My readers will be pleased to learn that I am not, in fact, dead. To add to their gratification, I have had a series of remarkable adventures in the past several months which I fully intend to describe with ink and parchment. Disbelieve me if you will, but everything I write truly happened to me in that realm that lies across the great sea to the south of Edazzo.
At evening I was strolling along the Edazzo docks in hopes of seeing a man of my acquaintance when the great disaster befell me. There are wicked men in Edazzo who trade human souls for gold, and although in the normal course of things they take their prey from far away lands, occasionally they get confused, forget where they are, and lay hands on one of their own countrymen. Possibly their confusion was somewhat justified in my case, as I am myself from a far away land, farther than most suspect.
It happened quite suddenly. A man approached me asking if I knew where he could find the shrine of some god with a title that was far too long to be real. I scoffed at him, but he was persistent, taking me by the arm. “I’ve never heard of that god before, and I certainly don’t know where his shrine is!” I said, trying to dislodge his hand. It was then that I felt my feet lifting off the ground, so that I was convinced for a brief moment that the god’s curse had come upon me. But I quickly realized that I was in fact being lifted by arms around my waist, though these arms resembled more than anything else the roots of an enormous tree.
“Hello,” I said, turning my head to speak to the tree-man.
He grunted. Well, not everyone enjoys conversation, and the tree-man was apparently the silent type.
“I don’t believe we’ve met, but before we exchange pleasantries, I must insist that you put me down.” His response was to sling me over his shoulder and begin to carry me someplace. I am not a man of violence, but I felt that this situation called for a certain measure of physical force. I struck his back with a series of sharp blows, which I am sure pained him deeply, even if he didn’t show it.
“All right, all right, put him in the bag,” someone said. I wondered what this meant until a rough sack was thrust over my head and shoulders and my hands and ankles were bound with rope. I spent some time in darkness, pondering my life and the curious events that had brought me this far. I wondered, not for the first time, what would happen to my Bird if I died.
At some point my captors took me onto a boat and what with the rocking of the waves and my mental despair, I was soon lulled into a state of deep sleep. I dreamed of the beautiful Rosédan, and these are the dreams that I desire more than any other kind and yet which I also loathe more than any other kind, because when I wake up I remember that she is gone. I pray to the Flame that she is not dead, but only the stars know where she is.
I grew to know my shipmates fairly well over the course of the voyage. By fairly well, of course, I mean that they refused to talk to me or indeed let me out of my cramped room much, but I like to think I understood their souls. Most of them were darker in color than the Parako, and I wished that the Bird were not so quick to translate, so I could have some idea of what language they were speaking.
I seemed to be in the care of one man in particular, a man whose face gave the impression of an unfinished portrait, with mottled skin and patchy beard. He brought me water and some kind of dry, bland bread that more often than not was infested with vermin. I made some small complaint about this, to which he reacted as if I had made insinuations about the chastity of his female relatives. I decided after this to pick out the weevils in silence.
It was difficult, of course, for me to estimate the time that passed, but I believe it was around three weeks. We made two landfalls, but I was not permitted on land, so it made little difference to me.
The last morning of the voyage, I was awakened by a foul smell and a rough hand on my arm. “You’re Kësil, aren’t you? If not, you’d be wise to say that are,” said the owner of the hand and possibly the smell also. It was the man with the mottled skin, and he was glaring at me in an unpleasant fashion.
“I certainly am Kësil,” I said. “Who, by the way, are you? We’ve spoken quite a bit and I don’t believe you ever mentioned your name.”
“It doesn’t matter who I am! It doesn’t matter any more than a fish’s head!” The sack was pulled off my head and I saw the face of the man who had my arm. It gave me the impression of an unfinished portrait: his skin was mottled and his beard patchy. “All that matters is that I’m not taking you to the oracle; may Hagūt kill me if I take you there! They’ll have my skin if she says you’re the wrong man. They’ll nail it up on an obelisk.”
“But I am Kësil, and I don’t know anyone else by that name. It isn’t a common one in this part of the world.”
“And don’t forget it. I’m still not taking you to the oracle. I’m taking you straight to Shamkārus, and then he can deal with you, and I’ll be out of the matter entirely. Let me warn you, Parako, never to let anyone do you a favor, because then you’ll have to repay it. You are Parako, aren’t you? You speak very good Dūrī for a Parako man.”
I shrugged. It is always an awkward moment, calling for awkward explanations, when my Bird’s fluency with languages is discovered. “I’m not from any of the Parako cities, actually.”
He frowned at me, then reached out and pulled my hat off before I realized what he was doing. He stared at the top of my head for a long moment, his mouth agape, and offered no resistance when I took the hat back from him and replaced it firmly over my head, covering up the Bird that perched there. I call it the Bird, understand, because of the way it sings in my ear, not because of any particular physical resemblance. There are other, less attractive, creatures in this world that it resembles more.
