As he wandered the strange land, memories of the blissful moments he spent with Isha came crowding in on him. He was unprepared to be out on his own, but his greatest fear was not death. There was a chance that Isha would bear his children in the middle of a drought and there would be no husband to see to her. What if the hyenas turned on the lion cubs? What if there were no more rains?
Isha had begged Taka to be freed from her obligations and leave with Mabatu. Of course, she could not say she had married him, for Taka would not have recognized vows taken before mantlement. It was a mistake to speak of leaving to the King. Not only did he refuse her passage, he sent hyenas to trail her every move to prevent her from fleeing. It seems he knew more than he was admitting.
Grief came to many that day. An old king had driven off some rogue lions that tested his authority. He and his brother were weak from age, and while they had both sired many daughters, there was no son to shoulder the load of defending the pride territory from the jealous eyes that wanted it.
Prince Baliaha’s life was flowing away in a crimson river. Remnants of his once splendid mane lay scattered on the ground, and he gasped for breath. He looked up with eyes that strove to focus. “Are they gone? Brother, have we driven them off?”
“Yes, we have.”
“Good,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “They’ll come back, you know. And I’m afraid you’ll have to handle them alone.”
“You’ll recover, but there will be scars.”
Through his pain, Baliaha managed a smile. “You always were an optimist.” His eyes closed tightly, and he went into a seizure. The king looked away in horror and did not see his dying breath escape.
There was a quiet moment, and a couple of lionesses peeked out of the brush. “How is he?”
“He’s gone.”
They bowed their heads low. “We will see to him. I’m sorry, but there’s another rogue male to the east by the termite mounds.”
He was tortured by grief, but the grief became a terrible rage. Whomever this lion was, he would kill! “A life for a life!” he shrieked, foam on his heaving nostrils as he ran like a thing possessed across the grassland.