The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles)

by Rice, Anne

  The other angels stood stock-still, clustered together, the magnificent Ramiel and Setheus in their rich robes, and the two simpler, plainer, more somber souls—all of them looking at me in utter suspense. I saw Setheus look at the pile of smoldering heads, and then again at me.

  “Go on, poor Vittorio,” he whispered. “Hurry on.”

  “Could you do it?” I asked.

  “I cannot.”

  “No, I know that you are not permitted,” I said, my chest aching from the exertion and now the talk I forced from myself. “I mean could you do it? Could you bring yourself to do it!”

  “I am not a creature of flesh and blood, Vittorio,” Setheus answered helplessly. “But I could do what God told me to do.”

  I went on past them. I looked back at them in their glorious radiance, the cluster of them, and the masterly one, Mastema, his armor gleaming in the falling light, and his sword so brilliant against his flank.

  He said nothing.

  I turned. I ripped off the first veil. It was Ursula.

  “No.” I stood back.

  I let the veil drop. I was far enough away from her that she didn’t appear to wake; she didn’t move. Her lovely arms lay folded still in the same pose of graceful death which all of them had borne, only with her it was sweet, as if in her most innocent girlhood a gentle bane had taken her, not mussing so much as a single hair of long rippling unbraided locks. They made a nest of gold for her head and her shoulders, her swan neck.

  I could hear my heaving breaths. I let the edge of my sword drag, singing on the stones. I licked at my parched lips. I didn’t dare to look at them, though I knew they were collected only a few yards from me, staring at me. And in the thick stillness, I heard the crisping and sizzling of the burning heads of the damned.

  I thrust my hand inside my pocket, and I drew out the rosary of amber beads. My hand shook shamefully as I held it, and then I lifted it, letting the crucifix dangle, and I hurled it at her, so that it struck her, just above her small hands, right on the white swell of her half-bared breasts. It lay there, the crucifix nestled in the curve of her pale skin, and she didn’t so much as stir.

  The light clung to her eyelashes as if it were dust.

  Without excuse or explanation, I turned to the next one, ripping off the veil and assaulting him or her, I knew not which, with a loud raucous cry. I grabbed up the severed head by its thick brown locks and threw it crashing past the angels into the mass of slop that lay at their feet.

  Then to the next. Godric. Oh, God, this will be sweet.

  I saw his bald head before I ever touched the veil, and now, tearing the veil loose, hearing it rip on account of my carelessness, I waited for him to open his eyes, waited for him to rise up halfway from the slab and glare at me.

  “Know me, monster? Know me?” I roared. The sword sliced through his neck. The white head hit the floor, and with my sword I speared it through its dripping stump of a neck. “Know me, monster?” I cried again to the fluttering eyes, the gaping, drooling red mouth. “Know me?”

  I walked with him to the pile of the other heads and laid him like a trophy on top of it. “Know me?” I wailed again.

  And then in a fury I went back to my work.

  Two more, then three, then five, then seven and then nine, and then some six more, and the Court was finished, and all its dancers and Lords and Ladies were dead.

  And then, reeling to the other side, I made swift work of those poor peasant servants, who had no veils to cover their simple bodies, and whose feeble half-starved white limbs could scarce rise in defense.

  “The huntsmen, where are they?”

  “At the far end. It is almost dark in here. Take great care.”

  “I see them,” I said. I drew myself up and caught my breath. They lay in a row of six, heads to the wall like all the others, but they were perilously close together. It would be a hard approach.

  I laughed suddenly at the simplicity of it. I laughed. I snatched off the first veil and chopped at the feet. The corpse rose and then my blade could easily see the place to strike, while the blood had already begun to gush.

  The second, I cut to stumps at once and then sliced across the middle, and only descended on the head before his hand had caught my blade. I ripped back my sword and chopped the hand off him. “Die, bastard, you who stole me with your fellow; I remember you.”

  And at last I came to the final one and had his bearded head hanging from my hand.

