They did not stop until that evening, when they had ascended to heights where only a few wildflowers grew. Unlike the millions that covered the hills from which they had fled, these were most emphatically nonaggressive.
Ehomba laid Simna down at the base of a large tree with far-spreading limbs and deeply grooved bark so dark it was almost black. A small stream meandered nearby, heading for the flower hills and the distant sea. In another tree a pair of crows argued for the sheer raucous delight of hearing themselves caw.
Ahlitah stood nearby, shaking his head as he stumbled nowhere in particular on unsteady legs, trying to shake off the effects of the insidious perfume. He had handled the effects better than the swordsman, but if Ehomba had not apprised him of what was happening and helped to hurry him out of the hills, he too would surely have succumbed to the second cloud of invisible perfume.
Simna must have taken the brunt of the first discharge, Ehomba felt. A blissful look had come over the swordsman’s face and he had gone down as if beneath the half dozen houris he spoke of so frequently and fondly. Then the flowers, the impossible, unreal, fantastic flowers, had actually picked him up and started to carry him off to some unimaginable destination of their own. The herdsman had drawn the sky-metal sword and gone grimly to work, trying not to think of the beauty he was destroying as he cut a path to liberate his friend. The blossoms he was shredding were not indifferent, he had told himself. Their agenda was not friendly. The intervention of active thorns and sharp-edged leaves and other inimical vegetation had been proof enough of that. His lower legs were covered with scratches and small puncture wounds.
The litah had fared better. Unable to penetrate his fur, small, sharp objects caused him no difficulty. Unsteady as he was, he had still been able to clear away large patches of flowers with great swings of his huge paws. Now he tottered about in circles, shaking his head, his great mane tossing violently as he fought to clear the effects of the concentrated fragrance from his senses.
Electing to conserve the safe town water that filled the carrying bag in his pack, Ehomba walked to the stream and returned with a double handful of cool liquid. He let it trickle slowly through his long fingers, directly over the swordsman’s face. Simna blinked, sputtered, and sat up. Or tried to. Ehomba had to help him. Woozy as a sailor in from a long voyage and just concluding a three-day drunk, the swordsman wiped at his face and tried to focus on the figure crouching concernedly before him.
“Etjole? What happened?” Simna looked around as if seeing the grass-covered hills, the grove of trees, and his friends for the first time. To his left, the big cat fell over on its side, growled irritably, and climbed to its feet again. “What’s wrong with kitty?”
“The same thing that is wrong with you, only to a lesser extent.”
“Wrong with me?” The swordsman looked puzzled. He started to stand, immediately listed severely to starboard, and promptly sat down again. “Hoy!” Placing a hand on either side of his head, he sat very still while rubbing his temples. “I remember smelling something so sweet and wonderful it can’t be described.” He looked up suddenly. “The flowers!”
“Yes, the flowers.” Ehomba looked back toward the south, toward the resplendent hills from which they had fled. “For some reason they wanted to keep us there. I cannot imagine why. Who can know how a flower thinks?” He turned back to his friend. “They tried to hold us back with little vines and roots and sharp leaves. When that did not work, they tried to smother us with delight. I caught very little of the perfume. Ahlitah received more. You were all but suffocated.” He held a hand up before the other man’s face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Five. That’s four too many.” The swordsman coughed lightly. “First horses and now flowers. Give me the reeking warrens of a city with its cutthroats and thieves and honest, straightforward assassins any day. Those I know how to deal with. But flowers?” Lowering his palms from the sides of his head, he took several deep breaths. “I’ll never again be able to feel the same way about picking a bouquet for a favorite lady.”
“I am glad that you are feeling better.”
“So am I, though I don’t ever before remember being knocked unconscious quite so pleasantly.” He rose, only slightly shaky. Nearby, the litah was exercising and testing its recovered reflexes by leaping high in playful attempts to knock the agitated crows out of their tree.
“By Gielaraith, wait a minute. If I was unconscious and the cat indisposed, how did I get out of those hills?”
“I carried you.” Ehomba was scanning the northern horizon. Ahead, the terrain continued to climb, but gently. No ragged escarpments, no jagged peaks appeared to block their way northward.
The swordsman’s gaze narrowed. “The aroma didn’t affect you?”