“I think it would be best if I kept wearing this,” I said, and he nodded. He didn’t talk much after that. The first thing he did was to take a long drink from a skin he wore on his belt, then he beckoned for me to follow him.
We were in a cramped wooden room at the base of a short flight of stairs that led up to a corridor and then onto the deck of a ship. Judging by its size and by the shape of its sails, it was a Dūrī vessel. I knew little about the Dūrī save that they were one of the great powers of the sea, and that their king ruled with the absolute power of a god. The lords of the Parako were powerful, to be sure, but when one of them judged that his brother was growing too arrogant, he would rebuke him by calling him a Dūrī king. So, being ignorant, I observed everything around me with great curiosity.
My readers may wonder why I was not more alarmed at my kidnapping, but you will recall that I was already far from my home. By this point in my life I was well accustomed to strange surroundings, and I doubted I had been brought all this way to be killed. It would have been more convenient to do that back in Edazzo, where my body could be easily dumped in some corner without the necessity of dragging it all the way across the ocean.
It was late in the day, and I was ravenously hungry, which I mentioned to my new friend. He shook his head and muttered, which I took to mean that my supper was not forthcoming.
The Dūrī ship was moored some distance from a dock, which was quite different from the ramshackle wooden structures that had grown up alongside Edazzo. Rather, this dock was framed by stone arches that ran along the sandy coast between two rocky fringes that stuck out like arms on either side, and in the midmost point between the arches was an obelisk. My new friend shoved me to the side of the ship, where a rope ladder led down to a smaller boat, and once we were both in the boat, began rowing us under an arch to the dock. As we passed the obelisk, I saw writing on it, or at least symbols that I assume to be writing, though they resembled nothing more than a nest of serpents crawling over one another and forming patterns like men and animals walking.
There were many people on the docks, most of them men wearing little clothing and carrying burdens from one place to another. In general they were the kind of men one would expect to see carrying burdens from one place to another, but there was one person who stood out. He was thin, nervous-looking, and wore more than just a loincloth, and when I climbed out of the boat onto the steps of the dock, he came running down to meet us.
“Is this the man?” he asked, peering at me as if I were an exotic animal.
“He is. I can swear by whatever god you want that this is Kësil.”
“Hello, Kësil. I am Shamkārus. ‘Son of war’, except, you know, squashed together a little. Really I should be called Sham-fī-hikārus or something abominable like that.”
“You shouldn’t have come down here to meet us. It’s not safe.”
“Not safe? Why not?”
The man with the mottled face sighed until it seemed as if he were about to deflate altogether. “Never mind. Let’s just all get back to your house, and then we can have a nice chat. Oh, and Shamkārus? Don’t, for the love of Sāku, ask him to take off his hat.”
Shamkārus scratched his head and for a moment I thought he was about to pull my hat off. But he shrugged and said, “I suppose I’ll find out why sooner or later. You’re not a priest in disguise, are you?”
For the sake of brevity, I will refer to the man with the mottled face by his proper name, which I learned later was Mimālal. Mimālal took Shamkārus by the shoulder and shoved him until he took the hint. I followed them back to wherever it was that they were going. Although I considered running, I couldn’t see the point. Where would I go, and why? Besides, I was curious as to why I had been sought out by name all across the southern ocean.
A road ascended from the bay in which the dock was built, and after climbing over a ridge, I saw a city laid out before us, the regular grid of its streets and avenues proof of its careful design. The most striking feature of the city was the pillars that marked every major intersection, pointing to the sky like trees stripped of their branches. Once we had descended into the city, I saw that these pillars too were covered with writing.
It was to a little house at the corner of one of these pillar-marked junctions that Shamkārus led me, and he gestured for me to sit down in a sort of porch surrounded by a knee-high wall. “You’re starving, I imagine. I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer you, and Mimālal would probably warn me against taking you to a restaurant where strangers could gawk at you.”
“I would,” said Mimālal. “You’re right about that!”
I cleared my throat and said, “I would appreciate it if it were explained to me why exactly I’m here. Where is here, anyway?”
“Well, that’s an easy question,” said Shamkārus. “This is the colony we call Tamzā.”
“Don’t tell him anything else, not yet,” Mimālal said, which didn’t inspire pleasant feelings towards him in me.
“Why not?”
“Yes, why not?” I added.
Mimālal looked from one of us to the other, then struck himself on the forehead. “There are two of them now! Tell him whatever you like, then. I wash myself of the entire business, from first to last.”
“Then I suppose you won’t be needing the rest of your fee,” said Shamkārus.
