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“You are lucky I got back in time,” Salih said smoothly.

Jimoh got up from fussing over Tariro and tugged at Ethan’s T-shirt sleeve. “Come, Ethan, Tariro not so good,” he said with an imploring look on his face. “He has fainted now. He has big bite and lots of scratches.”

“Yes! See what you can do for the boy, Ethan,” Salih said, his meaning clear. Which was all very well, but apart from the cave full of witnesses, Ethan was not looking forward to the awful feeling afterwards. He wished the cat would make up his mind. One minute he was warning Ethan not to give blood too often, and the next he was telling him to give it.

Salih seemed to have the witnesses covered, though. “Well done for chasing off the lionesses,” he said to Fisi’s pack, “but the danger has not passed. The lion has fallen asleep from the effects of the Tokoloshe arrows at last, but it is too close. Could I impose upon you to help move the beast to a further location?”

“I know just the place to leave him,” Fisi said. Ethan wondered if he knew what was going on, and was being tactful. He signalled for his hyenas and six of them got up and followed him into the night, leaving the seventh to look after the sleeping girl.
 

The Tokoloshe trailed out after them, carrying scraps of leather rope in a very professional way, as if they had done this before. They whispered and elbowed each other, but did not look like they were going to let a couple of hyenas ruin the opportunity of handling a sleeping lion.

“Why don’t they just kill it?” Ethan mumbled half to himself.
 

“No, Ethan. Is not good to kill lion. He only protecting his area,” Jimoh explained. “We are ones who should not be here. Also, if we kill him next leader of pack will kill all young from this lion. Upset balance.” He took his Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and handed it to Ethan.
 

“What if the girl by the fire and the other hyena see?” Ethan said.

“No. She get hit by arrow for Tokoloshe. That is why she change. She will sleep a long time now. Other one is not looking,” Jimoh said.

“I am afraid to give him blood, Jimoh. If he knows about the blood he might tell someone else and I might end up getting drained for it. Salih said I could also use spit.” Ethan took off his T-shirt and spat on it, and then groaned. Tariro had two large puncture wounds where the lion’s teeth had gripped his calf and several deep scratches on his ankle. He could see spit wasn’t going to be any use even before he wiped the T-shirt along the worst of the scratches. All it did was relieve Tariro’s pain enough for him to wake up and scream.

“Ethan!” Jimoh said, his hands on his hips in exasperation, “This is boy you have just faced lion for. Are you going to let him die now?” Then he glanced furtively towards the remaining hyena, but she continued to lie with her back towards them, licking the sleeping girl.
 

Jimoh grinned as if the idea came to him out of nowhere. “Maybe we cut him little bit with sleeping arrow?” he said. “Then he will not wake up and scream and also maybe not know about blood.”

Joe woke at sunrise. He had slept on the bare marble floor at the foot of Kitoko’s sleeping pallet. Kitoko could have given him a pallet of his own – Joe could see a pile of them against the back wall of the room. There was a massive ornately carved chest holding plenty of linen, too, but Kitoko wouldn’t let Joe touch it. Kitoko said if he chose that Joe sleep on the floor without a blanket, Joe had to do it.
 

Joe wondered at the heir’s spectacular room. It was at least thirty paces long and twenty paces wide. Huge tapestries, depicting hunting scenes, hung down from the six-metre high ceilings to the floor on three sides. The fourth side opened onto a vast balcony overlooking the rift valley. Kitoko had a bird’s eye view of the wildlife activity in the jungle between the escarpment and the river, and beyond. Joe looked yearningly at the countryside beyond. He could imagine sailboats drifting up or down the river in the far distance. He wished he could be over there. No, he corrected himself, he wished he could be snug in his own bedroom at home.

At the thought of Kitoko sleeping, dead to the world in sumptuous comfort, Joe’s hands coiled into fists. He realised with wonder that his finger hardly hurt at all. He removed the bandage, marvelling at how quickly the wound was healing, when he felt a soft nudge and jumped, his hand flying to his throat. But it was only Hajiri.

