A Triumph of Souls (22 page)

“I’m always open to new experiences,” he told them as he spit out orange peel. “That’s one I won’t have to open myself to
again. Paugh!” Nothing wrinkles in disgust, Ehomba mused, quite so exhaustively as the face of a displeased cat.

With Hunkapa Aub agreeing to take the first watch, the others retired, the two men to their blankets and the black
litah to the mat of leaves and grass he had assembled with his paws. Ehomba drifted off with one hand feeling gingerly of
his throat and the strip of cloth that now separated it from the beaded necklaces he wore.

As he slid into sleep, his thoughts drifted into dream—but it was most unlike any normal dream, or even a normal nightmare.

He was running, running hard, but on all fours
. Bushes and grass sped past at an astonishing rate of speed. Though he could feel the ground beneath his feet and therefore
knew he was not flying, with each prodigious stride he left it below him for an impossibly long time.

Startled by his sudden appearance, something with wide eyes looked up to encounter his gaze. Utterly paralyzed by the unexpected
eye contact, it stood frozen for an instant and then flashed by as he raced past. A rabbit, too small and scrawny to bother
with. Little more than a mouthful or three, certainly not enough to satiate the voluminous hunger that burned in his belly.
He needed, and was after, bigger prey.

When he exploded from the high grass the herd panicked. Though it meant he would have to exert himself a little more to make
a kill, he was exhilarated by the fear his appearance had incited. Eland and elk bolted in every direction, eyes rolling with
fright, tongues lolling from open mouths. Impala and syndyoceros crashed into one another and bounded away wildly as they
sought the safety of the herd that had not yet re-formed.

In the confusion Ehomba had an entire minute to single out a victim: more than enough time. Settling on an old bull elk, he
accelerated to maximum speed. The elk never
had a chance. Ehomba hit it head-on, his open jaws slamming into the hairy throat and locking like a vise. The elk tried to
lower its head in order to bring its massive horns to bear on its attacker, but, already caught and held in a death grip,
it had no real chance to defend itself.

Blood flowed into and through Ehomba’s jaws, exciting every nerve and sensation in his body. Unable to fight, the elk tried
to run. His assailant’s weight made sustained flight impossible. The prey sank to its knees, then its belly, and finally went
limp, suffocated by the tightening of its attacker’s jaws.

Ehomba held on for another several minutes until he was sure death had arrived. Then, crouching alongside the body, one paw
placed possessively on the carcass, he began to eat. Blood and muscle, organs and bone, all vanished into massive, efficient
jaws. Lingering over the kill, he ate intermittently for the rest of the afternoon and on into early evening. Only then did
he rise and move away, belly dragging low, back into the high grass. There he found the stream, and drank for long minutes.

Locating a small clearing, he lay down heavily in the shade of a cluster of yellow-blooming hopak trees and began to groom
himself. It was impossible to get all the blood off his muzzle no matter how many times he licked a paw and ran it across
his face, but he made a start. The rest of the stain would come out later, following repeated washings. Glutted and content,
he slumped down on his side and fell into a sleep any passing traveler might easily have mistaken for death. But despite his
seeming somnolence, the sound of a snapping twig would be enough to rouse him instantly. In the depth of his deep sleep, one
foot kicked out repeatedly.

Wrapped in his blanket beside the campfire, Ehomba’s left leg twitched restively.

Ahlitah was dizzy
. Not from chasing his tail, which when absolutely convinced no one and nothing else was watching he would occasionally do
to relieve unrelenting boredom, but from trying to maintain an alien and utterly unaccustomed posture. With each step he took,
no matter how short and cautious, he was convinced, absolutely certain, that he was going to fall over. Yet despite his fear
and misgivings, he did not.

By all that ran and crawled and swam and flew, what had happened to his other pair of legs?

And his eyes. And his ears, and his nose! Though he could see adequately, the acuity of vision he usually enjoyed had been
replaced by a pale, fuzzy imitation of normal sight. Objects located more than a short distance away were unidentifiable.
Anything at a reasonable distance blended invisibly into the landscape or the horizon. Furthermore, it was as if he were gazing
through a steady downpour. Colors were washed out or absent entirely. It was horrible: He felt half blinded.

