by Anne Rice
"Remember, any ghost is working with your brain, my beloved," said Amel, "to make you see what you are seeing."
What was I to do with that brilliant bit of intelligence?
Gremt was startled. He fixed his eyes intently on Magnus, and slowly the old image came back--the Magnus of now, the handsome ghost, the ghost dreamed up by the ancient mortal who'd endured badly formed limbs, a humped back, and a narrow hooked nose and now wanted none of it. Here were the even Grecian features and the beautiful forehead and the blond hair, the picture of a male in his prime, with the confidence of the fair.
Yet he looked away from me, humiliated, shattered. He stared into the fire, while Gremt stared at him with obvious concern. I was still shaken. In fact, I was beginning to feel a kind of panic.
Then a weariness took hold of Gremt and he settled back in the chair and looked up, perhaps at the figures of the tapestry, and he closed his eyes.
Amel was laughing softly and with a malicious delight. "What a crew they are," he said confidentially and with his low iron laughter. "Are you enjoying their company? Why don't you burn down their house and be done with it!"
"You're wasting your rage," I said to him. But I could see that Teskhamen had of course heard the threat and he didn't take it lightly. He was looking to me for some ratification that I had no such intention.
"I came here as your guest," I said. "I don't do what he wants."
"And how long before he can make you do what he wants?" asked Teskhamen. He didn't sound the least bit angry or impatient. Just smooth.
"He'll never be able to make me do anything," I said. I shrugged. "What makes you think otherwise?" There was no response. "Look, if he caused Akasha ever to do anything at his behest, it was because he deceived her, led her to believe that she was the author of the thoughts coming into her mind. He could never make Mekare do anything."
"What makes you certain?" asked Teskhamen. He was studying me intently. "Perhaps he coaxed Mekare into coming to you, offering herself to you, inviting you to take him out of her."
I shook my head.
"She came on her own," I said. "I was there. She wanted to go on, to be with her sister." Flash flicker of those images, of the late gracious red-haired Maharet in a place of sunshine awaiting her surviving sister.
Teskhamen nodded, but it seemed no more than a courtesy. "You will be on the watch, however," he said gently. "You will be careful. You have inside you a powerful and evil spirit."
"Evil?" I asked. "Are we going to start arguing about the nature of good and evil?"
"No need," said Gremt under his breath. "We know what evil is. And you know what it is." He looked up at me. They were much alike in their demeanor, Teskhamen and Gremt, but then that made perfect sense--that all these years Gremt had been modeling his manner on that of Teskhamen.
Magnus was changing again, the flesh appearing to fade like an image in an old photograph, and in a silent shimmer I saw the old one, the narrow beak of a nose, the hunched shoulders and wrists of knobby bone, before he recollected himself and became the smooth handsome one again.
"Be what you like, monsieur!" I said to Magnus, leaning towards him. "Yea gods, don't hold on to any certain image for me." I meant to be helpful, kind. I wanted to thaw the ice.
But he turned and glared at me as if I'd made some unforgivable transgression. His eyes were narrow, and if he'd been a blood drinker still, he might have blasted me with his anger even without directing it. As it was, the anger made him all the more brilliant. I could see the faint tracery of blood swimming in the whites of his eyes. I could see his lips trembling. Does a ghost feel all of this?
Teskhamen rose to his feet.
"Prince, I'm going to leave you now with these two. Again, we are glad you've come."
"Don't go," I said. "I want to talk to all of you. Look, I know I've offended you and disappointed you." I didn't wait for them to respond. "It's been six months since you came to see me at Trinity Gate in New York," I said. "I promised you I would meet with you, invite you to Court. I promised, but then so much has happened. And I've been negligent, and I'm sorry. I came here myself to tell you this. And Amel wanted me to come, urged me not to put it off any longer. I couldn't bear the thought of sending some messenger or formal invitation. I came here because I am sorry for not coming to you sooner."
