Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

SEVENTEEN

Divide the Kongor lord’s house by six. A house that is but a room, with an arch door, and walls of clay and mortar. Now put another room on top of that one, then another, then another, and another, then one more and one more on top of that, with a roof that curves like when the moon cuts herself in half. That was this man’s house, a house that looked like just one column was cut off and sent to the Dolingo mountain roads. This lord waited outside his hut, chewing khat, and was not surprised when we approached. It was three nights since we left Kongor. Sogolon nearly fell off the horse trying to dismount. The man pointed inside and the girl helped Sogolon in. Then he sat back down on his stoop and chewed.

“Look up inna the sky, woi lolo. You be seeing it? You be seeing the things?”

Mossi and I both looked up, him as unclear as me.

“You not be seeing the divine crocodile eat the moon?”

Mossi took my arm and said, “Dost you know anyone not mad?”

I did not answer him, and he would not have known had I asked, but I wondered if I was the only one who noticed that this man looked exactly like the house lord back in Kongor. Leopard would have noticed. He would have said so.

“Do you have a brother north of here?” I asked.

“Brother? Ha, my mother, she going tell you that one boy was one too many. She still living too, my mother, still testing me to die first. But he lick her hard, don’t he do? He lick her down hard. Harder than all her blood spirit them.”

“Blood spirit?”

“He lick her down, that mean he close, that mean he right back of you. You know who I speak?”

“Who are the blood spirits?”

“Never in this world or any of the other world I mention him name. The one with the black wings.” Then he laughed.

That morning, the girl painted runes on Sogolon’s door with white clay.

“Did she teach you this when you were both gone?” I asked of her, but she said nothing.

I wanted to tell her that she was wasting her contempt on me, but kept quiet. She saw me coming to the door and blocked me. Her lips shut tight, her eyes narrowing in a stare, she looked like a child told to watch over the younger children.

“Woman-child. Neither might nor craft will stop me from entering this room.”

She grabbed her knife but I slapped it out of her hand. She reached for another and I looked at her and said, “Try to stab me with it.” She stared at me for a long time. I watched her lips quiver and her brow frown. She stabbed at me, suddenly, but her hand shot past my chest. She stabbed again and the knife in her hand bounced back at her. She stabbed and stabbed, aiming for my chest and neck, but her knife wouldn’t touch me. She aimed for my eye and the knife shot over my head. I caught it. She tried to knee me in the balls but I caught her knee and pushed her through the door. She staggered backways and almost fell.

“The two of you have too much time,” Sogolon said from the window.

I stepped inside to see one pigeon fly from her hands. She reached in a cage and pulled out another. Something red was wrapped around its foot.

“A message for the Queen of Dolingo to expect us. They don’t show kind to people who come with no announcement.”

“Two pigeons?”

“There are hawks in these skies.”

“How go you today?”

“I go good. Thank you for the concern.”

“If you were a Sangoma and not a witch, you wouldn’t need to draw runes everywhere you go, and suffer attack if you forget one. The things you have to keep in your mind all at once.”

“Such is the mind of all womenfolk. I forget how big it be, Dolingo. All you can see from here is the mountain pass. It will take another day to be among its trees—”

“A hundred fucks for Dolingo. We shall have words, woman.”

“What you speaking to me about now?”

“We speaking about many things, but how we start with this boy? If the Aesi is after him and the Aesi stands behind the King, so is the King.”

“That is why they call him the Spider King. I tell you this over a moon ago.”

“You told me nothing. Bunshi did. Everything about the boy was in the writs.”

“Nothing about this boy in no writs.”

“Then what did I find in the library before they burned it down, witch?”

“You and the pretty prefect?” Sogolon said.

“If you say he is.”

“And yet you still to escape. Either you too hard to kill, or he not trying hard to kill you.”

She looked at me, then went back to the window.

“This is between us two,” I said.

“Too late for that,” Mossi said, and walked in the room.

Mossi. Sogolon’s back was to us but I saw her shoulders tighten. She tried to smile.

“I don’t know what people call you, other than prefect.”

“Those who call me friend call me Mossi.”

“Prefect, this not your move. Best thing for you is you turn around and go back for—”

“As I said. Too late for that.”

“If one more man interrupt me, before I finish what I say. This is no mission to find drunk fathers, or lost child and send them home, prefect. Go home.”

“Sun’s set on that thanks to all of you. What home is there for the prefect? The chieftain army will think all on the roof were killed with my blade. You don’t know them as I do. They’ve already burned down my house.”

“Nobody ask you to push up youself.”

He stepped right in and sat down on the floor, his legs spread wide apart, and pulled his scabbard around so it rested between them. Scabs on both knees.

“And yet plenty is upon me, whether you asked or not. Who do you have good with a sword? I was doing what I was paid to. That I no longer have that calling is your fault. But I bear no malice. And man should never turn down great sport or great adventure, I think. Besides, you need me more than I need you. I’m not as aloof as the Ogo, or simple as the girl. You never know, old woman. If this mission of yours excites me, I may do it for free.”

Mossi pulled out of his satchel a bunch of papyrus leaves folded small. I knew from the smell before I saw what they were.

“You took the writs?” I said.

“Something about them had the air of importance. Or maybe just sour milk.”

He smiled but neither I nor Sogolon laughed.

“No laughter to you people below the desert. So, who is this boy you seek? Who presently has him? And how shall he be found?”

He unfolded the papers, and Sogolon turned around. She moved in closer, but not so close it would look like she was trying to read them.

“The papers look burn,” she said.

“But they fold and unfold like papers untouched,” Mossi said.

“Those are not burns, they are glyphs,” I said. “Northern-style in the first two lines, coastal below. He wrote them down in sheep milk. But you knew this,” I said.

“No. Never know.”

“There were glyphs of this kind all over your room in Kongor.”

