All around him Keff felt rolls of silk fabric, invisible and magnetic, drawing him in, surrounding him, then smothering his nose and mouth. As the spell established itself, it threatened to draw every erg of energy out of his body through his skin. He gasped, clawing with difficulty at his throat. He was suffocating in the middle of thin air. Plennafrey, her slender form slumped partway over one chair arm, her skin turning blue, still fought to free them, her hands drawing primrose fire out other belt buckle. Her will proved mightier than the other female's magic. The sunlight flames consumed the air around her, then caught on the veils of web clinging to Keff and Brannel, turning them into insubstantial black ash. She was about to set them all free when they were overcome by dozens and dozens of bolts of scarlet lightning, striking at them from every direction.
As Keff lost consciousness, he heard Potria and Asedow shrilling at each other again over who would take possession of him and his ship. He vowed he would die before he would let anyone take Carialle.
A sharp scent introduced itself under his nose. Unwittingly, he took a deep breath and recoiled, choking. He batted at the bad smell, but nothing solid was there.
«You're awake,» a voice said. «Very good.»
With difficulty, Keff opened his eyes. Things around him began to take focus. He lay on his back in the main cabin of his ship. Beside him was Plennafrey, also in the throes of regaining consciousness. Brannel lay in a motionless heap under Plenna's feet. And leaning over Keff with a distorted expression of solicitousness was Chaumel.
Chapter Eleven
Carialle fought against the blackness that abruptly surrounded her, refusing to believe in it. Between one nanopulse and the next, Chaumel had appeared in the main cabin, past the protective magnetic wall she had set up, and stood gloating over the contents of a captive starship. Outraged at the invasion, Carialle set up the same multi-tone shriek she used on Brannel to try and drive him out. Chaumel threw up protective hands, but not over his ears.
Suddenly she could move nothing and all her visual receptors were down. She could still hear, though. The taunting voice boomed hollowly in her aural inputs, continuing his inventory and interjecting an occasional comment of self-congratulation.
She spoke then, pleading with him not to leave her in the dark. The voice paused, surprised, then Carialle felt hands running over her: impossible, insubstantial hands penetrating through her armor, brushing aside her neural connectors and yet not detaching them.
«My, my, what are you?» Chaumel's voice asked.
«Restore my controls!» Carialle insisted. «You don't know what you're doing!»
«How very interesting all of this is,» he was saying to someone. «In my wildest dreams I could never have imagined a man who was also a machine. Incredible! But it isn't a man, is it?» The hands drew closer, passed over and through her. «Why, no! It is a woman. And what interesting things she has at her command. I must see that.»
Invisible fingers took her multi-camera controls away from her nerve endings, leaving them teasingly just out of reach. She sensed her life-support system starting and stopping as Chaumel played with it, using his TK. She felt a rush of adrenaline as he upset the balance of her chemical input, and was unable to access the endorphins to counteract them. Then the waste tube began to back up toward the nutrient vat. She felt her delicate nervous system react against pollution by becoming drowsy and logy.
«Stop!» she begged. «You'll kill me!»
«I won't kill you, strange woman in a box,» Chaumel said, his voice light and airy, «but I will not risk having you break away from my control again as you did when the magic dropped. What a chase you led us! Right around Ozran and back again. You made a worthy quarry, but one grows tired of games.»
«Keff!»
«I'm here, Carialle,» the brawns voice came, weak but furious. Carialle could have sung her relief. She heard the shuffling of feet, and a crash. Keff spoke again through soughing pain. «Chaumel, we'll cooperate, but you have to let her alone. You don't understand what you're doing to her.»
«Why? She breathes, she eats—she even hears and speaks. I just control what she sees and does.»
For a brief flash, Carialle had a glimpse of the control room. Keff and the silver magiman faced one another, the Ozran very much in command. Keff was clutching his side as if cradling bruised ribs. Plenna stood behind Keff, erect and very pale. Brannel, disoriented, huddled in a corner beside Keff's weight bench. Then the image was gone, and she was left with the enveloping darkness. She couldn't restrain a wail of despair.
It was as if she were reliving the memory of her accident again for Inspector Maxwell-Corey. All over again! The helplessness she hoped never again to experience: sensory deprivation, her chemicals systems awry, her controls out of reach or disabled. This time, the results would be worse, because this time when she went mad, her brawn would be within arms reach, listening.
Swallowing against the pain in his ribs, Keff threw himself at Chaumel again. With a casual flick of his hand, Chaumel once more sent him flying against the bulkhead. Plennafrey ran to his side and hooked her arm in his to help him stand.
«You might as well stop that, stranger,» Chaumel advised him. «The result will be the same any time you try to lay hands on me. You will tire before I do.»
«You don't know what you're doing to her!» Keff said, dragging himself upright. He dashed a hand against the side of his mouth. It came away streaked with blood from a split lip.
«Ah, yes, but I do. I see pictures,» Chaumel said, with a smile playing about his lips as his eyes followed invisible images. «No, not pictures, sounds that haunt her mind, distinct, never far from her conscious thoughts-tapping.» The speakers hammered out a distant, slow, sinister cadence.
Carialle screamed, deafeningly. Keff knew what Chaumel was doing, exercising the same power of image-making he had used on Keff to intrude on his consciousness. Against this particular illusion Carialle had no mental defenses. To dredge up the long-gone memories of her accident coupled with Chaumel's ability to keep her bound in place and deprive her of normal function might rob her of her sanity.
«Please,» Keff begged. «I will cooperate. I'll do anything you want. Don't toy with her like that. You're harming her more than you could understand. Release her.»
Chaumel sat down in Keff's crash couch, hands folded lightly together. Swathed in his gleaming robes, he looked like the master of ceremonies at some demonic ritual.
«Before I lift a finger and free my prisoner"—he leveled his very long first digit at Keff—"I want to know who you are and why you are here. You didn't make the entire overlordship of this planet fly circuits for amusement. Now, what is your purpose?»
Keff, knowing he had to be quick to save Carialle's sanity, abandoned discretion and started talking. Leaving out names and distances, he gave Chaumel a precis of how they had chosen Ozran, and how they traveled there.
». . . We came here to study you just as I told you before. That's the truth. In the midst of our investigations we've discovered imbalances in the power grid all of you use,» Keff said. «Those imbalances are proving dangerous directly to you, and indirectly to your planet.»
«You mean the absences that occur in the ley lines?» Chaumel said, raising his arched eyebrows. «Yes, I noticed how you took advantage of that last lapse. Very, very clever.»