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I held his gaze. "It's just what you would have done, isn't it?" heasked.
"God help me," I said, "I really don't know."The landscape was changing. As we looked at each other, theworld around us was filled with new sounds. I realized there werehumans in the vicinity, men with flocks of goats and sheep, and far offin the distance I could see the walls of a town, and above on a hill, yetanother small settlement. Indeed, we were in a populated world now,ancient, but not that far from our own.
I knew these people couldn't see us, or hear us. I didn't have to betold.
Memnoch continued to stare at me, as if asking me something,and I didn't know what it was. The sun was beating down full on bothof us. I realized my hands were moist with blood sweat and I reachedup and wiped the sweat from my forehead, and looked at the blood onmy hand. He was covered with a faint shimmer, but nothing morethan that. He continued to stare at me.
"What happened!" I asked. "Why don't you tell me! What happened?
Why don't you go on?""You know damned good and well what happened," he said.
"Look down at your clothes now. They're robes, and better suitedfor the desert. I want you to come there, just over those hills ... with me."He stood up, and I at once followed him. We were in the HolyLand, there was no question. We passed dozens upon dozens of smallgroups of people, fishermen near a small town on the edge of the sea,others tending sheep or goats, or driving small flocks towards nearbysettlements or walled enclosures.
Everything looked distinctly familiar. Disturbingly familiar, quitebeyond deja vu or intimations of having lived here before. Familiar asif hardwired into my brain. And I refer to everything now梕ven anaked man with crooked legs, hollering and raving, as he passed us,not seeing us, one hand bent on a stick of a cane.
Beneath the layers of grit that covered all, I was surrounded byforms and styles and manners of behavior I knew intimately梖romScripture, from engraving, from embellished illustration, and fromfilm enactment. This was梚n all its stripped-down, burning-hotglory梐 sacred as well as familiar terrain.
We could see people standing before caves in which they livedhigh on the hills. Here and there little groups sat in the shadebeneath a copse, dozing, talking. A distant pulse came from the walledcities. The air was filled with sand. Sand blew into my nostrils andclung to my lips and my hair.
Memnoch had no wings. His robes were soiled and so were mine.
I think we wore linen; it was light and the air passed through it.
Our robes were long and unimportant. Our skin, our forms, wereunchanged.
The sky was vividly blue, and the sun glared down upon me as itmight on any being. The sweat felt alternately good and unbearable.
And I thought, fleetingly, how at any other time I might wonder atthe sun alone, the marvel of the sun denied to the Children ofNight梑ut all this time I had not even thought of it, not once,because having seen the Light of God, the Sun had ceased to be thatLight for me.
We walked up into the rocky hills, climbing steep paths, andcrossing over outcroppings of rock and ragged tree, and finally thereappeared below and before us a great patch of unwatered sand,burning and shifting slowly in comfortless wind.
Memnoch came to a halt at the very threshold of this desert, so tospeak, the place where we would leave the firm ground, rocky anduncomfortable as it was, and pass into the soft drudgery of the sand.
I caught up with him, having fallen a little behind. He put his leftarm around me, and his fingers spread out firm and large against myshoulder. I was very glad he did, because I was feeling a predictableapprehension; in fact, a dread was building in me, a premonition asbad as any I'd ever known.
"After He cast me out," Memnoch said, "I wandered." His eyeswere on the desert and what seemed the barren, blazing rocky cliffs inthe distance, hostile as the desert itself.
"I roamed the way you have often roamed, Lestat. Wingless, andbrokenhearted, I drifted along through the cities and nations of theearth, over continents and wastes. Sometime or other I can tell youall of it, if you wish. It's of no consequence now.
"Let me say only what is of consequence, that I did not dare tomake myself visible or known to Humankind but rather hid amongstthem, invisible, not daring to assume flesh for fear of angering Godagain; and not daring to join the human struggle under any disguise,for fear of God, and fear of what evil I might bring on humans. Onaccount of the same fears ... I didn't return to Sheol. I wanted in noway to increase the sufferings of Sheol. God alone could free thosesouls. What hope could I give them?
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