by C. T. Rwizi
In the distance, the town of Kageru is a hazy smudge. Explosions and black smoke can still be seen even through the rain. She knows they won’t continue for much longer.
While she watches, a sphere of black, shimmering light balloons above the town with multiple arcs of color whipping around it in a vengeful cloud. Its rays seem to twist her eyes into seeing a lord of shadows whose power is so glaring it brings tears to her eyes. Many will die beneath its light in retribution today—many have already died, and maybe she deserved to be one of them.
Maybe what she deserves will catch up to her one day.
Ilapara prods her buck into motion and rides southward.
5: Musalodi
Khaya-Siningwe—Yerezi Plains
A shriek from the devil herself trails them, but Salo and Monti do not stop to look back at the thing that emitted it or to find out whether it is pursuing them. They run.
Down a bushy shortcut to the chief’s compound. Through a cabbage patch when the shortcut isn’t short enough, trampling newly sprouted seedlings with their sandals. Screams come from all over the kraal, rangers shouting at the edge of Salo’s hearing. The foreign Seal keeps writhing above the kraal like a black sun. Salo doesn’t let go of Monti’s hand.
A cloud of dust bursts up from the earth near a borehole to their far left, where a clanswoman has just finished filling a ewer with water. Salo hears a deafening screech, then sees through the dust a skeletal figure heaving itself out of the ground like a rotted corpse from the grave. The woman squeals and starts to run when she sees it, too; like lightning, the thing bolts forward and catches her before she has moved even three feet. It lifts her struggling form toward the Seal like she weighs nothing—only to dig into her flesh with its talons and rip her apart in an explosion of gore.
Shock. The world slows down for a moment, and Salo’s ears ring with the echoes of the woman’s last screams and of Monti’s screams and of his own screams, and the horror of what they’ve just witnessed almost pulls him down to his knees.
Somehow, he manages to keep running. But Monti trips over the irrigation channel at the edge of the cabbage patch, and his matje case slips from his hand as he falls, rattling to the ground and spilling its contents into the channel and all over the tilled soil. He should leave it be; instead, he crawls to his case and tries to gather his scattered pebbles. With a muttered curse, Salo backtracks, sweeps the child into his arms, and promptly gets back to the business of running.
“My board!” Monti cries.
“Leave it.”
Monti squirms in Salo’s grip. “Put me down! I can run on my own.”
“Not as fast as I can.”
By now the suns have dipped beyond those brooding mountains in the west, staining the sky a vibrant ocher that matches the glowvines coming to life all over the kraal. The Seal is a foreign entity above the kraal, a stark black orb against the heavens.
As the large musuku tree just off center of the chief’s compound comes into view, its boughs laden with half-ripe yellow fruits and creeping glowvines that make it look like it’s on fire, a dense swarm of flies buzzes overhead, and Salo thinks he hears a shrill laugh coming from within the mass.
Then a flash of red in the bushes off to his right makes him freeze. Monti gives a smothered cry as the bushes shake on their stems, but to their relief, three spear-wielding men clad in red loincloths emerge, each bearing an elliptical shield of hide and spears of enchanted red steel.
Ajaha rangers.
Panting, Salo puts Monti down, but the boy clings to his trembling hand. “Aba D,” Salo says, addressing the ranger in front. “What’s going on? We saw tikoloshe!”
As VaSiningwe’s younger brother, and a general who commands the five-hundred-strong regiment of Siningwe rangers, Aba Deitari is the most important member of the chief’s council of advisors. He is also quite intimidating, if only because he’s always frowning at something. The taller, darker man with him is Aba Akuri, his equally standoffish husband and lieutenant, and the third ranger is a young man Salo knows as Jaliso.
“An Umadi witch flew right past our defenses,” Aba D says. “Those creatures are her work.” He searches the surrounding forests with his coldly determined gaze. “We’ll handle her, though. You should get to shelter. Now.”
“Is she alone?” Salo asks. “Are there others?”
Aba D brushes past him without answering. “Get that child to safety, Salo. Don’t make me ask you again.”
