“So, my father’s hatred of Muamir Ashad could be masked until, Allah receive his spirit, Abu was within range and caught unawares. By one such as you.”
Sumunguru nodded in agreement, biting his half of the flat loaf of seed covered bread. He rose up to his full height and looked around the darkening countryside. These hills were used as the grazing ground of goats and their fleecier cousins, so were bare of tall grass and thick brush. Here and there the stone foundations of the earth would show, like the uncovered bones of some shallow grave’s occupant uprooted by dogs and pigs.
Through his reading of the guide stars of heaven that were starting to appear, the way to the city lay in the southeast of where they now were.
“You have to –flush out, mistress?”
“What!”
“So much for being a courtier. Do you have to piss?”
“How vulgar!”
“Yes it’s humbling or was meant to be, lest we think too highly of ourselves and measure ourselves against those far, bright stars above us, not much good that did. Well, do you?”
“NO!”
“Then let’s mount up.”
He placed her upon the horse, taking the reins he started off at a ground eating lope, despite his armor. Not cresting hills but around their slopes, running through narrow gorges they went onward in the direction of Dihya’s home. Later they splashed across a small stream. It was nearly nighthunter’s dark when Sumunguru saw it. The Dogon of Home would have called it a sacred house. A tall tower like monument or shrine, it stabbed upwards into the evening sky.
“You know of this, maybe?”
“I would know little of such places swordsman, except something’s . . .”
“Not right about it, eh? I’ve been to places almost like it in the lands of Home but the energy they gave off were inviting rather than this here one. It’s like an alert crocodile waiting for the first of the herd to enter the water. We’ll pass it . . . Come here!”
He pulled Dihya down from the saddle just as a red ball came spinning from the hillock behind them. It zoomed by splashing against the entrance of the shrine, which appeared in the light. The horse galloped off in fear.
“Son of the Kante! You have walked too long among the Living!”
Another scarlet ball cannoned from the night, illuminating a figure with an upthrust right arm.
“Damnit! A bow and some war arrows would be great to have around here now! Keep low and run towards that brush there. Then crawl, crawl, over to those boulders.”
“Wh- wh- what of you?”
“It’s somebody from my past. Move it now!”
Dihya noticed her hands were free, and the swordsman was running away from where he had ordered her to go. A smaller more transparent globe followed the darting warrior, who feinted to his left and ran backwards a few swift steps. There was a smaller impact, and loud mocking laughter from Sumunguru.
“Goxjivme! Haven’t healed up all the way yet, have you? Well, you never were that good with two arms. I’ve seen that close up. Came to find out you’re strictly a bush howler with a big picture of himself. Good talker though, I’ll give you that. You fooled an old man.”
Sumunguru laughed again then burst into another run.
Dihya was now trembling in fear and indecision. First the attack and capture by this semi djinn Black, now a sorcerer rival after him! The door to the watchtower was open, she had seen. The eerie feeling that came over her was most probably the left-over essence of fallen soldiers in the long contest between her father and Abu’s, maybe even further back to the wars of the believers and the Christians. Rather than the boulders outside she ran to be protected by the stones of the tower.
Goxjivme was practically drained of his inner qloa. It was much worse than he had believed. He had raced up into these cursed hills in spirit form, to find the perfect spot to dispose of the ex-king. But like a lodestone the shrine had pulled him towards it as he raced to find where to destroy the SoSo exile. It was all he could do to reassemble himself to solid form as the shrine drew him towards its ancient crumbling bricks. Now it took so much from him to cast a heart of the sun bolt at the damned revitalized . . . a wall of ice fell on his soul. Sumunguru was closer than he thought. He scrambled down the slope of the small hill kicking gravel that sounded to his panic-filling mind like the rumble of a herd of elephants. Not since that fatal battle at Kirina eleven years ago, where Sundiata, his Soninke and Mandingo shamans had defeated the charm he had placed on the aged King Sumunguru, freeing him from Goxjivme’s control. Who once freed, then turned in raw hatred upon the mage.
Before he could completely disappear, the old warrior king had grasped his arm in a fearsome grip. Though he finally managed to complete his spell, the cost was his arm, left in the enflamed king’s grip. Not since those moments had he known such out and out fear.
For Sumunguru it seemed to be the turning point of the climatic battle. With a roar The Leopard cried out for the reaping of a great harvest of rebellious traitors and fools, as he once again led his mail clad veteran guard into the battle smashing aside all who stood against them. Through the hosts of kings and chieftains they cut their way. Up to the very standards of Sundiata they fought, unstoppable in their fury. Sundiata shivered in fear at the seeming collapse of all his hopes.
Goxjivme soon stumbled and fell forward, nearly crying out when
