The Quest

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Now we must find the surviving horses,’ Meren shouted. ‘They cannot have slaughtered and eaten them all. Search there first.’ He pointed into the dark forest from which they seen the butchers drag Starling to the slaughter. Hilto took his troop with him and rode into the dark. Suddenly a horse whinnied.

  ‘They are here!’ Hilto shouted happily. ‘Bring torches!’

  The men tore thatch from the roofs of the huts and made crude torches with it, lit them and followed Hilto into the forest. Leaving five men to guard the captured women and children, Meren and Taita followed the torch-bearers. Ahead, Hilto and his men called directions, until in the thickening light they made out the herd of stolen animals.

  Taita and Meren dismounted and ran to them. ‘How many are left?’

  Meren asked urgently.

  ‘Eleven only. We have lost six to the jackals,’ Hilto replied. The Luo had tied them all to the same tree on cruelly short ropes. They could not even stretch their necks to the ground.

  ‘They have not been allowed to graze or drink,’ Hilto shouted indignantly. ‘What kind of beasts are these people?’

  ‘Free them,’ Meren ordered. Three troopers dismounted and ran to obey. But the horses were so crowded together that they had to push between them.

  Suddenly a man bellowed with outrage and pain. ‘Beware! One of the Luo is hiding here. He has a spear and has wounded me.’

  Suddenly there were the sounds of a scuffle, followed by a high-pitched childish scream from among the horses’ legs.

  ‘Catch him! Don’t let him get away.’

  ‘What is happening there?’ Meren demanded.

  ‘A little savage is hiding here. He is the one who speared me.’

  At that a child darted out from among the horses, carrying a light assegai. A trooper tried to grab him but the child stabbed at him, and vanished into the darkness in the direction of the village. Taita had only a brief glimpse of him before he was gone, but he sensed something different about him. The Luo, even the children, were stocky and bowlegged, but this one was as slender as a papyrus stem, and his legs were elegantly straight. He ran with the grace of a frightened gazelle. Abruptly Taita realized that beneath the white clay and tribal designs, the child was female, and he was struck by an intense sensation of déjà vu: ‘I swear to all the gods I have seen her before,’ he murmured to himself.

  ‘When I catch the little swine, I’ll kill him slowly!’ the wounded trooper shouted, as he came out from among the horses whence he had flushed the child. There was a spear wound in his forearm, and blood dripped from his fingertips.

  ‘No!’ Taita shouted urgently. ‘It is a girl. I want her taken alive. She has run back towards the village. Surround the area and search the huts again. She will have gone to ground in one.’

  Leaving a few men to deal with the recovered horses, they galloped back to the village. Meren threw a cordon round the huts, and Taita questioned Nakonto and Nontu, who were guarding the women and their children. ‘Did you see a child run this way? About this height and covered, like the rest of them, with white clay?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Apart from these,’ Nakonto indicated the wailing captives, ‘we have seen no one.’

  ‘She can’t have gone far,’ Meren assured Taita. ‘We have the village surrounded. She cannot escape. We will find her.’ He sent Habari’s platoon in to carry out a hut-by-hut search. When he came back to Taita he asked, ‘Why is the murderous brat important to you, Magus?’

  ‘I am not certain, but I think she is not one of the Luo. She is different. She might even be Egyptian.’

  ‘I doubt that, Magus. She is a savage. Naked and covered with paint.’

  ‘Catch her,’ Taita snapped.

  Meren knew that tone, and hurried to take command of the search.

  The men went slowly and cautiously, none wanting to risk a spear thrust in his belly. By the time they were half-way through the village, dawn was breaking over the forest. Taita was troubled and restless. Something gnawed at him, like a rat in the granary of his memory. There was something he must remember.

  The dawn breeze veered into the south, wafting to him the stench of half-rotten fish from the smoking racks. He moved away to avoid it and the memory he was seeking rushed in.

  Where else would you search for a moon fish? You will find me hiding among the other fishes. It was the voice of Fenn, speaking through the mouth of the stone image of the goddess. Was the child they were pursuing a soul caught up in the wheel of creation? The reincarnation of someone who had lived long ago?

