by Anne Rice
“Until you answer my question, I’ll answer no more of yours.”
“What is this question?”
“How did your fracti become children in your heart and on your lips? From where did this love for them come?”
“You seek to know my heart?”
“I seek to know your motives. Your heart in its entirety I would do best not to explore. I imagine the endeavor would be akin to chasing a moonbeam off a cliff.”
“You seek to delay your murder of me with chatter. My motives have always been clear to you. I seek the pure elixir.”
“So that your children may never die?” she asked.
“How many immortals have you made? You have the pure elixir. You can’t understand my anguish. Two centuries, Bektaten. That was all I could give them. Two centuries of life. But a heartbeat amidst immortality. And yet, those were the only choices I was left with after our kingdom fell. The incessant, crushing grief of another generation lost to withering and dust after two hundred years. The absolute isolation as I walked the earth alone. Or the absolute darkness beneath it. And so I chose the first until only the third was bearable. And those children, the ones you slaughtered, had little time left. So I placed myself in a tomb, knowing that once they had crumbled, no one would know of my location, and my sleep would be as permanent as death.”
“And yet, they woke you.”
“Yes. They heard tell of this Ramses the Damned and in him they saw the hope of the pure elixir.”
“You could have easily dismissed them and returned to sleep,” she said.
“I’ve explained my motives. What else do you want of me?”
“You’ve lied about them. I watched you among your children, Saqnos. No great love drove you. You treated them as incompetents and slaves. You sought the pure elixir for your own benefit, not theirs.”
“You ask me questions to which you believe you have the answers. Why? Why delay for another moment what you have always longed to do? Turn me to dust! Punish me once and for all for this thing you call a betrayal. So that we may put our history to sleep forever.”
“What I have always longed to do? Nonsense. You were the one entirely possessed by a singular goal. You squandered the millennia you were given on bitterness and appetite, the pursuit of that which you were not meant to have. You don’t command me here or anywhere.”
“No. I give you explanations which you then twist to justify whatever you wish to do.”
“How dare you?” she said. “How dare you treat me as one governed only by emotion? You staged a rebellion without a plan. Without the barest knowledge of what you stole. In your jealousy and your rage, you allowed reason to abandon you. You didn’t once stop to question what an army needs to remain intact. You didn’t once stop to ask what would render a soldier loyal to you if they had no need of food, arms, or shelter. You assumed they would hail you for all time as the deliverer of a great gift, and this alone would render you a god in their eyes, and not just a calculating thief.
“And yet, the Saqnos I knew, the Saqnos who served me, would have asked these questions. He would have encouraged me to ask such questions myself had I told him of such a plan. But the man who burst into my chambers, with the arms of my own soldiers raised against me, he was not that man. And so I will not allow you to stand before me and claim that grief for your fracti has made you what you are now. You were changed thousands of years before then, before a drop of elixir ever touched your lips, when just the idea of it drove you insane.”
“I don’t stand before you. I sit and I do so in fear of your daggers and your poisons.”
“And I stand before you, in fear that you cannot tell the truth of yourself because you do not know the truth of yourself.”
“Then give it to me, my queen. Give me my truth, even as you refuse to reveal your own.”
“You have always known my truth.”
“That is a lie!” he cried out. “Eight thousand years later it is still the greatest discovery of humankind and still you keep it secret. Still you guard it as if it were just an ancient scroll.”
“And what would you do with it if I gave it to you?” she asked. “What would you have done then if your plan had not ended in ruin?”
“I would have made gods on earth.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, you would have. And to do this you would have extinguished anyone who was not godlike in your eyes. You would have used it to fortify our palace against all others. You would have fractured our kingdom into a million pieces small enough to lie at our feet like blossoms. You would have taken the glorious miracle I had discovered and used it to shatter Shaktanu, and to make a kingdom only out of what was within your reach. And you knew I would permit none of these things so long as I ruled. And that is why you raised arms against me the moment you heard of the elixir’s existence.”
“And yet you’ve allowed me to live all of this time,” he said.
“I have nourished hope. I have wished that a man given all the time in the world might someday come to know his true self and wish to improve upon it. But with each passing century, you have proved these hopes were in vain.”
“Grieving for my soul,” he sneered. “It holds you in thrall the way some are held by strong drink.”
“It has, Saqnos. But I’m relieved of this obsession now. I set you free.”
Ramses worked to keep silent. Next to him, Julie stiffened, tensing her hand around the dagger’s handle.
“Free?” Saqnos asked, giving voice, it seemed, to Ramses’ own thoughts.
“Yes. Free to make your final decision.”
In the doorway behind Saqnos, Enamon and Aktamu appeared, daggers drawn. But they allowed enough space between them for Saqnos to leave the great hall if he so chose.
As if he could not believe this sudden turn of events, Saqnos rose slowly to his feet and looked to each of them in turn. He seemed stricken by the confusion on Ramses’ face, on Julie’s face, as if any suggestion the two of them were not in on this plan meant it could not possibly be a trap.
His final decision.
