The Ship Who Won (16 page)

emerged from their burrow. Stooping in postures indicative of respect and healthy fear, they scurried toward the

floating chairs, halting some distance away. Keff noticed

Brannel among them, standing more erect than any of the

others. Still defying authority, Keff thought, with wry

admiration.

"Do you want to ask him what's going on?" Carialle said

through the implant.

"Remember what he said about being punished for

curiosity," Keff reminded her. 'These are the people he's

afraid of. If I single him out, he's in for it. I'll catch him

later for a private talk."

The elder, Alteis, approached and bowed low to the two

chair-holders. They ignored him, continuing to circle at ten

meters, calling out at one another.

"I knew I could not trust you to wait for Nokias to lead

us here, Asedow," Potria shouted angrily. "One day, your

eagerness to thrust out your hand for power will result in

having it cut off at the shoulder."

"You taunt me for breaking the rules when you also

didn't wait," Asedow retorted. "Where s Nokias, then?"

"I couldn't let you claim by default," Potria said, "so your

action forced me to follow at once. Now that I am here, I

restate that I should possess the silver cylinder and the

being inside. I will use it with greater responsibility than

you."

'The Ancient Ones would laugh at your disingenuous-ness, Potria," Asedow said, scornfully. "You want them just

to keep them from me. I declare," he shouted to the skies,

"that I am the legitimate keeper of these artifacts sent

down through the ages to me, and by my hope of promotion, I will use them wisely and well."

Potria circled Asedow, trying to get nearer to the great

cylinder, but he cut her off again and again. She directed

her chair to fly up and over him. He veered upward in a

flash, cackling maddeningly. She hated him, hated him for

thwarting her. At one time they had been friends, even

toyed with the idea of becoming lovers. She had hoped

that they could have been allies, taking power from Nokias

and that bitch Iranika and ruling the South between them

despite the fact that the first laws of the First Mages said

only one might lead. She and Asedow could never agree

on who that would be. As now, he wouldn't support her

claim, and she wouldn't support his. So they were forced

to follow archaic laws whose reasoning was laid down

thousands of years ago and might never be changed. The

two of them were set against one another like mad vermin

in a too-small cage. She or Asedow must conquer, must be

the clear winner in the final contest. Potria had

determined in her deepest heart that she would be the

victor.

The rustle in her mystic hearing told her that Asedow

was gathering power from the ley lines for an attack. He

had but to chase her away or knock her unconscious, and

the contest was his. Killing was unnecessary and would

only serve to make High Mage Nokias angry by depriving

him of a strong subject and ally. Potria began to wind in the

threads of power between her fingers, gathering and gathering until she had a web large enough to throw over him.

It would contain the force of Asedow s spell and knock him

out.

'That one is unworthy," she heard Asedow call out. "Let

me win, not her!"

Stretching the smothering web on her thumbs, she

spread out her arms wide in the prayer sign, hands upright

and palms properly turned in toward her to contain the

blessing.

"In the name ofUreth, the Mother World of Paradise, I

call all powers to serve me in this battle," she chanted.

Asedow flashed past her in his chariot, throwing his

spell. Raising herself, Potria dropped her spread counter-spell on top of him and laughed as his own blast of power

caught him. His chair wobbled unsteadily to a halt a hundred meters distant. His cursing was audible and he was

very angry. He switched his chair about on its axis. She saw

his face, dark with blood as a thundercloud. He panted

heavily.

'Thought you would have an easy win, did you?" Potria

called, tauntingly. She began to ready an attack other own.

Something not fatal but appropriate.

She felt disturbances in the ether. More mages were

coming, probably attracted by the buildup of power in this

barren, uninteresting place. Potria changed the character

of the cantrip she was molding. If she was to have an audience, she would give a good show and make a proper fool

of Asedow.

By now, her opponent hovered invisible in a spell-cloud of dark green smoke that roiled and rumbled.

Potria fancied she even saw miniature lightnings flash

within its depths. He, too, had observed the arrival of

more of their magical brethren, and it made him impatient. He struck while his spell was still insufficiently

prepared. Potria laughed and raised a single, slim hand,

fingers spread. The force bounced off the globe of protection she had wrought about herself, rushed outward,

and exploded on contact with the nearest solid object, a

tree, setting it ablaze. Some of it rebounded upon Asedow, shaking his chariot so hard that he nearly lost

control of it.

Having warded offAsedow's pathetic attack, Potria stole

a swift look at the newly arrived mages. They were all

minor lights from the East, probably upset that she and

Asedow had crossed the border into their putative realm.

By convention, they were bound to stay out of the middle

of a fairly joined battle, and so they hovered on the sidelines, swearing about me invasion by southern mages. So

long as they kept out of her way until she won, she didn't

care what they thought other.

Keff saw the five new arrivals blink into existence, well

beyond the battleground. The first two came to such a

screeching halt that he wondered if they had hurried to the

scene at a dead run and were having trouble braking. The

others proceeded with more caution toward the circling

combatants.

'The first arrivals remind me of something," Keff said,

"but I can't put my finger on what. Great effect, that sudden stop!"

"It looked like Singularity Drive," Carialle said, critically.

"Interesting that they've duplicated the effect unprotected

and in atmosphere."

'That's big magic," Keff said.

The new five were no sooner at the edge of the field

than the magiman and magiwoman let off their latest vol-ley at each other.

