Abengoni

by Charles R. Saunders

  Even though many of the Matile whose homes had been looted by the tsotsis while the Uloans were burning the city harbored bitterness in their hearts, no one visited the Maim to wreak vengeance on their own account. Although the Almovaads had assured the honest people of Khambawe that the Shadows posed no danger to them, only to the tsotsis, they were disinclined to put that pledge to the test. Besides, the Almovaads had convinced the people that the Muvuli were more than adequate surrogates for ensuring the destruction of the tsotsis. The shadows were picking the tsotsis off like lice from a scalp, one at a time ...

  Had the voice in his mind not assured him of his safety, Sehaye would never have gone to the Maim even during the day, let alone at night. Yet he trusted that voice as implicitly as the Matile trusted the Almovaads. And the voice told him neither the shadows nor the tsotsis would harm him.

  This was not Sehaye’s first venture into the Maim. He had come once before, and had seen what no one other than the tsotsis themselves had witnessed.

  From whispered conversations he had engaged in with people who lived on the fringes of the Maim, Sehaye had learned that one set of tsotsis continued to roam the district’s streets at night, despite the constant danger of an encounter with the Muvuli. The members of that set were searching for something more valuable to them than loot – or their lives. The informants had told Sehaye the name of the set, and of its much-feared Jass.

  Armed with that knowledge, and with the reassurances of the voice within him that he would not be harmed by the Muvuli, Sehaye had ventured into the Maim. Before Retribution Time, he’d had no reason to go there. The time he had spent in Khambawe had been devoted to selling the fish he caught and seeking information to pass on to Jass Imbiah. Otherwise, he had avoided the blankskins, primarily because the sight of them reminded him of his own want of spider-scars.

  Even so, his lack of familiarity with the convoluted streets of the Maim had not mattered. The voice inside him, the voice that had become his friend, but also his insistent taskmaster, guided him unerringly. He had seen no shadow other than his own, and the dogs, hyenas and rats had avoided him as though he were part of the silver glare that turned night into a disconcerting semblance of day.

  Hidden in an alley that contained his shadow and no others, Sehaye had waited until he heard rapid, scuttering footsteps coming down the street. Then the footsteps paused. A moment later, a tsotsi appeared in the opening of the alley. Fear was written plainly on the youth’s face as he peered into the darkness of the alley. The tsotsi carried a tirss in his hand. He held the weapon in front of him as though it could somehow detect danger he could not see.

  The tsotsi could not see Sehaye ... but Sehaye could see the second shadow that suddenly appeared on the street behind the tsotsi. He saw the Muvuli raise its tirss and plunge it into the back of the tsotsi’s shadow. He heard the tsotsi cry out in fear and agony at the impact he felt on his own flesh, even though it was only his shadow that was being attacked. And he stared wide-eyed as both shadows gradually disappeared even as the tsotsi bled to death practically at his feet.

  Striving to suppress his fear and giving himself over completely to the guidance of the voice within him, Sehaye had stepped over the body of the tsotsi as he emerged from the mouth of the alley. He cast a glance at the street-stones, then at the wall on the opposite side of the street, and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of only one shadow – his own.

  Now, he was back in the Maim ... at a different location this time, and for a different reason. The voice had told him the purpose of the previous visit had been to prepare him for what he would see when a shadow struck. Then, the life of a luckless tsotsi had meant nothing to either Sehaye or the voice. On this night, however, a tsotsi’s life would mean everything ...

  Sehaye waited in the darkness of another alley. The Almovaads’ night-sun shone pitilessly, creating shadows that were unavoidable. And before long, another tsotsi crept into view, keeping to the darkness as much as he could, but unable to prevent his shadow from following him.

  His efforts to avoid the inevitable were unsuccessful. As the tsotsi drew closer to the alley in which Sehaye was hiding, a second shadow appeared behind him ... a shadow with a tirss in its hand ... a tirss it was raising for a slash into the substance of the other shadow that shared the space on the wall.

