A Feast In Exile

Outside the rain drummed down, hissing on the leaves and the flimsy roof of the shed where Sanat Ji Mani and Tulsi waited for the storm to pass; it had blown in during the night and had not abated all day. The air whipped about them and several leaks let in steady trickles that turned the earthen floor to damp mud that smelled faintly of sheep-dung.

"Do you think this will continue through the night?" Tulsi asked as she stood in the doorway, staring out into the weather.

"It is likely," said Sanat Ji Mani. He could feel a sense of vertigo developing as the water ran from everything; he clenched his jaw against it.

"And tomorrow-what then?" She did her best to close the door that hung on a single leather hinge, and succeeded only in pulling it off the side of the building altogether; she struggled to put it in place across the opening.

"Tomorrow we must hope there is a little clearing. You and I will both need sustenance by then." He wanted to get away from this abandoned building before it fell in around them.

"Will we travel if the rain is still coming down?" she asked.

"We may have to," he said with a wry smile as he pointed at another leak from the roof. "I do not think this place will hold together much longer."

Tulsi made an abrupt gesture to show her frustration. "We could have reached that village last night if we had kept on walking."

"The bridge is out, or so the man on the donkey told us," he reminded her.

"Perhaps he lied," she said. "Or the crossing might have been shallow enough ..." She did not go on. "You were right to insist we come here, but it is still not a very good place."

"No, it is not," he agreed, lying back on the bed of a wheelless wagon. "But it is better than trying to find shelter in the forest. You saw the chital deer-they were leaving the trees behind."

"Are you so certain it is because of flooding?" Tulsi shook her head. "Why just the deer and no other animals?"

"I do not know," Sanat Ji Mani said quietly. "I have told you what my guess is-that their resting-place has been flooded out-and I can do no better than that."

"Have you no interest in the reason?" she asked, snapping her fingers in disapproval.

"Yes. But I do not want to try to move about in all this running water until night has fallen," he said, adding, "Perhaps not even then."

She heard the weariness in his voice and came back to his side. "You are worn out."

"So are you," he said, running his hand over his slow-growing beard, thinking it needed trimming.

"The light does not work upon me as it works on you," she said. "And running water is no barrier to me."

He reached out and took her hand. "You have my gratitude for remaining with me; you could do better on your own, I suspect."

"If I were lucky, I might. If I were unlucky, I could be taken as a slave, or raped, or killed. No one pays any attention to entertainers on the road, the more so if they are female." She took a deep breath. "You are protection for me, and I am thankful that you have not tried to sell me before now."

Sanat Ji Mani was deeply offended; he kept his temper with an effort. "Do you truly suppose I would do such a thing? What kind of wretch do you think me, Tulsi Kil, to suggest I could use you so traitorously?" He sat up, his features set in stem lines. "You are not mine to sell, nor would I if you were."

She laughed. "You could say I was and no one would doubt you," she told him. "You would not have to scratch for coppers, but have gold in your hands again."

"I would not do anything so reprehensible," he said.

"My father bought my mother from her uncle," she said. "You might change your mind, if we have to contend with many more difficulties."

"I will not change my mind," he said brusquely.

She decided it was best to abandon this fruitless argument. "Well, you will or you will not: time will show which."

He rubbed his eyes. "Thank you." He put his sack under his head-it was nearly empty now but he could not make himself give it up, as if that would be the final reduction to beggary-and leaned back once more.

She sat down at the end of the wagon-bed, huddled up, for although the day was warm, the damp was becoming unpleasant. "Tell me some more of your life, Sanat Ji Mani."

"Why?" he asked. "You do not believe me."

"No, not entirely; but I like to hear your tales. They are exciting, and they make me think that life will always change." She put her elbows on her knees and her hands under her chin. "I like the stories about the Romans. They sound wonderful, having such grand entertainments, and letting their women make lives for themselves."

