edible fungi and roots in the damp earth. Around their hut, close enough to discourage the horses from raiding them, Taita planted some seeds he had brought with him from the gardens at the temple of Saraswati, and raised a good crop. They ate well and rested, building up their strength for the next part of their long, hard journey.
The horses became accustomed to their presence at the springs, and soon they allowed Taita to come within a few paces of them before they tossed their manes and moved away. He assessed each animal's aura with his newly acquired Inner Eye.
Although the auras that surrounded the lower orders of animal were not as intense as those of humans, he could pick out those that were healthy and strong, and those with heart and sinew. He was also able to determine their temperament and disposition. He could distinguish between the headstrong and unruly, the mild and tractable. Over the weeks it took the plants in his garden to reach maturity, he developed a tentative relationship with five animals, all of superior intelligence, strength and amiable disposition. Three were mares with yearling foals at heel, and two were fillies, still flirting with the stallions but resisting their advances with kicks and gnashing teeth. Taita was especially attracted to one of the fillies.
This little herd was as drawn to him as he was to them. They took to sleeping close to the fence that Meren had built to protect the garden against them, which worried Meren: 'I know women, and I trust those conspiring females not at all. They are steeling their courage. One morning we will wake to find we have no garden left to us.' He spent much time strengthening his fence and patrolling it threateningly.
He was appalled when Taita picked a bag of sweet young beans, the first of the crop: instead of bringing them to the pot, he took them heyond the fence to where the little herd was watching him with interest.
The filly he had chosen for himself had a creamy hide dappled with smoky grey. She allowed him to approach more closely than he had liefore, scissoring her ears as she listened to his endearments. At last he I respassed on her forbearance: she tossed her head and galloped away. He stopped and called after her: 'I have a gift for you, my darling. Sweets for ii lovely girl.' She came up short at the sound of his voice. He held out I o her a handful of beans. She swung her head back to regard him over her shoulder. She rolled her eyes until she had exposed the pink rims of her eyelids, then flared her nostrils to suck in the scent of the beans.
'Yes, you lovely creature, just smell them. How can you refuse me?'
She blew through her nostrils and nodded with indecision.
'Very well. If you don't want them, Meren will welcome them for his pot.' He turned back to the fence, but with his hand still extended. They watched each other intently. The filly took a pace towards him, and stopped again. He lifted his hand to his mouth, put a bean between his lips and chewed it with his mouth open. 'I cannot describe to you how sweet it is,' he told her, and she gave in at last. She came to him, and daintily picked the beans out of his cupped hand. Her muzzle was velvet and her breath was scented with new grass. 'What shall we call you?'
Taita asked her. 'It must be a name that matches your beauty. Ah! I have one that suits you well. You shall be Windsmoke.'
Over the next weeks Taita and Meren scythed the plants. Then they winnowed the ripe beans and packed them into sacks made from the skins of water voles. They dried the plants in the sun and wind, then tied them into bundles. The horses stood in a row with their necks craned over the fence, munching the beanstalks that Taita fed them.
That evening Taita gave Windsmoke a last handful, then slipped an arm round her neck and brushed out her mane with his fingers while he spoke soothingly into her ear. Then, unhurriedly, he hoisted the skirts of his tunic, threw a skinny leg over her back and sat astride her. She stood frozen with astonishment, staring at him over her shoulder with huge, glistening eyes. He nudged her with his toes and she walked away, while Meren bellowed and clapped with delight.
When they left the camp by the pools, Taita rode Windsmoke and Meren had one of the older mares. Their baggage was loaded on to the backs of the string that followed them.
In that way they returned home more swiftly than they had departed.
But when they reached Gallala, they had been gone for seven years. As soon as it was known that they had reappeared, there was great rejoicing in the town. The citizens had long since given them up for dead. Every man brought his family to their home in the old ruined temple, bearing small gifts, to pay their respects. Most of the children had grown up in the time they had been away, and many had babies of their own. Taita dandled each little one and blessed them.
The news of their return was borne swiftly to the rest of Egypt by the caravan masters. Soon messengers arrived from the court at Thebes, from Pharaoh Nefer Seti and Queen Mintaka. There was little comfort in the news sent: it was the first that Taita had heard of the plagues that beset the kingdom. 'Come as soon as you are able, wise one,' Pharaoh ordered.
'We have need of you.'
