23
Lestat
In the Multitude of Counselors
THERE MUST HAVE BEEN forty or forty-five members of the Undead in the ballroom when I entered it with Louis. I was carrying Rose. We had had the briefest of reunions in the quiet of a cellar room, but I had been unable to quiet her fears, or my own for that matter as to leaving her, and so I’d vowed not to let her out of my sight.
“Be still, my darling,” I whispered to her. “You’re with us now, and everything is made new.”
She snuggled against me, helpless and trusting, her heart beating dangerously fast against my chest.
I stared at the assemblage. There were sixteen or seventeen blood drinkers flanking the broad table, made up as it was of two rows of small square tables, and most of these blood drinkers were speaking quietly to one another in little informal groups, Antoine with Sybelle and Bianca with Allesandra, and some alone, such as Marius or Armand, or my mother, merely watching and waiting without a word. Daniel was next to Marius. Eleni and Eugénie were beside Sevraine. On the far sides of the vast room were other small groups, though why they were out of the way like that I had no idea. One or two were obviously ancient. And the others were far older than I was.
The long broad rectangular table had no chairs at this end facing the door.
And at the other hand the lone chair was empty. Benji Mahmoud was standing by that chair. I sucked in my breath when I saw that empty chair. If they thought I was going to take that chair, they were crazy. Or mad, to put it with more gravitas and grace. I wasn’t going to do it. The two chairs nearest the head of the table were empty too.
Louis brought the bundle of silk pillows and we walked down the length of the ballroom as the others fell silent unevenly. By the time Louis laid out the cushions to make a small square bed with bolsters for Rose in the corner, no one was speaking.
Her arms felt hot around my neck, and her heart was pounding.
I put her down on the pillows and brought the blankets up over her. “Now you be quiet, and don’t try to follow what’s happening. Just rest. Sleep. Be confident that Viktor will be recovered. Be confident, you’re in our care.”
She nodded. Her cheek burned against mine as I kissed her.
I stepped back. She looked like a dewy pink mortal princess deposited there in the shadows, curled up now, with the blankets covering her, bright eyes peering ahead of her at the great grouping around the table.
Benji beckoned for me to come to the head of the table. He gestured to Louis that he take the chair opposite Benji’s own. At Benji’s side, Sybelle stared at me with rapt fascination, and, to her left, my tender fledgling musician Antoine could not have looked more worshipful.
“No,” I said. I did walk up to the head of the table, yes, but I didn’t take the chair. “Who places me at the head of this assembly?” I demanded.
No one responded.
I looked down the two rows of faces. So many I knew and so many I didn’t know, and so many ancient and obviously supremely powerful. And none of the ghosts here or the spirits.
Why not? Why had the great Sevraine brought three ancient female blood drinkers who were off to the side against the wall of French doors, just watching us, but not the spirits and the ghosts of the Talamasca?
And why were they all looking at me, this august company?
“Now, listen to me,” I said. “I don’t have three hundred years in the Blood as you say it now. Why am I standing here? Marius, what do you expect of me? Sevraine, why aren’t you in this place? Or you?” I turned to one of the smoothest blood drinkers of the group. Gregory. “Yes, all right, Gregory,” I said. “Is there anyone who knows our world and their world out there better than you do, Gregory?”
He looked to me to be as old as Maharet or Khayman, and his demeanor was so human as to have convinced anyone. Polish and capability, and fathomless strength, that’s what I saw in him, clothed as he was in some of the fanciest duds the modern world has to offer, with a handmade shirt and a gold watch on his wrist that was worth as much as diamonds.
No one moved or spoke. Marius was regarding me with a faint smile. He wore a black suit, simple, with shirt and tie. Beside him, Daniel was similarly dressed, fully restored, this child who’d been so mad and lost after the last great debacle. And who were these others?
Suddenly the names were coming at me telepathically in a chorus of salutation: Davis, Avicus, Flavius, Arjun, Thorne, Notker, Everard—.
“Very well, stop, please,” I said, putting up my hand. “Look, I went outside and spoke to the crowd because somebody had to do it. But I can’t be the leader here.”
My mother, halfway down the table away from me on the left, started laughing. It was soft laughing but it made me positively furious.
David, who sat beside her, as always the British Oxford Don in his Harris tweed Norfolk jacket, suddenly rose to his feet.
“We want you to lead,” he said. “It’s that simple.”
“And you must lead,” said Marius who sat opposite him and had turned to me without rising, “because no one else feels he or she can effectively do it.”
“That’s absurd,” I said, but nobody heard it because I was drowned out by a chorus of exhortations and encouragements.
