All this while neither Bianca nor Jesse had spoken. They were in fact sitting side by side, Jesse weary and worn and broken by the news of Maharet’s death, and Bianca still in a private Hell on account of her lost companion, but suddenly it was as if neither of them could stand it anymore, and after some silent agreement, Bianca rose and demanded in a shrill tone, “What is the point of all this? We’re helpless in the face of this Voice and what it wants! Why do we sit here talking, trying to reason this out? This Voice, look what it has done to us! Look! Is no one here going to weep for Maharet? Is no one here going to ask for a moment of silence in her memory? Is no one going to speak for those who might have lived forever and are now dead and gone in the earth as easily dispatched as if they were mortals?”

She was trembling. Her eyes fixed on Armand who sat nearer to me on the opposite side of the table from her. Armand’s face was the picture of shock and pain as he gazed on her. In fact it was so darkened and so vulnerable that it didn’t seem to be Armand’s face. And then she turned and glared at Marius as if making some silent demand. He too looked at her with the deepest sympathy. Then she sank down in her chair and put her face in her hands, and wept silently.

Jesse barely stirred. Jesse the young one, made by Maharet with the ancient blood in her, white-faced, shivering with the most human emotions, yet sustained by such powerful blood. Fareed concealed the same formula infinitely better than she did.

“My beloved aunt was indeed thinking of destroying the tribe,” Jesse said. “She promised me she would not do it. But she thought about it continuously.”

“This is true,” David said. He was right beside her.

“I understand why Rhoshamandes did the bidding of the Voice,” said Jesse. “And I know that if my aunt had wanted to live, she could have stopped Rhoshamandes. She could have stopped any one of us, even you, Gregory, or you, Seth. Or you, Sevraine. She was no stranger to defending herself. Her power was beyond our imagining. So was her experience. She was dying inside. And she let Rhoshamandes take her life.”

She sat back in the small gilded chair. David kissed her cheek.

I threw up my hands. “It’s true,” I said. “Maharet was thinking of destroying herself and Mekare. Of carrying Mekare with her into a core of an active volcano. I saw the images of this coming from her. Pacaya in Guatemala is that volcano. I hate to say it. I hate to admit it, because she should not have died as she did at the hands of this unspeakable Rhoshamandes! But it’s true.”