by Marc Secchia
An odd sound gave her pause. A breath, a tiny scraping sound. Right above her head.
Very, very slowly, Shioni turned her neck. Her eyes widened; her blood froze. Not two feet overhead, staring at her with ruby eyes as big as pigeons’ eggs, was the most enormous python she had ever seen. The King had a pet reticulated python which was big enough to swallow a baby goat. This sleek monster looked capable of eating a full-grown man. Its tongue flicked in and out, tasting the air. A wave of pure hatred seemed to pour out of the serpent, stupefying her.
Shioni’s shriek hit a piercing note of uncontained terror as the python dropped onto the back of her shoulders.
Pythons like a good ambush, as every Sheban child was taught from a young age. ‘Watch out in the forests! Look before you leap!’ But this one was so heavy that her slight frame was struck head-over-heels, in a flurry of knees and elbows, clear of the deadly coils for a vital instant. Shioni crashed into the base of the pedestal. Hiss! In the gloom, the reptile’s eyes gleamed like red stars.
She darted behind the nearest root. The python slithered after with surprising swiftness. She dodged again, and it tracked her movement with smooth menace. A strange ballet developed, with Shioni dodging from cover to cover and the python dogging her every footstep.
It was awfully persistent… quite unlike how a python ought to behave. Not that she had much experience with pythons! But surely no snake had eyes the colour of blood? Albino eyes were pink, not crimson! And this reptile’s eyes were glowing like lamps.
Magic! A thought wailed within her mind. Asmat! This was why the castle was named Black Magic castle! This was the reason for all the snakes… because their queen lived beneath the baobab.
All she could think was to run away. But she was lost, confused, turned around amidst the dangling roots. Shioni dodged and weaved, trying to keep one eye on the swift reptile while she searched desperately for the tunnel by which she had entered, or any other place she could hide or escape to. But the roots were a twisted maze.
And all the while, the snake’s hatred was gushing like a cruel waterfall that wanted to dash her against its rocks. It was more than a feeling: it was cruel and corrupt, a repulsive, bullying, callous thing that seemed to dredge up every awful thing she had ever imagined and parade it through her mind. It was demeaning and vindictive, worse than a thousand of the verbal insults she had suffered in her lifetime.
Her initial panic began to subside. Determined to out-think the beast, Shioni hatched a plan. She began to work her way around the edge of the chamber, keeping it at her right side. The doorway couldn’t be far. Then she would just walk away... and climb the well? Maybe. At least, far enough to be out of its reach. To her annoyance, however, the python seemed wise to her ideas. The coils twisted about, looping and curling in unexpected ways, cutting off her intended path. One mistake and she would be swallowed whole and digested slowly!
The other place the snake didn’t seem to like her getting close to was the pedestal. In all her darting around Shioni was also trying to take a good look at the bottle, but when she was nearly ambushed a second time by a crafty flick of the python’s tail, she opted rather to focus on keeping her own skin intact. But while her legs were growing tired, the python seemed to be gaining in strength.
Fears like vultures began to encircle her courage. When she slipped making a turn, she had to roll away desperately to avoid the python’s swift, open-mouthed lunge. The ever-burning hatred in those crimson eyes was making her panic. When she slipped again trying to keep a root between her and the python, she knew it was time to change the balance.
Shioni scrambled to her feet. She feinted for the pedestal, waited until the python was close, and then with a scream, took a flying leap over its back to freedom.
Unfortunately, she didn’t quite make it.
Chapter 8: A Night-Time Stroll
Even as she leaped across the python’s body, Shioni realized she had miscalculated. Help! Her ankle turned on the muscular, pliant coils and crumpled beneath her, sending her skidding across the stone floor of the grotto with a snakelike hiss of her own as she opened up every scab on her right knee. Again.
But she had no chance to think about the pain. The snake swung that broad head about and lunged for her–at least, where it thought she was. It struck one of the gnarled roots a jarring blow, mouth agape and fangs bared. The fangs lodged in the wood for a moment. Shioni winged a grateful prayer to the heavens. This was just the break she needed. She sprang to her feet and pelted away from the snake, startled to find that her ankle still took her weight. It thrashed about back there in a fury.
