“We forged an alliance, Gremt and Hesketh and me. I alone was a true physical being and provided some temporal rhythm for them that I have never fully come to understand. But in that place, that ruined monastery, we signed a pact, and our work together in this world began.”
“But what work was this?” Marius asked.
“The work was to learn,” said Teskhamen. “To learn why blood drinkers walk the Earth, and how that spirit of Amel makes such wonders possible, to learn why ghosts linger and cannot seek the light that attracts so many souls who ascend without a backward glance. To learn how witches might command spirits, and what those spirits are. We formed a resolve in that old ruined monastery, that as we rebuilt its roofs, its walls, its doorways, and replanted its vineyards and gardens, we would learn. We would be our own sect dedicated to no god or saint but to knowledge, understanding. That we would be the studious and profane scholars of an Order in which only the material was sacred, in which only the respect for the physical and all its mysteries governed all else.”
“You are describing the Talamasca to me, aren’t you?” said Marius. He was amazed. “This is the birth of the Talamasca that you are explaining.”
“Yes. It was the year 748, or so say the calendars of now. I well remember it, because I went to the nearby city early of an evening less than a month after our first meeting—properly dressed and with Gremt’s gold—to obtain that old monastery and its overgrown land for us in perpetuity and to safeguard our little refuge from the claims of the mortal world. I led the way. But we all signed the documents. And I have those parchment pages still. Gremt’s name is written on them beneath Hesketh’s name and mine. That land is ours to this very time, and that ancient monastery, still existing in the deep forest of France, has always been the true secret Motherhouse of the Talamasca.”
Marius couldn’t help but smile.
“Gremt was easily strong enough then to travel among humans,” said Teskhamen as he continued. “By day or by night, he had been appearing amongst them for some time. And soon Hesketh was moving among humankind with equal confidence, and the Order of the Talamasca was begun. Ah, it is a long story, but that old monastery is our home now.”
“I see it,” Marius gasped. “Of course. The old mystery is explained. It was you, you who founded it, a blood drinker, a spirit as you call him, and this phantom you loved. But your mortal followers, your members, your scholars, they were never to be told the actual truth?”
Teskhamen nodded. “We were the first Elders,” he said. “And we knew from the beginning that the mortal scholars we brought into the Order must never know our secret, our private truth.
“We were joined by other beings over the years. And our mortal members flourished, attracting acolytes from far and wide. As you know, we came to establish libraries and Motherhouses and places where mortal scholars took their vows to study and learn and never judge the mysterious, the invisible, the palpable unseen. We promulgated our secular principles. Soon the Order had its constitution, its rules, its rubric, and its traditions. Soon the Order had its vast wealth. It had a strength and vitality we could never have predicted. We created the myth of ‘the anonymous Elders’ chosen in each generation from the rank and file, and known only to those who had chosen them, governing from a secret location. But there were no such human Elders. Not until these times, when we have indeed recently anointed such a governing body—and passed to them the reins of the Order as it is now. But we kept always and keep now the secret from our mortal members of who we really are.”
“In a way, I always knew,” said Marius. He couldn’t stop himself from asking, “But who is Gremt, this spirit you’re describing? From where did he come?”
“Gremt was there when Amel entered the Queen,” said Teskhamen. “He was there when the twins, Mekare and Maharet, asked the spirits what had become of Amel. It was he who gave the answer: Amel has now what he has always wanted. Amel has the flesh. But Amel is no more. He’s of the same ilk as this thing which animates you and you, Daniel, and me. If spirits are brothers and sisters to one another, then he is the brother of Amel. He is Amel’s kindred. He was Amel’s equal in a realm we cannot see and for the most part cannot hear.”
“But why did he come down here to be with you,” asked Daniel, “to make this thing, the Talamasca? Why did it attract him, this physical world?”
“Who is to say?” asked Teskhamen. “Why is one human drawn irresistibly to music, another to painting, yet another to the glories of the forest or the field? Why do we weep when we see something beautiful? Why are we weakened by beauty? Why does it break our hearts? He came into the physical for the same reasons Amel hovered over the Queen of Egypt when she lay dying and sought to drink her blood, sought to enter her, sought to be one with her body, sought to know what she saw and heard and felt.” He sighed. “And Gremt came because Amel had come. And Gremt came because Gremt couldn’t stay away.”
There was a long moment of silence.