She glared at me quick, but her face smoothed. “I don’t write none of them. Is Bunshi you must ask.”

“Who?” Mossi said.

“Later,” I said, and he nodded.

“I don’t read North or coastal mark,” Sogolon said.

“Well fuck the gods, there is something you cannot do.” I pointed at Mossi with my chin. “He can.”

The room had a bed, though I was sure Sogolon never slept on one. The girl went beside her, they whispered, then she went back to the door.

“The writ the prefect holding be just one. Fumanguru make five, and one come across where I stay. He say the monarchy need go forward by going back, so that make me want to know more. You read the whole writ?”

“No.”

“Don’t have to. Boring once he stop talking about the King. Then he just turn into one more man telling woman what to do. But for what he say about the King, I find him one night.”

“Why would anything about the elder and the King concern you?” I said.

“It never was for me. Why you think no man can touch me, Tracker?”

“I—”

“Don’t bother with the smart tongue. I didn’t call on him for me, but for somebody else.”

“Bunshi.”

She laughed. “I find Fumanguru because I serve the sister of the King. From what he write, he sound like the one man who understand. The one who could look past his own fattening belly to see what wrong with the empire, the kingdom, how the North Kingdom being plagued by evil and misfortune and malcontent for as long as a child know the kingdom. Your eyes pass the part where he talk about the history of kings? The line of kings, this I know. That who succeed the King change when Moki become King. He not supposed to be King. Every King before him was the oldest son of the King’s oldest sister. So it was written for hundreds of years. Until now we have Kwash Moki.”

“How did he become King?” Mossi said.

“He murdered his sister and all under her roof,” I said.

“And when the time come Moki send his oldest daughter to the ancient sisterhood where no girl can become a mother. That way his oldest son, Liongo, become King. And so it go for year after year, age after age that when we come to Kwash Aduware, everybody forget how one become King and who can become King, so that even the faraway griots start singing that so always be the way. This land curse ever since,” Sogolon said.

“But all the griots’ songs sing of winning wars and conquering new lands. When exactly did a curse happen?”

“Look behind the palace wall. The records show all the children who live. You think it going show all the children who die? Too many dead sons mean the royal blood weak. Records, do they tell you of the three wives Kwash Netu have before he find one that would give him a prince? Kwash Dara lose his first brother to plague. And have three slow sisters because his father breeding concubines. And one uncle as mad as a southern king, and death strike nearly every wife who don’t give him a son. In which book all of that write? Rot run through the whole family. Here is a question and answer it true. When you last see rain in Fasisi?”

“And yet there are trees.”

“Defeat is not the problem. Victory is.”

Even Mossi leaned in when he heard that. Sogolon finally turned around, and sat in the windowsill. I almost expected Bunshi to come seeping down the wall.

“Yes, the great kings of the North make war and win plenty, but they always want more. Free lands, lands in fuss. Those cities, and towns that not take a side. They cannot help themself, man raise by man, not woman. Woman not like man, they don’t know gluttony. Each kingdom, spread wider, each king get worse. The South kings get madder and madder because they keep making incest with one another. The North kings get a different kind of mad. Evil curse them, because they whole line come out of the worst kind of evil, for what kind of evil kill he own blood?”

“More interested in questions where the answer is the boy,” I said.

“You said you know him? Tell me what you know,” Sogolon said.

I turned to Mossi, who was looking at us, back and forth, like somebody who had not yet decided who to believe, who to follow. He rubbed his young beard, longer and redder than I remembered it, and looked at the papers he held in his hand.

“Mossi, read it.”

“Gods of sky—no, lords of sky. They no longer speak to spirits of the ground. The voice of kings is becoming the new voice of the gods. Break the silence of the gods. Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings. The god butcher in black wings. And the rest?”

“Please.”

“Take him to Mitu, to the guided hand of the one-eyed one, walk through Mweru and let it eat your trail. Take no rest till Go.”

Sogolon shook her head. She had never read or heard this before, and knew that I knew it.

“So Fumanguru say take the boy to the one-eyed one in Mitu, walk through the Mweru, and then head to Go, a city that only live in dreams. And the Aesi is the butcher of gods? Maybe I choose a wrong man in Basu,” Sogolon said.

“You dare say that now? It was your choosing that led to his death,” I said.

“Watch your tongue,” said the girl.

“Did I hold a knife to his neck and say, Fumanguru, do this? No.”

“Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings,” I said.

“And?”

“Leave playing the fool to the girl, Sogolon. The god butcher is the Aesi. The killer of kings is the boy.”

Sogolon laughed, soft like a grin at first, then a loud howl.

“They are prophecies, are they not? Of some child—”

“What kind of prophecy rest hope on a child? Which prophet so fool? Witch bitches from the Ku? On a little thing that not going live ten years? Your pretty prefect come from a place where people never stop with the talk of magic children. Children of fate, people put all hope in them. All hope in a thing that stick a finger in he nose and eat what he pull out.”

“And yet that prophecy makes more sense than the horseshit you and the fish keep selling,” I said. “I took this road with you because I thought it would go somewhere. This boy is as much proof the King killed Fumanguru as a cut on a donkey’s ass. You still clutch it in the breast, the truth. I know what you put in my way to not find, Sogolon, including that you were at Fumanguru’s house and tried to use a spell to hide it. That you have been looking for ways to find the boy yourself so that you would not need me. You even had one whole moon to do it, and yet here we are. You are right, Bunshi is not your master. But she is not used to lying to men. She nearly went mad when I caught her double-tongue. And what is this girl anyway? You go off in some secret door and make her play with spears and knives and now she calls herself warrior? Is this another person who will die while you watch? I see that too, witch, for that you can also blame the Sangoma. She’s more powerful dead than alive.”

“I tell only truth.”

