And so now the time
has come that I may sit down and send my memory back again. I have come
to enjoy this simple exercise, the rhythmic tapping of these keys in cadence
of my existence. When I ended my last tale, I was off to Lima, Peru,
to advise the Museum des La Paz regarding the strange condition of one
of their mummies. The curator had noticed it beginning to move
slightly, from the typical "boxer position" as it is called, with the arms
flexed tightly across the chest, into a more relaxed stance. Naturally,
they were very worried that such a well preserved pre-Columbian mummy not
begin the slide into decay that affects so many of the older bodies in
museums. A quick examination revealed to me that, unfortunately,
it was merely the affects of gaseous emissions caused by sunlight shining
through the Plexiglas display case, and not the imminent rise from torpor
of another "sleeper".
I left my story
at my rise from the sleep of death. There is good reason for that,
for to tell all is to risk my secrets falling into another's hands.
But now I find that the risk be worth the reward, so onward I press.
You must, however, forgive my lapses in memory at some points. In
the accounting of nearly a millennium, certain small details may be lost
or colored by memory. And it is only a fool who tells the whole truth
when the story be lessened by it.
I remember
the crashing return of light and sound to my senses, and I realized that,
while my sight had been good before, it was now preternaturally sharp.
All the nuances of color, the soft weave of my sire's cloak as it fell
across the breastplate he wore, the leather musculare of a Roman centurion,
the subtle traces of darkness on his face, his hands, as he lifted me from
the casket, all these things were as if sketched in fire.
He smiled at me
then, and if ever I had believed in the black robed priests' devil, I would
have thought him one. Not that he was unbearably ugly, but so breathtakingly
beautiful, that I knew him to be as alien to the flesh as I now was.
He studied me calmly for a long moment, then slid me gracefully to the
floor of the charnel house.
"Ah, little pet,
I see the confusion on your face. But of course, did you think you
would be welcomed into death by your loved ones, your family?" He
spoke with a strange accent. I thought it was Roman, for I knew from
legend the strange armor and helm he wore.
I did not know
him to be vampire. I thought him a ghost, perhaps, or.... I did not
know.
But I knew there
was a fire in my veins, and a roaring in my head like the bellow of a wounded
bull.
"Yes, my little
one. You hunger. You thirst. Come, let us break our fast
together, and then I shall show you such sights." And with a wave
of his hand he bade me follow him.
As we stepped out
into the night, I realized we had been inside a large castle. I had
never seen anything like the massive stonework before, and knew I was no
longer anywhere near Caern Weig. I stopped and turned to look back
at it.
On each corner
of the building, spires shot to the very sky itself, as it stood, gloating
blackly, surrounded by a ditch filled to overflowing with the most stagnant,
brackish water I had ever seen. There were few torches lit, the few that
were sputtered impotently against the gloom. We stood just outside
a gatehouse, by a large arched opening with a heavy wooden door hanging
at half-open. To my back, as I turned, was a wooden walkway - I now
understood that it was a drawbridge across the moat. The outer walls
shot up from the sheer stone at least forty feet, and the corner towers
stood another twenty or thirty feet higher.
I drew in a sharp
breath of surprise. My "host", for I knew neither what to call him
nor what he was, turned to face me.
"Ah, yes, beautiful,
is it not? To build to the sky - much like the hanging gardens in
storied Enoch itself."
I turned to him,
wide-eyed with confusion. He laughed softly, and I noticed that even
though the night was briskly cold, no smoke issued forth from his lips.
"What ... has..
happened?" I finally was able to whisper.
His mood became
solemn now, and he looked at me as though weighing my soul.
"What do you remember
of the events leading up to this night, little milk-maiden?"
I looked down at
my ruined fingers, still bearing the traces of the coffin-wood under the
nails. Surprisingly enough, they did not hurt. Or, if they
did, the pain registered itself as a different sensation. I closed
my eyes, and a wave of thoughts and images washed over me.
My village.
