His sadness did not last long, however. Their final opponent was fleeing. Ott assumed he’d try to break over the plank onto solid ground, and the dlomu at first seemed intent on doing just that. But something overcame him as he ran, and oddly, he veered away from the plank around the starboard side of the wheelhouse, like a runner circling a very small track. And when he emerged to portside the spymaster thought for an instant that he’d been replaced by someone else. The dlomu was singing-a weird, wordless noise-and what had been a clumsy fighter was suddenly Great Gods!
They clashed. The man was his equal; Ott was forced backward, his moves defensive; the keening dlomu was suddenly imbued with a speed and grace that would be the envy of any fighter alive. He wasn’t thinking; he was possessed. When Alyash came at him with his cutlass the dlomu spun away from Ott, his thin sword whistling, falling short of the bosun’s jugular by a quarter inch. Hercol was in the fight as well, now, but the three of them, for Rin’s sake, were barely holding the man at bay. Ott danced backward and nocked an arrow. The man sensed it somehow, pressed after him; Ott had to twist the bow around to save his own neck from that damnable, flimsy-looking sword. Another spin; Hercol leaped backward, sucking in his chest; Ott twisted, and felt the sword’s tip graze his jaw.
Rage, and the certainty of time running out, awoke something long dormant in Ott. He leaped straight up, mouthing a bitten-off curse from campaigns long ago. His foot lashed out; the singing ceased. The dlomu fell with a broken neck upon the boards.
“Great flames, what a fighter!” said Alyash, gasping for breath.
“What happened to that man?” said Hercol. “He was the weakest of them all. He was hanging back, terrified, only darting with his sword.”
“Don’t you know?” said a voice behind them. “It was the nuhzat, gentlemen. You could see it in his eyes. Here now, won’t you help that boy, before he falls?”
The hooded youth was bent over, trying to pull off the sack over his head by pinching it between his knees. Hercol steadied him, then wrenched the sack away. It was the village boy, Ibjen. He was nearly hysterical with fear, and jumped away from the bodies on the deck. “The nuhzat!” he cried.
“You needn’t speak the word as if it means ‘plague,’ ” said Olik. Then, turning to the others, he said, “You saved our lives. May the Watchers shower you with favor.”
“The nuhzat!” cried the boy again.
“Silence, you fool!” hissed Alyash. But of course it was too late: the dead man’s singing had been as loud as a scream. Ott looked up at the Chathrand and saw the row of lanterns, the mob of dlomic soldiers, gazing at them over the empty berth. They were repeating the same strange word, nuhzat, nuhzat, murmuring it in fear and doubt.
“But Ibjen, it is perfectly natural,” the prince was saying as Hercol cut their wrist-bonds. “Dlomu have had the nuhzat since the dawn of our race.”
“Natural, my prince? Natural as death, perhaps. We must get away from these bodies, wash ourselves, wash and pray.”
The soldiers on the Chathrand were growing louder, more frantic.
“You realize,” said Alyash, “that we’re not taking another step toward the Great Ship? We’ll be lucky to get out of here with our skins.”
Hercol turned to Olik. “What is this nuhzat you speak of?” he demanded.
“Why, a state of mind,” said the prince (at this Ibjen broke into a sobbing sort of laughter). “It is a place we go inside ourselves, in times of the most intense feeling. Or used to: it has almost disappeared today. A pity, for it offers much. It is the door to poetry and genius, and many other things. Very rarely it manifests as fighting prowess. But there’s an old saying: In the nuhzat you may meet with anything save that which you expect. Usually only dlomu can experience the state, but in the old days a small number of humans were able to learn it as well.”
“Learn it? Learn it!” Ibjen threw up his hands.
“If they counted dlomu among their loved ones,” added the prince. “And strangely enough those humans were the last to become tol-chenni.”
Another voice began to sing. This time it was a soldier on the Chathrand’s quarterdeck. His song was slower, deeper, but still eerie, like a voice that comes echoing from somewhere very far away. Not unpleasant, thought Ott, and yet it produced only terror on the Great Ship. Most of the dlomu ran, leaping from the quarterdeck, dropping lanterns, shoving and jostling. The singer’s nearest comrade shook him by the arms, then slapped him. The man paused briefly, then raised his arms to the sky and resumed the song. His comrade darted into the wheelhouse and returned with a rigging-axe. He clubbed his friend down with the flat of the axe-head. Only then did the singing cease.
“Now do you understand, at last?” cried Ibjen. “Now do you see why madness is not something we joke about?”
Dlomic officers were screaming: “Hold your ground! Stay at your posts!” A few soldiers obeyed, but the bulk simply fled, over the gangways, down the scaffolding, away from the fallen man and the scene on the derelict. All around the port, lamps were appearing, swinging wildly as their bearers ran here and there. Cries of panic echoed through the streets.
“Gentlemen,” said Olik, “the Nilstone is gone.”
“What?” shouted Hercol. “How do you know this? Tell me quickly, Sire, I beg you!”
“I was aboard the Chathrand not thirty minutes ago,” said the prince. “Vadu caught me, demanded to know what I had done with the Stone, made oblique references to my death. He drew the tiny shard of the Plazic Blade he carries and showed it to me. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is eguar bone. I could use it to dry the blood in your veins, or to stop your heart-without touching you, without breaking the law.’ Then he told me that the Issar had just received a message from Bali Adro City, by courier osprey. Absolutely no one was to meddle with ‘the little sphere of darkness’ in the statue’s hand, until further notice. On pain of death. Vadu said he had rushed to the ship to redouble the guard, but had found his men slain in the doorway to the manger, and the door unlocked, and the statue empty-handed, with two broken fingers lying in the hay.
“Then Vadu raised his blade, and I felt a sudden cold grip my heart. I had a last, desperate card to play, and I did so. ‘The Imperial family is defended by more than laws, Counselor,’ I said. ‘Ours is a destiny as old and certain as the stars. No one who draws my blood shall escape the wrath of the Unseen.’ I could see that he was not wholly convinced. ‘The Nilstone has vanished,’ he said, ‘and you alone are here at the moment of its vanishing. You would do better to confess what you know than to threaten me with superstitions.’ I assured him that the Stone was a deadly weapon-deadlier by far than his Plazic Blade-and that only Arunis could have stolen it. Vadu replied that he had the Great Ship surrounded, and that no one had been in or out of the ship save his guards-and me.”