by Anne Rice
Maharet studied him for a moment in silence; it seemed this was almost beyond her endurance, this discussion of her sister, yet she fortified herself silently for the ordeal that lay ahead.
“We were there in the beginning,” Khayman said. “We were the first children of the Mother; and in these dreams lies the story of how it began.”
“Then you must tell us … all of it,” Marius said as gently as he could.
“Yes.” Maharet sighed. “And I will.” She looked at each of them in turn and then back to Jesse. “I must tell you the whole story,” she said, “so that you can understand what we may be powerless to avert. You see, this is not merely the story of the beginning. It may be the story of the end as well.” She sighed suddenly as if the prospect were too much for her. “Our world has never seen such upheaval,” she said, looking at Marius. “Lestat’s music, the rising of the Mother, so much death.”
She looked down for a moment, as if collecting herself again for the effort. And then she glanced at Khayman and at Jesse, who were the ones she most loved.
“I have never told it before,” she said as if pleading for indulgence. “It has for me now the hard purity of mythology—those times when I was alive. When I could still see the sun. But in this mythology is rooted all the truths that I know. And if we go back, we may find the future, and the means to change it. The very least that we can do is seek to understand.”
A hush fell. All waited with respectful patience for her to begin.
“In the beginning,” she said, “we were witches, my sister and I. We talked to the spirits and the spirits loved us. Until she sent her soldiers into our land.”
3
LESTAT: THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN
HE let me go. Instantly I began to plummet; the wind was a roar in my ears. But the worst part was that I couldn’t see! I heard her say Rise.
There was a moment of exquisite helplessness. I was plunging towards the earth and nothing was going to stop it; then I looked up, my eyes stinging, the clouds closing over me, and I remembered the tower, and the feeling of rising. I made the decision. Go up! And my descent stopped at once.
It was as if a current of air had caught me. I went up hundreds of feet in one instant, and then the clouds were below me—a white light that I could scarcely see. I decided to drift. Why did I have to go anywhere for the moment? Maybe I could open my eyes fully, and see through the wind, if I wasn’t afraid of the pain.
She was laughing somewhere—in my head or over it, I didn’t know which. Come on, prince, come higher.
I spun around and shot upwards again, until I saw her coming towards me, her garments swirling about her, her heavy plaits lifted more gently by the wind.
She caught me and kissed me. I tried to steady myself, holding onto her, to look down and really see something through the breaks in the clouds. Mountains, snow-covered and dazzling in the moonlight, with great bluish flanks that disappeared into deep valleys of fathomless snow.
“Lift me now,” she whispered in my ear. “Carry me to the northwest.”
“I don’t know the direction.”
“Yes, you do. The body knows it. Your mind knows it. Don’t ask them which way it is. Tell them that is the way you wish to go. You know the principles. When you lifted your rifle, you looked at the wolf running; you didn’t calculate the distance or the speed of the bullet; you fired; the wolf went down.”
I rose again with that same incredible buoyancy; and then I realized she had become a great weight in my arm. Her eyes were fixed on me; she was making me carry her. I smiled. I think I laughed aloud. I lifted her and kissed her again, and continued the ascent without interruption. To the northwest. That is to the right and to the right again and higher. My mind did know it; it knew the terrain over which we’d come. I made a little artful turn and then another; I was spinning, clutching her close to me, rather loving the weight of her body, the press of her breasts against me, and her lips again closing delicately on mine.
She drew close to my ear. “Do you hear it?” she asked.
I listened; the wind seemed annihilating; yet there came a dull chorus from the earth, human voices chanting; some in time with each other, others at random; voices praying aloud in an Asian tongue. Far far away I could hear them, and then near at hand. Important to distinguish the two sounds. First, there was a long procession of worshipers ascending through the mountain passes and over the cliffs, chanting to keep themselves alive as they trudged on in spite of weariness and cold. And within a building, a loud, ecstatic chorus, chanting fiercely over the clang of cymbals and drums.
