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

by Rice, Anne

  SIXTEEN

  In a flash, I shall have my answer, I thought. He will either admit us or cast us back down with His Might the way He once threw me to Earth. He might even dissolve the lot of us, for surely He can make His judgment on my success or failure before I ever reach the gates of Heaven. What had He said in His Infinite Wisdom? He had said, ‘Come back as soon as you can.’

  “I drew these souls to me, tight as I drew you when I took you upwards, and out of Sheol we rose, into the full blasting light of Heaven as it came pouring over the walls and the gates. And once again, those gates, which I had never seen in my early eons, were thrown open, and we found ourselves, one Archangel and a few million human souls, standing once more in the very midst of Heaven before amazed and laughing and pointing and startled and flabbergasted angels who gathered around us in a great circle, crying to get the attention of everyone until Heaven finally fell quiet.

  “Well, I thought, so far so good. We’re inside. And the human souls! The human souls could see the angels and the human souls were overjoyed. Oh, I can’t even remember this moment without dancing. I can’t remember it without singing. The souls were jubilant, and when the angels began their great potentially cacophonous singing of questions and exclamations, the human souls began to sing!

  “Indeed, Heaven was never going to be the same. I knew it. I knew it instantly. Because this is what took place. These souls brought with them the same powers of projection which they had learnt in Sheol, that is to create around them out of the invisible something of an environment that they wanted, longed for, and to which they were able to give their full wills.

  “And the geography of Heaven was changed dramatically and instantly and in an infinite capacity. There rose the towers and castles and mansions which you saw when I took you there, the domed palaces and libraries, and the gardens, oh, the breathtaking projections of flowers in all directions, things that angels simply never thought to bring to Heaven … well, it was all there. Trees rose in their mature fullness; rain came in whispering gusts, full of fragrance. The sky warmed and colors everywhere expanded or deepened. These souls took the invisible fabric of Heaven, whatever it is—energy, essence, the light of God, the Creative Power of God—and in a twinkling surrounded us all with wondrous constructions representing their curiosity, their concepts of beauty and their desires!

  “All that they had learnt on Earth they had brought into Heaven, creating it irresistibly in its most cherished form!

  “The commotion was beyond anything I had ever witnessed since the Creation of the Universe itself.

  “And nobody appeared more astonished than the Archangel Michael, who was staring at me as if to say, ‘Memnoch, you’ve brought them into Heaven!’

  “But before he could get those words out, and as the souls still stood together, only beginning to realize that they could shift and touch the angels and touch the things they envisioned, there came the light of God Himself—En Sof—rising and spreading out from behind the figures of the Seraphim and Cherubim, and very gently and considerately falling down upon these human souls, filling each and laying all secrets of each totally open, as angels are open.

  “The human souls cried with joy. Anthems rose from the Angels. I began to sing with my arms outstretched, ‘Lord, Lord, I have your souls, worthy of Heaven, and look what they have brought to Heaven, Lord, look on your Creation, look on the Souls of those you evolved from the tiniest cells through flesh and blood and Sheol to your very Throne. Lord, we are here! Lord, it’s done, it’s done. It’s happened. I have come back and you have allowed it.’

  “And having said more than enough, I fell down on my knees.

  “The songs had reached a frenzy, a sound no flesh-and-blood human could endure. Anthems rose from all quarters. The human souls were growing denser, more visible, until they appeared as clearly to us as we did to them and to each other. Some of them were locking hands and jumping up and down like little children. Others were merely crying and screaming and the tears were flooding down their faces.

  “And then the light swelled. We knew God was about to speak. We fell silent, en masse. We were all the bene ha elohim. And God said:

  “ ‘My Children. My beloved Children. Memnoch stands with his Millions, and they are worthy of Heaven.’

  “And the voice of God ceased, and the light grew stronger and warmer, and all of Heaven became pure acceptance and pure love.

  “I lay down upon the floor of Heaven in weariness, staring upwards into the great firmament of beautiful blue sky and ever-twinkling stars. I heard the souls of the humans rushing hither and thither. I heard the welcoming hymns and incantations of the angels. I heard everything, and then, in imitation of a mortal, I closed my eyes.

