Blood And Gold (Page 12)
12
IN THE TAVERN, I met with Avicus and Mael the following night. They were filled with fear and they listened with wide eyes as I told them the tale.
Avicus was crushed by this knowledge, but not Mael.
"To destroy her," said Avicus, "why did it have to be done?"
He felt no false manly need to disguise his grief and sadness and was weeping at once.
"You know why," said Mael. "There would have been no stop to her enmity. Marius knew this. Don't torment him now with questions. It had to be done."
I could say nothing, for I had too many doubts as to what I'd done. It had been so absolute and so sudden. I felt a tightening of my heart and chest when I thought about it, a sort of panic which resides in the body rather than the brain.
I sat back, observing my two companions and thinking hard on what their affection had meant to me. It had been sweet and I did not want to leave them, but that was precisely what I intended to do.
Finally after they had quietly quarreled for some time, I gestured for silence. On the matter of Eudoxia I had only a few things to say.
"It was my anger which required it," I said, "for what other part of me, except my anger, had received the insult of what she had done to us through the destruction of our house? I don't regret that she is gone; no, I cannot. And as I've told you, it was only done by means of an offering to the Mother, and as to why the Mother wanted or took such an offering, I can't say.
"Long ago in Antioch, I offered victims to the Divine Parents. I brought the Evil Doers, drugged and unknowing, into the shrine. But neither the Mother nor the Father ever took this blood.
"I don't know why the Mother drank from Eudoxia except that Eudoxia offered herself, and I had prayed for a sign. It's finished, this matter of Eudoxia. She is gone, with all her beauty and her charm.
"But listen hard to what I must tell you now. I'm leaving you. I'm leaving this city, which I detest, and I will take the Mother and the Father with me, of course. I'm leaving you, and I urge you to remain together, as I'm sure you mean to do, for your love for one another is the source of your endurance and your strength."
"But why leave us!" demanded Avicus. His expressive face was charged with emotion. "How can you do such a thing? We've been happy here, the three of us, we've hunted together, we've found Evil Doers aplenty. Why would you go now?"
"I must be alone," I said. "It was so before and it's so now."
"Marius, this is folly," said Mael. "You'll end up in the crypt again with the Divine Parents, slumbering until you're too weak to be awakened on your own."
"Perhaps, but if such a thing happens," I said, "you can be more than certain that Those Who Must Be Kept will be safe."
"I can't understand you," said Avicus. He began to weep again. He wept as much for Eudoxia as for me.
I didn't try to stop him. The tavern was dim and overcrowded and no one took notice of one being, albeit a splendid figure of a male with a white hand covering his face, drunk perhaps over his cup of wine for all anyone knew, weeping into it, and wiping at his tears.
Mael looked dreadfully sad.
"I must go," I tried to explain. "You must realize, both of you, that the secret of the Mother and the Father must be kept. As long as I remain with you, the secret isn't safe. Anyone, even those as weak as Eudoxia's slaves, Asphar and Rashid, can pick it out of your minds."
"But how do you know they did!" Mael protested.
Oh, it was all too sad. But I couldn't be deterred.
"If I am alone," I said, "then I alone possess the secret of where the Divine Parents sit in state, or lie in sleep." I paused, quite miserable and wishing that all of this could have been done simply, and despising myself as much perhaps as I ever have.
I wondered again why I had ever fled Pandora, and it seemed, quite suddenly, that I had put an end to Eudoxia for the same reason¡ªthat these two creatures were more surely linked in my mind than I was willing to admit.
But no, that wasn't true. Rather I didn't know it for certain. What I knew was, I was a weak being as well as a strong being and I could have loved Eudoxia, perhaps as much as I'd loved Pandora, if time had given me the chance.
"Stay with us," Avicus said. "I don't blame you for what you did. You mustn't leave because you think I do. I was caught by her spell, yes, I admit it, but I don't despise you for what you did."
