Apex Wildlife Foundry · The African Lion · Limited Edition
David Mark Quigley
The African Lion
The Limited Edition · One Hundred and Fifty Copies
Personalised in Silver
One hundred and fifty copies of The African Lion will be bound in genuine cow-hide, each carrying a sterling silver plaque set into the board, engraved and numbered. When the hundred and fiftieth is spoken for, there will be no more.
A novel is where the world gets written. The relics are where it gets held. For every title in this library I cast between ten and fifteen sterling silver pieces, and not one of them is a decorative animal chosen from a catalogue. Each is drawn from a scene on the page: the object a character carried, the animal that changed the course of the story, the moment the book turns.
A collector takes an edition and pairs it with a single relic, or with several, or with the whole set. The book and the silver are two halves of one thing. You read the world, then you hold what came out of it.
Every piece is cast by hand in my own foundry by the lost-wax method, as it has been done here since 2008. Fourteen have been chosen for The African Lion.
I write the world,
then sculpt its relics.
The Fourteen Relics
Drawn from five of the six collections of the Apex Wildlife Foundry, and every one of them anchored to a page of this novel.
01
The Last Roar
Apex Mythology Collection
The sound that died in his throat — and the species with it
He roared once across the valley. Then he threw his head back to say it a second time, and the bullet found his heart before the sound could leave him. This is the roar nobody ever heard. The novel opens on it, and the silence that follows runs for a hundred years.
Found inPrologue. The Tell Atlas, Algeria.
02
Nginqobile
Apex Artifact Collection
I have prevailed — the shield a boy held against a lion
The lion never attacked the boy. It attacked the white eye at the centre of the shield. A fourteen-year-old went in behind cured rawhide to take back a kudu bull, and four hundred pounds came over the top and spent its rage on the one thing that would not stop staring up at it. He stood when it was over and gave the old word. Nginqobile. I have prevailed. Everything the man becomes is issued from underneath this shield.
Found inChapter 9. Zimbabwe, 1998.
03
Titan
Apex Predator Collection
Seven hundred pounds at full charge — the instant it became a greeting
Somebody left the courtyard gate open and seven hundred pounds of Barbary lion came through it at a run. One sharpened fighting stick, planted in the ground, and nowhere left to go. He came the whole distance. Then he lowered his head, blinked, pushed his forehead into a man's hip and began to purr. The piece is cast at that half-second, when the charge turned into a greeting.
Found inChapter 38. Ipharadesi.
04
Luna
Apex Mythology Collection
The moon goddess, sent for the Prince of Darkness
Named for the goddess of the moon. While two males held the hunter's eyes in front of him, she came low and quick around the gatepost and crossed the open ground like a silent bullet. She landed on his back like a live grappling iron. A deity that lights the night, sent for the Prince of Darkness. He never saw her coming.
Found inChapter 40. Ipharadesi.
05
Old Tom
Keystone Conservation Collection
Twenty years old, two hundred miles from home — hunted by legislation
Twenty years old, hungry, and two hundred miles from the country he was born in, driven off Grapevine Peak by rifle and hound because a subcommittee decided Nevada's mule deer belonged to men holding tags. He killed dogs when he had to and ran the rest of the way. He never touched a human being. Stared down in a gully, he spun as if to trick the eye and was gone like a flash of light. All he ever wanted was to be left alone.
Found inChapter 19. Red Rock Canyon, Nevada.
06
Izinduku
Apex Fighter Collection
Isiquili and Uboko — the sticks that made him Inkunzi, the Bull
Isiquili to attack. Uboko to defend. He lost with them for years and walked home bleeding, until the night a blow to the shin, a strike to an unguarded shoulder and a tap behind the ear put a bigger boy down snoring in the dust. Inkunzi. The Bull. He cut two pick handles down in a Nevada barn to keep the art alive. The last time he used one, he planted it in the ground and waited for a lion.
Found inChapter 4, returning in Chapter 38.