  “Did God ever sleep? I don’t know. I closed my eyes, and I lay still in the Light of God, and after all those years and years in Sheol I was safe again, and I was warm.

  “Finally, I realized that the Seraphim had come to me, three or four of them, I didn’t really notice, and they were standing over me, and looking down on me, their faces almost unendurably bright with reflected light.

  “ ‘Memnoch, God wants to speak to you alone,’ they said. “ ‘Yes, at once!’ I sprang to my feet.

  “And far from the jubilant throngs, I found myself standing in silence, in quiet, without companions, my arm up over my eyes, my eyes down, and near as I could possibly be to the presence of the Lord.”

  SEVENTEEN

  “ ‘Uncover your eyes and look at me,’ said the Lord. “Instantly, aware that this might mean my total obliteration, that all might have been folly and misunderstanding, I obeyed.

  “The radiance had become uniform, glorious yet tolerable, and in the very midst of it, broadcast in it, I saw distinctly a countenance such as my own. I cannot say that it was a human face. Countenance, person, expression—this is what I beheld, and this Highly Personal Countenance was regarding me directly and fully.

  “It was so beautiful that I couldn’t imagine moving or ever turning away from it, but then it began to brighten, it began to force me to blink and to struggle not to cover my eyes rather than imperil my vision forever.

  “The light then became muted; it contracted; it became bearable and engulfing, but not blinding to me. And I stood, trembling, very glad I had not reached to cover my face.

  “ ‘Memnoch,’ God said. ‘You have done well. You have brought souls from Sheol who are worthy of Heaven; you have increased the joy and the bliss of Heaven; you have done well.’

  “I uttered a thanks which was in fact an anthem of adoration, repeating the obvious, that God had made all these souls and that in His mercy He had allowed them to come to Him.

  “ ‘This makes you very happy, does it not?’ He asked.

  “ ‘Only if it makes you happy, Lord,’ I said, which was a bit of a lie.

  “ ‘Rejoin the angels, Memnoch,’ He said. ‘You are forgiven for becoming flesh and blood without my permission, and forgiven for having slept with the Daughters of Men. You are upheld in your hopes for the souls of Sheol. Leave me now and do whatever it is you wish, but interfere no more with Nature, or with humankind, since you insist they are not part of Nature, and on which point you are wrong.’

  “ ‘Lord—’ I started timidly.

  “ ‘Yes???’

  “ ‘Lord, these souls I brought from Sheol, why, they are less than one one-hundredth of the souls in Sheol; they probably are less than one one-hundredth of souls who have disintegrated or vanished since the beginning of the world. Lord, Sheol is filled with confusion and misunderstanding. These were but the elect.’

  “ ‘I am supposed to be surprised by this information? How could I not know it?’ He asked.

  “ ‘Surely, Lord, you’ll let me go back to Sheol and to try to advance those souls who haven’t reached the level of Heaven. Surely you’ll let me try to purge them of whatever keeps them unworthy of heavenly bliss.’

  “ ‘Why?’

  “ ‘Lord, the
re are millions lost to you for every million saved.’

  “ ‘You know that I know this, do you not?’

  “ ‘Lord, have mercy on them! Have mercy on the humans of the Earth who seek through countless rituals to reach you, know you, and appease you.’

  “ ‘Why?’

  “I didn’t answer. I was dumbstruck. I thought. And then I said, ‘Lord, do you not care for these souls who are drifting in confusion? Who suffer so in darkness?’

  “ ‘Why should I?’ He asked.

  “Again, I took my time. It was imperative that this answer count. But in the interval he spoke:

  “ ‘Memnoch, can you count for me all of the stars? Do you know their names, their orbits, their destinies in Nature? Can you give me a rough calculation, Memnoch, of the number of grains of sand in the sea?’

  “ ‘No, Lord, I can’t.’

