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

I will need your assistance. Our minds have become so attuned that only you can help me with this task.'

'You do me honour, Magus,' she said simply.

The Jarrian cohorts pursued them for several leagues downstream, riding hard along the track that followed the riverbank, until swamps and thick jungle forced them to abandon the chase. The flotilla raced along on the current, which was swollen with the rain that had fallen on the Mountains of the Moon, leaving the enemy far behind.

Before nightfall that day the leading vessels of the squadron reached the first of the rapids that had so impeded their voyage upriver so many months before. Now the white water sent them hurtling down the chutes, the banks blurring past on each side. At the tail of the rapids when they stormed ashore below the stockade walls of the small Jarrian garrison, they discovered that the soldiers had fled as soon as they realized that the flotilla was hostile. The barracks was deserted, but the storerooms were well stocked with weapons, tools and stores. They loaded the pick of the supplies on to the barges and pressed on eastwards. A mere ten days after embarking, they sailed out through the mouth of the Kitangule into the vast blue expanses of the Lake Nalubaale and turned northwards, following the shore round towards the hills of Tamafupa.

By this time the voyage had settled into a routine. Taita had claimed a corner of the deck just forward of the rowing benches for himself and Fenn. He had spread a matting sail over it for shade and privacy. They spent most of their days sitting close together on a sleeping mat, holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes while he whispered to her in the Tenmass. It was the only language that was adequate to convey to her all the new information with which his mind brimmed.

As Taita murmured to her he became acutely aware of how her mind and her astral soul were expanding. She was giving back to him almost

as much as she was taking, and the experience strengthened and enriched them. Also, far from exhausting them, their intense, unremitting mental activity enlivened them.'

Each evening the flotilla anchored before sunset, and most of those aboard went ashore for the night, leaving only an anchor watch aboard.

Usually Taita and Fenn took advantage of the last hours of daylight to wander along the shore and the fringes of the forest, gathering roots, herbs and wild fruit. When they had sufficient for their dinner and for any medicines they required, they returned to their shelter, which was set apart from the rest of the encampment. On some evenings they invited Meren and Sidudu to share the meal they had concocted, but often they kept their own company and continued with their studies far into the night.

When at last they lay down on their sleeping mat and pulled the fur kaross over themselves Taita took her in his arms. She cuddled against him and, without the least sign of self-consciousness, reached down and took him in an affectionate but unskilled grip. Often her last drowsy words before she fell asleep were not to Taita himself but to the part of him that she held. 'Ho, my sweet mannikin, I like playing with you but you must lie down to sleep now, or you will keep us awake all night.'

Taita wanted her desperately. He longed for her with all his newfound manhood, but in many ways he was as innocent and untutored as she was. His only carnal experience had been the brutal warfare of the Cloud Gardens, in which he had been forced to use his body as a weapon of destruction, not as a vehicle of love. It had had not the remotest relationship to the bittersweet emotion he felt now, which grew more poignant each day.

When she fondled him he was consumed with an overpowering desire to express his love in the same intimate manner, but instinct warned him that although she stood at the very portals of womanhood, she was not yet ready to take the final step across the threshold.

We have a lifetime, perhaps many, ahead of us, he consoled himself, and determinedly composed himself to sleep.

442

I

The men on the rowing benches were bound for a lost motherland, so they pulled with a will. The familiar lakeshore streamed past, and the leagues dropped away behind the flotilla, until at last the hills of Tamafupa rose from the blue lake ahead. They crowded the rails of the boats and stared at them in awed silence. This place was fraught with evil, and even the bravest were filled with dread. As they rounded the headland of the bay and saw before them the Red Stones that dammed the mouth of the Nile, Fenn moved closer to Taita and took his hand for comfort. 'They are still there. I had hoped they had fallen with their mistress.'

Taita made no reply. Instead he called to Meren, at the helm, 'Steer for the top of the bay.'

They camped on the white beach. There was no celebration that night. Instead the mood was subdued and uncertain. There was no Nile on which to continue the voyage, or enough horses to carry them all back to Egypt.

In the morning Taita ordered the boats to be dragged up on to the beach and dismantled. No one had expected this, and even Meren looked at him askance, but none thought to question his orders. Once the baggage and equipment had been unloaded, the dowel pins were knocked out of their slots and the hulls were broken down into their separate sections.

'Transport everyone and everything, boats and baggage and people, up to the village where Kalulu, the legless shaman, lived on the crest of the headland.'

'But that is high above the river,' Meren reminded him, puzzled.

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

'Is that important, Magus?'

'It may be.'

'I shall see to it at once.'

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

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

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

'That is four days hence,' she said.

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

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

'Eos has thrown an astral barricade around herself.'

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

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

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