A Triumph of Souls Page 32

  XXIII

  Ehomba met the onrushing eromakadi head-on, without trying to dodge or step clear of their charge. In an instant he was enveloped in black cloud and completely obscured from view. Simna held his breath. Even so, he was less agitated than his companions, who unlike him had not had the benefit of seeing the herdsman deal with eromakadi. But as the minutes passed and nothing happened and Ehomba did not reappear, the swordsman found himself growing more and more uneasy.

  Then a soft whistling became audible. It grew louder, until it dominated the room. The vaporous substance of the eromakadi began to twitch, then to jerk violently, and finally to shrink. Moments later everyone could see Ehomba, standing with sword in hand, inhaling and inhaling without seemingly pausing to breathe. Into his open mouth the eromakadi disappeared, sucked down like steam from a kettle traveling in reverse, until the last frantic, faintly mewling black tendril had been swallowed.

  Without word or comment of any kind, an Ehomba none the apparent worse for the experience resumed his assault on the dais.

  “An eromakasi!” Balling one hand into a fist, a surprised Hymneth raged at the onrushing herdsman. “What have you done with my pets, eromakasi?” Flinging his closed, armored hand forward, the Possessed opened his fingers the instant his arm was fully extended.

  Ball lightning flew at Ehomba. It was olive green in hue and crackled with energy. Raising his blade, the herdsman parried the verdant globe. Deafening thunder rattled the reception hall. Simna and the others were momentarily blinded by the shower of green sparks that flew from the sky-metal sword.

  Even as Ehomba was opposing this latest assault, the lofty figure seething before the throne of Ehl-Larimar was readying another. Hymneth continued to fling spheres of sickly green energy at his attacker as the herdsman persistently warded them off. In this manner Ehomba, though his approach was slowed by the need to fight off the tall sorcerer’s successive attacks, sustained his advance on the throne. As he drew nearer, the ball lightning flew more often. Employing reflexes honed from years of fighting off predators intent on stealing from the Naumkib flocks, he struck down one blazing assault after another. The frenzy of emerald sparks that struck from his untiring blade outshone the far more subdued glow of the chamber’s lamps.

  Swinging the sword in short, deliberate arcs, he gained the first step, and then the second. If Hymneth the Possessed was growing anxious or uneasy, the evidence of such a condition remained his and his alone. His face remained hidden behind the magnificent helmet. His defense was as unremitting and incessant as Ehomba’s advance, and he showed no sign of weakening or abandoning his position before the throne.

  Surmounting the last step, Ehomba batted aside a lethal, crackling globe half his size and was swallowed up by the consequent deluge of rabid green sparks and shattered shafts of lightning. Emerging from this cataract of emerald energy, he brought his blade around in a low feint, then swung it up over his head and brought it straight down, edge on, with both hands. Hymneth the Possessed, Lord of Ehl-Larimar, was in the process of throwing another orb of lightning when he saw or sensed what his attacker intended. Quickly raising both mailed arms over his head, he crossed his wrists and caught the descending sword in the V they formed.

  Green and white sparks erupted from the point of contact and the concussive wave thus generated knocked Peregriff, the Visioness Themaryl, and Simna ibn Sind off their feet. Only the larger and more powerful Ahlitah and Hunkapa Aub were able to remain standing, and even they were staggered by the force of the detonation.

  When Simna’s vision cleared and he could once again discern the drama being played out in front of the throne, a loss of feeling and belief gripped him the likes of which he had never experienced before, not even when as a child he had been cruelly assaulted by his peers. As receding thunderclaps rolled through the chamber and off into the distance, he saw the remnants of the shattered sky-metal sword lying scattered everywhere: on the steps leading up to the dais, on the floor, on the throne itself. Stare at them as he might, they did not slowly revive, did not become dozens or hundreds of new, smaller blades as they had in far Skawpane. They had been smashed into ragged shards and strips of twisted steel, like the vulnerable metal of any common sword.

  At the foot of the steps lay a crumpled, motionless figure.

  “Etjole!” Heedless of whatever the domineering, armored figure commanding the dais might do, the swordsman rushed forward. Hunkapa Aub and the black litah were right behind him.

