by Dilman Dila
“Shut up!” Mozze said.
“If you like singing so much, why didn’t you grow up in that musician’s cave?”
“Ow no,” Hinko said.
“Jez!” Mishash’s voice screeched down the chimney. “Shut up or I’ll spank you!”
“You shut up!” Jez shouted back at her. “I’m a man now!”
“Ow no,” Hinko said, his mouth hanging open.
The fire lit up Mozze’s face, making it seem blacker than normal. His eyes glowed with anger.
“I’ll soon inherit this cave,” Jez said. “I must protect its reputation.”
Mozze did not know how to respond. A few heartbeats of silence passed, the crackling of the fire accentuated the tension in the room. Finally, without another word, Jez walked away.
#
For the first time in his life, Jez did not sleep in the cave. His parents worried about him all night. Mishash fell asleep on Mozze’s chest, her face wet with tears. Shortly after sunrise, as Mozze prepared a breakfast of millet bread and mbisi milk, a dove flew down the chimney and vomited a message from Hinko.
“I found the messengers gone,” the note said. “Jez offered them his services.”
A sudden surge of lisis seared Mozze’s legs, as though he had stepped on live coals. He crumbled to the floor with a yelp. He rushed for the vial in his undergarments, and took a sip for an instant remedy. The pain died. The exhaustion fell in. The dove watched with bored eyes, waiting for him to chant the spells to send a reply.
“I had to warn the king,” the note continued. “Sorry. It’ll be impossible for Jez.”
The messenger doves had a disadvantage. It was easy to steal the notes they carried. All the conspirators had to do was hire a wizard to read the doves heading into the palace and they would have intercepted the warning. But they did not, which indicated that they were careless and amateurish. Now that the king knew, Hinko would get a hundred gold bars as a reward for his loyalty, but Jez would certainly die.
Mishash walked into the kitchen. She looked very old, the beads in her dreadlocks shone in the myriad of colored lights that gave the room a somber atmosphere. She sat beside him. He wrapped his arms around her, offering comfort in the warmth of his body, wishing he could sing to assure her that everything was all right.
“What happened to Jez?”
“He thinks he can kill the king.”
Her tears fell onto his shoulder like warm raindrops. “Please, save him.”
#
Mozze set out at noon. He borrowed a horse from Hinko’s inn and rode fast to the city, reaching it just after sundown. The city lights looked like a million candles glowing on a dark lake around a little mountain. The palace stood on top of the little mountain, sparkling like a crown of stars, creating the illusion of a brilliant rainbow.
He shared a cheap hotel room with twelve other men. As he ate supper, he eavesdropped on their conversations. They spoke of the sudden increase in palace security. Guards doubled. Visitors screened more carefully, less than half the usual number allowed in. A lot of theories floated about, but when someone blamed the rabbit-eared folk, the room fell silent.
“Why did Amara invite them into our kingdom?” the speaker said. “Because his son fell in love? Now they want to kill him. We must drive them back into the forest.”
All night, Mozze puzzled over how to find his son. A search from inn to inn would be futile. He would need thirty days for that, yet the festival was eleven days away. That meant ten nights for Jez to attempt the assassination. It had to be night because Jez, being young and inexperienced, would want to sneak in like a thief. He would choose a time just before the first cock crow, when the world is asleep and the guards exhausted. Jez would think daytime, which a skilled assassin would prefer, is too risky.
Mozze went to the palace the next day. A long, closely guarded drawbridge provided the only access. A moat as deep and wide as a river flowed around the wall. Boatloads of soldiers patrolled the moat, while hundreds more kept watch on the wall. He suffered the scrutiny of three sets of guards. They searched him thoroughly until they were satisfied that he was merely visiting the temple of Nyamwiru, the goddess of fertility. When he finally passed through the golden gate, he felt exhausted and naked.
The palace had two sections. Commoners were restricted to the outer segment, where the guards and staff lived, and where Nyamwiru’s temple stood. A second wall enclosed the royal level. Mozze spent the day in the outer part, trying to figure out how his son would break into the royal section.
