containing a colorfully dressed doll, were rising to disperse.
Keff noticed suddenly that their progress was not unattended. Gold and black eye spheres flanked the silver chair as it rose higher still and began to fly in the direction of the darkening sky. More spheres, in different colors, hung behind like wary sparrows trailing a crow, never getting too close. This had to be the hierarchy again, Keff thought. He doubted this constituted an honor guard since he had gathered that Nokias and Ferngal outranked Chaumel. More on the order of keeping watch on both the Silver Mage and the stranger. Keff grinned and waved at them.
«Hi, Mum,» he said.
«It'll take you hours at that rate to reach one of those mountain ranges,» Carialle said through the implant. «I'd like to know how long he can fly that thing before he has to refuel or rest, or whatever.»
Keff turned to Chaumel.
«Where are we . . .»
Even before the question was completely out of his mouth, the view changed.
». . . going?»
Keff gaped. They were no longer hanging above Brannel's fields. Between one meter and another the silver chariot had transferred effortlessly to a point above snowcapped mountain peaks. The drop in temperature was so sudden Keff suffered a violent, involuntary shudder before he knew he was cold.
«—Ramjamming fardling flatulating dagnabbing planet!» Carialle's voice, missing from his consciousness for just moments, reasserted itself at full volume. «There you are! You are one hundred and seventy four kilometers northeast from your previous position.»
«Lady dear, what language!» Keff gasped out between chatters. «Not at all suitable for my lady fair.»
«But appropriate! You've been missing a long time. Confound it, I was worried!»
«It only felt like a second to me,» Keff said, apologetically.
«Fifty-three hundredths of a second,» Carialle said crisply. «Which felt like eons to my processing gear. I had to trace your vital signs through I don't know how many power areas before I found you. Luckily your evil wizard told us you were going to a mountain. That did cut down by about fifty percent the terrain I had to sweep.»
«We teleported,» Keff said, wonderingly. «I . . . teleported! I didn't feel as if I was. It's effortless!»
«I hate it,» Carialle replied. «You were off the air while you were in transit. I didn't know where you had gone, or if you were still alive. Confound these people with their unelectronic toys and nonmechanical machines!»
«My . . . mountain home,» Chaumel announced, interrupting Keff's subvocal argument. The silver magician pointed downward toward a gabled structure built onto the very crest of the highest peak in the range.
«How lovely,» Keff said, hoping one of the expressions he had gleaned from Carialle's tapes of the broadcasting drones was appropriate. By Chaumel's pleased expression, it was.
At first all he could see was the balcony, cantilevered out over a bottomless chasm, smoky purple and black in the light of the setting sun. Set into the mountaintop were tall, arched glass windows, shining with the last highlights of day. They were distinguishable from the blue-white ice cap only because they were flat and smooth. What little could be seen of the rest of the mountain was jagged outthrusts and steep ravines.
«Mighty . . . not . . . from the ground,» Chaumel said, pantomiming something trying to come up from underneath and being met above by a fist. IT rewound the comment and translated it in Keff's ear as «This is a mighty stronghold. Nothing can reach us from the ground.»
«No, to be sure.» Well, that stood to reason. No mage would want to live in a bastion that could be climbed to. Much less accessible if it could be reached only by an aerial route.
The balcony, as they got nearer, was as large as a commercial heliport, with designated landing pads marked out in different colored flush-set paving stones. One square, nearest the tall glass doors, was silver-gray, obviously reserved for the lord of the manor.
The chariot swung in a smooth curve over the pad and set down on it as daintily as a feather. As soon as it landed, the flock of spy-eyes turned and flew away. Chaumel gestured for Keff to get down.
The brawn stepped off the finial onto the dull stone tiles, and found himself dancing to try and keep his balance. The floor was smooth and slick, frictionless as a track-ball surface. Losing his footing, Keff sprawled backward, catching himself with his hands flat behind him, and struggled to an upright position. The feel of the floor disconcerted him. It was heavy with power. He didn't hear it or feel it, but he sensed it. The sensation was extremely unnerving. He rubbed his palms together.
