David Gerrold: The Flying Sorcerers

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 servant to the striped lizard. He was just drawing his robes imperiously about his squat and stubby form. Master, apparently, from his manner.

Abruptly, the stranger repeated his palms-out gesture, turned, and went back to his nest. He did not go inside. Instead. he briefly touched the rim of the doorway, and there was light! Garish “light it spurted from the flank of the nest, bright as double daylight.

And such a strange light. The ground and the plants seemed to take the wrong colors and there was something not right with their shadows, an odd blackness of shade.

The new magician’s motive was obvious, even to me — and even more so to Shoogar. He leapt back out of the light with his arms raised for defense. But it was no use. The light followed him, swept over him and dazzled him, effectively cancelling out the strength of the lunar light. The stranger had effectively negated the power of the striped lizard. Shoogar stood trembling, a tiny figure pinned in that dazzling odd-colored glow.

Then, for no apparent reason, the stranger caused the light to vanish.

“I think that the light disturbs you,” said the speakerspell, talking for the magician. “But, no matter. We can talk as well in the dark.”

I breathed more easily, but did not completely relax. This stranger had shown how easily he could cancel the effect of any lunar configuration. Any powers Shoogar might have hoped to draw from the sky would have to be forgone.

I watched the striped lizard slink dejectedly into the west. The moons rode their line across the sky, milk-white crescents with thick red fringes. On successive nights the red borderlines would narrow as the suns set closer and closer together. Then there would be no colored borders.Later, blue borders would show after second sunset… and Shoogar could make no use of any of this…

Shoogar and the new magician were still talking. by now the speakerspell had learned enough words so that the two could intelligently discuss the matters of magicians.

The ethics of the situation are obvious,” Shoogar was saying. “You are practicing magic in my district. For this you must pay. More precisely, you owe me a secret.”

“A secret.. .?” echoed the speakerspell device.

Still cold and cramped, I was suddenly no longer sleepy. I cocked an ear to hear better.

“Some bit of magic that I do not already know,” Shoogar amplified. “What, for instance, is the secret of your light like double daylight?”

“… potential difference … hot metal within an inert … doubt you would understand … heat is caused by a flow of … tiny packets of lightning …”

“Your words do not make sense. I take no meaning from them. You must tell me a secret that I can understand and use. I see that your magic is powerful. Perhaps you know of a way to predict the tides?”

“No, of course I can’t tell you how to predict the tides. You’ve got eleven moons and two primary suns tugging your oceans in all directions. Tugging at each other too. It would take years to compute a tidal pattern …”

“Surely you must know “things that I do not,” said Shoogar. “Just as I know secrets that you are unaware of.”

“Of course. But I’m trying to think what would help you the most. It’s a wonder you’ve gotten as far as you have. Bicycles even …”

“Those are good bicycles!” I protested. “I ought to know. Two of my sons built them.”

“But bicycles!” He moved closer eagerly. I tensed, but he only wanted to examine them. “Hardwood frames, leather-thonged pulleys instead of chains, sewn fur pelts for tires! They’re marvelous! Absolutely marvelous. Primitive and handmade, with big flat wheels and no spokes, but it doesn’t matter: they’re still bicycles. And when all the odds were against your developing any form of … at all!”

“What are you talking about?” Shoogar demanded. I was silent, seething at the insult to Wilville and Orbur’s bicycles. Primitive indeed!

“… starts with the perception of order,” said the magician. “But your world has no order to it at all. You’re in an opaque dust cloud, so you cannot see any of the fixed light-in-the-sky. Your sky is a random set of moons picked up from the worldlet belt … three-body configuration makes capture easy … tides that go every which way under the influence of all those moons … moons that cross and recross at random, changing their … because of mutual …” The speakerspell was missing half of the stranger’s words, making the rest gibberish. “And then the high level of … from the blue sun would give you a new species every week or so. No order in your observable … probably use strict cut-and-try methods of building. No put-it-together line techniques because you wouldn’t normally expect a put-it-together belt to produce the same item twice in a row … but it’s a human instinct to try to control nature. You must tell me —”

“Shoogar interrupted the babbling stranger. First, you must tell me. Tell me some new thing that you may satisfy the Guild law. What is the secret of your red flame?”

“Oh, I couldn’t give you a secret like that!”

Shoogar began to fume again, but he only said, “And why couldn’t you?”

“… For one thing, you couldn’t understand it. You wouldn’t be able to work it.” Shoogar drew himself up to his full height and stared up at the stranger. “Are you telling me that I am not even a magician of the second circle? Any magician worth his bones is able to make fire and throw it!” And with that Shoogar produced a ball of fire from his sleeve and casually hurled it across the clearing.

I could see that the stranger was startled. He had not expected that. The ball of fire lay sputtering on the ground, then died away leaving only the burnt core. The stranger took two steps toward it, as if to examine it, then turned back to Shoogar, “Very impressive,” he said, “but still…”

Shoogar “said, “You see, I can throw fire also. And I can control the color of the flame. What I want to know is how to throw it in a straight line, like you do.”

“It is a wholly different principle .. . coherent light … tight beam … small clumps of energy … vibration of …” As if to demonstrate, he touched his spell device again, and once more the red fire lashed out. Eye-searing flame played across Musk-Watz’s cairn. Another smoking hole.

I Winced.

The stranger said, “It boils the rock and tells me what it is made of by telling me what color the smoke is.”

I tried to conceal my reaction. Any idiot could have told him the smoke was bluish-gray, let alone what rocks are made of. I could tell him myself.

He was still talking, “Absorption of light… but I couldn’t teach you how to use it; you might use it as a weapon.”

“ Might use it as a weapon?” Shoogar exclaimed. “What other use is there for a spell to throw red fire?”