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

by Rice, Anne

  “I roamed the way you have often roamed, Lestat. Wingless, and brokenhearted, I drifted along through the cities and nations of the earth, over continents and wastes. Sometime or other I can tell you all of it, if you wish. It’s of no consequence now.

  “Let me say only what is of consequence, that I did not dare to make myself visible or known to Humankind but rather hid amongst them, invisible, not daring to assume flesh for fear of angering God again; and not daring to join the human struggle under any disguise, for fear of God, and fear of what evil I might bring on humans. On account of the same fears … I didn’t return to Sheol. I wanted in no way to increase the sufferings of Sheol. God alone could free those souls. What hope could I give them?

  “But I could see Sheol, I could see its immensity, and I felt the pain of the souls there, and wondered at the new and intricate and ever-changing patterns of confusion created by mortals as they departed one faith or sect or creed after another for that miserable margin of gloom.

  “Once a proud thought did come to me—that if I did penetrate Sheol, I might instruct the souls there so thoroughly that they themselves might transform it, create in it forms invented by hope rather than hopelessness, and some garden might be made of it in time. Certainly the elect, the millions I had taken to Heaven, they had transformed their portion of the place. But then what if I failed at this, and only added to the chaos? I didn’t dare. I didn’t dare, out of fear of God and fear of my own inability to accomplish such a dream.

  “I formulated many theories in my wanderings but I did not change my mind on anything which I believed or felt or had spoken to God. In fact, I prayed to Him often, though He was utterly silent, telling Him how much I continued to believe that He had deserted His finest creation. And sometimes out of weariness I only sung His praises. Sometimes I was silent. Looking, hearing … watching.…

  “Memnoch, the Watcher, the Fallen Angel.

  “Little did I know my argument with Almighty God was only begun. But at a certain time, I found myself wandering back to the very valleys which I had first visited, and where the first cities of men had been built.

  “This land for me was the land of beginnings, for though great peoples had sprung up in many nations, it was here that I had lain with the Daughters of Men. And here that I had learnt something in the flesh which I still held that God did not Himself know.

  “Now, as I came to this place, I came into Jerusalem, which by the way is only six or seven miles west of here, where we now stand.

  “And the times were immediately known to me, that the Romans governed the land, that the Hebrews had suffered a long and terrible captivity, and that those tribes going back to the very first settlements here—who had believed in the One God—were now under the foot of the polytheists who did not take their legends with any seriousness.

  “And the Tribes of Monotheists, themselves, were divided on many issues, with some Hebrews being strict Pharisees, and others Sadducees, and still others having sought to make pure communities in caves in those hills beyond.

  “If there was one feature which made the times remarkable to me—that is, truly different from any other—it was the might of the Roman Empire, which stretched farther than any empire of the West which I had ever witnessed, and remained somehow in ignorance of the Great Empire of China, as if that were not of the same world.

  “Something drew me to this spot, however, and I knew it. I sensed a presence here that was not as strong as a summons; but it was as if someone were crying out to me to come here, and yet would not use the full power of his voice. I must search, I must wander. Maybe this thing stalked and seduced me as I did you. I don’t know.

  “But I came here, and wandered Jerusalem, listening to what the tongues of men had to say.

  “They spoke of the prophets and holy men of the wilderness, of arguments over the law and purification and the will of God. They spoke of Holy Books and Holy Traditions. They spoke of men going out to be ‘baptized’ in water so as to be ‘saved’ in the eyes of God.

  “And they spoke of a man who had only lately gone into the wilderness after his baptism, because at the moment that he had stepped into the River Jordan and the water had been poured over him, the skies had opened above this man, and Light had been seen from God.

  “Of course one could hear stories like this all over the world. It was not unusual, except that it drew me. That this was my country; and I found myself as if directed, wandering out of Jerusalem to the east, into the wasteland, my keen angelic senses telling me that I was near to the presence of something mysterious, something that partook of the sacred in a way that an angel would know upon seeing, and a man might not. My reason rejected it, yet I walked on and on, in the heat of the day, wingless and invisible into the very wastes.”

