David Gerrold - The Flying Sorcerers

Was Musk-Watz attacking the stranger’s egg? Or was the latter attacking the village? The wind roared through the trees, through the leaves and branches and nests; it tried to pluck me from where I clung tightly to one of the root limbs. I wrapped my arms and legs about the branch and buried my face in the trunk. Leaves, bark, bits of wood sprayed me. It went on and on and on….

After a while, I became aware that the sound was lessening. I raised my head. The wind was dying….

Not a tree in the village carried a leaf. Every nest had been knocked to the ground. Many had been shattered against the trunks of their host trees. Others lay yards from where they should have fallen.

Purple’s great black egg, still spinning, had moved southward toward the river. It was above the new course of the rushing waters when it began to drop. Filfo-mar, angry and implacable, was pulling the black nest down to destruction.

I had to see. I followed the nest, unmindful of the possible danger. I had to know if Purple’s nest was truly being destroyed.

The nest was spinning ferociously, as if it were trying to escape the power of the river god. When it touched the water a great cloud of steam burst into the air. At the same time, the river and its muddy banks all rose up in one huge wave of earth and water. It blackened the sky, covered the moons — I tried to run — it splashed across the world in one vast wave. A scream forced itself out of my throat as the rushing water swept me back through the village. Filth and mud flooded my mouth, my nostrils..

Abruptly I was struck a jarring blow from behind, found myself caught between two limbs of a tree. Water rained down in fat drops and mud in stinging gobs.

The water began to recede then, flowing back toward the river in a great mud streaking wave. Churning debris left in its wake.

Shoogar had miscalculated. The nest had not returned to attack him. Even now I could see that there was nothing left of the village: just a few blackened trees, naked against the night.

I lowered myself from the branch. My back twinged warningly and I wondered if I had cracked a rib. Painfully I limped toward the river. If I were destined to die, I would first know the fate of my enemy.

Black mud squelched beneath my feet as I plodded. The bare trees dripped muddy goo. It was as if the whole world were uninhabitable, drowned in a rain of earth and water. It was tricky going; often the viscous mess beneath my feet hid shards of debris.

Under the shadowless light of seven of the moons, I began to cross the old course of the river. The mud and the smooth wet rocks all worked to slow me. Probably they saved my life. I had forgotten that one god had not yet spoken.

I cursed as I balanced on the slippery surfaces. The nest lay ahead. In its spinning it had churned a great dish-shaped cavity for itself. As I topped the lip of that cavity I saw the nest, black again and lying in shallow silvery water. Its spin had stopped, and — finally, finally — it was no longer upright.

It rested on its side with water pouring into the hollow around it, flooding into the doorway. Garish light reflected in that opening and across the surface of the water.

No doubt, that final awry tilt of the egg was the work of Fine-line, the god of engineers. Perhaps in his last moments, Purple had finally believed in the power of Shoogar’s magic. I worked my way closer, eyes open for one glimpse of the mad magician’s body. Nothing could be left alive within that nest.

I was not one quarter of the way down when the interior of the nest began to sparkle and flash. This was not the steady yellow which had lit the compartment earlier. This was a sick sputtering sparkle, the color of lightning. I paused, unsure. I could hear crackling sounds and the hiss of water turning to steam. I began to inch my way back up the mud slope. The nest was still dangerously alive.

The blue flashing grew brighter behind me — and then a thick puff of black smoke erupted from the gaping door. I reached the mud lip of the churned-out hollow none too soon and dropped behind it. Cautiously, I raised my head.

The nest seemed to pause, as if wondering what to do next.

It decided.

It leapt upward, up and out of the pond. It rose in a steep arc, glowing white, paused at the apex, and fell back. It landed right in the middle of the village. Instantly it bounced, leaving a clutch of burning trees behind it. A hot wind fanned my face. It bounced again.

The nest had forgotten how to fly. Now it moved by bouncing, and it glowed with a terrible heat. Each time it struck it would give off one enormous spark, and the land would burn. But only momentarily: the village was too much a swamp to support a fire.

And still the nest was bouncing. As it left the village, other patches of flame were spreading. They led in a straight line, west toward the mountains where Shoogar waited.

The nest bounced uphill, like a ball in reverse. I could see it, a glowing white speck moving erratically up the mountainside. It ultimately disappeared behind a ridge.

The wind followed it, crackling with the presence of the one god who had not yet spoken; then it too faded into the west. A semblance of calm crept over the landscape, leaving only the sound of water dripping from the trees and branches.

I stood up and looked off across the black mud to where a pillar of greasy smoke still rose from the center of the village. Brushing at the mud which permeated my clothing, I wondered if my first wife had survived. I would regret it very much if she had not. She was a good woman, obedient and almost as strong as a pack animal.

It occurred to me then which god had not yet spoken.

I sat down.

There was a slow and deathly silence now. Only the crackle of the mud, the hiss of water trickling into pits of melted rock disturbed the night. The wind died to nothing. The last of the moons was dropping toward the west. Darkness would soon be creeping across the land. It would not be safe to be about.

Could Shoogar have been mistaken in this one aspect? After all, He was an unpredictable god, known to have fits of pique — and also known to have failed when most expected to perform. Perhaps the experimental nature of Shoogar’s spell had not been enough to arouse him …

Behind me the east began to hint at deep blue instead of black. I stood, cursing the stiff cold weight of my clothes … Then an eye-searing flash of white filled the world …

My eyes clenched in pain. But in the after-image, burned into my skull, I saw a great ball of fire, like one of Shoogar’s but magnified to the size of a mountain. Then my eyes could open, and I saw a great rising mass of flaming cloud, a toadstool of red-lit fury — fiery smoke standing up behind the mountains, reaching, ever-reaching into the sky —

I was slammed backward, slapped rolling across the mud as if struck by a giant hammer made of air. And the sound — oh, the sound — my ears seemed to cry with the pain of a sound so loud.

If I had thought the sound of Musk-Watz earlier sweeping through the village had been loud, he was only a whisper compared to this. It was as if Ouells himself had come down, and clapped his mighty hands together in a sudden howling wind. But the sound continued — mutated into a continuous rumbling thunder that rolled up and down the hills. It grumbled and rumbled, rumbled and grumbled across the world. It echoed and re-echoed in a never-ending wave. I was sure I could hear it long after it actually had died away. That great bass roar went on and on and on. Small rocks began to fall from the sky.

Elcin had spoken.

I found my wife huddled in the crotch of two branches, beneath an uprooted tree.

“Are you all right?” I asked, helping her to her feet.