Khadi's Story 2: I Lost a Day |
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At the end of the first day on my journey for the Third Key I slept alone on the back of the Royal Bearing Beast Paha'Amit as we travelled onwards, and I dreamt I was back in Kehahn in the Squirming. When I awoke, the room was already well-lit: the walls of this room are so far apart you cannot see them, and there is no ceiling, so that the light of the Great Orbs is enough to see by. The Art Lords warned me of a strange thing that I now found to be true: as you leave the Impregnable Fortress, it appears to diminish in size. And yet the fronds of the strange green carpet in this room are hardly any larger, nor are they smaller. The Art Lords said that those who leave the Fortress themselves become smaller, as they diminish in proximity to the Centre and consequently diminish in importance. But I do not feel smaller. Perhaps it is because I am royalty. After I had eaten again from the Bearing Beast, and drunk my fill, I found a small hole in the floor and voided myself into it: there are no lavatories here for the Recycling, and no slaves to Feed. But scarcely had I been journeying for another Division when I came upon a large puddle in the carpet. There did not appear to be a ceiling, so I am not sure how the roof could have leaked, but there it was. Perhaps there are conduits beneath the floor that leak. At any rate I halted the Bearing Beast and bathed. No sooner had I entered the water, which was plenty deep enough and warm, than I perceived that I was not alone. A boy of some thirteen Hall-feasts was there, swimming. And such is the size of this mighty room that the puddle was larger than the length of the Bearing Beast, even the Royal Bearing Beast Paha'Amit, and I had not seen him. I took Control of him at once, and made him kneel at the edge of the water until I had finished bathing and had Steamed away the moisture. The boy appeared not to understand about this, for he simply let the water drip off him. Perhaps I had too strong a control on him, though. There were some discarded skins by the side of the puddle, but I did not go near them. I hoisted the boy onto the Bearing Beast and continued the Journey. The boy made constant animal-noises, until I tired of it and started to teach him to speak. He would point at something, such as one of the ruined temples I shall describe shortly, and make incoherent babblings, tee, tee! I would teach him the proper word, and make him repeat it, and soon he had a vocabulary of over one hundred words, quite remarkable for an Outsider. I mentioned the ruined temples: we see from time to time mighty pillars of soft brown stone, with many green flat tiles hanging all in disarray. Sometimes there are several of these, and it seems almost as if there had been a ceiling, a room within a room, or perhaps they are furniture and I really am shrinking. The stone is brittle, and there are broken shards of it all around these ruins. We stopped for lunch at mid-day, when the Orbs are together at their brightest. The Bearing Beast appears to be getting along well with eating the carpet here, for it fed me perfectly. The boy, seeing how I ate, appeared to react very strongly; there was no other food though, and as he would not eat what the Bearing Beast produced, I Controlled him and fed him myself. Afterwards I made use of his body. He appeared to enjoy this, and sat next to me when we continued. He is older than I had thought; perhaps Outsiders are stunted or grow more slowly than True People. We were approaching what seemed to be a large ruin: the columns made arches that almost touched, and in places it was dark inside. We entered, for I saw no reason to divert the Bearing Beast from the Direction of Travel. Presently we came upon a clearing, with a green carpet and a place where the floor was leaking, water welling upwards and bubbling. As we approached the leak, I ordered a short halt and dismounted; the Bearing Beast could refill while I inspected the ruins. I permitted the boy to play in the leak in the floor. Presently, as I wandered around looking at the strange soft stone, I realised that I was not alone. There were perhaps twenty or thirty people in a circle around me. I do not know how they had crept up, but perhaps they had some Craft I knew not. They were filthy, and their skin was in folds, as if it was ready to be discarded. Even their feet were encased in it. The tallest of these people approached me. He had silver hair: back in Kehahn he would have braided his silver pubic hair, but here his skin seemed somehow to hide all his body hair. He beckoned, and for his hair I did him honour and approached. It was the stupidest thing I have ever done, but he was only an Outsider. I did not know then that they could bite. The man bade me follow him; he could make only animal noises and not clear speech, but the meaning was plain, and again I gave him the honour of my presence. We entered the ruins, and since the arches were narrow, I did not reawaken the Bearing Beast. The floor was strewn with sharp broken rocks and slender branches of the soft brown stone; there were also places where the floor was rotted away into slimy brown puddles, so that soon I was as filthy as the people around me. We reached a place guarded in a manner I cannot easily describe for you, my brother. It was as if there were giant stick-rats, waving tentacles covered in dark green thorns. The Outsiders had thick skins, and stood on either side of me, so that the thorns did not pierce my flesh. It would be difficult for me to leave this place on my own, since beyond the Tunnel we are not able to fly through the air. There are no such barriers at home. We had reached a place where many small stone cupboards or cubby-holes were gathered in a rough circle; there must have been several hundred of these round stone objects, each with a domed roof no higher than a man could stand. There were many dirty people milling about. I was led before an elderly woman, a crone, who made animal noises at me. I stood straight and adopted the Third Posture of Declaiming, and then, very much to my surprise, she spoke. She held up a cup, and said, Drink this, and I did. The liquid was cold and bitter. After I returned the cup, she picked up some folded skins and fastened them around me. They were cold and uncomfortable. I felt dizzy. I awoke in the dark: but not entirely so, and after a while I realised that I was inside one of the domed structures. I had a headache, so I had been drugged. I reached Within to dispel it, and to my horror I could not reach my Power! I had rather I had been gelded than that! I stood, and at once fell: my feet were encased in boxes and tied together, and my hands were tied behind my back, perhaps with strands of braided hair. We keep slaves to grow hair for that purpose in Kehahn, of course. My mind was wandering, perhaps because of the drugs. I