Blood and Gold tvc-8

by Anne Rice

  "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—."

  "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—that one could make cf her what one wanted while losing nothing—and 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— 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—until 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.

  She looked at me with clear unquestioning eyes, as if she felt what I was doing to her, or trying to do, and it seemed that she would not hold anything back.

  But what did I learn? Only that she had told me the truth. / know no more of your beautiful blood drinker. She was patient with me, and then there came a wave of true grief. / loved Eudoxia. You destroyed her. And now you cannot leave me alone.

  I stood up and went again to walking about the room. Its 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 stoo
d 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.