A Triumph of Souls

by Alan Dean Foster

  Amputated arms and tentacles lay twitching in the street, some still futilely clutching their weapons. Green blood ran in rivers into animate sewers that sucked greedily at the flow. Blinded and crippled, sliced into smaller and smaller pieces, confronting a hostile and terrible magic where traditionally there should have been none, the would-be butchers fell back. Those that were still capable of movement retreated into the depths of the slaughterhouse and the unmentionable horrors that hung curing within. Others limped or crawled or dragged themselves into side alleys and away from the theater of battle.

  They found neither safety nor surcease there, and certainly no compassion, the latter being an emotion as alien to Skawpane as love or understanding. From their places of concealment in dark byways and dank vents, fanged orifices and greedy claws shivered forth to drag the wounded away. Drifting faintly back to the main street, the sounds of this muted slaughter were dreadful in the extreme.

  Only two of the foul crew of expectant butchers that had originally confronted the travelers were still capable of rapid movement. Without a word, they gave up at the same time, throwing their weapons and butchering tools aside as they hobbled for the safety of the slaughterhouse, slamming the great doors shut behind them and sealing themselves tightly inside.

  Face alight with blood-lust, Simna was all for pursuing and finishing them off. Ehomba first restrained, then calmed, his friend.

  “It is enough. I do not think they will trouble us for the duration of our stay in Skawpane.”

  “Gierot well right they won’t!” Breathing hard, the swordsman employed his weapon to make several obscene gestures in the direction of the shut-up slaughterhouse. “What say you, shit-spawn? Not bad work for a few scraps of ‘little meat,’ hoy?”

  Nearby, Hunkapa Aub was picking curiously through a pile of severed limbs, holding each one up for closer inspection, then tossing it aside as he moved on to the next. Ahlitah was sitting on the highest chunk of volcanic paving stone he had been able to find, one that was moderately free of slime, and was cleaning himself, licking his forepaws and using them to glean green gore, varicolored guts, and bits of torn flesh from his jaws and feet.

  As Simna relaxed and his levels of excitement, energy, and adrenaline began to decline, he and his companions were treated to another piece of sorcery that, if asked, Etjole Ehomba would insist he had nothing to do with. Using a slightly different two-handed grip to hold the damaged sword out in front of him, the herdsman held himself steady and watched blue effulgence expand. Soon the chipped and scored blade was throbbing and vibrating like a live thing. The effort Ehomba was expending to hold it in place showed in the whitened knuckles of his fingers and the strained lines of his face.

  Gradually, and then more swiftly, in ones and twos and small groups, the thousand-plus miniature swords that the conflict had given birth to returned to their metal of origin. Streaks of drifting, razor-edged silver-gray and blue bolted in the herdsman’s direction, the combined rush of their mass returning generating a small blue typhoon that roared and howled above Ehomba’s clenched hands. Steel swirled giddily about the parent blade. The etched span of sky metal drank them down, soaking up each and every sibling sword in an orgy of resplendent sapphire metalogenesis.

  Then the last was gone; vanished, redigested and amalgamated by the original length of star steel. The cerulean glow faded, the complaining roar of displaced air fell to a whisper, and the sky-metal sword was once again whole.

  Without a word of comment, its owner slid it back into its empty sheath. As was usually the case, Ehomba’s expression could not be read, but it was clear that the effort had cost him. Perspiration poured in small vertical rivers down his face and body, staining his shirt and kilt and running off down his legs and between his toes. If he was not breathing as hard as Simna, he was certainly fatigued.

  “I need something to eat,” he informed his companions, “and a place to rest.”

  “Not rest here.” As he delivered himself of the obvious, Hunkapa Aub kicked aside a mutilated, multimouthed length of tentacle as thick around as his thigh.

  “No.” Tired as he was, Ehomba was in complete agreement with his hirsute crony. “We will find a suitable place once we are well away from this blasphemous community.” Straightening to his considerable, full height, he gestured ahead. “But first we will have the water that we have fought so hard to gain.”

