I won’t explain here the system that the Uste, or at least the Shāme family, used to keep their records. It would be of no interest to anyone except clerks and maybe particularly perverse scholars. When I presented Rosédan with a summary I’d written up, her eyes began wandering within minutes, and she has all the discipline of a trained magician. So I will resume my story with the events that would be famous for years afterwards, when the hordes of the Ikkësa reached our city.

I am certain that the Shāme had some notion of what was coming, as in the previous months they had been importing exorbitant amounts of food. I’d rather foolishly asked Iargwomos about it when I noticed, but he gave me such a stern look that my curiosity was blasted away in an instant. So I, at least, was taken entirely by surprise when an army appeared as if by magic around the walls. An army of giants, no less, waving their spears, shooting arrows, and calling to their gods, who sounded like a bloodthirsty lot.

When I write that they were giants, I refer of course not to the enormous brutes of the fairy-tales, but to men seven or eight feet tall, which was quite intimidating enough. There was general panic throughout the city, so much that I judged it wiser to remain inside the Shāme hall. I spent a little while working with the tokens that the Shāme used as records, but only a little while. Quickly I was so occupied with worry and confusion that it was impossible for me to continue, and I think Kūrumos felt the same way, because he stood up suddenly, threw his tokens down to the table, and declared, “That’s enough for today. It’s moot now, at any rate. None of these numbers are going to change as long as we’re under siege.”

So we went our separate ways, leaving the tokens behind for the mice. I decided to go straight to Thikos, with whom I had established a rapport, and find out what was going on. He wasn’t in his usual spot on the porch, nor was he in the banquet hall or the room with the great windows. Eventually I found him leaving his father’s chambers, and I gave him a friendly salute.

He stared at me, no doubt too occupied with thought to return the wave. “What are you doing here?”

It was a profound question, but I had an answer ready, as I often think profound thoughts before going to bed at night. “Breathing, primarily,” I said.

“No, no! I mean, what are you doing here, pestering me? Isn’t there anyone else in my family or among our servants who you can ask your inane questions?” If my readers observe a slight difference in Thikos’s attitude towards me when I first arrived and now, it is a sign of his intimacy with me. Of course I ignored his question, which was obviously a rhetorical one.

“I was hoping you could tell me who all these people are outside the walls. Are they enemies of yours?”

“What? Didn’t you notice all the villagers and farmers pouring into the city these past weeks?” he asked. I had, of course, but I’d assumed there was some kind of festival or fair being held. “Have you somehow managed to be the only person in all of the land who didn’t know that the Ikkësa were coming?”

“The Ikkësa? I don’t understand.” This, finally, was a name I recognized, even if it made no sense to me. I had heard it in a story told by a pair of travelers out of the far west. “You don’t mean the Ikkësa who ruled over the lands west of the great lake, thousands of years ago?” This was to be my first hint as to where that rift in the air had taken me.

“Your joke is a very bad one,” said Thikos, and pushed his way past me. Looking back at me as he walked away, he said, “If you’re looking for something to do, go find Iargwomos at the temple. No doubt he’ll have a useful task for you.”

The rapport between Thikos and me having failed to provide me the answers I hoped for, I took his advice and went to the temple. Finding Iargwomos, however, proved more troublesome, since what seemed to be the entire population of the city was crowding around the temple, no doubt seeking the help of their gods. I contented myself with a short invocation of the Flame, then began hunting down Iargwomos.

I was fairly confident in my efforts: Iargwomos’s expression was one that would frighten away everyone within a span of several feet, so there was certain to be a gap in the crowd around him. When I turned the corner to the north side of the temple, I saw a man standing off by himself, but approaching him I saw that he had a broad grin on his face.

“Pardon me,” I said. “I mistook you for someone else.”

“Kësil!” he said in Iargwomos’s voice. “The day is here at last.”

“Iargwomos?” I asked in some disbelief. He looked like another man entirely when he was smiling, almost as if he and Thikos had switched souls somehow. It was unnerving, and I kept drawing my gaze away to look at the walls of the temple, which for all their garish colors showed no sign of breaking into a grin.

“The Ikkësa are here!”

“And that’s a good thing?” I asked, trying to keep up with the conversation. I was accustomed to hearing perplexing things from the Uste, but it wasn’t entirely clear to me how the hordes outside the walls could be interpreted as a blessing.

