A Triumph of Souls (33 page)

Peering in the indicated direction, Ehomba had to admit that the resemblance of the broken ridge of salt to a column of plodding
antelope was remarkable.

Evidently Simna was of like mind. “Sure looks real. Like they could take off in all directions if somebody made a loud noise.”

“You’re already making a loud noise.” Crouching low and making himself nearly invisible even in the bright moonlight, the
big cat had begun to stalk the windsculpted
ridge. Realistic they might be, but the salt formations did not move. Ehomba was about to say something when the swordsman
put a constraining hand on his arm.

“Leave him alone. All cats need to play. Don’t you think he’s earned a few moments of amusement?”

“Yes, of course. But he is being so serious about it.” Uncertainly, Ehomba watched as Ahlitah continued to stalk the weathered
parapet of halite crystals.

Simna shrugged it off. “I’ve never seen a cat that wasn’t serious about its play. He’ll catch up to us when he’s through.
Remember, he can cover a mile in the time it would take either one of us to run to that big ridge over there.” He pointed.
“See it? The one that looks like the entrance to a castle?”

Reluctantly, the herdsman allowed his attention to be diverted. Something did not feel right. Maybe, he thought, it was him.
The heat was beginning to melt their thoughts. Behind them, the litah dropped even closer to the ground, maintaining its hunting
posture as it stalked the salt. Try as he would, Ehomba could not see the harm in it.

Ahead and slightly to their right rose a massive hill of achromatic salts that had been eroded by the wind into a fantastic
assortment of spires and steeples, turrets and minarets. The gleaming citadel boasted an arched entrance and dark recesses
in the salt fortifications that during the day would not have commanded a second glance but which at night passed easily for
windows. A breeze sprang up, advancing unimpeded across the dry lake bed. Whipping around the extravagant towers that had
been precipitated ages ago out of a viscid solution of sodium chloride and other minerals, it imparted a carnival air to the
formation, whistling and trilling through the hollows that
had been worn in the salt. At a distance it almost sounded like people laughing and joking.

“Hoy, Etjole,” the swordsman prompted him. “Come on now, don’t let me win without a fight. I say it looks like a castle. What
would you call it?” As they walked past, salt crystals crunching under their sandals, he studied the pale ramparts admiringly.

“I cannot argue with you this time, Simna. A castle or fortress of some kind. I could not imagine calling it anything else,
because that is exactly what it looks like.”

“Then we are agreed.” Turning to his right, the swordsman started toward the silent formation. “Come on, bruther. Don’t you
want to see what it looks like up close?”

“I am certain it looks the same at close range, except that individual crystals of salt will begin to stand out.”

Shaking his head, the swordsman continued toward the looming structure. “All this traveling in my company still hasn’t made
you a more jolly companion. Go on, pass up the chance to study up close a fascinating phenomenon you’ll never see again.”

As always, Ehomba’s tone was unchanged, but his thoughts were churning fretfully. “Let me guess: You’ll catch up to me in
a few minutes.”

“Depend on it, bruther.” Turning away, Simna continued blithely toward the salt castle, moonlight reflecting off the hilt
of the sword he wore against his back.

In front of Ehomba, nothing moved on the lake bed. No pennants of gleaming salt waved in the clear, stark light. No white-faced
figures emerged from the weathered hill to greet him. Except for the barely perceptible breeze, all was silent, and still.

Frowning, he pivoted to look back the way they had
come. It was with considerable relief that he saw the reassuring oversized shape of Hunkapa Aub standing and waiting patiently
not more than a few yards behind him.

“Come on, Hunkapa. If these two want to amuse themselves with silly nighttime fancies, they will have to hurry to catch up
with us.” The massive, hirsute figure did not stir. Ehomba raised his voice slightly. “Hunkapa Aub? Come with me. There is
no reason for us to wait here until these two finish their games.”

When the hulking shape still did not move, a puzzled Ehomba walked back toward him, retracing his steps across the lake bed.
He knew he was retracing his steps because he could see where his feet had sunk a quarter inch or more into the bleached,
caked surface. He was on the verge of reaching out to grab his ungainly companion’s shaggy wrist when something made him pause.

