The Ship Who Saved The Worlds - The Ship Who Saved the Worlds Part 23
Library

The Ship Who Saved the Worlds Part 23

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!" 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 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 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 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." 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 know what we're doing. There's a lot to be done, and mages to convince." 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." 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?"

"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."

Chapter Thirteen.

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 is the most amazing thing I have seen in my life." 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.

They traveled six hundred meters in nearly total darkness. Plenna's hand settled on Keff's shoulder and he squeezed it. Abruptly the way opened out, and they emerged into a huge hemispherical cavern lit by a dull blue luminescence and filled with a soft humming like the purr of a cat.

"You could fit Chaumel's mountain in here," Carialle said, taking a sounding through Keff's implants.

The ceiling of this cavern had been scalloped smooth at some time in the distant past so that it bore only new, tiny stalactites like cilia at the edges of each sound-deadening bubble. Here and there a vast, textured, onyx pillar stretched from floor to roof, glowing with an internal light.

The globe-frogs began to bounce up and down in their cases, pointing excitedly. Keff felt like dancing, too. Ahead, minute in proportion, lay a platform situated on top of a complex array of machinery. It wasn't until he identified it that he realized they had been flying over an expanse of machinery that nearly covered the floor of the entire cavern.

"I have never seen anything like it in my life," Chaumel whispered, the first to break the silence. His voice was captured and tossed about like a ball by the scalloped stone walk.

"Nor has anyone else living," Keff said. "No one has been here in this cavern for at least five hundred years."

"Stepped field generators," Carialle said at once. "Will you look at that beautiful setup? They are huge! This could light a space station for a thousand years."

"It is amazing," Plennafrey breathed.

She and Chaumel leaned forward, urging speed from their chariots, each eager to be the first to land on the platform. Keff clenched his hands on the chair back under his hips until he thought his fingers would indent the wood, but he was laughing. The others were laughing and hooting, and in the frogs' cases, jumping up and down for pure delight.

"The manual says..." Keff said, piling off the chair, pushed by Plenna who wanted to dismount right away and see the wonders up close. "The manual says the system draws from the core below and the surface above to service power demands. It mentions lightning-Cari, this is too cracked to read. I must have lost a piece of it while we were flying."

Carialle found the copy in her memory bank. "It looks like the generators are made to absorb energy from the surface as well to take advantage of natural electrical surges like lightning. Sensible, but I think it got out of hand when the power demands grew beyond its stated capacity. It started drawing from living matter."

Plenna surrendered her belt buckle to the Frog Prince. He left his shell and joined Keff and Chaumel at the low-lying console at the edge of the platform. The brawn, on his knees, displayed the indicator fields to Carialle through the implants while signing with the amphibioids. Stopping frequently to compare notes with his companions, the Frog Prince read the fine scrawl on the face of each, then tried to tell the humans through sign language what they were.

"So that says internal temperature of the Core, eh, Tall?" Keff asked, marking the gauge in Standard with an indelible pen. "And by the way, it's hot in here, did you notice?"

"Residual heat from years of overuse," Carialle said. "I calculate that it would take over two years to heat that cavern to forty degrees centigrade."

"Well, we knew the overuse didn't occur overnight," Keff said. "Ah, he says that one is the power output? Thanks, Chaumel." He made another note on a glass-fronted display as the magiman gesticulated with the amphibioid. "Pity your ancestor didn't have any documentation on the mechanism itself, Plenna."

"Isn't that level rising?" Plennafrey asked, pointing over Keff's shoulder. Keff looked up from the circuit he was examining.

"You're right, it is," he said. Subtly, under their feet, the hum of the engines changed, speeding up slightly. "What's happening? I didn't touch anything. None of us did."

"I'm getting blips in the power grid outside your location," Carialle replied. "I'd say that some of the mages have gotten tired of the truce and are raising their defenses again."

Keff relayed the suggestion to Chaumel, who nodded sadly. "Distrust is too strong for any respite to hold for long," he said. "I am surprised we had this much time to examine the Core while it was quiescent."

Swiftly, more and more of the power cells kicked on, some of them groaning mightily as their turbines began once again to spin. The gauge crept upward until the indicator was pinned against the right edge, but the generators' roar increased in volume and pitch beyond that until it was painful to hear.