Faro rose in the dim blue light of the narrow chamber where he had slept. At first, he had refused to sleep beneath the great skins of beasts that formed the bed, laying on the cold stone, instead, but he had awoken chilled and shivering after seeing the vision of his father. After a time, he had drifted back to sleep. When he woke again, he was beneath a pile of pelts, though he had no memory of pulling them atop himself. With a shiver of disgust, he slid out from under them and placed his feet on the cold stone. He was drowsy, and when he stood his head slammed against the stone. Specks of light erupted in his vision. He sat back down heavily, holding the crown of his head and hoping he had not gouged himself too badly.

He had no idea whether it was morning or night. He might have slept through a whole day and not known it. There was silence beneath the stone. The air was fragrant but damp, full of deep scents he did not recognize. Before he lay down to sleep, he had examined the blue glow that veined the stone. It appeared to be a luminescent fungus, and it reminded him of stories his mother had told about the shores of Talanael, when algae had made the sea come to life with blue sparks at night. He had seen patches of red and yellow lights in the tunnels, too, and he supposed there may be varieties of the fungus.

While he could not make out details by the dim light, it gave him a rough idea of the shape of the chambers and tunnels. This chamber was so narrow he could cross it in a single stride. The bed where he had slept was little more than a wide shelf carved into the wall, and he had to sleep diagonally with his knees drawn up in order to fit.

When Klotig had left him in the chamber the night before, he had closed the stone door. Faro had tested it to make sure he was not a captive, and it had swung outward easily. He'd left it ajar, and now he stepped into the tunnel. He saw no moving shadows, nor heard footsteps.

"Hello?" he asked, knowing that he would not be understood. At least if anyone was near, they might come to him. He was afraid of getting lost. His memories of the walk to the chamber were not entirely clear. He had sat with the dhar for what must have been hours, eating and drinking küg. How far did these tunnels extend? He was fairly certain Klotig had brought him down the left hand tunnel.

Should he risk it? He stood hunched over in the doorway, trying to decide what to do. Thankfully, a figure approached from the left. He could not make out who it was.

"Rotnal eg iyn gar," the figure said as it arrived. He thought it was the voice of one of the females, but he had no idea what the dhar said. Still, she stood in silence, appearing to wait for an answer.

"I don't understand," he said. She motioned with one of her hands, and Faro thought she wanted him to follow. He stepped out the door, and she headed back the way she had come. Hunched over to protect his head, he followed along, trying to take deep breaths to calm the sense of panic that threatened to grip him in that tight space unknown fathoms beneath the surface. The fear had not been so terrible in the feasting hall with its high ceiling and pillars, but in the side tunnels, his pulse quickened, sweat beaded on his forehead, and his breaths grew quick and shallow. When he had first followed Klotig down the stair from the strand, Faro was cold and hungry and weary. Fatigue may have helped allay his fear. Now, it made a resurgence.

Thankfully, the dhar female led him into a section of the tunnels that was wider and higher, the walls smoothed to such a precise uniformity that he wondered how it had been achieved. He could see no tool-marks. Only the veining of the fungal colonies provided any variance apart from doorways and diverging paths.

She led him to a doorway. He ducked in after her and found himself in a long chamber with an arched roof tall enough to allow him to stand erect. A moment later there was a flare of light. The dhar touched a thin piece of some kind of kindling to the wick of a lamp. As the glow of the flame rose, he saw it was a vien glass-lamp. There could be no mistaking it. The glass was worked with motifs of vines rising from waves. The lamp sat upon a wide stone table flanked by low trestle benches.

Stacked upon the tables were tenae of the same type that Coir always used. Coir had told him they were an entirely different method of document storage from what his own people had used in Nosh-that-was. He was curious what they might contain, but he did not want to look for fear of insult. A glass cup, pitcher, and a metal platter of dried fruits also rested upon the table. The dhar turned to him and motioned to the food and drink. Seeing her face in the light, Faro realized she was the same dhar whom he had first seen feeding the little creatures upon the beach, and who had served him and Klotig at the feast the night before.

"Gulth," she said, pinching her fingers together and moving them toward her mouth. Then, she pointed at the food. "Gulth."

Faro nodded, sitting down at the end of the bench so he could stretch his legs to the side. The table and bench were not constructed for the Vien form. His hunger awakened at the smell of the dried fruits. There was wine in the cup. He raised it and drank. It was pomegranate wine, and the fruits were sliced apricots. Faro had no doubt the dhar had acquired these things from the Vien.

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The dhar sat down across from him at the table and watched as he picked up an apricot and placed it in his mouth.

