It is called Shi-har-ta ‘za and it means honesty with one’s self. We practice it often for it is a difficult thing to master. Here is my story; refined by many retellings. There still may be parts left out or untrue and for that I apologize but what is borne heavily on the heart and soul does not rise easily to the lips.
I had no name or at least none that I can remember. I was born into heat and hardship in a camp no better then a garbage pile. A place in the waste where women went to when they did not have the strength to kill their own ill-begotten monstrosities. I remember very little for I was still young when the refuge camp was raided. The makeshift tents and meager belongings were burned. The women were killed or suffered a worse fate of being raped again and many of their children were slaughtered or taken. The children who were taken were divided among nomadic tribes. They were sold, traded, gambled or given as gifts.My name was Karbrak, it means food-for-dogs. I became the property of the tribe Ragoone, the people of the longtoothed desert rat, the sons of Rathbak, led by Kanard the Salt-Sower. My tribe was fierce and pitiless and did not suffer the weak to live. They honored the gods and even kept a cleric. The longtoothed rat is a powerful totem and my tribe had a good eye for spoils, living richly off the treasures they chose. Men and women, old and young alike all had such ferocious battle scares that it was the envy of other tribes and the cause of more then a few fights.
Looking back I know my servitude was for the sole purpose of providing my tribe with the many and varied pleasures of inflicting cruelty on another although then I spent most of my time wondering what I was doing wrong, what I could do to be accepted by my tribe. And I would have, and did, do anything. Now I know that it is my human blood that is to blame for this hatred. I understand that I would never find acceptance, but it took me a long time to realize that.
I was given awful and painful and disgusting things to do which despite my vow of honestly still shame me to say aloud. When I was around four years Kanard took the two outside fingers on both my hands. It was both a gesture of absolute ownership and a reminder. It was a reminder that my blood was weak. A reminder of who I was and what my station was in life. Most of all it was to be a reminder that I could never be whole.
The torments of my tribe and of Konard were divine although I would not recognize the genius of the game until much later. As a child I loathed the fearful tasks, physical retribution, freezing nights and half-starved mornings but I loved the time I was given to learn about my people. I learned and memorized and parroted and adored anything tied to the meaning of being orcish. I knew the stories and songs of raiding parties and of great battles against the weak elves and childish dwarves. Half-breeds do not join raiding parties however and they do not fight our enemies, even weak ones like the elves. They themselves are weak like their blood and their loyalties can not be trusted. Kids younger than I would march back to camp with six fresh scalps hanging from their belts, metallic smelling blood still dripping off the hair. They would have new scars around which tales would be spun. Half-breeds do not get scars because no one even in your own tribe would practice or fight with such an unworthy opponent. Scars from a dog bite or a beating are nothing but things you should hide for there is no glory in a life like that. Everything I was taught to honor and aspire to was withheld from me because of my hateful mother.
Somewhere around my ninth year I ran. I stole a spear, a knife and a water skin and left the camp vowing I would find glory in death before I returned to a life like that, in my tribe or in any other. I wandered in the wasteland that was my home for many days. Weak, lost and desperate I stumbled upon an oasis in the waste. There was a half-crazy hermit who spoke to me in a language I did not understand and who saw right through my young attempts at being threatening but there was also water, food and shade. I was not driven away so I stayed.
My name was Sariah Singledrop. It is the name I have chosen. I was the student of the human mystic Kaffal Deepwaters. Some day I will be a mystic. I learned the language that he spoke. I learned of gods beyond the orcish tribes and of what it means to serve them. I began to learn the ways of Truth, how to search for it and how to use it when it is found. With my master’s help I scarred my face and hands and found it beautiful. I wore rings and sticks of metal, wood and bone through my ears, lip, nose, and nipples and found it beautiful. I learned to braid my hair and traded a divination and a little water to a merchant caravan for tiny bronze bells that I wove into the ends. The sound of my hair announced my presence and the sound was beautiful.
