by Wilbur Smith
The gorge was silent, hot and deserted. There was not even the chattering of birds or the murmur of insects in the undergrowth. The silence was more oppressive than the heat, and Zouga threw back his head and hallooed up at the deserted watch-hut.
The echoes, boomed grotesquely back and forth across the gorge, and then descended through confused whispers to the same foreboding silence. The last white man to pass this way was the Sword of God, in person, intent on decapitating the oracle, Zouga thought bitterly. He could not expect a hero's welcome.
He shouldered the gun again and went into the natural granite gateway, his instinct telling him that the bold approach was the only one open to him. The narrow passageway was floored with crunching grey sand, full of mica chips that sparkled like diamonds even in the subdued light. The passage curved gently until he could see neither the entrance behind him nor the end of it. He wanted to hurry, for this was like a cage, or a trap, but he controlled his feet and showed neither fear nor indecision in his tread.
Around the curve the passageway fanned open, and from one wall a small freshet rippled down the granite cliff, spilled with a tiny liquid gurgle into a natural basin of rock and then overflowed to run down into the hidden valley beyond. Zouga came out of the natural gateway and paused again to stare about him. It was a pleasant valley, probably a mile long and half as wide. The rivulet watered it, and the grass was cool green.
In the centre of the valley was a huddle of neatly thatched huts, around which scratched a few scrawny fowls. He went down to them. The huts were all deserted, although there was everywhere evidence of very recent occupation, even the porridge in the cooking pot was still hot.
Three of the largest huts were crammed with treasures, leather bags of salt, tools and weapons of iron, ingots of smelted red copper, a pile of small ivory tusks, and Zouga guessed that these were the tributes and gifts sent by petitioners and supplicants to the oracle. Payments made for her intercession with the rain gods, fees for a spell cast upon an enemy, or to soften a coquette's heart.
The fact that these treasures were left unguarded was proof of the Umlimo's power, and her own belief in that power. However, if Fuller Ballantyne's journal was the truth "the foul and midnight hag" as he referred to her was long ago dead, and her severed skull crunched by the hyenas or bleaching somewhere in the hot African sun.
Zouga stooped out through the low entrance of the last hut, into the sunlight once more. He called again, but again there was no answer. There were people here, many of them, but to make contact with them, and then to learn from them the location of the "burial place of the kings" was going to be more difficult than he expected.
Leaning on the long gun he turned his attention to the steep side of the valley, and again it was the pathway that caught his eye and led it to the entrance of the cave.
For the path continued beyond the village, running down the centre of the valley and climbed the far slope of the valley, then came to an abrupt end against the granite cliff. The mouth of the cave was low and wide, a narrow horizontal gash in the base of the cliff like a toad's mouth and the path led directly into it.
Zouga climbed the gentle slope to the cave entrance.
He had left his food bag and water bottle at the village, and, lightly burdened, he strode upwards, tall and lithe, his beard sparkling like gold thread in the sunlight, so that any hidden watcher could not have doubted that this was a chieftain and warrior to treat with respect.
He reached the cave entrance and checked, not from fatigue, for the climb had not taxed him, but merely to take his bearings. The cave entrance was a hundred paces or so wide, and the roof so low that he could reach up and touch the rough rock.
There was a guard wall built to close off the opening, a wall of dressed granite blocks, fitted so closely that it would have been impossible to drive a knife blade between the joints, clearly the work of skilled masons, but done long ago for in places the wall had tumbled, the blocks piled upon each other in disarray.
The path led into one of these gaps, and disappeared into the gloom beyond. It was a most unwelcoming entrance. Going in he would have the light at his back, and his eyes would be unaccustomed to the poor light, there would be many places where a man could wait with spear or axe. Zouga felt his first ardour cooling as he peered into that forbidding opening, and he called again in the Matabele language. I come in peace! " He was answered almost immediately, in a childish piping voice speaking the same language, close behind his shoulder, so close that his heart tripped, and he whirled. White is the colour of mourning and death, piped the voice, and Zouga looked about him in confusion. There was no child, no human, no animal even, the valley behind him was deserted, silent. The voice had emanated from the very air.
