The River of Shadows

Three days passed. The stone oven was dismantled, and the stones carried away. The dlomu delivered much in the way of raw foodstuffs, and several enormous crates of mul. But they brought no more hot meals, and none of the black beer Mr. Bolutu had longed for. Masalym had evidently decided that the ship was intoxicated enough.

Pazel had never felt more disheartened. To think of all the hopes they had placed on Bali Adro! An enlightened Empire, Bolutu had said, a place of just laws, peace among the many races, a wise and decent monarch on the throne. A place where good mages of Ramachni’s sort would be waiting to deal with Arunis, and take away the Stone. Bolutu had not lied to them: he had simply been describing the Bali Adro of two centuries before.

What would they do with their visitors now? The signs were hard to read. From beneath the hull came the noise of saws and hammers: the repairs, at least, were going forward. Soldiers remained plentiful along the rim of the berth, but the ordinary townsfolk were no more to be seen. Teams of dockworkers, using two of the big cargo cranes, raised what were unmistakably gangways, and swung the wooden structures into position between the ship’s rail and the edge of the berth: lowered, they would have formed wide, railed bridges between ship and shore. But they were not lowered. The workers left them dangling, thirty feet above the topdeck, like a promise deferred.

The “birdwatchers”-so someone had named the dlomu in the ash-gray coveralls, with their notebooks and field glasses-came each morning, and left only at sundown. They studied the Chathrand in shifts, whispering together for a while when one man replaced another. Vadu joined them at the end of each day. He read the watchers’ reports, his usual gaping expression often changing to a frown. When he looked at the ship his head bobbed faster.

What had the dlomu really made of the slaughter four days ago? Were they shocked, or was sudden, mindless killing all too familiar to them? In a sense it hardly mattered. They had seen humans at their worst. Any chance of winning the city’s trust had surely disappeared.

So, of course, had some five hundred ixchel.

Early morning, the first day of the last month of the year: in the North, winter would have begun in earnest; here each day felt warmer than the last. Pazel woke with sunlight already hot on his face through the single porthole of the cabin he now shared with Neeps. He groaned. Neeps was snoring. He rolled out of his hammock and groped around on the floor for his clothes.

“Such a racket,” mumbled Neeps into his pillow. “Thought you were Old Jupe, outside my window back home.”

Pazel pulled on his breeches. “Your neighbor?”

“Our sow.”

Pazel tugged at one of the ropes of Neeps’ hammock, untying it, and lowered his friend’s head to the floor. Eyes still shut, Neeps oozed like softening butter from his canvas bed. He came to rest among their boots. “Thanks,” he said, appearing to mean it.

“Get up,” said Pazel, rubbing his eyes. “Fighting practice, remember? If you want to eat before Thasha and Hercol start whacking us, it’s got to be now.”

The scare tactic worked. In short order Neeps too was dressed, after a fashion, and the boys stumbled into the corridor.

“I dreamed of my mother,” said Pazel.

Neeps responded with a yawn.

“She was free. Not a slave or a Mzithrini wife, like Chadfallow’s afraid she’s become. She was doing something on a table-top with jars of colored sand, or smoke maybe, in a little house in a poor quarter of some city-I thought I knew which city, when I dreamed it, but I don’t remember now. And there was a dog looking in at the window. That’s curious, isn’t it?”

Neeps might well have been sleepwalking. “I dreamed you were a sow,” he said.

In the stateroom, Thasha and Marila were finishing a breakfast of Masalym oats, boiled with molasses. Felthrup crouched on the table eating bread and butter, a cloth napkin tied at his neck. The boys looked around carefully for Hercol. The Tholjassan often began their fighting-classes by appearing out of nowhere and swinging hard at them with a practice sword.

“Don’t worry,” said Thasha, “he’s not hiding anywhere.”

“We’re alone, are we?” said Pazel, surly already.

