Nyumbani Tales Read online

  The returning warriors did not leap or dance or clash their spear-points against their shields in joy. No shouts of victory carried across the Tamburure. Narrowing his eyes, Makaro ascertained that the warriors were not carrying Karamu trussed to a pole – the signal that the youth had turned ilmonek. The old man was thankful for that. Still, he knew what he must do.

  With a sad shake of his head, Makaro turned and went to his manyatta to retrieve the Death-Drum. By the time he returned with the hide-covered wooden cylinder, nearly all the people of the clan had gathered to meet the warriors. Katisa stood at the forefront of the crowd. Patiently awaiting the moment when his task would begin, Makaro squatted behind his instrument. Before long, grief and sorrow would be his fellow musicians.

  Solemnly, the procession of fighting-men filed toward the assembled Kitoko. Including the ol-arem and the oibonok, there were nineteen of them: tall, rangy men with sinews of steel. Short swords called simis were belted to their sides. Hide garments clung to their lean, hard torsos and red pigment daubed their skin. Their hair lay in braided, ocher-covered plaits that would have seemed feminine had the faces beneath them not been so fierce.

  Yet for all their warlike demeanor and panoply, the warriors’ huge, oval-shaped shields and long spears weighed heavily in their hands, and sadness underscored the grimness of their expressions. Twenty of them had marched through the yellow grass in the morning. But Karamu was not among them now.

  Katisa could no longer avoid the truth. Mustering all the stoicism Ilyassai tradition demanded, she approached her father, the ol-arem. Though Mubaku’s presence was not required on all olmaiyos, he had joined this one because Karamu was to be wed to Katisa. The other warriors were relatives of Karamu’s who had already slain their lions.

  A formidable-looking man who had risen to his current rank at an early age, Mubaku waited for his daughter to speak.

  “How did Karamu die, Father?” she asked.

  “He died as an Ilyassai should ... bravely,” Mubaku replied. “His spear missed its mark – and against Ngatun the lion, a man has but one chance.”

  “But Karamu once killed a bush-pig with a single cast,” Katisa exclaimed, momentarily giving way to emotion. “How could he have missed his lion?”

  “Silence!” Mubaku thundered. “I speak as your ol-arem, not as your father. Do you doubt the truth of my words?”

  “I do not doubt you,” said Katisa.

  “Then I will continue. After Karamu’s spear missed its mark, he went down as Ngatun leaped onto his shield. Karamu drew his simi, but he could not penetrate Ngatun’s heart before he tore through the shield and killed him. We then slew the lion, and buried it in the Tamburure with Karamu.”

  That was all ... a few stark sentences describing the end of a man’s life. That was the Ilyassai way.

  Katisa was neither surprised nor outraged that the other warriors had not speared the lion before it killed Karamu. An olmaiyo was a contest between one man and one beast. The others were there to be witnesses if Karamu won; avengers if he lost. That was the Ilyassai way.

  “Unfortunate,” a new voice said, breaking the moment of silence. “So very unfortunate.”

  The voice belonged to Chitendu, who had unobtrusively placed himself between Mubaku and Katisa. The oibonok was accoutered like the rest of the warriors, save for the long, spiraled horn that hung at his side. With this horn, many generations of oibonoks had summoned forth lions to test the mettle of Ilyassai men.

  “Indeed, Karamu would have been a fine warrior and a wonderful mate,” Chitendu continued. “But he is dead. And according to our agreement, Mubaku, your daughter is now a Bride of Ajunge.”

  With that admonition, the oibonok reached out to seize Katisa’s arm. She slipped away from his grasp. Before Chitendu could take another step toward her, Katisa’s foot lashed out and caught the oibonok in the pit of his stomach. Doubling over in pain, he sat down hard.

  Baring her teeth in rage, Katisa sprang like a panther at Chitendu, who had risen to his knees and was gasping for breath. Well-versed in the many fighting-skills all Ilyassai women were taught, she might have slain the oibonok bare-handed, had she reached him. But three warriors intervened, catching her in mid-leap and pinioning her limbs.

  “He did it!” she shouted, struggling fiercely in the grasp of the warriors. “He used sorcery to cause Karamu’s death! I’ll die before I let him take me to his filthy sleeping-mat!”

