Taltos

by Anne Rice

  There sat Joan Cross, in the first of the formal parlors, surrounded by faces unknown to Marklin, but all of them in serious conversation.

  No Stuart.

  "You see?" said Tommy, whispering in his ear. "They're doing what comes naturally after someone dies--gathering, talking, as if it were a party. Now that's what we have to do. What comes naturally. You understand?"

  Marklin nodded, but he didn't like it, no, not at all. He glanced back once, trying to find the door, but the door had been closed, apparently, and the crowd blocked his view in any event. He could see nothing. Indeed, it struck him as strange that there were so many foreign faces, and he wanted to say something to Tommy, but Tommy had moved away.

  Tommy was chatting with Elvera, nodding as Elvera explained something to him. She looked as dowdy as ever, with her dark gray hair knotted at the nape of her neck, and her rimless glasses halfway down her nose. Enzo stood beside her, that devious-looking Italian. Where the hell was his twin?

  How dreadful to spend one's life in this place, he thought. Did he dare to ask about Stuart? Certainly he didn't dare to ask about Yuri, though of course he knew. Ansling and Perry had told him about Yuri's call. Oh God, what was he to do? And where were Ansling and Perry?

  Galton Penn, one of the other novices, was pushing his way towards Marklin.

  "Hey, there, Mark. What do you think of all this?"

  "Well, I don't know that people are talking about it here," said Marklin. "But then I haven't really listened."

  "Let's talk about it now, man, before they forbid all conversation on the subject. You know the Order. They haven't a clue as to who killed Marcus. Not a clue. You know what we're all thinking? There's something they don't want us to know."

  "Like what?"

  "That it was some supernatural agency, what else? Elvera saw something that horrified her. Something bad happened. You know, Mark, I'm very sorry for Marcus and all, but this is the most exciting thing that's ever happened since I was received."

  "Yes, I know what you mean," Mark answered. "Haven't seen Stuart, have you?"

  "No, not at all, not since this morning, when he declined to take charge. Were you here when that happened?"

  "No. I mean yes," said Mark. "I was wondering if he went out or what."

  Galton shook his head. "You hungry? I am. Let's get some chow."

  This was going to be rough, very rough. But if the only people who spoke to him were bright-faced imbeciles like Galton, he would do just fine, just fine indeed.

  Sixteen

  THEY'D BEEN ON the road over an hour, and it was almost dark, the sky clabbering with silvery clouds, and a drowsy look coming over the great expanses of rolling hills and bright green farmland, neatly cut into patterns as if the landscape were covered with a great patchwork quilt.

  They made a pit stop in a little one-street village with several black and white half-timbered houses and a small, overgrown cemetery. The pub was more than inviting. It even had the proverbial dart board and a couple of men playing darts, and the smell of the beer was wonderful.

  But this was hardly the time to stop for a drink, thought Michael.

  He stepped outside, lit a fresh cigarette, and watched with quiet fascination the formal gentleness with which Ash guided his prisoner into the pub and inevitably towards the bathroom.

  Across the street, Yuri stood at a phone booth, talking rapidly, having made his connection to the Motherhouse, apparently, and Rowan stood beside him, arms folded, watching the sky or something in it, Michael couldn't be sure which. Yuri was upset again, wringing his right hand as he held the receiver with the left, nodding over and over again. It was plain that Rowan was listening to his words.

  Michael leaned back against the plaster wall, and drew in on the smoke. It always amazed him how tiring it was to simply ride in a car.

  Even this journey, with its agonizing suspense, was no different ultimately, and now that darkness had closed off the lovely countryside, he would grow more sleepy, he figured, no matter what was yet to come.

  When Ash and his prisoner emerged from the pub, Gordon looked resentful and desperate. But obviously he'd been unable to solicit help, or had not dared to try.

  Yuri hung up the phone. It was his turn to disappear into the pub now; he was still anxious, if not crazed. Rowan had been watching him attentively during the drive, that is, when she was not riveted to Ash.

