The Vampire Lestat tvc-2

by Anne Rice

  "Make it uncommon, " she said. She was growing impatient. "If you are evil, how can voluptuousness and debauchery be your enemies? Don't the world, the flesh, and the devil conspire equally against man?

  " He shook his head, as if to say he did not care.

  "You are more concerned with what is spiritual than with evil, " I interjected, watching him closely. "Is that not so? "

  "Yes, " he said at once.

  "But don't you see, the color of wine in a crystal glass can be spiritual, " I continued. ' "The look in a face, the music of a violin. A Paris theater can be infused with the spiritual for all its solidity.

  There's nothing in it that hasn't been shaped by the power of those who possessed spiritual visions of what it could be. " Something quickened in him, but he pushed it away.

  "Seduce the public with voluptuousness, " Gabrielle said. "For God's sake, and the devil's, use the power of the theater as you will. " "Weren't the paintings of your master spiritual? " I asked. I could feel a warming in myself now at the thought of it. "Can anyone look on the great works of that time and not call them spiritual? "

  "I have asked myself that question, " Armand answered, "many times. Was it spiritual or was it voluptuous? Was the angel painted on the triptych caught in the material, or was the material transformed? "

  "No matter what they did to you after, you never doubted the beauty and the value of his work, " I said. "I know you didn't. And it was the material transformed. It ceased to be paint and it became magic, just as in the kill the blood ceases to be blood and becomes life. " His eyes misted, but no visions came from him. Whatever road he traveled back in his thoughts, he traveled alone.

  "The carnal and the spiritual, " Gabrielle said, "come together in the theater as they do in the paintings. Sensual fiends we are by our very nature. Take this as your key. " He closed his eyes for a moment as if he would shut us out.

  "Go to them and listen to the music that Nicki makes, " she said. "Make art with them in the Theater of the Vampires. You have to pass away from what failed you into what can sustain you. Otherwise-there is no hope. " I wished she had not said it so abruptly, brought it so to the point. But he nodded and his lips pressed together in a bitter smile.

  "The only thing really important for you, " she said slowly, "is that you go to an extreme. " He stared at her blankly. He could not possibly understand what she meant by this. And I thought it too brutal a truth to say. But he didn't resist it. His face became thoughtful and smooth and childlike again. For a long time he looked at the fire. Then he spoke:

  "But why must you go at all? " he asked. "No one is at war with you now. No one is trying to drive you out. Why can't you build it with me, this little enterprise? " Did that mean he would do it, go to the others and become part of the theater in the boulevard? He didn't contradict me. He was asking again why couldn't I create the imitation of life, if that was what I wanted to call it, right in the boulevard? But he was also giving up. He knew I couldn't endure the sight of the theater, or the sight of Nicolas. I couldn't even really urge him towards it. Gabrielle had done that. And he knew that it was too late to press us anymore. Finally Gabrielle said:

  "We can't live among our own kind, Armand. " And I thought, yes, that is the truest answer of all, and I don't know why I couldn't speak it aloud.

  "The Devil's Road is what we want, " she said. "And we are enough for each other now. Maybe years and years into the future, when we've been a thousand places and seen a thousand things, we'll come back. We'll talk then together as we have tonight. " This came as no real shock to him. But it was impossible now to know what he thought. For a long time we didn't speak. I don't know how long we remained quiet together in the room. I tried not to think of Marius anymore, or of Nicolas either. All sense of danger was gone now, but I was afraid of the parting, of the sadness of it, of the feeling that I had taken from this creature his astonishing story and given him precious little for it in return. It was Gabrielle who finally broke the quiet. She rose and moved gracefully to the bench beside him.

  "Armand, " she said. "We are going. If I have my way we'll be miles from Paris before midnight tomorrow night. " He looked at her with calm and acceptance. Impossible to know now what he chose to conceal.

  "Even if you do not go to the theater, " she said, "accept the things that we can give you. My son has wealth enough to make an entrance into the world very easy for you. "

  "You can take this tower for your lair, " I said. "Use it as long as you wish. Magnus found it safe enough. " After a moment, he nodded with a grave politeness, but he didn't say anything.

