Sogolon Kondé

But the air itself carries a charge, a tension that the birds seem to sense, for they have gone quiet in the branches, and even the insects seem to still their endless droning.

On one side of the field stand the forces of Soumaoro Kanté, the Sorcerer King of Sosso, a ruler whose name alone has for years been enough to empty villages, to send mothers clutching their children into the deep bush, to make grown men tremble at their cooking fires.

Soumaoro is said to possess dark and terrible magic, an armor of human skin that no blade can pierce, a throne room decorated with the skulls of nine kings he has personally strangled.

He is not merely a rival.