The Ship Who Won (40 page)

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 Femgal talking

about? I have talked to no one in his area. I would not."

'Then someone else is talking to them," Keff said.

"Noldas mentioned something similar. We'd better investigate."

A quick aerial reconnaissance of the two farmsteads

from which Noldas and Femgal 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 Carialles ship.

"Here's your trouble," Kiyottals 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," Kiyottals voice said. "I have also alerted

Femgal. Nokias is coming, too. It's in his territory."

In the center of the clearing in a southern farm village,

" ##\J "T \J1^

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.

T 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," Femgal 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 Plennas 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."

Femgal 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 hiin

by the arm.

"Don't interfere, Brannel. I won't be able to stop

Femgal 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

sony. 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 other 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 whats going to happen."

"But High Mage Femgal said... ?"

"Femgal doesn't want you to make things more difficult.

Help us, don't hinder. Tell them what they stand to gainin 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

ofOzran. 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 elses benefit. Once the

power levels lessen, it'll give me the last direction I need to

find the Core ofOzran."

"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."

a CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The high mountains looked daunting in their deep, predawn shadow as Plenna and Chaumel flew toward them.

Keff, on Plennas chair, had the ancient manuals spread out

on his lap. As he smoothed the plastic pages down, they

crackled in the cold.

'The sun's about to rise over Femgal's turf," Carialle

informed him. "You should see a drop in power beginning

in thirty seconds."

'Terrific, Cari. Chaumel, any of this looking familiar?"

Chaumel, in charge of three globe-frogs he was

restraining from falling off his chair with the use of a mini-containment field generated by his wand, nodded.

"I see the way I came last time," he shouted. His voice

was caught by the great mountains and bounced back and

forth like a toy. "See, above us, the two sharp peaks

together like the tines of a fork? I kept those immediately

to my left all the way into the heart. They overlook a narrow passage."

"Now," Carialle said.

Chaumel's and Plennas chariots shot forward slightly

and the "seat belts" around the globe-frogs brightened to a

blue glow.

'That's kickback," Keff said. "Every other mage in the

world has turned off the lights and the power available to

you two is near one hundred percent."

"A heady feeling, to be sure," Chaumel said, jovially. "If

it were not that each item of power is not capable of conducting all that there is in the Core. I must tell you how

difficult it was to convince all the mages and magesses that

they should not each send spy-eyes with us on this journey.

Ah, the passageway! Follow me."

He steered to the right and nipped into a fold of stone

that seemed to be a dead end. As the two chairs closed the

distance, Keff could see that the ledge was composed of

gigantic, rough blocks, separated by a good four meters.

The thin air between them was no barrier to communication between Keff and the Frog Prince. Lit weirdly by

the chariot light, the amphibioid resembled a grotesque

clay gnome. Keff waved to get his attention.

"Do you know where we are going?" he signed.

'Too long for any living to remember," Tall Eyebrow

signaled back. 'The high fingers-" he pointed up, "mentioned in history."

"What's next?"

"Lip, hole, long cavern."

"Did you get that, Carialle?" Keff asked. Flying into the

narrow chasm robbed them of any ambient light to see by.

Chaumel increased the silver luminance of his chariot to

help him avoid obstructions.

"I did," the crisp voice replied. "My planetary maps

show that you're approaching a slightly wider plateau that

ends in a high saddle cliff, probably the lip. As for the hole,

the low range beyond is full of chimneys."

'That's what the old manuals can tell me," Keff said,

reading by the gentle yellow light of Plennafrey's chair.

JLII.U L?mr vvnu VVUJN

"According to this, the cavern where the power generator

is situated is at ninety-three degrees, six minutes, two seconds east; forty-seven degrees, fifteen minutes, seven

seconds north." He held up a navigational compass. "Still

farther north."

'The lee lines lead straight ahead," Chaumel informed

him. "Without interference from the rest of Ozran, I can

follow the lines to their heart. You are to be congratulated,

Keff. This was not possible without a truce."

"We can't miss it," Keff said, crowing in triumph. "We

have too much information."

The sun touched the snow-covered summits high above

them with orange light as the pass opened out into the

great central cirque. Though scoured by glaciers in ages

past, the mountains were clearly of volcanic origin. Shards

of black obsidian glass stuck up unexpectedly from the