The Quest

'Do you have the Inner Eye, Taita?'

'Yes, but so does the witch,' he replied.

'What does my aura look like?' she asked, with ingenuous female vanity.

'It is a shimmering golden light, like no other I have seen or expect to

see again. It is divine.1 Fenn glowed, and he went on, 'Therein lies our difficulty. If you continue to let it shine forth the witch will descry you in an instant and know what a serious threat you may pose to her.'

She thought about that. 'You say that the witch has overlooked us.

In that case, has she not already descried my aura? Is it not too late to attempt to conceal it from her?'

'It is not possible even for a savant to perceive an aura by overlooking from afar. It can only be done by viewing a subject directly. We saw the witch in the water as a wraith, so she saw us in the same fashion.

She could perceive our physical selves and overhear our conversation she could even smell us as we did her - but she could not see your aura.'

'What of yours? Did you conceal it from her?'

'As savants, neither the witch nor I shed an aura.'

'Teach me the art of hiding mine,' she pleaded.

He inclined his head in agreement. 'I will, but we must be vigilant. I must be certain that she is not overlooking or listening to us.'

It was not an easy task. Fenn had to rely on him to tell her how successful her efforts were. At first her best attempts caused her aura to flicker but it soon flared up as brightly as before. They persevered, and gradually, with her most valiant efforts and his coaching, the flickering became a significant dimming. But it was weeks before she could suppress it at will to a level that was not much more striking than that of Meren or any of his troopers, and maintain it at that level of brightness for extended periods.

Nine days after leaving the encampment on the plateau, they reached the river. Although it was almost a league across from bank to bank, the Nile waters flowed no more strongly than those of the mountain stream beside which they had raised the dhurra crop. The thin trickle was almost lost in the wide expanse of dry sand and mudbanks. However, it was sufficient for their needs. They turned southwards and pushed on along the eastern bank, covering many leagues each day. Elephants had dug deep holes in the riverbed to reach the cleaner subterranean water.

Men and horses drank from them.

Each day they came upon large herds of these ancient grey beasts drinking from the holes, lifting huge draughts to their mouths in their trunks and squirting them down their gaping pink throats, but at the troopers' approach they charged up the bank in a herd, flapping their ears and trumpeting before rushing into the forest.

Many of the bulls carried massive shafts of ivory. It was only with an effort that Meren controlled his hunter's heart and allowed them to

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escape unmolested. Now they met other men of the Shilluk tribe grazing their herds along the riverbank. Nontu was carried away on a flood of his emotions. 'Old and revered one, these people are from my own town.

They have news of my family,' he told Taita. 'Two seasons ago one of my wives was taken by a crocodile when she went to draw water from the river, but the other three are well and have borne many children.'

Taita knew Nontu had been at Qebui for the last eight years, and he wondered at the births. 'I left my wives in the care of my brothers,'

Nontu explained blithely.

'It seems they have cared well for them,' Taita remarked drily.

Nontu went on cheerfully. 'My eldest daughter has seen her first red moon and come of child-bearing age. They tell me she has grown into a nubile girl, and the young men have offered many cattle for her as a bride price. I must return with these men, who are my kinsfolk, to the village to arrange her marriage, and to take care of the cattle.'

'I shall be saddened by our parting,' Taita told him. 'What of you, Nakonto? Will you leave us also?'

'Nay, old man. Your medicines are pleasing to my bowels. Furthermore, there is good food and good fighting to be had in your company.

I prefer it to that of many wives and their squalling brats. I have grown accustomed to living without such encumbrances. I will travel on with you.'

They camped for three days beside Nontu's village, an assembly of several hundred large conical huts, beautifully thatched and laid out in a circle around the extensive cattle kraals where each night the herds were penned. There, the herdsmen milked the cows, then drew blood from one of the large veins in each beast's neck. This seemed to be their only food, as they planted no crops. The men and even the women were inordinately tall, but slender and graceful. Despite their tribal tattoos the younger women were nubile and pleasing to look upon. They gathered round the camp in giggling gaggles, ogling the troopers brazenly.

On the third day they bade farewell to Nontu, and were preparing for the departure when five troopers came in a delegation to Meren. Each led by the hand a naked Shilluk maiden, who towered over her escort.

'We wish to bring these chickens with us,' declared Shofar, the spokesman for the group.

'Do they understand your intentions?' Meren asked, to give himself time to consider the proposal.

'Nakonto has explained it to them, and they are willing.'

'What of their fathers and brothers? We do not wish to start a war.'

'We have given them a bronze dagger each, and they are happy with the bargain.'

'Can the women ride?'1 'No, but they will perforce learn soon enough.'

Meren removed his leather helmet and ran his fingers through his curls, then looked to Taita for guidance. Taita shrugged, but his eyes twinkled. 'Perhaps they can be taught to cook, or at least wash our clothes,' he suggested.

'If any causes trouble, or if there is any squabbling or fighting over their favours, I will send them back to their fathers, no matter how far we have travelled,' Meren told Shofar sternly. 'Keep them under control, that is all.'

The column moved on. That evening when they went into laager, Nakonto came to report to Taita and, as had become their custom, to sit beside him for a while. 'We have made good ground today,' he said.

'After this many days more travel…' he showed all of his fingers twice, indicating twenty days '… we will leave the land of my people, and enter that of the Chima.'

'Who are they? Are they brothers to the Shilluk?'

'They are our enemies. They are short in stature and not beautiful as we are.'

'Will they let us pass?'

'Not willingly, old man.' Nakonto smiled wolfishly. 'There will be fighting. I have not had the opportunity to kill a Chima for many years.'

Then he added, as a casual afterthought, 'The Chima are eaters of men.'

The routine that Meren and Taita had adopted since leaving the settlement on the high plateau was to march for four consecutive days and take a break on the fifth. On that day they repaired any damaged equipment, rested the men and horses, and sent out hunting and foraging parties to replenish their supplies. Seventeen days after they had left Nontu with his wives, they passed the last cattle post of the Shilluk, and entered territory that seemed uninhabited by anything other than large herds of antelope. Most were of species they had not encountered before. They also came across new species of trees and plants, which delighted Taita and Fenn. She had become as ardent a botanist as he was. They looked for signs of cattle or human presence, but found none.

'This is the land of the Chima,' Nakonto told Taita.

'Do you know it well?'

'No, but I know the Chima well enough. They are secretive and treacherous. They keep no cattle, which is a true sign that they are savages. They eat game meat, and they prefer that of their fellow men above all else. We must be on our guard lest we end up on their cooking fires.'

With Nakonto's warning in mind, Meren gave special attention to the construction of the zareeba each evening, and placed additional guards over the horses and mules when they let them out to graze. As they travelled further into Chima territory they came across evidence of their presence. They found hollow tree-trunks, which had been hacked open and the bees in them smoked out. Then they came across a cluster of shelters that had not been inhabited for some time. Of more recent origin were a string of footprints in the mudbanks of the river, where a party of thirty men had crossed in single file from east to west. They were only a few days old.

From the beginning the new Shilluk wives, none of whom were much older than Fenn, had been fascinated by her. They discussed the colour of her hair and her eyes among themselves and watched her every move, but kept their distance. Finally Fenn made friendly advances and soon they were conversing happily in sign language, feeling the texture of Fenn's hair, squealing with laughter together at feminine jokes and bathing naked each evening in the shallow pools of the river. Fenn appealed to Nakonto for instruction, and picked up the Shilluk language as swiftly as she had Egyptian. In ways she was still a child, and Taita was pleased that she had convivial company closer to her own age to divert her. However, he made certain that she never wandered too far with the other girls. He kept her close so that he could rush to her aid at the first unnatural chill in the air or any other inkling of an alien presence. She and Taita took to speaking in Shilluk when there was a risk of being overlooked by their adversary.

'Perhaps it is one language that even the witch will not understand, though I doubt it,' he remarked. 'At the least it is good practice for you.'

They were deep into Chima territory when, at the end of a hard day's march, they built the zareeba in a grove of tall mahogany trees. Wide pastures of grass with fluffy pink heads surrounded it. The horses favoured this grazing and herds of antelope were already feeding there. It was clear that they had never been hunted, for they were so tame and confiding that they allowed the archers to approach within easy bowshot.

Meren declared that the following day they would rest, and early in the morning he sent out four hunting parties. When Taita and Fenn set off on their customary foraging expedition, Meren insisted that Shofar and two other troopers went with them: 'There is something in the wind that makes me uneasy,' was his only explanation.

Taita preferred to have Fenn to himself but he knew not to argue when Meren smelt something in the wind. He might not be a psychic but he was a warrior and could smell trouble. They returned to camp late in the afternoon to find that only three of the hunting parties Meren had sent out had returned before them. At first they were not alarmed, expecting the last band to return at any moment, but an hour after sunset a horse belonging to one of the missing hunters galloped into camp. It was lathered with sweat, and wounded in one shoulder. Meren ordered all the troopers to stand to arms, an extra guard on the horses, and bonfires to be lit to guide the missing hunters home.

At the first flush of dawn, when it was light enough to backtrack the wounded horse, Shabako and Hilto took out a heavily armed search party. Taita left Fenn in the care of Meren, and he and Nakonto rode out with them. Within a few leagues of the camp they rode under the outspread branches of a clump of silverleaf trees and came upon a grisly scene.

Nakonto, with his tracking skills and his knowledge of the Chima's habits, knew exactly what had taken place. A large band of men had concealed themselves among the trees and lain in ambush for the hunters. Nakonto picked up an ivory bracelet that one had dropped.

'This was made by a Chima. See how crude it is - a Shilluk child could have done better,' he told Taita. He pointed out the marks on the tree trunks where some of the Chima had climbed into the branches. 'This is the way the treacherous jackals like to fight, with stealthy cunning not courage.'

As the four Egyptian horsemen rode beneath the overhanging branches the Chima had dropped down upon them. At the same time their comrades had leapt out of hiding, and stabbed the horses. 'The Chima jackals pulled our men from their horses, probably before they could draw their weapons to defend themselves.' Nakonto pointed out the signs of the struggle. 'Here they speared them to death - see the blood on the grass.' Using plaited bark rope the Chima had hung the corpses by the heels from the low branches of the nearest silverleafs, and butchered them like antelope.

'They always eat the liver and entrails first,' Nakonto explained. 'Here

is where they shook the dung from the tripes before they cooked them on the coals of the fires.'

Then they had quartered the corpses and used bark rope to tie the severed limbs on to carrying poles. The feet, cut off at the ankle joints, were still hanging from the branches. They had thrown the heads and ¦ hands on to the fires, and when they were roasted, they had chewed off ™ the palms and sucked the flesh from the finger bones. They had split open the skulls to scoop out the baked brains with cupped fingers, then scraped off the cheeks and taken out the tongues, a great Chima delicacy.

The broken skulls and small bones were scattered all around. They had not bothered with the dead horses, probably because they were unable to deal with such a heavy load of meat. Then, with the physical remains, the clothing, weapons and other equipment of the troopers they had murdered, they had set off into the west, moving fast.

¦j'Shall we hunt them down?' Shabako demanded angrily. 'We cannot let this slaughter go unavenged.'

Nakonto was just as eager to take up the pursuit, his eyes shot with bloodlust. But after only a moment's thought Taita shook his head. 'There are thirty or forty of them and six of us. They have had a head start of almost a full day, and they will be expecting us to pursue them. They will lead us deeper into difficult territory and ambush us.' He looked around at the forest. 'Certainly they will have left men to spy on us. They are probably watching us at this moment.'

Some of the troopers drew their swords, but before they could rush among the trees and root them out, Taita stopped them. 'If we do not follow them, they will follow us, which is what we want. We will be able to lead them to a killing ground of our own choosing.' They buried the pathetic skulls with the severed feet, then returned to the zareeba.

Early the next morning they mustered into column and rode out again on the endless journey. At noon they broke the march to rest and water the horses. On Taita's orders, Nakonto slipped into the forest and made a wide circle through the trees. As stealthily as a shadow he cut the back trail of the column. The prints of three sets of bare feet were superimposed on the horse tracks. He made another wide circle to rejoin the column and report to Taita. 'Your eyes see far, old man. Three of the jackals are following us. As you foretold, the rest of the pack will not be far behind.'

That evening they sat late around the fire in the zareeba, laying plans for the morrow.

The next morning they started the march at a sharp trot. Within half

a league Meren ordered the pace increased to a canter. Swiftly they opened the gap between themselves and the Chima scouts whom they knew would be following. As they rode Meren and Taita were studying the terrain they were passing through, seeking ground that they could turn to their advantage. Ahead, a small isolated hillock rose above the forest and they angled towards it. Around its eastern slope they found a smooth, well-beaten elephant road. When they followed it they saw that the hillside above was steep, covered with a dense growth of kittar thornbush. The vicious hooks and densely intertwined branches formed an impenetrable wall. On the opposite side of the road the ground was level and, at first glance, the open forest seemed to afford little cover for an ambush. However, when Taita and Meren rode out a short distance among the trees they found a wadi, a dry gully cut out by storm water, that was deep and wide enough to hide their column, men and horses.

The lip of the gully was only forty yards from the elephant road, within easy bowshot. Quickly they rejoined the main column. They stayed on the elephant road for a short distance, then Meren stopped again to conceal three of his best archers beside the road.

'There are three Chima scouts following us. One for each of you,' he told them. 'Let them get close. Pick your shots. No mistakes. Quick, clean kills. You must not allow any of them to escape to warn the rest of the Chima, who are behind them.'

They left the three archers and rode on along the elephant road. After half a league they left it and made a wide circle back to the gully under the slope of the hill. They led the horses down into it, and dismounted.

Fenn and the Shilluk girls held the animals, ready to bring them forward when the troopers called for them. Taita waited with Fenn, but it would take him just an instant to run to Meren's side when the time came.

The men strung their bows, and lined up below the lip of the wadi facing the elephant road. At Meren's command they squatted down, out of sight, to rest their legs and bow-arms, and to prepare themselves for combat. Only Meren and his captains watched the road, but to conceal the silhouette of their heads they stood behind clumps of grass or bushes.

They did not have long to wait before the three Chima scouts came along the road. They had been running hard to keep up with the horses.

Their bodies shone with sweat, their chests heaved and their legs were dusty to the knees. Meren lifted a warning hand and none of the men stirred. The scouts passed the ambush at a rapid trot and disappeared along the road into the forest. Meren relaxed slightly. A little later the three archers he had left to take care of the scouts slipped out of the

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forest and dropped into the wadi. Meren looked at them questioningly.

The leader grinned and pointed to fresh splashes of blood on his tunic: the scouts had been accounted for. They all settled down to await the arrival of the main body of Chima.

A short time later, from the forest on the right flank, the querulous alarm call of the grey lory, 'Kee-wey! Kee-wey!' rang out. Then a baboon barked a challenge from the top of the hill. Meren lifted a fist as a signal to his men. They nocked their arrows on the bowstrings.

The leading file of the main Chima raiding party trotted round the curve in the elephant road. As they drew closer Meren studied them carefully. They were short, stocky and bow-legged, and wore only loincloths of tanned animal skins. Even when the entire band came into view it was difficult to make an accurate head count for they were bunched in a tight formation and moving fast.

'A hundred at least, maybe more. We are in for some rich sport, I warrant you,' Meren said, with anticipation. The Chima were armed with an assortment of clubs and flint-headed spears. The bows slung across their shoulders were small and primitive. Meren judged that they would not have the draw weight to kill a man at more than thirty paces. Then his eyes narrowed: one of the leaders carried an Egyptian sword slung over his shoulder. The man behind him wore a leather helmet, but of an archaic design. It was puzzling, but there was no time to ponder it now.

The head of the Chima formation came level with the white stone he had placed beside the road as a range marker. Now the entire left flank was exposed to the Egyptian archers.

Meren glanced left and right. The eyes of his men were fixed on him.

He dropped his raised right hand sharply, and his archers jumped upright.

As one man they drew their bows, paused to make good their aim, then loosed a silent cloud of arrows to arc high against the sky. Before the first struck home the second cloud rose into the air. The arrows fluted so softly that the Chima did not even look up. Then, with a sound like raindrops falling on the surface of a pond, they dropped among them.

The Chima did not seem to realize what was happening to them.

One stood gazing down, perplexed, at the shaft of the arrow protruding from between his ribs. Then his knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground. Another was staggering in small circles plucking at the arrow that had buried itself in his throat. Most of the others, even those who had received mortal wounds, did not seem to grasp that they had been hit.

When the third flight of arrows dropped among them those still on their feet panicked and bolted, screaming and howling, in every direction,

like a flock of guinea-fowl scattering under the stoop of an eagle. Some ran straight towards the wadi and the archers dropped their aim. At close range none of the arrows missed their mark: they struck deep into living flesh with meaty thumps. Some went right through the torso of the primary target, and flew on to wound the man behind him. Those who tried to escape up the hill ran into the palisade of kittar thorn bushes. It stopped them in their tracks, and forced them back into the hailstorm of arrows.

'Bring up the horses!' Meren yelled. Fenn and the other girls dragged them forward by the head ropes. Taita swung on to Windsmoke's back, while Meren and his men slung their bows and mounted.

'Forward! Charge!' Meren bellowed. 'Take the blade to them.' The horsemen bounded up the side of the wadi on to the level ground and, shoulder to shoulder, charged at the disordered rabble of Chima, who saw them coming and tried to turn back up the slope. They were caught between the thorn wall and the glittering bronze circle of swords. Some made no attempt to escape. They fell to their knees and covered their heads with their arms. The horsemen stood in the stirrups to stab them.

Others struggled in the thorns like fish in the folds of a net. The troopers cut them down as if they were firewood. By the time they had finished their grisly work, the slope and the ground below it were thickly strewn with bodies. Some Chima were writhing and groaning, but most lay still.

'Dismount,' Meren ordered. 'Finish the work.'

The troopers moved quickly over the field, stabbing any Chima who showed a spark of life. Meren spotted the man with the bronze sword still slung across his back. Three arrow shafts stood out of his chest.

