The Quest tes-4

by Wilbur Smith

  'I need you to take me to the place where the Nile is born.'

  Kalulu showed no surprise. 'You are the one who I saw in my dreams.

  You are the one I have waited for. I will take you to the Red Stones.

  We will leave tonight when the wind drops and the waters are still. How many are in your party?'

  'Thirty-eight, with Fenn and me, but we have much baggage.'

  'Five more large canoes will follow me. They will be here before nightfall.'

  'I have many horses,' Taita added.

  'Yes.' The little dwarf nodded. 'They will swim behind the canoes. I have brought bladders of animal stomachs to support them.'

  In the brief African twilight, as the last gusts of the wind died away, some of the troopers led the horses down to the shore and> in the shallow water, strapped an inflated bladder to each side of their girth ropes. While this was going on, the others loaded their equipment into the canoes. Kalulu's female bodyguards carried him on his litter to the largest canoe and placed him aboard. As the waters of the lake settled into a slick calm, they pushed out from the shore and headed into the darkness towards the great cross of stars that hung in the southern skies.

  Ten horses were roped behind each canoe. Fenn sat in the stern, where she could call encouragement to Windsmoke and Whirlwind as they swam behind. The ranks of rowers plied their oars and the long, narrow hulls knifed silently through the dark waters.

  Taita sat beside the litter on which Kalulu lay and they conversed quietly for a while. 'What is the name of this lake?'

  'Semliki Nianzu. It is one of many.'

  'How is it fed?'

  'Previously two great rivers ran into it, one at the western end called Semliki, the other our Nile. Both come from the south, the Semliki from the mountains, the Nile from the great waters. That is where I am taking you.'

  'Is it another lake?'

  'No man knows if it is truly a lake or if it is the beginning of the great void.'

  'This is where our Mother Nile is born?'

  'Even so,' Kalulu agreed.

  'What do you call this great water?'

  'We call it Nalubaale.'

  'Explain our route to me, Kalulu.'

  'When we reach the far shore of Semliki Nianzu we will find the southerly limb of the Nile.'

  'The picture I have in my mind is that the southerly limb of the Nile is where it flows into Semliki Nianzu. The northerly limb leaves this lake and flows north towards the great swamps. This is the branch of the Nile that has brought us thus far.'

  'Yes, Taita. That is the wide picture. Of course, there are other minor rivers, tributaries and lesser lakes, for this is the land of many waters, but they all flow into the Nile and run to the north.'

  'But the Nile is dying,' Taita said softly.

  Kalulu was silent for a while, and when he nodded a single tear ran

  down his wizened cheek, sparkling in the moonlight. 'Yes,' he agreed.

  'The rivers that feed her have all been stoppered. Our mother is dying.'

  'Kalulu, explain to me how this has happened.'

  'There are no words to explain it. When we reach the Red Stones you will see for yourself. I cannot describe these events to you. Mere words fall short of such a task.'

  'I will contain my impatience.'

  'Impatience is a young man's vice.' The dwarf smiled, his teeth gleaming in the gloom. 'And sleep is an old man's solace.' The plash of the waters under the canoe lulled them, and after a while they slept.

  Taita woke to a soft cry from the leading canoe. He roused himself and leant over the side of the vessel to splash a double handful of water into his face. Then he blinked the drops from his eyes and looked ahead.

  He made out the dark loom of land ahead.

  At last they felt the drag of the beach under the hull as they ran aground. The rowers dropped their oars and leapt ashore to pull the canoes higher. The horses found their footing and lunged ashore, streaming water.

  The women lifted Kalulu in his litter and carried him up the beach.

  'Your men must have breakfast now,' Kalulu told Taita, 'so that we can march at first light. We have a long road to travel before we reach the Stones.'

  They watched the rowers embark in the canoes and push off into the lake. The silhouettes of the swift craft merged into the darkness, until the white splash of oars was all that marked their position. Soon those, too, had vanished.

  By firelight they ate smoked lake fish and dhurra cakes, then in the . dawn they set off along the lakeshore. Within half a league they came to a dry white riverbed.

