Nyumbani Tales

by Charles R. Saunders

  Mizuna reached out touched Katisa’s face. The herb-woman’s gaze probed deeply into the younger woman’s troubled eyes.

  “Have I ever done you harm?” Mizuna asked in a gentle tone.

  Like a child, Katisa shook her head.

  “Then trust me now. There is a place you can go to, if you are willing to take the risk. This place lies neither to the east nor the west, where the enemies of the Ilyassai dwell. Nor does it lie to the forbidden north. It lies to the south.”

  “The Ardhi ya Nyama? Katisa exclaimed incredulously. “The Land of Beasts? Are you telling me it would be better to be eaten by the monsters that dwell there than captured by the Turkhana or Zamburu?”

  “I thought you trusted me,” Mizuna reproved.

  “I do,” said Katisa. “But ...”

  “Do you know the story of the Lost Clan?” Mizuna interrupted.

  “Yes,” Katisa replied in a puzzled tone. “I heard the tale from your own lips when I was a little girl. Many rains ago, a warrior named Kamayu had a disagreement with his clan’s ol-arem. In anger, Kamayu and most of the clan marched southward, toward the Ardhi ya Nyama. They were never heard from again, as the beasts of the Ardhi must have killed them.”

  “So it is said,” Mizuna agreed. “But if the Lost Clan did disappear, it was not because of the Ardhi’s beasts.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “The story was told to me by Myinya, the mother of my grandmother, not long before her death,” Mizuna replied. “In the time when Myinya was a young herb-woman, she loved Kamayu. But the ol-arem loved her, too, and that was the reason for their anger against each other. In the end, Myinya chose the ol-arem, and Kamayu and his followers were angry.

  “Because she still had feelings for Kamayu, Myinya gave them an herbal dawa she had recently discovered. When rubbed on the skin, this dawa drove away beasts that hunt by scent. Yet at the same time, it attracted game animals to within reach of hunters’ spears. Because she cared for Kamayu, Myinya gave him the dawa. But because she loved the ol-arem more, she did not go south with the Lost Clan.

  “Since then, the Ilyassai have believed the Lost Clan marched stubbornly to certain doom. Only to her daughter did Myinya eventually tell the secret of the dawa. The story came down to me. And now, I have told it to you.”

  “So, you’re saying there could be Ilyassai living beyond the Ardhi ya Nyama,” Katisa said.

  Mizuna nodded.

  “But how could I follow the Lost Clan?” Katisa asked. “I have no access to the dawa. The secret of making it must have died long ago, with Myinya.”

  A smile spread slowly across Mizuna’s face.

  “You are wrong, Katisa,” she said. “Before she died, Myinya chose me to succeed her as herb-woman. She gave me all her knowledge ... including the way to make the dawa that drives away dangerous beasts.”

  “And you will give that secret on to me, so that I can go the way of the Lost Clan to escape Chitendu?” Katisa asked, already knowing what Mizuna’s reply would be.

  Mizuna nodded. She chose not to tell Katisa that before Karamu’s fateful olmaiyo, she had decided that the daughter of Mubaku and Junyari would become her successor. Now, that could not be.

  Better to keep that grief to myself, Mizuna thought.

  Katisa wanted to hurl herself into the older woman’s arms and weep in gratitude. But that was not the Ilyassai way.

  “If I am going to go at all, I must leave tonight,” Katisa said.

  “Then I will tell you the secret of the dawa now,” said Mizuna, aware of the emotion Katisa was suppressing. “It is unbelievably simple. First, you rub your skin with biki-leaves, then with those of the jawuma – always in that order. There is nothing more to it than that. Yet Myinya was nearly killed as she tried different combinations of leaves before finding the right one.”

  Reaching into the shadows behind her, Mizuna produced a large leather pouch equipped with a strap that could be slung over one shoulder.

  “I have picked many leaves over the past days,” she said. “The biki are on the right; the jawuma on the left.”

  Wordlessly, Katisa accepted the pouch. She was filled not only with gratitude, but also awe. Given the many rains Mizuna had lived, and the great age to which Myinya was known to have lived, the events of which the herb-woman had spoken must have occurred beyond the memory of anyone else in the Kitoko clan. Yet Mizuna could just as easily have repeating yesterday’s gossip.