“Quiet, boy,” the tiger whispered. He cocked his head to indicate Kitoko. “He’s a heavy sleeper, and there’s not much danger of him rising before noon, but we don’t want to wake him up until we’ve shown you around and explained a little about how everything works. I did not expect to be brushed aside for the revolting youth yesterday. You can be assured, there will be a reckoning, but in the meantime, come, we will do our best to prepare you to make things easier with him.”

Joe wondered who Hajiri meant by “we” until he saw Nandi waiting for them around the corner. She was still in her pyjamas.

“I thought you would never wake up,” she said, grabbing Joe by the hand and dragging him down the passage. “Come on! If we hurry, you will have just enough time to bath and have something to eat. Once Kitoko wakes up, we will not be able to interfere with his wishes.”

After handing him a loofah and a towel, Nandi lead Joe down some steps, where she split off from him and Hajiri to go to the ladies’ baths, and Hajiri took him to the men’s. “Come to the kitchen when you are done,” she called after them.

The bath was a swimming pool carved out of the rocks, and at this time of the morning Joe and the tiger were the only ones there. Joe was a bit taken aback when Hajiri jumped in, sending the water cascading down the outlet.
 

“Come on in, exposure to the water will help the healing,” he told Joe.
 

Puddles of a sticky, oily substance floated on the surface of the water, smelling like strawberry, or watermelon, but Joe washed himself in it anyway.

Afterwards, Hajiri led him into the bustling kitchen where they found Nandi, already sitting at a communal table on the far side of an immense cooking range, eating something out of a bowl. The aroma of baking bread wafted up from several ovens to mingle with the smells of exotic spices and a wood fire that burned in a compartment beside the ovens.

Joe felt self-conscious as he slipped onto the bench opposite Nandi. He wished he could have hung on to the pyjama-like kurta the healer had given him. Now that he was clean, the hyena pelt felt dirty and awkward. Nandi, dressed in a richly embroidered tunic over lustrous silky pantaloons, looking every bit a princess, did not seem to care what he wore. She pushed a bowl towards him; it smelled like curry. Strange choice for breakfast, Joe thought, but he was worried that Kitoko would come in at any moment and take even that away from him, so he tucked in, stopping from time to time to fan his good hand in front of his mouth to dissipate some of the heat.

Hajiri hunkered down on the mosaic floor besides them, and tore chunks out of a small antelope he had grasped between his enormous paws. Several people interrupted their chores to give the tiger a scratch behind the ears on their way past.
 

“Where do all the servants come from?” Joe asked Nandi between mouthfuls.

“From across the river,” she said.

“I thought you didn’t allow people over from the other side of the river.”
 

Nandi looked a little guiltily at Hajiri, who cleaned his face with a paw and then licked it.
 

“Oh, they allow people to cross over if they dare, dear boy, it’s the going back that they are a bit fuzzy over. Now, these people,” he swept a paw around the room. “These people are all carefully chosen captives. The Almoha have raiding parties that go over the river and blend in with the locals. They find suitable candidates to do all the things the Almohad don’t want to do themselves.”
 

Hajiri clucked at the look of shock on Joe’s face. “Now don’t take on so, dear boy, they are lucky to be here. They live in abject poverty over there, and appalling squalor. The scouts only choose people who are unlikely to be missed.”

Joe stared around the room. “I suppose they don’t look unhappy...” He guessed there was no point in escaping, only to go back to a horrible place, but he knew he could never get used to this life – he promised himself he would strive to get home until the day he died.

“You see those two over there?” Nandi pointed at a couple tasting dishes behind what looked like a spice shop counter. “They keep everyone happy.”

“Over the last two millennia or so the Almohad have developed their ability to persuade people to do what they want,” Hajiri explained. “Their other trick is to convince people that they are happy to oblige.”
 

Joe glanced over at the couple. Both wore simple cotton tunics over comfortable baggy black trousers, and both were radiantly beautiful. The man was tall and muscular. He had dark skin with very thick long hair, worn in a ponytail hanging down his back. The woman was willowy and doe-like. She reached up and pulled a bottle from the shelf behind her, twisting the top off as she turned. Her eyes fell on Joe, staring at her from across the room. They were the most beguiling eyes he had ever seen – soft, and deep brown, almost violet. Her lids lowered languorously and Joe relaxed, his vow to get home already forgotten. He rose to go over to her because he just knew she would be so happy if he did...

