A Triumph of Souls (42 page)

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 the 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 imposing 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.

“I get it!” Simna blurted in sudden realization. “You weren’t really dead! You were faking it all along.”

Ehomba shook his head slowly. “No, my friend. I was dead. Well and truly dead. I know, because I spent time in the place where
the dead go.”

“Tell me,” asked Hunkapa Aub seriously, “what is it like, the place where the dead go?”

“Slow,” the herdsman told him. Reaching out, he put a firm hand on the swordsman’s shoulder and smiled reassuringly. “I knew
that I was going to die, Simna. It had been foretold. Not once, but three times. Once by a seductive seeress the memory of
whose beauty and wisdom I will always treasure, once by a dog witch whose insight and affection I will always remember, and
once even by a fog whose persistence I will never forget. ‘Continue on and die,’ they said—and so it had to be before we could
triumph.” Turning, he gazed gravely at the still unmoving body of Hymneth the Possessed: warlock, sorcerer, eminent ruler
of illustrious Ehl-Larimar.

“But that was as far as their predictions went. Nothing was said about what might happen
after
I died.” Raising his eyes, he smiled gratefully at the imposing, attentive, fraternal figure of Hunkapa Aub. “Nothing was
said that would preclude my being resurrected.”

Simna gaped at him, struggling to digest the import of his friend’s serene words. Then—he grinned. The grin widened until
it seemed to encompass the majority of his sweat-streaked face. And then he began to chuckle softly to himself. It never grew
loud or boisterous like before, but it did not go away, either.

“Two sorcerers. All this time I’ve been traveling in the company of
two
sorcerers.” Turning, he confronted Hunkapa
Aub, whose eyes had become suddenly wise as well as blue. “As many days and nights as I have spent in your company, as many
evils and dangers as we fought side by side, and I never suspected. I never
would
have suspected.”

Hunkapa Aub’s smile widened slightly. “Not all wizards look alike, good swordsman. Not everything in life appears as one imagines
it to be. And it is not required that one be human to be a master of the thaumaturgic arts.”