“You know what the Talamasca is today. It has thousands of dedicated scholars of the supernatural. But it does not know and must not know how it was born. And now its Elders are mortal men, and it is on its own. It is strong, it has its traditions, its sacred trusts, and it no longer needs those of us who brought it into being. Yet those of us who brought it into being can benefit at any moment from its tireless research, can steal into its archives to peruse its treasures, can access its most ancient records or its very latest reports. There is no reason anymore for us to control it. It is now fully on its own.”
“It was always your intent to watch us, to watch the progress of Amel,” said Daniel.
Teskhamen nodded, but then he shrugged. He made a graceful gesture with his open hands. “Yes, and no. Amel was the torch that led the procession through the ages. But many things have been learned and there are many more to learn, certainly, and the great Order of the Talamasca will continue, and so will we.”
He looked from Daniel to Marius.
“Gremt would know more about what he is as well. And Hesketh and all ghosts seek to understand themselves completely too. But we have come now with Amel to a moment we have long dreaded, a moment we knew would come.”
“How so?” asked Daniel.
“We are seeing now the moment we have long feared, the moment when Amel, the spirit of the vampiric Blood, comes to consciousness and seeks to direct his destiny for himself.”
“The Voice!” Marius whispered. The Voice. The voice that had spoken to him in his thoughts had been Amel. The voice urging him to slay had been Amel. The voice urging one blood drinker to kill another was Amel.
“Yes,” said Teskhamen. “After all these long millennia it is aware of itself, and it struggles to feel, and to see, as it did in those first moments when it went into the body and blood of the Queen.”
Daniel was dumbstruck. He climbed off the bench and came and seated himself beside Marius, but he wasn’t looking at either of the others, but rather into his own thoughts.
“Oh, it was never truly unaware,” said Teskhamen. “And the spirits knew it. Gremt knew. Only conscious awareness was no more. But that consciousness was always struggling. You might say it has gone through some sort of infancy towards childhood and now seeks to speak as a child, understand as a child, think as a child. And it would be a man. It would put away childish things quickly if it could. And the glass through which it sees is dark indeed.”
Marius was quietly marveling. Finally he asked, “And Gremt, its brother spirit, he does see clearly as we see, and speak and understand and think as we think? He knows what Amel does not know?”
“No, not really,” said Teskhamen, “as he is not really flesh and blood even as is Amel. He is a spirit still who’s learned to take on form amongst us, to sharpen his spirit eyes and his spirit ears through what he grasps of what we see and hear, but he does not feel what we feel or what Amel feels. And his life is to some extent more penitential than ours has ever been.”
Marius couldn’t contain himself. He stood up and walked slowly back and forth on the paving and then out on the soft warm sand. What do these spirits see when they look at us? He stared down at his own hands, so white, so strong, so flexible, so powerful in every simple human way, and now with preternatural strength. He had always sensed that spirits were attracted to the physical, could not remain indifferent to it, and were creatures of parameters and rules like humans even if they were unseen.
Behind him, Daniel asked, “Well, what will happen now, now that it can speak and plot and connive to destroy the young ones? Why has it done all this?”
Marius turned back and sat down again on the bench. But he could scarcely follow what they were saying. He was thinking of all those intimate whispers of the Voice, all that eerie eloquence, that searching to strike the right pitch.
“The ever-increasing young ones weaken it,” said Teskhamen. “Proliferation of the Blood ultimately weakens it. That is my guess, but it is only a guess. I suppose as a scholar I should say that is my working hypothesis. Amel has limits, though what they are no one knows. Gremt and Amel knew each other in the spirit realm in ways that cannot be described.
“Gremt is a powerful spirit now in the body he’s made for himself, drawn to himself through some form of etheric magnetism. Oh, after all these centuries the Talamasca knows no more about the science of the supernatural than before. I suspect the blood drinker doctor, Fareed, already has learned infinitely more than we have. We approached the data empirically and historically. He approaches it scientifically.”
Marius said nothing. He knew of Fareed and Seth, yes. David Talbot had told him of Fareed and Seth. But he had never laid eyes on either. He had assumed, wrongly, that Maharet would never tolerate their foray into hard science. But in truth, he had not himself been terribly interested. He had had his own reasons for choosing to live away from other blood drinkers with only Daniel for a companion. Daniel had spoken gently a number of times of wanting to approach Fareed and Seth, but Marius had never taken the matter up in a serious way.
