No one moved. Khalmet and Druffle kept their weapons raised. Pazel realised suddenly that he and Bolutu were still holding hands. Releasing the man, he stuttered, 'A dluh. A dloh-'
'Dlomu,' said Bolutu gently. 'Just one of the million, and if you let me live a few more days you will see for yourself what we truly look like, for now I know that my disguise-enchantment is at last starting to break. My new tongue proves it. We dlomu can regrow parts of our bodies, over time. Fingers, hands, even whole limbs if we rest properly. This tongue started growing just days after the sorcerer maimed me.' He probed the tongue with his fingers. 'Gagh. It is whole at last.'
If Bolutu meant to allay their fears, he did not succeed. Intelligent beings other than humans were not unheard of in Alifros: nearly everyone had seen the squid-eyed nunekkam, cooking on the decks of their houseboats, or playing their flutes at nightfall in some field or garden, their hairless children tumbling at their feet. A smaller number had seen ixchel sprinting for their lives along an alley, or flikkermen haggling in the flesh markets, or augrongs or bristle-backed stoors lumbering over the hills. A rare few had met with murths. But Pazel had never heard of dlomu, and by their faces he saw that none of the others had either. Marila stared at Bolutu like a frightened animal. Thasha's face glowed with a mix of rapture and fear. Big Skip Sunderling looked as though he had stepped into a madhouse and forgotten where the exit lay. Flinching, he whet his lips and whispered, 'A million?'
'Perhaps slightly more,' said Bolutu, 'spread out across the Empire.'
'The man's raving,' said Druffle with a shaky laugh. 'A million — things, running around the Empire, and no one claps eyes on you? What, do you all live buried in caves?'
'I don't think he's talking about the Empire of Arqual,' said Pazel.
'Right again,' said Bolutu. 'Arqual is but a little realm compared to Bali Adro, our vast and glorious kingdom in the South. Almost half of us are dlomu, including our Emperor and his court. Slightly less than a third are human, but their numbers are growing quickly. The remainder are a hotchpotch of other races, mostly unknown in the north. Such wonders in Bali Adro! Had we a month of council meetings I could scarcely attempt their description. And great as it is, Bali Adro comprises but a third of the mighty southern lands.'
Khalmet's look was hard and suspicious. 'You're asking us to believe… that you come from beyond the Nelluroq?'
'Exactly, Lieutenant. Now sheathe your sword, I pray you.'
'What do you really look like?' asked Marila.
Bolutu studied his hands, as if they might have changed in the last few minutes. 'Nothing terrible,' he said. 'We are blacker than the blackest humans. Our eyes have two lids, and shine in a way yours never can, like the eyes of night creatures. Our skin is smooth and tight; it would crack before it wrinkled. Such are the visible differences.
'As for this body, I am quite aware that I am too short and thick-chested to be a Noonfirther. That was to be the identity I assumed, and the metamorph-spell our wizards wrapped me in seemed perfect at first: when they finished I looked every bit the well-heeled gentleman from Pol. Scores of us agreed to such changes, trading our dlomic bodies for human ones.
'But twenty years ago, as we came north across the Nelluroq, something happened. I still do not understand it. We passed through a kind of soundless storm, a storm not of wind but of light. It blinded us, and when our eyesight returned days later we found that we had changed again. Some of my comrades had reverted completely to their dlomic bodies, and could play no part in our mission. Others still appeared human, but had reverted in one respect or another to themselves. I had regained my old height and weight. No longer able to pass for a Noonfirther, I chose to be a Slevran — the only other possible explanation for my skin colour.'
'But what in Pitfire are you doing here?' said Thasha. 'If you went to so much trouble to seem human and journey to the north, why are you on a boat heading south? Are you just trying to get home?'
Startled, Bolutu turned to her. 'You… want me to tell them?' he said
'What are you talking about?' Thasha demanded. 'I want you to tell me.'
Bolutu's eyes darted nervously from face to face. 'Yes,' he said at last. 'I see now that I must.'
'Then be quick about it, for Rin's sake,' said Fiffengurt.
