35

The Rise and Fall of Akasha

IT WAS PERHAPS twenty years ago that I brought the Mother and Father across the sea to America and to the frozen wastes in the North where I created beneath the ice my fine technologically splendid house described by Lestat in The Queen of the Damned and from which the Queen rose.

Let me pass over quickly what has been mentioned here before¡ª that I made a great modern shrine for the King and Queen with a television screen that might bring them music and other forms of entertainment and "news" from all over the planet.

As for me, I was living alone in this house, enjoying a whole string of well-warmed rooms and libraries as I did my eternal reading and writing, as I watched films and documentaries which intrigued me mightily.

I had entered the mortal world once or twice as a filmmaker, but in general I had lived a solitary life, and I knew little or nothing of the other Children of the Millennia.

Until such time as Bianca or Pandora should want to join me again, what did I care about others? And as for The Vampire Lestat, when he came forth with his mighty rock music I thought it hysterically funny. What more perfect guise for a vampire, I thought, than that of a rock musician?

But as his many short rock video films appeared, I realized that he was putting forth in that form the entire history which I had revealed to him. And I realized as well that blood drinkers all over the world were setting their cannons against him.

These were young beings of whom I had taken no notice, and I was quite amazed now to hear their voices lifted in the Mind Gift, searching diligently for others.

Nevertheless, I thought nothing of it. I did not dream his music could affect the world ¡ªnot the world of mortals or our world¡ª¡ªnot until the very night that I came down to the underground shrine and discovered my King, Enkil, a hollow being, a mere husk, a creature drained of all blood, sitting so perilously on the throne that when I touched him with my fingers, he fell onto the marble floor, his black plaited hair breaking into tiny splinters.

In shock I stared at this spectacle! Who could have done such a thing, who could have drained him of every drop of blood, who could have destroyed him!

And where was my Queen, had she met the same fate, had the whole legend of Those Who Must Be Kept been a deception from the beginning?

I knew that it was not a lie, and I knew the one being who could have visited this fate upon Enkil, the only being in all the world who had such cunning, such intimacy, such knowledge and such power.

Within seconds, I turned from the fallen husk of Enkil to discover her standing not three inches from me. Her black eyes were narrowed and quickened with life. Her royal raiment was the clothing I had placed upon her. Her red lips formed a mocking smile, and then there came from her a wicked laughter.

I hated her for that laughter.

I feared her and hated her that she laughed at me.

All my sense of possession came to the fore, that she was mine and that she now dared to turn on me.

Where was the sweetness of which I had dreamt? I stood in the midst of a nightmare.

"My dear servant," she said, "you have never had the power to stop me!"

It was inconceivable that this creature whom I had so protected throughout time could turn on me. It was inconceivable that this one whom I so completely adored now taunted me.

Something hasty and pathetic came from my lips:

"But what do you want? " I asked, as I tried to grasp what was taking place. "What do you mean to do?"

It was a wonder that she even gave some mocking answer to me.

It was lost in the sound of the television screen exploding, in the sound of metal ripping, in the sound of the ice falling.

With incalculable power she rose from the depths of the house, sending its walls, its ceilings, and its surrounding ice down upon me.

I found myself buried, calling for help.

And the reign of the Queen of the Damned had commenced, though she had never taken that name for herself.

You saw her as she moved through the world. You saw her as she slew blood drinkers all around her, you saw her as she slew blood drinkers who would not serve her purpose.

Did you see her as she took Lestat as her lover? Did you see her as she sought to frighten mortals with her petty displays of old-fashioned power?

And all the while I lay crushed beneath the ice¡ªspared for what purpose I could not imagine¡ªsending out my warning to Lestat that he was in danger, sending out my warning to all that they were in danger. And pleading as well with any Child of the Millennia who might come to help me rise from the crevasse in which I'd been buried.

Even as I called in my powerful voice I healed. I began to move the ice around me.

But at last two blood drinkers came to assist me. I caught the image of one in the mind of the other. And it seemed impossible to me, but the one whom I saw so radiantly in the other's vision was none other than my Pandora.

