After kneeling, he placed two fingertips on William’s forehead. A surge of energy jolted from the shaman’s fingertips, and William felt his friend’s eyes inside him; gently exploratory, but not invasive. Rather, his presence was a calming, slow-spreading warmth, like a draught of aged brandy. After a few moments Lightning Bird removed his fingertips from William’s forehead, opened his eyes and stood up.
‘The damage was severe, but you are well on your way toward a complete restoration of health,’ he announced in his slow, deep timbre. ‘You will be as good as new in a week or two.’
‘Thank you, my friend. I can’t remember how, but I know in my bones that you were right there with me during the darkest part of the ordeal I went through.’
Lightning Bird, smiling, dipped his head and said nothing, but his eyes told William that he had indeed been there, that he had pulled him back from the edge of the abyss. Zakaria had been observing closely, and once he deemed that it was time to speak, he did so in a booming, proud tone.
‘My friends,’ he said, ‘we are some of the last satyaduta Council members left alive after centuries of war against the Huntsmen. For thousands of years they have hunted our kind, killing us off one by one. Even though so few of us now remain, we must remember that once, yes, once, we were far stronger than them. Indeed, once we stood on the cusp of victory. Once…’
Njinga fixed her gaze on Zakaria, and the dark pools of her eyes howled in silence, screaming of a brokenness of spirit as vast as the Sahara.
‘An’ now,’ she murmured hoarsely, taking over from him, ‘our kind, an’ so many of the family trees of our animal brothers an’ sisters who share this planet with us, hovers on one shaky, cracked limb, teetering over the edge a’ the abyss that is … extinction.’
William clenched his right fist and then covered it with his left hand, gripping it tightly. A blood-heating loyalty and a ferocious fervour of determination swelled within him; a stirring patriotism of sorts, but his allegiance was not to any nation of men. Instead, he gave his fealty to both to his brothers and sisters, in whose veins flowed the same enchanted blood as in his, and to all living things over whose heads the terrible blade of permanent extinguishment was threateningly suspended.
‘That has always been their aim,’ William muttered. ‘The complete annihilation of our kind, and unchallenged domination of all life on this planet. And they’re almost there, I’m sorry to say. The bastards are almost there.’
Lightning Bird now spoke up.
‘But they are not there yet. More of us remain than just us four. Many more of us. And we have allies among the mortals too.’
‘Let us not forget, though,’ Zakaria interjected, his broad face darkening with a deep and potent wrath, ‘about those of our kind who are vile, self-serving traitors, serving the Huntsmen under the banner of the Alliance, and the cowards who choose to remain “neutral”, even though this conflict will swallow up their lives as surely as it will ours. Bah!’ He paused here to curl his meaty hands into tight fists before continuing. ‘The Huntsmen and their Alliance lapdogs have the gall to call us “Rebels” – a label I wear proudly, if it means opposing those filthy, treacherous vipers. But never forget, my brothers, and my sister, that for all the darkness and hopelessness that prevails in these times of evil, we still exist. We who believe in the old ways, in the dreams of our fallen Council teachers, of what could have been … and of what could still one day come to be.’
Njinga interjected, turning her fiery gaze to William.
‘We still have Parvati, and you, Tiger,’ she said. ‘An’ we’d best not forget something else: the lost Mothers are still alive, an’ still out there … I can feel their breath on the wind, taste their living blood in the life-givin’ rain, an’ sense their souls throbbin’ with infinite energy when I walk through the oldest forests, those last few places on this planet that remain unmolested by … mortals.’
She spat out this last word with rabid vehemence, the bitter tang of it like a caustic poison burning the surface of her tongue; Njinga had always had a rocky, conflicting relationship with the world of mortals.
William sat in silence, turning away from their probing, voiceless pleas and demands as all three of them turned their attention to him. The paralysis of loaded expectations numbed his limbs and lowered its ponderous weight onto his chest. He had never asked for this. He had never wanted any of it, but almost two hundred years ago the machinations of fate had hurled him into this hurricane, this blizzard of insanity that had given with one hand and hadtaken with five hundred others. His old teacher, one of the greatest beings he had ever known, had always spoken of this “gift”, of how grateful William should be to have received the so-called blessing of being born anew into a new and more potent form of being.
All he could think of, however, was how it had brought nothing but ruin, destruction, estrangement, loss and death into his life. Near-immortality, an immensely detailed understanding of the mysteries of life and the universe, and the ability to transform his human body into that of a tiger … it all seemed like a poor trade off in terms of what the other end of the bargain had cost him.
‘Yes,’ he finally replied, his voice hoarse and low. ‘You still have me.’
Zakaria raised an eyebrow above
