Black Leopard, Red Wolf

The slaver tries to meet with them later, but Tracker—who hates slavery and slavers—rejects this proposal. After threatened violence, the slaver relents, and shares his beer and food while telling them about the boy who went missing three years ago.

There was a fire at the house where the boy was staying, and a trail of deaths following the boy’s path. Tracker thinks the case has gone cold, and the slaver gives him time to decide if he’ll join the group at a collapsed tower. Leopard and Tracker stay in Tracker’s room for a few days, but Leopard wants to explore the city before they leave.

Tracker diverges into a description of Malakal—mountain forts—and the politics between Malakal and the Massykin city of the Inquisitor. In the main narrative, Leopard and Tracker see a “jubilee” (132) where residents dress up in paint and celebrate the king, and visit a man who owes Tracker money and pays up after seeing Leopard shift.

By scenting the slaver, they find a secret door that Tracker can open. Hidden in a staircase, they see a chained woman lighting up herself and the room with blue lightning, as well as a tall woman with the slaver and his date-feeder.

The date-feeder tells them about the woman. She took in a young boy who mentioned that monsters were chasing him, but then he let the monsters in to slaughter the children and infect the woman, Nooya, with lightning. When her husband came home, she killed him, but she was eventually captured.

The women and the date-feeder next discuss how the monster—the “white man” or “handsome man”—will infect others with lightning and become their “opium” (141-42), and how the boy in the story is the one they seek. Leopard and Tracker sneak away, but Leopard returns to save the woman after the others leave.

He frees her from her chains, but the lightning overtakes her and she violently attacks him as well as Tracker. After they fight for a while, the Leopard’s lover, Fumeli, shoots her in the shoulder with arrows. Escaping through a window, she runs through the city and off the edge of a cliff. 

Tracker walks to the collapsed tower, which he describes in detail, riffing on its history. He and Leopard meet the slaver, the date feeder, and the tall woman from before—Nsaka Ne Vampi—as well as an old woman named Sologon, and Sadogo (an Ogo, or very large man).

Nsaka and Tracker argue, and the slaver says they will travel to the burned house in Kongor. The slaver’s story about the boy’s disappearance changes slightly; Leopard and Tracker argue with him about his lies. Leopard notices Sologon “writing on air” (156), and her runes reveal a dark liquid on the floor which forms into a woman.

Tracker recognizes the monster: a Popele, the Omoluzu’s floor-birthed counterpart (as the Omoluzu is ceiling-born), named Bunshi. She tries to magically drown Tracker, but Sadogo stops her. Then, she offers a story about the relationship between the Prince (Kwash Dara) and Basu Fumanguru, the prince-whisperer.

When the Prince is King, he makes Basu an elder, but the men disagree. Basu challenges the King’s rule, but also disagrees with the other elders after they become corrupt. After killing an elder for attempting to rape a girl, Basu flees to Kongor.  

In Kongor, Omoluzu attack his house, and Basu gives Bunshi his baby to save. She cuts herself open and hides the boy inside, a “pregnant-looking woman fighting shadow devils with two blades” (165). After they escape, Bunshi gives the boy to a blind woman in Mitu who sells him in the slave market.

Tracker tries to sort through the different stories. A man, who turns out to be Nsaka’s lover and Tracker’s former lover named Nyka, joins them and Tracker fights him. Nsaka enters the fight with a knife at Tracker’s throat and Leopard’s boy sends an arrow through her hair. Sologon uses a magical wind to separate everyone.

That night, Bunshi asks Tracker about the feud between him and Nyka. They met in Fasisi, where Tracker was investigating an unfaithful husband who turns out to be in an opium inn raping a boy. Tracker fights the large rapist, and Nyka saves Tracker.

After that, the men travel together for a year. One night, they help a girl kill her abuser, go drinking, and talk about Nyka killing his abusive father. The next scene is Tracker waking up in chains, then humiliated, beaten, and raped—including losing his eye—by hyenas for days because of Nyka’s betrayal.

Eventually, the hyenas release Tracker, and he tries to scent Nyka, but Nyka sheds his skin and escapes. Bunshi asks what will convince Tracker to work with Nyka to find the boy, with Tracker demanding more money as well as Nyka’s head on a stake.

The beginning of Chapter 6 is a moment of intertextual inquest—oral and written language come together with Tracker reading the testimony aloud. This is one of the few moments where the novel’s point of view shifts; the Inquisitor voices opinions in the testimony, but not aloud, and Tracker revises some of the written record. Italics setting apart the written word—the text within the text—emphasizes the embedded nature of storytelling as well as the presence of orality in a novel.

Tracker also announces audience (readerly) expectations, saying, “for do not all my tales end in blood” (102). In the genre of fantasy, violence is prevalent. Fight scenes are one way that the fantasy genre is set apart from literary realism; the latter focuses more on character than action. Tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons codified this structure. The gathering of a questing party that occurs in Chapter 8 derives not only from Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, but also most D&D games, and modern fantasy novels, like Melville’s Perdido Street Station.

