Lord of Darkness

by Robert Silverberg

  But perhaps not open wide enough, or I would have been more on guard myself.

  We were in the third week of our hesitation before Makellacolonge, and a kind of tautness did grip all the Jaqqa camp, like the tight silence before a great storm, or before a quaking of the earth. We Jaqqa lords had feasted well, and Calandola had shown great favor to me, giving me the choicest cut of the meat, and pouring blooded wine for me with his own hand. Afterward I went to my sleeping-place and took my will most joyously and noisily of my wife Kulachinga, and then I toppled into sleep like a stone statue overturned by a tempest.

  And woke some time in the darkness to hear a little whimpering sound, like the cry of a cat in pain, and felt Kulachinga’s hand, or someone’s, against my shoulder, shoving me most vehemently to the far side of the mat. And looked upward, and by cold clear shafts of moonlight saw a figure great as a mountain looming over me, and a weapon raised high and descending; and I rolled aside just as it fell and cleft deep through the mat.

  Though I had been strong gripped by sleep, and almost drugged, I might say, by overmuch wine and the venting of lust, yet there is nothing quite like the crashing of a vast sword into one’s pillow to clarify one’s mind and bring it awake. I came to my knees, and saw my assailant striving to pull his weapon free of the ground into which it had cut; and when I put my hand to his wrist to stay him, he flung me aside like a bundle of rags. Now I saw his face. It was the captain Jaqqa Machimba-lombo.

  “Aye, and will you kill me?” I said. I grasped about, and found a spear, and my sword; and Kulachinga, unbidden, knelt to fan the fire, so that I could have clearer sight. Machimba-lombo left his sword where it lay, and went for his dagger, which he raked against my right arm, lightly cutting it. I thrust my spear between his legs and twisted, putting him off his balance, but the stratagem was a faulty one, for he fell forward atop me instead of, as I had hoped, broadside into the wall. We went down, losing all our weapons in the turmoil, and rolled over and over, fighting not in the graceful dance-like manner of Jaqqa wrestling, but in the bloodiest of coarse brawling, intending to do a lethal injury upon one another.

  I heard Kulachinga shouting, and running for aid.

  Now Machimba-lombo held the upper hand, and now I. He was a heavier man, and some years younger; but I was quick and no weakling, and the knowledge that I was fighting for my life gave me an added power. His hands were at my throat, but I forced them back, and got my thumbs against the sides of his neck: this hold he broke by swinging his shoulders clear of the ground, and then he brought his knee up to my loins, which stunned me and made me choke with pain. But that very action liberated a torrent of puke that sprang from my injured belly and spewed out upon him. He grunted and, in his disgust, gave over for an instant, turning from me just long enough for me to drive my elbow crashing into his gut, and then the side of my other hand across the back of his neck as he rolled away. It was done with such force that I felt it through my whole shoulder, and I dare say he felt it worse, for he writhed as if I had smashed his every bone with that one blow. I took his shoulders in my grip and forced his face hard into the ground and cried, “Will you yield?”

  “You must not live!”

  “Come, Machimba-lombo, give over. Give over!”

  “Filth-Jaqqa! Thief-Jaqqa! Offal-Jaqqa!”

  “These names have no force,” said I.

  But there was force left in him: that I soon learned, for he pried himself upward, and gave me a great buffet of his rising shoulder against my chin, that left me with my head spinning. Then he reached past me for the dagger he had dropped. I caught his arm just in time, chopping at it with the edge of my hand so that it was numbed, and mine fair numbed also. I took him arm in arm and rolled him over, so that he went through the fire of our hearth and was singed of the face, and howled. But on the far side of the hearth he landed against his sword, that was still stuck in the ground, and this time, such was the direction of his movement, it came free when he pulled at it. He sprang up like a demon and brandished it and swung it in a wide circle through the air, making it hiss and sing.

