Текст книги "The Quest"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Then Taita felt a bony spike drive deep into his thigh, and shouted again with pain. He knew what had wounded him: on each side of its genital vent, on the underside of its stubby tail, the python carried a pair

of viciously hooked claws. They were used to hold the body of its mate while it plunged its long corkscrew penis into her vent and spurted into her womb. With those hooks it also gripped its prey. They acted as a fulcrum for the coils, magnifying their strength. Desperately Taita tried to tear his leg free. But the hooks were buried in his flesh, and the first slippery coil whipped round his body.

'Meren!' Taita cried again. But his voice was weaker, and the next coil enfolded him, crushing his chest. He tried to call again but the air was forced from his lungs in a rush and his ribs buckled.

Suddenly Meren appeared at the opening of the tent. For a moment he paused to take in the full import of the monstrous heaving of the serpent's dappled body. Then he leapt forward, reaching over his shoulder to draw his sword from the sheath that hung down his back. He dared not strike at the python's head for he risked injuring Taita, so he took two dancing steps to one side to alter the angle of his attack. The python's darting head was still hammering at the bodies of its victims, but its stubby tail was held erect as it drove its hooks deeper into Taita's leg. With a flick of the blade Meren hacked off the exposed portion of the snake's tail above the hooks, a section as long as Taita's leg and as thick as his thigh.

The python lashed the top half of its body as high as the tent roof.

Its mouth gaped wide and its wolfish fangs gleamed as it towered above Meren. Its head wove from side to side as it watched him with its remaining eye. But the blow had severed its spinal column, and anchored it. Meren faced it with his sword lifted high. The snake swung forward and struck at his face, but Meren was ready for it. His blade whispered through the air, and the bright edge snicked cleanly through the snake's neck. The head fell clear, and the jaws snapped spasmodically as the headless carcass continued to twist. Meren kicked his way through the undulating coils and seized Taita's arm, blood spurting from the fang punctures in his wrist. He lifted Taita high above his head and carried him out of the tent.

'Demeter! You must rescue Demeter!' Taita panted. Meren ran back and hacked at the headless beast, trying to cut his way through to where Demeter lay. The other servants were at last aroused by the uproar and came running. The bravest followed Meren into the tent where they dragged the snake aside and freed Demeter. He was unconscious and bleeding copiously from the wounds in his shoulder.

Ignoring his own injuries, Taita went to work on him immediately.

The old man's chest was bruised, and covered with contusions. When

Taita palpated his ribs he found that at least two were cracked but his first concern was to staunch the bleeding of the shoulder wound. The pain brought Demeter round, and Taita sought to distract him as he cauterized the bites with the point of Meren's dagger heated in the flames of the brazier that burnt in a corner of the tent.

'The bite of the serpent is not venomous. That, at least, is fortunate,'

he told Demeter.

'Perhaps the only thing that is.' Demeter's voice was tight with pain.

'That was no natural creature, Taita. It was sent from out of the void.'

Taita was unable to find a convincing argument to the contrary, but he did not wish to encourage the old man's gloom. 'Come, old friend,' he said. 'Nothing is so bad that brooding cannot make it worse.

We are both alive. The snake might have been natural, rather than a device of Eos.'

'Have you ever heard of such a creature in Egypt before now?' Demeter asked.

'I have seen them in the lands to the south.' Taita sidestepped the question.

'Far to the south?'

'Yes, indeed,' Taita admitted. 'Beyond the Indus river in Asia, and south of where the Nile divides into two streams.'

'Always in the deep forests?' Demeter persisted. 'Never in these arid deserts? Never so massive in size?'

'As you say.' Taita capitulated.

'It was sent to kill me, not you. She does not want you dead – not yet,' Demeter said, with finality.

Taita continued his examination in silence. He was relieved to find that none of the major bones in Demeter's body were broken. He bathed the shoulder with a distillation of wine, covered the bites with a healing salve and bandaged them with strips of linen. Only then could he attend to his own injuries.

Once he had bound up his wrist, he helped Demeter to his feet and supported him as they limped out of the tent to where Meren had laid out the carcass of the gigantic python. They measured its length at fifteen full paces, without the head and the tail section; and even Meren's muscular arms were unable to encompass its girth at the thickest point.

