IMAJICA
by
Clive Barker

Also by Clive Barker

THE BOOKS OF BLOOD, VOLUMES I-VI

THE DAMNATION GAME

WEAVEIVORLD

CABAL

THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW

THE HELLBOUND HEART

CLIVE BARKER

imajica

Fontana

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London We 8JB

Special overseas edition 1992

This edition published by Fontana 1992

3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1991

Copyright 0 Clive Barker 1991

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of
this work

ISBN 0 00 617804 9

Printed in Great Britain by HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.

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without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CHAPTER ONE

It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated
dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how
ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for
three players.

Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer,
or a child.  Between twins, the spirit of the womb.  Between lovers,
Death.  Great numbers might drift through the drama, of course -
thousands in fact - but they could only ever be phantoms, agents or, on
rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self -willed beings
who stood at the centre.  And even this essential trio would not remain
intact, or so he thought.  It would steadily diminish as the story
unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left
deserted.

Needless to say, this dogma did not go unchallenged.  The writers of
fables and comedies were particularly vociferous in their scorn,
reminding the worthy Quexos that they invariably ended their own tales
with a marriage and a feast.  He was unrepentant.  He dubbed them
cheats, and told them they were swindling their audiences out of what he
called the last great procession, when, after the wedding songs had been
sung and the dances danced, the characters took their melancholy way off
into darkness, following each other into oblivion.

It was a hard philosophy, but he claimed it was both immutable and
universal, as true in the Fifth Dominion, called Earth, as it was in the
Second.

And more significantly, as certain in life as it was in art.

Being a man of contained emotion, Charlie Estabrook had little patience
with the theatre.  it was, in his bluntly stated opinion, a waste of
breath; indulgence, flummery, lies.  But had some student recited
Quexos's First Law of Drama to him this cold November night he would
have nodded grimly, and said: all true, all true.  It was his experience
precisely.

Just as Quexos's Law required, his story had begun with a trio: himself,
John Furie Zacharias, and between them, Judith.

That arrangement hadn't lasted very long.  Within a few weeks of setting
eyes on Judith he had managed to supersede Zacharias in her affections,
and the three had dwindled to a blissful two.  He and Judith had
married, and lived happily for five years, until, for reasons he still
didn't understand, their joy had foundered, and the two had become one.

He was that one, of course, and the night found him sitting in the back
of a purring car being driven around the frosty streets of London in
search of somebody to help him finish the story.  Not, perhaps, in a
fashion Quexos would have approved of - the stage would not be left
entirely empty - but one which would salve Estabrook's hurt.

He wasn't alone in his search.  He had the company of one half-trusted
soul tonight: his driver, guide and procurer, the ambiguous Mr Chant.
But despite Chant's shows of empathy, he was still just another servant,
content to attend upon his master as long as he was promptly paid.  He
didn't understand the profundity of Estabrook's pain; he was too chilly,
too remote.  Nor, for all the length of his family history, could
Estabrook turn to his lineage for comfort.  Although he could trace his
ancestors back to the reign of James the First, he had not been able to
find a single man on that tree of immoralities - even to the bloodiest
root - who had caused, either by his hand or hiring, what he, Estabrook,
was out this midnight to contrive: the murder of his wife.

When he thought of her (when didn't he?) his mouth was dry and his palms
were wet; he sighed; he shook.  She was in his mind's eye now, like a
fugitive from some more perfect place.  Her skin was flawless, and
always cool, always pale; her body was long, like her hair, like her
fingers, like her laughter; and her eyes, oh, her eyes, had every season
of leaf in them: the twin greens of spring and high summer, the golds of
autumn, and, in her rages, black midwinter rot.

He was, by contrast, a plain man; well scrubbed, but plain.  He'd made
his fortune selling baths, bidets and toilets, which lent him little by
way of mystique.  So, when he'd first laid eyes on Judith - she'd been
sitting behind a desk at his accountant's offices, her beauty all the
more luminous for its drab setting - his first thought was: I want this
woman; his second: she won't want me.  There was, however, an instinct
in him when it came to Judith that he'd never experienced with any other
woman.  Quite simply, he felt she belonged to him, and that if he turned
his wit to it, he could win her.  His courtship had begun the day they'd
met, with the first of many small tokens of affection delivered to her
desk.  But he soon learned that such bribes and blandishments would not
help his case.  She politely thanked him, but told him they weren't
welcome.  He dutifully ceased to send presents, and instead began a
systematic investigation of her circumstances.  There was precious
little to learn.  She lived simply, her small circle vaguely bohemian.
But amongst that circle he discovered a man whose claim upon her
preceded his own, and to whom she was apparently devoted.

That man was John Furie Zacharias, known universally as Gentle, and he
had a reputation as a lover that would have driven Estabrook from the
field had that strange certainty not been upon him.  He decided to be
patient and await his moment.  It would come.

Meanwhile he watched his beloved from afar, conspiring to encounter
her' accidentally now and again, while he researched his antagonist's
history.  Again, there was little to learn.  Zacharias was a minor
painter when he wasn't living off his mistresses, and reputedly a
dissolute.  Of this Estabrook had perfect proof when, by chance, he met
the fellow.  Gentle was as handsome as his legends suggested, but
looked, Charlie thought, like a man just risen from a fever.  There was
something raw about him; his body sweated to its essence, his face
betraying a hunger behind its symmetry that lent him a bedevilled look.

Half a week after that encounter, Charlie had heard that his beloved had
parted from the man with great grief, and was in need of tender care.
He'd been quick to supply it, and she'd come into the comfort of his
devotion with an ease that suggested his dreams of possession had been
well founded.

His memories of that triumph had, of course, been soured by her
departure, and now it was he who wore the hungry, yearning look he'd
first seen on Furie's face.  It suited him less well than it had
Zacharias.

His was not a head made for haunting.  At fifty-six, he looked sixty or
more, his features as solid as Gentle's were spare, as pragmatic as
Gentle's were rarefied.  His only concession to vanity was the
delicately curled mustache be neat his patrician's nose, which concealed
an upper lip he'd thought dubiously ripe in his youth, leaving the lower
to jut in lieu of a chin.

Now, as he rode through the darkened streets, he caught sight of that
face in the window, and perused it ruefully.  What a mockery he was!  He
blushed to think of how shamelessly he'd paraded himself when he'd had
Judith on his arm; how he'd joked that she loved him for his
cleanliness, and for his taste in bidets.  The same people who'd
listened to those jokes were laughing in earnest now; were calling him
ridiculous.  It was unbearable.  The only way he knew to heal the pain
of his humiliation was to punish her for the crime of leaving him.

He rubbed the heel of his hand against the window, and peered out.

"Where are we?" he asked Chant.

"South of the river, sir."

"Yes, but where?"

"Streatham."

Though he'd driven through this area many times - he had a warehouse in
the neighbourhood - he recognized none of it.  The city had never looked
more foreign, nor more unlovely.

"What sex is London, do you suppose?" he mused.

"I hadn't ever thought," Chant said.

"It was a woman once," Estabrook went on.. "One calls acity she, yes?
But it doesn't seem very feminine any more.. "She'll be a lady again in
spring," Chant replied.

I don't think a few crocuses in Hyde Park are going to make much
difference," Estabrook said.. "The charm's gone out of it." He sighed.
"How far now?. "Maybe another mile."

"Are you sure your man's going to be there?"

"Of course."

"You've done this a lot, have you?  Been a go-between, I mean.  What did
you call it ...  a facilitator?"

"Oh yes," Chant said.. "It's in my blood." That blood was not entirely
English.  Chant's skin and syntax carried traces of the immigrant.  But
Estabrook had grown to trust him a little, even so.

"Aren't you curious about all of this?" he asked the man.

"It's not my business, sir.  You're paying for the service, and I
provide it.  if you wanted to tell me your reason. "As it happens, I
don't."

"I understand.  So it would be useless for me to be curious, yes?"

That was neat enough, Estabrook thought.  Not to want what couldn't be
had no doubt took the sting from things.  He might need to learn the
trick of that before he got too much older; before he wanted time he
couldn't have.  Not that he demanded much in the way of satisfactions.
He'd not been sexually insistent with Judith, for instance.  indeed he'd
taken as much pleasure in the simple sight of her as he'd taken in the
act of love.  The sight of her had pierced him, making her the enterer,
had she but known it, and him the entered.  Perhaps she had known, on
reflection.

Perhaps she'd fled from his passivity, from his ease beneath the spike
of her beauty.  If so, he would undo her revulsion with tonight's
business.  Here, in the hiring of the assassin, he would prove himself.
And, dying, she would realize her error.

The thought pleased him.  He allowed himself a little smile, which
vanished from his face when he felt the car slowing, and glimpsed
through the misted window the place the facilitator had brought him to.

A wall of corrugated iron lay before them, its length daubed with
graffiti.  Beyond it, visible through gaps where the iron had been torn
into ragged wings and beaten back, was a junkyard in which caravans were
parked.  This was apparently their destination.

"Are you out of your mind?" he said, leaning forward to take hold of
Chant's shoulder.

"We're not safe here.. "I promised you the best assassin in England, Mr.
Estabrook, and he's here.  Trust me, he's here."

Estabrook growled in fury and frustration.  He'd expected a clandestine
rendezvous curtained windows, locked doors not a gypsy encampment.  This
was altogether too public, and too dangerous.  Would it not be the
perfect irony to be murdered in the middle of an assignation with an
assassin?  He leaned back against the creaking leather of his seat and
said. "You've let me down."

"I promise you this man is a most extraordinary individual," Chant said.
"Nobody in Europe comes remotely close.  I've worked with him before - I
"Would you care to name the victims?"

Chant looked round at his employer, and in faintly admonishing tones
said. "I haven't presumed upon your privacy, Mr Estabrook.

Please don't presume upon mine." Estabrook gave a chastened grunt.

"Would you prefer we go back to Chelsea?" Chant went on.. "I can find
somebody else for you.  Not as good, perhaps, but in more congenial
surroundings."

Chant's sarcasm wasn't lost on Estabrook; nor could he resist the
recognition that this was not a game he should have entered if he'd
hoped to stay lily-white.

"No, no," he said.. "We're here, and I may as well see him.  What's his
name?"

"I only know him as Pie," Chant said.

"Pie?  Pie what?" 

"Just Pie."

Chant got out of the car and opened Estabrook's door.  icy air swirled
in, bearing a few flakes of sleet.  Winter was eager this year.  Pulling
his coat collar up around his nape, and plunging his hands into the
minty depths of his pockets, Estabrook followed his guide through the
nearest gap in the corrugated wall.  The wind carried the tang of
burning timber from an almost spent bonfire set amongst the caravans;
that, and the smell of rancid fat.

"Keep close," Chant advised.. "Walk briskly, and don't show too much
interest.  These are very private people.. "What's your man doing here?"
Estabrook demanded to know.  'is he on the run?"

"You said you wanted somebody who couldn't be traced.  Invisible was the
word you used.

Pie's that man.  He's on no files of any kind.  Not the police, not the
Social Security.  He's not even registered as born.. "I find that
unlikely."

"I specialize in the unlikely," Chant replied.

Until this exchange the violent turn in Chant's eye had never unsettled
Estabrook, but it did now, preventing him as it did from meeting the
other man's gaze directly.  This tale he was telling was surely a lie.

Who these days got to adulthood without appearing on a file somewhere?
But the thought of meeting a man who even believed himself undocumented
intrigued Estabrook.  He nodded Chant on, and together they headed over
the ill-lit and squalid ground.

There was debris dumped every side: the skeletal hulks of rusted
vehicles; heaps of rotted household refuse, the stench of which the cold
could not subdue; innumerable dead bonfires.  The presence of
trespassers had attracted some attention.  A dog with more breeds in its
blood than hairs on its back foamed and yapped at them from the limit of
its rope; the curtains of several trailers were drawn back by shadowy
witnesses; two girls in early adolescence, both with hair so long and
blonde they looked to have been baptized in gold (unlikely beauty, in
such a place) rose from beside the fire, one running as if to alert
guards, the other watching the newcomers with a smile somewhere between
the seraphic and the cretinous on her face.

"Don't stare," Chant reminded him as he hurried on, but Estabrook
couldn't help himself.

An albino with white dread locks had appeared from one of the trailers
with the blonde girl in tow.  Seeing the strangers he let out a shout,
and headed towards them.  Two more doors now opened, and others emerged
from their trailers, but Estabrook had no chance to either see who they
were or whether they were armed because Chant again said:

"Just walk, don't look.  We're heading for the caravan with the sun
painted on it.  See O. "I see it."

There were twenty yards still to cover.  Dreadlocks was delivering a
stream of orders now, most of them incoherent, but surely intended to
stop them in their tracks.  Estabrook glanced across at Chant, who had
his gaze fixed on their destination, and his teeth clenched.  The sound
of footsteps grew louder behind them.  A blow on the head or a knife in
the ribs couldn't be far off.

"We're not going to make it," Estabrook said.

Within ten yards of the caravan - the albino at their shoulders - the
door ahead opened, and a woman in a dressing-gown, with a baby in her
arms, peered out.  She was small, and looked so frail it was a wonder
she could hold the child, who began bawling as soon as the cold found
it.  The ache of its complaint drove their pursuers to action.
Dreadlocks took hold of Estabrook's shoulder and stopped him dead. Chant
- wretched coward that he was - didn't slow his pace by a beat, but
strode on towards the caravan as Estabrook was swung round to face the
albino.  This was his perfect nightmare, to be facing scabby,
pock-marked men like these, who had nothing to lose if they gutted him
on the spot.  While Dreadlocks held him hard another man - gold incisors
glinting stepped in and pulled open Estabrook's coat, then reached in to
empty his pockets with the speed of an illusionist.  This was not simply
professionalism.  They wanted their business done before they were
stopped.  As the pickpocket's hand pulled out his victim's wallet a
voice from the caravan behind Estabrook said:

"Let the Mister go.  He's real."

Whatever the latter meant, the order was instantly obeyed, but by that
time the thief had whipped Estabrook's wallet into his own pocket, and
had stepped back, hands raised to show them empty.  Nor, despite the
fact that the speaker presumably Pie - was extending his protection to
his guest, did it seem circumspect to try and reclaim the wallet.
Estabrook retreated from the thieves, lighter in step and cash, but glad
to be doing so at all.

Turning, he saw Chant at the caravan door, which was open.  The woman,
the baby and the speaker had already gone back inside.

"They didn't hurt you, did they?" Chant said.

Estabrook glanced back over his shoulder at the thugs, who had gone to
the fire, presumably to divide the loot by its light.

"No," he said.. "But you'd better go and check the car, or they'll have
it stripped."

"First I'd like to introduce you

"Just check the car," Estabrook said, taking some satisfaction in the
thought of sending Chant back across the no-man's land between here and
the perimeter.. "I can introduce myself."

"As you like."

Chant went off, and Estabrook climbed the steps into the caravan.  A
scent and a sound met him, both sweet.  Oranges had been peeled, and
their dew was in the air.  So was a lullaby, played on a guitar.  The
player, a black man, sat in the furthest corner of the caravan, in a
shadowy place beside a sleeping child.  The babe lay to his other side,
gurgling softly in a simple cot, its fat arms raised as if to pluck the
music from the air with its tiny hands.  The woman was at a table at the
other end of the vehicle tidying away the orange peel.  The whole
interior was marked by the same fastidiousness she was applying to this
task; every surface neat and polished.

"You must be Pie," Estabrook said.

"Please close the door," the guitar player said.  Estabrook did so. "And
sit down.  Theresa?

Something for the gentleman.  You must be cold."

The china cup of brandy set before him was like nectar.  He downed it in
two throatfuls, and Theresa instantly replenished it.  He drank again
with the same speed, only to have his cup furnished with a further
draught.  By the time Pie had played both the children to sleep, and
rose to come and join his guest at the tabje, the liquor had brought a
pleasant buzz to Estabrook's head.

In his life Estabrook had known only two other black men by name.  One
the manager of a tiling manufacturers in Swindon, the other a colleague
of his brother's: neither of the men he'd wished to know better.  He was
of an age and class that still swilled the dregs of colonialism at two
in the morning, and the fact this man had black blood in him (and, he
guessed, much else besides) counted as another mark against Chant's
judgement.  And yet - perhaps it was the brandy - he found the fellow
opposite him intriguing.  Pie didn't have the face of an assassin.  It
wasn't dispassionate, but distressingly vulnerable; even (though
Estabrook would never have breathed this aloud) beautiful.  Cheeks high,
lips full, eyes heavily lidded.  His hair, mingled black and blond, fell
in Italian ate

profusion, knotted ringlets to his shoulders.  He looked older than
Estabrook would have expected, given the age of his children.  Perhaps
only thirty, but wearied by some excess or other, the burnished sepia of
his skin barely concealing a sickly iridescence, as though there was a
mercurial taint in his cells.  It made him difficult to fix, especially
for eyes awash with brandy, the merest motion of his head breaking
subtle waves against his bones, their spume draining back into his skin
trailing colours Estabrook had never seen in flesh before.

Theresa left them to their business, and retired to sit beside the cot.
In part out of deference to the sleepers, and in part from his own
unease at saying aloud what was on his mind, Estabrook spoke in
whispers.

"Did Chant tell you why I'm here?"

"Of course," said Pie.. "You want somebody murdered." He pulled a pack
of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his denim shirt, and offered one
to Estabrook, who declined with a shake of his head.. "That is why
you're here isn't it?"

"Yes," Estabrook replied.. "Only

"You're looking at me and thinking I'm not the one to do it," Pie
prompted.  He put a cigarette to his lips.. "Be honest."

"You're not exactly as I imagined," Estabrook replied.

"So, this is good," Pie e said, applying a light to the cigarette.  'if
I had been what you'd imagined, I'd look like an assassin, and you'd say
I was too obvious.. "Maybe."

'if you don't want to hire me, that's fine.  I'm sure Chant can find you
somebody else.  If you do want to hire me, then you'd better tell me
what you need."

Estabrook watched the smoke drift up over the assassin's grey eyes, and
before he could prevent himself he was telling his story, the rules he'd
drawn for this exchange forgotten.  instead of questioning the man
closely, concealing his own biography so that the other would have as
little hold on him as possible, he spilled the tragedy in every
unflattering detail.  Several times he almost stopped himself, but it
felt so good to be unburdened that he let his tongue defy his better
judgement.  Not once did the other man interrupt the litany, and it was
only when a rapping on the door, announcing Chant's return, interrupted
the flow that Estabrook remembered there was anyone else alive in the
world tonight beside himself and his confessor. And by that time the
tale was told.

Pie opened the door, but didn't let Chant in.. "We'll wander over to the
car when we've finished," he told the driver.. "We won't be long." Then
he closed the door again and returned to the table.. "Something more to
drink?" he asked.

Estabrook declined, but accepted a cigarette as they talked on, Pie
requesting details of Judith's whereabouts and movements, Estabrook
supplying the answers in a monotone.  Finally, the issue of payment.

Ten thousand pounds, to be paid in two halves, the first upon agreement
of the contract, the second after its completion.

"Chant has the money," Estabrook said.

"Shall we walk then?" Pie said.

Before they left the caravan, Estabrook looked into the cot.. "You have
beautiful children," he said when they were out in the cold.

"They're not mine," Pie replied.. "Their father died a year ago this
Christmas."

"Tragic," Estabrook said.

"It was quick," Pie said, glancing across at Estabrook and confirming in
his glance the suspicion that he was the orphan-maker.. "Are you quite
certain you want this woman dead?" Pie said.. "Doubt's bad in a business
like this.  If there's any part of you that hesitates -'

"There's none," Estabrook said.. "I came here to find a man to kill my
wife.  You're that man."

"You still love her, don't you?" Pie said, once they were out and
walking.

'of course I love her," Estabrook said.. "That's why I want her dead."

"There's no Resurrection, Mr Estabrook.  Not for you, at least."

"It's not me who's dying," he said.

"I think it is," came the reply.  They were at the fire, now untended.
"A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.
That's plain, yes?"

"If I die, I die," was Estabrook's response.. "As long as she goes
first.  I'd like it done as quickly as possible.. "You said she's in New
York.  Do you want me to follow her there?"

"Are you familiar with the city?"

"Yes."

"Then do it there and do it soon.  I'll have Chant supply extra funds to
cover the flight.

And that's that.  We shall't see each other again." Chant was waiting at
the perimeter, and fished the envelope containing the payment from his
inside pocket.  Pie accepted it without question or thanks, then shook
Estabrook's hand and left the trespassers to return to the safety of
their car.  As he settled into the comfort of the leather seat,
Estabrook realized the palm he'd pressed against Pie's was trembling. He
knitted its fingers with those of his other hand, and there they
remained, white knuckled for the length of the journey home.

CHAPTER TWO

Do this for the women of the world, read the note John Furie Zacharias
held.  Slit your lying throat.

Beside the note, lying on the bare boards, Vanessa and her cohorts (she
had two brothers; it was probably they who'd come with her to empty the
house) had left a neat pile of broken glass, in case he was sufficiently
moved by her entreaty to end his life there and then.  He stared at the
note in something of a stupor, reading it over and over, looking -
vainly, of course - for some small consolation in it.  Beneath the tick
and scrawl that made her name the paper was lightly wrinkled.

Had tears fallen there while she'd written her goodbye, he wondered?
Small comfort if they had, and a smaller likelihood still.  Vanessa was
not one for crying.  Nor could he imagine a woman with the least
ambiguity of feeling so comprehensively stripping him of possessions.
True, neither the mews house nor any stick of furniture in it had been
his by law, but they had chosen many of the items together - she relying
upon his artist's eye, he upon her money to purchase whatever his gaze
admired.  Now it was gone, to the last Persian rug and Deco lamp.  The
home they'd made together, and enjoyed for a year and two months, was
stripped bare.  And so indeed was he.  To the nerve, to the bone.

He had nothing.

It wasn't calamitous.  Vanessa hadn't been the first woman to indulge
his taste in hand-made shirts and silk waistcoats, nor would she be the
last.  But she was the first in recent memory - for Gentle the past had
a way of evaporating after about ten years - who had conspired to remove
everything from him in the space of half a day.  His error was plain
enough.  He'd woken that morning, lying beside Vanessa with a hard-on
she'd wanted him to pleasure her with, and had stupidly refused her,
knowing he had a liaison with Marline that afternoon.  How she'd
discovered where he was unloading his balls was academic.  She had, and
that was that.  He'd stepped out of the house at noon believing the
woman he'd left was devoted to him, and come home five hours later to
find the house as it was now.

He could be sentimental at the strangest times.  As now, for instance,
wandering through the empty rooms, collecting up the belongings she had
felt obliged to leave for him.  His address book; the clothes he'd
bought with his own money as opposed to hers; his spare spectacles; his
cigarettes.  He hadn't loved Vanessa, but he had enjoyed the fourteen
months they'd spent together here.  She'd left a few more pieces of
trash on the dining-room floor: reminders of that time.  A cluster of
keys which they'd never found doors to fit; instruction documents for a
blender he'd burned out making midnight margaritas; a plastic bottle of
massage oil.  All in all, a pitiful collection, but he wasn't so
self-deceiving as to believe their relationship had been much more than
a sum of those parts.  The question was - now that it was over - where
was he to go, and what was he to do?  Marline was a middle-aged married
woman, her husband a banker who spent three days of every week in
Luxembourg, leaving her time to philander.  She professed love for
Gentle at intervals, but not with sufficient consistency to make him
think he could prise her from her husband, even if he wanted to, which
he was by no means certain he did.  He'd known her eight months - met
her, in fact, at a dinner party hosted by Vanessa's elder brother
William - and they had only argued once, but it had been a telling
exchange.  She'd accused him of always looking at other women: looking,
looking, as though for the next conquest.  Perhaps because he didn't
care for her too much, he'd replied honestly, and told her she was
right.  He was stupid for her sex.  Sickened in their absence, blissful
in their company; love's fool.

She'd replied that while his obsession might be healthier than her
husband's - which was money and its manipulation - his behaviour was
still neurotic.  Why this endless hunt, she'd asked him.  He'd answered
with some folderol about seeking the ideal woman, but he'd known the
truth even as he was spinning her this tosh, and it was a bitter thing.
Too bitter, in fact, to be put on his tongue.  In essence, it came down
to this: that he felt meaningless, empty, almost invisible unless one or
more of her sex were doting on him.  Yes, he knew his face was finely
made, his forehead broad, his gaze haunting, his lips sculpted so that
even a sneer looked fetching on them, but he needed a living mirror to
tell him so.  More, he lived in hope that one such mirror would find
something behind his looks only another pair of eyes could see: some
undiscovered self that would free him from being Gentle.

As always when he felt deserted, he went to see Chester Klein, patron of
the arts by diverse hands, a man who claimed to have been excised by
fretful lawyers from more biographies than any other man since Byron.

He lived in Notting Hill Gate, in a house he'd bought cheaply in the
late fifties, which he now seldom left, touched as he was by
agoraphobia, or, as he preferred it, 'a perfectly rational fear of
anyone I can't blackmail'.  .  From this small dukedom he managed to
prosper, employed as he was in a business which required a few choice
contacts, a nose for the changing taste of his market, and an ability to
conceal his pleasure at his achievements.  In short, he dealt in fakes,
and it was this latter quality he was most deficient in.  There were
those amongst his small circle of intimates who said it would be his
undoing, but they or their predecessors had been prophesying the same
for three decades, and Klein had out-prospered every one of them.  The
luminaries he'd entertained over the decades - the defecting dancers and
minor spies, the addicted debutantes, the rock stars with Messianic
leanings and the bishops who made idols of

barrow-boys - they'd all had their moments of glory, then fallen.  But
Klein went on to tell the tale.  And when, on occasion, his name did
creep into a scandal-sheet or a confessional biography, he was
invariably painted as the patron saint of lost souls.

it wasn't only the knowledge that, being such a soul, Gentle would be
welcomed at the Klein residence, that took him there.  He'd never known
a time when Klein didn't need money for some gambit or other, and that
meant he needed painters.

There was more than comfort to be found in the house at Ladbroke Grove;
there was employment.  It had been eleven months since he'd seen or
spoken to Chester, but he was greeted as effusively as ever, and ushered
in.

"Quickly! Quickly!" Klein said.. "Gloriana's in heat again!" He managed
to slam the door before the obese Gloriana, one of his five cats,
escaped in search of a mate.. "Too slow, sweetie!" he told her.  She
yowled at him in complaint.. "I keep her fat so she's slow," he said.
"And I don't feel so piggy myself."

He patted a paunch that had swelled considerably since Gentle had last
seen him, and was testing the seams of his shirt, which, like him, was
florid and had seen better years.  He still wore his hair in a
pony-tail, complete with ribbon, and wore an ankh on a chain around his
neck, but beneath the veneer of a harmless flower-child gone to seed he
was as acquisitive as a bower-bird.  Even the vestibule in which they
embraced was overflowing with collectables: a wooden dog, plastic roses
in psychedelic profusion, sugar skulls on plates.

"My God you're cold," he said to Gentle, 'and you look wretched.  Who's
been beating you about the head?. "Nobody."

"You're bruised."

"I'm tired, that's all."

Gentle took off his heavy coat, and laid it on the chair by the door,
knowing when he returned it would be

warm and covered with cat hairs.  Klein was already in the living room,
pouring wine.

Always red.

"Don't mind the television," he said.. "I never turn it off these days.
The trick is not to turn up the sound.  It's much more entertaining
mute."

This was a new habit, and a distracting one.  Gentle accepted the wine,
and sat down in the corner of the ill-sprung couch, where it was easiest
to ignore the demands of the screen.  Even there, he was tempted.

"So now, my Bastard Boy," Klein said, 'to what disaster do I owe the
honour?"

"It's not really a disaster.  I've just had a bad time.  I wanted some
cheery company.. "Give them up, Gentle," Klein said.

"Give what up?"

"You know what.  The fair sex.  Give them up.  I have.  it's such a
relief.  All those desperate seductions.  All that time wasted
meditating on death to keep yourself from coming too soon.  I tell you,
it's like a burden gone from my shoulders.. "How old are you?"

"Age has got fuck-all to do with it.  I gave up women because they were
breaking my heart.. "What heart's that

"I might ask you the same thing.  Yes, you whine and you wring your
hands, but then you go back and make the same mistakes.  It's tedious.
They're tedious.. "So save me.. "Oh, now here it comes." J don't have
any money.. "Neither do . "So we'll make some together.  Then I won't
have to be a kept man.  I'm going back to live in the studio, Klein.

I'll paint whatever you need.. "The Bastard Boy speaks.. "I wish you
wouldn't call me that.. "It's what you are.  You haven't changed in
eight years.

The world grows old but the Bastard Boy keeps his perfection.  Speaking
of which

"Employ me."

I - Don't interrupt me when I'm gossiping.  Speaking of which, I saw
Clem the Sunday before last.  He asked after you.

He's put on a lot of weight.  And his love-life's almost as disastrous
as yours.  Taylor's sick with the plague.  I tell you, Gentle,
celibacy's the thing."

"So employ me."

"It's not as easy as that.  The market's soft at the moment.  And, well,
let me be brutal, I have a new wunderkind." He got up.. "Let me show
you." He led Gentle through the house to the study.. "The fellow's
twenty-two, and I swear if he had an idea in his head he'd be a great
painter.  But he's like you, he's got the talent but nothing to say."

"Thanks," said Gentle sourly.

"You know it's true." Klein switched on the light.  There were three
canvases, all unframed, in the room.  One, a nude woman after the style
of Modigliani.  Beside it, a small landscape after Corot.  But the
third, and largest of the three, was the coup.  It was a pastoral scene,
depicting classically garbed shepherds standing, in awe, before a tree
in the trunk of which a human face was visible.

"Would you know it from a real Poussin?"

"Is it still wet?" Gentle asked.

"Such a wit."

Gentle went to give the painting a more intimate examination.  This
period was not one he was particularly expert in, but he knew enough to
be impressed by the handiwork.  The canvas was a close weave, the paint
laid upon it in careful regular strokes, the tones built up, it seemed,
in glazes.

"Meticulous, eh?" said Klein.

"To the point of being mechanical."

"Now, now, no sour grapes."

"I mean it.  It's just too perfect for words.  You put this

in the market and the game's up.  Now, the Modighani's another matter -'

"That was a technical exercise," Klein said.. "I can't sell that.  The
man only painted a dozen pictures.  it's the Poussin I'm betting on."

"Don't.  You'll get stung.  Mind if I get another drink?" Gentle headed
back through the house to the lounge, Klein following, muttering to
himself.

"You've got a good eye, Gentle," he said.. "But you're unreliable.
You'll find another woman and off you'll go.. "Not this time.. "And I
wasn't kidding about the market.  There's no room for bullshit."      4"
"Did you ever have any problem with a piece I painted?" Klein mused on
this.. "No," he admitted.

"I've got a Gauguin in New York.  Those Fuse sketches I did. "Berlin. Oh
yes, you've made your little mark.. "Nobody's ever going to know it, of
course.. "They will.  in a hundred years' time your Fuselis will look as
old as they are, not as old as they should be.  People will start to
investigate, and you, my Bastard Boy, will be discovered.  And so will
Kenny Soames, and Gideon; all my deceivers."

"And you'll be vilified for bribing us.  Denying the twentieth century
all that originality."

"Originality shit.  It's an overrated commodity, you know that.  You can
be a visionary painting Virgins.. "That's what I'll do then.  Virgins in
any style.  I'll be celibate, and I'll paint Madonnas all day.  With
child.

Without child.  Weeping.

Blissful.  I'll work my balls off, Kleiny, which'll be fine because I
won't need them.. "Forget the Virgins.  They're out of fashion."
"They're forgotten."

"Decadence is your strongest suit."

"Whatever you want.  Say the word."

"But don't fuck with me.  If I find a client, and promise something to
him, then it's down to you to produce it."

"I'm going back to the studio tonight.  I'm starting over.

Just do one thing for me?. "What's that?. "Bum the Poussin."

He had visited the studio on and off through his time with Vanessa -
he'd even met Marline there on two occasions when her husband had
cancelled a Luxembourg trip and she'd been too heated to miss a liaison
but it was charm less and cheerless, and he'd returned happily to the
house in Wimpole Mews.  Now, however, he welcomed the studio's
austerity.

He turned on the little electric fire, made himself a cup of fake coffee
with fake milk, and under its influence thought about deception.

The last six years of his life - since Judith, in fact - had been a
series of duplicities.  This was not of itself disastrous after tonight
it would once more be his profession but whereas painting had a tangible
end result (two, if he included the recompense), pursuit and seduction
always left him naked and empty-handed.  An end to that, tonight.  He
made a vow, toasted in bad coffee, to the God of Forgers, whoever He
was, to become great.  If duplicity was his genius why waste it on
deceiving husbands and mistresses?  He should turn it to a profounder
end, producing masterpieces in another man's name.  Time would validate
him, the way Klein had said it would; uncover his many works, and show
him, at last, as the visionary he was about to become.  And if it didn't
- if Klein was wrong and his handiwork remained undiscovered forever
then that was the truest vision of all.  Invisible, he would be seen;
unknown, he'd be influential.  It was enough to make him forget women
entirely.  At least for tonight.

CHAPTER THREE

At dusk the clouds over Manhattan, which had threatened snow all day,
cleared and revealed a pristine sky, its colour so ambiguous it might
have fuelled a philosophical debate as to the nature of the blue.  Laden
as she was with her day's purchases, Jude chose to walk back to Marlin's
apartment at Park Avenue and 80th.  Her arms ached, but it gave her time
to turn over in her head the encounter which had marked the day, and
decide whether she wanted to share it with Marlin or not. Unfortunately,
he had a lawyer's mind.  At best, cool, and analytical; at worst,
reductionist.  She knew herself well enough to know that if he
challenged her account in the latter mode she'd almost certainly lose
her temper with him, and then the atmosphere between them, which had
been (with the exception of his overtures) so easy and undemanding;
would be spoiled.  It was better to work out what she believed about the
events of the previous two hours before she shared it with Marlin.  Then
he could dissect it at will.

Already, after going over the encounter a few times, it was becoming,
like the blue overhead, ambiguous.  But she held on hard to the facts of
the matter.  She'd been in the menswear department of Bloomingdales,
looking for a sweater for Marlin.  It was crowded, and there was nothing
on display that she thought appropriate.

She'd bent down to pick up the purchases at her feet, and as she rose
again she'd caught sight of a face she knew, looking straight at her
through the moving mesh of people.  How long had she seen the face for?
A second; two at most?  Long enough for her heart to jump, and her face
to flush; long enough for her mouth to open and shape the word Gentle.
Then the traffic between them

had thickened, and he'd disappeared.  She'd fixed the place where he'd
been, stooped to pick up her baggage, and gone after him, not doubting
that it was he.

The crowd slowed her progress, but she soon caught sight of him again,
heading towards the door.  This time she yelled his name, not giving a
damn if she looked a fool, and dived after him.  She was impressive in
full flight and the crowd yielded, so that by the time she reached the
door he was only yards the other side.  Third Avenue was as thronged as
the store, but there he was, heading across the street.  The lights
changed as she got to the kerb.

She went after him anyway, daring the traffic.  As she yelled again he
was buffeted by a shopper about some business as urgent as hers, and he
turned as he was struck, giving her a second glimpse of him.  She might
have laughed out loud at the absurdity of her error had it not disturbed
her so.  Either she was losing her mind, or she'd followed the wrong
man.

Either way, this black man, his ringleted hair gleaming on his
shoulders, was not Gentle.  Momentarily undecided as to whether to go on
looking or to give up the chase there and then, her eyes lingered on the
stranger's face, and for a heart-beat, or less, his features blurred,
and in their flux, caught as if by the sun off a wing in the
stratosphere, she saw Gentle, his hair swept back from his high
forehead, his grey eyes all yearning, his mouth, which she'd not known
she missed till now, ready to break into a smile.  it never came.  The
wing dipped, the stranger turned, Gentle was gone.  She stood in the
throng for several seconds while he disappeared downtown.  Then,
gathering herself together, she turned her back on the mystery, and
started home.

It didn't leave her thoughts, of course.  She was a woman who trusted
her senses, and to discover them so deceptive distressed her.  But more
vexing still was why it should be that particular face, of all those in
her memory's catalogue, she'd chosen to configure from that of a perfect
stranger.  Klein's Bastard Boy was out of her

life, and she out of his.  It was six years since she'd crossed the
bridge from where they'd stood, and the river that flowed between was a
torrent.  Her marriage to Estabrook had come and gone along that river,
and a good deal of pain with it.

Gentle was still on the other shore, part of her history; irretrievable.
So why had she conjured him now?

As she came within a block of Marlin's building she remembered something
she'd utterly put out of her head for that six-year span.  It had been a
glimpse of Gentle, not so unlike the one she'd just had, that had
propelled her into her near-suicidal affair with him.  She'd met him at
one of Klein's parties - a casual encounter - and had given him very
little conscious thought subsequently.  Then, three nights later, she'd
been visited by an erotic dream that regularly haunted her.  The
scenario was always the same.  She was lying naked on bare boards in an
empty room, not bound but somehow bounded, and a man whose face she
could never see, his mouth so sweet it was like eating candy to kiss
him, made violent love to her.  Only this time the fire that burned in
the grate close by showed her the face of her dream-lover, and it had
been Gentle's face.  The shock, after so many years of never knowing who
the man was, woke her, but with such a sense of loss at this interrupted
coitus she couldn't sleep again for mourning it.  The next day she'd
discovered his whereabouts from Klein, who'd warned her in no uncertain
manner that John Zacharias was bad news for tender hearts.  She'd
ignored the warning, and gone to see him that very afternoon, in the
studio off the Edgware Road.  They scarcely left it for the next two
weeks, their passion putting her dreams to shame.

Only later, when she was in love with him and it was too late for common
sense to qualify her feelings, did she learn more about him.  He trailed
a reputation for womanizing that, even if it was ninety percent
invention, as she assumed, was still prodigious.  If she mentioned his
name in any circle, however jaded it was by gossip, there

was always somebody who had some titbit about him.  He even went by a
variety of names.

Some referred to him as the Furie; some as Zach or Zacho or Mr Zee;
others called him Gentle, which was the name she knew him by, of course;
still others John the Divine.  Enough names for half a dozen lifetimes.
She wasn't so blindly devoted to him that she didn't accept there was
truth in these rumours.  Nor did he do much to temper them.  He liked
the air of legend that hung about his head.  He claimed, for instance,
not to know how old he was.  Like herself, he had a very slippery grasp
on the past.

And he frankly admitted to being obsessed with her sex - some of the
talk she'd heard was of cradle-snatching; some of deathbed fucks - he
played no favourites.

So, here was her Gentle: a man known to the doormen of every exclusive
club and hotel in the city, who, after ten years of high living, had
survived the ravages of every excess; who was still lucid, still
handsome, still alive.  And this same man, this Gentle, told her he was
in love with her, and put the words together so perfectly she
disregarded all she'd heard but those he spoke.

She might have gone on listening forever, but for her rage, which was
the legend she trailed.  A volatile thing, apt to ferment in her without
her even being aware of it.. "That had been the case with Gentle.  After
half a year of their affair, she'd begun to wonder, wallowing in his
affection, how a man whose history had been one infidelity after another
had mended his ways; which thought led to the possibility that perhaps
he hadn't.  in fact she had no reason to suspect him.  His devotion
bordered on the obsessive in some moods, as though he saw in her a woman
she didn't even know herself, an ancient soul mate.  She was, she began
to think, unlike any other woman he'd ever met; the love that had
changed his life.  When they were so intimately joined, how would she
not know if he were cheating on her?  She'd have surely sensed the other
woman.

Tasted her on his tongue, or smelt her on his skin.  And if not there,
then in the

subtleties of their exchanges.  But she'd underestimated him.  When, by
the sheerest fluke, she'd discovered he had not one other woman on the
side but two, it drove her to near insanity.  She began by destroying
the contents of the studio, slashing all his canvases, painted or not,
then tracking the felon himself, and mounting an assault that literally
brought him to his knees, in fear for his balls.

The rage burned a week, after which she fell totally silent for three
days; a silence broken by a grief like nothing she'd ever experienced
before.  Had it not been for her chance meeting with Estabrook - who saw
through her tumbling, distracted manner to the woman she was she might
well have taken her own life.

Thus the tale of Judith and Gentle: one death short of tragedy, and a
marriage short of farce.

She found Marlin already home, uncharacteristically agitated.

"Where have you been?" he wanted to know.. "It's six thirty-nine."

She instantly knew this was no time to be telling him what her trip to
Bloomingdales had cost her in peace of mind.  Instead she lied.

"I couldn't get a cab.  I had to walk." 'if that happens again just call
me.  I'll have you picked up by one of our limos.  I don't want you
wandering the streets.  It's not safe.  Anyhow, we're late.  We'll have
to eat after the performance."

"What performance?"

"The show in the Village Troy was yabbmng about last night, remember?
The Neo -Nativity?  He said it was the best thing since Bethlehem."

"It's sold out."

"I have my connections," he gleamed.

"We're going tonight?"

"Not if you don't move your ass."

"Marlin, sometimes you're sublime," she said, dumping her purchases and
racing to change.

"What about the rest of the time?" he hollered after her.. "Sexy?
Irresistible?  Beddable?"

if indeed he'd secured the tickets as a way of bribing her between the
sheets, then he suffered for his lust.  He concealed his boredom through
the first act, but by intermission he was itching to be away to claim
his prize.

"Do we really need to stay for the rest?" he asked her as they sipped
coffee in the tiny foyer. "I mean, it's not like there's any mystery
about it.  The kid gets born, the kid grows up, the kid gets crucified."

"I'm enjoying it."

"But it doesn't make any sense," he complained, in deadly earnest.  The
show's eclecticism offended his rationalism deeply.. "Why were the
angels playing jazz?. "Who knows what angels do?"

He shook his head.. "I don't know whether it's a comedy or a satire, or
what the hell it is," he said.. "Do you know   what it is?. "I think
it's very funny.. "So you'd like to stay?. "I'd like to stay."

The second half was even more of a grab-bag than the first, the
suspicion growing in Jude as she watched that the parody and pastiche
was a smoke-screen put up to cover the creators' embarrassment at their
own sincerity.  In the end, with Charlie Parker angels wailing on the
stable roof, and Santa crooning at the manger, the piece collapsed into
high camp.  But even that was oddly moving.  The child was born.  Light
had come into the world again, even if it was to the accompaniment of
tap dancing elves.

When they exited, there was sleet in the wind.

"Cold, cold, cold," Marlin said.. "I'd better take a leak." He went back
inside to join the queue for the toilets, leaving Jude at the door,
watching the blobs of wet snow pass through the lamplight.  The theatre
was not large, and the bulk of the audience were out in a couple of

minutes, umbrellas raised, heads dropped, darting off into the Village
to look for their cars, or a place where they could put some drink in
their systems, and play critics.  The light above the front door was
switched off, and a cleaner emerged from the theatre with a black
plastic bag Of rubbish and a broom, and began to brush the foyer,
ignoring Jude - who was the last visible occupant - until he reached
her, when he gave her a glance of such venom she decided to put up her
umbrella and stand on the darkened step.  Marlin was taking his time
emptying his bladder.  She only hoped he wasn't titivating himself,
sticking his hair and freshening his breath in the hope of talking her
into bed.

The first she knew of the assault was a motion glimpsed from the corner
of her eye: a blurred form approaching her at speed through the
thickening sleet.  Alarmed, she turned towards her attacker.  She had
time to recognize the face on Third Avenue, then the man was upon her.

She opened her mouth to yell, turning to retreat into the theatre as she
did so.  The cleaner had gone.  So had her shout, caught in her throat
by the stranger's hands.  They were expert.  They hurt brutally,
stopping every breath from being drawn.

She panicked; flailed; toppled.  He took her weight, controlling her
motion.  In desperation she threw the umbrella into the foyer, hoping
there was somebody out of sight in the box office who'd be alerted to
her jeopardy.  Then she was wrenched out of shadow into heavier shadow
still, and realized it was almost too late already.  She was becoming
light-headed; her leaden limbs no longer hers.  In the murk her
assassin's face was once more a blur, with two dark holes bored in it.
She fell towards them, wishing she had the energy to turn her gaze away
from this blankness, but as he moved closer to her a little light caught
his cheek and she saw, or thought she saw, tears there, spilling from
those dark eyes.  Then the light went, not just from his cheek but from
the whole world.  And as everything

IL

slipped away she could only hold on to the thought that somehow her
murderer knew who she was.

"Judith?"

Somebody was holding her.  Somebody was shouting to her.  Not the
assassin, but Marlin.

She sagged in his arms, catching dizzied sight of the assailant running
across the pavement, with another man in pursuit.  Her eyes swung back
towards Marlin, who was asking her if she was all right, then back
towards the street as brakes shrieked, and the failed assassin was
struck squarely by a speeding car, which reeled round, wheels locked an
sliding over the sleet-greased street, throwing the man's body off the
bonnet and over a parked car.  The pursuer threw himself aside as the
vehicle mounted the pavement, slamming into a lamp-post.

Jude put her arm out for some support other than Marlin, her fingers
finding the wall.

Ignoring his advice that she stay stiR, stay still, she started to
stumble towards the place where her assassin had fallen.  The driver was
being helped from his smashed vehicle, unleashing a stream of
obscenities as he emerged.  Others were appearing on the scene to lend
help in forming a crowd, but Jude ignored theV stares and headed across
the street, Marlin at her side. She was determined to reach the body
before anybody else.  She wanted to see it before it was touched; wanted
to meet its open eyes and fix its dead expression; know it, for memory's
sake.

She found his blood first, spattered in the grey slush underfoot, and
then, a little way beyond, the assassin himself, reduced to a lumpen
form in the gutter.  As she came within a few yards of it, however, a
shudder passed down its spine, and it rolled over, showing its face to
the sleet.  Then, impossible though this seemed given the blow it had
been struck, the form started to haul itself to its feet.  She saw how
bloodied it was, but she saw also that it was still essentially whole.
It's not human, she thought, as it stood upright; whatever it is, it's
not human.  Marlin groaned with revulsion behind her, and

a woman on the pavement screamed.  The man's gaze i went to the
screamer, wavered, then returned to Jude.

It wasn't an assassin any longer.  Nor was it Gentle.  If it had a self,
perhaps this was its face: split by wounds and doubt; pitiful; lost. She
saw its mouth open and close as if it was attempting to address her.
Then Marlin made a move to pursue it, and it ran.  How, after such an
accident, its limbs managed any speed at all was a miracle, but it was
off at a pace that Marlin couldn't hope to match.  He made a show of
pursuit, but gave up at the first intersection, returning to Jude
breathless.

"Drugs," he said, clearly angered to have missed his chance at heroism.
"Fucker's on drugs.

He's not feeling any pain.

Wait till he comes down, he'll drop dead.  Fucker!  How did he know
you?"

"Did he?" she said, her whole body trembling now, as relief at her
escape and terror at how close she'd come to losing her life both stung
tears from her.

"He called you Judith," Marlin said.

In her mind's eye she saw the assassin's mouth open and close, and on
them read the syllables of her name.

"Drugs," Marlin was saying again, and she didn't waste words arguing,
though she was certain he was wrong.  The only drug in the assassin's
system had been purpose, and that would not lay him low, tonight or any
other.

CHAPTER FOUR

Eleven days after he had taken Estabrook to the encampment in Streatham,
Chant realized he would soon be having a visitor.  He lived alone, and
anonymously, in a one-room flat on a soon to be condemned estate close
to the Elephant and Castle, an address he had given to nobody, not even
his employer.  Not that his pursuers would be distracted from finding
him by such petty secrecy.  Unlike homo sapiens, the species his
long-dead master Sartori had been wont to call the blossom on the simian
tree, Chant's kind could not hide themselves from oblivion's agents by
closing a door and drawing the blinds.

They were like beacons to those that preyed on them.

Men had it so much easier.  The creatures that had made meat of them in
earlier ages were zoo specimens now, brooding behind bars for the
entertainment of the victorious ape.  They had no grasp, those apes, of
how close they lay to a state where the devouring beasts of Earth's
infancy would be little more than fleas.  That state was called the In
ovo, and on the other side of it lay four worlds, the so-called
Reconciled Dominions.  They teemed with wonders: individuals blessed
with attributes that would have made them, in this, the Fifth Dominion,
fit for sainthood, or burning, or both; cults possessed of secrets that
would overturn in a moment the dogmas of faith and physics alike; beauty
that might blind the sun, or set the moon dreaming of fertility.  All
this, separated from Earth the unreconciled Fifth - by the abyss of the
In Ovo.

it was not, of course, an impossible journey to make.  But the power to
do so, which was usually - and contemptuously referred to as magic, had
been waning in

the Fifth since Chant had first arrived.  He'd seen the walls of reason
built against it, brick by brick.  He'd seen its practitioners hounded
and mocked; seen its theories decay into decadence and parody; seen its
purpose steadily forgotten.

The Fifth was choking in its own certainties, and though he took no
pleasure in the thought of losing his life, he would not mourn his
removal from

L

t

his hard and un poetic Dominion.

He went to his window, and looked down the five storeys into

the courtyard.  It was empty.  He had a few minutes yet, to

compose his missive to Estabrook.  Returning to his table he began

it again, for the ninth or tenth time.  There was so much he wanted

to communicate, but he knew that Estabrook was utterly ignorant

of the involvement his family, whose name he'd abandoned, had

with the fate of the Dominions.  It was too late now to educate him.

A warning would have to suffice.  But how to word it so that it

didn't sound like the rambling of a wild man?  He set to again,

putting the facts as plainly as he could, though doubted that these

words would save Estabrook's life.  If the powers that prowled this

world tonight wanted him dispatched, nothing short of intervention

from the Unbeheld Himself, Hapexamendios, the all powerful

occupant of the First Dominion, would save him.

With the note finished, Chant pocketed it, and headed out into

the darkness.  Not a moment too soon.  In the frosty quiet he heard

the sound of an engine too suave to belong to a resident, and

peered over the parapet to see the men getting out of the car below.

He didn't doubt that these were his visitors.  The only vehicles he'd

seen here so polished were hearses.  He cursed himself.  Fatigue

had made him slothful, and now he'd let his enemies get

dangerously close.  He ducked down the back stairs - glad, for

once, that there were so few lights working along the landings - as

his visitors strode towards the front.  From the flats he passed, the

sound of lives: Christmas pops on the radio, argument, a baby

laughing, which became tears, as though it sensed that there was

danger near.

He knew none of his neighbours, except as furtive faces glimpsed at
windows, and now though it was too late to change that - he regretted
it.

He reached ground level unharmed and, discounting the thought of trying
to retrieve his car from the courtyard, headed off towards the street
most heavily trafficked at this time of night, which was Kennington Park
Road.  If he was lucky he'd find a cab there, though at this time of
night they weren't frequent.  Fares were harder to pick up in this area
than in Covent Garden or Oxford Street, and more likely to prove unruly.
He allowed himself one backward glance towards the estate, then turned
his heels to the task of flight.

Though classically it was the light of day which showed a painter the
deepest flaws in his handiwork, Gentle worked best at night; the
instincts of a lover brought to a simpler art.  In the week or so since
he'd returned to his studio it had once again become a place of work:
the air pungent with the smell of paint and turpentine, the burned-down
butts of cigarettes left on every available shelf and plate.  Though
he'd spoken with Klein daily there was no sign of a commission yet, so
he had spent the time re-educating himself.  As Klein had so cruelly
observed, he was a technician without a vision, and that made these days
of meandering difficult.  Until he had a style to forge, he felt
listless, like some latter-day Adam, born with the power to impersonate
but bereft of subjects.  So he set himself an exercise.  He would paint
a canvas in four radically different styles: a cubist North, an
impressionist South, an East after Van Gogh, a West after Dali.  As his
subject he took Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus.  The challenge drove him
to a healthy distraction, and he was still occupied with it at three
thirty in the morning, when the telephone rang.  The line was

watery, and the voice at the other end pained and raw, but it was
unmistakably Judith.

"Is that you, Gentle?"

"It's me." He was glad the line was so bad.  The sound of her voice had
shaken him, and he didn't want her to know.

"Where you calling from?. "New York.  I'm just visiting for a few days."
"It's good to hear from you."

"I'm not sure why I'm calling.  It's just that today's been strange and
I thought maybe, oh." She stopped.  Laughed at herself, perhaps a little
drunkenly.. "I don't know what I thought," she went on.. "It's stupid.
I'm sorry.. "When are you coming back?. "I don't know that either."
"Maybe we could get together?" ,I don't think so, Gentle.. "Just to
talk.. "This line's getting worse.  I'm sorry I woke you.. "You didn't
-. "Keep warm, huh?" Judith

"Sorry, Gentle."

The line went dead.  But the water she'd spoken through gurgled on, like
the noise in a sea-shell.  Not the ocean at all, of course; just
illusion.  He put the receiver down, and knowing he'd never sleep now
squeezed out some fresh bright worms of paint to work with, and set to.

It was the whistle from the gloom behind him that alerted Chant to the
fact that his escape had not gone unnoticed.  It was not a whistle that
could have come from human lips, but a chilling scalpel shriek he had
heard only once before in the Fifth Dominion, when, some two hundred
years past, his then possessor, the Maestro Sartori, had conjured from
the In Ovo a familiar which had made such

a whistle.  It had brought bloody tears to its summoner's eyes, obliging
Sartori to relinquish it post haste.  Later Chant and the Maestro had
spoken of the event, and Chant had identified the creature.  It was a
creature known in the Reconciled Dominions as a voider, one of a brutal
species that haunted the wastes north of the Lenten Way.  They came in
many shapes, being made from collective desire, which fact seemed to
move Sartori profoundly.

"I must summon one again," he'd said, 'and speak with it," to which
Chant had replied that if they were to attempt such a summoning they had
to be ready next time, for voiders were lethal, and could not be tamed
except by Maestros of inordinate power.  The proposed conjuring had
never taken place.  Sartori had disappeared a short time later.  In all
the intervening years Chant had wondered if he had attempted a second
summoning alone, and been the voiders' victim.

Perhaps the creature coming after Chant now had been responsible. Though
Sartori had disappeared two hundred years ago, the lives of voiders,
like those of so many species from the other Dominions, were longer than
the longest human span.

Chant glanced over his shoulder.  The whistler was in sight.  It looked
perfectly human, dressed in a grey, well cut suit and black tie, its
collar turned up against the cold, its hands thrust into its pockets. It
didn't run, but almost idled as it came, the whistle confounding Chant's
thoughts, and making him stumble.  As he turned away the second of his
pursuers appeared on the pavement in front of him, drawing its hand from
his pocket.  A gun?  No.  A knife.  No.

Something tiny crawled in the voider's palm, like a flea.  Chant had no
sooner focused upon it than it leapt towards his face.  Repulsed, he
raised his arm to keep it from his eyes or mouth, and the flea landed
upon his hand.  He slapped at it with his other hand, but it was beneath
his thumbnail before he could get to it.  He raised his arm to see its
motion in the flesh of his thumb, and clamped his other hand around the
base of the digit in the hope of stopping its further advance, gasping
as though doused with ice-water.  The pain was out of all proportion to
the mite's size, but he held both thumb and sobs hard, determined not to
lose all dignity in front of his executioners.  Then he staggered off
the pavement into the street, throwing a glance down towards the
brighter' lights at the junction.  What safety .1 they offered was
debatable, but if worst came to worst he would throw himself beneath a
car, and deny the voiders the entertainment of his slow demise.

He began to run again, still clutching his hand.  This time he didn't
glance back.  He didn't need to.  The sound of the whistling faded, and
the purr of the car replaced it.  He threw every ounce of his energy
into the run, reaching the bright street to find it deserted by traffic.
He turned north, racing past the Underground station towards the
Elephant and Castle.

Now he did glance behind, to see the car following steadily.  it had
three occupants.  The voiders, and another, sitting in the back seat.
Sobbing with breathlessness he ran on, and - Lord love it!  - a taxi
appeared around the next corner, its yellow light announcing its
availability.  Concealing his pain as best he could, knowing the driver
might pass on by if he thought the hailer was wounded, he stepped out
into the street, and raised his hand to wave the driver down.  This
meant unclasping one hand from the other, and the mite took instant
advantage, working its way up into his wrist.  But the vehicle slowed.

"Where to, mate?"

He astonished himself with the reply, giving not Estabrook's address,
but that of another place entirely.

"Clerkenwell," he said.. "Gamut Street."

"Don't know it," the cabbie replied, and for one heart stopping moment
Chant thought he was going to drive on.

I'll direct you," he said.

"Get in, then." Chant did so, slamming the cab door with no little

satisfaction, and barely managing to reach the seat before the cab
picked up speed.

Why had he named Gamut Street?  There was nothing there that would heal
him.  Nothing could.  The flea - or whatever variation in that species
it was that crawled in him - had reached his elbow, and his arm below
that pain was now completely numb, the skin of his hand wrinkled and
flaky.  But the house in Gamut Street had been a place of miracles once.
Men and women of great authority had walked in it, and perhaps left some
ghost of themselves to calm him in extremism No creature, Sartori had
taught, passed through this Dominion unrecorded, even to the least - to
the child that perished a heart-beat after it opened its eyes, the child
that died in the womb, drowned in its mother's waters - even that
unnamed thing had its record and its consequence.  So how much more
might the once-mighty of Gamut Street have left, by way of echoes?

His heart was palpitating, and his body full of jitters.  Fearing he'd
soon lose control of his functions, he pulled the letter to Estabrook
from his pocket, and leaned forward to slide the half-window between
himself and the driver aside.

"When you've dropped me in Clerkenwell I'd like you to deliver a letter
for me.  Would you be so kind?"

"Sorry, mate," the driver said. "I'm going home after this.  I've a wife
waiting for me."

Chant dug in his inside pocket and pulled out his wallet, then passed it
through the window, letting it drop on the seat beside the driver.

"What's this?. "All the money I've got.  This letter has to be
delivered.. "All the money you've got, eh?"

The driver picked up the wallet and flicked it open, his gaze going
between its contents and the road.. "There's a lot of dosh in here."
"Have it.  It's no good to me.. "Are you sick?"

"And tired," Chant said.. "Take it, why don't you?  Enjoy it.,

"There's a Daimler been following us.  Somebody you know?"

There was no purpose served by lying to the man.. "Yes," Chant said.. "I
don't suppose you could put some distance between them and us?"

The man pocketed the wallet, and jabbed his foot down on the
accelerator.  The cab leapt forward like a racehorse from a gate, its
jockey's laugh rising above the guttural din of the engine.  Whether it
was the cash he was now heavy with or the challenge of out-running a
Daimler that motivated him, he put his cab through its paces, proving it
more mobile than its bulk would have suggested.  In under a minute
they'd made two sharp lefts and a squealing right, and were roaring down
a back street so narrow the least miscalculation would have taken off
handles, hubs and mirrors.  The ma zing didn't stop there.  They made
another turn, and another, bringing them in a short time to Southwark
Bridge.  Somewhere along the way, they'd lost the Daimler.  Chant might
have applauded had be possessed two workable hands, but the flea's
message of corruption was spreading with agonizing speed.

While he still had five fingers under his command he went back to the
window and dropped Estabrook's letter through, murmuring the address
with a tongue that felt disfigured in his mouth.

"What's wrong with you?" the cabbie said.. "It's not fucking contagious
is it, 'cause if it is

'.  .  .  not .  .  ." Chant said.

"You look fucking awful," the cabbie said, glancing in the mirror. "Sure
you don't want a hospital?. "No.  Gamut Street.  I want

Gamut Street.. "You'll have to direct me from here."

The streets had all changed.  Trees gone; rows demolished; austerity in
place of elegance, function in place of beauty; the new for old, however
poor the exchange rate.  It was a decade and more since he'd come here
last.  Had

Gamut Street fallen, and a steel phallus risen in its place?. "Where are
we?" he asked the driver.

"Clerkenwell.  That's where you wanted, isn't it?" 

"I mean the precise place."

The driver looked for a sign, and found:

Z

"Flaxen Street.  Does it ring a bell?"

Chant peered out of the window.

"Yes!  Yes!  Go down to the end, and turn right."

"Used to live around here, did you?"

"A long time ago."

"It's seen better days." He turned right.. "Now where?"

"First on the left."

"Here it is," the man said.. "Gamut Street.  What number was it?"

"Twenty-eight."

The cab drew up at the kerb.  Chant fumbled for the handle, opened the
door, and all but fell out on to the pavement.  Staggering, he put his
weight against the door to close it, and for the first time he and the
driver came face to face.  Whatever the flea was doing to his system it
must have been horribly apparent, to judge by the look of repugnance on
the man's face.

"You u411 deliver the letter?" Chant said.

"You can trust me, mate.. "When you've done it, you should go
home, "Chant said. "Tell your wife you love her.  Give a prayer of
thanks.. "What for?. "That you're human," Chant said.

The cabbie didn't question this little lunacy.

"Whatever you say, mate," he replied.. "I'll give the missus one and
give thanks at the same time, how's that?  Now don't do anything I
wouldn't do, eh?"

This advice given, he drove off, leaving his passenger to the silence of
the street.

With failing eyes, Chant scanned the gloom.  The houses, built in the
middle of Sartori's century, looked to be mostly deserted; primed for
demolition perhaps.  But then Chant knew that sacred places - and Gamut
Street

was sacred in its way - survived on occasion because they went unseen,
even in plain sight.

Burnished by magic, they deflected the threatening eye and found
unwitting allies in men and women who, all unknowing, knew holiness;
became sanctuaries for a secret few.

He climbed the three steps to the door, and pushed at it, but it was
securely locked, so he went to the nearest window.

There was a filthy shroud of cobweb across it, but no curtain beyond. He
pressed his face to the glass.  Though his eyes were weakening by the
moment, his gaze was still more acute than that of the blossoming ape.
The room he was looking into was stripped of all furniture and
decoration; if anybody had occupied this house since Sartori's time -
and it surely hadn't stood empty for two hundred years - they had gone,
taking every trace of their presence.  He raised his good arm and struck
the glass with his elbow, a single jab which shattered the window. Then,
careless of the damage he did himself, he hoisted his bulk on to the
sill, beat out the rest of the pieces of glass with his hand, and
dropped down into the room on the other side.

The layout of the house was still clear in his mind.  In dreams he'd
drifted through these rooms, and heard the Maestro's voice summoning him
up the stairs, up!  up!, to the room at the top where Sartori had worked
his work.  It was there Chant wanted to go now, but there were new signs
of atrophy in his body with every heartbeat.  The hand first invaded by
the flea was withered, its nails dropped from their place, its bone
showing at the knuckles and wrist.

Beneath his jacket he knew his torso to the hip was similarly unmade; he
felt pieces of his flesh falling inside his shirt as he moved.  He would
not be moving for much longer.  His legs were increasingly unwilling to
bear him up, and his senses were close to flickering out.

Like a man whose children were leaving him he begged as he climbed the
stairs:

"Stay with me.  Just a little longer.  Please.  .

His cajoling got him as far as the first landing, but then

his legs all but gave out, and thereafter he had to climb using his one
good arm to haul him onwards.

He was halfway up the final flight when he heard the voiders' whistle in
the street outside, its piercing din unmistakable.

They had found him quicker than he'd anticipated, sniffing him out
through the darkened streets.  The fear that he'd be denied sight of the
sanctum at the top of the stairs spurred him on, his body doing its
ragged best to accommodate his ambition.

From below, he heard the door being forced open' Then the whistle again,
harder than before, as his pursuers stepped into the house.  He began to
berate his limbs, his tongue barely able to shape the words.

"Don't let me down!  Work, will you?  Work!'

And they obliged.  He scaled the last few stairs in a spastic fashion,
but reached the top flight as he heard the voiders' soles at the bottom.
it was dark up here, though how much of that was blindness and how much
night he didn't know.  It scarcely mattered.  The route to the door of
the sanctum was as familiar to him as the limbs he'd lost.  He crawled
on hand and knees across the landing, the ancient boards creaking
beneath him.  A sudden fear seized him: that the door would be locked,
and he'd beat his weakness against it, and fail to gain access.  He
reached up for the handle, grasped it, tried to turn it once, failed,
tried again and this time dropped face down over the threshold as the
door swung open.

There was food for his enfeebled eyes.  Shafts of moonlight spilled from
the windows in the roof.  Though he'd dimly thought it was sentiment
that had driven him back here, he saw now it was not.  In returning here
he came full circle, back to the room which had been his first glimpse
of the Fifth Dominion.  This was his cradle, and his tutoring room. Here
he'd smelt the air of England for the first time, the crisp October air;
here he'd fed first, drunk first; first had cause for laughter, and
later, for tears.  Unlike the lower rooms, whose emptiness was a sign of
desertion, this space had always been sparsely

furnished, and sometimes completely empty.  He'd danced here on the same
legs that now lay dead beneath him, while Sartori had told him how he
planned to take this wretched Dominion, and build in its midst a city
that would shame Babylon; danced for sheer exuberance, knowing his
Maestro was a great man, and had it in his power to change the world.

Lost ambition; all lost.  Before that October had become November
Sartori had gone, flitted in the night, or murdered by his enemies.
Gone, and left his servant stranded in a city he barely knew.  How Chant
had longed then to return to the ether from where he'd been summoned;
to shrug off the body which Sartori had congealed around him, and be
gone out of this Dominion.  But the only voice capable of ordering such
a release was that which had conjured him, and with Sartori gone he was
exiled on earth forever.  He hadn't hated his summoner for that. Sartori
had been indulgent for the weeks they'd been together.

Were he to appear now, in the moonlit room, Chant would not have accused
him of negligence, but made proper obeisances and been glad that his
inspiration had returned.

Maestro..." he murmured, face to the musty boards.

"Not here," came a voice from behind him.  It was not, he knew, one of
the voiders.  They could whistle, but not speak.. "You were Sartori's
creature, were you?  I don't remember that."

The speaker was precise, cautious and smug.  Unable to turn, Chant had
to wait until the man walked past his supine body to get a sight of him.
He knew better than to judge by appearances.  He, whose flesh was not
his i own, but of the Maestro's sculpting.  Though the man in front of
him looked human enough, he had the voiders in tow, and spoke with
knowledge of things few humans had access to.  His face was an overripe
cheese, drooping with jowls and weary folds around the eyes, his
expression that of a funereal comic.  The smugness in his voice was here
too, in the studied way he licked upper

and lower lips with his tongue before he spoke, and tapped the
finger-tips of each hand together as he judged the broken man at his
feet.  He wore an immaculately tailored three-piece suit, cut from a
cloth of apricot cream.  Chant would have given a good deal to break the
bastard's nose so he bled on it.

"I never did meet Sartori,"the man said.. "Whatever happened to him?" He
went down on his haunches in front of Chant and suddenly snatched hold
of a handful of his hair.. "I asked you what happened to your
Maestro,"he said." I'm Dowd, by the way.  You never knew my master, the
Lord

kd Godolphin, and I never knew yours.  But they're gone, and you're
scrabbling around for work.  Well, you won't have to do it any longer,
if you take my meaning.. "Did you ...  did you send him to me?"

'it would help my comprehension if you could be more specific."

"Estabrook."

"Oh yes.  Him."

"You did.  Why?"

"Wheels within wheels, my dove," Dowd said.. "I'd tell you the whole
bitter story, but you don't have the time to listen and I don't have the
patience to explain.  I knew of a man who needed an assassin.  I knew of
another man who dealt in them.  Let's leave it at that."

"But how did you know about me?"

"You're not discreet," Dowd replied.. "You get drunk on the Queen's
birthday, and you gab like an Irishman at a wake.

Lovey, it draws attention sooner or later.. "Once in while.  .

"I know, you get melancholy.  We all do, lovey, we all do.  But some of
us do our weeping in private, and some of us' he let Chant's head drop
-'make fucking public spectacles of ourselves.  There are consequences,
lovey, didn't Sartori tell you that?  There are always consequences.
You've begun something with this Estabrook business, for instance, and
I'll need to watch it closely, or before

we know it there'll be ripples, spreading through the Imajica."

the Imajica .  .

"That's right.  From here to the margin of the First Dominion.  To the
region of the Unbeheld Himself." Chant began to gasp, and Dowd -
realizing he'd hit a nerve - leaned towards his victim.

"Do I detect a little anxiety?" he said.. "Are you afraid of going into
the glory of our Lord Hapexamendios?" Chant's voice was frail now. "Yes.
.  ." he murmured.

"Why?"Dowd wanted to know.. "Because of your crimes?. "Yes."

"What are your crimes?  Do tell me.  We needn't bother with the little
things.  Just the really shameful stuff'll do.. "I've had dealings with
a Eurhetemec."

"Have you indeed?" Dowd said.. "How ever did you get back to Yzordderrex
to do that

"I didn't," Chant replied.. "My dealings ...  were here in the Fifth."

"Really," said Dowd softly.. "I didn't know there were Eurhetemecs here.
You learn something new every day.  But, lovey, that's no great crime.
The Unbeheld's going to forgive a poxy little trespass like that.

Unless .  .  ." He stopped for a moment, turning over a new possibility.
"Unless, the Eurheternec was a mystif.  .  ." He trailed the thought,
but Chant remained silent.. "Oh, my dove,"Dowd said.. "It wasn't, was
it?" Another pause.. "Oh, it was.  It was." He sounded almost enchanted.
"There's a mystif in the Fifth, and what?  You're in love with it? You'd
better tell me before you run out of breath, lovey.  In a few minutes
your eternal soul will be waiting at Hapexamendios's door."

Chant shuddered.. "The assassin.  .  ." he said.

"What about the assassin?" came the reply.  Then realizing what he'd
just heard, Dowd drew a long, slow breath.. "The assassin is a mystif ?"
he said.

"Yes."

"Oh, my sweet Hyo!" he exclaimed.. "A mystif!" The

enchantment had vanished from his voice now.  He was

hard and dry.. "Do you know what they can do?  The

deceits they've got at their disposal?  This was supposed to

be an anonymous piece of shit-stirring, and look what

you've done!" His voice softened again.. "Was it beautiful?" he asked..
"No, no.  Don't tell me.  Let me have the

surprise, when I see it face to face." He turned to the

voiders.. "Pick the fucker up," he said.

They stepped forward, and raised Chant by his broken

arms.  There was no strength left in his neck, and his head

lolled forward, a solid stream of bilious fluid running from

mouth and nostrils.. "How often does the Eurheternec

tribe produce a mystif ?" Dowd mused, half to himself.

"Every ten years?  Every fifty?  They're certainly rare.  And

there you are, blithely hiring one of these little divinities as

an assassin.  Imagine!  How pitiful, that it had fallen so

low.  I must ask it how that came about.  .  ." He stepped

towards Chant, and at Dowd's order one of the voiders

raised Chant's head by the hair.. "I need the mystif's

whereabouts," Dowd said, 'and its name."

Chant sobbed through his bile.. "Please.  .  ." he said, .  I

meant ...  I .  .  .  meant.  .  ."

"Yes, yes.  No harm.  You were just doing your duty.

The Unbeheld will forgive you, I guarantee it.  But the

mystif, lovey, I need you to tell me about the mystif.

Where can I find it?  Just speak the words, and you won't

ever have to think about it again.  You'll go into the

presence of the Unbeheld like a babe."

"You will.  Trust me.  Just give me its name and tell me

the place where I can find it."

"Name ...  and ...  place."

"That's right.  But get to it, lovey, before it's too late!'

Chant took as deep a breath as his collapsing lungs

allowed.. "It's called Pie'oh'pah," he said.

Dowd stepped back from the dying man as if slapped.

"Pie'oh'pah?  Are you sure?"

I'm sure..."

"Pie'oh'pah is alive?  And Estabrook hired it?. "Yes."

Dowd threw off his imitation of a Father Confessor, and murmured a
fretful question of himself.. "What does this mean?" he said.

Chant made a pained little moan, his system racked by further waves of
dissolution.

Realizing that time was now very short, Dowd pressed the man afresh.

"Where is this mystif?  Quickly, now!  Quicklyr

Chant's face was decaying, cobs of withered flesh sliding off his
slackened bone.  When he answered it, it was., with half a mouth.  But
answer he did, to be unburdened. "I thank you," Dowd said to him, when
all the information had been supplied.. "I thank you." Then, to the
voiders. "Let him go."

They dropped Chant without ceremony.  When he hit the floor his face
broke, pieces spattering Dowd's shoe.  He viewed the mess with disgust.

