“Easy, Lathairboni,” Leebu said, “don’t go showing the boy how scared you get.”

  The old man cleared his throat. “Mock me,” he said coolly. “In front of a pupil?”

  “That’s just the start!” Leebu made the boy jump and the boatman begin pleading. “The only reason we make it far enough to drift on miserable logs is because of me. Me! Otherwise you’d be lost, limping, or in the belly of a lion pride.”

  That was enough. Boadu the boatman saw the old man rise, turn, then belt the cat in the ribs with his staff. The cat clawed the air, hissed, and eventually retreated until on the very lap of the white boy.

  Somewhere near midnight they poled through the waters at a renewed speed. Leebu, silent, saw them all. The boy saw only the ones whose glistening backs shined back the silver of the moon. Hippos had come on land. Conabitt squinted, counting fifteen before the nose of the canoe slid up onto the shells and mud of an island.

  Ullumon groaned and moaned until once again upright, cursing the foul canoe for its hard seats. On land he took a worse tone with Boadu, who nodded and began carrying into the hinterland what meager supplies the village had provided. Switching to his broken Orisulan, Ullumon said to the boy, “See, Diamond? Do wish to live a life of such servitude? Scurrying about with a sack over your head?”

  “Yeah,” Conabitt brightened. “Let’s move a little faster there, boat man.”

  “Ask him question. Go on.”

  The boy waited until the sweating figure reemerged from the shadows. “You, you like doing that?”

  “Good, good,” the Lathairboni laughed.

  The boatman said nothing, but the moon revealed more than once a stare suggesting he well understood.

  With the improvement of a scale-hide tent, the night came and went without the awfulness Conabitt concluded he was getting used to. In the morning the boatman was gone, and out into the expanse of a large island the three went.

  Before long, the rolling grass and clumps of dense bush gave way. Beyond the hard dirt hummed another village. “Deez people even more remote,” Ullumon said. The boy nodded, looking at what appeared to be some sort of primitive trash heap.

  He’d always heard back at the dismal colony that Suelans lived as savages, yes, but ones at least in tune with their land. With the top of the nearest hut barely visible, skulls that looked to have once been owned by dragons lay strewn about, hacked and beaten—former owners of the scales. Scattered amongst the sun-scorched bones were fish heads and the rotting gore that accompanied them.

  “Why are we here?” the boy asked.

  “Da village? Oh, we not going in.” Ullumon pointed at the heap. “Here good enough. Do you see?”

  “Rats? Everywhere.” And they were, sending a quick shiver down the boy. Rats in Orisula were for unsavory wards and ships that eventually sank.

  The Lathairboni leaned into his staff and turned a lustful whisper. “Not da rats.” Here he pointed that same bony finger, but at a bush near the wasteland’s fringe. “Do you see?”

  The bush was but a normal bush. The boy focused, intently, scratching his head and staring at nothing. A stick lying under the bush’s dirt-powdered leaves, it began to move.

  A large snake slithered, stopping at certain moments to regain its rhythm and place its dull yellow-brown stripes in blades of grass alongside a crushed skull.

  One was wrapping itself around his leg! Conabitt screamed, sending the old man leaping, the boy leapt too, and the rats scurrying into every hole. Leebu unwrapped his tail and plodded up to Ullumon. “If the boy is to learn the way of the fang, I’ll be his teacher.”

  Coming down and gripping his staff with both hands, Ullumon frothed. “Jokes and ruin. You, Leebu, you, great cat, ruin and now expect to teach?”

  “Yes I do,” the cat said, putting his eye on Conabitt. “You white humans love your plates, yeah? Our old man has told me. Made by others, caught by others, killed…by others.” The boy didn’t want to take his eyes off Ullumon. “Imagine, boy. Imagine that love, now add something sweeter than the cool drink of the springs. Sweeter even than a mother’s love. Hunger, boy, filled.”

  “You’re going to turn me into a snake.”

  The boy was talking to Ullumon, but it was Leebu who answered. “Patience. Ruthlessness.”

  “Are you done?” Ullumon said.

  “The bliss of a well-placed strike.”

