A Triumph of Souls (3 page)

High above, government officials and administrators came and went, unaware of the frightfulness that had subsumed the fortress
the night before. If they noticed anything out of the ordinary, it was that the castle’s retainers moved a little faster than
usual, and that they were less inclined to meet the eyes of visitors.

Far below, in the depths of the mountain, where earth met rock and where normal folk did not go, the Worm slept, its midsection
swollen and bloated.

S
o still was the morning that the gull feather Simna let fall fell straight down. When it landed on the deck it just lay there,
a puff of discarded dirty white that could easily be shifted by a waking woman’s sigh. But it did not move.

It was more than an absence of wind. It was as if the air itself had become paralyzed, petrified in place. Though they had
seen and experienced many things in their travels, the crew of the
Grömsketter
murmured superstitiously among themselves while anxiously watching the skies for any sign of movement. But the clouds themselves
remained exactly where they had appeared at sunup. It was one thing for a ship to be becalmed, quite another for the upper
reaches of the sky itself to grow still as death.

The only way they knew for certain that they still lived in the realm of air was because they continued to breathe. It was
possible to make a breeze by blowing, as Simna demonstrated when he dropped to all fours and blew hard against the abandoned
feather. It scudded a little ways across the deck, twisting and flipping, before it settled once more into a motionless, trancelike
state.

Just above the helm deck Stanager Rose stood in the rigging, shading her eyes with one hand as she surveyed the surrounding
sea. It was smooth as a mirror, undisturbed by wave or, more importantly, wind. They were two days’ sail out from the delta
of the Eynharrowk on a due westerly heading, and no longer moving. Nothing was moving. Even the seabirds had deserted them
in search of wind to help support their wings. It was uncanny, it was worrisome, and it was hot.

“Never been becalmed like this before,” she murmured.

On the deck below, Hunkapa Aub was chatting with Priget, the helmswoman, and trying to learn something about the basics of
open-ocean navigation. She had plenty of time to talk to him since the ship’s wheel, left unattended, was not moving. Ahlitah
lay on the main deck, sleeping in the shade. The utter absence of a breeze was making the morning too hot even for him. Simna
ibn Sind had tied a strip of colorful cloth around his forehead to soak up some of the perspiration. Though as unhappy with
the unnatural stillness as anyone else aboard, the sight of Stanager Rose clinging to rigging helped to mitigate his unease.

Etjole Ehomba stood just below and to one side of the troubled Captain. Though no mariner, he knew well the moods of the sea,
and right now the Semordria was not behaving in a proper maritime fashion. He had experienced still air before, while standing
on different beaches in the vicinity of his village, but never anything like this. Heavy, hot, and stagnant, it tempted a
man to take a whip to it, as if the very components of the atmosphere themselves had gone to sleep.

Stanager climbed down from the rigging. “The longer
we sit here, the more of our supplies we waste. Too much of this and we’ll be forced to return to the delta to reprovision.”

“We could eat less,” Ehomba proposed, “and catch rainwater to supplement the ship’s stores.”

“If it rains,” she replied. “I don’t gamble with the lives of my crew. Or my passengers.”

“Do you ever gamble?” Simna’s forced cheerfulness fooled no one.

“Only when it’s a sure thing.” Ignoring him as usual, she strained to see past the bow. “May have to try kedging, but in which
direction I haven’t decided. It would pain me to have to tuck tail and go back to the delta.” She squinted upward. All sails
were set, and hung loose as dead ghosts from both masts.

“What’s this ‘kedging’?” Simna wanted to know.

She sighed. “Landsmen. We lower all the small boats and put the anchors in them. They row out as far as the lines will go,
then drop anchor. This pulls the ship forward. Raise anchors and repeat, as many times as necessary until a breeze fills the
sails. It’s hot, hard work. A last resort for desperate sailors.”

“I cannot go backward,” Ehomba told her. “I have spent too much time already just in going forward.”

“Then find me some wind,” she declared curtly, “so we can escape these cursed doldrums!”

“The sky-metal sword!” Simna blurted. “Surely even a moment’s work with that would bring down enough wind to move the ship.”

Stanager frowned. “What is the mad elf blabbering about?”