My neighbors.
My mother and father,
now dead of the plague and in their graves.
And finally Connaer.
My bonnie Connaer,
throat swollen, skin sallow and sweating, shaking as the fever ravaged
his body.
And then, finally,
as though I were afraid of the memory, I saw my own face.
My face as I held up my little silver
hand mirror - a wedding gift from Connaer - on the last morning I had lived.
The last day of
my life.
I sat down, hard,
on the wooden drawbridge then. I felt as though all my strength,
all my sanity, had been taken from me.
Because I knew
myself to be dead.
I was not breathing.
The familiar thump
of my heart - the heart that I truly loved Connaer with - was no longer
in my ears, my throat.
I touched my skin
and found it cold and wax-like.
I had opened my
mouth to scream, but before the sound summoned itself, my host had clamped
his hand over my mouth and put one hand on my shoulder.
"No, no, little
one, do not scream. Many of us here have very acute hearing, and
a scream of such magnitude might deafen us. You are confused, yes,
that is understandable, and frightened, which is also understandable, but
you have not taken leave of your senses yet, nor have you become mad enough
to frenzy. That bespeaks the wisdom in my choice of you. You
are strong, and intelligent, and you can adapt. You lived within
the charnel house of your village for two weeks - I know it seems not that
long - and kept the wolves at bay, by yourself." He looked deeply
into my eyes, and slowly released his grip on my arm.
"Now, if I am to
remove my hand, you will not scream, no?"
I shook my head.
I needed to hear this man out, to know what had happened. Two weeks,
he had said. I had memories of one week, then nothingness.
I could not believe I had survived the plague for nearly two weeks.
He let go his grip
on my face. I stared at his hand as he drew it back. It was
a well-manicured, soft hand, almost that of a woman. It was certainly
not the hand of a soldier.
He followed my
gaze, then quickly let his cloak fall over the arm.
"My life I will
tell you of another time. Now, it is necessary to tell you of your
life, and death." He glanced up at the sky. Then he called
back into the doorway we had just walked through.
A young man, as
pale and unbreathing as my host, quickly came out. They conferred
for a moment, in a language I did not understand. Then the younger
one turned and ran across the drawbridge and out into the dark, leaving
my host and I alone once again.
"Septimus will
bring us food, little one. And you will come with me, to more hospitable
surroundings where we can speak." He held his arm out to me, and
I grasped it tightly, knowing true fear for the first time in my ... well,
no, not my life, but...
What was said to
me, on my first night as a childer of Caine, is between myself and he who
made me. He lives now, only in my memory. But I will tell you
that it was enough to convince me that what he said was true, that I was
no longer alive nor was I strictly dead.
And then he led
me to his library.
It filled an entire
wing of the manse, rising up into the darkness beyond the feeble light
of mere candles. The shelves lining the walls nearly groaned under
the weight of all the books contained there. He made a sweeping gesture
with his hand, indicating the stacks, and said, in a hushed voice, "This,
little one, this is indeed true power. Not fame, nor fortune, or
gold. This is the stuff which crowns kings... and topples them.
These volumes are worth the very world itself."
He smiled, noticing
the look of confusion on my face.
My head spun as
I tried to look up at the very top shelves, towering a good thirty feet
above us. I gaped openly at his treasure.
In all my life
before, I had seen one book.
It was the book
that the black robed priests had brought with them when they built their
fine church in my village. They called it a bible. I had never
had much use for any of it, or any of them for that matter. And now
I was near to being buried by the weight of all these tomes. It seemed
they pressed in at me from all sides. I turned and ran towards the
door.
Before I could
reach the bolt, he was there.
"Stop!" he said
roughly into my face, and I could do none other. I felt sapped of
my will.
"What do you fear,
childe?" he asked, more softly, but no less compelling.
"From these things
come the words of the priests. I have seen one of these. It
did no good against the plague, though they thought it would. It
is only good for making what was not theirs become theirs."
