3
I came into a brightly illuminated eighteenth Century salon. The stone walls had been covered in fine rosewood paneling with framed mirrors rising to the ceiling. There were the usual painted chests, upholstered chairs, dark and lush landscapes, porcelain clocks. A small collection of books in the glass-doored bookcases, a newspaper of recent date lying on a small table beside a brocaded winged chair.
High narrow French doors opened onto the stone terrace. where banks of white lilies and red roses gave off their powerful perfume.
And there, with his back to me, at the stone railing stood an eighteenth-century man.
It was Marius when he turned around and gestured for me to come out.
He was dressed as I was dressed. The frock coat was red, not violet, the lace Valenciennes, not Bruxelles. But he wore very much the same costume, his shining hair tied back loosely in a dark ribbon just as mine was, and he looked not at all ethereal as Armand might have, but rather like a superpresence, a creature of impossible whiteness and perfection who was nevertheless connected to everything around him -- the clothes he wore, the stone railing on which he laid his hand, even the moment itself in which a small cloud passed over the bright half moon.
I savored the moment: that he and I were about to speak, that I was really here. I was still clearheaded as I had been on the ship. I couldn't feel thirst. And I sensed that it was his blood in me that was sustaining me. All the old mysteries collected in me, arousing me and sharpening me. Did Those Who Must Be Kept lie somewhere on this island? Would all these things be known?
I went up to the railing and stood beside him, glancing out over the sea. His eyes were now fixed on an island not a half mile off the shore below. He was listening to something that I could not hear. And the side of his face, in the light from the open doors behind us, looked too frighteningly like stone.
But immediately, he turned to me with a cheerful expression, the smooth face vitalized impossibly for an instant, and then he put his arm around me and guided me back into the room.
He walked with the same rhythm as a mortal man, the step light but firm, the body moving through space in the predictable way.
He led me to a pair of winged chairs that faced each other and there we sat down. This was more or less the center of the room. The terrace was to my right, and we had a clear illumination from the chandelier above as well as a dozen or so candelabra and sconces on the paneled walls.
Natural, civilized it all was. And Marius settled in obvious comfort on the brocade cushions and let his fingers curl around the arms of the chair.
As he smiled, he looked entirely human. All the lines, the animation were there until the smile melted again.
I tried not to stare at him, but I couldn't help it.
And something mischievous crept into his face.
My heart was skipping.
"What would be easier for you?" he asked in French. "That I tell you why I brought you here, or that you tell me why you asked to see me?"
"Oh, the former would be easier," I said. "You talk."
He laughed in a soft ingratiating fashion.
"You're a remarkable creature," he said. "I didn't expect you to go down into the earth so soon. Most of us experience the first death much later -- after a century, maybe even two."
"The first death? You mean it's common -- to go into the earth the way I did?"
"Among those who survive, it's common. We die. We rise again. Those who don't go into the earth for periods of time usually do not last."
I was amazed, but it made perfect sense. And the awful thought struck me that if only Nicki had gone down into the earth instead of into the fire -- But I couldn't think of Nicki now. I would start asking inane questions if I did. Is Nicki somewhere? Has Nicki stopped? Are my brothers somewhere? Have they simply stopped?
"But I shouldn't have been so surprised that it happened when it did in your case," he resumed as if he hadn't heard these thoughts, or didn't want to address them just yet. "You've lost too much that was precious to you. You saw and learned a great deal very fast."
"How do you know what's been happening to me?" I asked.
Again, he smiled. He almost laughed. It was astonishing the warmth emanating from him, the immediacy. The manner of his speech was lively and absolutely current. That is, he spoke like a well-educated Frenchman.
"I don't frighten you, do I?" he asked.
"I didn't think that you were trying to," I said.
"I'm not." He made an offhand gesture. "But your selfpossession is a little surprising, nevertheless. To answer your question, I know things that happen to our kind all over the world. And frankly I do not always understand how or why I know. The power increases with age as do all our powers, but it remains inconsistent, not easily controlled. There are moments when I can hear what is happening with our kind in Rome or even in Paris. And when another calls to me as you have done, I can hear the call over amazing distances. I can find the source of it, as you have seen for yourself.
