“The times are never kind to the evil fool, are they? Despite all the great harm they cause so gleefully to others, the Foundation of Right falls on them heavier than the Sun.”
He rolled over to find Sumunguru staring down at him. The warrior placed his boot on the side of the spellcaster’s head, pressing it into the stony soil.
“No, your majesty,” he sputtered, with grit in his mouth. “I-I-I tried to help you! I tried to help you hold your empire together! I . . .”
“You befogged an old man lost in the grief of his eldest son’s death. A mongoose who thought he was a lion wound up besting me in a battle I would never had fought as I did that damned day. Let me help you Goxjivme. Let me give you- Peace!”
The bite of sword and the spray and gurgle of blood were the only sounds after that.
Moments later, there was the sound of trickling water. “Kante!” rang out in the hills, a roar of triumph. He walked quickly to where he expected the woman Dihya to be.
“Has it ever been that easy?” he said aloud to himself feeling more than seeing the towering shrine.
He breathed deeply then walked purposely towards it, sword held at the ready. As he neared closer, there was first a greenish than more of a cold dawn blue white light emanating from the entryway. Sumunguru loosened his neck muscles. He patted the flat of his blade to his forehead than his heart.
Couching warily, he entered. Stepping quickly through, he spun about to face any lurker in ambush. There was none. The light showed a large square room built of once finely shaped brick, now cracked and unevenly replastered. A row of columns lined both sides of the room some of them resembling strongly the sun-bleached ones he had seen in the ancient ruins of the Maghreb and here in the northern part of the Almohad realm. On the floor was a thick layer of dust in which he saw slipper prints going forward, in small tentative steps.
“You’re the one who chose this place.”
The light took away some of the weight of wrong this building had cast out earlier, but only because Sumunguru could see his surroundings. He too, took cautious steps watching warily the columns, roof, and walls following Dihya footsteps. On the left wall was the eroded carving of a god or demon sitting on a pile of stones or skulls. Spider webs lay thick the deeper he advanced, a grim smile creasing his face as he remembered his youthful struggle with a giant and ferocious child of Anaise the Spider Trickster in the Woods of Kongassambougou.
The ground floor ended, and the beginnings of a processional stairway began the first step had embossed on it the figure of a prostrating or dead man with a drooping mustache and spiked hair. Each step after there were images of men, women, and children alone or in pairs on the wide steps till he and the small footprints he followed reached the top landing. Dihya was in a quivering heap against a wall that at first resembled a memory board griots used to teach youngsters in their profession. Then he saw it wasn’t. They were niches filled with the fragments of skulls and bone. He made a series of quick movements with his hand over the terrified woman. The simple spell told him she wasn’t a demon in her form attempting to lure him to unwary destruction.
“Dihya, Sumunguru is here to take you home. By Shango’s Thunder that’s what I aim to do.”
He stooped to pick the woman up by her arms, when she suddenly looked up into his eyes. She tried to speak but couldn’t at first but the sheer terror that were in them receded in them a bit, like a tide going out to sea.
“Flee! Not even you can stand . . .”
Then they heard the first heavy steps coming from the darkness of the room. She gasped and tried to pull away from Sumunguru, but he pulled her to her feet none too gently.
“Put some bone in your spine woman! Run for all you are worth out this nest. It can’t follow you out else it would be hunting these hills instead of having its meals brought to it.”
“You know what it is?”
“Despite the differences men do the same foolish shit everywhere! Now Go!”
He pushed her towards the stairs and didn’t look back. The steps were methodically coming nearer.
“Oh, I’m unnerved! I’m truly scared, really I am. But let us end the ritual, shall we? Come and get me bitch of the dark!”
There was a silence; Sumunguru could hear the racing patter of Dihya on the stairs.
“Shall I come drag your ass to face me, you over pampered spew of a whorish stork and a drunken baboon! I’m King Sumunguru Kante, Breaker of nations, destroyer of armies, the vanquisher of fell spirits! I will not wait!”
There out of the cloaking shadows came hooves, then the scaled calves proceeding upward into the pale muscled flesh of thighs, then a svelte torso of a blue haired beautiful woman- man thing, its long tresses flowing over its shoulders, its slanted eyes staring with outrage and hatred at Sumunguru. Its slender arms ended in the talons of a predator bird.
“Your mother laid up with everything around the farm I see!”
The creature’s beauty went ugly as it screeched upward into the ceiling.
“Got you upset?”
The creature leapt forward at horrifying speed, almost catching Sumunguru in the midst of his charge. He ducked the beheading swipe and spun clear of the creature’s charging body. It quickly turned only to face Sumunguru wielding his blade two handed carving a figure eight in the air. The sword slashed the flailing taloned right arm and lined the pale chest . The lights flared white with the pain the beast felt possibly for the first time in its existence. Sumunguru was blinded
