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  "My name is Eudoxia," she said. "I wish I could say that I bid you welcome to Constantinople, but it is my city and I am not altogether pleased that you are here."

  "Can we not come to some understanding with you?" I asked. "We've made a long and arduous journey. The city is vast."

  She made some small gesture, and the mortal slaves withdrew. Only Asphar and Rashid remained, as if waiting for her command.

  I tried to tell if there were other blood drinkers in this house, but I couldn't do this without her knowing I was doing it, and so my attempt was rather weak.

  "Sit down, all of you, please," she said. And at that invitation, the two beautiful boys, Asphar and Rashid, made to bring the couches in closer so that we might gather in a natural way.

  At once I asked if I might have a chair. And Avicus and Mael in an uncertain whisper echoed the same request. It was done. We were seated.

  "An old Roman," she said with a sudden luminous smile. "You disdain

  a couch, and would have a chair."

  I laughed a small courteous laugh.

  But then something quite invisible yet strong caused me to cast a glance at Avicus and to see that he was staring at this splendid female blood drinker as though Cupid had just sent an arrow right into his heart.

  As for Mael, he glared at her as he had glared at me in Rome many centuries before.

  "Don't worry about your friends," said Eudoxia suddenly, startling me completely. "They're loyal to you and will follow you in whatever you say. It's you and I who must talk now. Understand that though this city is immense and there is blood enough for many, rogue blood drinkers come here often and must be driven away."

  "Are we rogues? " I asked gently.

  I couldn't help but study her features, her rounded chin with its single

  dimple, and her small cheeks. She appeared as young in mortal years as the two boys. As for her eyes they were jet black, with such a fringe of lashes that one might suspect there was Egyptian paint on her face when in fact there was none.

  This observation put me suddenly in mind of Akasha, and I felt a panic as I tried to clear my mind. What had I done bringing Those Who Must Be Kept here? I should have stayed in the ruins of Rome. But again, I could not think on this matter now.

  I looked directly at Eudoxia, a bit dazzled by the countless jewels of her robe, and the vision of her sparkling fingernails, far brighter than any I'd ever beheld except those of Akasha, and I gathered my strength again and tried to penetrate her mind.

  She smiled sweetly at me, and then she said, "Marius, I am far too old in the Blood for what you mean to do, but I will tell you anything you want to know."

  "May I call you by the name you've given us?" I asked.

  "That was my intent," she replied, "in giving you the name. But let me tell you, I expect honesty from you; otherwise, I will not tolerate you in my realm."

  I suddenly felt a wave of anger emanating from Mael. I threw a warning glance to him, and once again I saw that totally entranced expression on the face of Avicus.

  I realized suddenly that Avicus had probably never beheld such a blood drinker as this. The young women blood drinkers among the worshipers of Satan were deliberately dirty and disheveled, and here, reclining on her magnificent couch lay a woman who looked like the Empress who reigned over Byzantium.

  Indeed, perhaps this was how this creature perceived herself.

  She smiled as though all these thoughts were transparent to her, and then with a little movement of her hand she told the two blood drinker boys, Asphar and Rashid, to withdraw.

  Then her eyes passed very calmly and slowly over my two companions as though she were drawing from them every single coherent thought which had ever passed through their minds.

  I continued my study of her, of the pearls in her hair, and the ropes of pearls about her neck, and the jewels that adorned her naked toes as well as her hands.

  At last, she looked to me, and a smile spread itself once more on her features, brightening her entire countenance.

  "If I grant you permission to stay—and I am not at all sure that I mean to do it—you must show me loyalty when others come to break the peace that we share. You must never side with them against me. You must keep Constantinople only for us."

  "And just what will you do if we don't show you loyalty?" asked Mael with his old anger.

  She remained staring at me for a long moment, as though to insult him, and then as though rousing herself from a spell, she looked at Mael.

  "What can I do," she asked Mael, "to silence you before you say something foolish again?" Then her eyes returned to me. "Let me make this known to you all. I know that you possess the Mother and the Father. I know that you brought them here for safekeeping and that they are in a chapel deep beneath your house."

  I was brutally stunned.

  I felt a wave of grief. Once again, I had failed to keep the secret. Even in Antioch long ago, I had failed to keep the secret. Would I not always fail to keep the secret? Was this not my fate? What was to be done?

  "Don't be so quick to draw back from me, Marius," said Eudoxia. "I drank from the Mother in Egypt centuries before you took her away."

  This statement stunned me all the more. Yet it held some strange promise. It cast a small light into my soul.

  I was wondrously excited suddenly.

  Here was one who understood everything about the ancient mysteries, just as Pandora had understood. This one, delicate of face and speech, was a world apart from either Avicus or Mael, and how gentle and reasonable she seemed.

