by Wilbur Smith
On the tenth day after the seeding Meren seemed easier. Hannah rebandaged the eye, and declared herself pleased. 'As soon as the pain ceases completely I will be able to remove the stitches from the eyelid and review the progress he has made.'
Meren passed another peaceful night and woke with a fine appetite for his breakfast, and a resuscitated sense of humour. It was Taita rather than the patient who felt depleted and drained. Even though his eyes were still covered, Meren seemed to sense Taita's condition, his need to rest and be alone. Taita was often surprised by the flashes of intuition his usually bluff and uncomplicated companion displayed, and was moved when Meren said, 'You have played nursemaid to me long enough, Magus. Leave me alone to piddle the mattress if I need to. Go and rest. I am sure you must look dreadful.'
Taita took up his staff, and hitched the skirts of his tunic under his girdle and set off for the upper section of the gardens furthest from the sanatorium. He found this the most attractive area. He was not sure why, except that it was the wildest, most untended part of the crater. Huge boulders had broken off the rock wall and tumbled down to stand like ruined monuments to ancient kings and heroes. Over them, plants climbed and twisted in flowering profusion. He picked his way along a track he had thought he knew well, but at the point that it turned sharply between two of the great boulders he noticed for the first time that another well-defined path continued straight on towards the soaring cliff of the crater wall. He was sure that it had not been there on his last visit, but he had become accustomed to the gardens' illusory features and followed it without hesitation. Within a short distance he heard running water somewhere to his right. He followed the sound and at last pushed his way through a screen of greenery to discover another hidden nook.
He stepped into the little clearing and looked around curiously. A tiny stream issued from the mouth of a grotto, ran down over a series of lichen-covered ledges and into a pool.I It was all so charming and restful that Taita eased himself on to a patch of soft grass and, with a sigh, leant back against the trunk of a fallen tree. For a while he gazed down into the dark waters. Deep in the pool he picked out the shadow of a large fish, half concealed by a rock shelf and the ferns that overhung the water. Its tail waved hypnotically, like a flag in a lazy wind. Watching it, he realized how tired he was, and closed his eyes. He did not know how long he had slept before he was awakened by soft music.
The musician sat on a stone ledge at the far side of the pool, a boy of three or four, an imp with a mop of curls that bounced on his cheeks when he moved his head in time to the tune he was blowing on a reed flute. His skin was tanned to gold, and his features were angelic, while his little limbs were perfectly rounded and plump. He was beautiful, but when Taita gazed at him with the Inner Eye he saw no aura surrounding him.
'What is your name?' Taita asked.
The imp let the flute drop from his lips to dangle on the cord round his neck. 'I have many names,' he replied. His voice was childlike and lisping, lovelier even than the enchanted music he had played.
'If you cannot give me a name, then tell me who you are,' Taita insisted.
'I am many,' said the imp. 'I am legion.'
'Then I know who you are. You are not the cat, but the mark of her paw,' Taita said. He would not say her name aloud, but he guessed that this cherub was a manifestation of Eos.
'And I know who you are, Taita the Eunuch.'
Taita's expression remained inscrutable, but the gibe pierced the shell that protected his core like an arrow of ice. The child came to his feet with the grace of a fawn rising from its forest bed. He stood facing Taita and lifted the flute to his lips again. He played a softly lilting note, then took the reed from his lips. 'Some call you Taita the Magus, but half a man can never be more than half a Magus.' He played a silvery trill. The beauty of the music could not alleviate the agony his words had inflicted.
He dropped the pipe again and pointed down into the dark pool. 'What do you see there, Taita the Deformed? Do you recognize that image, Taita-who-is-neither-man-nor-woman?'
As he was bidden Taita stared down into the dark waters. He saw the
I
image of a young man appear from the depths, his hair thick and lustrous, his brow wide and deep, his eyes alive with wisdom and humour, understanding and compassion. It was the countenance of a scholar and an artist. He was tall with long, clean limbs. His torso was lightly muscled. His bearing was poised and graceful. His groin was clothed by a short skirt of bleached white linen. It was the body of an athlete and warrior.
