Imaro: Book I

by Charles R. Saunders

  Suddenly, he halted. At a point near a particularly thick growth of foliage, the path of light separated into four branches, each of them trailing away in a different direction.

  Eyes narrowed in thought, Imaro considered Isikukumadevu’s latest ploy. Was one of the paths genuine, and the others illusions? Would all four eventually lead to the demon, each in its own capricious and devious way? Or was Isikukumadevu now … behind him?

  A faint rustle in the brush had suddenly reached Imaro’s ears. He whirled, sword at the ready. Mwesu’s light flashed along the sharp, steel blade. Muscles tensed rock-hard beneath the Ilyassai’s dark skin as he stood in a half-crouch, poised to strike. But he saw nothing – no eldritch shape shambling out of the darkness; no treacherous spearpoint about to be thrust from behind.

  Yet he had heard something.

  He was certain of it.

  Imaro turned again to face the four-fold fork in the path – and nearly dropped his sword in astonishment at what he saw.

  Each branch of the path now had an occupant. None of the four, Imaro knew, could be Isikukumadevu. For he recognized each of them, and he knew each was dead, slain by his own hand. But if they were dead, why were they moving toward him now, weapons raised and grim purpose glittering in their eyes?

  Rumanzila was there. The moon’s light picked out every detail of the garish ornamentation on the clothing of the former bandit chieftain as he moved toward Imaro, sword sliding soundlessly out of its scabbard...

  Mbuto was there. The punisher’s mountainous bulk absorbed the moonlight rather than reflecting it. As he lashed his thick whip through the air, Mbuto’s dull eyes focused on Imaro...

  Chitendu was there. Towering higher than both Rumanzila and Mbuto, the oibonok’s body was swathed in a voluminous, iridescent cloak. Chitendu’s head seemed disproportionately small; his body, oddly asymmetrical. The oibonok, who had been exiled from the Ilyassai, began to open his cloak…

  N’tu-mwaa, n’tu-mchawi of the Turkhana, was there. He was naked. The pale splotches on his mahogany-colored skin glowed like phosphorescent fungus in Mwesu’s light. His head was an unholy amalgam of the face of Ngatun the lion and the horns of an Ilyassai ngombe. Two blood-dripping beast hearts hung from an intestine looped around the Turkhana’s neck. In his upraised hand, N’tu-mwaa held a curved blade; a blade splotched with blood…

  In silent, deadly unison, the specters from Imaro’s past attacked.

  Rumanzila’s sword clove the night air in a deadly crescent, aimed at the head of Imaro.

  Mbuto’s whip snaked toward Imaro’s face, its tip snapping in a way that would blind or maim what it struck.

  Chitendu’s cloak gaped wide, exposing a brightly glowing mass of wriggling, maggot-like tendrils. The tendrils flared, and a bolt of emerald demon-fire lanced toward Imaro’s body.

  N’tu-mwaa hurled his dagger of sacrifice straight at Imaro’s heart.

  The deadly, simultaneous attack hit – nothing. Only a moment before, Imaro had stood in stunned disbelief, shaken by the sheer impossibility of what he was seeing. Yet the moment his former foes launched their onslaught, he had flung himself to the ground, rolled, and sprang to his feet behind the shelter of an ironwood tree.

  Chitendu’s burst of demon-fire had torn loose a huge chunk of the bole of the tree. The concussion of its impact rang in Imaro’s ears. He could see N’tu-mwaa’s dagger buried deep in the scorched, smoking wood.

  Crouching warily behind the tree, Imaro saw that his attackers remained in their places at the branches of the path. Chitendu’s tentacles continued to glow. Mbuto’s whip lashed back and forth like the tail of a great cat. Rumanzila’s sword rested lightly in his hand. Somehow, N’tu-mwaa had acquired another dagger, exactly like the one he had hurled at Imaro.

  The irony of Isikukumadevu’s choice of weapons to use against him was not lost on the Ilyassai. But he had killed each of these nemeses once before. Now, he would lure them deeper into the woods and kill them as many times as he had to, until they rose no more.

  Then a memory came to him – vivid, but only in his mind, not before his eyes. He was back in the manyattas of the Ilyassai, on the day of his ill-fated olmaiyo. He was listening in disbelief to the lies that spewed from the mouths of Masadu, Kanoko and the other warriors who were branding him ilmonek. To the warriors, the lies had been truth. Muburi, the oibonok, the tool of Chitendu, had used mchawi to cause the warriors to see what he wanted them to see – what they themselves secretly wanted to see. But what they thought they had seen was not real; it was not true.

