A Triumph of Souls (36 page)

The bulb-shape struck the Drounge in the middle of its back. Humping implacably forward, it treated the barely perceptible
impact with the same indifference it treated all such contacts. Whenever something touched it, it was invariably the other
that suffered.

On impact, the bulb burst, spilling its contents. The thick, pale unguent spread slowly across the curving bulk of the Drounge.
Still its presence was ignored.

Until it started to sink in.

The tingling sensation the Drounge had heretofore experienced only at one small place on its left side started to penetrate
deeply. It was not unpleasant. On the contrary, the Drounge would have found it pleasurable had it possessed a means for describing
such a sensation. In the absence of applicable referents it could only struggle with physical feelings that were entirely
new. As a novelty, the effects of the expanding emollient were exhilarating. They could not last, of course. Within moments
they would be subsumed within and overwhelmed by the raging internal dissipation and disease that constituted the Drounge’s
customary state of existence.

Proceeding with its advance, the Drounge waited for this to happen. It did not. Instead, the effects of the free-flowing,
penetrating balm continued to spread. A strange feeling came over the Drounge, quite unlike anything it had ever felt before.
It was as if its whole body had been caught up in something as wonderful as it was unexpected,
though it possessed no more referents for wonderful than it did for pleasurable. It was changing.

For the first time in millennia, the Drounge stopped.

The singular tingling sensation now dominated every corner of its being, penetrating to the farthest reaches of self, replacing
eternal agony and perpetual discomfort with—something else. This was not a small thing;
not
an incident,
not
an insignificant transient episode. Its very shape was changing, twisting and buckling with neoteric forces it did not understand.
Could not understand, because it had no experience of them.

With a last convulsive, wrenching sensation of dislocation, the unforeseen metamorphosis achieved final resolution. The Drounge
stood as before, inviolate and untouched. Only, something was different. It took even the Drounge a moment to realize what
that was.

It was no longer in pain.

The absence of agony was so extraordinary a sensation that the Drounge was momentarily paralyzed. It was all gone, all of
it—all the suffering, all the disease and decay, all the everlasting affliction that had combined to comprise its physical
and mental existence. In its place was something the Drounge could not put a name to: a calmness and tranquillity that were
shocking in their unfamiliarity. And something else. For not only had it changed internally, its appearance was radically
altered as well. With a new inner individuality had come a new shell, a fresh and unspoiled outer self, courtesy of the tingling
unguent that had affected a transformation far beyond what even its wielder could have envisioned.

Elation swept through the Drounge at its unexpected epiphany. Never having felt itself trapped, it hardly knew
how to react to being free. Exhilaration was a sensation with which it had never before had to come to terms. Uncertain, tentative,
it could only try.

As the tiny cluster of astonished, fragile creatures it had come close to killing looked on in wonder, the enormous butterfly
that had materialized before their eyes spread six-foot wings of prismatic emerald and opalescent crimson and rose from the
bleached desert floor, haltingly at first but with increasing confidence, into a cloudless and welcoming clear blue sky.

L
et me have another look at that hand.”

Simna wordlessly raised the arm by which he had been attached to the lumbering horror. Rotting flesh had been miraculously
renewed, nerves sutured, skin regrown, the bleeding stopped. With the impossible butterfly vanishing into the distance and
his restored limb hanging healthy and normal from the end of his shoulder, his attention kept switching back and forth between
wonders.

“By Gravulia, what—what was it?” he mumbled as his rangy companion critically inspected first palm and then individual fingers.
“One minute I could see it clearly and the next, it wasn’t there and something beautiful was.”

Ehomba replied without looking up from his examination. “Disease is like that.”

The swordsman blinked. The hallucinatory, spectacular butterfly was gone now, swallowed up by the sky and imagination, leaving
him to contemplate his right hand. Moments ago it had been a putrefying, decaying ruin. Now it was restored. A small whitish
scar, souvenir of a fight in
a chieftain’s hut on a distant steppe, had vanished from his index finger together with the more recent corruption.

“So it was a disease of some kind?”

