The Quest

by Wilbur Smith

  She inclined her head towards the door and smiled again. He followed her out into the forest. She was walking away slowly along the path towards the sanatorium. He caught her up before she had gone another hundred yards. They chatted together, and at last she asked, ‘I often wonder about your recovery from the procedure that Dr. Hannah performed on you. Has it gone as well as it started off?’

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ he assured her. ‘Do you recall that you discussed with Dr. Hannah my ability to ejaculate?’

  He saw her aura light when he used the evocative word, and her voice was slightly hoarse as she replied, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I can assure you that it is now happening regularly. As a surgeon and a scientist, you might have some professional interest in a demonstration.’

  They kept up the pretence of being colleagues until they entered his rooms. He took a moment to cover the peep-hole in the corner with his cloak, then came back to where she stood.

  ‘I will need your assistance once again,’ he said, as he took off his tunic.

  ‘Of course,’ she agreed, and came to him readily. She reached down for him and, after a few deft strokes, she said, ‘You have grown a great deal since our first meeting.’ Then, a little later, she asked, ‘My lord, may I ask if you have ever known a woman before?’

  ‘Alas!’ He shook his head mournfully. ‘I would not know how to begin.’

  ‘Then let me instruct you.’

  Naked she was even more handsome than when she was clothed. She had wide hips, large resilient breasts and big dark nipples. When she lay on her back on his sleeping mat, spread her thighs and guided him into her he was taken off-guard by the heat and the clinging oleaginous embrace of her secret flesh. He came perilously close to spending himself before they had begun in earnest. With a huge effort he regained control of himself and his body. Now he was able to profit from all his practice and self-training. He blocked out his own sensations and concentrated on reading her aura in the way a mariner reads a chart of the oceans.

  He used it to divine her needs and wants before she became aware of them. He made her cry out and whimper. He made her screech like a condemned woman on a torture table. She spasmed and her whole body convulsed. She pleaded with him to stop, then begged him never to stop.

  ‘You are killing me,’ she sobbed at last. ‘In the holy name of the goddess, I can go on no longer.’ But he went on and on.

  She was weakening, unable to meet his thrusts. Her face was wet with tears and sweat. Dark shadows of fear fell across her eyes. ‘You are a devil,’ she whispered. ‘You are the devil himself.’

  ‘I am the devil that you, Hannah and others like you have created.’

  She was ready at last. There was no resistance left in her. He held her down, pinning her deeply. Her body and mind were open to him.

  He covered her mouth with his, forcing her lips open, then arched his back and, like a pearl diver taking a long last breath before plunging below the surface, he drew it all out, her strength, her wisdom and her knowledge, her triumphs and defeats, her fear and her deeply buried guilt. He took everything she had and left her empty on the mat. Her breathing was quick and shallow, her skin pale and translucent as wax.

  Her eyes stared ahead unblinking, but saw nothing. He sat beside her through the rest of that night, reading her memories, learning her secrets, truly coming to know her.

  The dawn light was filtering into the room when at last she stirred and rolled her head from side to side. ‘Who am I?’ she whispered weakly.

  ‘Where am I? What has happened to me? I can remember nothing.’

  ‘You are a person named Lusulu, but you have wrought great evil in your life. You were tormented by guilt. I have taken it and all else from you. But there is nothing of yours that I wish to keep. I am giving it back to you, especially the guilt. In the end it will kill you, and you so richly deserve that death.’

  As he spread her again and knelt over her, she tried to fight him off but she did not have the strength. As he entered her for the second time she screamed, but the scream burbled in her throat and did not reach her lips. When he was deep in her, he took another deep breath and strained.

  He expelled it all back into her in a single long ejaculation. After he had finished, he uncoupled from her and went to bathe himself.

  When he came back into the sleeping chamber she was pulling on her tunic. She gave him one look of stark terror, and he saw that her aura was shredded. She stumbled to the door, pulled it open and scuttled into the passage. The sound of her running feet receded.

  He felt the first twinge of pity for her, but he recalled all her heinous crimes and it fell away. Then he thought: But she has made retribution in small part by teaching me how I must deal with her mistress, the great witch.

  Day after day and week after week, he waited patiently for the invitation from Eos that he knew must come. Then, one morning, he awoke with the familiar sense of well-being and expectation.

  ‘The witch is summoning me to her lair,’ he told himself. On the terrace overlooking the lake he ate a frugal breakfast of dates and figs as he watched the sun break through the morning mist and clothe the walls of the crater with golden light. Apart from the servants he saw nobody: not Hannah, Rei, or Assem. He was relieved by this: he did not trust himself to come face to face with one of them so soon after the revelations contained in the scroll from the secret room. Nobody accosted him or attempted to restrain him when he left the building and set out for the gates of the upper gardens.

  He walked slowly, taking his time to assemble and review his forces.

  The only reliable intelligence he had about Eos was the description Demeter had given him. He was able to run over it word for word as he walked. So complete were his powers of recall that it was as if the old man was speaking to him again.

