Imaro: Book I

by Charles R. Saunders

  “Kanoko and Keteke were missing,” he said. “We found Kanoko’s body at the pool, for everyone in the manyattas knew that was where he and Keteke would go. Your trail was not difficult to follow from there ….”

  “So you came here to kill me?” Imaro snarled. “Do it quickly, then, for I have done what I had to do.”

  “You have slain fellow Ilyassai of your clan,” Mubaku said sternly. “You loosed the ngombes from the boma, causing the deaths of some before we could recover all of them. Those are great wrongs.”

  “And have the Ilyassai not wronged me?” Imaro shouted.

  For a fleeting moment then, the Kitoko clan warriors saw what lay beneath Imaro’s impregnable exterior: a hurt child.

  “Yes,” Mubaku replied. “We have.”

  Astounded by those words, Imaro leaned back against the pillar that suddenly was all that was keeping him on his feet.

  “How long do you think we have been here, Imaro?” the ol-arem asked. “We followed your spoor quickly. Chitendu’s mchawi was not as strong as he thought, or perhaps he was so intent on you that he failed to realize that we were coming. We heard everything: all his boasts and claims of the evils he had done to us – and to you and your mother. My daughter…

  “Chitendu’s mchawi did not capture us; we would have slain him, if you hadn’t done so.

  “But it was your fight – your second olmaiyo – and you won it. For afterward, we were not going to allow those demon-things to slay you. Nor would we slay you ourselves.”

  Masadu, the master of mafundishu-ya-muran, stepped forward then, and laid his own arem, simi and shield at Imaro’s feet.

  “When Chitendu died, so did his lies,” the scarred warrior said. “In our minds and memories, we finally saw the truth of what happened on your olmaiyo, not the lie Muburi made us think we saw.”

  He looked deeply into Imaro’s eyes.

  “Never before has a man of the Ilyassai slain Ngatun as you did,” Masadu said. “Never before has an Ilyassai done what you have this night. Warrior – my weapons are yours.”

  Imaro remained impassive.

  “Take them, Imaro,” Mubaku urged.

  Imaro still neither moved nor spoke. Mubaku’s next words came haltingly, as if at great cost.

  “The wrongs we Ilyassai have done to you are greater than any you have done to us,” the ol-arem said. “If killing Muburi and Kanoko, and stampeding the ngombes, were part of what you had to do to destroy the evil that was Chitendu – an evil we did not even know was still among us – we can live with that.

  “You are a man and a warrior, Imaro. You have done deeds greater than any Ilyassai of any clan since the time of the First Ancestors – of Ajunge himself. Return to the manyattas with us. We will do you honor – and we will honor the memory of Katisa, who brought you among us. No longer will you be called ‘son-of-no-father.’ I will make you my own son, for your mother’s blood is mine, as is yours.”

  Imaro looked at him then. Mubaku, father of Katisa. Mubaku, his grandfather. He recalled a day, long past, when he had unwittingly called Mubaku “mkale-ya-mzazi” – father of my mother. On that day, Mubaku had struck him senseless.

  He bent, and took up Masadu’s arem and simi. As he held the warrior-trainer’s weapons in his hands, new strength flowed into his weary limbs. It was the strength of vindication. His lifelong goal – acceptance as a warrior among his mother’s people – was his at last. For one, painfully short moment, his heart sang in triumph.

  Then the memories returned, crowding his mind like ants teeming from an overturned hill. Bitter memories, hateful memories, each one a brick in a soaring wall of acrimony that would forever stand between him and the people who had now, belatedly, acknowledged him. The Ilyassai were a proud people, a harsh people, a fierce people, a just people … but they were not his people.

  And he could not forget…

  His hands opened. Masadu’s weapons fell with a clatter and a clang to the rock-strewn ground. His heart hardened. And the hurt child spoke.

  “You did not accept me before,” he said tonelessly. “I will not accept you now.”

