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

'Taita who is neither man nor woman.' He repeated the imp's gibe and wiped his eyes on the fold of his woollen cloak. 'Am I to be imprisoned in this ancient maimed body for all eternity?' he wondered.

'Eos's temptations are as great a torment as any physical torture. Horus, Isis and Osiris, give me the strength to resist them.'

— —

We do not need your nurses today,' Hannah said, as she knelt beside Meren and trimmed the wick of the one small oil lamp that was the cell's only illumination. 'We will not inflict more pain on you. Instead we hope to compensate you for that which you have already suffered.' She set aside the lamp. It threw a soft light on to Meren's bandaged head. 'Are you ready, Dr Gibba?' While Gibba supported Meren's head she unpicked the knot in the bandage and peeled it away. Then she handed the lamp to Taita. 'Please direct the light on to his eye.'

Taita held a polished silver disc behind the flame to reflect a beam on to Meren's face. Hannah leant closer to examine the stitches that closed his eyelids. 'Good,' she said comfortably. 'I can see no vice in the way it has healed. I believe it is now safe to remove the stitches. Please hold the light steady.'

She snipped the stitches and, with forceps, drew the gut threads from the needle punctures. The lids were glued together with dried mucus and blood. Gently she washed it away with a cloth dipped in warm aromatic water.

'Please try to open your eye now, Colonel Cambyses,' she instructed.

The eyelid quivered, then flickered open. Taita felt his heart thump louder and more rapidly as he looked into the eye socket, which was no longer an empty pit.

'In the name of the holy triumvirate, Osiris, Isis and Horus,' Taita whispered, 'you have regrown a perfect new eye!'

'Not yet perfect,' Hannah demurred. 'It is but half-way grown and is still much smaller than the other. The pupil is cloudy.' She took the silver disc from Gibba and deflected the beam directly into the immature eye. 'On the other hand, see how the pupil contracts. It has already started to function correctly.' She covered Meren's good eye with the cotton pad. 'Tell us what you can see, Colonel,' she ordered.

'A bright light,' he replied.

Hannah passed her hand in front of his face with her fingers splayed open. 'Tell us what you see now.'

'Shadows,' he said doubtfully, but then he went on, firmly now, 'No, wait! I see fingers. The outline of five fingers.'

It was the first time Taita had seen Hannah smile and, in the yellow

lamplight, she looked younger and gentler. 'Nay, good Meren,' he said.

'This day you have seen more than fingers. You have seen a miracle.'

'I must bandage the eye again.' Hannah was brisk and businesslike once more. 'It will be many more days before it is able to withstand the light of day.'

The image of the imp in the grotto haunted Taita. He experienced a compulsion that grew more powerful each day to return to the gardens and wait for him beside the hidden pool. In the forefront of his mind he knew that this urge was not his own: it came directly from Eos.

Once I enter her territory I am powerless. She possesses every advantage.

She is the great black cat and I am her mouse, he thought.

Then his inner voice answered: What then, Taita? Did you not come to Jarri to struggle against her? What became of your grand design? Now that you have found her, will you slink away cravenly?

He sought another excuse for his cowardice: If only I could find a shield to deflect her malicious darts.

He tried to find distraction from these haunting fears and temptations by helping Meren to gain full use of his immature eye. At first Hannah removed the bandages for only a few hours, and even then she did not allow him to experience daylight but kept him indoors.

The lens of the eye was still cloudy and the colour of the iris was also pale and milky. It did not work in unison with the good eye but wandered at random. Taita helped him focus it: he held the Periapt of Lostris in front of Meren and moved it from side to side, up and down, nearer and further away.

At first the new eye tired quickly. It watered and the lid blinked involuntarily. It grew bloodshot and itchy. Meren complained that images remained blurred and distorted.

Taita discussed this with Hannah: 'The eye is of a different colour from the original. It does not match in size or motion. You said once that you were a gardener of men. Perhaps the eye you have grafted is of another strain.'

'Nay, Magus. The new eye is grown from the same root stock as the original. We have replaced limbs that have been cut away in battle.

They do not appear fully fledged. Like your protege's eye, they begin like

seedlings and gradually attain their mature form. The human body has the ability to shape and develop itself over time to match the original.

A blue eye is not replaced with a brown one. A hand is not replaced with a foot. There exists in each of us some life force that is able to replicate itself. Have you not wondered at how a child may resemble its parents?' She paused and looked into his eyes intently. 'In the same way an amputated arm is replaced with a perfect copy of the missing limb. A castrated penis would regrow in identical shape and size to the one that was destroyed.' Taita stared at her, aghast. She had turned the discussion back upon him in a cruel and wounding fashion.

She is speaking of my own imperfection, he thought. She knows about the mutilation I have suffered. He sprang to his feet and hurried from the room. Blindly he stumbled to the lakeside and knelt on the beach.

He felt helpless and defeated. At last, when the tears no longer stung and his vision cleared, he looked up at the cliffs that towered above the gardens. He felt Eos nearby. He was too weary and sick at heart to fight on.

You have won, he thought. The battle is over before it was joined. I will submit to you. Then he felt her influence changing. It seemed no longer completely evil and malign, but kindly and benevolent. He felt as though she was offering him release from pain and emotional strife. He wanted to go up into the gardens and surrender to her, cast himself upon her mercy. He struggled to his feet and was struck by the incongruity of his thoughts and actions. He straightened his back and lifted his chin.

'Nay!' he whispered aloud. 'This is not surrender. You have not yet won the battle. You have taken only the first skirmish.' He reached for the Periapt of Lostris and felt strength flow into him. 'She has taken Meren's eye. She has taken my manly parts. She has all the advantage over us. If only I had something of hers to use against her, a weapon with which to counterattack. When I have found one I will go against her again.' He glanced at the tops of the tall flowering trees of her gardens below the painted cliffs, and before he could stop himself he had taken a step in that direction. With an effort he turned away. 'Not yet. I am not ready.'

His tread was firmer as he returned to the sanatorium. He found that Hannah had moved Meren from the darkened cell to their more spacious and comfortable former quarters. Meren sprang up as soon as he entered and seized the sleeve of his tunic. 'I read a full scroll of hieroglyphics that the woman set for me,' he exclaimed, bursting with pride at his latest achievement. Even now he could not bring himself to use Hannah's name or title. 'Tomorrow she will remove the bandage for ever. Then I

will astonish you with how the colour has come to match the other, and how nimbly it moves. By the sweet breath of Isis, I declare I will soon be able to judge the flight of my arrows as accurately as I ever did.' His loquacity was a sure sign of his excitement. 'Then we shall escape this infernal place. I hate it here. There is something foul and detestable about it, and the people in it.'