  I saw my spear and snatched it up, and waited for him. For all his dire attack on me, I did not wish the slaying of him; but now I knew I must do it, or perish myself. It was a great loathly sharp sword he had, but a sword is not a good lunging weapon, nor a throwing weapon, and I could stick him from afar, and I would.

  I readied myself for the cast. But then suddenly there were torches everywhere, and the place was full of warriors, that swarmed on us and seized us both, and took from us our weapons; and Imbe Calandola himself came to the scene an instant afterward, demanding to know the cause of the uproar.

  “I awoke to find him over me with his sword poised,” I said. “And we fought; and we were stopped from fighting. I beg you, Lord Calandola, let me finish this thing.”

  And I glowered at Machimba-lombo, all grizzled on one side of his head from the flame in his hair, and battered, and enraged. The full anger was upon me, too, now, and my chest was full of it so I could scarce breathe, for that this man would have done me cowardly to death as I slept, butchering me like a calf. I felt fifty pains from our wrestling, that I had not noticed two moments before. There was across my eyes a mask of hot red rage.

  He too was enfuried. He spat toward me, and cried, “Slave-Jaqqa! Pig-Jaqqa!”

  “Night-creeper!”

  Machimba-lombo did struggle to break free. As did I, and nearly I succeeded, but I was restrained.

  Calandola said, “What is this treason, Machimba-lombo? This is the Kimana Kyeer you do menace! Explain your attack.”

  But now Machimba-lombo said nothing.

  Kinguri and Ntotela and Ti-Bangala and one or two of the other lords entered. They conferred in whispers; Imbe Calandola summoned them to him; after a moment Machimba-lombo was bound with thick plaited withes, and taken off, still cursing and muttering. Only then did the warriors who held my arms pinned behind my back release me. I rubbed at the bruised places I felt all over me, and Kulachinga most timidly came to me, and stroked me to soothe me.

  I said, “I know not why he did this ambuscade upon me, for I have done him no injury never, unless my rising so fast in your esteem did enrage him.”

  “It was nothing else than that,” said the Imbe-Jaqqa. And he looked dour and thoughtful, that by his ennobling me as Kimana Kyeer he had driven this valued prince of his to despair, and to treason. “He could not abide your triumphs.”

  “And would he kill, out of envy alone? Ah, that is it! I should have seen!”

  Kinguri said, “He has been greatly angered by your high repute among us, Andubatil. Before you came, he was the most valiant of our warriors, but your musket has darkened his light. We have seen him change in recent weeks. But I had not thought him changed so much, that he would come to slay in the dark.”

  Though he would have killed me most foully, I felt a sadness for this lord Machimba-lombo. My anger was passing. I am a man of even temper, as you know. Yet what pain there must have been upon Machimba-lombo, to see me climb so swift in his people! For I knew these Jaqqa lords to have a nobility, that would not permit them so shameful a murder, were they in their proper minds.

  To Calandola I said, “What will be done with him now?”

  “He will be tried and slain.”

  “And is there no sparing him?” I asked.

  The Imbe-Jaqqa looked perplexed. “What, you would spare him?”

  “It is the Christian way,” said Kinguri quietly to him. “They do love their enemies, by command of their great mokisso.”

  “Ah,” said Calandola to me, “you love him, then?”

  “By God’s feet, I love him not, O Imbe-Jaqqa!” I cried. “When he was in my hands on the floor, I would have had the life from him if I could, for his treachery on me. But now I am more calm. I think it would be a grievous waste to slay him, for his strength is great, and his valor huge.”

  “He is worthless now,” said old Ntotela. “He is an
animal now, a wild beast.”

  “He will recover his wits,” I said. “Look ye, it was only that he was jealous of my honors among you, as the Imbe-Jaqqa has said, because I am newly come and already risen high. But he can be led out of his wrath.”

  “Nay,” said Calandola. “This is foolishness. Defend him not to me, Andubatil. He will never leave off his enmity to you now. There is only one way to end this enmity, and that is to put an end to the one who dares attempt murder upon the Kimana Kyeer. Come.”

