Beneath the Shining Jewel Read online

  Beneath

  The

  Shining Jewel

  BALOGUN OJETADE

  Copyright © 2016 Balogun Ojetade

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1530583640

  ISBN-13: 978-1530583645

  DEDICATION

  I dedicate this book to Charles R. Saunders, the Father of Sword and Soul and one of the best authors on the planet. You have long been one of my greatest inspirations. I remember reading your ‘Out of Africa’ article in Dragon Magazine back in 1987 – when I foolishly believed I was the only brother writing Heroic or Epic Fantasy – and I said “Now, this white dude got it right.” I was embarrassed – and overjoyed – to find out that you are a brother who, indeed got it right – again and again and again.

  INTRODUCTION

  Beneath the Shining Jewel: Terror in Ki Khanga

  Since the resurgence of Sword and Soul in 2005, we have witnessed books that have expanded the genre in many directions. In 2005 we saw the return of Imaro from Charles R. Saunders and the completion of the brooding warrior’s epic adventure. In 2008 Charles also released Dossouye, a collection of stories about the first black woman in Sword and Soul and Sword and Sorcery. 2008 also saw the release of my first novel Meji, the first book of a two book saga that took sword and soul into the realm of epic fantasy. 2011 saw the release of the first Sword and Soul anthology, Griots, proving that the concept of Sword and Soul was much more widespread than initially imagined. I also released Changa’s Safari, the first in a series of books that introduced historical fiction into the Sword and Soul realm.

  In 2011 a fresh voice entered the genre; Balogun Ojetade. Balogun quickly made his mark with his first book Once Upon a Time in Afrika, a book that displayed his deep knowledge in Yoruba folklore and amazing skill with action and adventure. In addition to contributing stories to Griots and Griots Sisters of the Spear, Balogun and I wrote the Ki Khanga Anthology, a collection of stories based on the world we created for the upcoming role playing game of the same name.

  Now, Balogun expands the reach of Sword and Soul in a new direction: horror. Beneath the Shining Jewel takes place in Ki Khanga’s jewel city, Sati-Baa. Mba, a retired constable, is called back to active duty to deal with a situation that still haunts him twenty years later. Balogun brings together a host of characters to battle a scourge that once ravaged the city and may be poised to return. The novel is both familiar yet unique, combining Ki Khanga folklore with a good dose of horror and action adventure. The wide range of characters and their personalities gives this tale its depth and foundation and Balogun doesn’t disappoint us with his creative twists and turns and detailed action sequences.

  I won’t go into more detail because I don’t want to take away from what’s in store. I’ll just say that Beneath the Shining Jewel is a book that will have you riveted from beginning to end, and it’s a great addition to Sword and Soul’s legacy. It’s a story that takes you into the depths of Sati-Baa, revealing surprises along the way. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank all of the great books I have read over the years and the authors who wrote them. You know who you are.

  CHAPTER One

  It was an old building in a rundown part of town – the perfect place to find a body. And it was the perfect place for Mba Bongo to come, grousing, out of retirement.

  He wasn’t complaining at the moment because he was intoxicated, still drunk from the calabash of sorghum wine he devoured the night before. The cloves he chewed did nothing to hide the smell of cheap wine on his breath. He preferred honey wine, but had learned to drink anything he could afford on the single ingot of silver the Elder Merchants of Sati-Baa gave him every new moon for his two decades of loyal service.

  Mba pushed the curtain aside and peered out of the litter.

  The constable who sat ahead of him tapped the elephant’s ear with a stick. The tremendous beast came to a halt in front of the building. Mba struggled out of the litter, adjusting his belt where it slung under his belly. His back was acting up again. He kept postponing a visit to the medicine priest to get the problem fixed because the work of a medicine priest cost more than his pension would cover, so he would have to wait until he had saved enough coin, but when he weighed needing a drink against needing his back fixed, the drinks came out on top. His back only bothered him when he walked or rode elephants and he didn’t do much of either anymore.

