The man straightened, reclaiming his dignity. As he sat up, he pulled together robes of a strange fashion, banded at the arms and decorated in what looked like luminous shapes. It seemed to Rakam the robes Timbo wore for his office were in kind to these, and having no need to fear, he too came out from his hiding place.
“Yes, I am the Keeper. Josiah is my name. And, who are you?”
“This is the son of my grandson, Rakam,” Mabetu introduced them, “new Kasisi of the Village of the Falling Lakes.”
“Oh, the Falling Lakes is it?” the man said miserably. “And, why shouldn’t it be so, and some distant relative of that Mabetu and his infernal cures I’d bet, may his soul find everlasting torment.”
“Not my distant relative, no,” Mabetu said, stifling a laugh.
Josiah sat up, his mouth shut tight. After a few inarticulate words, he managed to say, “Who? Mabetu himself still lives?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“And, I thought that I was the oldest man alive.”
“No, you are not the eldest, not yet. But tell me, why are you here? The Pool hasn’t been used in generations.”
The Kasisi’s face lit with recognition. “Not since your cure,” he said with spite, folding his robes indignantly about him. “Though this place is sacred, a gift of the Almighty. The people choose your cure.”
“And, my cure was a gift from the Almighty, as well.”
Answering gruffly, Josiah said, “Yes, well, whatever, but the water is the real gift for the removal of evil.”
“Yes, I know. That is why we came. Only the Pool can help this young one.”
“Oh?” Josiah said with interest. “Young man, is that so?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me your story. I must know everything.”
“I would be honored to have you as an audience,” said Rakam, his voice gentle. “But I see you set yourself at feast. I have a fine cheese and some good root to offer you. May I suggest we relight your fire and cook your meat? I think my honored grandfather may even have a honey cake or two hidden somewhere in his pack.”
Eyeing Mabetu as if he were already holding back the best of the offerings, Josiah said, “Ah, yes, the young man speaks and acts with courtesy, a thing I had thought gone from the world. You honor me. Yes, let us share our meal and our stories round the fire.”
“Thank you. May I repair it while you rest?”
“No, no, I’ll do it. I can’t stand having disorderly flames. I have a few spits for the meat, but you two look as thin as water snakes, better cut some more.”
“It’s just you, then?” Rakam asked.
“Yes, just me.” The old man sighed, remembering, pain crossing his face. “I live well, though. The soil is fertile, and more land is tilled than I will ever need. There is no lack of game. I have a few goats, though I must say I haven’t had cheese in a long time. I never learned how to make it.”
Laughing Rakam said, “And, I have to admit my aunt was the best cheese maker in the village, but I never learned the art myself. Now my cousin, Kolojo, he always had a way with cheese, a true master.”
“Wasted youth, I never learned how to thatch a roof as well as my father, or how to stitch as neatly as my mother. I was always too busy learning our trade.”
They cooked the meal and ate, Rakam telling the story of his travels, the incident with the Jinn and the Losli, his encounter with the MaShaitani. During the meal, Josiah never spoke to Mabetu, treating him as decidedly unwelcome, but he often chatted with Rakam, trading stories and offering praise for his actions.
When Rakam had finished, Mabetu insisted, “So, now, Josiah, Keeper of the Pool, what do you think about this Jinn and its influence over this fine young man?”
The response was not directed toward Mabetu. Concentrating, looking deep into Rakam’s eyes, Josiah said, “You have no taint of evil upon you. You said you prayed for the Jinn?”
“Yes, and I continue to pray for it before I take rest.”
“That is an act of mercy, and though the evil one may corrupt men in many ways, mercy is divine. No, son, this Jinn has no power over you. I will treat you with the waters of the Pool. I will offer the ceremony of purification, but in listening to your story and in speaking to you, I find no corruption in your soul.”
“Thank you.”
