The Vampire Lestat (62 page)

“ ‘A story of our creation, analogous to the Genesis of the Hebrews, the tales in Homer, the babblings of your Roman poets Ovid and Virgil—a great gleaming morass of symbols out of which life itself is supposed to have sprung.’ He was on his feet and all but shouting, his black forehead knotted with veins, his hand a fist on the desk. ‘It is that kind of tale that fills the documents in these rooms, that emerges in fragments from the anthems and the incantations. Want to hear it? It’s as true as anything else.’

“ ‘Tell me what you will,’ I said. I was trying to keep calm. The volume of his voice was hurting my ears. And I heard things stirring in the rooms near us. Other creatures, like that dried-up wisp of a thing that had brought me in here, were prowling about.

“ ‘And you might begin,’ I said acidly, ‘by confessing why you came to me in my rooms here in Alexandria. It was you who led me here. Why did you do that? To rail at me? To curse me for asking you how it started?’

“ ‘Quiet yourself.’

“ ‘I might say the same to you.’

“He looked me up and down calmly, and then he smiled. He opened both his hands as if in greeting or offering, and then he shrugged.

“ ‘I want you to tell me about the accident,’ I said. ‘I would beg you to tell me if I thought it would do any good. What can I do for you to make you tell?’

“His face underwent several remarkable transformations. I could feel his thoughts, but not hear them, feel a high-pitched humor. And when he spoke again, his voice was thickened as if he were fighting back sorrow, as if it were strangling him.

“ ‘Hearken to our old story,’ he said. ‘The good god, Osiris, the first pharaoh of Egypt, in the eons before the invention of writing, was murdered by evil men. And when his wife, Isis, gathered together the parts of his body, he became immortal and thereafter ruled in the realm of the dead. This is the realm of the moon, and the night, in which he reigned, and to him were brought the blood sacrifices for the great goddess which he drank. But the priests tried to steal from him the secret of his immortality, and so his worship became secret, and his temples were known only to those of his cult who protected him from the sun god, who might at any time seek to destroy Osiris with the sun’s burning rays. But you can see the truth in the legend. The early king discovered something—or rather he was the victim of an ugly occurrence—and he became unnatural with a power that could be used for incalculable evil by those around him, and so he made a worship of it, seeking to contain it in obligation and ceremony, seeking to limit The Powerful Blood to those who would use it for white magic and nothing else. And so here we are.’

“ ‘And the Mother and Father are Isis and Osiris?’

“ ‘Yes and no. They are the first two. Isis and Osiris are the names that were used in the myths that they told, or the old worship onto which they grafted themselves.’

“ ‘What was the accident, then? How was this thing discovered?’

“He looked at me for a long period of silence, and then he sat down again, turning to the side and staring off as he’d been before.

“ ‘But why should I tell you?’ he asked, yet this time he put the question with new feeling, as though he meant it sincerely and had to answer it for himself. ‘Why should I do anything? If the Mother and the Father will not rise from the sands to save themselves as the sun comes over the horizon, why should I move? Or speak? Or go on?’ Again he looked up at me.

“ ‘This is what happened, the Mother and the Father went out into the sun?’

“ ‘Were left in the sun, my dear Marius,’ he said, astonishing me with the knowledge of my name. ‘Left in the sun. The Mother and the Father do not move of their own volition, save now and then to whisper to each other, to knock those of us down who would come to them for their healing blood. They could restore all of us who were burned, if they would let us drink the healing blood. Four thousand years the Father and Mother have existed, and our blood grows stronger with every season, every victim. It grows stronger even with starvation, for when the starvation is ended, new strength is enjoyed. But the Father and the Mother do not care for their children. And now it seems they do not care for themselves. Maybe after four thousand nights, they merely wished to see the sun!

“ ‘Since the coming of the Greek into Egypt, since the perversion of the old art, they have not spoken to us. They have not let us see the blink of their eye. And what is Egypt now but the granary of Rome? When the Mother and the Father strike out to drive us away from the veins in their necks, they are as iron and can crush our bones. And if they do not care anymore, then why should I?’

“I studied him for a long moment.

“ ‘And you are saying,’ I asked, ‘that this is what caused the others to burn up? That the Father and Mother were left out in the sun?’

“He nodded.

