In the center of the cavern the sacred fire had burned. It had burned there, so it was said, ever since Sango Lobango had lifted itself from the bottom of the sea.
THE animals would stand or lie about in the spaces of the cavern and observe this mystery of Fire. They would listen to the stories of the Mu, as told by Moa, a name which meant Father-of-Them-all; or Wami, the wife of Moa, she who had been the foster mother of Kwa and who shared with Moa the headship of the Furry Tribe.
The great cave had been, perhaps, the oldest and greatest cathedral in the world. With the advent of Anansi, the Fire Cave had become a prison.
The coming of Anansi had been so swift and subtle that the curse was upon the Mu before they were aware of it. For Anansi had come in the shape of a spider. Already he'd been aware, no doubt, that the Mu were non-fighters, that they never killed. And had he tried to come upon them as a man, they would have been forewarned by their friends of the jungle tribes—the elephants and buffalo, particularly—who were the closest allies of the Mu.
Anansi had spread his poison. He'd garnered the young of the Mu as a miser would have garnered so many golden ingots.
These children were beautiful.
Where in the world could beauty be found equal to the beauty of these children of the Mu? Nowhere! Not anywhere, at any rate, that Anansi had ever heard of.
Lithe bodies, as capable of aerial movement as butterflies; clad in a silken fur that shone like gold in the sun; yet each with a twist of flowering vine about the waist—like a diggo—like a loin-cloth, the cloth, the clothing of men.
The Mu, the Furry Tribe, the Not Yet Men, themselves keepers of some of the oldest magic in the world, as proven by the beauty of their children.
Anansi's power had grown; it had fattened as a spider may fatten. He had changed the great temple of the Mu, the Fire Cave, into a prison, into one great spider-trap. And here the Mu had been kept in a gray trance that was neither life nor death.
It was Aya who, thus far, had been the savior of her people.
AYA was Kwa's sister in a way. She had been reared as such. She had been born, when Kwa was born; and Wami, Aya's mother, had reared them both. Side by aide they'd fed at Wami's breasts. Side by side they'd roamed the Valley of the Mu—riding the buffalo, climbing with the monkeys, swimming in the pools under high cascades.
Until, at last, Aya had become less like her parents than she was like this strange brother of hers—
Aya crept through the shadows of the Fire Cave to where Moa and Wami sat. She stirred them from their trance.
"I tell you," she said, "that he comes!"
"The gray fog!" moaned Moa, the old chief, her father.
"Kwa comes!" the girl persisted.
Wami, her mother, Kwa's foster mother, raised her head.
Through the still air of the cave there came a whirling current, still very faint, yet which had about it something of the qualities of both sound and light, of music and color.
Wami threw back her face and clasped her hands against her breast.
"I knew it!" she said. "I knew it! There's a greater magic—"
The lion-chief had said it—there was no one who could run, as he could run, when the distance wasn't too great. There may have been something else that made the lion want to carry Kwa on that last wild charge of his across the Valley of the Mu.
The Lions, like the Hyksos, the Shepherd Kings, had carried on some tradition of the Law. They were the Keepers of the Law. And this was a fighting business in a fighting world.
As Kwa dropped down from that business of his of tearing away the mourning-crepe from the gate to the valley, the lions were there.
"Brother," said the lion-chief, "I'm the steed you'll want at present!"
Queer sights had been seen in the Valley of the Mu, great processionals of the Jungle Peoples in time of truce, children of the Ape People—and flowers in their hair—riding the wild antelope, hustling the buffalo children for their turn at the milk. But no queerer sight—it would be a safe bet—than that charge now of the lion cavalry across the broad meadows of the valley; and all the lions riderless, except that one who kept the lead.
A maned and undulant living arrow, with a living golden image on his back.
The animal army swept across the plain—an invasion of new life into what had almost become a valley of death.
Anansi, hidden along a cliff, watched that deluge of invaders. He wasn't afraid. He'd nourished his strength on Utangani medicine. His fetish was stronger than ever.
For one more Utangani, he decided, this would be—Judgment Day!
CHAPTER XV
ARMAGEDDON
KWA had sprung from the back of the lion and run up a well-remembered path. It was a path leading to the Fire Cave of the Mu. He saw the entrance to the Fire Cave and of other caves where he'd waived and played as a child—shrouded now, as the Elephant Gate had been shrouded, with thick gray webs.
He slit the nearest web with strokes of his knife. The rags of it he tore away with his hands.
"Wami!" he called. "Moa!"
A faint answer reached him. It would have been inaudible—it would have been imperceptible—to ordinary perceptions. But his foster-parents were answering him.
Then Kwa heard a louder call, and there was his foster-sister, Aya. She seemed all eyes as she stumbled toward him from the darkness of the Fire Cave. In a moment, he had put his arms about her. He stroked her head and her face. She put her own hands to his face with a caressing movement. There was a quick interchange between them in that all but inaudible speech of the Mu.
The speech was as natural to Kwa as English would have been. For this moment it was as if he had never been away from the valley. To him there was nothing strange about Aya, except that she was more fragile than he could ever have imagined her, she who had always been so strong.