Thasha stared at him. “Isn’t that what I just said? Nobody’s lurking in one of the cabins, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well that’s blary good,” said Neeps, yawning again. “Because you just never know.”

“Come here, you two,” said Marila quickly. “Be quiet. Eat oats.”

At least Fulbreech hasn’t moved in, thought Pazel acidly. Yet.

Then, waking farther, he shook his head. “Hold on. The ixchel. Where are the ixchel?”

“One is behind you,” said Ensyl, leaping onto the back of an armchair, startling both boys. But to Pazel’s shock, the young ixchel woman proceeded to explain that she was the last. The other ten who had sought refuge in the stateroom had departed at sunrise, not planning to return.

“They asked me to thank you,” she said, “and to say that you may always count on their help, should your paths cross again. Those are not idle words, either: ixchel do not make promises of aid unless they mean to keep them.”

“But where in blazes did they go?” Neeps demanded. “The same place as all the others?”

“So I imagine,” said Ensyl. “They asked if I would hinder their departure, and I said they were guests, not prisoners. Then they offered to take me with them. ‘Your final chance to stand with your people,’ they grandly declared. ‘I might do that, if my people stood for anything,’ I replied. Then they spat on the backs of their hands and called me a traitor, and left.”

“But everyone knew where to run, that first day,” said Pazel, dropping into an armchair.

Ensyl nodded. “Every clan has its disaster protocol. They change often, but they are always remembered. If the signal came we were all to fly to different rendezvous points deep in the ship. Elders were to meet us there, and take us to a place of safety.”

“Safe from Rose?” said Thasha, incredulous.

“We doubted that ourselves,” said Ensyl. “But this plan came from Lord Talag, and it was followed without question. I heard the ten who took shelter here discussing it-though they fell silent at my approach. All the rendezvous points were on the orlop deck, between the steerage compartment and the augrongs’ den. If they had not been trapped on the upper decks, that is where they would have gone.”

“Orlop, portside, amidships,” said Neeps. “That’s a lonely spot, all right. Especially now that the animals are-” He stopped, looking from one face to another. “The animals. The live animal compartment. It’s right smack there, isn’t it, forward of the augrongs?”

“Yes,” said Thasha, with a glance at Marila. “And that’s where the… strangest things have happened, to some of us.”

Marila’s round face looked troubled, and Pazel knew why: several months ago, Thasha and Marila had one day found themselves on a very different Chathrand. A Chathrand sailing a frigid winter sea, a Chathrand crewed by pirates. They had barely escaped with their lives.

Of course men passed through those chambers every day, and met with nothing strange. Pazel himself had spent more hours than he cared to recall filling buckets with manure and spoiled hay. Still, it was an odd coincidence. If the ixchel had gone where Thasha and Marila went, they couldn’t be much better off. But perhaps the magic didn’t work that way. Perhaps one never went to the same place twice.

Suddenly Thasha gasped. She placed a hand on her chest, then started to her feet.

“Someone’s just stepped through the wall! It’s not Hercol, nor Fiffengurt or Bolutu or Greysan. I didn’t let them pass through; they just came. Get your weapons! Quick!”

She and the two boys raced for their swords. Marila grabbed Felthrup and backed away. Jorl and Suzyt crouched low, silenced by a warning finger from their mistress, every muscle tensed to spring. Pazel gripped the sword that had been Eberzam Isiq’s, wishing he could use it half as well as Thasha used her own. Hercol was right. He always said the worst thing we could do was to depend on the magic wall.

Thasha flattened herself against the wall near the door, sword raised to strike whoever entered. Then they heard the footsteps: a single, heavy figure, walking with long strides to the door. When they reached the threshold, someone knocked.

Thasha looked at Pazel: a tender look, gone in half a heartbeat. Then she set her teeth and snarled: “If that’s you, Arunis, come. Ildraquin is waiting for you. It’s here in my hand.”

She was lying; she had only her own fine sword, not Hercol’s Curse-Cleaver. Then a voice spoke from beyond the passageway: “Your pardon, Lady Thasha. It is only me.”

