The Quest (Novels of Ancient Egypt)

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘His damaged eye has been troubling him sorely, has it not?’ Aquer went on.

  ‘It has not healed as cleanly as I had wished,’ Taita agreed.

  ‘I am sure that, with your skills, you are aware that your protégé is dying,’ Aquer said. ‘The eye is mortifying. In time it will kill him…unless it is treated.’

  Taita was taken aback. He had not divined this impending disaster from Meren’s aura, but somehow he could not doubt what Aquer had said. Perhaps he himself had known it all along but had shunned such an unpalatable truth. Yet, how could Aquer have known something that he did not? He saw from his aura that the man had no special skills or insights. He was neither sage, seer nor shaman. Of course, he left the chamber, but not to confer with the other oligarchs. He has been with another, Taita thought. He gathered himself and replied, ‘No, my lord. I have some little skill as a surgeon but I did not suspect the injury was so grave.’

  ‘We of the Supreme Council have agreed to accord to you and your protégé a special privilege. This boon is not granted to many, not even to worthy and eminent members of our own nobility. We do this as a mark of our deep respect and goodwill towards you. It will also be a demonstration to you of the advanced state of our society, our science and learning. Perhaps it might persuade you to remain with us in Jarri. Meren Cambyses will be taken to the sanatorium in the Cloud Gardens. This may take a little time to arrange because the medications to treat his condition must be prepared. When this has been done, you, Magus, may accompany him to observe his treatment. When you return from the sanatorium we will be pleased to meet you again and discuss your views.’

  As soon as they returned to Mutangi, Taita examined Meren’s eye and his general condition. The conclusions were troubling. There seemed to be a deep-seated infection in the wound cavity, which would account for the repeated pain, bleeding and suppuration. When Taita pressed firmly on the area round the wound, Meren bore it stoically, but the pain caused his aura to flicker like a flame in the wind. Taita told him that the oligarchs were planning to treat him.

  ‘You care for me and my injuries. I do not trust these renegade Egyptians, traitors to our land and Pharaoh. If anybody is to cure me, it will be you,’ Meren declared. As much as Taita tried to persuade him, he remained determined.

  Bilto and the other villagers were hospitable and friendly, and Taita’s party found themselves drawn into the daily life of the community. The children seemed fascinated by Fenn, and soon she had made three friends with whom she seemed happy. At first she spent much time with them, hunting for mushrooms in the forest, or learning their songs, dances and games. They could teach her nothing about bao, and she was soon the village champion. When she was not with the children, she was often at the stables grooming and training Whirlwind. Hilto was instructing her in archery and had carved her a bow of her own. One afternoon, after she had spent an hour chatting and laughing with Imbali, she came to Taita and asked, ‘Imbali says that all men have a dangling thing between their legs, which, like a kitten or a puppy, has a life of its own. If it likes you, it changes shape and size. Why don’t you have one, Taita?’

  Taita was at a loss for an appropriate reply. Although he had never attempted to hide it from her, she was not yet of an age at which he could discuss with her his mutilation. That time would come all too soon. He thought of remonstrating with Imbali, then decided against it. As the only female in their band, she was as good an instructress as any. He smoothed over the moment with a noncommittal reply, but afterwards he felt a keener awareness of his own inadequacy. He began to take pains to keep his body covered from her sight. Even when they swam together in the stream beyond the village he did not remove his tunic. He had believed himself resigned to his imperfect physical state, but that was changing each day.

  It could not be much longer before Onka arrived to escort Meren to the mysterious sanatorium in the Cloud Gardens, and Taita exerted all his powers of persuasion to make him agree to undergo the treatment, but Meren was capable of immutable obstinacy and stood firm against all blandishments.

  Then one evening Taita was awakened by the sound of soft groans from Meren’s chamber. He lit the lamp and went through to find him doubled over on his sleeping mat with his face buried in his hands. Gently Taita lifted away his hands. One side of his face was horribly swollen, the empty eye socket a tight slit, and his skin was burning. Taita applied hot poultices and soothing ointments, but by morning the old injury was little improved. It seemed more than coincidence that Onka arrived before noon that same day.

