by Anne Rice
The next night, Marius needed less than an hour to make all arrangements by phone with his mortal agents, and to ship their possessions and clothes, such as they were, to New York. They'd lodge at a small hotel uptown as they'd always done, where a suite of rooms had always been kept in readiness for them. And they would talk then, once they'd reached New York, about when to go to Benji and Armand and Louis and blessed Sybelle.
Daniel was powerfully excited that they were going. Daniel wanted to be with the others, Marius knew this, and he was happy for Daniel, but he himself was full of foreboding.
The encounter with Teskhamen had stimulated him, there was no doubt of that; he was in fact reeling from the shock.
Daniel could not grasp the extent of it. Yes, Daniel had been Born to Darkness in a time of myriad shocks. But, before that, Daniel had been born into a physical world of myriad changes and shocks. He had never known the dreary and weary mind-set of times past. He had never understood the inveterate pessimism and resignation into which most of the world's teeming millions had been born and lived and died.
But Marius had known the millennia, and they had been millennia of suffering as well as joy, of darkness as well as light, in which radical change of any kind too often culminated in disappointment and defeat.
Teskhamen. Marius could scarce believe that he had seen him, spoken to him, that such a momentous thing had taken place--that old god of the grove alive now, articulate and eloquent, and pointing the way to the past and the future in the same breath. A great dark portion of Marius's early history flamed into living color for him, and prompted him to search for a coherent thread to all of his life.
But there was the foreboding.
He could not stop thinking of all those long-ago interludes, when he had lain against the breast of Akasha--her caretaker, her keeper--listening to her heart and trying to fathom her thoughts. He had been inside her, this alien creature Amel. And Amel was inside of Marius now.
"Yes, I'm inside of you," said the Voice to him. "I am you and you are me."
There followed silence. Emptiness. And the lingering echo of a threat.
14
Rhoshamandes and Benedict
"BE CALM," he said. "Whatever you saw, whatever almost happened to you, you're safe now. Be calm and talk to me. Tell me precisely what you saw."
"Rhosh, it was unspeakable!" said Benedict.
Benedict sat at the desk with his head down on his folded arms, sobbing.
Rhosh, known to so many others through the ages as Rhoshamandes, sat by the cavernous hearth in the old stone room looking at his fledgling with a mixture of impatience and irresistible sympathy. He had never been able to divorce himself entirely from Benedict's boiling emotions, and maybe he had never really wanted to do that. Of all his companions and fledglings through the centuries, he loved Benedict the most--this child of Merovingian royalty who had been such a dreamy Latin scholar in his time, so eager to understand those years which the world now called the Dark Ages. How he'd cried when brought into the Blood, sure of his ultimate damnation, and only come round to worship Rhoshamandes instead of his Christian god--never believing in a world untainted by fear of perdition. But this great superstitious fear was, however, part of Benedict's eternal charm.
And this hapless child had had a gift for making other blood drinkers better than himself as time passed. Now that was quite a mystery to Rhosh, but it was fact.
It was Benedict who had made the young Notker the Wise of Prum, who likely survived to this day, a mad genius sustained on music as much as human blood.
Pretty Benedict, always a joy to look at, if not to listen to, whose tears could be as beguiling as his smiles.
Rhoshamandes was dressed in what might have passed for a monk's long hooded robe of heavy gray wool with a thick black leather belt around the waist, and big deep sleeves. But the robe was in fact made from fine cashmere, and the buckle on his belt was pewter and revealed a delicately modeled face of Medusa with writhing snakes for hair and a howling mouth. He wore exquisitely crafted brown leather sandals because he didn't feel the cold here on this craggy green island in the Outer Hebrides.
He had short and very soft golden-brown hair and large blue eyes. He'd been born thousands of years ago on the island of Crete to parents of Indo-European descent, and gone down into Egypt when he was twenty. His skin was the smooth creamy tan of immortals who go into the sun often in order to pass for human, and it made his eyes appear wondrously bright and beautiful.
