11
Gremt Stryker Knollys
IT WAS an old colonial mansion, red with white trim, a sprawling building with deep verandas and peaked roofs, covered with soft fluttering green vines and invisible from the winding road on account of the massive bamboo and mango trees surrounding it. A lovely place with palms swaying ever so gracefully in the breeze. It appeared abandoned but it had never been. Mortal servants maintained it by day.
And this vampire Arjun had been sleeping beneath it for centuries.
Now he was weeping. He sat at the table, his face in his hands.
“In my time I was a prince,” he said. He wasn’t boasting. He was merely reflecting. “And among the Undead I was a prince for so long. I do not know how I came to this.”
“I know all this is true,” Gremt said.
The blood drinker was undeniably beautiful, with light golden-brown skin so flawless it appeared unreal now, and large fierce black eyes. He had a wealth of jet-black hair worthy of a lion. Made by the wandering blood drinker Pandora in the days of the Chola dynasty of southern India, he had indeed been a prince, and much darker of skin than he was now and just as comely. The Blood had lightened his skin, but not his hair, which was sometimes the case, though no one knew why.
“I have always known who you were,” said Gremt. “I knew you when you traveled Europe with Pandora. I beg you, for both of us, tell me simply in your own words what happened.”
He withdrew a small white visiting card from his pocket, on which was written his full name in golden script: GREMT STRYKER KNOLLYS. Beneath it was his e-mail address and the numbers of his mobile phone.
But this blood drinker didn’t even acknowledge this human gesture. He could not. And Gremt moved the card discreetly to the center of the teak table and put it halfway under the brass base of the small shaded candle that was flickering there, giving a little bit of light to their faces. A soft golden light also came from the open doors along this deep porch.
This was a beautiful place.
It touched Gremt that this battered soul, this creature in such distress, had taken such time to wash the dirt from his shining hair, and that he was clothed now in a long well-fitted and richly jeweled sherwani, and black silk pants, and that his hands were clean and scented with true sandalwood.
“But how could you have known me then?” asked the blood drinker in a plaintive voice. “What are you? You’re not human, I know this. You are not human. And you are not what I am. What are you?”
“I am your friend now,” said Gremt. “I’ve always been your friend. I’ve been watching you for centuries, not just you, but all of you.”
Arjun was suspicious, of course, but more than anything he was horrified by what he’d done and he was warming piteously to Gremt’s persuasive tone, to the warmth of Gremt’s hand on his.
“All I wanted was to sleep,” Arjun said. He spoke with the same accent that was familiar in Goa and India to this day, though his command of English was perfect. “I knew I would return. My beloved, Pandora, she knows that I am here. She’s always known. I was safe here when the queen Akasha went on her rampage. She didn’t find me beneath this house.”
“I understand,” said Gremt. “Pandora is coming to you.”
“How can you know this?” Arjun asked. “Oh, truly I want to believe it. I need her so very much. But how do you know?”
Gremt hesitated. He gestured for Arjun to speak. “Tell me everything.”
“Ten years ago, I sat on this veranda with Pandora, and we spoke,” said Arjun. “I was still tired. I was not ready to join with her and her beloved friends. I told her I needed the sanctuary of the Earth and what we learn in the Earth, for we do learn when we sleep as if an umbilical cord connects us to the living world above.”
“That’s true,” said Gremt.
“It was never my intention to wake now.”
“Yes.”
“But this Voice. It spoke to me. I mean it was in my mind at first and it seemed these were my own thoughts, but in my sleep I did not embrace these thoughts.”
“Yes.”
“And then it had a tone and a vocabulary all its own, this Voice, speaking to me in English sharply, telling me that I wanted to rise, I, Arjun, wanted to rise, to go into Mumbai and wipe them out, the young ones. It seemed so true to me, true! Why did I listen to this? I, who have never wanted trouble with my own kind, who stood my ground patiently centuries ago with Marius, telling him from my soul I would give up my maker to him if that’s what he wanted, what she wanted. You understand? I fought my last battles when I was a mortal prince. What is this to me, murdering, massacring, burning young ones?” He hastened to answer his own question. “Is there something in the gentlest of us that longs to destroy? Something that dreams of annihilating other sentient beings?”
“Perhaps there is,” said Gremt. “When did you realize that this was not what you wanted?”
“When it was happening!” confessed Arjun. “The buildings were in flames. They were screaming, pleading with me, going down on their knees. And these were not all fledglings, you understand. Some of them had been in the Blood hundreds of years. ‘We survived the Queen to perish like this?’ That’s what they screamed as they put out their arms to me. ‘What have we done to you?’ But it was only slowly coming clear to me what I had started. It became a battle, their fighting me with the Fire Gift and I overriding their weaker power. It was … it was …”
“Pleasurable.”