He decided it had to be through the garden, which had enough trees, flowers, fountains and statues to provide many hiding places. The rest of the commoner’s section was too open and well lit, or full of the families of two thousand guards and palace employees. Moreover, at night couples sneaked into the garden to make love in the aphrodisiac aroma of the flowers, an open secret that Jez would seek to exploit.
This little forest had to be it. The problem would be to get past the hundreds of guards patrolling the moat and the outer wall.
A naïve person might get in during the day and hide in the garden until night. The guards however kept meticulous records. They would know if someone went in and never came out. They would search the garden until they found the intruder.
The second night in the city, Mozze crept up a tree to study the behavior of the guards who patrolled the wall. The bright lights made it easy to watch the wall and the moat, but impossible for anyone to sneak past the guards.
After a while, he searched the bushes and the trees, certain that Jez was somewhere nearby, looking for a way to beat the guards. He searched until dawn but he failed to find his son. For the next several days, he scoured inns near the palace, and every night he returned to the garden wall and searched with ever increasing despair. In vain. Then it happened, two nights before the festival.
A shadow walked to the moat, waving a handkerchief. Mozze recognized his son from the sparkle of green beads on his dreadlocks. He slipped down the tree and hurried after him, sword drawn, convinced that Jez planned to fight his way into the palace. A foolish act, for no single man could fight his way past a hundred guards on a wall.
“Jez!” he whispered as he ran. “Stop!” His voice was lost in the darkness.
A canoe approached Jez. Mozze could not run fast enough for he was trying to keep himself hidden and silent. He knew Jez could kill all six men on the boat with his knives before they got to him, but a barrage of arrows from the wall would bury him. Then, a strange thing happened. The canoe stopped. Jez climbed in.
Confused, Mozze crouched behind a shrub and watched the boat take his son to the other side. Questions ran through his mind. How did he connive with the palace guards? Are these Prince Manet’s men? How could he save the king without putting his son’s life in danger?
The guards on the wall threw down a rope ladder. Jez climbed up.
Mozze could not let him vanish, for then it would mean the loss of all hope. The king would die and then – and then the conspirators would turn against Jez! The best way is for an assassin to work alone, to find his own way in and out. By accepting this kind of help, Jez had placed himself totally under the mercy of the evil prince, and yet, if it became known that Manet hired an assassin to kill his father, Manet would lose the crown. Manet could not let that happen. He would have to kill Jez to destroy all evidence against him.
Jez went over the wall.
Mozze jumped into the moat and swam fast underwater. When he came up for air, a guard saw him. He vanished before the guard could shoot, but the next time he surfaced, arrows plopped into the water all around him. He vanished and resurfaced at the other bank, waving a hanky desperately. The shooting stopped.
Soldiers jumped off the canoe and drew their swords. Mozze spread out both arms in surrender. They disarmed him.
“I’m with him,” he said. “Didn’t he tell you?”
The guards looked at each other in confusion. They talked in gesture
s with the men on the wall, who then threw down the rope ladder.
Mozze climbed. His old body could not go as fast as Jez had. At the top, he faced a dozen swords. One belonged to a highly ranked jessi, the green feather on his armor identified him as a maimai commander with a hundred warriors in his fighting unit.
“Who are you?” the maimai said.
“I’m with him,” Mozze said.
“You can’t be with him. It’s his bobotong night with Sarrie.”
Bobotong? Mozze smiled to hide the shock.
Seven nights to a marriage, the bride and groom perform the bobotong ritual to test the compatibility of their fates. Under arranged marriages, where parents decide who their children should marry, astrologers match the two fates and then the couples do the ritual in the presence of an aunt to confirm the astrologer’s divination. But in naya marriages, where love unites the two, they do it in secret to assure themselves that their fates are compatible before visiting the astrologer, and then announcing their marriage.
How did Jez convince them that he only wanted to see a girl? Or is that the cover story in case someone caught them helping the assassin?
“You have ten heartbeats to live,” the commander said.
“I’m his father.”
“Huh?”
“Yes, I am. Look at my face.”
