The Ship Who Won

Chapter Twelve

Keff mounted the platform behind Plenna's chair, and put his hands on the back as the blue-green conveyance lifted into the sky. He watched her weave a shield and throw it around them. Chaumel, his duties as a host done, went inside. The great doors closed with a final-sounding boom! He suspected the silver mage was sealing every nook and cranny against intrusion.

Nothing was visible ahead of them but a faint jagged line on the horizon marking the tops of mountains. Plenna's chair gave off a dim glow that must have been visible for a hundred klicks in every direction. The thought of danger sent frissons up his legs into the root and spine of his body, but he found to his surprise that he wasn't frightened.

His arms were nudged apart and off the chair back, making him jerk forward, afraid of losing his balance. He glanced down. Plennafrey reached for his hands and drew them down toward her breast, turning her face up toward his for a kiss. The light limned her cheekbones and the delicate line of her jaw. Keff thought he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

«Am I always to feel this excited way about you when we are in peril?» Plenna asked impishly. Keff ran his hands caressingly down her smooth shoulders and she shivered with pleasure.

«I hope not,» he said, chuckling at her abandon. «I'd never know if the thrill was danger or love. And I do care about the difference.»

They didn't speak again for the rest of the journey. Keff listened with new appreciation to the night-birds and the quiet sounds of Ozran sighing in its sleep. In the sky around them was an invisible network of power, but it didn't impinge on the beauty or the silence.

The airlock door lifted, allowing Plennafrey to steer her chair smoothly into the main cabin. This time she was able to choose her landing place and parked the conveyance against the far bulkhead beside Keff's exercise equipment. Keff handed Plenna off the chair and swung her roughly into his arms. Their lips met with fiery urgency. Her hands moved up his back and into his hair.

«Keff, can we talk?» Carialle asked in his ear.

«Not now, Cari,» Keff muttered. «Is it an emergency?»

«No. I wanted to discuss my findings of this evening with you.»

«Not now, please.» Keff breathed out loud as Plenna ran her teeth along the tendon at the side of his neck.

Crossly, Carialle gave him a burst of discordant noise in both aural implants. He winced slightly but refused to let her distract him from Plennafrey. His thumbs ran down into the young woman's bodice, brushed over hard nipples and soft, pliant flesh. He bent his head down to them.

Plennafrey moaned softly. «Carialle won't watch us, will she?»

«No,» Keff said reassuringly. He bumped the control with his elbow and the cabin hatch slid aside. «Her domain ends at my door. Pray, lady, enter mine!»

In the circle of his arm, Plenna tiptoed into Keff's cabin.

«It is like you,» she said. «Spare, neat, and very handsome. Oh, books!» She picked one off the small shelf by his bed and lightly fingered the pages. «Of course, I cannot read it.» She glanced up at Keff with a bewitching dimple at the corner of her mouth. Her eye was caught by the works of art hanging on the walls. «Those are very good. Haunting. Who painted them?»

«You're standing in her,» Keff said, grinning. «Carialle is an artist.»

«She is wonderfully talented,» Plenna said, with a decided nod. «But I like you better.»

There was only one answer Keff could give. He kissed her.

At the end of their lovemaking, Keff propped himself up on his elbow to admire Plennafrey. Her unbound hair tumbled around her white shoulders and breast like black lace.

«You're so lovely,» Keff said, toying with a stray strand. «I will feel half my heart wrenched away when I have to go.»

«But why should I not come with you to your world?» Plenna asked, her fingers tracing an intricate design on his forearm.

«Because I'm in space eighty percent of my life,» Keff said, «and when I'm planet-side I'm seldom near civilization. My usual job is first contact with alien species. It's very strange and full of so many dangers I couldn't even describe them all to you. You wouldn't be happy with the way I live.»

«But I am not happy here now,» Plenna said plaintively, clasping her hands together in appeal. «If you take me with you, I would cede my claim of power to Brannel and keep my promise to him. There is nothing here to hold me; no family, no friends. I would be glad to learn about other people and other worlds.»

«Yes, but . . .»

She touched his face, and her eyes searched his. «We suit one another, do we not?»

«Yes, but . . .»

She silenced him with a kiss.

«Then please consider it,» she said, cuddling into his arms. Keff crushed her close to him, lost in her scent, lost in her.

In the early morning hours, Carialle monitored her exterior movement sensors until she heard sounds of life from the marshy area downhill from her bluff. She let down her ramp and sent her two servo robots forth into the pink light of dawn. The boxy units disappeared through the break in the brush and over the edge of the ridge. Carialle, idly noting a half dozen spy-eyes hovering at a hundred meters distant, heard clunks and high-pitched squawking as they reached their goal. In a little while, the servos returned to view, herding before them a pair of globe-frogs. The amphibioids tried to signal their indignation, but had to keep paddling on the inside of their plastic spheres before the boxes bumped into them from behind. With some effort, the servos got their quarry up the ramp. Carialle shut the airlock door and pulled up her ramp behind them.

As the frogs entered the main cabin, Carialle hooked into the IT, calling up all the examples of sign language that she and Keff had managed to record over the last few days.

«Now, little friends,» she said, «we're going to see if that sign you made was a fluke or not.» She manifested the picture of another frog on the side screen at their level, like them but with enough differences of color and configuration to make sure they knew it was a stranger.

«Lets chat.»

A few hours later, Keff's door opened, and the brawn emerged, yawning, wearing only uniform pants. Plenna, wrapped in his bathrobe, followed him, trailing a lazy finger down his neck.

«Good morning, young lovers,» Carialle said brightly.

«We have guests.»