  "Let Lestat give you the gold needed to make you a gentleman, " Gabrielle said. "And all we ask in return is that you leave the coven in peace if you do not choose to lead it. " He was looking at the fire again, face tranquil, irresistibly beautiful. Then again he nodded in silence. And the nod itself meant no more than that he had heard, not that he would promise anything.

  "If you will not go to them, " I said slowly, "then do not hurt them. Do not hurt Nicolas. " And when I spoke these words, his face changed very subtly. It was almost a smile that crept over his features. And his eyes shifted slowly to me. And I saw the scorn in them. I looked away but the look had affected me as much as a blow.

  "I don't want him to be harmed, " I said in a tense whisper.

  "No. You want him destroyed, " he whispered back. "So that you need never fear or grieve for him anymore. " And the look of scorn sharpened hideously. Gabrielle intervened.

  "Armand, " she said, "he is not dangerous to them. The woman alone can control him. And he has things to teach all of you about this time if you will listen. " They looked at each other for some time in silence. And again his face was soft and gentle and beautiful. And in a strangely decorous manner he took Gabrielle's hand and held it firmly. Then they stood up together, and he let her hand go, and he drew a little away from her and squared his shoulders. He looked at both of us.

  "I'll go to them, " he said in the softest voice. "And I will take the gold you offer me, and I will seek refuge in this tower. And I will learn from your passionate fledgling whatever he has to teach me. But I reach for these things only because they float on the surface of the darkness in which I am drowning. And I would not descend without some finer understanding. I would not leave eternity to you without .

  . . without some final battle. " I studied him. But no thoughts came from him to clarify these words.

  "Maybe as the years pass, " he said, "desire will come again to me. I will know appetite again, even passion. Maybe when we meet in another age, these things will not be abstract and fleeting. I'll speak with a vigor that matches yours, instead of merely reflecting it. And we will ponder matters of immortality and wisdom. We will talk about vengeance or acceptance then. For now it's enough for me to say that I want to see you again. I want our paths to cross in the future. And for that reason alone, I will do as you ask and not what you want: I will spare your ill-fated Nicolas. " I gave an audible sigh of relief. Yet his tone was so changed, so strong, that it sounded a deep silent alarm in me. This was the coven master, surely, this quiet and forceful one, the one who would survive, no matter how the orphan in him wept. But then he smiled slowly and gracefully, and there was something sad and endearing in his face. He became the da Vinci saint again, or more truly the little god from Caravaggio. And it seemed for a moment he couldn't be anything evil or dangerous. He was too radiant, too full of all that was wise and good.

  "Remember my warnings, " he said. "Not my curses. " Gabrielle and I both nodded.

  "And when you have need of me, " he said, "I will be here. " Then Gabrielle did the totally surprising thing of embracing him and kissing him. And I did the same. He was pliant and gentle and loving in our arms. And he let us know without words that he was going to the coven, and we could find him there tomorrow night. The next moment he was gone, and Gabrielle and I were there alone together, as if he'd never been in the room. I could hear no sound anywhe
re in the tower. Nothing but the wind in the forest beyond. And when I climbed the steps, I found the gate open and the fields stretching to the woods in unbroken quiet. I loved him. I knew it, as incomprehensible to me as he was. But I was so glad it was finished. So glad that we could go on. Yet I held to the bars for a long time just looking at the distant woods, and the dim glow far beyond that the city made upon the lowering clouds. And the grief I felt was not only for the loss of him, it was for Nicki, and for Paris, and for myself.

  5

  When I came back down to the crypt I saw her building up the fire again with the last of the wood. In a slow, weary fashion, she stoked the blaze, and the light was red on her profile and in her eyes. I sat quietly on the bench watching her, watching the explosion of sparks against the blackened bricks.

  "Did he give you what you wanted? " I asked.