  Throwing himself on the prone torso, Simna used both hands to wrench the valiant herdsman over onto his back. Ehomba’s eyes were closed and his body limp. There hung about him a sharp, acrid smell, as if he had been singed by something as lethal as it was invisible. The swordsman shook the smooth, lean shoulders; gently at first, then more forcefully.

  “Etjole! Bruther!” To his frantic entreaties there was no response. Pressing an ear to the herdsman’s chest, Simna’s eyes grew wide as he detected no sound from within. Hastily moistening a palm, he held it in front of the herdsman’s unmoving lips. Nothing cooled his skin.

  “It can’t be.” He drew back from the motionless body. “It can’t be.”

  Dipping his maned head low over the prostrate form, Ahlitah listened and sniffed once, twice. Then yellow eyes rose, flicking first in the direction of Hymneth the Possessed, then meeting those of the stricken swordsman.

  “It’s over, Simna. He’s dead. The herder of cattle is dead.”

  And he was.

  Ehomba felt no pain. In fact, he did not “feel” at all. He knew instinctively, unarguably, that he was dead. Dead at the hands of another. Hymneth the Possessed had killed him. This knowledge caused him neither regret nor discomfort. Those were concerns that belonged to the world of the living, and he was no longer a part of that. He did not think of his condition as a failure, or lament for his lost family, or sorrow for anything left behind. After death, everything changed.

  He was conscious that some time had passed, though whether seconds or years he could not have said. At first he had been aware of being above his body, utterly divorced from it and from everything of the living flesh. Very quickly thereafter and without any sense of transition or traveling he found himself in a void, an immeasurably vast space that would have been completely dark except for the presence of distant, unblinking stars. They were not the stars one saw in life. Somehow they seemed much closer, yet infinitely distant. There was no sense of ground, of up or down or direction, or of the presence of the Earth. Only the void, stars—and souls.

  He thought of them as souls for lack of a better term. Present around him in the starry vastness was everyone who had ever lived. Though they were packed together in a single immense, amorphous mass, there was a feeling of adequate space between individuals. It was crowded, yet with no sense of crowding.

  There was no movement of bodies. Everyone hung limp, drifting, eyes open and unblinking as they contemplated the star-washed heavens with a silent fusion of curiosity and wonderment. Ehomba was surprised to discover that he retained a sense of body, of the physical self. Gazing about, he was unable to identify or categorize individuals either as to sex or age. There was only the powerful, detached feeling of being surrounded by uncounted people.

  He was able to sense more than this from only one nearby individual, whom he felt to be a foot soldier of young to middle age who hailed from an earlier eon. Only his eyes conveyed any familiar impressions at all. No one breathed, or smelled. It was possible that they, and he, could hear, but there was no noise, no sound in the accepted sense.

  He was conscious of understanding words without actually hearing them as modulated waves pressing against his inner ear. The words were simply “there.” Otherwise it was infinitely peaceful and quiet despite the drifting, floating mass of humanity. There was an inescapable feeling of equilibrium, of everything and everyone being held in silent, sensationless suspension. This despite a steady, unending flow of new arrivals who added wordlessly to th
e ever-increasing volume of individuals.

  The only words he could comprehend seemed to be whispering “What time is it?” and “Does anyone here know the time?” Though conscious of, aware of, others around them, this was all that anyone could think of to say. Ehomba found it interesting that no one asked, or thought to ask, what day it was, or what month, or what year. Only, “What time?”

  That, and endless self-reflective queries of “Didn’t I just get here?” This gently querulous mantra was repeated over and over, yet without any feeling of repetition or tedium. There was never any sense of more than one minute passing before the question was heard again from another source, and then another, and another. “Didn’t I just get here?” This even though an immense amount of time had obviously passed. How many millions, or billions of times the question had been ethereally posed Ehomba could not have said. It was the same for him as for everyone around him. The feeling, the certainty, that regardless of real time, no more than a minute had ever passed.

  There was one other sensation. An inescapable, powerful, overriding sense of purpose to It All. What that might be, he never got a feel for. Catechist that he was, he was pleased to believe that there was a reason, a purpose behind It All, just as he was disappointed not to learn what that might be. It was frustrating, though he never felt frustrated in the familiar sense of the term.

