Lord of Darkness

by Robert Silverberg

  Then there came above us a great spreading darkness, like unto some vast bird that had opened his wings over us to blot out the glitter of the stars. I did not understand. But after a moment I perceived it was vast Calandola that loomed over both us twain as an avenging-demon.

  “He is mine,” said Calandola to me, and from my hand he plucked Kinguri’s hatchet, the very hatchet that had wounded him, taking it as lightly as it were a straw; and Kinguri, hissing, crouched down to shield himself with his hands.

  “Slave!” the Imbe-Jaqqa cried. “Go! Go from me! Go from the world!”

  And with a fearsome blow of the hatchet he did maim his crouching brother, lopping off an arm, and then struck again, the blow the second time being dire and the blood of Kinguri leaping forth to spew us both.

  “Nugga-Jaqqa!” Calandola exclaimed. “Shegga-Jaqqa!” And spat upon his brother’s corpse, and trampled him into the reddened earth.

  Then did he turn, and confront me once again, and a more hellish sight I hope never to see. His own blood and Kinguri’s painted his body utterly, that also did shine with the grease of slaughtered men, and his eyes were lunatic eyes, for that he had seen his kingdom dissolving about him in this war of brothers that had sprung up so suddenly.

  “Come, we must kill them all!” he cried.

  “Kill them yourself,” said I. “I want no part of your warfare.”

  “What say you?”

  “I am no longer of your kingdom, Calandola!”

  “Ah, and is that so?” Advancing upon me, he did say in thick half-strangled tones, “You will fight when I tell you to fight, Andubatil, and you will eat what I give you to eat, and you will obey me in all things. You are my creature, you are my toy!” And then he did cry out in a language I did not know, perhaps no language at all save the language of madness, or the language of Hell, some belching coarse mazy gibberish, the language of coccodrillos, the language of dream-warlocks. And leaped high and brought down the hatchet, but I lurched aside, and went unharmed, and he leaped again, and swung, and came near to trimming my beard, and cried out in his coccodrillo-crazy jargon anew. I was sure I would die at his hand, so berserk was he, but I meant to make him work at it. Thus he pursued me about in the narrow space we had to move, chopping at me and cursing me and weeping and moaning, while blood poured over him, and all his followers did battle drunkenly amongst themselves. I longed for a pistol, that I could thrust it into his face and explode him to Hell; but of pistols I had none, and my musket was in my cottage, that would have been useless here anyway in such close quarters. A sword I did have, and was able finally to hoist it out, and for an instant we faced one another as equals. But only for an instant, since that as I lunged at him with my blade he struck downward upon it with his hatchet in such force that my arm was made numb, and I dropped the weapon, not knowing whether I still had an arm or not.

  “Jesu receive me,” I cried.

  “Inga negga hagga khagga!” cried Calandola, or some such wild garboil.

  And he readied himself to come upon me and make an end of me. But in that instant came a thunderclap and a burst of flame in our midst, and a second such uproar, and a third. In mid-stride the Imbe-Jaqqa halted, and looked about.

  Cannon!

  Aye, Christian weapons erupting from all sides! For we were surrounded, the army of Portugals having come at last, and setting themselves up in surround of this place while the maddened Jaqqas did blind themselves with wine. Too late for Dona Teresa, alas, but in time, in time for my salvation, the forces of the Masanganu garrison had appeared, and were making deadly war into the Jaqqa multitude.

  Imbe Calandola did look at me most melancholy at this onslaught, much as Caesar must have looked upon Brutus: for I think he guessed that it had been I who brought this army onto him. “Ah, traitor, traitor,” said he in a low sad voice, and reached out to grip my shoulder, and held it tight a long moment, as brother might hold brother in a dark time, so that I felt the full flow of his powerful soul rushing from him to me. And having done that, I thought he would slay me, but merely did he scowl, and he spat upon me and turned on his heel without one more word to me. Then did he cry for his lieutenants by name, “Kasanje! Kaimba! Bangala!” Fully sobered was he by this invasion of the Portugals. I think he would fain have had Kinguri by his side now, and Andubatil as well; but Kinguri was tatters in the dust, and Andubatil was Andubatil no longer, having repudiated altogether his Jaqqa allegiance and taken on once more the name of Andrew Battell of Leigh in Essex.

