Bllod and Gold Page 22

  It was dreadfully sad to me, because I admired Eudoxia, but I knew that she had been far too humiliated by our struggle ever to give in.

  I looked up at Akasha. "How do I fight this creature to the death? " I asked. "This creature has your blood in her. I have your blood in me. But surely there must be a clearer sign of what you mean for me to do?"

  I stayed there for an hour or more, and then finally I went out.

  I found Avicus and Mael waiting where I had left them.

  "She's given me her blood," I said. "This isn't a boast. I only mean for you to know it. And I believe that that is her sign. But how can I know? I believe that she does not want to be given over to Eudoxia, and she will destroy if provoked."

  Avicus looked desperate.

  "In all our years in Rome," he said, "we were blessed that no one of great strength ever challenged us."

  I agreed with him. "Strong blood drinkers stay away from others like them," I said. "But you must see, surely, that we are challenging her. We could leave as she has asked us to do."

  "She has no right to ask this of us," said Avicus. "Why can't she try to love us? "

  "Love us?" I asked, repeating his words. "What makes you say such a strange thing? I know that you're enamored of her. Of course. I've seen this. But why should she love us?"

  "Precisely because we are strong," he responded. "She has only the weakest blood drinkers around her, creatures no more than half a century in age. We can tell her things, things she may not know."

  "Ah, yes, I thought the same things when I first laid eyes on her. But with this one it's not to be."

  "Why?" he asked again.

  "If she wanted strong ones like us, they would be here," I said. And then I said dejectedly, "We can always go back to Rome."

  He had no answer for that. I didn't know whether I meant it myself.

  As we went up the steps and through the tunnels to the surface, I took his arm.

  "You're mad with thoughts of her," I said. "You must regain your spiritual self. Don't love her. Make it a simple act of will."

  He nodded. But he was too troubled to conceal it.

  I glanced at Mael, and found him more calm about all this than I had imagined. Then came the inevitable question:

  "Would she have destroyed Avicus if you hadn't opposed her?" Mael asked.

  "She was going to give it a very good try," I said. "But Avicus is very old, older than you or me. And possibly older than her. And you've seen his strength tonight."

  Uneasy, filled with misgivings, and bad thoughts, we went to our unholy rest.

  The following night, as soon as I rose, I knew that there were strangers in our house. I was furious, but had some sense even then that anger renders one weak.

  Mael and Avicus came to me immediately, and the three of us went to discover Eudoxia and the terrified Asphar with her, and two other young male blood drinkers whom we had not see before.

  All were settled within my library as if they were invited guests.

  Eudoxia was dressed in splendid and heavy Eastern robes with long bell sleeves, and Persian slippers, and her thick black curls were gathered above her ears with jewels and pearls.

  The room was not as fine as the one in which she had received me, as I had not finished with my furnishings and other such things, and therefore she appeared the most sumptuous ornament in view.

  I was struck once more by the beauty of her small face, especially I think by her mouth, though her cold dark eyes were as mesmerizing as before.

  I felt sorry for the miserable Asphar who was so afraid of me, and as for the other two blood drinkers, both boys in mortal life, and young in immortality, I felt rather sorry for them too.

  Need I say that they were beautiful? They had been grown children when they were taken, that is, splendid beings with adult bodies and chubby boyish cheeks and mouths.

  "Why have you come without an invitation?" I asked Eudoxia. "You sit in my chair as though you're my guest."

  "Forgive me," she said gently. "I came because I felt compelled to come. I've searched your house through and through." "You boast of this? "I asked.

  Her lips were parted as though she meant to answer but then the tears rose in her eyes,

  "Where are the books, Marius?" she said softly. She looked at me. "Where are all the old books of Egypt? The books that were in the temple, the books that you stole?" I didn't answer. I didn't sit down.

  "I came because I hoped to find them," she said, staring forward, her tears falling. "I came here because last night I dreamed of the priests in the temple, and how they used to tell me that I ought to read the old tales."

  Still I didn't answer.

  She looked up, and then with the back of one hand, she wiped at her tears. "I could smell the scents of the temple, the scent of papyrus," she said. "I saw the Elder at his desk."

  "He put the Parents in the sun, Eudoxia," I said. "Don't slide into a dream that makes him innocent. The Elder was evil and guilty. The Elder was selfish and bitter. Would you know his ultimate fate?"

  "In my dream, the priests told me that you took the books, Marius. They said that, unopposed, you came into the library of the temple and took all the old scrolls away."

  I said nothing.

  But her grief was heartrending.

  "Tell me, Marius. Where are those books? If you will let me read them, if you will let me read the old stories of Egypt, then my soul can find some peace with you. Can you do that much for me?"

