Chapter 24

Luyanda and Nomsa hurried out the gates of the mansion. They kept glancing over their shoulders in fear, expecting someone to come after them. No one did. It was long past midnight, and the streets were quiet. In the distance they could hear music playing, and odd cheers and hoots every now and then.
“What the hell just happened?” Nomsa asked, as they paused and watched the gates clang shut behind them.
“I have no idea,” Luyanda replied. “How are you feeling?”
Nomsa screwed up her face.
“I’ve never felt better in my life.”
“Okay. That’s good. Let’s go home and forget that all this ever happened, okay?”
“Do you think he’s going to let us forget? You heard what he said as we were leaving.”
Luyanda remembered only too well. The snarling leer. The threatening tone. The ominous words.
“We need to see Keita. We need to see him right away.”
“It’s past midnight. Let’s wait until morning.”
“No. This might be more serious than either of us imagines. And if it is, we need to let someone know immediately.” He stretched out his wristband.
“Msiza, call Keita.”
Seconds later, Keita’s grizzly beard appeared on the display. He was wide awake, and had a red Christmas hat perched on his bald head. “Merry Christmas,” he waved jovially. “How kind of my students to remember me on Christmas day.”
“Merry Christmas to you, sir,” Luyanda replied. “Are you at a party?”
“Yes and no. Yes, if you mean a celebration, and no, if you mean a group of people who’ve come together with a common cause.”
“Okay,” Nomsa nudged Luyanda aside and stepped into the picture. “Can we come over and join you?”
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“We’ll tell you when we get there,” Luyanda replied. “There are some things we have to discuss with you urgently.”
Half an hour later, they pulled up at Keita’s address. He lived in an apartment complex on the western side of the city, in the suburb of Riverview. Nomsa paid the cab driver, a cheerful fellow whom they suspected might have had a pint or two, and proceeded up the stairs. They had barely knocked on the door of Apartment 37C, when the door swung open and a tiny grey terrier bolted out and nipped at their feet.
“Get back in, Vladimir,” Keita commanded, reaching to the ground and scooping up the dog. “Good to see you both,” he said, as he led them in. “Sorry the place is in a bit of mess, but I wasn’t expecting any visitors.” The apartment was covered with books. They seemed to occupy every available space. There were books on the kitchen counter, the coffee table, the dining room table. There were books on the floor. Shelves and book-cases dominated the apartment. In the odd corner here and there, there were piles of cartons. Luyanda suspected they contained still more books.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Keita said, as he put the dog down and nodded towards some couches next to the coffee table. “Can I offer you som Christmas pudding? Maybe a drop of gin?” he added with a mischievous wink.
“That will be great, thank you,” Nomsa said. Keita wandered off into the adjoining kitchen. “Let me help,” Nomsa said. She stood up and followed him. “No need,” he replied. He returned with two small plates, and a larger one holding some Christmas pudding. He set it before the two of them. “Help yourselves,” he said. “I got that from Mrs. Small, my neighbour. There’s no way I’m going to finish it.” He caught Luyanda’s shocked gaze, sweeping across the apartment.
“What?” he asked. “Why that funny look? Do you like what I’ve done with the place?”
“I’ve never seen so many hard copy books outside of the library in my life.”
“I collect them,” Keita said, going back to the kitchen, “You could say it’s my hobby.”
“You need a wife, sir,” Nomsa said.
“She was more of a bookworm that I was,” he hollered from the kitchen. “We met in a library and started going on reading dates.”
He returned with three glasses and a bottle of gin.
“Why keep all these hard copies, though?” Nomsa asked. “Aren’t they taking up too much space?”
“I don’t have much else to keep. Besides, there are some books that should never ever be digitised.” He poured out the gin into the three glasses.
“Why not?” Nomsa asked.
“Knowledge is a dangerous thing. Sometimes, you need to be sure that there no copies of God-knows-what floating around the info-sphere. You never know what damage it could do. Cheers.” He held up his tumbler and clinked glasses with them. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure? You said it was ‘urgent’?”
Luyanda and Nomsa exchanged a look. “You tell him,” Nomsa poked Luyanda in the rib. Luyanda shifted in his seat, cleared his throat and recounted everything that had happened. Keita gasped when Luyanda mentioned the fly whisk, then shut his eyes and leaned back in his seat. He didn’t move as Luyanda continued his tale. He stirred when Luyanda mentioned how the whisk had no effect on him, but after that remained still until Luyanda finished his story.
“We got out of that house as soon as we could, and same straight here.” Luyanda fell silent. Keita’s eyes snapped open.
“Is that everything?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get a good look at that fly-whisk?”
Luyanda and Nomsa shook their heads. Keita stood up and walked out the room. They heard him pushing and shoving boxes aside in the adjoining room. He returned a second later, holding a browning roll of papyrus scroll. He blew a cloud of dust off it, unrolled it, set it on the table and smoothed it out in front on them. “Did it look like this?” he pointed at a picture of a whisk. Nomsa and Luyanda caught their breath as they glimpsed the familiar jewel encrusted shaft, the ivory carved handle and the gold coiling just beneath the bushy head.
“Yes,” Luyanda nodded, “that was it.”

