Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis

by Anne Rice

  He ran his fingers through Benedict's hair.

  Faust...

  Somewhere in the world surely some opera company was presenting Faust. How could there be opera companies in the world and no one presenting Gounod's Faust? And tomorrow night or the next or the night after, they'd find that opera company; they'd seek out its palatial home. Then they'd walk together like mortals, simple mortals, in evening attire, through long carpeted hallways, surrounded by the pulse of human hearts, and the heat of human breath, and into the velvet-and-gilt box they would go, and take their seats, and they would sit there in the sweet snug darkness, secure amid the mortal throng, and he would hear Marguerite's voice rising in the finale, and everything would be perfectly fine once more.

  After all, it is a lot of trouble to hate people, isn't it? And a lot of trouble to be angry, and a lot of trouble to bother with such abstract notions as guilt or revenge.

  The Prince seemed far away and unimportant. The Court meant nothing to him. Even Roland meant nothing. He could not have saved Roland. Roland was gone. That's all. Roland was gone. But this fellow being, lying against him, this being who was his Benedict meant everything, and why this made him weep he did not know.

  23

  Derek

  IT HAD TAKEN time, or rather a long night of listening to Kapetria and remembering, and some time near her and with her--but he was finally able to see these creatures as innately beautiful, not as the white leeches who had kept him prisoner and tortured him. And particularly these two.

  Marius and Lestat. It was 2:00 a.m. in the morning and the entire Replimoid company had been sleeping, except for the newest of the newborn ones who'd been feasting quietly on cold meat and wine, famished as it seems newborn Replimoids are, when the knock had come at the door.

  Derek had heard it, and sat straight up in bed. Then Dertu who had been sleeping beside him was awake, and they were listening to Kapetria's voice. Everything was all right. They knew by the sound of her steady voice.

  Now they were gathered in Kapetria's rooms at the very front of the inn. Her quaint leaded glass windows looked down on the slumbering village, and the sheer white curtains no doubt kept out all prying human eyes, but then no one was awake in the village--in spite of the fact that when the wind was quiet, you could hear that nightmarish music coming from the Chateau. And if you did step outside and go to the very top of the street, you could see them all moving up there, those strange beings, a community of strange beings, moving behind the windows through rooms and corridors filled with brilliant yellow light.

  Lestat and Marius. They were beautiful, undeniably, positively majestic, and from the beginning they had appeared to Derek like father and son.

  Lestat sat back in a chair tilted against the wall like a Hollywood-western cowboy with one boot heel hooked on a chair rung and the other booted foot on the seat of the chair in front of him. His rakish long hair was tied back at the nape of his neck. But Marius sat still and straight as though he'd never slouched or slumped or relaxed in his entire long immortal life. Both wore red. The Prince a velvet coat and pressed blue jeans, and Marius a long tunic of heavy wool that might have been court dress in any kingdom of the ancient world for a millennium.

  "But is he really really dead?" asked Derek. "I mean he burned up, but does that really mean he can't come back?"

  It was Marius who had done all the talking and Marius who answered the question now.

  "You might be able to survive such a little conflagration," he said. "But we cannot. Roland had maybe three thousand years in the Blood. That makes for a powerful blood drinker, but not one that cannot be burned up."

  He was using Derek's phrase but not mocking Derek. Marius's preferred vocabulary included such words as "immolated" and "incinerated" and "annihilated." And phrases such as "quite gone beyond reprieve."

  "This was witnessed by some ten of us," said Marius, "and of course Rhoshamandes witnessed it as well. It was an exemplum for Rhoshamandes. Rhoshamandes yielded. Rhoshamandes has his young partner again, Benedict. Benedict saw this too. Between the fire that consumed Roland and the love that consumes Benedict, Rhoshamandes has been mollified and has given his word."

  "You believe him, that he will not try to hurt us?" asked Kapetria.

