enveloping her in a sublimely magnificent cloak of living light, just as he had seen it in his dreams. Beneath the grotesque coating of clay and filth, this sorry, bedraggled creature was Fenn. She had returned to him, as she had promised. The emotion that swept over him was more powerful than any he had experienced in his long life. It surpassed in intensity the grief that had overwhelmed him at her death, which had ended her other life, when he had removed her viscera and wrapped her corpse in the linen bandages and laid her in the stone sarcophagus.
Now she was restored to him at the same age she had been when she
had first been placed in his care all those bleak, lonely years ago. All that grief and sorrow was paid off with this single coin of joy, to which every cord, muscle and nerve in his body resonated.I The cloak of concealment he had spun round himself was disturbed by it. The child picked it up at once. She turned and stared in his direction, her bloodshot eyes enormous in the grotesque mask. She sensed his presence, but could not see him. He realized that she possessed the power. As yet her psychic gift was undeveloped and untutored, but he knew that, under his loving instruction, it would in time match his own. The rising sun shot a beam into her eyes, and their true lustre glowed in the deepest shade of green. Fenn green.
Meren was running in their direction, his footsteps pounding on the hard earth. There was only one escape route open to Fenn: down the narrow passage between the wood-pile and the smoking racks. She ran straight into Taita's arms. As they closed round her she shrieked in shock and renewed terror and dropped the assegai. Although she struggled and clawed at his eyes, Taita held her close to his chest. Her fingernails were long and ragged, black dirt was caked under them and they raised bloody welts across his forehead and cheeks. Still holding her with one arm circled round her waist, he took her arms one at a time and trapped them between their bodies. Now that she was helpless he leant close to her face and stared into her eyes, taking control of her. Instinctively she knew what he was doing and pushed forward to meet him, but just in time he divined her intention and jerked his head back sharply. Her sharp black teeth snapped shut a finger's breadth from the tip of his nose.
'Light of my eyes, I still have need of this old nose of mine. If you are hungry I will provide tastier fare.' He smiled.
At that moment Meren burst into sight, his expression of consternation and alarm. 'Magus!' he shouted. 'Do not let that filthy vixen near you. She has already tried to murder one man and now she will do you some grave injury.' He rushed towards them. 'Let me get my hands on her. I will take her to the swamp and drown her in the nearest pool.'
'Back, Meren!' Taita did not raise his voice. 'Don't touch her.'
Meren checked. 'But, Magus, she will—'
'She will do no such thing. Go, Meren. Leave us alone. We love each other. I just have to convince her of it.'
Still Meren hesitated.
'Go, I say. At once.'
Meren went.
Taita looked into Fenn's eyes and smiled reassuringly. 'Fenn, I have waited so long for you.' He was using the voice of power, but she resisted him fiercely. She spat, and bubbles of her saliva ran down his face to drip off his chin.
'You were not so strong when we first met. You were sullen and rebellious, oh, yes, indeed you were, but not as strong as you are now.'
He chuckled and she blinked. No Luo had ever emitted such a sound.
A spark of interest flashed for an instant in the green depths of her eyes, then she glared at him.
'You were so beautiful then, but look at you now.' His voice still carried the hypnotic inflection. 'You are a vision from the void.' He made it sound like an endearment. 'Your hair is filthy.' He stroked it but she tried to duck. It was not possible to guess the true colour of her hair under the thick clay and acacia gum, but he kept his voice calm and his smile reassuring as a stream of red lice crawled out of the clotted mass and climbed up his arm.
'By Ahura Maasda and the Truth, you stink worse than any polecat,'
he told her. 'It will take a month of scrubbing to get down to your skin.'
She wriggled and squirmed to be free. 'Now you are rubbing your filth on to me. I shall be in no better case than you by the time I have quietened you. We shall have to camp away from Meren and his troopers. Even rough soldiers will not withstand our combined odour.' He kept speaking: the sense of the words was unimportant, but the tone and inflection gradually lulled her. He felt her begin to relax, and the hostile light in her green eyes faded. She blinked almost sleepily, and he relaxed his grip.
At that she shook herself awake, and the malevolence flared again. He had to hold her hard as she renewed her struggles.
'You are indomitable.' He let the admiration and approval sound in his voice. 'You have the heart of a warrior, and the determination of the goddess you once were.' This time she quietened more readily. The migrating lice nipped Taita under his tunic, but he ignored them and continued to talk.
'Let me tell you about yourself, Fenn. You were once my ward, as you have become again. You were the daughter of an evil man who cared little for you. To this day I cannot fathom how he sired a lovely tiling like you. You were beautiful, Fenn, beyond the telling of it. Under the fleas, lice and dirt I know you are still.' Slowly her resistance faded as he related her childhood to her in loving detail, and recounted some of the funny things she had done or said. When he laughed now she looked at him with interest rather than anger. She began to blink again.
This time when he relaxed his grip she did not attempt to escape but sat quietly in his lap. The sun had reached its zenith when at last he stood up. She looked up at him solemnly and he reached down to take her hand. She did not pull away.
'Come along, now. If you are not hungry, I certainly am.' He set off towards the village and she trotted at his side.
Meren had set up a temporary camp well away from the village: in the sun the Luo corpses would soon begin to rot and the area become uninhabitable. As they approached the camp, he hurried to meet them.
'I am glad to see you, Magus. I thought the vixen had done away with you,' he shouted. Fenn hid behind Taita and clung to one of his legs as Meren came up to them. 'By the wounded eye of Horus, she stinks. I can smell her
