by Don Wilcox
“Are you going to make a wish for me, Kisqv?” he asked.
“I am going to try you out to see how dependable you are,” I whispered.
“Here is a message that I want you to deliver. Somewhere you will find Parroko and his party. There will be a white woman with the party. She will be able to read my message.”
Then I scribbled a few lines on the only thing I could find to write on—the piece of parchment with the weird verse about the five-fanged serpent.
“Let me know where to find you as soon as darkness comes, Sandra,” I wrote. “Better warn Parroko that the King expects him and intends to give him a chance to ‘bargain for his life.’ I have a hunch it’s Parroko’s wife, not life, that he intends to get.”
Then I added a. P.S. “Ye Gods, Sandra, don’t ever play medicine man without any previous preparation. What magic words should I say to change this fellow’s chimp claws to human hands? Yours in distress, John, the Kisqv.”
Graspy took the folded note and scrambled down the side of the arch and was gone. I proceeded to feed myself through my mask, wondering, meanwhile, what this dopey, quarreling old king could say to justify his evil intentions against a fine upstanding warrior like Parroko.
CHAPTER V
Plans for a Ceremonial Murder
All the weird devices for achieving revenge against a. personal enemy this Hazzwart ritual took the cocoanut cake. It was. a good thing that Safsaf refreshed my memory, or I might have walked into my part of the ceremony blind, so to speak—and there was still that guide line for a knife across my Adam’s apple, in case my brand of magic suddenly became trans-, parent.
The air of expectancy of the crowds began to bear down on me. One group after another finished feasting and moved in closer around the throne. The long shadows of evening came on. The Queen went down to join some of the tribal aristocracy. The attendants removed our dinner trays.
I could feel Safsaf’s strong eyes on me. I gathered that it was soon going to be time for me to make a speech. Jeepers, what did they expect of me? Magic, no doubt. What I wouldn’t have given for a sleight-of-hand outfit.
Safsaf said, “You Kisqvs travel so much from one tribe to another, I’m surprised you don’t get our customs mixed. Do you find it easy to remember?”
“Very difficult,” I said, trying hard to be casual.
“You do remember our customs, of course,” said the King, puffing at his pipe.
“Oh, yes, yes, sort of.” I frowned and stroked my chin thoughtfully. “I seem to remember—”
“Then prepare to kill my personal enemy by the snake ritual,” said the King. “I will have the dances begin at once, then your ritual will follow.”’
I swallowed with a dry throat. “You mean there’s someone you want killed tonight?”
“Isn’t that what you expected?” Safsaf put in, giving me the cold glare. “The King has been looking forward to your visit—”
“Yes, I have,” said the King, “for months and months.”
“Ever since you laid eyes on Parroko’s wife,” said Safsaf pointedly.
“Yes, ever since I—ugh! Safsaf, you talk too much.” The King puffed hard at his pipe for several minutes.
Between him and Safsaf I refreshed my memory on the ritual. It would be my job to bring together three materials, and the King seemed disturbed that I didn’t already have everything at hand.
First, I must have a portion of the garment of the man who was to be the King’s victim. And that man was, of course, Parroko. The King had thus far failed to learn of Parroko’s whereabouts (and I might have added that I had had no luck either, for Graspy had never returned to me.)
Secondly, I must have a snake.
For the third item, I would need some strips of flesh from the body of a dead man.
“According to our custom, your magic death descends upon the victim whose garment you treat in the prescribed manner,” said the King.
I wondered. Was it possible that this rigamarole, if practiced by a real Kisqv, would have any effect whatsoever?
“So you want me to take a piece of Parroko’s garment,” I said, “and stuff it down the throat of a serpent—”
“A dead serpent,” Safsaf corrected, and I must say the detail relieved me more than I could tell.
“And then, as I recall, I must tie the serpent with the sinews of a dead man.”
“And hang the serpent on the cliff—” said the King.
Safsaf cut in with his more accurate details, “From the highest branch of the highest tree on the great cliff above the village.”
I looked to the north where the orange rock reared high in the setting sun. The tree was visible, a naked black trunk with very few branches. One could imagine it to be an ideal place to hang a serpent or a man.
The chills were doing relays through my spine. I studied the sluggish, drooping face of the King, and thought what a curious character he must be within his sullen mask. One would never guess that he burned with hot passions for the beautiful wife of Parroko. He went on puffing his pipe, and when the attendants passed beneath the throne he signalled to them to let the dancing begin.
“If Parroko came to you to bargain for his life,” I said to the King, suddenly grasping for inspirations, “what chance would you give him?”
He puffed six long puffs, and I decided he didn’t intend to answer me. So I tried another question.
“As a Kisqv, do I not have the right to ask why Parroko deserves punishment?”
“As a Kisqv, you have the right to ask,” said Safsaf, answering for the King.
But the King said, “I have the right to answer—or refuse.”
“Well?” I tried to bring pressure to bear. After all, maybe I wasn’t too free with, my magic. Maybe I would say, no reasonable explanation, no death miracles. I put it gently but firmly. “You may as well know that I haven’t procured a snake. And I haven’t brought any stripes of flesh from a dead man. And I haven’t secured any scrap of Parroko’s garment.” The King glowered with a more menacing eye than I had seen before—a far more convincing bluff than he had used on the Queen when they had quarreled.
