The Ship Who Won (19 page)

mouth, the view changed.

" # f^??

# # # going?

Keff gaped. They were no longer hanging above Brannels fields. Between one meter and another the silver

chariot had transferred effortlessly to a point above snow-capped mountain peaks. The drop in temperature was so

sudden Keff suffered a violent, involuntary shudder before

he knew he was cold.

"-Ramjamming fardling flatulating dagnabbing

planet!" Carialle's voice, missing from his consciousness for

just moments, reasserted itself at full volume. 'There you

are! You are one hundred and seventy four kilometers

northeast from your previous position."

"Lady dear, what language!" Keff gasped out between

chatters. "Not at all suitable for my lady fair."

"But appropriate! You've been missing a long time.

Confound it, I was worried!"

"It only felt like a second to me," Keff said, apologetically.

"Fifty-three hundredths of a second," Carialle said

crisply. "Which felt like eons to my processing gear. I had

to trace your vital signs through I don't know how many

power areas before I found you. Luckily your evil wizard

told us you were going to a mountain. That did cut down

by about fifty percent the terrain I had to sweep."

"We teleported," Keff said, wonderingly. "I ... teleported! I didn't feel as if I was. It's effortless!"

"I hate it," Carialle replied. "You were off the air while

you were in transit. I didn't know where you had gone, or if

you were still alive. Confound these people with their

unelectronic toys and nonmechanical machines!"

"My . . . mountain home," Chaumel announced, interrupting Keffs subvocal argument. The silver magician

pointed downward toward a gabled structure built onto

the very crest of the highest peak in the range.

"How lovely," Keff said, hoping one of the expressions

he had gleaned from Carialle's tapes of the broadcasting

drones was appropriate. By Chaumel's pleased expression,

it was.

At first all he could see was the balcony, cantilevered out

over a bottomless chasm, smoky purple and black in the

light of the setting sun. Set into the mountaintop were tall,

arched glass windows, shining with the last highlights of

day. They were distinguishable from the blue-white ice cap

only because they were flat and smooth. What little could

be seen of the rest of the mountain was jagged outthrusts

and steep ravines.

"Mighty . . . not. . . from the ground," Chaumel said,

pantomiming something trying to come up from underneath and being met above by a fist. IT rewound the

comment and translated it in Keffs ear as 'This is a

mighty stronghold. Nothing can reach us from the

ground."

"No, to be sure." Well, that stood to reason. No mage

would want to live in a bastion that could be climbed to.

Much less accessible if it could be reached only by an aerial route.

The balcony, as they got nearer, was as large as a commercial heliport, with designated landing pads marked out

in different colored flush-set paving stones. One square,

nearest the tall glass doors, was silver-gray, obviously

reserved for the lord of the manor.

The chariot swung in a smooth curve over the pad and

set down on it as daintily as a feather. As soon as it landed,

the flock of spy-eyes turned and flew away. Chaumel gestured for Keffto get down.

The brawn stepped off the finial onto the dull stone

tiles, and found himself dancing to try and keep his balance. The floor was smooth and slick, frictionless as a

track-ball surface. Losing his footing, Keff sprawled backward, catching himself with his hands flat behind him, and

struggled to an upright position. The feel of the floor disconcerted him. It was heavy with power. He didn't hear it

or feel it, but he sensed it. The sensation was extremely

unnerving. He rubbed his palms together.

'What's the matter?" Carialle asked. 'The view keeps

changing. Ah, that's better. Hmm. No, it isn't. What's that

dreadful vibration? It feels mechanical."

"Don't know," Keff said subvocally, testing the floor

with a cautious hand. Though dry to look at, it felt tacky,

almost clammy "Slippery," he added, with a smile up at his

host.

Dark brows drawn into an impatient V, Chaumel gestured for Keff to get up. Very carefully, using his hands,

Keff got to his knees, and tentatively, to his feet. Chaumel

nodded, turned, and strode through the tall double doors.

Walking ding-toed like a waterfowl, Keff followed as

quickly as he could, if only to get off the surface.

Each time he put a foot down, the disturbing vibration

rattled up his leg into his spine. Keff forced himself to

ignore it as he tried to catch up with Chaumel.

The silver maglman nattered on, half to Keff, half to

himself. Keff boosted the gain on IT to pick up every

word, to play back later.

The glass doors opened out from a grand chamber like a

ballroom or a throne room. Ceilings were unusually high,

with fantastic ornamentation. Keff stared straight up at a

painted and gilded trompe d'oeil fresco of soaring native

avians in a cloud-dotted sky. Windows of glass, rock crystal,

and colored minerals were set at every level on the wall.

There was one skylight cut pielike into the ceiling. Considering that his host and his people flew almost everywhere,

Keff wasn't surprised at the attention paid to the upper

reaches of the rooms. The magifolk seemed to like light,

and living inside a mountain was likely to cause claustro-phobia. The walls were hewn out of the natural granite,

but the floor everywhere was that disconcerting track-ball

surface.

'This (thing)... mine ... old," Chaumel said, gesturing

casually at a couple of framed pieces of art displayed on

the wall. Keff glanced at the first one to figure out what it

represented, and then wished he hadn't. The moire

abstract seemed to move by itself in nauseous patterns.

Keff hastily glanced away, dashing tears from his eyes and

controlling the roil of his stomach.

"Most original," he said, gasping. Chaumel paused

briefly in his chattering to beam at Keffs evident perspi-cacity and pointed out another stomach-twister. Keff

carefully kept his gaze aimed below the level of the frames,

offering compliments without looking. Staring at the silver

magicians heels and the hem of his robe, Keff padded

faster to catch up.