“I’m not a fool! I don’t wash myself of it that much! Bring me what we agreed, or I swear I’ll make you regret it!”
“All right, all right. Just wait here a moment and I’ll bring you the rest of your fee,” said Shamkārus.
Mimaalaal sat down on the edge of the wall next to me and folded his arms. He fidgeted as he waited, and I considered asking him a question but was genuinely worried that he would strike me if I annoyed him any more. It was a long wait, but Shamkārus at last emerged from his house, much to my relief. He carried a small bag, and Mimālal leapt up to snatch it from his hands. “Thank you very much,” he said, and ran away.
It all seemed very strange to me, but this was a strange land, after all, and there was no point in letting myself be flustered.
“So what do you have under your hat?” Shamkārus asked. “If it frightened Mimālal it must be a sight. Oh! I don’t mean to embarrass you if you have a deformity. Is it something like that?”
“It is something like that,” I said. This was closer to a lie than my tender conscience is normally comfortable with, but I do not like talking about my Bird much.
“Well! I suppose you’re wondering why I brought you here.” This was such an obvious truth that I didn’t bother replying. “Do you have fortune-tellers in Edazzo? You know, people who look at birds diving around in the sky and tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow? That doesn’t matter, I suppose. What matters is that we have them here, and I consulted one about a certain matter that’s troubling me. I had a friend who did the same thing, and he was given useful advice, so I figured I might as well try my luck. Are you following me?”
“More or less,” I said, though it was rather less than more.
“I think I must have made a blunder in choosing my fortune-teller. She was a strange one, what with her incense and her muttering. Really I don’t understand how hard it can be. Surely all you have to do is memorize whatever list of correspondences someone wrote down between birds and events. I asked her about it but she treated me like a madman! Anyway, she did give me an answer. If I wanted to have Nuflīsat favor me, I had to bring here a man named Kësil from the barbaric northern city of Edazzo and take him into my service. So I did.”
I sympathized with the fortune-teller who had treated Shamkārus like a madman. Cautiously, treating him as I had heard somewhere one was supposed to treat madmen, I asked, “So what do you want me to do?”
“That I don’t know. I confess I’m starting to have doubts about this fortune-teller.”
“She did know there was a Kësil living in Edazzo,” I pointed out against my better judgment.
“That’s true. The gods do cover their hands when they work to achieve their ends. Maybe if you just sit around the house it will summon a kind of,” and here he waved his hands in the air, “spirit or power of something that will draw Nuflīsat to me like a fly to carrion.”
“Nuflīsat is a young woman, I presume?”
“She is,” said Shamkārus, and proceeded to list her charms for several exhausting minutes.
“I only wanted to suggest that it might be prudent to find different analogies when you speak with her in person.”
“What?”
I was beginning to understand the magnitude of the problem I faced. I wished Shamkārus well in an abstract sort of way, but my difficulty was that he would not let me leave until his affair with this Nuflīsat had reached a satisfactory conclusion. My readers may recall that I served as something of a go-between for Bekrao and Ripāti back in Edazzo, but Bekrao had at least had half a brain. “Never mind,” I said. “Tomorrow why don’t you introduce me to Nuflīsat?”
“A sound plan! Her family’s always been after me to buy a slave anyway. Every time I have them as guests at my house, they complain that it’s too dirty, or that I didn’t make enough food. I happen to enjoy cooking my own food. Do you know how to cook, by the way?”
“I do not,” I said quickly, eager to correct any misapprehension before it arose.
“That’s too bad. Food’s a marvelous thing,” said Shamkārus, and proceeded to list its charms for several exhausting minutes.
“I can, however, clean and carry things, or whatever domestic slaves do.” I was a bit fuzzy on this. My family had always regarded slavery as a dubious practice.
“Yes, yes, that will be fine.”
“Speaking of food, you mentioned earlier that you had some.”
“Of course! How could I have forgotten?” He turned and disappeared back into his house, leaving me to look around at the neighboring buildings. Bricks appeared to be the predominant material, and the houses rose as great blocks from the ground. They were decorated with pictures of vines and trees and various animals climbing and down them. Along the base, largely obscured by dust, were shapes like fish, one after another, with circles in between them.
I had time to reflect on my change in situation. In my lost home I had, though far from a lord myself, moved in those high circles, and my situation in Edazzo had been fairly similar, thanks to my good fortune in finding friends. But now I had fallen to the lowest depths. Or rather, I had been dragged down to the lowest depths. I am normally a peaceful man, quarreling with no one and trying to find the best in every situation, but I admit that when I think of Mimālal, I do get angry.