  Slowly I walked back with this one, kicking others before me, others I had not had the strength to hurl very far, and I kicked them like so much refuse until the light fell on all of them.

  It was bright now. The afternoon sun was coming in the west side of the church. And the opening above gave forth a terrific and fatal heat.

  Slowly I wiped my face with the back of my left hand. I laid down my sword, and I felt for the napkins the monks had put in my pockets, and I took these and cleaned my face and cleaned my hands.

  Then I picked up my sword, and I went to the foot of her bier again. She lay as before. The light was nowhere near her. It could not have touched any of them where they lay.

  She was safe on her bed of stone, her hands as still as before, fingers beautifully folded, the right hand over the left, and on her mound of white breast there rested the Crucified Christ in gold. Her hair was stirring in a faint draft that seemed to come from the narrow opening above. But this was a mere halo of tendrils about her otherwise lifeless face.

  Her hair, in its loose ripples, without its ribbons or pearls, had fallen a little over the edges of the bier, so narrow was it, and so had the folds of her long gold-embroidered dress. It was not the same that she’d worn when I’d seen her. Only the deep rich blood red was the same, but all the rest was splendid and ornate and new, as if she were a regal princess, always prepared for the kiss of her prince.

  “Could Hell receive this?” I whispered. I drew as close as I dared. I could not bear the thought of her arm rising in that mechanical fashion, the sudden clutch of her fingers on the empty air or her eyes opening. I couldn’t bear it.

  The points of her slippers were small beneath her hem. How daintily she must have lain down to her rest at sunrise. Who had pulled closed the trapdoor, whose chains had fallen? Who had set the trap of the spears, whose engines I had never inspected or compassed with my thoughts?

  For the first time in the dimness, I saw a tiny golden circlet on her head, lying just around the crown and fixed by the tiniest pins into the waves so that its single pearl rested on her forehead. Such a small thing.

  Was her soul so small? Would Hell take it, like the fire would take any tender part of her anatomy, like the sun would burn to horror her immaculate face?

  In some mother’s womb she had once slept and dreamt, and into some father’s arms been placed.

  What had been her tragedy to bring her to this foul and reeking grave, where the heads of her slain companions lay burning slowly in the sun’s ever patient, ever indifferent light?

  I turned on them. I held my sword down at my side.

  “One, let one only live. One!” I declared.

  Ramiel covered his face and turned his back on me. Setheus continued to stare but shook his head. My guardians only gazed at me with their level coldness, as they always had. Mastema stared at me, soundlessly, concealing whatever thought he possessed behind his serene mask of a face.

  “No, Vittorio,” he said. “Do you think a bevy of God’s angels has helped you past these barriers to leave one such as these to live?”

  “Mastema, she loved me. And I love her. Mastema, she gave me my life. Mastema, I ask in the name of love. I beg in the name of love. All else here has been justice. But what can I say to God if I slay this one, who has loved and whom I love?”

  Nothing in his countenance changed. He only regarded me with his eternal calm. I heard a terrible sound. It was the weeping of Ramiel and Setheus. My guardians turned to look at them, as though surprised, but only mil
dly so, and then their dreamy soft eyes fixed again, unchanging, on me.

  “Merciless angels,” I said. “Oh, but such is not fair, and I know it. I lie. I lie. Forgive me.”

  “We forgive you,” said Mastema. “But you must do what you have promised me you would do.”

  “Mastema, can she be saved? If she herself renounces … can she … is her soul still human?”

  No answer came from him. No answer.

  “Mastema, please, tell me. Don’t you see? If she can be saved, I can stay here with her, I can wring it out of her, I know I can because her heart is good. It’s young and good. Mastema, tell me. Can such a creature as she is be saved?”

  No answer. Ramiel had lain his head against Setheus’s shoulder.

