The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (163 page)

“Alexandria was not an old city. It had existed for just a little over three hundred years. But it was a great port and the home of the largest libraries in the Roman world. Scholars from all over the Empire came to study there, and I had been one of them in another lifetime, and now I found myself there again.

“Had not the god told me to come, I would have gone deeper into Egypt, ‘to the bottom,’ to use Mael’s phrase, suspecting that the answers to all riddles lay in the older shrines.

“But a curious feeling came on me in Alexandria. I
knew
the gods were there. I knew they were guiding my feet when I sought the streets of the whorehouses and the thieves’ dens, the places where men went to lose their souls.

“At night I lay on my bed in my little Roman house and I called to the gods. I grappled with my madness. I puzzled just as you have puzzled over the power and strength and crippling emotions which I now possessed. And one night just before morning, when the light of only one lamp shone through the sheer veils of the bed where I lay, I turned my eyes towards the distant garden doorway and saw a still black figure standing there.

“For one moment it seemed a dream, this figure, because it carried no scent, did not seem to breathe, did not make a sound. Then I knew it was one of the gods, but it was gone and I was left sitting up and staring after it, trying to remember what I had seen: a black naked thing with a bald head and red piercing eyes, a thing that seemed lost in its own stillness, strangely diffident, only marshaling its strength to move at the last moment before complete discovery.

“The next night in the back streets I heard a voice telling me to come. But it was a less articulate voice than that which had come from the tree. It made known to me only that the door was near. And finally there came the still and silent moment when I stood before the door.

“It was a god who opened it for me. It was a god who said Come.

“I was frightened as I descended the inevitable stairway, as I followed a steeply sloping tunnel. I lighted the candle I had brought with me, and I saw that I was entering an underground temple, a place older than the city of Alexandria, a sanctuary built perhaps under the ancient pharaohs, its walls covered with tiny colored pictures depicting the life of old Egypt.

“And then there was the writing, the magnificent picture writing with its tiny mummies and birds and embracing arms without bodies, and coiling snakes.

“I moved on, coming into a vast place of square pillars and a soaring ceiling. The same paintings decorated every inch of stone here.

“And then I saw in the corner of my eye what seemed at first a statue, a black figure standing near a pillar with one hand raised to rest against the stone. But I knew it was no statue. No Egyptian god made out of diorite ever stood in this attitude nor wore a real linen skirt about its loins.

“I turned slowly, bracing myself against the full sight of it, and saw the same burnt flesh, the same streaming hair, though it was black, the same
yellow eyes. The lips were shriveled around the teeth and the gums, and the breath came out of its throat full of pain.

“ ‘How and whence did you come?’ he asked in Greek.

“I saw myself as he saw me, luminous and strong, even my blue eyes something of an incidental mystery, and I saw my Roman garments, my linen tunic gathered in gold buckles on my shoulders, my red cloak. With my long yellow hair, I must have looked like a wanderer from the north woods, ‘civilized’ only on the surface, and perhaps this was now true.

“But he was the one who concerned me. And I saw him more fully, the seamed flesh burnt to his ribs and molded to his collarbone and the jutting bones of his hips. He was not starved, this thing. He had recently drunk human blood. But his agony was like heat coming from him, as though the fire still cooked him from within, as though he were a self-contained hell.

“ ‘How have you escaped the burning?’ he asked. ‘What saved you? Answer!’

“ ‘Nothing saved me,’ I said, speaking Greek as he did.

“I approached him holding the candle to the side when he shied from it. He had been thin in life, broad-shouldered like the old pharaohs, and his long black hair was cropped straight across the forehead in that old style.

“ ‘I wasn’t made when it happened,’ I said, ‘but afterwards, by the god of the sacred grove in Gaul.’

“ ‘Ah, then he was unharmed, this one who made you.’

“ ‘No, burned as you are, but he had enough strength to do it. He gave and took the blood over and over again. He said, “Go into Egypt and find why this has happened.” He said the gods of the wood had burst into flames, some in their sleep and some awake. He said this had happened all over the north.’