He and Benedict were speaking English now, the language they'd shared for the last seven hundred years, more or less, the Old French and the Latin having passed from their daily speech but not their libraries. Rhosh knew ancient tongues, tongues never known to Benedict.
"It burnt them all," Benedict sobbed. "It destroyed them completely," he said in his muffled, hopeless voice.
"Sit up and look at me," said Rhoshamandes. "I am talking to you, Benedict. Now look at me and tell me precisely what happened."
Benedict sat back in the chair, his long brown curly hair mussed and falling into his eyes, his boyish mouth quivering. Of course his face was smeared with blood and so were his clothes, his wool sweater and his tweed jacket. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. Vampires who spilt blood on their garments either from victims or tears were anathema! Nothing so revolted Rhoshamandes about modern fictive and film vampires as their utter unrealistic sloppiness.
And Benedict looked perfectly like a cheap television vampire with that blood all over him.
He'd be the image of an eighteen-year-old youth forever because that is what he was when he'd been made a blood drinker, just as Rhoshamandes would always look like a man a few years older than that with a fuller chest and heavier arms. But Benedict had always had a childlike personality. No guile, no cunning. He might never have outgrown it in mortal life. Something to do with Christ's command, "Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Benedict had not only been a monk in his youth, he'd been a mystic.
Who could know?
Rhoshamandes, on the other hand, if it mattered, had been the eldest of ten mortal children and a man at the age of twelve, protecting his mother. Palace intrigue. The day she'd been murdered, he'd run away to sea and survived by his wits, amassing a fortune before he journeyed up the Nile to trade with the Egyptians. He had fought many a battle, survived unscarred, but made his wealth by instinct rather than violence--until the Queen's blood drinker slaves captured him and dragged him from his boat.
Rhoshamandes and Benedict were both comely and fine boned, chosen for the Blood on account of their seeming physical perfection. Rhoshamandes had brought over dozens of such beauties as Benedict into the Blood, but none had survived with him, stayed with him, loved him as had Benedict, and when he thought of the times he'd driven Benedict away, he shuddered inwardly and thanked some dark god of the blood-drinking world that he'd always been able to find Benedict and bring him back.
Benedict was sniffling and now and then moaning in his inimitable charming fashion, trying to regain possession of himself. Benedict's mortal soul had been formed in kindness and gentleness and true faith in goodness, and these traits he'd never lost.
"All right, that's better," said Rhoshamandes. "Now recall it all for me."
"Surely you saw it, Rhosh, you saw the images. All those blood drinkers couldn't have perished without your catching images."
"Yes, I did, of course," said the other, "but I want to know just how it got the jump on them when they'd been warned. They had all been warned."
"But that's just it, we didn't know where to go or what to do. And the young ones, they have to hunt. You don't remember what an agony it is for them. I don't know if it was ever an agony for you."
"Oh, stop with all that," said Rhosh. "They were told to get out of London, to get away from that hotel, to move into the countryside. Benji Mahmoud had been warning them for nights on end. You warned them."
"Well, a l
ot of them did," said Benedict sadly. "Plenty of them did. But then we got the word. They were being spotted and burned out there--in the Cotswolds and in Bath--and all over!"
"I see."
"Do you? Do you care?" Benedict wiped furiously at his eyes. "I don't think you care. You're exactly as Benji Mahmoud describes. You're an elder of the tribe who doesn't care. You never did."
Rhoshamandes was looking away, out of the arched window, at the darkened land below, and the thick jagged forest that clung to the bluff over the ocean. There was no way in the world he was going to disclose his true thoughts to his beloved Benedict. Elder of the tribe, indeed.
Benedict went on talking.
Old ones had perished the night before. On waking Benedict had discovered the burnt remains of two of them right there in the house. He'd run to alert the others. Get out.
"That's when the walls caught fire," he said. "I wanted to save them, save one of them, anything, anything that I could. But the roof exploded and I saw them in flames all around me. And I saw this thing, this thing standing there, and it looked ragged and grotesque and it was on fire too. Is that possible? I swear it was burning. I went up. I did what I had to do."