Despite Ehomba’s proximity, Hunkapa Aub had yet to acknowledge the herdsman’s presence. No, the tall southerner decided: It
was worse than that. Hunkapa Aub was ignoring him completely, treating him as if he wasn’t there. Now Ehomba did reach out
to take his massive companion’s hand. He pulled, none too gently. He might as well have been tugging on a tree growing from
the side of a mountain. Hunkapa Aub did not budge, nor did he react in any way. Instead, he continued to stare straight ahead.

Turning uneasily to seek the source of the brute’s fascination, Ehomba found his gaze settling on a tall, heavily eroded pillar
of salt.

A pillar of salt that looked exactly like Hunkapa Aub.

The resemblance was more than a fortuitous coincidence, went deeper than something that looked vaguely like a shaggy head
attached to a cumbersome body and
limbs. The degree of detail was frightening, from the flattened nose to the wide, deep-set eyes. Edging closer, the herdsman
found himself staring intently into hollow pits of fractured salt crystal. Should they shift, however slightly, to look back
at him, he was afraid that he might cry out.

They did not. The image was composed wholly and unequivocally of salt; immobile, inanimate, and dead. Nothing more. But how
then to explain the startling likeness? Not to mention Ahlitah’s herd of sculpted prey and Simna’s inviting castle. Reaching
out, he took Hunkapa Aub’s left wrist in both his hands and prepared to pull again, this time with all his strength. He did
not. There was something odd about his hulking friend’s hair. Usually it was soft and pliant, so much so that Simna often
teased its wearer about its feminine feel. Now, suddenly, it felt granular and gritty. Releasing his grip, Ehomba put two
fingers to his mouth and touched them cautiously with his tongue. The taste was all too familiar.

Salt.

Whirling, he raced back the way they had come. He found the black litah with his teeth sunk deeply into the side of a mound
of slightly reddish salt. The big cat’s burning yellow eyes were still open, still alert, but dimmed. As if slightly glazed
over. With salt.

“Ahlitah, wake up, come out of it!” He pulled hard on one of the cat’s front legs, then on its tail, all to no avail. Equally
as heavy as Hunkapa Aub, the black litah was just as difficult to move. Stepping back, the herdsman saw to his horror that
the sleek ebony flank was already beginning to show a crust of rapidly congealing halite crystals.

Uncertain what to do, he turned a slow circle. This part of the lake bed was a maze of mounds and pillars, knolls
and motifs, configurations and oddly organic shapes. If he burrowed into some of the more recognizable forms, what might he
find concealed in their brackish depths? How many of the formations were natural—and how many molded on unlucky travelers
both human and otherwise who had preceded him and his companions to this occulted corner of reality? Did he dare dig within?
High above, the blanched moon shone down and proffered no explanation.

His mouth set in a grim, determined line, he swung his backpack around in front of him and fumbled inside until he found the
vial he was looking for. Little of the inordinately pungent liquid within remained. Hopefully, it would be enough. Since Ahlitah
was the first and most seriously affected, Ehomba determined to try to emancipate the big cat first. But as he prepared to
remove the stopper from the bottle, something off to his right caught his eye. He stared, then found himself staring harder,
but it would not go away. Three pillars, streaked with brown and less so with red. One tall and two short, gazing back at
him out of hollow, glistening eye sockets. Three pillars of accumulated, weathered, freshly precipitated mineral salts. Together,
they formed a family of salt.

His family.

There was no mistaking the identify of the tallest figure. It was Mirhanja, complete to the smallest detail, her ashen arms
extended pleadingly in his direction. He took an instinctive, automatic step toward her. Preparing to take another, he forced
himself to halt. His right leg, his whole body trembled. A battle was taking place within, a war between himself as he was
and himself as what he knew. It was a conflict that, if lost, would find him once more in the
bosom of his family. Embraced by the ones he loved most in the entire world—and encased in patient, precipitating, all-embracing
salt.

He would join his companions and their hapless predecessors not in crossing the surrounding sickly, bloodless terrain, but
in becoming a part of it.

