THE STEWARDS OF IGBILE-LAND. (SYNOPSIS)

The story is told of Waju.
Waju was tired of the running, but he was not afraid of it. He had known many years of life without roof or shelter with his mother and brother. Over the years of being on and off the road, He had learnt to understand foreign languages and customs, to harden his stomach against many days of hunger, to call a clump of moldy leaves a bed anywhere night found him with his mother and brother, home.
He was not afraid of the road. But he was tired of it. And when he asked his mother if a day would ever come that they would stop running, she'd smile and say nothing.
Perhaps he asked too often; perhaps his mother was as tired as he was, but the day did come when an old abandoned hut sheltered them for more than a night... then a week... then a roof and many repairs later, and Waju found that they were still there a full season later. But every single night of that season, they slept with their belongings packed, ready to hit the road running.
When the day did come to run, they heard the call too late.
A prince, a princess, and a chief -foreigners with an urgent mission- invaded the place thed come to call home of some sort without warning.
The trio was on a mission that couldn’t afford to fail. They sifted the village in search of the one they called 'the Steward's Son'. They described him as a runaway. Young, traveling with his mother -they called him their champion, one that they would do anything to recover. One on whom the fate and future of their people -the people of Igbile-land- depended.
But another entity had also come into the land seeking the Steward's Son. A silent menace with hard eyes -hard, cold, and merciless.
An expensive assassin whose services could only be afforded by a dynasty’s ransom.
He had never bungled an assignment and already, many men lay dead between the place he had begun and the doorstep ahead of him -the doorstep of the Steward's son.
He had a name in an unfamiliar tongue; and a title in the circles where his legend had spread. They called him "Idakeje -Idakeje ti o l'esi". "The Silence that has no reply".
The Silence had come for Waju.
But, even before the Silence, even before the prince, the princess, and the elder, an older Evil had long tailed Waju and his male ancestors before him.
The Evil had followed them on the road and off it. He watched in the shadows and lurked just behind the divide between sleep and consciousness.
With the impatient patience of one who had no choice, one who would not be denied, he lay in the playground of dreams and day-visions.
This ancient terror troubled the Waju till the boy was beyond his voice; then he turned his seduction to the younger son of his former Steward.
He existed in an isolated plane of transcendental sleep -neither in this world nor in the next. He was Lost, Mostly forgotten, but defiant of the war the deities waged against him for daring to aspire to become a deity himself, and if not, a demigod.
He longed to walk the earth again and He needed to regain his great and terrible power. He was waiting for his window to the plane of mortal men to be re-opened... even if for just a moment his thirst for blood and hunger for human flesh was an eternal agony.
It all started with a kingdoms need for a champion against their foes, but it has become something more evil.
An Evil from which Waju, his Mother and brother have been running from since he was a boy without success, because one unfortunate night, Waju and his family heard the call to run a little too late... and their lives would be changed forever... by a cursed legacy -the sacred and unique duty of "THE STEWARDS OF IGBILE-LAND".