She and snakes had never been particular enemies, but neither did she like them. Python steak was very tasty. She’d enjoyed that back at the royal palace once.
‘Python steak?’ she shook her head. ‘Honestly, Shioni, you’re thinking about your stomach now? There! The door!’
Drat, her ankle was announcing its hurts now. Shioni struck the edge of the tunnel a glancing blow as she ducked inside. Behind, she heard an enormous HISS! And the snake’s skin rustled across the stone floor. She had no doubt the python, freed, was coming after her again.
A monster like that would make a fine meal for most of the castle, she decided.
Shioni rushed along the tunnel as quickly as she dared, back down toward the blackness of the well shaft. Dangling roots slapped her face. She whacked something on her neck instinctively and came away with half a handful of spider ichor and a few hairy legs. But she was so focused on her escape she just wiped her hand absently on her tunic and kept right on fleeing, running her fingers along the tunnel wall to try to keep somewhat in the middle.
She had to slow down. Falling into the well and killing herself now would be pointless. Shioni tried to feel for a space ahead of her.
HISS! She glanced over her shoulder. Twin red orbs were gliding down the tunnel toward her, almost faster than she could run. They held a strangely hypnotic power. For the first time, she appreciated how a rat must feel, mesmerized by an adder before it strikes. But she was no rat! Tearing her gaze from those baleful eyes, Shioni very nearly tumbled over the edge of the well shaft.
“Elephant turds!” she gasped.
Her arms flailed about as she teetered on the edge. Shioni shrieked as her fingernails scored the side of the tunnel. She was falling! Her fingers suddenly hooked on stone. With a loud groan, the stone began to move, causing her to swing forward again. The wall shaft yawned beneath her. Just as Shioni realised she had a hold of the top edge of the stone door it swung shut behind her, jamming her fingers in the crack. Despite a jerk of pain, her hand was stuck fast.
Quick. The dagger. Shioni jabbed the dagger twice, three times, above her head before the blade gained purchase. As deftly as she could, she raised herself and found a toehold with her left foot. Up, girl! Up, for her life depended upon her climbing. She pressed the door back again with her foot, more by accident than design, and thus managed to wriggle her fingers free. Thank heavens, actually, for that door! She wrung her hand. It had saved her from a nasty fall.
“Shioni? You’s down there, my pet?”
Mama’s voice! Her head jerked up. “Help, Mama! I’m down here!”
She could just about make out a circle of faces around the well-mouth, just patches of darkness, really, silhouetted against the stars. A coil of rope slapped her in the mouth. But she had never in her life been so grateful to be made to eat rope.
“Shioni?” called Annakiya.
“Pull me up!”
Shioni wound the rope several times about her wrist, and before she could think the better of that idea, was yanked powerfully upward. She quickly transferred the dagger to her mouth and hung on with both hands as a clutch of burly warriors hauled her out of the well as though she were no heavier than a small sack of grain.
Suddenly she was in Annakiya’s arms. “Oh, Shioni! I’ve never been so glad to see you! When Tewodros told us we were so worried–”
; “We was asking all over!” Mama cried, scooping them both up in her arms. “We’s a-running all over this heap of rock like some pair of headless chickens–”
“But we found you! Well, Kifle–heavens. You were down the well?”
“Oh please, sister,” came the cool tones of Prince Bekele. “All this fuss over a mere slave-girl?”
“Was your men put her down there!” snapped Mama.
The Prince of West Sheba drew himself up. “Oh, go back to your pots and pans, woman! It was probably just a joke between warriors. An initiation, I suppose.”
And he stalked off with his nose pointed to the heavens.
Shioni suspected Annakiya was tempted to spit at her brother at that point. Mama, too, although she was trembling, wisely held her tongue. “Come, Shioni. You’s cold and tired and needs your bed. Where’s it hurting?”