Meren stooped over him to retrieve the sword, but at that instant Taita shouted, 'Meren! Behind you!' He used the voice of power, and Meren was galvanized. He leapt up and twisted aside. The Chima lying behind him had feigned death: he had waited until Meren was off-guard, then he jumped to his feet and swung at him with a heavy flint-headed club. The blow narrowly missed Meren's head but glanced off his left shoulder. Meren pivoted in close, blocking the weapon's next swing, and drove the point of his sword clean through the Chima, transfixing him from sternum to backbone. With a wrench of his wrist, he twisted the blade to open the wound, and when he jerked it clear, a great gush of heart blood followed it.

Clutching his damaged left shoulder Meren bellowed, 'Kill them all again! Make sure of them this time.'

Remembering their comrades hanging like sheep on slaughter racks,

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the troopers went to work with gusto, hacking and stabbing. They found a few Chima hiding in the kittar thickets and dragged them out, squealing like pigs, to the slaughter.

Only once he was certain of them would Meren allow his men to pick over the corpses and gather up their own spent arrows for reuse. He himself was the only casualty. Bare to the waist, he sat with his back to a tree-trunk while Taita examined his shoulder. There was no bleeding, but a dark bruise was spreading over it. Taita grunted with satisfaction.

'No bones broken. In six or seven days an old dog like you will be as good as new.' He anointed the shoulder with a salve, and twisted a linen bandage into a sling to hold the arm comfortably. Then he sat beside Meren as the captains brought the spoils they had gathered from the Chima dead, and laid everything out for them to examine. There were carved wooden lice combs, crude ivory trinkets, water gourds and packets of smoked meat, some still on the bone, wrapped in green leaves and tied with bark string. Taita examined it. 'Human. Almost certainly the remains of our comrades. Bury it with respect.'

Then they turned their attention to the Chima weapons, mostly clubs and spears with heads of flint or obsidian. The knife blades were of chipped flint, the handles wrapped with strips of uncured leather. 'Rubbish!

Not worth carrying away,' Meren said.

Taita nodded agreement. 'Throw it all on the fire.'

At last they examined the weapons and ornaments that were clearly not of Chima manufacture. Some had evidently been taken from the corpses of the four ambushed hunters - bronze weapons and recurve bows, leather helmets and padded jerkins, linen tunics and amulets of turquoise and lapis-lazuli. However, there were others of greater interest, well-worn old helmets and leather breastplates of a type that had not been used by Egyptian troops for decades. Then there was the sword that had almost cost Meren his life. Its blade was worn, the edges chipped and almost destroyed by rough sharpening against granite or some other rock. However, the hilt was finely worked and inlaid with silver. There were empty seatings from which precious stones had been prised or had dropped out. The engraved hieroglyphics were almost obliterated. Taita held it to the light and turned it from side to side, but he could not make out the characters. He called for Fenn: 'Use your sharp young eyes.'

She knelt beside him and pored over the engravings, then read out haltingly, 'I am Lotti, son of Lotti, Best of Ten Thousand, Companion of the Red Road, General and Commander in the guards of the divine Pharaoh Mamose. May he live for ever!'

'Lotti!' Taita exclaimed. 'I knew him well. He was second in command under Lord Aquer of the expedition that Queen Lostris sent from Ethiopia to discover the source of Mother Nile. He was a fine soldier.

So, it seems that he and his men reached at least as far as this place.'

'Did Lord Aquer and all the rest die here, and were they eaten by the Chima?' Meren wondered.

'No. According to Tiptip, the little priest of Hathor with six fingers, Aquer saw the volcano and the great lake. Besides, Queen Lostris placed a thousand men under his command. I doubt the Chima could have slaughtered them all,' Taita said. 'I believe that they caught off-guard a small detachment under Lotti as they did our men. But did the Chima destroy a whole Egyptian army? I think not.' While the discussion continued, Taita was surreptitiously watching Fenn's expression. Whenever the name of Queen Lostris was mentioned she frowned, as though seeking an elusive memory that was tucked away somewhere in the depths of her mind. One day it will all return to her, every memory of her other life, he thought, but he said aloud to Meren, 'We shall probably never know the truth of Lotti's fate, but his sword is proof to me that we are indeed following the trail to the south that Lord Aquer blazed so long ago. We have spent too much time here already.' He stood up.

'How soon can we move on?'

'The men are ready,' Meren said. They were cheerful as boys just released from study, sitting in the shade and joking with the Shilluk girls, who were serving them food and passing round jars of dhurra beer.

'Look at how eager they are. A good fight is better for their morale than a night with the prettiest whore in the Upper Kingdom.' He started to laugh, then broke off to rub his injured shoulder. 'The men are ready, but the day is almost done. The horses would profit from a short rest.'

'So will that shoulder of yours,' Taita agreed.

The sharp little fight seemed to have eliminated the threat of more Chima raids. Although they saw sign of their presence over the days that followed, none was of recent origin. Even these indications gradually became infrequent and eventually ceased. They passed out of the land of the Chima and rode on into uninhabited territory.

Although the Nile was still shrunken to a trickle, there had evidently been heavy rain in the surrounding countryside. The forest and savannah teemed with game, and grazing was abundant and rich. Taita had worried

that, by this time, the troopers would be homesick and depressed but they remained buoyant, their spirits high.

Fenn and the Shilluks delighted the men with their girlish pranks and high jinks. Two of the girls were pregnant, and Fenn wanted to know how they had come to this happy state; when questioned, the girls dissolved into paroxysms of laughter. Fenn was intrigued and came to Taita for elucidation. He made his explanation short and vague. She pondered it for a while. 'It sounds rich sport.' She had picked up the expression from Meren.

Taita tried to look grave but he could not prevent a smile. 'So I have heard,' he conceded.

'When I am grown, I should like a baby to play with,' she told him.

'No doubt you will.'

'We could have one together. Wouldn't that be rich sport, Taita?'

'To be sure,' he agreed, with a pang, knowing it could never be. 'But in the meantime we have many other important things to do.'

Taita could not remember having been so filled with well-being since those long-ago days when he had been young and Lostris was alive. He felt quicker and more lively. He did not tire nearly as easily as he had done before. He attributed this mostly to Fenn's company.

Her studies advanced so swiftly that he was forced to find other ways to keep her mind working at or near its potential. If he allowed her to slacken for even a short while, her attention wandered. By now she spoke both Shilluk and Egyptian fluently.

If she were ever to become an adept, she must learn the arcane language of the magi, the Tenmass. No other medium encompassed the entire body of esoteric learning. However, the Tenmass was so complex and multi-faceted, and had so little association with any other human language, that only those possessed of the highest intelligence and dedication could hope to master it.

It was a challenge that brought out the best in Fenn. At first she found it was like trying to scale a wall of polished glass that gave no purchase to hand or foot. Laboriously she climbed a little way, then, to her fury, lost her grip and slithered down. She picked herself up and tried again, each time more fiercely. She never despaired, even when it seemed she was making no progress. Taita was making her face the magnitude of the task: only then would she be ready to move on.

The moment came, but still he waited until they were alone on their sleeping mats at night. Then he placed his hand on her forehead and spoke to her quietly until she sank into a hypnotic trance. When she was

fully receptive, he could begin to plant the seeds of the Tenmass in her mind. He did not use the Egyptian language as the medium of instruction, but spoke directly to her in the Tenmass. It required many such nocturnal sessions before the seeds took tenuous hold. Like an infant standing for the first time, she took a few uncertain steps, then collapsed. The next time she stood more firmly and confidently. He was careful not to tax her too hard, but at the same time to keep her moving. Aware that the strain might stale her, and bend her spirit, he saw to it that they still spent enchanted hours at the boo board, or in easy but sparkling conversation, or wandering together in the forest in search of rare plants or other small treasures.

Whenever they passed a likely stretch of gravel in the riverbed, he unstrapped his prospecting pan from the back of his mule and they worked the gravel. While he swirled the slurry he had picked up, Fenn used her eyes and nimble fingers to pick out lovely semi-precious stones.

Many had been polished by the waters into fantastic shapes. When she had filled a bag, she showed them to Meren, who made her a bracelet with a matching anklet. One day, below a dried-up waterfall, she plucked a gold nugget the size of the first joint of her thumb from the pan. It sparkled in the sun and dazzled her. 'Fashion for me a jewel, Taita,' she demanded.

Although he had been able to hide it, Taita had felt twinges of jealousy when she wore the ornaments Meren had made for her. At my age?

He smiled at his folly. Like a lovelorn swain. Nevertheless, he devoted all his art and creative genius to the task she had set him. He used the silver from the hilt of Lotti's sword to make a thin chain and a setting from which he suspended the nugget. When it was done, he worked a spell into it to give it protective qualities over its wearer, then hung it round her neck. When she looked down at her image in a river pool her eyes filled with tears. 'It is so beautiful,' she whispered, 'and it feels warm on my skin, as though it were alive.' The warmth she had detected was the emanation of the power with which he had endowed it. It became her most prized possession, and she named it the Talisman of Taita.

The further south they travelled, the lighter and more buoyant the mood of the company became. All at once it struck Taita that there was something unnatural about it. It was true that the way was not as hazardous as it had been when they were lost in the great swamps or in the lands of the Chima, but they were far from home, the road was endless and the conditions arduous. There was no reason for their optimism and light-heartedness.

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In the fading light of day he was sitting beside a river pool with Fenn.

She was studying the trio of the elemental symbols of the Tenmass that he had drawn on her clay tablet. Each denoted a word of power. When they were conjugated they became so portentous and charged that they could be safely absorbed only into a mind that had been prepared carefully to receive them. Taita sat close to her, ready to protect her if the shock of the conjugation produced a backlash. Across the pool a giant black and white kingfisher, with a russet chest, was hovering over the water. It dived, but Fenn's concentration on the symbols was so intense that she did not glance up at the splash as the bird struck the surface, then rose with a flutter of wings and a small silver fish clamped in its long black bill.

Taita tried to analyse his own feelings more closely. There was only one good reason he could think of for his own euphoric state of mind: his love for and delight in the child at his side. On the other hand there were compelling reasons why he should be afraid for both their sakes. He was charged with a sacred duty to protect his pharaoh and his homeland.

He was travelling to a confrontation with a powerful evil force without any clear plan, a lone hare setting out to scotch a marauding leopard. All the chances were against him. Almost certainly the consequences would be dire. Why, then, was he doing so seemingly without any reckoning of the consequences?

Then he became aware that he was having difficulty in following even this simple line of reasoning. It was as though impediments were being placed deliberately in his way. He kept feeling a strong impulse to let it go and to lapse back into a complacent sense of well-being and trust in his own ability to overcome obstacles as he encountered them, without having any coherent plan. It is a dangerous and reckless state of mind, he thought, then laughed aloud as though it were a joke.

He had disrupted Fenn's concentration: she looked up and frowned.

'What is it, Taita?' she demanded. 'You warned me that it was dangerous to become distracted when I was attempting to conjugate the rational coefficients of the symbols.'

Her words brought him up sharply, and Taita realized how grievously he had erred. 'You are right. Forgive me.' She looked down again at the clay tablet in her lap. Taita tried to focus on the problem, but it remained hazy and unimportant. He bit hard into his lip, and tasted blood. The sharp pain sobered him. With an effort, he was able to concentrate.

There was something he must remember. He tried to grasp it, but it remained a shadow. He reached for it again, but it dissolved before he

could catch it. Beside him Fenn stirred again and sighed. Then she looked up and set aside the clay tablet. 'I cannot concentrate. I can feel your distress. Something is blocking you.' She stared at him with those candid green eyes, then whispered, 'I can see it now. It is the witch in the pool.'

Quickly she removed the nugget from round her neck and placed it in her palm. She held out both of her hands. Taita placed the Periapt of Lostris in his own palm. Then they linked hands and formed the circle of protection. Almost imperceptibly he felt the alien influence recede.

The words that had troubled him jumped into his mind. He had been trying to remember the warning of Demeter: She has already infected you with her evil. She has begun to bind you with her spells and temptations. She will twist your judgement. Soon you will begin to doubt that she is evil. She will seem to you fine, noble and as virtuous as any person who ever lived. Soon it will seem that 1 am the evil one who has poisoned your mind against her. When that happens she will have divided us and I will be destroyed. You will surrender yourself to her freely and willingly. She will have triumphed over both of us.

They sat together in the protective circle until Taita had thrown off the enervating influence of Eos. He was amazed by the support Fenn rendered him. He could feel the strength flowing from her soft little hands into his own gnarled and knotted ones. They had shared more than one life span, and together they had built a fortress of the spirit within walls of marble and granite.

Darkness fell swiftly and bats flitted over the pool, wheeling and swooping on the insects that rose from the surface of the water. On the opposite bank of the river a hyena whooped mournfully. Still holding Fenn's hand, Taita raised her to her feet and led her up the bank to the zareeba.

Meren greeted them. 'I was about to send out a search party to find you,' he called cheerfully.

Later Taita sat with him and his officers at the campfire. They, too, were cheerful, and he could hear the laughter and the banter from the men at the far end of the enclosure. Once in a while Taita thought to sober them with a warning, but he let them be: They also are marching to the siren song of Eos, but I will let them go happily where they must go anyway. As long as I can hold firm, there will be time anon to recall them to their senses.

Each day they pushed deeper into the south, and the determination of Meren and his men never wavered. One evening as they built the zareeba Taita led Meren aside and asked, 'What make you of the mood of the men? It seems to me that they are near the end of their endurance, eager to turn northwards for Assoun and their homes. We may soon be faced with a mutiny.' He had said it to test the other man, but Meren was outraged.

'They are my men and I have come to know them well. It seems you have not, Magus. There is not a mutinous hair on their heads or breath in their lungs. They are as hot for the enterprise as I am.'

'Forgive me, Meren. How could I doubt you?' Taita murmured, but he had heard echoes of the witch's voice rise from Meren's throat. It is good that I need not deal with sullen faces and surly moods on top of all else.

In that Eos is making my lot easier, he consoled himself.

At that Fenn came running from the camp calling, 'Magus! Taita!

Come swiftly! The baby of Li-To-Liti is bursting out of her and I cannot get it back inside!'

'Then I shall come and save the poor mite from your ministrations.'

Taita scrambled to his feet and hurried with her to the encampment.

With Taita kneeling beside the Shilluk girl, soothing her, the birth went swiftly. Fenn watched the process with horror. Each time Li-To-Liti squealed she started. In a pause between contractions, while the girl lay panting and drenched with sweat, Fenn said, 'It does not seem such rich sport after all. I don't think you and I should bother ourselves with it.'

Before midnight Li-To-Liti was delivered of an amber-coloured son with a cap of black curls. To Taita, the arrival of the child was some compensation for the profligate expenditure of other young lives along this bitter road. They all rejoiced with the father.

'It is a good omen,' the men told each other. 'The gods smile upon us. From now onwards our venture will prosper.'

Taita sought the counsel of Nakonto. 'What is the custom of your people? How long must the woman rest before she can go on?'

'My first wife gave birth while we were moving cattle to new pasture.

It was past noon when her waters broke. I left her with her mother to do the business beside the road. They caught up with me before nightfall, which was as well, because there were lions about.'

'Your women are hardy,' Taita remarked.

Nakonto looked mildly surprised. 'They are Shilluk,' he said.

'That would explain it,' Taita agreed.'

The next morning Li-To-Liti slung her infant on her hip, where it could reach the breast without her having to dismount, and was up behind her man when the column pulled out at dawn.

They continued on through well-watered, grassy countryside. The sandy earth was gentle on the animals' legs and hoofs. Taita treated any light injuries or ailments with his salves so they remained in fine condition.

There were endless herds of wild antelope and buffalo so there was never any shortage of meat. Days passed with such smooth regularity that they seemed to merge into one. The leagues fell away as vast distances opened ahead.

Then, at last, an escarpment of hills appeared on the misty blue horizon ahead of them. Over the following days it loomed larger until it seemed to fill half of the sky, and they could make out the deep notch in the high ground through which the Nile flowed. They headed directly for this, knowing that it would afford the easiest passage through the mountains. Closer still, they could see each feature of the heavily wooded slopes and the elephant roads that climbed them. At last Meren could no longer contain his impatience. He left the baggage train to make its own pace and took a small party forward to reconnoitre. Naturally Fenn went with them, riding beside Taita. They entered the gorge of the river and climbed up the rugged elephant road towards the summit of the escarpment. They were only half-way up when Nakonto ran forward and dropped on one knee to examine the ground.

'What is it?' Taita called. When he received no answer he rode forward and leant out from Windsmoke to discover what had intrigued the Shilluk.

'The tracks of horses.' Nakonto pointed to a patch of soft earth. 'They are very fresh. Only one day old.'

'Mountain zebra?' Taita hazarded.

Nakonto shook his head emphatically.

'Horses carrying riders,' Fenn translated, for Meren's sake.

He was alarmed. 'Strange horsemen. Who can they be, so far from civilization? They may be hostile. We should not continue up the pass until we find out who they are.' He looked back the way they had come.

On the plain below they could see the cloud of yellow dust the rest of the column had raised, still three or more leagues away. 'We must wait for the others, then go forward in strength.' Before Taita could reply a loud halloo rang down from the high ground above and echoed off the hills. It startled them all.

I176

'We have been discovered! But, by Seth's pestilential breath, whoever they are they speak Egyptian,' Meren exclaimed. He cupped his hands round his mouth and bellowed back up the pass, 'Who are you.7'

'Soldiers of the divine Pharaoh Nefer Seti!'

'Advance and be recognized,' Meren called.

They laughed with relief as three strange horsemen came clattering down to meet them. Even at a distance Meren saw that one carried the blue standard of the House of Mamose, and as they came closer still their features were clearly Egyptian. Meren started forward to meet them. As the two parties came together they dismounted and embraced rapturously.

'I am Captain Rabat,' the leader introduced himself, 'an officer in the legion of Colonel Ah-Akhton in the service of Pharaoh Nefer Seti.'