Nothing was audible except that which was in his immediate vicinity. The familiar panoply of distant sounds, the constant
susurration of animate life, was entirely absent. It was as if the world had suddenly gone silent. There were noises and the
echoes of movement close by, but nothing else. No complaining insects, no scuttling lizards or slithering snakes, no chirping
birds. The wing-beats of dragonets no longer whispered in his ears, and the delectable murmur of prey animals cropping grass
was sorely wanting.

As for the wonderful universe of scents that normally filled his nostrils, its absence constituted a kind of olfactory blindness
that made his severely impacted vision that much worse. It was a struggle, a strain, a surreal effort to smell anything at
all. What odors he was able to identify were so homogenized it hardly seemed worth the effort to inhale.

Simply keeping his ridiculous body from falling down demanded a preposterous share of his considerably reduced energy. And
yet he was conscious of the fact that, though shorter, it was a much better body than many of those that were in motion around
him. Feeling greatly enfeebled and not knowing what else to do, he instinctively sought shelter.

A nearby enclosure seemed to promise privacy if not enlightenment. Given his severely diminished capacity for perceiving the
world around him, it was hardly surprising that he should be wrong about this, too. The edifice was not empty.

Ordinarily he would have attacked and killed the pair of two-legged young females that came running toward him. For reasons
unknown and inexplicable, he did not. Instead, he allowed them to carry out a mock attack on his person; striking him about
the chest and arms, gamboling around his middle, and prattling inanities into his ears. They made muted howling noises. The
younger, a lithesome female not long past the cusp of puberty, was only slightly more respectful of his person than her elder.
The air of commingled anticipation and affection they projected was oddly unnerving, as if it were forced rather than natural.
Their strongest efforts to pull him farther into the
enclosure notwithstanding, they struck him as wretchedly weak.

So did the third female figure that appeared from another part of the enclosure to throw both fore and hind legs around him.
To his astonishment and disgust, instead of extending her tongue to lick his face by way of greeting, she thrust her tongue
deeply into his mouth. So startled was he by this unexpected, unnatural act that he forgot to bite it. She, however, was not
averse to nibbling on his ear. At least something about the otherwise inane interaction between himself and the unknown female
made sense!

Most unexpectedly, given the extreme distaste and inner turmoil his extraordinary situation had brought about, he felt the
heat rising in his loins. Disturbed and bewildered, he did not bother to resist as the female led him to another, darker portion
of the enclosure. At least, he thought with relief, she had dismissed her irritating, overly exuberant predecessors.

When he realized what she had in mind, he knew only one way to react. Evidently, this did not displease her. Quite to the
contrary. The mechanics of the act as well as its immediate consequences were surprisingly conventional, a touch of familiarity
in alien surroundings for which he was grateful. After they both rested awhile, he was prepared to repeat the process. Again,
the female had no objection.

By the fourth time, she was regarding him with unabashed awe. By the fifth, with hesitancy. When he ventured to initiate a
sixth reiteration with as much enthusiasm as the first, she retreated precipitously from the darkened portion of the enclosure.
Her reaction only confused him further. As was typical of his kind, he was
prepared to continue for the rest of the day and far on into the night. Clearly she was not.

His head hurt. Agitated and bemused, he stumbled back to the enclosure’s entrance. A pair of very large two-legged males were
waiting for him there. They bore weapons and grim expressions. Standing behind them, the female with whom he had recently
consorted appeared in a state of extreme agitation, pointing and jabbering in his direction. The looks on the faces of the
two armed males grew ominous.

If there was one thing he was in no mood to tolerate at that moment, it was the absurd verbalizations and oral circumlocutions
of a brace of irritable bipeds. To let them know how he was feeling, he voiced a warning roar. The effect was salutary. The
fur stood up on their heads, their eyes grew as big as emu eggs, and they turned and bolted in the opposite direction as fast
as their hind legs would carry them, flinging their weapons aside while screaming at the top of their lungs. From other enclosures,
startled faces peered out in search of the source of the sound. Feeling much better about things, he strode out of the bordello.
Though he had neglected to pay, no one dared to confront him.