“I will tell you my grievances against Parroko,” he said sullenly, “and you will convince the tribe that he deserves death.”
There were teeth in these words and in the gesture that accompanied them. The King lifted a long, dark-handled blade from its place of concealment in the front railing of the throne. It looked like a crude corn-knife, about twenty-five inches long and slightly curved. He handed this to Safsaf very solemnly.
“I have my own weapons,” Safsaf said dryly, and returned the corn-knife to its socket. “Here comes Graspy. He will have something of interest for us.” The little man with the chimpanzee hands ascended the stairs directly to Safsaf and to him a four-inch strip of bright red cloth.
“Here is the goods you requested,” said Graspy. “Now may I talk with the Kisqv again? Perhaps he will grant my wish and change my hands.”
The poor guy, I did wish his hands could be changed back, if wishing could help. And I called across and asked him to come to my side, and the sympathy I felt for him gave me a strange warmth around my forehead within the band of my headdress.
I whispered to him, “What news from the white girl with Parroko and his wife?”
“I did not find a white girl,” said Graspy.
“Then you must not have found Parroko,” I said;
“I delivered your message,” said Graspy. “Will you wish my hands to change?”
All this conversation had gone on in the most guarded whispers. But his evasive answers made me lose my temper.
“Then you did find Parroko—or didn’t you?” My whisper was a bit too loud, and the King looked at us as if he needed to know whatever was being said about Parroko. The little man with, the chimp hands was frightened and bluffed out. He swung over the rear rail and chased away before getting himself involved with any more questions.
I reasoned the mat
ter out and tried to take an optimistic view: he must have found Parroko’s party, because he had delivered the message, moreover, he’s brought back a piece of Parroko’s garment for the ceremony.
The King turned the bit of red cloth over in his hand. He was jealous. Warriors had no business getting so high-toned. Why should Parroko have any right to wear garments of such quality. Brilliant red should be reserved for the royalty.
“You were about to explain your grievances against Parroko,” I reminded the King.
“Yes, yes. He makes very bad arrows. It spoils a hunt when the arrows won’t shoot straight. I myself have tried some of his arrows. They won’t hit anything. I have warned him to improve his ways. But he is incorrigible.”
“That is a strange offense,” I said. “Can Parroko shoot straight with his own arrows?”
“If he does, he must aim away from the target,” said the King.
“If Parroko is handsome and strong and a good shot, what are the other tribesmen going to think if you have him killed? Will your own popularity not suffer?”
The King’s eyebrows gave a quick twitch. His fingers thumped nervously near the handle of the corn-knife. I sensed that he didn’t relish this situation, that he had some private fears of his own; but he intended to go through with the job, to get what he wanted.
“The people can soon forgive a man who has a beautiful wife. If I come before them with a beautiful new Queen—er—after all, you and I have the power to force this decision down their throats. You are the Kisqv. I am the King. We’ll force it down—heh! The snake. Where is your snake for the ceremony. Don’t you have a snake?
“. . . Safsaf, the Kisqv needs a snake.” Safsaf rallied to the cause. He would send some tribesmen around to the mouth of the cave and they would kill a serpent before the twilight grew any dimmer.
“Kisqvs are most careless about their serpents. They should furnish their own,” Safsaf said as he jogged down the steps. “Sometime I would like to see the Kisqv who would dare to use the great serpent that dwells in the third room of the cave.”
The Queen, ascending the steps as Safsaf departed, picked up his words and hissed at them.
“Hsss! Hsss! . . . Like as not, Safsaf himself is afraid of the great serpent in the third room. But I am not afraid,” the Queen bragged. “I find it pleasant to talk with such a large and beautiful serpent. You understand, don’t you, Kisqv?”
Did I understand? Well, if anyone ever talked like a snake it was this Queen. But I couldn’t imagine a very pleasant conversation growing put of a lot of hisses.
The Queen was pressing a bluff in my direction. “You would enjoy talking with the serpent too . . . Oh, yes you would, I’m sure. I’ve always wanted to be present when a Kisqv communicated with the source of his own magic. Shall we go to the cavern together tomorrow?”
The King tried to quiet her. I was busy gathering power for the ritual, he said, and I should not be disturbed.
“Do you have a piece of the victim’s garment?” the Queen asked.
“I have it,” I said.
“What about a dead snake?” she asked, as if it were her duty to check up on everything.
“Safsaf has gone for it.”
“And what about sinews from the body of a dead man? The Queen searched my eyes. “The party who went out to meet you have reported that you did not kill any of them. So you must have brought strips of flesh from some other dead man.” She sniffed. “I fail to smell dead flesh—or have you soaked it in grape wine?”
I rose to the occasion in a way that would have made Sandra proud.
“I killed a man just before the party met me,” I said. “But in this season when the moon gathers blackness across the sky and the hoptoads leave white trails in the slime and the tree roots tie knots under the ground, I could not slice the flesh of this dead man until an hour after sunset. Call for me an attendant, and I will direct him to the spot above the trail where the dead body lies waiting to be sliced.”
