Ras went into the front room. No covers were pulled off the furniture. Most everything looked as if it had not been touched for a long time. He went on down the hall to the doorway of that other room. There his flashlight beam picked up the chair, now lying on its side. And the tabletop was a glitter of color.
He crossed the room quickly to shine his light directly down on the table. Queer how bright it looked. But there were only pieces of a jigsaw, part of them put together to make a silver dragon. Was that what Sig had been doing here? Why in the world would he sit in this dark room and put together part of an old puzzle, shutting Ras up while he worked on it, as if it were some big secret?
Odd looking—Ras had seen a lot of puzzles, but none so bright as this one. And that dragon, when you looked right at him he seemed to move. Only, you could not be sure you saw him do that, you only felt so.
This was the puzzle Sig had fought him for. Yet he had gone now and left it lying here. Ras put out his hand, intending to sweep it all into the waiting box. It would serve Sig right if he took it home with him.
Only, he discovered that he could not touch those pieces, move them. Abruptly he turned and went out of the room. Let it stay right there, then. Who wanted that old puzzle, anyway? It wasn’t worth anything.
Ras hurried through the house and climbed out of the window. He was halfway down the drive when he saw Sig pass under the street light on his way back. Ras pushed into the bushes. Was he coming back for his precious puzzle?
As Sig went straight to the window and crawled through, Ras dodged along behind, watching. He was up on the porch as soon as Sig was inside. Now he could see the other’s flashlight beam illuminating the basement door. Sig had laid the light on top of the table as he tugged and pulled at it. Then he disappeared through the basement door. He must have gone a ways down the stair. But he was not going to find what he hunted for.
Ras ran for home. Let whitey stay there and hunt—do him good. But why had Sig come back—to fight again? Ras was puzzled.
Luck was with him, he was able to get in and up to his room without being seen. Shaka’s voice, and Mom’s, came from the front of the house. Mom sounded upset, as she was a lot lately when Shaka talked about what his protest crowd planned. Ever since Shaka had dropped out of college Mom had taken it hard. Just as she took it hard when Shaka stopped going to church and spoke mean about what the preacher was trying to do with the Head Start classes.
Ras sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the posters Shaka had given him for the wall. One had a big black fist raised against a red background and a lot of foreign words printed under it. Shaka said that was Swahili, their own language, and they ought to learn how to speak it. It was being taught now in the Afro-studies school Shaka had helped to start.
But Ras hardly saw that familiar black and red now, just as the voices from below were a meaningless murmur. What he continued to think about was the puzzle laid out on the table, that silver dragon which had seemed to move when you were not looking at it squarely, but was firmly fixed when you did.
There had been four dragons pictured on the lid of the box, he now remembered. A red one, a yellow one, and a blue. The blue one—once he had thought of it Ras could not get it out of his mind. Yet he had no clear mental picture of it at all—just the bright blue color.
Sig had gone down in the cellar on his return, to see where Ras was, he was sure of that. But would he also take away the puzzle? Suddenly Ras was uneasy. What was the matter? That puzzle, it was not important. But—he did not want Sig to take it! He, Ras, wanted to see it again!
Tomorrow was Friday, and after school Mom was going to pick him up and go and get some new shoes. There was no getting out of that. Saturday morning—it was going to be a long time until Saturday morning, that was for sure.
A loud banging of the door broke through his plans. Shaka was going out. He always banged that door when he was angry. Now Mom would be upset all evening, and Dad, when he came home, would be worse than Mom, because he got really sore at Shaka. Ras shook his head and stood up to put away his jacket. He wished there was not all this arguing, but the things Shaka said did make sense. Look at Dad, he worked hard all his life, never got better jobs—just because he was black. Nowadays people did not have to take it, no, they did not. Yet here was Dad saying it was wrong to do anything against the law. Shaka said as long as there were two laws, one for whitey and one for the black man, then the black man had to do something about it.
“George?” That was Mom from the foot of the stairs.
“Yes, I’m here,” he answered in a hurry. No use trying the “Ras” business on Mom or Dad.
“You have a half hour for homework before supper.” She was always counting off time that way. And when Dad came home and upstairs to clean up for supper, he would look in to see what books Ras had brought home.
They wanted him to get on the honor list, go to college. But Shaka said—Ras moved the school books around on the desk Dad had fitted up for him. It sure was hard in the family nowadays. When he listened to Dad it made sense, and when he listened to Shaka it made sense, too—only what they said were two different things.
He shuffled through the pages in his notebook, not really looking for his assignment but thinking again about that puzzle and the silver dragon Sig had put together. Why had Sig started working it right there? You would think he would have taken it home.
Ras sighed. Too many questions, and he seldom found answers which seemed to suit anyone, even himself. He wondered what Sig would say or do when they met at the bus stop in the morning. If Sig tried to start anything—just let him look out! Ras had him to thank for that dark, cold wait on the basement stairs, and that was something he would not forget in a hurry.
