Chaven looked stricken. “Is that true? Have you been suffering because of me?”

He shook his head. “I exaggerate. But yes, of course, we can make it dark.”

As Chert stood on a stool to douse the lantern burning high in the alcove above the fire, Opal left the room and returned with a single candle in a dish which she set on the table next to Chaven. Already the exchange of the lantern for this single small light had turned the morning into something else, into eerie, timeless twilight, and Chert could not help remembering the murk of Southmarch city across the bay, the ceaseless dripping of water, those armored…things stepping out of the shadows. He had dismissed Opal’s worries about doing this in the house, thinking that she was concerned only about a mess on her immaculate floors, but realized now that something deeper troubled her: by this one act, the lighting of a candle, and the knowledge that more was to come, the day and their house itself had been transformed into something quite different, almost frightening.

“Now,” said Chaven, “I will need something to prop this mirror—ah, the cup should do nicely. And I want to put the candle here, where it will reflect without being directly in front of him. Flint, that is the boy’s name, yes? Flint, come and sit here at the table. On this bench, yes.”

The straw-haired boy rose and came forward, looking not so much apprehensive now as confused—and why not, Chert thought: it was an odd thing for parents of any kind to do, foster-folk or not, handing their child over to a strange, bespectacled fellow like this one, a man who might be small among his own kind but here was too big for any of the furniture, then letting him do the Elders knew what to the boy.

“It’s all right, son,” Chert said abruptly. Flint looked at him, then seated himself.

“Now, child, I want you to move a little so you can see nothing but the candle.” The boy tilted a bit to the side, then moved the rest of his body at the physician’s gentle direction. Chaven stood behind him.

“Perhaps you two should move to where he cannot see you,” the physician said to Chert and Opal. “Just stand behind me.”

“Will this hurt him?” Opal asked suddenly. The boy flinched.

“No, no, and again, no. No pain, nothing dangerous, only a few questions, a little…conversation.”

When Opal had taken her place, gripping Chert’s hand tighter than he could remember her doing for some time, Chaven began quietly to speak. “Now, look in the mirror, lad.” It was strange to think this same fellow, so soothing now, had been shrieking like a man caught under a rockslide only a few hours earlier. “Do you see the candle flame? You do. It is there before you, the only bright thing. Look at it. Do not watch anything else, only the flame. See how it moves? See how it glows? The darkness on either side of it is spreading, but the light only grows brighter…”