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"'When the ashes are scattered,' he said,'their souls are free. '

"`Then why don't you scatter the ashes!' I said, trying not to sound so desperate, so undone.

"`Should I?' he asked of me, the crisped flesh around his eyes widening. 'Do you think that I should?'

"`You ask me!' I said.

"He gave one of those dry laughs again, that seemed to carry agony with it, and he led on down the passage to a lighted room.

"It was a library we entered, where a few scattered candles revealed the diamond-shaped wooden racks of parchment and papyrus scrolls.

"This delighted me, naturally, because a library was something I could understand. It was the one human place in which I still felt some measure of old sanity.

"But I was startled to see another one -- another one of us sitting to the side behind the writing table, his eyes on the floor.

"This one had no hair whatsoever, and though he was pitch black all over, his skin was full and well-modeled and gleamed as if it had been oiled. The planes of his face were beautiful, the hand that rested in the lap of his white linen kilt was gracefully curled, all the muscles of his naked chest well defined.

"He turned and looked up at me. And something immediately passed between us, something more silent than silence, as it can be with us.

"`This is the Elder,' said the weaker one who'd brought me here. 'And you see for yourself how he withstood the fire. But he will not speak. He has not spoken since it happened. Yet surely he knows where are the Mother and the Father, and why this was allowed to pass. '

"The Elder merely looked forward again. But there was a curious expression on his face, something sarcastic and faintly amused, and a little contemptuous.

"'Even before this disaster,' the other one said. 'the Elder did not often speak to us. The fire did not change him, make him more receptive. He sits in silence, more and more like the Mother and the Father. Now and then he reads. Now and then he walks in the world above. He's the Blood, he listens to the singers. Now and then he will dance. He speaks to mortals in the streets of Alexandria, but he will not speak to us. He has nothing to say to us. But he knows. . . . He knows why this happened to us. '

"'Leave me with him,' I said.

"I had the feeling that all beings have in such situations. I will make the man speak. I will draw something out of him, as no one else has been able to do. But it wasn't mere vanity that impelled me. This was the one who had come to me in the bedroom of my house, I was sure of it. This was the one who had stood watching me in my door.

"And I had sensed something in his glance. Call it intelligence, call it interest, call it recognition of some common knowledge -- there was something there.

"And I knew that I carried with me the possibilities of a different world, unknown to the God of the Grove and even to this feeble and wounded one beside me who looked at the Elder in despair.

"The feeble one withdrew as I had asked. I went to the writing table and looked at the Elder.

"`What should I do?' I asked in Greek.

"He looked up at me abruptly, and I could see this thing I call intelligence in his face.

"'Is there any point,' I asked,'to questioning you further?'

"I had chosen my tone carefully. There was nothing formal in it, nothing reverential. It was as familiar as it could be.

"`And just what is it you seek?' he asked in Latin suddenly, coldly, his mouth turning down at the ends, his attitude one of abruptness and challenge.

"It relieved me to switch to Latin.

"'You heard what I told the other,' I said in the same informal manner,'how I was made by the God of the Grove in the country of the Keltoi, and how I was told to discover why the gods had died in flames. '

"`You don't come on behalf of the Gods of the Grove!' he said, sardonic as before. He had not lifted his head, merely looked up, which made his eyes seem all the more challenging and contemptuous.

"'I do and I don't,' I said. 'If we can perish in this way, I would like to know why. What happened once can happen a second time. And I would like to know if we are really gods, and if we are, then what are our obligations to man. Are the Mother and the Father true beings, or are they legend? How did all this start? I would like to know that, of course. '

"'By accident,' he said.

"`By accident?' I leaned forward. I thought I had heard wrong.