The meal that Shamkārus eventually brought me was far better than I had expected, and I decided that Shamkārus’s words about cooking had been more than just the boasts of an idle aristocrat. (The society of Dūrī was and is foreign to me, but he had an aristocratic air to him, I thought). By the time I finished eating, it was too dark for me to see spoon or bowl, and Shamkārus showed me to my bed in an inner room.
I wondered, and still wonder, what my friends in Edazzo thought of my disappearance. No doubt they were distraught, if not inconsolable. Certainly I plan on returning to Edazzo at the first opportunity I have, once Shamkārus’s affairs are properly settled. It is curious how I acquire these responsibilities wherever I go, like the bear in the story who keeps picking up heavier and heavier rocks. I think that’s how the story goes, though I might be confusing it with another story. Why would a bear be picking up rocks anyway?
Puzzling over questions such as these, I fell asleep. I was awakened by Shamkārus shouting and clapping his hands. “Up! Up to work!”
I was still half-asleep, and said so. It is strange, but although I had spent a great deal of my time on the ship sleeping, the voyage had still exhausted me.
“There’s no time for sleep! They’re here?”
“Who’s here?”
“Nuflīsat!”
I couldn’t help but catch some of Shamkārus’s alarm, even though I had little idea who Nuflīsat was and no idea what he expected me to do. I jumped to my feet, then, realizing that I was being somewhat foolish, as once in a great while I am, I asked him to explain further.
“I may have invited Nuflīsat over to see an antique statue I purchased recently. She has an interest in such things.”
“And you want me to show it to her.”
“I want you to buy the statue.”
I considered this and finally decided that I had misheard, or that perhaps the Bird was beginning to fail me. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I want you to buy the statue.”
“You just said you purchased it,” I said with my usual keen perception.
“I was speaking loosely. The matter may have slipped my mind for a few days. I’ve been very concerned with bringing you here. It doesn’t matter now. No use tormenting myself over what can’t be changed. Here’s my plan. I send you out as if to buy wine, but actually you go to the house of a man named Sārusdir. Tell him that I sent you to buy the figure of, let me see, what was it called, the figure of Aluġrā. Then put it in the cask and come back. Clever, isn’t it?”
I thought that it would have been far more clever to have bought the statue beforehand, but I knew better than to say so. So I agreed, and we went out to meet Nuflīsat.
Nuflīsat was very beautiful in the way of women from this part of the world. I do not think the women of Dūrī cover themselves as much as the women of the Parako, so that all of her dark flowing hair and her striking face were visible, but she was glowering at Shamkārus, and I began to feel very uncomfortable. Unfortunately, when I looked to the main door as an escape, I saw a barrel-chested man and a surprisingly tall woman whom I took to be Nuflīsat’s parents and who were blocking my way.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Shamkārus was saying something about how delighted he was to see them. “My slave was just about to buy some wine, as I happen to have run out.”
“You drink a lot of it, do you?” asked the surprisingly tall woman in a surprisingly deep voice.
“Ah, no. Ah, hurry up, Kësil! There’s no time to waste!”
“The cask?” I said.
He stared at me, and I think it took him a few moments to remember all the details of the plan he had just explained to me. “Ah, yes. Ah, you’ll find the cask just around the corner there.”
Although I was genuinely worried that I wouldn’t, I did find the cask where Shamkārus said I would. It was a bulky thing of clay that I lifted onto my shoulders with difficulty. The barrel-chested man and the surprisingly tall woman made way for me, and I staggered out into the street, already wondering how I would carry it back when it had a statue rattling around inside. If Shamkārus had a wheeled cart or a donkey, he had failed to mention the fact to me.
I realized after a few steps that I also had no idea where Sārusdir lived. Happily, I only had to ask about eleven people before someone gave me directions to a house closer to the coast. It stood on a rise somewhat apart from any other structures, and statues of people in various attitudes surrounded it. A man sat on its porch resting his head against his arms, and as I approached him he only opened his eyes.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said.
“My name is Kësil,” I told him. “My master Shamkārus sent me to buy a figure of Aluġrā.”
“That’s right, I remember him babbling something about that. I hope you have the money with you. We agreed on six paddocks, I believe.”
“Six paddocks, did you say?”
“You know, six frogs! Money, you fool!”
Despite my general bewilderment, I was aware enough to realize that I did not have the money with me. “I’ll be right back,” I told Sārusdir, turned, took a few steps, turned again, and asked, “Do you mind if I leave this here?” He shrugged, which I took to be assent, so I dropped the cask with relief and ran back to Shamkārus’s house.
Shamkārus greeted me pleasantly at the door. “What in the name of Īfī are you doing back here? Where’s the cask?” He began looking around as if for a strap, and quickly I said, “I came back for the money.”
“Fool!” He thrust a purse into my hands and shut the door in my face.