“Something possible, but dangerous.” Reaching back,
Ehomba wrapped his fingers around the haft of the sword. Simna looked on expectantly. Among those aboard the
Grömsketter
, only he knew what that enchanted blade of otherworldly metal was capable of in the hands of his tall friend.

Reluctantly, Ehomba released his grip. Simna looked pained.

“Why the hesitation, bruther?”

“It is a chancy thing to consider, Simna, and not something to be attempted in haste. I have to think first how best to go
about it. Too little wind is not a problem. But too much wind could shred the sails or even capsize the ship. And what if
I thrust it wrongly to the heavens and call down another piece of sky? Here there are no holes in the ground for us to hide
in, and nowhere to run.”

“That’s fine, Etjole.” The swordsman made placating motions. “Take your time. Decide how to hold the weapon, which way to
point it, what angle to incline the blade against the Earth. Only when you’re satisfied that you know what you’re doing should
you go ahead.”

Ehomba eyed his friend speculatively. “And if I’m not satisfied?”

Simna shrugged. “Then we sit. And sweat. And try to think of something else.”

A thin smile curled the Captain’s delectable upper lip. “I’ve heard you boasting endlessly to the crew, swordsman. Perhaps
we should put you in a small boat behind the
Grömsketter
and let you jabber there all you wish. Maybe that would generate hot air enough to fill the mains’l just enough to get us
moving.”

He smiled back. “You don’t like me very much, do you, Captain?”

“Not very much, no. If you were under my command, I’d have you swabbing decks and bailing bilges all the way to Doroune.”

“I wouldn’t mind being under your command, Stanager—depending on the commands, of course.” He grinned irrepressibly.

She turned away, disgusted. “You are incorrigible!”

“Actually, I’m from a little village near Rakosy. Incorrigible is a bigger town that lies to the northwest.”

“Boat ho!”

At the cry, everyone tilted their heads back to look up at the mainmast. The lookout was gesturing slightly to port.

It took the better part of an hour for the small, single-masted craft to drift into view. Stolid and unimpressive, a wholly
utilitarian little boat, its aft half was piled high with pilchard and sardine, so much so that it rode lower in the water
than otherwise would have been expected. Nets fashioned of strong cord and spotted with cork floats hung from the boom and
over the sides. Its lone sail hung as limp from the mast as did those of the
Grömsketter
.

The single occupant was busy hauling in one of the nets, but not too busy to wave at the much larger vessel.

“Ayesh!” the fisherman sang out. “What ship?”

From near the bow, the first mate responded. “Good fishing?” Terious added by way of making conversation.

Grinning through his white-flecked beard, the lone sailor gestured at his catch. “As you see.”

“You’re not afraid to be out of sight of land, all by yourself?” the mate inquired. Several of the other members of the crew
had moved to the railing to watch the discourse. In the detestable stillness, any diversion was a welcome one.

“Not I. Crice is the name, sir, and I am known throughout the delta for my bravery.” He indicated his mast and sail. “I know
the winds hereabouts better than any man, you see, and am always confident of finding one to carry me home.”

Cupping her hands to her mouth, Stanager shouted across to the solitary harvester of the sea. “Ayesh, can you find one for
us, good sir? We have been stalled here this past day and a half.”

“Sorry.” He waved again. “I have the last of my catch to bring in and then I must return home. You know that every ship must
find its own wind. Not all have my skill.”

Stanager flushed, her cheeks reddening. It was an oblique insult and probably unintended, but it still set the Captain’s blood
to racing. When it came to seamanship, she took a back seat to no man or woman. This solitary sailor who stank of fish guts
and oil was taunting her, albeit gently.

Persistent he might be, even irritating, but Simna knew when to keep his mouth shut. Observing the look on the Captain’s beauteous
face, he sidled away from her and closer to Ehomba.

“What do you think, long bruther?” He nodded in the direction of the little fishing boat. “Is his an empty boast?”

“I was admiring his catch.” Ehomba gestured at the glistening mound that weighed down the boat. “All small fish, all silver
of side. Very difficult to see under normal conditions. When looking down into the water from the deck of a boat, it is hard
to separate such a school from sunlight. But in these conditions, with the surface absolutely calm and undisturbed by wind,
they would stand out much more clearly to a man with a net.”

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.