Blood and Gold (Vampire Chronicles Series #8)

Excerpt from\ Chapter 1\ His name was Thorne. In the ancient language of the runes, it had been longer–Thornevald. But when he became a blood drinker, his name had been changed to Thorne. And Thorne he remained now, centuries later, as he lay in his cave in the ice, dreaming.\ When he had first come to the frozen land, he had hoped he would sleep eternally. But now and then the thirst for blood awakened him, and using the Cloud Gift, he rose into the air, and went in search of the Snow Hunters.\ He fed off them, careful never to take too much blood from any one so that none died on account of him. And when he needed furs and boots he took them as well, and returned to his hiding place.\ These Snow Hunters were not his people. They were dark of skin and had slanted eyes, and they spoke a different tongue, but he had known them in the olden times when he had traveled with his uncle into the land to the East for trading. He had not liked trading. He had preferred war. But he'd learnt many things on those adventures.\ In his sleep in the North, he dreamed. He could not help it. The Mind Gift let him hear the voices of other blood drinkers.\ Unwillingly he saw through their eyes, and beheld the world as they beheld it. Sometimes he didn't mind. He liked it. Modern things amused him. He listened to far-away electric songs. With the Mind Gift he understood such things as steam engines and railroads; he even understood computers and automobiles. He felt he knew the cities he had left behind though it had been centuries since he'd forsaken them.\ An awareness had come over him that hewasn't going to die. Loneliness in itself could not destroy him. Neglect was insufficient. And so he slept.\ Then a strange thing happened. A catastrophe befell the world of the blood drinkers.\ A young singer of sagas had come. His name was Lestat, and in his electric songs, Lestat broadcast old secrets, secrets which Thorne had never known.\ Then a Queen had risen, an evil and ambitious being. She had claimed to have within her the Sacred Core of all blood drinkers, so that, should she die, all the race would perish with her.\ Thorne had been amazed.\ He had never heard these myths of his own kind. He did not know that he believed this thing.\ But as he slept, as he dreamt, as he watched, this Queen began, with the Fire Gift, to destroy blood drinkers everywhere throughout the world. Thorne heard their cries as they tried to escape; he saw their deaths in so far as others saw such things.\ As she roamed the earth, this Queen came close to Thorne but she passed over him. He was secretive and quiet in his cave. Perhaps she didn't sense his presence. But he had sensed hers and never had he encountered such age or strength except from the blood drinker who had given him the Blood.\ And he found himself thinking of that one, the Maker, the red-haired witch with the bleeding eyes.\ The catastrophe among his kind grew worse. More were slain; and out of hiding there came blood drinkers as old as the Queen herself, and Thorne saw these beings.\ At last there came the red-haired one who had made him. He saw her as others saw her. And at first he could not believe that she still lived; it had been so long since he'd left her in the Far South that he hadn't dared to hope she was still alive. The eyes and ears of other blood drinkers gave him the infallible proof. And when he looked on her in his dreams, he was overwhelmed with a tender feeling and a rage.\ She thrived, this creature who had given him the Blood, and she despised the Evil Queen and she wanted to stop her. Theirs was a hatred for each other which went back thousands of years.\ At last there was a coming together of these beings–old ones from the First Brood of blood drinkers, and others whom the blood drinker Lestat loved and whom the Evil Queen did not choose to destroy.\ Dimly, as he lay still in the ice, Thorne heard their strange talk, as round a table they sat, like so many powerful Knights, except that in this council, the women were equal to the men.\ With the Queen they sought to reason, struggling to persuade her to end her reign of violence, to forsake her evil designs.\ He listened, but he could not really understand all that was said among these blood drinkers. He knew only that the Queen must be stopped.\ The Queen loved the blood drinker Lestat. But even he could not turn her from disasters, so reckless was her vision, so depraved her mind.\ Did the Queen truly have the Sacred Core of all blood drinkers within herself? If so, how could she be destroyed?\ Thorne wished the Mind Gift were stronger in him, or that he had used it more often. During his long centuries of sleep, his strength had grown, but now he felt his distance and that he was weak.\ But as he watched, his eyes open, as though that might help him to see, there came into his vision another red-haired one, the twin sister of the woman who had loved him so long ago. It astonished him, as only a twin can do.\ And Thorne came to understand that the Maker he had loved so much had lost this twin thousands of years ago.\ The Evil Queen was the mistress of this disaster. She despised the red-haired twins. She had divided them. And the lost twin came now to fulfill an ancient curse she had laid on the Evil Queen.\ As she drew closer and closer to the Queen, the lost twin thought only of destruction. She did not sit at the council table. She did not know reason or restraint.