“You mean that nonsense about albinos,” said Pazel, “and the Magnificent Court of the Lilac.”
“Precisely,” said Olik. “But even as he spreads a nonsense tale, the good Vadu is struggling to determine just what kind of humans you are. With my encouragement, and after days of reports, he was prepared to let you all come ashore. But now that is out of the question.”
“We didn’t even catch that many,” Rose objected. “Crawlies, I mean. As an extermination it was a dismal failure.”
“How dispiriting for you,” said Olik. “Still the show you put on was gruesome enough. The rage to kill! It can, in fact, be a sign of the onset of the mental degeneration that turns humans into tol-chenni.” He looked at their shocked faces and added, “That, and a sharp smell of lemon in one’s sweat.”
“No one on Chathrand smells of lemons,” said Felthrup, from Marila’s arms.
Olik shot to his feet. He stared at Felthrup with his mouth agape. “That creature,” he said at last. “I saw you with it on the topdeck, but I took it for a pet. Did it speak?”
“Marila is not a ventriloquist, Sire,” said Felthrup. “I can speak. I am woken. There are many like me in the North. And if you please, we consider it rather derogatory.”
The prince stepped forward, awestruck. He dropped to one knee before Marila and the rat.
“Many?” he said.
“More all the time, Prince,” said Bolutu. “The rate of wakings has exploded in… recent years.”
Pazel caught his look of torment. Recent years.
“Then perhaps it’s true,” whispered Olik. “Perhaps this is the ship of our doom. The council foretold it, and though I was part of their foretelling I could not make myself believe. Have we come to the end? Will I live to see… that? O Watchers Beyond, take pity!”
“Your words are blary strange,” said Fiffengurt. “Can’t you speak more plainly, Sire?”
Olik crept to the window and peered out. “Yes, I can,” he said at last. “The poor folk of Masalym are not ignorant, by and large. Not two generations ago, every last dlomu in this city could read and write, and a great many had collections of books in their own homes-”
In Marila’s arms, Felthrup kicked and squirmed, overcome with feeling.
“-and that delight in learning has not left them altogether, though it is hard to keep alive in these darkening days. Those who believe that you are hastening the world’s end could give you reasons for that belief.”
He came back to the table and sat down. “There have been foretellings. Prophecies, if you like. For a century at least. The Empire has tried to silence them. They have jailed and killed the augurs, and those who repeat or publish the foretellings. Indeed the very practice of foretelling has recently become an Imperial crime. And why wouldn’t they try to silence us, when what we see ahead is an end to their dynasty, a final disintegration of their power?”
“We?” said Ensyl.
Olik looked up at Thasha. “You guessed, didn’t you? Tell them now, if you will.”
“I didn’t guess,” she said. “I felt it, when you passed through the wall. You’re a mage.”
Everyone tensed; Felthrup’s fur stood up bristling along his spine.
“I am a mage,” said Olik, “but I am nothing at all like Arunis. I can cast no spells, work no charms, summon no imp to do my bidding. I am a Spider Teller.”
Bolutu cried out in delight: “A Spider Teller! What joy, Your Majesty! Then they at least have not perished from the South during my absence!”
“Not quite,” said Olik soberly. “But we are hardly flourishing. I am the first member of the royal family ever to don a Teller’s cloak. My cousins in the capital feel quite vindicated, I understand: all along they thought me mad; now I have given them proof.”
Turning to the others, he said, “We Spider Tellers do only one thing. We search for clues. Clues about the future of Alifros, its destiny, and the secrets hidden in its immensity. A Spider Teller may seek this sort of knowledge by many paths. In my case, I was drawn to the order’s few surviving chasmamancers, and in time became one of them. Chasmamancers spend less time behind temple walls than our brethren, for to practice our art we must roam far and wide. We read the future through earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, and other disasters.”
“My own mentors, Sire,” said Bolutu, “used to say that such violent events disturbed the universe.”
“Ever so slightly,” agreed Olik. “No more than a pebble tossed into a lake disturbs the distant shore. The larger the disaster, of course, the greater the effect. The Worldstorm occurred fourteen centuries ago, but the waves it caused are still breaking. These waves are the oracles we try to read.