“And, what is more, I will offer you my blessing. You have a difficult time ahead of you, and it may be by my prayers and the waters of the Pool you may find comfort and strength. Now, the meal is finished. Come back with me to my house. There we will sleep, and I will think about what you told me. When we wake, we will pray together and purify ourselves. Then you must be on your way. The Almighty will not wait.”
Chapter 13
Somewhere in the darkening forest, the enemy watched and waited. Out of all the young and the old, the sick and the vulnerable, Crenshaw had become the hunted. In the way of nature, the tables had finally turned on him, his time come due. He knew it as surely as he took breath, could feel it in the deep recesses of his mind.
As he stared into the heavens above, the deep blue sky was fading to an anxious twilight, streaked with red and orange upon the slowly drifting clouds like the banners of ancient kings. Darkness was gathering beneath the trees, their bare branches like bones reaching up from the underworld.
Creatures that profited by stealth and secrecy had already begun to rise from their dens, hungry and desperate. He could hear their cries in the distance. But none of these were what he feared. The enemy did not intend him for food, not as living creatures of the world must take food to survive. Though the unseen enemy intended death, it was not for the price of flesh that the killing would be made.
But then, maybe it was a dream. So many dreams had come and gone with the sickness that Colonel Crenshaw was no longer certain what was real and what was a product of his darkest imaginings. Looking into the forest gloom, he tried to take credence from the nightmare feelings that consumed him. Nothing real could be so terrible. No enemy he had ever faced had filled him with so much fear.
Within the undergrowth another sound was made, like the sound that had awakened him from his sleep and pricked his senses with danger. It was a crack, a footstep on the dry litter of the forest floor. The sound was so quiet it could easily have been taken for a dead branch in the canopy above, broken by the wind, being pulled down to the jealous ground that takes all things back into itself at death.
The firelight flickered, playing tricks on his eyes, telling him by light and shadow the stories of a changing world. The enemy had nowhere left to hide. Each step deliberate, it entered the clearing in which he lay, to the edge of the light of the fire.
Closing his eyes to slits, relaxing his tired muscles, Crenshaw let his restless breathing die. For what seemed a lifetime, the enemy waited, hiding in the shadows. In this game the winner must be patient. The winner must know when to strike.
The enemy left the safety of its shadowy retreat. It moved with the grace of a warrior, practiced and certain. It came into the faint light, and Crenshaw could make out the dress of the tribesmen of the plains.
The tribesman that could not be a tribesman wore a hauberk of sinew and bone, painted red in the way of a warrior. There were wooden plates strapped to his arms and legs and these were traced with blades of grass stained red like blood. He wore a wooden mask topped with the plumes of some brightly colored beast with great, hollow eyes that looked like depthless caves.
With no movement from his intended victim, the false tribesman stepped forward, his skin shining dully, brown like roasted coffee beans. He drew a knife. The evil blade glinted in the flickering light of the fire. It was a metal knife, well-shaped, not of the kind or make of this world. As the tribesman raised the weapon to strike, Crenshaw saw a patch of flesh, devil white, and he knew this man and what he had come to do.
“Surprise!” Crenshaw shouted. Arms outstretched, he leaped up, taking the enemy by the wrist. The fever was upon him
, the madness, but it gave him strength, turning him into the nightmare beast he knew himself to be.
The false tribesman was taken by surprise, but not entirely caught off guard. He fought back, desperate to hold onto the knife. They grappled in the flicking light of the fire, first one and then the other winning the advantage. Crenshaw took a step in close, using his weight to throw the enemy off balance. Finding the leverage he needed, Crenshaw twisted the tribesman’s hand, breaking the wrist with one swift motion.
The knife fell into the dirt. The enemy screamed as Crenshaw kept twisting the hand, with blood spraying and the jagged ends of the bones poking out through the skin. Fighting hard, the man dressed as a tribal warrior landed a solid blow to the Colonel’s face, giving himself the opening he needed to escape the punishing grip.
