“Ah,” I said. “Simplicity itself, as you say.”
“Indeed. Is it not?”
“But why does anyone submit to these trials, knowing that the result is foredoomed, and not flee at once?”
Kinguri, looking troubled, replied in a dark voice, “But they do not know what I have told you.”
“Ah.”
“You understand, these are high secrets of the Imbe-Jaqqa, that I have told you because you are my brother.” He seized my wrist. “They must not be revealed, brother.”
“I understand—brother.”
“They must not be revealed,” said he, tightening his hand on my arm so that I could feel the bones moving about within, though I made no motion to withdraw from his painful grasp. “Must not, brother.”
“Brother, they shall not be,” said I.
Nor have they been, until this moment, when any pledge I might have made to Kinguri Jaqqa is long since cancelled and voided by the passage of time and the turning of events.
Having been made privy to such great secrets, though, I began to fear anew for my life, thinking that Kinguri might regret what he had confided in me even more, when the wine had burned from his brain. So when I went to my sleeping-mat, I slept that night with one eye open, and both my ears. But no dark figure came upon me in the night, and in the days that succeeded Kinguri showed me only cordiality, and gave no hint that he was uneasy with me.
It was the warm and rainy season, and several of the Jaqqas fell ill of fevers. For these sick ones, wickerwork houses were built at the far side of the camp, and they were made to dwell there, untended except for the bringing of a little food. No treatment were they given, though the man-witches of the tribe went to them and chanted prayers from a distance. The Jaqqas are generally very kind to one another in their health; but in their sickness they do abhor one another, and will shun their company.
Some of the sick recovered, and some did not. Of these there were burials. To bury the dead they made a vault in the ground, and a seat for him to sit. The dead one had his head newly embroidered with beads and bangles, his body washed, and anointed with sweet powders. All his best robes were put on, and he was brought between two men to his grave, and set in seat as though he were alive. Then two of his wives were set with him, looking most solemn and in terror, as well they might be: for they were to be buried alive. The arms of these wives were broken, I suppose so they might not dig their way out of the grave. And when they were seated, the vault was covered over on the top. After this, comrades of the dead man mourned and sang doleful songs at his grave for the space of three days, and killed many goats, and poured their blood upon his grave, and palm-wine also.
In the fullest of the season of the rain, when it came like greasy warm bullets out of the gray sky and turned the land to a quagmire and a mud-sea about us, this outbreak of fevers did become something like unto a great plague in the Jaqqa camp. Fifty, one hundred, two hundred fell ill, and perhaps more, with new victims every day. On the rim of the camp were whole villages of sick-houses, and the sound of moaning and retching was a hideous counterpointing of harsh symphonies under the drumming of the rain.
The two great men of the Jaqqas took exceeding different outlooks upon this calamity. I saw Kinguri going each hour through the encampment with his shoulders hunched in despair and his black face even blacker with grief. With desperate energy did he strive to halt the spreading of the malady. He conferred often with the witches, and set them to work beating on drums to drive off the spirits, and when the rain permitted it he caused great fires to be lit, with powders hurled into them to send blazes of violent crimson and yellow hues into the air. Every death seemed perceptibly to diminish him. “These are valiant warriors perishing,” said he to me. “This is a curse upon us, and I cannot abide it!”
“It will pass with the rain,” said I by way of consoling him, though I had no more idea of the truth of that than I did of the sort of birds that do live on the moon.
“It is a curse,” said Kinguri again most gloomfully.
He brooded and paced and boiled within as the outbreak became wholly epidemic amongst us. With ever more intent purpose he sought for some remedy. But meanwhile his brother Calandola held himself aloof, like a great mountain looming high above the mists and fogs, that dwelled in utter serenity in the midst of the chaos and the dying. From time to time I saw him moving through the camp among his special followers, observing in a most cool dispassioned way the downfall and wracking of his own armies. But at other times was he encloistered most placidly within his own dwelling, holding court amid wives and witches as if nothing untoward did progress. It was as though his view of the world, that was something that needed purging and cleansing and much destruction, did extend even unto his own nation: that he regarded this plague as a cooking away of needless impureness and dross from the hard gleaming core of the Jaqqa force. But that is only my own speculating; I could not tell you truly what enfolded in Imbe Calandola’s mind during this dark time.
One thing I greatly feared, as the dying proceeded, was that there would be some in the Jaqqa camp that would lay the plague to my door, saying, “He is a stranger, he is not one of us, he is white-faced, he has brought a pestilence upon us.” And that they would insist on the placating of their mokissos by my death. If such an outcry went up, would Calandola yield me up in sacrifice? I lived in daily caution of this.
So I did tremble when a day came on which Calandola summoned me to his inner sanctuary, sending me the word by Kasanje and Kilombo. And I thought, Ah, they have resolved at last that I am the cause, and I am to be slain.
I found the Imbe-Jaqqa sprawled on his great throne, toying with bangles of bone, and only some four or five of his wives about him. His face was somber but yet calm, and out of that dark glistening mask his terrible eyes did shine like beacon-fires as he looked down upon me and said, “I must have a service from you.”
“Ask it, O Imbe-Jaqqa.”
“I would have you end this sickness that is among us.”
“Ah, I am no surgeon, Lord Calandola.”
“You are more surgeon than you think,” replied the man-eater king. “And it is you must cut the heart from this plague lest it devour us all. For I have given it its free run, and let it to blaze like a healthy fire, but now a finish must swiftly be brought to it.”
“And I am to be the finisher?”
“Only you can do what is required, my Andubatil, my Kimana Kyeer.”
He did explain to me that in his prayers and meditation he had identified the causing of the disease. Which was, that certain members of the tribe who lay ill but neither regained their health nor died were the centers of the infection. From their wicker-house shelters they did pump the taint of their souls into the tribe, said he, and corrupted new victims every day. Therefore must these plague-bearers be eradicated. And that task he did assign to me, because the ngangas had decreed that the slayer must be one whose heart is Jaqqa but whose body is not, and that man could only be me.
“How am I to know which those persons are?” I asked.
“You will be shown,” said he.
He heaved his vast body from his throne, and descended, and walked out into the rainy deluge. I followed him, and a throng of witches and courtiers behind me. Kinguri too came to him, and a great witch of the tribe with his hair painted scarlet red, who carried upon a heavy palm-frond a long shining sword polished most brilliantly.