"There is no place where they can hide from me, " I said, "these godless and powerless ones who would destroy les Innocents. There is no lock that can keep me out. " He stared back at me silently. He appeared sad and calm. His eyes were darkened slightly, but they were untroubled by malice or rage. He didn't speak for a long moment, and then:
"A splendid mission, that, " he said, "to devil them mercilessly as you live among them. But it's you still who don't understand. "
"How so? " I asked.
"You can't endure in the world, living among men, you cannot survive. "
"But I do, " I said simply. "The old mysteries have given way to a new style. And who knows what will follow? There's no romance in what you are. There is great romance in what I am! "
"You can't be that strong, " he said. "You don't know what you're saying, you have only just come into being, you are young. "
"He is very strong, however, this child, " mused the queen, "and so is his beautiful newborn companion. They are fiends of high-blown ideas and great reason, these two. "
"You can't live among men! " Armand insisted again. His face colored for one second. But he wasn't my enemy now; rather he was some wondering elder struggling to tell me a critical truth. And at the same moment he seemed a child imploring me, and in that struggle lay his essence, parent and child, pleading with me to listen to what he had to say.
"And why not? I tell you I belong among men. It is their blood that makes me immortal. "
"Ah, yes, immortal, but you have not begun to understand it, " he said. "It's no more than a word. Study the fate of your maker. Why did Magnus go into the flames? It's an age-old truth among us, and you haven't even guessed it. Live among men, and the passing years will drive you to madness. To see others grow old and die, kingdoms rise and fall, to lose all you understand and cherish-who can endure it? It will drive you to idiot raving and despair. Your own immortal kind is your protection, your salvation. The ancient ways, don't you see, which never changed! " He stopped, shocked that he had used this word, salvation, and it reverberated through the room, his lips shaping it again.
"Armand, " the old queen sang softly. "Madness may come to the eldest we know, whether they keep to the old ways or abandon them. " She made a gesture as if to attack him with her white claws, screeching with laughter as he stared coldly back. "I have kept to the old ways as long as you have and I am mad, am I not? Perhaps that is why I have kept them so well! " He shook his head angrily in protest. Was he not the living proof it need not be so? But she drew near to me and took hold of my arm, turning my face towards hers.
"Did Magnus tell you nothing, child? " she asked. I felt an immense power flowing from her.
"While others prowled this sacred place, " she said, "I went alone across the snow-covered fields to find Magnus. My strength is so great now it is as if I have wings. I climbed to his window to find him in his chamber, and together we walked the battlements unseen by all save the distant stars. " She drew even closer, her grip tightening.
"Many things, Magnus knew, " she said. "And it is not madness which is your enemy, not if you are really strong. The vampire who leaves his coven to dwell among human beings faces a dreadful hell long before madness comes. He grows irresistibly to love mortals! He comes to understand all things in love. "
"Let me go, " I whispered softly. Her glance was holding me as surely as her hands.
"With the passage of time he comes to know mortals as they may never know each other, " she continued, undaunted, her eyebrows rising, "and finally there comes the moment when he cannot bear to take life, or bear to make suffering, and nothing but madness or his own death will ease his pain. That is the fate of the old ones which Magnus described to me, Magnus who suffered all afflictions in the end. " At last she released me. She receded from me as if she were an image in a sailor's glass.
"I don't believe what you're saying, " I whispered. But the whisper was like a hiss. "Magnus? Love mortals? "
"Of course you do not, " she said with her graven jester's smile. Armand, too, was looking at her as if he did not understand.
"My words have no meaning now, " she added. "But you have all the time in the world to understand! " Laughter, howling laughter, scraping the ceiling of the crypt. Cries again from within the walls.
She threw back her head with her laughter. Armand was horror- stricken as he watched her. It was as if he saw the laughter emanating froth her like so much glittering light.
"No, but it's a lie, a hideous simplification! " I said. My head was throbbing suddenly. My eyes were throbbing. "I mean it's a concept born out of moral idiocy, this idea of love! " I put my hands to my temples. A deadly pain in me was growing. The pain was dimming my vision, sharpening my memory of Magnus's dungeon, the mortal prisoners who had died among the rotted bodies of those condemned before them in the stinking crypt. Armand looked to me now as if I were torturing him as the old queen tortured him with her laughter. And her laughter went right on, rising and falling away. Armand's hands went out towards me as if he would touch me but did not dare. All the rapture and pain I'd known in these past months came together inside me. I felt quite suddenly as if I would begin to roar as I had that night on Renaud's stage. I was aghast at these sensations. I was murmuring nonsense syllables again aloud.
"Lestat! " Gabrielle whispered.
"Love mortals? " I said. I stared at the old queen's inhuman face, horrified suddenly to see the black eyelashes like spikes about her glistening eyes, her flesh like animated marble. "Love mortals? Does it take you three hundred years! " I glared at Gabrielle. "From the first nights when I held them close to me, I loved them. Drinking up their life, their death, I love them. Dear God, is that not the very essence of the Dark Gift? " My voice was growing in volume as it had that night in the theater. "Oh, what are you that you do not? What vile things that this is the sum of your wisdom, the simple capacity to feel! " I backed away from them, looking about me at this giant tomb, the damp earth arching over our heads. The place was passing out of the material into a hallucination.
"God, do you lose your reason with the Dark Trick, " I asked, "with your rituals, your sealing up of the fledglings in the grave? Or were you monsters when you were living? How could we not all of us love mortals with every breath we take! " No answer. Except the senseless cries of the starving ones. No answer. Just the dim beating of Nicki's heart.
"Well, hear me, whatever the case, " I said. I pointed my finger first at Armand, at the old queen.
"I never promised my soul to the devil for this! And when I made this one it was to save her from the worms that eat the corpses around here. If loving mortals is the hell you speak of, I am already in it. I have met my fate. Leave me to it and all scores are settled crow. " My voice had broken. I was gasping. I ran my hands back through my hair. Armand seemed to shimmer as he came close to me. His face was a miracle of seeming purity and awe.
"Dead. things, dead things. . . " I said. "Come no closer. Talking of madness and love, in this reeking place! And that old monster, Magnus, locking them up in his dungeon. How did he love them, his captives? The way boys love butterflies when they rip off their wings!
"No, child, you think you understand but you do not, " sang the woman vampire unperturbed.
"You have only just begun your loving. " She gave a soft lilting laugh. "You feel sorry for them, that is all. And for yourself that you cannot be both human and inhuman. Isn't it so? "
"Lies! " I said. I moved closer to Gabrielle. I put my arm around her.
"You will come to understand all things in love, " the old queen went on, "when you are a vicious and hateful thing. This is your immortality, child. Ever deeper understanding of it. " And throwing up her arms, again she howled.