The Quest

'Why sad?' she demanded.

'I fear we shall soon lose them. Now that he is to be a father,

Nakonto's days as a roving warrior are numbered. He will want to take Imbali and his child back to his own village. That will be soon, for we are nearing the land of the Shilluk.”

The terrain along the banks changed its nature as they left behind the forests and the elephant country to enter a wide savannah dotted with flat-topped acacia trees. Towering giraffe, with reticulated white markings on their coffee-coloured bodies, fed on the high branches and below them, grazing on the sweet savannah grasses, herds of antelope, kob, topi, eland, mingled with herds of fat striped zebra. The resuscitated Nile had brought them flocking back to partake of her bounty.

Two days' further sailing, and they sighted a herd of several hundred humped cattle, with long swept-back horns, grazing close to the edge of the reed banks. Young boys were herding them. 'I doubt not that they are Shilluk,' Taita told Fenn. 'Nakonto has come home.'

'How can you be sure of it?'

'See how tall and slender they are, and the manner in which they stand, like roosting storks, balanced on one long leg with the other foot resting on the calf. They can be none other than Shilluk.'

Nakonto had seen them too, and his usually aloof, disdainful manner evaporated. He broke into a stamping, prancing war-dance that shook the deck, and hallooed in a high-pitched tone that carried clearly over the reeds. Imbali laughed at his antics, clapped her hands and ululated to encourage him to greater efforts.

The herders heard someone calling to them in their own language from the boat, and ran to the bank to stare at the visitors in amazement.

Nakonto recognized two and hailed them across the water: 'Sikunela!

Timbai!'

The lads responded with astonishment: 'Stranger, who are you?'

'I am no stranger. I am your uncle Nakonto, the famous spearman!' he shouted back.

The boys whooped with excitement, and raced away to the village to call their elders. Before long several hundred Shilluk were gathered on the riverbank, gabbling at Nakonto in amazement. Then came Nontu the Short, all four and a half cubits of him, followed by his wives and their multitudinous offspring.

Nakonto and Nontu embraced rapturously. Then Nontu shouted instructions at the women, who trooped away to the village. They returned presently balancing on their heads enormous pots of bubbling beer.

The celebration on the riverbank lasted several days, but at last

Nakonto came to Taita. 'I have travelled far with you, great one who is no longer ancient,' he said. 'It has been good, especially the fighting, but this is the end of our road together. You are returning to your own people, and I must go back to mine.'

'This I understand. You have found a good woman who can put up with your ways, and you wish to see your sons grow as tall as you.

Perchance you can teach them to handle a stabbing spear with the same skill as their father.'

'This is true, old father who is younger than me. But how will you find your way back through the great swamps without me to guide you?'

'You will choose two young men of your tribe who are now as you were when I met you, hungry for fighting and adventure. You will send them with me to show me the way.' Nakonto chose two of his nephews to guide them through the Great Sud.

'They are very young.' Taita looked them over. 'Will they know the channels?'

'Does a baby know how to find its mother's teat?' Nakonto laughed.

'Go now. I shall think of you often as I grow older, and always it will be with pleasure.'

'Take as many beads from the ship's stores as will buy you five hundred head of fine cattle.' A Shilluk measured his wealth in terms of the cattle he owned and the sons he had fathered. 'Take also a hundred bronze spearheads so that your sons will always be well armed.'

'I praise you and Fenn, your woman with hair like sunlight dancing on the waters of the Nile.'

Imbali and Fenn embraced and both women wept. Nakonto and Imbali followed the flotilla for half of the morning, running along the riverbank, keeping pace with the leading boat, waving, dancing and shouting farewell. At last they halted, and Fenn and Taita stood together in the stern to watch their tall figures grow small with distance.

A the first dreary vista of the papyrus banks appeared ahead, stretching away to a boundless horizon, Nakonto's nephews took their .place in the bows, and as they entered the watery wilderness they signalled the turns and twists of the narrow channel to Meren on the steering oar.

With the Nile running high, the great swamp was water and more water, with no dry landings, so they were bound to the boats day after

day. But the wind that had driven them northwards remained constant and true, filling the lateen sails and driving down the swarms of stinging insects that rose from the reeds. Fenn thought often about the unnatural compliancy of that wind. At last she decided that Taita was exerting the extraordinary powers he had inherited from Eos to make even the elements sway to his will.

In these conditions, the journey through the watery wastes was not unendurable. There were few demands on Taita and he was able to leave the navigation to Meren and Nakonto's nephews, and all other matters to That. He and Fenn passed most of the days and nights in their own private space on the foredeck. The subjects that dominated most of their conversations were, first, Taita's confrontation with Eos and, second, his discovery of the Font and its miraculous properties. Fenn never tired of his descriptions of Eos.

'Was she the most beautiful woman you have ever seen?'

'No, Fenn. You are the most beautiful.'

'Do you say so to still my busy tongue or do you truly mean it?'

'You are my little fish, and your beauty is that of the golden dorado, the loveliest creature in all the oceans.'

'And Eos? What of her? Was she not beautiful, also?'

'She was very beautiful, but in the same way that a great killer shark is beautiful. She possessed a sinister and terrifying beauty.'

'When she joined her body to yours, was it the same with her as it is with me?'

'It was as different as death is from life. With her it was cold and brutal. With you it is warm, filled with love and compassion. With her I was locked into savage warfare. With you it is a meeting and blending of our separate spirits into some mystic whole that is infinitely greater than its parts.'

'Oh, Taita, I want so much to believe you. I know and understand why you had to go to Eos and join with her, but still I am consumed with jealousy. Imbali told me that men can take pleasure with many women. Did she not pleasure you?'

'There are no words to express how I loathed her infernal embrace.

I was frightened and repelled by every word she uttered, every touch of her hands and body. She soiled and corrupted me so that I believed I would never be clean again.'

'When I listen to you speak so, I am no longer jealous. I am left only with a feeling of great compassion for what you suffered. Will you ever find surcease?'

 I THE QUEST

'I was washed clean in the Blueness of the Font. The burdens of age, guilt and sin were lifted from me.'

'Tell me about the Font again. What did you feel as you were enveloped in the Blue?' Once again he described the miracle of his transmutation. When he had finished she was silent for a space, and then she said, 'The Font has been destroyed in the eruptions of the volcanoes, in the same way that Eos herself was.'

'It is the pulsing artery of the earth. It is the divine power of nature, which quickens and controls all life. It can never be destroyed, for if that ever happened, all creation would perish too.'

'If it still exists, then what has become of it? Where has it gone?'