Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“One, three, or four might as well be none. If all I needed was someone to find the child, Tracker, I could have hired two hundred trackers and their dogs. Two questions, you can choose which to answer first. Do you think his abductor will hand him to you just because you say, I am here, hand me the boy?”

“They will—”

“Is the tracker such a fool to think I am the only one looking for this child?”

“Who else seeks him?”

“The one who visits you in dreams. Skin like tar, hair red, when you see him you hear the flutter of black wings.”

“I don’t know this man.”

“He knows you. They call him the Aesi. He answers to the North King.”

“Why would he visit my dreams?”

“They are your dreams, not mine. You have something he wants. He too might know that you have found the child.”

“Tell me more of this man.”

“Necromancer. Witchman. He is the King’s adviser. From an old line of monks who started working secret science and invoking devils and were thrown out of the order. The King consults him on all things, even which direction to spit. Do you know why they call Kwash Dara the Spider King? Because in everything he moves with four arms and four legs, except two of each belong to the Aesi.”

“Why does he want the boy?”

“We have spoken on this. The boy is proof of the killings.”

“Are bodies not proof enough? Or do they think the wife cut her own self in two? Who is the boy?”

“The boy is the last son of the last honest man in the ten and three kingdoms. I will save him if that is the last thing I do in this world or another.”

“I will not ask a third time.”

“How dare you ask me anything! Who are you that demands that I make things clear to you? Are you master over me now, is that how you will have it?”

Her eyes bulged and the fin grew out of the back of her head.

“No. I will have nothing but rest. I am tired from this.” I turned and walked out. “I leave in two days.”

“Not today?”

“Not today. It seems there is more I need to know.”

“Where is the child? How many moons away is he?” she asked.

“Don’t speak of my mother again,” I said.

That night I was again in a dream jungle. A new kind of dream where I wondered why I was in it, and why a dream of trees and bushes and bitter raindrops. And moving but not walking, and knowing something would reveal itself in a clearing, or in the mirror of a puddle, or in the lonely cry of a lonely ghost bird. Reveal something that I already knew. The Sangoma once told me that the dream jungle is where you find things that are hidden in the waking world. And that hidden thing might be a lust. The knowledge is in leaves, and dirt, and mist, and heat thick like a ghost, and it is a jungle because the jungle is the only place where anything can wait behind the cover of a large leaf. The jungle finds you, you cannot seek it, which is why everyone in the jungle seeks why they are there. But looking for meaning will drive you mad, the Sangoma also said.

So I did not ask for meaning when Smoke Girl was the first to run to me, then run past me, not ignoring me but so used to my presence. And in the jungle was a man I only saw by hair on his hands and legs. He touched my shoulder, and chest, and belly, leaned his forehead to touch mine, then grabbed two spears and walked away. And Giraffe Boy stood with his legs wide open, the boy with no legs curled into a ball and rolled right between them, and the patch of sand in the middle of the bush blinked, then smiled, and the albino rose out of the sand as if he came from it and was not just hiding in it. Then he grabbed a spear and went to find the man I had no name for, but still felt warm at the thought that I do know his name. I had stopped walking but I was still walking and Smoke Girl sat down on my head and said, Tell me a story with an ant, a cheetah, and a magic bird, and I heard every word she said.

FIFTEEN

A ghost knows who to scare. As the sun glides to noon, men and women grab their children and run home, close windows, and draw curtains, for in Kongor it is noon that is the witching hour, the hour of the beast, when heat cracks the earth open to release seven thousand devils. I have no fear of devils. I went south, then turned west along the border road to the Nimbe quarter. Then I turned south down a crooked street, west down an alley, then south again until I came upon the Great Hall of Records.

Kongor was the record keeper for all the North Kingdom and most of the free states, and the Hall of Records was open to anyone who stated his purpose. But nobody came to these large rooms, five tall floors of scrolls stacked on shelves, stacked on top of each other, as tall as any palace in Kongor. The hall of records was like the palace of clouds in the sky—people were satisfied that it existed without ever entering, ever reading book or paper, or even coming close. On the way there I was hoping to meet a demon, or a spirit of someone who would feed the hunger of my two new axes. I truly wanted a fight.

Nobody was here but an old man with a hunch in his back.