Sanat Ji Mani sighed. "Not all women were so fortunate, and not all Romans were wonderful. The entertainments could be bloody." He stared up at the rickety roof. "You would have done very well there, particularly in the time between Julius and Traianus. Not everyone flourished, although it was a better time than many others. There was law that was intended to put all the citizens and subjects at the same level. But some could not use the law for protection, and some turned the law to their own ends."

"This was a long time ago, you say?" Tulsi prompted, her eyes shining like a child's for a loved story.

"More than thirteen hundred years," said Sanat Ji Mani. "I was there for more than a decade while power went from one man, to another, to another, and so on. It began with a youth called Nero and settled down again when Vespasianus and his grown sons came to rule: Titus and Domitianus. I was gone from the city before Titus wore the purple." He paused. "Emperors wore purple," he explained.

"Were they as grand as Timur-i Lenkh?" she asked as if the question were a ritual.

"Much grander. They had fine cities and good roads, and aqueducts that brought water long distances; their Empire stretched from Britain to Egypt, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea." He shook his head. "It lasted longer than many others, but not so long as some."

"Timur-i's Empire will last longer," said Tulsi. "Longer than the Emperors' of China will."

"No," said Sanat Ji Mani. "It will not."

She looked at him, her face masking her anger. "Why not?"

"Because Timur-i likes war more than he likes peace, and he does not trust his own deputies to serve him," he said flatly. "He appoints few men to supervise what he has conquered, and those he does appoint, he will not have faith in, and so he provides them inadequate support, for fear they will use that support to stand against him. He cannot have a legacy if he will not provide his lieutenants with the authority to do the work he demands of them."

"He is careful for the sake of his clan," said Tulsi.

"Do you really think so," he said. "Timur-i does not want to relinquish one jot of power and is convinced that anyone seeking it-other than himself-is a usurper." He closed his eyes. "Even the Emperor of China-who has reason to fear usurpers-appoints lieutenants and grants them the authority they must have to act in his stead. Timur-i has made himself master of an Empire and rules it as if it were still only a clan. He calls himself an Emperor and conducts himself like a chieftan."

"What do you know of such things?" Tulsi asked, too sweetly.

"Enough to know Timur-i's Empire will be gone before he has been dead a century," said Sanat Ji Mani.

She had no immediate answer. "You must not speak against him," she said at last. "He will find out."

Sanat Ji Mani laughed. "How could he, and what would it matter if he did?" He reached out and touched her arm. "You are not in his camp and you will not be in his camp again unless you decide to go there, as Djerat did."

"You would stop me if I tried," she said, not quite sulking.

"No, I would not," Sanat Ji Mani said. "I might ask you to consider your decision, and I might point out the risks, but if it is what you want to do, I will not stand against you." He felt grief pluck at him, grief for the many times he had not been able to spare his companions from pain.

"It would be hard for you to manage without me, would it not?" she pursued, exacting revenge for his words against Timur-i.

"Yes, it would," he said bluntly. "As being alone would be difficult for you."

Whatever she had been about to say, she held back, and finally, reluctantly, smiled. "You have the right of it. I do not want to travel alone; I have said as much. So we remain together for now." She sat back. "Later I may change my mind."

"Later you may find a patron who suits you," said Sanat Ji Mani.

"I hope I might," she said, wistfully dubious. "How am I to find this patron in all this rain and away from cities?" She put her pack aside and stretched out beside him. "If you had the wealth you say you have elsewhere, you could be my patron."

"It would please me very much," he said, putting his arm around her shoulder. "If we reach Chaul and you cross the sea with me, I may yet be."

She chuckled. "It would be a fine thing."

"It would," he agreed, thinking he missed the comforts he had enjoyed not so long ago; it would be most gratifying, he told himself, to return to a comfortable house with a library for reading, instruments for music, and a laboratory for alchemy.

"Do you truly believe we will reach Chaul?" she asked, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Yes. It is proving more difficult than I had expected, but I do not doubt we will get there." He stroked her hair. "The land is full of little princelings who squabble over territory like cocks over dunghills."

