by Anne Rice
“Very well,” I said. I turned to Rhoshamandes. “I say your apology is accepted. You are a member of this tribe. I can see no threat from you now to anyone here. Who disagrees with me on this? Speak up or forever be quiet.”
No one spoke up.
But there were tears in the eyes of the regal, ashen-haired Allesandra when I said this and Rhoshamandes nodded and took his seat. I’m not sure anyone but I caught Everard’s sharp personal glance to me and the confidential negative shake of his head.
Benedict looked confused, and so I directed my remarks to him.
“You are now once more in good standing,” I said. “Whatever you did, and why ever you did it—all this is now closed.”
But I knew this was small comfort to him. He’d live for years with the horror of what he’d done.
It was by that time almost 4:00 a.m., and sunrise would occur in slightly over two hours.
I stood silent at the head of the table. I could feel all these eyes on me as fixed and probing as ever, but I felt most keenly the scrutiny of Seth and Fareed, though why I wasn’t sure.
“We have much to do,” I said, “all of us, to establish what it means for us and for all those blood drinkers out there the world over that we are now one proud tribe, one proud People of Darkness, one proud race that seeks to prosper on this Earth. And as it has fallen to me to rule, by invitation and by unique selection, I want to rule from my home in the Auvergne.
“I live now in my father’s castle there, almost fully restored, a great stone edifice including as many comfortable chambers as this amazing house in which we’re gathered now. And I will be your prince.”
I paused to let the point be absorbed, then I went on.
“Prince Lestat I will be,” I said. “That is the term that’s been offered to me over and over in one form or another, it seems. And my court shall be in my castle, and I invite all of you to come there and help forge the constitution and the rules by which we’ll live. I will need your help in deciding a multitude of questions. And I will delegate to those of you who are receptive various tasks to help us move to a new and glorious existence which I hope that all the blood drinkers of the world will come to share.”
Benji was now close to tears. “Oh, if only this were being recorded!” he declared. Sybelle told him to be quiet, and Armand was laughing silently at him but also motioning for him to restrain himself.
“You may report my words in full whenever you wish,” I said. “You have my express permission.”
With a subtle gesture he opened his spiffy little jacket to reveal an iPhone peeping out of his inner pocket.
“Marius,” I said, turning to him. “I ask that you write for us all the rules by which you’ve lived and prospered for centuries, as I’ve never found anyone more ethical in these matters than you are.”
“I’ll do my best with this,” said Marius.
“And Gregory,” I said. “Gregory, you who have survived with such astonishing success in the mortal world, I ask that you help to establish a code by which blood drinkers can effectively interact with mortals to preserve their material wealth as well as their secrecy. Please give us the benefit of all you’ve learned. I have much to share on this and so does Armand, but you are the past master.”
“I’m more than willing,” said Gregory.
“We must assist the most befuddled fledgling out there in obtaining whatever papers and documents are required to move from place to place in the physical world. We must do our best to halt the creation of a class of desperate vampiric tramps and marauders.”
Benji was beside himself with excitement at all these proceedings. But he was shocked when I turned now to him.
“And you, Benjamin, obviously you must be our Minister of Communications from now on; and wherever in the world I am I will be in communication with you here at your headquarters every night. We must talk, you and I, about the radio program and the website, and what more we can do together through the internet to gather the lost sheep in the Blood.”
“Yes!” he said with obvious joy. He lifted his fedora in salute to me and it was the first time that I’d seen his adorable little round face and cap of curly black hair for what they were.
“Notker,” I said. “You’ve brought your musicians here, your singers, your violinists, and they’ve joined with Sybelle and with Antoine, and given us the extraordinary pleasure that only blood drinker musicians and artists can give. Will you come with me to my court in the Auvergne and help to create my court orchestra and my court choir? I want this with my whole heart.”
“Oh, my prince, I’m at your service,” said Notker. “And my own humble fiefdom is only minutes away from you in the Alps.”
“Seth and Fareed,” I said. “You are our physicians, our scientists, our bold explorers. What can I do? What can all of us do to support you in your ongoing work?”
“Well, I think you know,” said Seth. “There’s much we can learn from you and from … Amel.” Understatement. Burning eyes.
“You’ll have my complete cooperation always,” I said. “And you’ll have your rooms at my court and whatever else you need or desire. And I will be open to you, and offer you whatever knowledge or experience that I can.”
Fareed was smiling, obviously pleased, and Seth was satisfied for the moment but not without grave suspicions of what might lie ahead.
“We will never again, any of us here, be isolated from one another, in exile, and unreachable.” I stopped, taking the time to meet the eyes of each and every one present. “We must all promise. We must maintain our lines of communication, and we must seek to see how we may benefit from one another as a united people. For that is what we are now, not so much the Children of Darkness, but the People of the Savage Garden, because we have come of age as such.”
I stopped. People of the Savage Garden. I didn’t know if it was the right or ultimate term for us. I had to think on that, the matter of an ultimate term—consult, listen to the inevitable poetry that would rise to create a term from all the tribe. For now I had done the best that I could do. There was so much more to be done. But I was tired, raggedly tired.