“So either you are a liar or you have been lied to. I sniffed you out every step of the way, Sogolon. The night Bunshi told me Fumanguru ran afoul of his own elders, I went to see an elder. Then I killed him when he tried to kill me. He also wanted to know about the writs. He even knew about Omoluzu. Your fish told me the boy was Fumanguru’s son, but he had six sons, none of them the boy. The day before we met you, the Leopard and I followed the slaver to a tower in Malakal, where he kept a woman with the lightning sickness inside her. Bibi was there too, and Nsaka Ne Vampi. So either you were dropping nuts like a trail for the bird to pick and follow, or your mask of control is just that, and you control nothing.”

“Watch your mouth. Do you think I need a man? I need you is what you thinking? I know the ten and nine doors.”

“And you still couldn’t find him.”

Mossi went to stand behind me. Sogolon stared, frowned for a blink, then smiled.

“What is his use, you said to me when you saw the Leopard’s boy. A woman like you keeps the grains and burns the chaff,” I said.

“Give me the meat and not the fat, then.”

“You need me. Or you would have been rid of me a moon ago. Not only do you need me, you waited a whole moon for me. Because I can find this boy; your door only makes it more quick.”

“He is with you?”

“Mossi is his own man. We have come a long way, Sogolon. Longer than I would have ever gone on half-truths and lies, but something about this story … no, that’s not it. Something about you and the fish shaping this story, controlling so hard how each of us reads it, that turned into the only reason I came. Now it will be the only reason I leave.”

I turned to walk away. Mossi paused for a second, looking at Sogolon, then turned.

“It right there. Read it. Everything right there. Now you waiting on me to put it together for you like your name is child.”

“Be a mother, then.”

“Pretty prefect, read that line again.”

Mossi pulled the papers out of his pouch again.

“Lords of sky. They no longer speak to—”

“Jump over that.”

“As you wish. Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings.”

“Stop.”

Sogolon looked at me as if she’d just made everything plain. I almost nodded, thinking I must be a fool to still not see it. I would have left it there too.

“Your little boy is a prophesied assassin who will kill the King?” Mossi said before I could say it. “You want us to find the boy fated by some fool to commit the worst crime one could ever commit. Even this talk right now is treason.”

He was still a man following his uniform, even now.

“No. That would take least ten more years, if it was true. A bad slave and terrible mistress? Why you think it say take him to the Mweru, where no man come back from alive? And to Go, which no people ever see? Killer of kings mean killer of the depraved line, rejected by the gods, or else why would the Spider King join so close to the god butcher? The boy not here to kill no King. He is the King.”

Both Mossi and I stood silent, the prefect more stunned than me. I said to Sogolon, “You trusted this prince to a woman who sold him as soon as she had the chance.”

Sogolon turned back to the window.

“People are deceitful above all things. What can one do?”

“Give us word on this boy. We will have it.”

This is what Sogolon told us in the room. The girl was standing at the door, as if guarding it. And then the old man was in the room, though neither I nor Mossi remembered when he stepped past the girl. Sogolon told this story:

When the ewe drummer want to send you tidings good or bad, he pull the drum strings tight to the body and pitch the voice high or pitch the voice low. Through the pluck, through the pitch, through the beat, lie the message that only you can hear if it meant for you. So when Basu Fumanguru write the writ, and decide he going to send the first to the marketplace, the second to the palace of wisdom, the third to the hall of grand elders, and the fourth to the King, he fashion a fifth, to send to who? Nobody know. But nobody even get send the writs and nobody know what they say. Not even those he tell he was going to write. All we know is that we the sisters who serve the King sister was going to the western hall to pour libation to the earth gods since where we live was in the earth, and the gods of sky was deaf to we. And coming up to us was the sound of the drum.

Mantha. The mountain seven days west of Fasisi and north of Juba. From afar, to the eye of warriors, and travelers, and land pirates, Mantha be a mountain and that is all it be. It rise high like a mountain, have rocks like a mountain, and wild bush like a mountain. Cliff, and rock, and bush, and stone, and dirt, all with no plan. You have to go behind the mountain, and to get behind the mountain take one more day, climb for another half day to see the eight hundred and eight steps, cut out of the rock as if gods make them for the gods to walk. In a time older than now, Mantha be the fortress from where the army could see enemy coming close without the enemy knowing they being watched. That way nobody ever take the lands by surprise and nobody ever invade. Over nine hundred years Mantha gone from being the place to watch enemies, to the place to hide one. Kwash Likud, of the old house Nehu, before the house of this King, would send an old wife to Mantha as soon as he married a new one, or if she produce no boy child, or if the children ugly. Right before the Akum dynasty, the King, once they crown him, would banish all brother and man cousin there, a royal prison where they would die, or become the new King if the King die first. Then come the Akum dynasty, and kings who do as the father do before. And Kwash Dara no different from Kwash Netu. And Netu no different from his great-grandfather, who made it a royal decree that the firstborn sister must join the divine sisterhood, in service of the goddess of security and plenty. And so it be again, that kings all follow the way of Kwash Moki, and violate the true line of kings and give the crown to the son.

So it come that the King sister, before he become King and before she reach ten and seven, she to give herself over to the divine sisterhood, but this sister not go. Let ugly woman who no man want become divine sister, she say. Why would I push away great meats and soups and breads to eat millet and drink water with bitter, wrinkled dogs, and wear white for the rest of my days? Indeed no man answer her and among them her father. This princess forget that she be princess and start to walk like prince. Crown prince. She ride horse, and strike and parry with sword, and string the bow, and play the lute, and amuse her father and scare her mother, for she grow up to see what happen to woman with will of her own. Even a princess. Father, send me to join the women warriors in Wakadishu, or send me to be hostage in a court in the East, and I will be your spy, she say to him. What I should do is send you to a prince who will beat your thick head down soft, he say to her and she say, But, great King, are you ready for the war that will break when I kill this prince? And he say, I have no wish to send you to Wakadishu or the eastern land, and she say, I know, good Father, but why let that stop you? She quick of wit, something man in the North think is a gift that only come to man, and the King say to her more than once, How much more like a son you are to me than this one.

