Энн Маккефри - The Ship Who Won

Though she didn't seem to eat, in deference to his appetite, Magess Carialle had prepared for him a meal twice the size of the one he had eaten last time. Each dish was satisfying and most delicious. With every bite he liked the thought less and less of returning to raw roots and grains. He was nearly finished eating when the big picture before him lit up and he found himself looking into the weird green face of an Old One. He stopped with a half-chewed mouthful.

«Here's the first of the tapes, starting at the point we left off last time,» Carialle's voice said.

«Ah,» Brannel said, recovering his wits.

He couldn't not watch for he was fascinated and her voice kept supplying translations in his tongue. Brannel asked her the occasional question. She answered, but without offering as much of her attention as she gave one of Keff's inquiries. He glanced back over his shoulder, wondering why she had made a picture of the marsh creatures, and what they found so interesting in it.

». . . And that's the last of the tapes,» Carialle said, sometime later. «What a fine resource to have turn up.»

«What am I to do now?» Brannel asked, looking around him. Carialle's picture appeared on the wall beside him. The lady smiled.

«You've done so much for us—and for Ozran, by telling us about farming,» she said. «All we can do now is wait to see what the mages think of our evidence.»

«I would tell the mages all I know,» Brannel said hopefully. «It would help convince them to farm better.» The flat magess shook her head.

«Thank you, Brannel. Not yet. It would be better if you didn't get involved—less dangerous for you,» she said. «Now, I don't have any tasks that need doing. Why don't you go home and sleep? I'm sure Keff will find you tomorrow, or the next day. As soon as he has any definite news to tell you.»

Brannel went away, but Keff didn't come.

The worker spent the next day, and the next, waiting for Keff to stop off to see him between his hurried journeys to the far reaches of Ozran on the magess's chair. He never glanced at Brannel. In spite of his promise, he had forgotten the worker existed. He had forgotten their growing friendship.

Worse yet, Brannel now had a head full of information about the ancestors and the Old Ones, and what good did it do him? Nothing to do with teaching him to become a mage, or getting him better food to eat. In time his disappointment grew into a towering rage. How dare the strangers build up his hopes and leave him to rot like one of the despised roots of the field! How dare they make him a promise, knowing he never forgot anything, and then pretend it had never been spoken? Brannel swore to himself that he would never trust a mage again.

Ferngal's stronghold stood alone on a high, dentate mountain peak, set apart by diverging river branches from the rest of the eastern range. The obsidian-dark stone of its walls offered little of the open hospitality of Chaumel's home. In the dark, relatively low-ceilinged great hall, Keff had the uncomfortable feeling the walls were closing in on him. Brown-robed Lacia and a yellow-coated mage sat with Ferngal as Chaumel gave his by now familiar talk on preserving and restoring the natural balances of Ozran.

Chaumel, in his bright robes, seemed like a living gasflame as he hovered behind Carialle's illusions. He appealed to each of his listeners in turn, clearly disliking talking to more than one mage at a time. He had voiced a caution to Keff and Plenna before they had arrived.

«In a group, there is more chance of dissension. Careful manipulation will be required and I do not know if I am equal to it.»

Keff had felt a chill. «If you can't do it, we're in trouble,» he had said. «But we need to speed up the process. The power blackouts are becoming more frequent. I don't know how long you have until there's a complete failure.»

«If that happens,» Chaumel told his audience, «then mages will be trapped in the mountains with no means of rescue at hand. Food distribution will end, causing starvation in many areas. We have made the fur-faces dependent upon our system. We cannot fail them, or ourselves.»

Early in the discussion, Lacia had announced that she viewed the whole concept of the Core of Ozran as science to be sacrilege. She frowned at Chaumel whenever the silver magiman made eye contact with her. The mage in yellow robes, an older man named Whilashen, said little and sat through Chaumel's speech pinching his lower lip between thumb and forefinger.

«I do not like this idea of relying more upon the servant class,» Ferngal said. «They are mentally limited.»

«With respect. High Mage,» Keff said, «how would you know? Chaumel tells me that even your house servants are given a low dose of the docility drug in their food. I have done tests on the workers in the late Mage Klemay's province and can show you the results. They are of the same racial stock as you, and their capabilities are the same. All they need is more nurturing and education, and of course for you to stop the ritual mutilation and cranial mutations. In the next generation all the children will return to normal human appearance, with the possible exception of retaining the hirsutism. That may need to be bred out.»

«Tosh!» Ferngal's ruddy face suffused further.

«I can't wait to see what happens when we tell him about the Frog Prince,» Carialle said through the implants. «He'll have apoplexy.»

Keff leaned forward, his hands outstretched, making an appeal. «I can explain the scientific process and show you proof you'll understand.»

«Proof you manufacture proves nothing,» Ferngal said. «Illusions, that's all, like these pictures.»

«But Nokias said . . .» Plennafrey began. Chaumel made one attempt to silence her, but it was too late. «Nokias—»

Ferngal cut her off at once. «You've talked to Nokias? You spoke to him before you came to me?» The black magiman s nostrils flared. «Have you no respect for protocol?»

«He is my liege,» Plenna said with quiet dignity. «I was required. You would demand the same from any of the mages of the East.»

«Well . . . that is true.»

«Will you not consider what we have said?» she pleaded.

«No, I won't give up power and you can stuff your arguments about making the peasants smarter in a place where a magic item won't fit. You're out of your mind asking something like that. And if Nokias has softened enough to say yes, he will regret it.» Ferngal showed his teeth in a vicious grin. «I'll soon add the South to my domain. Chaumel, you ought to know better.»

«High Mage, sometimes truth must overcome even common sense.»

Abruptly, Ferngal lost interest in them.

«Go,» he said, tossing a deceptively casual gesture toward the door behind him. «Go now before I lose my temper.»

«Heretics!» screamed Lacia.

With what dignity he could muster, Chaumel led the small procession around Ferngal toward the doors. Keff gathered up the holo-table and opened his stride to catch up without running.

He heard a voice whisper very close to his ear. Not Carialle's: a man's.

«Some of us have honor,» the voice said. «Tell your master to contact me later.» Startled, Keff turned around. Whilashen nodded to him, his eyes intent.

In spite of Chaumel's pleas for confidentiality, word began to spread to the other mages before he had a chance to speak with them in person. Rumors began to spread that Chaumel and an unknown army of mages wanted to take over the rest by destroying their connection to the Core of Ozran. Chaumel spent a good deal of time on what Keff called «damage control,» scotching the gossip, and reassuring the panic-stricken magifolk that he was not planning an Ozran-wide coup.