A Triumph of Souls Read online

  Simna’s brows furrowed. “So the man is a good fisherman and brave to boot. What of that?”

  “While he has been working and talking I have been studying everything on his boat. Though more than a little windy himself, I think he is no natural master of wind. He does not have the look. But there is no mistaking the confidence he has in his seamanship.” Raising his voice, he called out to their visitor.

  “Gatherer of fish, that is a most unusual bottle I see resting by your tiller. Though large and well blown it does not appear to hold drink, or anything else. Yet I espy something moving within. What does it contain?”

  So startled by this unexpected inquiry was the fisherman that he dropped the net he was hauling in, letting it splash back over the gunwale. Once back in the water its contents, writhing and convulsing, wildly finned their way to freedom.

  “It’s only a bottle, sir. You have—remarkable eyes.”

  “From watching over my herd, looking out for predators. What is in the bottle?” Everyone on board the Grömsketter was watching Ehomba now. Men and women who had been resting in the shade rose from their places to crowd the railing.

  “Nothing, good sir.” Ignoring the fact that he had just lost the majority of his most recent catch, the fisherman resumed hauling in the one net that remained hanging over the side. He looked and sounded slightly agitated. “It’s just an empty bottle that I carry about with me. For storing caught rainwater.”

  Simna was staring at his tall friend. Etjole was on to something, had seen something, he knew. But what? Now that the herdsman had singled it out, he too located the large bottle that rested near the tiller of the small boat. It was big enough to hold several gallons, with a bulbous body and a narrow, tapering neck that terminated in an elaborate metallic stopper the color of pewter. Hard as he stared, he could not discern any contents.

  Ehomba, however, felt differently. Strongly enough to argue about it.

  “I can see movement within the glass. To catch rainwater anyone would use a bottle with a much wider mouth. I know: I have had to do so in dry country on more than one occasion. So what is it, fisherman? Why are you lying to us?”

  When the last of the net had been hauled in and piled on the deck of the little craft, its owner took a seat in the stern, resting one arm on the tiller. “You have no weapons that can reach me or you would have shown them by now. So I will tell you, landlord of sharp eyes. The knowledge will do you no good.”

  Baffled, Stanager had moved to stand close to Simna. “What nonsense is he prattling?” she whispered. “I can make sense neither of what he is saying nor of your friend.”

  Inclining his head close to hers, the swordsman murmured a reply. “I’m not sure, but Ehomba is a strange man. A good friend, to be sure. Straightforward and dependable. But different from such as you and I. He knows many things. I believe him to be a great sorcerer.”

  “What, him?” Almost, she laughed aloud. Almost.

  “Say then that he is a sometime student of that which would mystify the rest of us. If he says there’s something in that bottle, then I believe him, though I can’t see it myself.” He pointed. “It lies there, by the stern.”

  “I see it,” she admitted, leaning closer. After a moment she shook her head dubiously. “It looks empty to me.”

  “Hoy, but then why is our trawling friend looking so uneasy, and speaking of weapons? Could it be that the bottle contains something of great value, whose nature he is wary of revealing?” In the course of their intense whispering his arm had slipped around her waist. Intent upon the byplay between herdsman and fisher, she took no notice of it, and thus allowed it to remain in place.

  Lifting the bottle by its narrow neck, Crice held it up for all to see. Half the crew saw only a thick-walled container, perfectly blown and devoid of bubbles in the glass, sealed with a peculiarly sculpted pewter stopper. Among the rest there were many who thought they saw movement within the translucent vessel. Given the distance between the two craft, it was difficult to say what, if anything, occupied the bottle’s interior. But it was now clear to the most sharp-eyed among the crew that something did.

  Whatever it was, Ehomba had been first to espy it. Among them all, he was the only one to have an idea what it might be. Convinced of his invincibility, the fisherman proceeded to confirm the herdsman’s suspicions.

