A Triumph of Souls (34 page)

“Bring your water.” Ehomba spun on one sandaled foot. “We have to free the others.” He stamped down heavily as he walked.
“And keep moving. Do not linger too long in one place. As swiftly as the salt distorts and affects your mind, it also clutches
at your feet.”

It took the contents of an entire water bag and part of another to free the hulking Hunkapa Aub from his saline entombment.
When confronted with the reality of his mirrored self in salt, he could not be dissuaded from pushing it over. It smashed
to bits, leaving a pile of salt rubble where moments before had stood a perfect likeness of the shag-covered man-beast.

Continuously brushing salt crystals from their arms and legs, they hurried on to the knoll of salts that had assumed the guise
of a small castle. Breathing hard, Ehomba slowed before the sculpted entrance—but of his good friend and companion there was
no sign.

Scratching ceaselessly as he fought off the persistent salt, Hunkapa Aub turned a slow circle. “Not see friend Simna.”

“I don’t smell him, either.” Head back, the black litah was sniffing repeatedly at the air. “Between the new dampness and
the old salt it’s hard to scent anything else.”

“Keep trying.” Grateful for the moonlight, Ehomba strained to see through seams in the salt formations. They appeared to be
taunting him, mocking his efforts to penetrate their encrusted secrets, laughing silently from origins he preferred not to
contemplate.

His eyes widened slightly as he realized what must have happened. Whirling to face the blocky, crenellated formation
once more, he aimed the water bag he was holding and directed Hunkapa Aub to do likewise with his. Bereft of hands, Ahlitah
could only look on and watch.

Water gushed from the mouths of both bags to play over the flanks of the consolidated castle. Minarets dissolved into soggy
lumps, and then the lumps themselves became components of thin briny rivers that flowed down the flanks of the formation.
Turrets and spires sagged and crumbled, melding into the walls as they liquefied beneath the soaking assault.

It took more of their supply than the herdsman cared to think about, but halfway into the castle they finally caught a glimpse
of Simna ibn Sind’s backpack. Still riding high on the swordsman’s shoulders, it gleamed dully in the moonlight. The surrounding,
enclosing salt imparted a sickly blue cast to the exposed portions of his skin.

Moving closer and wielding the shrinking water bags like firearms, Ehomba and Hunkapa Aub dissolved the salt from around their
friend’s encrusted body. He had been completely entombed. Salt plugged his ears and formed a crust over his eyes. But his
nostrils were still unblocked, though barely, the advancing salt having been held back by the moisture breathed out by his
lungs.

Stiff and unbending, his body was dragged out into the open air and laid gently across Ahlitah’s back. Lying him down on the
ground was not contemplated, as it would just be returning him to the grip of the relentless, inimical salts. Water from still
another bag was poured over him, drenching his body and clothing, soaking his face. When he finally revived, the herdsman
did so sputtering violently and shaking his head.

Sitting up, he wiped animatedly at his face and took a
long, deep breath. “What happened? I feel as if I’ve come back from the land of the dead.” Rising to his feet, he suddenly
pointed and yelled, “That cursed castle tried to kill me! It grabbed me and tried to suffocate me!”

“Salt you down is more like it.” Careful to keep moving his feet and arms, Ehomba proceeded to explain. “I think that if we
had been five minutes longer in melting you out, the salt would have filled your nose and stopped your breathing. And your
heart.”

Wiping at himself as if he had just emerged from hiding in the depths of a cesspool, the swordsman found himself prone to
a momentary case of the shakes. He was prepared to face death, had been ever since he had taken up the sword, but suffocating
alive was among the least pleasant ways imaginable for a man to expire.

“Away from this place,” he declared with a sweep of his arm. “Let’s get away from here.”

His companions needed no urging. The matter of their suddenly and severely depleted water supply, which they had worked so
hard to obtain in Skawpane, was not mentioned. Commentary was unnecessary. Having utilized the greater portion of it to free
themselves from the grasp of the alkaline prison, it would now have to be rationed severely, and quickly replenished. In the
waning moonlight, the silhouette of the Curridgian escarpment loomed before them more meaningful than ever.

