The Quest

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Are you ready?’ Fenn’s eyes were huge with fear. ‘The other end is knotted to Whirlwind’s saddle. We’ll pull you up.’ Her head disappeared again. With a jerk the rope came up tight. As he went up, he fended himself off the dangling bridge with his feet and hands. More arrows slammed into the timbers but although he could hear the Jarrians clamouring for his blood, like a pack of dogs beneath a treed leopard, not one of their arrows touched him.

  As he came level with the path the strong hands of Meren and Nakonto reached out to haul him to safety. He regained his feet, and Fenn dropped Whirlwind’s reins to run back to him. She embraced him silently with tears of relief streaming down her cheeks.

  All that night they kept the column of refugees moving down the track, and in the early light of dawn they shepherded the last on to the bank of the Kitangule river. That was waiting for them at the gates of the boatyard stockade, and came quickly to meet Taita. ‘I am glad to see you safe, Magus, but I am sorry to have missed the fighting. I have reports that it was hot and heavy. What news of the Jarrian pursuit?’

  ‘The bridge over the gorge is down, but that will not hold them for long. Sidudu says there is an easier road down the escarpment forty leagues further to the south. We can be sure that Soklosh knows about it, and that he will take his men that way. He will be moving a great deal faster than we were able to. We can expect him to join us again soon.’

  ‘The southern road is the main entry port into Jarri. Of course Soklosh must know of it.’

  ‘I have left pickets upon the road to watch for him and to warn us of his approach,’ Taita told him. ‘We must get these people on to the boats at once.’ First they loaded the horses, then the remaining refugees.

  Before the last were aboard the pickets galloped into the boatyards.

  ‘The Jarrians’ leading cohorts will be upon us within the hour.’

  Meren and his men chivvied the last group of refugees down the jetty and into the boats. As soon as each vessel was filled the rowers pulled out into the mainstream of the river and turned the bows down the current. Fenn and Sidudu carried Hilto’s litter on to the last boat in the flotilla. Twenty remained empty on the slipways so Taita remained ashore with a few men to see to their destruction. They threw lighted torches into them and when the timbers were blazing fiercely they pushed them into the river where they burned swiftly to the waterline. The lookouts on the walls of the stockade that surrounded the boatyard sounded the alarm on kudu-horn trumpets. ‘The enemy is in sight!’

  There was a final scramble for the boats. Taita and Meren jumped on to the deck where the two girls were waiting anxiously for them. Meren took the helm and the rowers pulled away from the dock. They were still within bowshot of the bank when the leading squadron of the Jarrian vanguard galloped into the boatyard. They dismounted and crowded the bank to loose volleys of arrows, some of which pegged into the deck but nobody was hit.

  Meren swung the bows to catch the current of the wide Kitangule, which was in spate and bore them away, sweeping them round the first bend. He leant on the long steering oar as they gazed back at the high cliffs of the Jarrian massif. Perhaps they should have been ecstatic as they took their leave of the kingdom of Eos but, rather, they were silent and sober.

  Taita and Fenn stood apart from the others. Fenn broke the silence at last. She spoke low, for Taita’s ears alone: ‘So we have failed in our quest. We have escaped, but the witch survives and the Nile flows no longer.’

  ‘The game is not yet played out. The pieces are still on the board,’

  Taita told her.

  ‘I do not take your meaning, my lord. We are flying from Jarri, deserting the battlefield and leaving the witch alive. You have nothing to take back to Egypt and Pharaoh but these miserable fugitives and our own poor selves. Egypt is still doomed.’

  ‘Nay, that is not all I take back with me. I have all the wisdom and astral power of Eos.’

  ‘How will that profit you or Pharaoh if Egypt dies of drought?’

  ‘Perhaps I will be able to use the witch’s memories to unravel her mysteries and designs.’

  ‘Do you already hold the key to her magic?’ she asked hopefully, watching his face.

