Eric Flint: Mother of Demons

Or, had tried. But the cannibals never reached the black monster. Their flails never touched him. The assault of the Utuku broke against the demonlord's companion, who stood over his prostrate form, unmoving, unyielding, accepting each blow of the flail and returning it with a stroke of the spear. And if Utuku flails tore the demonlord champion's flesh, his spear split Utuku brains; if their flails spilled his blood, his spear spilled their lives; and if they gave him pain, he gave them oblivion.

Then did the cannibals falter, for the spear-strokes were unstoppable. If the white passion of the demonlord's companion seemed mysterious to them, they had not the time to wonder at it. For the blue rage of their mantles was the palest of shades, compared to the color in the monster's eyes. The demon's white passion quickly vanished, covered with red blood. But the blue never faded from his glare, and it seemed, to the Utuku who faced him, to be the color of Fury Itself.

They faltered. And then gray death arrived, for Nukurren was there. The demonlord's companion finally collapsed. But the demonlord himself had regained his feet, and took up his spear, and fell upon them. Black as night, implacable. Endless night, then, to the Utuku who had flailed his companion.

For days Dzhenushkunutushen lay near death. Indeed, would almost certainly have died, were it not for the strength of his body. Other demons in the hospital, weaker than he, did die in those days. Three of them. Two had been among the human warriors in the center, and they had died soon after arriving in the hospital, from terrible wounds.

The third was a female demon. Though many of the apalatunush warriors who had ravaged the Utuku right would bear scars, only two had been slain. Of those two, only one had survived the battle itself, to be brought to the hospital.

The female demon lingered for days before she died. Her name, Nukurren learned, had been Shofiyaburrunushtayn. She learned the name from the many demons who came to the hospital. All of the demons came, Nukurren thought, to sit by the side of their wounded and dying. Nukurren found the demon way of expressing grief, like so much else about them, to be messy, unsightly and grotesque. But she did not doubt for a moment that the water which leaked from their eyes, transparent though it was, bore the essence of brown misery.

The Mother of Demons herself came, many times, to sit with Shofiyaburrunushtayn and Dzhenushkunutushen. Nukurren was mildly interested to note that the Mother of Demons, alone among them, never wept (such, she learned, was the Enagulishuc word for that strange means of showing grief). She merely sat there, silent, still; her flat, armless face as rigid as bronze.

In her visits to the hospital, the Mother of Demons spoke rarely, and never to Nukurren. At first, Nukurren wondered (not caring, simply curious) if the Mother of Demons was angry at her for some unknown reason. All the other demons who came to the hospital spoke to Nukurren. Spoke to her often, in fact, and sometimes at tedious length; expressing their gratitude and their affection.

Eventually, Nukurren thought she understood. The Mother of Demons never showed her grief because it was so great that the showing of it would break her completely. And if she never spoke to Nukurren, it was not out of anger. It was because to speak to the gukuy warrior who had saved so many of her children (perhaps, in the end, all of them-for battles are fickle things) would be to acknowledge her own responsibility for sending them into their death. A responsibility which the Mother of Demons had taken, and had accepted; but could not yet, thought Nukurren, call by its own name.

The day came, after Shofiyaburrunushtayn finally died, when the healer demon Mariyaduloshruyush pronounced Dzhenushkunutushen safe from danger. Shortly thereafter, the Mother of Demons arrived at the hospital. The young male demon was conscious now, if still very weak, and he and his mother exchanged a few words before he fell asleep. For long, then, did the Mother of Demons remain, holding the huge, deadly hand of her child in her own tiny and much deadlier one.

The Mother of Demons sat on one side of Dzhenushkunutushen's pallet. Nukurren, as she had done for many days, squatted on the other. As always, the Mother of Demons said nothing to Nukurren; did not even look at her.

Much later, the Mother of Demons arose and made to leave. But at the doorway, she stopped, motionless for a time, and then turned back. She came to stand before Nukurren and then, still silent, bowed to the warrior.

Nukurren recognized the bow. Nukurren was very observant, and had already learned many of the subtle methods by which the demons expressed their sentiments. But no subtlety was needed here. The bow which the Mother of Demons gave to Nukurren was not the bow which ummun gave to gukuy. This was the great bow, the special bow. The bow which had no name in Enagulishuc, but which the Kiktu called the gukku tak tu rottonutu, the "homage to the Old Ones"; and the Pilgrims, in Anshac, the purren owoc.

Truly, the Mother of Demons, thought Nukurren, after Inudiratoledo left the hospital.

She, alone, almost understands.

There was no place for Nukurren in this new world being born, for the chants were absurd. Grandiose, preposterous, ridiculous- lies. That the chantresses themselves, and those who listened to the chants, thought them the truth mattered not at all. Lies, believed, are still lies. And untruth was made even the worse, by the fact it was thought to be true.

For there was no Nukurren the Valiant. That creature did not exist, had never existed, could never exist. There had been no glory in her charge. Neither glory, nor grandeur, nor courage, nor valor, nor justice, nor hope for the future, nor even the thought of triumph.

There had been nothing in it. Nothing.

It had been that nothing which had made her charge truly irresistible. Nukurren knew, had long known, that she was a great warrior. But not the greatest warrior in the world could have carried through that charge. Her charge had been irresistible because it was not a warrior's charge.

To be sure, she had used all her warrior's skill-and immense skills they were. But the soul of that charge had been the shriek of a newborn spawn, realizing, from the first moment of consciousness, that the universe was a cannibal. Knowing, always, that there was nothing in the world; nothing but pain and solitude, which endured, and endured, simply because the universe was a torturer enjoying its sport. A cannibal, lingering over the feast.

Nukurren had gone to the battle, but she had not intended to participate. She had come, simply because-she did not know, exactly. A professional interest, partly, to see how well the demons had learned the lessons she had taught them. But, mostly, she had gone because Dzhenushkunutushen had given back her weapons and her armor, and she had never realized he possessed them. She had been moved, then. She had been moved, not by the still-new and uncertain friendship embodied in Dzhenushkunutushen's return of her belongings. No, she had been moved by her astonishment that a monster could exist in the world who would salvage the possessions of a creature who, at the time, had done nothing to him but harm. She had come to the battle, in the end, wondering if such a capacity for friendship was possible.

Then, at the battle itself, she saw Dzhenushkunutushen die. (He did not die, as it happened. But Nukurren had been certain he would, and had been utterly astonished to find him still alive when she broke through). She watched Dzhenushkunutushen die, and the demonlord he cherished, and the other demons for whom he was their champion and protector, and knew they were dying because they were young. The universe had not given them time. The universe had given them, demons that they were, all the colors of creation. It had given them all the things which Nukurren had never had, and never would. It had even given the demons the power to extend friendship to one whom all others had cast out since birth. And then, had denied them the time to learn from the friendship. Had cast them, in the fearlessness of their youth, into a battlefield that needed the cunning of experience to survive.