Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

TWENTY-ONE

Some truth now, I hope you take it. When you crossed the Mawana witches, I would have gambled on your death. But look. You live. In one way or another,” the Aesi said.

Outside a black flurry turned into birds. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred and one. Birds looking like pigeons, looking like vultures, looking like crows landing on the windowsill and peeking through the window. Black wings flew past the window as well, and I could hear them landing on the roof, the turrets, the ledges, and the ground. Outside marching feet moved closer, but no soldier or mercenary was supposed to be in the city. The King sister sat up, but would not look at me.

“Did you know they came before the world? Even the gods came and saw them and even the gods didn’t dare. All children come from the mother’s will, not from mating with a father. When the world was just a gourd, the witches six were one, and she circled the world until her mouth reached her tail.”

“A spy I knew called you a god, once,” I said.

“I shall bless him, though I am not much of a god.”

“He was not much of a spy.”

Bunshi would not change to water and slip out of his hands. She could not change in the hands of Sadogo either, but there was no scent of enchantment about him. He was behind me, Sadogo, his metal knuckles clenching tight, iron grating on iron, itching for another fight. Mossi tried to draw his swords but the Aesi pressed the knife closer to Bunshi’s neck.

“You overestimate her value to us,” I said.

“Perhaps. But mine is not the estimation she fears. So if you will not beg me for her life, I will let her beg you.”

The boy, his head on Nsaka Ne Vampi’s shoulder, looked like he was asleep, but when she turned around, his eyes were open, and staring.

“Popele,” Aesi said, whispering to Bunshi in the way of people who want to be overheard. “Your life for the child. I think you are the one who should beg for it. For these brave men and women plus one fool are war-eager and will not listen to me. Popele, you of a thousand years and more, shall we let them see that you too can die? Their ears go deaf at my voice, goddess, and this dagger is so hungry.”

Aesi looked at me.

“Such was a time when I could have used a tracker. Many a time, many a place. Especially one so good at killing.”

“I am not a killer.”

“Yet your road from Malakal to Dolingo to Kongor is paved with corpses. Who am I, do you know?”

“You tried to kill me in a dream once,” I said.

“Are you sure it was me you met in dreams? You still live.”

“You are the extra four limbs of the Spider King.”

He laughed. “Yes, I have heard that is the way you call your King behind his eye. The King is his own, entire. I have no stake.”

“Never met a king who does his own thinking,” Mossi said.

“You do not hail from these lands.”

“I do not.”

“Of course, eastern light. The people who believe in one god, and everything else is either a slave to the god or an evil spirit. Every belief comes in two, which leads to a god two-sided. Vengeful and mad in his ways and takes his fury out on womenfolk. Yours is the silliest of all the gods. No art to his thoughts, no craft to his deeds. I’ve heard that you think men in the constant visitation of ancestors to be mad.”

“Or possessed.”

“What a land. Possession you call bad, spirits you call evil, and love? Love, as your heart calls it, makes men force you to leave. I sniff you and get a whiff of Tracker. More than a whiff, indeed a funk. What shall your father think?”

“I go by my own thoughts,” Mossi said.

“You must be a king. As for him, this little fly, your little king, the one who drools at this woman’s neck, even though he is six years gone in age. Tracker, it has been said you have a nose. Is the shit we smell not his?”

“There is a big piece of black shit in this room, no doubt of that,” I said.

“If you’re going to tell them who you are, tell them who you are,” the King sister said.

She still sat on the floor, still looking weak, as if drained. She finally looked at us.

“This, this Aesi, these four limbs of the Spider King. Tell them about your prophecy. Tell them about how you just appeared in our hearts and minds as someone who was there all along, but no woman or man can remember when you first came,” the King sister said.

“I want what is best for the King,” Aesi said.

“You want what is best for you. For now that is the same as what the King wants. Meanwhile nobody notices that you the same today as you was twenty years ago, and even before that. Call yourself by your name, necromancer. Man of sorcery and wicked art. You are what you are. You build nothing, disrupt everything, destroy everything. You know what he does? He waits until all are asleep, then he jumps through the air or runs under the ground. He goes to covens in caves and rapes babies offered up by mothers. Breeds children with sister upon sister and brother, but they all die. Eater of human flesh. I saw you, Aesi. I saw you as the wild boar, and the crocodile, and the pigeon, and the vulture, and the crow. Your evil will soon eat itself.”