"Clean it off," he said.

The voiders were at his feet in moments, dutifully removing the scraps
of matter from Dowd's hand-made shoes.

"What does this mean?" Dowd murmured again.  There was surely
synchronicity in this turn of events.  in a little over half a year's
time, the anniversary of the Reconciliation would be upon the Imajica.
Two hundred years would have passed since the Maestro Sartori had
attempted, and failed, to perform the greatest act of magic known to
this or any other Dominion.  The plans for that ceremony had been laid
here, at number twenty-eight Gamut Street, and the mystif, amongst
others, had been there to witness the preparations.

The ambition of those heady days had ended in tragedy, of course.  Rites
intended to heal the rift in the Imajica, and reconcile the Fifth
Dominion with the other   II four, had gone disastrously awry.  Many
great theurgists,   shamans and theologians had been killed.
Determined that such a calamity never be repeated, several of the

survivors had banded together in order to cleanse the Fifth of all
magical knowledge.  But however much they bbed to erase the past, the
slate could never be scru entirely cleansed.  Traces of what had been
dreamed and hoped for remained; fragments of poems to Union, written by
men whose names had been systematically removed from all record.  And as
long as such scraps remained, the spirit of the Reconciliation would
survive.

But spirit was not enough.  A Maestro was needed; a magician arrogant
enough to believe that he could succeed where Christos and innumerable
other sorcerers, most lost to history, had failed.  Though these were
bliss less times, Dowd didn't discount the possibility of such a soul
appearing.  He still encountered in his daily life a few who looked past
the empty gaud that distracted lesser minds and longed for a revelation
that would burn the tinsel away, an Apocalypse that would show the Fifth
the glories it yearned for in its sleep.

If a Maestro was going to appear, however, he would need to be swift.
Another attempt at Reconciliation couldn't be planned overnight, and if
the next midsummer went unused, the Imajica would pass another two
centuries divided.  Time enough for the Fifth Dominion to destroy itself
out of boredom or frustration, and prevent the Reconciliation from ever
taking place.

Dowd perused his newly polished shoes.

"Perfect," he said.. "Which is more than I can say for the rest of this
wretched world."

He crossed to the door.  The voiders lingered by the body, however,
bright enough to know that they still had some duty to perform with it.
But Dowd called them away.

"We'll leave it here," he said.. "Who knows?  It may stir a few ghosts."

CHAPTER FIVE

Two days after the predawn call from Judith

- days in which the water heater in the studio had failed, leaving
Gentle the option of bathing in polar waters or not at all (he chose the
latter) - Klein summoned him to the house.  He had good news.  He'd
heard of a buyer with a hunger that was not being satisfied through
conventional markets, and Klein had allowed it to be known that he might
be able to lay his hands on something attractive.  Gentle had
successfully recreated one Gauguin previously, a small picture which had
gone on to the open market and been consumed without any questions being
asked.  Could he do it again?  Gentle replied that he would make a
Gauguin so fine the artist himself would have wept to see it.  Klein
advanced Gentle five hundred pounds to pay the rent on the studio, and
left him to it, remarking only that Gentle was looking a good deal
better than he'd looked previously, though he smelt a good deal worse.

Gentle didn't much care.  Not bathing for two days was no great
inconvenience when he only had himself for company; not shaving suited
him fine when there was no woman to complain of beard burns.  And he'd
rediscovered the old, private erotics: spit, palm and fantasy.  it
sufficed.  A man might get used to living this way; might get to like
his gut a little ample, his armpits sweaty, his balls the same.  It
wasn't until the weekend that he started to pine for some entertainment
other than the sight of himself in the bathroom mirror.  There hadn't
been a Friday or Saturday in the last year which hadn't been occupied by
some social gathering, where he'd mingled

with Vanessa's friends.  Their numbers were still listed in his address
book, just a phone call away, but he felt squeamish about making
contact.  However much he may have charmed them, they were her friends
not his, and they'd have inevitably sided with her in this fiasco.

As for his own peers - the friends he'd had before Vanessa - most had
faded.  They were a part of his past,

A and like so many other memories, slippery.  While people

like Klein recalled events thirty years old in crystalline detail,
Gentle had difficulty remembering where he was and with whom even ten
years before.

Earlier than that still, and his memory banks were empty.  It was as
though his mind was disposed only to preserve enough details of his
history to make the present plausible.  The rest it disregarded.  He
kept this strange fallibility from almost everybody he knew, concocting
details if he was pressed hard.

It didn't much bother him.  Not knowing what it meant to have a past, he
didn't miss it.  And he construed from exchanges with others that though
they might talk confidently about their childhood and adolescence, much
of it was rumour and conjecture; some of it pure fabrication.

Nor was he alone in his ignorance.  Judith had once confided that she
too had an uncertain grasp of the past, though she'd been drunk at the
time, and had denied it vehemently when he'd raised the subject again.
So, between friends lost and friends forgotten, he was very much alone
this Saturday night, and picked up the phone when it rang with some
gratitude.

"Furie here," he said.  He felt like a Furie tonight.  The line was
alive, but there was no answer.. "Who's there?" he said.  Still,
silence.  Irritated, he put down the receiver.  Seconds later, the phone
rang again.. "Who the hell is this?" he demanded, and this time an
impeccably spoken man replied, albeit with another question.

"Am I speaking to John Zacharias?"

Gentle didn't hear himself called that too often.

"Who is this?" he said again.

"We've only met once.  You probably don't remember me.  Charles
Estabrook?"

Some people lingered longer in the memory than others.  Estabrook was
one.  The man who'd caught Jude when she'd dropped from the high-wire. A
classic inbred Englishman, member of minor aristocracy, pompous,
condescending and . "I'd like very much to meet with you, if that's
possible.. "I don't think we've got anything to say to each other."
"It's about Judith, Mr Zacharias.  A matter I'm obliged to keep in the
strictest confidence, but it is, I cannot stress too strongly, of the
profoundest importance."

The tortured syntax made Gentle blunt.. "Spit it out, then," he said.

"Not on the telephone.  I realize this request comes without warning,
but I beg you to consider it.. "I have.  And no.  I'm not interested in
meeting you.. "Even to gloat?. "Over what?"

"Over the fact that I've lost her," Estabrook said.. "She left me, Mr
Zacharias, just as she left you.  Thirty-three days ago." The precision
of that spoke volumes.  Was he counting the hours as well as the days.

Perhaps the minutes too.. "You needn't come to the house if you don't
wish to.  In fact, to be honest, I'd be happier if you didn't." He was
speaking as if Gentle would agree to the rendezvous, which, though he
hadn't said so yet, he would.

it was cruel, of course, to bring someone of Estabrook's age out on a
cold day, and make him climb a hill, but Gentle knew from experience you
took whatever satisfactions you could along the way.  And Parliament
Hill had a fine view of London, even on a day of louring cloud.  The
wind was brisk, and as usual on a Sunday the hill had a host of
kite-fliers on its back, their toys like

multi-coloured candles suspended in the wintry sky.  The hike made
Estabrook breathless, but he seemed glad that Gentle had picked the
spot.

"I haven't been up here in years.  My first wife used to like coming
here to see the kites."

He brought a brandy flask from his pocket, proffering it first to
Gentle.  Gentle declined.

"The cold never leaves one's marrow these days.  one of the penalties of
age.  I've yet to discover the advantages.  How old are you?"

Rather than confess to not knowing, Gentle said. "Almost forty."

"You look younger.  In fact you've scarcely changed since we first met.
Do you remember?  At the auction?  You were with her.  I wasn't.  That
was the world of difference between us.  With; without.  I envied you
that day the way I'd never envied any other man; just for having her
beside you.  Later, of course, I saw the same look on other men's faces
-'

I didn't come here to hear this," Gentle said.

"No, I realize that.  It's just necessary for me to express how very
precious she was to me.

I count the years I had with her as the best of my life.  But of course
the best can't go on forever, can they, or how are they the best?" He
drank again.

"You know, she never talked about you," he said.. "I tried to provoke
her into doing so, but she said she'd put you out of her mind completely
- she'd forgotten you, she said - which is nonsense of cours. "I believe
it."

"Don't," Estabrook said quickly.. "You were her guilty secret.. "Why are
you trying to flatter me?"

"It's the truth.  She still loved you, all through the time she was with
me.  That's why we're talking now.  Because I know it, and I think you
do too."

Not once so far had they mentioned her by name, almost as though from
some superstition.  She was she, her, the woman; an absolute and
invisible power.  Her

men seemed to have their feet on solid ground, but in truth they drifted
like the kites, tethered to reality only by the memory of her.

"I've done a terrible thing, John," Estabrook said.  The flask was at
his lips again.  He took several gulps before sealing it and pocketing
it.. "And I regret it bitterly." what?"

"May we walk a little way?" Estabrook said, glancing towards the
kite-fliers, who were both too distant and too involved in their sport
to be eavesdropping.  But he was not comfortable with sharing his secret
until he'd put twice the distance between his confession and their ears.
When he had, he made it simply and plainly.. "I don't know what kind of
madness overtook me," he said, 'but a little time ago I made a contract
with somebody to have her killed.. "You did what. "Does it appal you?"
"What do you think?  Of course it appals me."

"It's the highest form of devotion, you know, to want to end somebody's
existence rather than let them live on without you.  It's love of the
highest order.. "It's a fucking obscenity."

"Oh yes, it's that too.  But I couldn't bear ...  just couldn't bear ...
the idea of her being alive and me not being with her.

.  ." His delivery was now deteriorating; the words becoming tears.  She
was so dear to me.  .  ."

Gentle's thoughts were of his last exchange with Judith.  The
half-drowned telephone call from New York, which had ended with nothing
said.  Had she known then that her life was in jeopardy?  If not, did
she now?  My God, was she even alive?  He took hold of Estabrook's lapel
with the same force that the fear took hold of him.

"You haven't brought me here to tell me she's dead.. "No.  No," he
protested, making no attempt to disengage Gentle's hold.. "I hired this
man, and I want to call him off

"So do it," Gentle said, letting the coat go.

"I can't."

Estabrook reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper.  To
judge by its crumpled state it had been thrown away then reclaimed.

"This came from the man who found me the assassin," he went on.. "It was
delivered to my home two nights ago.  He was obviously drunk or drugged
when he wrote it, but it indicates that he expects to be dead by the
time I read it.  I'm assuming he's correct.  He hasn't made contact.  He
was my only route to the assassin.. "Where did you meet with this man?"
"He found me.. "And the assassin?"

"I met him somewhere south of the river, I don't know where.  It was
dark.  I was lost.

Besides, he won't be there.  He's gone after her.. "So warn her."

"I've tried.  She won't accept my calls.  She's got another lover now.
He's being covetous the way I was.  My letters, my telegrams, they're
all sent back unopened.  But he won't be able to save her.  This man I
hired, his name's Pie

"What's that, some kind of code?"

"I don't know," Estabrook said.. "I don't know anything except I've done
something unforgivable and you have to help me undo it.  You have to.
This man Pie is lethal.. "What makes you think she'll see me when she
won't see you?"

"There's no guarantee.  But you're a younger, fitter man, and you've had
some.  .  .

experience of the criminal mind.

You've a better chance of coming between her and Pie than I have.  I'll
give you money for the assassin.  You can pay him off.  And I'll pay
whatever you ask.  I'm rich.  Just warn her, Zacharias, and get her to
come home.  I can't have her death on my conscience."

"It's a little late to think about that."

"I'm making what amends I can.  Do we have a deal?"

He took off his leather glove in preparation for shaking Gentle's hand.

"I'd like the letter from your contact," Gentle said.

"It barely makes any sense," Estabrook said.

"If he is dead, and she dies too, that letter's evidence whether it
makes sense or not.  Hand it over, or no deal." Estabrook reached into
his inside pocket, as if to pull out the letter, but with his fingers
upon it he hesitated.  Despite all his talk about having a clear
conscience, about Gentle being the man to save her, he was deeply
reluctant to hand the letter over.

e. "I thought so," Gentle said.. "You want to make sure I look like the
guilty party if anything goes wrong.  Well, go fuck yourself."

He turned from Estabrook and started down the hill.  Estabrook came
after him, calling his name, but Gentle didn't slow his pace.  He let
the man run.

"All right!" he heard behind him.. "All right, have it!

Have it!' Gentle slowed but didn't stop.  Grey with exertion, Estabrook
caught up with him.

"The letter's yours," he said.

Gentle took it, pocketing it without unfolding it.

There'd be plenty of time to study it on the flight.

CHAPTER SIX

Chant's body was discovered the following day by 93ear-old Albert Burke,
who found it while looking for his errant mongrel, Kipper.

The animal had sniffed from the street what its owner had only begun to
nose as he climbed the stairs, whistling for his hound between curses:
the rotting tissue at the top.  In the autumn of 1916 Albert had fought
for his country at the Somme, sharing trenches with dead companions for
days at a time.  The sights and smells of death didn't much distress
him.

Indeed his sanguine response to his discovery lent colour to the story
when it reached the evening news, and assured it of greater coverage
than it might otherwise have merited, that focus in turn bringing a
penetrating eye to bear on the identity of the dead man.  Within a day a
portrait of the deceased as he might have looked in life had been
produced, and by Wednesday a woman living on a council estate south of
the river had identified him as her next door neighbour, Mr Chant.

An examination of his flat turned up a second picture, not of Chant's
flesh this time, but of his life.  It was the conclusion of the police
that the dead man was a practitioner of some obscure religion.  It was
reported that a small altar dominated his room, decorated with the
withered heads of animals forensics could not identify, its centre-piece
an idol of such explicitly sexual a nature no newspaper dared publish a
sketch of it, let alone a photograph.  The gutter press particularly
enjoyed the story, especially as the artifacts had belonged to a man now
thought to have been murdered.  They editorialized with barely concealed
racism on the influx of perverted

foreign religions.  Between this and stories on Burke of the Somme,
Chant's death attracted a lot of column inches.  That fact had several
consequences.  It brought a rash of right-wing attacks on mosques in
Greater London, it brought a call for the demolition of the estate where
Chant had lived, and it brought Dowd up to a certain tower in Highgate,
where he was summoned in lieu of his absentee master, Estabrook's
brother, Oscar Godolphin.

In the 1780s, when Highgate Hill was so steep and deeply rutted that
carriages regularly failed to make the grade, and the drive to town
sufficiently dangerous that a wise man went with pistols, a merchant
called Thomas Roxborough had constructed a handsome house on Hornsey
Lane, designed for him by one Henry Holland.  At that time it had
commanded fine views: south all the way to the river; north and west
over the lush pastures of the region towards the tiny village of
Hampstead.  The former view was still available to the tourist, from the
bridge that spanned the Archway Road, but Roxborough's fine house had
gone, replaced in the late thirties with an anonymous ten-storey tower,
set back from the street.  There was a screen of well-tended trees
between tower and road, not sufficiently thick to conceal the building
entirely, but enough to render what was already an undistinguished
building virtually invisible.  The only mail that was delivered there
was circulars, and official paperwork of one kind or another.  There
were no tenants, either individuals or businesses.  Yet Roxborough Tower
was kept well by its owners, who once every month or so gathered in the
single room which occupied the top floor of the building in the name of
the man who had owned this plot of land two hundred years before, and
who had left it to the society he had founded.

The men and women (eleven in all) who met here and

talked for a few hours and went their unremarkable ways, were the
descendants of the impassioned few Roxborough had gathered around him in
the dark days following the failure of the Reconciliation.  There was no
passion amongst them now, nor more than a vague comprehension of
Roxborough's purpose in forming what he'd called the Society of the
Tabula Rasa, or the Clean Slate.  But they met anyway, in part because
in their early childhood one or other of their parents, usually but not
always the father, had taken them aside and told them a great
responsibility would fall to them: the carrying forward of a
hermetically protected family secret, and in part because the Society
looked after its own.  Roxborough had been a man of wealth and insight.
He'd purchased considerable tracts of land during his lifetime, and the
profits that accrued from that investment had ballooned as London grew.
The sole recipient of those monies was the Society, though the funds
were so ingeniously routed, through companies and agents who were
unaware of their place in the system, that nobody who serviced the
Society in any capacity whatsoever knew of its existence.

Thus the Tabula Rasa flourished in its peculiar, purposeless way,
gathering to talk about the secrets it kept, as Roxborough had decreed,
and enjoying the sight of the city from its place on Highgate Hill.

Kuttner Dowd had been here several times, though never when the Society
was assembled, as it was tonight.  His employer, Oscar Godolphin, was
one of the eleven to whom the flame of Roxborough's intent had been
passed, though of all of them surely none was so perfect a hypocrite as
Godolphin, who was both a member of a Society committed to the
repression of all magical activity, and the employer (Godolphin would
have said ovmer) of a creature summoned by magic in the very year of the
tragedy that had brought the Society into being.

That creature was of course Dowd, whose existence was known to the
Society's members but whose origins

were not.  If it had been, they would never have summoned him here and
allowed him access to the hallowed Tower.

Rather they would have been bound by Roxborough's edict to destroy him
at whatever cost to their bodies, souls or sanity that might entail.
Certainly they had the expertise; or at least the means to gain it.  The
Tower reputedly housed a library of treatises, grimoires, cyclopaedias
and symposia second to none, collected by Roxborough and the group of
Fifth Dominion magi who'd first supported the attempt at the
Reconciliation.  One of those men had been Joshua Godolphin, Earl of
Bellingham.  He and Roxborough had survived the calamitous events of
that midsummer almost two hundred years ago, but most of their dearest
friends had not.  The story went that after the tragedy Godolphin had
retired to his country estate, and never again ventured beyond its
perimeters.  Roxborough, on the other hand, ever the most pragmatic of
the group, had within days of the cataclysm secured the occult libraries
of his dead colleagues, hiding the thousands of volumes in the cellar of
his house where they could, in the words of a letter to the Earl, 'no
longer taint with unchristian ambition the minds of good men like our
dear friends.  We must hereafter keep the doing of this damnable
magic from our shores." That he had not destroyed the books, but merely
locked them away, was testament to some ambiguity in him, however.
Despite the horrors he'd seen, and the fierceness of his revulsion, some
small part of him retained the fascination that had drawn him, Godolphin
and their fellow experimenters together in the first place.

Dowd shivered with unease as he stood in the plain hallway of the Tower,
knowing that somewhere nearby was the largest collection of magical
writings gathered in one place outside the Vatican, and that amongst
them would be many rituals for the raising and dispatching of creatures
like himself.  He was not the conventional stuff of which familiars were
made, of course.  Most were simpering, mindless functionaries, plucked
by their summoners from the In Ovo - the space between the Fifth and the
Reconciled Dominions - like a lobster from a restaurant tank.

He, on the other hand, had been a professional actor in his time; and
feted for it.  It wasn't congenital stupidity that had made him
susceptible to human jurisdiction, it was anguish.  He'd seen the face
of Hapexamendios Himself, and half-crazed by the sight had been unable
to resist the summons, and the binding, when it came.  His invoker had
of course been Joshua Godolphin, and he'd commanded Dowd to serve his
line until the end of time.  In fact, Joshua's retirement to the safety
of his estate had freed Dowd to wander until the old man's demise, when
he was drawn back to offer his services to Joshua's son Nathaniel, only
revealing his true nature once he'd made himself indispensable, for fear
he was trapped between his bounden duty and the zeal of a Christian.

In fact Nathaniel had grown into a dissolute of considerable proportions
by the time Dowd entered his employ, and could not have cared less what
kind of creature Dowd was as long as he procured the right kind of
company.  And so it had gone on, generation after generation, Dowd
changing his face on occasion (a simple trick, or felt) so as to conceal
his longevity from the withering human world.  But the possibility that
one day his double-dealing would be discovered by the Tabula Rasa, and
they would search through their library and find some vicious sway to
destroy him, never entirely left his calculations.  Especially now,
waiting for the call into their presence.

That call was an hour and a half in coming, during which time he
distracted himself thinking about the shows that were opening in the
coming week.  Theatre remained his great love, and there was scarcely a
production of any significance he failed to see.  on the following
Tuesday he had tickets for the much-acclaimed Lear at the National, and
then two days later a seat in the stalls for the revival of Turandot at
the Coliseum.  Much to look

forward to, once this wretched interview was over.

At last the lift hummed into life and one of the Society's younger
members, Giles Bloxham,

appeared.  At forty, Bloxham looked twice that age.  It took a kind of
genius, Godolphin had

once remarked when talking about Bloxham (he liked to report on the
absurdities of the

Society, particularly when he was in his cups) to look so dissipated and
have nothing to regret

for it.

"We're ready for you, now," Bloxham said, indicating that Dowd should
join him in the lift.

"You realize," he said as they ascended, 'that if you're ever tempted to
breathe a word of what

you see here the Society will eradicate you so quickly and so thoroughly
your mother won't

even know you existed?"

This over-heated threat sounded ludicrous delivered in Bloxham's nasal
whine, but Dowd

played the chastened functionary.

"I perfectly understand," he said.

"It's an extraordinary step," Bloxham continued, 'calling anyone who
isn't a member to a

meeting.  But these are extraordinary times.  Not that it's any of your
business."

"Quite so," Dowd said, all innocence.

Tonight he'd take their condescension without argument, he thought, more
confident by the

day that something was coming that would rock this Tower to its
foundations.

When it did,

he'd have his revenge.

The lift door opened, and Bloxham ordered Dowd to follow him.  The
passages that led to the main suite were stark and uncarpeted, the room
he was led into the said rie.

The drapes were drawn over all the windows, the enormous marble-topped
table that dominated

the room lit

by overhead lamps, the wash of their light thrown up on f

the six members, two of them women, sitting around it.  To judge by the
clutter of bottles,

glasses, and over-filled ashtrays, and the brooding, weary faces, they
had been debating for

many hours.  Bloxham poured himself a glass of water, and took his
place.  There was one

empty seat:

Godolphin's.  Dowd was not invited to occupy it, but stood at the end of
the table, mildly discomfited by the stares of his interrogators.  There
was not one face amongst them that would have been known by the populace
at large.  Though all of them had descended from families of wealth and
influence, these were not public powers.

The society forbade any member to hold office or take as a spouse an
individual who might invite or arouse the curiosity of the press.  it
worked in mystery, for the demise of mystery.  Perhaps it was that
paradox - more than any other aspect of its nature - which would finally
undo it.

At the other end of the table from Dowd, sitting in front of a heap of
newspapers doubtless carrying the Burke reports, sat a professorial man
in his sixties, white hair oiled to his scalp.  Dowd knew his name from
Godolphin's description: Hubert Shales; dubbed the Sloth by Oscar.  He
moved and spoke with the caution of a glass boned theologian.

"You know why you're here?" he said.

"He knows," Bloxham put in.

"Some problem with Mr Godolphin?" Dowd ventured.

He's not here," said one of the women to Dowd's right, her face
emaciated beneath a confection of dyed black hair.  Alice Tyrwhitt, Dowd
guessed.. "That's the problem.. "So I see," Dowd said.

"Where the hell is he?" Bloxham demanded.

"He's travelling," Dowd replied.. "I don't think he anticipated a
meeting."

"Neither did we," said Lionel Wakeman, flushed with the Scotch he'd
imbibed, the bottle lying in the crook of his arm.

"Where's he travelling?" Tyrwhitt asked.. "It's imperative we find him."

"I'm afraid I don't know," Dowd said.. "His business takes him all over
the world."

"Anything respectable?" Wakeman slurred.

"He's got a number of investments in Singapore," Dowd

replied.. "And in India.  Would you like me to prepare a dossier?  I'm
sure he'd be

"Bugger the dossier!" Bloxham said.. "We want him here!  Now!'

"I'm afraid I don't know his precise whereabouts.  Somewhere in the Far
East."

The severe but not un alluring woman to Wakeman's left now entered the
exchange, stabbing her cigarette in -4 the ashtray as she spoke.  This
could only be Charlotte Feaver; Charlotte the Scarlet, as Oscar called
her.

She was the last of the Roxborough line, he'd said, unless she found a
way to fertilize one of her girlfriends.

"This isn't some damn club he can visit when it fucking well suits him,"
she said.

"That's right," Wakeman put in.. "It's a damn poor show."

Shales picked up one of the newspapers in front of him and pitched it
down the table in Dowd's direction.

"I presume you've read about this body they found in Clerkenwell?" he
said.

"Yes.  I believe so."

Shales paused for several seconds, his sparrow eyes going from one
member to another.

Whatever he was about to say, its broaching had been debated before Dowd
entered.

"We have reason to believe that this man Chant did not originate in this
Dominion."

"I'm sorry?" Dowd said, feigning confusion.. "I don't follow. Dominion?"

Spare us your discretion," Charlotte Feaver said.. "You know what we're
talking about.

Oscar hasn't employed you for twenty-five years and kept his counsel."
"I know very little," Dowd protested.

"But enough to know there's an anniversary imminent," Shales said.

My, my, Dowd thought, they're not as stupid as they look.

"You mean the Reconciliation?" he said.

"That's exactly what I mean.  This coming midsummer

"Do we have to spell it out," Bloxham said.. "He already knows more than
he should."

Shales ignored the interruption, and was beginning again when a voice so
far unheard, emanating from a bulky figure sitting beyond the reach of
the light broke in.  Dowd had been waiting for this man, Matthias   Jk@
McGann, to say his piece.  if the Tabula Rasa had a leader, this was he.

"Hubert?" he said.. "May I?" Shales murmured. "Of course."

"Mr Dowd," said McGann. "I don't doubt that Oscar has been indiscreet.
We all have our weaknesses.  You must be his.  Nobody here blames you
for listening.  But this Society was created for a very specific
purpose, and on occasion has been obliged to act with extreme severity
in the pursuit of that purpose.  I won't go into details.  As Giles
says, you're already wiser than any of us would like.  But believe me,
we will silence any and all who put this Dominion at risk."

He leaned forward.  His face announced a man of good humour, presently
unhappy with his lot.

"Hubert mentioned that an anniversary is imminent.  So it is.  And
forces with an interest in subverting the sanity of this Dominion may be
readying themselves to celebrate that anniversary.  So far, this' - he
pointed to the newspaper -'is the only evidence we'd found of such
preparations, but if there are others they will be swiftly terminated by
this Society and its agents.  Do you understandT He didn't wait for an
answer.. "This sort of thing is very dangerous," he went on.. "People
start to investigate.

Academics.  Esoterics.  They start to question, and they start to
dream."

"I could see how that would be dangerous," Dowd said.

"Don't smarm, you smug little bastard," Bloxham burst out.. "We all know
what you and Godolphin have been doing.  Tell him, Hubert!'

"I've traced some artifacts of ...  non-terrestrial Origin ...  that
came my way.  The trail, as it were, leads back to Oscar Godolphin."

"We don't know that," Lionel put in.. "These buggers lie."

"I'm satisfied Godolphin's guilty," Alice Tyrwhitt said.. "And this one
with him.. "I protest," Dowd said.

"You've been dealing in magic," Bloxham hollered.

"Admit it!" He rose and slammed the table.. "Admit it!. "Sit down,
Giles," McGann said.

"Look at him," Bloxharn went on, jabbing his thumb in Dowd's direction.
"He's guilty as hell."

"I said sit down," McGann replied, raising his voice ever so slightly.
Cowed, Bloxham sat.

"You're not on trial here," McGann said to Dowd.. "It's Godolphin we
want.. "So find him," Feaver said.

"And when you do," Shales said, 'tell him I've got a few items he may
recognize."

The table fell silent.  Several heads turned in Matthias McGann's
direction. "I think that's it," he said.. "Unless you have any remarks
to make?. "I don't believe so," Dowd replied.

"Then you may go."

Dowd took his leave without further exchange, escorted as far as the
lift by Charlotte Feaver, and left to make the descent alone.  They were
better informed than he'd imagined, but they were some way from guessing
the truth.  He turned over passages of the interview as he drove back to
Regent's Park Road, committing them to memory for later recitation.

Wakeman's drunken irrelevancies; Shales's indiscretion; McGann, smooth
as a velvet scabbard.  He'd repeat it all for Godolphin's edification,
especially the cross-questioning about the absentee's whereabouts.

Somewhere in the East, Dowd had said.  East Yzordderrex maybe, in the
Kesparates built close to the harbour where Oscar liked to bargain for
contraband brought back

from Hakaridek or the islands.  Whether he was there or some other place
Dowd had no way of fetching him back.  He would come when he would come,
and the Tabula Rasa would have to bide its time, though the longer he
was away the more the likelihood grew of one of their number voicing the
suspicion some of them surely nurtured: that Godolphin's dealings in
talismans and wantons were only the tip of the iceberg.  Perhaps they
even suspected he took trips.

He wasn't the only Fifther who'd jaunted between Dominions, of course.
There were many routes from Earth to the Reconciled Dominions, some
safer than others, but all used at one time or another, and not always
by magicians.  Poets had found their way over (and sometimes back, to
tell the tale); so had a good number of priests over the centuries, and
hermits, meditating on their essence so hard the in Ovo enveloped them
and spat them into another world.  Any soul despairing or inspired
enough could get access.  But few in Dowd's experience had made such a
commonplace of it as Godolphin.

These were dangerous times for such jaunts, both here and there.  The
Reconciled Dominions had been under the control of Yzordderrex's Autarch
for over a century, and every time Godolphin returned from a trip he had
new signs of unrest to report.  From the margins of the First Dominion
to Patashoqua and its satellite cities in the Fourth, voices were raised
to stir rebellion.  There was as yet no consensus on how best to
overcome the Autarch's tyranny.

Only a simmering unrest which regularly erupted in riots or strikes, the
leaders of such mutinies invariably found and executed.  in fact on
occasion the Autarch's suppressions had been more draconian still.
Entire communities had been destroyed in the name of the Yzordderrexian
Engine.  Tribes and small nations deprived of their gods, their lands
and their right to procreate, others simply eradicated by pogroms the
Autarch personally supervised.  But none of these horrors had

dissuaded Godolphin from travelling in the Reconciled Dominions. Perhaps
tonight's events would, however, at least until the Society's suspicions
had been allayed.

Tiresome as it was, Dowd knew he had no choice as to where he went
tonight: to the Godolphin Estate and the folly in its deserted grounds
which was Oscar's departure place.  There he would wait, like a dog
grown lonely at its master's absence, until Godolphin's return.  Oscar
was not the only one who would have to muster some excuses in the near
future: so would he.  Killing Chant had seemed like a wise manoeuvre at
the time - and, of course, an agreeable diversion on a night without a
show to go to - but Dowd hadn't predicted the furore it would cause.
With hindsight, that had been naive.  England loved murder, preferably
with diagrams.  And he'd been unlucky, what with the ubiquitous Mr Burke
of the Somme and a low quota of political scandals conspiring to make
Chant posthumously famous.  He would have to be prepared for Godolphin's
wrath.  But hopefully it would be subsumed in the larger anxiety of the
Society's suspicions.

Godolphin would need Dowd to help him calm these suspicions, and a man
who needed his dog knew not to kick it too hard.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Gentle called Klein from the airport, minutes before he caught his
flight.  He presented Chester with a severely edited version of the
truth, making no mention of Estabrook's murder plot, but explaining that
Jude was ill and had requested his presence.  Klein didn't deliver the
tirade that Gentle had anticipated.  He simply observed, rather wearily,
that if Gentle's word was worth so little after all the effort he,
Klein, had put into finding work for him, then it was perhaps best that
they end their business relationship now.  Gentle begged him to be a
little more lenient, to which Klein said he'd call Gentle's studio in
two days' time, and if he received no answer would assume their deal was
no longer valid.

"Your dick'll be the death of you," he commented as he signed off.

The flight gave Gentle time to think about both that remark and the
conversation on Kite Hill, the memory of which still vexed him.  During
the exchange itself he'd moved from suspicion to disbelief to disgust
and finally to acceptance of Estabrook's proposal.  But despite the fact
that the man had been as good as his word, providing ample funds for the
trip, the more Gentle returned to the conversation in memory, the more
that first response suspicion - was re awoken  His doubts circled around
two elements of Estabrook's story: the assassin himself (this Mr Pie,
hired out of nowhere) and more particularly, around the man who'd
introduced Estabrook to his hired hand: Chant, whose death had been
media fodder for the past several days.

The dead man's letter was virtually incomprehensible, 73 as Estabrook
had warned, veering from pulpit rhetoric to opiate invention.  The fact
that Chant, knowing he was going to be murdered (that much was cogent),
should have chosen to set these non senses down as vital information was
proof of significant derangement.  How much more deranged then was a man
like Estabrook, who did business with this crazy?  And by the same token
was Gentle not crazier still, employed by the lunatic's employer?

Amid all these fantasies and equivocations, however, there were two
irreducible facts: death and Judith.  The former had come to Chant in a
derelict house in Clerkenwell; about that there was no ambiguity.

The latter, innocent of her husband's malice, was probably its next
target.  His task was simple.  To come between the two.

He checked into his hotel at 52nd and Madison a little after five in the
afternoon New York time.  From his window on the fourteenth floor he had
a view downtown, but the scene was far from welcoming.  A gruel of rain,
threatening to thicken into snow, had begun to fall as he journeyed in
from Kennedy, and the weather reports promised cold and more cold.  It
suited him, however.  The grey darkness, together with the horn and
brake squeals rising from the intersection below, fitted his mood of
dislocation.  As with London, New York was a city in which he'd had
friends once, but lost them.  The only face he would seek out here was
Judith's

There was no purpose in delaying that search.  He ordered coffee from
Room Service, showered, drank, dressed in his thickest sweater, leather
jacket, corduroys and heavy boots, and headed out.  Cabs were hard to
come by, and after ten minutes of waiting in line beneath the hotel
canopy he decided to walk uptown a few blocks and catch a passing cab if
he got lucky.  If not, the cold would clear his head.  By the time he'd
reached 70th Street the sleet had become a drizzle, and there was a
spring in his step.  Ten blocks from here Judith was about

some early evening occupation: bathing perhaps, or dressing for an
evening on the town.  Ten blocks, at a minute a block.

Ten minutes until he was standing outside the place where she was.

Marlin had been as solicitous as an erring husband since the attack,
calling her from his office every hour or so, and several times
suggesting that she might want to talk with an analyst, or at very least
with one of his many friends who'd been assaulted or mugged on the
streets of Manhattan.  She declined the offer.  Physically she was quite
well.  Psychologically too.  Though she'd heard that victims of attack
often suffered from delayed repercussions depression and sleeplessness
amongst them neither had struck her yet.  It was the mystery of what had
happened that kept her awake at night.  Who was he, this man who knew
her name, who got up from a collision that should have killed him
outright, and still managed to outrun a healthy man?  And why had she
projected upon his face the likeness of John Zacharias?  Twice she'd
begun to tell Marlin about the meeting in and outside Bloomingdales;
twice she'd re-channelled the conversation at the last moment, unable to
face his benign condescension.  This enigma was hers to unravel, and
sharing it too soon, perhaps at all, might make the solving impossible.

In the meantime, Marlin's apartment felt very secure.  There were two
doormen: Sergio by day and Freddy by night.

Marlin had given them both a detailed description of the assailant, and
instructions to let nobody up to the second floor without his Odell's
permission, and even then they were to accompany the visitor to the
apartment door, and escort them out if his guest chose not to see them.
Nothing could harm her as long as she stayed behind closed doors.
Tonight, with Marlin working until

nine and a late dinner planned, she'd decided to spend the early evening
assigning and wrapping the presents she'd accumulated on her various
Fifth Avenue sorties,

Is

sweetening her labours with wine and music.  Marlin record collection
was chiefly seduction songs of his sixties adolescence, which suited her
fine.  She played smoochy soul and sipped well-chilled Sauvignon as she
pottered, more than content with her own company.  Once in a while she'd
get up from the chaos of ribbons and tissue, and go to the window to
watch the cold.  The glass was misting.  She didn't clear it.  Let the
world lose focus.  She had no taste for it tonight.

There was a woman standing at one of the second-storey windows when
Gentle reached the intersection, just gazing out at the street.  He
watched her for several seconds before the casual motion of a hand
raised to the back of her neck and run up through her long hair
identified the silhouette as Judith.  She made no backward glance to
signify the presence of anyone else in the room.  She simply sipped from
her glass and stroked her scalp and watched the murky night.  He had
thought it would be easy to approach her, but now, watching her remotely
like this, he knew otherwise.

The first time he'd seen her - all those years ago - he'd felt something
close to panic.  His whole system had been stirred to nausea as he
relinquished power to the sight of her.  The seduction that had followed
had been both a homage and a revenge; an attempt to control someone who
exercised an authority over him that defied analysis.  To this day he
didn't understand that authority.  She was certainly a bewitching woman,
but then he'd known others every bit as bewitching, and not been
panicked by them.  What was it about Judith that threw him into such
confusion now, as then?  He watched her until she left the window, then
he watched the window where she'd been, but he wearied of that finally,
and of the chill in his feet.  He needed fortification: against the
cold, against

the woman.  He left the corner and trekked a few blocks east until he
found a bar, where he put two bourbons down his throat, and wished to
his core that alcohol and not the opposite sex had been his addiction.

At the sound of the stranger's voice Freddy, the night doorman, rose
muttering from his seat in the nook beside e elevator.

There was a shadowy figure visible through th the ironwork filigree and
bullet-proof glass of the front door.  He couldn't quite make out the
face, but he was certain he didn't know the caller, which was unusual.
He'd worked in the building for five years, and knew the names of most
of the occupants' visitors.  Grumbling, he crossed the mirrored lobby,
sucking in his paunch as he caught sight of himself.  Then, with chilled
fingers, he unlocked the door.  As he opened it he realized his mistake.
Though a gust of icy wind made his eyes water, blurring the caller's
features, he knew them well enough.  How could he not recognize his own
brother?  He'd been about to call him and find out what was going on in
Brooklyn when he'd heard the voice and the rapping on the door.

What are you doing here, Fly?"

Fly smiled his missing-toothed smile.. "Thought I'd just drop in," he
said.

"You got some problem?"

"No, everything's fine," Fly said.  Despite all the evidence of his
senses, Freddy was uneasy.

The shadow on the step, the wind in his eye, the very fact that Fly was
here when he never came into the city on weekdays: it all added up to
something he couldn't quite catch hold of.

"What you want?" he said.. "You shouldn't be here.. "Here I am, anyway,"
Fly said, stepping past Freddy into the foyer.. "I thought you'd be
pleased to see me."

Freddy let the door swing closed, still wrestling with his thoughts. But
they went from him the way they did in dreams.

He couldn't string Fly's presence and his doubts

together long enough to know what one had to do with the other.

"I think I'll take a look around, "Fly was saying, heading towards the
elevator.. "Wait up! You can't do that.. "What am I going to do?  Set
fire to the place?. "I said nol' Freddy replied, and blurred vision
notwithstanding, went after Fly, overtaking him to stand between his
brother and the elevator.  His motion dashed the tears from his eyes,
and as he came to a halt he saw the visitor plainly.

"You're not Fly!" he said.

He backed away towards the nook beside the elevator, where he kept his
gun, but the stranger was too quick.  He reached for Freddy, and with
what seemed no more than a flick of his wrist pitched him across the
foyer.  Freddy let out a yell, but who was going to come and help? There
was nobody to guard the guard.  He was a dead man.

Across the street, sheltering as best he could from the blasts of wind
down Park Avenue, Gentle - who'd returned to his station barely a minute
before - caught sight of the doorman scrabbling on the foyer floor.

He crossed the street, dodging the traffic, reaching the door in time to
see a second figure stepping into the elevator.  He slammed his fist on
the door, yelling to stir the doorman from his stupor.

"Let me in!  For God's sake!  Let me in!" 

Two floors above, Jude heard what she took to be a domestic argument,
and not wanting somebody else's marital strife to sour her fine mood,
was crossing to turn up the soul song on the turntable when somebody   J
knocked on the door.

"Who's there?" she said.

The summons came again, not accompanied by any reply.  She turned the
volume down instead of up and went to the door, which she'd dutifully
bolted and chained.  But the wine in her system made her incautious; she
fumbled with the chain, and was in the act of opening

the door when doubt entered her head.  Too late.  The man on the other
side took instant advantage.  The door was slammed wide, and he came at
her with the speed of the vehicle that should have killed him two nights
before.  There were only phantom traces of the lacerations that had made
his face scarlet; and no hint in his motion of any bodily harm.  He had
healed miraculously.  only the expression bore an echo of that night. It
was as pained and as lost - even now, as he came to kill her - as it had
been when they'd faced each other in the street.  hands reached for her,
silencing her scream behind his palm.

"Please," he said.

If he was asking her to die quickly, he was out of luck.  She raised her
glass to break it against his face but he intercepted her, snatching it
from her hand.

"Judith!" he said.

She stopped struggling at the sound of her name, and his hand dropped
from her face.

"How the fuck do you know who I am?"

"I don't want to hurt you," he said.  His voice was downy; his breath
orange-scented.  The perverse st desire came into her head, and she cast
it out instantly.  This man had tried to kill her, and this talk now was
just an attempt to quiet her till he tried again.

"Get away from me.. "I have to tell you

He didn't step away, nor did he finish.  She glimpsed a movement behind
him, and he saw her look, turning his head in time to meet a blow.  He
stumbled but didn't fall, turning his motion to attack with balletic
ease, and coming back at the other man with tremendous force.  It wasn't
Freddy, she saw.  It was Gentle, of all people.

The assassin's blow threw him back against the wall, hitting it so hard
he brought books tumbling from the shelves, but before the assassin's
fingers found his throat he delivered a punch to the man's belly that
must have touched some tender place, because the assault ceased,

and the attacker let him go, his eyes fixed for the first time on
Gentle's face.

The expression of pain in his face became something else entirely: in
some part horror, in some part awe, but in the greatest part some
sentiment for which she knew no word.  Gasping for breath, Gentle
registered little or none of this, but pushed himself up from the wall
to re-launch his attack.  The assassin was quick, however.

He was at the door and out through it before Gentle could lay hands on
him.  Gentle took a moment to ask if Judith was all right - which she
was - then raced in pursuit.

The snow had come again, its veil dropping between Gentle and Pie.  The
assassin was fast, despite the hurt done him, but Gentle was determined
not to let the bastard slip.  He chased Pie over Park Avenue, and West
on 80th, his heels sliding on the sleet-slickened ground.  Twice his
quarry threw him backward glances, and on the second occasion seemed to
slow his pace, as if he might stop and attempt a truce, but then thought
better of it and put on an extra turn of speed.  It carried him over
Madison towards Central Park.  If he reached its sanctuary, Gentle knew,
he'd be gone.

Throwing every last ounce of energy into the pursuit, he came within
snatching distance.  But even as he reached for the man he lost his
footing.  He fell headlong, his arms flailing, and -1 struck the street
hard enough to lose consciousness for a few seconds.  When he opened his
eyes, the taste of blood sharp in his mouth, he expected to see the
assassin disappearing into the shadows of the park, but the bizarre Mr
Pie was standing at the kerb looking back at him.  He continued to watch
as Gentle got up, his face betraying a mournful empathy with Gentle's
bruising.  Before the chase could begin again he spoke, his voice as
soft and melting as the sleet.

"Don't follow me," he said.

"You leave her ...  the fuck ...  alone," Gentle gasped,

knowing even as he spoke he had no way of enforcing this edict in his
present state.

But the man's reply was affirmation.

"I will," he said.. "But please ...  I beg you ...  forget you ever set
eyes on me."

As he spoke he began to take a backward step, and for an instant
Gentle's dizzied brain almost thought it possible the man would retreat
into nothingness; be proved spirit rather than substance.

"Who are you?" he found himself asking..

"Pie'oh'pah," the man returned, his voice perfectly matched to the soft
expellat ions of those syllables.

"But who?"

"Nobody and nothing," came the second reply, accompanied by a backward
step.

He took another and another, each pace putting further layers of sleet
between them.

Gentle began to follow, but the fall had left him aching in every joint,
and he knew the chase was lost before he'd hobbled three yards.  He
pushed himself on, however, reaching one side of Fifth Avenue as
Pie'oh'pah made the other.  The street between them was empty, but the
assassin spoke across it as if across a raging river.

"Go back," he said, or if you come, be prepared.  .

Absurd as it was, Gentle answered as if there were white waters between
them:

"Prepared for what?"  he shouted.

The man shook his head, and even across the street, with the sleet
between them, Gentle could see how much despair and confusion there was
on his face.  He wasn't certain why the expression made his stomach
churn, but churn it did.  He started to cross the street, plunging a
foot into the imaginary flood.  The expression on the assassin's face
changed: despair gave way to disbelief, and disbelief to a kind of
terror, as though this fording was unthinkable, unbearable.  With Gentle
halfway across the street the man's courage broke.  The shaking of the
head became a violent fit of denial, and he let out a strange sob,

ing back his head as he did so.  Then he retreated, as he had before,
stepping away from the object of his terror Gentle as though expecting
to forfeit his visibility.  If there was such magic in the world - and
tonight Gentle could believe it - the assassin was not an adept.  But
his feet could do what magic could not.  As Gentle reached the river's
other bank Pie'oh'pah turned and fled, throwing himself over the wall
into the park without seeming to care what lay on the other side:
anything to be out of Gentle's sight.

There was no purpose in following any further.  The cold was already
making Gentle's bruised bones ache fiercely, and in such a condition the
two blocks back to Jude's apartment would be a long and painful trek.

By the time he made it the sleet had soaked through every layer of his
clothing.  With his teeth chattering, his mouth bleeding and his hair
flattened to his skull he could not have looked less appealing as he
presented himself at the front door.

Jude was waiting in the lobby with the shame-faced doorman.  She came to
Gentle's aid as soon as he appeared, the exchange between them short and
functional: was he badly hurt?  No.  Did the man get Op"A   away?  Yes.

"Come upstairs," she said.. "You need some medical attention."

There had been too much drama in Jude and Gentle's reunion already
tonight for them to add more to it, so there was no gushing forth of
sentiment on either side.  Jude attended to Gentle with her usual
pragmatism.  He declined a shower, but bathed his face and wounded
extremities, delicately sluicing the grit from the palms of his hands.
Then he changed into a selection of dry clothes she'd found in Marlin's
wardrobe, though Gentle was both taller and leaner than the absent
lender.

As he did

so Jude asked him if he wanted to have a doctor examine him.  He thanked
her but said no, he'd be fine.  And so he was, once dry and clean;
aching, but fine.

"Did you call the police?" he asked, as he stood at the kitchen door
watching her brew Darjeeling.

"It's not worth it," she said.. "They already know about this guy from
the last time.  Maybe I'll get Martin to call them later."

"This is his second try?" She nodded.. "Well, if it's any comfort, I
don't think he'll try again.. "What makes you say that?"

"Because he looked about ready to throw himself under a car."

"don't think that'd do him much harm," she said, and went on to tell him
about the incident in the Village, finishing up with the assassin's
miraculous recovery.

"He should be dead," she said.. "His face was smashed up ...  it was a
wonder he could even stand.  Do you want sugar or milk?. "Maybe a dash
of Scotch.  Does Marlin drink?. "He's not a connoisseur like you."

Gentle laughed.  'is that how you describe me?  The alcoholic Gentle?"

"No.  To tell you the truth, I don't really describe you at all," she
said, slightly abashed.. "I mean, I'm sure I've mentioned you to Marlin
in passing, but you're.  .  I don't know ...  you're a guilty secret."
This echo of Kite Hill brought his hirer to mind.

"Have you spoken to Estabrook?" he said.

"Why should I do that?. "He's been trying to contact you.. "I don't want
to talk to him." She put his tea down on the table in the lounge, sought
out the Scotch and set it beside the cup.. "Help yourself," she said.

"You're not having a dream. Tea, but no whisky.  My brain's crazed
enough as it is., She crossed back to the window, taking her tea.
"There's

so much I don't understand about all of this," she said.

"To start with: why are you here?"

"I hate to sound melodramatic, but I really think you should sit down
before we have this discussion."

"Just tell me what's going on," she said, her voice tainted with
accusation.. "How long have you been watching me?. "Just a few hours."

"I thought I saw you following me a couple of days ago.. "Not me.  I was
in London until this morning." She looked puzzled at this.. "So what do
you know about this man who's trying to kill me?. "He said his name was
Pie'oh'pah."

"I don't give a fuck what his name is," she said, her show of detachment
finally dropping away.. "Who is he?  Why does he want to hurt me?"
"Because he was hired.. "He was what?. "He was hired.  By Estabrook."

Tea slopped from her cup as a shudder passed through her.

"To kill me?" she said.. "He hired someone to kill me?  I don't believe
you.  That's crazy."

"He's obsessed with you, Jude.  It's his way of making sure you don't
belong to anybody else."

She drew the cup up to her face, both hands clutched around it, the
knuckles so white it was a wonder the china didn't crack like an egg.
She sipped, her face obscured.  Then, the same denial, but more flatly:
"I don't believe you."

"He's been trying to speak to you to warn you.  He hired this man, then
changed his mind."

do you know all of this?" Again, the accu

"How       sat ion

"He sent me to stop it."

"Hired you too?"

It wasn't pleasant to hear it from her lips, but yes, he said, he was
just another hireling.  It was as though

Estabrook had set two dogs on Judith's heels - one b wringing death, the
other life - and let fate decide which caught up with her first.

"Maybe I will have some booze," she said, and crossed to the table to
pick up the bottle.

He stood to pour for her but his motion was enough to stop her in her
tracks, and he realized she was afraid of him.

He handed her the bottle at arm's length.  She didn't take it.

"I think maybe you should go," she said.. "Marlin'll be home soon.  I
don't want you here.  .

He understood her nervousness, but felt ill treated by this change of
tone.  As he'd hobbled back through the sleet a tiny part of him had
hoped her gratitude would include an embrace, or at least a few words
that would let him know she felt something for him.  But he was tarred
with Estabrook's guilt.  He wasn't her champion, he was her enemy's
agent.

"If that's what you want," he said.

"It's what I want."

"Just one request?  If you tell the police about Estabrook, will you
keep me out of it?"

"Why?  Are you back at the old business with Klein?. "Let's not get into
why.  Just pretend you never saw me." She shrugged.. "I suppose I can do
that.. "Thank you," he said.. "Where did you put my clothes?,

"They won't be dry.  Why don't you just keep the stuff you're wearing?"

"Better not," he said, unable to resist a tiny jab.. "You never know
what Martin might think."

She didn't rise to the remark, but let him go and change.  The clothes
had been left on the heated towel rack in the bathroom, which had taken
some of the chill off them, but insinuating himself into their dampness
was almost enough to make him retract his jibe, and wear the absent
lover's clothes.  Almost, but not quite.

Changed, he returned into the lounge to find her standing at the

window again, as if watching for the assassin's return.

"What did you say his name was?" she said.

"Something like Pie'oh'pah.. "What language is that?  Arabic?. "I don't
know."

"Well, did you tell him Estabrook had changed his mind?  Did you tell
him to leave me alone?. "I didn't get a chance," he said, rather lamely.
"So he could still come back and try again?. "Like I said, I don't think
he will."

"He's tried twice.  Maybe he's out there thinking: third time lucky.
There's something ...

unnatural about him, Gentle.

How the hell could he heal so fast?"

"Maybe he wasn't as badly hurt as he looked." She didn't seem convinced.
"A name like that he shouldn't be difficult to trace."

"I don't know, I think men like him ...  they're almost invisible."

"Marlin'll know what to do."

"Good for Marlin."

She drew a deep breath.. "I should thank you though," she said, her tone
as far from gratitude as it was possible to get.

"Don't bother," he replied.. "I'm just a hired hand.  I was only doing
it for the money."

From the shadows of a doorway on 79th Street, Pie'oh'pah watched John
Furie Zacharias emerge from the apartment building, pull the collar of
his jacket up around his bare nape, and scan the street north and south,
looking for a cab.

it was many years since the assassin's eyes had taken the pleasure they
did now, seeing him.  In the time between the world had changed in so
many ways.  But this man looked unchanged.  He was a constant, freed
from alteration by his own forgetfulness;

always new to himself, and therefore ageless.  Pie envied him.  For
Gentle time was a vapour, dissolving hurt and self knowledge  For Pie it
was a sack into which each day, each hour, dropped another stone,
bending the spine until it creaked.

Nor, until tonight, had he dared entertain any hope of release.  But
here, walking away down Park Avenue, was a man in whose power it lay to
make whole all broken things; even Pie's wounded spirit.  Indeed,
especially that.  Whether it was chance or the covert workings of the
Unbeheld that had brought them together this way, there was surely
significance in their reunion.

Minutes before, terrified by the scale of what was unfolding, Pie had
attempted to drive Gentle away, and having failed, had fled.  Now such
fear seemed stupid.  What was there to be afraid of?  Change?  That
would be welcome.  Revelation?

The same.  Death?  What did an assassin care for death?  If it came, it
came; it was no reason to turn from opportunity.  He shuddered.  it was
cold here in the doorway; cold in the century too.  Especially for a
soul like his, that loved the melting season, when the rise of sap and
sun made all things seem possible.  Until now, he'd given up hope that
such a burgeoning time would ever come again.  He'd been obliged to
commit too many crimes in this joyless world.  He'd broken too many
hearts.  So had they both, most likely.  But what if they were obliged
to seek that elusive spring for the good of those they'd orphaned and
anguished?  What if it was their duty to hope?  Then his denying of
their near-reunion, his fleeing from it, was just another crime to be
laid at his feet.  Had these lonely years made him a coward?  Never.

Clearing his tears, he left the doorstep, and pursued the disappearing
figure, daring to believe as he went that there might yet be another
spring, and a summer of reconciliation to follow.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When he got back to the hotel Gentle's first instinct was to call Jude.
She'd made her feelings towards him abundantly clear, of course, and
common sense decreed that he leave this little drama to fizzle out, but
he'd glimpsed too many enigmas tonight to be able to shrug off his
unease and walk away.  Though the streets of this city were solid, their
buildings numbered and named; though the avenues were bright enough,
even at night, to banish

aid ambiguity, he still felt as though he was on the margins of some
unknown land, and in danger of crossing into it without realizing he was
even doing so.  And if he went, might Jude not also follow?  Determined
though she was to divide her life from his, the obscure suspicion
remained in him that their fates were interwoven.

He had no logical explanation for this.  The feeling was a mystery, and
mysteries weren't his speciality.  They were the stuff of after-dinner
conversation when, mellowed by brandy and candlelight, people confessed
to fascinations they wouldn't have broached an hour earlier.  Under such
influence he'd heard rationalists confess.  their devotion to tabloid
astrologies; heard rtheists lay claim to heavenly visitations; heard
tales of psychic siblings, and prophetic deathbed pronouncements.

They'd all been amusing enough, in their way.  But this was something
different.  This was happening to him, and it made him afraid.

He finally gave in to his unease.  He located Marlin's number, and
called the apartment.

The lover-boy picked up.  He sounded agitated, and became more so when
Gentle identified himself.

"I don't know what your Goddamn game is -'he said.

"It's no game," Gentle told him.

"You just keep away from this apart men "I've no intention -'- because
if I see your face, I swea. "Can I speak to Jude?" '-Judith's not-. "I'm
on the other line," Jude said.

"Judith, put down the phone! You don't want to t talking with this
scum.. "Calm down, Marlin.. "You heard her, Mervin.  Calm down." Martin
slammed down the receiver.

"Suspicious, is he?" Gentle said.

"He thinks this is all your doing. "So you told him about Estabrook?"
"No, not yet."

"You're just going to blame the hired hand, is that it?. "Look, I'm
sorry about some of the things I said.  I wasn't thinking straight.  If
it hadn't been for you maybe I'd be dead by now.,

"No maybe about it," Gentle said.. "Our friend Pie meant business."

"He meant something," she replied, 'but I'm not sure it was murder."

"He was trying to smother you, Jude:

"Was he?  Or was he just trying to hush me?  He had such a strange look
.  .  ."

"I think we should talk about this, face to face," Gentle said.. "Why
don't you slip away from lover-boy for a late night drink?  I can pick
you up right outside your building.  You'll be quite safe."

"I don't think that's such a good idea.  I've got packing to do.  I've
decided to go back to London tomorrow.. "Was that planned?. "No.  I'd
just feel more secure if I was at home.. "Is Mervin going with you?"
"It's Marlin.  And no he isn't."

"More fool him.. "Look, I'd better go.  Thanks for thinking of me."

"It's no hardship," he said.  And if you get lonely", between now and
tomorrow morning.... "I won't."       "You never know.  I'm at the
Omni.  Room 103.

There's I

a double bed."

"You'll have plenty of room then."

ng of you," he said.  He paused, then added:

"I'll be think. "I'm glad I saw you."

A

"I'm glad you're glad."

"Does that mean you're not?"

e got packing to do.  Goodnight, Gentle.. "It means I'v

"Goodnight.. "Have fun."

He did what little packing of his own he had to do, then ordered up a
small supper: a club sandwich, ice-cream, bourbon and coffee.  The
warmth of the room after the icy street and its exertions made him feel
sluggish.  He undressed, and ate his supper naked in front of the
television, picking the crumbs from his pubic hair like lice.  By the
time he got to the ice-cream he was too weary to eat, so he downed the
bourbon - which instantly took its toll - and retired to bed, leaving
the tele vis next room, its sound turned down to a sol His body and his
mind were about their nesses.  The former, freed from consciou breathed,
rolled, sweated and digested.  dreaming.  First, of Manhattan served
on a r in perfect detail.

Then of a waiter, speaking asking if sir wanted night; and of night c,
form of a blueberry syrup, poured from h plate, and falling in viscous
folds upon t streets and, towers.  Then, Gentle walking in those
streets, between those towers, hand in hand with a shadow, the company
of which he was happy to keep, and which turned wheal they reached an
intersection, and laid its feather finger

upon the middle of his brow, as though Ash Wednesday was dawning.

He liked the touch, and opened his mouth to lightly lick the ball of the
shadow's hand.  It stroked the place again.  He shuddered with pleasure,
wishing he could see into the darkness of this other, and know its face.
In straining to see, he opened his eyes, body and mind converging once
again.  He was back in his hotel room, the only light the flicker of the
television, reflected in the gloss of a half-open door.  Though he was
awake the sensation continued, and to it was added sound: a milky sigh
that excited him.  There was a woman in the room.

"Jude?" he said.

She pressed her cool palm against his open mouth, hushing his enquiry
even as she answered it.  He couldn't distinguish her from the darkness,
but any lingering doubt that she might belong to the dream from which
he'd risen was dispatched as her hand went from his mouth to his bare
chest.  He reached up in the darkness to take hold of her face and bring
it down to his mouth, glad that the murk concealed the satisfaction he
wore.  She'd come to him.

After all the signals of rejection she'd sent out at the apartment -
despite Marlin, despite the dangerous streets, despite the hour, despite
their bitter history she'd come, bearing the gift of her body to his
bed.

Though he couldn't see her, the darkness was a black canvas, and he
painted her there to perfection, her beauty gazing down on him.  His
hands found her flawless cheeks.  They were cooler than her hands, which
were on his belly now, pressing harder as she hoisted herself over him.
There was everywhere in their exchange an exquisite synchronicity.  He
thought of her tongue, and tasted it; he imagined her breasts, and she
took his hands to them; he wished she would speak, and she spoke (oh,
how she spoke), words he hadn't dared admit he'd wanted to hear.

"I had to do this .  .  she said.

"I know.  I know.. "Forgive me.  .  .. "What's to forgive?. "I can't be
without you, Gentle.  We belong to each other, like man and wife."

With her here, so close after such an absence, the idea of marriage
didn't seem so preposterous.  Why not claim her now, and forever?

"You want to marry me?" he murmured.

"Ask me again another night," she replied.

"I'm asking you now."

She put her hand back upon that anointing place in the middle of his
brow.. "Hush," she said.. "What you want now you might not want tomorrow

t

He opened his mouth to disagree, but the thought lost its way between
his brain and his tongue, distracted by the small circular motions she
was making on his forehead.  A calm emanated from the place, moving down
through his torso and out to his fingertips.  With it, the pain of his
bruising faded.  He raised his hands above his head, stretching to let
bliss run through him freely.  Released from aches he'd become
accustomed to, his body felt new-minted; gleaming invisibly.

"I want to be inside you," he said.

"How far?"

"All the way."

He tried to divide the darkness and catch some glimpse of her response,
but his sight was a poor explorer and returned from the unknown without
news.  only a flicker from the television, reflected in the gloss of his
eye and thrown up against the blank darkness, lent him the illusion of a
lustre passing through her body, op aline  He started to sit up, seeking
her face, but she was already moving down the bed, and moments later he
felt her lips on his stomach, and then upon the head of his cock, which
she took into her mouth by degrees, her tongue playing on it as she
went, until he thought he would lose control.  He warned her with a
murmur, was released and a breath later swallowed again.

The absence of sight lent potency to her touch.  He felt every motion of
tongue and tooth in play upon him, his prick particularized by her
appetite, becoming vast in his mind's eye until it was his body's size:
a veiny torso and a blind head lying on the bed of his belly wet from
end to end, straining and shuddering, while she, the darkness, swallowed
him utterly.

He was only sensation now, and she its supplier, his body enslaved by
bliss, unable to remember its making or conceive of its undoing.  God,
but she knew how he liked to be pleasured, taking care not to stale his
nerves with repetition, but cajoling his juice into cells already
brimming, until he was ready to come in blood, and be murdered by her
work, willingly.

Another skitter of light behind his eye broke the hold of sensation, and
he was once again entire - his prick its modest length - and she not
darkness but a body through which waves of iridescence seemed to pass.
Only seemed, he knew.  This was his sight-starved eyes' invention.  Yet
it came again, a sinuous light sleeking her, then going out.  Invention
or not it made him want her more completely, and he put his arms beneath
her shoulders, lifting her up and off him.  She rolled over to his side,
and he reached across to undress her.  Now that she was lying against
white sheets her form was visible, albeit vaguely.  She moved beneath
his hand, raising her body to his touch.

Inside you .  .  ." he said, rummaging through the damp folds of her
clothes.

Her presence beside him had stilled; her breathing lost its
irregularity.  He bared her breasts; put his tongue to them as his hands
went down to the belt of her skirt, to find that she'd changed for the
trip, and was wearing jeans.

Her hands were on the belt, almost as if to deny him.  But he wouldn't
be delayed or denied.  He pulled the jeans down around her hips, feeling
skin so smooth

beneath his hands it was almost fluid; her whole body a slow curve, like
a wave about to break over him.

For the first time since she'd appeared she said his name, tentatively,
as though in this darkness she'd suddenly doubted he was real.

"I'm here," he replied.. "Always.. "This is what you want?" she said.

'of course it is.  of course," he replied, and put his hand on her sex.

This tim e the iridescence, when it came, was almost bright, and fixed
in his head the magic of her crotch, his ding over and between her
labia.  As the light fingers went, leaving its afterglow on his blind
eyes, he was vaguely distracted by a ringing sound, far off at first but
closer with every repetition.  The telephone, damn it!  He did his best
to ignore it, failed, and reached out to the bedside table where it sat,
throwing the receiver off its cradle and returning to her in one
graceless motion.  The body beneath him was once again perfectly still.
He climbed on top of her and slid inside.  it was like being sheathed in
silk.  She put her hands up around his neck, her fingers strong, and
raised her head a little way off the bed to meet his kisses.

Though their mouths were clamped together he could hear her saying his
name Gentle?  Gentle ...  7 - with the same questioning tone she'd had
before.

He didn't let memory divert him from his present pleasure, but found his
rhythm; long, slow strokes.  He remembered her as a woman who liked him
to take his time.  At the height of their affair they'd made love from
dusk to dawn on several occasions; toying and teasing, stopping to bathe
so they'd have the bliss of working up a second sweat.  But this was an
encounter that had none of the froth of those liaisons.  Her fingers
were digging hard at his back, pulling him on to her with each thrust.
And still he heard her voice, dimmed by the veils of his
self-consumption:

"Gentle?  Are you there?"

"I'm here," he murmured.

A fresh tide of light was rising through them both, the erotic becoming
a visionary toil as he watched it sweep over their skin, its brightness
intensifying with every thrust.

Again she asked him. "Are you there?,

How could she doubt it?  He was never more present than in this act;
never more comprehending of himself than when buried in the other sex.

"I'm here," he said.

Yet she asked again, and this time, though his mind was stewed in bliss,
the tiny voice of reason murmured that it wasn't his lady who was asking
the question at all, but the woman on the telephone.

He'd thrown the receiver off the hook, but she was haranguing the empty
line, demanding he reply.  Now he listened.

There was no mistaking the voice: it was Jude.  And if Jude was on the
line, who the fuck was he fucking?

Whoever it was, she knew the deception was over.  She dug deeper into
the flesh of his lower back and buttocks, raising her hips to press him
deeper into her still, her sex tightening around his cock as though to
prevent him from leaving her unspent.  But he was sufficiently master of
himself to resist, and pulled out of her, his heart thumping like some
crazy locked up in the cell of his chest.

"Who the hell are you?" he yelled.

Her hands were still upon him.  Their heat and their demand, which had
so aroused him moments before, unnerved him now.  He threw her off, and
started to reach towards the lamp on the bedside table.  She took hold
of his erection as he did so, and slid her palm along the shaft.  Her
touch was so persuasive he almost succumbed to the idea of entering her
again, taking her anonymity as carte blanche and indulging in the
darkness every last desire he could dredge up.  She was putting her
mouth where her hand had been, sucking him into her.  He regained in two
heart-beats the hardness he'd lost.

Then the whine of the empty line reached his ears.

Jude had given up trying to make contact.  Perhaps she'd

heard his panting, and the promises he'd been making in I., the dark.
The thought brought new rage.  He took hold of the woman's head and
pulled her from his lap.  What i, could have possessed him to want
somebody he couldn't even see?  And what kind of whore offered herself
that way?  Diseased?  Deformed?  Psychotic?  He had to see.

However repulsive, he had to see!

He reached for the lamp a second time, feeling the bed shake as the
harridan prepared to make her escape.

Fumbling for the switch, he brought the lamp off its perch.  It didn't
smash, but its beams were cast up at the ceiling, throwing a gauzy light
down on the room below.

Suddenly fearful she'd attack him, he turned without picking the lamp
up, only to find that the woman had already claimed her clothes from the
snarl of sheets and was retreating to the bedroom door.  His eyes had
been feeding on darkness and projections for too long, and now,
presented with solid reality, they were befuddled.

Half concealed by shadow the woman was a mire of shifting forms - face
blurred, body smeared, pulses of iridescence slow now, passing from toes
to head.  The only fixable element in this flux was her eyes, which
stared back at him mercilessly.  He wiped his hand from brow to' chin in
the hope of sloughing the illusion off, and in these seconds she opened
the door to make her escape.  He leapt from the bed, still determined to
get past his confusions to the grim truth he'd coupled with, but she was
already halfway through the door, and the only way he could stop her was
to seize hold of her arm.

Whatever power had deranged his senses, its bluff was

_4 called when he made contact with her.  The roiling forms of her face
resolved themselves like pieces of a multi-faceted jigsaw, turning and
turning as they found their place, concealing countless other
configurations - rare, wretched, bestial, dazzling - behind the shell of
a Congruous reality.  He knew the features, now that they'd come to
rest.  Here were the ringlets, framing a face of exquisite symmetry.
Here were the scars that healed with such

unnatural speed.  Here were the lips that hours before had described
their owner as nothing and nobody.  It was a lie!  This nothing had two
functions at least: assassin and whore.  This nobody had a name.

"Pie'oh'pah."

Gentle let go of the man's arm as though it were venomous.  The form
before him didn't re-dissolve however, for which fact Gentle was only
half glad.  That hallucinatory chaos had been distressing, but the solid
thing it had concealed appalled him more.  Whatever sexual imaginings
he'd shaped in the darkness - Judith's face, Judith's breasts, belly,
sex - all of them had been an illusion.  The creature he'd coupled with,
almost shot his load into, didn't even share her sex.

He was neither a hypocrite nor a puritan.  He loved sex too much to
condemn any expression of lust, and though he'd discouraged the
homosexual courtships he'd attracted, it was out of indifference not
revulsion.  So the shock he felt now was fuelled more by the power of
the deceit worked upon him than by the sex of the deceiver.

"What have you done to me?" was all he could say.. "What have you done?"

Pie'oh'pah stood his ground, knowing perhaps that his nakedness was his
best defence.

"I wanted to heal you," he said.  Though it trembled, there was music in
his voice.

"You put some drug in me.. "Not' Pie said.

"Don't give me no!  I thought you were Judith!  You let me think you
were Judith!'He looked down at his hands, then up at the hard, lean body
in front of him.. "I felt her, not you." Again, the same complaint.
"What have you done to me7'

"I gave you what you wanted," Pie said.

Gentle had no retort to this.  In its way, it was the truth.  Scowling,
he sniffed his palms, thinking that there might be traces of some drug
in his sweat.  But there was only

the stench of sex on him; of the heat of the bed behind him.

"You'll sleep it off," Pie said.

"Get the fuck out of here," Gentle replied.. "And if you go anywhere
near Jude again, I swear ...  I swear ...  I'll take you apart.. "You're
obsessed with her, aren't you?. "None of your fucking business.. "It'll
do you harm.. "Shut up." it will, I'm telling you." "I told you!"
Gentle yelled.. "Shut the fuck up!. "She doesn't belong to you," came
the reply.

The words ignited new fury in Gentle.  He reached for Pie and took him
by the throat.

The bundle of clothes dropped from the assassin's arm leaving him naked.
But he put up no defence; he simply raised his hands and laid them
lightly on Gentle's shoulders.  The gesture only infuriated Gentle
further.  He let out a stream of invective, but the placid face before
him took both spittle and spleen without flinching.  Gentle shook him,
digging his thumbs into the man's throat to stop his windpipe.  Still he
neither resisted nor succumbed, but stood in front of his attacker like
a saint awaiting martyrdom.

Finally, breathless with rage and exertion, Gentle let go his hold, and
threw Pie back, stepping away from the creature with a glimmer of
superstition in his eyes.  Why hadn't the fellow fought back, or fallen?

Anything but this sickening passivity.

"Get out," Gentle told him.

Pie still stood his ground, watching him with forgiving eyes.

"Will you get out?" Gentle said again, more softly, and this time the
martyr replied.

"If you wish."

"I wish."

He watched Pie'oh'pah stoop to pick up the scattered clothes.  Tomorrow,
this would all come clear in his head,

he thought.  He'd have shit this delirium out of his system, and these
events - Jude, the chase, his near rape at the hands of the assassin -
would be a tale to tell Klein and Clem and Taylor when he got back to
London.  They'd be entertained.

Aware now that he was more naked than the other man he turned to the
bed, and dragged a sheet off it to cover himself with.

There was a strange moment then, when he knew the bastard was still in
the room, still watching him, and all he could do was wait for him to
leave.  Strange because it reminded him of other bedroom partings:
sheets tangled, sweat cooling, confusion and self-reproach keeping
glances at bay.  He waited, and waited, and finally heard the door
close.  Even then he didn't turn, but listened to the room to be certain
there was only one breath in it: his own.

When he finally looked back, and saw that Pie'oh'pah had gone, he pulled
the sheet up around him like a toga, concealing himself from the absence
in the room, which' stared back at him too much like a reflection for his
peace of mind.  Then he locked the suite door and stumbled back to bed,
listening to his drugged h ca d wh i i i e like the empty telephone
line.

