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 real 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.

"He was never civil or kind, but never terribly cruel either. I was never out of his sight. When I asked if we might acquire better clothes for me, he agreed, though he obviously didn't care too much about it. As for himself, he wore a long tunic and a cloak, changing only when these became worn, stealing the fresh clothing from one of his victims.

"He often patted me on the head. He had no words for love, and he had no imagination. When I brought back books from the market to read poetry, he laughed at me, if you can call the toneless noise he made a laugh. I read the poetry to him nevertheless, and much of the time after the initial laugh he simply stared at me.

"Once or twice I asked him how he'd been made a blood drinker, and he said it was by a wicked drinker of the blood who had come out of Upper Egypt. 'They're all liars, those old ones,' he said. 'I call them the Temple Blood Drinkers.' And that constituted the entire history he bequeathed to me.

'If I went against him in any particular, he hit me. It wasn't a terribly hard blow, but it was enough to stop me from ever opposing him on any count.

"When I tried to put the household in some sort of order, he stared at me dully, never offering to help but never striking me either. I rolled out some of the Babylonian rugs. I put some of the marble statues along the wall so that they looked respectable. I cleaned up the courtyard.

"Now during this time, I heard other blood drinkers in Alexandria. I even glimpsed them, but never did they come very close.

"When I told him about them, he only shrugged and said that they were no worry of mine. Tm too strong for them,' he told me, 'and besides they don't want any trouble. They know that I know too much about them.' He didn't explain further, but he told me I was very blessed in that he'd given me old blood.

"I don't know what kept me so happy during that time. Perhaps it was hunting different parts of Alexandria, or just reading new books, or swimming in the sea. He and I did go out together and swim in the sea.

"I don't know if you can imagine this¡ªwhat the sea meant to me, that I might bathe in it, that I might walk along the shore. A closeted Greek housewife would never have that privilege. And I was a blood drinker. I was a boy. I hunted the ships in the harbor. I walked with brave and evil men.

"One night my Maker failed to cut off my hair, as was the evening custom, and he took me to a strange place. It was in the Egyptian quarter of the city, and once we opened the door, we had to follow a long descending tunnel, before we came into a great room covered with the old picture writing of Egypt. There were huge square pillars supporting the ceiling. It was rather an awe-inspiring place.

"I think it brought to memory a more refined time to me, when I had known things of mystery and beauty, though I cannot now really say.

"There were several blood drinkers there. They were pale and appeared extremely beautiful, but nothing as white as my Maker and they were clearly afraid of him. I was quite astonished to see all this. But then I remembered his phrase, 'Temple Blood Drinkers,' and I thought, So we are with them.

"He pushed me forward as a little miracle which they had not beheld. There was a quarrel then in their language, which I could just barely understand.

"It seemed they told him that the Mother would make the decision, and then and only then could he be forgiven for his ways. As for him, my Maker, he said that he didn't care whether or not he was forgiven, but he was going off now, and he wanted to be rid of me and if they would take me, that was all he wanted to know.

"I was terrified. I didn't entirely like this gloomy place, grand though it was. And we had spent several years together. And now he was leaving?

"I wanted to ask him, What had I done? I suppose I realized in that moment that I loved him. I would do anything if he would only change his mind.

"The others fell upon me. They took hold of me by both arms and dragged me with unnecessary force into another gigantic room.

"The Mother and the Father were there, resplendent and shining, seated on a huge throne of black diorite, above some six or seven marble steps.

"This was the main room of a temple, and all its columns and walls were decorated beautifully with the Egyptian writing, and the ceiling was covered with plates of gold.

"Naturally I thought, as we all do, that the Mother and the Father were statues, and as I was dragged closer to them, I was mad with resentment that such a thing was taking place.

"I was also curiously ashamed, ashamed that I wore old sandals and a dirty boyish tunic, and that my hair was tumbled down all around me¡ªfor on this one night my Maker had failed to hack it off¡ªand I was in no way prepared for what ritual was to take place.

"Akasha and Enkil were of the purest white, and they sat as they have always done, since I have come to know them¡ªas they sit in your underground chapel now."

Mael broke the narrative with an angry question:

"How do you know how the Mother and Father appear in our underground chapel?"

I was deeply disturbed that he had done this.

