word of gibberish.
«Welcome,» he said. «It is . . . my honor meet you.»
Chaumel drew back half a pace. The truth was that the stranger did not understand the language. What could possibly explain such an anomaly as a mage who used power that did not come from the core of all and a man of Ozran who did not know the tongue?
The stranger seemed to guess what he was thinking and continued although not ten words in twenty made sense. And the intelligible was unbelievable.
«I come from the stars,» Keff said, pointing upward. He gestured behind him at the brainship, flattened his hand out horizontally, then made it tip up and sink heel first toward the ground. «I flew here in the, er, silver house. I come from another world.»
». . . Not . . . here,» Chaumel said. IT missed some of the vocabulary but not the sense. He beckoned to Keff, turned his back on the rest of his people.
«You don't want me to talk about it here?» Keff said in a much lower voice.
«No,» Chaumel said, with a cautious glance over his shoulder at the other two Big Mountain Men. «Come . . . mountain . . . me.» IT rewound the phrase and restated the translation using full context. «Come back to my mountain with me. We'll talk there.»
«No, thanks,» Keff said, with a shake of his head. «Let's talk here. It's all right. Why don't you ask the others—uh!»
«Keff!» Carialle's voice thudded against his brain. He knew then why all the Noble Primitives were so submissive and eager to avoid trouble. Chaumel had taken a gadget like a skinny flashlight from a sling on his belt and jabbed it into Keff's side. Fire raced from his rib cage up his neck and through his backbone, burning away any control he had over his own muscles. For the second time in as many hours, he collapsed bonelessly to the ground. The difference this time was that he remained conscious of everything going on around him. Directly in front of his eyes, he saw that, under the hem of his ankle-length robe, Chaumel wore black and silver boots. They had very thick soles. Even though the ground under his cheek was dry, dust seemed not to adhere to the black material, which appeared to be some kind of animal hide, maybe skin from a six-pack. He became aware that Carialle was speaking.
». . . Fardle it, Keff! Why didn't you stay clear of him? I know you're conscious. Can you move at all?»
Chaumel's feet clumped backward and to one side, out from Keff's limited field of vision. Suddenly, the ground shot away. Unable to order his muscles to move, Keff felt his head sag limply to one side. He saw, almost disinterestedly, that he was floating on air. It felt as if he were being carried on a short mattress.
Unceremoniously, Keff was dumped off the invisible mattress onto the footrest of Chaumel's chariot, his head tilted at an uncomfortable upward angle. The magician stepped inside the U formed by Keff's body and sat down on the ornamented throne. The whole contraption rose suddenly into the air.
«Telekinesis,» Keff muttered into the dental implant. He found he was slowly regaining control of his body. A finger twitched. A muscle in his right calf contracted. It tingled. Then he was aware that the chair was rising above the fields, saw the upper curve of the underground cavern in which Brannel's people lived, the mountains beyond, very high, higher than he thought.
«Good!» Carialle's relief was audible. «You're still connected. I thought I might lose the links again when he hit you with that device.»
«Wand,» Keff said. He could move his eyes now, and he fixed them on the silver magicians belt. «Wand.»
«It looked like a wand. Acted more like a cattle prod.» There was a momentary pause. «No electrical damage. It seems to have affected synaptic response. That is one sophisticated psi device.»
«Magic,» Keff hissed quietly.
«We'll argue about that later. Can you get free?»
«No,» Keff said. «Motor responses slowed.»
«Blast and damn it, Galahad! I can't come and get you. You're a hundred meters in the air already. All right, I can track you wherever you're going.»
Carialle was upset. Keff didn't want her to be upset, but he was all but motionless. He managed to move his head to a slightly more comfortable position, panting with the strain of such a minor accommodation. Empathic and psionic beings in the galaxy had been encountered before, but these people's talents were so much stronger than any other. Keff was awed by a telekinetic power strong enough to carry the chair, Chaumel, and him with no apparent effort. Such strength was beyond known scientific reality.
«Magic,» he murmured.
«I do not believe in magic,» Carialle said firmly. «Not with all this stray electromagnetic current about.»
«Even magic must have physics,» Keff argued.
«Bah.» Carialle began to run through possibilities, some of which bordered a trifle on the magic she denied, but something which would bring Keff back where he belonged—inside her hull—and both of them off this planet as soon as her paralysis, like Keff's, showed any signs of wearing off.
Brannel hid alone in the bushes at the far end of the field, waiting to see if Mage Keff came out again. After offering respect to the magelords, the rest of his folk had taken advantage of the great ones' disinterest in them and rushed home to where it was warm.
The worker male was curious. Perhaps now that the battle was over, the magelords would go away so he could approach Keff on his own. To his dismay, the high ones showed no signs of departing. They awaited the same event he did: the emergence of Magelord Keff. He was awestruck as he watched Chaumel the Silver approach the great tower on foot. The mage waited, eyes on the tight-fitting door, face full of the same anticipation Brannel felt.
Keff did not come. Perhaps Keff was making them all play into his hands. Perhaps he was wiser than the magelords. That would be most satisfyingly ironic.
Instead, when Keff emerged and exchanged words with the mage, he suddenly collapsed. Then he was bundled onto the chariot of Chaumel the Silver and carried away. All Brannel's dreams of freedom and glory died in that instant. All the treasures in the silver tower were now out of his reach and would be forever.
He muttered to himself all the way back to the cave. Fralim caught him, asked him what he was on about.
«We ought to follow and save Magelord Keff.»
«Save a mage? You must be mad,» Fralim said. «It is night. Come inside and go to sleep. There will be more work in the morning.»
Depressed, Brannel turned and followed the chiefs son into the warmth.
Chapter Seven
«Why . . . make things more . . . harderest . . . than need?» Chaumel muttered as he steered the chair away from the plain. IT found the root for the missing words and relayed the question to Keff through his ear-link. «Why must you make things more difficult than they need to be? I want to talk . . . in early . . .»
«My apologies, honored one,» Keff said haltingly.
He had sufficiently recovered from the bolt to sit up on the end of Chaumel's chair. The magician leaned forward to clasp Keff's shoulder and pulled him back a few inches. Once he looked down, the brawn was grateful for the reassuring contact. From the hundred meters Carialle had last reported, they had ascended to at least two hundred and were still rising. He still had no idea how it was done, but he was beginning to enjoy this unusual ride.
The view was marvelous. The seven-meter square where Brannel and his people laid their gathered crops and the mound under which the home cavern lay had each shrunk to an area smaller than Keff's fingernail. On the flattened hilltop, the brainship was a shining figure like a literary statuette. Nearby, the miniature chairs, each