The maimai studied Mozze’s face under the torchlight. Mozze held his breath until he saw the maimai’s face relaxing. He had seen the resemblance.
“Why are you following him?”
Mozze’s smile widened as the swords pressed into his neck. He smiled to hide his terror. He took a backward step, but the swords maintained pressure on his skin. Another step and he would fall to death.
“I want him to marry,” he fumbled for an answer. “If he fails to please her, she’ll think he isn’t meant for her. And he’ll fail because – because he’s cursed. He needs a charm. He forgot it. I followed him to give it to him.” He fished out the wooden vial of lisis medicine and gave it to the jessi. “Here. Take it to him. I’ll go back down.”
The commander did not take the vial.
“The flowers can help him,” he said.
“No. The flowers work for normal men. He is cursed. Please, take it to him.”
Mozze placed the bottle at the jessi’s feet and started to go back down the rope.
“Wait,” the maimai said. “Sarrie’s father is my friend. You see there’s this scare in the palace – but who am I to deny lovers their happiness? I checked your son. He’s only a harmless, love sick boy.”
Mozze thought of the thirty-six finger length knives in his son’s vest, cleverly hidden under the sheep wool shirt. If the guards had asked Jez to remove his shirt, they would have seen his weapons.
“We can’t leave our stations,” the maimai said. “You take it to him. They are over there.” He pointed at the giant statue of a two-headed wolf whose eyes shone red in the darkness.
Mozze did not know how fast his heart was beating until he climbed down into the flower garden. His hands trembled. He had never used deceit before. He always relied on his sword. He wanted to chide Jez, Who is the silly little girl? Who tells lies rather than use a sword like a real man? Yet he felt angry with himself for failing to make a proper assassin out of his son.
Thick darkness lay under the wolf’s statue. Mozze could not see Jez. He searched hard, whispering urgently, and was just about to give up when he found a girl hidden under a paw. She was bound and gagged, drugged into a deep sleep.
Had Jez used a love potion to make her fall so madly in love with him in so short a time? Nothing else made sense. But how far would the bobotong lie take Jez? Certainly not into the king’s chambers.
Beside the girl was a bundle of clothing, which Mozze recognized as his son’s. Jez then had gone into the royal level in disguise. What disguise? A jessi? A palace worker? Mozze suddenly realized the futility of his efforts. He crumbled to the ground, defeated. Jez had vanished. Maybe he would succeed in killing the king and allow a rabbit-eared creature to become queen. Maybe he would fail, get captured and hanged. Whatever happens, Jez’s rebellion had exposed Mozze’s failure, both as a father and a mentor to his son. Never in their bloodline had a son rebelled to inherit the cave. The thought provoked such a severe lisis attack that he yelped out in pain.
“What’s that?” a voice said.
“Sarrie and her lover,” another replied.
“That’s not the sound of lovemaking.”
“It is.”
“It isn’t!”
Mozze took a long sip from the vial. He forced himself to shut up, to sit so still and not make any noise.
“Hear that?”
“It stopped.”
“Isn’t that strange?”
The pain ceased but exhaustion gripped Mozze as if he had just run up a steep slope at full speed.
“Sarrie! Are you alright?”
Quick, working as silently as possible, Mozze shoved her back into the deep shadows under the wolf’s paw. He had little energy left, and he knew he had even less time left.
“Sarrie! Answer me!”
Mozze slinked into the opposite paw and lay quiet, waiting for his strength to flood back.
“She won’t answer.”
“And it’s too quiet.”
The guards approached the wolf, lit a torch, searched, and saw Sarrie bound up.
“What kind of bobotong is this?”
Mozze saw his chance. He summoned all the strength he had and attacked. He struck the nearest guard on the neck, shattering bones and the carotid artery. The man fell, choking in his own blood. Mozze snatched up his sword. Startled, the second guard reached for the horn hanging like a necklace on his chest, rather than for his sword. If it weren’t for the lisis, Mozze might have killed him before the alarm sounded. He was a few heartbeats too slow. The man blew the pipe as the sword ripped his belly open. He fell, the little horn stuck on his mouth, filling with blood.
