The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (159 page)

“He was a giant of a Gaul as they all were, even taller than I was, and he had a long narrow face with an extremely strong jaw and hawklike nose, and eyes that gleamed beneath their bushy blond brows with a childlike intelligence. What I mean to say is he looked very very clever, but very young and innocent also. And he wasn’t young. The effect was perplexing.

“And it was made all the more so by the fact that his thick and coarse yellow hair wasn’t clipped short in the popular Roman style, but was streaming down to his shoulders. And instead of the usual tunic and cloak which you saw everywhere in those times, he wore the old belted leather jerkin that had been the barbarian dress before Caesar.

“Right out of the woods this character looked, with his gray eyes burning through me, and I was vaguely delighted with him. I wrote down hurriedly the details of his dress, confident he couldn’t read the Latin.

“But the stillness in which he sat unnerved me a little. His eyes were unnaturally wide, and his lips quivered slightly as if the mere sight of me excited him. His clean and delicate white hand, which casually rested on the table before him, seemed out of keeping with the rest of him.

“A quick glance about told me my slaves weren’t in the tavern. Well, they’re probably next door playing cards, I thought, or upstairs with a couple of women. They’ll stop in any minute.

“I forced a little smile at my strange and silent friend, and went back to writing. But directly he started talking.

“ ‘You are an educated man, aren’t you?’ he asked. He spoke the universal Latin of the Empire, but with a thick accent, pronouncing each word with a care that was almost musical.

“I told him, yes, I was fortunate enough to be educated, and I started to write again, thinking this would surely discourage him. After all, he was fine to look at, but I didn’t really want to talk to him.

“ ‘And you write both in Greek and in Latin, don’t you?’ he asked, glancing at the finished work that lay before me.

“I explained politely that the Greek I had written on the parchment was a quotation from another text. My text was in Latin. And again I started scribbling.

“ ‘But you are a Keltoi, are you not?’ he asked this time. It was the old Greek word for the Gauls.

“ ‘Not really, no. I am a Roman,’ I answered.

“ ‘You look like one of us, the Keltoi,’ he said. ‘You are tall like us, and you walk the way we do.’

“This was a strange statement. For hours I’d been sitting here, barely sipping my wine. I hadn’t walked anywhere. But I explained that my mother had been Keltic, but I hadn’t known her. My father was a Roman senator.

“ ‘And what is it you write in Greek and Latin?’ he asked. ‘What is it that arouses your passion?’

“I didn’t answer right away. He was beginning to intrigue me. But I knew enough at forty to realize that most people you meet in taverns sound interesting for the first few minutes and then begin to weary you beyond endurance.

“ ‘Your slaves say,’ he announced gravely, ‘that you are writing a great history.’

“ ‘Do they?’ I answered, a bit stiffly. ‘And where are my slaves, I wonder!’ Again I looked around. Nowhere in sight. Then I conceded to him that it was a history I was writing.

“ ‘And you have been to Egypt,’ he said. And his hand spread itself out flat on the table.

“I paused and took another good look at him. There was something otherworldly about him, the way that he sat, the way he used this one hand to gesture. It was the decorum primitive people often have that makes them seem repositors of immense wisdom, when in fact all they possess is immense conviction.

“ ‘Yes,’ I said a little warily. ‘I’ve been to Egypt.’

“Obviously this exhilarated him. His eyes widened slightly, then narrowed, and he made some little movement with his lips as though speaking to himself.

“ ‘And you know the language and the writing of Egypt?’ he asked earnestly, his eyebrows knitting. ‘You know the cities of Egypt?’

“ ‘The language as it is spoken, yes, I do know it. But if by the writing you mean the old picture writing, no, I can’t read it. I don’t know anyone who can read it. I’ve heard that even the old Egyptian priests can’t read it. Half the texts they copy they can’t decipher.’

“He laughed in the strangest way. I couldn’t tell whether this was exciting him or he knew something I didn’t know. He appeared to take a deep breath, his nostrils dilating a little. And then his face cooled. He was actually a splendid-looking man.

“ ‘The gods can read it,’ he whispered.

“ ‘Well, I wish they’d teach it to me,’ I said pleasantly.

“ ‘You do!’ he said in an astonished gasp. He leant forward over the table. ‘Say this again!’