The muscles beneath the magnificently patterned skin were still twitching and trembling, although it had been dead for some time.

Taita prodded the severed head with the tip of his staff, then prised

open the mouth. 'It is able to unhook the hinges of its jaws so that its mouth can open wide enough to swallow a large man with ease.'

Meren's handsome features reflected disgust. 'A foul and unholy creature. Demeter speaks truly. This is a monster from the void. I will burn the carcass to ashes.'

'You will do no such thing,' Taita told him firmly. 'The fat of such a supernatural creature has potent magical properties. If, as seems most likely, it has been conjured up by the witch, we might be able it to turn it back on her.'

'If you do not know where to find her,' Meren pointed out, 'how can you send it back to her?'

'It is her creation, a part of her. As if it were a homing pigeon, we can send it to seek her out,' Demeter explained.

Meren fidgeted uncomfortably. Even though he had been companion to the magus all these years, mysteries such as this puzzled and dismayed him.

Taita took pity on him and clasped his upper arm in a friendly grip.

'Once again I am in your debt. Without you, Demeter and I might, at this very moment, be within the gut of this creature.'

Meren's anxious expression changed to one of gratification. 'Tell me, then, what you wish me to do with it.' He kicked the twitching carcass, '

which was rolling itself slowly into a great ball.

'We are injured. It may be some days before we can gather our powers to work the magic. Take this offal to a place where it will not be eaten by vultures or jackals,' Taita told him. 'Later we will skin it and boil down its fat.'

Although he tried, Meren was unable to load the python on to the back of one of the camels. The animal was terrified by the stench of the carcass, and bucked, bawled and jibbed. In the end Meren and five strong men dragged it down to the horse lines and piled rocks over it to protect it from the hyenas and other scavengers.

When Meren returned he found the magi sitting on the floor of the tent, facing each other. They had linked hands to combine their powers and cast a spell of protection and concealment round the encampment.

When they had completed the intricate ceremony, Taita gave Demeter a draught of red sheppen, and soon the old man sagged into a drugged sleep.

'Leave us now, good Meren. Take your rest but stay within call,'

Taita said, as he sat down beside Demeter to watch over him. But his

own body betrayed him and dropped into the dark oblivion of sleep. He woke again to find Meren shaking his injured arm insistently. He sat up, groggy with sleep, and snarled. 'What ails you? Have you lost all sense and reason?'

'Come, Magus! Quickly!'

His urgent tone and stricken expression alarmed Taita and he turned anxiously to Demeter. With relief he saw that the old man was still sleeping. He scrambled to his feet. 'What is it?' he asked, but Meren was gone. Taita followed him out into the cooler air of dawn and saw him running towards the horse lines. When he caught up with him, Meren pointed wordlessly at the pile of rocks that had covered the serpent's carcass. For a moment Taita was puzzled, until he saw that the rocks had been moved aside.

'The snake has gone,' Meren blurted. 'It vanished during the night.'

He pointed to a depression in the sand left by the python's heavy body.

A few globules of blood had dried into black balls, but that was all that remained. Taita felt the hair at the back of his neck lift, as if touched by a cold wind. 'You have searched thoroughly?'

Meren nodded. 'We have scoured the ground for half a league around the camp. We found no sign of it.'

'Devoured by dogs or wild animals,' Taita said, but Meren shook his head.

'None of the dogs would go near it. They whined and growled and slunk away when they smelt it.'

'Hyena, vultures?'

'No bird could have moved those rocks, and a carcass that size would have fed a hundred hyenas. They would have made the night hideous with their shrieks and wails. There was no sound and there are no tracks, no spoor or drag marks.' He ran his fingers through his dense curls, then lowered his voice: 'There is no question but that Demeter was right. It has taken its head and flown away, without touching ground. It was a creature from the void.'

'An opinion not to be shared with the servants and camel drivers,'

Taita warned him. 'If they suspect this, they will desert us. You must tell them that Demeter and I disposed of the body with a spell that we worked during the night.'

It was several days before Taita judged that Demeter could resume the journey, but the awkward gait of the camel that carried his palanquin aggravated the pain of his cracked ribs, and Taita had to keep him sedated with regular draughts of the red sheppen. At the same time he reduced the pace of the caravan and shortened the marching hours to avoid causing him further distress and injury.