Red lights chased around the walls and formed an arrow pointing down at the two globe-frogs huddled together in the corner nearest the airlock corridor. Keff goggled.

«But how did they get past Plenna's barrier? She told me she warded the area. Any intrusion should have set off an alarm.»

«We're protected against magic only,» Plenna said, eyeing the marsh creatures with distaste. «Not vermin.»

«They aren't vermin and they're aware you don't like them,» Carialle said indignantly. «We've been exchanging compliments.»

On her main screen she displayed an expanded image of the small creatures staring at a strange-looking frog on the wall.

«That's my computer-generated envoy,» Carialle explained. «Now, watch,» The image made a gesture, to which the native creatures responded with a similar movement. As the complexity and number of signs increased, the frogs became excited, bumping into one another to respond to their imaginary host.

Keff watched the data string, glancing once in a while at the frogs.

«Monkey see monkey do,» Keff said, shaking his head.

«They observed the Ozran's making signs and copied them. This little performance is without meaning.»

«Beasts Blatisant,» Carialle countered. Keff grimaced. «Keff, I didn't make a subjective judgment on the frequency and meaning of these symbols. Check IT's function log. Read the vocabulary list.»

When Keff lifted his eyes from the small readout screen, they were shining.

«Who'd have thought it?» he said. «Cari, all praise to your sharp wits and powers of observation.»

Plennafrey had been listening carefully to the IT box's translation of Carialle's and Keff's conversation. She pointed to the frogs.

«Do you mean they can talk?» she asked.

«More than that,» Keff said. «They may be the founders of your civilization.» Plenna's jaw dropped open, and she stared at the two amphibioids. «Your belt buckle—may I borrow it?»

The belt flew out of Keff's room and smacked into Plenna's hands. She started to extend it to him, then withdrew it. «What for?» she asked.

«To see if they know what to do with it. Er, take it off the belt. Its too heavy for them.» Obligingly, Plenna detached the buckle and handed it to him.

Very slowly, Keff walked to where the frogs stood. They waited passively within their globes, kicking occasionally at the water to maintain their positions and watching him with their beady black eyes. Keff hunkered down and held out the buckle.

Wearing a startled expression on its peaky face, the larger frog met his eyes. Immediately, the case opened, splitting into two halves, splashing water on the cabin floor, and the frog stretched out for the power item. Its skinny wrist terminated in a long, sensitively fingered hand which outspread was as large as Plennafrey's. The ends of the digits slid into the five apertures. There was a nearly audible click.

«It is connected to the Core of Ozran,» Plennafrey said softly.

The water that had been inside the plastic ball gathered around the frogs body as if still held in place by the shell. Thus sheltered, the amphibioid rose on surprisingly long, skinny legs and made a tour of the cabin. Its small face was alive with wonder. Keff directed it to the astrogation tank showing the position of Ozran and its sun. The frog looked intelligently into the three-dimensional star map, and studied the surrounding control panels and keyboards. Then it returned to Keff.

«Help us,» it signaled.

«You win, lady dear. Here're your Ancient Ones,» Keff said, turning to Plennafrey with a flourish. «They were among you all the time.» The young magiwoman swallowed.

«I . . .» She seemed to have trouble getting the words out. «I do not think that I can respect frogs.»

Chaumel was more philosophical when confronted by the facts.

«I refuse to be surprised,» he said, shaking his head. «All in the space of a day or so, my whole life is thrown into confusion. The fur-faces turn out to be our long-lost brothers and we have cousins in plenty among the stars ready to search us out. Some of them live inside boxes. Why should we not discover that the Ancient Ones exist under our noses in the swamps?»

«Try talking to one of them,» Keff urged him. Doubtfully, Chaumel looked at the three globe-frogs Keff and Plenna had brought to his stronghold. They were rolling around the great room, signing furiously to one another over an artifact or a piece of furniture.

«Well . . .» Chaumel said, uneasily.

«Go on,» Keff said. With a few waves of his hands, Keff got their attention and signed to them to return to him. Once or twice the «courtiers» turned all the way over, trying to negotiate over the slick floor, but the biggest maintained admirable control of his sphere.

After the initial attempts at communication, Keff had let Carialle's two subjects go, asking them to send back one of their leaders. Within an hour, a larger frog speckled with yellow to show its great age had come up the ramp, rolling inside a battered case. A pair of smaller, younger frogs, guards or attendants, hurtled up behind it. The first amphibioid rolled directly over to Plenna and demanded her belt buckle. For his imperious manner as well as his great size, Keff and Carialle had dubbed him the Frog Prince. From the two symbols with which he designated his name, Keff decided he was called something like Tall Eyebrow.

«I'm sure it loses something in the translation,» he explained.

Chaumel knelt and made a few signs of polite greeting. He was unsure of himself at first, but grew enthusiastic when his courtesies were returned and expanded upon.

«These are not trained creatures,» he said with delight. «It really understands me.»

«Tall just said the same thing about you,» Keff noted, amused.

«It has feet. What are the globes for?»

«Ozran used to have much higher humidity,» Keff said. «The frogs' skins are delicate. The shells protect them from the dry air.»

«We cannot tell the other mages about them until we have negotiated the 'cease-fire,'» Chaumel told him seriously. «Already Nokias regrets that he said he will cooperate. He suspects Ferngal of sending those spy-eyes the other night and I have no reason to doubt him. If we present them with speaking animals who need bubbles to live, they will think we are mad, and the whole accord will fall apart.»

Neither Keff nor Carialle, listening through the implant contacts, argued the point.

«It's too important to get them to stop using power,» Keff said. «It goes against my better judgment, but it'll help the frogs' case if we don't try to make the mages believe too many impossible things before breakfast.»