“Lestat, we don’t have time for this,” said Sevraine.
Another very commanding female blood drinker, who sat beside Gregory, echoed the same words. She told me in a quick telepathic burst that her name was Chrysanthe.
She stood now and said in a soft voice, “If anyone here had been willing to lead, well, it would have happened a long time ago. You’ve brought something entirely new to our history. I beg you now. Follow through.”
Others were nodding and whispering in agreement.
I had a multitude of objections. What had I ever done but write books, tell stories, take to the rock music stage, and how could they romanticize this out of all proportion?
“I’m the Brat Prince, remember?” I said.
Marius waved that away with a bit of a laugh and told me to “get to it!”
“Yes, please,” said a dark-skinned blood drinker who introduced himself as Avicus. The one beside him, Flavius, blond and blue-eyed, only smiled at me, gazing at me with a trusting admiration that I saw on other faces here too.
“Nothing effective will be done,” said Allesandra, “if you do not take the helm. Lestat, I saw your destiny in you centuries ago in Paris when you came striding fearlessly through the mortal crowd.”
“I’m in agreement,” said Armand in a low voice as if talking to me alone. “Who but the Brat Prince to take charge? Beware of anyone else here who might try.”
Laughter all around.
Allesandra, Sevraine, Chrysanthe, and Eleni and Eugénie looked like queens of ages past in their simple jeweled gowns, with hair as spectacular as the gold trimming on their sleeves, and the rings on their fingers.
Even Bianca, the fragile grieving Bianca, had a majestic poise that commanded respect. And the petite Zenobia, her dark hair trimmed like that of a boy, in her exquisite blue velvet suit, appeared a cherubic page boy from a medieval court.
We each bring to this realm of ours a certain charm, I thought to myself, and obviously I can’t see myself as they see me. I, the bumbler, the blunderer, the impulsive one. And where the Hell was my son!
Deep in my mind a thought did flash for a moment that one who commands must of necessity be wildly imperfect, boldly pragmatic, capable of compromises impossible for the truly wise and the truly good.
“Yes!” said Benji in a whisper, having caught this from my mind.
I looked at him, at his small radiant face, and then back at the assembly.
“Yes, you have it there exactly,” said Marius. “Wildly imperfect, boldly pragmatic. My thoughts as well.”
David had taken his seat again but this time the smooth one rose, the one named Gregory. This was surely one of the most impressive blood drinkers I’d ever beheld. He had a self-possession to rival that of our lost Maharet.
“Lead for now, Lestat,” Gregory said with decorous courtesy, “and we shall see what happens. But for now, you must lead us. Viktor’s been taken. The Voice has turned its fury against those of us who’ve been deaf to it and is now seeking to shift itself out of the body of Mekare, wherever that body is, and into the body of another, one chosen to do the will of the Voice. Now surely all of us will collaborate in what we do here. But you be the leader. Please.” With a bow, he sat down and folded his hands on the gold table.
“All right, what are we to do then?” I said. Out of sheer impatience, I decided to be the chairman if that’s what they wanted. But I did not take the chair. I stood there beside it. “Who is this one who took my son?” I asked. “Does anyone have the slightest clue?”
“I do,” said Thorne. He sat directly under the central chandelier and it made a blaze of his long red hair. His clothes were simple, a working man’s clothes, but he had the casual look of a soldier of fortune. “I know him, this one—brown hair and blue eyes, yes—I know him, but not by name.” He went on. “He hunted the lands of the Franks in my time, and he goes back to the early times, and he made these women here—.” He pointed to Eleni and Allesandra.
“Rhoshamandes,” said Gregory. “How is it possible?”
“Rhoshamandes,” said Allesandra in wonder, glancing at Eleni and at Sevraine.
“Yes, that’s who he is,” said Thorne. “I didn’t have a chance against him.”
“He’s a blood drinker who has never battled with others,” said Sevraine. “How did he fall under the spell of the Voice? I can’t imagine it, or what drove him to murder Maharet and Khayman on his own. It’s madness. He used to avoid quarrels. His domain is an island in the North Sea. He’s always kept entirely to himself. I can’t fathom this.”
“But it was Rhoshamandes,” said Louis quietly. “I see his image in your minds and this is the blood drinker who broke the glass wall and took Viktor. And I’ll tell you something more. This being is not so very skilled at what he’s set out to do. He wanted to take Rose, but he simply couldn’t manage it, and he never harmed me or Thorne, when he might easily have destroyed me, and possibly Thorne too for all I know.”
“He has five thousand years in the Blood,” said Sevraine, “the same as I.” She looked at Gregory with the most tender expression and he nodded.
