The River of Shadows (24 page)

“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 dlömu, 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 dlömu, 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 dlömu 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 all: 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 Maî
. That is our river, born in the mountains far away.”

“The Maî 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.”

Suddenly he seized the captain’s forearm. No longer frail, or feigning frailty. Rose was clearly startled by his strength. Only Thasha, and Rose himself, knew that Olik’s hand was covering the scar of the Red Wolf.

“It is no easy task, shedding the skin,” he said. “Let us all remember that in days to come.”

And with that Prince Olik Ipandracon Tastandru Bali Adro ran across the forecastle, leaped with cat-like grace onto the rail, caught his balance—and dived, seventy feet straight down into the foam.

The
Chathrand
beat to quarters. Rose sent full gun crews to their stations. For the second time in a week, sailors and Turachs readied themselves for an assault.

Yet this time the frenzy had an air of make-believe. The ship was clearly trapped. The column of water had already lifted them a hundred feet and was still rising, fast. One above another the huge stone sluice-gates proclaimed their helplessness. There would be no fighting their way to freedom.

The small craft fled into the tunnels. Standing on the quarterdeck, mouth agape, Mr. Fiffengurt spotted Prince Olik across the basin, treading water, until the shaft filled enough to allow him to reach one of the staircases carved in its side. Then Olik clambered up the stairs and into another open tunnel, where more dlömu met him with bows. At the
Chathrand
’s stern, Mr. Alyash jumped at the sound of another splash, found a pair of sandals at his feet. Ibjen too had abandoned ship.

Huge bubbles burst as the tunnels filled. The
Chathrand
turned in a gentle, helpless circle. Somehow the moiling water never moved her anywhere near the fury of the falls themselves.

They rose as smoothly as any cargo pallet from the hold of a ship. But this time the ship itself was the cargo, and the pallet was water, a column of water, growing fast to nine hundred feet.
Imagine the destruction
, Thasha thought with a shudder,
if the gates were all opened at once …

It took the better part of an hour to reach the top of the cliffs: an hour during which the men stood like statues, looking upward, saying very little. The sky above them was darkening. A few torches appeared along the rim of the shaft.

The final gate boomed into place. All at once cries of amazement were heard from the crow’s nest, then from the topgallant men, and the archers on the fighting top. And then the water ceased to rise. The topdeck remained some thirty feet below the basin’s upper rim.

“What’s happening?” said Fiffengurt. “The falls are still pouring in. Why are we holding still?”

“Since it is still flowing in,” said Hercól, “we may assume that it is also flowing out.”

“In equal volume,” said Rose. “Our hosts have opened some other gate. They’re keeping us where we are.”

“Which is where, Captain?” asked Neeps. “Blast it, I want to
see.
”

“Undrabust! Stand down!” boomed Hercól. But the swordsman was no officer, and the officers said not a word. Neeps and Marila leaped onto the foremast shrouds. Thasha was right behind them, climbing with a will. And suddenly she realized that scores of sailors were doing the same. On the other masts they were climbing too, as many men and boys as the lines could support. The wind brought smells of woodsmoke and algae and dry stone streets. The climbers all reached viewing-height at roughly the same time. And held their collective breath.

A vast city surrounded them. It was surely thrice the size of Etherhorde, greatest city of the North. Over rolling hills it spread, a city of stone houses, thatched roofs, dark and still in the gathering night. Narrow, sharp-roofed towers and oblong domes cast shadows over the lower structures. They had risen inside the city’s massive, many-turreted wall.

But all that was at a distance. Thasha saw now that the flooded shaft did not truly end where she had supposed: it broadened into a wide basin, like a wineglass atop its stem. There was as yet no water in this upper basin, though it was clearly designed to be filled.

Projecting into the basin was a long bridge, supported by stone arches and ending in a round, railed platform overlooking the shaft where the
Chathrand
floated. Even now, dark figures were running out along this walkway, some bearing torches, their silver eyes glinting in the firelight. They were shouting to one another in high excitement. A great number of dogs loped at their feet.

“There
is
a shipyard!” cried someone. And there it was: indeed the whole eastern rim of the basin was a dark jumble of ships—ships in dry dock, raised on stilts; ships floating in a sealed-off lock, from which their spars poked out like the limbs of winter trees. Ships wrecked and abandoned in a dry, deserted square.

Thasha looked at the mighty river. Above the falls it rippled down a series of low cascades, like a giant staircase, each step flanked by statues in white stone—animals, horses, dlömu, men—that towered over the modest homes. Away to the south the cliffs rose again. There was another mighty waterfall, and above it more roofs and towers looking down on the city.

“Night has come,” said Bolutu, who was clinging close beside Neeps. “Why is the city dark? There should be lamps in the windows—countless lamps, not these scattered few. I don’t understand.”

The dlömu reached the platform at the walkway’s end. They leaned out over the rails, looking down at the ship, mighty and helpless below. They were pointing, shouting, grasping at one another in shock. There was just enough light for them to know the crew was human.

“Thashiziq!”

Ibjen’s voice. Thasha saw him, waving excitedly from a platform. The other dlömu left a little space about him, looking askance. As though in greeting one of them he had become almost a stranger himself.

She waved. Ibjen was chattering, explaining; his countrymen did not appear to be paying attention.

“Pazel should be here,” said Neeps. “He should be with us right now, seeing this.”

“Yes,” said Thasha with feeling, turning to him. But the distance in Neeps’ eyes told her that his words had been meant for Marila alone.

“Are they talking?” someone shouted from above. “Listen! Listen to them talk!”

Then Bolutu laughed. “Of course they’re talking, brothers! There’s not a
tol-chenni
on this ship! Hail! I am Bolutu of Istolym, and it is long—terribly long—since I walked among my people! I want black beer! I want candied fern and river clams! How long before you bring us ashore?”