  "I do," said Marius. "I might be wrong. But I believe him. And for the moment, if any one of us acts on his own and tries to annihilate him, well, there will be tremendous discord. Believe me, I have in my heart of hearts not a particle of love for this creature, but I feel that the forgiveness of Rhoshamandes must be the cornerstone of what we are seeking to build."

  The Prince rolled his eyes and smiled.

  "He won't break the peace now because of Benedict," said the Prince looking directly at Derek. "Rhoshamandes can live with slights and live with failure. He's protected from fatal pride by a near-fatal smallness of soul."

  "And more use to you alive than dead," said Kapetria.

  Marius appeared to be thinking this over. Then, "Thousands of years before I came into existence he was alive, walking the earth as we say." He paused. "We don't really want to..." His words gave out.

  "I understand," said Kapetria. "I read enough of your pages to understand." This is what she called their books, their "pages."

  Marius nodded and smiled. He didn't smile often, but when he did, he looked youthful and human just for an instant, rather than like an ancient Roman carved on a frieze.

  "And we have so many things we must do now," said the Prince. "We have to make a credo, make rules, make some way of enforcing rules."

  Marius kept his eyes on Kapetria. "So where will you go now?" Marius asked. "Will you actually leave here without telling us where we might find you?"

  This was a continuation of yesterday's argument and Derek felt himself tensing all over, fearful that these creatures were not going to let them go after all, that they'd never planned to let them go.

  But Kapetria took it in stride.

  "Marius, we have places, places that are our very own. Surely you understand how much we need this time together."

  "I know you're increasing in numbers as we speak," said Marius, "and I can't blame you for it. But when will you stop? What do you plan to do?"

  "As I told you last night," said Kapetria, "we need this time together to know one another. Can you not see it from our point of view?"

  "I see it, but it troubles me," he answered. "Why not take Gregory's offer to live and work in Paris? Why withdraw from us in such secrecy when we've all sworn that we are eternal friends?"

  What was the Prince thinking now, the Prince who was smiling and looking off as he listened?

  "If for no other reason than that I must answer their questions," said Kapetria, "as to all I've learned about us these last few years. And I have to study the new ones. I have to come to some sort of understanding of what they know and don't know, and just how knowledge is passed on, and what are the qualities of that knowledge in the new ones, and what might be their weaknesses. Look, I'm being completely open with you. My first obligation is to the colony, and I have to take the colony into seclusion."

  The colony. This was the first time Derek had ever heard her use this word. Derek liked it, the word "colony." We are indeed a colony in this world, he mused.

  "Why don't you stay close," asked the Prince, "and work along with Seth and Fareed? You know Fareed's eager for this. Okay, so some sparks flew last night, but it was nothing. He's eager to work with you. Think what you might achieve together, you and Seth and Fareed."

  He even talked like a Hollywood cowboy gunslinger, thought Derek. He looks like a princely porcelain statue but talks like a gunslinger, with a low easy drawl. French can be beautiful when you speak it with a drawl, and his English was beautiful with the French accent and the drawl. But however he spoke, he seemed sincere, and this warmed Derek's heart. The Prince's smile was brighter than Marius's smile because the Prince smiled with his eyes and his lips, and Marius smiled mainly with his lips. />
  "Surely we will achieve great things together," said Kapetria. "This is the future we all want. But we need our time alone before anything further happens. And I ask that you trust us. You do trust us, don't you?"

  "Of course," said the Prince. "And what would we do if we didn't trust you? Do you think we'd try to force you to stay? You think we'd try to seal you up under the Chateau the way Roland kept Derek in Budapest? Of course not. It's only that I didn't expect you to leave so soon."

  She wasn't budging, Derek thought. She wasn't giving them anything. And he wasn't sure why. Why didn't they remain here in the safety of the Chateau or better yet set up some new residence for themselves in Paris in the shadow of the great Gregory Duff Collingsworth? He'd offered to give them whatever they wanted. He'd promised resources beyond their dreams.

  "And what will you do now with the information Amel gave you?" asked the Prince. "We've opened our doors to you. And the doors remain open. But I can't help but wonder what you will do. I wonder because of what I am and what I once was." Just like a cowboy, so straightforward.

