A Triumph of Souls Read Online Free PDF

lands they had journeyed through together, of all the astounding
     places they had visited and countries they had traversed, here was the first that was devoid of stones, and here the first
     time Ehomba had required one.
    “Ballast!” the swordsman yelped. “There must be ballast in the hold!”
    Stanager was quick to disappoint him. “We carry base metals. Ingots of iron and copper that we can trade with the inhabitants
     of the towns on the other side of the Semordria. You’ll find no rock in the belly of the
Grömsketter.”
    “Well then, there must be at least one stone somewhere on this ship! Firestone in the galley, to protect her wooden walls.”
    The Captain shook her head sadly. “Firebrick.”
    “In someone’s sea chest, then. A memento of home, a worry stone, anything! If Ehomba says that he needs a stone, that means
     he needs—” Simna broke off, gaping at his tall friend.
    Reaching into a pocket of his kilt, the herdsman had removed the small cotton sack of “beach pebbles” he had carried with
     him all the way from his home village. AsSimna looked on, Ehomba selected the largest remaining, a flawless five-carat diamond of deeper blue hue than the surrounding
     sea, and shoved the remaining stones back in his pocket.
    “No, long bruther.” The swordsman gestured frantically. “Not that. We’ll find you a rock. There’s got to be a rock somewhere
     on this barge; an ordinary, everyday, commonplace, worthless rock. Whatever it is you’re thinking of doing—don’t.”
    The herdsman smiled apologetically at his friend. In his hand he held a stone worth more than the swordsman could hope to
     earn in a lifetime. In two lifetimes. And somehow, Simna knew his friend was not planning to convert it into ready currency.
    “Sorry, my friend. There is no time.” Pivoting, he returned his gaze to the little boat, now starting to pick up speed beneath
     the press of the freed breeze its sail had captured. “Soon he will be out of range.”
    “I don’t care what—” the swordsman halted in midcomplaint. “Out of range? Out of range of what?”
    “Rocks,” Ehomba explained simply—so simply that it was not an explanation at all, but only another puzzlement. Raising his
     voice, he directed his words to the retreating fisherman. “Truly you are the master of winds! But you must control them through
     spells and magicks. No mere bottle that fits in a man’s lap can contain more than the air that Nature has already placed inside.”
    “You think not, do you?” The fisherman turned in his seat, one arm resting easily on the tiller. “You’d be surprised, traveler,
     what a bottle can hold.”
    “Not a bottle that small,” Ehomba yelled back. “I wagerit is not even made of glass, but some marvel of the alchemist’s art instead!”
    “Oh, it’s glass, all right. Alchemist’s glass perhaps, but glass incontestably. See?” Holding the bottle aloft and grinning,
     he tapped the side with a small marlinspike. The smooth, slightly greenish material clinked sharply.
    As soon as the fisherman had begun to lift the bottle, Ehomba had placed the blue diamond in his mouth. At first a startled
     Simna suspected that the herdsman intended to swallow it, though for what purpose or reason he could not imagine. Not knowing
     what to think, Stanager had simply looked on in silence.
    That was when Ehomba began to inhale. Simna ibn Sind had seen his friend inhale like that only once before, when on the Sea
     of Aboqua he had consumed an entire eromakadi. But there was no darkness here, no ominous roiling haze with luminous red eyes,
     not even a stray storm cloud. The sky, like the air, was transparent.
    The herdsman’s chest expanded—and expanded, and swelled, until it seemed certain he would burst. Those members of the crew
     close enough to see what was happening gawked open-mouthed at the phenomenon of the distending herdsman while Stanager, brave
     as she was, began to back away from that which