"'And you might begin,' I said acidly, 'by confessing why you came to me in my rooms here in Alexandria. It was you who led me here.
Why did you do that? To rail at me? To curse me for asking you how it started?'
" 'Quiet yourself.'
" 'I might say the same to you.'
"He looked me up and down calmly, and then he smiled. He opened both his hands as if in greeting or offering, and then he shrugged.
" 'I want you to tell me about the accident,' I said. 'I would beg you to tell me if I thought it would do any good. What can I do for you to make you tell?'
"His face underwent several remarkable transformations. I could feel his thoughts, but not hear them, feel a high-pitched humor. And when he spoke again, his voice was thickened as if he were fighting back sorrow, as if it were strangling him.
" 'Hearken to our old story,' he said. 'The good god, Osiris, the first pharaoh of Egypt, in the eons before the invention of writing, was murdered by evil men. And when his wife, Isis, gathered together the parts of his body, he became immortal and thereafter ruled in the realm of the dead. This is the realm of the moon, and the night, in which he reigned, and to him were brought the blood sacrifices for the great goddess which he drank. But the priests tried to steal from him the secret of his immortality, and so his worship became secret, and his temples were known only to those of his cult who protected him from the sun god, who might at any time seek to destroy Osiris with the sun's burning rays. But you can see the truth in the legend. The early king discovered something-or rather he was the victim of an ugly occurrence-and he became unnatural with a power that could be used for incalculable evil by those around him, and so he made a worship of it, seeking to contain it in obligation and ceremony, seeking to limit The Powerful Blood to those who would use it for white magic and nothing else. And so here we are.'
" 'And the Mother and Father are Isis and Osiris?'
"'Yes and no. They are the first two. Isis and Osiris are the names that were used in the myths that they told, or the old worship onto which they grafted themselves.'
"'What was the accident, then? How was this thing discovered?'
"He looked at me for a long period of silence, and then he sat down again, turning to the side and staring off as he'd been before.
"'But why should I tell you?' he asked, yet this time he put the question with new feeling, as though he meant it sincerely and had to answer it for himself. 'Why should I do anything? If the Mother and the Father will not rise from the sands to save themselves as the sun comes over the horizon, why should I move? Or speak? Or go on?' Again he looked up at me.
" 'This is what happened, the Mother and the Father went out into the sun?'
"'Were left in the sun, my dear Marius,' he said, astonishing me with the knowledge of my name. 'Left in the sun. The Mother and the Father do not move of their own volition, save now and then to whisper to each other, to knock those of us down who would come to them for their healing blood. They could restore all of us who were burned, if they would let us drink the healing blood. Four thousand years the Father and Mother have existed, and our blood grows stronger with every season, every victim. It grows stronger even with starvation, for when the starvation is ended, new strength is enjoyed. But the Father and the Mother do not care for their children. And now it seems they do not care for themselves. Maybe after four thousand nights, they merely wished to see the sun!
"'Since the coming of the Greek into Egypt, since the perversion of the old art, they have not spoken to us. They have not let us see the blink of their eye. And what is Egypt now but the granary of Rome? When the Mother and the Father strike out to drive us away from the veins in their necks, they are as iron and can crush our bones. And if they do not care anymore, then why should I?'
"I studied him for a long moment.
" 'And you are saying,' I asked, 'that this is what caused the others to burn up? That the Father and Mother were left out in the sun?'
"He nodded.
"'Our blood comes from them!' he said. 'It is their blood. The line is direct, and what befalls them befalls us. If they are burnt, we are burnt.'
"'We are connected to them!' I whispered in amazement.
" 'Exactly, my dear Marius,' he said, watching me, seeming to enjoy my fear. 'That is why they have been kept for a thousand years, the Mother and the Father, that is why victims are brought to them in sacrifice, that is why they are worshiped. What happens to them happens to us.'
"'Who did it? Who put them in the sun?'
"He laughed without making a sound.
"'The one who kept them,' he said, 'the one who couldn't endure it any longer, the one who had had this solemn charge for too long, the one who could persuade no one else to accept the burden, and finally, weeping and shivering, took them out into the desert sands and left them like two statues there.'
" 'And my fate is linked to this,' I murmured.
" 'Yes. But you see, I do not think he believed it any longer, the one who kept them. It was just an old tale. After all, they were worshiped as I told you, worshiped by us, as we are worshiped by mortals, and no one dared to harm them. No one held a torch to them to see if it made the rest of us feel pain. No. He did not believe it. He left them in the desert, and that night when he opened his eyes in his coffin and found himself a burnt and unrecognizable horror, he screamed and screamed.'
" 'You got them back underground.'
"'Yes.'
"'And they are blackened as you are...'
" 'No.' He shook his head. 'Darkened to a golden bronze, like the meat turning on the spit. No more than that. And beautiful as before, as if beauty has become part of their heritage, beauty part and parcel of what they are destined to be. They stare forward as they always have, but they no longer incline their heads to each other, they no longer hum with the rhythm of their secret exchanges, they no longer let us drink their blood. And the victims brought to them, they will not take, save now and then, and only in solitude. No one knows when they will drink, when they will not.'
"I shook my head. I moved back and forth, my head bowed, the candle fluttering in my hand, not knowing what to say to all this, needing time to think it out.
"He gestured for me to take the chair on the other side of the writing table, and without thinking of it, I did.
" 'But wasn't it meant to happen, Roman?' he asked. 'Weren't they meant to meet their death in the sands, silent, unmoving, like statues cast there after a city is sacked by the conquering army, and were we not meant to die too? Look at Egypt. What is Egypt, I ask you again, but the granary of Rome? Were they not meant to burn there day after day while all of us burned like stars the world over?'
"'Where are they?' I asked.
"'Why do you want to know?' he sneered. 'Why should I give you the secret? They cannot be hacked to pieces, they are too strong for that, a knife will barely pierce their skin. Yet cut them and you cut us. Burn them and you burn us. And whatever they make us feel, they feel only a particle of it because their age protects them. And yet to destroy every one of us, you have merely to bring them annoyance! The blood they do not even seem to need! Maybe their minds are connected to ours as well. Maybe the sorrow we feel, the misery, the horror at the fate of the world itself, comes from their minds, as locked in their
chambers they dream! No. I cannot tell you where they are, can I? Until I decide for certain that I am indifferent, that it is time for us to die out.'
"'Where are they?' I said again.
"'Why should I not sink them into the very depths of sea?' he asked. 'Until such time as the earth herself heaves them up into the sunlight on the crest of a great wave?'