During the successive weeks, the brawn and the two magifolk traveled to each mage's stronghold to convince him or her to join with them in the cause of environmental survival.

Keff spent his free time, such as remained of it, divided between Plennafrey in the evenings and the frogs in the early morning. He had to learn another whole new language, but he had never been so happy. His linguistic skills were getting a good, solid workout. Carialle's memory banks began to fill with holos of gestures with different meanings and implications.

Since the mages had always used the signs as sacred or magical communion, Keff had to begin all over again with the frogs on basic language principles. The mages had employed only a small quantity of gestures that had been gleaned from the Old Ones in their everyday lives, giving him a very limited working vocabulary. Chaumel knew only a few hundred signs, Plenna a few dozen. Keff used those to build toward scientific understanding.

Mathematical principles were easy. These frogs were the five-hundredth generation since the life-form came to this world. That verified what Keff had been coming to believe, that none of the three dominant life-forms who occupied Ozran were native to it.

Knowledge of their past had been handed down by rote through the generations. The frogs had manufactured the life-support bubbles with the aid of the one single item of power that remained to them. The other devices had all been borrowed, and then stolen by the Flat Ones, by whom Keff understood them to mean the Old Ones.

For a change, IT was working as well as he had always hoped it would. An optical monitor fed the frogs' gestures into the computer, and the voice of IT repeated the meaning into Keff's implant and on a small speaker for the benefit of the others. Keff worked out a simple code for body language that IT used to transcribe the replies he spoke out loud. Having to act out his sentence after he said it made the going slow, but in no time he picked up more and more of the physical language so he could use it to converse directly.

He was however surprised at how few frogs were willing to come forward to meet with the Ozrans and help bridge the language barrier. The Frog Prince assured him it was nothing personal; a matter of safety. After so many years, they found it difficult to trust any of the Big Folk. Keff understood perfectly what he meant. He was careful never to allude to the frogs when on any of his many visits to the mages' strongholds.

On his knees at the end of another dusty row of roots, Brannel observed Keff and Plennafrey returning to the silver ship. Scraping away at the base of a wilted plant as long as he dared, he waited for Keff to keep Carialle's promise and come get him. It seemed funny they couldn't see him, but perhaps they hadn't looked his way when he was standing up. He knew he could go up to the door and be admitted, but he was reluctant to do so until asked as they seemed disinterested in asking him. Weighing the question of waiting or not waiting, he pushed his gathering basket into the next row and started digging through the clay-thick soil for more of the woody vegetables.

His thoughts were driven away by a stunning blow to the side of the head. Brannel fell to the earth in surprise.

Alteis stood over him, waving a clump of roots from his basket, spraying dirt all over the place. Some of it was on Brannel's head. A female with light brown fur stood beside the old leader, her eyes flashing angrily.

«You're in the wrong row, Brannel!» Alteis exclaimed. «This is Gonna's row. You should go that way.» He pointed to the right and waited while Brannel picked up his gear and moved.

«Your mind in the mountains?» Fralim chortled from his position across the field. What traces of long-term memory the others retained came from rote and repetition, and they had been witness to Brannel's peculiarities and ambitions since he was small. Everyone but his mother scorned the young male's hopes. «We saw the Mage Keff and the Magess Plennafrey fly into the tower. You planning to set yourself up with the mages?» He cackled.

Another worker joined in with the same joke he had been using for twenty years. «Gonna shave your face and call yourself Mage, Brannel?»

Brannel was stung. «If I do, I'll show you what power the overlords wield, Mogag,» he said in a voice like a growl. Alteis walked up and slapped him in the head again.

«Work!» the leader said. «The roots won't pull themselves.»

The others jeered. Brannel worked by himself until the sun was just a fingertips width above the mountain rim at the edge of the valley. Any time, food would arrive, and he would be able to sneak away. Perhaps, if no one was looking, he might go now.

It was his bad luck that Alteis and his strapping son were almost behind him. Fralim yanked him back by the collar and seat of his garment from the edge of the field, and plunked him sprawling into his half-worked row.

«Stay away from that tower,» Alteis ordered him. «You have duties to your own folk.»

Moments crept by like years. Brannel, fuming, finished his day's chores with the least possible grace. As soon as the magess kept her promise to teach him, he would never return to this place full of stupid people. He would study all day, and work great works of magic, like the ancestors and the Old Ones.

At the end of the day, he hung back from the crowd hurrying toward the newly materialized food. With Alteis busy doing something else, there was no one watching one discontented worker. Brannel sneaked away through the long shadows on the field and hurried up to the ship.

As he reached the tall door, it slid upward to disgorge Magess Plennafrey and Keff on her floating chair.

«Oh, Brannel!» Mage Keff said, surprised. «I'm glad you came up. I am sorry, but we've got to run now. Carialle will look after you, all right?» Before Brannel could tell him that nothing was «all right,» the chair was already wafting them away. «See you later!» Keff called.

Brannel watched them ascend into the sky, then made his way toward the heart of the tower.

Inside, Magess Carialle was doing something with a trio of marsh creatures.

«Oh, Brannel,» she said, in an unconscious echo of Keff. «Welcome. Have you eaten yet?» A meal was bubbling in the small doorway even before he had stopped shaking his head. «I promised you a peep at the tapes. Will you sit down in the big chair? I've got to keep doing another job at the same time, but I can handle many tasks at once.»

Keff's big chair turned toward him and, at that direct invitation, Brannel came forward, only a little uneasy to be alone in the great silver cylinder without any other living beings. Marsh creatures didn't count, he thought, as he ate his dinner, and he wasn't sure what Carialle was.

