A Triumph of Souls (35 page)

And the Drounge moved on.

Nothing could stand in its way, and the perceptive got out of it. Those that were incapable of movement prepared themselves
as best they were able, and expired as readily as those living things that could. The Drounge handed down no judgments, passed
no resolutions, essayed no assessments.

Only solid rock barred its way or altered its course. Water it passed through as freely as it moved through air, sliding
with damned grace into lake or pond and advancing by means of repeated humping motions. As on land, so it was beneath the
surface of waves large and small.

Water plants withered and collapsed to the muddy bottom. The shells of unfortunate mollusks bled calcium until they deteriorated
beyond usefulness. Abscesses appeared on the sensitive skin of amphibians, and the gills of passing fish swelled up until
suffocation brought on a slow and painful death. Wading birds that ate the dead and dying fell from the sky as if shot, their
eyes glazed, their intestines rotting. Emerging on the far shore, the Drounge left behind a body of water as devastated as
any town or field. As always, in the aftermath of its passing, only the patient insects prospered.

The Drounge continued to move northward.

Eventually it reached a region it might have called home, had it possessed any thought of so removed a notion. For the first
time in a long, long while it was able to advance without killing anything. Not because it had suddenly become any less lethal,
the essence of itself any less virulent, but because there was so little life in its new surroundings to slaughter. It could
not kill what did not live.

Dimly, through its persistent but restricted vision, it took note of rocks bare of bushes, of a soil so sterile it would not
support the hardiest of weeds. An amazing place, as barren of life as the far side of the sky. But as if to ensure it could
not relax, an occasional wandering or lost creature would materialize, only to make casual contact and die to remind the Drounge
of the homicidal actuality that was itself.

Not many: just enough. A flowering grass that had somehow managed to establish itself in a shady crack in the
blasted ground encountered the passing Drounge. Moments later its petals had dropped off, to skitter away in the detached
grasp of a passing breeze. Then the stems bent, bowed by a sudden systemic affliction. The tiny stockade of glistening green
blades yellowed and split. Within minutes the miniature oasis was no more, a flavescent smudge of decay against the sickly,
pallid earth.

Where the snake had come from or how it had survived for as long as it had in that blasted land none could say. Heavy with
eggs, it sought a place to lay. Searching for the shade of a boulder, it found instead the passing Drounge. Immediately, it
began to cough, and to twist violently. The forked tongue flicked spasmodically. One long muscle, the snake writhed and coiled
as if trying to choke itself. Eggs began to spew uncontrollably from the ventral orifice. Deposited exposed to the pitiless,
blistering sunlight, they soon dried out, the desiccated life within never to see the light of day.

But for the most part the Drounge killed far less than usual, caused no havoc, induced no mass destruction. Apart from the
few isolated encounters with weed and reptile, it lurched onward, enjoying an unusual period of grace and isolation. For a
change, the only pain in its vicinity was its own.

It came eventually to a region of strange rock formations, peculiar spires and precipitates that contained the aspect but
not the actuality of life. Composed entirely of inanimate minerals, they were immune and indifferent to the Drounge’s presence.
To its left rose a range of high mountains, their peaks ascending toward the clouds. Both would entail a detour, a delay in
the march that knew no end, and
to which the Drounge was wholly committed despite its lack of a purpose.

But between massif and hillocks lay an open plain, rising slightly as it approached the first foothills. It was almost perfectly
flat, unadorned by plant life and devoid of rocky impediments. Offering an unobstructed route north, it was the path and direction
the Drounge chose.

How long it had toiled forward over the arid plain before it once more encountered life it did not know. Time had no meaning
for it, day being no different from night, summer accompanying the same suffering as winter. What life was doing in that place
of desolation the Drounge could not imagine. It did not matter. It kept moving forward, always advancing, compelled to alter
its chosen course to avoid solid stone but nothing else.