For here is truth. Before he was Kwash Dara, he flighty, and vengeful, and carry great malice over small things. But he was no fool. It was Lissisolo who say, Consider returning Wakadishu to the southern King, Father, after the elders said in open court it was wise that a king, after war, keep all spoils and spare none to the enemy, for he will think him weak. It is nothing to us, she said. No good fruit, pure silver, or strong slave comes from there, it is near all swamp. Besides, there is sown so many seeds of rebellion that he will lose it without us lifting a finger. The King nodded at such good wisdom and said, How much like a son you are to me, more than this one. Meanwhile Kwash Dara spend day and nights rejecting the fifty women who say yes, so he can rape and kill the one girl who say no. Or whip any friend and any prince who beat him in horse racing, and demanding they cook the horse. Or say to his father at court, The gods whisper it in my ear, but tell me true, Father, will you die soon? And he say these things because there was many to tell him that he is the most beautiful and wise of men.

Then the King change the rule. What a thing that be! He could not bear to see the kingdom without his daughter so he say, You, my darling Lissisolo, shall never have to join the divine sisterhood. But you must find a husband. A lord, or a prince, but not a chief. So she find a prince, one of the plenty in Kalindar, with no princedom. But the seed strong in him and she make four children in seven years, and still take her place at the King side, while Kwash Dara go to follow warriors three days after battle to hiss that slow horses make him again miss the fighting.

Let us make the story quick. The King dead, choke on chicken bone, they say. Kwash Dara, he take the crown off the head of he father, right there in the battle camp, and say, I am King. Regard your King, and worship me. And when the King’s general said, But you are worshipped only on your death, when you become a god, Most Excellent One, Kwash Dara scream at him, but do nothing in front of the other generals. That general dead in one moon. Poison. Not even a year pass by when the people of the empire start to wonder, is it the southern King who mad, or this new King in the North? I not yet serve her, so I not know how it start, first the rumor, then the accuse. But the rumor fly around and land in whispers days before the King, at the assembly of court, rise from the throne, turn, and point straight at he sister, saying, You, dearest Lissisolo, on this my first anniversary, your plot has been found out. Did you think that you could slip it past a King and a god? Lissisolo always laugh at her brother as sport and she laugh as he speak, for how in all the gods this be anything but joke?

And when he walk right up to her and say, The divine King has ears everywhere, sister, she say, Which King he talking about, Lissisolo don’t know since the divine King is their father, who was now with the ancestors. Lissisolo laugh at him and say, You still the little boy in the royal bed, saying what is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine. Even the lords and chiefs who hate him know that was disrespect to Kwash Dara. The King is the throne, and the throne is the King. Mock one and mock the other. He slap her straight across her face and she stagger back on the throne platform, and almost fall off.

“And here comes your Prince consort, from who cares which territory,” he say to the Kalindar prince, who step once, think about what a next step going to mean, and hold back.

“You think I don’t know you were Father’s favorite? You think I don’t know he would cut off my own cock and bind it to you by precious sorcery, just to make you the one thing he want me to be? You think I don’t know, dearest sister, all the witchcraft you worked on him to convince this greatest and strongest of kings not to send you to the divine sisterhood, and as such violate the sacred tradition of the gods we all serve, even you? If even I, your King, your Kwash Dara, has to bow to the will of the gods, why not you?” he say to his sister.

“I serve who deserve serving,” she say.

“Did you hear, excellent people of the court, did you hear? Seems all kings and gods must make themselves worthy of Princess Lissisolo’s service.”

Lissisolo, she just stare at her brother. Never was smart, this boy, but somebody had been giving him smart counsel.

“Only the gods know my heart.”

“So we agree. For I certainly know yours, sister. But enough talk, now we eat. Bring sweet wines, and strong meats, and honey and milk with a little cow’s blood like river folk, and beer.”

This is what people say happen, people in the exile in the South. That at the great table right before the throne, womanservants and manservants bring out all sort of meat, and all sort of salad and fruit, and drink, in gold cup and silver, glass, and leather. And at the royal table and every table in the great hall was much eating, and drinking, and making merry. No cup of honey wine or beer go empty or a slave would be flogged. On the tables, mutton, raw and cook both, beef the same, and chicken, and vulture, and stuffed doves. Bread, butter, and honey. The air spice up with garlic, onion, mustard, and pepper.

The King step down from the throne and sit at the head of the royal table with his elder warriors and advisers, noblemen and noblewomen. Lissisolo, she about to sit on his right, three places down, where she always sit, when he say, “Sister. Sit at the foot of the table, for we are one flesh. And who else would I want to see when I look up from my meat?”

Everybody at every table wait until the King wave, and they all set to eat. Grabbing meat, grabbing fruits, grabbing raised bread, grabbing flatbread, calling for honey wine and daro beer, while griots play kora and drum and sing of how the great Kwash Dara is even greater one year in the reign. The King grab a chicken leg, but he not eating it, he watching his sister. Then he clap and two men, thick in arms and legs, come around the table carrying a large basket cover in cloth. Then the King turn to the people near to him, and speak soft as if he sharing a joke for few ears only.

“Listen to me now. I brought in a special delicacy, both of them from the noble houses in the South.”

He raise he voice when he say, “For you, sister. So there is no malice between us and we are again equal.”

The two men remove the cloth, upturn the baskets, and two bloody head fall out and land in the table. People jump back, many women scream, Lissisolo jump, but not as much as the King did hope, then just sit there, looking at two lords from the South Kingdom, one an elder, the other a chief and adviser to the King, two head cut off and rolling on the table in front of her. The women still screaming and two lords get up.

