males were so greatly feared.”
“So they didn’t fear the women,” said Rowan. “Because the women didn’t bring death to the human men who lay with them.”
“Exactly,” said Gordon. “However!” He held up his finger with a little delighted smile. “However! It did now and then happen, yes! That the male giant or the female giant did parent, as it were, the magical child of its own race. And there would be this newborn giant for all to behold.
“No time was more propitious for such a union than Christmas, December Twenty-fifth, the feast of the old solar god! And it was said then—when a giant was born—that the heavens had once again copulated with the earth, and out of the union had come a great magic, as had happened at the First Creation; and only after great feasting, and singing of the Christmas songs, was the sacrifice carried out in Christ’s name. Now and then a giant fathered or mothered many such off-spring, and Taltos mated with Taltos, and the fires of sacrifice filled the glens, the smoke rising to heaven, bringing an early spring and warm winds and good rains, and making the crops grow.”
Gordon broke off, turning enthusiastically to Ash. “You must know all of this. You yourself could give us links in the chain of memory. Surely you too have lived an earlier life. You could tell us things which no human can ever discover in any other way. You can tell them with clarity and power, for you’re strong, and not addled, like my poor Tessa! You can give us this gift.”
Ash said nothing. But his face had darkened, and Gordon seemed not at all aware of it.
He’s a fool, thought Yuri. Perhaps that is what great schemes of violence always require—a romantic fool.
Gordon turned to the others, even to Yuri, to whom he appealed now. “Don’t you understand? Surely you understand now what such possibilities meant to me?”
“What I know,” said Yuri, “is that you didn’t tell Aaron. And you didn’t tell the Elders, either, did you? The Elders never knew. Your brothers and sisters never knew!”
“I told you. I could trust no one with my discoveries, and frankly, I would not. They were mine. Besides, what would our beloved Elders have said, if ‘said’ is even appropriate for their endless silent communications! A fax would have come through directing me to bring Tessa to the Motherhouse at once, and to—No, this discovery was mine by right. I had found Tessa.”
“No, you lie to yourself and everyone else,” said Yuri. “Everything that you are is because of the Talamasca.”
“That’s a contemptible thought! Have I given the Talamasca nothing? Besides, it was never my idea to hurt our own members! The doctors involved, yes, I agreed to this, though again I would never have proposed it.”
“You did kill Dr. Samuel Larkin?” asked Rowan in her low, expressionless voice, probing but not meaning to alarm him.
“Larkin, Larkin … Oh, I don’t know. I get confused. You see, my helpers had some very different notions from mine, about what was required to keep the whole thing secret. You might say I went along with the more daring aspects of the plan. In truth, I can’t imagine simply killing another human being.”
He glared at Ash, accusingly.
“And your helpers, their names?” asked Michael. His tone was not unlike Rowan’s, low-key, entirely pragmatic. “The men in New Orleans, Norgan and Stolov, you invited those men to share these secrets?”
“No, of course not,” declared Gordon. “They weren’t really members, any more than Yuri here was a member. They were merely investigators for us, couriers, that kind of thing. But by that time it had … it had gotten out of hand, perhaps. I can’t say. I only know my friends, my confidants, they felt they could control those men with secrets and money. That’s what it’s always about, corruption—secrets and money. But let’s get away from all that. What matters here is the discovery itself. That is what is pure and what redeems everything.”
“It redeems nothing!” said Yuri. “For gain you took your knowledge! A common traitor, looting the archives for personal gain.”
“Nothing could be farther from the truth,” declared Gordon.
“Yuri, let him go on,” said Michael quietly. Gordon calmed himself with remarkable will, appealing to Yuri again in a manner that infuriated Yuri.
“How can you think that my goals were other than spiritual?” asked Gordon. “I, who have grown up in the shadow of Glastonbury Tor, who all his life has been