Keita rolled up the scroll, and returned it to the neighbouring room. He sat down again and filled their glasses up with gin.
“Drink up.”
Luyanda and Nomsa hesitated.
“Please,” he insisted.
Luyanda grabbed the glass and knocked the contents down his throat in one gulp. He winced as insides screamed in agony. Nomsa took one look at him, picked up her glass and sipped tentatively.
“It’s better if you just chuck it down,” Keita said.
Nomsa shut her eyes, and gulped down the rest. Her eyes watered, and she swallowed a mouthful of air.
“Yuck!”
Keita nodded, and tipped the contents of his own glass down his throat. Then he leaned back, closed his eyes and locked his fingers together under his chin. Nomsa and Luyanda exchanged anxious glances. Nomsa cleared her throat. Keita didn’t stir.
“So?” Nomsa asked. “What was so special about the fly-whisk?”
Keita’s eyes snapped open.
“It’s the flywhisk of Sumanguru. We hoped that it had been destroyed centuries ago. But it seems that we were mistaken.” Luyanda and Nomsa exchanged a look.
“Who’s we?” Nomsa asked.
“My order,” Keita answered. “The Keepers. The Order of the Keepers.”
Nomsa and Luyanda gazed at him, puzzled. “I a griot,” Keita continued, “the last of a long line of griots. For centuries, we have spent our lives preserving the knowledge and secrets of our forefathers. Most of it innocuous, but some so dangerous that it could destroy the world as we know it. If it fell into the wrong hands. I am sure you can understand our predicament.”
They stared at him blankly. Keita continued.
“We walk a thin line: keeping knowledge that could destroy mankind and yet unable to use it nor destroy it. The solemn vows that we and our bloodline took bind us. Some of our number have often skirted the edges of insanity. And,” he added sadly, “some of us have crossed that line.”
He looked off into the distance, eyes lost in a sea of memories.
“Is that what happened to Uru?” Nomsa asked, wide-eyed.
“That was not always his name.”
Keita filled another glass with gin and knocked it down his throat.