  'What river was this?' Taita asked Kalulu, although he knew what the answer would be.

  'This was and is the Nile,' Kalulu replied simply.

  'It is completely dried up!' Taita exclaimed, as he looked across the riverbed. It was four hundred paces from bank to bank, but no water flowed between them. Instead, elephant grass, like miniature bamboo that stood twice the height of a tall man, had filled it. 'We have followed the river two thousand leagues from Egypt to this place. All the way we

  have found at least some water, standing pools, even trickles and rivulets, but here it is as dry as the desert.'¦ 'The water you encountered further north was the overflow from the lake Semliki Nianzu, which ran in from its tributaries,' Kalulu explained. 'This was the Nile, the mightiest river on all the earth. Now it is nothing.'

  'What has happened to it?' Taita demanded. 'What infernal power could have stopped such a vast flow?'

  'It is something that defies even an imagination as all-encompassing as your own, Magus. When we reach the Red Stones you will see it all before you.'

  Fenn had been translating what was said for the benefit of Meren, and now he could no longer contain himself. 'If we are to follow a dry river,'

  he demanded, 'where will I find water for my men and horses?'

  'You will find it even as the elephants do, by digging for it,' Taita told him.

  'How long will this journey take?' Meren asked.

  When this had been translated, Kalulu gave him an impish smile and replied, 'Much depends on the stamina of your horses and the strength of your own legs.'

  They moved fast, passing the stagnant pools of once brimming lagoons and climbing through dry, rocky gorges where waterfalls had thundered.

  Sixteen days later they came upon a low ridge that ran parallel to the course of the Nile. It was the first feature that had relieved the monotony of the forest for many leagues.

  'On that high ground stands the town of Tamafupa, the home of my people,' Kalulu told them. 'From the heights you can see the great waters of Nalubaale.'

  'Let us go there,' Taita said. They rode up through a grove of fever trees with bright yellow trunks, which covered the slope above the dry riverbed. For lack of water the trees had died back, and their branches were leafless and twisted like rheumatic limbs. They came out on top of the ridge, where Windsmoke flared her nostrils and tossed her head.

  Whirlwind was equally excited: he gave a series of bucks and jumps.

  'You bad horse!' Fenn struck him lightly on the neck with the switch of papyrus she carried. 'Behave!' Then she called to Taita, 'What is exciting them, Magus?'

  'Smell it for yourself,' he called. 'Cool and sweet as the perfume of Kigelia flowers.'

  'I smell it now,' she said, 'but what is it?'

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  'Water!' he answered, and pointed ahead. To the south stood a silver cloud, and beneath it lay a curve of ethereal blue that stretched across the breadth of the horizon. 'Nalubaale, at last!'

  A sturdy palisade of hardwood poles dominated the crest of the ridge.

  The gates stood open and they rode through into the abandoned village of Tamafupa. Evidently it had once been the centre of a prosperous, thriving community - the abandoned huts were palatial and magnifi'

  cently thatched - but the brooding silence that hung over them was eerie. They turned back to the gates and called up the rest o
f the party.

  In response to their halloo, Kalulu was borne up to them on his litter by the panting and perspiring bodyguards. They were all solemn and contemplative as they gathered before the gates of Tamafupa and stared at the distant blue waters.

  Taita broke the silence. 'The source of our very Mother Nile.'

  'The end of the earth,' Kalulu said. 'There is nothing beyond those waters but the void and the Lie.'

  Taita looked back at the fortifications of Tamafupa. 'We are in dangerous country, surrounded by hostile tribes. We will use it as our stronghold until we move on,' he told Meren. 'We will leave Hilto and Shabako here with their men to make the walls secure against attack.

  While they attend to this, Kalulu will take us to see the mysterious Red Stones.'

  In the morning they went on: the last short stage of the journey that had taken them more than two years to complete. They followed the riverbed, often riding in the middle of the wide dry dip. They came round another gentle bend and ahead of them sloped a glacis of water worn rocks. Surmounting it, like the fortification of a great city, rose a wall of solid red granite.

