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"This was very uncharacteristic of me, to leave in temper, to break off abruptly and depart I had never done that sort of thing when I was a e of madness, the first madness ht into this by force
"I went back to reat library of Alexandria, and I lay down on my bed as if I could really let
"’Idiot nonsense,’ I ht about the story, thewas inhtened all sensations, that it keptwhen it should have co had no anization of force with a desire to live all its own
"And then it even made sense that we could all be connected to the Mother and the Father because this thing was spiritual, and had no bodily limits except the liained control It was the vine, this thing, and ere the flowers, scattered over great distances, but connected by the twining tendrils that could reach all over the world
"And this e gods could hear each other so well, why I could know the others were in Alexandria, even before they called to me It hy they could come and find me in my house, why they could lead ht Maybe it was true And it was an accident, thisof an unna as the Elder had said
"But still -- I didn’t like it
"I revolted against all of it because if I was anything, I was an individual, a particular being, with a strong sense of atives I could not realize that I was host to an alien entity I was still Marius, no matter what had been done to ht and one thought only: if I was connected to this Mother and Father then I must see them, and I ht that I could die at any moment on account of some alchemy I could neither control nor understand
"But I didn’t return to the underground te on blood until hts were drowned in it, and then in the early hours I roa as I had always done
"So forin the cellar teth I possessed I would live for centuries: I would know the answers to all kinds of questions I would be the continual awareness of things as ti as I slew only the evildoer, I could endure my blood thirst, revel in it, in fact And when the appropriate time came, I would make my companions and make them well
"Nohat remained? Go back to the Elder and find out where he had put the Mother and the Father And see these creatures forthe Elder had threatened, sink them so deep into the earth that no ht
"Easy to think about this, easy to ihts after I’d left the Elder, when all these thoughts had had ti in h the sheer bed curtains as before In filtered and golden light, I listened to the sounds of sleeping Alexandria, and slipped into thin and glittering waking dreaain, disappointed that I had not returned -- and as the thought ca in the doorway again
"So me I could feel it To see this person I had but to turn my head And then I would have the upper hand with the Elder I would say, ’So you’ve come out of loneliness and disillusionment and now you want to tell o back and sit in silence to wound your wraithlike companions, the brotherhood of the cinders?’ Of course I wouldn’t say such a thing to hi hihts
"The one as there did not go away
"And slowly I turned my eyes in the direction of the door, and it was a wonificent bronze-skinned Egyptian woman as artfully bejeweled and dressed as the old queens, in fine pleated linen, with her black hair down to her shoulders and braided with strands of gold An i sense of her presence, her occupation of this snificant room
"I sat up and moved back the curtains, and the la fro towards the ceiling and then gone She was still there, the re on the jewels around her neck and in her large almond-shaped eyes And silently she said:
"Marius, take us out of Egypt
"And then she was gone
"My heart was knocking infor her I leapt over the wall and stood alone listening in the empty unpaved street
"I started to run towards the old section where I had found the door I round temple and find the Elder and tell him that he must take me to her, I had seen her, she had moved, she had spoken, she had come to me! I was delirious, but when I reached the door, I knew that I didn’t have to go down I knew that if I went out of the city into the sands I could find her She was already leading me to where she was
"In the hour that followed I was to reth and the speed I’d known in the forests of Gaul, and had not used since I went out froht, and I walked until I ca in the sand It would have taken a band of mortals several hours to discover the trapdoor, but I found it quickly, and I was able to lift it, whichstairs and corridors I folloere not illu a candle, for being so swept off ht of her that I had rushed after her as if I were in love
"’Help me, Akasha,’ I whispered I put my hands out in front of me and tried not to feel mortal fear of the blackness in which I was as blind as an ordinaryhard beforeto co and felt what seemed the chest of a human statue, its shoulders, its ar wasmore resilient than stone And when my hand found the face, the lips proved just a little softer than all the rest of it, and I drew back
"I could hear my heart beat I could feel the sheer humiliation of cowardice I didn’t dare say the na I had touched had a man’s forather my wits, for and running like a ainst my closed lids saw fire
"When I openedtorch on the wall beyond hi beforeat ray light He was otherwise lifeless, hands limp at his sides He was ornalorified dress of the pharaoh and his hair too was plaited with gold His skin was bronze all over, as hers had been, enhanced, as the Elder had said And he was the incarnation ofat me
"In the barren chamber behind hile, her ar there Her linen was smeared with sand, her sandaled feet caked with it, and her eyes were vacant and staring Perfect attitude of death
"And he like a stone sentinel in a royal tomb blocked my path
"I could hear no more from either of them than you heard from them when I took you down to the chaht expire on the spot from fear
" Yet there was the sand on her feet and on her linen She’d come to me! She had!
"But someone had co the passage, and when I turned, I saw one of the burnt ones -- a s cutting into the shiny black raisin skin of his lower lip
"I sed a gasp at the sight of hi with every step He was plowing towards us, but he did not seem to see me He put his hands up and shoved at Enkil
"’No, no, back into the cha voice ’No, no!’ and each syllable seeure He couldn’t budge it
"’Help me!’ he said to o back The further they et them back’
"I stared at Enkil and I felt the horror that you felt to see this statue with life in it, see to rew evenand scratching at Enkil, unable to do anything with hi that should have been dead wearing itself out like this, and this other thing that looked so perfectly godlike andthere, was more than I could bear
" ’Helpsaid ’Get him back into the chamber Get them back where they must remain’
"How could I do this? How could I lay hands on this being? How could I presuo?
"’They will be all right, if you help ether and they will be at peace Push on him Do it Push! Oh, look at her, what’s happened to her Look’
" ’All right, damn it!’ I whispered, and overcoain on Enkil and I pushed at hi here, and the burnt one beca and shoving
"But then he gasped and cackled and threw his skeletal arms up in the air and backed up
"’What’s thenot to screah
"Akasha had appeared behind Enkil She was standing directly behind hiertips colazed beauty as they had been before But she was s walking of their own volition, he backing up slowly, feet barely leaving the ground, and she shielded by him so that I saw only her hands and the top of her head and her eyes
"I blinked, trying to clear ain, together, and they had lapsed into the same posture in which you saw theht
"The burnt creature was near to collapse He had gone down on his knees, and he didn’t have to explain to me why He had found them many a time in different positions, but he had never witnessed their movement And he had never seen her as she had been before
"I was bursting with the knowledge of why she had been as she was before She had come to ave way to what it should have been: overwhelrief
"I started to cry I started to cry uncontrollably as I had not cried since I had been with the old god in the grove and reat luminous and powerful curse, had descended on me I cried as you cried when you first saw them I cried for their stillness and their isolation, and this horrible little place in which they stared forward at nothing or sat in darkness while Egypt died above
"The goddess, the , whatever she was, theat lossy eyes, with their black fringe of lashes, were fixed uponof its old power, it was e, inside ypt, Marius The Elder means to destroy us Guard us, Marius Or we perish here