the voice.
A man in the prime of life at the moment of the immortal gift. And the square face, with its slightly hollowed cheeks, its long full mouth, stamped with terrifying gentleness and peace.
"Drink," he said, eyebrows rising slightly, lips shaping the word carefully, slowly, as if it were a kiss.
As Magnus had done on that lethal night so many eons ago, he raised his hand now and moved the cloth back from his throat. The vein, dark purple beneath the translucent preternatural skin, offered itself. And the sound commenced again, that overpowering sound, and it lifted me right off the earth and drew me into it.
Blood like light itself, liquid fire. Our blood.
And my arms gathering incalculable strength, winding round his shoulders, my face pressed to his cool white flesh, the blood shooting down into my loins and every vessel in my body ignited with it. How many centuries had purified this blood, distilled its power?
It seemed beneath the roar of the flow he spoke. He said again:
"Drink, my young one, my wounded one."
I felt his heart swell, his body undulate, and we were sealed against each other.
I think I heard myself say:
"Marius."
And he answered:
"Yes."
Part VII Ancient Magic, Ancient Mysteries Chapter 1
Part VII
Ancient Magic, Ancient Mysteries
1
When I awoke, I was on board a ship. I could hear the creak of the boards, smell the sea. I could smell the blood of those who manned the ship. And I knew that it was a galley because I could hear the rhythm of the oars under the low rumbling of the giant canvas sails.
I couldn't open my eyes, couldn't make my limbs move. Yet I was calm. I didn't thirst. In fact, I experienced an extraordinary sense of peace. My body was warm as if I had only just fed, and it was pleasant to lie there, to dream waking dreams on the gentle undulation of the sea.
Then my mind began to clear.
I knew that we were slipping very fast through rather still waters. And that the sun had just gone down. The early evening sky was darkening, the wind was dying away. And the sound of the oars dipping and rising was as soothing as it was clear.
My eyes were now open.
I was no longer in the coffin. I had just come out of the rear cabin of the long vessel and I was standing on the deck.
I breathed the fresh salt air and I saw the lovely incandescent blue of the twilight sky and the multitude of brilliant stars overhead. Never from land do the stars look like that. Never are they so near.
There were dark mountainous islands on either side of us, cliffs sprinkled with tiny flickering lights. The air was full of the scent of green things, of flowers, of land itself.
And the small sleek vessel was moving fast to a narrow pass through the cliffs ahead.
I felt uncommonly clearheaded and strong. There was a moment's temptation to try to figure out how I had gotten here, whether I was in the Aegean or the Mediterranean itself, to know when we had left Cairo and if the things I remembered had really taken place.
But this slipped away from me in some quiet acceptance of what was happening.
Marius was up ahead on the bridge before the mainmast.
I walked towards the bridge and stood beside it, looking up.
He was wearing the long red velvet cloak he had worn in Cairo, and his full white blond hair was blown back by the wind. His eyes were fixed on the pass before us, the dangerous rocks that protruded from the shallow water, his left hand gripping the rail of the little deck.
I felt an overpowering attraction to him, and the sense of peace in me expanded.
There was no forbidding grandeur to his face or his stance, no loftiness that might have humbled me and made me afraid. There was only a quiet nobility about him, his eyes rather wide as they looked forward, the mouth suggesting a disposition of exceptional gentleness as before.
Too smooth the face, yes. It had the sheen of scar tissue, it was so smooth, and it might have startled, even frightened, in a dark street. It gave off a faint light. But the expression was too warm, too human in its goodness to do anything but invite.
Armand might have looked like a god out of Caravaggio, Gabrielle a marble archangel at the threshold of a church.
But this figure above me was that of an immortal man.
And