«Perhaps, perhaps.»
Keff pressed him. «I'd really like an answer to that, Chaumel. It's sort of important to me, in a strange sort of way,» he said, shrugging diffidently.
Chaumel irritably shook his head and waved his hands.
«I'll tackle him again later, Cari,» Keff said under his breath.
«Now is better . . . What's that sound?» Carialle said, interrupting herself.
Keff looked around. «I didn't hear anything.»
But Chaumel had. Like a hunting dog hearing a horn, he turned his head. Keff felt a rise of static, raising the hair on the back of his neck.
«There it is again,» Carialle said. «Approximately fifty thousand cycles. Now I'm showing serious power fluctuations where you are. What Chaumel was doing in the hallway was a spit in the ocean compared with this.»
Chaumel grabbed Keffs arm and made a spiraling gesture upward with one finger.
«This way, in haste!» Chaumel said, pushing him through the hallway toward the great room and the landing pad beyond. His hand flew above his head, repeating the spiral over and over. «Haste, haste!»
Chapter Eight
Night had fallen over the mountains. The new arrivals seemed to glow with their own ghostlight as they flew through the purple-dark sky toward Chaumel's balcony. Keff, concealed with Chaumel behind a curtain in the tall glass door, recognized Ferngal, Nokias, Potria, and some of the lesser magimen and magiwomen from that afternoon. There were plenty of new faces, including some in chairs as fancy as Chaumel's own.
«The big chaps and their circle of intimates, no doubt. Wish I had a chance to put on my best bib and tucker,» Keff murmured to Carialle. To his host, he said, «Shouldn't we go out and greet them, Chaumel?»
«Hutt!» Chaumel said, hurriedly putting a hand to his lips, and raising the wand at his belt in threat to back up his command. Silently, he pantomimed putting one object after another in a row. «. . . (untranslatable) . . .»
«I think I understand you,» Keff said, interrupting IT's attempt to locate roots for the phrase. «Order of precedence. Protocol. You're waiting for everyone to land.»
Pursing his lips, Chaumel nodded curtly and returned to studying the scene. One at a time, like a flock of enormous migratory birds, the chariots queued up beyond the lip of the landing zone. Some jockeyed for better position, then resumed their places as a sharp word came from one of the occupants of the more elaborate chairs. Keff sensed that adherence to protocol was strictly enforced among the magifolk. Behave or get blasted, he thought.
As soon as the last one was in place, Chaumel threw open the great doors and stood to one side, bowing. Hastily, Keff followed suit. Five of the chairs flew forward and set down all at once in the nearest squares. Their occupants rose and stepped majestically toward them.
«Zolaika, High Magess of the North,» Chaumel said, bowing deeply. «I greet you.»
«Chaumel,» the tiny, old woman of the leaf-green chariot said, with a slight inclination of her head. She sailed regally into the center of the grand hall and stood there, five feet above the ground as if fixed in glass.
«Ilnir, High Mage of the Isles.» Chaumel bowed to a lean man in purple with a hooked nose and a domed, bald head. Nokias started forward, but Chaumel held up an apologetic finger. «Ferngal, High Mage of the East, I greet you.»
Nokias's face crimsoned in the reflected light from the ballroom. He stepped forward after Ferngal strode past with a smug half-grin on his face. «I had forgotten, brother Chaumel. Forgive my discourtesy.»
«Forgive mine, high one,» Chaumel said, suavely, holding his hands high and apart. «Ureth help me, but you could never be less than courteous. Be greeted, Nokias, High Mage of the South.»
Gravely, the golden magiman entered and took his place at the south point of the center ring. He was followed by Omri of the West, a flamboyantly handsome man dressed fittingly in peacock blue. Chaumel gave him an elaborate salute.
With less ceremony and markedly less deference, Chaumel greeted the rest of the visiting magi.
«He outranks these people,» Carialle said in Keff's implant. «He's making it clear they're lucky to get the time of day out of him. I'm not sure where he stands in the society. He's probably not quite of the rank of the first five, but he's got a lot of power.»
«And me where he wants us,» Keff said in a sour tone.
As Nokias had, a few of the lesser ones were compelled to take an unexpected backseat to some of their fellows. Chaumel was firm as he indicated demotions and ignored those who conceded with bad grace. Keff wondered if the order of precedence was liquid and altered frequently. He saw a few exchanges of hot glares and curt gestures, but no one spoke or swung a wand.
Potria and Asedow had had time to change clothes and freshen up after their battle. Potria undulated off her pink-gold chariot swathed in an opaque gown of a cloth so fine it pulsed at wrists and throat with her heartbeat. Her perfume should have been illegal. Asedow, still in dark green, wore several chains and wristlets of hammered and pierced metal that clanked together as he walked. The two elbowed one another as they approached Chaumel, striving to be admitted first. Chaumel broke the deadlock by bowing over Potria's hand, but waving Asedow through behind her back. Potria smirked for receiving extra attention from the host, but Asedow had preceded her into the hall, dark green robes aswirl. As Carialle and Keff had observed before, Chaumel was a diplomat.
«How does one get promoted?» he asked Chaumel, who bowed the last of the magifolk, a slender girl in a primrose robe, into the ballroom. «What criteria do you use to tell who's on first?»
«I will explain in time,» the silver mage said. «Come.»
Taking Keff firmly by the upper arm, he went forth to make small talk with his many visitors. He brought Keff to bow to Zolaika who began an incomprehensible conversation with Chaumel literally over Keff's head because the host rose several feet to float on the same level as the lady. Keff stood, staring up at the verbal Ping-Pong match, wishing the IT was faster at simultaneous translation. He heard his name several times, but caught little of the context. Most of it was in the alternate, alien-flavored dialect, peppered with a few hand gestures. Keff only recognized the signs for «help» and «honor.»
«I hope you're taking all this down so I can work on it later,» he said in a subvocal mutter to Carialle. Hands behind his back, he twisted to survey the rest of the hall.
«With my tongue out,» Carialle said. «My, you certainly brought out the numbers. Everyone wants a peep at you. What would you be willing to bet that everyone who could reasonably expect admittance is here. I wonder how many are sitting home, trying to think up a good excuse to call?»
«No bet,» Keff said cheerfully. «Oh, look, the decorator's been in.»
The big room, which had been empty until the guests arrived, was beginning to fill in with appropriate pieces of furniture. Two rows of sconces bearing burning torches appeared at intervals along the walls. Three magifolk chatting near the double doors discovered a couch behind them and sat down. Spider-legged chairs chased mages through the room, only to place themselves in a correct and timely manner, for the mages never once looked behind to see if there was something there to be sat on: a seat was assumed. Fat, ferny plants in huge crockery pots grew up around two magimen who huddled against one wall, talking in furtive undertones.
A wing chair nudged the back of Zolaika's knees while an ottoman insinuated itself lovingly under the old woman's feet. She made herself comfortable as several of the junior magifolk came to pay their respects. A small table with a round, rimmed top appeared in their midst. Several set down their magical items, initiating an apparent truce for the duration.