Lord of Darkness

by Robert Silverberg

  And after a long while of these barbarous festivities, the cry went up that the meat was cooked, and the eating could thereupon commence.

  Kinguri said to me, “It is first-feast for you, and so we make great holiday tonight, Andubatil!”

  “I am grateful for this high honor.”

  “It is the law that the Imbe-Jaqqa must eat before all others. But you are to be second.”

  For this, too, I did give most courteous thanks.

  Then did a man-witch of the royal court, covered from head to toe with chalked markings that made him look himself like a capering zevvera, go to the centermost of the three cauldrons, and take from it with his bare hands out of the boiling water a joint of meat, and hold it high, and show it to the Jaqqas. Who set up at once the most hideous howling and wailing, as is their way of showing approval, though it sounds like the shrieks of Pandemonium itself.

  And there was no mistaking this haunch, that it was neither cow nor goat nor dog, and I knew whereof that meat had come.

  The witch did carry the steaming meat forth to Calandola, and held it out to the Imbe-Jaqqa to be inspected. Calandola made a sound of assent, and took a deep slavering draught of his bloodied palm-wine, and seized the haunch after that with both his hands, and put his jaws to it and ripped away a great piece.

  “Ayayya! Ayayya! Ayayya!” cried the Jaqqas, capering ever more wildly.

  And then did the Imbe-Jaqqa turn to me, with the great slab of meat in his hands.

  O! The world did spin about me, so that I was the very center and vortex of it, and thought I would be whirled apart! O! And there was a storm in my brain, and a throbbing of my soul, and I felt my breast would burst!

  O! and I prayed that the earth might open and swallow me, that I should not have to partake of this that was offered me!

  Yet was I not engulfed, nor did I fall down faint, nor was there any hiding place. And I grew calm and told myself, as I had told myself often enough before, that all this was meant for some high purpose beyond my understanding.

  “Take and eat,” said Calandola.

  “Lord,” I said, saying it aloud and in English, “I am Andrew Battell Thy servant, and I have fallen into a strange fate, which no doubt Thou had good reason for sending upon me. I will do Thy bidding in all things and I look to Thee to preserve me and to keep my body from peril and my soul from corruption. Amen.” This was mine own prayer, that I had invented myself long ago among the Portugals of São Paulo de Loanda. That prayer had stood me in such good stead thus far, and in uttering it now I felt a great ease of the soul. I took the meat from Calandola, who smiled upon me as benignly as though this were my baptism.

  I stared at the thing I held in my hand, that warm and most tender piece of meat, as though never had I seen meat before, of any sort whatsoever.

  I will eat of it, I told myself. And if I gag and retch and puke it forth, and give offense to the Imbe-Jaqqa, why, let him slay me and cast me next into the pot, and it will not matter to me, it will not matter to me, it will not matter.

  I put my teeth to the forbidden flesh and took a hesitating bite, and closed mine eyes a moment, and swallowed it down.

  I did not gag, I did not retch. That was the greatest amazement I have ever known. The meat was succulent and well seasoned, and had a flavor of it not unlike a fine degree of pork, from a pig well nourished. I felt it pass my tongue and make the juices of my mouth flow forth, and I swallowed it down, and all of this was strangely easy for me. It is only meat, I thought. And meat of a passing good taste, which the Lord hath created and put upon the earth.

  “Andubatil!” cried Imbe Calandola in loud delight and approval. “Eat, Andubatil!”

  I had accepted of their hospitality, and now I knew I was free to hand back the haunch, and ask for some other meat more closely kin to my usual choice. And yet, and yet, and yet: I had not eaten meat of any kind but for those pitiful few scraps of monkey, and so easy was the first bite, and so surprising to my palate, that I thought to myself, If I am to go to Hell for this, the one mouthful will have damned me, so there is no reason not to have another.

  God grant me forgiveness, said I within, and took for myself a second serving of the meat.

  “Andubatil!” cried Calandola again. “Andubatil Jaqqa!”