Tears of shame rose in Arjun’s eyes. He nodded.
“Ah, you murder a human being,” Arjun said, “and you steal a life, yes, and that is unspeakable. You murder a blood drinker and you steal eternity! You steal immortality!”
He laid his head down on his arm.
“What happened in Kolkata?”
“That was not me,” he said at once. He sat back in the old rattan peacock chair, the broad woven back creaking against his weight. “I did not do it.”
“I believe you,” said Gremt.
“But why did I kill these children in Mumbai?”
“The Voice roused you for the purpose. It’s done this in other places. It’s done it in the Orient. It’s doing it in South America. I’ve suspected from the beginning there was no one blood drinker enacting the Burning.”
“But who is the Voice?” asked Arjun.
Gremt grew quiet. “Pandora is coming,” he said.
Arjun rose to his feet, almost upsetting the big chair behind him. He looked from right to left, trying to see through the darkness.
When she emerged from the long thick bamboo hedge, he went into her arms, and for a long moment, they held one another, rocking back and forth, and then he broke the grip and covered her face with kisses. She stood very still, allowing this, a slender female with wavy brown hair wearing a long simple hooded cloak and robe, her pale-white hands stroking Arjun’s hair, her eyes closed as she savored the moment.
Excitedly he brought her towards the veranda, and into the light coming from the rooms of the bungalow. “Sit here, please, sit here!” he said, bringing her to the teakwood table and the peacock chairs. Then, unable to stop himself, he embraced her again and sobbed silently against her shoulder.
She whispered to him in the tongue they’d shared when she’d wooed and wed him. She consoled him with her kisses.
Gremt had risen to his feet as any gentleman might in the presence of a woman. And this woman, Pandora, took his measure carefully, even as she suffered more kisses and embraces from Arjun. Her eyes were now fixed on him, and she was obviously listening to the beat of Gremt’s heart, to the sound of his respiration, as she studied his skin, his eyes, his hair.
What did she see? A tall blue-eyed male with short black wavy hair and Caucasian skin and a face modeled on a Greek statue, a man with broad capable shoulders and slender hands, dressed in a plain long black silk thawb that covered him to his ankles, a garment that might have passed for a priest’s cassock in another country. This was the body Gremt had perfected for himself over some fourteen hundred years. It might have fooled any human being on the planet. It could withstand the scrutiny of X-ray machines in modern airports. But it could not fool Pandora. It wasn’t biologically human.
She was shocked to the soul, but Gremt knew full well she’d seen beings like him before. Many times. Powerful beings walking around in made-up bodies, so to speak. Indeed she’d seen Gremt many a time, though she had not always known that it was Gremt by any means. And the very first time he had ever seen her, he had been bodiless.
“I am your friend,” Gremt said immediately. And he extended his hand to her, though she didn’t lift her hand in response.
Arjun was now wiping away his tears with an old linen handkerchief. Carefully, he tucked this back into his pocket.
“I did not mean to do it!” he said frantically. He was imploring her to understand.
And Pandora as if wakened from a spell turned her eyes away from Gremt and back to him.
“I knew you didn’t,” she said. “I understood this completely.”
“What you must think of me!” he persisted, his face stricken with shame.
“Ah, but it wasn’t you at all, was it?” she said at once, taking his hand and then kissing him again and drawing back once more to look at Gremt. “It was a voice, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, a voice,” he said. “I was telling Gremt. Gremt understands. Gremt is a friend.”
Very reluctantly, she sat down as Arjun urged her to do so, and he settled back into his chair to the left of her.
Only then did Gremt take his seat again.
“But you must have believed me guilty,” Arjun said to Pandora, “or why else would you have come here to me?”
Pandora was again staring at Gremt. She was far too uncomfortable with the obvious mystery of Gremt to hear what Arjun wanted her to hear.
Gremt turned to Arjun and spoke softly. “Pandora knew because of the pictures, Arjun. When it happened there were witnesses snapping pictures, and those pictures went viral, as they say on the internet. These pictures were infinitely more detailed and clear than telepathic glimpses. These pictures don’t fade as memory fades; they will circulate for all time. And in New York, a young blood drinker named Benjamin Mahmoud, made by Marius, posted the pictures on a website. And Pandora saw those pictures.”
“Ahhh! Unspeakable disgrace,” Arjun said, covering his face with his long fingers. “And so Marius and his children think I am guilty of this. And how many others believe it?”