“I told you—you and Ahlitah received a stronger dose than I did. Besides, my sense of smell is much weaker than either of yours.” Looking back down, he smiled. “Many years of herding cattle and sheep, of living close to them every day, have dulled my nose to anything very distilled.”
“Hoy—the preserving power of heavy stink.” With a grunt, Simna straightened his pack on his back. “I’m used to my assailants smelling like six-month-old bed linen, not attar of camellia.”
“In a new and strange land one must be prepared to deal with anything.” Ehomba started northward. The grass was low and patchy, the ground firm and supportive. Able to hike in any direction they preferred, they did not need to follow a particular path. Behind them, the litah gave up its game of leap and strike, conceding victory to the exhausted crows. “Old forms may no longer be valid. Seeming friends may be masked by lies, and conspicuous enemies nothing more than upright individuals in disguise.”
Having shaken off the last lingering effects of the potent perfume, the swordsman strode along strongly beside him. “Hoy, that’s not a problem a man has in a dark alley.”
Ehomba took in their clean, bracing environs with a sweep of his free hand. “I would rather find myself in surroundings like this facing adversaries unknown than in some crowded, noisy city where one has to deal with people all the time.”
“Then we make a good team, long bruther. I’ll take care of the people, and you deal with the flowers. And damned if I don’t think I’ll have the easier time of it.”
They slept that night in a grove of smaller trees, welcoming in their silence and lack of activity. They were indisputably trees and nothing more, as was the grass that grew thickly at their bases and the occasional weed flower that added a dab of color to the campsite. The stars shone unblinkingly overhead in a cool, pellucid sky, and they enjoyed the best night’s sleep they had had since before embarking on their crossing of the Aboqua.
At least Simna ibn Sind and Ahlitah did. Ehomba found his slumber unexpectedly disturbed.
She was very tall, the vision was, though not so tall as the herdsman. Her skin had the texture of new ivory and the sheen of the finest silk. Large eyes of sapphire blue framed by high cheekbones gazed down at him, and her hair was a talus of black diamonds. Beneath a gown of crimson lace she was naked, and her body was as supplely inviting as a down-filled bed on a cold winter’s night.
Her lips parted, and the very act of separation was an invitation to passion. They moved, but no sounds emerged. Yet in the absence of words he felt that she was calling out to him, her arms spread wide in supplication. With her eyes and her posture, her limbs and the striking shape beneath the gown, he was convinced that she was promising him anything, anything, if he would but redeem her from her current plight.
Discomfited by her consummate union of lubricity and innocent appeal, he stirred uneasily in his sleep, tossing about on the cushioning grass. Her hands reached out to him, the long, lissome fingers drawing down his cheek to her lips, then his neck, his chest. She smiled enticingly, and it was as if the stars themselves had invited him to waltz in their hot and august company. He felt himself embraced, and the heat rose in his body like steam trapped within a kettle.
Then he became aware of another, a horned presence looming ominously above the both of them. It too was incapable of speech, though much was conveyed by glaring eyes and clenching teeth. Eyes downcast, the vision of the Visioness pulled back from him, drawn away by an awful unseen strength. In her place threatened the helmeted figure. It blotted out the light, and what it did not obscure, a pair of keening dark clouds that crept along at its heels enveloped and devoured.
“Etjole. Etjole!”
The hideous figure was shaking him now, thrusting him violently back and forth, and he was helpless to stop it. Shaking and—no, it was not the horned and helmeted one. That was a beast inhabiting his dream. The hands on his shoulders were solid, and real, and belonged entirely to the realm of wakefulness.
He opened his eyes to find a concerned Simna gazing down at him. It was still night, still dark out. Unable to stay long in one place, the stars had moved. But the grove of trees was unchanged, undisturbed by hideous intrusion. Nearby, the great humped mass of the black litah lay on its side, snoring softly.
The swordsman sat back on his heels. “Hoy, I don’t know what dream you were having, but don’t share it with me.”
Ehomba raised up on one elbow and considered his memories. “The first part was good. I am ashamed to admit it, but it was good.”
“Ah!” In the darkness the worldly swordsman grinned knowingly. “A woman, then. Your wife?”
Ehomba did not meet his gaze. “No. It was not Mirhanja.”