  When the golden powder rained down on Conabitt the boy had expected it, and the pain, contorting him as if crushed by hands into a stricken, convulsing rope. The old man’s words sounded far away, then sound itself became something different. The site of Leebu caused Conabitt to do he knew not what. Coil? A pressed paw into the dirt sounded as if rolls of thunder. The Lathairboni may have instructed the boy, but he didn’t need it. He was to experience lying in wait, to capture prey.

  The boy slithered.

  The boy didn’t hear Ullumon say, “You hear the hyenas, Leebu? They must’ve crossed in the night. You wish to show them your knowledge of the fang?” Leebu’s paws boomed off the earth as he leapt into the nearest tree. The boy heard nothing, but the earth screamed with an army of increasing trots.

  “Hyenas,” said a voice out of nowhere. It was in the native tongue, though, too, the boy could not hear. It cried, “Hyenas are not the only who’ve crossed the waters, Ullumon.” Not from the village but out of bushes appeared a short and portly little man. The boy sensed a rut in the soil, where his prey would be.

  “Chomcha,” Ullumon groaned. “The good Lathairboni.”

  “All Lathairboni are good,” said Chomcha, adjusting the scale-skin armor that covered his legs and chest. “Except you. Where is the white boy?”

  “I have seen no white boy, kind and heroic Chomcha.”

  “My nephew Boadu says you have possession.” Chomcha was without staff, but in one hand he waved an ornate and formidable wand. “Diabolic dog! Do you think of no one? They are more than looking for him. It’s bringing ruin to people all over Suela, from the grasslands all the way down to the river edge.” Chomcha began to cross the rat-infested ground. “Where is that boy?”

  Ullumon slowly put his hand into his satchel. “Oh, he’s slithering around here someplace.”

  The boy slithered forward, gaining speed.

  He did not choose to become what he was, but he did choose to want it. Want…maybe not. Did his sister Dia want to be pretty? Yes, a snake’s brain thought, like his sister Lia wants to fly, like their sister Mia wants to marry a prince. All just who and what they are. Put a boy in the jungle, and he won’t be able to help it, he will become hungry.

  Those sisters, they may live without beauty, they’ll live without having cut clouds with bare hands or marrying, but the boy, he had no choice. It was oblivion or eat. He saw the short, fat man, his booming feet, but the boy cared not. Movement was in his eye, low to the ground as he was.

  “And how dare you,” the man called Chomcha cried, pointing his decorated stick at Ullumon, “threaten the village with plague if they didn’t give to you what you ask.”

  “Watch where you point that thing, Chomcha.”

  The boy waited. One came out, briefly, then scurried out of sight and range when the ground’s rumble gave way to Ullumon.

  The old man had been smitten by Chomcha’s wand. His curse of surprise ran through the boy, who, also stunned, watched as roots from under the soil burst up and seized Ullumon by the wrists, pulling him down, trying to pin him against the hard earth.

  Ullumon slipped a hand free, flinging gold powder at Chomcha. The cloud, falling short, burst to life a cluster of fish heads. Their missed target jerked back as they writhed and moaned and hideously mutated into new, fouler forms. Mouths grown large crawled and clamored. Forcing his eyes away, Chomcha struck the air, calling forth a second volley of roots.

  Ullumon, no longer free, crumpled as laughter stepped foot onto their war. Both Lathairboni saw all the thick brown heads now. Chomcha dithered, dropping his wand, but Ullumon howled, eyes wild, wide—white—calling forth the slobbering pack.

  The pack charged. Chomcha reclaimed his wand to thwart their attack. Teeth crashed into a globe that had instantaneously encased the man, flashing green wherever the beasts lunged before circling Chomcha in a thickening ring.

  The villagers were long used to hyenas. A local clan foraged their broken crocodile heads and fish garbage and served as guardians against nosey male lions. Their tracks tattooed the soil, the trails leading away, their muzzles viewed for two generations as tools of use and protection. But these who surrounded Chomcha were Ullumon’s.

  Ullumon called upon two, who obeyed the human who knew their tongue, soon working with their teeth to free him from the roots.

  For those who cast magic in an appointed village, or for those few Lathairboni who wandered the plains or dwelt in jungle twilight, there was no question: Chomcha was no match for the vile Ullumon. Ullumon cackled. Staggering upright, he raised his arms. Chomcha had no recourse. Ullumon then leveled them at Chomcha, popping his green globe like a boil.