“No, not so,” said Pandora. “We’re all coming to understand. Everyone is coming to understand.”
“You must. You must know that it was the Voice.” He looked helplessly to Gremt for confirmation.
“But Arjun is himself now,” said Gremt. “And he is now perfectly capable of resisting the Voice. And the Voice has moved on to some other slumbering blood drinkers.”
“Yes, that explains part of it,” said Pandora, “but not all of it. Because it is now almost certain that the burnings happening in South America are being done by none other than Khayman.”
“Khayman?” said Arjun. “Gentle Khayman? But I thought he had become the consort and guard of the twins now!”
“That he is and has been for a long time,” said Gremt. “But Khayman has always been a broken soul, and he is now apparently as susceptible to the Voice as some of the other old ones.”
“And Maharet cannot control him?” asked Pandora. There was an edge to her voice. She wanted to talk of all this, wanted to know what Gremt knew, but she wanted most certainly to know more about Gremt, so she spoke with a tone that said, You are a stranger to me.
She narrowed her eyes. “Is Maharet herself the Voice?” she asked with obvious horror.
Gremt said nothing.
“Could it be her twin, Mekare?”
Still Gremt didn’t answer.
“Unspeakable thought,” whispered Arjun.
“Well, who else could guide gentle Khayman to such things?” Pandora murmured. She was thinking out loud.
Again Gremt didn’t answer.
“And if it is not one of those two,” Pandora went on. “Well, then, who is it?” She asked it as if she were a lawyer and Gremt were a hostile witness in a courtroom.
“It’s far from clear,” Gremt said finally. “But I think I know who it is. What I don’t know is what it wants and what it means to do in the long run.”
“And what is all this to you, precisely?” Pandora demanded.
Arjun was frightened by her tone, and he blinked as if she were a light blinding him with her coldness.
“What does it matter to you, in particular,” she pressed, “what happens to us, creatures like us?”
Gremt pondered. Sooner or later he must reveal all. Sooner or later he must put forth all he knew. But was this the time for it, and how many times must he confess everything? He’d learned what he needed to learn here from Arjun, and he had comforted Arjun as had been his intention. And he had laid eyes on Pandora to whom he owed an immense debt, but he was not sure he could answer her questions fully.
“You are dear to me,” he said to her now in a small but steady voice. “And it gives me a certain pleasure, at last, after all these years, these centuries, to tell you that you are, and that you have always been, a shining star on my path, when you had no way of knowing it.”
She was intrigued and mollified, but not satisfied. She waited. Her pale face, though she’d rubbed it with ashes and oil to make it less luminous tonight, looked virginal and biblical on account of her robes and the delicacy of her features. But behind that beautiful face she was calculating: How could she defend herself against a being like Gremt? Could she use her immense strength to harm him?
“No, you cannot,” he said, giving her the answer. “It’s time for me to leave you both.” He rose to his feet. “I urge you to go to New York, to join with Armand and Louis there.…”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because you must come together to meet the challenge of the Voice, just as you did long ago to meet the challenge of Akasha! You cannot allow this thing to continue. You must get to the root of the mystery, and that is best done if you come together. If you go there, Marius will follow your lead surely. And so will others, others whose names you do not know and have never known, and surely Lestat will come. And it is to Lestat that people look for leadership.”
“Oh why, oh why to that insufferable brat,” murmured Arjun. “What has he ever done but make trouble?”
Gremt smiled. Pandora laughed softly under her breath as she glanced at Arjun, but then she fell silent again, thinking, gazing up at Gremt.
She weighed all this calmly. Nothing he’d said shocked or surprised her.
“And you, Gremt … why is it that you want the best for us?” asked Arjun. He rose to his feet. “You have been so kind to me. You have comforted me. Why?”
Gremt hesitated. He felt a knot loosened inside him.
“I love you all,” he said in a low confidential voice. He wondered if he looked cold to them as he spoke. He was never entirely sure how his emotions registered on this made-up human face, even when he could feel the blood in his veins rushing to his cheeks, feel the tears rising in his eyes. He never knew for sure if all these myriad systems that he so well controlled with his mind were truly working as he wanted them to work. To smile, to laugh, to yawn, to weep—this was nothing. But to truly register what he felt inside his own true invisible heart—well, that was another matter.
“You know me,” he said to Pandora. The tears were indeed rising in his eyes. “Oh, how I have loved you.”
She sat in the peacock chair like a queen on a throne gazing up at him, the soft black silk hood making a dark frame around her radiant face.
