Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(23)
Author: Anne Rice

“Why? I want to know who killed him.”

“When I know you better, when you’ve matched my confessions with your own.”

“What can I confess? I’m Ashlar. I’m a Taltos. It’s centuries since I’ve seen one single other member of my own species. Oh, there have been others. I’ve heard tell of them, chased after them, and in some instances almost found them. Mark, I say almost. But not in centuries have I touched my own flesh and blood, as humans are so fond of saying. Never in all this time.”

“You’re very old, that’s what you’re telling me. Our lifespan is nothing compared to yours.”

“Well, apparently not,” said the man. “I must be old. I have this white hair now, as you see. But then how am I to know how old I am, and what my decline may be, and how long it will take in human years? When I lived in happiness among my own, I was too young to learn what I would need for this long, lonely voyage. And God did not gift me with a supernatural memory. Like an ordinary man, I remember some things with haunting clarity; others are completely erased.”

“The Talamasca knows about you?” asked Yuri. “It’s crucial that you tell me. The Talamasca was my vocation.”

“Explain how this changed.”

“As I told you, Aaron Lightner went to New Orleans. Aaron is an expert on witches. We study witches.”

“Understood,” said the dwarf. “Get on with it.”

“Hush, Samuel, mind your manners,” said the tall one softly but seriously.

“Don’t be an imbecile, Ash, this gypsy is falling in love with you!”

The Taltos was shocked and outraged. The anger flared in him beautifully and fully, and then be shook his head and folded his arms as if he knew how to deal with such anger.

As for Yuri, he was again stunned. It seemed the way of the world now—outrageous shocks and revelations. He was stunned and hurt because he had in some way warmed to this being far beyond the ways in which he’d warmed to the little man, which were, in the main, more intellectual.

He looked away, humiliated. He had no time now to tell the story of his own life—how he had fallen so totally under the dominance of Aaron Lightner, and the force and power which strong men often exerted over him. He wanted to say this was not erotic. But it was erotic, insofar as anything and everything is.

The Taltos was staring coldly at the little man.

Yuri resumed his story.

“Aaron Lightner went to help the Mayfair witches in their endless battles with the spirit Lasher. Aaron Lightner never knew whence this spirit came, or what it really was. That a witch had called it up in Donnelaith in the year 1665—that was known, but not much else about it.

“After the creature was made flesh, after it had caused the deaths of too many witches for me to count—only after all this did Aaron Lightner see the creature and learn from its own lips that it was the Taltos, and that it had lived in a body before, in the time of King Henry, meeting its death in Donnelaith, the glen which it haunted until the witch called it up.

“These things are not in any Talamasca file known to me. Scarcely three weeks have passed since the creature was slaughtered. But these things may be in secret files known to someone. Once the Talamasca learnt that Lasher had been reincarnated, or whatever in the name of God we should call it, they moved in on him and sought to remove him for their own purposes. They may have coldly and deliberately taken several lives in the process. I don’t know. I know that Aaron had no part in their schemes, and felt betrayed by them. That is why I’m asking you: Do they know about you? Are you part of the Talamasca knowledge, because if you are, it is highly occult knowledge.”

“Yes and no,” said the tall one. “You don’t tell lies at all, do you?”

“Ash, try not to say strange things,” grumbled the dwarf. He too had sat back, letting his short, stumpy legs stretch out perfectly straight. He had knitted his fingers on his tweed vest, and his shirt was open at the neck. A bit of light flashed in his hooded eyes.

“I was merely remarking on it, Samuel. Have some patience.” The tall man sighed. “Try not to say such strange things yourself.” He looked a little annoyed and then his eyes returned to Yuri.

“Let me answer your question, Yuri,” he said. The way he had spoken the name was warm and casual. “Men in the Talamasca today probably know nothing of me. It would take a genius to unearth what tales of us are told in Talamasca archives, if indeed such documents still exist. I never fully understood the status or the significance of this knowledge—the Order’s files, as they call them now. I read some manuscript once, centuries ago, and laughed and laughed at the words in it. But in those times all written language seemed naive and touching to me. Some of it still does.”

To Yuri, this was a fascinating point. The dwarf had been right, of course; he was falling under the sway of this being, he had lost his healthy reluctance to trust, but that was what this sort of love was about, wasn’t it? Divesting oneself so totally of the customary feelings of alienation and distrust that the subsequent acceptance was intellectually orgasmic.

“What sort of language doesn’t make you laugh?” asked Yuri.

“Modern slang,” said the tall one. “Realism in fiction, and journalism which is filled with colloquialisms. It often lacks naiveté completely. It has lost all formality, and instead abides by an intense compression. When people write now, it is sometimes like the screech of a whistle compared to the songs they used to sing.”

Yuri laughed. “I think you’re right,” he said. “Not so the documents of the Talamasca, however.”

“No. As I was explaining, they are melodic and amusing.”

“But then there are documents and documents. So you don’t think they know about you now.”

“I’m fairly certain they don’t know about me, and as you tell your tale, it becomes very clear that they cannot possibly know about me. But go on. What happened to this Taltos?”

“They tried to take him away, and they died in the process. The man who killed the Taltos killed these men from the Talamasca. Before they died, however, when these men were seeking to take the Taltos into their custody, you might say, they indicated that they had a female Taltos, that they had for centuries sought to bring the male and the female together. They indicated it was the avowed purpose of the Order. The clandestine and occult purpose, I should say. This was demoralizing to Aaron Lightner.”