Just out of her reach lay a bag made of rags, tied at the neck with a carving sticking out. A phuungu. A charm, like a nkisi, to protect against witchcraft. She tried to grab it, but her head slammed into the ground and the charm rolled away.

“I want what goes best for the King,” the Aesi said.

“You should want what goes best for the kingdom. Not the same thing,” I said.

“Look at you, noble men and women, and one fool. None of you bear any stake in this room. Some of you have been wounded, some of you have died, but this boy means nothing more than coin to you. Truly, I wondered how women and men could risk limb for a child not their own, but such is money in this age. But now I am bidding you all farewell, for this is a family argument.”

The King sister laughed. “Family? You dare to call yourself family? Did you marry one of my slow cousins in some cave? Will you not tell them your grand plan, king kisser? God butcher. Oh, that one moves you. God butcher. Butcher of gods. Sogolon knew. She told my servant. She said, I go to the temple of Wakadishu. I go to the steps of Mantha. I go north, and east, and west, and I have not felt the presence of the gods. Not one. But that is another of your tricks, is it not, God butcher? Nobody knows what they lost because nobody remembers what they have had. Is this the night where you stop the King just as you have stopped the gods? Is it? Is it?”

A flap of huge wings, we heard it.

“Leave the child and go. Don’t hesitate and set him down gently. Just drop him and go,” the Aesi said.

He locked his eyes on Nsaka Ne Vampi.

“He is your King,” the King sister said.

They saw nothing. But the nothing grabbed the King sister and slapped her left and right. Leopard ran to her, but the nothing kicked him away. He rolled and caught himself right beside me. He crouched again to pounce, but I bent down and touched the back of his neck. The nothing pulled up the King sister and shoved her down on a stool.

“King? This is the King. Have you seen his face? Do you know the taste in his mouth? It is fouler than the swordsman’s shit. This is your King? Shall we call him Khosi, our lion? Get him a kaphoonda for his royal head. Three brass rings for his ankle. We should call players of moondu and matuumba, and all drums. Shall we call xylophone? Shall we call all earth chiefs to come and bow down in red dirt? Shall I pluck a hair from my head and stick it in his? And what is your stake in this, river nymph? Did the false queen seek you? Did you seek the false queen? Did she tell you of how glorious it will be when the King returns to the glorious line of mothers? Oh Mama, I beat my slit drum so that he will tell a secret to my big vagina nkooku maama, kangwaana phenya mbuta. You believed in a bad oracle, King sister. Your ngaanga ngoombu lied to you. Filled your head with wicked gold. You should have called a diviner. Instead you surrounded yourself with women even women have forgotten. Look at him, who you would have as King. He is lower than an it.”

The Aesi pointed the green knife at me.

“My boy will be king,” the King sister said.

“The North already has a King. Have you looked upon your son? How could you, you have never even known your son. Put your gaze on him now. If a demon beast bared a nipple, he would grab it and suck it. You, Tracker, and the pale one, you promised to deliver the boy and you have delivered. What do you wish? Coin? Cowrie shells the weight of your body? This woman and her little river nymph deceived you, how many times? Even now, tell the room true. Do you believe any of their stories? No. Or you would have at least tried to throw that ax. The knife at her neck—if I were to kill her right now you would not even look me in the eye. Sogolon knew not to trust men who had nothing to lose. A pity how she died. I wish I had seen it.”

I heard marching outside, marching that knocked down the doors and came in the house. Mossi could hear it too. He looked up at me and I nodded, hoping it said what I did not know.

“Leave the child here, then go, and I promise when I meet you next, it will be over some dolo, some good soup, and there shall be mirth,” the Aesi said.

“I scarce think there is any mirth in you,” Mossi said.

“I would have loved to talk to you about your belief in your one god some more. I have met so many gods.”

“Met and killed them, God butcher,” the King sister said.

