Chapter 36

They came to him in the trembling hour, when the sun still threatened to take to the sky, but had not yet found the courage. The first to enter was Wijen, who, as Master of Histories, would act as official witness to record the event. Zimu watched the old man approach across the floor of the Hall. The old Djin’s eyes flicked up once to meet Zimu’s own briefly, but quickly fled, and the man hastily busied himself in organizing the stylus and scroll with which he would record his official observations.

The King and Queen arrived together, some few moments later, Yoliq striding imperiously over the cold morning floor to take her place beside the throne, while Mabundi did his best to keep pace. As he stepped up to the Anvil Seat, the King stumbled, and had to raise a hand to keep the crown from slipping from his brow. Zimu smiled at the portent.

The Queen too, noticed her husband’s slip, and it burned her face into a rigid glare. “You intend to continue in this outrage?” she barked, glaring at Zimu with all the fury she could muster.

“I do,” Zimu said, bowing slightly, with his hands still crossed neatly over his chest, fused together by the iron bands on his wrists.

“Then let us have it done,” she declared. “Mabundi! Take up that chisel and kill this fool. A King has better things to do than to parade around his court for the amusement of some trifling oaf and his delusions of honor.”

Mabundi glanced quickly at Zimu, as though noting for the first time just how large the son of Kijamon was, and then he quickly looked away, turning his attention to the ruined arm of his throne. The silver handled chisel still gleamed from its place, rising up out of the fist-shaped crater Zimu had pounded into it.

“I do this, not with joy, but with sorrow,” Mabundi intoned, with the even, uninflected pace of a well-practiced speech. “For the good of the Djin and for the security of the Crown, I hereby accept the Challenge of the Tooth.” And then, with a single jerk of his hand, Mabundi snatched the chisel from the arm of the throne and raised it triumphantly above his head.

Or rather, he raised his hand in triumph. The chisel was still firmly rooted in the wreckage.

Wijen looked up from where he had been scratching down the King’s majestic speech and then hastily wrote an additional note. The Queen just rolled her eyes.

Mabundi smiled at her weakly, and then returned his attentions to his task, grabbing the chisel firmly in his hand. Then he pulled again. But again the silver shaft did not budge, and the King could only strain there for a long moment before giving up with an abrupt release of breath. The veins on his neck throbbed and his face was flushed from the effort. Mabundi’s eye came up to meet Zimu’s then, and the King seemed to appraise his challenger with newfound respect.

Yoliq however, was growing frantic. “Hurry, you fool! The sun has almost risen!” Suddenly, she whipped around to Wijen. “And you! Don’t write that. I was… You misheard me. I said, ‘Hurry, my King.’ Mark it so.” Wijen nodded and bent himself to further scratchings.

Back at the throne, Mabundi now had both hands wrapped around the silver grip and one foot up on the throne, heaving and tugging like a young boy trying to move his father from the circle in his first play-grapple. But no matter how he twisted or turned, and no matter how he cursed or grunted, the chisel would not so much as wiggle. At last, exhausted and fuming, Mabundi kicked at the massive throne and managed to nudge it back a full fingerwidth. Yoliq stomped over to stand in front of Zimu. Her eyes shone with anger.

“You have bespelled the tooth!” she spat. Then she turned and called out to Wijen. “Make it known that I name Zimu of House Kijamon a cheat! He has used a cement of some kind, and the chisel cannot now be pulled from its place. Not by any man, nor any five Djin acting together!”

Zimu’s blood began to boil, and his hearing began to wash out with his rising anger. He strained at the bond rings that still held his hands bound together before him. Mabundi’s time was not yet up, and so he remained in his place and struggled to maintain his composure, breathing slowly, as his mother had often advised Sarqi to do.

But the Queen barked another ill-spirited laugh. “Where is your righteous anger now, upstart? Even could you win this challenge, still you would not be King. The crown cannot be won through trickery and deceit. It will not bond to you for your honorless frauds.”

In the silent pause of suppressed rage that followed, all four in attendance heard the metallic click, and suddenly, Zimu’s hands fell free at his sides. The sun had risen. The King had failed to protect his throne.

And now it was Zimu’s turn.

“Watch him!” Yoliq shouted, laughing, and pointing at the throne even as Zimu advanced toward it. “Watch as he now feigns surprise at his own strength that planted it there. I tell you now, mark these words upon your scroll, Historian! The tooth will not come out, and the son of Kijamon will deny malfeasance, saying only that it has been sunk more deeply than even he can withdraw. The great Craven Zimu will now give us a show!”

Anger burned white-hot in his flesh as Zimu took the chisel between his hands. Mabundi stepped back. Zimu pulled.

