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tried to descry what her singular passenger was pointing out. “I don’t see anything, Mr. Ehomba.”
    “Please, call me Etjole. If you do not see anything, then you
are
seeing it.”
    Her expression contorted and she barked at the tallsoutherner’s companion. “Simna! What nonsense is he talking?”
    The swordsman could only shrug. “Sorcerers speak a language unto themselves, but I’ve learned these past many weeks to heed
     his advice. If he says to sail toward nothing, I’d be the first man to set my helm for it.”
    Stanager mulled over this second suggested absurdity in succession. “I see no harm in sailing toward nothing.” Her gaze drifted
     upward. “The storm holds steady behind us. A little to port or starboard will not strain the stays any more than they already
     are. Helm to port!” she ordered Priget. Working in concert, the two women forced the wheel over.
    It was late afternoon before they arrived at the place Ehomba had espied through the depths of the tempest. It was not, as
     he had told Simna, an island. Nor was it land of any kind. But it was a place of calm, and rest, in the midst of raging windblown
     chaos. That did not mean it was a haven for the exhausted crew of the
Grömsketter
and their battered ship. What the herdsman had seen and what they were about to enter into proffered an entirely unnatural
     and potentially perilous tranquillity. It was a valley.
    A valley in the sea.

III
    T he bowl-shaped depression in the ocean’s otherwise unbroken expanse was large enough to hold most of Hamacassar. Through the
     fulminating winds they could see that the ocean sloped gently down into the glassy green basin on all four sides. Attempting
     to analyze the impossibility, Stanager would have ordered the
Grömsketter
hard to starboard to avoid it, but there was no time. One moment the ship was thundering westward, driven by gales whipped
     into line by Ehomba’s parrying blade. Then its bow was tilting downward into a trough the likes of which no sailor aboard
     had ever seen.
    The concavity lay not between the crests of two waves, but between four uniquely stable oceanic slopes. Several women and
     not a few of the men held their breath as the ship’s keel began to slide downward at a perilously sharp angle. As she descended
     she picked up speed, though not a great deal. It was not so very different from sailing upon level waters, save for the fact
     that a mariner had to guard against sliding along the deck until he fetched up against the bow.

    The unrelenting gusts that had been flailing the ship from astern immediately began to moderate in intensity. Pounding squalls
     became gentle breezes. Ehomba estimated that the floor of the valley lay little more than a hundred feet below the surrounding
     surface of the ocean proper. Not a great difference, but one sufficient to provide them with a safe haven while the winds
     liberated from the mysterious bottle blew themselves out overhead.
    They could hear those freed siroccos and emancipated mistrals blustering and raging overhead, but they did not blow down into
     the olivine depression to roil the serene waters. There was no perceptible current; only a gentle lapping of wavelets against
     the tired sides of the ship.
    Climbing down out of the rigging, Stanager confronted her tall, laconic passenger. “For someone who’s never been to sea, you
     seem to know much of its secrets.”
    Ehomba smiled gently. “I have lived by the shore all my life. The Naumkib learn to swim before they can walk. And there are
     many in the village who have been farther out on the waters than I. A wise man is a sponge who soaks up the experiences of
     others.”
    With an acknowledging grunt, she studied the walls of water that formed the basin. “I would’ve preferred the lee of an island.”
    “This was the only refuge I saw,” he replied apologetically.
    “I’m not complaining, mind.” As the
Grömsketter
rocked contentedly in the mild swells, she