Prince Lestat

by Anne Rice

  Armand was suddenly at Gregory's side.

  "Rather like fiddling while Rome burns, isn't it?" he asked.

  "Oh, I don't know," said Gregory. "But the intensity of this is undeniable. This many of us gathered here in one place. This is ... I didn't ..."

  "I know, but this time we mustn't scatter like marbles rolling in all directions when it's over."

  "No," said Gregory, "it's not possible anymore for us to live isolated from one another and uncooperative with one another. I've known that for a long time."

  "Yet it's never worked when I've tried ..." Armand broke off and turned to the music.

  Benji came into the room.

  The music stopped.

  In his dark gray three-piece suit and matching fedora Benji moved through the crowd with the smiling vigor of a visiting politician, shaking this hand and that, bowing to Pandora, and to Chrysanthe, accepting the kisses of the women graciously and then taking the center of the room, eyes sweeping over all. He was perhaps five feet two inches in height, yet a perfectly proportioned man. His hat was clearly integral to his costume, and no one need bother to tell him that a gentleman takes off his hat indoors, because his hat was not coming off, it was part of him.

  "I thank you all for coming," he declared, his boyish voice ringing out clearly and distinctly with a commanding self-confidence. "I've broken off broadcasting to inform you of the following. The Voice has called our phone lines, and spoken to us through the vocal cords of a vampire male. The Voice says it is trying to come to us."

  "But how can you be certain this was the Voice?" asked Armand.

  "It was the Voice," said Benji with a little deferential bow to Armand. "I spoke to him myself, of course, Armand, and he referenced for me the things he had told me privately." Benji tapped the side of his head beneath the brim of his hat. "He recalled for me the bits of poetry he'd been reciting to me telepathically. It was the Voice. And the Voice says he is struggling with all his might to come to us. Now, ladies and gentlemen of the Night, I must return to the broadcast."

  "But wait, please, Benji," said Marius. "I'm at a disadvantage here. What poetry was it exactly that the Voice recited?"

  "Yeats, Master," said Benji with a deeper more referential bow. "Yeats, 'The Second Coming': 'And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.' "

  And he was off without another word for his studio upstairs, tipping his hat as he passed Pandora and Chrysanthe. And the music filled the room again--the throbbing, rushing sound of "The Carousel Waltz."

  Gregory moved back, close to the wall, watching the dancers as they resumed. Then he realized that Davis was at his side. He felt the cool touch of Davis's hand on his.

  "Dance with me," said Davis. "Come dance at my side."

  "How?"

  "Oh, you know. You've always known. The way men have always danced. Think back. Long ago, you must have danced with other men." Davis's eyes were moist, searching. Davis was smiling, and he seemed utterly trusting, trusting in Gregory somehow no matter what the future held. How sweet was that trust.

  Gregory did think back, yes. Back and back, he went through the memories to those long-ago human nights in ancient Kemet when he had danced, danced with other men, danced at the banquets of the court until he'd fallen down in bliss and exhaustion with the drums still pounding in his ears.

  "Very well," he said to Davis. "You lead the way."

  How marvelous it was to be drifting into the ancient patterns yet bound up in this new romantic music. How natural it suddenly seemed. And though his eyes were half closed and for a moment all his fear and apprehension was forgotten, he was conscious that other male immortals were dancing too, all around him, each in his own way. Flavius was dancing. Flavius of the miracle limb dancing with that limb. It seemed everyone was dancing; everyone was caught up in this raw and relentless music; everyone had yielded to it, and to this unprecedented and extraordinary moment that stretched on and on.

  An hour had passed. Maybe more.

  Gregory wandered the house. The music filled it, seemed to reverberate in the very beams.

  In an open library, a pretty French library, he saw Pandora talking with Flavius by a gas fire. Flavius was weeping and Pandora was stroking his head, lovingly, tenderly.

  "Oh, yes, but we have time now to talk about all of it," she said to him softly. "I have always loved you, loved you from the night I made you, and you have always been in my heart."