What could Bektaten mean by this?
“You set me free now that you have taken everything from me,” he said. “My children, my hounds.”
“Your house stands. Your hounds are still there. Although they won’t be as submissive to your evil deeds as they once were. A decision awaits you on the other side of the bridge that brought you here. I give this decision entirely to you. Cross the bridge before I change my mind.”
For a while no one spoke. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the roaring surf, and then those sounds were joined by a third: the low rumble of laughter coming from Saqnos, a sound so full of derision and contempt, Ramses tightened his grip on his dagger in response. Eventually this rumble turned into a frenzied cackling, and it was then that Ramses thought the man had gone mad.
There was fury in Bektaten’s expression, but she did not order Saqnos to leave.
“You’re a coward, Bektaten,” Saqnos finally said, left breathless by his own laughter. “You’re a coward who kills only at a safe remove. You cannot even bear to see me brought down by your own men. You are a coward, Bektaten, and you always were. A coward who could not face the evil in her kingdom.”
“There was only one evil in my kingdom. And it was you. And I have faced you for thousands of years. And I watched your children die only a few feet from where I stood. Every last one. There was no remove. You were the one who sent them unaccompanied to do your bidding while you remained at your estate.” She took a deep breath. “Leave this place. And know that from this day forward, my back will be turned to you.”
Julie squeezed Ramses’ hand, distressed by Bektaten’s order almost to the point of crying out in protest. She had not seen what Ramses had just glimpsed when Saqnos turned his back to the fire and stepped into the more even light cast by the chandelier overhead.
“Fare thee well, my queen,” Saqnos whispered.
Bektaten said nothing.
Saqnos turned, passed between her guards, who turned and followed him. Bektaten followed as well. Ramses did the same. Julie tightened her grip and held him in place. “Ramses,” she whispered fiercely, “she cannot let him go. She must not.”
“His eyes, Julie,” he whispered back. “Did you see his eyes?”
40
Outside, the winds were fierce, the sky over the sea still dark and pierced by stars. But in the east, dawn’s first light brightened the sky. There was a pale glow all around them, which allowed their group to see without need for a flashlight or a torch.
Steps from the garden that had brought him so much ruin, Saqnos slowed and gazed into the rustling blossoms.
Behind him, they all came to a stop. Enamon and Aktamu, who had remained on the man’s heels ever since they left the great room; Bektaten a few paces behind them; and then Ramses and Julie in the rear, their hands still clutching daggers that had been dipped in the strangle lily upon their return.
Ramses looked back at the castle.
Above, Sibyl opened her window. The wind whipped through her golden hair and she was forced to hold the collar of her nightgown closed against it with one hand. Had she overheard their conversation in the great room? If so, had she been able to make any sense of it? Regardless, she was silent. She seemed to understand she was bearing witness to a departure of great significance.
As Saqnos lingered, Ramses expected words of farewell. But there were none.
Silently, he started once again for the courtyard gate, which had been left open.
When he came to the bridge, he gripped both of its rope rails to steady himself and then proceeded to cross it. Slowly. Carefully. The boards underfoot were knotted tightly together, forming an almost solid floor. But the entire construction swayed steadily in the wind. And the spray from the crashing waves far below created a constant mist that turned the boards slick.
“Ramses,” Julie whispered. “Ramses, she can’t—”
“Patience, Julie,” he whispered back. “Patience, my love.”
Light glinted off some sort of shiny object that appeared to be resting against one of the rocks on the other side. Some sort of gift waiting for Saqnos just beyond the bridge. But Saqnos had not yet seen it.
Once he had crossed, he looked back to find Enamon and Aktamu standing on either side of the bridge’s headland side. Each man had taken one of the rope rails in hand and stretched it taut across the upturned blade of his dagger. Their meaning was clear: should Saqnos suddenly try to return they would quite literally cut the bridge out from under him.
At first, Saqnos sneered, then a sort of realization seemed to dawn.
Why would they think this a threat worth making with this silent, deliberate tableau?
An immortal could easily survive the fall. An immortal might be strong enough to cling to the nearest rock and keep the waves from sweeping him away. Perhaps it was then that Saqnos noticed the gift that had been left for him on the rocks nearby. Or perhaps this strange gesture on the part of Bektaten’s men caused him to survey his immediate surroundings, searching for evidence of this final choice she had referenced earlier.
The mirror rested against a jagged outcropping of rock behind him. Its details were hard for Ramses to make out at a distance, but it was the size of an elegant ladies’ hand mirror, with an oval reflective surface and a bright silver frame.
Saqnos lifted it and stared into his own reflection. The sound that came from him then reminded Ramses of the bellowing of some great, stricken animal brought low by spears. For now Saqnos saw what Ramses had glimpsed briefly in the castle moments before as the man had turned from the fire and stepped into the chandelier’s glow; his eyes, once blue, were now brown again.
For what felt like an eternity, he did not lower the mirror. His weary bellows eventually faded into labored breathing they could not hear from this distance. He looked again to Aktamu and Enamon. Neither man had lowered his dagger or changed his stance by an inch.