I had to guess that Sārusdir was asking for six of the frog-shaped tokens in the purse, but my guess seemed to be right, as he took what I gave him without complaining. It may be, of course, that I had overpaid him, but if so, it was purely Shamkārus who was to blame. I am, as my readers are well aware, one of the most clear-headed and thoughtful of men, and I was dismayed by the prospect of looking after a scatter-brained master.
Sārusdir grunted and brought me in exchange a small stone sculpture, about the size of my head, in the shape of some kind of bird, though the shape of its wide maw was like no bird which I had ever seen or heard about. I didn’t care for the expression in its eyes either, and I was glad when I had safely put it away inside the cask. I was then faced with the problem of carrying it back, a tricky dilemma that I contemplated for some time (and to tell the truth, I was not particularly eager to get back to Shamkārus or to anyone else currently at his home), but finally, unable to see any other way, I lifted the cask and set off down the street.
I will pass over in silence my trials as I brought the figure of Aluġrā to Shamkārus. Suffice it to say that when I came at last to his threshold and set the cask down on my toes, I was a different man, a harder and stronger and yet a wearier man. I had suffered things that I would not wish on my worst enemy, not even on Mimālal.
When Shamkārus appeared at the door, he did not seem happy to see me. I gestured at the cask, but even then his mood did not improve. “Well?” he said. “What are you waiting for? Take it inside.”
“And its contents?” I asked.
He sighed and stared up at the arch of the doorway, which gave me time to reflect. The Shamkārus I had met yesterday had not impressed me with his sense, true, but he had at least been amiable. If this was the effect that Nuflīsat had on him, I couldn’t say I was enthused about their further acquaintanceship. Finally Shamkārus said, “I’ll show you where to put it. Follow me.”
The houses of the Dūrī, or at least the ones here in Tamzā, are something like those in Edazzo, but the center of the house is the open courtyard rather than the hall. With gesture and mime Shamkārus communicated to me that Nuflīsat and her family were in the courtyard, as we made our way around the surrounding corridor. He took me to a room where a couple of small statues already stood on pedestals. I wondered if they were gods, but as I opened my mouth to ask the question, Shamkārus slapped his hand over it to muffle me, and pointed from the cask to an empty pedestal.
Not being a fool, I understood his meaning immediately and did as he wanted. At that moment a voice called from the courtyard. I wish to do Nuflīsat no injustice, but if I were forced to describe it, I would say that it was reminiscent of two swords scraping along one another. “Shamkārus!” she was saying. “What are you doing over there? Come here!”
I began to wonder if this was where Shamkārus’s brusqueness had come from. Immediately Shamkārus grabbed my arm and dragged me out into the courtyard despite my protests. “Yes, dearest one,” he said.
“I am not your dearest one. What is this?” She was pointing at a small fountain in the shape of a fish continually spouting water from its mouth. It seemed like a foolish question to me, and I think Shamkārus thought so too, because she had to repeat herself before he answered.
“Well. It’s a fish.”
“It’s a fish. And what decan is this?”
Shamkārus stared up at the sky.
“It’s day. You can’t see the stars: they’re all hidden away in Shāmak’s bosom. It is the decan of Ħamifzū. Tell me, what is the symbol most abhorred by Ħamifzū?”
“It’s not the fish, is it?” asked Shamkārus hopefully.
“It is the fish. I would think you’d have the decency to cover this up while Ħamifzū rules the sky.”
“Yes. Of course. I mean, if nothing else, I don’t want bad luck, do I?” Shamkārus turned to me and asked me to fetch a cloth.
“Very good, sir,” I said, doing my best imitation of Agamnu’s old servant Labarinud. “Where shall I find a suitable cloth?”
“Oh no. You go find the cloth, Shamkārus. I want to have a talk with your servant here.”
So Shamkārus left, and Nuflīsat turned her glower on me. “You’re new to Shamkārus’s service, aren’t you?”
“I am, yes.” I didn’t add that I was new to service altogether, let alone that of a Dūrī lord.
“Then you may not be aware that Shamkārus is the greatest fool in all Tamzā.” She raised her eyebrows at me. Perhaps she expected me to reply, but I knew better than to say anything at all in response to this. “He wants to marry me. My parents pretend they object, but I doubt they’d really mind all that much. I’d mind, however, I’d mind a lot! There’s another man, you see.”
“Of course,” I said with a bow. At this point it genuinely seems to be my curse to find myself in the middle of other people’s complicated love affairs. I am resigned to it now. It no longer troubles me.
“So, you see, I want to end this thing before it goes any further. I want to end it now.”
I mumbled something about how although I sympathized, I didn’t really see what I could do to help.
“Well, you’d better think of something. If I end up marrying Shamkārus, I’ll be your mistress, and trust me when I tell you that I’ll make your life as miserable as I can without sending you down to be devoured by Hagūt’s vultures.”
