The Quest tes-4

by Wilbur Smith

  He shuffled his feet and stood awkwardly as Taita turned an enigmatic gaze upon him. 'It is also high above the great lake,' he said at last.

  'Is that important, Magus?'

  'It may be.'

  'I shall see to it at once.'

  It took six days of back-breaking effort to carry everything up into the hills. When at last they had stacked the sections of hull on the open ground in the centre of the blackened ruins of Kalulu's village, Taita let them rest. He and Fenn placed their own shelter on the forward slope of the hills, overlooking the dry bed of the Nile and the impervious rock barrage at its mouth. In the dawn, they sat under the plaited reed awning and looked out over the lake, a vast expanse of blue water that reflected

  the images of the clouds in the sky above. They had an uninterrupted view of the dam and the tiny temple of Eos on the bluff above it.

  On the third morning Taita said, 'Fenn, we are prepared. We have mustered our forces. Now we must wait for the full moon.'

  'That is four days hence,' she said.

  'There is one more sally we can make against the witch before then.'

  'I am ready for whatever you decide, Magus.'

  'Eos has thrown an astral barricade around herself.'

  'That was why we could not contact each other while you were in her lair.'

  'I intend to test her defences for the last time. It will be dangerous, of course, but you and I must combine our powers and make another attempt to pierce her shield and overlook her in her stronghold.' They went down to the lakeshore again. They washed their clothing, then bathed in the limpid waters. It was a ritual cleansing: evil flourishes in dirt and foul matter. While their naked bodies dried in the sunlight, Taita combed her hair and plaited the wet tresses. She attended to his crisp new beard. They scrubbed their teeth with green twigs, then picked bunches of aromatic leaves which they took back up the hills to the encampment. When they reached their shelter Fenn built up the smouldering embers of their fire and Taita sprinkled the leaves into the flames. Then they sat cross-legged, hand in hand, to inhale the cleansing, stimulating smoke.

  It was the first time they had attempted astral travel together, but this transfer into the astral plane went smoothly. Linked in spirit, they rose high above the lake and glided westward over the forests.

  They found the land of Jarri covered with thick cloud: only the peaks of the Mountains of the Moon rose out of it and the snows upon them shone with an austere radiance. The hidden crater of the Cloud Gardens nestled in their icy embrace. They sank down towards the witch's stronghold, but as they drew closer the ether became turbid and oppressive, as though they swam through a cesspit. Its weight and density resisted their passage. Linked as one they strove forward against its debilitating influence. At last, after immense spiritual exertion, they had forced their way down to the green chamber in the witch's lair.

  Eos's massive cocoon lay where Taita had last seen it, but now the protective carapace was fully formed, green and lustrous, shining with an adamantine glitter. Taita had achieved his purpose: he had brought Fenn to look upon the veritable form of Eos, not merely one of her shadowy

  manifestations. Now, when the time came, they would be able to combine all their force and concentrate it upon her.

  They drew back from the Cloud Gardens, over the mountains, the forests and the lake, back into their physical bodies. Taita was still holding her hands. As she came alive again, he looked at her through his Inner Eye. Her aura smouldered like molten metal pouring from the furnace, heated by her fear and anger.

  'That thing!' She clung to him. 'Oh, Taita, it was horrible beyond my wildest imagining. That carapace seems to contain all the evil and malice of the universe.' Her face was ashen and her skin cold.

  'You have looked upon the enemy. Now you must steel yourself, my love,' he told her. 'You must call upon all your courage and strength.'

  He held her to him. 'I need you with me. I cannot prevail against her without you.'

  Fenn's face hardened with determination. 'I will not fail you, Taita.'

  “I have never thought for a moment that you might.' Over the next few days he employed all of his esoteric art to bolster in her the spiritual powers that the sight of Eos had shaken.

  'Tomorrow night the moon will be full, the most propitious phase of its cycle. We are ready and the time is ripe.' But Taita was awakened at dawn by Fenn's sobs and moans. He stroked her face and whispered in her ear, 'Wake up, my darling. It is only a dream. I am here beside you.'