  Michael watched Ash as he returned Gordon to the backseat. He didn't try to disguise the fact that he was staring. That seemed unnecessarily cumbersome. The thing about the tall man was this: he did not in any way appear hideous, as Yuri had averred. The beauty was there, and rather spectacular, but the hideousness? Michael couldn't see it. He saw only a graceful frame, and easy, efficient movements that indicated both alertness and strength. The man's reflexes were amazing. He'd proved that when Stuart Gordon had reached again for the lock of the door when they were stopped at a crossroads about a half hour back.

  The man's soft black hair reminded him all too much of Lasher; too silky, too fine, too much body to it, he didn't know for certain. The white streaks added a kind of high luster to the whole figure. The face was far too big-boned to be feminine in any conventional sense, but it was delicate, the long nose redeemed perhaps by the fact that the eyes were so large and set so wide apart. The skin was mature skin and not baby-fine. But the real allure of the man was mixed up with his voice and his eyes. His voice could have talked you into anything, Michael thought, and the eyes were highly persuasive as well.

  Both bordered on a childlike simplicity, but were not ultimately simple. The effect? The man seemed some sort of angelic being, infinitely wise and patient and yet resolved, without question, to murder Stuart Gordon exactly as he had said that he would.

  Of course, Michael wasn't assuming anything about the age of this creature. It was pretty hard not to think he was human, just different, unaccountably strange. Of course, Michael knew he wasn't. He knew it by a hundred little details--the size of Ash's knuckles, the curious way he widened his eyes now and then so that he looked awestruck, and above all perhaps by the absolute perfection of his mouth and teeth. The mouth was baby-soft, impossible for a man with that skin, really, or at least highly improbable, and the teeth were as white as some sort of flashing advertisement that had been shamelessly retouched.

  Michael didn't for a moment believe this creature was ancient, or that he was the great Saint Ashlar of the Donnelaith legends, the ancient king who had converted to Christianity in the last days of the Roman Empire in Britain, and allowed his pagan spouse, Janet, to be burnt at the stake.

  But the grim tale he had believed when Julien had told it to him. And this was one of the many Ashlars, no doubt--one of the mighty Taltos from the glen--a being of the very same ilk as the one that Michael had slaughtered.

  These things were not disputed by any part of his mind.

  He had experienced too much for him to doubt, It was only that he couldn't believe the tall, beautiful man was that old St. Ashlar himself. Perhaps he just didn't want it to be so, for very good reasons that made sense within these elaborate frameworks which he'd now totally accepted.

  Yes, you are living now with a whole series of completely new realities, he thought. Maybe this is why you're taking it all calmly. You've seen a ghost; you've listened to him; you know he was there. He told you things you could have never manufactured or imagined. And you've seen Lasher and you've heard his long plea for sympathy, and that was also something completely unimaginable for you, something filled with new information and strange details that you can still remember with puzzlement, now that the misery you were feeling when Lasher told it is over, and Lasher lies buried under the tree.

  Oh yeah, don't forget, the burying of the body, dropping the head down in the hole beside it, and then finding the emerald, picking it up, and holding it in the dark while the decapitated body lay down there in the wet earth, ready to be covered up.

  Perhaps you can
become accustomed to anything, he figured. And he wondered if that was what had happened to Stuart Gordon. He had no doubt that Stuart Gordon was guilty, dreadfully and inexcusably guilty of everything. Yuri had no doubt. But how had the man managed to betray his values?

  Michael had to admit he himself had always had a susceptibility to this very kind of Celtic darkness and mystery. His very love of Christmas had its roots in some irrational longing for rituals born in these isles, perhaps. And the tiny Christmas ornaments he had so lovingly collected over the years were all in some way emblematic of old Celtic gods, and a worship overlaid on pagan secrets.

  His love of the houses he'd restored had brought him at times as close to this atmosphere of old secrets, old designs, and a dormant knowledge to be revealed as one could ever get in America.

  He realized he understood Stuart Gordon in a way. And very soon the figure of Tessa would explain Gordon's sacrifices and terrible mistakes, very clearly.