  ‘This I do not know. I have taken from her a mountain and an ocean of knowledge and experience. My inner mind and consciousness are awash with it. There is so much that, like a dog with too many bones, I have had to bury most of it. Perhaps some is so deeply buried that I will never retrieve it. At best it will take time and effort to assimilate it all. I will need your assistance. Our minds have become so attuned that only you can help me with this task.’

  ‘You do me honour, Magus,’ she said simply.

  The Jarrian cohorts pursued them for several leagues downstream, riding hard along the track that followed the riverbank, until swamps and thick jungle forced them to abandon the chase. The flotilla raced along on the current, which was swollen with the rain that had fallen on the Mountains of the Moon, leaving the enemy far behind.

  Before nightfall that day the leading vessels of the squadron reached the first of the rapids that had so impeded their voyage upriver so many months before. Now the white water sent them hurtling down the chutes, the banks blurring past on each side. At the tail of the rapids when they stormed ashore below the stockade walls of the small Jarrian garrison, they discovered that the soldiers had fled as soon as they realized that the flotilla was hostile. The barracks was deserted, but the storerooms were well stocked with weapons, tools and stores. They loaded the pick of the supplies on to the barges and pressed on eastwards. A mere ten days after embarking, they sailed out through the mouth of the Kitangule into the vast blue expanses of the Lake Nalubaale and turned northwards, following the shore round towards the hills of Tamafupa.

  By this time the voyage had settled into a routine. Taita had claimed a corner of the deck just forward of the rowing benches for himself and Fenn. He had spread a matting sail over it for shade and privacy. They spent most of their days sitting close together on a sleeping mat, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes while he whispered to her in the Tenmass. It was the only language that was adequate to convey to her all the new information with which his mind brimmed.

  As Taita murmured to her he became acutely aware of how her mind and her astral soul were expanding. She was giving back to him almost as much as she was taking, and the experience strengthened and enriched them. Also, far from exhausting them, their intense, unremitting mental activity enlivened them.’

  Each evening the flotilla anchored before sunset, and most of those aboard went ashore for the night, leaving only an anchor watch aboard.

  Usually Taita and Fenn took advantage of the last hours of daylight to wander along the shore and the fringes of the forest, gathering roots, herbs and wild fruit. When they had sufficient for their dinner and for any medicines they required, they returned to their shelter, which was set apart from the rest of the encampment. On some evenings they invited Meren and Sidudu to share the meal they had concocted, but often they kept their own company and continued with their studies far into the night.

  When at last they lay down on their sleeping mat and pulled the fur kaross over themselves Taita took her in his arms. She cuddled against him and, without the least sign of self-consciousness, reached down and took him in an affectionate but unskilled grip. Often her last drowsy words before she fell asleep were not to Taita himself but to the part of him that she held. ‘Ho, my sweet mannikin, I like playing with you but you must lie down to sleep now, or you will keep us awake all night.’

  Taita wanted her desperately. He longed for her with all his newfound manhood, but in many ways he was as innocent and untutored as she was. His only carnal experience had been the brutal warfare of the Cloud Gardens, in which he had been forced to use his body as a weapon of destruction, not as a vehicle of love. It had had not the remotest relationship to the bittersweet emotion he felt now, which grew more poignant each day.

  W
hen she fondled him he was consumed with an overpowering desire to express his love in the same intimate manner, but instinct warned him that although she stood at the very portals of womanhood, she was not yet ready to take the final step across the threshold.

  We have a lifetime, perhaps many, ahead of us, he consoled himself, and determinedly composed himself to sleep.

  The men on the rowing benches were bound for a lost motherland, so they pulled with a will. The familiar lakeshore streamed past, and the leagues dropped away behind the flotilla, until at last the hills of Tamafupa rose from the blue lake ahead. They crowded the rails of the boats and stared at them in awed silence. This place was fraught with evil, and even the bravest were filled with dread. As they rounded the headland of the bay and saw before them the Red Stones that dammed the mouth of the Nile, Fenn moved closer to Taita and took his hand for comfort. ‘They are still there. I had hoped they had fallen with their mistress.’

  Taita made no reply. Instead he called to Meren, at the helm, ‘Steer for the top of the bay.’