Though she didn't seem to eat, in deference to his appetite, Magess Carialle had prepared for him a meal twice the size of the one he had eaten last time. Each dish was satisfying and most delicious. With every bite he liked the thought less and less of returning to raw roots and grains. He was nearly finished eating when the big picture before him lit up and he found himself looking into the weird green face of an Old One. He stopped with a half-chewed mouthful.

«Here's the first of the tapes, starting at the point we left off last time,» Carialle's voice said.

«Ah,» Brannel said, recovering his wits.

He couldn't not watch for he was fascinated and her voice kept supplying translations in his tongue. Brannel asked her the occasional question. She answered, but without offering as much of her attention as she gave one of Keff's inquiries. He glanced back over his shoulder, wondering why she had made a picture of the marsh creatures, and what they found so interesting in it.

». . . And that's the last of the tapes,» Carialle said, sometime later. «What a fine resource to have turn up.»

«What am I to do now?» Brannel asked, looking around him. Carialle's picture appeared on the wall beside him. The lady smiled.

«You've done so much for us—and for Ozran, by telling us about farming,» she said. «All we can do now is wait to see what the mages think of our evidence.»

«I would tell the mages all I know,» Brannel said hopefully. «It would help convince them to farm better.» The flat magess shook her head.

«Thank you, Brannel. Not yet. It would be better if you didn't get involved—less dangerous for you,» she said. «Now, I don't have any tasks that need doing. Why don't you go home and sleep? I'm sure Keff will find you tomorrow, or the next day. As soon as he has any definite news to tell you.»

Brannel went away, but Keff didn't come.

The worker spent the next day, and the next, waiting for Keff to stop off to see him between his hurried journeys to the far reaches of Ozran on the magess's chair. He never glanced at Brannel. In spite of his promise, he had forgotten the worker existed. He had forgotten their growing friendship.

Worse yet, Brannel now had a head full of information about the ancestors and the Old Ones, and what good did it do him? Nothing to do with teaching him to become a mage, or getting him better food to eat. In time his disappointment grew into a towering rage. How dare the strangers build up his hopes and leave him to rot like one of the despised roots of the field! How dare they make him a promise, knowing he never forgot anything, and then pretend it had never been spoken? Brannel swore to himself that he would never trust a mage again.

Ferngal's stronghold stood alone on a high, dentate mountain peak, set apart by diverging river branches from the rest of the eastern range. The obsidian-dark stone of its walls offered little of the open hospitality of Chaumel's home. In the dark, relatively low-ceilinged great hall, Keff had the uncomfortable feeling the walls were closing in on him. Brown-robed Lacia and a yellow-coated mage sat with Ferngal as Chaumel gave his by now familiar talk on preserving and restoring the natural balances of Ozran.

Chaumel, in his bright robes, seemed like a living gasflame as he hovered behind Carialle's illusions. He appealed to each of his listeners in turn, clearly disliking talking to more than one mage at a time. He had voiced a caution to Keff and Plenna before they had arrived.

«In a group, there is more chance of dissension. Careful manipulation will be required and I do not know if I am equal to it.»

Keff had felt a chill. «If you can't do it, we're in trouble,» he had said. «But we need to speed up the process. The power blackouts are becoming more frequent. I don't know how long you have until there's a complete failure.»

«If that happens,» Chaumel told his audience, «then mages will be trapped in the mountains with no means of rescue at hand. Food distribution will end, causing starvation in many areas. We have made the fur-faces dependent upon our system. We cannot fail them, or ourselves.»

Early in the discussion, Lacia had announced that she viewed the whole concept of the Core of Ozran as science to be sacrilege. She frowned at Chaumel whenever the silver magiman made eye contact with her. The mage in yellow robes, an older man named Whilashen, said little and sat through Chaumel's speech pinching his lower lip between thumb and forefinger.

«I do not like this idea of relying more upon the servant class,» Ferngal said. «They are mentally limited.»

«With respect. High Mage,» Keff said, «how would you know? Chaumel tells me that even your house servants are given a low dose of the docility drug in their food. I have done tests on the workers in the late Mage Klemay's province and can show you the results. They are of the same racial stock as you, and their capabilities are the same. All they need is more nurturing and education, and of course for you to stop the ritual mutilation and cranial mutations. In the next generation all the children will return to normal human appearance, with the possible exception of retaining the hirsutism. That may need to be bred out.»

«Tosh!» Ferngal's ruddy face suffused further.

«I can't wait to see what happens when we tell him about the Frog Prince,» Carialle said through the implants. «He'll have apoplexy.»

Keff leaned forward, his hands outstretched, making an appeal. «I can explain the scientific process and show you proof you'll understand.»

«Proof you manufacture proves nothing,» Ferngal said. «Illusions, that's all, like these pictures.»

«But Nokias said . . .» Plennafrey began. Chaumel made one attempt to silence her, but it was too late. «Nokias—»

Ferngal cut her off at once. «You've talked to Nokias? You spoke to him before you came to me?» The black magiman s nostrils flared. «Have you no respect for protocol?»

«He is my liege,» Plenna said with quiet dignity. «I was required. You would demand the same from any of the mages of the East.»

«Well . . . that is true.»

«Will you not consider what we have said?» she pleaded.

«No, I won't give up power and you can stuff your arguments about making the peasants smarter in a place where a magic item won't fit. You're out of your mind asking something like that. And if Nokias has softened enough to say yes, he will regret it.» Ferngal showed his teeth in a vicious grin. «I'll soon add the South to my domain. Chaumel, you ought to know better.»

«High Mage, sometimes truth must overcome even common sense.»

Abruptly, Ferngal lost interest in them.