  "In his own way, yes, " she said. She put the poker aside and sat down opposite, her hair spilling down over her shoulders as she rested her hands beside her on the bench. "I tell you, I don't care if I never look upon another one of our kind, " she said coldly. "I am done with their legends, their curses, their sorrows. And done with their insufferable humanity, which may be the most astonishing thing they've revealed. I'm ready for the world again, Lestat, as I was on the night I died. "

  "But Marius- " I said excitedly. "Mother, there are ancient ones-ones who have used immortality in a wholly different way. "

  "Are there? " she asked. "Lestat, you're too generous with your imagination. The story of Marius has the quality of a fairy tale. "

  "No, that's not true. "

  "So the orphan demon claims descent not from the filthy peasant devils he resembles, " she said, "but from a lost lord, almost a god. I tell you any dirty-faced village child dreaming at the kitchen fire can tell you tales like that. "

  "Mother, he couldn't have invented Marius, " I said. "I may have a great deal of imagination, but he has almost none. He couldn't have made up the images. I tell you he saw those things... "

  "I hadn't thought of it exactly that way, " she admitted with a little smile. "But he could well have borrowed Marius from the legends he heard... "

  "No, " I said. "There was a Marius and there is a Marius still. And there are others like him. There are Children of the Millennia who have done better than these Children of Darkness with the gifts given them. "

  "Lestat, what is important is that we do better, " she said. "All I learned from Armand, finally, was that immortals find death seductive and ultimately irresistible, that they fail to conquer death or humanity in their minds. Now I want to take that knowledge and wear it like armor as I move through the world. And luckily, I don't mean the world of change which these creatures have found so dangerous. I mean the world that for eons has been the same. " She tossed her hair back as she looked at the fire again. "It's of snow-covered mountains I dream, " she said softly, "of desert wastes-of impenetrable jungles, or the great north woods of America where they say white men have never been. " Her face warmed just a little as she looked at me. "Think on it, " she said. "There is nowhere that we cannot go. And if the Children of the Millennia do exist, maybe that is where they are-far from the world of men. "

  "And how do they live if they are? " I asked. I was picturing my own world and it was full of mortal beings, and the things that mortal beings made. "It's man we feed on, " I said.

  "There are hearts that beat in those forests, " she said dreamily. "There is blood that flows for the one who takes it . . . I can do the things now that you used to do. I could fight those wolves on my own... " Her voice trailed off as she was lost in her thoughts. "The important thing, " she said after a long moment, "is that we can go wherever we wish now, Lestat. We're free. "

  "I was free before, " I said. "I never cared for what Armand had to tell. But Marius-I know that Marius is alive. I feel it. I felt it when Armand told the tale. And Marius knows things and I don't mean just about us, or about Those Who Must Be Kept or whatever the old mystery-he knows things about life itself, about how to move through time. "

  "So let him be your patron saint if you need it, " she said. This angered me, and I didn't say anything more. The fact was her talk of jungles and forests frightened me. And all the things Armand said to divide us came back to me, just as I'd known they would when he had spoken his well-chosen words. And so we live with our differences, I thought, just as mortals do, and maybe our divisions are exaggerated as are our passions, as is our love.

  "There was one inkling... " she said as she watched the fire, "one little indication that the story of Marius had truth. "

  "There were a thousand indications, " I said.

  "He said that Marius slew the evildoer, " she continued, "and he called the evildoer Typhon, the slayer of his brother. Do you remember this? "

  "I thought that he meant Cain who had slain Abel. It was Cain I saw in the images, though I heard the other name. "

  "That's just it. Armand himself didn't understand the name Typhon. Yet he repeated it. But I know what it means. "

  "Tell me. "

  "It's from the Greek and Roman myths-the old story of the Egyptian god, Osiris, slain by his brother Typhon, so that he became lord of the Underworld. Of course Armand could have read it in Plutarch, but he didn't, that's the strange thing. "

  "Ah, you see then, Marius did exist. When he said he'd lived for a millennium he was telling the truth. "

  "Perhaps, Lestat, perhaps, " she said.

