mind. I was thinking:
Here are two immortals but we cannot solace one another; we cannot have friendship. We can only part after bitter words. And then I'll be alone again. I'll be proud Marius who left Pandora. I shall have my beautiful house and all my fine possessions to myself.
I realized Avicus was staring at me, trying to probe my mind, but failing though his Mind Gift was quite terrifically strong. "Why do you live as vagabonds? " I asked.
"We don't know how to live as anything else," said Avicus. "We've never tried. We shy away from mortals, except when we hunt. We fear discovery. We fear fire." I nodded.
"What do you seek other than blood?"
A miserable expression passed over his face. He was in pain. He tried to hide it. Or perhaps he tried to make the pain go away.
"I'm not sure that we seek anything," he said. "We don't know how."
"Do you want to stay with me," I asked, "and learn? " I felt the boldness, the presumptuousness of this question, but the words had already been said.
"I can show you the Temples of Rome; I can show you the big palaces, the houses that make this villa appear quite humble indeed. I can show you how to play the shadows so that mortals never see you; how to climb walls swiftly and silently; how to walk the roofs at night all over the city, never touching the ground." Avicus was amazed. He looked to Mael. Mael sat slumped, saying nothing. Then he pulled himself up. In a weak voice he continued his condemnation. "I would have been stronger if you hadn't told me all those marvelous things," he said, "and now you ask if we want to enjoy the same pleasures, the pleasures of a Roman."
"It's what I have to offer," I said. "Do what you wish."
Mael shook his head. He began to speak again, for the benefit of whom I don't know.
"When it was plain that you wouldn't return," he said, "they chose me. I was to become the god. But for this to happen we had to find a God of the Grove who had not been burnt to death by the Terrible Fire. After all, we had destroyed our own gentle god foolishly! A creature who had had the magic to make you."
I gestured as if to say, It was indeed a shame.
"We sent word far and wide," he said. "At last an answer came from Britain. A god survived there, a god who was most ancient and most strong."
I looked to Avicus, but there was no change in his expression.
"However we were warned not to go to him. We were told that it was perhaps not something we should do. We were confused by these messages, and at last we set out for we felt that we must try."
"And how did you feel," I asked cruelly, "now that you had been chosen, and you knew that you would be shut up in the oak, never to see the sun again, and only to drink blood during the great feasts and during the full moon?"
He looked straight ahead as if he couldn't give me a decent answer to this, and then he replied.
"You had corrupted me as I told you."
"Ah," I said, "so you were afraid. The Faithful of the Forest couldn't comfort you. And I was to blame."
"Not afraid," he said furiously, clenching his teeth. "Corrupted as I said." He flashed his small deep-set eyes on me. "Do you know what it means to believe absolutely nothing, to have no god, no truth!"
"Yes, of course I know," I answered. "I believe nothing. I consider it wise. I believed nothing when I was mortal. I believe nothing now."
I think I saw Avicus flinch.
I might have said more brutal things, but I saw that Mael meant to go on.
Staring forward in the same manner he told his tale: "We made our journey," he said. "We crossed the narrow sea to Britain and went North to a land of green woods and there we came upon a band of priests who sang our hymns and knew our poetry and our law. They were Druids as we were Druids, they were the Faithful of the Forest as were we. We fell into each other's arms."
Avicus was watching Mael keenly. My eyes were more patient and cold, I was sure. Nevertheless the simple narrative drew me, I have to confess.
"I went into the grove," said Mael. "How huge