The island on the water level. The others sleep between the two palm trees. Alexis takes the far one.
He told them at the fire what his working was for. The Tear is close and he wants the guidance of the Inner Watch on the tear and the taint. Rask seemed to like the idea.
The carving takes most of the night. He scrapes the sand down to the wet layer and cuts it with the butt of his whip, a section at a time, sitting back to look along the line and then leaning in again.
What it comes out as, for anyone who woke and looked: a wall, drawn as a closed ring around the foot of the tree. Set into the inside of the wall, facing in, a single open eye.
Then he sits back on his heels and lets his eyes go, and for a long while nothing happens at all.
The sand inside the ring starts glowing faintly, evenly. The dim light fades and comes back. Haze comes off the water somewhere in there and settles at knee height around Alexis and his glowing working.
“It answers in the voice you expect,” Alexis mutters to himself.
“The Second Sun was broken and it was called progress as the ruins of what was wrought was stepped on.”
Later.
“The ancients keep it in in rings nobody wears.”
The light under the sand goes almost out, and returns.
“There are shadows around it, it doesn’t throw.”
“The ladder of the gods was climbed with mortal bones and entry was denied, but hubris never ends.”
“It seeks out its others. Its others are itself.”
A long time after that, quieter.
“You will be asked to set it down. Once by a one who wants it. Once by a one who loves you.”
“The one is supported by the two.”
“Find the one who feeds him iron and blood... the one who believes he can control him“
His hands are flat on the sand.
“It remembers.”
The haze is gone by the time he comes back to himself, and the sand has stopped giving light. His knees have locked. Alexis works the feeling into them, then goes around the ring on his hands and knees, putting the sand back in place.
“Well,” he says. “That’s more than I had.”