  'Hold me, Taita. I had such a terrible dream. I dreamt that Eos struck at me with her magic. She drove her dagger into my belly. The blade was glowing hot.' She groaned again. 'Oh, I can still feel the pain. It was not a dream. It is true. I am wounded and the pain is bitter.'

  Taita's heart leapt with alarm. 'Let me feel your stomach.' He pushed her down gently, drew the kaross as far as her knees and laid his hand upon her flat white belly.

  'The pain is not all, Taita,' she whispered. 'I am bleeding from the wound she has inflicted.'

  'Bleeding? Where is the wound?'

  'Here!' She spread her thighs and pushed his hand lower. 'The blood is pouring through the cleft between my legs.'

  'Has this not happened to you before - at your age?'

  'Never,' she replied. 'This is the very first time.'

  'Oh, my sweetest heart.' He took her tenderly in his arms. 'It is not what you think. That comes not from Eos. It is a gift and blessing from the gods of the Truth. I wonder that Imbali did not mention it. You have become a full woman.'

  'I do not understand, Taita.' She was still afraid.

  'This is your moon blood, the proud emblem of your womanhood.'

  Taita realized that the rigours of the journey, the deprivation and hardship she had suffered, must have delayed her natural development.

  'But why the pain?'

  'Pain is the lot of woman. In pain she is born and in pain she gives forth life. It was ever so.'

  'Why now? Why am I struck down at the very time you need me so?'

  she lamented.

  'Fenn, you must rejoice in your womanhood. The gods have armed you. The first moon blood of a virgin is the most potent talisman in all nature. Neither the witch nor all the host of the Lie can prevail against you on this day when you have come of age.' They rose from the mat and Taita showed her how to fold a square of linen into a pad filled with dried herbs to soak up the discharge. They washed again and drank a little lake water, but took no food.

  'The lion and his lioness hunt better on a hungry stomach,' he told her. They left their shelter, and walked through the main encampment.

  In anxious silence the people watched them pass. Something in their manner and mien warned that some fateful business was afoot.

  Only Meren came forward to meet them. 'Do you need my help, Magus?'

  'Good Meren, you were ever faithful but we are bound whither you cannot follow.'

  Meren went down on one knee in front of him. 'Then give me your blessing, I beseech you.'

  Taita placed his hand on his head. 'You have it in full measure,' he said, then he and Fenn walked out of the encampment and down the hillside towards the lake. The air was sultry and still, all the earth hushed.

  No animal moved or called. No bird flew. The sky was a bright, aching blue, with only one tiny cloud hanging far out over the lake. As Taita watched, it changed gradually into the shape of a cat's paw.

  'Even in her cocoon the witch has sensed the threat we pose to her and she moves against us,' he told Fenn softly. She leant closer to him, and they went on until they stood at last on the heights of the bluff.

  They gazed down on the Red Stones, the mighty barrier that choked the mouth of the infant Nile.

  'Is there any force commanded by man or nature that can shift something of that magnitude?' Fenn wondered aloud.

  'It was raised by the force of the Lie. Perchance it can be brought

  down by the power of the Truth,' he answered
her, and as one they turned their eyes towards the temple of Eos.

  'Are you ready?' he asked and she nodded. 'Then we must go to confront Eos in her temple.'

  'What will happen if we enter there, Magus?'

  'That I do not know. We must expect the worst, and prepare for it.'

  Taita took another moment to look down once more upon the surface of the lake. It was smooth and glassy. High above it sailed the little cloud, still in the shape of the cat's paw. Holding hands, they stepped on to the paved pathway that led up towards the domed roof of the temple.

  Immediately a tiny wind stirred the sullen air. It was cold upon their cheeks, cold as the fingers of a dead man. It scuttled across the lake, scratching the polished surface, then dropped away again. They walked on upwards. Before they were half-way to the crest, the wind came again.

  Whistling softly, it smeared the little cloud across the horizon and furrowed the lake with dark blue streaks.

  The sound of the wind rose sharply. Then it hurled itself upon them.