'I am Colonel Meren Cambyses, on a special duty for the same divine pharaoh.' Rabat acknowledged his superior ranking with a salute of one fist clenched across his breast. Meren went on, 'And this is the magus, Taita of Gallala.' True respect dawned in Rabat's eyes and he saluted again. Taita saw from his aura that Rabat was man of limited intelligence, but honest and without guile.

'Your fame precedes you, Magus. Please allow me to guide you to our encampment, where you will be our honoured guest.'

Rabat had ignored Fenn for she was a child, but she was conscious of the snub. 'I don't like this Rabat,' Fenn told Taita in Shilluk. 'He is arrogant.'

Taita smiled. She had become accustomed to her favoured position.

In this she reminded him strongly of Lostris when she had been sovereign of Egypt. 'He is only a rough soldier,' he consoled her, 'and beneath your consideration.' Appeased, her expression softened.

'What are your orders, Magus?' Rabat asked.

'The rest of our contingent follows with a large train of baggage.' Taita pointed at the dustcloud on the plain. 'Please send one of your men back to guide them.' Rabat despatched a man at once, then led the rest of them up the steep, rocky pathway towards the crest of the pass.

'Where is Colonel Ah-Akhton, your commander?' Taita asked, as he rode at Rabat's side.

'He died of the swamp-sickness during our advance up the river.'

'That was seven years ago?' Taita asked.

'Nay, Magus. It was nine years and two months,' Rabat corrected him, 'the term of our exile from our beloved homeland, Egypt.'

Taita realized that he had forgotten to include the time it would have

taken them to reach this place since leaving Karnak. 'Who commands the army in Colonel Ah-Akhton's place?' he asked.; 'Colonel That Ankut.'I 'Where is he?'

'He led the army southwards along the river in accordance with the command of Pharaoh. He left me here with only twenty men and some women, those with very young children who had been born during the march or those who were too sick or weak to continue.'

'Why did Colonel That leave you here?'

'I was ordered to plant crops, to keep a herd of horses ready for him, and to hold a base in his rear to which he could retire, if he were forced to retreat from the wild lands to the south.'

'Have you had news of him since he marched away?'

'Some months later he sent back three men with all of his surviving horses. It seems that he had journeyed into a country to the south that is infested with a fly whose sting is fatal to horses and he had lost almost all of his herd. Since those three arrived, we have had no word of him.

He and his men have been swallowed up by the wilderness. That was many long years ago. You are the first civilized men we have met in all that time.' He sounded forlorn.

'You have not thought to abandon this place and take your people back to Egypt?' Taita asked, to gauge his mettle.

'I have thought on it,' Rabat admitted, 'but my orders and my duty are to hold this post.' He hesitated, then went on, 'Besides, the man-eating Chima and the great swamps stand between us and our very Egypt.'

Which is probably the most telling reason why you have remained at iyour post, Taita thought. As they talked they came out at the head of IIIthe pass and before them stretched a wide plateau. Almost at once they 1felt that the air of this high place was more pleasant than that on the Iplains below.

1There were scattered herds of grazing cattle, and beyond them Taita IIIwas astonished to see the mud walls of a substantial military fort. It seemed out of place in this remote and savage landscape; the first sign of civilization they had come across since they had left the fort of Qebui more than two years previously. This was a lost outpost of empire of which no one in Egypt was aware.

'What is the name of this place?' Taita asked.

'Colonel That called it Fort Adari.'

They rode among the grazing cattle, tall, rangy animals with huge

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'¦ THE QUEST

humped shoulders and a wide spread of heavy horns. The coat of each had a distinctive colour and pattern, no two alike. They were red or white, black or yellow, with contrasting blotches and spots.

'Where did you find these cattle?' Taita asked. 'I have seen none other like them.'

'We trade them with the native tribes. They call them zebu. The herds provide us with milk and beef. Without them we would suffer even greater hardship than we do at present.'

Meren frowned and opened his mouth to reprimand Rabat for his lack of spirit, but Taita read his intention, and cautioned him with a quick shake of his head. Although Taita agreed with both Fenn and Meren on the fellow's worth, it would not be of any benefit to them to offend him. Almost certainly, they would need his Co-operation later. The fields around the fort were planted with dhurra, melons and vegetable crops that Taita did not recognize. Rabat told them the outlandish native names, and dismounted to pick a large shiny black fruit, which he handed to Taita. 'When cooked in a stew of meat they are tasty and nutritious.'

When they reached the fort the women and children of the garrison came out through the gates to welcome them, carrying bowls of soured milk and platters of dhurra cake. Altogether there were fewer than fifty and they were a bedraggled, sorry-looking lot, although they were friendly enough. Accommodation in the fort was limited. The women offered a small windowless cell to Taita and Fenn. The floor was of packed earth, ants moved in military file along the rough-hewn walls and shiny black cockroaches scurried into cracks in the log walls. The smell of the unwashed bodies and chamber-pots of the previous occupants was pervasive.

Rabat explained apologetically that Meren and the rest, officers and men alike, would have to bunk with his soldiers in the communal barracks. With expressions of gratitude and regret, Taita declined this offer of hospitality.

Taita and Meren chose a congenial site half a league beyond the fort, in a grove of shady trees on the banks of a running stream. Rabat, who was plainly relieved not to have them in the fort, honoured Meren's Hawk Seal and provided them with fresh milk, dhurra and, at regular intervals, a slaughtered ox.

'I hope we are not to stay long in this place,' Hilto remarked to Taita, on the second day. 'The mood of these people is so despondent that it will lower the morale of our men. Their spirits are high, and I would like

them to remain so. Besides, all the women are married and most of our men have been celibate for too long. Soon they will want to sport with them and there will be trouble.'i 'I assure you, good Hilto, that we will move on as soon as we have made the arrangements.' Taita and Meren spent the following days in close consultation with the melancholy Rabat.

'How many men went south with Colonel That?' Taita wanted to know.

Like many illiterates, Rabat had a reliable memory and he replied without hesitation: 'Six hundred and twenty-three, with one hundred and forty-five women.'

'Merciful Isis, was that all who remained of the original thousand who marched from Karnak?'

'The swamps were trackless and deep,' Rabat explained. 'We were laid low with swamp-sickness. Our guides were unreliable and we were attacked by the native tribes. Our losses of men and horses were heavy. Surely you had the same experience, for you must have covered the same ground to reach Adari.'

'Yes, indeed. However, the water was lower, and our guides faultless.'

'Then you were more fortunate than ourselves.'

'You said that Colonel That sent men and horses back here. How many horses were there?' Taita switched to a more agreeable subject.

'They brought back fifty-six, all fly-struck. Most died after reaching us.

Only eighteen survived. Once they had delivered the horses, Colonel Tinat's men went south again to rejoin him. They took with them the porters I had recruited for them.'

'So none of Tinat's men remains with you?'

'One was so ill that I kept him here. He has survived to this day.'

'I would like to question him,' Taita told him.

'I will send for him at once.'

The sole survivor was tall but skeletally thin. Taita saw at once that his emaciated frame and thin white hair were relics of disease, rather than signs of age. Despite this he had recovered his health. He was cheerful and willing, unlike most of the other men under Rabat's command.

“I have heard of your ordeal,' Taita told him, 'and 1 commend your courage and zeal.'

'You are the only one who has, Magus, and 1 thank you for it.'

'What is your name?'

'Tolas.'

¦¦ THE QUEST

'Your rank?'

'I am a horse surgeon and a sergeant of the first water.'

'How far had you ventured south before Colonel That sent you to bring back the surviving horses?'

'About twenty days' travel, Magus, perhaps two hundred leagues.

Colonel That was determined to travel fast - too fast. I believe this increased our loss of horses.'

'Why was he in such haste?' Taita asked.

Tolas smiled thinly. 'He did not confide in me, Magus, nor seek my counsel.'

Taita thought for a while. It seemed possible that That had come under the influence of the witch, and that she had enticed him southwards.

'Then, good Tolas, tell me about the disease that attacked the horses. Captain Rabat mentioned it to me, but he gave no details. What makes you think that it was caused by these flies?'

'It broke out ten days after we first encountered the insects. The horses began to sweat excessively and their eyes filled with blood so that they became half blind. Most died within ten or fifteen days of the first symptoms occurring.'

'You are a horse surgeon. Do you know of any cure?'

Tolas hesitated, but did not answer the question. Instead he remarked, 'I saw the grey mare you ride. I have seen many tens of thousands of horses in my lifetime, but I would think that mare is as good as the best of them. You might never find another like her.'

'It is clear that you are a fine judge of horseflesh, Tolas, but why do you tell me this?'

'Because it would be a shame to sacrifice such a horse to the fly. If you are determined to go on, as I think you are, leave the mare and her foal with me until you return. I will look after her as though she were my own child.'

'I will think on it,' Taita told him. 'But to return to my question: do you know of any remedy for the fly sickness?'

'The native tribes hereabouts have a potion that they distil from wild berries. They dose their cattle with it.'

'Why did they not warn Colonel That of this disease before he left Fort Adari?'

'At that time we had no contact with the tribes. It was only when I returned with the fly-ridden herd that they came forward to sell us the medicine.'

'Is it efficacious?'

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WILBUR SMITH

'It is not infallible,' Tolas told him. 'It appears to me that it will,cure six out of ten horses that have been fly-struck. But perhaps those horses I tried it on had already been too long infected.'I 'What would have been your losses if you had not used it?'

'I cannot tell for certain.'

'Then guess.'

'It seems to me that some animals have a natural resistance to the sting. A very few, say, five in a hundred, will show no ill-effects.

Others, perhaps thirty or forty in a hundred, will sicken but recover.

The rest die. Any animal that is infected but recovers is immune to any subsequent infection.'

'How do you know this?'

'The natives know it well.'

'How many of the horses in your care have been infected but have recovered?'

'Most were too far gone before we could dose them. However, eighteen are salted,' Tolas answered promptly, then clarified, 'They are immune.'

'So, Tolas, I will need a goodly supply of this native potion. Can you

[procure it for me?'

'I can do better. I have had almost nine years to study the matter.

Although the tribesmen are secretive and will not divulge the recipe, I ihave discovered for myself the plant that they use. I have spied upon them while their women are gathering it.'

,'You will show it to me?'

'Of course, Magus,' Tolas agreed readily. 'But, again, I caution you 'that even when treated many horses will still die. Your grey mare is too fine an animal to expose to such risk.'

Taita smiled. It was apparent that Tolas had fallen in love with Windsmoke and was angling for a way to keep her with him. “I will take into careful consideration all you have told me. But now my main concern is to learn the secret of the cure.'

'With the permission of Captain Rabat, I will take you into the forest tomorrow to gather the berries. It is a ride of several hours to reach the area where they grow.'

'Excellent.' Taita was pleased. 'Now describe for me the road to the south that you travelled with Colonel That.' Tolas told them all he could remember, while Fenn made notes on a clay tablet. When he had finished Taita said, 'What you have told me, Tolas, is invaluable, but now you must describe how we will recognize the boundary of the fly territory.'

Tolas placed his forefinger on the sketch map that Fenn had drawn on the tablet. 'On about the twentieth day of the journey southwards you will come upon a pair of hills shaped like a virgin's breasts. They will be visible from several leagues off. Those hills mark the boundary. I counsel you not to take the grey mare further. You will lose her in the sad country that lies beyond.'

The next morning Captain Rabat went with them, riding beside Taita, when they set out in search of the berries. The pace was easy, and they had much opportunity to talk.

After several hours, Tolas led them into a grove of enormous wild fig trees strung out along the bank of the river, deep in the gorge. Most of the branches were draped with serpentine vines, upon which grew clusters of small purple-black berries. Fenn, Tolas and three other men, whom Tolas had brought from the fort, climbed into the trees. Each had a leather harvesting bag slung round their neck into which they packed the fruit. When they clambered down from the trees their hands were stained purple and the berries emitted a sickly, putrid odour. Fenn offered a handful to Whirlwind, but the colt refused it. Windsmoke was equally disdainful.

'It is not to their natural taste, I grant, but if you mix the berries into dhurra meal and bake it into cakes they will eat them readily enough,'

Tolas said. He lit a fire and placed flat river stones in the flames. While they heated he demonstrated how to pound the fruit into a paste and mix it with the dhurra meal. 'The proportions are important. One of fruit to five of the meal. Any larger amount of the berries and the horse will refuse it, or if they eat it they will purge excessively,' he explained. When the stones were crackling hot he put handfuls of the mixture on to them and let it bake into hard cakes. He laid them aside to cool and began another batch. 'The cakes will keep without spoiling for many months, even in the worst conditions. The horses will eat them even when they are covered with green mould.'

Fenn picked one up and burnt her fingers. She passed it from hand to hand and blew on it until it cooled, then took it to Windsmoke. The mare sniffed it, fluttering her nostrils. Then she took it between her lips and rolled her eyes at Taita.

'Go on, you silly thing,' he told her sternly. 'Eat. It is good for you.'

Windsmoke crunched the cake. A few scraps fell out of her mouth,

but she swallowed the rest. Then she lowered her head to pick up the pieces from the grass. Whirlwind was watching her with interest. When Fenn brought him a cake he followed her example and ate it with gusto.

Then he pushed Fenn with his muzzle, demanding more.

'What dose do you give them?' Taita asked Tolas.

'It was a matter of experiment,' Tolas replied. 'As soon as they show any symptoms of being fly-struck I give them four or five cakes each day until the symptoms disappear, then continue the dose until long after they seem fully recovered.'

'What do you call the fruit?' Fenn demanded.

Tolas shrugged. 'The Ootasa have some outlandish name for it, but I have never thought to give it an Egyptian one.'

“Then I shall name it the Tolas fruit,' Fenn announced, and Tolas smiled, gratified.

The following day Taita and Fenn returned to the grove with Shofar, four troopers and the equipment they needed to bake a large quantity of Tolas cakes. They set up camp in the midst of the grove, in a clearing that overlooked the dry bed of the Nile. They stayed there for ten days, and filled twenty large leather sacks with the cakes. When they returned with purple-stained hands and ten baggage-loaded mules, they found Meren and his men eager to leave.

When they bade Rabat farewell, he told Taita dolefully, 'We shall probably never meet again in this life, Magus, but it has been a great honour for me to be allowed to render you some small service.'

'I am grateful for your willing assistance and cheerful company.

Pharaoh himself will hear of it,' Taita assured him.

They struck out again southwards, with Tolas as their guide, towards the hills shaped like a virgin's breasts, and the fly country. Their time at Fort Adari had refreshed men and animals and they made good progress.

Taita ordered that the hunters should keep the tails of the animal game they caught. He showed the men how to skin them, scrape flesh, salt them, then leave them to dry in the air. Meanwhile they carved wood into handles and inserted them into the tubes of dried skin in place of the bone they had removed. Finally Taita brandished one of the fly switches and told them, 'Soon you will be grateful for these. It is probably the only weapon that will discourage the fly.'

On the twentieth morning after they had left Fort Adari they made the customary early start on the day's trek. Then at a little past noon, as Tolas had predicted, the twin nipples of the hills, like the breasts of a virgin, thrust above the horizon.

'No further. Order the halt,' Taita called to Meren. He had decided before they left Fort Adari that he would not follow Tolas's advice slavishly. He had already been dosing Windsmoke and Whirlwind with the cakes and hoped that the medicine would concentrate in their blood long before they suffered the first sting. On that last evening before they entered the fly territory he took Fenn with him to the horse lines. When she saw them coming Windsmoke whickered. Taita rubbed her forehead and scratched behind her ears, then fed her a Tolas cake. Fenn did the same for Whirlwind. By now both had developed a taste for the cakes and swallowed them with appetite. Tolas had been watching from the shadows. Now he approached Taita and greeted him diffidently. 'So you are taking the grey mare and her foal with you?' he asked.

'I could not bear to leave them behind,' Taita replied.

Tolas sighed. 'I understand, Magus. Perhaps I would have done the same, for already I love them. I pray to Horus and Isis that they will survive.'

'Thank you, Tolas. We will all come together again, of that I am certain.'

Next morning they parted company. Tolas could guide them no further and turned back for Fort Adari. Nakonto was out on the point, breaking the trail, Meren and three squads marching behind him. Taita and Fenn came next, on Windsmoke and Whirlwind. The eighteen salted horses followed in a loose herd. Shabako, with the fourth squad, brought up the rear.

They camped that evening under the hills. While they ate their dinner by the fires a pride of hunting lions began to roar on the dark plain beyond the hills, a menacing sound. Taita and Meren went to check the head ropes of the tethered horses, but the lions did not come closer and gradually their roars receded and the silence of the night settled over them.

The next morning, while the column mustered, Taita and Fenn fed the horses their Tolas cakes. Then they mounted and rode on between the twin hills. Taita had just relaxed into the rhythm of the march when suddenly he straightened and stared at Windsmoke's neck. A large dark insect had appeared on her creamy hide, close to her mane. He cupped his right hand and waited for the insect to settle, extend its sharp black

proboscis and probe for the blood vessels beneath the mare's skin. The buried sting anchored it, so he was able to snatch it up in his cupped hands. It buzzed shrilly as it tried to escape but he tightened his; grip and crushed its head and body. Then he held it between two fingers and showed it to Fenn. 'This is a fly that the tribes call the tsetse. It is the first of many to come,' he predicted. At the words, another fly settled on his neck and plunged its sting into the soft skin behind his ear.

He winced and slapped at it. Although he caught it a hard blow, it shot away seemingly unharmed.

'Get out your fly switches,' Meren ordered, and soon they were all lashing at themselves and their mounts, like religious flagellants, trying to drive off the stinging swarms. The following days were a torment as the flies plagued them ceaselessly. They were at their worst during the heat of the day, but kept up the attack by the light of the moon and the stars, maddening men and horses alike.

The tails of the horses lashed continuously against their flanks and hindquarters. They tossed their heads and twitched their skins as they rtried to shake off the flies that crawled into their ears and eyes.