She remained quiet for some little time, then said, as if continuing with a conversation already begun, "The women you have known-are there many of them?"

"I suppose some would think so," said Sanat Ji Mani. "I have lived a long time."

"And do you forget them, over the years?" How forlorn she sounded, as if all her hopes had been dashed.

"Those who have known me, no, I do not forget them; they are part of me and I am part of them. I could more easily forget my hand than a woman I have touched, who knows that I have touched her." He turned his head toward her.

"You never forget anyone?" she asked in disbelief.

"Those I visit in sleep, as a dream, they are a dream for me as well, sweet and ephemeral, not intended to last. I often forget those women, in time. But those who receive me knowingly, every one is clear in my memory, and will remain so until I die the True Death." He kissed her forehead; it was a chaste kiss, a gentle benediction. "I will not forget you, whether or not I taste your blood."

"Have you visited me in sleep? as a dream?" She shivered as she asked.

"No, Tulsi Kil; I have not," he said.

"Why not?" She was genuinely puzzled. "You could have done."

"No, I could not; I told you I would want more from you than a fleeting impression of satisfaction." He touched her face with his free hand. "I would not abuse your trust of me so egregiously."

"Um," she said, reserving judgment.

He could not let it rest. "I value your friendship and your good opinion, Tulsi; I would do nothing to jeopardize either. If that means there can be nothing more between us than what there is now, I accept it. But I cannot help but wish for intimacy, so that you and I would experience each other more fully."

"And you would be nourished," she said in a small voice.

"It comes back to that, does it not? You think that because I am a vampire, I must be without honor, that I am ruled by my esurience. If you so distrust me, why do you remain with me?" He kept his voice level even as emotion roiled within him.

"I do not distrust you," she said. "But you are right; I fear what you are."

"And the only way I could convince you otherwise would be to compel you to do what you do not wish to do." His enigmatic gaze rested on her face. "So we are at a stand-still."

"You will not leave me," she said, one arm across his chest as if to weight him down. "Say you will not."

"No, I will not," he said with kindness.

She stared into his dark, dark eyes and finally said, "If you do, I will kill myself."

"Why would you do that?" he asked, trying to fathom her intent. "What would you gain? If you do not desire congress with me because you fear death, what is the advantage of killing yourself?"

"I will not be at the mercy of the world." She tightened her hold on him. "I will not have it all be for nothing."

He drew her closer to him. "How can it be for nothing: you have not turned away from what life has offered you."

"I have turned away from what you offer me," she said.

"That is hardly the same thing," he said, managing to smile at her. "I wish you were not afraid, Tulsi, of me, of the world, of anything."

"How could I not be afraid?" She clung to him. "I have been dreaming about how my mother and father died. There has been so much killing."

"Yes," he said. "There has."

"All will end in death, no matter what we do," she whispered.

"Soon or late, it will," he agreed.

"Does that not trouble you, that all will end in death?" Beneath her indignation there was yearning.

"It did, a long time ago. I have come to terms with it: I have had to." He held her gaze with his. "That does not mean I find it easy to say good-bye, for I do not."

She held him tightly. "How long will you live?"

"I have no idea," he answered. "In that I am the same as any breathing human."

This time her silence lasted longer than before. "You say you do not take much blood, not from ... from women." She tried to sound disinterested. "Not as much as from birds and beasts."

"You mean," he said as gently as he could, "you want to know if I take enough blood from a knowing partner, or a dreaming one, to be dangerous: no, I do not. With animals, it is different, for most of them are small, and do not have much to spare, and are needed as food for the living. Also, I get only blood from birds and beasts; from living humans I have the nourishment of touching, and that is better sustenance than anything." He was keenly aware of the places where their bodies met, even through clothes, but he strove to give no sign of this.

"Then your women who die do not die on your account," she said.

