The covenant - James A. Michener [32]
Between the twin domes and the sleeping elephant lay a large field of granite boulders, big and round, like eggs half buried in the earth. Nxumalo had often seen boulders that resembled these, but never of such magnificent size and certainly none that had their peculiar quality. For all of them were exfoliating, as if they wished to create building blocks from which splendid structures could be made; they formed a quarry in which nine-tenths of the work was done by nature, where man had to do only the final sizing and the portage.
The rounded domes, fifty and sixty feet high, had been laid down a billion years ago in layers, and now the action of rain and sun and changing temperature had begun to peel away the layers. They were like gigantic onions made of rock, whose segments were being exposed and lifted away. The result was unbelievable: extensive slabs of choice granite, a uniform six inches thick, were thrown down year after year. Men collecting them could cut them into strips the width of a building block and many yards long. When other men cut these strips into ten-inch lengths, some of the best and strongest bricks ever devised would result.
There was only one drawback to this operation: the Field of Granite lay in the south; the site where the bricks were needed was five miles to the north. To solve this problem the king had long ago decreed a simple rule: no man or woman traveling north to Zimbabwe was permitted to pass this field without picking up at least three building blocks and lugging them to the capital. Strong men, like Sibisi's, were expected to carry eight, and even couriers like Nxumalo, son of a chief, had to bring three. If their other burdens were too great, they must be laid aside, for no man could move north without his stone bricks.
Masons working at the site tied the stones in packages of four, binding them with lianas found in the forest, and these were waiting for the southerners as they arrived. When the masons found that a chief's son was in the train, they prepared a bundle of only three bricks for him, and with this new burden he set off.
At first the stones were not oppressive, but as the hours passed, the men groaned, particularly those who had already been burdened with the copper. That night four men had to share the watch, tending the fire and fighting exhaustion, and when Nxumalo stood guard, he was so tired he forgot the animals and watched only the stars that marked the slow passage of his watch.
At dawn the punished men climbed the last hill, and at its crest they received a reward which made the drudgery acceptable, for there in a gracious valley, beside a marsh, stood the city of Zimbabwe, grand in a manner no one from Nxumalo's tribe could have imagined. There stood the mighty edifices built of rock, pile after glorious pile of gray-green granite rising from the valley floor.
'Look!' Sibisi cried in awe. 'That must be where the king worships!' And Nxumalo looked to the north where a hill of real size was crowned by a citadel whose rough stone walls shone in the morning sunlight. The men from the little village stood in silence, gaping at the wonder of the place. From a thousand huts in the shade of the mighty walls and parapets the workers of the city were greeting the dawn of a new day.
'This is Zimbabwe,' Nxumalo said, wiping his eyes, and no one spoke.
No group of visitors from beyond the Limpopo could expect to enter any of the handsome stone enclosures, so after dutifully depositing the rhino horns with the authorities, Nxumalo and his men were led to the section of the city occupied by the common people, and there they rested for fifteen days before starting their return journey. On the day of departure Nxumalo left his lodgings with a sense of sadness, for he had enjoyed this city and its manifold offerings, but as he reached the area where his