The Aesi laughed. “Your friend the Tracker, he said he did not believe in belief; I saw that too. You think he believes in a butcher of the gods? He would have to believe in gods first. Did you notice, Tracker, that nobody worships anymore? I know you do not believe in gods but you know many who do. Have you not noticed that more and more, the men of the lands are like you, and the women too? You have been around witchmen and fetish priests, but when have you last seen an offering? A sacrifice? A shrine? Women gathered in praise? Fuck the gods, you say. I have heard you. And yes fuck them, this is the age of kings. You don’t believe in belief. I butcher belief. We are the same.”

“I will tell my mother she has one more son. She will laugh,” I said.

“Not with your grandfather’s cock in her mouth she will not.”

My head went red. I grabbed my ax from the Leopard, who growled.

“You must be sad, then, with Sogolon dead and nobody to see through you,” I said.

“Sogolon? What good are the eyes of an old moon witch when the eyes of a hundred angry spirits are upon her? You did not sleep the night you rode from Kongor, so someone must have told you that I visit dreams.”

“I did not sleep.”

“I know. But you, behind him, you slept deeper than a deaf child.”

He pointed his finger at the Ogo. Sadogo looked at us, at his hands, out the window, back at himself, as if he heard something but not words.

“An Ogo’s dream jungle is so wide, so rich, so open to possibility. Sometimes he was blind to me traveling in his head, opening one eye when he slept. Sometimes he fought me in dream. Did he not punch a hole in that ship? Sometimes from his mouth came what I said in his sleep, and sometimes people heard. Is that not so, dear Ogo? Pity your friends here did not share as much with you as I would have liked, or I would have known your plans in Dolingo. Maybe they did not trust the giant?”

Sadogo growled, looking around for the somebody the Aesi might be speaking of.

“And what I saw through your eyes. What I heard through your ears. Your friends, this might give them laughter. Was even a moon gone when I spoke through your mouth? You will not remember. I spoke and you spoke and that man, that old man was on the roof and he heard you. Me. I am who he heard, but you, dear Ogo, you are the one who grabbed the man, crushed his throat so he could not scream, and with your dear hands you threw him off the roof.”

I knew Sadogo would look to see who watched him. I did not look. Sadogo squeezed his knuckles so tight I heard the iron bend. The Leopard did not turn around. Mossi did.

“He is the father of lies, Sadogo,” Mossi said.

“Lies? What is one more death to the Ogo? At least he didn’t kill that Zogbanu slave girl by letting her sit on his little ogo. But she sat on it many times in his daytime dreaming. What a noise she was making in your dream jungle. Made me shoot seed twice myself. But this Ogo here, his cum almost burst through the roof. But which was the wilder dream, you inside her or you calling her wife? You thinking you will make a half Ogo? I was there. I was there when—”

“Do not listen, Sadogo,” Mossi said.

“Do not interrupt. Wondering if she could ever love an Ogo, are you the first who is more than beast?”

“He’s trying to provoke you, Sadogo. He would not make you angry if he didn’t have a plan,” Mossi said.

Sadogo growled. I turned to face him, but my gaze landed on the boy on Nsaka Ne Vampi’s shoulder, his mouth open wide as if he was going to bite her, but he closed his mouth when he saw me looking. His eyes, wide open and blank, so black, almost blue.

“Provoke? If I wanted to provoke him would I not have said half giant?” the Aesi said.

Sadogo bellowed. I spun around to see him punch the wall. He squeezed his knuckles and stamped after the Aesi but right then the dark turned on him, jumped out from the shadows, grabbed his limbs as he yelled, and pulled him out of the room. Leopard jumped right for the King sister and bit into the nothing that still rested on her shoulder. Red spurted in his mouth. The nothing screamed.

“Fuck the gods indeed,” the Aesi said, and slashed Bunshi’s throat. She fell.