  Taita reasoned with Meren: ‘Old friend, there seems nothing that I can do to cure you. Your choice is to endure this suffering, which I now believe will lead before too long to your death, or you can allow the Jarrian surgeons to try where I have failed you.’

  Meren was so weak and feverish that he resisted no longer. Imbali and Fenn helped him to dress, then packed a small bag of his possessions. The men led him out and helped him into the saddle. Taita bade Fenn a hasty farewell, and commended her to the care of Hilto, Nakonto and Imbali before he mounted Windsmoke. They left Mutangi on the road to the west. Fenn ran beside Windsmoke for half a league, then stopped beside the road and waved them out of sight.

  Once again they headed towards the triple peaks of the volcanoes but before they reached the citadel they took a fork that led in a more northerly direction. Finally they entered a narrow pass into the mountains, and climbed up it to a height from which they could look down on the citadel far to the south. From this distance the council hall where they had met the oligarchs seemed tiny. They went on up the mountain path. The air grew colder and the wind moaned sadly along the cliffs. Higher they climbed, and higher still. White hoarfrost formed on their beards and eyebrows. They huddled into their capes and continued to climb upwards. By now Meren was swaying drunkenly in the saddle. Taita and Onka rode on each side to support him and prevent him falling.

  Suddenly the mouth of a tunnel appeared in the cliff face ahead behind gates of heavy wooden beams. As they approached, the gates swung open ponderously to allow them through. From a distance they saw that there were guards at the entrance. Taita was so concerned by Meren’s condition that, at first, he paid them little heed. As they drew closer he saw that they were of short stature, barely half as tall as a normal man but with massively developed chests and long, swinging arms that reached almost to the ground. Their stance was hunchbacked and bow-legged. Suddenly he realized that they were not humans but large apes. What he had taken to be brown uniform coats were pelts of shaggy fur. Their foreheads sloped almost straight back above beetling eyebrows, and their jaws were so over-developed that their lips did not close fully over their fangs. They returned his scrutiny with a close-set implacable stare. Quickly Taita opened the Inner Eye and saw that their auras were rudimentary and bestial, their murderous instincts balanced on a knife edge of restraint.

  ‘Do not look into their eyes,’ Onka warned. ‘Do not provoke them. They are powerful, dangerous creatures, and single-minded in their guard duties. They can rip a man to pieces as you would dismember the carcass of a roasted quail.’ He led them into the mouth of the tunnel and immediately the heavy gates boomed shut behind them. Flaming torches were set in brackets on the walls and the hoofs of the horses clattered on the rocky footing. The tunnel was only wide enough to allow two horses to pass side by side, and the riders were forced to stoop in the saddle so that the roof cleared their heads. The rock around them was murmurous with the sounds of running subterranean rivers and seething lava pipes. They had no means of measuring the passage of time or the distance they travelled, but at last they were aware of a nimbus of natural light ahead. It grew stronger and they approached another gate similar to the first that had sealed the tunnel entrance. This gate also swung open before they reached it, to reveal another contingent of apes. They rode past them, blinking in the brilliant sunshine.

  It took some time for their eyes to adjust, and then they looked around in wonder and
awe. They were in an enormous volcanic crater, so wide that it would have taken even a swift horse half a day to traverse it, from one vertical wall to the other. Not even a nimble mountain ibex could have climbed those lava walls. The bottom of the crater was a concave green shield. In its centre lay a small lake of milky sapphire-tinted water. Tendrils of steam drifted over the surface. A flake of ice melted from Taita’s eyebrow and tapped his cheek as it fell. He blinked, and realized that the air in the crater was as balmy as that of an island in a tropical sea. They shed their leather capes and even Meren’s condition seemed to improve in the warmer air.

  ‘It is the water from the furnaces of the earth that heat this place. There is no cruel winter here.’ With a sweep of his arms Onka encompassed the hauntingly lovely forest that surrounded them. ‘Do you see the trees and plants that flourish all around? You will find them nowhere else in the world.’