  They camped on the white beach. There was no celebration that night. Instead the mood was subdued and uncertain. There was no Nile on which to continue the voyage, or enough horses to carry them all back to Egypt.

  In the morning Taita ordered the boats to be dragged up on to the beach and dismantled. No one had expected this, and even Meren looked at him askance, but none thought to question his orders. Once the baggage and equipment had been unloaded, the dowel pins were knocked out of their slots and the hulls were broken down into their separate sections.

  ‘Transport everyone and everything, boats and baggage and people, up to the village where Kalulu, the legless shaman, lived on the crest of the headland.’

  ‘But that is high above the river,’ Meren reminded him, puzzled.

  He shuffled his feet and stood awkwardly as Taita turned an enigmatic gaze upon him. ‘It is also high above the great lake,’ he said at last.

  ‘Is that important, Magus?’

  ‘It may be.’

  ‘I shall see to it at once.’

  It took six days of back-breaking effort to carry everything up into the hills. When at last they had stacked the sections of hull on the open ground in the centre of the blackened ruins of Kalulu’s village, Taita let them rest. He and Fenn placed their own shelter on the forward slope of the hills, overlooking the dry bed of the Nile and the impervious rock barrage at its mouth. In the dawn, they sat under the plaited reed awning and looked out over the lake, a vast expanse of blue water that reflected the images of the clouds in the sky above. They had an uninterrupted view of the dam and the tiny temple of Eos on the bluff above it.

  On the third morning Taita said, ‘Fenn, we are prepared. We have mustered our forces. Now we must wait for the full moon.’

  ‘That is four days hence,’ she said.

  ‘There is one more sally we can make against the witch before then.’

  ‘I am ready for whatever you decide, Magus.’

  ‘Eos has thrown an astral barricade around herself.’

  ‘That was why we could not contact each other while you were in her lair.’

  ‘I intend to test her defences for the last time. It will be dangerous, of course, but you and I must combine our powers and make another attempt to pierce her shield and overlook her in her stronghold.’ They went down to the lakeshore again. They washed their clothing, then bathed in the limpid waters. It was a ritual cleansing: evil flourishes in dirt and foul matter. While their naked bodies dried in the sunlight, Taita combed her hair and plaited the wet tresses. She attended to his crisp new beard. They scrubbed their teeth with green twigs, then picked bunches of aromatic leaves which they took back up the hills to the encampment. When they reached their shelter Fenn built up the smouldering embers of their fire and Taita sprinkled the leaves into the flames. Then they sat cross-legged, hand in hand, to inhale the cleansing, stimulating smoke.

  It was the first time they had attempted astral travel together, but this transfer into the astral plane went smoothly. Linked in spirit, they rose high above the lake and glided westward over the forests.

  They found the land of Jarri covered with thick cloud: only the peaks of the Mountains of the Moon rose out of it and the snows upon them shone with an austere radiance. The hidden crater of the Cloud Gardens nestled in their icy embrace. They sank down towards the witch’s stronghold, but as they drew closer the ether became turbid and oppressive, as though they swam through a cesspit. Its weight and density resisted their passage. Linked as one they strove forward against its debilitating influence. At last, after immense spiritual exertion, they had forced their way down to the green chamber in the witch’s lair.

  Eos’s massive cocoon lay where Taita had last seen it, but now the protective carapace was fully formed, green and lustrous, shining with an adamantine glitter. Taita had achieved his purpose: he had brought Fenn to look upon the veritable form of Eos, not merely one of her shadowy manifestations. Now, when the time came, they would be able to combine all their force and concentrate it upon her.

  They drew back from the Cloud Gardens, over the mountains, the forests and the lake, back into their physical bodies. Taita was still holding her hands. As she came alive again, he looked at her through his Inner Eye. Her aura smouldered like molten metal pouring from the furnace, heated by her fear and anger.

  ‘That thing!’ She clung to him. ‘Oh, Taita, it was horrible beyond my wildest imagining. That carapace seems to contain all the evil and malice of the universe.’ Her face was ashen and her skin cold.