  And the cry went up on all sides, and became general, as they beheld me eating of their feast, that no other stranger had ever shared with them, and that made me now one of their number: “Andubatil Jaqqa! Andubatil Jaqqa!”

  BOOK

  FOUR:

  Jaqqa

  ONE

  AND SO that night was I entered into the man-eater tribe, and became one among them: the first white Jaqqa that has ever walked this earth, and, God grant it, also the last.

  I had shared their monstrous meal. Within my body now lay shreds of meat that a few hours before had been the flesh of a child of God, a son of Adam. So be it. I made no orations upon that in the inwardness of my soul: for if I had learned anything in this my African sojourn, it was to take each thing as it comes, and ask not to live in English ways in a place that was so alien to all that was English. And thus I might hope to survive until the next morn.

  All that raucous evening the Jaqqas feasted and drank and danced, and I among them did the same. They asked me to dance an English dance for them, but I was hesitant at that, it being so long since I had been in England that I had forgot most of their amusements. Then I recalled the dance that is called the hornpipe, that is done by our sailors aboard the ships, and that I had learned of my brothers Henry and John so long ago in Essex by the water.

  “Dance!” cried Imbe Calandola.

  “Ah, I must fain have music, if I am to dance.”

  He waved to his musicians, telling me to take my choice of them, whichever met my need.

  I went down the ranks of all those painted and gleaming gargoyles and cacodaemons, and lit upon one that took my fancy, a fife-player, that did play the mpunga, which is fashioned from elephanto-tusk.

  “You,” said I. “Give unto me your instrument, so that I can show you the melody I require.”

  He laughed and handed me his instrument, and put my hands into the fingering. I found it not hard to bring a sound from this barbarous fife, though what I made at first was doubly barbarous, harsh and awkward, that drew great gawfing bellows of amusement from the man-eaters. But then did I find the tune, and played it most lively, with a nodding of my head and a prancing of my feet, and gave back the fife to its owner so he could essay the same.

  And lo! he caught the music by its heart, and delivered it so well in a moment that he displayed himself five times as skilled as any Englishman that fifed. The hornpipe that he did play was of course a strange and most discordant one, the Devil’s own hornpipe tune, but yet it had a wild delightful strength in it. And as the sound of it rose high above the Jaqqa camp all of them fell solemn still, and I did my dance.

  Ah, such a dance it was! In the dread frozen silence of these man-eaters I did jig up and down, kicking high my legs, and putting now this hand afore my belly and now that, in the hornpipe manner. The Jaqqas had never beheld its like, and they were thrown into stupor by it, statue-still, amazed, as the long-legged white-skinned man in beads and shells and a palm-cloth loin-clout hopped about amongst them, up one row and down the next, to the wailing melody of that eerie fife.

  “Andubatil Jaqqa!” they began to cry, when the surprise had lifted some from them. “Andubatil! Andubatil!”

  And they rose, and danced behind me, a band of frightful black apparitions with great long spectral legs and arms. They flung out their limbs, they threw back their heads, they shouted, they cried, they stamped their feet. “Ooom-day!” they called. “Oom-da ooom-day ooom da! Ooom-Jaqqa Ooom-Jaqqa ooom ooom ooom! Andubatil! Andubatil! Ooom!”

  When they had had their full share of that, and the fife-man was compelled to stop from soreness of the lips and an excess of laughter, for this was a passing riotous dance, and a most rolli
cking sight withal, these Jaqqas doing the hornpipe, Kinguri did turn to me and say, “Do you know another dance, Andubatil?”

  “Aye, that I do,” said I.

  And I bethought me of the dance of our village known as the longways dance, and called forth eight Jaqqas to take part, and tried to instruct them in the movements, while telling certain musicians how best to imitate the rhythm of our tabor and the squirling of the pipes and the shrill sounds of the fiddle. All this brought great merriment, and the huge black men did leap and fling like Bedlam lunatics, in a dance, God wot, nothing at all like anything the village greens of Essex had ever seen. But they danced until they were sore weary, and would have had more. And I saw myself becoming their dancing-master, and teaching them square dances and round dances and maybe even the morris-dance, too, with tuned bells fastened to their legs and a Robin Hood and a Friar Tuck and a Little John, and one of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s heavy-breasted scar-faced wives to dance the Maid Marian. And then in all this high jollity there came a sudden halt. For Calandola had risen from his throne-stool and was handling my musket, that all this time had lain to one side, unheeded.

