«Keff! They're crawling over my skin,» Carialle moaned. «Tearing away my nerve endings. Stop them!»
«Chaumel . . .»
«All in good time. She is not at risk.»
«You're wrong about that,» Keff said sincerely, praying the magiman would listen. «She suffered a long time ago, and you are making her live it over.»
«And so loudly, too!» Chaumel flicked his fingers, and Carialle's voice faded. Keff had the urge to run to her pillar, throw himself against it to feel whether she was still alive in there. He wanted to reassure her that he was still out there. She wasn't alone! But he had to fight this battle sitting still, without fists, without epee, hoping his anxiety didn't show on his face, to convince this languid tyrant to free her before she went mad.
«I've discovered something else that I think you should know,» Keff said, speaking quickly. «Your people are not native to Ozran.»
«Oh, that I knew already,» Chaumel said, with his small smile. «I am a historian, the son of historians, as I told you when you . . . visited me. Our legends tell us we came from the stars. As soon as I saw you, I knew that your people are our brothers. What do you call our race?»
«Humans,» Keff said quickly, anxious to get the magiman back on track of letting go of Carialle's mind. «The old term for it was 'Homo sapiens' meaning the 'wise man.' Now, about Carialle . . .»
«And you also wish to tell me that our power comes from a mechanical source, not drawn mystically from the air as some superstitious mages may believe. That I also knew already.» He looked at Plennafrey. «When I was your age, I followed my power to its source. I know more than the High Mages of the Points about whence our connection comes to the Core, but I kept my knowledge to myself and my eyes low, having no wish to become a target.» Modestly, he dropped his gaze to the ground.
If he was looking for applause, he was performing for the wrong audience. Keff lunged toward Chaumel and pinned his shoulders against the chair back.
«While you're sitting here so calmly bragging about yourself,» Keff said in a clear, dangerous voice, «my partner is suffering unnecessary and possibly permanent psychic trauma.»
«Oh, very well,» Chaumel said, imperturbably, closing his hand around the shaft of his wand as Keff let him go. «What you are saying is more amusing. You will tell me more, of course, or I will pen her up again.»
Sight and sensation flooded in all at once. Carialle almost sobbed with relief, but managed to regain her composure within seconds. To Keff, whose sympathetic face was close to her pillar camera, she said, «Thank you, sir knight. I'm all right. I promise,» but she sensed that her voice quavered. Keff looked skeptical as he caressed her pillar and then resumed his seat.
«Keff says that our power was supposed to be used to make it rain,» Plenna said. «Is this why the crops fail? Because we use it for other things?»
«That's right,» Keff said. «If you're using the weather technology as you have been, no wonder the system is overloading. Whenever a new mage rises to power, it puts that much more of a strain on the system.»
«You have some proof of this?» Chaumel asked, narrowing his eyes.
«We have evidence from your earliest ancestors,» Keff said.
«Ah, yes,» Chaumel said, raising the notebooks from his lap. «These. I have been perusing them while waiting for you to wake up. Except for a picture of the inside of an odd stronghold and an image of the Old Ones, I cannot understand it.»
«I can only read portions of it without my equipment,» Keff said. «The language in it is very old. Things have changed since your ancestors and mine parted company.»
«It's a datafile from the original landing party,» Carialle said. «That much we can confirm. Humans came to Ozran on a starship called the TMS Bigelow over nine hundred years ago.»
«And where did you get this . . . datafile?»
«It's mine!» Plenna said stoutly. She started forward to reclaim her property, but Chaumel held a warning hand toward Carialle's pillar. With a glance at Keff's anxious face, Plenna stopped where she stood.
«Yours?» The silver magiman looked her over with new respect. «I didn't think you had it in you to keep a deep secret, least of magesses. Your father, Rardain, certainly never could have.»
Plenna reacted with shame to any mention of her late father. «He didn't know about it. I found it in an old place after he . . . died.»
«Does that matter?» Keff said, stepping forward and putting a protective arm around Plenna's waist. The tall girl was quaking. «We're trying to head off what could become a worldwide disaster, and you're preventing us from finding out more about the problem.»
«And this 'datafile' will tell you what to do?» Chaumel was delicately skeptical.
Carialle manifested her Lady Fair image on the wall.
After a momentary double take, Chaumel accepted it and occasionally made eye contact with it.
«Given time, I can try to read the tapes,» Carialle said. «In the meantime, Keff can translate the hard copy.»
Chaumel settled back. «Good. We have all the time you wish. The curtain you set about this place will prevent the others from finding us. In a little while they will be tired of chasing shadows and go home. That will leave us without disturbance.»
«Can I use my display screens?»
The silver magiman was gracious. «Use anything you wish. You can't go anywhere.»
Grumbling at Chaumel's make-yourself-at-home attitude, Carialle spent a few minutes re-establishing the chemical balances in her system. Two full extra cycles of the waste-disposal processor, and her bloodstream was clear of everything but what belonged there. She increased the flow of nutrients and gratefully felt the adrenaline high fade away.
She assessed the size of the tape cassette Keff held up and noted that there was one place for a spindle on the small, airtight capsule. Two other input bays were made to take tapes as well as datahedrons. Carialle rolled the capstan and spindle forward from the rear wall of the player, narrowed the niche so the tape wouldn't wobble, then opened the door.
«Ready,» she said.
«Here goes nothing at all,» Keff said, and slid the tape in.
Carialle closed the door. As she engaged the spindle, the cassette popped open, revealing the tape, and letting go a puff of air. Carialle, who had been expecting just that, captured the trace of the thousand-year-old atmosphere in a lab flask and carried it away through the walls to analyze its contents.
Slowly, she rolled the tape against the heads, comparing the scan pattern produced on her wave-form monitor with thousands of similar patterns.
«Can you read it?» Keff asked.
«We'll see,» Carialle said. «There are irregularities in the scan, which I attribute to poor maintenance of the recording device that produced it. Of all the lazy skivers, why did one have to be recording this most important piece of history? It would have been no trouble at all to keep their machinery in good repair, damn their eyes.»
«Did you want it to be easy, lady fair? Do you know, I just realized I'm hungry,» Keff announced, turning to the others. «Plenna, we've had nothing since last night, and damned little then. May I buy you lunch?»
The magiwoman turned her eyes toward him with relief. Her face was beginning to look almost hollow from strain.
«Oh, that would be very nice,» she said thinly. A timid croak from the side of the weight bench reminded him Brannel was still with them. He was hungry, too.
«Right. Three coming up. Chaumel?»
«No, very kindly, no,» the silver magiman said, waving a hand, although keeping an eye on him that was anything but casual. Keff gave instructions to the synthesizer, and in moments removed a tray with three steaming dishes.
«Very simple: meat, potatoes, vegetables, bread,» Keff said, pointing the food out to his guests.