He spoke words I confided to Lestat so long ago when I told him my story, words that he salvaged so mercifully from the few images of these times which I was able to give him.

I hear Marius's voice when I repeat these words, the last I was ever to hear as a mortal child:

"This is the only sun that you will ever see again. But a millennium of nights will be yours to see light as no mortal has ever seen it, to snatch from the distant stars, as if you were Prometheus, an endless illumination by which to understand all things."

And I, who had beheld a far more wondrous celestial light in that realm from which I'd been turned away, longed only for him to eclipse it now forever.

Chapter Eight

The master’s private saloons: a string of rooms in which he had covered the walls with flawless copies of the works of those mortal painters he so admired - Giotto, Fra Angelico, Bellini.

We stood in the room of Benozzo Gozzoli's great work, from the Medici Chapel in Florence: The Procession of the Magi.

In the middle of the century, Gozzoli had created this vision, wrapping it around three walls of that small sacred chamber.

But my Master, with his supernatural memory and skill, had spread out the great work, rendering the whole flat from end to end on one great side of this immense and broad gallery.

Perfect as Gozzoli's original it loomed, with its hordes of beautifully dressed young Florentines, each pale face a study in thoughtful innocence, astride a cavalry of gorgeous horses following the exquisite figure of the young Lorenzo de' Medici himself, a youth with soft curling brownish-blond hair to his shoulders, and a carnal blush in his white cheeks. With a tranquil expression he appeared to gaze indifferently at the viewer of the painting as he sat, regal in his fur-trimmed gold jacket with its long slashed sleeves, on a beautifully caparisoned white horse. No detail of the painting was unworthy of another. Even the horse's bridle and fittings were of beautifully worked gold and velvet, a match for the tight sleeves of Lorenzo's tunic and his red velvet knee-high boots.

But the enchantment of the painting arose most powerfully from the faces of the youths, as well as the few old men who made up the immense crowded procession, all with small quiet mouths and eyes drifting to the sides as if a forward glance would have broken the spell.

On and on they came past castles and mountains, winding their way to Bethlehem.

To illuminate this masterpiece, dozens of silver branching candelabra had been lighted up and down both sides of the room. The thick white candles of the purest beeswax gave off a luxurious illumination. High above a glorious wilderness of painted clouds surrounded an oval of floating saints who touched each other's outstretched hands as they looked down benevolently and contentedly upon us.