I had never seen
such a look on anyone's face, and I suddenly feared for my existence.
Then, he let go of my arms, backed away from me, and put his head down.
His head began to shake rhythmically.
And I realized
he was laughing.
He laughed until
big, red tears slid down his face. Then he dabbed at them with a
cloth he pulled from his vestment.
"Only one book!?
Do you truly believe that all there is, is but one book?" He was
nearly shouting, and I cringed. He seemed not to notice, and pulled
me along, into the room, gesturing to the shelves with his free hand.
"You see before
you the collection of fifteen hundred years of knowledge. Some of
these," he casually plucked a slim volume from a table and waved it in
my face. It was bound in red leather with flowing Arabic script,
which appeared to me like letters of fire. "Some of these were written
before the Romans came down from the hills. Some before the great
library at Alexandria was a dream in the mind of Ptolemy. Some were
scribed so long ago that none of the race of men has looked upon the writer.
And you think that there is only one book! Indeed!"
I knew not if I had insulted him or
amused him. Both, I would think now. But he seemed not overly
hostile, so I accepted his offer of one of these tomes, a thick volume
bound in black. It looked like the priest's book, yet when I opened
it, I knew it was not.
There were pictures,
crude woodcut images, of imps and devils, of naked women riding beasts,
of goat headed monstrosities. All manner of terrible thing was represented
in that book. He must have been watching my face as I slowly turned
the pages. I looked at him in askance.
"That is considered
to be the nature of evil," he said calmly.
"But, it is not.
That is a lie," I said, aware that some sort of test was happening, and
not knowing what I should say. So I chose the truth as I knew it.
He raised his brows,
but said nothing and motioned for me to continue.
"If evil were so
easy to see with the naked eye, there would be no need for black-robed
priests and their god," I said quietly.
"They're called
christians, my pet," he corrected.
I pointed to a
picture, that of a large snake hovering over a babe, preparing to devour
it.
"And truly a people
who sacrifice their children would never prosper. They would have
no helping hands come the harvest."
He laughed again,
this time in a softer tone, and put a hand on my shoulder.
"Ah, you see things
in such a unique way, my little milk-maiden. Let us hope that you
do not learn to see things through a glass, darkly. Ah, Septimus
has returned. There will be food, little pet, if you can stomach
it."
I was aware of
the younger man's presence at the door; he had heard him long before I
had. He stepped into the room and gently set a large bag down, then
turned on his heel and left.
My senses were
overwhelmed with the scent of blood, coming from the bag. Marcus
looked from me to the sack, which was twisting with feeble motions.
The proper thing
to do would be to lie here, to say that it was an animal from the forests
beyond the castle. But, in a way, it was.
It was a child,
of about eight winters, smeared with dirt and covered in mud. A beggar,
or a budding thief. I cannot remember to this night if it were male
or female, not that it truly mattered.
I was hungry.
I was the damned, the vampir. I fed.
And so I learned
the truth of what I was, what I had become. A part of me, the part
that loved the sunlight, that laughed and danced and picked flowers, and
loved Connear, that part of me had died. And I found other things,
other parts of me, lying in the dark corners of my soul, that were more
fitting, more suited to that which I had become.
Time meant nothing
in my sire's household. Marcus had been alive to see the great convergence
of the Cappadocians, the choosing of the worthy and the punishment of the
unworthy, and he had been old then... He spoke of things that happened
before the pyramids were built, before Greece was just a port and nothing
more, even before the great standing stones were erected on Salisbury Plain.
And when he spoke of these things, I listened, and remembered.
He taught me to
read the books in his library, those in English, and Latin, and other,
far away languages.
"Someday, little
pet, you too will travel, as I have. You will stand in the shadow
the moon throws from the great tombs of the god-kings in Ghiza, and you
will know how small we really are. Even those of us, "and here he
looked around the table, to his other childer, "Even we who are larger
than the kine who live but one lifetime, we too are truly small.
Never forget that."
