"We left Saint Petersburg immediately, but we should have stayed, investigated...."
"Yes, of course, it's coming back. But all we had was a glimpse, and we weren't certain."
"Rhosh, remember the being's skin, smooth, dark brown skin, like this one's skin, and the being's hair. The hair was the same, thick like this and with loose curls and the very same golden streak in it, only broader and on the right side of the head."
Was it possible?
"I don't remember."
Go on, go on talking, go on, Derek thought desperately, staring off....The tears came to his eyes again. Good, cry, and think about being hungry and wanting some red wine. Red wine, red wine, red wine...Who was it they had seen--with the very same golden streak in his hair! On the right side of his head? Bury the names as deeply as you can. Bury them, along with the faces, along with the story, along with the betrayal--.
"The thing was identical to this one in a number of ways," Roland insisted. "Taller, yes, with larger eyes, yes, but the hair was exactly the same. It was exceptionally long, unfashionably long, it gave the creature a savage look, unkempt, almost feral, but the creature was smooth shaven. This one has no need of a razor. And that one had no need either, I wager. Well, whether you remember or not, I remember. And this creature likely knows that creature and how many others like them there are and, more important, what they are, and how they came to be here."
Rhoshamandes was pondering, then very slowly he said, "I see what you mean." But he wasn't all that interested. He gave a dismissive shrug. He was frustrating Roland and Roland was revealing it.
Derek looked at them out of the corner of his eye. He couldn't conceal his excitement. He glared at Roland.
"Ah, and in all this time, you've kept this from me!" said Derek.
Roland glanced at Derek and gave him the usual maddeningly gentle smile.
"When you tell me what you know, Derek," he said, "I will tell you what I know. You are not friendly. You do not cooperate."
"You are a monster," said Derek, clenching his teeth. "You've kept me here for ten years, and this is wrong! By any law under the sun and the moon, this is wrong. I am not your property. I am not your slave."
But what did he really care! He had just been given the single most valuable bit of information he had ever received since he'd come awake in this time, since he'd awakened in the humble hut of the priest high in the Andes. Another one! Another one lives. Another one perhaps found in the frozen wastes of Siberia, another one found in the ice where Derek had slept for thousands of years, the ice to which he'd retreated in despair two times to freeze as he'd been frozen before.
And Amel. This Rhoshamandes had spoken more about Amel than Derek had ever glimpsed when Roland drank from him.
This Rhoshamandes creature glared at Derek again as if he were a little intrigued but repelled. "Can't read a thing from him."
"Not until you drink his blood," said Roland.
Rhoshamandes stepped back as if he couldn't stop himself.
"Rhoshamandes, listen to me," said Derek. "You're ancient. You come from times long past, before this one came into the world. I heard you speaking upstairs! Surely you have some morality. You remember something of human reverence for right and wrong. You spoke of a prince who injured you, affronted you. But it was about right and wrong, your quarrel, was it not? Listen to me. That I'm kept here, as a bottomless fount of blood for this monster, is wrong!"
He had begun to cry again. Oh, why had they made him the "most" human! Why did he have to be the one who felt things so deeply? He turned away. In a flash he pictured the others with him, comforting him the way they had always done. And he told himself as he had countless times, If you are alive, they are alive. If you are walking this earth once more, they could be walking this earth.
But something was changing in the room.
Rhoshamandes sat down beside him on the bed.
Slowly Derek turned and looked at him. Such pure skin, pure as liquid, as if it had been poured over the being, as if it had never been human! Yes, I look human, Derek thought, and these beings cease to be human apparently with every passing year.
"I understand you're here against your will," the blood drinker said leaning close to him. "I want to drink. I want you to yield to me, to allow it."
Derek laughed bitterly. "What, you insist on my permission?"
Roland laughed silently; his face was the picture of scorn.
But before Derek could say more he felt the loathsome creature's hand on his left shoulder and the being's face pressing close to the right side of his neck.
"Remember, you cannot kill him," said Roland. "Look deep, Rhosh. Drag the truth from him in the blood."
Why was the ancient one hesitating?
Derek gazed up at Roland, the white-haired Roland with the graven wrinkles of mortal old age inscribed forever perhaps in his long oval face. Roland of the cold indifferent eyes. Before Arion had come, th