“Why?”
“Because I am in pain and if there is a God, he made this pain.”
“Yes, that I understand perfectly, Lasher. But he made love, too, if he exists.”
“Yes. Love. Love is the source of my pain,” he said. “It is the source of all my moving into time and ambition and plans. All my desires spring from love. You might say that what I was-when I was only what I am-that I was poisoned by love, that in the call of Suzanne I was awakened to love, and to the nightmare of want. But I saw. And I loved. And I came.”
“You make me sad,” she said suddenly.
“Love mutated me, Rowan. It created my first dissatisfaction.”
“Yes.”
“And now I seek to mutate into flesh, and that shall be the consummation of my love. I have waited so long for you. I have seen such suffering before you, and if I had had tears to shed, they would have been shed. God knows, for Langtry I made an illusion of myself weeping. It was a true image of my pain. I wept not merely for Stella, but for all of them-my witches. When Julien died, I was in agony. So great was my pain then, that I might have moved away, back to the realm of the moon and the stars and the silence. But it was too late for me. I could not bear my loneliness. When Mary Beth called, I came back to her. Quickening. I looked into the future. And I saw the thirteenth again. I saw the ever increasing strength of my witches.”
She had closed her eyes again. The fire was gone out. The room was full of the spirit of Lasher. She could feel him against her skin though he did not move, and the fabric of him lay as lightly as the air itself.
“When I am truly flesh,” he said, “the tears and the laughter will come from me by reflex, as they come in you, or in Michael. I shall be a complete organism.”
“But not human.”
“Better than human.”
“But not human.”
“Stronger, more enduring, for I shall be the organizing intelligence, and I have great power, greater than the power inside any existing human. I shall be a new thing, as I told you. I shall be a species which as of now does not exist.”
“Did you kill Arthur Langtry?”
“Not necessary. He was dying. What he saw hastened his death.”
“But why did you show yourself to him?”
“Because he was strong and he could see me, and I wanted to draw him in so that he might save Stella, for I knew Stella was in danger. Carlotta was the enemy of Stella. Carlotta was as strong as you are, Rowan.”
“Why didn’t Arthur help Stella?”
“You know the history. It was too late. I am as a child at such moments in time. I was defeated by simultaneity because I was acting in time.”
“I don’t follow.”
“While I appeared to Langtry, the shots were fired into the brain of Stella, and brought about instant death. I see far, but I cannot see all the surprises.”
“You didn’t know.”
“And Carlotta tricked me. Carlotta misled me. I am not infallible. In fact, I am confused with amazing ease.”
“How so?”
“Why should I tell you? So you may all the better control me? You know how. You are as powerful a witch as Carlotta. It was through emotions. Carlotta conceived of the killing as an act of love. She schooled Lionel in what he was to think as he took the gun and fired at Stella. I was not alerted by hatred, or malice. I paid no attention to the love thoughts of Lionel. Then Stella lay dying, calling to me silently, with her eyes open, wounded beyond hope of repair. And Lionel fired the second shot which drove the spirit of Stella up and out of the body forever.”
“But you killed Lionel. You drove him to his death.”
“I did.”
“And Cortland? You killed Cortland.”
“No. I fought with Cortland. I struggled with him, and he sought to use his strength against me, and he failed, and fell in his struggle. I did not kill your father.”
“Why did you fight?”
“I warned him. He believed he could command me. He was not my witch. Deirdre was my witch. You are my witch. Not Cortland.”
“But Deirdre didn’t want to give me up. And Cortland was defending her wishes.”
“For his own aims.”
“Which were what?”
“That is old now, unimportant. You went to freedom, so that you could be strong when you returned. You were freed from Carlotta.”
“But you saw to it, and this was against the wishes of both Deirdre and Cortland.”
“For your sake, Rowan. I love you.”
“Ah, but you see, there’s a pattern here, isn’t there? And you don’t want me to understand it. Once the child is born, you are for the child and not the mother. That’s what happened with Deborah and Charlotte, isn’t it?”
“You misjudge me. When I act in time, sometimes I do what is wrong.”
“You went against the wishes of Deirdre. You saw to it I was taken away. You advanced the plan of the thirteen witches, and that was for your own aims. You have always worked for your own aims, haven’t you?”
“You are the thirteenth and the strongest. You have been my aim, and I will serve you. Your aims and my aims are identical.”
“I think not.”
She could feel his pain now, feel the turbulence in the air, feel the emotion as if it were the low strum of a harp string, playing upon her unconscious ear. Song of pain. The draperies swayed again in a warm draft and both of the chandeliers of the double parlors danced in the shadows, full of splinters of white light, now that the fire had died and taken with it the colors.
“Were you ever a living human being?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember the first time you ever saw human beings?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
“That it was not possible for spirit to come from matter, that it was a joke. What you would call preposterous or a blunder.”
“It came from matter.”
“It did indeed. It came out of the matter when the organization reached the appropriate point for it to emerge, and we were surprised by this mutation.”
“You and the others who were already there.”
“In timelessness already there.”
“Did it draw your attention?”
“Yes. Because it was a mutation and entirely new. And also because we were called to observe.”
“How?”
“The newly emerging intelligences of man, locked in matter, nevertheless perceived us, and thereby caused us to perceive ourselves. Again, this is a sophisticated sentence and therefore partially inaccurate. For millennia, these human spiritual intelligences developed; they grew stronger and stronger; they developed telepathic powers; they sensed our existence; they named us and talked to us and seduced us; if we took notice we were changed; we thought of ourselves.”
“So you learned self-consciousness from us.”
“All things from you. Self-consciousness, desire, ambition. You are dangerous teachers. And we are discontent.”
“Then there are others of you with ambition.”
“Julien said, ‘Matter created man and man created the gods.’ That is partially correct.”
“Did you ever speak to a human being before Suzanne?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I saw and heard Suzanne. I loved Suzanne.”
“I want to go back to Aaron. Why do you say Aaron tells lies?”
“Aaron does not reveal the whole purpose of the Talamasca.”
“Are you certain of this?”
“Of course. How can Aaron lie to me? I knew of Aaron’s coming before there was Aaron. Arthur Langtry’s warnings were for Aaron, when he did not even know about Aaron.”
“But how does Aaron lie? When, and in regard to what, did he lie?”
“Aaron has a mission. So do all the brothers of the Talamasca. They keep it secret. They keep much knowledge secret. They are an occult order, to use words you would understand.”