  It was dawn now. A great red blaze of light, that looked like a giant bonfire, was rising over the eastern mountains. The air was soft and heavy, with the hint of a later rain. All the Jaqqas were up, and all appeared to know of Machimba-lombo’s invasion of my sleeping-place, for they were agitated and vehement.

  Kinguri, falling in alongside me, said, “This is never done, the striking of one Jaqqa captain by another. It was noble of you to speak in his favor, but you ought not to persist. He is doomed.”

  I shrugged. “It is nothing to me, if he die,” I said. For my outburst of mercy had gone from me as swiftly as my earlier red rage had. I felt now all the pains that Machimba-lombo had inflicted upon me in our struggle, and also I felt the strange belated dismay that comes over one when one has had a near thing with death, and has had no time to comprehend it for the first while. But for Kulachinga’s warning I would be cleft halves painting the earth-mother’s breast with my good blood now.

  They had Machimba-lombo in the midst of a circle, like the lion-circle of before, and Zimbo and some of the older men were speaking with him. His bonds had been undone, and indeed he seemed quieter now, almost reflective, even saddened. But it was only his failure to slay me that made him downcast. The sunrise fell upon him so that his deeply black skin did shine with a bronzy brightness, and I saw my marks upon his flesh. When he beheld me he glared with new fervor, and I think if he had been freed he would have leapt me all over again.

  Imbe Calandola said, approaching him, “Speak, Machimba-lombo, tell us what was in your mind.”

  “It was in my mind. O Imbe-Jaqqa, that this man is not one of us, and does not deserve his rank.”

  “And so you would slay him?”

  “If not I, then who? For I knew you would not remove him. And he should not be what he is among us, for he is not of our kind, I think.”

  “Then you are wrong. He is truly of our kind, Machimba-lombo.”

  I found it passing strange, to hear the man-eater king say this of me. But I kept my silence, and chewed inward a little upon those words.

  “How, of our kind?” cried Machimba-lombo. “His skin is white! His hair is gold! He is Christian!”

  “He is taken in with us, and adopted into our number.”

  “Aye, and made a captain, even! But he is not of the blood, O Imbe-Jaqqa!”

  “I say that he is blooded with us by his soul,” replied Calandola. Then impatiently he said, “I will not dispute this with you. You know that it is treason to raise your hand against a high Jaqqa.”

  “He is no Jaqqa,” stubbornly said Machimba-lombo.

  “Yet I say he is. And you have done treason; and therefore you are put down from all your high place, and we grant you only this one mercy, that you will have an elephanto-tail dedicated for you as though you had died in honor. For you were a man of honor before this.” To the captain Ti-Bangala he gestured, and said, “Bring to us the tail of the elephanto of the Jaqqa Machimba-lombo.”

  At this, the face of Machimba-lombo turned stony and ashen, for he knew that his death was upon him. And I think he heard his mokisso singing to him out of the ground, which soon would draw him down to Hell.

  I felt some sorrow for him, though he would have felt none for me. But I kept it locked within my breast, and only glared at him like an enemy. For I was Kimana Kyeer, and he had done treason against me and all my adopted nation.

  Ti-Bangala returned. A great heavy hairy elephanto-tail was in his grasp. Calandola took it, and draped it like a whip about his shoulders. Then to Machimba-lombo he said, “We grant you the death of honor, Machimba-lombo Jaqqa.”

  What next befell filled me with stupefaction and amaze. They did not put Machimba-lombo to death with weapons, as I had expected, nor any poison. Merely did Calandola lay the coiled elephanto-tail at the condemned man’s feet. And Machimba-lombo nodded, and looked downward most somber at it a moment; and then he swayed and went sinking down upon the earth like a puppet-doll whose strings had been let loose. For he simply did release his life, and let it from him upon a wish, and that was an end to him. It is a trick these Africans have, that I do not understand, that when they grieve extremely, or are dishonored and must die, they can do it by willing it alone, and saying to themselves, “Depart this world,” and they do depart.

