Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [205]
“But don’t you see, all my understanding of our powers is reinforced by their beauty and their majesty! I know whence we come! I have seen you drink from the Queen. I have seen you wake from your swoon. I have seen your skin healing.
“But what did Amadeo ever see? What did Santino ever see? And you marvel at the extent of their heresy.”
“Don’t call it heresy!” I declared suddenly, the words bursting from my lips. “Don’t speak as if this were a worship! I have told you that yes, there are secret things, and things which no one can explain! But we are not worshipers!”
“It is a truth you revealed to me,” she said, “in their paradox, in their presence!” Her voice rose, ill-tempered and utterly alien to her. “You might have smashed Santino’s ill-founded crusade with a mere glimpse of the Divine Parents.”
I glared at her. A madness took hold of me.
I rose to my feet. I looked about the shrine furiously.
“Gather up all you possess,” I said suddenly. “I’m casting you out of here!”
She sat still as she had been before, gazing up at me in cold defiance.
“You heard what I said. Gather your precious clothes, your looking glass, your pearls, your jewels, your books, whatever you want. I’m taking you out of here.”
For a long moment she looked at me, glowering, I should say, as if she didn’t believe me.
Then all at once she moved, obeying me in a series of quick gestures. And within the space of a few moments, she stood before me, her cloak about her, her bundle clasped to her chest, looking as she had some countless years before when first I had brought her here.
I don’t know whether she looked back at the face of the Mother and the Father. I did not. I did not for one moment believe that either would prevent this dreadful expulsion.
Within moments, I was on the wind, and I didn’t know where I would take her.
I traveled higher and faster than I had dared to do before, and found it well within my power. Indeed, my own speed amazed me. The land before me had been burnt in recent wars and I knew it to be spotted here and there with ruined castles.
It was to one of these that I took her, making certain that the town all around had been pillaged and deserted, and then I set her down in a stone room within the broken fortress, and went in search of a place where she might sleep by day in the ruined graveyard.
It did not take me long to be confident that she could survive here. In the burnt-out chapel there were crypts beneath the floor. There were hiding places everywhere.
I went back to her. She was standing as I had left her, her face as solemn as before, her brilliant oval eyes fixed on me.
“I want no more of you,” I said. I was shuddering. “I want no more of you that you could say such a thing, that you could blame me that Santino took from me my child! I can have no more of you. You have no grasp of the burden I have carried throughout time or how many times I have lamented it! What do you think your precious Santino would do had he the Mother and the Father in his possession? How many demons could he bring to drink from them? And who knows what the Mother and Father might permit in their silence? Who knows what they have ever wanted?”
“You are an evil and negligent brother to me,” she said coldly, glancing about herself. “Why not leave me to the wolves in the forest? But go. I want no more of you either. Tell your scholars in the Talamasca where you have deposited me and perhaps they will offer me their kind shelter. But be gone. Whatever, be gone! I don’t want you here!”
Though up to that second I had been hanging upon her every word, I abandoned her.
Hours passed. I traveled the skies, not knowing where I went, marveling at the blurred landscape beneath me.
My power was far greater than it had ever been! Would I to try it, I could easily reach England.
I saw the mountains and then the sea, and then suddenly my soul ached so completely that I could do nothing but will myself to go back to her.
Bianca, what have I done?
Bianca, pray that you have waited for me!
Out of the deep dark heavens I somehow returned