  Calandola, like a thwarted Lucifer, went running off one way, and I went the other, thinking to tunnel down into darkness in the bush, to strip from myself the beads and bangles of the man-eater nation; better to be naked now than a Jaqqa. As he vanished I saw old Ntotela and Zimbo come toward me, both of them wounded and looking more than half dazed. They hailed me and cried out, “Andubatil! Imbe-Jaqqa Andubatil!”

  “Ah, nay, I will not be your king,” I said, for that was their purpose, to offer me the Jaqqa crown, I think, with all else fallen into turmoil.

  “Imbe-Jaqqa!” said they again, sadly, in bewilderment, but I shook my head and ran past them.

  Fires were blazing, clouds of dusty smoke were rising. From their fortifications around us the Portugals fired again and again, exploding a sunrise on the darkness, and the Jaqqas did stampede most wildly, all their brave courage peeled away by the confusion of their leadership and the surprise of the assault. They went this way and that, a headless mob. Some rushed into the adjoining camp of Kafuche Kambara, where I think they were slaughtered; some stood their ground, and made war against one another while the Portugals in regular formation sent them to Hell; some went into madness, and screamed and raged into the trees; and I know not what the others did, save that the camp of many thousands was dissipated, and reduced within an hour or two to nothing.

  There came at last the dawn. I stood alone in a field of dreadful carnage. Black bodies lay everywhere, and a very few white ones in armor. The great kettles of the man-eaters were overturned; their banners were down; their shrines were all trampled. Mists drifted over the ground, and streams of blood ran like wine, and streams of wine alongside the blood, so that they mixed in hard mockery of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s own favored tipple. Of Calandola I saw nothing. He had slipped away; he had surely not been slain. I do not believe he could have been slain, nor that he will ever die. He is too dark a force, too deep in league with Satan his master, whose incarnation I do think him to be. Search I did for that great body, and I did not discover it. It would have surprised me much had it been otherwise.

  And at sunrise the Portugals found me. I was naked but for shreds; I was bloodied and injured; and I sobbed, not out of grief nor fear but of simple relief and ease, that this eternal night was over, and the demons were fled, and I still alive.

  Three soldiers that were little more than boys came upon me and pointed their muskets at me, and I threw up my hands to show I meant no harm.

  “What is this?” they asked. “Is it Jaqqa, or demon, or what?”

  “English,” said I in their own Portuguese tongue. “I am Andres the Piloto, of São Paulo de Loanda, captive among the Jaqqas these past years, and you have freed me.”

  “Go you to the governor,” said one Portugal to another, who rushed off at once. And to me he said, looking wide-eyed upon me, “I have heard tales of you, but I thought that they were all but fable. What has befallen you, man? Are you hurt?”

  I replied, “I have been in the Devil’s own paw, and he has squeezed me some. But I am whole, I think, and will go on breathing some while longer. Jesu Cristo, it has been a dream, and not a cheerful one, but now I am awake. Now I am awake!”

  And I did fall to my knees, and give thanks for my deliverance to Him who guardeth me.

  Through the forest now came more Portugals, and at their head was the Angolan governor, João Coutinho, of whom Dona Teresa had spoken. This man looked at me long, without belief, as if I had a second head beside mine own,
or wings and a tail. At last he said, “It was you, then, that summoned us.”

  “Aye. But I had given up all hope of your coming.”

  “We came as swift as we could. There were tales of a massing of the Jaqqas, so that we were poised for the attack, and needed only to know the place. What is your name, Englishman? Andres, is it?”

  “Andrew, in good sooth. Andrew Battell.”

  He gave me his hand, and drew me to my feet, and ordered up a cloak to be thrown over me, and sent for his surgeon to examine my wounds. This João Coutinho was a man of perhaps four-and-thirty, very sleek and handsome of face, with a warm and kindly way about him; I saw by the mirrors of his soul that were his eyes, that he would use me well, and that he felt great compassion for me in my long travail, so that perhaps my betrayals were at their end.