“Sit down, beautiful men and women. Sit down!”

The whole hall go quiet. Kwash Dara stand up and walk right over to his sister. He grab one of the heads by the hair and lift up to his face. The eyes still open, the brown skin almost blue, the hair thick and bushy and the beard patchy as if he scratch it out.

“Now this one, this boy lover. Is he a boy lover? He must be a boy lover to think that my sister, a princess, can become a king. What kind of witchcraft they must work on him, to scheme and plot, and remember, eh, sister? Take some wise words from your wise King. As you drag a man into a plot, so you should also drag the wife, or she will think it a plot against her. Next time you get this plotting sickness, try not to infect anybody else with it, sister. Play a game of Bawo.”

He drop the head on the table and Lissisolo jump.

“Remove her from me,” he say.

Now here is a true thing. The King still afraid to kill his sister for if divine blood run in his rivers then it must also run in hers too, and who would be the one to kill she born of a god?

He lock her away in a dungeon with rats big like cats. Lissisolo don’t scream or weep. She in there for day upon day and they feed her scraps from the royal table so that though she only get bone and dregs, she would know where the dregs come from. The guards take to sporting with her but not touching her. One day they bring her a bowl of water, and say it come with a special seasoning most excellent, and as they place it down she could see a rat floating in it. She turn and say, My bowl has special seasoning too, and dash her piss at them. Two guards rush to the bars, and she say, “Get to it then, be the one to dare touch divine flesh.”

Lissisolo don’t know it but ten and four day pass her in the dungeon. Her brother come to see her, wearing red robes and a white turban that he place a crown on. No chair in the cell, and the guard hesitate when Kwash Dara point at him to go down be on four, like the donkey, so the King can sit on his back.

“I miss you, sister,” he say.

“I miss me too,” she say. Always too clever but not clever enough to know when to blow out that wick so she don’t shine too bright around a man, even if the man be her brother.

He say to her, “Differences we have and will have, sister. That is just the ways of blood, but when trouble comes, when ill fortune comes, when just bad tidings come, surely I must stand by my blood. Even if she betrayed me, my sorrow is her sorrow.”

“You have no proof that I betrayed you.”

“All truth rests with the gods, and the King is the godhead.”

“When he dies, if the gods wish his company.”

“Now, and the gods are bound by their own law.”

“Who is your latest coward hiding behind shadows?”

He come out of the dark into the light of the torch. Skin black like ink, eye so white they glow, and hair red like a fireball flower. She know him name before he say it.

“You are the Aesi,” she say. Like every woman, every man, every child in the lands, when she see him, it was as if the Aesi was always behind the King, but nobody can remember when he take that place. Like air and the gods, there was no beginning and no end, only Aesi.

“We come bearing news, sister. It is not good.”

The King rock himself on the soldier back. The Aesi approach the bars.

“Your husband and your children all fell from air sickness for it is the season, and they went where malevolent airs were prominent. They will be buried tomorrow, in ceremonies fit for princes, of course. But not near the royal enclosure, for they may still carry disease. You will—”

“You think you sit like a king when you are the speck of shit on donkey’s backside that the tail can’t wick off. What did you come down here for? A scream? A plea for my children? I fall on the floor so you can laugh? Come to the bars and put your ears here so I can give you a scream.”

“I will leave you to grieve, sister. Then I will come back.”

“For what? What do you want? Your wife hear you call my name when you fuck her yet, or do you let this one do it?”

The King, he jump up and throw his staff at the cell. Then he turn to leave. The Aesi turn to her and say, “Tomorrow you are to leave to join the divine sisterhood, as was your fate set by the gods. All of the realm will grieve for you and wish you abiding peace.”

“Come earlier and I have given you peace I just leave in that bucket.”

“We leave you to grieve, sister.”

“Grieve? I shall never grieve. I reject it, grief. I replace it with rage. My rage at you walk higher and wider than any grief.”

“I will kill you too, sister.”

“Too? Truly, you are an imbecile’s idea of an imbecile. The sun has not even set on their deaths and you have confessed to the murder already. Secret griots said you slipped out of Mother and dropped on your head. They are wrong. Mother must have dropped you on purpose. Yes leave, get out, you coward, men should have come and clip you the way they do girls in the river valley. Mark it, brother. From this day I will curse you and your children’s names every day.”

A curse from blood frighten even Kwash Dara, he leave in the quick, but the Aesi stay to look at her.

“You can still be someone’s wife,” he say.

“You can still be something other than the King’s shit pan,” she say.

As soon as the guard close the door she fall to the ground, and wail so hard it turn into a sickness. The morning when they send her to the fortress of Mantha to join the divine sisterhood, anger and grief gone.

Let us make this quick. The water goddess see all and know all. I am a priestess serving in a temple in Wakadishu when I go down the steps that lead to the river, and up jump Bunshi. No fear come from me, though I see she have a fishtail black like pitch. She send me to Mantha with nothing but my leather dress, one sandal, and a mark from the house at Wakadishu. The princess Lissisolo take to her room, and play the kora at sunset and talk to no one. In the divine sisterhood no one have power or class, or rank, so her royal blood don’t mean nothing. But all the sisters see her need to be alone. Word was that she walk the lands at night under moonlight to whisper to the goddess of justice and girl children how much she hate her.

After a year, as I walk to the sacred hall to pour libations, she point at me and say, “What is your use?”

“To bring you into your royal purpose, princess.”

“Nothing about my purpose is royal and I am no princess,” she say.

