Griots

by Charles R. Saunders

  Dihya noticed her hands were free, and the swordsman was running away from where he had ordered her to go. A smaller more transparent globe followed the darting warrior, who feinted to his left and ran backwards a few swift steps. There was a smaller impact, and loud mocking laughter from Sumunguru.

  “Goxjivme! Haven’t healed up all the way yet, have you? Well, you never were that good with two arms. I’ve seen that close up. Came to find out you’re strictly a bush howler with a big picture of himself. Good talker though, I’ll give you that. You fooled an old man.”

  Sumunguru laughed again then burst into another run.

  Dihya was now trembling in fear and indecision. First the attack and capture by this semi djinn Black, now a sorcerer rival after him! The door to the watchtower was open, she had seen. The eerie feeling that came over her was most probably the left-over essence of fallen soldiers in the long contest between her father and Abu’s, maybe even further back to the wars of the believers and the Christians. Rather than the boulders outside she ran to be protected by the stones of the tower.

  Goxjivme was practically drained of his inner qloa. It was much worse than he had believed. He had raced up into these cursed hills in spirit form, to find the perfect spot to dispose of the ex-king. But like a lodestone the shrine had pulled him towards it as he raced to find where to destroy the SoSo exile. It was all he could do to reassemble himself to solid form as the shrine drew him towards its ancient crumbling bricks. Now it took so much from him to cast a heart of the sun bolt at the damned revitalized . . . a wall of ice fell on his soul. Sumunguru was closer than he thought. He scrambled down the slope of the small hill kicking gravel that sounded to his panic-filling mind like the rumble of a herd of elephants. Not since that fatal battle at Kirina eleven years ago, where Sundiata, his Soninke and Mandingo shamans had defeated the charm he had placed on the aged King Sumunguru, freeing him from Goxjivme’s control. Who once freed, then turned in raw hatred upon the mage.

  Before he could completely disappear, the old warrior king had grasped his arm in a fearsome grip. Though he finally managed to complete his spell, the cost was his arm, left in the enflamed king’s grip. Not since those moments had he known such out and out fear.

  For Sumunguru it seemed to be the turning point of the climatic battle. With a roar The Leopard cried out for the reaping of a great harvest of rebellious traitors and fools, as he once again led his mail clad veteran guard into the battle smashing aside all who stood against them. Through the hosts of kings and chieftains they cut their way. Up to the very standards of Sundiata they fought, unstoppable in their fury. Sundiata shivered in fear at the seeming collapse of all his hopes.

  Goxjivme soon stumbled and fell forward, nearly crying out when he twisted his arm attempting to halt his fall.

  “The times are never kind to the evil fool, are they? Despite all the great harm they cause so gleefully to others, the Foundation of Right falls on them heavier than the Sun.”

  He rolled over to find Sumunguru staring down at him. The warrior placed his boot on the side of the spellcaster’s head, pressing it into the stony soil.

  “No, your majesty,” he sputtered, with grit in his mouth. “I-I-I tried to help you! I tried to help you hold your empire together! I . . .”

  “You befogged an old man lost in the grief of his eldest son’s death. A mongoose who thought he was a lion wound up besting me in a battle I would never had fought as I did that damned day. Let me help you Goxjivme. Let me give you- Peace!”

  The bite of sword and the spray and gurgle of blood were the only sounds after that.

  Moments later, there was the sound of trickling water. “Kante!” rang out in the hills, a roar of triumph. He walked quickly to where he expected the woman Dihya to be.

  “Has it ever been that easy?” he said aloud to himself feeling more than seeing the towering shrine.

  He breathed deeply then walked purposely towards it, sword held at the ready. As he neared closer, there was first a greenish than more of a cold dawn blue white light emanating from the entryway. Sumunguru loosened his neck muscles. He patted the flat of his blade to his forehead than his heart.