«Go,» he said, tossing a deceptively casual gesture toward the door behind him. «Go now before I lose my temper.»

«Heretics!» screamed Lacia.

With what dignity he could muster, Chaumel led the small procession around Ferngal toward the doors. Keff gathered up the holo-table and opened his stride to catch up without running.

He heard a voice whisper very close to his ear. Not Carialle's: a man's.

«Some of us have honor,» the voice said. «Tell your master to contact me later.» Startled, Keff turned around. Whilashen nodded to him, his eyes intent.

In spite of Chaumel's pleas for confidentiality, word began to spread to the other mages before he had a chance to speak with them in person. Rumors began to spread that Chaumel and an unknown army of mages wanted to take over the rest by destroying their connection to the Core of Ozran. Chaumel spent a good deal of time on what Keff called «damage control,» scotching the gossip, and reassuring the panic-stricken magifolk that he was not planning an Ozran-wide coup.

«No one will be compelled to give up all power,» Chaumel said, trying to calm an angry Zolaika. He sat in her study in a hovering chair with his head at the level of her knees to show respect. Keff and Plennafrey stood on the floor meters below them, silent and watching. «Each mage needs to be allowed free will in such an important matter. But I think you see, Zolaika, and everyone will see in the end, that inevitably we must be more judicious in our use of power. You, in your great wisdom, will have seen that the Core of Ozran is not infinite in its gifts.»

Zolaika was guarded. «Oh, I see the truth of what you say, Chaumel, but so far, you have offered us no proof! Pictures, what are they? I make pretty illusions like those for my grandchildren.»

«We are working on gathering solid proof,» Chaumel said, «proof that will convince everyone that what we say about the Core of Ozran is the truth. But, in the meantime, it is necessary to soften the coming blow, don't you think?»

«I'm an old woman,» Zolaika snapped. «I don't want words to 'soften the coming blow.' I want facts. I'm not blind or senile. I will be convinced by evidence.» Her eyes lost their hard edge for a moment, and Keff fancied he saw a twinkle there for a moment. «You have never lied to me, Chaumel. You say a thousand words where one will do, but you are not a liar, nor an imaginative man. If you're convinced, so will I be. But bring proof!»

As they flew off Zolaika's balcony, Chaumel sat bolt upright in his chariot, a smug expression on his face. «That was most satisfactory.»

«It was? She didn't say she'd support us,» Keff said.

«But she believes us. Everyone respects her, even the ones who are spelling for her position.» Chaumel made a cursory pass with one hand in the air to show what he meant. «Her belief in us will carry weight. Whether or not she actually says she supports us, she does by not saying she doesn't.»

«There speaks a diplomat,» Carialle said. «He makes pure black and white print into one of those awful moire paintings. Progress report: out of some two hundred and seventeen mages with multiple power items, I now have one hundred fifty-two frequency signatures. It is now theoretically possible for me to selectively intercept and deaden power emissions in each of those items.»

«Good going. We might need it,» Keff said, «but I hope not.»

With Zolaika four of the high mages had given tentative agreement to stand down power at the risk of losing it, but meetings with some of the lesser magifolk had not gone well. Potria had heard the first few sentences of Chaumel's discourse and driven them out of her home with a miniature dust storm. Harvel, the next most junior mage above Plenna, had accused her of trying to climb the social ladder over his head. When Chaumel explained that their traditional structure for promotion was a perversion of the ancestors' system, the insulted Harvel had done his best to kill all of them with a bombardment of lightning. Carialle turned off his two magic items, a rod and a ring, and left him to stew as the others effected a hurried withdrawal. «I think that among the remaining mages we can concentrate on the potential troublemakers,» Chaumel said as they materialized above his balcony. «Most of the others will not become involved. A hundred of them barely use their spells except to fetch and carry household items, or to power their flying chairs.»

«They'll miss it the most,» Keff said, «but at least they aren't the conspicuous consumers.»

«Oh, well put!» Chaumel said, chortling, as he docketed the phrase. «The 'conspicuous consumers' have been making us do most of the work for them. I laughed when Howet said he'd agree if we talked to his farm workers for him—Verni, what are you doing out here?»

Below them, clinging to the parapet of Chaumel's landing pad, was his chief servant. As soon as the magiman angled in to touch down, Verni ran toward him, wringing his hands.

«Master, High Mage Nokias is here,» he whispered as Chaumel rose from the chariot. «He is in the hall of antiquities. He has warded the ways in and out. I have been trapped out here for hours.»

«Nokias?» Chaumel said, sharing a puzzled glance with Keff and Plennafrey. «What does he want here? And warded?»

«Yes, master,» the servant said, winding his hands in his apron. «None of us can pass in or out until he lets down the barriers.»

«How strange. What can frighten a high mage?»

Chaumel strode through the great hall. The servant, Keff, and Plennafrey hurried after him, having to scoot to avoid the tall glass doors closing on their heels.

The silver mage stood back a pace from the second set of doors and felt the air cautiously. Then he moved forward and pounded with the end of his wand.

«High Mage!» he shouted. «It is Chaumel. Open the door! I have warded the outside ways.»

The door opened slightly, only wide enough for a human body to pass through. Chaumel beckoned to the others and slipped in. Keff let Plenna go first, then followed with the servant. No one was behind the door. It snapped shut as soon as they were all inside.

Nokias waited halfway down the hall, seated on the old hover-chair, his hands positioned and ready to activate his bracelet amulet. Even at a distance, Keff could see the taut skin around the mage's eyes.

«Old friend,» Chaumel said, coming forward with his hands open and relaxed. «Why the secrecy?»

