Asedow was getting louder, his hands flying in the old signs, emphasizing his point. «It is to my honor, and the tower and the beast will come to me!»
Potria's hands waved just as excitedly. «You have no honor. Your mother was a fur-skin with a dray-beast jaw, and your father was drunk when he took her!»
At the murderous look in Asedow's eye, Plenna warded herself and planted her hand firmly over her belt buckle beneath the concealing sash. At least she could help prevent the argument from spreading. With an act of will, she cushioned the air around them so no sound escaped past their small circle. That deadened the shouting, but it didn't prevent others from seeing the pantomime the two were throwing at one another.
«How dare you!» Zolaika's chair swooped in on the pair, knocking them apart with a blast of force which dispelled Plenna's cloud of silence. «You profane the sacred signs in a petty brawl!»
«She seeks to take what is rightfully mine,» Asedow bellowed. Freed, his voice threatened to shake down the ceiling.
«High one, I appeal to you,» Potria said, turning to the senior magess. «I challenged for the divine objects and I claim them as my property.» She pointed at Keff.
Keff was taken aback.
«Now just a minute here,» he said, starting forward as he recognized the words. «I'm no one's chattel.»
«Hutt!» Zolaika ordered, pointing an irregular, hand-sized form at him. Keff ducked, fearing another bolt of scarlet lightning. Chaumel pulled him back and, keeping a hand firmly on his shoulder, offered a placatory word to Potria.
«She's not the enchantress I thought she was,» Keff said sadly to Carialle.
«A regular La Belle Dame Sans Merci,» Carialle said. «Treat with courtesy, at a respectable distance.»
«Speaking of stating one's rights,» Ferngal said as he and the other high magimen moved forward. He folded his long fingers in the air before him and studied them. «May I mention that the objects were found in Klemay's territory, which is now my domain, so I have the prior claim. The tower and the male are mine.» He crushed his palms together deliberately.
«But before that, they were in my venue,» the old woman in red cried out from her place by the window. Her chair lifted high into the air. «I had seen the silver object and the being near my village when first it fell on Ozran. I claim precedence over you for the find, Ferngal!»
«I am no one's find!» Keff said, breaking away from Chaumel. «I'm a free man. My ship is my magical object, no one else's.»
«I'm mine,» Carialle crisply reminded him.
«I'd better keep you a piece of magical esoterica, lady, or they'll kill me without hesitation over a talking ship with its own brain.»
La Belle Dame Sans Merci raised a shrill outcry. Chaumel, eager to keep the peace in his own home, flew to the center of the room and raised his hands.
«Mages and magesses and honored guest, the hour is come! Let us dine. We will discuss this situation much more reasonably when we all have had a bite and a sup. Please!» He clapped his hands, and a handful of servants appeared, bearing steaming trays. At a wave of their master's hand they fanned out among the guests, offering tasty-smelling hors d'oeuvres. Keff sniffed appreciatively.
«Don't touch,» Carialle cautioned him. «You don't know what's in them.»
«I know,» Keff said, «but I'm starved. It's been hours since I had that hot meal.» He felt his stomach threatening to rumble and compressed his diaphragm to prevent it being heard. He concentrated on looking politely disinterested.
Chaumel clapped his hands, and fur-faced musicians strumming oddly shaped instruments suddenly appeared here and there about the room. They passed among the guests, smiling politely. Chaumel nodded with satisfaction, and signaled again.
More Noble Primitives appeared out of the air, this time with goblets and pitchers of sparkling liquids in jewel colors. A chair hobbled up to Keff and edged its seat sideways toward his legs, as if offering him a chance to sit down.
«No thanks,» he said, stepping away a pace. The chair, unperturbed, tottered on toward the next person standing next to him. «Look around, Cari! Its like Merlin's household in The Sword in the Stone. I feel a little drunk on glory, Cari. We've discovered a race of magicians. This is the pinnacle of our careers. We could retire tomorrow and they'd talk about us until the end of time.»
«Once we get off this rock and go home! I keep telling you, Keff, what they're doing isn't magic. It can't be. Real magic shouldn't require power, least of all the kind of power they're sucking out of the surrounding area. Mental power possibly, but not battery-generator type power, which is what is coming along those electromagnetic lines in the air.»
«Well, there's invocation of power as well as evocation, drawing it into you for use,» Keff said, trying to remember the phrases out of the Myths and Legends rule book.
Carialle seemed to read his mind. «Don't talk about a game! This is real life. This isn't magic. Ah! There it is: proof.»
Keff glanced up. Chaumel was bowing to something hovering before him at eye level. It was a box of some kind. It drifted slightly so that the flat side that had been directed at Chaumel was pointing at him. Looking out from behind a glass panel was a man's face, dark-skinned and ancient beyond age. The puckered eyelids compressed as the man peered intently at Keff.
«See? It's a monitor,» Carialle said. «A com unit. Its a device, not magic, not evoked from the person of the user. He's transmitting his image through it, probably because he's too weak to be here in person.»
«Maybe the box is just a relic from the old days,» Keff said, but his grand theory did have a few holes in it. «Look, there's nothing feeding it.»
«You don't need cable to transmit power, Keff. You know that. Even Chaumel isn't magicking the food up himself. He's calling it from somewhere. Probably in the depths of the dungeon, there's a host of fuzzy-faced cooks working their heads off, and furry sommeliers decanting wine. I think he's acting like the teleportative equivalent of a maitre d'.»
«All right, I concede that they might be technicians. What I want to know is just what they want with us so badly that they have to trap us in place.»
«What we appear to be, or at least I appear to be, is a superior technical gizmo. Your girlfriend and her green sidekick at least don't want something this big to get away. The greed, by the way, is not limited to those two. At least eighty percent of the people here experience increased respiration and heartbeat when they look at you and the IT box, and by proxy, me. It's absolutely indecent.»
Chaumel went around the room like a zephyr, defusing arguments and urging people to sit down to prepare for the meal. Keff admired his knack of having every detail at his fingertips. Couches with attached tables appeared out of the ether. The guests disported themselves languidly on the velvet covers while the tables adjusted themselves to be in easy range. The canape servers vanished in midstep and the remains of the hors d'oeuvres with them. Napery, silver, and a translucent dinner service appeared on every table followed by one, two, three sparkling crystal goblets, all of different design. White, embroidered napkins opened out and spread themselves on each lap.
Something caught Keff squarely in the belly and behind the knees, making him fold up. A padded seat caught him, lifted him up and forward several feet into the heart of the circle of magifolk, and the tray across his middle clamped firmly down on the other arm of the chair. Under his heels, a broad bar braced itself to give him support. A napkin puffed up, settled like swansdown on his thighs.
«Oh, I'm not hungry,» he said to the air. The invisible maitre d' paid no attention to his protest. He was favored with china and crystal, and a small finger bowl on a doily. He picked up a goblet to examine it. Though the glass was wafer-thin, it had been incised delicately with arabesques and intricate interlocking diamonds.