by Anne Rice
Where was Barbara? Barbara came down the stairs declaring that the tanks and pipes of the sprinkler system had worked. The fire was out.
She looked positively normal with her hair still neatly held back by a silver barrette, and her long plain dark blue dress dusty but untorn.
She went into a closet that held all the many hand tools for those who worked in the Château.
And suddenly Cyril and Avicus were at work, along with Viktor, repairing hinges, hanging doors up again, and shoveling out of the way all the broken stone.
But then Cyril stopped and began to tremble all over.
“Someone go now to that other dungeon and tell them to be still! I can’t stand it, their howling and crying. Tell them to shut up. Thorne, do it. Do it now while he is on his way away with Marius. Go.”
Thorne, who always yielded to Cyril, left on this mission.
Then it seemed everyone in the crypt was busy restoring the place again, except for me as I gave my blood to the wounded Sybelle.
It had been just past midnight when Rhoshamandes took Marius.
Hours later, Sybelle had been dressed again in a new gown of black wool, and lay sleeping, her skin ruddy with blood. Barbara had gone to her apartment for her clothes. She had brought down fresh clothing for everyone. Barbara went on working, doing everything she could.
I decided that I wanted to go upstairs.
A chorus of voices told me no.
“He’s not coming back tonight,” I said. But they persisted, and so I sat down on the marble bench on which I’d slept, my new home now, and I told them I knew what I had to do.
Once they were gathered around me to listen, I began to speak, and it was in speaking that I thought it out, drew it from the numb wordless shock of knowing and made it into a design.
“I have to talk to the fiend,” I said. My voice was a little stronger than it had been before but flat. “I have to reason with him. I have to give myself up to him in exchange for peace. I have to have his word it will be enough, his taking me, and then I’d go with him.”
I sensed a silence in the faraway dungeon on the other side of the Château, but how I sensed it, I couldn’t have explained.
“I am the one he loathes and despises. I was the one he blamed for everything. I will talk to him, and bargain with him—I will give myself up to him if he will stop his attacks against us and leave the Court forever alone.
“I know him to be a man of his word,” I said. “A man still, yes, and a man of his word. Just as I am a man of my word. And I want a quarter of an hour with him, after he takes me, a quarter of an hour in which to explain to him my thoughts on what has happened, and to hear his before I perish at his hands.”
At once came the chorus of objections. “Be patient,” said Gregory. “The Children of Atlantis are closing in on him. They will have a location for him soon.”
“How is that possible?” I said. “He can hear what you’re saying.”
“You don’t know that,” said Benji.
“Where is he?” I asked. “On the other side of the world? And how long will it take for them to find his new refuge? No, my mind is made up. All I need is his word. And I will swear to him on my honor, and I do have honor, that none of you will seek to harm him when he comes for me.
“And Amel and Kapetria will restore his property to him, and there will be peace.”
Once again came the mingled objections, and from the far dungeon the pleas of Allesandra that Rhosh was indeed a being of his word.
“At any time that he accepts my word,” I said, “at any time that he reaches me with his pledge that he will honor this agreement, I shall go up onto the battlements of the northwest tower, and I will wait for him without guards around me, and go with him willingly when he comes.”
Again, the voices rose with their objections, but Cyril raised his hand for silence.
“He’s speaking,” Cyril said. “I hear him.”
Gregory obviously could not hear him. But then we’d long known that the first generation of the Queens Blood and the First Brood couldn’t hear one another, any more than a maker and his fledglings.
But I could hear him now—faint, calling to me from very far away, a voice as soft as it was distinct.
I am a being of my word.
“Do you accept my terms?” I asked, speaking aloud even as I sent the message to him, picturing him, doing all in my power to reach him.
I accept your bargain. But the Replimoids must restore my property to me, all of it. And your minions must not dare to try to harm me when I come for you or it will be war again. And I will destroy all that I can.
Armand suddenly began to weep.
“Don’t do it, don’t trust him,” he said. “Lestat, he’ll just destroy you. And if you are gone—.”
Ah, such sweet words from one who only hours ago had been cursing me with his every breath.
“I will see to it that the Replimoids restore your property,” I said, speaking to Rhosh. It was as if I could see my voice reaching out over the winds and the clouds. “I am still the Prince here, in these ruins, and I am telling Gregory now that this is my wish. He is the oldest present. And he will get word to Seth of my pledge.”
Gregory with the solemn face of the robed Mesopotamian angel nodded and whispered the word, “Yes.”
“But I want a quarter of an hour with you, Rhoshamandes,” I said, “to talk to you before I meet with your final judgment. I want that before I join my mother and my lover and my mentor at your hands.”
I heard a thin hollow laughter.
I give my word. I will give you the quarter of an hour that you want. And then I will do what I want with you. And if your cohorts don’t keep your pledge, I will come back for them.
“And if they do keep my pledge in every particular?”
I will leave the Court alone and seek a new existence far from the Court in another part of the world.