«What's the matter?» Carialle asked. «The view keeps changing. Ah, that's better. Hmm. No, it isn't. What's that dreadful vibration? It feels mechanical.»
«Don't know,» Keff said subvocally, testing the floor with a cautious hand. Though dry to look at, it felt tacky, almost clammy «Slippery,» he added, with a smile up at his host.
Dark brows drawn into an impatient V, Chaumel gestured for Keff to get up. Very carefully, using his hands, Keff got to his knees, and tentatively, to his feet. Chaumel nodded, turned, and strode through the tall double doors. Walking ding-toed like a waterfowl, Keff followed as quickly as he could, if only to get off the surface.
Each time he put a foot down, the disturbing vibration rattled up his leg into his spine. Keff forced himself to ignore it as he tried to catch up with Chaumel.
The silver magiman nattered on, half to Keff, half to himself. Keff boosted the gain on IT to pick up every word, to play back later.
The glass doors opened out from a grand chamber like a ballroom or a throne room. Ceilings were unusually high, with fantastic ornamentation. Keff stared straight up at a painted and gilded trompe d'oeil fresco of soaring native avians in a cloud-dotted sky. Windows of glass, rock crystal, and colored minerals were set at every level on the wall. There was one skylight cut pielike into the ceiling. Considering that his host and his people flew almost everywhere, Keff wasn't surprised at the attention paid to the upper reaches of the rooms. The magifolk seemed to like light, and living inside a mountain was likely to cause claustrophobia. The walls were hewn out of the natural granite, but the floor everywhere was that disconcerting track-ball surface.
«This (thing) . . . mine . . . old,» Chaumel said, gesturing casually at a couple of framed pieces of art displayed on the wall. Keff glanced at the first one to figure out what it represented, and then wished he hadn't. The moire abstract seemed to move by itself in nauseous patterns. Keff hastily glanced away, dashing tears from his eyes and controlling the roil of his stomach.
«Most original,» he said, gasping. Chaumel paused briefly in his chattering to beam at Keff's evident perspicacity and pointed out another stomach-twister. Keff carefully kept his gaze aimed below the level of the frames, offering compliments without looking. Staring at the silver magicians heels and the hem of his robe, Keff padded faster to catch up.
They passed over a threshold into an anteroom where several servants were sweeping and dusting. Except when raising their eyes to acknowledge the presence of their master, they also made a point of watching the ground in front of them. It was no consolation to Keff to realize that others had the same reaction to the «artwork.»
Chaumel was the only bare-skin Keff saw. The staff appeared to consist solely of fur-skinned Noble Primitives, like Brannel, but instead of having just four fingers on each hand, some had all five.
«The missing links?» Keff asked Carialle. These beings looked like a combination between Chaumel's people and Brannel's. Though their faces were hairy, they did not bear the animal cast to their features that the various villagers had. They looked more humanly diversified. «Do you suppose that the farther you go away from the overlords, the more changes you find in facial structure?» He stopped to study the face of a furry-faced maiden, who reddened under her pelt and dropped her eyes shyly. She twisted her duster between her hands.
«Ahem! A geographical cause isn't logical,» Carialle said, «although you might postulate inbreeding between the two races. That would mean that the races are genetically close. Very interesting.»
Chaumel, noticing he'd lost his audience, detoured back, directed Keff away from the serving maid and toward a stone archway.
«Will you look at the workmanship in that?» Keff said, admiringly. «Very fine, Chaumel.»
«I'm glad you . . .» the magiman said, moving on through the doorway into a wide corridor. «Now, this . . . my father . . .»
«This» proved to be a tapestry woven, Carialle informed Keff after a microscopic peek, of dyed vegetable fibers blended with embroidered colorful figures in six-pack hair.