There would be water there, Ehomba knew as he moved forward at the run. The snowy peaks promised as much. The only question
was, how high up and how far back would they have to go to find it?

Behind them, fantastic contours and extravagant shapes stood silent sentinel over the salt plain. They did not
move, and none uttered so much as a whisper. Rising from pools of rapidly dispersing and evaporating water, crystals of halite
and gypsum sparkled like diamonds as they precipitated out of the chloride-heavy solution. In most places such a wealth of
crystals would have been zealously guarded and protected, for salt was necessary to the perpetuation of life.

Only here, in this forsaken and barren place between mountain and misery, had it turned deadly.

I
t did not know how old it was. It did not know where it came from; whether mother and father, egg, spore, seed, or spontaneous
generation. It could not remember when it had begun or how long it had been wandering. It did not know if there were others
of its kind, but it had never seen another like itself. It knew only that it was in pain.

For as long as it could remember, which might very well be for as long as Time was, it had been so. Without any specific destination
in mind it had wandered the world, its only purpose, its only motivation, to keep moving. It sought nothing, desired nothing,
expected nothing—and that was what it got. On its singular plight it did not speculate. What was the use? It was what it was,
and no amount of contemplation or conjecture was going to change that. To say that the Drounge was resigned to its condition
would be to understate the situation grossly. Alternatives did not and had never existed.

There wasn’t an antagonistic particle in its being. By the same token, it was too compassionate to be friendly. Where possible,
it kept its distance. When contact with other living
things was unavoidable, as was too often the case, it rendered neither judgment nor insensibility. It simply was, and then
it moved on.

Most creatures could not see the Drounge so much as sense a disturbance in their surroundings when it was present. This was
to the benefit of both, since the Drounge did not especially want to be seen and because it was not pleasant to look upon.
Occasionally, the sharp-eyed and perceptive were able to separate it from its surroundings. Whenever that occurred, usually
in times of stress or moments of panic, screaming frequently ensued. Followed by death, though this was not inevitable. Murder
was the farthest thing from the Drounge’s mind. When life departed in its presence, apathy was the strongest emotion it could
muster. How could it feel for the demise of others when its own condition was so pitiable?

For the Drounge was a swab. It roved the world picking up the pain and misery and wounds and hurt of whatever it came in contact
with. A vague amorphous shape the size of a hippopotamus, it humped and oozed along in the absence of legs or cilia, making
slow but inevitable progress toward a nondestination. It had no arms, but could with difficulty extrude lengths of its own
substance and utilize these to exert pressure on its surroundings. Other creatures, unseeing, often ran into it, giving rise
to consequences that were disastrous for them but of no import to the Drounge.

Open, running sores bedecked its body the way spots adorn a leopard. Scabs formed continually and sloughed off, to be replaced
by new ones ranging in size from small spots to others big as dinner plates. They were in constant lugubrious motion, traveling
slowly like small continental
plates across the viscous ocean of the Drounge’s body. Foul pustules erupted like diminutive volcanoes, only to subside and
reappear elsewhere. Cuts and bruises ran together to comprise what in any other living being would have been an outer epidermis.

None of this unstable, motile horror caused the Drounge any discomfort. It did not experience pain as others did, perhaps
because it had never been allowed to distinguish pain from any other state of being. For it, it was the way things were, the
circumstance to which existence had condemned it. It did not weep, because it had no eyes. It did not wail, because it had
no mouth. Though capable of meditation and reflection, it did not bemoan its fate. It simply kept moving on.

Unable to alter its condition, it had long since become indifferent to the aftermath of its passing. As well to try to change
the effect of the sun on the green Earth, or of the wind on small flying creatures. Incapable of change, it felt no culpability
in the destruction of those it came in contact with. It was not a matter of caring or not caring. A force of one of the more
benighted components of Nature, it simply was.

It did not matter what it encountered. Large or small, the consequences were similar, differing only in degree depending on
the extent and length of time that contact was made. The Drounge acted as a sponge, soaking up the world’s injuries and pain.
And like a sponge, when something made contact with it, it leaked. Not water, but hurt, damage, wounds, and death. The process
was involuntary and something over which the Drounge had no control.

