Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,83

the courage to do what I had to do! To place them both and myself in the sun and finish forever what the Egyptian Elder had sought to do—rid the world of the King and Queen and all the fanged men and women who glut themselves on death! Oh, she is too clever.”

“You really planned to do that?” I asked. “To immolate them and yourself?”

He made a small sarcastic sound. “Yes, of course, I planned it. Next week, next month, next year, next decade, after another hundred years, maybe in two hundred, maybe after I’d read all the books in the world and seen all the places, maybe in five hundred years, maybe . . . maybe soon in my loneliness.”

I was at first too stunned to speak.

He smiled at me wisely and sadly. “Oh, but I cry like a child,” he said softly.

“Where comes the confidence,” I asked, “to put an end so swiftly to such bold and complex evidence of divine magic!”

“Magic!” he cursed.

“I’d rather if you did not do this,” I said. “I don’t mean the crying, I mean burning up the Mother and Father and . . . ”

“I’m sure you would!” he answered. “And do you think I could bear to do it against your will, subject you to the fire? You innocent desperate idiot of a woman! Restore her altars! Oh! Restore her worship! Oh! You are out of your mind!”

“Idiot! You dare sling your insults at me! You think you’ve brought a slave into your household? You haven’t even brought a wife.”

Yes. Our minds were locked now to each other, and later I would find out that it was because of our heavy exchange of blood. But all I knew then was that we had to content ourselves with words like mortal men and women.

“I did not mean to use petty insults!” he said. He was stung.

“Well, then sharpen your great male reason and your lofty elegant patrician mode of expression!” I said.

We glowered at one another.

“Yes!” he said. “Reason,” he said. He held up his finger. “You are the most clever woman I’ve ever known. And you listen to reason. I will explain and you will see. That is what must be done.”

“Yes, and you are hotheaded and sentimental and give way to tears again and again—and you pound upon the Queen herself like a child throwing a tantrum!”

His face went red with immediate anger. It sealed his lips against his words.

He turned and went away.

“Do you cast me out?” I said. “Do you want me gone!” I shouted. “This is your house. Tell me now if you want me gone. I’ll go now!”

He stopped. “No,” he said.

He turned around and looked at me, shaken, and caught off guard. In a raw voice, he said, “Don’t go, Pandora!” He blinked as if to clear his vision. “Don’t go. Please, don’t.” And then he let fall a final whisper. “We have each other.”

“And where do you go now, to get away from me?”

“Only to change her dress,” he said with a sad bitter smile. “To clean and recostume ‘such bold evidence of complex and divine magic.’ ”

He disappeared.

I turned to the violet outdoors. To the clouds stirred in a cauldron by the moon, to defy the darkness. To the big old trees that said, Mount our limbs, we will embrace you! To the scattered flowers everywhere that said, We are your bed. Lie down with us.

And so the two-hundred-year brawl began.

And it never really ended.

10

ITH my eyes still closed, I heard voices of the city, voices from nearby houses; I heard men talking as they passed on the road outside. I heard music coming from somewhere, and the laughter of women and children. When I concentrated I could understand what they said. I chose not to do this, and their voices melded with the breeze.

Suddenly, the state seemed unbearable. There seemed nothing to do but rush back to the chapel and kneel there and worship! These senses I had been given seemed fit for nothing else. If this was my destiny, then what was to become of me?

Through it all, I heard a soul weeping in agony; it was an echo of my own, a soul broken from a course of great hope, who could scarce believe that such fine beginnings should end in terror! It was Flavius.

I leapt into the old gnarled olive tree. It was as simple as taking a step. I stood among the branches, and then leapt to the next, and then to the top of the wall,