He was becoming like them. And sometime in the great yawn of eternity, I would become like him! If I survived that long.
"Please, Marius..." I said. I was beyond shame and vanity. I wanted to get out of the room.
"Wait for me then," he said patiently. "Stay here."
And he let my hand go. He turned and looked down at the flowers I had crushed, the spilled water.
And before my eyes these things were corrected, the flowers put back in the vase, the water gone from the floor.
He stood looking at the two before him, and then I heard his thoughts. He was greeting them in some personal way that did not require an address or a title. He was explaining to them why he had been away the last few nights. He had gone into Egypt. And he had brought back gifts for them which he would soon bring. He would take them out to look at the sea very soon.
I started to calm down a little. But my mind was now anatomizing all that had come clear to me at the moment of shock. He cared for them. He had always cared for them. He made this chamber beautiful because they were staring at it, and they just might care about the beauty of the paintings and the flowers he brought.
But he didn't know. And all I had to do was look squarely at them again to feel horror, that they were alive and locked inside themselves!
"I can't bear this," I murmured. I knew, without his ever telling me, the reason that he kept them. He could not bury them deep in the earth somewhere because they were conscious. He would not burn them because they were helpless and could not give their consent. Oh, God, it was getting worse and worse.
But he kept them as the ancient pagans kept their gods in temples that were their houses. He brought them flowers.
And now as I watched, he was lighting incense for them, a small cake that he had taken out of a silk handkerchief. This he told them had come from Egypt. And he was putting it to burn in a small bronze dish.
My eyes began to tear. I actually began to cry.
When I looked up, he was standing with his back to them, and I could see them over his shoulder. He looked shockingly
like them, a statue dressed in fabric. And I felt maybe he was doing it deliberately, letting his face go blank.
"I've disappointed you, haven't I?" I whispered.
"No, not at all," he said kindly. "You have not."
"I'm sorry that I-"
"No, you have not."
I drew a little closer. I felt I had been rude to Those Who Must Be Kept. I had been rude to him. He had revealed to me this secret and I had shown horror and recoiling. I had disappointed myself.
I moved even closer. I wanted to make up for what I'd done. He turned towards them again and he put his arm around me. The incense was intoxicating. Their dark eyes were full of the eerie movement of the flames of the lamps.
No ridge of vein anywhere in the white skin, no fold or crease. Not even the penstroke lines in the lips which even Marius still had. They did not move with the rise and fall of breath.
And listening in the stillness I heard no thought from them, no heartbeat, no movement of blood.
"But it's there, isn't it?" I whispered.
"Yes, it's there."
"And do you-?" Bring the victims to them, I wanted to ask.
"They no longer drink."
Even that was ghastly! They had not even that pleasure. And yet to imagine it-how it would have been-their firing with movement long enough to take the victim and lapsing back into stillness, ah! No, I should have been relieved. But I was not.
"Long, long ago, they still drank, but only once in a year. I would leave the victims in the sanctuary for them-evildoers who were weak and close to death. I would come back and find that they had been taken, and Those Who Must Be Kept would be as they were before. Only the color of the flesh was a little different. Not a drop of blood had been spilt.
"It was at the full moon always that this was done, and usually in the spring. Other victims left were never taken. And then even this yearly feast stopped. I continued to bring victims now and then. And once after a decade had passed, they took another. Again, it was the time of the full moon. It was spring. And then no more for at least half a century. I lost count. I thought perhaps they had to see the moon, that they had to know the change of the seasons. But as it turned out, this did rot matter.
"They have drunk nothing since the time before I took them into Italy. That was three hundred years ago. Even in the warmth of Egypt they do not drink."
"But even when it happened, you never saw it with your own eyes?"
"No," he said.
"You've never seen them move?"
"Not since . . . the beginning."
I was trembling again. As I looked at them, I fancied I saw them breathing, fancied I saw their lips change. I knew it was illusion. But it was driving me wild. I had to get out of here. I would start crying again.
"Sometimes when I come to them," Marius said, "I find things changed."
"How? What?"
"Little things," he said. He looked at them thoughtfully. He reached out and touched the woman's necklace. "She likes this one. It is the proper kind apparently. There was another which I used to find broken on the floor."
"Then they can move."
"I thought at first the necklace had fallen. But after repairing it three times I realized that was foolish. She was tearing it off her neck, or making it fall with her mind."
I made some little horrified whisper. And then I felt absolutely mortified that I had done this in her presence. I wanted to go out at once. Her face was like a mirror for all my imaginings. Her lips curved in a smile but did not curve.
