He didn't answer.

"Do you think I would wage this battle with Him on any terms if souls couldn't?" he asked, as if the very idea of an eternal hell offended him.

"Get me out of here, please," I whispered. My cheek was resting on the stone floor.

The stench of the manure of the horses was mingled with urine and blood. But the cries were the worst. The cries and the incessant clatter of metal!

"Memnoch, get me out of here! Tell me what this battle is about between you and Him! Tell me the rules!"

I struggled to sit up, drawing my legs in, wiping at my eyes with my left hand, the right still clutching the veil. I began to choke on the smoke. My eyes burned.

"Tell me, what did you mean when you said you needed me, that you were winning the battle? What is the battle between you and Him! What do you want me to do?

How are you his adversary! What in the name of God am I supposed to do!"

I looked up. He sat relaxed, one knee up, arms folded, face clear one moment in a flash of flame and pale the next. He was soiled all over, and seemed rather limp and in a strange misery of ease. His expression was neither bitter nor sarcastic, only thoughtful—fixed with an enduring expression just as the faces on the mosaics were fixed as they bore lifeless witness to the same events.

"So we pass so many wars? We leave behind so many massacres? We have passed over so much martyrdom," he said. "But then you do not lack imagination, Lestat."

"Let me rest, Memnoch. Answer my questions. I am not an angel, only a monster.

Please let's go."

"All right," he said. "We'll go now. You've been brave, actually, just as I thought you would be. Your tears are plentiful and they come from the heart."

I didn't answer. My chest was heaving. I held on to the veil. I put my left hand over my ear. How could I move? Did I expect him to take us in the whirlwind? Had I limbs any longer that would obey commands?

"We'll go, Lestat," he said again. I heard the wind rising. It was the whirlwind, and the walls had already flown backwards. I pressed my hand against the veil. I heard his voice in my ear:

"Rest now."

The souls whirled around us in the dimness. I felt my head against his shoulder, the wind ripping at my hair. I closed my eyes and I saw the Son of God enter a great vast dark and gloomy place. The rays of Light emanated from his small distinct figure in all directions, illuminating hundreds of struggling human forms, soul forms, ghost forms.

"Sheol," I struggled to say. But we were in the whirlwind, and this was an image against the blackness of my closed eyes only. Again the Light grew brighter, the rays merging in one great blaze as if I were in its very presence, and songs rose, louder and clearer, drowning out the wailing souls around us, until the mingling of wail and song became the nature of the vision and the nature of the whirlwind. And they were one.