He broke into sobs again and buried his face in his crooked arm on the desktop.
"You did right," said Rhoshamandes. "But are you sure this one was making the fire?"
"I don't know," said Benedict. "I think it was. It was a wraith. It was bones and rags, but I think ... I don't know."
Rhoshamandes was reflecting. Bones and rags on fire. He was in fact nothing as calm inside as he pretended now. He was in fact furious, furious that Benedict had almost been harmed, furious about all aspects of this. But he went on listening in silence.
"The Voice," Benedict stammered. "The Voice, it said such strange things. I heard it myself two nights ago, urging me to do it. I told you. It wanted me and I laughed at it. I told them then it was going to find someone to do its dirty work. I warned everyone. A lot of them left then, but I think they're dead, all those who left. I think it found someone else and that someone else was out there waiting. It's not true about Paris, is it? They were all talking about Paris before this happened--."
"Yes, it's true about Paris," Rhoshamandes replied. "But the massacre was interrupted. Someone or something intervened, stopped it. Blood drinkers did escape. I have a feeling I know what happened there." But he fell silent again. There was no point in disclosing all this to Benedict. There never had been.
Rhoshamandes rose to his feet. He began to pace, his narrow hands together as if in prayer, making a slow leisurely circle in the old stone room, gradually coming up behind Benedict and putting a reassuring hand on his head. He bent and kissed Benedict's head. He stroked his cheek with his thumb.
"There, there now, you are here," he murmured. He drew away and stood before the twin arches of the windows.
Rhoshamandes had built this castle in the French Gothic style when he had first come north to England, and he still loved these narrow pointed arches. The dawn of the truly delicate and ornate Gothic style had thrilled him to his heart. Even now he could be reduced to weeping when he wandered the great cathedrals.
Benedict had no idea how often Rhoshamandes went on his own to walk in the cathedrals of Rheims or Autun or Chartres. Some things could be shared with Benedict and some could not. Benedict never stepped inside a great cathedral without experiencing a crisis of cosmic proportions and weeping in grief for his lost faith.
It occurred to Rhosh idly that the notorious Vampire Lestat would understand, Lestat who worshipped nothing and no one but beauty--but then it was easy to love celebrities like Lestat, wasn't it, to imagine them perfect companions.
Later additions to this castle, Rhosh had designed in the High Gothic style for his own pleasure, and his heart was warmed when those mortals who occasionally stumbled on this place thought it was a triumph.
How he loathed being disturbed here by all this. How much other immortals must loathe it, those who'd made sanctuaries like this so they could have some peace.
He'd never modernized the place. It was as cold and severe as it had been five hundred years ago, a castle appearing to grow out of rocky cliffs on the western coast of a steep, inaccessible, and untamable island.
He'd managed to install generators in the gulch below the cliff some twenty years ago, and tanks for petrol, and to deepen and improve the eastern harbor for his sleek modern boats, but electric power here was reserved entirely for the televisions and the computers, never for lighting or warmth. And those computers had brought him the first word of all this madness, not telepathic voices that he had long ago learned to entirely shut out. No, Benji Mahmoud had told him the times were changing.
How he wanted to keep things as they had always been.
There was no one on this island but the two of them, and down in the gorge the old mortal caretaker and his wife and his poor feebleminded daughter. The old mortal caretaker saw to the petrol tanks and the generators and the cleaning of these rooms by day, and he was paid well for it. He saw to Rhosh's cabin cruiser in the harbor, that big powerful Wally Stealth Cruiser which Rhosh could effortlessly sail on his own. They were forty miles from the nearest land. That's how Rhoshamandes wanted to keep it.
True, once the great Maharet had come calling. That had been in the nineteenth century and she had appeared on his battlements, a lone figure attired in heavy wool robes waiting courteously for an invitation to enter.
