by Anne Rice
"Of course," said Magnus, "and he provides abundant images of those souls who have learned his lessons well ascending to Heaven. But nobody ascends from his domain. He is not of God. He is not of Hell. He's a spirit. And into his maw go the unwary, those longing to be judged and punished."
I sighed. I sat back in the chair. None of it was surprising, yet to hear it confirmed at last, that was something.
"Think of the great Catholic theologians of the twentieth century," said Magnus. "They are poets of their own intoxicating belief systems. They swim in an atmosphere of vintage theologies, and weave new and airy systems for themselves wholly detached from the real world, the flesh-and-blood world--."
"I know," I whispered.
"Well, think of Memnoch as being like that. Think of Memnoch as finding in religion a great creative milieu in which he could define himself!"
"He tapped into the lost devotions of your childhood," said Gremt. "That is what he does. And now and then other souls go to his realm, wiser souls, and they seek out those who are trapped there and they bring them out and into freedom."
"How?" I asked.
"By alerting those trapped souls that they are prisoners of their own guilt and wretched disillusionment." Gremt looked at Magnus. "There are souls most skilled at such things, traveling the astral as they sometimes call it, and seeking to free the unwary human ghosts who are lingering in labyrinths from which there is no exit."
"That is too horrible to think about," I said. "That souls would be trapped in make-believe regions, when perhaps there is some other finer destiny awaiting them."
"And sometimes," said Magnus, "when those tormented souls are freed from such traps, they do ascend and vanish. And sometimes they do not ascend. They come back down, down to this earth, with their rescuers, and they linger earthbound, unfinished, restless. That is what you see in me, you see a ghost who has escaped Memnoch's Hell, and knows him well to be a fraud. You see one who would destroy every astral vestige of his kingdom, were it in my power to do so."
"You know all this, Lestat," said Gremt. "Your instincts told you. You fled from his purgatory, condemning him, rejecting him."
"Yes, exactly," I said. "How could I have shattered the place? How could I have freed them all?"
"Holy Saturday," whispered Magnus. " 'And He descended into Hell.' "
I knew full well what he meant. He was speaking of the old idea that Jesus after His death on the cross had gone down into Sheol or Hell to free all the souls waiting for His redemption, so that they could ascend to Heaven. I don't know if even the most devout Christians believe such things anymore, in any literal sense, but I had been taught them, centuries ago, in a monastery school, and I remembered the priceless illuminated manuscripts with their tiny pictures of Jesus awakening the dead.
"Memnoch is a liar," said Magnus. "I suffered in his Hell."
"And now you're free," I said.
"Free to be dead forever?" he asked.
I realized what he was saying of course. He was earthbound. He was not one who'd gone into the Light, as they say. He was a haunt of the material world. He blazed bright and beautiful in my eyes. A serene expression smoothed his face.
"If I were ever in your presence, Prince," he said, "I would be the strongest of ghosts, I think! By day, I'd lie atop your sarcophagus and dream, waiting for you to wake, and your rising at sunset would be sunrise for me in terms of power."
"Forgive me, Master," I said, "but you seem to be doing very well on your own, and to have your tomes to write, your poems, your songs. What do you need me for?"
"To look on me," he said softly, his eyebrows rising. "To look on me and forgive."
Silence once more. He turned to the fire. They all did. I put my head back against the hardwood carving, and gazed off thinking of all this, and remembering other ghosts I'd known, and a dark fear gripped me, a fear of being dead and earthbound, and then it seemed not unlikely that all intelligent beings of the whole world were locked in some sort of dance with the physical. Maybe those who rose into the Light simply died, and the universe beyond this world was silent. I could drive myself mad contemplating a great nothingness filled with a billion pinpoints of light and millions of drifting planets generating their myriad biological kingdoms of insect, animal, sentient witness.
"This is the point," said Gremt. "Memnoch waits and watches and he might not make his move again for a hundred years. But don't forget ever that he is there. And don't forget Rhoshamandes. Best do away with Rhoshamandes."
"No," said Teskhamen as if he couldn't stop himself.
