He stood there gazing at it, remembering all the reports of the Burnings. They’d started in Tokyo, moved to China, then, Mumbai, Kolkata, the Middle East. And then broken out madly all over South America, in Peru, Bolivia, and Honduras.

Then Europe had been stricken. Even Budapest which contained Rhosh’s favorite opera house. Maddening.

It seemed there had been a plan at first; but the plan had broken down into utterly random attacks—except for one thing. The Burnings in South America had occurred in an arc that had become a crude circle. Only there did such a pattern appear. And that’s where the twins were, he was sure of it, deep within the Amazon. Those who knew for certain were clever indeed, and of course he was far too close to the twins in age to have a telepathic advantage with them. But he knew. They were in the Amazon.

The eccentric Maharet favored jungle locations, and always had since the Sacred Core had been taken into her sister. He had now and then caught some weak flashes of the twins in his dreams, emanating from other minds, conveyed to yet other minds and so forth. Yes, they were in the jungles of the Amazon, the ghastly pair who had stolen the Sacred Blood from Akasha’s Egypt.

Rebels, heretics, blasphemers. He’d been nourished on those old tales. In fact they were reputedly the cause of it all, were they not? The twins had brought the evil spirit of Amel into Akasha’s kingdom. He didn’t really care about that old mythology but he did appreciate irony and patterns in human behavior just as he appreciated these elements in books.

Well, he had scant affection for Akasha, who’d been a raving tyrant by the time he’d been dragged into her presence and forced to drink from the Sacred Fount and pledge his eternal fidelity. Icy merciless goddess. She’d been reigning for a thousand years. Or so they said. How she had inspected him, running her hard thumbs over his head, his face, his shoulders, his chest. How her unctuous fawning priests had examined him in all his parts before he was pronounced perfect to be a blood god.

And what fate had awaited him as a blood god? It was either fight under Prince Nebamun’s command with the Queen’s defenders or be walled up in a mountain shrine, starving, dreaming, reading minds, passing judgment for peasants who brought him blood sacrifices on holy feasts and beseeched him with endless superstitious prayers.

He’d run away soon enough. He’d planned it early. A wanderer from the isle of Crete, a seagoing wanderer and merchant, he’d never bought the dark tangled beliefs of old Egypt.

But he’d refused to abandon Nebamun in the time of his worst trial, Nebamun who’d always been kind to him. And he was not going to run when Nebamun stood before the Queen accused of high treason and blasphemy for the frivolous and selfish making of a woman blood drinker.

Making women into blood drinkers was the decadent and foul practice of the First Brood rebels, and utterly forbidden to the Queens Blood. For the blood gods and the dedicated soldiers of the Queens Blood, there need be only one woman, the Queen. Why would anyone dare to make a blood drinker of a woman? True, it had happened a few times, but only with the Queen’s reluctant blessing. Not even her own sister had she brought into the Blood. Nor her daughters.

He’d been sure that Nebamun and Sevraine, his bride, were going to be put to death when Rhosh had delayed his own escape. But it hadn’t happened.

The all-powerful Queen who thought her smallest whim a reflection of the Divine Mind had “loved Sevraine” when she had looked upon her. And she had let Sevraine drink her powerful blood and called her handmaiden.

As for Nebamun, for his transgressions and presumptions, his soldiering times were over. Shut up in a shrine for all time, he was to ponder his offenses. Were he to serve obediently for a century he might be forgiven.

In the early hours of the morning, when the guards of the shrine slept in a drunken stupor, Rhosh had crept to the brick walls and begged Nebamun to speak to him.

“Run away, leave this place,” said Nebamun. “She has taken my precious Sevraine and doomed me to this harsh and unbearable existence. The time will come when I’ll escape these walls. Leave here now, my friend. Get as far away as you can. Find the First Brood rebels if you can, and if you cannot, bring others into the Blood. All we’ve defended is lies built upon lies built upon lies. Blood drinkers of the First Brood tell the truth. She is no goddess. There is a demon inside her, a thing named Amel. I have seen the work of that demon. I was there when it possessed her.”

For words like that they would have ripped out his tongue. But no one had heard that night through the brick wall except Rhoshamandes. And Rhoshamandes would forever love Nebamun for those brave words.

It had been fifty years before Rhoshamandes had returned and smashed that shrine to dust, freeing Nebamun. As for Sevraine, she’d long ago betrayed the Queen. She’d had no use for the old religion either. There was a price on her head. She was hated, as were the twins. Cursed for her blond hair and blue eyes, as if these natural gifts alone marked her as a sorceress and a traitor. And she had vanished.

“Well, old friends, wherever you are,” said Rhoshamandes out loud in the quiet of his little library. “We may soon have to meet over this present disaster. But for now I’m going forth to find out what I can on my own.”

Of course he knew where Nebamun was, he’d known for centuries. Nebamun had become Gregory in the Common Era, and kept a blood drinker family of awe-inspiring stability in the greatest luxury. Just about every year or so, the face of that ancient and powerful Nebamun would flash full bright on a television screen as some mortal commentator spoke of Gregory Duff Collingsworth’s vast pharmaceutical empire, his worldly dealings on different continents, even his famous fin de siècle tower on the shores of Lake Geneva.

How many catching those televised glimpses recognized that face? Probably no one. Except Sevraine perhaps. But then perhaps Sevraine was with Gregory. And perhaps they too had heard the Voice.

Perhaps the Voice was a consummate flatterer and liar. Perhaps the Voice played blood drinkers against one another.

“You alone, I have loved above all, your face and form and your mind,” the Voice had said to Rhoshamandes.

Hmmm. We’ll see about that.

He blew out the candles. For some reason his telekinetic powers could never just make them go out. He had to do it with his breath. So that’s how he did it.

He went back into his bedchamber and opened another armoire that was indeed a true armoire, holding his weapons, those items he’d collected over the years more for sentiment than any other reason. He took the sharp knife he loved best off the shelf, and tied the scabbard to his leather belt inside his coat. Then he took out another weapon, a small greenish weapon from modern war called simply a hand grenade. He knew what this could do. He’d seen it plenty during the great wars that had laid waste to Europe in the twentieth century. He tucked it into his coat. He knew how to pull the pin and hurl it should the need arise.