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

'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

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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.