The Quest

by Wilbur Smith

  Nakonto came back to report to Taita. ‘These people are related to the Ootasa. Their languages are so similar that we understand each other well.’

  By now the villagers were so emboldened that they came trooping back to examine the men, their weapons and horses. The unmarried girls wore only a string of beads round their waists, and almost immediately established friendships with the troopers who had no Shilluk camp followers.

  The married women brought calabashes of sour native beer to Taita, Meren and the captains, while the elder, whose name was Poto, sat proudly beside Taita and readily answered the questions Nakonto put to him.

  ‘I know the southlands well,’ he boasted. ‘My father and his father before him lived on the great lakes, which were full of fish, some so large it needed four men to lift them. Their girth was thus…’ he made a circle with his skinny old arms ‘. .. and their length was thus…“ he jumped up and drew a line with his big toe in the dust, then took four full paces and drew a second line ‘. .. from there to there!’

  ‘Fishermen are the same everywhere,’ Taita remarked, but he made appropriate sounds of amazement. Poto seemed neglected by his tribe and, for once, had the attention of all. He was enjoying the company of his new friends. ‘Why did your tribe leave such good fishing grounds?’ Taita asked.

  ‘Another stronger and more numerous people came from the east and we could not resist them. They drove us northwards along the river to this place.’ He looked downcast for a moment, then brightened again.

  ‘When I was initiated and circumcised, my father took me to the great waterfall that is the birthplace of this, our river.’ He indicated the Nile on whose banks they sat. ‘The waterfall is called Tungula Madzi, the Waters that Thunder.’

  ‘Why such an unusual name?’

  ‘The roar of the falling waters and the mighty rocks they bring crashing down can be heard from a distance of two days’ march. The spray stands above the falls like a silver cloud in the sky.’

  ‘You have looked upon such a sight as this?’ Taita asked, and turned his Inner Eye upon the ancient.

  ‘With these very eyes!’ Poto cried. His aura burnt brightly, like the flame of an oil lamp before it dies from lack of fuel. He was telling the truth.

  ‘You believe that this is the birthplace of the river?’ Taita’s pulse raced with excitement.

  ‘On the ghost of my father, the falls are where the river rises.’

  ‘What lies above and beyond them?’

  ‘Water,’ said Poto flatly. ‘Nothing but water. Water to the ends of the world.’

  ‘You saw no land beyond the falls?’™ ‘Nothing but water.’

  ‘You did not see a burning mountain that sends a cloud of smoke into the sky?‘I ‘Nothing,’ said Poto. ‘Nothing but water.’

  ‘Will you lead us to this waterfall?’ Taita asked.

  When Nakonto translated the question to him, Poto looked alarmed.

  ‘I can never return. The people thereabouts are my enemies, and they will kill me and eat me. I cannot follow the river because, as you can see, the river is cursed and dying.’

  ‘I will make you a gift of a full bag of glass beads if you come with us,’

  Taita promised. ‘You will be the richest man in all your tribe.’

  Poto did not hesitate. He had turned the colour of ashes and was trembling with terror. ‘No! Never! Not for a hundred bags of beads. If they eat me, my soul will never pass through the flames. It will become a hyena and wander for all time in the night, eating rotting carcasses and offal.’ He made as if to jump up and run, but Taita restrained him with a gentle touch, then exerted his influence to calm and reassure him. He let him drink two large swallows of beer before he spoke to him again.

  ‘Is there another who will guide us?’

  Poto shook his head vigorously. ‘They are all afraid, even more than I am.’

  They sat in silence for a while, then Poto began to fidget and shuffle his feet. Taita waited patiently for him to reach some difficult decision.

  At last he coughed, and spat a large clot of yellow mucus into the dust.

  ‘Perhaps there is somebody,’ he ventured. ‘But, no, he must be dead. He was an old man when last I saw him, and that was long ago. Even then he was older than you, revered elder.’ He bobbed his head respectfully at Taita. ‘He is among the last of our people who remain from the time that we were a tribe of consequence.’

  ‘Who is he? Where will I find him?’ Taita asked.