  They rode on along the well-defined pathway, with Onka pointing out the remarkable features of the crater. ‘Look at the colours of the cliffs,’ he invited Taita, who craned his neck to gaze up at the mighty walls. They were not grey or black, the natural colours of volcanic rock, but covered with a motley of soft blue and ruddy gold streaked with azure. ‘What seem to be multicoloured rocks are mosses as long and thick as the hair of a beautiful woman,’ Onka told him.

  Taita dropped his gaze from the cliffs, and looked over the forests in the basin below. ‘Those are pine trees,’ he exclaimed, at the towering green spears that pierced the thickets of golden bamboo, ‘and gigantic lobelias.’ Incandescent blooms were suspended from the thick fleshy stems. ‘I would hazard that those are some strange type of euphorbia, and the thickets covered with blossoms of pink and feathery silver are proteas. The tall trees beyond are aromatic cedars, and the smaller ones are tamarind and Khaya mahogany.’ I wish Fenn were here to enjoy them with me, he thought.

  The mist from the heated water of the lake wafted like smoke among the mossy branches. They turned to follow a stream, but before they had gone more than a few hundred paces they heard splashing, women’s voices and laughter. They came out into a clearing to see three women swimming and disporting themselves in the steaming blue waters of the pool below. In silence the women watched the men ride by. They were young and dark-skinned, their long wet hair jet black. Taita thought that they were most likely from the lands across the eastern ocean. They seemed oblivious of their nakedness. All three were with child, and leant back from the hips to balance the weight of their bulging bellies.

  As they rode on Taita asked, ‘How many families live in this place? Where are the husbands of those women?’

  ‘They may work in the sanatorium, perhaps even as surgeons.’ Onka evinced little interest. ‘We should be able to see it when we come out on to the lakeshore over there.’

  Seen from across the smoky sapphire waters the sanatorium was a complex of low unobtrusive stone buildings. It was evident that the stone blocks of the walls had been quarried from the cliffs. They had not been lime-washed, but remained their natural dark grey. They were surrounded by trim green lawns on which flocks of wild geese grazed. Waterfowl of twenty different varieties bobbed on the lake, while storks and herons waded in the shallows. As they rode round the gravelly beach Taita noticed a few large crocodiles floating like logs in the blue water.

  They left the beach and crossed the lawns to enter the courtyard of the main building through a handsome colonnade covered with flowering creepers. Grooms were waiting to take the horses, and four sturdy male attendants lifted Meren from the saddle and laid him on a litter. When they carried him into the building Taita walked beside him. ‘You are in good hands now,’ he comforted Meren, but the ride up the mountain in the wind and cold had taken its toll and Meren was hovering on the edge of consciousness.

  The attendants took him to a large, sparsely furnished room with a wide doorway that overlooked the lake. The walls and ceiling were tiled with pale yellow marble. They lifted him on to a padded mattress in the middle of the white marble floor, undressed him and took away his soiled clothing. Then they sponged him with hot water from a copper pipe that ran into a basin built into a corner of the room. It had a sulphurous odour, and Taita realized that it came up from one of the hot springs. The marble floor under their feet was pleasantly warm and he guessed that the same water ran in conduits beneath it. The warmth of the room and the water seemed to soothe Meren. The attendants dried him with linen towels, then one held a bowl to his lips and made him drink an infusion of herbs that smelt of pine. They withdrew and left Taita sitting beside his mattress. Soon Meren lapsed into a sleep so deep that Taita knew it had been induced by the potion.

  This was the first chance he had had to inspect their new surroundings. When he looked towards the corner of the wall adjacent to the washroom door he detected a human aura emanating from behind it. Without seeming to do so he focused closely on it, and realized there was a concealed peep-hole in the wall and they were observed through it. He would warn Meren as soon as he was awake. He looked away as though he was unaware of the watcher.

  A short while later a man and a woman entered the room, dressed in clean white knee-length tunics. Although they wore no necklaces or bracelets of magic beads and carved figurines and carried none of the other accoutrements of the arcane arts, Taita recognized them as surgeons. They greeted him politely by name and introduced themselves.