"I have told you that before. No, Tulsi, they do not die from what passes between us, or they have not for more than three thousand years." He looked up as another leak brought a ribbon of water through the roof, splattering onto the earthen floor an arm's-length away from where they lay in the wagon-bed. "When I first came to this life, I was what you fear, but I learned the folly of it, and I changed."

"You could have become more cautious, better at persuading women to forget their safety and embrace you." Her arm across his chest tightened. "Once they succumb to you, you would be free to do whatever satisfies you, and they could not stop you-could you not?"

"No doubt," he said drily. "But I do not."

"I want so much to believe you," she cried. "But I dare not."

He gave a quick, one-sided smile. "If that is the case, I can say nothing, do nothing that will end your apprehension." He laid his hand lightly on her arm. "Yet I want you to believe me."

She sighed. "If I knew someone who could tell me you had treated her well, that would be different."

"There are such women, but none of them are here." He laughed sadly. "When we reach Alexandria, you can meet one."

"If we reach Alexandria," she said. "That is a long way across the ocean, you have said."

"Beyond Damascus," Sanat Ji Mani agreed, choosing a city Timur-i had sacked.

"Do you think we will reach it?" She snuggled closer.

"Yes, I do. It is a direct journey across the sea when we are aboard a ship. That is not a difficult matter to arrange: once we reach Chaul, I will be able to get passage aboard one of my ships, or one of Rustam Iniattir's ships, and once the Mameluke Empire is reached, it will be an easy thing to cross to Alexandria." He did his best to minimize the dangers they might encounter; Tulsi was frightened enough without being told of storms and pirates on the ocean, and the desert and thieves in Egypt.

"I know it is never an easy thing to travel-I have been with Timur-i's army most of my life." She tried to break away from him, and although he released her arm, she could not bring herself to move. "It is just that I am lonely."

"Ah, Tulsi Kil," he said tenderly, "so am I."

"Are you? You have said as much, but I wonder how you can be." She sighed and relaxed.

"Why do you say that?" He looked directly at her.

"Because I cannot see how you could endure your loneliness, if you are truly lonely. How can you stand to live?" She waited a moment. "I am so lonely I feel as if the flesh has been stripped from my bones. If you care for those you say you love, and they are lost to you, how can you bear the anguish of it?"

He answered indirectly, recalling his time in the Land of Snows, not quite two centuries ago. "Do you know what it is to be in the high mountain passes, when the wind whips the snow so that it stings and your face is numb-when you know you must continue to move, no matter how arduous movement may be, or die of the cold?" He saw her nod. "My loneliness is like that, when I admit it to my life. Most of the time, I concentrate on the immediacy of things-staying dry, or keeping my life in order-but the isolation is never gone."

"But that is terrible," she exclaimed. "To have so many losses, that only increase: how can you continue on?"

"If I value those I love, I do them no honor by turning my back on the life they shared with me." He shifted the arm she was lying on so he could touch her shoulder. "When you perform, you honor your mother and father, do you not? Well, living is how I value those I have loved and still love, though they are lost to me."

She looked past him, staring at a point beyond the walls of the abandoned building. "What if I want to be with you only because I am lonely, and I am afraid only that I will be lonely still?"

"I have known less ... reasonable explanations for seeking love," he told her thoughtfully, Csimenae and Heugenet both coming to mind. "Do you want me to persuade you to change your mind so that you can be angry if I disappoint you? I will not. Do you want me to tell you I can end your loneliness? I cannot."

Tulsi made a sound of distress. "Yes, I want you to change my mind, and in part so I can blame you for doing it." She moved suddenly, moving her hand from his chest to his head and pulling him down to kiss him directly on the mouth. "There."

"It is a beginning, if you want to begin," he said to her.

"And you: do you want to begin?" She still held her hand tangled in his slightly waving hair, keeping his head a finger's width from hers.

"Yes, but not against your will to begin," he answered, studying her demeanor; he perceived her doubts and attraction together.

