"Both the apprentices and Taka-Taka overlooked one of the diamonds," Tungata said softly. "We found the clay shards and a single diamond where they had left it."
"Now you may go to sleep if you are still weary, Nkosi." Vusamanzi gave his permission with a gleam in his rheumy old eyes. "What? You want to hear more? There is nothing else to tell. The tale is finished."
"Where did they take the king's body?" Tungata asked.
"Do you know the place, my wise and revered old father?" Vusamanzi grinned. "It is indeed an unexpected pleasure to find respect and honour for age in the young people of this new age, but to answer your question, son of Kumalo: I do know where the king's body is. The secret was passed to me by my father!
"Can you lead me to the place?"
"Di I not te you that mis place in which we now sit "14 is sacred? It is sacred for good reason!
"My God I"
"Herel both Craig and Tungata exclaimed together I and Vusamanzi cackled happily and hugged his bony old knees, well pleased with their reaction.
"In the morning I will take you to view the site of the king's grave," he promised, "but now my throat is dry with too much talking. Pass the beer-pot to an old man." hen Craig woke, the first morning light was diffusing through the hole in the roof of the I! Tcavern, milky and blued by the smoke from the cooking-fire where the girls were busy preparing the morning meal.
While they breakfasted, and with Vusamanzi's reluctant permission, Craig related in English the outlines of the tale of Loberigula's reburial to Sarah and Sally-Anne. They were both enthralled, and immediately on fire to join the expedition.
"It is a difficult place to reach," the old man buffed, "and it is not for the eyes of mere womenfolk." But Sarah smiled "s head and whispered in her sweetest, stroked the old man his ear, and finally, after a further show of gruff severity, he relented.
Under Vusamanzi's direction, the men made a few simple preparations for the expedition. In one of the ancillary branches of the cavern beneath a flat stone was a hidey, hole containing another kerosene lantern, two native axes and three large coils of good-quality nylon rope which the old man clearly prized highly.
"We liberated this fine rope from the army of Smithy during the bush war," he boasted.
"One great blow for freedom," Craig murmured, and Sally-Anne frowned him to silence.
They set off down one of the branches of the cavern, Vusamanzi leading and carrying one of the lanterns followed by Tungata with one of the rope coils, the girls in the centre, and Craig with a second coil of rope and the orb r lantern in the rear.
Vusamanzi strode along the passage as it narrowed and twisted. When the passage forked, he did not hesitate.
Craig opened his clasp-knife and marked the wall of the right, hand fork, and then hurried to catch up with the rest of the party.
The system of tunnels and caves was a three-dimensional maze. Water and seepage had mined the limestone of the hills until it was as perforated as Gruy&e cheese. In some places they scrambled down rock scree, and at one point they climbed a rough, natural staircase of limestone. Craig blazed every twist and turn of the way. The air was cold and dank and musky with the smell of guano. Occasionally there was a flurry of shadowy wings around their heads, and the shrill squeal of disturbed bats echoed down the passageways.
After twenty minutes they came to an almost vertical drop of glossy smooth limestone, so deep that the lantern glow did not reach the depths. Under Vusamanzi's direction, they secured the end of one coil of nylon rope to a pillar of limestone, and one at a time slid down fifty feet to the next stage. This was a vertical fault in the rock formation, where two geological bodies had shifted slightly and formed an open crack in the depths of the earth. It was so narrow that he could touch either wall, and in the lantern light Craig could just make out the bright eyes of the bats hanging inverted from the rocky roof above them.
Uncoiling the second rope Vusamanzi cautiously climbed down the treacherous floor of the crack. The crack widened as it descended, and the roof receded into the gloom above their heads. It reminded Craig of the great gallery in the heart of Claeops" pyramid, a fearsome cleft through living rock, daAgerously steep, so they had to steady themselves with the rope at every pace. They had almost reached the limit of the rope, when Vusamanzi halted and stood tall on a tilted slab, lit by his own lantern, looking likea black Moses descended from the mountain.
"What is it?" Craig called.
"Come on down!" Tungata ordered, and Craig scrambled down the last slope and found Vusamanzi and the others perched on the rock slab peering over the ledge into the still surface of a subterranean lake.
"Now what?" Sally-Anne asked, her voice muted with awe of this deep and secret place.
The lake had filled the limestone shaft. Across the surface, a hundred and fifty feet away, the roof of the shaft dipped into it at the same angle as the floor on which they stood.
Craig used the flashlight that they had salvaged from the wrecked Cessna for the first time. He shone it into the water that had stood undisturbed through the ages so that all sediment had settled out of it, leaving it clear as a trout stream. They could see the inclined floor of the gallery sinking away at the same angle into the depths. Craig F ill switched off the flashlight, conserving the batteries.
"Well, Sam." Craig put one hand on his shoulder. "Here's sh." Tungata's chuckle was your big chance to swim likea ri brief and insincere, and they both looked at Vusamanzi.
"Where now, revered father?"
"When Taka-Taka came to these hills and my grander saved the king's body from defilement, father and my lath J there had been seven long terrible years of drought scorching the land. The level of the water in this shaft was much lower than it is now. Down there," Vusamanzi pointed into the limpid depths, "there is another branch in the rock. In that place they laid Lobengula s body. In the many years since then, good and plentiful rains have blessed the land, and each year the level of these waters has risen. The first time I visited this place, brought here by my father, the waters were below that pointed rock-" Briefly Craig switched on the flashlight and in its beam the splintered limestone lay thirty feet or more below the surface.