Maurice Broaddus - [BCS300 S03] Read online

  “And you sought me out. Why?” A deep pang radiated in his heart, paining him. The young man no longer knew what to do with his hands.

  “We were meant to be free. Free of our pasts. Free to live. I wanted you to know the man your father is. And perhaps... me.”

  “Are you with child?”

  “That’s never a polite thing to ask a woman.” She smiled, but it was cold and, despite the lightness of her tone, without humor. “I repeat my mother’s transgressions. I fell in love with someone I could not have. Whose first love was to duty and tribe.”

  “And their wife?” The young man regretted the directness, the perceived harshness, of his words as they stumbled out of his mouth. He had no intent to shame, though his words had the impact of hurled stones.

  She lowered her head, choosing to fix her eyes to the flames.

  The boy, learning to be a man, walked over to her. He sat down next to her and set his hands on hers. “We are more than the transgressions of our parents. You should not travel alone. If you would have my company, I would like to see Mo-Ito before I head to the jeweled city.”

  “I... would like the company.” She smiled, her slow grin filled with inviting humor.

  Exhausted, Dinga rolled onto his back. He swore he spied a shift among the shadows in the night sky. It bobbed along like a black ball in a sea of ink. The moon slid out from behind the cover of clouds, its light catching the occasional glint as it slowly came into view. Through the brooding silhouette of crags, a domed cityscape drifted through the sky into view.

  They’d found it.

  III.

  There is a grief we carry from betraying creation, the very world around us.

  Dinga visored his hand above his eyes as if that might help him discern the shadows better. The city within the globe bobbed above them, shifting in and out of view as if not quite in focus, lost in the swirl of night stuff. A shimmer haloed it like a heat mirage about its edges, as if other planes intersected along any particular line of sight.

  “How does it stay up there?” Gerard froze in study of it, his voice stopping short of awe.

  “There must be a support of some kind. Something connecting it to or suspending it above these crags that we can’t see.”

  Gerard arched his head toward him. “You know, it’s all right to say you don’t know.”

  Hitching his pack higher on his back, Dinga headed toward the exposed rock formation. “Come on. We have to get closer.”

  “Can you see a way in?” Gerard called after him, already speeding up to a near trot to keep up.

  Dinga pointed to a cleft along the wall of rock. “There. A doorway.”

  “That’s barely a hole,” Gerard said. “And I don’t see a set of stairs leading up there.”

  “It’s our way in.” Dinga couldn’t explain the tug in his bones, the way his spirit drew him along with a deep confidence that his steps were true. As he climbed through the aperture, the darkness welled about like a living thing. He forced himself forward, each step an act of faith that his feet would find ground when they landed. The floor gave with each step, as if he walked along a sprawling bog. His mind filled with the image of treading along an intestine. They descended down the dark tunnel. Dinga ran his hand along the wall to steady himself only to be met by a strange, fetid mildew slicking the sides of the cavern, accompanied by a cloying stench that ached his belly with queasiness. Their footfalls broke the sacred silence, each step sending them further and further from the world they knew.

  Dinga tried not to think of where he came from. Abandoning his family, his kraal, everything that rooted him in the world, to carve his own way. No matter what the Wise One prophecied, he would find his own destiny on his terms. Alone. That was what it meant to be a man, his father had taught him. To seize the world by the throat and force your will upon it. That was what made true leaders, and Dinga was born to lead.

  Yet he had never felt so lost.

  Lost in the dark, his body moved as if on strings, imitating the motions of walking. With no point fixed in the distance, movement became illusion. Time and space meant nothing; simply a new ether to pass through.

  A plop echoed in the distance. Dinga hesitated, listening for further sounds. The tunnel grew warm; a stream of liquid splattered their faces from some unseen pool.

  “You bring me to the most excellent of places.” Gerard spat to clear his mouth. The cavern magnified his voice, his words echoing into the darkness.

  “I only promised you a memorable experience,” Dinga said. “Full of peril.”