The faces of the men swelled like some grotesque crimson fruit and their eyes became slits in the puffy flesh. The backs of their necks were lumpy and the itching was intolerable. With their fingernails they scratched raw the skin behind their ears. At night they built smudge fires ,of dried elephant dung and crouched, coughing and gasping, in the acrid Ismoke to seek respite. But as soon as they moved away for a breath of Ifresh air the flies arrowed in on them, driving their stings deep at the instant they landed. Their bodies were so tough that a hard blow with the palm of a hand hardly disturbed them. Even when they were knocked from their perch, they rebounded in the same movement, stinging again ion some other exposed body part. The fly switches were the only effective weapon. They did not kill them, but the long tail hairs tangled legs and wings and held them so that they could be crushed between the fingers.

'There is a limit to the range of these monsters,' Taita encouraged the men. 'Nakonto knows their habits well. He says that as suddenly as we came upon them we will be free of them.'

Meren ordered forced marches and rode at the head of the column, setting a driving pace. Deprived of sleep and weakened by the venom that the flies pumped into their blood the men swayed in their saddles.

When a trooper collapsed his comrades threw him over the back of his horse and rode on.

Nakonto alone was inured to the insects. His skin remained smooth

and glossy, unmarked by stings. He allowed the insects to suck themselves full of his blood so that they could not fly. Then he mocked them as he tore off their wings: 'I have been stabbed by men, leopards have bitten me and lions clawed me. Who are you to annoy me? Now you can walk home to hell.'

On the tenth day after they had left the hills, they rode out of the fly country. It happened so suddenly that they were taken unawares. At one moment they were cursing and flogging at the whirling insects, then fifty paces further on the silence of the forest was no longer disturbed by the vicious whine. Within a league of passing out of the tyranny they came upon an isolated river pool. Meren took pity on the party. 'Fall out!' he roared. 'The last one into the water is a simpering virgin.'

There was a rush of naked bodies, then the forest rang with cries of relief and jubilation. When they emerged from the pool, Taita and Fenn ministered to everyone's swollen stings, smearing them with one of the magus's salves. That night the laughter and banter round the campfires was unstinted.

It was dark when Fenn knelt over Taita and shook him awake. 'Come quickly, Taitai Something terrible is happening.' She seized his hand and dragged him to the horse lines. 'It's both of them.' Fenn's voice cracked with distress. 'Windsmoke and Whirlwind together.'

When they reached the lines, the colt was down, his body heaving to the urgent tempo of his breathing. Windsmoke stood over him, licking his head with long strokes of her tongue. She reeled weakly as she tried to keep her balance. Her coat was standing on end and she was drenched with sweat: it dripped from her belly and ran down all four legs.

'Call Shofar and his troops. Tell them to hurry. Then run and ask them to fill their largest pot with hot water and bring it to me.' Taita's main concern was to get Whirlwind back on his feet and keep Windsmoke on hers. Once a horse was down it had lost the will to fight and surrendered to the disease.

Shofar and his men lifted Whirlwind and placed him on his feet, then Taita sponged him with warm water. Fenn stood at his head blowing softly into his nostrils, whispering encouragement and endearments while she persuaded him to eat one Tolas cake after another.

As soon as he had bathed the colt, Taita turned to Windsmoke.

'Be brave, my darling,' he murmured, as he wiped her down with a wet linen rag. Meren helped him to dry her vigorously with fresh cloths, and then they spread Taita's tiger-skin over her back. 'You and I will defeat this thing together.' He kept talking quietly to her, and used the

voice of power whenever he spoke her name. She cocked her ears to listen to him, splayed her legs and braced herself to keep her balance.

'Bak-her, Windsmoke. Do not give in.”

He hand-fed her the Tolas cakes, which he had dipped in honey. Even in her distress she could not resist this delicacy. Then he persuaded her to swallow a bowl of his special remedy for fever, yellow-strangler and equine distemper. He and Fenn joined hands to invoke the protection of Horus, in his form as the god of horses. Meren and his men joined in the prayers, and continued to chant them for the rest of the night. By morning, Windsmoke and her colt were still standing, but their heads were hanging and they would no longer take the cakes. They were, however, consumed by thirst, and drank eagerly from the pots of clean water that Fenn and Taita held for them. Just before noon Windsmoke raised her head and whickered to her colt, then staggered across to him and nuzzled his shoulder. He raised his head to look at her.

'He has lifted his head,' one man said excitedly.

'She stands more firmly,' another observed. 'She is fighting for herself and for her foal.'

'She has stopped sweating. The fever is breaking.'

That evening Windsmoke ate five more Tolas cakes with honey. The next morning she followed Taita down into the riverbed and rolled in the white sand. She had always favoured a particular variety of soft grass with fluffy pink seed heads that grew on the banks of the Nile, so Taita and Fenn scythed bundles of it and sorted from it the choicest stalks.

On the fourth day both Windsmoke and Whirlwind filled their empty bellies with it.

'They are out of danger,' Taita pronounced, and Fenn hugged Whirlwind, then wept as though her heart had broken and would never mend.

Despite the Tolas cakes, many other horses showed symptoms of the disease. Twelve died, but Meren replaced them from the small herd of salted animals. Some men were also suffering from the effects of the fly venom: they were racked with enervating headaches, and every joint in their bodies was so stiff that they could hardly walk. It was many more days before animals and men had recovered enough to resume the march.

Even then Taita and Fenn would not burden Windsmoke and Whirlwind with their weight, but rode spare horses and led them on their halter ropes. Meren reduced the length and pace of his daily marches to allow them all to recover completely. Then, over the days that followed, he increased the speed until they were moving briskly once more.

For two hundred leagues beyond the flies the land was devoid of human habitation. Then they encountered a small village of itinerant fishermen. The inhabitants fled as soon as the column of horsemen appeared. The shock of meeting these pale-skinned men with their strange bronze weapons, riding on strange hornless cattle, was too much for them. Taita examined their fish-smoking racks, and found them almost empty. The Nile no longer provided the village with her bounty.

Clearly the fishermen were starving.

On the floodplains along the riverbank herds of large, robust antelope, with scimitar horns and white patches around their eyes, were feeding.

The males were black, the females dark red. Meren sent out five of his mounted archers. The antelope seemed curious about the horses, and came to meet them. The first volley of arrows brought down four, and the next as many again. They laid out the carcasses on the outskirts of the village as a peace-offering, then settled down to wait. The starving villagers could not long resist and crept forward cautiously, ready to flee again at the first sign of aggression from the strangers. Once they had butchered the carcasses and had the meat grilling on a dozen smoky fires, Nakonto went forward to hail them. Their spokesman was a venerable greybeard, who replied in a squeaky treble.

Nakonto came back to report to Taita. 'These people are related to the Ootasa. Their languages are so similar that we understand each other well.'

By now the villagers were so emboldened that they came trooping back to examine the men, their weapons and horses. The unmarried girls wore only a string of beads round their waists, and almost immediately established friendships with the troopers who had no Shilluk camp followers.

The married women brought calabashes of sour native beer to Taita, Meren and the captains, while the elder, whose name was Poto, sat proudly beside Taita and readily answered the questions Nakonto put to him.

'I know the southlands well,' he boasted. 'My father and his father before him lived on the great lakes, which were full of fish, some so large it needed four men to lift them. Their girth was thus .. .' he made a circle with his skinny old arms '. .. and their length was thus…“ he jumped up and drew a line with his big toe in the dust, then took four full paces and drew a second line '. .. from there to there!'

'Fishermen are the same everywhere,' Taita remarked, but he made

appropriate sounds of amazement. Poto seemed neglected by his tribe and, for once, had the attention of all. He was enjoying the company of his new friends.I 'Why did your tribe leave such good fishing grounds?' Taita asked.

'Another stronger and more numerous people came from the east and we could not resist them. They drove us northwards along the river to this place.' He looked downcast for a moment, then brightened again.

'When I was initiated and circumcised, my father took me to the great waterfall that is the birthplace of this, our river.' He indicated the Nile on whose banks they sat. 'The waterfall is called Tungula Madzi, the Waters that Thunder.'

'Why such an unusual name?'j 'The roar of the falling waters and the mighty rocks they bring crashing down can be heard from a distance of two days' march. The spray stands above the falls like a silver cloud in the sky.'

'You have looked upon such a sight as this?' Taita asked, and turned his Inner Eye upon the ancient.

'With these very eyes!' Poto cried. His aura burnt brightly, like the flame of an oil lamp before it dies from lack of fuel. He was telling the truth.

'You believe that this is the birthplace of the river?' Taita's pulse raced with excitement.

'On the ghost of my father, the falls are where the river rises.'

'What lies above and beyond them?'

'Water,' said Poto flatly. 'Nothing but water. Water to the ends of the world.'¦ 'You saw no land beyond the falls?'™ 'Nothing but water.'

'You did not see a burning mountain that sends a cloud of smoke into the sky?'I 'Nothing,' said Poto. 'Nothing but water.'

'Will you lead us to this waterfall?' Taita asked.

When Nakonto translated the question to him, Poto looked alarmed.

'I can never return. The people thereabouts are my enemies, and they will kill me and eat me. I cannot follow the river because, as you can see, the river is cursed and dying.'

'I will make you a gift of a full bag of glass beads if you come with us,'

Taita promised. 'You will be the richest man in all your tribe.'

Poto did not hesitate. He had turned the colour of ashes and was trembling with terror. 'No! Never! Not for a hundred bags of beads. If

they eat me, my soul will never pass through the flames. It will become a hyena and wander for all time in the night, eating rotting carcasses and offal.' He made as if to jump up and run, but Taita restrained him with a gentle touch, then exerted his influence to calm and reassure him. He let him drink two large swallows of beer before he spoke to him again.

'Is there another who will guide us?'

Poto shook his head vigorously. 'They are all afraid, even more than I am.'

They sat in silence for a while, then Poto began to fidget and shuffle his feet. Taita waited patiently for him to reach some difficult decision.

At last he coughed, and spat a large clot of yellow mucus into the dust.

'Perhaps there is somebody,' he ventured. 'But, no, he must be dead. He was an old man when last I saw him, and that was long ago. Even then he was older than you, revered elder.' He bobbed his head respectfully at Taita. 'He is among the last of our people who remain from the time that we were a tribe of consequence.'

'Who is he? Where will I find him?' Taita asked.

'His name is Kalulu. I will show you where to find him.' Again Poto began to draw with his toe in the dust. 'If you follow the great river, which is dying, you will come at last to where it meets one of the many lakes. This is a mighty stretch of water. We call it Semliki Nianzu.' He drew it as an elliptical flattened circle.

'Is it here that we will find the waterfall that is the birthplace of the river?' Taita demanded.

'No. The river cuts through the lake like the head of a spear through the body of a fish.' He slashed his toe through the circle. 'Our river is the outlet, the inlet is on the far south bank of the lake.'

'How will I find it?'

'You will not, unless somebody like Kalulu leads you to it. He lives in the marshes, on a floating island of reeds on the lake. Near the outlet of the river.'

'How will I find him?'

'By searching diligently and by good fortune.' Poto shrugged. 'Or perhaps he will find you.' Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, 'Kalulu is a shaman of great mystical powers, but he has no legs.'

When they left the village Taita gave Poto a double handful of glass beads and the old man wept. 'You have made me rich, and my old age happy. Now I can buy two young wives to look after me.'

The Nile flowed a little more strongly as they moved south along its bank, but they could tell from the high-water line that the level was much lower than it had been in former times.

'It has shrunk twenty-fold,' Meren calculated, and Taita agreed, even though he did not say so. Sometimes Meren had to be reminded that he was not an adept, and that some matters were better left to those qualified to deal with them.

As they journeyed along the west bank, horses and men grew stronger with each day that passed. They were all fully recovered from the effects of the fly by the time they reached the lake, which was as Poto had described it to them. It was vast.

'It must be a sea, not merely a lake,' Meren declared, and Taita sent him to fetch a pitcher of water from it.

'Now taste it, my good Meren,' he ordered. Gingerly Meren took a sip, and let it run round his mouth. Then he drank the rest of the pitcher.

'Salt sea?' Taita smiled kindly.

'Nay, Magus, sweet as honey. I was mistaken, and you were right.'

The lake was so large that it seemed to create its own wind system.

In the dawn the air was still and cool. What looked like smoke rose high into the air from the surface. The men discussed this animatedly.

'The water is heated by a volcano,' said one.

'No,' said another. 'The water rises like mist. It will fall again elsewhere as rain.'

'Nay, it is the fiery breath of a sea monster that lives in the waters,'

Meren said with authority.

In the end they looked at Taita for the truth.

'Spiders,' said Taita, which threw them into further passionate argument.

'Spiders do not fly. He means flies - dragon flies.'

'He toys with our credibility,' said Meren. 'I know him well. He loves his little jokes.'

Two days later the wind veered and one of the cloudy up-wellings drifted over the camp. Then as it reached land it began to descend. Fenn leapt high in the air and snatched something out of it.

'Spiders!' she squealed. 'Taita is never wrong.' The cloud was formed by countless newly hatched spiders, so immature as to be almost transparent.

Each had woven a gossamer sail, which it used to catch the dawn breeze and sail aloft to be transported to some new quarter of the lake.

As soon as the sun struck the surface the wind picked up, until by noon it was whipping the water to foaming frenzy. During the afternoon it subsided until, at sunset, all was calm and serene. Flights of flamingoes strung out along the horizon in wavy pink lines. Hippopotamuses wallowed like granite boulders, grunting and bellowing in the shallows, cavernous pink jaws gaping to threaten rivals with their long incisors. Mighty crocodiles stretched out on the sandbars, sunning themselves, holding their mouths wide open so that water birds could pick the scraps of flesh from between their stubby yellow fangs. The nights were still, with the stars reflected on the velvety black waters.

To the west the lake was so extensive that there was no sight of land, other than a few small islands that seemed to sail like dhows on the wind-torn surface. To the south, they could just make out the far shore of the lake. There were no high mountain peaks or volcanoes, just a blue tracing of low hills.

Poto had warned them about the ferocity of the local tribes, so they built a secure camp with branches from the thorny acacia trees that burgeoned on the shores of the lake. During the days the horses and mules grazed on the fine grasses that grew on the littoral, or waded out to feast on the water-lilies and other aquatic plants in the shallows.

'When will we set out to find Kalulu, the shaman?' Fenn demanded.

'This very evening after you have had your dinner.'

As he had promised he took her to the beach, where they gathered driftwood and built a small fire. They squatted over it and Taita took her hands in his, forming the circle of protection. 'If Kalulu is an adept, as Poto suggested, we can cast for him across the ether,' Taita told her.

'Can you do that, Taita?' Fenn asked, in awe.

'According to Poto, he lives in the marshes very close to this place, perhaps only a few leagues distant from where we are now. He is within easy call.'

'Is distance important?' Fenn asked.

Taita nodded. 'We know his name. We know his physical appearance, his amputated legs. Of course, it would be easier if we knew his spirit name, or if we possessed something of his person - a hair, nail clippings, sweat, urine or dung. However, I will teach you to cast for a subject with what we have.' Taita took a pinch of herbs from his pouch and threw them on to the fire. They flared in a cloud of pungent smoke. 'This will drive off any evil influence that may be hovering nearby,' he explained.

'Look into the flames. If Kalulu comes you will see him there.'

Still holding hands they began to sway in time to a soft humming that

Taita made deep in his chest. When Fenn had cleared her mind as he had taught her, they conjured up the three symbols of power, and silently conjugated them.I 'Mensaar!'

'Kydash!'

'Ncube!'

The ether sang round them. Taita cast into it.

'Kalulu, hearken! O legless one, open thine ears!' He repeated the invitation at intervals as the moon rose and travelled half-way towards its zenith.

Suddenly they felt the strike. Fenn gasped at the thrill, like a discharge of static through her fingertips. She stared into the fire, and saw the outline of a face. It looked to her like that of an ancient but eternally wise ape.

'Who calls?' The fiery lips formed the question in the Tenmass. 'Who calls on Kalulu?'

'I am Taita of Gallala.'

'If you are of the Truth, show me your spirit name.' Taita allowed it to materialize as a symbol over his head: the sign of a falcon with a broken wing. It would be mortally dangerous for him to enunciate it into the ether where it might be pounced on by a malevolent entity.

'I acknowledge you, brother in Truth,' Kalulu said.

'Reveal your own spirit name,' Taita challenged him. Slowly the outline of a crouching African hare took shape above the face in the fire.

It was the mythological wise one, Kalulu the Hare, whose head and long ears were portrayed in the disc of the full moon.

'I acknowledge you, brother of the right hand. I call upon you for your help,' said Taita.

'I know where you are and I am close by. Within three days I will come to you,' Kalulu replied.

Fenn was enchanted by the art of casting for a person across the ether. 'Oh, Taita, I never dreamt it was possible. Please teach me to do it.'

'First you must learn your own spirit name.'

'I think I know it,' she replied. 'You called me by it once, did you not?

Or was it a dream, Taita?'

'Dreams and reality often blend and become one, Fenn. What is the name you remember?'

'Child of the Water,' she replied diffidently. 'Lostris.'

Taita stared at her in amazement. She was unconsciously demonstrating her psychic powers as seldom before. She had managed to reach back into the other life. Excitement and elation made his breathing quicken.

'Do you know the symbol of your spirit name, Fenn?'

'No, I have never seen it,' she whispered. 'Or have I, Taita?'

'Think of it,' he instructed. 'Hold it in the forefront of your mind!'

She closed her eyes, and reached instinctively for the talisman that hung at her throat. 'Do you have it in your mind?' he asked gently.

'I have it,' she whispered, and he opened his Inner Eye. Her aura was a dazzling brilliance that cloaked her from head to foot, and the symbol of her spirit name hung over her head, etched in the same celestial fire.

The shape of the nymphaea flower, the water-lily, he thought. It is complete. She has come into full bloom, like her spirit symbol. Even in childhood, she has become an adept of the first water. Aloud he said to her, 'Fenn, your mind and spirit are fully prepared. You are ready to learn everything I can teach you, and perhaps more than that.'

'Then teach me to cast upon the ether, and to reach you even when great distances separate us.'

'We will begin at once,' he said. 'I already have something of yours.'