“ ‘I was joking,’ I said. ‘I only meant I wished I could read the old Egyptian writing. If I could read it, then I could know true things about the people of Egypt, instead of all the nonsense written by the Greek historians. Egypt is a misunderstood land—’ I stopped myself. Why was I talking to this man about Egypt?

“ ‘In Egypt there are true gods still,’ he said gravely, ‘gods who have been there forever. Have you been to the very bottom of Egypt?’

“This was a curious way to put it. I told him I had been up the Nile quite far, that I had seen many wonders. ‘But as for there being true gods,’ I said, I can scarce accept the veracity of gods with the heads of animals—’

“He shook his head almost a little sadly.

“ ‘The true gods require no statues of them to be erected,’ he said. ‘They have the heads of man and they themselves appear when they choose, and they are living as the crops that come from the earth are living, as all things under the heavens are living, even the stones and the moon itself, which divides time in the great silence of its never changing cycles.’

“ ‘Very likely,’ I said under my breath, not wishing to disturb him. So it was zeal, this mixture of cleverness and youthfulness I had perceived in him. I should have known it. And something came back to me from Julius Caesar’s writings about Gaul, that the Keltoi had come from Dis Pater, the god of the night. Was this strange creature a believer in these things?

“ ‘There are old gods in Egypt,’ he said softly, ‘and there are old gods in this land for those who know how to worship them. I do not mean in your temples round which merchants sell the animals to defile the altars, and the butchers after sell the meat that is left over. I speak of the proper worship, the proper sacrifice for the god, the one sacrifice to which he will hearken.’

“ ‘Human sacrifice, you mean, don’t you?’ I said unobtrusively. Caesar had described well enough that practice among the Keltoi, and it rather curdled my blood to think of it. Of course I’d seen ghastly deaths in the arena in Rome, ghastly deaths at the places of execution, but human sacrifice to the gods, that we had not done in centuries. If ever.

“And now I realized what this remarkable man might actually be. A Druid, a member of the ancient priesthood of the Keltoi, whom Caesar had also described, a priesthood so powerful that nothing like it existed, so far as I knew, anywhere in the Empire. But it wasn’t supposed to exist in Roman Gaul anymore either.

“Of course the Druids were always described as wearing long white robes. They went into the forests and collected mistletoe off the oak trees with ceremonial sickles. And this man looked more like a farmer, or a soldier. But then what Druid was going to wear his white robes into a waterfront tavern? And it wasn’t lawful anymore for the Druids to go about being Druids.

“ ‘Do you really believe in this old worship?’ I asked, leaning forward. ‘Have you yourself been down to the bottom of Egypt?’

“If this was a real live Druid, I had made a marvelous catch, I was thinking. I could get this man to tell me things about the Keltoi that nobody knew. And what on earth did Egypt have to do with it, I wondered?

“ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have not been to Egypt, though from Egypt our gods came to us. It is not my destiny to go there. It is not my destiny to learn to read the ancient language. The tongue I speak is enough for the gods. They give ear to it.’

“ ‘And what tongue is that?’

“ ‘The tongue of the Keltoi, of course,’ he said. ‘You know that without asking.’

“ ‘And when you speak to your gods, how do you know that they hear you?’

“His eyes widened again, and his mouth lengthened in an unmistakable look of triumph.

“ ‘My gods answer me,’ he said quietly.

“Surely he was a Druid. And he appeared to take on a shimmer, suddenly. I pictured him in his white robes. There might have been an earthquake then in Massilia, and I doubt I would have noticed it.

“ ‘Then you yourself have heard them,’ I said.

“ ‘I have laid eyes upon my gods,’ he said. ‘And they have spoken to me both in words and in silence.’

“ ‘And what do they say? What do they do that makes them different from our gods, I mean aside from the nature of the sacrifice?’

“His voice took on the lilting reverence of a song as he spoke. ‘They do as gods have always done; they divide the evil from the good. They bring down blessings upon all who worship them. They draw the faithful into harmony with all the cycles of the universe, with the cycles of the moon, as I have told you. They fructify the land, the gods do. All things that are good proceed from them.’

“Yes, I thought, the old old religion in its simplest forms, and the forms that still held a great spell for the common people of the Empire.

“ ‘My gods sent me here,’ he said. ‘To search for you.’

