A Triumph of Souls

by Alan Dean Foster

  “I am not sure. One king, I think.”

  The first mate’s heavy brows drew together. “There are no kings out here.”

  “There are watery kingdoms just as there are kingdoms of the land, friend Terious. Who are we to say whether these folk have kings of their own, and if so, what their nature might be? We must have help to escape this valley, and if that means treating some creature of the sea as a king, why, I will be the first to bow down before him and beg assistance.” His gaze left the mate to travel out across the water, toward the surrounding walls of sloping sea that prevented them from continuing on their way.

  “It will not be a king of dolphins, though. Or one of their larger cousins, nor sargassum people. It will be something else.”

  “How will we know it, then?” Impatient to be back aboard ship, Terious drew hard on the oars, putting his back and full weight into each stroke. “Will it come to us trailing a royal retinue, dressed in rich garment and jewels with a high crown perched upon its head?”

  Ehomba shrugged. “I suppose you will know as well as I, my friend. We do not know what it is, but I suspect it will not be wearing clothes or crown. No creature of the sea that I have ever seen or heard tell of does so.”

  “Nor any that are known to me,” the first mate replied as he strained at the oars.

  They were right about the clothing, but wrong about the crown.

  The sun slipped below the western rim of the valley, its shafting light turning the upper reaches of the slope into a sheet of emerald. Darkness descended on the valley in the sea, on the noble ship bobbing gently in the ripples that were not strong enough to qualify as swells, and on her apprehensive yet expectant crew.

  Etjole Ehomba was no less anxious than any of them. With the ship’s lamps alight and several secured high up in the rigging to mark the vessel’s location to any passing craft—or king—he stood on the main deck and stared out to sea, wondering at the sargassum man’s parting words. What dwelled out there that was not porpoise or whale yet was potentially strong enough to free the Grömsketter from her obstinate sanctuary? What mysterious acquaintances did the green humanoid intend to converse with on their behalf?

  A familiar voice nudged up alongside him. “Hoy, long bruther: We’re pondering the same thing, I think.” The swordsman’s gaze was similarly drawn to the black waters on which the ship rode, and to the unknown depths beneath her keel. What monstrous life-forms swam and fought and died there, down in the unfathomable abyss? Which of them could free the ship and her crew and send both on their way? Sea serpents? Simna had heard many tales of such. The horrid great Kraken, with its clacking beak and tentacles like a pack of pythons? A king, Ehomba said the weed man had told him. But king of what?

  “Did you ever stop to consider what lies out there, Simna?” The herdsman spoke without taking his gaze from the water, even though in the hush of night nothing save a few fleeting phosphorescences were visible, minuscule ghosts scuttling across the surface of the sea.

  “I’m not you, Etjole. I’m more inclined to ponder on what lies on the far shore, how expensive it is, how attractive, and how much longer I have to spend rattling around inside a wooden hull before I’ll be able to investigate it.”

  Ehomba murmured something inaudible before replying with conviction. “You are right, my friend. You are not me.”

  “The treasure’s to be found in distant Ehl-Larimar, isn’t it?” As forthright as henna on a courtesan’s cheeks, avariciousness rouged the swordsman’s words. “Watched over by Hymneth the Possessed. He’s obsessed by this Visioness he’s abducted, and so are you, a little bit, but his real concern and yours is the treasure he guards in his castle.”

  “Simna, I really don’t—” Ehomba’s reply was cut short by a shout from the third mate. She was standing in the rigging on the starboard side, the opposite side of the ship from the two travelers.

  “Ware the gunwales! Something’s coming up!”

  Everyone not on duty, passengers included, rushed to that side of the ship. With many of the crew already belowdecks either in their hammocks or preparing to retire, it was not immediately swarmed. There was room for each individual to peer over the side without crowding out a neighbor.

  At first Ehomba saw nothing, only dark water and the barely perceptible reflection of a slivered moon. Then one of the sailors standing by the boarding ladder that always hung over the side as a precaution, should anyone fall in, shouted and gestured straight downward. What had moments before been apparent only to the mate from her elevated vantage point could now be seen by all as it rose from the depths.

