Mother of Demons by Eric Flint

“Explain how you know Ushulubang,” he commanded. “Are you Pilgrims of the Way?”

“No, I am not,” replied Nukurren immediately. Dhowifa’s response was slower in coming. The ochre hues in his mantle were now interlaced with pink apprehension.

“I am not either,” said Dhowifa hesitantly. “Not really. But I talked with Ushulubang whenever I could, and she trained me in dukuna.”

“What is `dukuna’?” asked the demon Dzhenushkunutushen. But before Dhowifa could answer, the black demon interrupted with a sudden burst of incomprehensible language. Nukurren could not understand it, but she knew that it was a different language than the one which the demons had used heretofore. Even harsher, and full of sounds which no gukuy could ever hope to reproduce.

Within a short time, all the demons in the caravan were gathered about the litter. After a lengthy exchange in the new language, the black demon began hooting. At once the caravan resumed its progress, but now at a more rapid pace than before. Watching the owoc who were carrying her litter, Nukurren realized that the slow and ungainly creatures were moving at the fastest pace possible for them on such difficult terrain.

“Why are you interested in Ushulubang?” she asked the demon Dzhenushkunutushen.

“Because she is—”

He was interrupted by a few short and sharp words uttered in the new demon language by Ludumila. Dzhenushkunutushen fell silent. After a moment, he said curtly: “I am not to speak of it,” and moved away.

Nukurren examined the female demon. She was able, from the experience of the past few days, to recognize some of the variations in the demons’ features which distinguished one from the other. By now, the difference in body shape between female and male demons was clear to Nukurren. The demons also varied in size and color.

But there were other differences, as well, which were much less obvious. As with gukuy, these differences were mainly in the face. Gukuy recognized each other primarily from the different configurations of the arm-clusters and the subtle variations in the eye-orbits. Nukurren had already learned to distinguish one demon from another with regard to their eye-orbits. Despite their tiny size, demon eyes were much like gukuy eyes; and the orbits were generically similar, except that the demon orbits seemed made of some hard material beneath the flesh.

Some of the demons—about half of them, Nukurren estimated—had deep orbits. The orbits of the remainder were shallower, it seemed. The female demon Ludumila was one of these. Looking at her, Nukurren now realized that the flatness of her eye-orbits was due to an extension of the flesh coming from that strange feature in the middle of her face—the beak-above-the-true-beak.

“What is that called?” she suddenly asked Ludumila. “That feature which protrudes above your beak?”

It required a bit more of an explanation before the demon understood the question.

“A . . . nosu?” asked Nukurren. Ludumila made the peculiar bobbing motion of her head which Nukurren had come to recognize as the demon gesture of affirmation.

That was the key to discerning one human from another, Nukurren now realized. Ludumila’s nosu was shallow and flat, spreading widely across her face. The black demon’s nosu did likewise. Whereas—

“Dzhenushkunutushen’s nosu is bigger than yours, and it protrudes much farther forward.”

Ludumila began barking in the demon manner of laughter.

“We call it `The Beak,’ ” she said, and barked again. Nukurren tried to understand the humor involved, but could make no sense of it. After a time, she felt herself growing weaker again and was less and less able to observe anything coherently. She felt very hot and feverish, and her mind began to wander. Disease now held her tightly in its arms.

At some point in the vague meanderings of her thoughts, she recalled Dhowifa’s earlier remark. Half-unconsciously, her arms curled in the gesture of amusement.

I remember the first time I saw Dhowifa. I was not terrified of him. But I was apprehensive, and tense. He was very high-clan. Ansha royalty.

She had been standing guard at night, alone, by one of the side entrances to the Divine Shell. It was a shabby entrance, used only by servants. The stones of the arch were crudely cut and undecorated. The area was dim, lit only by a small, poorly-fed glowmoss colony.