And he'd been talking to the Voice a long time, something which he had no intention of confiding in Benedict. He was furious with the Voice right now, furious that Benedict had been in danger.
"And what's to stop it from coming here?" asked Benedict. "What's to stop it from finding me here the way it's been finding all those others who're trying to escape? It burnt some as old as me."
"Not quite as old as you," said Rhoshamandes, "and not with your blood. There was an old one there, obviously, in thrall to the Voice. It was probably blasting you when the walls went up. If others were burning around you, it had you in its sights. It was in that building and it had you. But it couldn't kill you."
"It said horrid ghastly things to me when it spoke to me," said Benedict. He had recovered himself a little and was sitting back again. "It tried to confuse me, to make me think I was having these thoughts and somehow was its servant, that I wanted to serve it."
"Go, clean all the blood from your face," said Rhoshamandes.
"Rhosh, why do you always worry about such things?" Benedict pleaded. "I'm suffering, I'm in agony here, and all you care about is blood on my face and clothes."
"All right," said Rhoshamandes. He sighed. "So tell me. What is it you want me to know?"
"That thing, that thing when he was talking to me, I mean before the fire ..."
"Several nights back."
"Yes, then. He told me to burn the others, that he could not come to power until they were wiped out, that he wanted me to kill them for him, and that he expected me to be ready to rush into the flames myself for him."
"Yes," said Rhoshamandes, laughing softly, "he's whispered a lot of that rhapsodic nonsense to me too. He has an exalted idea of himself." He laughed again. "He didn't begin at such a pitch, however. At first it was simply, 'You must kill them. Look at what they're doing to you.' "
Again, he did not let on that he was in a rage, a rage now that the Voice had sought after all their many intimate conversations to enlist his Benedict. Did the Voice see through Rhosh's eyes? Did it hear through his ears? Or could it only pitch its tent inside Rhosh's brain and talk and talk and talk?
"Yes, but then he started all that about his coming into his own. What does he mean?" Benedict brought his fist down on the old oak desk. He'd screwed up his face like an angry cherub. "Who is he?"
"Stop that," said Rhoshamandes. "Be still now and let me think."
He sat down again by the stone hearth. The flames were burning brightly there, fanned by the cool wind that now and then gusted through the glassless windows.
Rhosh had been speaking to the Voice for weeks. But the Voice had been silent now for five nights. Could it be the Voice could not attend to two tasks at one time, that the Voice, if it were to possess some wretched revenant and drive it to burn, could not be speaking politely to Rhosh at the same time or even on the same evening?
Five nights ago the Voice had said, "You of all understand me. You of all understand power, the desire for power, what is at the heart of the desire for power."
"Which is what?" Rhosh had asked the Voice.
"Simple," the Voice had replied. "Those who desire power want to be immune to the power of others."
Then five nights of silence. Mayhem throughout the world. Benji Mahmoud broadcasting all night long from the infamous Trinity Gate house in New York, with recordings of the show looping during his daylight hours so that those in other parts of the globe could hear them.
"Maybe it's time I discovered what's going on here for myself," Rhosh said. "Now listen to me. I want you to go belowstairs and stay there. If some benighted emissary of the thing should crash-land on our wintry little paradise, you'll be safe from it down there. Stay there till I return. This is the same precaution being taken by others the world over. Belowground you are safe. And if this thing talks to you, this Voice, well, try to learn more about it."
He opened the heavy iron-braced oak doors to the bedroom. He had to change his clothes for the journey, another terrific annoyance.
But Benedict came after him.
The fire was low in the bedchamber and glowing beautifully. Heavy red velvet draperies covered the open windows, and the stone floors here were covered with old oak boards and layered with silk and wool Persian carpets.
Rhosh stepped out of his robe and flung it to the side, but then Benedict rushed into his arms and held him fast. He buried his face in Rhosh's wool shirt and Rhosh looked to the ceiling thinking of all this blood smearing onto his own clothes.
But what did it matter?
He embraced Benedict tightly and moved him towards the bed.
It was an old coffered bed from the court of the last Henry. A splendid thing with rich knobby posts, and they loved lying together in it.
He stripped off Benedict's jacket, and then his shirt and his sweater, and brought him down on the dark embroidered covers. He lay beside him, fingers tightening on the pink nipples on Benedict's chest, his lips grazing Benedict's throat, and then he pressed Benedict's head against his own throat and said, "Drink" under his breath.
At once those razor-sharp teeth broke through and he felt the mighty hungry pull on his heart as the blood flowed out of him towards the heart beating against him. A gusher of images opened. He saw the burning house in London, saw that hideous wraithlike thing, saw what Benedict must have seen but never registered, that thing falling to its knees, the rafters coming down on it, an arm cracked loose and flung away in the fire, black fingers curling. He heard the skull pop.