'Do you recognize this man?' the imp insisted.
'Yes,' Taita whispered huskily, his voice almost failing.
'It is you,' said the imp. 'You as you once were, so many long years ago.'
'Yes,' Taita murmured.
'Now see yourself as you have become,' said the infernal child. The back of the young Taita bowed, and his limbs became thin and stick like. The fine muscle turned stringy, and his belly pouted. His hair faded to grey and became long, straight and sparse, the white teeth yellow and crooked. Deep lines appeared in his cheeks, and the skin beneath his chin sagged into folds. The eyes lost their sparkle. Although the image was a caricature, reality was only slightly exaggerated.
Then, suddenly, the loincloth was stripped away, as if by a gust of wind, and the groin exposed. A thin fringe of frizzy grey pubic hair surrounded the glaring pink, puckered cicatrice left by the cut of the castrating knife and the red-hot cauterizing rod. Taita moaned softly.
'Do you recognize yourself as you are now?' asked the imp. Strangely, his tone was filled with infinite compassion.
The pity wounded Taita more than the mockery. 'Why do you show me these things?' he asked.
'I come to warn you. If your life was lonely and barren before, it will soon become a thousand times worse. Once again you will know love and longing, but those passions can never be requited. You will burn in the hell of an impossible love.' Taita had no words to deny him, for already the agony the imp threatened had taken its grip. This, he knew, was just a foretaste of what must follow and he groaned.
'The time will come when you pray for death to release you from the agony,' the imp went on remorselessly, 'but think on this, Taita the Long Liver. How long is your suffering to last before death gives you surcease?'
In the pool the image of the ancient figure faded, and that of the beautiful, vigorous youth replaced it. He smiled up at Taita from the dark water, teeth shining, eyes sparkling.
'What has been taken away, I can give back to you,' said the child,
and his voice was the purring of a kitten. The silken cloth dropped from around the youth's waist to reveal perfectly formed genitalia, majestic and weighty.I 'I can give you back your manhood. I can make you as whole again as the image I set before you.' Taita could not tear his gaze away from it.
As he stared at it, the phallus of the phantom youth swelled and lengthened. Taita was filled with longings he had never entertained in all his life. They were so grossly prurient that he knew they could not have sprung from his own mind but had been placed there by the diabolical imp. He tried to tread them down, but they oozed back like the slime of a cesspool.
The beautiful child lifted one small hand and pointed at Taita's groin.
'Anything is possible, Taita, if only you believe in me.'
Suddenly Taita felt a powerful sensation in his crotch. He had no idea what was happening to him - until he realized that the sensations experienced by the phantom youth were being mirrored in his own body.
He felt the weight of that magnificent phallus tugging at his guts. When he watched it stiffen and arc like a drawn war bow, he felt the tension stretch his own nerves to breaking point. When he saw the youth's glans engorge with blood, turning a dark, angry red, it resonated in every fibre of his own body. A copious ejaculation gushed from the gaping cleft and he felt the exquisite agony of each scalding jet. His back arched involuntarily and his lips drew back in rictus as he clenched hi
s teeth.
A hoarse cry burst from his throat. His whole body jerked and trembled like that of a man seized by the palsy, then he sagged back on the grass, panting as though he had run a league, his strength spent.
'Had you forgotten? Had you suppressed the memory of the ultimate pinnacle of physical delight? What you have just experienced is only a grain of sand compared to the mountain that I can give to you,' said the child, and ran to the edge of the stone step. He poised there and looked across at Taita for the last time. 'Think on it, Taita. It is yours if you dare stretch out your hand to me.' He dived cleanly into the pool.
Taita saw his pale body flash as he shot down into the depths and disappeared. He could not summon the strength to rise to his feet again until the sun had made half its transit of the sky.
It was late in the afternoon when he reached the sanatorium. He found Meren sitting in his darkened cell with his nurse. His pleasure when he heard Taita's voice was pathetic to witness, and Taita felt guilty to have left him so long alone in the cell with the darkness and doubts that must be consuming him.