  “ ‘Throughout my Creation, there are creatures whose spawn numbers in the thousands, of which only a tiny portion survive—fishes of the sea, turtles of the sea, winged insects of the air. A hundred, a million even, of one species may be born under the arc of one day’s sun, with only a handful to survive and reproduce. Don’t you know this?’

  “ ‘Yes, Lord, I know. I knew in ages past. I knew when the animals were evolved. I knew.’

  “ ‘So what is it to me that only a handful of souls come to the Gates of Heaven? Maybe I will send you to Sheol again, in Time. I will not say.’

  “ ‘Lord, humankind is sentient and suffering!’

  “ ‘Must we argue again about Nature? Humankind is my creation, Memnoch, and its development whether you know it or not follows my Laws.’

  “ ‘But, Lord, everything under the sun dies eventually, and these souls have the potential to live forever! They are outside the cycle! They are made of invisible will and knowledge. Lord, surely they were meant within the Laws to come to Heaven, how could it not be? I am asking you, Lord, I am asking you to tell me, because as much as I love you, I don’t understand.’

  “ ‘Memnoch, the invisible and the willful are embodied in my angels and they obey my laws.’

  “ ‘Yes, Lord, but they don’t die. And you talk to us, and you reveal yourself to us, and you love us, and you let us see things.’

  “ ‘You don’t think the beauty of Creation reveals my light to Humankind? You don’t think these souls, which you yourself have brought here, have not developed out of a perception of the glory of all that has been made?’

  “ ‘Many more could come, Lord, with just a little help. The number here now is so small. Lord, the lower animals, what can they conceive of that they cannot have? I mean, the lion conceives of the meat of the gazelle and he gets it, does he not? Human souls have conceived of Almighty God and are longing for Him.’

  “ ‘You’ve proved that to me already,’ he said. ‘You’ve proved it to all of Heaven.’

  “ ‘But these were a few! Lord, if you were only flesh and blood, if you had only gone down as I did—’

  “ ‘Caution, Memnoch.’

  “ ‘No, Lord, forgive me, but I can’t deny you my finest efforts, and my finest efforts at logic tell me that if you went down and became flesh and blood as I did, you would better know these Creatures whom you think you know but you don’t!’

  “No answer.

  “ ‘Lord, your fight doesn’t penetrate human flesh. It mistakes it for animal flesh and always has! Lord, you may know all but you don’t know every tiny thing! You can’t, or you couldn’t leave these souls languishing in Sheol in agony. And you could not allow the suffering of men and women on Earth to go without context. I don’t believe it! I don’t believe you would do it! I don’t believe it.’

  “ ‘Memnoch, for me it is only necessary to say something once.’

  “I didn’t answer.

  “ ‘I’m being gentle with you,’ He said.

  “ ‘Yes, you are, but you are wrong, and in that, too, you are wrong, for you would hear your anthems of praise sung over and over without end and forever, and Lord! These souls could come to you and sing those anthems.’

  “ ‘I don’t need the anthems, Memnoch,’ He said.

  “ ‘Then why do we sing?’

  “ ‘You of all my angels are the only one who accuses me! Who does not trust in me. Why, these souls you brought from Sheol trust in me as you do not! That was your standard for selecting them! That they trusted in the Wisdom of God.’

  “I couldn’t be silenced:

  “ ‘I knew something when I was flesh and blood, Lord, which upheld all that I had suspected before, and which confirms all I have seen since. What can I do, Lord, tell you lies? Speak things with my tongue that are flat-out falsehoods? Lord, in humankind you have made something that even you do not fully comprehend! There can be no other explanation, for if there is, then there is no Nature and there are no Laws.’

  “ ‘Get out of my sight, Memnoch. Go down to Earth and get away from me and interfere with Nothing, do you hear?’

  “ ‘Put it to the test, Lord. Become flesh and blood as I did. You who can do anything, sheath yourself in flesh—’

  “ ‘Silence, Memnoch.’

  “ ‘Or if you do not dare to do that, if it is unworthy of the Creator to understand in every cell his Creation, then silence all the anthems of Angels and Men! Silence them, since you say you do not need them, and observe then what your Creation means to you!’