  ‘You have looked upon the enemy. Now you must steel yourself, my love,’ he told her. ‘You must call upon all your courage and strength.’

  He held her to him. ‘I need you with me. I cannot prevail against her without you.’

  Fenn’s face hardened with determination. ‘I will not fail you, Taita.’

  “I have never thought for a moment that you might.’ Over the next few days he employed all of his esoteric art to bolster in her the spiritual powers that the sight of Eos had shaken.

  ‘Tomorrow night the moon will be full, the most propitious phase of its cycle. We are ready and the time is ripe.’ But Taita was awakened at dawn by Fenn’s sobs and moans. He stroked her face and whispered in her ear, ‘Wake up, my darling. It is only a dream. I am here beside you.’

  ‘Hold me, Taita. I had such a terrible dream. I dreamt that Eos struck at me with her magic. She drove her dagger into my belly. The blade was glowing hot.’ She groaned again. ‘Oh, I can still feel the pain. It was not a dream. It is true. I am wounded and the pain is bitter.’

  Taita’s heart leapt with alarm. ‘Let me feel your stomach.’ He pushed her down gently, drew the kaross as far as her knees and laid his hand upon her flat white belly.

  ‘The pain is not all, Taita,’ she whispered. ‘I am bleeding from the wound she has inflicted.’

  ‘Bleeding? Where is the wound?’

  ‘Here!’ She spread her thighs and pushed his hand lower. ‘The blood is pouring through the cleft between my legs.’

  ‘Has this not happened to you before - at your age?’

  ‘Never,’ she replied. ‘This is the very first time.’

  ‘Oh, my sweetest heart.’ He took her tenderly in his arms. ‘It is not what you think. That comes not from Eos. It is a gift and blessing from the gods of the Truth. I wonder that Imbali did not mention it. You have become a full woman.’

  ‘I do not understand, Taita.’ She was still afraid.

  ‘This is your moon blood, the proud emblem of your womanhood.’

  Taita realized that the rigours of the journey, the deprivation and hardship she had suffered, must have delayed her natural development.

  ‘But why the pain?’

  ‘Pain is the lot of woman. In pain she is born and in pain she gives forth life. It was ever so.’

  ‘Why now? Why am I struck down at the very time you need me so?’ she lamented.

>   ‘Fenn, you must rejoice in your womanhood. The gods have armed you. The first moon blood of a virgin is the most potent talisman in all nature. Neither the witch nor all the host of the Lie can prevail against you on this day when you have come of age.’ They rose from the mat and Taita showed her how to fold a square of linen into a pad filled with dried herbs to soak up the discharge. They washed again and drank a little lake water, but took no food.

  ‘The lion and his lioness hunt better on a hungry stomach,’ he told her. They left their shelter, and walked through the main encampment.

  In anxious silence the people watched them pass. Something in their manner and mien warned that some fateful business was afoot.

  Only Meren came forward to meet them. ‘Do you need my help, Magus?’

  ‘Good Meren, you were ever faithful but we are bound whither you cannot follow.’

  Meren went down on one knee in front of him. ‘Then give me your blessing, I beseech you.’

  Taita placed his hand on his head. ‘You have it in full measure,’ he said, then he and Fenn walked out of the encampment and down the hillside towards the lake. The air was sultry and still, all the earth hushed.

  No animal moved or called. No bird flew. The sky was a bright, aching blue, with only one tiny cloud hanging far out over the lake. As Taita watched, it changed gradually into the shape of a cat’s paw.

  ‘Even in her cocoon the witch has sensed the threat we pose to her and she moves against us,’ he told Fenn softly. She leant closer to him, and they went on until they stood at last on the heights of the bluff.

  They gazed down on the Red Stones, the mighty barrier that choked the mouth of the infant Nile.

  ‘Is there any force commanded by man or nature that can shift something of that magnitude?’ Fenn wondered aloud.

  ‘It was raised by the force of the Lie. Perchance it can be brought down by the power of the Truth,’ he answered her, and as one they turned their eyes towards the temple of Eos.