"Well, why not?" asked Gremt. He looked at me again. "And don't underestimate the rebels out there who want to topple you for the sheer sake of doing it. And don't, don't ever underestimate Amel!"
A low moan came from Magnus.
"How at times like this do I wish I were a musician, because music is the only fit vehicle for the emotions I feel. I died the night I made you, and what a fool I was to do it, to die in that fire of my own making, and not to have had the courage to embrace you, love you, travel the Devil's Road with you, my ancient body the eager pupil to your lordly newborn strength! Ah, the things we do. What are we that we can make such great blunders without the slightest realization of what we are doing? What is man that he is so mindful of himself and knows so little of the consequences of what he does!"
He rose to his feet and drew near to me, and in a flash I again felt as surely as I saw it that he ceased to be the blond-haired male of perfect proportions and became the very image of the monster I had known.
It took all my resolve not to get up and move away from him. He came close to me, the vivid embodiment of the gaunt, wraithlike being he'd been on the night of my making, except for his clothes which were dark and ragged and shapeless, with leggings like bandages and his eyes fiercely black, black as his hair.
Scatter the ashes. Or else I might return, and in what shape that would be, I dare not contemplate. But mark my words, if you allow me to come back, more hideous than I am now...
I found myself standing some feet away from him. Not a sound from Amel. Just this creature with its back to the fire, his wavering figure surrounded by a halo of flickering light.
Gremt came up silently beside me.
"This is my fault, all of this," he said. I felt his arm on mine.
"I did scatter the ashes," I whispered. It sounded so stupid, so childlike. "I scattered them just as you told me to do," I said to Magnus. "I scattered them."
The figure's face was in shadow against the blaze, but I could see the expression softening.
"Oh, I know you did, young one," he said in a frayed and broken voice. "I remember, and I remember your tears and your terror." He appeared to sigh with his whole spectral body, and then to cover his face with his long spidery fingers, his tangled black-and-silver hair falling down over him like a veil. "How stupid I was. I thought if you were born in terror you'd be all the stronger for it. Child that I was of a cruel age, I respected cruelty. And now I deplore it more than any other thing under Heaven. Cruelty. If I could strip the earth of any one thing, it would be cruelty. I would give my soul to strip the earth of cruelty. I look at you and I see the son of my cruelty."
"What comfort can I give you, Magnus?" I said.
He threw back his head and lifted his hands. His fingers fluttered, white and pleading, and he prayed in Old French to God and the saints and the Virgin. Then his dark eyes fixed on me again.
"Child, I wanted to beg your forgiveness for all of it, casting you a vagabond on the Devil's Road without a word of instruction, making you the young and vulnerable heir to what I myself couldn't endure."
He sighed and turned away and made his way to his chair. He reached for the back of it. I could feel that white hand that closed on the wood, feel it as it had touched me all those long years ago:
But you can't leave me!...Not the fire. You can't go into the fire!
That was my voice, the voice of the boy I'd been
at twenty, immortal for less than an hour.
Oh, yes, I can. Yes, I can!...my brave Wolfkiller.
I couldn't bear the sight of him, bent, shuddering, seeming to lean for mortal support upon the chair. I couldn't bear the groan that came from him, or the way he stood upright and rocked back and forth as though interrogating Heaven with his hands raised again.
Gremt slipped his arm around my waist, warmly, and placed his hand on my arm. But it was the ghost who needed comforting. My heart was breaking.
Teskhamen was gone. I'd barely realized it, but he had slipped out of the room, leaving us alone here. And some part of my mind registered that he, a living being, as I was a living being, who had never known incorporeal consciousness could not share the pain that these two specters shared in these moments.
"This will pass," Gremt said under his breath. "It is my doing, all of it. We are wanderers. We have no Fareed and no Seth for spirits and phantoms. Fate is merciless to the living who lack flesh and blood."
"Not so," said Magnus. He turned and as he did so his figure appeared to toughen, to lose something of its brilliant shimmer. "It is not your fault." He looked at me with the same gaunt white face he'd had when he made me.