ANYONE would have found her beautiful—a human animal of the Dawn Age, member of that race which even the animals called the Not Yet Men. Lightly furred, after the manner of some of the Apes; yet human; with an altogether human look—in the eyes, especially; and yet also with that hint of hidden understanding in her eyes—of a knowledge not possessed by man—which all animals have.
"I have come to save you," Kwa said. "Go spread the news."
His heart was in a riot of revolt and pity.
"Anansi!" she said. "His magic is too strong!"
"I'm Kwa!"
"Anansi has killed others of your race. That is the only reason that we are still alive."
"I'll kill Anansi—as I killed—as you and I killed together—that other Big Spider."
IT was a reference to Kwa's first great battle here in the Valley of the Mu, when he'd killed Mok, the renegade gorilla.
A whirl of warning cries came from a thousand directions—even from the air, where birds were hovering and circling, but mostly from the valley floor.
Aya clung to Kwa a little, but he pushed her gently away. He was telling her not to be afraid, that he was Kwa. He was the fighting animal again. He was the creature of the fighting race. Not in all the long and varied evolution of the tribe inhabiting the world— evolution through a million variations toward a million goals—had there ever been evolved a fighting creature equal to the white man.
Aya knew this. There wasn't a living thing in the Valley of the Mu this day who didn't know it.
With the exception, perhaps, of that black magician, Anansi himself.
Kwa saw that grotesque figure headed in his direction as he started Aya safely back, then ran toward Anansi along a wide ledge. As Kwa did so, he shrilled a call to his animal friends also to stand away. This was to be his fight.
His call had been one of defiance to Anansi also. It was a defiance he repeated. He shouted it aloud:
"I am Kwa! I will kill Anansi!"
But the spectacle of Anansi was like that of some creature out of a nightmare. He was like something dropped from another world.
He was the spectacle of a spid
er, huge—grotesque and hairy. He was larger than a man. His size seemed to vary, like the dark shadow of a man cast against a wall by a shaking candle—with all of a shadow's quick and eccentric movement.
THE uncanny uncertainty of size and movement about him was augmented by his surface appearance of black and quivering bristles, also by his gait—a scrambling progress, buoyant and awkward.
Anansi had come out of a deep cleft in the cliffside further along the valley wall where all the animals could see him—sending a shiver out over the massing herds and groups like a premonition of storm. Just when he was in full view he had paused there—all spider and yet elephantine, spectral; in a sort of seated position, the front part of him reared, two of his big front arms or legs, black and thorny, thrown up in an attitude of Satanic blessing—or anathema.
The watchers in the valley milled and were ready to stampede. Yet their terror also held him. What would have passed for hands or feet on the specter's arms were like clusters of curved black daggers. At sight of them, even the lions were slinking about—bodies to the earth—their topaz eyes fixed in awe, their own claws withdrawn, their tread but a velvet that wouldn't have scared a lamb.
After that, and the spider-monster had seemingly fastened its attention on Kwa and Kwa alone.
Kwa, headed toward the thing, saw its face. It was an impression etched in gray and black. The only features of it were eyes and mouth—both of a demon out of hell.
To Kwa there came up a sort of voiceless cry from the valley floor. It was a mixed cry—of warning, encouragement, despair.
Without turning to look, Kwa knew that terror was distilling again in the uncounted hearts down there. A few would be brave, but most would fear. Would he be able to drive away this fear? Not unless he himself was fearless.
Watchful, knife ready, his feet well planted—for there could be no telling when Anansi might begin his rush—Kwa stooped and with his left hand found a sizable splinter of rock. He had always been able to use his left hand and arm as deftly as his right. He flung his rock with a whirling speed that made it sing.
The effect was other than he expected. He hadn't missed. He was sure of that. In a general way he had aimed at the ferocious eyes, the gaping blackness of the mouth. These he had missed; for, quicker than the flying rock, there had been a twitching aside of the target. But the rock had struck—it had as if been swallowed into the black thicket of that spiny wallow of legs and claws—yet there'd been no quiver of recoil, no show of pain.
Almost on the same instant, there was something else to think about.
FROM somewhere above him, up the broken and shelved face of the cliff, other spider-shapes had appeared. They may have been smaller than the monster just ahead of him. At their appearance there had come a fresh gust of alarm from the straining, quivering and sometimes milling jungle people. In the midst of this—in one of the breathless seconds with which all this was being timed—Kwa felt the sting of fresh poison in arms and side.
So that was it! Those were spider men! Not spiders but men—the same as those priests of Anansi's he'd fought back there in the elephant park!
He stooped for another rock. Anansi, the spectral, had shot forward a space at that ambling, airy gait of his, then paused again—the spider god—all spider!
CHAPTER XVI
OLD FIRES
KWA sent his second rock humming at Anansi's head. It checked the rush of the spider chief. There was satisfaction in that. Something of the haunt that was forming in Kwa's own mind—the feeling that he was fighting against something supernatural—left him. In an instant it was as if something supernatural had been infused into his own heart and brain.
