At a casual glance, the council room of the High Mage of the South appeared to be occupied by only one man, Nokias himself, in the thronelike hover-chair in the center, picked out by the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Plennafrey realized, as she directed her floating spy-eye to gaze around the palatial chamber, that more presence and power was represented there and then than almost anywhere else on Ozran. She was proud to be included in that number allied to Nokias, proud but awed.
Closest to the rear of the hover-chair hung the simple silver globes of his trusted chief servants, ready to serve the High Mage, but also guarding him. They were the eyes in the back of his head, not actual fleshly eyes as Plennafrey had imagined when she was a child. Ranged in random display about the great chamber were the more ornate globe eyes of the mages and magesses. In the darkest corner hovered the sphere belonging to gloomy Howet. Mage-height above all the others flew the spy-eye of Asedow, glaring scornfully down on everyone else. Iranika's red ball drifted near the huge open window that looked out upon the mountain range, seemingly inattentive to the High Mage's discourse. Immediately before Nokias at eye level floated the gleaming metallic pink and gold eye of Potria, an ambitious and dangerous enchantress. As if sensing her regard, Potria's spy-eye turned toward hers, and Plennafrey turned hers just in time to be gazing at High Mage Nokias before the mystical aperture focused.
At home in her fortress sanctuary many klicks distant, Plenna felt her cheeks redden. It would not do to attract attention, nor would her inexperience excuse an open act of discourtesy. That was how mages died. For security, she tightened her fingers and thumb in the five depressions on her belt buckle, her personal object of power, and began to draw from it the weblike framework of a spell that would both protect her and injure or kill anyone who tried to cross its boundaries as well as generate an atmosphere of self-deprecation and effacement. Her magical defenses were as great as any mage's: lack of experience was her weakness. Plennafrey was the most junior of all the mages, the sole survivor of her family. She had taken her father's place only two years ago. Thankfully, Potria appeared not to have taken offense, and the pink-gold spy-eye spun in air to stare at each of its fellows in turn. Plenna directed her blue-green spy-eye to efface itself so as not to arouse further notice, and let the spell stand down, inactive but ready.
"We should move now to take over Klemay's stronghold," Potria's mental voice announced. Musical as a horn call, it had a strong, deep flavor that rumbled with mystic force. On the walls, the mystic art of the ancients quivered slightly, setting the patterns in motion within their deeply carved frames.
"Counsel first, Lady Potria," Nokias said, mildly. He was a lean, ruddy-faced man, not so tall as Plennafrey's late father, but with larger hands and feet out of proportion to his small stature. His light brown eyes, wide and innocent, belied the quick mind behind them. He snapped his long fingers and a servant bearing a tray appeared before him. The fur-face knelt at Nokias's feet and filled the exquisite goblet with sparkling green wine. The High Mage of the South appeared to study the liquid, as if seeking advice within its emerald lights. "My good brother to the east, Ferngal, also has a claim on Klemay's estate. After all, it was his argument with our late brother that led to his property becoming . . . available."
Silence fell in the room as the mages considered that position.
"Klemay's realm lies on the border between East and South," said Asedow's voice from the electric blue sphere. "It belongs not to Ferngal nor to us until one puts a claim on it. Let us make sure the successful claim is ours!"
"Do you hope for such a swift promotion, taking right of leadership like that?" Nokias asked mildly, setting down the half-empty goblet and tapping the base with one great hand. A mental murmur passed between some of the other mages. Plenna knew, as all of them did, how ambitious Asedow was. The man was not yet bold enough nor strong enough to challenge Nokias for the seat of Mage of the South. He had a tendency to charge into situations, not watching his back as carefully as he might. Plennafrey had overheard others saying that it probably wouldn't be long before carrion birds were squabbling over Asedow's property.
"Klemay carried a staff of power that drew most strongly from the Core of Ozran," Asedow stated. "Long as your forearm, with a knob on the end that looked like a great red jewel. He could control the lightning with it. I move to take possession of it."
"What you can take, you can keep," Nokias said. The words were spoken quietly, yet they held as much threat as a rumbling volcano. Even then, Asedow did not concede. Unless he was baiting Nokias into a challenge, Plenna thought, with a thrill of terror. Not now, when they were facing a challenge from a rival faction! Cautiously, she made her spy-eye dip toward the floor, where it would be out of the way of flying strikes of power. She'd heard of one mage crisped to ash and cinders by a blast sent through his spy-eye.
