Black Leopard, Red Wolf

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.