  Several members of the usually steadfast crew broke and ran as soon as they caught a glimpse of the apparition, hurling themselves belowdecks in hopes of hiding themselves away from the monstrosity. Others thought to find safety higher up in the rigging. That left the main deck clear save for Stanager and the bravest of her company. Terious was not surprised to see that the tall southerner held his ground, but the continued presence of the great black cat, the simple-minded brute, and the husky swordsman led him to comment admiringly on their unity of purpose.

  “After what we’ve seen and been through together these past weeks, my ponytailed friend, there’s nothing above or below the waters that can frighten us.” Even as he delivered himself of this characteristic burst of bravado, Simna was contemplating making a dash below for his sword, but he held back. For one thing, a smart man could judge the imminence of danger by monitoring the herdsman’s posture and expression. Ehomba showed no sign of concern, much less panic. He had not stiffened or drawn back from the apparition that was ascending majestically from the depths. If he felt safe, then it was most likely that all who remained in his vicinity could likewise count themselves reasonably secure.

  Also, bolting the scene in search of weaponry would not make much of an impression on Stanager, who stood tense but agreeably disposed to greet whatever was making its way up toward her ship.

  The legs emerged first. Long and skeletal white they were, with touches of pink and carmine, as if a ghost had spent an evening making itself up to attend a masked ball. Fearsome barbs and spines protruded from each limb. They were tipped in ebony, legs armed with quill pens that had been dipped in the blackest of inks. Then the body appeared, equipped with an even more conspicuous array of anomalous weaponry. Bulging eyes stared up at the humans that lined the railing. They goggled from the terminus of stalks that weaved slowly from side to side.

  Those terrible spines helped first one leg, then another, to secure a grip on the boarding ladder. Turning itself sideways, the visitant from the frigid ocean deep began to make its way upward. Muttering softly and swiftly to their respective chosen deities, two more of the crew fled for the safety and anonymity of their quarters.

  From claw-tip to claw-tip, the creature hauling itself up out of the water was no less than twenty feet across. Seaweed clung to extruded spurs and hung from legs and eyestalks. Water dripped from its body while tiny bubbles oozed around the edges of the multipart mouth.

  Simna was at once fascinated by and disappointed in the nocturnal caller. “Your weed man was right, bruther. He sent to us a king.” The swordsman made a disgusted sound. “A king crab.”

  “A king crab, yes,” Ehomba readily agreed, “but is that all it is?”

  His companion frowned. “I don’t follow you, Etjole. Not that it’s the first time your reasoning has left me blind, deaf, and dumb.”

  The herdsman continued his line of thinking. “It is a king crab, but is it also a king among crabs? Look at its head.”

  “Must I?” Even as he objected, the swordsman complied. The longer he stared, the more his frustration gave way to dawning realization. There in the dim glow supplied by the Grömsketter’s oil lamps he saw those spines and projections in a new and implausible light. Squint a little, squeeze the eyes tight, and one could almost see those chitonous barbs and protuberances coming together to form, if not an actual crown, at least an approxima
tion of a comparable configuration.

  “What now?” he muttered. “Don’t tell me, bruther, that you can talk to even so lowly a creature as this? Big as it is, it is still only a crab, a creature that spends all its life grubbing in the muck and ooze at the bottom of the sea.”

  “You have many good qualities, friend Simna, but you also have an unfortunate tendency to underestimate all manner of living things based upon their lifestyle. I know of men who abide at rarefied heights yet who cannot be trusted to tend to their own children, while others who live in the depths of poverty and homeliness I would charge with the safekeeping of my own wife.”

  Simna was not so easily rebuked. “Then if I underestimate, you overtrust, my friend.”

  Ehomba smiled. “Perhaps between us, then, we may make one sensible human being.” He turned away as long, clawed legs came clambering over the side of the ship. “You are right to say that I cannot ‘talk’ to a crab. But there are numerous manners of speaking, Simna, of which the Naumkib know more than many other peoples. It is what comes of living in a lonely country. You learn to make yourself known to whatever inhabits the same land as yourself, however many legs it happens to walk upon.”