"But information comes to me in other ways as well. I know of the messages you left for me on walls throughout Europe because I read them. And I've heard of you from others. And sometimes you and I have been near to each other -- nearer than you ever supposed -- and I have heard your thoughts. I can hear your thoughts now, of course, as I'm sure you realize. But I prefer to communicate with words."
"Why?" I asked. "I thought the older ones would dispense with speech altogether."
"Thoughts are imprecise," he said. "If I open my mind to you I cannot really control what you read there. And when I read your mind it is possible for me to misunderstand what I hear or see. I prefer to use speech and let my mental facilities work with it. I like the alarm of sound to announce my important communications. For my voice to be received. I do not like to penetrate the thoughts of another without warning. And quite frankly. I think speech is the greatest gift mortals and immortals share."
I didn't know what to answer to this. Again, it made perfect sense. Yet I found myself shaking my head. "And your manner," I said. "You don't move the way Armand or Magnus moved, the way I thought the ancient ones -- "
"You mean like a phantom? Why should I?" He laughed again, softly, charming me. He slumped back in the chair a little further and raised his knee, resting his foot on the seat cushion just as a man might in his private study.
"There were times, of course," he said, "when all of that was very interesting. To glide without seeming to take steps, to assume physical positions that are uncomfortable or impossible for mortals. To fly short distances and land without a sound. To move objects by the mere wish to do so. But it can be crude, finally. Human gestures are elegant. There is wisdom in the flesh, in the way the human body does things. I like the sound of my foot touching the ground, the feel of objects in my fingers. Besides, to fly even short distances and to move things by sheer will alone is exhausting. I can do it when I have to, as you've seen, but it's much easier to use my hands to do things."
I was delighted by this and didn't try to hide it.
"A singer can shatter a glass with the proper high note," he said, "but the simplest way for anyone to break a glass is simply to drop it on the floor."
I laughed outright this time.
I was already getting used to the shifts in his face between masklike perfection and expression, and the steady vitality of his gaze that united both. The impression remained one of evenness and openness-of a startlingly beautiful and perceptive man.
But what I could not get used to was the sense of presence, that something immensely powerful, dangerously powerful, was so contained and immediately there.
I became a little agitated suddenly, a little overwhelmed. I felt the unaccountable desire to weep.
He leaned forward and touched the back of my hand with his fingers, and a shock coursed through me. We were connected in the touch. And though his skin was silky like the skin of all vampires, it was less pliant. It was like being touched by a stone hand in a silk glove.
"I brought you here because I want to tell you what I know," he said. "I want to share with you whatever secrets I possess. For several reasons, you have attracted me."
I was fascinated. And I felt the possibility of an overpowering love.
"But I warn you," he said, "there's a danger in this. I don't possess the ultimate answers. I can't tell you who made the world or why man exists. I can't tell you why we exist. I can only tell you more about us than anyone else has told you so far. I can show you Those Who Must Be Kept and tell you what I know of them. I can tell you why I think I have managed to survive for so long. This knowledge may change you somewhat. That's all knowledge ever really does, I suppose..."
"Yes -- "
"But when I've given all I have to give, you will be exactly where you were before: an immortal being who must find his own reasons to exist."
"Yes," I said, "reasons to exist." My voice was a little bitter. But it was good to hear it spelled out that way.
But I felt a dark sense of myself as a hungry, vicious creature, who did a very good job of existing without reasons, a powerful vampire who always took exactly what he wanted, no matter who said what. I wondered if he knew how perfectly awful I was.
The reason to kill was the blood.
Acknowledged. The blood and the sheer ecstasy of the blood. And without it we are husks as I was in the Egyptian earth.
"Just remember my warning," he said, "that the circumstances will be the same afterwards. Only you might be changed. You might be more bereft than before you came here."
"But why have you chosen to reveal things to me?" I asked. "Surely others have gone looking for you. You must know where Armand is."
"There are several reasons, as I told you," he said. "And probably the strongest reason is the manner in which you sought me. Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner. But you have been truly asking since you left Paris ten years ago."
I understood this, but only inarticulately.
"You have few preconceptions," he said. "In fact, you astound me because you admit to such extraordinary simplicity. You want a purpose. You want love."