  "Please remember," said Kapetria. "We do see ourselves as the People of the Purpose--the new purpose we embraced in Atalantaya. We will never do anything to harm sentient life. We are like you. You are like us. We are alive, all of us. But we must have some time to ourselves."

  "What about Amel?" asked the Prince. "You don't want to learn more directly from Amel?"

  "How can we be learning directly from him," asked Kapetria, "when such communication risks causing you excruciating pain and that pain is felt by the tribe when you feel it?"

  "The pain was before I drank from you," said the Prince. "I think we could attempt it again."

  "There are other ways," said Marius. "Amel can speak through any blood drinker. He could speak through me. I'm centuries older and stronger than Lestat. Whatever pain I feel won't be felt by others." His voice had a coldness to it as he spoke, Derek thought, but the coldness didn't seem personal.

  Kapetria was studying Marius with narrow eyes.

  "What did you learn from Amel?" asked Kapetria. "Is Amel who you thought he was? Maybe I'm asking, what did you learn about Amel from me?"

  Silence. Derek was surprised at their silence and their stillness. When they went quiet they resembled statues.

  Then the Prince spoke, and for the first time, his voice sounded cold, too.

  "I think Amel told you things in the blood," he said, "that I couldn't share."

  Kapetria did not respond. She held his gaze and gave no hint of what was in her mind.

  "I think he told you things perhaps that you didn't know," said the Prince. Then he shrugged, and sat up a little, and looked off again. "Naturally," he said, "I wonder why you want to leave so soon. I wonder what he told you. I wonder if we really are friends, kindred, fellow travelers of the millennia. How can I not?"

  "I don't want to disappoint you," said Kapetria. Her voice had taken on a new and darker tone. But it wasn't hostile. Just more serious as if the admission had been drawn out of her by force. "Something tells me that you, both of you, think on your feet. I don't think on my feet."

  "There are so many questions," said Lestat, "that you haven't asked. You haven't asked me if Amel remembers himself now, and that seems an immense question."

  Kapetria regarded him carefully before answering.

  "I know that he remembers himself now, Lestat," she said. "I knew last night in the blood. I knew he was our Amel and he remembers himself and he remembers us."

  The Prince waited for a moment and then he nodded. "Very well," he said, looking off again and then back at her. "I can't change your mind, can I?"

  "No," she said. "But will you believe in us? Will you trust us? Will you trust that we will be back soon?" This was as close as she had come to deep feeling, Derek figured.

  Again, the Prince hesitated. "He has something else to tell you," said the Prince.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  He drew a piece of paper out of his jacket and he handed it to her across the table. It was fine stationery folded in half and in half again.

  Kapetria opened it. Derek could easily read the large perfect alphabetical script without leaning over to crowd her. In a flash, he realized what it was. It was what Dertu had told Kapetria to do over the phone line--if they had to communicate with one another via the internet--to transliterate the ancient tongue of Atalantaya into phonic words via the alphabet. And as he heard the written syllables in his head he understood them:

  You cannot hurt him. I love him. You cannot hurt them. I love them. You must find a way to do it without hurting him or them. Or it will not be done.

  She looked up and smiled. "Very well," she said.

  "What does it say?" asked the Prince.

  "You really don't know?"

  "No." Again he shrugged. "He didn't tell me what it meant. He only kept repeating it and telling me that I had to give you the message. That you couldn't leave without the message. And so I wrote it down just before coming to see you. Does it make sense?"

  "Yes," she said. "It makes sense. Isn't it his place to tell you what it means?"

  "Probably," said the Prince. He sat up, and let the front legs of the chair settle on the floor, and he rose to his feet.

  Kapetria was looking up at him with a kind of wonder but Derek stood out of respect. Marius had also risen and moved towards the door.

  Slowly Kapetria rose. She folded the sheet of stationery back into fours and tucked it inside the neck of her dress. She did this carefully as if it had some ceremonial meaning. Then she gestured for them to wait. She moved soundlessly into the bedroom and came back with a large capped vial filled with blood.

