"And what did she say?"
"She banished us both. She gave us infusions of her blood. She insisted on this. And then she told us we were not to come back. She'd already banished David." She glanced at him and then went on. "She said pretty much the same things to us she'd said to him. The time was past when she could extend hospitality any longer to others, that she and Mekare and Khayman must now be alone--."
"Khayman wasn't there at the time," David interjected. "Isn't that so?"
She nodded. "He'd been missing for a week at least." She went on with her story. "I begged her to let me remain. Thorne went down on his knees. But she was adamant. She said to leave then, not to wait on anything as cumbersome as regular transportation, but to take to the air and put as much distance between ourselves and her as we could. I went to England immediately to see David. I think Thorne actually went to New York. I think many are going to New York. I think he went to Benji and Armand and Louis, but I'm not sure. Thorne was in a fury. He so loves Maharet. But she warned him not to try to deceive her. She said she'd know if he lingered. She was agitated. More agitated than I'd ever seen her. She pressed on me some routine information about resources, money, but I reminded her she'd seen to that. I knew how to get along out here."
"The infusions of blood," I said, "what did you see in those infusions?"
This was a highly sensitive question to ask a blood drinker, and especially to ask this blood drinker who was the loyal biological descendant of Maharet. But even fledglings see images when they receive the blood of their makers; even they experience a telepathic connection in those moments that is otherwise closed. I stood firm.
Her face softened. She was sad, thoughtful. "Many things," she said, "as always. But this time, they were images of the mountain and the valley where the twins had been born. At least, I think that's what I was seeing, seeing them in their old village and seeing them when they were alive."
"So this is what was on her mind," I said. "Memories of her human past."
"I think so," said Jesse in a small voice. "There were other images, colliding, cascading, you know how it is, but again and again, it was those long-ago times. Sunshine. Sunshine in the valley ..."
David was giving me one of his subtle little gestures to be gentle, tread lightly.
But we both knew these visions or memories were like unto what mortals think about at the end of their lives, their earliest happiest memories.
"She's in the Amazon, isn't she?" I said. "Deep in the jungles."
"Yes," said Jesse. "She forbade me to tell anyone, and I'm breaking her confidence now. She's in uncharted jungle. The only tribe in the area fled after our arrival there."
"I'm going there," I said. "I want to see for myself what's happening. If we're all to perish because of this Voice, well, I want to hear from her what's going on."
"Lestat, she doesn't know what's going on," said Jesse. "That's what I'm trying to tell you."
"I know--."
"I think all this disgusts her. She wants to be left alone. I think this Voice may be driving her to think about destroying herself and Mekare and, well, all of us."
"I don't think the Voice wants us destroyed," I said.
"But she may be thinking of it," said Jesse sharply. "I'm only speculating," she confessed. "I know she's confused, angry, even bitter, and this from Maharet. Maharet of all immortals. Maharet."
"She's human still," David said softly. He stroked Jesse's arm. He kissed her hair. "We're all human no matter how long we go on."
He spoke with the easy authority of an old Talamasca scholar, but I actually agreed with him. "If you ask me," he said softly to Jesse, "finding her sister, being reunited with her sister, has destroyed Maharet."
Jesse wasn't surprised by this or jarred by it.
"She never leaves Mekare alone now," Jesse said. "And Khayman, well, Khayman is hopeless, roaming off for weeks at a time, and stumbling back in with no memory of where he's been."
"Well, surely he's not the source of the Voice," said David.
"No, of course not," I said. "But the Voice is controlling him. Isn't that obvious? The Voice is manipulating him as it has been all along. I suspect the Voice began these massacres with him; and then moved to enlisting others. The Voice is working on a number of fronts, you might say. But Maharet and Khayman are too close for any telepathic bridge. She can't know. And he obviously can't tell her. He hasn't the wits to tell her or anyone."