“For a long time now we have sensed the coming of a terrible event. For decades its shape was too faint to discern. Only this past spring was the vision clearly revealed: a moving palace, gliding out of a storm. Within the palace were beings we could not see, but only sense. In the words of the foretelling, they were the ones we thought were gone forever. My brethren in the Spider Temple long debated who those figures might be. Some said humans, returned to their right minds. Others said Thinkers, what you call woken animals. Here on this ship you have both.”
“Not to mention ixchel,” said Ensyl, “who also came from this side of the Nelluroq originally, though you do not appear to know of us.”
“Many stories mention you,” said Olik to Ensyl, “but few of us believed them.” He looked up at the others excitedly. “The last part of the foretelling was this: that the moving palace would appear at the time of the death of Empires, the sundering of nations. That its movement across the world would trace lines along which the world might be broken, snapped, like the lines scored in glass by a diamond blade. And that when all the world was in fragments a new mosaic would be formed out of the pieces, though how long it would take, and what the mosaic would show, we could not, and cannot, foresee.”
Captain Rose grunted and shook his head. “Rubbish. Poetry. We’re an Arquali ship, on a plain, ugly mission. We have old foes called the Mzithrinis, and we’re trying to stab them in the back. We’re only in the South because we couldn’t possibly find our way to the Mzithrin’s western borderlands by dead reckoning. The crawlies and the sorcerer and that blary woken rat-they’re unlawful passengers, nothing more.”
“And the Nilstone?” said Olik.
Rose started, glared at him. “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, or how much you know about the Stone. But understand this: my crew did not seek that devilish thing, and my mission does not require it. All that matters is the Shaggat Ness. I will go further: after Arunis himself, the Nilstone is our mission’s greatest obstacle. It has already turned the Shaggat to stone. If you or your city possess the skill to remove it from the Shaggat’s hand without killing the bastard-your pardon, Sire-you may have it, with my blessing.”
“Captain! No!” cried the others, aghast.
“A strange blessing you offer,” said the prince. “I should rather be blessed with an armful of scorpions than to have the Nilstone placed in my keeping. But others in this city-others in my family, too-would like nothing so much. My cousin the Emperor and his fell advisers will gladly take the Stone off your hands. They will not accept your terms, however. They will pulverize your Shaggat, and kill you all, as eagerly as you killed the ixchel. Ah, Watchers above me! What are we to do?”
He considered the buttered bread Felthrup had nibbled, then snatched it and gobbled it down.
“Six of you bear the wolf-scar,” he said, chewing. “And five of you, along with this young woman”-he nodded at Marila-“fought to save the lives of the ixchel. That, more than Erithusme’s mark itself, made me wish to see you. Of course, the sixth bearer of the mark gave the order to kill.”
Rose stiffened. “Have you come to debate my orders, Sire?”
“No,” said Olik, “though I find them highly debatable. Still, you must keep the Nilstone, and I must be grateful that it has not yet f
allen into the hands of someone worse. At the very least you are not Macadra.”
His last word electrified Felthrup. He squealed, ear-piercing and high, and writhed so violently that he fell from Marila’s arms. When he struck the floor he ran in circles, smashing into chairs and tables and people and dogs, all the while shouting, “Macadra! Macadra! White teeth! White bones!”
At first no one could lay hands on him. Then Suzyt pounced, and caught him with loving firmness in her jaws, as she might a hysterical puppy. Felthrup’s screams went on for a short while, oddly magnified by the cavernous mouth engulfing his head. Then he fell still, whimpering and muttering. Suzyt disgorged him, and the two dogs curled around him protectively, half burying him in their folds of flesh.
“Skies above,” said Olik, “are they all like that?”
The others assured him that there was only one Felthrup. But the prince’s alarm did not abate. “How could he know of Macadra?” he asked with dread. “She is white, or at least unnaturally pale. And she is a terrible sorceress-as bad as Arunis, in her way. If she is involved in this matter things are far worse than they appear.”
