by Anne Rice
I knelt there defeated. I didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t know what to say. I felt such a huge exhaustion, I had no way out of it, no way to find eloquence or reason or the vigor to try to reach him, reach beyond his malice to his soul.
He went on again, staring at me as he spoke.
“I hate you as much as I have ever loved you,” he said. “Oh, I didn’t want for Rhoshamandes to destroy you. Good God, that I never wanted. Never. When I heard them crying out that you’d returned I wept like a child. I never wished for that, for you to vanish into the same darkness that has swallowed Louis and Marius. But how could I not hate you, you who went in search of my maker all those long years ago when I scarce believed in him anymore—and was found by him, saved from the earth by him, welcomed into his lair by him, you whom he loved, you to whom he told the secrets of our beginning, when he had never come to free me from the Children of Satan, you to whom he gave his love, while resigning me to the ruins of all you’d destroyed around me. I hate you! I understand the very definition of ‘hate’ when I think of you.”
He broke off, unable to continue. Benji clung tight to him, resting his head on his shoulder, crying softly. And I heard Sybelle weeping by the distant fire.
I tried in vain to find words, words that would have some meaning, but I couldn’t. I had slipped again into knowing, and not thinking. I had slipped again into a purposeless awareness that was a blade turning in my heart.
“You who humiliated me and destroyed my world,” he said, his voice now a fragile whisper. “You who later told with such relish how you shattered my coven, my little coven, my little coven of holy purpose. Yet still I didn’t want for you to die. And I should have known that you wouldn’t. Of course not. How could anyone put an end to you? How clumsy Rhoshamandes must have been in the face of your simple, vulgar cunning.” He laughed under his breath. “How astonished he must have been to find himself blinded and burning at your hands. You. The upstart Lestat. The Brat Prince.”
I found myself on my feet again. I’d drawn back away from him without realizing it. The air was poison between us. But I couldn’t look away or go.
“I love you still,” he said. “Yes, even now, I love you, as they all love you, your minions seeking just a smile or a nod or a quick touch of your hand. I love you like all those throughout this palace who are dreaming of drinking just a drop of your blood. Well, you can leave me now. I’m not going anywhere. Where is there to go? I’ll be here if you want me. And grant me my wish for the moment, you and your august friends. Go and leave me alone.”
He bent forward and put his face in his hands.
Benji came round and moved next to him, forcing Gregory to give way. And Benji held on to him, begging him not to weep, kissing him, and telling him that this would change, this would pass, that he and Sybelle adored him and could not go on without him, that he must live and love for them.
I did not move.
He had looked as ever like an angelic boy as he’d said all these things, and there flashed before my memory the first time I had ever laid eyes on him in the dusty shadows of Notre Dame de Paris, a vagabond angel without wings. I thought of Gabrielle then. I thought of Marius . . . but no, it was not thinking. It was simply knowing. Knowing what was past. Knowing what was present. Knowing who and what were gone.
I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t comfort him. I couldn’t say anything. There was no point even to try.
It was Gregory who spoke, saying that these were dangerous words from a beloved fellow blood drinker, that it was in dark moments such as this that blood drinkers sought to destroy themselves, and that he, Gregory, did not want to leave Armand alone.
Armand sat up straight. He took a linen handkerchief from his pocket and blotted his eyes. “Have no fear of that,” he said, “for my fear of death is greater than my fear of whatever lies ahead here. I fear that death is like a nightmare from which we can’t wake. I fear that, once detached from our bodies, we go on in some confused and anguished state in which we are forever lost and unable to escape. You go and do all those many things that the Court demands of you, the busy work of coven building that once so obsessed me and gave me the imitation of a purpose.”
“Come with us now,” said Gregory. He rose and held Armand’s left hand in both of his hands.
“Not now,” said Armand.
I wandered away, in the direction of the door, and found Santh there waiting for me.
“Rest and mourn then,” Gregory said to Armand. “And promise me that if these thoughts become too great for you, you will come to us; you will not seek to harm yourself.”
Armand gave some confidential answer, but I didn’t hear it. I didn’t separate the syllables from the crackling noise of the fire, or the sounds of Sybelle’s sobs. Perhaps I realized that I didn’t care what Armand was saying. Perhaps I just knew that I didn’t. I couldn’t be certain.
Outside the wind gusted, driving the snow against the dark panes.
I was as broken as I’d been by that wind, or the icy winds of the upper air. I was as bruised and exhausted as if I’d just made the long journey back from Rhoshamandes’s Pacific lair all over again.
I walked out of the room and on through the rooms of the Château as if I had no feeling in me, no heart to break, greeting the many new lodgers under the roof, listening to this little question or receiving that little compliment as if nothing had happened.
And all the rest of the night I attended to the affairs of the Court, and finally the moment came when I could escape to my bed of marble and so I did, and the last thing I heard before I closed my eyes was Cyril speaking to me in a warm voice, assuring me all was well with the house and that I should sleep well knowing it.