  “Here’s your wind, sailors! You think yourselves masters of the sea and all that’s above and below it—but I, Crice, command the air!” He held the glass container a little higher. “Here in this bottle I have all the wind that covers this portion of the sea. Found it at the bottom of a chest in a ruined ship. Must have been a thousand years old, she was, and reeking of magic fantastic and decayed. But the stopper on this bottle was intact, and I, yes I, discovered by myself how to open and close it. I let a little out when I need it and keep the rest shut up when I don’t.” He gestured at the perfectly flat, motionless water on which both craft floated. “That way I can see the fish I seek as clearly as if looking through a window. When I have enough, I let out just the right amount of wind in precisely the appropriate direction to carry me home.”

  “No wonder he’s not afraid to travel out of sight of land,” Simna whispered. His hand tightened a little on the Captain’s waist.

  “Not if he can control all the wind in this part of the ocean, no.” Pressing forward against the railing, Stanager raised her voice. “Ayesh, fisherman, can you not let us have back a little of that wind?”

  “Every ship must find its own,” he reiterated implacably. “And if I give some to you, that will mean less for my sail. How much do you think a bottle like this can hold, anyway? I found the bottle, I captured the wind, and now it’s mine! Seek out your own breezes.”

  Sitting back down in the stern, he pointed the neck of the bottle toward his mast. Slowly and very carefully, he unscrewed the pewter stopper just a little.

  Emerging from the glass alembic, a gust of wind immediately filled his small sail, sending its thrusting curve billowing outward. Seeing this, several sailors on board the Grömsketter looked to their own masts, only to see their own sails luffing uselessly against spar and line. Yet to look at the little boat was to see it beginning to accelerate with a freshening breeze astern. Except no breeze advanced from the vicinity of the stern. It had emerged straight from the bottle that the fisherman was now firmly restoppering.

  “Etjole, do something!” Simna blurted anxiously. At the same time, Stanager became aware of the arm coiled around her waist and stepped away. Her expression was a mixture of anger and—something else. “If he gets away with all the wind from this part of the sea we could be stuck here for weeks!”

  “I know.” Ehomba had not taken his eyes from the little boat heavily laden with fish and its contrary master. “I need a stone.”

  “A stone?” Simna knew better than to question his companion. If Ehomba had declared that he needed a purple pig, the swordsman would have done his best to find one.

  Actually, on board a ship the size of the Grömsketter, finding the pig might have been the easier task. Of all the lands they had journeyed through together, of all the astounding places they had visited and countries they had traversed, here was the first that was devoid of stones, and here the first time Ehomba had required one.

  “Ballast!” the swordsman yelped. “There must be ballast in the hold!”

  Stanager was quick to disappoint him. “We carry base metals. Ingots of iron and copper that we can trade with the inhabitants of the towns on the other side of the Semordria. You’ll find no rock in the belly of the Grömsketter.”

  “Well then, there must be at least one stone somewhere on this ship! Firestone in the galley, to protect her wooden walls.”

  The Captain shook her head sadly. “Firebrick.”

  “In someone’s sea chest, then. A memento of home, a worry stone, anything! If Ehomba says that he needs a stone, that means he needs—” Simna broke off, gaping at his tall friend.

&n
bsp; Reaching into a pocket of his kilt, the herdsman had removed the small cotton sack of “beach pebbles” he had carried with him all the way from his home village. As Simna looked on, Ehomba selected the largest remaining, a flawless five-carat diamond of deeper blue hue than the surrounding sea, and shoved the remaining stones back in his pocket.

  “No, long bruther.” The swordsman gestured frantically. “Not that. We’ll find you a rock. There’s got to be a rock somewhere on this barge; an ordinary, everyday, commonplace, worthless rock. Whatever it is you’re thinking of doing—don’t.”

  The herdsman smiled apologetically at his friend. In his hand he held a stone worth more than the swordsman could hope to earn in a lifetime. In two lifetimes. And somehow, Simna knew his friend was not planning to convert it into ready currency.

  “Sorry, my friend. There is no time.” Pivoting, he returned his gaze to the little boat, now starting to pick up speed beneath the press of the freed breeze its sail had captured. “Soon he will be out of range.”