“He was my friend and more than that,” said Gregory, “but when I rose in the Common Era, I never knew him. What was between us was in those dark nights near the beginning, at the end of the first millennium in our time, and he did great things for me, out of nothing but personal devotion.” Obviously some painful recollection was restraining him. He let the matter drop.
Benji raised his hand but spoke out before anyone had a chance to respond.
“Who’s heard from the Voice? Who’s heard him tonight here?” He looked around expectantly.
No one responded.
Antoine, my beloved fledgling from New Orleans, said softly that he’d never heard the Voice. Sybelle said the same. So did Bianca.
Then Notker spoke up, this bald but handsome blood drinker with the saddest eyes, big puppy eyes, beautiful and swimmingly deep but pulled down at the ends to make him look tragic even if he was smiling.
“He last spoke to me three nights ago,” said Notker. “He told me he had found his instrument, that he’d be imprisoned no longer. He told me to remain in my home—my home is in the French Alps as many of you know—and to keep my people there, that what was to happen with him had no bearing on me. He said he would come into his own, and only the young and the weak would die, and my children were too old, and too strong to be affected.”
He paused, and then went on.
“There are many here in this room whom this Voice would call young and weak.” He looked directly at Armand who sat a few chairs away from me on the left and opposite him. He looked at Louis. He didn’t bother to look at Sybelle or Benji or Antoine, or even Fareed.
“And I will tell you something else,” said Notker. “This Voice can drive a person mad. There is no stopping it now. Months ago, yes, before the killing began, one could block it. But not now. It’s too strong.”
This amazed me. I hadn’t reflected on this. But it made perfect sense. The more the Voice killed off the vampires of the world, the stronger the Voice became.
“That’s true,” Benji declared. “That’s what the young ones are reporting from all over. There’s no shutting him out now. The killings have made him strong.”
Fareed rose to his feet. He’d been sitting quietly beside Seth. They both wore what I would call cassocks of black velvet, with high neatly fitted collars and long rows of jet buttons. He stood facing me.
“The Voice wants to be transferred from the body of Mekare into the body of this chosen one, this anointed,” he said. “And he wants me to affect this. He has told me. He told me the night we arrived here. He wants the cooperation of me and of Seth. I’ve never answered the Voice. And true the Voice is becoming remarkably strong. I can still shut out the Voice but it’s difficult. The Voice must be seen as a force which can harry and drive to madness any mind it possesses. This is now part of the picture. I will not do what the Voice wants. I will not bring an end to the innocent Mekare. At least not, not as things now stand.”
He took his seat and Seth rose. Of all the vampires gathered, Gregory and Seth were perhaps the most powerful. And there was clearly no enmity between them. Gregory was looking eagerly to Seth, and Seth was collecting his thoughts slowly, his eyes moving from one to the other of all those assembled—except those behind him against the wall.
“We must remind ourselves,” said Seth, “that the Voice knows what we are saying to one another. It can obviously, at will, visit any of us, and see through our eyes and hear through our ears, but it cannot visit more than one, or so it seems. But since there is no way to take the Voice by surprise by any decision we make here, then I will say this outright. The Voice must not pass into this one, Rhoshamandes. This one is not spiritually strong. Strong he is in the Blood, yes, but he is not spiritually strong. How do I know this? I know this by what he has already done—the brutal slaughter of Maharet and Khayman who were hacked to death as if by common marauders. And if the Voice takes over such a mind, the Voice will rule it.”
All around the table others nodded, murmured their agreement. All were horrified by what had befallen the great Maharet and the helpless Khayman. I was horrified. I never wanted to relive my last visit to the burnt-out compound, my discovery of those hasty graves. A deep rage was gathered in me against this murderous Rhoshamandes. But we did have to speak more of this now.
“That mustn’t happen,” I agreed. “The Voice cannot go into Rhoshamandes. Absolutely must not happen.”
I’d told them when I arrived what I’d found in the jungle compound. The bodies mutilated and hastily buried, the place burnt. I’d told them of the wreckage, ancient books destroyed, chests of venerable jewelry and treasured objects torn open and scattered and blackened with soot. But I referred to it briefly again for any here that had not heard or understood.
“Common marauders indeed,” I said with disgust.
Jesse bowed her head. I saw the blood tears coming to her eyes. I saw David embrace her.
Pandora, who sat with her head bowed and her arm around her companion, Arjun, wiped the blood tears from her eyes.
Armand spoke up now, not bothering to stand or raise his own voice, but merely addressing the group in a way that forced them to focus more attentively on him. Excellent trick of those who whisper so you must move forward to hear them.