"Here, in this place, I do want to," she said, growing breathless. "I may not want anything other than your company at another time."

"That does not bother me," he said, compassion suffusing his features. "I want what you want, no more and no less."

She was about to challenge him again when she sighed abruptly and tugged his hair so she could kiss him again; this time it lasted longer, and became sweeter as it went on. When she moved back, her face was flushed and her eyes were huge. "That was ... not what I expected." She let go of his hair.

"And what did you expect?" he asked, his compelling eyes fixed on hers.

"I ... am not sure. Nothing like ... what you did." She laid her hand on the side of his face. "I felt ... awakened."

Sanat Ji Mani smiled slowly, with deep delight. "If that is what you felt, what can I be but beguiled." He lay still, sensing her need for consideration.

"You are not going to press your advantage?" She sounded confused again.

"I was not aware that I had an advantage," he responded. "It seems to me that I am being tested."

"Are you angry?" she asked urgently.

"No," he said, and knew it was entirely the truth. "I want you to be certain of your decision, whatever it may be, and whenever you may make it."

She levered herself upward so that she could stare down into his face. "I would be furious, to be tested in this way."

He chose to give her an honest answer. "There was a time when I would have been vexed, but that was more than fifteen hundred years ago."

"Are you really so old?" She was studying his face. "You do not look much more than thirty-five or forty."

"I was thirty-three when I came to this life, a mature age then. My family was known for being long-lived." He fingered her hair.

"Were they vampires, too?" She had trouble speaking the word.

"No. They were not." He paused, startled at how keenly he could still feel their loss. "It would not have mattered if they had been."

Without warning, she lowered herself to kiss him again, this time letting the kiss evolve from easy contact to something much more profound, more sensual and complex, filled with promises and hesitation. When she pulled back this time, she was trembling. "What do you want of me?"

"What you seek for yourself," he answered, the incipient joy in his face mirroring her own.

She bit her lower lip. "I do not know what that is."

"Then I will help you to define it, if you want to," he said, warmth in his voice and his eyes.

Tulsi sank down on his chest. "If I become pregnant, I cannot perform, and then we will truly be beggars." She paused. "I was pregnant once; Djerat gave me herbs and it was over. She cannot give me herbs now."

"You will not become pregnant," said Sanat Ji Mani, enfolding her in his arms, wanting to shield her from her experience.

"All men say that. Djerat warned me many times how men lie, and how women must bear the consequences. She was right." She touched his face where the beard began. "Men will do or say anything when lust is on them."

"Many will do," he agreed. "But I do not. Do not fear me for that, Tulsi; there is no reason to, I give you my Word: I will not make you pregnant because I cannot make you pregnant. Those who are undead cannot create life." He brushed her hair out of her face, still holding her close to him.

Tulsi contemplated this for a short while. "That may be true," she allowed at last, realizing as she spoke that she wanted to believe him, to be convinced of his good intentions and her own safety. "But how can you achieve what you need if you do not-"

He laughed once. "There are many ways to find release, not just the one," he answered her. "Those of my blood take the pleasure they give, nothing more and nothing less. What you have, I have. If you want to try, and dislike it, that will be the end of it."

It was her turn to laugh, with an edge in the sound. "You will not demand again what I have given once?"

"No, if it is not what you want," he told her somberly. "There would be no reason to do it."

She scrutinized his features as best she could. "If I tell you that you must not go on, will you stop?" Before he could answer, she went on, "You will say yes in any case, will you not?"

"I will say yes because it is true," he replied.

"Which is either the truth or a lie, and I cannot know which unless I-" She moved atop him again. "How long will it take?"

"That depends on you," he answered. "It will be as long or as brief as you wish."

"Truly?" She waited for him to speak; when he said nothing, she went on. "All right. You may begin, but if I tell you to stop-"

"Then I will stop," he promised her, and drew her down into another kiss, one that opened her lips and evoked sensations she had not known before. As he kissed her, he caressed her shoulders, then her back, and finally her breasts, his small hands gentle and knowing, unhurried in their elicitation of pleasure.