  The prodigious crustacean finally clambered over the railing to settle on the deck with a waterlogged thunk. Stalks swiveled bulbous eyes to right and then to left. Behind it, a captivated Stanager Rose spoke to Ehomba without taking her eyes off the visitor.

  “If this is what your weedy man meant when he told you he would try to implore a king to come calling on us, then he must have believed you could communicate with it. I certainly can’t. I would know how to boil it, but not talk to it. I certainly don’t see what other use it can be of to us.”

  “Nor do I,” Ehomba confessed. “But you are right, Captain. The sargassum man must have had a thought in mind or he would not have asked this creature to seek us out. I will try my best to find out what is afoot.” As soon as he stepped forward, the huge crab scrabbled sideways to confront him. It was wary, but not afraid. Nor had it reason to be; not with those enormous sharp-spined arms with which to defend itself.

  “What is afoot not indeed, but aplenty,” Simna murmured to the hulking Hunkapa, who stood open-mouthed behind him. Unsurprisingly, the shaggy mountain did not react to what the swordsman felt was his best sally in some time.

  Behind both of them, the black litah stood and stared in silence. From time to time its long tongue would emerge to lick heavy lips. The humans aboard were not alone in their fondness for the taste of crabmeat. The cat restrained the impulses that were surging through it. Ehomba had scolded him before for trying to eat an envoy. It was, the herdsman had pontificated at the time in no uncertain terms, not only bad manners but very poor diplomacy.

  But oh, Ahlitah mused, what a meal this visitor would make!

  Standing alone before the visitant, aware that those watching viewed it from perspectives as wildly different from one another as from his, Ehomba considered how best to proceed. The type of talking itself was no stranger to him. He had known it since childhood, albeit with a considerably lesser degree of eloquence. He simply did not want to get off on the wrong foot. Offend this noble creature and it would doubtless plunge itself right back into the depths it had risen from. It was not for nothing that its kind were called crabs.

  Raising both hands, he began to wiggle several of his fingers in a certain manner. Though when it came to sheer number of limbs his counterpart had him outgunned, not all could be used simultaneously for conversation. Out of the water, at least, several had to be used at all times to support the weighty body.

  “Well would you look at that!” Not for the first time Simna was all but struck dumb by an unexpected talent of his lanky companion. This time there was no question that sorcery was not involved. It was, as Ehomba had tried to explain, simply a different kind of speaking. One that made use of hand signs, or in the case of the crab king, foot signs, to express notions, emotions, and ideas.

  After several minutes the giant crustacean and the tall human were practically shouting, so rapid and intense had the movements of their respective limbs become. It was certain that much was being said, but what, not a man jack among the crew had a clue. Neither did Simna ibn Sind, or the black litah, and certainly not the utterly engrossed Hunkapa Aub, who had to pause to ponder the meaning of any sentence longer than ten words.

  Eventually the frenetic exchange of signs slowed. Bending low, Ehomba extended a hand. It was met by a thorny claw. They did not shake, exactly. The crustacean’s armature would not properly allow it. But there was a definite physical meeting, following which those remarkable legs proceeded to carry their owner once more up over the railing and down the side of the ship. Rushing to the rail, those members of the crew who had remained on deck watched as the spiny, starlike shape sank once more beneath the wavelets, swallowed up entire by water the color of blue-black ink.

  Direct as always, Stanager was first to question Ehomba. “Are we to make anything of that? Or was it no more than an unlikely dialogue?”

  Turning to her, the herdsman smiled. “They are going to try to help us. Not because it is in their nature to do so, or because it would ever happen under ordinary circumstances—but because the sargassum man asked it of them. As fellow creatures of the sea, it seems they have a compact of sorts that is very old, and inviolate. The king was reluctant, but as soon as he saw that I was able to speak with him, his last uncertainties disappeared.”

  “I’m glad they’re going to try to help us,” Simna put in. “If not, I’d hate to think we let such a superb meal just walk away.”

