A cold wind rustles through the gum trees around the shed. Monti sidles up to Salo, his voice quavering as he speaks. “What’s that, Bra Salo? Who is he? Why is he here?”
Salo tries not to let his fear show. “I don’t know. Best not to look at it. Come, your ama will be worried about you.”
They’ve reached the main gravel road that meanders toward the gates when, just ahead, a dense, swirling plume of dust begins to rise from the earth as though on the currents of an unnaturally slow whirlwind. Salo and Monti watch it, paralyzed, even as it gathers into a horror straight from a fireside tale. Crouched at first, then slowly rising to stand at almost seven feet tall.
A human skeleton. Human, yes, but its arms are twisted and disproportionately long, and those bony fingers dangling by its sides might as well be talons. A pall of dust lingers about it like a gauzy cloak, effusing from its bones, though never drifting far from them. The reek of loamy earth and decay chokes the air around it, and a white fire suddenly ignites in its skull, flames licking out through the eye sockets.
All vocabulary vanishes from Salo’s mind at the sight of it, all except for one word: tikoloshe. A devilish creature of Black magic, summoned from one of the underworld’s many realms.
Monti makes a feeble noise as the tikoloshe’s burning eyes pivot toward them. For the longest second of his life, Salo’s heart becomes a still, frozen stone inside his chest. Then he grabs Monti’s hand and runs.
4: Ilapara
Kageru, along the World’s Artery—Umadiland
On a normal day, Ilapara would find standing sentry by the Mimvura gatehouse rather dull and torpid, a chance to let her mind wander to better places. But today something raw keeps nagging at her, a chafing sense of guilt and anxiety that feels like a dog gnawing at her ribs from the inside.
At some point Bloodworm and his two servants ride out the gates on tronic zebroids with metallic hooves that thunder as they strike the pebbles of the driveway. An image of the Faraswa man they used for the muti ritual flashes through her mind—resigned and helpless on his knees, ears shorn off, rivers of blood on his face—and she recoils, sickened to her core.
She tries to restrain herself, but her body rebels against her. Her heart pumps like it’s preparing for a fight. Her ears listen for signs of trouble. She gets to the point where she’s brimming with so much anxious energy she can almost feel her skin vibrating, and it doesn’t help matters when the skies grow overcast with the promise of an afternoon storm.
An hour after Bloodworm’s departure, one of BaMimvura’s house servants brings her a lunch of fermented cassava bread and roasted bush fowl. Her stomach revolts at the thought of food, so she leaves it to the attention of buzzing flies.
Every now and then she’ll look toward the residence and shudder at the thought of what might still be going on. Why Kwashe is still here. Why she is still here.
She paces in front of the gatehouse. A harsh grating whisper grows inside her mind, becoming louder and harder to ignore.
Get out, it keeps saying. Get out now!
Ilapara grits her teeth and picks up her spear, staring at the open gate. She could leave. She could just walk out and never come back. She has no debts and no sworn oaths; no one would waste time coming after her. She would be free of this place and its horrors.
Get out now!
She takes a step forward but stops when she hears the mournful bellow of a battle horn coming from somewhere east of town. At first she thinks she has imagined it, but then three more horns blare out the same alarm ceaselessly.
A chill grips her bones, seeping deeper the longer the horns continue to blare, until she feels like she has dipped herself in ice water. This isn’t the kind of warning given when trouble has been spotted hours in advance; this is the warning given when trouble is already here.
A squad of the Cataract’s local militiamen streaks past the gates in a clatter of galloping hooves, riding to join the town’s defense. BaMimvura’s two eldest sons emerge from behind the residence, both now wearing breastplates over their dashikis and carrying expensive pole arms of aerosteel and witchwood. Kwashe trails silently behind them with his own spear.
“Close the gate!” the elder Mimvura shouts, jutting a long finger toward Ilapara. “Close the gate now!”
By reflex Ilapara moves to comply, and as the heavy iron gate slams shut, she catches sight of a glittering shadow sailing past directly overhead. She looks up, and her lips part in awe.
Cutting across the overcast skies is a great flying reptile bearing a rider with a horned helmet. Kongamato, her mind supplies, though she did not know that one could grow so big.
Its scales are like silver coins, its wings massive and membranous. The rider sitting astride its long neck has a burning staff in one hand, and Ilapara watches him pull the harness with the other so that the creature banks steeply toward the compound, barely flapping to keep itself afloat. As it swoops by, making a pass along the roadway beyond the gate, Ilapara lives through a horrid, frozen second during which the rider looks down at her and she looks back—and sees that his eyes are red and bright yellow and reptilian and aware of her. Then the moment is gone, and her head scarf rustles with the wind of the creature’s flight.
She shivers, feeling like she’s been marked for death somehow. Beside her, an ashen cast to his skin, the younger Mimvura watches the kongamato carry its rider back into the skies. “How are they already here?” he mutters. “Where the devil is the Cataract?”
Neither Kwashe nor the elder Mimvura has answers for him. Ilapara suspects that they know, like she knows, that if the Dark Sun’s forces have come this far, then this battle is already lost.
“If we barricade ourselves in here, we’ll at least survive until the Cataract arrives,” the elder Mimvura suggests.
A blistering wave of hatred overtakes Ilapara, hatred of him and his whole family, but then she remembers her own choices.
We’re no different from him, Ilira. We might even be worse.
“Warlords don’t fight their own battles,” she tells them. “The Cataract isn’t coming. If his disciples can’t defend the town, we’re on our own.” She glances at Kwashe, who blinks emptily at her. “It might be better to make a run for it.”
The elder Mimvura gets a dark look on his face. “No one’s making a run for it. We stay here and defend this gate, all of us.”
She ignores him, addressing Kwashe. “We could leave. We don’t have to die here.”
But Kwashe shakes his head, his spear planted firmly on the ground. “We both made our choices, Ilira. Now it’s time to live with them.”
She looks away, trying to escape the weight of his gaze, the truth of his words.
A fine rain begins to mist the world, giving the air a biting crispness. She paces the gatehouse while the others patrol along the compound’s walls. All around them the sounds of battle intensify. Blaring horns. An uproar of voices. Shrieks of terror. BaMimvura ventures out of his house to take stock of things but cowers back inside as soon as a distant explosion makes the ground quake.
Ilapara frowns, intensely disgusted. Is this the man she should now die for? This miserable pest who would torture and sacrifice a loyal servant to save himself from the consequences of his greed?
Does she really deserve to die for him?