A gratified Simna slapped one knee to punctuate his satisfaction. “By Geuvar, you are human, then. Tell me what she was like.” His voice dripped eagerness.
Ehomba eyed him distastefully. “I would rather not. I am not happy with my reaction.”
“It was only a dream, bruther!” The swordsman was chuckling at his stolid companion’s obvious discomfiture. “Wedded or not, a man cannot be acclaimed guilty for enjoying his sleep. A dream is not a prosecutable offense—no matter what women think.”
“It is not that. It was not just any woman, Simna. It was her.”
“Hoy—then there was significance to it.” The swordsman’s smile was replaced by a look of grave concern. “What did you learn from it?”
“Nothing, except that she may somehow know that we are coming to try and help her. That, and the realization that she is more ravishing than even the image we saw above the fire that night on the veldt.”
“So beautiful,” Simna murmured, a far-off look in his eye. “Too beautiful for simple mortals like you and I, methinks.” His grin returned, its lubriciousness muted. “That doesn’t mean we can’t look, at least in dreams. But that wasn’t her you were seeing there at the last. You were moaning and rolling about.”
“Hymneth the Possessed. It had to be, I think.” Ehomba had lain back down, staring up at the stars, his head resting on the cup formed by his linked fingers. “As before, his face was hidden. I wonder if he is hideous to look upon in person.”
“With luck we’ll never find out.” Returning to his own bedroll, the swordsman slipped back beneath the blanket. Having climbed beyond the hills into the gentle mountains, they were now high above sea level, and along with fresh air and quilted silence the night brought with it a creeping chill.
Ehomba lay still for a long time, listening to the quick, sharp calls of nocturnal birds and the muffled voices of inquiring insects. He was both eager and afraid of returning to the dream. But when he finally drifted off, it was into that restful and rejuvenating region where nothing stirred—not even the vaporous images of imagination.
The next day they continued to ascend, but at such a gentle incline and over such accommodating gradients that the increasing altitude imposed no burden on them and did not slow their progress. They saw small herds of moose and sivatherium, camelops and wapiti. Ahlitah made a fine swift kill of a young bull bison, and they feasted luxuriantly.
Small tarns glittered like pendants of peridot and aquamarine at the foot of pure white snowpacks, casting reflections that shone like inverse cameos among the bare gray granites. At this altitude trees were stunted, whipped and twisted like taffy by relentless winter winds. Diminutive wildflowers burst forth in knots of blue and lavender, corn red and old butter yellow. None of them attempted to trip, seduce, or otherwise restrain the impassive hikers in their midst. Small rodents and marsupials dove for cover among the rock piles whenever the marchers approached, and Ahlitah amused himself by stalking them, pouncing, and then magnanimously letting the less-than-bite-size snacks scamper free.
They had already begun to descend from the heights when they encountered the sheep. Simna pronounced them to be quite ordinary sheep, but to the man from the far south they were strikingly different from the animals he had grown up with. Their fleece was thick and billowy where that of the Naumkib’s herds tended to be straight and stringy. Their narrowing faces were black or dirty white instead of brown and yellow. And their feet were smaller, to the point of being dainty. These were coddled animals, he decided, not one of which would survive for a week in the wilds of the dry country inland from the village. Yet they remained, indisputably, sheep.
At the strangers’ approach they showed they were not as helpless as they looked. Amid much distraught baaing and bleating, they hastened to form a circle; lambs in the middle, ewes facing determinedly outward, young rams spacing themselves efficiently along the outermost rim.
One old ram, obviously the herd dominant and leader, lowered his head and pawed angrily at the ground. Bleating furiously, he took several challenging pronks in the direction of the newcomers. At this point Ahlitah, who had been dawdling behind his human companions, trotted forward to rejoin them. Espying and taking nonchalant note of the ram’s challenge, he vouchsafed to give forth a midrange snarl, whereupon the suddenly paralyzed ram froze at the end of an advancing pronk, stood tottering on all fours for an instant or two, and proceeded to keel over onto one side in a dead faint, all four legs locked sideways and straight, parallel to the ground.
“Easy meat,” the litah commented idly as they strolled past the trembling herd.
“Mind your manners,” Ehomba chided his four-legged companion. “You cannot be hungry. Not after that half an animal you just devoured.”