Mozze held his breath, hoping no one heard the short blast. But there came a reply, telling him that he had put his son’s life in greater danger.
Mozze raced for the inner wall, keeping in the shadows, as a pandemonium of horns rocked the night. He used a creeping plant to scale the inner wall, which was only twenty feet high, jumped into the royal section, and hid in a shrub.
The pandemonium peaked. Two guards were dead. A deadly intruder lurked. Guards ran from here to there in total confusion. He tripped one who was running by, and broke his neck with a single blow. Quickly, he dragged the corpse into the shrub and waited. No one had seen it happen. He dressed up in the man’s clothing. He folded his dreadlocks and hid them in a large scarf. Feeling safe in his disguise, he set out to help Jez.
He stayed near the shrub, to prevent other guards from searching it and finding the third dead guard, but he was still able to glean information from the jessis who ran to and fro. Some shouted orders at him. Others asked if he had orders for them. A great deal of time passed and still there was no sign of the intruder. Finally, Mozze let out a sigh. He smiled with himself, happy with what he had done. Maybe he had saved the king’s life, and Jez had after all found a way out.
Just as he was beginning to bask in the comfort of this thought, the bell rang. It froze the night with gruesome peals that were loud enough to awake the entire city. It rang only to make important announcements. On such a night, it could only mean the king’s death. Sure enough, the next set of guards who passed by verbally confirmed it. The king was dead. Slain in his sleep.
Another lisis attack sent Mozze to the ground. Fire burned his legs worse than ever. He took a sip of his medicine but the pain did not relent. He had to take two more sips before the torture ended.
Tears stung his eyes, the kind of tears that came when his father died. It was foolish of him to try to stop Jez, a naïve but very intelligent assassin, who had clearly thought of a way in and a way out. But Mozze’s clumsiness had ruined the plan. How can J
ez get out now? Surely, the commander who let him in won’t help him out.
He had killed his son.
He waited for the news of the assassin’s capture to reach him. He heard nothing. He learned that the assassin had sneaked into the palace dressed as a cobweb sweeper. When the alarm sounded, jessis closed the golden doors, unaware that the assassin was already inside. He slay eight guards before breaking into the royal bed chambers, where the king was fast asleep with his wife, and killed them both. He had then escaped through a window. The jessis now hunted for an assassin disguised as a cobweb sweeper.
Jez was more intelligent than Mozze had thought. He had an alternative way out. Mozze felt proud of him. But the death of the king and the thought of a rabbit-eared queen angered him.
Daybreak drew closer. The oleli bird, unaware of the tragedy, sang to lure the sun out of its bed. At another time, Mozze might have sung along. He won his wife’s love by imitating the tiny songster ikinko, whose sweet voice causes flowers to bloom. But now he wanted to kill this oleli bird. To kill every musician. To destroy every song ever made and put an end to all singing. He lay in a stupor in the grass until the first rays of the sun touched the treetops and the bird fell quiet.
An idea struck him with such a force that he sat bolt upright. An idea that would stop that rabbit-eared creature from becoming queen. It would also give Jez a chance to escape, if Jez had not yet gotten out.
Even before the idea could solidify, Mozze pranced to the golden doors of the king’s court, where a group of soldiers milled about in confusion. He removed the scarf hiding his dreadlocks and let his hair fall onto his back.
“I am the assassin,” he said. “I have a message for Prince Manet.”
#
After half a day in a windowless cell, they shackled him and took him to Prince Manet, who sat on the king’s throne, though he was still a prince. His wife had a haughty face. She wore an elaborate crown that hid her rabbit ears. She sat on the queen’s throne, at the right hand side of Prince Manet. Twelve guards stood in a row behind Mozze. They were in a large room. It had no furniture apart from the two thrones. The walls were bedecked with waxed heads of previous kings. A rug of leopard skin covered the entire floor. A thousand leopards must have died over hundreds of years to make the rug. Golden chandeliers hung overhead, holding candles that produced a sweet smell and too much soot. Artists used the soot to paint murals on the ceiling depicting the glory of the Bito Kingdom.