  ‘She promised to return,’ he said aloud. ‘Is it possible - or does my own longing delude me?’ And then he answered himself: ‘There are things that surpass the wildest imagining of mankind. Nothing is impossible.’

  Taita glanced around swiftly to make certain that nobody was watching him, then moved casually to the edge of the village and walked to the smoking racks. As soon as he was out of sight his attitude changed.

  He stood like a dog testing the air for the scent of its quarry. His nerves jumped. She was very close, her presence almost palpable. Holding his staff at the ready to fend off a stroke from her assegai he moved forward. Every few paces he went down on one knee to try to see under or between the racks on which the layers of fish were packed densely together. At intervals bundles of firewood and drifting clouds of smoke obstructed his view. He had to circle each wood-pile as he came to it to make certain she was not hiding behind one, which slowed his progress.

  By now the rays of the early sun were flooding the village. Then as he crept round another wood-pile he heard a stealthy movement ahead. He peered round the corner. Nobody was there. He glanced at the ground and saw the prints of her small bare feet in the grey ash. She was aware that she was being stalked, moving just ahead of him, darting from one wood-pile to the next.

  ‘There is no sign of the brat. She is not here,’ he called, to an imaginary companion, and started back towards the village. He went noisily, tapping the racks with his staff, then doubled back in a wide circle, moving swiftly and silently.

  He reached a position close to where he had last seen her footprints, and squatted behind a wood-pile to wait for her. He was alert for any movement or the faintest sound. Now that she had lost sight of him, she would become nervous and change her position again. He threw a spell of concealment round himself. Then, from behind the screen, he reached out for her, searching the ether.

  ‘Ah!’ he murmured, as he descried her. She was very close, but not moving. He sensed her fear and uncertainty: she did not know where he was. He saw that she was cowering under one of the wood-piles. Now he focused all his power on her, sending out impulses to lure her towards him.

  ‘Magus! Where are you?’ Meren called, from the direction of the village. When he received no answer, his voice rose urgently. ‘Magus, do you hear me?’ Then he was coming towards where Taita waited.

  That’s right, Taita encouraged him silently. Keep coming. You will force her to move. Ah! There she goes.

  The girl was moving again. She had crawled out from under the wood and was scurrying in his direction, running ahead of Meren.

  Come, little one. He tightened the tentacles of the spell round her.

  Come to me.

  ‘Magus!’ Meren called again, much closer. The girl appeared in front of Taita, at the corner of the wood-pile. She paused to glance back towards where Meren’s voice had come from and he saw that she was quivering with terror. She looked in his direction. Her face was a hideous mask of clay, her hair built up in a mass on top of her head with a mixture of what looked like clay and acacia gum. Her eyes were so bloodshot from the smoke of the fires and the dye that had run from her hair that he could not make out the colour of the irises. Her teeth had been deliberately blackened. All of the Luo women they had captured had blackened their teeth and wore the same ugly hairstyle. Clearly, it was their primitive idea of beauty.

  As she stood there, terrified, h
er head cocked, Taita opened his Inner Eye. Her aura sprang up around her, enveloping her in a sublimely magnificent cloak of living light, just as he had seen it in his dreams. Beneath the grotesque coating of clay and filth, this sorry, bedraggled creature was Fenn. She had returned to him, as she had promised. The emotion that swept over him was more powerful than any he had experienced in his long life. It surpassed in intensity the grief that had overwhelmed him at her death, which had ended her other life, when he had removed her viscera and wrapped her corpse in the linen bandages and laid her in the stone sarcophagus.

  Now she was restored to him at the same age she had been when she had first been placed in his care all those bleak, lonely years ago. All that grief and sorrow was paid off with this single coin of joy, to which every cord, muscle and nerve in his body resonated. The cloak of concealment he had spun round himself was disturbed by it. The child picked it up at once. She turned and stared in his direction, her bloodshot eyes enormous in the grotesque mask. She sensed his presence, but could not see him. He realized that she possessed the power. As yet her psychic gift was undeveloped and untutored, but he knew that, under his loving instruction, it would in time match his own. The rising sun shot a beam into her eyes, and their true lustre glowed in the deepest shade of green. Fenn green.