At last, with their help, I broke the ice that kept me from the surface, and I climbed free under the arctic sky, taking Pandora's hand, and then gathering her in my arms, refusing for a moment to think of anything, even of my savage Queen and her deadly rampage.

There were no words now, no vows, no denials. I held Pandora in love and she knew it, and when I looked up, when I cleared my eyes of pain and love and fear, I realized that the blood drinker who had come North with her, he who had answered my summons, was none other than Santino.

For a moment, I was filled with such hatred I meant to destroy him completely.

"No," Pandora said, "Marius, you can't. All of us are needed now. And why do you think he has come if not to repay you?"

He stood there in the snow in his fine black garments, the wind whipping his black hair and I could see he was consumed with fear, but he would not confess it.

"This is no repayment for what you did to me," I said to him. "But I know Pandora is right, we're all needed, and for that reason, I spare you."

I looked at my beloved Pandora.

"There is a council forming now," I said. "It's in a great house in the coastal forest, a place of glass walls. We'll go there together."

You know of what happened then. We gathered at our great table in the redwood trees¡ªas if we were a new and passionate Faithful of the Forest¡ªand when the Queen came to us with her plan to bring harm to the great world, we all sought to reason with her.

It was her dream to be the Queen of Heaven to humankind, to slay male children by the billions, and make the world a "garden" of tender-spirited women. It was a horrific and impossible conception.

No one sought more diligently than your red-haired Maker Maharet to turn her from her goals, condemning her that she would dare to change the course of human history.

I myself, thinking bitterly of the beautiful gardens I'd seen when I had drunk her blood, risked her deadly power over and over by pleading with her to give the world time to follow its own destiny.

Oh, it was a chilling thing to see this living statue now speaking to me so coldly yet with such strong will and contemptuous temper. How grand and evil were her schemes, to slay male children, to gather women in a superstitious worship.

What gave us courage to fight her? I don't know except that we knew that we had to do it. And all along, as she threatened us repeatedly with death, I thought: I could have prevented this, I could have stopped it from ever happening had I put an end to her and to all of us.

As it is, she will destroy us and go on; and who will prevent her?

At one point she knocked me backwards with her arm, so quick was her rage at my words. And it was Santino who came to my assistance. I hated him for this but there was no time for hating him or anyone.

At last she laid her condemnation down on all of us. As we would not side with her, we would be destroyed, one after another. She would begin with Lestat, for she took his insult to her to be the greatest. And he had resisted her. Bravely he had sided with us, pleading with her for reason.

At this dreadful moment, the elders rose, the ones of the First Brood who had been made blood drinkers within her very lifetime, and those Children of the Millennia such as Pandora and myself and Mael and others.

But before the murderous little struggle could begin, there came another into our midst, approaching loudly up the iron steps of the forest compound where we met, until in the doorway we beheld the twin of Maharet: her mute sister, the sister from whom Akasha had torn the tongue: Mekare.

It was she who, snatching the long black hair of the Queen, bashed her head against the glass wall, breaking it, and severing the head from the body. It was she and her sister who dropped down on their knees, to retrieve from the decapitated Queen, the Sacred Core of all the vampires.

Whether that Sacred Core¡ªthat fatal root¡ªwas imbibed from heart or brain, I know not. I know only that the mute Mekare became its new tabernacle.

And after a few moments of sputtering darkness in which we all of us wondered whether or not death should take us now, we regained our strength and looked up to see the twins standing before us.

Maharet put her arm around Mekare's waist, and Mekare, come from brutal isolation I know not where, merely stared into space as though she knew some quiet peace but no more than that. And from Maharet's lips there came the words:

"Behold. The Queen of the Damned."

It was finished.

The reign of my beloved Akasha¡ªwith all its hopes and dreams¡ª had come abruptly to an end.

And I carried through the world the burden of Those Who Must Be Kept no longer.

THE LISTENER

The End of the Story of Marius