  How bitterly did I draw in my breath.

  "Eudoxia," I said gently. "They're gone, those books, and all that remains of them is here, in my head." I tapped the side of my forehead. "In Rome, when the savages from the North breached the city, my house was burnt and my library destroyed."

  She shook her head and put her hands to the side of her face as though she could not bear this.

  I went down on my knees beside her and I tried to turn her to me, but she would have none of it. Her tears were shed quietly.

  "I'll write it all out, all that I remember, and there is so much that I remember," I said. "Or shall I tell it aloud for our scribes? You decide how you will receive it, and I'll give it to you, lovingly. I understand what you desire."

  This was not the time to tell her that much of what she sought came to nothing, that the old tales had been full of superstition and nonsense and even incantations that meant nothing at all.

  Even the wicked Elder had said so. But I had read these scrollsduring my years in Antioch. I remembered them. They were inside my heart and soul.

  She turned to me slowly. And lifting her left hand, she stroked my hair.

  "Why did you steal those books!" she whispered desperately, her tears still flowing. "Why did you take them from a sanctum where they had been safe for so long!"

  "I wanted to know what they said," I answered candidly. "Why didn't you read them when you had a lifetime to do it? " I asked gently. "Why didn't you copy them when you copied for the Greeks and the Romans? How can you blame me now for what I did? "

  "Blame you?" she said earnestly. "I hate you for it."

  "The Elder was dead, Eudoxia," I said quietly. "It was the Mother who slew the Elder."

  Her eyes suddenly, for all their tears, grew wide.

  "You want me to believe this? That you didn't do it? "

  "I? Slay a blood drinker who was a thousand years old, when I was just born?" I gave a short laugh. "No. It was the Mother who did it. And it was the Mother who asked me to take her out of Egypt. I did only what she asked me to do."

  I stared into her eyes, determined that she must believe me, that she must weigh this final and all-important piece of evidence before she proceeded in her case of hatred against me.

  "Look into my mind, Eudoxia," I said. "See the pictures of this for yourself."

  I myself relived the grim moments when Akasha had crushed the evil Elder underfoot. I myself remembered the lamp, brought magically from its stand, to pour its naming oil upon
his remains. How the mysterious blood had burnt.

  "Yes," Eudoxia whispered. "Fire is our enemy, always our enemy. You are speaking the truth."

  "With my heart and soul," I said. "It's true. And having been charged with this duty, and having seen the death of the Elder, how could I leave the books behind? I wanted them as you wanted them. I read them when I was in Antioch. I will tell you all they contained."

  She thought on this for a long time and then nodded.

  I rose to my feet. I looked down at her. She sat still, her head bowed, and then she drew a fine napkin from inside her robes, and she wiped at her blood tears.

  Once again, I pressed my promises.

  "I'll write down all I remember," I said. "I'll write down all that the Elder told me when first I came to the temple. I'll spend my nights in this labor until everything is told."

  She didn't answer me, and I couldn't see her face unless I knelt down again.

  "Eudoxia," I said. "We know much that we can give to each other. In Rome, I grew so weary that I lost the thread of life for a century. I am eager to hear all you know."

  Was she weighing this? I couldn't tell.

  Then she spoke, without raising her face to me.

  "My sleep this last day was feverish," she said. "I dreamed of Rashid crying out to me."

  What could I say? I felt desperate.

  "No, I don't ask for placating words from you," she said. "I only mean to say, my sleep was miserable. And then I was in the temple and the priests were all around me. And I had an awful sense, the purest sense, of death and time."

  I went down on one knee before her. "We can conquer this," I said.

  She looked into my eyes as though she were suspicious of me and I were trying to trick her.

  "No," she said softly. "We die too. We die when it is right for us to die."

  "I don't want to die," I said. "To sleep, yes, and sometimes to sleep almost forever, yes, but not to die."

  She smiled.

  "What would you write for me?" she asked, "if you could write anything at all? What would you choose to put down on parchment for me to read and know?"

  "Not what was in those old Egyptian texts," I said forcefully, "but something finer, more truly universal, something full of hope and vitality that speaks of growth and triumph, that speaks—how shall I put it any other way?—of life."

  She nodded gravely, and once again she smiled.

  She looked at me for a long and seemingly affectionate moment.

  "Take me down into the shrine," she said. She reached out and clasped my hand.

  "Very well," I said.

  As I rose, so did she, and then she went past me to lead the way. This might have been to show me that she knew it, and, thank the gods, her retinue stayed behind so that I did not have to tell them to do so.

  I went down with her, and with the Mind Gift I opened the many doors without touching them.