  Mba didn’t look retired at first glance. Sure he had crow’s feet clustered at the corners of his deep set, dark brown eyes and his gut was as big as a woman six months with child, but he had a head full of black hair and wrinkle-free, mahogany skin. His thick, sinewy shoulders and arms strained against his jacket, which was fashioned from the bark of a young mutuba tree. His trousers were olive-colored…and cranberry-colored where something had spilled on his right thigh after traveling down the front of his cream-colored dashiki. He covered the stains as best he could with his leather vest. This was as dressed up as he had been in many years; as he would ever be. He didn’t care. The sorghum wine had made him immune to criticism.

  The constable that drove him down nodded at the building. Mba nodded his quiet thanks for the lift and then he turned to give the gathered constables the once over. He saw disdain or curiosity on the youngest faces, and grudging admiration in none but one older flatfoot – Bunseki, a man he vaguely remembered, but he did know Bunseki had twenty-five years or so in the constabulary. Mba walked up to him and frowned. Bunseki grinned, hooking a thumb over his scabbard. He squared his shoulders. Mba looked around; they had dealt with Bacillus by the book: bash, bag and burn. The public had been moved far back. The ground floor windows were sealed with thick tarps with sheets of sealskin over those. Constables stood on guard every twenty feet.

  “Where is the miserable bastard?” Mba growled at Bunseki without turning.

  “Inside,” the constable said, pointing to a dark, triangular cleft in the sealskin and tarps.

  Mba grumbled and walked toward the building.

  He paused in the walkway at the door, peering over his shoulders to make sure no one was watching and then he drew a small calabash from the interior pocket of his bark-cloth jacket. He tipped the rim of the gourd to his open mouth. A maroon liquid cascaded over his tongue. He closed his eyes, savoring the taste. He wiped his lips and then slipped the tiny calabash back into his pocket. He pulled the door. It opened with a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  A constable stood there. Droplets of sweat rained from the young man’s forehead and followed the creases on his leather mask. He dared not remove it though, lest Bacillus take him.

  “Where’s Jima?” Mba asked.

  “In there, sir,” the constable replied, his voice muffled by cowhide. He pointed across an open space to a door that might have been an office once. The building was a furriers’ a few years back. Tufts of otter fur still blew around the dusty plank floor. Mba walked over to the door. Inside, Constable 1st Class Debre leaned against a wall. A bit heavier than I remember, he thought. But still beautiful.

  A few feet past her stood another masked constable shining a lantern. Its bright beam burned a circle on the floor in front of a man bent at the waist. The man wore a long hooded coat with baggy sleeves. The dark material fell over his body, almost covering the bronze rings strapped to his legs, from knee to ankle. The rings sang as he slowly lowered himself to the floor. A wheelchair, made of thick ironwood, sat about six feet behind him.

  “This wasn’t Bacillus,” the man in the hooded coat said; his pronunciation was flawless. His face hung inches above the floor. “Don’t need me to tell you that.”

  The man crouched o
ver a great red smear. It looked to Mba like someone had made a sandbird…out of blood instead of sand. The arms and legs fanned out in a big arc. This wasn’t the childish fun of making sandbirds, though. The victim had struggled.

  Mba sniffed the air and smelled his cloves.

  The man on the floor studied the marks for several minutes until he said: “Mba, you useless drunk. Why are you late?”

  “Just do your job, Jima,” Mba said. “Finish and go, so I can do my thing!”

  “Finished,” Jima hissed. He rose, gesturing to two partial sets of prints that stepped in and out of the blood stain. “Boots.”

  “You sure?” Mba asked. “Poachers?”

  “A Poacher wouldn’t do it here. You should know that,” Jima whispered before backing away from the bloodstained planks.

  “It’s bloody enough for Gnaw Maws…” Mba forged on.

  “Gnaw Maws don’t wear shoes and they would leave the clothing!” Jima snapped, backing toward his wheelchair. The action raised his sleeves a couple of inches. The light of the constable’s lantern caught Jima’s forearms and hands in the beam. The flesh was raw, just muscle and tendon, veins traced over them gleaming like wax. “You would remember how Gnaw Maws work if you weren’t drunk all the time.”