  The hyenas took note.

  When the screaming became something nearer to silence, a youngster broke off to seize in its jaws the long body of a fleeing snake. Leebu had sought refuge in high branches and the tranquility of a rare moment alone, and had watched the skirmish with relative indifference. At the sight of the boy, the leopard flew down and pounced on the hyena’s back.

  Pulled from the display of carnage, Ullumon shrieked, baying the burdened hyena. Leebu swung to Ullumon’s side, snarling at the pack, who, with loud commands and great somatic effort, Ullumon sent laughing and scampering back into the bush.

  The two looked down at the broken snake. The tiny, fanged mouth opened. Leebu, unable to hear, spoke to the boy, but the boy could not understand. Ullumon looked at Leebu, then back down, over the boy, contorting his tongue and firing down the necessary reverberation. Conabitt heard the old man: “Why? The more violence, the greater the control; the greater the control, the easier the corruption. And when corruption seeps in, my dear boy, then appears the master for whom we work.”

  The boy, a dying cobra, driven by promptings from a borrowed guise, summoned the machinery of a long spine to plunge his fangs into his own side, not stopping until every drop of venom poured into unmeant places.

  The human boy lay breathing, next to Chomcha, who wasn’t.

  *

  “Da hyenas did what lesson was meant for you.” In his true form, Conabitt patted himself and found not a single bone broken. Not a scratch rendered. Observing the boy’s astonishment, Ullumon came off his staff. “Did you feel da headache of an impala? No, Diamond, retrograde make all better.”

  The boy sickened when he saw what remained of the strange man. “Who is he?”

  “Some wicked, wily Lathairboni. Meant to take you and Leebu away.”

  “Ullumon.” The boy turned to the old man.

  “Where,” Leebu interrupted, back in his tree. “Where are you going to have us hide now?” He keened his eye at some point beyond the highest bush. “Smoke,” the cat said, climbing back down. “It’s near.”

  *

  The God’s Broth was wearing off. Ullumon knew this, for he’d mastered the mixtures; the cauldron’s load of blood, spring water, the incantation-covered herbs and the appropriate dust of once appropriated bones. Conabitt knew it because growls—plain and ordinary—were starting to come out of Leebu.

  “How much longer will I be able to talk to him?”

  They were in what the village had provided. Ullumon didn’t just need rest, he needed to heal. The war he’d won, but it had cost him. That the villagers had hid behind every tree and hut’s hard corner to watch the end of Chomcha the Lathairboni didn’t surprise him, nor did their silence as the three had entered after, to be given a wide berth and a vacant hut.

  The boy was wondering, if Ullumon died, whether the God’s Broth would suddenly end. His thoughts faded when Ullumon sat up from a bed of rags. “Soon, Diamond. Want to talk to da animals forever, do you?” The old man cackled, calling the boy over to hoist him up and carry him to the open doorway. “Magic.” The old man squinted and pointed at a patch of wild palms. “Magic be everywhere. Don’t you worry. See da palms? Even day hold great, learned, ancient magic. How are day magic?—dear Diamond, day are da gatekeepers of da gods. First planted of all da plants. Of all da tall, day commune powers of man to da powers higher dan man. Day, dare leaves, day will wrap around born leaders, but only when da born leader be good an ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  The old man looked down, into him. “When ready to turn da white sands red.”

  The boy understood perfectly. When some warlord appeared, some great man, ready to take no orders but give them, then the palm trees would do something. Or he thought he understood—but such talk gave way to the settling in of evening and soon it seemed there was only silence.

  Silence—except for the hyenas—out where the bush was thicker, out beyond the palms. The last event of the day had been a fight between the cat and his master so fierce that Conabitt thought one was going to bite the other bloody. Now a fire crackled. Ullumon and Leebu snored on opposing sides. The boy was back at that open doorway, listening. There was another noise out there. Cries? he thought. Of men? Not in the broken Orisulan as Suelans spoke, but in the plain, bald speech of his father’s people.

  Against good sense, he ventured out into the early twilight. The black of the village and the blue of the sky reminded him of the types of paintings one of his sisters liked to paint. Blocky, pointed shapes for men, though none strolled the dim ribbons of between-paths, and the warm dark night greeted him, as did the stars, twinkling high above a final scream.