  There was no heat or cold, no feeling of weight. No pain or pleasure. Physicality without sensation. Just a sense of being—and the Purpose. No sense of a deity, either, or of anyone or anything watching or manipulating. Just souls, people, accumulating, wondering about the Purpose…

  Standing tall and assured before the throne, Hymneth the Possessed straightened his helmet, which had in the course of the preceding clash been jolted slightly askew, and regarded the tableau of intruders below him.

  “See to them, Peregriff.”

  “Yes, Lord,” came the always prepared voice off to his left.

  “As soon as they have recovered from their bathetic grieving, find out what they want to do. Offer the mercenary a position with the army—not my household staff. I’m not in the habit of recruiting the potentially vengeful. The cat is clearly intelligent beyond the level of his more modestly proportioned cousins. I suspect it will want to leave. Let it. As for the bloated rug-creature—I’m not sure what to do about it. Hopefully, it will depart in the company of the cat, and without soiling the floor on its way out.” Turning to his right, he extended an arm.

  “Come, my dear. I think this has been enough entertainment for one night.”

  Crouched alongside the motionless body of his tall friend, a disbelieving Simna cried unabashedly, the tears spilling copiously down his cheeks. “You crazy, single-minded fool! You gaunt, self-righteous bastard! Hoy, you weren’t supposed to die! What am I going to tell your family?”

  “Excuse me,” murmured Hunkapa Aub as his huge frame inclined over the corpse, “would you please step back, Simna?”

  “What difference will it make?” The swordsman sobbed angrily, consumed by passion and self-pity. “Why should I—” He broke off, sniffed long and hard, and gaped uncertainly at his oversized companion. “Wait a minute here. What did you say?”

  Eyes of arctic blue gazed back at him. “I asked you to please step aside. I need room.”

  “You need …?” The swordsman’s expression narrowed. “All of a sudden it’s not ‘Hunkapa need’ or ‘Hunkapa want Simna move.’ It’s ‘Would you please step back, Simna’—glib and polite as a thrice-bedamned court orator.” He straightened and took a couple of steps backward, staring hard, hard, at the massive, looming figure. “By every goddamned god I’ve ever sworn by—what’s going on here?”

  “I need room in which to work.” Having concluded his hasty but thorough examination of the herdsman’s corpse, Hunkapa Aub rose to his full height, tilted his shaggy head back until he was gazing at the ceiling, closed his eyes, and stretched both arms up and out.

  Opposite, Ahlitah was in stealthy retreat, muscles tensed, head held low. “I knew there was something about him. I knew it.”

  “What’s that?” Simna shouted across Ehomba’s prostrate body at the big cat. “What did you know?”

  The black litah growled softly, its rending claws fully extended as they scraped backward across the floor. “He never smelled stupid.”

  “Simbala!” cried Hunkapa Aub, imploring forces that lay deeper than his words. “Acenka sar vranutho!”

  A brilliant white glow appeared above his head, a fierce effulgence that pulsed with scarcely restrained energy. Descending on the far side of the dais, Hymneth the Possessed and his new consort paused and turned. Behind the helmet, the ruler of all Ehl-Larimar—blinked.

  Eyes closed tight, chanting to himself, Hunkapa Aub lowered his arms until both hands were pointing at the floor—and at the prone figure of Etjole Ehomba. “Haranath!” he rumbled, and the pulsating, glittering orb responded. Drifting down from its location above the shaggy head, it impacted the body of the herdsman, and sank into it like milk into a sponge. A pale brilliance suffused the slender cadaver, overflowing it with radiance from head to toe. Eyes still shut, Hunkapa sustained the incantation as an obviously agitated Hymneth released the Visioness Themaryl and started hurriedly back around the base of the dais.

  “’A master of all the necromantic arts’ is coming, the Worm said—but it never described what he would look like!” Raising one hand, the sovereign warlock threw a crackling, virulent green sphere at the hulking hirsute figure. Lethal lightning darted straight for Hunkapa Aub’s eyes.