Nokias was the only one who noticed her cautious deployment and turned a kindly, amused glance in her drone's direction. She felt he could see her through its contracting pupil as she really was: a lass of barely twenty years, with a pixie's pointed chin and large, dark eyes wide with alarm. Ashamed of showing weakness, Plenna bravely levitated her eye to a level just slightly below the level held by the others. Nokias began to study a corner of the ceiling as if meditating on its relevance to the subject at hand.
"There is something stirring in the East," Iranika said in her gravelly mental voice, rose-colored spy-eye bobbing with her efforts to keep it steady. She was an elderly magess who lived at the extreme end of the southern mountain range. Plennafrey had never met her in person, nor was she likely to. The old woman stayed discreetly in her well-guarded fortress lest her aging reflexes fail to stop an assassination attempt. "Twice now I have felt unusual emanations in the ley lines. I suspect connivance, perhaps an upcoming effort by the eastern powers to take over some southern territory."
"I, too, have my suspicions," Nokias said, nodding.
Iranika snorted. "The Mage of the East wants his realm to spread out like sunrise and cover the whole of Ozran. Action is required lest he thinks you weak. Some of you fly on magic-back at once to Klemay's mountain. The power must be seized now! Strange portents are abroad."
"'Some of you' fly to the mountain? You will not be of our number, sister?" Howet rumbled from his corner.
"Nay. I have no need of additional power, as some feel they do," Iranika said, an unsubtle thrust at Asedow, who ignored it since she sided with him to attack. "I have enough. But I don't want Klemay's trove falling into the hands of the East by default."
"One might say the same about yours," Potria said offensively. "Why, I should claim yours now before your chair falls vacant, lest someone move upon it from the West."
"You are welcome to try, girl," Iranika said, turning her eye fully upon Potria's.
"Shall I show you how I'll do it?" Potria asked, her voice ringing in the huge chamber. The pink-gold sphere loomed toward the red. Both levitated toward the ceiling as they threw threats back and forth.
Plenna's eye's-eye view wobbled as she prepared for what looked like another contretemps between the two women. As Asedow yearned for the seat of Mage of the South, Potria craved Iranika's hoard of magical devices. Though Nokias was the senior mage in this quarter, Plennafrey had heard he held the seat only because Iranika didn't want it. She wished she was as secure in her position as the old woman. Plennafrey would have given a great deal to know if old Iranika kept her place by right or by bluff. If one was seen as weakening, one became an almost certain victim of assassination, and one's items of power would be gone even before the carrion birds arrived to circle around the corpse.
To achieve promotion in the hierarchy, a mage or magess must challenge and win against senior enchanters. Such battles were not always fatal, nor were they always magical. Sometimes, such matters were accomplished by suborning a mage's servants to steal artifacts that weakened power to the point where the mage could be overcome by devious means. Kills gave one more status. Plennafrey knew that, but she was reluctant to take lives. Even thoughts of theft and murder did not come easily to her, though she was learning them as a plain matter of survival. Another way to get promotion was to acquire magical paraphernalia from a secret cache left by the Ancient Ones or the Old Ones—such things were not unknown—or to take them from a mage no longer using them. Plenna wouldn't get much of Klemay's hoard unless she was bold. She was determined to claim something no matter what it cost her.
The items of power that descended from the Ancient Ones to the Old Ones and thence to the mages varied in design, but all had the same property, the ability to draw power from the Core of Ozran, the mystic source. There seemed to be no particular pattern the Ancient Ones followed in creating objects that channeled power: amulets, rings, wands, maces, staves, and objects of mysterious shape that had to be mounted in belts or bracelets to be carried. Plennafrey had even heard of a gauntlet the shape of an animal's head. Nokias bore upon his wrist the Great Ring of Ozran and also possessed amulets of varying and strange shapes. His followers had fewer, but all these artifacts had one feature in common: the five depressions into which one fit one's fingertips when issuing the mental or verbal Words of Command.
"Enough bickering," Nokias said wearily. "Are we agreed then? To take what we can of Klemay's power? What we find shall be shared between us according to seniority." Nokias settled back, the look in his eyes indicating he did not expect a challenge. "And strength."
