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I thought of my conversation with Gabrielle in Cairo my last conversation. I myself had told her this was my strength.

"Precisely," he said. "So you and I have that in common. We did not grow to manhood expecting very much of others. And the burden of conscience was private, terrible though it might be. "

"But was it under the Christian god . . . in the very first days of the Christian god that you were-born to immortality -- as you said?"

"No," he said with a hint of disgust. "We never served the Christian god. That you can put out of your mind right now. "

"But the forces of good and evil behind the names of Christ and Satan?"

"Again, they have very little if anything to do with us. "

"But the concept

of evil in some form surely. . . "

"No. We are older than that, Lestat. The men that made me were worshipers of gods, true. And they believed in things that I did not believe. But their faith hearkened back to a time long before the temples of the Roman Empire, when the shedding of innocent human blood could be done on a massive scale in the name of good. And evil was the drought and the plague of the locust and the death of the crops. I was made what I am by these men in the name of good. "

This was too enticing, too enthralling.

All the old myths came to my mind, in a chorus of dazzling poetry. Osiris was a good god to the Egyptians, a god of the corn. What has this to do with us? My thoughts were spinning. In a flash of mute pictures, I recalled the night I left my father's house in the Auvergne when the villagers had been dancing round the Lenten fire, and making their chants for the increase of the crops. Pagan, my mother had said. Pagan, had declared the angry priest they had long ago sent away.

And it all seemed more than ever the story of the Savage Garden, dancers in the Savage Garden, where no law prevailed except the law of the garden, which was the aesthetic law. That the crops shall grow high, that the wheat shall be green and then yellow, that the sun shall shine. Look at the perfectly shaped apple that the tree has made, fancy that! The villagers would run through the orchards with their burning brands from the Lenten bonfire, to make the apples grow.

"Yes, the Savage Garden," Marius said with a spark of light in his eyes. "And I had to go out of the civilized cities of the Empire to find it. I had to go into the deep woods of the northern provinces, where the garden still grew at its lushest, the very land of Southern Gaul in which you were born. I had to fall into the hands of the barbarians who gave us both our stature, our blue eyes, our fair hair. I had it through the blood of my mother, who had come from those people, the daughter of a Keltic chieftain married to a Roman patrician. And you have it through the blood of your fathers directly from those days. And by a strange coincidence, we were both chosen for immortality for the very same reason -- you by Magnus and I by my captors -- that we were the nonpareils of our blood and blueeyed race, that we were taller and more finely made than other men. "

"Ooooh, you have to tell me all of it! You have to explain everything!" I said.

"I am explaining everything," he said. "But first, I think it is time for you to see something that will be very important as we go on. "

He waited for a moment for the words to sink in.

Then he rose slowly in human fashion, assisting himself easily with his hands on the arms of the chair. He stood looking down at me and waiting.

"Those Who Must Be Kept?" I asked. My voice had gotten terribly small, terribly unsure of itself.

And I could see a little mischief again in his face, or rather a touch of the amusement that was never far away.

"Don't be afraid," he said soberly, trying to conceal the amusement. "It's very unlike you, you know. "

I was burning to see them, to know what they were, and yet I didn't move. I'd really thought that I would see them. I'd never really thought what it would mean . . .

"Is it. . . is it something terrible to see?" I asked.

He smiled slowly and affectionately and placed his hand on my shoulder.

"Would it stop you if I said yes?"

"No," I said. But I was afraid.

"It's only terrible as time goes on," he said. "In the beginning, it's beautiful. "

He waited, watching me, trying to be patient. Then he said softly:

"Come, let's go. "

Chapter 4

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