The Golden Read Free Page A

so roughly. Not only did he
pride himself on his tolerance for mortals, his liberal recognition
of them as more than beasts, he felt an especial fondness for
Giselle, a curious mixture of paternal feelings and sexual attraction
and romantic love, and he recognized that he had acted toward her
with the same contempt and carelessness he had so decried in his
conversation with Lady Dolores.
    He turned on his
side and found her watching him soberly. Her pale gray eyes locked
onto his, but she remained silent. There was a smear of blood on the
swell of her right breast. She shivered when he wiped it away.
    “I thought
you would judge me,” she said. “You drank so fiercely.”
    “I’m
sorry I frightened you.”
    “I wasn’t
frightened.” She trailed her fingers across the spot on her
breast from which he had wiped away the blood, then inspected the
tips. “Why do you withhold your judgment? You know how I long
for it.”
    “I fear
losing you.”
    “Perhaps
you won’t, perhaps you’ll have me forever.”
    “The odds
aren’t good.”
    She propped
herself up on an elbow. “You know already, don’t you? You
know I’ll fail judgment?”
    “No one
can know that. It’s just that the odds are never good. I’ve
told you so a hundred times.”
    She fell back,
lay staring up into the canopy. “I don’t care. I want my
chance. If I were with someone else—one of the de Czeges, for
instance—they wouldn’t deny me.”
    “If you
were with the de Czeges, likely they would slaughter you, whether or
not you passed the judgment.”
    She started to
object, but Beheim, growing annoyed, snapped at her, saying, “You
cannot possibly apprehend the dangers of the world you wish to enter.
But if you insist, if you truly wish it”—he sat up and
leaned over her, with one hand planted beside her pillowed head,
shadowing her with his body—“I will judge you this
minute.”
    Her face
betrayed surprise, then was flooded with the dreamy slackness of
desire, and he thought at first that she would accept his offer; but
after a moment she averted her eyes and said in an almost inaudible
whisper, “I am not so free of fear as I thought.”
    “Listen,”
he said, relieved. “There will come a time when judgment must
be given, when no other course is open to us. That is the way of it.
It will be a thing of the moment, a moment of surrender and
invitation and utter commitment when we will risk much together, when
you will take the risk of dying, and I the risk of being left without
you. It may be that death is visited upon those who fail to wait
until they are consumed by the urge to judge and be judged, that
certain enabling chemicals are produced by such an urgency. We have
so little knowledge about any of this. But be assured, the time will come, and then I will judge you . . . not because you
have persuaded me, but out of love.”
    She turned back
to him. “You understand why I’m so impatient, don’t
you? I want you for all the nights. Forever. Living like this, not
knowing what will happen yourself.”
    “I’ll
try.” She put an arm about his waist and brought her mouth
close to his, warming his face with her breath. “Tell me . . .”
She left the command unfinished.
    “What is
it?”
    She shook her
head. “It’s nothing.”
    “Surely
not.”
    “I was
going to ask you about death.”
    “I don’t
follow.”
    “When you
were judged, you passed through death, did you not?”
    “Passed
through,” he said absently, remembering. “Yes, I suppose
that’s what happened.”
    “Tell me
about it!”
    He looked up at
the canopy, like a swollen black abdomen hanging overhead. “There’s
no consolation for you in my knowledge of death.”
    “How can
you say that? You don’t—”
    “You’re
hoping I can tell you that death is not an end, that something exists
beyond this life, that some ultimate majesty prevails, that souls
swim up from the darkness to circle and sing in the light. Well, I
can tell you that