“Then we’re agreed on everything,” I said.
Except for one thing. You do not come up now from your cowardly hiding place. You come in one hour right before the sun rises while you still have the strength to do it. Make your pledge binding upon the Replimoids and then come to the northwest tower right before dawn. If I see any of your cohorts, if I feel their invisible weapons, I will burn you to ashes on the battlements of your father’s house and take from your ranks each and every one who ever followed you in your folly. This is our bargain.
Silence.
“Give me the phone,” I said to Gregory, “with the connection to the Paris headquarters.”
He did as I said. And I did as I had said I would.
Kapetria resisted, but I simply told her over and over that I’d given my word.
“Begin to restore his properties and his resources to him now,” I said. And I gave the little slab of a glass phone back to Gregory, who tucked it away in his ancient robes.
I could write another chapter of all the back-and-forth then.
Those gathered in the dungeons left the pathetic Baudwin in his iron wrappings and came quickly to join us in our crypts. Allesandra was convinced that I could prevail upon Rhosh to spare my life, and told me that I must entreat him, that I must persuade him to understand that I had not wanted Benedict to die.
So many arguments. So many hushed and urgent voices mingling in the fractured marble rooms. And the smell of earth coming from the corridors which I’d never lined in granite as I had done the chambers, and Barbara and the new fledgling, Marie, busy with their little chores, and Armand finally sitting beside me, his face crumpled and broken up like that of a little boy as he clung to me, and Cyril against the wall staring off, listening for immortal voices that didn’t come.
I was prevailed upon repeatedly not to do what I was planning to do.
Only Allesandra believed
I could win the heart of Rhoshamandes, who she swore was infinitely better at loving than hating and had left his beautiful old monastery in the Loire long ago rather than battle the Children of Satan, Rhosh whose heart melted at the strains of beautiful music, Rhosh who used to bring musicians in the ancient times from Paris to play in his cloisters and old book-lined chambers, Rhosh who had wept when the Children of Satan had demolished the old walls and rooms until the forest covered the place where Allesandra and Eleni, and Everard and Benedict and Notker, had been born.
There were moments when Eleni joined in this entreaty. “Say this to him” or “Yes, point out that.”
All the while Everard sat sneering at them both. I could see the malice in his eyes. He had never forgiven Rhoshamandes for not rescuing him from the Children of Satan, and he’d escaped their miserable clutches just as soon as he could. He thought them “lovely fools” now and he said so, and the clocks ticked in the empty corridors upstairs, and the pale sky was showing through the shattered walls of the ballroom as Barbara and her fledgling Marie went about with their brooms upstairs, quite convinced of their safety, and the others clung to me as if this were my wake.
And it was my wake.
I sat there knowing, knowing all they told me, knowing who Rhosh was from all of these different angles. And I knew my mother had once run with me through the tall grass on this very mountain, in the spring sunshine, both of us laughing as we climbed higher and higher to look out over the entire valley and the road winding towards the village, I knew because I saw it. And I saw Louis with Claudia in his arms walking through the deep perfumed darkness of the Garden District of New Orleans as the cicadas sang of late twilight, and Claudia with her curls streaming down her back from her bonnet sang a soft song to him that made Louis smile.
And I knew Marius had once drawn me up out of the earth in Cairo and into his arms, because I saw it, and saw him in his great Mediterranean villa, an eighteenth-century man then after two thousand years, welcoming me, smiling at me, ready to share the secret with me of our great and mysterious parents, those unmovable marblelike beings, Akasha and Enkil in their perfumed shrine.
Incense, flowers. Claudia singing. I listened now for the morning birds of the forest.
I knew Rhoshamandes might well have taken Marius with him across the Atlantic and yet come back in one and the same night because he was that strong. But then again, perhaps he had never gone very far. What did it matter? He was coming now. The birds of the forest knew it was time and had begun to sing.
Time to go.
The shrill ring of a glass phone startled me. Kapetria calling to assure Gregory that Rhosh’s fortune had been given back over to him and all the conniving tentacles of her internet reach had been withdrawn.
“For the last time,” Armand whispered. “I beg you—.”
I kissed Armand and rose to my feet. I embraced Gregory.
“You’ll find all my papers in my study upstairs,” I said. “You will find directions and codes to make over everything I possess to you. I ask only that should Magnus, my maker, ever succeed in reentering this life, in taking on a body, that you give some portion of my fortune to him, as it was from him that my fortune came into being.”
He nodded. “I will take care of everything and everyone,” he said—the bearded angel with the long black hair talking and kissing my lips. “Remember you have my blood in you now!” he whispered in my ear.
“Whoever you choose to be your prince,” I said, “I wish him well.”
I walked towards the stairs.
I turned back and saw them all crowding the passage, with Benji just elbowing through the crush to the very front.
“Goodbye, brave dybbuk,” he said.
I smiled.
“Stay below, all of you,” I said. For one moment, something immense and very like terror breathed close to me, but I shoved it back. “If you break your word, my friends, remember, he’ll destroy me and never let up.”
