The second session of the council was given over to those who had never seen the sun.
Among the three thousand four hundred survivors who had reached the thousandth entry hall, more than eight hundred were of the Drift-Ages—men, women, and children born within the underwater halls of the middle and lower strata. Their skin possessed the pale, semi-clear quality of cave-salamanders, their eyes wide, dark, and highly sensitive to the animal fat lanterns. Their ancestors had entered the Hall ten thousand years ago as refugees from the falling heavens. They had grown up in the dry alcoves above the high-water marks, eating dried salt water-shrimp, scraped lichen, and the hard, salted mullet that swam through the drowned stone beams.
An elder named Blind Lu stood upon the second step of the marble round hall.
He was ninety years of age, his back bent into an arch that mirrored the arch stones of the lower portals. His eyes were milky and unseeing, having lost their sight sixty seasons ago to the sulfur vapors of the deep water tanks, yet his ears were sharper than a sounding lead. He leaned upon a staff made of the rib of a bone whale, its surface carved with thousands of small notches recording the passing of the spring tides.
