Now the face of Dingaan went grey, even in the moonlight it went grey beneath the blackness of his skin, for there rose before his mind a vision of a hut and of Mopo and of Umhlangana, the prince his brother whom he had slain, and of himself, seated in the darkness, their heads together beneath a blanket whispering of the murder of a king.
“Thou knowest all,” he gasped, “thou art Nomkubulwana and no other. Spare us, Spirit who canst summon our dead sins from the grave of time, and make them walk alive before us.”
“Nay, nay,” she answered, mockingly, “surely I am but a woman, daughter of a Teacher who lives yonder over the Tugela, a white maiden who eats and sleeps and drinks as other maidens do. Take notice, King, and you his captains, that I am no spirit, nothing but a woman who chances to bear a high name, and to have some wisdom. Only,” she added with meaning, “if any harm should come to me, if I should die, then I think that I should become a spirit, a terrible spirit, and that ill would it go with that people against whom my blood was laid.”
“Oh!” said the King, who still shook with fear, “we know, we know. Mock us not, I pray. Thou art the Spirit who hast chosen to wear the robe of woman, as flame hides itself in flint, and woe be to the hand that strikes the fire from this stone. White One, give us now that wisdom whereof thou speakest. Shall I fall upon the Boers or shall I let them be?”
Rachel looked upwards, studying the stars.
“She takes counsel with the Heavens, she who is their daughter,” muttered one of the indunas in a low voice.
As he spoke it chanced that a bright meteor travelling from the south-west swept across the sky to burst and vanish over the kraal of Umgugundhlovo.
“It is a messenger to her,” said one. “I saw the fire shine upon her hair and vanish in her breast.”
“Nay,” answered another, “it is the _Ehlose_, the guardian ghost of the Amazulu that appears and dies.”
“Not so,” broke in a third, “that light shows the Amaboona travelling from the south-west to be eaten up in the blackness of our impis.”
“Such a star runs ever before the death of kings. It fell the night ere the Black One died,” murmured a fourth as though he spoke to himself.
Only Dingaan, taking no heed of them, said, addressing Rachel: