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Why didn't you come to me? Why didn't you tell me who you were?"

She considered for a longback and forth suddenly over the others who drew close to him now

Santino was terrified of this woh he knew her very well And Mael was afraid of her too, though perhaps a little less In fact, it seemed that Mael loved her and was bound to her in some subservient way As for Pandora, she was merely apprehensive She drew even closer to Marius as if to stand with hiardless of what he meant to do

"Yes, I knew of you," the wolish in the modern fashion But it was the unmistakable voice of the twin in the dream, the blind tho had cried out the name of her mute sister, Mekare, as both had been shut up in stone coffins by the angry mob

Our voices never really change, Marius thought The voice was young, pretty It had a reticent softness as she spoke again

"I ht have destroyed your shrine if I had co and the Queen beneath the sea 1 , destroyed ail of us And this I didn't want to do And so I did nothing What would you have had me do? I couldn't take your burden from you I couldn't help you So I did not come "

It was a better answer than he had expected It was not impossible to like this creature On the other hand, this wasAnd her answer-it wasn't the whole truth

"No?" she asked him Her face revealed a tracery of subtle lines for an instant, the gli that had once been human "What is the whole truth?" she asked "That I owed you nothing, least of all the knowledge of est that I should have made myself known to you? I have seen a thousand like you I knohen you co I knohen you perish What are you to er All living things are in danger! And maybe when this is finished ill love each other and respect each other And maybe not Maybe we'll all be dead "

"Perhaps so," he said quietly He couldn't help sht And he liked her manner, the bone-hard way in which she spoke

It had been his experience that all ie in which they were born And so it was true, also, of even this ancient one, whose words had a savage sih the timbre of the voice had been soft

"I'm not myself," he added hesitantly "I haven't survived all this as well as I should have survived it My body's healed-the old miracle " He sneered "But I don't understand s The bitterness, the utter-" He stopped

"The utter darkness," she said

"Yes Never has life itself seemed so senseless," he added "I don't s It's a joke, isn't it? Consciousness, it's a kind of joke "

"No," she said "That's not so "

"I disagree with you Will you patronize me? Tell me no many thousands of years you've lived before I was born? How ain of his ih his liht of the immortal voices that had answered hiht one by one by Akasha's fire He had heard them die, if he had not seen them! And what had sleep meant for him? The dreams of the twins