Blood and Gold (5 page)

Down into the wood-lined cellar they went, and there Marius showed Thorne to a chamber cut into the stone. The walls of it were cold, but a large sumptuous bed had been made inside the chamber, hung with brightly colored linen draperies, and heaped with intricately sewn covers. The mattress looked thick and so did the many pillows.

It was startling to Thorne that there was no crypt, no true hiding place. Anyone could find him here. It seemed as simple as his cave in the North, but far more inviting, far more luxurious. He was so tired in all his limbs that he could scarce speak. Yet he was anxious.

“Who is to disturb us here?” asked Marius. “Other blood drinkers go to their rest in this strange darkness just as we do. And there is no mortal who can enter here. But if you are afraid, I understand if we must seek some other shelter for you.”

“Do you sleep in this way, unguarded?” Thorne asked.

“Even more so, in the bedroom above, like a mortal man, sprawled on my mattress in the cabinet bed among my comforts. The only enemy who has ever harmed me was a swarm of blood drinkers. They came when I was fully awake and aware as must needs be. If you like, I shall tell you that awful story.”

Marius’s face had gone dark, as though the mere mention of this disaster was evocative of terrible pain.

And Thorne understood something suddenly. It was that Marius wanted to tell this story. Marius needed to speak in a long flow of words as much as Thorne needed to hear words. Marius and Thorne had come upon each other in the proper moment.

But that would be tomorrow night. This night was ended.

Marius drew himself up and went on with his reassurance.

“The light won’t come as you know, and no one will trouble you here. Sleep and dream as you must. And we’ll talk on the morrow. Now let me take my leave. Daniel, my friend, is young. He falls on the floor by his little empire. I have to make him retire to a comfortable place, though I wonder sometimes if it matters.”

“Will you tell me one thing before you go?” asked Thorne.

“If I can,” said Marius gently, though suddenly he looked overwhelmingly hesitant. He looked as though he contained heavy secrets which he must tell and yet he feared to do it.

“The blood drinker who walked on the seashore,” said Thorne, “looking at the pretty shells one by one, what became of her?”

Marius was relieved. He gave Thorne a long look and then in careful words he answered.

“They said that she gave herself up to the sun. She was not so old. They found her one evening in the moonlight. She’d drawn a great circle around herself of shells so they knew that her death was deliberate. There were only ashes there, and in fact, some had already been scattered by the wind. Those who loved her stood nearby and they watched as the wind took the rest. It was all finished by morning.”

“Ah, what a dreadful thing,” said Thorne. “Had she no pleasure in being one of us?”

Marius seemed struck by Thorne’s words. Gently he asked:

“Do you take any pleasure in being one of us?”

“I think . . . I think I do again,” said Thorne hesitantly.

4

H
e was awakened by the good smell of an oak fire. He turned over in the soft bed, not knowing where he was for the moment, but completely unafraid. He expected the ice and the loneliness. But he was someplace good, and someone was waiting for him. He had only to climb to his feet, to go up the steps.

Quite suddenly it all came clear. He was with Marius, his strange and hospitable friend. They were in a new city of promise and beauty built upon the ruins of the old. And good talk awaited him.

He stood up, stretching his limbs in the easy warmth of the room, and looked about himself, realizing that the illumination came from two old oil lamps, made of glass. How safe it seemed here. How pretty the painted wood of the walls.

There was a clean linen shirt for him on the chair. He put it on, having much difficulty with the tiny buttons. His pants were fine as they were. He wore woolen stockings but no shoes. The floors were smooth and polished and warm.

He let his tread announce him as he went up the stairs. It seemed very much the proper thing to do in this house, to let Marius know that he was coming, and not to be accused of boldness or stealth.

As he came to the door to the chamber where Daniel made his wondrous cities and towns, he paused, and very reticently glanced inside to see the boyish blond-haired Daniel at his work as though he had never retired for the day at all. Daniel looked up, and quite unexpectedly, gave Thorne an open smile as he greeted him.

“Thorne, our guest,” he said. It had a faint tone of mockery, but Thorne sensed it was a weaker emotion.

“Daniel, my friend,” said Thorne, glancing again over the tiny mountains and valleys, over the fast-running little trains with their lighted windows, over the thick forest of trees which seemed Daniel’s present obsession.

Daniel turned his eyes back to his work as though they hadn’t spoken. It was green paint now that he dabbed onto the small tree.

Quietly, Thorne moved to go but as he did so, Daniel spoke:

“Marius says it’s a craft, not an art that I do.” He held up the tiny tree.

Thorne didn’t know what to say.

“I make the mountains with my own hands,” said Daniel. “Marius says I should make the houses as well.”

Again Thorne found himself unable to answer.

Daniel went on talking.

“I like the houses that come in the packages. It’s difficult to assemble them, even for me. Besides, I would never think of so many different types of houses. I don’t know why Marius has to say such disparaging things.”

Thorne was perplexed. Finally he said simply,

“I have no answer.”

Daniel went quiet.

Thorne waited for a respectful interval and then he went into the great room.

