The Last Song

In Kangaba, a king does not die until the last griot stops singing his name.

Sira Kouyate had known this since she was old enough to hold a kora. Her mother had taught her at the doorstep of their clay house in the shadow of the palace walls, the great carved instrument across her small knees, the twenty-one strings humming under her fingers. A king lives in the song, her mother would say. A kingdom lives in the king. Forget the song, and the sun forgets to rise.

She was nineteen now. Her mother was dead. And the song was dying.

It began the night the old king Mansa Dembele passed away. The griots gathered in the throne room at midnight to sing the Epic of the Seven Kings, as they had done at every royal funeral for four hundred years. Forty singers, in white robes, standing in a half-circle round the bier. A hundred kora players. The air thick with incense.

Sira sat at the back, among the apprentices. She was not allowed to sing. The law said that only men could carry the long songs, and that women were permitted to accompany, to hum, to play the lesser harp. Her mother had broken the law once. She had been dead within the year.

The chief griot, a gaunt white-bearded man named Jeli Madi, lifted his hands. He drew breath to begin.

And stopped.

His mouth hung open. His eyes went blank. He swayed, grabbed at the air, and said in a voice cracked with terror: "I don't remember."

A ripple of horror ran through the hall.

"The first line," whispered Jeli Madi. "The first line of the Epic. I have sung it ten thousand times. I have lost it."

"Master?"

"It's gone." He staggered. "It's gone. Ya Allah, it's gone."

One by one, the other griots tried. They opened their mouths. Their faces twisted. A boy began to weep. A man tore his robe. Across the whole room, forty of the finest memories in the empire fell silent, as though a hand had reached into their skulls and plucked out the thread.

Sira alone remained still.

She felt it, a cold wind in her mind, brushing against the edges of her thoughts. It passed over her. It drifted on. It did not take hold.

She knew every word.

The Epic of the Seven Kings. Four thousand lines. She had learned it in the womb, her mother used to say. She could have sung it backward. It rolled through her head like a river, clear and bright.

"Stop," said a voice at the door.

The chamber froze.

A figure stood on the threshold, tall, thin, wrapped in a robe of black and gold. His face was hidden behind a mask of beaten bronze, long-nosed and smooth. He carried a staff topped with the skull of a hyena. His voice was warm, honeyed, vaguely amused.

"Good evening," he said. "I am sorry to interrupt."

"Who are you?" demanded the captain of the guard.

"I am Vizier Kankan Musa. The late king's counsellor." He swept in, with a rustle of silks. "And I regret to inform you that the Epic has been abolished."

"By whom?"

"By me." He raised his staff. "A kingdom that remembers its past cannot change. A kingdom that forgets can be anything. I have grown tired of the old stories. I propose a new one."

He tapped the staff on the floor. A wave of pale light rolled out across the room. The griots groaned and fell to their knees. The incense flared and went out.

"You have stolen their memory," whispered Jeli Madi.

"Only a little. Only the old part." The vizier's mask turned. "Tomorrow, I shall teach them the new songs. In which I am the greatest king Kangaba has ever known."

Sira's blood ran cold. She slipped from her place at the back and crept along the wall, bent double, hidden by the shadows of the pillars. She reached the side door. She pressed it open.

"Wait," said the vizier, without turning.

She froze.

"There is one who is not afflicted." His voice was soft. "I can feel her. She is hiding. She is clever."

Sira ran.

She tore through the corridors of the palace, up stairs and down, through a laundry, a kitchen, a courtyard of sleeping peacocks. Behind her, boots rang. A shout went up. She burst out through the servants' gate into the night, into the stinking maze of the lower town, and did not stop until her lungs were on fire.

At the edge of the river, she collapsed in the reeds, gasping. The moon shone. A frog croaked. Her kora, which she had not known she was carrying, lay across her back, its strings humming faintly in the wind.

"Mother," she whispered. "What do I do?"

A hand closed over her mouth.