Robert Redick - The Rats and the Ruling sea

Bolutu shook his head. "I am not.'

A hint of panic entered the room. Neeps, trying gamely to contain the situation, forced out a laugh. 'Fine then, I got it wrong. Let's not get excited. We're all human beings.'

'I am not,' said Bolutu.

Everyone leaped up; Khalmet's sword was out in a flash; Druffle bared his cutlass, and even Fiffengurt whipped the blackjack from his pocket. Bolutu wisely raised his hands in surrender. For a moment they heard only their own breath and the slosh of the bilgewater. Then Pazel stepped in front of Bolutu, his heart pounding. Courage, courage! said Diadrelu from above.

Trembling, Pazel extended his hand. 'Elaya,' he said.

'Elaya chol! ' replied a delighted Bolutu, shaking his hand. 'And where did you learn Nemmocian, Mr Pathkendle?'

'On Bramian,' said Pathkendle. 'From a scrap of paper in Ott's hand. I've never heard it spoken before this minute. And… it's not your native tongue, is it?'

Bolutu shook his head. 'Indeed, I barely speak Nemmocian, though I read it well. Can you guess why?'

'Not if my life depended on it,' said Pazel.

'What in Rin's name is happening, here?' demanded Khalmet. 'Who is this lunatic, who says he is not human?'

Suddenly Thasha gasped. 'It was you!' she said. 'It was you I was sensing, not Ramachni at all! But you're with him, aren't you? You're his friend!'

'Friend?' Bolutu smiled at her in turn. 'Admirer might be a better word. I have the honour to know and revere him, but I have seen Ramachni only once in the past twenty years: at the battle of the Straits of Simja, the day he put out the coal Arunis placed in my mouth.'

He looked at the ring of startled faces. 'Don't fear me, please. I am your ally still, and will hide the truth from you no longer. My name is Belesar Bolutu Malineko Urstorch. I am a dlomu. And I must hasten to inform you that the battle we are engaged in is larger than you have ever suspected.'

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.'