'What is it? Where?' she asked eagerly. In reply he touched the Periapt that hung round his neck. 'Show me,' she demanded, and he opened the locket to reveal the coil of hair it contained.

'Hair,' she said, 'but not mine.' She touched it with her forefinger.

'This is the hair of an old lady. See? There are grey strands mixed with the gold.'

'You were old when I cut it from your head,' he agreed. 'You were already dead. You were lying upon the embalming table, cold and stark.'

She shuddered with delicious horror. 'Was that in the other life?' she asked. 'Tell me about it. Who was I?'

'It will take me a lifetime to tell it all,' he said, 'but let me start by saying that you were the woman I loved, even as I love you now.' She groped for his hand, blinded by tears.

'You have something of mine,' she whispered. 'Now 1 need something of yours.' She reached up into his beard and twisted a thick strand around her finger. 'Your beard struck me when you pursued me on the first day we met. It shines like purest silver.' She drew the small sharp

bronze dagger from the sheath on her girdle, and cut the strand close to the skin, then lifted it to her nose and smelt it, as though it were a fragrant blossom. 'It is your smell, Taita, your very essence.' I 'I will make you a locket to keep it in.'

She laughed with pleasure. 'Yes, I would like that. But you must have the hair of the living child to go with that of the dead woman.' She reached up, cut a lock from her head and offered it to him. He coiled it carefully and placed it in the compartment of the Periapt, on top of the lock that had lain there for more than seventy years.

'Will I always be able to summon you?' Fenn said.

'Yes, and I you,' Taita agreed, 'but first I must teach you how.'

Over the days that followed they practised the art. They started by sitting within sight of each other, but out of earshot. Within hours she was able to receive the images he placed in her mind, and respond with images of her own. When they had it perfected, they turned their backs upon each other so that they were out of eye contact. Finally Taita left her in the camp and rode several leagues west along the lakeshore in the company of Meren. From there he reached her with his first attempt.

Each time he cast, she struck more readily, and the images she presented to him were crisper and more complete. For him she wore her symbol on her forehead, and after many attempts she could change the colour of the lily to suit her fancy, from rose to lilac to scarlet.

At night, she lay close to him, for protection, on her sleeping mat, and before she fell asleep she whispered, 'Now we will never be parted again, for I can find you wherever you go.'

In the dawn, before the wind came up, they went to bathe in the lake. Before they entered the water Taita cast a spell of protection to repel crocodiles and any other monsters that might lurk in the deep. Then they plunged in. Fenn swam with the lithe grace of an otter. Her naked body flashed like polished ivory as she slipped away into the depths. He never grew accustomed to how long she could stay under water and grew alarmed as he lay on the surface staring down into the green world below. After what seemed like an eternity, he saw the pale flash of her body as she came up towards him, just as she had in his dreams. Then she burst out beside him, laughing and shaking water out of her hair. At other times he did not see her returning. The

¦

I THE QUEST

first he knew of it was when she seized his ankle and tried to pull him under.

'How did you learn to swim as you do?' he demanded.

'I am the child of the water.' She laughed at him. 'Don't you remember? I was born to swim.' When they emerged from the lake they found a place in the early sunlight to dry themselves. He sat behind her and braided her hair, weaving water-lily blossoms into the tresses.

While he worked he told her about the life she had lived as Queen of Egypt, the others who had loved her and the children to whom she had given birth. Often she would exclaim, 'Oh, yes! I remember that now. I remember that I had a son, but I cannot see his face.'

'Open your mind, and I will place his image in it from my own memory of him.'

She closed her eyes and he placed his cupped hands on each side of her head, covering her ears. They were silent for a while. At last she whispered, 'Oh, what a beautiful child. His hair is golden. I see his cartouche above him. His name is Memnon.'

'That was his childhood name,' he murmured. 'When he ascended to the throne and took the double crown of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms, he became Pharaoh Tamose, the first of that name. There! Look upon him in all his power and majesty.' Taita placed the image in her mind.

She was silent for a long time. Then she said, 'So handsome and noble. Oh, Taita, I wish I could have seen my son.'

'You did, Fenn. You suckled him at your breast, and with your own hands you placed the crown upon his head.'

Again she was silent, and then she said, 'Show me yourself on the day we first met in the other life. Can you do that, Taita? Can you conjure up your own image for me?'

'I would not dare to make the attempt,' he answered quickly.

'Why not?' she asked.

'It would be dangerous,' he replied. 'You must believe me. It would be too dangerous by far.'

He knew that if he showed her that image, it would haunt her in time with unattainable dreams. He would have sown the seeds of her discontent.

For when they had first met in her other life, Taita had been a slave and the most beautiful young man in Egypt. That had been his downfall. His master, Lord Intef, had been the Nomarch of Karnak and the governor of all twenty-two nomes of Upper Egypt. He had also been

a pederast and insanely jealous of his slave boy. Taita fell in love with a slave girl in his master's household named Alyda. When this was reported to Lord Intef, he ordered Rasfer, his executioner, to crush Alyda's skull slowly. Taita had been forced to watch her die. Even after the deed was done Lord Intef was still not satisfied. He had ordered Rasfer to castrate the virgin Taita.

There was a further aspect to this terrible situation. Lord Intef was the father of the little girl who, years later, became Queen Lostris. He was uninterested in his daughter and had made Taita, the eunuch, her tutor and mentor. That child was now reincarnated as Fenn.

It was so complex that Taita had difficulty finding the words to explain all this to Fenn, and for the moment he was relieved of the obligation to do so by a loud hail from the direction of the camp: 'Boats coming from the east! Stand to arms.' It was Meren's voice, clearly recognizable even at this distance. They sprang up, pulled on their tunics over bodies that were still damp and hurried back towards the camp.

'There!' Fenn pointed across the green waters. It took Taita a few moments to make out the dark specks against the white horses that were already being driven up by the rising wind.

'Native war canoes! Can you count the number of rowers, Fenn?'

She shaded her eyes, stared hard, then said, 'The leading canoe has twelve on each side. The others look to be as large. Wait! The second boat is the largest by far, with twenty rowers on the nearest side.'

Meren had drawn up his men in double ranks before the gate to the stockade. They were fully armed and alert to meet any sudden exigency.

They watched as the canoes beached below them. The crews disembarked and gathered round the largest vessel. A band of musicians jumped ashore and began to dance on the beach. The drummers pounded out a feral rhythm, while the trumpeters brayed on the long spiral horns of some wild antelope.

'Mask your aura,' Taita whispered to Fenn. 'We know nothing of this fellow.' He watched it fade. 'Good. Enough.' If Kalulu was a savant, to mask her aura completely would raise even deeper suspicion.

Eight bearers lifted a litter from the boat and carried it up the beach.

They were sturdy young women, with muscular arms and legs, wearing loincloths that were richly embroidered with glass beads. Their breasts were anointed with clarified fat and gleamed in the sunlight. They came directly to where Taita stood, and deposited the litter before him. Then they knelt beside it, in an attitude of deep reverence.

In the middle of the litter sat a dwarf. Fenn recognized him from the

image in the flames, the face of the ancient ape with protruding ears and shining bald pate. 'I am Kalulu,' he said in the Tenmass, 'and I see you, TaitaofGallala.'

'I welcome you,' Taita responded. He saw at once that Kalulu was not a savant, but he threw a powerful, intense aura. From it, Taita could tell that he was an adept and a follower of the Truth. 'Let us go where we can speak in comfort and privacy.'

Kalulu swung himself into a handstand, the stubs of his severed legs pointing to the sky, and hopped down from the litter. He walked on his hands as though they were feet, twisting his head to one side so that he could talk up into Taita's face. 'I have been expecting you, Magus. Your approach has created a sharp disturbance on the ether. I have felt your presence grow stronger as you made your way up the river.' The women came after him, carrying the empty litter.

'This way, Kalulu,' Taita invited. When they reached his quarters, the women set down the litter, then backed away until they were out of earshot. Kalulu hopped back on to it and resumed his normal head-high position, squatting on his stumps. He looked around brightly at the camp, but when Fenn knelt before him to offer him a bowl of honey mead, he concentrated his attention on her.

'Who are you, child? I saw you in the firelight,' he said in the Tenmass.

She pretended not to understand and glanced at Taita.

'You may reply,' he told her. 'He is of the Truth.'

'I am Fenn, a novice to the magus.'

He looked at Taita. 'Do you vouch for her?'

'I do,' Taita replied, and the little man nodded.

'Sit beside me, Fenn, for you are beautiful.' She sat on the litter trustingly. Kalulu looked at Taita with piercing black eyes. 'Why did you call for me, Magus? What is the service you require from me?'

'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?'

I

I

'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 of 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 they 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?'

I

'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.

'But stay close to me, and be ready to form the circle at the first malevolent emanation we encounter.'

They found a path that climbed the bluff. When they reached the temple they saw that the stonework was beautifully executed. The entire building was roofed with hewn timber planking, over which had been laid a thatch of river reeds that was collapsing in places. They walked slowly round the walls. The temple was laid out on a circular foundation, about fifty paces across. At five equidistant points tall granite stele had been built into the walls. 'The five points of the black magicians' pentagram,'

Taita told Fenn softly. They came back to the entrance portals of the temple. The door jambs were carved with bas-reliefs of esoteric symbols.

'Can you read them?' Fenn asked.

'No,' Taita admitted. 'They are alien.' Then he looked into her eyes for any sign of fear. 'Will you enter with me?'

For answer she took his hand. 'Let us form the circle,' she suggested.

Together they stepped through the gateway into the circular outer portico. It was paved with flat grey stones, and shafts of light beamed down through the holes in the roof. There was no opening in the inner wall. Side by side they followed the curving portico. As they drew level with each stela, they found the points of the pentagram laid out in white marble under their feet. Within each point was enclosed another

mysterious symbol, a serpent, a crux ansata, a vulture in flight, another at roost and, last, a jackal. They stepped over a pile of loose thatching and heard a harsh hiss, then a violent rustle beneath their feet.'Taita slipped an arm round Fenn's waist and lifted her clear. Behind them the hooded head of a black Egyptian cobra rose out of the tumbled reeds.

It stared hard at them with tiny black marble eyes, the long tongue flickering and testing the air for their scent. Taita set Fenn down, raised his staff and pointed it at the serpent's head. 'Don't be alarmed,' he said.

'This is no apparition. It is a natural animal.' He began to move the tip of the staff rhythmically from side to side, and the cobra swayed to the motion. Gradually it was lulled, the hood deflated, and it sank back into the tangle of thatch. Taita led Fenn away down the gallery. They stopped at last in front of an ornate doorway.

'The opposed opening,' Taita told her. 'This is diametrically opposite the outer entrance. It limits the ingress and egress of alien influences to the inner sanctum.'

The doorway that faced them was shaped like a petalled flower. The jambs were covered with tiles of polished ivory, malachite and tiger's eye.

The closed doors were covered with lacquered crocodile skin. Taita used his staff to lean his full weight against one door. It swung open, bronze hinges whining. The interior was lit only by a shaft of sunlight cast from a single opening in the dome of the roof. It struck the floor of the sanctum in an eruption of colour.

The floor was decorated with an elaborately designed pentagram, the pattern worked in tiles of marble and semi-precious stones. Taita recognized rose quartz and rock crystal, beryllium and rubellite. The workmanship was masterly. The heart of the design was a circle of tiles so superbly fitted together and polished that the joints were invisible. It seemed to be a single shield of gleaming ivory.

'Let us go in, Magus.' Fenn's childish treble was thrown back and forth between the rounded walls.

'Wait!' he said. 'There is a presence within, the spirit of this place.

I think it is dangerous. It is what terrified Kalulu.' He pointed to the sunlight on the temple floor. 'It is almost noon. The beam is about to fall upon the heart of the pentagram. That will be the fateful moment.'

They watched the sunlight creep across the floor. It touched the lip of the ivory circle and was reflected on to the surrounding walls, its radiance enhanced tenfold. Now it seemed to advance more swiftly, until suddenly it filled the ivory disc. Immediately they heard sistrums hum and rattle.

They heard the wings of bats and vultures in the air around them. White light filled the sanctum with such brilliance that they lifted their hands to shield their eyes. Through the dazzle they saw the spirit sign of Eos appear at the centre of the disc, the cat's paw picked out in fire.

The odour of the witch filled their nostrils with the redolence of wild beasts. They reeled back from the doorway, but then the sunlight passed over the ivory disc and the fiery letters were expunged. The reek of the witch abated, leaving only the smell of musty thatch and bat droppings.

The sunlight faded, leaving the sanctum once more in gloom. In silence they retreated down the gallery and out into the sunlight.

'She was there,' whispered Fenn. She took a deep breath of the cool lake air, as if to cleanse her lungs.

'Her influence remains.' Taita pointed with his staff at the humped Red Stones. 'She still presides over her fiendish works.'

'Could we destroy her temple,' Fenn glanced back at the building, 'and in that way destroy her also?'

'No,' Taita told her firmly. 'Her influence is powerful within the inner sanctum of her stronghold. To challenge her there would be mortally dangerous. We will find another time and place to attack her.' He took Fenn's hand and led her away. 'We will return tomorrow to test the wall for weakness, and to learn more from Kalulu of how the Red Stones were placed across the gorge.'

Meren pointed out the central crack that divided the Red Stones.

'There is no doubt that this is the weakest point in the length of the wall. It may be a shear line.'

'Certainly that seems the best point at which to begin the experiment,'

Taita agreed. 'There is no dearth of firewood.' Most of the big trees that covered the slopes of the gorge had died when their water was dammed.

'Tell the men to begin.'

They watched them spread out through the forest. Soon the sound of their axes rang down the gorge and woke the echoes from the cliffs.

Once the trees were felled, they used the horses to drag them to the base of the red wall. There they cut them into lengths, which they stacked against the wall of stone so that they formed a flue through which air would be drawn to fuel the flames. It took several days to set the gigantic mound of combustibles in place. In the meantime Taita supervised the

building of four separate shadoof wheels to raise the water from the lake to the top of the wall and spill it on to the reverse face to drench the rock once it was red hot.> When all was in readiness, Meren set fire to the stack of wood. The flames took hold and leapt upwards. In minutes the entire pile of timber was a roaring conflagration. No man could stand within a hundred yards of it without having the skin flayed from his flesh.

While they waited for the fire to subside, Taita and Fenn sat with Kalulu on the bluff above the gorge, looking across at the temple of Eos on the far side. They sheltered from the sun under a small ruined pavilion that stood on the spot. The bodyguards had repaired the roof thatch.

'While the river still ran and my tribe lived here, I was in the habit of coming to this place during the hot season of the year, when all the earth groans under the lash of the sun,' Kalulu explained. 'You can feel how the breeze comes off the lake. Furthermore, I was fascinated by the activity of the strangers in the temple across the river. I used this as a lookout from where I could spy upon them.' He pointed at the temple sitting high on the opposite bluff. 'You must visualize the scene at that time. Where the wall of red stone now stands there was a deep gorge with a series of rapids, and cascades down which descended such a volume of water that the senses were numbed by the thunder of their fall. A tall cloud of spray towered above them.' He lifted his arms high and described the hovering cloud with an eloquent, graceful gesture.

'When the wind shifted, the spray blew over us here, as cool and blessed as rain.' He smiled with pleasure at the thought. 'Thus, from here, I had the view of a vulture over all the momentous occurrences of that time.'

'You watched the temple being constructed?' Fenn asked. 'Did you know that there is much ivory and many precious stones within its precincts?'

'Indeed, my pretty child. I watched the strangers bring them in. They used hundreds of slaves as beasts of burden.'

'From which direction did they arrive?' Taita asked.

'They came from the west.' Kalulu pointed into the hazy blue distance.

'What country lies out there?' Tait asked.

The dwarf did not answer immediately. He was silent for a while, and then he responded hesitantly: 'When I was a young man and my legs were whole and strong, I travelled there. I went in search of wisdom and

learning, for I had heard of a wondrous sage who lived in that far country to the west.'

'What did you discover?'

'I beheld mountains, mighty mountains, hidden for most of the year by masses of dense cloud. When it parted, it revealed peaks that climbed to the very skies, peaks whose bald heads were shining white.'

'Did you climb to the summits?'

'No. I saw them only from a great distance.'

'Do these mountains have a name?'

'The people who live within sight of them call them the Mountains of the Moon for their tops are as bright as the full moon.'

'Tell me, my learned and revered friend, did you see any other wonders on these travels?'

'The wonders were many and legion,' Kalulu replied. 'I saw rivers that burst from the earth and boiled with steam as though from a seething cauldron. I heard the hills groan and felt them shake beneath my feet, as though some monster stirred in his deep cavern.' The memories illuminated his dark eyes. 'There was such power in this range of mountains that one of the peaks burned and smoked like a gigantic furnace.'

'A burning mountain!' Taita exclaimed. 'You saw a peak that belched fire and smoke! You discovered a volcano?'

'If that is what you call such a miracle,' the little man acceded. 'The tribes that lived within sight of it called it the Tower of Light. It was a sight that filled me with awe.'

'Did you ever find the famous sage for whom you went in search?'

'No.'

'The men who built this temple came from the Mountains of the Moon? Is that what you believe?' Taita brought him back to the original question.

'Who knows? Not I. But they came from that direction. They laboured for twenty months. First they carried in the building materials with their slaves. Then they erected the walls and covered them with timbers and thatch. My tribe provided food for them, in exchange for beads, cloth and metal tools. We did not understand the purpose of that building, but it seemed harmless and posed no threat to us.' Kalulu shook his head at the memory of their naivety. 'I was interested in the work. I tried to ingratiate myself with the builders and learn more about what they were doing, but they turned me away in a most hostile manner. They placed guards around their camp and I could not get close. I was forced to watch their works from this vantage-point.' Kalulu lapsed into silence.

Taita encouraged him with another question. 'What happened after the temple was completed?'; 'The builders and slaves departed. They marched back into the west, the way they had come. They left nine priests to serve in the temple.'

'Only nine?' Taita asked.

'Yes. I became familiar with the appearance of every one of them, at this distance, of course.'

