«Are these documents good?» Plennafrey asked, over the rush of the wind.
«Better than good!» Keff said, leaning over to show her the ship's layout and classification printed on the inside front cover of the first folder. «These prove that you are the descendant of a starship crew from the Central Worlds who landed here a thousand years ago. You're a human, just like me.»
«That makes everything wonderful!» Plennafrey said, clasping his wrist. «Then there will be no difficulty with us staying together. We might be able to have children.»
Keff goggled. Without being insulting there was nothing he could do at the moment but kiss her shining face, which he did energetically.
«One thing at a time, Plenna,» Keff said, going hastily back to his perusal of the folders. «Ah, there's a reference to the Core of Ozran. If I follow this correctly, yes . . . its a device, passed on to them, not constructed by, the Old Ones, pictured overleaf.» Keff turned the page to the solido. «Eyuch! Ug-ly!»
The Old Ones were indeed upright creatures of bilateral symmetry who could use the chairs reposing in Chaumel's art collection, but that was where their similarity to humanoids ended. Multi-jointed legs with backward-pointing knees depended from flat, shallow bodies a meter wide. They had five small eyes set in a row across their flat faces, which were dark green. Lank black tendrils on their cylindrical heads were either hair or antennae, Keff wasn't sure which from the description below.
«Erg,» Keff said, making a face. «So now we know what the Old Ones looked like.»
«Oh, yes,» Brannel said, casually standing up on the back to look, as if he flew a hundred kilometers above the ground every day. «My father's father told us about the Old Ones. They lived in the mountains with the overlords many years past.»
«How long ago?» Keff asked.
Brannel struggled for specifics, then shrugged. «The wooze-food makes our memories bad,» he explained, his tone apologetic but his jaw set with frustration.
«Keff, something has to be done about deliberately retarding half the population,» Carialle said seriously. «With the diet they're being forced to subsist on, Brannel's people could actually lose their capacity for rational thought in a few more generations.»
«Aha!» Keff crowed triumphantly. «Tapes!» He plucked a sealed spool out of the back cover of one of the folders. «Compressed data, I hope, and maybe footage of our scaly friends. Can you read one of these, Carialle?»
«I can adapt one of my players to fit it, but I have no idea what format its in,» she said. «It could take time.»
Keff wasn't listening. He was engrossed in the second folders contents.
«Fascinating!» he said. «Look at this, Cari. The whole system of remote power manipulation comes from a worldwide weather-control system! So that's what the ley lines are for. They're electromagnetic sensors, reading the temperature and humidity all across Ozran. They were designed to channel energy to help produce rain or mist where it was needed . . . Ah, but the Old Ones didn't build it. They either found it, or they met the original owners when they came to this planet. Sounds like they were cagey about that. The Old Ones adapted the devices to use the power to make it rain and passed them on to you,» he told Plennafrey. «They were made by the Ancient Ones.»
«The Ancient Ones,» Plenna said, reverently, pulling the folder down so she could see it. «Are there images of them, too? None know what they looked like.»
Keff thumbed through the log. «No. Nothing. Drat.»
«Rain?» Brannel asked, reverently. «They could make it rain?»
«Weather control,» Carialle said. «Now that does smack of an advanced technological civilization. Pity they're not still around. This planet is an incipient dust-bowl. Keff, I'm within fifty klicks of the rendezvous site. Beginning landing procedures . . . Uh-oh, power traces increasing in your general vicinity. Company!»
Keff heard cries of triumph and swiveled his head, looking for their source. A score of magimen, led by Potria and Chaumel, had just jumped in and were homing in on them along a northwest vector.
«They've found us!» Plenna exclaimed, her dark eyes wide. Keff stood upright and grasped the back of her chair.
The magiwoman started to weave her arms in complicated patterns. Brannel, realizing that he was in the firing line of a building spell, dropped flat. Plenna launched her sally and had the satisfaction of seeing three of the magimen clear the way. The rattling hiss of the spell as it missed its mark and vanished jarred Keff's bones.
«Can you teleport?» Keff asked, clinging to the chair's uprights.
«Someone is blocking me,» Plenna said, forcing the words through her teeth. «I must fight, instead.»
«You'd be a sitting duck in here anyway,» Carialle interjected crisply, «because the tractor grabbed me again as soon as I touched down. Keep moving!»
Plenna didn't need Carialle's message relayed to her. She took evasive maneuvers like a veteran fighter, zigzagging over the pursuers' heads and diving between two so their red lightning bolts narrowly missed each other. Keff saw Potria's face as he passed. The golden magiwoman had abandoned her look of elegant boredom for a grim set. If her will or her marksmanship had been up to it, she would have spitted them all.
Contrarily, Chaumel seemed to enjoy toying with them. He shot his bolts, not so much to wound, but more as if he were seeing what Plennafrey would do to avoid them. He seemed to have observed that she wasn't spelling to kill, obviously a novelty among Ozran mages.
Plennafrey dived low into the valleys, defying the magifolk to chase her through the nooks and crannies of her own domain. Keff felt the crackle of dry branches brush his shoulders as she maneuvered her chair through a narrow passage and down into a concealed tunnel. While the others circled overhead squawking like crows, she flew through the mountain. Brannel's keening echoed off the moist stone walls. Just as swiftly, they emerged into day.
Keff thought they might have shaken off their pursuers, but he had reckoned without Chaumel's determination. The moment they cleared the tunnel mouth, the silver magiman was there in midair, winding nothingness around and around his hands. Brannel gasped and threw his hands over his head to protect it.
Plenna flattened her hands on her belt buckle, and a translucent bubble of force appeared around her.
«Oh, child.» Chaumel grinned and flicked his fingers. The chair started to sink toward the ground.
«He made the force shield heavy!» Keff said. «We're falling!»
Abandoning her defensive tactic at once, Plennafrey popped the sphere and threw a few of her own bolts at Chaumel. Almost lazily, the other gestured, and the lightning split around him, rocketing toward the horizon. He made up another bundle of power, which Plenna averted. She returned fire, sending a handful of toroid shapes that grew and grew until they could surround Chaumel's limbs and neck. Two made contact, then fell away as open arcs, snaring and taking the other rings with them.
A moment later, Potria and Asedow appeared.
«You found them!» Potria called. The pink-gold magess was jubilant. Plenna turned in her seat and fired a double-barrel of white spark lightning at her. Potria shrieked when her fine clothes and skin were burned by some of the hot sparks. At once she retaliated, weaving a web with missiles of force around the edge that propelled it toward the younger magess.
Asedow chose that moment to drive in at them from the other side. His methods were not as smooth as his rivals. He produced a steady stream of smoky puffs that hung in the air like mines until Plennafrey, trying to avoid Potria's web, was forced back into them.
Keff was nearly shaken off when the first exploded against his back. Plennafrey turned her chair in midair, seeking to steer her way clear of the obstacles. No matter how she turned, she collided with another, and another. By then, Potria's web had struck.