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s. I had to think on that, the matter of an ultimate term--consult, listen to the inevitable poetry that would rise to create a term from all the tribe. For now I had done the best that I could do. There was so much more to be done. But I was tired, raggedly tired.

I motioned that I needed a moment to collect my thoughts. And I was startled to hear a soft applause break out in the room that soon included everyone, it seemed, and then died away quietly.

So much more to say.

I thought again of Magnus, that ghost, Magnus who'd come to me in the golden caves of Sevraine's little city in Cappadocia. I thought of Gremt, the grand spirit who had been there too.

"And we must take up one more matter now," I said. "It's the matter of the Talamasca. It's the matter of what they've made known to me and Sevraine about their members."

"And to me as well," said Pandora. "I've met Gremt as I know you have, the spirit who in fact brought the Talamasca into being."

"And I too have been contacted by them," said Marius. "And a meeting with them soon might be to the benefit of us all."

Again, I listened for Amel, but there was only silence, and the warm subtle embrace under my skin that let me know he was there. I was looking down. I waited.

"Learning, Prince Lestat," he said in the lowest whisper. "Learning as I have never dreamed it was possible to learn."

I looked up. "Yes, and we will indeed meet with them, meet with those who've revealed themselves to us, and we will determine among other things how to treat the old ongoing mortal Order of the Talamasca whom these spectral founding fathers have apparently cut loose to pursue its own destiny."

Seth was marveling, obviously wanting to know so much more on this.

"Now, if there's nothing more," I said, "I'd like to retire. I've made that French library my lair and it's waiting for me and I need to rest perhaps more now than ever before in my life."

"One thing more," said Seth. "You hold the Core now. You are the Source. You are the Primal Fount."

"Yes?" I responded calmly, patiently, waiting.

"Your fate is our fate," he said.

"Yes?"

"You must vow never to slip away from us, never to seek to hide from us, never to be careless with your own person, any more than any earthly monarch on whom the peace of a realm depends."

"I'm aware of that," I said. I suppressed a little flash of anger. "I am yours now," I said, as difficult as it was to say this. A chill ran through me, an awful foreboding. "I belong to the realm. I know."

Suddenly Everard spoke up, the young blood drinker from Italy.

"But is this thing quiet inside you now?" he asked. "Is he quiet!"

A ripple of alarm ran through the gathering, though why I'm not sure. This question was on the mind of nearly everyone here. It had to be.

"Yes, Amel is quiet," I said. "Amel is satisfied. Amel is at peace."

"Or maybe he's somewhere else at this very moment, perhaps," said my mother.

"Yes," said Everard, "off making some more horrible trouble."

"No," I replied.

"But why?" asked Rhoshamandes. "Why is he content?" It was said with total sincerity, and for the first time in his face I saw a glimmer of actual pain.

I reflected for a moment before responding. Then:

"Because he can see and he can hear more clearly than ever," I said. "And this is what he's longed for. That's what he has always wanted. To see and hear and know in this world, the physical world, our world. And he is watching, and learning, as never before."

"But surely," said Zenobia, the diminutive friend of Gregory, "he saw and heard when he was in Akasha all that time, before Mekare ever came."

"No," I said. "He didn't. Because in those times, he didn't know how."