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

Meren knew that tone, and hurried to take command of the search.

The men went slowly and cautiously, none wanting to risk a spear thrust in his belly. By the time they were half-way through the village!dawn was breaking over the forest. Taita was troubled and restless. Something gnawed at him, like a rat in the granary of his memory. There was something he must remember.

The dawn breeze veered into the south, wafting to him the stench of half-rotten fish from the smoking racks. He moved away to avoid it and the memory he was seeking rushed in.

Where else would you search for a moon fish? You will find me hiding among the other fishes. It was the voice of Fenn, speaking through the mouth of the stone image of the goddess. Was the child they were pursuing a soul caught up in the wheel of creation? The reincarnation of someone who had lived long ago?

'She promised to return,' he said aloud. 'Is it possible - or does my own longing delude me?' And then he answered himself: 'There are things that surpass the wildest imagining of mankind. Nothing is impossible.'

Taita glanced around swiftly to make certain that nobody was watching him, then moved casually to the edge of the village and walked to the smoking racks. As soon as he was out of sight his attitude changed.

He stood like a dog testing the air for the scent of its quarry. His nerves jumped. She was very close, her presence almost palpable. Holding his staff at the ready to fend off a stroke from her assegai he moved forward. Every few paces he went down on one knee to try to see under or between the racks on which the layers of fish were packed densely together. At intervals bundles of firewood and drifting clouds of smoke obstructed his view. He had to circle each wood-pile as he came to it to make certain she was not hiding behind one, which slowed his progress.

By now the rays of the early sun were flooding the village. Then as he crept round another wood-pile he heard a stealthy movement ahead. He peered round the corner. Nobody was there. He glanced at the ground and saw the prints of her small bare feet in the grey ash. She was aware that she was being stalked, moving just ahead of him, darting from one wood-pile to the next.

'There is no sign of the brat. She is not here,' he called, to an imaginary companion, and started back towards the village. He went noisily, tapping the racks with his staff, then doubled back in a wide circle, moving swiftly and silently.

He reached a position close to where he had last seen her footprints, and squatted behind a wood-pile to wait for her. He was alert for any

movement or the faintest sound. Now that she had lost sight of him, she would become nervous and change her position again. He threw a spell of concealment round himself. Then, from behind the screen, he reached out for her, searching the ether.

'Ah!' he murmured, as he descried her. She was very close, but not moving. He sensed her fear and uncertainty: she did not know where he was. He saw that she was cowering under one of the wood-piles. Now he focused all his power on her, sending out impulses to lure her towards him.

'Magus! Where are you?' Meren called, from the direction of the village. When he received no answer, his voice rose urgently. 'Magus, do you hear me?' Then he was coming towards where Taita waited.

That's right, Taita encouraged him silently. Keep coming. You will force her to move. Ah! There she goes.

The girl was moving again. She had crawled out from under the wood and was scurrying in his direction, running ahead of Meren.

Come, little one. He tightened the tentacles of the spell round her.

Come to me.

'Magus!' Meren called again, much closer. The girl appeared in front of Taita, at the corner of the wood-pile. She paused to glance back towards where Meren's voice had come from and he saw that she was quivering with terror. She looked in his direction. Her face was a hideous mask of clay, her hair built up in a mass on top of her head with a mixture of what looked like clay and acacia gum. Her eyes were so bloodshot from the smoke of the fires and the dye that had run from her hair that he could not make out the colour of the irises. Her teeth had been deliberately blackened. All of the Luo women they had captured had blackened their teeth and wore the same ugly hairstyle. Clearly, it was their primitive idea of beauty.

As she stood there, terrified, her head cocked, Taita opened his Inner Eye. Her aura sprang up around her, enveloping her in a sublimely magnificent cloak of living light, just as he had seen it in his dreams. Beneath the grotesque coating of clay and filth, this sorry, bedraggled creature was Fenn. She had returned to him, as she had promised. The emotion that swept over him was more powerful than any he had experienced in his long life. It surpassed in intensity the grief that had overwhelmed him at her death, which had ended her other life, when he had removed her viscera and wrapped her corpse in the linen bandages and laid her in the stone sarcophagus.

Now she was restored to him at the same age she had been when she

had first been placed in his care all those bleak, lonely years ago. All that grief and sorrow was paid off with this single coin of joy, to which every cord, muscle and nerve in his body resonated.I The cloak of concealment he had spun round himself was disturbed by it. The child picked it up at once. She turned and stared in his direction, her bloodshot eyes enormous in the grotesque mask. She sensed his presence, but could not see him. He realized that she possessed the power. As yet her psychic gift was undeveloped and untutored, but he knew that, under his loving instruction, it would in time match his own. The rising sun shot a beam into her eyes, and their true lustre glowed in the deepest shade of green. Fenn green.

Meren was running in their direction, his footsteps pounding on the hard earth. There was only one escape route open to Fenn: down the narrow passage between the wood-pile and the smoking racks. She ran straight into Taita's arms. As they closed round her she shrieked in shock and renewed terror and dropped the assegai. Although she struggled and clawed at his eyes, Taita held her close to his chest. Her fingernails were long and ragged, black dirt was caked under them and they raised bloody welts across his forehead and cheeks. Still holding her with one arm circled round her waist, he took her arms one at a time and trapped them between their bodies. Now that she was helpless he leant close to her face and stared into her eyes, taking control of her. Instinctively she knew what he was doing and pushed forward to meet him, but just in time he divined her intention and jerked his head back sharply. Her sharp black teeth snapped shut a finger's breadth from the tip of his nose.

'Light of my eyes, I still have need of this old nose of mine. If you are hungry I will provide tastier fare.' He smiled.

At that moment Meren burst into sight, his expression of consternation and alarm. 'Magus!' he shouted. 'Do not let that filthy vixen near you. She has already tried to murder one man and now she will do you some grave injury.' He rushed towards them. 'Let me get my hands on her. I will take her to the swamp and drown her in the nearest pool.'

'Back, Meren!' Taita did not raise his voice. 'Don't touch her.'

Meren checked. 'But, Magus, she will—'

'She will do no such thing. Go, Meren. Leave us alone. We love each other. I just have to convince her of it.'

Still Meren hesitated.

'Go, I say. At once.'

Meren went.

Taita looked into Fenn's eyes and smiled reassuringly. 'Fenn, I have waited so long for you.' He was using the voice of power, but she resisted him fiercely. She spat, and bubbles of her saliva ran down his face to drip off his chin.

'You were not so strong when we first met. You were sullen and rebellious, oh, yes, indeed you were, but not as strong as you are now.'