The fire was going on a blackened hearth within a rectangle of heavy stones, and Marius was seated beside it, slumped in his large leather chair, rather in the posture of a boy than a man, beckoning for Thorne to take his place on a big leather couch opposite.

“Sit there if you will, or here if you prefer,” said Marius kindly. “If you mind the fire, I’ll damp it down.”

“And why would I mind it, friend?” asked Thorne, as he seated himself. The cushions were thick and soft.

As his eyes moved over the room, he saw that almost all the wood paneling was painted in gold or blue, and there were carvings on the ceiling beams above, and on the beams over the doorways. These carvings reminded him of his own times. But it was all new—as Marius had said, it was made by a modern man, this place, but it was made well and with much thought and care to it.

“Sometimes blood drinkers fear the fire,” said Marius, looking at the flames, his serene white face full of light and shadow. “One never knows. I’ve always liked it, though once I suffered dreadfully on account of it, but then you know that story.”

“I don’t think I do know it,” said Thorne. “No, I’ve never heard it. If you want to tell it, I want to hear.”

“But first there are some questions you want answered,” said Marius. “You want to know if the things you saw with the Mind Gift were entirely real.”

“Yes,” said Thorne. He remembered the net, the points of light, the Sacred Core. He thought of the Evil Queen. What had shaped his vision of her? It had been the thoughts of the blood drinkers who had gathered around her council table.

He realized he was looking directly into Marius’s eyes, and that Marius knew his thoughts completely.

Marius looked away, and into the fire, and then he said offhandedly:

“Put your feet up on the table. All that matters here is comfort.”

Marius did this with his own feet, and Thorne stretched his legs out, crossing his feet at his ankles.

“Talk as you please,” said Marius. “Tell me what you know, if you wish; tell me what you would know.” There seemed a touch of anger in his voice but it wasn’t anger for Thorne. “I have no secrets,” Marius said. He studied Thorne’s face thoughtfully, and then he continued: “There are the others—the ones you saw at that council table, and even more, scattered to the ends of the world.”

He gave a little sigh and then a shake of his head, then he went on speaking.

“But I’m too alone now. I want to be with those I love but I cannot.” He looked at the fire. “I come together with them for a short while and then I go away . . .

“. . . I took Daniel with me because he needed me. I took Daniel because it’s unendurable to me to be utterly alone. I sought the North countries because I was tired of the beautiful South lands, even tired of Italy where I was born. I used to think no mortal nor blood drinker could ever grow tired of bountiful Italy, but now I’m tired, and want to look on the pure whiteness of snow.”

“I understand,” said Thorne. The silence invited him to continue. “After I was made a blood drinker,” he said, “I was taken South and it seemed Valhalla. In Rome I lived in a palace and looked out on the seven hills each night. It was a dream of soft breezes and fruit trees. I sat in a window high above the sea and watched it strike the rocks. I went down to the sea, and the sea was warm.”

Marius smiled a truly kind and trusting smile. He nodded. “Italy, my Italy,” he said softly.

Thorne thought the expression on his face was truly wondrous, and he wanted Marius to keep the smile but very quickly it was gone.

Marius had become sober and was looking into the flames again as though lost in his own sadness. In the light of the fire, his hair was almost entirely white.

“Talk to me, Marius,” said Thorne. “My questions can wait. I want the sound of your voice. I want your words.” He hesitated. “I know you have much to tell.”

Marius looked at him as if startled, and warmed somewhat by this. Then he spoke.

“I’m old, my friend,” he said. “I’m a true Child of the Millennia. It was in the years of Caesar Augustus that I became a blood drinker. It was a Druid priest who brought me to this peculiar death, a creature named Mael, mortal when he wronged me, but a blood drinker soon after, and one who still lives though he tried not long ago to sacrifice his life in a new religious fervor. What a fool.

“Time has made us companions more than once. How perfectly odd. It’s a lie that I hold him high in my affections. My life is full of such lies. I don’t know that I’ve ever forgiven him for what he did—taking me prisoner, dragging me out of my mortal life to a distant grove in Gaul, where an ancient blood drinker, badly burnt, yet still imagining himself to be a god of the Sacred Grove, gave me the Dark Blood.”

Marius stopped. “Do you follow my meaning?”

“Yes,” said Thorne. “I remember those groves and the whispers among us of gods who had lived in them. You are saying that a blood drinker lived within the Sacred Oak.”

Marius nodded. He went on.

“ ‘Go to Egypt,’ he charged me, this badly burnt god, this wounded god, “and find the Mother. Find the reason for the terrible fire that has come from her, burning us far and wide.’ “

“And this Mother,” said Thorne. “She was the Evil Queen who carried within her the Sacred Core.”

“Yes,” said Marius, his steady blue eyes passing over Thorne gently. “She was the Evil Queen, friend, no doubt of it . . .