“Ah, Kësil, you may be a fine clerk, as you say, but you don’t have the heart of a warrior!” This was undoubtedly true. The only fact keeping me from outright panic was that the Ikkësa were out there and I was in here. “The people of Tīuame were warriors once, Kësil, and our enemies feared our name. Do you hear the fierce Ikkësa howling for our blood? There was a time when it would have been we outside the walls and our enemies who cowered within!”

I looked around and observed out loud that it was we who seemed to be cowering at the moment.

“Yes, but not for long. We’ve learned the ways of the clerks, as you say, and the way of the priests, but we haven’t entirely forgotten the virtues that brought our fathers here out of the east. Now the Ikkësa have been sent by our ancestors’ shades to reawaken us! The spirit of the Uste will breathe in us again.”

Many of the things I’d wondered about over the past months were beginning to make more sense. “You’ve been preparing for this siege,” I said.

“We have.”

“All that grain and all those weapons.”

“Yes.”

“And the wine.”

“Of course.”

“And the dancing girls.”

“Well, no, that was something entirely different.”

“But who are the Ikkësa and what do they want with us?”

“They want to invite us to a feast, of course. What do you think they want with us? The Ikkësa, the scourge of the north, the sons of clouds, we’ve heard all these names, and we’ve heard what they do to the cities in their path. But the things they shout up at us are as much of a mystery as the invocations of the priests.”

“It isn’t that much of a mystery,” I said. “They’re shouting a lot of things and it’s quite difficult to hear a lot of it, but they do keep mentioning someone named Umoddan and the way in which he’s going to cut off our heads with his ax. The ax, as far as I can make out, is supposed to be the size of a mountain, so either Umoddan is a god or we’re in more trouble than you anticipated.”

Iargwomos’s smile fell away and his stern expression returned, stern enough that I took several involuntary steps back. “You can understand them?”

“Well, as I said, it’s hard to make out their words. They didn’t seem inclined to enunciate clearly.”

He grabbed my arm with significantly more force than I thought necessary and dragged me down into the city, with me struggling all the way to break free. But if the spirit of the Uste granted extraordinary strength, then the spirit of the Uste certainly was breathing in Iargowomos right then. The place to which he took me was a tower that rose several yards above the ground near the walls, and when we reached the top he said to me in most discourteous tones, “What are they saying, then?”

I looked down at the giants and tried to make out their words. There are men among my people who have trained themselves to be able to speak and be heard at great distances, and it was clear that some of the Ikkësa warriors had the same ability. It would have been clearer, unfortunately, if only one had had the ability, but as the situation stood their voices overlapped and blended to such an extent that I had to shut my eyes and concentrate to distinguish them.

“We are the forsaken,” I said, repeating what I heard. “We are the children of mighty gods, of the gods who made the earth, and all the earth belongs to us. Umoddan fights for us! Umoddan is with us!”

Iargwomos raised his hand for me to stop. “And where did you learn the Ikkësa language?”

This was a conundrum. Taking the question in the literal sense, I could only answer that I didn’t know the Ikkësa language, but this was unlikely to satisfy Iargwomos. I could come up with a plausible lie, but I, as my readers may recall, am truthful by nature, and anyway with that stern face glaring me down, it was doubtful I could summon the wit to concoct such a lie. My only option was to avoid or evade the question, which I did by remarking, “Ah, well, you see…”

He continued to glare at me for a while, then said, “How convenient. We may have a use for you beyond juggling tokens. Come with me.”

He brought me down to the north gate of the city, where Thikos was engaged in conversation with several old men. Iargwomos clapped me roughly on the back and said to Thikos, “Kësil here says he can speak the language of the Ikkësa, but only the gods know how.”

I felt obligated to correct him. “I didn’t say that.”

“What? Then what were you doing in the tower?”

I saw the misunderstanding. “No, no. I can speak the language of the Ikkësa, but I didn’t say only the gods know how.” I had the feeling that neither Iargwomos or Thikos appreciated my clarification.

“Then you can accompany us to the hurling of words that precedes the hurling of stones,” said Thikos, “and we’ll see if you speak their language as well as ours. But I’m not a god, and I’ll be waiting for your explanation. Let’s get up to the wall.”