  Eyes and photoreceptors that were not eyes and organs that did not even require the presence of light in order to see watched from the shadows as the four vanquishing mortals strode purposefully past the locked-down slaughterhouse and the remaining few buildings that barred them from the central square. Now and then, Simna ibn Sind would raise his sword and take a step sideways as if to confront one of the hidden watchers. In response, the concealed eyes always retreated—albeit some with greater reluctance than others.

  When they finally reached the plaza that lay at Skawpane’s heart, it was with a feeling of mutual relief. The unlucky lizard had not played them false: The fountain was there, exactly as it had told them it would be. Fenced off by blocks of volcanic scree, it bubbled and foamed to a height of more than fifteen feet. From all appearances, it was a natural spring. Fed from below, it could not be turned off. Hundreds of gallons of fresh water spouted into the sky, spilling down into cracks that carried it away, and all of it theirs for the taking. Except that it was perfectly useless to them.

  Because Skawpane’s fountain was a geyser.

  It made sense, Ehomba mused. What more fitting as the centerpiece for a hellish town like this than a permanent font of boiling water? It was so hot that they could not get near it. Hunkapa Aub and the black litah had to keep well clear lest the sizzling droplets singe their bare feet and paws. Much of the water turned to steam before it could fall back to Earth. Even if they could figure out a way to approach close enough to catch the searing liquid, there was no way they could transport it: The heat would destroy their water bags.

  As he considered the predicament, Ehomba felt a hand tapping urgently on his shoulder. Turning, he saw what Simna was pointing at.

  Emboldened by the travelers’ indecisiveness, a diverse collection of Skawpane’s denizens began to emerge from their burrows, pits, sewers, and hiding places. Things with great glowing eyes and pincers in place of hands came crawling slowly toward the fountain. Tentacles writhed, and legs with joints in all the wrong places staggered stiffly out of dark recesses in the surrounding structures. They were not as well armed as the inhabitants of the slaughterhouse had been, but this time there were many more of them. It was as if the entire mephitic town had decided to creep forth to teach the interlopers a lesson.

  Teeth clenched, Simna gripped his sword tightly. “Time for another fight, bruther. By Gowoar, there’s a lot of them! I hope they don’t realize how tired I am. Swinging a sword is heavy work.”

  “We are all tired,” the herdsman observed. “Perhaps we will not have to fight.”

  “Not for this cursed ‘water.’ Useful for boiling a chicken or two, but we can’t take it with us.”

  “Maybe we can.” Ehomba was ignoring the swarming, slithering, advancing rabble to concentrate on the geyser. It hissed and sputtered angrily as it spewed from the earth. In his right hand he still held the sky-metal sword. Now he raised and aimed it—not at the salivating, noisome creatures that were humping their way toward him and his friends, but toward the geyser. This time the blue glow that emanated from the wondrous blade was so deep as to be almost purple.

  “Hoy, long bruther,” Simna exhorted him, “the enemy’s over this way.” Though fatigued, Hunkapa Aub and Ahlitah had lined up on either side of him.

  Ehomba continued to point the radiant sword at the geyser. “Otjihanja told me that the sky metal can command more than the wind that rushes between worlds, and do more than send small ghosts of itself into battle. It also holds deep within its core the essence of the place where it was born.”

  Simna kept an uneasy e
ye on the advancing horrors. “So you’re telling me it can spawn the heat of the fire in which it was forged? Somehow I don’t think the ability to command heat is going to do us much good in Skawpane.”

  “Not where it was forged,” the herdsman corrected his friend. “Where it was born.”

  Something leaped from the point of the sword to the geyser. A streak of impossibly dark blue, a flash of muted silver—Simna was looking the other way when it happened. There was a loud, violent cracking sound, like stone being shattered, only far more highly pitched.

  One and all, the frightful denizens of Skawpane halted their advance. They stared out of eyes that bulged and eyes that were slitted, out of compound eyes and simple eyes that could detect only movement. They halted—and then turned and began to flee.

  Simna gaped in disbelief. Then he began to whirl his sword above his head as he charged after them, yelling imprecations and insults. Less inclined to resume the slaughter, his companions heaved a joint sigh of relief and remained where they were. The black litah was more tired than he would have liked to admit, and Hunkapa Aub’s oversized hairy feet hurt.