CHAPTER NINE

Oscar Esmond Godolphin always recited a little prayer in praise of
democracy when, after one of his trips to the Dominions, he stepped back
on to English soil.  Extraordinary as those visits were - and as warmly
welcomed as he found himself in the diverse Kesparates of Yzordderrex -
the city state was an autocracy of the most extreme kind, its excesses
dwarfing the repressions of the country he'd been born in.  Especially
of late.  Even his great friend and business partner in the Second
Dominion, Hebbert Nuits-St-Georges, called Peccable by those who knew
him well, a merchant who had made substantial profit from the
superstitious and the woebegone in the Second Dominion, regularly
remarked that the order of Yzordderrex was less stable by the day, and
he would soon take his family out of the city, indeed out of the
Dominion entirely, and find a new home where he would not have to smell
burning bodies when he opened his windows in the morning.  So far, it
was only talk.  Godolphin knew Peccable well enough to be certain that
until he'd exhausted his supply of idols, relics and jujus from the
Fifth, and could make no more profit, he'd stay put.  And given that it
was Godolphin himself who supplied these items most were simply
terrestrial trivia, revered in the Dominions because of their place of
origin - and given that he would not cease to do so as long as the fever
of collection was upon him and he could exchange such items for
artifacts from the Imajica, Peccable's business would flourish.  It was
a trade in talismans, and neither man was likely to tire of it soon.

dolphon tire of being an Englishman in that

Nor did Go

most un English of cities.  He was instantly recognizable in the small
but influential circle he kept.  A large man in every way, he was tall
and big-bel bed bellicose when fondest, hearty when not.  At fifty-two
he had long ago found his style, and was more than comfortable with it.
True, he concealed his second and third chins beneath a grey-brown beard
that only got an efficient trimming at the hands of Peccable's eldest
daughter Hoi-Polloi.  True, he attempted to look a little more learned
by wearing silver-rimmed spectacles that were dwarfed by his large face
but were, he thought, all the-more pedagoguish because they didn't
flatter.  But these were little deceits.  They helped to make him
unmistakable, which he liked.  He wore his thinning hair short, and his
collars long, preferring for dress a clash of tweeds and a striped
shirt;

always a tie; invariably a waistcoat.  All in all, a difficult Sight to
ignore, which suited him fine.  Nothing was more likely to bring a smile
to his face than being told he was talked about.  it was usually with
affection.

There was no smile on his face now, however, as he stepped out of the
site of the Reconciliation - known euphemistically as the Retreat - to
find Dowd sitting perched on a shooting-stick a few yards from the door.
it was early afternoon but the sun was already low in the sky, the air
as chilly as Dowd's welcome.  It was almost enough to make him turn
round and go back to Yzordderrex, revolution or no.

"Why do I think you haven't come here with sparkling news?" he said.

Dowd rose with his usual theatricality.. "I'm afraid you're absolutely
correct," he said.

"Let me guess: the government fell!  The house burned down." His face
dropped.. "Not my brother?" he said.. "Not Charlie?" He tried to read
Dowd's face.. "What: dead?  A massive coronary.  When was the funeral?"

"No, he's alive.  But the problem lies with him.. "Always has.  Always
has.  Will you fetch my goods and chattels out of the Folly?  We'll talk
as we walk.  Go on

in, will you?  There's nothing in there that's going to bite." A Dowd
had stayed out of the Retreat all the time he'd waited for Godolphin (a
wearisome three days) even though it would have given him some measure
of protection against the bitter cold.  Not that his system was
susceptible to such discomforts, but he fancied himself an empathic
soul, and his time on Earth had taught him to feel cold as an
intellectual concept, if not a physical one, and he might have wished to
take shelter.

Anywhere other than the Retreat.  Not only had many esoterics died there
(and he didn't enjoy the proximity of death unless he'd been its
bringer), but the Retreat was'a passing place between the Fifth Dominion
and the other four, including, of course, the home from which he was in
permanent exile.  To be so close to the door through which his home lay,
and be prevented by the conjurations of his first keeper, Joshua
Godolphin, from opening that door, was painful.  The cold was
preferable.

He stepped inside now, however, having no choice in the matter.  The
Retreat had been built in neoclassical style: twelve marble pillars
rising to support a dome that called for decoration, but had none.  The
plainness of the whole lent it gravity, and a certain functionalism
which was not inappropriate.  It was, after all, no more than a station,
built to serve countless passengers and now usedf, by only one.  On the
floor, set in the middle of the elabor- I ate mosaic that appeared to be
the building's sole concession to prettification but was in fact the
evidence of W", true purpose, were the bundles of artifacts Godolphin'
brought back from his travels, neatly tied up by Hoi-Polloi
Nuits-St-Georges, the knots encrusted with scarlet sealing wax.  it was
her present delight, this business with the wax, and Dowd cursed it,
given that it fell to him to unpack these treasures.  He crossed to the
centre of the mosaic, light on his heels.  This was tremulous terrain,
and he didn't trust it.  But moments later, he emerged, with his
freight, to find that Godolphin was al read , marching out of the copse
that screened the Retreat from

both the house (empty, of course; in ruins) and any casual spy who
peered over the wall.  He took a deep breath and went after his master,
knowing the explanation ahead would not be easy.

"So they've summoned me, have they?" Oscar said, as they drove back into
London, the traffic thickening with the dusk.

"Well, let them wait."

"You're not going to tell them you're here?"

"In my time, not in theirs.  This is a mess, Dowdy.  A wretched mess."

"You told me to help Estabrook if he needed it."

"Helping him hire an assassin isn't what I had in mind."

"Chant was very discreet."

"Death makes you that way, I find.  You really have made a pig's ear of
the whole thing."

"I protest," said Dowd.. "What else was I supposed to do?   Italian I
You knew he wanted the woman dead, and you washed your hands of it.,

"All true," said Godolphin.. "She is dead, I assume?"

"I don't think so.  I've been scouring the papers, and there's no
mention."

"So why did you have Chant killed?"

Here Dowd was more cautious in his account.  if he said too little,
Godolphin would suspect him of concealment.  Too much, and the larger
picture might become apparent.

The longer his employer stayed in ignorance of the scale P of the
stakes, the better.  He proffered two explanations, both ready and
waiting:

"For one thing, the man was more unreliable than I'd thought.  Drunk and
maudlin half the time.  And I think he knew more than was good for
either you or your brother.  He might have ended up finding out about
your travels."

"Instead it's the Society that's suspicious.,

"It's unfortunate the way these things turn out.. "Unfortunate, my arse.
it's a total balls-up is what it is.. "I'm very sorry."

"I know you are, Dowdy," Oscar said.. "The point is, where do we find a
scapegoat?. "Your brother?"

"Perhaps," Godolphin replied, cannily concealing the degree to which
this suggestion found favour.

"When should I tell them that you've come back?" 

Dowd asked.

"When I've made up a lie I can believe in," came the reply.

Back in the house in Regent's Park Road, Oscar took some time to study
the newspaper reports of Chant's death before retiring to his treasure
house on the third floor with both his new artifacts and a good deal to
think about.

There was a sizeable part of him that wanted to exit this Dominion once
and for all.  Take himself off to Yzordderrex and set up business with
Peccable; marry Hoi-polloi despite her crossed eyes; have a litter of
kids and retire to the Hills of the Conscious Cloud, in the Third, and
raise parrots.  But he knew he'd yearn for England sooner or later, and
a yearning man could be cruel.  He'd end up beating his wife, bullying
his kids and eating the parrots.

So, given that he'd always have to keep a foot in England, if only
during the cricket season, and j given that as long as he kept a
presence here he would be answerable to the Society, he had to face
them.

own

He locked the door of his treasure room, sat d amongst his collection,
and waited for inspiration.  The shelves around him, which were built to
the ceiling, were bowed beneath the weight of his trove.  Here were
items gathered from the edge of the Second Dominion to the t

limits of the Fourth.  He had only to pick one of them of its up to be
transported back to the time and place

e of the Etook Ha'chiit he'd bar acquisition  The Statu tered for in a
little town called Slew, which was now, regrettably a blasted spot,
its citizens the victims of a purge visited upon them for the crime of a
song, written in the dialect of their community, suggesting that the
Autarch of Yzordderrex lacked testicles.

Another of his treasures, the seventh volume of Gaud Maybellome's
Encyclopaedia of Heavenly Signs, originally written in the language of
Third Dominion academics but widely translated for the delectation of
the proletariat, he'd bought from a woman in the city of Jassick, who'd
approached him in a gaming room where he was attempting to explain
cricket to a group of the locals, and said she recognized him from
stories her husband (who was in the Autarch's army in Yzordderrex) had
told.

"You're the English male," she'd said, which didn seem worth denying.

Then she'd shown him the book: a very rare volume indeed.  He'd never
ceased to find fascination within its pages, for it was Maybellome's
intention to make an encyclopaedia listing all the flora, fauna,
languages, sciences, ideas, moral perspectives - in short, anything that
occurred to her - that had found their way from the Fifth Dominion, the
Place of the Succulent Rock, through to the other worlds.  it was a
Herculean task, and she'd died just as she was beginning the nineteenth
volume, with no end in sight, but even the one book in Godolphin's
possession was enough to guarantee that he would search for the others
until his dying day.  It was a bizarre, almost surreal volume.  Even if
only half the entries were true, or nearly true, Earth had influenced
just about every aspect of the worlds from which it was divided.  Fauna,
for instance.  There were countless animals listed in the volume which
Maybellome claimed to be invaders from the other world.  Some clearly
were: the zebra, the crocodile, the dog.  Others were a mixture of
genetic strands, part terrestrial part non.  But many of these species
(pictured in the book like fugitives from a mediaeval bestiary) were so
outlandish he doubted their very existence.  Here, for instance, were
hand-sized wolves, with the wings of

canaries.  Here was an elephant that lived in an enormous conch.  Here
was a literate worm that wrote omens with its thread-fine, half-mile
body.  Wonderment upon wonderment.  Godolphin only had to pick up the
encyclopaedia and he was ready to put on his boots and set off for the
Dominions again.

What was self-evident from even a casual perusal of the book was how
extensively the unreconciled Dominion had influenced the others.  The
languages of earth - English, Italian, Hindustani and Chinese
particularly - were known in some variation everywhere, though it seemed
the Autarch - who had come to power in the confusion following the
failed Reconciliation favoured English, which was the preferred
linguistic currency almost everywhere now.  To name a child with an
English word was thought particularly propitious, though there was
little or no consideration given to what the word actually meant.  Hence
Hoi-Polloi, for instance; this one of the less strange namings amongst
the thousands Godolphin had encountered.

He flattered himself that he was in some small part responsible for such
blissful bizarrities, given that over the years he'd brought all manner
of influences through from the Succulent Rock.  There was always a
hunger for newspapers and magazines (usually preferred to books) and
he'd heard of baptizers in Patashoqua who named children by stabbing a
copy of the London Times with a pin and bequeathing the first three
words they pricked., upon the infant, however unmusical the
combination.,1 But he was not the only influence.  He hadn't brougs u;
the crocodile, or the zebra, or the dog (though he wo lay claim to the
parrot).  No, there had always been route two through from Earth into
the Dominions, other than tied" at the Retreat.  Some, no doubt, had
been opened -J!  Maestros and esoterics, in all manner of cultures, for
express purpose of their passing to and fro between worlds.  Others
were conceivably opened by accident, a perhaps remained open, marking
the sites as haunted or

sacred, shunned or obsessively protected.  Yet others, these in the
smallest number, had been created by the sciences of the other
Dominions, as a means of gaining access to the heaven of the Succulent
Rock.

In such a place, this near the walls of the lahmandhas in the Third
Dominion, Godolphin had acquired his most sacred possession: a Boston
Bowl, complete with its forty-one coloured stones.  Though he'd never
used it, the Bowl was reputedly the most accurate prophetic tool known
in the worlds, and now - sitting amid his treasures, with a sense
growing in him that events on Earth in the last few days were leading to
some matter of moment - he brought the Bowl down from its place on the
highest shelf, unwrapped it, and set it on the table.  Then he took the
stones from their pouch and laid them at the bottom of the Bowl.  Truth
to tell, the arrangement didn't look particularly promising: the Bowl
resembled something for kitchen use, plain fired ceramic, large enough
to whip eggs for a couple of souffles.  The stones were more colourful,
varying in size and shape from tiny, flat pebbles to perfect spheres the
size of an eyeball.

Having set them out, Godolphin had second thoughts.  Did he even believe
in prophecy?

And if he did, was it wise to know the future?  Probably not.  Death was
bound to be in there somewhere, sooner or later.

Only Maestros and deities lived forever, and a man might sour the
balance of his span knowing when it was going to end.  But then, suppose
he found in this Bowl some indication as to how the Society might be
handled?  That would be no small weight off his shoulders.

"Be brave," he told himself, and laid the middle finger of each hand
upon the rim, as Peccable, who'd once owned such a Bowl and had it
smashed by his wife in a domestic row, had instructed.

Nothing happened at first, but Peccable had warned him the Bowls usually
took some time to start from cold.  He waited, and waited.  The first
sight of activation was a rattling from the bottom of the Bowl as the
stones began

to move against each other, the second, a distinctly acidic odour rising
to jab at his sinuses, the third, and most startling, the sudden
ricocheting of one pebble, then two, then a dozen, across the Bowl and
back, several skipping higher than the rim.  Their ambition increased by
the movement, until all forty-one were in violent motion, so violent
that the Bowl began to move across the table, and Oscar had to take a
firm hold of it to keep it from turning over.  The stones struck his
fingers and knuckles with stinging force, but the pain made sweeter the
success that now followed, as the speed and motion of the multiq far ious
shapes and colours began to describe images i#11 the air above the Bowl.

Like all prophecy, the signs were in the eye of the beholder, and
perhaps another witness would have se ens quite different forms in the
blur.  But what Godolphin] saw seemed quite plain to him.  The Retreat
for one, half hidden in the copse.  Then himself, standing in the middle
of the mosaic, either coming back from Yzordderrex or preparing to
depart.  The images lingered for only a briefj time before changing, the
Retreat demolished in the storm of stones and a new structure raised in
the whirl: the Tower of the Tabula Rasa.  He fixed his eyes on th
prophecy with fresh deliberation, denying himself the, comfort of
blinking to be certain he missed nothing.  The Tower as seen from the
street gave way to its I interior.  Here they were, the wise ones,
sitting around', the table contemplating their divine duty.

They were navel-defluffers and snot-rollers to a man.  Not one of them
would be capable Of surviving an hour in the alley- t ways of East
Yzordderrex, he thought, down by the harbour where even the cats had
pimps.  Now he saw himself step into the picture, and something he was
doing or saying made the men and women before him jump from their seats,
even Lionel.

"What's this?" Oscar murmured.

They had wild expressions on their faces, every one.  Were they
laughing?  What had he done?  Cracked a joke?

Passed wind?  He studied the prophecy more closely.  No, it wasn't
humour on their faces.  It was horror.

"Sir?"

Dowd's voice from outside the door broke his concentration.  He looked
away from the Bowl for a few seconds to snap. "Go away."

But Dowd had urgent news.. "McGann's on the telephone," he said.

"Tell him you don't know where I am," Oscar snorted, returning his gaze
to the Bowl.

Something terrible had happened in the time between his looking away and
looking back.

The horror remained on their faces, but for some reason he'd disappeared
from the scene.  Had they dispatched him summarily?  God, was he dead on
the floor?  Maybe.  There was something glistening on the table, like
spilled blood.

"Sir!'

"Fuck off, Dowdy."

"They know you're here, sir."     4, They knew; they knew.  The house
was being watched, and they knew.

"All right,, he said.. "Tell him I'll be down in a moment.. "What did
you say, sir?"

Oscar raised his voice over the din of the stones, looking away again,
this time more willingly. "Get his whereabouts.  I'll call him back."

Again, he returned his gaze to the Bowl, but his concentration had
faltered, and he could no longer interpret the images concealed in the
motion of the stones.  Except for one.  As the speed of the display
slowed he seemed to catch - oh so fleetingly - a woman's face in the
mMe.  His replacement at the Society's table, perhaps; or his
dispatcher.

011004i He needed a drink before he spoke to McGann, and Dowd, ever the
anticipator, had

already mixed him a whisky and soda, but he forsook it for fear it would
loosen his tongue.

Paradoxically, what had been half-revealed by the Boston Bowl helped him
in his

exchange.  in extreme circumstances he responded with almost
pathological

detachment: it was

one of

his most

English

traits.  He

had thus

seldom

been

cooler or

more

controlled than

now, as

he told

McGann

that yes

indeed he

had been

travelling

, and no,

it was

none of

the

Society's

business

where or

about

what

pursuit.

He would

of course

be

delighted

to attend

a

gathering

at the

Tower

the

following

day, but was

McGann

aware

(indeed

did he

care?)

that

tomorrow was

Christmas Eve?

"I never miss Midnight Mass at St Martin's-in-the Field Oscar told him,
'so I'd appreciate it

greatly if the meeting could be concluded quickly enough to allow me
time to get there and

find a pew with a good view." He delivered all of this without a tremor
in his voice.

McGann attempted to press him as to his whereabouts in the last few
days, to which Oscar

asked why the hell it mattered.

"I don't ask about your private affairs, now do 1?" he said, in a mildly
affronted tone.

"Nor,

by the way, do I spy on your comings and goings.  Don't splutter,
McGann.  You don't trust

me and I don't trust you.  I will take tomorrow's meeting as a forum to
debate the privacy of

the Society's members, and a chance to remind the gathering that the
name of Godolphin is

one of the LOW cornerstones of the Society."

"All the more reason you be forthright," McGann said

"I'll be perfectly forthright," was Oscar's reply.. "You'll have ample
evidence of my

innocence." Only now, with the war of wits won, did he accept the whisky
and soda Dowd

had mixed for him.. "Ample and definitive."

He silently toasted Dowd as he talked, knowing as he

sipped it that there'd be bloodshed before Christmas Day dawned.  Grim
as that prospect was, there was no avoiding it now.

When he put the phone down he said to Dowd: "I think I'll wear the
herringbone suit tomorrow.  And a plain shirt.  White.  Starched
collar."

"And the tie?" Dowd asked, replacing Oscar's drained glass with a fresh
one.

"I'll be going straight on to Midnight Mass," Oscar said.

"Black, then.. "Black."

CHAPTER TEN

The afternoon of the day following the assassin's appearance at Marlin's
apartment a blizzard descended upon New York with no little ferocity,
conspiring with the inevitable seasonal rush to make finding a flight
back to England difficult.  But Jude was not easily denied anything,
especially when she'd set her mind firmly on an objective; and she was
certain - despite Marlin's protestations - that leaving Manhattan was
the most sensible thing to do.  She had reason on her side.  The
assassin had made two attempts upon her life.  He was still at large. As
long as she stayed in New York she would be under threat.

But even if this had not been the case (and there was a part of her that
still believed that he'd come that second time to explain, or apologize)
she would have found an excuse for returning to England, just to be out
of Marlin's company.  He had become too cloying in his affections, his
talk as saccharine as the dialogue from the Christmas classics on the
television, his every gaze mawkish.  He'd had this sickness all along,
of course, but he'd worsened since the assassin's visit, and her
tolerance for these traits, braced as she'd been by her encounter with
Gentle, had dropped to zero.

once she'd put the phone down on him the previous night she'd regretted
her skittish way with him, and, after a heart-to heart with Marlin in
which she'd told him she wanted to go back to England, and he'd replied
that it would all seem different in the morning and why didn't she just
take a pill and lie down, she'd decided to call him back.  By this time,
Marlin was sound asleep.  She'd left her bed, gone through to the
lounge, put on a single

lamp, and made the call.  it felt covert, which in a way it was.  Marlin
had not been pleased to know that one of her ex-lovers had attempted to
play hero in his own apartment, and he wouldn't have been happy to find
her making contact with Gentle at two in the morning.  She still didn't
know what had happened when she'd been put through to the room.  The
receiver had been picked up, and then dropped, leaving her to listen
with increasing fury and frustration to the sound of Gentle making love.
Instead of putting the phone down there and then she'd listened,
half-wishing she could have joined the escapade.  Eventually, after
failing to distract Gentle from his labours, she'd put down the phone
and traipsed back to her cold bed in a foul humour.

He'd called the next day, and Martin had picked up.  She let him tell
Gentle that if he ever saw hide or hair of Gentle in the building again
he'd have him arrested as an accomplice to attempted murder.

"What did he say?" she'd asked when the conversation was done.

"Not very much.  He sounded drunk."

She had not discussed the matter any further.  Marlin was already sullen
enough, after her breakfast announcement that she still intended
returning to England that day.  He'd asked her over and over: why?  Was
there something he could do to make her stay more comfortable?  Extra
locks on the doors?  A promise that he wouldn't leave her side?  None of
these, of course, filled her with renewed enthusiasm for staying.  If
she.  told him once she told him two dozen times that he was quite the
perfect host, and that he wasn't to take this personally, but she wanted
to be back in her own house, her own city, where she would feel most
protected from the assassin.  He'd then offered to come back with her,
so that she wasn't returning to an empty house alone, at which point -
running out of soothing phrases and patience she'd told him that alone
was exactly what she wanted to be.

And so here she was, one snail crawl through the blizzard to Kennedy, a
five-hour delay and a flight in which she was wedged between a nun who
prayed aloud every time they hit an air-pocket, and a child in need of
worming, later.  Her own sole possessor, in an empty flat on Christmas
Eve.

The painting in four contrary modes was there to greet Gentle when he
got back to the studio.

His return had been delayed by the same blizzard that had almost
prevented Judith leaving Manhattan, and put him beyond the deadline
Klein had set.

But his thoughts had not turned to his business dealings with Klein more
than once during the journey.  They'd revolved almost entirely around
the encounter with the assassin.  Whatever mischief Pie'oh'pah had
worked upon his system it had

AL cleared by the following morning - his eyes were operating normally,
and he was lucid enough to deal with the practicalities of departure -
but the echoes of what he'd experienced still reverberated.  Dozing on
the plane he felt the smoothness of the assassin's face in his
fingertips, the tumble of hair he'd taken to be Jude's over the back of
his hands.  He could still smell the scent of wet skin, and feel the
weight of Pie'oh'pah's body on his hips, this so persuasive he had an
erection apparent enough to draw a stare from one of the stewardesses.
He reasoned that perhaps he would have to put fresh sensation between
these echoes and their origins; fuck them out; sweat himself clean.  The
thought comforted him.  When he dozed again, and the memories returned,
he didn't fight them, knowing he had a means of scouring them from his
system once he got back to England.

Now he sat in front of the painting in four modes, and flipped through
his address book looking for a partner for

the night.  He made a few calls, but couldn't have chosen a worse time
to be setting up a casual liaison.  Husbands were home; family
gatherings were in the offing.  He was out of season.

He did eventually speak to Klein, who after some persuasion accepted his
apologies, and then went on to tell him there was to be a party at
Taylor and Clem's house the following day, and he was sure Gentle would
be welcome if he had no other plans.

"Everyone says it'll be Taylor's last," Chester said.. "I know he'd like
to see you.. "I suppose I should go then," Gentle said.

"You should.  He's very sick.  He's had pneumonia, and now cancer.  He
was always very fond of you, you know." The association of ideas made
fondness for Gentle sound like another disease, but he didn't comment on
it, merely made arrangements to pick up Klein the following evening and
put down the phone, plunged into a dee per trough than ever.  He'd known
Taylor had the plague, but hadn't realized people were counting the days
to his demise.  Such grim times.

Everywhere he looked things were coming apart.  There seemed to be only
darkness ahead, full of blurred shapes and pitiful glances.  The Age of
Pie'oh'pah, perhaps.  The time of the assassin.

He didn't sleep, despite being tired, but sat up into the small hours
with an object of study that he'd previously dismissed as fanciful
nonsense: Chant's final letter.  when he'd first read it, on the plane
to New York, it had seemed a ludicrous outpouring.  But there had been
strange times since then, and they'd put Gentle in an apter mood for
this study.  Pages that had seemed worthless a few days before were now
pored over, in the hope that they'd yield some clue, encoded in the
fanciful excesses of Chant's idiosyncratic and ill-punctuated prose,
that would lead him to some fresh comprehension of the times and their
movers.  Whose God, for instance, was this Hapexamendios that Chant
exhorted Estabrook to pray to and praise?  He

came trailing synonyms.  The Unbeheld.  The Aboriginal.  The Wanderer.
And what was the greater plan that Chant hoped in his final hours he was
a part of?

I AM ready for death in this DOMINION he'd written, if I know that the
Unbeheld has used me as His INSTRUMENT.  All praise to HAPEXAMENDIOS.
For He was in the Place of the Succulent Rock, and left his children to
SUFFER here and I have suffered here and AM DONE with suffering.

That at least was true.  The man had known his death was imminent, which
suggested that he'd known his murderer too.  Was it Pie'oh'pah he'd been
expecting?  It seemed not.  The assassin was referred to, but not as
Chant's executioner.  Indeed, in his first reading of the letter Gentle
hadn't even realized it was Pie'oh'pah who was being spoken of in this
passage.  But on this re-reading it was completely apparent.

You have made a covenant with a thing RARE in this DOMINION or any
other, and I do not know if this death nearly upon me is my punishment
or my reward for my agency in that.  But be circumspect in all your
dealings with it, for such power is capricious, being a stew of kinds
and possibilities, no UTTER thing, in any part of its nature, but
pavo nine and prismatic.  An apostate to its Core.

I was never the friend of this power - it has only ADOPERS AND uN DoERs -
but it trusted me as its representative and I have done it as much harm
in these dealings as I have you.  More I think; for it is a lonely
thing, and suffers in this DOMINION XI I have.  You have friends who
know you for the man you are, and do not have to conceal your TRUE
NATURE.  Cling to them, and their love for you, for the Place of the
Succulent Rock is about to shake and tremble, and in such a time all a
soul has is the company of its loving like.  I say this having lived in
such a time, and am GLAD that if such is coming upon the FIFTH DOMINION
again, I will be dead, and my face turned to the glory of the UN BEHELD

All praise to HAPEXAMENDIOS.

And to you, sir, in this moment, I offer my contrition and my prayers.

There was a little more, but both handwriting and the sentence structure
deterioriated rapidly thereafter, as though Chant had panicked, and
scrawled the rest while putting on his coat.  The more coherent passages
contained enough hints to keep Gentle from sleep, however.

The descriptions of Pie'oh'pah were particularly alarming:

"A RAPE thing ...  a stew of kinds and possibilities .

How was that to be interpreted, except as a verification of what
Gentle's senses had glimpsed in New York?  If so, what was this
creature, that had stood before him naked and singular, but concealed
multitudes?; this power Chant had said possessed no friends (it has only
ADORERS AND uN DoERs he'd written) and had been done as much harm in
these dealings (again, Chant's words) as Estabrook, to whom Chant had
offered his contrition and his prayers?  Not human, for certain.  Not
born of any tribe or nation Gentle was familiar with.  He read the
letter over and over again, and with each re-reading the possibility of
belief crept closer.  He felt its proximity.  It was fresh from the
margins of that land he'd first suspected in New York.  The thought of
being there had made him fearful then.  But it no longer did, perhaps
because it was Christmas morning, and time for something miraculous to
appear and change the world.

The closer they crept - both morning and belief - the more he regretted
shunning the assassin when it had so plainly wanted his company.  He had
no dues to its mystery but those contained in Chant's letter, and after
a hundred readings they were exhausted.  He wanted more.  The only other
source was his memory of the creature's jigsaw face, and, knowing his
propensity for forgetting, they'd start to fade all too soon.  He had to
set them down! That was the priority now; to set the vision down before
it slipped away!

He threw the letter aside, and went to stare at his Supper at Emmaus.
Was any of those styles capable of capturing what he'd seen?

He doubted it.  He'd have to invent a new mode to reproduce what he'd
seen.  Fired up by that ambition he turned the Supper on end, and began
to

squeeze burnt umber directly on to the canvas, spreading it with a
palette knife until the scene beneath was completely obscured.  In its
place was now a dark ground, into which he started to gouge the outline
of a figure.  He had never studied anatomy very closely.  The male body
was of little aesthetic interest to him, and the female was so mutable,
so much a function of its own motion, or that of light across it, that
all static representation seemed to him doomed from the outset.

But he wanted to represent a protean form now, however impossible;
wanted to find a way to fix what he'd seen at the door of his hotel
room, when Pie'oh'pah's many faces had been shuffled in front of him
like cards in an illusionist's deck.  If he could fix that sight, or
even begin to do so, he might yet find a way of controlling the thing
that had come to haunt him.

He worked in a fair frenzy for two hours, making demands of the paint
he'd never made before, plastering it on with palette knife and fingers,
attempting to capture at least the shape and proportion of the thing's
head and neck.  He could see the image clearly enough in his mind's eye
(since that night no two rememberings had been more than a minute apart)
but even the most basic sketch eluded his hand.  He was badly equipped
for the task.  He'd been a parasite for too long, a mere copier, echoing
other men's vision.  Now he finally had one of his own only one, but all
the more precious for that and he simply couldn't set it down.  He
wanted to weep at this final defeat, but he was too tired for that. With
his hands still covered in paint he lay down on the chilly sheets and
waited for sleep to take his confusions away.

Two thoughts visited him as he slipped into dreams.  The first, that
with so much burnt umber on his hands he looked as though he'd been
playing with his own shit.  The second, that the only way to solve the
problem on the canvas was to see its subject again in the flesh, which
thought he welcomed, and went to dreams relieved of his frauds and
pieties, smiling to think of having the rare thing's face before him
once again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Though the journey from Godolphin's house in Primrose Hill to the Tabula
Rasa's Tower was short, and Dowd got him up to Highgate on the dot of
six, Oscar suggested they drive down through Crouch End then up through
Muswell Hill and back to the Tower, so that they'd arrive ten minutes
late.

"We mustn't seem to be too eager to prostrate ourselves," he observed as
they approached the Tower for a second time.

"It'll only make them arrogant.. "Shall I wait down here?. "Cold and
lonely?  My dear Dowdy, out of the question.

We'll ascend together, bearing gifts.. "What gifts?"

"Our wit, our taste in suits - well, my taste - in essence, ourselves."

They got out of the car, and went to the porch, their every step
monitored by cameras mounted above the door.  The lock clicked as they
approached, and they stepped inside.  As they crossed the foyer to the
lift Godolphin whispered:

"Whatever happens tonight, Dowdy, please remember

He got no further.  The lift doors opened, and Bloxham appeared, as
preening as ever.

"Pretty tie," Oscar said to him.. "Yellow's your colour." The tie was
blue.. "Don't mind my man Dowd here, will you?  I never go anywhere
without him."

"He's got no place here tonight," Bloxham said.

Again, Dowd offered to wait below, but Oscar would have none of it.
"Heaven forfend," he said.. "You can wait upstairs.

Enjoy the view."

All this irritated Bloxham mightily, but Oscar was not

an easy man to deny.  They ascended in silence.  Once on the top floor
Dowd was left to entertain himself, and Bloxham led, Godolphin through
to the chamber.  They were all waiting, and there was accusation on
every face.  A few - Shales, certainly, and Charlotte Feaver - didn't'
attempt to disguise their pleasure that the Society's most ebullient and
unrepentant member was here finally called to heel.

job I'm sorry .  .  ." Oscar said, as they closed the doors behind him.
"Have you been waiting long?"

Outside, in one of the deserted ante-chambers, Dowd listened to his
tinny little radio and mused.  At seven the news bulletin brought a
report of a motorway collision which had claimed the lives of an entire
family travelling north for Christmas, and of prison riots that had
ignited in Bristol and Manchester, with inmates claiming that presents
from loved ones had been tampered with and destroyed by prison officers.
There was the usual collection of war updates, then the weather report,
which, promised a grey Christmas, accompanied by a spring-likii balm.
This would on past; experience coax the crocuses out in Hyde Park, only
to be spiked by frost in a few days' time.

At eight, still waiting by the window, a secondj bulletin corrected one
of the reports from the first.  *4 survivor had been claimed from the
entangled vehiclet-I on the motorway: a tot of three months, found
orphaned'm but unscathed in the wreckage.  Sitting in the cold gloom,,j
Dowd began to weep quietly, which was an experience] as far beyond his
true emotional capacity as cold was beyond his nerve-endings.  But he'd
trained himself in the craft of grief with the same commitment to
feigning humanity as he had learning to shiver; his tutor, the Bard;
Lear his favourite lesson.

He cried for the child, and for the crocuses, and was still moist-eyed
when he heard the voices in the chamber suddenly rise up in rage.  The
door was flung open, and Oscar called him in, despite shouts of
complaint from some of the other members.

"This is an outrage, Godolphin!" Bloxham yelped.

"You drove me to it!'was Oscar's reply, his performance at fever pitch.
Clearly he'd been having a bad time of it.  The sinews in his neck stood
out like knotted string; sweat gleamed in the pouches beneath his eyes;
every

Word brought flecks of spittle.. "You don't know half of UV it!" he was
saying.. "Not the half.  We're being conspired

in against, by forces we can barely conceive of.  This man Chant was
undoubtedly one of their agents.  They can take human form!"

"Godolphin, this is absurd," Tyrwhitt said.

"You don't believe me?"

"No, I don't.  And I certainly don't want your bum-boy here listening to
us debate.  Will you please remove him from the Chamber?"

"But he has evidence to support my thesis," Oscar insisted.

"Oh, does he?" said Shales.

"He'll have to show you himself," Oscar said, turning to Dowd.. "You're
going to have to show them, I'm afraid," he said, and as he spoke
reached into his jacket.

An instant before the blade emerged Dowd realized Godolphin's intent,
and started to turn away, but Oscar had the edge, and it came forth
glittering.  Dowd felt his master's hand on his neck, and heard shouts
of horror on all sides.  Then he was thrown back across the table,
sprawling beneath the lights like an unwilling patient.  The surgeon
followed through with one swift stab, striking Dowd in the middle of his
chest.

"You want proof?" Oscar yelled, through Dowd's screams, and the din of
shouts around the table.. "You want proof?  Then here it is!'

His bulk put weight behind the blade, driving it first to the right then
to the left, encountering no obstruction from rib or breastbone.  Nor
was there blood; only a fluid the colour of brackish water, that
dribbled from the wounds and ran across the table.  Dowd's head thrashed
to and fro as this indignity was visited upon him, only

once raising his gaze to stare accusingly at Godolphin, who was too busy
about this undoing to return the look.  Despite protests from all sides
he didn't halt his labours until the body before him had been opened
from navel to throat, and Dowd's thrashings had ceased.  The stench from
the carcass filled the Chamber; a pungent mixture of sewage and vanilla.
it drove two of the witnesses to the door, one of them Bloxham, whose
nausea overtook ggings him before he could reach the corridor.  But his
ga and moans didn't slow Godolphin by a beat.  without hesitation he
plunged his arm into the open body again rummaging there, pulled out a
fistful of gut.  It was knotty mass of blue and black tissue final proof
Dowd's inhumanity.  Triumphant, he threw the eviden, down on the table
beside the body, then stepped away A from his handiwork, chucking the
knife into the wound it had opened.  The whole performance had taken no

but in that time he'd succeeded in more than a minute,

turning the Chamber's table into a fish-market gutter.. "Satisfied?" he
said.

All protest had been silenced.  The only sound was the rhythmical hiss
of fluid escaping an opened artery.

Very quietly McGann said:

"You're a fucking maniac." Oscar reached gingerly into his trouser
pocket and wd's last teased out a fresh handkerchief.

One of poor Do tasks had been its pressing.  It was immaculate.  He
shook out its scalpel creases and began to clean his hands.

"How else was I going to prove my point?" he said.. "You drove me to
this.  Now there's the evidence, in all its glory.  I don't know what
happened to Dowd - my bum-boy I think you called him, Alice - but
wherever he is this thing took his place."

"How long have you known?" Charlotte asked.

"I've suspected for the last two weeks.  I was here in the city all the
time; watching its every move while it - and you thought I was
disporting myself in sunnier climes."

"What the bugger is it?" Lionel wanted to know, prodding a scrap of
alien en trail with his finger.

"God alone knows," Godolphin said.. "Something not of this world,
clearly."

"What did it want?" Alice said.. "That's more to the point."

"At a guess, access to this Chamber, which'- he looked at those around
the table one by one . "I gather you granted it, three days ago.  I
trust none of you was indiscreet." Furtive glances were exchanged.. "Oh,
you were,, he said.. "That's a pity.  Let's hope it didn't have time to
communicate. any of its findings to its overlords.. "What's done's done,"
McGann said, 'and we must all bear some part of the responsibility.

including you, Oscar.  You should have shared your suspicions with us."
"Would you have believed me?" Oscar replied.. "I didn't believe it
myself at first, until I started to notice little changes in Dowd."

"Why you?" Shales said.. "That's what I want to know.  Why would they
target you for this surveillance unless they thought you were more
susceptible than the rest of us?  Maybe they thought you'd join them.

Maybe you have."

"As usual, Hubert, you're too self-righteous to see your own frailties,"
Godolphin replied.

"How do you know I am the only one they targeted?  Could you swear to me
every one of your circle's above suspicion?

How closely do you watch your friends?  Your family?  Any one of them
might be a part of this conspiracy."

It gave Oscar a perverse joy to sow these doubts.  He saw them taking
root already.  Saw faces that half an hour before had been puffed up
with their own infallibility deflated by doubt.  It was worth the risk
he'd taken with these theatrics, just to see them afraid.  But Shales
wouldn't leave this bone alone.

"The fact remains that this thing was in your employ, he said.

"We've heard enough, Hubert," McGann said softly.

"This is no time for divisive talk.  We've got a fight on our hands, and
whether we agree with Oscar's methods or not - and just for the record,
I don't - surely none of us can doubt his integrity." He glanced around
the table.  There were murmurs of accord on all sides.. "God knows what
a creature like this might have been capable of had it realized its ruse
had been discovered.  Godolphin took a very considerable risk on our
behalf."

"I agree," Lionel said.  He'd come round to Oscar's side of the table
and placed a glass of neat malt whisky in the executioner's freshly
wiped fingers.. "Good man, I say," he remarked.. "I'd have done the
same.  Drink up."

Oscar accepted the glass.. "Salut," he said, downing the whisky in one.

"I see nothing to celebrate," said Charlotte Feaver, the first to sit
down at the table despite what lay upon it.  She lit a fresh cigarette,
expelling the smoke through pursed lips.. "Assuming Godolphin's right,
and this thing was attempting to get access to the Society, we have to
ask why."

"Ask away," Shales said drily, indicating the corpse.. "He's not going
to be telling us very much.  Which is no doubt convenient for some."

"How much longer do I have to endure this innuendo?" Oscar demanded.

J said we've heard enough, Hubert," McGann remarked.

"This is a democratic gathering," Shales said, rising to challenge
McGann's unspoken authority.. "If I've got something to say

"You've already said it," Lionel remarked with well lubricated vim.. "Now
why don't you just shut up?"

"The point is, what do we do now?" Bloxham said.  He'd returned to the
table, his chin wiped, and was determined to reassert himself following
his unmanly display.. "This is a dangerous time."

"That's why they're here," said Alice.. "They know the

anniversary's coming up and they want to start the whole damn
Reconciliation over again."

"Why try and penetrate the Society?" Bloxham said.

"To put a spoke in our wheels," Lionel said.. "If they know what we're
planning, they can out-manoeuvre us.  By the way, was the tie furiously
expensive?"

Bloxham looked down to see that his silk tie was comprehensively
spattered with puke.

Casting a rancorous look in Lionel's direction, he tore it from his
neck.

"I don't see what they could find out from us anyway," said Alice
Tyrwhitt, in her distracted manner.. "We don't even know what the
Reconciliation is:

"Yes we do," Shales said.. "Our ancestors were trying to put Earth into
the same orbit as Heaven."

"Very poetic," Charlotte remarked.. "But what does that mean in concrete
terms?  Does anybody know? "There was silence.. "I thought not.  Here we
are, sworn to prevent something we don't even understand."

"It was an experiment of some kind," Bloxham said.. "And it failed."

"Were they all insane?" Alice said.

"Let's hope not," Lionel put in.. "Insanity usually runs in the family:

"Well I'm not crazy," Alice said.. "And I'm damn sure my friends are as
sane and normal and human as I am.  If they were anything else, I'd know
it.,

"Godolphin," McGann said.. "You've been uncharacteristically quiet."

"I'm soaking up the wisdom," Oscar replied.

"Have you reached any conclusions?"

"Things go in cycles," he said, taking his time to reply.  He was as
certain of his audience as any man could ever hope to be.. "We're coming
to the end of the millennium.  Reason'll be supplanted by unreason.
Detachment by sentiment.  I think if I were a fledgling esoteric, with a
nose for history, it wouldn't be difficult to turn up details of what
was attempted the experiment as Bloxham called

We'll

it - and maybe get it into my head that the time was right to try
again."

"Very plausible," said McGann.

"Where would such an adept get the information?" Shales enquired.

"Self-taught."

me of any valu. "From what source?  We've got every to buried in the
ground beneath us."

?I

"Every one?" said Godolphin.. "How can we be so sure

of magic

"Because there hasn't been a significant act

was Shales's reply.  I performed on earth in two centuries,. "The
esoterics are powerless; lost.  If there'd been the least

e'd know about it." i sign of magical activity w

"We didn't know about Godolphin's little friend," Char. "I

lotte pointed out, denying Oscar the pleasure of that irony

dropping from his own lips. "Are we even sure the library's intact?"
Charlotte went

on.. "How do we know books haven't been stolen?"

"Who by?" said Bloxham.

"By Dowd, for one.  They've never been properly catalogued.  I know that
Leash woman attempted it, but we

all know what happened to, her."

The tale of the Leash woman was one of the Society's

lesser shames: a catalogue of accidents that had ended in tragedy.  In
essence, the obsessive Clare Leash had taken

it upon herself to make a full account of the volumes in

the Society's possession, and had suffered a stroke while

doing so.  She'd lain for two days on the cellar floor.  By the time she
was discovered, she was barely alive, and

quite without her wits.  She'd survived, however, and

eleven years later was still a resident in a hospice in

Sussex, witless as ever.

"It still shouldn't be that difficult to find out if the place has been
tampered with," Charlotte said.

Bloxham agreed.. "That should be looked into," he said.

"I take it you're volunteering," said McGann.

"And if they didn't get their information from down-1 stairs," Charlotte
said, 'there are other sources.  We don't

believe we have every last book dealing with the Imajica in our hands -
do we?"

"No, of course not," said McGann.. "But the Society's

iV broken the back of the tradition over the years.

The cults in this country aren't worth a damn, we all know that.  They
cobble workings together from whatever they can scrape up.

it's all piecemeal.  Senseless.  None of them have the wherewithal to
conceive of a Reconciliation.  Most of them don't even know what the
Imajica is.  They're putting hexes on their bosses at the bank."

Godolphin had heard similar speeches for years.  Talk of magic in the
Western World as a spent force; self congratulatory accounts of cults
that had been infiltrated, and discovered to be groups of
pseudo-scientists exchanging arcane theories in a language no two of
them agreed upon, or sexual obsessives using the excuse of workings to
demand favours they couldn't seduce from their partners or, most often,
crazies in search of some mythology, however ludicrous, to keep them
from complete psychosis.  But amongst the fakes, obsessives and lunatics
was there perhaps a man who instinctively knew the route to the Imajica?
A natural Maestro, born with something in his genes that made him
capable of re-inventing the workings of the Reconciliation?  Until now
the possibility hadn't occurred to Godolphin - he'd been too preoccupied
by the secret that he'd lived with most of his adult life - but it was
an intriguing, and disturbing, thought

"I believe we should take the risk seriously," he pronounced.. "However
unlikely we think it is."

"What risk?" McGann said.

"That there is a Maestro out there.  Somebody who understands our
forefathers' ambition and is going to find his own way of repeating the
experiment.

Maybe he doesn't want the books.  Maybe he doesn't need the books Maybe
he's sitting at home somewhere, even now, working out the problems for
himself."

"So what do we do?" said Charlotte.

"We purge," said Shales.. "It pains me to say it, but Godol-

phin's right.  We don't know what's going on out there.  We keep an eye
on things from a distance, and we occasionally arrange to have somebody
put under permanent sedation, but we don't purge.  I think we've got to
begin."

"How do we go about that?" Bloxham wanted to know.

100+11   He had a zealot's gleam in his dishwater eyes.

"We've got our allies.  We use them.  We turn over every stone, and if
we find anything we don't like, we kill it.. "We're not an assassination
squad."

"We have the finance to hire one," Shales pointed out.. "And the friends
to cover the evidence if need be.  As I see it, we have one
responsibility: to prevent, at all costs, another attempt at
Reconciliation.  That's what we were born to do."

He spoke with a total lack of melodrama, as though he were reciting a
shopping list.  His detachment impressed the room.  So did the last
sentiment, however blandly it was presented.  Who could fail to be
stirred by the thought of such purpose, reaching back over generations
to the men who had gathered on this spot two centuries before?  A few
bloodied survivors, swearing that they, and their children, and their
children's children, and so on until the end of the world, would live
and die with one ambition burning in their hearts: the prevention of
another such apocalypse.

At this juncture McGann suggested a vote, and one was taken.  There were
no dissenting voices.  The Society was agreed that the way forward lay
in a comprehensive purge of all elements - innocent or not - who might
presently be tampering, or tempted to tamper, with rituals intended to
gain access to so-called Reconciled Dominions.  All conventional
religious structures would be excluded from this sanction, as they were
utterly ineffectual, and presented a useful distraction for some souls
who might have been tempted towards esoteric practices.  The shams and
the profiteers would also be passed over.  The pier-end palmists and
fake psychics,

the spiritualists who wrote new concertos for dead composers, and
sonnets for poets long since dust - all these would be left untouched.

It was only those who stood a chance of tripping over something
Imajical, and acting upon it, that would be rooted out.  It would be an
extensive and sometimes brutal business, but the Society was the equal
of the challenge.

This was not the first purge it had masterminded (though it would be the
first of this scale); the structure was in place for an invisible but
comprehensive cleansing.  The cults would be the prime targets: their
acolytes would be dispersed, their leaders bought off or incarcerated.

It had happened before that England had been sluiced clean of every
significant esoteric and thaumaturgist.  Now it would happen again.

"Is the business of the day concluded?" Oscar asked.. "Only Mass calls
me."

"What's to be done with the body?" Alice Tyrwhitt asked.

Godolphin had his answer ready and waiting.

"It's my mess and I'll clear it up," he said, with due humility.. "I can
arrange to have it buried in a motorway tonight, unless anybody has a
better idea?"

There were no objections.. "Just as long as it's out of here," Alice
said.

"I'll need some help to wrap it up and get it down to the car.  Bloxham,
would you oblige?"

Reluctant to refuse, Bloxham went in search of something to contain the
carcass.

"I see no reason for us to sit and watch," Charlotte said, rising from
her seat.. "If that's the night's business, I'm going home."

As she headed to the door, Oscar took his cue to sow one last,
triumphant mischief.

"I suppose we'll be all thinking the same thing tonight," he said.

"What's that?" Lionel asked.

"Oh, just that if these things are as good at imitation as they appear
to be, then we can't entirely trust each other

from now on.  I'm assuming we're all still human at the moment, but who
knows what Christmas will bring?"

Half an hour later, Oscar was ready to depart for Mass.  For all his
earlier squeamishness, Bloxham had done well, returning Dowd's guts into
the bowel of the carcass, and mummifying the whole sorry slab in plastic
and tape.  He and Oscar had then lugged the corpse to the lift, and, at
the bottom, out of the Tower to the car.  it was a fine night, the moon
a virtuous sliver in a sky rife with stars.  As ever, Oscar took beauty
where he could find it, and before setting off, halted to admire the
spectacle.

"Isn't it stupendous, Giles?"

"It is indeed!' Bloxham replied.. "It makes my head spin.. "All those
worlds."

"Don't worry," Bloxham replied.. "We'll make sure it never happens."

Confounded by this reply, Oscar looked across at the other man to see
that he wasn't looking at the stars at all, but was still busying
himself with the body.  It was the thought of the coming purge he found
stupendous.

"That should do it," Bloxham said, slamming the boot and offering his
hand for shaking.    A

Glad that he had the shadows to conceal his distaste, Oscar shook it,
and bid the boot goodnight.  Very soon, he knew, he would have to choose
sides, and despite the success of tonight's endeavour, and the security
he'd won with it, he was by no means sure that he belonged amongst the
ranks of the purgers, even though they were certain to carry the day.
But then if his place was not there, where was his place?  This was a
puzzlement, and he was glad he had the soothing spectacle of Midnight
Mass to distract him from it.

Twenty-five minutes later, as he climbed the steps of St
Martin's-in-the-Field, he found himself offering up a little prayer, its
sentiments not so very different from those of the carols this
congregation would presently be singing.  He prayed that hope was
somewhere out there

in the city tonight, and that it might come into his heart, and scour
him of his doubts and confusions; a light that would not only burn in
him, but would spread throughout the Dominions, and illuminate the
Imajica from one end to the other.  But if such a divinity was near, he
prayed that the songs had it wrong, because sweet as tales of Nativity
were, time was short, and if hope was only a babe tonight then by the
time it had reached redeeming age the worlds it had come to save would
be dead.

CHAPTER TWELVE ZOO

Taylor Briggs had once told Judith that he measured out his life in
summers.  when his span came to an end, he said, it would be the summers
he remembered, and mongst them.  counting them, count himself blessed a
From the romances of his youth to the days of the last great orgies in
the back rooms and bath-houses of New York and San Francisco, he could
recall his career in love by sniffing the sweat from his armpits.

Judith had envied him at the time.

Like Gentle, she had difficulty remembering more than ten years of her
past.  She had no recollection of her adolescence whatsoever, nor her
childhood; could not picture her parents, nor even name them.  This
inability to hold on to history didn't much concern her (she knew no
other), until she encountered somebody like Taylor, who took such
satisfaction from memory.  She hoped he still did; it was one of the few
pleasures left to him.

She'd first heard news of his sickness the previous July, from his lover
Clem.  Despite the fact that he and Taylor had lived the same high life
together, the plague had h passed Clem by, and Jude had spent several
nights wit him talking through the guilt he felt at what he saw as an
undeserved escape.  Their paths had diverged through the autumn months,
however, and she was surprised to find an invitation to their Christmas
party awaiting her Mi _1 when she got back from New York.  Still feeling
delicate after all that had happened, she'd rung up to decline, only to
have Clem quietly tell her that Taylor was not.  expected to see another
spring, never mind another summer.  would she not come, for his sake?
She of course

accepted.  If any of her circle could make good times of bad it was
Taylor and Clem, and she owed them both her best efforts in that
endeavour.  Was it perhaps because she'd had so many difficulties with
the heterosexual males in her life that she relaxed in the company of
men for whom her sex were not contested terrain?

At a little after eight in the evening of Christmas Day, Clem opened the
door and ushered her in, claiming a kiss beneath the sprig of mistletoe
in the hallway before, as he put it, the barbarians were upon her.  The
house had been decorated as it might have been a century earlier,
tinsel, fake snow and fairy lights forsaken in favour of evergreen, hung
in such abundance around the walls and mantelpieces that the rooms were
half-forested.  Clem, whose youth had outrun the toll of years for so
long, was not such a healthy sight.  Five months before he'd looked a
fleshy thirty in a flattering light.  Now he looked ten years older at
least, his bright welcome and flattery unable to conceal his fatigue.

"You wore green," he said as he escorted her into the lounge.. "I told
Taylor you'd do that.  Green eyes, green dress."

"Do you approve?"

"Of course!  We're having a pagan Christmas this year.  Dies Natalis
Solis Inviaus."

"What's that?"

"The Birth of the Unconquered Sun," he said.. "The Light of the World.
We need a little of that right now.

"Do I know many people here?" she said, before they stepped into the hub
of the party.

"Everybody knows you, darling," he said fondly.. "Even the people who've
never met you."

There were many faces she knew awaiting them, and it took her five
minutes to get across to where Taylor was sitting, lord of all he
surveyed, in a well-cushioned chair close to the roaring fire.  She
tried not to register the shock she felt at the sight of him.  He'd lost
almost all of what had once been a leonine head of hair, and every spare

ounce of substance from the face beneath.  His eyes, which had always
been his most penetrating feature (one of the many things they'd had in
common), seemed enormous now, as though to devour in the time he had
left the sights his demise would deny him.  He opened his arms to her.

"Oh, my sweet," he said.. "Give me a hug.  Excuse me if I don't get up."

She bent and hugged him.  He was skin and bone; and cold, despite the
fire close by.

"Has Clem got you some punch?" he asked.

"I'm on my way," Clem said.

"Get me another vodka while you're at it," Taylor said, imperious as
ever.

"I thought we'd agreed -' Clem said.

"I know it's bad for me.  But staying sober's worse.

"It's your funeral," Clem said, with a bluntness Jude I found shocking.
But he and Taylor eyed each other with a kind of adoring ferocity, and
she saw in the look how Clem's cruelty was part of their mechanism for
dealing with this tragedy.

"You wish," Taylor said.. "I'll have an orange juice.  No, make that a
Virgin Mary.  Let's be seasonal about it.. "I thought you were having a
pagan celebration," Jude said as Clem headed away to fetch the drinks.

"I don't see why the Christians should have the Holy Mother," Taylor
said.. "They don't know what to do with her when they've got her.  Pull
up a chair, sweetie.  I heard a rumour you were in foreign climes."

"I was.  But I came back at the last minute.  I had some problems in New
York."

"Whose heart did you break this time?"

"It wasn't that kind of problem."

"Well?" he said.. "Be a telltale.  Tell Taylor."

This was a bad joke from way back, and it brought a smile to Judith's
lips.  It also brought the story, which she'd come here swearing she'd
keep to herself.

"Somebody tried to murder me," she said.

"You're jesting," he replied.

"I wish I was."

"What happened?" he said.. "Spill the beans.  I like hearing other
people's bad news just at the moment.  The worse, the better."

She slid her palm over Taylor's bony hand.. "Tell me how you are first:

"Grotesque," he said.. "Clem's wonderful, of course, but all the tender
loving care in the world won't make me healthy.

I have bad days and good days.  Mostly bad lately.  I am, as my ma used
to say, not long for this world." He glanced up.

"Look out, here comes Saint Clemence of the Bed Pan.  Change the
subject.  Clem, did Judy tell you somebody tried to kill her?"

"No.  Where was this?"

"In Manhattan?"

"A mugger?"

"No."

"Not someone you knew? "Taylor said.

Now she was on the point of telling the whole thing, and she wasn't sure
she wanted to.

But Taylor had an anticipatory gleam in his eye, and she couldn't bear
to disappoint him.  She began, her account punctuated by exclamations of
delighted incredulity from Taylor, and she found herself rising to her
audience as though this story were not the grim truth but a preposterous
fiction.  Only once did she lose her momentum, when she mentioned
Gentle's name, and Clem broke in to say that he'd been invited tonight.
Her heart tripped, and took a beat to get back into its rhythm.

"Tell the rest," Taylor was exhorting her.. "What happened?"

She went on with her story, but now, with her back to the door, she
found herself wondering every moment if he was stepping through it.  Her
distraction took its toll on the narrative.  But then perhaps a tale
about murder told by the prey was bound to predictability.  She wrapped
it up with undue haste.

"The point is, I'm alive," she said.

"I'll drink to that," Taylor replied, passing his un sipped Virgin Mary
back to Clem.

"Maybe just a splash of vodka?"

he pleaded.. "I'll take the consequences."

Clem gave a reluctant shrug, and claiming Jude's empty glass, wended his
way back through the crowd to the drinks table, giving Jude an excuse
for turning round and scanning the room.  Half a dozen new faces had
appeared since she'd sat down.  Gentle was not amongst them.

"Looking for Mister Right? "Taylor said.. "He's not here

yet."

She looked back to meet his amusement.

"I don't know who you're talking about," she said.

"Mr Zacharias."

"What's so funny?"

"You and him.  The most talked-about affair of the last decade.  you
know, when you mention him, your voice changes.  It gets-'

"Venomous."

Row

"Breathy.  Yearning."

,I don't yearn for Gentle."

my mistake," he said archly.. "Was he good in bed?"

"I've had better."

"You want to know something I never told anybody?" He leaned forward,
the smile becoming more pained.  She thought it was his aching body that
brought the frown to his brow, until she heard his words.. "I was in
love with Gentle from the moment I met him.  I tried everything to get
him into bed.  Got him drunk.  Got him high.  Nothing worked.  But I
kept at him, and about six years ago -'

Clem appeared at this juncture, supplying Taylor and Jude with
replenished glasses before heading off to welcome a fresh influx of
guests.

"You slept with Gentle?" Jude said.

"Not exactly.  I mean, I sort of talked him into letting me give him a
blow-job.  He was very high.  Grinning that grin of his.  I used to
worship that grin.  So there I am,"

Taylor went on, as lascivious as he'd ever been when recounting his
conquests, 'trying to get him hard, and he starts ...  I don't know how
to explain this ...  I suppose he began speaking in tongues.  He was
lying back on my bed with his trousers round his ankles and he just
started to talk in some other language. Nothing vaguely recognizable.

It wasn't Spanish.  It wasn't French.  I don't know what it was.  And
you know what?  I lost my hard-on, and he got one." He laughed
uproariously, but not for long.  The laugh went from his face, as he
began again.. "You know I was a little afraid of him suddenly.  I was
actually afraid.  I couldn't finish what I'd started.

I got up and left king him to it, lying there with his dick sticking up,
spca nd in tongues." He claimed her drink from her hand, a took a
throatful.  The memory had clearly shaken him.  There was a mottled rash
on his neck, and his eyes were glistening.

"Did you ever hear anything like that from him?" She shook her head.. "I
only ask because I know you broke up very quickly.  I wondered if he'd
freaked you out for some reason."

"No.  He just fucked around too much."

Taylor made a non-committal grunt, then said. "I get these night-sweats
now, you know, and I have to get up sometimes at three in the morning
and let Clem change the sheets.  I don't know whether I'm awake or
asleep half the time.  And all kinds of memories are coming back to me.
Things I haven't thought about in years.  0 the of them was that.  I can
hear him, when I'm standing there in a pool of sweat.

Hear him talking like he's possessed.. "And you don't like O'

"I don't know," he said.. "Memories mean different things to me now.  I
dream about my mother, and it's like I want to crawl back into her and
be born all over again.  I dream about Gentle, and I wonder why I let
all these mysteries in my life go.  Things it's too late to solve now.
Being in love.  Speaking in tongues.  It's all one in the end.  I
haven't understood any of it." He shook his head, and

shook down tears at the same time.. "I'm sorry," he said.. "I always get
maudlin at Christmas.

Will you fetch Clem for me?

I need the bathroom.. "Can't I help?"

"There's some things I still need Clem for.  Thanks anyway.. "No
problem.. "And for listening."

She threaded her way to where Clem was chatting, and discreetly informed
him of Taylor's request.

"You know Simone, don't you?" Clem said by way of an exit, and left Jude
to talk.

She did indeed know Simone, though not well, and after the conversation
she'd just had with Taylor, she found it difficult to whip up a social
souffle.  But Simone was almost flirtatiously excessive in her
responses, unleashing a gurgling laugh at the merest hint of a cue, and
fingering her neck as though to mark the places she wanted kissed.  Jude
was silently rehearsing a polite refusal, when she caught Simone's
glance, ill concealed in a particularly extravagant laugh, flitting
towards somebody elsewhere in the crowd.  irritated to be cast as a
stooge for the woman's vamping, she said:

"Who is he?"

"Who's who?" Simone said, flustered and blushin. "Oh, I'm sorry.  It's
just some man who keeps staring at me.

Her gaze went back to her admirer, and as it did so Jude was seized by
the utter certainty that if she were to turn now it would be Gentle's
stare she intercepted.  He was here, and up to his stale old tricks,
threading himself J-, a little string of gazes ready to pluck the
prettiest when he tired of the game.

"Why don't you just go near and talk to him," she said.

"I don't know if I should."

"You can always change your mind if a better offer comes along."

"Maybe I will," Simone said, and without making any

further attempt at conversation she took her laugh elsewhere.

Jude fought the temptation to follow her progress for fully two seconds,
then glanced round.  Simone's wooer was standing beside the Christmas
tree, smiling a welcome at his object of desire as she breasted her way
through the crowd towards him.  It wasn't Gentle, after all, but a man
she thought she remembered as Taylor's brother.  Oddly relieved, and
irritated at herself for being so, she headed towards the drinks table
for a refill, then wandered out into the hallway in search of some
cooler air.  There was a cellist on the half-landing, playing In the
Bleak Midu4nter, the melody and the instrument it was played upon
combining to melancholy effect.  The front door stood open, and the air
through it raised goose bumps.  She went to close it, only to have one
of the other listeners discreetly whisper:

"There's somebody being sick out there." She glanced into the street.
There was indeed somebody sitting on the edge of the pavement, in the
posture of one resigned to the dictates of his belly: head down, elbows
on his knees, waiting for the next surge.  Perhaps she made a sound.
Perhaps he simply felt her gaze on him.  He raised his head, and looked
round.

"Gentle.  What are you doing out here?"

"What does it look like?" He hadn't looked too pretty last time she'd
seen him, but he looked a damn sight worse now.

Haggard, unshaven and waxy with nausea.

"There's a bathroom in the house."

"There's a wheelchair up there," Gentle said, with an almost
superstitious look.. "I'd prefer to be sick out here." He wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand.  It was virtually covered in paint.  So
was the other, she now saw; and his trousers, and his shirt.

"You've been busy."

He misunderstood.. "I shouldn't have drunk anything," he said.

"Do you want me to get you some water?"

"No, thanks.  I'm going home.  Will you say goodbye to Taylor and Clem
for me?  I can't face going back in.  I'll disgrace myself." He got to
his feet, stumbling a little.. "We don't seem to meet under very
pleasant circumstances, do we?" he said.

"I think I should drive you home.  You'll either kill yourself or
somebody else."

"It's all right," he said, raising his painted hands.. "The roads are
empty.  I'll be fine." He started to rummage in his pocket for his car
keys.

"You saved my life, let me return the favour."

He looked up at her, his eyelids drooping.. "Maybe it wouldn't be such a
bad idea."

She went back inside to say farewell on behalf of herself and Gentle.
Taylor was back in his chair.  She caught sight of him before he saw
her.  He was staring into the middle distance, his eyes glazed.  it
wasn't sorrow she read in his expression, but a fatigue so profound it
had wiped all feeling from him, except, maybe, regret for unsolved
mysteries.  She went to him, and explained that she'd found Gentle and
that he was sick, and needed taking

home"t he going to come and say goodbye?" Taylor said.. "Isn

"I think he's afraid of throwing up all over the carpet, or you, or
both."

"Tell him to call me.  Tell him I want to see him soon." He took hold of
Jude's hand, holding it with surprising strength.. "Soon, tell him."

"I will."

"I want to see that grin of his, one more time.. "There'll be lots of
times," she said.

He shook his head.. "Once will have to do," he replied softly.

She kissed him, and promised she'd call to say she got home safely.  On
her way to the door she met Clem and once again made her apologies and
farewells.

"Call me if there's anything I can do," she offered.

"Thanks, but I think it's a waiting game."

"Then we can wait together."

"Better just him and me," Clem said.. "But I will call." He glanced
towards Taylor, who was once more staring at nothing.. "He's determined
to hold on till spring.  One more spring, he keeps saying.  He never
gave a fuck about crocuses till now." Clem smiled.. "You know what's
wonderful?" he said.. "I've fallen in love with him all over again."

"That is wonderful:

"And now I'm going to lose him, just when I realize what he means to me.
You won't make that mistake, will you?" He looked at her hard.. "You
know who I mean." She nodded.

"Good.  Then you'd better take him home."

The roads were as empty as she'd predicted, and it took only fifteen
minutes to get back to Gentle's studio.  He wasn't exactly coherent.

On the way, the exchanges between them were full of gaps and
discontinuities, as though his mind were running ahead of his tongue, or
behind it.  Drink wasn't the culprit.  Jude had seen Gentle drunk on all
forms of alcohol: it made him roaring, randy and sanctimonious by turns.
Never like this, with his head back against the seat, his eyes closed,
talking from the bottom of a pit.  One moment he was thanking her for
looking after him, the next he was telling her not to mistake the paint
on his hands for shit.  It wasn't shit, he kept saying, it was burnt
umber, and Prussian blue, and cadmium yellow, but somehow when you mixed
colours together, any colours, they always came out looking like shit
eventually.  This monologue dwindled into silence, from which, a minute
or two later, a new subject emerged.

"I can't look at him, you know, the way he is.  .

"Who?" Jude said.

"Taylor.  I can't look at him when he's so sick.  You know how much I
hate sickness."

She'd forgotten.  It amounted to a paranoia with him, A ' d his A
fuelled perhaps by the fact that though he treated

body with scant regard for its health he not only never.  sickened but
hardly aged.  Doubtless the collapse, when it came, would be calamitous:
excess, frenzy and the passage of years taking their toll in one fell
swoop.  Until that time he wanted no reminders of his physical frailty.
"Taylor's going to die, isn't he?" he said.

"Clem thinks very soon."

Gentle gave a heavy sigh.. "I should spend some time with him.  We were
good friends once.. "There were rumours about you two.. "He spread them,
not me.. "Just rumours, were they?. "What do you think?"

"I think you've probably tried every experience that swam by at least
once."

"He's not my type Gentle said, not opening his eyes.

"You should see him again," she said.. "You've got to face up to falling
apart sooner or later.

It happens to us all."

"Not to me it won't.  When I start to decay, I'm going to kill myself. I
swear." He made fists of his painted hands, and raised them to his face,
drawing the knuckles down over his cheeks.. "I won't let it happen," he
said.

"Good luck," she replied.

They drove the rest of the way without any further exchange between
them, his passive presence on the passenger seat beside her making her
uneasy.  She kept thinking of Taylor's story and expecting him to start
talking, unleashing a stream of lunacies.  It wasn't until she announced
that they'd arrived at the studio that she realized he'd fallen asleep.
She stared at him awhile: at the smooth dome of his forehead, and the
delicate configuration of his lips.  It was still in her to dote on him,
no

so

question of that.  But what lay that way?  Disappointment and frustrated
rage.  Despite Clem's words of encouragement she was almost certain it
was a lost cause.

She shook him awake, and asked him if she could use his bathroom before
going on her way.  The punch was heavy in her bladder.

He was hesitant, which surprised her.  The suspicion dawned that he'd
already moved a female companion into the studio, some seasonal bird to
be stuffed for Christmas and dumped by New Year.  Curiosity made her
press to be allowed in.  Reluctant as he was, he could scarcely say no,
of course, and she traipsed up the stairs after him, wondering as she
went what the conquest was going to look like, only to find that the
studio was empty.  His sole companion was the painting that had so
filthied his hands.  He seemed genuinely upset that she'd set eyes on
it, and ushered her to the bathroom more discomfited than if her first
suspicions had been correct, and one of his conquests had indeed been
disporting herself on the threadbare couch.  Poor Gentle.  He was
getting stranger by the day.

She relieved herself, and emerged from the toilet to find the painting
covered with a stained sheet, and him looking furtive and fidgety,
clearly eager to have her out of the place.  She saw no reason not to be
plain with him, and said. "Working on something new?. "Nothing much," he
said.

"I'd like to see.. "It's not finished.. "It doesn't matter to me if it's
a fake," she said.. "I know what you and Klein get up to."

"It's not a fake," he said, a fierceness in his voice and face she'd not
seen so far tonight.. "It's mine."

"An original Zacharias?" she remarked.. "This I have to see."

She reached for the sheet before he could stop her, and flipped it up
over the top of the canvas.  She'd only had a glimpse of the picture as
she'd entered, and from some

distance.  Up close, it was clear he'd worked on the canvas with no
little ferocity.  There were places where it had been punctured, as
though he'd stabbed it with his palette knife or brush; other places
where the paint was laid on with glutinous abandon, then thumbed and
fingered to drive it before his will.  All this to achieve the likeness
of what?  Two people, it seemed, standing face to face against a brutal
sky, their flesh white, but shot through with jabs of livid colour.

Who are they?" she said.

"They?" he said, sounding almost surprised that she'd read the image
thus, then covering his response with a shrug.. "Nobody," he said, 'just
an experiment," and pulled the sheet back down over the painting.

"Is it a commission?"

"I'd prefer not to discuss it," he said.

His discomfort was oddly charming.  He was like a child who'd been
caught about some secret ritual.. "You're full of surprises," she said,
smiling.

"Nah, not me."

Though the painting was out of sight he continued to look ill at ease,
and she realized there was going to be no further discussion on the
picture or its import.

"I'll be off then," she said.

"Thanks for the lift," he replied, escorting her to the door.

"Do you still want to have that drink?" she said.

"You're not going back to New York?"

"Not immediately.  I'll call you in a couple of days.  Don't forget
Taylor."

"What are you, my conscience?" he said, with too small a trace of humour
to soften the weight of the reply.. "I won't forget."

"You leave marks on people, Gentle.  That's a responsibility you can't
just shrug off."

"I'll try to be invisible from now on," he replied.

He didn't take her to the front door, but let her head down the stairs
alone, closing the studio door before she'd

taken more than half a dozen steps.  As she went, she

wondered what misbegotten instinct had made her suggest drinks.  Well,
it was easily slipped out of, even as sunt- 0i

ing he remembered the suggestion had been made, which

she doubted.

Once out in the street she looked up at the building to

see if she could spot him through the window.  She had

to cross the road to do so, but from the opposite pavement

she could see him standing in front of the painting, which

he had once again unveiled.  He was staring at it, with his

head slightly cocked.  She couldn't be certain, but it

.1 looked as though his lips were moving; as though he

were talking to the image on the canvas.  What was he i saying, she
wondered.  Was he coaxing some image forth

from the chaos of paint?  And if so, in which of his many J tongues was
he speaking?

Bill,

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She had seen two people where he'd painted one.  Not a.  he, a she or an
it, but they.  She'd looked at the image and seen past his conscious
intention to a buried purpose, one he'd hidden even from himself.

Now he went back to the canvas and looked at it again, with borrowed
eyes, and there they were, the two she'd seen.

In his passion to capture some impression of Pie'oh'pah, he had painted
the assassin stepping from shadow (or back into it), a stream of
darkness running down the middle of his face and torso.  It divided the
figure from top to bottom, and its

outer edges, ragged and lush, described the reciprocative forms of
profiles, etched in white from the halves of what y stared at each he'd
intended to be a single face.  The other like lovers, eyes looking
forward in the Egyptian manner, the backs of their heads folded into
shadow.  The question was: who were these two?  What had he been trying
to express setting these faces thus, nose to nose?

He interrogated the painting for several minutes after she'd gone,
preparing as he did so to attack the canvas again.  But when it came to
doing so, he lacked the strength.  His hands were trembling, his palms
clammy; 5i his eyes could only focus upon the image indifferently well.
He retreated from the picture, afraid to touch it in this weakened state
for fear he- undo what little he'd already achieved.  A painting could
escape so quickly.  A few inept strokes and a likeness (to a face, to
another painter's work) could flee the canvas and never be recaptured.
Better to leave it alone tonight.  To rest, and hope he was strong
tomorrow.

He dreamed of sickness.  Of lying in his bed, naked beneath a thin white
sheet, shivering so hard his teeth chattered.  Snow fell from the
ceiling intermittently, and didn't melt when it touched his flesh,
because he was colder than the snow.  There were visitors in his
sickroom, and he tried to tell them how cold he was, but he had no power
in his voice, and the words came out as gasps, as though he were
struggling for his last breath.  He began to fear that this dream
condition was fatal; that snow and breathlessness would bury him.  He
had to act.  Rise up from the hard bed and prove these mourners
premature.

With painful slowness, he moved his hands to the edge of the mattress in
the hope of pulling himself upright, but the sheets were slick with his
final sweat, and he couldn't get a firm hold.  Fear turned to panic,
despair bringing on a new round of gasps, more desperate than the last.
He struggled to make his situation plain, but the door of his sickroom
stood wide now and all the mourners had disappeared through it.  He
could hear them in another room, talking and laughing.  There was a
patch of sun on the threshold, he saw.  Next door it was summer.  Here,
there was only the heart-stopping cold, taking a firmer grip on him by
the moment.  He gave up attempting Lazarus, and instead let his palms
lie flat on the sheets, and his eyes flutter closed.  The sound of
voices from the next room softened to a murmur.

The noise of his heart dwindled.

New sounds rose to replace it, however.  A wind was gusting outside, and
branches thrashed at the windows.  Somebody's voice rose in prayer,
another simply sobbed.  What grief was this?  Not his passing, surely.

He was too minor to earn such lamentation.  He opened his eyes again.
The bed had gone, so had the snow.  Lightning threw into silhouette a
man who stood watching the storm.

"Can you make me forget?" Gentle heard himself saying.. "Do you have the
trick of that?"

"Of course," came the soft reply.. "But you don't want it."

"No, what I want's death, but I'm too afraid of that

tonight.  That's the real sickness: fear of death.  But I can live with
forgetfulness, give me that."

"For how long?"

"Until the end of the world."

Another lightning flash burned out the figure in front of him, and then
the whole scene.