“You’re right; I’m not hungry. But I’ve run too many hot mornings in pursuit of prey that eventually escaped ever to ignore something that looks like roast on a stick.” The maned head gestured scornfully in the direction of the herd, and thin, hoofed legs quaked at the casual nod. “These things are domesticated. They are become the vassals of human appetite.”
“You can say that again. I love mutton.” Simna was eyeing several plump members of the herd more covetously than the big cat.
Ehomba sighed. Belying his stocky frame, the swordsman’s appetites were outsized in every way. “If not the shepherd, we may encounter the landholder. Perhaps we can bargain for some chops, if you must have some.”
Walking on, they stumbled not on the landowner but upon his dwelling, a modest and unprepossessing structure of stone walls and thatched roof. There was a well out front, and a small garden fenced to keep out the wild vermin as well as sheep and goats. Smoke rose unhurriedly from the stone chimney, and flowering wisteria vined its way up the walls and around the door and the single window. Several young lambs grazed in a stone paddock back of the main building. At the travelers’ approach, an old dog lifted its head to check them out. Broad bands of white streaked her long black fur. Apparently satisfied, it laid its lower jaw back down on its paws. It did not bark, not even at the sight and smell of the litah.
“Quiet, tidy little place,” Simna declared grudgingly. “Simple lodgings for simple folk.”
“Even simple folk may have useful information to give.” Tilting back his head, the herdsman squinted at the sky. “And there are clouds gathering. If we are polite, and pleasant, perhaps the owner will let us stay the night.” Trying to see inside, Ehomba bent low and shaded his eyes with one hand. “When traveling in a strange land, any known direction is welcome.” Advancing on the half-open swinging door, the lower half of which was latched, he raised his voice. Impressively, the dog continued to disregard them.
“Hello! Is anyone at home? We see your smoke.”
“It’s not my smoke, no. It belongs to the fire. But you may come in anyhow, all of you.”
Ehomba led the way into the cottage, which was very neat and clean. Among the Naumkib, it would have been accounted a palace. Sturdy chairs surrounded a table. Both were decorated with carvings and fine scrollwork. An iron pot hung from a swing-out cooking bar in the large fireplace, and there was a sink with a hand pump on the far side of the room. Facing a stone fireplace off to the right were larger, upholstered chairs and a sitting couch. Bookshelves filled with well-thumbed tomes lined the walls, and hanging oil-filled lamps were in place to provide light throughout the evening hours. To the left, a door led to rooms unseen, and a short ladder leaning against one wall hinted at the presence of a copious attic. The cottage’s lone occupant was working at the sink, wet up to his elbows. He turned to smile at them as they entered.
“Mind your head, stranger. I don’t get many visitors, and few your size. Now, I’ll be with you in a moment. I’m just finishing up these dishes.”
The owner was plainly dressed in ankle-length pants and matching shirt of dark brown. Both were devoid of decoration. The simple elegance and efficiency of the furnishings suggested that they had not been made by the cottage’s occupant, but were the product of other craftsmen and had been bought and brought to this place by wagon or other means of transport. If true, it meant that the owner’s isolation was deceptive. He was here by choice rather than out of necessity, and had the resources to pay for more than basic needs.
Not that there was any overt reference to wealth to be seen anywhere within the cottage, unless one so considered the many books. But even a poor man could accumulate a decent library through careful purchasing, especially if it was accomplished over a matter of decades. And their diminutive host certainly had, if not obvious wealth, many years to his credit. His beard and hair were entirely gray, full but neatly trimmed, and despite the blush in his pale cheeks he was clearly an individual of considerable maturity.
“Just have a seat, over there, by the fire,” he instructed them as he ran a rag across the face of a ceramic plate. “I should have attended to these earlier, but there were new lambs in need of docking, and I thought it better to take care of them first.”
“Yes,” Ehomba agreed. He watched Simna flop like a rag doll into one of the big overstuffed chairs and then carefully imitated the swordsman’s actions. He was not used to such comfort. In the village, beds were stuffed but chairs were straight-backed and hard. “Better to see to that as quickly as possible or they are liable to become fly-blown.”
Putting the plate in a drying rack, the owner turned in surprise. “You are a sheep man, then?”