«I had to be discreet,» Nokias said. «There's been an attempt on me at my citadel already. You've stirred up a fierce gale among the other mages, Chaumel. Many of them want your head. They're upset about your threats of destruction. Most of the others don't believe your data—they do not want to, that is all. I came to tell you that I cannot consider giving up my power. Not now.»

«Not now?» Keff echoed. «But you see the reasoning behind it. What's changed?»

«I do see the reasoning,» the Mage of the South said, «but there's revolt brewing in my farm caverns. I can't let go with violence threatened. People will die. The harvest will be ruined.»

«What has happened?» Chaumel asked.

Nokias clenched his big hands. «I have been speaking to village after village of my workers. Oh, many of them were not sure what I meant by my promises of freedom, but I saw sparks of intelligence there. The difficulties began only a day or so ago. My house servants report that, among the peasantry, there is fear and anger. They cry that they will not cooperate. It is stirring up the others. If I lose my ability to govern, there will be riots.»

«It's only their fear of the unknown,» Chaumel said smoothly. «They should rejoice in what you're offering them, the first high mage in twenty generations to change the way things are to the way things might be.»

«They cannot understand abstract thinking,» Nokias corrected him sternly.

«I will go and talk to them on your behalf, Nokias,» Chaumel said. «I've done so for Zolaika. Its only right I should also do it for you.»

«I would be grateful,» Nokias said. «But I will not appear in person.»

«You don't need to,» Chaumel assured him. «I and my friends here will take care of it.»

The farm village looked like any of the others Keff had seen, except that it also boasted an elderly but well cared for orchard as well as the usual fields of crops. A few lonely late fruit clung to the uppermost branches of the trees nearest the home cavern. Nokias's farmers were harvesting the next row's yield.

The Noble Primitives glanced warily at the three «magifolk» when they arrived, then went about their business with their heads averted, carefully keeping from making eye contact with them.

«Surely they are wondering what brings three mages here,» Keff said.

«They dare not ask,» Plenna said. «It isn't their place.»

Chaumel looked at the sun above the horizon. «It's close enough to the end of the working day.»

He flung his hands over his head and the air around him filled with lights of blue and red. Like will-o'-the-wisps the sparks scattered, surrounding the farmers, dancing at them to make them climb down from the trees, gathering them toward the three waiting by the cavern entrance. Keff, flanking Chaumel on the left, watched it all with the admiration due a consummate showman. Plennafrey stood demure and proud on Chaumel's right.

«Good friends!» Chaumel called out to them when the whole village was assembled. «I have news for you from your overlord Nokias!»

In slow, majestic phrases, Chaumel outlined the events to come when the workers would have greater capacity to think and to do. «You look forward to something unimaginable by your parents and grandparents. You workers will have greater scope than any since the ancestors came to Ozran.»

«Uh-oh,» Carialle said to Keff. «Someone out there is not at all happy to see you. I'm noting heightened blood pressure and heartbeat in someone in the crowd. Give me a sweep view and I'll try to spot them.»

Not knowing quite what he was looking for, Keff gazed slowly around at the crowd. The children were openmouthed, as usual, to be in the presence of one of the mighty overlords. Most of the older folk still refused to look up at Chaumel. It was the younger ones who were sneaking glances, and in a couple of cases, staring openly at them the way Brannel had.

». . . Nokias has sent me, Chaumel the Silver, to announce to you that you shall be given greater freedoms than ever in your lifetime!» Chaumel said, sweeping his sleeves up around his head. «We the mages will be more open to you on matters of education and responsibility. On your part, you must continue to do your duty to the magefolk, as your tasks serve all Ozran. These are the last harvests of the season. It is vital to get them in so you will not be hungry in the winter. In the spring, a new world order is coming, and it is for your benefit that changes will be taking place. Embrace them! Rejoice!»

Chaumel waved his arms and the illusion of a flock of small bluebirds fluttered up behind him. The audience gasped.

«No! It's a lie!» A deep male voice echoed over the plainlands. When everyone whirled right and left to see who was talking, a rock came whistling over the heads of the crowd toward Plenna.

With lightning-fast gestures, the magiwoman warded herself. The rock struck an invisible shield and fell to the ground with a heavy thud. Keff saw the color drain from her shocked face. She was controlling herself to keep from crying. Keff pushed in front of the two magifolk and glared at the villagers. Some of them had recoiled in terror, wondering what punishment was in store for them, harboring an assailant. The male who had thrown the stone stood at the back, glaring and fists clenched. Keff hurtled through the crowd after him.

The farmer was no match for the honed body of the spacer. Before the panicked worker could do more than turn away and take a couple of steps, Keff cannoned into him. He knocked the male flat with a body blow. The worker struggled, yelling, but Keff shoved a knee into his spine and bent his arms up behind his head.

«What do you want done with him, Chaumel?» Keff called out in the linga esoterka.

«Bring him here.»

Using the male's joined wrists as a handle, Keff hauled upward. To avoid having his wrists break, the rest of the worker followed. Keff trotted him along the path that magically opened up among the rest of the workers.

«Who is in charge of this man?» Chaumel asked. A timid graybeard came forward and bowed deeply. «Even if there is to be change, respect toward one another must still be observed. Give him some extra work to do, to soak up this superfluous energy.»

«Is this what the new world order will be like? If we allow the workers more freedom of thought, there will be no safe place for me to go,» Plenna said to Keff in an undertone with a catch in her voice. He put an arm around her.

«We'd better get out of here,» Keff said under his breath to Chaumel.

«It would have been better if you'd pretended nothing had happened,» Chaumel said over Keff's shoulder. «We are supposed to be above such petty attacks. But never mind. Follow me.» Though he was obviously shaken, too, the magiman negotiated a calm and impressive departure. The three of them flew hastily away from the village.

