Griots

by Charles R. Saunders

  Thus saying, she placed the staff in Sembele’s hand.

  The staff in her right hand, Sembele flung herself upon her dying mother. Iyoke, too, knelt at the bedside, but Nunu stood.

  “Mother,” Sembele pleaded. “Do not die. You alone have loved and honored me. Who on earth do I have but you?”

  But Queen Mizake did die, and was buried. Thereafter, Sembele left the northern land to rule Tentuke with her husband. Her accession to the throne was accomplished with great pomp, and the common people received their Beauty with feasts, ribands, and much celebrating. But Sembele soon began to despise the size of her kingdom. True, it was larger than Hans’ country but it was not a tenth the size of Jaejoong’s land. When Sembele proposed war on a neighboring kingdom, her advisors hardly knew how to answer her. Resources were plenty, their peoples lived in harmony, why set forth to conquer?

  But Sembele answered, “Have you not seen how those of the eastern kingdom have sought to encroach on our land? Have they not sent spies into the southern lands to spy out our happiness?”

  The advisors had seen no such thing, but they kept silent.

  Queen Sembele held forth the ebony staff of her ancestors. “All these lands of the south were once a large kingdom. Powerful and fierce, the lost great southern kingdom was impregnable and safe from attack. But now, what have we become? Small villages at the mercy of fierce kings.”

  Years had passed since war had decimated towns and blood had washed away the lives of widows and orphans. The counselors had forgotten the odor of staling blood. They therefore agreed to the wisdom of consolidating the nations, whether those nations desired it or no. Nation after nation toppled and Tentuke grew larger, gorging itself on tinier kingdoms. Still, it was not half the size of Jaejoong’s kingdom.

  Far across the seas, Iyoke was all too aware of her sister’s malevolence. Whether in country fields or on the cobblestone roads of her adopted homeland, tidings continually overwhelmed her. One night, as fireflies danced over rice fields, she spoke to her husband, “The kingdom adjoining Tentuke is ruled by Queen Nunu and Prince Biodun. I have no doubt my sister longs to devour it and add it to her already bloated kingdom.”

  Jaejoong held her close. “Indeed, she will. But it will not remedy your sister’s ailment. For joining kingdom to kingdom will increase the territory but not the wealth.”

  She looked into her husband’s face. “So, Sembele will not be satisfied.”

  “Indeed, she will not.”

  “I shall travel forth to my former homeland and plead with my sister to spare Nunu’s land.”

  Her husband held her hands firmly and his eyes challenged hers. “Indeed, my wife, you will not travel there. For she will not listen. Rather, she will say that envy caused you to travel forth, because you feared her kingdom would rival yours.”

  Days came and passed, Summer bloomed and faded. Queen Nunu sent word to Iyoke that she and King Biodun had paid Empress Sembele a visit.

  “The Empress received us with great pomp and show of her kingdom’s glory,” the letter declared. “Inside the throne room, I bowed before our sister. ‘Queen Sembele,’ I said, ‘I have come to plead for the safety of my kingdom. I know that the wisdom and weaponry of Hans’ people have caused you to crush other nations, and that it is within your power to destroy us. But I plead with you to remember we shared a mother, a mother who would not want you to destroy your own sister.’

  “‘The Empress answered, ‘You were never a loving sister to me. Why should I spare your kingdom or your life?’

  “‘Not so, Queen Sembele,’ I answered. ‘A dear loving sister I have been to you. Even when our mother raised you high above us.’

  “‘This I do not remember,’ our sister the Empress Sembele replied. She then clapped her hands and called two courtiers to her side. They came bowing, carrying goblets of gold and platters of silver.

  “Then this great Empress spoke thusly, ‘And yet, because you are my sister, I will spare your life, although I have not spared the lives of the kings of the former territories.’

  “So, this is the news, Dear Sister, Prince Biodun’s land has become tributary to Tentuke, and it is also rumored that the Prince himself lies servant to the Empress. Yet, our sister remains unsettled. For it is not greed or lust for power that drives her onward but envy and jealousy that you, her unworthy sister, should have been blessed with a happy life. Therefore, My Sister, beware snares. This sister of ours, this great Empress, is set to provoke war with you.”