I came to almost
worship him, through the years. I certainly respected him, and knew
him to be breathtakingly intelligent. And I knew that there was much
to be learned, and I had all the time to do that.
But he never treated
me as more than favored pet. His equal I was not, and I knew it.
The three whom he had created as his childer, we were exalted servants,
but no more.
My "brothers" as
they would be vulgarly called now, were a silent lot, speaking only when
spoken to or, more rarely, asking a question of our sire. They stayed
to their art of warfare and riding, and I stayed to the books and lessons
inside the keep.
I asked Marcus
once, in the beginning of my second century, if they resented me, or looked
down upon me for my sex. The question brought laughter, and an indulgent
stroke of my hair.
"No, my pet, though
they seem cold and unfriendly, I am sure they would fight to defend you.
They are male, and they are made for war, and that is what they study,
and think of. They have not the time for books and ideas. That
is why I summoned you. There were no females in this household for
over five hundred years before you came to us. I believe they became,
how is it said...set in their ways....
"But I needed someone
to speak with, to discuss philosophy and art and music. And so, you
came to be with us. And I am ever so much happier now."
And my skin grew
pale from long nights spent in airless chambers, reading by the light of
a single candle, or by the moon. And I grew thin, and my eyes became
darker, and my nails were sharp and long. I saw these things in the
mirror, but the change took place so gradually I did not realize how different
I had become. Where I had once been a plump housewife, I was now
a wild thing, more like a gypsy with my looks and thoughts. And my
sire cautioned me on this as well.
"Someday, little
one, you will go out into the world. You will be amongst the kine
again. Do not be too surprised when they treat you as if you have
the mind of a child, because you are a woman. And do not be surprised
if they accuse you of ill-doings, for you have great beauty, and that arouses
passion. Better to be as the sheep, as the christians say, when you
go amongst the wolves."
"But even wolves
fear the fire that burns them," I pointed out, "And the beasts that
they cannot see, that dog their steps in the forests, them also they fear."
I thought
I had spoken wise and true. Yet with a slap of his hand my sire threw
my perceptions into the midden. My cheek stung with the outline of
his hand, soft no longer.
"Never, not ever..."
he hissed, leaning so closely to me that I felt myself drawn into his gaze
and swallowed whole, "dream yourself smarter, or cleverer, for that which
you have become. There are whole races of us, of Caine's childer,
who believed themselves Gods. And they were thrown down, destroyed
utterly. Our own line, sired by the mighty Cappadocius, produced
many of these fools. And they were buried alive, imprisoned beneath
the burning sands for all eternity. Never leaving, never resting,
never free."
He gestured toward
his great towers of books with an impatient air. My eyes fell on
the tome of the snake-worshippers, written in hoary old Egyptian, before
it was Egyptian.
"Yessssssssss,
my pet," he nodded, his soft voice mocking the snake god, whether consciously
or not I do not know. "They thought to make gods of themselves.
And what do they do now? Why, they corrupt. They destroy.
They make all that they touch unclean and blasphemous. And the others!
The fiends, ridden by hideous twisted things! The infernalists, dabbling
with daemons and infested with vermin! The monstrosities, twisted
in form and feature! All these are our brothers and sisters, our
family as it were; that we may never forget that the road to loathsomeness
is slick and beguiling. Never forget that there will be those to
whom you, feral little predator that you may be, are as small and insignificant
as that spider."
He got up quickly
and strode to a dark corner of the room, lightly reached out and fingered
a spider web hanging from a high bookshelf. He plucked it once with
his finger, making it quiver in the high reaches where it joined the ceiling.
I saw the spider
crawl quickly downward to where my sire stood, hand outstretched.
It scuttled along the shining strand, unseeing what was trapped in its
web. I grew uneasy, though I knew not why. A spider ten times
it's size could not hurt my sire, but it lead me to think of things trapped
in an immense web.
And then my sire
reached out and captured the spider.