“He was once one of us, a humble and disciplined member of the Order. Then the war broke out, and he lost everything. He saw his wife and child massacred before his eyes. He escaped and made a perilous journey across the ocean, packed into a boat with hundreds of others, seeking a better life. He lost more of his friends and relatives in the crossing but finally made it to the shore alive. From there we lost track of him. There were rumours that he was sold into slavery. After several years, he managed to escape and to make his way back to Timbuktoo. When he showed up, he was delirious, and had forgotten most of what had happened. Either that, or, as I suspected, he simply refused to speak about it.”
Keita paused, filled his glass, and gulped down another shot of gin. Nomsa’s eyes widened in surprise. Keita wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and continued.
“We did our best to recover him. But he was never the same. A few months later, there was a big fire in the library. We managed to stop it in time, but we lost some valuable texts. The man you call Uru disappeared. We thought he was dead, but we never found his body. We also realized that some of the texts had disappeared along with him. That’s when we put two and two together. I was tasked with tracking him down. I have been looking for him for years. I wish I had found him before the order was disbanded.”
“The order was disbanded?” Nomsa echoed.
“Yes. During the war. Each of the members was entrusted with some books and scrolls. Our job is to keep them away from people who would use them for the wrong reasons.”
“Or from falling apart,” Nomsa added, casting a reproachful glance at the threadbare volumes littering the room. “Is that what all these are?”
“In part,” Keita answered. “Turns out that the best place to hide a book is in and amongst a pile of other books.”
“Aah, so you hid all the old books here in this junk?”
“Precisely. And it would take days to find them. Especially because I took the extra precaution of removing the covers and title pages from every volume in the collection. Luyanda, are you still with us?”
Luyanda had a faraway look on his face.
“How come he did not recognise you?” Luyanda asked. “I mean Uru.”
“He’s always been a master of disguise. I just picked up a couple of tricks out of his own book. I am quite a handsome young man, you know, “ he added with a wry grin, “underneath it all.”
“And what is this flywhisk of Sumanguru?” Luyanda asked. Keita paused, filled his glass with gin again, and tossed it down his throat. Nomsa shot a worried look at Luyanda. He ignored her.
“That is one of the most powerful objects in existence,” Keita answered.
“Why?”
“Have you ever heard of bestowal?”
Luyanda shook his head.
“Yes,” Nomsa answered, her eyes widening, “That’s what he did to us at the party.”
“I am afraid so.”
“Hang on, what’s this bestowal thing,” Luyanda asked.
“It’s the ability to give superhuman powers to ordinary people,” Nomsa answered.
“Or to jumpstart hidden ones,” Keita added. “But that is one of the most complicated rituals to pull off. Which is why it’s taken him so long.”
“What makes it so complicated?”
“You need the rite, the artefact and the subject,” Keita answered. “For a long time he had the rite. He had stolen it from the Timbukto library. How he got his hands on that flywhisk, I do not know.”
“It came in with the other shipments to the museum,” Luyanda said.
Keita groaned.
“Ahh. Clever. It all makes sense now. The museum provided the perfect front to not only collect and test artefacts, but also to find the third essential element: subjects. As far as we in the order knew, a subject can’t just be anyone off the street. He or she has to be a descendant.”
Nomsa nodded knowingly.
“Sorry, I’m a bit lost here,” Luyanda said.
“You know what a descendant is, right?”
“Yes,” Luyanda nodded, “someone who’s descended from someone else, right?”
“Correct. But in the case of a bestowal, a descendant is someone who has come down from a mythical hero.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Luyanda asked, shooting a glance at Nomsa.
“I wish I were. A good number of legends are based on people who actually existed. And in many cases, their progeny are still amongst us today. Though not always, because sometimes the bloodlines disappear. And that was Uru’s stroke of genius. It sounds like he figured out a way to bring those ancient bloodlines back, using a combination of modern genetics and ancient herbology.”
“That’s what he gave us to drink,” Nomsa said.
“This doesn’t make any sense at all,” Luyanda muttered. “Why didn’t it work on me?”
“Because he would literally have to cut your shadow first. But he actually wouldn’t need to, because in that room you were probably the only true descendant.”
Luyanda clammed up, and shot a guilty look at Nomsa. Nomsa glanced from Luyanda to Keita and back to Luyanda.
“Why do I get the feeling that there’s something that the two of you are not telling me?”
Luyanda scratched the back of his head.
“I saw you disappear and then reappear on the other side of the door. You want to tell me that that had nothing to do with Uru?”
“No.”
“So you did that all by yourself?”
Luyanda nodded.
“If it had nothing to do with Uru, how the hell were you able to do it?”
Luyanda shot a glance at Keita.
“I think it’s better if you told her, Luyanda.”
“Told me what?” Nomsa asked, glancing from one to the other.
“It’s a long story,” Luyanda replied, “but I guess now’s as good a time as any.” In a few minutes, he told Nomsa all that had happened, starting with the first time he had touched the stool, to their last trip to the Shadow Realm.
“And you didn’t tell me anything about this until now?” Nomsa asked when he had finished his tale. “Were you ever planning on telling me?”
“Go easy on him,” Keita said. “He was just as confused and surprised as you are.”
“So basically Luyanda’s the only real descendant amongst us?” Nomsa asked.
“It’s quite likely,” Keita replied.

Nomsa screwed up her face.
“And you don’t know anything about your birth parents, do you?
“No,” Luyanda hesitated, wondering whether to tell them what Ma Selina had revealed about his mother. He shook his head. “I know nothing at all.”
“Which is a pity,” Keita said, giving him a searching glance. “Because at this stage, we need as much information as we can get.”
“What are we going to do about Uru?” Luyanda asked, trying to change the topic.
Keita groaned.
“I don’t know. I have to wait until I understand what his plan is, in the grander scheme of things. I have my suspicions, but I cannot voice them now, not even to you two. “
“But he wants to build an empire,” Luyanda said.
“Alkebulan,” Nomsa added.
“It’s not that simple. He shot himself in the foot when he burnt the library. He destroyed some information that he thereafter realised he would need to make his empire a reality. And when he returned to the ruins of the library, he found the order disbanded and remnants gone. All that was left was sand and memories.”
“If he’s going to build an empire, he’ll need an army,” Nomsa pointed out.
“Which he’s already started working on,” Luyanda added.
“He needs an artefact that will speed things up and introduce a level of certainty into his experiments. His failure with Luyanda today will have rattled him, and left him asking many questions.”
“So what must we do?”
“Wait.”
“That’s what you said last time,” Luyanda moaned.
“Yes. It takes patience to win a war. Uru will betray his plans, and then we will move.”
“And if he comes after us?” Luyanda asked.
“He’d never do that. He has too much faith in his lies. Only when he is certain that he cannot bring you over to his side, would he attempt to destroy you. So in the interim, go home, enjoy Christmas, but keep your eyes and ears open.

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