Taita himself had recovered swiftly from the worst effects of the serpent's attack. Soon he was at ease on Windsmoke's back. Occasionally during the night marches he left Meren to attend to Demeter, while he rode ahead of the caravan. He had to be alone to study the skies. He was certain the momentous psychic events in which they were caught up must be reflected by new omens and portents among the heavenly bodies.

He soon discovered that they were in evidence everywhere. The heavens blazed with the vivid trails of fire left by flocks of shooting stars and comets, more in a single night than he had seen in the previous five years. This plethora of omens was confusing and contradictory: they spelled out no clear message that he could discern. Instead there were dire warnings, promises of hope, dread threats and signs of reassurance all at the same time.

On the tenth night after the serpent's disappearance, the moon was full, an enormous luminous orb that paled the fiery tails of shooting stars, and reduced even the major planets to insignificant pricks of light.

Long after midnight Taita rode out on to a barren plain he recognized.

They were less than fifty leagues from the rim of the escarpment that led down to the once fertile lands of the Nile delta. He would have to turn back soon, so he reined in Windsmoke. He dismounted and found a seat on a flat rock beside the path. The mare nudged him with her muzzle so he opened the pouch that hung at his hip and absently fed her a handful of crushed dhurra meal, while he turned his full attention to the skies.

He could barely distinguish the faint cloud that was all that remained of the Star of Lostris, and felt a pang of bereavement when he realized it would soon disappear for ever. Sadly he looked back at the moon. It heralded the beginning of the planting season, a time of rejuvenation and regrowth, but without the inundation of the river no crops would be planted in the delta.

Suddenly Taita sat up straighter. He felt the chill that always preceded some dire occult event: gooseflesh prickled his arms and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. The outline of the moon was changing

before his eyes. At first he thought it an illusion, a trick of the light, but within minutes a thick slice had been swallowed as though by the jaws of some dark monster. With startling rapidity the remainder of the great orb shared the same fate, and only a dark hole remained in its place. The stars reappeared but they were wan and sickly, compared to the light that had been blotted out.

All nature seemed confounded. No night bird called. The breeze dropped and was stilled. The outlines of the surrounding hills merged into the darkness. Even the grey mare was distressed: she tossed her mane and whinnied with fear. Then she reared, jerking the reins from Taita's grip, and bolted down the track along which they had come. He let her go– Although Taita knew that no invocation or prayer would have any force with cosmic events in train, he called aloud on Ahura Maasda and all the gods of Egypt to save the moon from obliteration. Then he saw that the remains of the Star of Lostris showed more clearly. It was just a pale smear, but he lifted the Periapt on its chain and held it towards the star. He concentrated his mind, his trained senses and the power of the Inner Eye upon it.

'Lostris!' he cried in despair. 'You who have always been the light in my heart! Use your powers to intercede with the gods who are your peers.

Rekindle the moon and light the heavens again.'

Almost at once a thin sliver of light appeared where the rim of the moon had vanished. It grew in size, became curved and bright as the blade of a sword, then assumed the shape of a battleaxe. While he called upon Lostris and held aloft her Periapt, the moon returned in all its splendour and shining glory. Relief and joy flooded through him. Nevertheless, he knew that even if the moon had been restored, the warning conveyed by its eclipse remained, an omen that cancelled these more auspicious auguries.

It took him half of the remaining hours of darkness to rally after the harrowing sight of the dying moon, but at last he hoisted himself to his feet, took up his staff and struck out in search of the mare. Within a league he came up with her. She was browsing the leaves of a scrubby desert bush beside the track, and whickered a greeting when she saw him, then trotted to meet him in a show of contrition for her unconscionable behaviour. Taita mounted her and they rode back to rejoin the caravan.

The men had witnessed the swallowing of the moon, and even Meren was having difficulty controlling them. He hurried to Taita as soon as he

saw him returning. 'Did you see what happened to the moon, Magus?

Such a terrible omen! I feared for your very existence,' he cried. 'I give thanks to Horus that you are safe. Demeter is awake and awaits your arrival, but first will you speak to these craven dogs? They want to slink back to their kennels.'