Lying well away from the campfire, Ahlitah smacked his lips as he rolled over onto his back.

Simna frowned as he entered the city
. The golden towers, the marble archways, the teeming crowds of barkers and bazaaris, the fragrant smells of fine cooking—all
were absent. In their place were simple houses of stone and wood and thatch. In lieu of richly garbed horses and moas, dogs
and rodent-hunting cats roamed the streets. Where he normally
would have expected to see paving stones of granite there was only packed earth.

A few women tracked his progress as he advanced. Some were ancient, others not yet old enough to understand. Those of young
and middle age were tall, proud, and comely, with elegant necks and straight backs, full breasts and curving backsides. He
grinned at them and a few smiled back, though there was a hesitancy in their expressions that bruised his ego.

Where was he? Was this not the entrance to Vharuphan the Radiant, renowned capital of the Dhashtari Emperors? Where were the
great domes of polished green verdite and the fine gilded latticework famed near and far across half a continent? The nearest
thing he saw to fine latticework was a sturdily constructed well. As for domes, there was one of brick for firing pottery,
and it was not habitable.

As he wandered in a daze something struck him in the legs. Looking down, he saw a young girl clinging to him and beaming delightedly,
her sweet innocent features blushing with love. As he struggled weakly to disengage himself from her pythonic embrace, a young
man stepped down from the porch of a nearby house and approached. In one hand he carried a spear suitable in size and weight
for someone no longer a child but not yet an adult. It was more than toy, less than weapon. Bowing low, he then put a hand
on Simna’s arm and smiled, revealing a blaze of perfect white teeth.

Stunned and not knowing what else to do or where to go, Simna allowed himself to be led by hand and arm up the steps of the
porch and into the house. In a back room an astoundingly handsome woman stood before a stone counter, using knives of differing
size and heft to slice and
butcher what remained of a human hindquarter. When Simna made gagging sounds, she turned. A conflagration of a smile spread
across her face, making her appear more beautiful than ever and somewhat minimizing the effect of the bloodstains that spotted
her apron and overblouse. The ensuing kiss she bestowed upon him almost, but not quite, allowed him to overlook the import
of the three harrowing words she spoke to him.

“Welcome home—husband.”

Simna ibn Sind woke up screaming.

The sounds of his yelling and thrashing about startled his companions to wakefulness. This included Hunkapa Aub, who, having
never been relieved of his watch, had fallen asleep where he sat. Around the dying embers of the campfire the forest was silent,
and night still held sway over the world.

Ehomba rushed to his friend’s side. “Simna, what is wrong? Is there anything I can do?” Nearby, Hunkapa Aub was still trying
to shake the sleep webs from his brain while the black litah looked on unblinkingly.

“Anything you can… ?” The swordsman looked up at his rangy companion. “Yes, by Guquaquo. If you ever hear me making noises
like that in my sleep ever again, wake me instantly.” Putting both hands to his head, he stared blankly at the corpse of the
campfire. “Hoy, what a nightmare! I—I was domesticated!”

His expression twisting, Ehomba stood up and stepped back. “Is that all?”

Simna fixed the herdsman with a look of utmost seriousness. “Bruther, every man has his own fears. I do not mock yours. Grant
me the same courtesy.”

Ehomba nodded soberly. “You are right, my friend. I
apologize.” His expression tightened slightly. “I am curious, for I also had a most peculiar dream. I had four legs and the
keenest imaginable senses, and was hunting.”

“And I,” Ahlitah put in with a reverberating growl, “walked on two legs like humans, and visited a place where intercourse
was expected to be paid for with human money.”

It was left, unsurprisingly, for Ehomba to sort out what must have taken place.

“I do not know what happened, or how, but it seems that some unknown mechanism has caused our dreams to slip from one individual
to the next.” He nodded at the swordsman. “You got my dream, Simna.” His gaze shifted to the intent big cat. “I dreamed Ahlitah’s
dream. And he must have suffered through yours.”