'The woman came again while you were away,' Meren cried. 'She says that tomorrow she will remove the bandages completely. I can hardly contain myself that long.'
Taita was still so overwrought by memories of the afternoon's events that he knew he would not be able to sleep that night. After they had eaten the evening meal he asked the male nurse if he could find a lute he might borrow.
'Dr Gibba is a lute player,' the fellow replied. 'Shall I refer your request to him?'
He went off and returned some little time later with the instrument.
There had been a time when Taita's voice had been the joy of all who heard him sing, and it was still tuneful and true. He sang until Meren's chin dropped on to his chest and he began to snore. Even then Taita went on strumming softly, until he found his fingers picking out the haunting melody that the imp had played on his flute. He stopped playing and put away the lute.
He lay down on the mattress on the opposite side of the cell from Meren and composed himself, but sleep eluded him. In the darkness his mind ran on, then took flight like a wild horse he could not control. The images and sensations that the imp had grafted into his mind crowded back so vividly that he had to escape them. He took his cloak, slipped from the cell and went out on to the lawns, which were bathed in brilliant moonlight, to walk along the edge of the lake. He felt the ice on his cheeks, but this time it was his own tears and not some alien presence that had chilled him.
'Taita who is neither man nor woman.' He repeated the imp's gibe and wiped his eyes on the fold of his woollen cloak. 'Am I to be imprisoned in this ancient maimed body for all eternity?' he wondered.
'Eos's temptations are as great a torment as any physical torture. Horus, Isis and Osiris, give me the strength to resist them.'
— —
We do not need your nurses today,' Hannah said, as she knelt beside Meren and trimmed the wick of the one small oil lamp that was the cell's only illumination. 'We will not inflict more pain on you. Instead we hope to compensate you for that which you have already suffered.' She set aside the lamp. It threw a soft light on to Meren's bandaged head. 'Are you ready, Dr Gibba?' While Gibba supported Meren's head she unpicked the knot in the bandage and peeled it away. Then she handed the lamp to Taita. 'Please direct the light on to his eye.'
Taita held a polished silver disc behind the flame to reflect a beam on to Meren's face. Hannah leant closer to examine the stitches that closed his eyelids. 'Good,' she said comfortably. 'I can see no vice in the way it has healed. I believe it is now safe to remove the stitches. Please hold the light steady.'
She snipped the stitches and, with forceps, drew the gut threads from the needle punctures. The lids were glued together with dried mucus and blood. Gently she washed it away with a cloth dipped in warm aromatic water.
'Please try to open your eye now, Colonel Cambyses,' she instructed.
The eyelid quivered, then flickered open. Taita felt his heart thump louder and more rapidly as he looked into the eye socket, which was no longer an empty pit.
'In the name of the holy triumvirate, Osiris, Isis and Horus,' Taita whispered, 'you have regrown a perfect new eye!'
'Not yet perfect,' Hannah demurred. 'It is but half-way grown and is still much smaller than the other. The pupil is cloudy.' She took the silver disc from Gibba and deflected the beam directly into the immature eye. 'On the other hand, see how the pupil contracts. It has already started to function correctly.' She covered Meren's good eye with the cotton pad. 'Tell us what you can see, Colonel,' she ordered.
'A bright light,' he replied.
Hannah passed her hand in front of his face with her fingers splayed open. 'Tell us what you see now.'
'Shadows,' he said doubtfully, but then he went on, firmly now, 'No, wait! I see fingers. The outline of five fingers.'
It was the first time Taita had seen Hannah smile and, in the yellow
lamplight, she looked younger and gentler. 'Nay, good Meren,' he said.
'This day you have seen more than fingers. You have seen a miracle.'
'I must bandage the eye again.' Hannah was brisk and businesslike once more. 'It will be many more days before it is able to withstand the light of day.'
The image of the imp in the grotto haunted Taita. He experienced a compulsion that grew more powerful each day to return to the gardens and wait for him beside the hidden pool. In the forefront of his mind he knew that this urge was not his own: it came directly from Eos.