  Memnoch drew me with him and we walked into the sand, which was not as deep as I had imagined, but was hot and full of little stones. We moved on into canyons and up slopes and finally came to a little clearing of sorts where rocks had been gathered, as if others were wont to come here from time to time. It was as natural as the other place we had chosen to remain for so long.

  A landmark in the desert, so to speak, a monument to something, perhaps.

  I waited on tenterhooks for Memnoch to begin again. My uneasiness was growing. He slowed his pace until we stood well over a stone’s throw from this little gathering of rocks.

  “Closer and closer I came,” he said, “to those markers there that you see, and with my angelic eyes, powerful as are yours, I spied from a long way off a single human man. But my eyes told me this was no human, that on the contrary this man was filled with the fire of God.

  “I didn’t believe it, and yet I walked on, closer and closer, unable to stop myself, and then stopped where we are now, staring at the figure who sat on that rock before me, looking up at me here.

  “It was God! There was no question. He was sheathed in flesh, dark-skinned from the sun, dark-haired, and had the dark eyes of the desert people, but it was God! My God!

  “And there he sat in this fleshly body, looking at me with human eyes, and the eyes of God, and I could see the Light totally filling Him and contained within Him and concealed from the outside world by His flesh as if it were the strongest membrane betwixt Heaven and Earth.

  “If there was anything more terrible than this revelation, it was that He was looking at me and that He knew me and had been waiting for me, and that all I felt for Him, as I looked at Him, was love.

  “We sing over and over again the songs of love. Is that the one song intended for all Creation?

  “I looked at Him in terror for His mortal parts, His sunburnt flesh, His thirst, the emptiness of His stomach and the suffering of His eyes in the heat, for the presence of Almighty God inside Him, and I felt overwhelming love.

  “ ‘So, Memnoch,’ He said in a man’s tongue and with a man’s voice. ‘I have come.’

  “I fell on my face before Him. This was instinctive. I just lay there, reaching out and touching the very tip of the latchet of His sandal. I sighed and my body shook with the relief of loneliness, the attraction to God and the satisfaction of it, and I began a giddy weeping just to be near Him and see Him and I marveled at what this must mean.

  “ ‘Stand up, come sit near me,’ He said. ‘I am a man now and I am God, but I am afraid.’ His voice was indescribably moving to me, human yet filled with the wisdom of the divine. He spoke with the language and accents of Jerusalem.

  “ ‘Oh, Lord, what can I do to ease your pain?’ I said, for the pain was obvious. I stood up. ‘What have you done and why?’

  “ ‘I have done exactly what you tempted me to do, Memnoch,’ He answered, and His face wore the most dreamlike and engaging smile. ‘I have come into the flesh. Only I have done you one better. I was born of a mortal woman, planting the seed myself in her, and for thirty years, I have lived on this Earth as a child and as a man, and for long periods doubting—no, even forgetting and ceasing to believe alto
gether—that I was really God!’

  “ ‘I see you, I know you. You are the Lord my God,’ I said. I was so struck by His face; by the recognition of Him in the mask of skin that covered the bones of His skull. In a shivering instant I recovered the exact feeling of when I’d glimpsed His countenance in the light, and I saw now the same expression in this human face. I went down on my knees. ‘You are my God,’ I said.

  “ ‘I know that now, Memnoch, but you understand that I allowed myself to be submerged in the flesh utterly, to forget it, so that I could know what it means, as you said, to be human, and what humans suffer, and what they fear and what they long for, and what they are capable of learning either here or above. I did what you told me to do, and I did it better than you ever did it, Memnoch, I did it as God must do it, to the very extremity!’

  “ ‘Lord, I can scarcely bear the sight of you suffering,’ I said quickly, unable to rip my eyes off Him and yet dreaming of water and food for Him. ‘Let me wipe the sweat from you. Let me get you water. Let me take you to it in an angelic instant. Let me comfort you and wash you and clothe you in a finery fit for God on Earth.’

