The spell the Free'l were casting ought to have drawn the moon down from the heavens, made water run uphill, and inverted the order of the seasons. But, since they had got broor's blood instead of newt's, were using alganon instead of vervet juice, and were three days later than the solstice anyhow, nothing happened.
Neeshan watched their antics with a bitter smile.
He'd tried hard with them. The Free'l were really a challenge to evangelical wizardry. They had some natural talent for magic, as was evinced by the frequent attempts they made to perform it, and they were interested in what he told them about its capacities. But they simply wouldn't take the trouble to do it right.
How long had they been stamping around in their circle, anyhow? Since early moonset, and it was now almost dawn. No doubt they would go on stamping all next day, if not interrupted. It was time to call a halt.
Neeshan strode into the middle of the circle. Rhn, the village chief, looked up from his drumming.
"Go away," he said. "You'll spoil the charm."
"What charm? Can't you see by now, Rhn, that it isn't going to work?"
"Of course it will. It just takes time."
"Hell it will. Hell it does. Watch."
Neeshan pushed Rhn to one side and squatted down in the center of the circle. From the pockets of his black robe he produced stylus, dragon's blood, oil of anointing, and salt.
He drew a design on the ground with the stylus, dropped dragon's blood at the corners of the parallelogram, and touched the inner cusps with the oil. Then, sighting carefully at the double red and white sun, which was just coming up, he touched the outer cusps with salt. An intense smoke sprang up.
When the smoke died away, a small lizardlike creature was visible in the parallelogram.
"Tell the demon what you want," Neeshan ordered the Free'l.
The Free'l hesitated. They had few wants, after all, which was one of the things that made teaching them magic difficult.
"Two big dyla melons," one of the younger ones said at last.
"A new andana necklace," said another.
"A tooter like the one you have," said Rhn, who was ambitious.
"Straw for a new roof on my hut," said one of the older females.
"That's enough for now," Neeshan interrupted. "The demon can't bring you a tooter, Rhn—you have to ask another sort of demon for that. The other things he can get. Sammel, to work!"
The lizard in the parallelogram twitched its tail. It disappeared, and returned almost immediately with melons, a handsome necklace, and an enormous heap of straw.
"Can I go now?" it asked.
"Yes." Neeshan turned to the Free'l, who were sharing the dyla melons out around their circle. "You see? That's how it ought to be. You cast a spell. You're careful with it. And it works. Right away."
"When you do it, it works," Rhn answered.
"Magic works when anybody does it. But you have to do it right."
Rhn raised his mud-plastered shoulders in a shrug. "It's such a lot of dreeze, doing it that way. Magic ought to be fun." He walked away, munching on a slice of the melon the demon had brought.
Neeshan stared after him, his eyes hot. "Dreeze" was a Free'l word that referred originally to the nasal drip that accompanied that race's virulent head colds. It had been extended to mean almost anything annoying. The Free'l, who spent much of their time sitting in the rain, had a lot of colds in the head.
Wasn't there anything to be done with these people? Even the simplest spell was too dreezish for them to bother with.
He was getting a headache. He'd better perform a headache-removing spell.
He retired to the hut the Free'l had assigned to him. The spell worked, of course, but it left him feeling soggy and dispirited. He was still standing in the hut, wondering what he should do next, when his big black-and-gold tooter in the corner gave a faint "woof." That meant headquarters wanted to communicate with him.
Neeshan carefully aligned the tooter, which is basically a sort of lens for focusing neural force, with the rising double suns. He moved his couch out into a parallel position and lay down on it. In a minute or two he was deep in a cataleptic trance.
The message from headquarters was long, circuitous, and couched in the elaborate, ego-caressing ceremonial of high magic, but its gist was clear enough.
"Your report received," it boiled down to. "We are glad to hear that you are keeping on with the Free'l. We do not expect you to succeed with them—none of the other magical missionaries we have sent out ever has. But if you should succeed, by any chance, you would get your senior warlock's rating immediately. It would be no exaggeration, in fact, to say that the highest offices in the Brotherhood would be open to you."
Neeshan came out of his trance. His eyes were round with wonder and cupidity. His senior warlock's rating—why, he wasn't due to get that for nearly four more six hundred-and-five-day years. And the highest offices in the Brotherhood—that could mean anything. Anything! He hadn't realized the Brotherhood set such store on converting the Free'l. Well, now, a reward like that was worth going to some trouble for.
Neeshan sat down on his couch, his elbows on his knees, his fists pressed against his forehead, and tried to think.
The Free'l liked magic, but they were lazy. Anything that involved accuracy impressed them as dreezish. And they didn't want anything. That was the biggest difficulty. Magic had nothing to offer them. He had never, Neeshan thought, heard one of the Free'l express a want.
Wait, though. There was Rhn.
He had shown a definite interest in Neeshan's tooter. Something in its intricate, florid black-and-gold curves seemed to fascinate him. True, he hadn't been interested in it for its legitimate uses, which were to extend and develop a magician's spiritual power. He probably thought that having it would give him more prestige and influence among his people. But for one of the Free'l to say "I wish I had that" about anything whatever meant that he could be worked on. Could the tooter be used as a bribe?
Neeshan sighed heavily. Getting a tooter was painful and laborious. A tooter was carefully fitted to an individual magician's personality; in a sense, it was a part of his personality, and if Neeshan let Rhn have his tooter, he would be letting him have a part of himself. But the stakes were enormous.
Neeshan got up from his couch. It had begun to rain, but he didn't want to spend time performing a rain-repelling spell. He wanted to find Rhn.
Rhn was standing at the edge of the swamp, luxuriating in the downpour. The mud had washed from his shoulders, and he was already sniffling. Neeshan came to the point directly.
"I'll give you my tooter," he said, almost choking over the words, "if you'll do a spell—a simple spell, mind you—exactly right."
Rhn hesitated. Neeshan felt an impulse to kick him. Then he said, "Well...."
Neeshan began his instructions. It wouldn't do for him to help Rhn too directly, but he was willing to do everything reasonable. Rhn listened, scratching himself in the armpits and sneezing from time to time.
After Neeshan had been through the directions twice, Rhn stopped him. "No, don't b............