“My name’s Monti,” Monti says a little petulantly. Aba D isn’t listening, though. He and his men are back to searching for something in the woods around them.
“She’s here somewhere,” he says. “I can feel it.”
Instead of running the rest of the way to the chief’s compound, Salo and Monti watch with morbid curiosity as the three rangers fan out into the woods, treading softly on their feet like skulking predators. They all stand rigid when the swarm of flies reappears above, moving through the air like no flies Salo has ever seen, like they’re of one mind. They hover in place for a wavering moment before they swirl into a funnel and swoop downward.
“Watch out!” Salo cries, but Jaliso doesn’t turn around in time to raise his shield. The swarm slams into his side with surprising force, knocking him back several yards. He hits the trunk of a tree with a crack so sickening Salo doubts he’ll ever get up again.
While Aba Akuri rushes to check on the fallen ranger, Aba D starts shouting at Salo and Monti to run, which they promptly do, but the swarm veers in their direction and drops right in front of them, reconstituting itself into a woman.
A naked woman. Every inch of her lithe body is a swirling canvas of black tattoos, even her face. But the cosmic shards pulsing on both of her arms, an elaborate network of lines with a metallic sheen, are aglow with the moon’s power, and so are her eyes, which burn in the dusk like fluorescent rubies. Her thick braids stand on either side of her head like curved horns. She snarls, exposing an array of teeth sharpened to needle points.
It’s Salo’s first encounter with a foreign mystic, and he knows just by looking at her that she is a disciple of the one whose Seal is terrorizing the skies, that in fact she is the one who cast it on his behalf.
Salo puts himself in front of Monti, his eyes never leaving the witch, this monster who would harm his people. “Why are you doing this?” he demands in the Umadi tongue, guessing she will understand. “What have we done to you?”
She cocks her head to one side, surprise briefly registering on her heavily marked face. Then her eyes dart behind him, and the next thing he knows, Aba D is slamming into her with his shield.
The Yerezi ancestral talent—awakened exclusively in the blood of Yerezi mystics—is the ability to share with the nonmagical a portion of their arcane power, thereby endowing them with either mental or physical magical abilities. While the former, reserved only for women of the Asazi, turns them into a sort of subordinate mystic, the latter transforms even what would be a warrior of average ability into an unstoppable brute with supernatural strength, exceptional reflexes, and resistance to harmful sorcery.
Aba D is unquestionably Khaya-Siningwe’s fiercest Ajaha, with the queen’s power thrumming strongly in his bones, and yet when he slams into the witch with his enchanted shield, she simply dissipates into a swarm of flies, flows away like air, and reconstitutes in a crouch on a low branch not far away.
She discorporates again as Aba Akuri hurls his spear with the force of a tempest. It explodes into the branch she was perching on with an earsplitting crack, but the witch, again, floats away unharmed, partially reconstituting her upper body so that it looks like she has a vortex of flies where there should be legs.
Salo stares in awe. He takes a closer look at the woman’s shards and counts, to his shock, exactly five complete rings encircling each forearm—which would make her almost as powerful as the Yerezi queen, who has six rings. She laughs as she drifts between the trees like a whirlwind, her glowing eyes and cosmi
c shards leaving wisps of trailing red light where they pass in the air. From one outstretched hand she summons a maelstrom of space-bending force; it gathers together into an ornate spear as black as pitch before she hurls it at Aba D with a rabid howl.
Void craft, Salo realizes with dismay. This witch wields power over the fabric of space and time.
The Ajaha general quickly lowers himself into a crouch and raises his shield. The patterns on the shield flash red as the protective magic they hold activates, shattering the Void spear like glass when it hits, a million pieces of cold darkness flaking away into nothingness.
But the witch is not done. She slowly raises her hands with a look of intense concentration, twin clouds of dust and leaves swirling upward from the ground on either side of her. Salo takes an involuntary step back when a skeletal creature emerges from each whirlwind, reeking of compost and rotting things.