"I know that," I said, taking his hand and seeking to reassure him. "But I have to be alone." I couldn't console him. "Now listen to me, both of you," I said. "You know well how to find concealment for yourself. You must do it. I myself will go to Eudoxia's old house to make the plans for my departure, as I have no other house in which I can work. You may come with me if you like and see what crypts there might be beneath the structure but such is a dangerous thing to do."
Neither of them wanted to go near the house of Eudoxia.
"Very well then, you're wise, you always have been. I'll leave you now to your own designs. I promise I won't leave Constantinople for some nights. There are things I want to revisit again, among them the great churches and even the Imperial palace. Come to me at the house of Eudoxia, or I'll find you."
I kissed them both, as men kiss, roughly, with gruff and heated gestures and tight embraces, and then I was off on my own as I so longed to be.
Eudoxia's house was utterly deserted. But some mortal slave had been there, for lamps were lighted in almost every room.
I searched these palatial chambers most carefully and found no trace of any recent occupant. There were no other blood drinkers to be discovered. The sumptuous sitting rooms and spacious library all lay under a thin blanket of silence, the only sound being the several fountains in her lovely inner garden into which the sun might penetrate by day.
There were crypts beneath her house with heavy bronze caskets, and I made a count of these to confirm that I had, indeed, destroyed all her blood drinker slaves.
Then, without difficulty I found the crypt where she had lain during the sunlight hours, with all her treasure and wealth hidden there, and two gorgeous sarcophagi decorated thickly with gold and silver and rubies and emeralds and large, perfect pearls.
Why two? I didn't know, except perhaps that she had had a companion once who was now gone.
As I studied this magnificent chamber, a harrowing pain gripped me, a harrowing pain rather like the grief I felt in Rome when I realized that I had utterly lost Pandora, and that nothing could bring her back. Indeed, it was worse than that, for Pandora might surely exist somewhere, and Eudoxia did not.
I knelt beside one of the sarcophagi and I folded my arms beneath my head and, wearily, I shed tears as I had last night.
For little more than an hour I'd been there, wasting the night away in morbid and miserable guilt, when suddenly I was aware of a footfall on the stairs.
It wasn't a mortal, I knew that immediately, and I knew as well that it was no blood drinker whom I'd seen before.
I didn't bother to move. Whoever it was, it wasn't a strong one, and in fact, the creature was so weak and young as to let me hear its bare feet.
Quietly there appeared in the torchlight a young girl, a girl perhaps no older than Eudoxia when she'd been taken into Darkness, a girl with black hair parted in the middle and streaming down over her shoulders, her clothes as fine as those of Eudoxia had been.
Her face was unblemished, her troubled eyes gleaming, her mouth red. She was blushing with the human tissue which she still possessed. And the painful seriousness of her expression gave a sharpness to all her features and to the strong line of her full lips.
Of course I must have seen someone somewhere who was more beautiful than this child, but I could not think of that one. I was so humbled, indeed, so astonished by this beauty that I felt a pure fool.
Nevertheless I knew in an instant that this girl had been the blood drinker lover of Eudoxia, that this girl had been chosen because she was incomparably beautiful, as well as extremely well educated and clever, and that before Eudoxia's summoning of us, she had closeted this girl away.
The other sarcophagus in this chamber belonged to this young one. This one had been deeply loved.
Yes, all that was logical and evident and I didn't have to speak for the moment. I had only to gaze at this radiant child who stood in the door of the crypt, the torch blazing above her, her tormented eyes on me.
Finally in a hushed whisper she spoke.
"You've killed her, haven't you?" she said. She was fearless, either out of simple youth or remarkable bravery. "You've destroyed her. She's gone."
I rose to my feet as if a queen had ordered me to do it. Her eyes took my measure. And then her face became completely and utterly sad.
It seemed she would fall to the floor. I caught her just before it happened, and then I lifted her, and carried her slowly up the marble stairs.
She let her head fall against my chest. She gave a deep sigh.
I brought her into the ornate bedchamber of the house and laid her down on the huge bed. She wouldn't remain on the pillow however. She wanted to sit there and I sat beside her.