  “I won’t soon be forgetting this. Especially the smell.” Gerard’s hand snapped forward to grab Dinga’s arm to halt him. He sniffed with intent, the way he did whenever someone presented a new wineskin. “Dinga, this place has an awful familiarity about it.”

  “I have seen nothing like it before.”

  “Because you restrict your travels to the Land of Tribes. But I have seen something akin to this before.”

  Dinga rotated in place, noting the detailed architecture of the system. An intelligence was present in its design. “It is like we’re in an undercity of mazes.”

  “Because we are. Like aqueducts, though I haven’t seen its like so advanced.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “We are surrounded by the shit of the gods,” Gerard said.

  Ignoring him, Dinga squinted at a pinprick of light down the corridor. “What’s that up ahead?”

  “Perhaps it signals the end of our quest.”

  Dinga shifted the weight he carried. They had traveled for so long in the senseless dark, he’d almost forgotten it was there. He nudged it again to make sure it was real. And still present. He scrambled toward the light. A window of clear material, sturdy and hard, sealed an observation portal. They pressed themselves to it to get a better view.

  From their vantage point, they floated above the great city, overlooking an elaborate array of towers of burnished glass and white marble. Tile roofs bathed in the sun’s light, its rays washed along the building tops, illuminating the tiles such that they sparkled like diamonds scattered across the sky. He wondered how human hands could have constructed it, save by sorcery. When he scanned the edges of the sphere, a massive forest spread out, an expanse of undulating green. A thin veiling mist lowered over the tree tops. The mighty river. The canyon of crags, which, from their positioning, he guessed hid armaments of some sort. He felt as if he stood on the edge of the world. Somehow the cares of the world far below them became... less.

  “How do we get... down? Up?” Gerard asked. “Truly, this place makes no sense.”

  “I need a moment to think.” Dinga rubbed his temple to ward off the threatening headache.

  “I may have the beginnings of a cunning plan,” Gerard said.

  Those words never failed to send a chill down to Dinga’s nether regions. “Dare I ask?”

  “The easiest way in is to let them bring us in...”

  “No.” Dinga already regretted opening the door to his lunacy.

  “...as prisoners,” Gerard finished.

  “No part of that half-thought even qualifies as a sound idea, much less a plan.”

  “But it’s the best we can muster.” Gerard shrugged.

  “No, I agree with your friend,” a female voice chimed in. “As stratagems go, that option seems more a consequence than an actual intention.”

  The men whirled around. A statuesque woman blocked their lone exit. Dinga hadn’t heard her approach, and even now, it was as if his keen senses couldn’t quite settle onto her. He reached for the hilt of his panga, but something in her eye gave him pause.

  A wan light glowed about her, though Dinga could not divine its source. Her maroon and black vestments, a series of small plates woven like a scaled kaftan, reminded him of the uniforms of the assailants who had ambushed them years ago in Utica. Along the bronze complexion of her left arm wound a tattoo of a scaled serpent. Her long black hair, drawn back in gold plai
ts.

  “Who are you?” Dinga asked.

  “With you being the strangers to our land, I would think that proper manners would dictate that you introduce yourselves and your intent first.” The woman retained a practiced nonchalance, but her relaxed bearing belied a battle-ready stance.

  “I am Gerard, scion of Sparta,” he announced as he stepped forward. Dinga recognized his positioning. Gerard moved to flank her, splitting her awareness between the two of them.

  “And you?” Unfazed, her attentions not the least bit divided, her eyes shifted to Dinga, as though still assessing their level of potential threats.

  “Dinga. Of the clan Cisse.” His fingertips itched, regretting that the only weapon he brought with him was his panga. Though his instinct didn’t sense her radiating a death spirit. And the way she carried herself, with her defiant tone and stance, reminded his heart of Lalyani.

  “I am Luci’Kobe.” She bowed slightly, her appraising gaze never leaving them.

