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IN THE TAVERN, I met with Avicus and Mael the following night. They were filled with fear and they listened with wide eyes as I told them the tale.

Avicus was crushed by this knowledge, but not Mael.

"To destroy her," said Avicus, "why did it have to be done?"

He felt no false manly need to disguise his grief and sadness and was weeping at once.

"You know why," said Mael. "There would have been no stop to her enmity. Marius knew this. Don't torment him now with questions. It had to be done. "

I could say nothing, for I had too many doubts as to what I'd done. It had been so absolute and so sudden. I felt a tightening of my heart and chest when I thought about it, a sort of panic which resides in the body rather than the brain.

I sat back, observing my two companions and thinking hard on what their affection had meant to me. It had been sweet and I did not want to leave them, but that was precisely what I intended to do.

Finally after they had quietly quarreled for some time, I gestured for silence. On the matter of Eudoxia I had only a few things to say.

"It was my anger which required it," I said, "for what other part of me, except my anger, had received the insult of what she had done to us through the destruction of our house? I don't regret that she is gone; no, I cannot. And as I've told you, it was only done by means of an offering to the Mother, and as to why the Mother wanted or took such an offering, I can't say.

"Long ago in Antioch, I offered victims to the Divine Parents. I brought the Evil Doers, drugged and unknowing, into the shrine. But neither the Mother nor the Father ever took this blood.

"I don't know why the Mother drank from Eudoxia except that Eudoxia offered herself, and I had prayed for a sign. It's finished, this matter of Eudoxia. She is gone, with all her beauty and her charm.

"But listen hard to what I must tell you now. I'm leaving you. I'm leaving this city, which I detest, and I will take the Mother and the Father with me, of course. I'm leaving you, and I urge you to remain together, as I'm sure you mean to do, for your love for one another is the source of your endurance and your strength. "

"But why leave us!" demanded Avicus. His expressive face was charged with emotion. "How can you do such a thing? We've been happy here, the three of us, we've hunted together, we've found Evil Doers aplenty. Why would you go now?"

"I must be alone," I said. "It was so before and it's so now. "

"Marius, this is folly," said Mael. "You'll end up in the crypt again with the Divine Parents, slumbering until you're too weak to be awakened on your own. "

"Perhaps, but if such a thing happens," I said, "you can be more than certain that Those Who Must Be Kept will be safe. "

"I can't understand you," said Avicus. He began to weep again. He wept as much for Eudoxia as for me.

I didn't try to stop him. The tavern was dim and overcrowded and no one took notice of one being, albeit a splendid figure of a male with a white hand covering his face, drunk perhaps over his cup of wine for all anyone knew, weeping into it, and wiping at his tears.

Mael looked dreadfully sad.

"I must go," I tried to explain. "You must realize, both of you, that the secret of the Mother and the Father must be kept. As long as I remain with you, the secret isn't safe. Anyone, even those as weak as Eudoxia's slaves, Asphar and Rashid, can pick it out of your minds. "

"But how do you know they did!" Mael protested.

Oh, it was all too sad. But I couldn't be deterred.

"If I am alone," I said, "then I alone possess the secret of where the Divine Parents sit in state, or lie in sleep. " I paused, quite miserable and wishing that all of this could have been done simply, and despising myself as much perhaps as I ever have.

I wondered again why I had ever fled Pandora, and it seemed, quite suddenly, that I had put an end to Eudoxia for the same reason¡ªthat these two creatures were more surely linked in my mind than I was willing to admit.

But no, that wasn't true. Rather I didn't know it for certain. What I knew was, I was a weak being as well as a strong being and I could have loved Eudoxia, perhaps as much as I'd loved Pandora, if time had given me the chance.

"Stay with us," Avicus said. "I don't blame you for what you did. You mustn't leave because you think I do. I was caught by her spell, yes, I admit it, but I don't despise you for what you did. "

"I know that," I said, taking his hand and seeking to reassure him. "But I have to be alone. " I couldn't console him. "Now listen to me, both of you," I said. "You know well how to find concealment for yourself. You must do it. I myself will go to Eudoxia's old house to make the plans for my departure, as I have no other house in which I can work. You may come with me if you like and see what crypts there might be beneath the structure but such is a dangerous thing to do. "

Neither of them wanted to go near the house of Eudoxia.

"Very well then, you're wise, you always have been. I'll leave you now to your own designs. I promise I won't leave Constantinople for some nights. There are things I want to revisit again, among them the great churches and even the Imperial palace. Come to me at the house of Eudoxia, or I'll find you. "

I kissed them both, as men kiss, roughly, with gruff and heated gestures and tight embraces, and then I was off on my own as I so longed to be.