“Felthrup’s instincts are uncanny,” said Hercol. “Though often bewildering even to him, they should not be ignored. He is possessed of an exceptional mind.”
“I shouldn’t argue with possessed, anyway,” said Olik. “But Macadra is not in the city! Vadu would have told me at once.”
“Unless he has a reason to keep it from you,” said Rose. “A reason, or an order.”
Olik looked at him. “You’re a disturbing fellow, Captain Rose, but I can’t dismiss what you say. Nor can you, my good people, stay in Masalym.”
“We have yet to leave the ship, Your Highness,” said Hercol.
“That will change tomorrow,” said Olik. “Be glad that I managed to meet with you beforehand. Remember: my powers in Masalym are mostly bluff and bluster. True, the Issar rules the city in the name of my family, and no one in Bali Adro may harm me, on pain of death. But it is the Issar and not Prince Olik who holds the Imperial mandate. When I am obeyed it is more out of habit than duty-and there are ways around any law, even the law that protects my person, if one is willing to sacrifice a few assassins. I too must be careful.”
“My good liege,” Bolutu cried, as though he could contain himself no longer, “what has happened to Bali Adro? For you speak as though the Ravens themselves have seized the throne.”
Olik looked at Bolutu, and suddenly his eyes were full of concern. Pazel knew vaguely who the Ravens were: Bolutu had described a gang of murderous criminals, some of whom were also sorcerers. It was the Ravens, he had claimed, who first sent Arunis across the Ruling Sea in search of the Nilstone. But the Ravens had been crushed, disbanded, before Bolutu ever set sail.
Rose made a dismissive wave. “Mr. Bolutu asks too large a question. He forgets that he has been twenty years in the North.”
Prince Olik looked dubiously at the captain. “Twenty?” he asked.
Rose stared back at him, perplexed. Olik turned to Bolutu. “You have passed through the Red Storm, brother, as have I. Don’t you know what it does?”
Bolutu nodded and said, “I know.”
“What is it you know?” Rose exploded. “Damn you, what is it you haven’t told me? Speak! I’m the captain of this ship!”
“What’s this all about, Mr. Bolutu?” asked Fiffengurt, cocking his head.
Bolutu looked to the others for support. Hercol nodded. “It is time we did speak, at that. You had best sit down, Captain Rose. And you as well, Mr. Fiffengurt.”
“Sit down?” shouted Rose. “To the Pits with that! Tell me!”
“This is the little something you wouldn’t talk about, ain’t it?” said Fiffengurt, angry himself. “That night by the fire on the Sandwall, when I asked if there was more, and you all played dead-to-the-world. From me, Pathkendle, Undrabust! You kept secrets from me, from old Fiffengurt, your friend through every spot of nastiness since we sailed out of Sorrophran! No I won’t sit down either!” Fiffengurt stamped his foot. “I’m hurt, Miss Thasha, that’s what I am.”
“You won’t care about that in a moment,” said Thasha.
Her hollow voice scared Mr. Fiffengurt sober. He sat down. Rose would not, at least at first, but as Thasha began to speak of the time-skip he groped for a chair. Pazel found that watching the emotions (denial, outrage, terror, wonder, loss) surfacing on Rose’s craggy face brought his own agony back to him. Gone, everything gone. It was one thing to imagine death at sea, quite another to survive a terrible ordeal and know that your world-the world that made you, the people you loved-had not. He thought of Maisa, Hercol’s beloved deposed Empress, whom he had fought for years to restore to the throne. He thought of his mother, whom he had dreamed of so strangely for several nights, and of Eberzam Isiq. Their old age, their final years, their deaths with no family beside them. He thought of Mr. Fiffengurt’s Annabel, raising their child, never knowing what had become of the father. Mother and child were dead and gone, their very names forgotten, and the Chathrand reduced to a few lines in the latest Polylex. The Great Ship, the one that vanished two centuries ago.
He could see that Rose did not believe a word.
