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.
