown man making a fool of himself, nor was it advisable that they witness Shoogar discomfited. Several of the men began muttering among themselves. Shoogar gestured for silence — he still had not given up. “Went around …?” he asked. “Went around what? The dust clouds?”

“Oh, no. I went through the dust clouds. I…. went around the distance.”

Shoogar repeated this sentence slowly, to see if there was something in it he had missed. There wasn’t. He looked at Purple and shook his head. “Uh uh,” he said. That was all, just, “Uh uh.”

Then he turned and walked away, up the slope, shaking his head and turning the small light-making device over and over in his hands.

Purple-gray spent the next several days collecting small plants, pieces of larger plants, handfuls of mud and water and dirt. There were plenty of sprats and adults to watch him, but he took little notice of them.

A floating three-legged clicking device followed him about with its legs folded, unnoticed and untended until he needed it. Each time he took a sample of something he would mount this device on its legs and point it at the site. It seemed a harmless enough testing device, but Shoogar would grit his teeth every time it came floating by.

Shoogar went into seclusion then, determined to discover the secret of the stranger’s light-making device. When I visited him for the purpose of checking his progress, he glared angrily at me, and muttered, “Curse that