Gone; forgotten, Gentle blinked the after-image of window and silhouette
out of his eyes, and in doing so passed between sleep and i

waking.

The room was cold, but not as icy as his deathbed.  He sat upright,
staring first at his unclean hands, then at the window.  It was still
night, but he could hear the sound of vehicles on the Edgware Road,
their murmur reassuring.  Already - distracted by sound and sight the
nightmare was fading.  He was happy to lose it.

He shrugged off the bedclothes and went to the kitchen to find himself
something to drink.  There was a carton of milk in the refrigerator.  He
downed its contents - though Fred the milk was ready to turn - aware
that his churned system would probably reject it in short order.
Quenched, he wiped his mouth and chin and went through to look at the
painting again, but the intensity of the dream from which he'd just
woken made a mockery of his efforts.  He would not conjure the assassin
by this crude magic.  He could paint a dozen canvases, a hundred, and
still not capture the ambiguities of Pie'oh'pah.  He belched, bringing
the taste of bad milk back up into his mouth.  What was he to do?  Lock
himself away, and let this sickness in him - put there by the sight of
the assassin - consume him?  Or bathe, sweeten himself, and go out to
find some faces to put between him and the memory?  Both vain
endeavours.  Which left a third, distressing route.  To find Pie'oh'pah
in the flesh: to face him, question him, have his fill of him, until
every ambiguity was scoured away.

He went on staring at the painting while he turned this option over.
What would it take to find the assassin?  An interrogation of Estabrook,
for one.  That wouldn't be too onerous a duty.  Then a search of the
city, to find the

"AAA;

place Estabrook had claimed he couldn't recall.  Again, no great
hardship.  Better than sour milk and sourer dreams.

Knowing that in the light of morning he might lose his present clarity
of mind, and it was best to close off at least one route of retreat, he
went to the paints, and squeezed on to his palm a fat worm of cadmium
yellow, and worked it into the still wet canvas.  It obliterated the
lovers immediately, but he wasn't satisfied until he'd covered the
canvas from edge to edge.  The colour fought for its brilliance, but it
soon deteriorated, tainted by the darkness it was trying to obscure.  By
the time he'd finished, it was as if his attempt to capture Pie'oh'pah
had never been made.

Satisfied, he stood back and belched again.  The nausea had gone from
him.  He felt strangely buoyant.  Maybe sour milk suited him.

Pie'oh'pah sat on the step of his trailer, and stared up at the night
sky.  In their beds behind him, his adopted wife and children slept.  In
the heavens above him, the stars were burning behind a blanket of
sodium-tinted cloud.  He had seldom felt more alone in his long life
than now.  Since returning from New York he had been in a state of
constant anticipation.

Something was going to happen to him and his world, but he didn't know
what.  His ignorance pained him, not simply because he was helpless in
the face of this imminent event, but because his inability to grasp its
nature was testament to how his skills had deteriorated.  The days when
he could read futurities off the air had gone.  He was more and more a
prisoner of the here and now.  That here, the body he occupied, was also
less than its former glory.

It was so long since he'd corresponded the way he had with Gentle,
taking the will of another as the gospel of his flesh, that he'd almost
lost the trick of it.  But Gentle's desire had been potent enough

body still reverberated wi to remind him, and his     th echoes of their
time together.

Though it had ended badly he didn't regret snatching those minutes.
Another such encounter might never come.

He wandered from his trailer towards the perimeter of the encampment.
The first light of dawn was beginning to ecit CU the murk.  One of the
camp mongrels, back from a night of adventuring, squeezed between twq
sheets of corrugated iron and came wagging to his side.  He stroked the
dog's snout, and tickled behind its battle-ravaged ears, wishing he
could find his way back to his home and master so easily.

It was the oft-stated belief of Esmond Bloom Godolphin, the late father
of Oscar and Charles, that a man could never have too many bolt-holes,
and of E.B.G."s countless saws this was the only one Oscar had been
significantly influenced by.  He had not less than four places of
occupation in London.  The house in Primrose Hill was his chief
residence, but there was also a pied d terre in Maida Vale, a smallish
flat in Notting Hill, and the location he was presently occupying: a
windowless warehouse concealed in a maze of derelict and near-derelict
properties near the river.

It was not a place he was particularly happy to frequent, especially not
on the day after Christmas, but over the years it had proved a secure
haven for Dowd's two associates, the voiders, and it now served as a
Chapel of Rest for Dowd himself.  His naked corpse lay beneath a shroud
on the cold concrete, with aromatic herbs, picked and dried on the
slopes of the Jokalaylau, smouldering in bowls at his head and feet,
after the rituals proscribed in that region.  The voiders had shown
little interest in the arrival of their leader's body.  They were
functionaries - incapable of anything but the most rudimentary thought
processes.  They had no physical appetites: no desire, no hunger or
thirst, no ambition.  They simply sat out the days and nights in the
darkness of the warehouse and waited for Dowd to instruct them.  Oscar
was less than comfortable in their company, but could not bring himself
to leave until this business was finished.  He'd brought a book to read:
a cricket almanac that he found soothing to peruse.  Every now and then
he'd get up and refuel the bowls.  Otherwise there was little to do but
wait.

It had already been a day and a half since he'd made such a show of
taking Dowd's life: a performance of which he was justly proud.  But the
casualty that lay before him was a real loss.  Dowd had been passed down
the line of Godolphin for two centuries, bound to them until the end of
time or Joshua's line, whichever came first.

And he had been a fine manservant.  Who else could mix a whisky and soda
so well?  Who else knew to dry and Powder between Oscar's toes with
especial care, because he was prone to fungal infections there?  Dowd
was irreplaceable, and it had pained Oscar considerably to take the
brutal measures circumstance had demanded.  But he'd done so knowing
that while there was a slim possibility that he would lose his servant
forever, an entity such as Dowd could survive a disembowelling as long
as the rituals of Resurrection were readily and' precisely followed.
Oscar was not in ignorance of those rituals.  He'd spent many lazy
Yzordderrexian evenings on the roof of Peccable's house, watching the
tail of the Comet disappear behind the towers of the Autarch's palace,
talking about the theory and practice of Imajical fe its writs,
pneurnas, uredos and the rest.

He knew the oils to pour into Dowd's carcass, and what blossoms to burn
around the body.

He even had in his treasure room a phonetic version of the ritual, set
down by Peccable himself, in case Dowd was ever harmed.  He had no idea
how long the process would take, but he knew better than to peer beneath
the sheet to see if the bread of life was rising.  He could only bide
his time, and hope held done all that was necessary.

At four minutes past four, he had proof of his precision.

A choking breath was drawn beneath the sheet, and a second later Dowd
sat up.  The motion was so sudden, and - after such a time - so
unexpected, Oscar panicked, his chair tipping over as he rose, the
almanac flying from his hand.  He'd seen much in his time that the
people of the Fifth would call miraculous, but not in a dismal room like
this, with the commonplace world grinding on its way outside the door.
Composing himself, he searched for a word of welcome, but his mouth was
so dry he could have blotted a letter with his tongue.  He simply
stared, gaping and amazed.

Dowd had pulled the sheet off his face and was studying the hand with
which he'd done so, his face as empty as the eyes of the voiders sitting
against the opposite wall.

I've made a terrible error, Oscar thought.  I've brought back the body,
but the soul's gone out of him; oh Christ, what now?

Dowd stared on, blankly.  Then, like a puppet into which a hand had been
inserted, bringing the illusion of life and independent purpose to
senseless stuff, he raised his head, and his face filled with
expression.

It was all anger.  He narrowed his eyes, and bared his teeth as he
spoke.

"You did me a great wrong," he said.. "A terrible wrong." Oscar worked
up some spittle, thick as mud.. "I did what I deemed necessary," he
replied, determined not to be cowed by the creature.  It had been bound
by Joshua never to do a Godolphin harm, much as it might presently wish
to.

"What have I ever done to you that you humiliate me that way?" Dowd
said.

"I had to prove my allegiance to the Tabula Rasa.  You understand why."

"And must I continue to be humiliated?" he said.. "Can I not at least
have something to wear?"

"Your suit's stained."

"It's better than nothing," Dowd replied.

floor a few feet from where

The garments lay on the

Dowd sat, but he made no move to pick them up.  Aware that Dowd was
testing the limits of his master's remorse, but willing to play the game
for a while at least, Oscar

picked up the clothes and lay them within Dowd's reach.

"I knew a knife wasn't going to kill you," he said.

"It's more than I did," Dowd replied.. "But that's not the point.  I
would have entered the game with you if that's what you'd wanted.
Happily; slavishly.  Entered and died for you." His tone was that of a
man deeply and inconsolably affronted.

"Instead you conspire against me.  You make me suffer like a common
criminal."

"I couldn't afford for it to look like a charade.  If they'd suspected
it was stage-managed -'

"Oh I see," Dowd replied.  Unwittingly Oscar had caused even greater
offence with this justification.. "You didn't trust my act orly
instincts.  I've played every lead Quexos wrote.  Comedy, tragedy,
farce.

And you didn't trust me to carry off a petty little death-scene!'

"All right, I was mistaken."

"I thought the knife stung badly enough.  But this ...

"Please, accept my apologies.  It was crude and hurtful.  What can I do
to heal the harm, eh?  Name it, Dowdy.  I feel I've violated the trust
between us and I have to make good.  Whatever you want, just name it."
Dowd shook his head.. "It's not as easy as that.. "I know.  But it's a
start.  Name it." Dowd considered the offer for a full minute, staring n
at Oscar but the blank wall.  Finally, he said. "I'll start with the
assassin, Pie'oh'pah.. "What do you want with a mystif?. "I want to
torment it.  I want to humiliate it.  And finally, I want to kill it."
"Why?. "You offered me whatever I wanted.  Name it, you said.

I've named it.. "Then you have carte blanche to do whatever you wish,"
Oscar said.  'is that all?. "For now," Dowd said.. "I'm sure something
more will occur.  Death's put some strange ideas in my head.  But I'll
name them, as time goes by."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

J While it was to prove difficult for Gentle to prise from Estabrook the
details of the night-journey that had taken him to Pie'oh'pah, it was
not as difficult as getting in to see the man in the first place.  He
went to the house around noon, to find the curtains at all the windows
meticulously drawn.  He knocked and rang the bell for several minutes,
but there was no reply.  Assuming Estabrook had gone out for a
constitutional, he left off his attempt and went to find something to
put into his stomach, which after being so thoroughly scorned the night
before was echoing with its own emptiness.  It was Boxing Day, of
course, and there was no caM or restaurant open, but he located a small
supermarket managed by a family of Pakistanis, who were doing a fine
trade supplying Christians with stale bread to break.

Though the stock had disappeared from many of the shelves the store
still had a tempting parade of toothdecayers, and Gentle left with
chocolate, biscuits and cake to satisfy his sweet tooth.  He found a
bench, and sat down to subdue his hunger.  The cake was too moist and
heavy for his taste, so he broke it up into pieces and threw it to the
pigeons his meal had attracted.

The news soon spread that there was sustenance to be had, and what had
been an intimate picnic quickly turned into a squabbling match.  in lieu
of loaves and fishes to subdue the mob, Gentle tossed the rest of his
biscuits into the midst of the, feasters, and returned to Estabrook's
house content with his chocolate.  As he approached he saw a motion at
one:"!, of the upper windows.  He didn't bother to ring and knol," this
time, but simply called up at the window.

n

up!'

When there was no sign of Estabrook obliging, he let his voice ring out
a little louder.

There was very little competition from traffic, this being a holiday.
His call was a clarion.

"Come on, Charlie, open up, unless you want me to tell the neighbours
about our little deal."

The curtain was drawn aside this time, and Gentle had his first sight of
Estabrook.  A glimpse only, for the curtain was dropped back into place
a moment later.  Gentle waited, and just as he was about to start his
haranguing afresh heard the front door being unbolted.  Estabrook
appeared, barefoot and bald.  The latter was a shock.

Gentle hadn't known the man wore a toupee.  Without it his face was as
round and as white as a plate, his features set upon it like a child's
breakfast.

Eggs for eyes, a tomato nose, sausage lips; all swimming in a grease of
fear.

"It's time we talked," Gentle said, and without waiting for an
invitation, stepped inside.

He pulled no punches in his interrogation, making it plain from the
outset that this was no social call.  He needed to know where to find
Pie'oh'pah, and he wasn't going to be fobbed off with excuses.  To aid
Estabrook's memory he'd brought a battered street map of London.  He set
it down on the table between them.

"Now," he said.. "We sit here until you've told where you went that
night.  And if you lie to me I swear I'm going to come back and break
your neck."

Estabrook didn't attempt any obfuscation.  His manner was that of a man
who had passed many days in terror of a sound upon his step, and was
relieved now that it had come, that his caller was merely human.  His
egg eyes were perpetually on the verge of breaking, and his hands
trembled as he flipped the pages of the gazetteer, murmuring as he did
so that he was sure of nothing, but he would try to remember.  Gentle
didn't press too hard, but

"I want a word, Charlie!  I know you're in there.  ope

It

let the man make the journey again in memory, running back and forth
over the map as he did so.

is finger back   . "A F       Al

They'd driven through Lambeth, he said, then Ken- ington and Stockwell.
He didn't remember grazing Clap- n

ham Common, so he assumed they'd driven to the east

of it, towards Streatham Hill.  He remembered a church, and sought out a
cross on the map that would mark the place.

There were several, but only one close to the other landmark he
remembered, the railway line.  At this point, he said he could offer
nothing more by way of directions, only a description of the place
itself: the corrugated iron perimeter, the trailers, the fires.

"You'll find it," he said.

"I'd better," Gentle replied.

He'd so far told Estabrook nothing about the circumstances that had
brought him back here, though the man had several times asked if Judith
was alive and well.  Now

ir he asked again.

"Please tell me," he said.. "I've been straight with you, I

w she is?" swear I have.  Won't you please tell me ho

"She's alive and kicking," Gentle said.

"Has she mentioned me at all?  She must have done

tell her I still love her?"

What did she say?  Did you     If

"Tell her yourself.

"I'm not your pimp," Gentle said.

you can get her to talk to you."

"What am I going to do?" Estabrook said.  He took hold expert with

women, aren't of Gentle's arm.. "You're an

you?  Everybody says so.  What can I do to make amends?

iL

"She'd probably be satisfied if you sent her your balls," Gentle said.
"Anything less wouldn't be appropriate."

You think it's funny."

S

"Trying to have your wife killed?  No, I don't think that very amusing.
Changing your mind, and wanting everything lovey-dovey again: that's
hysterical."

"You wait till you love somebody the way I love Judith.  if you're
capable of that, which I doubt.  You wait until you want somebody so
badly your sanity hangs on it.

You'll learn."

Gentle didn't rise to the remark.  It was too close to his present state
to be fully confessed, even to himself.  But once out of the house, map
in hand, he couldn't suppress a smile of pleasure that he had a way
forward.  It was already getting gloomy, as the midwinter afternoon
closed its fist on the city.  But darkness loved lovers, even if the
world no longer did.

At midday, with his unease of the previous night allayed not one jot,
Pie'oh'pah had suggested to Theresa that they should leave the
encampment.  The suggestion wasn't met with enthusiasm.  The baby was
sick with sniffles, and had not stopped wailing since she'd woken; the
other child was feverish too.  This was no time to be going away,
Theresa said, even if they had somewhere to go, which they didn't. We'll
take the trailer with us, Pie replied; we'll just drive out of the city.
To the coast, maybe, where the children would benefit from the leaner
air.  Theresa liked that idea.

Tomorrow, she said, or the day after, but not now.

Pie pressed the case, however, until she asked him what he was so
nervous about.  He had no answer to give; at least none that she'd care
to hear.  She understood nothing of his nature, nor questioned him about
his past.  He was simply a provider.  Someone who put food in the mouths
of her children, and his arms around her at night.  But her question
still hung in the air, so he answered it as best he could.

"I'm afraid for us," he said.

"It's that old man, isn't it?"  Theresa replied.. "The one who came to see
you?  Who was he?. "He wanted a job doing.. "And you did if. "No."

"Soyouthinkhe'sgoingtocomeback'shesaid."We'U

et the dogs on him."

It was healthy to hear such plain solutions, even if as now - they
didn't answer the

problem at hand.  H* mystif soul was sometimes too readily drawn to the
arnw-C, guities

that mirrored his true self.  But she chastened hinll'; reminded him
that he'd taken a face and

a function, and, in this human sphere, a sex; that as far as she was
cerned he belonged in the

fixed world of children, c -1

d; and orange peel.  There was no room for poetry in sucstraitened
circumstances; no time between hard dawn and uneasy dusk for the luxury
of doubt

or speculation

Now another of those dusks had fallen, and Theresa was putting her
cherished ones to bed in the

trailer.  The v sleig well.  He had a spell that he'd kept polished from
the claim, of his power: a

way of speaking prayers into a pillow WA that they'd sweeten the
sleeper's dreams.  His Maestro

had asked for its comfort often, and Pie used it still, two hundred
years later.

Even now Theresa

was laying her children's heads upon down suffused with cradlesongs,
secreted there to guide

them from the dark world into the bright.

The mongrel he'd met at the perimeter in the predawn gloom was barking
furiously, and he

went out to calm it.  Seeing him approach it pulled on its chain,
scrabbling at the dirt to be closer

to him.  Its owner was a man Pie had little contact with; a
short-tempered Scot who brutalized

the dog when he could catch it.  Pie went down on his haunches to hush
the creature, for fear its

din would bring its owner out from his supping.  The dog obeyed, but
continued to paw at Pie

fretfully, clearly wanting to be loosed from its leash.

"What's wrong, buster?" he said to it, scratching behind its war-torn
ears.. "Have you got a lady

out there?"

He looked up towards the perimeter as he spoke, and caught the
fleeting glimpse of a figure stepping into

shadow behind one of the trailers.  The dog had seen the

i

interloper too.  It set up a new round of barking.  Pie stood up again.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

A sound at the other end of the encampment claimed his attention in
omentarily; water splashing on the ground.  No, not water.  The stench
that reached his nostrils was that of petrol.  He looked back towards
his own trailer.

Theresa's shadow was on the blind, her head bared as she turned off the
night-light beside the children's bed.  The stench was coming from that
direction too.  He reached down and released the dog.

"Go, boy!  Go!  Go!'

It ran barking at a figure slipping out through a gap in the fence.  As
it went Pie started towards his trailer, yelling Theresa's name.

Behind him, somebody shouted for him to shut up out there, but the
curses were unfinished, erased by the boom and bloom of fire, twin
eruptions that lit the encampment from end to end.  He heard Theresa
scream; saw flame surge up and around his trailer.  The spilled fuel was
only a fuse.  Before he'd covered ten yards the mother lode exploded
directly under the vehicle, the force sufficient to lift it off the
ground and pitch it on its side.

Pie was blown over by a solid wave of heat.  By the time he'd scrabbled
to his feet the trailer was a solid sheet of flame.  As he pitched
himself through the baking air towards the pyre he heard another sobbing
cry, and realized it was his own; a sound he'd forgotten his throat
could make, but which was always the same, grief on grief.

Gentle had just sighted the church which had been Estabrook's last
landmark when a sudden day broke on the street ahead, as though the sun
had come to burn the night away.  The car in front of his veered
sharply, and he was only able to prevent a collision by mounting the
pavement, bringing his own car to a juddering halt inches short of the
church wall.

He got out, and headed towards the fire on foot, turn- V inga corner to
head directly into the smoke, which veered and veered again as he ran,
allowing him only glimpses of his destination.  He saw a corrugated iron
fence, and beyond it a host of caravans, most of which were already
ablaze.  Even if he'd not had Estabrook's description to confirm that
this was indeed Pie'oh'pah's home, the fact of its destruction would
have marked to out.  Death had preceded him here, like his shado thrown
forward by a blaze at his back that was even,,; brighter than the one
that lay ahead.  His knowledge of this other cataclysm, the one behind,
had been a part 06 the business between himself and the assassin from
the'l beginning.  It had flickered in their first exchanges on Fifth
Avenue; it had lit the fury that had sent him to debate with the canvas;
and it had burned brightest in his dreams, in that room he'd invented
(or remembered) where he'd begged Pie for forgetfulness.  What had they
experienced together that had been so terrible he'd wanted to forget his
whole life rather than live with the fact?  Whatever it was, it was
somehow echoed in this new calamity, and he wished to God he could have
his forgetfulness undone, and know what crime he'd committed that
brought upon innocents such punishment as this.

The encampment was an inferno, wind fanning flames that in turn inspired
new wind, with flesh the toy of both.  He had only piss and spittle
against this conflagration uselessly - but he ran on towards it anyway,
his eyes streaming as the smoke bit at them, not knowing what hope of
survival he had, only certain that Pie was somewhere in this firestorm
and to lose him now would be tantamount to losing himself.

There were some escapees; but a pitiful few.  He ran past them towards
the gap in the fence through which they'd escaped.  His route was by
turns clear and confounded, as the wind brought choking smoke in his
direction then carried it away again.  He pulled off his leather

jacket and threw it over his head as primitive protection against the
heat, then ducked through the fence.  There was solid flame in front of
him, making the way forward impassable.  He tried to his left, and found
a gap between two blazing vehicles.  Dodging between them, the smell of
singeing leather already sharp in his nostrils, he found himself in the
middle of the compound, a space relatively free of combustible material,
and thus of fire.  But on every side, the flames had hold.

Only three of the caravans weren't blazing, and the veering wind would
soon carry the flame in their direction.  How many of the inhabitants
had fled before the flames took hold he couldn't know, but it was
certain there'd be no further escapees.

The heat was nearly unbearable.  It beat upon him from every side,
cooking his thoughts to incoherence.  But he held on to the image of the
creature he'd come to find, determined not to desert the pyre until he
had that face in his hands, or knew beyond doubt it was ash.

A dog appeared from the smoke, barking hysterically.  As it ran past him
a fresh eruption of fire drove it back the way it had come, its panic
escalating.  Having no better route, he chased its tail through the
chaos, calling Pie's name as he ran, though each breath he took was
hotter than the last, and after a few such shouts the name was a rasp.
He'd lost the dog in the smoke, and all sense of direction at the same
time.  Even if the way was still clear he no longer knew where it lay.

The world was fire on every side.

Somewhere up ahead he heard the dog again, and thinking now that maybe
the only life he'd claim from this horror was the hound's, he ran in
search of it.  Tears were pouring from his smoke-stung eyes; he could
barely focus on the ground he was stumbling across.  The barking had
stopped again, leaving him without a beacon.  There was no way to go but
forward, hoping the silence didn't mean the dog had succumbed.  it
hadn't.  He spotted it ahead of him now, cowering in terror.

As he drew a breath to call it to him he saw the figure beyond it,
stepping from the smoke.

The fire had taken its toll on Pie'oh'pah, but he was at least alive.
His eyes, like Gentle's, streamed.  There was blood at his mouth, and
neck, and in his arms, a forlorn bundle.

A child.

"Are there more?" Gentle yelled.

Pie's reply was to glance back over his shoulder, towards a heap of
debris that had once been a trailer.  Rather than draw another
lung cooking breath to reply, Gentle started towards this bonfire, but
was intercepted by Pie, who passed over the child in his arms.

"Take her," he said.

Gentle threw aside his jacket, and took the child.

"Now get out," Pie said.. "I'll follow."

He didn't wait to see his instruction obeyed, but turned back towards
the debris.

Gentle looked down at the child he was carrying.  She was bloody and
blackened; surely dead.  But perhaps life could be pumped back into her
if he was quick.  What was the fastest route to safety?  The way he'd
come was blocked now, and the ground ahead littered with burning
wreckage.  Between left and right, he chose left, because he heard the
incongruous sound of somebody whistling somewhere in the smoke: at least
proof that breath could be drawn in that direction.

The dog came with him, but only for a few steps.  Then it retreated
again, despite the fact that the air was cooler by the step, and a gap
in the flames was visible ahead.  Visible, but not empty.  As Gentle
headed for the place a figure stepped out from behind one of the
bonfires.  It was the whistler, still practising his craft, though his
hair was burning and his hands, raised in front of him, were smoking
ruins.  He turned his head as he walked, and looked at Gentle.

The tune he whistled was charm less but it was sweet beside the stare he
had.  His eyes were like mirrors, reflecting the fires: they flared and
smoked.  This was the fire-setter, he realized; or one of them.  That
was why it

whistled as it burned, because this was its paradise.  it didn't attempt
to lay its carbonized hands on either Gentle or the child, but walked on
into the smoke, turning its stare back towards the blaze as it did so,
leaving Gentle's route to the perimeter clear.  The cooler air was
heady; it dizzied him, made him stumble.  He held on tight to the child,
his only thought now to get it out into the street, in which endeavour
he was aided by two masked firemen who'd seen his approach and came to
meet him now, arms outstretched.  One took the child from him, the other
bore him up as his legs gave way beneath him.

"There's people alive in there!" he said, looking back towards the fire.
"You've got to get them out!'

His rescuer didn't leave his side till he'd got Gentle through the fence
and into the street.

Then there were other hands to take charge.

Ambulance attendants with stretchers and blankets, telling him that he
was safe now and everything would be all right.  But it wasn't, not as
long as Pie was in the fire.  He shrugged off the blanket and refused
the oxygen mask they were ready to clamp to his face, insisting that he
wanted no help.  With so many others in need they didn't waste time
attempting to persuade him, but went to aid those who were sobbing and
shrieking on all sides.  They were the lucky ones, who had voices to
raise.  He saw others being carried past who were too far gone to
complain, and still others lying beneath makeshift shrouds on the
pavement, blackened limbs jutting out here and there.  He turned his
back on this horror and began to make his way around the edge of the
encampment.

The fence was being torn down to allow the hoses, which thronged the
street like mating snakes, access to the fire.  The engines pumped and
roared, their reeling blue lights no competition for the fierce
brightness of the fire itself.

By that blaze he saw that a substantial crowd had gathered to watch.
They raised a cheer as the fence was toppled, sending plagues of
fire-flies up as it fell.  He

moved on as the firefighters advanced into the conflagration, bringing
their hoses to bear on the heart of the fire.  By the time he'd made a
half circuit of the site, and was standing opposite the breach they'd
made, the flames were already in retreat in several places, smoke and
steam replacing their fury.  He watched them gain ground from J, his new
vantage point, hoping for some glimpse of life, until the appearance of
another two machines and a further group of firefighters drove him on
around the perimeter, back to the place from which he'd emerged.

There was no sign of Pie'oh'pah, either being carried from the blaze or
standing amongst those few survivors who, like Gentle, had refused to be
taken away to be tended.  The smoke issuing from the fire's steady
defeat, was thickening, and by the time he got back to the row of bodies
on the pavement - the number of which had doubled - the whole scene was
barely visible through the pall.  He looked down at the shrouded forms.
Was one of them Pie'oh'pah?  As he approached the nearest of them a hand
was laid on his shoulder, and he turned to face a policeman whose
features were those of a boy soprano, smooth and troubled.

"Aren't you the one who brought out the kid?, he said.

"Yes Is she all right?"

"I'm sorry, mate.  I'm afraid she's dead.  Was she your kid?"

He shook his head.. "There was somebody else.  A black guy with long
curly hair.  He had blood on his face.  Has he come out of there?"

Formal language now. "I haven't seen anybody of that description."

Gentle looked back towards the bodies on the pavement.

"It's no use looking there," the policeman said.. "They're all black
now, whatever colour they started out." ,I have to look," Gentle said.

"I'm telling you it's no use.  You wouldn't recognize

J

them.  Why don't you let me put you in an ambulance?

You need seeing to."

"No.  I have to keep looking, "Gentle said, and was about to move off
when the policeman took hold of his arm.

"I think you'd be better away from the fence, sir," he said.. "There's
some danger of explosions.. "But he could still be in there."

"If he is, sir, I think he's gone.  There's not much chance of anybody
else coming out alive.

Let me take you to the police line.  You can watch from there."

Gentle shook off the man's hold.

"I'll go," he said.. "I don't need an escort."

it took an hour for the fire to be finally brought under control, by
which time it had little left to consume.  During that hour all Gentle
could do was wait behind the cordon and watch, as the ambulances came
and went, ferrying the last of the injured away, and then taking the
bodies.  As the boy soprano had predicted, there were no further victims
brought out, dead or alive, though Gentle waited until all but a few
late arrivals amongst the crowd had left, and the fire was almost
completely doused.  only when the last of the firefighters emerged from
the crematorium, and the hoses were turned off, did he give up hope.  It
was almost two in the morning.  His limbs were burdened with exhaustion,
but they were light beside the weight in his chest.  To go heavy-hearted
was no poet's conceit: it felt as though the pump had turned to lead,
and was-bruising the plush meat of his innards.

As he wandered back to his car he heard the whistling again, the same
tuneless sound floating on the dirty air.  He stopped walking, and
turned to all compass points looking for the source, but the whistler
was already out of sight, and Gentle was too weary to give chase.  Even
if he had, he thought, even if he'd caught it by its lapels and
threatened to break its burned bones, what purpose would that have
served?  Assuming it had been moved by his threat (and pain was probably
meat and drink to   J a creature that whistled as it burned) he'd be no
more

rehend its reply than interpret Chant's letter: able to comp and for
similar reasons.  They were both escapees from the same unknown land,
whose borders he'd grazed when he'd gone to New York; the same world
that held the God Hapexamendios, and had given birth to Pie'oh'pah.
Sooner or later he'd find a way to gain access to that state, and when
he did all the mysteries would come clear: the whistler, the letter, the
lover.

He might mornings in the even solve the mystery that he met most shaving
mirror; the face he thought he knew well enough 4 until recently, but
whose code he now realized he'd for gotten, and would not now remember
without the help of undiscovered gods.

Back in the house in Primrose Hill, Godolphin sat up news bulletins
through the night and listened to the reporting the tragedy.  The number
of dead rose every more victims had already perished in hospital.  hour;
two Theories were being advanced everywhere as to the cause of the fire,
pundits using the event to comment on the lax ants camped, safety
standards applied to sites where itiner and demanding a full
Parliamentary enquiry to prevent f such a conflagration.

a repeat o

The reports appalled him.  Though he'd given Dowd leash enough to
dispatch the mystif and who knew what hidden agenda lay there?  - the
creature had abused the freedom he'd been granted.  There would have to
be punishment meted out for such abuse, though Godolphin was in no mood
to plot that now.  Held bide his time; choose his moment.  it would
come.

Meanwhile, Dowd's violence seemed to him further evidence of a
disturbing pattern.  Things he'd thought immutable were changing.  Power
was slipping from the possession of those who'd traditionally held it,
into the hands of underlings - fixers,

'a' familiars and functionaries who were ill equipped to

- I

use it.  Tonight's disaster was symptomatic of that.  But the disease
had barely begun to take hold.  Once it spread through the Dominions
there'd be no stopping it.  There had already been uprisings in Vanaeph
and L'Himby, there were mutterings of rebellion in Yzorddeffex; now
there was to be a purge here in the Fifth Dominion, organized by the
Tabula Rasa, a perfect background to 11 Dowd's vendetta, and its bloody
consequences.  Everywhere, signs of disintegration.

Paradoxically the most chilling of those signs was superficially an
image of reconstruction: that of Dowd recreating his face so that if he
were seen by any member of the Society he'd not be recognized.  It was a
process he'd undertaken with each generation, but this was the first
time any Godolphin had witnessed said process.  Now Oscar thought back
on it he suspected Dowd had deliberately displayed his transformative
powers, as further evidence of his new-found authority.  It had worked.
Seeing the face he'd grown so used to soften and shift at the will of
its possessor was one of the most distressing spectacles Oscar had set
eyes upon.  The face Dowd had finally fixed was sans mustache and
eyebrows, the head sleeker than his other, and younger: the face that of
an ideal National Socialist.  Dowd must also have caught that echo,
bdcause he later bleached his hair, and bought several new suits, all
apricot, but of a much severer cut than those he'd worn in his earlier
incarnation.  He sensed the instabilities ahead as well as Oscar; he
felt the rot in the body politic, and was readying himself for a New
Austerity.

And what more perfect tool than fire, the bookbumer's joy, the
soul-cleaner's bliss?  Oscar shuddered to contemplate the pleasure Dowd
had taken from his night's work, callously murdering innocent human
families in pursuit of the mystif.  He would return to the house, no
doubt, with tears on his face, and say he regretted the hurt he'd done
to the children.  But it would be a performance, a sham.  There was no
true capacity for grief

or regret in the creature, and Oscar knew it.  Dowd was deceit
incarnated, and from now on Oscar knew he had to be on his guard.  The
comfortable years were over.  Hereafter he would sleep with his bedroom
door locked.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In her rage at his conspiracies Jude had contemplated several possible
ways to revenge herself upon Estabrook, ranging from the bloodily
intimate to the classically detached.  But her nature never ceased to
surprise her.  All thoughts of garden shears and prosecutions dimmed in
a short time, and she came to realize that the worst harm she could do
him - given that the harm he'd intended to do her had been stopped in
its tracks - was to ignore him.  Why give him the satisfaction of her
least interest in him?

From now on he would be so far beneath her contempt as to be invisible.
Having unburdened herself of her story to Taylor and Clem, she sought no
further audience.  From now on she wouldn't sully her lips with his
name, or let her thoughts dally with him for two consecutive seconds. At
least that was the pact she made with herself.  it proved difficult to
keep.  On Boxing Day she received the first of what were to be many
calls from him, which she resolutely cut short the instant she
recognized his voice.  It wasn't the authoritative Estabrook she'd been
used to hearing, and it took her three exchanges before she realized who
was on the other end of the line, at which point she put down the
receiver and let it lie un cradled for the rest of the day.  The
following morning he called again, and this time, just in case he was in
any doubt, she told him:

"I don't ever want to hear your voice again," and once more cut him off.

When she'd done so she realized he'd been sobbing as he spoke, which
gave her no little satisfaction, and the hope that he wouldn't try
again.  A frail hope; he called

twice that evening, leaving messages on her answering machine while she
was out a t a party flung by Chester Klein.  There she heard news of
Gentle, to whom she hadn't spoken since their odd parting at the studio.
Chester, who was much the worse for vodka, told her la inly he expected
Gentle to have a full-blown nervous P breakdown in a short time.  He'd
spoken to the Bastard Boy twice since Christmas, and he was increasingly
incoherent.

"What is it about all you men?" she found herself saying.. "You fall
apart so easily."

"That's because we're the more tragic of the sexes," Chester returned.
"God, woman, can't you see how we suffer?"

"Frankly, no."

"Well, we do.  Take it from me.  We do."

"Is there any particular reason, or is it just free-form suffering?"

"We're all sealed up," Klein said, 'nothing can get in."

"So are women.  What's the

"Women get tucked," Klein interrupted, pronouncing the word with a
drunken ripeness.

"Oh, you bitch about it, but you love it.  Go on, admit it.  You love
it."

"So all men really want is to get fucked, is that it? Jude said.. "Or
are you just talking personally?"

This brought a ripple of laughter from those who'd given up their
chit-chat to watch the fireworks.

"Not literally," Klein spat back.. "You're not listening to -A me."

"I'm listening.  You're just not making any sense."

"Take the Church

"Fuck the Church!'

"No, listen!" Klein said, teeth clenched.. "I'm telling God' honest
fucking truth here.  Why do you think me! invented the Church, huh?

Huh?"

His bombast had infuriated Jude to the point where' she refused to
reply.  He went on, unperturbed, talking pedantically, as if to a slow
student.

men invented the Church so that they could bleed for christ.  So that
they could be entered by the Holy Spirit.  So that they could be saved
from being sealed up." His lesson finished, he leaned back in his chair,
raising his glass.

"In vodka veritas," he said.

in vodka shit," Jude replied.

"Well, that's just typical of you, isn't it?" Klein slurred.. "As soon
as you're fucking beaten you start the insults." she turned from him,
shaking her head dismissively.  But he still had a barb in his armoury.

"Is that how you drive the Bastard Boy crazy?" he said.  she turned back
on him, stung.

"Keep him out of this," she snapped.

"You want to see sealed up?" Klein said.. "There's your example.  He's
out of his head, you know that?"

"Who cares?" she said.. "If he wants to have a nervous breakdown, he can
have one."

"How very humanitarian of you."

She stood up at this juncture, knowing that she was perilously close to
losing her temper completely.

"I know the Bastard Boy's excuse," Klein went on.. "He's anaemic.  He's
only got enough blood for his brain or his prick.  if he gets a hard-on,
he can't remember his own name."

"I wouldn't know," Jude said, swilling the ice around in her glass.

"Is that your excuse, too?" Klein went on.. "Have you got something down
there you haven't been telling us about?"

"If I had," she said. "You'd be the last to know."

And so saying, she deposited her drink, ice and all, down the front of
his open shirt.

she regretted it afterwards, of course, and she drove home trying to
invent some way of making peace with him without apologizing.

Unable to think of any she decided to let it lie.  She'd had arguments
with Klein before, drunk and sober.  They were forgotten after a month;
two at most.

Highly

She got in to find more messages from Estabrook awaiting her.  He wasn't
sobbing any more.  His voice was a colourless dirge, delivered from what
was clearly genuine despair.  The first call was filled with the same
pleas sheA heard before.  He told her he was losing his mind without
her, and needed her with him.  Wouldn't she at least talk to him, let
him explain himself?  The second call was less coherent.  He said she
didn't understand how many secrets he had; how he was smothered in
secrets and it was killing him.  Wouldn't she come back to see him, he
said, even if it was just to collect her clothes?

That was probably the only part of her exit-scene she would rewrite if
she could play it over again.  In her rage she'd left a goodly
collection of personal items, jewellery and clothes, in Estabrook's
possession.  Now she imagined him sobbing over them, sniffing them, God
knows, even wearing them.  But peeved as she was not to have taken them
with her, she was not about to bargain for them now.

There would come a time when she felt calm enough to go back and empty
the cupboards and the drawers, but not quite yet.

There were no further calls after that night.  With the New Year almost
upon her, it was time to turn her attention to the challenge of earning
a crust come January.  She'd given up her job at Vandenburgh's when
Estabrook had proposed marriage, and she'd enjoyed his money freely
while they were together, trusting - naively, no doubt - that if they
ever broke up he'd deal with her in an honourable fashion.

She hadn't anticipated either the profound unease that had finally
driven her from his side (the sense that she was almost owned, and that
if she stayed with him a moment longer she'd never unshackle herself)
nor the vehemence of his revenge.  Again, there'd come a time when she
felt able to deal with the mutual mud-slinging of a divorce, but, like
the business with the clothes, she wasn't ready for that turmoil yet,
even though she could hope for some monies from such a

settlement.  In the meanwhile, she had to think about employment.

Then, on December thirtieth, she received a call from Estabrook's
lawyer, Lewis Leader, a man she'd met only once, but who was memorable
for his loquaciousness It was not in evidence on this occasion, however.
He Signalled what she assumed was his distaste for her desertion of his
client with a manner that teetered on the rude.  Did she know, he asked
her, that Estabrook had been hospitalized?

When she told him that she didn't, he replied that though he was sure
she didn't give a damn he'd been charged with the duty of informing her.
She asked him what had happened.  He briskly explained that Estabrook
had been found in the street in the early hours of the twenty eighth
wearing only one item of clothing.  He didn't specify what.

"Is he hurt?" she asked.

"Not physically," Leader replied.

"But mentally he's in a bad state.  I thought you ought to know, even
though I'm sure he wouldn't want to see you."

"I'm sure you're right," Jude said.

"For what it's worth," Leader said, 'he deserved better than this:

He signed off with that platitude, leaving Jude to ponder on why it was
that the men she mated with turned out to be crazy.  Just two days
earlier she'd been predicting that Gentle would soon be in the throes of
a nervous breakdown.  Now it was Estabrook who was under sedation.  Was
it her presence in their lives that drove them to it, or was the lunacy
in their blood?  She contemplated calling Gentle at the studio, to see
that he was all right, but decided against it.  He had his painting to
make love to, and she was damned if she was going to compete for his
attention with a piece of canvas.

One useful possibility did spring from the news Leader had brought. With
Estabrook in hospital, there was nothing to stop her visiting the house
and picking up her belongings.  It was an apt project for the last day
of

December.  She'd gather the remnants of her life from the lair of her
husband, and prepare to begin the New Year alone.

He hadn't changed the lock, perhaps in the hope that she'd come back one
night and slip into bed beside him.  But as she entered the house she
couldn't shake the feeling of being a burglar.  It was gloomy outside,
and she switched on all the lights, but the rooms seemed to resist
illumination, as though the smell of spoiled food, which was pungent,
was thickening the air.

She braved the kitchen in search of something to drink before she began
her packing, and found plates of rotting food stacked on every surface,
most of them barely picked at.  She opened first a window and then the
refrigerator, where there were further rancid goods.  There was also ice
and water.  She put both into a clean glass, and set about her work.

There was as much disarray upstairs as down.  Estabrook had apparently
lived in squalor since her departure, the bed they'd shared a swamp of
filthy sheets, the floor littered with soiled linen.  There was no sign
of any of her clothes amongst these heaps however, and when she went
through to the adjacent dressing room she found them all hanging in
place, untouched.  Determined to be done with this distasteful business
in as short a time as possible she found herself a set of suitcases, and
proceeded to pack.  It didn't take long.  With that labour performed she
emptied her belongings from the drawers, and packed those.  Her
jewellery was in the safe downstairs, and it was there she went once
she'd finished in the bedroom, leaving the cases by the front door to be
picked up as she left.  Though she knew where Estabrook kept the key to
the safe, she'd never opened it herself.  It was a ritual he'd demanded
be rigorously observed that on a night when she was to wear one of the
pieces he'd

given her he'd first ask her which she favoured, then go and get it from
the safe and put it around her neck, or wrist, or slip it through the
lobe of her ear himself.  With hindsight, a blatant piece of power-play.
She wondered what kind of fugue state she'd been in when sharing his
company, that she'd endured such idiocies for so long.  Certainly the
luxuries he'd bestowed upon her had been pleasurable, but why had she
played his game so passively?  It was grotesque.

The key to the safe was where she'd expected it to be, secreted at the
back of the desk drawer in his study.  The safe itself was behind an
architectural drawing on the study wall, several elevations of a
pseudo-classical folly the artist had simply marked as the Retreat.  It
was far more elaborately framed than its merit deserved, and she had
some difficulty lifting it.  But she eventually succeeded and got into
the safe it had concealed.

There were two shelves, the lower crammed with papers, the upper with
small parcels, amongst which she assumed she would find her belongings.
She took everything out, and laid it all on the desk, curiosity
overtaking the desire to have what was hers and be gone.  Two of the
packages clearly contained her jewellery, but the other three were far
more intriguing, not least because they were wrapped in a fabric as fine
as silk, and smelt not of the safe's must, but of a sweet, almost
sickly, spice.

She opened the largest of them first.  It contained a manuscript, made
up of vellum pages sewn together with an elaborate stitch.  it had no
cover to speak of, but seemed to be an arbitrarily arrayed collection of
sheets, their subject an anatomical treatise, or at least so she first
assumed.  On second glance she realized it was not a surgeon's manual at
all, but a pillow book, depicting love-making positions and techniques.
Leafing through it she sincerely hoped the artist was locked up where he
could not attempt to put these fantasies into practice.  Human flesh was
neither malleable nor protean enough to recreate what his brush and ink
had set on the pages.  There were

couples intertwined like quarrelling squid; others who seemed to have
been blessed (or cursed) with organs and orifices of such strangeness
and in such profusion t

were barely recognizable as human.    hey

She flicked back and forth through the sheets, her I interest returning
her to the double page of illustration at the centre, which was laid out
sequentially.  The first j picture showed a naked man and woman of
perfectly normal appearance, the woman lying with her head on a pillow
while the man knelt between her legs, applying his tongue to the
underside of her foot.  From that innocent beginning, a cannibalistic
union ensued, the male beginning to devour the woman, starting with her
legs, while his partner obliged him with the same act of devotion. Their
antics defied both physics and physique, of course, but the artist had
succeeded in rendering the act without grotesquerie, but rather in the
manner of instructions for some extraordinary magical illusion.  it was
only when she closed the book, and found the images lingering in her
head, that they distressed her, and to sluice them out she turned her
distress into a righteous rage that Estabrook would not only purchase
such bizarri-ties but hide them from her.

Another reason to be well out of his company.

The rest of the packages contained a much more innocent item: what
appeared to be a fragment of statuary the size of her fist.  One facet
had been crudely marked with what could have been a weeping eye, a
lactating nipple or a bud seeping sap.  The other facets revealed the
structure of the block from which the image had been carved.  it was
predominantly a milky blue, but shot through with fine seams of black
and red.  She liked the feel of it in her hand, and only reluctantly put
it down f to pick up the third parcel.  The contents of this were the
prettiest find: half a dozen pea-sized beads, which had been obsessively
carved.  She'd seen oriental ivories worked with this level of care, but
they'd always been behind museum glass.  She took one of them to the

dy it more closely.  The artist had carved window to stu the bead to
give the impression that it was in fact a ball of gossamer thread, wound
upon itself.  Curious, and oddly inviting.

A s she turned it over in her fingers, and over, and over, she found her
concentration narrowing, focusing on the exquisite interweaving of
threads, almost as though there was an end to be found in the ball, and
if she could only grasp it with her mind she might unravel it and
discover some mystery inside.  She had to force herself to look away, or
she was certain the bead's will would have overwhelmed her own, and
she'd have ended up staring at its detail until she collapsed.

She returned to the desk and put the bead back amongst its fellows.
Staring at it so intently had upset her equilibrium somewhat.  She felt
slightly dizzy, the litter she'd left on the desk slipping out of focus
as she rifled through it.  Her hands knew what she wanted, however, even
if her conscious thought didn't.  One of them picked up the fragment of
blue stone, while her other strayed back to the bead she'd relinquished.
Two souvenirs: why not?  A piece of stone and a bead.  Who could blame
her for dispossessing Estabrook of such minor items when he'd intended
her so much harm?  She pocketed them both without further hesitation,
and set about wrapping up the book and the remaining beads and returning
them to the safe.

Then she picked up the cloth in which the fragment had been wrapped,
pocketed that, took the ewellery, and returned to the front door,
turning off the lights as she went.  At the door she remembered she'd
opened the kitchen window, and headed back to close it.  She didn't want
the place burgled in her absence.  There was only one thief who had
right of trespass here, and that was her.

she felt well satisfied with the morning's work, and to a glass of
wine with her spartan lunch treated herself then started unpacking her
loot.  As she laid her hostage clothes out on the bed her thoughts
returned to the pillow book.

She regretted leaving it now; it would have been the perfect gift for
Gentle, who doubtless imagined he'd indulged every physical excess known
to man.  No matter.  She'd find an opportunity to describe its contents
to him one of these days, and astonish him with her memory for
depravity.

Clem interrupted her work.  He spoke so

A call from softly she had to strain to hear.  The news was grim. Taylor
was at death's door, he said, having two days before succumbed to
another sudden bout of pneumonia.  He refused to be hospitalized,
however.  His last wish, he'd said, was to die where he had lived.

sking for Gentle," Clem explained.  I And I've

"He keeps a tried to telephone him but he doesn't answer.  Do you know
if he's gone away?"

"I don't think so," she said.. "I haven't spoken to him

since Christmas Night." Could you try and find him for me?  Or rather
for Taylor.  If you could maybe go round to the studio, and rouse him?
I'd go myself but I daren't leave the house.  I'm afraid as soon as I
step outside - .  ." he faltered, tears in his breath, I want to be here
if anything happens."

of course you do.  And of course I'll go.  Right no. "Thanks.  I don't
think there's much time, Judy." Before

she left she tried calling Gentle, but as Clem had already warned her,
nobody answered.

She gave up after two

attempts, put on her. jacket and headed out to the car.  As she reached
into her pocket for the keys she realized she'd brought the stone and
the bead with her, and some superstition made her hesitate, wondering if
she

should deposit them back inside.  But time was of the essence.  As long
as they remained in her pocket, who

A

was going to see them?  And even if they did, what did it matter?  With
death in the air who was going to care about a few purloined bits and
pieces?

She had discovered the night she'd left Gentle at the studio that he
could be seen through the window if she stood on the opposite side of
the street, so when he failed to answer the door that was where she went
to spy him.  The room seemed to be empty, but the bare bulb was burning.
She waited a minute or so, and he stepped into view, shirtless and
bedraggled.

She had powerful lungs, and used them now, hollering his name.  He
didn't seem to hear at first.  But she tried again, and this time he
looked in her direction, crossing to the window.

"Let me in!" she yelled.. "It's an emergency."

The same reluctance she read in his retreat from the window was on his
face when he opened the door.  If he had looked bad at the party, he
looked considerably worse now.

"What's the problem?" he said.

"Taylor's very sick, and Clem says he keeps asking for you." Gentle
looked bemused, as though he was having difficulty remembering who
Taylor and Clem were.. "You have to get cleaned up and dressed," she
said.

"Furie, are you listening to me?"

She'd always called him Furie when she was irritated with him, and that
name seemed to work its magic now.  Though she'd expected some objection
from him, given his phobia where sickness was concerned, she got none.
He looked too drained to argue, his stare somehow unfinished, as though
it had a place it wanted to rest but couldn't find.  She followed him up
the stairs into the studio.

"I'd better clean up," he said, leaving her in the midst of the chaos
and going into the bathroom.

She heard the shower run.  As ever, he'd left the bathroom door wide
open.  There was no bodily function, to the most fundamental, he'd ever
shown the least embarrassment about, an attitude which had shocked her
at first but which she'd taken for granted after a time, so that she'd
had to re-learn the laws of propriety when she'd gone to live with
Estabrook.

"Will you find a clean shirt for me?" he called through to her.. "And
some underwear?"

It seemed to be a day for going through other people's belongings.  By
the time she'd found a denim shirt and a pair of over washed boxer
shorts, he was out of the shower standing in front of the bathroom
mirror combing his wet hair back from his brow.  His body hadn't changed
since she'd last looked at it naked.  He was as lean as everp-i his
buttocks and belly tight, his chest smooth.  His hooded-, prick drew her
eye; the part that truly gave the lie to Gentle's name.  It was no great
size in this passive state, but it was pretty even so.  if he knew he
was being scrutinized he made no sign of it.  He peered at himself in
the mirror without affection, then shook his head.

"Should I shave?" he said.

"I wouldn't worry about it," she said.. "Here's your clothes." He
dressed quickly, repairing to his bedroom to find a pair of boots,
leaving her to idle in the studio while he did so.  The painting of the
couple she'd seen on Christmas Night had gone, and his equipment -
paints, easel and primed canvases - had been unceremoniously dumped in a
corner.  In their place, newspapers, many of their pages bearing reports
on a tragedy which she had only noted in passing: the death by fire of
twenty-one men, women and children in an arson attack in South London.
She didn't give the reports close scrutiny.  There was enough to mourn
this gloomy afternoon.

Clem was pale, but tearless.  He embraced them both at the front door,
then ushered them into the house.  "he Christmas decorations were still
up, awaiting Twe fth Night, the perfume of pine needles sharpening the a
r.

"Before you see him, Gentle," Clem said. "I should

explain that he's got a lot of drugs in his system, so he drifts in and
out.  But he wanted to see you so badly.. "Did he say why?" Gentle
asked.

"He doesn't need a reason, does he?" Clem said softly.. "Will you stay,
Judy?  If you want to see him when Gentle's been in .  .

I'd like that." While Clem took Gentle up to the bedroom, Jude went
through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, wishing as she did so that
she'd had the foresight to tell Gentle as they drove about how Taylor
had talked of him the week before; particularly the tale about his
speaking in tongues.  It might have provided Gentle with some sense of
what Taylor needed to know from him now.  The solving of mysteries had
been much on Taylor's mind on Christmas Night.

Perhaps now, whether drugged or not, he hoped to winsome last reprieve
from his confusion.  She doubted Gentle would have any answers.  The
look she'd seen him give the bathroom mirror had been that of a man to
whom even his own reflection was a mystery.

Bedrooms were only ever this hot for sickness or love, Gentle thought as
Clem ushered him in; for the sweating out of obsession or contagion.  It
didn't always work, of course, in either case, but at least in love
failure had its satisfactions.  He'd eaten very little since he'd
departed the scene in Streatham, and the stale heat made him feel
light-headed.  He had to scan the room twice before his eyes settled on
the bed in which Taylor lay, so nearly enveloped was it by the soulless
attendants of modern death: an oxygen tank with its tubes and mask; a
table loaded with dressings and towels; another, with a vomit bowl,
bed-pan and towels, and beside them a third, carrying medication and
ointments.  In the midst of this panoply was the magnet that had drawn
them here, who now seemed very like their prisoner.  Taylor was propped
up on plastic-covered pillows, with his eyes closed.  He looked like an
ancient.  His hair was thin, his frame thinner still, the inner life of
his body - bone, nerve and vein painfully visible through skin the
colour of his sheet.  it was all Gentle could do not to turn and flee
before the man's eyes flickered open.  Death was here again, so soon.  A
different heat this time, and a different scene, but he was assailed by
the same mixture of fear and ineptitude he'd felt in Streatham.

He hung back at the door, leaving Clem to approach the bed first, and
softly wake the sleeper.  Taylor stirred, an irritated look on his face
until his gaze found Gentle.  Then the anger at being called back into
pain went from his brow, and he said. "You found him."

"It was Judy, not me," Clem said.

"Oh, Judy.  She's a wonder," Taylor said.  He tried to reposition himself
on the pillow, but the effort was beyond him.

His breathing became instantly arduous, and he flinched at some
discomfort the motion brought.

"Do you want a pain-killer?" Clem asked him.

"No thanks," he said.. "I want to be clear-headed, so Gentle and I can
talk. "He looked across at his visitor, who was still lingering at the
door.. "Will you talk to me for a while, John?" he said.. "Just the two
of us?. "Of course," Gentle said.

Clem moved from beside the bed and beckoned Gentle across.  There was a
chair, but Taylor patted the bed, and it was there Gentle sat, hearing
the crackle of the plastic under sheet as he did so.

"if you need anything," Clem said, th

"Ca      e remark directed not at Taylor but at Gentle.  Then he left
them alone.

"Could you pour me a glass of water?" Taylor asked.

Gentle did so, realizing as he passed it to Taylor that the man lacked
the strength to hold it for himself.  He Pq it to Taylor's lips.  There
was a salve on them, whicW moistened them lightly, but they were still
split, and puffy with sores.

After a few sips Taylor murmured something.

"Enough?" Gentle said.

"Yes, thanks," Taylor replied.  Gentle set the glass down.. "I've had
just about enough of everything.  It's time it was all over."

"You'll get strong again."

"I didn't want to see you so we could sit and lie to each other, "Taylor
said.. "I wanted you here so I could tell you how much I've been
thinking about you.  Night and day, Gentle."

"I'm sure I don't deserve that."

"My subconscious thinks you do, "Taylor replied.. "And, while we're being
honest, the rest of me too.  You don't look as if you're getting enough
sleep, Gentle.. "I've been working, that's all."

"Painting?. "Some of the time.  Looking for inspiration, you know."
"I've got a confession to make," Taylor said.. "But first, you've got to
promise you won't be angry with me.. "What have you done?"

"I told Judy about the night we got together," Taylor said.  He stared
at Gentle as if expecting there to be some eruption.  When there was
none, he went on. "I know it was no big deal to you," he said.. "But
it's been on my mind a lot.

You don't mind, do you?"

Gentle shrugged.. "I'm sure it didn't come as any big surprise to her."

Taylor turned his hand palm up on the sheet, and Gentle took it.  There
was no power in Taylor's fingers, but he closed them round Gentle's hand
with what little strength he had.  His grip was cold.

"You're shaking," Taylor said.

"I haven't eaten in a while," Gentle said.

"You should keep your strength up.  You're a busy man."

"Sometimes I need to float a little bit," Gentle replied.

Taylor smiled, and there in his wasted features was a phantom glimpse of
the beauty he'd had.. "Oh yes," he said.. "I float all the time.  I've
been all over the room.  I've even been outside the window, looking in
at myself.

WY

That's the way it'll be when I go, Gentle.  I'll float off.  only that
one time I won't come back.  I know Clem, s going to miss me - we've had
half a life together - but you and Judy will be kind to him, won't you?
Make him-1 understand how things are if you can.  Tell him how I floated
off.  He doesn't want to hear me talk that way, but you understand.. "I'm
not sure I do."     . "You're an artist," he said.

"I'm a faker."

"Not in my dreams, you're not.  in my dreams you want to heal me, and
you know what I say?  I tell you I don't want to get well.  I say I want
to be out in the light. "That sounds like a good place to be," Gentle
said.

"Maybe I'll join you.. "Are things so bad?  Tell me.  I want to hear."
"MY whole life's fucked, Tay.. "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself.
You're a good

man."

"You said we wouldn't tell lies."   one to

"That's no lie.  You are.  You just need some erwise remind you once in
a while.

Everybody does.  Oth we slip back into the mud, you know?"

Gentle took tighter hold of Taylor's hand.  There was so much in him he
had neither the form nor the comprehension to express.  Here was Taylor
pouring out us heart about love and dreams and how it was going to )e
when he died, and what did he, Gentle, have by way of contribution?  At
best, confusion and forgetfulness.  Which of und himself thinking.  them
was the sicker then, he or Taylor, who was frail but able to speak his
heart?  Or himself, whole but silent?  Determined he wouldn't part from
this man without attempting to share something of what had happened to
him, he fumbled for some words

of explanation.

"think I found somebody," he said.. "Somebody to help me ...  remember
myself."

"That's good."

"I'm not sure," he said, his voice gossamer.. "I've seen some things in
the last few weeks, Tay ...  things I didn't want to believe until I had
no choice.  Sometimes I think I'm going crazy."

"Tell me.  .

"There was someone in New York who tried to kill jude."

"I know.  She told me about it.  What about him?" His eyes widened.. "Is
this the somebody?" he said.

"It's not a he.. "I thought Judy said it was a man."

"It's not a man," Gentle said.. "It's not a woman, either.  It's not
even human, Tay:

"What is it then?"

"Wonderful," he said.  He hadn't dared use a word like that, even to
himself.  But anything less was a lie, and lies weren't welcome here.

"I told you I was going crazy.  But I swear if you had seen the way it
changed ...  it was like nothing on earth."

"And where is it now?"

"I think it's dead," Gentle replied.. "I wasted too long to find it.  I
tried to forget I'd ever set eyes on it.  I was afraid of what it was
stirring up in me.  And then when that didn't work I tried to paint it
out of my system.  But it wouldn't go.  Of course it wouldn't go.  It
was part of me by that time.  And then when I finally went to find it
...  I was too late."

"Are you sure?" Taylor said.  Knots of discomfort had appeared on his
face as Gentle talked, and were tightening.

"Are you all right?. "Yes, Yes," he said.. "I want to hear the rest."
"There's nothing else to hear.  Maybe Pie's out there somewhere, but I
don't know where."

"Is that why you want to float?  Are you hoping -' he stopped, his
breathing suddenly turning into gasps.. "You know, maybe you should
fetch Clem," he said.

"Of course."

Gentle went to the door, but before he reached it Taylor said:

"You've got to understand, Gentle.  Whatever the mystery is, you've got
to see it for us both."

With his hand on the door, and ample reason to beat a hasty retreat,
Gentle knew that he could still choose silence over a reply; could take
his leave of the ancient without accepting the quest.  But that if he
answered, and took it, he was bound.

"I'm going to understand," he said, meeting Taylor's despairing gaze.
"We both are.  I swear."

Taylor managed to smile in response, but it was fleeting.  Gentle opened
the door and headed out on to the landing.

Clem was waiting.

"He needs you," Gentle said.

Clem stepped inside and closed the bedroom door.  Feeling suddenly
exiled, Gentle headed downstairs.  Jude was sitting at the kitchen
table, playing with a piece of rock.

"How is he?" she wanted to know.

"Not good," Gentle said.. "Clem's gone in to look after him.. "Do you
want some tea?"

"No thanks.  What I really need's some fresh air.  I think I'll take a
walk around the block."

There was a fine drizzle falling when he stepped outside, which was
welcome after the suffocating heat of the sickroom.

He knew the neighbourhood scarcely at all, so he decided to stay close
to the house, but his distraction soon got the better of that plan and
he wandered aimlessly, lost in thought and the maze of streets.  There
was a freshness in the wind that made him sigh for escape.  This was no
place to solve mysteries.  After the turn of the year everybody would be
stepping up to a new round of resolutions and ambitions, plotting their
futures like well-oiled farces.  He wanted none of it.

As he began the trek back to the house he remembered that Jude had asked
him to pick up milk and cigarettes

on his journey, and that he was returning empty-handed.  He turned round
and went in search of both, which took him longer than he expected. When
he finally rounded the corner, goods in hand, there was an ambulance
outside the house.

The front door was open.  Jude stood on the step, watching the drizzle.
She had tears on her face.

"He's dead," she said.

He stood rooted to the spot a yard from her.. "When?" he said, as if it
mattered.

"Just after you left."

He didn't want to weep; not with her watching.  There was too much else
that he didn't want to stumble over in her presence.  Stony, he said:

"Where's Clem?"

"With him upstairs.  Don't go up.  There's already too many people."

She spied the cigarettes in his hand, and reached for the packet.  As
her hand grazed his, their grief ran between them.

Despite his intent, tears sprang to his eyes, and he went into her
embrace, both of them sobbing freely, like enemies joined by a common
loss, or lovers about to be parted.  Or else souls who could d not
remember whether they were lovers or enemies, and were weeping at their
own confusion.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Since the meeting at which the subject of the Tabula Rasa's library had
first been raised, Bloxham had several times planned to perform the duty
he'd volunteered him-self for, and go into the bowels of the Tower to
check on the security of the collection.  But he'd twice put off the
task, telling himself that there were more urgent claims on his time:
specifically, the organization of the Society's F

Great Purge.  He might have postponed a third time had the matter not
been raised again, this in a casual aside from Charlotte Feaver, who'd
been equally vociferous about the safety of the books at that first
gathering, and now offered to accompany him on the investigation.

Women baffled Bloxham, and the attraction they exercised over him had
always to be set beside the discomfort he felt in their company, but in
recent days he'd felt an i intensity of sexual need he'd seldom, if
ever, experienced before.  Not even in the privacy of his own prayers
did he dare confess the reason.  The Purge excited him - it roused his
blood and his manhood - and he had no doubt that Charlotte had responded
to this heat, even thou h he'd

9 made no outward show of it.  He promptly accepted her offer, and at
her suggestion they agreed to meet at the Tower on the last evening of
the old year.  He brought a bottle of champagne.

"We may as well enjoy ourselves," he said, as they headed down through
the remains of Roxborough's original house, a floor of which had been
preserved and concealed within the plainer walls of the Tower.

Neither of them had ventured into this underworld for

W many years.  It was more primitive than either of them

remembered.  Electric light had been crudely installed cables from which
bare bulbs hung looped along the passages - but otherwise the place was
just as it had been in the first years of the Tabula Rasa.  The cellars
had been built for the express purpose of housing the Society's
collection; thus for the millennium.  A fan of identical corridors
spread from the bottom stairs, lined on both sides with shelves that
rose up the brick walls to the curve of the ceilings.  The intersections
were elaborately vaulted, but otherwise there was no decoration.

"Shall we break open the bottle before we start?" Bloxham suggested.

"Why not?  What are we drinking from?" His reply was to bring two fluted
glasses from his pocket.  She claimed them from him while he opened the
bottle, its cork coming with no more than a decorous sigh, the sound of
which carried away through the labyrinth, and failed to return.  Glasses
filled, they drank to the Purge.

"Now we're here," Charlotte said, pulling her furs up around her, 'what
are we looking for?"

"Any sign of tampering or theft," Bloxham said.. "Shall we split up or
go together?"

"Oh, together," she replied.

It had been Roxborough's claim that these shelves carried every single
volume of any significance in the hemisphere, and as they wandered
together, surveying the tens of thousands of manuscripts and books, it
was easy to believe the boast.

"How in hell's name do you suppose they gathered all this stuff up?"
Charlotte wondered as they walked.

"I daresay the world was smaller then," Bloxham remarked.. "They all
knew each other, didn't they?  Casanova, Sartori, the Comte de
Saint-Germain.  All fakes and buggers together."

"Fakes?  Do you really think so?"

"Most of them," Bloxham said, wallowing in the ill deserved role of
expert.. "There may have been one or

two, I suppose, who knew what they were doing.. "Have you ever been
tempted?" Charlotte asked him, slipping her arm through

the crook of his as they went.. "To do what?" 

"To see if any of it's worth a damn.  To try raising a familiar, or
crossing into the Dominions?" He looked at her with genuine
astonishment.

"That's against every precept of the Society," he said.

"That's not what I asked," she replied, almost curtly.. "I said: have
you ever been tempted?"

"My father taught me that any dealings with the Imajica would put my
soul in jeopardy."

"Mine said the same.  But I think he regretted not find- A

i ing out for himself at the end.  I mean, if there's no truth in it,
then there's no harm."

"Oh I believe there's truth in it," Bloxham said.

"You believe there are other Dominions?"

"You saw that damn creature Godolphin cut up in front

of us."

"I saw a species I hadn't seen before, that's all." She

stopped and arbitrarily plucked a book from the shelves.

"But I wonder sometimes if the fortress we re guarding

i isn't empty." She opened the book, and a lock of hair fell a

from it.. "Maybe it's all invention," she said.. "Drug dreams A and
fancy." She put the book back on the shelf, and

turned to face Bloxham.. "Did you really invite me down here to check
the security?" she murmured.. "I'm going to

be damn disappointed if you did."

"Not entirely," he said.

"Good," she replied, and wandered on, deeper into the

maze.

Though Jude had been invited to a number of New Year's Eve parties,
she'd made no firm commitment to attend any of them, for which fact,
after the sorrows the day

had brought, she was thankful.  She'd offered to stay with Clem once
Taylor's body had been taken from the house, but he'd quietly declined,
saying that he needed the time alone.  He was comforted to know she'd be
at the other end of the telephone if he needed her, however, and said
he'd call if he got too maudlin.

One of the parties she'd been invited to was at the house opposite her
flat, and on the evidence of past years it would raise quite a din.

She'd several times been one of the celebrants there herself, but it was
no great hardship to be alone tonight.  She was in no mood to trust the
future if what the New Year brought was more of what the old had
offered.  She closed the curtains in the hope that her presence would go
undetected, lit some candles, put on a flute concerto, and started to
prepare something light for supper.  As she washed her hands, she found
that her fingers and palms had taken on a light dusting of colour from
the stone.  She'd caught herself toying with it several times during the
afternoon, and pocketed it, only to find minutes later that it was once
again in her hands.  Why the colour it had left behind had escaped her
until now she didn't know.  She rubbed her hands briskly beneath the tap
to wash the dust off, but when she came to dry them found the colour was
actually brighter.  She went into the bathroom to study the phenomenon
under a more intense light.  It wasn't, as she'd first thought, dust.
The pigment seemed to be in her skin, like a henna stain.  Nor was it
confined to her palms.  It had spread to her wrists, where she was sure
her flesh hadn't come in contact with the stone.  She took off her
blouse, and to her shock discovered there were irregular patches of
colour at her elbows as well.  She started talking to herself, which she
always did when she was confounded by something.

"What the hell is this?  I'm turning blue?  This is ridiculous.,

Ridiculous maybe, but none too funny.  There was a crawl of panic in her
stomach.  Had she caught some

disease from the stone?  Was that why Estabrook had wrapped it up so
carefully and hidden it away?

She turned on the shower, and stripped.  There were no further stains on
her body that she could find, which was some small comfort.

With the water seething hot she stepped into the bath, working up a
lather and rubbing at the colour.  The combination of heat and the panic
in' her belly was dizzying her, and halfway through scrubbing at her
skin she feared she was going to faint and t had to step out of the bath
again, reaching to open the k bathroom door, and let in some cooler air.
Her slick hand slid on the door-knob however, and cursing she reeled
round for a towel to wipe the soap off.  As she did so she caught sight
of herself in the mirror.  Her neck was blue.  The skin around her eyes
was blue.  Her brow was blue, all the way up into her hairline.  She
backed away from this grotesquerie, flattening herself against the
steam wetted tiles.

"This isn't real," she said aloud.

She reached for the handle a second time, and wrenched at it with
sufficient force to open the door.  The cold brought gooseflesh from
head to foot, but she was glad of the chill.  Perhaps it would slap this
self-deceit out of her.

Shuddering with cold she fled the reflection, heading back into the
candlelit haven of the living room.  There in the middle of the
coffee-table lay the piece of blue stone, its eye looking back at her.
She didn't even remember taking it out of her pocket, much less setting
it on the table in this studied fashion, surrounded by candles.  its
presence made her hang back at the door.  She was suddenly superstitious
of it, as though its gaze had a basilisk's power, and could turn her to
similar stuff.  if that was its business she was too late to undo it.
Every time she'd turned the stone over she'd met its glance.  Made bold
by fatalism, she went to the table and picked the stone up, not giving
it time to obsess her again but flinging it against the wall with all
the power she possessed.

As it flew from her hand it granted her the luxury of knowing her error.
It had taken possession of the room in her absence; had become more real
than the hand that had thrown it, or the wall it was about to strike.
Time was its plaything, and place its toy, and in seeking its
destruction she would unknit both.

It was too late to undo the error now.  The stone struck the wall with a
loud hard sound, and in that moment she was thrown out of herself, as
surely as if somebody had reached into her head, plucked out her
consciousness and pitched it through the window.  Her body remained in
the room she'd left, irrelevant to the journey she was about to
undertake.  All she had of its senses was sight.  That was enough.

She floated out over the bleak street, shining wet in the lamplight,
towards the step of the house opposite hers.  A quartet of party-goers
three young men with a tipsy girl in their midst - was waiting there,
one of the youths rapping impatiently on the door.  While they waited,
the burliest of the trio pressed kisses on the girl, kneading her
breasts covertly as he did so.

Jude caught glimpses of the discomfort that surfaced between the girl's
giggles; saw her hands make vain little fists when her suitor pushed his
tongue against her lips, then saw her open her mouth to him, more in
resignation than lust.  As the door opened, and the four stumbled into
the din of celebration, she moved away, rising over the rooftops as she
flew, and dropping down again to catch glimpses of other dramas
unfolding in the houses she passed.

They were all, like the stone that had sent her on this mission,
fragments; slivers of dramas she could only guess at.  A woman in an
upper room, staring down at a dress laid on a stripped bed; another at a
window, tears falling from beneath her closed lids as she swayed to
music Jude couldn't hear; yet another rising from a table of glittering
guests, sickened by something.  None of them women she knew, but all
quite familiar.  Even in her short remembered life she'd felt like all
of them at some time

Jtr

or other: forsaken; powerless; yearning.  She began to see the scheme
here.  She was going from glimpse to glimpse lA as if to moments of her
life, meeting her reflection in women of every class and kind.

in a dark street behind King's Cross she saw a woman servicing a man in
the front seat of his car, bending to take his hard pink prick between
lips the colour of menstrual blood.  She'd done that too, or its like,
because she'd wanted to be loved.  And the woman driving past, seeing
the whores on parade and righteously sickened by them: that was her. And
the beauty taunting her lover out in the rain, and the virago applauding
drunkenly above, she'd been in those lives just as surely, or they in
hers.

Her journey was nearing its end.  She'd reached a bridge from which
there would perhaps have been a panoramic view of the city, but the rain
in this region was heavier than it had been in Notting Hill, and the
distance was shrouded.  Her mind didn't linger, but moved on through the
downpour - unchilled, un wetted - towards a lightless tower that lay all
but concealed behind a row of trees.  Her speed had dropped, and she
wove between the foliage like a drunken bird, dropping down to the
ground, and sinking through it into a sodden and utter darkness.

There was a momentary terror that she was going to be buried alive in
this place, then the darkness gave way to light, and she was dropping
through the roof of some kind of cellar, its walls lined not with
wine-racks but with shelves.

Lights hung along the passageways, but the air"?, here was still dense,
not with dust but with something" she only understood vaguely.  There
was sanctity here, and there was power.  She had felt nothing like it in
her life; not in St Peter's, or Chartres, or the Duomo.  It made her
want to be flesh again, instead of a roving mind.  walk here.  To touch
the books, the brick; to smell the Dusty it would be, but such dust;
every mote wise as a planet from floating in this holy space.