In some deep, buried, half-hidden part of itself it screamed at the creatures to change direction, to move out of the way,
to do something to avoid contact. Having no lips, no palate, no tongue and no mouth, it could not shout a warning. It could
only hope. But as had ever been the case with the Drounge, hope was a mostly forgotten component of its existence. What mattered,
what was important, was that it keep moving, advancing, progressing. Why, it did not know. “Why” was a concept it could not
afford.

At first it thought it would miss the creatures. They were highly active, agile, and traveling across the plain perpendicularly
to the Drounge’s course. If it had slowed down, if they had slowed down, contact could have been avoided. But they showed
no inclination to accelerate or moderate their pace, and the Drounge could not. Catastrophe accompanied
the Drounge the way remoras shadowed a shark.

Even so, a sliver of apathetic hope remained as it slid past first one, then another of the energetic vertebrates without
making contact. They were an odd lot, the Drounge thought sluggishly. Paradoxical at best, mismatched at worst. A third member
of the party trooped past without brushing against it or glancing in its lurching, pitching direction.

And then the fourth hesitated, reaching out as if feeling of the air in front of it, and grabbed a protruding wad of the Drounge’s
putrefying flesh just above one oculus.

Corruption spurted from the Drounge’s fragile epidermis, surging forward to coagulate around the creature’s fingers and wrist.
Its eyes bugged and it gasped in agony as the relic residue of a thousand diseases and pestilences, of a million tumors and
ulcerations, shot briefly through its flesh. Cinched by solidifying putridity to the left side of the Drounge, the luckless
biped found itself dragged helplessly forward.

This was an unusual but not unprecedented occurrence. The Drounge knew exactly what would happen. Attached to its humping,
gelatinous body, the trapped creature would find itself hauled along until the timeless poisons in the Drounge’s system began
to affect it the same way they affected every living thing. It would regain its freedom only when its pinioned limb rotted
off at the wrist. Then the rest of the body would atrophy and die, most likely rotted away from within by the extreme contact
it had made with the Drounge.

Instead of fleeing at the highest speed of which they were capable, the unfortunate’s companions whirled and
returned, rushing to catch up to him. Rushing to their own deaths, the Drounge reflected. No matter, no shame, no difference.
It continued on its way, oblivious to their futile and soon-to-be-fatal efforts. Make contact with their friend or with it,
and they too would die. Such had been the affliction of the Drounge’s existence, and such would it always be.

Two of them stumbled and dodged about as if no longer in control of their own bodies. They were trying to react to something
they could not see. Only the third now stared directly at the indefatigably advancing Drounge, peering into its seeping, pustulant
optics, plainly sensible not only of its presence but of its bearing and appearance. Recognition, the Drounge knew, meant
nothing. A minuscule part of it hoped the creature would keep its distance. The greater part of it was indifferent. After
having induced tens of thousands of deaths, one or two more were of less significance to it than raindrops were to the sea.

At first it thought that the aware creature was digging into its own back, a pain the Drounge could have empathized with.
Then it saw that the biped’s own flesh remained inviolate. It was reaching into an artificial object that relied for motility
on its organic host. Still avoiding contact with the advancing Drounge while making loud vocalizations to its companions,
it withdrew from the sizable, lumpy object one that was smaller still.

Unlike the article that had given it birth, this small sac of treated and cured vacular material fit comfortably in its owner’s
palm. It had the shape of an onion, many thousands of which the Drounge had killed during its passage through formerly lush
farmlands far, far to the south. Removing the tapered end of the sac, the vigorous biped proceeded
to squeeze the bulb shape slightly. A small bit of thick, viscous paste oozed from the interior. Pale pink in color, it smelled
sharply of rain-swept willow and other growing things.

Pacing the Drounge, the creature reached out and dabbed the bit of sticky mucilage on the spot where its companion’s limb
had become adhered. For a while nothing happened. The biped continued to trot alongside the lacerated flank of the Drounge,
uttering comforting vocalizations to its entrapped friend, while the rest of its companions kept their distance.

