spirits. We was right up against the side of the great cave, and though there was not anything there like a window or a door, high above us there was a kind of a channel that had been sunk through the stone when it first was built, maybe to let in light or air or else for some other reason I could not guess at now. It was very narrow, and it went up on a shallow angle. I had good hope the sun might look down through it either just after it come up or just before it lay down again. If it did, I could set the DreamSleeve underneath it and give it some power.
I sit and watched awhile, trying to guess what time of day it was in the outside and whether it was clear enough out there for the sun to shine down through the hole. Before that happened though, two of the hand women and two of the hand men come and took me out of our prison, lifting the grating away to do it. I seen as I come through it that the grating was set in metal grooves that was bolted to the stone somehow. It wasn’t locked or nothing, but you couldn’t knock the grating down or slide it away when it was set in place. You had got to raise it up, and you needed to be real strong to do it. It took the four hand people and the two men that had been watching us, working all together, to lift it off.
I thought the hand people was going to put me up on that bonfire, and I was so scared I couldn’t hardly walk. But they took me the other way, towards the wagon-house and then further on again. I seen as we went by the wagon-house that it was set on them long metal bands that we followed when we come into the cave. It was like the wheels was balanced right on top of the metal bands somehow.
There was lots of people coming and going there. I thought at first they was going in and out of the wagon-house, but they wasn’t. They was going to a big tub that was kind of like the water tanks we had in Mythen Rood to hold the rain when it come so it could be boiled and sieved and, by and by, used for drinking. Maybe it was water, for they all brung cups and bowls to it, dipped them in and brung them away again, balancing them most careful. I looked for my brother in among them, but I wasn’t sure I would even know him after all the years that had passed since he was took. If Jud was here, he would have a new name now, and marks on his face to match them. We would be strangers, each to other.
The hand people took me to the bed where Senlas was lying when I first seen him. He was lying there again now, on his back with all of his hundreds of eyes staring up at the hanging lanterns and the dark between them.
“Is that my altar boy?” he said when they brung me to him.
“It’s your altar boy, Senlas,” one of the hand women said. “Come at your command.”
“That’s good. That’s meet. Kneel by me, altar boy, kneel by me here.”
I did not want to do it. I couldn’t anyway, no more than I could the last time, for my leg was splinted up like before. The best I could do was to go on one knee and stick the other leg out straight. The hand men stood by with their spears all pointed at me, I guess in case I got up or run away, or maybe in case I tried to do some harm to Senlas. The hand women went and stood all in a line between us and the rest of the cave.
Senlas set his hand on the top of my head. He smiled like he was sitting on a secret, as they say, which was not a cheering thing to look at. Now that I was this close to him, I seen he was older than I thought at first. His skin was all covered over in close-set wrinkles, like ripples on water when the smallest breath of wind hits it. The eyes that was drawed on his body was not all the same. Some of them looked so real you