  Standing bolt upright, engulfed in a torrent of unadulterated white energy that was the shadow of the lingering breath of a billion unfinished, unfulfilled souls, Etjole Ehomba caught the sickly emerald globe square in the chest. It exploded on impact, shriveled green spikes flying off and spilling away in all directions like startled snakes. As Ehomba started toward him, Hymneth once more began throwing sphere after destructively lambent sphere. Those directed at himself the herdsman shattered with a simple wave of his hand, each finger armored with the massed white energy of a million souls. Any orbs aimed at Hunkapa Aub he merely deflected, sending them crashing destructively into the far corners of the quaking hall.

  Crouched off to one side, Simna ibn Sind watched the clash of forces whose scope he could not judge and whose strength he could not imagine, and found himself struck most by something that was less than overwhelming but just as distinctive. Throughout all that had happened, his friend Ehomba had never lost his poise. His expression had been the same when first he had attacked Hymneth, when he had lain before the swordsman in death, and now when he was—what was he? Simna did not know. He was a man of the blade and not of the mind. As always, struggling with the latter caused him far more pain than any edge, no matter how sharp.

  Ehomba’s advance was deliberate and relentless. No matter what Hymneth threw at him, no matter how awesome the energy or irresistible the might, the herdsman continued to approach. Green and white lightning flooded the great chamber and obscured much of what was happening at its far end.

  Until a burst of verdant ball lightning taller and wider than Hunkapa Aub smashed the shell of protective white energy that surrounded Ehomba. Exhausted but triumphant, perspiring heavily within his armor, Hymneth the Possessed prepared to raise his tired, trembling right hand one last time.

  “Now, whatever you are become, we’ll make an end to this, and to the secret master who has manipulated you all along!”

  Like his expression, the herdsman’s voice never changed. “I am Etjole Ehomba, of the Naumkib, and no one manipulates me.” Parting his jaws and before Hymneth could bring his arm up and forward, he spat forcefully at the supreme sovereign of the central coast. Two dark, wet, black blobs flew from his lips, to strike the looming, armored figure right in the eye slit that creased the upper part of his helmet.

  Hymneth’s arm continued to rise—only to halt, quivering, halfway from the ground. The impo
sing figure stumbled once, shook itself, then staggered sideways. There came a metallic cracking sound as deep fissures appeared in his armor, running from magnificent helmet to mailed foot. The Visioness Themaryl screamed as the ruler of Ehl-Larimar collapsed sideways onto the floor. Struck by the half-digested essence of not one but two eromakadi, he lay in his useless armor, unmoving where he had fallen.

  Reaching for his sword, Peregriff started forward, only to be intercepted by a still uncertain but increasingly confident Simna. Holding his blade out in front of him, the swordsman ventured a strained smile.

  “No, my venerable friend! By Gequed, we’ll see this thing done with by those who matter. You and I are insignificant components of any final rendering.”

  An awkward pause ensued while Hymneth’s general glared down at the itinerant swordsman. Then he nodded, once, and dropped his hand from the hilt of his weapon. Together, both men turned to look.

  Rushing forward, Themaryl had knelt beside the supine figure of her monarch. Concern wracked her countenance, but there were no tears. Fearful, she looked up at the rangy, solemn-visaged herdsman.

  “Is—is he dead?”

  “No.” Ehomba studied the motionless figure somberly. Bits and pieces of fractured armor were starting to slough away from the body. “Only paralyzed, and that I think just from the shoulders down. Eventually, he should recover all movement.”

  She started to smile gratefully, then thought better of it, and instead turned her attention back to the recumbent torso.

  Breathing hard, Simna ibn Sind joined his tall friend in gazing down at the motionless form. “Hoy, only paralyzed? Why leave the job half finished?” He aimed the point of his blade.

  “No, my friend.” Reaching out, Ehomba forestalled the swordsman’s fatal intent. “That is not what I came for.”

  Simna eyed him imploringly. “By Gulvent, bruther, he tried to kill you! He did kill you! Speaking of which …” The swordsman turned to look at the indefatigable hulk that was Hunkapa Aub. Through his fur, the biggest member of their little party was smiling.