  When Iyoke read the letter, she could not imagine how war could rise. But soon, she understood.

  Sembele began to seek occasion to trouble the ships that sailed to and from the eastern kingdom. Merchant ship or navy, the ships of Queen Iyoke were set upon by Tentuke pirates. The blood of King Jaejoong’s seamen – for he had become king at last—flowed congealed upon the waters. Their corpses were returned to their home shores in battered hulls, defiled by Sembele’s warriors.

  “Let me go to my sister,” Iyoke begged, kneeling before the king her husband. “For am I not the cause of all the world’s evil? Is not my joy the root of the deaths of so many innocents, both common and royal?” She tugged at his sleeve as if her heart would break.

  “And what will you do when you reach her kingdom?” King Jaejoong asked. “Who is able to stand against so great a jealousy?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps, if she thought me unhappy, if she thought me mocked and married to an evil tyrant . . . if she considered me dishonored and pitiable in her sight . . .”

  King Jaejoong raised an eyebrow, shook his head then raised his sobbing wife from the floor. “Would you destroy my honor to ease her spite? Even if you would, I would not. Not that I honor my honor so much, but I will not lie about my greatest happiness to please any. Are you not a symbol of our great kingdom and my great joy? Why should you – the gem of our kingdom—hide your beauty and happiness to quell another’s jealousy?”

  So Iyoke could not go. And the king gave warning to Tentuke: Sembele was to desist or war would rain down on her kingdom. This warning brought great joy to the Empress’ heart. Was this not what she had longed for? She defied Jaejoong’s challenge and war ensued, the battlefield being the land ruled by the puppet King Biodun.

  Riding fiercely, like an eddying gust, Sembele went forth with her armies galloping across the valley and through rushing water to battle her sister. Ten thousand horsemen and fifty thousand foot soldiers followed in her wake, their ebony bodies gleaming in the sunrise. Black clouds covered the sky, and although the midday sun beat down upon sparse desert plains, trees shivered in fear.

  Meanwhile her sister Queen Iyoke, like a tender bird, trembled atop a hillside near the ocean shore. Although the desert wind blew hot, Iyoke’s fingers were numb and her hands clammy and moist. Like the trees, and quite unlike a princess, she too shivered. But not from fear of herself. Behind her, an army of soldiers with features unlike her own. Jaejoong’s great army. By eastern ship they had come, in fleets past counting, as numerous as the bees of the forest.

  Iyoke had never seen a battle before. And the thought that she was the root and cause of such bloodshed was hard for her to endure. When the imperial ships had returned to the eastern kingdom with its ruined men and decaying corpses, she had walked onto the blood-stained ship and grieved for her husband’s countrymen – her adopted people. But this, this cutting and ripping of flesh before her eyes – her heart could not bear it. Nor could she bear to see the dead bodies of those of her native land. So, she felt a changeling’s guilt rather than a Queen’s anger.

  A soldier blew the war trumpet. Alerted, King Jaejoong’s mare raised its head. The king firmly held its reins. With the other, he thrust a lance in his wife’s hand. “My wife, command my captains – for they are yours. Mount your horse. For it smells anger. Yes, even the wind rouses itself at your sister’s wrath. Yet you stand here, trembling.”

  Iyoke’s turned from her husband, looked toward her sister’s army in the di
stance and threw the lance to the ground. “Sembele will relent,” she said.

  King Jaejoong dismounted, retrieved the scorned lance. From the dirt he raised it, and thrust it toward her. “Sisters have murdered sisters ages long! And will long after. If not to gain or keep kingdoms, at least to preserve their own lives.”

  Again, she pushed the lance into Jaejoong’s impatient hands. Sembele’s army was a league and a half away. Soon, sister would look on sister at the foot of the mountain. “Why can I not murder as other sisters have?”