I gathered her head close to mine and looked down, but the clouds had become a solid bed of whiteness. Yet I could see through the minds of the worshipers the brilliant vision of a courtyard and a temple of marble arches and vast painted rooms. The procession wound towards the temple.
“I want to see it!” I said. She didn’t answer, but she didn’t stop me as I drifted downward, stretching out on the air as if I were a bird flying, yet descending until we were in the very middle of the clouds. She had become light again, as if she were nothing.
And as we left the sea of whiteness, I saw the temple gleaming below, a tiny clay model of itself, it seemed, the terrain buckling here and there beneath its meandering walls. The stench of burning bodies rose from its blazing pyres. And towards this cluster of roofs and towers, men and women wound their way along perilous paths from as far as I could see.
“Tell me who is inside, my prince,” she said. “Tell me who is the god of this temple.”
See it! Draw close to it. The old trick, but all at once I began to fall. I let out a terrible cry. She caught me.
“More care, my prince,” she said, steadying me.
I thought my heart was going to burst.
“You cannot move out of your body to look into the temple and fly at the same time. Look through the eyes of the mortals the way you did it before.”
I was still shaking, clutching hold of her.
“I’ll drop you again if you don’t calm yourself,” she said gently. “Tell your heart to do as you would have it do.”
I gave a great sigh. My body ached suddenly from the constant force of the wind. And my eyes, they were stinging so badly again, I couldn’t see anything. But I tried to subdue these little pains; or rather to ignore them as if they didn’t exist. I took hold of her firmly and started down, telling myself to go slowly; and then again I tried to find the minds of the mortals and see what they saw:
Gilded walls, cusped arches, every surface glittering with decoration; incense rising, mingling with the scent of fresh blood. In blurred snatches I saw him, “the god of the temple.”
“A vampire,” I whispered. “A bloodsucking devil. He draws them to himself, and slaughters them at his leisure. The place reeks of death.”
“And so there shall be more death,” she whispered, kissing my face again tenderly. “Now, very fast, so fast mortal eyes can’t see you. Bring us down to the courtyard beside the funeral pyre.”
I could have sworn it was done before I’d decided it; I’d done no more than consider the idea! And there I was fallen against a rough plaster wall, with hard stones under my feet, trembling, my head reeling, my innards grinding in pain. My body wanted to keep going down, right through solid rock.
Sinking back against the wall, I heard the chanting before I could see anything. I smelt the fire, the bodies burning; then I saw the flames.
“That was very clumsy, my prince,” she said softly. “We almost struck the wall.”
“I don’t exactly know how it happened.”
“Ah, but that’s the key,” she said, “the word ‘exact.’ The spirit in you obeys swiftly and completely. Consider a little more. You don’t cease to hear and see as you descend; it merely happens faster than you realize. Do you know the pure mechanics of snapping your fingers? No, you do not. Yet you can do it. A mortal child can do it.”
I nodded. The principle was clear all right
, as it had been with the target and the gun.
“Merely a matter of degrees,” I said.
“And of surrender, fearless surrender.”
I nodded. The truth was I wanted to fall on a soft bed and sleep. I blinked my eyes at the roaring fire, the sight of the bodies going black in the flames. One of them wasn’t dead; an arm was raised, fingers curled. Now he was dead. Poor devil. All right.
Her cold hand touched my cheek. It touched my lips, and then she smoothed back the tangled hair of my head.
“You’ve never had a teacher, have you?” she asked. “Magnus orphaned you the night he made you. Your father and brothers were fools. As for your mother, she hated her children.”
“I’ve always been my own teacher,” I said soberly. “And I must confess I’ve always been my favorite pupil as well.”
Laughter.
“Maybe it was a little conspiracy,” I said. “Of pupil and teacher. But as you said, there was never anyone else.”