  "Mother, tell me this again, this Egyptian story... 'Lestat, you have years to read all the old tales for yourself. " She rose and bent to kiss me, and I sensed the coldness and sluggishness in her that always came before dawn. "As for me, I am done with books. They are what I read when I could do nothing else. " She took my two hands in hers. "Tell me that we'll be on the road tomorrow. That we won't see the ramparts of Paris again until we've seen the other side of the world. "

  "Exactly as you wish, " I said. She started up the stairs.

  "But where are you going? " I said as I followed her. She opened the gate and went out towards the trees.

  "I want to see if I can sleep in the raw earth itself, " she said over her shoulder. "If I don't rise tomorrow you'll know I failed. "

  "But this is madness, " I said, coming after her. I hated the very idea of it. She went ahead into a thicket of old oaks, and kneeling, she dug into the dead leaves and damp soil with her hands. Ghastly she looked, as if she were a beautiful blondhaired witch scratching with the speed of a beast. Then she rose and waved a farewell kiss to me. And commanding all her strength, she descended as the earth belonged to her. And I was left staring in disbelief at the emptiness where she had been, and the leaves that had settled as if nothing had disturbed the spot. I was away from the woods. I walked south away from the tower. And as my step quickened, I started singing softly to myself some little song, maybe a bit of melody that the violins had played earlier this night in the Palais Royal. And the sense of grief came back to me, the realization that we were really going, that it was finished with Nicolas and finished with the Children of Darkness and their leader, and I wouldn't see Paris again, or anything familiar to me, for years and years. And for all my desire to be free, I wanted to weep.

  But it seems I had some purpose in my wandering that I hadn't admitted to myself. A half hour or so before the morning light I was on the post road near the ruin of an old inn. Falling down it was, this outpost of an abandoned village, with only the heavily mortared walls left intact. And taking out my dagger, I began to carve deep in the soft stone: MARIUS, THE ANCIENT ONE: LESTAT IS SEARCHING FOR YOU. IT IS THE MONTH OF MAY, IN THE YEAR 1780 AND I GO SOUTH FROM PARIS TOWARDS LYONS. PLEASE MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN TO ME. What arrogance it seemed when I stepped back from it. And I had already broken the dark commandments, telling the name of an immortal, and putting it into written words. Well, it gave me a wondrous satisfaction to do it. And after all, I had never been very good at obeying rules.