They stared at one another. The voice belonged to Prince Olik. The door opened a few inches, and the man’s bright silver eyes and beak-like nose appeared in the gap.

“A splendid morning to you all,” he said.

Thasha opened the door wide. She lowered the sword but did not sheathe it. “Your Highness,” she said. “How did you get in here? No one has ever been able to pass through the wall without my permission.”

“Then you must have given it, my lady,” said Olik.

“I did no such thing,” said Thasha.

All at once she leaped back into fighting stance and pointed her sword at Olik’s breast. “Stay where you are!” she shouted. “We haven’t seen Prince Olik in four days-and suddenly here you appear out of nowhere, alone? How do I know you’re not Arunis in disguise? Prove that you’re you!”

Olik smiled. “That is just what the Karyskans said. Mistaken identity appears to be my fate. Alas, I’m not sure how to prove myself-but as it happens, I’ve not come alone.”

“Thasha Isiq!”

Captain Rose’s bellow carried down the passage. Olik stepped aside, and they could all see him, toes to the painted line, fists pounding empty air. Behind him, pressing as close as they dared, were four well-armed dlomic warriors.

“Let me pass!” bellowed Rose. “This is a royal visit, I’m escorting His Majesty on a tour of my ship!”

“Your guards I won’t allow,” said Thasha to the prince.

“I am delighted to hear it,” said Olik. “They were inflicted on me by Counselor Vadu.”

“And you yourself, Sire? Not armed?” she asked.

“Certainly I am,” he said. “Knife in my boot. I’ve carried one that way since I was a boy. Would you feel better if I surrendered it?”

“Yes,” said Thasha, “and I’m glad you told me the truth. I spotted that knife straightaway.”

Olik passed her the knife. It was broad and well used, the leopard-and-sun design on the sheath nearly worn away. Without turning to the hallway again, Thasha said, “Come in, Captain Rose.”

Rose’s fast, limping gait echoed down the passage, and then he barreled into the chamber and spread his hands. “The master stateroom,” he said, rather more loudly than necessary. “Fifty-four heads of state have traveled in these chambers during the ship’s public history alone-her early years being classified, you understand. Note the aromatic woods, the Virabalm crystal in the chandelier. To your left there’s a panel that once disguised a dumbwaiter. And the walls are triply insulated, for the warmth and privacy of our guests.”

He slammed the door and fell silent, leaning on the frame, breathing like some winded animal. Then, slowly, almost with fear, he turned his head so that one eye could look at them. Pazel’s hand tightened on his sword. Rose’s eye swiveled about the room, left to right, floor to ceiling.

“Sweet Rin in his heaven,” he whispered. “There’s not a ghost in this room.”

After a long silence, the prince asked amiably, “Is that unusual?”

“They can’t get in,” said Rose. “Outside the wall they’re thick as flies in a stable, but here-” He turned to look at them directly, standing straight. “Here a man can breathe.”

An expression came over his features that Pazel knew he had never seen before. It was not satisfaction, or not that alone (he had seen the man satisfied, often for the worst of reasons). The look was closer to contentment. On Rose’s face it was stranger than a third eye.

Ignoring the prince, he walked forward until he stood directly in front of the youths. “It’s as I thought all along,” he said. “Ghosts avoid you, and that makes you blary useful. Waste not-that’s my father’s iron law. I told him I shouldn’t have you killed.”

Pazel sighed. That was the Rose he knew.

“You’re not on a tour of the ship,” said Thasha. “Why have you come here, Captain?”

Rose waved a hand at the prince. “His Majesty-”

“Desired an audience,” Olik interrupted. “With all of you, who fought so hard to protect the little people. Captain Rose would not agree to it unless I gave my word that he too could be present. I did so, reluctantly. But now that he is here I think it is for the best.”

Thasha opened the door once again, and a moment later Hercol, Bolutu and Fiffengurt entered the room. Hercol stiffened at the sight of Rose.