  A murmur of disquiet rustled through the crowd. Katisa’s accusation could not be taken lightly, for an oibonok was forbidden to cast harmful spells against a fellow clan-member. The punishment for doing so was death. Yet Chitendu remained calm as he rose to his feet and looked at Katisa.

  “Every man who went on this olmaiyo will tell you that I did nothing beyond the calling of the lion,” he said.

  He turned to the other warriors.

  “Is it not so?” he demanded.

  One-by-one, seventeen plaited heads nodded curtly. Only Mubaku’s head remained rigid.

  “Is it not so, ol-arem?” Chitendu repeated, a hard edge pushing aside the deference in his tone.

  Reluctantly, Mubaku nodded. Rage kindled in his heart as Chitendu grinned. Because of Katisa’s unseemly outburst, the ol-arem was being none-too-subtly ridiculed by the oibonok, whose influence was growing well beyond the traditional limits of his place in the clan’s hierarchy.

  “Your daughter is not behaving in a matter befitting an Ilyassai,” Chitendu continued, elaborating his insult.

  Mubaku could only grind his teeth and say nothing, for nearly half the clan had heard Katisa’s indiscreet accusation.

  “I go now to prepare the Place of Ajunge for the arrival of his Bride,” Chitendu said. “In three days, I will come for her. Perhaps by then, Mubaku, you will have convinced her to accept the reality of what has happened on this day. If you do not ... I will.”

  Abruptly, the oibonok turned on his heel and strode away, showing little effect from the blow Katisa had landed. The people of the clan made way for him as they never would have in the face of armed foes or menacing beasts. Then he was gone, vanishing into shadows darkened by deepening sunset.

  Mubaku glared angrily at Katisa. On this day, his daughter had disgraced him almost as thoroughly as if she had been a warrior who turned ilmonek on his olmaiyo. And that devil Chitendu had taken full advantage of her indiscretion and diminished Mubaku’s standing as head of the clan.

  With each passing moment, the ol-arem’s fury grew. The crowd murmured in anticipation, for they knew as well as Katisa what was going to happen next.

  “Turn her,” Mubaku said to the warriors who were still holding Katisa.

  Obediently, the three men positioned Katisa so that her back faced Mubaku. Then one of them used the point of his spear to trace a line in the dust about two paces away from her feet. The other two pulled her muvazi away from her shoulders, baring the skin of her back.

  At Mubaku’s behest, a boy fetched him a stick of wood slender and strong enough to have served as a spear-shaft. Gripping the stick firmly in both hands, Mubaku bade the warriors holding Katisa to step aside.

  Then he swung she stick against Katisa’s naked back. Wood met flesh with a sound like the strike of lightning against a tree. Pain seared through Katisa’s body. Her knees buckled and a scream struggled to escape her throat. But outwardly, she neither struggled nor cried out. The crowd muttered is approval, for refusal to acknowledge pain was the way of the Ilyassai.

  Again, Mubaku swung. Again, the stick struck. Again, the pain. Again, no sound escaped Katisa’s lips.

  But this time, the impact of her father’s blow drove her a step forward. As the next blow landed, she tried to plant her feet more firmly. For if Mubaku succeeded in forcing her to cross the line in the dust, even worse punishment would ensue.

  Mubaku was a powerful man, and the blows from his stick pushed her ever forward. Her legs weakened, and her knees became numb. The smooth skin of her back became a gr
id of swollen welts, some of which were beginning to bleed. The scream caught in her throat was forcing its way ever upward, and she was losing the struggle to dam the tears threatening to burst from her eyes.

  Only a moment before the tears would flow; before the awful pain would rip an outcry loose; before her feet staggered the final inches across the spear-cut line, the stuck shattered in Mubaku’s hands – and the beating was done.

  Katisa heard the sound of splintering wood and saw part of the stick fly past her. Her back was composed of layers of agony, each one worse than the last. Darkness eddied around the periphery of her vision. She could no longer feel her legs. Yet she knew she must not fall across the line. If she did, the phenomenal fortitude she had demonstrated would mean nothing...

  Her unyielding resolve could carry her no farther. She felt herself reeling to the ground. With a final, heart-wrenching effort, she twisted her body so that she fell on her side. Even so, the impact of her landing jarred her welted back, and sheer agony stitched through her body. Then she lay still and unconscious ... only a hairsbreadth away from the furrow in the dust.