We climbed up a ramp to stand on a platform on the city wall, where Thikos took a folded banner from one of the old men and unfolded it to reveal a painted symbol like a wolf’s head, which he waved in the air. Down below there was an answer: a banner with a bird of some kind, a falcon or an eagle I think. A silence fell over the giants, and Thikos took a deep breath in preparation before shouting, “Who are you, and what do you mean by all this noise?”

There was some discussion below. The giant who stood under the banner stood still as another whispered in his ear, no doubt translating, then he laughed and shouted back, “You are a fool if you haven’t heard our name. This city is ours. Leave it or we will break its walls, cut off your heads, and take your women for our own. That is all you need to know! What do you say to that?”

I translated this for Thikos, who nodded slowly and was silent in thought for a while. Iargwomos was less contemplative. “You swear by your ancestors? That’s really what he said?”

I was shocked by his mistrust. “I swear by the Flame, that’s exactly what he said.”

Thikos nodded again and shouted down to the Ikkësa. I was glad at that moment that they had a translator down with them, as I fear that my attempt to project my voice would have been a pitiful one. “This city is Tīuame!” Thikos said. “Our fathers took it by the sword long ago, and we will never surrender it!”

“Then by Ęshur, you will all die! Whether by the sword or by slow starvation, you will all die!”

I relayed this message, which I confess was making me rather nervous. The prospect of being beheaded by these giants was not a pleasant one. Nor, for that matter, was the prospect of slowly starving within a besieged city; I had read accounts of such things and they were unsettling reading.

This seemed to be the end of the negotiations. Both banners were folded up, and Thikos hurried down for the wall, followed by the old men and by Iargwomos, who had his hand on my arm again. The amiable Iargwomos I had met at the temple was long gone, and the stern Iargwomos seemed to have taken a disliking to me for some reason, despite all the help I’d given. It was puzzling.

“Are the men ready?” I heard Thikos ask his companions.

“They are. Ah! If only the wolves were here.”

“You should be more careful with your words. Better to have the wolves outside than in. Or do you think your old bones can protect you when they come knocking on your door?”

“Thikos!” Iargwomos called. “Where should we put him?”

“Oh, Kësil? Put him in the little white room. I’ll talk to him there.”

“You heard him,” said Iargwomos to me.

I had, but I didn’t understand. Even as I was searching my memory for any room in the Shāme’s halls that could be described as little and white, Iargwomos led me into the halls and down a flight of stairs into a hallway that was almost completely dark. “Where, exactly, is it that I’m being put?” I asked, starting to feel concerned. There was obviously a great deal going on in Tīuame that I had little knowledge of, and I wanted to avoid getting my foot caught in those unseen depths. And with the Ikkësa howling outside the walls, I was beginning to experience the same sensations that I had when, as a boy, I was accidentally locked inside a storeroom and observed a large spider crawling towards my foot.

“Oh, there’s a room where we keep troublemakers.”

“But what does that have to do with me? I’m not a troublemaker.”

“Aren’t you?” By now we had reached a door that he kicked open. The room on the other side was indeed little, and I had a suspicion that if the light were better I would be able to see that it was plastered white within. “You appear out of the wild northern hills and speak the tongues of both Uste and Ikkësa perfectly. That’s trouble in itself. Did you escape Ikkësa captivity? Why then didn’t you tell us?”

With no other choice left to me, I prepared to explain all about my Bird, or at least as much of it as I understood myself. (Rosédan has confessed to me that she herself is baffled by its magic.)

“The wild northern hills,” Iargwomos said again before I could gather my words. “They say witches and evil spirits live under those hills, plotting against us and conjuring deceptions.” He gave me a meaningful look. The meaning, I gathered, was that I might be a plot or a deception. I began pinching my arms to try and prove to myself and to him that I was flesh and blood, but it proved futile. Iargwomos’s gaze continued to rest on me, bearing all its weight of suspicion like a heavy-laden wagon, if I may wax poetic about an extremely unpoetic moment.

“Well,” I said, “I have a certain knack for languages.”

“You learned theirs somehow. Where?”

It was very tense for us all, I think. I cleared my throat; he said “Ah ha!”; I changed my mind and said nothing. There was a long silence, broken only when Thikos arrived at last, beaming genially. Emboldened by his arrival, I mustered all of my remaining courage and said, “Of what, exactly, are you accusing me? I am a guest among you, not a spy, and I have done my best to behave as a guest should. Is this the courtesy that hosts show their guests in Tīuame, among the Uste, among the Shāme?”

