The Quest

by Wilbur Smith

  Now I understand the urges that govern all natural men. I have become one of them. This thing that I have been given is the beloved enemy, a beast with two faces. If I can control it, it will bring me all the joy and delights that Lusulu spoke of. If it controls me, it will destroy me as surely as Eos plans to do.

  When he returned to the library later that morning, he found it difficult at first to concentrate on the scroll that he unrolled on the low worktable in front of him. He was very much aware of a glow in the pit of his belly, and the presence under the skirts of his tunic.

  It is as though another person has come to share my life, a spoilt brat who endlessly demands attention. He felt an indulgent proprietary affection for it. This is going to be a contest, a trial of wills to decide which of us is in command, he thought. But a mind like his, which had been honed to such perfection that it could suppress high levels of pain, an intelligence that had been trained to assimilate vast quantities of information, was able to deal with this much lesser distraction. He returned his full attention to the scroll. Soon he was so absorbed in it that he was only vaguely aware of his immediate surroundings.

  The atmosphere in the library was quiet and studious. Although patrons were sitting at worktables in the adjoining rooms, he had this one to himself. It was as if the others had been warned to keep at a respectful distance. Occasionally the librarians passed through the room in which he sat, carrying baskets of scrolls to replace them on the shelves.

  Taita took little notice of them. He heard the grille that barred the forbidden room being opened, and glanced up in time to see a librarian going through the open gate, a woman of middle age and unremarkable appearance. He thought nothing of it and went on with his reading. A little later he heard the grille open again. The same woman came out and locked it behind her. She walked quietly down the room, then paused unexpectedly beside Taita’s table. He looked up enquiringly. She laid a scroll on the table top. ‘You are mistaken, I fear,’ Taita told her.

  ‘I did not ask for this.’

  ‘You should have,’ said the woman, so softly that he could barely catch the words. She extended the little finger of her right hand, then touched her lower lip with it.

  Taita started. It was the recognition signal that Colonel That had shown him. The woman was one of his people. Without another word she walked on, leaving the scroll on his table. Taita wanted to call after her, but restrained himself and watched her leave the room. He went on reading his own scroll until he was certain that he was alone and unobserved, then rolled it up and set it aside. In its place he opened the one that the librarian had brought him. It was untitled and the author was not named. Then he recognized the hand that had formed the unusually small and artistically drawn hieroglyphics.: ‘Dr. Rei,’ he whispered, and read on quickly. The subject that she was addressing was the replacement of human body parts by the process of seeding and grafting. His eyes skipped down the sheet of papyrus. He was intimately familiar with everything that Rei had written: her coverage of the subject was impressively detailed and lucid, but he found nothing new until he was almost half-way through the scroll. Then Rei began to describe how the seedings were harvested and prepared for application to the wound site. The chapter was headed: ‘Selecting and cultivating the seedings’. As his eye ran on, the enormity of what she was so coldly enumerating crashed down on him like an avalanche. His mind numb with shock, he went back to the beginning of the chapter and reread it, this time very slowly, returning time and again to those sections that were beyond rational belief.

  The donor should be young and healthy. She should have demonstrated at least five menstrual periods. Neither she nor her immediate family should have any history of serious disease. Her appearance should be pleasing. For reasons of management she should be obedient and tractable. If any difficulty is encountered in this area, the use of calming drugs is recommended. They should be administered with care so as not to contaminate the end product. There is a list of recommended drugs in the appendix at the end of this thesis. Diet is also important. It should be low in red meat and milk products, which heat the blood.

  There was much more in this vein. Then he reached the next chapter, headed simply ‘Breeding’.

  As with the donor, the impregnators should be young and healthy, without defect or blemish. Under the present system they are usually selected as a reward for some service to the state. Often this is for military accomplishment. Care must be exercised to prevent any establishing emotional ties with the donor. They should be rotated at brief intervals. As soon as the donor’s pregnancy is confirmed she must be denied any further contact with her impregnator.

