"We go into the fire or we go into legend, " said a teller of the tale. Then came accounts of chaos in Rome, of dozens of leaders who put on the black hood and the black robes to preside over the coven. And then it seemed there were none. Since the year 1700 there had been no word anymore from Italy. For half a century Armand had not been able to trust to his passion or that of the others around him to create the frenzy of the true Sabbat. And he had dreamed of his old Master, Marius, in those rich robes of red velvet, and seen the palazzo full of vibrant paintings, and he had been afraid. Then another had come.
His children rushed down into the cellars beneath les Innocents to describe to him this new vampire, who wore a furlined cloak of red velvet and could profane the churches and strike down those who wore crosses and walk in the places of light. Red velvet. It was mere coincidence, and yet it maddened him and seemed an insult to him, a gratuitous pain that his soul couldn't bear. And then the woman had been made, the woman with the hair of a lion and the name of an angel, beautiful and powerful as her son. And he had come up the stairway out of the catacomb, leading the band against us, as the hooded ones had come to destroy him and his Master in Venice centuries before. And it had failed. He stood dressed in these strange lace and brocade garments. He carried coins in his pockets. His mind swam with images from the thousands of books he had read. And he felt himself pierced with all he had witnessed in the places of light in the great city called Paris, and it was as if he could hear his old Master whispering in his ear: But a millennium of nights will be yours to see light as no mortal has ever seen it, to snatch from the distant stars as if you were Prometheus an endless illumination in which to understand all things.
"All things have eluded my understanding, " he said. "I am as one whom the earth has given back, and you, Lestat and Gabrielle, are like the images painted by my old Master in cerulean and carmine and gold. " He stood still in the doorway, his hands on the backs of his arms, and he was looking at us, asking silently: What is there to know? What is there to give? We are the abandoned of God. And there is no Devil's Road spinning out before me and there are no bells of hell ringing in my ears.
4
An hour passed, perhaps more. Armand sat by the fire. No marks any longer on his face from the long-forgotten battle. He seemed, in his stillness, to be as fragile as an emptied shell. Gabrielle sat across from him, and she too stared at the flames in silence, her face weary and seemingly compassionate. It was painful for me not to know her thoughts. I was thinking of Marius. And Marius and Marius . . . the vampire who had painted pictures in and of the real world. Triptychs, portraits, frescoes on the walls of his palazzo. And the real world had never suspected him nor hunted him nor cast him out. It was this band of hooded fiends who came to burn the paintings, the ones who shared the Dark Gift with him-had he himself ever called it the Dark Gift?-they were the ones who said he couldn't live and create among mortals. Not mortals. I saw the little stage at Renaud's and I heard myself sing and the singing become a roar. Nicolas said, "It is splendid. " I said, "It is petty. " And it was like striking Nicolas. In my imagination he said what he had not said that night: "Let me have what I can believe in. You would never do that. " The triptychs of Marius were in churches and convent chapels, maybe on the walls of the great houses in Venice and Padua. The vampires would not have gone into holy places to pull them down. So they were there somewhere, with a signature perhaps worked into the detail, these creations of the vampire who surrounded himself with mortal apprentices, kept a mortal lover from whom he took the little drink, went out alone to kill. I thought of the night in the inn when I had seen the meaninglessness of life, and the soft fathomless despair of Armand's story seemed an ocean in which I might drown. This was worse than the blasted shore in Nicki's mind. This was for three centuries, this darkness, this nothingness. The radiant auburn-haired child by the fire could open his mouth again and out would come blackness like ink to cover the world. That is, if there had not been this protagonist, this Venetian master, who had committed the heretical act of making meaning on the panels he painted-it had to be meaning-and our own kind, the elect of Satan, had made him into a living torch. Had Gabrielle seen these paintings in the story as I had seen them? Did they burn in her mind's eye as they did in mine? Marius was traveling some route into my soul that would let him roam there forever, along with the hooded fiends who turned the paintings into chaos again. In a dull sort of misery, I thought of the traveler's tales that Marius was alive, seen in Egypt or Greece. I wanted to ask Armand, wasn't it possible? Marius must have been so very strong . .
. But it seemed disrespectful of him to ask.
"Old legend, " he whispered. His voice was as precise as the inner voice. Unhurriedly, he continued without ever looking away from the flames. "Legend from the olden times before they destroyed us both. " "Perhaps not, " I said. Echo of the visions, paintings on the walls. "Maybe Marius is alive. "
"We are miracles or horrors, " he said quietly, "depending upon how you wish to see us. And when you just know about us, whether it's through the dark blood or promises or visitations, you think anything is possible. But that isn't so. The world closes tight around this miracle soon enough; and you don't hope for other miracles. That is, you become accustomed to the new limits and the limits define everything once again. So they say Marius continues. They all continue somewhere, that's what you want to believe.
"Not a single one remains in the coven in Rome from those nights when I was taught the ritual; and maybe the coven itself is no longer even there. Years and years have passed since there was any communication from the coven. But they all exist somewhere, don't they? After all, we can't die. " He sighed. "Doesn't matter, " he said. Something greater and more terrible mattered, that this despair might crush Armand beneath it. That in spite of the thirst in him now, the blood lost when we had fought together, and the silent furnace of his body healing the bruises and the broken flesh, he could not will himself into the world above to hunt. Rather suffer the thirst and the heat of the silent furnace. Rather stay here and be with us. But he already knew the answer, that he could not be with us. Gabrielle and I didn't have to speak to let him know. We did not even have to resolve the question in our minds. He knew, the way God might know the future because God is the possessor of all the facts. Unbearable anguish. And Gabrielle's expression all the more weary, sad.
"You know that with all my soul I do want to take you with us, " I said. I was surprised at my own emotion. "But it would be disaster for us all. " No change in him. He knew. No challenge from Gabrielle.
"I cannot stop thinking of Marius, " I confessed. I know. And you do not think of Those Who Must Be Kept, which is most strange.
"That is merely another mystery, " I said. "And there are a thousand mysteries. I think of Marius! And I'm too much the slave of my own obsessions and fascination. It's a dreadful thing to linger so on Marius, to extract that one radiant figure from the tale. " Doesn't matter. If it pleases you, take it. I do not lose what I give.