VII | Dragger
Even from his dais, he could see Shekalane trembling as the dragger approached.
He could not blame her. That they employed such vessels to ferry their gondolas upriver was commonly known, but it was doubtful that Shekalane—who had been born in Jaskir and hence was no less a creature of the inland forest than any bear or coyote—had ever seen one up close. He tried to imagine it through her eyes: the dragger emerging from the swirling gloom like some hellish apparition—its sides laden with black gondolas and its derricks strung with mock shrunken heads.
The juggernaut slowed to a virtual crawl and dropped its anchor, which seemed a hammer of the gods as it struck the water, and he set them on a parallel course, so that they drifted between the chain of that anchor and the dr