She was smiling at me. The fire was playing in her eyes. Her face was luminous, frighteningly beautiful.
“Surrender,” she said, “and I’ll teach you things you never dreamed of. You’ve never known battle. Real battle. You’ve never felt the purity of a righteous cause.”
I didn’t answer. I felt dizzy, not merely from the long journey through the air, but from the gentle caress of her words, and the fathomless blackness of her eyes. It seemed a great part of her beauty was the sweetness of her expression, the serenity of it, the way that her eyes held steady even when the glistening white flesh of her face moved suddenly with a smile or a subtle frown. I knew if I let myself, I’d be terrified of what was happening. She must have known it too. She took me in her arms again. “Drink, prince,” she whispered. “Take the strength you need to do as I would have you do.”
I don’t know how many moments passed. When she pulled away, I was drugged for an instant, then the clarity was as always overwhelming. The monotonous music of the temple was thundering through the walls.
“Azim! Azim! Azim!”
As she drew me along after her, it seemed my body didn’t exist anymore except as a vision I kept in place. I felt of my own face, the bones beneath my skin, to touch something solid that was myself; but this skin, this sensation. It was utterly new. What was left of me?
The wooden doors opened as if by magic before us. We passed silently into a long corridor of slender white marble pillars and scalloped arches, but this was but the outer border of an immense central room. And the room was filled with frenzied, screaming worshipers who did not even see us or sense our presence as they continued to dance, to chant, to leap into the air in the hopes of glimpsing their one and only god.
“Keep at my side, Lestat,” she said, the voice cutting through the din as if I’d been touched by a velvet glove.
The crowd parted, violently, bodies thrust to right and left. Screaming replaced the chant immediately; the room was in chaos, as a path lay open for us to the center of the room. The cymbals and drums were silenced; moans and soft piteous cries surrounded us.
Then a great sigh of wonder rose as Akasha stepped forward and threw back her veil.
Many feet away, in the center of the ornate floor stood the blood god, Azim, clothed in a black silk turban and jeweled robes. His face was disfigured with fury as he stared at Akasha, as he stared at me.
Prayers rose from the crowd around us; a shrill voice cried out an anthem to “the eternal mother.”
“Silence!” Azim commanded. I didn’t know the language; but I understood the word.
I could hear the sound of human blood in his voice; I could see it rushing through his veins. Never in fact had I seen any vampire or blood drinker so choked with human blood as was this one; he was as old as Marius, surely, yet his skin had a dark golden gleam. A thin veil of blood sweat covered it completely, even to the backs of his large, soft-looking hands.
“You dare to come into my temple!” he said, and again the language itself eluded me but the meaning was telepathically clear.
“You will die now!” Akasha said, the voice even softer than it had been a moment ago. “You who have misled these hopeless innocents; you who have fed upon their lives and their blood like a bloated leech.”
Screams rose from the worshipers, cries for mercy. Again, Azim told them to be quiet.
“What right have you to condemn my worship,” he cried, pointing his finger at us, “you who have sat silent on your throne since the beginning of time!”
“Time did not begin with you, my cursed beauty,” Akasha answered. “I was old when you were born. And I am risen now to rule as I was meant to rule. And you shall die as a lesson to your people. You are my first great martyr. You shall die now!”
He tried to run at her; and I tried to step between them; but it was all too fast to be seen. She caught him by some invisible means and shoved him backwards so that his feet slid across the marble tile and he teetered, almost falling and then dancing as he sought to right himself, his eyes rolling up into his head.
A deep gurgling cry came out of him. He was burning. His garments were burning; and then the smoke rose from him gray and thin and writhing in the gloom as the terrified crowd gave way to screams and wails. He was twisting as the heat consumed him; then suddenly, bent double, he rose, staring at her, and flew at her with his arms out.
It seemed he would reach her before she thought what to do. And again, I tried to step before her, and with a quick shove of her right hand she threw me back into the human swarm. There were half-naked bodies all around, struggling to get away from me as I caught my balance.