I expected her to question me, to become violent, to turn her hatred on me, though she had hardly any strength. She couldn't have been made ten years ago. And if she'd been fourteen when it happened, I would have been surprised.
"Where were you hiding?" I asked.
"In an old house," she said softly. "A deserted place. She insisted I stay there. She said she would send for me."
"When? "I asked.
"When she had finished with you, when you were destroyed or driven away." She looked up at me.
She was no more than an exquisite baby of a woman! I wanted so to kiss her cheeks. But her sorrow was terrible.
"She said it would be a battle," she said, "that you were one of the strongest who had ever come here. The others had been simple. But with you, she wasn't sure of the outcome, and so she had to hide me away."
I nodded. I didn't dare to touch her. But I felt nothing but a desire to protect her, to enfold her in my arms, to tell her that if she meant to pound her fists on my chest and curse me she should do it, that if she meant to weep she might do that as well.
"Why don't you speak?" she asked me, her eyes full of hurt and wonder. "Why are you so quiet?"
I shook my head. "What can I say?" I asked. "It was a terrible quarrel.
I didn't want it. I thought that we could all exist here in peace."
At this she smiled. "She would never have allowed that," she said to me quickly. "If you knew how many she's destroyed ... but then I don't know myself."
This was a small comfort to my conscience, but I didn't seize upon it. I let it go.
"She said that this city belonged to her, and that it took the power of an empress to protect it. She took me from the palace, where I was a slave. She brought me here by night and I was so frightened. But then I came to love her. She was so certain that I would. She told such stories of her wanderings. And then when others came, she would hide me, and she would go against them until the city was hers again."
I nodded, listening to all this, sad for her and the drowsy sorrowful manner in which she spoke. It was no more than I'd supposed.
"How will you exist if I leave you here?" I asked.
"I can't!" she answered. She looked into my eyes. "You can't leave me. You must take care of me. I beg you. I don't know what it means to exist alone."
I cursed under my breath. She heard it, and I saw the pain in her expression.
I stood up and walked about the room. I looked back at her, this baby woman, with her tender mouth and her long loose black hair.
"What's your name?" I asked her.
"Zenobia," she replied. "Why can't you read it from my mind? She could always read my thoughts."
"I could do it," I said, "if I wanted to do it. But I would rather talk to you. Your beauty confuses me. I would rather hear your voice. Who made you a vampire?"
"One of her slaves," she said. "The one named Asphar. He's gone too, isn't he?" she asked. "They're all gone. I saw the ashes." She gestured vaguely to the other rooms. She murmured a string of names.
"Yes," I said, "they're all dead."
"You would have slain me too if I'd been here," she said, with the same wondering and hurt-filled expression.
"Perhaps," I said. "But it's over now. It was a battle. And when a battle is finished, everything changes. Who else has been hidden away?"
"No one," she answered truthfully, "only me, with one mortal slave, and when I woke tonight, he was gone."
I must have looked very dejected for surely I felt that way.
She turned and with the slowness of a dazed person, reached under the heavy pillows at the head of the bed, and withdrew a dagger.
Then she rose and made her way to me. She held up the dagger with two hands, the tip pointed at my chest. She stared before her, but not into my eyes. Her long wavy black hair fell down around her on both sides of her face.
"I should take vengeance," she said quietly, "but you will only stop me if I try."
"Don't try it," I said in the same calm voice I had used for her all along. I pushed the dagger away gently. And putting my arm around her, I led her back to the bed.
"Why didn't she give you the Blood?" I asked.
"Her blood was too strong for us. She told us so. All her blood drinker slaves were stolen or made one by another under her direction. She said that her blood was not to be shared. It would come with strength and silence. Make a blood drinker and you cannot ever hear his thoughts afterwards. That's what she told us. So Asphar made me and I was deaf to Asphar and Asphar was deaf to me. She must keep us all in obedience and that she could not do if we were made from her powerful blood."
It pained me now that Eudoxia was the teacher, and Eudoxia was dead.