Hajiri directed a low rumble at her, and, after a moment of disorientation, Joe sat down with a jolt. What had just happened? She flashed him a wicked grin, her perfect teeth contrasting with her velvety bronze skin, and turned her attention back to her work.
 

“That was weird...” Joe shook his head to clear it. He felt a slightly desolate feeling at the loss of the woman’s approval. “Can you all do that?”

“Well, she has been practising for nearly fifty years,” Nandi said.
 

Joe was shocked. He was no expert but she barely looked thirty.

“Okay, this is how it works,” Nandi explained. “The magic in the water makes us strong and healthy, and we live for much longer than the people in the valley kingdoms, but some of us also study it really hard to get it to give us what we want–”
 

Nandi stopped speaking, eyes widening suddenly. The next thing Joe knew he lay sprawled on his back on the kitchen floor clutching his head.
 

Praxades’ face swam in front of his eyes. “Up, boy.” Her laugh was vicious. “I want a pear from the cliff garden for my breakfast. Kitoko says you can get it for me.”

Joe was sure he was staring at his boiled and polished finger bone swaying hypnotically back and forth in front of his face. She was wearing it on a leather thong around her neck!

“I will have it carved once it has dried out enough,” she boasted, seeing his eye on it.

His jaw clenched with fury at the sight of it hanging there, but before he had time to react Kitoko grabbed him by the ear from behind and dragged him to his feet.
 

“Come on, you can’t sit around here all morning chatting to your friends,” he sneered. “Things to do...” He turned on his heel and strode out of the kitchen.

Joe was shocked to discover a sort of eagerness within himself to do what Kitoko commanded. He shook his head. No, he was sure he just felt that way because Nandi had suggested he might, but he ran after the heir anyway, followed by Praxades, and the colourful entourage, who had been hovering at the door.

~~~

Sweat stung where it ran into Joe’s eyes. He wished he could wipe it away. He wished he had on a pair of track shoes to provide a little more friction between his bare feet and the rock face. The pear Praxades wanted was in a tree overhanging the cliffs. It had seemed like a great idea to climb up the bare face of the rock for it when Kitoko had told him to. His thoughts had been full of the excitement of the challenge as long as the heir had been close by, but the mesmerising influence of the youth had gotten weaker and weaker the further up Joe climbed. He wasn’t sure if it was the distance between himself and his new owner, or if the stupid youth was simply losing interest. Now he was urgently aware that he hung from a rock face hundreds of metres above the rift valley, and one false move would see him plummeting down the cliffs.

He backtracked a step, but the taunts yelled up at him by Kitoko’s friends waiting below, left him in no doubt that they would enjoy flinging him the rest of the way down the cliff if he did not complete his task.

“Oh. Let me try!” Praxades said, in a long-suffering tone, as if the broken spellbinding link were Joe’s fault. A look of fierce concentration passed over her face and Joe screwed his eyes shut. He recited the six-times table over and over in a desperate bid to repel the girl’s thoughts. Without a shadow of a doubt, he knew that if he let her interfere with his thoughts he would fall to his death.

“No, I am sick of this,” Kitoko said, kicking the dirt at his feet with a multi-bejewelled moccasin. “Let’s go and get something to eat, Praxie.”

“We
are
getting something to eat!” Praxades glared at him. “I want to eat the pear.”

Joe didn’t look down to see her expression, but a deathly hush told him she had overstepped the mark. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kitoko turn on his heel and march indoors. Praxades followed close behind.

“Kitoko... Kitoko... I was just saying...” her voice drifted back towards Joe.

“Best not to look down, boy,” a skinny boy in a purple kurta with gold trim called up to him. He was the smallest of Kitoko’s entourage. “Just hug the rock and look up towards your right hand. You will see a small depression in the rock. Put all your weight on your feet and move your right hand into that depression. That’s it. Now pull yourself up by your hands, there is a good foothold near your left foot. Don’t look down – feel for it. One step at a time. If you look closely, you will see a path has been cut in the rock face.” He laughed. “Don’t think you are the first to attempt this.”