  Whatever, Michael had been through so much that his calm now was only inevitable.

  Yes, you've been through these things, and you've been used by them and battered by them, and now you stand here, by the village pub in this small, picture-postcard village, with its gently sloping stone street, and you think about all this without emotion--that you are with something that is not human, but is as intelligent as any human, and is soon to meet a female of its kind, an event of such enormous significance that no one really wants to touch upon it, perhaps only out of respect for the man who is supposed to die.

  It's hard to ride in a car for an hour with a man who is supposed to die.

  He'd finished the cigarette. Yuri had just come out of the pub. They were ready to push off.

  "You did reach the Motherhouse?" Michael asked quickly.

  "Yes, and I reached more than one person. I made four different calls and reached four different individuals. If these four, my oldest and closest friends, are part of it, then I despair."

  Michael gave Yuri's thin shoulder a squeeze. He followed Yuri to the car.

  Another thought came to him, that he wasn't going to think about Rowan and her reactions to the Taltos any more now than he had all the way down here, when a deep, instinctive possessiveness had almost caused him to demand that they stop the car, that Yuri climb in the front, so that he could sit by his wife.

  No, he wasn't going to give in to this. He couldn't any way in the world know what Rowan was thinking or feeling as she looked at this strange creature. A witch he might be, by genetic profile, and perhaps by some peculiar heritage of which he knew nothing. But he wasn't a mind reader. And he had been aware from the very first moments of their encounter with Ashlar that Rowan would probably not be harmed by making love to this strange creature, because now that she could not have children, she could not suffer the sort of terrible hemorrhage which had brought down Lasher's Mayfair victims one by one.

  As for Ash, if he was lusting after Rowan, he was keeping it a gentlemanly secret, but then the creature was driving towards a female of his species, who was perhaps one of the last female Taltos in the world.

  And then there's the immediate consideration, isn't there, he thought as he slipped into the passenger seat and firmly shut the door. Are you going to stand by and let this giant of a man murder Stuart Gordon? You know perfectly well you can't do that. You can't watch somebody be murdered. That's impossible. The only time you've ever done it, it happened so quick, with the crack of the gun, that you scarcely had time to breathe.

  Of course, you have killed three people yourself. And this misguided bastard, this crazed man who claims to have a goddess under lock and key, has killed Aaron.

  They were leaving the little village, which had all but disappeared into the gathering shadows. How tender, how manageable, how tame this landscape. At any other time he would have asked them to stop so that they could walk for a while along the road.

  When he turned to the side, he was surprised to discover that Rowan had been watching him. That she was sitting to the side herself and had brought her leg up on the seat right behind him, apparently so that she could look at him. Of course her half-naked legs looked glorious, but so what? She had pulled her skirt down properly. It was no more than a fashionable flash of nylon-covered thigh.

  He stretched out his arm along the old leather upholstery, and he laid his left hand on her shoulder, which she allowed, quietly looking at him with her immense and secretive gray eyes, and giving him something far more intimate than a smile.

  He had avoided her the entire time they were in the village, and now he wondered why he had done that. Why? On impulse, he decided to do something rude and vulgar.

  He leaned over, reaching out to cup the back of her head with his hand, and he kissed her quickly, and then settled back. She could have avoided it, but she didn't. And when her lips had touched him, he had felt a sharp little pain inside, that now began to glow and to increase in intensity. Love you! Dear God, give it a chance again!

  And no sooner had that reprimand come into his mind than he realized he wasn't talking to her at all; he was talking to himself about her.

  He settled back, looking out the windshield, watching the dark sky thicken and lose the last of its porcelain luster, and leaning his head to the side, he closed his eyes.

  There was nothing stopping Rowan from falling madly in love with this being who could not wring monstrous babies from her, nothing but her marriage vows and her will.

  And Michael realized he was not sure of either one. Perhaps he would never be sure again.

  Within twenty minutes the light was gone. Their headlights forged through the darkness, and this might have been any highway, anywhere in the world.

