Mother of Demons by Eric Flint

She lost all vision, then. And almost, but not quite, her consciousness. Around her, she could hear the mingled hoots of hunnakaku and demons. She could feel Dhowifa’s warm, trembling little body clutching her head. Reason, always thinly rooted in truemales, had fled completely.

Poor Dhowifa, was her last thought before sliding into oblivion, you were so proud of your mind. Now you see what terror can do.

Chapter 3

Rottu waited in the shadows while the patrol passed. She was not especially worried. The warriors in the patrol were auxiliaries, not keen-eyed legionnaires. More concerned with ending their patrol in the warmth of an ashu-chamber than with finding suspicious persons lurking in dark alleys.

As they drew alongside the mouth of the alley, the warriors stopped and made a casual examination of its interior. But Rottu knew they would see nothing. There was only a single glowmoss pillar at the entrance of the alley. An old colony, moreover, whose light penetrated not more than a few steps into the gloom beyond.

Still, Rottu took no chances. Far back in the alley, she pressed herself more closely against the stones. Then, cursing silently, repressed a hoot of pain. She had forgotten. The walls of the tenements were crudely made, with many sharp edges and rough corners. Nothing like the polished, beautiful walls of the Divine Shell.

I’m getting old and sloppy. Too accustomed to the luxury of the Shell. I haven’t been outside the clan quarters in—how many eightweeks?

One of the warriors began to make a perfunctory inspection of the alley. But she had no sooner taken a few steps forward than she suddenly recoiled.

Watching, in the darkness beyond, Rottu found it hard not to whistle derision.

She smells the stench of the corpse.

The corpse lay between Rottu and the mouth of the alley. When she had seen the warriors approach, she had deliberately hidden herself beyond the body. If the squad of warriors chose to investigate the alley closely, they would have to edge their way past the thing. Several days dead, that corpse. Crawling with scavengers. Putrid.

A nameless corpse, Rottu knew. Dead of hunger, or parasites; or the wounds inflicted by thieves, themselves desperate enough to rob a nameless one. A former helot, most likely, escaped from the lands of her clan mistresses. Seeking, like so many before her, a new life in Shakutulubac. And finding nothing but death in the slums of the great city.

There are more and more such, now. Driven by the increasing tyranny in the land to seek refuge in a city which is itself hooting louder and louder.

There will be another pogrom soon. The awosha have already given the order. Many Pilgrims will die. We are too many, now, to find safety in a few cellars.

The patrol left quickly, as Rottu had known they would. In eightyweeks gone by, in the time of Rottu’s youth, the patrol would have reported the corpse at the end of their night’s work. The following morning, a gang of slaves would have been sent by the Mistresses of the City to remove it. But those days were long gone. In the Shakutulubac of Rottu’s old age, corpses rotted in the streets. There were so many of them now. The life of the poor and low-clanned had always been cheap. Today, it was worth nothing.

Some time later, when she judged it was safe to do so, Rottu edged past the corpse and left the alley. Allowing no sign in her mantle of the repugnance she felt. There were none to see her color, of course. But Rottu had been a mistress of shoroku for too long to relax her discipline. A lifetime too long.

Once back in the street, she hurried along. Hurried, but took no chances. If she were spotted by a patrol, she would certainly be recognized. The patrol, of course, would not accost her. They would not dare. But they would talk, and the talk would reach the Tympani of the Ansha. Then—disaster. Rottu herself ranked high in the Tympani. But not high enough to avoid the chambers in the cellars of the Shell. Not if it became known that she was seen, late in the night, in that quarter of the city which was known to be infested with Pilgrims.