CHAPTER 10
The Kwindi Affair
Reema sat on the floor of a rotting decrepit hut. She was covered in thick clothes but she still shivered from the cold. There was a swirling fire floating above, but it gave only light and not heat. The cold had power here. The cold here was more than a lack of heat; it was an eldritch force gnawing at any feeling of optimism, happiness, joy. Nasomi was a formless ghost, but she felt this insatiable sucking power.
Large vines had broken through the floor at numerous spots, some creeping up and cracking the walls, threatening to break the hut apart.
Opposite Reema sat two old men, pallid skin so wrinkled they seemed to be like melting wax. They sat cross-legged, the ground having swallowed their bodies an inch deep. Nasomi wondered how long it had been since they ever got up. Their garments were sparse, tattered and so brittle that when one of them lifted a hand ever so slowly, a piece of his cloth broke off and drifted to the floor.
“This is everything I have,” Reema said. She gripped the bound mouth of the heavy burlap sack beside her, pulling it closer to herself. “I have traveled so far.”
As Nasomi watched Reema, she was drawn into her, became her. She could read her memory: she saw the desolate road, winding through creepy places, stretching for lonesome miles. Reema’s companions had died along the way: one to a terrible fever, another to a jackal pack attack. Reema had paid much of the gold and copper she had come with from Nari to sorcerers for protection. But she still lost the other two servants to bandits and the consequences of performing unskilled witchcraft. Bandits took her horses, the timber from the cart was all now strewn ashes from fires she had made to keep herself warm.
“We know,” one of the sorcerers hissed. “Not many have the courage to take that road.”
Reema’s fury was red hot. Nasomi could feel it. “I am tired of losing. She has taken everything from me. I need to know you will deal with her.” Nasomi could tell that Reema was thinking about her.
Nasomi found herself ejected from Reema’s body, and she was once again an unseen presence hovering above the other three.
“We will,” the twin sorcerers said in unison. “Have Gweuka and Loshui ever failed?”
“All I have are stories to go with. People have told me you’re the best, and I know I have tried to find help from others. They’ve all been worthless, thieving bastards.”
“We do not fail,” the two said. “We will do as you desire. And more. Give us the price.”
Reema didn’t.
“We know what you seek,” one of the sorcerers said.
“Do you, now?”
“Your own power, your own magic, death to your enemy.”
“Anyone can guess that.”
“And only we can give that to you. Because we know that when you’re happy with us, you will come back.”
“Come back all this way? With what I’ve been through? I don’t think so. If you can just kill her, I’ll be glad to give this entire sack to you.”
“Don’t doubt Gweuka and Loshui. Here is our gift to you.”
A vine moved. It elongated to Reema, crept up her thigh. Then it shriveled and broke apart into dry flakes. Reema gasped. “I can feel it! What is it?”
“Your own magic to command.”
“Is that possible? You don’t want to lie to me, I dislike people who lie to me.”
“Try it. You can make yourself warm, cast a hedge of protection about yourself, know if a witch is stalking you, and not die from poisons.”
Reema stood up. “The cold, it’s gone. And I can fly!” She rose two inches into the air.
“It’s more like carrying yourself lightly than flying,” the sorcerers said. “Don’t use too much of the power on one thing. May we have the bag now?”
“Take it!”
The burlap sack slid magically toward the sorcerers, and they giggled like children. The sack got swallowed into the floor, and a blue-green vine crept up from where it sank in.
“Well?” Reema asked. “What about her?”
“We will make her suffer. This very night,” the sorcerers said in unison.
Reema's triumphant laugh jolted Nasomi awake.
She could still hear it fade away as she gasped and panted. She shook Tambo. “She's going to kill me! She's going to kill me!”
“Calm down, calm down.” Tambo held her. “What is it?”
“My dream... Oh, Tambo…” Nasomi shook. “I saw her, Reema, in my dream. She has consulted with powerful sorcerers and has paid to have me killed.”
“It was just a bad dream, my love. Reema is gone.”
“Tambo, this was a telling dream!”
“Are you certain?”
“Something will happen tonight. I don’t know wha—”
There was a staccato of knocks on the wall from outside. “What is that?” Tambo said.
Tambo and Nasomi jumped from the bed. She pulled a cloth around her body as he struck a piece of firestone against the clay wall. It budded a small light which he applied to a lamp that was on the floor.
Something fell from the thatched roof. A small white rat.