Now Saqnos realized why the prospect of having the bridge cut out from under him constituted a real threat.
Saqnos was mortal again.
This was why they’d taken him to the armory before bringing him to the fire.
This was the secret in Bektaten’s garden she had referred to before blessing their raid upon Havilland Park.
Saqnos raised the mirror in one hand and hurled it to the rocks underfoot. The glass shattered instantly. Ramses at first thought this act was meant to only vent rage, then Saqnos crouched down and carefully picked up one of the largest shards. Studiously, he ran one sharp end down the inside of his forearm, and then the other. He watched the blood flow. He watched the wound remain open and red. And he knew then, from the fierceness of the wounds and the speed at which the blood flowed, that he was no longer immortal.
“A choice?” he roared across the stormy gulf between them. “This is the choice of which you spoke? Where is the choice in this? You have now taken everything from me. Everything.”
“You have your life!” There was such strength and power in Bektaten’s voice that it seemed as if she were calmly speaking, and not shouting, even though her words were clear above the restless sea and whistling wind. “And you have your half elixir. You have the choice to make more children. You have the choice to live among them for two more centuries. And now, you have the choice to truly love them as companions and partners and equals. For you will be one of them, Saqnos. For when they die, so shall you.”
“And the alternative?” he shouted back.
Bektaten uncurled the fingers on one hand and gestured to the great gap of wind and waves that now separated them.
I shall spend the rest of my existence trying to find the word to describe the change that is overtaking this man, Ramses thought. Was it peace that came to him? Was there a word in any known language that could describe the moment in which an immortal thousands of years old casts off his memories, sets down his burdens, relieves himself of the weight of a lived experience heavier than most creatures will ever know? Was it a moment for which a word need be invented, and would he, Ramses the Great, Ramses the Damned, be the one to someday invent it? Or did the word exist somewhere in Bektaten’s ancient language? Was it written somewhere within the volumes of her journals?
Saqnos stared down at his bleeding arms, studied them quietly and calmly. Then he raised his gaze and looked once more across the violent gulf that separated them.
“Long may you reign!” he sneered, and then he stepped from the edge of the cliff.
41
Sibyl screamed.
Saqnos plunged silently into the stormy dark, arms thrown out in a gesture of surrender.
His body was caught, then flipped, by a jagged outcropping of rock.
He somersaulted into curtains of whitecaps and then was lost to the roaring sea.
When he drew near to her, Ramses saw no tears in Bektaten’s eyes. No evidence of triumph in her expression either. But she had an answer to her final question, an answer that could not be disputed.
No great love or passion had driven the man who betrayed her. No great love or passion held him to this earth once his immortality was taken from him. And so his tale of being hardened by grief for his fracti was truly a lie, proved so by his own final leap.
Would it bring her peace to know this?
“Sibyl,” Julie said quietly, then she squeezed Ramses’ hand and hurried back inside the courtyard.
The four of them remained at the cliff’s edge, staring down into the foaming sea. The wind was powerful enough to make great flapping sounds as it beat Bektaten’s red gown against her body.
When he noticed that Aktamu and Enamon both rested a hand on Bektaten’s shoulder, he thought, at first, they were trying to steady her in the wind. But nothing about her posture seemed unsteady or unsure. Their touch was solely meant to comfort.
The look on her face was something he could not describe even to himself
. A deep sorrow pervaded her, yet he could point to no one change in her expression or her demeanor. She stared down at the rocks below.
“Go,” she finally said. “See if his body can be found.”
They nodded and departed.
Bektaten turned back to the castle. She bowed her head and walked slowly towards it.
Ramses had no choice but to follow.
He drew the gate closed behind him, as if this gesture would somehow wall off the implications of what had just taken place.
The winds were not as strong inside the courtyard. But the plants and blossoms in Bektaten’s garden still danced and shifted and made a whispering music as they rustled together. Some of the stalks were taller than her by half, and while many of the flowers seemed ordinary at first glance, upon closer inspection he saw a certain characteristic in each that marked it as miraculous: strangely shaped leaves and petals that reminded him of human hands, blossoms of such an intense hue and size it was almost impossible to look away from them.
As she paused in the aisle between the two rows of plantings, of secrets, of miracles, Ramses expected her to collapse, or at least to fall to her knees. Perhaps in grief, or perhaps from relief. But she stood steady and strong, fingering one of the blossoms closest to her.
There was a creaking metal sound from above. He looked up. It was Julie, drawing the window to Sibyl’s room shut.
“And so there is something that can make us what we were,” Ramses finally said.
“Is there?” she asked. “Could you ever again be the man you were before you became pharaoh? Before you became immortal? Or have you been so marked by your experiences since then, the return of your mortality would simply usher in a new existence, however limited in years?”
“Have you ever wished to know this yourself? After so much life, you must have some desire to meet the gods, should they exist. Some desire to see what realm lies beyond this one.”
She considered his words for a while. She began walking again with Ramses beside her, but her focus seemed to be on each plant she passed.