in progress this night. The Viper Maidens were stalking the Night Howlers whose blood they drank. Here and there one could catch a glimpse of a naked female form with a long tail and eyes like those of cats, darting from bush to bush in a desperate search for the huge monsters that were the source of their food and sport. Evil was hunting itself for lack of human victims and such hunts by Lower World creatures are well known for their utter pitilessness. Lo! is it not said in our Words of Wisdom that ‘evil hunts and destroys itself?
While this great, silent hunt was in progress in the moon-bathed forests, the slowly dying outcast god Nangai was lying on his soft bed of silver cloud in the dark depths of a cave that he knew as his home. For once the god experienced a flicker of hope: at long last the woman he needed in order to survive was about to be delivered into his hands and into his mercy. The beautiful immortal woman who had done so much to bring happiness into the land of ungrateful men had been betrayed by one of her son’s wives, Lozana, who poured an evil drug into her food. This was on the occasion of the Festival of Odu and the drug had caused Marimba to fall into a deep coma – and into the arms of her ruthless enemy.
The old wizard-lord of the Wakambi had vowed to hand over the princess to Nangai in exchange for immortality. The fierce Kahawa was far away when this happened, having been lured away by the scheming group with a false report that a great lion was terrorising one of the new outpost villages on the border of the land of the Wakambi. Kahawa, who hated lions and loved to hunt them, had set out with Mpushu to the distant village to direct the hunt.
And this night, three days after the wizard-lord of the Wakambi had terrorised the shocked people into making him Chief, a long canoe was gliding its silent way to the island home of Nangai, the Outcast God. There were five people in the canoe: Marimba who was still unconscious, Mbomongo the one-eyed, Luchiza the son of Mutengu, the old wizard-lord himself, and Kahawa’s treacherous second wife Lozana. All these people hoped to gain immortality from Nangai as a prize for delivering Marimba, to whom they had done the most cowardly thing one human being can do to another. The very stars knew already that Marimba would never sing again . . .
Nangai had, on receiving a dream message from the triumphant wizard-lord, promised to use his waning powers of godhood to protect the passengers of the midnight canoe from attack by any of the many kinds of unearthly monsters haunting the lake and its environs. Now he was lying on his fantastic bed of shimmering cloud awaiting their arrival with great impatience; watching with expressionless eyes as the poison in his body attacked the remaining stump of his upper arm; watching without feeling as great blisters erupted down his left side and burst into purulent oozing sores. A god knows no fear and Nangai was not afraid, nor did he feel any pain. He was only interested in containing his existence for reasons he could not bother to find out.
Footsteps sounded somewhere in the darkness beyond the light shed by his own radiance, and he sat up as the wizard-lord of the Wakambi stepped into his presence, leading Marimba by the arm and closely followed by his evil friends.
Nangai did not bother to waste a glance on the nervous humans before him. He was only interested in Marimba – his one chance of survival – and it was she that he caught by the wrist and drew close to him. Marimba knelt down with downcast eyes like the soulless puppet she had become; the god sank his hollow claws into her upper arm and siphoned some of her blood through them into his own system. In front of the astonished mortals a strange thing happened to the outcast god; the blisters covering his body from head to foot gradually healed and a new left arm began to grow. His hard cold eyes lighted with a brilliance of new-born stars and his powerful body started vibrating with an extraordinary quality and power.
Eventually he released the woman’s arm and stood regarding her in great bewilderment. With a voice of strange hardness he addressed the wizard-lord for the first time: ‘What did you do to this immortal female?’
‘I made her into a zombie, Oh great Nangai,’ the man replied in gloating tones. ‘She is now completely at your mercy, and not only does she fail to remember who she is and what she was – she is totally incapable of independent thought of any kind. She shall remain like this forever – a beautiful, soulless, immortal zombie.’
‘Wretch of a mortal!’ cried Nangai. ‘You dare to gloat over what you have done? Does not this blind little brain of yours realise the enormity of your crime? You have committed a crime so great that the very stars are weeping at the sight of it.’
Fear and naked terror seized the old wizard-lord at the strange turn of events and with a hoarse scream he turned to flee. But the rejuvenated god seized him and held him fast while his evil followers fainted one by one. ‘No, mortal, you do not so easily escape the consequences of your vile sacrilege. Both you and I stand here ready for judgment by one much higher than I.’
‘But my lord . . .,’ begged the old wizard.
‘Be silent, you sinful wretch! As a result of your deed I must now surrender myself to punishment by the other gods. I only hope that I am tried by one who is just and impartial.
At that precise moment there came a flash of incredibly brilliant light and a clap of blood-freezing thunder. In the whirling mist of many-coloured light that filled the cavern a dark form took shape and soon, as the flaming mist dispersed, the whimpering wizard-lord found himself staring into the great eyes of a silvery giantess whose very presence seemed to shrivel his dirty soul.
‘Merciful Ma, mother of the stars,’ said Nangai, throwing himself flat on his face, ‘this unworthy creature, unfit to bear the name of god, yields himself into your mercy and justice. And he also yields into your mercy the mortals who committed this evil crime upon the person of Marimba, your loyal servant who has done so much for mankind.’
‘That does not sound at all like you, Oh Nangai,’ said Ma coldly. ‘When one hears you speak in this way one is tempted to wonder just what has become of your usual insolent bluster – and why you speak as though you have at last discovered how to distinguish good from evil.’
‘Great Ma, I began repenting my evil ways immediately I saw what this wretched mortal has done to your servant, and it occurred to me that for a god to stoop so low as to tolerate the committing of crimes of this sort in his name is, in fact, the deepest form of evil. It occurred to me that gods should fight against evil and neither countenance nor encourage it.’
‘That is indeed so, Oh Nangai; a god who works for evil principles is a traitor to his kind, because while the good principles which we support stand for Existence and Life, the former characterise Non-existence and Death. And now I am going to pass sentence on you, Nangai. You have reformed, that is true; but the taint of your sins still clings to you, and therefore you are not allowed to return to Tura-ya-Moya, but you are demoted from god to ordinary High Immortal and you are to be exiled into the land of mortals until the end of time.’
Nangai bowed his head and said at length: ‘Your sentence is milder than my crimes, Oh Great Mother of All, and I praise you for your leniency. But what about this poor woman, this beautiful victim of the ingratitude of mortal men?’
‘It is my will that you be the husband and guardian of Marimba until the very world ceases to be. Marimba had a great love for turning evil things into good, and it is strange indeed to find that as a result of her terrible suffering she has helped in reforming an evil god.’
‘Please restore her brain to her, Great Goddess; please heal the brain of the one I love!’
‘No!’ said Ma firmly. ‘You must take this beautiful woman back to her son and her people as she is, and you must
