The Quest

  ‘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 smother 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?’

  ‘I cannot hazard a guess,’ Taita admitted. ‘This thing is too vast to admit of reason or belief.’

  ‘Might we not attempt to overlook the land of Jarri once again, and try to fathom the cause and consequences of this holocaust?’

  ‘We must do so at once,’ he agreed. ‘Let us prepare ourselves.’ They sat together on the barren hillside above the thundering river, linked their hands and launched themselves in unison into the astral plane.

  They soared on high and glided towards the mighty cloud and the land spread beneath it.

  Looking down upon it they saw that it was ruined: the villages blazed and the fields were devastated by poisonous smoke and falling ash. They saw people running from it with their hair and clothing on fire. They heard women wailing and children screaming as they perished. They drew closer to the Mountains of the Moon, and saw that the peaks were blown away.

  From the craters that had split them asunder poured rivers of fiery lava.

  One spilled down on to the citadel of the oligarchs, submerging it with fire and ash until it seemed that it had never existed.

  In the midst of all this destruction only the valley of the Cloud Gardens seemed untouched. But then they saw the peaks that towered above them heave and sway. While they watched, another volcanic eruption blew away half of the mountain. Massive buttresses of black rock were hurled into the heavens. The Cloud Gardens were obliterated.

  Where once they had stood another yawning crater spewed forth fresh rivers of lava.

  ‘The witch! What of her?’

  Taita drew her with him into the very heart of the furnace. Their astral beings were impervious to the raging temperatures that would instantly have reduced their physical bodies to puffs of steam. Down they sank through the passages of Eos’s lair, which Taita remembered so well, until they reached the chamber in which her cocoon lay. Already the green malachite walls were glowing, the tiles popping and shattering with the heat.

  Wisps of smoke rose from the carapace. The glistening surface began to blacken and crack. Slowly it twisted and writhed, then suddenly it split open and from it poured a glutinous yellow fluid, which bubbled and boiled as it cooked. The stench was overpowering. Then the carapace burst into flames and burnt to a powdery ash. The last of the foul liquid boiled away, leaving a black stain on the glowing malachite tiles. The roof of the cavern burst open, and burning lava forced its way through the cracks to flood the witch’s chamber.

  Taita and Fenn drew back and rose above the mountains. Below, the destruction was complete. Jarri had disappeared beneath the ash and the lava. When at last they dropped back across the ether into their physical bodies they were at first too moved by all they had seen and experienced to speak or even move. Still holding hands, they stared at each other.

  Then Fenn’s eyes filled with tears and she began to weep silently.

  ‘It is over,’ Taita told her soothingly.

  ‘Eos is dead?’ Fenn begged. ‘Tell me it was not an illusion. Please, Taita, tell me that what I saw in the vision was the truth.’

  ‘It was the truth. She died in the only way that was possible for her, consumed in the flames of the volcano from which she had risen.’

  Fenn crawled into his lap and he put his arms round her. Now that the danger had passed her strength had evaporated. She was a frightened child again. They sat for the rest of the day gazing down upon the green Nile. Then, as the sun set behind the towering smoke and dustclouds that still filled the western half of the heavens, Taita stood up and carried her back up the hill path to the village.

  The people saw them coming and rushed to meet them, the children squealing with excitement and the women ululating with joy. Meren raced ahead of the crowd to be the first to greet them. Taita set Fenn down and opened his arms to welcome him.

  ‘Magus! We feared for your lives,’ Meren bellowed, while he was still fifty paces away. ‘I should have had more faith in you. I should have known that your magic would prevail. The Nile flows again!’ He seized Taita in a fervent embrace. ‘You have restored life to it and to our motherland.’ He reached out with his other arm and pulled Fenn to him.

  ‘None of us will ever understand the extent of the miracle that the two of you have brought to pass, but a hundred generations of Egyptians will thank you for it.’ Then they were surrounded by the exultant throng and borne up to the hilltop. The singing and laughter, the dancing and rejoicing lasted all that night.

  It was many weeks before the Nile had dropped sufficiently to be contained once more between its banks. Even then it was wreathed in silver spray, and the roaring flood continued to grind great chunks of the red rock along the bottom. It sounded as though a giant was gnashing his teeth in rage. Nevertheless, Taita gave the order for the boats to be carried down the hill and reassembled on the bank.

  ‘If you had not made us bring them to the top, that wave would have smashed them to kindling,’ Meren admitted. ‘I argued with you then, and I ask your forgiveness and understanding for that, Magus.’

  ‘They are freely given.’ Taita smiled. ‘But the truth is that, over the years, I have become inured to you jibbing like an unbroken horse at any piece of good sense I offer you.’

  Once the boats were reassembled on the riverbank, they left Kalulu’s old village on the heights to set up a new encampment in a pleasant wooded site closer to where the boats lay. Here they waited for the Nile to drop to a level at which it could be safely navigated. The mood in the camp was still festive. The knowledge that they were safe from further pursuit by the Jarrian army and that they need no longer fear the malignant power of Eos was a constant source of joy to everyone. It was enhanced by the realization that they would soon be embarking upon the final leg of the long journey back to the motherland they lov
ed so well and had missed so keenly.

  An enormous female hippopotamus, one of a herd that inhabited Lake Nalubaale, ventured too close to the newly opened mouth of the Nile and was caught in the current. Even her great strength was insufficient to save her from being swept down the rapids. Her body was ripped and torn as she was thrown against the rocks. Mortally wounded, she dragged herself ashore just below the encampment. Fifty men armed with spears, javelins and axes rushed down upon her and the dying beast was unable to flee. Once they had dispatched her, they butchered her carcass where it lay.

  That night, pieces of her flesh wrapped in the luscious white belly fat were grilled upon the coals of fifty separate fires and, once again, the people feasted and danced the night through. Although they had all gorged themselves, there remained plenty to salt and smoke; it would feed them for several weeks. In addition to this, the river teemed with catfish that were stunned and disoriented by the raging waters and easily harpooned from the bank, some were heavier than a full-grown man.

  They still had several tons of the dhurra they had taken from the Jarrian granaries so Taita agreed that some might be fermented to make beer.

  By the time the river had dropped to a level that allowed them to take to their oars, they were all strong, rested and eager for the voyage to recommence. Even Hilto was almost recovered from his wound and able to take his place on a rowing bench.

  The Nile had changed from the sullen trickle they had known on the journey towards the land of Jarri. Every bend, every shoal and reef came as a surprise, so Taita could take no chances with a night run. In the evenings they moored to the bank and built a secure stockade of thorn bushes on the shore. After a long day confined between the narrow decks, the horses were turned loose to graze until nightfall. Meren led out a hunting party to bring in what game they could find. As soon as it was dark, men and animals were brought into the safety of the stockade: lions roared and leopards sawed around the thorn-bush walls, attracted by the scent of the horses and the fresh game meat.