“ ‘Yes.’ He nodded, and he gave a dry rasping laugh that shook his entire form. ‘And only the ancient had the strength to survive, to inherit the agony which only immortality can sustain. And so we suffer. But you have been made. You have come. You will make more. But is it justice to make more? Would the Father and the Mother have allowed this to happen to us if the time had not come?’

“ ‘But who are the Father and the Mother?’ I asked. I knew he did not mean the earth when he said Mother.

“ ‘The first of us,’ he answered, ‘those from whom all of us descend.’

“I tried to penetrate his thoughts, feel the truth of them, but he knew what I was doing, and his mind folded up like a flower at dusk.

“ ‘Come with me,’ he said. And he commenced to walk with a shuffling step out of the large room and down a long corridor, decorated as the chamber had been.

“I sensed we were in an even older place, something built before the temple from which we’d just come. I do not know how I knew it. The chill you felt on the steps here on the island was not there. You don’t feel such things in Egypt. You feel something else. You feel the presence of something living in the air itself.

“But there was more palpable evidence of antiquity as we walked on. The paintings on these walls were older, the colors fainter, and here and there was damage where the colored plaster had flaked and fallen away. The style had changed. The black hair of the little figures was longer and fuller, and it seemed the whole was more lovely, more full of light and intricate design.

“Somewhere far off water dripped on stone. The sound gave a songlike echo through the passage. It seemed the walls had captured life in these delicate and tenderly painted figures, it seemed that the magic attempted again and again by the ancient religious artists had its tiny glowing kernel of power. I could hear whispers of life where there were no whispers. I could feel the great continuity of history even if there was no one who was aware.

“The dark figure beside me paused as I looked at the walls. He made an airy gesture for me to follow him through a doorway, and we entered a long rectangular chamber covered entirely with the artful hieroglyphs. It was like being encased in a manuscript to be inside it. And I saw two older Egyptian sarcophagi placed head to head against the wall.

“These were boxes carved to conform to the shape of the mummies for which they were made, and fully modeled and painted to represent the dead, with faces of hammered gold, and eyes of inlaid lapis lazuli.

“I held the candle high. And with great effort my guide opened the lids of these cases and let them fall back so that I might see inside.

“I saw what at first appeared to be bodies, but when I drew closer I realized that they were heaps of ash in manly form. Nothing of tissue remained to them except a white fang here, a chip of bone there.

“ ‘No amount of blood can bring them back now,’ said my guide. ‘They are past all resurrection. The vessels of the blood are gone. Those who could rise have risen, and centuries will pass before we are healed, before we know the cessation of our pain.’

“Before he closed the mummy cases, I saw that the lids inside were blackened by the fire that had immolated these two. I wasn’t sorry to see them shut up again.

“He turned and moved towards the doorway again, and I followed with the candle, but he paused and glanced back at the painted coffins.

“ ‘When the ashes are scattered,’ he said, ‘their souls are free.’

“ ‘Then why don’t you scatter the ashes!’ I said, trying not to sound so desperate, so undone.

“ ‘Should I?’ he asked of me, the crisped flesh around his eyes widening. ‘Do you think that I should?’

“ ‘You ask me!’ I said.

“He gave one of those dry laughs again, that seemed to carry agony with it, and he led on down the passage to a lighted room.

“It was a library we entered, where a few scattered candles revealed the diamond-shaped wooden racks of parchment and papyrus scrolls.

“This delighted me, naturally, because a library was something I could understand. It was the one human place in which I still felt some measure of my old sanity.

“But I was startled to see another one—another one of us—sitting to the side behind the writing table, his eyes on the floor.

“This one had no hair whatsoever, and though he was pitch black all over, his skin was full and well-modeled and gleamed as if it had been oiled. The planes of his face were beautiful, the hand that rested in the lap of his white linen kilt was gracefully curled, all the muscles of his naked chest well defined.

“He turned and looked up at me. And something immediately passed between us, something more silent than silence, as it can be with us.

“ ‘This is the Elder,’ said the weaker one who’d brought me here. ‘And you see for yourself how he withstood the fire. But he will not speak. He has not spoken since it happened. Yet surely he knows where are the Mother and the Father, and why this was allowed to pass.’

