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"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 f

riend, Avicus, I must lay down for you some hard terms. "

"How so, Eudoxia?" I asked calmly.

Mael was in a rage.