Two moons, and she move me to her side. Women as equal but knowing she is the royal. Two moons after that, I telling her that the water goddess have greater purpose for her. Three moons more and she believe me, after I summon dew to lift me off the ground and above her head. No, not believe me, she believe that something more be to her life than a childless widow saying prayers to a goddess she hate. No, not belief, for she say, belief will get people around her killed. I say to her, No, my mistress, only belief in love do that. Accept it, return it, cherish it, but never believe love can do anything other than love. The year didn’t finish before Bunshi appear to her on the last hot night of the year, when nearly all the women, one hundred and twenty and nine, went to bathe in the waterfall with nymphs, to tell her the truth about her line, and why she will be the one to restore it. We will send a man, it has all been arranged, Bunshi said.

“Look at my life. All of it around a hole owned, ordered, and arranged by men. Now I must take that from womankind too? You know nothing of sisterhood, you’re just a pale echo of men. The true King will be a bastard? Did this water sprite also fall on her head at birth?”

“No, Your Most Excellent. We have found a prince in—”

“Kalindar. Another one? They seem to be everywhere, like lice, these kingdomless princes of Kalindar.”

“A marriage to a prince make your child legitimate. And when the true line of kings return he can claim before all lords.”

“Fuck all lords. All these kings also come from the womb of woman. What is to stop this man-child from doing just as all other man has done? Kill all men.”

“Then rule them, princess. Rule them through him. And leave this place.”

“What if I like this place? In Fasisi even the winds conspire against you.”

“If it is your wish to stay, then stay, mistress. But as long as your brother is King, plagues above the earth and below will visit even this place.”

“No plague has visited so far. When is this pestilence taking place? Why not now?”

“Maybe the gods give you time to prevent it, Your Excellence.”

“Your tongue is too smooth. I do not fully trust it. Let me see this man, at least.”

“He will come to you disguised as eunuch. If he pleases you then we will find an elder who cares for our cause.”

“An elder? So we are doomed to be betrayed, then,” she say.

“No, mistress,” I say.

I bring the prince from Kalindar. No man put down foot in Mantha for one hundred years, but many eunuchs. None of the women would ask the eunuch to lift he robes for the scars show horrendous knife craft. But at the great entrance stand the big guard, daughter from a line of the tallest women in Fasisi, who grab the crotch and squeeze. Before, I tell this prince, this is what you do, forget you great discomfort and do not betray your unease or they will kill you at the gate and not care that they kill a prince. Take your balls and feel for each, then push them out of the sac up into your bush. Take your kongkong and pull it hard between your legs until it touch near your bottom hole. The guard will feel you ball skin, hangin’ on both sides of the kongkong, and think you are a woman. She will not even look at your face. The Prince make it all the way to Lissisolo chamber before he remove veil and robe. Tall, dark, thick in hair, brown in eyes, thick and dark in lips, pattern scars above the brows and down both arms, and many year younger in age. All he know was that this is a crown princess and he will see title.

“He will do,” Lissisolo say.

I did not have to go find the elder. Seven moon, and the elder find me. Fumanguru finish the writs, then send a message under the ewe drum that only devout women could hear, for he play it like a devotional, saying he have words for the princess and tidings that may be good, may be bad, but will certainly be wise. I ride horse seven days to meet him, and tell him that his wish, his prophecy, it real, but her son cannot be born a bastard. We ride back in another seven days, me, the elder Basu Fumanguru, and the Prince from Kalindar. Some of the sisters know, some do not. Some know that whatever be taking place was of great importance. Others think new people come and violate the sacred hymen of Mantha, despite that for years upon years the fort was a place for men. I ask some not to speak of what was happening, and I threaten others. But as soon as that boy is born I know he not safe. The only place safe for him is the Mweru, I tell the princess, who would not lose a child again. Keep him here and you most certainly will lose him again, for a sister done betray us, I tell her. And indeed it play true. This sister, she leave at night, not to travel what would be ten and five days by foot, but she go far enough to release a pigeon. She set the pigeon free before I reach her, but I get out of her that she send them back to a master in Fasisi. Then I slit her throat. I go back and say to the princess, No time leave. A message already on the way to court. We take him to Fumanguru that night, knowing it would take seven days, and the princess we leave with another sect of wisewomen loyal to the Queen of Dolingo. The boy stay with Fumanguru three moons and live like him own. You know how the rest go.

We sat there in the morning room feeling the quiet. Mossi, behind me, his breathing grew slow. I wondered where the Ogo was, and how much of the morning was gone. Sogolon was looking out the window so long that I went beside her to see what she was looking at. That is why the boy ran by my nose one blink and vanished the next. Also why sometimes he was a quartermoon, sometimes five moons away.

“I know they are using the ten and nine doors,” I said.

“I know you know,” she said.

“Who is this they?” said Mossi.

“I know of only one by name, and only because of who he leave behind him, most of them womenfolk. The people in the Hills of Enchantment call him Ipundulu.”

“Lightning bird,” whispered the old man. A harsh whisper, a curse under his breath. Sogolon nodded at him and turned back to the window. I looked outside and saw nothing but noon coming to pass. I was about to say, Old woman, to what do you look, when the old man said, “Lightning bird, lightning bird, woman beware of the lightning bird.”

Sogolon turned around and said, “You about to give us song, brother.”

He frowned. “I talking ’bout the lightning bird. Talk is just talk.”

“That is a story you should tell them,” she said.

“The Ipundulu is—”

“In the way of your ancestors. In the way you raise to do.”

“Singer men don’t sing songs no more, woman.”

“Lie you speaking. Southern griots they still be. Few and in secret but they still be. I tell them about you. How you keep to memory what the world tell you to forget.”

“The world have him father name.”

“Many a man sing.”

“Many don’t sing at all.”

“We will have verse.”

“You the ruler over me now? You giving me orders?”

“No, my friend, I giving you a wish. The southern griots—”

“There is no southern griots.”

“Southern griots speak against the King.”

“Southern griots speak the truth!”

“Old man, you just say there be no southern griots,” Sogolon said.

