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"And you saw them," Mael said, as if nothing could make him pause in his relentless questioning.

"They exist; they are-safe," I said. "Listen to what Avicus tells you. What was Avicus told? "

Avicus was desperately trying to remember. He was searching so far back that he was discovering his own age. At last he spoke in the same respectful and polite voice as before.

"Both of them contain the seed from which we all spring!" he answered. "They cannot be destroyed on that account for if they were, we would die with them. Ah, don't you see?" He looked at Mael. "I know now the cause of the Terrible Fire. Someone seeking to destroy us burnt them or placed them in the sun. "

I was utterly defeated. He had revealed one of the most precious secrets. Would he know the other? I sat in sullen silence.

He rose from the chair and began to walk about the room, incensed by his memories,

"How long did they remain in the fire? Or was it only one day's passage in the desert sand?" He turned to me. "They were white as marble when I saw them. 'This is the Divine Mother,' they said to me. My lips touched her foot. The priest pressed his heel to the back of my neck. When the Terrible Fire came I had been so long in the oak I remembered nothing. I had deliberately slain my memory. I had slain all sense of time. I lived for the monthly blood sacrifice and the yearly Sanhaim. I starved and dreamed as I'd been commanded to do. My life was in rising at Sanhaim to judge the wicked, to look into the hearts of those who were accused and pronounce on their guilt or innocence.

"But now I remember. I remember the sight of them¡ªthe Mother and the Father¡ªfor I saw both of them before they pressed my lips to her feet. How cold she was. How awful it was. And I was unwilling. I was so filled with anger and fear. And it was a brave man's fear. "

I winced at his last words. I knew what he meant. What must a brave general feel when he knows the battle has gone against him and nothing remains but death?Mael looked up at Avicus with a face full of sorrow and sympathy.

But Avicus was not finished. On he went with his walking, seeing nothing before him but memory, his thick black hair falling forward as he dipped his head under the weight of memories he bore.

His black eyes were lustrous in the light of the many lamps. But his expression was his finest feature.

"Was it the sun, or was it a Te

rrible Fire?" he asked. "Did someone try to burn them? Did someone believe such a thing could be done? (Oh, it's so simple. I should have remembered. But memory is desperate to leave us. Memory knows that we cannot endure its company.

Memory would reduce us to fools. Ah, listen to old mortals when they have nothing but memories of childhood. How they go on mistaking those around them for persons long dead, and no one listens. How often I have eavesdropped on them in their misery. How often I have wondered at their long uninterrupted conversations with ghosts in empty rooms. "

Still I said nothing.

But he looked at me at last, and asked me:

"You saw them, the King and Queen. You know where they are?"

I waited a long moment before answering. I spoke simply when I answered.

"I saw them, yes. And you must trust me that they are safe. And that you don't want to know where they are. " I studied both of them. "If you were to know, then perhaps some night other blood drinkers could take you prisoner and wring the truth from you, and they might strive to claim the King and Queen. "

Mael studied me for a long while before he responded. "We fight others who attempt to take Rome from us. You know we've done this. We force them to leave. "

"I know you do," I said. "But the Christian vampires continue to come, and they come in numbers, and those numbers grow larger all the time. They are devoted to their Devil, their Serpent, their Satan. They will come again. There will be more and more. . . ""They mean nothing to us," said Mael disgustedly. "Why would they want this Holy Pair?"

For a moment I said nothing. Then the truth broke from me hatefully, as though I couldn't protect them from it, nor protect myself.

"All right," I said. "Since you know so much, both of you, let me explain the following: many blood drinkers want the Mother and the Father. There are those who come from the Far East who know of them. They want the Primal Blood. They believe in its strength. It's stronger than any other blood. But the Mother and Father can move to defend themselves. Yet still thieves will always be in search of them, ready to destroy whoever keeps them in hiding. And such thieves have in the past come to me. "

Neither of them spoke. I went on.

"You do not want, either of you," I said, "to know anything further of the Mother and the Father. You do not want rogues to come upon you and try to overpower you for your knowledge. You do not want secrets which can be ripped from your heart. "

I glared at Mael as I said these last words. Then I spoke again.

"To know of the Mother and the Father is a curse. "

A silence fell, but I could see that Mael would not allow for it to be very long. A light came into his face, and he said to me in a trembling voice:

"Have you drunk this Primal Blood?" Slowly he became incensed. "You have drunk this blood, haven't you?"

"Quiet, Mael," said Avicus. But it was no use.