  It shrieked as it tore at their clothing and ripped at Taita's beard. They staggered before it, clutching each other for support. The surface of the lake was lashed into dancing white waves. The trees along the shore swayed, their branches whipping. Painfully they climbed on until at last they stood before the main doors of the temple, which were wide open, one sagging on its hinges, the other banging and flapping. Suddenly the howling wind seized both and slammed them shut with such force that the rendering round the jambs cracked and crumbled.

  Taita reached up to his throat and closed his hand over the Periapt of Lostris, which hung there on its golden chain. Fenn grasped the gold nugget of the Talisman of Taita. Then, with his free hand, Taita reached into his pouch and brought from it the thick braid of Eos's hair. He held it high, and the earth moved beneath them, shuddering with such agitation that one of the closed doors was torn from its hinges and crashed down at their feet. They stepped over it and went through the opening into the circular portico of the temple. Here, the air was thick and viscious with evil. It was difficult to wade through it, as though they were struggling in the mud of a deep morass. Taita took Fenn's arm to steady her, and guided her along the passageway to the opposite side of the temple. At last they stood before the flower-shaped doorway, its jambs tiled with polished ivory, malachite and tiger's eye. The crocodile skin door was closed. Taita struck the centre with the rope of Eos's hair.

  The door opened slowly, its hinges squealing.

  The splendour of the interior was undiminished, the emblems in the great pentagram glowing with marble and semi-precious stones. But their eyes were drawn irresistibly to the ivory shield at the centre. The ray of sunlight that fell through the aperture in the roof moved slowly but inexorably towards the heart of the pentagram. It would soon be noon.

  The wind moaned and wailed round the outer walls of the temple, shaking the thatching and the roof timbers. They stood transfixed and watched the beam of sunlight. When it entered the ivory circle the power of the Lie would reach its peak.

  A draught of icy air blew in through the ceiling aperture. It hissed like a cobra and fluttered like the wings of bats and vultures in the air around them. The beam of sunlight touched the ivory circle. Blinding white light filled the sanctum but they did not shrink from it or shield their eyes. They concentrated on the fiery spirit sign of Eos that appeared in the centre of the ivory disc. As the stench of the witch filled the air Taita stepped forward and held aloft the braid of her hair.

  'Tashkalon!' he shouted, and hurled the hair into the ivory circle.

  'Ascartow! Silondela!' He had turned Eos's words of power back upon her. The wind dropped abruptly and a frozen silence gripped the temple.

  Fenn stepped up beside Taita and lifted the hem of her tunic. She tore the linen pad from between her legs and threw it on top of Eos's hair in the ivory circle. 'Tashkalon! Ascartow! Silondela!' she repeated, in a sweet clear voice. The temple rocked on its foundations and a deep rumble rose from the earth. A section of the facing wall buckled outwards, then collapsed in a pile of rubble and plaster dust. Behind them one of the roof rafters cracked and fell into the outer portico, bringing down with it a mass of rotten thatch.

  With a thunderous roar the floor of the temple was torn open. A deep crevice split the pentagram down the centre, ripping through the ivory circle, and running through the paving between them, isolating them from each other. There was no bottom to the crevice. It seemed to reach down into the bowels of the earth.

  'Taita!' Fenn screamed. They were divided, and she could feel the strength she had drawn from him guttering and fading like the flame of a lamp running out of oil. She tottered on the lip of the crevice, which sucked at her voraciously.

  'Taita, I am falling. Save me!' She tried to turn away from the lip, her arms flailing and her back arched as she was drawn towards it.

  He had not realized the full strength of the astral forces they had built

  between them and he sprang out across the fatal pit to land lightly at her side. He seized her before she toppled into the crevice, swept her up in his arms and ran with her to the flower-shaped doorway. He held her close to his heart, recharging the force that Eos had taken from her. He left the inner sanctum and raced along the portico towards the outer doors of the temple. A massive roof timber crashed to the ground in front of them, narrowly missing them. He jumped over it and ran on. It was like being on the deck of a small ship in a hurricane. All around him more deep fissures opened in the floor. He leapt over them. The earth heaved and quaked. Another section of the outer wall just ahead tumbled down into a pile of loose debris but he bounded over the rubble and burst out into the open air.