They had played chess, talked. And she had gone her way. First Brood and Queens Blood had no longer meant the slightest thing to either of them. But he'd been left with the impression of insurmountable power and wisdom, yes, wisdom, though he did not like to admit it. And he had admired her in spite of his wariness and the unpleasant realization that her gifts vastly exceeded his own.
Another time the formidable Sevraine had been here too, though he had only caught a glimpse of her in the oak forest that covered the lower southern coast of the little island. Yes, it had been Sevraine, he'd been sure of it.
He'd gone down into the valley and in search of her. But she'd vanished, and to the best of his knowledge she'd never returned. She'd been splendidly attired, in gold-trimmed robes of rich flashing color. And that indeed was how she was always described by those who insisted they'd seen her--the magnificent Sevraine.
Yet another time when he'd been piloting his boat alone through the violent seas off the Irish coast, he'd seen her high on a bluff looking out at him. He'd wanted to drop anchor and go to her. He'd sent her the message. But telepathy was dim or nonexistant among those made in the first thousand years, and it seemed to have become even dimmer now. He had caught no greeting from her. Indeed she'd disappeared. After that he'd searched Ireland for her but never turned up the slightest indication of her presence or a habitation or a coven or a clan. And it was known that the great Sevraine had always about her a number of women, a female clan.
Not a single other blood drinker had ever come here. So this was and always had been the realm of Rhoshamandes. And he envied no one, not the erudite and philosophical Marius, nor the other gentle well bred vampires of the Coven of the Articulate.
Yes, he wanted to know those new poetic vampire writers, yes, he had to admit it, wanted to know Louis and Lestat, yes, but he could live with that longing for centuries. And in a few centuries they might be gone from the Earth.
What was an immortal like Lestat, who had less than three hundred years in the Blood, after all? One could hardly call such a being a true immortal. Too many died at that age and beyond. So yes, he could wait.
And as for Armand, he would despise Armand till the end of his days. He would like very much to destroy him. Again, on that he could wait, but he had been thinking of late the time for vengeance on Armand might be drawing closer. If Rhoshamandes had still been in France when Armand arrived there to lead the Children of Satan, he would have destroyed Armand. But by that time, Rhosh was long gone. Still, he should ha
ve done it, should have ravaged that Paris coven. He'd always thought some other ancient one would do it, and he'd been wrong. Lestat had destroyed it and not by force but with new ways.
Ah, but this is my kingdom, he thought now, and how can all this be coming to my shores?
Never had he hunted in Edinburgh or Dublin or London that he hadn't wanted to come home immediately to this zone of quiet and changelessness.
Now this thing, this Voice, was threatening his peace and his independence.
And he'd been talking to the Voice a long time, something which he had no intention of confiding in Benedict. He was furious with the Voice right now, furious that Benedict had been in danger.
"And what's to stop it from coming here?" asked Benedict. "What's to stop it from finding me here the way it's been finding all those others who're trying to escape? It burnt some as old as me."
"Not quite as old as you," said Rhoshamandes, "and not with your blood. There was an old one there, obviously, in thrall to the Voice. It was probably blasting you when the walls went up. If others were burning around you, it had you in its sights. It was in that building and it had you. But it couldn't kill you."
"It said horrid ghastly things to me when it spoke to me," said Benedict. He had recovered himself a little and was sitting back again. "It tried to confuse me, to make me think I was having these thoughts and somehow was its servant, that I wanted to serve it."
"Go, clean all the blood from your face," said Rhoshamandes.
"Rhosh, why do you always worry about such things?" Benedict pleaded. "I'm suffering, I'm in agony here, and all you care about is blood on my face and clothes."
"All right," said Rhoshamandes. He sighed. "So tell me. What is it you want me to know?"
"That thing, that thing when he was talking to me, I mean before the fire ..."
"Several nights back."
"Yes, then. He told me to burn the others, that he could not come to power until they were wiped out, that he wanted me to kill them for him, and that he expected me to be ready to rush into the flames myself for him."