Blood and Gold (Random House Large Print) - Hardcover

Rice, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375431330 ISBN 13: 9780375431333

Publisher: Random House Large Print, 2001

Synopsis

Out of the pages of the Vampire Chronicles steps the golden-haired Marius, true Child of the Millenia, once mentor to the Vampire Lestat, always and forever the conscientious slayer of the evildoer, and now ready to reveal the secrets of his two-thousand-year-long existence in his own intense yet intimate voice.

Born in Imperial Rome, imprisoned and made a "blood god" by the ancient Druids, Marius is the baffled yet powerful protector of Akasha and Enkil, Queen and King of the vampires, in whom the core of the race resides.

We follow him through his tragic loss of the vampire Pandora, his lover and fledgling creation. Through him we see the fall of pagan Rome to the Christendom of Constantine, and the sack of the Eternal City by the Visigoths. We see him sailing to the glittering city of Constantinople.

Worlds within worlds unfold as Marius, surviving the Dark Ages and the Black Death, emerges in the midst of the Italian Renaissance to create magnificent paintings and a vampire—the boy Armand.

Moving from Florence, Venice, Dresden, Paris, and the English castle of the secret and scholarly order of the Talamasca, the novel reaches its dramatic finale in a jungle paradise where the oldest of the vampires reigns supreme.

About this title

About the Author

This is Anne Rice's twenty-third book. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, the poet and painter Stan Rice, and her son, the novelist Christopher Rice.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Blood and Gold

By Anne Rice

Random House Large Print Publishing

Copyright © 2001 Anne Rice
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0375431330

Chapter One

His name was Thorne. In the ancient language of the runes, it had beenlonger–Thornevald. But when he became a blood drinker, his name had beenchanged to Thorne. And Thorne he remained now, centuries later, as he lay in hiscave in the ice, dreaming.

When he had first come to the frozen land, he had hoped he would sleepeternally. But now and then the thirst for blood awakened him, and using theCloud Gift, he rose into the air, and went in search of the Snow Hunters.

He fed off them, careful never to take too much blood from any one so that nonedied on account of him. And when he needed furs and boots he took them as well,and returned to his hiding place.

These Snow Hunters were not his people. They were dark of skin and had slantedeyes, and they spoke a different tongue, but he had known them in the oldentimes when he had traveled with his uncle into the land to the East for trading.He had not liked trading. He had preferred war. But he’d learnt manythings on those adventures.

In his sleep in the North, he dreamed. He could not help it. The Mind Gift lethim hear the voices of other blood drinkers.

Unwillingly he saw through their eyes, and beheld the world as they beheld it.Sometimes he didn’t mind. He liked it. Modern things amused him. Helistened to far-away electric songs. With the Mind Gift he understood suchthings as steam engines and railroads; he even understood computers andautomobiles. He felt he knew the cities he had left behind though it had beencenturies since he’d forsaken them.

An awareness had come over him that he wasn’t going to die. Loneliness initself could not destroy him. Neglect was insufficient. And so he slept.

Then a strange thing happened. A catastrophe befell the world of the blooddrinkers.

A young singer of sagas had come. His name was Lestat, and in his electricsongs, Lestat broadcast old secrets, secrets which Thorne had never known.

Then a Queen had risen, an evil and ambitious being. She had claimed to havewithin her the Sacred Core of all blood drinkers, so that, should she die, allthe race would perish with her.

Thorne had been amazed.

He had never heard these myths of his own kind. He did not know that he believedthis thing.

But as he slept, as he dreamt, as he watched, this Queen began, with the FireGift, to destroy blood drinkers everywhere throughout the world. Thorne heardtheir cries as they tried to escape; he saw their deaths in so far as others sawsuch things.

As she roamed the earth, this Queen came close to Thorne but she passed overhim. He was secretive and quiet in his cave. Perhaps she didn’t sense hispresence. But he had sensed hers and never had he encountered such age orstrength except from the blood drinker who had given him the Blood.

And he found himself thinking of that one, the Maker, the red-haired witch withthe bleeding eyes.

The catastrophe among his kind grew worse. More were slain; and out of hidingthere came blood drinkers as old as the Queen herself, and Thorne saw thesebeings.