However, an explicitly shoga (gay) male protagonist surrounded by polysexual characters does break with fantasy conventions. Historically, fantasy—i.e. Arthurian romance—includes fraught heterosexual relationships (i.e. Lancelot’s affair with Guinevere), but a first-person narrator who, explicitly and frequently, lusts after men is rather groundbreaking. Moments like Leopard acknowledging “every man who just wants to lie on his back for a change” (135) shifts the focus away from dynastic political concerns of Lancelot’s inventor (Chrétien de Troyes) towards sex removed from the production of heirs.

A monstrous foil for the roof walkers (Omoluzu) first appear in Chapter 8: the Popele, specifically Bunshi. Like stalactites and stalagmites, respectively, these creatures fall from the ceiling or rise from the floor. Sologon reveres Bunshi as a river goddess and her story enchants Leopard, but Tracker sees her as simply another side of the demonic coin.

James later reveals that the “white man” (142) who follows the boy is the lightning bird, or Ipundulu; lightning is Nooya’s opiate and, we find out, the boy’s opiate. Also, a recurring simile, “like a buffalo” (173), foreshadows another quester that will join the party later in the novel—a somewhat sentient buffalo. 

Tracker riffs on the Inquisitor’s mad king situation, comparing his knowledge of war and taxes with what Bunshi claimed. He once met Belekun the Big—an elder whom Basu opposed in Bunshi’s story—some years ago, and tracked him down for more information.

While Tracker describes Belekun’s luxurious home, the elder drinks and claims Basu annoyed Bisimbi. Tracker threatens him with summoning Omoluzu, and Belekun reveals his knowledge of eight dead, not nine. After archers attack, Tracker fights with Belekun and his guards; Belekun calls for “Aesi, lord of hosts” (198), and Tracker kills him.

When we return to the questing party—Leopard, the slaver, Fumeli, Nyka, Nsaka, Sadogo, and Sologon—they are in Uwomowomowomowo valley. The slaver gives them money, maps, and his date-feeder, Bibi. Nyka talks to Tracker about the Darklands and reveals the lightning woman in a cage; she shows them the direction of the Ipundulu (and thus the boy). Here, Nyka and Nsaka break off from the group.

The rest of the party heads to White Lake, and Tracker talks with Sadogo, who overshares about his life for many hours. The next morning, Tracker learns about Bibi’s life as a former mercenary with the Seven Wings. Tracker describes the scenery and notes the lack of animal smells. When he asks Sadogo to join the conversation, the near-giant, again, talks for hours.

Tracker hushes Sadogo when he smells cannibalistic cooking, and they find body parts roasted and hung in a tree. They fight the Zogbanu—“trolls from the Blood Swamp” (216)—and save a girl who can only repeat that she is supposed to be a sacrifice.

Her screams bring more Zogbanu, and they fight the rest of the way to the lake, but Bibi falls behind. Bunshi waits for them on a raft, they argue about going back for Bibi, and Tracker dives in the water. The next morning. Tracker pieces together that Bunshi covered him with a membrane as he came out of the lake, and they found Bibi in pieces on a spit. Back on the raft, Tracker talks to the girl they rescued, who says her name is Venin, and thinks they walked into a trap.

Sologon explains that their raft is Chipfalambula, a giant fish, who Bunshi swims around and obtains permission to ride. Tracker reports what he learned from Belekun to Leopard—the boy isn’t Basu’s child—and that he feels a rift growing between them.

They arrive at the shore, at the edge of the Darklands, and spirits attack Sologon until she encloses herself in a circle of runes. She heads around the Darklands, but Leopard—influenced by Fumeli—decides to go through them and Sadogo follows. Tracker tries to go around, but Sologon warns him that the others will need saving in the Darklands.

Tracker turns back and travels into the Darklands for Leopard. He describes “ghosts of elephants” (230), living apes, bat-like creatures, and more in the “god-forgotten forest” (231). After gazing in pond visions, Tracker comes across Ewele and Egbere—ghommids he has met before—and casts one of the Sangoma’s spells before beheading Egbere with his hatchet and fighting off Ewele.

A disembodied spirit called an Anjonu, represented with italicized text, insults Tracker, and he insults it in return. Tracker finds Sadogo under the spell of bone dust and persuades him to move by calling him a giant (which Sadogo finds offensive because Ogo is a different type of very large humanoid). They find a hut with Leopard and Fumeli, as well as a door with many locks, inside.

Tracker recognizes it as one of the “ten and nine doors” (239). Sadogo goes on another rant, but eventually carries Leopard while Tracker carries Fumeli. The Anjonu runs towards the hut and starts to break in, but Tracker whispers a spell he doesn’t remember learning and the door with many locks opens with a frame of flame. Through the door is Kongor.