'I will come to you in the new moon of Isis,' was Taita's reply. He was
not being wilfully disobedient: he knew that he was not yet spiritually prepared to give counsel to his pharaoh. He sensed that the plagues were a manifestation of the greater evil of which Samana, the reverend mother, had warned him. Although he possessed the power of the Inner Eye he was not yet able to face the force of the Lie. He must study and ponder the auguries, then gather his spiritual resources. He must wait, too, for the guidance that he knew instinctively would come to him at Gallala.
But there were many disruptions and diversions. Very soon strangers began to arrive, pilgrims and supplicants begging favours, cripples and the sick seeking cures. The emissaries of kings bore rich gifts and asked for oracular and divine guidance. Taita searched their auras eagerly, hoping that one was the messenger he was expecting. Time after time he was disappointed, and he turned them away with their gifts.
'May we not keep some small tithe, Magus?' Meren begged. 'Holy as you have become, you must still eat, and your tunic is a rag. I need a new bow.'
Occasionally a visitor gave him fleeting hope, when he recognized the complexity of their aura. They were seekers after wisdom and knowledge, drawn to him by his reputation among the brotherhood of the magi.
But they came to take from him: none could match his powers or offer him anything in return. Nevertheless he listened carefully to what they said, sifting and evaluating their words. Nothing was of significance, but at times a random remark, or an erroneous opinion, sent his own mind on an original tack. Through their errors he was guided to a contrary and valid conclusion. The warning that Samana and Kashyap had given him was always in his mind: a conflict ahead would require all his strength, wisdom and cunning to survive.
The caravans coming up from Egypt and going on down through the rocky wilderness to Sagafa on the Red Sea brought them regular news from Mother Egypt. When another arrived Taita sent Meren down to converse with the caravan master; they all treated Meren with deep respect for they knew he was the confidant of Taita, the renowned magus. That evening he returned from the town and reported, 'Obed Tindali, the caravan merchant, begs you to remember him in your prayers to the great god Horus. He has sent you a generous L'ift of the finest quality coffee beans from far-off Ethiopia, but I warn you
now to steel yourself, Magus, for he has no tidings of comfort from the delta for you.'
The old man lowered his eyes to hide the shadow of fear that passed behind them. What worse news could there be than they had already received? He looked up again and spoke sternly: 'Do not try to protect me, Meren. Hold nothing back. Has the flood of the Nile commenced?'
'Not yet,' Meren replied softly, regretfully. 'Seven years now without the inundation.'
Taita's stern expression wavered. Without the rise of the waters and the rich, fertile bounty of alluvial soils they brought from the south, Egypt was given over to famine, pestilence and death.
'Magus, it grieves me deeply but there is still worse to relate,' murmured Meren. 'What little water still remains in the Nile has turned to blood.'
Taita stared at him. 'Blood?' he echoed. 'I do not understand.'
'Magus, even the shrunken pools of the river have turned dark red and they stink like the congealed blood of cadavers,' Meren said. 'Neither man nor beast can drink from them. The horses and cattle, even the goats, are perishing from thirst. Their skeletal bodies line the riverbanks.'
'Plague and affliction! Such a thing has never been dreamed of in the history of the earth since the beginning time,' Taita whispered.
'And it is not a single plague, Magus,' Meren went on doggedly. 'From the bloody pools of the Nile have emerged great hordes of spiny toads, large and swift as dogs. Rank poison oozes from the warts that cover their hideous bodies. They eat the corpses of the dead animals. But that is not enough. The people say great Horus should forbid it, that these monsters will attack any child, or any person who is too old or feeble to defend himself. They will devour him while he still writhes and screams.' Meren paused and drew a deep breath. 'What is happening to our earth? What dreadful curse has been placed upon us, Magus?'
In all the decades they had been together, since the great battle against the usurpers, the false pharaohs, since the ascension of Nefer Seti to the double throne of Upper and Lower Egypt, Meren had been at Taita's side. He was the adopted son who could never have sprung naturally from Taita's gelded loins. Nay, Meren was more than a son: his love for the old man surpassed that of a blood tie. Now Taita was moved by his distress, although his own was as pervasive.
'Why is this happening to the land we love, to the people we love, to the king we love?' Meren pleaded.
Taita shook his head, and remained silent for a long while. Then he leant across to touch Meren's upper arm. 'The gods are angry,' he said.
'Why?' Meren insisted. The mighty warrior and stalwart companion was rendered almost childlike by his superstitious dread. 'What is the offence?'
'Since our return to Egypt I have sought the answer to that question.
I have made sacrifice and I have searched the breadth and depth of the skies for some sign. The cause of their divine anger eludes me still. It is almost as though it is cloaked by some baleful presence.'
'For Pharaoh and Egypt, for all of us, you must find the answer, Magus,'
Meren urged. 'But where can you still search for it?'