«I don't understand it,» Chaumel said, when they were a hundred meters over the plain. «In every other village, they've been delighted with the idea of learning and being free. Could they enjoy being stupid? No, no,» he chided himself.

Keff sighed. «I'm beginning to think I put my hand into a hornets nest, Cari,» he said under his breath. «Have I done wrong trying to set things straight here?»

«Not at all, Sir Galahad,» Carialle reassured him. «Think of the frogs and the power blackouts. Not everyone will be delighted with global change, but never lose sight of the facts. The imbalances of power here, both social and physical, could prove fatal to Ozran. You're doing the right thing, whether or not anyone else thinks so.»

When they returned to Chaumel's residence, another visitor awaited them. Ferngal, with a mighty entourage of lesser eastern Mages, did not even trouble to wait inside.

The underlings covered the landing pad with wardings and minor spells of protection like a presidential security force. Chaumel picked his way carefully toward his own landing strip, passing a hand before him to make sure it wasn't booby-trapped. He set down lightly and approached the black chariot on foot.

«High Mage Ferngal! How nice to see you so soon,» Chaumel said, arms wide with welcome. «Come in. Allow me to offer you my hospitality.»

Ferngal was in no mood for chitchat. He cut off Chaumel's compliments with an angry sweep of his hand.

«How dare you go spreading sedition among my workers? You dare to preach your nonsense in my farmsteads? You have overreached yourself.»

«High Mage, I have not been speaking to your farmers. That is for you to do, or not, as you choose,» Chaumel said, puzzled. «I would not presume upon your territories.»

«Oh, no. It could only be you. You will cease this nonsense about the Core of Ozran at once, or it will be at your peril.»

«It is not nonsense, High Mage,» Chaumel said mildly but with steel apparent in his tone. «I tell you these things for your sake, not mine.»

Ferngal leveled an angry finger at Chaumel's nose. «If this is a petty attempt to gain power, you will pay heavily for your deceit,» he said. «I hold domain over the East, and your stronghold falls within those boundaries. I order you to cease spreading your lies.»

«I am not lying,» Chaumel said. «And I cannot cease.»

«Then so be it,» the black-clad mage snarled.

He and his people lifted off from the balcony, and vanished. Chaumel shook his head, and turned toward Keff and Plenna with a «what can you do?» expression.

«Heads up, Keff!» Carialle said. «Power surge building in your general area—a heavy one. Focusing . . . building . . . Watch out!»

«Carialle says someone is sending a huge burst of power toward us!» Keff shouted.

«An attack,» shrieked Plenna. The three of them converged in the center of the balcony. The magiwoman and Chaumel threw their hands up over their heads. A rose-colored shell formed around them like a gigantic soap bubble only a split second before the storm broke.

It was no ordinary storm. Their shield was assailed by forked staves of multicolored lightning and sheets of flaming rain. Hand-sized explosions rocked them, setting off clouds of smoke and shooting jagged debris against the shell. Torrents of clear acid and flame-red lava flowed down the edges and sank into the floor, the ruin separated from their feet only by a fingertip's width.

The deafening noises stopped abruptly. When the smoke cleared, Chaumel waited a moment before dissolving the bubble. He let it pop silently on the air and took a step forward. Part of the floor rocked under his feet. Keff grabbed him. Two paces beyond the place they were standing, the end of the balcony was gone, ripped away by the magical storm as if a giant had taken a bite out of it. The pieces were still crashing with dull echoes into the ravine far below. Plenna mounted her chair to go look. She returned, shaking her head.

«It is . . .» Chaumel began, and had to stop to clear his throat. «It is considered ill-mannered to notice when someone else is building a spell, especially if that person is of higher rank than oneself. I believe it has now become a matter of life and death for us to behave in an ill-mannered fashion.»

«Ferngal,» Carialle said. «Using two power objects at once. I have both their frequencies logged.» Keff passed along the information.

«Sedition, he said.» Chaumel was confused. He appealed to Keff. «What sedition was Ferngal talking about? I have talked to no one in his area. I would not.»

«Then someone else is talking to them,» Keff said. «Nokias mentioned something similar. We'd better investigate.»

A quick aerial reconnaissance of the two farmsteads from which Nokias and Ferngal's complaints came revealed that they were very close together, suggesting that whatever set off the riots was somewhere in the area, and on foot, not aloft. Chaumel asked help from a few of the mages who had tentatively given their promise to cooperate. They sent out spy-eyes to all the surrounding villages, looking for anything that seemed threatening.

Nothing appeared during the next day or so. On the third day, a light green spy-eye found Chaumel as he was leaving Carialle's ship.

«Here's your trouble,» Kiyottal's mental voice announced.

Plennafrey, sensing the arrival of an eye-sphere from inside the ship, interrupted their attempts at conversation with the Frog Prince to run outside. Keff followed her.

«We've located the troublemaker,» Chaumel said, after communing silently with the sphere. «It's your four-finger. He's making speeches.»

«Brannel?» Keff said. He glanced out at the farm fields. Wielding heavy forks, the workers were turning over empty rows of earth and bedding them down with straw. He searched their ranks and turned back to Chaumel.

«You're right. I forgot all about him. He's gone.»

«Follow me,» Kiyottal's voice said. «I have also alerted Ferngal. Nokias is coming, too. It's in his territory.»

In the center of the clearing in a southern farm village, Brannel raised his arms for silence. The workers, who had long, pack beast-like faces, were gently worried about this skinny, dirty stranger who had arrived at their farmstead with an exhausted dray beast at his heels.

