Ordolan was honorable and true to his word, and that is about all I can say on behalf of the Ikkësa. In the brief time I spent among them, or at least in their camp, I was treated very cruelly. I’ve read that certain northern tribes prove their bravery by engaging in trials of pain, which may be the explanation for the ordeal the Ikkësa put me through. “Don’t be afraid,” I remember Ordolan telling me as I was dragged over to the fire, which was certainly easy for him to say.
My memory is somewhat fuzzy after that. I do recall that it hurt very badly when they burned my arm. I’m fairly confident that I screamed and wept an unfortunate amount. No doubt the Ikkësa took a bad impression of me from the incident, but since I also received a bad impression of them, this was only fair. What was less fair was the way they expected me to carry buckets of water and bundles of firewood from place to place even with my wounds still fresh (if bandaged, at least).
In the Ikkësa camp there were many slaves, and in the moments of time when I was not otherwise engaged I befriended and talked with the others. A large portion were Uste, but from what I could gather all the nations were represented that had stood in the path of the Ikkësa as they swept down from their homeland. The abilities of my Bird made me popular in the camp, where I soon became regarded as a kind of magician.
One thin old man told me with tears running down his cheeks how it had been many years since he had heard the language of his home. “Long has it been,” he said, “since I have heard anything but the cursed jabber of our masters.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Now I can die and be content.”
“Please don’t,” I said in distress, though now that I look back it was probably true that he found death preferable to a continuance of his servitude in that camp. I do not know what became of him after I left.
If I have passed over this period quickly, it is because the pain I suffered makes it hazy in my memory. That first day was not the only time I was tormented at the fires. When I look at my arms now I can still make out the scars.
I’m not sure of the exact length of time I spent in the Ikkësa camp, though I do know that towards the end my arms were fully on their way to healing. The siege did not seem to be going particularly well for the Uste, or at least that’s what I gathered from the things Ordolan said. I had attached myself to the role of his particular servant, chiefly on the grounds that he (as I mentioned previously) treated me with more decency than any of his brethren.
Rosédan has been looking over what I’ve written so far, and she says I should describe the Ikkësa more. Physically, then, they were giants, with dark hair and blue eyes and a distinct cast to their faces that I am not sure how to describe. They were excellent horsemen and every one among them seemed to bear himself with an innate dignity. Their garments were ornamented with spiral symbols. They worshiped a slew of gods who seemed more like exalted human beings than divinities, and to whom they sacrificed the occasional slave.
She is not entirely satisfied with these brief sentences, but I would rather go on to the incident that restored my freedom to me. As my readers can probably guess, my shining robes were taken from me and given to one of the Ikkësa shamans, who waved his hands and muttered words over them, then appropriated them for his own use, though they were too small and made him look fairly ridiculous, not that I dared mention it to him or anyone else. My new garments consisted of a baggy tunic of some scratchy and dull-colored material, though I was allowed to keep my hat at Ordolan’s insistence, a remarkably kind gesture on his part. Many of the female slaves were dressed more fully, but only because they were given their long colorful scarves and dresses by the Ikkësa men who had claimed them for their beds.
I got to know one of the women in particular, a tall Uste girl by the name of Itakelis who helped around Ordolan’s tent. Probably she shared his bed too, though I didn’t inquire, and now that I think back, it’s quite possible that he was actually hoping for a romance between Itakelis and me. At the time I was too occupied with other concerns, mainly my injuries.
Rosédan wants to know if Itakelis was beautiful, but despite the accusations of some of my friends in Edazzo I am not such a fool as that. I can only say that few slaves were in a position where their physical charms could be displayed to full effect, not even the concubines (as I believe the polite term is).
But I talked often with Itakelis and helped her carry various things between Ordolan’s tent and the small hill that was on the east side of the Ikkësa camp, where the shamans had set up a thing of wood and rock that I took to be a shrine. Ordolan, for some reason, wanted Itakelis to exchange the round stones at the base of the shrine with identical round stones he brought into his tent in a chest. I was utterly baffled as to the reason for this, and I would frequently debate the matter with Itakelis.
“It must be part of a plot to chip away at the shamans’ authority,” I said on one such occasion as I heaved a stone up into my arms. “He’s been arguing with them lately, though I don’t know why.”
“Oh, I think it’s something less mundane than that!” said Itakelis, peeking up at me, as she typically did, from underneath her long bangs of hair. As among the Edazzo, the women of the Uste tended to remain indoors out of the public eye, so here in this camp many of them had taken to wearing their hair long over their faces as an approximation of their former modesty.
“You think it has some magical or ritual significance?”
