“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 wager it 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.