“Whatever the case,” Teskhamen went on, “these invisible bodies have limits, and Amel has limits. He is not, as the ancient witches supposed, a thing of infinite size. Invisible does not mean infinite. And I think now he resents the drain upon his body. It—he—would limit the population, and how severely no one can know.”
“And no one can know that he has always been unconscious,” said Marius. He was remembering many things, so many things. “What if two thousand years ago,” he asked, “it was Amel who put the wicked elder of Alexandria up to abandoning the Mother and the Father in the sun? He knew, somehow, on some level, that the Mother and Father would survive, but that all the young ones out there would burn, and ones of your age would suffer as you did. What if Amel knew?”
“And when Akasha awakened,” asked Daniel, “when she went after Lestat. Was that Amel’s doing as well?”
“That we can’t know,” said Teskhamen. “But I wager he comes to consciousness more often and more strongly when there is no fierce mind in the host body to contest his own churning thoughts.”
Churning. That seemed a perfect word for it, Marius agreed. That was a perfect word for his own ruminations. He was seeking to remember so many things, moments over the centuries when he had drunk Akasha’s blood, been visited by visions he had thought to come from her. But what if they had not come from her? What if they had come from Amel?
“So that’s its goal?” said Daniel. “I mean his goal. Is it to confine us to a small population?”
“Oh, I think he dreams of much-greater accomplishments than that,” said Marius. “Can anyone know what his ultimate purpose might be?”
“He rages,” said Daniel. “When he’s gotten into my head, he’s raged.”
Marius shuddered. He had so hoped somehow this would all pass without his active acknowledgment, that somehow his time of holding the survival of the tribe in his hands was past. Had he not cared for the Mother and Father for two millennia? But he knew now he could not remain on the sidelines any longer.
“What do you want us to do?” asked Daniel.
“Join Louis and Armand and Benji as soon as you can. Whatever happens, you, the blood drinkers enlivened by this thing and dependent upon it, must come together and be prepared to act. Go to them now. If you go, others will go.”
“And you’re not one of us?” Marius asked. “You are not coming yourself?”
“I am and I am not. I chose the path of the Talamasca long ago, and that was a path to observe but never to intervene.”
“I don’t see that that old vow much matters now,” said Marius.
“My friend, think on what you’re saying,” said Teskhamen. “I gave my life into the hands of Gremt, and I have given it since to him and to my fellow Elders of the Talamasca. I’m the only blood drinker among them. How can I walk away from them now?”
“But why should you have to walk away?” Marius insisted. “Why won’t you help us? You said yourself that Gremt came into the physical realm to watch this thing, Amel.”
“And what if it is Gremt’s decision that the body in which Amel resides must be destroyed?” asked Daniel. He spoke calmly, reasonably, as if he had no fear. “I mean last time it was the soul of Akasha that was condemned to perish, but not this thing that animated her. If this thing is condemned, then we all die.”
“Ah, but it was not the Talamasca that condemned Akasha’s body and soul to death,” said Teskhamen. “It was Mekare who slew her, and Mekare and her twin who removed the Sacred Core. We ourselves made no decision.”
“Because you didn’t have to,” said Daniel. “Isn’t that so?”
Teskhamen shrugged. He made a little gesture of agreement with his hands.
“And now, you may come to a decision, that’s what you’re telling us,” said Daniel. “You and Gremt and Hesketh and whoever else is with you, if there are other spirit elders with you—you may decide that you think Amel himself should be destroyed.”
“I don’t know,” said Teskhamen softly. “I only know that I stand with Gremt.”
“Even if you perish? Or are you certain yourself to return the way Hesketh returned?”
Teskhamen put up his hands again but this time defensively. “Daniel,” he said gently. “I honestly do not know.”
Marius went silent. He was reaching for courage, true courage to say that if this is what must happen, I will support it, but he did not quite have that courage. His mind wanted possibilities, it wanted some chance of containing or controlling this Voice that did not involve the death of all that he, Marius, was and knew.
“It slays only blood drinkers,” he said. “Why should it perish for this? Even now, it’s made no real destructive incursion into the world.”
Teskhamen’s face was unreadable, except for its geniality, its gentleness.
“For now, I can tell you that it’s not our intention to remain indifferent,” said Teskhamen. “We are with you. That’s why I am here. In time, Gremt will come to you. I’m sure of it. But when that will be, I don’t know. Gremt knows so many things. We are your friends. Think back on your own life, of how the Talamasca once supported you, comforted you, helped you to find Pandora. We’ve never really been your enemy or the enemy of any blood drinker. We’ve had our battles, when mortal members were brought over, yes.”