It may have been a thought prompted by something else that happened just then. For a moment Anansi was beset by another enemy. There was a rush of many black wings and a flock of ravens had spun around Anansi's head. At the same time they were shrilling out in their tribal speech—cries so filled with human meaning that almost anyone could have understood them. They were telling Kwa to run—to save himself while they created this diversion.
Kwa uttered a cry of his own, warning them away.
Anansi, quick as any spider might strike, thrust out a black arm and fanged one of the birds with his terrible hooked fingers. The bird came down a huddle of black feathers.
Kwa knew that his own hope of victory lay only in keeping out of Anansi's reach. He'd thrown two more rocks in that brief interview— one at Anansi, one at the lurking, scampering enemy above him on the higher ledge.
From where he stood, he saw there would be no chance of disposing of the spider men before Anansi would attack. Instinct was telling him not to allow his attention to be distracted from Anansi for an instant.
Yet the dilemma was there. He was caught between two fires. For the moment he'd found the partial shelter of a boulder.
Kwa foresaw what his end would be unless he countered that attack from above. He'd had experience with the spider poison. There was a memory of the weblike paralysis he'd known at daybreak—a memory that was in his skin, rather than in his brain. A premonition—a warning! He saw himself paralyzed, down, and that crawling, jumping horror of the spider-god already smothering him—fetid with the living-death it fed on, the black mouth already at his throat.
He sent the next rock also singing at the enemy above, then once again seized another to meet Anansi's rush. Anansi had made another gliding, skating spring but had stopped again. Kwa knew, however, that the final clash was coming. He was alone, outflanked, outnumbered, outarmed, with nothing much but spirit and one strong knife to see him through.
NO, there were other allies. So had the lions remembered that battle in the morning mists of the elephant park it seemed. Leo, the lion chief, had evidently remembered it at any rate. And these sunlit cliffs were a natural fighting-place for the lion people. This was no dank and gloomy forest.
There'd been a yellow streaking charge from the valley floor. A score of lions perhaps—young males and old—who followed their leader. They flattened themselves to the rocky, precipitous trail. They became a narrow, winding, quick and tireless river of death that ran uphill. For, whatever Anansi was—god or devil—those that followed him, served him, were men—animals. So Kwa had already revealed to the lions and so the lions had already proven for themselves.
Master-killers now, the lions.
Above the ridge which had become the fated battleground for Kwa and Anansi, there was the explosion of the slaughter-sounds as the lions struck death about them. Down to the ledge where Kwa stood, one black and broken body fell, then another—like human ravens. Kwa stepped around them to the clear.
As Kwa did so, there came to him a flash of revelation.
It may have been due to some sudden failure of Anansi's magic. For all magic is a subtle thing. In a moment it escapes, it turns against the user of it. There must have come a shock to Anansi's assurance when he knew that the lions were attacking and killing his men. He may have seen in those falling bodies a portent of his own defeat.
IN any case—master hypnotist or whatever he was—suddenly his power had slipped.
Suddenly, Kwa had seen that the shadow cast by the huge specter of a spider was nothing but the shadow of a man. Even as Kwa rushed, he could see the spider-haunt as if dissolved. Before him there was nothing but a black wizard such as might have dominated any native village—wicked, powerful, skilled in dangerous knowledge, doubtless, but mortal.
Kwa struck, right and left, with knife and splinter of rock.
Anansi—the man—twisted, reeled, and, dead before he fell, lurched headlong down the cliff.
THIS moon had to die and another one be born before the real work of purification could be considered accomplished in the Valley of the Mu. But considerably before that time, the thing had been brought to pass in a purely material way. No carrion, that is, was left in the valley. The valley was again by way of becoming the Eden that it had almost always been since the beginning of the world—
an Eden hidden away in the heart of that great mountain mass known as Sango Lobango.
The valley lay almost under the equator, yet at such an elevation that the climate, the year round, was like that of a Northern June. Down from the snow-peaks that shut it in, pure streams came down in misty cascades. While here and there, from openings in the wall-like cliffs, other streams that were hot and medicinal pulsed like open veins from mountain's heart.
Of the people of the Mu whom Kwa had known, many were dead. But, toward death, Kwa himself had accepted the attitude of his friends of the jungle world—and of the Mu themselves: Death, after all, was a mere incident of living, something to be accepted, like the sinking of the sun; and no more to be feared than that, with another day assured.
But there were also children of the Furry Tribe whom Kwa had never seen and in whom he now delighted. They were like any other children— a little longer-armed, perhaps, and covered with a golden fleece that shone like floating yellow silk in the sun. These children were infinitely graceful. They chased the wild goats in play along the cliffs and often caught them. They swung far out over dizzy heights on ropes of vine and frolicked through the cold cascades.
It all reminded Kwa of the time when he was one of them—making him wish that he was one of them again.
Then, on the night of the new moon, the great Fire Cave once again became the cathedral of the Furry Tribe and all their animal friends— all who could find a place in the dim vastness of the hollow mountain—elephants, buffalo, lions, the great apes and all their lesser kindred, birds.
Such a gathering as only Noah might have seen—outside the Valley of the Mu.
The sacred fire burned clear again in the center of the cave.
Adventures of Kwa, Man of the Jungle (Two jungle adventure classics in one volume!) Page 6