His hand flew out
and up, and plucked it cleanly from the web, not even breaking the slender
thread. He brought his hand down, in front of his face as if contemplating
the struggling creature (though I could not see it, I could somehow sense
it's terror), and then calmly squeezed his hand shut.
I made some sort
of noise, cried out for its life. Why I did this I do not know, only
that it seemed wrong somehow. He turned to look at me, with a mixture
of sadness and pity in his eyes.
"Understand me
well, my pet, that no one would cry out for you, if you were in the place
of this creature."
He opened his hand
then, and cast the remains of the spider from the window, down a hundred
feet into the dank moat below.
"Monsters we are,
lest monsters we become," he said cryptically, and quickly left the room.
I looked down at my hands, which were gripping the chair so tightly the
knuckles were drawn and white, and slowly released my grasp.
I thought much
on that night, in the years since. I know now what he meant, what
he tried to tell me.
I only wish I had
understood it then.
Perhaps............
Ah, perhaps is
such a sorrowful word. All that might have been is wrapped within
it, and all that comes from it is tinged with loss. Best to not use
it at all, and never know that bittersweet pain.
Sometime in my third century,
I became aware of messages coming and going from my Lord’s study.
Now, when I say they were frequent, the thought that will spring to mind
would be once or twice a fortnight. Nay, I mean that they came one
or two a season, but that was frequent in the scheme of things. My
Lord fretted afterward, but never said what was in these communications,
nor whom they were from. I never dreamt of asking him, as it was
not my place. After some years of this, I awoke one twilight
to find that mortal servants were now populating the keep.
My surprise must
have been etched wide upon my face when I greeted him in his hall that
night. He answered my look with a pat on the wrist, like the stroke
of a favored pet’s fur, and nothing more.
“My childe,” he
said quietly to me when they had left, “We expect company this night.
Please be so kind as to dress your part.”
I bowed my head
low to him, begged my leave, and made my way to my bedchamber, unused and
unoccupied save for my wardrobe for three centuries. There was a
new gown on the bedstead, and a rich fur cloak. I slipped the gown
on, not wishing the aid of the chambermaid, and threw the cloak about my
shoulders. It reached the floor and trailed behind me, a very sumptuous
look.
There was also
a wrap, which I took up and swathed about my neck, thereby covering the
worst of the ravages of the disease, for the marks have never truly left
my skin, and then turned to look at myself in the dark mirror over my toilet.
My skin had grown
still paler and thinner, and it stretched like parchment over my cheekbones.
I had no color to my face at all, just my eyes, which burned like green
fire in the darkness of my chamber. Indeed, I looked as though I
were drawn in the air with a charcoal stick; I was so pale and gray.
I heard the low
murmur of conversation in the library as I approached the hall. My
sire had not instructed me to join him, only to be dressed decently, so
I took my accustomed seat near the great fireplace and began to strum lazily
on my harp.
I was, therefore,
surprised, to find that I was not alone in the hall. A young man,
barely out of his youth, stepped quietly from his spot beside the hearth,
his outspread hands showing me he held no weapon, and was no threat.
I made a small
noise, but kept on with my playing, then nodded in his direction and said,
“Hail and well
met, traveler. Are ye of the party that visits my Lord?”
“Yes, my Lady.
I am Augustus, eldest son of House Giovanni. My sire has traveled
to see your Lord on a matter of grave importance.” His eyes traveled
about the room like a weasel. I found I did not like him. He
gave off an odor of some sort, like a graveyard or a sepulcher. I
knew instantly he was a vampyr, and that he was not a cultured one, either,
to speak of matters of importance in his House to a girl he had just met
in the drawing room, and not knowing whom she might be. I, for my
part, merely lowered my head and continued playing.
He did not attempt
to engage me in conversation again, nor was I very much disappointed in
that. He clasped his hands behind his back and wandered about the
room, occasionally touching things and then glancing at me to see if I
would protest. I pretended not to notice and he soon bored of the
game, if game it were, and threw himself with a great sigh down on one
of the soft chairs that lined the room. I played until I heard the
turning of the catch on the library door, then rose and assumed a bowing
position as my sire entered the room. With him was another man, of
the same years as he, with white hair and sharp features.