“It was long, long ago,” he said, “on the coast of Southern Italy, and a great man, a great scholar of those times, died on that night in a beautiful monastery that he had built called Vivarium. Do you remember these things? Do you remember Vivarium? His name was Cassiodorus, and all the world remembers him, remembers his letters, his books, and most truly what he was, the scholar that he was in those days when darkness was closing over Italy.” His voice was rough now with his emotions. He could hear it breaking. But he went on, staring into her placid unwavering gaze.
“And you saw me then, saw me, a bodiless spirit, rise from the beehives in which I’d been slumbering, extended, and rooted through a thousand tentacles in the bees, in their energy, in their collective and mysterious life. You saw me spring loose at that moment and you saw me embrace with all my power the ludicrous figure of a straw man, a scarecrow, a thing of ridicule in a beggar’s coat and pants, with an eyeless head and fingerless hands, and you saw me weep in that form, weep and mourn for the great Cassiodorus!”
Red tears had risen in her eyes. She had written of this not long ago, but would she believe now that he was the one she’d seen? Would she remain silent?
“I know you remember the words you spoke to me,” he said. “You were so very brave. You didn’t flee from something you couldn’t understand. You didn’t turn away in disgust from something unnatural even to you. You stood your ground and you spoke to me.”
She nodded. She repeated the words she’d said to him that night.
“ ‘If you would have fleshly life, human life, hard life which can move through time and space, then fight for it. If you would have human philosophy, then struggle and make yourself wise, so that nothing can hurt you ever. Wisdom is strength. Collect yourself, whatever you are, into something with a purpose.’ ”
“Yes,” Gremt whispered. “And you said more. ‘But know this: if you would become an organized being as you see in me, love all mankind and womankind and all their children. Do not take your strength from blood! Do not feed on suffering. Do not rise like a god above crowds chanting in adoration. Do not lie.’ ”
She nodded. “Yes,” she said. A gentle smile broke over her face. She was not failing him in this moment. She was opening to him. He saw the same sensitivity and compassion in her now that he had seen those many years ago. And he had waited so very long for this! He wanted to reach out to her, to embrace her, but he didn’t dare.
“I have followed your counsel,” he said. Now he knew the tears were streaming from his eyes, though they never had before. “I’ve followed it always. And I built the Talamasca for you, Pandora, and for all of your kind and for all humankind and I patterned it as best I could on the monks and scholars of that beautiful old monastery, Vivarium, of which not a stone remains. I built it in memoriam to that brave Cassiodorus who studied and dipped his pen to write to the very end, with such strength and devotion, even as the world went dark around him.”
She sighed. She was amazed. And her smile brightened. “And so it was from that moment?”
“Yes, that the Talamasca was born,” he said. “From that encounter.”
Arjun was gazing at him in pure wonder.
She rose from the table.
She moved around it and came towards Gremt. How loving and eager she appeared, how guileless and how fearless. She was no more frightened of him now than she’d been hundreds of years ago.
But he was spent, dangerously spent—more spent than he could ever have imagined by this—and he couldn’t bear the sweetness, the joy, of having her in his arms.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. He wiped foolishly at the tears on his face.
“Talk with us, stay with us here,” she said imploringly. And Arjun uttered the same invitation.
But Gremt did the only thing he could do with his waning strength. He moved away fast, leaving the garden behind him and the lights of the bungalow lost in the forest of bamboo and mango trees.
She could have pursued him. If she did try to pursue, he would have no choice but to vanish, and that he did not want to do. He wanted to remain in this body as long as possible. That was always his choice.
But she didn’t pursue him. She accepted his exit. And he knew he’d see her soon again. He’d see them all soon. And he would tell her and all of the others everything.
He followed the road for a long time, gradually regaining his strength, his body hardening once more, his pulse steady, the tears gone and his vision clear.
Headlights now and then picked him out of the darkness as cars swept by, leaving him once more in silence.
So he had told her. He had confided the great secret of the Talamasca to her first of all, before all others, and very soon he would make it known to the entire tribe of blood drinkers.
Never to those mortal Talamasca members who struggled as they always did to continue their studies. No. They would be left in peace to continue with the fables of the Order’s origins.
But he would tell it to all of them, the great supernatural beings whom the Talamasca had studied from its very beginnings.
And maybe they would understand as she understood, and maybe they would accept as she had accepted. And maybe they would not fail him in those moments of connection he so badly needed with them.
Whatever the case, it was time, was it not, to help them directly, to reach out, to give them what he could as they confronted the greatest challenge in their history. Who better to help them solve the mystery of the Voice than Gremt Stryker Knollys?