Taita took time to reassure the men. He told them that the regeneration of the moon signalled no disaster, but instead heralded the return of the Nile inundation. His reputation was such that they were readily satisfied, and at last, quite cheerfully, they agreed to continue the journey. Taita left them and went to Demeter's tent. Over the past ten days the old man had made a heartening recovery from the mauling that the python had inflicted on him, and he was much stronger. However, he greeted Taita with a solemn mien. They sat together quietly for the rest of that night and discussed the significance of the moon's darkening.

'I have lived long enough to witness many similar occurrences,'

Demeter said softly, 'but seldom have I seen such a complete obliteration.'

Taita nodded. 'Indeed, I have seen only two such disappearances before. Always they have foreshadowed some calamity – the death of great kings, the fall of beautiful and prosperous cities, famine or pestilence.'

'It was another manifestation of the dark powers of the Lie,' Demeter muttered. 'I believe that Eos flaunts her invincibility. She is trying to cow us, to drive us to despair.'

'We must linger no longer on the road, but hurry to Thebes,' Taita said.

'Above all, we must never relax our vigilance. We can expect her to unleash her next onslaught upon us at any time of day or night.' Demeter studied Taita's face seriously. 'You must forgive me if I repeat myself, but until you come to know the witch's wiles and artifices as I do, it is difficult to understand how devious they are. She is able to plant in your mind the most convincing images. She can return your earliest infant memories to you, even the images of your father and mother so vividly that you cannot doubt them.'

'In my case that will present her with some difficulty.' Taita smiled wryly. 'For I never knew either parent.'

A lthough the camel drivers had stepped up the pace, Taita was yuA still consumed with impatience. The following night he left the JL JL caravan again and rode ahead, hoping to reach the escarpment of the delta and look down into his beloved Egypt after all his years of absence. His eagerness seemed infectious for Windsmoke kept up an easy canter, her flying hoofs eating the leagues until at last Taita reined her in on the rim of the escarpment. Below, the moon lit the cultivated lands with silvery radiance, and highlighted the palm groves that outlined the course of the Nile. He searched for the faintest gleam of silver waters but at this distance the riverbed was dark and sombre.

Taita dismounted and stood at the mare's head, stroking her neck and staring raptly down upon the city, the moon-white walls of the temples and palaces of Karnak. He picked out the towering walls of the Palace of Memnon on the far bank but resisted the temptation to continue down the slope, across the alluvial plain and through one of the hundred gates of Thebes.

His duty was to stay close to Demeter, not leave him to race ahead.

He squatted on his haunches at the mare's head, and allowed himself to anticipate his homecoming and reunion with those he held so dear.

Pharaoh and his queen, Mintaka, held Taita in the deep affection usually reserved for a senior family member. In return he cherished an abiding love for both of them, undiminished since their childhood.

Nefer's father, Pharaoh Tamose, had been murdered when Nefer was but a child, too young to succeed to the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt so a regent had been appointed. Taita had been tutor to Tamose, so it followed that his son would be placed in Taita's care until he reached manhood. Taita had seen to his formal education, had trained him as a warrior and horseman, then instructed him in the conduct of war and the direction of armies. He had taught him the duties of royalty, the lore of statecraft and diplomacy. He had made him a man. During those years a bond was forged between them, and remained unbroken.

A draught wafted up the escarpment, cool enough to make him shiver.

In these hot months it was unseasonable. Instantly he was on his guard.

A sudden drop in temperature often presaged an occult manifestation.

Demeter's warnings still echoed in his mind.

He sat still and searched the ether. He could discern nothing sinister.

Then he turned his attention to Windsmoke, who was almost as sensitive to the supernatural as he was, but she seemed relaxed and quiet. Satisfied,

he rose to his feet and gathered her reins to mount her and ride back to the caravan. By now Meren would probably be calling a halt to the night march and setting up camp. Taita wanted to spend a little time in conversation with Demeter before sleep overcame him. He had not yet fully tapped the old man's treasury of wisdom and experience.

Just then Windsmoke whickered softly and pricked her ears, but she was not seriously alarmed. Taita saw that she was gazing down the slope and turned. At first he saw nothing, but he trusted the mare and he listened to the silence of the night. At last, he glimpsed a shadowy movement near the bottom of the slope. It vanished and he thought he might have been mistaken, but the mare was still alert. He waited and watched. Then he saw movement again, closer at hand and more distinct.