  He said, “And the Portugals who were prisoner with you?”

  “Dead. All.”

  “Dona Teresa? Don Fernão?”

  “Dead,” said I. “Dead and eaten.”

  He looked away, choking with a deep revulsion.

  “They are monsters,” said he after a moment. “We will hunt them down, and they shall all perish. Did they torment you greatly?”

  “Nay,” I answered. “They treated me like one of themselves. I think it was for my golden hair, that made me seem as some kind of spirit to them.”

  “Golden hair?” said Don João Coutinho in wonder. “Is it golden, then?”

  “Is it not?”

  He put his hand to it, and ran his fingers gently through it, and said, “It is white, Senhor Andrew, it is most altogether and entirely white.”

  BOOK

  FIVE:

  Ulysses

  ONE

  SO ENDED my sojourn among the Jaqqas. But there is much more to tell. For I was not yet done with Africa, not by a great long while, and much else went into the tempering and annealing of my soul before that land would let me free. Nor am I fully free yet. Nor have I escaped wholly from the malign sway of the Imbe-Jaqqa Calandola, to this hour.

  Don João Coutinho would not have me walk with his army, but gave orders that I be carried by bearer as we left the place of the battle, and returned to Masanganu. There was no war now to be pursued, the Jaqqas having scattered in all directions, and that other army of Kafuche Kambara having decamped very swiftly and taken itself to its home territory some way south and east of this place. Which was just as well, since that the only advantage that this Portugal force had had was that of surprise, that now had been expended; for they were only some four hundred men, though they had in that night routed many thousands.

  In Masanganu, that had been so hateful to me before but which now seemed like a veritable Jerusalem, did I quickly regain my strength. I was very well used by this new governor, who regarded me as some kind of holy sufferer, a pilgrim, even, that had undergone a great ordeal and must now be recompensed with the kindest of treatment. Thus as I lay at Masanganu he gave orders that I was to have the best of wine and drink; and his surgeons did what they could to close my wounds, and heal them without further mutilation of my skin. And the natural strength and resilience of my body did manifest itself, so that after some time I felt myself beginning to grow strong again, and recovering somewhat of my weariness. But all the same I knew I had been transformed, in a way from which there was no recovering. My body bore scars, both those of a tribal nature and those of warfare and rough usage. And now I had the visage of an old man, which was the outer mark of my experiences, the sign and symbol of the horrors I had witnessed and those that I had committed.

  Dona Teresa visited me often in dreams those first nights, and said to me, “Weep not, Andres, I am with the saints in heaven.” Which was but mocking comfort to me. My philosophical quietude over her death had fled me. I bethought me often of the sage Marcus Aurelius, but his teachings just now seemed of no worth: for she was dead that I had held most dear and lost and unexpectedly regained, and I would not regain her again no matter how close I explored this sultry jungled land. And that great loss did burn more hotly in me the more fully my weary body renewed its health.

  Then I went to Don João Coutinho in his place at the presidio of Masanganu and he greeted me most warmly, with an embrace and good wine, and asked what service he could do me.

  To which I replied, “Only one, that you put me aboard a pinnace bound for São Paulo de Loanda, and you give an order that I am to be set free, and shipped to England, since that I am old now, and would die among my own people.”

  “Why are you here at all?” he asked.

  I told him everything of it, the great tangled tale of my setting to sea with Abraham Cocke and being taken in Brazil and made prisoner and then being a pilot and then imprisoned again, and so on and on and on down all the winding years of it, in which he was much interested. Only of the Jaqqa part of my life was I chary, telling him merely that I was kept by them.

  When I was done he embraced me and said, “You shall have your freedom, Senhor Andrew. But no ship will be departing this land for some months.”

  “So that I am aboard the next one, I can wait a little time more,” said I. “For in truth I am not fully ready to see England again.”

  “Ah, is that so?”

  It was indeed, though I could not tell him why. Which was, forsooth, that there was still too much Jaqqa in me; that my mind and soul were corrupted by the dark rites of that jungle people, in which I had partaken; that I needed some time yet to cleanse myself of all that, and to have a full purge, before I could enter myself into the clean quiet life of England, from which I had been absent so long that I scarce felt I belonged there.