“Just remember
what I have said, Marcus,” the other addressed my sire, and then motioned
the young man and took his leave. I turned to watch them as they
exited the high doors, and found myself wondering what had gone on in the
library.
My sire stared
after them for a long time, only coming to himself when I touched his arm
and asked of his health. He blinked as a man seeing the sun for the
first time in years, then shook his head.
“My pet, these
are strange days…” was all he would say, before he turned on his heel and
left me to ponder the meaning of this night.
But my sire did
not speak of it again, and as the days turned into seasons, and the seasons
to years, I found myself analyzing the things I had heard.
And, most importantly,
the things I had not heard. Like my Lord’s title, when his friend
had taken leave of him.
Many years, almost
another century, passed before the seeds planted during that winter night
bore their bitter fruit. I was first to see the dusty cloud coming up the
pass, and went searching for Lord Marcus to tell him of it. I found
him deep in study, in the library.
"Yes, my little
one? What is it?" he said absently.
"Several carriages,
or many horsemen, ride up the pass. I have seen the dust on the horizon.
Do we expect visitors, Sire?"
He raised his head
from the book with an air of concern.
"Nay, too early
in the year for pleasant company, and too late in the season for those
barbarians," he referred to the strange, large men who had come several
years ago, sailing from far away on their dragon boats. They had
come up the pass early in the night, directly after dusk, and attempted
to storm the keep. Lord Marcus' words with their leader were enough
to convince them it was best to go elsewhere.
He rose and went
to the large window overlooking the guardhouse. He could see nothing
from here, yet his fingers gripped the sill just the same. Then the
banners hove into view, over the ridge, and I could just make out in the
full moon’s light the ornate letter “G” surrounded by leaves and vines
on their devices.
For reasons I do
not know, I drew close to my sire, pressed against his side, and whispered,
“What comes?
Who are these people?”
He looked at me
sadly, and for a moment I saw the same look in his eyes that had been in
Connear’s, at the end. He sighed deeply, then turned from the window.
“Giovanni,” was
all he would say, and he said the name like a curse. He trod from
the room, and I heard him calling the guards and my “brethren” to arms
then.
I turned back to
the window, where I could now see the long lines of horsemen with torches
marching along the path. Beyond them was the quay, and from there
the sea. They had obviously come in the dragon ships, for who else
would brave the cold dark waters or the barely submerged reefs that lay
beneath?
And by the moonlight
glinting off their armor, they had obviously come for war. This was
no diplomatic party, no honored guests visiting.
Straining my eyes
still further, I could see the figure at the front of the column.
He was a slight man, dark of skin and hair, and with his cowl pulled back
I could see that it was our erstwhile guest of so long ago, the one who
had called himself Augustus, and spoken to me in the hall.
I pulled myself
back into the window then, flattening myself against the wall and shaking
all over. If I could see him, then it followed that he could see
me, and the thought of that filled me with fear and loathing.
And somewhere,
off in the distance, came the crash of thunder and the smell of incoming
rain. A brief flash of lightening lit the chamber, and then I could
hear the portcullis, not closed in a thousand years, come swinging down
with a thud, to mix with the thunder so far away.
I wished then that
I had listened better to the words of the priests when they spoke of the
prayers to their angry war god. I had no prayers, only fear.
I knew the world was going to change for me, and I did not want it to.
And then I rose
from the floor, terribly conscious now that my sire could return at any
moment and find me cringing like an animal, and forced myself to walk to
the wall about the great fireplace. There were battle-axes, swords
and shields hung on it, along with other implements of war. I pulled
down a targ and a short sword, and began to make my way down the staircase
to the courtyard below.
I would die on
my feet, shouting, not on my knees begging. I owed my Sire at least
that much.