But Eudoxia remained utterly composed.

"You have no power to see through the minds of other blood drinkers?" she asked. Her eyes were hard, perhaps even a little cruel.

Mael was confused.

And I was keenly aware that he had given away a secret to Eudoxia, the secret being that he didn't have such a power, or that he didn't know that he did, and I wasn't quite sure what I should do.

Understand he knew that he could find other blood drinkers by hearing their thoughts, but he didn't know how to use this power to even greater advantage, seeing what they saw.

Indeed, all three of us were uncertain of our powers. And I realized how foolish this was.

At this moment, when Eudoxia received no answer to her question, I tried vainly to think of some way to distract her.

"Please," I said to Eudoxia, "will you continue? Tell us your story." I didn't dare to apologize for Mael's rudeness because that might have made him furious.

"Very well," said Eudoxia looking straight at me as though she were dismissing my companions as impossible.

"As I was telling you," she said, "My Maker pushed me forward and told me to kneel before the Father and the Mother. And being exceedingly frightened, I did as I was told.

"I looked up at their faces, as blood drinkers have done since time immemorial and I saw no vitality, no subtlety of expression, only the relaxation of dumb animals, no more.

"But then there came a change in the Mother. Her right hand was raised ever so slightly from her lap and it turned and thereby made the simplest beckoning gesture to me.

"I was astonished by this gesture. So these creatures lived and breathed? Or was it trickery, some form of magic? I didn't know.

"My Maker, ever so crude even at this sacred moment, said, 'Ah, go to her, drink her blood. She is the Mother of us all.' And with his bare foot, he kicked me. 'She is the First One,' he said. 'Drink.'

"The other blood drinkers began to quarrel with him fiercely, speaking the old Egyptian tongue again, telling him that the gesture wasn't clear, that the Mother might destroy me, and who was he to give such a command, and how dare he come to this temple with a pitiful female blood drinker who was as soiled and untutored as he was.

"But he overrode them. 'Drink her blood and your strength will be beyond measure,' he said. Then he lifted me to my feet and all but threw me forward so that I landed with my hands on the marble steps before the throne.

"The other blood drinkers were shocked by his behavior. I heard a low laugh from my Maker. But my eyes were on the King and the Queen.

"I saw that the Queen had moved her hand again, opening her fingers, and though her eyes never changed, the beckoning gesture was certain.

" 'From her neck,' said my Maker. 'Don't be afraid. She never destroys those whom she beckons. Do as I say.' And I did.

"I drank as much from her as I was able to drink. And mark my words, Marius, this was over three hundred years before the Elder ever put the Mother and Father in the Great Fire. And I was to drink from her more than once. Heed my words, more than once, long before you ever came to Alexandria, long before you took our King and Queen."

She raised her dark black eyebrows slightly as she looked at me, as though she wanted me to understand her point most keenly. She was very very strong.

"But Eudoxia, when I did come to Alexandria," I answered her. "When I came in search of the Mother and Father, and to discover who had put them in the sun, you weren't there in the temple. You weren't in Alexandria. At least you didn't make yourself known to me."

"No," she said, "I was in the city of Ephesus where I had gone with another blood drinker whom the Fire destroyed. Or I should say, I was making my way home to Alexandria, to find the reason for the Fire, and to drink of the healing fount, when you took the Mother and Father away."

She gave me a delicate but cold smile.

"Can you imagine my anguish when I discovered that the Elder was dead and the temple was empty? When the few survivors of the temple told me that a Roman named Marius had come and stolen our King and Queen?"

I said nothing, but her resentment was plain. Her face displayed its human emotions. A shimmer of blood tears rose in her round dark eyes,

"Time has healed me, Marius," she said, "because I contain a great deal of the Queen's blood, and was from the moment of my making very strong. Indeed, the Great Fire only turned me a dark brown color, with small pain. But if you hadn't taken Akasha away from Alexandria, she would have let me drink her blood again, and I would have been healed quickly. It would not have taken so long."

"And would you drink the Queen's blood now, Eudoxia? " I asked. "Is that what you mean to do? For surely you know why I did what I did. Surely you know it was the Elder who put the Mother and the Father in the sun."