“Where’s it not hurting, Mama,” she said, hobbling away between her two friends. “Thank you. Thank you for coming–”
“Please! Think we’d leave you down there, my honey?”
“I’m so sorry,” Annakiya added, putting her arm around Shioni’s shoulders. “Come–leaping hyenas, you’re filthy! Mama?”
“Anni, you two aren’t making a drop of sense. How’d you–”
“Kifle saw two warriors talking to you by the well,” said the Princess. “Then Tewodros heard laughter down in the camp about someone ‘getting payback’. When he and Kifle changed over duties at sunset, they were chatting and, somehow… you’ve got them to thank, Shioni.”
“Oh I definitely will!”
“I’s fetching fresh clothes, warm water, and a double helping of my special medicine,” said Mama, waddling away toward her kitchens.
“Ugh, not the medicine!”
Annakiya laughed into her shoulder, held Shioni fiercely for a moment, and then looked her over. “I’ll bet half the jewels of my kingdom Bekele or Dabir put those men up to their little joke,” she said. “But you know, they say some slaves just aren’t worth the trouble to keep. And then there are those who definitely are.”
“Are trouble, or are worth keeping?”
The Princess laughed softly, but there was something in her friend’s eyes that Shioni could not quite place. “My father paid a silver talent for you, my friend. I think he got himself the bargain of the century. If only he would realise it. If only he knew…”
How precious his own daughter was, Shioni thought, finishing Annakiya’s unspoken words for her. Prince Bekele was a model of the King in more ways than one. And that included his dislike for his sister.
After enduring Mama Nomuula’s fussing over her like a mother hen and forcing her to down two cups of her ‘special brew’, which practically curdled her stomach, Shioni was made to change and go straight to bed.
“You’s needing your rest now,” she clucked. “Been a big day for you, my little dove.”
And how! Mama could not have guessed the half of it, Shioni thought, and smiled at her over the heap of extra furs that Mama had brought from her own bed. It was on the tip of her tongue to start telling her what had happened, but instead, what came out was: “Thank you, Mama. For everything.”
The huge woman paused in the doorway, wiping what had to be a tear from the corner of her dark eyes. “Just look at you all tucked in like a cat in her basket, with those green eyes still twinkling at me. I was so worried. But now you’s fine. I’s going to see to it or I’s a slinking old hyena and no Mama Nomuula.”
And with that, the light of her lantern receded down the corridor.
Shioni must have dozed for a while, because she could now hear Princess Annakiya’s soft breathing in the room, but after a while, the excitement of the day caught up with her and she found herself lying awake, thinking. The hyenas were calling. Every night now, their hunch-backed shadows stalked around Castle Asmat’s walls, and the chorus of their eerie yipping, cackling and laughing rose like a song to the moon.
A song she was beginning to understand.
This was all too strange. She lay on her pallet, chewing her lip. She had felt that python. The lion–well, she had ignored him, but there had been something from him too. This was all wrong. Maybe she was going crazy. She worried and puzzled it around in her mind for what seemed ages, as Castle Asmat slept. Eventually she gave up. Rising quietly to avoid disturbing Princess Annakiya, she padded out into the night. The dry-season sky was clear, the stars brilliant, and the soft chirruping of crickets added to what should have been a balmy night. But the castle was on edge. Not a day was free of accident or mishap. The King was snappish, the slaves grumbled, and the warriors prowled about like nervous cats.
With the King’s birthday feast just days away, the castle-dwellers should have been getting ready to celebrate.
As she slipped through the courtyard, where the stone walls still radiated a comfortable warmth from heat stored during the day, her gaze touched on the well. Shioni grimaced. She had to tell them soon. That bottle was so out of place… just as soon as she had some idea herself. Just as soon as she stopped being scared.
Shioni greeted the gate-guard softly. A shadow broke away from their number. She recognised Kifle, a slight young man who was an outstanding runner. He thought nothing of running to Takazze and back in a day.
“Off on our usual night-time stroll?” he said. “Aren’t you afraid of the hyenas?”
“I don’t bother them, so they don’t bother me.”