  “Hyena. Hyena. Hyenas,” a frog croaked.

  Perhaps it was the confidence he’d gained as a duelist impala, or a snake, broken on his hunt and repaired to normal by a black magician’s strange powder. Perhaps it was that a fanged leopard had slept near him on consecutive nights. But whatever drove the young boy to skirt the edge of the palms and to tread into where now-gone hyenas had rampaged, he was most certainly driven.

  Moonlight. This time brighter. Between he and it were the palms; tall Suelan trees that he could not tell if they’d grown wild or were planted. As he crept passed, the nearest, oddly, seemed to creak and sway, as if the dull-silver appendages of the great leaves were straining to reach out and forbid his progress.

  Just beyond them lay slain men, white men, caught in the agony of their final moments. Some with swords still in hand, chunks of fur in the other. What feat these men had made, stabbing so deep into the Suelan delta they’d come within arrowshot. They had come so close. Gotten so close. A familiar badge sent Conabitt wailing.

  They were the True Men, a crack reconnaissance outfit made from the colony’s best trackers. Though small in number, the boy knew from harrowing tales that they went blow to blow with every adversary of the Suelan wild. Suffering the squishes under his bare feet, he welled into tears, seeing the unmarred face of one who’d let him once hold the great sword that he died swinging. A night cloud gave way, shining the moon fully upon the massacre. The way the skin had been ripped, the way muscle had been torn off the bone: all, by now, familiarities. They had been ravaged by Ullumon’s pack.

  There were dead hyenas, too. Many, one of which he kicked and slung sloppily a sword too big to bring it down on a devilish head. The True Men could have, would have, bested an ordinary pack.

  “Ullumon,” the boy uttered, letting go of the sword and looking back at the village. What conviction had driven these beasts? The old man was amazing, but the boy did not feel amazed. He wondered why he had frolicked in the wildest wood in all Mulgara. Long gone now was the last residual of the Goonu, popped free by the sight of supernatural murder. Unlike the joyous journey here, here the boy was a stranger, in a land that did not love him, herded by a stranger who saw to it that good men, men who were the lions of their own world, were mangled and eaten.

  Conabitt began walking back to the hut. Fires behind doorways glowed. No noise came from the village, as if they too had been butchered by the mad man’s schemes.

  “Ullumon, sir.” The boy stepped inside. Their own fire had burned low. Both were awake. “Did you know?”

  “Know what, dear boy? Do not speak in riddle.”

  “The men. From the colony.”

  “What of dem?”

  Sights too horrid for a boy to see had been seen and more. They had been felt, smelled, seared into a young impressionable brain. All at once, his nanny, dead beside him on a night that could have been a million years since, the dead guards and the sickening fate of that short, fat man, they all converged. The boy cried.

  “What of da white men, Diamond?” Ullumon had risen off his rags, eyeing him.

  “The True Men,” Conabitt heaved, then pointed, “out there.”

  The Lathairboni reached for his staff, stumbling to his feet. “Where? Out dare!”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No, boy.”

  The old man hobbled over and addressed his crying, but in the way a coarse older boy may, having dared someone into accidently breaking a bone, and now worried of an adult hearing the wails and whimpers.

  The boy looked at Leebu, hoping for something. But the cat only sniffed the air. “I want to go home,” the boy sobbed.

  “Yes, yes, you should.” Ullumon renewed. “Splendid idea. Home shall you go.” Ullumon hobbled over to his satchel, then triumphantly floured the boy in a new powder. The boy felt nothing, not even when the old man began chanting. “Dare,” Ullumon smiled, “dare you go. Good as white man’s iron shield. No harm now can befall you.” Conabitt was being ushered out the door. “You don’t need food, don’t need water. Not for at least, um, six days! Six days to get back to white colony and never speak of old Ullumon again.”

  Conabitt Lotgard had impressed his tutors. They were obliged to clap and clamor, to show marked progress to his father lest be sacked, but they’d genuinely meant it, too. He was astute for his age—astute enough to once point out the clumsy timing in a story he parsed for a full day. All at once, the boy had pointed out, a master thief who’d been stricken blind was cured by the surprise benevolence of an appeared fairy, and on the same day another, unrelated fairy had dizzied a tyrant into casting away the fierce keepers of his famed treasury.