“See how the tooth remains fixed—” Yoliq crowed.

The silver handle cried out in anguished protest, and then slid from the ruined throne, silencing the Queen. Zimu raised it aloft, breathing heavily from his effort and the rage that still burned within him. The world hung in a heartbeat. Mabundi looked up at him with awe, at Zimu’s silver-handled chisel gleaming in his fist, poised in the light.

And for a moment, Zimu hesitated. This was the Honor Hall. The Anvil Seat. This was the very heartstone of the Djin people. The nexus of all they were and all they believed. It was bigger than any man. Bigger than any king. It was the bond ring of their entire world.

Mabundi continued to stare up into Zimu’s eyes. But it was not fear Zimu saw there, or cowardice, or rage. It was hope. And in that moment, Zimu knew that Mabundi was trapped in this moment, just as surely as he was himself. Trapped by the forces of history. Trapped by the powers that wrestled throughout the land. And trapped by his wife’s ambitions. Yet both knew that those forces would not let either of them back away from this brink. The Djin needed a king. A strong king. And they needed him now, today, without any dissembling or delay.

Behind them, the Queen sprang to her feet. “Cravenheart!” she shouted. “You have spoken the words but your own tongue will not swallow them! Zimu of House Kijamon, I name you cowar—”

A look passed from the one-time teacher to his younger student. A look of pride. Of forgiveness. And Zimu raged that such a good man, whose only failing had been in being too kind for his crown, must become the pawn of history in this way. There was no escape. And with a bellow of rage and despair, Zimu brought his hand down, driving Mabundi back onto the throne and plunging the chisel point deep into his chest, and through it, pinning the man to the great bronze chair.

“My King!” Wijen shouted, jumping forward, scattering his tools around him.

“Thank you,” someone whispered.

“My crown!” Yoliq shrieked, leaping forward to grab at the band of gold still girding her husband’s brow, where it would remain for as long as the King drew breath.

Zimu glanced at her in disgust.

“I did not make a very good king, did I?” Mabundi whispered. His words cut into Zimu like a knife. Like a chisel.

“You only played the fool,” Zimu said, as understanding began to unfold within him.

Mabundi nodded tightly. “I was the wrong king for this time,” he said. A weak cough shattered his face in pain, but he continued. “I hoped it would be you. But even you were blinded by tradition. These are new days… We need, new traditions…” The smell of blood filled Zimu’s nose, and around them, the shrieking of a vanquished Queen echoed from the walls like the cry of bats returning at dawn.

“You provoked me.”

“Had to… make you see,” Mabundi said. A grimace twisted his face. Life was draining quickly from him. “To awaken… something.”

“Awaken arrogance,” Zimu said.

The dying King shook his head and opened his mouth in the shape of a reply, but he was wracked by a painful cough, and though he fought to say what was in his mind — “Awaken a kuh! Kuh!” — he could not master breath enough to shape the word. Zimu felt another spasm tighten the body in his grip, and then it slackened. The cough had finally passed. And with it, Mabundi King as well, the whisper of his final word, escaping his lips on the wind of his final breath. “King,” Mabundi whispered. As that word resonated in Zimu’s heart, the band of gold that circled the King’s brow faded, and dulled into the quiet dignity of stone.

The King of the Djin was dead.

With tears in his eyes, Zimu sagged against the body of his former teacher, in grief. And shame.

Then the floor began to quake.

 
***
 

The shaking of the floor seemed right to Zimu. It was appropriate that the mountain should tremble with sorrow at the passing of Mabundi. He had not been a good king, but he had been a good man, and in the end, he had found a way to let the one out-matter the other. Around them, columns of stone wobbled on their bases in woe, and the air was rent with the ancient shriek of a being in agony. Decorations and the oddments of state clattered and fell like grieving attendants. Wijen too had collapsed at Zimu’s side, his old joints made liquid by grief at the falling of his King.

Zimu squeezed his eyes tight, but he knew he must get up. The time for proper grieving would come. For now, he had new duties to see to. The duties of the new King. Slowly, he pushed himself back from Mabundi’s lifeless form and made to stand up, but an unexpected blow caught him on the back of the head, and Zimu pitched forward to sprawl over the throne as blackness swirled around him.

Dimly, he could hear shouting. “Help!” someone cried. There was terror in the voice. And glee? “The challenger has broken his vow! He did not wait the full time! He has killed the King before the challenge had expired!”

“Wha… ?” Zimu muttered as he struggled to stand. “Not correct… Must tell…”

But then a second blow crashed into the back of his skull, and as lightning jags of pain lit up his mind and then flickered out, they dragged Zimu down with them.

Down into oblivion.