A sharp pain stabbed through Nukurren’s ruined eye. She reached up an arm, felt a strange thing covering it.
To her surprise, Dhowifa pulled her arm away.
“Don’t touch that!” he cried.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of thing made of plants.” He hesitated. “One of the demons put it there. On the first day. It put similar ones on your other wounds. I tried to pull the things off, of course, because I thought it was trying to poison you. But it wouldn’t let me, and it’s much stronger than I am. Then, it got this other one—” Dhowifa gestured toward the large white demon who was still stick-pedding alongside the litter “—to talk to me. It speaks Kiktu. I don’t understand Kiktu as well as you do, and it’s got a horrible accent, but as near as I can make out, it was telling me that the things will help you heal. And I noticed that it’s wearing one too. I think it’s one of the ones you injured.”
Nukurren looked again at the white demon. On one of its upper—tentacles? no, they were jointed like its peds—its upper limbs, a large poultice was strapped.
“So I decided to leave them there,” continued Dhowifa. “I think you should leave them alone.”
He doesn’t understand, Nukurren realized. Oh, Dhowifa, now I must cause you more pain. But better that than to lie.
“It doesn’t matter, dear one,” she said softly. “I am going to die, anyway.”
She started to explain about the diseases which mantle-rupturing wounds always brought in their train. Dhowifa, the poor emotional little thing, tried to interrupt, but Nukurren plowed on. Better that he should face the truth now than to live in the fairy-tale world that truemales preferred.
Suddenly, to her astonishment, the truemale started slapping her with his arms.
“Will you shut up for a moment—you, you clamhead!”
Nukurren stared at him. The azure irritation which suffused Dhowifa’s mantle was not, this time, mottled by any affectionate traces of green.
“I know about those diseases,” said the truemale angrily. “Do you think I haven’t been filled with anguish, worrying about it? Self-righteous fool. Snail!”
He took a deep breath.
“But this big white demon says—well, at least, I think that’s what it’s been trying to tell me—that you can be healed. When we get to where we’re going.”
“And where’s that?”
Orange surprise. “Didn’t you see it? We’ve already started up the slopes.”
He stretched out a tentacle, pointing up and ahead.
“The Chiton.”
Nukurren twisted, looked where he was pointing. The sight was awesome.
“We’re going there? Why?”
“Because that’s where the demons live. Or come from, I’m not quite sure. That’s where the ones live who it says can heal you.”
After a short silence, Dhowifa added:
“And, if I understand it, that’s where the one lives who will decide what to do with us.”
“And who is that?” She felt dread at the answer.
“The Mother of Demons.”
Suddenly, a voice spoke in Kiktu: “How do you feel?”
Swiveling her remaining eye, Nukurren saw that it was the large white demon who had spoken. Its Kiktu was crude, and, as Dhowifa had said, the accent was horrible—harsh, and sibilant. But Nukurren had no difficulty understanding it.
“Better,” she replied. “Very weak, but my brain is clear.” She gestured at the demon’s injured limb.
“And you?”
The demon flexed its limb—its right limb, Nukurren saw—and examined it.
“It will heal,” replied the monster. “But it is painful. You almost tore it off.”
For a moment, Nukurren and the demon stared at each other in silence. The bright blue color of its eyes was distracting. Despite Dhowifa’s opinion, Nukurren automatically reacted to that color as if she were facing an enraged enemy. But, in truth, the whiteness of its hide never showed the slightest trace of blue fury. And, though the demon’s shape and posture was like nothing Nukurren had ever seen, not even in her worst nightmares, there seemed something—
A memory came to her suddenly. Long ago, shortly after Dhowifa and she had sought refuge among the Kiktu, a young Kiktu warrior had challenged her to single combat. The cause, according to the warrior—Kokokda was her name—was her outrage at Nukurren’s sexual perversity. But that had been a mere pretext, Nukurren knew. The truth was that the young warrior could not resist the challenge of fighting such a fearsome-looking gukuy, especially one who was reputed to have been a great Anshac warrior.