“In all these centuries,” said Cyril, “never have we known one whom we could see as our champion. You can’t really know, boss, just what you are now to the others. You think you know, but you don’t, and that’s why I’ll be right outside your door again sleeping in the passage, sleeping here so nothing and no one can get at you or hurt you—as long as I live and breathe.”
Then I was alone in the chilling darkness—with the villain Armand despised, and the son who had not protected his mother, and the lover who had never protected Louis from himself or others, and the miserable pupil of Marius who had so misjudged Rhoshamandes that now Marius was dead.
The edge of sleep can be such a precious time.
I felt that quickening again, that prodding from the depths of my soul that some great change was taking place in me, a vital change—and another nagging thought, something to do with language. What was it? Something to do with the language Gregory had been speaking with Santh. Dungeons. They were cleaning out all those dungeons. Rhoshamandes had said something . . . and what had I seen? Stairs to a dungeon?
Hours later, when the day had died, and the moon and the stars had risen, I knew what it was that I’d been struggling to remember, those last words coming from Rhoshamandes as he died.
I hurried out of the crypts and went through the house until I came to the Council Chamber—where the lights were warm and the scent of flowers filled the air—and I found Gregory there with Seth and Sevraine, the lovely Sevraine in her gown of white silk, already in discussion about how to carry on Marius’s work. Jesse Reeves was there also, a quiet flower in her drab wool clothes, and also Barbara, my dedicated and beloved Barbara, who was scribbling away in a notebook as I came in.
Cyril and Thorne had followed me, as expected, and I asked Cyril to find Allesandra and ask her to join us. “And if Everard de Landen is still here, will you find him?”
“You want the fledglings of Rhoshamandes,” he said.
“Yes, that’s what I want.” And off he went.
I sat down at the table, and realizing they were all looking at me, I began talking. But it was to Gregory that I made my appeal.
“Rhoshamandes
said something before he died,” I said. “He said something in a foreign tongue, and I don’t know what it was.”
When Allesandra opened the door, she brought David in with her. They were both in black clothes, simple, the clothes of mourning, and I thought I saw ashes in Allesandra’s long smooth hair.
I had not had a private moment with David since the night of my return, because he had been busy in England with Kapetria and Gremt and others settling the Replimoid colony again.
And now we embraced, silently, for the first time since Marius and Louis had been taken. Then he sat down to my left. He looked vaguely clerical in his black suit and simple shirt. And Allesandra might have been a desert wanderer in her black robes.
I knew David was feeling the loss of Louis keenly. No one had to tell me this. But I couldn’t entertain the awareness just now that they were gone—all gone. I had to put that completely out of my mind, as I’d been doing over and over again since I pitched the last of Rhoshamandes into the flames.
I had something, something to cling to and investigate, and it supported me rather like Rhosh’s blood had supported me with a steel scaffolding when I thought myself too exhausted to go on.
Fact was, I was still exhausted, still bruised all over from the fierce winds, and from all that Armand had said to me, and only a remnant of myself was carrying on. But it was carrying on.
“Go on,” said Gregory. “What did Rhoshamandes say?” In his immaculate hands, he played with an old-fashioned fountain pen and finally laid it down.
“Well, I’m going to try to repeat it,” I said. “It was a string of syllables . . . Actually Rhosh said strange things . . . I remember him blurting out, ‘Stop, you don’t understand’ and I believe he said, ‘Wait, this is all wrong,’ and then he said these syllables in a foreign tongue, perhaps ancient Egyptian, and it sounded to me like bait hah so roar . . . something like that. I caught an image when he said it of stone steps. I didn’t even think of it or register it at the time. I was given over completely to one thing, and that was destroying him, and these words went by me. But it was the last thing, well, almost the last thing he ever said.”
Gregory was drawing a blank, it seemed. And Santh wasn’t in the room. I was about to say something about their ancient tongue when Allesandra spoke up.
“Oh, of course,” she said. “The old name he used for his private prison. It’s from the Hebrew Bible, the name for Pharaoh’s prison, where Joseph is kept in the book of Genesis.” She then pronounced it precisely as he’d pronounced it, a cluster of syllables I couldn’t reproduce but which I remembered perfectly when I heard her repeat them with such care. She spelled it out for me in our alphabet. “Bet ha sohar.”
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s what he said.”
“Perhaps he was desperately trying to deceive you,” said Gregory. “Bargaining that if you’d give up the assault, he’d keep you alive.” He was looking at Seth. Then they spoke to each other in a different language for a few moments, and I caught snatches of similar syllables, but it was all too quick for me. And once again, I saw the stone stairs, and this time barred cells, and all the usual things one sees in an ancient prison, and the uncomfortable thought came to me that the old dungeon of this house was being cleaned out for a purpose which no one had dared to confess.
“Well, it was the name of his own secret prison,” said Allesandra, “the place where he kept mortals in waiting for when he wanted to feast on their blood.”
Yes, and that is very likely what everyone around me is planning for that prison beneath this house. They just don’t want to say.
“But, Prince, that old prison is long gone,” she said. “The monastery was destroyed centuries ago. All that land is now planted over with vineyards. Machines have plowed those fields. Who knows where those old stones have gone? I saw a garden wall built of old stones in that valley, old stones that might have come from the very rooms in which I’d once lodged. It’s gone without a trace.”