  'In the holy names of Horus, the son, and Osiris, the divine father!'

  Meren exclaimed. 'What fortress is this? Is it the citadel of some African emperor?'

  'What you see are the Red Stones,' said Kalulu, quietly.

  'Who placed them there?' Taita asked, as perplexed as any of his companions. 'What man or demon has done this?'

  'No man,' Kalulu replied. 'This is not the work of human hands.'

  'What, then?'

  'Come, let me show it to you first. Then we can discuss it.'

  Cautiously they approached the Red Stones. When at last they stood under the great wall of rock that blocked the course of the Nile from one bank to the other, Taita dismounted and walked slowly along the base.

  Fenn and Meren followed him. They paused at intervals to inspect. It was flow-shaped, like the wax of a candle.; 'This rock was once molten,' Taita observed. 'It has cooled into these fantastic shapes.'

  'You are correct,' Kalulu agreed. 'That is precisely how it was formed.'

  'It seems impossible, but this is a single mass of solid stone. There are no joints between individual blocks.'

  'There is at least one crack, Magus.' Fenn pointed ahead. Her keen eyes had spotted a narrow fissure that ran through the centre of the wall, from top to bottom. When they reached it, Taita drew his dagger and tried to work the blade into it, but it was too narrow. The blade went in only as deep as the first joint of his little finger.

  'That is why my people call it the Red Stones, rather than the Red Stone,' Kalulu told them, 'for it is divided into two sections.'

  Taita went down on one knee to examine the base of the wall. 'It is not built upon the old riverbed. It emerges from it as though it has grown up from the centre of the earth like some monstrous mushroom. The stone of this wall seems to differ from any other around it.'

  'Again, you are right,' Kalulu told him. 'It cannot be chiselled or chipped like the rock that surrounds it. If you look closely you will see the red crystals in it that give it the name.'

  Taita leant forward until the minute crystals of which the wall was composed caught the sunlight and sparkled like tiny rubies. 'There is nothing obscene or unnatural about it,' he said softly. He came back to where Kalulu sat on his litter. 'How did this thing come to be here?'

  'I cannot say with any certainty, Magus, even though I was here when it happened.'

  'If you witnessed it, how do you not know what happened?'

  'I will explain it to you later,' said Kalulu. 'Suffice to say that many others witnessed it, as I did, yet they have fifty different legends to describe it.'

  'This entire wall of stone is chimerical,' Taita pointed out. 'Perhaps seeds of the truth may be buried in the legends and fantasies.'

  'That may be so.' Kalulu inclined his head in agreement. 'But let us first ascend to the summit of the wall. There is much still that you must see.' They had to retreat along the riverbed to find a place to climb out and to the top of the bank. Then they picked their way back to the base of the red-stone wall.

  'I will wait for you here,' Kalulu said. 'The way up is too difficult.' He indicated the daunting climb over glassy and almost vertical rock to the

  I THE QUEST

  summit. They left him, and cautiously climbed upwards. In some places they were forced to crawl on hands and knees, but at last they stood on the rounded top of the Red Stones. From there they looked out across the lake. Taita shaded his eyes against the sun-dazzle that danced on the surface of the water. Close by there were a number of small islets, but he could see not the faintest trace of land beyond them. He looked back the way they had come. The foreshortened figure of the dwarf was far below. Kalulu was gazing up at him.

  'Has anyone ever tried to cross to the far side of the lake?' Taita called down.

  'There is no far side,' Kalulu shouted back. 'There is only the void.'

  The surface of the water lapped the wall only four or five cubits below their feet. Taita looked back into the riverbed and made an approximate calculation of the discrepancy in the heights on each side of the wall.

  'It is holding back forty or fifty cubits' depth of water.' He made a sweeping gesture, which took in the limitless extent of the lake's surface.

  'Without this wall, all that water would have spilled over the cataract into the Nile and been carried down into Egypt. Little wonder that our land has been reduced to such straits.'

