An evil light kindled in Ewuebe’s eyes as he turned to reply.
“Oh yes, Akuntali dan-Kanou, I do need you,” he said in a smooth, sinister tone. “I need you very much, indeed. You see, in order to perform a mystic feat of such magnitude as casting the same illusion in the minds of an entire Dyula encampment, a ... price must be paid. A sacrifice, if you will. It is unfortunate, but Legba, my godly mentor, demands it.
“In this case, the price must be a life. I am truly sorry to have to say that the life must be –”
“Yours!” cried Akuntali, who had averted his eyes from Ewuebe’s burning, hypnotic stare.
With all the quickness of a Haussa boxer, Akuntali’s fist struck the sorcerer on the jaw. Totally unprepared for the sudden blow, Ewuebe’s head rocked backward, and he flew over the edge of the well. A long, trailing scream marked the dan-Ifeti’s long plunge to the well’s bottom.
Akuntali allowed a smile of self-satisfaction to spread across his face. For he had prepared well, having realized that the dan-Ife was a more powerful sorcerer than he had said – just as Akuntali was not as naive as he had pretended to be.
His gloating was short-lived. Behind him, Akuntali heard a bellowing roar of rage. He turned and saw the duku charging him its huge mouth agape and its eyes burning red with madness.
Ikuu’s fury had good reason. For ten years, he had suffered the humiliation of being trapped in the fat, ungainly form of a duku. In all the West Coast, only one man had the power to reverse the miscast spell that bound him. And now Ewuebe was lying dead at the bottom of the well ...
Ikuu lunged forward, striving to close his lethal jaws on the body of the dan-Kano. But Akuntali was an agile man with soldier-trained reflexes, while Ikuu was now little more than a mindless beast. Leaping high in the air, Akuntali watched the gray-black bulk of the duku pass beneath him. The momentum of Ikuu’s body carried him over the edge of the well, and his braying cry ended with a muffled smack as he hit its bottom.
Akuntali landed on his feet. His arms flailed wildly for balance as he teetered on the edge. Then he threw himself forward, narrowly avoiding the fate of falling into the well with the others. Lying face-down on the ground, Akuntali laughed. His feigning of ingenuousness had enabled him to outwit the dan-Ife sorcerer. Now, the treasure of the Dyula caravan was his alone...
Suddenly, Akuntali stopped laughing. For, from the dark depths of the well, his mirth was ... echoed. Icy drops of perspiration beaded Akuntali’s brow as he peered into the yawning opening. Yes ... he could hear it clearly. It sounded like the chuckling of a ghoul.
Now Akuntali could hear a faint scrabbling, as if something were moving on the distant bottom. Then his eyes bulged in stark horror. The rope that was tied around the treasure was being jerked, as though something were climbing upward. And the demonic laughter grew louder.
Frantically, Akuntali ripped his sword from its sheath and hacked furiously at the rope. The moment it parted and fell away, he began to hurl the heaviest rocks he could find into the deep hole. More and more rocks bounced off the sides of the well as Akuntali scoured the area for anything he could find to bury the laughing thing at the well’s bottom.
In the process, Akuntali realized that he was burying uncounted cowries worth of wealth. But in his mounting terror, Akuntali cared little for riches. In fear-trembling whispers, all the tales he had heard about the sorcerers of Ifeti crept through his mind. He had scoffed in disbelief at those tales until now. And still the laughter continued.
Crying out in fear, Akuntali turned and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, disregarding the caravan guards who must by now have been scouring the area. It was well for his shaky sanity that he continued to think that the echoing laughter he heard was Ewuebe’s ...
Deep in the blackness of the well, an even darker shape stirred. Its eight limbs brushed away the rocks Akuntali had thrown. The shape was Kwaku Anansi, in his usual manifestation as a gigantic spider.
Kwaku Anansi laughed, for he had derived much pleasure from the adventurous chicanery of Akuntali and Ewuebe. Even more gratifying, however, was the fact that he now had within his grasp an acolyte of the boastful deity Legba. Lazily, the huge spider-shape glided toward the inert form of Ewuebe. A spark of life remained in Ewuebe’s broken body, for a sorcerer of Ife was hard to kill. But he could only cringe in horror as he felt a hairy spider-limb brush across his face.
One again, Kwaku Anansi laughed before the huge pincers of his jaws closed upon the throat of Ewuebe dan-Ifeti.
OKOSENE ALAKUN
AND THE MAGIC GUINEA FOWL
BEFORE I UNDERTOOK the task of turning some of the first Imaro stories into a novel, I ranged far and wide in my explorations of ways to turn African folk-tales into fantasy stories. The eastern and western parts of Nyumbani correspond roughly to similar regions in the Africa of the world we know. Stories from those and other regions inspired Imaro, Dossouye and the non-series stories. “Okosene Alakun and the Magic Guinea-Fowl” is adapted from a Nigerian folk-tale. Of all the stories and novels I’ve ever done, this one – along with “The Blacksmith and the Bambuti” – was the most fun to write. It was published in Weirdbook, in 1978.
Okosene Alakun’s hand lingered over the warri-board of ebony inlaid with gold. Carefully, he studied the positions of the ivory counters resting in thirty-two holes scooped delicately into the surface of the wood. Okosene’s eyes strayed to those of his opponent