The old man walked over to a pile of robes and pulled them away. Underneath was a kora.

“Your King, he find six of we. Your King, he kill them all, and not one he kill quick. Do you remember Babuta, Sogolon? He come to six of we, among them Ikede, who you know, and say, Enough with hiding in caves for no reason, we sing the true story of kings! We don’t own truth. Truth is truth and nothing you can do about it even if you hide it, or kill it, or even tell it. It was truth before you open your mouth and say, That there is a true thing. Truth is truth even after them who rule send poison griots to spread lie till they take root in every man’s heart. Babuta say he know a man in the court of the King who serve the King, but loyal to the truth. The man say the King come into knowledge of you since he have belly walkers on the ground and pigeons in the sky. So gather your griots and let a caravan take them to Kongor, for they can live safe among the books of the house of records. For the age of the voice is over and we in the age of the written mark. The word on stone, the word on parchment, the word on cloth, the word that is even greater than the glyph for the word provoke a sound in the mouth. And once in Kongor, let men of writing save words from lips and in that way they may kill the griot but can never kill the word. And Babuta say, back in the red caves stinking with sulfur, that this be a good thing, my brothers. This sound like we should take the man for his word. But Babuta is from the time when word fall like waterfall in a room and even smell like truth. And the man say, When the pigeon land at the mouth of this cave, in the evening two days from now, take the note from its right foot and follow the instructions of the glyphs, for it will tell you where to go. Do you know of the way of the pigeon? It flies in one direction, only to where is home. Unless they are bound by witchcraft, to think home is an otherwhere place. Babuta say to the man, Watch me now, no man here ever wished to read, and the man say, You will know when you see the glyphs, for the glyphs talk like the world. And Babuta approach the others, and Babuta approach me, and say this is a good thing, we must no longer live like dogs. And so instead we go to the hall of books and live like rats, I say. There is nobody in the King’s court any half imbecile should trust. And he say, Go suck a hyena’s teat for calling me a fool, and I leave the cave for I know it marked and I start to wander. Babuta and five man wait by the cave, day and night. And it come to pass three night hence that the pigeon land at the cave mouth. No drum ever beat. No drums ever tell where Babuta and the five go. But nobody ever see them again. So there be no southern griots. There be me.”

“That was a long story,” Sogolon said. “If not verse then no verse. Tell them about the lightning bird. And who travel with him.”

“You see how they work.”

“So have you.”

“One of you stop staring at the shit and tell us the story,” Mossi said. And it was going to be the first time he didn’t irritate me, had he not smiled at me when he said it.

The man sat down on the bed that Sogolon never sleeps in and said, “A wicked word come from the West, ten and four nights previous. A village right by the Red Lake. A woman say to her neighbor, Is one quartermoon now we don’t see anybody from that house, three hut down the left. But they is quiet folk who keep their own company, another woman say. But not even the spirit of the breeze this quiet, another say and they go to the hut to look see. All around the hut death be stinking, but the foul coming from dead beasts, from cows and goats slaughtered not for food but for blood and sport. The fisherman, his first wife and second wife, and three sons dead but they did not smell. How to describe a sight strange even to the gods? They were all gathered around like worship fetishes, piled up as if about to burn. They have skin like tree bark. Like the blood, the flesh, the humors, the rivers of life, something suck it all out. The first and second wife, both of them chest cut open and they heart rip out. But not before he bite them all over the neck and rape them, leaving his dead seed to grow rot in they womb. You already call him name.”

“Ipundulu. Who is his witch? He roaming loose like he not under command anymore?” Sogolon asked.

“He not. The witch who control him die before she could pass ownership to she daughter, so Ipundulu change back into the lightning bird and grab the daughter with him claws, and fly with her high and high and high, then let her go. She hit the ground and smash to juice. This is how you know he seed was in the two wife. For little drops of lightning was falling out of they kehkeh even after they start rot. The Ipundulu he the handsomest of men, he skin white like clay, whiter than this one, but pretty like him too.”

He pointed at Mossi.

“Ayet bu ajijiyat kanon,” Mossi said, and surprised everyone.

“Yes, prefect, he is a white bird. But he not good. He evil as people think. Worser. Ipundulu because he handsome and he in a gown white like he skin, think woman come to him free, but he infect they mind as soon as he enter the room. And he open he gown which is not no gown but his wings and he not wearing no robes, and he rape them, one then two, and most he kill and some he make live, but they not living, they living dead with lightning running through they body where blood used to run. I hear rumors that he change man too. And watch if you step to the lightning bird and he know for he change into something big and furious and when he flap him wing he let loose thunder which shake the ground and deaf the ear and knock down a whole house and lightning that shock your blood and burn you to a black husk.

“This is how it happen in a house in Nigiki. A hot night. See a man and a woman in a room, and a cloud of flies above a bed mat. He a handsome man, neck long, hair black, eyes bright, lips thick. Too tall for the room. He grin at the cloud of flies. He nod at the woman and she, naked, bleeding from the shoulder, walk over. Her eyes, they gone up in her skull and her lips, just quivering. She covered in wetness. She walking to him, her hands stiff at the side, stepping over her own clothes and scattered sorghum from a bowl that shatter. She comes closer, her blood still in his mouth.

“He grab her neck with one hand and feel her belly for sign of the child with the other. Dog teeth grow out of his mouth and past his chin. His fingers roughing between her legs, but she still. Ipundulu point a finger at the woman’s breast and a claw pop through the middle finger. He press deep into her chest and blood pump up, as he cut her chest open for the heart. The cloud of flies swarming and buzzing, and fattening up with blood. Flies pull away for a blink and is a boy on the mat, covered in pox holes like chigger. From the pox holes worm burrow out, ten, dozens, hundreds, pop out of the boy’s skin, unfold wings and flying off. The boy’s eyes wide open, his blood dripping onto the bed mat also cover in flies. Bite, burrow, suck. Him mouth crack open and a groan come out. The boy is a wasp nest.”

