Were they wise to leave him then, to leave a silverback that fed upon his own mate’s blood? In truth, he had only erred from inexperience, when he had believed himself an ape of another kind.
And was it not his right and duty as a king to select many queens? And was it now as old Baho had said, and each female was insulted by the other?
But how could Ginny be his queen knowing there was another, and that he had drunk her blood?
Even then his thoughts returned to Lilly, to her soft breasts and welcoming eyes. He felt the hunger rise to refute his claims of innocence, and he beat a fist against his brow.
“No Lilly! No Ginny!” he shouted, staring at the sand. “Gazda is a beast.”
He did not deserve a mate like Ginny, anymore than he was worth his mother Eeda. Mates and mothers and love and family were for apes of every kind but not for Gazda.
No, he was not an ape! For his mother, and Goro and old Baho had taught him the grace of power, that a good ape does not kill his offspring or beat his mate or his fellows, and that a king protects his tribe with his own life!
Gazda was a predator and a beast no better than Omag! Sip-sip!
His tribe of apes would not be safe with him as king. No! Better with old Baho they would be.
From out of these turbulent thoughts Gazda’s awareness staggered briefly, and there to either side of him and behind he saw the black fog lurking. It covered the sand beneath the trees and crept through the leaves but would not trade the shadows for the sunlight, or touch him where he rose to stand near the waves.
Growling, Gazda looked across the great blue water, then turned back again to the fog, only swing around and glare at the smoke at the horizon.
No one remained. It was Gazda, the empty tree-nest, the jungle and the fog.
He could never return to the apes for even little Ooso’s daughter Yulu should fear him.
Gazda would be alone—as he deserved. He had killed his mother and would have killed his mate. Revulsion cramped the night ape’s guts and burned within his breast as this truth wrenched him, as he glared at the distant smoke knowing...
...Ginny was alive, but she had rejected him.
Fire burned in the night ape’s eyes as his powerful hands twisted into fists, and as they shook, as his mighty shoulders quivered with rage and sorrow, his body filled with power; it swelled with pain.
The King of the Apes threw back his head and from his arching breast burst a challenging cry so wracked with wanton agony that as its echoes faded; a silence fell upon the jungle and the sea.
Deeper seemed the quiet then for all Gazda’s loss had tinged his rage with hopeless, helpless pain. A silverback who gave that cry was calling Death itself to battle.
And an answer came.
Inland, the trees were shaken by a great disturbance. A terrible trumpeting wave of sound rushed through the shivering jungle, surging toward the sea, and Gazda turned to it, a grim and hungry smile on his handsome features.
Magnuh had returned, and the bull elephant was making it known that he was master.
But he was not the lord of this jungle, not yet. Not while one creature still lived.
With the scar on his forehead blazing above his burning eyes, the furious Gazda leapt into the nearest branches and swung away to seek the source of this new challenge.
His face was set in a mask of fury and despair, and his soul was empty of all caution.
Gazda wished to know who ruled the jungle.
The afternoon was old, and the jungle shadows long by the time Gazda found the bull elephant in a stretch of tall trees with trunks distant enough for the monster to move among them.
The night ape saw then how large Magnuh had grown in his maturity. The beast stood 18 feet to the great mountain of muscle growing across his broad shoulders, and spear-like tusks curved 15 feet out from the battering ram of a skull.
“I thought you were dead,” Gazda rasped from his high perch.
As king of the greatest elephant herd in West Africa, Magnuh had been busy over the last years with his duties as monarch.
Chief among these was siring generations of powerful pachyderms, and indeed his aggressive character and strength had long ago transferred to the young males of his herd.
In the society of elephants, these males were driven off by the jealous king when they approached an age to challenge him for the females.
The rogues then haunted the herd at a distance pounding their frustrations out upon each other, preparing themselves to challenge Magnuh when the time was right.
And so, Magnuh had no time for grudges like that which he had fostered with the night ape. Indeed, Gazda was strange to him for the jungle giant had learned he had somehow survived a fatal beating. Many times since had Magnuh heard his foe’s cry at a distance, and often he yearned to charge into the jungle to slay him outright.
But as the bull elephant’s many scars attested, he was occupied battling young males who sought his crown. Young males who were his sons, and shared his might, malice and zeal.
Only Magnuh’s titanic size, wit and violence had kept him in power, so when the herds entered the jungle to feed on fruit and plants, he roamed the grassy land that led to the groves to battle any male that approached his herd.
The King of the Elephants had crossed the river many times in the years since thrashing the night ape, and even fed upon the trees that bordered Gazda’s lands; but the elephant’s offspring gave him no leisure, and his own foul mood drove him at every challenger.
He had already slain the oldest and biggest of his sons, and would kill others, so Magnuh had