The Void spear the witch cast, though deadly, was a pure expression of Red magic, whose eternal source is Ama Vaziishe, the Red Moon. But these tikoloshe can be nothing but the workings of Black magic, the most profane of all sorcery, practiced by those who have corrupted their cosmic shards with the underworld’s embrace. If this witch can call upon that kind of power, then she must be in league with Arante herself, who is the devil and queen of the underworld.
Too much. Salo finally grabs Monti’s hand and runs as he was commanded. The last thing he sees of the battle is Aba D gusting toward the witch and her tikoloshe with his shield raised, his spear throbbing with magic.
All over the kraal, warriors in bloodred loincloths can be seen battling devilish wraiths with their warded spears and shields. Clansmen of all ages have joined them with whatever weapons they could find—machetes, pitchforks, axes. As they race past a peanut field on their way to the chief’s compound, Salo sees a middle-aged farmer getting his gut slashed open by a tikoloshe’s bony talon while his son tries to skewer the beast from behind with a pike.
Salo looks away, choking back tears. He tries to focus on what’s important: getting Monti to safety. Still, the vise of fear clamped around his chest squeezes tighter with each cry he hears.
They reach the chief’s compound at last, only to find it silent as death. Aakus and aagos like to come here to smoke their pipes under the musuku tree and complain about today’s youth; farmers come to complain about the neighbors’ oxen grazing in their fields; neighbors come to accuse each other of jealousy, name-calling, and using malicious rituals to bewitch each other. The compound rarely knows a dull day.
Today it lies empty, a desolate island of stillness amid the sudden storm that has befallen the kraal.
Six drystone buildings surround the compound, the largest being the council house, a giant oval hut with a thatched dome for a roof. If anyone’s around, they’re probably holed up in there.
Salo makes for the chief’s hut, which he knows has powerful defensive wards woven into every brick. The hut’s ancient wooden door, engraved with the clan’s spike-maned leopard, opens for him without protest as soon as he touches the doorknob. He prods Monti past the barren parlor and into VaSiningwe’s chamber, where he shuts and locks the door with shaky hands.
“Okay. We should be safe here. I think.” When he notices that the reed curtains aren’t drawn, he rushes to the windows and rectifies that quickly. In the ensuing darkness, the glowvines draping the ceiling rafters go active, bathing the chamber in twilight.
Despite their current circumstances, Monti stares around the chamber with undisguised curiosity. Not many people ever get to see where the chief sleeps at night. In fact, Salo hasn’t been in here since he was a small boy.
VaSiningwe is a man of simple tastes, so there’s not much inside besides a low bed and a wicker chair in the corner, which he sits on during nightly dinners out in the compound. A tapestry on the wall facing the bed shows his genealogy, a proud line of men whose rangers were always the most skillful of the tribe, men whose names Salo could never hope to live up to despite being of their blood.
He moves away from the window and paces the length of the chamber, trying to gather his thoughts. He feels like the fabric of reality is fraying at the seams and tearing away from his grasp.
The witch’s marked face flashes through his mind. By Ama, Black magic and tikoloshe in the kraal. How can this be? Why is she doing this? Could this be a ritual of some kind?
The killing of humans for magical power was banned from the Plains a long time ago, but Salo knows it is still commonplace in much of the Redlands. Umadi warlords in particular are notorious for raiding villages for slaves and sacrificial victims.
Salo has never heard of them using tikoloshe, however, or any of the other terrible aspects of Black magic, for that matter. That kind of sorcery was supposed to have been rooted out from the Redlands centuries ago, and the Umadi aren’t supposed to be sophisticated enough in the arcane to bring it back.
And yet, here is a five-ringed Umadi witch in the heart of the Plains, performing what is likely a ritual of Black magic.
And the speed at which she cast her spells! She summoned those tikoloshe as swiftly as she could breathe. Not to mention her metamorphic abilities, rare even among Void mystics, and how she was completely at ease with the shadowy maelstroms of the craft.
