Your son is too weak.
And he could feel what was about to happen, feel himself cartwheeling through blackness, clipping the sides as a doll cast down a well. He could feel the fatal plummet that was release— A bird blasted up out of the blackness, its great white wings thrashing, the yellow knife of its beak aimed at heaven. The peering etched it in clean light above, a stork, a miraculous vision of life— Sorweel seized Oinaral’s wrist—out of brute reflex more than resolution. He swung wide and kicking over the void. The Great Entresol resonated with bottled screams.
The iron band of the Nonman’s grip vanished. He toppled, flew into the peering as though into the sun, missed it by the breadth of an arm, crashed into the stacked carcasses. He rolled to planks of sodden wood, looked about wildly.
Clack … Clack … Clack …
Every surface seemed aglow for the brilliance of the peering. Oinaral lay riven on his back upon a bed of butchered animals, convulsing arms and legs out, mouth wide and gasping. His nimil coats blazed as water beneath morning sunlight. His eyes fluttered.
Immiriccas pondered killing him for what he had done.
You wear a prisonhouse upon your head, mortal …
But Sorweel found his gaze drawn to the other, the night-cloaked figure that stood directly beneath the peering—for the mouth of the hood now regarded them. The Boatman regarded them, his mouth working as though reciting words—to a song.
Clack … Clack … Clack …
An emaciated hand drew back the cowl, and the Son of Harweel was amazed. The peering flashed across bare white scalp, and the eyes watched from the shadow of hairless brows … The Boatman was a Nonman—the fact of this emanated from him. And yet he was ancient, his cheeks creased, his sockets pouched as infirm breasts. Mortality pursed the whole of his hard, cruel mien.
He stared as one who searches for the relatives of those he hates.
Clack … Clack … Clack …
And the Haul went down.
The Boatman, his blasted skin luminous in the light, had not ceased staring at them—singing all the while. The Lament subsided in imperceptible degrees, became less and less distinct from the endless boom of falling waters, more and more haunting, an appalling backdrop for the growl of Boatman’s song:
O’ Si?l! Dark is the harbour of your womb,
A lion has arisen, and your children hide.
A dragon has descended, and your children flee.
O’ Si?l! O’ barren House Primordial!
So we squatted upon our haunches,
Bathed our arms in the black water,
We swore oaths of hatred against them.
We spurned our prayers,
And the emptiness that ate them.
It was an ancient song, and obscure. It sawed on the ears, the heart, bearing more the stain of melancholy than the substance, and yet possessed of unnerving passion all the same.
Clack … Clack … Clack …
What was near was all too bright, enough to make a scowl of the merest inward glance. Halos hung about every surface, be it bitten wood, links of iron, or porcine swales. The Boatman seemed even more a horror, given how deeply the light inked his senescence in shadow. So Sorweel and Oinaral found their eyes driven outward, to the walls of the Ingressus, where distance and graven image had declawed the peering light. The walls climbed about them, hoop after hoop of reliefs carved at least a forearm deep, slowly climbing into oblivion above and resolving from oblivion below. They remained silent long after the dwindling of the Lament above had permitted easy speech. Each stared out from their portion of the bark’s stern, disbelieving what had just happened. Sorweel leaned blank against the gunwale, listening to the clatter of machinery, the creak of links and joists about the grisly load.
The Haul descended on a great nimil chain. Two great iron wheels revolved at its heart, purchasing length from above by consuming slack from below. Gears locked into the wheels released a mighty hammer against an iron anvil, generating the rhythmic crack that had punctured the Lament above. The noise itself was difficult to describe, save that it was sharp enough to wince ears, and somehow left the taste of metal upon the tongue. Given the dread nature of their descent it seemed alarming and horrifying, a drawing of attention in a place where only those as soundless as shadows could hope to survive.
Clack … Clack … Clack …
Iron bars jutted from points short the prow and stern, converging upon a black-iron collar that pinched the chain between two smaller wheels above—a stabilizing device of some kind. The peering hung from this, a radiance too bright to possess detail.
And directly beneath it, the hale yet withered Nonman stared and sang:
O’ Si?l! What love hath thou remaining?
What fury hath thou loosed? What destruction?
We who know the ground, plot in its bones,
Prepare to grapple the endless, Eating Sky!