“Excellent,” said Olik. “Now everyone I wished to speak to is here.”

“I do not understand your interest in these mutineers,” said Rose. “You’ve still not met our spymaster, or Lady Oggosk, my soothsayer hag.”

“I saw quite enough of Mr. Ott four days ago,” said the prince with finality. “As for these people, I wished to see them because their behavior in that terrible circumstance was the opposite of his-and yours. But I have another reason, and this one includes you, Rose: for you also bear the mark of Erithusme.”

Thasha whirled. “Do you mean our scars? What do you know about them, Sire? What do they have to do with Erithusme?”

“Close the door, Lady Thasha,” said the prince, “and let us keep away from the windows, too. Counselor Vadu and his legionnaires know quite enough about me as it is.”

“We, however, do not know much at all,” said Hercol. “I would ask you to change that, Majesty, before asking for our trust.”

“Nothing could be more fair,” said the prince, “or alas, more difficult. I cannot say all that you might wish, for I don’t know how far my words will travel. Oh, I’m not impugning your good faith, my friends. You won’t breathe a word if I ask you not to-I’m confident of that. Even in your case, Captain Rose.”

“I’ve given no such promise,” grumbled Rose.

“But you will keep my secrets, all the same,” said Olik with a twinkle in his eye, “except perhaps from that Lady Oggosk of yours, and she will not breathe a word. But not only words can be spied upon-as you should know, who fight Arunis.”

“You know about Arunis?” asked Pazel.

“Who does not, in the South? You are safe within this splendid chamber, but you cannot always be here. And when you emerge, he probes at you, and feels the outlines of your thoughts.”

“Just a minute,” said Neeps. “You still haven’t told us how you know about our blary scars. Maybe you saw Pazel’s hand, and Thasha’s, and Rose’s arm. But Hercol’s scar is under his shirt, and Bolutu’s hair covers his. And I was never anywhere near you, until today.”

Thasha sheathed her sword. “I know the answer to that question,” she said.

“Let us not discuss that now!” said the prince. He went to the table, lowered himself into a chair. “We may have only minutes,” he said. “The physicians have nearly made their choice.”

“Physicians?” said Ensyl, who had climbed onto the table.

“The men who watch you from the quay, and report to Vadu-the ones your men have so delightfully labeled ‘birdwatchers.’ They are about to choose a few representatives for an audience with the Issar. And I have a strong hunch that you will be among them, for they are tasked with determining who is uncontaminated.”

“Uncontaminated!” thundered Rose. “That is outrageous! Fewer than twenty of my men have touched dry land this side of the Ruling Sea, and six of those disappeared without a trace. Of the rest, it is precisely these agitators who spent the longest time ashore. Yet you expect them to be chosen to visit the lord of Masalym? What, pray tell, does that Issar think we might be contaminated with?”

“Why, madness,” said the prince. “Captain Rose, you appear to care about your men. Do you realize the harm you have done them already? The Masalym physicians were on the point of attesting to your crew’s sanity when you ordered that killing spree against the little people.”

“So they’re admitting we’re human after all?” said Fiffengurt.

“My dear quartermaster, everyone in Masalym knows that you are human-the poor of the Lower City, the shipwrights under orders not to speak to your own carpenters, the Issar’s scientists and above all Vadu and other servants of Emperor Nahundra. They have known since we sailed into the Jaws of Masalym. They simply hope, with some desperation, to keep the world from learning about it. From their perspective it is convenient that we are at war. This city and its Inner Dominion are effectively quarantined. News does not easily escape by land or sea. I happen to know, however, that letters have already been sent by courier albatross. I can only assume that they repeat the official story.”

“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 fallen 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 here, 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.

“Did I not say it, girl?” said Hercol, looking almost furious. “Tell me, did I not say it?”

“You did,” she said, embracing him with arms and legs.