  Couching warily, he entered. Stepping quickly through, he spun about to face any lurker in ambush. There was none. The light showed a large square room built of once finely shaped brick, now cracked and unevenly replastered. A row of columns lined both sides of the room some of them resembling strongly the sun-bleached ones he had seen in the ancient ruins of the Maghreb and here in the northern part of the Almohad realm. On the floor was a thick layer of dust in which he saw slipper prints going forward, in small tentative steps.

  “You’re the one who chose this place.”

  The light took away some of the weight of wrong this building had cast out earlier, but only because Sumunguru could see his surroundings. He too, took cautious steps watching warily the columns, roof, and walls following Dihya footsteps. On the left wall was the eroded carving of a god or demon sitting on a pile of stones or skulls. Spider webs lay thick the deeper he advanced, a grim smile creasing his face as he remembered his youthful struggle with a giant and ferocious child of Anaise the Spider Trickster in the Woods of Kongassambougou.

  The ground floor ended, and the beginnings of a processional stairway began the first step had embossed on it the figure of a prostrating or dead man with a drooping mustache and spiked hair. Each step after there were images of men, women, and children alone or in pairs on the wide steps till he and the small footprints he followed reached the top landing. Dihya was in a quivering heap against a wall that at first resembled a memory board griots used to teach youngsters in their profession. Then he saw it wasn’t. They were niches filled with the fragments of skulls and bone. He made a series of quick movements with his hand over the terrified woman. The simple spell told him she wasn’t a demon in her form attempting to lure him to unwary destruction.

  “Dihya, Sumunguru is here to take you home. By Shango’s Thunder that’s what I aim to do.”

  He stooped to pick the woman up by her arms, when she suddenly looked up into his eyes. She tried to speak but couldn’t at first but the sheer terror that were in them receded in them a bit, like a tide going out to sea.

  “Flee! Not even you can stand . . .”

  Then they heard the first heavy steps coming from the darkness of the room. She gasped and tried to pull away from Sumunguru, but he pulled her to her feet none too gently.

  “Put some bone in your spine woman! Run for all you are worth out this nest. It can’t follow you out else it would be hunting these hills instead of having its meals brought to it.”

  “You know what it is?”

  “Despite the differences men do the same foolish shit everywhere! Now Go!”

  He pushed her towards the stairs and didn’t look back. The steps were methodically coming nearer.

  “Oh, I’m unnerved! I’m truly scared, really I am. But let us end the ritual, shall we? Come and get me bitch of the dark!”

  There was a silence; Sumunguru could hear the racing patter of Dihya on the stairs.

  “Shall I come drag your ass to face me, you over pampered spew of a whorish stork and a drunken baboon! I’m King Sumunguru Kante, Breaker of nations, destroyer of armies, the vanquisher of fell spirits! I will not wait!”

  There out of the cloaking shadows came hooves, then the scaled calves proceeding upward into the pale muscled flesh of thighs, then a svelte torso of a blue haired beautiful woman- man thing, its long tresses flowing over its shoulders, its slanted eyes staring with outrage and hatred at Sumunguru. Its slender arms ended in the talons of a predator bird.

  “Your mother laid up with everything around the farm I see!”

  The creature’s beauty went ugly as it screeched upward into the ceiling.

  “Got you upset?”

  The creature leapt forward at horrifying speed, almost catching Sumunguru in the midst of his charge. He ducked the beheading swipe and spun c
lear of the creature’s charging body. It quickly turned only to face Sumunguru wielding his blade two handed carving a figure eight in the air. The sword slashed the flailing taloned right arm and lined the pale chest . The lights flared white with the pain the beast felt possibly for the first time in its existence. Sumunguru was blinded by them and seemed to freeze with fear and hesitation. The creature started to circle the warrior, who was visibly shaking. It relished the sight a moment longer then padded in closer for the kill. To its surprise Sumunguru pivoted on his toes bringing a trunk hewing blow down that slashed it shallowly on its left shoulder to its ribs.

  “Hygiene gets the best of us all, feel no shame in that.”

  His sight, much to his relief, was now back to normal and he saw the malevolent night haunter stand in disbelief staring at him.