“ ‘Our blood comes from them!’ he said. ‘It is their blood. The line is direct, and what befalls them befalls us. If they are burnt, we are burnt.’

“ ‘We are connected to them!’ I whispered in amazement.

“ ‘Exactly, my dear Marius,’ he said, watching me, seeming to enjoy my fear. ‘That is why they have been kept for a thousand years, the Mother and the Father, that is why victims are brought to them in sacrifice, that is why they are worshiped. What happens to them happens to us.’

“ ‘Who did it? Who put them in the sun?’ “He laughed without making a sound.

“ ‘The one who kept them,’ he said, ‘the one who couldn’t endure it any longer, the one who had had this solemn charge for too long, the one who could persuade no one else to accept the burden, and finally, weeping and shivering, took them out into the desert sands and left them like two statues there.’

“ ‘And my fate is linked to this,’ I murmured.

“ ‘Yes. But you see, I do not think he believed it any longer, the one who kept them. It was just an old tale. After all, they were worshiped as I told you, worshiped by us, as we are worshiped by mortals, and no one dared to harm them. No one held a torch to them to see if it made the rest of us feel pain. No. He did not believe it. He left them in the desert, and that night when he opened his eyes in his coffin and found himself a burnt and unrecognizable horror, he screamed and screamed.’

“ ‘You got them back underground.’

“ ‘Yes.’

“ ‘And they are blackened as you are . . . ’

“ ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Darkened to a golden bronze, like the meat turning on the spit. No more than that. And beautiful as before, as if beauty has become part of their heritage, beauty part and parcel of what they are destined to be. They stare forward as they always have, but they no longer incline their heads to each other, they no longer hum with the rhythm of their secret exchanges, they no longer let us drink their blood. And the victims brought to them, they will not take, save now and then, and only in solitude. No one knows when they will drink, when they will not.’

“I shook my head. I moved back and forth, my head bowed, the candle fluttering in my hand, not knowing what to say to all this, needing time to think it out.

“He gestured for me to take the chair on the other side of the writing table, and without thinking of it, I did.

“ ‘But wasn’t it meant to happen, Roman?’ he asked. ‘Weren’t they meant to meet their death in the sands, silent, unmoving, like statues cast there after a city is sacked by the conquering army, and were we not meant to die too? Look at Egypt. What is Egypt, I ask you again, but the granary of Rome? Were they not meant to burn there day after day while all of us burned like stars the world over?’

“ ‘Where are they?’ I asked.

“ ‘Why do you want to know?’ he sneered. ‘Why should I give you the secret? They cannot be hacked to pieces, they are too strong for that, a knife will barely pierce their skin. Yet cut them and you cut us. Burn them
and you burn us. And whatever they make us feel, they feel only a particle of it because their age protects them. And yet to destroy every one of us, you have merely to bring them annoyance! The blood they do not even seem to need! Maybe their minds are connected to ours as well. Maybe the sorrow we feel, the misery, the horror at the fate of the world itself, comes from their minds, as locked in their chambers they dream! No. I cannot tell you where they are, can I? Until I decide for certain that I am indifferent, that it is time for us to die out.’

“ ‘Where are they?’ I said again.

“ ‘Why should I not sink them into the very depths of sea?’ he asked. ‘Until such time as the earth herself heaves them up into the sunlight on the crest of a great wave?’

“I didn’t answer. I was watching him, wondering at his excitement, understanding it but in awe of it just the same.

“ ‘Why should I not bury them in the depths of the earth, I mean the darkest depths beyond the faintest sounds of life, and let them lie in silence there, no matter what they think and feel?’

“What answer could I give? I watched him. I waited until he seemed calmer. He looked at me and his face became tranquil and almost trusting.

“ ‘Tell me how they became the Mother and the Father,’ I said.

“ ‘Why?’

“ ‘You know damn good and well why. I want to know! Why did you come into my bedroom if you didn’t mean to tell me?’ I asked again.

“ ‘So what if I did?’ he said bitterly. ‘So what if I wanted to see the Roman with my own eyes? We will die and you will die with us. So I wanted to see our magic in a new form. Who worships us now, after all? Yellow-haired warriors in the northern forests? Old old Egyptians in secret crypts beneath the sands? We do not live in the temples of Greece and Rome. We never did. And yet they celebrate our myth—the only myth—they call the names of the Mother and the Father . . . ’

“ ‘I don’t give a damn,’ I said. ‘You know I don’t. We are alike, you and I. I won’t go back to the northern forests to make a race of gods for those people! But I came here to know and you must tell.’