  "There's so much I want to tell you. There's this longing for a continuity, for you to know."

  "To be your witness, yes, I understand."

  "Still, after all this time, this unimaginable time, I have these fears."

  Fears.

  Gregory passed on, silently, not wanting to intrude. Fears. What were his own fears? Was Gregory afraid that in this new coming together, they would lose their little family that had endured for so long?

  Oh, yes. He knew that fear. He'd known it as soon as he'd brought his little company through the front door.

  But something finer, something greater was possible here, and for that he was willing to take the risk. Even as it chilled him, even as he found himself wandering back towards the music, towards the inevitable spectacle of seeing his beloved Chrysanthe dazzled and entertained by new and magnetic immortals, he knew that he wanted this, this great gathering more than he had ever wanted anything with his entire soul. Were not all of these immortals here his kin? Could they not all become one united and enduring family?

  18

  Lestat

  Sevraine and the Caves of Gold

  MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO two great volcanoes poured lava and ash again and again over the land now called Cappadocia, creating a stark and breathtaking landscape of serpentine gorges and valleys and soaring cliffs and countless clustered knifelike towers of stone piercing the sky which have come to be known as fairy chimneys. For thousands of years, mortals have carved deep cave dwellings into the soft volcanic rock, eventually creating virtual cathedrals underground and monasteries and even whole cities remote from all natural light.

  Was it any wonder that a great immortal had created a refuge in this strange land where tourists now come to see Byzantine paintings in cave churches, and hotels today offer luxurious accommodations in rock-cut rooms in cliff faces and mountain peaks?

  How gorgeous it was under the light of the moon, this magical land in the middle of the Anatolian plain.

  But nothing had prepared me for what I beheld as we entered Sevraine's underground domain.

  It was just past midnight when we made our way through a narrow winding rocky valley far beyond any human habitation, and how Gabrielle found the entrance in what seemed an impenetrable cliff I wasn't certain.

  But climbing the face of this cliff, clinging with preternatural skill to the outcroppings and broken roots that humans might never trust, we made our way into a dark slit of an opening that widened out into an actual low-roofed tunnel.

  Even with my vampiric vision, it was difficult for me to make out the shape of Gabrielle moving in front of me, until suddenly after the fourth or fifth turn in the passage, her figure loomed small and dark against the glow of flickering flames.

  Two vigorously burning torches marked the entrance into a passage of hammered gold where the air was suddenly cool with currents from the world beyond, and the shimmering metal all around us enclosed us in an eerie light.

  On we walked until we reached the first of many broader gold-lined chambers where layer after layer of the precious metal had been hammered over crude stone, perhaps mixed with fresco plaster, I couldn't know, and suddenly the ceilings above us were ablaze with magnificent paintings in the old Byzantine style that had once filled the churches of Constantinople and still filled the churches of Ravenna and San Marco in Venice.

  Rows and rows of dark-haired round-faced saints gazed down on us with dark brows and unwavering gravity, clothed in embroidered robes, as we moved deeper and de
eper into the underground realm.

  At last we emerged on a gallery that wound around the upper part of a vast domed space with the feel of a great plaza. All around us passages opened from this great central place to other parts of the seeming city, while above the dome itself was decorated in brilliant sections of green and blue and gold mosaic swirling with vines and blossoms, bordered in red and gold at the top of the walls.

  Grecian columns carved out of the soft rock appeared to hold a structure that was in fact part of the mountain. Everywhere the walls lived and breathed with color and ornament, but there were no Christian saints here. The figures that rose from the floor to gaze at us as we went down the rock-cut stairs were angelic and glorious but devoid of all faith iconography. They might have been celebrated members of our people for all I knew, with their shimmering and perfect faces, and grand robes of crimson or cobalt blue or twinkling silver.

  Everywhere I saw mixtures of historical motifs, ribbons of egg-and-dart decoration dividing diamond-shaped panels of multipetaled flowers or dark blue night behind symmetrical stars, or painting so vividly real it seemed a glimpse here and there into a real garden. A great harmony held it all together, and gradually my eyes saw that much that had been done here was ancient and fading, yet other areas were fresh and still smelled of the pigment and plaster recently applied. The whole was a visual wonderland.