Now again I have no name although they call me many things. I am aboard a ship in chains, alone and in the dark. I am sick, dehydrated and breathing through broken ribs. My lip is split and my eye is swollen shut. No one wants a half-orc that is half-skilled at half-a dozen things but this time I am thankful for it. Now I have a new cell mate. Indirectly from my hosts I learn he is an elf in need of an attitude adjustment. Even though he is an elf and speaks constantly of inane things I silently wish him the strength to hold on to his bad attitude through whatever it is that is coming. He shares his water with me and helps me with my blindfold. We play stupid games that I scratch into the floorboards with my nails. I listen to his dumb elf stories. When my host decide my attitude needs adjustment I curl up as best I can to protect my vulnerable places. I force myself to eat what I am given. I keep my ears open and when possible my eyes open, and let my body adjust to the rhythm of the water. I wait for my chance.
Never having had a room of her own before Sariah spent her last few days of vacation stalking around after Gwen, pretending to be bored and annoyed but actually studying the ways that the half-drow decorated the keep. She stole glances into other people’s room when she had the chance, although the rest of her companions were still in the process of moving in as well so it was difficult to tell what the rooms would look like when they were finished. She surreptitiously moved things into her tower as Dirk obsessed over his sword, Gwen adjusted and rearranged, and the rest of the brave companions drifted homeward from their own vacations, returning by ones and twos.
At the end of the ride she stood in the doorway appraising her work. To the left was a weapons rack she had taken from the practice room. She had refinished the wood and now it was a soft cherry color with a glossy finish. The rack held her weapons: a spear decorated with feathers, bones and beads on sinew thread tied to the shaft where it met the head; a large, shining adamantine flail; her red-bladed scalping knife, with an edge as keen as dragon teeth, that had been her first material present; and an elegantly plain heavy mace made of a metal so dark it drank in the light rather than reflecting it. She has decided to wear only the first-mate’s scalp on her belt, it was from an elf and it went well with her armor besides, so she had displayed the rest of her scalps across the top beam of the rack. She trailed her fingers along the scar that ran across her face. There were five scalps on the rack and plenty of room for more.
Next was a cot and a small table with a candle holder and a basin and pitcher for water. The basin and pitcher were both made of a cobalt blue glass worked in a local technique that put ripples in the glass so it looked like waves. She had thought they were rather pretty. There was a large rug on the floor (it got cold in here) that looked to her like some kind of underwater scene, although the patterns didn’t really depict anything. Between the rug and the cot was a plain copper fire bowl for heating the room.
Directly across from the doorway hung a massive, brightly colored tapestry that was nearly alive with scenes from home. There were camels and desert caravans, fig trees and palms, fountains, veiled dancing women, men with large curved swords and a sparkling white palace rising up in the distance. There were no orcs in the picture of course but that was to be expected. She liked it anyways.
In front of the tapestry was a rough alter on a table she had finished to match the weapon stand. There was a place for her bowl and her components, some magpie feathers she had bought from a hatter (she hadn’t seen any magpies around the city), a smooth, rounded stone from the spring at her teacher’s oasis, a small bronze figure of a camel and a ring that had belonged to Rain. She had set candles on the floor in a half-circle around the alter, evenly spaced but stopping well before the tapestry.
The last thing in the room was a work bench. There were a few tools, a shallow box of smooth sand for sketching designs in and carefully sorted materials she had collected to make jewelry from. She knew it was a stupid thing to do. Walk five blocks in any direction from the keep and you could have your choice of the finest things men had to offer. Precious stones in any color, delicately worked silver, gold or platinum, finery that would make anyone envy you, things like Gwen wears. But she couldn’t wear those things. It would just look dumb and besides she could imagine the look on the jeweler’s face when she ordered fine rings for her nipples or her nose. She thought that Tage probably won’t wear that stuff either and that’s…well, that’s something anyways.
She gave the room one last look and nodded. Almost done. With some assistance from Sean and Dirk she will build an entrance onto the roof of the tower and have some plants and maybe some ravens too. It’s still too damn cold here and there are really too many elves and dwarves about but outside of that, this might just be a good place to live.
Go Back?
