Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Nyka says the Ipundulu changed him into a monster (instead of killing him) when he offered to take Nsaka’s place. The transformation erased some of Nyka’s older memories, but he recalls the incidents surrounding the monstrous change.

Nyka’s story: He and Nsaka follow the lightning woman northwest and come upon a hut where Adze’s bugs cover Nsaka, but the Ipundulu electrifies them, freeing her. Adze and Ipundulu fight, Adze flies away, and Nyka fights Ipundulu. When the lightning bird attempts to rape Nsaka, Nyka asks to take her place, and the bird obliges, putting lightning in his blood.

During his transformation into the Ipundulu, Nyka kills Nsaka. Tracker calls him a liar, asks about the Sasabonsam, and talks about the boy’s strange fading smell as well as his addiction to “Vampire blood. His opium” (554). In order to lure the boy and kill the monsters, Tracker needs Nyka’s attractive lightning blood.

They leave the Malangika, and Tracker leaves the baby with a midwife. He says he wants to “murder the world” (556). They pass through the Blood Swamp, a battlefield filled with corpses, and meet Aesi. The three eat together, and Nyka asks about the unexpected alliance. Tracker shrugs off the question, and they bicker about Sasabonsam’s trail.

Aesi notes that Tracker’s enchantment from the Sangoma has been wearing off since he left the Mweru. They travel along the Bakanga trail, and Nyka asks why Tracker seeks revenge. At a village, Aesi speaks to an old man who describes Sasabonsam’s violence against his people. Others testify to the beast’s attacks, and the party decides to wait for the next attack where the boy will accompany the Sasabonsam.

While they gather weapons, Nyka and Tracker argue. Lightning men and women come and cover Nyka; Tracker fights with his axes and knife until Nyka is free. Sasabonsam arrives and Aesi attacks him with birds until he flies to the river. Tracker runs after, swims in the river, and Nyka helps him onto the bank.

He continues to chase the Sasabonsam and runs into warriors on horseback, who he deduces are Lissisolo’s guards after talking with their female chief. Leopard is riding with them, as a man, in armor. They bicker, Leopard orders warriors to take Tracker, but Aesi possesses all of them and their horses.

Leopard, now transformed into a cat, tries to get to Aesi, and Nyka takes warrior hearts. Tracker, Aesi, and Nyka ride off; Leopard pursues them and fights with Tracker. When Tracker has a knife to Leopard’s throat, the earth swallows Leopard. 

Tracker berates Aesi for killing Leopard, and Aesi makes an air hole in the earth so he can live. They ride again, stop to rest their horses, and cross another battlefield. Aesi diverges to ride after a woman, while Nyka and Tracker enter the forest, which reminds Tracker of the Darklands.

After losing Nyka, Tracker becomes cocooned in silk in a tree. A ghommid eats a live monkey and makes himself a silk chair in front of Tracker. He wants to trade tales: “Take a story and give me” (583). The unfamiliar monster was a white scientist, called Kamikwayo, whose experiments with spiders transformed him. His story includes killing white scientists who developed rape drugs.

Tracker re-tells the story of Lissisolo that the main narrative has covered and retraced, but adds on what happened after the boy and his mother enter the Mweru: Sasabonsam steals the boy and wreaks havoc with him. They find Tracker’s home “where love lived” and “A beautiful hand wrote on the sand in blood. But that is not the story” (588).

After the boy and the monster kill Mossi and the mingi children, Tracker travels to Mweru and describes its tunnels. He fights through guards, remembers Sadogo, and confronts Lissisolo. One of her guards knocks him out.

Tracker awakens in a cell, where Lissisolo tells him about how her son drank her blood and the blood of a servant girl. They argue about parenting, and Tracker tells her about the mingi: how he and Mossi gave them names when they came to Mitu.

The cycle of someone knocking Tracker out and then him awakening to a cloth from the boy’s bed for him to smell repeats a few times. Lissisolo wants him to track her son and bring him back unharmed. Eventually, Tracker smells the cloth. In the dream jungle, Tracker approaches Aesi, offering him the boy in exchange for passage out of Mweru. They pass through magical traps and escape.

The white-scientist-turned-monster declares this is only half a story. After a break, Tracker says he didn’t wake (as opposed to the cycle with Lissisolo), but transported to a different forest. He is free, grabs his axes, and tracks Nyka.

Mossi’s mangled and reanimated corpse approaches Tracker and walks off into the bush. Tracker finds Nyka trapped by Sasabonsam, and the boy watches as they fight. Sasabonsam describes killing the mingi and Mossi while attacking and torturing Tracker; Tracker eventually stabs him in the eyes.

The boy tries to feed off Nyka, Tracker cuts some of his bonds, and he throws lightning at Sasabonsam until his body burns. Tracker beheads the charred body. Afterwards, he buries some teeth of the mingi and asks Nyka for his tale of betrayal. Nyka replies: “The tale is when it came to you, my friend, I was bewitched by the very conceit of it” (612).

Then, Nyka asks why Tracker let the boy live after they killed Sasabonsam; Tracker says he doesn’t know. At White Lake—or a place resembling White Lake—Nyka and Tracker see Leopard, the boy, and Sogolon. The boy tries to run to Nyka to feed, but Sogolon slaps him. Leopard tries to kill the boy, but Sogolon uses a wind spell to knock him into his own sword.

The boy laughs. Sogolon slaps him, but he bites her. Aesi reappears, commanding the earth to encase Sogolon, but it leaves her head free. Aesi talks about the incest in the matrilineal royal line. Nyka allows the boy to run to him and feed; he flies up and calls lightning to strike both of them and stay until they burn up.

Tracker holds Leopard while he dies trying to change back to a cat. He leaves Sogolon, undresses, and walks north. After walking, he is arrested in Nigiki, bringing the story back to the beginning with the Inquisitor. The novel ends with Tracker asking for Sogolon’s version of the story.