  Meren was running in their direction, his footsteps pounding on the hard earth. There was only one escape route open to Fenn: down the narrow passage between the wood-pile and the smoking racks. She ran straight into Taita’s arms. As they closed round her she shrieked in shock and renewed terror and dropped the assegai. Although she struggled and clawed at his eyes, Taita held her close to his chest. Her fingernails were long and ragged, black dirt was caked under them and they raised bloody welts across his forehead and cheeks. Still holding her with one arm circled round her waist, he took her arms one at a time and trapped them between their bodies. Now that she was helpless he leant close to her face and stared into her eyes, taking control of her. Instinctively she knew what he was doing and pushed forward to meet him, but just in time he divined her intention and jerked his head back sharply. Her sharp black teeth snapped shut a finger’s breadth from the tip of his nose.

  ‘Light of my eyes, I still have need of this old nose of mine. If you are hungry I will provide tastier fare.’ He smiled.

  At that moment Meren burst into sight, his expression of consternation and alarm. ‘Magus!’ he shouted. ‘Do not let that filthy vixen near you. She has already tried to murder one man and now she will do you some grave injury.’ He rushed towards them. ‘Let me get my hands on her. I will take her to the swamp and drown her in the nearest pool.’

  ‘Back, Meren!’ Taita did not raise his voice. ‘Don’t touch her.’

  Meren checked. ‘But, Magus, she will—’

  ‘She will do no such thing. Go, Meren. Leave us alone. We love each other. I just have to convince her of it.’

  Still Meren hesitated.

  ‘Go, I say. At once.’

  Meren went.

  Taita looked into Fenn’s eyes and smiled reassuringly. ‘Fenn, I have waited so long for you.’ He was using the voice of power, but she resisted him fiercely. She spat, and bubbles of her saliva ran down his face to drip off his chin.

  ‘You were not so strong when we first met. You were sullen and rebellious, oh, yes, indeed you were, but not as strong as you are now.’

  He chuckled and she blinked. No Luo had ever emitted such a sound.

  A spark of interest flashed for an instant in the green depths of her eyes, then she glared at him.

  ‘You were so beautiful then, but look at you now.’ His voice still carried the hypnotic inflection. ‘You are a vision from the void.’ He made it sound like an endearment. ‘Your hair is filthy.’ He stroked it but she tried to duck. It was not possible to guess the true colour of her hair under the thick clay and acacia gum, but he kept his voice calm and his smile reassuring as a stream of red lice crawled out of the clotted mass and climbed up his arm.

  ‘By Ahura Maasda and the Truth, you stink worse than any polecat,’

  he told her. ‘It will take a month of scrubbing to get down to your skin.’

  She wriggled and squirmed to be free. ‘Now you are rubbing your filth on to me. I shall be in no better case than you by the time I have quietened you. We shall have to camp away from Meren and his troopers. Even rough soldiers will not withstand our combined odour.’ He kept speaking: the sense of the words was unimportant, but the tone and inflection gradually lulled her. He felt her begin to relax, and the hostile light in her green eyes faded. She blinked almost sleepily, and he relaxed his grip.

  At that she shook herself awake, and the malevolence flared again. He had to hold her hard as she renewed her struggles.

  ‘You are indomitable.’ He let the admiration and approval sound in his voice. ‘You have the heart of a warrior, and the determination of the goddess you once were.’ This time she quietened more readily. The migrating lice nipped Taita under his tunic, but he ignored them and continued to talk.

  ‘Let me tell you about yourself, Fenn. You were once my ward, as you have become again. You were the daughter of an evil man who cared little for you. To this day I cannot fathom how he sired a lovely tiling like you. You were beautiful, Fenn, beyond the telling of it. Under the fleas, lice and dirt I know you are still.’ Slowly her resistance faded as he related her childhood to her in loving detail, and recounted some of the funny things she had done or said. When he laughed now she looked at him with interest rather than anger. She began to blink again.