“Seems there are more every night,” said Kifle. “I don’t like it. The slaves cleared all the garbage, yet still those mangy animals come.”
If only he knew! The hyenas were looking forward to a feast of bones, the bones of everyone in the castle. And how did she know this? She trembled. The elephants or the python… something had changed inside of her. For good or for ill? She could feel it, and she was afraid.
Shioni said, “Hyenas and snakes? Nothing a warrior couldn’t handle.”
Kifle made a rude noise in his throat. “Just be careful out there.”
Once she was far enough from the warriors, Shioni turned off the road and struck into the bush a ways. She hunted a rock hyrax and downed it with her throwing-knife. After that, she had to push through tall, razor-edged grasses and scrubby bushes for several minutes before she came to a stand of trees. Here was a fallen baobab, where several days before she had discovered the den of a red fox vixen and her four kits.
“Fox?” she said softly.
Seconds later, the vixen’s snout pushed out of the hollow trunk as she tested the air. “Two-leg?”
Shioni froze. Not again!
Now a clear picture entered her mind: A two-legged creature, that was how the fox saw her. She was putting words to a picture. A picture no person should have a right to understand.
Half-hoping she was wrong, Shioni tried to send a picture of the hyrax. The fox seemed pleased, and after a moment she and her four kits emerged to feed. Shioni was torn between holding her breath and wanting to scream. She could hear them. Their feelings were lapping over her–the iron tang of meat in their jaws, their mock-snapping at each other, the mother’s wavering between enjoying the meal and her distrust at letting a two-leg near her kits. Shioni knew the fox would bite her without hesitation if she made a false move.
After the meal, the kits wanted to play. She scratched their tummies and roughed up their fur and they loved it, tumbling over her legs, yapping and snarling and mock-biting her fingers.
Well, if she was going to speak to animals… she should just start trying and learning. “I like your young ones!”
The vixen projected the satisfaction of a full belly.
“My pleasure,” she said, and then, struck by a wacky idea, tried: “Hyenas? What are the hyenas doing in the valley?”
The fox didn’t understand at first. It took Shioni several tries before she received something back, and then it was a confusing gush of images: humans throwing something down a waterfall; a great bonfire jetting sparks into the night s
ky; hyenas crawling on their bellies towards a dark figure with blazing red eyes seated on a throne decorated with writhing snakes; foxes fleeing from an unknown terror; talons swooping out of blackness…
Eyes like the python? Shioni hugged her knees as a nasty chill speared into her belly. And witchcraft? What in all Sheba could be hidden in that bottle, guarded by the snake?
One thing was for certain. She was not going back down the well to find out!
Chapter 9: Buildings and Births
Shioni raced back from the General’s chamber, her arms loaded with scrolls and maps and building plans. She scampered down the path to the outer defensive wall, which was reluctantly rising out of its foundations, over the rock causeway, and around the still-dry fosse ditch towards the northern side of the castle.
Getu was stumping along up there, leading a posse of masons, engineers and warriors on a merry chase. Her lungs were afire. They were burning like a nice, cheerful blaze had been lit inside and was funnelling its heat and smoke up her throat. But Shioni put her head down and ran faster, despite the fact that her ankle was still tender after her adventure with the python two days before. It was unwise to irritate the General.
And the building work had not stopped, despite preparations for tomorrow’s feast.
“About time!” Hakim Isoke greeted her panting arrival with her customary scowl. “Give me those elevations, girl! Now we will get to the bottom of this.”
Princess Annakiya deftly extracted a rolled-up plan from Shioni’s bundle and placed it in the Hakim’s outstretched palm. The old tutor had an encyclopaedic knowledge of architecture and war craft, and so was often consulted by the General and his building crew. She also had the personality of a thorn bush and the arrogance to tell anyone who would listen how clever she was, Shioni thought sourly. As she watched the Hakim glowering at the scroll, as if by sheer dint of malevolence she could scare it into giving up its secrets, an unaccustomed pair of fingers gripped her jaw and tilted her face up to the light.
