The day after the warriors returned victorious, the king decreed that there should be one week long celebrations starting with a full day of prayers. The subjects had lined up on either side of the road to the main shrine before first light on the anointed day. From oldest to youngest, all waited impatiently to catch a glimpse of the royals and the brave victorious warriors. It wasn't much longer after the royal rooster's crow, that their impatience was replaced with excitement. The king emerged from the court with his first and second wives by his sides. Just close by were his sons led by Welaba, the warrior who had led the warriors into battle. He was followed by Mazima another son of the King's first wife, Sola and then Mulinzi, the eight year old son of the King's second wife, Nafesi. The royals were followed by several army commanders and thousands of warriors.
When the last of the warriors had passed through, the people on the sidelines began to move towards the shrine. Most of the bystanders had already moved on when someone else emerged from the court with a boy of about ten years. A little girl pulled at her mother's bark dress to get her attention.
"What is it?!"the woman reacted angrily.
"Who are they, maama?" asked the girl as she pointed at the woman and the boy.
Her mother looked where she had pointed only briefly before turning back toward the shrine.
"You don't need to know who they are," answered the woman, "they are not important."
The woman was the King's third and, still, last wife, Mulokozi and the boy was Zabu, the king's third son. Being from the last wife, Zabu was the furthest from the throne of all the King's children. Mulokozi, being the last wife, was seen as 'merely not' a commoner. She wound up in that unenviable position because her father was rather fond of the cattle and the land the king had to offer. Her father's belief in the divinity of the king made the act conscionable in his mind if not even pious.
By the time Mulokozi and Zabu got to the shrine, the royals and military commanders were inside while the commoners remained outside. They too got inside where the royal men were seated while the women and military commanders were standing a respectful distance away from their superiors. The stools were arranged in such a way that the throne was the nearest to the altar while the other stools were each farther and farther. Strangely, there was a fourth stool. The nearest stool to the throne was occupied by Welaba while Mazima occupied the second and Mulinzi the third. Zabu was hesitant to occupy the fourth stool which had clearly been reserved for him. His mother had to physically push him forward before he took several steps towards the stool. Mulinzi watched him as he moved and smirked mischievously. Zabu was halfway to the stool when Mulinzi kicked it and it toppled over. Welaba stared at Mulinzi scoldingly without saying a word, Mazima chuckled a little while the King, their father, pretended not to have seen a thing.
Zabu turned swiftly and walked back to his true place besides his mother. Mulokozi was saddened. She had long accepted her misfortune while still remaining hopeful that her son might not be caught up in it. The sight of sadness in his mother's eyes made Zabu angry. Once the priest began to speak, it sounded like the very voice of god to everyone except Zabu who was deafened by anger and Mulokozi who was lost in thought. Zabu, in his anger, imagined what he would do to all those who made his mother sad if ever he were king. He would punish them all, especially Welaba. Welaba was kinder to him and his mother but Zabu felt he was the worst offender of them all even worse than the king. He dangled a promise of respect before them, Zabu reasoned, but that promise never seemed to become reality. Zabu's imagination was as fertile as anyone's and yet he was smart enough to know that it was only that. It only served the purpose of preventing him from doing something stupid in his moment of anger.
The priest moved around the altar four times proclaiming each time that; 'everything happens by the will of the gods. May each get what each deserves.' This ritual was not uncommon but it was usually done once and the chant ended with the will of the gods. With the stool reserved for Zabu amongst the royals nearest to the throne, three strange things in total had happened. After chanting a bountiful amount of gibberish, believed widely to be the language of deities, the priest signalled to his apprentices to bring forward the sacrifices. Two apprentices drove forward a spotless white bull while a third lit a fire in the altar. The fire burned bright orange like the evening sun, colouring even the saddest of faces with a façade of merriment. With a single strike of a machete, the priest lobbed off the bull's head before it could tell that it had taken its last breath. The bull shook and kicked violently, spraying its red blood onto the royals as if to indicate they were the chosen of the gods. There was complete silence as the bull bled into the flames with its last kicks. The ways of the gods were very clear and there would be no doubt if the sacrifice had been accepted. It was an anxious wait as the flames continued to burn orange. The priest shoved the apprentice, who had been adding firewood to the altar, aside and took over the task himself. Two movements later, the flames turned red and the shrine was filled with jubilations which were echoed outside. The red flames were a clear indication that the god of that shrine was still on their side.
The king rewarded the priest with a bag of gold before leading the procession to the shrine of the god of wisdom. That main shrine, which they had visited first, where they had been so well received, was the shrine of the god of war. The king and three of his sons left the first shrine drenched in the bull's blood, now confirmed as a good omen. Strangely, not a single drop of blood had landed on the stool reserved for Zabu even though it had not been much farther away!
It was a grand day of shrine hopping which culminated in the visit to the thirty third shrine; the shrine of the god king-the first king of the kingdom. A white bull had been bled into the flames at each of the shrines. Each time, the flames had turned a shade of red, a sign of the acceptance of the prayer and offering by the god. The apprentice had mastered the trick after the twenty-third shrine and he could execute it effortlessly by the twenty seventh. If the god were paying attention, they all must have been blushing at their servant's progress. The main royals were by then completely red; their bark gowns had stiffened with the crystalized blood of the death white bulls. The many layers of blood on their skins were beginning to irritate them. They were all very tired from the shrine hopping even though they had been the only ones to be given seats in each of the shrines. Zabu had given up on taking a seat even where one was prepared for him at a shrine. The enthusiasm had long waned from the subjects who could not wait for it all to finally end.
The last shrine was different from all the others. The king was the priest. The three princes closest to the throne were the apprentices. The ceremony had already been performed thirty two times; there was therefore not a single acceptable excuse for failure on the thirty-third attempt. The king performed all his priestly duties perfectly while the prince watched the altar fire and matched the thirty-third bull to its fate. Being the one who had achieved the victory which was the cause of all the ceremony, the crucial part of killing the bull was left to Welaba.
Perhaps what happened next should not have surprised anyone considering how long the day had been. And yet the murmurs could not stop when Welaba missed the bull's neck not once, not twice but three times! For once, the king could not pretend not to have seen what had happened.