Ras was so interested in what Sig would do that he managed to get to the bus stop earlier than usual the next morning. The Chinese kid, Kim Stevens, again was up against the wall, as if he needed something behind him. He had his book bag between his feet and was reading a paperback book. Always had his nose in a book, that one. And Artie Jones was holding a new football, smacking it back and forth between his hands. He was whistling, paying no attention to Kim. But Sig was not to be seen. Yes—here he came, almost running, his windbreaker unzipped, his cap so far back on his head it was almost falling off.
Sig stared straight at Ras, a queer expression on his face. And he slowed to a walk, then glanced quickly away. The bus was coming as Sig halted beside Artie and started talking in a fast gabble. They waded in through the crowd of little kids. Kim had his finger between the pages of his book to mark his place. He went on reading as soon as they sat down, as if Ras, sharing his seat, were invisible. Artie, across the aisle, was talking about the football. Ras had Artie sized up as a big talker. He ran after the Ross gang, not that they wanted him.
Ras slipped lower in his seat and thought. He had his plans made for Saturday. There were his regular house jobs, sure. One of those was to go down to the laundromat. He could set the clothes washing there and then beat it for awhile. The laundry was only two blocks over from the old house—and there he could see about the puzzle.
He did not know why he wanted to look at it, but somehow he knew that he had to. Though, of course, if Sig had already taken it he certainly would never see it again.
The next day it worked out smoothly enough. Ras got the laundry down and in the washer. He now had twenty-five minutes, and if he ran both ways he ought to have plenty of time to get to the house and back. As he hurried along he watched for Sig. Down the block Artie was kicking his football around. There was no one near the wall and Ras dodged in, making his way as quickly as possible behind the bushes.
He waited and watched for a long minute before he went up on the porch, struggled with the window, propping it up with the same brick Sig had used. Once inside he stood and listened. There were faint sounds from without, but quiet within.
With as little noise as possible, Ras crept through the rooms, down the hall to
the room with the table. A bar of light coming through the open inner shutter fell squarely on the table and chair.
The puzzle was still there, Sig had not taken it. And it was exactly as Ras had seen it last, the silver dragon coiled and rearing in a way which made it look alive.
Somehow Ras found himself sitting down, studying the partly completed puzzle. He knew what he had to do—put together some more of it. He picked up the lid of the box, traced with his fingertip the bisecting lines which divided it into four parts—the silver dragon at the top, the red dragon to his left, the gold-yellow one to his right, and the queer blue one, very unlike the other three, far more stiff and strange looking, at the bottom. Then he was pushing out of the way the reds and the yellows, concentrating on gathering all the blue ones in a heap.
And he forgot, as he hurried over that sorting, time or where he was, or anything but the need to fit one piece to another, and the next to that, and to that. The blue dragon now had one leg, back haunches—now two hindfeet with their birdlike claws, a tail, long and thin, held up at a stiff angle to match the long, snaky neck at the other end. Now—here was part of a paw—why did the thing have paws like a lion in front and bird claws at the back? Yes, that was the other leg! No—rather a part of the neck. Ras paused to study the picture on the box more carefully.
The head had a curled bit like a mane, and a cone-shaped horn halfway down the creature’s nose. He had the head nearly done. Some more bits of upper neck—
As he picked and chose, fitted and discarded, Ras knew a growing excitement. There was something about this strange picture that he knew, had seen before; only, he could not remember when or where. He frowned as he hunted for the section that would unite head with body. Suddenly he closed his eyes, trying to think of the whole thing as a picture and not a puzzle. Where had he seen it? Something Shaka had shown him? A picture in a book? Memory stirred very faintly.
All done now but one piece of clawed paw. Ras hesitated, trying again to remember how—when—where—This must be the right piece, but it was upside down. Those queer marks on the back looked like little wedges set in a broken pattern.
He remembered! Writing! He had seen that writing in a history book—Sumerian writing! Those wedges were made on clay with a stick and then baked so that the blocks of clay were books! Ras was surprised at the clearness with which it came back to his mind now. Carefully he detached two of the pieces he had fitted in earlier and turned them over. Each piece had some of the wedge writing, though each was different. The Sumerians had lived a very long time ago. What would their writing be doing here on the back of the puzzle?
It had something to do with the dragon, he was sure of that. Bricks! Yes, bricks! He suddenly saw the picture his mind had been seeking—a wall and on it this queer shape made of colored bricks.
“Sirrush-Lau!”
Ras started, looked around the many-shadowed room, Who had said that? He—he must have! But how—why?
Sirrush-Lau. He stared down at the creature now complete. That was its name. And it blazed up at him fiercely as if brilliantly lighted by a hot sun.
PRINCE SHERKARER
The sun blazed, so strongly that the brick pavement of the wharf was oven-hot. Yet inside himself Sherkarer shivered with cold. But to let these pale-faced barbarians know that he had ever been touched by fear—! He stared straight ahead, his head as proudly high as he could hold it: he, who was of the blood of Nubian Piankhay, Lord of the Two Lands, Pharaoh of Egypt, a slave in this place of towering walls and strange, bearded men.