This was a fairly persuasive argument, I admitted. At this point Shamkārus returned with the requested cloth, which ended our plotting. He struggled to fit the cloth over the fish, but finally succeeded and began talking cheerily with Nuflīsat, who seemed rather less cheery.
When Nuflīsat left at last, she gave me a single meaningful look, whose meaning I interpreted easily. If I did not find some way to stop this impending marriage, I would wish that I was being devoured by Hagūt’s vultures, whatever that meant. And while I would certainly be able to devise some clever method of discouraging Shamkārus, I did the honest and straightforward thing and spoke directly to him. Or rather, I would have spoken directly to him, but the eye he turned on me still had something of Nuflīsat’s glower in it, and so I reconsidered my plan.
“Who is Hagūt?” I asked. “What are his vultures?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about ill-omened things,” he said. “But Hagūt is the god of the dead, and the vultures are his messengers.
“Oh. I see. In any case, how did it go between you and her?” I asked, trying to sound as cheerful as I could.
He sucked in his breath, bit his lip, and glanced around for a while, so that I doubted whether he was ever going to answer me, then said, “Well enough.”
“Her parents approve, I assume?”
“Well, you know, I am a wealthy, brave, intelligent, handsome man.” I doubted whether all these were true. One, or maybe two at the most. “But for some reason, Nuflīsat herself regards me as some kind of dirty fish.”
This caused me to regard Shamkārus in a new light. There was something piscine about the shape of his face, and now that he had mentioned it, I couldn’t help but see it every time I looked at him.
“I do everything I can to please her and to impress her, but still she despises me, though she has too much courtesy to let it show.”
With my usual sympathy and subtlety, I asked him if there were any other women he would rather marry.
“No, no!” he said, shaking his head with emphasis. “There is no one like Nuflīsat, and even if there were, I wouldn’t want her.” As I considered this logical conundrum, he went on to say, “You have to help me, Kësil. Please help me!”
By this time it was later in the afternoon, and I was rather hungry. Two questions were foremost in my mind. Was it proper etiquette for a Dūrī slave to inquire about dinner? And then, was I to help Shamkārus or Nuflīsat, and how? As the first of these questions seemed the most pressing, I decided to risk rudeness and ask it.
Shamkārus gave me a puzzled look. “You’re thinking about food at a time like this? All right, all right. Go to the market and buy some things.” He disappeared into his house, leaving me to contemplate the location of the market and the identity of the things. Happily, I didn’t have to contemplate long before he returned and rattled off a list of foodstuffs for me to buy, adding as a sort of epilogue that I could find the market in such and such a place.
You can perhaps guess the conclusion I came to in the end. I dreaded the idea of an angry Nuflīsat as my mistress, not to mention Shamkārus at her side becoming more and more like her every day. I would have to end his dreams one way or another. The question was how to do it without distressing Shamkārus. When he was not with Nuflīsat, he was a pleasant enough person.
Wherever I go, I am renowned for my cleverness, and it didn’t take me long to work out a suitable plan. It was simple enough, as the best plans are. There’s no point in over-complicating things with a million plots that all have to go exactly right. I went to sleep that night satisfied that within a few days this problem would be dealt with and I would be able to start figuring out why exactly I had been brought here.
The next day I began work on the first stage of my plan. I would have to find out what exactly Shamkārus found so appealing about Nuflīsat, in order to either break that bond or find a superior alternative. So I found an opportunity and asked him subtly, “Why do you want to marry Nuflīsat?”
He stared at me as if one or the other of us had gone insane. “You’ve met her, haven’t you?”
As my meeting with her had left me more puzzled than ever, I was not sure how to respond to this. “Well,” I said finally, “I was hoping to hear it from you.” A fairly meaningless sentence, but Shamkārus seemed to understand it, even if I didn’t.
Sadly, I had forgotten entirely the last time Shamkārus had explained Nuflīsat’s charms to me. Forgotten, that is, until he began to speak again and the entire ordeal rushed back upon me like the memory of a nightmare. This time I forced myself to pay more attention, and categorized said charms under five headings.
First, her physical attractions.
Second, her personality as expressed in her conversation.
Third, her personality as expressed in her actions.
Fourth, her family: its generous spirit (which I had not observed) and its importance in the life of Tamzā. “They even have connections in the capital itself,” he added.
Fifth, the strong and healthy children they were sure to have. At this point I began to feel that he had stepped from observation into fantasy, and I interrupted. “I see,” I said. “So why does she want to marry you?”
He stared at me, and this time it was clear that it was I who had gone insane. “You’ve met me, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I said with some hesitation. He didn’t seem to think the matter needed to be explained any further, so we left it there for the time being.