The motion of a shadow caught her eye, and she moved towards it along
the passageway, wondering as she went

what vo lurnes these were, stacked on every side.  The shadow up ahead,
which she'd taken to be that of one person, was of two, erotically
entangled.  The woman had her back to the books, her arms grasping the
shelf above her head.  Her mate, his trousers around his ankles, was
pressed against her, making short gasps to accompany the jabbing of his
hips.  Both had their eyes closed, the sight of each other was no great
aphrodisiac.  Was this coupling what she'd come here to see?  God knows,
there was nothing in their labours to either arouse or educate her.
Surely the blue eye hadn't driven her across the city gathering tales of
womanhood just to witness this joyless intercourse.  There had to be
something here she wasn't comprehending.  Something hidden in their
exchange, perhaps?  But no.  It was only gasps.

In the books that rocked on the shelves behind them?  Perhaps.

She drifted closer to scrutinize the tides, but her gaze ran beyond
spines to the wall against which they stood.  The bricks were the same
plain stuff as all along the passages.  The mortar between had a stain
in it she recognized however: an unmistakable blue.  Excited now, she
drove her mind on, past the lovers and the books, and through the brick.
It was dark on the other side, darker even than the ground she'd dropped
through to enter this secret place.  Nor was it simply a darkness made
of light's absence, but of despair and sorrow.  Her instinct was to
retreat from it, but there was another presence here that made her
linger; a form barely distinguishable from the darkness, lying on the
ground in this squalid cell.

It was bound - almost cocooned - its face completely covered.  The
binding was as fine as thread, and had been wound around the body with
obsessive care, but there was enough of its shape visible for her to be
certain that this like the ensnared spirits at every station along her
route, was also a woman.

Her binders had been meticulous.  They'd left not so much as a hair or
toenail visible.

Jude hovered over the body, studying it.  They were almost
complimentary: like

corpse and essence, eternally divided; except that she had flesh to
return to.  At least she hoped she did; hoped that now she'd completed
this bizarre pilgrimage, and had seen the relic in the wall, she'd be
allowed to return to her tainted skin.

But something still held her here.  Not

he walls, but some sense of u

the darkness, not t    nfinished business.  Was a sign of veneration
required of her?  If so, what?  She lacked the hands for genuflection,
and the lips for hosannas; she couldn't kneel, she couldn't touch the
relic.  What was there left to do?  Unless God help her she had to enter
the thing.

She knew the instant she'd formed the thought that this was precisely
why she'd been brought here.  She'd left her living flesh to enter this
prisoner of brick, cord and decay, a thrice-bounded carcass from which
she might never emerge again.

The thought revolted her, but had she come this far only to turn back
because this last rite distressed her too much?  Even assuming she could
defy the forces that had brought her here, and return to the house of
her body against their will, wouldn't she wonder forever what adventure
she'd turned her back on?  She was no coward; she would enter the relic,
and take the consequences.

No sooner thought than done.  Her mind sank towards the binding, and
slipped between the threads into the body's maze.

She had expected darkness, but there was light here, the forms of the
body's innards delineated by the milk-blue she'd come to know as the
colour of this mystery.  There was no foulness; no corruption.  It was
less a charnel house than a cathedral, the source, she now suspected, of
the sacredness that permeated this underground.  But, like a cathedral,
its substance was quite dead.  No blood ran in these veins, no heart
pumped, no lungs drew breath.  She spread her intention through the
stilled anatomy, to feel its length and breadith.  The dead woman had
been large in life, her hips substantial, her breasts heavy.  But the
binding bit into her ripeness everywhere, perverting the swell and sweep
of her.  What

terrible last moments she must have known, lying blind in this filth,
hearing the wall of her mausoleum being built brick by brick.  What kind
of crime hung on her, Jude wondered, that she'd been condemned to such a
death?  And who were her executioners, the builders of that wall?  Had
they sung as they worked, their voices growing dimmer as the brick
blotted them out?  Or had they been silent, half-ashamed at their
cruelty?

There was so much she wished she knew, and none of it answerable.  She'd
finished her journey as she'd begun it, in fear and confusion.  It was
time to be gone from the relic, and home.  She willed herself to rise
out of the dead blue flesh.  To her horror, nothing -happened.  She was
bound here, a prisoner within a prisoner.  God help her, what had she
done?

instructing herself not to panic, she concentrated her mind on the
problem, picturing the cell beyond the binding, and the wall she'd
passed so effortlessly through, and the lovers, and the passageway that
led out to the open sky.  But imagining was not enough.  She had let her
curiosity overtake her, spreading her spirit through the corpse, and now
it had claimed that spirit for itself.

A rage began in her, and she let it come.  It was as recognizable a part
of her as the nose on her face, and she needed all that she was, every
particular, to empower her.  If she'd had her own body around her it
would have been flushing as her heart-beat caught the rhythm of her
fury.  She even seemed to hear it - the first sound she'd been aware of
since leaving the house - the pump at its hectic work.  It was not
imagined.  She felt it in the body around her, a tremor passing through
the long-stilled system as her rage ignited it afresh.  in the
throne-room of its head a sleeping mind woke, and knew it was invaded.

For Jude there was an exquisite moment of shared consciousness, when a
mind new to her - yet sweetly familiar - grazed her own.  Then she was
expelled by its wakefulness.  She heard it scream in horror behind her,
a sound of mind rather than throat, which went with her

as she sped from the cell, out through the wall, past the lovers shaken
from their intercourse by falls of dust, out and up, into the rain, and
into a night not blue but bitterest black.  The din of the woman's
terror accompanied her all the way back to the house, where, to her
infinite relief, she found her own body still standing in the candlelit
room.  She slid into it with ease, and stood in the middle of the room
for a minute or two, sobbing, until she began to shudder with cold.  She
found her dressing-gown, and as she put it on, realized that her wrists
and elbows were no longer stained.  She went into the bathroom and
consulted the mirror.  Her face was similarly cleansed.

Still shivering, she returned to the living room to look for the blue
stone.  There was a substantial hole in the wall where its impact had
gouged out the plaster.  The stone itself was unharmed, lying on the rug
in front of the hearth.  She didn't pick it up.  She'd had enough of its
delirium for one night.  Avoiding its baleful glance as best she could,
she threw a cushion over it.  Tomorrow she'd plan some way of ridding
herself of the thing.  Tonight she needed to tell somebody what she'd
experienced, before she began to doubt it.  Someone a little crazy,
who'd not dismiss her account out of hand; someone already
half-believing.  Gentle, of course.

d

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Towards midnight, the traffic outside Gentle's studio dwindled to almost
nothing.  Anybody who was going to a party tonight had arrived.  They
were deep in drink, debate or seduction, determined as they celebrated
to have in the coming year what the going had denied them.  Content with
his solitude, Gentle sat cross-legged on the floor, a bottle of bourbon
between his legs, and canvases propped up against the furniture all
around him.  Most of them were blank, but that suited his meditation. So
was the future.

He'd been sitting in this ring of emptiness for about two hours,
drinking from the bottle, and now his bladder needed emptying.  He got
up and went to the bathroom, using the light from the lounge to go by
rather than face his reflection.

As he shook the last drops into the bowl, that light went off.  He
zipped himself up, and went back into the studio.  The rain lashed
against the window, but there was sufficient illumination from the
street for him to see that the door out on to the landing stood inches
ajar.

"Who's there?" he said.

The room was still for a moment, then he glimpsed a form against the
window, and the smell of something burned and cold pricked his nostrils.
The whistler!  My God, it had found him!

Fear made him fleet.  He broke from his frozen posture, and raced to the
door.  He would have been through it and away down the stairs had he not
almost tripped on the dog waiting obediently on the other side.  It
wagged its tail in pleasure at the sight of him, and halted his flight.
The whistler was no dog-lover.  So who was here?

Turning back, he reached for the light-switch, and was

about to flip it on when the unmistakable voice of Pie'oh'pah said:
"Please don't.  I prefer the dark."

Gentle's finger dropped from the switch, his heart hammering for a
different reason.

"Pie?  is that you?"

"Yes, it's me," came the reply.. "I heard you wanted to see me, from a
friend of yours.. "I thought you were dead.. "I was %dth the dead.
Theresa, and the children.. "Oh God.  Oh God."

"You lost somebody too," Pie'oh'pah said.

it was wise, Gentle now understood, to have this exchange in darkness:
to talk in shadow, of the grave and the lambs it had claimed.

"I was with the spirits of my children for a time.  Your friend found me
in the mourning-place; spoke to me; told me you wanted to see me again.
This surprises me, Gentle."

"As much as you talking to Taylor surprises me," Gentle replied, though
after their conversation it shouldn't have done.

'is he happy?" he asked, knowing the question might be viewed as a
banality, but wanting reassurance.

"No spirit is happy," Pie replied.. "There's no release for them.  Not
in this Dominion or any other.  They haunt the doors, waiting to leave,
but there's nowhere for them to go.,

"Why?"

"That's a question that's been asked for many generations, Gentle.  And
unanswered.  As a child I was taught that before the Unbeheld went into
the First Dominion there was a place there into which all spirits were
received.  My people lived in that Dominion then, and watched over that
place, but the Unbeheld drove both the spirits and my people out."

"So the spirits have nowhere to go?"

"Exactly.  Their numbers swell, and so does their grief."

He thought of Taylor, lying on his deathbed, dreaming

of release, of the final flight into the Absolute.  instead, if Pie was
to be believed, his spirit had entered a place of lost souls, denied
both flesh and revelation.  What price understanding now, when the end
of everything was limbo?

"Who is this Unbeheld?" Gentle said.

"Hapexamendios, the God of the Imajica.. "Is he a God of this world toor

"He was once.  But he went out of the Fifth Dominion, through the other
worlds, laying their divinities waste, until he reached the Place of
Spirits.  Then he drew a veil across that Dominion -. "And became
Unbeheld.. "That's what I was taught.,

The formality and plainness of Pie'oh'pah's account lent the story
authority, but for all its elegance it was still a tale of Gods and
other worlds, very far from this dark room, and the cold rain running on
the glass.

"How do I know any of this is true?" Gentle said.

"You don't, unless you see it with your own eyes," Pie'oh'pah replied.
His voice when he said this was almost sultry.  He spoke like a seducer.

"And how do I do that?"

"You must ask me direct questions, and I'll try to answer them.  I can't
reply to generalities."

"All right, answer this: Can you take me to the Dominions?. "That I can
do.. "I want to follow in the footsteps of Hapexamendios.

Can we do that?. "We can try."

"I want to see the Unbeheld, Pie'oh'pah.  I want to know why Taylor and
your children are in Purgatory.  I want to understand why they're
suffering."

There was no question in this speech, therefore no reply except the
other's quickening breath.

"Can you take us now?" Gentle said.

"If that's what you want."

It's what I want, Pie.  Prove what you've said is true, or leave me
alone forever."

it was eighteen minutes to midnight when Jude got into her car to start
her journey to Gentle's house.  It was an easy drive, with the roads so
clear, and she was several times tempted to jump red lights, but the
police were especially vigilant on this night, and any infringement
might bring them out of hiding.  Though she had no alcohol in her system
she was by no means sure it was innocent of alien influences.

She therefore drove as cautiously as at noon, and it took fully fifteen
minutes to reach the studio.  When she did she found the upper windows
dark.  Had Gentle decided to drown his sorrows in a night of high life,
she wondered, or was he already fast asleep?  if the latter, she had
news worth waking him for.

"There's some things you should understand before we leave," Pie said as
it tied its own left wrist to Gentle's right, using its belt to do so.

"This is no easy journey, Gentle.  This Dominion, the Fifth, is
unreconciled, which means that getting to the Fourth involves risk. it's
not like crossing a bridge.  Passing over requires considerable power.
And if anything goes wrong, the consequences will be dire."

"Tell me the worst."

"In between the Reconciled Dominions and the Fifth is a state called the
In Ovo.  it's an ether, in which things that have ventured from their
worlds are imprisoned.  Some of them are innocent.  They're there by
accident.  Some were dispatched there as a judgement.  They're lethal.
I'm hoping we'll pass through the In Ovo before any of them even notice
we were there.  But if we were to become separated

"I get the picture.  You'd better tighten that knot then.

It could still work loose."

Pie applied himself to the task, with Gentle fumbling to help in the
darkness.

"Let's assume we get through the In Ovo," Gentle said.

"What's on the other side?"

"The Fourth Dominion," Pie replied.  'if I'm accurate in my bearings,
we'll arrive near the city of

Patashoqua.. "And if not?"

"Who knows?  The sea.  A swamp."

"Shit."

"Don't worry.  I've got a good sense of direction.  And there's plenty
of power between us.

I couldn't do this on my own.  But together.

.

J

"Is this the only way to cross over?"

I

. "Not at all.  There are a number of passing places here

in the Fifth: stone circles, hidden away.  But most of them were created
to carry travellers to some particular location.  We want to go as free
agents.

Unseen, unsuspected."

"So why have you chosen Patashoqua?"

"It has ...  sentimental associations," Pie replied.. "You'll see for
yourself, very soon." It paused.. "You do still want to go?"

"Of course."

"This is as tight as I can get the knot without stopping our blood."

"Then why are we delaying?"

Pie's fingers touched Gentle's face.. "Close your eyes," it said.

Gentle did so.  Pie's fingers sought out Gentle's free hand and raised
it between them.

"You have to help me," he said.

"Tell me what to do."

"Make a fist.  Lightly.  Leave enough room for a breath to pass through.
Good.  Good.  All magic proceeds from breath.  Remember that."

He did, from somewhere.

"Now," Pie went on, 'put your hand to your face, with your thumb against
your chin.  There are very few incantations in our workings.

No pretty words.  Just pneuma like this, and the will behind them."

"I've got the will, if that's what you're asking," Gentle, said.

"Then one solid breath is all we need.  Exhale until it hurts.  I'll do
the rest.. "Can I take another breath afterwards?. "Not in this
Dominion."

With that reply the enormity of what they were undertaking struck
Gentle.  They were leaving earth.  Stepping off the edge of the only
reality he'd ever known into another state entirely.  He grinned in the
darkness, the hand bound to Pie's taking hold of his deliverer's
fingers.

"Shall we?" he said.

in the murk ahead of him Pie's teeth gleamed as it matched Gentle's
smile.

"Why not?"

Gentle drew breath.  Somewhere in the house, he heard a door slamming
and footsteps on the stairs leading up to the studio.  But it was too
late for interruptions.  He exhaled through his hand, one solid breath
which Pie'oh'pah seemed to snatch from the air between them.

Something ignited in the fist the mystif made, bright enough to burn
between his clenched fingers ...

At the door, Jude saw Gentle's painting almost made flesh.  Two figures,
almost nose to nose, with their faces illuminated by some unnatural
source, swelling like a slow explosion between them.  She had time to
recognize them both - to see the smiles on their faces as they met each
other's gaze - then, to her horror, they seemed to turn inside out.  She
glimpsed wet red surfaces, which folded upon themselves not once but
three times in quick succession, each fold diminishing their bodies,
until they were slivers of stuff, still folding, and folding, and
finally gone.

She sank back against the door-jamb, shock making her nerves cavort. The
dog she'd found waiting at the top of the stairs went fearlessly to the
place where they'd stood.  There was no further magic there, to snatch
him

after them.  The place was dead.  They'd gone, the bastards, wherever
such avenues led.

The realization drew a yell of rage from her, sufficient to send the dog
scurrying for cover.

She dearly hoped Gentle heard her, wherever he was.  Hadn't she come
here to share her revelations with him, so that they could investigate
the great unknown together?  And all the time he was preparing for his
departure without her.  Without her!

I. "How dare you?" she yelled at the empty space.

The dog whined in fear, and the sight of its terror mellowed her.  She
went down on her haunches.

"I'm sorry," she said to, it.. "Come here.  I'm not cross with you. It's
that little fucker Gentle."

The dog was reluctant at first, but came to her after a time, its tail
wagging intermittently as it grew more confident of her sanity.  She
rubbed its head, the contact soothing.  All was not lost.  What Gentle
could do, she could do.

He didn't have the copyright on adventuring.

She'd find a way to go where he'd gone, if she had to eat the blue eye
grain by grain to do so.

Church bells began to ring as she sat chewing this over, announcing in
their ragged peals the arrival of midnight.  Their clamour was
accompanied by car horns in the street outside and cheers from a party
in an adjacent house.

"Whoopee," she said quietly, on her face the distracted look that had
obsessed so many of the opposite sex over the years.  She'd forgotten
most of them.  The ones who'd fought over her; the ones who'd lost their
wives in their pursuit of her; even those who'd sold their sanity to
find her equal: all were forgotten.  History had never much engaged her.
it was the future that glittered in her mind's eye, now more than ever.

The past had been written by men.  But the future pregnant with
possibilities - the future was a woman.

no j

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Until the rise of Yzorddeffex, a rise engineered by the Autarch for
reasons more political than geographical, the city of Patashoqua, which
lay on the edge of the Fourth Dominion, close to where the In Ovo marked
the perimeter of the reconciled worlds, had just claim to be the
preeminent City of the Dominions.  Its proud inhabitants called it casje
all casje, simply meaning the hive of hives, a place of intense and
fruitful labour.  Its proximity to the Fifth made it particularly prone
to influences from that source, and even after Yzordderrex had become
the centre of power across the Dominions it was to Pat-I&M ashoqua that
those at the cutting edge of style and invention looked for the coming
thing.  Patashoqua had a variation on the motor vehicle in its streets
long before Yzordderrex.  It had rock and roll in its clubs long before
Yzordderrex.  It had hamburgers, cinemas, blue jeans and countless other
proofs of modernity long before the great city of the Second.  Nor was
it simply the trivialities of fashion that Patashoqua reinvented from
Fifth Dominion models.  it was philosophies and belief-systems.  Indeed
it was said in Patashoqua that you knew a native of Yzordderrex because
he looked like you yesterday, and believed what you'd believed the day
before.

But as with most cities in love with the modern, Patashoqua had deeply
conservative roots.  Whereas Yzordderrex was a sinful city, notorious
for the excesses of its darker Kesparates, the streets of Patashoqua
were quiet after nightfall, its occupants in their own beds with their
own spouses, plotting vogues.  This mingling of chic and conservatism
was nowhere more apparent than in the

city's architecture.  Built as they were in a temperate region, unlike
the semi-tropical Yzorddeffex, the buildings did not have to be designed
with any climatic extreme in mind.  They were either elegantly
classical, and built to remain standing until Doomsday, or else
functions of some current craze, and likely to be demolished within a
week.

But it was on the borders of the city where the most extraordinary
sights were to be seen, because it was here that a second, parasitic al
city had been created, peopled by inhabitants of the Four Dominions who
had fled persecution and had looked to Patashoqua as a place where
liberty of thought and action were still possible.  For how much longer
this would remain the case was a debate that do minted every social
gathering in the city.  The Autarch had moved against other towns,
cities and states which he and his councils judged hot-beds of
revolutionary thought.  Some of those cities had been razed to the
ground, others had come under Yzordderrexian edict, and all sign of
independent thought crushed.  The University city of Hezoir, for
instance, had been reduced to rubble, the brains of its students
literally scooped out of their skulls and heaped up in the streets.  In
the Azzintulto the inhabitants of an entire province had been decimated,
so rumour went, by a disease introduced into that region by the
Autarch's representatives.  There were tales of atrocity from so many
sources that people became almost blage about the newest horror, until,
of course, somebody asked how long it would be until the Autarch turned
his unforgiving eyes on the hive of hives.  Then their faces drained of
colour, and people talked in whispers of how they planned to escape or
defend themselves if that day ever came; and they looked around at their
exquisite city, built to stand until Doomsday, and wondered just how
near that day was.

Though Pie'oh'pah had briefly described the forces that haunted the In
Ovo, Gentle had only the vaguest impression of the dark, protean state
between the Dominions, occupied as he was by a spectacle much closer to
his heart, that of the change that overtook both travellers as their
bodies were translated into the common currency of passage.

Dizzied by lack of oxygen he wasn't certain whether these were real
phenomena or not.

Could bodies open like flowers, and the seeds of an essential self fly
from them the way his mind told him they did?  And could those same
bodies be remade at the other end of the journey, arriving whole despite
the trauma they'd under gone?  So it seemed.  The world Pie had called
the Fifth folded up before the travellers' eyes, and they went like
transported dreams into another place entirely.  As soon as he saw the
light, Gentle fell to his knees on the hard rock, drinking the air of
this Dominion with gratitude.

"Not bad at all," he heard Pie say.. "We did it, Gentle.  I didn't think
we were going to make it for a moment, but we did it!'

Gentle raised his head, as Pie pulled him to his feet by the strap that
joined them.

"Up!  Up!" the mystif said.. "It's not good to start a journey on your
knees."

It was bright day here, Gentle saw, the sky above his head cloudless,
and brilliant as the green-gold sheen of a peacock's tail.  There was
neither sun nor moon in it, but the very air seemed lucid, and by it
Gentle had his first true sight of Pie since they'd met in the fire.
Perhaps out of remembrance for those it had lost, the mystif was still
wearing the clothes it had worn that night, scorched and bloodied though
they were.  But it had washed the dirt from its face, and its skin
gleamed in the clear light.

"Good to see you," Gentle said.

You too."

It started to untie the belt that bound them, while Gentle turned his
gaze on the Dominion.

They were standing close to the summit of a hill, a quarter of a mile
from the perimeters of a sprawling shanty-town, from which a din of
activity rose.  It spread beyond the foot of the hill, and halfway
across a flat and treeless plain of ochre earth, crossed by a thronged
highway that led his eye to the domes and spires of glittering city.

"Patashoqua?" he said.

"Where else?. "You were accurate then."

"More than I dared hope.  The hill we're standing on is supposed to be
the place where Hapexamendios first rested when He came through from the
Fifth.  It's called the Mount of Lipper Bayak.  Don't ask me why.. "Is
the city under siege?" Gentle said.

"I don't think so.  The gates look open to me." Gentle scanned the
distant walls, and indeed the gates were open wide.. "So who are all
these people?  Refugees?. "We'll ask in a while," Pie said.

The knot had come undone.  Gentle rubbed his wrist, which was indented
by the belt, staring down the hill as he did so.  Moving between the
makeshift dwellings below he glimpsed forms of being that didn't much
resemble humanity.  And mingling freely with them, many who did.  It
wouldn't be difficult to pass as a local, at least.

"You're going to have to teach me, Pie," he said.  J need to know who's
who and what's what.  Do they speak English here?"

"It used to be quite a popular language," Pie replied.. "I can't believe
it's fallen out of fashion.  But before we go any further, I think you
should know what you're travelling with.  The way people respond to me
may confound you otherwise.,

"Tell me as we go," Gentle said, eager to see the strangers below up
close.

"As you wish." They began to descend.. "I'm a mystif;

my name's Pie'oh'pah.  That much you know.  My gender you don't.. "I've
made a guess," Gentle said.

"Oh?" said Pie, smiling.. "And what's your guess?. "You're an androgyne.
Am I right.

"That's part of it, certainly.. "But you've got a talent for illusion. I
saw that in New York."

"I don't like the word illusion.  It makes me a guiser, and I'm not
that.. "What then?"

"In New York, you wanted Judith, and that's what you saw.  It was your
invention, not mine.. "But you played along.. "Because I wanted to be
with you.. "And are you playing along now?. "I'm not deceiving you, if
that's what you mean.  What you see is what I am, to you.. "But to other
people?"

"I may be something different.  A man sometimes.  A woman others."
"Could you be white?"

"I might manage it for a moment or two.  But if I'd tried to come to
your bed in daylight, you'd have known I wasn't Judith.  Or if you'd
been in love with an eight year-old, or a dog.  I couldn't have
accommodated that, except.  .  ., the creature glanced round at him, . .
under very particular circumstances."

Gentle wrestled with this notion, questions biological, philosophical
and libidinous filling his head.  He stopped walking for a moment, and
turned to Pie.

"Let me tell you what I see, "he said.. "Just so you know. "Good."

"If I passed you on the street I believe I'd think you were a woman .  .
." he cocked his head,

though maybe not.  I suppose it'd depend on the light, and how fast you
were walking." He laughed.. "Oh shit," he said.

"The more I look at you the more I see, and the more I see

'- the less you know."

"That's right.  You're not a man.  That's plain enough.  But then.  . ."
He shook his head.

"Am I seeing you the way you really are?  I mean, is this the final
version?. "Of course not.  There's stranger sights inside us both.  You
know that."

"Not until now."

"We can't go too naked in the world.  We'd burn out each other's eyes."

"But this is you."

"For the time being."

"For what it's worth, I like it," Gentle said.. "I don't know what I'd
call you if I saw you in the street, but I'd turn my head.  How's that?"

"What more could I ask for?"

"Will I meet others like you?"

"A few maybe," Pie said, 'but mystifs aren't common.  When one is born,
it's an occasion for great celebration amongst my people."

"Who are your people?"

"The Eurhetemec."

"Will they be here?" Gentle said, nodding towards the throng below.

"I doubt it.  But in Yzordderrex, certainly.  They have a Kesparate
there."

"What's a Kesparate?"

"A district.  My people have a city within the city.  Or at least they
had one.  It's two hundred and twenty-one years since I was there.. "My
God.  How old are you?"

"Half that again.  I know that sounds like an extraordinary span, but
time works slowly on flesh touched by fe its

"Feits?"

"Magical workings.  Feits, wantons, sways.  They work their miracles
even on a whore like me."

"Whoal' said Gentle.

"Oh yes.  That's something else you should know about me.  I was told -
a long time ago that I should spend my life as a whore or an assassin,
and that's what I've done."

"Until now, maybe.  But that's over.. "What will I be from now on?. "My
friend," Gentle said, without hesitation.  The mystif smiled.

"Thank you for that." The round of questions ended there, and side by
side they wandered on down the slope.

"Don't make your interest too apparent' Pie advised as they approached
the edge of this makeshift conurbation.. "Pretend you see this sort of
sight daily."

"That's going to be difficult," Gentle predicted.

So it was.  Walking through the narrow spaces between the shanties was
like passing through a country in which the very air had evolutionary
ambition, and to breathe was to change.  A hundred kinds of eye gazed
out at them from doorways and windows, while a hundred forms of limb got
about the business of the day: cooking, nursing, crafting, conniving,
making fires and deals and love; and all glimpsed so briefly that after
a few paces Gentle was obliged to look away, to study the muddy gutter
they were walking in, for fear his mind be overwhelmed by the sheer
profusion of sights.  Smells too: aromatic, sickly, sour and sweet; and
sounds that made his skull shake and his gut quiver.

There had been nothing in his life to date, either waking or sleeping,
to prepare him for this.  He'd studied the masterworks of great
imaginers - he'd painted a passable Goya, once, and sold an Ensor for a
small fortune - but the difference between paint and reality was vast, a
gap whose scale he could not by definition have known until now, when he
had around him the other half of the equation.  This wasn't an invented
place, its inhabitants variations on experienced phenomena.  It was
independent of his terms of reference: a place unto and of itself.

J

When he looked up again, daring the assault of the strange, he was
grateful that he and Pie were now in a quarter occupied by more human
entities, though even here there were surprises.  What seemed to be a
three legged child skipped across their path only to look back with a
face wizened as a desert corpse, its third leg a tail.  A woman sitting
in a doorway, her hair being combed by her consort, drew her robes
around her as Gentle looked her way, but not fast enough to conceal the
fact that a second consort, with the skin of a herring and an eye that
ran all the way around its skull, kneeling in front of her was
inscribing hieroglyphics on her belly with the sharpened heel of its
hand.  He heard a range of tongues being spoken, but English seemed to
be the commonest parlance, albeit heavily accented, or corrupted by the
labial anatomy of the speaker.

Some seemed to sing their speech; some to almost vomit it up.

But the voice that called to them from one of the crowded alleyways off
to their right might have been heard on any street in London: a lisping,
pompous holler demanding they halt in their tracks.  They looked in its
direction.  The throng had divided to allow the speaker and his party of
three easy passage.

"Play dumb," Pie muttered to Gentle as the lisper, an overfed gargoyle,
bald but for an absurd wreath of oiled kiss-curls, approached.

He was finely dressed, his high black boots polished and his
canary-yellow jacket densely embroidered after what Gentle would come to
know as the present Patashoquan fashion.  A man much less showily garbed
followed, an eye covered by a patch that trailed the tail feathers of a
scarlet bird as if echoing the moment of his mutilation.  on his
shoulders he carried a woman in black, with silvery scales for skin and
a cane in her tiny hands with which she tapped her mount's head to speed
him on his way.  Still further behind came the oddest of the four.

"A Nullianac," Gentle heard Pie murmur.  He didn't need to ask if this
was good news or bad.  The creature

was its own best advertisement, and it was selling harm.  its head
resembled nothing so much as praying hands, the thumbs leading and
tipped with lobsters' eyes, the gap between the palms wide enough for
the sky to be seen through it, but flickering, as arcs of energy passed
from side to side.  It was without question the ugliest living thing
Gentle had ever seen.

if Pie had not suggested they obey the edict, and halt, Gentle would
have taken to his heels there and then, rather than let the Nullianac
get one stride closer to them.

The lisper had halted, and now addressed them afresh.

"What business have you in Vanaeph?" he wanted to know.

"We're just passing through," Pie said, a reply somewhat lacking in
invention, Gentle thought.

"Who are you?" the man demanded.

"Who are you?" Gentle returned.

The patch-eyed mount guffawed, and got his he ad slapped for his
troubles.

"Loitus Hammeryock," the lisper replied.

"My name's Zacharias," Gentle said, 'and this is -. "Casanova," Pie
said, which earned him a quizzical glance from Gentle.

"Zooical!" the woman said.. "D'yee speak at the gloss. "Sure," said
Gentle.. "I speak at the gloss."

"Be careful," Pie whispered at his side.

"Bonel Bone!" the woman went on, and proceeded to tell them, in a
language which was two parts English, or a variant thereof, one part
Latin and one part some Fourth Dominion dialect that consisted of tongue
clicks and teeth snappings, that all strangers to this town, Neo
Vanaeph, had to register their origins and intentions before they were
allowed access; or indeed, the right to depart.  For all its ramshackle
appearance, Vanaeph was no lawless stew, it appeared, but a tightly
policed township, and this woman - who introduced herself in this flurry
of lexicons as Pontiff Farrow - was a significant authority here.

When she'd finished, Gentle cast a confounded look in

Pie's direction.  This was proving more difficult terrain by the moment.
Unconcealed in the Pontiff's speech was the threat of summary execution
if they failed to answer their enquiries satisfactorily.  The
executioner amongst this party was not hard to spot: he of the prayerful
head the Nullianac - waiting in the rear for his instructions.

"So," said Hammeryock.. "We need some identification.. "I don't have
any," Gentle said.

"And you?" he asked Pie, who also shook his head.. "Spies," the Pontiff
hissed.

"No, we're just ...  tourists," Gentle said.

"Tourists?" said Hammeryock.

"We've come to see the sights of Patashoqua." He turned to Pie for
support.. "Whatever they are."

"The tombs of the Vehement Loki Lobb ...  I Pie said, clearly scratching
around for the glories Patashoqua had to offer,

and the Merrow Ti' Ti'."

That sounded pretty to Gentle's ears.  He faked a broad smile of
enthusiasm.. "The Merrow Ti 'Till' he said.. "Absolutely!

I wouldn't miss the Merrow Ti' Ti' for all the tea in China."

"China?" said Hammeryock.

"Did I say China?"

"You did."

"Fifth Dominion .  .  .1 the Pontiff muttered.. "Spiatits from the Fifth
Dominion:

"object strongly to that accusation," said Pie'oh'pah.

"And so -' said a voice behind the accused, '- do L' Both Pie and Gentle
turned to take in the sight of a scabrous, bearded individual, dressed
in what might generously have been described as motley, and less
generously as rags, standing on one leg scraping shit off the heel of
his other foot with a stick.

"It's the hypocrisy that turns my stomach, Hamineryock," he said, his
expression a maze of wiles.. "You two pontificate," he went on, eyeing
his pun's target as he spoke, 'about keeping the streets free from
undesirables, but you do nothing about the dog-shit el

"This isn't your business, Tick Raw," Hammeryock said.

"Oh but it is.  These are my friends and you've insulted them with your
slurs and your suspicions.. "Friends, say at the Pontiff murmured.

"Yes, ma'am.  Friends.  Some of us still know the difference between
conversation and diatribe.  I have friends, with whom I talk and
exchange ideas.  Remember ideas?  They're what make life worth living."

Hammeryock could not disguise his unease, hearing his mistress thus
addressed, but whoever Tick Raw was he wielded sufficient authority to
silence any further objection.

"My dear lings he said to Gentle and Pie, 'shall we repair to my home?"

As a parting gesture he lobbed the stick in Hammeryock's direction.  it
landed in the mud between the man's legs.

"Clean up, Loitus," Tick Raw said.. "We don't want the Autarch's heel
sliding in shite now, do we?"

The two parties then went their separate ways, Tick Raw leading Pie and
Gentle off through the labyrinth.

"We want to thank you," Gentle said.

"What for?" Tick Raw asked him, aiming a kick at a goat that wandered
across his path.

"Talking us out of trouble," Gentle replied.. "We'll be on our way now."

"Butyou Ive got to come back with me," Tick Raw said.

"There's no need."

"Need?  There's every need!  Have I got this right?" he said to Pie. "Is
there need or isn't there?"

"We'd certainly like the benefit of your insights," Pie said.. "We're
strangers here.  Both of us." The mystif spoke in an oddly stilted
fashion, as if it wanted to say more, but couldn't.. "We need
re-educating," it said.

"Oh?" said Tick Raw.. "Really?. "Who is this Autarch?" Gentle asked.

"He rules the Reconciled Dominions, from Yzordderrex.

He's the greatest power in the Imajica."

"And he's coming here?"

"That's the rumour.  He's losing his grip in the Fourth, and he knows
it.  So he's decided to put in a personal appearance.  Officially, he's
visiting Patashoqua, but this is where the trouble's brewing."

"Do you think he'll definitely come?" Pie asked.

"If he doesn't the whole of the Imajica's going to know he's afraid to
show his face.  Of course that's always been

Is

a part of his fascination, hasn't it?  All these years he ruled the
Dominions without anybody really knowing what he looks like.  But the
glamour's worn off.  If he wants to avoid revolution he's going to have
to prove he's a charismatic."

"Are you going to get blamed for telling Hammeryock we were your
friends?" Gentle asked.

"Probably, but I've been accused of worse.  Besides, it's almost true.
Any stranger here's a friend of mine." He cast a glance at Pie.. "Even a
mystif,".  he said.. "The people in this dung heap have no poetry in
them.  I know I should be more sympathetic.  They're refugees, most of
them.  They've lost their lands, their houses, their tribes.  But
they're so concerned with their itsy-bitsy little sorrows they don't see
the broader picture."

"And what is the broader picture?" Gentle asked.

"I think that's better discussed behind closed doors," Tick Raw said,
and would not be drawn any further on the subject until they were secure
in his hut.

The hut was spartan in the extreme.  Blankets on a board for a bed;
another board for a table; some moth-eaten pillows to squat on.

"This is what I'm reduced to," Tick Raw said to Pie, as though the
mystif understood, perhaps even shared, his sense of humiliation.

"If I'd moved on it might have been different.  But I couldn't of
course."   VIN. "Why not?" Gentle asked.

Tick Raw gave him a quizzical look, glancing over at Pie, then looking
back at Gentle again.

"I'd have thought that was obvious," he said.. "I've kept my post.  I'm
here until a better day dawns.. "And when will that be?" Gentle
enquired.

"You tell me," Tick Raw replied, a certain bitterness entering his
voice.. "Tomorrow wouldn't be too soon.  This is no frigging life for a
great sway-worker.  I mean, look at it!"  He cast his eyes around the
room.

"And let me tell you, this is the lap of luxury compared with some of
the hovels I could show you.  People living in their own excrement,
grubbing around for food.  And all in sight of one of the richest cities
in the Dominions.  it's obscene.  At least I've got food in my belly.
And I get some respect, you know.  Nobody crosses me.  They know I'm an
evocator, and they keep their distance.  Even Hammeryock.  He hates me
with a passion, but he'd never dare send the Nullianac to kill me in
case it failed, and I came after him.  Which I would.  Oh yes.  Gladly.
Pompous little fuck."

"You should just leave," Gentle said.. "Go and live in Patashoqua."

"Please," Tick Raw said, his tone vaguely pained.. "Must we play games?
Haven't I proved my integrity?  I saved your lives."

"And we're grateful," Gentle said.

"I don't want gratitude," Tick Raw said.

"What do you want then?  Money?"

At this, Tick Raw rose from his cushion, his face reddening, not with
blushes but with rage.

J don't deserve this," he said.

"Deserve what?"  said Gentle.

"I've lived in shite," Tick Raw said, 'but I'm damned if I'm going to
eat it!  All right, so I'm not a great Maestro.  I wish I werel I wish
Uter Musky was still alive, and he could have waited here all these
years instead of me.  But he's gone, and I'm all that's left!  Take me
or leave me!"  The outburst completely befuddled Gentle.  He glanced
across at Pie, looking for some guidance, but the mystif had hung its
head.

"Maybe we'd better leave," Gentle said.

"Yest Why don't you do that?" Tick Raw yelled.. "Get the fuck out of
here.  Maybe you can find Musky's grave, and resurrect him.  He's out
there on the Mount.  I buried him with these two hands!" His voice was
close to cracking now.

There was grief in it as well as rage.. "You can dig him up the same
way!'

Gentle started to get to his feet, sensing that any further words from
him would only push Tick Raw closer to an eruption or a breakdown,
neither of which he wanted to witness.  But the mystif reached up and
took hold of Gentle's arm.

"Wait," Pie said.

"The man wants us out," Gentle replied.

"Let me talk to Tick for a few moments." The evocator glared fiercely at
the mystif.

"I'm in no mood for seductions," he warned.

Pie shook his head.. "Neither am I," it said, glancing at Gentle.

"You want me out of here?" he said.

"Not for long."

Gentle shrugged, though he felt rather less easy with the idea of
leaving Pie in Tick Raw's company than his manner suggested.  There was
something about the way the two of them stared and studied each other
that made him think there was some hidden agenda here.  If so, it was
surely sexual, despite their denials.

"I'll be outside," Gentle said, and left them to their debate.

He'd no sooner closed the door than he heard the two begin to talk
inside.  There was a good deal of din from the shack opposite - a baby
bawling, a mother attempting to hush it with an off-key lullaby - but he
caught fragments of the exchange.

Tick Raw was still in a fury:

"Is this some kind of punishment?" he demanded at one point; then, a few
moments later. "Patient?  How much more frigging patient do I have to
be?"

The lullaby blotted out much of what followed, and

7 when it quietened again, the conversation inside Tick

Raw's shack had taken another turn entirely.

"We've got a long way to go Gentle heard Pie saying, and a lot to learn

Tick Raw made some inaudible reply, to which Pie said. "He s a stranger
here."

Again Tick Raw murmured something.

J can't do that," Pie replied.. "He's my responsibility." Now Tick Raw's
persuasions grew loud enough

for

Gentle to hear.

"You're wasting your time," the evocator said.. "Stay here with me.  I
miss a warm body at night."

At this Pie's voice dropped to a whisper.  Gentle took a half-step back
towards the door, and managed

to catch a few of the mystif's words.  It said heart-broken, he was
sure; then something about faith.  But

the rest was a murmur too soft to be interpreted.  Deciding he'd given
the two of them long enough

alone, he announced that he was coming back in, and entered.  Both
looked up at him; somewhat guiltily,

he thought.

"I want to get out of here," he announced.

Tick Raw's hand was at Pie's neck, and remained there, like a staked
claim.

"If you go," Tick Raw told the mystif. "I can't guarantee your safety.
Hammeryock will be wanting

your blood.. "We can defend ourselves," Gentle said, somewhat surprised
by his own certainly.

"Maybe we shouldn't be quite so hasty," Pie put in.

"We've got a journey to make," Gentle replied.

"Let her make up her own mind, "Tick Raw suggested.

"She's not your property."

At this remark, a curious look crossed Pieloh'pah's face.  Not guilt
now, but a troubled expression,

softening into resignation.  The mystif's hand went up to its neck, and
brushed off Tick Raw's hold.

"He's right," it said to Tick.. "We do have a journey ahead

of us."

The evocator pursed his lips, as if making up his mind

whether to pursue this business any further or not.  Then he said. "Well
then.  You'd better go."

He turned a sour eye on Gentle.

"May everything be as it seems, stranger.. "Thank you," said Gentle, and
escorted Pie out of the

hut into the mud and flurry of Vanaeph.

"Strange thing to say," Gentle observed as they trudged away from Tick
Raw's hut.

"May

everything be as it seems.. "It's the profoundest curse a sway-worker
knows," Pie replied.

"I see."

"On the contrary," Pie said. "I don't think you see very much."

There was a note of accusation in Pie's words which

Gentle rose to.     he said.. "You

"I certainly saw what you were up to," had half a mind to stay with him.
Batting your eyes

like a -' He stopped himself.

"Go on," Pie replied.

"Say it.  Like a whore.,

"That wasn't what I meant."

"No, please," Pie went on, bitterly.. "You can lay on the insults.  Why
not?  it can be very

arousing."

Gentle shot Pie a look of disgust.

"You said you wanted education, Gentle.  Well let's start with may
everything be as it seems.

It's a curse, because if that were the case we'd all be living just to
die, and mud would be King

of the Dominions."

"I get it," Gentle said.. "And you'd be just a whore.. "And you'd be a
just a faker, working

for Before the rest of the sentence was out of his mouth a pack of
animals ran out between

two of the dwellings, squealing like pigs, though they looked more like
tiny llamas.

Gentle

looked in the direction from which they'd come, and saw, advancing
between the shanties, a

sight

to bring shudders.

e,. "The Nullianad'

"I see it!" Pie said.

As the executioner approached, the praying hands of its head opened and
closed, as though kindling the energies between the palms to a lethal
heat.  There were cries of alarm from the houses around.  Doors slammed.
Shutters closed.  A child was snatched from a step, bawling as it went.
Gentle had time to see the executioner dr aw two weapons, with blades
that caught the livid light of the arcs, then he was obeying Pie's
instruction to run, the mystif leading the way.

The street they'd been on was no more than a narrow

Si'

gutter, but it was a well-lit highway by comparison with

-?

the narrow alley they ducked into.  Pie was light-footed; Gentle was
not.  Twice the mystif made a turn and Gentle overshot it.  The second
time he lost Pie entirely in the murk and dirt, and was about to retrace
his steps when he heard the executioner's blade slice through something
behind him and glanced back to see one of the frailer houses folding up
in a cloud of dust and screams, its demolisher's shape,
lightning-headed, appearing from the chaos and fixing its gaze upon him.

Its target sighted, it advanced with a sudden speed, and Gentle darted
for cover at the first turn, a route that took him into a swamp of
sewage which he barely crossed without falling, and thence into even
narrower passages.

it would only be a matter of time before he chanced upon a cul-de-sac,
he knew.  When he did the game would be up.

He felt an itch at the nape of his neck, as though the blades were
already there.  This wasn't right! He'd barely been out of the Fifth an
hour and he was seconds from death.  He glanced back.  The Nullianac had
closed the distance between them.

He picked up his pace, pitching himself around a corner, and into a
tunnel of corrugated iron, with no way out at the other end.

"Shite!" he said, taking Tick Raw's favourite word for his complaint.
"Furie, you've killed yourself!'

The walls of the cul-de-sac were slick with filth, and high.  Knowing
he'd never scale them, he ran to the far end and threw himself against
the wall there, hoping it

might crack.  But its builders (damn them!) had been better craftsmen
than most in the vicinity.  The wall fl

il rocked, and pieces of its foetid mortar fell about him, but all his
efforts did was bring the Nullianac straight to him,

drawn by the sound of his effort.

Seeing his executioner approaching, Gentle pitched his

body against the wall afresh, hoping for some last-minute

reprieve.  But all he got was bruises.  The itch at his nape was an ache
now, but through its pain he formed the

despairing thought that this was surely the most ignominious of deaths,
to be sliced up amongst sewage.  What

had he done to deserve it, he asked aloud.

"What have I done?  What the fuck have I done?"

The question went unanswered; or did it?  As his yells

ceased he found himself raising his hand to his face, not

knowing - even as he did so - why.  There was simply an

inner compulsion to open his palm and spit upon it.  The

spittle felt cold, or else his palm was hot.  Now a yard

away, the Nullianac raised its twin blades above its head.

Gentle made a fist, lightly, and put it to his mouth.  As the blades
reached the top of their are, he exhaled.

He felt his breath blaze against his palm, and in the

instant before the blades reached his head the pneuma

went from his fist like a bullet.  It struck the Nullianac in

the neck with such force it was thrown backwards, a livid spurt of
energy breaking from the gap in its head, and

rising like Earth-born lightning into the sky.  The creature

fell in the filth, its hands dropping the blades to reach for

the wound.  They never touched the place.  Its life went

out of it in a spasm, and its prayerful head was permanently silenced.

At least as shaken by the other's death as the proximity

of his own, Gentle got to his feet, his gaze going from the

body in the dirt to his fist.  He opened it.  The spittle had gone;
transformed into some lethal dart.  There was a

seam of discolouration that ran from the ball of his thumb

to the other side of his hand.  That was the only sign of the pneuma's
passing.

"Holy shite," he said.

A small crowd had already gathered at the end of the cul-de-sac, and
heads appeared over the wall behind him.  From every side came an
agitated buzz that wouldn't, he guessed, take long to reach Harnmeryock
and Pontiff Farrow.  it would be naive to suppose they ruled Vanaeph
with only one executioner in their squad.  There'd be others; and here,
soon.  He stepped over the body, not caring to look too closely at the
damage he'd done, but aware with only a passing glance that it was
substantial.

The crowd, seeing the conquerer approach, parted.  Some bowed, others
fled.  One said, bravo!, and tried to kiss his hand.  He pressed his
admirer away, and scanned the alleys in every direction, hoping for some
sign of Pie'oh'pah.  Finding none, he debated his options.  Where would
Pie go?  Not to the top of the Mount.  Though that was a visible
rendezvous, their enemies would spot them there.  Where else?  The gates
of Patashoqua, perhaps, that the mystif had pointed out when they'd
first arrived?  it was as good a place as any, he thought, and started
off, down through teeming Vanaeph towards the glorious city.

His worst expectations - that news of his crime had reached the Pontiff
and her league were soon confirmed.  He was almost at the edge of the
township, and within sight of the open ground that lay between its
borders and the walls of Patashoqua, when a hue and cry from the streets
behind announced a pursuing party.  In his Fifth Dominion garb, jeans
and shirt, he would be easily recognized if he started towards the
gates, but if he attempted to stay within the confines of Vanaeph it
would be only a matter of time before he was hunted down.  Better to
take the chance of running now, he decided, while he still had a lead.
Even if he didn't make it to the gates before they came after him, they
surely wouldn't dispatch him within sight of Patashoqua's gleaming
walls.

He put on a fair turn of speed, and was out of the

township in less than a minute, the commotion behind him gathering
volume.  Though it was difficult to judge the distance to the gates in a
light that lent such iridescence to the ground between, it was certainly
no less than a mile; perhaps twice that.  He'd not got far when the
first of his pursuers appeared from the outskirts of Vanaeph, runners
fresher and lither than he, who rapidly closed the distance between
them.  There were plenty of travellers coming and going along the
Straight road to the gates.  Some pedestrians, most in groups, and
dressed like pilgrims; other, finer figures, mounted on horses whose
flanks and heads were painted with gaudy designs; still others riding on
shaggy derivatives of the mule.  Most envied, however, and most rare,
were those in motor vehicles, which, though they basically resembled
their equivalents in the Fifth a chassis riding on wheels were in every
other regard fresh inventions.  Some were as elaborate as baroque
altarpieces, every inch of their body work chased and filigreed.  Others,
with spindly wheels twice the height of their roofs, had the
preposterous delicacy of tropical insects.  Still others, mounted on a
dozen or more tiny wheels, their exhausts giving off a dense, bitter
fume, looked like speeding wreckage, asymmetrical and inelegant
farragoes of glass and metalwork.  Risking death by hoof and wheel
Gentle joined the traffic, and put on a new spurt as he dodged between
the vehicles.  The leaders of the pack behind him had also reached the
road.  They were armed, he saw, and had no compunction about displaying
their weapons. His belief that they wouldn't attempt to kill him amongst
witnesses suddenly seemed frail.  Perhaps the law of Vanaeph was good to
the very gates of Patashoqua.  If so, he was dead.  They would overtake
him long before he reached sanctuary.

But now, above the din of the highway, another sound reached him, and he
dared a glance off to his left, to see a small, plain vehicle, its
engine badly tuned, careering in his direction.  It was open topped, its
driver visible.

Pie'oh'pah, God love him, driving like a man - or mystif possessed.
Gentle changed direction instantly, veering off the road, dividing a
herd of pilgrims as he did so, and raced towards Pie's noisy chariot.

A chorus of whoops at his back told him the pursuers had also changed
direction, but the sight of Pie had given heat to Gentle's heels.  His
turn of speed was wasted, however.  Rather than slowing to let Gentle
aboard Pie drove on past him, heading towards the hunters.  The leaders
scattered as the vehicle bore down upon them, but it was a figure Gentle
had missed, being carried in a sedan chair, who was Pie's true target.
Hammeryock, sitting on high, ready to watch the execution, was suddenly
a target in his turn.  He yelled to his bearers to retreat, but in their
panic they failed to agree on a direction.  Two pulled left, two right.
One of the chair's arms splintered, and Hammeryock was pitched out,
hitting the ground hard.  He didn't get up.  The sedan-chair was
discarded, and its bearers fled, leaving Pie to veer round and head back
towards Gentle.  With their leader felled, the scattered pursuers, most
likely coerced into serving the Pontiff in the first place, had lost
heart.  They were not sufficiently inspired to risk Harnmeryock's fate,
and so kept their distance, while Pie drove back and picked up his
gasping passenger.

"I thought maybe you'd gone back to Tick Raw," Gentle said once he was
aboard.

"He wouldn't have wanted me' Pie said.. "I've had congress with a
murderer.. "Who's that?. "You, my friend, you!  We're both assassins
now.. "I suppose we are.. "And not much welcome in this region, I
think.. "Where did you find the vehicle?. "There's a few of them parked
on the outskirts.  They'll be in them soon enough, and after us.. "The
sooner we are in the city the better then."

"I don't think we'd be safe there for long," the mystif replied.

It had manoeuvred the vehicle so that its snub nose faced the highway.
The choice lay before them.  Left, to the gates of Patashoqua.  Right,
off down a highway which an on past the Mount of Lipper Bayak, to a
horizon that rose, at the furthest limit of the eye, to a mountain
range.

"It's your choice," Pie said.

Gentle looked longingly towards the city, tempted by its spires.  But he
knew there was wisdom in Pie's advice.

"We'll come back some day, won't we?" he said.

"Certainly, if that's what you want."

"Then let's head the other way."

The MyStif turned the vehicle on to the highway, against the predominant
flow of traffic, and with the city behind them they soon picked up
speed.

"So much for Patashoqua," Gentle said as the walls became a mirage.

"No great loss,, Pie remarked.

"But I wanted to see the Merrow TiTi'," Gentle said.

"No chance," Pie returned.

"Why?. "It was pure invention," Pie said.. "Like all my favourite
things, including myself!  Pure invention'

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Though Jude had made an oath, in all sobriety, to follow Gentle wherever
she'd seen him go, her plans for pursuit were stymied by a number of
claims upon her energies, the most pressing of which was Clem's.  He
needed her advice, comfort and organizational skills in the dreary,
rainy days that followed New Year, and despite the urgency of her agenda
she could scarcely turn her back on him.  Taylor's funeral took place on
the ninth of January, with a Memorial Service which Clem took great
pains to perfect.  It was a melancholy triumph: a time for Taylor's
friends and relations to mingle and express their affections for the
departed man.  Jude met people she'd not seen in many years, and few, if
any, failed to comment on the one conspicuous absentee: Gentle.

She told everybody what she'd told Clem.  That Gentle had been going
through a bad time, and the last she'd heard he ould was planning to
leave on holiday.  Clem, of course, w not be fobbed off with such vague
excuses.  Gentle had left knowing that Taylor was dead, and Clem viewed
his departure as a kind of cowardice.  Jude didn't attempt to d to make
as little defend the wanderer.  She simply tried mention of Gentle in
Clem's presence as she could.

But the subject would keep coming up, one way or another.  Sorting
through Taylor's belongings after the funeral, Clem came upon three
watercolours, painted by Gentle in the style of Samuel Palmer, but
signed with his own name, and dedicated to Taylor.  Pictures of
idealized landscapes, they couldn't help but turn Clem's thoughts back
to Taylor's unrequited love for the vanished man, and Jude's to the
place he had vanished for.  They were

among the few items that Clem, perhaps vengefully, wanted to destroy,
but Jude persuaded him otherwise.  He kept one in memory of Taylor, gave
one to Klein, and the third to Jude.

Her duty to Clem took its toll not only upon her time but upon her
focus.  When, in the middle of the month, he

suddenly announced that he was going to leave the next day for Tenerife,
there to tan his troubles away for

a fortnight, she was glad to be released from the daily

duties of friend and comforter, but found herself unable

to rekindle the heat of ambition that had flared in her at

the month's first hour.  She had one unlikely touchstone,

however: the dog.  She only had to look at the mutt and

she remembered - as though it were an hour ago - standing at the door of
Gentle's flat, and seeing

the pair dissolving in front

of her

astonished

eyes.  And

on the heels

of

that memory came thoughts of the news she had been

carrying to Gentle that night: the dream-journey induced 41 I by the
stone that was now wrapped up and hidden from 14 sight and seeing in her
wardrobe.  She was not a great

. "I lover of dogs, but she'd taken the mongrel home that

night, knowing it would perish if she didn't.  It quickly

ingratiated itself, wagging a furious welcome when she

returned home each night after being with Clem; sneaking into her
bedroom in the early hours and

making a

nest for itself in her soiled clothes.  She called it Skin,

because it had so little fur, and while she didn't dote on

it the way it doted upon her she was still glad of its

company.  More than once she found herself talking to it

at great length, while it licked its paws or its balls, these

monologues a means to refocus her thoughts without

worrying that she was losing her mind.  Three days after

Clem Is departure for sunnier climes, discussing with Skin

how she should best proceed, Estabrook's name came up.

- !. "You haven't met Estabrook," she told Skin.. "But I'll

guarantee you won't like him.  He tried to have me killed, you know?"

The dog looked up from its toilet.

"Yeah, I was amazed, too," she said.. "I mean, that's worse than an
animal, right?  No disrespect, but it is.  I was his wife.  I am his
wife.

And he tried to have me killed.  What would you do, if you were me?
Yeah, I know, I should see him.  He had the blue eye in his safe.

And that book!  Remind me to tell you about the book some time.  No,
maybe I shouldn't.  It'll give you ideas." Skin settled his head on his
crossed paws, gave a small sigh of contentment, and started to doze.

"You're a big help," she said. "I need some advice here.  What do you
say to a man who tried to have you murdered?"

Skin's eyes were closed, so she was obliged to furnish

her own reply.

"I say: Hello, Charlie, why don't you tell me the story of your life?"

She called Lewis Leader the next day to find out whether Estabrook was
still hospitalized.

She was told he was, but that he'd been moved to a private clinic in
Hampstead.  Leader supplied details of his whereabouts, and Jude called
to enquire both about Estabrook's condition and visiting hours.  She was
told he was still under close scrutiny, but seemed to be in better
spirits than he'd been, and she was welcome to come and see him at any
time.  There seemed little purpose in delaying the meeting.  She drove
up to Hampstead that very evening, through another tumultuous rainstorm,
arriving to a welcome from the psychiatric nurse in charge of
Estabrook's case, a chatty young man called Maurice who lost his top lip
when he smiled, which was often, and talked with an almost indiscreet
enthusiasm about the state of his patient's mind.

"He has good days," Maurice said brightly.  Then, just as brightly. "But
not many.  He's severely depressed.  He

made one attempt to kill himself before he came to us, but he's settled
down a lot."

"Is he sedated?"

"We help keep the anxiety controllable, but he's not drugged senseless.
We can't help him get to the root of the problem if he is."

"Has he told you what that is?" she said, expecting accusations to be
tossed in her direction.

"It's pretty obscure," Maurice said.. "He talks about you very fondly,
and I'm sure your coming will do him a great deal of good.  But the
problem's obviously with his blood relatives.  I've got him to talk a
little about his father and his brother but he's very cagey.  The
father's dead of course, but maybe you can shed some light on the
brother."

"I never met him."

"That's a pity.  Charles clearly feels a great deal of anger towards his
brother, but I haven't got to the root of why.  I will.  It'll just take
time.  He's very good at keeping his secrets to himself, isn't he?  But
then you probably know that.  Shall I take you along to see him?  I did
tell him you'd telephoned, so I think he's expecting you."

Jude was irritated that the element of surprise had been removed; that
Estabrook would have had time to prepare his feints and fabrications.
But what was done was done, and rather than snap at the gleeful Maurice
for his indiscretion she kept her displeasure to herself.  She might
need the man's smiling assistance in the fullness of time.

Estabrook's room was pleasant enough.  Spacious and comfortable, its
walls adorned with reproductions of Monet and Renoir, it was a soothing
space.  Even the piano concerto that played softly in the background
seemed designed to placate a troubled mind.  Estabrook was not in bed
but sitting by the window, one of the curtains drawn aside so that he
could watch the rain.

He was dressed in pyjamas and his best dressing-gown, and smoking.  As
Maurice had said, he was clearly awaiting his visitor.  There was no
flicker of surprise when she

appeared at the door.  And, as she'd anticipated, he had his welcome
ready.

"At last, a familiar face."

He didn't open his arms to embrace her, but she went to him and kissed
him lightly on both cheeks.

"One of the nurses will get you something to drink if you'd like," he
said.

Yes, I'd like some coffee.  It's bitter out there."

Maybe Maurice'll get it, if I promise to unburden my soul tomorrow.. "Do
you?" said Maurice.

"I do.  I promise.  You'll know the secrets of my Pottytraining by this
time tomorrow.. "Milk and sugar?" Maurice asked.

just milk," Charlie said.. "Unless her tastes have changed."

"No," she told him.

"Of course not.  Judith doesn't change.  Judith's eternal." Maurice
withdrew, leaving them to talk.  There was no embarrassed silence.  He
had his spiel ready, and while he delivered it - a speech about how glad
he was that she'd come, and how much he hoped it meant she would begin
to forgive him - she studied his changed face.  He'd lost weight, and
was without his toupee, which revealed in his physiognomy qualities
she'd never seen before.  His large nose and tugged-down mouth, with
jutting overlarge lower lip, lent him the look of an aristocrat fallen
on hard times.  She doubted that she'd ever find it in her heart to love
him again, but she could certainly manage a twinge of pity, seeing him
so reduced.

"I suppose you want a divorce," he said.

'we can talk about that another time.. "Do you need money?. "Not at the
moment.. "If you d. "I'll ask., A male nurse appeared with coffee for
Jude, hot chocolate for Estabrook, and biscuits.  When he'd gone, she

plunged into a confession.  One from her, she reasoned, might elicit one
from him.

"I went to the house," she said.. "To collect my j ewellery.. "And you
couldn't get into the safe."

"Oh no, I got in." He didn't look at her, but sipped his chocolate
noisily.. "And I found some very strange things, Charlie.

I'd like to talk about them."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Some souvenirs.  A piece of a statue.  A book."

"No," he said, still not looking her way.. "Those aren't mine.  I don't
know what they are.

Oscar gave them to me to look after."

Here was an intriguing connection.. "Where did Oscar get them from?" she
asked him.

"I didn't enquire," Estabrook said with a detached air.. "He travels a
lot, you know:

"I'd like to meet him."

"No, you wouldn't," he said hurriedly.. "You wouldn't like him at all."

"Globe-trotters are always interesting," she said, attempting to
preserve a lightness in her tone.

"I told you," he said.. "You wouldn't like him."

"Has he been to see you?"

"No.  And I wouldn't see him if he did.  Why are you asking me these
questions?  You've never cared about Oscar before:

"He is your brother," she said. "He has some filial responsibility.,

"Oscar?  He doesn't care for anybody but himself.  He only gave me those
presents as a sop."

"So they were gifts.  I thought you were just looking after them:

"Does it matter?, he said, raising his voice a little.. "Just don't
touch them, they're dangerous.  You put them back, yes?"

She lied and told him she had, realizing any further discussion on the
matter would only infuriate him further.

Is there a view out of the window?" she asked him.

"Of the Heath," he said.. "It's very pretty on sunny days, apparently.
They found a body there on Monday.  A woman, strangled.  I watched them
combing the bushes all day yesterday and all day today, looking for
clues I suppose.  In this weather.  Horrible, to be out in this weather,
digging around looking for soiled underwear or some such.  Can you
imagine?

I thought: I'm damn lucky

t I'm in here, warm and cosy."

if there was any indication of a change in his mental processes it was
here, in this strange digression.  An earlier

Estabrook would have had no patience with any conversation that was not
serving a clear purpose.  Gossip and t its purveyors had drawn his
contempt like little else, _'Ii

especially when he knew he was the subject of the little-tattle.  As to
gazing out of a window and wondering how others were faring in the cold,
that would have been literally unthinkable two months before.  She liked
the change, just as she liked the new-found nobility in his profile.
Seeing the hidden man revealed gave her faith in her own judgement.
Perhaps it was this Estabrook she'd loved all along.

They spoke for a while more, without returning to any of the personal
matters between them, and parted on friendly terms, with an embrace that
was genuinely warm.

"When will you come again?" he asked her.

"In the next couple of days," she told him.    i

"I'll be waiting."

So, the gifts she'd found in the safe had come from Oscar Godolphin.
Oscar the mysterious, who'd kept the family name while brother Charles
had disowned it; Oscar the enigmatic; Oscar the globe-trotter.  How far
afield had he gone, she wondered, to have returned with such outr
trophies?  Somewhere out of this world, perhaps, into the same
remoteness to which she'd seen Gentle and Pie'oh'pah dispatch
themselves?  She began to suspect

that there was some conspiracy aboard.  If two men who had no knowledge
of each other, Oscar Godolphin and John Zacharias, knew about this other
world and how to remove themselves there, how many others in her circle
also knew?  Was it information only available to men?  Did it come with
the penis and a mother fixation, as part of the male apparatus?  Had
Taylor known?  Did Clem?  Or was this some kind of family secret, and
the part of the puzzle she was missing was the link between a Godolphin
and a Zacharias?

Whatever the explanation, it was certain she would not get answers from
Gentle, which meant she had to seek out brother Oscar.  She tried by the
most direct route first: the telephone directory.  He wasn't listed. She
then tried via Lewis Leader, but he claimed to have no knowledge of the
man's whereabouts or fortunes, telling her that the affairs of the two
brothers were quite separate, and he had never been called to deal with
any matter involving Oscar Godolphin.

"For all I know," he said, 'the man could be dead." Having drawn a blank
with the direct routes, she was thrown back upon the indirect.  She
returned to Estabrook's house and scoured it thoroughly, looking for
Oscar's address or telephone number.

She found neither, but she did turn up a Photograph album Charlie had
never shown to her, in which pictures of what she took to be the two
brothers appeared.  It wasn't difficult to distinguish one from the
other.

Even in those early pictures Charlie had the troubled look the camera
always found in him, whereas Oscar, younger by half a dozen years, was
nevertheless the more confident of the pair; a little overweight, but
carrying it easily, smiling an easy smile as he hooked his arm around
his brother's shoulders.  She removed the most recent of the
photographs, which pictured Charles at puberty, or thereabouts, from the
album, and kept it.  Repetition, she found, made theft easier.  But it
was the only information about Oscar she took away with her.  If she was
to get to the traveller, and

find out in what world he'd bought his souvenirs, she'd have to work on
Estabrook to do so.

It would take time, and her impatience grew with every short and rainy
day.  Even though she had the freedom to buy a ticket anywhere on the
planet, a kind of claustrophobia was upon her.  There was another world
to which she wanted access.  Until she got it, the Earth itself would be
a prison.

Leader called Oscar on the morning of 17 January, with the news that his
brother's estranged wife was asking for information on his whereabouts.

"Did she say why?"

"No, not precisely.  But she's very clearly sniffing after something.
She's apparently seen Estabrook three times in the last week.. "Thank
you, Lewis.  I appreciate this."

"Appreciate it in hard cash, Oscar," Leader replied.. "I've had a very
expensive Christmas."

"When have you ever gone empty-handed?" Oscar said.. "Keep me posted."

The lawyer promised to do so, but Oscar doubted he'd provide much more
by way of useful information.  Only truly despairing souls confided in
lawyers, and he doubted Judith was the despairing type.  He'd never met
her - Charlie had seen to that - but if she'd surivived his company for
any time at all she had to have a will of iron.

Which begged the question: why would a woman who knew (presuming she
did) that her husband had conspired to kill her, seek out his company,
unless she had an ulterior motive?  And was it conceivable that said
motive was finding brother Oscar?  If so, such curiosity had to be
nipped in the bud.  There were already enough variables at play, what
with the Society's purge now underway, and the inevitable police
investigate on on its heels, not to mention his new major domo Augustine

(no Dowd) who was behaving in altogether too snotty a fashion.  And of
course, most volatile of these variables, sitting in his asylum beside
the Heath, Charlie himself, probably crazy, certainly unpredictable,
with all manner of tit bits in his head which could do Oscar a lot of
harm.  It could be only a matter of time before he started to become
talkative, and when he did what better ear to drop his discretions into
than that of his enquiring wife?

That evening he sent Dowd (he couldn't get used to that saintly
Augustine) up to the clinic, with a basket of fruit for his brother.

"Find a friend there, if you can," he told Dowd.. "I need to know what
Charlie babbles about when he's being bathed."

"Why don't you ask him directly?"

"He hates me, that's why.  He thinks I stole his mess of pottage when
Papa introduced me into the Tabula Rasa instead of Charlie?"

"Why did your father do that

"Because he knew Charlie was unstable, and he'd do the Society more harm
than good.

I've had him under control until now.  He's had his little gifts from
the Dominions.  He's had you fawn upon him when he needed something out
of the ordinary, like his assassin!  This all started with that fucking
assassin!  Why couldn't you have just killed the woman yourself?"

"What do you take me for?" Dowd said with distaste.. "I couldn't lay
hands on a woman.

Especially not a beauty.,

"How do you know she's a beautyr

"I've heard her talked about."

"Well, I don't care what she looks like.  I don't want her meddling in
my business.  Find out what she's up to.  Then we'll work out our
response.,

Dowd came back a few hours later, with alarming news.

"Apparently she's persuaded him to take her to the

Estate."

hat?  What?"  Oscar bounded from his chair.  The

parrots rose up squawking in sympathy.. "She knows more than she should.
Shit!  All that heartache to keep the Society out of our hair, and now
this bitch comes along and we're in worse trouble than ever.. "Nothing's
happened yet."

"But it will, it will!  She'll wind him round her little finger and
he'll tell her everything.. "What do you want to do about it?"

Oscar went to hush the parrots.. "Ideally?" he said, as he smoothed
their ruffled wings.

"Ideally I'd have Charlie vanish off the face of the earth."

"He had much the same ambition for her," Dowd observed.

"Meaning what?. "Just that you're both quite capable of murder." Oscar
made a contemptuous grunt.. "Charlie was only playing at it," he said.
"He's got no balls!  He's got no vision!" He returned to his high-backed
chair, his expression sullen.. "It's not going to hold, damn it," he
said.. "I can feel it in my gut.  We've kept things neat and tidy so
far, but it's not going to hold.

Charlie has to be taken out of the equation."

"He's your brother."

"He's a burden."

"What I mean is: he's your brother.  You should be the one to dispatch
him."

Oscar's eyes widened.

"Oh my Lord," he said.

"Think what they'd say in Yzordderrex, if you were to tell them."

"What?  That I killed my own brother?  I don't see much charm in that."

"But that you did what you had to do, however unpalatable, to keep the
secret safe." Dowd paused to let the idea blossom.. "That sounds heroic
to me.  Think what they'll say."

"I'm thinking."

"It's your reputation in Yzordderrex you care about, 238 isn't it, not
what happens in the Fifth?  You've said before this world's getting
duller all the time."

Oscar pondered this for a while, then said. "Maybe I should slip away.
Kill them both to make sure nobody ever knows where I've gone

"Where we've gone."

then slip away and pass into legend.  Oscar Godolphin, who left his
crazy brother dead beside his wife, and disappeared.

Oh yes.  That'd make quite a headline in Patashoqua." He mused for a few
moments more.

"What's the classic sibling murder?" he finally asked.

"The jaw-bone of an ass."

"Ridiculous."

"You'll think of something better."

"So I will.  Make me a drink, Dowdy.  And have one yourself.  We'll
drink to escape."

"Doesn't everybody?" Dowd replied, but the remark was lost on Godolphin,
who was already plunged deep into murderous thought.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Gentle and Pie were six days on the Patashoquan Highway, days measured
not by the watch on Pie's wrist but by the brightening and darkening of
the peacock sky.  on the fifth day the watch gave up the ghost anyway,
maddened, Pie supposed, by the magnetic field surrounding a city of
pyramids they passed.  Thereafter, even though Gentle wanted to preserve
some sense of how time was proceeding in the Dominion they'd left, it
was virtually impossible.  Within a few days their bodies were
accommodating the rhythm of their new world, and he let his curiosity
feast on more pertinent matters; chiefly, the landscape through which
they were travelling.

it was diverse.  In that first week they passed out of the

which plain into a region of lagoons - the Cosacosa

took two days to cross, and thence into tracts of ancient conifers so
tall clouds hung in their topmost branches like the nests of ethereal
birds.  On the other side of this stupendous forest the mountains which
Gentle had glimpsed days before came plainly into view.  The range was
called the Jokalaylau, Pie informed him, and legend had it that after
the Mount of Lipper Bayak these heights A

had been Hapexamendios's next resting place as He crossed through the
Dominions.  It was no accident, it seemed, that the landscapes they
passed through recalled those of the Fifth; they had been chosen for
that similarity.

The Unbeheld had strode the Imajica dropping seeds of humanity as He
went - even to the very edge of His sanctum - in order to give the
species He favoured new challenges, and like any good gardener He'd
dispersed them where they had the best hope of prospering.

240 Where the native crop could be conquered or accommodated; where the
living was hard enough to make sure only the most resilient survived,
but the land fertile ennugh to feed their children; where rain came;
where light came; where all the vicissitudes that strengthened a species
by occasional calamity - tempest, earthquake, flood - were to hand.

But while there was much that any terrestrial traveller would have
recognized, nothing, not to the smallest pebble underfoot, was quite
like its counterpart in the Fifth.  Some of these disparities were too
vast to be missed: the green-gold of the heavens, for instance, or the
elephantine snails that grazed beneath the cloud-nested trees.  Others
were smaller, but equally bizarre, like the wild dogs that ran along the
Highway now and then, hairless and shiny as patent leather; or
grotesque, like the horned kites which swooped on any animal dead or
near-dead on the road, and only rose from their meals, purple wings
opening like cloaks, when the vehicle was almost upon them; or absurd,
like the bone-white lizards that congregated in their thousands along
the edge of the lagoons, the urge to turn somersaults passing through
their colonies in waves.

Perhaps finding some new response to these experiences was out of the
question when the sheer proliferation of travellers' tales had all but
exhausted the lexicon of discovery.  But it nevertheless irritated
Gentle to hear himself responding in cliches.  The traveller moved by
un spoilt beauty, or appalled by native barbarism.  The traveller touched
by primitive wisdom or caught breathless by undreamt-of modernities. The
traveller condescending; the traveller humbled; the traveller hungry for
the next horizon, or pining miserably for home.  Of all these perhaps
only the last response never passed Gentle's lips.  He thought of the
Fifth only when it came up in conversation between himself and Pie, and
that happened less and less as the practicalities of the moment pressed
more heavily upon them.  Food and sleeping

241 quarters were easily come by at first, as was fuel for the car.
There were small villages and hostelries along the Highway, where Pie,
despite an absence of hard cash, always managed to secure them
sustenance and beds to sleep in.  The mystif had a host of minor fe its
at its disposal, Gentle realized: ways to use its powers of seduction A
to make even the most rapacious hostelier pliant.  But

I   once they got beyond the forest matters became more

problematical.  The bulk of the vehicles had turned off at

the intersections and the Highway had degenerated from a well-serviced

thoroughfare to a two-lane road, with c.  The vehicle Pie had stolen
more

pot-holes than traffi

had not been designed for the rig ours of long-distance

travel.  It started to show signs of fatigue, and with the Id

mountains looming ahead it was decided they shou

:71 stop at the next village, and attempt to trade it in for a

more reliable model.

