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"All right, then, what would your world be?" Marius said. His hands were trembling. "You don't believe that the women aren't going to fight for their men?"

She laughed. She turned to me. "Did they fight in Sri Lanka, Lestat? Did they fight in Haiti? Did they fight in Lynkonos?"

Marius stared at me. He waited for me to answer, to take my stand with him. I wanted to make arguments; to reach for the threads he'd given me and take it further. But my mind went blank.

"Akasha," I said. "Don't continue this bloodbath. Please. Don't lie to human beings or befuddle them anymore. "

There it was-brutal and unsophisticated, but the only truth I could give.

Chapter 38

"Yes, for that's the essence of it," Marius said, his tone careful again, fearful, and almost pleading. "It's a lie, Akasha; it's another superstitious lie! Have we not had enough of them? And now, of all times, when the world's waking from its old delusions. When it has thrown off the old gods. "

"A lie?" she asked. She drew back, as if he'd hurt her. "What is the lie? Did I lie when I told them I would bring a reign of peace on earth? Did I lie when I told them I was the one they had been waiting for? No, I didn't lie. What I can do is give them the first bit of truth they've ever had! I am what they think I am. I am eternal, and all powerful, and shall protect them-"

"Protect them?" Marius asked. "How can you protect them from their most deadly foes?"

"What foes?"

"Disease, my Queen. Death. You are no healer. You cannot give life or save it. And they will expect such miracles. All you can do is kill. "

Silence. Stillness. Her face suddenly as lifeless as it had been in the shrine; eyes staring forward; emptiness or deep thought, impossible to distinguish.

No sound but the wood shifting and falling into the fire.

"Akasha," I whispered. "Time, the thing that Maharet asked for. A century. So little to give. "

Dazed, she looked at me. I could feel death breathing on my face, death close as it had been years and years ago when the wolves tracked me into the frozen forest, and I couldn't reach up high enough for the limbs of the barren trees.

"You are all my enemies, aren't you?" she whispered. "Even you, my prince. You are my enemy. My lover and my enemy at the same time. "

"I love you!" I said. "But I can't lie to you. I cannot believe in it! It is wrong! It is the very simplicity and the elegance which make it so wrong!"

Her eyes moved rapidly over their faces. Eric was on the verge of panic again. And I could feel the anger cresting in Mael.

"Is there not one of you who would stand with me?" she whispered. "Not one who would reach for that dazzling dream? Not even one who is ready to forsake his or her small and selfish world?" Her eyes fixed on Pandora. "Ah, you, poor dreamer, grieving for your lost humanity; would you not be redeemed?"

Pandora stared as if through a dim glass. "I have no taste for bringing death," she answered in an even softer whisper. "It is enough for me to see it in the falling leaves. I cannot believe good things can come from bloodshed. For that's the crux, my Queen. Those horrors happen still, but good men and women everywhere deplore them; you would reclaim such methods; you would exonerate them and bring the dialogue to an end. " She smiled sadly. "I am a useless thing to you. I have nothing to give. "

Akasha didn't respond. Then her eyes moved over the others again; she took the measure of Mael, of Eric. Of Jesse.

"Akasha," I said. "History is a litany of injustice, no one denies it. But when has a simple solution ever been anything but evil? Only in complexity do we find answers. Through complexity men struggle towards fairness; it is slow and clumsy, but it's the only way. Simplicity demands too great a sacrifice. It always has. "

"Yes," Marius said. "Exactly. Simplicity and brutality are synonymous in philosophy and in actions. It is brutal what you propose!"

"Is there no humility in you?" she asked suddenly. She turned from me to him. "Is there no willingness to understand? You are so proud, all of you, so arrogant. You want your world to remain the same on account of your greed!"

"No," Marius said.

"What have I done that you should set yourselves so against me?" she demanded. She looked at me, then at Marius, and finally to Maharet. "From Lestat I expected arrogance," she said. "I expected platitudes and rhetoric, and untested ideas. But from many of you I expected more. Oh, how you disappoint me. How can you turn away from the destiny that awaits you? You who could be saviors! How can you deny what you have seen?"

"But they'd want to know what we really are," Santino said. "And once they did know, they'd rise against us. They'd want the immortal blood as they always do. "

"Even women want to live forever," Maharet 'said coldly. "Even women would kill for that. "

"Akasha, it's folly," said Marius. "It cannot be accomplished. For the Western world, not to resist would be unthinkable. "

"It is a savage and primitive vision," Maharet said with cold scorn.