  Then he turned and strode past the silent warriors. He descended the broken stairway he had climbed under Chitendu’s ensorcelment. He left it to the others to see to Keteke’s remains, though the image of her terror-stricken face would accuse him for the rest of his life.

  Dawn spread wings of pink through the sky as Imaro left the Place of Stones. He headed northward, deliberately taking the opposite direction from the one his mother had taken long rains ago. Chitendu had lied – Imaro knew that only Katisa could tell him who his father was. But she had refused to tell him during the five rains he had been with her. And now – he had no desire to know, nor to seek her out for any other reason. He desired only solitude.

  Then he heard the singing. It came from behind him, from the Place of Stones. He recognized the words of the song, punctuated by the rhythmic clash of spear butts against stone. It was the song sung by warriors when they returned triumphant from olmaiyo.

  The deep-voiced words wrenched at his emotions. Almost… almost, he turned, almost he yielded to Mubaku’s promise of honor and fellowship among the only people he had ever known.

  But the wall of rancor was too strong. Without looking back, he strode onward, the echoes of the Ilyassai song fading as he resolutely shut his ears against it.

  The weapon was out of the crucible. Now, the forging would begin.

  PART II

  THE HARAMIA

  THE AFUA

  In the country of the fierce,

  An Ilyassai is king.

  -- Tamburure proverb

  Imaro stood at the juncture between forest and savanna – two entirely different worlds. He hesitated, uncertain where his next footsteps should take him.

  As he had wandered farther north in the Tamburure, far beyond the territory the Ilyassai claimed, he noted that the occasional copses of trees with which he was familiar were becoming larger and more frequent. And he was also beginning to see trees of types he had never before encountered. Gradually, the woodlands had thickened, until they became the towering palisade of bark, limbs and leaves before which the warrior now stood.

  He looked back in the direction from which he had come. In the distance, beyond the scatterings of trees, he could see the last of the golden grassland of the Tamburure. Mwesu the moon had waxed and waned six times since he had departed from the Place of Stones and left the Kitoko clan behind. During that time, he had avoided all contact with other people. And he had wandered through places into which no Ilyassai had ever before set foot.

  During his travels, he had seen ample signs of human habitation: herds of cattle, bomas, and dwellings different from those of the Ilyassai. And he had caught glimpses of people who did not resemble the Ilyassai and their neighboring tribes. But because they did not look like him, either, he avoided them.

  Having rejected the weapons Mubaku had offered him, Imaro had spent the first weeks of his exile living in a manner similar to that of his distant ancestors. Stones and sharpened sticks were his weapons, and with such crude equipment, his hunts were seldom successful. On some days, he went hungry; on others, he ate things the Ilyassai would have disdained. But he was no longer an Ilyassai, so it did not matter what he ate or did not eat.

  One day, Imaro came across the corpse of a man. Or, at least, the parts of the carcass that the scavengers had left behind. From the skin that had not been torn away by the teeth of Fisi and Mbweha, Imaro could see that the man had been extremely dark in hue. He could also see that the man had been a warrior; his spear still lay in the grass, as did a bladed weapon that was smaller than a simi, but larger than the dagger N’tu-mwaa had carried.

  The dead man’s clothing had been torn asunder, but enough of it remained intact to allow Imaro to create a makeshift garment to wrap around his loins. He took the man’s weapons, as well. The spear was nothing like an arem. Its blade was not nearly as long, and its p
oint was far narrower. It would, however, suit Imaro’s purpose, which was to hunt with greater efficiency.

  For a moment, he wondered why this warrior had been wandering alone, like him. He wondered how the man had died. And he wondered how he would have responded if he had met this man in life. Then he left his speculations, along with the man’s remains, behind.

  With better weapons at his disposal, Imaro’s eating improved. His body, which had grown leaner, now regained the massive musculature that was reaching its maturity. His hair had grown into an unruly, wooly bush – never again would he wear it in the ocher-caked braids of the Ilyassai. And never again would he allow his head to be shaved like that of a Tamburure woman.

