enjoy your time here with us, I promise you. To our new friendship.» She flicked her fingers. A cup of opal glass materialized in front of her and skimmed across the air to Keff's tray. Keff, surprised and gratified, picked it up and tilted it to her in salute.
«What's in it, Cari?» he subvocalized.
«Yum. Its a nice mugful of mind-wipe,» she said. «Stabilized sodium pentothal and a few other goodies guaranteed to make her the apple of your eye.» Keff gave the enchantress a smile full of charm and a polite nod, raised the goblet to her once again, and put it down untasted. «Sorry, ma'am. I don't drink.»
The bronze woman swept her hand angrily to one side, and the goblet vanished.
«Nice try, peachie,» Cari said, triumphantly.
Keff seized a miniature dumpling from the next plate that landed on his tray.
«Yes,» Carialle whispered. Keff popped it into his mouth and swallowed. His greed amused the magifolk of the south, whose chairs bobbed up and down in time to their laughter. He smiled kindly at them and decided to turn the tables.
«I am very interested in your society. How are you governed? Who is in charge of decision-making that affects you all?»
That simple question started a philosophical discussion that fast deteriorated into a shouted argument, resulting in the death or discomfort of six more fur-skinned foodtasters. Keff smiled and nodded and tried to follow it all while he swallowed a few bites.
Following Carialle's instructions, he waved away the next two dishes, took a morsel from the third, ignored the next three when Carialle found native trace elements that would upset his digestive tract, and ate several delightful mouthfuls from the last, crisp, hot pastries stuffed with fresh vegetables. Each dish was more succulent and appealing than the one before it.
«I can't get over the variety of magic going on in here,» Keff whispered, toying with a soufflГ© that all but defied gravity.
«If it was really magic, they could magic up what you wanted to eat and not just what they want you to have. As for the rest, you know what I think.»
«Well, the food is perfect,» Keff said stubbornly. «No burnt spots, no failed sauces, no gristle. That sounds like magic.»
«Oh, maybe its food-synths instead,» Carialle countered. «If I was working for Chaumel, I'd be terrified of making mistakes and ruining the food. Wouldn't you?»
Keff sighed. «At least I still have my aliens.»
«Enough of this tittle-tattle,» Chaumel called out, rising. He clapped his hands. The assemblage craned their necks to look at him. «A little entertainment, my friends?» He brought his hands together again.
Between Nokias and Ferngal, a fur-skinned tumbler appeared halfway through a back flip and bounded into the center of the room. Keff's chair automatically backed up until it was between two others, leaving the middle of the circle open. A narrow cable suspended from the ceiling came into being. On it, a male and a female hung ankle to ankle ten meters above the ground. Starting slowly, they revolved faster until they were spinning flat out, parallel to the floor. There was a patter of insincere applause. The rope and acrobats vanished, and the tumbler leaped into the air, turned a double somersault, and landed on one hand. A small animal with an ornamented collar appeared standing on his upturned feet. It did flips on its perch, as the male boosted it into the air with thrusts of his powerful legs. Omri yawned. The male and his pet disappeared to make room for a whole troupe of juvenile tumblers.
Keff heard a gush of wind from the open windows. The night air blew a cloud of dust over the luminescent parapet, but it never reached the open door. Chaumel flashed his wand across in a warding gesture. The dust beat itself against a bellying, invisible barrier and fell to the floor.
«Was that part of the entertainment?» Keff said subvocally.
«Another one of those power drains,» Carialle said. «Somehow, what they do sucks all the energy, all the cohesive force out of the surrounding ecology. The air outside of Chaumel's little mountain nest is dead, clear to where I am.»
«Magic doesn't have to come from somewhere,» Keff said.
«Keff, physics! Power is leaching toward your location. Therefore logic suggests it is being drawn in that direction by need.»
«Magic doesn't depend on physics. But I concede your point.»
«It's true whether or not you believe in it. The concentrated force-fields are weakening everywhere but there.»
«Any chance it weakened enough to let you go?»
There was a slight pause. «No.»
A prestidigitator and his slender, golden-furred assistant suddenly appeared in midair, floating down toward the floor while performing difficult sleight-of-hand involving fire and silk cloths. They held up hoops, and acrobats bounded out of the walls to fly through them. More acrobats materialized to catch the flyers, then disappeared as soon as they were safely down. Keff watched in fascination, admiring the dramatic timing. Apparently, the spectacle failed to maintain the interest of the other guests. His chair jerked roughly forward toward Lacia, nearly ramming him through the back. The acrobats had to leap swiftly to one side to avoid being run over.
«You are a spy for a faction on the other side of Ozran, aren't you?» she demanded.
«There aren't any other factions on Ozran, madam,» Keff said. «I scanned from space. All habitations are limited to this continent in the northern hemisphere and the archipelago to the southwest.»
«You must have come from one of them, then,» she said. «Whose spy are you?»
Just like that, the interrogation began all over again. Instead of letting him have time to answer their demands, they seemed to be vying with one another to escalate their accusations of what they suspected him of doing on Ozran. Potria, still angry, didn't bother to speak to him, but occasionally snatched him away from another magifolk just for the pleasure of seeing his gasping discomfort. Asedow joined in the game, tugging Keff away from his rival. Chaumel, too, decided to assert his authority as curator of the curiosity, pulling him away from other magifolk to prevent him answering their questions. In the turmoil, Keff spun around faster and faster, growing more irked by the moment at the magi using him as a pawn. He kept his hands clamped to his chair arms, his teeth gritted tightly as he strove to keep from being sick. Their voices chattered and shrilled like a flock of birds.
«Who are you . . .?»
«I demand to know . . .!»
«What are you . . .?»
«Tell me . . .»
«How do . . .?»
«Why . . .?»
«What . . .?»
Fed up at last, Keff shouted at the featureless mass of color. «Enough of this boorish interrogation. I'm not playing anymore!»
Heedless of the speed at which he was spinning, he pushed away his tray, stepped out from the footrest, and went down, down, down . . .
Chapter Nine
Keff fell down and down toward a dark abyss. Frigid winds screamed upward, freezing his face and his hands, which were thrust above his head by his descent. The horizontal blur that was the faces and costumes of the magifolk was replaced by a vertical blur of gray and black and tan. He was falling through a narrow tunnel of rough stone occasionally lit by streaks of garishly colored light. His hands grasped out at nothing; his feet sought for support and found none.
Gargoyle faces leered at him, gibbering. Flying creatures with dozens of clawed feet swooped down to worry his hair and shoulders. Momentum snapped his head back so he was staring up at a point of light far, far above him