  “ ‘I cast you out, Memnoch!’ He declared, and in an instant all of Heaven had reappeared around me, the entire bene ha elohim and with it the millions of souls of the saved, and Michael and Raphael were standing before me, watching in horror as I was forced backwards right out of the gates and into the whirlwind.

  “ ‘You are merciless to your Creations, my Lord!’ I roared as loud as I could over the din of distressful singing. ‘Those men and women made in your own image are right to despise you, for nine-tenths of them would be better off if they had never been born!’ ”

  Memnoch stopped.

  He made a little frown, just a tiny very perfectly symmetrical scowl for a moment, and then lowered his head as if listening to something. Then slowly he turned to me.

  I held his gaze. “It’s just what you would have done, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “God help me,” I said, “I really don’t know.”

  The landscape was changing. As we looked at each other, the world around us was filled with new sounds. I realized there were humans in the vicinity, men with flocks of goats and sheep, and far off in the distance I could see the walls of a town, and above on a hill, yet another small settlement. Indeed, we were in a populated world now, ancient, but not that far from our own.

  I knew these people couldn’t see us, or hear us. I didn’t have to be told.

  Memnoch continued to stare at me, as if asking me something, and I didn’t know what it was. The sun was beating down full on both of us. I realized my hands were moist with blood sweat and I reached up and wiped the sweat from my forehead, and looked at the blood on my hand. He was covered with a faint shimmer, but nothing more than that. He continued to stare at me.

  “What happened!” I asked. “Why don’t you tell me! What happened? Why don’t you go on?”

  “You know damned good and well what happened,” he said. “Look down at your clothes now. They’re robes, and better suited for the desert. I want you to come there, just over those hills … with me.”

  He stood up, and I at once followed him. We were in the Holy Land, there was no question. We passed dozens upon dozens of small groups of people, fishermen near a small town on the edge of the sea, others tending sheep or goats, or driving small flocks towards nearby settlements or walled enclosures.

  Everything looked distinctly familiar. Disturbingly familiar, quite beyond déjà vu or intimations of having lived here before. Familiar as if hardwired into my brain. And I refer to everything now—even a naked man with crooked legs, hollering and raving, as he passed us, not seeing us, one hand bent on a st
ick of a cane.

  Beneath the layers of grit that covered all, I was surrounded by forms and styles and manners of behavior I knew intimately—from Scripture, from engraving, from embellished illustration, and from film enactment. This was—in all its stripped-down, burning-hot glory—a sacred as well as familiar terrain.

  We could see people standing before caves in which they lived high on the hills. Here and there little groups sat in the shade beneath a copse, dozing, talking. A distant pulse came from the walled cities. The air was filled with sand. Sand blew into my nostrils and clung to my tips and my hair.

  Memnoch had no wings. His robes were soiled and so were mine. I think we wore linen; it was light and the air passed through it. Our robes were long and unimportant. Our skin, our forms, were unchanged.

  The sky was vividly blue, and the sun glared down upon me as it might on any being. The sweat felt alternately good and unbearable. And I thought, fleetingly, how at any other time I might wonder at the sun alone, the marvel of the sun denied to the Children of Night—but all this time I had not even thought of it, not once, because having seen the Light of God, the Sun had ceased to be that Light for me.

  We walked up into the rocky hills, climbing steep paths, and crossing over outcroppings of rock and ragged tree, and finally there appeared below and before us a great patch of unwatered sand, burning and shifting slowly in comfortless wind.

  Memnoch came to a halt at the very threshold of this desert, so to speak, the place where we would leave the firm ground, rocky and uncomfortable as it was, and pass into the soft drudgery of the sand.

  I caught up with him, having fallen a little behind. He put his left arm around me, and his fingers spread out firm and large against my shoulder. I was very glad he did, because I was feeling a predictable apprehension; in fact, a dread was building in me, a premonition as bad as any I’d ever known.

  “After He cast me out,” Memnoch said, “I wandered.” His eyes were on the desert and what seemed the barren, blazing rocky cliffs in the distance, hostile as the desert itself.