  “Oh, please, Setheus,” I said. “Tell me. Can she be saved? Must she die by my hand? What if I stay here with her, and wring it out of her, her confession, her final disavowal of all that she has ever done? Is there no priest who can give her absolution? Oh, God …”

  “Vittorio,” came the whisper from Ramiel. “Are your ears stopped with wax? Can you hear those prisoners starving, crying? You have not even set them free yet. Will you do it by night?”

  “I can do it. I can yet do it. But can I not stay here with her, and when she finds she is all alone, that all the others have perished, that all the promises of Godric and Florian were tyranny, is there no way that she can render her soul to God?”

  Mastema, without ever a change in his soft cold eyes, slowly turned his back.

  “No! Don’t do it, don’t turn away!” I shouted. I caught hold of his powerful silk-clad arm. I felt his unsurmountable strength beneath the fabric, the strange, unnatural fabric. He gazed down at me.

  “Why can’t you tell me!”

  “For the love of God, Vittorio!” he roared suddenly, his voice filling the entire crypt. “Don’t you realize? We don’t know!”

  He shook me loose, the better to glare down at me, his brows furrowed, his hand closing on the hilt of his sword.

  “We don’t come from a species that has ever known forgiveness!” he shouted. “We are not flesh and blood, and in our realm things are Light or they are the Darkness, and that is all we know!”

  In a fury, he turned and marched towards her. I rushed after him, pulling at him, but unable to deter him a fraction from his purpose.

  He plunged his hand down, past her groping hands, and clutched her tiny neck. Her eyes stared up at him in that terrible, terrible blindness.

  “She has a human soul in her,” he said in a whisper. And then he drew back as if he did not want to touch her, couldn’t bear to touch her, and he backed away from her, shoving me away, forcing me back as he did.

  I broke into weeping. The sun shifted, and the shadows began to thicken in the crypt. I turned finally. The patch of light above was now pale. It was a rich radiant gold, but it was pale.

  My angels stood there, all gathered, watching me and waiting.

  “I’m staying with her here,” I said. “She’ll wake soon. And I’ll put it to her, that she pray for God’s grace.”

  I knew it only as I said it. I understood it only as I made it plain.

  “I’ll stay with her. If she renounces all her sins for the love of God, then she can remain with me, and death will come, and we will not lift a hand to hasten it, and God will accept us both.”

  “You think you have the strength to do that?” Mastema asked. “And you think it of her?”

  “I owe her this,” I said. “I am bound. I never lied to you, not to any of you. I never lied to myself. She slew my brother and sister. I saw her. No doubt she killed many of them, my own. But she saved me. She saved me twice. And to kill is simple, but to save is not!”

  “Ah,” said Mastema as though I’d struck him. “That’s true.”

  “So I’ll stay. I expect nothing from you now. I know I cannot get out of here. Perhaps even she cannot.”

  “Of course she can,” said Mastema.

  “Don’t leave him,” said Setheus. “Take him against his will.”

  “None of us can do that, and you know it,” said Mastema.

  “Only out of the crypt,” pleaded Ramiel, “as if from a canyon into which he’s fallen.”

  “But it is not such a thing, and I cannot.”

  “Then let us stay with him,” said Ramiel.

  “Yes, let us stay,” said my two guardians, more or less at the same time and in similar muted expressions.

  “Let her see us.”

  “How do we know that she can?” asked Mastema. “How do we know that she will? How many times does it happen that a human being can see us?”

  For the first time I saw anger in him. He looked at me.

  “God has played such a game with you, Vittorio!” he said. “Given you such enemies and such allies!”

  “Yes, I know this, and I will beg Him with all my strength and the weight of all my suffering for her soul.”

  I didn’t mean to close my eyes.

  I know that I did not.

  But the entire scene was altered utterly. The pile of heads lay as before, and some at random, shriveling, drying up, the acrid smoke still rising from them, and the light above had darkened, yet it was still golden, golden beyond the broken stair, and the jagged broken spears, golden with the last burnt dregs of the late afternoon.

  And my angels had gone.

  12

  DELIVER ME NOT INTO TEMPTATION

  For all my youth, my body could take no more. Yet how could I remain in this crypt, waiting for her to awake, without attempting some form of exit?

