Yet you come for me anyway, I don’t say.
I throw two daggers at him. In the quick he catch one, but the other dodge his hand, up, down, under, then behind, where I cut the back of his neck. He smile and say something about how he should know me, but I don’t look like anyone he has crossed paths with. Not that any of them ever lived to give good or bad report, he say. I don’t remember him talking so much. The ground underneath me begin to shake, split, tear in two. I jump on the side of a chasm ever widening, when a chunk break off and hurl itself at me. I try to dodge but it hit my right thigh and knock me over into the dirt. Bigger pieces break off. He would crush me with them, but the wind (not wind) dome over my head and the boulders crack into dust, the same dust that I whip into a storm to blind him. Run right up to him I do as he fumble around, but he catch my hand, grip it, swing me, and slam me into the ground, killing the dust cloud. He have a sword now, swinging to chop and chop and chop, but I roll and roll and roll. My wind (not wind) knock him off his feet and he land on his back. I leap at him but a tree knock me away. He say enough with the tricks and grab his sword, then kick me my daggers. He say something about how is long years now that he don’t have any sport. I don’t say that this must be his first time since his last birth that he find a mind he can’t read or control. He catch me going too deep in the thought and swing for my head. I block but he knock me over and I roll again out of a jab to the ground. He swing low and I block low, push him back, and jab high, but he block high. I kick him in the belly and he stagger back just enough to steady himself and charge back, spinning like a whirlwind. Swing and chop left and I block left, swing and chop right and I block right, he have me only defending blows and he know it, so he swing hard and faster, and I let the wind (not wind) bounce me over his head and slice across his face. He yell, then spit, then laugh. So we’re cheating, then, he say, and a block of dirt burst in my face. I can’t wipe my eyes before his hand is on my neck, and I remember the last time his hand grab my neck.
“I know you,” he say. “But I don’t remember your face. Not even the real one behind your false face.”
This enrage me. After all he done to me, it’s that he don’t even remember that make me scream and my wind (not wind) blast him off me. I go inside and explode people before. I can do it to man a great distance from me. But maybe I need to touch him because all I am getting is a headache. Maybe the body learn from the old even if it new. He land at the side of the mound, saying something about my wind.
“Is not wind,” I say. And then a hole open up and suck me down. I not even thinking of the wind (not wind) when the earth pull me down deeper, deeper, and deeper still, past new roots, past old root, past layer of rock, layer of mud, and deeper, deeper, deeper. The wind (not wind) have to choose between attack and protect, and it choose protect, with a barrier around my head. And still the underground suck me under the dirt, crackling, shifting, and trickling as I go down, down, and down. I try to get the wind (not wind) to blast, but it won’t leave my protection. It won’t attack. So far down in the earth he leave me, yet I can still hear the fucking Aesi.
About how war was coming, not the one that is here. That it was vital that the North win. That this latest mad King of the line of mad kings of the South was the craziest because he wanted to rule all kingdoms. So maybe he was not that mad. Maybe foolish. But a threat is coming, from neither South, North, nor East. But the West. Fire and disease and death and slavery will come across from the sea, and nobody, none of the great elders, fetish priests, and yerewolos have seen it. But he has seen it with the third eye. And only one unified kingdom, only one strong King, not a mad one, and not a blood-hungry abomination can alter what he has seen. He leave me with the echo of his voice, buried deep in the earth.
The Red Lake. When I finally claw my way back to the top it was morning. But it was also morning when this ground suck me under, so this was a new day. The Aesi leave my horse, likely thinking I would never free myself from the ground. I didn’t know where to go or where to look except ahead is the Red Lake. I get there to see Lissisolo’s soldiers, only ten or twelve in number, all on the inlet almost surrounded by river that people call the skull. One of them holding her son. Separated by that thin turn of the lake was the Tracker and the Ishologu. I don’t know what I was watching. Some sort of drama with no sound. The Ishologu spreading his wings and the boy fighting the stronger hands restraining him. He want to run to the Ishologu and is screeching, that I hear. I don’t know what they saying. The soldier holding the boy remove his helmet and I am shocked to see the Leopard. He was the one I wondered most about, for if the Tracker didn’t blame him for what happened, then surely he blame himself. Then the boy break free, and the Leopard chase after him, two spears fly, both hitting him in the chest. The Aesi coming up from behind, as he always seem to do. The Tracker shouting Leopard’s name, dashing into the water after him, swimming to catch him before he float away. The Aesi, I know it is him, appear to do nothing, but every soldier fall to the ground, just like so. The Tracker is bawling over his cat, who seem to still be alive.
And then this, the boy run to the Ishologu. Everybody is so taken with this, Ishologu holding the boy, hugging him, that nobody see me approach. The Aesi is going around making sure the soldiers are either deep in sleep or dead. The Tracker is still cradling the Leopard and kissing him on the forehead, telling him that he was the great love, the only one he could call love. The Leopard say that if he love any one person as much as he loved his own cock then that would have been enough love to fill the whole world. Nobody else would need any, he say, and die mid-laugh. Ishologu turn around and for the first time I see that it is Nyka, the snake. It rush to my mouth to ask him where is Nsaka Ne Vampi, where is my great-great-granddaughter, but he is an Ishologu now and in his eyes I know. And this boy. He lean into Nyka’s chest, resting, nuzzling like a baby lamb, but was just aiming for the nipple to bite into. This boy, who look like he only a few years from a Zareba. Nyka wince, but he also smile. He wrap his arms tighter around him, and flap his wings until he was flying. The boy stop sucking when he see they in the air and smile with black and red lips. In the quick, Nyka flap his wings again and a lightning bolt, tall as the sky, strike them two. The dirt shiver and knock me off me feet. The lightning stay, not jumping around, not hopping, not vanishing, just dropping a shower of shock on the two. Nyka hold on tight to the boy kicking and screaming, until they both burst into flame that explode, leaving nothing but smoke. And the Tracker, still whimpering.