Behind them the four noble warriors crowded with the temerity of children, peering around them anxiously and stumbling on the uneven footing. The throat of the cavern narrowed, and Tanase thought with a flash of grim humour that it was as well that the light was too bad for the indunas to make out clearly the walls on either hand, for even their warlike courage might have been unequal to the horror of the catacombs.
In a bygone age that the verbal history of the Rozwi and the Karanga tribes could no longer recount, generations before bold Mzilikazi led his tribe into these hills, another plundering marauder had passed this way. It might have been Manatassi, the legendary conquering queen, at the head of her merciless hordes, laying waste to the land and slaughtering everything in her path, sparing neither woman nor child nor even the domestic animals.
The threatened tribes had taken refuge in this valley, but the marauders had burst through the narrow pass- and the miserable host had fled into their final sanctuary in this cavern. The roof overhead was still coated with soot, for the marauders had not deemed it worthwhile to lay siege to the cavern. They had pulled down the protecting wall and blocked the entrance with piles of green brush and wood. Then they had put in fire. The entire tribe had perished, and smoke had mummified their remains. So they had lain down the years in banks and heaps, piled as high as the low roof.
As Tanase's party went forward, from somewhere ahead of them a faint bluish light grew in intensity, until Bazo exclaimed suddenly and pointed to the wall of human debris beside him. In places, the parchment-like flesh had peeled away so that the ivory skulls grinned at them, and the contorted skeletal arms seemed to wave a macabre salutation as they passed. The indunas were bathed in sweat, despite the cool gloom, and their expressions were awed and sickly.
Tanase and the child followed the twisting pathway with unerring familiarity, and came out at last" above a deep natural amphitheatre.
A single ray of sunlight burned down from a narrow crack in the domed cavern roof. On the floor of the amphitheatre was an open fireplace, and a tendril of pale blue smoke twisted slowly upwards towards the opening high above. Tanase and the child led them down the rock steps to the smooth sandy floor of the amphitheatre, and at her gesture the four indunas sank down gratefully and squatted facing the smouldering fire.
Tanase released the child's hand, and sat a little to one side and behind the men. The child crossed to the far wall and took a handful of herbs from one of the big round clay pots that stood there. She threw the handful upon the fire and immediately a great yellow cloud of acrid smoke billowed upwards, and as it slowly cleared, the indunas started and exclaimed with superstitious dread.
A grotesque figure faced them from across the flames. It was an albino, with silver-white leprous skin. It was a woman, for the great pale breasts were massively pendulous, the nipples a painful boiled pink colour. She was stark naked and her dense public bush was white as frost-struck winter grass, and above it her belly hung in loose balconies of fat. Her forehead was low and sloped backwards, her mouth was wide and thin so that she appeared toadlike. Across her broad and flattened nose and her pale cheeks, the un pigmented skin had erupted in a tender raw rash. Her thickened forearms were folded across her belly and her thighs, splotched with large ginger-coloured freckles, were wide-spread as she knelt on a mat of zebra skin and regarded the men before her fixedly.
"I see you, oh Chosen One," Somabula greeted her. Despite an enormous effort of will, his voice trembled.
The Umlimo made no response, and Somabula. rocked back on his heels and was silent. The girl-child was busy amongst the pots, and now she came forward and knelt beside the gross albino, proffering the clay pipe she had prepared.
The Umlimo took the long reed stem between her thin silvery lips, and the girl lifted a live coal from the fire with her bare hands and placed it on the vegetable ball in the bowl of the pipe. It began to glow and splutter and the Umlimo drew a slow lungful and then let the aromatic smoke trickle out of her simian nostrils. Immediately the heavy sweetish odour of insanghu carried to the waiting men.
The oracle was induced in different ways. Before Tanase had lost the power, it had descended spontaneously upon her, throwing her into convulsive fits, while the spirit voices struggled to escape from her throat. However, this grotesque successor had to resort to the wild hemp pipe. The seeds and flowers of the Cannabis sativa plant, crushed in the green and moulded into sun-dried balls, were her key to the spirit world.
She smoked quietly, a dozen short inhalations without allowing the smoke to escape, holding it in until her pale face seemed to swell and the pink pupils of her eyes glazed over. Then she expelled the smoke with an explosive exhalation, and started again. The indunas watched her with such fascination that they did not at first notice the soft scratching sound on the cavern floor. It was Bazo who at last started and grunted with shock, and involuntarily grasped his father's forearm. Gandang exclaimed and began to rise in horror and alarm, but Tanase's voice arrested him.
"Do not move. It is dangerous," she whispered urgently, and Gandang sank back and froze into stillness.
From the dark recesses in the back of the cavern a lobster-like creature scuttled across the pale sandy floor towards where the Umlimo squatted. The firelight glinted on the glossy armoured carapace of the creature as it reached the Umlimo, and then, began to climb up her bloated silver white body. It paused in her lap, with the long segmented tail lifting and pulsing, its spiderlike legs hooked into the Umlimo's coarse white pubic curls, before it began climbing again, up over her bulging belly, hanging from one drooping pale breast like some evil fruit on the bough, upwards it climbed, onto her shoulder and then it reached the angle of her jaw below the, ear.
The Umlimo remained unperturbed, sipping little puffs of the narcotic smoke from the mouthpiece of her pipe, her pink eyes staring blindly at the indunas. The huge glittering insect crawled up her temple and then sideways until it stopped in the centre of her crusted and scabbed forehead, where it hung upside down, and the long scorpion tail, longer than a man's forefinger, arched up over its horny back.
The Umlimo began to mutter and mumble and a rime of white froth bubbled onto her raw lips. She said something in a strange language, and the scorpion on her forehead pulsed its long segmented tail, and from the point of the red fang at the tip a clear drop of venom welled and sparkled like a jewel in the dim light.
The Umlimo spoke again, in a hoarse strained voice and an unintelligible language.
"What does she say?" Bazo whispered, turning his head towards Tanase. "What language does she use?" "She speaks in the secret tongue of the initiates," Tanase murmured. "She is inviting the spirits to enter and take control of her body." The albino reached up slowly and took the scorpion off her forehead. She held the head and body within her closed fist, only the long tail whipped furiously from side to side, and she brought it down slowly and held it to her own breast.
The scorpion struck, and the rigid thorn fang buried itself deeply in her obscene pink flesh. The Umlimo's face did not alter, and the scorpion struck again and again, leaving little red punctures in the soft breast.