  Derek was amazed. He watched with misgivings as she put the vial in the Prince's hand.

  "This is my blood," she said. "Give it to Fareed. He wanted it, didn't he? Well, this is a pure sample. I want him to have it, to make what he can of what he discovers in it."

  The Prince slipped the vial into his jacket pocket and bowed. "Thank you," he said. He laughed. "This will make the mad scientist supremely happy, perhaps more than either of us can know."

  Kapetria stretched out her arms to the Prince.

  They embraced tightly, and they stood together like that for a long moment.

  Then Kapetria said, "Let me tell Amel now through you that I understand," she said. "And I love you, and will never do you harm."

  The Prince smiled, but it was no spontaneous innocent smile.

  He nodded.

  "And you, Derek, let me take you in my arms too," said the Prince. "You've been through too much suffering. Forgive us for what happened." They embraced, and then Marius offered his hand in farewell.

  It was all right touching them, feeling their skin. He had not felt the frisson he'd been dreading. However powerful they were, they were suffused with a genuine human heat, and it was all right.

  Yet now that they were going down the stairs, Derek felt a cruel little surge of joy that Roland was dead. Roland had been punished for what he had done to Derek. Roland had lost his "immortality." Roland was no more. That Arion had aided in the punishing of Roland, this too made Derek happy, but it felt very bad to Derek to be happy that any living creature was dead. It flashed through his mind suddenly that when they did get away to some safe place, they would all be joyful because death would be no part of it, and fear would be no part of it, and they would be a colony and a kindred in their own little world. A deep sense of Atalantaya came back to him, as it had last night all during Kapetria's story, of warm nights in Atalantaya when it seemed all living things were content and flourishing, and the music played on the street corners and in the little cafes and the flowers perfumed the air, and the tall thin trees with their yellowish-green leaves sent lacy shadows over the shining pavements, and the birds sang, all those tiny birds that lived under the great dome of Atalantaya, of which they'd not spoken a word, any of them, behold such birds.

  Kapetria went to t
he window and moved back the white curtain. Derek stood beside her, looking down on them as they stepped out under the lamp above the sign of the inn and then both figures vanished.

  Kapetria uttered a small delighted laugh. "Did you see which direction they went?"

  "No," said Derek. "They simply disappeared."

  "Now if we could only move like that."

  She stood gazing down at the empty street. Derek could hear the dull echoing thrum of the music from the Chateau.

  "It's Marius who rules, isn't it?" he asked in a whisper.

  "Not really," said Kapetria, still looking out and up over the pointed roofs opposite. "I thought so at first. I thought it was obvious. But I was wrong. It's the Prince who rules. It's the Prince who's decided to trust us."

  "Is that why you gave him the blood?" Derek asked. "Are you sure you should have done that?"

  "Yes, I'm sure," Kapetria said. "Don't worry, Derek."

  "If you say so," he responded. He felt better already. He felt that nothing bad could ever happen to him again if Kapetria was here. He thought of all the times that Roland had drunk his blood. And to think there was this blood drinker doctor, Fareed, and what he might have given to study the blood.

  Kapetria was still looking out into the night.

  "Marius will gather the Council together," said Kapetria, "and he will do all the work of making a credo for them and rules, and means of punishing offenders and he will see that it's done with dignity and honor. But Marius is angry, angry at the other old ones. He's angry that for centuries they never came forward to help him with the keeping of the Queen when Amel was inside her. They watched from afar but they never helped. It's all in their pages. You can read it later for yourself."

  "Why didn't they help him?" asked Derek. He spoke as softly as she spoke.

  "That's a question only they can answer," said Kapetria. She let go of the sheer curtain, and sat down again, holding the backs of her arms. "Whatever the case, Marius will do the work that has to be done. But it's the Prince who holds it all together. And the Prince loves Marius and that's enough for Marius to do what has to be done."