Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,56
blood from one of these weaklings, he grows a little stronger. And he is straight from the old legends, and you have dreamed of them. He wears his hair long in the old Egyptian style. He is in agony from his burns. He spits curses at the Temple.”
“What kind of curses?”
The Priestess interjected at once. “He seems to think that Queen Isis has betrayed him. He speaks in old Egyptian. We barely understand him. Our Roman friend here, our benefactor, has translated the words for us.”
“Stop!” I demanded. “My head is reeling. Don’t say anymore. The man over there has told the truth. I know nothing of this bloody burnt creature. I don’t know why I have the dreams. I think a woman is sending the dreams to me. It may be the Queen I described to you, the Queen on the throne, in fetters, who weeps, I don’t know why!”
“You have never seen this man?” asked the Priest.
The Roman answered for me. “She has not.”
“Oh, your marvelous talents as spokesman again!” I said to the Roman. “I am so delighted! Why are you hiding behind your toga? Why do you stand over there, so far away that I can’t see you? Have you seen this blood drinker?”
“Be patient with me,” he said. It was spoken with such charm that I couldn’t bring myself to say more to him. I turned on the Priest and the Priestess.
“Why don’t you lie in wait for this black burnt thing,” I said, “this weakling? I am hearing voices in my head. But it’s the words of a woman that come to me, warning me of danger. It’s a woman laughing. I want to leave now. I want to go home. I have something that must be done, and must be done cleverly. I need to go.”
“I will protect you from your enemy,” said the Roman.
“That’s charming,” I answered. “If you can protect me, if you know who my enemy is, then why can’t you lie in wait for this blood drinker? Catch him in a gladiator’s net. Sink five tridents into him. Five of you can hold him. All you have to do is hold him till the sun rises, the rays of Amon Ra will kill him. It may take two days, even three, but they’ll kill him. He’ll burn like I did in the dream. And you, mind reader, why don’t you help?”
I broke off, shocked and disoriented. Why was I so certain of this. Why was I using the name Amon Ra so casually, as if I believed in the god? I scarcely knew his fables.
“The creature knows when we are lying in wait,” said the Priest and Priestess. “He knows when the tall friend is here, and does not come. We are vigilant, we are patient, we think we will see no more of him, and then he comes. And now you have come with the dreams.”
A vivid garish flash of the dream returned. I was a man. I argued and cursed. I refused to do something which I had been ordered to do. A woman was weeping. I fought off those who tried to stop me. But I had not foreseen that I would, as I ran away, come to a desert place where I could find no shelter.
If the others spoke, I took no note of it. I heard the woman of the dream crying, the fettered Queen, and the woman was a blood drinker too. “You must drink from the Fount,” said the man in my dream. And he wasn’t a man. I wasn’t a man. We were gods. We were blood drinkers. That’s why the sun destroyed me. It was the force of a more powerful god. Layers upon layers of the dream lay below this polished bit of remembrance.
I came to my senses, or back to an awareness of the others, when someone placed a cup of wine in my hands. I drank it. It was excellent wine, from Italy, and I felt refreshed, though at once tired. It would make the walk home much too tiring if I drank any more. I needed my strength.
“Take this away,” I said. I looked at the Priestess. “In the dream, I told you, I was one of them. They wanted me to drink from the Queen. They called her ‘the Fount.’ They said she did not know how to rule. I told you.”
The Priestess burst into tears and turned her back, hunching up her narrow shoulders.
“I