“You see I want to know all those things too. You see, I wanted to know, wanted to know with my whole heart, what is snow? And what is beautiful and what is love? I still want to know! I want to see with your eyes, Lestat, and hear with your ears, and speak with your voice. But you have denied me. You have left me in blindness and misery and you will pay for that.”

I climbed to my feet.

“Where are you, Voice?” I asked. “What have you done to Mekare?”

He wept bitterly. “How can you ask me such a question? You, of all the blood drinkers spawned by me and sustained by me. You know how helpless I am inside of her! And for me you have no pity, and only hate.”

He was gone.

I tried to anatomize how I knew, what it was I felt, when he left me, what were the tiny indications of his sudden abandonment, but I couldn’t really even remember all the tiny little aspects of it. I just knew he was gone.

“I don’t despise you, Voice,” I said aloud. My voice sounded unnatural in the empty stone chamber. “I have never really despised you. I was guilty of only one thing, not knowing who you really are. You might have told me, Voice. You might have trusted me.”

But he was gone, gone to some other part of the great Savage Garden to do mischief, no doubt.

I left the dead man, since there seemed no proper place to dump his bloodless carcass, and I started back through the maze to find the others.

Somewhere along the way, when stone passages had once more given way to brightly painted passages and golden passages, I heard singing.

It was the softest most ethereal singing, words spun out by high clear soprano voices in Latin, one thread of melody interweaving with another, and under this the sounds of what had to be a lyre.

The sounds of running water came to me with the exquisite music, singing—running water, splashing water, and the laughter of blood drinkers. Sevraine laughing. My mother laughing. I smelled the water. I smelled sunlight, green grass in the water. Somehow the freshness and sweetness of the water mingled in my mind with the richly satisfying blood that had just flooded my mouth and my brain. And I could all but see the music in golden ribbons winding through the air.

I came to a large, cavernous, and brightly lighted bath.

Glittering mosaics covered the uneven ceiling and walls, tiny bits of gold and silver and crimson marble, malachite and lapis lazuli and shining obsidian and flakes of glinting glass. Candles burned on their bronze stands.

Two gentle dancing waterfalls fed the large rock-cut basin in which they bathed.