  Grim pride showed in Mubaku’s eyes as he looked down at his daughter. At least some of his family’s honor had been salvaged. Yet even as his foot erased the line beside which Katisa lay, a voice spoke deep inside his soul:

  Would you have done this if Junyari were still alive?

  He had no answer.

  In the meantime, the Death-Drum pounded a doleful dirge for Karamu long into the night. For Karamu ... and Katisa.

  THE BLACK BLANKET OF night lay above the Tamburure, broken only by the wan light of Mwesu the moon and the scattered stars. In the manyattas of the Kitoko clan, night-fired burned like red-orange eyes, while the ngombes milled somnolently in their thornbush enclosure. No one stirred other than the night-sentries and the boys whose duty it was to tend the cattle.

  It was the night of the second day since the death of Karamu. Katisa had finally fallen into a fitful slumber. It was not the heartache of her lover’s passing that disturbed her sleep this night. Nor was it the pain that lingered from the beating her father had given her. Nor was it the certainty that Chitendu would be coming for her the nest day that pulled moans from her mouth and sent shudders through her limbs.

  The pain in her back had become bearable – partly because she was Ilyassai, and partly because the welts had been healed by the balms and poultices of Mizuna, the Kitokos’ herb-woman. As the oibonok practiced sorcery with spells and incantations, so the herb-woman worked healing-magic with roots and leaves. Many were the warriors and women who owed their lives to Mizuna, who was so old that even the clan’s elders were as children to her.

  It was a dream that troubled Katisa’s sleep this night.

  She was a bodiless soul, floating amid a milieu of vague colors and indistinct shapes. She felt nothing. She understood nothing. She could hardly even recall who she was ...

  Suddenly, her surroundings snapped into sharp focus. She was suspended somehow between the bright blue bowl of the sky and the flat plain of the Tamburure, a sea of yellow grass dotted with acacia and baobab trees. Twenty Ilyassai warriors strode through the grass. Straighter, taller, prouder than all the rest strode a figure she recognized as Karamu. Against her will, she drifted closer to Karamu, until his fiercely handsome face blotted out everything else.

  Abruptly, the focus shifted. Again, she was floating above the warriors. She saw Chitendu raise the spiraled horn to his lips and sound the challenge to the lions. The bestial clarion boomed ... and was answered by the roar of a huge, black-maned monarch of the plain.

  Karamu stepped away from the other warriors, and glided toward the great, tawny predator stalking through the tall grass ...

  Katisa knew what was coming next. She tried to shut out the sight of Karamu’s impending doom. But she had no eyelids to close. She wanted to scream a warning to Karamu, who now crouched and tensed his spear-arm as Ngatun’s tufted tail lashed in anticipation. But she had neither mouth nor voice. She wanted to flee from the terrible vision as Ngatun roared and rushed with frightening velocity toward the waiting warrior. But she had no legs to carry her away.

  She could only watch in helpless horror as Karamu’s spear missed its mark. And she saw it was a streak of green luminescence, like an errant bolt of lightning, that deflected Karamu’s weapon from its course.

  Now the enormous weight of the lion bore Karamu to the ground. Beneath the protection of his shield, he drove his simi toward the heart of the snarling beast. But a glowing green sheath formed along the blade of the short sword, blunting the weapon’s thrust.

  Mind reeling in disbelief, Katisa watched as emerald light formed around Ngatun’s claws, enhancing the lion’s power as he tore into the thick rhinoceros-hide of the shield. Inexorably, the lion peeled away the only barrier that separated him from the human who had dared to challenge him.

  Talons ripped red wounds in Karamu’s flesh. Fanged jaws closed over the warrior’s face as he continued to strike futile blows with his simi. Katisa screamed soundlessly at the sight of the body she had once embraced as the black-maned beast continued its attack.

  Then the focus changed again. Now the figure of Chitendu dominated the scene. The oibonok stood rigidly immobile, eyes closed and arms upraised. Hovering only a few feet above his headpiece was a sphere of emerald fire. Threads of green light coruscated across its blazing surface. Katisa realized that Chitendu could manipulate those threads in any way he pleased. This was a new kind of sorcery, ominous and forbidding.