Mossi pulled both swords and ran towards him. I threw my ax. A wind whipped up, blew Mossi hard against the wall, and sent the ax flying back to my face, but the iron could not touch me and the ax flew by. Nsaka Ne Vampi ran out with the child, and the King sister wailed. The Aesi turned to chase Nsaka Ne Vampi, but stopped quick and caught an arrow with his left hand, stopping it from his face. With his right he caught another. His hands full, the third and fourth shot straight into his forehead. I saw Fumeli, his bow still pulled, two arrows between his fingers. The Aesi fell back and crashed into the floor, the arrows flag-posts in his forehead. The nothing lost his spell and died a Tokoloshe. The birds, flapping and squawking, flew away from the window.

“We must go,” Leopard said to the King sister.

He grabbed her hand and yanked her away. I could hear Sadogo fighting the invisible monsters and crashing through one wall and then another. I stared at the Aesi lying there and thought not of him, but of Omoluzu, who always attacked from above, not behind. I ran to Sadogo. Killing the Aesi dropped his invisible enchantment. All black and tarlike, but not Omoluzu. Red eyes, but not like Sasabonsam. Shadow creatures who could still break, like the neck that Sadogo just snapped. I ran into the dark, swinging my ax through shadow, but it felt like chopping flesh and chunking bone. Two of the shadowings jumped me, one kicking me in the chest and one trying to stomp me down. I pulled my knife and rammed it right up where his balls would be. He squealed. Or she. On the floor I swung the ax and chopped off toe after toe, then jumped back up. The shadowings ran up and down the Ogo, enraging him so much that he grabbed at the dark, crushing a head with his right hand, breaking a neck with his left, and stomping two so hard into the floor that he kicked a hole right through it. I rolled out of the shadows and a hand grabbed my ankle. I chopped it off.

“Sadogo!”

They crawled all over him. As he pulled off one, another came. They climbed and crawled all over him so that all but his head vanished. He looked over at me, his eyebrows raised, his eyes lost. I stared at him, trying to hold him with just a look. I rose and gripped my ax, but he closed his eyes slow, opened them and looked at me again. I couldn’t read his eyes. Then a shadow creature crawled over his face.

“Sadogo,” I said.

He stomped, stomped, and stomped until he cracked the floor wider open and, with the shadow creatures grabbing him, fell through. I heard one crash the floor, then another, and another, and another and another. Then nothing. I went to the hole and looked down, but saw hole after hole after hole, then darkness. At the foot of the final steps, the door ahead, I looked over to the pile of dirt, bricks, dust, and black shadow, and something that glimmered just a little. His iron glove. Sadogo. He could never face such a life of knowing he killed the old man with such wickedness, even if it was not him. Not truly. I stood there, looking, waiting, not hoping, but waiting all the same, but nothing moved. I knew if anything moved it would be something from the black. And soon.

Mossi ran in shouting something about people and birds. I didn’t hear him. I looked over into the dark, waiting.

Mossi touched my cheek and turned my head to his face.

“We must go,” he said.

Outside people from the city stood about two hundred paces away and watched us. Nsaka Ne Vampi and the King sister mounted horses, the Leopard and Fumeli shared one. The King sister placed the boy in front of her and held him with one hand, the reins in the other. The people stood back. Birds bunched, thick in the sky, then flew apart, then came together again.

“Leopard, look up. Are they possessed?” I asked.

“I don’t know. The Aesi is dead.”

“I do not see any weapons,” Mossi said.

“We also stole these horses,” the Leopard said.

Mossi mounted his horse and pulled me up. The crowd made a noise and charged after us. The King sister galloped off, not waiting. Nsaka Ne Vampi turned to us and, riding off, shouted, “Ride! Fools.”

We took off as the crowd starting flinging rocks. I lost the boy’s smell, even though I could still see the King sister.

“Where are we going?” he said.

“The Mweru,” I said.

The crowd kept chasing us even as we rode away, down to the border road and then west, then south, along the Gallunkube/Matyube, which took us west again until we saw the docks and the shore. We continued south and did not stop until the horses crossed the canal and took us out of the city. Above, a flock of birds followed us. They followed us even as we rode through forest and grassland, and as the sky started changing colour of day. Until we could no longer see Kongor. Right above us some dove for our heads. Pigeons. Nsaka Ne Vampi yelled and the King sister shouted, Move! Nsaka Ne Vampi led her through a patch of trees, which blocked the birds, but they started diving again as soon as we were out of the patch.