"It has happened with other ornaments, ornaments bearing the names of gods whom they do not like, I think. A vase I brought from a church was broken once, blown to tiny fragments as if by their glance. And then there have been more startling changes as well."
"Tell me."
"I have come into the sanctuary and found one or the other of them standing."
This was too terrifying. I wanted to tug his hand and pull him out of here.
"I found him once several paces from the chair. And the woman, another time, at the door."
"Trying to get out?" I whispered.
"Perhaps," he said thoughtfully. "But then they could easily get out if they wanted to. When you hear the whole story you can judge. Whenever I've found them moved, I've carried them back. I've arranged their limbs as they were before. It takes enormous strength to do it. They are like flexible stone, if you can imagine it. And if I have such strength, you can imagine what theirs might be."
"You say want . . . wanted to. What if they want to do everything and they no longer can? What if it was the limit of her greatest effort even to reach the door!"
"I think she could have broken the doors, had she wanted to. If I can open bolts with my mind, what can she do?"
I looked at their cold, remote faces, their narrow hollowed cheeks, their large and serene mouths.
"But what if you're wrong. And what if they can hear every word that we are saying to each other, and it angers them, outrages them.. ."
"I think they do hear," he said, trying to calm me again, his hand on mine, his tone subdued, "but I do not think they care. If they cared, they would move."
"But how can you know that?"
"They do other things that require great strength. For example, there are times when I lock the tabernacle and they at once unlock it and open the doors again. I know they are doing it because they are the only ones who could be doing it. The doors fly back and there they are. I take them out to look at the sea. And before dawn, when I come to fetch them, they are heavier, less pliant, almost impossible to move. There are times when I think they do these things to torment me as it were, to play with me."
"No. They are trying and they can't."
"Don't be so quick to judge," he said. "I have come into their chamber and found evidence of strange things indeed. And of course, there are the things that happened in
the beginning..."
But he stopped. Something had distracted him.
"Do you hear thoughts from them?" I asked. He did seem to be listening.
He didn't answer. He was studying them. It occurred to me that something had changed! I used every bit of my will not to turn and run. I looked at them carefully. I couldn't see anything, hear anything, feel anything. I was going to start shouting and screaming if Marius didn't explain why he was staring.
"Don't be so impetuous, Lestat," he said finally, smiling a little, his eyes still fixed on the male. "Every now and then I do hear them, but it is unintelligible, it is merely the presence of them-you know the sound."
"And you heard him just then."
"Yeeesss . . . Perhaps."
"Marius, please let us go out of here, I beg you. Forgive me, I can't bear it! Please, Marius, let's go."
"All right," he said kindly. He squeezed my shoulder. "But do something for me first."
"Anything you ask."
"Talk to them. It need not be out loud. But talk. Tell them you find them beautiful."
"They know," I said. "They know I find them indescribably beautiful." I was certain that they did. But he meant tell them in a ceremonial way, and so I cleared my mind of all fear and all mad suppositions and I told them this.
"Just talk to them," Marius said, urging me on.
I did. I looked into the eyes of the man and into the eyes of the woman. And the strangest feeling crept over me. I was repeating the phrases I find you beautiful, I find you incomparably beautiful with the barest shape of real words. I was praying as I had when I was very, very little and I would lie in the meadow on the side of the mountain and ask God please please to help me get away from my father's house.
I talked to her like this now and I said I was grateful that I had been allowed to come near her and her ancient secrets, and this feeling became physical. It was all over the surface of my skin and at the roots of my hair. I could feel tension draining from my face. I could feel it leaving my body. I was light all over, and the incense and the flowers were enfolding my spirit as I looked into the black centers of her deep brown eyes.
"Akasha," I said aloud. I heard the name at the same moment of speaking it. And it sounded lovely to me. The hairs rose all over me. The tabernacle became like a flaming border around her, and there was only something indistinct where the male figure sat. I drew close to her without willing it, and I leaned forward and I almost kissed her lips. I wanted to. I bent nearer. Then I felt her lips.
I wanted to make the blood come up in my mouth and pass it to her as I had that time to Gabrielle when she lay in the coffin.
The spell was deepening, and I looked right into the fathomless orbs of her eyes.
I am kissing the goddess on her mouth, what is the matter with me! Am I mad to think of it!
I moved back. I found myself against the wall again, trembling, with my hands clamped to the sides of my head. At least this time I had not upset the lilies, but I was crying again.
