The Quest - Smith Wilbur (читаем книги онлайн бесплатно TXT) 📗

She will seem to you fine, noble and as virtuous as any woman who ever lived. Soon it will seem that I 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.'

Taita shook his whole body, as though to rid himself of a swarm of poisonous insects. 'Forgive me, Demeter!' he cried. 'Now that you warn me of what she is doing, I can feel the enervating weakness welling within me. I was losing control of judgement and reason. What you say is true. I find myself haunted by strange longings. Great Horus, shield me.' Taita groaned. 'I never thought to know such agony again. I thought myself long past the torments of desire.'

'The contrary emotions that assail you spring not from your wisdom and reason. They are an infection of the spirit, a poisoned arrow shot from the bow of the great witch. I was once harassed by her in the same manner. You can see the state to which I have been reduced. However, I have learnt how to survive.'

'Teach me. Help me to withstand her, Demeter.'

'I have unwittingly led Eos to you. I believed I had eluded her, but she has used me as a hunting hound to lead her to you, her next victim.

But now we must stand together, as one. That is the only way we can hope to withstand her onslaughts. However, before all else, we must leave Gallala. We cannot rest long in one place. If she is uncertain of our exact whereabouts, it will be more difficult for her to focus her powers upon us. Between us we must weave a perpetual screen of concealment to cover our movements.'

'Meren!' Taita called urgently. He was swiftly at his master's side.

'How soon can we be ready to leave Gallala?'

'I will bring the horses with all haste. But where are we going, Master?'

'Thebes and Karnak,' Taita replied, and glanced at Demeter.

He nodded agreement. 'We must muster all support from every source, temporal as well as spiritual.'

'Pharaoh is the chosen of the gods, and the most powerful of men,1 Taita agreed.

'And you are the chief of his favourites,' said Demeter. 'We must leave this very night, to go to him.'

Taita rode Windsmoke, and Meren followed closely on one of the other horses they had brought from the plains of Ecbatana. Demeter lay in his swaying litter, high on the back of his camel, Taita alongside him.

The litter curtains were open and they could converse easily over the other soft sounds of the caravan: the creak and jingle of tack, the fall of horses' hoofs and camels' pads on the yellow sand, the low voices of the servants and guards. During the night they stopped twice to rest and water the animals. At each halt Taita and Demeter performed the spell of concealment. Their combined powers were formidable and the screen they wove seemed impervious: although they scried the silences of the night around them before they mounted and moved on, neither could detect any further sign of Eos's baleful presence.

'She has lost us for the moment, but we will always be at risk, and most vulnerable when we sleep. We should never do so at the same time,' Demeter advised.

'We will never again relax our vigilance,' Taita asserted. “I will keep up my guard against careless mistakes. I had underestimated our enemy, allowed Eos to take me by surprise. 1 am ashamed of my weakness and stupidity.'

'I am a hundred times deeper in guilt than you are,' Demeter admitted.

'I fear my powers are waning fast, Taita. I should have guided you, but I behaved like a novice. We can afford no further lapses. We must seek out the weaknesses in our enemy, and attack her there, but without exposing ourselves.'

'Despite all you have told me, my knowledge and understanding of Eos is pitifully inadequate. You must recall every detail about her that you discovered during your ordeal, no matter how trivial or seemingly insignificant,' Taita told him, 'or 1 am blind, while she holds every advantage.'

'You are the stronger of we two,' Demeter said, 'but you are right.

Remember how swift her reaction was when you and 1 came together and she descried our combined forces. Within hours of our first meeting she could overlook us. From now on her attacks upon me will become more relentless and vicious. We must not rest until I have passed on to you all that I have learnt about her. We do not know how long we will

be together before she kills me or drives a wedge between us. Every hour is precious.'

Taita nodded. 'Then let us begin with the most important matters.

I know who she is, and where she came from. Next, I must know her whereabouts. Where is she, Demeter? Where can we find her?'

'She has hidden in numerous lairs since she escaped from the temple of Apollo, when Agamemnon and his brother, Menelaus, sacked Ilion so long ago.'

'Where did you have your fateful encounter with her?'

'On an island in the Middle Sea, which has since become the stronghold of the sea people, that nation of corsairs and pirates. At that time she lived on the slopes of a great burning mountain she named Etna, a volcano that spewed forth fire and brimstone and sent clouds of poisoned smoke to the very heavens.'

'That was long ago?'

'Centuries before either you or I was born.'

Taita chuckled drily. 'Yes, indeed, it was long ago.' His expression hardened again. 'Is it possible that Eos may still be at Etna?'

'She is no longer there,' Demeter replied, without hesitation.

'How can you be certain?'

'By the time I broke free of her, my body was shattered in health and vitality, my mind unhinged, and my psychic forces were almost dispersed by the ordeal through which she had put me. I was her prisoner for little more than a decade, but I aged a lifetime for each of those years.

Nevertheless I was able to take advantage of a mighty eruption of the volcano to conceal my flight, and I had help from the priests of a small, insignificant god, whose temple lay in the valley below Etna's eastern slopes. They spirited me across the narrow straits to the mainland in a tiny boat, and led me to sanctuary in another temple of their sect, hidden in the mountains, where they placed me in the care of their brothers.

Those good priests helped me to reassemble what remained of my powers, which I needed to intercept a singularly virulent spell that Eos sent after me.'

'Could you turn it back upon her?' Taita demanded. 'Were you able to wound her with her own magic?'

'She may have become complacent, because she underestimated my remaining strength and did not protect herself adequately. I aimed my return strike at her essence, which I could still see with my Inner Eye.

She was close at hand. Only the narrow strait of water stood between us.

1

WILBUR SMITH

My riposte flew true and hit her hard. I heard her cry of agony echo across the ether. Then she disappeared, and I believed for a while that I had destroyed her. My hosts made discreet enquiries from their brothers in the temple below the mountain of Etna. We heard from them that she had vanished, and that her former abode was deserted. I wasted no time in taking advantage of my victory. As soon as I was strong enough I left my sanctuary and travelled to the furthest ends of the earth, to the continent of ice, as far from Eos as I could go. At last I found a place where I could lie quiescent, as still as a frightened frog beneath a stone.

It was as well that I did so. After a very short time, fifty years or less, I felt the resurgence of Eos, my enemy. Her powers seemed to have been mightily enhanced. The ether around me hummed with the vicious darts she hurled at random after me. She could not place me precisely, and although many of her barbs came close to where I lay, none struck home.