Why it kept moving it did not know. Perhaps an instinctive feeling that so much pain should not long remain in
any one place. Possibly some atavistic urge to seek a peace it had never known. Survival, reproduction, feeding—the normal
components of life did not drive or affect it. Staring relentlessly forward out of oculi that were not eyes in the normal
sense, but which were misshapen and damaged and bleeding, it existed in a state of perpetual migration.

Gliding over a field of grass, it would leave behind a spreading swath of brown. Fire would have had a similar effect, would
have been cleaner, purer, but the Drounge was a collage, a mélange, a medley of murder, and not an elemental. In its wake
the formerly healthy green blades would quickly break out in brown spots. These would expand to swallow up the entire blade,
and then spread to its neighbors. It was not a disease but an entire panoply of diseases, a veritable deluge of afflictions
not even the healthiest, most productive field could withstand. After a few days the formerly serene grassland or meadow would
stand as devastated and barren as if it had been washed by lava.

Sensing solidity, a herd of wild goats brushed past the patient, persistent Drounge as it made its way northward. Tainted
blood and other impure drippings promptly stained their flanks. Some hours later, their thick hair began to fall out in ragged
clumps. One by one they grew dizzy and disoriented, dropping to their knees or keeling over on their sides. Tongues turned
black and open lesions appeared on freshly exposed skin. Pregnant ewes spontaneously aborted deformed, stillborn fetuses,
and the testicles of rams shrank and dried up.

Eyes bulging, black tongues lolling, the toughest and most resilient of them expired within a day. Vultures and foxes came
to feast on the dead, only to shun the plethora of tempting carcasses. Something in the wind kept them
away despite the presence of so much easy meat. It was a smell worse than death, more off-putting than disease. The fennecs
twitched their astonishing ears as they paced uneasily back and forth, keeping their distance yet reluctant to abandon such
a tempting supply of food. Vultures landed near the bodies, fanning the air with their dark, brooding wings. Accustomed as
they were to the worst sort of decay, a couple took tentative bites out of the belly of a stinking ram.

Within minutes they were hopping unsteadily about. Feathers began to fall away. The hooked, yellow beak of one bird developed
a spreading canker that rotted the face of its owner. Within an hour both hardened scavengers lay twitching and dying alongside
the expired goats.

Enormous wings spread wide as the survivors took to the air. For the first time in their relentlessly efficient existence,
they had encountered something not even they could digest. The foxes and hyenas slunk away as if pursued by invisible carnivores
armed with immense claws and fangs. Only the insects, who could sustain the losses necessary to make a meal of the deceased,
found the ruminant desolation to their benefit.

Field or forest, taiga or town, it was all the same to the Drounge as it proceeded on its never-ending march. What happened
when it passed through a city was unpleasant to the point of becoming the stuff of nightmare legend. Some called it the judgment
of the gods, others simply the plague. All agreed that the consequences were horrific beyond imagining.

People perished, not in ones and twos or even in family groups, but in droves. Symptoms varied depending on what afflicted
part of the Drounge each encountered.
Wounds refused to heal and bled unstoppably, until the unfortunate casualty shriveled like a grape left too long in the sun.
Lesions blossomed like the flowers of death until they covered more of a sufferer’s body than his skin. The daily clamor of
the community; the give and take of commerce, the fluting arpeggios of gossip, the chatter of small children that was a constant,
underlying giggling like a symphony of piccolos, was entirely subsumed in shrieks of pain and wails of despair.

So the city died, its inhabitants shunned by surrounding communities. Those who lived long enough to flee were denied sanctuary
by their terrified neighbors. They wandered aimlessly, perishing in ditches that lined the sides of roads or beneath trees
that could provide welcoming shade but were unable to mourn. Everyone who had come in contact with the Drounge died: the resigned
elderly and the disbelieving young, the healthy laborers and the children who could not comprehend. They expired, and so did
those who had been in contact with them. Those few who had seen the Drounge and remarked on its passage died differently,
slaughtered by their panicked neighbors in a frenzy of ignorance and fear. Eventually, even the plague perished, exhausted
by its own capacity for destruction.