  Although his eyes remained alert to the constant dangers of the wilderness, Imaro’s face bore an expression of melancholy. The isolation he had welcomed after he left the Place of Stones was beginning to wear on him, though he would never have admitted it. At first, he had reveled in his freedom from the opprobrium he had endured during his life among his mother’s people. Now, he longed for human contact – contact that was not hostile.

  But he was not yet willing to incur the risks involved in initiating such contact. So he continued to embrace solitude as though it were a friend.

  For a moment longer, Imaro stood at the threshold of the forest. Once again, he looked back toward the Tamburure. Even at a distance, its familiarity drew him – but that familiarity included unwanted memories… most of all, that of Keteke’s face, mouth gaping in a silent scream in the moonlight…

  He shook himself violently, as though his skin was covered with foul water. Then he turned to the woodland.

  Never before had he seen so many trees clustered so closely together. The forest stretched as far as he could see, in all directions other than the one that lay behind him – the one he did not want to take. He could travel along the forest’s edge, in the hope that he would eventually find a way around it. Or he could venture into the foliage to see what might await him there.

  The question of whether he should enter the forest was far more straightforward than the ones that had plagued him since his confrontation with Chitendu. The sorcerer’s words repeated themselves endlessly, sometimes maddeningly, in his mind. And all too often, the Place of Stones intruded in his dreams, as did the faces of the creatures that dwelled there. So did the face of Chitendu – and, always, Keteke.

  Imaro did not welcome those dreams. But he could not prevent them. And the questions continued …

  Where was Naama? Who were the High Sorcerers? Who – or what – were the Mashataan?

  None of those names had ever been mentioned in the tales of the past that Ilyassai clan elders told by firelight. Even so, Imaro was certain that Chitendu had been the least of his enemies. There were others who were far more powerful and dangerous than the disgraced former oibonok of the Ilyassai. Imaro needed to find them, before they found him.

  But how?

  Imaro pushed that question to the back of his mind, as he always did when he could not find an answer to it. He listened to the sounds of the forest, which were unlike those of the savanna. To his ears, the chorus of birdsong was a cacophony. The screeches of the monkeys, which to Imaro looked like smaller, long-tailed cousins of the baboons that roamed the Tamburure, grated annoyingly. Even the voice of the wind was different, rustling noisily through leaves rather than sighing softly in the grass.

  For a moment longer, Imaro stood, shifting his spear from one hand to the other as he looked from the forest to the plain.

  Then he decided. The forest was a place of trees, not a Place of Stones. It was a living place, not a dead place. He did not think he would find Naama or the Mashataan in its depths. But he might well find something that would fill the emptiness that gaped like an abyss inside him.

  Gripping his spear firmly in on hand, Imaro entered the forest. And the forest embraced him.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Imaro’s first reaction to the forest was a sense of enclosement. The trees, most of which were far taller and thicker than those that dotted the Tamburure, crowded against him, even though there were spaces between them through which he could walk. Under his feet, the carpet of fallen leaves gave him an uncomfortable sensation, different from the familiar touch of trampled grass. Overhead, the foliage concealed the sky like the roof of a manyatta.

  The shapes of birds and monkeys flitted across his line of vision, and hordes of insects flew around him and crawled along the ground. He saw shapes moving between the trees; the shapes of larger animals that were either evading him – or stalking him. He noticed the tracks of Chui, the leopard, but none of Ngatun or Matisho. And there was spoor of other beasts he could not identify.

  His kufahuma sense, which had been honed in the wide spaces of the Tamburure, could not help him in this place. To survive, he would have to learn its signs of danger… and learn them quickly.

  When Imaro first stepped into the forest, all sound ceased, as though the entire woodland was aware of the presence of an intruder. Then, after a short silence, the calls and cries resumed.

  The forest was a much noisier place than the Tamburure, and Imaro could hardly hear the sound of his own footsteps. But he did hear the distant trumpeting of Tembo, the elephant, and he wondered how a creature that large could squeeze its bulk through the spaces between the trees.