"Perhaps something with breath in its body," Pie suggested.

"Speaking of which," Gentle said, 'you never asked me about the
Nullianac."

'what was there to ask?"

"How I killed it."

"I presumed you used a pneuma."

"You don't sound very surprised."

"How else would you have done it?" Pie said, quite reasonably.. "You had
the will, and you had the power.. "But where did I get it from?" Gentle
said.

"You've always had it," Pie replied, which left Gentle nursing as many
questions, or more, than he'd begun with.  He started to formulate one,
but something in the motion of the car began to nauseate him as he did
so.. "I think we'd better stop for a few minutes," he said.. "I think
I'm going to puke."

Pie brought the vehicle to a halt, and Gentle stepped out.  The sky was
darkening, and some night-blooming flower spiced the cooling air.  on
the slopes above them herds of pale-flanked beasts, relations of the yak
but here

called doeki, moved down through the twilight of their dormitory
pastures, lowing as they came.  The dangers of Vanaeph, and the thronged
Highway outside Patashoqua, seemed very remote.  Gentle breathed deeply,
and the nausea, like his questions, no longer vexed him.  He looked up
at the first stars.  Some were red here, like Mars; others gold:
fragments of the noonday sky that refused to be extinguished.

"Is this Dominion another planet?" he asked Pie.. "Are we in some other
galaxy?"

"No.  It's not space that separates the Fifth from the rest of the
Dominions, it's the in Ovo."

"So, is the whole of planet Earth the Fifth Dominion, or just part of O'

"I don't know," it said.. "All, I assume.  But everyone has a different
theory.. "What's yours?"

"Well, when we move between the Reconciled Dominions, you'll see it's
very easy.  There are countless passing places between the Fourth and
the Third, the Thir( and the Second.  We'll walk into a mist, and we'll
come out into another world.

Simple.  But I don't think the borders are fixed.  I think they move
over the centuries, and the shapes of the Dominions change.  So may be
it'll be the same with the Fifth.  If it's reconciled, the borders will
spread, until the whole planet has access to the rest of the Dominions.
The truth is, nobody really knows what the Imajica looks like, because
nobody's ever made a map.. "Somebody should try."

"Maybe you're the man to do it," Pie said.. "You were an artist before
you were a traveller.. "I was a faker, not an artist.. "But your hands
are clever," Pie replied.

"Clever," Gentle said softly, 'but never inspired." This melancholy
thought took him back, momentarily, to Klein, and to the rest of the
circle he'd left in the Fifth; to Jude, Clem, Estabrook, Vanessa and the
rest.  What

were they doing this fine night?  Had they even noticed his departure?
He doubted it.

"Are you feeling any better?" Pie enquired.. "I see some lights down the
road a little way.  It may be the last outpost before the mountains."

"I'm in good shape," Gentle said, climbing back into the car.

They'd proceeded perhaps a quarter of a mile, and were in sight of the
village when their progress was brought to a halt by a young girl who
appeared from the dusk to herd her doeki across the road.  She was in
every way a normal thirteen year-old child, but for one: her face, and
those parts of her body revealed by her simple dress, were

sleek with fawny down.  It was plaited where it grew long at her elbow
and her temples, and tied in a row of ribbons at her nape.

"What village is this?" Pie asked as the last of the doeki lingered in
the road.

"Beatrix," she said, and without prompting added. "There is no better
place in any heaven."

Then, shooing the last beast on its way, she vanished into the twilight.

The streets of Beatrix weren't as narrow as those of Vanaeph, but nor
were they designed for motor vehicles.  Pie parked the car close to the
outskirts, and the two of them ambled into the village from there.  The
houses were unpretentious affairs raised of an ochre stone, and
surrounded by stands of vegetation that were a cross between silver
birches and bamboo.  The lights Pie had spotted from a distance weren't
those that burned in the windows, but the lanterns that hung in these
trees, throwing their mellow light across the streets.  Just about every
copse boasted its lantern-trimmer - shaggy-faced children like the
herders - some squatting beneath the

trees, others perched precariously in their branches.  The doors of
almost all the houses stood open, and music drifted from several, tunes
caught by the lantern trimmers and danced to in the dapple.  Asked to
guess, Gentle would have said life was good here.  Slow, perhaps, but
good.

"We can't cheat these people," Gentle said.. "It wouldn't be
honourable."

"Agreed," Pie replied.

"So what do we do for money?"

"Maybe they'll agree to cannibalize the vehicle for a good meal, and a
horse or two."

"I don't see any horses."

"A doeki would be fine."

"They look slow."

Pie directed Gentle's gaze up the heights of the Jokalaylau.  The last
traces of day still lingered on the snow-fields, but for all their
beauty the mountains were vast and vanishing.

"Slow and certain is safer up there," Pie said.  Gentle took Pie's
point.. "I'm going to see if I can find somebody in charge," the mystif
went on, and left Gentle's side to go and question one of the
lantern-trimmers.

Drawn by the sound of raucous laughter, Gentle wandered on a little
further, and turning a corner he found two dozen of the villagers,
mostly men and boys, standing in front of a marionette theatre that had
been set up in the lee of one of the houses.  The show they were
watchIng contrasted violently with the benign atmosphere of the village.
To judge by the spires painted on the back cloth the story was set in
Patashoqua, and as Gentle joined the audience two characters, one a
grossly fat woman, the other a man with the proportions of a foetus and
the endowment of a donkey, were in the middle of a domestic tiff so
frenzied the spires were shaking.  The puppeteers, three slim young men
with identical moustaches, were plainly visible above the booth, and
proving d de both the raucous dialogue and the sound effects, the

former larded with baroque obscenities.  Now another character entered -
this a hunchbacked sibling of Pulcinella's - and summarily beheaded
Donkey-Dick.  The head flew to the ground, where the fat woman knelt to
sob over it.  As she did so, cherubic wings unfolded from behind its
ears and it floated up into the sky, accompanied by a falsetto din from
the puppeteers.  This earned applause from the audience, during which
Gentle caught sight of Pie in the street.  At the mystif's side was a
jug eared adolescent with hair down to the middle of his back.  Gentle
went to join them.

"This is Efreet Splendid," Pie said.. "He tells me - wait for this - he
tells me his mother has dreams about white, furless men, and would like
to meet you."

The grin that broke through Efreet's facial thatch was crooked but
beguiling.

"She'll like you," he announced.

"Are you sure?" Gentle said.

"Certainly!'

"Will she feed us?"

"For a furless whitey, anything," Efreet replied.

Gentle threw the mystif a doubtful glance.. "I hope you know what we're
doing," he said.

Efreet led the way, chattering as he went, asking mostly about
Patashoqua.  it was, he said, his ambition to see the great city. Rather
than disappoint the boy by admitting that he hadn't stepped inside the
gates, Gentle informed him that it was a place of untold magnificence.

"Especially the Merrow TV TiV he said.

The boy grinned, and said he'd tell everybody he knew that he'd met a
hairless white man who'd seen the Merrow TV TV.  From such innocent
lies, Gentle mused, legends came.  At the door of the house, Efreet
stood aside, in order that Gentle be the first over the threshold.  He
startled the woman inside with his appearance.

She dropped the cat she was combing, and instantly fell to her knees.
Embarrassed, Gentle asked her to stand, but it was only after much
persuasion that she did so, and

It

even then she kept her head bowed, watching him furtively from the
corner of her small, dark eyes.  She was short - barely taller than her
son in fact - her face fine boned beneath its down.  Her name was
Larumday, she said, and she would very happily extend to Gentle and his
lady (as she assumed Pie to be) the hospitality of her house.

Her younger son Emblem was coerced into helping her prepare food while
Efreet talked about where they could find a buyer for the car.  Nobody
in the village had any use for such a vehicle, he said, but in the hills
was a man who might.  His name was Coaxial Tasko, and it came as a
considerable shock to Efreet that neither Gentle nor Pie had heard of
the man.

"Everybody knows Wretched Tasko," he said.. "He used to be a King in the
Third Dominion, but his tribe's extinct."

"Will you introduce me to him in the morning?" Pie asked.

"That's a long time off," Efreet said.

"Tonight then," Pie replied, and it was thus agreed between them.

The food, when it came, was simpler than the fare they'd been served
along the Highway but no less tasty for that: doeki meat marinated in a
root wine, accompanied by bread, a selection of pickled goods including
eggs the size of small loaves and a broth which stung the throat like
chili, bringing tears to Gentle's eyes, much to Efreet's undisguised
amusement.  While they ate and drank - the wine strong, but downed by
the boys like water - Gentle asked about the marionette show he'd seen.

Ever eager to parade his knowledge, Efreet explained that the puppeteers
were on their way to Patashoqua ahead of the Autarch's host, who were
coming over the mountains in the next few days.  The puppeteers were
very famous in Yzordderrex, he said, at which point Larumday hushed him.

"But, Mama -' he began.

"I said hush.  I won't have talk of that place in this house.

Your father went there and never came back.  Remember

that."

"I want to go there when I've seen the Merrow TV TV, like Mr Gentle,"
Efreet replied defiantly, and earned a sharp slap on the head for his
troubles.

"Enough," Larumday said.. "We've had too much talk tonight.  A little
silence would be welcome."

The conversation dwindled thereafter, and it wasn't until the meal was
finished, and Efreet was preparing to take Pie up the hill to meet
Wretched Tasko, that the boy's mood brightened and his spring of
enthusiasms burst forth afresh.  Gentle was ready to join them, but
Efreet explained that his mother - who was presently out of the room -
wanted him to stay.

"You should accommodate her," Pie remarked when the boy had headed out.
"If Tasko doesn't want the car we may have to sell your body."

"I thought you were the expert on that, not me," Gentle

replied.

"Now, now," Pie said, with a grin.. "I thought we'd agreed not to
mention my dubious past."

"So go," Gentle said.. "Leave me to her tender mercies.  But you'll have
to pick the fluff from between my teeth." He found Mother Splendid in
the kitchen, kneading dough for the morrow's bread.

"You've honoured our home, coming here and sharing our table," she said
as she worked.

"And please, don't think badly of me for asking, but.  .  ." Her voice
became a frightened whisper.. "What do you want?"

A

"Nothing," Gentle replied.. "You've already been more

than generous."

She looked at him balefully, as though he was being cruel teasing her in
this fashion.     A

"I've dreamt about somebody coming here," she said.. "White and furless,
like you.  I wasn't sure whether it was a man or a woman, but now you're
here sitting at the table, I know it was you."

iV

First Tick Raw, he thought, now Mother Splendid.

What was it about his face that made people think they knew him?  Did he
el gAnger wandering around the Fourth?

"Who do you think I am?" he said.

"I don't know," she replied.. "But I knew that when you came everything
would change:

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears as she spoke, and they ran down the
silky fur on her cheeks.  The sight of her distress in turn distressed
him, not least because he knew he was the cause of it, but he didn't
know why.

Undoubtedly she had dreamt of him - the look of shocked recognition on
her face when he'd first stepped over the threshold was ample evidence
of that - but what did that fact signify?

He and Pie were here by chance.  They'd be gone again by morning,
passing through the millpond of Beatrix leaving nary a ripple.  He had
no significance in the life of the Splendid household, except as a
subject of conversation when he'd gone.

"I hope your life doesn't change," he said to her.  'it seems very
pleasant here."

"It is," she said, wiping the tears away.. "This is a safe place.  It's
good to raise children here.  I know Efreet will leave soon.  He wants
to see Patashoqua and I won't be able to stop him.  But Emblem will
stay.  He likes the hills, and tending the doeki."

"And you'll stay toor

"Oh yes.  I've done my wandering," she said.. "I lived in Yzordderrex,
near the Oke T'Noon, when I was young.  That's where I met Eloigh.  We
moved away as soon as we were married.  It's a terrible city, Mr
Gentle.. "If it's so bad, why did he go back there?. "His brother joined
the Autarch's army, and when Eloigh heard he went back to try and make
him desert.  He said it brought shame on the family to have a brother
taking a wage from an orphan-maker."

"A man of principle."

"Oh yes," said Larumday, with fondness in her voice.

"He's a fine man.  Quiet, like Emblem, but with Efreet's

curiosity.  All the books in this house are his.  There's nothing he
won't read.. "How long has he been away?. "Too long," she said.. "I'm
afraid perhaps his brother's killed him.. "A brother kill a brother?"
Gentle said.. "No.  I can't believe that."

"Yzordderrex does strange things to people, Mr Gentle.  Even good men
lose their way."

only men?" Gentle said.

it's men who make this world," she said.. "The Goddesses have gone, and
men have their way everywhere." There was no accusation in this.  She
simply stated it as fact, and he had no evidence to contradict it with.
She asked him if he'd like her to brew tea, but he declined, saying he
wanted to go out and take the air, perhaps find Pie'oh'pah.

"She's very beautiful," Larumday said.. "Is she wise as well?"

"Oh yes," he said.. "She's wise."

"That's not usually the way with beauties, is it?" she said.. "It's
strange that I didn't dream her at the table too.. "Maybe you did, and
you've forgotten."

She shook her head.. "Oh no, I've had the dream too many times, and it's
always the same.

A white, furless someone sitting at my table, eating with me and my
sons.. "I wish I could have been a more sparkling guest," he said.

"But you're just the beginning, aren't you?" she said.

"What comes after?"

"I don't know," he said.. "Maybe your husband, home from Yzordderrex."

Shelookeddoubtful."Something,"shesaid."Something that'll change us all."

3      April.

Efreet had said the climb would be easy, and measuring it in terms of
incline, so it was.  But the darkness made an easy route difficult, even
for one as light-footed as Pie'oh'pah.  Efreet was an accommodating
guide, however, slowing his pace when he realized Pie was lagging
behind, and warning him of places where the ground was uncertain.  After
a time they were high above the village, with the snow-clad peaks of the
Jokalaylau visible above the backs of the hills in which Beatrix slept.

High and majestic as those mountains were, the lower slopes of peaks yet
more monumental were visible beyond them, their heads lost in cumulus.
Not far now, the boy said, and this time his promises were good.

Within a few yards Pie spotted a building silhouetted against the sky,
with a light burning on its porch.

"Hey, Wretched!" Efreet started to call.. "Someone to see you!  Someone
to see you!'

There was no reply forthcoming, however, and when they reached the house
itself the only living occupant was the flame in the lamp.  The door
stood open; there was food on the table.  But of Wretched Tasko there
was no sign.  Efreet went out to search around, leaving Pie on the
porch.  Animals corralled behind the house stamped and muttered in the
darkness; there was a palpable unease.  Efreet came back moments later,
and said:

"I see him up the hill!  He's almost at the top.,

"What's he doing there?" Pie asked.

"Watching the sky maybe.  We'll go up.  He won't mind." They continued
to climb, their presence now noticed by the figure standing on the
hill's higher reaches.. "Who is this?" he called down.

"It's only Efreet, Mr Tasko.  I'm with a friend."

"Your voice is too loud, boy," the man returned.. "Keep it low, will
you?. "He wants us to keep quiet," Efreet whispered.

"I understand."

There was a wind blowing on these heights, and its chill put Pie in mind
of the fact that neither Gentle or itself had clothes appropriate to the
journey that lay ahead of them.  Coaxial clearly climbed here regularly;
he was wearing a shaggy coat, and a hat with fur rly not a local man.
ear-warmers.  He was very clea it would have taken three of the
villagers to equal his mass or strength, and his skin was almost as dark
as

Pie's.

"This is my friend Pie'oh'pah," Efreet whispered to him when they were
at his side.

"Mystif," Tasko said instantly.

"Yes."

"Ah.  So, you're a stranger?"

"Yes."

"From Yzordderrex?. "No.,

"That's to the good, at least.  But so many strangers, and all on the
same night.  What are we to make of it?"

"Are there others?" said Efreet.

"Listen .  .  ." Tasko said, casting his gaze over the valley to the
darkened slopes beyond.

"Don't you hear the machines?"

"No.  Just the wind."

Tasko's response was to pick the boy up and physically point him in the
direction of the sound.

"Now listen!" he said fiercely.

The wind carried a low rumble that might have been distant thunder, but
that it was unbroken.  Its source was certainly not the village below,
nor did it seem likely there were earthworks in the hills.  This was the
sound of engines, moving through the night.

"They're coming towards the valley."

Efreet made a whoop of pleasure, which was cut short by Tasko slapping
his hand over the boy's mouth.

"Why so happy, child?" he said.. "Have you never

learned fear?  No, I don't suppose you have.  Well, learn it now." He
held Efreet so tightly the boy struggled to be free.. "Those machines
are from Yzordderrex.  From the Autarch.  Do you understand?"

Growling his displeasure he let go, and Efreet backed away from him, at
least as nervous of Tasko now as of the distant machines.

The man hawked up a wad of phlegm, and spat it in the direction of the
sound.

"Maybe they'll pass us by," he said.. "There are other valleys they
could choose.  They may not come through ours." He spat again.. "Ach,
well, there's no purpose in staying up here.  If they come, they come."
He turned to Efreet.

"I'm sorry if I was rough, boy," he said.. "But I've heard these
machines before.  They're the same that killed MY people.  Take it from
me, they're nothing to whoop about.  Do you understand?"

"Yes," Efreet said, though Pie doubted he did.  The prospect of a
visitation from these thundering things held no horror for him, only
exhilaration.

"So tell me what you want, mystif," Tasko said as he started back down
the hill.. "You didn't climb all the way up here to watch the stars.

Or maybe you did.  Are you in love?" Efreet tittered in the darkness
behind them.

"If I were I wouldn't talk about it," Pie replied.

"So what, then?"

"I came here with a friend, from ...  some considerable distance, and
our vehicle's nearly defunct.  We need to trade it in for animals."

"Where are you heading?"

"Up into the mountains."

"Are you prepared for that journey?"

"No.  But it has to be taken."

"The faster you're out of the valley the safer we'll be, I think.
Strangers attract strangers."

"Will you help us?"

"Here's my offer,"Tasko said.. "If you leave Beatrix now, 253 I'll see
they give you supplies and two doeki.  But you must be quick, mystif."
"I understand.. "If you go now, maybe the machines will pass us by."

Without anyone to lead him, Gentle had soon lost his way on the dark
hill.  But rather than turning round and J, heading back to await Pie in
Beatrix, he continued to, climb, drawn by the promise of a view from the
heights, and a wind to clear his head.  Both took his breath away.  The
wind with its chill, the panorama with its sweep.

Ahead, range upon range receded into mist and distance, the furthest
heights so vast he doubted the Fifth Dominion could boast their equal.
Behind him, just visible between the softer silhouettes of the
foothills, the forests which they'd driven through.

once again, he wished he had a map of the territory, so that he could
begin to grasp the scale of the journey they were undertaking.  He tried
to lay the landscape out on a page in his mind, like a sketch for a
painting with this vista of mountains, hills and plain as the subject.
But the fact of the scene before him overwhelmed his attempt to make
symbols of it; to reduce it, and set it down.  He let the problem go,
and turned his eyes back towards the Jokalaylau.

Before his gaze reached its destination, it came to rest on the hill
slopes directly across from him.  He was suddenly aware of the valley's
symmetry, hills rising to the same height, left and right.  He studied
the slopes opposite.  It was a nonsensical quest, seeking a sign of life
at such a distance, but the more he squinted at the hill's face the more
certain he became that it was a dark mirror, and that somebody as yet
unseen was studying the shadows in which he stood, looking for some sign
of him as he in his turn searched for them.  The notion intrigued him at
first, but then it began to make him

afraid.  The chill in his skin worked its way into his innards.  He
began to shiver inside, afraid to move for fear that this other, whoever
or whatever it was, would see him, and in the seeing, bring calamity. He
remained motionless for a long time, the wind coming in frigid gusts,
and bringing with it sounds he hadn't heard until now.

The rumble of machinery; the complaint of unfed animals; sobbing.  The
sounds and the seeker on the mirror hill belonged together, he knew.
This other had not come alone.  It had engines, and beasts.  It brought
tears.

As the cold reached his marrow, he heard Pie'oh'pah calling his name,
way down the hill.

He prayed the wind wouldn't veer, and carry the call, and thus his
whereabouts, in the direction of the watcher.  Pie continued to call for
him, the voice getting nearer as the mystif climbed through the
darkness.  He endured five terrible minutes of this, his system racked
by contrary desires: part of him desperately wanting Pie here with him,
embracing him, telling him that the fear upon him was ridiculous; the
other part in terror that Pie would find him and thus reveal his
whereabouts to the creature on the other hill.

At last, the mystif gave up on its search, and retraced its steps down
into the secure streets of Beatrix.

Gentle didn't break cover, however.  He waited another quarter of an
hour until his aching eyes discovered a motion on the opposite slope.
The watcher was giving up his post, it seemed, moving around the back of
the hill.  Gentle caught a glimpse of his silhouette as he disappeared
over the brow, just enough to confirm that the other had indeed been
human, at least in shape if not in spirit.  He waited another minute,
then started down the slope.  His extremities were numb, his teeth
chattering, his torso rigid with cold, but he went quickly, falling and
descending several yards on his buttocks, much to the startlement of
dozing doeki.  Pie was below, waiting at the door of Mother Splendid's
house.  Two saddled and

bridled beasts stood in the street, one being fed a palrnful of fodder
by Efreet.

"Where did you go?" Pie wanted to know.  J came looking for you."
"Later," Gentle said.. "I have to get warm."

"No time," Pie replied.. "The deal is we get the doeki, food and coats
if we go immediately."

"They're very eager to get rid of us suddenly-,

"Yes we zire," said a voice from beneath the trees opposite the house. A
black man with pale, mesmeric eyes stepped into view.

"You're Zacharias?"

"I am."

"I'm Coaxial Tasko, called the Wretched.  The doeki are yours.  I've
given the mystif some supplies to set you on your way, but please ...
tell nobody you've been here.. "He thinks we're bad luck," Pie said.

"He could be right," said Gentle.. "Am I allowed to shake your hand, Mr
Tasko, or is that bad luck too?. "You may shake my hand," the man said.

"Thank you for the transport.  I swear we'll tell nobody we were here.
But I may want to mention you in my memoirs." A smile broke over Tasko's
stern features.

"You may do that too," he said, shaking Gentle's hand.

"But not till I'm dead, huh?  I don't like scrutiny.. "That's fair."

"Now, please ...  the sooner you're gone the sooner we can pretend we
never saw you."

Efreet came forward, bearing a coat, which Gentle put on.  it reached to
his shins, and smelt strongly of the animal who'd been born in it, but
it was welcome.

"Mother says goodbye," the boy told Gentle.. "She won't come out and see
you. "He lowered his voice to an embarrassed whisper.. "She's crying a
lot."

Gentle made a move towards the door, but Tasko checked him.. "Please, Mr
Zacharias, no delays," he said.. "Go now, with our blessing, or not at
all."

"He means it," Pie said, climbing up on to his doeki, the animal casting
a backward glance at its rider as it was mounted.

"We have to go."

"Don't we even discuss the route?"

"Tasko has given me a compass and directions," the Mystif said.. "That's
the way we take," it said, pointing to a narrow trail that led up out of
the village.

Reluctantly, Gentle put his foot in the doeki's leather stirrup and
hoisted himself into the saddle.  Only Efreet managed a goodbye, daring
Tasko's wrath to press his hand into Gentle's.

"I'll see you in Patashoqua one day," he said.

J hope so," Gentle replied.

That being the full sum of their farewells, Gentle was left with the
sense of an exchange broken in mid-sentence, and now permanently
unfinished.  But they were at least going on from the village better
equipped for the terrain ahead than they'd been when they'd entered.

"What was all that about?" Gentle asked Pie, when they were on the ridge
above Beatrix, and the trail was about to turn and take its tranquil,
lamp lit streets from sight.

"A battalion of the Autarch's army is passing through the hills, on its
way to Patashoqua.

Tasko was afraid the presence of strangers in the village would give the
soldiers an excuse for marauding.. "So that's what I heard on the hill."
"That's what you heard."

"And I saw somebody on the other hill.  I swear he was looking for me.
No, that's not right.  Not me, but somebody.

That's why I didn't answer you when you came looking for me.. "Any idea
who it was?"

Gentle shook his head.. "I just felt his stare.  Then I got a glimpse of
somebody, on the ridge.  Who knows?  it sounds absurd now I say it."
"There was nothing absurd about the noises I heard.

The best thing we can do is get out of this region as fast as possible."
"Agreed."

"Tasko said there was a place to the north-east of here, where the
border of the Third reaches into this Dominion a good distance maybe a
thousand miles.  We could shorten our journey if we made for it.. "That
sounds good.. "But it means taking the High Pass.. "That sounds bad."
"It'll be faster.. "It'll be fatal," Gentle said.. "I want to see
Yzordderrex, I don't want to die frozen stiff in the Jokalaylau.. "Then
we go the long way?. "That's my vote.. "It'll add two or three weeks to
the journey.. "And years to our lives," Gentle replied.

"As if we haven't lived long enough," Pie remarked.

"I've always held to the belief," Gentle said, 'that you

can never live too long, or love too many women."

The doeki were obedient and surefooted mounts, negotiating the track
whether it was churned mud or dust and pebbles, seemingly indifferent to
the ravines that gaped inches from their hooves at one moment, and the
white waters that wound beside them the next.

All this in the dark, for although the hours passed, and it seemed dawn
should have crept up over the hills, the peacock sky hid its glory in a
starless gloom.

"Is it possible the nights are longer up here than they were down on the
Highway?" Gentle wondered.

'it seems so," Pie said.. "My bowels tell me the sun should have been up
hours ago."

"Do you always calculate the passage of time by your bowels?"

"They're more reliable than your beard," Pie replied.

"Which direction is the light going to come from when it comes?" Gentle
asked, turning in his saddle to scan the horizon.  As he craned round to
look back the way they'd come a murmur of distress escaped his lips.

"What is it?" the mystif said, bringing its beast to a halt, and
following Gentle's gaze.

It didn't need telling.  A column of black smoke was rising from the
cradle of the hills, its lower plumes tinged with fire.  Gentle was
already slipping from his saddle, and now scrambled up the rock face at
their side to get a better sense of the fire's location.  He lingered
only seconds at the top before scrambling down, sweating and panting.

"We have to turn back," he said.

"Why?"

"Beatrix is burning."

"How can you tell from this distance?" Pie said.

"I know, damn it!  Beatrix is burning!  We have to go back." He climbed
on to his doeki, and started to haul it round on the narrow path.

"Wait," said Pie.. "Wait, for God's sake!'

"We have to help them," Gentle said, against the rock face.. "They were
good to us.. "Only because they wanted us out!" Pie replied.

"Well, now the worst's happened, and we have to do what we can."

"You used to be more rational than this.,

"What do you mean: used to be?  You don't know anything about me, so
don't start making judgements.  If you won't come with me, fuck you!'

The doeki was fully turned now, and Gentle dug his heels into its flanks
to make it pick up speed.  There had only been three or four places
along the route where the road had divided.  He was certain he could
retrace their steps back to Beatrix without much problem.  And if he was
right, and it was the town that was burning up ahead, he would have the
column of smoke as a grim marker.

Pie followed, after a time, as Gentle knew it must.  The

mystif was happy to be called a friend, but some its soul it was a
slave.    where in

They didn't speak as they travelled, which was not  4 surprising given
their last exchange.  Only once, as they mounted a ridge that laid the
vista of foothills before them, with the valley in which Beatrix nestle
still out of sight but unequivocally the source of the smoke, did   f

Pie'oh'pah murmur:

"Why is it always fire' and Gentle realized how insensitive he'd been to
Pie's reluctance to return.

The devastation that undoubtedly lay before them was an echo of the fire
in which its adopted family had perished - a matter that had gone
undiscussed between them since.

"Shall I go from here without you?" he asked.

Pie shook its head.. "Together, or not at all," it said.

The route became easier to negotiate from there on.  The inclines were
mellower and the track itself better kept, but there was also light in
the sky, as the long delayed dawn finally came.  By the time they finally
laid their eyes on the remains of Beatrix the peacock-tail glory Gentle
had first admired in the heavens over Patashoqua was overhead, its
glamour making grimmer still the scene laid below.  Beatrix was still
burning fitfully, but the fire had consumed most of the houses and their
birch bamboo arbours.  He brought his doeki to a halt and scoured the
place from this vantage-point.  There was no sign of Beatrix's
destroyers.

"On foot from here?" Gentle said.  ,I think so.,

They tethered the beasts, and descended into the village.  The sound of
lamentation reached them before they were within its perimeters, the
sobbing, emerging as it did from the murk of the smoke, reminding Gentle
of the sounds he'd heard while keeping his vigil on the hill.

The destruction around them now was somehow a consequence of that
sightless encounter, he knew.  Though he'd

avoided the eye of the watcher in the darkness, his presence had been
suspected, and that had been enough to bring this calamity upon Beatrix.

"I'm responsible..  ." he said.. "God help me ...  I'm responsible."

He turned to the mystif, who was standing in the middle of the street,
its features drained of blood and expression.

"Stay here," Gentle said.. "I'm going to find the family." Pie didn't
register any response, but Gentle assumed what he'd said had been
understood, and headed off in the direction of the Splendids' house.  It
wasn't simply fire that had undone Beatrix.  Some of the houses had been
toppled unburned, the copses around them uprooted.  There was no sign of
fatalities, however, and Gentle began to hope that Coaxial Tasko had
persuaded the villagers to take to the hills before Beatrix's violators
had appeared out of the night.  That hope was dashed when he came to the
place where the Splendids' home had stood.  It was rubble, like the
others, and the smoke from its burning timbers had concealed from him
until now the horror heaped in front of it.  Here were the good people
of Beatrix, shovelled together in a bleeding pile higher than his head.
There were a few sobbing survivors at the heap, looking for their loved
ones in the confusion of broken bodies, some clutching at limbs they
thought they recognized, others simply kneeling in the bloody dirt,
keening.

Gentle walked around the pile, searching amongst the mourners for a face
he knew.  One fellow he'd seen laughing at the show was cradling in his
arms a wife or sister whose body was as lifeless as the puppets he'd
taken such pleasure in.  Another, a woman, was burrowing in amongst the
bodies, yelling somebody's name.  He went to help her, but she screamed
at him to stay away.  As he retreated he caught sight of Efreet.  The
boy was in the heap, his eyes open, his mouth - which had been the
vehicle for such unalloyed enthusiasms beaten in by a

rifle butt or a boot.  At that moment Gentle wanted nothing - not life
itself - as much as he wanted the bastard who'd done this, standing in
his sights.  He felt the killing breath hot in his throat, itching to be
merciless.

He turned from the heap, looking for some target, even  if it wasn't
the murderer himself.  Someone with a gun, or a uniform; a man he could
call the enemy.  He couldn't remember ever feeling this way before, but
then he'd never possessed the power he had now - or rather, if Pie was
to be believed, he'd had it without recognizing the fact - and agonizing
as these horrors were, it was salve to his distress, knowing there was
such a capacity for cleansing in him; that his lungs, throat and palm
could take the guilty out of life with such ease.  He headed away from
the calm of flesh, ready to be an executioner at the first invitation.

The street twisted, and he followed its convolutions, turning a corner
to find the way ahead blocked by one of the invaders' war machines.  He
stopped in his tracks, expecting it to turn its steel eyes upon him.

It was a perfect death bringer armoured as a crab, its wheels bristling
with bloodied scythes, its turret with armaments.  But death had found
the bringer.  Smoke rose from the turret, and the driver lay where the
fire had found him, in the act of scrabbling from the machine's stomach.
A small victory, but one that at least proved the machines had
frailties.

Come another day, that knowledge might be the difference between hope
and despair.  He was turning his back on the machine when he heard his
name called, and Tasko appeared from behind the smoking carcass.
Wretched he was, his face bloodied, his clothes filthy with dust.

"Bad timing, Zacharias," he said.. "You left too late and now you come
back, too late again."

"Why did they do this?"

"The Autarch doesn't need reasons."

"He was here?" Gentle said.  The thought that the

Butcher of Yzordderrex had stood in Beatrix made his heart beat faster.
But Tasko said:

"Who knows?  Nobody's ever seen his face.  Maybe he was here yesterday,
counting the children, and nobody even noticed him."

"Do you know where Mother Splendid is?"

"In the heap somewhere."

"Jesus.  .  ."

"She wouldn't have made a very good witness.  She was too crazy with
grief.  They left alive the ones who'd tell the story best.  Atrocities
need witnesses, Zacharias.  People to spread the word."

"They did this as a warning?" Gentle said.

Tasko shook his huge head.. "I don't know how their minds work," he
said.

"Maybe we have to learn, so that we can stop them.. "I'd prefer to die,"
the man replied, 'than understand filth like that.

If you've got the appetite, then go to Yzordderrex.  You'll get your
education there."

"I want to help here," Gentle said.. "There must be something I can do."

"You can leave us to mourn:

If there was any profounder dismissal, Gentle didn't know it.  He
searched for some word of comfort or apology, but in the face of such
devastation only silence seemed appropriate.  He bowed his head, and
left Tasko to the burden of being a witness, returning up the street
past the heap of corpses to where Pie'oh'pah was standing.

The mystif hadn't moved an inch, and even when Gentle came abreast of
it, and quietly told it they should go, it was a long time before it
looked round at him.

"We shouldn't have come back," it said.

"Every day we waste, this is going to happen again .  .

"You think you can stop its Pie said, with a trace of sarcasm.

"We won't go the long way round, we'll go through the mountains.  Save
ourselves three weeks."

"You do, don't you?" Pie said.. "You think you can stop this.. "We won't
die," Gentle said, putting his arms around Pie'oh'pah.. "I won't let us.
I came here to understand and I will." How much more of this can you
take?. "As much as I have to.. "I may remind you of that.. "I'll
remember," Gentle said.. "After this, I'll remember everything."

A

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Retreat at the Godolphin Estate had been built in an age of follies,
when the oldest sons of the rich and mighty, having no wars to distract
them, amused themselves spending the gains of generations on buildings
whose only function was to flatter their egos.  Most of these lunacies,
designed without care for basic architectural principles, were dust
before their designers.  A few, however, became noteworthy even in
neglect, either because somebody associated with them had lived or died
in notoriety, or because they were the scene of some drama.  The Retreat
fell into both categories.  its architect, Geoffrey Light, had died
within six months of its completion, choked by a bull's pizzle in the
wilds of West Riding, a grotesquerie which attracted some attention.

As did the retirement from the public eye of Light's patron, Lord Joshua
Godolphin, whose decline into insanity was the talk of court and
coffee-house for many years.  Even at his zenith he'd attracted gossip,
mainly because he kept the company of magicians.  Cagliostro, the Comte
de Saint-Germain, and even Casanova (reputedly no mean thaumaturgist)
had spent time on the Estate, as well as a host of lesser-known
practitioners.

His Lordship had made no secret of his occult investigations, though the
work he was truly undertaking was never known to the gossips.

They assumed he kept company with these mountebanks for their
entertainment value.

Whatever his reasons, the fact that he retired from sight so suddenly
drew further attention to his last indulgence, the folly Light had built
for him.  A diary purported to have belonged to the choked architect
appeared a year

after his demise, containing an account of the Retreat's construction.
Whether it was the genuine article or not, it made bizarre reading.  The
foundations had been laid, it said, under stars calculated to be
particularly propitious; the masons sought and hired in a dozen cities -
had been sworn to silence with an oath of Arabic ferocity.

The stones themselves had been individually baptized in a mixture of
milk M1 and frankincense and a lamb been allowed to wander through the
half-completed building three times, and the altar and font been placed
where it had laid its innocent head.

Of course these details were soon corrupted by repetition, and Satanic
purpose ascribed to the building.  It became babies' blood that was used
to anoint the stone, and a mad dog's grave that marked the spot where
the altar was built.

Sealed up behind the high walls of his sanctum it was doubtful that Lord
Godolphin even knew that such rumours were circulating until, two
Septembers after his withdrawal, the inhabitants of Yoke, the village
closest to the Estate, needing a scapegoat to blame the poor harvest
upon, and inflamed by a passage from Ezekiel delivered from the pulpit
of the parish church, used the Sunday afternoon to mount a crusade
against the Devil's work, and climbed the gates of the Estate to raze
the Retreat to the ground.  They found none of the promised blasphemies.
No inverted cross; no altar stained with virginal blood.  But having
trespassed they did what damage they could inflict out of sheer
frustration, finally setting a bonfire of baled hay in the middle of the
great mosaic.  All the flames did was lick the place black, but the
Retreat earned its nickname from that afternoon: the Black Chapel; or
Godolphin's Sin.

if Jude had known anything about the history of Yoke she might well have
looked for signs of its echoes in the village as she drove through.  She
would have had to look

hard, but the signs were there to be found.  There was scarcely a house
within its bounds that didn't have a cross carved into the keystone
above the door, or a horseshoe cemented into the doorstep.  If she'd had
time to linger in the churchyard she would have found inscribed on the
stones there entreaties to the good Lord that He keep the Devil from the
living even as he gathered the dead to His Bosom, and on the board
beside the gate a notice announcing that next Sunday's sermon would be
"The Lamb in Our Lives', as though to banish any lingering thought of
the infernal goat.

She saw none of these signs, however.  It was the road and the man at
her side - with occasional words of comfort directed towards the dog on
the back seat - that consumed her attention.  Getting Estabrook to bring
her here had been a spur of the moment inspiration, but there was sound
logic behind it.  She would be his freedom for a day, taking him out of
the clinic's stale heat into the bracing January air.  It was her hope
that out in the open he might talk more freely about his family, and
more particularly about brother Oscar.  What better place to innocently
enquire about the Godolphins and their history than in the grounds of
the house Charlie's forefathers had built?

The Estate lay half a mile beyond the village, along a private road that
led to a gateway besieged, even in this sterile season, by a green army
of bushes and creepers.  The gates themselves had long ago been removed,
and a less elegant defence against trespassers raised: boards and
corrugated iron covered with barbed wire.  The storms of early December
had brought down much of this barricade, however, and once the car was
parked, and they both approached the gateway Skin bounding ahead,
yapping joyously - it became apparent that as long as they were willing
to brave brambles and nettles access could be readily gained.

"It's a sad sight," she remarked.. "It must have been magnificent.. "Not
in my time," Estabrook said.

shall I beat the way through?" she suggested, picking up a fallen
branch and stripping off the twigs to do SO.

"No, let me," he replied, relieving her of the switch, and clearing a
path for them by flaying the nettles mercilessly.  I

Jude followed in his green wake, a kind of exhilaration seizing her as
she drew closer to stepping between the gate posts, a feeling she
ascribed to the sight of Estabrook so heartily engaged in this
adventure.  He was a very different man to the husk she'd seen slumped
in a chair two weeks before.  As she clambered through the debris of
fallen timbers he offered her his hand, and like lovers in search of
some try sting-place they slipped through the broken barrier into the
Estate beyond.

She was expecting an open vista: a driveway leading the eye to the house
itself.  Indeed once she might have enjoyed just such a view.  But two
hundred years of I ancestral insanities, mismanagement and neglect had
given symmetry over to chaos, parkland to pampas.  What had once been
artfully placed copses, built for shady dalliance, had spread and become
choked woods.  Lawns once levelled to perfection were wildernesses now.
Several other members of England's landed gentry, finding them-selves
unable to sustain the family manse, had turned their estates into safari
parks, importing the fauna of lost empire to wander where deer had
grazed in better-heeled times.  To Jude's eye the effect of such efforts
was always bathe tic  The parks were always too tended, the oaks and
sycamores an inappropriate backc1oth for lion or baboon.

But here, she thought, it was possible to imagine wild beasts roaming.
it was like a foreign landscape, dropped in the middle of England.

It was a long walk to the house, but Estabrook was already leading the
way, with Skin as scout.  What visions were in Charlie's mind's eye,
Jude wondered, that drove him on with such gusto?  The past, perhaps;
childhood  4 visits here?  Or further back still, to the days of High
Yoke's glory, when the route they were taking had been

raked gravel, and the house ahead a gathering place for the wealthy and
the influential?

"Did you come here a lot when you were little?" she asked him as they
ploughed through the grass.

He looked round at her with a moment's bewilderment, as though he'd
forgotten she was with him.

"Not often," he said.. "I liked it though.  It was like a playground.
Later on, I thought about selling it, but Oscar would never let me.  He
had his reasons, of

course .  .  ."

"What were theyr she asked him lightly.

"Frankly, I'm glad we left it to run to seed.  It's prettier this way."

He marched on, wielding his branch like a machete.  As they drew closer
to the house Jude could see what a pitiful state it was in.  The windows
were gone, the roof was reduced to a timber lattice, the doors teetered
on their hinges like drunks.

All sad enough in any house, but near tragic in a structure that had
once been so magnificent.

The sunlight was getting stronger as the clouds cleared, and by the time
they stepped through the porch it was pouring through the lattice
overhead, its geometry a perfect foil for the scene below.  The
staircase, albeit rubble-strewn, still rose in a sweep to a half-landing
which had once been dominated by a window fit for a cathedral.  It was
smashed now, by a tree toppled many winters before, the withered
extremities of which lay on the spot where the Lord and Lady would have
paused before descending to greet their guests.  The panelling of the
hallway and the corridors that led off it was still intact, and the
boards solid beneath their feet.  Despite the decay of the roof, the
structure didn't look unsound.  it had been built to serve Godolphins in
perpetuity, the fertility of land and loin preserving the name until the
sun went out.  It was flesh that had failed it, not the other way about.

Estabrook and Skin wandered off in the direction of the dining room,
which was the size of a restaurant.  Jude

followed a little way, but found herself drawn back to the staircase.
All she knew about the period in which the house had flourished she'd
culled from films and tele-  a vision, but her imagination rose to the
challenge with astonishing ardour, painting mind-pictures so intense
they all but displaced the dispiriting truth.  When she climbed the
stairs, indulging, somewhat guiltily, her dreams of aristocracy, she
could see the hallway below lit with the glow of candles, could hear
laughter on the landing above, and - as she descended - the sigh of silk
as her skirts brushed the carpet.  Somebody called to her from a
doorway, and she turned expecting to see Estabrook, but the caller was
imagined, and the name too.  Nobody had ever called her Peachplum.

The moment unsettled her slightly, and she went after Estabrook, as much
to reacquaint herself with solid reality as for his company.  He was in
what had surely been a ballroom, one wall of which was a line of
ceiling high windows, offering a view across terraces and formal gardens
to a ruined gazebo.  She went to his side and put her arm through his.
Their breaths became a common cloud, gilded by the sun through the
shattered glass.

'it must have been so beautiful," she said.

"I'm sure it was." He sniffed hard.. "But it's gone forever." 'it could
be restored.. "For a fortune.. "You've got a fortune.. "Not that big."
"What about Oscar?. "No.  This is mine.  He can come and go, but it's
mine.

That was part of the deal."

"What deal?" she said.  He didn't reply.  She pressed him, with words
and proximity.. "Tell me," she said.. "Share it with me."

He took a deep breath.. "I'm older than Oscar, and there's a family
tradition - it goes back to the time when this house was intact - which
says the oldest son, or

daughter if there are no sons, becomes a member of a society called the
Tabula Rasa."

"I've never heard of it."

"That's the way they'd like it to stay, I'm sure.  I shouldn't be
telling you any of this, but what the hell?  I don't care any more. It's
all ancient history.  So ...  I was supposed to join the Tabula Rasa,
but I was passed over by Papa in favour of Oscar."

"Why?"

Charlie made a little smile.. "Believe it or not, they thought I was
unstable.  Me?  Can you imagine?  They were afraid I'd be indiscreet."
The smile became a laugh.. "Well, fuck them all.  I'll be indiscreet."

"What does the Society do?"

"It was founded to prevent .  .  .  let me remember the words exactly .
.  .  to prevent the tainting of England's soil.  Joshua loved England."

"Joshua?"

"The Godolphin who

built this house."

"What did he think

this taint was?"

"Who knows?  Catholics?  The French?  He was crazy and so were most of
his friends.

Secret societies were in vogue back then-'

"And it's still in operation?"

"I suppose so.  I don't talk to Oscar very often, and when I do it's not
about the Tabula Rasa.  He's a strange man.  In fact, he's a lot crazier
than me.  He just hides it better.. "You used to hide it very well,
Charlie," she reminded him.

ore fool me.  I should have let it out.  I might have kept you." He put
his hand up to her face.. "I was stupid, Judith.  I can't believe my
luck that you've forgiven me." She felt a pang of guilt, hearing him so
moved by her manipulations.  But they'd at least borne fruit.  She had
two new pieces for the puzzle: the Tabula Rasa and its raison Xitre.

"Do you believe in magic?" she asked him.

"D

o you want the old Charlie or the new one?"

"The new.  The crazy."

"Then, yes, I think I do.  When Oscar used to bring his little presents
round, he'd say to me: have a piece of the miracle.  I used to throw
most of them out, except for the bits and pieces you found.  I didn't
want to know where he got them -'

"You never asked him?" she said.

"I did, finally.  one night when you were away and I was drunk, he came
round with that book you found in the safe, and I asked him outright
where he got this shit from.  I wasn't ready to believe what he told me.
You know what made me ready?"

"No.  What?"

"The body on the Heath.  I told you about it, didn't I?  I watched them
digging around in the muck and the rain for two days and I kept
thinking: what a fucking life this is.  No way out except feet first.  I
was ready to slit my wrists, and I probably would have done it except
that you appeared, and I remembered the way I felt about you when I
first saw you.  I remembered feeling as though something miraculous was
happening, as though I was reclaiming something I'd lost.  And I
thought: if I believe in one miracle then I may as well believe in them
all.  Even Oscar's.  Even his talk about the Imajica, and the Dominions
in the Imajica, and the people there, and the cities.  I just thought
why not ...  embrace it all before I lose the chance?  Before I'm a body
lying out in the rain." You won't die in the rain."

I don't care where I die, Jude, I care where I live, and I want to live
in some kind of hope.

I want to live with

you.,

"Charlie .  .  ." she chided softly, 'we shouldn't talk about

that now."

"Why not?  What better time?  I know you brought me here because you've
got questions of your own you want answering, and I don't blame you.  if
I'd seen that damn assassin come after me, I'd be asking questions.  But
think about it, Judy, that's all I'm asking.  Think about whether

the new Charlie's worth a little bit of your time.  Will you

do that?"

"I'll do that."

Thank you, "he said, and, taking the hand she'd tucked through his
arm, he kissed her fingers.

"You've heard most of Oscar's secrets now," he said.. "You may as well
know them all.  See the little wood way over towards the wall?  That's
his little railway station, where he takes the train to wherever he
goes.. "I'd like to see it."

"Shall we stroll over there, ma'am?" he said.. "Where did the dog go?"
He whistled, and Skin came pounding in, raising golden dust.

"Perfect.  Let's take the air."

The afternoon Was so bright it was easy to imagine what bliss this place
would be, even in its present decay, come spring or high summer, with
dandelion-seeds and birdsong in the air and the evenings long and balmy.
Though she was eager to see the place Estabrook had described as Oscar's
railway station, she didn't force the pace.  They strolled, just as
Charlie had suggested, taking time to cast an appreciative glance back
towards the house.  It looked even grander from this aspect, with the
terraces rising to the row of ballroom windows.  Though the wood ahead
was not large, the undergrowth and the sheer density of trees kept their
destination from sight until they were under the canopy and treading the
damp rot of last September's fall.  Only then did she realize what
building this was.  She'd seen it countless times before, drawn in
elevation and hanging in front of the safe.

"The Retreat," she said.

"You recognize it?. "Of course." Birds sang in the branches overhead,
misled by the warmth and tuning up for courtship.  When she looked

Into

up it seemed to her the branches formed a fretted vault above the
Retreat, as if echoing its dome.  Between the two, vault and song, the
place felt almost sacred.

"Oscar calls it the Black Chapel," Charlie said.. "Don't ask me why."

it had no windows, and, from this side, no door.  They had to walk
around it a few yards before the entrance came in sight.  Skin was
panting at the step, but when Charlie opened the door the dog declined
to enter.

"Coward," Charlie said, preceding Jude over the threshold.. "It's quite
safe."

The sense of the numinous she'd felt outside was stronger still inside,
but despite all that she'd experienced since Pie'oh'pah had come for her
life, she was still ill prepared for mystery.  Her modernity burdened
her.  She e wished there was some forgotten self she could dredg from
her crippled history, better equipped for this.  Charlie had his
blood-line even if he'd denied his name.  The thrushes in the trees
outside resembled absolutely the thrushes who'd sung here since these
boughs had been strong enough to bear them.  But she was adrift
resembling nobody; not even the woman she'd been s ix weeks ago.

"Don't be nervous," Charlie said, beckoning her in.

He spoke too loudly for the place; his voice carried around the vast
bare circle, and came back to meet him magnified.

He seemed not to notice.  Perhaps it was simply familiarity that bred
this indifference, but she thought not.  For all his talk of embracing
the miraculous Charlie was still a pragmatist, fixed in the particular.
Whatever forces moved here, and she felt them strongly, he was dead to
their presence.

Approaching the Retreat she'd thought the place windowless, but she'd
been wrong.  At the intersection of wall and dome ran a ring of windows,
like a halo fitted to the Chapel's skull.  Small though they were, they
let in sufficient light to strike the floor and rise up into the middle
of the space, where the luminescence converged

above the mosaic.  If this was indeed a place of departure, then that
rarefied spot was the platform.

"It's nothing special, is it?" Charlie observed.

She was about to disagree, searching for a way to express what she was
feeling, when Skin began barking outside.  This wasn't the excited
yapping with which he'd announced each new pissing-place along the way,
but a sound of alarm.  She started towards the door, but the hold the
Chapel had on her slowed her response, and Charlie was out before she'd
reached the step, calling to the dog to be quiet.  He stopped barking
suddenly.

"Charlie?" she said.

There was no reply.  With the dog quietened she heard a greater quiet.
The birds had stopped singing.

Again she said. "Charlie?", and as she did so somebody stepped into the
doorway.  It was not Charlie; this man, bearded and heavy, was a
stranger.  But her system responded to the sight of him with a shock of
recognition, as though he were some long-lost comrade.  She might have
thought herself crazy, except that what she felt was echoed on his face.
He looked at her with narrowed eyes, turning his head a little to the
side.

"You're Judith?,

"Yes.  Who are you?"

"Oscar Godolphin."

She let her shallow breaths go, in favour of a deeper draught.

"Oh...  thank God," she said.. "You startled me.  I thought...  I don't
know what I thought.

Did the dog try and attack you?. "Forget the dog," he said, stepping
into the Chapel.

"Have we met before?. "I don't believe so," she said.. "Where's Charlie?
Is he all right?" Godolphin continued to approach her, his step steady.

"This confuses things," he said.

"What doesT

"Me ...  knowing you.  You being whoever you are.  it confuses things."

"I don't see why," she said.. "I'd wanted to meet you, and I asked
Charlie several times if he'd introduce us, but he always seemed
reluctant She kept chattering as much to defend herself from his
appraisal as for communication's sake.  She felt if she fell silent
she'd forget herself utterly; become his object.  I'm very pleased we
finally get to talk." He was close enough to touch her now.  She put out
her hand to shake his.. "It really is a pleasure," she said.

Outside, the dog began barking again, and this time the din was followed
by a shout.

"Oh God, he's bitten somebody," Jude said, and started towards the door.

Oscar took hold of her arm, and the contact, light but proprietorial,
checked her.  She looked back towards him, and all the laughable cliches
of romantic fiction were suddenly real, and deadly serious.  Her heart
was beating in her throat; her cheeks were beacons; the ground seemed
uncertain beneath her feet.  There was no pleasure in this, only a
sickening powerlessness which she could do nothing to defend herself
against.  Her only comfort - and it was small - was the fact that her
partner in this dance of desire seemed almost as distressed by their
mutual fixation as she.

The dog's din was abruptly cut short, and she heard Charlie yell her
name.  Oscar's glance went to the door, and hers went with it, to see
Estabrook, armed with a cudgel of wood, gasping at the threshold.

Behind him, an abomination: a half burned creature, its face caved in
(Charlie's doing, she saw; there were scraps of its blackened flesh on
the cudgel) reaching blindly for him.

She cried out at the sight, and he stepped aside as it lurched forward.
it lost its balance on the step, and fell.  One hand, fingers burned to
the bone, reached for the door-jamb, but Charlie brought his weapon down
on its wounded head.  Skull shards flew; silvery blood preceded

A

its head to the step, as its hand missed its purchase and it collapsed
on the threshold.

She heard Oscar quietly moan.

"You fuckhead!" Charlie said.  He was panting, and sweaty, but there was
a gleam of purpose in his eye she'd never seen the like of.. "Let her
go," he said.

She felt Oscar's grip go from her arm, and mourned its departure.  What
she'd felt for Charlie had been only a prophecy of what she felt now; as
if she'd loved him in remembrance of a man she'd never met.  And now
that she had, now that she'd heard the true voice and not its echo,
Estabrook seemed like a poor substitute, for all his tardy heroism.

Where these feelings came from she didn't know, but they had the force
of instinct, and she would not be gainsaid.  She stared at Oscar.  He
wasn't a particularly prepossessing man.  He was overweight, overdressed
and doubtless overbearing.

Not the kind of individual she'd have sought out, given the choice.  But
for some reason that she didn't yet comprehend she'd had that choice
denied.  Some urge profounder than conscious desire had claimed her
will.

The fears she'd had for Charlie's safety, and indeed for her own, were
suddenly remote; almost abstractions.

"Take no notice of him," Charlie said.. "He's not going to hurt you."

She glanced his way.  He looked like a husk beside his brother; beset by
tics and tremors.

How had she ever loved him?

"Come here," he said, beckoning to her.

She didn't move, until Oscar said. "Go on." More out of obedience to his
instruction than any wish to go, she started to walk towards Charlie.

As she did so another shadow fell across the threshold.  A severely
dressed young man with dyed blond hair appeared at the door, the lines
of his face perfect to the point of banality.

"Stay away, Dowd.  .  ." Oscar said.. "This is just Charlie and me."

Dowd looked down at the body on the step, then back at Oscar, offering
two words of warning. "He's dangerous."

"I know what he is," Oscar said.. "Judith, why don't you step outside
with Dowd?"

"Don't go near that little fucker," Charlie told her.. "He killed Skin.
And there's another of those things out there."

"They're called voiders, Charles," Oscar said.. "And   j they're not
going to harm a hair on her beautiful head.  Judith.  Look at me." She
looked round at him.. "You're not in danger.  You understand?  Nobody's
going to hurt you.,

She understood, and believed him.  Without looking back at Charlie, she
went to the door.

The dog-killer moved aside, offering her a hand to help her over the
voider's corpse, but she ignored it, and went out into the sun with a
shameful lightness in her heart and step.

Dowd followed her as she walked from the Chapel.  She felt his stare.

Judith .  .  ." he said, as if astonished.

"That's me," she replied, knowing that to lay claim to that identity was
somehow momentous.

Squatting in the humus a little way from them she saw the other voider.
it was idly perusing the body of Skin, runnin its

fingers over the dog's flank.  She looked away,

unwilling to have the strange joy she felt soured by morbidity.

She and Dowd had reached the edge of the wood, where she had an
unhindered view of the sky.  The sun was sinking, gaining colour as it
fell, and lending a new glamour to the vista of park, terraces and
house.

"I feel as though I've been here before," she said.

The thought was strangely soothing.  Like the feelings she had towards
Oscar, it rose from some place in her she didn't remember owning, and
identifying its source was

not for now as important as accepting its presence.  That she did,
gladly.  She'd spent so much of her recent life in the grip of events
that lay outside her power to control, that it was a pleasure to touch a
source of feeling that was so deep, so instinctive, she didn't need to
analyse its intentions.  It was part of her, and therefore good.
Tomorrow, maybe, or the day after, she'd question its significance more
closely.

"Do you remember anything specific about this place?" Dowd asked her.

She mused on this for a time, then said:

"No.  It's just a feeling of .  .  .  belonging.. "Then maybe it's
better not to remember," came the reply.. "You know memory.  It can be
very treacherous." She didn't like this man, but there was merit in his
observation.  She could barely remember ten years of her own span;
thinking back beyond that would be near impossible.  If the
recollections came, in the fullness of time, then she'd welcome them.

But for now she had a brimming cup of feelings, and perhaps they were
all the more attractive for their mystery.

There were raised voices from the Chapel, though the echo within and the
distance without made comprehension impossible.

"A little sibling rivalry," Dowd remarked.. "How does it feel being a
woman contested over?"

"There's no contest," she replied.

"They don't seem to think so," he said.

The voices were shouts now, rising to a pitch, then suddenly subdued.
One of them went on talking - Oscar, she thought - interrupted by
exhortations from the other.  Were they bargaining over her, throwing
their bids back and forth?  She started to think she should intervene.
Go back to the Chapel and make her allegiance, irrational as it was,
quite plain.

Better to tell the truth now than let Charlie bargain away his goods and
chattels only to discover the prize wasn't his to have.  She turned
round and began to walk towards the Chapel.

What are you doing?" said Dowd.

I have to talk to them." Mr Godolphin told you :1 heard him.  I have to
talk to them."

off to her right she saw the voider rise from its haunches, its eyes not
on her but on the open door.  It sniffed the air, then let out a whistle
as plaintive as a whine, and started towards the building with a loping,
almost bestial, gait.  It reached the door before Jude, stepping on its
dead brother in its haste to be inside.  As she came within a couple of
yards of the door she caught the scent that had set it whining.  A
breeze - too warm for the season and carrying perfumes too strange for
this world - came to meet her out of the Chapel, and to her horror she
realized that history was repeating itself.  The train between the
Dominions was being boarded inside, and the wind she smelt was blowing
along the track from its destination.

"Oscar!" she yelled, stumbling over the body as she threw herself
inside.

The travellers were already dispatched.  She saw them passing from view
like Gentle and Pie'oh'pah, except that the voider, desperate to go with
them, was pitching itself into the flux of passage.  She might have done
the same, but that its error was evident.  Caught in the flux, but too
late to be taken where the travellers had gone, its whistle became a
screech as it was un knitted  Its arms and head, thrust into the knot of
power which marked the place of departure, began to turn inside out. Its
lower half, untouched by the power, convulsed, its legs scrambling for
purchase on the mosaic as it tried to retrieve itself.  Too late. She
saw its head and torso unveiled; saw the skin of its arm stripped and
sucked away.

The power that trapped it quickly died.  But it was not so lucky.  With
its arms still clutching at the world it had perhaps glimpsed as its
eyes went from its head, it dropped to the ground, the blue-black stew
of its innards spilling across the mosaic.  Even then, gutted and blind,

its body refused to cease.  It thrashed in its coils like the victim of
a grand mal.

Dowd stepped past her, approaching the passing place cautiously for fear
the flux had left an echo, but, finding none, drew a gun from inside his
jacket, and eyeing some vulnerable place in the mess at his feet, fired
twice.  The voider's throes slowed, then stopped.

"You shouldn't be here," he said.. "None of this is for your eyes."

"Why not?  I know where they've gone."

"Oh, do you?" he said, raising a quizzical eyebrow.. "And where's that?"

"To the Imajica," she said, affecting complete familiarity with the
notion, though it still astonished her.

He made a tiny smile, though she wasn't sure whether it was one of
acceptance or subtle mockery.  He watched her study him, almost basking
in her scrutiny, taking it, perhaps, for simple admiration.

"And how do you know about the Imajica?" he enquired.        la

"Doesn't everybody?"

"I think you know better than that," he replied.. "Though how much
better, I'm not entirely sure."

She was something of an enigma to him, she suspected, and as long as she
remained so, might hope to keep him friendly.

"Do you think they made it?" she asked.

"Who knows?  The voider may have spoilt their passage by trying to tag
along.  They may not have reached Yzorddeffex."

"So where will they be?. "In the In Ovo, of course.  Somewhere between
here and the Second Dominion.. "And how will they get back?. "Simple,"
he said.. "They won't."

So, they waited.  Or rather, she waited, watching the sun disappear
behind trees blotted with rookeries, and the evening stars appearing as
light-bringers in its place.  Dowd busied himself dealing "ith the
bodies of the voiders, dragging them out of the Chapel, making a simple
pyre of dead wood and burning them upon it.  He showed not the least
concern that she was witnessing this, which was a lesson and perhaps a
warning to her.  He apparently assumed she was part of the secret world
he and the voiders occupied, not subject to the laws and moralities the
rest of the world was bounded by.  In seeing all she'd seen, and passing
herself off as expert in the ways of the Imajica, she had become a
conspirator.  There was no way back after this, to the company she'd
kept and the life she'd known; she belonged to the secret, every bit as
much as the secret belonged to her.

That of itself would be no great loss if Godolphin returned.  He would
help her find her way through the mysteries.  If he didn't return then
the consequences were less palatable.  To be obliged to keep Dowd's
company, simply because they were fellow marginals, would be unbearable.
She would surely wither and die.  But then if Godolphin was not in her
life, what could that matter?  From ecstasy to despair in the space of
an hour.  Was it too much to hope the pendulum would swing back the
other way before the day was out?

The chill was adding to her misery, and - having no other source of
warmth - she went over to the pyre, preparing to retreat if the scent or
the sight was too offensive.  But the smoke, which she'd expected to
smell of burning meat, was almost aromatic, and the forms in the fire
unrecognizable.  Dowd offered her a cigarette, which she accepted,
lighting it from a branch plucked from the edge of the fire.

"What were they?" she asked him, eyeing the remains.

"You've never heard of voiders?" he said.. "They're the

lowest of the low.  I brought them through from the In Ovo myself, and
I'm no Maestro, so that gives an idea of how gullible they are."

"When it smelt the wind

"Yes, that was rather touching, wasn't it?" Dowd said.. "It smelt
Yzordderrex."

"Maybe it was born there."

"Very possibly.  I've heard it said they're made of collective desire,
but that's not true.

They're revenge children.  Got on women who were working the Way for
themselves."

"Working the Way isn't good?"

"Not for your sex it isn't.  It's strictly forbidden."

"So somebody who breaks the law's made pregnant as revenge?"

"Exactly.  You can't abort voiders, you see.  They're stupid, but they
fight, even in the womb.  And killing something you gave birth to is
strictly against the women s codes.  So they pay to have the voiders
thrown into the In Ovo.  They can survive there longer than just about
anything.  They feed on whatever they can find, including each other.
And eventually, if they're lucky, they get summoned by someone in this
Dominion."

So much to learn, she thought.  Perhaps she should cultivate Dowd's
friendship, however charm less he was.  He seemed to enjoy parading his
knowledge, and the more she knew the better prepared she'd be when she
finally stepped through the door into Yzordderrex.  She was about to ask
him something more about the city when a gust of wind, blowing from out
of the Chapel, threw a flurry of sparks up between them.

"They're coming back," she said, and started towards the building.

"Be careful," Dowd said.. "You don't know it's them."

His warning went unheeded.  She went to the door at a run, and reached
it as the spi icy summer w I and died away.

The interior of the Chapel was gloomy, but she could see a single figure
standing in the middle of the

mosaic.  It staggered towards her, its breathing ragged.  The light from
the fire caught it as it came within two yards of her.

it was Oscar Godolphin, his hand up to his  4_ bleeding nose.

"That bastard," he said.

"Where is he?"

"Dead," he said plainly.. "I had to do it, Judith.  He was crazy.  God
alone knows what he might have said or done .  .

He put his arm towards her.. "Will you help me?  He damn near broke my
nose."

"I'll take him," Dowd said, possessively.  He stepped past her, fetching
a handkerchief from his pocket to put to Oscar's nose.  it was waved
away.

"I'll survive," Oscar said.. "Let's just get home." They were out of the
Chapel now, and Oscar was eyeing the fire.

"The voiders," Dowd explained.

Oscar threw a glance at Judith.. "He made you pyre watch with him?" he
said.. "I'm so sorry." He looked back at Dowd, pained.. "That's no way
to treat a lady," he said.. "We're going to have to do better in
future.. "What do you mean?. "She's coming to live with us.  Aren't you,
Judith?" She hesitated a shamelessly short time; then she said. "Yes, I
am." Satisfied, he went over to look at the pyre.

"Come back tomorrow, "she heard him tell Dowd.. "Scatter the ashes and
bury the bones.

I've got a little prayer book Peccable gave me.  We'll find something
appropriate in there."

While he spoke she stared into the murk of the Chapel, trying to imagine
the journey that had been taken from here, and the city at the other end
from which that tantalizing wind had blown.  She would be there one day.
She'd lost a husband in pursuit of passage, but from her present
perspective that seemed like a negligible loss.

There was a new order of feeling in her, founded at the

sight of Oscar Godolphin.  She didn't yet know what he would come to
mean to her, but perhaps she could persuade him to take her away with
him, some day soon.

Eager as she was to create in her mind's eye the mysteries that lay
beyond the veil of the Fifth, Jude's imagination, for all its fever,
could never have conjured the reality of that journey.  inspired by a
few clues from Dowd, she had imagined the In Ovo as a kind of wasteland,
where voiders hung like drowned men in deep-sea trenches, and creatures
the sun would never see crawled towards her, their paths lit by their
own sickly luminescence.  But the inhabitants of the In Ovo beggared the
bizarrity of any ocean floor.  They had forms and appetites that no book
had ever set down.  They had rages and frustrations that were centuries
old.

And the scenes she'd imagined awaiting her on the other side of that
prison were also very different from those she'd created.  If she'd
travelled on the Yzordderrexian Express she would not have been
delivered into the middle of a summer city, but into a dam pish cellar,
lined with the merchant Peccable's forbidden cache of charms a

nd petrifications.  In order to reach the open air, she would have had
to climb the stairs and pass through the house itself.  Once she'd
reached the street, she'd have found some of her expectations satisfied,
at least.  The air was warm and spicy there, and the sky was bright. But
it was not a sun that blazed overhead, it was a Comet, trailing its
glory across the Second Dominion.  And if she stared at it a moment,
then looked down at the street, she'd have found its reflection
glittering in a pool of blood.  Here was the spot where the brawl
between Oscar and Charlie had ended, and where the defeated brother had
been left,

He had not remained there for very long.  News of a man dressed in
foreign garb and dumped in the gutter had soon spread, and before the
last of his blood had drained from his body three individuals never
before seen

in this Kesparate had come to claim him.  They were Dearthers, to judge
by their tattoos, and had Jude been standing on Peccable's step watching
the scene, she would have been touched to see how reverently they
treated their burden as they spirited it away.  How they smiled down at
that bruised and lolling face.  How one of them wept.  She might also
have noticed though in the flurry of the street this detail might have
escaped her eye - that though the defeated man lay quite still in the
cradle his bearers made of their limbs - his eyes closed, his arms
trailing until they were folded across his chest - said chest was not
entirely motionless.

Charles Estabrook, abandoned for dead in the filth of Yzordderrex, left
its streets with enough breath in his body to be dubbed a loser, not a
corpse.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The days following Pie and Gentle's second departure from Beatrix seemed
to shorten as they climbed, supporting the suspicion that the nights in
the Jokalaylau were longer than those in the lowlands.  It was
impossible to confirm that this was so, because their two timekeepers
Gentle's beard and Pie's bowels - became increasingly unreliable as they
climbed, the former because Gentle ceased to shave, the latter because
the travellers' desire to eat, and thus their need to defecate, dwindled
the higher they went.  Far from inspiring appetite, the rarefied air
became a feast in itself, and they travelled for hour upon hour without
their thoughts once turning to physical need.  They had each other's
company, of course, to keep them from completely forgetting their bodies
and their purpose, but more reliable still were the beasts on whose
shaggy backs they rode.  When the doeki grew hungry they simply stopped,
and would not be bullied or coaxed into moving from whatever bush or
piece of pasture they'd found until they were sated.  At first, this was
an irritation, and the riders cursed as they slipped from their saddles
on such occasions, knowing they had an idling hour ahead while the
animals grazed.  But as the days passed, and the air grew thinner, they
came to depend upon the rhythm of the doeki's digestive tracts, and made
such stopping places mealtimes for themselves.

It soon became apparent that Pie's calculations as to the length of this
journey had been hopelessly optimistic.  The only part of the mystif's
predictions that experience was confirming was the hardship.  Even
before they reached the snow-line both riders and mounts were

showing signs of fatigue, and the track they were following became less
visible by the mile as the soft earth chilled and froze, refusing the
traces of those who had preceded them.  With the prospect of snow-fields
and glaciers ahead, they rested the doeki for a day, and encouraged the
beasts to gorge themselves on what would be the last available pasture
until they reached the other side of the range.

Gentle had called his mount Chester, after dear old Klein, with whom it
shared a certain ruminative charm.  Pie declined to name its beast,
however, claiming that it was bad luck to eat anything you knew by name,
and circumstances might very well oblige them to dine on doeki meat
before they reached the borders of the Third A Dominion.  That small
disagreement aside, they kept their exchanges frictionless when they set
off again, both consciously skirting any discussion of the events in
Beatrix, or their significance.  The cold soon became aggressive, the
coats they'd been given barely adequate defence against the assault of
winds that blew up walls of dusty snow so dense they often obliterated
the way ahead.  When that happened Pie pulled out the compass - the face
of which looked more like a star-map to Gentle's untutored eye - and
assessed their direction from that.  Only once did Gentle remark that he
hoped the mystif knew what it was doing, earning such a withering glance
for his troubles it silenced him utterly on the matter thereafter.

Despite weather that was worsening by the day making Gentle think
wistfully of an English January good fortune did not entirely desert
them.  On the fifth day beyond the snow-line, in a lull between gusts,
Gentle heard bells ringing, and following the sound they discovered a
group of half a dozen mountain-men, tendin 9 to a flock of a hundred or
more cousins to the terrestrial goat, these shaggier by far, and purple
as crocuses.  The herders spoke no English, and only one of them, whose
name was Kuthuss and who boasted a beard as shaggy

and as purple as his beasts (leading Gentle to wonder what marriages of
convenience had occurred in these lonely uplands) had any words in his
vocabulary that Pie could comprehend.  What he told was grim.  The
herders were bringing their herds down from the High Passes early
because the snow had covered ground the beasts would have grazed for
another twenty days in a normal season.  This was not, he repeated
several times, a normal season.  He had never known the snow to come so
early, or fall so copiously; never known the winds to be so bitter.  in
essence, he advised them not to attempt the route ahead.  it would be
tantamount to suicide.

Pie and Gentle talked this advice over.  The journey was already taking
far longer than they'd anticipated.  if they went back down below the
snow-line, tempting as the prospect of relative warmth and fresh food
was, they were wasting yet more time.  Days when all manner of horrors
could be unfolding; a hundred villages like Beatrix destroyed, and
countless lives lost.

"Remember what I said when we left Beatrix?" Gentle said.

"No, to be honest, I don't."

"I said we wouldn't die, and I meant it.  We'll find a way through."

"I'm not sure I like this Messianic conviction, "Pie said.. "People with
the best intentions die, Gentle.  Come to think of it, they're often the
first to go.. "What are you saying?  That you won't come with me?. "I
said I'd go wherever you go, and I will.  But good intentions won't
impress the cold.. "How much money have we got?. "Not much."

"Enough to buy some goatskins off these men?  And maybe some meat?"

A complex exchange ensued, in three languages - with Pie translating
Gentle's words into the language Kuthuss understood and Kuthuss in turn
translating for his fellow herders.  A deal was rapidly struck; the
herders seemed

much persuaded by the prospect of hard cash.  Rather than give over
their own coats, however, two of them got about the business of
slaughtering and skinning four of the animals.  The meat they cooked,
and was shared amongst the group.  it was fatty and underdone, but
neither Gentle nor Pie declined, and it was washed down with a beverage
they brewed from boiled snow, dried leaves and a dash of liquor which
Pie understood Kuthuss to have called the piss of the goat.  They tasted
it in spite of this.  It was potent, and after a shot of it - downed
like vodka - Gentle remarked that if this made him a piss drinker so be
it.

