A Triumph of Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

she could not explain and did not understand. Hunkapa Aub looked up in dumb
     fascination while Ahlitah, as usual, slept on, oblivious to what was happening around him.
    Just when it seemed that the skin of the herdsman’s chest must surely rupture, exploding his internal organs all over the
     deck and railing, he exhaled. To say explosively would be to do injustice to the sound that emerged from his chest and mouth.
     It reverberated like gunpowder,echoing across not only the deck but the sea as well. The force of it blew its perpetrator backwards, lifting Ehomba’s feet
     off the deck and sending him crashing into the smaller railing that delimited the fore edge of the helm deck. Hunkapa ran
     over to make sure the herdsman was all right.
    As for Simna, he remained at the railing, realizing that Ehomba had expelled more than just air. There had been one other
     thing in his mouth, and it was not his tongue that had been violently discharged across the water.
    In the little boat, the disdainful fisherman was preparing to tap his bottle a second time with the metal marlinspike to demonstrate
     the qualities of its composition when the ejected diamond struck it squarely in the middle, shattering the glass and sending
     green-tinted shards flying in all directions. The fisherman had barely an instant to gape at the ruined container, its neck
     and stopper still clutched tightly in one hand, before the winds it had held burst to freedom.
    All the winds that had swept a section of sea greater than a man could see in any direction, and all of it released at once.
    “Etjole, you right still?” The shaggy countenance of Hunkapa Aub was leaning low over his lanky friend. Ehomba sat, dazed
     but conscious, against the railing.
    “I am…” he started to reply. Then a sound reached his ears—a rising sound—and he yelled out even as he wrapped his arms tightly
     around the nearest post. “Grab something and hang on! Everybody grab someth—”
    The liberated winds struck the
Grömsketter
amidships, howling like a thousand crazed goblins suddenly released from an asylum for insane spirits as they tore through
     the masts and rigging. Struck hard enough to cause the sturdyvessel to heel sharply to starboard. For a terrifying moment, in the midst of that awesome roar, Stanager was afraid the
     ship was going to turn turtle. Her list reached seventy degrees. But as the initial blast began to subside, the ballast in
     her hold asserted itself. With maddening slowness, she began to roll back onto an even keel.
    Clinging to the rigging, her skin and clothing soaked with gale-driven spray, the Captain screamed orders to the crew. Stays
     were drawn taut, the mainsail boom secured, the wheel steadied. Somehow, the sails held. Working his way aft, Terious Kermarkh
     silently blessed a succession of unnamed sailmakers. Tough fabric caught the wind and contained it.
    But with demented gusts blowing from every direction, the sails kept wrapping themselves around the masts, making it impossible
     for the ship to maintain a heading, any heading. In the teeth of the disordered, chaotic gale there was no choosing a course.
    Terious fought his way to within shouting distance of the helm deck. Standing below, he yelled up to the wheel. “Captain,
     we’ve got to get out of this! We’re starting to take on water!”
    “Keep the fores’l reefed, Mr. Kermarkh! All hands hold to stations!” Maintaining a firm grip on a storm line, her experienced
     sea legs absorbing the impact of every pitch and roll, she staggered over to where Hunkapa Aub and Simna ibn Sind hovered
     solicitously over their tall friend. Awakened from his sleep by the sudden, unexpected storm, the black litah stood nearby.
     The heaving, pitching deck did not concern him, not with four sets of powerful claws at his disposal to dig into the wood.
    “Mr. Ehomba, you’ve taken us from the doldrums to theroaring forties, from not a ghost of a breeze to all the winds of the four