understand me?”
“Yes, I understand you. There are twelve crypts in the graveyard and one door.”
“Aye, Rowan. Now you are thinking. When you first read your books of neurology, when you first stepped into the laboratory, what was your sense? That man had only begun to realize the possibilities of the present science, that new beings might be created by means of transplants, grafts, in vitro experimentation with genes and cells. You saw the scope of the possibilities. Your mind was young, your imagination enormous; you were what men fear-the doctor with the vision of a poet. And you turned your back on your visions, Rowan. In the laboratory of Lemle, you could have created new beings from the parts of existent beings. You reached for brutal tools because you feared what you could do. You hid behind the surgical microscope and substituted for your power the crude micro tools of steel with which you severed tissues, rather man creating them. Even now you act from fear. You will build hospitals where people are to be cured, when you could create new beings, Rowan.”
She sat still and quiet. No one had ever spoken to her about her innermost thoughts with greater accuracy. She felt the heat and size of her own ambition. She felt the amoral child in her who had dreamed of brain grafts and synthetic beings, before the adult put out the light.
“Haven’t you a heart to understand why, Lasher?”
“I see far, Rowan. I see great suffering in the world. I see the way of accident and blundering, and what it has created. I am not blinded by illusions. I hear the cries everywhere of pain. And I know my own loneliness. I know my own desire.”
“But what will you give up when you become flesh and blood? What’s the price for you?”
“I do not shrink from the price. A fleshly pain could be no worse than what I have suffered these three centuries. Would you be what I am, Rowan? Drifting, timeless and alone, listening to the carnal voices of the world, apart, and thirsting for love and understanding?”
She couldn’t answer.
“I have waited for all eternity to be incarnate. I have waited beyond the scope of memory. I have waited until the fragile spirit of man has finally attained the knowledge so that the barrier can come down. And I shall be made flesh, and it shall be perfect.”
Silence.
“I see why Aaron is afraid of you,” she said.
“Aaron is small. The Talamasca is small. They are nothing!” The voice grew thin with anger. The air in the room was warm and moving like the water in a pot moves before it boils. The chandeliers moved yet they made no sound, as if the sound were carried away by the currents in the air.
“The Talamasca has knowledge,” he said, “they have power to open doorways, but they refuse to do so for us. They are the enemy of us. They would keep the world’s destiny in the hands of the suffering and the blind. And they lie. All of them lie. They have maintained the history of the Mayfair Witches because it is the history of Lasher, and they fight Lasher. That is their avowed purpose. And they trick you with their attention to the witches. It is Lasher whose name should be emblazoned on the covers of their precious leather-bound files. The file is in a code. It is the history of the growing power of Lasher. Can you not see through the code?”
“Don’t harm Aaron.”
“You love unwisely, Rowan.”
“You don’t like my goodness, do you? You like the evil.”
“What is evil, Rowan? Is your curiosity evil? That you would study me as you have studied the brains of human beings? That you would learn from my cells all that you could to advance the great cause of medicine? I am not the enemy of the world, Rowan. I merely wish to enter into it!”
“You’re angry now.”
“I am in pain. I love you, Rowan.”
“To want is not to love, Lasher. To use is not to love.”
“No, don’t speak these words to me. You hurt me. You wound me.”
“If you kill Aaron, I will never be your doorway.”
“Such a small thing to affect so much.”
“Lasher, kill him and I will not be the doorway.”
“Rowan, I am at your command. I would have killed him already were I not.”
“Same with Michael.”
“Very well, Rowan.”
“Why did you tell Michael that he couldn’t stop me?”
“Because I hoped that he could not and I wanted to frighten him. He is under the spell of Aaron.”
“Lasher, how am I to help you come through?”
“I will know when you know, Rowan. And you know. Aaron knows.”
“Lasher, we don’t know what life is. Not with all our science and all our definitions do we know what life is, or how it began. The moment when it sprang into existence from inert materials is a complete mystery.”
“I am already alive, Rowan.”
“And how can I make you flesh? You’ve gone into the bodies of the living and the dead. You can’t anchor there.”
“It can be done, Rowan.” His voice had become as soft as a whisper. “With my power and your power, and with my faith, for I must yield to achieve the bond, and only in your hands is the full merging possible.”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to see shapes, patterns in the airy dark.
“I love you, Rowan,” he said. “You are weary now. Let me soothe you, Rowan. Let me touch you.” The resonance of the voice deepened.
“I want-I want a happy life with Michael and our child.”
Turbulence in the air, something collecting, intensifying. She felt the air grow warmer.
“I have infinite patience. I see far. I can wait. But you will lose your taste for others now that you have seen and spoken to me.”
“Don’t be so certain, Lasher. I’m stronger than the others. I know much more.”
“Yes, Rowan.” The shadowy turbulence was growing denser, like a great wreath of smoke, only there was no smoke, circling the chandelier, moving out. Like cobwebs caught in a draft.
“Can I destroy you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Rowan, you torture me.”
“Why can’t I destroy you?”
“Rowan, your gift is to transmute matter. I have no matter in me for you to attack. You may destroy the matter I bring into organization to make my image, but then I do this myself when I disintegrate. You have seen it. You could hurt my transitory image at such a moment of materialization, and you have already done so. When I first appeared to you. When I came to you near the water. But you cannot destroy
“And suppose I told you it was finished now, Lasher, that I would never recognize you again. That I would not be the doorway. That I am the doorway for the Mayfairs into the future centuries, the doorway for my unborn child, and for things of which I dream with my ambition.”
“Small things, Rowan. Nothing compared to the mysteries and possibilities which I offer you. Imagine, Rowan, when the mutation is complete and I have a body, infused with my timeless spirit, what you can learn from this.”
“And if it’s done, Lasher, if the doorway is opened, and the fusion is effected, and you stand before me, flesh and blood, how will you treat me then?”
“I would love you beyond all human reason, Rowan, for you would be my mother and my creator, and my teacher. How could I not love you? And how tragic my need of you will be. I will cleave to you to learn how to move with my new limbs, how to see, how to speak and laugh. I will be as a helpless infant in your hands. Can’t you see? I would worship you, my beloved Rowan. I would be your instrument in anything that you wished, and twenty times as strong as I am now. Why do you cry? Why are there tears in your eyes?”
“It’s a trick, it’s a trick of sound and light, the spell you induce.”
“No. I am what I am, Rowan. It’s your reason which weakens you. You see far. You always have. Twelve
