Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(76)
Author: Anne Rice

It took a moment for Michael to realize the room held another partially concealed figure. Yuri was already looking at this figure.

Across the circle from them, at the far end of the diameter, so to speak, sat a very tall woman at a stool, apparently working on a loom. One small gooseneck lamp illuminated her hands, but not her face. A small bit of her tapestry was revealed, and Michael could see that it was very intricate and full of muted color.

Ash stood stock-still, staring at her. The woman stared back. It was the long-haired woman Michael had seen at the window.

The others made no move. Gordon rushed towards her. “Tessa,” he said, “Tessa, I’m here, my darling.” The voice was speaking in a realm of its own, the others forgotten.

The woman rose, towering over the frail figure of Gordon as he embraced her. She yielded with a sweet, delicate sigh, her hands rising to gently touch Gordon’s thin shoulders. In spite of her height, she was so slight of build that she seemed the weaker one. With his arms around her, he brought her forward into the brighter light, into the circle.

There was something grim in Rowan’s expression. Yuri was enthralled. Ash’s face was unreadable. He merely watched as the woman came closer and closer and now stood beneath the chandelier, the light gleaming on the top of her head and on her forehead.

Perhaps on account of her sex, the woman’s height seemed truly monstrous.

Her face was perfectly round, flawless, rather like that of Ash, but not so long or deeply defined. Her mouth was tender and tiny, and her eyes, though big, were timid and without unusual color. Blue eyes, however, kind, and fringed, like those of Ash, with long, luxuriant lashes. A great mane of white hair grew back from her forehead, falling about her almost magically. It seemed motionless and soft, more a cloud than a mane, perhaps, and so fine that the light made the mass of it appear faintly transparent.

She wore a violet dress, beautifully smocked just beneath her br**sts. The sleeves were gorgeously old-fashioned, gathered around the small of her upper arms and then ballooning to the cuffs that fitted tightly at the wrists.

Dim thoughts of Rapunzel came to Michael—or more truly of every speck of romance that he had ever read—a realm of fairy queens and princes of unambiguous power. As the woman drew near to Ash, Michael couldn’t help but see that her skin was so pale it was almost white. A swan of a princess she seemed, her cheeks firm and her mouth glistening slightly, and her lashes very vivid around her glowing blue eyes.

She frowned, which made a single pucker in her forehead, and seemed like a baby about to bawl.

“Taltos,” she whispered. But this was said without the slightest alarm. Indeed, she looked almost sad.

Yuri let out a tiny, faint gasp.

Gordon was transformed with astonishment, as if nothing had actually prepared him for this meeting to take place. He seemed for a moment almost young, eyes fired with love and with rapture.

“This is your female?” asked Ash softly. He was gazing at her, even smiling slightly, but he had not moved to greet her or touch her outstretched hand. He spoke slowly.

“This is the female for whom you murdered Aaron Lightner, for whom you tried to kill Yuri, the female to whom you would have brought the male Taltos at any cost?”

“What are you saying!” said Gordon in a timorous voice. “You dare to hurt her, either with words or actions, I’ll kill you.”

“I don’t think so,” said Ash. “My dearest,” he said to the woman, “can you understand me?”

“Yes,” she said softly, in a tiny bell of a voice. She shrugged and threw up her hands, almost in the manner of an ecstatic saint. “Taltos,” she said, and gave a small sad shake of her head, and frowned again with almost dreamy distress.

Had the doomed Emaleth been so fair and feminine?

With a shock, Michael saw Emaleth’s face collapse as the bullets struck it, saw the body fall over backwards! Was this why Rowan was crying, or was she merely tired and wondering, eyes watering slightly as she watched Ash looking down at the woman and the woman looking up. What must this be for her?

“Beautiful Tessa,” Ash said with a slight rise of his eyebrows.

“What’s wrong?” asked Gordon. “Something is wrong—for both of you. Tell me what’s wrong.” He moved closer, but stopped, obviously not willing to step between them. His voice was rich and sorrowful now. It had the quality of an orator, or of someone who knew how to affect his listeners. “Oh, God in heaven, this is not what I imagined—to meet here in this place, surrounded by those who can’t truly grasp the meaning.”

But he was too full of emotion for there to be any artifice in what he was saying or doing at all. His gestures were no longer hysterical. They were tragic.

Ash stood as still as ever, smiling at Tessa very deliberately, and then nodding with pleasure as her little mouth opened and expanded, and her cheeks grew small and plump with her own smile.

“You’re very beautiful,” Ash whispered, and then he raised his hand to his lips, and kissed his fingers and gently placed this kiss on her cheek.

She sighed, stretching her long neck and letting her hair tumble down her back, and then she reached out for him, and he took her in his arms. He kissed her, but there was no passion in it. Michael could see it.

Gordon came between them, circling Tessa’s waist with his left hand and gently drawing her back.

“Not here, I beg you. Oh, please, not as if it were in a common brothel.”

He let go of Tessa and approached Ash, hands clasped as if praying, peering up without fear now, caught in something more crucial to him even than his own survival.

“What is the place for the wedding of the Taltos?” he said reverently, voice rich and imploring. “What is the holiest place in England, where St. Michael’s line runs over the crest of the hill, and the ruined tower of the ancient Church of St. Michael is a sentinel still?”

Ash regarded him almost sadly, composed, merely listening, as the impassioned voice continued.

“Let me take you there, both of you, let me see the wedding of the Taltos on Glastonbury Tor!” His voice dropped low and the words came evenly, almost slowly. “If I see this, if I see the miracle of the birth there on the sacred mountain, in the place where Christ himself came to England—where old gods have fallen and new gods risen, where blood was shed in the defense of the sacred—if I see this, the birth of the offspring, full-grown and reaching out to embrace its parents, the very symbol of life itself, then it doesn’t matter whether I go on living, or whether I die.”