Shamkārus was preoccupied with some private thoughts for most of the rest of the day, but as evening drew near, he asked me, “Is there some reason you think Nuflīsat might not want to marry me?”
“No,” I said quickly, before I had a chance to think it through. “Of course not. Why would you say that?”
He nodded, frowned, nodded again, and frowned again. “It’s just that a strange idea occurred to me.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re not in love with Nuflīsat yourself, are you?”
This was so far from any thought that had ever entered my head that I choked and was unable to reply, which he apparently took to be a sign of my guilt, because his face became very dark. He turned away from me and took several steps before whirling back around and pointing one finger at me.
“I don’t care what Mimālal says. I’m taking you to that fortune-teller tomorrow, and she can deal with you. I should have known better than to trust a Parako bandit.”
I began to explain that I was not, in fact, Parako, but he didn’t seem inclined to hear me out. I did the few small chores that remained to me and went to bed, hoping that Shamkārus would be more sensible in the morning. My plan was thrown into confusion, as I’ve noticed my plans tend to be.
He was not, and so we went to see the fortune teller. I wasn’t sure whether to be delighted that I was about to learn why I’d been brought here, or to be worried about Shamkārus’s sullen glances in my direction. I settled on a kind of mingled delight and worry for which some poet has probably found a word in some language, but for which I myself have none.
She lived in a house near the water, some distance from the docks and indeed from any other building in the city. Its bricks were decorated not with images but with lines and curves that seemed to form some pattern, though not one I could decipher. The fortune-teller herself was sitting on a three-legged chair outside, stirring up the dirt in front of her with a stick. “Hello, Umrālīsat!” said Shamkārus in a pleasant voice. “I’ve brought you that slave you asked for.”
She nodded but did not look up from the dirt. “You are Kësil,” she said, presumably to me, as I doubted there were any other Kësils in the vicinity.
“I am.”
“And you speak the language of the reeds. That is remarkable. You will bring good fortune to whoever is near you,” she said. I thought of Rosédan and wasn’t able to reply. “I’ll buy him from you, Shamkārus. I’ll even borrow him from you for a time, though I can’t guarantee that he will return as he left.”
I didn’t entirely understand this, but I didn’t like the sound of it. I was relieved when Shamkārus shook his head. “No. Only if he agrees. But you said to bring Kësil here, and Mimālal and I have done what you said. Where is my good fortune?”
“It will come, in time.” Quite suddenly she looked up and jabbed at me with her stick. She was not aiming at me, however, but at my hat, and it slid off the back of my head. There was a high-pitched scream, but it wasn’t from Umrālīsat, who only twirled the stick between her fingers, then said, “Please put your hat back on. I believe your familiar spirit is disturbing Shamkārus.”
“It isn’t a spirit,” I corrected her.
“Oh? What is it, then?” When I didn’t answer this question, she stood up and tucked her chair under her arm. “Come with me. I will speak to you in private.”
“He belongs to me,” Shamkārus said.
“I swear by Tiħāsū, I will not harm him or turn him against you. Don’t forget who it was that warned you against that ivory scheme of Mimālal’s.”
“He says it wasn’t his fault that it didn’t work out,” said Shamkārus, but he was obviously defeated. He waved for me to follow Umrālīsat into her house.
Once inside, I found that there was barely enough room to fit both of us. The space was filled with all kinds of idols and sheets of papyrus on which complicated diagrams were drawn. I peered at one or two of these, trying to decipher their meaning. In my long-lost home I often dealt with diagrams of buildings or machines, but these were meaningless to me: circles within circles with lines drawn between various points on their circumferences. There were tiny labels, but of course I could no more read these than I could read someone’s mind. Come to think of it, the Bird had to be doing something of that sort in order to translate language to language, but when I try to work out the details, it makes my head hurt. I am neither a magician nor one of the fair folk, and these things are beyond me.
At least, these were the things in my head that distracted me from whatever Umrālīsat had been saying. When I realized she was talking, I coughed, bowed, and politely asked her to start from the beginning.
She made some baffling remark under her breath about good fortune, then said, “Kësil, man from across the northern sea. But where did you come from, in the beginning?”
I shrugged. “If you can tell what is to happen in days to come, can’t you tell what has happened in the days before?” I asked. The question had a kind of double meaning, but I can’t remember whether I’ve explained it in these writings of mine. I’ll add this note to remind myself to explain it to my readers as soon as I can find a good place.
“This much has been revealed to me. You spent time with the fair folk of the north under their hills. They gave you certain gifts.” She reached out again to touch my hat, but this time I was ready, and grabbing a statue of some wide-hipped goddess, held it up to ward off her hand.
“All true,” I said.