07
The Edmi
The African Series
Cuvier's gazelle — the last kill a wild Barbary lion ever made
The fastest gazelle in North Africa, which is why the last Barbary lion had to take them with patience instead of speed. The buck snorted, flicked his ears, dropped his head to graze, then caught a flicker of movement and went straight up into the air. He twisted at the last instant and very nearly made it. These were the last animals a wild Barbary lion ever killed.
Found inPrologue. The Tell Atlas, Algeria.
08
The Teka Hack
Apex Artifact Collection
The poacher's talisman — the one thing he would never surrender
He surrendered his rifle at a diplomat's order without argument, and would not give this up for anyone, whoever was giving the orders. It crossed every border he crossed. He laid the flat of it under an old herdsman's chin to ask where the man he was hunting had gone. It outlived its owner by about a day.
Found inChapters 13, 22, 23 and 40.
09
The Flanking
Apex Predator Collection
Two Barbary males chose a side — and it was his
They came out of the courtyard, lifted their noses and read the ground. Then they split, one pacing left and one right, walked past the man they had come to kill without laying a claw on him, and closed either side of the man they had come to stand with. One looked up once for assurance. The growl that answered the hand on his head was not aimed at him. The gap between these two animals is the shape of a man, and it is the image the whole novel is built to produce.
Found inChapter 40. Ipharadesi.
10
Saif Fulath
Apex Artifact Collection
Damascus steel with inlay — he died on his own blade
Fourteenth-century Damascus steel with inlay, carried halfway across the world to finish what a bow had started. He held it at high port with two Barbary lions circling and could not choose between the sword in his hands and the weapon on his back. The lioness chose for him. The coroner found the blade driven up into his own diaphragm.
Found inChapter 40. Ipharadesi.
11
The Lion's Mark
Apex Artifact Collection
The mane of the African Lion, marking your place
The mane is the identification. On an ordinary lion it frames the head and stops at the shoulders. On a Barbary the black haystack sweeps from the head and upper back beneath the belly to the groin, covering half the body. That is the whole diagnosis. It is what made a man stop dead at an electrified fence and say it could not possibly be true. The piece carries that proof down the shaft, and it holds your place in the book that contains it.
Found inPrologue, confirmed in Chapter 17 at the Ngala fence.
12
The Barbary Macaque
The African Series
He screamed twice — nobody listened either time
He screamed twice. The first time the gazelles turned a single ear and went on grazing. The second time every head came up, and even the lion cupped an ear to the side before going back to watching the herd. The monkey was not calling at the lion. He was calling at the men coming up the valley with the rifle. Two species heard the warning and both dismissed it, and within the hour the last wild Barbary lion was dead on the plain. He is the only animal in the book who read it correctly.
Found inPrologue. The Tell Atlas, Algeria.
13
The Desert Bighorn Ram
Keystone Conservation Collection
He walked up to a stranger — and she photographed it
He took the ewes off the main herd and formed a new band, and the man on the ridge had watched him do it. On the fourth morning the ram bucked his head once in recognition and walked straight on toward him. A hand went out and rested on the horn, and the animal never flinched. Two ridges away a park ranger was firing her shutter, and when she scrolled the frame back the stranger had turned and was looking directly down her lens. Everything between those two people is arranged by this animal.
Found inChapter 6, returning in Chapter 19.
14
The Lion's Head Cufflink
Apex Artifact Collection
Silver lions for a world title — worn at the wrist
The only relic in the collection that already exists inside the novel, and it is already silver. They were a gift for winning a world title, and he wears them exactly once. The invitation said elegantly casual and he had no idea what that meant, so he went with near-new veldskoens, khaki chinos, a white shirt, and the only things he owned that had ever been handed to him for winning something. Two bronze lions guarded the dais at Ngala, the place of the lion. He had a silver one on each wrist.
Found inChapter 21. Ngala Wildlife Preserve, Florida.
Acquisition
Each edition and each relic is personalised in silver to the reader who owns it. The plaque in the board and the piece that accompanies it are engraved to you, or to the person you are giving it to. Nothing leaves the foundry until it belongs to somebody by name.
Acquisition begins with a conversation: which relic, or which relics, belong with your copy. Enquiries are handled personally.
Enquiries are made through the contact page and answered personally by the author.