At last there came the red-haired one who had made him. He saw her as others sawher. And at first he could not believe that she still lived; it had been so longsince he’d left her in the Far South that he hadn’t dared to hopeshe was still alive. The eyes and ears of other blood drinkers gave him theinfallible proof. And when he looked on her in his dreams, he was overwhelmedwith a tender feeling and a rage.

She thrived, this creature who had given him the Blood, and she despised theEvil Queen and she wanted to stop her. Theirs was a hatred for each other whichwent back thousands of years.

At last there was a coming together of these beings–old ones from theFirst Brood of blood drinkers, and others whom the blood drinker Lestat lovedand whom the Evil Queen did not choose to destroy.

Dimly, as he lay still in the ice, Thorne heard their strange talk, as round atable they sat, like so many powerful Knights, except that in this council, thewomen were equal to the men.

With the Queen they sought to reason, struggling to persuade her to end herreign of violence, to forsake her evil designs.

He listened, but he could not really understand all that was said among theseblood drinkers. He knew only that the Queen must be stopped.

The Queen loved the blood drinker Lestat. But even he could not turn her fromdisasters, so reckless was her vision, so depraved her mind.

Did the Queen truly have the Sacred Core of all blood drinkers within herself?If so, how could she be destroyed?

Thorne wished the Mind Gift were stronger in him, or that he had used it moreoften. During his long centuries of sleep, his strength had grown, but now hefelt his distance and that he was weak.

But as he watched, his eyes open, as though that might help him to see, therecame into his vision another red-haired one, the twin sister of the woman whohad loved him so long ago. It astonished him, as only a twin can do.

And Thorne came to understand that the Maker he had loved so much had lost thistwin thousands of years ago.

The Evil Queen was the mistress of this disaster. She despised the red-hairedtwins. She had divided them. And the lost twin came now to fulfill an ancientcurse she had laid on the Evil Queen.

As she drew closer and closer to the Queen, the lost twin thought only ofdestruction. She did not sit at the council table. She did not know reason orrestraint.

“We shall all die,” Thorne whispered in his sleep, drowsy in thesnow and ice, the eternal arctic night coldly enclosing him. He did not move tojoin his immortal companions. But he watched. He listened. He would do so untilthe last moment. He could do no less.

Finally, the lost twin reached her destination. She rose against the Queen. Theother blood drinkers around her looked on in horror. As the two female beingsstruggled, as they fought as two warriors upon a battlefield, a strange visionsuddenly filled Thorne’s mind utterly, as though he lay in the snow and hewere looking at the heavens.

What he saw was a great intricate web stretching out in all directions, andcaught within it many pulsing points of light. At the very center of this webwas a single vibrant flame. He knew the flame was the Queen; and he knew thatthe other points of light were all the other blood drinkers. He himself was oneof those tiny points of light. The tale of the Sacred Core was true. He couldsee it with his own eyes. And now came the moment for all to surrender todarkness and silence. Now came the end.

The far-flung complex web grew glistening and bright; the core appeared toexplode; and then all went dim for a long moment, during which he felt a sweetvibration in his limbs as he often felt in simple sleep, and he thought tohimself, Ah, so, now we are dying. And there is no pain.

Yet it was like Ragnarok for his old gods, when the great god, Heimdall, theWorld Brightener, would blow his horn summoning the gods of Aiser to their finalbattle.

“And we end with a war as well,” Thorne whispered in his cave. Buthis thoughts did not end.

It seemed the best thing that he live no more, until he thought of her, hisred-haired one, his Maker. He had wanted so badly to see her again.

Why had she never told him of her lost twin? Why had she never entrusted to himthe myths of which the blood drinker Lestat sang? Surely she had known thesecret of the Evil Queen with her Sacred Core.

He shifted; he stirred in his sleep. The great sprawling web had faded from hisvision. But with uncommon clarity he could see the red-haired twins, spectacularwomen.

They stood side by side, these comely creatures, the one in rags, the other insplendor. And through the eyes of other blood drinkers he came to know that thestranger twin had slain the Queen, and had taken the Sacred Core within herself.

“Behold, the Queen of the Damned,” said his Maker twin as shepresented to the others her long-lost sister. Thorne understood her. Thorne sawthe suffering in her face. But the face of the stranger twin, the Queen of theDamned, was blank.

