Clack … Clack … Clack …
There, less than two lengths from where he lay against the deck, a living stone statue stood no more than a cubit in height …
It was one of the countless Ishroi chiselled from the walls, dressed much as Oinaral, rendered in exquisite detail, save where scabbed by ancient happenstance. The little face held him in its chipped regard.
Sorweel could not call out, could not move, whether for the want of limbs or volition he would never know.
A second graven doll joined the first, this one naked and missing the top third of its head.
And then a third joined them. And more, appearing along the summit of the pig carcasses immediately before him, miniature stone ghouls glaring down eyeless. He could hear even more, their march like a thousand little hammers tapping across the deck.
The peering flared soundless and white, cast a garland of crisp little shadows from their stone feet.
Clack … Clack … Clack …
He could not scream out any warning.
But someone had seized his shoulders—someone was shouting his father’s name! The Siqu—Oinaral …
“Awaken! On your feet, Son of Harweel!”
Sorweel clawed his way up, casting wildly about for any sign of the stone effigies. He looked to the Lastborn in confusion, glimpsed a pale, naked figure drop wheeling and kicking into the abyss a mere toss from the Haul. He turned to the Siqu in astonishment, to confirm that he had seen what he had seen. But Oinaral was already squinting upward, his hand held so as to cast a shadow across his eyes. Sorweel joined him, found himself dazzled by the peering. Another pallid figure materialized, plummeting from visibility into obscurity within a heartbeat—close enough for the youth to start. It seemed he had locked gazes with the hurtling wretch, glimpsed the mien of someone awakening …
He stood blinking against his own disordered soul.
Clack … Clack … Clack …
“What happens?” he gulped as much as called.
“I do not kno—”
Another flash of battling white. Sorweel glimpsed a form streak toward the far side of the Haul, catch it with its face, then carom, flipping. The entire bark kicked and swayed upon the chain. Oinaral fell to one knee. Sorweel clasped at the swine carcasses, caught one of the legs above the cloven feet; it was stiff as wood for rigour. The Boatman merely swayed counter to his vessel the way an ancient mariner might, and continued singing.
And he heard her say unto her brother,
“Lay with me, tend to my fallow plot,
make my barrens bloom, sweet Cet’moiol!
Let our Line suffer no iniquity, no alien earth or seed.
Let us aim our children as spears!”
Sorweel and Oinaral each stood on the rear portion of the deck gazing upward, hands against the peering light. The youth saw the last ring of engravings climb into the murk, a band consisting entirely of heads massed upon hairless heads, all of them watching. Raw stone ruled beneath, scarps jumbled and hanging. He glimpsed an iron catwalk rising from the obscurity below, a brace of scaffold across the wall, a pillared recess— A nude figure flickered past the prow.
Clack … Clack … Clack …
Oinaral cried out. Sorweel looked up, saw at least seven forms plummet from shadow into stark light, limbs flailing, bodies somersaulting, eyes glittering for the peering light, incredulous. The nearest slammed into the stern directly behind the Siqu. The Haul kicked up, tossed Sorweel against the stacked carcasses. He glimpsed a flashing miss, then another ghoul sheared across one of the iron braces, torso exploding into violet haze behind the Boatman. Another hurtled into the stacked pigs almost immediately before Sorweel. The impact slapped him backward. The Haul rocked and danced, swung on a ragged arc. Others slipped past without sound. Sorweel teetered on the gunwale as the bark wagged about, felt his stomach pitch. Any instant, it seemed, the lacquered bark would snap the chain and they would drop into the black.
But Oinaral was up, seizing his shoulder, even as the Haul’s motion rounded into a pendulous swing, one heaved slower and slower by the torsion of the Fathoming chain. He stared in horror at the pulverized pit where the wretch had landed upon the pigs. A hand lay miraculously intact on the floor at his feet, laying palm up as though holding a stylus.
All this time the Boatman had simply grasped the length of chain hanging beside him, swinging so as to seem motionless while the deck rolled and bucked beneath his shod feet. And for all the dangling violence of his bark, he did not once falter in his song …
Thence to the cruel House they fled,
the bastion that turns aside seasons—
“What happens?” Sorweel cried out. “Are they leaping?”
“No,” Oinaral replied, keen on the void above them once again. “They were not suicides.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they were Nonmen.”