  This time, Sehaye was more than merely an observer. This time, he acted. Even as the Muvuli’s weapon began to descend, Sehaye sprinted from the alley, seized the tsotsi, and dragged him back into the safety of the darkness. In the moment before he reached the alley, Sehaye was touched by an icy coldness unlike anything ever experienced by any Matile or Uloan, or anyone else in Abengoni. He shuddered even as the cursing tsotsi struggled to get away from him.

  When an unseen point of the tsotsi’s tirss pricked his skin, Sehaye uttered curses of his own. Then he twisted the tsotsi’s arm behind his back and turned him so that he could see outside the alley.

  “Look!” Sehaye commanded, forcing the tsotsi’s head in the direction of the street.

  The tsotsi obeyed ... and saw a shadow where no one stood to cast it. Tirss still raised, the Muvuli looked left and right, looking for its prey. The apparition was still searching as it faded from sight.

  While he watched the Muvuli disappear, the tsotsi’s body went slack in Sehaye’s arms. Now, his lean muscles tensed. Sehaye tightened his grasp.

  “Who you is?” the tsotsi hissed. “What you want?”

  Sehaye knew better than to expect gratitude, or even courtesy, from a tsotsi. Instead of replying directly, the Uloan asked a question of his own.

  “Are you Ashaki?”

  The tsotsi started, then stared hard at what little he could see of Sehaye in the alley’s gloom.

  “Why you ask that?” the tsotsi demanded.

  “I have something Jass Mofo wants.”

  “What that be?”

  Sehaye leaned forward and whispered a name in the tsotsi’s ear. This time, the tsotsi grinned.

  “Mofo want that, for true. You coming with me. Heard?”

  “Heard,” Sehaye said.

  4

  The Muvuli did not unnerve Sehaye nearly as much as did Jass Mofo. And he had to struggle twice as hard to contain his fear as he had in the alley in the Maim, when a mere brush from the shadow’s weapon had thrust a cold blade into his soul. The eyes of the Ashaki set’s leader were even colder than the Muvuli’s touch. Yet there was something else in those dark, empty chasms ... something that burned fiercely, yet emitted no warmth ... something that was as distant from sanity as the Moon Stars were from the world.

  Sehaye was in the dilapidated aderash that was still the headquarters of the Ashaki set. A few candles provided illumination; these days, any other light after sunset was the tsotsis’ worst enemy. The tsotsis who surrounded their Jass seemed more wraithlike than real: their bodies were thin to the point of emaciation, and their eyes, showing the influence of the copious amounts of khat they chewed, flickered like the candles that lit the huge, nearly empty hall from which they and Mofo had once ruled the night.

  Now, the night ruled them.

  The tsotsi who had led Sehaye to the aderash had left him in the custody of several others while he went to inform Jass Mofo of his arrival. Sehaye knew the repetition of the name he had whispered would bring Mofo to him immediately. He was not wrong. He waited only a short time before the tsotsi reappeared, with Mofo at his side. During the interval, the other tsotsis had eyed him as though he were fresh meat, and they were starving. Sehaye ignored their attention. He knew he was safe among them.

  Or so the voice told him ...

  But when Sehaye first laid eyes on Mofo, that assurance fled: voice or no voice. Jass Mofo reminded him of the sharks that had tried to tear the catches from his nets during his time as a fisherman. The tsotsi’s previous finery was long since gone. The braids of his hair had become as tangled as a bramble bush, and his skin stretched tautly across the bones of his lean fram
e. Mofo looked as though he were cornered, and therefore even more dangerous than usual. The tsotsi eyed the Uloan for a long time before he spoke.

  “You save Kutu from the shadow,” Mofo said, nodding toward the tsotsi at his side. “You give Kutu a name. That name bring you here alive. You want to stay alive, you say what you want here. Heard?”

  “This is not about what I want, Jass Mofo,” Sehaye said. “It’s about what you want. Word is, you want two things. I have one of them. The name tells you which one it is.”

  “The Fidi-tsotsi,” Mofo said.

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Where he be?”

  “In a safe place.”

  “How I know you got him?”

  “Maybe this will convince you.”

  Slowly, Sehaye reached beneath the folds of his chamma and produced a long, thin tail of sandy-colored hair. As he held it in front of Mofo’s eyes, Athir’s hair-tail swayed like a pendulum.

