The others stared at her in amazement. Sisay's breath was coming hard, as if she had been running in some great race.
The vizier's expression changed to one of concern, and she said, "Please, sit down. I am sorry if I have caused you discomfort. Yet it seemed to me best that we be able to speak frankly, without interference, and without misunderstanding.
"You, my sister-" the Saprazzan leader turned to Orim- "you have a strong, familiar soul." She stared intensely into the Samite's eyes, then looked away to the Mercadian nobles. She gestured to them and said something in Mercadian that sounded placating.
The nobles, with what appeared to Hanna to be very bad grace, seated themselves on the chairs that were provided, carefully placing their backs to the window and its vast seascape.
The Saprazzan leader touched a bell that stood on a rack to one side of the chamber. Amid sweet chiming, she said to Sisay, "You have had a long journey hither. I have instructed chambers to be prepared for you and for your friends."
The captain nodded. "Thank you." "We shall begin our discussions tomorrow. Meanwhile you and your companions are free to make your way about the city. If you like, I shall send some of my people with you to guide you and answer your questions." "Your offer is most kind."
From a hidden recess a servant entered, bearing tallfluted glasses on a silver tray. He distributed them, and the Saprazzan leader lifted hers in a toast. "To the success of our meeting." "To success!"
Sisay, Orim, and Hanna lifted their cups. They contained water, but to Hanna it tasted like no water she knew. She could feel the liquid flowing deep down inside her, washing away the weariness of her journey, invigorating her. It had much the same effect on Orim and Sisay, who were drinking with eager delight. The Mercadian nobles had done no more than touch the rims of their cups to their fat lips and were now sitting silently, with expressions of disapproval.
The Saprazzan looked around, then addressed Sisay once more. "You come in the name of Mercadia, though our longstanding antagonism with them is no secret. You come aboard a Rishadan ship, and we have no love for their harpoons and nets. You come as friends of the Cho-Arrim, and though in ancient times we were great allies, it has been centuries since we have conversed with our forest brothers. Mercadian, Rishadan, Cho-Arrim-what message could you possibly bring to Saprazzo?"
Sisay replied, "It is a very important message we bear- very strange and wonderful. So important and strange, you will not believe if we tell you here, in this place of politics."
A look of concern crossed the vizier's face. "Where then?"
Sisay's gaze was level and bright. "A place of faith- for outside of faith, our message will be but foolishness."
"There are many places of faith in Saprazzo-sea shrines and sacred wells-but you seem to have one place in mind…?"
"Yes," Sisay said. "We beg the favor of speaking to you tomorrow in the Shrine of the Matrix."
The Shrine of the Matrix lay, heavily guarded, at the center of Saprazzo's royal palace. The palace itself was a massive edifice poised above the docks. One bank of windows gazed out on the wide bay and the other on the spreading city above. The building was a vast jewel box, built of red oceanic marble, white limestone, and insets of onyx. Corals of fuchsia and mauve had been figured into bosses along the walls. Curtains of kelp, rugs of woven seaweed, sponge cushions, whale-bone archways, baleen screens-the majesty of the sea suffused the place. At its heart, in a small raised room done in crimson, the Power Matrix resided within a large case of thick glass. It was magnificent.
The main body of the Power Matrix was a single enormous white crystal, nearly the height of a man. All along its faceted outer edges, other smaller stones in blue, green, red, white, and black were affixed. They seemed to pluck each strand of the spectrum out of the room's dim light and send it lancing into the central crystal. A network of metal wires connected the stones, and along the wires moved scintillating jolts of energy. It was a mesmerizing sight.
"We must keep the room dark," the grand vizier told her guests, "for the Matrix stores and channels energy. Were it to be exposed to sunlight, the stored energy would quickly cause the Matrix to explode."
Hanna nodded, her eyes tracing out the device she had read about in the Thran Tome. Orim's gaze was less analytic, more worshipful. To her, this was the mind of the Uniter. The Mercadians could only gape in naked avarice.
Sisay spoke reverently, "Tell us, Grand Vizier, if you please-tell us the story of this glorious artifact."
The vizier replied, "This is our greatest treasure, a symbol of the Saprazzan people, of their origins in divinity. Have you heard of the myth of Ramos?"
Orim said, "Yes. Among the Cho-Arrim, I observed the separi and stood beside the Fountain of Cho."
"The separi and the Navel of the World are well-known legends among us," the grand vizier replied. "I cannot speak for the Cho-Arrim account, but among Saprazzans, the story we know is this." The vizier's voice sank low, vibrating through the room in a kind of singsong rhythm that grew more pronounced as her tale continued. "Ramos was a great king and artificer, born in the dim past in another world. Some say he ruled all of his world, and the people bent beneath his foot. He strode across mountain and sea, fen and forest. But one place eluded his rule. At night he beheld the stars shining in the sky, and he wept because he could never reach up to them, could never bring them within the folds of his power and wisdom.
"Ramos sought long and hard for a way to reach the stars and grew increasingly obsessed by his quest. Each night he sat in the top room of the highest tower of his castle by the sea and stared up at the night sky. He made machines that might lift him up to the stars, but all failed.
"His people began to suffer for his neglect. He ignored the ordinary affairs of state, and the kingdom fell into disarray. Cruel, ambitious men took advantage of his preoccupation and carved out kingdoms for themselves. The land and sea groaned under their depredations, and the people sent ambassadors to Ramos, begging him for help. Still he would not listen.
"At the height of his pride and the peril of his need, he began to delve into the deepest secrets of artifice, secrets long hidden and forbidden. The palace was filled with strange men in white robes, and his courtiers shrank away from them when they passed. Yet they were welcomed into Ramos's inner sanctum, and he spent more and more time with them and less time with his ministers, so the kingdom grew even more weakened and divided.
"There came a night when the smoke and oil reek from the sealed room at the top of the tower was especially noisome, the chants and exhortations especially foul. So horrible were these mad ministrations that the folk of the forest gathered below the castle to shout imprecations. A shipful of pirates drew near to shake their fists toward the castle. Even the people of the sea rose from the waves to cry in anger. All of them heard the artificers clamoring amid their unholy machines, and they saw flashes of light from within the tower.
"On the balcony of the tower, from which place he had been accustomed in times past to watch the skies, appeared Ramos himself. Yet it seemed not Ramos, for his body shone and glimmered from within as if he were on fire. He clutched to his body a strange device-this device, the Power Matrix. It gathered the light of moon and stars and channeled them into the king.