  Having satisfied his desire for verbal if not corporeal retaliation, Simna turned and trotted back to rejoin his friends. As he did so he caught sight of what had frightened off their potential attackers, and found himself shivering as he approached. Many remarkable spectacles had been sighted in old Skawpane, the great majority of them horrific in nature. But never before had its infernal residents witnessed anything like this.

  Ice. Calling forth the temperature in which it had been birthed, the sky-metal sword had turned the geyser instantly to ice.

  The gleaming crystalline pillar radiated a cold that, even at a distance, raised bumps on Ehomba’s skin. Carefully, he sheathed the extraordinary blade, feeling the lingering cold of it against his back through both his shirt and the heavy leather scabbard. Simna and the black litah kept their distance, but Hunkapa Aub, so far from his beloved mountains, all but embraced it.

  The herdsman was quick to intercept him. “Do not touch it, my friend. I know you welcome the cold, but you have never experienced a cold like this. You may stand close, but make no contact, or your skin will freeze tight to it.” Listening, the shaggy face nodded understandingly, but even Ehomba’s warning could not mitigate the man-beast’s delight. He had been uncomfortably warm for a long, long time.

  As cold continued to spill in vaporous waves from the sides of the frozen obelisk, it drove the hideous heat-loving inhabitants of Skawpane ever deeper into their holes and hiding places, leaving the travelers with the run of the central plaza and allowing them to relax a little. Already, the unrelenting torridity of the Blasted Lands was beginning to affect the newly forged frigid monolith. Beneath the baleful, remorseless glare of the sun, it started to melt. Immediately, water bags were unlimbered and their spouts carefully positioned to catch the rapidly increasing drip, drip. Ehomba allowed Ahlitah to lap from his bag.

  “How is it?”

  A thick, fleshy black tongue emerged to lick upper and lower jaws and snout. The big cat did not quite sigh with pleasure. “It is cold and wet and deliriously delicious, man.” Fierce yellow eyes regarded the weeping shaft longingly. “Are you sure it’s not safe to lick?”

  “Not unless you want your tongue frozen to the column,” Ehomba warned him. “Be patient. It looks as if the cold is keeping away the horrid inhabitants of this dreadful town.” He glanced up. Cold, fresh, mineral-rich water was pouring from the pillar’s summit as the sun began to reduce it with a vengeance. What ran off onto the ground formed small puddles that evaporated before they could grow very large.

  “Soon we will have more water than we can carry. Then we must make haste to leave before these detestable creatures have either their hot spring or their courage restored to them.” As the litah lowered its head, Ehomba impulsively reached out to tousle the thick black mane.

  “I understand what you are feeling. I could use a bath myself.” Turning together, man and feline gazed longingly at the streams of cool water that cascaded off the frozen geyser, only to vanish as steam or disappear into cracks in the ground. The waste was painful to observe.

  When the last of the water bags had been replenished to overflowing, they took turns drinking their fill. The liquid that was streaming down the icy monolith was already starting to grow warm. Soon the relentless, abiding pressure from below would overwhelm the temporary cold the sword had drawn down from the sky, and the frozen column would once more become a boiling, frothing tower of scalding liquid.

  But the abominable inhabitants of Skawpane did not know that. They continued to huddle in their cavities and hiding places, away from the visitors and the terrible cold that had taken possession of the very center of their community. Frustrated and helpless to interfere, they watched as the quartet of edible travelers took their time repacking their gear before heading out of town. Not east, as would have been expected, but westward into country so barren and bleak even the lowliest of the town’s denizens shunned it. To the west lay country where not even a renegade beetle could survive. Truly, these mysterious visitors commanded vast powers.

  Or else, the more cynical among Skawpane’s citizens mused, they were controlled by idiocy on a cosmic scale. Shouldering his pack, grateful for the weight of cool water against his spine, Simna glanced often back the way they had come as they left the last of Skawpane’s twisted, warped buildings and equally skewed inhabitants behind.

  * * *

  “What do you think, bruther? When they get over their fear of your chilling little demonstration, will they come after us?”