I had some more thoughts prepared along these lines, but as I spoke I began to see that Thikos’s genial smile was wearing thin. He raised his hand and I stopped talking. “This is a very serious matter,” he said. “But it’s simple enough to clear up. All you have to do is explain where you came to learn the Ikkësa language. I know Iargwomos is suspicious, but there are many innocent ways you could have acquired your knowledge.”

“Yes,” I said, and paused to try and think of one of these innocent ways. Not that I would have lied outright, my readers should understand, only implied that I had learned Ikkësa in some way that didn’t involve treachery or magic. I would have to choose my words very carefully. “This is how it happened,” I began. “You know that I was a clerk in my home. I had been assigned by my master to bring a message from him to some of my fellow servants in a distant town, but on the way I found something like a doorway in a hill. I find it hard, now that I think back, to explain exactly what it was like, but I opened it and passed through. That’s how I found myself in the caverns of the fair folk.”

My readers may have noticed that at some point in my explanation my imagination failed me and I began to recite the plain historical facts. Alas, I was betrayed by my innate honesty, and I wonder what Thikos and Iargwomos would have done next if a messenger had not appeared in the doorway and said, “Forgive me, sirs, but there’s trouble at the gates. The Ikkësa are waving that banner and we think they want to exchange words with you again.”

“All right,” said Thikos. “You come with me, and you come too. I don’t know whether you’re a madman or a spy, but I want to know what you and the Ikkësa have to say.” Iargwomos gestured and I followed them out, preferring to walk of my own volition, constrained as it might be, rather than be dragged by force.

Once we reached the platform on the wall, Thikos held up the wolf banner and shouted, “What do you have to say now? Have you reconsidered your boasts?”

The Ikkësa leader laughed. “Have you reconsidered yours? But I only wanted to add one more thing that I forgot to mention earlier. How sure are you that all your kindred would rather live under the heavy hand of the Shāme family than enjoy the protection of the Ikkësa? How sure are you that everyone within your walls is loyal to you?”

On the heels of my interrogation in the little white room, this was not the sort of question I wanted Thikos and Iargwomos to be asking themselves. But both of them were looking in my direction, waiting for their translation. I cleared my throat and, with terrible pangs of misgiving, prepared myself to utter a statement that was not quite in accord with the truth. “I’m not sure,” I said. “He spoke too quickly.”

At this my Bird gave such a squawk that I nearly fell over. Up to this point my relationship with the Bird had been a utilitarian one: it translated for me and no doubt in return it was allowed to feast on my brains or something equally uncomfortable. This was the first sign it gave that it might approve or disapprove of what I said, and I was more unnerved than ever.

“You lie,” said Thikos. “You lie badly.” I wasn’t sure whether he was disappointed by the first part or the second. “You were tested and you failed. Listen down there! We have one of your spies, a man who calls himself Kësil and who wears a curious hat. You can take him, if you want him.” Iargwomos pushed me up to the edge of the platform, and I observed the drop below with significant alarm. I hoped that Thikos intended me to be intact upon my supposed return to the Ikkësa, and not broken in several pieces on the ground.

My eyes met those of the Ikkësa leader, who suddenly began to laugh and waved his arm in a grand motion. “Send him down, then! We always have room for more.”

So I was lowered down on a rope, which although awkward and uncomfortable was not as violent as I had feared. The Ikkësa leader loomed over me as I reached the ground, and I trembled to see him. At least the Uste were civilized after a fashion; despite their peculiarities I had always had an idea of how to deal with them. It was beyond me what I would do now.

“Well, boy,” he said, “I don’t recognize you or your hat, but it looks like your friends in there have had enough of you. Why don’t you throw in your lot with us?”

I am not the kind of man to switch allegiances at the flip of a coin, but I was aware that I had been placed in a very difficult situation. I decided that the best course of action would be to temporize. “Ah,” I said, “that’s a very tempting offer.”

He threw back his head and laughed again. “I should hope so! You’re a bold one, boy! Worthy of service to the Ikkësa! I am Ordolan, the Shield of the Herons, and I accept your fealty.” I didn’t recall offering it, but Ordolan didn’t seem like the sort of man to be troubled by that detail. The shouts of his companions went up all around us, and, needless to say, I shuddered.