  "I'll tell you my story if you want it, Marius," she said. "I have always been a worldly blood drinker, never one given to the old religion of the Blood Gods of Egypt. I was three hundred years old in the Blood before you were born. But I'll tell you all you want to know. It is plain that you move through the world by means of questions."

  "Yes," I said. "I do move through the world by means of questions, and too often I've asked those questions in utter silence, or long centuries ago of people who gave me answers that were fragments which I had to piece together as though they were bits of old papyri. I hunger for knowledge. I hunger for what you mean to say to me."

  She nodded and this seemed to give her extraordinary pleasure.

  "Some of us don't require intimate understanding," she said. "Do you require it, Marius? I can read much in your thoughts, but this is a puzzle. Must you be understood?"

  I was baffled.

  "Must I be understood," I said, thinking it over, as secretly as I might. Did either Avicus or Mael understand me? No, they did not. But once long long ago the Mother had understood me. Or had she? Just possibly when I'd fallen so in love with her, I had understood her.

  "I don't have an answer for you," I said softly. "I think I have come to enjoy loneliness. I think when I was mortal I loved it. I was the wanderer. But why do you put this question to me?"

  "Because I don't require understanding," she said, and for the first time there came a cold tone into her voice. "But if you wish it, I'll tell you about my life."

  "I want so much to hear your story," I answered. I was infatuated. Again, I thought of my beautiful Pandora. Here was an incomparable woman who seemed to have the same gifts. I wanted so to listen to her, and it was more than essential for our safety that I listen to her. But how could we deal with the uneasiness of Mael, and the obvious

  obsession of Avicus?

  She took the thought from me immediately, looking at Avicus gently and then turning her attention for a long sober moment on the infuriated Mael.

  "You were a priest in Gaul," she said calmly to him, "yet you have the attitude of a dedicated warrior. You would destroy me. Why is this so?"

  "I don't respect your authority here," Mael answered, trying to match her quiet tone. "Who are you to me? You say you never respected the old religion. Well, I respected it. And Avicus respected it. Of this we're proud."

  "We all want the same thing," she answered. She smil
ed, revealing her fang teeth. "We want a hunting ground which is not overcrowded. We want the Satanic blood drinkers to be kept out for they multiply insanely and seek to foment trouble in the mortal world. My authority rests on my past triumphs. It's no more than habit. If we can make a peace ..." She broke off and in the manner of a man she shrugged her shoulders and opened her hands.

  Suddenly Avicus broke in.

  "Marius speaks for us," he said. "Marius, make the peace with Eudoxia, please."

  "We give you our loyalty," I said, "in so far as we do want the same things, as you've described. But I want very much to speak with you. I want to know how many blood drinkers are here now. As for your history, let me say again that I do want to hear it. One thing we can give to each other is our history. Yes. I want to know yours."

  She rose from the couch very gracefully, revealing herself to be a little taller than I had supposed. She had rather broad shoulders for a woman, and she walked very straight, her bare feet not making the slightest sound.

  "Come into my library," she said, leading us into a chamber off the main room. "It's better for talking, I believe." Her hair was long down her back, a heavy mass of black curls, and she moved gracefully despite the weight of her beaded and decorated robes.

  The library was immense, with shelves for scrolls and codexes, that is, bound volumes such as we have today. There were chairs here and there, and some gathered in the center, and two couches for reclining and tables on which to write. The golden lamps looked Persian to me in their heavy worked designs, but I couldn't be certain of it.

  The carpets strewn about were definitely Persian, that much I knew.

  Of course the moment I saw the books, I was overcome with pleasure. This always happens with me. I remembered the library in old Egypt in which I had found the Elder who had put the Mother and Father into the sun. I feel foolishly safe with books which can be a mistake.

  I thought of all that I had lost in the first siege of Rome. I couldn't help but wonder what Greek and Roman authors were here preserved. For the Christians, though they were kinder to the ancients than people

  now believe, did not always save the old works.

  "Your eyes are hungry," she said, "though your mind is shut. I know you want to read here. You're welcome. Send your scribes to copy what you will. But I go ahead of myself, don't I? We must talk. We must see if we can achieve an agreement. I don't know that we can."

  She turned her eyes to Avicus.

  "And you, you who are old, you who were given the Blood in Egypt, you are only just learning to love the realm of letters. How strange that it would take you so long."

  I could feel his immense excitement and tender confusion.

  "I'm learning," he said. "Marius is teaching me." And then the flame rose in his cheeks.

  As for Mael, I couldn't help but note his quiet fury, and it struck me that he had for so long been the author of his own unhappiness, but now something was truly happening which might be a legitimate cause

  of his pain.