  With a sound akin to a snarl, Mofo snatched the hair-tail from Sehaye’s hand. With his other hand, he pulled his tirss from its loop at his waist and thrust the weapon in front of the other man’s face. Its points were close to Sehaye’s eyes.

  “Give the rest of him to me,” Mofo said in a low voice.

  “I want something in return,” Sehaye said.

  The points of Mofo’s tirss moved closer to Sehaye’s eyes. Sehaye did not move or blink. He knew his life depended on not giving in to the terror that was clawing him inside.

  “I want; I take,” Mofo said. “I take easy, I take hard. But I take. Heard?”

  Sehaye knew exactly what the tsotsi meant.

  “You can torture me if you want to, Jass Mofo,” the Uloan said. “You can make me scream for my gods and my mother. But I will not tell you where you can find Athir unless you do what I ask. If you do it, not only will you have what you want; you will also be free from the Muvuli, and no longer be hated by the people of this city. Heard?”

  No one had ever before spoken to Jass Mofo with such impunity. The remaining Ashaki waited for their Jass to savage Sehaye with his tirss.

  Instead, Mofo lowered his weapon. He stared at Sehaye with an expression akin to interest. It was as though he was looking at something he had never seen before. In Sehaye’s eyes, he recognized an implacability that might well have matched his own.

  “What you want, then?” he asked.

  Sehaye told him. And when he finished, Mofo did not kill him.

  5

  Athir opened his eyes to darkness. He blinked several times, but what he saw was always the same: a darkness so profound that he could not see his hand in front of his face. Or, more accurately, had he been able to move his hand into his field of vision, it would have remained indistinguishable from the darkness. But he could not move his hands, or his feet. His limbs had been bound so securely that he wondered how blood managed to make its way to his extremities.

  However, Athir was not gagged. He could call for help if he so desired. He didn’t. His abductor had obviously hidden him in a place where no one was likely to hear his cries, and had therefore not bothered to ensure his silence.

  Although Athir could see nothing, the darkness did not affect his sense of smell. A foul odor permeated the place in which he was imprisoned. A strong smell of garbage surrounded him, and he struggled to prevent himself from retching. And there was another, underlying scent as well ... one with which Athir was familiar, having encountered it in other places in the course of his travels.

  It was the dank, musty, acrid smell of a sewer. On more than one occasion, such places had provided an appropriate place of refuge for the Ship’s Rat. And another sewer in this city had held the loot that bought him his now-departed time of luxury. But now, the underground was a prison. Or, perhaps, a tomb.

  The latter was not likely, though. If the palace servant who had abducted him had wanted him dead, by now he would be. However, he had a feeling that he would not live much longer if he remained bound and helpless in the sewer. He had essayed a few abductions himself, and he knew the value of the victim was either loot or life. He knew of no one who would be willing to pay anything to keep him alive. So his skin had to be the prize in this game. And he knew exactly who it was that wanted that skin more than anything else.

  The tsotsis ...

  Rivulets of sweat began to trickle down Athir’s face as he contemplated his chances for survival. Out of necessity, he had become adept at wriggling his way out of ropes, and sometimes even chains. He could not discern the nature of his present bonds. However, the job had been done in expert fashion. His arms were bound straight at his sides, giving his fingers nothing upon which to gain purchase. He tried the eel-like wriggle that had always worked for him in the past. He could move ... but only a little. And he knew if he continued such gyrations, he would eventually free himself. His bonds were so tight, though, that he knew a great deal of time would have to pass before that happened.

  And he did not know how much time he had. He suspected it was far less than he needed ...

  Then he heard faint, splashing sounds. And he knew he had no time left at all. For the sounds were coming closer to him. And he could see an object that was casting a silvery light in the pitch-darkness of the sewer.

  As the object drew nearer, Athir could see that it was a mask, carved in the likeness of a woman too beautiful to be human, even though it was marred by a small dent. At first, the mask seemed to be floating disembodied in midair. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to the sudden light, Athir could see that the mask surmounted the emaciated, nearly naked body of a young girl.

  “Who are you?” he croaked. “What are you doing down here?”