  “You’re beautiful.” Incorrigible, Gerard sweetened the tenor of his voice to something approaching charming. “You, my dear, could be a princess.”

  “Why would I aim my dreams so low?” Luci’Kobe demurred, her tone playing to his poor flirtation but never taking her eyes from Dinga. “Why does your gaze linger so?”

  “You remind me of someone.” Dinga returned his attentions to the window. “I can’t believe we’re at the Dreaming City.”

  “You have no idea where you are. Dreams are about truth, sometimes deeper truths unknown to us.” Approaching slowly yet intently, she took his chin and turned his face side to side, inspecting him. “You have a fascinating mind. Dark and beautiful, like a many-roomed house with most of the doors locked. What business brings you skulking about the bowels of our city?”

  “What strange anatomy you must have for your bowels to hover above the rest of the body,” Gerard said.

  “A promise.” Lingering at her comforting touch, Dinga hesitated before he drew away.

  “A vague answer,” she said.

  “Trust me, the specifics wouldn’t make the explanation any easier,” Gerard huffed.

  “You love the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” Luci’Kobe cut her eyes toward him.

  “I do. I really do.” Gerard bowed slightly. The flourish of his hand appeared to reflexively signal for a drink.

  “My sister wished me to travel here...” Dinga’s words trailed off. He searched for something true to offer. “In hopes that I might find peace enough for both of us.”

  “All who find us were meant to make the journey.” Withdrawing a few steps, she paused and gestured for them. “Come along. Let’s see how well your plan works.”

  “Plan?” Dinga asked.

  “The one involving you being my prisoners.”

  “No offense.” Gerard planted his hands to his sides, refusing to move. Within the folds of his chlamys, he reached for his short sword. “But you’re alone and expect us to just dance into your prison cells on your word.”

  “Oh.” Her lips upturned, cold and mischievous. “Our kind is never alone.”

  Dinga held his hand up to halt Gerard. The shadows about them shifted. Much like when he had first spied the suspended city, when he fixed his gaze on the darkness directly, the shadows shifted. A spiraling curtain of night slithered with purpose, like a living weapon. Luci’Kobe flicked her wrist in their direction. Two globules of the shadow stuff flew out, lashing itself about each of their wrists. The remaining shadow glided across the surface of the ground before forming as a cloak about her.

  “This way, gentlemen.” She curled her finger towards her.

  Luci’Kobe escorted them to a strange conveyance, much like a hovering cart. She closed her eyes as if in concentration, and the vehicle seemed to respond to her thoughts and veered toward the heart of the Dreaming City.

  The jutting towers of the city were a magnificent vision. Dinga had seen nothing of its like in all of his travels. Around the outer edges of the city, the high-walled channels of the undercity girdled it. Domed roofs and fretted archways embossed each building. Heavy gold-laced gates guarded the narrow streets paved with marble, which funneled into slimmer alleys, like the veins on the hands of an old woman. They passed an open-air marketplace. Colorful floating disks rotated above each stall, like fans circulating the air doubling as umbrellas for canopies. The morning sun sent a cascade of colors along the array of spires. The shape of two birds, like sentient air, circled overhead.

  Noting Dinga’s interest, Luci’Kobe said, “Part of our surveillance and security system.”

  “What strange science is this?” Gerard asked.

  “Science is a diluted form of magic,” she said. “To your kind, sorcery is something to be learned. Mastered. Written down in scrolls and passed down, each iteration weaker than the last until one day they are just fanciful scribblings. For us, sorcery is something to intuit. To feel, like the blood pulsing through your veins.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Dinga struggled to voice.

  Gerard leaned over. “I have a new cunning plan: we steal the birds.”

  “Is theft your true mission?” Luci’Kobi asked.

  “No,” Dinga wanted to shove him out of the speeding vehicle’s window. “I spoke true. My friend simply believes he has jokes.”

  “Mine is a singular humor. An acquired taste, not always for the faint of heart,” Gerard concurred.

