David Gerrold - The Flying Sorcerers

Orbur gathered the last of the aircloth shreds we had been using as blankets, and the remaining cavernmouth eggs. We pounded the plug back into the hole, and shoved the boat roughly into the water.

“Hurry, hurry,” snapped Shoogar. The moon will be falling soon!”

“Does Purple know?” asked Orbur.

“Of course not. Why should I tell Purple?”

“Oh, no reason,” Orbur said as he pulled himself out of the water and onto his outrigger. “Except that he might have died of fright, and then you wouldn’t have needed to go through with the spell.”

Shoogar snorted and climbed into the boat. I followed. Our robes were wet from our thighs down. We had had to push the boat out past the breakers before we could climb in. Wilville was the last to mount. He swung the boat around so that its stern was toward the sea — it would have taken too long to try to turn it the other way.

He swung himself up on the bike frame, and the two boys unslung their airpushers and began backpedaling furiously. Within moments we were moving away from the shore. Purple, up there in the dark with his many-eyed calling device, did not notice at first. But by and by he came strolling across the sand to call, “What are you doing?”

“Testing the boat!” Shoogar called across the black water.

“Good idea,” Purple called back. He went back up the hill. There was sufficient light from the moons and the still westering sun to see him as a puffy form on the crest of the slope.

Wilville kept backpedaling then, while Orbur began pedaling forward. The boat swung around to head away from the Teeth of Despair. Bow forward, we moved across the water.

We made little progress though. The wind was headed shoreward and hampered our efforts.

“Pedal faster,” Shoogar urged them, “lest the falling moon destroy us!”

“This is nonsense,” Orbur complained. “Shoogar can’t bring down a moon!”

“Don’t you believe in magic?” I demanded.

“Well —”

“You’ve flown, you fool! How can you not believe in magic?”

“Of course, I believe in magic!” Orbur whispered to me. “It’s Shoogar I don’t believe in!”

“I notice,” I said, “that despite your skepticism you still thought enough to whisper.”

“I don’t care. He’s not the magician Purple is. Even Purple never claimed the power to bring down a moon.”

I didn’t answer. The boys continued to pedal, but without conviction. Ssss — the bicycles droned, and the water churned.

The boat was a fragile frame with limp bags hanging above it. The sea was restless, like an endless vat of ink; the water was a greasy black oil, flecked with foam. The shore was dark, and Purple was a motionless silhouette on a blackened hill.

I looked at the moons — two were disks, pink on one side, blue-white on the other. Four were too small to show as disks — and there was something wrong up there, something dreadfully wrong.

he boys felt it too. The ssssss of the bicycles rose frantically. The boat bounced across the water.

I continued to stare, frozen.

One of the little moons, the tail of the crooked cross, was drifting out of alignment.

I looked toward the shore. Did Purple suspect?

He was a doll-sized silhouette capering wildly on a darkened mound. Yes, he must be trying to force it back into the sky. Even now as we watched, he was jumping and crying — but this was Shoogar’s home ground.

I glanced over at him as he leaned out the back of the boat. His teeth gleamed as he watched. My sons pedaled furiously, frantically. Our wake was a churning froth.

The moon grew larger.

At first it was a bright dot against the black sky like the other moons — but moving, always moving — faster than any moon had a right to move! Then it was a clear disk like the major moons, red on one side and blue on the other. It was the largest moon in the sky now.

And still it grew!

It should have been sinking toward Purple — should have been. Instead, it seemed to hover overhead growing steadily.

The blue-white side suddenly darkened, now dimmed to almost black. The moon grew faster, and the red side commenced to dim also.

In the middle of the nearly black globe a yellow eye stared down at us.

And the moon grew huge, huge, and huger still!

“Pedal! Curse you! Faster! Faster!” Shoogar and I were both screaming.

He had miscalculated, the blithering toad — a moon is too big a thing for one man’s revenge! Its weight would destroy a world for one man’s pride!

And then it was drifting down, down like a monstrous soap bubble — Shoogar hadn’t miscalculated — down to where Purple capered on the black-scarred hill.

It stopped over Purple’s head — and directly over Shoogar’s design.

“Well, don’t stop now!” Shoogar shrieked. He practically leapt out of the boat. “Crush him! Crush him! Another two manheights, is that too much to manage? Arrrgh!” For the moon would fall no further. Instead, Purple was rising, rising toward the yellow eye. He disappeared into it.

“It ate him!” Shoogar was flabbergasted. “Why did it do that? It wasn’t in any of the runes.”

“Maybe it was in Purple’s runes,” said Wilville.

“Yes! He’s right,” I said. “I see it now! Your moon and Purple’s mother egg are one and the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s going home in it,” I said. “Home. I’m glad.”

“Purple? In my moon ? He can’t I won’t let him! Boys, turn around!”

“Do it,” I told them. As the boat swung slowly around, Shoogar stamped toward the bow. I followed to reason with him.

“He’s probably going to wait for us,” I said quietly. “He told me he’d make sure we could get home before he left. What are you going to tell him?”

“Tell him? I’ll tell him to get his hairless rump out of my moon! What else would I tell him?”

“And what do you think he will answer?”

“What do you mean ?”

There’s only one thing Purple can say if he wants to keep the moon. He’ll have to say that this is his vehicle; that he brought it down; that you had nothing at all to do with it.”

“But that’s a black lie!”

“Of course it is, Shoogar. But he needs the moon to get home. He’ll have to say it. And as your only witness,” I explained softly, “I’ll have to tell the villagers that Purple denied your claim that you brought down a moon.”

“But it’s a lie, a black outrageous lie!” Shoogar was flabbergasted at the mad magician’s perfidy. “I did too bring it down! And they’ll know it, too! Who will the villagers believe, me or that insane bald magician?!!”

“They will believe their Speaker,” I said.

For a moment Shoogar glared at me. Then he stamped back to the stern to sulk. We were twenty minutes pedaling back to shore.

The great black moon waited for us, shedding yellow light on the sand.

“I never thought he could do it,” Orbur kept repeating as he pulled the boat onto the shore. “Imagine Shoogar bringing down a moon! And he couldn’t even cure baldness.”

“Perhaps he had help,” I said, jumping out of the boat, splashing into ankle-deep water. “Orbur,” I complained. “Couldn’t you have beached it a little higher? Look at my robe.”

“Sorry, Father,” said Orbur. He. gave another tug at his outrigger. “You think Purple brought the moon down?”

“Not by himself. Obviously he had to wait for Shoogar’s spells. But they both wanted the same thing: a falling moon and Purple’s departure. Two such powerful magicians working in concert, is it surprising that they succeeded?”

Wilville came up on the other side of me. There was a splash from behind as Shoogar stamped grumpily from the boat. We turned to look at him.