Fiffengurt, for his part, was turning from one face to the next. Begging someone to laugh. Pazel’s eyes grew bright. Stupid, he accused himself, even you don’t quite believe it yet. How can you ask them to accept it, if you’re too frightened yourself?
With a great effort he summoned one of Hercol’s teachings from fighting-class, a phrase from the Thojmele Code: You will fail in proportion to your resistance to change. Fluidity is universal, stasis a phantom of the mind.
“Two centuries,” said the prince. “That is much worse than my own case. I set sail just after my twenty-seventh birthday, aboard the great Segral-class ship Leurad. There were five ships in that expedition: all bound for the North, to your own lands. It would have been historic, the rekindling of contact between two worlds, and it might have brought a measure of safety and peace to both, for there were warnings we meant to give, and facts we sought to learn. But the moment our ships entered the Red Storm we lost sight of one another, and when the Leurad emerged on the Northern side, she was alone. Worse still, a horrid gale bore down on us not two days later, and we were almost sunk. We limped home again, passing once more through the blaze of light-only to find some eight decades had elapsed. That was twenty years ago. I have become a creature of this latter-day world, but I still mourn the one I lost.”
Rose leaned on his elbows, his hands folded before his face. “No,” he said, “this is absurd. This is the stuff of madness, nothing more.”
Pazel had never seen him so shaken. “It’s true, Captain,” he said. “Everyone we left behind is dead.”
“Oh no,” said the prince, startling him.
The others turned him a mystified look. “What do you mean, no?” said Thasha.
“I mean,” said Olik, “that you have misunderstood the Storm. Not surprisingly-I did as well. But I have made a study of the phenomenon since my return, and have established a few points beyond question. First of all, the time-skip occurs only when sailing northward. Your two centuries vanished, Mr. Bolutu, when you first sailed north. It is a matter of how totally estranged North and South have become that you were not even aware of it, during the twenty further years you dwelled in those lands.”
Pazel felt light-headed. He saw Thasha gripping the edge of the table as though some wild force might try to snatch it, or her, away. She said, “When we passed through the Storm on the Chathrand, then, heading south-”
“No time-skip occurred at all,” said Olik. “I guarantee it, my dear.”
Everyone but Rose and Fiffengurt cried aloud, their feelings irrepressible. Even Hercol’s face was transformed by a sudden, unbearable change in his understanding of the world. Thasha dropped her eyes, and Pazel knew it was taking all her effort not to weep. Her father’s alive. Somewhere, ten thousand miles from h
ere, he’s alive and waiting. And my mother, too. And we can never, ever go back.
Bolutu rose and walked stiffly to the corner by the washroom. Pazel’s mind was flooded, the thoughts almost too sharp to bear. That man just learned that his world died twenty years ago. Twenty years in exile, never dreaming that every friend, cousin, brother, sister was dead and gone. He lived a lie for two decades. Aya Rin.
“My second observation,” said the prince, speaking over their oaths and laments, “is that the Red Storm is weakening. It has always fluctuated in intensity-and thus in its power as both a time-interrupter and a barrier to the flow of magic across the hemispheres. But there can be no doubt that it is in swift decline. I would not be surprised if it vanished altogether within another decade or two. Already there are periods when it is very weak.”
“Meaning what?” Pazel demanded, utterly forgetting that he was speaking to royalty. “Meaning that there are times when it wouldn’t toss us centuries into the future, even when we’re sailing north?”
“That is correct,” said Olik.
Now they were surrounding his chair, mobbing him. “How many years forward would it propel us?” asked Hercol.
Olik shrugged. “Forty or fifty? Perhaps fewer at the weakest times. My estimates are quite rough. It’s a difficult matter to put to the test.”
“And every year,” said Thasha, “it weakens?”
The prince nodded gravely.
“Then,” cried Marila, “say, in four or five years, even, those fluctuations, if we hit them just right-”
“Could mean that your time-displacement would be small indeed, on your return-if, as you say, your timing was perfect.”
Suddenly Hercol lifted Thasha right off her feet and into his arms. They had eyes only for each other, then-streaming eyes, and a look of understanding that left Pazel mystified.
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