“Now say it yourself,” he growled. “Say it now and believe it forever. Claim it, Thasha Isiq.”

“Eyacaulgra,” she said. And as she kissed him, and Hercol lowered her to her feet, Pazel’s bewildered mind did the translating. The language was Hercol’s native Tholjassan, but the sentiment was her father’s maxim, his signature: Unvanquished.

A few minutes later Prince Olik rose to leave. He was glad to have given them new hope, he said, but he warned them that the immediate peril was real.

“I will leave you with three suggestions,” he said. “First, you should each pack a visiting bag-clothes and toothbrushes, sleepwear and such-to last you several days. Masalym hospitality is a ferocious business, and once he sees for himself that you’re not demons or dangerous lunatics, the Issar may very well insist on parading you through all the finer homes of the Upper City. You would cause great offense if you had to come back here for a change of socks.

“Second, ask for nothing in the Upper City. As a rule we dlomu take pride in our generosity, but in Masalym that pride is an obsession, and among the well-to-do of Masalym it must be experienced to be believed. If you want water, you mention in passing that the weather tends to dry one’s throat. To make a direct request is to insult your host for not having provided it already.”

“But all we did was ask, when we showed up in port,” said Marila. “Food, food. We practically begged on our knees.”

“Yes,” said Olik, “and that made it terribly difficult to feed you. Vadu was preparing a grand feast, but when you begged, he was so offended that he ordered the cooks not to deliver it to the port. I was unable to change his mind until the following day.”

“What about that first meal, the one that came by pulleys in the dark?”

“You can thank Ibjen for that,” said the prince. “He was clever to mention those nursery rhymes about the feeling of hunger. The poor of the Lower City know the feeling well, and it was the poor who fed you. I doubt if the meal seemed excessive to you, starving as you were. But it would have fed ten times as many dlomic mouths. They gave you everything they could put their hands on-even though many of them believed you were ghosts. In our stories even ghosts need to eat.”

“Perfect lunacy,” said Fiffengurt.

“That too is forbidden!” Olik laughed. “A grave insult it is-a fighting insult-to call another mad.”

“Ibjen explained already, Prince,” said Bolutu, “but even I have trouble remembering.”

“See that you remember tomorrow,” said Olik. “Well, goodbye, my new friends. Rest today; you will soon need all your strength.”

He rose then and bowed to Thasha and Marila-and then, catching himself, Ensyl. The captain led him to the door and opened it, and the prince was already in the passage when Pazel said, “Wait, Sire. What about your third suggestion? It wasn’t about madness, was it?”

Olik turned in the doorway. He rested both hands on the frame. “No, it wasn’t, Mr. Pathkendle,” he said. “My third suggestion I nearly decided to keep to myself. But now I think I will speak after all.”

His voice had a sudden, utterly chilling edge. “My third suggestion is that you be far more careful in whom you confide. As you say, you know little about me. I could well be an enemy-perhaps an ally of Arunis, or of Lady Macadra and the Raven Society. But you assumed I was a friend, and lavished information on me. You confirmed that the Nilstone and Arunis are aboard this ship-I was, in fact, guessing about both. You, Undrabust, named those who bear the mark of Erithusme: I did not know that you and Hercol were among them. You, Master Felthrup, revealed that you’re a woken animal-to a prince of the Imperium that labels such creatures maukslarets, little demons, and has hunted them to the edge of extinction.”

Heart racing, Pazel moved in front of Felthrup and Marila. Thasha stepped up beside him. The prince’s smile was impenetrable. Then he turned and looked coldly at Bolutu.

“And you, brother: you were the worst by far. You barely spoke, but when you did, you revealed your passionate hatred for the Ravens. You let me know that you would consider it a dark day if Bali Adro should ever be ruled by that noble Society, which counts both Arunis and Macadra among its founders. But you have been gone a long time, Bolutu, and that day has come. When I leave here I shall endeavor to forget that you spoke those words. I most earnestly advise you to do the same.”