A dark cold feeling came over me that, no matter how this came to an end, Khayman as an immortal on this Earth was finished. Khayman wouldn't survive. And I dreaded the loss of Khayman. I dreaded the loss of all he'd experienced in his thousands of years of roaming, the loss of the tales he might have told of the early battles of the First Brood, of his later wanderings as Benjamin the Devil. I dreaded the loss of the gentle, sweet-hearted Khayman whom I'd briefly known. This was too painful. Who else wouldn't survive?
Jesse appeared to be reading my thoughts. She nodded. "I'm afraid you're right."
"Well, I think I know what's happening," I said. "I'm going there now. After I see her I'll meet you in Manaus. That's far enough away from her, isn't it?"
David nodded. He said he knew of a fashionable little jungle lodge about thirty miles out of Manaus located on the Acajatuba River. Ah, British gentlemen, they always know how to go forth into the wilderness in style. I smiled. We agreed we'd meet there.
"Are you ready for this journey tonight?" he asked.
"Absolutely. It's westward. We'll gain six hours of darkness. Let's go."
"You do realize there's danger here, don't you?" asked David. "You're going against Maharet's express wish."
"Of course," I said. "But why did you two come to me? Didn't you expect me to do something? Why are you both staring at me?"
"We came to urge you to go with us to New York," Jesse explained timidly, "to urge you to call a meeting of all the powerful ones of the tribe."
"You don't need me to do that," I said. "Go yourselves. Call the meeting."
"But everyone will come if you call the meeting," David said.
"And who is everyone? I want to see Maharet."
They were edgy, uncertain.
"Look, you go on ahead of me to the Amazon now, and I'll meet you later this very night. And if I don't--if I don't meet you in two nights at the jungle lodge on the river, well, have a Requiem Mass said for me in Notre Dame de Paris."
I left them then, knowing I'd be traveling much faster and higher than either of them, and also, I went back to my chateau for my ax.
It was rather silly, my wanting my little ax.
I also stripped off the fancy velvet and lace, and put on a decent heavy leather jacket for the journey. I should have cut my hair for those jungles, but I was too damned vain to do that. Samson never loved his hair as much as I love mine. And then I set out for the Amazon.
Five hours before dawn in that great southerly region, I was descending towards the endless channel of deep darkness that was the Amazon rain forest with the silver streak of river winding through it. I was scanning for pinpoints of light, infinitesimal flickers that no mortal eye could ever see.
And then taking my best shot at it, I went down, crashing through the wet humid canopy, descending through crackling and breaking branches and vines until I landed rather awkwardly in the dense darkness of a grove of ancient trees.
At once I was imprisoned by vines and clattering branches in the understory, but I stood quiet, very quiet, listening, making like a stealthy beast on the silent prowl.
The air was wet and fragrant and filled with the simmering voices of the slithering, twittering, and voracious creatures around me everywhere.
But I could hear their voices too. Maharet and Khayman quarreling in the ancient tongue.
If there was a path in the vicinity leading towards those voices, well, I never found it.
I didn't dare try to cut my way through with the ax. That would have made too much noise and du
lled the blade. I just made my way slowly, painstakingly, over bulbous roots and through stinging brush, suppressing my respiration, my pulse, as best I could along with my thoughts.
I could hear Maharet's low sobbing voice and hear Khayman weeping.
"Did you do these things!" she was demanding. She was speaking their ancient language. I caught the images. Was he the one who'd burnt the house in Bolivia? Had he done this? What about the carnage in Peru? Was he responsible for the other burnings? Was this his work? All of it? The time had come for him to tell her. The time had come for him to be honorable with her.
I caught flashes from his mind, opened up like a ripe fruit in distress: flames, anguished faces, people screaming. He was in a paroxysm of guilt.
And there came into my mind the badly concealed image of a boiling and smoking volcano. An errant shimmering flash.
No.
He was pleading with her to understand that he didn't know what he'd done. "I never killed Eric," he said. "I couldn't have been the one. I can't remember. He was dead, finished when I found his body."
She didn't believe him.
"Kill me!" he wailed suddenly.