  'We could sweep through the surrounding country, capture a host of slaves and set them to work on it,' Meren suggested.

  'What would they do?' Taita asked.

  'We will tear down this barrier, and let the Nile waters flow into our very Egypt once more.'

  Taita smiled and stamped one sandalled foot on the wall beneath him. 'Kalulu has told us how hard and adamantine this stone is. Look at the size of it, Meren. It is many times bigger than all three of the great pyramids of Giza placed on top of each other. If you captured every man in Africa and set them to work for the next hundred years, I doubt they could move even a small part of it.'

  'We should not take that strange man's word for how hard it is. I will get my men to test the rock with fire and bronze. Remember also, Magus, the engineering skills that raised those pyramids might be used to cast them down again. I see no reason why we should not be able to carry out the same feat, for we are also Egyptians, the most advanced culture on this earth.'

  'I see some small merit in your arguments, Meren,' Taita agreed. Then something beyond the far end of the wall caught his attention. He frowned. 'Is that a building on the bluff overlooking us? I will put the question to Kalulu.'

  They scrambled down the slippery rockface to where the dwarf sat on his litter surrounded by his bodyguards. When Taita pointed out the ruins he nodded brightly. 'You are right, Magus. That is a temple built by men.'

  'Your tribe do not build in stone, do they?'

  'No, that place was built by strangers.'

  'Who were these strangers, and when did they build it?' Taita demanded.

  'It is almost exactly fifteen years ago that they laid the first stones.'

  'What manner of men were they.' Taita asked.

  Kalulu hesitated before he answered. 'They were not southern men.

  Their features were like yours and those men with you. They wore the same dress and carried the same weapons.'

  Taita stared at him, stunned into silence. At last he said, 'You suggest that they were Egyptians. It does not seem possible. Are you sure they came from Egypt?'

  'I know nothing about the land from which you have come. I have never been down the Nile even as far as the great swamps. I cannot say with any certainty, but to me they appeared to be men of your race.'

  'Did you speak to them?'

  'No,' Kalulu said, with feeling. 'They were secretive and spoke to no one.'

  'How many were here, and where are th
ey now?' Taita asked keenly.

  He seemed to be watching the little man's eyes intently, but Fenn knew he was reading his aura.

  'There were more than thirty, and less than fifty. They disappeared as mysteriously as they came.'

  'They disappeared after the damming of the river with the Red Stones?'

  'At the same time, Magus.'

  'Surpassing strange,' Taita said. 'Who inhabits the temple now?'

  'It is deserted, Magus,' Kalulu replied, 'as all the land for a hundred leagues around is deserted. My tribe and all the others fled in terror at these and other strange events. Even I took shelter in the marshes. This is the first time I have returned, and I admit that I would never have done so without your protection.'

  'We should visit the temple,' Taita said. 'Will you show it to us?'

  'I have never been inside that building,' Kalulu said softly. 'I never will. You must not ask me to go with you.'

  'Why not, Kalulu?'

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  'It is the site of utmost evil. The force that has brought disaster upon all of us.'

  'I respect your caution. These are deep matters and should not be undertaken lightly. Return with Meren. I will go alone to the temple.'

  He turned to Meren. 'Spare no labours to make the camp secure. Fortify it well, and post a strong guard. When you have done that we will return to assay the hardness of the Red Stones.'

  'I implore you to return to the camp before darkness falls, Magus.'

  Meren looked jaundiced with worry. 'If you are not back at sunset, I will come to search for you.'

  As the bodyguards hefted the litter and followed Meren, Taita turned to Fenn. 'Go with Meren. Hurry to catch up with him.'

  She stood to her full height, arms behind her back, mouth set obstinately. He had come to know that expression well. 'There is no spell you can weave to make me leave you,' she declared.

  'When you scowl you are no longer beautiful,' he warned her mildly.

  'You cannot imagine how ugly I can be,' she said. 'Try to rid yourself of me and I will show you.'

  'Your threats unman me.' He could scarce prevent himself smiling.