“Not a disease. Disease itself, or some pitiful entity that it had become attached to. I am not really sure what it was, Simna.
But there was no mistaking its effects. Even as I ran to help you I felt myself starting to grow weak and uneasy. If I had
not been able to deal with it we might well all have died.”

Feeling none too energetic himself after the mephitic encounter, the swordsman sat down on a rock. Nearby, Hunkapa Aub was
studying the increasingly steep slopes that lay before them. The black litah was sunning itself on the brackish ground.

“The butterfly—“ Simna looked up sharply. “Hoy, I remember you putting something on my hand! It set me free.”

Ehomba nodded. “A salve prepared for me by Meruba. I was told that it was useful for dealing with cuts and scrapes, burns
and punctures. When I saw what had caught ahold of you it was all I could think of to use.” He gestured downward. “It cured
your arm.”

Holding his right hand in his left while gently rubbing it, Simna nodded gratefully. “My arm, yes, but that doesn’t explain
the butterfly.” He shuddered once. “What I saw first, when it was visible to me, was no butterfly.”

“No,” the herdsman agreed solemnly. He smiled as he reminisced. “Meruba is known for her salves. It is said that, if applied
in sufficient strength, they can cure anything. I used all that she gave me.” Turning his head, his braids bouncing slightly
against his neck, he gazed
thoughtfully at the northern horizon. “Whatever it was that had hold of you, I think we healed it.”

“Should’ve killed it,” the swordsman grumbled. Releasing his hand, he started to shake it sharply.

“Hurt?” Ehomba looked suddenly concerned.

“Hoy, it throbs like my head the morning after a three-day binge! But it’s nothing I can’t handle, bruther.” Rising from his
seat, he straightened his pack on his back. Some of the straps had become loosened while he was being dragged along by the
revolting apparition. “It’s too damn hot here.” He nodded briskly in the direction of the foothills and the rocky crags they
fronted. “Let’s find ourselves some cool shade and fresh water.”

The ascent into the Curridgian Mountains proved arduous, but less so than their trek into the Hrugars. Deep gorges allowed
them to avoid the need to scale the highest peaks, providing a natural approach to the towering escarpment. Where there was
snow there was runoff, and the same canyons that guided them westward soon boasted of swiftly running streams and even small
rivers. Ehomba was grateful they would not have to worry any longer about water. As they climbed higher the air grew cooler.
The awful heat of the Tortured Lands receded until it was no more than a disagreeable memory.

Pines and redwoods, firs and kauris soon replaced weedy grasses and small-leaved brush, until they once again found themselves
traipsing through forest. Ehomba and Simna were rejuvenated by the fresh air and increased humidity, while Ahlitah was largely
indifferent. But Hunkapa Aub was positively exhilarated. Of them all, he, with his heavy, shaggy coat, had suffered the most
by far from the unrelenting heat they had left behind and below.

He even welcomed the mist that settled in around them as they climbed a slope luxuriant with wildflowers, their petals splashed
with extravagant shades of scarlet and teal and lemon yellow. As the moist haze thickened, the blossoms took on an air of
unreality, their variegated faces staring brazenly at the shrouded sun, kaleidoscopic denizens of a languid dream.

Soon the mist had congealed to the point where even the black litah was hard pressed to espy a route upward, and they were
reduced to following the stream that had cut the canyon. Though the humid air was still temperate and the climbing not difficult,
Ehomba found himself glancing around apprehensively. Noting his friend’s unease, Simna edged close.

“Hoy, long bruther, something’s troubling you.” The swordsman strove, without much success, to penetrate the haze. “You see
something?”

“No, it is not that, Simna.” As the herdsman licked his lips he tried not to suck in any of the prevailing moisture. “I was—I
am—trying to remember something.” Raising a hand, he gestured imprecisely. “It is this fog.”

Simna took a look around, then shrugged indifferently. “It’s fog. Accursedly thick fog, but just fog. So what?”

“I remember it.”

The swordsman couldn’t help himself: He laughed without thinking. “Hoy, Etjole, a man remembers the deaths he escapes and
the lovers he’s had. He remembers long, restful mornings and nights awash in celebration. He
doesn’t
remember fog.”

