The air in the royal dungeons hung thick and cold, a cloying miasma of mildew, despair, and something acrid that prickled Prince Rega's nostrils. Torches flickered fitfully in their sconces, casting dancing shadows that writhed across the damp stone walls, each flicker seeming to emphasize the hopelessness etched into the faces of the other prisoners. Rega, however, moved with grim purpose, his polished boots clicking softly on the flagstones as two heavily armed guards flanked him.
They stopped before a cell at the deepest end of the corridor, a place where the silence was heavier, the darkness more profound. A figure huddled in the corner, barely discernible in the gloom. The stench emanating from the cell was particularly rank – a sickly sweet decay mingled with the sharp tang of old blood.
"Njiru," Rega's voice, usually resonant and commanding, was low, almost a whisper in this oppressive place.
A rasping cough echoed from the corner, followed by a slow, agonizing shift. A pair of hollow eyes, burning with a feverish intensity despite their sunken state, fixed on Rega. Njiru. The black mage whose name had become a whispered curse within the palace walls. Imprisoned for the unspeakable desecration of a deceased royal family member, his experiments with necromancy a taboo so profound it had shaken the very foundations of the kingdom.
Njiru's frame was skeletal, his once-powerful build ravaged by starvation and torture. Scars crisscrossed his exposed skin like grotesque calligraphy, testament to the tender mercies of the royal interrogators. His matted hair, blackened with dirt, clung to his skull, and his lips were cracked and bleeding.
"Prince… Rega," Njiru croaked, his voice a dry rustle of dead leaves. "What… what brings the lion to the rat's cage?"
Rega stepped closer, the torchlight revealing the morbid fascination in his own eyes as he studied the broken mage. "Intrigue, Njiru. Your… talents. They are… unique."
A sardonic smile twisted Njiru's lips. "Talents that earned me this delightful accommodation. And the… enthusiastic ministrations of your guards." He gestured weakly to the chains that bound his emaciated wrists to the wall.
"The transgression was severe," Rega conceded, his gaze unwavering. "Defiling the royal dead… it struck at the heart of our traditions."
"Traditions," Njiru spat the word like a bitter seed. "While your glorious traditions leave your kingdom vulnerable. Your armies bleed and die, feeding the earth. I offered a different path. A stronger path."
Rega's interest piqued. "Undead soldiers. You claimed you could raise them."
Njiru's eyes gleamed with a desperate intensity. "Not claimed. Demonstrated. Before your… zealous protectors intervened."
The prince considered this, his mind racing. The war against the northern tribes was dragging on, their losses mounting. The prospect of a tireless, fearless army, immune to pain and death… it was a tempting one, a dark seed of ambition taking root in his heart.
"The risks…" Rega began, a hint of caution in his voice.
"The risks of stagnation are far greater, Prince," Njiru countered, his voice gaining a sliver of its former power. "Imagine. An army that never tires, never retreats, never mourns its fallen. An army that will fight until the very stones crumble."
Rega's gaze drifted to the other prisoners, their faces etched with weariness and despair. The contrast with Njiru's vision was stark. "What would you require?" he asked, his decision teetering on the edge.
Njiru's hollow eyes burned into Rega's. "Freedom. Release me from these chains, from this starvation. Give me access to… resources. And I will give you your undead legion."
A tense silence hung in the fetid air. Rega considered the enormity of the proposition. Freeing a man reviled by the entire kingdom, a mage who had committed the ultimate sacrilege. But the potential reward…
"An undead squad," Rega clarified, his voice firm. "A demonstration of your capabilities. If they prove… effective, then we shall discuss further arrangements." He wouldn't unleash a full legion until he saw proof.
Njiru nodded slowly, a flicker of something akin to hope in his gaunt features. "Agreed, Prince. Release me, and I will raise for you soldiers who will make your enemies tremble in their living boots."
Rega met Njiru's gaze, a dangerous pact forming in the depths of the dungeon. "See to it, Njiru. Your second chance… it is a precarious one." He turned to his guards. "Release him."
The guards exchanged uneasy glances but obeyed their prince's command. The heavy chains clanked against the stone as they were unlocked, and Njiru, weak but with a spark of dark purpose rekindled within him, slowly rose to his feet, his gaze fixed on Rega, a silent promise of unholy service passing between them in the suffocating darkness of the royal dungeon.
