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Slowly I turned and looked down at the long white fingers, and then up into Mekare's face.

The pale-blue eyes were innocent and wondering, the flesh like alabaster all but glowing in the dark. No expression actually, but a suggestion of drowsiness, of languor and of sweetness. No harm.

Just the faintest telepathic shimmer: my image, my image in one of those rock videos I'd made years ago--dancing and singing, and singing about us. Gone.

I searched for a spark of intellect, but this was like the agreeable face of some poor mad mortal in whom most of the brain had long ago been destroyed. It seemed the innocence and curiosity were artifacts of flesh and reflex more than anything else. Her mouth was the perfect pink of a seashell. She wore a long pink gown trimmed in gold. Here and there twinkled diamonds and amethysts sewn exquisitely into the border.

"Beautiful," I whispered. "Such loving work."

I was as near to panic as I'd been in a long time, but then as always happens, always when I'm afraid, when anything is making me afraid, I got angry. I remained very still. She appeared to be studying me in an almost dreamy way, but she wasn't. She might have been blind for all I could tell.

"It is you?" I said. I struggled to say it in the ancient tongue, searching in memory for the smattering of it I knew. "Mekare, is it you?"

There must have been a swelling of great pride in me, ridiculous arrogance to think suddenly with fierce elation that I could reach this creature when all others had failed, that I could touch the surface of her mind and quicken it.

Desperately, I wanted to see that image of me again, from the rock videos. That image or any image, but there was nothing. I sent forth the image. I remembered those songs and canticles of our origins, hoping against hope that this had some meaning for her.

But one wrong word, and think what she might do. She could crush my skull with both hands. She could blast me with obliterating fire. But I couldn't think of this, or imagine it.

"Beautiful," I said again.

No change. I detected a low humming coming from her. We don't need our tongues to hum? It was almost a purr as might come from a cat, and suddenly her eyes were as remote and without consciousness as those of a statue.

"Why are you doing it?" I asked. "Why kill all those young ones, those poor little young ones?"

With no spark of recognition or response, she moved forward and kissed me, kissing the right side of my face with those seashell-pink lips, those cold lips. I brought my hand up slowly and let my fingers move into the soft thickness of her waving red hair. I touched her head ever so gently.

"Mekare, trust in me," I whispered in that old language.

A riot of sounds exploded behind me, again some force tearing through a forest that was almost impenetrable. The air was filled with a rain of tiny falling green leaves. I saw them falling on the

viscid surface of the water.

Maharet stood there to my left helping Mekare to her feet, making soft gentle crooning sounds as she did it, her fingers stroking Mekare's face.

I climbed to my feet as well.

"You leave here now, Lestat," said Maharet, "and don't you come back. And don't you urge anyone ever again to come here!"

Her pale face was streaked with blood. There was blood on her pale-green silk robe, blood in her hair, all this from weeping. Blood tears. Blood-red lips.

Mekare stood beside her gazing at me impassively, eyes drifting over the palm fronds, the mesh of branches that shut out the sky, as if she were listening to the birds or the insects and not to anything spoken here.

"Very well," I said. "I came to help. I came to learn what I could."

"Say no more! I know why you came," she said. "You must go. I understand. I would have done the same thing if I were you. But you must tell the others never to look for us again. Never. Do you think I would ever try to hurt you, you or any of the others? My sister would never do this. She would never harm anyone. Go now."

"What about Pacaya, the volcano?" I asked. "You can't do this, Maharet. You can't go into the volcano, you and Mekare. You can't do this to us."

"I know!" she said. It was almost a groan. A terrible deep groan of anguish.

A deep groan came out of Mekare as well, a horrid groan. It was as if her only voice were in her chest and she turned to her sister suddenly lifting her hands but only a little, and letting them drop as if she couldn't manage to really work them at all.

"Let me talk to you," I pleaded.

Khayman was coming towards us, and Mekare turned sharply away and moved towards him and lay against his chest and he enfolded her with his arms. Maharet stared at me. She was shaking her head, moaning as if her fevered thoughts had a little song to them of moans.

Before I could speak again, there came a heated blast of air against my face and chest. It blinded me. I thought it was the Fire Gift, and she was making an immediate mockery of her own words.