Once I enter her territory I am powerless. She possesses every advantage.
She is the great black cat and I am her mouse, he thought.
Then his inner voice answered: What then, Taita? Did you not come to Jarri to struggle against her? What became of your grand design? Now that you have found her, will you slink away cravenly?
He sought another excuse for his cowardice: If only I could find a shield to deflect her malicious darts.
He tried to find distraction from these haunting fears and temptations by helping Meren to gain full use of his immature eye. At first Hannah removed the bandages for only a few hours, and even then she did not allow him to experience daylight but kept him indoors.
The lens of the eye was still cloudy and the colour of the iris was also pale and milky. It did not work in unison with the good eye but wandered at random. Taita helped him focus it: he held the Periapt of Lostris in front of Meren and moved it from side to side, up and down, nearer and further away.
At first the new eye tired quickly. It watered and the lid blinked involuntarily. It grew bloodshot and itchy. Meren complained that images remained blurred and distorted.
Taita discussed this with Hannah: 'The eye is of a different colour from the original. It does not match in size or motion. You said once that you were a gardener of men. Perhaps the eye you have grafted is of another strain.'
'Nay, Magus. The new eye is grown from the same root stock as the original. We have replaced limbs that have been cut away in battle.
They do not appear fully fledged. Like your protege's eye, they begin like
seedlings and gradually attain their mature form. The human body has the ability to shape and develop itself over time to match the original.
A blue eye is not replaced with a brown one. A hand is not replaced with a foot. There exists in each of us some life force that is able to replicate itself. Have you not wondered at how a child may resemble its parents?' She paused and looked into his eyes intently. 'In the same way an amputated arm is replaced with a perfect copy of the missing limb. A castrated penis would regrow in identical shape and size to the one that was destroyed.' Taita stared at her, aghast. She had turned the discussion back upon him in a cruel and wounding fashion.
She is speaking of my own imperfection, he thought. She knows about the mutilation I have suffered. He sprang to his feet and hurried from the room. Blindly he stumbled to the lakeside and knelt on the beach.
He felt helpless and defeated. At last, when the tears no longer stung and his vision cleared, he looked up at the cliffs that towered above the gardens. He felt Eos nearby. He was too weary and sick at heart to fight on.
You have won, he thought. The battle is over before it was joined. I will submit to you. Then he felt her influence changing. It seemed no longer completely evil and malign, but kindly and benevolent. He felt as though she was offering him release from pain and emotional strife. He wanted to go up into the gardens and surrender to her, cast himself upon her mercy. He struggled to his feet and was struck by the incongruity of his thoughts and actions. He straightened his back and lifted his chin.
'Nay!' he whispered aloud. 'This is not surrender. You have not yet won the battle. You have taken only the first skirmish.' He reached for the Periapt of Lostris and felt strength flow into him. 'She has taken Meren's eye. She has taken my manly parts. She has all the advantage over us. If only I had something of hers to use against her, a weapon with which to counterattack. When I have found one I will go against her again.' He glanced at the tops of the tall flowering trees of her gardens below the painted cliffs, and before he could stop himself he had taken a step in that direction. With an effort he turned away. 'Not yet. I am not ready.'
His tread was firmer as he returned to the sanatorium. He found that Hannah had moved Meren from the darkened cell to their more spacious and comfortable former quarters. Meren sprang up as soon as he entered and seized the sleeve of his tunic. 'I read a full scroll of hieroglyphics that the woman set for me,' he exclaimed, bursting with pride at his latest achievement. Even now he could not bring himself to use Hannah's name or title. 'Tomorrow she will remove the bandage for ever. Then I
will astonish you with how the colour has come to match the other, and how nimbly it moves. By the sweet breath of Isis, I declare I will soon be able to judge the flight of my arrows as accurately as I ever did.' His loquacity was a sure sign of his excitement. 'Then we shall escape this infernal place. I hate it here. There is something foul and detestable about it, and the people in it.'