  “Not real,” Imaro whispered between clenched teeth. “Not real…”

  Suddenly, the outlines of his four foes blurred, then broke apart like a reflection on the surface of water into which a stone had been cast. Then they snapped back into clear focus, each appearing as he had the moment of death.

  Rumanzila collapsed under the bulk of Mbuto, whose body had been impaled by the bandit chieftain’s sword. Both men sprawled on the ground. Their eyes stared directly into Imaro’s: vengeful, hating.

  Chitendu, writhing like a dying serpent, his skull crushed, his alien intestines spilled and seared by his own demon-fire, raised his head in a final, supreme effort. His eyes daggered into Imaro’s: vengeful, hating.

  N’tu-mwaa, his beast-face twisted in agony, his sacrificial blade buried in his heart, lay unmoving on the ground. Yellow lion-eyes burned into Imaro’s: vengeful, hating.

  Then the figures began to blur. Stepping from behind the tree, Imaro watched them slowly disappear. His eyes were vengeful, hating.

  When the apparitions were finally gone, the path changed. Once again, it was a single strip of shining brilliance, leading directly into a thick tangle of foliage. The path seemed to beckon and mock Imaro at the same time.

  Imaro looked at the ironwood tree. N’tu-mwaa’s dagger no longer jutted from its wood. But there was still a gaping, smoking wound in the tree’s trunk. Gingerly, Imaro touched the part of the tree that had been seared by the demon-fire. Heat flared on his fingertips. He quickly drew his hand back and glared at it angrily, as though it had betrayed him somehow. If the phantoms from his past had not been real, what, then, had so severely damaged the tree?

  The implications of that conundrum caused Imaro’s skin to crawl – but only for a moment – before he again followed Isikukumadevu’s path of light. As he slashed and shoved his way through bushes and vines, he did not waste any thoughts speculating on what he would find at the end of the silver trail, or on who might be lurking treacherously behind him.

  Whatever awaited him there, he vowed, would die.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  After a seeming eternity of chopping through undergrowth that may or may not have been real, Imaro finally broke through to a small, circular glade that looked as though it had been scooped like a cup into the summit of the highest hill in the range. At the center of the glade lay a pool of a viscid liquid that was not water. Gnarled, stunted trees that grew in unnatural, eye-wrenching loops and whorls lined the margins of the pool. The area closest to Imaro, however, was barren of foliage. A narrow stretch of foul-smelling muck rimmed the shore.

  The shining trail laid by Isikukumadevu led directly into the pool. Imaro tightened his grip on his sword-hilt and planted his feet in a fighting stance. For he had decided that he would not follow the silver path any longer.

  He would not be so foolish as to meet Isikukumadevu in her own element. If the fetid pool was, indeed, the demon’s lair, she would have to emerge from it to meet the Ilyassai. He steeled himself against a renewed onslaught of Isikukumadevu’s song, even as he remembered the first time he had heard it. When it came, his only chance would be to leap once and slash, and even that chance would only come if the demon-creature revealed herself, even if only for a moment…

  A sound did, indeed, burst upon Imaro’s ears. But Imaro did not go down with his hands clapped against his ears, as he had in the encampment. For the sound was not Isikukumadevu’s
song. Instead, it was one Imaro knew well. He had shouted it himself countless times in the past, in battles against the other tribes of the Tamburure. It was the war-cry of the Ilyassai.

  The cry did not come from the direction of the pool. Alerted by a rustle of limbs from the distorted trees that grew nearby, Imaro turned – and he saw a huge, lithe figure appear as if by magic from the foliage. In graceful, catlike bounds, the shape, still partially obscured by darkness, approached Imaro. Then it sprang fully into the glare of Mwesu’s light.

  Imaro prepared himself for an imminent attack. Then he uttered a half-strangled gasp of disbelief.

  For the newest foe from the warrior’s past that Isikukumadevu had sent him was – himself!

  A single, incredulous glance told Imaro this was no mirror-image he faced, nor was it a trick of his senses. It was the Imaro who had embarked so hopefully on his olmaiyo. His plaited hair was plastered with red ocher; his body was daubed with crimson clay; his simi gleamed in his massive hand.