Sevraine appeared to be pondering.
Allesandra was gazing off as if the past had taken hold of her. “For a while there was a series of archways standing, ah, but that was long ago, when I was with the Children of Satan, and I remember all those white hands pulling at those archways, all those stones falling, and the grass, the grass was like wild wheat.”
Her voice trailed off with the last two words.
“What about Saint Rayne?” I asked. “Could there be a hidden prison on Saint Rayne?”
“We went to Saint Rayne,” said Seth. “We searched the entire island. There was no dungeon there, only a few easily accessed cells, including the one where he had kept Derek.”
David’s face was the picture of sadness. “Lestat, why are you putting yourself through this?” he asked. “Kapetria and the others searched the island by day. They went to Budapest and searched the house of his old friend Roland.”
“I searched that dwelling as well,” said Seth. “There was no real dungeon or prison there either. Only one miserable windowless chamber where Derek had been confined, and a couple of other rooms just like it where, obviously, that Roland had kept mortals.”
“David, I have to be sure,” I said. “Think on it. Why would he cry out like that saying those words? What if there is someplace on Saint Rayne, away from the castle?”
“Prince, that castle is not a real artifact of the Middle Ages,” said Sevraine. “Rhoshamandes fashioned it as a blood drinker’s refuge and he had no need of deep dungeons by that time and there were none there. I too searched the entire island. I looked, I listened, I roamed every inch of that place. No dungeons.”
“Are you absolutely certain?” I said before I could check myself. I immediately apologized. I was talking to immortals so much more powerful than I was. I was crestfallen.
“On the contrary,” Seth said, looking directly at me. “We’re all in awe of you, Prince. We don’t feel superior to you. You brought down Rhoshamandes. We’d thought it impossible. We still don’t quite understand how you did it.”
I shook my head, and put my hands to the side of my face. I heard Rhoshamandes’s voice, that insistent, “you don’t understand.”
I sat back and found myself staring at the ceiling, at the busy figures so magnificently painted all over it, and then I realized I was looking at the work of Marius, Marius who was gone forever, and suddenly the pain I felt suffocated me, and threatened to become more than I could bear. I almost rose to go, but then where would I go? To Saint Rayne to find nothing? To Budapest to search a house in which Rhosh had likely never lodged?
What was it he had said. This is wrong.
“What could he have meant?” I asked.
“Lestat, it’s obvious,” said Jesse Reeves. “He was an egotist, a self-indulgent lazy immortal without a particle of depth or true understanding of life. Of course he thought you didn’t understand him, because you held him to account for what he’d done to others, and that he couldn’t tolerate.” She broke off. “Look, must we go over it again? Well, let me say that if you must go over it, I will excuse myself and leave you to it.” She rose to her feet and so did I.
“Don’t leave without my taking you in my arms,” I said. “I never meant to cause you pain, truly I didn’t.”
“You haven’t made me angry,” she said.
She softened all over as I held her. I kissed her thick copper hair and her forehead.
“You are my champion,” she whispered. “You shed blood for her blood.” But she continued towards the door, and Cyril opened it for her, and she was gone. I couldn’t blame her.
I settled back into my chair.
“I want to search any place he might have owned or visited,” I said. “I feel I must do that. He was trying to tell me something, clearly, about a prison, or a dungeon, or a hiding place, and I must investigate as fully as I can. Doesn’t that make sense to anyone else?
Why would he mention a prison?”
“Very well. We’ll do this with you,” said Gregory. “Tonight I’ll cross the Atlantic and find those vineyards he owned in the Napa Valley. I’ll make sure there is no place there that might serve as a prison.”
“Santh knows the house to which he took you, does he not?” asked Seth. “I’ll find him and we’ll go there and search that house.”
“How stupid of me not to have done that,” I whispered. And it was stupid. But then I’d been so exhausted, and in such a strange state of disbelief as to what had actually happened.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Sevraine.
I was touched suddenly by their willingness to be pressed into action.
“Ah, yes,” I said. “I’d forgotten about those American vineyards. I ought to go with you, but I can’t—.” I broke off, the mere thought of riding the icy currents above the clouds exhausted me.
Sevraine waited. Gregory waited. David waited.
Allesandra was plainly grieving for Rhosh, and lost in her memories, her eyes down. She was singing something to herself, some hymn, and murmuring under her breath.
“And this place in the Loire Valley,” I pressed, though I hated to interrupt her.
“I was so in love with him then,” she said in answer. “When he rescued me and brought me there, and he took me down into the prison. He was talking about Joseph in the book of Genesis and Pharaoh keeping him in his special prison all those years. He said he was the Pharaoh of his world. And this was the place where he could leave hapless mortals to languish.”
I saw it as she described it, the wide stone steps, the damp glittering on the undressed stone.
“There were monks in his prison, monks whom he’d taken prisoner, pleading for their lives, reaching through the bars to entreat him, begging him if he feared God to let them go.”
I sensed that Sevraine and Gregory and the others were seeing it.