'What makes you believe they were priests?'

'They wore religious habits, red in colour. They conducted rituals of devotion. They made sacrifices and burnt offerings.'

'Describe the rituals.' Taita was listening with great attention. 'Every detail may be important.'

'At noon every day three of the priests descended in procession to the head of the cataract. They drew water in pitchers and carried it to the temple, dancing and exulting in some strange dialect.'

'Not the Tenmass?' Taita demanded.

'No, Magus. I did not recognize it.'

'That is all that happened? Or do you remember anything else? You spoke of sacrifices.'

'They bought black goats and black fowls from us. They were very particular about the colour. They had to be pure black. They took them into the temple. I heard singing, and afterwards I saw smoke and smelt burnt flesh.'

'What else?' Taita insisted.

Kalulu thought for a moment. 'One of the priests died. I do not know why. The other eight carried his body to the lakeside. They laid it naked on the sand. Then they retreated up the slope of the bluff. From there they watched as the crocodiles came out of the lake and dragged it under the waters.' The dwarf made a gesture of finality. 'Within weeks another priest arrived at the temple.'

'Coming from the west again?' Taita hazarded.

'I know not, for I did not see him arrive. One evening there were eight, the next morning there were nine once more.'

'So the number of priests was significant. Nine. The cipher of the Lie.'

Taita mused for a while then asked, 'What happened after that?'

'For more than two years the routine of the priests was maintained.

Then 1 was aware that something of consequence was about to take place. They lit five beacon fires around the temple and kept them burning day and night for many months.'

'Five fires,' Taita said. 'At what positions did they set them?'

I

'.

'There are five stele built into the outer wall. Did you remark them?'

Kalulu asked.

'Yes. They form the points of a great pentagram, the mystical design over which the temple stands.'

'I have never been inside the temple. I know nothing of any pentagram.

I know only that the fires were placed at the five points around the outer wall,' Kalulu told them.

'Was that all that occurred which was untoward?'

'Then another person joined the brotherhood.'

'Another priest?'

'I think not. This person was clad in black, not red. An airy black veil covered the features, so I was unable to tell with any certainty if it was male or female. However, from the shape of the figure beneath the robes and the grace of its movement I thought it might be a woman. She emerged from the temple each morning at sunrise. She prayed before each of the five fires, then returned to the temple precincts.'

'Did you ever see her face?'

'She was always veiled. She moved with an ethereal, haunting grace.

The other priests treated her with the greatest reverence, prostrating themselves before her. She must have been the high priestess of their sect.'

'Did you observe any significant signs in the heavens or in nature while she inhabited the temple?'

'Indeed, Magus, there were many strange celestial signs. On the day I first saw her pray at the temple fires, the evening star reversed its track through the skies. Shortly thereafter another insignificant and unnamed star swelled up into monstrous proportion and was consumed by flames.

During all her tenure in the temple strange lights of many colours danced in the northern night sky. All these omens flew in the face of nature.'

'Do you believe they were the works of the veiled woman?'

'I say only that they occurred when she arrived. It may have been mere happenstance, I do not know.'

'Was that all?' Taita asked.

Kalulu shook his head firmly. 'There was more. Nature seemed plunged into turmoil. Our crops in the field turned yellow and withered. The cattle aborted their calves. The paramount chief of our tribe was bitten by a snake and died almost at once. His senior wife gave birth to a son with two heads.'

'Dire omens.' Taita looked grave.

'There was worse to follow. The weather was disturbed. A mighty

wind blew through our town on the hill, and ripped off the roofs.1 A fire destroyed the tribal totem hut and consumed the relics and jujus of our ancestors. Hyenas dug up the corpse of the paramount chief and devoured it.'

'This was a direct onslaught on your people, your ancestors and your religion,' Taita murmured.

'Then the earth moved and shook itself like a living beast under our feet. The waters of the lake leapt into the air, boiling white and furious.

The fish shoals disappeared. The lake birds flew away towards the west. The waves crushed our canoes where they lay upon the beaches.

They ripped out our fishing nets. The people begged me to intercede with the angry gods of our tribe.'

'What could you do in the face of the elements?' Taita wondered.

'They had set you a daunting task.'

'I came to this place where we now sit. I cast a spell, the most potent in my power. I evoked the shades of our ancestors to placate the gods of the lake. But they were deaf to my pleas, and blind to the suffering of my tribe. They shook these hills on which we sit as a bull elephant shakes a ngong nut tree. The earth danced so that men could not stand upright.

Deep cracks opened like the jaws of hungry lions and swallowed men and women with their infants strapped upon their backs.' By now Kalulu was weeping. His tears dripped from his chin on to his naked chest. One of his bodyguards wiped them away with a linen cloth.

'While I watched, the waters of the lake began to roll and thunder upon the beaches with increasing fury. They leapt half-way up the cliff below us. The spray burst over me in torrents. I was blinded and deafened. I looked across at the temple. Through the clouds and the spray, I saw the black-robed figure standing alone before the gateway.

She had her arms held out towards the tumultuous lake like a wife welcoming the return of her beloved husband from the wars.' Kalulu panted for breath and struggled to control his body. His arms jerked and danced, his head shook like that of a man with the palsy. His features convulsed as though he were in a fit.

'Peace!' Taita laid a hand on his head, and slowly the dwarf calmed and relaxed, but the tears still poured down his face. 'You need not continue if this is too painful.'

'I must tell you. Only you will understand.' He took a gulp of air, then gabbled on: 'The waters opened and dark masses pushed through the waves. At first I thought they were living monsters from the depths.'_ He pointed at the nearest island. 'There was no island. The lake watersI

214

I

were open and empty. Then that mass of rock pushed through the surface. The island you look upon now was born like an infant squeezed from the womb of the lake.' His hand trembled wildly as he pointed at it. 'But that was not the end. Once again the waters were riven asunder.

Another great mass of rock rose up from the bottom of the lake. That is it! The Red Stones! They were glowing like metal from the flames of the forge. The waters hissed and turned to steam as they were pushed aside.

The stones were half molten, hardening as they emerged from the depths into the air. The clouds of steam they generated were so dense as to obscure almost everything, but when they parted I saw that the temple was untouched. Every stone of the walls was in place, the roof firm. But the black-robed figure had disappeared. The priests also had gone. I never saw any of them again. The Red Stones kept swelling, like a gigantic pregnant belly, until they were the size and shape they are now, sealing off the mouth of the Nile. The river shrivelled to nothing, while the rocks and sandbanks in its bed appeared from beneath the waters.'

Kalulu gesticulated to his bodyguards. One ran forward to support his head while another held a gourd to his lips. He swallowed noisily. The liquid had a pungent smell and seemed to calm him at once. He pushed aside the gourd and went on talking to Taita.

'I was so overcome by these cataclysmic events that I ran from this hut down the slope of the bluff.' He pointed out the route he had taken.

'I was level with that clump of trees when the ground split and I was hurled into the deep trench that opened in front of me. I tried to claw my way out, but one of my legs was broken. I had almost reached the top when, like the jaws of a man-eating monster, the earth closed on me as swiftly as it had opened. Both my legs were caught, the bones crushed to fragments. I lay there for two days before survivors from Tamafupa found me. They tried to free me but my legs were trapped between two slabs of rock. I asked them to bring me a knife and an axe. While they held me, I cut off my legs, and bound up the stumps with bark cloth. When my tribe fled from this accursed place into the marshes of Kioga they carried me with them.'

'You have lived again through all the terrible events of those days,'

Taita told him. 'It has tried your strength to the limit. I have been deeply moved by all you have told me. Call your women. Let them carry you back to the safety of Tamafupa, where you must rest.'

'What will you do, Magus?'

'Colonel Meren is ready to quench the heated rockface to find out if it will shatter. I will assist him.'

The mountain of wood stacked against the rock wall had'burnt down to a pile of glowing ash. The red rock was so hot that the air around it shimmered and wavered like a desert mirage. Four gangs of men gathered around the shadoof wheels on top of the Red Stones. None had any experience of rock-breaking. However, Taita had explained it to them.

'Are you ready, Magus?' Meren's voice echoed up from the gorge.

'Ready!' Taita shouted back.

'Start pumping!' Meren cried.

The men seized the handles of the shadoofs and put their full weight behind them. Their heads bobbed up and down to the rhythm Habari beat on a native drum. The line of empty buckets dipped into the lake surface, filled, then rose to the top of the wall. There, they spilled over into the wooden trough that channelled the water over the hump of the wall to cascade down the heated rockface on the opposite side. Immediately the air was filled with dense white clouds of hissing steam that enveloped the wall and the men on top of it. Those on the handles never faltered, and water streamed over the lip. The steam billowed, and the contracting rock groaned and growled.

'Is it breaking?' Taita shouted.

At the base of the wall Meren was lost in the dense steam. His reply came back, almost drowned in the rush of water and the hiss of steam.

'I cannot see anything. Keep them pumping, Magus!'

The men on the shadoofs were tiring, and Taita replaced them with fresh teams. They kept the water pouring down the face, and gradually the hissing clouds of steam began to subside and disperse.

'Pump!' Meren roared. Taita changed the teams again, then gingerly approached the lip and peered over, but the curvature of the cliff hid the base of the wall. 'I am going down,' he called to the men on the pumps.

'Don't stop until I give the order.' He hurried to the path that led into the gorge and made his way down at his best speed. The steam had cleared sufficiently for him to make out the shapes of Meren and Fenn below. They had moved much closer to the wall, and were discussing the result of the experiment.

'Don't get too close to the rockface,' Taita called, but they did not seem to hear him. Water was still pouring down it and had washed the ashes into the dry riverbed.

'Ho, Meren! What success?' Taita called, as he hurried down the path.

Meren looked up at him, his expression so comically mournful that Taita laughed. 'Why so glum?'

'Nothing!' Meren lamented. 'All that effort in vain.' He moved into

Ithe eddies of steam and stretched out his hand towards the rock.

'Take care!' Taita shouted. 'It is still hot.' Meren pulled his hand back, then drew his sword. He reached out with the point of the bronze blade.

Fenn had moved close to his side. 'The rock is still intact,' she cried.

'No cracks.' She and Meren were only an arm's length from the steaming face when Taita came up behind them. He saw that Fenn was correct: the red rock wall was blackened by the flames but unscathed.

Meren tapped it with the point of his sword. It sounded solid. Angrily, Ihe raised the sword to deliver a harder blow and relieve his frustration.

The steam clouds in which they were enveloped were moist and warm, but Taita felt a sudden intense contrast, an icy chill on his arms and face. Immediately he opened his Inner Eye. Through it he saw a tiny spot appear on the soot-blackened stone where Meren had struck it. It glowed red, then took on the shape of the cat's paw, symbol of Eos of the Dawn.

'Get back!' Taita ordered, and used the voice of power to reinforce the command. At the same time he lunged forward, seized Fenn's arm and flung her away. But his warning to Meren had come too late.

Although Meren tried to check his stroke, the point of his sword touched the glowing spot again. With a sound like shattering glass the small area of rock directly beneath the symbol of Eos exploded outwards and a blast of splinters struck him full in the face. Although most were small fragments, they were as sharp as needles. His head snapped back, he dropped the sword and clutched at his face with both hands. Blood poured between his fingers and ran down on to his chest.

Taita ran to him and caught his arm to steady him. Fenn had been thrown to the ground, but now she scrambled up and ran to help.

Between them they led Meren back from the steaming rock, found a patch of shade and sat him down.

'Stand back!' Taita ordered the men, who had followed and were now crowding forward. 'Give us room to work.' To Fenn, he said, 'Bring water.'

She ran to a gourd and brought it to him. Taita lifted Meren's hands away from his ruined face. She exclaimed with horror, but Taita cautioned her to silence with a frown.

'Am I still as beautiful?' Meren tried to grin, but his eyes were tightly closed, the lids swollen and clotted with blood.

'It's a great improvement,' Taita assured him, and began to wash away the blood. Some of the cuts were superficial, but three were deep. One ran through the bridge of his nose, the second through his upper lip, but the third and worst had pierced his right eyelid. Taita could make out a shard of stone embedded in the eye cavity.

'Fetch my medicine bag,' he ordered Fenn, who ran to where their equipment had been placed and brought back the leather satchel.

Taita opened the roll of surgical instruments and selected a pair of ivory forceps with a probe. 'Can you open your eyes?' he asked gently.

Meren made an attempt and the left lid opened a little, but although the damaged lid quivered, the right eye remained closed.

'No, Magus.' His voice was subdued.

'Is it sore?' Fenn asked timorously. 'Oh, poor Meren.' She took his hand.

'Sore? Not in the least. Your touch has made it better.'

Taita placed a square of leather between Meren's teeth. 'Bite down on that.' He closed the jaws of the forceps over the fragment of stone and, with a single firm movement, drew it out. Meren grunted and his face contorted. Taita laid aside the forceps and, with a finger on each eyelid, gently drew them apart. Behind him he heard Fenn gasp.

'Is it bad?' Meren asked.

Taita remained silent. The eyeball had burst and the bloody jelly dribbled down his cheek. Taita knew at once that Meren would never see with that eye again. Gently he prised open the lid of the other and stared into it. He saw the pupil dilate and focus normally. He held up his other hand. 'How many fingers?' he asked.

'Three,' Meren answered.

'You aren't completely blind, then,' Taita told him. Meren was a tough warrior. It was neither necessary nor advisable to shield him from the truth.

'Only half-way there?' Meren asked, his smile lopsided 'That was why the gods gave you two eyes,' Taita said, and began to bind up the ruined one with a white linen bandage.

'I hate the witch. This is her doing,' said Fenn, and began to weep softly. 'I hate her. I hate her.'

'Make a litter for the colonel,' Taita ordered the men, who waited close at hand.

'I don't need one,' Meren protested. 'I can walk.'

'The first law of the cavalry,' Taita reminded him. 'Never walk when you can ride.'

I

As soon as the litter was ready they helped Meren on to it and started back to Tamafupa. They had been moving for a short time when Fenn called to Taita: 'There are strange men up there, watching us.' She pointed across the dried-up river course. On the skyline stood a small group of men. Fenn counted them swiftly. 'Five.'

They were dressed in loincloths, but their torsos were bare. They all carried spears and clubs. Two were armed with bows. The tallest among them stood at their head. He wore a headdress of red flamingo feathers.

Their bearing was arrogant and hostile. Two of the men behind the chief seemed wounded or injured: they were being supported by their comrades.

'Magus, they have been in a fight,' Shofar, one of the litter-bearers, pointed out.

'Hail them!' Taita ordered. Shofar shouted and waved. None of the warriors showed any reaction. Shofar shouted again. The chief in the flamingo headdress lifted his spear in a gesture of command and immediately his men disappeared from the skyline, leaving the hillside deserted.

A distant chorus of shouts broke the silence that followed their departure.

'That comes from the town.' Fenn turned quickly in that direction.

'There has been trouble.'

When they had left Taita at the Red Stones, Kalulu's bodyguards carried him down the river valley towards Tamafupa. He was in such distress that they went slowly and carefully. They halted every few hundred yards to let him drink from his gourd of medicine, to wet his face and wipe it with a damp cloth. Measured against the arc of the sun, it was almost two hours before they started the climb from the valley towards the gates of Tamafupa.

As they entered a thicket of dense kittar thorn a tall figure stepped onto the pathway. Kalulu and his women recognized him, not only by his headdress of flamingo feathers. The women lowered the litter to the ground and prostrated themselves.

'We see you, great chief,' they chorused. Kalulu struggled up on one elbow, and stared at the newcomer with trepidation. Basma was paramount chief of all the Basmara tribes that inhabited the land between Tamafupa and Kioga. Before the coming of the strangers who had built the temple and raised the Red Stones from the depths of the lake, he had been a mighty ruler. Now his tribes were scattered and his rule disrupted.

'Hail, mighty Basma,' Kalulu said respectfully. 'I am your dog.' I Basma was his bitter rival and enemy. Until this time Kalulu had been protected by his reputation and status. Even the chief of the Bslsmara had not dared to harm a shaman of his power and influence. However, Kalulu knew that ever since the damming of the Nile, Basma had been waiting for his opportunity.

'I have been watching you, wizard,' Basma said coldly.

'I am honoured that such a mighty chief would even notice my humble existence,' Kalulu murmured. Ten Basmara warriors stepped out of the thicket and formed up behind their chief.

'You have led these enemies of the tribe to Tamafupa. They have taken over my town.'

'They are not enemies,' Kalulu replied. 'They are our friends and allies.

Their leader is a great shaman, much more learned and powerful than I am. He has been sent here to destroy the Red Stones and to make the Nile flow again.'

'What feeble lies are these, you pathetic legless thing? Those men are the same sorcerers who built the temple at the mouth of the river, the same wizards who called up the wrath of the dark spirits, who caused the lake waters to boil and the earth to burst open. They are the ones who conjured up the rocks from the depths, and blocked off the great river, which is our mother and our father.'

'That is not so.' Kalulu hopped off his litter and balanced on his stumps to confront Basma. 'Those people are our friends.'

Slowly Basma raised his spear and pointed it at the dwarf. This was a gesture of condemnation. Kalulu looked at his bodyguards. They were not members of a tribe subservient to Basma, one of the many reasons he had selected them. They came from a warrior tribe far to the north.

However, when it came to a choice between himself and Basma he could not be certain in which direction their loyalty would sway. As if in answer to his unspoken question, the eight women tightened their ranks around him. Imbali, the flower, was their leader. Her body might have been carved from anthracite. Her jet skin was anointed with oil so that it glowed in the sunlight. Her arms and legs were sleek with fine flat muscle. Her breasts were high and hard, decorated with an intricate pattern of ritual scarification. Her neck was long and proud. Her eyes were fierce. She loosened the battleaxe from the loop at her waist. The others followed her example.

'Your whores will not save you now, Kalulu,' Basma sneered disdain

fully. 'Kill the wizard,' he shouted at his warriors, and hurled his spear at Kalulu.

