X

In and out of consciousness, Zakalwe reframes overwhelming pain as oceans and citadels, groping for memory: the planet Fohls, a funeral, a crash. He recalls flames aboard an aircraft, then darkness. Touch and dim shapes return; he senses being tended by a girl who gives him water.

He fully wakes in a mud-walled chamber, naked and lashed to a wooden X-frame, body broken and likely infected. Villagers paint him and later haul the frame outside. On a mound above a kneeling crowd, a girl grips his hair while two men stand ready: one with a broad sword, the other with an earthenware pot.

As chanting surges and his pain crescendos, the swordsman decapitates him. Zakalwe’s viewpoint lingers momentarily, seeing his headless body and the pot intended to receive his head. He drifts toward oblivion, thinking of a lost woman and half-formed names.

Suddenly, a roaring craft screams overhead and a “carved black rock” slams into the village. Amid panic and dust, the head is taken; the craft departs with a fading windlike sound. When the villagers return, guided by a shaman and apprentice, the body remains but the head is gone. They interpret the event as omen and warning, substituting an animal’s head in the ritual pot.