  “Not Poachers, either?” Mba repeated, frowning.

  “Think! Ritual,” Jima spat. “There would be a set up, an oven. Dinner table; someplace like home; maybe flowers...” Jima fell into his wheelchair. The new angle allowed the light into his hood just enough to catch the scarlet jaw muscles and row of shiny yellow teeth. “The constables have been over the building. It’s sealed. Nobody…nothing’s here. The footprints trail out on the stairs!”

  Mba frowned at the stain. “So…where’s the body?”

  “Some crazy fools used a knife to kill a guy and carried him off,” Jima replied. Maybe they just hurt him badly. There’s no indication of Bacillus. Just signs of a brutal, bloody crime.” He gestured at the stain on the floor. “Clear your head, Mba.” Jima turned his wheelchair, his fingers manipulating the wheels. “Not Gnaw Maws.”

  “That’s it?” Mba hissed, sticking a hand in his waistband to press his knuckles against a herniated disc.

  Jima pushed his wheelchair past Mba to the door, and out.

  “That’s it?” Mba shouted after him.

  The wheelchair stopped. Jima mumbled something, and his head shook under the hood before he wheeled himself past the constable at the end of the hall.

  “You have to earn your ingots somehow!” Mba said. “You damned freak!”

  Jima wheeled himself out the door.

  Mba glared at Constable 1st Class Debre and the constable with the lantern. “Protocol…everybody out!” He barked. “Get the building ready for burning!”

  He paced for a moment and then left the room, fishing around in his jacket pocket for the calabash.

  CHAPTER two

  “Hold him there!” Mba shouted, pushing past the constables in the main entrance and stumbling onto the sidewalk. Jima was just wheeling himself onto the lift attached to his litter. Two massively muscled constables, Jima’s attendants, held the lift’s rope.

  “You! Um…” Mba squinted at one of the men’s uniform. A patch of lion hide was tied around his left biceps. “Corporal…hold that lift!”

  Mba sprinted toward Jima’s elephant. He lunged toward Jima’s wheelchair and then grabbed it by the arm.

  “Don’t wheel away from me!” Mba yelled, spinning the chair around. In the overcast day, he could see the glistening scar tissue on Jima’s jaw, neck and upper chest. “I’m retired too. I didn’t call you in!”

  “You did!” Jima’s voice grew harsh. “Debre said as much upstairs.”

  “No, no!” Mba bellowed. “Chief Ibio called me in about a possible Gnaw Maw. She said she called you in to confirm it.”

  “You told her to call me in!” Jima’s words spattered out, sprinkling saliva over Mba’s hands. “If you weren’t drunk you’d remember!”

  “The hell with you!” Mba balled up a fist but lowered it and then pressed it against his thigh. “You drank your share.”

  “Never on the job!” Jima hissed, “Especially that job.”

  “Come on,” Mba said. “Everybody partook – wine; iboga; maluga berries…something. It was part of the job! We wouldn’t go in if we weren’t frogged!” Mba pointed his fist at the gathered constables. “I still get frogged because of it.”

  “Fine,” Jima said. “Constables needed to get frogged, but we were Captains.” Jima leaned forward, his lipless lower jaw was clear for all to see. “Trained, anointed and appointed by the Namaqua. Captains don’t get frogged, that’s the rule. Things happen too fast with Gnaw Maws.”

  “The whole squad gets frogged and goes in,” Mba said, stabbing the air with a finger. “Unspoken rule!”

  “You and your squad got frogged and that’s how you got them skinned.”

  “Ah, here we go,” Mba said. “Get over it.”

  “That’s how they got me and my squad,” Jima spat. “You stagger into trouble with a head full of iboga and a gut full of honey wine and who has to pull you out, eh, Mba? Damned Gnaw Maws ripped me and my squad to shreds because we were rescuing your ass!”

  “They got me too...getting you out!” Mba growled.

  He pulled his sleeve up; wriggling his scarred fingers.