I motioned that I needed a moment to collect my thoughts. And I was startled to hear a soft applause break out in the room that soon included everyone, it seemed, and then died away quietly.
So much more to say.
I thought again of Magnus, that ghost, Magnus who’d come to me in the golden caves of Sevraine’s little city in Cappadocia. I thought of Gremt, the grand spirit who had been there too.
“And we must take up one more matter now,” I said. “It’s the matter of the Talamasca. It’s the matter of what they’ve made known to me and Sevraine about their members.”
“And to me as well,” said Pandora. “I’ve met Gremt as I know you have, the spirit who in fact brought the Talamasca into being.”
“And I too have been contacted by them,” said Marius. “And a meeting with them soon might be to the benefit of us all.”
Again, I listened for Amel, but there was only silence, and the warm subtle embrace under my skin that let me know he was there. I was looking down. I waited.
“Learning, Prince Lestat,” he said in the lowest whisper. “Learning as I have never dreamed it was possible to learn.”
I looked up. “Yes, and we will indeed meet with them, meet with those who’ve revealed themselves to us, and we will determine among other things how to treat the old ongoing mortal Order of the Talamasca whom these spectral founding fathers have apparently cut loose to pursue its own destiny.”
Seth was marveling, obviously wanting to know so much more on this.
“Now, if there’s nothing more,” I said, “I’d like to retire. I’ve made that French library my lair and it’s waiting for me and I need to rest perhaps more now than ever before in my life.”
“One thing more,” said Seth. “You hold the Core now. You are the Source. You are the Primal Fount.”
“Yes?” I respon
ded calmly, patiently, waiting.
“Your fate is our fate,” he said.
“Yes?”
“You must vow never to slip away from us, never to seek to hide from us, never to be careless with your own person, any more than any earthly monarch on whom the peace of a realm depends.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said. I suppressed a little flash of anger. “I am yours now,” I said, as difficult as it was to say this. A chill ran through me, an awful foreboding. “I belong to the realm. I know.”
Suddenly Everard spoke up, the young blood drinker from Italy.
“But is this thing quiet inside you now?” he asked. “Is he quiet!”
A ripple of alarm ran through the gathering, though why I’m not sure. This question was on the mind of nearly everyone here. It had to be.
“Yes, Amel is quiet,” I said. “Amel is satisfied. Amel is at peace.”
“Or maybe he’s somewhere else at this very moment, perhaps,” said my mother.
“Yes,” said Everard, “off making some more horrible trouble.”
“No,” I replied.
“But why?” asked Rhoshamandes. “Why is he content?” It was said with total sincerity, and for the first time in his face I saw a glimmer of actual pain.
I reflected for a moment before responding. Then:
“Because he can see and he can hear more clearly than ever,” I said. “And this is what he’s longed for. That’s what he has always wanted. To see and hear and know in this world, the physical world, our world. And he is watching, and learning, as never before.”
“But surely,” said Zenobia, the diminutive friend of Gregory, “he saw and heard when he was in Akasha all that time, before Mekare ever came.”
“No,” I said. “He didn’t. Because in those times, he didn’t know how.”
Pause.
The various amazing minds of the room pondered.
Inside me, Amel gave the softest most eloquent laugh with nothing of humor in it and everything of wonder that I could hope to hear.
I raised my hands for patience.
I had to sleep. And the morning was creeping up on the young ones with its sly burning fingers, and it would soon be creeping up even on me.
“Rose and Viktor,” I said. “This day will be your last on Earth when the sun is visible to you and when the sun is your friend.” I felt a sudden throb in my heart. I swallowed, trying to keep my voice steady. “Spend this day however you wish, but be wise and stay safe and come home to us at sunset … to reaffirm your decision.”
I saw my son beaming at me, and beside him Rose looking on in quiet wonder. I smiled. I put my fingers gently to my lips and let the silent kiss go.
I left the room quickly. There would be time to embrace them, and to weep, yes, to weep as I held their warm, tender mortal bodies in my arms, only some thirteen hours from now when the night threw its inevitable mantle once again across the great Savage Garden that was our world.
As I lay down to sleep in the French library, I spoke softly to Amel.
“You’re quiet,” I said, “strangely quiet but I know you are there.”
“Yes, I’m here,” he said. “And it’s as you told them. Do you doubt your own explanation?” There was a pause but I knew he was going to say something more. “Years ago,” he said, “when you were a mortal boy in your village in France you had a friend, a friend you loved.”
“Nicolas,” I said.
“And you and he would talk.”
“Yes.”
“By the hour, by the day, by the night, by the week and the month …”
“Yes, always in those days when we were boys together, we would talk.”
“Do you remember what you called it, your long flowing exchange?”
“Our conversation,” I said. I marveled that he knew. Did he know because I knew? Could he search through my memory when I wasn’t remembering? I was drowsy and my eyes were closing. “Our conversation,” I said again. “And it went on and on.…”
“Well, we are having ‘our conversation,’ aren’t we?” he asked. “And our conversation will go on forever. There is no need for haste.”