  “You’ve have had it too easy for too long. A blind one-legged baby burping would throw you off. And I’m not that, am I!”

  He attacked shouting the battle cry of his ancestors. The creature found itself on the defensive kicking with his hooves at this being who seemed to time the blows to the last second before avoiding them. Moments later it managed to rip its talons across his chest mail tearing the links and sending Sumunguru spinning and off balanced into a wall niche. Slamming hard he dropped his sword. Leaping to catch the warrior before he could right himself, it rushed at its disarmed enemy, sensing victory over the arrogant mortal. Sumunguru struck out with a hard kick to the creature’s chest, then grasping its outstretched right arm flipped it into the wall. Grabbing his sword, he readied himself to deliver the final blow only to have to leap high over its scything talons as it came at him on his knees.

  Now the old Celt-Iberian haunt, knowing the doubts of previous opponents it had faced, flailed away furiously as Sumunguru sought to deliver telling blows of his own. To him the creature was fast and tough. It parried off his blows or swerved its body aside when the evernight strike was on its way. He blocked its frantic sweeps when they came too near or ducked or spun away. He sang a traditional battle song all the while shouting “Hai!” when he struck home.

  Then, at last, a thrust got through to the being’s chest, all fears of being locked forever in combat with this foe leaving him. A thin ichor splatted on his blade as the creature started to convulse. Trying to muster all its seductive power back, it looked imploringly at him. But all it heard was, “This is for them, night vomit!” and the shearing of its ancient flesh by the vengeful dark-skinned king.

  * * *

  Sebastiano and five of his men were still in hiding but not from the parties of the Silver Panther. Christian warriors from Aragon had overwhelmed him in this, his once haven of the hills. Sebastiano witnessed a band led by knights such as he used to fancy himself overwhelm his pursuer, Kalawun BrokeNose, slaughtering them to a man. What this portended for the future of Malik Battur was not good. Nor for him.

  “Don Sebastiano,” one of his men called to him. “What is it Ruy? Another Aragonese patrol?”

  “No, maybe that might be better. It’s that Negro swordsman. And he has the Dona Dihya with him.”

  Sebastiano scrambled up to where his man was and saw coming towards them the daughter of the caid looking none to indisposed. In fact, she was riding the grey of her late, butchered husband, without a veil and smiling as she did so. And he strode towards them as if he was coming to resume his seat at his castle after a successful hunt on the estate.

  “Ho, Cebashinno!” he called out nonchalantly, “Let us make haste from these hills. They’ve acquired new owners who might be over particular in who they allow in them. The Lady Dihya will like some food if you have it.”

  “We thought you dead,” said the man Ruy.

  “That’s gotten to be a habit with me lately,” Sumunguru said smiling tossing down a torn garment soaked in blood and buzzing about with flies. Inside were what appeared to be two heads. “Something extra for our paymaster,” said Sumunguru.

  The Three-Faced One

  By

  Charles R. Saunders

  The warrior peered intently over a high sandstone escarpment. An unfamiliar landscape spread like a ragged carpet beneath him. Far to the north, his keen vision could discern a dark smudge on the horizon: not storm clouds, but smoke and ash flung skyward from the fiery throats of a lengthy range of volcanoes that erupted only intermittently, but were never completely quiescent. The volcanic range, along with its immediate surroundings, was known as Motoni, the northernmost boundary of the mighty continent called Nyumbani.

  It was said that nothing could live in Motoni ... nothing other than demons and the spirits of the damned. The warrior had no desire to encounter either, though he would not retreat if he were confronted. What he saw in the area beneath the escarpment interested him more than the tales of vagabonds who had ventured close to – but never into – Motoni.

  The land before him was bleak, but not blasted. Part of it consisted of semi-arid territory, with patches of scrub-brush interspersed with the occasional flat-topped acacia tree. Desert antelope with horns as straight as spears browsed on the brush, and puffs of dust marked the passage of other, smaller creatures that moved so swiftly that the dust was all that could be seen of them.

