“To dust?  Prince, if I am mistaken, why am I the best of wizards, or the worst, and why did your jaw drop and your face change at my words, and why do you even now touch your dry lips with your tongue?  Yes, I know that it is dark here, yet some can see in it, and I am one of them.  Ay, Prince, and I can see your mind also.  You would be rid of your father:  he has lived too long.  Moreover his love turns to Nodwengo, the good and gentle; and perhaps—­who can say?—­it is even in his thought, when all his regiments are about him two days hence, to declare that you, Prince, are deposed, and that your brother, Nodwengo, shall be king in your stead.  Now, Nodwengo you cannot kill; he is too well loved and too well guarded.  If he died suddenly, his dead lips would call out ‘Murder!’ in the ears of all men; and, Prince, all eyes would turn to you, who alone could profit by his end.  But if the king should chance to die—­why he is old, is he not? and such things happen to the old.  Also he grows feeble, and will not suffer the regiments to be doctored for war, although day by day they clamour to be led to battle; for he seeks to end his years in peace.”

“I say that you speak folly,” answered the prince with vehemence.

“Then, Son of the Great One, why should you waste time in listening to me?  Farewell, Hafela the Prince, first-born of the king, who in a day to come shall carry the shield of Nodwengo; for he is good and gentle, and will spare your life—­if I beg it of him.”

Hafela stretched out his hand through the darkness, and caught Hokosa by the wrist.

“Stay,” he whispered, “it is true.  The king must die; for if he does not die within three days, I shall cease to be his heir.  I know it through my spies.  He is angry with me; he hates me, and he loves Nodwengo and the mother of Nodwengo.  But if he dies before the last day of the festival, then that decree will never pass his lips, and the regiments will never roar out the name of Nodwengo as the name of the king to come.  He must die, I tell you, Hokosa, and—­by your hand.”

“By my hand, Prince!  Nay; what have you to offer me in return for such a deed as this?  Have I not grown up in Umsuka’s shadow, and shall I cut down the tree that shades me?”

“What have I to offer you?  This:  that next to myself you shall be the greatest in the land, Hokosa.”

“That I am already, and whoever rules it, that I must always be.  I, who am the chief of wizards; I, the reader of men’s hearts; I, the hearer of men’s thoughts!  I, the lord of the air and the lightning; I, the invulnerable.  If you would murder, Prince, then do the deed; do it knowing that I have your secret, and that henceforth you who rule shall be my servant.  Nay, you forget that I can see in the dark; lay down that assegai, or, by my spirit, prince as you are, I will blast you with a spell, and your body shall be thrown to the kites, as that of one who would murder his king and father!”