Switch! (36 page)

The lions were hesitant, as if the change of rules had thrown them off their game. They backed off a bit, the large male crouching low, his ears flattened against his head, his tail jerking up and down. Joe counted four lionesses in the grass on the male’s right flank and at least one on his left. He wondered where they had come from. Had the Almohad lead the buffaloes past the lion’s habitual resting place hoping they would be there, or were they able to manipulate the cats to be in the place where they wanted them just for this game?

Nyala stood to the side. She held her bow, arrow nocked, ready for an emergency. The two men stalked forward. Each carried a curved dagger in his left hand and a pole with a sharp point in his right. Nandi had told Joe that they would lean the back of the stake into the ground and see if the lions charged right onto the point. He hadn’t believed that either. He caught a movement in his peripheral vision and gasped. Nyala and Elymu’s buffalos had circled round to join Faraji’s one and were beginning to stalk the Almohad. Now the hunters were also the hunted.

The three buffalos moved forward in unison, their heads held low. With their outstretched horns covering most of their bodies, and their solid bosses rendering their sculls impenetrable, Joe saw that Nyala’s only hope was a straight shot through the eye. Even if she was that accurate, she would only save one of them – Nyala, Elyamu or herself. Instead, she called out, shifted her weapon onto her shoulder and stood perfectly still facing side on to the charge. The two men followed suit. The three Almohad held their ground until the buffalo were almost upon them and then wheeled around suddenly, ducking out of the way, like bull fighters, leaving the buffalo charging headlong into the pride of lions.
 

“Don’t move!” Nandi yelled, easing her buffalo in next to Joe’s. “You may yet come out of this alive.” She clambered up behind him, climbed over him with the agility of a monkey and settled herself on his buffalo’s neck in front of him. “Hang on to me,” she said, taking control of the horns and gently easing the buffalo towards the edge of the herd, where she slid off, keeping a controlling grip on one horn while Joe jumped shakily to the ground.

“Let’s go and find Nyak,” she said. “Just back away very slowly while they are preoccupied with the lions.”

Joe was still shaking uncontrollably when they found Nyak. Phomelo and Thandiwe were trying to coax him out of the tree, Phomelo whooping and yelling excitedly, Thandiwe a little more earnestly.

“It’s okay, Nyak, just come down now.”

Nyak scanned the bushes nearby worriedly. “No!” he said. “You come up here. She is still nearby. I know she is. I can feel her.”

A nearby bush rustled, sending Phomelo up the tree after his friend, but Thandiwe and Nandi stood their ground. Joe stood frozen in fear.

A short, middle-aged man crawled out of the thicket. He wore a lion’s head as a headdress, with the rest of the lion’s skin hanging down his back.

“Azikiwe!” Thandiwe cried, shaking the man by the hand. “That was the best game ever.”

“Young man, it is not over until all the players are accounted for,” Azikiwe chided him, giving his ponytail a playful yank and looking around for the others.

“No, they are fine,” Thandiwe said. “You should have seen them. Those buffalo went right past them and into the lions. I saw them climbing up a rock to watch. Eish! That Nyala can dance – Faraji too. Nerves of steel, that man. He let the buffalo touch him before he danced away! I hope they were watching properly from the city.”

Suddenly his eyes went wide with fright. For a split second Joe assumed it was part of the man’s narrative but Phomelo screamed and Joe, Nandi and Azikiwe spun round to face a large buffalo cow in full charge. She was heading straight for Joe, her neck outstretched, presenting her boss and her outstretched horns. Before Joe had time to think, Thandiwe and Azikiwe crouched down in front of him, imbedding their pointed stakes in the ground before them, pointed towards the underbelly of the beast.

Gogo Maya led her companions through the lavish gardens, and past the dying vats, in a noisy procession. Even padding softly on tiptoes the Tokoloshe could not be quiet. Ethan watched in dismay as several of them, finding the colours of the dye too irresistible, poked fingers, whole arms, and in one case, a whole body, into the vats, appearing to be delighted with the results. None of the Almohad workers remained this late in the day, except an old man who doffed his hat at them as they passed, even though it was quite obvious they had no business being there.