Ehomba ignored his friend’s good-natured chiding. There was something not in the air, but about it. A quality that stirred
a particular memory. He struggled to recall it.
Perhaps Simna was right. What was fog, after all, but droplets of moisture that hung in the air, too tired to rise as cloud,
too lazy to fall as rain? How could anyone “remember” something so transient and ordinary?

Then he did. It was not just a fog, but
the
fog. The one that had tried to hold him back, the one that had attempted to enshroud and restrain him from ever beginning
on this journey. It was the fog he had encountered not long after first leaving the village, so seemingly long ago. Failing
to slow him then, it had come after him, abandoning its ocean home to confront him here, in these distant and foreign highlands.

Close by, the lumbering, mist-veiled mountain that was Hunkapa Aub called out uncertainly.

“Etjole, Hunkapa can’t move. Hunkapa’s legs not working.

A frustrated snarl sounded from just in front of the herdsman. Despite its great strength, the black litah too was finding
progress suddenly difficult. Massive paws clawed at the sodden atmosphere in a futile attempt to advance.

The two humans were not immune to this sudden hindrance. Ignoring Simna’s ensuing eruption of profanity, Ehomba concentrated
on trying to take another step uphill. The sensation was akin to trying to walk through thin mud. It did not hold him back
so much as slow him down to an unacceptable degree. At this rate they would be years getting through the mountains. Lifting
his other leg, he struggled to take another stride. The result was the same. It was as if he had been wrapped in a waterlogged
sheet not heavy enough to stop him, but sufficient to slow him dangerously.

Leaning forward, he put his weight into his next attempt. The gummy damp continued to cling to him, to drag him down and hold
him back. Wanting to make certain that he had truly identified their adversary, he scanned every foot of the flower-laden
meadow he could see, but with his range of vision reduced to a few feet, he was not able to make out any visible nemesis.
For him to be able to see an enemy clearly in the fog, it would have to be right on top of him.

Which is when he was convinced once and for all that that was exactly the case.

“Go baaaackk
.…” It was an auricular specter, a verbal shadow, a ghost of a voice, as though wind had momentarily been manipulated and
palpitated to form a word in the same ponderous manner as a baker kneads heavy dough.

The unexpected voice induced him to take one last look around, but there was nothing else to see; nothing but flowers and
field and fog. Determined, he tried to push on, only to experience the same sensation of being slowed down and held back.
He was covering ground, but trying to force his legs forward through the persistent impediment would soon exhaust him completely.

“Go…baaackk
….” the sepulchral voice moaned. It seemed to come not from one particular place but from all around him. Which made sense,
since that which was restraining him
was
all around him. But how to fight it? A man with a knife he would have known how to deal with immediately.

He searched in vain for a face, for eyes or a mouth, for something to focus on. There wasn’t anything. There was only the
fog, evanescent and everywhere present. “Why
should I?” he asked guardedly, addressing his query to the damp, gently swirling mist.

The vaporous moan seemed to gather the slightest bit of additional strength from his reply. “Go back,” it intoned in a dark
whisper. “Go home.” Airborne droplets of cool water eddied before his face. “It is all here, waiting for you. I have seen
it. Disaster, complete and entire. You are doomed to unremitting misery, your quest to failure, the rest of your life to cold
emptiness. Unless you end this now. Go home, back to your village and to your family. Before it is too late. Before you die.”

This wouldn’t do, he decided. Twice before, he had been compelled to listen to those exact same words—first from a seeress,
then from a dog. Arms upraised in a gesture of defiance, he turned a slow circle and challenged the sky.

“A beauty gave me that augury, and then a witch. I did not heed
their
warnings, and I certainly will not heed this one!”

Nearby, his friend Simna ventured to comment hesitantly. “Etjole, you’re arguing with the weather. That’s a quarrel any man
is bound to lose.”

Ehomba begged to differ, but silently. Question he would, even the weather if need be, or he and his companions might never
break free of the malicious atmosphere. They could not stay, and he would not turn back. Choosing, he reached back over his
shoulder and drew the sky-metal sword Otjihanja had made for him. Crystallized iron caught the few isolated flashes of light
that managed to penetrate the haze and broke them into sparks.