He need only glance at his own wrist to see the blue tattoo marks braceleting his dark brown arm—the coiled Serpent with the lion head of the great god Apedemek—to remember how it had been. How long ago? One day wove into the next and the next. First only a blurred misery of pain, which had fogged his mind after the war ax had smashed against his skull at the taking of Napata, City of Kings. Later, when his wits had returned to him, he had found himself a war captive, sold as a slave. Ah, that was a drinking of bitterness!
There is no medicine to cure hatred, and he hated hotly those who had taken but not killed him at Napata, as well as the trader who had bought him, and those jostling around him now. He might not yet wear the lionclaw scars of a warrior across his cheeks, but he had fought in the defense, his bow well drawn until the arrows failed and the Egyptian forces broke in, those Egyptians who hated all the men of Nubia since the days Piankhay had shown them to be only shadow men in battle and had taken their throne.
The Nubians had held that throne, too, until generations later, Pharaoh Tanwetamani had at last been driven south once more, but not by Egyptians! No, it had taken the Assyrian war host to do that. This time, along with the Egyptians who had stormed Napata were mainly barbarians, white-skinned sea rovers, clanless men who had taken service in the north.
Not that they had found the men of Napata, or Meroe, easy meat. Sherkarer’s lips flattened against his teeth in a silent snarl. Ay, they had paid a full price for the sacking of the city. Though to remember that did not ease his heart now, since he was not among those who had managed to retreat farther south to Meroë.
He had no bow, no sword hung in a shoulder sling ready for his drawing, no ax to hand. He was as those men on the wharf stripped to breechclouts, working to haul up the largest piece of cargo in the ship which had come up river at early dawn. That cargo—Sherkarer shivered.
He knew the wild hunters of the marshes south of Meroë. Had he not, from the time he stood upon his two feet and ran about his mother’s courtyards, heard the strange tales they could spin? For his mother was Bartare, Princess of Meroë, grand-daughter to the Candace, the Queen-Mother. At her court gathered all those who came and went into far lands, that she might hear what they had to tell and report it to Napata.
In those days, merchants from the caravans to the gulf ports, men out of the south where there were many strange and almost unbelievable things, told their stories and the scribes wrote them down. So the marsh hunters had talked of the lau—the demon-monster of the swamp-lands—until at last the Candace had decreed that this thing be captured and brought to her that she might make an offering of it to Apedemek. And Pharaoh Asopleta, her Son by the Favor of Amun, gave his seal to that order.
When the Great Voice speaks, men obey. It had taken a full year and twenty days more. Men died in ways the survivors would not speak of save in whispers, looking over their shoulders to the right and left as they did so. Finally the lau was brought caged to Meroë. Those who saw it knew that it could only be a demon, for no normal beast would have had such an appearance. Yet it had been netted by men, put in a cage, carried north. So who could doubt the courage of any man out of Nubia?
Sherkarer, looking now upon that cage set on rollers, that curtained cage, wondered what those about him would think if the matting screen about it should suddenly fall and they could see what manner of creature they transported. He wished that would happen, for he was sure he would see all this company flee.
He thought again of the past, the days at court, before his enslavement. He remembered well how the lau had been sent from Meroë to the palace of the Candace at Napata. And Sherkarer had gone with the party guarding it. His mother had wished to bring him so to the attention of the Great Lady, thus to take the first step along the road of her future favor. He had pleased the Candace, though the lau had not. For she straightway ordered it covered again after she looked upon it, taken away to the temple of Apedemek. But the priests there had not slain it, but carefully tended it, planning to make its sacrifice the center of the great midyear ceremonies. Only, before that time had arrived, the Egyptians and the barbarian mercenaries had struck.
After the taking of Napata, which he could not remember to the end, Sherkarer had found himself part of the booty along with the lau. Why the monster had been preserved, he did not know. It was a thing of ill omen. Look how Napata had fared after it was brought to that city, and how those who had borne it north had suffered. Sh
erkarer was captive; the rest, he thought, were all dead. Again Sherkarer snarled.
But the lau and the Sherkarer had been bought by the merchant Cha-paz and now they were both in this city of white-skinned, crocodile-souled barbarians. Had the lion-god Apedemek disliked the monster so much that he arranged this defeat for his own people so that it might be gone from his temple?
If so, was Sherkarer cursed because he had helped to take the monster to Napata? Yet he had only acted under orders, and those the orders of the Great One, Daughter of Apedemek, Lioness of the Land.
His lips moved now, though he did not speak aloud, in that prayer he had heard each morning at sunrise:
“Thou are greeted, Apedemek, Lord of Napata
Splendid God, at the head of Nubia.
Lion of the South, strong of arm.
Great God, who comes to him and calls.
Who is a companion for men and women,
Who will not be hindered in heaven nor earth.”
“You, black one, down!”
That ever-ready lash curled about Sherkarer’s shoulders, shocking him into awareness of what was going on about him. The slaves who had been dragging the curtained lau cage were lying face down on the wharf. Other men, free-born, had fallen to their knees, their arms crossed over their breasts, their heads bowed. There was the sound of horns. A procession was coming.
The lash licked painfully at Sherkarer’s shoulders.
“Down, slave. You do not look upon the Great King’s Chamberlain!”
Sherkarer knelt. It was that or be beaten senseless, as he had discovered the first time his captors had had their will of him.