  Then, in defiance of the Ilyassai way, Katisa embraced Mizuna and allowed a few tears to fall onto the older woman’s wrinkled brow. The tensions and bitterness of the past few days seeped freely from Katisa’s tightly shut eyelids.

  Finally, Mizuna gently freed herself from Katisa’s arms.

  “You must go before dawn,” Mizuna said quietly. “May the ancestors guide your way.”

  “Yes,” Katisa said solemnly. “Thank you, Mizuna.”

  Slinging the pouch over her shoulder, Katisa turned and squeezed through the doorway of the herb-woman’s dwelling. On her way back to her own manyatta, Katisa did not notice the small shape that hid in the background.

  It was Muburi, a boy who had seen the passing of fewer than ten rains. Leaving the ngombes he was guarding to relieve himself, Muburi had spotted Katisa as she had made her way to the manyatta of the herb-woman. The curious child followed her, then crouched outside the manyatta, and heard everything that had passed between Katisa and Mizuna.

  Now, after Katisa’s departure, the boy’s brow furrowed in thought. What was he to do with what he had just overheard? Should he tell the sentries that Katisa was about to flee? He quickly dismissed that alternative, for he knew he would be flogged mercilessly for leaving his cattle unattended. But the next day, when Chitendu would come for Katisa ... then he would tell the oibonok what he knew. Katisa would not have traveled far ...

  Muburi smiled as he returned to his ngombes, and his thoughts overflowed with fanciful speculation on how Chitendu might reward him.

  THE SUN HAD SET ONLY recently, and the southern edge of the Tamburure was now veiled in a twilight gloom. Over the treetops in the distance, Katisa could see the looming escarpment that marked the beginning of the Ardhi ya Nyama. She decided to rest over the night. Tomorrow, she would arrive in the last sanctuary of the giant beasts that had roamed the length and breadth of Nyumbani before the advent of man and woman.

  It was not difficult for her to slip away from the manyattas three nights ago. She knew where the sentries would be, and believed she could avoid the herd-boys. No palisade surrounded the manyattas, for the Ilyassai were so feared that neither human nor beast would dare to attack their dwellings.

  Thus, Katisa had simply stolen away, leaving little sentiment behind. For her father, she felt no regrets, as the distance between them had widened steadily since her mother’s death.

  She was accoutered for a long march, like the clan’s seasonal migrations to better grazing land. Gone were the muvazi and copper ornaments in which she would have been wed. Now, she was clad in a brief cowhide garment that left her limbs bare and unencumbered. Her only adornment was a boar-tusk that hung from a thong around her neck. Karamu had given it to her as a token of his last kill before olmaiyo. It was all she had left of him.

  Her only weapons were a slender throwing-spear and the dagger with which she had threatened Chitendu. For an Ilyassai woman, that was more-than-sufficient armament.

  Before leaving the manyattas, Katisa had rubbed her skin with the biki and jawuma leaves, in the order Mizuna had prescribed. Not much time passed before the herb-woman’s dawa was put to the test.

  A rustle in the grass had alerted her that she was being stalked. Her keen eyes spotted the tawny, moon-washed form of a lioness several strides behind her. The great cat seemed about to charge ... then it hacked and sneezed in sudden disgust, and padded disdainfully away from its intended prey.

  Later that night, Katisa passed a rare clump of savannah trees. She walked beyond the dist
ance across which a leopard lurking in the branches could spring. There was, indeed, a leopard in the trees. And it did leap ... in the opposite direction from Katisa, spitting and snarling as it ran away.

  “I must smell like a civet,” Katisa said ruefully – and gratefully.

  Thus far, there had been no signs of pursuit from Chitendu. The farther the distance between her and the oibonok increased, the better. Now she was entering the edge of a narrow fringe of forest that separated the plain from the escarpment. Like all Ilyassai, Katisa did not like forests. But this night, at least, she could sleep comfortably in the shelter of a tree instead of napping fitfully and tending a night-fire as she had on the savannah.

  As she clambered up a particularly tall tree and found a comfortable fork in its branches, Katisa wondered how the Lost Clan had traversed the seemingly impenetrable cliffs that guarded the Ardhi ya Nyama. Soon enough, she would learn.

  She fell asleep.

  And she dreamed ...

