The Poet Laureate was fetched from his retirement in a lighthouse on the far shore of the Founder Mer to compose a song of eighty-six interlocked stanzas like steps on a stairway spiraling down into a cool dim quiet. But on the forty-seventh stanza of its recitation, the Governor squinted into the space over the Poet's shoulder and said, "listen, any deeper and we shall hear the words those beasts sing as they pass" and demanded that the previous stanzas be read in reverse; "back to the surface," he said.

Merton did not answer because Soliver's jibe had struck truer than he could know. The Moult attacked more than the body. Flightlessness was followed inevitably by madness and then total emptiness of the mind, if the disease was allowed to run its course. Most Kin afflicted as he was killed themselves long before that point though or were killed by others in pointless battles the madness caused the afflicted to seek out.