  Frantically, she looked to the other warriors, and to her father. Were they not aware of what the oibonok had done? Why were they not butchering Chitendu for his crime? Whey had they not understood that it was necessary to save Karamu, who had been robbed of his ability to fend off the lion?

  The answer to her desperate, unspoken questions lay in the warriors’ faces. Slack-jawed, vacant-eyed ... they saw only what Chitendu intended them to see. The green sphere, the luminous tendrils ... none of those manifestations of sorcery registered in their benumbed senses. Illusions created by the oibonok were all they saw.

  Chitendu opened his eyes and lowered his arms. The emerald sphere winked out of existence, leaving not even an afterimage to mark its presence. Abruptly, the mindless glaze disappeared from the warriors’ eyes. Surging forward in a wave of sinew and steel, they plunged their spears into the crimson-jawed beast that crouched over what was left of Karamu.

  Chitendu looked directly at her ... and grinned.

  Beyond further anguish, Katisa watched passively as a black fog began to envelop the scene. Soon, the blackness became absolute, and she floated in nothingness, devoid of light, devoid of feeling ... but not devoid of sound.

  It was a low, chilling cachinnation that rose from the periphery of nowhere. At first, it was only a soft whisper. Then it became hideous, all-too-familiar laughter that grew in intensity until it boomed like the thunder of a thousand war-drums. Katisa writhed and groaned as she struggled to free herself from the grip of the nightmare ...

  She sat bolt upright on her sleeping-mat. Her sweat-drenched body trembled, and the pain returned to her welted back. Her eyes darted toward the entrance to her manyatta, half-expecting to discover the shadowy shape of Chitendu lurking there. But she saw only a circle of flickering firelight.

  Despite the pain in her back and shoulders, Katisa dragged herself to her feet, wrapped a length of cloth around her body, and squeezed through the doorway of the manyatta. Despite the lateness of the hour, she was determined to speak with the one person in the clan she believed she could still trust.

  HALF-HIDDEN IN A GARMENT of zebra-hide, Mizuna squatted in the center of her manyatta like a benign spider in its web. The dim light that filtered through the openings in the leather dwelling softened the network of creases that seamed her ancient face. The scattered piles of roots, stems, leaves and other bits of plant matter with which she plied her healing trade were obscured by deep sha
dows.

  Katisa sat near the entrance. She had thought she would have needed to rouse the older woman from a sound slumber. But she found Mizuna wide awake, her dark eyes lively in a way that belied her advancing rains. As the women talked, they sipped from a bowl filled with the pinkish mixture of milk and cow’s-blood that was the staple of the Ilyassai diet.

  “It almost seems that you were expecting me,” Katisa said after she had told the herb-woman of the dream-vision she was certain had been sent by Chitendu.

  “I was,” Mizuna confirmed. “Since the time your mother, Junyari, died of a fever I could not cure, I have tried to take her place for you. So, I knew you would come to me before you do whatever you are going to do.”

  “But I don’t know what I am going to do!” Katisa cried. “I just know that I will not go to Chitendu to be a Bride of Ajunge. Either he or I will die before that happens.”

  “Yes,” mused Mizuna, seemingly unmindful of the ferocity in Katisa’s voice. “Chitendu is a devil in human form. I knew him of old, before he disappeared from the Tamburure, then came back a different man, with a name that was not the same as the one his parents gave him. I understand how you feel, Katisa.”

  She touched the younger woman’s hand.

  “There is another way for you,” the herb-woman said. “It is a very dangerous way, but it is better than killing. If you take it, you may one day wish you had become a Bride of Ajunge after all.”

  “What is this way?” Katisa asked.

  “Exile,” Mizuna said.

  “Exile?” Katisa repeated in a whisper. “But you know as well as I that exile means death. Where would I go? To the Zamburu? The Turkhana? The Place of Stones?”

  At the latter mention, an involuntary shudder gripped Mizuna, and her hands formed a sign of protection. For the Place of Stones was a ruin left behind by an archaic, pre-human race. Located far to the north of the Ilyassai domain, the ruins had always been shunned by the warrior-herdsmen. The gesture Mizuna made was as close as an Ilyassai could come to an admission of fear.