Then something touched the Drounge.

This in itself was a most remarkable happenstance. Nothing touched the Drounge. It was the one that did all the touching;
the imparting of death, the conveyance of misery, the transmission of suffering. So astonishing was the sensation that for
the first time in living memory it reduced its habitual gait, slowing slightly the better to focus on what had occurred while
simultaneously trying to analyze it.

It was not pain. Supreme among all living things on the subject of affliction, the Drounge was intimately familiar with agony
in every conceivable, possible variance and permutation. This was something else. Something new and extraordinary. Unable
to understand what had taken place, even in the abstract, it could only continue on its way, its direction and purpose temporarily
muted but not swayed.

Instead of fading away, the phenomenon expanded its influence, until a portion of the Drounge the size of a pillow was fully
involved. Within this segregated section of self, unprecedented processes were at work. Never having
in its entire existence encountered or experienced anything like it before, the Drounge was at a loss to give a name to what
was happening. It was not frightened. That which bears the burden of annihilation does not fear. But it was puzzled, if not
a little confused.

Part of it, albeit a very small part, was changing. Metamorphosing in a most matchless and extreme fashion. It took place
so rapidly that the Drounge was unable to react, nor did it quite know how to do so. Some sort of response seemed called for,
but it could not begin to know exactly what.

The portion of itself that had engaged the creature foolish enough to initiate physical contact withdrew. Freed, the unfortunate
dropped away from the Drounge’s flank, falling to the ground while clutching its formerly impacted upper member. By now that
limb should have been diseased beyond recognition, should be little more than a stick upon which a multitude of afflictions
had worked their foul dissipation. Moreover, the general infection that was the Drounge ought to have spread to and throughout
the creature’s entire slight, vulnerable body, reducing it to a corrupted mass of dead and decaying tissue.

Nothing of the sort had happened. With the application of the soft paste, all that the Drounge had inflicted had been countered.
The individual limb as well as the rest of its owner had been miraculously restored to health. Climbing to its feet, the smaller
biped held its formerly impacted appendage and stared down its length as if examining an unexpected apparition. It manifested
no evidence of damage and its expression was absent of anguish.

To the Drounge this amounted to nothing more than an incident. A striking incident, to be sure. One without
precedent. But in the long lexicon of its existence merely a footnote, a quip of fate, a momentary interruption in its everlasting
painful passage through reality. The quartet of creatures whose path it had ephemerally encountered fell behind; their identities
unknown, their insignificant purposes in life restored. The spot on its side where the second biped had daubed the bit of
odd ointment tingled, but that was all. No harm had come to the Drounge. How could anything injure that which carried upon
and within itself all the world’s hurt?

A small flurry of movement caused it to look back, a gesture that required an effort no less painful than simply moving forward.
It could not believe what it was seeing. Apparently indifferent to the damage that had almost been done to its friend, the
taller of the two bipeds with which the Drounge had experienced contact was running. Not away from the northward path as would
have been sensible, but directly toward the methodically advancing, only intermittently visible organism. The absurd, demented
creature was chasing
after
the Drounge instead of racing at maximum speed in the opposite direction!

Self-evidently it was deranged. What could unsettle a sentient being so, the Drounge could not imagine. It did not increase
its pace, nor did it slow down. Whatever mad, lunatic purpose motivated the biped was beyond the Drounge’s ability to affect
or understand. It did not matter. In the scheme of things, it made no difference whether the crazed creature lived or died.

It halted abruptly before reaching the stoically retreating Drounge. That, at least, was a rational decision. Perhaps the
creature, momentarily maddened, had suddenly come back to its senses. One of its upper, absurdly spindly limbs
was upraised. As the Drounge ignored it, the creature brought this member forward. Propelled through the air by this slight
physical action, something flew from the end of the appendage. Idly, the Drounge identified it as the onion-shaped object
the creature had been carrying earlier.