The dim shape of another horse and rider emerged from the darkness, following the path up the escarpment towards where he stood. The strange horse was also grey, but even paler than Windsmoke. His memory stirred: he never forgot a good horse. Even in the starlight, this one seemed familiar. He tried to think when and where he had last seen it, but the memory was so remote that he realized it must have been long ago, yet the grey paced like a four-year-old. Sharply he switched his attention to the rider upon its back – a slight figure, not a man but a boy, perhaps. Whoever he might be, he sat the grey with elan. There was something familiar about him, too, but, like his mount, the boy seemed too young for Taita's memory of him to be so faded. Could it be that this was the child of somebody he knew well? One of the princes of Egypt?

he puzzled.

Queen Mintaka had presented Pharaoh Nefer Seti with many fine boys. All bore a strong resemblance to either their father or their mother.

There was nothing ordinary about this child, and Taita could not doubt that he was of royal blood. Horse and rider drew nearer. Taita was struck by several other features. He saw that the rider wore a short chiton that left the legs bare, and they were slim, unmistakably feminine. This was a girl. Her head was covered, but as she drew closer he could make out the outline of her features beneath her head shawl.

'I know her. I know her well!' he whispered to himself. A pulse in his ears beat faster. The girl lifted a hand towards him in salutation, then thrust forward with her hips to urge the grey on. It swung into a canter, but its hoofs struck no sound from the stony path. It came up the slope towards him in eerie silence.

Too late, Taita realized that he had been lulled by a familiar appearance.

He blinked rapidly to open his Inner Eye.

'They throw no aura!' he gasped, and had to place his hand on the mare's shoulder to steady himself. Neither the grey horse nor its rider was a natural creature: they came from a different dimension. Despite Demeter's warnings, he had been caught off-guard again. Swiftly he reached for the Periapt that hung at his throat, and held it in front of his face. The rider reined in and regarded him from the shadow of the shawl that covered her face. She was so close now that he could make out the glint of eyes, the soft curve of a young cheek. His memories rushed back.

Small wonder that he remembered the grey horse so well. It had been his own gift to her, chosen with care and love. He had paid for it fifty talents of silver and considered he had the best of the bargain. She had named it Gull, and it had ever been her favourite. She rode it with the grace and style Taita remembered from all those decades ago. So profound was his shock that he was unable to think clearly. He stood like a pillar of granite, holding the Periapt as a shield.

Slowly the horsewoman lifted a shapely white hand and threw back the fringe of the shawl. Taita felt the fabric of his soul ripped through as he looked upon that lovely face, each detail perfectly rendered.

It is not her. He tried to steel himself. This is another apparition from out of the void, like the giant serpent, and perhaps as deadly.

When he had discussed with Demeter his dream of the girl on the golden dolphin, the other man had been in no doubt whatsoever: 'Your dream was one of the ruses of the witch,' he had warned. 'You must not trust any image that feeds upon your hopes and longing. When you cast back your mind to a joyous memory, such as an old love, you open the door to Eos. She will find a way through it to reach you.'

Taita had shaken his head. 'No, Demeter, how could even Eos have conjured up such intimate detail from so long ago? Lostris's voice, the set of her eyes, the quirk of her lips when she smiled. How could Eos have copied them? Lostris has been in her sarcophagus these seventy years past. There can be no living traces of her for Eos to draw upon.'

'Eos stole from your own memories of Lostris, and gave them back to you in their most convincing, compelling form.'

'But even I had forgotten most of those details.'

'It was you who averred that we forget nothing. Every detail remains.

It requires only occult skills, such as Eos possesses, to retrieve it from the vaults of your mind, as you retrieved from me my memories of Eos, her voice as she uttered the incantation to fire.'

'I cannot accept that it was not Lostris,' Taita moaned softly.

'That is because you do not want to accept it. Eos seeks to close your

1

mind to reason. Think a moment how cunningly the image of the girl on the dolphin was woven into her evil schemes. While she lured and distracted you with false visions of a lost love, she sent her spectral serpent to destroy me. She used your dream as a distraction.'

Now, upon the escarpment of the delta, Taita was confronted with the vision again: the image of Lostris, once queen of Egypt, whose memory still ruled his heart. This time she seemed even more perfect.

He felt his resolve and reason wavering, and tried desperately to check himself. But he could not prevent himself looking into Lostris's eyes.