  Ehomba turned to have a look. Already the ominous outlines of the town were receding, swallowed up by intervening boulders and cliffs. Soon it would recede permanently into memory and nightmare.

  “I doubt it, Simna. Many who sprang from the slaughterhouse to beset us died. Those who merely suffered a touch of cold are probably counting themselves fortunate. Behind all those oozing fangs and sharp-edged suckers there must lie intelligence of a sort.”

  “Hoy,” the swordsman agreed, “and they can probably imagine what you’d do to them if they tried to give chase.” He clapped his rangy friend on the back.

  “I do not know that I would, or could, do anything.” The herdsman protested mildly. “Really, if any of them came after us I think I would have to try and run away. I am very tired, my friend. You cannot imagine how these exertions drain me. To use the swords or the gifts in my backpack is difficult. I am not trained in the ways of the necromantic arts as are old Likulu or Maumuno Kaudom.”

  “I know, I know.” Hearing only what he wanted to hear, the swordsman grinned broadly. “You’re just a rank amateur, a babe in the brush, a hopeless simpleton when it comes to matters of magic. So you’ve told me all along. Well, fine. Let it be that way, since you continue to insist it is so. I am satisfied with the consequences of your actions, if not the feeble explanations you offer for them.”

  Ehomba took umbrage as much at his companion’s tone as his words. “I did not say that I was any of those things.”

  Despite the heat, Simna was enjoying himself. “But you still insist you are no sorcerer.”

  The herdsman drew himself up. “I am Naumkib. So I am neither a ‘hopeless simpleton’ nor a ‘babe in the brush.’”

  “Okay, okay.” Simna chuckled softly. “Peace on you, bruther. You know, I wouldn’t taunt you so much if you didn’t take everything I said so literally.”

  The herdsman’s gaze rose to fix on the high peaks of the Curridgian Range. They were markedly closer now. On the other side, he knew, lay Ehl-Larimar and the opportunity, at last, to fulfill his obligation. Those snowy crests held the promise of home.

  Home, he thought. How much had Daki and Nelecha grown? Would they remember him as their father, or only as a distant, shimmering figure from their past? Many months had passed since he had made his farewells and set off northward up the coast. He fingered the cord f
rom which had hung the carved figurine of old Fhastal, smiling to himself at the memory of her cackling laugh and coarse but encouraging comments.

  He could turn for home even now, he mused. Forget this folly of abducted visionesses and possessed warlocks, of suspicious aristocrats and moribund noblemen. Put aside what, after all, were only words exchanged on a beach in a moment of compassion, and return to his beloved village and family.

  Break a promise given to a dying man.

  Lengthening his stride, Ehomba inhaled deeply. Other men might do such a thing, but he could not conceive of it. To do so would be to deny himself, to abjure what made him Naumkib. Even if his companions decided today, or tomorrow, or before the gates of this Hymneth’s house, to turn about and return to their own homes, he knew that he would go on. Because he had to. Because it was all bound up inside him with what he was. Because he had given his word.

  Mirhanja had understood. She hadn’t liked it, but she had understood. That was understandable. She was Naumkib. He wondered if the children did, or if they even missed their father.

  Immediately behind lay hesitant horror. Immediately ahead lay—nothing. The ground was as flat as a bad argument, white with splotches of brown and pale red. Scorching heat caused distant objects to waver and ripple like the surface of a pond. Compared to the terrain that stretched out before them, the rocky gulches and boulder-strewn slopes they had crossed to reach Skawpane were a vision of rain-forest paradise.

  Nothing broke the bleached, sterile surface in front of them: not a weed, not a bush, not a blade of errant grass. There was only flat, granular whiteness.

  It was a dry lake, he was confident. A salt pan where nothing could live. There would be no game, no seeds or berries to gather, no moist and flavorful mushrooms crouched invitingly beneath shading logs. And most important of all, no water. At present they were well supplied, loaded down with the precious liquid. But the hulking Hunkapa Aub and the massive black litah needed far more water each day than any human. Despite their renewed supplies, he knew he would be able to relax only when they were safely across the blasted flats and in the foothills where springs or small streams might be found.