Backing cautiously away, the enemy waited for his chance. Crenshaw lunged forward, and the tribesman was off, running down a packed dirt trail the natives must consider a road. Off they ran--a hunt as desperate as any in the wild.
Parallel to the river the road led, following the rolling hills, avoiding the wet and the murky places where the water would have consumed it when the rains came and the level was high. But Crenshaw had no shoes upon his feet, and the roughness of the path slowed his pursuit. In the darkness he lost sight of the enemy.
Soon the road took a turn into a rocky gorge. The walls of the gorge were cut sharply by a stream that flowed down its center and into the greater river. Like skeletal fingers, the roots of the trees clutched the rock. Here the road became covered in sharp little stones. As he walked, the Colonel could barely keep going for all the pains in his feet. His passion cooled; his mind grew clouded.
What had been only moments before a fierce struggle for life and death was now, with the absence of the enemy, not so desperate. Still he trudged on, the fever confusing his mind, the anxious twilit forest alive around him.
Every now and again as he went, he saw drops of blood and the print of a hard soled boot upon the ground. That boot print was distinctive as no other mark in the entire world could be. It was the absolute sign of betrayal.
The road dipped into a low, marshy area. The air reeked of standing water and rot. The ground was muddy; and though the sensation comforted his aching feet, he thought darkly of what sort of infection might be lurking there, at that very moment worming its way inside him.
A sort of pool came up from the river, a low spot in the riverbank that was even now filled with water. He stopped to drink, noting the shining eyes of what Hayes lightheartedly named a crocodile. Its gnarled, gray brown body skimmed beneath the surface like a floating log.
The Colonel watched it warily, thinking he had never seen a crocodile of that size, and how absurd giving the thing such a name really was. Other men would name the plants and animals of this place, men with letters after their names, men who would not be ashamed of what they had done.
In the quiet of the marsh, Crenshaw found himself again. The fever had lost its power. He wondered where the rage had come from, where the strength had come from, neither belonged to him. When the moment had come, he had thought himself a beast, he had acted like a beast, but he was a man. Or had that too been a dream?
The breeze was cool upon his naked skin, and Crenshaw shivered. The forest had gone quiet again. He wondered if it were because of him or his enemy or some other monster spawned by this horrible, dream place.
Along the trail he came upon an old tree with a broad trunk. Thinking it much like all the other old trees he had passed while making his way down the road, he kept walking, not noticing the man that hid there. Dulled was his anger and so too were his senses. As the tribesman came from behind the tree with a crudely fashioned club raised in his good hand, Crenshaw took no notice.
Pain, unexpected and violent, sent him into the dirt. In practiced motion, the Colonel rolled away, not so quickly as to avoid being struck, but able to keep the blow from spilling his brains on the grass beneath him. With the pumping of his desperate heart, the fever returned. The beast returned.
When the next blow fell, Crenshaw grabbed hold of the club and took it from the tribesman’s hand, pulling him down to the dirt. And, then, they were on each other, grasping, scratching, and biting like animals. Crenshaw found his hands around the neck of his enemy, the man he now recognized as Roberts, squeezing the life from him.
Full of animal rage, he bit into Robert’s neck and he tasted the hot blood as it spurted into his mouth. He drank desperately, greedily, the beast within, the fever, ruling every thought and action.
Still consumed in his bloody feast, Crenshaw heard a noise, the animal brain telling him danger was near. It was something like music that he heard, the sound growing nearer and nearer. Up the road he saw the dancing light of torches and what looked like many men coming toward him.
In a few moments they would see him, and yet he did nothing. It was almost as if they had a power over him, had mesmerized him with their dancing light and singing. He watched it in fascination and could not help himself.
A shout arose from the natives. The fever rising in his blood, Crenshaw sprang toward them, no longer a man but the beast returned. The natives spread out into the forest surrounding the road, yet one moved slower.