  ‘His name is Kalulu. I will show you where to find him.’ Again Poto began to draw with his toe in the dust. ‘If you follow the great river, which is dying, you will come at last to where it meets one of the many lakes. This is a mighty stretch of water. We call it Semliki Nianzu.’ He drew it as an elliptical flattened circle.

  ‘Is it here that we will find the waterfall that is the birthplace of the river?’ Taita demanded.

  ‘No. The river cuts through the lake like the head of a spear through the body of a fish.’ He slashed his toe through the circle. ‘Our river is the outlet, the inlet is on the far south bank of the lake.’

  ‘How will I find it?’

  ‘You will not, unless somebody like Kalulu leads you to it. He lives in the marshes, on a floating island of reeds on the lake. Near the outlet of the river.’

  ‘How will I find him?’

  ‘By searching diligently and by good fortune.’ Poto shrugged. ‘Or perhaps he will find you.’ Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, ‘Kalulu is a shaman of great mystical powers, but he has no legs.’

  When they left the village Taita gave Poto a double handful of glass beads and the old man wept. ‘You have made me rich, and my old age happy. Now I can buy two young wives to look after me.’

  The Nile flowed a little more strongly as they moved south along its bank, but they could tell from the high-water line that the level was much lower than it had been in former times.

  ‘It has shrunk twenty-fold,’ Meren calculated, and Taita agreed, even though he did not say so. Sometimes Meren had to be reminded that he was not an adept, and that some matters were better left to those qualified to deal with them.

  As they journeyed along the west bank, horses and men grew stronger with each day that passed. They were all fully recovered from the effects of the fly by the time they reached the lake, which was as Poto had described it to them. It was vast.

  ‘It must be a sea, not merely a lake,’ Meren declared, and Taita sent him to fetch a pitcher of water from it.

  ‘Now taste it, my good Meren,’ he ordered. Gingerly Meren took a sip, and let it run round his mouth. Then he drank the rest of the pitcher.

  ‘Salt sea?’ Taita smiled kindly.

  ‘Nay, Magus, sweet as honey. I was mistaken, and you were right.’

  The lake was so large that it seemed to create its own wind system.

  In the dawn the air was still and cool. What looked like smoke rose high into the air from the surface. The men discussed this animatedly.

  ‘The water is heated by a volcano,’ said one.

  ‘No,’ said another. ‘The water rises like mist. It will fall again elsewhere as rain.’

  ‘Nay, it is the fiery breath of a sea monster that lives in the waters,’

  Meren said with authority.

  In the end they looked at Taita for the truth.

  ‘Spiders,’ said Taita, which threw them into further passionate argument.

  ‘Spiders do not fly. He means flies - dragon flies.’

  ‘He toys with our credibility,’ said Meren. ‘I know him well. He loves his little jokes.’

  Two days later the wind veered and one of the cloudy up-wellings drifted over the camp. Then as it reached land it began to descend. Fenn leapt high in the air and snatched something out of it.

  ‘Spiders!’ she squealed. ‘Taita is never wrong.’ The cloud was formed by countless newly hatched spiders, so immature as to be almost transparent.

  Each had woven a gossame
r sail, which it used to catch the dawn breeze and sail aloft to be transported to some new quarter of the lake.

  As soon as the sun struck the surface the wind picked up, until by noon it was whipping the water to foaming frenzy. During the afternoon it subsided until, at sunset, all was calm and serene. Flights of flamingoes strung out along the horizon in wavy pink lines. Hippopotamuses wallowed like granite boulders, grunting and bellowing in the shallows, cavernous pink jaws gaping to threaten rivals with their long incisors. Mighty crocodiles stretched out on the sandbars, sunning themselves, holding their mouths wide open so that water birds could pick the scraps of flesh from between their stubby yellow fangs. The nights were still, with the stars reflected on the velvety black waters.

  To the west the lake was so extensive that there was no sight of land, other than a few small islands that seemed to sail like dhows on the wind-torn surface. To the south, they could just make out the far shore of the lake. There were no high mountain peaks or volcanoes, just a blue tracing of low hills.