---
In the heart of Ọ̀yọ́-Ìlú, beneath the shadowed eaves of the old palace compound—where murals of deified kings stared down with chipped grandeur and termite-bitten feet—a hidden chamber throbbed with quiet dissent.
It was once an ancestral archive, a circular room buried behind the Zamani Hall, where griots had sung lineages into the dust-thick air for centuries. But now the scrolls had been pushed aside. Mats replaced the old stone stools. And the room had taken on a darker purpose.
A single oil lamp burned low, casting shadows that danced like spirits across the red-clay walls. The smell of camphor, kola nut, and burnt palm frond drifted from a brass censer in the center. No guards stood watch outside; only the double sound of the royal talking drum from the courtyard could be heard, muffled and distant like a dying heartbeat.
Four men knelt around the flame. At their center sat Prince Rega, his face painted with streaks of blackened camwood—marks used in times of ancestral war. His eyes, usually shrewd and unreadable, burned tonight with the clarity of conviction.
Across from him sat Chief Tendaji, the Bashọ̀run, a man whose white beard curled like ancestral smoke and whose voice once echoed in the king's council like a thunderclap. Beside him, Diviner Zuberi, the royal historian and diviner, whose face was a mask of ash, lips stained from the bitter root he chewed for second sight. The final man, Commander Sekou, the commander of the palace's elite leopard guard, sat with one hand on his cutlass, the other clutching a small pouch of dried herbs known to paralyze a man in under ten heartbeats.
None spoke for a long time.
The silence in ancient custom was a kind of truth serum. A testing ground. To speak before the ancestors had circled the room twice in silence was to curse your own plan.
When at last Chief Tendaji spoke, his voice cracked like old iron. "Your father grows weaker with each passing moon. His vision dims. The northern gates rot. The Desert raider attacks return and he responds with divinations instead of daggers. Ọ̀yọ́-Ìlú cannot be governed by ghosts."
Prince Rega's jaw clenched. "He dreams of the past. He believes thunder will answer him because it once did. But the gods no longer strike for him."
Diviner Zuberi hissed softly, casting a handful of powdered snail shell into the flame. It sparked green. "The ancestors turn their backs. I have seen them. The orí of this kingdom bends, Prince, but not toward your father. His crown weighs down the land like a grinding stone on cassava."
Commander Sekou leaned forward, voice low and taut with held fury. "My warriors eat fermented yam and patch their spears with copper wire. When I asked for iron, he sent me proverbs. When the reavers came last harvest, we lost seventeen men. The king buried their names beneath rituals. Not action."
Rega nodded, slowly. "And yet, he lives."
"That," said the Bashọ̀run, "is why we are here. To discuss how he dies."
The flame cracked. The censer hissed.
No one flinched.
Diviner Zuberi turned his gaze to Rega. "You must understand. This is not murder. This is ritual correction. A cleansing of the stool for the good of the kingdom."
Commander Sekou added, "But the blood must fall on a night without drums. And the people must believe he went by the will of the gods."
The Bashọ̀run reached into his cloak and withdrew a small bronze mask—a replica of the sacred Kivuli Mask, used to summon ancestral dreams in funeral rites. "This shall be worn when the deed is done. The last thing he sees should be the face of the ancestors. Not yours."
Rega reached out and took the mask, his fingers trembling only slightly.
"What of his loyalists?" he asked, voice level. "The Mfalme Council? His seers?"
Diviner Zuberi grinned, teeth brown with kola. "Half already pray for your rise. The others… can be redirected. Or silenced."
Rega bowed his head. "Then it is settled. On the night of the third moon, when the bat cries thrice before midnight, we do what must be done. No drums. No mourning. The crown will not touch the earth. It will pass... cleanly."
They passed a gourd of bitter gin between them. Each man sipped without flinching.
When the gourd returned to Rega, he drank last, then crushed it in his palm. "Let it be done."
Outside, the drumming in the courtyard ceased. Inside the hidden chamber, history pivoted—not on a battlefield, but on whispered oaths and the brittle neck of a dying king.