This one was studying me, and then she asked in the simplest voice:
"Why don't you want me? What can I do to make you want me?" She went on speaking tenderly. "You're very beautiful," she said, "with your light yellow hair. You look like a god, really, tall as you are and with your blue eyes. Even she thought you were beautiful. She told me you were. I was never allowed to see you. But she told me that you were like the North men. She described you as you walked about in your red robes¡ª."
"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 seemed 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."
"And the Mother and the Father?" I asked. "Do you know what they are?"
She shook her head. "Only that you have them, or had them when she spoke of it. Are they the First of us?"
I didn't answer her. But I believed her, that this was all she knew, extreme as it was.
And now I did penetrate her mind, calling on my power to know her past and present, to know her most secret and casual thoughts.
But what did I learn? Only that she had told me the truth. I know no more of your beautiful blood drinker. She was patient with me, and then there came a wave of true grief. I loved Eudoxia. You destroyed her. And now you cannot leave me alone.
I stood up and went again to walking about the room. It's sumptuous
Byzantine furnishings stifled me. The thick patterned hangings seemed to fill the air with dust. And nowhere could I glimpse the night sky from this chamber, for we were too far from the inner garden court.
But what did I want just now? Only to be free of this creature, no, free of the whole knowledge of her, of the whole awareness of her, free of ever having seen her, and that was quite impossible, was it not?
Suddenly a sound interrupted me and I realized that at last Avicus and Mael had come.
They found their way through the many rooms to the bedchamber, and as both of them entered, they were astonished to see the gorgeous young woman seated on the side of the immense heavily draped bed.
I stood silent while the two of them absorbed the shock. Immediately
Avicus was drawn to Zenobia, as drawn to her as he had been to Eudoxia, and this creature had yet to speak a single word.
In Mael I saw suspicion and a bit of concern. He looked to me searchingly. He was not spellbound by the young woman's beauty. His feelings were under his command.
Avicus drew near to Zenobia, and as I watched him, as I watched his eyes fire with a passion for her, I saw my way out. I saw it plainly, and when I did, I felt a terrible regret. I felt my solemn vow to be alone weigh heavily upon me, as if I had taken it in the name of a god, and perhaps I had. I had taken it in the name of Those Who Must Be Kept. But there must be no more thoughts of them now, not in Zenobia's presence.
As for the child woman herself, she was far more drawn to Avicus, perhaps because of his immediate and obvious devotion, than she was to the distant and somewhat suspicious Mael.
"Thank you for coming," I said. "I know it was not your choice to set foot in this house."
"What's happened?" Mael asked. "Who is this creature?"
"The companion of Eudoxia, sent away for her own protection until the battle with us could be finished, and now that it is finished, here is the child."
"Child?" asked Zenobia gently. "I am no child."
Avicus and Mael both smiled indulgently at her, though her look was grave and disapproving.
"I was as old as Eudoxia," she said, "when the Blood was given to her. 'Never make a blood drinker of a greater age,' said Eudoxia. 'For a greater mortal age can only lead to misery later on from habits learned in mortal life.' All of Eudoxia's slaves received the Blood at my age, and were therefore no longer children, but blood drinkers prepared for eternal life within the Blood."
I said nothing to this, but I never forgot it. Mark me. I never forgot it. Indeed, there came a time a thousand years after, when these words meant a great deal to me, and they came to haunt my nights and to torture me. But we will come soon enough to that, for I mean to pass over that thousand years very quickly. But let me return to my tale.
This little speech from Zenobia was spoken tenderly as all her words had been spoken, and when she finished it I could see that Avicus was charmed. This did not mean that he would love her completely or forever, mind you, I knew that. But I could see that there was no barrier between the child and himself.
He drew closer still and seemed at a loss to express his respect for her beauty, and then, surprising me completely, he spoke to her:
"My name is Avicus," he said. "I am a long-time friend of Marius." Then he looked at me, and then back to Zenobia. He asked: "Are you alone?"
"Quite alone," said Zenobia, though she did glance at me first to see if I meant to silence her, "and if you ¡ª all of you or perhaps one of you ¡ª do not take me with you out of here, or remain with me in this house, I'm lost."
