In those first few days when he infrequently bobbed back up into consciousness, 'Ker had little inclination towards doing anything. thinking, alone, was a difficult enough task in those brief moments, and lucidity came and went quickly those rare moments when it came at all.
As those moments of coherent cogitation stretched out longer and stitched themselves together into a regular awareness, 'Ker began to wonder at his vulnerability. His status as a prisoner, which he decided was a forgone conclusion, would need to be remedied once he had healed enough in body to challenge his captor. Or to just slip away once their dark, and evil magics that even now held him in the bed had been overcome.
It took time for 'Tj'Chin'Ker to piece together enough waking thought each day to realize he wasn't ensorcelled, so much as very ill. The People, na 'Tj'Shea, as they called themselves, healed faster, and were generally more hardy than most of the other Races. Thousands of years of the study of magic had made na 'Tj'Shea effective healers, at least of their own personal injuries; 'Ker knew many healers who could bring a person back from the very Doors of Death Herself, as long as they had not already wandered through them. 'Ker had lost many of his own, personal protections when he had been taken to the cell beneath the throne room by the Hand of the Father.
So, until he could renew his own protections, he had to achieve health the slow way; unaided by any power he might otherwise bring to bare.
He assessed his situation as frankly as he might.
First, 'Ker knew, he was unaided by any of na Tj'Shea, as they were all still in the Winterlands. This was also a plus, as he was also now not being chased, not persecuted by any of The People... HIS People. No allies, but no confirmed enemies.
Call that one a draw... he thought.
‘Ker needed, above all, a watcher. A friend to keep the authorities distracted and at bay; and in the tall woman who came to his room most days, he thought he might have found just that. She was tall for a woman, even for a human woman, she would tower over him. She must have been at least as tall a draft horse’s head was high. Mayhap she was just a few hairs taller than even that. Wavy curly red hair, the color that you might see on a robin’s chest. A deep rich red, like some flowers in bloom could sport; not the orangey, bronze-like tones most humans called red, but the color of freshly heated copper at the forge.
She was gentle when she checked his bandages, though he saw she had healthy, strong arms with broad hands, and well articulated long fingers. She possessed a long handsome face, as well. Strong, and angular, where most human woman had rounded faces. One acquaintance of his from his childhood had always called human women "cherubs" because of their tendency towards soft, gentle features. Not at all like the women of the People, who had sharper, more angular, harder edged features than humans.
A nose one might charitably call “noble,” but in actuality it was long, proud, and as sturdy as the prow of a ship. Muscles in her arms and shoulders had no trouble lifting and moving his frame to care for his injuries, but the hands, though large and competent, where as soft as any noble women’s hands he had ever beheld. In truth, the few human noble women he had seen the last time he had been in these realms had the hands of sailors; calloused and work hardened with the daily chores they did. The women of na 'Tj'Shea constantly washed their hands, trimmed and filed their nails, and softened their skins to remove, or hide the callouses caused by hard work. In fact, he doubted even the poorest woman amongst the People had roughened hands. 'Tj'Chin'Ker had never considered that before.
She could have been a battle maiden if she so chose. Her coloration might see her fit in well amongst the Njordi. So large, so well balanced and sturdy; she even walked with the grace of one trained for the field.
He might have thought of a dancer’s grace. … but no one that tall would be trained for dancing. She has the seductive walk of a lioness at leisure. hrrrm... I may need to lie down... if I already weren't doing exactly that... and with that slew of thoughts racing through his head, he blushed for the first time in a long time. Light on her feet for one so large, while he had often seen men her size that would stomp and pound the earth into submission beneath their feet. She moved slowly, a measured pace, but oh, so graceful.
Never had he seen her take a step unmeant, or a motion unneeded. The gentle sway of her hips as she moved about the small room in which he recovered from the devastation of moving through the paths the Tj’Shea had not used in so long. It made up for the pain, that lovely rocking and swaying of those broad hips, hypnotic.
…stop it!
…stopitstopit…think of something else…
One of the Ravens of Uillaishtar; that band of human women who made men pause in fear on the field, a thousand years long passed and more. 'Ker wondered is they still rode over the hills of the Green Isle. She could be one of them, easily, he thought. She had the commanding presence, the height, and the grace. But, he considered, she heals people. Not a Raven, then. And her hips swaying, her bottom slowly moving reminded him of a boat on a rough sea...she’s comfortable in this room, when she leaves it her walk changes, becomes flattened and faster, but here she wants to linger, Here, she knows she is the one in command…
Think of the Misty Havens, and all thoughts will become calm! his teachers used to tell him. Sometimes it even worked. A mental shake of his head, for real shaking would have hurt too much. I do wonder if they’re still about... His thoughts darting and racing back to old debts, old battles, and older wounds. I hope to not find myself on the Green Isle ever again to find that answer. Thousand years or not, if any humans would stay around just to exact a debt, The Ravens would…
He noticed she came regularly, at night, to change his dressings and clean his wounds. Gentle hands, and a no nonsense attitude made her his ideal caretaker while these strange and powerful, though anonymous, Northmen held him.
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Her silence unnerved him, though. Night after night she would not speak a word to him. He knew she thought he was sleeping, in the deep healing sleep that he came here in. She didn't even hum.
Didn't everyone hum when the worked alone? How could she not?
This was a truth ‘Ker would grant, that she thought he was asleep and injured horribly; but he seldom saw a Daughter of the Fleam so silent. They all tended to talk to those they tended, even those insensate and about to die.