This clearly caught all of them off guard. I had definitely roused the interest of Gremt though he did not seem at all content. And a sadness came over Magnus's illusory features of which he did not seem to be in control.
What was wrong here? Something was wrong. There was a cloud over this group, a cloud that had thickened before I'd ever come to the door.
Only Teskhamen remained smooth. He was seated again.
"Thank you," he said. "I'm glad, very glad. I want to know you," he said. "I want to know you well enough that I can come and go at Court and it will be nothing out of the ordinary. I've heard of the Friday-night balls, the theater, your little performance of Macbeth, and the chapel wedding of Rose and Viktor." He smiled. "All this speaks of vitality," he said, "vibrant communal life, something that's never before united the Undead. Yea gods, are we done forever with cults and ancient worship? And I know you're exhausted. Others have told me. They worry that it wears you out, and I don't blame you for leaving the rules to a council. You can't make the rules and be this powerful creative monarch."
"Then it's decided," I said. "You'll come and often. You'll come tonight and tomorrow, whether I'm there or not, and you'll come when you wish. You'll walk through the front doors, just as blood drinkers do who are coming from all over the world. Macbeth is only the first of the plays I want to do, by the way. I want to move on to Othello. The music composed for the balls is being recorded and collected, and Marius is painting again, though how he finds the time I don't know. He's covering new bedchambers and salons with his Italianesque murals."
I realized I was talking too fast. I was excited. He'd spoken of exactly the aspects of the Court that excited me, playing Macbeth myself on our little stage for an audience of two hundred blood drinkers, young and old, and the Great Sevraine providing her enchanting Lady Macbeth with a deep current of feeling that astonished her companions. Of course we had our critics--the cynical ones, the dark, deeply conservative ones who wanted to know why blood drinkers would bother with anything, presumably, but savaging humans for their blood.
You can't build a culture with Devils out of Hell!
"The Hell I can't" had been my answer. I went on for a moment, talking about Notker's musicians and how new musicians had appeared to make up our orchestras. I spoke of Antoine, my long-lost fledgling, writing concertos again for the violin. And then a sudden darkness came over me, because Antoine wanted to bring over into the Blood a musical secretary who could transcribe for him all he performed and recorded, and that had brought up the central question I couldn't yet face:
If this is all good, then why not bring people into it for our own purposes? Hadn't Fareed done it, making vampires out of brilliant doctors and scientists? Were we a thing that was good, or weren't we? And if I believed we were good, and believed the Dark Gift was just that, a gift, then I had to allow Antoine to find himself the musical scribes he wanted. And then what?
Teskhamen might have been reading my mind, but I wasn't sure of it. There are subtle rules about such things, matters of courtesy, matters of not stabbing into the mind of the other without permission to revert to the telepathic.
"Look, there's another matter," I said. "Some of the others are afraid of you. That's the plain truth. They're afraid of you. You, a blood drinker, who claims a greater loyalty to the Talamasca than you do to us. And Gremt here, an incarnate spirit. I've always seen ghosts, but many a blood drinker has never seen ghosts, not at least that he or she was aware of."
I had their full attention as I continued. "This shouldn't have happened, this silence and neglect of you on my part. And please, please don't call me Prince. I'm Lestat, that's
all. Lestat de Lioncourt on legal documents. And to all and sundry, simply Lestat."
"Oh, come on, you love being called Prince," said Amel. "You vain preening peacock of a monster. You love it. You coxcomb. Tell them about the crown jewels lavished on you by the vampires from Russia, all that Romanov booty soaked in blood."
"Shut up," I said aloud.
"And the crown expressly made for you by that old vampire from Oxford!"
"If you don't shut up--."
"What?" he asked. "What will you do if I don't shut up? What can you do? Are you looking at them, the way they're looking at you, the way they're studying you and listening to my voice inside you? Are you aware of their calculating evil minds!"
"Why did you want to come here?" I asked him without moving my lips.
Silence. It was like dealing with a child.
Then Teskhamen spoke. "He doesn't make life easy for you, does he?" he asked.