  I gave no thought to the dismissal by my angels. I deserved it, but I was convinced of the rectitude of the chance I meant to give her, that she throw herself on the mercy of God, and that we leave this crypt and, if necessary, find the priest who could absolve her human soul of all her sins. For if she could not make a perfect confession for the love of God alone, well, then, the absolution would surely save her.

  I poked around the crypt, stepping among the drying-up corpses. What light there was gleamed on dried founts of blood that ran down the sides of the stone biers.

  At last I found what I had hoped to find, a great ladder that could be lifted and thrown up to the ceiling above. Only, how could I wield such a thing?

  I dragged it towards the center of the crypt, kicking out of my path the heads which were now damaged beyond reprieve, and I laid down the ladder, and stepped at midpoint, between two of the rungs, and tried from there to lift it.

  Impossible. I simply did not possess the leverage. It weighed too much, slight as it was, because it was so long. Three or four strong men might have hoisted it sufficiently to make its topmost rungs catch on the broken spears, but I alone could not do it.

  Alas, there was another possibility. A chain, or a rope, that could be tossed to the spears above. In the gloam, I made a search for such but found none.

  No chains anywhere here? No coil of rope?

  Had even the young larvae been able to leap the gap between the floor and the broken stairway?

  At last I moved along the walls, searching for any bump or hook or excrescence which might indicate a storeroom or, God forbid, another crypt of these fiends.

  But I could find nothing.

  Finally, I staggered towards the center of the room again. I gathered all the heads, even the loathsome bald head of Godric, which was now black like leather with its yellowed slits of eyes, and I piled these heads where the light could not fail to continue its work on them.

  Then, stumbling over the ladder, I fell on my knees at the foot of Ursula’s bier.

  I sank down. I would sleep this little while. No, not sleep, rest.

  Not willing it, indeed, fearing it and regretting it, I felt my limbs go limp and I lay on the stone floor, and my eyes closed in a blessed restorative sleep.

  How curious it was.

  I had thought her scream would awaken me, that like a frightened child she would have risen u
p in the darkness on the bier, finding herself alone with so many dead ones.

  I had thought the sight of the heads in the pile would have terrified her.

  But no such had happened.

  Twilight filled the space above, violet-colored, like the flowers of the meadow, and she stood over me. She had put the rosary around her neck, which is not common, and she wore it as a beautiful ornament with the gold crucifix turning and twisting in the light, a glinting speck of gold that matched the specks of light in her eyes.

  She was smiling.

  “My brave one, my hero, come, let’s escape this place of death. You’ve done it, you have avenged them.”

  “Did you move your lips?”

  “Need I do that with you?”

  I felt a thrill pass through me as she lifted me to my feet. She stood looking up into my face, her hands firmly on my shoulders.

  “Blessed Vittorio,” she said. Then clasping me about the waist, she rose upwards and we passed the broken spears, without so much as touching their splintered tips, and found ourselves in the chapel in the dusk, the windows darkened and the shadows playing gracefully but mercifully around the distant altar.

  “Oh, my darling, my darling,” I said. “Do you know what the angels did? Do you know what they said?”

  “Come, let’s free the prisoners as you wish,” she told me.

  I felt so refreshed, so full of vigor. It was as if I’d suffered no exhausting labor at all, as if war hadn’t worn down my limbs and broken me, as though battle and struggle hadn’t been my portion for days.

  I rushed with her through the castle. We threw open the doors, one pair after another, on the miserable occupants of the coop. It was she who scurried on her light, feline feet through the pathways beneath the orange trees and the bird aviaries, overturning the kettles of soup, crying out to the poor and the lame and the hopeless that they were free, that no one imprisoned them now.

  In a twinkling we stood on a high balcony. I saw far below their miserable procession in the half-light, the long winding line of them progressing down the mountain under the purple sky and the rising evening star. The weak helped the strong; the old carried the young.