  “Much like many diseases.” Luci’Kobe’s words snapped but without bite. “Do not worry: we’ve dealt with the occasional court fool before.”

  “What is this place?” Dinga pressed his face closer to the vehicle’s window.

  “This is Wagadu.”

  “Wagadu?” The words trailed from his lips. He recalled the words of the Wise One of his kraal. “Four times Wagadu stood there in all her splendor. Four times she turned her face.” But this bauble gleamed, so unlike the...

  ...ruins the trio encountered at the end of their journey. Dinga squatted over a pile of crumbling stones. Weeds grew between the shattered cobbles. Toppled columns laid across what had once been grand plazas and spacious streets. The picturesque ruins, now the ghost of a city.

  “Wagadu was the last city ruled by the gods,” Lalyani said.

  “The gods have let things go to seed.” Gerard kicked over the remains of a collapsed wall, perhaps hoping to reveal a hidden room full of treasure.

  “What do you think it means?” Dinga asked.

  “That once there was a city,” Lalyani said. “Perhaps this was just a small place where chiefs gathered to discuss the business of the tribes. And one day the city fell, and in so doing, became a legend spread by the whispers of greedy drunkards in the back of taverns.”

  “Hey!” Gerard said.

  “Do you really believe that?” Dinga recalled the men who attacked them, with their strange weapons and attire.

  “Not really. It would be easier to believe that Wagadu never existed. I know in my bones the true city, the Dreaming City, exists somewhere. And I will find it. My bones will reside there and my spirit will know peace.” Lalyani knelt to sift through the dirt. “Do you not burn to learn more of our ancestors?”

  “Should I?” Dinga asked. “They have done little but disappoint me so far.”

  “To learn more of your past, where you came from, is to know yourself better.” Standing up, Lalyani took his hand. “Remember what you once told me. ‘We are more than the transgressions of our parents.’ Look around and see the dream of what could be. We will one day rebuild this.”

  “We?” Dinga said.

  “I carry Wagadu in my heart. Promise me that one day I will rest there. Some believe that other than Olodumare, the orishas were actually rulers of ancient city-kingdoms. Or great heroes who were deified after their deaths. One, even one such as yourself, can become one of the orishas.”

  “There is a process?” Dinga asked.

  “Known to a few.”

  Dinga shoo
k his head as if to clear it of foolish notions. “We are too young to plan for our deaths.” He had long reconciled that his was the path of blood and violence, a story which could only end one way. However, the thought of such a fate for his sister unsettled the core of his spirit.

  Interrupting his course of thoughts, Lalyani took his chin and turned his face to hers. “A warrior has to accept the beauty and terror of life. Death always stalks us, and we never elude it for long. When death finds you, make sure it finds you alive.”

  Then Lalyani propped her hand on her hip in that defiant way of hers, as if saying...

  “...you will wait here for Orunmila to summon you.”

  Luci’Kobe stepped out of the vehicle. Before them was a building whose structure was reminiscent of a tree. Constructed of triangle-shaped sections, the curving facets of the wall gave the building the illusion of movement. With a shimmer and a sigh, the wall’s essence shifted, its very components blinking out until an opening formed. When they stepped through the door, the latticed canopy shaded a courtyard. Hanging gardens lined the interior, and pipes for an internal irrigation system served as interior walls. At the center of the courtyard, a structure sifted water, creating a waterfall.

  “Orunmila?” Dinga held up his bound wrists.

  Lalyani waved in their direction, and the black bands shifted, became globules, and rejoined the material forming her cape.

  “Orunmila, one of the primordial irunmole, an orisha who had a hand in creation. He is the orisha of wisdom, knowledge, and divination.” Luci’Kobe opened the door with her approach, as if she were the key to an unseen lock.

  “I haven’t come to see any orisha,” Dinga said. “Only perform my task and lay down my burden.”

  “Whether you realize it or not, it is he you have come to see.”

  “She did say wisdom, knowledge, and divination,” Gerard said. “He probably knew you were coming.”