All he needed had been a touch of glamour to make her talk. A little blood from the tip of a finger to scrawl the right set of Ogham just upon the edge of the metal frame of his bed, and whenever the tall, kind woman entered the room alone, she would speak; specifically she would speak to him. Every night a torrent of words flew about him as some vocal dam in her had broken under his spells. Words, words, and more words began to gather around in his head each night as Ellen spoke, buzzing gnats in summer twilight. Small words he picked out from the patterns of her speech at first. “Ah,” and “dhe,” or "Djey" and “Aye.” He knew it would take time to get the bigger linguistic picture.
The word "nurz" was said often. It may have been related to the word Romans used for some caregivers, that sounded like "nuTRIKA." Later he had heard some Frankish brutes use a term that sounded like "Nouriss." But, regardless, the words came on in their now never-ending flood.
“Ta” and “Tatah” were the words she left him with every night. He knew she was about to leave him for the day when she would turn to him and simply say “Ta.” Often it sounded to his ear like “blahblahblahBLAHbla-blah…TA!” ‘Ker had no idea what the words actually meant, what arcane connotations they had, but he had learned they presaged her departure. His own people had many words one gave to those taking leave, and some more to those you were leaving, and the each had a significance all their own. “Veanaket Leat!” was the most basic phrase.
But the way she looked at him, the warmth she exuded when she said simply “Ta…” as she left him was more akin to the words a wife would speak to her lover, or a mother to her dearest son. It will take time to figure this out, time I don’t rightly own. Time I’ll have to take, so for now, farewell is simply “Ta…”
The more he listened to those around him, the more confused he was becoming. In the long hours abed, he had so much time for his mind to wander, making connections of its own about whatever he heard. And there were many peculiarities.
A large glazed oval hung on the wall before his bed. It was an arm length wide, and about half that tall; at first ‘Ker thought it might be a mirror until he saw another smaller mirror in the room that was a perfect reflecting surface. This gray thing didn’t throw back images near as well as the small silvered glass over a wash basin he had seen the staff use.
Then, one day, a member of the daytime staff came in, and decided to engage in the worst kind of arcanum; he would do something to the rim of the gray oval to make images and sound jump from it. At first it had frightened ‘Ker more than almost everything else he had yet seen, and he had almost screamed in terror as he lay, wrapped in his bandages in the white bed. They would say something like “Ooh, whassona TellynoaEH?” and the oval would jump to life as they snapped their fingers at the thing. Sometimes it was “Telly” and at other’s it was “Tee Vee,” more often it was simply “da' celestra.” Later in the day people coming into his cell would glance at the frame and make mention of the “stories.” Places, things, and people, humans, mostly, would dance and caper about in the air a hand width or two in front of the plate's domed surface.
By nightfall "Nurz-Ellen" would enter and startle him again when she would grimace at the flicker images racing across the low domed surface, and with a wave of her hand they would freeze, along with the sounds to which he had become numbed, and then blink away back to a matte grey. She would usually spit out a scornful “idiotbox.”
Most peculiar was the way the speech sounded in his ears. Bits of words he knew, from many places and peoples, smeared together and shuffled about. It was a new Traders’ Language.
He must be near some place of commerce. Humans always made up new languages from many old ones when tribes met to barter. Why they couldn’t all be like the Pechts, who the Romoi called “Picti” he would never know. Use one language, that of the People, and stick with it.
If all humans spoke it, it would end all this silly sailing to other lands just for the burning of thatch from roofs and the stealing of grain, metals, and the occasional women. It only stood well if reasoned well. Women might be more willing to marry you or at least bear your children, if you spoke their language. No killing of the family needed, no house burning, no putting the old husbands’ and various brothers’ heads on stakes. Simple. The People rarely took humans as prisoners, it was too much trouble. Chubby little human babies were sometimes taken, but they were so cute as babies, many a 'Tj'Shea man thought grabbing one or two human kits was worth it to give to their betrothed. They usually raised them, but then returned the things after a decade or two... any longer and the things would be too much trouble to keep around.
But, simple as his people thought humans might be, the average human kingdom could come up with any number of ways to complicate everything and all things. Even Language.
But the words did come to him over time. One by one he began to understand the vocabulary; a soup of other languages that it might be. How did they ever come up with this crazy speech? Latin, German, Greek, Anglia, Keltoi all smeared into each other.
What had happened to the language the Picti had adopted from his people, or the simplified form that the Scotti brought from the Green Isle? Or even the garbled gutturals of the Njordi Raiders?
Nothing to be done for it, he attempted to learn it as best he could, and be gone! Thinking furiously one night as he watched his tall “nurse” sway silently from the room, her very enticingly female body moving as might a tree caught in some breeze he himself could not feel, but moved him nonetheless.
Soon after came the first test.
Slipping from his chamber, he eased himself past the guards set to watch him. He was curious at first; they all seemed to be women sitting behind a rounded table or booth. Sometimes men mixed in, but none of them wore swords, carried bows, nor even a good cudgel. Odd…they also made no effort to call for other guards as other obvious prisoners ambled about. Some pushing or being pushed in small horseless chariots. He remembered some tribes in his last visit rode small chariots pulled by dogs trained both to haul and for battle; it was a stupid and hilarious thing to watch fall apart.
But these chariots do not pull warriors, unless they only warred against illnesses…