The taste of this knowledge was at once bitter and sweet to me: sweet, because it blotted out in an instant the only great fear of all my race; bitter, because it showed me that for many generations both this man's people and my own had been hoodwinked, shamed and overlorded by the members of a single useless profession. For it had come to me that now I knew who The Nameless truly were.
Dy-lee was one of The Nameless, and so was Zheena his mate, and great grizzled Dy-veece, and every member of that merry clan with whom I had eaten and slept the night before....
Dy-lee was one of The Nameless, and so was—Ahmusk the hunter.
It must have taken me an hour to tell my friend this terrible, wonderful truth which I had discovered. But finally he realized it, and at first his wrath was dreadful to behold, and then he saw the happiness in it and he danced for joy among his dogwolves.
The simple fact was that for no-one-knew-how-long, the guild of guardians had kept our two races apart and in horror of the things they called The Nameless, for reasons I could not then even begin to guess; had kept us apart by tales of monsters which existed only in their own minds. For the first time in my life I knew pure black hatred of fellow humans. Had I had the guardians there at that moment, I would have slain them all.
Yes, Dy-lee's people were The Nameless; and my glen-folk were The Nameless to him, under whatever exotic name he called us. Nothing could be plainer, for why else would he think The Nameless lived to the east, while I had been taught they lived in the west?
Now in my rage it came to me why Laq had shot at me in the Fearful Forest, and later had pinked Halfspoor with an arrow to make the bear attack me. He did not dare allow me to make friends here with the hairy folk. It would topple him and his entire crew of liars and rascals. He might have halted me yesterday afternoon with a word, but there was Lora, whom he coveted. He had had a bow, a thing no guardian ever owned—he must long ago have stolen it and some arrows, to practice until he thought himself skilled enough to slay me. It did not seem incredible now that he would plan to kill me for her. Nothing seemed strange in the light of my new discovery. The world was topsy-turvy, and surely all things must be possible to one of his loathsome breed.
After we had stamped about for a while, talking furiously and incomprehensibly to each other and shaking hands with fervor and startling the dogwolves into howling many times, we went up to Dy-lee's cave, where he called in all those of his folk who were nearby, and laying his hand on my chest, he solemnly told them that I was one of those creatures whom they had all feared for so many years. The turmoil was frightful. Then, before they could flee, he shouted to them what he had discovered. Of course it took much less time than it had when I explained it to him, for he shared his language with them and needed no elaborate signals. You never heard such a roar as went up when he had finished.
It was decided, to be brief, that Dy-lee should accompany me back through the Fearful Forest to the glens, and there we two would confront the guardians and fling their lifetime of lies into their teeth. I gathered also that he would protect me on the journey from wild beasts, though how without weapons he could do this, I did not see. At any rate, he bade farewell to Zheena and I shook hands all round and we started out across the ruins, with Dy-lee's two poorts, the tame dogwolves, running before us with their scarlet tongues lolling out and their noses in the air.