smoke.'
Who laid the fire? ' Zouga persisted. The black bull from the south.
The Angoni.'
Zouga was silent again imagining the tribe fleeing here, to their holy place, their refuge, the women carrying the children, running like driven game ahead of the beaters, looking back over their shoulders for a glimpse of the waving tufts on the crowns of the warshields and the plumed headdresses of the Angoni arnadoda.
He imagined them lying here in the darkness listening to the ring of axes and shouts of the besieging warriors as they cut the timber and piled it in the mouth of the cave, and then the crackle of the flames as they put fire to it and the first choking acrid clouds of smoke boiled into the cave.
He could hear again in his imagination the screams and cries of the choking, dying victims, and the shouts and the laughter of the men beyond the flaming, smoking barricade of timber. That too was part of the prophecy, ' said the Umlirno and was silent. In the silence there was a soft rustling sound like a leaf blown by the breeze across the tiles at midnight, and Zouga's eyes turned towards the sound.
A dark thing flowed out of the shadows at the back of the cave, like a trickle of spilt blood, black in the gloom but catching the firelight in pinpricks of reflected light.
It rustled softly across the stone floor, and Zouga felt his skin crawl and his nostrils flare at the sweetish mousy odour which he had noticed before, but which he recognized now.
It was the smell of snake.
Zouga stared at it, frozen with fascinated horror, for the reptile was as thick as his wrist and the full length of it was lost in the recesses of the cave. The head slid into the circle of orange firelight. The scales glittered with a marble lustre, the lidless eyes fixed Zouga with an unblinking stare and from the slyly grinning lipless mouth the silken black tongue vibrated as it tasted his scent upon the air. Sweet Christ! Zouga whispered hoarsely and dropped his hand to the hilt of his hunting-knife on his belt, but the Urnlimo did not move.
The snake lifted its head from the stone and dipped it over the bowl of milk. It began to drink.
It was a mamba, a black mamba, the most venomous of all the reptiles, the death it could inflict was swift but agonizing beyond all nightmares of pain. Zouga had not believed that a mamba could grow to such dimensions, for as he watched it drink half its length was still lost in the shadows.
After a minute the monstrous reptile lifted its head from the bowl and turned towards the Umlirno, it began to slide forward, the muscles under the glittering scales convulsing in little waves that came running down its length towards the broad spatulate head.
It touched the woman's bare knee with the flickering black tongue, seeming to use the tongue like a blind man uses his cane to grope its way along her thigh, licking briefly at the lips of her bulging sex, and then lifting itself up over her belly, over her breasts, still licking at her smoothly oiled skin, it rose up around her neck and then slid down over the other shoulder until it came to rest at last suspended around her neck, the head reaching out the length of a man's arm ahead of her at the level of her breasts; swaying slightly, it fixed Zouga once more with that cold ophidian stare.
Zouga licked his lips, and relaxed his grip on the hilt of the knife.
I have come to seek wisdom, he said hoarsely. I know what you seek, ' replied the Urnlirno. 'But you will find more than you seek. 'Who will lead me? 'Follow the little seeker of sweetness in the treetops. 'I do not understand. ' Zouga frowned, still watching the huge snake, and the Umlirno did not reply. Her silence was clearly an invitation to ponder the reply, and Zouga did so in silence, but found no explanation. He memorized the words, and would have asked another question but there was a silken rush out of the darkness near him, and he started half to his feet as a second snake slid swiftly past him.
It was another mamba, but a smaller snake, not much thicker than his thumb, and as long as twice the stretch of his arms. Half its length was raised arrow-straight in the air, and it sailed on its tail up to the kneeling woman with her grotesque living necklace.
The woman did not move, and the smaller snake stood before her, swaying gently from side to side, lowering itself gradually until it touched tongue to darting black tongue with the thick reptile around her neck.
Then it slid forward and began to roll itself around the body of the other snake, throwing turn after turn like a sailor lashing a sheet about a mast, and each time it rolled, it showed its soft white pulsating underbelly with the narrow scales reaching from flank to flank.
Neither the woman nor the bigger snake moved, nor removed their steadfast gaze from Zouga's fascinated pale face. The thinner lighter-colonred body of the second snake began a slow rhythmical and sensual movement, expanding and contracting about the thicker and darker body of the other and Zouga realized that they were a mating pair.
Two-thirds of the way down the underbelly of the male were the elongated scales that guarded the genital sac. As the male's excitement mounted so the scales gaped apart and the penis began to extrude. It was the colour and shape of the bloom of a night-flowering cactus, a pale lilac belled flower that gleamed like wet satin.
insistently the male caressed the thick, dark body, and gradually his ardourlwas rewarded. The female rolled a portion of her own length, the white belly throbbing softly in acquiescence, exposing the scaled genital purse.
With a long shuddering movement the male slid his length down hers, white belly pressed to belly, and the swollen lilac flower prised open the female sexual purse, distorting the lips. The female mamba opened her mouth wide, and her throat was a lovely buttercup yellow. In her top jaw the small bony needles of her fangs were erect, each tipped with a pearly drop of venom, and she emitted a low sibilant hiss of ecstasy or pain as the male locked his penis deeply into her.
Zouga found he was sweating. A droplet slid down from his temple into his beard. The bizarre courtship and copulation had taken only minutes during which neither he nor the Umlimo had moved, but now she spoke. The white eagle has stooped on the stone falcons, and cast them to earth She paused. 'Now the eagle shall lift them up again and they will fly afar.'
Zouga leaned forward, listening intently, There shall be no peace in the kingdoms of the Mambos or the Monomatapa until they return. For the white eagle will war with the black bull until the stone falcons return to roost.'
While she spoke, the slow convulsing copulation of those inter-locked bodies continued, giving to her words an obscene and evil weight. Generation will war with generation, the eaglet will strive against the bull calf, white