Another came down. Five more.
Nasomi screamed and stomped at one that scurried at her. It was quick: it jumped onto her leg. Her skin crawled. Tambo gave her the lamp after he slapped the rat away from her. He picked a rug from the floor, rolled it and used it to hit at the rats.
When Ramona screamed in her room, Nasomi rushed there. Ramona was standing on her bed, screaming and pointing at the wall. Through a hole at one corner, white rats squeezed into the room.
As she lifted Ramona and ran out of the house, the rodents jumped at Nasomi's feet, sinking their tiny teeth into her. She kicked them away, but they were deft little scoundrels.
Tambo came outside, hitting at the rats with the harvesting stick as they flooded out through the door, through holes in the wall, off the roof, and through the garden at the back. There were hundreds of them.
“Mara help us!” Tambo shouted. “This is Reema's doing?”
He urged Nasomi to keep running as he continued to hit at the little creatures, killing several. Like a little army, they bunched together, following after Nasomi. She was the target, after all. She ran faster, Ramona in her arms screaming, “Ma! Ma!”
When she looked back, Tambo was covered in rats. He had trouble shaking them off.
“No, run, leave me!” he shouted when Nasomi stopped.
But she put Ramona down. “Go, baby, run to Aunty Naena,” Nasomi said, as a river of rats flowed toward her.
“It’s far!” Ramona began to cry.
“Just go, baby. We will find you there.”
As the little girl ran through the night, Nasomi faced the rats. She kicked and stepped on the little beasts, making her way toward Tambo. They scurried up her legs, scratching and biting into her skin, tearing through her wrapping cloth. She lost balance and fell.
She shut her eyes, and resigned herself to death, as she felt her warm blood flowing out of the many wounds on her body. Still, the rats bit relentlessly. She screamed. Tambo was shouting curses.
The attack stopped, and the rats scampered from her. She thought she was dead, afraid to open her eyes. Something — a hand — touched and shook her.
“Nasomi?”
She opened her eyes. Tambo, kneeling beside her, took a breath. “I thought you were dead.” He took off his robe, tearing it into three pieces, tying them around her left thigh and right forearm and neck, where her wounds were deep.
“How did…?” she said, testing her voice to see if she was truly alive. “They stopped. How did they stop?’
“I think it’s the dawn.”
The sky hinted the gray of a new morning. Shudders ran through Nasomi as she tried to compose herself. She looked at the house. Part of the roof had fallen in, and the lower part of the wall was riddled with holes. Something inside fell and made a cracking sound. Tambo indicated for her to stay as he went to check.
Dozens of dead rats lay on the ground; these were the ones she had squashed through her squirming and rolling. The rest were as gone as though they had never existed.
“They are gone,” Tambo said when he came back outside. “Our house… It’s marred… Can you stand?”
She tried. She was too weak and she slumped down.
He picked her up. He winced. He had more bite marks than she did, and he limped when he took a step.
“Your leg.” Speaking was labor. She was losing strength to stay awake.
“It will be alright,” he promised, though he winced again. “I'm taking you to a medicineman.” She put her arms around his neck, and he limped away in nothing but his undergarment.
She saw neighbors appearing among the trees. They stood and watched from a distance. None of them stepped forward to help. It was the last thing she saw before she became unconscious or slept, she couldn't tell.
When she awoke, she was looking at a low thatch roof. She was lying on a mat, her neck and back stiff. Outside, two people were speaking.
“I am just a simple medicineman,” one voice said. “Only the mages can deal with this.”
“It will be impossible to get to them,” the other replied. Nasomi recognized Tambo’s voice. “Especially now that I am no longer a nobleman.”
Nasomi sat up. “Tambo,” she called.
He rushed in. He was dressed in a new robe, bandages on his neck and arms and a wide smile. “Nasomi! How are you feeling?”
She inspected herself. She was bandaged in a few places, and her wounds were dry and there was some balm on most of them. “I am well.”
“Thank the Mara!”
The medicineman came in too. He knelt before her. “It is good you are well,” he said, giving her a wooden cup. “Drink this.”
It was a thick bitter liquid but she drained the cup. “Tambo, we must go and see the mages,” she said. “What if more come? I think Reema will only be satisfied when I am dead.”
“So, you heard us speaking.” He wiped his face with a palm. “You know how impossible that is. Who are we to go to the King’s Island and demand assistance of his mages?”
“We must find a way.”