Marius closed the tabernacle doors. He made the bolt inside slip into place.
We went into the passage and he made the inner bolt rise and go into its brackets. He put the outside bolt in with his hands.
"Come, young one," he said. "Let's go upstairs."
But we had walked only a few yards when we heard a crisp clicking sound, and then another. He turned and looked back.
"They did it again," he said. And a look of distress divided his face like a shadow.
"What?" I backed up against the wall.
"The tabernacle, they opened it. Come. I'll return later and lock it before the sun rises. Now we will go back to my drawing room and I will tell you my tale."
When we reached the lighted room, I collapsed in the chair with my head in my hands. He was standing still just looking at me, and when I realized it, I looked up.
"She told you her name," he said.
"Akasha!" I said. It was snatching a word out of the whirlpool of a dissolving dream. "She did tell me! I said Akasha out loud." I looked at him, imploring him for answers. For some explanation of the attitude with which he stared at me.
I thought I'd lose my mind if his face didn't become expressive again.
"Are you angry with me?"
"Shhh. Be quiet," he said.
I could hear nothing in the silence. Except maybe the sea. Maybe a sound from the wicks of the candles in the room. Maybe the wind. Not even their eyes had appeared more lifeless than his eyes now seemed.
"You cause something to stir in them," he whispered.
I stood up.
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe nothing. The tabernacle is still open and they are merely sitting there as always. Who knows?"
And I felt suddenly all his long years of wanting to know. I would say centuries, but I cannot really imagine centuries. Not even now. I felt his years and years of trying to elicit from them the smallest signs and getting nothing, and I knew that he was wondering why I had drawn from her the secret of her name. Akasha. Things had happened, but that had been in the time of Rome. Dark things. Terrible things. Suffering, unspeakable suffering.
The images went white. Silence. He was stranded in the room like a saint taken down off an altar and left in the aisle of a church.
"Marius!" I whispered.
He woke and his face warmed slowly, and he looked at me affectionately, almost wonderingly.
"Yes, Lestat," he said and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze.
He seated himself and gestured for me to do the same, and we were once again facing each other comfortably. And the even light of the room was reassuring. It was reassuring to see, beyond the windows, the night sky.
His former quickness was returning, the glint of good humor in his eyes.
"It's not yet midnight," he said. "And all is well on the islands. If I'm not disturbed, I think there is time for me to tell you the whole tale."
MARIUS'S STORY
5
"It happened in my fortieth year, on a warm spring night in the Roman Gallic city of Massilia, when in a dirty waterfront tavern I sat scribbling away on my history of the world.
"The tavern was deliciously filthy and crowded, a hangout for sailors and wanderers, travelers like me, I fancied, loving them all in a general sort of way, though most of them were poor and I wasn't poor, and they couldn't read what I wrote when they glanced over my shoulder.
"I'd come to Massilia after a long and studious journey that had taken me through all the great cities of the Empire. To Alexandria, Pergamon, Athens I'd traveled, observing and writing about the people, and now I was making my way through the cities of Roman Gaul.
"I couldn't have been more content on this night had I been in my library at Rome. In fact, I liked the tavern better. Everywhere I went I sought out such places in which to write, setting up my candle and ink and parchment at a table close to the wall, and I did my best work early in the evening when the places were at their noisiest.
"In retrospect, it's easy to see that I lived my whole life in the midst of frenzied activity. I was used to the idea that nothing could affect me adversely.
"I'd grown up an illegitimate son in a rich Roman household-loved, pampered, and allowed to do what I wanted. My legitimate brothers had to worry about marriage, politics, and war. By the age of twenty, I'd become the scholar and the chronicler, the one who raised his voice at drunken banquets to settle historical and military arguments.
"When I traveled I had plenty of money, and documents that opened doors everywhere. And to say life had been good to me would be an understatement. I was an extraordinarily happy individual. But the really important point here is that life had never bored me or defeated me.
"I carried within me a sense of invincibility, a sense of wonder. And this was as important to me later on as your anger and strength have been to you, as important as despair or cruelty can be in the spirits of others.
"But to continue .
. . If there was anything I'd missed in my rather eventful life-and I didn't think of this too much-it was the love and knowledge of my Keltic mother. She'd died when I was born, and all I knew of her was that she'd been a slave, daughter of the warlike Gauls who fought Julius Caesar. I was blond and blue-eyed as she was. And her people had been giants it seemed. At a very young age, I towered over my father and my brothers.
Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles 2 - The Vampire Lestat (1985) Page 46