Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,46

at her decorated face! Surely she felt my revulsion. I must not hurt her. She meant well. It wasn’t her fault that she looked to me like a monster. Why in hell had I come here!

I lay dazed. The room had a soft golden light coming mainly through its three doors, and they were cut Egyptian-style, these doors, wider at the base than at the top, and I let this light make a blur of my vision. I asked the light to do this.

I felt the Priestess’s hand. Such silken warmth. So lovely, her touch, her sweetness.

“Do you believe all of it!” I suddenly whispered.

She completely ignored this question. Her painted mask gave forth the creed.

“You must be like Mother Isis. Depend on no one. You don’t have the burden of recovering a lost husband or father. You are free. Receive into your house men with love as you choose. You belong to no one but Mother Isis. Remember, Isis is the goddess who loves, the goddess who forgives, the goddess of infinite undemanding because she herself has suffered!”

“Suffered!” I gasped. I moaned, a very uncommon sound for me, most of my life. But I saw the weeping Queen of my nightmares, bound to her throne.

“Listen to this,” I said, “the dreams I will now recount, and then tell me why it is happening.” I knew my voice sounded angry. I was sorry for it. “These dreams don’t come from wine or potions, or after long periods of wakefulness that twist the mind.”

Then I launched into another totally unplanned confession.

I told this woman of the blood dreams, the dreams of ancient Egypt in which I had drunk blood—the altar, the Temple, the desert, the sun rising.

“Amon Ra!” I said. This was the Egyptian name for the sun god, but I had never spoken it to my knowledge. I said it now. “Yes, Isis tricked him into revealing his name, but he killed me and I was her blood drinker, do you hear me, a thirsty god!”

“No!” said the Priestess. She sat motionless.

She thought for a long while. I had scared her and now this scared me all the more.

“Can you read the ancient picture writing of Egypt?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

Then she said, in a more relaxed and vulnerable tone:

“You speak of very old legends, legends buried in the history of our worship of Isis and Osiris; that they once did indeed take the blood of their victims as sacrifice. There are scrolls here that tell of this. But nobody can really decipher them, except for one . . . ”

Her voice trailed off.

“Who is the one?” I asked. I sat up on my elbows. I realized the plaits of my hair had come undone. Good. It felt good because it was free now and clean. I raked my hair with both hands.

What did it feel like to be entombed in paint and wig like this Priestess?

“Tell me,” I said, “who is the one who can read these legends. Tell me!”

“These are evil tales,” she said, “that Isis herself and Osiris live on, somewhere, in material form, taking blood even now.” She made an expression of denial and disgust. “But this is not our worship! We sacrifice no humans here! Egypt was old and wise before Rome was born!”

Who was she trying to convince? Me?

“I’ve never had such dreams, in a string like this, with the same theme.”

She became very worked up with her declarations.

“Our Mother Isis has no taste for blood. She has conquered death and set her husband Osiris as King of the Dead, but for us, she is life itself. She didn’t send you these dreams.”

“Probably not! I agree with you. But then who did? Where do they come from? Why did they pursue me at sea? Who is this one who can read the old writing?”

She was shaken. She had let go of me and she stared off, her eyes taking on a deceptive ferocity due to the black lining.

“Perhaps somewhere in childhood you heard an old tale, maybe an old Egyptian Priest told it to you. You forgot it, and now it flames in your tortured mind. It feeds on fires to which it has no right—your Father’s death.”

“Yes, well, I certainly hope so, but I’ve never known an old Egyptian. At the Temple, the Priests were Roman. Besides, if we take the dreams and lay them out, what is the pattern there? Why is the Queen weeping? Why does the sun kill me? The Queen is in fetters.