A great warmth came over me as if I’d been wrapped in a blanket of love.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”
29
Lestat
Pomp and Circumstance
AT SUNSET, the word went out that I would come before all in the park, at a deserted location well hidden from the mortal world. And as I set out to go, dressed in a new red-velvet coat and black pants and nice spiffy midcalf boots generously provided by Armand along with some old-fashioned lace at my throat, I discovered that Seth and Gregory were coming with me, that under no circumstances would they allow the Prince to walk amongst his people unguarded. Thorne and Flavius also accompanied us without a word.
I accepted it.
There were perhaps seventy-five fledglings in the gathering at eight o’clock and I had little difficulty greeting each with a clasp of hands and a promise that we would all work together to prosper. All had been young mortals when made, most dressed in black, some elegantly in old romantic nineteenth-century jackets or dresses, and others in the most exquisite black fashions of the present time, and still others were ragged, unkempt with matted hair—but all surrounded me with open hearts, with touching willingness to follow me and what I might demand. And one or two older ones were there, too, blood drinkers as old as Louis or myself. But there was no one older.
Taking a position in the middle of a circle, I explained that I was now their prince and I wouldn’t fail them. I did not tell them yet that I contained the Sacred Core. I saw no reason for that to be announced in vulgar fashion in such a place, or for it to be announced by me personally at all. But I did assure them that the rampage of the Voice had been ended.
The darkness was soothing here, and there was a certain quiet, with the distant buildings of Manhattan flanking the park on either side, and the overhanging trees partially concealing us. But I knew I had to be quick. There were curious mortals about. And I wanted no disruption.
I told them all now that they were to be assured of my guidance.
“I’ll soon set up my court to which you can come at any time, with rooms there for wayfarers, and all wayfarers. And the voice of Benji Mahmoud will never cease to offer you invaluable counsel. But if we are to cease from all battles and gang wars, and to live in secrecy and harmony with one another, then there must be rules, the very things I fought all my life, rules, and there must be a willingness on your part, for your own sake, to obey them.”
Again came that soft but mighty roar I’d heard from them on the sidewalk before the townhouse only a night ago.
“You must leave this city,” I said. “You must not congregate any more before Trinity Gate. Please, I ask that you agree to this.”
There were nods, cries of affirmation, of “yes” from all sides.
“This city,” I said, “great as it is, cannot sustain so many hunters, and you must find hunting grounds where you can feed on the evildoer and leave the innocent unmolested. Understand. This you have to do, and there is no escaping it.”
Again came their chorus of praise and agreement. So eager, so innocent, they seemed, so charged with collective conviction.
“There is no reason under the moon and stars,” I said, “why we cannot prosper. And prosper we will.”
A louder roar, and the innermost circle pressing in even as Gregory and Seth gestured for them to hold where they were.
“Now, give me time,” I said. “Give me opportunity. Wait to hear from me and I promise your patience will be rewarded. And spread the word far and wide that I am your leader now and you can trust in me and what we will all achieve together.”
I then took my leave, once again clasping hands on both sides as Gregory, Seth, Flavius, and Thorne escorted me out of the park. We ignored a deluge of irrepressible questions I could not answer now.
When I entered the townh
ouse, I saw in the drawing room the unmistakable figures of Gremt Stryker Knollys and Magnus, along with an impressive white-haired ancient blood drinker, and other ghosts—striking ghosts as solid and real seeming as Magnus. The shining and cheerful ghost of Raymond Gallant was among them. Had he met with Marius? I certainly hoped so. But Marius wasn’t there.
Armand was with them and so were Louis and Sevraine and they all stared silently at me as I came into the room. I was alarmed at the sight of this ancient blood drinker simply because he hadn’t come to us before. But I could see at once by the manner of everyone present that this was some sort of decorous or amicable meeting. And Seth and Gregory didn’t follow me but remained in the hallway, with Flavius and Thorne, but they did not seem concerned.
Gremt and Magnus were robed as before, but this ancient blood drinker who gave me his name telepathically as “Teskhamen” wore a handsome modern suit of clothes. The other ghosts were all attired in the same way, except for the one woman ghost, who wore a fashionable long dress and a slim black coat. The group was very simply astonishing.
Did Louis and Armand know these were ghosts? Did they know this Gremt was a spirit? And who was this Teskhamen, a blood drinker who knew these ghosts obviously, but hadn’t made himself known to us until now?
After a moment’s hesitation, Louis left the company and Armand stepped back into the shadows. Sevraine gave a warm embrace to the blood drinker, and then took her leave as well.
The clock was chiming the half hour. I had only thirty minutes to be with Rose and Viktor.
I approached Gremt. I realized that the first time I’d encountered this spirit I’d found him intimidating. I hadn’t admitted it to myself. But I knew it now because I was not in any way afraid of him. And a certain definite liking of him arose in me, a certain warming to him because I had seen emotions in him that I understood. He wasn’t without emotion now.
“You know what’s happened,” I said. He was staring at me intently, staring, and perhaps staring through me, and through my eyes at Amel. I couldn’t know. But Amel was quiet. Amel was there as he always would be, but not a sound came from him.