The next day, having been supplied with skins, meat, and the makings of
several pots of the herders' beverage, plus a pan and two glasses, they
made their inarticulate farewells, and parted company.  The weather
closed in soon after, and once again they were lost in a white
wilderness.  But their spirits had been buoyed up by the meeting, and
they made steady progress for the next two and a half days, until, as
twilight approached on the third, the animal Gentle was riding started
to show signs of exhaustion, its head drooping, its hooves barely able
to A clear the snow they were trudging through.

"I think we'd better rest him," Gentle said.

They found a niche between boulders so large they were almost hills in
themselves, and lit a fire to brew up some of the herders' liquor.  It,
more than the meat, was what had sustained them through the most
demanding portions of the journey so far, but try as they might to use
it sparingly, they had almost consumed their modest supply.  As they
drank they talked about what lay ahead.  Kuthuss's predictions were
proving correct.  The weather was worsening all the time, and the
chances of encountering another living soul up here if they were to get
into difficulty were surely zero.  Pie took a moment to remind Gentle of
his conviction that they weren't going to die; come blizzard, come
hurricane, come the echo of Hapex amen dios Himself, down from the
mountain.

"And I meant what I said," Gentle replied.. "But I can still fret about
it, can't I?" He put his hands closer to the fire.. "Any more in the
piss pot?" he said.

"I'm afraid not."

"I tell you, when we come back this way -' Pie made a wry face '- we
will, we will.  When we come back this way we've got to get the recipe.
Then we can brew it back on Earth

They'd left the doeki a little distance away, and heard now a lowing
sound.

"Chesterl' Gentle said, and went to the beasts.

Chester was lying on its side, its flank heaving.  Blood stemmed from
its mouth and rose, melting the snow it poured upon.

"Oh shit, Chester," Gentle implored, 'don't die."

But he'd no sooner put what he hoped was a comforting hand on the
doeki's flank that it turned its glossy brown eye towards him, let out
one final moan, and stopped breathing.

"We just lost fifty percent of our transport," he said to Pie.

"Look on the bright side.  We gained ourselves a week of meat."

Gentle glanced back towards the dead animal, wishing he'd taken Pie's
advice and never named the beast.  Now when he sucked its bones he'd be
thinking of Klein.

"Will you do it or should I?" he said.. "I suppose it should be me.  I
named him, I should skin him."

The mystif didn't argue, only suggested that it should move the other
animal out of the sight of the scene, in case it too lost all will to
live, seeing its comrade disembowelled.  Gentle agreed, and watched
while Pie led the fretting creature away.

Wielding the blade they'd been given as they left Beatrix, he then set
about his butchering.

He rapidly discovered that neither he nor the knife were the equal of
the task.  The doeki's hide was thick, its fat rubbery, its meat tough.
After an hour of hacking and tearing he'd only managed to strip the hide
from the

upper half of its back leg and a small portion of its flank.  He was
sticky with its blood, and sweating inside his coats of furs.

"Shall I take over?" Pie suggested.

"No," Gentle snapped. "I can do it," and continued to labour in the same
inept fashion, the blade dulled by now, and the muscles driving it
weary.  He waited a decent interval, then got up and went back to the
fire where Pie was sitting, gazing into the flames.  Disgruntled by his
defeat, he tossed the knife down in the melting snow beside the fire.

"I give up," he said.. "It's all yours." Somewhat reluctantly, Pie
picked up the knife, and proceeded to sharpen it on the rock-face, then
went to work.  Gentle didn't watch.  Repulsed by the blood that had
spattered him, he elected to brave the cold and wash it off.  He found a
place a little way from the fire where the ground was untrammelled,
removed his coat and shirt, and knelt down to bathe in the snow.  His
skin crawled at the chill, but some urge to self-mortification was
satisfied by this testing of will and flesh, and when he'd cleaned his
hands and face he rubbed the pricking snow into his chest and belly,
though the doeki's fluids hadn't stained him there.  The wind had
dropped in the last little while, and the sky visible between the rocks
was more gold than green.  He was seized by the need to stand
unencumbered in its light, and without putting his coat back on he
clambered up over the rocks to do so.  His hands were numb, and the
climb more arduous than he'd anticipated, but the scene above and below
him when he reached the top of the rock was worth the effort.  No wonder
Hapexamendios had come here on His way to His resting place.  Even Gods
might be inspired by such grandeur.  The peaks of the Jokalaylau receded
in apparently infinite procession, their white slopes faintly gilded by
the heavens they reached for.

The silence could not have been more utter.

His vantage-point served a practical as well as aesthetic

purpose.  The High Pass was plainly visible.  And so, some distance off
to his right, was a sight perplexing enough for him to call the mystif
up from its work.  A glacier, its surface shimmering, lay a mile or more
from the rock.  But it wasn't the spectacle of such frozen enormity that
claimed Gentle's eye, it was the presence within the ice of a litter of
darker forms.

"You want to go and find out what they are?" the mystif said, washing
its bloodied hands in the snow.

"I think we should," Gentle replied.. "If we're walking in the
Unbeheld's footsteps, we should make it our business to see what He
saw."

"Or what He caused," Pie said.

They descended, and Gentle put his shirt and coat back on.  The clothes
were warm, having been left beside the fire, and he was glad of that
comfort, but they also stank of his sweat and of the animals whose backs
they'd been stripped from, and he half-wished he could go naked, rather
than be burdened by another hide.

"Have you finished with the skinning?" Gentle asked Pie as they set off,
going by foot rather than waste the energies of their remaining vehicle.

"I've done what I can," Pie replied.. "But it's crude.  I'm no butcher."
"Are you a cook?" Gentle asked.

"Not really.  Why'd you ask?"

"I've been thinking about food a lot, that's all.  You know, after this
trip I may never eat meat again.  The fat!  The gristle!

It turns my stomach thinking about it.. "You've got a sweet tooth."

"You noticed.  I'd kill for a plate of profiteroles right now, swimming
in chocolate sauce." He laughed.. "Listen to me.

The glories of Jokalaylau laid before us and I'm obsessing on
profiteroles."Then again, deadly serious. "Do they have chocolate in
Yzordderrex?"

"By now, I'm sure they do.  But my people eat plainly, so I never got an
addiction for sugar.  Fish, on the other hand

"Fish?" said Gentle.. "I've no taste for it.. "You'll get one in
Yzordderrex.  There's restaurants down by the harbour.  .  ." The
mystif's talk turned into a smile.. "Now I'm sounding like you.  We must
both be sick of doeki meat.. "Go on," Gentle said.. "I want to see you
salivate.

"There are restaurants down by the harbour where the fish is so fresh
it's still flapping when they take it into the kitchen.. "That's a
recommendation?"

"There's nothing in the world as good as fresh fish," Pie said.. "If the
catch is good you've got a choice of forty, maybe fifty, dishes.  From
tiny jepas to squeffah my size and bigger.. "Is there anything I'd
recognize?"

"A few species.  But why travel all this way for a cod steak when you
could have squeffah?

Or better, there's a dish I have to order for you.  It's a fish called
an ugichee, which is almost as small as a jepas, and it lives in the
belly of another fish.. "That sounds suicidal."

"Wait, there's more.  The second fish is often eaten whole by a bloater
called a coliacic.

They're ugly, but the meat melts like butter.  So if you're lucky,
they'll grill all three of them together, just the way they were caught
"One inside the other?. "Head, tail, the whole caboodle.. "That's
disgusting.. "And if you're very luck. "Pie

the ugichee's a female, and you find, when You cut An through all three
layers of fish

her belly's full of caviar.. "You guessed it.  Doesn't that sound
tempting?. "I'll stay with my chocolate mousse and ice-cream.. "How is
it you're not fat. "Vanessa used to say I had the palate of a child, the
libido of an adolescent, and the - well, you can guess the

rest.  I sweat it out making love.  or at least I used to."

They were close to the edge of the glacier now, and their talk of fish
and chocolate ceased, replaced by a grim silence, as the identity of the
forms encased in the ice became apparent.  They were human bodies, a
dozen or more.  Ice-locked around them, a collection of debris:
fragments of blue stone; immense bowls of beaten metal; the remnants of
garments, the blood on them still bright.  Gentle clambered and skidded
across the top of the glacier until the bodies were directly beneath
him.  Some were buried too deeply to be studied, but those closer to the
surface faces upturned, limbs fixed in attitudes of desperation - were
almost too visible.  They were all women, the youngest barely out of
childhood, the oldest a naked many-breasted hag who'd perished with her
eyes still open, her stare preserved for the millennium.  Some massacre
had occurred here, or further up the mountain, and the evidence been
thrown into this river while it still flowed.  Then, apparently, it had
frozen around the victims and their belongings.

"Who are they?" Gentle asked.. "Any idea? "Though they were dead the past
tense didn't seem appropriate for corpses so perfectly preserved.

"When the Unbeheld passed through the Dominions He overthrew all the
cults He deemed unworthy.  Most of them were sacred to Goddesses.  Their
oracles and devotees were women.. "So you think Hapexamendios did this?"
"If not Him, then His agents, His Righteous.  Though on second thoughts
He's supposed to have walked here alone, so maybe this is His
handiwork."

"Then whoever He is," Gentle said, looking down at the child in the ice,
"He's a murderer.

No better than you or me.. "I wouldn't say that too loudly," Pie
advised.

"Why not?  He's not here."

"If this is His doing, then He may have left entities watch over it."

Gentle looked around.  The air could not have been clearer.  There was
no sign of motion on the peaks or the snow fields gleaming below.. "If
they're here I don't see em," he said.

"The worst are the ones you can't see," Pie replied.. "Shall we go back
to the fire?"

They were weighed down by what they'd seen, and the return journey took
longer than the outward.  By the time they made the safety of their
niche in the rocks, to welcoming grunts from the surviving docki, the
sky was losing its golden sheen, and dusk was on its way.  They debated
whether to proceed in darkness, and decided against it.  Though the air
was calm at present they knew from past experience that conditions on
these heights were unpredictable.  if they attempted to move by night,
and a storm descended from the peaks, they'd be twice blinded, and in
danger of losing their way.  With the High Pass so close, and the
journey once they were through it hopefully easier, the risk was not
worth taking.

Having used up the supply of wood they'd collected below the snow-line,
they were obliged to fuel the fire with the dead doeki's saddle and
harness.  It made for a smoky, pungent and fitful fire, but it was
better than nothing.  They cooked some of the fresh meat, Gentle
observing as he chewed that he had less compunction about eating
something he'd named than he'd thought, and brewed up a small serving of
the herders' piss-liquor.  As they drank, Gentle returned the
conversation to the women in the ice.

"Why would a God as powerful as Hapexamendios slaughter defenceless
women?"

"Whoever said they were defenceless?" Pie replied.. "I think they were
probably very powerful.  Their oracles

must have sensed what was coming, so they had their armies ready

"Armies of women?"

"Certainly.  Warriors in their tens of thousands.  There are places to
the north of the Lenten Way where the earth used to move every fifty
years or so, and uncover one of their war graves."

"They were all slaughtered?  The armies, the oracle. "Or driven so deep
into hiding they forgot who they were after a few generations.  Don't
look so surprised.  It happens."

"One God defeats how many Goddesses?  Ten, twenty

"Innumerable."

"How?"

"He was One, and simple.  They were many, and diverse.. "Singularity is
strengt. "At least in the short term.  Who told you that

"I'm trying to remember.  Somebody I didn't like much.  Klein maybe."

"Whoever said it, it's true.  Hapexamendios came into the Dominions with
a seductive idea: that wherever you went, whatever misfortune attended
you, you needed only one name on your lips, one prayer, one altar, and
you'd be in His care.

And He brought a species to maintain that order once He'd established
it.  Yours.. "Those women back there looked human enough to me.. "So do
I," Pie reminded him.. "But I'm not.. "No ...  you're pretty diverse,
aren't you?. "I was once.  .  .. "So that puts you on the side of the
Goddesses, doesn't it?"  Gentle whispered.

The mystif put its finger to his lips.

Gentle mouthed one word by way of response. "Heretic." It was very dark
now, and they both settled to studying

the fire.  it was steadily diminishing as the last of Chester's saddle
was consumed.

"Maybe we should burn some fur," Gentle suggested.

"No," said Pie.. "Let it dwindle.  But keep looking.. "At what?"
"Anything.. "There's only you to look at.. "Then look at me."

He did so.  The privations of the last many days had seemingly taken
little toll on the mystif.  It had no facial hair to disfigure the
symmetry of its features, nor had their spartan diet pinched its cheeks
or hollowed its eyes.  Studying its face was like returning to a
favourite painting in a museum.  There it was: a thing of calm and
beauty But, unlike the painting, the face before him, which presently
seemed so solid, had the capacity for infinite change.  it was months
since the night when he'd first seen that phenomenon.  But now, as the
fire burned itself out, and the shadows deepened around them, he
realized the same sweet miracle was imminent.  The flicker of dying
flame made the symmetry swim; the flesh before him seemed to lose its
fixedness as he stared and stirred it.

"I want to watch..." he murmured.

"Then watch.. "But the fire's going out .  .

"We don't need light to see each other, "the mystif whispered.. "Hold on
to the sight."

Gentle concentrated, studying the face before him.  His eyes ached as he
tried to hold on to it, but they were no competition for the swelling
darkness.

"Stop looking .  .  ." Pie said, its voice seeming to rise from the
decay of the embers.. "Stop looking, and see.,

Gentle fought for the sense of this, but it was no more susceptible to
analysis than the darkness in front of him.  Two senses were failing him
here - one physical, one linguistic - two ways to embrace the world
slipping from him at the same moment.  It felt like a little death, and
a

panic seized him, like the fear he'd felt some midnights waking in his
bed and body and knowing neither: his bones a cage, his blood a gruel;
his dissolution the only certainty.  At such times he'd turned on all
the lights, for their comfort.  But there were no lights here.  Only
bodies, growing colder as the fire died.

"Help me," he said.

The mystif didn't speak.

"Are you there, Pie?  I'm afraid.  Touch me, will' you  Pie?"

The mystif didn't move.  Gentle started to reach out in the darkness,
remembering as he did so the sight of Taylor lying on a pillow from
which they'd both known he'd never rise again, asking for Gentle to hold
his hand.  With that memory, the panic became sorrow: for Taylor, for
Clem, for every soul sealed from its loved ones by senses born to
failure; himself included.  He wanted what the child wanted: knowledge
of another presence, proved in touch.  But he knew it was no real
solution.  He might find the mystif in the darkness, but he could no
more hold on to its flesh forever than he could hold the senses he'd
already lost.  Nerves decayed, and fingers slipped from fingers at the
last.

Knowing this little solace was as hopeless as any other, he withdrew his
hand, and instead said:

"I love you."

Or did he simply think it?  Perhaps it was thought, because it was the
idea rather than the syllables that formed in front of him, the
iridescence he remembered from Pie's transforming self shimmering in a
darkness that was not, he vaguely understood, the darkness of the
starless night, but his mind's darkness; and this seeing not the
business of eye and object, but his exchange with a creature he loved,
and who loved him back.

He let his feelings go to Pie, if there was indeed a going, which he
doubted.  Space, like time, belonged to the other tale to the tragedy of
separation they'd left behind.  Stripped of his senses and their
necessities, almost unborn again, he knew the mystif's comfort as it
knew his, and

that dissolution he'd woken in terror of so many times stood revealed as
the beginning of bliss.

A gust of wind, blowing between the rocks, caught the embers at their
side, and their glow became a momentary flame.

it brightened the face in front of him, and the sight summoned him back
from his unborn state.  It was no great hardship to return.  The place
they'd found together was out of time, and could not decay; and the face
in front of him, for all its frailty (or perhaps because of it) was
beautiful to look at.  Pie smiled at him, but said nothing.

"We should sleep," Gentle said.. "We've got a long way to go tomorrow."

Another gust came along, and there were flecks of snow in it, stinging
Gentle's face.  He pulled the hood of his coat up over his head, and got
up to check on the welfare of the doeki.  It had made a shallow bed for
itself in the snow, and was asleep.  By the time he got back to the
fire, which had found some combustible morsel and was devouring it
brightly, the mystif was also asleep, its hood pulled up around its
head.  As he stared down at the visible crescent of Pie's face, a simple
thought came; that though the wind was moaning at the rock, ready to
bury them, and there was death in the valley behind, and -a city of
atrocities ahead, he was happy.  He lay down on the hard ground beside
the mystif.  His last thought as sleep came was of Taylor, lying on a
pillow which was becoming a snow-field as he drew his final breaths, his
face growing translucent and finally disappearing, so that when Gentle
slipped from consciousness, it was not into darkness, but into the
whiteness of that deathbed, turned to untrodden snow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Gentle dreamed that the wind grew harsher, and brought snow down off the
peaks, fresh-minted.  He nevertheless rose from the relative comfort of
his place beside the ashes, and took off his coat and shirt, took off
his boots and socks, took off his trousers and underwear, and naked
walked down the narrow corridor of rock, past the sleeping doeki, to
face the blast.

Even in dreams, the wind threatened to freeze his marrow, but he had his
sights set on the glacier, and he had to go to it in all humility,
bare-loined, bare-backed, to show due respect for those souls who
suffered there.  They had endured centuries of pain, the crime against
them unrevenged.  Beside theirs, his suffering was a minor thing.

There was sufficient light in the wide sky to show him his way, but the
wastes seemed endless, and the gusts worsened as he went, several times
throwing him over into the snow.  His muscles cramped and his breath
shortened, coming from between his numbed lips in hard, small clouds. He
wanted to weep for the pain of it, but the tears crystallized on the
ledge of his eye, and would not fall.

Twice he stopped, because he sensed that there was something more than
snow on the storm's back.  He remembered Pie's talk of agents left in
this wilderness to guard the murder site and, though he was only
dreaming and knew it, he was still afraid.  If these entities were
charged to keep witnesses from the glacier, then they would not simply
drive the wakeful off, but the sleeping too; and those who came as he
came, in reverence, would earn their special ire.  He studied the
spattered air, looking

for some sign of them, and once thought he glimpsed a form overhead that
would have been invisible but that it displaced the snow: an eel's body
with a tiny ball of a head.  But it was come and gone too quickly for
him to be certain he'd.  even seen it.  The glacier was in sight,
however, and his will drove his limbs to motion, until he was standing
at its edge.  He raised his hands to his face and wiped the snow from
his cheeks and forehead, then stepped on to the ice.  The women gazed up
at him as they had when he'd stood here with Pie'oh'pah, but now,
through the dust of snow blowing across the ice, they saw him naked, his
manhood shrunk, his body trembling; on his face and lips a question he
had half an answer to.  Why, if this was indeed the work of
Hapexamendios, had the Unbeheld, with all His powers of destruction, not
obliterated every last sign of His victims?  Was it because they were
women or, more particularly, women Of power?  Had He brought them to
ruin as best He could overturning their altars, and unseating their
temples but at the last been unable to wipe them away?

And if so, was this ice a grave, or merely a prison?

He dropped to his knees and laid his palms on the glacier.  This time he
definitely heard a sound in the wind - a raw howl somewhere overhead.
The invisibles had entertained his dreaming presence long enough.

They saw his purpose, and were encircling in preparation for descent. He
blew against his palm, and made a fist before the breath could slip,
then raised his arm and slammed his hand against the ice, opening it as
he did so.

The pneuma went off like a thunder crack  Before the tremors had died he
snatched a second breath and broke it against the ice; then a third and
fourth in quick succession, striking the steely surface so hard that had
the pneuma not cushioned the blow he'd have broken every bone from wrist
to fingertip.  But his efforts had effect.

There were hairline cracks spreading from the point of impact.

Encouraged, he began a second round of blows, but

he'd delivered only three when he felt something take hold of his hair,
wrenching his head back.  A second grip instantly seized his raised arm.
He had time to feel the ice splintering beneath his legs, then he was
hauled up off the glacier by wrist and hair.  He struggled against the
claim, knowing that if his assaulters carried him too high death was
assured: they'd either tear him apart in the clouds, or simply drop him.
The hold on his head was the less secure of the two and his gyrations
were sufficient to slip it, though blood ran down his brow.  Freed, he
looked up at the entities.

There were two, six feet long, their bodies scantily fleshed spines
sprouting innumerable ribs, their limbs twelve fold and bereft of bone,
their heads vestigial.  Only their motion had beauty: a sinuous knotting
and un knotting  He reached up and snatched at the closest of the two
heads.  Though it had no discernible features, it looked tender, and his
hand had sufficient echo of the pneumas it had discharged to do harm. He
dug his fingers into the flesh of the thing, and it instantly began to
writhe, coiling its length around its companion for support, its limbs
flailing wildly.  He twisted his body to the left and right, the motion
violent enough to wrench him free.  Then he fell; a mere six feet, but
hard, on to slivered ice.  The breath went from him as the pain came. He
had time to see the agents descending upon him, but none in which to
escape.

Waking or sleeping, this was the end of him, he knew; death by these
limbs had jurisdiction in both states.

But before they could find his flesh, and blind him, and unman him, he
felt the shattered glacier beneath him shudder, and with a roar it rose,
throwing him off its back into the snow.  Shards pelted down upon him,
but he peered up through their hail to see that the women were emerging
from their graves, clothed in ice.  He hauled himself to his feet as the
tremors increased, the din of this unshackling echoing off the
mountains.  Then he turned and ran.

The storm was discreet, and quickly drew its veil over

M the resurrection, so that he fled not knowing how the M 111 events
he'd begun had finished.

Certainly the agents of Hapexamendios made no pursuit; or if they did
they failed to find him.  Their absence comforted him only a little. his
adventures had done him harm, and the distance he had to cover to get
back to the camp was substantial.  His run soon deteriorated into
stumbling and staggering, blood marking his route.  It was time to be
done with this dream of endurance, he thought, and open his eyes; to
roll over and put his arms around Pie'oh'pah; to kiss the mystif's
cheek, and share this vision with it.  But his thoughts were too
confounded to take hold of wakefulness long enough for him to rouse
himself, and he dared not lie down in the snow in case a dreamed death
came to him before morning woke him.

All he could do was push himself on, weaker by the step, putting out of
his head the possibility that he'd lost his way, and that the camp
didn't lie ahead but off in another direction entirely.

He was looking down at his feet when he heard the shout, and his first
instinct was to peer up into the snow above him, expecting one of the
Unbeheld's creatures' But before his eyes reached their zenith they
found the shape approaching him from his left.  He stopped, and studied
the figure.  It was shaggy and hooded, but its arms were outspread in
invitation.

He didn't waste what little energy he had calling Pie's name.  He simply
changed his direction and headed towards the mystif as it came to meet
him.  It was the faster of the two, and as it came it shrugged off its
coat and held it open, so that he fell into its luxury.  He couldn't
feel it; indeed he could feel little, except relief.  Borne up by the
mystif he let all conscious thought go, the rest of the journey becoming
a blur of snow and snow, and Pie's voice sometimes, at his side, telling
him that it would be over soon.

"Am I awake?" He opened his eyes and sat up, grasping

hold of Pie's coat to do so.. "Am I awake?"

Yes."

"Thank God!  Thank God!  I thought I was going to freeze

to death."

He let his head sink back.  The fire was burning, fed with fur, and he
could feel its warmth on his face and body.  It took a few seconds to
realize the significance of this.  Then he sat up again, and realized he
was naked; naked and covered with cuts.

"I'm not awake," he said.. "Shid I'm not awake!'

Pie took the pot of herders' brew from the fire, and poured a cup.

"You didn't dream it," the mystif said.  It handed the cup over to
Gentle.. "You went to the glacier, and you almost didn't make it back."

Gentle took the cup in raw fingers.. "I must have been out of my mind,"
he said.. "I remember thinking: I'm dreaming this, then taking off my
coat and my clothes.  why the hell did I do that?" He could still recall

struggling

' ' through the snow, and reaching the glacier.  He remembered pain, and
splintering ice, but the rest had receded so far he couldn't grasp it.
Pie read his

p

e

r

p

le

x

e

d look.

"Don't

try and

remember

now," the

mystif

said.. "It'll

come back

when the

moment's

right.

Push too

hard and

you'll

break your

heart.

You

should

sleep for a

while.. "I

don't

fancy

sleeping," he said.

"It's a little

too much

like dying."

"I'll be

here," Pie

told him.

"Your body

needs rest.

Let it do

what it

needs to

do."

The

mystif had

been

warming

Gentle's

shirt in

front of

the fire,

and now

helped him

put it on, a

delicate

business.

Gentle's

joints were

already

stiffening.

He pulled

on his

trousers

without

Pie's help

however,

up over

limbs that

were a

mass of

bruises and

abrasions.

"Whatever

I did out

there I

certainly

made a

mess of

myself," he

remarked.

"You

heal

quickly,"

Pie said.

This was

true,

though

Gentle

couldn't

remember

sharing

that

information

with

the mystif.. "Lie down.  I'll wake you when it's light." Gentle put his
head on the small heap of hides Pie had made as a pillow, and let the
mystif pull his coat up over him.

"Dream of sleeping," Pie said, laying its hand on Gentle's face.. "And
wake whole."

When Pie shook him awake, what seemed mere minutes later, the sky
visible between the rock-faces was still dark, but it was the gloom of
snow-bearing cloud rather than the purple-black of a Jokalaylaurian
night.

He sat up feeling wretched, aching in every bone.

"I'd kill for coffee," he said, resisting the urge to torture his joints
by stretching.. "And warm pain all chocolate. "If they don't have it in
Yzordderrex, we'll invent it," Pie said.

"Did you brew up?. "There's nothing left to burn.. "And what's the
weather like?. "Don't ask.. "That bad?"

"We should get a move on.  The thicker the snow gets, the more difficult
it'll be to find the Pass."

They roused the doeki, which made plain its disgruntlement at having to
breakfast on words of encouragement rather than hay, and, with the meat
Pie had prepared the day before loaded, left the shelter of the rock and
headed out into the snow.  There had been a short debate befc, re they
left as to whether they should ride or not, Pie insisting that Gentle
should do so, given his present delicacy, but he'd argued that they
might need the doeki's strength to carry them both if they got into
worse difficulties, and they should preserve such energies as it still
possessed for such an emergency.  But he soon began to stumble in snow
that was waist-high in places, his body,

though somewhat healed by sleep, not the equal of the demands upon it.

"We'll go more quickly if you ride," Pie told him.

He needed little persuasion, and mounted the doeki, his fatigue such
that he could barely sit upright with the wind so strong, and instead
slumped against the beast's neck.  He only occasionally raised himself
from that posture, and when he did the scene had scarcely changed.

"Shouldn't we be in the Pass by now?" he murmured to Pie at one point,
and the look on the mystif's face was answer enough.  They were lost.
Gentle pushed himself into an upright position, and squinted against the
gale looked for some sign of shelter, however small.  The world M was
white in every direction, but for them, and even they were being
steadily erased as ice clogged the fur of their coats, and the snow they
were trudging through deepened.  Until now, however arduous the journey
had become, he hadn't countenanced the possibility of failure.  He'd
been his own best convert to the gospel of their in destructibility  But
now such confidence seemed self-deception.  The white world would strip
all colour from them, to get to the purity of their bones.

He reached to take hold of Pie's shoulder, but misjudged the distance
and slid from the doeki's back.  Relieved of its burden the beast
slumped, its front legs buckling.  Had Pie not been swift, and pulled
Gentle out of harm's way, he might have been crushed beneath the
creature's bulk.  Hauling back his hood, and swiping the snow from the
back of his neck, he got to his feet, and found Pie's exhausted gaze
there to meet him.

"I thought I was leading us right.  .  ." the mystif said.

"Of course you did."

"But we've missed the Pass somehow.  The slope's getting steeper.  I
don't know where the fuck we are, Gentle.. "In trouble is where we are,
and too tired to think our way out of it.  We have to rest."

"Where?. "Here," Gentle said.. "This blizzard can't go on forever.

off

Am

There's only so much snow in the sky, and most of it's already fallen,
right?  Right?  So if we can just hold on till the storm's over, and we
can see where we are.  .

"Suppose by that time it's night again?  We'll freeze, my friend."

"Do we have any other choice?" Gentle said.. "If we go on we'll kill the
beast and probably ourselves.  We could march right over a gorge, we'd
never know it.  But if we stay here ...  together ...  maybe we're in
with a chance.. "I thought I knew our direction."

"Maybe you did.  Maybe the storm'll blow over, and we'll find ourselves
on the other side of the mountain." Gentle put his hands on Pie's
shoulders, sliding them around the back of the mystif's neck.. "We have
no choice, "he said slowly.

Pie nodded, and together they settled as best they could in the dubious
shelter of the doeki's body.  The beast was still breathing, but not,
Gentle thought, for long.  He tried to put from his mind what would
happen if it died and the storm failed to abate, but what was the use of
leaving such plans to the last?  if death seemed inevitable, would it
not be better for he and Pie to meet it together - to slit their wrists
and bleed to death side by side rather than slowly freeze, pretending to
the end that survival was plausible?  He was ready to voice that
suggestion now, while he still had the energy and focus to do so, but as
he turned to the mystif some tremor reached him that was not the wind's
tirade, but a voice beneath its harangue, calling him to stand up.  He
did so.  The gusts would have blown him over had Pie not stood up with
him, and his eyes would have missed the figures in the drifts but that
the mystif caught his arm and, putting its head close to Gentle's said:

"How the hell did they get out?"

The women stood a hundred yards from them.  Their feet were touching the
snow but not impressing themselves upon it.  Their bodies were wound
with cloth brought from the ice, which billowed around them as

the wind filled it.  Some held treasures, claimed from the glacier.
Pieces of their temple, and ark, and altar.  One, the young girl whose
corpse had moved Gentle so much, held in her arms the head of a Goddess
carved in blue stone.  It had been badly vandalized.  There were cracks
in its cheeks, and part of its nose, and an eye, were missing.  But it
found light from somewhere, and gave off a serene radiance.

"What do they want?" Gentle said.

"You, maybe?" Pie ventured.

The woman standing closest to them, her hair rising half her height
again above her head courtesy of the wind, beckoned.

"I think they want us both to go," Gentle said.

"That's the way it looks," Pie said, not moving a muscle.

"What are we waiting for?. "I thought they were dead," the mystif said.

"Maybe they were."

"So we take the lead from phantoms?  I'm not sure that's wise."

"They came to find us, Pie," Gentle said.

Having beckoned, the woman was turning slowly on her toe -tips, like a
mechanical Madonna Clem had once given Gentle, that had played Ave Maria
as it turned,

"We're going to lose them if we don't hurry.  What's your problem, Pie?
You've talked with spirits before.. "Not like these," Pie said.. "The
Goddesses weren't all forgiving mothers, you know.  And their rites
weren't all milk and honey.

Some of them were cruel.  They sacrificed men.. "You think that's why
they want us?. "It's possible."

"So, we weigh that possibility against the absolute certainty of
freezing to death where we stand," Gentle said.

"It's your decision."

"No, this one we make together.  You've got fifty percent of the vote,
and fifty percent of the responsibility.. "What do you want to do?"

"There you go again.  Make up your own mind for once."

Pie looked at the departing women, their forms already disappearing
behind a veil of snow.  Then at Gentle.  Then at the doeki.  Then back
at Gentle.

"I heard they eat men's balls," it said.

"So what are you worried about?. "All right!' the mystif growled.. "I
vote we go.. "Then it's unanimous."

Pie started to haul the doeki to its feet.  It didn't want to move, but
the mystif had a fine turn of threat when pressed, and began to berate
it ripely.

"Quick, or we'll lose them!" Gentle said.

The beast was up now, and tugging on its bridle Pie led it in pursuit of
Gentle, who was forging ahead to keep their guides in sight.

The snow obliterated the women completely at times, but he saw the
beckoner glance back several times, and knew that she'd not let her
foundlings get lost again.  After a time, their destination came in
sight.  A rock-face, slate-grey and sheer, loomed from the murk, its
summit lost in mist.

'if they want us to climb, they can think again," Pie yelled through the
wind.

"No, there's a door," Gentle yelled over his shoulder.. "See it?"

The word rather flattered what was no more than a jagged crack, like a
bolt of black lightning burned into the face of the cliff.  But it
represented some hope of shelter, if nothing else.

Gentle turned back to Pie.. "Do you see it, PieT

"I see it," came the response.. "But I don't see the women."

One sweeping glance along the rock face confirmed the mystif's
observation.  They'd either entered the cliff or floated up its face
into the clouds.  Whichever, they'd removed themselves quickly.

"Phantoms," Pie said, fretfully.

"What if they are?" Gentle replied.. "They brought us to shelter."

He took the doeki's rein from Pie's hands, and coaxed the animal on,
saying. "See that hole in the wall?  it's going to be warm inside.

Remember warm?"

The snow thickened as they covered the last hundred yards, until it was
almost waist-deep again.  But all three man, animal and mystif made the
crack alive.  There was more than shelter inside; there was light.  A
narrow passageway presented itself, its black walls encased in ice, with
a fire flickering somewhere out of sight in the cavern's depths.  Gentle
had let slip the doeki's reins, and the wise animal was already heading
away down the passage, the sound of its hooves echoing against the
glittering walls.  By the time Gentle and Pie caught up with it, a s ig
t end in the passage had revealed the source of the light and warmth it
was heading towards.  A broad but shallow bowl of beaten brass was set
in a place where the passage widened, and the fire was burning
vigorously in its centre.  There were two curiosities, however.  one,
that the flame was not gold but blue.  Two, that it burned without fuel,
the flames hovering six inches above the bottom of the bowl.  But oh, it
was warm.  The cobs of ice in Gentle's beard melted and dropped off; the
snowflakes became beads on Pie's smooth brow and cheek.  The warmth
brought a whoop of pure pleasure to Gentle's lips, and he opened his
aching arms to Pie"oh"pah.

"We're not going to die!" he said.. "Didn't I tell you?

We're not going to die?" 

The mystif hugged him in return, its lips first pressed to Gentle's
neck, then to his face.

"All right, I was wrong," it said.. "There!  I admit it!. "So, we go on
and find the women, yes?. "Yes!" it said.

A sound was waiting for them when the echoes of their enthusiasm died. A
tinkling, as of ice-bells.

"They're calling us," Gentle said.

The doeki had found a little paradise by the fire, and

was not about to move, for all Pie's attempts to tug it to its feet.

"Leave it awhile," Gentle said, before the mystif began a fresh round of
profanities.. "It's given good service.  Let it rest.

We can come back and fetch it later."

The passage they now followed not only curved but divided, many times,
the routes all lit by fire-bowls.  They chose between them by listening
for the sound of the bells, which didn't seem to be getting any closer.
Each choice, of course, made the likelihood of finding their way back to
the doeki more uncertain.

"This place is a maze," Pie said, the old unease creeping back into its
voice.. "I think we should stop and assess exactly what we're doing."
"Finding the Goddesses."

"And losing our transport while we do it.  We're neither of us in any
state to go much further on foot."

"I don't feel so bad.  Except for my hands." He raised them in front of
his face, palms up.

They were puffy and bruised, the lacerations livid.. "I suppose I look
like that all over.  Did you hear the bells?  They're just around the
corner, I swear!'

"They've been just round the corner for the last three quarters of an
hour.  They're not getting any closer, Gentle.  It's some kind of trick.
We should go back for the animal before it's slaughtered."

"I don't think they'd shed blood in here," Gentle replied.  The bells
came again.. "Listen to that.  They are closer." He went to the next
corner, sliding on the ice.. "Pie.  Come look."

Pie joined him at the corner.  Ahead of them the passageway narrowed to
a doorway.

"What did I tell you?" Gentle said, and headed on to the door and
through it.

The sanctum on the other side wasn't vast - the size of a modest church,
no more - but it had been hewn with such cunning it gave the impression
of magnificence.  It had sustained great damage, however.

Despite its myriad

pillars, chased by the finest craft, and its vaults of ice-sleek stone,
its walls were pitted, its floor gouged.  Nor did it take great wit to
see that the objects that had been buried in the glacier had once been
part of its furniture.  The altar lay in hammered ruins at its centre,
and amongst the wreckage were fragments of blue stone, matching that of
the statue the girl had carried.  Now, more certainly than ever, they
were standing in a place that carried the marks of Hapexamendios's
passing.

"In His footsteps," Gentle murmured.

"Oh yes," Pie murmured.. "He was here."

"And so were the women," Gentle said.. "But I don't think they ate men's
balls.  I think their ceremonies were more loving than that." He went
down on his haunches, running his fingers over the carved fragments.  J
wonder what they did?  I'd like to have seen the rites.. "They'd have
ripped you limb from limb.. "Why?. "Because their devotions weren't for
men's eyes.. "You could have got in though, couldn't you?" Gentle said.
"You would have been a perfect spy.  You could have seen it.. "It's not
the seeing," Pie said softly, 'it's the feeling." Gentle stood up,
gazing at the mystif with new comprehension.. "I think I envy you, Pie,"
he said.. "You know what it feels like to be both, don't you?  I never
thought of that before.  Will you tell me how it feels, one of these
days?. "You'd be better off finding out for yourself," Pie said.

"And how do I do that?"

"This isn't the time

"Tell me."

"Well, mystifs have their rites, just like men and women.  Don't worry,
I won't make you spy on me.  You'll be invited, if that's what you
want."

The remotest twinge of fear touched Gentle as he listened to this.  He'd
become almost blase about the many wonders they'd witnessed as they
travelled, but the creature that had been at his side these many days
remained, he realized, undiscovered.  He had never seen it naked since
that first encounter in New York; nor kissed it the way a lover might
kiss; nor allowed himself sexual feelings towards it.

Perhaps it was because he'd been thinking of the women here, and their
secret rites, but now, like it or not, he was looking at Pie'oh'pah, and
aroused.

Pain diverted him from these thoughts and he looked down at his hands to
see that in his unease he'd made fists of them, and reopened the cuts in
his palms.  Blood dropped on to the ice underfoot, shockingly red.

with the sight of it came a memory he'd consigned to the back of his
head.

"What's wrong?" Pie said.

But Gentle didn't have the breath to reply.  He could hear the frozen
river cracking beneath him, and the howl of the Unbeheld's agents
wheeling overhead.  He could feel his hand slamming, slamming, slamming
against the glacier, and the thorns of ice flying up into his face.

The mystif had come to his side.

"Gentle," it said, anxious now, 'speak to me, will you?  What's wrong?"

it put its arms around Gentle's shoulders, and at its touch Gentle drew
breath.

"The women..." he said.

"What about them?. "It was me who freed them.. "How?. "Pneuma.  How
else?"

"You undid the Unbeheld's handiwork?" the mystif said, J its voice
barely audible.. "For our sake I hope the women were the only
witnesses.. "There were agents, just as you said there'd be.  They
almost killed me.  But I hurt them back.. "This is bad news.. "Why?  If
I'm going to bleed, let Him bleed a little too.. "Hapexamendios doesn't
bleed."

A

"Everything bleeds, Pie.  Even God.  Maybe especially God.  Or else why
did He hide Himself away?"

As he spoke the tinkling bells sounded again, closer than ever, and
glancing over Gentle's shoulder Pie said. "She must have been waiting
for that little heresy."

Gentle turned to see the beckoning woman standing halfway in shadow at
the end of the sanctum.  The ice that still clung to her body hadn't
melted, suggesting that, like the walls, the flesh it was encrusted upon
was still below zero.  There were cobs of ice in her hair, and when she
moved her head a little, as she did now, they struck each other, and
tinkled like tiny bells.

"I brought you out of the ice," Gentle said, stepping past Pie to
approach her.  The woman said nothing.. "Do you understand me?" Gentle
went on.. "Will you lead us out of here?  We want to find a way through
the mountain." The woman took a step backwards, retreating into the
shadows.

"Don't be afraid of me," Gentle said.. "Piel Help me out here."

"How?

"Maybe she doesn't understand English.. "She understands you well
enough."

"Just talk to her, will you?" Gentle said.

Ever obedient, Pie began to speak in a tongue Gentle hadn't heard
before, its musicality reassuring even if the words were unintelligible.
But neither music nor sense seemed to impress the woman.  She continued
to retreat into the darkness, Gentle pursuing cautiously, fearful of
startling her, but more fearful still of losing her entirely.  His
additions to Pie's persuasions had dwindled to the basest bargaining:

"One favour deserves another," he said.

Pie was right, she did indeed understand.  Even though she stood in
shadow, he could see that a little smile was playing on her sealed lips.
Damn her, he thought, why wouldn't she answer him?  The bells still rang
in her hair, however, and he kept following them even when the

shadows became so heavy she was virtually lost amongst them.  He glanced
back towards the mystif, who had by now given up any attempt to
communicate with the woman, and instead addressed Gentle. "Don't go any
further," it said.

Though he was no more than fifty yards from where the mystif stood, its
voice sounded unnaturally remote, as though another law besides that of
distance and light held sway in the space between them.

"I'm still here.  Can you see me?" he called back, and, gratified to
hear the mystif reply that it could, he returned his gaze to the
shadows.  The woman had disappeared, however.  Cursing, he plunged on
towards the place where she'd last stood, his sense that this was
equivocal terrain intensifying.  The darkness had a nervous quality,
like a bad liar attempting to shoo him off with shrugs.  He wouldn't go.
The more it trembled, the more eager he became to see what it was
hiding.  Sightless though he was, he wasn't blind to the risk he was
taking.  Minutes before he'd told Pie that everything was vulnerable.
But nobody, not even the Unbeheld, could make darkness bleed.  If it
closed on him he could claw at it forever and not make a mark on its
hide less back.  He heard Pie calling behind him now. "Where the hell are
you?"

The mystif was following him into the shadow s, he saw.

"Don't come any further," he told it.

"Why not?"

"I may need a marker to find my way back."

"Just turn around."

"Not till I find her," Gentle said, forging on with his arms
outstretched.

The floor was slick beneath him, and he had to proceed with extreme
caution.  But without the woman to guide them through the mountain, this
maze might prove as fatal as the snows they'd escaped.  He had to find
her.

"Can you still hear me?" he called back to Pie.

The voice that told him yes was as faint as a long distance call on a
failing line.

"Keep talking," he yelled.

"What do you want me to say?. "Anything.  Sing a song.. "I'm tone deaf."
"Talk about food, then."

"All right," said Pie. "I already told you about the ugichee and the
bellyful of eggs .  .

"It's the foulest thing I ever heard," Gentle replied.

"You'll like it once you taste it.. "As the Actress said to the Bishop."

e heard Pie's muted laughter come his way; then the mystif said. "You
hated me almost as much as you hated fish, remember?  And I converted
you.. "I never hated you." 'in New York you did.. "Not even then.  I was
just confused.  I'd never slept with a mystif before.. "How did you like
it?. "It's better than fish but not as good as chocolate.. "What did you
say?. "I sai. "Gentle?  I can hardly hear you.. "I'm still her el he
replied, shouting now.. "I'd like to do it again some time, Pie.. "Do
what?. "Sleep with you.. "I'll have to think about it.. "What do you
want?  A proposal of marriage?. "That might do it.. "All right!" Gentle
called back.. "So marry me."  There was a silence from behind him.  He
stopped, and turned.  Pie's form was a blurred shadow against the
distant light of the sanctum.

"Did you hear me?" he yelled.

"I'm thinking it over."

Gentle laughed, despite the darkness, and the unease it wrung from him.

"You can't take forever, Pie," he hollered.. "I need an answer in -' He
stopped as his outstretched fingers made contact with something frozen
and solid.  oh shit.. "What's wrong?"

"It's a fucking dead end!" he said, stepping right up to the surface
he'd encountered, and running his palms over the ice.

"Just a blank wall."

But that wasn't the whole story.  The suspicion he'd

had that this was nebulous territory was stronger than aid   ever. There
was something on the other side of this wall,

if he could only reach it.

"Make your way back.  .  ." he heard Pie entreating.

"Not yet," he said to himself, knowing the words wouldn't reach the
mystif.  He raised his hand to his mouth, and snatched an expelled
breath.

"Did you hear me, Gentle?" Pie called.

Without replying he slammed the pneuma against the wall, a technique his
palm was now expert in.  The sound of the blow was swallowed by the
murk, but the force he unleashed shook a freezing hail down from the
roof.  He didn't wait for the reverberations to settle, but delivered a
second blow, and a third, each impact opening further the wounds in his
hand, adding blood to the violence of his blows.  Perhaps it fuelled
them.  if his breath and spittle did such service, what power might his
blood contain, or his semen?

As he stopped to draw a fresh lungful, he heard the mystif yelling, and
turned to see it moving towards him across a gulf of frantic shadow.  It
wasn't just the wall and the roof above that were shaken by his assault:
the very air was in a furore, shaking Pie's silhouette into fragments.
As his eyes fought to fix the image a vast spear of ice divided the
space between them, hitting the ground and shattering.  He had time to
raise his arms over his face before the shards struck him, but their
impact threW

him back against the wall.

"You'll bring the whole place down!" he heard Pie yell as new spears
fell.

"It's too late to change our minds!" Gentle replied.. "Move, Pie!'

Light-footed, even on this lethal ground, the mystif dodged through the
ice towards Gentle's voice.  Before it was even at his side, he turned
to attack the wall afresh, knowing that if it didn't capitulate very
soon they'd be buried where they stood.  Snatching another breath from
his lips he delivered it against the wall, and this time the shadows
failed to swallow the sound.  It rang out like a thunderous bell.  The
shock-wave would have pitched him to the floor had the mystif's arms not
been there to catch him.

"This is a passing place!" it yelled.

"What does that mean?"

"Two breaths this time, "was its reply.. "Mine as well as yours, in one
hand.  Do you understand me?. "Yes."

He couldn't see the mystif, but he felt it raise his hand to its mouth.

"On a count of three," Pie said.. "One." Gentle drew a breath full of
furious air.

TWO.

Then drew again, deeper still.

"Three!'

And expelled it, mingled with Pie's, into his hand.  Human flesh wasn't
designed to govern such force.  Had Pie not been beside him to brace his
shoulder and wrist the power would have erupted from his palm and taken
his hand with it.  But they flung themselves forward in unison, and he
opened his hand the instant before it struck the wall.

The roar from above redoubled, but it was drowned out moments later by
the havoc they'd wrought ahead of them.  Had there been room to retreat
they'd have done so, but the roof was pitching down a fusillade of
stalactites, and all they could do was shield their bare

"M I

heads and stand their ground as the wall stoned them for their crime,
knocking them to their knees as it split and fell.  The commotion went
on for what seemed like minutes, the ground shuddering so violently they
were thrown down yet again, this time to their faces.  Then, by degrees,
the convulsions slowed.  The hail of stone and ice became a drizzle, and
stopped, and a miraculous gust brought warm wind to their faces.

They looked up.  The air was murky, but light was catching glints off
the daggers they lay on, and its source was somewhere up ahead.  The
mystif was first to its feet, hauling Gentle up beside it.

"A passing place," it said again.

it put its arm around Gentle's shoulders, and together they stumbled
towards the warmth that had roused them.  Though the gloom was still
deep, they could make out the vague presence of the wall.  For all the
scale of the upheaval, the fissure they'd made was scarcely more than a
man's height.  On the other side, it was foggy, but each step took them
closer to the light.  As they went, i their feet sinking into a soft
sand that was the colour of i the fog, they heard the ice-bells again,
and looked back expecting to see the women following.  But the fog
already obscured the fissure and the sanctum beyond, and when the bells
stopped, as they did moments later, they lost all sense of its
direction.

"We've come out in to the Third Dominion," Pie said.

"No more mountains?  No more snow?"

"Not unless you want to find your way back to thank them."

Gentle peered ahead into the fog.. "Is this the only way out of the
Fourth?"

"Lord, no," said Pie.. "If we'd gone the scenic route we'd have had the
choice of a hundred places to cross.  But this must have been their
secret way, before the ice sealed it up.,

The light showed Gentle the mystif's face now, and it bore a wide smile.

"You did fine work," Pie said.. "I thought you'd gone crazy."

"I think I did, a little," Gentle replied.. "I must have a destructive
streak.  Hapexamendios would be proud of me." He halted to give his body
a moment's rest.. "I hope there's more than fog in the Third."

"Oh believe me, there is.  It's the Dominion I've longed to see more
than any other, while I've been in the Fifth.  It's full of light, and
fertility.  We'll rest, and we'll feed, and we'll get strong again.
Maybe go to L'Himby, and see my friend Scopique.  We deserve to indulge
ourselves for a few days before we head for the Second, and join the
Lenten Way.. "Will that take us to Yzordderrex?"

Indeed it will," Pie said, coaxing Gentle into motion again.. "The
Lenten Way's the longest road in the Imajica.  It must be the length of
the Americas, and more.. "A map!" said Gentle.. "I must start making
that map." The fog was beginning to thin, and with the growing light
came plants: the first greenery they'd seen since the foothills of the
Jokalaylau.  They picked up their pace as the vegetation became lusher,
and scented, calling them on to the sun.

"Remember, Gentle," Pie said when they'd gone a little way. "I
accepted.. "Accepted what?"  Gentle asked.

The fog was wispy now; they could see a warm new world awaiting them.

"You proposed, my friend, don't you remember?. "I didn't hear you
accept.. "But I did," the mystif replied, as the verdant landscape was
unveiled before them.. "If we do nothing else in this Dominion, we
should at very least get married!'

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

England saw an early spring that year, with the days becoming balmy at
the end of February, and by the middle of March warm enough to have
coaxed April and May flowers forth.  The pundits were opining that if no
further frosts came along to kill the blooms and chill the chicks in
their nests, there would be a surge of new life by May, as parents let
their fledglings fly and set about a second brood for June.  More
pessimistic souls were already predicting drought, their divining
dampened when, at the beginning of March the heavens opened over the
island.

When - on that first day of rain - Jude looked back over the weeks since
she'd left the Godolphin Estate with Oscar and Dowd, they seemed well
occupied; but the details of what had filled that time were at best
sketchy.  She had been made welcome in the house from the beginning, and
was allowed to come and go whenever it pleased her to do so, which was
not often.  The sense of belonging she'd discovered when she'd set eyes
on Oscar had not faded, though she had yet to uncover its true source.
He was a generous host, to be sure, but she'd been treated well by many
men and not felt the devotion she felt now.  That devotion was not
returned, at least not overtly, which was something of a fresh
experience for her.  There was a certain reserve in Oscar's manner and a
consequent formality in their exchanges - which merely intensified her
feelings for him.  When they were alone together she felt like a
long-lost mistress miraculously returned to his side, each with
sufficient knowledge of the other that overt expressions of affection
were

superfluous; when she was with him in company - at the theatre, or at
dinner with his friends - she was mostly silent, and happily so.  This
too was odd for her.  She was accustomed to volubility, to handing out
opinions on whatever subject was at issue whether said opinions were
requested, or even seriously held.  But now it didn't trouble her not to
speak.  She listened to the little-tattle and the chat (politics,
finance, social gossip) as to the dialogue of a play.  It wasn't her
drama.

She had no drama, just the ease of being where she wanted to be.  And
with such contentment to be had from simply witnessing, there seemed
little reason to demand more.

Godolphin was a busy man, and though they spent some portion of every
day together, she was more often than not alone.  When she was, a
pleasant languor overJ Z

came her, which contrasted forcibly with the confusion

that had preceded her coming to stay with him.  in fact

she tried hard to put thoughts of that time out of her

mind, and it was only when she went back to her flat to

pick up belongings or bills (which, on Oscar's instruction,

Dowd paid) that she was reminded of friends whose company she was at
present not disposed to keep.  There were J, telephone messages left for
her, of course, from Klein,

Clem, and half a dozen others.  Later, there were even

letters - some of them concerned for her health - and v le

notes pushed through her door asking her to make con-At tact.  In the
case of Clem she did so, guilty that she'd not

spoken to him since the funeral.  They lunched near his

offices in Marylebone, and she told him that she'd met a

man, and had gone to live with him on a temporary

basis.  Inevitably, Clem was curious.  Who was this lucky

individual?  Anyone he knew?  How was the sex: sublime

or merely wonderful?  And was it love?  Most of all, was

it love?  She answered as best she could: named the man

and described him; explained that there was nothing

sexual between them as yet, though the thought had

I passed through her mind on several occasions; and as to

love, it was too soon to tell.  She knew Clem well, and

F

could be certain that this account would be public knowledge in
twenty-four hours, which suited her fine.  At least with this telling
she'd allayed her friends' fears for her health.

so when do we get to meet this paragon?" Clem asked her as they parted.

"In a while.  .  ." she said.

"He's certainly had quite an effect on you, hasn't he?"

"Has he?"

"You're so - I don't know the word exactly - tranquil maybe?  I've never
seen you this way before."

"I'm not sure I've ever felt this way before."

"Well, just make sure we don't lose the Judy we all know and love, huh?"
Clem said.. "Too much serenity's bad for the circulation.  Everybody
needs a good rage once in a while." The significance of this exchange
didn't really strike when - sitting downstairs in her until the evening
after, the quiet of the house, waiting for Oscar to come home she
realized how passive she'd become it was almost as if the woman she'd
been, the Jude of furies and opinions, had been shed like a dead skin,
and now, tender and new, she had entered a time of waiting.  instruction
would come, she assumed; she couldn't live the rest of her life as
becalmed as she was.

And she knew to whom she had to look for that instruction: the man whose
voice in the hall made her heart rise and her head light, Oscar
Godolphin.

if Oscar was the good news that those weeks brought, Kuttner Dowd was
the bad.  He was astute enough to realize after a very short time that
she knew far less about the Dominions and their mysteries than their
conversation at the Retreat had suggested, and far from being the source
of information she'd hoped he'd prove, he was taciturn, suspicious and
on occasion rude, though never the latter in Oscar's company.  Indeed
when all three of them were together he lavished her with respect, its
irony

lost on Oscar, who was so used to Dowd's obsequious presence he barely
seemed to notice the man.

Jude soon learned to match suspicion with suspicion, and several times
verged on discussing Dowd with Oscar.  That she didn't was a consequence
of what she'd seen at the Retreat.  Dowd had dealt almost casually with
the problem of the corpses, dispatching them with the efficiency of one
who had covered for his employer in similar circumstances before.  Nor
had he sought commendation for his labour, at least not within earshot
of her.  When the relationship between master and servant was so
ingrained that a criminal act - the disposal of murdered flesh - was
passed over as an unremarkable duty, it was best, she thought, not to
come between them.  It was she who was the interloper here; the new girl
who dreamed she'd belonged to the master forever.  She couldn't hope to
have Oscar's ear the way Dowd did, and any attempt

I

to sow mistrust might easily rebound upon her.  She kept her silence,
and things went on their smooth way.  Until J

the day of rain.

A trip to the opera had been planned for March the

second, and she had spent the latter half of the afternoon

in leisurely preparation for the evening, idling over her

+4 choice of dress and shoes, luxuriating in indecision.  Dowd A I had
gone out at lunchtime, on urgent business for Oscar

which she knew better than to enquire about.  She'd been

4 told upon her arrival at the house that any questions as A

to Oscar's business would not be welcomed, and she' dIM never challenged
that edict: it was not the place of mistresses to do so.  But today,
with Dowd uncharacteristically flustered as he left, she found herself
wondering, as

she bathed and dressed, what work Godolphin was about.

Was he off in Yzordderrex, the city whose streets she

assumed Gentle now walked with his soul-mate the

assassin?  A mere two months before, with the bells of London pealing in
the New Year, she'd sworn to go to Yzordderrex after him.  But she'd
been distracted from that ambition by the very man whose company she'd
sought to take her there.

Though her thoughts returned to that mysterious city now, it was without
her former appetite.

She'd have liked to know if Gentle was safe in those summer streets -
and might have enjoyed a description of its seamier quarter - but the
fact that she'd once sworn an oath to get there now seemed almost  "I

M absurd.  She had all that she needed here.

It wasn't only her curiosity about the other Dominions that had been
dulled by contentment; her curiosity about events in her own planet was
similarly cool.  Though the television bur bled constantly in the corner
of her bedroom, its presence soporific, she attended to its details
scarcely at all, and would not have noticed the midafternoon news
bulletin but that an item she caught in passing put her in mind of
Charlie.

Three bodies had been found in a shallow grave on Hampstead Heath, the
condition of the mutilated corpses implying, the report said, some kind
of ritualistic murder.  Preliminary investigations further suggested
that the deceased had been known to the community of cultists and black
magic practitioners in the city, some of whom, in the light of other
deaths or disappearances amongst

s their number, believed that a vendetta against them was underway.  To
round the piece off there was footage of the police searching the bushes
and undergrowth of Hampstead Heath, while the rain fell and compounded
their misery.

The report distressed her for two reasons, each related to one of the
brothers.  The first, that it brought back memories of Charlie, sitting
in that stuffy little room in the Clinic, watching the Heath and
contemplating suicide.  The second, that perhaps this vendetta might
endanger Oscar, who was as involved in occult practices as any man
alive.

S e fretted about this for the rest of the afternoon, her concern
deepening further when Oscar failed to return home by six.  She put off
dressing for the opera, and waited for him downstairs, the front door
open, the rain beating the bushes around the step.  He returned at six
forty, with Dowd, who had barely stepped through the door before he
pronounced that there would be no opera visit tonight.  Godolphin
contradicted him immediately, much to his chagrin, telling Jude to go
and get ready, and that they'd be leaving in twenty minutes.

As she dutifully headed upstairs, she heard Dowd say:

"You know McGann wants to see you?"

"We can do both,, Oscar replied.. "Did you put out the black suit?  No?
What have you been doing all day?  No, don't tell me.  Not on an empty
stomach."

Oscar looked handsome in black, and she told him so when, twenty-five
minutes later, he came downstairs.  in response to the compliment he
smiled, and made a small bow.

"And you were never lovelier," he replied.  You know, I don't have a
photograph of you?  I'd like one, for my wallet.  We'll have Dowd
organize it., I

By now, Dowd was conspicuous by his absence.  Most evenings he would
play chauffeur, but tonight he apparently had other business.

"We're going to have to miss the first act," Oscar said as they drove,
"I've got a little errand to run in Highgate if you'll bear with me.. "I
don't mind," she said.

He patted her hand.. "It won't take long," he said.

Perhaps because he didn't often take the wheel himself he concentrated
hard as he drove, and though the news item she'd seen was still very
much in her mind she was loth to distract him with talk.  They made good
time, threading their way through the back streets to avoid
thoroughfares clogged by rain-slowed traffic, and arriving in a
veritable cloudburst.

"Here we are," he said, though the windscreen was so

awash she could barely see ten yards ahead.. "You stay in the warm.  I
won't be long."

He left her in the car and sprinted across a courtyard towards an
anonymous building.

Nobody came to the front door.

it opened automatically, and closed after him.

only when he'd disappeared, and the thunderous drum-ming of the rain on
the roof had diminished somewhat, did she lean forward to peer up
through the watery wind-screen at the building itself.  Despite the
rain, she recognized instantly the Tower from the dream of the blue eye.

Without conscious instruction her hand went to the door and opened it,
her breath quickened with denials.. "Oh W no.  Oh no..."      I

She got out of the car and turned her face up to the cold rain, and to
an even colder memory.  She'd let this place - and indeed the journey
that had brought her here, her mind moving through the streets touching
this woman's grief and that woman's rage - slip into the dubious
territory that lay between recollections of the real and those of the
dreamt.  In essence, she'd allowed herself to believe it had never
happened.  But here was the very

X place, to the window, to the brick.  And if the exterior was so
exactly as she'd seen it, why should she doubt that the interior would
be any different?

There'd been a labyrinthine cellar, she remembered, lined with shelves
piled high with books and manuscripts.

There'd been a wall (lovers coupling against it) and behind it, hidden
from every sight but hers, a cell in which a bound woman had lain in
darkness for a suffering age.  She heard the prisoner's scream now, in
her mind's ear: that howl of madness that had driven her up out of the
ground and back through the dark streets to the safety of her own house
and head.  Was the woman still screaming, she wondered, or had she sunk
back into the comatose state from which she'd been so unkindly woken?
The thought of her pain brought tears to Jude's eyes, mingling with the
rain.

"What are you doing?"

Oscar had reappeared from the Tower, and was hurrying across the gravel
towards her, his jacket raised and tented over his head.

"My dear, you'll freeze to death.  Get in the car.  Please, please.  Get
in the car."

She did as he suggested, the rain running down her neck.

"I'm sorry," she said.. "I...  I wondered where you'd gone, that was
all.  Then...  I don't know ...  the place seemed familiar:

"It's a place of no importance," he said.. "You're shivering.  Would you
prefer we didn't go to the opera?. "Would you mind?"

"Not in the least.  Pleasure shouldn't be a trial.  You're wet and cold,
and we can't have you getting a chill.  One sickly individual's enough.
.  ."

She didn't question this last remark; there was too much else on her
mind.  She wanted to sob, though whether out of joy or sorrow she wasn't
sure.  The dream she'd come to dismiss as fancy was founded in solid
fact, and this solid fact beside her - Godolphin - was in turn touched
by something momentous.  She'd been persuaded by his practised
understatement: the way he talked of travelling to the Dominions as he
would of boarding a train, and his expeditions in Yzordderrex as a form
of tourism as yet unavailable to the great unwashed.  But his
reductionism was a screen - whether he was aware of the fact or not - a
ploy to conceal the greater significance of his business.  His
ignorance, or arrogance, might well kill him, she began to suspect:
which thought was the sorrow in her.  And the joy?  That she might save
him, and he learn to love her out of gratitude.

Back at the house they both changed out of their formal attire.  When
she emerged from her room on the top floor she found him on the stairs,
waiting for her.

"I wonder ...  perhaps we should talk?, They went downstairs into the
tasteful clutter of the

lounge.  The rain beat against the window.  He drew the curtains, and
poured them brandies to fortify them inst the cold.

Then he sat down opposite her, and said: aga

"We have a problem, you and . "We do?"

"There's so much we have to say to each other.  At least ...  here am I
presuming it's reciprocal, but for myself, certainly ...  certainly I've
got a good deal I want to say and I'm damned if I know where to begin.
I'm aware that I owe you explanations, about what you saw at the Estate,
about Dowd and the voiders, about what I did to Charlie.  The list goes
on.  And I've tried, really I have, to find some way to make it all
clear to you.  I'm not sure of the truth myself.  Memory plays such
tricks.  .  ." She made a murmur of agreement.  especially when you're
dealing with places and people who seem to belong half in your dreams.
Or in your nightmares."

He drained his glass, and reached for the bottle he'd set on the table
beside him.

"I don't like Dowd," she said suddenly.. "And I don't trust him."

He looked up from refilling his glass.. "That's perceptive," he said.
"You want some more brandy?" She proffered her glass and he poured her
an ample measure.. "I agree with you," he said.. "He's a dangerous
creature, for a number of reasons."

"Can't you get rid of him?"

"He knows too much, I'm afraid.  He'd be more dangerous out of my
employ than in it."

"Has he got something to do with these murders?  Just today, I saw the
news He waved her enquiry away.

"You don't need to know about any of that, my dear," he said.

"But if you're at risk-. "I'm not.  I'm not.  At least be reassured
about that.. "So you know all about it?. "Yes," he said heavily.. "I
know a little something.  And

so does Dowd.  in fact, he knows more about this whole situation than
you and I put together."

She wondered about this.  Did Dowd know about the prisoner behind the
wall, for instance, or was that a secret she had entirely to herself? If
so, perhaps she'd be wise to keep it that way.  When so many players in
this game had information she lacked, sharing anything - even with Oscar
- might weaken her position; perhaps threaten her life.  Some part of
her nature not susceptible to the blandishments of luxury or the need
for love was lodged behind that wall with the woman she'd woken.  She
would leave it there, safe in the darkness.  The rest anything else she
knew she'd share.

"You're not the only one who crosses over," she said.. "A friend of mine
went."

"Really?" he said.. "Who?"

"His name's Gentle.  Actually, his real name's Zacharias.

John Furie Zacharias.  Charlie knew him a little."

"Charlie.  .  ." Oscar shook his head, poor Charlie." Then he said:
"Tell me about Gentle."

"It's complicated," she said.. "When I left Charlie he got very
vengeful.  He hired somebody to kill me.  .

She went on to tell Oscar about the murder attempt in New York, and
Gentle's later intervention; then about the events of New Year's Eve. As
she related this, she had the distinct impression that at least some of
what she was telling him he already knew, a suspicion confirmed when
she'd finished her description of Gentle's removal from this Dominion.

"The mystif took him?" he said.. "My God, that's a risk.  .

"What's a mystif ?I she asked.

"A very rare creature indeed.  One would be born into the Eurhetemec
tribe once in a generation.  They're reputedly extraordinary lovers.  As
I understand it, they have no sexual identity, except as a function of
their partner's desire.. "That sounds like Gentle's idea of paradise."

As long as you know what you want," Oscar said.  'if you don't I daresay
it could get very confusing." She laughed.. "He knows what he wants,
believe me.. "You speak from experience?. "Bitter experience."

"He may have bitten off more than he can chew, so to speak, keeping the
company of a mystif.  My friend in Yzordderrex - Peccable - had a
mistress for a while who'd been a madam.  She'd had a very plush
establishment in Patashoqua, and she and I got on famously.  She kept
telling me I should become a white slaver, and bring her girls from the
Fifth, so she could start a new business in Yzordderrex.  She reckoned
we'd have made a fortune.  We never did it of course.  But we both
enjoyed talking about things venereal, and people immediately think of
disease, instead of Venus .  .  He paused, seeming to have lost his
way, then said. "Anyway, she told me once that she'd employed a mystif
for a while, in her bordello, and it caused her no end of problems.
She'd almost had to close her place, because of the reputation she got.
You'd think a creature like that would make the ultimate whore, wouldn't
you?  But apparently a lot of customers just didn't want to see their
desires made flesh." He watched her as he spoke, a smile playing around
his lips.. "I can't imagine why.. "Maybe they were afraid of what they
were.. "You'd consider that foolish, I assume.. "Yes, of course.  What
you are, you are.. "That's a hard philosophy to live up to.. "No harder
than running away.. "Oh, I don't know.  I've thought about running away
quite a lot of late.  Disappearing forever."

"Really?" she said, trying to stifle any show of agitation.. "Why?"

"Too many birds coming home to roost.. "But you're staying?" vacillate.
England's so pleasant in the spring.  And I'd miss the cricket in the
summer months."

A

`V

"They play cricket everywhere, don't they?"

"Not in Yzordderrex they don't."

"You'd go there forever?"

"Why not?  Nobody would find me, because nobody would ever guess where
I'd gone."

"I'd know."

"Then maybe I'd have to take you with me," he said, tentatively, almost
as though he were making the proposal in all seriousness, and was afraid
of being refused.. "Could you bear that thought?" he said.. "Of leaving
the Fifth, I mean."

"I could bear it."

He paused.  Then:

"I think it's about time I showed you some of my treasures," he said,
rising from his chair.

"Come on."

She'd known from oblique remarks of Dowd's that the locked room on the
second floor contained some kind of collection, but its nature, when he
finally unlocked the door and ushered her in, astonished her.

"All this was collected in the Dominions," Oscar explained.. "And
brought back by hand."

He escorted er around the room, giving her a capsule summary of what
some of the stranger objects were, and bringing from hiding tiny items
she might otherwise have overlooked.  Into the former category, amongst
others, went the Boston Bowl and Gaud Maybellome's Encyclopaedia of
Heavenly Signs; into the latter a bracelet of beetles caught by the
killing jar in their daisy-chain coupling fourteen generations, he
explained, male entering female, and female in turn devouring the male
in front, the circle joined by the youngest female and the oldest male,
who, by dint of the latter's suicidal acrobatics, were face to face.

She had many questions of course, and he was pleased to play the
teacher.  But there were several enquiries he had no answers to.  Like
the empire-looters from whom he was descended, he'd assembled the
collection with commitment, taste and ignorance in equal measure.  Yet

when he spoke of the artifacts, even those whose function he had no clue
to, there was a touching fervour in his tone, familiar as he was with
the tiniest detail of the tiniest piece.

"You gave some objects to Charlie, didn't you?" she said.

"Once in a while.  Did you see them?"

"Yes, indeed," she said, the brandy tempting her tongue to confess the
dream of the blue eye, but resisting it.

"If things had been different," Oscar said. "Charlie might have been the
one wandering the Dominions.  I owed him a glimpse."

"A piece of the miracle," she quoted.

"That's right.  But I'm sure he felt ambivalent about them."

"That was Charlie."     A

"True, true.  He was too English for his own good.  He never had the
courage of his feelings, except where you were concerned.  And who could
blame him?"

She looked up from the trinket she was studying to find that she too was
a subject of study, the look on his face unequivocal.

'it's a family problem," he said.. "When it comes to ...  matters of the
heart."

This confession made, a look of discomfort crossed his face, and his
hand went to his ribs.

"I'll leave you to look around if you like," he said.. "There's nothing
in here that's really volatile."

"Thank you."

will you lock up after you?"

'of course."

She watched him go, unable to think of anything to detain him, but
feeling forsaken once he'd gone.  She heard him go to his bedroom, which
was down the hall on the same floor, and close the door behind him.

Then she turned her attention back to the treasures on the shelves.  It
wouldn't stay there, however.  She wanted to touch, and be touched by,
something warmer than these

relics.  After a few moments of hesitation she left the treasures in the
dark, locking the door behind her.  She would take the key back to him,
she'd decided.  if his words of admiration were not simply flattery - if
he had bed on his mind - she'd know it soon enough.  And if he rejected
her at least there'd be an end to this trial by doubt.

She knocked on the bedroom door.  There was no reply.  There was light
seeping from under the door, however, so she knocked again, and then
turned the handle, and, saying his name softly, entered.  The lamp
beside the bed was burning, illuminating an ancestral portrait that hung
over it.  Through its gilded window a severe and sallow individual gazed
down on the empty sheets.  Hearing the sound of running water from the
adjacent bathroom Jude crossed the bedroom, taking in a dozen details of
this, his most private chamber, as she did so.  The plush ness of the
pillows and the linen; the spirit decanter and glass beside the bed; the
cigarettes and ashtray on a small heap of well-thumbed paperbacks.
Without declaring herself, she pushed the door open.  Oscar was sitting
on the edge of the bath in his undershorts, dabbing a flannel to a
partially healed wound in his side.  Reddened water ran over the furry
swell of his belly.

Hearing her, he looked up.

There was pain on his face.  She didn't attempt to offer an excuse for
being there, nor did he request one.  He simply said:

"Charlie did it."

"You should see a doctor."

"I don't trust doctors.  Besides, it's getting better." He tossed the
flannel into the sink.. "Do you make a habit of walking into bathrooms
unannounced?" he said.. "You could have walked in on something even less
"Venereal?" she said.

"Don't mock me," he replied.. "I'm a crude seducer, I know.  it comes
from years of buying company.. "Would you be more comfortable buying
me?" she said.

"My God," he replied, his look appalled.. "What do you take me for?"

"A lover," she said plainly.. "My lover?. "I wonder if you know what
you're saying?"

what I don't know I'll learn," she said.. "I've been hiding from
myself, Oscar.  Putting everything out of my head so I wouldn't feel
anything.  But I feel a lot.  And I want you to know that."

"I know," he said.. "More than you can understand, I know.  And it makes
me afraid, Judith."

"There's nothing to be afraid of," she said, astonished that it was she
who was mouthing these words of reassurance when he was the elder, and
presumably the stronger, the wiser.  She reached out and put her palm
flat against his massive chest.  He bent forward to kiss her, his mouth
closed until it met hers and found it open.  One hand went around her
back, the other to her breast her murmur of pleasure smeared between
their mouths.  His touch moved down over her stomach, past her groin to
hoist up her skirt and retrace its steps.  His fingers found her sopping
- she'd been wet since first stepping into the treasure room - and he
slid his whole hand down into the hot pouch of her underwear, pressing
the heel of his palm against the top of her sex while his long middle
digit sought out her fundament, gently catching its flukes with his
nail.

"Bed," she said.