They were filled with enchanted lights, all the tears and smiles of her lifetime in their depths.

'I reject you!' he told her, in a voice as cold and stern as he could muster. 'You are not Lostris. You are not the woman I loved. You are the Great Lie. Get you hence into the darkness from which you sprang.'

At his words the sparkle in Lostris's lovely eyes was replaced by a vast sorrow. 'Darling Taita,' she called to him softly. 'I have existed without you through all the sterile and lonely years that we have been parted.

Now, when you are in such mortal and spiritual danger, I have come far to be with you again. Together we can resist the evil that hovers over you.'

'You blaspheme,' he said. 'You are Eos, the Lie, and I reject you. I am protected by the Truth. You cannot reach me. You cannot harm me.'

'Oh, Taita.' Lostris's voice fell to a whisper. 'You will destroy us both.

I am in peril too.' She seemed burdened by all the sorrows that had afflicted mankind since the beginning time. 'Trust me, my darling. For both our sakes you must trust me. 1 am none other than the Lostris you loved and who loved you. You called to me across the ether. I heeded your call and I have come to you.'

Taita felt the foundations of the earth tremble beneath his feet but he steeled himself. 'Out, cursed witch!' he cried. 'Begone, foul minion of the Lie. I reject you and all your works. Plague me no more.'

'No, Taita! You cannot do this,' she pleaded. 'We have been given this chance, this one chance. You must not refuse it.'

'You are evil,' he told her harshly. 'You are an abomination from the void. Go back to your foul abode.'

Lostris moaned and her image receded. She faded in the same way that her star had often been eclipsed by the light of coming day. The last whisper of her voice came back to him from out of the night: 'I have tasted death once, and now I must drink the bitter cup to the dregs.

Farewell, Taita, whom I loved. If only you could have loved me more.'

J

Then she was gone and he sank on to his knees to let the waves of remorse and loss break over his head. When he had the strength to lift his head again, the sun had risen. Already it had climbed a hand's span above the horizon. Windsmoke stood quietly beside him. She was dozing, but as soon as he stirred she threw up her head and turned her eyes on him. He was so reduced that he had to use a rock as a mounting platform to reach her back. He swayed there, almost losing his seat, as she started along the path towards the encampment.

Taita tried to order the jumble of emotions that filled his head. One salient fact emerged from his confusion: it was the manner in which Windsmoke had stood calmly, without the least sign of perturbation, during his encounter with the phantom Lostris. On every other occasion she had detected a manifestation of evil long before he had become aware of it himself. She had bolted when the moon was devoured, yet she had shown only mild interest in the wraith of Lostris and her phantom steed.

'There could not have been evil in them,' he began to convince himself. 'Did Lostris speak the truth? Did she come as my ally and friend to protect me? Have I destroyed both of us?' The pain was too much to bear. He pulled Windsmoke's head round and drove her into a full gallop back towards the delta. He checked her only when they burst out on to the rim of the escarpment, and swung down from her back on the exact spot at which Lostris had vanished.

'Lostris!' he shouted to the sky. 'Forgive me! I was mistaken! I know now that you spoke the truth. Verily and indeed you are Lostris. Come back to me, my love! Come back!' But she was gone and the echoes mocked him: 'Come back … back . . . back .. .'

They were so close to the holy city of Thebes that Taita ordered Meren to continue the night march even after the sun had risen. Lit by its slanting early rays the little caravan descended the escarpment and struck out across the flat alluvial plain towards the walls of the city. The plain was desolate. No green thing grew upon it.

The black earth was baked hard as brick and split with deep cracks by the furnace heat of the sun. The peasant farmers had abandoned their stricken fields and their huts stood derelict, the palm-leaf thatching falling in clumps from the rafters, the unplastered walls crumbling. The bones of the kine that had died of famine littered the fields like patches

of white daisies. A whirlwind swayed and wove an erratic dance across the empty lands, spinning a column of dust and dry dhurra leaves high into the cloudless sky. The sun smote down upon the parched land like the blows of a battleaxe upon a brazen shield.

The men and animals of the caravan were as insignificant in this sullen landscape as a child's toys. They reached the river and halted involuntarily upon the bank, caught up in horrified fascination. Even Demeter dismounted from his palanquin, and hobbled down to join Taita and Meren. At this point the riverbed was four hundred yards wide.