They passed over a threshold into an anteroom where

several servants were sweeping and dusting. Except when

raising their eyes to acknowledge the presence of their

master, they also made a point of watching the ground in

front of them. It was no consolation to Keff to realize that

others had the same reaction to the "artwork."

Chaumel was the only bare-skin Keff saw. The staff

appeared to consist solely of fur-skinned Noble Primitives,

like Brannel, but instead of having just four fingers on each

hand, some had all five.

'The missing links?" Keff asked Carialle. These beings

looked like a combination between Chaumel s people and

Brannels. Though their faces were hairy, they did not bear

the animal cast to their features that the various villagers

had. They looked more humanly diversified. "Do you suppose that the farther you go away from the overlords, the

more changes you find in facial structure?" He stopped to

study the face of a furry-faced maiden, who reddened

under her pelt and dropped her eyes shyly. She twisted her

duster between her hands.

"Ahem! A geographical cause isn't logical," Carialle said,

"although you might postulate inbreeding between the two

races. That would mean that the races are genetically

close. Very interesting."

Chaumel, noticing he'd lost his audience, detoured

back, directed Keff away from the serving maid and

toward a stone archway.

"Will you look at the workmanship in that?" Keff said,

admiringly. 'Very fine, Chaumel."

"I'm glad you . . ." the magiman said, moving on

through the doorway into a wide corridor. "Now, this . . .

my father. . ."

This" proved to be a tapestry woven, Carialle informed

Keff after a microscopic peek, of dyed vegetable fibers

blended with embroidered colorful figures in six-pack hair.

"Old," she said. "At least four hundred years. And expert

craftwork, I might add."

"Lovely," Keff said, making sure the contact button

scanned ft in full for his xenology records. "Er, high

worker-ship, Chaumel."

His host was delighted, and took him by the arm to

show him every item displayed in the long hall.

Chaumel was evidently an enthusiastic collector of

objets d'art and, except for the nauseating pictures, had

a well-developed appreciation of beauty. Keff had no

trouble admiring handsomely made chairs, incidental

tables, and pedestals of wood and stone; more tapestries; pieces of scientific equipment that had fallen into

disuse and been adapted for other purposes. A primitive

chariot, evidently the precursor of the elegant chairs

Chaumel and his people used, was enshrined underneath the picture of a bearded man in a silver robe.

Chaumel also owned some paintings and representational art executed with great skill that were not

only not uncomfortable but a pleasure to behold. Keff

exclaimed over everything, recording it, hoping that he

was also gathering clues to help free Carialle so they

could leave Ozran as soon as possible.

A few of Chaumel s treasures absolutely defied description. Keff would have judged them to be sculpture or

statuary, but some of the vertical and horizontal surfaces

showed wear, the polished appearance of long use. They

were furniture, but for what kind of being?

"What is this, Chaumel?" Keff asked, drawing the magimans attention to a small grouping arranged in an alcove.

He pointed to one item. It looked like a low-set painters

easel from which a pair of hardwood tines rose in a V. 'This

is very old."

"Ah!" the magiman said, eagerly. "... from old, old day-day." IT promptly interpreted into "from ancient days,"

and recorded the usage.

"I'm getting a reading of between one thousand six hundred and one thousand nine hundred years," Carialle said,

confirming Chaumel's statement. The magiman gave Keff

a curious look.

"Surely your people didn't use these things," Keff said.

"Can't sit on them, see?" He made as if to sit down on the

narrow horizontal ledge at just above knee level.

Chaumel grinned and shook his head. "Old Ones

used ... sit-lie," he said.

'They weren't humanoid?" Keff asked, and then clari-fied as the magiman looked confused. "Not like you, or

me, or your servants?"

"Not, not. Before New Ones, we."

'Then the humanoids were not the native race on this

planet," Carialle said excitedly into Kerfs implant. 'They

are travelers. They settled here alongside the indigenous

beings and shared their culture."

'That would explain the linguistic anomalies," Keff said.

"And that awful artwork in the grand hall." Then speaking

aloud, he added, "Are there any of the Old Ones left,

Chaumel?"

"Not, not. Many days gone. Worked, move from empty

land to mountain. Gave us, gave them." Chaumel struggled with a pantomime. "All... gone."

"I think I understand. You helped them move out of the

valleys, and they gave you . . . what? Then they all died?

What caused that? A plague?"

Chaumel suddenly grew wary. He muttered and moved

on to the next grouping of artifacts. He paused dramati-cally before one item displayed on a wooden pedestal. The

gray stone object, about fifty centimeters high, resembled

an oddly twisted um with an off-center opening.

"0\d-0ld-0nes," he said with awe, placing his hands

possessively on the um.

"Old Ones-Ancient Ones?" Keff asked, gesturing one

step farther back with his hand.

"Yes," Chaumel said. He caressed the stone. Keff

moved cipser so Carialle could take a reading through the

contact button.

"It's even older than the Old Ones' chair, if that's what

that was. Much older. Ask if this is a religious artifact. Are

the Ancient Ones their gods?" Carialle asked.

"Did you, your father-father, bring Ancient Ones with

you to Ozran?" Keff asked.

"Not our ancestors," Chaumel said, laying three imaginary objects in a row. "Ozran: Ancient Ones; Old Ones;

New Ones, we. Ancient," he added, holding out the wand

in his belt.

"Carialle, I think he means that artifact is a leftover from

the original culture. It is ancient, but there has been some

modification on it, dating a couple thousand years back."

Then aloud, he said to Chaumel. "So they passed usable

items down. Did the Ancient Ones look like the Old Ones?

Were they their ancestors?"

Chaumel shrugged.

"It looks like an entirely different culture, Keff," Carialle

said, processing the image and running a schematic overlay

of all the pieces in the hall. 'There're very few Ancient

One artifacts here to judge by, but my reconstruction program suggests different body types for the Ancients and