  The wearer of the mask did not reply. As she came closer, Athir let out a low cry of fear and frustration. Not only was the girl wearing a glowing mask; she was carrying a small, lethal-looking dagger. And the dagger was moving toward him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE@

  Eshetu’s Story

  1

  Eshetu did not look like a man who belonged in, or anywhere near, the Gebbi Senafa. Indeed, he did not even look as though he belonged in any other part of the Jewel City, not even the disreputable Maim. He was a kabbar – a peasant farmer from the Matile hinterland, the lands of the Imba Jassi, where teff, the grain that was the main ingredient in injerra, was grown. His hands bore the calluses that betokened a life of hard farm work, and he wore the rural harai rather than the city-dweller’s chamma. Both his harai and his waist-cloth were torn and threadbare. His unbraided hair grew in a huge, uneven mass, and many days had passed since the last time he had trimmed his bushy beard.

  A badly healed scar traversed Eshetu’s face from his left brow to his right cheek. By some miracle, the slash that had made the wound had not taken his eye as well. However, the scar was not Eshetu’s most arresting feature. It was his eyes that indicated he was no longer a typical rural-dweller; that he had witnessed horrors that rivaled the worst depredations the Uloans had inflicted in Khambawe.

  Ordinarily, a kabbar would never have had any reason to make the long journey to Khambawe. The people who lived in the outlying parts of the Matile Mala Empire seldom ventured farther than the next town or village. On rare occasions, they would go to a festival or ceremony in the nearest large town, or to the few cities in the region. Khambawe was only a name to them, a name signifying a place as distant and unattainable as the Realms of the Jagasti.

  Yet here he was, being escorted by a soldier past a long line of people waiting to be ushered through the gates of the Gebbi Senafa. Inside, the petitioners would present their grievances or requests for favors to the Palace functionaries who looked after such matters. Petitions of greater importance would be passed along to the Emperor. Only on rare occasions would a petitioner be permitted to bypass the functionaries and be presented directly to the Emperor. Thus, the people in the line stared at Eshetu as he walked past them.

  Eshetu had to remind himself that the Emperor was now Gebrem, f
ormerly the Leba, and that Alemeyu was dead. Until he had travelled closer to the city, Eshetu had not even known that the Uloans had invaded the mainland. Not enough time had passed for the news to travel that far.

  But he carried other tidings ... vital information of which he was very certain no one else in the city was aware, other than the few to whom he had already spoken, albeit obliquely.

  When he first entered the city, Eshetu had been overwhelmed by its size; its splendor; the sheer numbers of people crowding its stone-paved streets; the unimaginable wealth that ordinary people displayed as mere ornamentation in their hair and on their bodies. He also saw the remnants of the havoc the Uloans had wrought, as well as the city-dwellers’ determination to rebuild. And, mingling with the throngs that filled Khambawe’s streets, he saw the Fidi.

  The Fidi ...

  At first, Eshetu had wanted to blurt his tale to the first person he encountered when he finally arrived in Khambawe. Caution prevailed, though, and he had taken the time to learn what had happened in the city since the time he had departed from his home village, which no longer existed.

  In exchange for his help in the many back-breaking tasks that remained in the rebuilding process, Eshetu received food, talla, and information. The kabbar learned of the arrival of the Fidi ship, and the fact that a second Fidi sea-craft had sunk before it could reach Khambawe. He learned how the intervention of the Fidis’ powerful god, Almovaar, had saved the city from destruction at the hands of the spider-scarred Uloans. And he learned of the Emperor Alemeyu’s death, along with that of the Empress Issa, and the ascension of Jass Gebrem to the Lion Throne, and the elevation of the Fidi Seer, Kyroun, to the position of Leba, and the Matiles’ eager embrace of the newcomers’ religion.

  Eshetu observed intently, and absorbed all the details he could glean about the numerous changes that had occurred in Khambawe since the invasion was repelled. At times, he was tempted to simply return to the frontier and find another farm to till. His news seemed of minor import compared to the aftermath of the battle against the Uloans and the transition from the veneration of the Jagasti to the worship of the new god, Almovaar.