Simna rolled his eyes. “Oh no.” Near his feet, Ahlitah wound three times around himself before, satisfied, he lay down in front of the fire.
“Sheep, yes, and cattle. Mostly cattle.”
“I have never been a man for cattle.” Taking an intricately carved pipe from its stand, the homeowner ambled over to the stone hearth. Selecting a narrow taper from a small box affixed to the rockwork, he stuck it into the flames until it acquired one of its own, then touched the flickering tip to the bowl of the pipe. While he drew on the contents, he spoke around each puff. “Too rambunctious for me, and a bit much for one man to handle. Even with Roileé to help.”
“Roileé?” The herdsman searched the room for signs of another resident.
“My dog.” The owner smiled delightfully around the stem of his pipe. “She’s getting on, and she’s lost a step or two, but she’s still the best sheepdog in these mountains. I am Lamidy Coubert, and I think you are not from the Thinking Kingdoms.”
“How can you tell?” Simna chuckled softly.
Coubert laughed along with the swordsman. Removing the pipe from his mouth, he gestured with its bowl. “Well for one thing, no one I have heard of, not even lords and noblemen, travels with a house cat of quite such imposing dimensions. Much less one that speaks.” Seeing Ehomba’s expression, he added, “I heard all three of you talking outside as you approached the cottage. And your manner of dress, my friend, is also strikingly new to me.” He frowned slightly as he turned to Simna. “Your attire I can almost place.”
“You live alone here, Lamidy Coubert?” Ehomba asked him.
“Yes. Except for Roileé, of course.”
“Yet you allow us, three strangers, freely into your home. Two well armed, and the third a meat-eater of great size and strength. And you are not afraid?”
Coubert coughed lightly, checked his pipe. “If your intentions were malicious I could not have stopped you. So I might as well greet you.” His smile returned. “Besides, I have lived a long time now by myself. Here on the edge of civilization I get few visitors. So I try to treasure those I do.”
“I hate to disillusion you, old man, but this isn’t the edge of civilization. South of here lies the port of Lybondai and a host of other coastal cities.” Simna’s throat was calling for refreshment but he decided to hold off a while longer to see if their host offered before he made the request. “And beyond that, the sea of Aboqua, and the cities and cultures of the south. Myself, I’m from far to the east, and I can tell you, we’re goddamn civilized out that way.”
“I am sure.” The oldster was courteously contrite. “I meant no insult. It is simply the view that is generally held in the Thinking Kingdoms, and therefore one with which I am familiar, though I do not hold to it myself.” He gestured expansively. “Obviously, you three are as civilized as any people.”
“Two.” On the thick oval carpet before the crackling fireplace, Ahlitah spoke without lifting his head from his paws.
“Yes, well.”
“Where are the Thinking Kingdoms?” Ehomba inquired softly. Beyond the door and window, evening was stealing stealthily over the land. The muffled baaing of sheep was interrupted by the occasional booming of muted thunder. He could not tell which way the gathering storm was moving. With each strobing flash of unseen lightning the walls of the cottage seemed to grow stronger, and to tighten around them all like a finely made, heavy coat. A chill entered via the still open upper half of the double door. Feeling it, Coubert moved to shut the remaining barrier against the rising wind.
“The Thinking Kingdoms are all the lands to the north of here,” their host explained as he returned to stand near the fireplace, slightly to one side of the sputtering, popping blaze itself. “There is Bondressey, and the Dukedom of Veroi-verai. Farther to the north one may enter the Grand Barony of Melespra, which is bordered by Squoy East and Squoy South. East of the Grand Barony lies the river port of Urenon the Elegant, and downstream from it the province of Phan that is ruled by the enlightened Count Tyrahnar Cresthelmare.
“Those are only a few of the most notable kingdoms immediately to the north of here. There are many more, to east and west and to the north of Phan.”
“And all these tribes—these kingdoms,” Ehomba corrected himself. “They are at peace? I ask because we must travel farther north still.”
“There are always disputes and altercations, bickerings and controversies.” Coubert turned philosophical. “It is the nature of sovereigns to debate. But war is rare in the Thinking Kingdoms. Each ruler prides himself on his or her intelligence and learning. Altercations are most likely to be settled through reasoned discussion, sometimes by greatly respected teams of logicians.”