  He fingered it most close, the lock and the stock and the barrel, admiring its workmanship, sniffing it at both ends, hefting it to have the weight of it. I thought then he would put it to his shoulder and mimic the firing of it, but he did not seem to comprehend the holding of it.

  Then he looked to me and said, “Show us how.”

  I took the gun from him and put the powder to it, and rammed a ball down the barrel, and saw to my match, and looked about for a place to shoot. A night-owl stood perched on a dark-leaved tree high above the camp, and it croaked its ill-omened sound, and I turned my gun to it. It is no small feat to strike an owl from its perch by night with a musket, but in my time as a soldier of the Portugals I had learned some little skill with that weapon. And so I took my aim and pulled my trigger, and the Jaqqas did gasp aloud at the sight of the flash of the powder in the pan, and I struck the owl fair in his breast and knocked him aflutter to the ground.

  Again the cry went up, “Andubatil! Andubatil Jaqqa!”

  And the Jaqqas did turn outward their hands, and slap against their temples, and cut the air with their elbows, which all are their ways of showing amaze.

  This display of killing sank deep in the soul of Imbe Calandola. He stood a long time brooding, looking toward me and then to the shattered fallen owl, and to the musket, and to me again. For he had never seen our weapons in action, and certainly not the musket: for the Portugals are more given to the older instruments, such as the arquebus and the caliver, and muskets are uncommon among them. And a way of striking death from a distance, with so loud a roar and so bright a flash—yea, that caught the Imbe-Jaqqa’s interest, and held it firm!

  Then Calandola did make a little grunt and a gesture, and out of the crowd of women about him came one of his wives, a woman of perhaps thirty years, who bore a maze of tribal scars on her body, and whose teeth were few and whose breasts were long and low-hanging. The Imbe-Jaqqa ordered her to take up a stance at some hundred paces from me, or a little less, and there she stood, unmoving, and seeming as uncaring as a tree.

  “Do it to her,” said Imbe Calandola.

  That command struck me as would a knee in the gut. Cold-blooded slaughter of an innocent woman? God’s eyes, that was worse than cannibalism!

  “Nay,” I said. “I cannot.”

  “Cannot?” Calandola repeated, turning the word around in his mouth as though it were some rare delicacy. “Cannot? Who says this to the Imbe-Jaqqa?”

  Kinguri, closer by me, murmured, “The Imbe-Jaqqa fain would see how your weapon works on such a target.”

  “I understand,” said I, “but it is not in me to slay her.”

  “She has no life except at the Imbe-Jaqqa’s pleasure,” returned Kinguri. “That has now been withdrawn from her.”

  “I am tired, and the weapon is heavy, and I have had so much wine tonight that I fear my aim will be untrue.”

  “Your aim was true enough when you shot the owl.”

  “God guided my eye then,” said I, “but He will do that but once a night, and before I may shoot again I must make special prayers to Him, that will be quite lengthy.”

  In thus speaking of God and long prayer I hoped to divert them, until they forgot this evil enterprise, as my circumcision had been forgotten. It did not thus befall. Kinguri spat and said something to Calandola; and the Imbe-Jaqqa, growing impatient, folded his arms and grunted, and his eyes blazed and a ghastly raging scowl came across his features.

  Kinguri said, “Andubatil, why do you wait?”

  “This is not easy for me.”

  “The Imbe-Jaqqa would see the display.”

  “I beg you—”

  And all this while the woman stood unmoving, waiting the fatal shot. Whether she was aware of the essence of our talk or no, I cannot say: but I have seen dumb animals in the field look with greater sense upon the huntsman that in a moment will blow out their lives.