«I tell you the mages are weakening!» Brannel cried. «They are not all-powerful. If we have an uprising, every worker together, they will come out to punish us, but they will all fall to the ground helpless!»

«You are mad,» a female farmer said, curling back her broad lips in a sneer.

«Why would we want to overthrow the mages?» one of the males asked him. «We have enough to eat.»

«But you cannot think for yourselves,» Brannel said. He was tired. He had given the same speech at another farmstead only days before, and once a few days before that, with the same stupid faces and the same stupid questions. If not for the flame of revenge that burned within him, the thought of journeying all over Ozran would have daunted him into returning to Alteis. «You do the same things every day of your lives, every year of your lives!»

«Yes? So? What else should we do?» Most of the listeners were more inclined to heckle, but Brannel thought he saw the gleam of comprehension on the faces of a few.

«Change is coming, but it won't be for our sakes—only the mages'. If you want things to change for you, don't eat the mage food. Don't eat it tonight, not tomorrow, not any day. Keep roots from your harvest, and eat them. You will remember,» Brannel insisted, pointing to his temples with both hands. «Tomorrow you will see. It will be like nothing you have ever experienced in your life. You will remember. You need to trust me only for one night! Then you will see for yourselves. You grow the food! You have a right to it! We can get rid of the magefolk. On the first day of the next planting when the sun is highest, throw down your tools and refuse to work.»

The whirring sound in the air distracted most of the workers, who looked up, then threw themselves flat on the ground. Brannel and his few converts remained standing, staring up at the four chariots descending upon them. The black and gold chairs touched down first.

«Kill him,» Ferngal said heatedly, pointing at the sheep-faced male, «or I will do so myself. His people have been without an overlord too long. They are getting above themselves.»

«No,» Keff said. He leaped off Plenna's chair, putting himself between the high mage and the peasant. «Don't touch him. Brannel, what are you doing?»

At first Brannel remained mulishly silent, then words burst out of him in a torrent of wounded feelings.

«You promised me, and I risked myself, and Chaumel knocked me out, and you threw me out again with nothing. Nothing!» Brannel spat. «I am as I was before, only worse. The others made fun of me. Why didn't you keep your promise?»

Keff held up his hands. «I promised I'd do what I could for you. Amulets aren't easy to find, you know, and the power is going to end soon anyway. Do you want to fill your head with useless knowledge?»

«Yes! To know is to understand one's life.»

Ferngal spat. «If you're going to waste my time by talking nonsense with a servant, I'm away. Just make certain he does not come back to my domain. Never!» The black chair disappeared toward the clouds. Nokias, shaking his head, went off in the opposite direction. The workers, freed from their thrall by the departure of the high mages, went on to eat their supper, which had just appeared in the square of stones. Brannel started away from Keff to divert the villagers. The brawn grabbed him by the arm.

«Don't interfere, Brannel. I won't be able to stop Ferngal next time. Look, man, I guaranteed only that Plenna would teach you.»

Brannel was unsatisfied. «Even that did not happen. You sent me away, and I heard nothing for days. When I saw you at last, you were in too much of a hurry to speak to me.»

«That was most discourteous of me,» Keff agreed. «I'm sorry. But you know what we're doing. There's a lot to be done, and mages to convince.»

«But we had a bargain,» Brannel said stubbornly. «She could give me one of her items of power, and I can learn to use it by myself. Then I will have magic as long as anyone.»

«Brannel, I want to offer you a different kind of power, the kind that will last. Will you listen to me?»

Reluctantly, but swayed by the sincerity of his first friend ever, the embittered Noble Primitive agreed at last to listen. Keff beckoned him to a broad rock at the end of the field, at a far remove from both the magifolk and the dray-faced farmers.

«If you still want to help,» Keff said, «and you're up to continuing your journey, I want you to go on with it. Talk to the workers. Explain what's going to happen.»

«But High Mage Ferngal said . . .?»

«Ferngal doesn't want you to make things more difficult. Help us, don't hinder. Tell them what they stand to gain—in cooperation.» Keff saw light dawning in the male's eyes. «Yes, you do see. In return, we'll supply you with food. We might even be able to manage transporting you from region to region by chair. Arriving in a chariot will give you immediate high status with the others. You like to fly, don't you?»

«I love to fly,» Brannel said, easily enough converted with such a shining prospect. «I will change my message to cooperation.»

«Good! Tell them the truth. The workers will get better treatment and more input into their own government when the power is diminished. The mages will need you more than ever.»

«That I will be happy to tell my fellow workers,» Brannel said gravely.

«I have a secret to tell you, but you, and only you,» Keff said, leaning toward the worker. «Do you promise? Good. Now listen: the mages are not the true owners of the Core of Ozran. Remember it.»

Brannel was goggle-eyed. «I never forget, Mage Keff.»

Seven days later, Chaumel returned to his great room dusting his hands together. A quintet of chariots lifted off the balcony and disappeared over the mountaintops. He stood for a moment as if listening, and turned with a smile to Plenna and Keff.

«That is the last of them,» he said with satisfaction. «Everyone who has said they will cooperate has also promised to press the ones who haven't agreed. In the meantime, all have said that they will keep voluntarily to the barest minimum of use. On the day you designated, two days hence, at sunrise in the eastern province, the great mutual truce will commence.»

«Not without grumbling, I'm sure,» Keff said, with a grin. «I'm sure there'll be a lot of attempts before that to renegotiate the accord to everyone else's benefit. Once the power levels lessen, it'll give me the last direction I need to find the Core of Ozran.»

«Leave the last-minute doubters to me,» Chaumel said. «At the appointed moment, you must be ready. Such a treaty was not easily arranged, and may never again be achieved. Do not fail.»