The Exile

"Don't scream," said a voice. "Please. I mean you no harm."

She bit.

The hand jerked away. A low curse. A figure rolled back into the reeds, clutching his palm. In the moonlight she saw a young man, perhaps twenty-three, tall and rangy, in a ragged travelling cloak. His face was thin, bearded, hollow-cheeked. A rough bandage was tied round his throat.

"I said don't scream," he hissed.

"You grabbed me!"

"You were making a noise." He sucked his thumb. "The guards are two hundred yards behind. They will be here in a minute."

"Who are you?"

He did not answer. He lifted a finger to the bandage at his neck, and shook his head. Then, slowly, he drew from his belt a small slate and a stick of chalk, and wrote.

I cannot speak.

Sira stared. "Why not?"

He wrote again. The vizier cut it out.

She read the words twice. The hairs rose on her neck. "You're the prince."

He nodded.

"Prince Moussa. The king's son."

Another nod.

"But you were exiled. Five years ago. They said you had killed your father's favourite horse."

He gave a small bitter smile, and wrote: I didn't. The vizier framed me. He cut my tongue and left me to die in the desert.

Her stomach lurched. "God."

I was found by nomads. They nursed me. I have been living with them. I came back when I heard my father had died.

"To claim the throne."

To stop Kankan Musa.

The shouts grew louder. Torches flickered through the reeds. The prince seized her wrist and pulled her down into the mud. They lay side by side in the dark, scarcely breathing, as a line of guards tramped along the bank.

"Nothing here, Captain."

"She went this way."

"The river's full of crocodiles. Perhaps she's been eaten."

"Pray that she has. The vizier will skin us if she lives."

The boots moved on. The torches faded. For a long while the two of them lay motionless, mud to the chin, listening to the sounds of the night.

"We can't stay here," she whispered.

He wrote on the slate and held it up. There is a village two miles east. My friends are waiting.

"Friends?"

The nomads. The Tuareg. Their chief is called Aïcha.

"You trust them?"

With my life.

She looked at him. In the faint light she saw how young he was, and how tired. He had a thin scar along his jaw. His eyes, deep-set and dark, held the steady, patient look of a man who had been alone a long time.

"What do you want from me?" she asked.

He hesitated. He took the chalk. He wrote slowly, as though each word cost him blood.

You remember.

"Yes."

You remember the Epic. All of it.

"Every word."

He closed his eyes. A shudder ran through his body. When he opened them again, they were bright.

Then you are the most important person in the empire.

"I'm a girl."

Yes.

"I can't sing the Epic. It's forbidden."

By whom?

"By... by the law."

Whose law? He tapped the slate. The vizier changed it. The law of the griots was never that women could not sing. It was only that no one had asked.

Sira's heart missed a beat. "That's not true."

Ask your mother's ghost.

She stared at him. She thought of her mother's hands on the kora strings. Her mother's voice, singing in the dark when she thought no one was listening. A voice that could split the sky. A voice that could have carried the whole Epic, if anyone had let it.

"Where do we go?" she asked.

To the Hall of Echoes. He wrote the words in a bold hand. It is in the heart of the desert. Three hundred miles. The Epic is carved there in stone. If we can reach it, and you can sing it aloud, the vizier's spell will break.

"And if we can't?"

Then Kangaba forgets itself. And it dies.

She picked up her kora. She slung it across her back. Her hands were steady.

"Take me to your friends," said Sira.