The hall went down for a long way, then it opened into a ring.
It was a round hall as wide as the main street of his city, curving away on both sides, around a deep shaft of water in the middle. The ring was dry. Its floor was stone, with warm, still air above it that smelled of nothing. Steps went down on the far side to another ring below it, then another below that. From the edge of the shaft, Mav could see five of them, one under the other, going down into the gold light like the inside of a shell.
"Some of them have water and some don’t," Sela said beside him, with her head out of the shaft. "Who builds a house like that?"
"Someone who had fish and builders," Mav said. "And didn’t want to choose."
She looked at him sideways. Then she looked at the ring, at the low doorways cut into its outer wall, every one of them half his height. She swam to the edge, climbed out and stood in front of the nearest door.
"Too low for you," she said. She sounded pleased.
-----
The dry rings were a problem for the fish.
Sela solved it before Mav could think of anything. She and her two water movers lifted a long rope of water out of the shaft, as thick as a man, to hold it above the floor of the ring. Mav held it too, with his own Telekinesis, to take some of the strain off them. Twelve’s needlefish swam into it. So did Pip, Puddle and their young, packed close together.
Then they walked.
It was slow, hard work. The water movers had to keep their hands raised the whole time. By the end of the first dry ring, the youngest of them was shaking. Mav took more of the rope on himself, until his head ached. But they got the fish across and down the steps into the next ring, which was flooded. Everyone could breathe again.
Moss didn’t need any help. She walked the dry rings on her long legs, slowly, with her flat head turning from side to side. Wherever she stopped, her skin took the gold of the stone, and she vanished.
In the flooded rings, there were small pale shrimp living in the cracks between the stones. They were the only living things that Mav had seen in this place. The fish ate them. So did he. They tasted of nothing, like the water.
He thought often about the city, and whether Willow had moved for Two yet. He couldn’t know, so he made himself stop wondering. The others didn’t see how much it bothered him.
-----
At the bottom of the fourth ring, there was a room.
It was round, and its roof was a low dome, like the dome over his Heartstone at home. It was flooded. In the middle of the floor, a column of pale light rose from the stone to the ceiling. It was a different light from the gold of the walls, whiter and softer, and it didn’t move.
Twelve’s scouts went in first, the way that they went into everything. Mav saw them slow down as they passed through the column. They didn’t turn away. They turned back into it, slowly, as if they had swum into warm water on a cold day.
’Twelve,’ he said. ’Bring them out.’
"Wait," Twelve said.
She went in herself before he could stop her. She swam into the light and hung there, small and silver, with her fins spread. Mav felt her through her point in his head. There was no fear in her at all, only a slow, deep ease, like sleep after a long hunt.
"It’s warm," Twelve said. "It doesn’t hurt. Mav, it’s good."
Mav swam to the edge of the room, to go in after her.
One stopped him.
It went tight around his chest, all at once, so hard that he couldn’t move forward. When he tried again, it went tighter. It didn’t hurt him. It only held him, the way that a hand holds a child back from a fire.
’You know this place,’ he thought. ’Don’t you?’
One didn’t answer. But it didn’t let go either.
Mav stayed at the edge of the room. Inside, the rest of Twelve’s needlefish had gone into the light, all 20 of them, around her. Pip and Puddle were edging toward it too, side by side, with their young behind them.
’No,’ Mav told them. ’You two stay with me.’
"But..." Pip said.
"He said no," Puddle said, and pulled him back.
-----
The fish stayed in the light while Mav watched from the edge.
At first, nothing happened. Then Mav saw Twelve’s body stretch, very slowly, the way that a cat stretches after sleep. She grew. It wasn’t much at first, only a little longer, a little thicker behind the head. Then her scales changed. They darkened from silver to the gray of old iron, closing over each other like the plates of a shell. A ridge rose along her long jaws and turned around them, once, like the thread of a screw.
The others changed with her, one after another.
Mav watched all of it. He was so anxious that his hands hurt, but he didn’t call them out. They had asked to stay. The light was becoming dimmer with time.
When it was over, they were a hand longer than before, darker, harder, with that turning ridge along their jaws. There was no light in the water anymore.Then the letters came.
[The needlefish have evolved.]
[Skill: Drill]
[The user spins its whole body and drives forward through shell, bone or armor. It lasts three seconds. Recharge: 30 seconds.]
He borrowed it at once, because he had to know.
[You have borrowed a skill: Drill.]
[A borrowed skill grows as its borrower grows.]
When he pushed his harpoon at the wall, the steel turned in his hands like a screw going into wood. It didn’t go into the stone, because he stopped it. But it wanted to.
Mav grinned in the gold water. He was so pleased that he wanted to laugh. His needlefish had gone through sharks and eels with their jaws, but they had always broken on shell. Now they wouldn’t.
’Twelve,’ he said. ’How do you feel?’
Twelve came out of the light slowly. She swam a circle around him, then another, faster.
"Heavy," she said. "Strong." She thought about it. "Sleepy."
Then she sank to the floor of the room, and she went to sleep.
-----
All of them slept, all 21.
Mav couldn’t wake them. He tried calling them, then nudging them, then lifting Twelve gently with Telekinesis. She only curled tighter on the stone. They were alive, with warm, steady points in his head. They were simply asleep, so deeply that nothing reached them.
He couldn’t leave them. So he sat down at the edge of the room and waited.
He waited for hours. Pip and Puddle slept, side by side. Sela and her water movers slept on the dry steps above. Moss lay across the doorway with one eye open, the way that she always did. Mav slept too, a little, against the wall.
When he woke, the fish were still asleep. Hunger had woken him, much worse than it should have been, so he ate shrimp from the cracks until it went away.
He didn’t think about it much then. Later, he would remember it, and he would understand that the light had taken its price. It took time.
The needlefish woke at last, one after another, stretching their new bodies. Twelve was the first to swim, then the rest, slowly at first, but faster than before. Mav felt a rush of relief.
He stood up, eager to go on.
Then Moss lifted her head from the doorway, and every one of his fish went still.
Something was walking in the next hall.