“The Elder merely looked forward again. But there was a curious expression on his face, something sarcastic and faintly amused, and a little contemptuous.

“ ‘Even before this disaster,’ the other one said, ‘the Elder did not often speak to us. The fire did not change him, make him more receptive. He sits in silence, more and more like the Mother and the Father. Now and then he reads. Now and then he walks in the world above. He Drinks the Blood, he listens to the singers. Now and then he will dance. He speaks to mortals in the streets of Alexandria, but he will not speak to us. He has nothing to say to us. But he knows … He knows why this happened to us.’

“ ‘Leave me with him,’ I said.

“I had the feeling that all beings have in such situations. I will make the man speak. I will draw something out of him, as no one else has been able to do. But it wasn’t mere vanity that impelled me. This was the one who had come to me in the bedroom of my house, I was sure of it. This was the one who had stood watching me in my door.

“And I had sensed something in his glance. Call it intelligence, call it interest, call it recognition of some common knowledge—there was something there.

“And I knew that I carried with me the possibilities of a different world, unknown to the God of the Grove and even to this feeble and wounded one beside me who looked at the Elder in despair.

“The feeble one withdrew as I had asked. I went to the writing table and looked at the Elder.

“ ‘What should I do?’ I asked in Greek.

“He looked up at me abruptly, and I could see this thing I call intelligence in his face.

“ ‘Is there any point,’ I asked, ‘to questioning you further?’

“I had chosen my tone carefully. There was nothing formal in it, nothing reverential. It was as familiar as it could be.

“ ‘And just what is it you seek!’ he asked in Latin suddenly, coldly, his mouth turning down at the ends, his attitude one of abruptness and challenge.

“It relieved me to switch to Latin.

“ ‘You heard what I told the other,’ I said in the same informal manner, ‘how I was made by the God of the Grove in the country of the Keltoi, and how I was told to discover why the gods had died in flames.’

“ ‘You don’t come on behalf of the Gods of the Grove!’ he said, sardonic as before. He had not lifted his head, merely looked up, which made his eyes seem all the more challenging and contemptuous.

“ ‘I do and I don’t,’ I said. ‘If we can perish in this way, I would like to know why. What happened once can happen a second time. And I would like to know if we are really gods, and if we are, then what are our obligations to man. Are the Mother and the Father true beings, or are they legend? How did all this start? I would like to know that, of course.’

“ ‘By accident,’ he said.

“ ‘By accident?’ I leaned forward. I thought I had heard wrong.

“ ‘By accident it started,’ he said coolly, forbiddingly, with the clear implication that the question was absurd. ‘Four thousand years ago, by accident, and it has been enclosed in magic and religion ever since.’

“ ‘You are telling me the truth, aren’t you?’

“ ‘Why shouldn’t I? Why should I protect you from the truth? Why should I bother to lie to you? I don’t even know who you are. I don’t care.’

“ ‘Then will you explain to me what you mean, that it happened by accident,’ I pressed.

“ ‘I don’t know. I may. I may not. I have spoken more in these last few moments than I have in years. The story of the accident may be no more true than the myths that delight the others. The others have always chosen the myths. It’s what you really want, is it not?’ His voice rose and he rose slightly out of the chair as if his angry voice were impelling him to his feet.

“ ‘A story of our creation, analogous to the Genesis of the Hebrews, the tales in Homer, the babblings of your Roman poets Ovid and Virgil—a great gleaming morass of symbols out of which life itself is supposed to have sprung.’ He was on his feet and all but shouting, his black forehead knotted with veins, his hand a fist on the desk. ‘It is that kind of tale that fills the documents in these rooms, that emerges in fragments from the anthems and the incantations. Want to hear it? It’s as true as anything else.’

“ ‘Tell me what you will,’ I said. I was trying to keep calm. The volume of his voice was hurting my ears. And I heard things stirring in the rooms near us. Other creatures, like that dried-up wisp of a thing that had brought me in here, were prowling about.