“Well, well,” mused the prince, “stay near me, lad. We will find another way for you to make amends.”
At that very moment there came an explosion. Everyone winced: it was one of the mainland guns. But no cannonball followed. Instead, looking up, Thasha saw a ball of fire sailing from the clifftops. It burst above the cove in a shower of bright red sparks.
“I’ve been noticed already, it appears,” said the prince.
“There’s the proof you wanted, Captain!” said Bolutu excitedly. “Fireworks have always greeted the Imperial family when they return from the sea.”
“Yes,” said Olik, “and a measure of our popularity can be taken by the length and splendor of the display.” He smiled, indicated the now-empty sky. “I am recognized, as you see, but hardly with boundless joy.”
Rose led Olik to the forecastle, a long walk for the weary prince. Moving beside them, Thasha seethed. It’s all over. For better or worse. They were at the mercy of this dlomu, this stowaway, this less-than-popular prince. Olik struck her as a good man-but she had been wrong before-disastrously wrong. What if he betrayed them? What if the Karyskans had been hunting him precisely because he was a criminal?
No time to wonder: the ship sailed right in between the soaring cliffs. The shadow of the western rocks fell over them; the roar of the falls grew loud.
“We’ll lose the wind if we sail much farther,” said Rose. “What then?”
“They will send boats with a towline,” said Olik. “We should bear a little to starboard-that way.” He pointed at the cove’s deepest corner, a recess still largely hidden from sight. Rose shouted the course change into a speaking-tube. The helm responded, and with sagging sails they glided on.
A few minutes later they neared the recess. It was an uncanny sight. The cliff walls drew close together here: so close in fact that they formed a cylinder, open only in front, and rising straight from the surface where the Chathrand floated to the top of the falls, eight or nine hundred feet above. The walls of the cylinder had been shaped with great precision, with teeth of carved stone to either side of the opening. Thasha did not care for those teeth: they made her think of a wolf trap. Another waterfall, straight as a white braid, thundered down at the back of this stone shaft and flowed out through the narrow opening. Thasha glimpsed huge iron wheels half hidden in the spray.
“There is the cable now,” said Olik.
A pair of boats emerged from the recess, each rowed by ten dlomu, and each dragging a rope that vanished behind it into the water. They came right for the Chathrand, which was now almost motionless. But at the sight of the humans on the deck the rowers all but dropped their oars.
“Carry on, there!” the prince shouted at them. “Don’t be afraid! Be glad, rather-they’re woken humans, all right.”
“A miracle, my lord,” one of the rowers managed to croak.
“Very likely. But savor it after you’ve done your job. Come on, boys, we’re hungry.”
The boats drew near; the lines were coiled and tossed to the Chathrand’s deck. Following Olik’s instructions, sailors began hauling in the lines as quickly as they could. They were light at first, but soon grew much heavier, the cordage twice as thick. Three sailors hauled at each, and then the ropes’ thickness doubled again. Now a dozen men worked in unison, running from starboard to portside, lashing the lines to the far gunwale, returning for more. In this way at last they raised the ends of two chains nearly as thick as anchor-lines.
“Secure those to your bow, gentlemen, and your work is done,” said the prince.
Rose so ordered. The men awkwardly horsed the great chains to the catheads and made them fast. Then the prince waved to the boatmen, and one raised some manner of bugle to his lips and blew a rising note.
A grinding noise, low and enormous, began somewhere within the stone shaft, and Thasha saw the wheels at the back of the falls turning slowly, like the gears of a mill. At once the chains began to tighten.
“By the Night Gods,” said Rose, “that is fine engineering.”
“But you’ve only seen the simplest part, Captain.” Ibjen laughed delightedly from the deck. “Is it not so, my prince?”
Olik just smiled again. The cables drew taut, and the Chathrand moved swiftly, smoothly through the narrow opening.
Inside the shaft it was cooler; the spray misted the deck and soaked into their clothing, and the falls’ thunder made it necessary to shout. The area enclosed was about three ship’s lengths in diameter. Other dlomu were at work here, rowing in and out of tunnel mouths, blowing whistles, signaling one another with flags. Thasha looked up and saw that the tunnel openings were scattered up the length of the cylinder, like windows in a tower, and that flagmen stood in many of them, relaying signals from below. They had an air of practiced efficiency, except when they stopped to gape at the Chathrand.
“It may be dark before we reach the city,” said Olik, looking up in turn.
“I dare say,” said Rose. “Forgive me, Sire, but you hardly seem fit for such a climb.”
The prince turned to look at him. “Climb,” he said, and broke suddenly into laughter.
There came a sound like the earlier grinding, but far louder and closer. A shout arose from the stern, and Thasha turned to see that a vast piece of the shaft wall was moving, teeth and alclass="underline" sliding to close the gap by which they had entered. The moving portion appeared to begin at the river bottom and reached some hundred feet over their heads.
“Don’t be afraid, Thashiziq,” said Ibjen. “No harm will befall us. All boats reach the shipyard in this way.”
He pointed up the shaft. Thasha gaped at him. “The shipyard… is up there?”
The teeth meshed; the moving wall grew still. Instead of a recess in a cove the ship was now in a basin, sealed to nearly a hundred feet. A basin into which a mighty waterfall was still thundering.
“Have your men drop the lines,” said Olik. “Quickly, sir; the shaft will fill in minutes.”
The chains fell from the catheads. Already the lowest tunnel mouths had vanished under the rising flood. Above, a second hundred-foot-high section of wall was rumbling into place above the first.
“All done with waterpower,” said Ibjen. “Water, tunnels, locks. In Masalym we have a saying: No enemy can stand against the Mai. That is our river, born in the mountains far away.”
“The Mai defends you only from the sea,” said Olik. “But it is true enough in that sense: even the armada, with its infernal power, sailed by without a second thought.”
“But why would the armada threaten Masalym?” Thasha asked quickly. “Aren’t you all part of Bali Adro?”
The prince looked at her-a sad, lonely look, she thought. “I am a citizen of no other country, and the Resplendent One, the Emperor Nahundra, is my cousin. But I would be part of no country, no Empire, no faction of any kind that would belch such a killing terror from its ports. As for Masalym’s loyalties-well, that is what I am here to determine.”
“Determine?” cried Rose. He advanced furiously on the prince. “What in Pitfire do you mean, determine? You brought us here without knowing whether they’re still part of your mucking Empire or not? They might have cut us to ribbons with those guns!”
Ibjen backed away, horrified by the captain’s tone. Olik, however, remained serene. “They fly the Bali Adro flag,” he said, “just as many of you, I gather, carry papers of Arquali citizenship. Do those papers tell me your real affections? Whether you will do good or evil, when your last choice is before you? Of course not. We must seek deeper truths than flags, Captain.”
“How do you know about Arqual, damn your eyes?”
The prince gave him a thoughtful smile. “Eyes are one place to look for truth-maybe the best, when all’s said and done. I would say it is our skins that damn us, not our eyes. Indeed we could do worse than to follow the example of snakes, dragons, eguar, and shed them when they outlive their usefulness.”