“ ‘For me?’ I asked. I was startled.

“ ‘You will understand all these things,’ he said. ‘Just as you will come to know the true worship of ancient Egypt. The gods will teach you.’

“ ‘Why ever would they do that?’ I asked.

“ ‘The answer is simple,’ he said. ‘Because you are going to become one of them.’

“I was about to answer when I felt a sharp blow to the back of my head and the pain spread out in all directions over my skull as if it were water. I knew I was going out. I saw the table rising, saw the ceiling high above
me. I think I wanted to say if it is ransom you want, take me to my house, to my steward.

“But I knew even then that the rules of my world had absolutely nothing to do with it.

“When I awoke it was daylight and I was in a large wagon being pulled fast along an unpaved road through an immense forest. I was bound hand and foot and a loose cover was thrown over me. I could see to the left and right, through the wicker sides of the cart, and I saw the man who had talked to me, riding beside me. There were others riding with him, and all were dressed in the trousers and belted leather jerkins, and they wore iron swords and iron bracelets. Their hair was almost white in the dappled sun, and they didn’t talk as they rode beside the cart together.

“This forest itself seemed made to the scale of Titans. The oaks were ancient and enormous, the interlacing of their limbs blocked out most of the light, and we moved for hours through a world of damp and dark green leaves and deep shadow.

“I do not remember towns. I do not remember villages. I remember only a crude fortress. Once inside the gates I saw two rows of thatched-roof houses, and everywhere the leather-clad barbarians. And when I was taken into one of the houses, a dark low place, and left there alone, I could hardly stand for the cramps in my legs, and I was as wary as I was furious.

“I knew now that I was in an undisturbed enclave of the ancient Keltoi, the very same fighters who had sacked the great shrine of Delphi only a few centuries ago, and Rome itself not too long after, the same warlike creatures who rode stark naked into battle against Caesar, their trumpets blasting, their cries affrighting the disciplined Roman soldiers.

“In other words, I was beyond the reach of everything I counted upon. And if all this talk about my becoming one of the gods meant I was to be slain on some blood-stained altar in an oak grove, then I had better try to get the hell out of here.”

When my captor appeared again, he was in the fabled long white robes, and his coarse blond hair had been combed, and he looked immaculate and impressive and solemn. There were other tall white-robed men, some old, some young, and all with the same gleaming
yellow hair, who came into the small shadowy room behind him.

“In a silent circle they enclosed me. And after a protracted silence, a riff of whispers passed amongst them.

“ ‘You are perfect for the god,’ said the eldest, and I saw the silent pleasure in the one who had brought me here. ‘You are what the god has asked for,’ the eldest said. ‘You will remain with us until the great feast of Samhain, and then you will be taken to the sacred grove and there you will drink the Divine Blood and you will become a father of gods, a restorer of all the magic that has inexplicably been taken from us.’

“ ‘And will my body die when this happens?’ I asked. I was looking at them, their sharp narrow faces, their probing eyes, the gaunt grace with which they surrounded me. What a terror this race must have been when its warriors swept down on the Mediterranean peoples. No wonder there had been so much written about their fearlessness. But these weren’t warriors. These were priests, judges, and teachers. These were the instructors of the young, the keepers of the poetry and the laws that were never written in any language.

“ ‘Only the mortal part of you will die,’ said the one who had spoken to me all along.

“ ‘Bad luck,’ I said. ‘Since that’s about all there is to me.’

“ ‘No,’ he said. ‘Your form will remain and it will become glorified. You will see. Don’t fear. And besides, there is nothing you can do to change these things. Until the feast of Samhain, you will let your hair grow long, and you will learn our tongue, and our hymns and our laws. We will care for you. My name is Mael, and I myself will teach you.’

“ ‘But I am not willing to become the god,’ I said. ‘Surely the gods don’t want one who is unwilling.’

“ ‘The old god will decide,’ said Mael. ‘But I know that when you drink the Divine Blood you will become the god, and all things will be clear to you.’

“Escape was impossible.

“I was guarded night and day. I was allowed no knife with which I might cut off my hair or otherwise damage myself. And a good deal of the time I lay in the dark empty room, drunk on wheaten beer and satiated with the rich roasted meats they gave to me. I had nothing with which to write and this tortured me.