  The lights. I had not noticed it before but of course all this was seen in a wealth of electric light, streaming from horizontal fixtures tucked everywhere along borders, in corners, and beneath the lower rim of the huge dome. The steady brilliance of electric light came from the many doorways.

  We had come to a stop now on the marble tiled floor of this huge piazza-like place. I could feel the fresh air moving around us. It smelled of the night beyond, of water and green things.

  From one of the doors came a figure to greet us, a blood drinker who resembled a young woman of perhaps twenty. Oval face, and oval eyes, and a complexion like cream.

  "Lestat and Gabrielle," she said as she drew near, her hands extended to include both of us. "I'm Bianca, Marius's Bianca, from Venice."

  "Of course, I should have known you immediately," I said. She felt soft and tender to me, remarkably so, in fact, considering she had five hundred years in the Blood and plenty of the blood of the Mother. All those years with Marius during which he protected the shrine of Those Who Must Be Kept, she'd drunk that precious blood. And she'd been made by Marius, and all those made by Marius had been well made, much better made than my fledglings.

  I hadn't known to take and give the Blood over and over as Marius had always done.

  Bianca wore a simple black robe trimmed in gold, and her long hair was braided with what seemed a leafy vine of gold. And a delicate gold circlet around her head made me think of the painting the mortal painter Botticelli had done of her.

  "You come with me, please, both of you," she said.

  We followed her down another corridor of splendid gold enameling, bordered in delicately wrought flowering trees with blossoms like jewels, and into another large and splendid chamber.

  Behind a long heavy wooden table with carved legs sat Sevraine, who rose now to greet us. It had to be Sevraine. Indeed it was the same powerful and ancient immortal I'd seen rising out of the tunnel in Paris.

  She was a strongly built figure with fine high breasts in what seemed a Roman gown of sheer rose fabric crisscrossed with gold ribbons and bound around the waist. With a mane of flowing light blond hair she looked Nordic, and her pale-blue eyes underscored the impression. She was big boned but beautifully shaped all over, down to her tapering fingers, and her lush naked arms.

  But before I could fully absorb this miracle, this vision, this creature who was reaching across the table now and inviting us to sit down, I was distracted by two figures who flanked her--one a female blood drinker I knew but couldn't place, a woman taken in her prime with remarkably long dark-ashen hair, hair that was almost a luminous gray, and clever vibrant eyes. And the other a spirit.

  I knew at once it was a spirit, but it was not like any other spirit I'd seen up close before. It was a spirit clothing himself in actual physical particles, a body of particles that it had made up somehow and drawn to itself, out of dust, air, free-floating bits of matter, and it was so solidly put together, the physical vehicle of this spirit, that it was wearing actual clothes.

  This was wholly different from the apparitions of ghosts and spirits I'd known in the past. And I had seen some powerful ghosts and spirits--including the spirit who had called himself Memnoch the Devil--in differing forms. But they had been hallucinations, those ghosts and spirits with their clothes being a part of the illusion, and even the scent of blood and sweat or the sound of a heartbeat had been part of the illusion. When they'd smoked a cigarette or drunk a glass of whiskey or given off the sound of a footstep it had been part of the apparition. The whole vision had been of a different texture than the world around it, the world I inhabited and from which I'd seen it. Oh, so I believed.

  Not so at all with this spirit. His body, whatever it was made of, was occupying three-dimensional space, and had weight, and I could hear the sounds of simulated organs inside it, hear the distinct beating of a heart, hear the respiration. I could see the light of the room actually falling on the planes of this spirit's face, see it glittering in his eyes, see the shadow of his arm on the table. No scent, however, except that of incense and perfume which clung to its clothes.

  Maybe I had in fact seen such spirits as this--but only fleetingly in the past, and never close enough or long enough to realize that they could be touched, that they were being seen by others.