Imbali anticipated the throw. She jumped forward, swung the battle axe in her right hand and hit the spear in mid-air, knocking it straight upwards. As it fell back she caught it neatly in her left hand and raised the point to meet the rush of warriors. The first man ran on to it, transfixing himself just below the sternum. He reeled backwards into the man coming up behind him, knocking him off balance. Then he dropped on to his back and lay kicking with the shaft of the spear standing out of his belly. Imbali leapt gracefully over his corpse, and caught the man behind him before he could recover. She swung the axe in a rising stroke that lopped off his spear-arm neatly at the elbow. She pirouetted and used the momentum to decapitate a third man as he rushed forward. The headless corpse dropped into a sitting position, the open arteries sending up a tall fountain of bright red, then flopped over and bled into the earth.

Shielding Kalulu, Imbali and the other women fell back quickly and picked up the litter by its rawhide carrying straps. Then using it as a battering ram, they charged into the Basmara. Their war-cry was a shrill ululation as the axe blades whistled and fluted, then thudded into flesh and bone.

Basma's men rallied swiftly. They met the women with a wall of locked shields and threw their long spears at their heads. One went down, killed outright with a flint point through her throat. The others raised the litter and hammered it into the line of shields. Both sides heaved against each other. One of the Basmara dropped to his knees and stabbed up under the bottom edge of the litter into the belly of the girl at the centre of the line. She released her grip and reeled backwards. She tried to turn away but her assailant jerked his spear free and stabbed again, aiming for her kidneys. The blow went in deep and the girl screamed as the blade slipped alongside her spine crippling her instantly.

Kalulu's bodyguards retreated a few steps, filled the gap left by the wounded girl and held the litter steady. The Basmara raised their shields and, once more, charged shoulder to shoulder. As they crashed into the litter they stabbed up under the bottom edge of the shields, aiming for groins and bellies. The line of shields swayed back and forth. Two more girls went down, one hit in the upper thigh so that the femoral artery erupted. She fell back and tried to stem the bleeding by pushing her fingers into the wound to pinch the artery closed. While she was bowed

over her back was exposed and a Basmara stabbed her in the spine. The spearhead found the joint between her vertebrae, and her paralysed legs gave way. The man stabbed her again, but while he was concentrating on killing her, Imbali ducked under the litter and chopped deep into his skull.

The uneven pressure on the litter slewed it round. Kalulu was left unprotected on one flank. Chief Basma seized the moment: he darted out of the wall of shields, dodged around the litter and ran at him. Kalulu saw him coming and swung himself into a handstand. With amazing agility he shot towards the shelter of the nearby thicket of kittar thorns.

He had almost reached it when Basma overhauled him and stabbed him twice. 'Traitor!' the chief screamed, and the spearhead hit Kalulu in thej centre of the back. With a huge effort he managed to stay balanced on his hands. He bounced along, but Basma caught up with him again.

'Witchmonger!' he yelled and thrust again, deeply through the little man's inverted crotch and into his belly. Kalulu howled and tumbled into the thicket. Basma tried to follow up his attack, but from the corner of his eye he saw Imbali rushing at him with her axe above her head. He ducked and when her blade hissed past his ear, he swerved away from her return stroke and ran. His men saw him go and followed, pelting away down the slope.

'The sorcerer is dead!' Basma shouted.

His warriors took up the chant: 'Kalulu is dead! The familiar of devils and demons is slain!'

'Leave them to run back to the bitches that whelped them.' Imbali stopped her girls chasing them. 'We must save our master.'

By the time they found him in the thicket Kalulu was curled into a ball, whimpering with pain. Tenderly they extricated him from the hooked thorn branches and placed him on his litter. At that moment a shout from further down the slope checked them.

'It is the voice of the old man.' Imbali had recognized Taita, and ululated to direct them.

Soon Taita and Fenn came into view, followed closely by the party carrying Meren on his litter.

'Kalulu, you are wounded grievously,' Taita said gently.

'Nay, Magus, not wounded.' Kalulu shook his head painfully. 'I fear I am slain.'

'Swiftly. Take him to the camp!' Taita told Imbali and her three surviving companions. 'And you men!' He picked out four following Meren's litter. 'Your help is needed here!'

222 I

'Wait!' Kalulu seized Taita's hand to prevent him leaving. 'The man who did this is Basma, the paramount chief of Basmara.'

'Why did he attack you? You are his subject, surely?'

'Basma believes that you are of the same tribe who built the temple, and that you have come here to instigate further calamity and catastrophe.

He thinks I have joined with you to destroy the land, the rivers, the lakes and to kill all the Basmara.'

'He has gone now. Your women have driven him away.' Taita tried to reassure and calm him.

Kalulu would have none of it. 'He will return.' He reached up and seized Taita's wrist as he stooped over the litter. 'You must get into the town and prepare to defend yourselves. Basma will return with all his regiments.'

'When I leave Tamafupa, I will take you with me, Kalulu. Our pursuit of the witch cannot succeed without your help.'

'I can feel the bleeding deep in my belly. I will not be going on with you.'

Before sunset Kalulu died. The four bodyguards dug an adit into the side of a large abandoned anthill outside the stockade of Tamafupa. Taita wrapped the corpse in a sheet of unbleached linen and they laid it in the damp clay tunnel. Then they sealed it with large boulders to prevent the hyenas digging it out.

'Your ancestral gods will welcome you, Shaman Kalulu, for you were of the Truth.' Taita bade him farewell.

When he turned away from the tomb, the four bodyguards stood before him, and Imbali spoke for them all in the Shilluk language. 'Our master is gone. We are far from our own land, alone. You are a mighty shaman, greater even than Kalulu. We will follow you.'

Taita looked at Nakonto. 'What do you make of these women? If I enlist them, will you take them under your command?' he asked.

Nakonto considered the question solemnly. 'I have seen them fight.

I will be content to have them follow me.'

With a regal tilt of her head, Imbali acknowledged his presence and his words. 'For as long as it pleases us to do so, we will march shoulder to shoulder with this strutting Shilluk rooster, but not behind him,' she told Taita.

Her eyes were almost on a level with Nakonto's. The magnificent pair stared at each other with apparent scorn. Taita opened his Inner Eye and smiled as he saw how their auras mirrored the inclination they felt towards each other. 'Nakonto, is it agreed?' he asked.

22.3

'It is agreed.' Nakonto made another lordly gesture of acquiescence.

'For the time being.';

Fenn and the Shilluk camp-followers swept out one of the largest huts for Meren. Then Fenn burnt a handful of Taita's special herbs in the open fireplace. The aromatic smoke drove out the insects and spiders that had made the hut their home. They cut a mattress of fresh grass and laid Meren's sleeping mat upon it. He was in such pain that he could hardly raise his head to drink from the bowl that Fenn held to his lips. Taita promoted Hilto-bar-Hilto to take his place at the head of the four divisions until Meren had recovered sufficiently to assume command again.

Taita and Hilto toured the town to inspect the defences. Their first concern was to ensure that the water supply was secure. There was a deep well in the centre of the village, with a narrow circular clay staircase descending to the water, which was of good quality. Taita ordered that a party under Shofar should fill all of the gourds and waterskins in readiness for the anticipated assault by the Basmara. In the thick of the fighting, thirsty men would have no opportunity to draw from the well.

Taita's next concern was the condition of the outer stockade. They found that it was still in a reasonable state of repair, except for a few sections where termites had eaten the poles. However, it was immediately apparent that they could not hope to hold such an extended line.

Tamafupa was a big town that had once been home to a large tribe. The stockade was almost half a league in circumference. 'We will have to shorten it,' he told Hilto, 'then burn the remainder of the town to clear the approaches and enable our archers to cover the ground.'

'You have set us a daunting task, Magus,' Hilto remarked. 'We had better begin at once.'

Once Taita had marked out the new perimeter, men and women fell to. They dug out the best preserved of the stockade poles and set them up along the line Taita had surveyed. There was no time to make a permanent fortification, so they filled the gaps with branches of kittar thorn bush. They erected tall watch-towers at the four compass points of the new stockade, which commanded a good view over the valley and all the approaches.

Taita ordered bonfires to be set around the perimeter. When they were lit they would illuminate the stockade walls in the event of a night

attack. Once this was done he built an inner keep round the well, their last line of defence if the Basmara regiments broke into the town. Within this inner stronghold, he stored the remaining bags of dhurra, the spare weapons and all other valuable supplies. They built stables for the remaining horses. Windsmoke and her colt were still in good condition, but many others were sick or dying after the long hard road they had travelled.

Every evening after she had fed Meren and helped Taita change the dressing over the empty socket of his right eye, Fenn went down to visit Whirlwind and take him the dhurra cakes he loved.

Taita waited for a favourable wind before he set fire to the remains of the old town that lay outside the new stockade. The thatch and wooden walls had dried and burned rapidly, the wind blowing the flames away from the new walls. By nightfall that day the old town was levelled to a smouldering field of ashes.

'Let the Basmara attack across that open ground,' Hilto observed, with satisfaction, 'and we will shock them.'

'Now you can set up markers in front of the stockade,' Taita told him.

They placed cairns of white river stones at twenty, fifty and a hundred paces so that the archers could have the enemy accurately ranged as they sent in their attacks.

Taita sent Imbali with her companions and the other women to the dry river to cut reeds for arrow-making. He had brought bags of spare arrowheads from the armoury at Qebui fort, and when they had been used, he discovered an outcrop of flint in the hillside below the stockade.

He showed the women how to chip the flint fragments into arrowheads.

They learnt the skill quickly, then bound the heads into the reed shafts with bark twine and soaked them in water to make them tight and hard.

They stacked bundles of spare arrows at salient points along the perimeter of the stockade.

Within ten days all of the preparation had been completed. The men and Imbali's women sharpened their weapons and checked their equipment for what might be the last time.

One evening as the men gathered around the fires for the evening meal, there was a sudden stir and a burst of cheering as an ill-assorted couple came into the firelight. Meren was unsteady on his feet, but supported himself with a hand on Fenn's shoulder as he came to where Taita sat with the captains. They all jumped to their feet and crowded round him, laughing and congratulating him on his swift recovery.

A linen bandage covered his empty eye socket, and he was pale and

thinner, but he was making an effort to walk with something of his old swagger, and countered the sallies of the officers with ribald ripostes. At last he stood before Taita and saluted him.'

'Ho, Meren, bored with lying abed to be tended by all the females in camp?' Taita had spoken with a smile but he had difficulty in repressing the pang he felt when he saw the callused warrior's hand on Fenn's dainty shoulder. He knew that his jealousy would become keener as her body and beauty matured. He had experienced that corrosive emotion during her other life.

The following morning Meren was at the practice butts with the archers. At first he had difficulty in keeping his balance with only one eye to steady himself, but with fierce concentration he was at last able to master his unruly senses and train them anew. His next difficulty came in estimating the range and the hold-over of his aim. His arrows either dropped away before they reached the target or flew high above it. Grimly he persevered. Taita, who had been the champion archer in all the armies of Queen Lostris, coached him, teaching him the technique of letting fly his first arrow as a marker, and using it to correct the second, which he released immediately afterwards. Soon Meren could loose a second while the first was still in flight. Fenn and the Shilluk wives made him a leather eyepatch to cover the unsightly socket. His countenance regained its naturally healthy hue, and the remaining eye its old sparkle.

Every morning Taita sent out a mounted patrol, but they returned each evening without having discovered any sign of the Basmara regiments.

Taita consulted Imbali and her women.

'We know Chief Basma well. He is a vengeful, merciless man,' Imbali told him. 'He has not forgotten us. His regiments are scattered along the hills of the Valley of the Great Rift, in the river gorges and the marshes of the lakes. It will take time for him to muster them, but in the end he will come. We can be certain of it.'

Now that the most important preparations had been completed, Taita had time for less vital work. He showed the women how to make dummy human heads with lumps of clay and grass set on top of long poles. These they painted with natural pigments, until the results were convincing when seen from a distance. They enjoyed this more than arrow-making.

However, the waiting was starting to wear on their nerves.

226

I

'Even considering the distance they must cover from here to Kioga, Basmara should have arrived,' Taita told Meren, as they ate their dinner round the campfire. 'Tomorrow you and I will ride out to scout the terrain for ourselves.'

'And I shall go with you,' piped up Fenn.

'We shall see about that when the time comes,' said Taita, gruffly.

'Thank you, beloved Taita,' she said, her smile sweet and sunny.

'That was not what I meant,' he replied, but they both knew that it was.

The child was endlessly fascinating, and Taita delighted in her presence. He felt that she had become an extension of his own being.

When the patrol rode out, Fenn was between Taita and Meren.

Nakonto and Imbali trotted ahead as trackers to read the sign. On her long legs Imbali could match Nakonto over the leagues. Habari and two troopers brought up the rear. For once Taita wore a sheathed sword at his waist, but carried his staff in his hand.

They rode along the crest of the hills whence they could look down the full length of the valley. On the left the terrain was rolling and heavily forested. They saw numerous large herds of elephant spread out below the ridge. Their huge grey bodies showed up clearly in every open glade, and every so often a large fruit-bearing tree was sent crashing to earth by their massive strength. When a tree was too strong to yield to the efforts of a single beast, the other bulls came to his assistance. No tree could resist their combined assault.

Since the tribes had fled from this land the elephant had not been molested, and they were unalarmed by the close proximity of humans.

They did not flee at the first approach but stood their ground while the horsemen passed close by. Occasionally a cantankerous female indulged in a threatening display, but none pushed home her attack. Fenn was delighted by the antics of the calves, and plied Taita with questions about the mighty beasts and their ways.

The elephants were not the only wild animals they encountered.

There were herds of antelope, and yellow baboons foraged in the open glades or swarmed nimbly to the tops of the tallest trees. One troop erupted into shrieking panic. The mothers snatched up their infants and slung them under their bellies as they bounded away in flight. The big males formed a belligerent rearguard, fluffing out their manes and uttering explosive barks of fury.

'What ails them?' Fenn demanded.

'Likely a leopard or some other predator.' As Taita spoke, a beautiful

gold and black spotted cat stalked out of a patch of grass just ahead: The leopard's markings blended perfectly with the background.; 'You were right again, Taita. You must know everything there is to know in this world,' Fenn told him admiringly.

They angled up the slope of the next range of hills, but before they reached the crest a vast herd of zebra thundered over the skyline. Their hoofs tore up the dry earth and lifted a cloud of pale dust high into the brazen sky. They took little notice of the horses, seemingly accepting that they were of their own species, and passed them within a few paces.

'Something must have alarmed them,' Meren said.

'Fire or men,' Taita agreed. 'Nothing else would have caused a stampede on this scale.'

'I see no smoke of a bushfire,' Meren said. 'It must be men.' They rode cautiously now, approaching the skyline at a walk.

Suddenly Fenn exclaimed again and pointed to the left. 'A child! A little black child.'

It was a naked infant of no more than three or four years. He was toddling up the slope on bowed legs, his plump little buttocks wobbling with each pace.

'I am going to pick him up,' Fenn exclaimed. She pressed Whirlwind into a trot, but Taita grabbed her rein.

'Fenn, this smells like ripe bait.'

'We cannot let him go,' Fenn protested, as the child went over the skyline and disappeared. 'He is lost, and all alone.'

'We will follow him,' Taita agreed, 'but with caution.' He did not release his hold on Whirlwind's rein as they rode on. He halted a hundred paces below the ridge.

'Come, Meren!' he ordered. They dismounted and passed their reins to Fenn.

'Stay here and hold our horses, but be ready to ride hard,' Taita told her. He and Meren went forward on foot. They used a small bush to break up the outline of their heads as they peered over the far slope of the hill. The child stood just below them, facing them with a cheerful grin on his round face. He was holding his tiny penis in both hands, piddling a yellow stream on to the sun-baked earth. It was such a homely scene that it lulled them for a moment. Meren started to grin in sympathy but Taita seized his arm. 'Look beyond!'

They stared for an instant longer, then Meren reacted. 'The Basmara impis!' he cried. 'That little devil was the bait.'

Not fifty paces beyond where the child stood, they squatted rank upon

I

4 THE QUEST

close-packed rank. They were armed with wooden clubs, long throwing spears and shorter, stabbing assegais, tipped with sharp flint. Their rawhide shields were slung upon their backs, and their features were daubed with coloured clay to form warlike masks. They wore headdresses of fur and feathers, ivory pins pierced their nostrils and earlobes, while bracelets and anklets of ostrich shell and ivory beads adorned their limbs.

As Taita and Meren looked at them a hum, as though from a disturbed beehive, went up from the close-packed masses. With a single concerted movement they unslung their war shields and drummed upon them with their spears. Then they burst into their battle hymn. The deep, melodious voices soared and swelled with the drumming. Then the din was pierced by a shrill blast on an antelope-horn whistle. This was the signal for the ranks to leap to their feet and, in a mass, they started up the slope.

'Back to the horses,' said Taita.

Fenn saw them coming and galloped to meet them, bringing Wind smoke and Meren's steed. They mounted swiftly and had turned the horse's heads as the first rank of Basmara warriors burst over the crest behind them. They galloped back to where Habari and the remainder of the patrol were waiting.

'Already they have sent out men to try to head us off,' Fenn called, rising in the stirrups and pointing into the forest. Now they could make out figures among the trees, racing to surround them.

'Take my stirrup rope!' Taita called to Nakonto, as he kicked his left foot free of the loop. Nakonto grabbed it.

'Meren, pick up Imbali to cover your blind side.' Meren swerved and Imbali snatched the right loop. She and Nakonto were carried along by the horses, their feet skimming the earth.

'Ride hard!' Taita shouted. 'We must break through before they encircle us.' The fastest runners among the Basmara were streaking ahead of their companions. 'Fenn, stay between Meren and me. Don't allow yourself to be separated from us.'