  This time when he relaxed his grip she did not attempt to escape but sat quietly in his lap. The sun had reached its zenith when at last he stood up. She looked up at him solemnly and he reached down to take her hand. She did not pull away.

  ‘Come along, now. If you are not hungry, I certainly am.’ He set off towards the village and she trotted at his side.

  Meren had set up a temporary camp well away from the village: in the sun the Luo corpses would soon begin to rot and the area become uninhabitable. As they approached the camp, he hurried to meet them.

  ‘I am glad to see you, Magus. I thought the vixen had done away with you,’ he shouted. Fenn hid behind Taita and clung to one of his legs as Meren came up to them. ‘By the wounded eye of Horus, she stinks. I can smell her from here.’

  ‘Lower your voice,’ Taita ordered. ‘Ignore her. Do not look at her like that or you will undo my hard work in an instant. Go ahead of us to the camp and warn your men not to stare at her or alarm her. Have food ready for her.’

  ‘So now we have a wild filly to break?’ Meren shook his head ruefully.

  ‘Oh, no! You underestimate the task ahead of us,’ Taita assured him.

  Taita and Fenn sat in the shade under the great sausage tree in the centre of the camp, and one of the men brought food. Fenn tasted the dhurra cake gingerly, but after the first mouthfuls she ate ravenously. Then she turned her attention to the cold slices of wild duck breast. She stuffed them into her mouth so rapidly that she choked and coughed.

  ‘I can see you need instruction in manners before you are fit to dine with Pharaoh,’ Taita observed, as she gnawed the duck bones with her black teeth. When she had stuffed her skinny belly to bursting point, he called for Nakonto. Like most of the men, he had been watching from a discreet distance, but he came to squat in front of them. Fenn huddled closer to Taita and stared at the huge black man with renewed suspicion.

  ‘Ask the child her name. I am sure she speaks and understands Luo,’

  Taita instructed, and Nakonto spoke a few words to her. It was clear that she understood him, but her face set and her mouth closed in a hard, stubborn line. He tried for a while longer to induce her to answer him, but Fenn would not budge.

  ‘Fetch one of the captured Luo women,’ Taita told Nakonto. He left them briefly, and when he returned he was dragging with him a wailing old woman from the village.

  ‘Ask her if she knows thi
s girl,’ Taita said.

  Nakonto had to speak sharply to the woman before she would cease whining and weeping, but at last she made a lengthy statement. ‘She knows her,’ Nakonto translated. ‘She says she is a devil. They drove her out of the village, but she lived close by in the forest, and she has brought bad witchcraft on the tribe. They believe it was she who sent you to kill their men.’

  ‘So the child is not of her tribe?’ Taita asked.

  The old woman’s reply was a vehement denial. ‘No, she is a stranger.

  One of the women found her floating in the swamps in a tiny boat made of reeds.’ Nakonto described a papyrus cradle such as Egyptian peasant women wove for their infants. ‘She brought the devil to the village and named her Khona Manzi, which means “the one from the waters”. The woman was childless and for that reason had been rejected by her husband. She took this strange creature as her own. She dressed her ugly hair in the decent fashion, and covered her fish-white body with clay and ash to protect her from the sun and the insects, as is fitting and customary. She fed her and cared for her.’ The old woman looked at Fenn with evident distaste.

  ‘Where is this woman?’ Taita asked.

  ‘She has died of some strange disease that the devil child brought down upon her with witchcraft.’

  ‘Is that why you drove her out of the village?’

  ‘Not for that reason alone. She brought many other afflictions upon us. In the same season that she came into the village the waters failed and the swamp, which is our home, began to shrivel and die. It was the devil child’s work.’ The old woman gobbled with outrage. ‘She brought sickness upon us that blinded our children, made many of our young women barren and our men impotent.’

  ‘All this from one child?’ Taita asked.

  Nakonto translated the woman’s reply. ‘She is no ordinary child She is a devil and a sorcerer. She led our enemies to our secret places, and caused them to triumph over us, just as she has now brought you to attack us.’

  Then Fenn spoke for the first time. Her voice was filled with bitter anger.