Fear pulled his limbs like a puppeteer's strings.
William could not remember exactly how he had left the lowest deck. By the time he came to, he had already crawled back onto the floor of the second-level cargo hold.
The mineral dust and mud caked over his palms and clothes showed that he had briefly regressed to walking on all fours, no different from a startled beast.
Perhaps it was only an illusion, but the darkness in the lower hold was no longer pure nothingness. Something viscous and invisible seemed to flow through it.
He could sense the change, yet could not locate it. Only an elusive intuition lingered in his mind:
That thing had been taken too carelessly from the Ice Plains, released from the stone. It was no longer where it belonged. It could be anywhere.
He gulped in air, leaned against a support pillar, and sat up. Reaching into his inner pocket, he pulled out a flask and tipped back nearly half of it in one swallow. The solid, burning taste finally dragged his thoughts back from terror and into reality.
Two sailors were watching him uneasily, their eyes holding both admiration and apprehension.
"Slipped and fell. What's the matter? Waiting around to laugh at me?" William wiped his palms clean on his coattails, trying to act as though nothing had happened. He knew his appearance was hardly convincing, but a captain who could still put on a show was better than one completely at a loss.
"Get back in there and tell them it's an undersea current surging up. Stop making a fuss.
"My knee's hurt. I'll sit here a while longer."
He drove the sailors away, hooked the hatch with his foot, kicked it back into place, and locked it shut with an iron bolt.