«We can't teleport out of a place,» Plenna said, staring ahead of them. «Only in. Almost there. Hold on.»
Keff, gripping the legs of her chair, got brief impressions of a series of vast caverns and corkscrewing passages as they looped and flitted through a passage that wound in an ever-widening spiral without the walls ever spreading farther apart. To Keff's relief, they emerged into the open air. They were over a steep-sided, narrow, dry riverbed bounded by dun-colored brush and scrub trees. He had a mere glimpse of the partly-concealed stone niche where Plenna almost certainly landed her chair when here by herself, then they were out over the ravine heading into the sunrise. Keff's stomach turned over when he realized how high up they were. He chided himself for a practical coward; he wasn't afraid of heights in vacuum, but where gravity ruled, he was acrophobic.
He turned at the sound of a shout. Through a lucky fluke, Chaumel and Asedow were almost immediately behind them. The others were probably still trying to get out of Plenna's labyrinth, or had crashed into the stone walls. As soon as he was clear, Asedow raised his mace. Red fire lanced out at them. Plenna, apparently intuiting where Asedow would strike, dodged up and down, slewing sideways to let the beams pass. The dry brush of the deep river vale smoldered and caught fire.
Chaumel was more subtle. Keff felt something creep into his mind and take hold. He suddenly thought he was being carried in the jaws of a dragon. Fiery breath crept along his back and into his hair, growing hotter. The fierce, white teeth were about to bite down on him, severing his legs. He groaned, clenching his jaws, as he fought the illusions hold on his mind. The image vanished in the sweet breeze Keff had come to associate with Plenna, but it was followed immediately by another horrible illusion. She batted it away at once without losing her concentration on the battle. Chaumel was ready with the next sally.
«Don't want them taking my mind!» Keff ground out, battling images of clutching octopi with needle-sharp teeth set in a ring.
«Concentrate, Keff,» Carialle said «Those devious bastards can't find a crack if you keep your focus small. Think of an equation. Six to the eighth power is . . .?»
«Times six is thirty six, times six is two hundred sixteen, times six is . . .» Keff recited.
Plennafrey started forming small balls of gray nothingness between her hands. Her chair wheeled on its own axis, bringing her face-to-face with her pursuers. They peeled off to the sides like expert dog-fighters, but not before she had flung her spells at them. Explosions echoed down the valley. Ferngal's chair tipped over backward, sending him plummeting into the ravine. Keff heard his cry before the magiman vanished in midair. The black chair vanished, too. Nokias zoomed in toward them, his hand laid across his spell-casting ring. Plenna threw up a wall of protection just in time to shield them from the scarlet lightning.
«Divided by fourteen is . . . ? Come on!» Carialle said. «To the nearest integer.»
One by one, the last three mages appeared out of the cave mouth and joined in the aerial battle. Keff couldn't watch Plenna weaving spells anymore because the webs made him think of giant spiders, which the illusion-casters made creep toward him, threatening to eat him. He drove them away with numbers.
«How long is a ninety-five kilohertz radio wave?» Carialle pressed him. «Keff, late-breaking headline: a couple hundred chariots just left Chaumel's residence. They're all coming for you. Teleporting . . . now!»
«We're too vulnerable,» Keff shouted hoarsely. «If they get through to my mind the way they did in the banquet hall, I'll end up their plaything. If they don't shoot us first!»
All six of the remaining mages positioned themselves around Plenna like the sides of a cube, converging on her, throwing their diverse spells and illusions. Hands flying, Plennafrey warded herself and Keff in a translucent globe of energy. Carialle s voice became suffused with static.
Suddenly, the chair under him dropped. Spells and lightning bolts, along with the shield-globe, vanished. The sides of the ravine shot upward like the stone walls in his nightmare.
«What happened?» he shouted. All the other mages were falling, too, their faces frozen with fear. Before his question was completely out of his mouth, the terrifying fall ceased. Keff felt his hair crackle with static electricity, and bright sparks seemed to fly around all the mages' chariots. Unhesitatingly, Plenna angled her chair upward, flying out of the canyon. She crested the ridge and ran flat out toward the east. «What was that?»
«Didn't you pay the power bill?» Carialle asked, in his ear. «That was a full blackout, a tremendous drop along the electromagnetic lines. I think you overloaded the circuits of whatever's powering them, but they're back on line. Fortunately, it got everybody at once, not just you.»
«Are you all right?» Keff asked.
The yearning and frustration in the brain's voice was unmistakable. «For that one moment I was free, but unfortunately I was too slow to take off! All the power on the planet is draining toward you—even the plants seem to be losing their color. Everyone is out in full force after you. Keff, get her to bring you here!»
Like a hive of angry hornets, swarms of chariots poured over the ridge in pursuit. Scarlet bolts whipped past Keff's ear. He grabbed Plennafrey's knee, and turned his face up to her.
«Plenna, if you can't teleport out, we have to teleport into somewhere—my ship!» She nodded curtly.
Over his head, the girl's arms wove and wove. Keff watched the mass of chairs fill the air behind them. He prayed they wouldn't suffer another magical blackout.
«Great Mother Planet of Paradise, aid me!» Plenna threw up her arms, and the whole scene, angry magicians and all, vanished.
Chapter Ten
Plonk! The chariot was abruptly surrounded by the walls of Carialle's main cabin.
«That was a tight fit,» Carialle remarked on her main speaker. «You're nearly close enough to the bulkhead to meld with the paint.»
«But we made it,» Keff said, scrambling out. Gratefully, he stretched his legs and reached high over his head with joined hands until his back crackled in seven places. «Ahhh . . .»
Plenna rose and stared around her in wonder. «Yes, we made it. So this is what the tower looks like inside. It is like a home, but so many strange things!»
«I think she likes it,» Carialle said, approvingly.
«Well, what's not to like?» Keff said. «Are the magimen still coming?»
«They don't know where you've gone. They'll figure it out soon enough, but I'm generating white noise to mask my interior. It's making the spy-eyes crazy, but that's all right with me, the nasty little metal mosquitoes.»
«It is not you talking,» Plennafrey said, watching his lips as Carialle made her latest statement. «There is a second voice, a female's. Your tower can speak?»
Keff, realizing the habits of fourteen years were stronger than discretion, glanced at Carialle's pillar and pulled an apologetic face.
«Oops,» Carialle said.
«Er, it's not a tower, Plenna. It's a ship,» Keff explained.
«And it's not his. It's mine.» Carialle manifested her Myths and Legends image of the Lady Fair on the main screen. With tremendous and admirable self-control, Plennafrey just caught her mouth before it could drop open. She eyed the gorgeous silhouette, evidently contrasting her own disheveled costume unfavorably with the rose- colored gauze and satin of the Lady.
«You're . . . only a picture,» Plenna said at last.
«You want me three-dimensional?» Cari said, making her image «step» off the wall and assume a moving holographic image. She held out her hands, making her long sleeves flutter with a whisper of silk. «As you wish. But I am real. I exist inside the walls of this ship. I am the other half of Keff's team. My name is Carialle.»
The fierce expression Plenna wore told Carialle that Plenna was jealous of all things pertaining to Keff. That needed to be handled when the crisis had passed. To the magiwoman's credit, she understood that, too.
«I greet you, Carialle,» Plenna said politely.
«She's a winner, Keff,» Cari said, pitching her statement for Keff's mastoid implant only. «Pretty, too. And just a little taller than you are. That must have made things interesting.»