I nodded to both my long-time companions.
Mael gave me a withering look and shook his head in negation. He glanced at Avicus. But Avicus was still looking at our child.
"You won't be left here unprotected," said Avicus, "that's unthinkable.
But you must leave us alone now, so that we may talk. No, you remain where you are. There are many rooms in this house. Marius, where can we gather? "
"The library," I said at once. "Come, both of you. Zenobia, don't be afraid, and don't try to listen, for you may hear only parts of what we say, and all is what matters. All is what will contain the true sentiments of the heart."
I led the way, and we quickly seated ourselves in Eudoxia's fine library just as we had only a short time before.
"You must take her," I said. "I can't do it. I'm leaving here and I'm taking the Mother and the Father, just as I've told you. Take her under your wing."
"This is impossible," Mael declared, "she's far too weak. And I don't want her! I tell you that plainly, I don't want her!"
Avicus reached out and covered Mael's hand with his own.
"Marius can't take her," said Avicus. "He's speaking the simple truth. It's not a choice. He cannot have such a little creature with him."
"Little creature," said Mael disgustedly. "Say what's really the truth. She is a frail creature, an unknowing creature, and she will bring us harm."
"I beg you both, take her," I said. "Teach her all that you know. Teach her what she needs to be on her own."
"But she's a woman," said Mael disgustedly. "How could she ever be on her own?"
"Mael, when one is a blood drinker such a thing doesn't matter," I said. "Once she is strong, once she truly knows everything, she can live like Eudoxia once lived if she chooses. She can live any way that she likes."
"No, I don't want her," said Mael. "I will not take her. Not for any price or on any terms."
I was about to speak but when I saw the look on his face, I realized he was telling the truth more completely than he knew himself. He would never be reconciled to Zenobia, and if I did leave her with him, I would be leaving her in danger. For he would abandon her or desert her, or even worse. It would only be a matter of time.
I looked to Avicus only to see that he was miserably at the mercy of Mael's words. As always he was in Mael's power. As always he could not break free of Mael's anger.
Avicus pleaded with him. Surely it would not change their lives so very much. They could teach her to hunt, could they not? Why, surely she knew already how to hunt. She wasn't so very human, this lovely little girl. It wasn't hopeless, and shouldn't they do what I had asked?
"I want her to be with us," said Avicus warmly. "I find her lovely. And I see in her a sweetness that touches my heart."
"Yes, there is that," I said. "It's very true, this sweetness."
"And why is such a thing of use in a blood drinker?" asked Mael. "A blood drinker should be sweet?"
I couldn't speak. I thought of Pandora. The pain in me was simply too intense for me to form words. But I saw Pandora. I saw her, and I knew that she had always combined both passion and sweetness, and that both men and women can have such traits, and this child, Zenobia, might grow in both.
I looked off, unable to speak to either of them as they argued, but I realized suddenly that Avicus had grown angry, and that Mael was boiling to a rage.
When I looked back to them, they fell silent. Then Avicus looked at me as if for some authority which I knew that I did not possess.
"I can't command your future," I said. "I'm leaving you as you know."
"Stay and keep her with us," said Avicus.
"Unthinkable!" I said.
"You're stubborn, Marius," said Avicus softly. "Your own strongest passions frighten you. We could be the four of us in this house."
"I've brought about the death of the owner of this house," I said, "I cannot live in it. It is blasphemy against the old gods that I linger this long. The old gods will bring about vengeance not so much because they exist but because I once honored them. As for this city, I've told you, I must leave it, and I must take Those Who Must Be Kept to where they are truly secret and safe."
"The house is yours by right," said Avicus. "And you know this. You've offered it to us."
"You didn't destroy her," I said. "Now let us return to the question at hand. Will you take this girl? "
"We will not," said Mael.
Avicus could say nothing. He had no choice.
I looked away once more. My thoughts were purely and completely with Pandora on the isle of Crete, something which I could not even envision. Pandora, the wanderer. I said nothing for the longest while.