  Poto had warned them about the ferocity of the local tribes, so they built a secure camp with branches from the thorny acacia trees that burgeoned on the shores of the lake. During the days the horses and mules grazed on the fine grasses that grew on the littoral, or waded out to feast on the water-lilies and other aquatic plants in the shallows.

  ‘When will we set out to find Kalulu, the shaman?’ Fenn demanded.

  ‘This very evening after you have had your dinner.’

  As he had promised he took her to the beach, where they gathered driftwood and built a small fire. They squatted over it and Taita took her hands in his, forming the circle of protection. ‘If Kalulu is an adept, as Poto suggested, we can cast for him across the ether,’ Taita told her.

  ‘Can you do that, Taita?’ Fenn asked, in awe.

  ‘According to Poto, he lives in the marshes very close to this place, perhaps only a few leagues distant from where we are now. He is within easy call.’

  ‘Is distance important?’ Fenn asked.

  Taita nodded. ‘We know his name. We know his physical appearance, his amputated legs. Of course, it would be easier if we knew his spirit name, or if we possessed something of his person - a hair, nail clippings, sweat, urine or dung. However, I will teach you to cast for a subject with what we have.’ Taita took a pinch of herbs from his pouch and threw them on to the fire. They flared in a cloud of pungent smoke. ‘This will drive off any evil influence that may be hovering nearby,’ he explained.

  ‘Look into the flames. If Kalulu comes you will see him there.’

  Still holding hands they began to sway in time to a soft humming that Taita made deep in his chest. When Fenn had cleared her mind as he had taught her, they conjured up the three symbols of power, and silently conjugated them. ‘Mensaar!’

  ‘Kydash!’

  ‘Ncube!’

  The ether sang round them. Taita cast into it.

  ‘Kalulu, hearken! O legless one, open thine ears!’ He repeated the invitation at intervals as the moon rose and travelled half-way towards its zenith.

  Suddenly they felt the strike. Fenn gasped at the thrill, like a discharge of static through her fingertips. She stared into the fire, and saw the outline of a face. It looked to her like that of an ancient but eternally wise ape.

  ‘Who calls?’ The fiery lips formed the question in the Tenmass. ‘Who calls on Kalulu?’

  ‘I am Taita of Gallala.’

  ‘If you are of the Truth, show me your spirit name.’ Taita allowed it to materialize as a symbol over his head: the sign of a falcon with a broken wing. It would be mortally dangerous for him to enunciate it into the ether where it might be pounced on by a malevolent entity.

  ‘I acknowledge you, brother in Truth,’ Kalulu said.

  ‘Reveal your own spirit name,’ Taita challenged him. Slowly the outline of a crouching African hare took shape above the face in the fire.

  It was the mythological wise one, Kalulu the Hare, whose head and long ears were portrayed in the disc of the full moon.

  ‘I acknowledge you, brother of the right hand. I call upon you for your help,’ said Taita.

  ‘I know where you are and I am close by. Within three days I will come to you,’ Kalulu replied.

  Fenn was enchanted by the art of casting for a person across the ether. ‘Oh, Taita, I never dreamt it was possible. Please teach me to do it.’

  ‘First you must learn your own spirit name.’

  ‘I think I know it,’ she replied. ‘You called me by it once, did you not? Or was it a dream, Taita?’

  ‘Dreams and reality often blend and become one, Fenn. What is the name you remember?’

  ‘Child of the Water,’ she replied diffidently. ‘Lostris.’

  Taita stared at her in amazement. She was unconsciously demonstrating her psychic powers as seldom before. She had managed to reach back into the other life. Excitement and elation made his breathing quicken.

  ‘Do you know the symbol of your spirit name, Fenn?’

  ‘No, I have never seen it,’ she whispered. ‘Or have I, Taita?’

  ‘Think of it,’ he instructed. ‘Hold it in the forefront of your mind!’

  She closed her eyes, and reached instinctively for the talisman that hung at her throat. ‘Do you have it in your mind?’ he asked gently.