"Gulth," she said, pointing at him, then motioning to her mouth. She chewed with an exaggerated motion of exposed teeth. "Gulth."

"Gulth," Faro mimicked. She nodded and placed her hands palm down on the stone table. Moving them back and forth, she said:

"Naer."

Faro pointed at the table.

"Naer."

She nodded again.

Before they left, she told him the names of every object in the chamber, as well as the words for eat, sit, stand, and speak. She made him repeat the words many times. Faro knew Noshian, Vienwé, and bits of the quthli speech, and it was not difficult to pick up the new words. Besides, he had no choice but to learn, and nothing else to do. It proved to be the beginning of a daily occupation—though what night and day meant there, he could hardly say. There was a kind of delirium that set upon him, lacking any sense of the sky. The only proof of passing time was hunger, thirst, and fatigue, not to mention an ever-increasing trove of dhar words.

How long Faro learned the dhar language, he could not say. The dhar lived most of their days and nights underground. Klotig took him to the surface from time to time, but Faro suspected that he only did so out of kindness, perhaps sensing Faro's distress. Though Faro longed for the occasional visits to the surface, to breathe the briny air and see the sky, the weather had turned especially foul. The temperatures plummeted even more, and ice lay in thick unmoving jumbles. He could see no open water before the horizon. They usually had to dig through the snow to open the stairway. Even when the wind drove the snow sideways, so dense and piercing that he could see no more than a yard away, he would stick his head up from the hole and feel the movement of air and the openness of space. The cold was so bitter that the dhar did not brave it long even with heavy furs, and trips to the surface were rare. For days and weeks at a time, Faro had no sense of whether it was day or night. His fear of the low tunnels never went away. The dread grew worst when he lay curled in the little bed alcove to rest, thinking of all that stone above him, that vast cold weight that could crush him without escape.

Every waking, someone would teach him the dhar language. Most of the time it was the same female. It was weeks, so far as he could reckon time, before she told him her name. More than once, he repeatedly pointed to himself, saying "Faro," and then pointed to her. He was certain she knew his name and knew what he was asking. Finally, she had relented.

"Myeglanesht," she said.

He pointed at her.

"Myeglanesht?"

"Myeglanesht."

He soon realized that the other dhar called her "Nesht" more often than not.

Sometimes, Klotig would sit with him for a few hours, drinking küg. More and more, they engaged in simple conversations.

Faro's greatest breakthroughs came when he stopped listening to individual words, and instead listened to the music of the dhar speech, the roll and flow of their phrases, and the way they emphasized their moods by cadence. The underlying music had structure and rhythm, and the more he came to feel that music, the easier the words flowed from him.

At first, he had tried teaching Nesht a few words of Vienwé as well. When she told him the word for "chair," he had offered her the Vienwé word in exchange. She had crooked the corner of her mouth in an expression he didn't understand, but she did not repeat the Vienwé word. This happened a few times before he decided to insist she repeat the Vienwé word for the tenae. They often met in the chamber with the arched roof and the stone table stacked with the tenae.

"Tenae," Faro said, holding one of the cases. "Tenae."

Nesht shook her head. Faro repeated it again in a more insistent tone. "Tenae!"

She sighed, then stared at him for a few moments as if considering. He waited.

At last, she opened her mouth, but the sound that came from her throat was nothing like the Vienwé word. After a few more attempts, Faro realized the problem. She could not create the tones of the Vienwé language at all. It was as if her throat could not produce the pitches—certainly not in the octaves and with the flexibility required. She was blushing, and he felt embarrassed by it, and sorry that he had pushed her. It was far easier for his voice to adapt to the dhar language than for her to speak Vienwé. He never pressed her again.

Yet his choice of words was not happenstance, and his ulterior motive bore fruit. As if seeking a distraction, Nesh picked up one of the tenae and opened it, sliding out the papers within. Inevien calligraphy descended up and down the first page, but the second bore dhar marks he did not understand. He spoke the dhar word for "please?" and she slid the papers toward him. He did not stop asking until he had seen the contents of all of the tenae.

The Inevien scripts were primarily lists of steel, silver, gold, and weapons, as well as references to produce, wines, dried fruits, and glasswork. Many bore added dhar marks clearly drawn by Inevien hands, and others bore approximations of Vienwé words clearly marked by dhar. It appeared to be a mixed language of trade, simple words and symbols both dhar and Vien. His dedication to understand the dhar language only grew, both for the strange music of it, and to learn about their trade with the Inevien. It was his best hope to escape exile.

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