But just when his thoughts sank into discouragement, the Voice would come, whispering, cajoling, wheedling. “I will make you the monarch of the tribe. Don’t you see what I am offering you? Don’t you grasp why I need you? Once inside your body, I can walk into the sun of my own free will because your body is strong enough for this, and all over the world young ones will burn. But you and I inside of you will only be kissed by that golden light. Oh, I remember now, yes, I remember, the blessed peace and strength that came to me when Akasha and Enkil were put into the sun. Golden brown they became, and no more than that, but all over the world children burned. My strong blood was restored to me. I was myself in flashes of waking wonder! We will do that, don’t you see, when I am in you and you can brave the sunlight. And you love me! Who else loves me?”

“I love you all right,” said Rhosh grimly. “But not enough to be destroyed trying to take you into me. And if I did have you inside me, would you feel what I feel?”

“Yes, don’t you see? I am entombed in one who feels nothing and desires nothing, and never drinks, never drinks of the life-giving human blood!”

“When I expose myself to the sun, I know pain as I’m falling into unconsciousness and pain for months after I wake. I do it only because I must to pass for human. Are you willing to know that pain?”

“That is nothing to the pain I know now!” he said. “You’ll wake to golden skin as you know, and so many others will have died, mercifully died, died! And we will be stronger than ever! Don’t you see? Yes, I will feel what you feel. But once you have the Sacred Core in you, you will feel what I feel too.”

The Voice rambled on.

“Did I ever promise the Queen of Egypt that I could support a legion of blood drinkers? Was she mad? Were the First Brood not mad? They knew what I was and who I was and yet they stretched my body and my power beyond all reasonable limits, greedy and wanton, passing the Blood to anyone who would revolt against Akasha, and she made this Queens Blood as if the size of her guard was all that mattered—until I was as a human bleeding from all limbs and all orifices, unable to think, to dream, to know.…”

Rhosh was listening but not much. You will feel what I feel, too.

The possibilities were blazing in his mind as he stood at the window looking out over the nighttime city of Manaus.