  Then Calandola, angered to madness now by my slowness, cried out something to me in the Jaqqa tongue, his voice so thick with roarings and snortings that I could not identify the words. He did stamp his foot and spit and pound his fists, and his black face grew blacker still with rage. He appeared at that moment a pure madman, capable of any deed.

  While that he raged, I did begin to reload my musket, which is a painful slow business. I was thinking that if he should launch some attack upon me, and in his anger condemn me to the cauldron, or worse, I would at least turn my musket on him, and take his life before he could have mine.

  Yet that idea went from my mind the instant I conceived it, for it was the greatest folly: among these cannibals the Imbe-Jaqqa was near to being a god, and if I were to harm him even slightly, I knew, the death that his followers would give me would be the most foul this world doth hold, a slow boiling, perhaps, or something far more terrible even than that. So I banished the plan, and searched for some other way to mollify him, but there was none, save to do his bidding. His rage yet mounted and I feared to defy him, and to my disgrace I could no longer find the will to say him nay in this terrible thing.

  Kinguri said, “It will go hard for us all if you do not obey.”

  “Shoot!” howled the Imbe-Jaqqa.

  “Lord give Thy unhappy servant mercy, and forgive me,” I whispered, and I touched my finger to the trigger and discharged my shot.

  Mine arms were trembling and mine eyes were half blinded with tears of shame. Yet did the musket-ball fly true to his target and take the woman between her breasts, and knock her back five or ten paces and drop her sprawling to the ground.

  Some Jaqqas ran to her, and danced about her, and held her up bleeding, and lifted her like a trophy. And they did set up a wild howling of glee.

  Thus did I for the only time in my life slay a purely innocent person, that had done no harm to me, and promised none, and made me no obstacle. And for that I think I will do penance long years before I am let see Paradise. But yet in the moment of doing it I felt I had no other way, but to gratify the dark demand of the Imbe-Jaqqa.

  Who now was entirely at his ease, and smiling, and applauding me for my marksmanship. That crazed wrath of his of only a moment before was altogether gone from him, as though it had never been. He came to my side and wrapped his great arm about me and hugged me joyfully, and gave me warm praise in coarse Jaqqa words I scarce understood, and caressed the hot barrel of my musket, and called for his cup-bearer to bring me a draught of the royal wine that was mixed with blood. And lifted the cup high, and pronounced a long pronouncement, and gave me the cup to drain.

  Kinguri and the other Jaqqa lords did circle close about, and I saw their eyes glittering like shining stars, and their faces set in deep expressions, and some of them not amused, nor friendly in the least.

  “What is it he says?” I asked Kinguri.

  “Ah, Andubatil, he names you to be the chief of all his w
arriors.”

  “Do you tell me so?”

  “And makes you the lieutenant of the battlefield, and says all honors will be yours.”

  “But I am white! I am Christian!”

  “You are Andubatil Jaqqa. He calls you also Kimana Kyeer, that is, Lord of the Thunder.”

  And with the saying of that new name the other Jaqqas about us did shout, “Kimana Kyeer! Kimana Kyeer!” But some were joyous and some were scowling, as well they might, if this white stranger had been raised in rank above them in the twinkling of an eye only because he carried a thunder-stick.

  Calandola gestured in his impatient way, and made the sounds that I knew now to mean, “Drink! Drink!”

  Therefore did I drink. And they backslapped me and handled me, so that the drink did run down my chin and chest, and the wine dripped all the way to my loins, where I felt it sliding over my privities, that wine that was mixed with blood.

  “Kimana Kyeer!” they all did cry.

  And I all the while could think only of that poor dumb woman that I had blown to Hell with my musket at his cruel inhuman command, the which I had not had the strength to resist.

  Kinguri to me did say, “You are fortunate. He will make you great among us, and give you great gladness, for that you have the power to slay from afar.”

  I looked to the other lordlings and saw them discussing among themselves, and some nodding and some spitting, and I knew that it was perilous delicate to be elevated to lieutenant and duke among these folk. Yet had I been a prisoner and a pawn overlong, and if my musket did win me acclaim, well, be I then Kimana Kyeer in gladness, said I to myself, and Devil have the hindmost.