  Jima peered at Mba’s arm and then laughed. “I see some marks on your arm…poor boy.”

  Jima leaned back in his wheelchair and pulled up his sleeve. There was only muscle and bone beneath. Veins twitched over the red surface. “Let someone eat the skin off your groin sometime and then I’ll sympathize.”

  “You want revenge?” Mba stepped up, flinging his jacket open. He yanked his broadsword out of its scabbard and threw it on Jima’s lap. “Go ahead; put me out of your misery.” He pointed his chin toward Jima.

  Jima’s skinless hand closed around the pearl handle of the sword. He lifted it and centered the tip of the sword on Mba’s chest.

  All around them, the constables raised their throwing clubs. They glanced at each other, uncertain of their target.

  “You’d be surprised how many times I’ve had you in the sights of my longbow, Mba” Jima said, ignoring the constables. “How many times I could have put you down like the sick dog you are.”

  Jima slid the sword back into Mba’s scabbard. “But you’re already doing worse to yourself than anything I could do.”

  Jima set his skinless hands on the wheels and then turned the chair.

  Mba watched Jima’s wheelchair slowly rise onto the elephant’s back. He turned on his heels and stalked down the street. There was an inn that sold very cheap wine two roads over.

  CHAPTER three

  Mba’s legs grew steadier with each sip of wine. The cold bottle felt good in his fist.

  Jima always infuriated him. Why couldn’t he put it behind him? He was still alive wasn’t he? He wasn’t infected. Didn’t that count for something? But who was Mba to say? How was he to know? He had lost a fair bit of skin off the one arm, and a good-sized strip off his chest. It hurt badly, so he could only guess what Jima was going through, getting skinned right down to his muscles and veins; peeled from stem to stern. It had probably driven Jima insane. It would drive anyone over the edge having a bunch of Gnaw Maws hold you down while their Alpha chewed off your skin.

  Mba drained the bottle of wine before returning to the crime scene. The constables hadn’t found a body, just a stain. But Bacillus protocols had to be followed now that the wheels had started turning. Of course, they were rusty old wheels, and Mba knew that the constables on the scene would be waiting to hear whether they should bring down the building and then torch it or just cut out and burn the areas that had stains and might hold Bacillus.

  He made his way to the front of the building and walked up to a group of five constables gathered and gossiping. Mba wanted to give them lots of time to know he was coming, in case they we
re talking about him. He didn’t need any more enemies and he didn’t have any friends. When the constables saw him they turned. Two of them gestured to a third, who greeted him through layers of cowhide. “Me and the team were wondering sir,” the constable said. “Was that really Captain Jima?”

  “Yep,” Mba said. “Captain Nire Jima, in the flesh.”

  “Old Bunseki said he was a hero back in the day,” a constable said.

  “Yeah,” Mba said with a nod. “Lots of heroes back in the day.”

  “You fought with him,” another constable said, wagging his finger at Mba and smiling as he recognized the old drunkard. “Long time ago; against Bacillus.”

  “Everybody fought,” Mba said. His back hurt.

  “Jima saved a whole squad, didn’t he, when a big pack of Gnaw Maws caught them in the sewers?”

  “In the tunnels under Mohan University,” Mba corrected, wishing he could just pull out his calabash and have a sip.

  “You were there, too?” asked another constable, this one a pretty woman who sported the tattoos of Fez.

  “Yeah…I figured out that’s where we’d find the hunting pack,” Mba said, rubbing a hairy hand under his nose.

  “If the Gnaw Maws got Captain Jima,” another fellow began. “Why didn’t the Bacillus get into his blood when they ate his skin?”

  “It doesn’t pass on in every case.” Mba said with a shrug. “Besides, we all have it in us. It’s in the water…it was in your mother’s milk…it’s in your seed and your seed’s seed.”

  “Really?” the tattooed woman gasped.

  “Yes,” Mba said. “The Elders don’t want anyone knowing this; they don’t want a panic. I didn’t know until I made Sergeant-At-Arms. Back when everyone was taking it for curses from witches, it just built up in our systems until…”