“Oh, I can think of wild explanations if you really want. Maybe each stone is the soul of one of their ancestors, and by exchanging them, he’s acquiring the power of families that aren’t his own. Maybe the stones are the tears of the weeping giant and he hopes to summon him to fight his enemies. Maybe the stones from the shrine have jewels in their cores and he wants to steal them.”
“To sell them for gold?”
“Or to make them into a brilliant statue of himself with which he can amaze his brothers and establish himself as king.” Her eyes shone with the light that made me glad every time her hair slipped away from her brows. (Not that it is anything compared to the light I see in Rosédan’s eyes each day). “Sell them for gold, indeed! I don’t know what secret you’re hiding under your hat, but it can’t be that interesting if these are the kinds of ideas you come up with.”
I hid my amusement. If only she knew the truth of my Bird and where and from whom I had received it!
“What are you grinning about?” she asked. “Hurry up and let’s get these to the shrine before either night falls or Ordolan comes back.” I nodded and lifted the corner of my hat so as to rest the stone between the back of my head and the hat’s fabric, where it was hidden from view. The Bird squawked in mild annoyance, but both it and I had grown used to the practice. I supported the stone with one hand as Itakelis and I began our ascent.
By the time we reached the shrine and made the mysterious exchange of stones, it was already dark enough that Itakelis’s face was completely invisible behind her hair. As we turned to hurry back, I heard a sound in the distance, and with my sharp hearing I was able to identify it immediately as a wolf’s howl. “We should go,” I began to say, but found that Itakelis was already clinging to me, in a sisterly fashion I hasten to add. My readers will be pleased to learn that we made our way back to Ordolan’s tent without being torn apart and eaten by wolves, though I consider it a narrow escape. From the sound of that howl, they were within a mile of the camp. Itakelis held on to me the entire way, only releasing her grip on my arm when Ordolan’s tent was in sight.
There was no sign of the man himself, but Itakelis gave me a quick wave and ran to the tent. I returned to the tent that I shared with several other slaves and there I fell asleep. Despite an irrational fear that I would dream of the great wolf again (so intensely had my nightmare in Rashāme affected me), my dreams were not unpleasant ones.
It was our practice in the Ikkësa camp to do as little work as we possibly could. For one thing, we had no reason to want the Ikkësa to succeed in their efforts. For another, the very fact of our servitude made us want to fight against it, and this was the only way open to us. So when dawn broke we lay on the thin blankets we called beds and joked with one another about what we would do when the Ikkësa were defeated and we were free. Then, one by one, the giants pushed their way in, their necks bent to fit under the low ceiling we had put up, and chose their victims.
I was beginning to get quite worried that I would be picked by some stranger to help with the earthworks, which was the hardest and harshest of the tasks we slaves were put to, but at last Ordolan appeared and held out his hand to me. “Come,” he said. “We’re only halfway done, boy. Itakelis is pining for you.”
This information about Itakelis didn’t seem particularly likely, but I rose and followed Ordolan to his tent, where the stones were waiting for me. And so was Itakelis, who sat against the chest with her legs folded underneath her. “I dreamed about you last night,” she said with a strange grin.
“There’s a coincidence,” I replied, but Ordolan let his hand fall heavily on my shoulder.
“Now to work,” he said. “Kësil, start with the stones, and Itakelis, you see what you can put together for the noon meal. And be quick about it, both of you. There is something in the wind that tells me we don’t have much time left.”
“Time left until what?” I asked. He laughed and I felt his grip tighten until my shoulder felt as if it was about to snap out of its joint. Then he released me to fall to the ground at Itakelis’s feet.
So I spent that morning carrying stones back and forth, wondering all the time what secret was concealed within them. They didn’t feel especially light or especially heavy, though I am no expert when it comes to the weight of rocks. I leave such things to the engineers and architects just as, up until this point, I would have left such work to the laborers. Unfortunately, although my hands and neck didn’t find the stones particularly heavy, my foot disagreed. That is to say, when I was standing at the shrine, just about to make the exchange, someone grabbed me from behind and I dropped the stone I was holding. The pain was remarkable, even if not to be compared with my burned arms, and I yelled and began hopping on the foot that remained uncrushed. But, alas, whoever had grabbed me did not seem to be sympathetic to my agony. He seized me by the ear and pulled me upright, which distracted me from my foot at least.
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“How much did Ordolan tell you?” he demanded, shaking me rudely.
“Well,” I began, “he told me what I should do every day, and he told me a few of your stories, but no doubt there’s a plenitude of knowledge he hasn’t—”
“You talk like an old shaman,” said the man. He was obviously Ikkësa, but I had never seen him around the camp before (I would certainly have recognized him by the scar that ran down the middle of his face, as if to split it into equal halves). “But you’re nothing more than a slave. Where did you learn to talk like that, I wonder? What’s a slave doing with a hat like that?”