'It will come to me soon, Meren. This is presaged by the auguries. It will be carried by some unexpected messenger - perhaps a man or a demon, a beast or a god. Perhaps it will appear as a sign in the heavens, written in a star. But the answer will come to me here at Gallala.'
'When, Magus? Is it not already too late?'
'Perhaps this very night.'
Taita rose to his feet in a single lithe motion. Despite his great age he moved like a young man. His agility and resilience never ceased to amaze Meren, even after all the years he had spent at his side. Taita picked up his staff from the corner of the terrace and leant lightly on it as he paused at the bottom of the stairs to look up to the high tower. The villagers had built it for him. Every family in Gallala had taken part in the labour. It was a tangible sign of the love and reverence they felt for the old magus, who had opened the sweet-water spring that nourished the town, who protected them with the invisible but potent power of his magic.
Taita started up the circular staircase that wound up the outside of the tower; the treads were narrow and open to the drop, unprotected by a balustrade. He went up like an ibex, not watching his feet, the tip of his staff tapping lightly on the stones. When he reached the platform on the summit, he settled on the silken prayer rug, facing east. Meren placed a silver flask beside him, then took his place behind him, close enough to respond swiftly if Taita needed him, but not so close that he would intrude on the magus's concentration.
Taita removed the horn stopper from the flask and took a mouthful of
the sharply bitter fluid. He swallowed it slowly, feeling the warmth spreading from his belly through every muscle and nerve in his body, flooding his mind with a crystalline radiance. He sighed softly and allowed the Inner Eye of his soul to open under its balmy influence.
Two nights previously the old moon had been swallowed by the monster of night, and now the sky belonged only to the stars. Taita watched as they began to appear in order of their ranking, the brightest and most powerful leading the train. Soon they thronged the heavens in teeming multitudes, bathing the desert with a silvery luminance. Taita had studied them all his life. He had thought he knew all that there was to know and understand of them, but now, through his Inner Eye, he was developing a new understanding of the qualities and position of each in the eternal scheme of matter, and in the affairs of men and gods.
There was one bright, particular star that he sought out eagerly. He knew it was nearest of all to where he sat. As soon as he saw it all his senses were exalted: that evening it seemed to hang directly above the tower.
The star had first appeared in the sky exactly ninety days after the mummification of Queen Lostris, on the night he had sealed her into her tomb. Its appearance had been miraculous. Before she died she had promised him that she would return to him, and he felt a deep conviction that the star was the fulfilment of her oath. She had never left him. For all these years her nova had been his lodestar. When he looked up at it, the desolation that had dominated his soul since her death was alleviated.
Now when he gazed at it with his Inner Eye he saw that Lostris's star was surrounded by her aura. Although it was diminutive when compared to some of the astral colossi, no other body in the heavens could match its splendour. Taita felt his love for Lostris burn steadily, undiminished, warming his soul. Suddenly his whole body stiffened with alarm and a coldness spread through his veins towards his heart.
'Magus!' Mefen had sensed his change of mood. 'What ails you?'
He clasped Taita's shoulder, his other hand on the hilt of his sword.
Unable to speak in his distress, Taita shrugged him away, and continued to stare upwards.
In the interval since he had last laid eyes upon it, Lostris's star had swollen to several times its normal size. Its once bright and constant aura had become intermittent, the emanations fluttering as disconsolately as the torn pennant of a defeated army. Its body was distorted, bulging at each end and narrowing in the centre.
Even Meren noticed the change: 'Your star! Something has happened to it. What does this mean?' He knew how important it was to Taita.
'I cannot yet say,' Taita whispered. 'Leave me here, Meren. Go to your sleeping mat. I must have no distraction. Come for me at dawn.'
Taita kept watch until the star faded with the approach of the sun, but by the time Meren returned to lead him down from the tower, he knew that Lostris's star was moribund.
Though he was exhausted from his long night's vigil, he could not sleep. The image of the dying star filled his mind, and he was harried by dark, formless forebodings. This was the last and most awful manifestation of evil. First there had been the plagues that killed man and beast, and now this terrible malignancy, which destroyed the stars. The following night Taita did not return to the tower but went alone into the desert, seeking solace. Although Meren had been instructed not to follow his master, he did so at a distance. Of course, Taita sensed his presence and confounded him by cloaking himself in a spell of concealment. Angry, and worried for his master's safety, Meren searched for him all night. At sunrise when he hurried back to Gallala to raise a search party, he found Taita sitting alone on the terrace of the old temple.