  It was the Imaro who had just slain Ngatun the lion, and was about to cut off the great cat’s head and display it to the warriors of his clan. Seeing himself as he was then, Imaro became one with the warrior who had just won the right to full manhood among a people who despised him. The hot scent of Ngatun’s blood filled his nostrils; both Imaros cried out in joy and vindication …

  Yet even in the Imaros’ moment of triumph, the other Ilyassai were encircling them, their faces grim-set, their eyes hard. The Imaros knew then that betrayal was at hand. Roaring like the lion they had just slain, the Imaros swung their simi in a vicious arc …

  A primal urge to survive jolted the warrior from his double-consciousness. Imaro raised the blade of his sword just in time to parry the death-slash from his earlier self. Sword and simi clanged together with an impact that numbed Imaro’s arm, and nearly caused him to drop his weapon.

  The Imaro from the past struck again. Imaro leaped backward. Only by a hairsbreadth did he avoid evisceration. The other Imaro pressed his attack, the blade of his simi flickering like an iron wand.

  Bewildered, Imaro fell back, fighting defensively. The metallic ring of Ilyassai iron clashing with haramia steel echoed in his ears. The other Imaro moved quickly – so quickly that Imaro could hardly follow the pattern of the simi’s blade as it repeatedly darted toward him, eager to taste his blood. His own movements seemed sluggish in comparison.

  “Not real,” Imaro muttered. “Not real…”

  But how could he believe that, when his former self was gradually backing him into the muck that bordered Isikukumadevu’s pool? The other Imaro’s red-daubed face snarled, and battle-lust blazed in his dark, narrowed eyes. His movements were graceful, like a lethal dance.

  In contrast, Imaro’s efforts were lethargic, almost desultory. It was as though he had become spellbound by the sight of his own mighty arm rising and falling, beating out a cadence of death against his own faltering blade. Only a nearly unconscious evocation of his fighting skills had prevented him from going down at the beginning of the other Imaro’s attack. Even so, he felt the sting of half-a-dozen wounds, while the other Imaro remained unscathed.

  Suddenly, Imaro’s feet came into contact with the fluid of the pool. The viscid liquid sucked at his heels like quicksand. For a vital split-second, Imaro’s attention wavered, and his sword did not move. In that moment, the other Imaro’s simi flashed and twisted, and slammed just above Imaro’s hilt. The impact tore Imaro’s blade from his hand, and it whirled into the muck. And the iron of the simi shattered against the steel of the sword, leaving the Imaro of the past holding only a hilt spiked with slivers of jagged metal.

  The other Imaro swung the hilt in a sweeping blow aimed at the head of Imaro. Imaro ducked under the lunging swing, and the hilt flew by without touching him. Contemptuously, as he had done on many occasions, Imaro tossed the useless hilt aside – then, in almost the same motion, he smashed a heavy fist against Imaro’s jaw. Caught unaware, as he had caught so many others, Imaro’s head snapped sideways, and he pitched backward into the pool.

  Imaro struggled to raise his head above the foul, choking liquid. But before he could reach the surface, an iron-hard hand clamped onto the top of his head and shoved him deeper into the pool. Another hand closed crushingly around his wrist, and began to force his arm behind his back. Feet slipping in the ooze at the bottom of the pool, Imaro strained his gigantic thews to their utmost. But the other Imaro seemed immovable as a mountain, and Imaro could not budge his adversary. Imaro’s head remained beneath the surface of the pool, and his arm felt as though it was about to be wrenched out of its socket.

  Not since his childhood had Imaro been rendered so helpless by any foe. Slowly, inexorably, he was drowning, dying in a futile struggle against his own strength, the strength that set him apart from all others – except himself.

  Why? Imaro cried out in his mind as air emptied from his lungs. Why could he do nothing to fend off another self who was younger, less-experienced and ever-so-slightly less strong than he?

  The answer came to him with all the intensity of the pains stitching through his oxygen-starved lungs: hate!

  It was a core of hatred that fuelled his strength, expanding it to levels beyond the limits of other men. Hate had sustained him through the bleak years of mafundishu-ya-muran, when the hands of all the other Ilyassai of the Kitoko clan were raised against the son-of-no-father. And now… now, he had to redirect his hatred, to aim it against his earlier self, the fool who had actually believed he could be one with his mother’s people, and earn the approval of those who hated him in turn – those whose approval finally came too late to matter.