  “I don’t care what—” the swordsman halted in midcomplaint. “Out of range? Out of range of what?”

  “Rocks,” Ehomba explained simply—so simply that it was not an explanation at all, but only another puzzlement. Raising his voice, he directed his words to the retreating fisherman. “Truly you are the master of winds! But you must control them through spells and magicks. No mere bottle that fits in a man’s lap can contain more than the air that Nature has already placed inside.”

  “You think not, do you?” The fisherman turned in his seat, one arm resting easily on the tiller. “You’d be surprised, traveler, what a bottle can hold.”

  “Not a bottle that small,” Ehomba yelled back. “I wager it is not even made of glass, but some marvel of the alchemist’s art instead!”

  “Oh, it’s glass, all right. Alchemist’s glass perhaps, but glass incontestably. See?” Holding the bottle aloft and grinning, he tapped the side with a small marlinspike. The smooth, slightly greenish material clinked sharply.

  As soon as the fisherman had begun to lift the bottle, Ehomba had placed the blue diamond in his mouth. At first a startled Simna suspected that the herdsman intended to swallow it, though for what purpose or reason he could not imagine. Not knowing what to think, Stanager had simply looked on in silence.

  That was when Ehomba began to inhale. Simna ibn Sind had seen his friend inhale like that only once before, when on the Sea of Aboqua he had consumed an entire eromakadi. But there was no darkness here, no ominous roiling haze with luminous red eyes, not even a stray storm cloud. The sky, like the air, was transparent.

  The herdsman’s chest expanded—and expanded, and swelled, until it seemed certain he would burst. Those members of the crew close enough to see what was happening gawked open-mouthed at the phenomenon of the distending herdsman while Stanager, brave as she was, began to back away from that which she could not explain and did not understand. Hunkapa Aub looked up in dumb fascination while Ahlitah, as usual, slept on, oblivious to what was happening around him.

  Just when it seemed that the skin of the herdsman’s chest must surely rupture, exploding his internal organs all over the deck and railing, he exhaled. To say explosively would be to do injustice to the sound that emerged from his chest and mouth. It reverberated like gunpowder, echoing across not only the deck but the sea as well. The force of it blew its perpetrator backwards, lifting Ehomba’s feet off the deck and sending him crashing into the smaller railing that delimited the fore edge of the helm deck. Hunkapa ran over to make sure the herdsman was all right.

  As for Simna, he remained at the railing, realizing that Ehomba had expelled more than just air. There had been one other thing in his mouth, and it was not his tongue that had been violently discharged across the water.

  In the little boat, the disdainful fisherman was preparing to tap his bottle a second time with the metal marlinspike to demonstrate the qualities of its composition when the ejected diamond struck it squarely in the middle, shattering the glass and sending green-tinted shards flying in all directions. The fisherman had barely an instant to gape at the ruined container, its neck and stopper still clutched tightly in one hand, before the winds it had held burst to freedom.

  All the winds that had swept a section of sea greater than a man could see in any direction, and all of it released at once.

  “Etjole, you right still?” The shaggy countenance of Hunkapa Aub was leaning low over his lanky friend. Ehomba sat, dazed but conscious, against the railing.

  “I am…” he started to reply. Then a sound reached his ears—a rising sound—and he yelled out even as he wrapped his arms tightly around the nearest post. “Grab something and hang on! Everybody grab someth—”

  The liberated winds struck the Grömsketter amidships, howling like a thousand crazed goblins suddenly released from an asylum for insane spirits as they tore through the masts and rigging. Struck hard enough to cause the sturdy vessel to heel sharply to starboard. For a terrifying moment, in the midst of that awesome roar, Stanager was afraid the ship was going to turn turtle. Her list reached seventy degrees. But as the initial blast began to subside, the ballast in her hold asserted itself. With maddening slowness, she began to roll back onto an even keel.

  Clinging to the rigging, her skin and clothing soaked with gale-driven spray, the Captain screamed orders to the crew. Stays were drawn taut, the mainsail boom secured, the wheel steadied. Somehow, the sails held. Working his way aft, Terious Kermarkh silently blessed a succession of unnamed sailmakers. Tough fabric caught the wind and contained it.

