“Etjole! Bruther!” To his frantic entreaties there was no response. Pressing an ear to the herdsman’s chest, Simna’s eyes grew wide as he detected no sound from within. Hastily moistening a palm, he held it in front of the herdsman’s unmoving lips. Nothing cooled his skin.
“It can’t be.” He drew back from the motionless body. “It can’t be.”
Dipping his maned head low over the prostrate form, Ahlitah listened and sniffed once, twice. Then yellow eyes rose, flicking first in the direction of Hymneth the Possessed, then meeting those of the stricken swordsman.
“It’s over, Simna. He’s dead. The herder of cattle is dead.”
And he was.
* * * *
Ehomba felt no pain. In fact, he did not “feel” at all. He knew instinctively, unarguably, that he was dead. Dead at the hands of another. Hymneth the Possessed had killed him. This knowledge caused him neither regret nor discomfort. Those were concerns that belonged to the world of the living, and he was no longer a part of that. He did not think of his condition as a failure, or lament for his lost family, or sorrow for anything left behind. After death, everything changed.
He was conscious that some time had passed, though whether seconds or years he could not have said. At first he had been aware of being above his body, utterly divorced from it and from everything of the living flesh. Very quickly thereafter and without any sense of transition or traveling he found himself in a void, an immeasurably vast space that would have been completely dark except for the presence of distant, unblinking stars. They were not the stars one saw in life. Somehow they seemed much closer, yet infinitely distant. There was no sense of ground, of up or down or direction, or of the presence of the Earth. Only the void, stars—and souls.