“. . . But in that time, two thousand years ago, she was silent and still and seemed the most desperate of victims. Four thousand years old they were, the pair of them—she and her consort Enkil. And she did possess the Sacred Core, there was no doubt of it, for the terrible fire had come to all blood drinkers on the morning when an exhausted elder blood drinker had abandoned the King and Queen to the bright desert sun.

“Blood drinkers all over the world—gods, creatures of the night, lamias, whatever they called themselves—had suffered agony, some obliterated by terrible flames, others merely darkened and left with a meager pain. The very oldest suffered little, the youngest were ashes.

“As for the Sacred Parents—that is the kind thing to call them, I suppose—what had they done when the sun rose? Nothing. The Elder, severely burnt for all his efforts to make them wake or speak or run for shelter, found them as he had left them, unmovable, heedless, and so, fearing more suffering for himself he had returned them to a darkened chamber, which was no more than a miserable underground prison cell.”

Marius stopped. He paused so completely it seemed that the memories were too hurtful to him. He was watching the flames as men do, and the flames did their reliable and eternal dance.

“Please tell me,” said Thorne. “You found her, this Queen, you looked upon her with your own eyes that long ago?”

“Yes, I found her,” Marius said softly. His voice was serious but not bitter. “I became her keeper. “Take us out of Egypt, Marius,’ that is what she said to me with the silent voice—what you call the Mind Gift, Thorne—never moving her lips.

“And I took her and her lover Enkil, and sheltered them for two thousand years as they remained still and silent as statues.

“I kept them hidden in a sacramental shrine. It was my life; it was my solemn commission.

“Flowers and incense I put before them. I tended to their clothes. I wiped the dust from their motionless faces. It was my sacred obligation to do these things, and all the while to keep the secret from vagrant blood drinkers who might seek to drink their powerful blood, or even take them captive.”

His eyes remained on the fire, but the muscles in his throat tightened, and Thorne could see the veins for a moment against the smoothness of his temples.

“All the while,” Marius went on, “I loved her, this seeming divinity whom you so rightly call our Evil Queen; that’s perhaps the greatest lie I’ve ever lived. I loved her.”

“How could you not love such a being?” Thorne asked. “Even in my sleep I saw her face. I felt her mystery. The Evil Queen. I felt her spell. And she had her silence to precede her. When she came to life it must have seemed as if a curse were broken, and she was at last released.”

These words seemed to have a rather strong effect on Marius. His eyes moved over Thorne a bit coldly and then he looked back at the fire.

“If I said something wrong I am sorry for it,” Thorne said. “I was only trying to understand.”

“Yes, she was like a goddess,” Marius resumed. “So I thought and so I dreamt, though I told myself and everyone else otherwise. It was part of my elaborate lie.”

“Do we have to confess our loves to everyone?” asked Thorne softly. “Can we not keep some secrets?” With overwhelming pain he thought of his Maker. He did nothing to disguise these thoughts. He saw her again seated in the cave with the blazing fire behind her. He saw her taking the hairs from her own head and weaving them into thread with her distaff and her spindle. He saw her eyes rimmed in blood, and then he broke from these memories. He pushed them deep down inside his heart.

He looked at Marius.

Marius had not answered Thorne’s question.

The silence made Thorne anxious. He felt he should fall silent and let Marius go on. Yet the question came to his lips.

“How did the disaster come to pass?” Thorne asked. “Why did the Evil Queen rise from her throne? Was it the Vampire Lestat with his electric songs who waked her? I saw him in human guise, dancing for humans, as if he were one of them. I smiled in my sleep, as I saw the modern world enfold him, unbelieving, amused, and dancing to his rhythms.”

“That’s what happened, my friend,” said Marius, “at least with the modern world. As for her? Her rising from her throne? His songs had much to do with it.

“For we have to remind ourselves that for thousands of years she had existed in silence. Flowers and incense, yes, these things I gave her in abundance, but music? Never. Not until the modern world made such a thing possible, and then Lestat’s music came into the very room where she sat shimmering in her raiment. And it did wake her, not once, but twice.

“The first time was as shocking to me as the later disaster, though it was mended soon enough. It was two hundred years ago—on an island in the Aegean Sea—this little surprise, and I should have taken a hard lesson from it, but this in my pride I failed to do.”

“What took place?”

“Lestat was a new blood drinker and having heard of me, he sought me out, and with an honest heart. He wanted to know what I had to reveal. All over the world he’d sought me, and then there came a time when he was weak and broken by the very gift of immortality, a time of his going into the earth as you went into the ice of the Far North.

“I brought him to me; I talked with him as I’m talking to you now. But something curious happened with him which caught me quite off guard. I felt a sudden surge of pure devotion to him and this combined with an extraordinary trust.

“He was young but he wasn’t innocent. And when I talked, he listened perfectly. When I played the teacher, there came no argument. I wanted to tell him my earliest secrets. I wanted to reveal the secret of our King and Queen.

“It had been a long, long time since I’d revealed that secret. I’d been alone for a century among mortals. And Lestat, so absolute in his devotion to me, seemed completely worthy of my trust.

“I took him down to the underground shrine. I opened the door upon the two seated figures.