Zouga felt his mouth drying, and the skin on his forearms and at the base of his skull crawled with the loathsome little insects of fear, and while he stared another voice screeched from the cliff above him. White is the colour of war.
" It was the voice of an old woman, a very old woman, quavering and shrill. Zouga's heart jumped again, and then raced as he looked up. The cliff face was bare and smooth. His heart was fluttering against his ribs like a trapped bird, and his breath rasped and sawed in his throat. White is the colour of slavery, sang a young girl's voice, filling the air about his head, having no direction and no substance, sweet and liquid as the burble of running water. She spoke in the voices of Belial and Beelzebub, the hideous voices of Azazel and Behar, all Satan's myriad alter-egos, " his father had written, and Zouga felt the slow leaden spread of superstitious terror weighing down his legs.
Another voice, roaring like a bull, boomed from the mouth of the cave. "The white eagle has cast down the stone falcons."
He took a long slow breath, to bring his mutinous body under control, and he cast his mind back deliberately to a childhood memory. Brighton pier on August bank holiday, the small boy clutching his Uncle William's hand and staring up in wonder at the magician on the stage who made a doll come to life and speak in a quaint piping voice, answering the voice from the box too small to contain even a rabbit. The memory steadied him, and he laughed. It was a clear firm laugh, surprising himself even. Keep your tricks for the children, Umlimo. I come in peace to speak with you as a man."
There was no reply, though he thought he caught the silken whisper of bare feet on stone, coming from the darkness beyond the turned stone wall. See me, Umlirno! I lay aside my weapons."
He unslung the powder bag and dropped it at his feet, and then he laid the elephant gun across it and holding his empty hands before him advanced slowly into the cave.
As he reached the step in the wall, there was the crackling spitting snarl of an angry leopard from the shadows just ahead of him. It was a terrible sound, fierce and real, but Zouga had himself in hand now. He did not miss a pace but stooped under the sill through the gap, and straightened on the far side.
He waited for a minute while his eyes adjusted, and he could make out shapes and planes in the gloom.
There were no other voices or animal sounds. There was a faint source of light somewhere ahead of him in the depths of the cave, and he could now make out a way among St. the scree and fallen rock that choked the cave, in some places as high as the low roof.
Zouga began to pick his way carefully forward. The light grew stronger, and Zouga realized that it was a single beam of sunlight, shining through a narrow crack in the roof.
Looking up, he stumbled and put out a hand to save himself. it was not rock that he touched but something sticklike that moved beneath his touch. There was a rattle, and a loose dry rush of debris. Zouga caught his balance and glanced down. A disembodied human skull gaped up at him from empty black eye sockets, the cheekbones still covered with a parchment of dried skin.
With a jolting little shock Zouga realized that what he had taken for loose scree and rock was instead piles of human remains, dried and desiccated corpses, lying in mounds and heaps, choking the passages and deepest rec
esses of the cave, here and there a single body, crouched or sprawled alone, bone shining dully from gaps in its covering of dark dried skin or through the rotting leather garments. That reeking charnel house, Fuller Ballantyne had called it.
Instinctively Zouga wiped the hand that had touched the long-dead skeleton, and then went on towards the light. There was the smell of smoke now, and of human presence, and another sweet mousy odour that was hauntingly familiar but which Zouga could not place at that moment. The floor of the cave sloped downwards under his feet, and he turned a rocky shoulder and looked down into a small natural amphitheatre, with a floor of smooth granite.
In the centre of the floor burned a low fire of some aromatic wood, the smoke spiced the air and rose in a slow spiral towards the crack in the rocky roof, clouding the beam of sunlight with milky blue. There seemed to be other fingers of the cave leading further into the hillside, like the adits of a mine shaft, but Zouga's attention was focused on the figure that sat across the fire from him.