"Oh!" Tulsi cried softly as she broke from their kiss; Sanat Ji Mani at once stopped what he was doing. "No. Go on," she whispered. "I will tell you to stop when I want you to stop."

He resumed his fondling, then, as his hands moved lower, his lips took up what his fingers had left off, teasing at her nipples until they were hard as buttons. He took his time, searching out the hidden passions of her flesh until she was trembling.

"You can do what you want now," she said, catching her breath in her throat.

"No, not yet," he said.

"Why not?" She pushed back from him on quivering arms.

"Because you are not ready yet," he said, continuing his summoning of her responses; gradually her tension gave way to a rapturous languor. He opened the sea-scented folds at the apex of her thighs and a jolt of satisfaction went through her.

"You can-" She was about to say finish when his fingers drew a second and more intense response that plucked the word from her thoughts and left her gasping in ecstasy as her body found its first astounding spasm of fulfillment.

"Now you are ready," he murmured as he moved to nuzzle her throat, and they lay with amplectant limbs, and blended gratification, through the last of the wet afternoon; they neither noticed nor cared when the ceiling sprang another leak.

Text of a letter from Atta Olivia Clemens at Rome to Rogerian in Alexandria; written in the Latin of Imperial Rome.

To my most highly regarded friend and the loyal companion of my treasured Sanct' Germain, the hasty greetings of Atta Olivia Clemens, from Sanza Pari, three thousand paces beyond the walls of Rome.

I have only just returned here from Rhodes, or I would have answered you sooner; I hope the delay has not inconvenienced you. I must tell you that I am leaving tomorrow for France; I have learned that an ambitious Baron is attempting to take over my horse-farm near Orleans, claiming the exigencies of war make it necessary. I intend to stop him.

Yes, I agree with Avasa Dani, Sanct' Germain is as alive as he has been for thirty-four centuries, and although he may be in danger, he has not suffered the True Death. I also agree it is infuriating of him to go off on these journeys on his own, with never a word to anyone. I have never liked his determination to be so far from his native earth without companions or protection. It is most thoughtless of him to put his friends through so much worry on his behalf, going to outlandish places and not informing us of his location or condition. He is a most exasperating man, to be sure. When he returns, you must inform me so that I can give him my thoughts on the matter. To be forever fretting about my oldest and most cherished ally is not something that delights me, and so he should be aware.

There is more disapproval of Wenceslas of Bohemia, and a movement to depose him. The Holy Roman Emperor, it seems, ought not to be a spendthrift sot who passes his time in drunken revels instead of managing the Empire. I cannot suppose that Wenceslas will meekly submit if he is challenged. This may yet lead to internal wars in the German States, which would be most unfortunate, coming at a time when the world is finally beginning to recover from the three Plagues. I mention this in case you should decide to travel into Italy or north, into German territories. This may turn out to be a difficult time in that part of the world.

If you come to Rome, you may, of course, stay at Sanza Pari, whether I am here or not. I will inform Niklos Aulirios to make arrangements for you, in case you have enough of Alexandria and want to wait for Sanct' Germain here rather than there. I confess it would be reassuring to see you again-a reminder that we are all capable of surviving no matter what the world throws at us. You may even bring Avasa Dani if you like. She will be welcome here, if she decides to come with you.

I will have this carried to Ostia today and sent aboard the first reliable ship bound for Alexandria. You should receive it urithin twenty days, perhaps sooner if the weather is favorable. Send word to me in Orleans if you have anything to impart, as I will send word to Alexandria until I am notified you are not there anymore.

Enough of this. I must go to supervise the packing for my journey May you travel safely, and may I, as well.

Atta Olivia Clemens

At Sanza Pari, outside Rome, 13th August, 1399 of the Church's measure.