Chapter 17
The snow was falling lightly and soundlessly as I came out of the iron doorway on the northwest tower and walked towards the battlements. I could feel the numbness of morning in me, and wondered if that wasn’t some sort of mercy, but he would take me west with the night for certain, and so fast that no one would be able to follow him, and what would follow would happen while all those I loved slept.
I stood still, watching the snow fall on my open palms. And all was stillness and silence all through the Château and throughout the valley, with the smell of burnt timber in the wind.
Suddenly I saw him directly above me, his eyes huge, his dark robes swirling about him—and in that instant, the others betrayed me and sent from all directions their mighty fire.
“No,” I roared. “Stop. No.” But I couldn’t hear my own voice over the swirling force that threw me backwards onto the stone floor.
A great ball of flame rolled Heavenward, and then went out like the flame of a candle crushed between finger and thumb. An arm like iron went around me, and high into the sky I went, so fast the wind felt as if it were scalding my face and my ears.
I saw below me flames in all directions, as if a volley of soundless explosions were sending their dark thick clouds rolling Heavenward, and then there was nothing but the stars for one instant, the great far-flung stars too numerous to be broken into patterns, and I realized I was clutching to Rhoshamandes, and he had his left hand on the back of my neck. By this he held me, this iron hand, and I said to him:
“I didn’t betray you. They broke their word.”
Laughter. And his intimate confidential voice saying, “I expected it, of course.”
The pain in my face and in my ears and in my hands was unbearable. I gasped at the wind, trying to breathe it, and then I heard him say the word just as Gregory had said to me: Sleep. I couldn’t resist it. I felt we were leaving the earth altogether, and it seemed impossible that the drowsiness could feel so warm and so good.
How many hours passed, I didn’t know. I knew only that we were someplace over the Pacific, and how I knew that much, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was the strange green tint of the sky, the soft green layers on top of the rosy layers, and the blackness above from which we were descending slowly, until we had dropped down on a white stone terrace just over the glassy and shining sea.
I fell out of his arms and to the ground, dazed. My limbs were numb and useless. But he picked me up and threw me against the stone railing, his hand clamped to the back of my neck.
I looked down at the white-foamed waves crashing on the rocks and saw far away a string of golden lights that meant another shore, or another island, I knew not which.
Beautiful, I thought. The blood rushed through my legs and my feet, and my arms and my hands, again. A wave of sickness came over me. But when I opened my mouth to vomit, nothing came out.
Just a glimmer of a thought sprang to mind and then died into the deliberate silence of my locked mind.
Don’t think. Don’t imagine. Don’t scheme. Don’t plan.
“It is so very beautiful,” I said.
I felt something brush close to my left side, and then I was thrown a short distance and down again on another stone floor.
He had ripped the ax out from under my coat.
As I got to my knees and turned around, I saw him standing with his back to a row of open arches, beyond which the stars struggled to shine in a rosy mist.
“Yes, it is beautiful,” he said. And for the first time I saw him with his golden hair long to his shoulders, and his mustached mouth and bearded chin. He wore a simple robe of brown wool, as monastic as Benedict’s habit had been, which fell to the naked insteps of his bare feet.
“So this is the great Rhoshamandes,” I said, “as he looks when he rises, and gives no thought to a razor or a scissors.”
He stared at me with an e
nigmatic expression, certainly not one of scorn or hate.
“You think you know me, but you don’t know me,” he said. “You, with your arrogance and your vanity, and your shiny little ax.” He held it up. It glittered in the low electric light that came from the stone ceiling, a simple fixture of white-painted metal. All the stone chamber was painted white, except for the floor, which was polished to a dazzling luster, and there was the de rigueur fireplace, built of soft sandstone with pilasters supporting its deep mantel and a pile of oak in which the crumpled and broken kindling was just roaring into flame.
I climbed to my feet.
Moving so fast I couldn’t see it, he kicked me down on my back and returned to his place, the ax still in his hand.
“Remember when you cut off my hand and my arm with this?” he asked.
“Yes, I do. And if I had it to do over I would not do it,” I said. “Think of those who’ve suffered because I did it. It was rash.”
Never mind that his evil plan of that moment had collapsed without my cruel gesture with the ax having anything to do with it. Or that I’d forgiven him all he had done in killing Maharet and imprisoning my son, and told him countless times that I held nothing but goodwill for him and wanted only that we be friends.
I knew this, but I didn’t think on it. It just was.
And this time when I climbed to my feet, I did so slowly, dusting off the knees of my jeans and realizing for the first time that my boots were gone.
The wind had ripped them from my feet. And the black velvet coat I wore was torn at the left shoulder, and my hair was a mass of knots and tangles.
I shook myself all over. It felt good to be standing in my black stocking feet and the stone floor was warm. I sensed a large house around me; I could see electric light streaming in through a doorway to his right as he faced me, and I knew there was a larger archway behind me on my left leading into what was likely the same room.