  If she is threatened she can change her appearance as a chameleon does, Demeter’s voice said in his ears, and Taita remembered the manifestations he had encountered at the grotto: the imp, the pharaoh, the gods and goddesses and his own self.

  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 wiles. The sight of her reduces even the most noble soul to the level of a beast. Taita cast his mind back to his sighting of Eos in the operating room at the sanatorium. He had not glimpsed her face through the black veil, but such was her beauty that even unseen it had flooded the room.

  Despite all my training as an adept I was not able to restrain my basest instincts. Demeter spoke again, and Taita hearkened to him. 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 world. She gave me her body. Taita heard again his tormented groans as he went on: 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.

  Will I be able to do so? Taita wondered.

  Then Demeter’s most dire warning echoed in his head: 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.

  As she has done to me. Taita reflected.

  She is omnivo
rous. Those were the words of Demeter who had known her as no living man ever could. No matter age or appearance, physical frailty or imperfection. It is not their flesh that feeds her appetites, but their souk. 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 out from their loins in her loathsome embrace.

  She leaves only a desiccated husk.

  The witch’s minions, Hannah, Rei and Assem, had regenerated Taita’s missing organs for one reason only; to enable Eos to destroy him, body, mind and soul. He crushed down the terror that threatened to rise like a tidal wave and sweep him away.

  I am ready for her, as ready as I can ever be. But will that be enough?

  The gates to the gardens were wide open, but as he stood in front of them a hush fell over the crater. The soft wind died away. A pair of bulbul shrikes that had been calling a duet to each other fell silent. The high branches of the trees froze and remained as motionless as a painting against the blue canopy of the sky. For a moment longer he listened to the silence, then he stepped through the gates.

  The earth moved under his feet. It trembled, the branches of the trees quivering in sympathy. The tremble became a harsh juddering. He heard rock groan under his feet. A section of the crater wall split away and fell with a roar into the forest below. The earth tipped under him like the deck of a ship caught in a gale. He almost lost his balance and reached out to grab one of the gate’s bars to prevent himself being cast down.

  The wind rose again, but it came from the direction of the imp’s grotto.

  It swept over the tops of the trees and swirled round him in a vortex of dead leaves. It was as cold as the hand of a corpse.

  Eos is trying to intimidate me. She is the mistress of the volcanoes.

  She commands the earthquakes and the lava rivers that flow up from hell. She is showing me how puny I am in the face of her might, he thought. Then he shouted aloud, ‘Hear me, Eos! I accept your challenge.’

  The trembling of the earth ceased, and once again the mysterious hush fell over the crater. Now the pathway lay clear and inviting before him. When at last he passed through the gap between the tall boulders he heard ahead the chortling of the waters that flowed out of the grotto.

  He pushed his way through the screen of greenery and stepped into the clearing beside the pool. All was as he remembered it. He took his customary seat on the grass with his back to the fallen tree-trunk, and waited.

  The first warning he received of her approach was an icy breeze that tickled the back of his neck, and he felt the hair rise on his forearms. He watched the opening of the grotto and saw a fine silver mist billow from it. Then a dark figure appeared through the mist, coming down the lichen covered ledges towards him with stately grace. It was the veiled woman he had last seen in Hannah’s rooms, dressed in the same voluminous, translucent robe of black silk.

  Eos stepped out of the silver mist, and he saw that her feet were bare.

  Her toes peeped out from under the hem of her robe, the the only part of her that was visible. They were wet and shining from the spring water that spilled over them, small and perfectly shaped, as though carved by a great artist from creamy ivory. Her toenails were pearly bright. Those feet were the only part of her body he had ever laid eyes on, and they were exquisitely erotic. He could not tear his gaze from them. He felt his manhood swell, and stilled it with an effort.

  If she can affect me thus with a glimpse of her toes, what chance have I of resisting her if she reveals the rest of herself?

  At last he was able to lift his eyes. He tried to see beyond her veil but it was impenetrable. Then he felt the touch of her regard as though a butterfly had landed upon his skin. She spoke, and he caught his breath.

  He had never heard a sound to match the music of her voice. It was as silvery as the chiming of crystal bells. It shivered the foundations of his soul.

  ‘I have waited through the eons for you to come to me,’ said Eos, and although he knew that she embodied the great Lie, he could not help but believe her.

  Fenn and Meren had kept Sidudu hidden for many long months after Taita had been taken away by Captain Onka to the Cloud Gardens. At first she had been so enfeebled by her ordeal that she was confused and distraught. Meren and Fenn were gentle and soon she became pathetically reliant upon them. One or other had to stay with her at all times. Slowly she rallied and her confidence began to return. At last she was able to describe her experiences and to tell them of the Temple of Love.

