The Quest - Smith Wilbur (читать лучшие читаемые книги TXT) 📗

Each day after that was one of survival while I found the one who had been ordained to succeed me. I did not make the error of responding to her attacks. Each time I sensed her closing in I moved on quietly to another hiding-place. At last I realized that there was only one place on this earth where she would never look for me again. I returned secretly to Etna, and concealed myself in the caverns that had once been her abode, and my dungeon. The echoes of her evil presence must have been so strong still that they disguised my own feeble presence. I remained hidden on the mountain, and in time I felt her interest in me fade. Her search became desultory, and at last ceased. Perhaps she believed that I had perished or that she had obliterated my powers so I no longer posed a threat. I waited in secret until the joyous day that I felt your presence stirring. When the priestess of Saraswati opened your Inner Eye, I felt the disturbance it created on the ether. Then the star you call Lostris appeared to me. I rallied my scattered resolve and followed it to you.'

After Demeter had finished Taita was silent for a time. He sat hunched on Windsmoke, swaying to her easy motion, his cloak wrapped about his head, only his eyes showing through a slit. 'So if she is not at Etna,' he said eventually, 'where is she, Demeter?'

'I have told you that I do not know.'

'You must know, even though you think you do not,' Taita contradicted him. 'How long did you abide with her? Ten years, you said?'

'Ten years,' Demeter agreed. 'Each year was an eternity.'

'Then you know her as no other living being. You have absorbed part of her: she has left traces of herself on and in you.'

'She took from me. She gave nothing,' Demeter replied.

'You took from her also, perhaps not in the same measure, but no coupling of man and woman is completely barren. You have knowledge of her still. Maybe it is so painful to you that you have hidden it even from yourself. Let me help you to retrieve it.'

Taita took on the role of inquisitor. He was ruthless, making no allowances for his victim's great age, his weaknesses and afflictions of both body and spirit. He strove to draw from him every memory he still possessed of the great witch, no matter how faint or deeply suppressed it was. Day after day he ransacked the old man's mind, and they did not break their journey. They travelled at night, to escape the savage desert sun, and camped before dawn broke. As soon as Demeter's tent had been raised, they took shelter from the sunrise and Taita resumed his questioning.

Gradually he conceived strong affection and admiration for Demeter as he came to understand the full extent of the old man's suffering, the courage and fortitude he had required to survive Eos's persecutions over such a vast span. But he did not allow pity to deter him from his task.

At last it seemed there remained nothing more for Taita to learn, but he was not satisfied. Demeter's revelations seemed superficial and mundane.

'There is a spell practised by the priests of Ahura Maasda in Babylon,'

he told Demeter at last. 'They can send a man into a deep trance that is close to death itself. Then they are able to direct his mind back great distances in time and space, to the very day of his birth. Every detail of his life, every word he ever spoke or heard, every voice and every face becomes clear to him.'

'Yes,' Demeter agreed. 'I have heard these matters spoken of. Are you privy to this art, Taita?'

'Do you trust me? Will you submit yourself to me?'

Demeter closed his eyes in weary resignation. 'There is nothing left within me. I am a dried-out husk from which you have sucked every drop as ravenously as the witch herself.' He wiped a clawlike hand across his face and massaged his closed eyes. Then he opened them. 'I submit myself to you. Work this spell over me, if you are able.'

Taita held up the golden Periapt before his eyes and let it swing gently on its chain. 'Concentrate on this golden star. Drive every other thought from your mind. See nothing but the star, hear nothing but my voice.

You are weary to the depths of your soul, Demeter. You must sleep. Let yourself fall into sleep. Let sleep close over your head, like a soft fur blanket. Sleep, Demeter, sleep . ..'

Slowly the old man relaxed. His eyelids quivered, and were still. He

lay like a corpse upon a bier, snoring softly. One of his eyelids drooped open, and behind it the eye was rolled back so that only the white showed, blind and opaque. He seemed to have sunk into a deep trance, but when Taita asked him a question he answered. His voice was blurred and weak, the tone reedy.

'Go back, Demeter, go back along the river of time.'

'Yes,' Demeter responded. 'I am rolling back the years . .. back, back, back …' His voice grew stronger, more vigorous.

'Where are you now?'

'I stand at the E-temen-an-ki, the Foundation of Heaven and Earth,'

he replied, in a vital young voice.

Taita knew the building well: an immense structure in the centre of Babylon. The walls were of glazed bricks, in all the colours of earth and sky, shaped into a mighty pyramid. 'What do you see, Demeter?' “I see a great open space, the very centre of the world, the axis of earth and heaven.'

'Do you see walls and high terraces?'

'There are no walls, but I see the workmen and slaves. They are as many as the ants of the earth and locusts of the sky. I hear their voices.'

Then Demeter spoke in many tongues, a mighty babble of humanity.

Taita recognized some of the languages he spoke, but others were obscure.

Suddenly Demeter cried out in Ancient Sumerian: 'Let us build a tower whose height may reach unto heaven.'

With astonishment Taita realized that he was witnessing the laying of the foundations of the Tower of Babel. He had travelled back to the beginning time.

'Now you are journeying through the centuries. You see the E-temen an-ki reach to its full height, and kings worshipping the gods Bel and Marduk on its summit. Come forward in time!' Taita directed him, and through Demeter's eyes, he witnessed the rise of great empires and the fall of mighty kings as Demeter described events that had been lost and forgotten in antiquity. He heard the voices of men and women who had returned to dust centuries before.

At last Demeter faltered, and his voice tost its strength. Taita laid a hand on his brow, which was as cool as a gravestone. 'Peace, Demeter,'

he whispered. 'Sleep now. Leave your memories to the ages. Return to the present.'

Demeter shuddered and relaxed. He slept until sunset, then woke as naturally and calmly as though nothing unusual had occurred. He seemed refreshed and fortified. He ate the fruit Taita brought to him with good

appetite and drank the soured goat's milk, while the retainers struck camp, then loaded the tents and baggage on to the camels. When the caravan started out he was strong enough to walk a short way beside Taita.

'What memories did you extort from me while I slept?' he asked, with a smile. 'I remember nothing, so nothing it must have been.'

'You were present when the foundations of E-temen-an-ki were dug and laid,' Taita told him.

Demeter stopped short and turned to him with amazement. 'I told you that?'

In reply Taita mimicked some of the voices and languages Demeter had used in his trance. At once Demeter identified each utterance.

His legs soon tired, but his enthusiasm was unaffected. He mounted his palanquin and stretched out on the mattress. Taita rode beside him, and they continued their conversation throughout the long night. At last Demeter asked a question that was central in both their minds: 'Did I speak of Eos? Were you able to uncover some hidden memory?'

Taita shook his head. 'I was careful not to alarm you. I did not broach the matter directly but allowed your memories to range freely.'