Smoke exploded in a plume from the green storm

cloud. It was shot along its expanse with lightning and

booms of thunder. Enwrapping the magiwoman in its

snakelike coils, it closed into a murky sphere with the

golden female at its center. Lights flashed inside and Keff

heard a scream. Whether it was fury, fear, or pain he

couldn't determine.

Suddenly, the sphere broke apart. The smoke dissipated

on the evening sly, leaving the female free. Her hair had

escaped from its elegant coif and stood out in crackling

tendrils. The shoulder of her robe was burned away,

showing the tawny flesh beneath. Eyes sparking, she

levitated upward, arms gathering and gathering armfuls of

nothing to her breast. Her hands chopped forward, and

lightning, liquid electricity, flew at her opponent.

The male crossed his forearms before himself in a gesture intended to ward away the attack, but only managed

to deflect some of it. Tiny fingers of white heat peppered

his legs and the runner of his chair, burning holes in his

robe and scorching the vehicles ornamentation. In order

to escape, he had to move away from Carialle toward the

open fields, where the lightning ceased to pursue him. Triumphantly, the female sailed in and spiraled around the

brainship in a kind of victory lap. In front of the ship, a

translucent brick wall built itself up row by row, until it was

as tall as Carialle herself.

Keff stared.

"Are they fighting over us?" he asked in disbelief.

Carialle took umbrage at the suggestion. "How dare

they?" she said. 'This is my ship, not the competition

trophy!"

The male did not intend to give up easily. As soon as the

cloud of lightning was gone, he headed back toward the

ship. Between his hands a blue-white globe was forming.

He threw it directly at the brick wall and the enchantress

behind it.

The female was insufficiently prepared and the ball

caught her in the belly. It knocked her chair back hundreds

of meters, past the hovering strangers who hastily shifted

out of her way. The illusory wall vanished. With a cry, the

female flew in, arching her fingers like a cats claws. Scarlet

fire shot from each one, focusing on the male. His chair

bounced up in the air and turned a full loop. Miraculously,

he kept his seat. He tried to regain his original position

near Carialle.

'They are fighting over me. The unmitigated gall of the

creatures!"

At the first sign of mystic lightning, the workers had

judiciously fled to a safe distance from which they avidly

watched the batde. Ignoring Alteiss hissed commands to

keep his head down, Brannel watched the overlords

hungrily, as his eyes had earlier fed on Keff. Maybe tills

time a miracle would occur and one of them would drop

an object of power. In the confusion of batde, it would go

unnoticed until he, Brannel, dove for it and made it his

own. Mere possession of an object of power might not

make one a mage, but he wanted to find out. All his life he

had cherished dreams of learning to fly or control

lightning.

The odds against his success were immense. The mages

were the mages, and the workers were the workers, to live,

die, or serve at the whim of their overlords, never permitted to look above their lowly station. Until today, when

Mage Keff arrived out of the sky, Brannel had never

thought there was a third way of life. The stranger was not

a mage by Ozran standards, since the overlords were fighting over him as if he wasn't there; but he was certainly not

a worker. He must be something in between, a stepping

stone from peasant to power. Brannel knew Keff could

help him rise above his lowborn status and gain a place

among mages, but how to win his favor and his aid? He

had already been of service to Mage Keff. Perhaps he

could render other services, provided that Keff survived

the contest going on above his head.

Brannel had recognized Magess Potria and Mage Asedow by their colors while his peers were too afraid to lift

their heads out of the dust. He'd give his heart and the rest

of his fingers to be able to spin spells as they did. In spite

of the damage that the combatants were doing to one

another, not a tendril of smoke nor a tongue of flame had

even come close to Keff, who was watching the battle rage

calmly and without fear. Brannel admired the strangers

courage. Keff would be a powerful mentor. Together they

would fight the current order, letting worthy ones from the

lowest caste ascend to rule as their intelligence merited.

That is, if Keff survived the war in which he was one of the

prizes.

"A world of wizards, my lady!" Keff chortled gleefully to

Carialle. 'They're doing magic! No wonder you can't find a

power source. There isn't one. This is pure evocation of

power from the astral plane of the galaxy."

The beautiful woman zipped past him in her floating

chair, hands busy between making signs and spells. He

adjusted IT to register all motions and divide them

between language and ritual by repeat usage and context.

He was also picking up on a second spoken language or

dialect. IT had informed him that Brannel had used some

of the terms, and Keff wondered at the linguistic shift from

one species to the other.

"Magical evocation is hardly scientific, Keff," Carialle

reminded him. 'They're getting power from somewhere,

that's for sure. I can even follow some of the buildup a

short way out, but then I lose it in the random emanations."

"It comes from the ether," Keff said, rapt. "It's magic."

"Stop calling it that. We're not playing the game now,"

Carialle said sharply. "We're witnessing sophisticated

manipulation of power, not abracadabra-something-out-of-nothing."

"Look at it logically," Keff said, watching the male lob a

hand-sized ball of flame over his head at his opponent.

"How else would you explain being able to fly without

engines or to appear in midair?"

21 i.fAUV-'iyi I <-/M <^ -/<-/M'l/

'Telekinesis."

"And how about knitting lightning between your hands?

Or causing smoke and fireballs without fuel? This is the

stuff of legends. Magic."

"Its sophisticated legerdemain, I'll grant that much, but

there's a logical explanation, too."

Keff laughed. 'There is a logical explanation. We've discovered a planet where the laws of magic are the laws of

science."

"Well, there's physics, anyhow," Carialle said. "Our

magimen up there are beginning to fatigue. Their energy