  If this made an impression upon her she didn't acknowledge it. But I didn't know if we were at war with each other any longer. I couldn't gauge her frame of mind.

  When she saw the Mother and the Father in their fine linen and exquisite jewelry she let out a gasp.

  "Oh, Blessed Parents," she whispered. "I have come such a long way to this."

  I was moved by her voice. Her tears were flowing again.

  "Would that I had something to offer you," she said, gazing up at the Queen. She was trembling. "Would that I had some sacrifice, some

  gift-"

  I didn't know why but something quickened in me when she said

  those words. I looked at the Mother first and then at the Father, and I detected nothing, yet something had changed within the chapel,

  something which Eudoxia perhaps felt.

  I breathed in the heavy fragrance rising from the censers. I looked at the shivering flowers in their vases. I looked at the glistening eyes of my Queen.

  "What gift can I give you?" Eudoxia pressed as she stepped forward. "What would you take from me that I could give with my whole soul?" She walked closer and closer to the steps, her arms out. "I am your slave. I was your slave in Alexandria when first you gave me your blood, and I am your slave now."

  "Step back," I said suddenly, though why I didn't know. "Step back and be quiet," I said quickly.

  But Eudoxia only moved forward, mounting the first step of the dais.

  "Don't you see I mean what I say?" she said to me without turning her head away from the King and Queen. "Let me be your victim, most holy Akasha, let me be your blood sacrifice, most holy Queen."

  In a flash Akasha's right arm rose and pulled Eudoxia forward in a brutal and tight embrace.

  An awful groan rose from Eudoxia.

  Down came the reddened mouth of the Queen, with only the slightest move of her head, and I saw the sharp teeth only for an instant before they penetrated Eudoxia's neck. Eudoxia was helpless, head wrenched to one side, as Akasha drank from her, Eudoxia's arms hanging limp as her legs, Akasha's face as blank as ever, as the grip tightened and the drinking went on.

  I stood horrified, not daring to challenge anything that I beheld.

  No more than a few seconds passed, perhaps half a minute before Eudoxia gave a raw and terrible scream. She tried desperately to raise her arms.

  "Stop, Mother, I beg you!" I cried out and with all my might I took hold of the body of Eudoxia. "Stop, I beg you, don't take her life! Spare her!" I pulled on the body. "Spare her, Mother!" I cried. I felt the body shift in my grasp and quickly I drew it back from the curved arm which remained poised in space.

  Eudoxia still breathed, though she was livid, and groaning miserably,

  and we both fell back off the dais, as the arm of Akasha returned to its age-old position, at her side, fingers laid on her thigh as though nothing had occurred.

  Sprawled on the floor I lay with the gasping Eudoxia.

  "Did you want to die!" I demanded.

  "No," she said desperately. She lay there with her breast heaving, her hands shuddering, seemingly unable to rise to her feet.

  I looked up searchingly into the Queen's face.

  The sacrifice had given no blush to her cheeks. And on her lips there was no red blood.

  I was stupefied. I picked up Eudoxia and rushed to get her out of the shrine, up the steps, through the various tunnels, and finally into the house above ground.

  I ordered all the others out of the library, slamming tight the doors with the Mind Gift, and there I laid her down on my couch so that she might at least catch her breath.

  "But how?" she asked me, "did you ever have the courage to take me from her? " She clung to my neck. "Hold tight to me, Marius, don't let me go just yet. I cannot. ... I do not. . . . Hold tight to me. Where did you get the courage to move against our own Queen?"

  "She was about to destroy you," I said. "She was about to answer my prayer."

  "And what prayer was that?" she asked.

  She let me go. I brought up a chair to sit beside her.

  Her face was drawn and tragic, her eyes brilliant. She reached out and clung to my sleeve.

  "I asked for a sign of her pleasure," I said. "Would she be given over to you or remain with me? She's spoken. And you see how it is."

  She shook her head, but it was not a negation to anything that I'd said. She was trying to recover her clarity of mind. She tried to rise from the couch and then fell backwards.

  For a long time, she merely lay there, staring at the ceiling and I couldn't know her thoughts. I tried to take her hand, but she withdrew it from me.

  Then in a low voice, she said:

  "You've drunk her blood. You have the Fire Gift, and you've drunk her blood. And this she has done in answer to your prayer."

  "Tell me," I said. "What prompted you to offer yourself to her? Why did you say such words? Had you ever spoken them in Egypt? "

  "Never," she said in a heated murmur. "I had forgotten the beauty." She looked confused, weak. "I had forgotten the timelessness," s
he whispered. "I had forgotten the silence gathered around them—as if it were so many veils."

  She turned and looked at me languidly. She looked about her. I sensed her hunger, her weakness.