"But what work was this?" Marius asked.
"The work was to learn," said Teskhamen. "To learn why blood drinkers walk the Earth, and how that spirit of Amel makes such wonders possible, to learn why ghosts linger and cannot seek the light that attracts so many souls who ascend without a backward glance. To learn how witches might command spirits, and what those spirits are. We formed a resolve in that old ruined monastery, that as we rebuilt its roofs, its walls, its doorways, and replanted its vineyards and gardens, we would learn. We would be our own sect dedicated to no god or saint but to knowledge, understanding. That we would be the studious and profane scholars of an Order in which only the material was sacred, in which only the respect for the physical and all its mysteries governed all else."
"You are describing the Talamasca to me, aren't you?" said Marius. He was amazed. "This is the birth of the Talamasca that you are explaining."
"Yes. It was the year 748, or so say the calendars of now. I well remember it, because I went to the nearby city early of an evening less than a month after our first meeting--properly dressed and with Gremt's gold--to obtain that old monastery and its overgrown land for us in perpetuity and to safeguard our little refuge from the claims of the mortal world. I led the way. But we all signed the documents. And I have those parchment pages still. Gremt's name is written on them beneath Hesketh's name and mine. That land is ours to this very time, and that ancient monastery, still existing in the deep forest of France, has always been the true secret Motherhouse of the Talamasca."
Marius couldn't help but smile.
"Gremt was easily strong enough then to travel among humans," said Teskhamen as he continued. "By day or by night, he had been appearing amongst them for some time. And soon Hesketh was moving among humankind with equal confidence, and the Order of the Talamasca was begun. Ah, it is a long story, but that old monastery is our home now."
"I see it," Marius gasped. "Of course. The old mystery is explained. It was you, you who founded it, a blood drinker, a spirit as you call him, and this phantom you loved. But your mortal followers, your members, your scholars, they were never to be told the actual truth?"
Teskhamen nodded. "We were the first Elders," he said. "And we knew from the beginning that the mortal scholars we brought into the Order must never know our secret, our private truth.
"We were joined by other beings over the years. And our mortal members flourished, attracting acolytes from far and wide. As you know, we came to establish libraries and Motherhouses and places where mortal scholars took their vows to study and learn and never judge the mysterious, the invisible, the palpable unseen. We promulgated our secular principles. Soon the Order had its constitution, its rules, its rubric, and its traditions. Soon the Order had its vast wealth. It had a strength and vitality we could never have predicted. We created the myth of 'the anonymous Elders' chosen in each generation from the rank and file, and known only to those who had chosen them, governing from a secret location. But there were no such human Elders. Not until these times, when we have indeed recently anointed such a governing body--and passed to them the reins of the Order as it is now. But we kept always and keep now the secret from our mortal members of who we really are."
"In a way, I always knew," said Marius. He couldn't stop himself from asking, "But who is Gremt, this spirit you're describing? From where did he come?"
"Gremt was there when Amel entered the Queen," said Teskhamen. "He was there when the twins, Mekare and Maharet, asked the spirits what had become of Amel. It was he who gave the answer: Amel has now what he has always wanted. Amel has the flesh. But Amel is no more. He's of the same ilk as this thing which animates you and you, Daniel, and me. If spirits are brothers and sisters to one another, then he is the brother of Amel. He is Amel's kindred. He was Amel's equal in a realm we cannot see and for the most part cannot hear."
"But why did he come down here to be with you," asked Daniel, "to make this thing, the Talamasca? Why did it attract him, this physical world?"
"Who is to say?" asked Teskhamen. "Why is one human drawn irresistibly to music, another to painting, yet another to the glories of the forest or the field? Why do we weep when we see something beautiful? Why are we weakened by beauty? Why does it break our hearts? He came into the physical for the same reasons Amel hovered over the Queen of Egypt when she lay dying and sought to drink her blood, sought to enter her, sought to be one with her body, sought to know what she saw and heard and felt." He sighed. "And Gremt came because Amel had come. And Gremt came because Gremt couldn't stay away."
There was a long moment of silence.
"You know what the Talamasca is today. It has thousands of dedicated scholars of the supernatural. But it does not know and must not know how it was born. And now its Elders are mortal men, and it is on its own. It is strong, it has its traditions, its sacred trusts, and it no longer needs those of us who brought it into being. Yet those of us who brought it into being can benefit at any moment from its tireless research, can steal into its archives to peruse its treasures, can access its most ancient records or its very latest reports. There is no reason anymore for us to control it. It is now fully on its own."
"It was always your intent to watch us, to watch the progress of Amel," said Daniel.
Teskhamen nodded, but then he shrugged. He made a graceful gesture with his open hands. "Yes, and no. Amel was the torch that led the procession through the ages. But many things have been learned and there are many more to learn, certainly, and the great Order of the Talamasca will continue, and so will we."
He looked from Daniel to Marius.
"Gremt would know more about what he is as well. And Hesketh and all ghosts seek to understand themselves completely too. But we have come now with Amel to a moment we have long dreaded, a moment we knew would come."
"How so?" asked Daniel.
"We are seeing now the moment we have long feared, the moment when Amel, the spirit of the vampiric Blood, comes to consciousness and seeks to direct his destiny for himself."
"The Voice!" Marius whispered. The Voice. The voice that had spoken to him in his thoughts had been Amel. The voice urging him to slay had been Amel. The voice urging one blood drinker to kill another was Amel.
"Yes," said Teskhamen. "After all these long millennia it is aware of itself, and it struggles to feel, and to see, as it did in those first moments when it went into the body and blood of the Queen."
Daniel was dumbstruck. He climbed off the bench and came and seated himself beside Marius, but he wasn't looking at either of the others, but rather into his own thoughts.
"Oh, it was never truly unaware," said Teskhamen. "And the spirits knew it. Gremt knew. Only conscious awareness was no more. But that consciousness was always struggling. You might say it has gone through some sort of infancy towards childhood and now seeks to speak as a child, understand as a child, think as a child. And it would be a man. It would put away childish things quickly if it could. And the glass through which it sees is dark indeed."
Marius was quietly marveling. Finally he asked, "And Gremt, its brother spirit, he does see clearly as we see, and speak and understand and think as we think? He knows what Amel does not know?"
"No, not really," said Teskhamen, "as he is not really flesh and blood even as is Amel. He is a spirit still who's learned to take on form amongst us, to sharpen his spirit eyes and his spirit ears through what he grasps of what we see and hear,
but he does not feel what we feel or what Amel feels. And his life is to some extent more penitential than ours has ever been."
Marius couldn't contain himself. He stood up and walked slowly back and forth on the paving and then out on the soft warm sand. What do these spirits see when they look at us? He stared down at his own hands, so white, so strong, so flexible, so powerful in every simple human way, and now with preternatural strength. He had always sensed that spirits were attracted to the physical, could not remain indifferent to it, and were creatures of parameters and rules like humans even if they were unseen.
Behind him, Daniel asked, "Well, what will happen now, now that it can speak and plot and connive to destroy the young ones? Why has it done all this?"