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"Don't you see I mean what I say?" she said to me without turning her head away from the King and Queen. "Let me be your victim, most holy Akasha, let me be your blood sacrifice, most holy Queen. "

In a flash Akasha's right arm rose and pulled Eudoxia forward in a brutal and tight embrace.

An awful groan rose from Eudoxia.

Down came the reddened mouth of the Queen, with only the slightest move of her head, and I saw the sharp teeth only for an instant before they penetrated Eudoxia's neck. Eudoxia was helpless, head wrenched to one side, as Akasha drank from her, Eudoxia's arms hanging limp as her legs, Akasha's face as blank as ever, as the grip tightened and the drinking went on.

I stood horrified, not daring to challenge anything that I beheld.

No more than a few seconds passed, perhaps half a minute before Eudoxia gave a raw and terrible scream. She tried desperately to raise her arms.

"Stop, Mother, I beg you!" I cried out and with all my might I took hold of the body of Eudoxia. "Stop, I beg you, don't take her life! Spare her!" I pulled on the body. "Spare her, Mother!" I cried. I felt the body shift in my grasp and quickly I drew it back from the curved arm which remained poised in space.

Eudoxia still breathed, though she was livid, and groaning miserably, and we both fell back off the dais, as the arm of Akasha returned to its age-old position, at her side, fingers laid on her thigh as though nothing had occurred.

Sprawled on the floor I lay with the gasping Eudoxia.

"Did you want to die!" I demanded.

"No," she said desperately. She lay there with her breast heaving, her hands shuddering, seemingly unable to rise to her feet.

I looked up searchingly into the Queen's face.

The sacrifice had given no blush to her cheeks. And on her lips there was no red blood.

I was stupefied. I picked up Eudoxia and rushed to get her out of the shrine, up the steps, through the various tunnels, and finally into the house above ground.

I ordered all the others out of the library, slamming tight the doors with the Mind Gift, and there I laid her down on my couch so that she might at least catch her breath.

"But how?" she asked me, "did you ever have the courage to take me from her? " She clung to my neck. "Hold tight to me, Marius, don't let me go just yet. I cannot. . . I do not. . . Hold tight to me. Where did you get the courage to move against our own Queen?"

"She was about to destroy you," I said. "She was about to answer my prayer. "

"And what prayer was that?" she asked.

She let me go. I brought up a chair to sit beside her.

Her face was drawn and tragic, her eyes brilliant. She reached out and clung to my sleeve.

"I asked for a sign of her pleasure," I said. "Would she be given over to you or remain with me? She's spoken. And you see how it is. "

She shook her head, but it was not a negation to anything that I'd said. She was trying to recover her clarity of mind. She tried to rise from the couch and then fell backwards.

For a long time, she merely lay there, staring at the ceiling and I couldn't know her thoughts. I tried to take her hand, but she withdrew it from me.

Then in a low voice, she said:

"You've drunk her blood. You have the Fire Gift, and you've drunk her blood. And this she has done in answer to your prayer. "

"Tell me," I said. "What prompted you to offer yourself to her? Why did you say such words? Had you ever spoken them in Egypt? "

"Never," she said in a heated murmur. "I had forgotten the beauty. " She looked confused, weak. "I had forgotten the timelessness," she whispered. "I had forgotten the silence gathered around them¡ªas if it were so many veils. "

She turned and looked at me languidly. She looked about her. I sensed her hunger, her weakness.

"Yes," she sighed. "Bring my slaves to me," she said. "Let them go out and obtain for me a sacrifice, for I'm too weak from having been the sacrifice myself. "

I went into the courtyard garden and told her little gang of exquisite blood drinkers to go to her. She could give them this disagreeable order on her own.