  “ ‘No,’ He said. ‘In those days when I thought myself mad, when I could scarce remember that I was God, when I knew I had yielded my omniscience deliberately in order to suffer and to know limitations, you might have persuaded me that that was the path. I might have seized upon your offer. Yes, make me a King. Let that be my way of revealing myself to them. But not now. I know Who I am and What I am, and I know What Will Happen. And you are right, Memnoch, there are souls in Sheol ready for Heaven and I myself will take them there. I have learnt what you tempted me to learn.’

  “ ‘Lord, you’re starving. You’re suffering from terrible thirst. Here, turn these stones into bread by your power, that you can eat. Or let me get you food.’

  “ ‘For once will you listen to me!’ He said, smiling. ‘Stop talking of food and drink. Who is human here? I am! You impossible adversary, you argumentative devil! Hush for now and listen. I am in the flesh. Have pity at least and let me speak my piece.’ He laughed at me, His face full of kindness and sympathy.

  “ ‘Here, come into the flesh, too, with me,’ He said. ‘Be my brother and sit beside me, Son of God and Son of God, and let us talk.’

  “I did as He said at once, creating a body thoughtlessly that matched what you see now, as that was as natural to me as thinking was natural, and I gave myself a similar robe, and I realized that I was sitting on that rock there by His side. I was bigger than He was, and had not thought to reduce the scale of my limbs, and now I did it hastily until we were men of equal proportion, more or less. I was fully angelic in my form, and not hungry or thirsty or tired.

  “ ‘How long have you been in this wilderness?’ I asked. ‘The people in Jerusalem say almost forty days.’

  “He nodded. ‘That’s about the right number,’ He answered me. ‘And it’s time now for me to begin my ministry, which will last three years. I will teach the great lessons that must be learnt for admission to Heaven—awareness of Creation and the Understanding of its deliberate unfolding; an appreciation of its beauty and laws which makes possible an acceptance of suffering and seeming injustice and all forms of pain; I will promise a final glory to those who can attain understanding; to those who can surrender their souls to the understanding of God and what He has done. I will give that to Men and Women, which is precisely, I think, what you wanted me to do.’

  “I didn’t dare to answer him.

  “ ‘Love, Memnoch, I have learnt to love them as you told me I would. I have learnt to love and cherish as men and women do, and I have lain with women and I have known that ecstasy, that spark of jubilation of which you spoke so eloquently when I could not conceive of wanting such a tiny thing.

  “ ‘I will talk more of love than any other subject. I will say things that men and women can twist and misunderstand. But love, that shall be the message. You convinced me and I have convinced myself that that is what elevates Human above animal, though animal is what Humankind is.’

  “ ‘Do you mean to leave them with specific guidance as to how to love? As to how to stop war and come together in one form of worship—’

  “ ‘No, not at all. That would be an absurd intervention and would undo the entire grand scheme which I have put into motion. It would stop the dynamics of the unfolding of the universe.

  “ ‘Memnoch, to me we human beings are all still part of Nature, as I said, only Humans are better than animals. It’s a matter of degrees. Yes, humans cry out against suffering and they are conscious of it when they suffer, but in a sense they behave exactly like the lower animals, in that suffering improves them and drives them towards evolutionary advance. They are quick-witted enough to see its value, where the animals only learn to avoid suffering by instinct. Humans can actually be improved within one lifetime by suffering. But they are part of Nature still. The world will unfold as it always has, full of surprises. Some of those surprises will be horrid, and others wondrous, and some beautiful. But what is known for certain is that the world will continue to grow and Creation will continue to unfold.’

  “ ‘Yes, Lord,’ I said, ‘but surely suffering is an evil thing.’

  “ ‘What did I teach you, Memnoch, when you first came to me saying that decay was wrong, that death was wrong? Don’t you understand the magnificence in human suffering?’

  “ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I see the ruin of hope and love and family; the destruction of peace of mind; I see pain beyond endurance; I see man buckle under this, and fall into bitterness and hate.’

  “ ‘You haven’t looked deep enough, Memnoch. You are only an angel. You refuse to understand Nature, and that has been your way since the start.

