David Gerrold - The Flying Sorcerers

In moments it was gone.

The crackle of rock sank to a distant mutter, then died away entirely. Dazed, I walked to the rubbled edge of the hole. Darkness swallowed the bottom of it although an occasional distant rumble of movement could be felt.

Shoogar came up beside me.

“Brilliant,” I said, and I never meant anything more. “It’s gone, Shoogar. Completely, totally gone. The world has swallowed it up as though it never existed. And —” I gasped breathlessly, “ and there were no side effects at all.”

Shoogar harrumphed modestly. He bent to pick up the glass appurtenances which had fallen from Purple’s nose. He pocketed them absent-mindedly. “It was nothing,” he said.

“But, Shoogar! No side effects! I wouldn’t have believed you could do it! I wouldn’t have believed anyone could do it. Why didn’t you tell us you were planning this? We wouldn’t have had to leave the village.”

“Best to be safe,” Shoogar mumbled. He must have been dazed by his triumph. “You see, I wasn’t sure … What with the tidal equations acting to pull the nest down instead of… and with Eccar the Man tending to — well, it was highly unusual; experimental, you might say. I —”

The whole mountain shook under us.

I landed jarringly on my belly looking downslope. Two hundred feet below, the black nest erupted out of the hillside, shrieking in agony.

It plunged up and southward, screaming with an unholy sound — we had hurt it terribly. The egg wailed its pain — a rising and falling note — piercingly loud even as it moved away from the mountain.

Some weird side effect had pulverized the very substance of the hill beneath us, turning it to sliding dirt and pebbles. The entire slope was sliding, shifting, carrying us majestically downward. We were powerless to move; we rode the rumbling avalanche, a massive churning movement of dust and sand. The black nest was a speck of shrieking red brightness fast disappearing into the southern horizon.

The sliding mountain came gradually to a stop. Whether from caprice or Shoogar’s magic, it had not buried us. We had been fortunate enough to be standing at the top of the affected area, and had ridden it down unhurt. Now I found myself on my belly, deep in soft sloping dirt. Shoogar was several yards below me.

I climbed to my knees. The black nest was no more than a dot above the horizon: rising and dwindling, rising and dwindling. It was going almost straight up when my eyes lost it.

I scrambled down the slope to Shoogar, each step creating tiny echoes of the bigger slide. “Is it over?” I asked, helping him to his feet.

Shoogar brushed ineffectually at his robe, “I think not.” He peered into the south, “There are too many gods who have not yet spoken.”

We were ankle-deep in the newly pulverized dirt, and would have to walk softly lest the slope be jarred loose again. We began to work our way down cautiously. “How long must we wait for the curse to complete its workings?” I asked.

Shoogar shrugged, “I cannot guess. We called heavily on too many gods. Lant, I suggest you return to the village now. Your wives and children will be waiting.”

“I would stay here with you until the curse is complete.”

Shoogar frowned thoughtfully, “Lant, the black nest will probably return to attack the one who injured it. I dare not return to the village until that danger is past, and I would not want you here with me when that happens.” He put his hand on my shoulder, “Thank you, Lant. I appreciate all you have done. Now go.”

I nodded. I did not want to leave him. But I knew that this had to be. Shoogar was not just saying good night; he was saying good-bye. Until he knew for sure that the black nest had been destroyed, he could not return.

Dejectedly, I turned and trudged down the slope. I did not want him to see the tears welling up in my eyes.

The village was as I had left it. Silent, deserted, and bearing the scars of Shoogar’s preparations.

I had been fortunate to find one of my bicycles half-way down the hill. Now I parked it beneath my own nest. Miraculously, both bicycle and housetree had remained undamaged.

My number one wife was curled up on the floor sleeping when I hoisted myself into the nest. She awoke at the swaying of the structure and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“Where are the others?” I asked.

She shook her head, “They fled when Purple came to the village this morning.”

“Purple came to the village?” I was aghast.

She nodded.

I seized her by the shoulders, “You must tell me what he did! Did he curse Shoogar’s nest? Did he —”

“No, it was nothing like that. He just walked around for a while.”

“The fire device? Did he use the fire device?”

“No. He wanted something else.”

“What was it, woman?”

“I cannot say if I understood right, my husband. He did not have his speakerspell with him. We had to use gestures.”

“Well, what did he want?”

“He wanted to do the family-making thing, I think.”

“And you let him…?”

She lowered her eyes, “I thought it would help Shoogar’s part of the duel if the mad magician were distracted for a while …”

“But, how could you? He is not a guest of ours! I should beat you!”

“I am sorry, my husband. I thought it would help.” She cringed before my upraised hand, “And you did not beat your third wife when Purple talked to her.”

She was right. I lowered my hand. It would not be fair to beat one and not the other.

“He is built most strangely, my husband. He is almost completely without hair, except for —”

“I do not want to hear about it,” I said. “Is that all that you did?”

She nodded.

“And then he left the village?”

Again she nodded.

“He did not touch anything? Take anything?”

She shook her head.

I breathed a sigh of relief, “Thank the gods for small favors. The situation could have been very bad. Fortunately you say nothing was damaged.” Gratefully, I lowered myself to the floor. I had not realized how weary I was. “You may serve me a meal,” I said.

She did so, wordlessly. If she had to exercise her jaw, there were always my dinner leavings. I had taken two bites, when abruptly from overhead came a weird kind of shrieking whistle.

It was a sound of disaster, of emergency and panic. I dropped out of the nest and ran for the clearing. Through the treetops I could see —

The flying nest! It had returned to the village. It was no longer silver. Now it was yellow with heat. It hurtled across the sky, then circled and returned for another shrieking pass.

Shoogar’s words flashed across my mind, “… the black nest will probably return to attack the one who injured it…” Could the nest have confused me with Shoogar? I stood there in the central clearing, too panicked to move.

It stopped jarringly a few yards above the treetops, as if it had hit a soft wall. Its door was missing, ripped away. The opening showed black against the orange glow of what could only be heated metal.

The nest turned, questing. I imagined eyes in the blackness behind the doorway. I waited for them to find me.

The nest turned, faster.

Suddenly, it was spinning, terribly fast. All details blurred and vanished; the surface seemed a liquid red-orange. I heard the drone of it rising and I covered my ears. A wind swept through the trees.

As it spun, the nest was carrying the air with it. Great gusts spun through the village with a rising shriek, different from the agony-cry of the nest, but terrifying all the same. It was a great whirlpool of wind with the nest at the center. I clung to the trunk of one of the nearby housetrees.