The Quest

She opened her eyes wide with surprise. 'For a magus and a savant, sometimes you can be obtuse, Taita. Of course I belong to you. I promised you that in the other life. You told me so yourself.'

'What do you know of incest?' He changed the subject. 'Who told you about it?'

'Imbali,' she replied. 'She tells me the things that you don't.'

'And what did she have to say on the subject?'

'Incest is when people who are related by blood gijima each other,' she replied evenly.

He caught his breath to hear the coarse word on her innocent lips. 'GijimaV he asked cautiously. 'What does that mean?'

'You know what it means, Taita,' she said, with a long-suffering air.

'You and I gijima each other all the time.'

He caught his breath again, but this time held it. 'How do we do that?'

'You know very well. We hold hands and kiss each other. That is how people gijima.' He exhaled in a sigh of relief, at which she realized he was holding something back. 'Well, it is, isn't it?'

'I suppose so, or at least part of it.'

Now her suspicions were thoroughly aroused and she was unusually quiet for the rest of the evening. He knew that she would not easily be fobbed off.

The next night they camped above a waterfall they remembered from their journey upstream. Then the river had been almost dry, but now its position was marked by the tall column of spray that rose high above the forest. While the shore party cut the thorn bushes to build the stockade and make camp, Taita and Fenn mounted Windsmoke and Whirlwind and followed a game trail along the riverbank that was deeply scored with the tracks of buffalo and elephant and littered with piles of their dung. They carried their bows at the ready and went forward cautiously, expecting at every turn of the trail to run into a herd of one species or the other. However, although they heard elephant trumpeting and breaking branches in the forest nearby, they reached the top of the falls without glimpsing them. They hobbled the horses and let them graze, while they went forward on foot.

Taita thought of this section of the river when it had been a mere trickle in the depths of the narrow rocky gorge. Now the waters were white and foaming, leaping from rock to black rock as they flowed between the high banks. Ahead the unseen falls thundered and spray drizzled on their upturned faces.

When they came out at last on the headland above the main falls, the Nile had been compressed from a width of two hundred paces to a mere

twenty. Below, the torrent plunged through brilliant arches of rainbows hundreds of cubits down into the foaming gorge.

'This is the last waterfall before we come to the cataracts of Egypt',' he said. 'The last barrier in our path.' He lost himself in the splendour of the spectacle.

Fenn seemed equally entranced by it, but in fact she was engrossed in other thoughts. With a half-smile on her lips and a dreamy look in her eyes, she leant against his shoulder. When at last she spoke, it was in a husky whisper that was almost, but not quite, lost in the thunder of the Nile waters. 'Yesterday I spoke to Imbali again about how people gLJima each other.' She slanted those green eyes at him. 'She told me all about it. Of course I had seen horses and dogs doing it, but I'd never thought that we would do the same thing.'

Taita was at a loss for an adequate response. 'We must go back now,'

he said. 'The sun is setting and we should not be on the path after dark when there are lions abroad. We shall discuss this later.'

They saddled the horses and started back along the riverbank.

Usually the flow of their conversation was endless, each idea leading on to the next. But for once neither had anything to say and they followed the game trail in silence. Every time he glanced at her surreptitiously she was still smiling.

When they rode into the stockade the women were busy at the cooking fires and the men were gathered in small groups, talking and drinking beer, resting aching muscles after their long day at the oars.

Meren hurried to meet them as they dismounted. 'I was about to send out a search party to find you.'

'We were scouting the trail,' Taita told him, as they dismounted and handed the horses to the grooms. 'Tomorrow we will have to dismantle the boats to carry them round the falls. The track down is steep, so there is much hard work ahead.'

'I have called all the captains and headmen into council to discuss that very matter. We were waiting for your return to camp.'

'I will bring your dinner to you,' Fenn told Taita, and slipped away to join the women at the cooking fires.

Taita took his place at the head of the gathering. He had instituted these meetings not only to plan specific actions but also to give each an

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opportunity to raise any subject of interest or importance to the group. It was also a court of justice and discipline before which miscreants could be called to answer for their sins.

Before the conference began, Fenn brought him a bowl of stew and a cup of beer. As she left him she whispered, 'I will keep the lamp burning and wait up for you. We have much of importance to discuss, you and I.'

Intrigued by this, Taita hurried the meeting along. As soon as they had agreed on how they would transport the boats, he left Meren and That to deal with a few matters of lesser consequence. As he passed the women at the fires they called goodnight, then giggled among themselves as if at some delicious secret. Meren had placed their hut at the far end of the enclosure behind a screen of freshly cut thatching grass. When Taita stooped through the open doorway he found that Fenn had indeed left the oil lamp burning, and was already under the kaross on their sleeping mat. She was still wide awake. She sat up and let the fur fall to her waist. Her breasts shone softly in the lamplight. Since her first moon they had become fuller and more shapely. The nipples peeped out cheerily, and their areolas had taken on a deeper shade of pink.

'You have come sooner than I expected,' she said softly. 'Throw your tunic into the corner. I will wash it tomorrow. Now come to bed.' He bent over the lamp to blow out the flame, but she stopped him. 'No, let it burn. I like to watch you.' He came to where she lay and stretched out on the mat beside her. She remained sitting, and leant over him to study his face.

'You wanted to tell me something,' he prompted her.

'You are so beautiful,' she whispered, and brushed the hair off his forehead with her fingers. 'Sometimes when I look at your face I am so happy I feel like crying.' She traced the curves of his eyebrows and then his lips. 'You are perfect.'

'Is that the secret?'

'Part of it,' she said, and ran her fingers down his throat and the muscles of his chest. Then, suddenly, she took one of his nipples between her thumb and forefinger and pinched it. She purred with laughter when he gasped.

'You have not too much there, my lord.' She took one of her own breasts in her hand. 'I, on the other hand, have enough for both of us.'

They made a serious assessment of the discrepancy in sizes, then Fenn went on, 'This evening I watched Revi feeding her baby while we sat by the fire. He is a greedy little piglet. Revi says that it feels nice when he

suckles.' She leant closer to him and proffered her breast, touching his lips with the nipple. 'Shall we pretend you are my baby? I want to know what it feels like.“

Then it was her turn to gasp. 'Ah! Ah! I never thought it would be like that. It makes something in my belly clench.' She was silent for a while, then gave a throaty little chuckle. 'Oh! Our mannikin has woken.'

She reached for him. Her fingers, with practice, were becoming more cunning and skilful. 'I have been thinking about him ever since I spoke to Imbali this evening while you were in council. Do you know what she told me?' His mouth was still busy, so his reply was muffled. She pushed his head away from her breast. 'You will never believe what she told me.'