“So this is what was on her mind,” I said. “Memories of her human past.”
“I think so,” said Jesse in a small voice. “There were other images, colliding, cascading, you know how it is, but again and again, it was those long-ago times. Sunshine. Sunshine in the valley …”
David was giving me one of his subtle little gestures to be gentle, tread lightly.
But we both knew these visions or memories were like unto what mortals think about at the end of their lives, their earliest happiest memories.
“She’s in the Amazon, isn’t she?” I said. “Deep in the jungles.”
“Yes,” said Jesse. “She forbade me to tell anyone, and I’m breaking her confidence now. She’s in uncharted jungle. The only tribe in the area fled after our arrival there.”
“I’m going there,” I said. “I want to see for myself what’s happening. If we’re all to perish because of this Voice, well, I want to hear from her what’s going on.”
“Lestat, she doesn’t know what’s going on,” said Jesse. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“I know—.”
“I think all this disgusts her. She wants to be left alone. I think this Voice may be driving her to think about destroying herself and Mekare and, well, all of us.”
“I don’t think the Voice wants us destroyed,” I said.
“But she may be thinking of it,” said Jesse sharply. “I’m only speculating,” she confessed. “I know she’s confused, angry, even bitter, and this from Maharet. Maharet of all immortals. Maharet.”
“She’s human still,” David said softly. He stroked Jesse’s arm. He kissed her hair. “We’re all human no matter how long we go on.”
He spoke with the easy authority of an old Talamasca scholar, but I actually agreed with him. “If you ask me,” he said softly to Jesse, “finding her sister, being reunited with her sister, has destroyed Maharet.”
Jesse wasn’t surprised by this or jarred by it.
“She never leaves Mekare alone now,” Jesse said. “And Khayman, well, Khayman is hopeless, roaming off for weeks at a time, and stumbling back in with no memory of where he’s been.”
“Well, surely he’s not the source of the Voice,” said David.
“No, of course not,” I said. “But the Voice is controlling him. Isn’t that obvious? The Voice is manipulating him as it has been all along. I suspect the Voice began these massacres with him; and then moved to enlisting others. The Voice is working on a number of fronts, you might say. But Maharet and Khayman are too close for any telepathic bridge. She can’t know. And he obviously can’t tell her. He hasn’t the wits to tell her or anyone.”
A dark cold feeling came over me that, no matter how this came to an end, Khayman as an immortal on this Earth was finished. Khayman wouldn’t survive. And I dreaded the loss of Khayman. I dreaded the loss of all he’d experienced in his thousands of years of roaming, the loss of the tales he might have told of the early battles of the First Brood, of his later wanderings as Benjamin the Devil. I dreaded the loss of the gentle, sweet-hearted Khayman whom I’d briefly known. This was too painful. Who else wouldn’t survive?
Jesse appeared to be reading my thoughts. She nodded. “I’m afraid you’re right.”
“Well, I think I know what’s happening,” I said. “I’m going there now. After I see her I’ll meet you in Manaus. That’s far enough away from her, isn’t it?”
David nodded. He said he knew of a fashionable little jungle lodge about thirty miles out of Manaus located on the Acajatuba River. Ah, British gentlemen, they always know how to go forth into the wilderness in style. I smiled. We agreed we’d meet there.
“Are you ready for this journey tonight?” he asked.
“Absolutely. It’s westward. We’ll gain six hours of darkness. Let’s go.”
“You do realize there’s danger here, don’t you?” asked David. “You’re going against Maharet’s express wish.”
“Of course,” I said. “But why did you two come to me? Didn’t you expect me to do something? Why are you both staring at me?”
“We came to urge you to go with us to New York,” Jesse explained timidly, “to urge you to call a meeting of all the powerful ones of the tribe.”
“You don’t need me to do that,” I said. “Go yourselves. Call the meeting.”
“But everyone will come if you call the meeting,” David said.
“And who is everyone? I want to see Maharet.”
They were edgy, uncertain.
“Look, you go on ahead of me to the Amazon now, and I’ll meet you later this very night. And if I don’t—if I don’t meet you in two nights at the jungle lodge on the river, well, have a Requiem Mass said for me in Notre Dame de Paris.”
I left them then, knowing I’d be traveling much faster and higher than either of them, and also, I went back to my château for my ax.
It was rather silly, my wanting my little ax.
I also stripped off the fancy velvet and lace, and put on a decent heavy leather jacket for the journey. I should have cut my hair for those jungles, but I was too damned vain to do that. Samson never loved his hair as much as I love mine. And then I set out for the Amazon.
Five hours before dawn in that great southerly region, I was descending towards the endless channel of deep darkness that was the Amazon rain forest with the silver streak of river winding through it. I was scanning for pinpoints of light, infinitesimal flickers that no mortal eye could ever see.
And then taking my best shot at it, I went down, crashing through the wet humid canopy, descending through crackling and breaking branches and vines until I landed rather awkwardly in the dense darkness of a grove of ancient trees.
At once I was imprisoned by vines and clattering branches in the understory, but I stood quiet, very quiet, listening, making like a stealthy beast on the silent prowl.
The air was wet and fragrant and filled with the simmering voices of the slithering, twittering, and voracious creatures around me everywhere.
But I could hear their voices too. Maharet and Khayman quarreling in the ancient tongue.
If there was a path in the vicinity leading towards those voices, well, I never found it.
I didn’t dare try to cut my way through with the ax. That would have made too much noise and dulled the blade. I just made my way slowly, painstakingly, over bulbous roots and through stinging brush, suppressing my respiration, my pulse, as best I could along with my thoughts.