  The other part – the part that lay to the east – was covered with short, dun-colored grass. Blade-leafed mopane trees grew in copses not large enough to be considered forests. Herds of gnu, zebra and impala grazed the plain. Their ears flickered and their nostrils twitched as they kept constant vigil for signs of lurking flesh-eaters.

  Farther to the east, the warrior saw clusters of stony spires that towered like monuments to forgotten deities. Outcrops of rock were present on the arid side as well, but they rose in isolation, and were not as high as their eastern counterparts.

  At the border of the two territories, sand and grass competed in a never-ending struggle, with dry yellow fingers reaching into the plain and clumps of ochre grass finding precarious purchase in arid soil. It was on that border that two groups of people gathered. And it was those groups that had captured and maintained the warrior’s attention.

  Even from the distant escarpment, the warrior could see clear differences between the groups. The people of the grassland were very dark in hue, and wore almost no clothing. With them were long-horned cattle of a type similar to the ones the warrior had herded during his youth.

  It was difficult to discern much about the people on the other side of the few yards of space that separated the groups. For their bodies were wrapped in lengths of white cloth that threw back the sunlight in a blinding glare. Turbans of similar cloth covered their heads. Camels stood placidly at the swathed people’s side. The humped beasts bore saddles and bridles.

  Neither side carried any weapons that the warrior could see. Yet the tension between the contingents was apparent even at a distance.

  They must be here to trade, the warrior thought. To his way of thinking, the cattle-herders would surely get the worst of any bargain. Despite the many rains he had spent away from the herds of his childhood, the warrior continued to prefer cows to camels.

  Then he realized that none of the white-robes’ camels were unsaddled or without bridles. And the warrior saw no bundles or stacks of other goods for exchange. He frowned in puzzlement.

  One of the white-robes made a sudden, emphatic gesture. With ill-concealed reluctance, the herders acknowledged the signal, and urged all the cattle they had brought to go to the westerners’ side. Nearly a score of the herders followed the cattle. The ones who went with the beasts were not young enough to be considered children, but still too young to have reached adulthood. They carried sacks and containers with them. As they departed, they did not look back. And the herders left behind looked at the ground.

  Not trade, the warrior realized. Tribute. The robed ones take not only cattle, but also slaves and other goods, from the herders.

  The white-robes mounted their camels. The warrior heard echoes of harsh words and cruel laughter as t
he westerners drove the cattle and captives into the semi-arid side of the land. The herders watched silently for a time. Then, heads still down, they turned and trudged toward the jumble of tall rocks that shimmered in the distance.

  The warrior frowned. He had wandered a great distance since his last sojourn with other people. Increasingly, he had become careful concerning such contact, and drained by its demands. In most parts of Nyumbani, his name preceded him. So did tales of his deeds. Some of those stories were true; others, exaggerated; and still others nothing more than the imaginings of the griots and praise-singers who told them.

  To some, he was The Liberator. To others, he was known as The Deathless Warrior. More ominously, some referred to him as Death’s Friend. He had overthrown empires, destroyed demons, freed slaves, slain sorcerers. It was whispered that a deity dwelled inside him – a Cloud Strider from ancient times.

  The whisperers spoke truth. But the warrior was still a man, though unlike any other. At times, he wearied of the importunings of men and women, as well as the toll he exacted from himself as he reflected on some of the things he had done.

  He was aware that the lands to the immediate south of Motoni were isolated and mostly unknown. He had never ventured this far north before. He wondered if the tales about him had spread to this place. If they had not, there was a chance he could find the peace that eluded him elsewhere.

  But the scene below did not look peaceful ...

  I should have known better, he thought as he gazed at the unfamiliar country, through which the wild beasts roamed more freely now that the men and their tame creatures had gone.

  Although memories of his life with the people among whom he had been raised remained bitter, the cattle had not judged him, and the quietude that had imbued him when he was among the herds on the vast Tamburure savanna had afforded him solace. These people who had allowed their cattle to be taken were not like the people of his past, who would never have allowed such a shameful incident to occur.