Then I rose without addressing either one of them, for they had disappointed me, and I went back into the bedchamber where the lovely young creature lay on the bed.
Her eyes were closed. The lamplight was soft. What a lush and passive being she seemed to be, her hair cascading over the pillow, her skin flawless, her mouth half closed.
I sat down beside her.
"Besides your beauty, why did Eudoxia choose you?" I asked. "Did she ever say?"
She opened her eyes as if startled, which could be the case with one so young, and then she reflected before answering, to say finally in a soft voice:
"Because I was quick of wit and knew whole books by memory. She had me recite them to her." Without rising from the pillows, she held her hands as if she had a bound book in them. "I could but glance at a page and remember all of it. And I had no mortals to grieve for. I was but one of a hundred attendants to the Empress. I was a virgin. I was a slave."
"I see. Was there anything more?"
I was aware that Avicus had come to the door, but I said nothing to acknowledge him.
Zenobia thought for a moment, then answered:
"She said my soul was incorruptible, that though I'd seen wickedness in the Imperial palace, I could still hear music in the rain."
I nodded. "Do you still hear it, this music?"
"Yes," she said. "More than ever, I think. Though if you leave me here, it won't sustain me."
"I'm going to give you something before I leave you," I said.
"What is that? What can it be?" She sat up, pushing herself back against the pillows. "What can you give me that will help me?"
"What do you think?" I asked gently. "My blood."
I heard Avicus gasp at the doorway, but I paid no attention to it. Indeed, I paid no attention to anything but her.
"I'm strong, little one," I said, "very strong. And after you've drunk from me, as long as you wish and however much you wish, you'll be a different creature from the one you are now."
She was mystified and drawn by the notion. Timidly she lifted her hands and placed them on my shoulders.
"And this I should do now?"
"Yes," I said. I was seated firmly there, and I let her take hold of me, and as I felt her teeth go into my neck, I gave out a long sigh. "Drink, precious one," I said. "Pull hard to take as much blood from me as you can."
My mind was flooded with a thousand tripping visions of the Imperial palace, of golden rooms, and banquets, of music and magicians, of the daylight city with its wild chariot races crashing through the Hippodrome, of the crowd screaming with applause, of the Emperor rising in his Imperial box to wave to those who worshiped him, of the huge processions passing into Hagia Sophia, of candles and incense, and once again of palatial splendor, this time beneath this roof.
I grew weak. I grew sick. But it didn't matter. What mattered was she must take all that she could.
And at last, she fell back on the pillows, and I looked down at her, and I saw her cheeks stark white with the Blood.
Scrambling to sit up, to look at me, she stared like a newborn blood drinker as if she'd never had the true vision of the Blood before.
She climbed off the bed and walked about the room. She made a huge circle, her right hand clenching the fabric of her tunic, her face shining with its new whiteness, her eyes wide and swimming and bright.
She stared at me as if she'd never seen me before. Then she stopped, obviously hearing distant sounds to which she'd been deaf. She put her hands to her ears. Her face was full of quiet awe and sweetness, yes, sweetness, and then her eyes played over me.
I tried to climb to my feet but I was too weak for it. Avicus came to help me but I waved him away.
"What have you done to her!" he said.
"You see what I've done," I answered. "Both of you, you who wouldn't take her. I've given her my blood. I've given her a chance."
I went to Zenobia and made her look at me.
"Pay attention to me," I said. "Did Eudoxia tell you of her early life?" I asked. "Do you know that you can hunt the streets as a man?"
She stared at me with her new eyes, too dazzled, uncomprehending.
"Do you know that your hair, if cut, will grow back in the space of one day, and be as long and full as before?"
She shook her head, her eyes passing over me and over the myriad bronze lamps of the room, and over the mosaics of the walls and the floor.
"Listen to me, lovely creature, I don't have that much time to teach you," I said. "I mean to leave you armed with knowledge as well as strength."
Assuring her again that her hair would grow back, I cut it off for her, watching as it fell to the floor, and then taking her to the rooms of the male blood drinkers, I dressed her in male clothes.