  “Indeed!” Her husband didn’t hide his anger. “Indeed!” Prince Jaejoong, not often angry, the lover of her soul loved his people and his country as well. When roused, his temper was unmatched, his actions unpredictable. He mounted his horse, but left the lance rooted in the ground. “With this you will thrust your sister through, as she thrust through your seamen as they journeyed peacefully across the ocean.”

  “I cannot, I will not.”

  “Murder is in her heart. Have you not seen it?” He shouted. “Do you think she will spare you should she lose this battle? She will not! Look and see. A fifth of our imperial army has sailed the seas to battle. Let them not see you retreat from bloodshed. No one bends to obey a passionless queen?”

  “If she must die, you must do it,” she answered her husband, and the wind blew her braid – woven in the fashion of the women of the southern kingdoms—across her face.

  “Our daughter’s future depends on your actions this day. Who will respect the daughter if he does not respect the mother?”

  Heart-beating, she climbed to her horse. She understood well her husband’s thoughts. Her honor would reflect on her daughter. To destroy Sembele would secure Iyoke’s daughter as chief wife, no matter how many concubines the future king took.

  Prince Jaejoong stirred his horse, kept it steady between his legs. He edged it closer to his wife. “Sonless, I have been. Plagued with the death of children, I have been. Plagued with a wife who, like a thirsty reed, soaks up love and yet cannot receive it. Plagued with a wife who treats the handmaids as her equals! And yet I have loved you. If I die before you, how will you survive in our kingdom? My love” –his words pleaded— “a queen’s opportunity is here. At last, you will receive honor in the sight of the imperial court. Only but kill this false empress and receive honor as a queen worthy of our people.”

  Again, she didn’t answer.

  “What is blood?”

  Again, she remained silent.

  “She is no sister to you!” He turned aside and left her there atop the mountain.

  The Queen remained there, beaten by her thoughts. Am I in truth a queen? she asked herself. Perhaps I am a changeling, a cuckoo’s egg.

  The day wore on, and broken bodies were continually crushed, like fallen leaves ground to powder. Bones seemed to melt into the riverbed, indistinguishable in the bloodmeal of mud, sand, leaves, stench, ravens, and flies. Piled high along the riverbed, corpses were trampled by fierce horses, even fiercer men.

  Soon it became evident that Sembele’s troops were being routed, and Iyoke began to dread what she knew would soon take place: Soon Sembele would be brought before her, and Jaejoong would demand. . .

  No, I cannot do it, Iyoke told herself. All about her, blood mingled with blood. The blood of both her peoples. And am I the cause of all this? She asked herself. Had I been beautiful, such a war would not have happened!

  Then as the sun began to set, it happened. A trumpet call came: Sembele was captured, her captains killed and her army dispersed, defeated. The Empress, her husband, and her lover Prince Biodun were dragged by King Jaejoong’s captains to Jaejoong and his wife.

  Jaejoong dismounted and walked toward the defeated Sembele. He called his wife to his side and once again handed her the lance. She took it. He waited, and as Jaejoong watched, she lifted the lance high and plunged it deep into her own breast. Nunu, standing by, was not so full of self-loathing. She retrieved the lance from her sister’s bloody hands and with one swift blow, thrust Sembele and Biodun clean through.

  It is said by the old ones that Nunu married Prince Hans. But this she would not do. It is said by the modern scholars that King Jaejoong took Nunu to wife. This also, I do not believe.

  The General’s Daughter

  By

  Anthony Nana Kwamu

  Here is the story of the general and his daughter, as it is recorded in the chronicler’s journals in monastery in Debre Damo.

  Abyssinia, 1274 AD. The people of Roha chanted, danced and made merry as the army marched in from the wars, with victory over the rebels in Amhara Province achieved at last. Thousands choked the roads, streets, terraces, balconies, and even rooftops as they welcomed the Emperor Yekuno Amlak, who rode at the head of his victorious army.

  Next to the joyful emperor rode the general, who had nothing but a soft smile on his face, though it was he who by his own hand had slain Dahnay, the rebel commander, and ended the war. The general paid little attention to the deafening merriment that surrounded him, for he wished for nothing more at that moment than to be with the most important person in his life. She was Zeina. She was the general’s daughter.