  The governor gave me his pledge that I was to go home. And in good sooth it was a pledge I had heard often before, as you know. But I think this Coutinho was sincere. I might go home whenever I pleased, said he, and in the mean time, could I do a little service for him?

  Ah, I thought, it is the old song sung anew; it is the wheel to which I am ever yoked. If I am not to be a pilot for them, I am to be a soldier of the army, or some like thing, I who want only to retreat from the fray and meditate upon my travail. But yet was I beholden to him for my rescue. So what was the little thing he desired of me? Why, that he was going to march down into Kisama province, and bring all the rebels to heel and make an end to the Jaqqas if he could find them, and destroy for all time the power of the chief Kafuche Kambara. And since I knew these peoples so well, and spoke their languages as though I had been born to them, would I join with them in that endeavor?

  Well, and what could I say, but yes? I was beholden. So then I journeyed again to the wars. The governor made me a sergeant of a Portugal company, with an hundred men at my command. We marched into Muchima first, the place where first I had seen the bloody fury of the Jaqqas expended long ago, and at the presidio there we gathered further soldiers; from thence it was south-easterly to a place called Cava, and then to Malombe, that was the city of a great lord subject to Kafuche Kambara. Here we were four days, and many lords came and obeyed us, so that our armies were swelled mightily with our black auxiliaries.

  From thence we marched upon Agokayongo, where lately I had experienced such terrible events. The chief of this town was a Christian, and we settled ourselves here for eight days, finding it a very pleasant place, and full of cattle and victuals. But here a further misfortune came upon me, for the bountiful Don João Coutinho fell ill of the fever that is so widespread at Masanganu, and that he had carried secret in his body from that place. He sickened quickly and did roam wildly in his mind for a few days, and then he died, which was a great loss to us all, and most especially to me.

  To serve as governor now the army did choose its captain-major, whose name was Manoel Cerveira Pereira. I did not find him greatly to my liking. This Cerveira Pereira was small of stature and very hard-fleshed and dark, as some Portugals are, as though the sun has baked all mercy and charity from their bodies. He was of somber mien and very deeply religious, constantly fing
ering his beads and crucifixes and the like such holy apparatus. The Jesuits of Angola did hold him in the highest esteem, and he gave them much advantage in the colony, which earned him the enmity of many of the powerful men. To me he made outward show of courtesy, and confirmed me in the sergeancy that Don João Coutinho had bestowed upon me. But because he was so devout a Papist and I a mere Protestant heretic, Cerveira Pereira privately did not regard me as one to whom he needs must be faithful of his oath, and he did sadly play me false in many ways.

  Yet this will I say for him, he was a most excellent warrior. As soon as he had seen the late governor given proper funeral, he addressed his army and made ready to march. We were eight hundred Portugals, or more, and I know not how many thousand blacks: a very great army indeed, and well armed. Eastward we did press. The Jaqqas were wholly dispersed, having melted into the land like the phantoms they be, but the army of Kafuche Kambara was not far beyond Agokayongo, with more than sixty thousand men, whom we did fall upon mightily. We had the victory, and made a great slaughter among them, and took captives all the women and children of Kafuche Kambara. This took place upon the tenth day of August, Anno 1603, and in the very place where Kafuche had slain so many Portugals years before, so that that terrible defeat was wholly avenged.

  After we had been two months in the country about Agokayongo, we marched towards Kambambe, which was but three days’ journey, and came right against the Serras da Prata, and passed the River Kwanza. At the great waterfall that was the holy place of the Jaqqas we did see signs that the man-eaters had been there of late: some remnants of their feasting, and certain painted marks on the rocks. But of the Jaqqas themselves we yet saw nothing, they being as elusive as ghosts. This was finely suitable to me, I having seen enough of those folk for one lifetime and being in little urgency to encounter them again. At night Imbe Calandola came to me in dreams very greatly often, floating through the seas of my mind like a malign monster of the depths, and laughing and stirring up turbulent maelstroms, and crying out, “Andubatil Jaqqa! Return unto me, Andubatil Jaqqa, and let us devour the world!” For which meal I had small appetite remaining.