Энн Маккефри - The Ship Who Won

«I love to fly,» Brannel said, easily enough converted with such a shining prospect. «I will change my message to cooperation.»

«Good! Tell them the truth. The workers will get better treatment and more input into their own government when the power is diminished. The mages will need you more than ever.»

«That I will be happy to tell my fellow workers,» Brannel said gravely.

«I have a secret to tell you, but you, and only you,» Keff said, leaning toward the worker. «Do you promise? Good. Now listen: the mages are not the true owners of the Core of Ozran. Remember it.»

Brannel was goggle-eyed. «I never forget, Mage Keff.»

Seven days later, Chaumel returned to his great room dusting his hands together. A quintet of chariots lifted off the balcony and disappeared over the mountaintops. He stood for a moment as if listening, and turned with a smile to Plenna and Keff.

«That is the last of them,» he said with satisfaction. «Everyone who has said they will cooperate has also promised to press the ones who haven't agreed. In the meantime, all have said that they will keep voluntarily to the barest minimum of use. On the day you designated, two days hence, at sunrise in the eastern province, the great mutual truce will commence.»

«Not without grumbling, I'm sure,» Keff said, with a grin. «I'm sure there'll be a lot of attempts before that to renegotiate the accord to everyone else's benefit. Once the power levels lessen, it'll give me the last direction I need to find the Core of Ozran.»

«Leave the last-minute doubters to me,» Chaumel said. «At the appointed moment, you must be ready. Such a treaty was not easily arranged, and may never again be achieved. Do not fail.»

The high mountains looked daunting in their deep, predawn shadow as Plenna and Chaumel flew toward them. Keff, on Plenna's chair, had the ancient manuals spread out on his lap. As he smoothed the plastic pages down, they crackled in the cold.

«The sun's about to rise over Ferngal's turf,» Carialle informed him. «You should see a drop in power beginning in thirty seconds.»

«Terrific, Cari. Chaumel, any of this looking familiar?»

Chaumel, in charge of three globe-frogs he was restraining from falling off his chair with the use of a mini-containment field generated by his wand, nodded.

«I see the way I came last time,» he shouted. His voice was caught by the great mountains and bounced back and forth like a toy. «See, above us, the two sharp peaks together like the tines of a fork? I kept those immediately to my left all the way into the heart. They overlook a narrow passage.»

«Now,» Carialle said.

Chaumel's and Plenna's chariots shot forward slightly and the «seat belts» around the globe-frogs brightened to a blue glow.

«That's kickback,» Keff said. «Every other mage in the world has turned off the lights and the power available to you two is near one hundred percent.»

«A heady feeling, to be sure,» Chaumel said, jovially. «If it were not that each item of power is not capable of conducting all that there is in the Core. I must tell you how difficult it was to convince all the mages and magesses that they should not each send spy-eyes with us on this journey. Ah, the passageway! Follow me.»

He steered to the right and nipped into a fold of stone that seemed to be a dead end. As the two chairs closed the distance, Keff could see that the ledge was composed of gigantic, rough blocks, separated by a good four meters.

The thin air between them was no barrier to communication between Keff and the Frog Prince. Lit weirdly by the chariot light, the amphibioid resembled a grotesque clay gnome. Keff waved to get his attention.

«Do you know where we are going?» he signed.

«Too long for any living to remember,» Tall Eyebrow signaled back. «The high fingers—» he pointed up, «mentioned in history.»

«What's next?»

«Lip, hole, long cavern.»

«Did you get that, Carialle?» Keff asked. Flying into the narrow chasm robbed them of any ambient light to see by. Chaumel increased the silver luminance of his chariot to help him avoid obstructions.

«I did,» the crisp voice replied. «My planetary maps show that you're approaching a slightly wider plateau that ends in a high saddle cliff, probably the lip. As for the hole, the low range beyond is full of chimneys.»

«That's what the old manuals can tell me,» Keff said, reading by the gentle yellow light of Plennafrey's chair.

«According to this, the cavern where the power generator is situated is at ninety-three degrees, six minutes, two seconds east; forty-seven degrees, fifteen minutes, seven seconds north.» He held up a navigational compass. «Still farther north.»

«The lee lines lead straight ahead,» Chaumel informed him. «Without interference from the rest of Ozran, I can follow the lines to their heart. You are to be congratulated, Keff. This was not possible without a truce.»

«We can't miss it,» Keff said, crowing in triumph. «We have too much information.»

The sun touched the snow-covered summits high above them with orange light as the pass opened out into the great central cirque. Though scoured by glaciers in ages past, the mountains were clearly of volcanic origin. Shards of black obsidian glass stuck up unexpectedly from the cloudy whiteness of snowbanks under icefalls. The two chairs ran along the moraine until it dropped abruptly out from underneath. Keff had a momentary surge of vertigo as he glanced back at the cliff.

«How high is that thing, Cari?» he asked.

«Eight hundred meters. You wonder how the original humans got here, let alone the globe-frogs who built it.»

At his signal, Plenna dropped into the dark, cold valley. Keff shivered in the blackness and hugged himself for warmth. He glanced up at Plenna, who was staring straight ahead in wonder.

«What do you see?» he asked.

«I see a great skein of lines coming together,» she said. «I will try to show you.» She waved her hands, and the faintest limning of blue fire a fingertip wide started above their heads and ran down before them like a burning fuse. A moment later, a network of similar lines appeared coming over the mountain ridges all around them, converging on a point still ahead. Her glowing gaze met Keff's eyes. «It is the most amazing thing I have seen in my life.»

«Your point of convergence is roughly in the center of your five high mages' regions,» Carialle pointed out. «Everyone shares equal access to the Core.»

«Has anyone else ever come here?» Keff asked Chaumel.

«It is considered a No-Mages'-Land,» the silver magiman said. «Rumors are that things go out of control within these mountains. I could not come this far in my youth. I became confused by the overabundance of power, lost my way, and nearly lost my life trying to fly away. Here is the path, all marked out before us, as if it was meant to be.»

«We should never have lost sight of the source of our power,» Plenna said. «Nor the aims of our ancestors.» Her own tragedy, Keff guessed, was never far from the surface of her thoughts.

The two chariots began to throw tips of shadows as they ran over the broken ground. Soot-rimmed holes ten meters and more across punctuated the snow-field. Keff followed the indicator on his compass as the numbers came closer and closer to the target coordinates.

All at once, Chaumel, Carialle, and the Frog Prince said, «That one.»

«And down!» Keff cried.

The tunnel mouth was larger than most of the others in the snow-covered plain. Keff felt a chill creep along his skin as they dropped into the hole, shutting off even the feeble predawn sunlight. Plenna's chariot's soft light kept him from becoming blind as soon as they were underground. Chaumel dropped back to fly alongside them.