“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.