  Finally Gordon spoke up. The next road right, and left on the one immediately following.

  The car turned off into the weald, into the high dark trees, a mixture of beech and oak it seemed, with even some light flowering fruit trees that he could not clearly see. The blossoms looked pink here and there in the headlights.

  The second side road was unpaved. The woods grew thicker. Maybe this was the remnant of an ancient forest, the kind of grand, Druid-infested woods that had once covered all of England and Scotland, possibly all of Europe, the kind of forest that Julius Caesar had cleared away with ruthless conviction so that the gods of his enemies would either flee or die.

  The moon was fairly bright. He could see a little bridge now as they drew closer, and then came another turn, and they were driving along the borders of a small and peaceful lake. Far across the water stood a tower, perhaps a Norman keep. It was a sight so romantic that surely the poets of the last century had gone mad for the place, he thought. Perhaps they had even built it, and it was one of those beautiful shams which were thrown up everywhere as the recent love for the Gothic transformed architecture and style worldwide.

  But as they drew closer, as they swung round and came near to the tower, Michael saw it more clearly. And realized that it was a rounded Norman tower, rather large, with perhaps three stories rising to its battlements. The windows were lighted. The lower portion of the building was shrouded by trees.

  Yes, that was exactly what it was, a Norman tower--he had seen many in his student years, wandering the tourists' roads over all England. Perhaps on some summer sabbatical which he could no longer remember he had even seen this one.

  It didn't seem so. The lake, the giant tree to the left, all of this was too nearly perfect. Now he could see the foundations of a larger structure, wandering away in crumbling lumps and pieces, worn down by rain and wind, no doubt, and further blurred by mounds of wild ivy.

  They drove through a thick copse of young oaks, losing track of the building altogether, and then emerged, surprisingly close to it, and Michael could see a couple of cars parked in front of it, and two tiny electric lights flanking a very large door.

  All very civilized, it seemed, livable. But how marvelously preserved it was, unmarred by any visible modern addition. Ivy crawled over t
he rounded and mortared stone, up above the simple arch of the doorway.

  No one spoke.

  The driver stopped the car finally, in a small graveled clearing.

  Michael at once got out and looked around. He could see a lush and wild English garden spreading towards the lake and towards the forest, banks of flowers just coming into bloom. He knew their dim shapes, but they had closed up in the darkness, and who knew what glory would be all around when the sun rose?

  Were they going to be here when the sun rose?

  An enormous larch tree stood between them and the tower, a tree that was surely one of the oldest Michael had ever seen.

  He walked towards its venerable trunk, realizing that he was walking away from his wife. But he couldn't do otherwise.

  And when he finally stood under the tree's great spreading branches, he looked up at the facade of the tower, and saw a lone figure in the third window. Small head and shoulders. A woman, her hair loose or covered with a veil, he couldn't be certain.

  For one moment the entire scene overwhelmed him--the dreamy white clouds, the high light of the moon, the tower itself in all its rough grandeur.

  Though he could hear the crunch of the others coming, he didn't step out of the way, or move at all. He wanted to stand here, to see this--this serene lake, to his right, water interrupted and framed now by the delicate fruit trees with their pale, fluttering flowers. Japanese plum, most likely, the very kind of tree that bloomed all over Berkeley, California, in the springtime, sometimes making the very light in the small streets a rosy pink.

  He wanted to remember all this. He wanted never to forget it. Perhaps he was still weakened by jet lag, maybe even going predictably crazy like Yuri. He didn't know. But this, this was some image that spoke of the entire venture, of its horrors and revelations--the high tower and the promise of a princess within it.

  The driver had switched off the headlamps. The others were walking past him. Rowan stood at his side. He looked one more time across the lake and then at the enormous figure of Ash walking in front of him, Ash's hand still clamped to Stuart Gordon, and Stuart Gordon walking as if he would soon collapse--an elderly gray-haired man, the tendons of his thin neck looking woefully vulnerable as he moved into the light of the doorway.