"Agreed," the voice issued forth from Potria's spy-eye.
"Yes," boomed Howet.
"All right," Asedow agreed sourly.
"Yes." Plenna added her soft murmur, which was almost unheard among the other equally low voices around the great room.
Iranika alone remained silent, having had her say.
"Then the eyes have it," Nokias said, jovially, slapping his huge hands together.
Plennafrey joined in the chorus of groans that echoed through the chamber. That joke was old when the Ancient Ones walked Ozran.
"How shall we do this thing, High Mage?" Potria asked. "Open attack or stealth?"
"Stealth implies we have something to hide," Asedow said at once. "Ancient treasures belong to anyone who can claim and hold them. I say we go in force and challenge Ferngal openly."
"Ah!" Potria cried suddenly. "Ferngal and the Easterlings are on the move at this very moment! I sense a disruption in the lines of power in the debated lands! Unusual emanations of power."
"Ferngal would not dare!" Asedow declared.
"Wait," Nokias said, his brows drawn over thoughtful eyes. His gaze grew unfocused. "I sense what you do, Potria. Dyrene"—he raised a hand to one of his minions hovering just behind her masters chair. "You have a spy-eye in the vicinity. Investigate."
"I obey, High Mage," Dyrene's voice said. The young woman was monitoring several eyes at once for Nokias, to keep the High Mage from having to occupy his attention with simple reconnaissance. "Hmm—hmmm! It is not Ferngal, magical ones. There is a silver cylinder in the crop fields among the workers. It is huge, High Mage, as large as a tower. I do not know how it got there! There is a man nearby and . . . I do not know this person."
Iranika cackled to herself. The other spy-eyes spun on hers, pupils dilated to show the fury of their operators.
"You knew about it all the time, old woman," Potria said, accusingly.
"I detected it many hours ago," Iranika said, maddeningly coy. "I told you there had been strange movement in the ley lines, but did you listen? Did you think to check for yourselves? I have been watching. The great silver cylinder fell through the sky with fire at its base. A veritable flying fortress. It is a power object of incredible force. The man who came from within has been consorting with Klemay's peasants."
"He is not tied to the Core of Ozran," Nokias declared after a moment's concentration, "and so he is not a mage. That will make him easy to capture. We will find out who he is and whence he comes. Lend me your eyes, Dyrene. Open to me."
"I obey, lord," the tinny voice said.
Concentrating on his target, the Mage of the South laid his left hand across his right wrist to activate the Great Ring, and raised both hands toward the window. A bolt of crackling, scarlet fire lanced from his fingertips into the sky.
"He falls, High Mage," Dyrene reported
"I must see this stranger for myself," Iranika said. Without asking for leave, her spy-eye rose toward the great window.
"Wait, high ones!" Dyrene called. "A peasant moves the stranger's body. He carries it toward the silver tower." After a moment, when all the spy-eyes hovered around Dyrene's sphere, "It is sealed inside."
Iranika groaned.
"I want this silver cylinder," Asedow said in great excitement. "What forces it would command! High Mage, I claim it!"
"I challenge you, Asedow," Potria shrilled at once. "I claim both the tower and the being."
Other voices raised in the argument: some supporting Potria, some Asedow, while there were even a few clamoring for their right to take possession of the new artifacts. Nokias ignored these. Potria and Asedow would be permitted to make the initial attempt. Subsequent challengers would take on the winner, if Nokias himself did not claim liege right to the prizes.
"The challenge is heard and witnessed," Nokias declared, shouting over the din. He raised the hand holding the Great Ring. With a squawk, Plenna sent her spy-eye to take refuge underneath Nokias's floating chair and warded the windows of her mountain home. Humming, scarlet power beams lanced in through Nokias's open window, one from each of the two mages in their mountain strongholds. They struck together in a crashing explosion sealed by the Great Ring. "And the contest begins."
All the eyes flew out of the arching stone casement behind the challengers to have a look at the objects of contention.
"It is bigger than huge," Plennafrey observed, spiraling her eye around and around the silver tower. "How beautiful it is!"
"There are runes inscribed here," Iranika's old voice said. Plennafrey felt the faint pull of the old woman trying to attract attention, and followed the impulse to the red spy-eye floating near the broad base. "Come here and see. I have not seen anything in all my archives which resemble these."