Zouga went slowly down on to the floor of the stone amphitheatre without taking his eyes from the figure. That foul and midnight hag, his father had called the Umlimo but this was no hag. She was young, in full physical prime, and as she knelt facing him Zouga realized that he had seldom seen such a fine-looking woman, certainly not in India or Africa, and very seldom, if ever, in the northern lands.
She had a long regal neck on which her head balanced like a black lily on its stern . Her features were Egyptian, with a straight fine nose and huge dark eyes above high moulded cheekbones. Her teeth were small and perfect, her lips chiselled like the flutes of a pink seashell.
She was naked, her body slim, her limbs long and fine, her hands and feet narrow and delicately shaped with tapered fingers and pate pink palms. Her small breasts rode high and were perfectly round, her waist narrow but flaring into tight hard buttocks and hips like the curve of a Venetian vase. Her sex was a wide triangle, deeply cleft, the inner lips bursting out unashamedly, like the wings of a dark exotic butterfly emerging from its woolly chrysalis.
She was watching him with those huge dark eyes, and when he stopped across the fire from her, she made a slow gracious gesture with those delicately long fingers.
Obediently Zouga squatted down opposite her and waited.
The woman took up one of the calabash gourds from the array beside her, holding it between the palms of her hands and poured from it into a shallow earthen bowl.
It was milk. She set the calabash aside, and Zouga expected her to offer him the bowl, but she did not. She continued to watch him inscrutably. I come from the north, Zouga said at last. Then call me Bakela."
Your sire slew the one before me, said the woman.
Her voice was compelling, for although the fluted lips barely moved, it was thrown with the power and timbre of the skilled ventriloquist. The sound of it seemed to quiver in the air long after she finished speaking and he knew now with certainty who had spoken in the voice of child and maid, of warrior and wild animal. He was a sick man, Zouga replied, not questioning the source of her knowledge. Not querying how she had known that he was the son of the father.
Her words explained much to Zouga, and it was logical that the Urnlimo was a hereditary duty, the office of high priestess being passed on down the years. This magnificent woman was the latest bearer of the title. My father was driven mad by the sickness in his blood. He did not know what he did, Zouga explained. It was part of the prophecy. " The Umlimo's statement shimmered against the cave walls, but she did not stir while the silence spun out over many minutes. These, Zouga spoke at last, indicating the dusty, crumbling piles of dead, "who were they, and how did they die? "They are the people of the Rozwi, " said the woman, and they died by fire and smoke."
Who laid the fire? " Zouga persisted. The black bull from the south.
The Angoni."
Zouga was silent again imagining the tribe fleeing here, to their holy place, their refuge, the women carrying the children, running like driven game ahead of the beaters, looking back over their shoulders for a glimpse of the waving tufts on the crowns of the warshields and the plumed headdresses of the Angoni arnadoda.
He imagined them lying here in the darkness listening to the ring of axes and shouts of the besieging warriors as they cut the timber and piled it in the mouth of the cave, and then the crackle of the flames as they put fire to it and the first choking acrid clouds of smoke boiled into the cave.
He could hear again in his imagination the screams and cries of the choking, dying victims, and the shouts and the laughter of the men beyond the flaming, smoking barricade of timber. That too was part of the prophecy, " said the Umlirno and was silent. In the silence there was a soft rustling sound like a leaf blown by the breeze across the tiles at midnight, and Zouga's eyes turned towards the sound.
A dark thing flowed out of the shadows at the back of the cave, like a trickle of spilt blood, black in the gloom but catching the firelight in pinpricks of reflected light.
It rustled softly across the stone floor, and Zouga felt his skin crawl and his nostrils flare at the sweetish mousy odour which he had noticed before, but which he recognized now.
It was the smell of snake.