“All I can say is that no one’s taken it from me.”
“Oh? Ordolan’s grown indulgent. Or maybe he was afraid you’d betray him. But I am not Ordolan.” This, I thought, was obvious enough that he didn’t need to say it. I stepped closer to him and peered up at his face, hoping to see some sign of resemblance that would explain his remark. Of course, to my eyes there is a certain similarity to all Ikkësa faces.
Then he seized my hat and tore it away from my head. This was not the first time one of the Ikkësa had decided to take a look at the Bird, and I was surprised that the story hadn’t reached this scarred man. He gaped at me and dropped the hat.
“What...what…what?” The scar twisted with the emotion in his face.
“May I?” I asked, and restored my hat to its rightful place atop my head. “You understand now why no one’s taken it from me.”
The scar was a straight line again, and he knocked me to the ground with a blow that split my lip. “I don’t know what kind of Makrųt-born monster you are, but we’ll get the truth out of you one way or another. After me!”
My foot ached intensely every time I put my weight on it, but I did have the consolation that the pain helped clear my thoughts. Normally, of course, my thoughts are as clear as spring water, but this was perhaps the lowest point of my fortunes, and my time among the Ikkësa had been marked by a sluggishness of my mental processes. When we reached Ordolan’s tent, I was dismayed to see Itakelis lying sprawled on the ground, her hands crushed under giants’ feet. Ordolan himself was sitting nearby and seemed less like a man than the stump of a tree, left desolate after all its branches had been cut away.
“Now,” said the scarred man. “Your little plot is at an end.”
Naturally I wondered what plot this was, but when I cleared my throat to ask, he struck me across the face again. I must disappoint my readers here by telling them that I never did find out what Ordolan was planning. It may satisfy them to reread my and Itakelis’s speculations, but then again it may not. Alas, there are many things in this world and beyond it that remain mysteries to me.
“Yes,” the scarred man said in case Ordolan hadn’t heard him the first time, “your little plot is at an end. I am to be the new Shield for the Herons. Your nose will be slit and your fingers cut; you will never receive your promised blessing from the shamans. Let that thought torment you.”
“Itakelis and Kësil?” Ordolan asked in a quiet rumble.
“Oh, when the master transgresses, the slave must suffer. Who’ll trust a slave who dared, however unwittingly, to lay his hands on the stones of the promise? They must be punished and purified.” Then the scarred man gave me a wary glance and added, “Your maid will be punished, at least. The man carries a bad omen upon his head. We never should have brought him into the camp, and once I’ve consulted with the shamans I’ll send him away.”
“No,” said Ordolan. “She knew nothing.”
“And yet her hands are defiled.”
Ordolan rose slowly to his feet. “No,” he said again. “Let her go free too. I gave her my word.”
“Your word? What is your word worth? Who are you to say anything about the affairs of the Herons from now on?”
The exchange was a gripping, dramatic one, with a great deal of relevance to my future. But at that moment I was surprised by the hands that seized me from behind and dragged me away from that clearing. Since I was being dragged backwards, I couldn’t see where I was going, and feared the worst. It was a comfort, albeit a selfish one, to see that I was not alone, that Itakelis was being carried by another Ikkësa giant along with me.
We were thrown into a pit, Itakelis landing on top of me and driving the breath from my lungs. “In the morning,” one of the giants called to us, but didn’t expand on his meaning. I doubted somehow that we should be prepared for a hearty and nourishing breakfast. As I looked around, I discovered that the pit was in fact one of the ditches that surrounded the camp, flanked on both sides by Ikkësa sentries, which cast some doubt on whether we could escape. I did observe that the sentries didn’t seem to be paying us much attention, trusting no doubt in the height of the ditch’s walls to keep us from climbing out.
Itakelis wept for a while, and I did what I could to comfort her, but even I found it hard to be optimistic then. After she dried her tears, however, she stared fiercely at me (at least I assume she did; it was dark) and said, “I won’t let them lay a finger on me.”
“Nor will I. Let them lay a finger on you, I mean,” I said.
“Oh? And how will you stop them?” This was admittedly a conundrum, which I contemplated for a moment. “Well, even if you can’t think of anything, I can. We should remove our clothes.”
This didn’t seem like the time for such a thing, and I pondered over the best way to say so while avoiding either offense or crudity.
“And exchange them,” she continued before I could finish my pondering. “That way, they’ll let me go, thinking I’m you, and when they find out that you’re not me, they’ll let you go too!”
It took me a few more moments to work this out in my head, but once I had I immediately spotted the flaw. “I don’t think you could ever be mistaken for a man,” I said gallantly.