  ‘I have it,’ she whispered, and he opened his Inner Eye. Her aura was a dazzling brilliance that cloaked her from head to foot, and the symbol of her spirit name hung over her head, etched in the same celestial fire.

  The shape of the nymphaea flower, the water-lily, he thought. It is complete. She has come into full bloom, like her spirit symbol. Even in childhood, she has become an adept of the first water. Aloud he said to her, ‘Fenn, your mind and spirit are fully prepared. You are ready to learn everything I can teach you, and perhaps more than that.’

  ‘Then teach me to cast upon the ether, and to reach you even when great distances separate us.’

  ‘We will begin at once,’ he said. ‘I already have something of yours.’

  ‘What is it? Where?’ she asked eagerly. In reply he touched the Periapt that hung round his neck. ‘Show me,’ she demanded, and he opened the locket to reveal the coil of hair it contained.

  ‘Hair,’ she said, ‘but not mine.’ She touched it with her forefinger.

  ‘This is the hair of an old lady. See? There are grey strands mixed with the gold.’

  ‘You were old when I cut it from your head,’ he agreed. ‘You were already dead. You were lying upon the embalming table, cold and stark.’

  She shuddered with delicious horror. ‘Was that in the other life?’ she asked. ‘Tell me about it. Who was I?’

  ‘It will take me a lifetime to tell it all,’ he said, ‘but let me start by saying that you were the woman I loved, even as I love you now.’ She groped for his hand, blinded by tears.

  ‘You have something of mine,’ she whispered. ‘Now I need something of yours.’ She reached up into his beard and twisted a thick strand around her finger. ‘Your beard struck me when you pursued me on the first day we met. It shines like purest silver.’ She drew the small sharp bronze dagger from the sheath on her girdle, and cut the strand close to the skin, then lifted it to her nose and smelt it, as though it were a fragrant blossom. ‘It is your smell, Taita, your very essence.’ I ‘I will make you a locket to keep it in.’

  She laughed with pleasure. ‘Yes, I would like that. But you must have the hair of the living child to go with that of the dead woman.’ She reached up, cut a lock from her head and offered it to him. He coiled it carefully and placed it in the compartment of the Periapt, on top of the lock that had lain there for more than seventy years.

  ‘Will I always be able to summon you?’ Fenn said.

  ‘Yes, and I you,’ Taita agreed, ‘but first I must teach you how.’

  Over the days that followed they practised the art. They started by sitting within sight of each other, but out of earshot.
Within hours she was able to receive the images he placed in her mind, and respond with images of her own. When they had it perfected, they turned their backs upon each other so that they were out of eye contact. Finally Taita left her in the camp and rode several leagues west along the lakeshore in the company of Meren. From there he reached her with his first attempt.

  Each time he cast, she struck more readily, and the images she presented to him were crisper and more complete. For him she wore her symbol on her forehead, and after many attempts she could change the colour of the lily to suit her fancy, from rose to lilac to scarlet.

  At night, she lay close to him, for protection, on her sleeping mat, and before she fell asleep she whispered, ‘Now we will never be parted again, for I can find you wherever you go.’

  In the dawn, before the wind came up, they went to bathe in the lake. Before they entered the water Taita cast a spell of protection to repel crocodiles and any other monsters that might lurk in the deep. Then they plunged in. Fenn swam with the lithe grace of an otter. Her naked body flashed like polished ivory as she slipped away into the depths. He never grew accustomed to how long she could stay under water and grew alarmed as he lay on the surface staring down into the green world below. After what seemed like an eternity, he saw the pale flash of her body as she came up towards him, just as she had in his dreams. Then she burst out beside him, laughing and shaking water out of her hair. At other times he did not see her returning. The first he knew of it was when she seized his ankle and tried to pull him under.

  ‘How did you learn to swim as you do?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am the child of the water.’ She laughed at him. ‘Don’t you remember? I was born to swim.’ When they emerged from the lake they found a place in the early sunlight to dry themselves. He sat behind her and braided her hair, weaving water-lily blossoms into the tresses.