Zouga stared at it, frozen with fascinated horror, for the reptile was as thick as his wrist and the full length of it was lost in the recesses of the cave. The head slid into the circle of orange firelight. The scales glittered with a marble lustre, the lidless eyes fixed Zouga with an unblinking stare and from the slyly grinning lipless mouth the silken black tongue vibrated as it tasted his scent upon the air. Sweet Christ! Zouga whispered hoarsely and dropped his hand to the hilt of his hunting-knife on his belt, but the Urnlimo did not move.
The snake lifted its head from the stone and dipped it over the bowl of milk. It began to drink.
It was a mamba, a black mamba, the most venomous of all the reptiles, the death it could inflict was swift but agonizing beyond all nightmares of pain. Zouga had not believed that a mamba could grow to such dimensions, for as he watched it drink half its length was still lost in the shadows.
After a minute the monstrous reptile lifted its head from the bowl and turned towards the Umlirno, it began to slide forward, the muscles under the glittering scales convulsing in little waves that came running down its length towards the broad spatulate head.
It touched the woman's bare knee with the flickering black tongue, seeming to use the tongue like a blind man uses his cane to grope its way along her thigh, licking briefly at the lips of her bulging sex, and then lifting itself up over her belly, over her breasts, still licking at her smoothly oiled skin, it rose up around her neck and then slid down over the other shoulder until it came to rest at last suspended around her neck, the head reaching out the length of a man's arm ahead of her at the level of her breasts; swaying slightly, it fixed Zouga once more with that cold ophidian stare.
Zouga licked his lips, and relaxed his grip on the hilt of the knife.
I have come to seek wisdom, he said hoarsely. I know what you seek, " replied the Urnlirno. "But you will find more than you seek. "Who will lead me? "Follow the little seeker of sweetness in the treetops. "I do not understand. " Zouga frowned, still watching the huge snake, and the Umlirno did not reply. Her silence was clearly an invitation to ponder the reply, and Zouga did so in silence, but found no explanation. He memorized the words, and would have asked another question but there was a silken rush out of the darkness near him, and he started half to his feet as a second snake slid swiftly past him.
It was another mamba, but a smaller snake, not much thicker than his thumb, and as long as twice the stretch of his arms. Half its length was raised arrow-straight in the air, and it sailed on its tail up to the kneeling woman with her grotesque living necklace.
The woman did not move, and the smaller snake stood before her, swaying gently from side to side, lowering itself gradually until it touched tongue to darting black tongue with the thick reptile around h
er neck.
Then it slid forward and began to roll itself around the body of the other snake, throwing turn after turn like a sailor lashing a sheet about a mast, and each time it rolled, it showed its soft white pulsating underbelly with the narrow scales reaching from flank to flank.
Neither the woman nor the bigger snake moved, nor removed their steadfast gaze from Zouga's fascinated pale face. The thinner lighter-colonred body of the second snake began a slow rhythmical and sensual movement, expanding and contracting about the thicker and darker body of the other and Zouga realized that they were a mating pair.
Two-thirds of the way down the underbelly of the male were the elongated scales that guarded the genital sac. As the male's excitement mounted so the scales gaped apart and the penis began to extrude. It was the colour and shape of the bloom of a night-flowering cactus, a pale lilac belled flower that gleamed like wet satin.
insistently the male caressed the thick, dark body, and gradually his ardourlwas rewarded. The female rolled a portion of her own length, the white belly throbbing softly in acquiescence, exposing the scaled genital purse.
With a long shuddering movement the male slid his length down hers, white belly pressed to belly, and the swollen lilac flower prised open the female sexual purse, distorting the lips. The female mamba opened her mouth wide, and her throat was a lovely buttercup yellow. In her top jaw the small bony needles of her fangs were erect, each tipped with a pearly drop of venom, and she emitted a low sibilant hiss of ecstasy or pain as the male locked his penis deeply into her.
Zouga found he was sweating. A droplet slid down from his temple into his beard. The bizarre courtship and copulation had taken only minutes during which neither he nor the Umlimo had moved, but now she spoke. The white eagle has stooped on the stone falcons, and cast them to earth She paused. "Now the eagle shall lift them up again and they will fly afar."