  Taita looked up sightlessly at the shelf of tablets directly in front of him. He remembered the stark terror of little Sidudu. He recalled vividly her pathetic plea: ‘Please, Magus! I beg you! Please help me! If I don’t rid myself of the baby they will kill me. I don’t want to die for Onka’s bastard.’

  Sidudu the runaway had been one of the donors. Not a wife or mother, but a donor. Onka was one of her impregnators. Not her husband, lover or mate, but her impregnator. Taita’s horror mounted steadily, but he forced himself to read on. The next section was headed ‘Harvesting’.

  Some phrases seemed to leap at him from the text.

  The harvesting must take place between the twentieth and twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.

  The foetus must be removed intact and entire from the womb.

  Natural birth should not be allowed to take place as this has proved to be detrimental to the quality of the seedings.

  As the chance of the donor surviving after the removal of the foetus is remote, her life should be terminated immediately. The surgeon should usually take measures to prevent unnecessary suffering. The preferred method is to place the donor under restraint. Her limbs are pinioned and she is gagged to prevent her screams alarming the other donors. The foetus is then removed swiftly by frontal section of the abdomen. Immediately this has been carried out the donor’s life should be terminated by strangulation. The ligature is kept in place until the heart has stopped beating and her flesh has cooled.

  Taita hurried on to the next chapter, entitled ‘The foetus’. His heart was beating so rapidly that he could hear it resonating in his eardrums.

  The sex of the foetus appears to be unimportant, although it seems logical and desirable that it should be the same as that of the recipient. The foetus should be healthy and well formed with no detectable deformity or defect. If it does not conform to these criteria it should be discarded. For these reasons it is advisable to have more than one donor available. If the area to be grafted is extensive there should be a choice of at least three donors available. Five would be a more desirable number.

  Taita rocked back. Three donors. He remembered the three girls in the waterfall on the day of their first arrival. They had been brought as sacrificial lambs to provide a new eye for Meren. Five donors. He remembered the five girls whom Onka had been bringing up the mountain when they met him on the pathway. Had they all died of strangulation in the approved manner? Had it been one of them he had heard weeping in the night? Had she known what was about to happen to her and the babe in her womb? Was that why she had wept? He jumped up from the table, rushed out of the building and into the forest. As soon as he was hidden among the trees he doubled over and retched painfully, vomiting his shame and guilt. He leant against the trunk of one of the trees and stared down at the bulge beneath his tunic.

  ‘Is this the reason why those innocents were slaughtered?’ He drew the small knife from the sheath on his girdle. ‘I will hack it off and force it down Hannah’s throat. I will choke her with it!’ he raged. ‘It is a poisonous gift that will bring me only guilt and torment.’

  His hand was shaking so violently that the knife slipped from his fingers. He covered his eyes with both hands. ‘I hate it — I hate myself!’ he whispered. His mind was filled with violent and confused images. He remembered the frenzied feasting of the crocodiles
in the azure lake.

  He heard the weeping of women and the wailing of infants, the sounds of sorrow and despair.

  Then the confusion cleared and he heard again the voice of Demeter the savant: This Eos is the minion of the Lie. She is the consummate impostor, the usurper, the deceiver, the thief, the devourer of infants.

  ‘She is the devourer of infants,’ he repeated. ‘She is the one who orders and directs these atrocities. I must turn my hatred for myself upon her. She is the one I truly hate. She is the one I have come to destroy. Perhaps by grafting this thing upon me she has unwittingly given me the instrument of her own destruction.’ He lifted his hands from his eyes and stared at them. They were no longer trembling.

  ‘Screw up your courage and resolve, Taita of Gallala,’ he whispered.

  ‘The skirmishing is over. The battle royal is about to begin.’

  He left the forest and made his way back to the library to retrieve Dr. Rei’s scroll. He knew he must read and remember every detail. He must know how they desecrated the bodies of the little ones to create the vile seedings. He must make sure that the sacrifice of the infants was never forgotten. He went to the worktable where he had left the scroll, but it was gone.

