Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [21]
“The King and Queen returned to their throne, besmirched and bloody and finally silent. But for the rest of the night Enkil was restless, destroying the vases and braziers of the shrine.
“It was a terrifying display of power. And I realized that for his safety, indeed, even for my own, I must say farewell at once to Lestat, which caused me excruciating pain, and so we parted the following night.”
Marius fell silent again, and Thorne waited patiently. Then Marius began to speak once more.
“I don’t know what caused me the worst pain—the loss of Lestat, or my jealousy that she had given and taken with him. I’m unable to know my own mind. You understand I felt I possessed her. I felt she was my Queen.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “When I revealed her to him, I was displaying a possession! You see what a liar I was?” he asked. “And then to lose him, to lose this young one with whom I felt such utter communion. Ah, that was such rich pain. Rather like the music of the violin, I think, just as deeply colored, such terrible pain.”
“What can I do to ease your sorrow now?” asked Thorne. “For you carry it, as if she were here still.”
Marius looked up, and suddenly an expression of pure surprise brightened his face. “You’re right,” he said. “I carry the obligation, as if she were still with me, as if even now I had to go and spend my hours in her shrine.”
“Can’t you be glad that it’s over?” asked Thorne. “It seemed when I lay in my cave of ice, when I saw these things in dreams that there were others who were at peace when it was finished. Even the red-haired twins whom I saw standing before everyone seemed to have a sense that it was done.”
Marius nodded. “They do all share this,” said Marius, “except perhaps for Lestat.” He looked wondering at Thorne.
“Tell me now how she was wakened finally,” said Thorne, “how she became the slayer of her children. I felt her pass me, close and with a searching eye, yet somehow I was not found.”
“Others as well escaped her,” said Marius, “though how many no one knows. She tired of her slaughter and she came to us. I think she thought that she had time to finish. But her end came swiftly enough.
“As for the second resurrection, it was Lestat again, but I am as much to blame myself.
“This is what I believe happened. I brought the inventions of the modern world to her as offerings. At first it was the machines that played music, and then came those which would show moving pictures. At last, I brought the most powerful of all, the television that would play constantly. I set it in her shrine as though it were a sacrifice.”
“And she fed upon this thing,” said Thorne, “as gods are wont to do when they come down to their altars.”
“Yes, she fed upon it. She fed upon its terrible electric violence. Lurid colors flashed over her face, and images accosted her. It might have wakened her with the sheer clamor. And I wonder sometimes if the endless public talk of the great world could not have in itself inspired an imitation of a mind in her.”
“An imitation of a mind?”
“She awoke with a simple ugly sense of purpose. She would rule this world.”
Marius shook his head. His attitude was one of profound sadness.
“She would outwit its finest human minds,” he said sorrowfully. “She would destroy the vast majority of this world’s male children. In a female paradise, she could create and enforce peace. It was nonsense—a concept drenched in violence and blood.
“And those of us who tried to reason with her had to take great care with our words not to insult her. Where could she have gotten these notions, except from the bits and pieces of electric dreams that she watched on the giant screen I’d provided for her? Fictions of all kinds, and what the world calls News, all this had inundated her. I had loosed the flood.”
Marius’s gaze flashed on Thorne as he continued:
“Of course she saw