“Erm... could you direct us to the throne room?” Gogo Maya asked him. He pointed in the general direction of a large central structure with graceful arches and a lofty dome, extravagantly decorated in a variety of mosaic tile patterns in earthy shades of red, orange and yellow, and accented in blue.
 

The reception room, when they burst into it, was as quiet and as empty as the streets had been.
 

They interrupted two men at a game of bao.
 

“Everyone’s on the balcony,” one said somewhat sulkily at the interruption.

“Well, would you be kind enough to take us there! Or would you rather we wait here?” Grandma Wanyika said, wiggling her eyebrows meaningfully at her unruly clan, some of whom had begun to look at things with their hands.
 

One young Tokoloshe sat admiring the glinting metallic luster of a finely hammered silver and stained glass lantern, by tossing it from hand to hand. One, bright orange from the dying vats, started to unravel the gold thread from an elaborately woven wall hanging to see how it had been put together. Yet another stuffed his cheeks to bursting with ripe dates he found in a bowl, just there for the taking. Half-chewed pieces of date escaped from his mouth to splatter onto the intricately patterned, priceless looking silk carpet.

The old man beamed at Grandma superciliously. “I’ll take you,” he moaned.

“You can’t fool me. I knew he was a servant,” Grandma chuckled to Ethan as they followed the man down a passage, through a shady tiled courtyard with a fountain playing in the middle, and down another passage. “He must be one of those who has almost gained enough strength to be accepted by the Almohad, judging by his superior air, but he will still be responsible for cleaning up the mess when my boys are done exploring.”

They stopped in front of a gigantic, finely sculpted door that fit snugly into a scalloped, horseshoe shaped arch in the wall. The muffled sounds of a party drifted through the heavy wood.

Their guide threw the doors open dramatically to reveal a large room, at least thirty paces by twenty, with an open balcony overlooking the valley below. A row of drummers, straddling large, skin-covered drums along one wall, beat a frantic tattoo with their hands, while women in leopard skin skirts moved rhythmically, in a sinuous line, shaking bead encrusted rattles and gyrating their hips in time to the beat – all completely ignored by a group of lavishly robed spectators out on the balcony, jostling for turns at seven ancient looking telescopes set up to face the valley below.

“The wicked witches!” announced the guide in a voice, loud enough to be heard above the noise.

The room went gradually quiet as more and more occupants became aware of the visitors. One man, blowing a kudu horn trumpet with wild enthusiasm, was the last to realise, but eventually even he turned to stare.

“There’s nothing wicked about us,” Gogo Maya growled at the reluctant guide, and then smiled her most charming smile to the assembled Almohad, in line with not being wicked.

A strikingly handsome man in a bright turquoise robe and a bejewelled ochre headdress, with half-closed, bored-looking eyes, strolled towards them. “Ah... Gogo... Gogo...” he said, snapping his fingers, her name on the tip of his tongue.
 

