Blood and Gold (22 page)

And as I recognized this guilty desire inside of me, as I saw it flare up like a fire fed by the bellows, I realized that during those long nights at sea, on the voyage to Constantinople, I had secretly wished that our ship would meet with misadventure, that we would be sunk and Those Who Must Be Kept would have gone down to the bottom of the ocean, never to surface again. I could have survived any shipwreck. But they would have been buried just as the Elder in Egypt had long ago mentioned to me, cursing and carrying on, saying, “Why do I not sink them into the sea?”

Oh, these were terrible thoughts. Did I not love Akasha? Had I not pledged my soul?

I was consumed with self-hatred and dread that the Queen would know my petty secret—that I wished to be rid of her, that I wished to be rid of all of them—Avicus, Mael, Eudoxia most certainly—that I wished—for the very first time—to wander a vagabond like so many others, that I wished to have no name and no place and no destination, but to be alone.

These thoughts were too dreadful. They divided me from all that I valued. I had to banish them from my mind.

But before I could get my wits about me, Mael and Avicus came rushing into the library. There was some sort of disturbance outside the house.

“Can you hear it?” Avicus said frantically.

“Yea gods,” I said, “why are all those people shouting in the streets?”

I realized there was a great clamor, and that some of these people were beating on our windows and doors. Rocks were being thrown at our house. The wooden shutters were about to be broken in.

“What is happening? What is the reason for this?” Mael asked desperately.

“Listen!” I said desperately. “They’re saying that we seduced a rich merchant into the house, and then murdered him, and threw his corpse out to rot! Oh, damn Eudoxia, don’t you see what she’s done, it was she who murdered the merchant! She’s caused a mob to rise against us. We have only time to retreat to the shrine.”

I led them to the entrance, lifted the heavy marble door, and we were soon inside the passage, knowing full well that we were protected, but unable to defend our house.

Then all we could do was listen helplessly as the mob broke in and sacked our entire dwelling, destroying my new library and all I possessed. We did not have to hear their voices to know when they had set the house ablaze.

At last, when it was quiet above, when a few looters picked their way through the smoldering rafters and debris, we came up out of the tunnel, and stared at the ruins in utter disgust.

We scared off the riffraff. Then we made certain that the entrance to the shrine was in fact secure and disguised, which it was, and finally, we went off to a crowded tavern, where, huddled at a table amid mortals, we could talk.

Such a retreat was, for us, quite incredible, but what else could we do?

I told Avicus and Mael what had happened in the shrine, how Eudoxia had been nearly drained of all blood by the Mother and how I had intervened to save Eudoxia’s life. I then explained with regard to the mortal merchant, for they had seen him brought in, and seen him removed, but had not understood.

“They dumped his body where it would be found,” said Avicus. “They baited the crowd to gather as it did.”

“Yes. Our dwelling is gone,” I said finally, “and the shrine will be lost to us until such time as I go to bizarre and complex legal measures to purchase under a new name what already belongs to me under an old one, and the family of the merchant will demand justice against the unfortunate individual, whom I was before, if you follow me, so that I might not be able to buy the property at all.”

“What does she expect of us?” asked Avicus.

“This is an insult to Those Who Must Be Kept,” Mael declared. “She knows the shrine is under the house, yet she incited a riot to destroy it.”

I stared at him for a long moment. I was too ready to condemn him for his anger. But quite suddenly I had a confession to make.

“That thought had not occurred to me,” I said. “But it seems to me that you are precisely right. It was an insult to Those Who Must Be Kept.”

“Oh, yes, she has done an injury to the Mother,” said Avicus. “Surely she has done that. By day, thieves may chip at the very floor that blocks the passage to the shrine below.”

A dreadful gloom took hold of me. A pure and youthful anger was part of it. The anger fed my will.

“What is it?” Avicus demanded. “Your entire countenance is changed. Tell us your thoughts, right now, from your soul.”

“I’m not so certain I can voice my thoughts,” I said, “but I know them, and they don’t bode well for Eudoxia or those whom she claims to love. Both of you, seal your minds off from everything so that you give no hint of your whereabouts. Go to the nearest gate of the city, and leave it, and hide yourselves for the coming day in the hills. Tomorrow, come immediately to meet me here at this tavern.”

I walked with them part of the distance to the gate, and seeing them safely on their way, I went directly to Eudoxia’s house.

It was a simple matter to hear her blood drinker slaves within, and I commanded them brusquely to open the door.

Eudoxia, ever the arrogant one, commanded them to do as I had requested, and once inside, seeing the two young blood drinkers, I began to tremble with anger, but I could not hesitate, and with all my force, I burnt them both at once.

It was appalling to watch, this violent fire, and it set me to gasping and to shaking, but I had no time for observation. Asphar ran from me, and Eudoxia shouted to me fiercely to stop, but I burnt Asphar, wincing as I heard his piteous screams, all the while fighting Eudoxia’s enormous powers with all the might I could command.