  Six of the high captains bore Machimba-lombo’s body away, and there was a ceremony that I did not attend, and they laid him to rest. And afterward another Jaqqa that was named Paivaga was named to be captain in his place, being slender and swift, with the thin lips and narrow nose of a Moor, though his skin was jet. For some days Calandola did keep to himself, thereafter, brooding on the death of Machimba-lombo, for he had been a great warrior. But his life had been forfeit, since it is forbidden for one high Jaqqa to harm another. And in the eyes of all in this nation, now, was I recognized to be a high Jaqqa: I Andubatil, I Kimana Kyeer.

  FIVE

  FOUR DAYS after the death of Machimba-lombo, Kinguri the Imbe-Jaqqa’s brother did summon me quietly, and say, “Tell no one, but make ready for a journey, and take nothing with you but a knife and a sword.”

  “Not my musket?”

  “Nay, it will be only a hindrance.”

  Though I knew not what he had in mind, I did as he said, and at his orders I arose in the night and said to Kulachinga that I would return, but I knew not when. I went to the edge of the camp by dawny mists, and there I met Kinguri.

  He and I left camp stealthily together, only us two, and made our way eastward across a broad open plain. By the sunrise hour we halted, and he said, “You told me once of the city of Rome, that is the Pope’s house, and sits on seven hills beside a river. Is it a splendid city?”

  “So I have heard, though I have never seen it.”

  “Is it as splendid, do you think, as that?”

  And he led me a little way around a low grassy hill, and I looked beyond it and saw a city perched atop a stony mountain some seven leagues in compass, that had been hidden from my view by the winding of our path. Between that city and us lay rich green pastures, fields, and meadows, that surely did yield God’s own bounty of provision for everyone who dwelled therein.

  Kinguri said, “It is the city of Dongo, that is the residence of King Ngola. Tell me, Andubatil, do you know anything so splendid in all of Christendom?”

  What could I say? That Dongo is a mere squalid town of thatched cottages, and Rome is the capital of the world? Nay, I would not hurt him so. Besides, in its way this Dongo was a fair wondrous place, perched so high, like the habitation of the former gods upon Olympus, and in the early light it did shine with a pale beauty quite unearthly.

  “Is it the Imbe-Jaqqa’s thought to assault that city now, instead of Makellacolonge?”

  Kinguri smiled and shook his head. “Not yet, Andubatil, not yet! You see there: there is but a single passage into the mountain, and that is well fortified, so that in the forcing of it we would suffer great loss of life. The Imbe-Jaqqa is not ready for that forcing. First we must grow our numbers, threefold beyond what we are now; and then we will camp below Dongo, and cut its road to the fields, and starve it a little. And when it is enough starved we will burst into it, and take it, and remove it from the world. And that will be the end of King Ngola and his nation, whom we have hated a long while.”

  This he said most calmly, seeming without blood-lust. It was much like Calandola’s talk of a divine mission to purge the world of its cities and farms: this did Kinguri also share, and in a dispass
ionate way he longed to turn everything back to the fashion of the beginning, to render Africa a new Eden of simple naked shepherds.

  Well, and I suppose that is no worse a reason to go to war than any other, and better than some. For what profits it to march into a land simply to force Papistry upon its people, or to take Papistry from them, or to make a change of government that puts one lecherous greedy prince in place of another? And the war that the Spaniards did carry against the people of the Indies, stealing their gold from them and giving them poxes and plagues in return: was that any more noble than the Jaqqas’ dream of cleansing the world of everything that mankind had builded upon it? I was still under Imbe Calandola’s spell, and his monstrous ambition, though I did not truly share it, had substance in my eyes. I saw in it a kind of strange poetry, and a stark simplicity, that seemed to me to be in its way most deeply felt. Aye, clear them off, those who profaned the earth! Pull down the cities, push the perfidious Portugals into the sea! Why not? It had a merit. Dongo tomorrow, and São Paulo de Loanda the day after that: aye, why not, why not? And then the land would be at peace, and sheep might safely graze.