"I spy, with my little eye, an enigma of huge and significant proportions," Nokias said, his golden sphere hovering behind them as they tried to puzzle out the runes.
"It is a marvelous illusion," Howet said, streaking back a distance to take in the whole object. "How do I know this isn't a great trick by Ferngal? Metal and fire—that's no miracle, High Mage. I can build something like this myself."
"It is most original in design," Nokias said.
"Ferngal hasn't the imagination," Potria protested.
"It's lovely," Plenna said, admiring the smooth lines.
Iranika sputtered. "Lovely but useless!"
"How do you know?" Potria snapped.
While her servos were taking care of Keff, Carialle kept vigil on the mountain range to the south. No rain was falling, so where had that lightning, if it was lightning, come from? An electrical discharge of that much force had to have a source. She didn't read anything appropriate in that direction, not even a concentration of conductive ore in the mountains that could act as a natural capacitor. The fact that the bolt had fallen so neatly at Keff's feet suggested deliberate action.
The air around her felt ionized, empty, almost brittle. After the bolt had struck, the atmosphere slowly began to return to normal, as if the elements were flowing like water filling in where a stone had hit the surface of a pond.
Her sensors picked up faint rumbling, and the air around her drained again. This time she felt a wind blowing hard toward the mountain range. Suddenly the scarlet bolts struck again, two jagged spears converging on one distant peak. Then, like smithereens scattering from under a blacksmith's hammer, minute particles flew outward from the point of impact toward her.
She focused quickly on the incoming missiles. They were too regular in shape to be shards of rock, and also appeared to be flying under their own power, even increasing in speed. The analysis arrived only seconds before the artifacts did, showing perfect spheres, smooth and vividly colored, with one sector sliced off the front of each to show a lenslike aperture. Strangely, she scanned no mechanisms inside. They appeared to be hollow.
The spheres spiraled around and over her, as if some fantastic juggler was keeping all those balls in the air at once. Carialle became aware of faint, low-frequency transmissions. The spheres were sending data back to some source. She plugged the IT into her external array.
Her first assumption—that the data was meant only for whatever had sent each—changed as she observed the alternating pattern of transmission and the faint responses to the broadcasts from the nontransmitting spheres. They were talking to each other. By pinning down the frequency, she was able to hear voices.
Using what vocabulary and grammar Keff had recorded from Brannel and the others, she tried to get a sense of the conversation.
The IT left long, untranslatable gaps in the transcript. The Ozran language was as complex as Standard. Keff had only barely begun to analyze its syntax and amass vocabulary. Carialle recorded everything, whether she understood it or not.
"Darn you, Keff, wake up," she said. This was his specialty. He knew how to tweak the IT, to adjust the arcane device to the variables and parameters of language. The snatches of words she did understand tantalized her.
"Come here," one of the colored balls said to the others in a high-pitched voice. " . . . (something) not . . . like (untranslatable)."
" . . . (untranslatable) . . . how do . . . know . . ." Carialle heard a deep masculine voice say, followed by a word Brannel had been using to refer to Keff, then another unintelligible sentence.
" . . . (untranslatable)."
"How do you know?"
An entire sentence came through in clear translation. Carialle perked up her audio sensors, straining to hear more. She ordered the servo beside the weight bench to nudge Keff's shoulder.
"Keff. Keff, wake up! I need you. You have to hear this. Aargh!" She growled in frustration, the bass notes of her voice vibrating the tannoy diaphragms. "We get a group of uninhibited, fluent native speakers, situated who knows where, and you're taking a nap!"
The strange power arcs that she had sensed when they first landed were stronger now. Did that power support the hollow spheres and make them function? Whoever was running the system was using up massive power like air: free, limitless, and easy. She found it hard to believe it could be the indigenous Noble Primitives. They didn't have anything more technologically advanced than beast harness. Carialle should now look for a separate sect, the "overlords" of this culture.
She scanned her planetary maps for a power source and was thwarted once again by the lack of focus. The lines of force seemed to be everywhere and anywhere, defying analysis. If there had been less electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere, it would have been easier. Its very abundance prevented her from tracing it. Carialle was fascinated but nervous. With Keff hurt, she'd rather study the situation from a safer distance until she could figure out who was controlling things, and what with.