She didn't answer. I couldn't tell whether this information surprised her or not. She was perfectly concealed. Then she said:

"Do I need the blood now, Marius? Look at me. What do you see?"

I hesitated to answer. Then I did:

"No, you don't need it, Eudoxia," I said. "Unless such blood is always a blessing."

She looked at me for a long moment and then she nodded her head slowly, almost drowsily and her dark eyebrows came together in a small frown.

"Always a blessing?" she asked, repeating my words. "I don't know if it is always a blessing."

"Will you tell me more of your story? What happened after you first drank from Akasha? After your Maker went his way?" I put these questions gently. "Did you reside in the temple once your Maker had left?"

This seemed to give her the moment of recollection that she required.

"No, I didn't remain there," she said. "Though the priests coaxed me, telling me wild stories of old worship, and that the Mother was imperishable, save from the sunlight, and should she ever burn, so would we all. There was one among them who made quite a point of this warning, as though the prospect tantalized him¡ª."

"The Elder," I said, "who eventually sought to prove it."

"Yes," she said. "But to me he was no Elder, and I did not heed his words.

"I went out, free of my Maker, and, left with his house and his treasure, I decided upon another way of life. Of course the temple priests often came to me and harried me that I was profane and reckless, but as they did no more than that, I paid them no heed.

"I could easily pass for human then, especially if I covered my skin with certain oils." She sighed. "And I was used to passing for a young man. It was a simple matter for me to make a fine household, to acquire good clothes, that is, to pass from poor to rich in a matter of nights.

"I gave out word in the schools and in the marketplace that I could write letters for people, and that I could copy books, and all this by night when the other copyists had quit and gone home. And arranging a big study in my house, with plenty of light, I set to doing this for human beings, and this was how I came to know them, and came to know what the teachers were teaching by day.

"What an agony it was that I couldn't hear the great philosophers who held forth in the daylight hours, but I did very well with this nocturnal occupation, and I had what I wanted, the warm voices of humans speaking to me. I befriended mortals. And on many an evening my house was filled with banqueting guests.

"I learned of the world from students, poets, soldiers. In the small hours, I slipped into the great library of Alexandria, a place that you should have visited, Marius. It is a wonder that you passed over such a treasure house of books. I did not pass it over."

She paused. Her face was horridly blank, and I knew it was from an excess of emotion. She did not look at any of us.

"Yes, I understand this," I said, "I understand it very very deeply. I feel the same need for mortal voices near me, for mortals smiling on me as though I were their own."

"I know your loneliness," she said in a rather hard voice. And for the first time I had the feeling that the passing expressions on her face were hard as well, that her face was nothing but a beautiful shell for a disturbed soul inside her, of which I knew little from her words.

"I lived well and for a long time in Alexandria," she said. "What greater city was there? And I believed as many blood drinkers do that knowledge alone would sustain me over the decades, that information could somehow stave off despair."

I was quite impressed with these words, but I didn't respond.

"I should have remained in Alexandria," she said, looking off, her voice low and suddenly full of regret. "I began to love a certain mortal, a young man who felt great love for me. One night he made his love known to me, that he would give up all for me¡ªhis proposed marriage, his family, all¡ªif only I would go away with him to Ephesus, the place from which his family had come, and where he wanted to return."

She broke off as if she did not mean to go on.

"It was such love," she said, her words coming more slowly, "and all this while he believed that I was a young man."

I said nothing.

"The night he declared his love, I revealed myself. He was quite horrified by the pretense. And I took my revenge." She frowned as though she wasn't quite sure of the word. "Yes," she said, "my revenge."

"You made him a blood drinker," I said softly.

"Yes," she said, still looking off as though she were back in those times. "I did, and by the most brutal and ungraceful force, and once that was done, he saw me with naked and loving eyes."

"Loving eyes?" I repeated.

She looked pointedly at Avicus and then back to me. Then she looked at Avicus again.

I took my measure of him. I had always thought him rather splendid, and assumed from his beauty that the Gods of the Grove were chosen for their beauty as well as their endurance, but I tried to see him as she saw him now. His skin was golden now, rather than brown, and his thick black hair made a dignified frame for his unusually beguiling face.

I looked back to Eudoxia and saw with a little shock that she was looking at me.