  ‘I am Hannah,’ said the woman.

  ‘And I am Gibba,’ said the man.

  Immediately they began their examination of the patient. At first they ignored his bandaged head and considered instead the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. They palpated his belly and chest. Hannah scratched the skin of his back with the point of a sharp stick to study the nature of the welt it raised.

  Only when they had satisfied themselves did they move to his head. Gibba took it between his bare knees and held it firmly. They peered into Meren’s throat, ears and nostrils. Then they unwrapped the bandage with which Taita had covered the eye. Although it was now soiled with dried blood and pus, Hannah remarked with approval on the skill with which it had been applied. She nodded at Taita to express her admiration of his art.

  They now concentrated on the empty eye socket, using a pair of silver dilators to hold the eyelids apart. Hannah ran the tip of her finger into the cavity and palpated it firmly. Meren moaned and tried to roll away his head, but Gibba held it steady between his knees. At last they stood up. Hannah bowed to Taita, her fingertips held together and touching her lips. ‘Please excuse us for a short while. We must discuss the patient’s condition.’

  They went out through the open doorway on to the lawn, where they paced together, immersed in talk. Through the doorway, Taita studied their auras. Gibba’s had the shimmering gleam of a sword blade held in the sunlight, and Taita saw that his high intelligence was cold and dispassionate.

  When he studied Hannah, he saw at once that she was a Long Liver. Her accumulated experience was immense, and her skills were legion. He realized that her medical ability probably surpassed his own, yet she lacked compassion. Her aura was sterile and astringent. He saw from it that in her devotion to her calling she was single-minded and would not be constrained by kindness or mercy.

  When the pair returned to the sickroom it seemed natural that Hannah should speak for them. ‘We must operate at once, before the effects of the sedative dissipate,’ she said.

  The four muscular attendants returned and squatted over Meren’s arms and legs. Hannah laid out a tray of silver surgical instruments.

  Gibba swabbed Meren’s eye socket and the surrounding skin with an aromatic herbal solution, and then, with two fingers, spread the eyelids wide and placed the silver dilators between them. Hannah chose a scalpel with a narrow, pointed blade and poised it above the pit of the socket. With the forefinger of her left hand she felt the back as though she was trying to find some precise spot in the inflamed lining, then used it to guide the scalpel to the point she had
selected. Carefully she probed the flesh. Blood welled around the metal, and Gibba mopped it away with a swab held in the cleft at the end of an ivory rod. Hannah cut deeper until half of the blade was buried. Suddenly green pus erupted from the wound she had opened. It squirted up in a thin fountain and sprayed against the tiled ceiling of the sickroom. Meren screamed, and his whole body bucked and heaved so that the men who held him needed all their strength to prevent him tearing himself out of their grasp.

  Hannah dropped the scalpel on to the tray and clapped a cotton pad over the eye socket. The smell of the pus that dripped from the ceiling was rank and fetid. Meren collapsed under the weight of the men above him. Quickly Hannah removed the pad from his eye and slid the open jaws of a pair of bronze forceps into the incision. Taita heard the points scrape on something buried in the wound. Hannah closed the jaws until she had a firm grip on it, then drew back gently and firmly. With another gush of watery green pus the foreign object popped out. She held it up with the forceps and examined it closely. ‘I do not know what it is, do you?’ She looked at Taita, who held out his cupped hand. She dropped the thing into it.

  He stood up and crossed the room to examine it by the light from the open doorway. It was heavy for its size, a sliver the size of a pine kernel. Between his finger and thumb he rubbed away the blood and pus that coated it. ‘A splinter of the Red Stones!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘You recognize it?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘A piece of stone. I cannot understand how I overlooked it. I found all the other fragments.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, Magus. It was deeply buried. Without the infection to guide us, we might not have found it either.’ Hannah and Gibba were cleaning the socket and stuffing wadding into it. Meren had lapsed into unconsciousness. The burly attendants relaxed their hold on him.

  ‘He will rest more easily now,’ Hannah said, ‘but it will be some days before the wound has drained and we can replace the eye. Until then he must rest quietly.’