“Blind ourselves??” Chert was almost choking. “Are you mad?”
“If you do not, I will not take you. The way to the drying shed is not for landleggers, even those who claim to serve Kioy-a-pous.”
“Please, Father,” Flint said. “All will be well.”
Oh, certainly, Chert thought. Why not? Perhaps when we fall in the boy will charm the sharks, too, like one of the holy oracles. With great reluctance, he tied the stiff, salty rag over his eyes; a moment later he felt the boat beginning to move. What truly happened to this child behind the Shadowline—and when he went to the Shining Man?
The Shining Man. Chert could not help thinking of how the boy had lain at the great figure’s feet. Like the rest of his people, Chert had been taught that the Shining Man was the image of their creator, the Lord of the Hot Wet Stone. During the Mysteries it had even been hinted to him and the others crossing into adulthood that the great crystalline shape was somehow alive—that the power of their god lived inside it. So why had the boy struck off on his own to find it? And what had he done with that strange mirror—the one that Chert had later risked execution to deliver to the terrifying Qar woman? And just as important, what in the name of the Earth Elders was the boy up to now? Flint had questioned ancient Brother Sulphur until the old man had flown into a rage, and now he had demanded—and been permitted!—access to some treasure of the secretive Skimmers. Sisters, scales—Chert had no idea what any of it might mean, but he knew for a certainty that he had no more control of events than a man caught at the top of a rockslide: all he could do was hang on and pray…
These thoughts and a hundred more flitted through his mind as the oars creaked and the waves splashed gently against the side of the boat. At some point they passed through a long tunnel, with echoes bouncing off the stone. When the echo dropped away again the water, which had been as mild as one would expect on a lagoon inside the castle walls, suddenly began to rock the boat so strongly that Chert began tugging at his blindfold in panic.
“Don’t!” said Ena. She sounded breathless, as though she was working hard. “Keep that cloth on you or I’ll turn us around.”
“What’s happening?”
“Never you mind, Funderling. Just sit back.”
Chert felt Flint reach over and squeeze his arm, so he reluctantly left the rag across his eyes. What was going on? Were they on the open sea? But how would they have got out through the harbor and past the harbor chain? What about the besieging Qar? It didn’t make sense.
At last, after what seemed an hour or more on the water, the last half tossing and pitching in a very queasy way, Chert felt the prow of the boat bump up against something solid. The girl jumped out and helped them both up onto a dock, and from there onto dry land.
“Keep the eye-cloths on,” she said. “I’ll tell you when to take ’em off.”
At last Chert heard a door open and he and Flint were led through, guided by Ena’s careful, rough-skinned hands. Immediately his lungs and nostrils filled with harsh, salty smoke.
“You can unbind your eyes now,” she said.
When he stopped coughing, Chert did. They were standing in what looked like some kind of upgrounder barn. A great fire roared in a stone pit in the room’s center, flames twice as tall as Chert painting everything a dull red-orange. On either side of the fire long poles stretched from one end of the high-ceilinged, rectangular room to the other, supported every few paces with thicker, rough-hewn wooden pillars. On the poles hung hundreds of splayed fish carcasses.
“By the Elders, it really is a drying shed,” Chert murmured, then found himself coughing again from the smoke. His eyes were already stinging painfully.
“Oh, who’s there, who’s there?” The voice, though quiet, seemed to speak right in his ear. He jumped and whirled around but saw only Ena and silent Flint—for all he could tell, it might have been the split carcasses of the fish that spoke. “Dear, dear, we seem to have frightened Papa Sprat.” The invisible voice laughed, a cracked bray. “Come here to us, darlings. Nothing to fear in the drying shed—unless you’re a fish. Isn’t that right, Meve?”
Chert hesitated, but Flint was already walking toward the fire. As he made his way around the firepit Chert saw two small shapes sitting on a bench near the flames. One of them, an old Skimmer woman, rose as Flint approached. She was tiny, barely taller than Chert himself, and although all of the fisher-people had a little of the frog in their looks, this ancient creature was like one of the entombed toads or mudskippers the Funderlings sometimes discovered in the foundations of buildings they were excavating—a withered, seemingly lifeless creatures that nevertheless would recover if dipped in water, though it had been sleeping in the clay for centuries.
“Good evening,” said the ancient Skimmer woman. “Gulda I am, and here is my sweet sister Meve.” Gulda gestured to the other figure, even smaller than she, huddled in a coarse robe with the hood pulled close, as if even beside the fire Meve felt uncomfortably cold. “She talks not as much as she once did, but what she says is wise—is that not right, my love?”
“Wise,” croaked the other woman without looking up.
“And greetings to you, Turley’s daughter,” Gulda said to Ena. “You can wait with your sea-pony. The great ones have naught to say to you tonight, although doubtless they will another time.”
“Another time,” Meve echoed in a dry rasp that suggested she had been in the smoky shed for a very long time indeed.
Ena looked disappointed but did not argue. She made a curtsy to the sisters and walked to the door.
“You are the keepers of the Scale,” suggested Flint when the girl was gone.
“And why wouldn’t we be?” Gulda’s leathery, pop-eyed face seemed almost merry, although there was an edge of irritation in her voice. “Given the lore by our mother, we were, and she by hers, stretching back since keels first ran on ground here—who else would keep it and polish it and know its secrets?”
“And the god speaks to you through the Scale,” said Flint, as though the sentence made absolute sense. It certainly must have to Gulda, because she nodded sharply.
“When he sees fit.”
“When he sees,” added Meve, nodding gently, as if too violent a motion—even coughing, which Chert himself was doing again—might shake something loose. Howold were these creatures?
“The god has been speaking much to you of late,” said Flint.
For the first time, Gulda hesitated. “Yes… and no…”
“No,” said Meve. “Yes.”
“He speaks to us.” Gulda shook her head. “But sometimes it seems as though the dreams have changed him. He seemed not so angry before as now. As though something had come into his sleep and pained him.”
“Sleep and pain,” added Meve.
“Perhaps he remembers how he left the world,” said Flint, each word taking him further away from Chert, who was feeling as though there was nothing solid in the earth to stand on anymore. “Perhaps he finally remembers.”
“Aye, could be,” said Gulda. “But still he seems changed.”
“And what does the Lord of the Green Depths say to you?”
Gulda peered at him for a while before answering. “That the day of the gods’ return is coming. That our lord wants us to do everything we can to help him come back to us.”
Flint nodded. “To help Egye-Var come back. But you said he seems different when he speaks to you these days.”
Gulda nodded. “Closer, like. And never so angry before, even in our grandmothers’ days. Hot, not cold. Impatient and hot and grasping, like a thirsting man.”