Ahead of us was something white and moving, either clouds or dust. The King sister rode straight for it and we followed. The birds dove at us one more time. One flew straight into Mossi’s head. He yelled for me to get it out so I yanked it and threw it away. Fumeli slapped away birds with his bow, as the Leopard rode hot after the two women. The buffalo charged on past us. We rode so hard that it was not until we were in the mist—for it was a mist—that I noticed the birds did not follow. I had no name for the smell. Not a stench, but not a fragrance either. Maybe something like when clouds are fat with rain and lightning has scorched them. We rode to a stop beside the King sister—a good thing too, for she stopped at the steep drop of a cliff. Mossi nudged me to dismount. Below us, but still a distance away, lay those lands, waiting on any fool to enter it.

“Sogolon said take him to the Mweru,” the King sister said. “He would be safe from all magic and white science in the Mweru. In that, at least, we can trust her.”

She said it in a way that I could not tell if she was telling or asking. I turned to her and saw her looking at me.

“Trust the gods,” I said.

She pointed to the trail leading down, laughed, and rode off without saying anything of gratitude. I could not smell the boy even when I looked at him. As they rode off his smell finally came to me, then it vanished again. Did not fade, but vanished. Nsaka Ne Vampi turned to me, nodded, then rode off back to Kongor.

“Leopard,” I said.

“I know.”

“What will she be riding back to, with the Ipundulu dead?”

“I don’t know, Tracker. Whatever it is, it will not be what she wants …. So, Tracker.”

“Yes?”

“The ten and nine doors. Was there a map? Did you see one?”

“We both saw one,” Mossi said.

“From here to Gangatom we would have to cross a river to Mitu, ride around the Darklands, cut through the long rain forest, and follow two sisters river west. That is at least ten and eight days and that’s not counting pirates, Ku warriors, and this King’s army and mercenaries already plundering the river folk,” I said.

“What about the doors?” Leopard said.

“We would have to sail against current to Nigiki.”

“You wish us go back past Dolingo?” Mossi said, loud enough but clearly to only me.

“Six days to Nigiki if we go by river. Take the door at Nigiki and we are in the Hills of Enchantment, three days from Gangatom.”

“That’s nine days,” the Leopard said. “But Nigiki is South Kingdom, Tracker. Catch us they will, and kill us as spies before we even get to that door.”

“Not if we move with a hush.”

“Quiet? Us four?”

“Darklands to Kongor, Kongor to Dolingo. We can only go one way,” I said.

He nodded.

“Take care,” I said to everyone. “Slip in like thieves, slip out before anyone, even the night, knows.”

“To the river,” the Leopard said.

Fumeli kicked the horse and they galloped off. I turned back to look at the Mweru. In the dark, with the sky a rich blue, all I could see were shadows. Hills rising upward, too smooth and precise. Or towers, or things left behind by giants who practiced wicked arts before man.

“Sadogo,” I said to Mossi. “I loved that giant, even if he went mad when one called him so. If I had fallen asleep, had you let me, I would have been the one to throw that old man from the roof. Do you know how much it pained him to kill? He told me of all his killings one night. Every single one, for his memory was a curse. It took us right into the break of morning. Most of the killings were no fault of his—an executioner’s job is still but a job, no worse than the man who increases taxes by the year.”

They came, the tears. I could hear myself bawl and was shocked at it. What kind of dawn was this? Mossi stood by me, silent, waiting. He put his hands on my shoulder until I stopped.

“Poor Ogo. He was the only—”

“Only?”

I tried to smile. Mossi squeezed my neck with a soft hand, and I leaned into it. He wiped my cheek and brought my forehead to his. He kissed me on the lips, and I searched for his tongue with mine.

“All your cuts are open again,” I said.

“You’ll be saying I’m ugly next.”

“These children will not want me.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Fuck the gods, Mossi.”

“But they will never need you more,” he said, mounting the horse and pulling me up behind him. The horse broke into a trot, then a full gallop. I wanted to look back, but did not. I didn’t want to look ahead either, so I rested my head on Mossi’s back. Behind us, light shone ahead as if it came from the Mweru, but it was just the break of daylight.