«How can we do that?» Keff asked, bemused.
«By letting them know where you are,» Cari said. «You zoom outside and start the Wild Hunt all over. That will bring everyone here with a view-halloo, and if I'm right, overload the power lines. As soon as the tractor beam on my tail lets go, I'll take off and distract them away from you. I'll lead them on an orbit of Ozran while Brannel is getting your papers.»
«Do you have enough fuel?» Keff asked.
«Enough for one try,» Carialle said, showing an indicator of her tank levels, «or we may not have the wherewithal to get home. I burned a lot trying to break loose before. Don't fail me.»
«Did I burst my heart in the effort I never would, fair lady,» Keff said, kissing his hand to her. «We'll rendezvous here in two hours.»
With a final reproachful glance at Carialle's image, Plenna took her place on her chariot. Keff crouched behind her like the musher on a dogsled, and Brannel, hunched on hands and knees, clung to the back, white knuckles showing through the fur on his fingers.
«Ready, steady, go!» Carialle threw up the airlock door, and the chariot shot out the narrow passage.
«Yeeeee-haaaah!» Keff yelled as they zoomed over the Noble Primitives' cave. The spy-eyes froze in place.
Suddenly, the air was full of chariots. The mages in them looked here and there for Plennafrey, who was already kilometers away from Carialle.
«Look!» shouted Asedow, pointing with his whole arm, and the mob turned to follow them.
Chaumel blinked in, with Nokias and Ferngal alongside him. Like well-trained squadrons, the wings of mages fell in behind. Keff turned and thumbed his nose at them.
«Nyaah!» he shouted.
Two hundred bolts of red lightning shot from two hundred amulets and rods toward their backs. Plennafrey threw up a shield behind them, which deflected the force spectacularly off in all directions.
«If its coming, its coming now,» Carialle said in Keff's ear. «Building . . . building . . . now!»
«Hold tight!» Keff yelled, as the floor dropped out from under them when the power failed. Plennafrey's shoulders tensed under his hands, and Brannel moaned.
Shrieks and shouts echoed off the valley floor as the other mages were deprived of their power and fell helplessly earthward. Some were close enough to the ground to strike it before the blackout ended. One magess ended up sitting dazed, in the midst of broken pieces of chair, staring around in complete bewilderment.
As before, the power-free interval was brief, but it sufficed for Carialle to kick on her engines and break loose from her invisible bonds. With a roar and an elongating mushroom of fire, she was airborne. As one, the hundreds of mages swiveled in midair, ignoring Plennafrey and Keff, to pursue her. Her cameras picked up images of astonished and furious faces. Chaumel was hammering his chair arm.
«Catch me if you can!» she cried, and took off toward planetary north.
Another fifty meters, and Plennafrey transported them from Klemays valley to an isolated peak. Brannel, a huddled bundle of knees and elbows at her feet, was silent. Keff thought the Noble Primitive was terrified until Brannel turned glowing eyes to them.
«Oh, Magess, I want to do this!» he exclaimed. «It would be the greatest moment of my life if I could make myself fly. I could never even imagine this out of a dream. I beg you to teach me this first.»
Keff grinned at the worker males enthusiasm. «I hope you'll feel as energetic when you find out how much work it is to do magic,» he said.
«Oh, it feels so good to be free again!» said the voice in his ear. Carialle, knowing in advance where they were going, reconnected instantly with Keff's implants. «I have to keep slowing down so I don't lose my audience. They're such quitters! I've almost lost Potria twice.»
«Any unwanted watchers out there, Cari?» Keff asked, pointing his finger so the ocular implants could see.
«No spy-eyes here yet,» Carialle's voice said after a moment.
Plenna shot in over the balcony, which was a twin to the one at Chaumel's stronghold, and hovered a few centimeters above the gray tiles.
«I mustn't land, or the ley lines will indicate it,» she said.
Brannel hopped off and dashed inside.
«Good luck!» Keff called after him. Plenna lifted the chair up and looped over the landing pad's edge to wait beneath the overhang.
Brannel felt the floor humming through his feet and forced himself to ignore it. The discomfort was a small price to pay for associating with mages and having them treat him as a friend, if not an equal. Even a true Ozran magess had been kind to him, and the promise Mage Keff had made him—! The knowledge put a spring in his step all along the corridor walled with painted tiles. At the green-edged door, he turned and put his hand on the latch.
«Ho, there!» Brannel turned. A tall far-face with five fingers strode toward him. He had a strange, flat-nosed face, and his eyes turned up at the corners, but he was handsome, nearly as handsome as a mage. «You're a stranger. What do you think you're doing?»
«I have been sent by the magess,» Brannel said, leaning toward the house servant with all the aggression of a fighter who has survived tough living conditions. The servant backed up a pace.
«Who? Which magess?» the servant demanded. He eyed Brannel's prominent jaw with disdain. «You're not one of us.»
«Indeed I am not,» Brannel said, drawing himself upward. «I am Magess Plennafrey's pupil.»
That statement, and the casual use of the magess's name, shocked the house male rigid. His tilted eyes widened into circles.
Brannel, ignoring him, pushed through the door. The room was lined with hanging cloth pictures. He went to the fourth one from the door and felt behind it at knee level. Gently, he extracted from the hidden pocket a thick bundle. He forced himself to walk, not run, out the door, past the startled house male, down the hallway, and out onto the open balcony.
The chariot appeared suddenly at the edge of the low wall overlooking the precipice, startling him. Keff cheered as Brannel held up the packet and waved him onto the chairs end.
«Good man, Brannel! Where are you, Cari?» Mage Keff asked the air. «We're on our way back to the plain. Yes, I've got them! Cari, I can almost read these!»
The chair swept skyward once more. Now that his task was done and reward at hand, Brannel indulged himself in enjoying the view. One day, he would fly over the mountains like this on his own chariot. Wouldn't Alteis stare?
«Are those what they look like?» Carialle asked, from her position over the south pole.
«Yes! They're technical manuals from a starship,» Keff said, gloating. «One of our starships. The language is human Standard, but old. Very old. Nine to twelve hundred years is my guess from the syntax. Please run a check through your memory in that time frame for,» he held a trembling finger underneath the notation to make sure he was reading it correctly, «the CW-53 TMS Bigelow. See when it flew, and when it disappeared, because there certainly was never a record of its landing here.»
Keff turned page after page of the fragile, yellowing documents, showing each leaf to the implants for Carialle to scan.
«This is precious and not very sturdy,» he said. «If anything happens to it before I get there, at least we'll have a complete recording.» The covers and pages had been extruded as a smooth-toothed and flexible but now crackling plastic. In a tribute to technology a thousand years old, the laser print lettering was perfectly black and legible. He wondered, glancing through it, what the original owners would have said if they could see to what purpose their record-keeping was being put.