The Quest

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘You have no aura!’ Taita exclaimed, before he could prevent the words reaching his lips.

  The Hitama inclined his head slightly. ‘Neither have you, Taita. None of those who have returned from the temple of Saraswati give out a detectable aura. We have left part of our humanity with Kashyap, the lamp-bearer. This deficiency enables us to recognize one another.’

  Taita took a while to consider these words. The Hitama had echoed what he had been told by Samana.

  ‘Kashyap is dead and a woman has taken his seat before the goddess. Her name is Samana. She told me there had been others. You are the first I have met.’

  ‘Few of us are granted the gift of the Inner Eye. Even fewer of us remain. Our numbers have been reduced. There is a sinister reason for this, which I will explain to you in due time.’ He made space on the mattress beside him. ‘Come, sit close to me, Taita. My hearing begins to fail me, and there is much to discuss, but little time is left to us.’ The visitor switched from laboured Egyptian into the arcane Tenmass of the adepts, which he spoke flawlessly. ‘We must remain discreet.’

  ‘How did you find me?’ Taita asked, in the same language, as he settled beside him.

  ‘The star led me.’ The ancient seer raised his face to the eastern sky.

  In the time that they had been speaking together, night had fallen and the panoply of the heavens shone forth in majesty. The Star of Lostris still hung directly overhead, but it was further altered in shape and substance. It no longer had a solid centre. It had become merely a cloud of glowing gases, blowing away in a long feather on the solar winds.

  ‘I have always been aware of my intimate connection to that star,’

  Taita murmured.

  ‘With good reason,’ the old man assured him mysteriously. ‘Your destiny is linked to it.’

  ‘But it is dying before our eyes.’

  The old man looked at him in a way that made Taita’s fingertips tingle. ‘Nothing dies. What we call death is merely a change of state. She will remain with you always.’

  Taita opened his mouth to say her name, ‘Lostris’, but the old man stopped him with a gesture.

  ‘Do not speak her name aloud. In doing so you may betray her to those who wish you ill.’

  ‘Is a name, then, so powerful?’

  ‘Without one a being does not exist. Even the gods need a name. Only the Truth is nameless.’

  ‘And the Lie,’ Taita said, but the old man shook his head.

  ‘The Lie is named Ahriman.’

  ‘You know my name,’ said Taita, ‘but I am ignorant of yours.’

  ‘I am Demeter.’

  ‘Demeter is one of the demigods.’ Taita had recognized the name at once. ‘Are you that one?’

  ‘As you can see, I am mortal.’ He held up his hands and they trembled with palsy. ‘I am a Long Liver, as you are, Taita. I have lived an inordinately long time. But soon I will die. Already I am dying. In time you will follow me. Neither of us is a demigod. We are not Benevolent Immortals.’

  ‘Demeter, you cannot leave me so soon. We have just come together,’ Taita protested. ‘I have searched so long to find you. There is so much I must learn from you. Surely this is why you have come to me. You did not come here to die?’

  Demeter inclined his head in acquiescence. ‘I shall stay as long as I am able, but I am wearied by years and sickened by the forces of the Lie.’

  ‘We must waste not an hour of the time we have. Instruct me.’ Taita spoke humbly. ‘I am as a little child beside you.’

  ‘We have already begun,’ Demeter said.

  ‘Time is a river like the one above us.’ Demeter lifted his head and pointed with his chin to Oceanus, the endless river of stars that flowed from horizon to horizon across the sky above them. ‘It has no beginning and no ending. There was another who came before me, as countless others came before him. He passed on this duty to me. It is a divine baton handed on from one runner to the next. Some carry it further than others. My race is almost run, for I have been shorn of much of my power. I must pass the baton to you.’

  ‘Why to me?’

  ‘It has been ordained. It is not for us to query or contest the decision. You must open your mind to me, Taita, to receive what I have to give you. I must caution you that it is a poisoned gift. Once you receive it you may never again know lasting peace, for you are about to shoulder all the suffering and pain of the world.’

  They fell silent while Taita considered this bleak proposition. At last he sighed. ‘I would refuse it if I could. Continue, Demeter, for I cannot stand against the inevitable.’