Still uneasy, Bolutu began: 'I came north over the Ruling Sea as a youth. That was two decades ago, as I told you. Oh yes, there are ships as great as Chathrand in the south: not many, but enough. Ours was a mission of justice, m'lady — justice and retribution. We were forty hunters: thirty humans, and ten others, mostly dlomu like myself, in magical disguise. We had sworn to each other and our monarch that we would find and slay the criminal Arunis Wytterscorm, also known as the Blood Mage. This sorcerer's meddling in the affairs of kings had left many a nation at war with its neighbours, and the whole of the mighty South was the poorer for his ravages. When I left, twenty years ago, Bali Adro was still healing, and I doubt that she is finished yet. Catastrophe is the mage's calling. And what he did to our realm, he has for the last sixty years been struggling to inflict on your own.'
Bolutu sat down once more on his crate. The others glanced at each other, and warily followed suit. 'Arunis has played this game for centuries: seeking power in one land, reaching too far, destroying what he sought to rule. And later, moving on to some place where his name and crimes are unknown. He has crossed the Nelluroq many times in his long life. He profits greatly by our forgetting.'
'You make him sound worse than all the devils in the Pits rolled together,' said Fiffengurt. 'Is he that strong?'
'No,' said Bolutu, 'and that is why he runs. He lacks the strength to conquer any land outright; his ruinous talent has been to set us at each others' throats. But should he find a way to use the Nilstone, he will command a power more terrible than the Worldstorm. Then I fear he will not only bleed the nations of Alifros, but begin to exterminate them.'
Bolutu sighed, and rubbed his face. 'Now to the worst part of my story.'
'It gets worse?' asked Dastu, incredulous.
'More shameful, anyway. Arunis, you see, did not simply choose to assault your northern lands. He was sent. Dispatched, as it were, by a league of criminals in my country, to steal something from yours.'
Aya Rin, hissed Diadrelu. Now I see.
'Of course,' said Bolutu, 'I am speaking of the Nilstone. And the league of which I speak — known as the Ravens, for they grow fat on death — has wanted it for nine hundred years. When your-'
He checked himself, as if he had almost spoken amiss. Then, taking a deep breath, he continued: 'When your great wizardess, Erithusme, set out to rid herself of the Nilstone, she found to her horror that she was less its owner than its slave. First she tried to bury it within the hoard of Eplendrus the Glacier-Worm, but the Stone only drove the creature mad, so that he took his own life, and left the hoard unguarded. She came next to our lands, where our mages met and questioned her.'
'They wouldn't take the Stone,' said Thasha. 'I know that part of the story. They made her carry it away.'
'So they did,' said Bolutu, 'but not before the mighty of Bali Adro had seen the miracles she could work with it: a river turned backwards, a forest made to bloom in winter, a tower reduced to a termite mound. Erithusme was, after all, the only being able to wield the Nilstone since the time of the Fell Princes. She knew that it would one day kill her too, if she did not relinquish it, but meanwhile it gave her powers beyond reason. She had no peer in Alifros. She was the master of the world.'
'But she never wanted to rule it,' said Thasha. 'Unless my Polylex has it wrong.'
Bolutu shook his head. 'I said master, my lady, not tyrant. No, she did not wish to rule the world. And she certainly did not wish to force the Stone on anyone. So she departed again, this time to a secret place, and there she laboured alone. Her goal was to pierce the very fabric of the world, and cast the Stone through the aperture, into the dark realm from whence it came. Never had she attempted anything so difficult; all her might as a wizardess she poured into the task. The effort nearly killed her — and failed, for in the end she could not use the power of the Stone against the Stone itself.
'When she returned to the northern world, she had lost the better part of her strength. The Mzithrin Kings gave her shelter, and Erithusme was forced to plead with them for a safe place — any safe place — to leave the Stone until such time as she could recover, and try again.'
'Aha,' said Fiffengurt. 'Then it was the Sizzies who made the Red Wolf.'
'No, sir; that was Erithusme's own work. The Mzithrin Kings built the Citadel around it, and more importantly, an armour of legends that wound the Nilstone up with their own fear of devils and corruption, lest anyone should be