No time to make a pretty takeoff. On command, Carialle's servo robots threw their padded arms across Keff's forehead, neck, chest, hips, and legs, securing him to the weight bench. Carialle started launch procedures. None of the Noble Primitives were outside, so she wouldn't scare them or fry them when she took off. The flying eye-balls would have to shift for themselves. She kicked the engines to launch.
Everything was go and on green. Only she wasn't moving.
Increasing power almost to the red line, she felt the heat of her thrusters as they started to slag the mineral-heavy clay under her landing gear, but she hadn't risen a centimeter.
"What kind of fardling place is this?" Carialle demanded. "What's holding me?" She shut down thrust, then gunned it again, hoping to break free of the invisible bonds. Shut down, thrust! Shut down, thrust! No go. She was trapped. She felt a rising panic and sharply put it down. Reality check: this could not be happening to a ship of her capabilities.
Carialle ran through a complete diagnostic and found every system normal. She found it hard to believe what her systems told her. She could detect no power plant on this planet, certainly not one strong enough to hold her with thrusters on full blast. She should at least have felt a twitch as such power cut in. Some incredible alien force of unknown potency was holding her surface-bound.
"No," she whispered. "Not again."
Objectively, the concept of such huge, wild power controlled with such ease fascinated the unemotional, calculating part of Carialle's mind. Subjectively, she was frightened. She cut her engines and let them cool.
Rescue from this situation seemed unlikely. Not even Simeon had known their exact destination. Sector R was large and unexplored. Nevertheless, she told herself staunchly, Central Worlds had to be warned about the power anomaly so no one else would make the mistake of setting down on this planet. She readied an emergency drone and prepared it to launch, filling its small memory with all the data she and Keff had already gathered about Ozran. She opened the small drone hatch and launched it. Its jets did not ignite. The invisible force held it as firmly as it did her.
Frequency analysis showed that an uncapsuled mayday was unlikely to penetrate the ambient electromagnetic noise. Even if she could have gotten one in orbit, who was likely to hear it in the next hundred years? She and Keff were on their own.
"Ooooh." A heartfelt groan from the exercise equipment announced Keff's return to consciousness.
"How do you feel?" she asked, switching voice location to the speaker nearest him.
"Horrible." Keff started to sit up but immediately regretted any upward movement. A sharp, seemingly pointed pain like a saw was attempting to remove the rear of his skull. He put a hand to the back of his head, clamped his eyes shut, then opened them as wide as he could, hoping to dispel his fuzzy vision. His eyelids felt thick and gritty. He took a few deep breaths and began to shiver. "Why is it cold in here, Cari? I'm chilled to the bone."
"Ambient temperature of this planet is uncomfortably low for humans," Carialle said, brisk with relief at his recovery.
"Birr! You're telling me!" Keff slid his legs around and put his feet on the ground. His sight cleared and he realized that he was sitting on his weight bench. Carialle's servos waited respectfully a few paces away. "How did I get in here? The last thing I remember was talking to Brannel out in the field. What's happened?"
"Brannel brought you in, my poor wounded knight. Are you sure you're well enough to comprehend all?" Carialle's voice sounded light and casual, but Keff wasn't fooled. She was very upset.
The first thing to do was to dissolve the headache and restore his energy. Pulling an exercise towel over his shoulders like a cape and moving slowly so as not to jar his head more than necessary, Keff got to the food synthesizer.
"Hangover cure number five, and a high-carb warm-up," he ordered. The synthesizer whirred obediently. He drank what appeared in the hatch and shuddered as it oozed down to his stomach. He burped. "I needed that. And I need some food, too. Warm, high protein.
"While I replenish myself, tell all, fair lady," Keff said. "I can take it." With far more confidence than he felt, he smiled at her central pillar and waited.
"Now, let's see, where were we?" she began in a tone that was firm enough, but his long association with Carialle told him that she was considerably agitated. "You got hit by scarlet lightning. Not, I think, a natural phenomenon, since none of the necessary meteorological conditions existed. There's also the problem with its accuracy, landing right at your feet and knocking you, and you only, unconscious. I refuse to entertain coincidence. Someone shot that lightning right at you! I persuaded Brannel to bring you inside."
"You did?" Keff was admiring, knowing how little of the language she would have had to do any persuading.