A few minutes later two attendants started off on a run, to get the desired materials before the dance ended.
A chill struck me when I noticed that a third person fell in with them—the brawny, grizzled man with the square-cut bone ornaments in his ears—Safsaf. I could have bet my Clipper reservation that he wanted to find out whom I had killed.
CHAPTER VI
“With This Act I Do Destroy . . .”
The snake was a brightly colored young python, cold to my hands.
There was enough of life left in its dead body to keep it twitthing and writhing for a long time. What little grape stain there was left in my palms wore away rapidly.
The shine of its body, illuminated by the columns of ceremonial fire from either side of the arch, apparently delighted these natives. Their eyes shone bright and eager. I wondered if Parroko was somewhere among the dark shadows, looking on, dreading the fate that he believed this ceremony would bring down on his head.
Poor Parroko. His spirit of adventure had been his undoing. His strength and endurance had taken him on longer treks, than most of the warriors endured. And so he had met the traders along the shore. He iTad become acquainted with a few of the east villages. He had met a few American and English business men or tourists. And he had chosen to live a long distance, in terms of a day’s walk, from his original Hazzwart tribe.
He had thrived upon the advantages of many contacts, and I wondered, as I prepared to administer the ceremonial death to a bit of his garment, whether he would have believed these elaborate exercises could hurt him. Could magic words—such as the mystifying American language that I used—have any unfavorable psychological effects?
I walked down the steps slowly. I swayed rhythmically to the weird music. The snake’s slow twisting and swinging from my arms contributed to the effect.
That music! If only I could have recorded that! The seven tribal musicians were watching me closely, and it would seem that what they played was a perfect expression of jungle magic. As if the snake and I were calling out melodies to fit the mood.
And yet, the strangeness of the music was in reality effecting me. The slow thumping of leather-headed drums, the capricious fading in and put of flute passages in the most curious harmonies, like the rising and falling of winds in a lost cavern—these cast a spell upon me. I was the man of magic. I was the man of magic.
Magic power was mine because all those pairs of shining superstitious eyes believed, I was a man of magic. And now as the. warmth of the colored band of my headgear sent hot waves through my brain, as I saw the shadows of my tall black plumes dancing above my head, I was struck through with the sense of a wonderful power.
Could I, by this simple gesture, make Death descend upon an innocent man?
I swear there was no murder in my heart in that strange hour. I swear that my respect for the brave, handsome Parroko and his beautiful wife had not diminished.
But I was caught in the enchantment of a whirlpool of magic—the burning expectations of superstitious people. And under the pressure of this spell, I wanted to know!
I wanted to know what I could do, how far my powers would reach, whether I had caught the secret—God forgive me—of a magic murder.
As I moved into the throngs, they slowly widened the circle around me, standing, staring, waiting. Near enough that they could hear my voice, yet far enough back that I sensed their awe and fear. Within their circle I seemed to stand alone between the two ceremonial fires. But I was not alone. The young python was in my hands, still twitching, still mocking the Death that had claimed it.
I lifted the bit of red cloth from my pocket and held it aloft for all to see.
A wisp of smoke from one of the fires coiled down like a shadowy snake and seemed to catch the red cloth from my fingers. Whether the smoke held it there, or whether my hand did it, I cannot say.
My Hazzwart words were simple, but my voice was invested with ah eloquence that held my audience spellbound. The dead snake, hanging, loosely from my
left hand, ceased to twitch.
“This bit of cloth which floats here in the air—”
The rhythm of my words were echoed back to me in the melody of the primitive musicians.
“—shall symbolize the life of the one who wore this garment.”
Again that strange echo of music like a repetition of my words. But more—a slight movement among the dancers, as if one of them was swaying her graceful body to the tune of my magic chant. She was a most attractive savage, scantily costumed.
She moved out into the circle slowly, as my speech continued. With each spoken phrase she waited, a beautifully molded statue; with each echo from the flutists she danced a little farther out into the circle. It would seem that she herself was the personification of the magic power I invited.
“This bit of cloth, then, is one life among you. But I have power to judge where Death shall strike.
And so I find this life has stirred the enmity of your own King.”
I pressed the jaws of the young python between my thumb and forefinger and the dead mouth opened. I stood there, repeating my words in English, and even I felt the strangeness of the sounds no Hazzwart understood. The orchestra echoed the words, and again the graceful dancer lent her body to the theme of Death.
“I hold here in my hand a thing of Death,” I went on. “And into its dead mouth I force this life.”
With my right hand I drew the bit of cloth out of the coiling smoke above my head and inserted it in the snake’s mouth. With a bit of stick I forced it deep down the throat. The dancer stood near me now, and with the echo of the music, she imitated these actions—first mine, then, in a grotesque contortion, that of the twisting snake receiving the red cloth down its throat.
Finally I said, “With this act I do destroy, for all time, the personal enemy of the noble King.”
Orchestra and dancer emphasizing each motion of my hand, I proceeded to take the human sinews from my belt that had been delivered to me just before the ceremony began, and tied the python’s tail and head together.