  Demeter nodded. ‘I have faith that you will succeed where I have failed so woefully. You are to become gatekeeper of the fortress of the Truth against the onslaughts of the minions of the Lie.’

  Demeter’s whispers grew bolder and took on a new urgency: ‘We have spoken of gods and demigods, of adepts and Benevolent Immortals. From this I see that you already have a deep understanding of these things. But I can tell you more. Since the beginning time of the Great Chaos, the gods have been lifted up and cast down in succession. They have struggled against each other, and against the minions of the Lie. The Titans, who were the elder gods, were cast down by the Olympian gods. They, in their turn, will become enfeebled. None will trust and worship them. They will be defeated and replaced by younger deities or, if we fail, they may be superseded by the malign agents of the Lie.’ He was silent for a while, but when he continued his voice was firmer: ‘This rise and fall of divine dynasties is part of the natural and immutable body of laws that emerged to bring order to the Great Chaos. Those laws govern the cosmos. They order the ebb and flood of the tides. They command the succession of day and night. They order and control the wind and the storm, the volcanoes and the tidal waves, the rise and fall of empires, and the progression of days and nights. The gods are only the servants of the Truth. In the end there remain only the Truth and the Lie.’ Demeter turned suddenly and glanced behind him, his expression melancholy, but resigned. ‘Do you feel it, Taita? Do you hear it?’

  Taita exerted all his powers, and at last he heard a faint rustling in the air around them, like the wings of vultures settling to a carrion feast.

  He nodded. He was too moved to speak. The sense of great evil almost overwhelmed him. He had to exert all his strength to fight it back.

  ‘She is here with us already.’ Demeter’s voice sank lower, became laboured and breathless, as though his lungs were crushed by the weight of a baleful presence. ‘Can you smell her?’ he asked.

  Taita flared his nostrils, and caught the faint reek of corruption and decay, disease and rotting flesh, the effluvium of plague and the contents of ruptured bowels. ‘I sense it and smell it,’ he answered.

  ‘We are in danger,’ said Demeter. He reached towards Taita. ‘Join hands!’ he ordered. ‘We must unite our power to resist her.’

  As their fingers touched an intense blue spark flashed between them.

  Taita resist the impulse to jerk away his hand and break the contact.

  Instead he seized Demeter’s hands and held them firmly. Strength flowed back and forth between them. Gradually the malign presence receded, and they could breathe freely again.

  ‘It was inevitable,’ said Demeter, with resignation. ‘She has been searching for me these past centuries, ever since I escaped from her web of spells and charms. But now that you and I have come together we have created such an upheaval of psychic energy that she has been able to detect it, even at immense distance, just as a great shark can detect a shoal of sardines long before it has sight of them.’ He looked sorrowfully at Taita, still holding his hands. ‘She knows of you now, Taita, through me, and if not through me, she would have discovered you by some other means. The scent you leave on the wind of the cosmos is strong, and she is the ultimate predator.’

  ‘You say “she”? Who is this female?’

  ‘She calls herself Eos.’

  ‘I have heard that name. A woman named Eo
s visited the temple of Saraswati more than fifty generations ago.’

  ‘It is the same woman.’

  ‘Eos is the ancient goddess of the dawn, sister of Helius, the sun,’

  Taita said. ‘She was an insatiable nymphomaniac, but she was destroyed in the war between the Titans and the Olympians.’ He shook his head.

  ‘This cannot be the same Eos.’

  ‘You are right, Taita. They are not the same. This Eos is the minion of the Lie. She is the consummate impostor, the usurper, the deceiver, the thief, the devourer of infants. She has stolen the identity of the old goddess. At the same time, she adopted her vices but none of her virtues.’

  ‘Do I understand you to say that Eos has lived for fifty generations? That means she is two thousand years old,’ Taita exclaimed, incredulous.

  ‘What is she? Mortal or immortal, human or goddess?’

  ‘In the beginning she was human. Many ages ago she was the high priestess at the temple of Apollo in Ilion. When the city was sacked by the Spartans, she escaped the pillage and assumed the name Eos, still human, but I have no words to describe what she has become.’