Then ordering Mael and Avicus sternly to leave us, I took her out with me into the city, and tried to show her the manner in which a man would walk, and how fearless he might be, and what was the life of the taverns, which she'd never even dreamt of, and how to hunt on her own.
All the while I found her enchanting as I had before. She seemed now to be her own older, wiser sister. And as she laughed over the usual wasted cup of wine at the table in the tavern, I found myself half resolving that I would urge her to come with me, but then I knew I could not.
"You don't really look like a man, you know," I said to her, smiling, "hair or no hair."
She laughed. "Of course, I don't. I know it. But to be in such a place as this, a place I'd never see if it weren't for you."
"You can do anything now," I told her. "Merely think on it. You can be male. You can be female. You can be neither. Seek the Evil Doer as I do and you will never choke on death. But always, whatever your joys, whatever your misery, don't put yourself in danger of the judgment of others. Measure your strength and take care."
She nodded, her eyes wide with fascination. Of course the men in the tavern shot glances at her. They thought I had brought my pretty boy out drinking with me. Before things got out of hand, I left with her, but not before she had tested her powers to read the minds of those around her, and to daze the poor slave boy who had brought our wine.
As we walked through the streets, I gave her random instructions in the ways of the world which I thought she might need. I enjoyed doing this far too much.
She described for me all the secrets of the Imperial palace so that I might better penetrate it to satisfy my curiosity, and then we found ourselves in a tavern again.
I warned her,
"You'll come to hate me for what I did to Eudoxia, and for what I did to the other blood drinkers as well."
"No, that's not so," she said plainly. "You must understand that Eudoxia never allowed me one moment of freedom, and as for the others they felt only contempt for me or jealousy, I never knew which."
I nodded, accepting this, but then I asked her,
"Why do you think that Eudoxia told me the story of her life, of how she herself had once wandered in a boy's clothing in Alexandria, when she never told you such things? "
"She had some hope of loving you," Zenobia answered. "She confided this to me, not directly you understand, but through her descriptions of you and her enthusiasm for seeing you. But these emotions were mixed up in her mind with wariness and cunning. And I think that her fear of you won out."
I was quiet, thinking it over, the tavern noises like music.
Zenobia was watching me and then she said,
"From me, she wanted no such knowledge of herself or understanding.
She was content to have me as a plaything. And even when I read to her or sang for her, she would not really look at me, or care for me. But you? You, she saw as a being who was worthy of her. When she spoke of you, it was as if no one was listening. She went on and on, making her plan to summon you to her house and speak with you. It was an obsession full of fear. Don't you see?"
"It went so wrong," I said. "But come, there are many things I must teach you. We have only so many hours before dawn."
We went out into the night, holding fast to each other. How I loved teaching her! There was such a spell to it for me.
I showed her how she might climb walls effortlessly, and how easy it was to get past mortals in the shadows, and how she could draw mortal victims to herself.
We crept into Hagia Sophia, a thing she believed to be impossible, and for the first time since she'd been given the Blood she saw the great church she'd known so well when she was alive.
Finally, after we'd both claimed victims in the back streets for the night's thirst, at which time she learnt of her considerable new strength, we returned to the house.
There I found the official documents pertaining to its ownership, and I examined these with her, and suggested how she might maintain the house of Eudoxia for her own.
Avicus and Mael were both there. And as it came near to sunrise they asked if they might remain.
"That question you must put to Zenobia," I said. "This house belongs to her."
Immediately, in her kindness of heart she told them to remain. They could take the hidden places that had belonged to Asphar and Rashid.
I could see that she found the well-built Avicus with his finely molded features quite handsome, and she also seemed to look far too kindly and guilelessly upon Mael.
I said nothing. But I was feeling extraordinary confusion and pain. I didn't want to be separated from her. I wanted to lie down in the darkness of the crypt with her. But it was time for me to take my leave.
Being very weary, no matter how good the hunting had been, and it had been marvelous, I went back to the ashes of my house, and down into the shrine of the Divine Parents and lay down to sleep.