  But with demented gusts blowing from every direction, the sails kept wrapping themselves around the masts, making it impossible for the ship to maintain a heading, any heading. In the teeth of the disordered, chaotic gale there was no choosing a course.

  Terious fought his way to within shouting distance of the helm deck. Standing below, he yelled up to the wheel. “Captain, we’ve got to get out of this! We’re starting to take on water!”

  “Keep the fores’l reefed, Mr. Kermarkh! All hands hold to stations!” Maintaining a firm grip on a storm line, her experienced sea legs absorbing the impact of every pitch and roll, she staggered over to where Hunkapa Aub and Simna ibn Sind hovered solicitously over their tall friend. Awakened from his sleep by the sudden, unexpected storm, the black litah stood nearby. The heaving, pitching deck did not concern him, not with four sets of powerful claws at his disposal to dig into the wood.

  “Mr. Ehomba, you’ve taken us from the doldrums to the roaring forties, from not a ghost of a breeze to all the winds of the four corners of the compass. But they’ve been let loose all together and all at once, and as a consequence blow from all directions unaligned. You got us into this, now you have to get us out, or we’ll sit here and spin like a top until we sink!”

  Still dazed from the blow to the back of his head, Ehomba accepted the help of his friends to rise. Simna helped him up. Once erect, Hunkapa embraced him in an immovable grasp that held him steady.

  Observing the anarchic weather that had enveloped the Grömsketter, Ehomba thanked his friends and told Hunkapa to release him. The broad-shouldered man-beast complied reluctantly. All kept a wary watch on the herdsman as he half climbed, half slid down the steps that led to the main deck and disappeared below. Moments later he emerged with the sky-metal sword gripped tightly in one hand.

  Simna eyed him uncertainly. Along with everyone else, he had to shout to make himself heard above the howl of clashing winds. “Hoy, long bruther, what do you want with that? We need less wind, not more of it!”

  “Not less, Simna.” Ehomba wiped perspiration from his eyes and forehead. “What we have is what we need. It only wants some guidance.”

  Climbing back onto the helm deck, he made his way to the stern railing. There he tried to assume a solid stance, but the pitching and rolling of the ship made it impossible. Without using at least one hand to grip a stay or line, he kept stumbling from side to side, forw
ard or back. Leaning against the railing helped a little, but when the bow of the Grömsketter rose sharply, the motion threatened to pitch him over the side.

  “This is not working,” he declared aloud.

  “I can see that, bruther!” Spitting seawater, Simna clung to the railing next to him. “What do you need? What do you want?” Spume-flecked wind shrieked in their ears.

  “My feet nailed to the deck, but that could cause problems later.” Grimly searching the ship, the herdsman espied the big cat standing foursquare and four-footed to the left of the helm, as stable as the mainmast. “Ahlitah! I need your help!”

  “What now?” Grumbling, the cat released its grip on the battered teak and turned. His extended claws held the decking as firmly as crampons on a glacier.

  “I need someone to brace me,” Ehomba told him. “Can you do it?”

  The big cat considered, yellow eyes glowing like lamps in the darkness of the rising storm. When lightning flashed, it was the same color as the master of the veldt’s pupils. “It’ll be awkward. My forelegs are not arms.”

  Ehomba pondered, then shouted again. “Hunkapa! Brace yourself against Ahlitah and hold me! Hold me as high up as you can!”

  “Yes, Etjole! Hunkapa do!”

  The litah set itself immovably against the back railing, the claws of each paw nailing themselves to the deck. Then Hunkapa Aub stepped across the cat’s back and straddled him, locking his shaggy ankles beneath the feline belly. With Hunkapa thus anchored to the litah, and Ahlitah fastened firmly to the deck, Hunkapa put huge, hirsute hands around the herdsman’s waist and lifted him skyward. The Grömsketter rocked in the wind and waves, she rolled and pitched, but on her helm deck the unlikely pyramid of cat, man-beast, and herdsman rode rigid and straight.