PTER 4

Over the city of the Snake the sun sank red dry, leaving the Place of
Kings hot in the electric air of magic and world happenings. The people
were still confined to their huts, trembling in the knowledge that for
three days love must be eschewed, no water drawn nor any food cooked with
fire; nor might any man, woman or child leave the precincts of the
compound.

All the night Bakuma crouched in her hut listening in awe to the swish of
the ghosts through the air, to the moans, groans and howls of the wizards
doing battle with them. Tightly did she hold the amulet as she strove to
conceal curiosity regarding the welfare of Zalu Zako; for did her mother
suspect the presence of this evil spirit would she cause Bakuma to take a
decoction of the castor-oil plant in order that the demon might be
expelled; and the more to aid her conquer this unlawful impulse to peep
without did she most persistently recite to herself the fate of the
daughter of MTasa, the foolish Tangulbala whose body had been discovered
impaled upon a tree by the angry spirits of the dead, because she had
rashly ventured forth the third day after the death of the grandfather of
Zalu Zako. Bakuma dared not mention the name of one who had died, for, as
everybody knows, such an impious person runs the risk of summoning the
ghosts to their presence.

The "putting out of the fire" had changed Bakuma's prospects, had made
Zalu Zako heir-apparent, implying half a hundred responsibilities, the
chief of which was that now he was compelled to choose his official first
wife, she who would be the mother of the "divine" Son of the Snake: an
alteration that excited Bakuma to frantic clutching at the amulet. Would
the charm work or would it not? How to insure that it would be
efficacious? Marufa's greedy demands worried her. She feared even if she
obtained the goat that he might require something else as well. Anybody
knows how greedy doctors are and how wealthy. He would be sure to increase
the fee, knowing the value of the prize. Bakuma only possessed one really
valuable article, and that was a charm against sterility; but this was the
last thing that she wished to part with as the only possible occurrence
that could ever divorce her from the position of chief wife, once she had
won Zalu Zako, would be failure to provide the male heir. She was
impatient, too, at the delay caused by the three days' tabu. Time was
important. Soon she would be under the ban of th