Once more, encouraged by the wild howling of the izanusi, this strange band of doom came whirling towards me. This time I was gone. But, no! They halted more suddenly than before, and their song seemed to die on their very lips. Then I looked up from calculating the distance between my stick and the skull of Tambusa, and beheld—a woman!
She was standing alone in the open, midway between the cloud of scowling witch doctors and the band of girls, and there was that in her wondrous eyes which constrained and controlled the latter. She, too, was arrayed in rich beadwork, but wore no wreaths or garlands of leaves, and as I gazed upon her standing there—a splendid and majestic form—why then, Nkose, anybody who chose might have stepped up and slain me, unresisting in my amazement. For she who stood there was none other than my lost sorceress-wife, Lalusini.
Had the shades sent forth their spirits? Had the grim alligators in Umzilikazi’s pool of death shrank back in fear from so royal a prey? Was I dreaming, or had I gone mad with the prolonged suspense of my impending doom? No! In the very life there she stood—she to avenge whom I would have slain a king—would have destroyed a whole mighty nation. And she stood there to avert from me the sure and dreadful death—the death of the man at whom the witch-wand has been pointed.
One glance she flashed upon me from her wonderful eyes—quick, full, penetrating—one glance and no more; but in that glance I knew I was safe, for who should harm one whom the most marvellous magic ever known now protected?
For some time thus she stood, speaking no word, only gazing around with calm commanding eyes. Then the King grew impatient.
“Have done,” he exclaimed, with a frown. “Let us see whether the magic of Mahlula is greater than that of Tola.”
“The magic of Mahlula,” had said Dingane. Then Lalusini was not known. Yet it seemed to me the majesty of the House of Senzangakona was so stamped upon every feature that her very look must betray her.
“Judge now for thyself, Father of the Wise,” she replied. “This is the word of Mahlula. The ‘stranger’ of whom Tola speaks, of whom his company did but now sing, is not here, else these”—showing with a sweep of the hand the band of girls, who had ceased their movements and were now sitting in a ring around her—“these whom I have trained and taught would have found him—for my will works through theirs—my eyes see through theirs. Therefore, he cannot be here.”
“Why, then, are we?” said Dingane, with a meaning in his tone that boded ill for Tola and his following.
“Was it to learn the fate of a nation, Great Great One?” answered Lalusini, or Mahlula, as she was known here. “Learn it then so far. The end is not yet. But—I see the shook of war. I see men and horses advancing. The lion-cubs of Zulu flee before them. But lying behind the hills on either side is a dark cloud of terrible ones. Still they advance, those whites. Then that cloud whirls down upon them, breaks over them. Ha! There are death-screams as the flash of the spears rises and falls, and horses straggling, hoofs in air, and the song of those black ones is a battle-song of triumph.”