"After he scooted, and not without persuasion, I add for accuracy's sake, we had a plague of what I would normally class as reconnaissance drones, except they have no perceptible internal mechanisms whatsoever, not even flight or anti-grav gear." Carialle's screens shifted to views of the outside, telephoto and close-angle. Small, colored spheres hovered at some distance, flat apertures all facing the brainship.
"Someone has very pretty eyes," Keff said with interest. "No visible means of support, as you say. Curious." The buzzer sounded on the food hatch, and he retrieved the large, steaming bowl. "Ahhh!"
On the screen, a waveguide graph showing frequency modulation had been added beside the image of each drone. The various sound levels rose and fell in patterns.
"Here's what I picked up on the supersonics."
"Such low frequencies," Keff said, reading the graphs. "They can't be transmitting very sophisticated data."
"They're broadcasting voice signals to one another," Carialle said. "I ran the tapes through IT, and here's what I got." She played the datafile at slightly higher than normal speed to get through it all. Keff's eyebrows went up at the full sentence in clear Standard. He went to the console where Carialle had allowed him to install IT's mainframe and fiddled with the controls.
"Hmm! More vocabulary, verbs, and I dare to suggest we've got a few colloquialisms or ejaculations, though I've no referents to translate them fully. This is a pretty how-de-do, isn't it? Whoever's running these artifacts is undoubtedly responsible for the unexpected power emissions the freighter captain reported to Simeon." He straightened up and cocked his head wryly at Carialle's pillar. "Well, my lady, I don't fancy sneak attacks with high-powered weapons. I'd rather not sit and analyze language in the middle of a war zone. Since we're not armed for this party, why don't we take off, and file a partial report on Ozran to be completed by somebody with better shields?"
Carialle made an exasperated noise. "I would take off in a Jovian second, but we are being held in place by a tractor beam of some kind. I can read neither the source nor the direction the power is coming from. It's completely impossible, but I can't move a centimeter. I've been burning fuel trying to take off over and over—and you know we don't have reserves to spare."
Keff finished his meal and put the crockery into the synthesizers hatch. With food in his belly, he felt himself again. His head had ceased to revolve, and the cold had receded from his bones and muscles.
"That's why I'm your brawn," he said, lightly. "I go and find out these things."
"Sacrificing yourself again, Keff? To pairs of roving eyes?" Carialle tried to sound flip, but Keff wasn't fooled. He smiled winningly at her central pillar. All his protective instincts were awake and functioning.
"You are my lady," he said, with a gallant gesture. "I seek the object of my quest to lay at your feet. In this case, information. Perhaps an Ozran's metabolism only gets a minor shock when touched with this mystical power beam. We don't know that the folk on the other end are hostile."
"Anything that ties my tail down is hostile."
"You shall not be held in durance vile while I, your champion, live." Keff picked up the portable IT unit, checked it for damage, and slung it around his chest. "At least I can find Brannel and ask him what hit me."
"Don't be hasty," Carialle urged. On the main screen she displayed her recording of the attack on Keff. "The equation has changed. We've gone suddenly from dealing with indigenous peasantry at no level of technology to an unknown life-form with a higher technology than we have. This is what you're up against."
Keff sat back down and concentrated on the screen, running the frames back and forth one at a time, then at speed.
"Good! Now I know what I need to ask about," he said, pointing. "Do you see that? Brannel knew what the lightning was, he knew it was coming, and he got out of its way. Look at those reflexes! Hmmm. The bolt came from the mountains to the south. Southwest. I wonder what the terms are for compass directions in Ozran? I can draw him a compass rose in the dust, with planetary sunrise for east . . ."
Carialle interrupted him by filling the main cabin with a siren wail.
"Keff, you're not listening. It might be too dangerous. To unknown powers who can tie up a full-size spaceship, one human male isn't a threat. And they've downed you once already."
"It's not that easy to kill Von Scoyk-Larsens," Keff said, smiling. "They may be surprised I'm still moving around. Or as I said, perhaps they didn't think the red bolt would affect me the way it did. In any case, can you think of a way to get us out of here unless I do?"
Carialle sighed. "Okay, okay, gird your manly loins and join the fray, Sir Galahad! But if you fall down and break both your legs don't come running to me."
"Nay, my lady," Keff said with a grin and a salute to her titanium pillar. "With my shield or upon it. Back soon."