“Then it pleases my heart to know. Tell me now that I am not the only one to come home to find his son with half of his head missing. Or just the hand of another son. Or him most dear with a hole where his chest and belly used to be. Or maybe hanging from—”
“Are we to compare loves murdered and children butchered? This is where you will judge to see if you are better than me?”
“Your child was just hurt.”
“My other children were murdered by my brother.”
“Shall we compare so you can come out victorious?”
“I never said this was a contest.”
“Then stop trying to win.”
He said nothing.
“Will you find your King?”
He paused. Waited. Knew she expected him to wait, to pause, to think, to even struggle within the head, then come to a decision.
“Yes,” he said.
The old woman looked up at him and tilted her head as if that was the way to know a person true.
“He lies. There is no question he will kill him,” she said.
He elbowed the guard behind him in the nose, pushed him away, grabbed and pulled out the guard’s sword, and stabbed it deep in its master’s belly. He ducked without looking, knowing the other guard would go for the neck. The guard’s sword cut through air above his head. He swung from below and chopped him in the calf. The guard fell and he shoved the sword in his chest, then took his sword too. More guards all stepped out as if they had popped out of the wall. Two came at him first and he became Mossi, he of the two swords, from the East, who never visited him in mind or spirit since he wrote in his own blood in the dirt. Mossi did not visit him now; Tracker just thought of him standing on rocks, practicing with swords. He kicked the first guard in the balls, jumped on him when he fell, leapt at two other guards, knocked away their spears with his left sword, and sliced one in the belly with the right sword and chopped the other in the shoulder. But hark, his back burst with blood and the guard who slashed him charged. He rolled out of the guard’s second strike. The guard swung again, but he hesitated—on orders not to kill, this was clear. The guard paused too long; Tracker’s sword went right through him.
Men surrounded him. He lunged at them, they stepped back. The collar clamped around his neck squeezed in tight, like a hand pulling a noose tighter. From his hands, both swords fell. He coughed and couldn’t cough, growled and couldn’t growl. Tighter, tighter, his face swelled, his head about to burst. And his eyes. Fright. Not fright. Shock. You look like you didn’t know. Bad man, you must did know. The Sangoma’s enchantment is fading from you. You will have no mastery of metals. No wind came in the nose, no wind left. He fell to one knee. The guards stepped away. He looked up, tears blinding him, and the old woman held out her right hand and made a fist. She did not smile, but looked like a woman thinking a happy thought. He tried to cough again; he could barely see her. He pawed the floor and found the sword. Scooping up the grip, he held it up like a spear and threw it hard and quick. The spear struck the old woman right in the heart. Her eyes popped. She opened her mouth and black blood came out. She fell and the collar broke from his neck. A guard struck him in the back of his head.
Smell it,” the King sister said to Tracker when he woke up. Who knew which room this was, but he was back in the cage and the same strip of cloth was at his feet.
“It is from him. His favorite bedding. He would have the servants wash it every quartermoon, indeed it was many colours once. I can make you a new bargain. Find him and bring him back, and do whatever you wish to the other one. If you can leave the Mweru. Many men enter, but no man can ever leave.”
“Witchcraft?”
“Which witch would want a man to stay? But you can try to leave. Smell the rag.”
He grabbed the piece of cloth, brought it to his nose, and breathed in deep. The smell filled his head, and he knew what it was before his nose took flight, followed the source; he jumped on it as it took him right between her legs.
“Look at you. You wanted to know where he was going and I gave you where he came from.”
She laughed loud and long and the laugh bounced over the empty hall.
“You. You will be the one to murder the world?” she said, and left him.
That night Tracker was awake in the dream jungle. Past trees as small as shrubs and shrubs as tall as elephants, the Tracker went and looked for him. He came upon a still pond where nothing seemed to live. First he saw himself. Then he saw the clouds, then mountains, then a path and elephants running away, then antelopes, then cheetahs, and past them another road that led to a city wall, and up the wall a tower, and in the tower looking out, then straight at him, eye-to-eye, the one he searched for. This man was he ever surprised to hear the Tracker’s call, but he knew why before asking.
“You know I can kill you in your sleep,” he said.
“But you wonder why I would have called you, the worst of enemies,” Tracker said. “Tell no lie. No man can leave the Mweru, but you are no man.”
He smiled and said, “True, you cannot leave the Mweru without either dying or going mad, a goddess with revenge towards me made it so, unless there is one beyond magic to lead you out. But what shall I get for it?”
“You want this boy’s head. I am the only one who can find him,” Tracker said.
It was a lie, for he had lost all track of the boy’s smell, and he would learn after that the boy no longer had a smell, truly none at all, but a bargain they struck, him and the Aesi.
“Tell me where in the palace you are when you find out,” the Aesi said.
This man who was not a man came for him; indeed it took him one and a half moons to do so, and the North had long thrown first spears at the South. Wakadishu and Kalindar.
This is what happened. The Tracker woke to the sound of bodies falling. A guard entered his cell and nodded for him to follow, saying nothing. They both stepped over the dead guards and kept walking. Down a corridor, past a hall, down steps, up steps, and down more. Down another corridor, past many dead guards and sleeping guards and felled guards. This guard who said nothing pointed to a horse waiting at the foot of the massive steps leading out, and Tracker turned to say what, he did not know, only to see that the guard’s eyes were wide open but saw nothing. Then he fell. Tracker ran down the steps, stopped midway to grab a dead guard’s sword, then mounted the horse and rode away, past the smoking lakes, through the tunnel, and right to the edge of the Mweru. The horse dug into his hooves and threw him, but he grabbed the reins even as he flew off the horse. The horse turned and galloped away.
Tracker kept walking and after a while saw a figure in the dark wearing a hood. He sat cross-legged and wrote in the air the way Sogolon had, and was off the ground, floating on air. Tracker approached and the man stretched his hand out to say stop. He pointed right and Tracker walked right, and when he had stepped ten and five paces, fire shot out of the earth before him. He jumped back. The man beckoned Tracker forward ten steps and gestured to stop. The earth below him cracked and split and moved apart in a loud rumble, shaking the ground like an earthquake. The man put both feet down, rubbing something sticky in his right hand. He threw it—a heart—into the chasm and the chasm hissed and coughed, and closed itself. Then he waved at Tracker to come. He threw something else and it sparked the air like lightning. Spark spread to spark, which spread to spark, and then a boom that knocked Tracker down.
“Get up and run,” the man said. “I no longer have a hold on any of them.”
Tracker turned around and saw a cloud of dust coming. Riders.
“Run!” the man shouted.
Tracker ran, with the riders coming up behind him, to where the man was, and both stood, Tracker trembling as the riders rode straight at them. He saw the calm in the man and borrowed it even as everything in him wanted to scream, We will be trampled, fuck the gods, why do we not run? A horseman came within a breath of his face before he rode into the wall that was not there. Man and horse slammed into it one after the other, and many at once, some horses breaking their necks and legs, some riders flying into the sky and slamming into the wall, some horses stopping quick and throwing their riders off.
Tracker caught the Aesi as he passed out, and pulled him away.
“And that is the story I have taken and given to you,” I said.
“But, but … but … but … that is no story. That is not even half of one. Your story is only half-delicious. Shall I only kill half of you? And who is this man who is not a man? Who is he? I will have a name, I will have it!”
“Do you not know? They call him the Aesi.”
The white man went all blue. His jaw dropped and he grabbed his shoulders, as if cold.