Again the phantom wavered, turning its back to us, and becoming transparent, the sound of its voice vaporous as it wept.
I couldn't watch and do nothing. I moved towards Magnus, reaching out for him, trying to enfold him in my arms, and wrapping myself around what seemed a vibrant invisible force that was nothing now but light and voice.
"I have no regrets now, none," I said. "You can't be weeping for me. Weep for yourself, yes, that's your right, but not for me."
Someone else entered the room, as softly as Teskhamen had left it. Had he gone to summon this one, to send him in? I heard the step of the other, and picked up the scent of a blood drinker. But I didn't detach myself from the weeping spirit and I didn't want to be detached.
It seemed the spirit was wrapping itself around me. I could feel the subtle throbbing presence enclosing my arms, my face, my heart. A swoon bound us together. Images of long ago flooded my senses, the dim hollow cloister in which beneath the purpling dusky sky the mortal alchemist Magnus had bound the tender vampiric prisoner whom I now knew to be Benedict, the Benedict of Rhoshamandes, from whom he bent to steal the precious Blood. Denied this Blood, cruelly denied this Blood, no matter what his brilliance, his wisdom, his worthiness, because he was not young, was not beautiful, was not pleasing to the eyes of those who safeguarded it from all but their favorites, Magnus at last feloniously and greedily drinking the Blood even as his own blood poured from his torn wrists, drinking and drinking the pure nectar, not intermingled with his own but undiluted and supremely powerful. Weeping, weeping.
A voice filled the illusion, an ominous and punishing and angry voice, the voice of Rhoshamandes.
"Cursed are you among all blood drinkers for what you've done. Abomination on the face of the earth! Blessed be the blood drinker who slays you."
I saw my old master rising in the air, rising as if to meet the stars tumbling in their purple mist, his eyes full of wonder. It is mine. It is in my veins. I am among the immortals.
And now he cried. He cried as miserably as I'd cried when as a boy blood drinker I'd seen him burned on the pyre. He swallowed and sought to muffle his cries, but the sound was all the worse for it.
Pain like this is unendurable.
Was that why Amel said nothing? Is that why he did not even seem to breathe inside me? Did he feel it because we felt it?
Somewhere near, a soft singing penetrated the swoon.
The blood drinker who had come in and was now, here in this great cavernous room, singing a hymn I knew with German words, the masterpiece of Bach, "Wake up...the voice summons...of the watchmen on the battlements, wake...you city of Jerusalem! This is the hour of midnight...." And beneath the voice, the marching of the harpsichord. This tender-yet-piercing boy soprano voice of one of Notker's choristers.
The ghost who embraced me sighed, and slowly its limbs took form, its body solid once more and its head resting on my shoulder, the hair so fine to the touch, and the hands clasping my arms.
Love you, yes, always and forever....
I'd be dead forever now beneath the earth were it not for you, or a ghost wandering without ever having glimpsed what you gave me....
The music went on, the boy soprano blood drinker singing just above the volume of the keyboard, drifting into variations of his own on Bach's theme, as Bach himself might have done for pure amusement, taking the lyrics into uncharted places, "Wake, wake, the blood calls us from eternal sleep...."
We stood together, and it was the music now that enfolded both of us.
Finally the music grew softer, and found its subtle finish.
A radiant silence gripped the room in which it seemed the walls gave back the ghostly echo of the cantata. Then the ghost turned and kissed me on the mouth. Magnus again, fully. Not the made-up ideal Magnus, but a strong powerful Magnus who'd brought me over, no longer the wraith, but robust, and clothed in simple black robes, his long dark glossy silver-streaked hair combed, and his gaunt face calm and etched with the fine lines that had become as pen strokes when he was made.
"You are my finest work, my finest miracle," he said to me. Once again he kissed me, and I opened my lips to receive the kiss and give it back. I bit into my lower lip, and offered the blood on my tongue. He took it, though how and what he felt, I couldn't know. He stroked my hair, my face.
"And now you are the Prince of the tribe, and old Rhoshamandes wanders with the mark of Cain on him, that winsome, capricious, heartless blood drinker, with the mark of Cain, so that no one will put him out of his anguish for what he did to the gentle witch, and you are the ruler."