"He loved you again?" I asked, locking in immediately upon her story and its meaning. "He loved you even when the Blood flowed in his veins?"

I could not even guess her inner thoughts.

She gave me a grave nod. "Yes, he loved me again," she said. "And he had the new eyes of the Blood, and I was his teacher, and we all know what charm lies in all that." She smiled bitterly.

A sinister feeling came over me, a feeling that something was very wrong with her, that perhaps she was mad. But I had to bury this feeling within me and I did.

"Off we went to Ephesus," she said, going on with her story, "and though it was no match for Alexandria, it was nevertheless a great Greek city, with rich trade from the East, and with pilgrims always coming for the worship of the great goddess Artemis, and there we lived until the Great Fire."

Her voice became small. Mortals might not have heard it.

"The Great Fire destroyed him utterly," she said. "He was just that age when all the human flesh was gone from him, and only the blood drinker remained, but the blood drinker had only just begun to be strong."

She broke off, as though she could not continue, then she went on:

"There were only ashes left to me of him. Ashes and no more."

She fell silent and I dared not encourage her.

Then she said:

"I should have taken him to the Queen before I ever left Alexandria. But you see, I had no time for the temple blood drinkers and when I had gone to them, it was as a rebel, talking my way in proudly with tales of the Queen's gestures to me so that I might lay flowers before her, and what if I had brought my lover, and the Queen had made no such gesture as that which she had made to me? And so, you see, I had not brought him, and there in Ephesus, I stood with the ashes in my hands."

I remained silent out of respect for her. I couldn't help but glance at Avicus again. He was all but weeping. She had possession of him, heart and soul.

"Why did I go back to Alexandria after this terrible loss?" she asked wearily. "Because the temple blood drinkers had told me that the Mother was the Queen of all. Because they had spoken of the sun and of our burning. And I knew that something must have befallen our Mother, something had caused this Great Fire, and that only those in the temple would know what it was. And there was a pain in my flesh, by no means unbearable, but something which I would have healed by the Mother, if I had found her there."

I said nothing.

In all the years since I'd taken Those Who Must Be Kept, I had never come upon such a creature as this woman. And I should say as well that never had such a blood drinker come upon me.

Never had anyone come armed with such eloquence, or history, or old poetry such as this.

"For centuries," I said, my voice low and gentle, "I kept the Mother and Father in Antioch. Other blood drinkers found me¡ªwarlike and violent creatures, creatures badly burnt and bound upon stealing the strong blood. But you, you never came."

She shook her head in negation.

"Never did Antioch enter my thoughts," she confessed. "I believed that you had taken the Mother and Father to Rome. Marius, the Roman, that is what they called you. Marius, the Roman, has taken the Mother and the Father. And so you see, I made a severe error in going to the Imperial City, and after that I went to Crete, and I was never to be close to you, never to find you by the Mind Gift, never to hear tell of where you might be.

"But I was not always searching for the Mother and Father," she said. "I had my passions. I made blood drinkers to be my companions. The centuries healed me as you have seen. I am now far stronger than you are, Marius. I am infinitely stronger than your companions. And though touched by your fine Patrician manners and your old-fashioned Latin, and by the devotion of your friend, Avicus, I must lay down for you some hard terms."

"How so, Eudoxia?" I asked calmly.

Mael was in a rage.

She was quiet for a long moment, during which her small delicate features wore nothing but an expression of sweetness and kindness, and then she said with courtesy:

"Give over the Mother and Father to me, Marius, or I shall destroy you and your companions. You will not be allowed either to stay or to go."

I could see the shock in Avicus. As for Mael he was, thank the gods, dumbfounded. And as for me, I was again stunned. I waited several moments, and then I asked: "Why do you want the Mother and Father, Eudoxia?" "Oh, Marius," she shook her head crossly, "don't play the fool. You know the Mother's blood is the strongest. I've already told you that every time I ever appealed to her, she gave me the welcoming gesture, and allowed me to drink. I want her because I want the power in her. And also because I would not have this King and Queen, who can be burnt again or put in the sun, given over to others who might do such rash things."

"Have you thought this through?" I asked coldly. "How would you keep the shrine secret? From what I've seen of your blood drinker companions, they are almost children both in mortal years and in the Blood. Do you know the weight of this burden?"