I couldn’t see much of her face behind the empty gaze of the goddess. “Do you want me to tell you your future? I can do that as easily as a girl playing with pebbles on the beach.”
There was a time when I would have thought of fortune-telling as nonsense, but I would also have thought of magical doors and the fair folk as nonsense, so I was no longer sure what to think. Still, I didn’t like the way the goddess was staring at me. “Have you ever heard of the Rela?” I asked her.
Her hand reached out into the air. “It is a sound in the air that I don’t understand. It means nothing to me. I throw the pebbles into the air, yet they mean nothing until they land among the patterns on the ground. But I do not need my art to tell your future. You have been claimed by the house of reeds in Turīsū, and one way or another, you will go to the sisters there.”
“Maybe,” I said, not wanting to be impolite. “But if I die tomorrow, eaten by a crocodile or something horrible like that, what will become of your vision?”
With her outstretched hand she plucked the goddess from me. “You will not die tomorrow. This is how your future will go. Shamkārus will shortly be persuaded to sell you to me, and I will take you to Turīsū.”
“How do you intend to persuade him?”
“Did I say it was I who would persuade him? But one way or another, he’ll see what is in his best interests.”
“I doubt that,” I said with a world-weary sigh. “He pursues Nuflīsat, even though she doesn’t want him and she’s utterly unsuited for him.”
“Oh? Have you told him what you think?”
“No matter what you may have heard, I am not a fool.”
She clapped her hands together, startling me. “Fool or not, you have come up with the answer the gods were looking for.”
While it didn’t surprise me that I had come up with a brilliant idea, I wasn’t quite sure what the idea was. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to say this, of course, so I just nodded.
“Leave me for a time, for a brief moment, and send Shamkārus in for me to cast his fortune. He may refuse, but tell him that a crocodile will eat him if he does not. If I can persuade him to leave his pursuit of Nuflīsat, will you come with me to Turīsū?”
I agreed to this, but being truthful by nature (as I have remarked before), the lie she proposed troubled me. Fortunately I was not called upon to utter such a blatant untruth. When I stepped outside, he eyed me and asked cautiously what she had told me.
“She offered to tell me my future, but I don’t hold to such things,” I said.
“Hmph. I always think it’s better to be prepared, don’t you agree? I mean, if she’s wrong you’re not any worse off, and if she’s right at least you’ll have some idea of what to expect.” I was pleased to see that he was returning to something of the manner he had possessed when I first met him.
“In that case, she said she’s waiting for you inside.”
“You see? She does know the future after all!” With this dubious reasoning, Shamkārus went inside, leaving me to ponder the nature of the past and of the future. I was deeply pondering when he returned, and I noticed the troubled expression on his face right away.
Tactfully I said nothing as we returned to his home. As my readers will have discerned by now, I am a master of tact and discretion. But eventually legitimate curiosity overcame me and I asked him what Umrālīsat had told him.
“She said that if I marry Nuflīsat, great disaster will fall upon my house.” Shamkārus sighed as if all the weight of a city had landed on him. “I don’t doubt Umrālīsat’s prophecies. I’ve never known her to be wrong. But if I cannot wed Nuflīsat, I might as well go south to die in the desert.” He sighed as if all the weight of a mountain had landed on him.
“It’s not that bad,” I said.
“Oh? If you think it’s not that bad, tell me why.”
I cleared my throat, then realized I didn’t really have any answer for him. Finally, after some thought, I said weakly, “Is she the only woman in Tamzā?”
He laughed bitterly. “As far as I’m concerned she is. But see here, Kësil. If it’s so disastrous for me to marry her, it’d be a hundred times more disastrous for you. I think it’s best if I do sell you to Umrālīsat. You don’t object, do you?”
“I don’t.” I had made my promise to Umrālīsat, and I meant to keep it.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think that she planned for all of this to happen, all along, from the beginning.” He pondered, and I could almost see his sullen anger melting away. “She can see the future. Maybe it’s not that strange of an idea. Maybe I was just a foolish piece being moved around so her piece could reach the end of the board. Maybe we all are, Nuflīsat and Mimālal and you and me.”
“Maybe,” I said, wanting to be agreeable.
Shamkārus stared off into the distance for a while, then jerked around to face me. “You know, I don’t think I ever got around to writing up that contract with Mimālal. Technically I don’t think I have the slightest bit of ownership over you. We should probably go see him and get that cleared up.”
There seemed to be something deeply wrong with what he had just said, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. So we went to see Mimālal, who after much protesting and waving his hands furiously, agreed to change the name on the contract from Shamkārus to Umrālīsat.
I leave off writing this first section of my account here. I only note that as Shamkārus and I were walking, his eye fell on a young woman going the other way, and he remarked, “She’s awfully pretty, isn’t she?” So he’ll be all right, I think.