Simna indicated the pack and sword he had removed and placed near his feet. “Everybody’s different, Gulyulo says. Where I come from, we talk a lot while we’re arguing, but it’s usually loud, unreasoning, and in words of one syllable.”
“I can believe that.” Coubert turned back to Ehomba. “And you, my tall friend? How are disputations settled in your country?”
“The Naumkib are too small and too few to enjoy the luxury of infighting. We are too busy surviving to waste time and energy on individual quarrels.”
“Yet despite this claimed pacificity you carry not one but three large and unusual weapons,” the observant sheepherder pointed out sagely.
“It was thought I should be as well equipped as possible for this journey. Not every creature, much less every human, that one meets in strange lands is ready or willing to sit down and peacefully work out disagreements.”
“Hoy, you can say that again! Especially the ones that want to eat you.” Simna started to curl his legs up on the chair beneath his backside, then thought better of it. Not that he was shy, but his feet had not been washed in days, and though he would never admit to it, he was slightly intimidated by the unexpected tidiness of their surroundings.
“Whither are you bound, then?” their host inquired. “To which of the Thinking Kingdoms?” Reflected firelight danced in his pale green eyes.
“To none of them, based on what you have told us.” Ehomba felt himself growing sleepy. It had been a long day’s march, the welcoming warmth of the fire was seeping inexorably into his tired muscles, and the plushness of the couch on which his lanky frame reposed was intoxicating. “We have to cross the Semordria, and to do that we have learned that we must go to Hamacassar to find a ship.”
“Hamacassar!” For the first time since their arrival, the little man looked startled. “So far! And yet just a prelude to a greater journey still. I am impressed. You are great travelers.”
“You bet your chin hairs we are.” Simna nodded in the herdsman’s direction. “And my friend there, he’s a grand and powerful wizard. He claims to be doing this only to help some lady, but I know he’s really after a great treasure.” Looking smug, the swordsman crossed his arms over his chest and compromised with his legs by laying them across a small serving table.
The sheepherder nodded slowly as he digested this information before turning back to Ehomba. “Is what your friend says true? Are you a wizard?”
“Not only not a wizard,” the southerner protested, “but not grand or powerful, either. I was well prepared for this journey by the good people of my village, that is all.” He threw Simna a dirty look, but the swordsman ignored him. “Some people get an idea into their heads and no matter what you do, you cannot get it away from them. They bury it as deeply as a dog does a favorite bit of offal.”
“Oh, don’t I know that!” Puffing on his pipe, Lamidy Coubert chuckled under his breath. “A person’s mind is a hard thing to change, it is. Living up here by myself like this, I’m often the butt of jokes from the people of Cailase village, where I buy those things I can’t make myself. Or I am looked upon with suspicion and uncertainty by those few visitors who do manage to make it this far into the mountains.” He manifested a kindly grin. “But after they meet me, their concerns usually disappear quite rapidly. I’m not what even the most fearful would call a threatening figure.” He gestured with one hand at the surrounding room.
“As you can see, I don’t even keep any weapons here.”
Ehomba nodded, then eyed the old man with interest. “Where I live there are many predators. They are very fond of sheep as well as cattle. We have to watch over our herds every minute, or the meat-eaters would take the chance to snatch a lamb or calf. So we need our weapons. You have no predators here?”
“Oh yes, of course. Dire wolves and pumas, small smilodons and the occasional hungry griffin. But Roileé generally keeps them off, and if they’re persistent, whether out of deep hunger or ignorance or real stubbornness, I can usually make enough noise and fuss to drive them away.”
“That old dog would face down a griffin?” Simna was disbelieving. “She hardly looks steady enough to make it to the nearest ridge top.”
“Roileé may have lost a step or two, but she still has her bark, and she can still bite. I haven’t lost a lamb to a predator in twelve years.”
The swordsman grunted. “Hoy, it just goes to show. Appearances can be deceiving for people. I guess it can be the same for dogs.” He scrunched deeper into the obliging back of the chair. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything to drink? We’ve been a long time walking with nothing but water to sustain us.”
“Of course, of course!” For the second time Coubert looked startled. “My manners—I am getting old.” Thunder rumbled in the distance, and not as far off as before. The storm was definitely moving in the direction of the solidly built little cottage.
