Энн Маккефри - The Ship Who Won

The deafening noises stopped abruptly. When the smoke cleared, Chaumel waited a moment before dissolving the bubble. He let it pop silently on the air and took a step forward. Part of the floor rocked under his feet. Keff grabbed him. Two paces beyond the place they were standing, the end of the balcony was gone, ripped away by the magical storm as if a giant had taken a bite out of it. The pieces were still crashing with dull echoes into the ravine far below. Plenna mounted her chair to go look. She returned, shaking her head.

«It is . . .» Chaumel began, and had to stop to clear his throat. «It is considered ill-mannered to notice when someone else is building a spell, especially if that person is of higher rank than oneself. I believe it has now become a matter of life and death for us to behave in an ill-mannered fashion.»

«Ferngal,» Carialle said. «Using two power objects at once. I have both their frequencies logged.» Keff passed along the information.

«Sedition, he said.» Chaumel was confused. He appealed to Keff. «What sedition was Ferngal talking about? I have talked to no one in his area. I would not.»

«Then someone else is talking to them,» Keff said. «Nokias mentioned something similar. We'd better investigate.»

A quick aerial reconnaissance of the two farmsteads from which Nokias and Ferngal's complaints came revealed that they were very close together, suggesting that whatever set off the riots was somewhere in the area, and on foot, not aloft. Chaumel asked help from a few of the mages who had tentatively given their promise to cooperate. They sent out spy-eyes to all the surrounding villages, looking for anything that seemed threatening.

Nothing appeared during the next day or so. On the third day, a light green spy-eye found Chaumel as he was leaving Carialle's ship.

«Here's your trouble,» Kiyottal's mental voice announced.

Plennafrey, sensing the arrival of an eye-sphere from inside the ship, interrupted their attempts at conversation with the Frog Prince to run outside. Keff followed her.

«We've located the troublemaker,» Chaumel said, after communing silently with the sphere. «It's your four-finger. He's making speeches.»

«Brannel?» Keff said. He glanced out at the farm fields. Wielding heavy forks, the workers were turning over empty rows of earth and bedding them down with straw. He searched their ranks and turned back to Chaumel.

«You're right. I forgot all about him. He's gone.»

«Follow me,» Kiyottal's voice said. «I have also alerted Ferngal. Nokias is coming, too. It's in his territory.»

In the center of the clearing in a southern farm village, Brannel raised his arms for silence. The workers, who had long, pack beast-like faces, were gently worried about this skinny, dirty stranger who had arrived at their farmstead with an exhausted dray beast at his heels.

«I tell you the mages are weakening!» Brannel cried. «They are not all-powerful. If we have an uprising, every worker together, they will come out to punish us, but they will all fall to the ground helpless!»

«You are mad,» a female farmer said, curling back her broad lips in a sneer.

«Why would we want to overthrow the mages?» one of the males asked him. «We have enough to eat.»

«But you cannot think for yourselves,» Brannel said. He was tired. He had given the same speech at another farmstead only days before, and once a few days before that, with the same stupid faces and the same stupid questions. If not for the flame of revenge that burned within him, the thought of journeying all over Ozran would have daunted him into returning to Alteis. «You do the same things every day of your lives, every year of your lives!»

«Yes? So? What else should we do?» Most of the listeners were more inclined to heckle, but Brannel thought he saw the gleam of comprehension on the faces of a few.

«Change is coming, but it won't be for our sakes—only the mages'. If you want things to change for you, don't eat the mage food. Don't eat it tonight, not tomorrow, not any day. Keep roots from your harvest, and eat them. You will remember,» Brannel insisted, pointing to his temples with both hands. «Tomorrow you will see. It will be like nothing you have ever experienced in your life. You will remember. You need to trust me only for one night! Then you will see for yourselves. You grow the food! You have a right to it! We can get rid of the magefolk. On the first day of the next planting when the sun is highest, throw down your tools and refuse to work.»

The whirring sound in the air distracted most of the workers, who looked up, then threw themselves flat on the ground. Brannel and his few converts remained standing, staring up at the four chariots descending upon them. The black and gold chairs touched down first.

«Kill him,» Ferngal said heatedly, pointing at the sheep-faced male, «or I will do so myself. His people have been without an overlord too long. They are getting above themselves.»

«No,» Keff said. He leaped off Plenna's chair, putting himself between the high mage and the peasant. «Don't touch him. Brannel, what are you doing?»

At first Brannel remained mulishly silent, then words burst out of him in a torrent of wounded feelings.

«You promised me, and I risked myself, and Chaumel knocked me out, and you threw me out again with nothing. Nothing!» Brannel spat. «I am as I was before, only worse. The others made fun of me. Why didn't you keep your promise?»

Keff held up his hands. «I promised I'd do what I could for you. Amulets aren't easy to find, you know, and the power is going to end soon anyway. Do you want to fill your head with useless knowledge?»

«Yes! To know is to understand one's life.»

Ferngal spat. «If you're going to waste my time by talking nonsense with a servant, I'm away. Just make certain he does not come back to my domain. Never!» The black chair disappeared toward the clouds. Nokias, shaking his head, went off in the opposite direction. The workers, freed from their thrall by the departure of the high mages, went on to eat their supper, which had just appeared in the square of stones. Brannel started away from Keff to divert the villagers. The brawn grabbed him by the arm.

«Don't interfere, Brannel. I won't be able to stop Ferngal next time. Look, man, I guaranteed only that Plenna would teach you.»

Brannel was unsatisfied. «Even that did not happen. You sent me away, and I heard nothing for days. When I saw you at last, you were in too much of a hurry to speak to me.»

«That was most discourteous of me,» Keff agreed. «I'm sorry. But you know what we're doing. There's a lot to be done, and mages to convince.»

«But we had a bargain,» Brannel said stubbornly. «She could give me one of her items of power, and I can learn to use it by myself. Then I will have magic as long as anyone.»

«Brannel, I want to offer you a different kind of power, the kind that will last. Will you listen to me?»

Reluctantly, but swayed by the sincerity of his first friend ever, the embittered Noble Primitive agreed at last to listen. Keff beckoned him to a broad rock at the end of the field, at a far remove from both the magifolk and the dray-faced farmers.

«If you still want to help,» Keff said, «and you're up to continuing your journey, I want you to go on with it. Talk to the workers. Explain what's going to happen.»

«But High Mage Ferngal said . . .?»

«Ferngal doesn't want you to make things more difficult. Help us, don't hinder. Tell them what they stand to gain—in cooperation.» Keff saw light dawning in the male's eyes. «Yes, you do see. In return, we'll supply you with food. We might even be able to manage transporting you from region to region by chair. Arriving in a chariot will give you immediate high status with the others. You like to fly, don't you?»