“ ‘All right. So that you can understand the futility of it, so that you can understand the silence of the Mother and the Father, I will tell. But mark my words, I may yet bring us all down. I may yet burn the Mother and the Father in the heat of a kiln! But we will dispense with lengthy initiations and high-blown language. We will do away with the myths that died in the sand the day the sun shone on the Mother and the Father. I will tell you what all these scrolls left by the Father and the Mother reveal. Set down your candle. And listen to me.’ ”

“ ‘W
HAT the scrolls will tell you,’ he said, ‘if you could decipher them, is that we have two human beings, Akasha and Enkil, who had come into Egypt from some other, older land. This was in the time long before the first writing, before the first pyramids, when the Egyptians were still cannibals and hunted for the bodies of enemies to eat.

“ ‘Akasha and Enkil directed the people away from these practices. They were worshipers of the Good Mother Earth and they taught the Egyptians how to sow seed in the Good Mother, and how to herd animals for meat and milk and skins.

“ ‘In all probability, they were not alone as they taught these things, but rather the leaders of a people who had come with them from older cities whose names are now lost beneath the sands of Lebanon, their monuments laid waste.

“ ‘Whatever is the truth, these were benevolent rulers, these two, in whom the good of others was the commanding value, as the Good Mother was the Nourishing Mother and wished for all men to live in peace, and they decided all questions of justice for the emerging land.

“ ‘Perhaps they would have passed into myth in some benign form had it not been for a disturbance in the house of the royal steward which began with the antics of a demon that hurled the furniture about.

“ ‘Now this was no more than a common demon, the kind one hears of in all lands at all times. He devils those who live in a certain place for a certain while. Perhaps he enters into the body of some innocent and roars through her mouth with a loud voice. He may cause the innocent one to belch obscenities and carnal invitations to those around her. Do you know of these things?’

“I nodded. I told him you always heard such stories. Such a demon was supposed to have possessed a vestal virgin in Rome. She made lewd overtures to all those around her, her face turning purple with exertion, then fainted. But the demon had somehow been driven out. ‘I thought the girl was simply mad,’ I said. ‘That she was, shall we say, not suited to be a vestal virgin . . . ’

“ ‘Of course!’ he said with a note of rich irony. ‘And I would assume the same thing, and so would most any intelligent man walking the streets of Alexandria above us. Yet such stories come and go. And if they are remarkable for any one thing it is that they do not affect the course of human events. These demons rather trouble some household, some person, and then
they are gone into oblivion and we are right where we started again.’

“ ‘Precisely,’ I said.

“ ‘But you understand this was old old Egypt. This was a time when men ran from the thunder, or ate the bodies of the dead to absorb their souls.’

“ ‘I understand,’ I said.

“ ‘And this good King Enkil decided that he would himself address the demon who had come into his steward’s house. This thing was out of harmony, he said. The royal magicians begged, of course, to be allowed to see to this, to drive the demon out. But this was a king who would do good for everyone. He had some vision of all things being united in good, of all forces being made to go on the same divine course. He would speak to this demon, try to harness its power, so to speak, for the general good. And only if that could not be done would he consent to the demon’s being driven out.

“ ‘And so he went into the house of his steward, where furniture was being flung at the walls, and jars broken, and doors slammed. And he commenced to talk to this demon and invite it to talk to him. Everyone else ran away.

“ ‘A full night passed before he came out of the haunted house and he had amazing things to say:

“ ‘ “These demons are mindless and childlike,” he told his magicians, “but I have studied their conduct and I have learned from all the evidence why it is that they rage. They are maddened that they do not have bodies, that they cannot feel as we feel. They make the innocent scream filth because the rites of love and passion are things that they cannot possibly know. They can work the body parts but not truly inhabit them, and so they are obsessed with the flesh that they cannot invade. And with their feeble powers they bump upon objects, they make their victims twist and jump. This longing to be carnal is the origin of their anger, the indication of the suffering which is their lot.” And with these pious words he prepared to lock himself in the haunted chambers to learn more.