  “ ‘I will bring my light into Nature, through the flesh for three years. I will teach the wisest things I can know and say in this flesh-and-blood body and brain; and then I will die.’

  “ ‘Die? Why do that? I mean, what do you mean, die? Your soul will leave—’ I broke off, uncertain.

  “He smiled.

  “ ‘You do have a soul, don’t you, Lord? I mean, you are my God inside this Son of Man, and the light fills every particle of you, but you … you don’t have a soul, do you? You don’t have a human soul!’

  “ ‘Memnoch, these distinctions don’t matter. I am God Incarnate. How could I have a human soul? What is important is that I will remain in this body as it is tortured and slain; and my death will be evidence of my Love for those whom I have created and allowed to suffer so much. I will share their pain and know their pain.’

  “ ‘Please, Lord, forgive me, but there seems to be something wrong with this whole idea.’

  “Again, he seemed amused. His dark eyes were filled with a sympathetic and silent laughter. ‘Wrong? What is wrong, Memnoch, that I shall take the form of the Dying God of the Wood, whom men and women have imagined and dreamed of and sung of since time immemorial, a dying god who symbolizes the very cycle of nature itself in which all that is born must die.

  “ ‘I shall die, and I shall rise from the Dead, as that god has risen in every myth of the eternal return of the spring after winter in nations all over the world. I shall be the god destroyed and the god uplifted, only here it will happen literally in Jerusalem, not in ceremony, or with human substitutes. The Son of God himself shall fulfill the myths. I have chosen to sanctify those legends with my literal death.

  “ ‘I shall walk out of the Tomb. My resurrection will confirm the eternal return of the spring after winter. It will confirm that in Nature all things that have evolved have their place.

  “ ‘But Memnoch, it will be for my death that I am remembered. My death. It’s going to be terrible. It won’t be for my resurrection they’ll remember me, you can be sure of it, for that is something many simply will never see or believe. But my death, my death will spring full blown into a confirmation of mythology, underscored by all the myths which have preceded it, and my death will be a
sacrifice by God to know His own Creation. Just what you told me to do.’

  “ ‘No, no, wait, Lord, there’s something wrong with this!’

  “ ‘You always forget yourself and to whom you are speaking,’ He said kindly, the mixture of human and divine continuing to obsess me as I looked at Him, falling into His beauty and staggered by His divinity, and overcome again and again by my own sure belief that this was all wrong.

  “ ‘Memnoch, I’ve just told you what no one knows but Me,’ He said. ‘Don’t speak to me as if I can be wrong. Don’t waste these moments with the Son of God! Can’t you learn from me in the flesh as you learn from humans in flesh? Have I nothing to teach you, my beloved Archangel? Why do you sit here questioning me? What could possibly be the meaning of your word, wrong?’

  “ ‘I don’t know, Lord, I don’t know how to answer. I can’t find all the words. I just know this is not going to work. First of all, who will do this torturing and killing?’

  “ ‘The people of Jerusalem,’ He said. ‘I will succeed in offending everyone, the traditional Hebrews, the callous Romans, everyone will be offended by the blinding message of pure love and what love demands of humans. I will show contempt for the ways of others, for their rituals and their laws. And into the machinery of their justice I will fall.

  “ ‘I will be condemned on charges of treason when I speak of my Divinity, that I am the Son of God, God Incarnate … and for my very message I will be tortured with such embellishment that it will never be forgotten; my death, by crucifixion, is going to be the same.’

  “ ‘By crucifixion? Lord, have you seen men die in this way? Do you know how they suffer? They are nailed to the wood and they suffocate, hanging as they do, weakening, unable to lift their own weight on their nailed feet, and finally strangling in blood and in pain?’

  “ ‘Of course I’ve seen it. It’s a common form of execution. It’s filthy and it’s very human.’

  “ ‘Oh, no, no,’ I cried out. ‘This can’t be. You don’t mean to climax your teachings with such spectacular failure and execution, with such cruelty and death itself!’