The Quest

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, spi

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.

In a normal season of low Nile the mighty stream filled it from side to side, a torrent of grey, silt-laden waters, so deep and powerful that the surface was riven by shining eddies and dimpled with spi

At the season of high water the Nile could not be contained. She burst over her banks and flooded the fields. The mud and sediment dropped by her waters was so rich that they sustained three successive crops during a single growing season.

But there had been no inundation for seven years and the river was a grotesque travesty of its former mighty self. It had been reduced to a string of shallow stinking pools strung out along its bed. Their surface was stirred only by the struggles of dying fish, and the languid movements of the few surviving crocodiles. A frothy red scum covered the water, like congealing blood.

'What causes the river to bleed?' Meren asked. 'Is it a curse?'

'It seems to me that it is caused by a bloom of poisonous algae,' Taita said, and Demeter agreed.

'It is indeed algae, but I have no doubt that it is u

The blood-coloured pools were separated from each other by the exposed banks of black mud, which were littered with stranded rubbish and sewage from the city, roots and driftwood, the wreckage of abandoned rivercraft and the bloated carcasses of birds and animals. The only living things that frequented the open sandbanks were strange squat creatures that hopped and crawled clumsily on grotesque webbed feet over the mud. They struggled ferociously among themselves for possession of the carcasses, ripping them apart, then gulping the chunks of rotting flesh. Taita was uncertain of the creatures' nature until Meren muttered, in deep disgust, 'They are as the caravan master described them to me.

Giant toads!' He hawked, then spat out the taste and stench that clogged his throat. 'Is there no end to the abominations that have descended upon Egypt?'

Taita realized then that it was the sheer size of the amphibians that had puzzled him. They were enormous. Across the back they were as wide as bush pigs, and they stood almost as tall as jackals when they raised themselves on their long back legs to their full height.

'There are human cadavers lying on the mud,' Meren exclaimed. He pointed to a tiny body that lay below them. 'There's a dead infant.'

'It seems that the citizens of Thebes are so far gone in apathy that they no longer bury their dead but cast them into the river.' Demeter shook his head sorrowfully.

As they watched, one of the toads seized the child's arm and, with a dozen shakes of its head, tore it loose from the shoulder joint. Then it threw the tiny limb high. As it dropped the toad gaped, caught and swallowed it.

All of them were sickened by the spectacle. They mounted and went on along the bank until they reached the outer walls of the city. The area outside was crowded with makeshift shelters, erected by the dispossessed peasant farmers, by the widows and orphans, by the sick and dying, and by all the other victims of the catastrophe. They huddled together under the roughly thatched roofs of the open-sided hovels. All were emaciated and apathetic. Taita saw one young mother holding her infant to shrivelled empty dugs, but the child was too weak anyway to suck, and flies crawled into its eyes and nostrils. The mother stared back at them hopelessly.

'Let me give her food for her baby.' Meren began to dismount, but Demeter stopped him.

'If you show these miserable creatures food, they will riot.'

When they rode on, Meren looked back sadly and guiltily.

'Demeter is right,' Taita told him softly. 'We ca

Taita and Meren picked out a camp site well away from the unfortunates.

Taita called Demeter's foreman aside and pointed it out to him.

'Make certain that your master is comfortable and guard him well. Then build a fence of dried thornbush to protect the camp and keep out thieves and scavengers. Find water and fodder for the animals. Remain here until I have arranged more suitable quarters for us.'

He turned to Meren. 'I am going into the city to the palace of Pharaoh. Stay with Demeter.' He kicked his heels into the mare's flanks and headed for the main gates. The guards looked down on him from

the tower as he rode through, but did not challenge him. The streets were almost deserted. The few people he saw were as pale and starving as the beggars outside the walls. They scurried away at his approach.

A sickly stench hung over the city: the odour of death and suffering.

The captain of the palace guards recognized Taita, and ran to open the side gate for him, saluting respectfully as he entered the precincts.

'One of my men will take your horse to the stables, Magus. The royal grooms will care for it.'

'Is Pharaoh in residence?' Taita asked, as he dismounted.

'He is here.'

'Take me to him,' Taita ordered. The captain hurried to obey, and led him into the labyrinth of passages and halls. They passed through courtyards that had once been lovely with lawns, banks of flowers and tinkling fountains of limpid water, then on through halls and cloisters that in former times had sounded merrily to the laughter and singing of noble ladies and lords, of tumblers, troubadours and dancing slave girls.

Now the rooms were deserted, the gardens were brown and dead and the fountains had run dry. The heavy silence was disturbed only by the sound of their footsteps on the stone paving.

At last they reached the antechamber of the royal audience hall.

In the opposite wall there was a closed door. The captain knocked upon it with the butt of his spear, and it was opened almost immediately by a slave. Taita looked beyond him. On the floor of rose-coloured marble slabs a corpulent eunuch in a short linen skirt sat cross'legged at a low desk stacked with papyrus scrolls and writing tablets. Taita recognized him at once. He was Pharaoh's senior chamberlain. It had been on Taita's recommendation that he was selected for such an illustrious position.

'Ramram, my old friend,' Taita greeted him. Ramram jumped to his feet with surprising alacrity for such a large person, and hurried to embrace Taita. All the eunuchs in Pharaoh's service were bound by strong fraternal ties.

'Taita, you have been gone from Thebes for far too long.' He drew Taita into his private bureau. 'Pharaoh is in council with his generals so I ca