I feared bees and the wax had made me think of them. I knew that I had seen Cyrus, King of Persia, and that the favor I had asked of him had not been unreasonable. Other than that? I knew only general things.
"Over and over he demanded I try. Over and over I failed. I wept. Finally I told him to leave me alone, what did he want of me, and he touched me on the shoulder and said, 'There, there, don't you see, if you don't remember your life, you can't remember its moral lessons.'
" 'Well, what if there were none!' I said ominously. 'What if all I saw was treachery and lies.'
" 'That is simply impossible,' he said. 'But you do remember Cyrus, and you do remember what you did today?'
"All that I could remember-coming to him, all he'd said, being sent to slay the bedouins and enjoying it, and coming back to him and all that had happened since. He threw at me a few random questions about details . . . such as what had the fire been made of round which the bedouins camped: camel dung was the answer. Had there been any women? No. Where was the place? I had to think and extract an answer, as I had taken no note, but it came to me to his satisfaction, fifty miles from where the desert begins due east of Miletus.
" 'Who is King now?'
" 'Cyrus of Persia,' I said. He then went into a whole series of questions. I answered them all. Who were the Lydians, the Medians the Ionians, where was Athens, who was Pharaoh, what was the city where Cyrus had been declared King of the World. I answered and answered and answered.
"He asked practical questions about colors and food and air and warmth and heat. I knew all the answers. I knew everything general but nothing pertaining to my own life. I knew lots about silver and gold and could tell him that-he was impressed. I looked at the emeralds the King had sent him and told him they were most precious and especially beautiful and which was better than another. I told him the names of flowers in his garden. Then I felt tired.
"A strange thing happened. I began to weep. I began to weep like a child. I couldn't stop myself from it and any sense of being humiliated before him didn't matter to me. Finally I looked up and saw him waiting with his bright, curious, and rather merciless blue eyes.
" 'Did you really mean it when you said, always remember the hungry and the poor?' I asked.
" 'Yes,' he said. 'I'm going to tell you the most important things I know now. Listen. I want this repeated back to me whenever I ask you for it. Very well? You call it the lessons of Zurvan and long after I'm dead, you demand of your masters that they tell you what they know, and you keep it in your memory even if it is something stupid, and you'll know when it's stupid. You are a clever, clever spirit.'
" 'All right, bright-blue-eyed Master,' I said angrily. 'Tell me all you know.'
"He furrowed his brows at the sarcasm and insult. He sat brooding. He put one knee over the other. He looked bony in his tunic. His gray hair came to his shoulders and there broke off, but his face was most alert.
" 'Azriel,' he said, 'I could punish you for your impertinence. I could make you feel pain. I could pitch you into the cauldron you fear so that you do not know that it is not real! I can do that at any time.'
" 'And if you do, I will climb out of that cauldron and I will rip you limb from limb, magician!'
" 'Yes, that's more or less why I haven't done it,' he said. 'So let me do it to you this way. I want and expect courtesy from you, in return for all that I teach you. I am your Master at your pleasure.'
" 'Sounds all right,' I said.
" 'All right. Now this is what I know. Don't ever forget it. As long you hate, and you roast in a hell of anger, there will be a limit to what you can do. You will be at the mercy of other spirits now and men and magicians. Anger is a confusing force, and hatred is blinding. So. You cripple yourself with this, you see,