  Could he channel his hatred against himself? Yes. For he had done it before.

  As his strained lungs seemed about to explode, Imaro gathered his legs beneath him, found purchase on the slippery bottom of the pool, and shoved upward. All the strength remaining in Imaro’s thews powered that single, mighty surge. He burst through the pool’s surface in a shower of viscid spray, and even as he blinked the loathsome liquid from his eyes, he reached out to grapple with his foe – himself.

  He felt nothing – the other Imaro’s crushing grasp was gone. When his vision cleared, he saw nothing.

  Shaking off the liquid of the pool and gratefully gulping air back into his lungs, Imaro awaited the reappearance of his other self. He heard a sound behind him, and he whirled, careful to maintain his footing. Ripples began to spread from a spot not far from where Imaro stood.

  Then Isikukumadevu rose from the pool, making almost no sound despite the large amount of liquid the demon displaced.

  As Ochinga had said, Isikukumadevu was a female creature. But she was far from human – almost as far from it as the oibonok Chitendu had become at the time of his demise.

  Isikukumadevu was an enormous, squatting lump with a swollen, melon-like head that bore jaws similar to those of a hippopotamus. Pale, fishlike eyes glared chillingly beneath a tangled mane of mossy filaments that only slightly resembled hair. Mottled, grayish skin covered her naked, bloated body. Multiple breasts that were huge sacs of flesh spilled slackly over an abdomen that was grossly distended. Huge arms tapered into incongruously delicate hands that clenched in anticipation as Isikukumadevu scrutinized her latest prey.

  Then Isikukumadevu spoke.

  The syllables that slid from her mouth pricked at Imaro’s mind like a handful of nettles pulled across naked skin. Isikukumadevu spoke in the same repellant, yet at the same time seductive, whisper that had drawn Imaro away from the encampment of the haramia.

  “Imaro,” Isikukumadevu said, her voice caressing the warrior’s name. “The chants that praised your name, and disturbed my slumber, spoke the truth. Not since the conflict between the Cloud Striders and the Mashataan have I encountered a human being such as you. The Cloud Striders made your kind, even as the Mashataan made mine. Are you not aware of that, warrior?”

  Imaro did not reply to the demon, even though he had qu
estions of his own.

  Who are the Cloud Striders?

  What do you mean, they ‘made’ me?

  But the creature’s answers, he suspected, would be of no more use to him than were Chitendu’s.

  “For the sake of your kind, Imaro, the Cloud Striders imprisoned me in this pool, where humans rarely venture,” Isikukumadevu continued. “But when your kind comes close enough, I sing to the one who most deserves my… love. I will love you, Imaro, better than any woman of your kind could. In my love, you will die as all your kind should have done, so long ago.”

  Imaro still betrayed no reaction. Isikukumadevu grinned then, her mouth stretching wide, showing rows of peg-like, grinding teeth.

  “Love me, Imaro,” the demon crooned. “Now!”

  With preternatural speed, Isikukumadevu hurled her bloated mass toward Imaro. Her maw, fully open, hung above the head of the Ilyassai. A single snap of her jaws would have crushed Imaro into a crimson pulp – if he had been standing still as they closed.

  The demon had read Imaro’s thoughts well – but not well enough. She had plucked images from his mind, given them a semblance of life, and directed them against the warrior. She had studied him closely. But she did not know him.

  Isikukumadevu was the focus of Imaro’s hate now, because her manipulations of his mind had undone all the forgetting he had forced upon himself since he had left the Ilyassai. With pantherish speed, Imaro evaded Isikukumadevu’s jaws a moment before they snapped shut. Then he jammed his forearm beneath the creature’s lower jaw. Bracing his left hand beneath his forearm, Imaro began to lever Isikukumadevu’s head upward.

  The demon croaked in pain – the first such sound she had uttered in many hundreds of rains. Wrapping her massive arms around Imaro’s back, Isikukumadevu pressed him against the pendulous folds of her body. It was as though she intended to absorb him into the substance of her gray flesh.

  His face a mask of fury, Imaro shoved his forearm harder against the point where Isikukumadevu’s underjaw met her throat. Like a bar of black iron, Imaro’s arm sank deep into the demon’s flabby flesh. Isikukumadevu’s head tilted further upward. Strength undiminished by his struggle against the illusion of his former self, the Ilyassai redoubled his efforts to break the neck of his foe.