The queen of the damned - Anne Rice [109]
Flash of her silver bracelet in the light. And that might as well have been a tiny dagger to the mental shield of Mael, because his love and his thoughts were wholly visible again for one fluid instant.
This one is going to die, too, if he doesn’t become wise, Khayman thought. He’d been schooled by Maharet, no doubt, and perhaps nourished by her powerful blood; yet his heart was undisciplined, and his temper beyond his control, it was obvious.
Then some feet behind Jesse, in the swirling color and noise, Khayman spied another intriguing figure, much younger, yet almost as powerful in his own fashion as the Gaul, Mael.
Khayman sought for the name, but the creature’s mind was a perfect blank; not so much as a glimmer of personality escaped from it. A boy he’d been when he died, with straight dark auburn hair, and eyes a little too big for his face. But it was easy, suddenly, to filch the being’s name from Daniel, his newborn fledgling who stood beside him. Armand. And the fledgling, Daniel, was scarcely dead. All the tiny molecules of his body were dancing with the demon’s invisible chemistry.
Armand immediately attracted Khayman. Surely he was the same Armand of whom Louis and Lestat had both written—the immortal with the form of a youth. And this meant that he was no more than five hundred years old, yet he veiled himself completely. Shrewd, cold he seemed, yet without flair—a stance that required no room in which to display itself. And now, sensing infallibly that he was watched, he turned his large soft brown eyes upward and fixed instantly upon the remote figure of Khayman.
“No harm meant to you or your young one,” Khayman whispered, so that his lips might shape and control the thoughts. “No friend to the Mother.”
Armand heard but gave no answer. Whatever terror he felt at the sight of one so old, he masked completely. One would have thought he was looking at the wall behind Khayman’s head, at the steady stream of laughing and shouting children who poured down the steps from the topmost doorways.
And, quite inevitably, this oddly beguiling little five-hundred-year-old being fixed his eyes upon Mael as the gaunt one felt another irresistible surge of concern for his fragile Jesse.
Khayman understood this being, Armand. He felt he understood him and liked him completely. As their eyes met again, all that had been written of this creature in the two little histories was informed and balanced by the creature’s innate simplicity. The loneliness which Khayman had felt in Athens was now very strong.
“Not unlike my own simple soul,” Khayman whispered. “You’re lost in all this because you know the terrain too well. And that no matter how far you walk, you come again to the same mountains, the same valley.”
No response. Of course. Khayman shrugged and smiled. To this one he’d give anything that he could; and guilelessly, he let Armand know it.
Now the question was, how to help them, these two that might have some hope of sleeping the immortal sleep until another sunset. And most important of all, how to reach Maharet, to whom the fierce and distrusting Mael was unstintingly devoted.
To Armand, Khayman said with the slightest movement of his lips: “No friend of the Mother. I told you. And keep with the mortal crowd. She’ll pick you out when you step apart. It’s that simple.”
Armand’s face registered no change. Beside him, the fledgling Daniel was happy, glorying in the pageant that surrounded him. He knew no fear, no plans or dreams. And why not? He had this extremely powerful creature to take care of him. He was a damn sight luckier than the rest.
Khayman rose to his feet. It was the loneliness as much as anything else. He would be near to one of these two, Armand or Mael. That’s what he had wanted in Athens when all this glorious remembering and knowing had begun. To be near another like himself. To speak, to touch . . . something.
He moved along the top aisle of the hall, which circled the