Words of Swords

1 . 2

His stay in Indarari hadn't exceeded three hours but Abu already felt like he was suffocating. It has been years since he lived within the confines of a walled city and owing to that, he felt a tragic heaviness hovering over him and strangling him. Perhaps it was the eeriness resounding within this earthen palace that seeped into his skin. Or maybe it was the shadow of gloom he carried around that bloated his soul but no matter, it was nothing he wasn't used to. This was not worth getting under his skin for he had experienced far worse. The scars running from the nape of his neck to his spine testified as witnesses.

Indarari's end of the deal of three thousand horses had been delivered the very day Muhammad Ala had visited Razf with the proposal. So Abu's purpose here, in the midst of the very tribe they had sworn nothing but hate to, was crystal clear to him. How perfect and wise is Ibra's choice of sending his fourth and least favored son to the slaughter house, finally getting a way to dispose of him and indeed, Abu had stretched out his neck ready to be sacrificed.

But to his bewilderment, considering the abhorrence Kallam had first gazed upon him with, he had received a much warmer welcome than he expected; with him not being beheaded or thrown into the dungeon immediately.

Abu was assigned a modest quarter just off the palace's west wing and out of what he knew to be less of hospitality and more of a bid to keep an eye on him, had even been offered a personal servant but of course, he managed to decline claiming his visit wasn't worth the trouble and he knew in doing that, he'd only succeeded in arousing more suspicion to his actions.

After settling the little that accompanied him as luggage, he strolled the palaces' grounds that evening, just as the sun held its breath and slowly drowned into the horizon. He wondered from quarter to quarter, pretending to be oblivious to the various eyes that wandered with him. Indeed their architectural feats were remarkable, just as he had heard of the cities of the Hausa. Their sturdy mud buildings decorated in fine colourful geometric shapes, some thatched with bamboo while others roofed with clay but still, though most of Razf consisted of dispersed makeshift sheepskin tents, there wasn't much around here that awed him; for how could there be for a man who had spent three of his twenty five summers in the great city of Timbuktu?

Nothing intrigued him. All that did laid outside the palace's walls- or so he thought- he had noticed them under a Bushreen's stall on his arrival, stacks upon stacks neglected in a corner unless the few literates seeking such treasures graced the stall. It laid in bundled parchments bound in leather casings; in faded ink that fought the test of time to remain legible; in letters he'd bead so gracefully together, they'd flow into an enchanting river of pearls; in words he yearned to trace the raw edges of and strip naked till he felt the hiss of their bare emotions branded to his skin; in the tremble of his fingers as he turned over each leaflet as if reaching the last page entails closing the door to his very being. Everything that intrigued him lied in books.

The duration as well as limitations of his stay here was well calculated, that is if Madu's plan stays constant, but Abu knew, that was very unlikely for that ruthless Foulah was quite unpredictable. He was the mastermind of all that was about to happen, he was the one who had laden Abu's shoulders with such herculean burdens he was only at the thresholds of.

On getting back to his quarter, Abu noticed a soldier and an old man standing by the gates, appearantly waiting for him. He had seen that same old man with a generous grey beard dyed in maroon with the king earlier and he looked like he possessed some authority. Abu realized he should have been anxious, nervous that perhaps, he wasn't so safe after all, that their plans had been apprehended before they even got anywhere but he felt nothing save for indifference. Even danger couldn't arouse any emotion in him anymore.