“Just wait till he hears this,” Doya said.

Just then, they heard heavy footsteps leaving the cave and padding through the leaves. “It’s that sound again. Let’s get out of here!”

Busara looked up. “What happened to Asumini? You’d think she saw a ghost!”

Seconds later, the lioness appeared, very agitated. “Doya and Uwezo were right outside.”

“What did they hear?”

“Probably everything.”

Busara closed his eyes and tilted his head back. He moaned as if someone had gouged him. “We are in grave danger.”

“Let me kill them,” Asumini said.

“No, girl. That will only make Kinara more suspicious than ever. We are not judge and executioner. Not like him.”

When Uwezo and Doya found Kinara, Chief Priest Kasisi was with him. They competed to be first to give their reports, knowing that there would be a bonus in it for them somewhere.

“He’s an Aiheuist,” Uwezo said.

“He’s teaching Metutu to be one,” Doya said.

“He said he tried to get you and Maloki on speaking terms, but that Metutu as the next chief would really clear out the cobwebs.”

Kinara sat stunned for a moment, then jerked to his feet. He almost never showed his temper, but he grabbed a fruit he had been eating and hurled it at a tree.

"My son! He thinks to turn my own SON upon me! That triple cursed barbaric heathen! I trusted him. I gave him my own son! Oh gods!"

Uwezo and Doya were really expecting a reward for that. Instead, Kinara merely dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

Kasisi was almost foaming at the mouth. “We have to wipe this thing out! It is a disease, and it’s spreading! Wipe it out, I say!”

“I’ll have to have a little talk with Busara.”

“You’ll have to kill him,” the Chief Priest said.

“Denounce my friend to the council? Have him put down like a thief or adulterer? I will banish him.”