“Here, now! You must let me speak to him first…” Nickel hurried after the boy and Chert trotted behind the two of them, fearing it might turn into an actual wrestling match. Flint was half a head bigger now than any of the Funderlings except Brother Antimony, so Chert wasn’t worried the boy would be hurt, but they were all guests of the Metamorphic Brotherhood: it would be a bad idea to start a brawl.
“Chert?” called Chaven from behind him. “Where have you gone?” The physician let out a squeal of pain as he banged his shin against one of the stone tables.
Chert reluctantly turned and went back to help Chaven. It was too late to catch up to Nickel and Flint in any case.
“Ah, there you are.” Chaven clutched at his arm. “I will be better in a moment—my eyes do not take to darkness as well as they did when I was younger…”
By the time they’d made their way across the dim room Flint was waiting beside the old man’s stool, his face once more expressionless, as though he had gone away somewhere inside his own head. Brother Nickel was talking to Sulphur, a tumble of words of which Chert heard only the tail end.
“… strange times, of course—you heard of the visitors, Grandfather, didn’t you? This is one of them. He wishes to ask you something.”
The old monk looked from Nickel to Flint, then back to Nickel again. Sulphur’s face was gaunt, the wrinkled skin hanging slackly as though with age his skull had shrunk. His eyes, although clearly almost blind with cataracts, were squinting and suspicious. “Wishes to ask something… or wishes to take something?” The voice was cracked and dry as a sandstone cliff.
“I have told them very strongly that they can only…” Nickel broke off, staring. Chert was staring too. The hood of the old man’s robe was quivering, as if one of his ears was trying to detach itself from his head. A moment later a grotesque little face popped out of the hood beside his cheek, so that everyone except Flint gasped and took a step back in surprise.
“Ha!” said Sulphur. “Iktis, down.” He flapped his hand in his lap and the slender, furry little animal crawled out of his hood and down his arm. It settled on the monk’s lap and turned to watch them all with bright eyes. It was a fitch, what some upgrounders called a robber cat. Some of the richer Funderlings had them in their houses to hunt mice and voles, but Chert had never seen one kept as a pet. “So, what does this child want of me?” Sulphur demanded.
Flint did not hesitate. “You have dreams,” the boy said. “Frightening dreams of the gods. Tell me about them.”
The old monk straightened up. The fitch chattered indignantly, clinging as a man in a storm might hang onto a pitching raft. “What could you know of my visions, gha’jaz? ” Grandfather Sulphur’s voice was a hoarse growl—he seemed fearful as well as angry. “Who are you, an upgrounder child, to demand the gods’ words from me?”
Nickel and Chert both began to speak at the same time but Flint calmly ignored them both. “I am a friend. Tell me. Your people need you to tell me.”
“See here, child…” Nickel began again, but Sulphur was ignoring him too. For a moment it seemed to Chert that everyone else in the great, musty room had vanished except for the old man and the pale-haired boy. Something passed between them—a language without words, like the tiny, all but invisible seeds of the mushrooms themselves, which passed through the air like a cloud of unseen spirits.
“The tortoise,” said Grandfather Sulphur abruptly. “It began with the tortoise.”
“What?” Nickel put his hand on Flint’s shoulder as if to pull the boy away. “Grandfather, you are tired…”
“The tortoise came to me in a dream. It spoke to me of the coming times—the time when evil men will seek to destroy the gods. Of the catastrophe they will bring down on the Funderlings. It was truth, that dream—I know it. It was the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone himself.”
“The tortoise…” said Chaven slowly, distantly, as if speaking to himself. Something in the physician’s voice put the hairs up on the back of Chert’s neck. “The tortoise… the spiral shell… the pine tree… the owl…”
Flint would not be distracted. “Tell me, Grandfather, what were you to do? What did the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone ask of you?”
“This is blasphemy,” Nickel sputtered. “This… upgrounder, this gha’jaz, should not be asking about such sacred things!”
But Grandfather Sulphur did not seem to mind—in fact, Chert thought the old man seemed to be warming to the subject. “He said I must tell my people that Old Night is coming and that this sinful world will end soon. He came to me in many dreams. He said to tell the people that there is nothing they can do to resist his will.”
“He told you not to fight against the will of the gods?” Flint asked. “But why would your god say such a thing?”
“Blasphemy!” said Nickel. “How can he ask such questions of Sulphur, who is the select of the Stone Lord himself?”
Chert put his hand on the monk’s arm. “Brother Sulphur is not afraid to speak to the boy, so let them talk. Come, Nickel, these matters are beyond either of us—but you must see that these are extraordinary times.”
Nickel could barely stand still. “That does not mean I should allow a… a mere child to do as he pleases in our holy temple!”
Chert sighed. “Whatever he is, I have known for a long time that my Flint is no ‘mere child.’ Isn’t that right, Chaven?”
But the physician did not reply: he was listening raptly to the old man and the boy.
“You have always dreamed of the gods.” Flint was telling more than asking.
“Of course. Since I was younger than you, child,” said the old man, not without satisfaction. He lifted a spotted, clawlike hand. “When I had but two years I told my parents I would be a Metamorphic Brother.”
“But these dreams are different,” said Flint. “Isn’t that true?”
The old man leaned back sharply, as though he had been struck. His milky eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“The dreams of the tortoise—the dreams that brought you the god’s own voice. You have not had dreams like that all your life—have you?”
“I have always dreamed of the gods…” the old man said, blustering.
“When did they change? When did they become… so strong?”
Again a long, silent communication seemed to pass between Flint and the old monk. At last Sulphur’s lined face went slack. “A year ago or more, just after the season of cold. That is when I first dreamed of the tortoise. That is when I first began to hear His voice.”
“And what came to you just before the dreams began?” Flint spoke as gently as if he were the priest and the old man some hapless, troubled penitent. “You found something, or someone gave something to you—isn’t that true?”
Chert could not help being disturbed by this newest face of the child in whom he and Opal had put so much of their hope. What had been done to this boy behind the Shadowline? More important, was he even a boy, or some kind of Twilight dweller that only looked like a child? What kind of serpent had they taken to their breasts?
“Yes, what?” said Chaven with an edge of hunger in his voice. “What came to you?”
Sulphur waved his hand. “I do not know what you mean. I am tired now. Go away.” In his lap, Iktis the fitch grew anxious; chittering, the creature vanished up the old man’s sleeve.
“That is enough!” said Nickel. “You must go now!”
“No one will take it away from you,” said Flint as if no one else had spoken. “That I promise, Grandfather. But tell the truth. Even the gods must respect truth.”