  Part VI - O
n The Devil's Road From Paris To Cairo

  1

  The last time we saw Armand in the eighteenth century, he was standing with Eleni and Nicolas and the other vampire mummers before the door of Renaud's theater, watching as our carriage made its way into the stream of traffic on the boulevard. I'd found him earlier closeted in my old dressing room with Nicolas in the midst of a strange conversation dominated by Nicki's sarcasm and peculiar fire. He wore a wig and a somber red frock coat, and it seemed to me that he had already acquired a new opacity, as if every waking moment since the death of the old coven was giving him greater substance and strength. Nicki and I had no words for each other in these last awkward moments, but Armand politely accepted the keys of the tower from me, and a great quantity of money, and the promise of more when he wanted it from Roget. His mind was closed to me, but he said again that Nicolas would come to no harm from him. And as we said our farewells, I believed that Nicolas and the little coven had every chance for survival and that Armand and I were friends. By the end of that first night, Gabrielle and I were far from Paris, as we vowed we would be, and in the months that followed, we went on to Lyons, Turin, and Vienna, and after that to Prague and Leipzig and St. Petersburg, and then south again to Italy, where we were to settle for many years. Eventually we went on to Sicily, then north into Greece and Turkey, and then south again through the ancient cities of Asia Minor and finally to Cairo, where we remained for some time. And in all these places I was to write my messages to Marius on the walls. Sometimes it was no more than a few words that I scratched with the tip of my knife. In other places, I spent hours chiseling my ruminations into the stone. But wherever I was, I wrote my name, the date, and my future destination, and my invitation: "Marius, make yourself known to me. " As for the old covens, we were to come upon them in a number of scattered places, but it was clear from the outset that the old ways were everywhere breaking down. Seldom more than three or four vampires carried on the old rituals, and when they came to realize that we wanted no part of them or their existence they let us alone. Infinitely more interesting were the occasional rogues we glimpsed in the middle of society, lone and secretive vampires pretending to be mortal just as skillfully as we could pretend. But we never got close to these creatures. They ran from us as they must have from the old covens. And seeing nothing more than fear in their eyes, I wasn't tempted to give chase. Yet it was strangely reassuring to know that I hadn't been the first aristocratic fiend to move through the ballrooms of the world in search of my victims-the deadly gentleman who would soon surface in stories and poetry and penny dreadful novels as the very epitome of our tribe. There were others appearing all the time. But we were to encounter stranger creatures of darkness as we moved on. In Greece we found demons who did not know how they had been made, and sometimes even mad creatures without reason or language who attacked us as if we were mortal, and ran screaming from the prayers we said to drive them away. The vampires in Istanbul actually dwelt in houses, safe behind high wall and gates, their graves in their gardens, and dressed as all humans do in that part of the world, in flowing robes, to hunt the nighttime streets. Yet even they were quite horrified to see me living amongst the French and the Venetians, riding in carriages, joining the gatherings at the European embassies and homes. They menaced us, shouting incantations at us, and then ran in panic when we turned on them, only to come back and devil us again. The revenants who haunted the Mameluke tombs in Cairo were beastly wraiths, held to the old laws by hollow-eyed masters who lived in the ruins of a Coptic monastery, their rituals full of Eastern magic and the evocation of many demons and evil spirits whom they called by strange names. They stayed clear of us, despite all their acidic threats, yet they knew our names. As the years passed, we learned nothing from all these creatures, which of course was no great surprise to me. And though vampires in many places had heard the legends of Marius and the other ancient ones, they had never seen such beings with their own eyes. Even Armand had become a legend to them, and they were likely to ask: "Did you really see the vampire Armand? " Nowhere did I meet a truly old vampire. Nowhere did I meet a vampire who was in any way a magnetic creature, a being of great wisdom or special accomplishment, an unusual being in whom the Dark Gift had worked any perceivable alchemy that was of interest to me. Armand was a dark god compared to these beings. And so was Gabrielle and so was I. But I jump ahead of my tale. Early on, when we first came into Italy, we gained a fuller and more sympathetic knowledge of the ancient rituals. The Roman coven came out to welcome us with open arms. "Come to the Sabbat, " they said. "Come into the catacombs and join in the hymns. " Yes, they knew that we'd destroyed the Paris coven, and bested the great master of dark secrets, Armand. But they didn't despise us for it. On the contrary, they could not understand the cause of Armand's resignation of his power. Why hadn't the coven changed with the times? For even here where the ceremonies were so elaborate and sensuous that they took my breath away, the vampires, far from eschewing the ways of men, thought nothing of passing themselves off as human whenever it suited their purposes. It was the same with the two vampires we had seen in Venice, and the handful we were later to meet in Florence as well. In black cloaks, they penetrated the crowds at the opera, the shadowy corridors of great houses during balls and banquets, and even sometimes sat amid the press in lowly taverns or wine shops, peering at humans quite close at hand. It was their habit here more than anywhere to dress in the costumes of the time of their birth, and they were often splendidly attired and most regal, possessing jewels and finery and showing it often to great advantage when they chose. Yet they crept back to their stinking graveyards to sleep, and they fled screaming from any sign of heavenly power, and they threw themselves with savage abandon into their horrifying and beautiful Sabbats. In comparison, the vampires of Paris had been primitive, coarse, and childlike; but I could see that it was the very sophistication and worldliness of Paris that had caused Armand and his flock to retreat so far from mortal ways. As the French capital became secular, the vampires had clung to old magic, while the Italian fiends lived among deeply religious humans whose lives were drenched in Roman Catholic ceremony, men and women who respected evil as they respected the Roman Church. In sum the old ways of the fiends were not unlike the old ways of people in Italy, and so the Italian vampires moved in both worlds. Did they believe in the old ways? They shrugged. The Sabbat for them was a grand pleasure. Hadn't Gabrielle and I enjoyed it? Had we not finally joined in the dance?