“Yeees, Galal,” she prompted him, but she did not give him any clue as to her name.

~~~

Ethan saw Lewa immediately start to search for the thought patterns of the assembled Almohad, who were, presumably, the robed ones. He groaned; at least twenty of them were on the right side of Galal, meaning he had to process them all. Only five were on Lewa’s side. And what about the entertainment and the rest of the people, he wondered? The jumper could just as easily be one of them. They were all on his side of the room. He glanced over at Tariro and Jimoh. Both gazed intently at the Almohad, pretending to read everybody’s minds. Jimoh, at least, was pretending. Tariro was alternately glaring at them and shaking his head, muttering, “Nothing! Nothing! Not a bloody thing! Damn, I really expected something by now.”
 

“I’m not getting anything either.” Ethan told him.

Fisi gripped Ethan firmly by the shoulders from behind and hissed into his ear. “It will come once you start, Ethan, just start.”

Ethan took a deep breath and slowed his thoughts down. He tentatively studied a woman in a flowing, deep red dress, elaborately embroidered in yellow, green and silver, standing on the extreme right.
 

“What is this now? Just when we were getting to the best part of the game,”
she was thinking.
 

“Oh, no! Witches! I wonder if they can...?”
thought the woman next to her, just as colourfully dressed, her face turning expressionless suddenly.

“It’s true! They don’t seem to be affected at all,”
thought the man standing on the other side of her, his face screwed up in concentration. Ethan guessed he was trying to make Gogo Maya or Grandma Wanyika do something they didn’t want to, an impossible task even without a protective amulet.

“Nice looking,” a sultry looking woman said out loud, bringing Ethan up short. She was looking at Fisi with a predatory glint in her eye. Fisi glared back at her.

“I am still getting no thought patterns, Ethan,” Tarriro said worriedly. “Is anyone thinking about the game below? Surely if Joe or anyone has been hurt, one of the Almohad will think about that.”

“No, Tariro, they are pretty much thinking about themselves,” Ethan said ruefully. Tariro looked so frustrated at not being able to tap into the magic that Ethan felt really sorry for him.
 

“Keep scanning, Ethan,” Salih said, sensing his distraction.

Ethan passed over the pet tiger and started on the entertainers. Surprisingly, after reading a couple of them, it appeared that they performed because they wanted to. He wondered if they had been coerced into believing that, or if they were Almohad who liked dancing and showing off.

He stopped at the last man in his group. An intense youth with a disdainful look on his face, standing where Galal had stood moments before.
“These are not witches!”
the man was thinking.
“That one is as pale as my slave!”
His hand hovered above an ornately carved sword hilt, which he wore strapped to his belt.

“Oh no, Salih, no one said there would be weapons!” Ethan whispered, moving closer to the leopard.

Galal gave up trying to recall Gogo Maya’s name. “Welcome,” he drawled in tones of carefully studied boredom.

“We brought you a small house gift,” Lewa said, stepping out from behind Tariro, who seemed to have given up on his attempts to read the Almohads’ minds and had joined Aaron in protecting her instead. Lewa offered the amulet to Galal. “Well, it’s more of a jewel, actually,” she said. “We have heard of your fondness for jewels. Plus, you already have everything for the home.” She gestured pointedly at the richly decorated balcony, and then motioned to put the amulet over his head. “May I?”

Galal glanced from the fearsome scowl on Tariro’s face to the sparkling jewel as if he wasn’t sure what to make of either, but then bowed his head towards Lewa, his green eyes glinting at the sight of the gems.
 

Ethan exhaled softly. Fortunately the man was not quite ready to take the risk that Tariro might be a powerful witch, which was just as well because Ethan could see that Tariro was not bluffing. He really was prepared to put himself at risk for Lewa because he thought he could heal himself.

“It’s a trick!” shrieked an angry young lady, almost knocking Tariro over in her rush to snatch the amulet from Lewa. Even her hair looked furious as it swung forwards across her face before snapping back into its carefully bobbed style. Her intense black eyes glared accusingly at Lewa. “They want to control you with it,” she said to Galal.
 

Lewa danced away from her and slipped it over Galal’s still bowed head. Ethan hitched his breath again as Lewa gripped Galal’s reluctant face firmly between her hands and turned his ear towards her to whisper into it.

The Almohad froze in startled confusion. Among the general gasps of indignation, Ethan picked up that no one ever touched Galal, and here was this slip of a girl ensnaring him and pulling him towards her against his will.

But Galal did not rip Lewa’s head off as some of the Almohad expected. Instead he lifted his own head abruptly, stared at Gogo Maya and said, “Really? Here?”

Gogo Maya nodded.

“I have heard of this thing,” he said, his eyes darting around the room wildly. “Who?”

It must be the dark-eyed girl, Ethan decided, or why would she have tried to snatch the amulet? Besides, she looked ready for another attack.

“It’s the girl!” Tariro made a grab for her, obviously coming to the same conclusion.

Galal backed away from the girl as if she had scalded him. The petulant youth with the sword struck like lightning. One moment he was standing behind Galal and the next he had his sword at Tariro’s throat. Ethan went cold. The youth pressed his sword against Tariro’s larynx for less than a heartbeat before collapsing to the floor, writhing in agony, his sword clanging to the floor.

What the hell’s the matter with him?
Ethan thought but immediately realised that he, himself, was the cause of the young man’s problem. He could not help himself. A strong current of sticky gel-like air seemed to ripple outwards from him, and he could almost see it soak into the writhing youth. He glanced at Salih to see if the leopard was channelling some new power through him, but Salih looked as startled as everyone else. Ethan realised with a sense of wonder that he was doing it on his own. Some deep instinct had made him jump to Tariro’s defence.