"I knew it before you ever existed," she said, her face suffused with anger. "You play with me, Marius. And I won't have it. I know what's in your heart. You won't give up the Mother because you won't give up the blood."

"Perhaps so, Eudoxia," I said, straining to remain civil. "I want time to consider what has been said here."

"No, I give you no time," she said, her voice angry, a blush coming to her cheeks. "Answer me now, or I destroy you."

Her rage was so sudden it caught me off guard. Yet quickly, I recovered.

"And how do you mean to do this?" I asked.

Mael jumped to his feet, and moved behind his chair. I gestured for him to be still. Avicus sat in mute despair. The blood tears had begun to flow from him, and they moved down his face. He was far more disappointed than fearful. In fact, he seemed rather solemnly brave.

Eudoxia turned to Avicus, and at once I sensed a threat in her posture. Her limbs stiffened, and it seemed that her eyes became unusually hard. She meant to do something evil to Avicus, and there was no time for me to wait and see what that might be.

I rose, and rushing at her, took hold of her by both wrists, turning her so that inevitably and furiously she looked up at me.

Of course this physical strength could accomplish little here, but what more could I do? What had my powers become over these years? I didn't know. But there was no time to ponder or experiment. I summoned, from the very depths of my being, all the destructive force I might possess.

I felt a pain in my belly and then in my head, and while Eudoxia went limp in my grasp, with her eyes closed, I felt a dreadful heat come full force against my face and chest. But I was not burnt by it. I repelled it and drove it back whence it had come.

In sum, this was a battle, and I had no idea who might win it. I sought again to bring all the force that I could command into action and again I saw her weaken, felt her weaken, and yet there came the heat once more against me but it had no effect.

I threw her down on the marble floor and I stood over her, gathering the force with all my will and directing it towards her, and she writhed on the marble, her eyes closed, and her hands shuddering. My force held her pinioned. My force would not let her rise.

At last she went still. She breathed deeply and then she opened her eyes, and she looked up at me.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her acolytes Asphar and Rashid coming to assist her. Both brandished huge glittering swords. I looked desperately about for one of the oil lamps in the hope that I could burn one of them with flaming oil, but then my thoughts went before me with all my strength and with utter rage: Oh, if I could only burn you! And Rashid stopped, cried out, and then burst into flames.

With utter horror, I beheld this. I knew I had done it. And so did all present. The boy's bones were visible but for an instant and then they collapsed and the flames leapt and danced on the marble floor.

I had no choice but to turn to Asphar. But Eudoxia cried out.

"Enough." She struggled to rise but she couldn't do it. I took both her hands and lifted her to her feet.

With her head bowed she backed away from me. She turned and looked at the remains of Rashid.

"You've destroyed one who was dear to me," she said, her voice quivering. "And you didn't even know you had the power of Fire."

"And you meant to destroy my Avicus," I said, "and you meant to destroy me." I sighed as I looked at her. "What choice did you give me? You have been my teacher in regard to my powers." I trembled with exhaustion and fury. "We might have all lived here in accord."

I looked at Asphar who didn't dare to come any closer. I looked at Eudoxia who sat weak and useless in her chair.

"I mean to leave now," I said, "and take my two companions with me. If you try to harm any of us, I'll turn my full power on you. And as you said, I do not even know what it is myself."

"You threaten from fear," she said wearily. "And you won't leave here without giving me a life for a life. You burnt Rashid. Give me

Avicus. Give him to me now of your own free will."

"I will not," I said coldly. I felt my power gathered inside me. I glared at Asphar. The poor child blood drinker quivered in terror.

Eudoxia sat sullenly in her chair, her head still bowed.

"What a loss there has been here, Eudoxia," I said. "We could have given such riches of mind to each other."

"Stop your golden talk, Marius," she said, looking up angrily, her eyes full of blood tears. "You still fear me. Bring me to the Mother and the Father, and let the Mother decide who shall be her keeper, you or I."

I answered quickly,

"I won't have you under my roof, Eudoxia. But I will take the matter before the Mother and the Father. And after they speak to me, I will speak to you."

I turned to Asphar.

"Lead us out of this place now," I said, "or I'll burn you as I did your companion."

He obeyed without hesitation, and once he had led us speedily to the street, we fled.