  By the time he reached his own rooms in the sanatorium the sun had gone behind the crater wall. The servants had lit oil lamps, and the bowl that contained his evening meal was warming over the glowing charcoal in the copper brazier. After he had eaten sparingly, then brewed and drunk a bowl of the coffee grown by Dr. Assem, he settled himself cross-legged on the sleeping mat and composed himself for meditation. This was his nightly routine, and the watcher at the hidden peep-hole would find nothing unusual in it.

  At last he doused the oil lamp and the room was plunged into darkness. Within a short time the aura of the man behind the peep-hole faded as he left his station for the night. Taita waited a little longer, then relit the lamp, but turned down the wick until it was only a soft glow.

  He held the Periapt in his cupped hands and concentrated on the mental image of Lostris, who had become Fenn. He opened the locket and took out the locks of her hair, the old and the new. His love for her was the central redoubt upon which his defences against Eos hinged. Holding the curls to his lips he affirmed that love.

  ‘Shield me, my love,’ he prayed. ‘Give me strength.’ He felt the power that flowed from the soft hair warm his soul, then laid it back in the locket, and took out the fragment of red stone they had removed from Meren’s eye. He placed it in the palm of his hand and concentrated upon it.

  ‘It is cold and hard,’ he whispered, ‘as is my hatred of Eos.’ Love was the shield, hatred the sword. He affirmed both. Then he placed the stone in the locket with the hair and hung the Periapt round his neck. He blew out the lamp and lay down, but sleep would not come.

  Disjointed memories of Fenn haunted him. He remembered her laughing and crying. He remembered her smiling and teasing. He remembered her serious expression as she studied some problem he had set for her. He remembered her body lying warm and soft beside him in the night, the gentle sigh of her breathing and the beat of her heart against his.

  I must see her once more. It may be the last time. He sat up on his mat. I dare not cast for her, but I can overlook her. These two astral manoeuvres were similar but in essence very different. To cast was to shout to her across the ether, when an unwelcome listener might detect the disturbance. To overlook was to spy upon her secretly, like the watcher at the peep-hole. Only a savant and seer, like Eos, might be able to detect it, as he had detected the watcher. However, he had refrained from any astral activity for so long now that the witch might no longer be on the alert.

  I must see Fenn. I must take the chance.

  He held the Periapt in his right hand. The locks of hair were part of Fenn and would guide him to her. He pressed the Periapt to his forehead and closed his eyes. He began to rock from side to side. The locket in his right hand seemed to take on some strange life of its own. Taita felt it pulsing softly in rhythm to his own heartbeat. He opened his mind and let the currents of existence enter freely, swirling round him like a great river. His spirit broke free of his body and he soared aloft as though he were borne on the wings of a gigantic bird. Far below, he saw fleeting, confused images of the forests and plains. He saw what looked like an army on the march, but as he drew closer he saw it was a slow-moving column of refugees, hundreds of men, women and children trudging along a dusty road, or packed into cumbersome ox-carts. There were soldiers with them, and men on horseback. But Fenn was not among the multitude.

  He moved on, his spirit soul ranging wide, holding the amulet as his lodestone, searching until the tiny cluster of buildings at Mutangi appeared in the distance ahead. As he drew closer, he realized with mounting alarm that the village was in ruins, blackened and charred.

  The astral memory of a massacre hung like fog over the village. He sifted through the traces but, with surging relief, found that neither Fenn nor any others of his band were among the dead. They must have escaped from Mutangi before it had been destroyed.

  He let his spirit soul range wider until he detected a pale glimmer of her presence in the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon, far to the west of the village. He followed the gleam and at last hovered above a narrow valley, hidden in the forests that covered the lower slopes of the mountains.

  She is down there. He searched closer until he discovered a picket of horses. Windsmoke was among them, and so was Whirlwind. Just beyond the horses, firelight glowed from the narrow entrance to a cave. Nakonto sat above the entrance with Imbali beside him. Taita allowed his spirit soul to drift inside.