  Of course it greatly distressed me that neither of them could keep their minds secret. Long ago in Rome when I had sought to find them they had done a better job of it.

  "Let's be seated," said Eudoxia, "and let me tell you who I am." We took the chairs, which brought us closer together, and she

  began to tell her story in a quiet tone.

  10

  MY MORTAL LIFE isn't very important," she said, "but I'll pass over it quickly. I was from a fine Greek family, one of the first wave of settlers to come from Athens to Alexandria

  to make it the great city that Alexander wanted when he founded it three hundred years before the birth of the Christ.

  "I was brought up like any girl in such a Greek household, extremely protected, and never leaving the house. I did however learn to read and write, because my father wanted me to be able to write letters to him after I was married and he thought that I might read poetry to my children later on.

  "I loved him for it, though no one else did, and I took to my education with a passion, neglecting all else.

  "An early marriage was prepared for me. I wasn't fifteen when I was told of it, and frankly I was rather happy about it because I had seen the man, and I'd found him intriguing and somewhat strange. I wondered if marriage to him wouldn't bring a new existence for me, something more interesting than what I'd had at home. My real mother was dead and I didn't care for my stepmother. I wanted to be out of her house."

  She paused for a moment and I was of course calculating. She was older than me by many years, she was making that plain to me, twice over, and that is why she appeared so utterly perfect. Time had done its work on the lines of her face, as it was doing its work on my own.

  She watched me and hesitated for a moment, but then she went on:

  ' A month before the nuptials, I was abducted right out of my bed at night, and taken over the walls of the house to a dark and filthy place where I was flung down in the corner, to cower on the stone floor while several men carried on a crude argument, as to who would be paid how much for having stolen me.

  "I expected to be murdered. I also knew that my stepmother was behind my ruin.

  "But there came into the place a tall thin man with a head of shaggy black hair, and a face and hands as white as the moon, who murdered all of these men, throwing them about as if they were weightless, and holding the last up to his mouth for a long time, as though he were drinking blood from the corpse, or eating part of it.

  "I thought I was on the verge of madness.

  "As he dropped the body, the white-faced being realized that I was staring at him. I had nothing but a torn and dirty night dress to cover me. But I rose to my feet to face him bravely.

  " 'A woman,' he said. I shall never forget. 'A woman' as if that were remarkable."

  "Sometimes, it is," I said.

  She smiled at me rather tolerantly. She went on with the story.

  "After this remark, he gave a strange little laugh and then he came

  for me.

  "Once again, I expected to be murdered. But he made me a blood drinker. There was no ceremony to it, no words, nothing. He simply did it, right then and there.

  "Then ripping off the tunic and sandals from one of the men, he dressed me crudely as a boy and we hunted the streets together for the rest of the night. He handled me roughly as we went along, turning me this way and that, pushing me, instructing me as much with shoves as

  with crude words.

  "Before dawn, he took me back to his curious dwelling. It wasn't in the elite Greek quarter where I had been brought up. But I didn't know that at the time. As a matter of fact, I'd never been out of my father's house. My first experience of the city streets had been frankly

  enthralling.

  "Now here I was being carried up the high wall of a three-story dwelling and then brought down into its barren courtyard.

  "The place was an immense and disorderly treasure house. In every room there were riches unimaginable.

  " 'See, all this!' the blood drinker said to me proudly.

  "There was chaos everywhere. There were silk draperies in heaps and beautiful cushions, and these he brought together to make a kind of nest for us. He put heavy necklaces on me and said, 'These will lure your victims. Then you can quickly take hold of them.'

  "I was intoxicated and afraid.

  "Then he took out his dagger and, grabbing me by the hair, he cut it off, almost all of it, and that sent me into wailing like nothing that had gone before. I had killed. I had drunk blood. I had run through the streets half mad. That did not make me bellow, but the cutting of my hair was too much.

  "He didn't seem at all disturbed by my crying, but quite suddenly he snatched me up, and threw me down into a large casket on a hard bed of jewels and gold chains and he shut the lid on me. Little did I know the sun was rising. Again, I thought I would die.

  "But next I opened my eyes, he was there, smiling, and in a gruff voice, with no re
al wit or talent for a turn of phrase he explained that we must sleep all day away from the sun. It was our nature. And we had to drink plenty of blood. Blood was the only thing that mattered to us.

  "Maybe to you, I thought, but I didn't dare argue with him.

  "And my hair of course had all grown back as it would every day forever, and he once again hacked it off. Within a few nights, to my relief he did acquire an expensive scissors to make this operation easier, but he, no matter what we had to do, would never tolerate my long locks.

  "I was with him several years.