Muburi smiled as he returned to his ngombes, and his thoughts overflowed with fanciful speculation on how Chitendu might reward him.
THE SUN HAD SET ONLY recently, and the southern edge of the Tamburure was now veiled in a twilight gloom. Over the treetops in the distance, Katisa could see the looming escarpment that marked the beginning of the Ardhi ya Nyama. She decided to rest over the night. Tomorrow, she would arrive in the last sanctuary of the giant beasts that had roamed the length and breadth of Nyumbani before the advent of man and woman.
It was not difficult for her to slip away from the manyattas three nights ago. She knew where the sentries would be, and believed she could avoid the herd-boys. No palisade surrounded the manyattas, for the Ilyassai were so feared that neither human nor beast would dare to attack their dwellings.
Thus, Katisa had simply stolen away, leaving little sentiment behind. For her father, she felt no regrets, as the distance between them had widened steadily since her mother’s death.
She was accoutered for a long march, like the clan’s seasonal migrations to better grazing land. Gone were the muvazi and copper ornaments in which she would have been wed. Now, she was clad in a brief cowhide garment that left her limbs bare and unencumbered. Her only adornment was a boar-tusk that hung from a thong around her neck. Karamu had given it to her as a token of his last kill before olmaiyo. It was all she had left of him.
Her only weapons were a slender throwing-spear and the dagger with which she had threatened Chitendu. For an Ilyassai woman, that was more-than-sufficient armament.
Before leaving the manyattas, Katisa had rubbed her skin with the biki and jawuma leaves, in the order Mizuna had prescribed. Not much time passed before the herb-woman’s dawa was put to the test.
A rustle in the grass had alerted her that she was being stalked. Her keen eyes spotted the tawny, moon-washed form of a lioness several strides behind her. The great cat seemed about to charge ... then it hacked and sneezed in sudden disgust, and padded disdainfully away from its intended prey.
Later that night, Katisa passed a rare clump of savannah trees. She walked beyond the distance across which a leopard lurking in the branches could spring. There was, indeed, a leopard in the trees. And it did leap ... in the opposite direction from Katisa, spitting and snarling as it ran away.
“I must smell like a civet,” Katisa said ruefully – and gratefully.
Thus far, there had been no signs of pursuit from Chitendu. The farther the distance between her and the oibonok increased, the better. Now she was entering the edge of a narrow fringe of forest that separated the plain from the escarpment. Like all Ilyassai, Katisa did not like forests. But this night, at least, she could sleep comfortably in the shelter of a tree instead of napping fitfully and tending a night-fire as she had on the savannah.
As she clambered up a particularly tall tree and found a comfortable fork in its branches, Katisa wondered how the Lost Clan had traversed the seemingly impenetrable cliffs that guarded the Ardhi ya Nyama. Soon enough, she would learn.
She fell asleep.
And she dreamed ...
SHE WAS STANDING AT the base of the tree in which she’d been sleeping. She could not recall having climbed down from her perch. A sense that was beyond the ones that served her when she was awake told her that something was standing behind her ... a presence that imbued her with a terror she had never before experienced. She must not turn around; she must not turn around ...
The thing behind her spoke. It called her name: “Katiiiiiiisa ...”
She recognized the hollow, whispery voice, even though everything inside her wished that she didn’t. She found herself turning to face the thing that called her name. But she would not open her eyes.
“Katiiiiiiisa ... look at meeee,” the thing commanded.
No, her mind pleaded as a force beyond her control slowly pried her eyelids apart.
I don’t want to see ... I don’t want to see ...
Her eyes were open. And she saw. And she suppressed a shriek that would have been loud enough to awaken all in the small fringe of forest.
Standing before her was a thing that had once been a man, but was now only a travesty, a caricature surrounded by a nimbus of bilious green luminescence. Its legs were scored with wounds clawed deep to the bone. Its thigh-muscles hung in gory, striated strips. Entrails slithered downward like snakes from its slashed-open abdomen to its groin. One arm clung by a single shred of sinew to its shoulder. Its face was chewed and mutilated almost beyond recognition.
Almost ... but not quite. Katisa knew that face. It was the face of Karamu ... her Karamu ... calling her to join him in death ...
Dead hands bore deadly weapons, the same ones with which he had been buried. The torn arm carried his simi; the sound one his broken spear. The arm that held the spear drew back. And the eerie voice crooned: “Katiiiiiiisa ... come, Katiiiiiiisa ...”
“No!” Katisa shouted.
Her feet moved, carrying her away from to spot to which her terror had rooted her. The steel point of the spear bit into the bole of the tree. Even though it dangled loosely, the arm that held the simi transferred the weapon to the thing’s empty hand. The green glow intensified.
“Cooome ... Katiiiiiiisa ...”
Now the thing she refused to think of as Karamu shuffled toward her. It raised its simi to strike. Reflexively, she