“Adze? They working together?” Sogolon said.

“Not them two alone. Others. Ipundulu and Adze, they two suck the body life out but they don’t drain it to a husk. That be the grass troll, Eloko. He only hunt alone or with his kind, but since the King burn down his forest to plant tobacco and millet, they join anyone. A lightning woman, this be her story. This is what happen when Ipundulu suck out all the blood but stop before he suck out the lifeblood, and breed lightning into her and leave her mad too. A southern griot pull all of this out of her mouth, but he never make no verse out of it. There be those three and two more, and another one. This is what I telling you. They working together. But Ipundulu leading them. And the boy.”

“What of the boy?” Sogolon asked.

“You know the story yourself. They use the boy to get into woman the house.”

“They force the boy.”

“Same thing,” he said. “Also this. Another one following them three or four days later, for by then the rotting body and the stinking humors is a pleasing scent to him. He cut them open with he claws and drink the stinking rot juice, then eat the flesh till he full. He used to have a brother till somebody kill him in the Hills of Enchantment.”

I looked at them as plain as one could.

“They using the boy, Sogolon,” the man said.

“I say nobody ask about—”

“They turn the boy.”

“Look here.”

“They make the boy into—”

A gust, thick like a storm, blew up from the floor and kicked everybody against the wall. The angry wind hissed, then flew out the window.

“Nobody make the boy into nothing. We find the boy, and—”

“And what?” I said. “What does this man say to displease you?”

“Don’t you hear it, Tracker? How long has the boy been missing?” Mossi said.

“Three years.”

“He’s saying the boy is one of them. If not a blood drinker, then under necromancy.”

“Don’t provoke her. She will blow the roof off next,” the old man said.

Mossi gave me a look that said, This little old woman? I nodded.

“Tracker right. They are using the ten and nine doors,” Sogolon said.

“And how many doors have you been through?” Mossi asked.

“One. It is not good for one such as me to go through that door. I get my calling from the green world and that travel violate the green world.”

“A very long way to say that gates are bad for witches,” I said. “You need me and my Sangoma craft to open them for you. And even passing through each door weakens you.”

“What a man, he know me more than I know myself. Write my song for me then, Tracker.”

“Sarcasm always masks something else,” Mossi said.

“How quickly the Leopard get replace.”

“Shut your face, Sogolon.”

“Ha, now my loose tongue will be a river.”

“Woman, we lose time,” the old man said to her, and she quieted herself. He stepped over to the chest and took out a huge parchment.

Mossi said, “Old man, is this what I think it is? I thought these were uncharted lands.”

“What do you two speak of?” I asked.

The old man unrolled the scroll. A big drawing, in brown, blue, and the colour of bone. I have also seen the like; there were three in the palace of wisdom, but I did not know what they were or what was their use.

“A map? Is this a map of our lands? Who did such a thing? Such masterful craft, such detail, even of the eastern seas. Was this from a merchant in the East?” Mossi said.

“Men and women in these lands have mastered crafts too, foreigner,” Sogolon said.

“Of course.”

“You think we run with lions and shit with zebra so we cannot draw the land or paint the buffalo?”

“That is not what I meant.”

Sogolon let him go with a huff. But this map thing made him grin like a child who stole a kola nut. The man dragged it to the center of the room and placed two pots and two stones at the corners. The blue pulled me in. Light like the sky, and swirls of dark blue like the sea itself. The sea but not like the sea, more like the sea of dream. Bobbing out of the sea, as if leaping on land, were creatures great and small, grand fishes, and a beast with eight tails gobbling a dhow boat.

“I have been waiting to show this to you, the sand sea before it was sand,” the old man said to Sogolon.

Which waters are these? I said to myself.

“A map is just a drawing of the land, of what a man sees so that we too may see it. And plot where to go,” Mossi said.

“Thank the gods for this man to tell us what we already know,” Sogolon said. Mossi kept quiet.

“You mark them in red? Based on what wisdom?” Sogolon asked.

“The wisdom of mathematics and black arts. Nobody travel four moons in one flip of a sandglass, unless they move like the gods, or they using the ten and nine doors.”

“And this is them,” I said.

“All of them.”

Sogolon kneeled and Mossi stooped down, the man excited, the woman silent and with a frown.

“Where you last hear anything about them?” she said.

“The Hills of Enchantment. Twenty and four nights ago.”

“You draw an arrow from the Hills of Enchantment to … where does this point, to Lish?” Mossi said.

“No, from the Hills to Nigiki.”

“This one points from Dolingo to Mitu, but not far from Kongor,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But we came from Mitu to Dolingo, and before that the Darklands to Kongor.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. You said they are using the ten and nine doors.”

“Of course. Once you go through a door, you can only go in one direction until you go through all doors. You can never go back until you done.”

“What happens when you try?” I say.

“You who kiss a door and flame burns away the mask of it, you should know. The door consume you in flames and burn you up, something that would scare the Ipundulu. They must be using them for two years now, Sogolon. That is why they so hard to find and impossible to track. They stay on the course of doors until they complete the journey, then they go back ways. That’s why I draw each line with an arrow at the two ends. That way they kill at night, kill only one house, maybe two maybe four, all the killing they can do in seven or eight days, then vanish before they leave any real mark.”

I walked over, pointed, and said, “If I was going from the Darklands to Kongor, then here, not far from Mitu to Dolingo, then I would have to ride through Wakadishu to get to the next door, at Nigiki. If they travel in reverse, then already they have come through the Nigiki door. Now they walk through Wakadishu, to get to—”

“Dolingo,” Mossi said.

He pressed his finger into the map, at a star between mountains right below the center.

“Dolingo.”