  I felt sure this one had never been a human being. He wasn't a ghost. No, he had to be something originating in some other realm for the simple reason that his body was wholly ideal, like a work of Greek classical art, and there was nothing about it that was particular.

  In sum, this was the best spirit body I'd ever beheld. And he was smiling at me, apparently pleased with my quiet but obvious fascination.

  He had dark and wavy and perfect hair framing his face in a classical Greek style, and the face could easily have come from a Greek statue. Yet this thing lived and breathed in the body it had assembled for itself. I had no idea how it could have a heartbeat, how the blood could rush to its face now, or appear to do so, as I smelled no actual blood, but it was a splendid spirit.

  We had come to the edge of the table. It was perhaps three feet wide, of a wood so old I could smell the generations of oil worked into it. There were playing cards out on the wood, bright pretty glittering playing cards.

  "Welcome to you both," said Sevraine. She spoke in a sweet lyrical voice with a girl's enthusiasm. "I'm so happy you've come, Lestat. You don't know how many nights I've heard you out there roaming this land, wandering about the ruins of Gobekli Tepe, and I always dreamed you would find your way here, that you would hear something emanating from these mountains that would prove irresistible to you. But you seemed alone, dedicated to being alone, not eager at all to have your thoughts interrupted. And so I've waited, and waited. And your mother and I have long known each other and she at last has brought you here."

  I didn't believe a word she was saying. She coveted her secrecy. She was merely trying to be polite, and I was bound to be polite as well.

  "Maybe this is the perfect time, Sevraine," I said. "I'm happy to be here."

  The mysterious woman had risen at Sevraine's right and so had this male spirit on her left.

  "Ah, young one," said the woman and immediately I knew this voice from the charnel house under Paris. "You have ridden the Devil's Road with greater zeal than any I've ever known. You don't know how many nights from my grave I followed you, catching one image of you after another from the minds that doted on you. I dreamed of waking merely to talk to you. You burnt like a flame in the blackness in which I suffered, beckoning me to rise."

  A chill came over me. I took both her
hands.

  "The old one," I said in a whisper, "from Les Innocents! The one who was with Armand and the Children of Satan!" I was astonished. "You're the one I called the old Queen."

  "Yes, beloved one. I'm Allesandra," she said. "That's my name. Allesandra, daughter of Dagobert, last king of the Merovingians and brought into the Blood by Rhoshamandes. Oh, what a splendid pleasure it is to behold you here in this safe and warm place!"

  These names powerfully excited me. The history of the Merovingians I knew, but who was this blood drinker Rhoshamandes? Something told me I'd soon find out, not here perhaps but somewhere and in short order as the old ones, like Sevraine, continued to let down their guard.

  I wanted to embrace this woman. The table stood between us. I had half a mind to crawl over it. Instead I squeezed her hands ever more tightly. My heart was pounding. This moment was too precious.

  "You were like a Cassandra in that doomed old coven," I said. My words came in a rush. "Oh, you don't know the sadness I felt when they told me you were dead. They said you'd gone into the flames. I tell you it was anguish I felt! I had so wanted to take you out of those catacombs and into the light. I had so wanted--."

  "Yes, young one. I remember. I remember all." She sighed and lifted my fingers to her lips, kissing them as she went on. "If I was Cassandra in those nights, I was unheeded and unloved even by myself."

  "Oh, but I loved you!" I confessed. "And why did they say you'd gone into the fire?"

  "Because I did, Lestat," she said. "But the fire would not have me, did not kill me, and I tumbled down, and down amid smoking timbers and old bones as I wept, too weak to rise, and was finally entombed with the remains of the cemetery beneath Paris. I didn't know my own age then, beloved. I didn't know my gifts or my strength. It was the way then of the very ancient, to pass in and out of history, and in and out of lunacy, and I think there are others still in those tunnels beneath the city. Ah, what an agony that slumber amid whispers and howls. Your voice was the only voice that ever actually pierced my uneasy dreams."