Blood And Gold (The Vampire Chronicles 8)

Then he spoke:

"I have not," he said. "Those were dreams. They've died in this very place. It will take longer for memory to die¡ª. "

"Then remember her beauty and her power," Marius said. "I asked her once why she had never taken a blood drinker's eyes for her own. Why always the weak and bleeding eyes of a mortal victim? She told me she had never come upon a blood drinker whom she would destroy or even hurt, save for the Evil Queen herself and the Queen's eyes she couldn't take. Pure hatred prevented it. "

Thorne thought on this for a long time without replying.

"Always mortal eyes," he whispered.

And with each pair, as they endure, she sees more than you and I can see," said Marius.

"Yes," said Thorne, "I understand you. "

I want the strength to grow older," Marius said. "I want to find wonders around me as I always have. If I don't, I'll lose the strength to continue and that is what bites into me now. Death has put its hand on my shoulder. Death has come in the form of disappointment and fear of scorn"

"Ah, these things I understand, almost perfectly," said Thorne. "When I went up into the snow, I wanted to flee from these things. I wanted to die and not die, as so many mortals do. I don't think I thought I would endure in the ice or snow. I thought it would devour me, freeze me solid as it would a mortal man. But no such thing ever happened. And as for the pain of the cold I grew used to it, as if it were my daily portion, as if I had no right to anything else. But it was pain that drove me there, and so I understand you. You would fight pain now rather than retreat. "

"Yes, I would," said Marius. "When the Queen rose from her underground shrine, she left me buried in ice and indifference. Others came to rescue me and bring me to the council table where we sought to reason with her. Before this happened, I could not have imagined such contempt from the Queen or such injury. I could not have imagined my own patience and seeming forgiveness.

"But at that council table, Akasha met her destruction. The insult to me was avenged with utter finality. This creature whom I had guarded for two thousand years was gone from me. My Queen, gone from me . . .

"And so I can see now the larger story of my own life, of which my beautiful Queen was only a part, even in her cruelty to me. I can see all the stories of my life. I can pick and choose from among them. "

"Let me hear these stories," said Thorne. "Your words flow over me like warm water. They bring me comfort. I hunger for your images. I hunger for all you might say. "

Marius pondered this.

"Let me try to tell my stories," Marius said. "Let my stories do what stories always do. Let them keep you from your darker dreams and from your darker journey. Let them keep you here. "

Thorne smiled.

"Yes," he said, "I trust in you. Go on. "

Chapter 5

THE STORY

5

As I HAVE TOLD YOU, I was born in the Roman times, in the age of Augustus when the Roman Empire was immense and powerful, though the Northern tribes of barbarians who would eventually overrun it had long been fighting on its Northern frontiers.

Europe was a world of big and powerful cities just as it is now.

As for me, as I've said I was a bookish individual, and it had been my bad luck to be stolen from my world, taken into Druid precincts and there delivered to a blood drinker who believed himself to be a sacred God of the Grove and gave me nothing but superstition along with the Dark Blood.

My journey to Egypt to find the Mother was for myself. What if this fire described by the blackened and suffering god should come again?

Well, I found the Divine Pair and I stole them from those who had long been their guardians. I did it not only to possess the Sacred Core of the Divine Queen but because of my love of Akasha, my belief that she had spoken to me and commanded me to rescue her, and because she had given me her Precious Blood.

Understand there was nothing as strong as that primal fount. The blood rendered me a formidable blood drinker who could fight off any of the old burnt gods who came after me in the years to come.

But you must also understand: no religious impulse guided me. I had thought the "god" of the Druid woods to be a monster. And I understood that in her own way Akasha was a monster. I was a monster as well. I had no intention of creating a devotion for her. She was a secret. And from the moment she came into my hands she and her consort were most truly Those Who Must Be Kept.

This did not stop me from adoring her in my heart, and creating the most lavish shrine for her, and dreaming that, having spoken to me once with the Mind Gift, she would speak to me again.

The first city to which I took the mysterious pair was Antioch, a most marvelous and interesting place. It was in the East as we said in those days, yet it was a Roman city and had been shaped by the tremendous influence of Hellenism¡ªthat is, the philosophy and ideas of the Greeks. It was a city of new and splendid Roman buildings, and it was a city of great libraries and schools of philosophy, and though I haunted it by night, the ghost of my former self, there were brilliant men to be spied upon and wondrous things to be heard.

Nevertheless my first years as the keeper of the Mother and the Father were bitter in my loneliness, and the silence of the Divine Parents struck me often as particularly cruel. I was pitifully ignorant as to my own nature, and perpetually brooding on my eternal fate.