He drew back, just as any living being might at this moment, and wiped the tears from his eyes, staring for a moment at his own hands. This was a creature I had never really seen--the true Magnus restored: the long thin nose and long mouth, the high domed forehead and white hands made of knots, and shoulders squared but misshapen--what he must have looked like in those early nights when the Blood had done all it could to make him near perfect. And who was to say this wasn't beauty?
"Aye, but I was never beautiful," he said with a sigh. "What is it that has made you see beauty here when others only ever saw ugliness and imperfection, and the ravages of disease?"
"My maker," I said. "Who gave me the power to see all things as beautiful."
Not one sound came from Amel inside me. Not one quiver. But he was there.
Magnus turned as if looking for the chair, reaching for it, in fact, yet unable to find it. I escorted him to the chair and held his hand as he sat down slowly, as though his phantom bones were actually aching.
Does a ghost become the full expression of the mortal and the immortal? Does a ghost embrace the entire past of the being?
"Forgive me," he said looking up at me. He sat back, relaxing, putting his hands on the arms of the chair as we are wont to do with these old wooden chairs with their knobby carvings, and he looked at me calmly. "You came here seeking Gremt, and I've distracted you, caught you up in my griefs and madness. I was always mad, or so I was told, when I said things of the world that common men and women say today; I was thought mad, when I spoke of loving and how one had to learn to love; mad Magnus the thief of the Blood. I should leave you now to your talk with Gremt. But I am whole and firm again, and don't want to give it up."
"I understand."
I looked at Gremt. He was merely watching us. The slender vampire boy soprano had come up to stand beside him, eternal acolyte in a white lace surplice, and he held the boy around the waist as he'd held me moments ago.
I wanted to leave. It was time to leave. I knew that Magnus was weary to his heart, and he had had enough and so had I. And the silence of Amel was ominous and baffling. I found I was drained and sad and had nothing more to say just now to anyone.
I
turned and took Magnus's right hand and kissed it. Flesh. Anyone would have thought so. I don't know that I'd ever kissed any being's hand before, but I kissed his.
"Anon, I come to you," he said under his breath. "Blessed heir."
"Yes, Master, whenever you wish," I said. I turned to Gremt and took Gremt's hand. "And I'll take my leave now and invite you to come whenever you wish to Court, you and all the household here."
"Thank you," Gremt said. "We'll come soon enough, but remember my words. Remember: he is not what you think he is. He is more and less. And don't be fooled by him."
I nodded. I looked at the boy singer and tried to remember if I'd seen him before with Notker's choir or musicians. Surely he had come from Notker's lair in the Alps.
He had been thirteen or fourteen when he was made, before the manly changes came over him, a boy of curly dark hair and dark glowing eyes and skin almost the color of honey by lamplight. His face brightened.
"Yes, Prince," he said. "I've sung for you and will sing for you again. It was Benedict who brought me to Notker, but your master who made me, and so I sing for him to bring him comfort."
"Ah, I see," I said. I repressed the simple urge to touch his hair affectionately. Against all evidence, he was hundreds of years old, a man in a boy's body, and no more the boy than Armand was a boy, or I a young man of twenty.
Gremt followed me as I headed to the front doors, hastening to open them for me.
The cold night air felt good, and I saw the snow was falling thinly. The ground was freshly blanketed in whiteness. And beyond, the trees glistened as they moved in the soft bitter wind. Two dim figures waited for me.
"Goodbye, my friend," I said. "Again, I came to break the silence between us. Come to me anytime, and I'll be back when I can, if you're willing."
"Always," he said. I saw the anguish in his face again, the strange grim unhappiness. "Oh, there's so much I want to confide, but I cannot confide without confiding in the one I fear."
I didn't know what to say.
We stood there, staring at one another, the snow swirling lightly and soundlessly around us, and then he took my hand. His fingers felt warm and human, and I felt the faint beat of his heart in them. What heart? The heart he'd made for himself to become one of us?