I drew closer and closer.
"You did kill Eric, didn't you? You were the one who did it!"
Eric. Eric had been with Maharet over twenty years ago when Akasha rose. Eric had been at the council table with us when we'd confronted Akasha and opposed her. I had never known Eric, and had never heard of Eric since. Mael, I knew, had perished in New York, though precisely how I wasn't certain. He'd gone into the sun on the steps of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, but surely that had not been enough to destroy him. But Eric? I didn't know.
"It's finished," Khayman cried. "I will not continue. You do what you have to do with me. You do it!" He was wailing like one in mourning. "My journey in this world is finished."
I saw the volcano again.
Pacaya. That was the name of the volcano. The image was coming from her, not from him. He couldn't even know what she was thinking.
I continued moving through the jungles as slowly and silently as I could. But they were so deep into this agonizing discussion, they took no notice.
At last, I came to the black steel mesh of a great enclosure. Dimly through the dense green foliage I could see both of them now in a cavernous lighted room--Maharet with her arms around Khayman, Khayman with his face in his hands. Maharet was crying with a deep wrenching feminine sound to it, like a young girl crying.
She stood back and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand like a child might do it. Then she looked up.
She'd seen me.
"Leave here, Lestat," she said in a clear voice that carried over the vast enclosure. "Go. It's not safe for you here."
"I wouldn't harm him," Khayman said with a groan. "I would never harm him or anyone of my own will." He was peering through the foliage trying to make me out. I think he was actually addressing me.
"Maharet, I must speak to you," I said. "I don't want to leave here without talking to you."
Silence.
"You know how things are, Maharet. I have to speak to you for myself and for others. Please, let me in."
"I don't want any of you here!" she cried out. "Do you understand? Why do you challenge me?"
Suddenly an invisible forced ripped through the enclosure, uprooting palms, shearing off leaves, and then buckling the steel mesh before it, it drove me backwards, bits and pieces of the mesh flying everywhere in silver needles.
It was the Mind Gift.
I fought it with all my strength but was powerless against it. It hurled me hundreds of yards, slamming me into one crackling tangle of foliage after another until finally I fell against the broad red trunk of an immense tree. I was sprawled on its monstrous roots.
I must have been a mile from where I'd been standing. I couldn't even see the light of the enclosure from here. I could hear nothing.
I tried to stand up but the understory here was too thick for anything but crawling or climbing towards a break in the jungle that surrounded a dim winding pond. A great scummy growth covered much of the surface, but here and there the water reflected the light of the sky like brilliant silvery glass.
It seemed to me that human hands or immortal hands had been at work here, arranging a rim of damp and pitted stones along the banks.
The insects were twittering and whistling in my ears yet staying clear of me. I had a gash in my face but it was of course already healing. They were dive-bombing at the blood and then veering off in natural revulsion.
I sat down on the largest boulder and tried to think what to do. She wasn't going to permit me to come in, no doubt of that. But what had I just seen? What did it mean?
I closed my eyes and listened, but all I heard were the voices of this rapacious and devouring jungle.
There came a soft living pressure on my back. I went alert instantly. There was a hand on my shoulder. A cloud of the sweetest perfume enveloped me, something of green herbs, flowers, and citrus, very strong. A vague sense of happiness came over me, but this was not originating with me. I knew it was absolutely pointless to struggle against this hand.
Slowly I turned and looked down at the long white fingers, and then up into Mekare's face.
The pale-blue eyes were innocent and wondering, the flesh like alabaster all but glowing in the dark. No expression actually, but a suggestion of drowsiness, of languor and of sweetness. No harm.
Just the faintest telepathic shimmer: my image, my image in one of those rock videos I'd made years ago--dancing and singing, and singing about us. Gone.
I searched for a spark of intellect, but this was like the agreeable face of some poor mad mortal in whom most of the brain had long ago been destroyed. It seemed the innocence and curiosity were artifacts of flesh and reflex more than anything else. Her mouth was the perfect pink of a seashell. She wore a long pink gown trimmed in gold. Here and there twinkled diamonds and amethysts sewn exquisitely into the border.
