“She was a phantom, this Hesketh, but she was alive! Her hair was flaxen and her body tall and straight. Her pale hands and face were shimmering and soft. And another phantom was with her, as physically visible as was she. This phantom went by the name of Gremt. And it was he who had aided her wandering shade and given it solace and taught her how to appear to eyes such as yours and mine. This was Gremt who had taught her how to hold together the airy physical shape in which she sought to appear. It was he who taught her how to make that shape solid and enduring so that I could reach out and touch her with my hands. I could even kiss her lips. I could even take her in my arms.”

Marius said nothing, but he had seen ghosts this powerful himself. Not often, but he had seen them. He’d known of them but not known ever who they were.

He waited but Teskhamen had fallen quiet.

“What happened?” Marius whispered. “Why did this change the course of your life?”

“It changed everything because she remained with me,” said Teskhamen, looking at Marius again. “It was no fleeting moment. And with each passing night she grew stronger, and more clever at retaining her physical shape, and Gremt, whose powerful solid shape would have fooled any mortal, shared my hearth in the old monastery as she did, and we spoke of things invisible and visible and of blood drinkers and of the spirit that had come into the ancient Queen.”

He paused as if pondering and then went on.

“Of our species and history, Gremt knew all things, things that I did not know, for he’d been watching the course of the spirit Amel inside the Queen for centuries, and he knew of discoveries and battles and defeats of which I’d never heard a word.

“We forged an alliance, Gremt and Hesketh and me. I alone was a true physical being and provided some temporal rhythm for them that I have never fully come to understand. But in that place, that ruined monastery, we signed a pact, and our work together in this world began.”

“But what work was this?” Marius asked.

“The work was to learn,” said Teskhamen. “To learn why blood drinkers walk the Earth, and how that spirit of Amel makes such wonders possible, to learn why ghosts linger and cannot seek the light that attracts so many souls who ascend without a backward glance. To learn how witches might command spirits, and what those spirits are. We formed a resolve in that old ruined monastery, that as we rebuilt its roofs, its walls, its doorways, and replanted its vineyards and gardens, we would learn. We would be our own sect dedicated to no god or saint but to knowledge, understanding. That we would be the studious and profane scholars of an Order in which only the material was sacred, in which only the respect for the physical and all its mysteries governed all else.”

“You are describing the Talamasca to me, aren’t you?” said Marius. He was amazed. “This is the birth of the Talamasca that you are explaining.”

“Yes. It was the year 748, or so say the calendars of now. I well remember it, because I went to the nearby city early of an evening less than a month after our first meeting—properly dressed and with Gremt’s gold—to obtain that old monastery and its overgrown land for us in perpetuity and to safeguard our little refuge from the claims of the mortal world. I led the way. But we all signed the documents. And I have those parchment pages still. Gremt’s name is written on them beneath Hesketh’s name and mine. That land is ours to this very time, and that ancient monastery, still existing in the deep forest of France, has always been the true secret Motherhouse of the Talamasca.”

Marius couldn’t help but smile.

“Gremt was easily strong enough then to travel among humans,” said Teskhamen as he continued. “By day or by night, he had been appearing amongst them for some time. And soon Hesketh was moving among humankind with equal confidence, and the Order of the Talamasca was begun. Ah, it is a long story, but that old monastery is our home now.”

“I see it,” Marius gasped. “Of course. The old mystery is explained. It was you, you who founded it, a blood drinker, a spirit as you call him, and this phantom you loved. But your mortal followers, your members, your scholars, they were never to be told the actual truth?”

Teskhamen nodded. “We were the first Elders,” he said. “And we knew from the beginning that the mortal scholars we brought into the Order must never know our secret, our private truth.

“We were joined by other beings over the years. And our mortal members flourished, attracting acolytes from far and wide. As you know, we came to establish libraries and Motherhouses and places where mortal scholars took their vows to study and learn and never judge the mysterious, the invisible, the palpable unseen. We promulgated our secular principles. Soon the Order had its constitution, its rules, its rubric, and its traditions. Soon the Order had its vast wealth. It had a strength and vitality we could never have predicted. We created the myth of ‘the anonymous Elders’ chosen in each generation from the rank and file, and known only to those who had chosen them, governing from a secret location. But there were no such human Elders. Not until these times, when we have indeed recently anointed such a governing body—and passed to them the reins of the Order as it is now. But we kept always and keep now the secret from our mortal members of who we really are.”

“In a way, I always knew,” said Marius. He couldn’t stop himself from asking, “But who is Gremt, this spirit you’re describing? From where did he come?”

“Gremt was there when Amel entered the Queen,” said Teskhamen. “He was there when the twins, Mekare and Maharet, asked the spirits what had become of Amel. It was he who gave the answer: Amel has now what he has always wanted. Amel has the flesh. But Amel is no more. He’s of the same ilk as this thing which animates you and you, Daniel, and me. If spirits are brothers and sisters to one another, then he is the brother of Amel. He is Amel’s kindred. He was Amel’s equal in a realm we cannot see and for the most part cannot hear.”

“But why did he come down here to be with you,” asked Daniel, “to make this thing, the Talamasca? Why did it attract him, this physical world?”

“Who is to say?” asked Teskhamen. “Why is one human drawn irresistibly to music, another to painting, yet another to the glories of the forest or the field? Why do we weep when we see something beautiful? Why are we weakened by beauty? Why does it break our hearts? He came into the physical for the same reasons Amel hovered over the Queen of Egypt when she lay dying and sought to drink her blood, sought to enter her, sought to be one with her body, sought to know what she saw and heard and felt.” He sighed. “And Gremt came because Amel had come. And Gremt came because Gremt couldn’t stay away.”