  Still there was no respite from the primordial chaos of the elements.

  Staggering to keep his balance on the heaving earth, Taita looked about in wild amazement. The lake was gone. Where the pale lucid blue waters had lain there was now a vast empty basin in which stranded shoals of fish flapped, crocodiles writhed and ponderous hippopotamus tried to find their footing on the mud. The red rock barrier was nakedly revealed, its magnitude defying the imagination.

  Abruptly the upheaval ceased, replaced by an eerie stillness. All of creation seemed frozen. There was no sound or movement. Taita placed Fenn carefully on her feet, but she clung to him still as she stared out over the empty lake. 'What is happening to the world?' she breathed, through pale dry lips.

  'It was an earthquake of cataclysmic proportions.'

  'I give thanks to Hathor and Isis that it has passed.'

  'It is not over. Those were merely the first shocks. Now there is a lull before the full force breaks.'

  'What has happened to the waters of the lake?'

  'They have been sucked away by the shifting crust of the earth,' he told her, then held up a hand. 'Listen!' There was a rushing sound like that of a mighty wind. 'The waters are returning!' He pointed across the empty basin.

  On the horizon rose a blue mountain of water laced with creamy spume that advanced upon the land with ponderous, stately might. One after another it overwhelmed the outer islands and came on, rearing higher into the sky as it approached the shore. It was still several leagues distant, but already its crest seemed to tower above the height of the bluff on which they stood.

  'It will sweep us away! We will be drowned! We must run!'

  'There is nowhere for us to run to,' he told her. 'Stand firm beside me.”

  She sensed him throwing a spell of protection round them, and immediately joined her own psychic forces to his.

  Another gargantuan convulsion racked the earth, so violent that they were thrown to their knees, but they clung together and gazed at the approaching wave. There was a sound like all the thunder of the heavens, so loud that it dulled their hearing.

  The red rock barrier was split through from its foundations to its summit. Its entire surface was crazed with a network of deep cracks. The huge wave rose high above it and crashed into it in a sm
other of foam and leaping wave crests. The mighty rock pier was submerged beneath it.

  Then there was a roar as the fragments of red rock tumbled over each other and were carried on by the force of the tidal wave into the empty bed of the Nile. They were swept along the riverbed as though they were of no more consequence than beach pebbles. The waters of the lake continued to pour through the breach in a thunderous green spout. The riverbed was neither deep nor wide enough to contain such a volume so the waters burst from its banks and reached as high as the topmost branches of the trees on either side. They were uprooted and toppled into the flow, to be borne downstream like driftwood. Dense clouds of spray towered into the sky above the tumultuous cauldron, catching the sunlight and spinning it into marvellous rainbows that arched across the river.

  The crest of the tidal wave surged up the bluff towards where they crouched beside the ruins of the temple. It seemed that it would engulf them also and carry them away in the torrent, but its strength dissipated before it reached them. The residue of its might swirled round the shattered walls of the temple, and reached as high as their knees before it faltered. They linked arms and braced themselves. Although the waters dragged at them, together they were able to resist being swept into the lake.

  Slowly the elements regained their composure, the tremors of the earth subsided and the waters of the lake stilled. Only the Nile thundered on, green, wide and smoking with spray towards Egypt in the north.

  'The river is reborn,' Fenn whispered, 'just as you are, Magus. The Nile is renewed and made young again.'

  It seemed that they would never tire of the magnificent spectacle.

  They stood for hour upon hour gazing down on it in wonder and awe.

  Then, on an impulse, Fenn turned in the circle of his arms and looked

  towards the west. She started so violently that Taita was alarmed. 'What is it, Fenn?'

  'Look!' she cried, her voice shaking with excitement. 'The land of Jarri is burning!' Mighty clouds of smoke were rising over the horizon, boiling upwards into the heavens, grey and menacing, gradually blotting out the sun and plunging all the earth into sombre shadow. 'What is it, Taita? What is taking place in the kingdom of the witch?'