  ‘Samana showed me the ancient temple inscription that recorded the visit of the woman from Ilion,’ Taita said.

  ‘She is the same. Kurma gave her the gift of the Inner Eye. He believed that she was chosen. Her powers of concealment and deceit are so powerful and persuasive that even Kurma, that great sage and savant, could not see through them.’

  ‘If she is the embodiment of evil, surely it is our duty to seek her out and destroy her.’

  Demeter smiled ruefully. ‘I have devoted all my long life to that purpose, but she is as cunning as she is evil. She is as elusive as the wind. She emits no aura. She is able to protect herself with spells and wiles that far surpass my own knowledge of the occult. She lays snares to catch those who search for her. She can move with ease from one continent to another. Kurma merely enhanced her powers. Nonetheless I once succeeded in finding her.’ He corrected himself: ‘That is not entirely true, I did not find her. She sought me out.’

  Taita leant forward eagerly. ‘You know this creature? You have met her face to face? Tell me, Demeter, what is her appearance?’

  ‘If she is threatened she can change her appearance as a chameleon does. Yet vanity is among her multitudinous vices. You cannot imagine the beauty she is able to assume. It stuns the senses, and negates reason. When she takes on this aspect no man can resist her. The sight of her reduces even the most noble soul to the level of a beast.’ He fell silent, his eyes dulled with sorrow. ‘Despite all my training as an adept I was not able to restrain my basest instincts. I lost the ability and the inclination to reckon consequences. For me, in that moment, nothing but her existed. I was consumed by lust. She toyed with me, like the winds of autumn with a dead leaf. To me it seemed she gave me everything, every delight contained in this earth. She gave me her body.’

  He groaned softly. ‘Even now the memory drives me to the brink of madness. Each rise and swell, enchanted opening and fragrant cleft … I did not try to resist her, for no mortal man could do so.’ A faint, agitated colour had risen to his wan features.

  ‘Taita, you remarked that the original Eos was an insatiable nymphomaniac, and that is so, but this other Eos outstrips her in appetite. When she kisses, she sucks out the vital juices of her lover, as you or I might suck out the juices from a ripe orange. When she takes a man between her thighs in that exquisite but infernal coupling she draws out of him his very substance. She takes from him his soul. His substance is the ambrosia that nourishes her. She is as some monstrous vampire that feeds on human blood. She chooses only superior beings as her victims, men and women of Good Mind, servants of the Truth, a magus of illustrious reputation or a gifted seer. Once she detects her victim, she runs him down as relentlessly as a wolf harries a deer. She is omnivorous. No matter age or appearance, physical frailty or imperfection. It is not their flesh that feeds her appetites, but their souls. She devours young and old, men and women. Once she has them in her thrall, wrapped in her silken web, she draws from them their accumulated store of learning, wisdom and experience. She sucks it out through their mouths with her accursed kisses. She draws it from their loins in her loathsome embrace. She leaves only a desiccated husk.’

  ‘I have witnessed this carnal exchange,’ Taita said. ‘When Kashyap reached the end of his life he passed on his wisdom and learning to Samana, whom he had chosen as his successor.’

  ‘What you witnessed was a willing exchange. The obscene act Eos practises is a carnal invasion and conquest. She is a ravager and devourer of souls.’

  For a while Taita was dumbstruck. Then he asked, ‘Ancient and infirm? Whole or maimed? Man and woman? How does she couple with those who are no longer capable of union?’

  ‘She has powers that you and I, adepts though we may be, cannot emulate or even fathom. She has developed the art of regenerating the frail flesh of her victims for a day, only to destroy them by wiping away their minds and their very substance.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you have not answered my question, Demeter. What is she? Mortal or immortal, human or goddess? Does this rare beauty she possesses know no term? Is she not as vulnerable to the ravages of time and age as you and I?’

  ‘My answer to your question, Taita, is that I know not. She may well be the oldest woman on earth,’ Demeter spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness, ‘but she seems to have discovered some power previously known only to the gods. Does that make her a goddess? I do not know. She may not be immortal, but she is certainly ageless.’