  Moments after the army’s entrance into the city a servant brought Zeina to meet her father, a sight which now produced the excitement in the general that was present in all others in the city. After many hugs and kisses between the soldier and his daughter had passed, he placed the girl on his horse and had her ride next to the emperor, while he himself took to foot and walked the remaining journey into the city amidst jubilating hordes as he led the horse that carried his daughter by its reins. On her father’s horse Zeina used her kirar harp to produce music so beautiful that her father could distinguish it from that produced by the countless others that filled their surroundings. It was music he had missed during all those days at the frontlines.

  The general’s daughter had only seen ten summers, yet she carried herself with the grace of a lady. She was a beautiful child with eyes as wild as a rebel’s, yet as charming as the limitless beauty of the vast open sea, made even more so by the glittering gold beads that were plaited into her long-braided hair.

  It was known that Dahnay, the rebel leader, before his death, had cursed the general.

  “Count your days of joy, General,” Dahnay had said, “For misery and sorrow will soon be your company.”

  Many say that this curse explains why six days after the general’s return, he was met by a terrible tragedy. His daughter, the lovely Zeina, fell off the balcony of her father’s house, broke her neck, and died!

  Those were the beginning of dark days for the general, for his daughter’s death had not been like that of his wife, Zeina’s mother, seven summers prior. She passed on thirty days after she took ill. But Zeina had simply ceased to exist, taken from the general in a twinkling, her sweet voice, laughter, gentle footsteps, and soothing harp music to be heard no more.

  Though the city shared his loss and mourned with him, the general wanted no more than to be left alone with his daughter. And so, it was that for three days he locked himself with his deceased daughter in a room and refused that she be buried; and during those days he refused to utter any words or see anyone, not even the emperor himself, who visited to pay his respects. It was the general’s servants and brothers who forced their way into his room, gently bore little Zeina away and laid her to rest carrying her harp, with many a man, woman, and child present to bid her farewell.

  The general himself did not make his presence at his daughter’s funeral, refusing to believe she really was no more. Again, he barred himself in a room and again he refused to utter any words or see anyone, despite pleas from his brothers and sisters. For seven days he cursed God and for seven nights he cursed the devil, and in all those days he neither ate nor slept, nor did he even see the emperor, who once again attempted to convey his condolences to the general.

  On the eighth day a man arrived—a mysterious traveler they called the Wizard of Sheba.
With a single question posed through the door of the general’s room, he got the general’s ear.

  “What if I tell you, My Lord,” he began, “That for a price I will bring your daughter back from the dead?”

  And so, it was that after seven days the general burst out from his containment, a broken and wounded man, now dead bent upon seizing any chance to again walk by his daughter’s side.

  “Name your price, man, and it shall be yours!” the general urged the traveler.

  “Beyond what is visible to the eyes lies the Realm of the Undying. There are those there whose souls will soon the claimed by the Devil and those who soon will meet their maker. And then there are those who are the Sleepless, who will languish in the Realm of the Undying for all eternity. Your daughter’s soul lies in this realm. It was the devil who took her, but he realized too late that she was not meant for him. Now she walks about as one of the Undying in this realm, bound to suffer for all eternity until one may come from the land of the living to give life back to her soul and body.”

  “Tell me, wizard,” the general exclaimed, “That you do not toy with me, for I will have your tongue pulled out and tied around your neck.”

  “I do not toy with grieving men, My Lord. I only intend to erase their pain.”

  “What must I do then, to bring back my Zeina?”

  “You must descend the Realm of the Undying and slay Garone, the horned demon who watches over the agents of darkness in these parts and who guards the gates of Hell in the Realm of the Undying. Toss his head across the River of Fire and Poisons and you will have your daughter back. Toss his head into the river and his soul would also be destroyed, but you will not bring your daughter back. But you must bring me his horn. That is the price you must pay in exchange of my help. Promise this to me, My Lord, and I will help you get back your daughter!”