  Ehomba glanced over at his friend. “Odd you should say that, Simna. The king was thinking the same about you. About all of us. His people are quite fond of the taste of man, having dined on numerous occasions on the bodies of sailors drowned at sea. At the bottom of the ocean, it seems, nothing goes to waste.”

  The swordsman envisioned himself sinking, slowly sinking to the soft sands below, his face turned blue, his eyes bulging in a manner not unlike the crab’s. Saw himself settling to the bottom, to be visited not long thereafter by first one small crab, and then another, and another, until dozens of tiny but sharply efficient claws were ripping at his saturated flesh, tearing off bits of meat to be stuffed into alien, insectlike jaws, there to be ground into…

  “Like I said.” Simna swallowed uncomfortably. “I’m glad they’re going to try to help us.” He blinked. “Hoy, wait a moment. Who are ‘they’?”

  “The king and his minions, of course. Apparently he commands a substantial empire, even if all of it is hidden well beneath the waves.”

  “I don’t understand.” Stanager’s expression showed clearly how much she disliked not understanding. “How can they help us to leave this valley?”

  “The king did not say.” Ehomba looked past her, to the east. “He told me that we should wait here until morning, and then we would all see if the thing was possible.”

  Her tone was sarcastic. “That we can certainly do! It’s not as if we had plans to be anywhere else.” Nodding past Terious, she indicated the hopeful, attentive crew. “Set the watch, Mr. Kamarkh. All crew to be sounded to quarters if anything, um, unusual should start to happen.” Raising her voice, she addressed the others herself. “All of you, hear me! Get some sleep. With luck”—and she glanced at the studiously noncommittal Ehomba—”tomorrow will find us freed of this place.

  “Though how,” she murmured as she turned and strode past the herdsman, “I cannot begin to imagine.”

  V

  It was not a perfect morning, but it would do. As was his wont, Ehomba rose with the sun. Normally one to sleep in, even aboard ship, Simna ibn Sind bestirred himself as soon as he sensed his rangy companion was awake. Whatever was going to happen, he was not about to miss it. And if nothing happened, as he half suspected it might, why then he would have a fine excuse for returning early to bed.

  Hunkapa Aub was already awake, it being hard for h
im to sleep long in the cramped space he had been provided in the hold. There was no sign of Ahlitah, there being little that could rouse the big cat from its rest. Hands working against one another behind her back, Stanager Rose nervously paced the helm deck as she stared out to sea. She manifested more anxiety than she intended when Ehomba finally showed himself.

  “Anything?” Shading his eyes against the sharpness of the early morning sun, the herdsman scanned the surrounding waters.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all, unless you call the presence of a hundred or so flying fish significant. I hope your crab was not keeping you hand-talking so long merely because he valued the opportunity for conversation.”

  “I do not think so. And he is not my crab, nor the sargassum man’s. Whatever happens, he was most definitely his own crab.”

  A cry came from the lookout. It was indistinct, perhaps because the man was choked with surprise. But his extended arm, if not his foreshortened words, pointed the way.

  Rising from the calm surface of the sea beneath the bowsprit was a line of crabs. All manner of crabs. Every type and kind and variety of crab the sailors of the Grömsketter had ever seen, as well as a goodly number that were new to them. Ehomba recognized some they did not, and there were many that he had never seen before. There were blue crabs and stone crabs, snow crabs and lady crabs, rock crabs and green crabs. There were tiny sand crabs and fiddler crabs, each sporting a single grotesquely oversized dueling claw. Pea crabs vied for space in the line with hermit crabs, while pelagic crabs shared the water with benthic crabs that were utterly devoid of color and nearly so of eyesight. There were king crabs, too, but of them all were subjects and none visibly a king.

  The line they formed was a good two feet wide and stretched across the surface as far as one could see. Stretched all the way across the valley and up the nearest aqueous slope, in fact. Claws linked tightly to claws while spiny legs entwined, the chitonous queue continuing to thicken and grow even as those aboard the trapped vessel gathered to gaze at the astonishing sight.