  SHE WAS STANDING AT the base of the tree in which she’d been sleeping. She could not recall having climbed down from her perch. A sense that was beyond the ones that served her when she was awake told her that something was standing behind her ... a presence that imbued her with a terror she had never before experienced. She must not turn around; she must not turn around ...

  The thing behind her spoke. It called her name: “Katiiiiiiisa ...”

  She recognized the hollow, whispery voice, even though everything inside her wished that she didn’t. She found herself turning to face the thing that called her name. But she would not open her eyes.

  “Katiiiiiiisa ... look at meeee,” the thing commanded.

  No, her mind pleaded as a force beyond her control slowly pried her eyelids apart.

  I don’t want to see ... I don’t want to see ...

  Her eyes were open. And she saw. And she suppressed a shriek that would have been loud enough to awaken all in the small fringe of forest.

  Standing before her was a thing that had once been a man, but was now only a travesty, a caricature surrounded by a nimbus of bilious green luminescence. Its legs were scored with wounds clawed deep to the bone. Its thigh-muscles hung in gory, striated strips. Entrails slithered downward like snakes from its slashed-open abdomen to its groin. One arm clung by a single shred of sinew to its shoulder. Its face was chewed and mutilated almost beyond recognition.

  Almost ... but not quite. Katisa knew that face. It was the face of Karamu ... her Karamu ... calling her to join him in death ...

  Dead hands bore deadly weapons, the same ones with which he had been buried. The torn arm carried his simi; the sound one his broken spear. The arm that held the spear drew back. And the eerie voice crooned: “Katiiiiiiisa ... come, Katiiiiiiisa ...”

  “No!” Katisa shouted.

  Her feet moved, carrying her away from to spot to which her terror had rooted her. The steel point of the spear bit into the bole of the tree. Even though it dangled loosely, the arm that held the simi transferred the weapon to the thing’s empty hand. The green glow intensified.

  “Cooome ... Katiiiiiiisa ...”

  Now the thing she refused to think of as Karamu shuffled toward her. It raised its simi to strike. Reflexively, she raised the blade of her dagger to meet the attack. Lithe and fearless, Katisa was a match for many a warrior. But she was reluctant to battle this foul distortion of the warrior who had loved her.

  “Katiiiiiiisa ... come.”

  Only her lightning quickness saved her from the first vicious thrust at her stomach. Her dagger parried the next blow, and the one after that. But she was being forced to retreat by the attack of the dead thing. She fought defensively, unwilling to add to Karamu’s terrible wounds.

  “Katiiiiiiisa ... come.”

  Even as she retreated, she noticed that after its initial flare, the emerald glow surrounding Karamu’s corpse was dimming. Bits of rotting flesh were falling. The strokes of the simi were weakening.

  “Cooome ... Katiiiiiiisa.”

  The voice had changed. No longer did it mimic that of Karamu. Katisa recognized the new voice. It was Chitendu’s.

  The mere thought of the oibonok’s name sent a torrent of rage flooding through Katisa. Chitendu had pursued her after all ... in the most hideous way he could devise. She leaped to the attack. The clangor of her dagger against the dead thing’s blade echoed through the trees. It was Chitendu she fought now, not her dead lover. She battled with the fury of a lioness.

  Now, the dead thing’s movements slowed. Katisa saw an opening. Her blade flashed in the moonlight. The dead thing’s simi spun to the ground. She plunged her weapon into a heart that had long since stopped beating. The dead thing staggered. Its nimbus faded to a faint glimmer.

  But it did not fall.

  “Katiiiiiiisa ...”

  The dead thing lurched heavily against her, even as she desperately attempted to wrench her dagger from rotting flesh. A bony hand jerked the boar tusk from her neck, then snaked around her waist. As sharp teeth snapped at her skin in a ghastly parody of a lover’s caress, Katisa cried out in pain and horror.

  Her heel caught on a root and she fell backward. The dead thing landed on top of her. Its teeth slashed beast-like at her breasts and throat. Katisa struggled wildly as she and the dead thing rolled across the forest floor in a macabre embrace. The green glow was almost gone now, as was most of the flesh on the dead thing’s face. The movement of its limbs slowed, then stopped.

  One last time, it called her name, in the ghost of a whisper:

  “Katiiiiiiisa ...

