The Ship Who Won ккп-5

by Энн Маккефри

  «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 retu
rn 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.