Spinner throwed off when she come out of the Waiting House. I give him a shell and kept the meat of the egg for myself, as they say.
“Demar,” Senlas said. He moved his hand in the air as if there was some music only he could hear. “Yes. That’s who it was. And perhaps there was a boy who kissed you too. It’s not all the way clear. But whether there was or there wasn’t, him that sent me says you’re pure enough of heart to stand before him. Give me your name now. Not your old name, for that’s stale and bad like green bread. I mean the last name you got, that’s fresh and new and scarce even spoken.”
I couldn’t lie to him twice. I didn’t even try. “Koli Faceless,” I said.
He give that same smile again. “Yes. Yes, indeed. You did well, Sky, to bring Koli Faceless to me. You brung him in good time too, for I see now he was meant to be the one. Sender provides like he always does. And you was his messenger.”
Sky tucked her head down into her chest and give a kind of a bow. “Praise be to the sender,” she muttered. “And the sent.”
Standing right beside her, Cup clasped her hands together and swung them up and down like she was wrestling with herself. Her warm feelings for the blue man would not be contained. “Praise them!” she said, and her voice was kind of wrenched up out of her throat with the fierceness of her love. “Praise them both, the sender and the sent!”
Senlas seen that, and he smiled.
“Who was sent first, my Cup, my precious goblet?” he asked her.
“The dead god,” says Cup, loud and clear like she was telling back her lessons and was proud of what she knowed.
“Who was sent second?”
“Dandrake.”
“Who was sent last?”
“You. You was!”
“Sent last,” the hand people chanted. “Sent last. Sent last. Sent last.” Sky and Mole and Cup was saying it too, and then the sound carried to the people nearest to us and they picked it up and they passed it on until the whole cave was full of nothing but them two words. Until they became one word.
Senlas lifted up his hands with the fingers spread and the eyes in his palms wide open. Everyone fell silent all at once.
“Sent last,” he said. “And called home soon. This is my altar boy, and he’s got my blessing. His name is Koli. Koli Faceless. Speak it.”
“Koli Faceless,” all them hundreds of people chanted. “Koli Faceless. Koli Faceless. Koli Faceless.”
The sound rolled on and rolled on for a great long time. My head was filled with it, and then my body was too, it seemed like. I sunk down on the ground, the hand woman letting my head slip out of her grip at last.
They picked me up and carried me when they was all done with saying my name. I didn’t see who done it, nor where they took me to. I was in a faint, I think. There was blood in my mouth, though I wasn’t sure where it come from. My splinted leg hurt from the way they was carrying me, but it was like the memory of a pain that used to be.
They set me down in a space that was small and narrow and dark. They went away, and I heard a door shut.
“Well, I’m surprised to see you, Koli,” a quiet voice said. “But not as surprised as I might have been, for they were kind enough to announce you in advance.”
I knowed that voice. I lifted up my head and blinked the dark and the dullness out of my eyes. I could not tell what kind of place I was in, except that the walls was stone and the floor was dirt. It didn’t have no door, I was wrong about that. There was just an iron grating that they had put in place behind me. Some light come in between the bars of it. Not very much.
But enough to see Ursala, sitting a few feet away. There was dried blood crusted on her face, and a lot more of it all down the front of her. One of her eyes was gone.
45
“Messianic,” Ursala said again. “From the word messiah. It’s a kind of religion built around a man or a woman who claims to have been sent down from heaven to save the rest of us from our own sin.”
“But why do