\ "We shall all die," Thorne whispered in his sleep, drowsy in the snow and ice, the eternal arctic night coldly enclosing him. He did not move to join his immortal companions. But he watched. He listened. He would do so until the last moment. He could do no less.\ Finally, the lost twin reached her destination. She rose against the Queen. The other blood drinkers around her looked on in horror. As the two female beings struggled, as they fought as two warriors upon a battlefield, a strange vision suddenly filled Thorne's mind utterly, as though he lay in the snow and he were looking at the heavens.\ What he saw was a great intricate web stretching out in all directions, and caught within it many pulsing points of light. At the very center of this web was a single vibrant flame. He knew the flame was the Queen; and he knew that the other points of light were all the other blood drinkers. He himself was one of those tiny points of light. The tale of the Sacred Core was true. He could see it with his own eyes. And now came the moment for all to surrender to darkness and silence. Now came the end.\ The far-flung complex web grew glistening and bright; the core appeared to explode; and then all went dim for a long moment, during which he felt a sweet vibration in his limbs as he often felt in simple sleep, and he thought to himself, Ah, so, now we are dying. And there is no pain.\ Yet it was like Ragnarok for his old gods, when the great god, Heimdall, the World Brightener, would blow his horn summoning the gods of Aiser to their final battle.\ "And we end with a war as well," Thorne whispered in his cave. But his thoughts did not end.\ It seemed the best thing that he live no more, until he thought of her, his red-haired one, his Maker. He had wanted so badly to see her again.\ Why had she never told him of her lost twin? Why had she never entrusted to him the myths of which the blood drinker Lestat sang? Surely she had known the secret of the Evil Queen with her Sacred Core.\ He shifted; he stirred in his sleep. The great sprawling web had faded from his vision. But with uncommon clarity he could see the red-haired twins, spectacular women.\ They stood side by side, these comely creatures, the one in rags, the other in splendor. And through the eyes of other blood drinkers he came to know that the stranger twin had slain the Queen, and had taken the Sacred Core within herself.\ "Behold, the Queen of the Damned," said his Maker twin as she presented to the others her long-lost sister. Thorne understood her. Thorne saw the suffering in her face. But the face of the stranger twin, the Queen of the Damned, was blank.\ In the nights that followed the survivors of the catastrophe remained together. They told their tales to one another. And their stories filled the air like so many songs from the bards of old, sung in the mead hall. And Lestat, leaving his electric instruments for music, became once more the chronicler, making a story of the battle that he would pass effortlessly into the mortal world.\ Soon the red-haired sisters had moved away, seeking a hiding place where Thorne's distant eye could not find them.\ Be still, he had told himself. Forget the things that you have seen. There is no reason for you to rise from the ice, any more than there ever was. Sleep is your friend. Dreams are your unwelcome guests.\ Lie quiet and you will lapse back into peace again. Be like the god Heimdall before the battle call, so still that you can hear the wool grow on the backs of sheep, and the grass grow far away in the lands where the snow melts.\ But more visions came to him.\ The blood drinker Lestat brought about some new and confusing tumult in the mortal world. It was a marvelous secret from the Chris- tian past that he bore, which he had entrusted to a mortal girl.\ There would never be any peace for this one called Lestat. He was like one of Thorne's people, like one of the warriors of Thorne's time.\ Thorne watched as once again, his red-haired one appeared, his lovely Maker, her eyes red with mortal blood as always, and finely glad and full of authority and power, and this time come to bind the unhappy blood drinker Lestat in chains.\ Chains that could bind such a powerful one?\ Thorne pondered it. What chains could accomplish this, he wondered. It seemed that he had to know the answer to this question. And he saw his red-haired one sitting patiently by while the blood drinker Lestat, bound and helpless, fought and raved but could not get free.\ What were they made of, these seemingly soft shaped links that held such a being? The question left Thorne no peace. And why did his red-haired Maker love Lestat and allow him to live? Why was she so quiet as the young one raved? What was it like to be bound in her chains, and close to her?\ Memories came back to Thorne; troubling visions of his Maker when he, a mortal warrior, had first come upon her in a cave in the North land that had been his home. It had been night and he had seen her with her distaff and her spindle and her bleeding eyes.\ From her long red locks she had taken one hair after another and spun it into thread, working with silent speed as he approached her.\ It had been bitter winter, and the fire behind her seemed magical in its brightness as he had stood in the snow watching her as she spun the thread as he had seen a hundred mortal women do....