I spun around and saw him poised not three feet from her, snarling at her, and trying to reach her over some invisible and unsurmountable force.
“Die, damnable one!” she cried out. (I clamped my hands over my ears.) “Go into the pit of perdition. I create it for you now.”
Azim’s head exploded. Smoke and flame poured out of his ruptured skull. His eyes turned black. With a flash, his entire frame ignited; yet he went down in a human posture, his fist raised against her, his legs curling as if he meant to try to stand again. Then his form disappeared utterly in a great orange blaze.
Panic descended upon the crowd, just as it had upon the rock fans outside the concert hall when the fires had broken out and Gabrielle and Louis and I had made our escape.
Yet it seemed the hysteria here reached a more dangerous pitch. Bodies crashed against the slender marble pillars. Men and women were crushed instantly as others rushed over them to the doors.
Akasha turned full circle, her garments caught in a brief dance of black and white silk around her; and everywhere human beings were caught as if by invisible hands and flung to the floor. Their bodies went into convulsions. The women, looking down at the stricken victims, wailed and tore their hair.
It took me a moment to realize what was happening, that she was killing the men. It wasn’t fire. It was some invisible attack upon the vital organs. Blood poured from their ears and their eyes as they expired. Enraged, several of the women ran at her, only to meet the same fate. The men who attacked her were vanquished instantly.
Then I heard her voice inside my head:
Kill them, Lestat. Slaughter the males to the last one.
I was paralyzed. I stood beside her, lest one of them get close to her. But they didn’t have a chance. This was beyond nightmare, beyond the stupid horrors to which I’d been a party all of my accursed life.
Suddenly she was standing in front of me, grasping my arms. Her soft icy voice had become an engulfing sound in my brain.
My prince, my love. You will do this for me. Slaughter the males so that the legend of their punishment will surpass the legend of the temple. They are the henchmen of the blood god. The women are helpless. Punish the males in my name.
“Oh, God help me, please don’t ask this of me,” I whispered. “They are pitiful humans!”
The crowd seemed to have lost its spir
it. Those who had run into the rear yard were trapped. The dead and the mourning lay everywhere around us, while from the ignorant multitude at the front gates there rose the most piteous pleas.
“Let them go, Akasha, please,” I said to her. Had I ever in my life begged for anything as I did now? What had these poor beings to do with us?
She drew closer to me. I couldn’t see anything now but her black eyes.
“My love, this is divine war. Not the loathsome feeding upon human life which you have done night after night without scheme or reason save to survive. You kill now in my name and for my cause and I give you the greatest freedom ever given man: I tell you that to slay your mortal brother is right. Now use the new power I’ve given you. Choose your victims one by one, use your invisible strength or the strength of your hands.”
My head was spinning. Had I this power to make men drop in their tracks? I looked around me in the smoky chamber where the incense still poured from the censers and bodies tumbled over one another, men and women embracing each other in terror, others crawling into corners as if there they would be safe.
“There is no life for them now, save in the lesson,” she said. “Do as I command.”
It seemed I saw a vision; for surely this wasn’t from my heart or mind; I saw a thin emaciated form rise before me; I gritted my teeth as I glared at it, concentrating my malice as if it were a laser, and then I saw the victim rise off his feet and tumble backwards as the blood came out of his mouth. Lifeless, withered, he fell to the floor. It had been like a spasm; and then as effortless as shouting, as throwing one’s voice out unseen yet powerful, over a great space.
Yes, kill them. Strike for the tender organs; rupture them; make the blood flow. You know that you have always wanted to do it. To kill as if it were nothing, to destroy without scruple or regret!
It was true, so true; but it was also forbidden, forbidden as nothing else on earth is forbidden.…
My love, it is as common as hunger; as common as time. And now you have my power and command. You and I shall put an end to it through what we will do now.