“Ah, yes, my beloved old friend Raymond Gallant did help me,” said Marius. “He gave his whole life to you and he died without ever knowing who founded his Order, he died without ever knowing who or what we were.”
“Well, he might have died without that knowledge,” said Teskhamen. “But he is with us now. He has been with us since the night he died. I was there when his spirit hovered, remained in the Motherhouse. I saw it when those gathered around his deathbed could not see it. And he is indeed one of us now. He is anchored in the physical now as surely as my Hesketh, and there are other ghosts with us as well.”
“I knew it,” said Daniel softly. “Of course. You would have gathered other ghosts like Hesketh over the years.”
Marius was astonished. He was almost moved to tears.
“Oh, yes, Marius, you will see your beloved Raymond again, I assure you,” said Teskhamen. “You will see all of us—and there are indeed many others—and it is not our wish that the blood drinkers of this world be extinguished. It’s never been. But allow us our old caution, our old passivity, even now.”
“I understand,” said Marius. “You want us to come together as a tribe, the very same thing that Benji wants. You want us to do the very best that we can in the face of this challenge—without your intervention.”
“You’re a splendid being, Marius,” said Teskhamen. “Never have you ever bowed the knee to any fancy, fantasy, or superstition. The others need you now. And this Amel, he knows you, and you know him perhaps better than you think. I was made by the Mother. I have that direct and pure primal blood. But you have even more of it than I was ever given. And this Voice, if he is to be understood, controlled, educated, whatever is to happen, you must surely play a role.”
Teskhamen started to rise, but Marius still held his hand.
“And where will you go now, Teskhamen?” he asked.
“We must come together ourselves before we meet with you and your kindred,” Teskhamen answered. “Believe me, we will eventually come to you. I’m certain of it. Gremt wants to help. I am certain that this is what Gremt wants. I will see you very soon again.”
“You give my love to my precious Raymond,” Marius said.
“He knows you love him, Marius,” said Teskhamen. “Many times he’s watched over you, been near you, seen your pain, and wanted to intervene. But he is loyal to us and our slow and wary ways. He is Talamasca as he was when he was living. You know our old motto: ‘We watch and we are always here.’ ”
It was now an hour before sunrise.
Teskhamen embraced them both. And then he was gone. Simply gone. And they stood alone together on the sand as the wind swept in from the endless sparkling surf, and the vast sprawling city behind them slowly came to morning life.
The next night, Marius needed less than an hour to make all arrangements by phone with his mortal agents, and to ship their possessions and clothes, such as they were, to New York. They’d lodge at a small hotel uptown as they’d always done, where a suite of rooms had always been kept in readiness for them. And they would talk then, once they’d reached New York, about when to go to Benji and Armand and Louis and blessed Sybelle.
Daniel was powerfully excited that they were going. Daniel wanted to be with the others, Marius knew this, and he was happy for Daniel, but he himself was full of foreboding.
The encounter with Teskhamen had stimulated him, there was no doubt of that; he was in fact reeling from the shock.
Daniel could not grasp the extent of it. Yes, Daniel had been Born to Darkness in a time of myriad shocks. But, before that, Daniel had been born into a physical world of myriad changes and shocks. He had never known the dreary and weary mind-set of times past. He had never understood the inveterate pessimism and resignation into which most of the world’s teeming millions had been born and lived and died.
But Marius had known the millennia, and they had been millennia of suffering as well as joy, of darkness as well as light, in which radical change of any kind too often culminated in disappointment and defeat.
Teskhamen. Marius could scarce believe that he had seen him, spoken to him, that such a momentous thing had taken place—that old god of the grove alive now, articulate and eloquent, and pointing the way to the past and the future in the same breath. A great dark portion of Marius’s early history flamed into living color for him, and prompted him to search for a coherent thread to all of his life.
But there was the foreboding.
He could not stop thinking of all those long-ago interludes, when he had lain against the breast of Akasha—her caretaker, her keeper—listening to her heart and trying to fathom her thoughts. He had been inside her, this alien creature Amel. And Amel was inside of Marius now.
“Yes, I’m inside of you,” said the Voice to him. “I am you and you are me.”
There followed silence. Emptiness. And the lingering echo of a threat.