Free A Triumph of Souls by Alan Dean Foster Page B

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 showedclearly 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
    I t 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 him 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 wasnot 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