"No," I responded. "But he makes it very exciting. It's not so bad most of the time. Not at all." This was a magnificent understatement. I loved Amel. "And for long periods, he leaves," I said. "He goes running off to spy on others. But he can make life a perfect Hell if he wants to with all his noise, questions, demands, and denials. But that's all he can do."
That's not true. If I want to, I can make your right hand jump right now.
I made my right hand into a fist.
"A distinct personality?" asked Magnus. "Or a legion of hobgoblins wrapped into one?" It seemed a sincere question.
"Very much a distinct personality. Male. Curious. Loving."
You're nauseating me; I'm going to make you vomit.
"For now," said Teskhamen. He drew himself up. "But I have no choice but to warn you of certain things right in his presence, because there is no telling ever where he is, or in whom he might be hiding, including me. And I have to warn you. He wants more than to be trapped in you. He had a life as a spirit; a personality; we have fragmentary evidence of that, just what Maharet told you and the others when she told you the old stories. But in those stories he emerged as an evil spirit, a spirit who claimed blood and violence...."
"Don't listen to this trash!" said Amel loudly. I was startled by the sheer volume of his voice and Teskhamen saw it. Maybe he heard it.
"Remember, Lestat," Teskhamen said, assuming the gentle tone again, "we are the Talamasca. We know spirits, and we know what we don't know about them. Never trust him. Never give him an inch to take over. Your body is powerful. He picked you on account of your body."
"Fool," said Amel. "Fool," he repeated. "He knows nothing about love; he knows nothing about the suffering of those whom he calls spirits. And what's your body compared to Marius's body or the body of Seth or Gregory or his body, for that matter!"
I looked at Gremt. "Can you hear him too? Can you hear him talking inside my head right now?"
Gremt shook his head. "In the beginning I could, centuries ago, when I was no more than an illusion; in those times I could see him superimposed over the figure of the comatose Queen. When I drew near her shrine, and I did come to her often, I heard a species of relentless singing from him that suggested madness. But no, I can't hear him now. I'm too solid, separate and individual." There was bitterness in his voice. I wondered if he had specifically shaped his voice, its deep timbre, as he had shaped his appearance. Maybe the voice had distinguished itself over time.
Amel started laughing again. A mean mocking laugh.
Another silence fell, and Gremt seemed lost in his thoughts, eyes on the fire. "I came here after him," he said as though speaking to the flames. "I came down into the flesh after Amel, enchanted by his example. And I wanted to be one of you, a human. It seemed so splendid."
"Burn down this house and see what they do," said Amel. "You never do anything to make me happy."
"Has it been splendid?" I asked Gremt.
He looked at me as if the question astonished him. To me, it seemed logical.
"Yes," he said. "It is splendid, but I am not human, am I? Seems I don't age, and can't die. The old story."
"Would it have been more splendid if you had become wholly human, grown old, and died?" I pushed.
No answer. Faint annoyance.
"And so for us you make good company, Gremt," I said. "You understand us."
Silence again and I hated it. Something unspoken in the air. And I thought suddenly of leaving, going ahead up into the sky and over the sea to find Louis. But it was far too soon to leave, just because I was uncomfortable.
"You have quite a sense of gravitas about being the Prince now, don't you?" asked Magnus. His smile was almost innocent, almost pleasant.
"Shouldn't I?" I asked. "Aren't you glad your fledgling and heir grew up to be the Prince of the Undead? Aren't you proud of me?"
"Yes, I am," he said sincerely. "I've always been proud of you, except when you retreat, and give in to your suffering. I haven't been so proud when you do that. But you always come back. Doesn't matter how dreadful the defeat, you come back."
"And does this mean you've been near me, watching me, all these years?"
"No, because I wasn't the ghost you see now all these years. I was another kind of ghost until Gremt rescued me and brought me here and showed me what I could be. After that, yes, I did spy on you. But that wasn't so very long ago."
"Will you tell me more about all this?"