In the nights that followed the survivors of the catastrophe remained together.They told their tales to one another. And their stories filled the air like somany songs from the bards of old, sung in the mead hall. And Lestat, leaving hiselectric instruments for music, became once more the chronicler, making a storyof the battle that he would pass effortlessly into the mortal world.

Soon the red-haired sisters had moved away, seeking a hiding place whereThorne’s distant eye could not find them.

Be still, he had told himself. Forget the things that you have seen. There is noreason for you to rise from the ice, any more than there ever was. Sleep is yourfriend. Dreams are your unwelcome guests.

Lie quiet and you will lapse back into peace again. Be like the god Heimdallbefore the battle call, so still that you can hear the wool grow on the backs ofsheep, and the grass grow far away in the lands where the snow melts.

But more visions came to him.

The blood drinker Lestat brought about some new and confusing tumult in themortal world. It was a marvelous secret from the Chris- tian past that he bore,which he had entrusted to a mortal girl.

There would never be any peace for this one called Lestat. He was like one ofThorne’s people, like one of the warriors of Thorne’s time.

Thorne watched as once again, his red-haired one appeared, his lovely Maker, hereyes red with mortal blood as always, and finely glad and full of authority andpower, and this time come to bind the unhappy blood drinker Lestat in chains.

Chains that could bind such a powerful one?

Thorne pondered it. What chains could accomplish this, he wondered. It seemedthat he had to know the answer to this question. And he saw his red-haired onesitting patiently by while the blood drinker Lestat, bound and helpless, foughtand raved but could not get free.

What were they made of, these seemingly soft shaped links that held such abeing? The question left Thorne no peace. And why did his red-haired Maker loveLestat and allow him to live? Why was she so quiet as the young one raved? Whatwas it like to be bound in her chains, and close to her?

Memories came back to Thorne; troubling visions of his Maker when he, a mortalwarrior, had first come upon her in a cave in the North land that had been hishome. It had been night and he had seen her with her distaff and her spindle andher bleeding eyes.

From her long red locks she had taken one hair after another and spun it intothread, working with silent speed as he approached her.

It had been bitter winter, and the fire behind her seemed magical in itsbrightness as he had stood in the snow watching her as she spun the thread as hehad seen a hundred mortal women do.

“A witch,” he had said aloud.

From his mind he banished this memory.

He saw her now as she guarded Lestat who had become strong like her. He saw thestrange chains that bound Lestat who no longer struggled.

At last Lestat had been released.

Gathering up the magical chains, his red-haired Maker had abandoned him and hiscompanions.

The others were visible but she had slipped out of their vision, and slippingfrom their vision, she slipped from the visions of Thorne.

Once again, he vowed to continue his slumber. He opened his mind to sleep. Butthe nights passed one by one in his icy cave. The noise of the world wasdeafening and formless.

And as time passed he could not forget the sight of his long-lost one; he couldnot forget that she was as vital and beautiful as she had ever been, and oldthoughts came back to him with bitter sharpness.

Why had they quarreled? Had she really ever turned her back on him? Why had hehated so much her other companions? Why had he begrudged her the wanderer blooddrinkers who, discovering her and her company, adored her as all talked togetherof their journeys in the Blood.

And the myths–of the Queen and the Sacred Core–would they havemattered to him? He didn’t know. He had had no hunger for myths. Itconfused him. And he could not banish from his mind the picture of Lestat boundin those mysterious chains.

Memory wouldn’t leave him alone.

It was the middle of winter when the sun doesn’t shine at all over theice, when he realized that sleep had left him. And he would have no furtherpeace.

And so he rose from the cave, and began his long walk South through the snow,taking his time as he listened to the electric voices of the world below, notcertain of where he would enter it again.

The wind blew his long thick red hair; he pulled up his fur-lined collar overhis mouth, and he wiped the ice from his eyebrows. His boots were soon wet, andso he stretched out his arms, summoning the Cloud Gift without words, and beganhis ascent so that he might travel low over the land, listening for others ofhis kind, hoping to find an old one like himself, someone who might welcome him.

Weary of the Mind Gift and its random messages, he wanted to hear spoken words.

Continues...

Excerpted from Blood and Goldby Anne Rice Copyright © 2001 by Anne Rice. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Random House Large Print
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375431330
• ISBN 13: 9780375431333
• Binding: Hardcover