For a moment, there was silence. “What did you say? —”
I opened my mouth to repeat it.
“Never mind. I heard it the first time.” There was a sound of digging in the dirt. A scraping and a crunching. “Damn me. I’m so stupid sometimes —”
“What are you talking about?”
He stood up, a blur in the darkness. He held his device in his hands. “Lant, you are a genius sometimes. And all this time I thought you didn’t understand a thing I was talking about but were only being polite and pretending that you did. Of course there’s a planet in the way,” he stamped his foot. “This one.”
“H’m,” I said, pretending to understand. Who was I to shatter his illusion?
“Don’t you see? My egg hasn’t risen yet. Like the suns, it’s probably on the other side of the world. I will have to wait until it is in sight, before I try calling it again. That’s probably why it didn’t work before.”
When magic doesn’t work, a good magician usually has an explanation ready. Purple was one of the best. I wondered if he understood his own explanation. I asked, “How long will it take before you can call it down?”
“A couple of hours should be all I need. I’ll try calling it every fifteen minutes. Its orbit is only two and a half hours. I couldn’t possibly miss it, no matter how low on the horizon it is.”
I left him mumbling happily to himself, explaining things to no one in particular.
Blue dawn snapped up over the eastern rim, revealing a world even bleaker and drearier than before — if such was possible.
Aching with hunger I stumbled up a black hill to find Shoogar tracing a gigantic pattern in the greasy dust. He was using a brilliant white powder and mixing it with various colored potions as he trickled it into graceful curves. Every so often he stopped to consult a parchment in his hand.
I recognized the skin, with its circles and ellipses looping around a central dot — then I recognized the larger pattern. “Shoogar! What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m casting a spell!”
“And your oath of fealty?”
“You know perfectly well that I swore by the local gods. Different territories imply different gods and different oaths. Now we’re on my home territory. Here, I painted the runes of the duel against Purple. Here, that duel is still in progress!”
“But so much has changed —” I stopped, for he was right. “And you stole his map of the moonpaths.”
“No. He gave it to me, the fool. I’ll use his own magic against him. And his own name — his real name! Of course, he wasn’t worried before. He knew I couldn’t hurt him because his speakerspell hadn’t told his true name. But this time —”
“Maybe he was lying,” I said quickly.
Shoogar gave me a contemptuous look. “Lant,” he explained patiently, “the act of saying ‘my real name is,’ is a consecration spell. Even if he was lying when he said it, the act of saying it made it as good as his real name. And it can be used against him! If this were not so, a magician would have no power at all. People would change names at will to avoid local spells.”
“But why the moonpaths?” I said. Then it dawned on me. “No — you can’t!”
“I can — and I will. I’m going to drop a moon on his head.”
I felt a strong urge to laugh. It was insane. Wildly, incredibly insane.
And he meant every word of it.
“Shoogar,” I said. “A moon did fall once. Do you know what the results were?”
“I have seen the Circle Sea.”
“Circle Sea was once a rich farming area. Now the sea rolls in a circular depression of blasted stone, where nothing grows at all.”
Shoogar shrugged unconcernedly. “This place is already accursed, Lant. What harm can a falling moon do here?”
“It can kill us!” I almost shouted.
“I’ll pick one of the little ones —”
“Even a little one can kill us — they say that the Circle Sea was a ring of molten rock for many years, before the sea stopped boiling and moved in to cover it.”
“Probably, they exaggerate.”
“But —”
“Lant,” he said, “I can do no less. Consider: Purple has insulted the Gods themselves. He has claimed repeatedly that they do not exist at all — and he has had the incredible effrontery to build a flying machine that proves it! In his violations of reason, such as his games with the ballast concept, he mocks the laws that even the gods obey.”
Shoogar paced furiously as he spoke, red-eyed and wild. “He has insulted custom, Lant. He has given names to women and taught them the trades of men! He has interrupted housetree consecrations, and turned housetrees into prickly plants. He has reduced our village life to chaos. Some of our traditional trades no longer exist, while others, like coppersmithery, have swollen monstrously in importance.”
He stopped pacing and looked at me. “He has introduced new concepts to us, Lant. He has taught us evil things that lessen the value of life and increase the importance of things!
“But most of all,” he said. “He has insulted me. He would not teach me to fly, until he needed to fly himself; and he still has not taught me the spells that make electrissy. We depend on his charity for his lightning boxes and airmakers! He has undermined my authority with his spurious cures, so that they trade my spells for his at ten to one!”
“I was bound to him by an oath of servitude, but he never asked for my help in anything. Never, not once. He even threw my sails overboard!”
“No little death spell would retrieve my honor,” Shoogar screamed. “I will bring a moon down upon his head! This one last time I must show my might, before he escapes me forever!”
“It won’t help you,” I said feebly.
“You don’t have to, Lant. I’m sure it was your help last time that yn gvied me up.”
“How long will this take?”
“Not long. I will finish this soon and then I will chant. I will chant until the red sun is high in the west. Then we will move off and wait.”
“I would rather you do something about finding us some food,” I grumbled.
“Forget your stomach for once, Lant. Before the blue sun rises again, Purple will be destroyed.”
Purple tried his calling thing three more times. On the third try the red light flashed. It began winking steadily.
Purple screamed with delight and threw the device joyously into the air. He capered about wildly, singing and dancing. “I’m going home, I’m going home — I’m going home.”
He flung himself on the ground and rolled and kicked. He jumped up with a holler and ran furiously in all directions. Back and forth, in a great circle about me, he pranced and yelled.
At last — it seemed like days — he tired and came gasping up to me. “Lant, I can hardly believe it. It has been so long,” he panted. “But it’s true. It’s happening. My mother egg has heard.”
I glanced nervously at the hill where Shoogar still worked. He was sitting and chanting now. “Uh, how long will it take before your egg gets here, Purple?”
He frowned. “Who cares? It’s coming — that’s all.”
“I care!” I almost screamed.
He gave me a peculiar look. “I hadn’t realized this meant so much to you.”
“Well, it does,” I said, in a slightly quieter tone. “How long will it take?”
“Maybe a day,” he said. “Maybe a little longer. The egg was on standby. It will have to activate itself, come to full power, take bearings, check its systems, plot a course, make an approach — it will take time, Lant. The egg could not possibly be here before blue sunset.”