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.From the bluffs, citizens ofPhrixos watched the vessel's passage, and countless voices chanted a funeralhymn.Escape! That was what counted now.Escape from the tangles of this cursedplot, this evil deception.Brak found that he could lift his left leg.Gripping the edge of the catafalque, he tried to swing his lower body downfrom it.As he turned his head, his gaze fell upon his own hand.Aghast, heheld it up before his eyes.The flesh was bone white.He sniffed.Dimly, he remembered Hel mentioningpalace cosmeticians.For a moment he wanted to cackle with savage,disbelieving laughter.He was a dead man, tricked out in a dead man's robes,his skin whitened to a corpselike paleness.Page 72 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlAbruptly Brak jerked his hand down again.He lay still as granite, staringstraight up at a great peacock-hued canopy that hung above the catafalque.Themulticolored hangings of this silken pavilion were drawn back to allow theshore watchers to glimpse the dead bodies bound for paradise.He should nothave raised his hand to his face.Someone might have seen from shore.No outcry disturbed the singing.Brak relaxed a little, but remained stiff onhis back.It would not be wise just yet to treat the watchers to the sight ofthe dead rising.The dead & Another cold shiver crawled up his back.He was but a consort.Hewas some swaggering prince named Nicor, married to &Brak wrenched his head far enough to the right so that he could see for thefirst time what lay in that direction.There, upon a similar catafalque,rested the robed body of Queen Joenna.Her eyelids were a pale bluish color, closed in death.Her hands were foldedupon her breast.Her lips had been tinted coral.A simple pearl chapletadorned her head.Beyond her, more torches were ranked along the starboardrail.On that far bluff, too, thousands sang, and lined the night with firedots as far as the eye could see.A foreboding of evil filled Brak then.The queen lay dead.The same queenwhose cold, translucent self he had encountered on the battlefield as shesearched for her husband's body.Where was that haunted spirit now?Close, very close.Brak sensed it.Her soul might be hovering within that paleivory body that was stretched out unmoving, and yet seemed (had the gods madehim mad?) subtly alive.Floating down Phrixos on a timber-hewn island of light, Brak felt morehelpless than he ever had in his life.True, most of his lassitude was drainedaway now.But he had no weapon.The moment he left the catafalque, thousandsupon the shores would see, and cry out.Cautiously he inched his head up just enough, so that he could peer past thetight, binding toes of the calfskin boots that had been jammed onto his feet.He wanted to assess the size of the barge, the number of persons aboard.The big barbarian judged the barge to be the most immense he had ever seen.Hetranslated the size into an easy, familiar scale of reckoning.It was perhapsas long as a hundred great gray elephant bulls standing trunk to tail, and afourth as wide.Mammoth.The priestly wail, the music, and the clamor ofcelebrants came from a tiny patch of light far ahead at the prow.There, at least three dozen people were gathered in a smaller, lamplit silkpavilion.Wine cups twinkled.In between bow and stern pavilions, the deck pit of the barge was nearly pitchdark.Once, perhaps, the vessel had been equipped with rower's benches.Nowthe barge seemed propelled along by the swiftness of the current of Phrixos;no oars or sails were in evidence.And all that was visible in the old oar pitwas a small, square stone altar, fitfully lit by three peculiarly shaped lampson a trident stand.They cast a smoky purple glow.Near this altar, Brak thought he saw something.A shadow, a lump of livingdark stirred and whipped past the wan circle of radiance cast by the altarlights.Then Brak blinked, uncertain.A gust of wind stirred distant hangings.Brak glimpsed men wearing tigerstripes, there among the revellers in the bow pavilion.Would they be leavingthe barge? Undoubtedly, for beyond the Dark Veils, whatever they were, lay thesacred abode of the dead
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