ich still can draw you like a rope, I
charge you, tell me--what does this old wizard mean, and why
should I not kill him and be rid of one who haunts my heart like
an evil vision of the night and, as I sometimes think, is an
umtakati, an evil-doer, who would work ill to me and all my
House, yes, and to all my people?"

"How should I know what he means, O King?" I answered with
indignation, though in fact I could guess well enough. "As for
killing him, cannot the King kill whom he will? Yet I remember
that once I heard you father ask much the same question and of
Zikali himself, saying that he was minded to find out whether or
no he were mortal like other men. I remember also Zikali
answered that there was a saying that when the Opener of Roads
came to the end of his road, there would be no more a king of
Zululand, as there was none when first he set foot upon his road.
Now I have spoken, who am a white man and do not understand your
sayings."

"I remember it also, Macumazahn, who was present at the time," he
replied heavily. "My father feared this Zikali and his father
feared him, and I have heard that the Black One himself, who
feared nothing, feared him also. And I, too, fear him, so much
that I dare not make up my mind upon a great matter without his
counsel, lest he should bewitch me and the nation and bring us to
nothing."

He paused, then turning to Goza, asked, "Did the Opener of Roads
tell you where he wished to dwell when he comes to visit me here
at Ulundi?"

"O King," answered Goza, "yonder in the hills, not further away
than an aged man can walk in the half of an hour, is a place
called the Valley of Bones, because there in the days of those
who went before the King, and even in the King's day, many
evildoers have been led to die. Zikali would dwell in this
Valley of Bones, and there and nowhere else would meet the King
and the Great Council, not in the daylight but after sunset when
the moon has risen."

"Why," said Cetewayo, starting, "the place is ill-omened and,
they say, haunted, one that no man dares to approach after the
fall of darkness for fear lest the ghosts of the dead should leap
upon him gibbering."

"Such were the words of the Opener of Roads, O King," replied
Goza. "There and nowhere else will he meet the King, and there
he demands that three huts should be built to shelter him and his
folk and stored with all things needful. If this be not granted
to him, then he refuses