"Some night, surely," he said. "All of it. At times, I write. I write pages and pages of my thoughts. I write poems. I write songs even. I write reflections. The autobiography of a vampire and a vampire ghost who was once an alchemist who sought to cure all the diseases of the world and make broken bones fuse perfectly, an alchemist who sought to comfort little children in pain--." He broke off, and his eyes left me for the flames. "I had written books for you, my heir. Then the night before I brought you to my tower, I burned them."
"Good God, why?" I asked. "I would have cherished every word!"
"I know," he said. "I know that now. I didn't know it then. We have much to say to one another, and you can have at me, you know." He glanced at me again and back to the blazing logs. "You can rail at me for snatching you out of mortal life, rail at me for abandoning you with hard cold jewels and coin when you might have gotten all that for yourself on your own...." Again, he stopped, drifted, and the whole image flickered, but now the flickering couldn't conceivably diminish his seeming power.
"There should be no secrets with any of us," I said. "I mean the Talamasca's no more, right? You've let the human Order go into the world without your governance. And now you're free to come live with us for as long as you like! To be part of us, part of the Court, part of the company that we are."
He gave me a long loving smile. I was faintly humiliated.
Amel was silent but most assuredly present.
"You need never worry about the Talamasca anymore," said Teskhamen. "Surely you know that. And they'll never seek to harm you any more than they did in the past. They're off studying supernatural phenomena with the same dreary dedication for which they have always been famous."
"Hands off the Talamasca," I said with a shrug. "We agreed to that the first time we came together to agree on anything."
That didn't surprise them. Likely they knew. Likely they had some ghost in the very room spying on us. Where were the other ghosts? Hesketh? And that male ghost who'd come to Trinity Gate, bringing tears from Armand, the one called Riccardo?
"But you," I said, "you, the very heart of the Talamasca, you must come and visit with us and share with us everything you ever discovered, ever learned...."
"And what do you think we learned," asked Teskhamen, "that Maharet didn't long ago tell you? Ghosts exist. Spirits exist. Are all spirits ghosts? Nobody knows. It always ends with 'nobody knows.' And nothing changes the ascent of biological humans, humans of body and soul, to rule the planet and reach for the stars beyond it."
Suddenly in a silent flash I saw that city falling into the sea, that great city
of glistening spires....But the image vanished as if snatched away from me. A misery came over me, certainly originating with Amel. I knew because it was like nothing I ever felt in the regular course of things. The fire. The sea. A city melting? And then that too was gone, and the fire here on the hearth was crackling and the air filled anew with the sweet smoke of the burning wood, and I felt an icy draft moving along the floor that meant it was colder outside, and maybe it was snowing. I couldn't see out the windows from where I sat, but I could feel that it was snowing. I longed for the sweet balmy air of New Orleans, across the sea, for Louis.
Teskhamen started speaking again.
"The Order is stable now, quite harmless to you. But we've never stopped watching over them. The old traditions are still venerated, and the scholars are more than ever obedient to the old rules. We know everything. We watch them as they watch the supernatural phenomena of the world. And if there were to be any disturbance with the Order, if any of you were to be threatened, we would intervene. When it comes time for the Talamasca to die, we will dispatch it."
"In years past," I answered, "I made a lot of trouble for the Talamasca from time to time. But you know perfectly well, I thought the Order was made up entirely of mortals. I acknowledge that, and the trouble I made. I deliberately seduced and overcame David Talbot. I did other things. I offended the Order and now I know you were the Order, and though I can't say I regret any of it, I've never held any enmity for you."
"What happened with David Talbot and Jesse Reeves has been removed from the Order's records," said Teskhamen. "From all of the records in all forms. There isn't anything now in the archives to verify what actually took place. Also all Marius's paintings that were salvaged from his Venetian years have been returned to him. Surely he told you this. There are no blood drinker relics at all anymore in the vaults."
"I see," I said. "Well, that's probably for the best."
"It's for their protection as they continue, as they go on studying the paranormal phenomena of the world. Of course."