you know of such magic; help us if you will, for you know that we never meant to harm you, only to spread the truth and the law.'
"We did not dwell on the stupidity of this statement-the virtue of spreading the truth through wholesale slaughter and so forth and so on. But Mekare demanded that the King now tell what he could recall.
"He spoke of things which you-all of you seated here-surely know. Of how he was dying; and how he tasted the blood from his wife which had covered his face; and of how his body quickened, and wanted this blood, and then how he took it from his wife and she gave it; and then he became as she was. But for him there was no mysterious cloud of blood. There was no thing running rampant within him. The thirst, it's unbearable,' he said to us. 'Unbearable.' And he too bowed his head.
"We stood in silence for a moment looking at each other, Mekare and I, and as always, Mekare spoke first;
" 'We know no name for what you are,' she said. 'We know no stories of such a thing ever happening in this world before. But it's plain enough what took place.' She fixed her eyes upon the Queen. 'As you perceived your own death, your soul sought to make its swift escape from suffering as souls so often do. But as it rose, the spirit Amel seized it, this thing being invisible as your soul was invisible; and in the normal course of things you might have easily overcome this earthbound entity and gone on to realms we do not know.
" 'But this spirit had long before wrought a change within himself; a change that was utterly new. This spirit had tasted the blood of humans whom he had pierced or tormented, as you yourself have seen him do. And your body, lying there, and full of blood despite its many wounds, had life still.
" 'And so the spirit, thirsting, plunged down into your body, his invisible form still wedded to your soul.
" "Still you might have triumphed, fighting off this evil thing as possessed persons often do. But now the tiny core of this spirit- the thing of matter which is the roaring center of all spirits, from which their endless energy conies-was suddenly filled with blood as never in the past.
" 'And so the fusion of blood and timeless tissue was a million times magnified and accelerated; and blood flowed through all his body, both material and nonmaterial, and this was the blood cloud that you saw.
" 'But it is the pain you felt which is most significant, this pain which traveled through your limbs. For surely as inevitable death came to your body, the spirit's tiny core merged with the flesh of your body as its energy had already merged with your soul. It found some special place or organ in which matter merged with matter as spirit had already merged with spirit; and a new thing was formed.'
" 'Its heart and my heart,' the Queen whispered. 'They became one.' And closing her eyes, she lifted her hand and laid it on her breast.
"We said nothing, for this seemed a simplification, and we did not believe the heart was the center of intellect or emotion. For us, it had been the brain which controlled these things. And in that moment, both Mekare and I saw a terrible memory-our mother's heart and brain thrown down and trampled in ashes and dust.
"But we fought this memory. It was abhorrent that this pain should be glimpsed by those who had been its cause.
"The King pressed us with a question. 'Very well,' he said, 'you've explained what has happened to Akasha. This spirit is in her, core wedded perhaps to core. But what is in me? I felt no such pain, no such scurrying demon. I felt... I felt only the thirst when her bloodied hands touched my lips.' He looked to his wife.
"The shame, the horror, they felt over the thirst was clear.
" 'But the same spirit is in you, too,' Mekare answered. There is but one Amel. Its core resides in the Queen, but it is in you also.'
" 'How is such a thing possible?' asked the King.
Chapter 34
"'This being has a great invisible part,' Mekare said. 'Were you to have seen it in its entirety, before this catastrophe took place, you would have seen something almost without end.'