  There she is. He picked out the form of Fenn stretched on a sleeping mat beside the small fire. Sidudu lay on one side of her, Meren beside Sidudu, then Hilto. Taita was so close to Fenn that he could hear her breathing. He saw that she had laid out her weapons close at hand. All the other members of the small party were also fully armed. Fenn was lying on her back. She wore only a linen loincloth and was bare to the waist. He gazed upon her tenderly. Since last he had seen her, her body had become even more womanly. Her breasts were larger and rounder, the nipples still tiny, but alert and darker pink now. The last vestiges of puppy fat had melted from her belly. The hollows and swells of her flesh were shadowed and highlighted by the low flames of the fire. In repose her countenance was lovely beyond his fondest memories. Taita realized with astonishment that she must now be at least sixteen. The years he had spent with her had passed so quickly.

  The pattern of her breathing changed and slowly she opened her eyes.

  They were green in the glow from the hearth fire but darkened as she sensed his presence. She raised herself on one elbow, and he could feel her making ready to cast for him. They were close to the Cloud Gardens.

  He must stop her before she betrayed her position to the hostile thing up there on the mountain. He let his spirit sign appear in the air before her eyes. She started up as she realized he was watching her. She stared directly at the sign and he commanded her to remain silent. She smiled and nodded.

  She formed her own spirit sign in reply to his, the delicate tracing of the water-lily bloom entwined with his falcon in a lover’s embrace. He stayed with her a moment more. The contact had been fleeting, but to tarry longer might be deadly. He placed a single last message in her mind: ‘I will return to you soon, very soon.’ Then he began to withdraw.

  She felt him going and the smile died on her lips. She held out a hand as if to hold him back, but he dared not stay.

  With a start he jerked back into his own body, and found himself sitting cross-legged on the sleeping mat in his room at the Cloud Gardens. The sorrow of parting from her, after so brief a contact, was a heavy weight on him.

  Over the months that followed he wrestled with his new flesh.

  Because he had always been a horseman, he treated it as if it were an unbroken colt, bending it to his will by force and persuasion. Since his youth he had made many mo
re arduous demands upon his body than the one he was making now. He schooled and disciplined himself mercilessly. First he practised breathing techniques, which gave him extraordinary stamina and powers of concentration.

  Then he was ready to master his newly grown parts. Within a short time he was able, without manual stimulation, to remain fully tumescent from dusk to dawn. He schooled himself until he was able to withhold his seed indefinitely or to spend it at the precise moment of his choosing.

  Demeter had described what he had experienced when Eos had had him in her power and their ‘infernal coupling’. Taita knew that he would soon be the victim of her carnal invasion, and if he were to survive he must learn to resist. All his preparations for the struggle seemed futile.

  He was matching himself against one of the most voracious predators of the ages, yet he was a virgin.

  I need a woman to help me arm myself, he decided. Preferably one who is vastly experienced.

  Since their first meeting, he had seen Dr. Lusulu on more than one occasion in the library. Like him, she seemed to spend much of her spare time in study. They had exchanged brief salutations, but although she seemed ready to take their friendship further, he had not encouraged it.

  Now he looked out for her and one morning he came across her, sitting at a worktable in one of the library rooms.

  ‘The peace of the goddess upon you,’ he greeted her quietly. He had heard Hannah and Rei use the same phrase. Lusulu looked up and smiled warmly. Her aura flared with fiery zigzag lines, her colour rose and her eyes glowed. When she was aroused, she was a handsome woman.

  ‘Peace on you, my lord,’ she replied. ‘I am much taken by the new cut of your beard. It suits you most admirably.’ They spoke for a few minutes, then Taita took his leave and went to his own table. He did not look in her direction again until much later when he heard her roll the scrolls she was studying and stand up. Her sandals slapped lightly on the stone floor as she crossed the room. Now he glanced up and their eyes met.