Four of the racing Basmara cut in directly ahead of them, closing the gap for which Taita had been aiming. They turned to face the oncoming riders, their tall shields on their backs so that their hands were free to use their weapons. Taita and Meren slipped their short recurved cavalry bows, designed to be shot from horseback, from their shoulders as they closed in. They dropped the reins on to the necks of their mounts and, guiding them with the pressure of their feet and knees, rode straight at the spearmen. A Basmara hurled his spear. He was aiming at Meren, but the range was long. Meren had time to react. With a touch of his toe

he turned the bay and the spear flew past his left shoulder. He raised his bow and loosed two arrows in rapid succession. One flew high, almost an arm's length over the man's head and went on for fifty paces - at this close range the bow was massively powerful — but the second hit the Basmara in the centre of his chest and flew clean through him. It burst out between his shoulder-blades in a spray of blood. He was dead even before he hit the ground.

Out on the right the second spearman heaved back his throwing arm.

He, too, was concentrating on Meren, and he was in Meren's blind zone.

Meren did not see him so made no effort to defend himself. Imbali swung out on the rope stirrup and threw her axe, which cartwheeled through the air. The Basmara's weight was on his back foot - he was in the very moment of his throw, unable to dodge or duck. The axe struck him in the middle of the forehead and buried itself deep in his skull. Imbali leant down to retrieve it as they swept by. Taita shot an arrow into the body of the third spearman, who dropped the weapon he had been about to throw and tried to pull the arrow out of his belly but the barbs had bitten deep.

The fourth and last warrior stood his ground. He was poised to make his throw, the shaft of the spear resting on his right shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot with battle rage, and Taita saw that they were fastened on Fenn. She was sitting high on Whirlwind's back, a perfect target. The Basmara grimaced with the effort of launching the heavy spear at her.

Taita nocked another arrow from his quiver. 'Down, Fenn,' he commanded, in the voice of power. 'Lie flat!' She dropped forward and pressed her face into Whirlwind's mane. Taita threw up his bow, drew until the bowstring touched his nose and lips, then released the arrow.

The spearman was already swinging his body into the forward stroke, but Taita's flint arrowhead hit the notch at the base of his throat and killed him instantly. However, the spear had already left his hand. Taita watched, helpless, as it flew straight at Fenn. She had her face down and did not see it coming, but Whirlwind did. As it flitted across his nose he shied violently to one side and threw up his head so that Taita lost sight of the spear for a moment. He thought that it had missed her and he felt a leap of relief. But then he heard her cry out in pain and surprise, and saw her writhe on the colt's back.

'Are you hit?' Taita shouted, but she did not reply. Then he saw the shaft of the spear dangling down Whirlwind's flank, dragging along the ground behind him.

Taita turned Windsmoke behind the colt and saw at once that the

head of the spear was lodged in Fenn's bare thigh. She had dropped the reins and was clinging with both hands to the colt's neck. She turned towards him, and Taita saw that she was ash pale, her green eyes seeming to fill half of her face as she stared at him. The shaft of the spear was bucking and kicking as it bounced along the ground, and he knew that the razor edges of the head were working brutally in her flesh, worrying and enlarging the wound. It had lodged close to the femoral artery. If it severed that great blood vessel she would be dead within minutes.

'Hold hard, my darling,' he called, and glanced over his shoulder. He saw a pack of Basmara in full pursuit after them, baying as they raced through the forest. 'We dare not stop. If we do, they will be upon us in an instant. I am coming to get you.'

Taita drew his sword and came up beside the colt. He measured his stroke carefully. The sight of the girl in such anguish seemed to restore the strength he had thought lost so many years ago. He focused his mind on the jerking spear. As he swung the heavy bronze blade he shouted a word of power: 'Kydash!'

In his grip the weapon seemed to take on a life of its own. There is a spot on the cutting edge of a well-balanced blade where all the weight and energy of the blow is concentrated. It caught the hardwood shaft precisely a finger's length above the leather bindings that secured the shank of the head and sliced through it as though it were a green twig.

The shaft dropped away, and he saw the instant relief that lit Fenn's features.

'I am coming to get you,' he told her, as he slipped the blade back into its scabbard. 'Be ready.' He pushed Windsmoke in beside her colt and Fenn opened her arms to him trustingly. He slipped his own arm round her waist and lifted her across the gap. She wrapped her arms round his neck as he sat her sideways across Windsmoke's withers.

'I was so afraid, Taita,' she whispered, 'until you came. Now I know it will be all right.'

'Hold tight,' he ordered, 'or it will be all wrong.' With his teeth he tore a strip of linen from the hem of her tunic, then pressed the stub of the severed shaft flat against her upper thigh and secured it with the linen. 'Not very neat or pretty,' he told her, 'but you are bravest girl I know, and that will hold it firmly until we get back to Tamafupa.'

The pursuing Basmara dropped back, and soon disappeared from sight among the trees. They were able to rein down to a trot, but still reached the gates of Tamafupa before the sun had made its noon.

'Stand the garrison to arms,' Taita ordered Meren. 'Those devils will

be upon us before another hour has passed.' He lifted Fenn down from Windsmoke's back, carried her to the hut they shared and laid her gently on her sleeping mat.'

Taita spoke reassuringly to Fenn as he washed away the clotted black blood from around the shank of the spearhead. Then he began a thorough examination of her leg. Until he was ready to operate, he would not remove the linen strip with which he had secured it.

'You were always a favourite of the gods,' he told her at last. 'The spear has missed the big artery by the breadth of your little fingernail. If we hadn't stopped the sharp edges sawing away inside you they would have ruptured it. Now, lie quietly while I mix you something to drink.'

He measured a strong dose of the red sheppen powder into a ceramic bowl and topped it up with hot water from the pan that stood on the coals of the central fireplace. 'Drink this. It will make you sleepy and dull the pain.'

While the drug took effect he searched in his leather medical bag.

There was a separate compartment in which he kept his silver spoons.

To his knowledge only one other surgeon had ever owned a set, and he was dead. When he was ready he called Meren, who was hovering at the door of the hut. 'You know what to do,' he said.

'Of course. You know how many times I have done this before,' Meren replied.

'You have washed your hands, of course?' Taita asked.

Meren's expression changed. 'Yes,' he said doubtfully.

'When?'

'This morning, before we rode out on patrol.'

'Wash them again.'

'I see no reason for it,' Meren muttered, as he always did, but he went to the pan on the fire and filled a bowl.

'We will need another pair of hands,' Taita decided, as he held the silver cups in the flames. 'Call Imbali.'

'Imbali? She is a savage. What about one of our own men?'

'She is strong and clever,' Taita contradicted him. What was more to the point, she was female. Taita did not want another man handling Fenn's naked body. It was bad enough that he must use Meren, but not

another rough soldier - and the Shilluk women were flighty creatures.

'Call Imbali,' he repeated, 'and make sure she washes her hands also.'

Although the red sheppen had sedated Fenn, she groaned and stirred when he disturbed the spearhead. Taita nodded at Meren. Between them they lifted Fenn into a sitting position, then Meren squatted behind her, folded her arms across her chest and pinioned them.

'Ready,' he said.

Taita glanced at Imbali, who was kneeling at Fenn's feet. 'Hold her legs straight. Make sure she does not move.' Imbali leant forward and gripped Fenn's ankles. Taita took a deep breath, and focused his mind.

While he flexed his long, bony fingers, he reviewed every move he must make. Speed and decisiveness were the keys to success. The longer the patient suffered, the more damage was inflicted on body and spirit, and the lower the chances of recovery. Quickly he cut the linen strip that held the spearhead, and gently lifted it into the vertical. Fenn groaned again. Meren had the leather gag ready and slipped it between her teeth to prevent her biting through her tongue.

'Make sure she does not spit it out,' Taita told him. He leant closer and studied the wound. The movements of the flint had already enlarged it considerably, but not enough to allow him to introduce the silver spoons into the gash. He palpated the swollen flesh and traced the regular pulsing of the great artery. He slipped his first and second finger into the wound to stretch it open, then ran them down into the warm raw flesh until he touched the sharp points of the barbs buried there.

Fenn screamed and struggled. Meren and Imbali tightened their grip.

Taita stretched the wound channel a little wider. Although his movements were so quick, they were controlled and precise: within seconds he had located the points of the barbs. Fenn's flesh and muscle fibres were clinging to them. With his free hand he took up the spoons, placed them over the shank and ran them into the wound, one on each side of the spearhead. He guided them over the sharp flint to mask it so that he could draw out the spearhead without it snagging.

'You are killing me!' Fenn screamed. Meren and Imbali were using all their strength, but they could hardly hold her as she wriggled and squirmed. Twice Taita managed to guide the spoons over the barbs, but each time she twisted them loose. At the next attempt, he felt them slide into place. He closed the polished metal over the barbs, and in the same movement drew them upwards. There was a clinging suction as the bloody lips of the wound resisted the movement. With his fingertips deep

in Fenn's flesh he could feel the artery thudding steadily. It seemed to reverberate through his soul. He concentrated on guiding the spoons past it. If even a sliver of the flint was protruding from the enclosing metal it might catch the artery and slice it open. Smoothly he applied more pressure. He felt the mouth of the wound begin to yield, and then, abruptly, the blood-smeared silver spoons and the flint spearhead came free. Quickly he withdrew his fingers from the wound, and pressed the gaping lips of raw flesh together. With his free hand he snatched the thick linen pad Meren handed to him and pressed it over the wound to staunch the bleeding. Fenn's head fell back. Her screams became soft moans, the tension went out of her limbs, and the rigid arch of her spine relaxed.

'Your skill never fails to astonish me,' Meren whispered. 'Each time I see you work like that I am in awe. You are the greatest surgeon who ever lived.'

'We can discuss that later,' Taita replied. 'Now you can help me to stitch her up.'

Taita was laying the final horsehair stitch when they heard a shout from the northern watch-tower. He did not look up at Meren as he tied the knot that closed the wound. 'I believe that the Basmara have arrived.

You must go to your duties now. You may take Imbali with you. Thank you for your help, good Meren. If the wound does not mortify, the child will have much to thank you for too.'

After he had bandaged Fenn's leg, Taita went to the door of the hut and called for Lala, the most reliable and sensible of the Shilluk wives.

She came with her naked baby on her hip. She and Fenn were close friends. They spent much time together, talking and playing with the infant. Lala burst into loud lamentations when she saw Fenn pale and blood-smeared. Taita took some time to calm her and rehearse her in her duties. Then he left her to watch over Fenn while she slept off the effects of the red sheppen.

Taita scrambled up the makeshift ladder to join Meren at the north wall of the stockade. Meren greeted him gravely and, without another word, pointed down the valley. The Basmara were advancing in three separate formations. They came at a steady trot.

Their headdresses nodded and waved in the breeze of their passage, and their columns wound like long black serpents through the forest.

They were singing again, a deep repetitive chant that chilled the blood of the defenders and made their skin crawl. Taita turned to look along the parapet. Their entire active strength was assembled there, and he was sobered by how few they were.

'Thirty-two of us,' he said softly, 'and at least six hundred of them.'

'Then we are evenly matched, Magus, and we are in for some rich sport, I wager,' Meren averred. Taita shook his head in mock-disbelief at such phlegm in the face of the storm that was about to break over them.

Nakonto stood with the Imbali and her women at the far end of the parapet. Taita walked over to them. As always, Imbali's noble Nilotic features were calm and remote.

'You know these people, Imbali. How will they attack?' he asked.

'First they will count our numbers and test our mettle,' she replied, without hesitation.

'How will they do that?'

'They will rush directly at the wall to make us show ourselves.'

'Will they try to set fire to the stockade?'

'No, Shaman. This is their own town. Their ancestors are buried here.

They would never burn their graves.'

Taita returned to Meren's side. 'It is time for you to set up the dummies along the parapet,' he said, and Meren passed the order to the Shilluk wives. They had already placed the dummies in position below the parapet. Now they scampered along the stockade lifting them so that the false heads were visible to the Basmara over the top of the wall.

'We have seemingly double the strength of our garrison at a single stroke,' Taita remarked. 'It should make the Basmara treat us with a little more respect.'

They watched the formations of spearmen manoeuvre across the ash strewn ground on which the huts had burnt. The Basmara massed their three regiments in distinct columns, captains at the front.

'Their drill is sloppy and their formations are untidy and confused.'

Meren's tone was scornful. 'This is a rabble, not an army.'

'But a large rabble, while we are a very small army,' Taita pointed'out.

'Let us delay our celebrations until after the victory.'; The singing ceased, and a heavy silence fell over the field. A single figure left the Basmara ranks and advanced half-way to the stockade. He wore the tall pink flamingo headdress. He posed in front of his men to let them admire his warlike appearance, then harangued them in a high pitched shriek, punctuating each statement with a leap high in the air and a clash of spear against war shield.

'What is he saying?' Meren was puzzled.

'I can only guess that he is not being friendly to us.' Taita smiled.

'I will encourage him with an arrow.'

'He is seventy paces beyond your longest shot.' Taita restrained him.

'We have no arrows to waste.'

They watched Basma, the paramount chief of the Basmara, strut back to his waiting regiments. This time he took up a command position behind the rear ranks. Another silence fell over the field. There was no movement. Even the wind had died away. The tension was as oppressive as the lull before a tropical thunderstorm. Then Chief Basma screeched, 'Haul Haul' and his regiments started forward.

'Steady!' Meren cautioned his men. 'Let them get in close. Hold your arrows!'

The massed ranks of the Basmara swept past the outer markers and they began to chant their war-cry. The spears drummed on the shields.

At every fifth pace they stamped their bare feet in unison. The rattles on their ankles clashed, and the ground jumped at the impact. The fine dust from the ashes of the burned city rose waist high around them so they seemed to wade through water. They came up to the one-hundred-pace markers. The chanting and drumming swelled into a frenzy.

'Steady!' Meren bellowed, so that his voice carried above the din.

'Hold hard!' The front rank was coming up to the fifty-pace marker.

They could see every detail of the weird patterns painted on the Basmara faces. The leaders were past the markers now; and were so close that the archers on the stockade were looking down upon them.

'Nock and aim!' Meren roared. Up came the bows. They arced as the archers drew. Their eyes narrowed as they aimed along the shafts. Meren knew better than to let them hold the draw, until their arms began to judder. His next command came only a breath behind the last. At that precise moment the dense ranks reached the thirty-pace markers.

'Let fly!' he shouted, and they loosed as one man. At that range not a single arrow missed. They flew in a massed, silent cloud. It was a mark of

236 I

their mettle that no two archers aimed at the same Basmara warrior. The first rank went down as though they had fallen into a pit in the earth.

'Loose at will!' Meren howled. His archers nocked the second arrow with practised dexterity. They threw up, drew and released in one movement, making it appear easy and unhurried. The next rank of Basmara went down, and moments later, the next fell on top of them.

Those that followed stumbled over growing mounds of corpses.

'Arrows here!' The cry went up along the top of the parapet, and the Shilluk women scurried forward, bowed under the bundles they carried on their shoulders. The Basmara kept coming, and the archers shot at them until at last they milled about below the stockade trying for a handhold on the poles of the wall to hoist themselves up. Some reached the top, but Nakonto, Imbali and her women were waiting for them.

The battleaxes rose and fell as though they were chopping firewood.

Nakonto's cries were murderous as he plied his stabbing spear.

At last a shrill piping of ivory whistles brought the carnage to an abrupt end. The regiments melted away across the ash-dusted field to where Basma waited to regroup the survivors.

Meren strode along the parapet. 'Is anyone wounded? No? Good.

When you go out to pick up your arrows, watch out for those who are feigning dead. It's a favourite trick of such devils.'

They opened the gates and rushed out to gather up the arrows. The barbs of many were buried in the dead flesh and had to be chopped out with sword or axe. It was grisly work and they were soon as blood spattered as a gang of butchers. Once they had the arrows they collected the spears of the fallen Basmara. Then they ran back into the stockade and slammed the gates.

The women brought up the waterskins with baskets of dried fish and dhurra cakes. While most of the men were still chewing, the chanting began again and their captains called them back to the parapet: 'Stand to your arms!'

The Basmara came again in a tight phalanx, but this time the leaders carried long poles they had cut in the forest. When they were shot down by the archers on the wall, the men that followed picked up the poles they had dropped and carried them forward. Fifty or more men died before the poles reached the outer wall of the stockade. The Basmara crowded forward to lift one end of a pole and prop it against the top of the wall. Immediately they swarmed up it, their short stabbing spears clamped in their teeth.

Once their weight was on the pole it was impossible for the defenders

to dislodge it. They had to meet the warriors hand to hand when they reached the top of the wall. Imbali and her women stood in the line with the men, and dealt out deadly execution with their battleaxes. But the Basmara seemed impervious to their losses. They clambered over the corpses of their comrades, and rushed into the fray, eager and undaunted.

At last a small bunch had fought their way on to the parapet. It took hard and bitter fighting before the last was hurled back. However, fresh waves swarmed to take their places. Just when it seemed that the exhausted defenders were about to be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of painted bodies, the whistles shrilled again and the attackers melted away.

They drank, dressed their wounds and changed their blunted swords for new ones with keener edges, but the respite was short-lived before the cry went up once more: 'Stand to your arms! They are coming again.'

Meren's men met two more rushes before sunset, but the last was costly. Eight men and two of Imbali's companions had been speared or clubbed to death on the parapet before the Basmara were thrown back.

Few of the troopers had survived the day unscathed. Some had only light cuts or bruises. Two had broken bones from blows of the heavy Basmara clubs. Two more would not see out the night: a spear thrust through the guts and another through the lungs would carry them off before dawn. Many were too weary to eat or even to drag themselves to the shelter of the huts. As soon as they had quenched their thirst they threw themselves down on the parapet and fell asleep in their sweat soaked armour and bloody bandages.

'We will not hold out here another day,' Meren told Taita. 'This village has become a death-trap. I had not thought the Basmara could be so tenacious. We will have to kill every one before we can get away.'

He looked tired and despondent. His eye cavity was hurting — he kept lifting the patch and rubbing it with his knuckles.

Taita had seldom seen him in such a reduced state. 'We do not have enough men to hold this perimeter,' he agreed. 'We will have to pull back to the inner line.' They looked across at the final ring of defences around the well. 'We can do that under cover of night. Then we will set fire to the stockade at the first enemy charge in the morning. That will hold them for a few hours until the flames burn down.'