  And above the cacophony of forest sounds, Imaro heard another noise – one that was strange, yet tantalizingly familiar. It sounded like rain. Yet shafts of sunlight penetrated the spaces in the canopy of leaves high above his head.

  Curiosity piqued, Imaro decided that he would seek the source of this new sound. Gripping his spear more tightly, the warrior pushed his way between the trees, and through patches of undergrowth splashed with flowers. He looked back once – and saw only trees. For the first time in his life, he could not see the Tamburure.

  Then he heard a rustle in the trees, directly overhead. He looked up quickly, spear poised to hurl. High above, he saw an unfamiliar creature that resembled a monkey, but was far larger and lacked a tail. In face and shape, the beast was more manlike than those of monkeys or baboons. Thick, black hair covered its body. Even in the distance from its perch in the high branches, Imaro could see that the creature was observing him, examining him.

  The beast made soft, hooting noises as it gazed at Imaro. Then it screeched loudly, shook the branch on which it was standing, and sped off, using its long arms to swing from tree to tree.

  Imaro paused for a moment longer, wondering if the man-like creature would return with others of its kind. For several heartbeats, he strove to extend his kufahuma sense through the loud noses of the forest. When he was satisfied that the beast of the trees was not returning, he continued toward the rain-like sound that had attracted his attention.

  As he drew closer, Imaro could hear other sounds; sounds with which he was very familiar – human voices. He halted. People were the last thing he expected to find in the forest, for all the tribes of the Tamburure knew that the savanna was the only place where cattle could be grazed, and manyattas built. Yet the sounds he heard could only have been made by humans – men, not women, judging by the timbre of their voices.

  Imaro wasn’t certain he wanted to resume contact with his own kind. But the closest alternative he had seen was the hairy creature of the trees. Without further contemplation, Imaro pressed forward, moving more cautiously now. The watery sound grew louder, as did the voices, which conversed in a language Imaro did not understand.

  Soon, only a thin screen of foliage separated Imaro from the sounds that had intrigued him. He pulled a bit of the brush away – and stared wide-eyed, transfixed by his first sight of a river.

  The Tamburure was a land of lakes and ponds, not rivers. The sight of a wide ribbon of flowing water, tinged brown with silt, caused Imaro to blink several times in disbelief.

  On the other side of the river, he saw another forest, like the one that now enclosed him. Then he tu
rned his attention to the voices. And he saw two men on the bank of the river closest to him. The men were dark of skin, ebony to Imaro’s own umber shade. They were shorter than the people of the Tamburure, but stockier in build. Loin-coverings of brightly colored cloth – which looked to Imaro like the hides of bizarre beasts – were their only garments, other than strings of beads that circled their wrists and ankles.

  A large, hollowed-out log lay beside the two men, who were wrestling a large net filled with fish into the hollow. Imaro had seen fish in the lakes of the Tamburure, but the Ilyassai never ate them, and did not make nets. He wondered why these men were going to the trouble of hauling the fish into the log – then the river exploded in a shower of water, and a huge shape hurtled onto the bank and seized one of the men in its jaws.

  The sudden cries of both men tore at Imaro’s ears… and he immediately sprang into action.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bursting through the foliage and raising his spear in both hands, Imaro raced down the riverbank. Neither the men nor the river-beast were aware of him – not until he plunged the point of his spear into the creature’s scaly hide. Imaro’s thrust was so powerful that the spearpoint drove completely through the creature’s body, pinning it to the riverbank.

  Imaro leaped out of the way of the river-beast’s lashing tail. Its long, teeth-laden jaws opened in agony, releasing their hold on their intended prey. Imaro paid no heed to the man. For instead of weakening, the river-beast’s struggles grew stronger, and it was actually beginning to pull the spear-point out of the soft soil of the riverbank, even as blood poured from the wound.

  Quickly, Imaro pulled his other weapon – the dead warrior’s dagger – from its sheath. Moving out of range of the snapping jaws of the roaring river-beast, he focused on the creature’s eyes – small, reptilian, malevolent. The beast was almost free from the soil, and was turning toward Imaro…