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20  that you will come back safe to be a prop to me in things that will happen in days unborn. Otherwise I would have told you nothing of this story, since it is necessary to me that you should remain living beneath the sun.

Have done, Zikali. What is it that you desire?

Oh! a great deal that I shall get, but chiefly two things, so with the rest I will not trouble you. First I desire to know whether these dreams of mine of a wonderful white witch-doctoress, or witch, and of my converse with her are indeed more than dreams. Next I would learn whether certain plots of mine at which I have worked for years, will succeed.

What plots, Zikali, and how can my taking a distant journey tell you anything about them?

You know them well enough, Macumazahn; they have to do with the overthrow of a Royal House that has worked me bitter wrong. As to how your journey can help me, why, thus. You shall promise to me to ask of this Queen whether Zikali, Opener-of-Roads, shall triumph or be overthrown in that on which he has set his heart.

As you seem to know this witch so well, why do you not ask her yourself, Zikali?

To ask is one thing, Macumazahn. To get an answer is another. I have asked in the watches of the night, and the reply was, Come hither and perchance I will tell you. Queen, I said, how can I come save in the spirit, who am an ancient and a crippled dwarf scarcely able to stand upon my feet?

 Then send a messenger, Wizard, and be sure that he is white, for of black savages I have seen more than enough. Let him bear a token also that he comes from you and tell me of it in your sleep. Moreover let that token be something of power which will protect him on the journey.

Such is the answer that comes to me in my dreams, Macumazahn.

Well, what token will you give me, Zikali?

He groped about in his robe and produced a piece of ivory of the size of a large chessman, that had a hole in it, through which ran a plaited cord of the stiff hairs from an elephant's tail. On this article, which was of a rusty brown colour, he breathed, then having whispered to it for a while, handed it to me.

I took the talisman, for such I guessed it to be, idly