“No, but I was thinking you might be mistaken for a woman.” This was a shock, though at the time I had suffered so many shocks that I couldn’t find it within myself to protest. “Besides, it’s dark and getting darker.”
I was still dubious, but conceded that her plan was worth a try. Here let me assure my readers, and particularly Rosédan, that it was too dark for me to see her clearly, even if I had been lasciviously inclined, which under the circumstances I was not. Once she was wearing my tunic and I was wearing her dress and scarves (which I was dismayed to find a quite good fit), there only remained my hat, and she reached up towards it.
I stepped back, and although I couldn’t see her face, I was able to guess her expression from the way she crossed her arms. “They won’t think I’m you unless I’m wearing that monstrosity,” she said.
“Naturally,” I said. “Just give me a moment.” My readers will appreciate my dilemma, as I shrank from the thought of displaying my Bird openly, let alone the thought of showing it to Itakelis. I’ve grown accustomed to the sight of that strange creation of the fair folk, but it has taken me some years.
“A moment for what? Are you really hiding something under there? Magic sandals to let us fly over the heads of the Ikkësa, I hope.”
“I’d rather not remove my hat,” I said simply. “But it shouldn’t matter if I lie down here in the shadow, should it?”
“And what exactly do you propose that I wear on my head?”
I thought this over, and as I thought I tugged on the edge of one of the scarves draped around my neck. It slipped loose and fell to the ground between us.
“You are clever!” cried Itakelis. I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d said or done that was so clever, but I appreciated the compliment and said so. She picked up the scarf and with a few remarkably deft movements shaped it into a pile of fabric that, in this lack of light, resembled my own headgear. “There!” she said, and placed it on her head. “Now I look exactly like you!”
I squinted at her and I admit that I saw very little resemblance, but I didn’t contradict her at the time. I lay down in the place she indicated to me and we waited. This was to be the last time I saw Itakelis, and those moments are still clear in my memory: I was deeply afraid and could do nothing but wait in silence, but I saw her pacing back and forth, the scarf atop her head eclipsing the moon at intervals. I am afraid, looking back over what I’ve written, that I may have failed to portray Itakelis as I knew her, as she really was, but what does it matter? We all will be known by the light of the Flame in the end.
At last I heard the voice of the scarred man again. “It’s time for you to go, and your curse with you,” he was saying as he lowered a ladder down into the ditch. Itakelis gave me a final wave before she climbed up and vanished from my sight. It is my fervent hope that the scarred giant was telling the truth, and that Itakelis was allowed to leave the camp safely and returned to her home.
As for me, I continued to lie in the mud. While I was grateful that I had been able to help Itakelis escape, I was beginning to realize that my position would be a difficult one once the Ikkësa discovered that I was in fact myself and not she. But I am a quick thinker, especially in moments of distress like this (my foot was still extremely painful), and it wasn’t long before I had conceived a plan.
Nor was it long before the scarred man called down to me again. “Are you prepared for your chastisement?” he asked.
Then I heard another voice, a much more unpleasant one. “Are you ready for some fun?”
It was time to put my plan into action, it seemed. I jumped to my feet, tripped when a spear of pain shot through my leg, and fell over again, which was not a propitious start. But I recovered my wits and shouted, “I’m Kësil! I’m not Itakelis!”
“You sound like Itakelis,” said the scarred giant.
I realized that I did. No doubt the stress I was experiencing in that moment had caused my voice to break into a higher pitch. “Look at me!” I said, making my voice as deep as I could. “I’m Kësil!”
“Come up here and let us get a better look.”
So I climbed up the ladder, feeling simultaneously foolish and terrified. I stood between the scarred giant and his companion, a man with an ugliness in his face that matched the ugliness in his voice. The latter gave a disappointed grunt. “It is the man after all. Where is she? Where’s the girl?” And he stomped directly on my foot. My readers, alas, will be able to guess which foot.
When I was able to form words more coherent than a series of yelps, I told him that I didn’t know where Itakelis was. He stepped on my foot, but fortunately it was the other foot this time.
“You’ll pay for this,” he said, and then I noticed the knife he wore on his belt. I didn’t have the opportunity to figure out what to do next, since my legs made the decision for me. That is to say, I ran. We were already close to the edge of the Ikkësa camp, and it wasn’t far to the forest, into which I fled, ignoring the cries from behind me. A spear narrowly missed me, striking the trunk of a nearby tree instead. But I escaped, and I was swallowed by the darkness and the silence of the forest. That is how it seemed to me, as if I were in the mouth of some enormous beast to whom the Uste city and the Ikkësa camp were alike morsels to be devoured whole. And I felt as if I, too, were a morsel and that the jaws of the beast had closed behind me.