Powerful magic. The kind of thing he’d expect from a Yerezi clan mystic, or even the queen herself.
A chilling cry makes it through the windows, and Monti hugs himself. He sits down with his back against the wall, facing the door. Salo walks over to sit with him.
“What now?” the boy says, his big eyes wide with fear.
Salo tries to put on a brave face for him. “We stay here until it’s over.”
“What if it’s never over?”
“It will be.” That’s what Salo keeps telling himself.
“But what if it’s over in a bad way?” Monti says, a sob breaking into his voice. “What if the witch kills everyone?”
Salo puts an arm around his shoulders and pulls him closer. “She won’t, all right? We have the best rangers in the Plains in this kraal, and they all carry the queen’s blessing. They’ll deal with that witch. You mustn’t worry.”
Tears pool around Monti’s eyes. “She killed them, Bra Salo.”
The images are seared in Salo’s mind: the woman with the ewer torn apart, Jaliso hitting the tree with so much force it probably cracked his spine, the farmer getting gutted right in front of his own son. Salo wipes his eyes. “When this is over, Nimara will take them to the bonehouse and heal them. You’ll see.”
“They’re dead!” Monti cries. “There’s no way she can heal them. You’re just saying that because you think I’m a dumb child.”
“I don’t think you’re dumb, Monti, but I’m telling you, I have faith in our rangers. They’ll save us. Just you watch.”
Monti falls quiet for a while. Salo can almost hear the thoughts churning inside that little brain of his. “Why aren’t you out there?” he finally whispers.
The heat of shame works its way up Salo’s cheeks. For a child to ask him such a penetrating question, the exact question he’s been trying not to ask himself this whole time . . . it makes him wonder if maybe his shame is painted all over his face in stark colors.
Niko and my brothers are somewhere out there fighting tikoloshe for their clan while I’m cowering like a child in my aba’s bedchamber. Why aren’t you out there, Salo? Why aren’t you a man?
How to answer? “I’m not a ranger. I wouldn’t last a second out there.”
“But why aren’t you?”
“Why aren’t I what?”
“A ranger,” Monti says. “Why aren’t you?”
“Does it matter?” Salo winces at his own tone. “Look, not all of us can be . . . brave like rangers. Bravery is . . . their talent, I suppose. But some of us have other talents that are just as valuable.”
Silence stretches painfully in the chamber, punctuated by rangers shouting in the distance. “So it’s true what t
hey say about you,” Monti says after a time. “That you are a siratata.”
Salo retracts his arm from Monti’s shoulders and leans his head against the wall. “That’s not a nice word. And just because I’m not a ranger, it doesn’t mean I’m . . . that.”
Salo can’t even say it, can barely think it. Siratata. The Yerezi term for a man so misguided he does not know his place in the world. An ineffectual man. An impotent man. A worthless, cowardly man. All rolled into one nasty word: siratata.
“Lots of men aren’t rangers,” he goes on. “Matter of fact, most men aren’t rangers. Your aba isn’t a ranger, is he?”
Monti raises his chin defiantly. “He’s a stonemason, but he can fight. And I bet he’s out there right now, fighting beside the rangers like the other men. I saw them. They are brave, and so am I.” With a determined glint in his eye, Monti rises from the floor. “I’m going.”
Salo stares up at him, not believing his ears. “Are you mad? Sit back down! I’m not letting you go out there!”
“I need to make sure my ama is all right,” Monti says. “She left the kraal in the morning. I need to know she’s safe.”
“I’m still not letting you go, Monti. You saw what’s out there, didn’t you?”
By the way Monti narrows his eyes, Salo knows he’s about to say something mean. “I’m not asking for your permission, coward.”
Salo represses his rising temper. Monti is just frightened. That’s all. He’s a frightened child who has just seen people die. Take a deep breath. Start again. “Monti, sit down, will you? Please. I’ll take you to your ama when this is over, I promise. But I’d be a bad friend if I let you go out there right now. Are we not friends?”
Some of the heat in Monti’s expression mellows out, but he scowls as he sits down.