fancied I could hear many people singing or chanting, and drums beating. I slept some more. At one point I woke enough to try the door, but, although it was of the brown soft stone, it was solid, and fastened closed. I slept. I am not sure if it was the noise that awakened me or some presentiment. the Art Lords say that when an Elder is about to die, the Wolfbirds that Cannot be Shot will approach the tower and make their howling noises. At any rate, I awoke, and as I did so, the door opened. Outside it was dark, but there were flickering lights, and I could smell that the air was smoky. My headache had abated but I still had no Power. Three burly men came into the hut and rolled me over, picked me up by my armpits and dragged me outside. I could tell that they were not about to honour me. There was a large fire burning, and more of the dirty savages were prancing around it making loud animal noises. Near to the fire stood a tall poll, about the height of a man; I was led to this and lifted up high, so that the poll went through the twines holding the skins about my feet, and then I think through a loop holding my wrists together, so that when I stood, I could not move. The base of the poll was a loose platform; there were piles of dried snakes underneath it, like the hair of a mine-slave. From time to time an Outsider savage would throw more of these brittle sticks onto the pile, making loud guttural animal noises. I saw the woman who had drugged me and caught her eye. She laughed at me, and then approached and sang a chant, to the same tune the savages were babbling: Pay for your blood for the food that you take; pay with your life for the pain and the hate! but her words made no sense. Surely they must know that we can grow nothing in the Fortress: the savages exist to serve us as surely as the Three Great Orbs circle the Land. I spat at her. A group of silver-haired Elders stood on some rubble and shouted animal noises, and then someone, a young woman, ran to the bonfire and threw something burning onto the pile under my feet. Almost at once, great flames sprang up around me. I have seen bonfires before made of human fat and dried flesh, and of oil, but never of small dried snake-like pieces of stone. The woman screeched, The wood burns, the child burns, the debt is paid and for the first time I realised that this was not stone, but that ancient and sacred substance, wood. We have only a small amount in the Fortress, and I did not know it could still be obtained. This must be a mighty magic working. My brother, it is my duty to teach you many things, and in these Sendings when we do not lie together in the Squirming, it is easier to remember that duty. Therefore I shall send to you of the Making of the Wall, not to interrupt my tale, but so that you shall understand what happened next, for the Art Lords have not chosen to instruct you in these things. When I return, I shall receive instruction from the Pain Lords, and we shall be even. At any rate, know this: the outermost walls of the Impregnable and Impenetrable Fortress of Kehahn are coated in the pain of tens of thousands of captured savage slaves who dared to attack us. The greater their pain and the longer their suffering, the stronger the wall-coating. The strongest Power is born of Pain. As the flames grew, the folds of skin started to burn, and whatever they had wrapped around my feet started to smoke with the heat. I leaned into the flames as much as I could, though, to get as much pain as possible, for even if I could not reach the Power consciously, perhaps I could lash out as untrained infants sometimes do. I do not know whether this helped. The chanting had worked up into a frenzy, and as the dried skins fell from my chest (the woman had called them Klodes I think) some men started to whip me. They did not know they were helping me: soon the pain was white-hot and intense, and I let out a Great Scream. And for a while I lost consciousness. Of course, since I am writing this, you know that the life-force that is Khadi did not die. I am beautiful, so you are hoping the body survived, and this is how it happened: as the pain built up, the Bearing Beast heard, and charged through the ruins, complete with the boy clinging on for dear life at the back; Paha'Amit swept me up, burning poll and burning cloth and all, in His great Maw, and carried me off. But at the instant before he arrived, the pain awoke me enough that I could call down the Great Lightening upon the Elders. I had used that only once before, in the Tall Room, to sacrifice some children, but here the entire high, high ceiling lit up, and there was a clap of thunder and a wind that put the fire out in an instant and left the savages cowering in fright. I was completely spent and close to death, but at that instant they did not know that, and when the Bearing Beast arrived they collapsed and prostrated themselves. But then I passed out. * I was surprised to awaken. The boy was pouring water onto my face from his cupped hands, and the light of the Green Orb told me it was morning. I slept. I think it was mid-day when I slowly turned my head. The boy was eating directly from the Bearing Beast, and I was pleased. I hoped that he would come and feed me, and indeed he approached me, and I used most of my energy to nod my head encouragingly and open my mouth. I think it was difficult for him. The food gave me energy, and soon I started to peel off the Klodes. In places they had burned their way into my flesh, but the more I got off, the easier it became. The things wrapped round my feet were harder, but eventually I removed the trappings of savagery. The Bearing Beast had taken us far from the ruin, but had found another leak in the floor, so that I was able to bathe. And as I slid my bare and burned feet into the water they became whole: each inch of me that entered the water glistened with fresh but hairless skin, until I was underwater entirely. The boy reached for me, and pulled me out: he did not know that I could breathe underwater. Only the hair on my head remained, and that no longer reached everywhere to my waist, but in places only to my shoulders. Perhaps it will regrow. Out of the water, I realised that I had the Power once more. Perhaps it was not the drugs, but the skins, but if that were so, why would the savages wear them' Maybe they were stupider than I had thought. We will resume our journey tomorrow. I sleep here on the warm Carpet, with the boy curled up next to me. I have come to realise that I have no need to Control him: he likes my company, and will stay near me because of it, like a pet that needs no training. This is very strange to me. When I slept with my cousins, with any except you whom I love as my True Master, it was for a purpose or from obligation, or from happenstance in the Squirming. I hope that the boy can be taught to grow into a human.
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