  The sound echoed endlessly as darkness closed on Katisa’s consciousness.

  DAWN’S CRIMSON LIGHT greeted Katisa as she awakened. The moment she opened her eyes, she realized that the horror she remembered from the night before was more than a mere dream. For she was lying at the bottom of the tree, in the embrace of a skeleton.

  With a cry of disgust, Katisa shoved the clinging bones aside and rose to her feet. She brushed her skin, as though that action could cleanse her. A slight charnel scent wafted from bits of rotting flesh strewn haphazardly across the ground. Nearby, Katisa saw the paw-prints of a hyena. The scavenger had come close to where she had lain unconscious. Then it had abruptly turned away.

  Was it the dawa that had driven off the leopard, Katisa wondered. Or had the animal been repulsed by what it had seen, rather than what it smelled?

  She looked again at the disjointed skeleton.

  “Karamu,” she murmured as she touched the teeth-marks on her skin. Then she turned away from the skeleton and climbed the tree to retrieve her and the pouch of biki and jawuma leaves. On the way up, she avoided contact with Karamu’s broken spear, which was embedded in the tree’s bark.

  Her expression settled into a grim mask as she descended, then plucked her dagger from the ribs of the skeleton. The bones may have been Karamu’s, she thought, but the will that had animated the warrior’s corpse, and beclouded her mind so she could not tell the difference between dream and reality, was that of someone else.

  She knew that Chitendu had done something forbidden and unspeakable. He had inserted his spirit into Karamu’s corpse, transforming it into a mindless creature that did Chitendu’s bidding. Long ago, the oibonoks of the Ilyassai clans had renounced such evil use of sorcery. But not Chitendu.

  Her spirit had prevailed over that of the oibonok. But the victory gave her no joy. She could only hope that she had slain Chitendu’s spirit ... if that were possible.

  Katisa searched the ground upon which the bones lay. She spotted the boar’s tusk that the dead thing had torn from her. She picked it up and re-knotted its leather thong around her neck. With a final glance at Karamu’s remains, she turned and began to make her way through the strip of forest.

  When she emerged on the other side, she saw what Kamayu and the Lost Clan had seen many rains ago. Like an open mouth, a small canyon split the stony face of the towering escarpment. Here was the way to the Ardhi
ya Nyama.

  Katisa began walk across the stretch of grass and trees that led to the canyon. But before she reached the opening, a sudden wind blew behind her. In its swift passage, the leaves and grass whispered her name: “Katiiiiiiisa ...”

  And as she entered the canyon, Katisa wondered if she would ever be truly free from Chitendu and the evil he served.

  THE BLACKSMITH

  AND THE BAMBUTI

  OTHER THAN IMARO AND Dossouye, Pomphis is my favorite character. At the time Imaro first began taking shape in my imagination, Pomphis was there, too. The idea of an outsized warrior like Imaro teaming up with a pygmy intrigued me. By the way, back then the term “pygmy” was not considered a pejorative in describing the small people who live in the forests of Central Africa. These days, the preferred term is “Mbuti” or “Bambuti,” and that’s the reference I will continue to use.

  Indirectly, I may have been influenced by Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in conceiving Imaro and Pomphis. But I did not pattern either of my characters’ personalities after that famous pair.

  In the beginning of their respective sagas, Pomphis shared the stage with Imaro and Tanisha. Sometimes, he even stole the show. But I had always planned on writing about Pomphis’s misadventures in the time before he met Imaro. “The Blacksmith and the Bambuti,” which appeared in a small-press magazine called Escape in 1977, takes place during the Bambuti’s time as a mjimja, or jester, at the court of the Sha’a of Azania, one of the greatest kingdoms of Nyumbani’s East Coast.

  Readers of the novel Imaro: The Trail of Bohu will be aware that “Pomphis” was not the Bambuti’s original name. At the Sha’a’s court, he was known by another name that was not exactly flattering. To avoid confusion, I referred to him as “Pomphis” in this story.

  I might add that I had more fun writing this tale than any other to date.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Walukaga the blacksmith would have been elated when the Royal Summoner presented him with a single black hornbill feather. Such a presentation meant that the recipient was invited to appear at the court of the Sha’a, the ruler of Azania. Rarely was such an honor bestowed upon a common artisan.