Of the group, beast Crenshaw recognized the most vulnerable, a little man, standing still. He would take this one for his next victim. His prey was dressed differently than the others, with white robes that bore some unknowable symbols and a great headdress that marked him as some heathen witchdoctor. An arrow sliced Crenshaw at his side, a glancing blow that barely cut the skin. Another arrow stuck in his leg, but he kept going.
The man in white held out his hand and threw back his head. As Crenshaw was about to attack, flames erupted from the witch’s outstretched hand. The flames burned Crenshaw’s face and chest, the stench of burnt flesh and singed hair rising in his nostrils. He covered his face protectively, falling to the ground, writhing in pain.
There was the crackle of gunfire. Crenshaw looked up and recognized what his mind called Hayes. He had his rifle in hand, the angry reports of the weapon confusing the natives and sending them off in a panic. Hayes was joined by three others, all armed, all firing their weapons into the fleeing natives.
Crenshaw turned. The witchdoctor was gone, disappeared into the confusion. Hayes came to his side and called for help and took off his shirt and started ripping it into strips. He looked up at Hayes and through the pain and the coming darkness, he said, “What am I doing here? Is it still a dream?”
Chapter 14
“We should have enough of Josiah’s meat to make it to Pakali’s city,” Mabetu said, looking into his food bag as they walked, intending to take a break.
“This forest is rich with fruits and nuts,” agreed Rakam, taking the hint. He pulled the satchel holding Betu from his shoulder and let it fall softly to the ground. Unlike Rakam and Mabetu who had been walking since they had awakened, the otter scurried away, eager to stretch her legs from the journey’s confinement. “We have hardly had to slow ourselves to find food the entire way.”
A strip of dried flesh in hand, Mabetu sat on the ground, rubbing his knees. “As my body knows well,” he said. “I have gone farther and faster than ever I imagined I could, but at last these many steps are catching up to me.”
“It’s the good company,” said Rakam, smiling broadly. “It always makes the road seem shorter.”
“With your mouth running swiftly like a river as it has, I’ve hardly had time to think, it’s true,” Mabetu replied. “And the sound of your voice has drowned out the groans of my aged bones also. I shall never again journey with a man who has spent so much time alone in the wilderness and is rediscovering the use of his tongue past eating.”
After taking an especially large bite of meat, Mabetu looked into his bag. Finding a small jar with a lid that was bound with a cord, he opened the jar and began applying a salve to his knees.
“Now I understand why old
Josiah took such an instant disliking to you. I’m sure it wasn’t by reputation alone.”
Mabetu laughed, nearly spitting out his mouthful. “No, I don’t think we’ve met before, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have liked me any better if we had. Though my reputation often precedes me, his sort and mine hardly find cause to live harmoniously.”
“We’re lucky he gave us this meat for the journey.”
“Yes, well, he was bound to lend aid. It honors him to be able to provide for us as he did. The old ways are not all lost. He could not have done less.”
“Oh, none of that now,” said Rakam. “He was most generous. What do you think of that potion he made for your knees?”
Mabetu frowned. Hastily rubbing what remained of the salve into his hands, he put away the small jar and said, “Serviceable.”
“I should say not only the meat has taken us so far and so fast.”
“Think what you will, but a firm resolve and purpose has as much to do with it.”
“It is not by resolve alone that man accomplishes anything in this world, but by the Will of the Almighty and the help of his friends.”
“All right, all right, enough. Let an old man have peace. Yes, thanks to Josiah for his meat, tough as it is. It has probably been hanging in his hut since the dawn. We surely owe him that much in gratitude. He needed the extra room to store his crops for the Long Night, and we were convenient for that purpose.”
“Maybe you should rub some of that salve on your teeth. I don’t find the meat tough at all. It is uncommonly rich.” As if demonstrating, Rakam took a bite of the flesh. He whistled and held it up for Betu to see. The river dog, having wandered during the conversation, quickly scurried over to him for a sample. “And, look, even this little one knows how good it is.”
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