Always dispute what is happening around you, his father had told him. Never, ever, stop questioning everything and anything,
even that which you perceive to be indisputably and undeniably real, for reality can play all manner of unpleasant tricks
on the cocksure. Ehomba had grown up skeptical and politely suspicious of the world around him. As he was now.

Think!
he screamed at himself. What has happened here? What
is
happening here? Ahlitah saw a herd of prey animals, and the salt became prey animals. Hunkapa Aub saw himself reflected in
the salt, and the salt became his reflection. You see your family, the thing
you
most want to see.

But Simna ibn Sind had walked off toward a salt castle. Other travelers and animals could have wandered into this ghastly
place and become embalmed by the salt, creating so many of the strange and now ominous formations surrounding him. But a castle
couldn’t just pick up and move. Therefore what they were seeing was being drawn, had to be drawn, from the hidden places of
their own minds. Simna might dream a castle full of willing concubines, but he would want to take possession of the castle
first. So the salt had, by inimical magicks unknown and unimaginable, risen up from the lake bed, precipitated out, and formed
itself into a small castle for him to inspect. If he entered it fully, Ehomba sensed, his friend would never come out.

Reaching down to scratch an itch, his fingers came away with tiny white grains beneath the nails. Employing every ounce of
energy and every iota of determination he could muster, he wrenched himself away from the heart-rendingly realistic figures
of his family. As he did so, a cracking sounded beneath his sandals as he broke free of the encrusting salt that had already
begun to crawl up his legs. He was free again, but for how long? And what of the fate of his friends?

No!
he shouted silently. He had not brought them this far to lose them now, so near to their goal. Realizing that the nearly
empty bottle of oris musk would not be enough to shatter the saline illusions the accursed landscape had precipitated around
his friends, he fumbled anew with the contents of the backpack. But what could he possibly use? There was nothing, nothing
he knew of that was stronger or had a more powerful effect on the living than oris musk.

No, he thought as he stopped digging through the jumble at the bottom of the pack. That wasn’t true. There was something more
powerful. Furthermore, he had plenty of it.

Slinging the pack around to where it rested comfortably against his shoulders once again, nestling against the twin scabbards,
he unlimbered his water bag and tucked it firmly beneath his right arm. It was nearly full, brimming with the stuff of life
hard-won in sinister Skawpane. Carefully he removed the stopper and let it dangle by its cord from the lip of the bag. The
contents sloshed gently in response to his actions.

Turning his back on his imploring but inanimate family, he walked up to where the black litah stood frozen in the midst of
suffocating halite. Taking careful aim with the
mouth of the bag, he brought his right elbow and arm roughly against his side, squeezing the bag sharply. Water sprayed from
the opening to drench the big cat. It struck his mane and shoulders, ribs and legs. It got in his eyes and nose.

For the first time in many long moments, Ahlitah blinked. Thanks to the water that had gone up his nostrils, this was followed
by a sneeze of truly leonine proportions. Running down his flanks, the precious water dissolved away the salt. Even as the
big cat was cleansed, fresh salt was trying to precipitate out around his feet, to make its way up his legs and trap him anew.

Shaking his head, the litah sent a shower of sparkling halite crystals flying in all directions. “What happened?” Wrinkling
back his lips as only a big cat can do, he spat disgustedly to one side. “What have I been eating?”

Ehomba pointed out the places where the uncannily saiga-shaped lump of mineral salts showed claw and tooth marks. “Everyone
likes a little salt with their meal, but there are limits. While you were trying to eat the salt, the salt was starting to
eat you. It was not meat that was salted—it was your thoughts.” Steeling himself, he turned and gestured in the direction
of the three sculpted figures of his family. Now that he was fully conscious of the slow, terrible death they symbolized,
he was able to look at them more clearly and see them for what they really were. This time they looked less like Mirhanja
and his children than they did like three small pillars of accumulated whiteness.

Revelation proved sanguinary for Ahlitah as well. “I can’t believe I was chewing so single-mindedly on that.” His snarl of
antipathy and contempt echoing across the lake bed, he brought one massive paw around in a great arc
and decapitated the nearest formation. Lumps of shattered salt went skittering across the hard, crusty ground.