"Beautiful," I whispered. "Such loving work."
I was as near to panic as I'd been in a long time, but then as always happens, always when I'm afraid, when anything is making me afraid, I got angry. I remained very still. She appeared to be studying me in an almost dreamy way, but she wasn't. She might have been blind for all I could tell.
"It is you?" I said. I struggled to say it in the ancient tongue, searching in memory for the smattering of it I knew. "Mekare, is it you?"
There must have been a swelling of great pride in me, ridiculous arrogance to think suddenly with fierce elation that I could reach this creature when all others had failed, that I could touch the surface of her mind and quicken it.
Desperately, I wanted to see that image of me again, from the rock videos. That image or any image, but there was nothing. I sent forth the image. I remembered those songs and canticles of our origins, hoping against hope that this had some meaning for her.
But one wrong word, and think what she might do. She could crush my skull with both hands. She could blast me with obliterating fire. But I couldn't think of this, or imagine it.
"Beautiful," I said again.
No change. I detected a low humming coming from her. We don't need our tongues to hum? It was almost a purr as might come from a cat, and suddenly her eyes were as remote and without consciousness as those of a statue.
"Why are you doing it?" I asked. "Why kill all those young ones, those poor little young ones?"
With no spark of recognition or response, she moved forward and kissed me, kissing the right side of my face with those seashell-pink lips, those cold lips. I brought my hand up slowly and let my fingers move into the soft thickness of her waving red hair. I touched her head ever so gently.
"Mekare, trust in me," I whispered in that old language.
A riot of sounds exploded behind me, again some force tearing through a forest that was almost impenetrable. The air was filled with a rain of tiny falling green leaves. I saw them falling on the
viscid surface of the water.
Maharet stood there to my left helping Mekare to her feet, making soft gentle crooning sounds as she did it, her fingers stroking Mekare's face.
I climbed to my feet as well.
"You leave here now, Lestat," said Maharet, "and don't you come back. And don't you urge anyone ever again to come here!"
Her pale face was streaked with blood. There was blood on her pale-green silk robe, blood in her hair, all this from weeping. Blood tears. Blood-red lips.
Mekare stood beside her gazing at me impassively, eyes drifting over the palm fronds, the mesh of branches that shut out the sky, as if she were listening to the birds or the insects and not to anything spoken here.
"Very well," I said. "I came to help. I came to learn what I could."
"Say no more! I know why you came," she said. "You must go. I understand. I would have done the same thing if I were you. But you must tell the others never to look for us again. Never. Do you think I would ever try to hurt you, you or any of the others? My sister would never do this. She would never harm anyone. Go now."
"What about Pacaya, the volcano?" I asked. "You can't do this, Maharet. You can't go into the volcano, you and Mekare. You can't do this to us."
"I know!" she said. It was almost a groan. A terrible deep groan of anguish.
A deep groan came out of Mekare as well, a horrid groan. It was as if her only voice were in her chest and she turned to her sister suddenly lifting her hands but only a little, and letting them drop as if she couldn't manage to really work them at all.
"Let me talk to you," I pleaded.
Khayman was coming towards us, and Mekare turned sharply away and moved towards him and lay against his chest and he enfolded her with his arms. Maharet stared at me. She was shaking her head, moaning as if her fevered thoughts had a little song to them of moans.
Before I could speak again, there came a heated blast of air against my face and chest. It blinded me. I thought it was the Fire Gift, and she was making an immediate mockery of her own words.
Well, Brat Prince, I thought, you gambled, you lost! And you get to die now. Here's your personal Pacaya.
But I was merely flying backwards through the bracken again, smashing against tree trunks, and through clattering crackling branches and wet fronds. I twisted and turned with all my might trying to escape this thing, trying to flee to one side or the other, but it was driving me backwards at such speed that I was helpless.