Page 61

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 tha

t 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. "