The lord on his throne of gnawed sticks, his loins alive with maggots, reclined with one thick, white arm across his blank brow, and thought of nothing.I had wandered through those thoughts, lost in the empty blackness. My hands groped outward, but the skull – the walls – were as unreachable as the sky – a sky barren of stars.Scratching flakes of faded white paint with a fingernail, I realised, with a vague detachment, that I was aboard Mistress Flight. I had no memory of ever coming to this place, and of my final parting words with my friends I recalled only an agreement to meet again – tomorrow. But within all this there were visions heady with terror – the faces of my friends blurred and became the giant’s face – the mouth a round black hole, the eyes pinched slashes across swollen white flesh, the nose eaten away, pink and gaping – a face round and smooth as a ball, the cheeks stretched and shining, the eyebrows plucked away – Roland’s face, Lynk’s face, Carl’s face.
