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"Don't say any more, please," I said. "You don't have to flatter me. It won't matter. I can't take you with me. "

"Why?" she asked. "Because I know about the Mother and the Father?"

I was shocked.

I should read her thoughts, all her thoughts, ransack her soul for everything she knew, I thought, but I didn't want to do it. I didn't want that feeling of intimacy with her. Her beauty was too much, there was no denying it.

Unlike my paragon, Pandora, this lovely creature had the promise of a virgin¡ªthat one could make of her what one wanted while losing nothing¡ªand I believed that promise to contain a lie.

I answered her in a warm whisper trying not to hurt her.

"That's precisely the reason I can't take you, that, and because I must be alone. "

She bowed her head. "What am I to do?" she asked. "Tell me. Men will come here, mortal men," she said, "wanting the taxes on this house or some other triviality and I shall be discovered and called a witch or a heretic and dragged into the streets. Or during the day they will come and find me sleeping like the dead beneath the floor, and lift me, hoping to revive me, into the certain death of the sun's light. "

"Stop, I know it all," I said. "Don't you see, I'm trying to reason! Leave me alone for now. "

"If I leave you alone," she said, "I'll start weeping or screaming in my grief, and you won't be able to bear it. You'll desert me. "

"No, I won't," I said. "Be quiet. "

I paced the floor, my heart aching for her, and my soul hurting for myself that this had fallen to me. It seem

ed a terrible justice for my slaughter of Eudoxia. Indeed this child seemed some phantom risen from Eudoxia's ashes to haunt me as I tried to plan my escape from what I'd done.

Finally, I quietly sent out my call to Avicus and Mael. Using my strongest Mind Gift, I urged them, no, commanded them, to come to me at Eudoxia's house and to let nothing keep them from it. I told them I needed them and I would wait until they arrived.

Then I sat down beside my young captive and I did what I had been wanting to do all along: I moved her heavy black hair back behind her shoulders and I kissed her soft cheeks. These were rapacious kisses and I knew it. But the texture of her baby soft skin and of her thick wavy hair drove me to quiet madness, and I wouldn't stop.

This intimacy startled her but she did nothing to drive me away.

"Did Eudoxia suffer?" she asked me.

"Very little, if at all," I said. I drew back from kissing her. "But tell me why she didn't simply try to destroy me," I said. "Why did she invite me here? Why did she talk with me? Why did she give me some hope that we could come to an understanding of the mind?"

She pondered this before she answered.

"You held a fascination for her," said Zenobia, "which others had not. It wasn't only your beauty though that was a large part of it. Always for her a large part of it. She said to me that she had heard tell of you from a woman blood drinker in Crete long ago. "

I dared not interrupt her! I stared with wide eyes.

"Many years ago," she said, "this Roman blood drinker had come to the isle of Crete, wandering, looking for you, and speaking of you¡ª Marius, the Roman, Patrician by birth, scholar by choice. The woman blood drinker loved you. She didn't challenge the claim of Eudoxia to all of the island. She searched only for you, and when she found that you weren't there, she moved on. "

I couldn't speak! I was so miserable and so excited that I couldn't answer her. It was Pandora! And this was the first that I had heard of her in three hundred years.

"Don't weep over this," she said gently. "It happened in ages past. Surely time can take away such love. What a curse if it can't. "

"It can't. " I said. My voice was thick. The tears were in my eyes. "What more did she say? Tell me, please, the tiniest things you might remember. " My heart was knocking in my chest. Indeed it seemed as if I'd forgotten that I had a heart and must now find out.

"What more. There is no more. Only that the woman was powerful and no easy enemy. You know Eudoxia always spoke of such things. The woman could not be destroyed, nor would she tell the origin of her great strength. To Eudoxia it was a mystery¡ªuntil you came to Constantinople, and she saw you, Marius, the Roman, in your brilliant red robes, moving through the square at evening, pale as marble, yet with all the conviction of a mortal man. "

She paused. She put her hand up to touch the side of my face.

"Don't cry. Those were her words: 'with all the conviction of a mortal man. ' "

"How then did you learn of the Mother and the Father?" I asked, "and what do such words mean to you?"

"She spoke of them in amazement," she said. "She said you were rash if not mad. But you see, she would go one way and then the other, that was always in her nature. She cursed you that the Mother and the Father were in this very city, and yet she wanted to bring you here to her house. On account of this, I had to be hidden. Yet she kept the boys for whom she cared so little. And I was put away. "