\ From Barnes & NobleThe Barnes & Noble Review \ Anne Rice writes grand romances in the traditional sense of the word, the Victor Hugo sense: novels with larger-than-life characters whose epic experiences sweep through all the great themes and emotions of life, death, love, passion, and loss, while also providing plenty of action.\ \ \ Blood and Gold continues Rice's Vampire Chronicles by taking up the tale of Marius, who was for centuries the guardian of Those Who Must Be Kept, and whose duty to the King and Queen of the Vampires caused him much pain, loss, and suffering. Marius, who originally appeared in The Vampire Lestat and has figured briefly in the majority of the Chronicles that have followed, was an aristocrat of ancient Rome before his conversion to the Living Death. Blood and Gold follows his lonely life through the ages, sweeping from Imperial Rome to Constantinople to Venice during the Renaissance (Botticelli makes a brief cameo appearance) to the present day. His passion for longtime companion Pandora (detailed in a book of the same name, although told from her perspective), results in his loneliness and a centuries-long search for her.\ Blood and Gold is one of Rice's finest achievements and has the added benefit of standing completely on its own for new readers. But those seeking the most complete picture of Marius will also want to revisit The Vampire Lestat, Pandora, and The Vampire Armand to understand how he's viewed by those his life has touched. (Greg Herren)\ \ \ \ \ \ Michael HarrisIn Anne Rice's novel Blood and Gold, the comparison flatters us--surely one of the secrets of her popularity. \ — Los Angeles Times\ \ \ From The CriticsRice brings her long-waning Vampire Chronicles series back to life with this passionate book about the vampire Marius, who recounts his life story to a visitor he has invited in out of the cold. Made into an immortal by a band of Druids during the time of Caesar Augustus, Marius, once a Roman senator, spent centuries living an opulently idle life. His primary task throughout the years was to guard the unmoving forms of Akasha and Enkil, the queen and king of the vampires, who caused such a ruckus in Rice's earlier novels. Marius has always been one of the author's more fascinating characters. His florid, foppish recollections of Rome and Venice, run-ins with people like Botticelli, battles with hordes of Satan-worshiping vampires and the never-ending search for his true love, Pandora, make for a satisfying read, something Rice has not delivered in far too long.\ —Chris Barsanti \ \ \ \ \ \ \ Library JournalAfter a long, deep sleep, the vampire Thorne looks to centuries-old Marius for guidance as he comes back into the world. Thorne is curious about Marius's life and his relationship to others in the community of Blood Drinkers, and Marius consents to tell all. It is this story that makes up the bulk of Rice's newest entry to the "Vampire Chronicles," the first of which was Interview with the Vampire. This complex tale presents the history of vampires through the eyes of Marius, who offers his perspective on several characters, most of whom have appeared in earlier volumes. Marius, who is something of an erudite philosopher, brings his own spin to the stories of the various undead he has met in his long existence. Though it is not as engrossing as the earlier books perhaps because so much of the story has already been told devoted followers of the series will find new information about familiar characters, and new readers will find this a good introduction to Rice's world of the vampire. Most public libraries will want to purchase. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/01.] Patricia Altner, Information Seekers, Columbia, MD Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsLarge arterial heart-piece in Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Though much of the lordly speech ("Oh . . . you foolish, mad, self-important dreamer!") suggests no advance in dialogue since Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur (1880) or H. Rider Haggard's She (1887), Rice opens grandly, reviewing cultural vampirology, its origins and historical underpinnings, in a backstory skimmed from earlier works. Akasha, mother of all vampires and Queen of the Damned (1990), is 6,000 years old when red-haired twins Maharet and Mekare rise up and behead her. Mute Mekare becomes Queen, having taken into herself from Akasha the Sacred Core of blood drinkers. Akasha's destruction liberates Marius, who for 2,000 years kept safe the sleeping bodies of Akasha and her consort Enkil, to tell his story to red-haired Thorne, a Viking given the Dark Gift long ago by Maharet. Too sensitive to kill, Thorne encased himself in an arctic cave for centuries and only now awakens to the modern world. As Thorne listens, Marius describes carrying the royal vampire coffins from Antioch to Rome, seeing Byzantium change into Christian Constantinople, and (skipping the Dark Ages) participating in Italy's glory years of blood and gold, during which he becomes a great painter. For centuries he mourns his beloved Pandora, whom he fled in Antioch. A pair of two-dimensional vampires, angry Mael and tearful Avicus, cling to Marius as he meets the glorious Eastern vamp Eudoxia, who herself has drunk from Akasha. But Eudoxia must die and be replaced by Zenobia, a virginal variation on child-vampire Claudia. Besotted by Botticelli, painter Marius hears Satan whisper, Give Botticelli the Blood. Then Marius loves Bianca the poisoner and the Russian waif Amadeo/Armand. Later turns: Marius is burned by Christian Satanists and tries to win back Pandora. Given her historical antecedents, Rice-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed writes like a damned Queen.\ \