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.