From an ice-chilled cabinet their elderly host brought out wine, and from a chest small metal goblets. Simna was disappointed in the limited capacity of the drinking utensils, but relaxed after their host set the bottle on the table and did not comment when refills were poured.
“You must tell me.” Coubert had taken a seat on the hearth just to the left of the fire. “What are the sheep like in your country? Are they the same as mine, or very different?”
Emitting a soft moan of despair, Simna poured himself a third glass of the excellent spirits and tried to shutter his ears as well as his mouth. Ehomba took up the question energetically, and the two men embarked on a discussion of sheep and sheep-raising, with an occasional aside to accommodate the dissimilar nature of cattle, that required the addition of several logs to the fire. Despite the steady cannonade of approaching heavy weather, Ahlitah was already submerged deep in cat sleep. With his abnormally long legs fully extended to front and rear, his paws nearly touched opposite walls of the cottage. With the assistance of more wine, Simna ibn Sind soon followed the imposing feline into similar latitudes of slumber.
Coubert’s hospitality extended to his offering his guest the only bed. Ehomba would not hear of it.
“Besides,” he told the oldster, “it has been my experience that the beds of more civilized people are too soft for me, and I would probably not sleep well in it. Better for me to remain here with my friends.” He pushed down on the cushion that was supporting him. “If this couch is also too soft, I assure you I will be very comfortable here on the floor, beside your excellent fire.” He glanced significantly upwards. “I think that tonight a strong roof will be the most important aid to sleep.”
“I think you’re right, my friend.” With a kindly smile, their host tapped the bowl of his pipe against the stone mantel, knocking the contents into the fireplace. “Actually, it’s been pretty dry hereabouts lately. We could use a good rain.” Thunder echoed through the surrounding vales in counterpoint to his comment. “From the sound of it, we’re about to have some. I hope you sleep well, Etjole.”
“Thank you, Lamidy.”
After the old man had retired to the room behind the kitchen, closing the door gently behind him, Ehomba struggled to negotiate with the couch for reconciliation of his long frame. It took some twisting and turning, and his legs still dangled off the far end, but the final position he settled on was not an impossible one, and he felt he would be able to sleep. The soothing fire was a great help, and the profundo purring of the black litah a suitable if not entirely exact substitution for the soothing susurration of the small waves that curled and broke rhythmically on the shore beneath the village.
He awoke to the peal of thunder and the flash of lightning. It revealed a world transformed into brief glimpses of stark black and white. Color returned only when the shocked purple faded from his sight, allowing him to see once again by the light of the dying fire. Ahlitah now reposed on his back with all four legs in the air, his massive skull lolling to one side, leaving him looking for all the world like a contented, spoiled tabby. That was one thing about cats, Ehomba knew: No matter how much they were scaled up in size, they all retained their essential, inherent catness.
Simna lay slumped in the chair, quite unconscious and smelling strongly of the fruit of the vine. The earth could have opened beneath the cottage and the swordsman would have slept until he hit bottom.
A second rumble rattled the room, leaving the herdsman more awake than ever. Rain tiptoed on the thatch and spilled in a succession of channeled bells off the roof to strike the compacted ground outside. Sleeping in the awkward position had left him with a cramp in his thighs. Grimacing, he swung his legs off the arm of the couch and onto the floor. He would walk off the cramp and then try to go back to sleep in a different position.
In the dwindling firelight he paced back and forth between the couch and the kitchen, feeling the sensation return to his legs. It was on one such turn that he happened to glance out a window precisely when distant lightning flared. What he saw, or thought he saw, momentarily frozen in the stark dazzle, gave him pause.
An uncertain frown on his face, he walked to the door and unlatched the top half. Cool, wet wind greeted him and blowing rain assailed his bare skin. He blinked it away, trying to penetrate the darkness. His eyes were sharp, his night vision acute, but he was no owl. Another flash of light, a boom of thunder close at hand, and his eyes finally confirmed what he had seen through the window a moment before. There could be no question about it.
Yapping and barking excitedly with the strength of a much younger animal, darting back and forth with impossible swiftness, leaping higher into the air than any impala, Lamidy Coubert’s dog was herding the lightning.