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Suddenly I felt her holding h she was nowhere near me I heard her voice in my head:

Well done, my prince

Chapter 25

I couldn't stop This invisible thing was one ofit back into myself It was as if I was poised to take a breath, and if I did not take that breath I should die But she heldover rew still and the power concentrated itself withinmore

Slowly I turned around I looked at the clear snowy peaks, the perfectly black sky, and at the long line of dark bodies that lay on the path fro to one another, sobbing in disbelief, or giving off low and terrible moans I smelled death as I have never sore that had splashed arments But my hands! My hands were so white and clean Dear God, I didn't do it! Not me I didn't And my hands, they are clean!

Oh, but I had! And what am I that I could do it? That I loved it, loved it beyond all reason, loved it as men have always loved it in the absolute moral freedom of war-

It seemed a silence had fallen

If the women still cried I didn't hear theh why I didn't know I had dropped down to my knees and I reached out for the lastlike broken sticks in the snow, and I put my hand into the blood on his mouth and then I smeared this blood all over both my hands and pressed them to my face

Never had I killed in two hundred years that I hadn't tasted the blood, and taken it, along with the life, intoBut hastly raves And it had been done with the ease of thought and breath Oh, this can never be atoned for! This can never never be justified!

I stood staring at the snow, through radually I realized that so was happening around me, and I could feel it as if the cold air had been warmed and the wind had risen and left the steep slope undisturbed Then the change see the beat of my heart

The crying had ceased Indeed the wo by twos and threes down the path as if in a trance, stepping over the dead It see, and that the earth had suddenly yielded spring flowers of every color and description, and that the air was full of perfume

Yet these things weren't happening, were they? In a haze of s and silks, and dark cloaks I shook myself all over I had to think clearly! This was no time for disorientation This power and these dead bodies were no dream and I could not, absolutely could not, yield to this overwhel and peace

"Akasha!" I whispered

Then lifting my eyes, not because I wanted to, but because I had to, I saw her standing on a far pro towards her, soer that others had to carry theround

A hush had fallen over all things