  ‘It is dedicated to the one true goddess,’ she explained. ‘All the temple virgins are chosen from the incomers, never the noble families. Each arriving family must offer up one of their daughters, and it brings great honour and privilege on those whose daughters are chosen. All the people in our village held a festival of praise to the goddess and dressed me in the finest robes, placed a crown of flowers on my head and took me to the temple. My father and mother went with me, laughing and weeping with joy. They gave me to the mother superior and left me there. I never saw them again.’

  ‘Who chose you for the service of the goddess?’ Fenn asked her.

  ‘They told us it was the oligarchs,’ she replied.

  ‘Tell us about the Temple of Love,’ Meren said. She was silent for a while as she thought about it. Then she went on, speaking softly and hesitantly: ‘It was very beautiful. There were many other girls when first I arrived. The priestesses were kind to us. We were given lovely clothes and delicious food. They explained that when we had proved ourselves to be worthy we would go up into the mountain of the goddess and be exalted by her.’

  ‘You were happy?’ Fenn asked.

  ‘At first I was. Of course I missed my mother and father, but each morning they gave us a delicious sherbet to drink that filled us with joy and high spirits. We laughed, sang and danced.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ Meren asked.

  She turned away her face and spoke so softly that he could hardly hear her. ‘The men came to visit us. We thought they were to be our friends. We danced with them.’ Sidudu began to weep silently. ‘I am ashamed to tell you more.’

  They were silent, and Fenn took her hand. ‘We are your true friends, Sidudu,’ she said. ‘You can speak to us. You can tell us everything.’

  The girl let out a heart-wrenching sob and threw her arms round Fenn’s neck. ‘The priestesses ordered us to have congress with the men who visited us.’

  ‘Which men were they?’ Meren asked grimly.

  ‘The first was Lord Aquer. He was horrible. After him there were others, many others, then Onka.’

  ‘You need tell us no more.’ Fenn stroked her hair.

  ‘Yes! I must! The memory is a fire inside me. I cannot keep it from you.’

  Sidudu took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Once a month a woman doctor named Hannah came to examine us. On each occasion she chose one or more of the girls. They were taken away to the mountain to be exalted by the goddess. They never returned to the temple.’ She stopped speaking again, and Fenn passed her a square of linen on which to blow her nose.

  When she had finished, Sidudu folded the cloth carefully and went on: ‘One of the other girls became my dearest friend. Her name was Litane. She was very gentle and lovely, but she missed her mother and hated what we had to do with the men. One night she ran away from the temple. She told me she was going and I tried to stop her, but she was determined. The next morning the priestesses laid her dead body on the altar. As a caution, they made each of us walk past it. They told us that the trogs had caught her in the forest. Lying on the altar, Litane was no longer lovely.’

  They let her cry for a while, and then Meren said, ‘Tell us about Onka.’

  ‘Onka is a nobleman. Lord Aquer is his uncle. He is also Aquer’s chief spy-master. For all these reasons, he has special privileges. He was taken with me. Because of his
position he was allowed to see me more than once. Then they allowed him to take me away from the temple to live with him as his house slave. I was a reward for the services he had performed for the state. When he was drunk he beat me. It gave him pleasure to hurt me. It made his eyes sparkle and he smiled when he was doing it. One day while Onka was away on military duty a woman came secretly to see me. She told me that she worked in a great library in the Cloud Gardens. She told me what happened to the girls from the temple who were taken up into the mountain. They were not exalted by the goddess. Their babies were cut from their wombs before they were born and given as food to the goddess. That is why the goddess is known secretly as the Devourer of Infants.’

  ‘What happened to the girls who bore the infants?’

  ‘They disappeared,’ Sidudu said simply. She sobbed again. ‘I loved some of those girls who have gone. There are others in the temple whom I also love. They, too, will go up the mountain when there is a baby inside them.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Sidudu,’ Fenn whispered. ‘This is all too dreadful to be told.’

  ‘No, Fenn, let the poor girl speak,’ Meren intervened. ‘What she says fires me with rage. The Jarrians are monsters. My anger arms me against them.’

  ‘So you will help me to save my friends, Meren?’ Sidudu looked at him with more than trust in her large dark eyes.

  ‘I will do whatever you ask of me,’ he answered at once. ‘But tell me more of Onka. He will be the first to know my vengeance.’

  ‘I thought he would protect me. I thought that if I stayed with him I would never be sent to the mountain. But one day, not long ago, Dr. Hannah came to examine me. I was not expecting her, but I knew what her visit meant. When she had finished she said nothing, but I saw her look at Onka and nod. It was enough. I knew then that when the baby inside me grew larger I would be taken up the mountain. A few days later I had another visitor. She came to see me in secret while Onka was with Colonel That at Tamafupa. She was the wife of Bilto. She asked me to work with the incomers who were planning an escape from Jarri. I agreed, of course, and when they asked me to do so I gave a potion to Onka that made him sick. After that Onka suspected me. He treated me even more cruelly, and I knew that soon he would send me back to the temple. Then I heard that the magus was in Mutangi. I thought he would be able to take away Onka’s baby, and I decided to risk everything to find him. I ran away, but the trogs came after me. That is when you rescued me.’