  ‘What do you propose, Demeter? How will we trace her to her lair?’

  ‘She has already found you. You have excited her monstrous appetites. You do not have to seek her out. She is already stalking you. She will draw you to her.’

  ‘Demeter, I am long past any temptations and snares that even this creature can place in my path.’

  ‘She wants you, she must have you. However, you and I together pose a threat to her.’ He thought for a while about his own statement, then went on, ‘She has already taken from me almost everything I can give her. She will want to rid herself of me, and isolate you, but at the same time she must see to it that no harm comes to you. Alone, you will find it almost impossible to resist her. With our combined forces we may be able to repel her, and even find a way to put her apparent immortality to the test.’

  ‘I am glad to have you at my side,’ said Taita.

  Demeter did not respond at once. He studied Taita with a strange new expression. At last he asked quietly, ‘You feel no sense of dread, no premonition of disaster?’

  ‘No. I believe that you and I can succeed,’ Taita told him.

  ‘You have considered my solemn warnings. You understand the powers against which we will pit ourselves. Yet you do not hesitate. You entertain no doubts — you, who are the wisest of men. How can you explain this?’

  ‘I know it is inevitable. I must face her with boldness and good heart.’

  ‘Taita, search the innermost recesses of your soul. Do you detect in yourself a sense of elation? When last did you feel so vigorous, so vital?’

  Taita looked thoughtful, but did not answer.

  ‘Taita, you must be entirely truthful with yourself. Do you feel like a warrior marching to a battle you may not survive? Or do you find in your breast another unwarranted emotion? Do you feel reckless of all consequences, like a young swain hurrying to a lovers’ tryst?’

  Taita remained silent but his mien changed: the light flush of his cheeks subsided and his eyes became sober. ‘I am not afraid,’ he said at last.

  ‘Tell me truly. Your mind swarms with prurient images, and unconscionable yearnings, does it not?’ Taita covered his eyes and clenched his jaw. Demeter went on remorselessly: ‘She has already infected you with her evil. She has begun to bind you with her spells and temptations. She will twist your judgement. Soon you will begin to doubt that she is evil. She will seem t
o you fine, noble and as virtuous as any woman who ever lived. Soon it will seem that I am the evil one, who has poisoned your mind against her. When that happens she will have divided us and I will be destroyed. You will surrender yourself to her freely and willingly. She will have triumphed over both of us.’

  Taita shook his whole body, as though to rid himself of a swarm of poisonous insects. ‘Forgive me, Demeter!’ he cried. ‘Now that you warn me of what she is doing, I can feel the enervating weakness welling within me. I was losing control of judgement and reason. What you say is true. I find myself haunted by strange longings. Great Horus, shield me.’ Taita groaned. ‘I never thought to know such agony again. I thought myself long past the torments of desire.’

  ‘The contrary emotions that assail you spring not from your wisdom and reason. They are an infection of the spirit, a poisoned arrow shot from the bow of the great witch. I was once harassed by her in the same manner. You can see the state to which I have been reduced. However, I have learnt how to survive.’

  ‘Teach me. Help me to withstand her, Demeter.’

  ‘I have unwittingly led Eos to you. I believed I had eluded her, but she has used me as a hunting hound to lead her to you, her next victim. But now we must stand together, as one. That is the only way we can hope to withstand her onslaughts. However, before all else, we must leave Gallala. We cannot rest long in one place. If she is uncertain of our exact whereabouts, it will be more difficult for her to focus her powers upon us. Between us we must weave a perpetual screen of concealment to cover our movements.’

  ‘Meren!’ Taita called urgently. He was swiftly at his master’s side.

  ‘How soon can we be ready to leave Gallala?’

  ‘I will bring the horses with all haste. But where are we going, Master?’

  ‘Thebes and Karnak,’ Taita replied, and glanced at Demeter.

  He nodded agreement. ‘We must muster all support from every source, temporal as well as spiritual.’

  ‘Pharaoh is the chosen of the gods, and the most powerful of men,’ Taita agreed.