Indeed so hot was the fire against my chest that I thought I would die, but I hardened all my body, and hurled my own Fire Gift against Eudoxia with full force.

Her mortal slaves were fleeing out every door and window.

She rushed at me, fists clenched, her face a picture of rage.

“Why do you do this to me!” she demanded.

I caught her up in my arms as she fought me, the waves of heat passing over me, and I carried her out of her house and through the dark streets towards the smoking ruins above the shrine.

“So you would send a mob to destroy my house,” I said. “So you would do this after I saved you, so you would do this while deceiving me with your thanks.”

“I gave you no thanks,” she said, twisting, turning, struggling against me, the heat exhausting me as I fought to control her, her hands pushing me with stunning force. “You prayed for my death, you prayed to the Mother to destroy me,” she cried. “You told me yourself.”

At last I came to the smoking heap of wood and rubble, and finding the mosaic covered door, I lifted it with the Mind Gift, which gave her just time enough to send a scorching blast against my face.

I felt it like a mortal might feel scalding water. But the heavy door was indeed opened, and I protected myself once more against her, as pulling the giant stone down behind me with one arm, I held her with the other, and started to drag her through the complex passages to the shrine.

Again and again, the heat came to burn me, and I could smell my hair scorched by it, and see the smoke in the air around me, as she made some victory no matter how great my strength.

But I fended her off, and I never let go of her. Clutching her with one arm, I opened the doors, one after another, pushing back her power, even as I stumbled. On and on I dragged her towards the shrine. Nothing could stop me, but I could not hurt her with all my force.

No, that privilege was reserved for one far greater than me.

At last we had reached the chapel, and I flung her down on the floor.

Sealing myself off from her with all my strength I turned my eyes to the Mother and Father, only to see the same mute picture which had always greeted my gaze.

And having no further sign than that, and fighting off another crippling wave of heat, I picked up Eudoxia before she could climb to her feet and holding her wrists behind her back, I offered her to the Mother as closely as I dared without disturbing the garments of the Mother, without committing what for me was a sacrilege in the name of what I meant to do.

The right arm of the Mother reached out for Eudoxia, detaching itself, as it were, from the Mother’s tranquility, and once again, Akasha’s head made that slight, subtle and utterly grotesque movement, her lips parting, fangs bared. Eudoxia screamed as I released her body and stepped back.

A great desperate sigh came out of me. Ah, so be it!

And I watched in quiet horror as Eudoxia became the Mother’s victim, Eudoxia’s arms flailing hopelessly, her knees pushing against the Mother, until finally the limp body of Eudoxia was allowed to slip from the Mother’s embrace.

Once fallen onto the marble floor, it looked like an exquisite doll of white wax. No audible breath came from it. Its round dark eyes did not move.

But it wasn’t dead, no, not by any means. It was a blood drinker’s body with a blood drinker’s soul. Only fire could kill it. I waited, keeping my own powers in check.

Long ago, in Antioch, when unwelcome vampires had assaulted the Mother, she had used the Mind Gift to lift a lamp to burn their remains with fire and oil. So she had done with the remains of the Elder in Egypt, as I have already described. Would she do this now?

Something simpler happened.

Quite suddenly I saw flames erupt from Eudoxia’s breast, and then flames run riot through her veins. Her face remained sweet and unfeeling. Her eyes remained empty. Her limbs twitched.

It was not my Fire Gift that had brought about this execution. It was the power of Akasha. What else could it have been? A new power, lain dormant in her for centuries, now known to her on account of Eudoxia and me?

I dared not guess. I dared not question.

At once the flames rising from the highly combustible blood of the preternatural body ignited the heavy ornate garments and the whole form was ablaze.

Only after a long time did the fire die away, leaving a glittering mass of ash.

The clever learned creature who had been Eudoxia was no more. The brilliant charming creature who had lived so well and so long was no more. The being who had given me such hope when first I saw her and heard her voice was no more.

I took off my outer cloak and, going down on my knees like a poor scrubwoman, I wiped up this pollution of the shrine and then I sat down exhausted in the corner, my head against the wall. And to my own surprise, and who knows?—perhaps to the surprise of the Mother and Father—I gave way to tears.

I wept and wept for Eudoxia, and also for myself that I had brutally burnt those young blood drinkers, those foolish unschooled and undisciplined immortals who had been Born to Darkness as we say now, only to be pawns in a brawl.

I felt a cruelty in myself which I could only abhor.

Finally, being quite satisfied that my underground crypt remained impregnable—for looters were now thick in the ruins above—I laid down for the sleep of the day.

I knew what I meant to do the following night and nothing could change my mind.

12

I
n 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 or 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—that 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—.”