He didn't let her go.  They made an ungainly exit from the bathroom,
with him guiding her backwards until she felt the edge of the bed behind
her thighs.  There she sat down, taking hold of the waistband of his
blood-stained underwear, and easing it down while she kissed his belly.
Suddenly bashful, he reached to stop her, but she pulled them down until
his penis appeared.  It was a curiosity.  Only a little engorged, it had
been deprived of its foreskin, which made its outlandishly bulbous,
carmine head look even more inflamed than the wound in its wielder's
side.  The stem was considerably thinner, and paler, its length knotted
with veins bearing blood to its crown.  If it was this disproportion
that embarrassed him he had no need, and

to prove her pleasure she put her lips against the head.  His objecting
hand was no longer in evidence.  She heard him make a little moan above,
and looked up to see him staring down at her with something very like
awe on his face.  Sliding her fingers beneath testicles and stem, she
raised the curiosity to her mouth, and took it inside, then she dropped
both hands to her blouse and began to unbutton.  But he'd no sooner
started to harden in her mouth than he murmured a denial, withdrew his
member, and stepped back from her, pulling up his underwear.

"Why are you doing this?" he said.

"I'm enjoying it."

He was genuinely agitated, she saw, shaking his head, covering the bulge
in his underwear in a new fit of bashfulness.

"For whose sake?" he said.. "You don't have to, you know."

"I know."

"I wonder?" he said, genuine puzzlement in his voice.. "I don't want to
use you.. "I wouldn't let you.. "Maybe you wouldn't know.,

This remark inflamed her.  A rage rose such as she'd not felt in a long
while.  She stood up.

"I know what I want," she said, 'but I'm not about to beg for it."

"That's not what I'm saying."

hat are you saying?. "That I want you too.. "So do something about it,"
she said.

He seemed to find her fury freshly arousing, and stepped towards her
again, saying her name in a voice almost pained with feeling.

"I'd like to undress you," he said.. "Would you mind?,

"No.. "I don't want you to do anythin. "Then, I won't."

except lie down:

She did so.  He turned off the bathroom light then came o the edge of
the bed and looked down at her.  His bulk vas emphasized by the light
from the lamp, which threw us shadow up to the ceiling.  Quantity had
never seemed n arousing quality hitherto, but in him she found it
ntensely attractive; evidence as it was of his excesses nd his
appetites.  Here was a man who would not be -ontained by one world, one
set of experiences, but who vas kneeling now like a slave in front of
her, his Expression that of one obsessed.

With consummate tenderness, he began to undress ier.  She'd known
fetishists before men to whom she vas not an individual but a hook upon
which some par.icular item was hung for worship.  If there was any such
articular in this man's head it was the body he now egan to uncover,
proceeding to do so in an order and .nanner that made some fevered sense
to him.  First he lipped off her knickers; then he finished unbuttoning
-ier blouse, without removing it.  Next he teased her ireasts from her
bra, so that they were available to his -.oying, but then didn't play
there, but went to her shoes,  moving them and setting them beside the
bed before .e ,ioisting up her skirt so as to have a view of her sex.
Here his eyes lingered, his fingers advancing up her thigh to be crease
of her groin, then retreating.  Not once did he ,ook at her face.  She
looked at his, however, enjoying the zeal and veneration there.  Finally
he rewarded his own Diligence with kisses.  First on her lower legs,
moving up owards her knees; then her stomach, and her breasts, and
finally returning to her thighs and up into the place he'd forbidden
them both till now.  She was ready for ilea sure and he supplied it, his
huge hand caressing her breasts as he tongued her.  She closed her eyes
as he -infolded her, alive to every drop of moisture on her labia and
legs.

When he rose from this to finish undressing her - skirt first, then
blouse and bra - her face was hot and her breath fast.  He tossed the
clothes on to the floor, and stood up again, taking her knees and
pushing them up

and back, spreading her for his delectation, and holding her there,
prettily exposed.

"Finger yourself," he said, not letting her go.

She put her hands between her legs and made a show for him.  He'd
slackened her well, but her fingers went deeper than his tongue,
readying herself for the curiosity.  He gorged on the sight, meanwhile,
glancing up at her face several times, then returning to the spectacle
below.  All trace of his previous hesitation had gone.  He encouraged
her with his admiration, calling her a host of sweet names, his tented
underwear proof - as if she needed it - of his arousal.  She started to
push her hips up from the bed to meet her fingers, and he took firmer
grip of her knees as she moved, opening her wider still.  Lifting his
right hand to his mouth he licked his middle finger and put it down
against the pucker of her other hole, rubbing it gently.

"Will you suck me now?" he asked her.. "Just a little?. "Show me it,"
she said.

He stepped away from her and took off his underwear.  The curiosity was
now fully risen, and florid.  She sat up, and put it back between her
lips, one hand holding it by its pulsing root while the other continued
its dalliance with her own sex.

She'd never been good at guessing the point at which the milk boiled
over, so she took it from the heat of her mouth to cool him a little,
glancing up at him as she did so.  Either the extraction or her glance
set him off, however.

"Damn!" he said.. "Damn!" and started to step back from her, his hand
going down to his groin to take the curiosity in a stranglehold.

It seemed he might have succeeded, as two desultory dribbles ran from
its head.  Then his testicles unleashed their flood, and it came forth
in uncommon abundance.  He moaned as it came, as much in
self-admonishment as pleasure, she thought, that assumption confirmed
when he'd emptied his sac upon the floor.

"I'm sorry .  .  ." he said, '.  .  .  I'm sorry.  .

"There's no need," she said, standing up and putting

her lips to his.  He continued to murmur his apologies, however.

J haven't done that in a long time," he said.. "So adolescent."

She kept her silence, knowing anything she said would only begin a
further round of self-reproach.  He slipped away into the bathroom to
find a towel.  When he returned she was picking up her clothes.

"Are you going?" he said.

"Only to my room."

"Do you have to?" he said.. "I know that wasn't much of a performance,
but ...  the bed's big enough for us both.  And I don't snore.. "The
bed's enormous.. "So ...  would you stay?" he said.

"I'd like to."

He made a charming smile.. "I'm honoured," he said.  . "Will you excuse
me a moment?"

He switched the bathroom light back on, and disappeared inside, closing
the door, leaving her to lie back on the bed and wonder at this whole
turn of events.  Its very oddness seemed appropriate.  After all, this
whole journey had begun with an act of misplaced love; love become
murder.  Now a new dislocation.  Here she was, lying in the bed of a man
with a body far from beautiful, whose bulk she longed to have upon her;
whose hands were capable of fratricide, but aroused her like none she'd
ever known; who'd walked more worlds than an opium poet, but couldn't
speak love without stumbling; who was a titan, and yet afraid.  She made
a nest amongst his duck down pillows and waited there for him to come
back and tell her a story of love.  He reappeared after a long while,
and slipped beneath the sheets beside her.  True to her imaginings he
said he loved her at last, but only once he'd turned the light out, and
his eyes were not available for study.

When she slept, it was deeply, and when she woke again, it was like
sleeping, dark and pleasurable, the former

because the drapes were still drawn, and between their cracks she could
see that the sky was still benighted, the latter because Oscar was
behind her, and inside.  One of his hands was upon her breast, the other
lifting her leg so that he could ease his upward stroke.  He'd entered
her with skUl and discretion, she realized.  Not only had he not stirred
her until he was embedded, but he'd chosen the virgin passage, which -
had he suggested it while she was awake - she'd have attempted to coax
him from, fearing the discomfort.  In truth, there was none, though the
sensation was quite unlike anything she'd felt before.  He kissed her
neck and shoulder-blade, light kisses, as though he was unaware of her
wakefulness.  She made it known with a sigh.  His stroke slowed and
stopped, but she pressed her buttocks back to meet his thrust,
satisfying his curiosity as to the limit of its access, which was to say
none.  She was happy to accept him entirely, trapping his hand against
her breast to press it to rougher service, while putting her own at the
connecting place.  He'd dutifully slipped on a condom before entering
her, which, together with the fact that he'd already poured forth once
tonight, made him a near perfect lover: slow and certain.

She didn't use the dark to reconfigure him.  The man pressing his face
into her hair, and biting at her shoulder, wasn't like the mystif he'd
described - a reflection of imagined ideals.  It was Oscar Godolphin,
paunch, curiosity and all.  What she did reconfigure was herself, so
that she became in her mind's eye a glyph of sensation: a line dividing
from the coil of her pierced core, up through her belly to the points of
her breasts, then intersecting again at her nape, crossing and becoming
woven irals beneath the hood of her skull.  Her imagination SP added a
further refinement, inscribing a circle around this figure, which burned
in the darkness behind her lids like a vision.

Her rapture was perfected then; being an abstraction in his arms, yet
pleasured like flesh.

There was no greater luxury.

He asked if they might move, saying only. "The wound..." by way of
explanation.

She went on to her hands and knees, he slipping from her for a
tormenting moment while she did so, then putting the curiosity back to
work.  His rhythm instantly became more urgent, his fingers in her sex,
his voice in her head, both expressing ecstasy.  The glyph brightened in
her mind's eye, fiery from end to end.  She yelled out to him, first
only yes and yes, then plainer demands, inflaming him to new invention.
The glyph became blinding, burning away all thought of where she was, or
what; all memory of conjunctions past subsumed in this perpetuity.

She was not even aware that he'd spent himself until she felt him
withdrawing, and then she reached behind her to keep him inside a while
longer.  He obliged.  She enjoyed the sensation of his softening inside
her, and even, finally, his exiting, the tender muscle yielding its
prisoner reluctantly.  Then he rolled over on to the bed beside her, and
reached for the light.

it was dim enough not to sting, but still too bright, and she was about
to protest when she saw that he was putting his fingers to his injured
side.  Their congress had un knitted the wound.  Blood was running from
it in two directions: down towards the curiosity, still nestled in the
condom, and down his side to the sheet.

"It's all right," he said as she made to get up.. "It looks worse than
it is."

"It still needs something to staunch it," she said.

"That's good Godolphin blood," he said, wincing and grinning at the same
moment.  His gaze went from her face to the portrait above the bed.
"It's always flowed freely," he said.

"He doesn't look as though he approved of us," she said.

"On the contrary," Oscar replied.. "I know for a fact he'd adore you.
Joshua understood devotion."

She looked at the wound again.  Blood was seeping between his fingers.

"Won't you let me cover that up?" she said.  'it makes me queasy.. "For
you ...  anything.. "Have you got any dressing?"

"Dowd's probably got some, but I don't want him knowing about us.  At
least, not yet.

Let's keep it our secret."

"You, me and Joshua," she said.

"Even Joshua doesn't know what we got up to," Oscar said, without a
trace of irony audible in his voice.. "Why do you think I turned the
light out?"

In lieu of fresh dressing she went through to the bathroom to find a
fresh towel.  While she was doing so he spoke to her through the open
door. "I meant what I said, by the way," he told her.

"About what?"     hat'. "That I'll do anything for you.  At least
anything t in my power to do or give.  I want you to stay with me,
Judith.  I'm no Adonis, I know that.

But I learned a lot from Joshua .  .  .  about devotion, I mean." She
emerged with the towel to be greeted by the same offer.

"Anything you want.. "That's very generous.. "The pleasure's in the
giving," he said.

"I think you know what I'd like most." He shook his head.. "I'm no good
at guessing games.

Only cricket.  Just tell the." She sat down on the edge of the bed, and
gently tugged his hand from the wound in his side, wiping the blood from
between his fingers.

"Say it," he told her.

"Very well," she said.. "I want you to take me out of this Dominion.  I
want you to show me Yzordderrex."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Twenty-two days after emerging from the icy wastes of the Jokalaylau
into the balmier climes of the Third Dominion days which had seen Pie
and Gentle's fortunes rise dramatically as they journeyed through the
Third's diverse territories the wanderers were standing on a station
platform outside the tiny town of MarK6 waiting for the train that once
a week came through on its way from the city of Iahmandhas in the
north-east, to L'Himby, half a day's journey to the south.

They were eager to be departing.  Of all the towns and villages they'd
visited in the past three weeks MarK6 had been the least welcoming.  It
had its reasons.  It was a community under siege from the Dominion's two
suns, the rains which brought the region its crops having failed to
materialize for six consecutive years.  Terraces and fields that should
have been bright with shoots were virtually dust-bowls, stocks hoarded
against this eventuality critically depleted.  Famine was imminent, and
the village was in no mood to entertain strangers.  The previous night
the entire populace had been out in the drab streets praying aloud,
these imprecations led by their spiritual leaders, who had about them
the air of men whose invention was nearing its end.  The noise, so
unmusical Gentle had observed that it would irritate the most
sympathetic of deities, had gone on until first light, making sleep
impossible.  As a consequence exchanges between Pie and Gentle were
somewhat tense this morning.

They were not the only travellers waiting for the train.  A farmer from
MaiM had brought a herd of sheep on to the platform, some of them so
emaciated it was a

wonder they could stand, and the flock had brought with them clouds of
the local pest: an insect called a zarzi, that had the wing-span of a
dragon fly and a body as fat and furred as a bee.  It fed on sheep
ticks, unless it could find something more tempting.  Gentle's blood
fell into this latter category, and the lazy whine of the zarzi was
never far from his ears as he waited in the midday heat.  Their one
informant in MaiM, a woman called Hairstone Banty, had predicted that
the train would be on time, but it was already well overdue, which
didn't augur well for the hundred other pieces of advice she'd offered
them the night before.

Swatting zarzi to left and right, Gentle emerged from the shade of the
platform building to peer down the track.  It ran without crook or bend
to its vanishing point, empty every mile of the way.  On the rails a few
yards from where he stood rats, a gangrenous variety called graveolents,
toed and froed gathering dead grasses for the nests they were
constructing between the rails and the gravel the rails were set upon.
Their industry only served to irritate Gentle further.

"We're stuck here forever," he said to Pie, who was squatting on the
platform making marks on the stone with a sharp pebble.. "This is
Hairstone's revenge on a couple of hoopreo."

He'd heard this term whispered in their presence countless times.  it
meant anything from exotic stranger to repugnant leper, depending on the
facial expression of the speaker.  The people of MarK6 were keen
face pullers and when they'd used the word in Gentle's company there was
little doubt which end of the scale of affections they had in mind.

"It'll come," said Pie.. "We're not the only ones waiting." Two more
groups of travellers had appeared on the platform in the last few
minutes: a family of Mai-Macs, three generations represented, who had
lugged everything they owned down to the station; and three women in
voluminous robes, their heads shaved and plastered

with white mud: nuns of the Goetic Kicaranki, an order 1i as despised in
MaiM as any well-fed hoopreo.  Gentle took some comfort from the
appearance of these fellow travellers, but the track was still empty,
the graveolents, who would surely be the first to sense any disturbance
in the rails, going about their nest-building unperturbed.  He wearied
of watching them very quickly, and turned his attention to Pie's
scrawlings.

"What are you doing?. "I'm trying to work out how long we've been here."
"Two days in MarK6, a day and a half on the road from Attaboy

"No, no," said the mystif.. "I'm trying to work it out in Earth days.
Right from first arriving in the Dominions.. "We tried that in the
mountains, and we didn't get anywhere."

"That's because our brains were frozen stiff."

"So have you done it?"

"Give me a little time."

"Time we've got," Gentle said, returning his gaze to the antics of the
graveolents.. "These little buggers'll have grandchildren by the time
the damn train arrives."

The mystif went on with its calculations, leaving Gentle to wander back
into the comparative comfort of the waiting room, which, to judge by the
sheep droppings on the floor, had been used to pen entire flocks in the
recent past.  The zarzi followed him, buzzing around his brow.  He
pulled from his ill-fitting jacket (bought with the money he and Pie had
won gambling in Attaboy) a dogeared copy of Fanny Hill - the only volume
in English, besides Pilgrim's Progress, which he'd been able to purchase
- and used it to flail at the insects, then gave up.  J They'd tire of
him eventually, or else he'd become immune to their attacks.  Whichever;
he didn't care.

He leaned against the graffiti-covered wall, and yawned.  He was bored.
Of all things, bored! If, when they'd first arrived in Vanaeph, Pie had
suggested that a few weeks later the wonders of the Reconciled

Dominions would have become tedious, Gentle would have laughed the
thought off as nonsense.  With a gold green sky above, and the spires of
Patashoqua gleaming in the distance, the scope for adventure had seemed
endless.  But by the time he'd reached Beatrix - the fond memories of
which had not been entirely erased by images of its ruin - he was
travelling like any man in a foreign land, prepared for occasional
revelations, but persuaded that the nature of conscious, curious bipeds
was a constant under any heaven.  They'd seen a great deal in the last
few days, to be sure, but nothing he might not have imagined had he not
stayed at home and got seriously drunk.

Yes, there had been glorious sights.  But there had also been hours of
discomfort, boredom and banality.  On their way to MarK6, for instance,
they'd been exhorted to stay in some nameless hamlet to witness the
community's festival: the annual donkey-drowning.  The origins of this
ritual were, they were told, shrouded in fabulous mystery.  They
declined, Gentle remarking that this surely marked the nadir of their
journey, and travelled on in the back of a wagon whose driver informed
them that the vehicle had served his family for six generations as a
dung-carrier.

He then proceeded to explain at great length the life-cycle of his
family's ancient foe, the pensanu, or shite-rooster, a beast that with
one turd could render an entire wagonload of dung inedible.  They didn't
press the man as to who in the region dined thusly, but they peered
closely at their plates for many days following.

As he sat rolling the hard pellets of sheep-dung under his heel, Gentle
turned his thoughts to the one high-point in their journey across the
Third.  That was the town of Effatoi, which Gentle had rechristened
Attaboy.  It wasn't that large - the size of Amsterdam, perhaps, and
with that city's charm - but it was a gambler's paradise, drawing souls
addicted to chance from across the Dominion.  Here every game in the
Imajica could be played.  If your

credit wasn't good in the casinos or the cockpits you could always find
a desperate man somewhere who'd bet on the colour of your next piss if
it was the only game on offer.  Working together with what was surely
telepathic efficiency, Gentle and the mystif had made a small fortune in
the city - in eight currencies no less - enough to keep them in clothes,
food and train-tickets until they reached Yzordderrex.  it wasn't profit
that had almost seduced Gentle into setting up house there, however.  It
was a local delicacy: a cake of strudel pastry and the honey-softened
seeds of a marriage between peach and pomegranate, which he ate before
they gambled to give him vim, then while they gambled to calm his
nerves, and then again in celebration when they'd won.  it was only when
Pie assured him that the confection would be available elsewhere (and if
it wasn't they now had sufficient funds to hire their own pastry-chef to
make it) that Gentle was persuaded to depart.  L'Himby called.

"We have to move on," the mystif had said.. "Scopique will be waiting. .

"You make it sound like he's expecting us.. "I'm always expected," Pie
said.

"How long since you were in L'Himby?"

"At least ...  two hundred and thirty years.. "Then he'll be dead."

"Not Scopique," Pie said.. "It's important you see him, Gentle.
Especially now, with so many changes in the air.. "If that's what you
want to do, then we'll do it," Gentle had replied.. "How far is
L'Himby?"

"A day's journey, if we take the train."

That had been the first mention Gentle had heard of the iron road that
joined the city of Iahmandhas and L'Himby: the city of furnaces and the
city of temples.

"You'll like L'Himby," Pie had said.. "It's a place of meditation."

Rested and funded, they'd left Attaboy the following morning, travelling
along the River Fefer for a day, then, via Happily and Omootajive, into
the province called the

Ched Lo Ched, the Flowering Place (now bloom less and finally to Marko,
caught in the twin pincers of poverty and puritanism.

On the platform outside, Gentle heard Pie say. "Good." He raised himself
from the comfort of the wall,

and stepped out into the sunshine again.

"The train?" he said.

"No.  The calculations.  I've finished them." The mystif stared down at
the marks on the platform at its feet.. "This is only an approximation,
of course, but I think it's sound within a day or two.  Three at the
most."

"So what day is it?" 

"Take a guess."

"March ...  the tenth.,

"Way off," said Pie.. "By these calculations, and remember this is only
an approximation, it's the seventeenth of May."

"Impossible."

"It's true."

"Spring's almost over."

"Are you wishing you were back therer Pie asked.

Gentle chewed on this for a while, then said. "Not partitularly.  I just
wish the fucking trains ran on time." He wandered to the edge of the
platform and stared down the line.

"There's no sign," Pie said.. "We'd be quicker going by doeki.. "You
keep doing that. "Doing what?. "Saying what's on the tip of my tongue.
Are you reading my mind?"

"No," said Pie, rubbing out its calculation with its sole.

"So how did we win all that in Attaboy?"

"You don't need teaching," Pie replied.

"Don't tell me it comes naturally," Gentle said.. "I've got through my
entire life without winning a thing, and suddenly, when you're with me,
I can do no wrong.  That's no coincidence.  Tell me the truth."

That is the truth.  You don't need teaching.  Remindinq, I maybe..."
Pie gave a little smile.     i

"And that's another thing -' Gentle said, snatching at one of the zarzi
as he spoke.  Much to his surprise, he actually caught it.  He opened
his palm.  He'd cracked its casing, and the blue mush of its innards was
oozing out, but it was still alive.  Disgusted, he flicked his wrist,
depositing the body on the platform at his feet.  He didn't scrutinize
the remains, but pulled up a fistful of the sickly grass that sprouted
between the slabs of the platform, and set about scrubbing his palm with
it.

"What were we talking about?" he said.  Pie didn't reply.

oh Yes ...  things I'd forgotten." He looked down at his clean hand.
"Pneuma," he said.. "Why would I ever forget having a power like the
pneuma?"

"Either because it wasn't important to you -any longer

which is doubtful."

I - or you forgot because you wanted to forget."

There was an oddness in the way the mystif pronounced its reply which
grated on Gentle's ear, but he pursued the argument anyway.

"Why would I want to forget?" he said.

Pie looked back along the line.  The distance was obscured by dust, but
there were glimpses through it of a clear sky.

"Well?" said Gentle.

"Maybe because remembering hurts too much," it said, without looking
round.

The words were even uglier to Gentle's ear than the reply that had
preceded it.  He caught the sense, but only with difficulty.

"Stop this," he said.

"Stop what?"

"Talking in that damn-fool way.  It turns my gut."

"I'm not doing anything," Pie said, its voice still distorted, but now
more subtly.. "Trust me.

I'm doing nothing."

"So tell me about the pneuma," Gentle said.. "I want to know how I came
by a power like that."

Pie opened its mouth to reply, but this time the words were so badly
disfigured, and the sound itself so ugly, it was like a fist in Gentle's
stomach, stirring the stew there.

"Jesus!" he said, rubbing his belly in a vain attempt to soothe the
churning.. "Whatever you're playing at

"It's not me," Pie protested.. "It's you.  You don't want to hear what
I'm saying."

"Yes I do," Gentle said, wiping beads of chilly sweat from around his
mouth.. "I Want answers.  I want straight answersl'

Grimly, Pie started to speak again, but as soon as it did so the waves
of nausea climbed Gentle's gut with fresh zeal.  The pain in his belly
was sufficient to bend him double, but he was damned if the mystif was
going to keep anything from him.

It was a matter of principle now.  He studied Pie's lips through
narrowed eyes, but after a few words the mystif stopped speaking.

"Tell me!' Gentle said, determined to have Pie obey him even if he could
make no sense of the words.. "What have I done that I want to forget so
badly?  Tell me!'

Its face all reluctance, the mystif once again opened its mouth.  The
words, when they came, were so hopelessly corrupted Gentle could barely
grasp a fraction of their ense.  Something about power.

Something about death.

Point proved, he waved the source of this excremental din away, and
turned his eyes in search of a sight to calm his belly.

But the scene around him was a convention of little horrors: the
graveolent making its wretched nest beneath the rails; the perspective
of the track, snatching his eye into the dust; the dead zarzi at his
feet, its egg sac split, spattering its unborn on to the stone.  This
last image, vile as it was, brought food to mind.  The harbour meal in
Yzordderrex: fish within fish within fish, the littlest filled with
eggs.  The thought defeated him.  He tottered to the edge of the
platform, and vomited on to the rails, his gut convulsing.  He didn't
have that much in

his belly, but the heaves went on, and on, until his abdomen ached, and
tears of pain ran from his eyes.  At last, he stepped back from the
platform edge, shuddering.  The smell of his stomach was still in his
nostrils, but the spasms were steadily diminishing.  From the corner of
his eye he saw Pie approach.

"Don't come near met' he said.. "I don't want you touching me!'

He turned his back on the vomit and its cause, and retired to the shade
of the waiting room, sitting down on the hard wood bench, putting his
head against the wall and closing his eyes.  As the pain eased, and
finally disappeared, his thoughts turned to the purpose behind Pie's
assault.  He'd quizzed the mystif several times over the past months
about the problem of power: how it was come by, and - more particularly
- how he, Gentle, had come to possess it.  Pie's replies had been
oblique in the extreme, but Gentle hadn't felt any great urge to get to
the bottom of the question.  Perhaps subconsciously he hadn't really
wanted to know.  Classically, such gifts had consequences, and he was
enjoying his role as getter and

J wielder of power too much to want it spoiled with talk of hubris. He'd
been content to be fobbed off with hints and equivocation, and he might
have continued to be content, if he hadn't been irritated by the zarzi,
and the lateness of the L'Himby train; bored and ready for an argument.
But that was only half the issue.  He'd pressed the mystif, certainly,
but he'd scarcely goaded it.  The attack seemed out of all proportion to
the offence.  He'd asked an innocent question, and been turned inside
out for doing so.  So much for all that loving talk in the mountains.

"Gentle.  .

"Fuck you.,

"The train, Gentle.  .

"What about it?"

"It's coming."

He opened his eyes.  The mystif was standing in the doorway, looking
forlorn.

"I'm sorry that had to happen," it said.

"It didn't have to," Gentle said.. "You made it happen.. "Truly I
didn't."

"What was it then?  Something I ate?"

"No.  But there are some questions.  .

"That make me sick." '.  .  .  that have answers you don't want to
hear.. "What do you take me for?" Gentle said, his tone all quiet
contempt.. "I ask a question - you fill my head with so muc s it for an
answer that I throw up - and then it's my fault for asking in the first
place?  What kind of fucked-up logic is thatr

Pie raised its hands in mock-surrender.

"I'm not going to argue," it said.

"Damn right," Gentle replied.

Any further exchange would have been impractical anyway, with the sound
of the train's approach steadily getting louder, and its arrival being
greeted by cheers and clapping from an audience that had gathered on the
platform.  Still feeling delicate when he stood, Gentle followed Pie out
into the crowd.

It seemed half the inhabitants of MarK6 had come down to the station.
Most, he assumed, were sightseers rather than potential travellers: the
train a distraction from hunger and unanswered prayers.  There were some
families here who planned to board, however, pressing through the crowd
with their luggage.  What privations they'd endured to purchase their
escape from MarK6 could only be imagined.  There was much sobbing as
they embraced those they were leaving behind, most of whom were old
folk, who, to judge by their grief, did not expect to see their children
and grandchildren again after this.  The journey to L'Himby, which for
Gentle and Pie was little more than a jaunt, was for them a departure
into memory.

That said, there could be few more spectacular means

of departure in the Imajica than the massive locomotive which was only
now emerging from a cloud of evaporating steam.

Whoever had made blueprints for this roaring, glistening machine knew
its earth counterpart - the kind of locomotives outdated in the West but
still serving in China and India - very well.  Their imitation was not
so slavish as to suppress a certain decorative joie de vivre - it had
been painted so gaudily it looked like the male of the species in search
of a mate but beneath the daubings was a machine that might have steamed
into King's Cross or Marylebone in the years following the Great War. It
drew six carriages and as many freight vehicles again, two of the latter
being loaded with the flock of sheep.  Pie had already been down the
line of carriages and was now coming back towards Gentle, saying:

"The second.  It's fuller down the other end."

They got in.  The interiors had once been lush, but usage had taken its
toll.  Most of the seats had been stripped of both padding and
headrests, and some were missing A backs entirely.  The floor was dusty,
and the walls - which had once been decorated in the same riot as the
engine - in dire need of a fresh coat of paint.  There were only two
other occupants, both male, both grotesquely fat, and both wearing
frock-coats from which elaborately bound limbs emerged, lending them the
look of clerics who'd' escaped from an accident ward.  Their features
were minuscule, crowded in the centre of faces as if clinging together
for fear of drowning in fat.  Both were eating i nuts, cracking them in
their pudgy fists and dropping i little rains of pulverized shell on the
floor between them.  i

i

"Brothers of the Boulevard," Pie remarked as Gentle took a seat as far
from the nut-crackers as possible.

Pie sat across the aisle from him, the bag containing what few
belongings they'd accrued to date at its side.

There was then a long delay while recalcitrant animals were beaten and
cajoled into boarding for what they perhaps knew was a ride to the
slaughterhouse, and those on the platform made their final farewells. It
wasn't just

the vows and tears that came in through the windows.  So did the stench
of the animals, and the inevitable zarzi, though with the Brothers and
their meal to attract them the insects were uninterested in Gentle's
flesh.

Wearied by the hours of waiting and wrung out by his nausea, Gentle
dozed, and finally fell into so deep a sleep that the train's
long-delayed departure didn't stir him, and when he woke two hours of
their journey had already passed.  Very little had changed outside the
window.  Here were the same expanses of grey-brown earth that had
stretched around MaiM, clusters of dwellings, built from mud in times of
water, and barely distinguishable from the ground they stood upon,
dotted here and there.  Occasionally they would pass a plot of land -
either blessed with a spring or better irrigated than the ground around
it - from which life was rising; even more occasionally he saw workers
bending to reap a healthy crop.  But generally the scene was just as
Hairstone Banty had predicted.  There would be many hours of dead land,
she'd said; then they would travel through the Steppes, and over the
Three Rivers, to the province of Bern, of which L'Himby was the capital
city.

Gentle had doubted her competence at the time (she'd been smoking a weed
too pungent to be simply pleasurable, and wearing something unseen
elsewhere in the town: a smile) but dope-fiend or no, she knew her
geography.

As they travelled, Gentle's thoughts turned once again to the origins of
the power Pie had somehow awakened in him.

If, as he suspected, the mystif had touched a hitherto passive portion
of his mind and given him access to capabilities dormant in all human
beings, why was it so damned reluctant to admit to the fact?  Hadn't
Gentle proved in the mountains that he was more than willing to accept
the notion of mind embracing mind?  Or was that commingling now an
embarrassment to the mystif, and its assault on the platform a way to
re-establish a distance between them?  If so, it had succeeded.  They
travelled half a day without exchanging a single word.

in the heat of the afternoon the train stopped at a small town and
lingered there while the flock from MarK disembarked.  No less than four
suppliers of refreshments came through the train while it waited, one
exclusively carrying pastries and candies, amongst which Gentle found a
variation on the honey and seed cake that had almost kept him in
Attaboy.  He bought three slices, and then two cups of well-sweetened
coffee from another merchant, the combination of which soon enlivened
his torpid system.  For its part, the mystif bought and ate dried fish,
the smell of which drove Gentle even further from its side.

As the shout came announcing their imminent departure Pie suddenly
sprang up from its seat and darted to the door.

The thought went through Gentle's head that it intended to desert him,
but it had spotted newspapers for sale on the platform, and having made
a hurried purchase clambered aboard again as the train began to move
off.  Then it sat down beside the remains of its fish-dinner, and had no
sooner unfolded the paper than it let out a low whistle.

"Gentle.  You'd better look at this." it passed the newspaper across the
aisle.  The banner headline was in a language Gentle neither understood
nor even recognized, but that scarcely mattered.  The photographs below
were plain enough.  Here was a gallows, with six bodies hanging from it,
and inset, the death portraits of the executed individuals.  Amongst
them, Hammeryock and Pontiff Farrow, the law-givers of Vanaeph.  Below
this rogues' gallery a finely rendered etching of Tick Raw, the crazy
evocator.

"So .  .  ." Gentle said, 'they got their comeuppance.  It's the best
news I've had in days."

"No, it's not," Pie replied.

"They tried to kill us, remember?" Gentle said reasonably, determined
not to be infuriated by Pie's contentiousness.  'if they got hanged I'm
not going to mourn them!  What did they do, try and steal the Merrow
TiThe Merrow Ti' TV doesn't exist.. "That was a joke, Pie," Gentle said,
deadpan.

"I missed the humour of it, I'm sorry," the mystif said, unsmiling.
"Their crime -' It stopped, and crossed the aisle to sit opposite
Gentle, claiming the paper from his hands before continuing.. "Their
crime is far more significant," it went on, its voice lowered.  It began
to read in the same whisper, pr6cising the text of the paper.. "They
were executed a week ago for making an attempt on the Autarch's life
while he and his entourage were on their peace mission in Vanaeph..

"Are you kidding?"

"No joke.  That's what it says."

"Did they succeed?"

"Of course not." Pie fell silent while it scanned the columns.. "It says
they killed three of his advisers with a bomb, and injured eleven
soldiers.  The device was ...  wait, my Omootajivac is rusty ...  the
device was smuggled into his presence by Pontiff Farrow.  They were all
caught alive, it says, but hanged dead, which means they died under
torture but the Autarch made a show of the execution anyway.. "That's
fucking barbaric.. "It's very common, particularly in political trials."
"What about Tick Raw?  Why's his picture in there?. "He was named as a
co-conspirator, but apparently he escaped.  The damn fool.  .  .. "Why'd
you call him that?"

"Getting involved in politics when there's so much more at stake.  It's
not the first time, of course, and won't be the las. "I'm not
following."

"People get frustrated with waiting and they end up stooping to
politics.  But it's so short-sighted.  Stupid sod.. "How well do you
know him?"

"Who?  Tick Raw?" Pie's placid features were momentarily confounded.
Then it said. "He has ...  a certain reputation, shall we say?  They'll
find him for

certain.  There isn't a sewer in the Dominions he'll be able to hide his
head.. "Why should you care?. "Keep your voice down."

"Answer the question," Gentle replied, dropping his volume as he spoke.

"He was a Maestro, Gentle.  He called himself an evocator but it amounts
to the same thing: he had power.. "Then why was he living in the middle
of a shit-hole like Vanaeph?. "Not everybody cares about wealth and
women, Gentle.  Some souls have higher ambition.. "Such as?"

"Wisdom.  Remember why we came on this journey?  To understand.  That's
a fine ambition." it looked at Gentle, making eye-to-eye contact for the
first time since the episode on the platform.. "Your ambition, my
friend.  You and Tick Raw had a lot in common."

"And he knew it?"

"Oh yes

"Is that why he was so riled when I wouldn't sit down and talk with
him?"

"I'd say so."

,shiti,

"Harnmeryock and Farrow must have taken us for spies, come to wheedle
out plots laid against the Autarch.. "But Tick Raw saw the truth."

"He did.  He was once a great man, Gentle.  At least .  .  .  that was
the rumour.  Now I suppose he's dead, or being tortured.  Which is grim
news for us."

"You think he'll name us?"

"Who knows?  Maestros have ways of protecting themselves from torture,
but even the strongest man can break under the right kind of pressure."

"Are you saying we've got the Autarch on our tails?" q think we'd know
it if we had.  We've come a long way from Vanaeph.  The trail's probably
cold by now."

"And maybe they didn't arrest TIck, eh?  Maybe he escaped."

"They still caught Hammeryock and the Pontiff.  I think we can assume
they've got a hair-by-hair description of us."

Gentle laid his head back against the seat.. "Shit," he said.. "We're
not making many friends, are we?"

"All the more reason that we don't lose each other," the mystif replied.
The shadows of passing bamboo flickered on its face, but it looked at
him unblinking.. "Whatever harm you believe I may have done you, now or
in the past, I apologize for it.  I'd never wish you any hurt, Gentle.
Please believe that.  Not the slightest."

"I know," Gentle murmured, 'and I'm sorry too, truly.. "Shall we agree
to postpone our argument until the only opponents we've got left in the
Imajica are each other?"

"That may be a very long time.. "All the better:

Gentle laughed.. "Agreed," he said, leaning forward and taking the
mystif's hand.. "We've seen some amazing eights together, haven't we?"

"Indeed we have."

"Back there in MarK6 I was losing my sense of how marvelous all this
is."

"We've got a lot more wonders to see.. "Just promise me one thing?"

"Ask it."

"Don't eat raw fish in eye-shot of me again.  It's more than a man can
take:

From the yearning way that Hairstone Banty had described L'Himby, Gentle
had been expecting some kind of Katmandu - a city of temples, pilgrims
and free dope.  Perhaps it had been that way once, in Banty's long-lost

youth.  But when, a few minutes after night had fallen, Gentle and Pie
stepped off the train, it was not into an atmosphere of spiritual calm.

There were soldiers at the station gates, most of them standing idle,
smoking and talking, but a few casting their eyes over the disembarking
passengers.  As luck had it, however, another train had arrived at an
adjacent platform minutes before, and the gateway was choked with
passengers, many hugging their life's belongings.  It wasn't difficult
for Pie and Gentle to dig their way through to the densest part of the
crowd, and pass unnoticed through the turnstiles and out of the station.

There were many more troops in the wide, lamp lit streets, their presence
no less disturbing for the air of lassitude that hung about them.

The uncommissioned ranks wore a drab grey, but the officers wore white,
which suited the sub-tropical night.  All were conspicuously armed.
Gentle made certain not to study either men or weaponry too closely for
fear of attracting unwelcome attention, but it was clear from even a
furtive glance that both the armaments and the vehicles parked in every
other alleyway were of the same elaborately intimidating design as he'd
seen in Beatrix.  The warlords of Yzordderrex were clearly past masters
in the crafts of death, their technology several generations beyond that
of the locomotive that had brought the travellers here.

To Gentle's eye the most fascinating sight was not the tanks or the
machine-guns, however, it was the presence amongst these troops of a
sub-species he'd not encountered hitherto.  Oethacs, Pie called them.
They stood no taller than their fellows, but their heads made up a third
or more of that height, their squat bodies grotesquely broad to bear the
weight of such a massive load of bone.  Easy targets, Gentle remarked,
but Pie whispered that their brains were small, their skulls thick and
their tolerance for pain heroic, the latter evidenced by the
extraordinary array of livid scars and disfigurements they all bore on
skin that was as white as the bone it concealed.

It seemed this substantial military presence had been M.  Place for some
time, because the populace went about their evening business as if these
men and their killing machines were completely commonplace.  There was
little sign of fraternization, but there was no harassment either.

"Where do we go from here?" Gentle asked Pie once they were clear of the
crowds around the station.

"Scopique lives in the north-east part of the city, close to the
Temples.  He's a doctor.

Very well respected. "You think he may be still practising?"

"He doesn't mend bones, Gentle.  He's a doctor of theology.  He used to
like the city because it was so sleepy.. "It's changed then.. "It
certainly has.  It looks as though it's got rich." There was evidence of
L'Himby's new-found wealth everywhere.  in the gleaming buildings, many
of them looking as though the paint on their doors was barely dry, in
the proliferation of styles amongst the pedestrians and in the number of
elegant automobiles on the street.  There were a few signs still
remaining of the culture that had existed here before the city's
fortunes had boomed: beasts of burden still wove amongst the traffic,
honked at and cursed; a smattering of faqades had been preserved from
older buildings, and incorporated - usually crudely into the designs of
the newer.  And then there were the living faades, the faces of the
people Gentle and Pie were mingling with.  The natives had a physical
peculiarity unique to the region: clusters of small crystalline growths,
yellow and purple, on their heads, sometimes arranged like crowns or
coxcombs, but just as often erupting from the middle of the forehead, or
irregularly placed around the mouth.  To Pie's knowledge, they had no
particular function, but they were clearly viewed as a disfigurement by
the sophisticates, many of whom went to extraordinary lengths to
disguise their commonality of stock with the undecorated peasants.  Some
of these stylists wore hats, veils and makeup to conceal the evidence;
others

had tried surgery to remove the growths, and went proudly about
un hatted wearing their scars as proof of their wealth.

"It's grotesque," Pie said when Gentle remarked upon this.. "But that's
the pernicious influence of fashion for you.

These people want to look like the models they see in the magazines from
Patashoqua, and the stylists in Patashoqua have always looked to the
Fifth for their inspiration.  Damn fools! Look at them! I swear if we
were to spread the rumour that everyone in Paris is cutting off their
right arms these days, we'd be tripping over hacked-off limbs all the
way to Scopique's house." 'it wasn't like this when you were here?. "Not
in L'Himby.  As I said, it was a place of meditation.  But in
Patashoqua, yes, always, because it's so close to the Fifth, so the
influence is very strong.  And there's always been a few minor Maestros,
you know, travelling back and forth, bringing styles, bringing ideas.  A
few of them made a kind of business of it, crossing the In Ovo every few
months to get news of the Fifth, and Selling it to the fashion houses,
the architects and so on.  So damn decadent.  It revolts me."

"But you did the same thing, didn't you?  You became part of the Fifth
Dominion."

"Never here," the mystif said, its fist to its chest.. "Never in my
heart.  My mistake was getting lost in the In Ovo, and letting myself be
summoned to Earth.  When I was there I played the human game, but only
as much as I had to."

Despite their baggy and by now well-crumpled clothes, both Pie and
Gentle were bare-headed and smoothskulled, so they attracted a good deal
of attention from envious poseurs parading on the pavement.  It was far
from welcome, of course.

if Pie's theory was correct, and Hammeryock or Pontiff Farrow had
described them to the Autarch's torturers, then their likenesses might
very well have appeared in the broad sheets of L'Himby.  If so, an
envious dandy might have them removed from the

dn f7-'

competition with a few words in a soldier's ear.  Would it not be wiser,
Gentle suggested, if they hailed a taxi, and travelled a little more
discreetly?  The mystif was reluctant to do so, however, explaining that
it could not remember Scopique's address, and their only hope of finding
it was to go on foot, while Pie followed its nose.

They made a point of avoiding the busier parts of the street, however,
where cafe customers were outside enjoying the evening air or, less
frequently, where soldiers gathered.  Though they continued to attract
interest and admiration, nobody challenged them, and after twenty
minutes they turned off the main thoroughfare, the well-tended buildings
giving way within a couple of blocks to grimier structures, the fops to
grimmer souls.

"This feels safer," Gentle said, a paradoxical remark given that the
streets they were wandering through now were the kind they would have
instinctively avoided in any city of the Fifth: ill-lit backwaters,
where many of A the houses had fallen into severe disrepair.  Lamps
burned

in even the most dilapidated, however, and children played in the gloomy
streets despite the lateness of the hour.  Their game s were those of
Earth, give or take a detail - not filched, but invented by young minds
from the same basic materials: a ball and.a bat, some chalk and a
pavement, a rope and a rhyme.  Gentle found it reassuring to walk
amongst them, and hear their laughter, which was indistinguishable from
that of human children.

Eventually the ten anted houses gave way to total dereliction, and it was
clear from Pie's disgruntlement that it was no longer sure of its
whereabouts.  Then, a little noise of pleasure, as it caught sight of a
distant structure.

"That's the Temple," he said, pointing to a monolith some miles from
where they stood.  It was unlit, and seemed forsaken, the ground in its
vicinity levelled.. "Scopique had that view from his toilet window, I
remember.  On fine days he said he used to throw open

the window and contemplate and defecate simultaneously."

Smiling at the memory, the mystif turned its back on the Temple.. "The
bathroom faced the Temple, and there were no more streets between the
house and the Temple.  It was common land, for the pilgrims to pitch
their tents.. "So we're walking in the right direction," Gentle said.
"We just need the last street on our right."

"That seems logical," Pie said.. "I was beginning to doubt my memory."

They didn't have much further to look.  Two more blocks, and the
rubble-strewn streets came to an abrupt end.

"This is it," Pie said.  There was no triumph in its voice, which was
not surprising, given the scene of devastation before them.  While it
was time that had undone the splendour of the streets they'd passed
through, this last had been prey to more systematic assault.  Fires had
been set in several of the houses.  others looked as though they'd been
used for target practice by a Panzer division.

"Somebody got here before us," Gentle said.

"So it seems," Pie replied.  I must say I'm not altogether surprised."

"So why the hell did you bring us here?"

,I had to see for myself," Pie replied.. "Don't worry, the trail doesn't
end here.  He'll have left a message."

Gentle didn't remark on how unlikely he thought this, but followed the
mystif along the street until it stopped in front of a building that,
while not reduced to a heap of blackened stone, looked ready to succumb.

Fire had eaten out its eyes, and the once fine door had been replaced
with partially rotted timbers; all this illuminated not by lamplight
(the street had none) but by a scattering of stars.

"Better you stay out here," Pie'oh'pah said.. "Scopique may have left
de fences-'

"Like what?"       I It

"The Unbeheld isn't the only one who can conjure

hh-       J

guardians," Pie replied.. "Please, Gentle ...  I'd prefer to do this
alone."

Gentle shrugged.. "Do as you wish," he said.  Then, as an afterthought,
"You usually do."

He watched Pie climb the debris-covered steps' pun several of the
timbers off the door, and slip out of sight.  Rather than wait at the
threshold, Gentle wandered further along the row to get another view of
the Temple, musing as he went that this Dominion, like the Fourth, had
confounded not only his expectations but those of Pie as well.  The safe
haven of Vanaeph had almost seen their execution, while the murderous
wastes of the mountains had offered resurrections.  And now L'Himby, a
sometime city of meditation, reduced to gaud and rubble.  What next, he
wondered?  Would they arrive in Yzordderrex only to find it had spurned
its reputation as the Babylon of the Dominions, and become a New
Jerusalem?

He stared across at the shadowy Temple, his mind straying back to a
subject that had occupied him several times on their journey through the
Third: how best to address the challenge of making a map of the
Dominions, so that when they finally returned to the Fifth Dominion he
could give his friends some sense of how the lands lay.

They'd travelled on all kinds of roads - from the Patashoquan Highway to
the dirt tracks between Happi and MarK6; they'd wound through verdant
valleys and scaled heights where even the hardiest moss would perish;
they'd had the luxury of chariots and the loyalty of doeki; they'd
sweated and frozen and gone dreamily, like poets into some place of
fancy, doubting their senses and themselves.

all this needed setting down: the routes, the cities, the ranges and the
plains, all needed laying in two dimensions, to be pored over at
leisure.  In time he thought, putting the challenge off yet again; in
time.

He looked back towards Scopique's house.  There was no sign of Pie
emerging, and he began to wonder if some harm had befallen the mystif
inside.  He walked back to

the steps, climbed them, and - feeling a little guilty - slid through
the gap between the timbers.  The starlight had more difficulty getting
in than he did, and his blindness put a chill in him, bringing to mind
the measureless darkness of the ice cathedral.  On that occasion the
mystif had been behind him; this time, in front.  He waited a few
seconds at the door, until his eyes began to make out the interior.  It
was a narrow house, full of narrow places, but there was a voice in its
depths, barely above a whisper, which he pursued, stumbling through the
murk.  After only a few paces he realized it was not Pie speaking but
someone hoarse and panicked.  Scopique, perhaps, still taking refuge in
the ruins?

A glimmer of light, no brighter than the dimmest star, led him to a door
through which he had sight of the speaker.  Pie was standing in the
middle of the blackened room, turned from Gentle.  Over the mystif's
shoulder Gentle saw the light's fading source: a shape hanging in the
air like a web woven by a spider that aspired to portraiture, and held
aloft by the merest breeze.  Its motion was not arbitrary, however.  The
gossamer face opened its mouth, and whispered its wisdom.

no better proof than in these cataclysms.  We must hold to that, my
friend ...  hold to it and pray ...  no, better not pray ...  I doubt
every God now, especially the Aboriginal.  If the children are any
measure of the Father, then He's no lover of justice or goodness."
"Children?" said Gentle.

The breath the word came upon seemed to flutter in the threads.  The
face grew long, the mouth tearing.

The mystif glanced behind it, and shook its head to silence the
trespasser.  Scopique - for this was surely his message was talking
again.

'.  .  .  Believe me when I say we know only the tenth part of a tenth
part of the plots laid in this.  Long before the Reconciliation, forces
were at work to undo it; that's my firm belief.  And it's reasonable to
assume that those forces have not perished.  They're working in this

Dominion, and the Dominion from which you've come.  They strategize not
in terms of decades, but centuries, just as we've had to.  And they've
buried their agents deeply.  Trust nobody, Pie'oh'pah.  Not even
yourself.

Their plots go back before we were born.  We could either one of us have
been conceived to serve them in some oblique fashion and not know it.

They're coming for me very soon, probably with voiders.  If I'm dead
you'll know it.  If I can convince them I'm just a harmless lunatic
they'll take me off to the Cradle, put me in the mais on de santi.  Find
me there, Pie'oh'pah.  or if you have more pressing business, then
forget me, I won't blame you.  But, friend, whether you come for me or
not, know that when I think of you I still smile, and in these days that
is the rarest comfort."

Even before he'd finished speaking the gossamer was losing its power to
capture his likeness, the features softening, the form sinking in upon
itself, until, by the time the last of his message had been uttered,
there was little left for it to do but flutter to the ground.  The
mystif went down on its haunches and ran its fingers through the inert
threads.

"Scopique..  ." it murmured.

"What's the Cradle he talked abouff

"The Cradle of Chzercemit.  It's an island sea, two or three
days' journey from here.. "You've been there?"

"No.  It's a place of exile.  There's an island in the Cradle which was
used as a prison.

Mostly for criminals who'd committed atrocities but were too dangerous
to execute.. "I don't follow that.,

"Ask me another time.  The point is, it sounds like it's been turned
into an asylum." Pie stood up.. "Poor Scopique.  He always had a terror
of insanity.. "I know the feeling," Gentle remarked.

'.  .  .  and now they've put him in a madhouse.. "So we must get him
out," Gentle said simply.

He couldn't see Pie's expression, but he saw the

mystif's hands go up to its face, and heard a sob from behind its palms.

"Hey.  .  ." Gentle said softly, embracing Pie.. "We'll find him.  I
know I shouldn't have come spying like that, but I thought maybe
something had happened to you."

"At least you've heard him for yourself.  You know it's not a lie."

"Why would I think that?"

"Because you don't trust me," Pie said.

"I thought we'd agreed," Gentle said, 'we've got each other and that's
our best hope of staying alive and sane.  Didn't we agree that?"

"Yes."

"So let's hold to it."

"It may not be so easy.  If Scopique's suspicions are correct, either
one of us could be working for the enemy and not know it."

"By enemy you mean the Autarch?"

"He's one, certainly.  But I think he's just a sign of some greater
corruption.  The Imajica's sick, Gentle, from end to end.

Coming here and seeing the way L'Himby's changed makes me want to
despair."

"You know, you should have forced me to sit down and talk with Tick Raw.
He might have given us a few clues.. "It's not my place to force you to
do anything.  Besides, I'm not sure he'd have been any wiser than
Scopique.. "Maybe he'll know more by the time we speak with him.. "Let's
hope so.. "And this time I won't take umbrage and waltz off like an
idiot."

"If we get to the island, there'll be nowhere to waltz to.,

"True enough.  So now, we need a means of transport."

"Something anonymous."

"Something fast."

Is

omething easy to steal."

"Do you know how to get to the Cradler Gentle asked.

"No, but I can maybe enquire around while you steal the car."

"Good enough.  Oh, and Pie?  Buy some booze and cigarettes while you're
at it, will your

"You'll make a decadent of me yet."

"My mistake.  I thought it was the other way round."

They left L'Himby well before dawn, in a car that Gentle chose for its
colour (grey) and its total lack of distinction.  It served them well.
For two days they travelled without incident, on roads that were less
trafficked the further from the Temple city and its spreading suburbs
they went.  There was some military presence beyond the city perimeters,
but it was discreet, and no attempt was made to stop them.  Only once
did they glimpse a contingent at work in a distant field, vehicles
manoeuvring heavy artillery into position behind barricades, pointing
back towards L'Himby, the work just public enough to let the citizens
know whose clemency their lives were conditional upon.

By the middle of the third day, however, the road they were travelling
was almost entirely deserted, and the flatlands in which L'Mmby was set
had given way to rolling hills.  Along with this change of landscape
came a change of weather.

The skies clouded; and with no wind to press them on, the clouds
thickened.  A landscape that might have been enlivened by sun and shadow
became drear, almost dank.  Signs of habitation dwindled.  Once in .  a
while they'd pass a homestead, long since fallen into rum; and more
infrequently still they'd catch sight of a living soul, usually unkempt,
always alone, as though the territory had been given over to the lost.

And then, the Cradle.  It appeared suddenly, the road

369 taking them up over a headland which presented them with a sudden
panorama of grey shore and silver sea.  Gentle had not realized how
oppressed he'd been by the hills until this vista opened in front of
them.  He felt his spirits rise at the sight.

There were peculiarities, however; most particularly the thousands of
silent birds on the stony beach below, all sitting like an audience
awaiting some spectacle to appear from the arena of the sea, not one in
the air or on the water.  It wasn't until Pie and Gentle reached the
perimeter of this roosting multitude and got out of the car that the
reason for their inactivity became apparent.  Not only were they and the
sky above them immobile, so was the Cradle itself.  Gentle made his way
through the mingled nations of birds - a close relation of the gull
predominated, but there were also geese, oyster-catchers and a
smattering of parrots - to the edge, testing it first with his foot then
with his fingers.  It wasn't frozen - he knew what ice felt like from
bitter experience - it was simply solidified, the last wave still
plainly visible, every curl and eddy fixed as it broke against the
shore.

"At least we won't have to swim," the mystif said.  It was already
scanning the horizon, looking for Scopique's prison.

The far shore wasn't visible, but the island was, a sharp grey rock
rising from the sea several miles from where they stood, the mais on de
sante, as Scopique had called it, a cluster of buildings teetering on
its heights.

"Do we go now or wait until dark?" Gentle asked.

"We'll never find it after dark," Pie said.. "We have to go now."

They returned to the car, and drove down through the birds, who were no
more inclined to move for wheels than they'd been for feet.  A few took
to the air briefly, only to flutter down again; many more stood their
ground and died for their stoicism.

The sea made the best road they'd travelled since the Patashoquan
Highway; it had apparently been as calm as a millpond when it had
solidified.  They passed the corpses

of several birds who'd been caught in the process, and there was still
meat and feathers on their bones, suggesting that the solidification had
occurred recently.

"I've heard of walking on water," Gentle said as they drove.. "But drMng
...  that's a whole other miracle.. "Have you any idea of what we're
going to do when we get to the island?, Pie said.

"We ask to see Scopique, and when we've found him we leave with him.  if
they refuse to let us see him, we use force.

It's as simple as that."

"They may have armed guards."

"See these hands?" Gentle said, taking them off the wheel and thrusting
them at Pie.. "These hands are lethal." He laughed at the expression on
the mystif's face.. "Don't worry, I won't be indiscriminate." He seized
the wheel again.. "I like having the power though.  I really like it.
The idea of using it sort of arouses me.  Hey, will you look at that?
The suns are coming out."

The parting clouds allowed a few beams through, and they lit the island,
which was within half a mile of them now.  The visitors' approach had
been noticed.  Guards had appeared on the cliff-top, and along the
prison's parapet.  Figures could be seen hurrying down the steps that
wound down the cliff-face, heading for the boats moored at its base.
From the shore behind them rose the clamour of birds.

"They finally woke up," Gentle said.

Pie looked around.  Sunlight was lighting the beach, and the wings of
the birds as they rose in a squalling cloud.

"Oh, Jesu.  .." Pie said.

"What's wrong?. "The sea .  .

Pie didn't need to explain, for the same phenomenon that was crossing
the Cradle's surface behind them was now coming to meet them from the
island.  A slow shock wave, changing the nature of the matter it passed
through.  Gentle picked up speed, closing the gap between

the vehicle and solid ground, but the road had already liquefied
completely at the island's shore, and the message of transformation was
spreading at speed.

"Stop the car!" Pie yelled.. "If we don't get out we'll go down in it."

Gentle brought the car to a skidding halt, and they flung themselves
out.  The ground beneath them was still solid enough to run on, but they
could feel the tremors in it as they went, prophesying dissolution.

"Can you swim?" Gentle called to Pie.

"If I have to," the mystif replied, its eyes on the approaching tide.
The water looked mercurial, and seemed to be full of thrashing fish.
"But I don't think this is something we want to bathe in, Gentle."

"I don't think we're going to have any choice."

There was at least some hope of rescue.  Boats were being launched off
the island's shore, the sound of the oars and the rhythmical shouts of
the oarsmen rising above the churning of the silver water.  The mystif
wasn't looking for hope from that source, however.  its eyes had found a
narrow causeway, like a path of softening ice, between where they stood
and the land.  Grabbing Gentle's arm, it pointed the way.   . "I

"I see it!" Gentle replied, and they headed off along this zigzag route,
checking on the position of the two boats as they went.  The oarsmen had
comprehended their strategy, and changed direction to intercept them.
Though the flood was eating at their causeway from either side, the
possibility of escape had just seemed plausible when the sound of the
car upending and slipping into the waters distracted Gentle from his
dash.  He turned, and collided with Pie as he did so.  The mystif went
down, falling on its face.  Gentle hauled it back on to its feet, but it
was momentarily too dazed to know their jeopardy.

There were shouts of alarm coming from the boats now, and the frenzy of
water yards from their heels.  Gentle half hoisted Pie on to his
shoulders, and picked

up the race again.  Precious seconds had been lost, however.  The lead
boat was within twenty yards of them, but the tide was half that
distance behind, and half again between his feet and the bow.  If he
stood still, the floe beneath him would go before the boat reached them.
If he tried to run, burdened with the semi-conscious mystif, he'd miss
his rendezvous with his rescuers.

As it was, the choice was taken from him.  The ground beneath the
combined weight of man and mystif fractured, and the silver waters of
the Chzercernit bubbled up between his feet.  He heard a shout of alarm
from the creature in the nearest boat - an Oethac, huge-headed and
scarred - then felt his right leg lose six inches as his foot plunged
through the brittle floe.

It was Pie's turn to haul him up now, but it was a lost cause: the
ground would support neither of them.

In desperation Gentle looked down at the waters that he was going to
have to swim in.

The creatures he'd seen thrashing were not in the sea, but of the sea.
The wavelets had backs and necks; the glitter of the spume was the
glitter of countless tiny eyes.  The boat was still speeding in their
direction, and for an instant it seemed they might bridge the gap with a
lunge.

"Go!" he yelled to Pie, pushing as he did so.

Though the mystif flailed, there was sufficient power in its legs to
turn the fall into a jump.  Its fingers caught the edge of the boat, but
the violence of its leap threw Gentle from his precarious perch.  He had
time to see the mystif being hauled on to the rocking boat, and time too
to think he might reach the hands outstretched in his direction.  But
the sea was not about to be denied both its morsels.  As he dropped into
the silver spume, which pressed around him like a living thing, he threw
his hands up above his head in the hope that the Oethac would catch hold
of him.  All in vain.  Consciousness went from him, and un captained he
sank.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Gentle woke to the sound of a prayer.  He knew before sight came to join
the sound that the words were a beseechment, though the language was
foreign to him.  The voices rose and fell in the same unmelodious
fashion as Earth congregations, one or two of the half dozen speakers
lagging a syllable behind, leaving the verses ragged.  But it was
nevertheless a welcome sound.  He'd gone down thinking he'd never rise
again.

light touched his eyes, but whatever lay in front of him was murky.
There was a vague texture to the gloom, however, and he tried to focus
upon it.  It wasn't until his brow, cheeks and chin reported their
irritation to his brain that he realized why his eyes couldn't make
sense of the scene.  He was lying on his back, and there was a cloth
over his face.  He told his arm to rise and pluck it away, but the limb
just lay stupid at his side.  He concentrated, demanding it obey, his
irritation growing as the timbre of the supplications changed, and a
distressing urgency came into them.  He felt the bed he was lying on
jostled, and tried to call out in alarm, but there was something in his
throat that prevented him from making a sound.  Irritation became
unease.  What was wrong with him?  Be calm, he told himself.  It'll come
clear; just be calm.  But damn it, the bed was being lifted up!  Where
was he being taken?  To hell with calm.  He couldn't just lie still
while he was paraded around.  He wasn't dead, for God's sake I

or was he?  The thought shredded every hope of equilibrium.  He was
being lifted up, and carried, lying inert on a hard board with his face
beneath a shroud.  What

was that, if it wasn't death?  They were saying prayers for his soul,
hoping to waft it heavenward, meanwhile carrying his remains to what
dispatch?  A hole in the ground?  A pyre?  He had to stop them; raise a
hand, a moan, anything to signal that his leave-taking was premature.

As he was concentrating on making a sign, however primitive, a voice cut
through the prayers.  Both prayers and bier-bearers stumbled to a halt
and the same voice - it was Pie!  - came again.

"Not yed' it said.

Somebody off to Gentle's right murmured something in a language Gentle
didn't recognize; words of consolation, perhaps.  The mystif responded
in the same tongue, its voice fractured with grief.

A third speaker now entered the exchange, his purpose undoubtedly the
same as his compatriot's: coaxing Pie to leave the body alone.

What were they saying?  That the corpse was just a husk; an empty shadow
of a man whose spirit was gone into a better place?  Gentle willed Pie
not to listen.  The spirit was here!  Here!

Then - joy of joys!  - the shroud was pulled back from his face, and Pie
appeared in his field of vision, staring down at him.  The mystif looked
half-dead itself, its eyes raw, its beauty bruised with sorrow.

I'm saved, Gentle thought.  Pie sees that my eyes are open, and there's
more than putrefaction going on in my skull.  But no such comprehension
came into Pie's face.  The sight simply brought a new burst of tears.  A
man came to Pie's side, his head a cluster of crystalline growths, and
laid his hand on the mystif's shoulders, whispering something in its
ear, and gently tugging it away.  Pie's fingers went to Gentle's face,
and lay for a few seconds close to his lips.  But his breath - which
he'd used to shatter the wall between Dominions was so piffling now it
went unfelt, and the fingers were withdrawn by the hand of Pie's
consoler, who then reached down and drew the shroud back over the dead
man's face.

The prayer-sayers picked up their dirge, and the bearers their burden.
Blinded again, Gentle felt the spark of hope extinguished, replaced with
panic and anger.  Pie had always claimed such sensitivity.  How was it
possible that now, when its empathy was essential, it could be immune to
the jeopardy of the man it claimed as a friend?  More than that: a
soul-mate; someone it had reconfigured its flesh for.

Gentle's panic slowed for an instant.  Was there some half-hope buried
amid these rebukes?  He scoured them for a clue.  Soul-mate?
Reconfigured flesh?

Yes; of course; as long as he had thought he had desire, and desire
could touch the mystif; change the mystif.  If he could put death from
his mind and turn his thoughts to sex he might still touch Pie's protean
core; bring about some metamorphosis, however small, that would signal
his sentience.

As if to confound him, a remark of Klein's drifted into his head,
recalled from another world:

'.  .  All that time wasted," Klein had said, 'meditating on death to
keep yourself from coming too soon.  .

The memory seemed mere distraction, until he realized that it was
precisely the mirror of his present plight.  Desire was now his only
defence against premature extinction.  He turned his thoughts to the
little details that were always a stimulus to his erotic imagination: a
nape bared by lifted curls; lips re wetted by a slow tongue; looks;
touches; dares.  But Thanatos had Eros by the neck.  His terror drove
arousal away.  How could he hold a sexual thought in his head long
enough to influence Pie when either the flame or the grave was waiting
at his feet?  He was ready for neither.  One was too hot, the other too
cold; one bright, the other so very dark.  What he wanted was a few more
weeks, days hours, even; he'd be grateful for hours - in the space
between such poles.  Where flesh was; where love was.  Knowing the
death-thoughts couldn't be mastered, he attempted one

final gambit: to embrace them; to fold them into the texture of his
sexual imaginings:

Flame?  Let that be the heat of the mystif's body as it was pressed
against him, and cold the sweat on his back as they coupled.  Let the
darkness be a night that concealed their excesses, and the pyre blaze
like their mutual consumption.  He could feel the trick working as he
thought this through.  Why should death be so un erotic  If they
blistered or rotted together mightn't their dissolution show them new
ways to love, uncovering them layer by layer and joining their moistures
and their marrows until they were utterly mingled?

He'd proposed marriage to Pie, and been accepted.  The creature was his
to have and hold, to make over and over, in the image of his fondest and
most forbidden desires.  He did so now.  He saw the creature naked and
astride him, changing even as he touched it, throwing off skins like
clothes.  Jude was one of those skins, and Vanessa another, and Marline
another still.  They were all riding him high; the beauty of the world
impaled on his prick.

Lost in this fantasy he wasn't even aware that the prayers had stopped
until the bier was halted once again.  There were whispers all around
him, and in the middle of the whispers soft and astonished laughter. The
shroud was snatched away, and his beloved was looking down at him,
grinning through features blurred by tears and Gentle's influence.

"He's alive!  Jesu, he's alive!'

There were doubting voices raised, but the mystif laughed them down.

"I feel him in me!" it said.. "I swear it!  He's still with us.  Put him
down!  Put him dovm!,

The pall-bearers did as they were instructed, and Gentle had his first
glimpse of the strangers who'd almost bade him farewell.  Not a happy
bunch, even now.  They stared down at the body, still disbelieving.  But
the danger was over, at least for the time being.  The mystif leaned

over Gentle and kissed his lips.  Its face was fixed once more: its
features exquisite in their joy.

"I love you," it murmured to Gentle.. "I'll love you until the death of
love."

Alive he was; but not healed.  He was moved to a small room of grey
brick, and laid on a bed only marginally more comfortable than the
boards they'd laid him on as a corpse.  There was a window, but being
unable to move he had to rely upon Pie'oh'pah to lift him up and show
him the view through it, which was scarcely more interesting than the
walls, being simply an expanse of sea solid once again - under a cloudy
sky.

"The sea only changes when the sun comes out," Pie explained.. "Which
isn't very often.

We were unlucky.  But everyone is amazed that you survived.  Nobody who
fell to the Cradle ever came out alive before."

in something of curiosity was evidenced by

That he was the number of visitors he had: both guards and prisoners.
The regime seemed to be fairly relaxed, from what little he could judge.
There were bars on the windows, and the door was unbolted and bolted up
again when anybody came or went, but the officers, particularly the
Oethac who ran the asylum, called Vigor Washap, and his number two - a
military peacock called Aping, whose buttons and boots shone a good deal
more brightly than his eyes, and whose features drooped on his head as
though sodden - were polite enough.

"They get no news out here," Pie explained.. "They just get sent
prisoners to look after.

Washap knows there was a plot against the Autarch, but I don't believe
he knows whether it's been successful or not.  They've quizzed me for
hours, but they haven't really asked about us.  I just told them we were
friends of Scopique's, and we'd heard he'd lost his sanity, so we came
to visit him.  All innocence, in other words.  And they seemed to
swallow it.  But they get supplies of food, magazines and newspapers
every eight or nine days - uck may not hold out too long.

Meanwhile I'm doing what I can to keep them both happy.  They get very
lonely."

The significance of this last remark wasn't lost on Gentle, but all he
could do was listen, and hope his healing wouldn't take too long.  There
was some easing in his muscles, allowing him to open and close his eyes,
swallow, and even move his hands a little, but his torso was still
completely rigid.

His other regular visitor, and by far the most entertaining of those who
came to gawp, was Scopique, who had an opinion on everything, including
the patient's rigidity.  He was a tiny man, with the perpetual squint of
a watchmaker, and nose so upturned and so tiny his nostrils were
virtually two holes in the middle of a face which was already gouged
with laugh-lines deep enough to plant in.  Every day he would come and
sit on the edge of Gentle's bed, his grey asylum clothes as crumpled as
his features, his glossy black wig never in the same place on his pate
from hour to hour.  Sitting, sipping coffee, he'd pontificate: on
politics, on the various psychoses of his fellow inmates; on the
subjugation of L'Himby by commerce; on the deaths of his friends, mostly
by what he called despair's slow sword; and, of course, on Gentle's
condition.

He had seen people made rigid in such a fashion before, he claimed.  The
reason was not physiological but psychological, a theory which seemed to
carry weight with Pie.  Once, when Scopique had left after a session of
theorizing, leaving Pie and Gentle alone, the mystif poured out its
guilt.  None of this would have come about, it said, if it had been
sensitive to Gentle's situation from the beginning.  Instead it had been
crude and unkind.  The incident on the platform at MarK6 was a case in
point.  Would Gentle ever forgive it?  Ever believe that its actions
were the product of ineptitude not cruelty?  Over the

years it had wondered what would happen if they ever took the journey
they were taking, and had tried to rehearse its responses, but it had
been alone in the Fifth Dominion, unable to confess its fears or share
its hopes, and the circumstances of their meeting and departure had been
so haphazard that those few rules it had set itself had been thrown to
the wind.

"Forgive me," it said over and over.. "I love you and I've hurt you, but
please, forgive me."

Gentle expressed what little he could with his eyes, wishing his fingers
had the strength to hold a pen, so that he could simply write I do, but
the small advances he'd made since his resurrection seemed to be the
limit of his healing, and though he was fed and bathed by Pie, and his
muscles massaged, there was no sign of further improvement.  Despite the
mystif's constant words of encouragement, there was no doubt that death
still had its finger in him.  In them both, in fact, for Pie's devotion
seemed to be taking its own toll, and more than once Gentle wondered if
the mystif's dwindling was simply fatigue, or whether they were
symbiotically linked after their time together.  If so, his demise would
surely take them both to oblivion.

He was alone in his cell the day the suns came out again, but Pie had
left him sitting up, with a view through the bars, and he was able to
watch the slow unfurling of the clouds, and the appearance of the
subtlest beams, falling on the solid sea.

This was the first time since their arrival that the suns had broken
over the Chzercemit, and he heard a chorus of welcome from other cells,
then the sound of running feet as guards went to the parapet to watch
the transformation.  He could see the surface of the Cradle from where
he was sitting, and felt a kind of exhilaration at the imminent
spectacle, but as the beams brightened he felt a tremor climbing through
his body from his toes, gathering force as it went until by the time it
reached his head it had force enough to throw his

senses from his skull.  At first he thought he'd stood up and run to the
window - he was peering out through the bars at the sea below - but a
noise at the door drew his gaze round to meet the sight of Scopique,
with Aping at his side, crossing the cell to the sallow, bearded
derelict sitting with a glazed expression against the far wall.  He was
that man.

"You have to come and see, Zacharias!" Scopique was enthusing, putting
his arm beneath the derelict, and hoisting him up.

Aping lent a hand, and together they began to carry Gentle to the
window, from which his mind was already departing.

He left them to their kindness, the exhilaration he'd felt like an
engine in him.  Out and along the dreary corridor he went, passing cells
in which prisoners were clamouring to be released to see the suns.  He
had no sense of the building's geography, and for a few moments his
speeding soul lost its way in the maze of grey brick, until he
encountered two guards hurrying up a flight of stone stairs, and went
with them, an invisible mind, into a brighter suite of rooms.  There
were more guards here, forsaking games of cards to head out into the
open air.

"Where's Captain N'ashap?" one of them said.

"I'll go and tell him," another said, and broke from his comrades
towards a closed door only to be called back by another who told him:
"He's in conference.  With the mystif," the reply winning a ribald laugh
from his fellows.

Turning his spirit's back on the open air, Gentle flew towards the door,
passing through it without harm or hesitation.

The room beyond was not, as he'd expected, Washap's office but an
ante-chamber, occupied by two empty chairs and a bare table.  On the
wall behind the table hung a painting of a small child, so wretchedly
rendered the subject's sex was indeterminate.  To the left of the
picture, which was signed Aping, lay another door, as securely closed as
the one he'd just passed through.  But there was a voice audible from
the far side: Vigor Washap, in a little ecstasy.

"Againt Againl' he was saying, then an outpouring in a foreign tongue,
followed by cries o. "Yes!' an. "Therel There!' IN Gentle went to the
door too quickly to prepare himself for what lay on the other side. Even
if he had - even if he'd conjured the sight of N'ashap with his breeches
down and his Oethac prick purple - he could not have imagined
Pie'oh'pah's condition, given that in all their months together he had
never once seen the mystif naked.  Now he did, and the shock of its
beauty was second only to that of its humiliation.  It had a body as
serene as its face, and as ambiguous, even in plain sight.  There was no
hair on any part of it; nor nipples; nor navel.

Between its legs, however, which were presently spread as it knelt in
front of Washap, was the source of its transforming self, the core its
coupler touched with thought.  It was neither phallic nor vaginal, but a
third genital form entirely, fluttering at its groin like an agitated
dove, and with every flutter reconfiguring its glistening heart, so that
_AL Gentle, mesmerized, found a fresh echo in each motion.

His own flesh was mirrored there unfolding as it passed between
Dominions.  So was the sky above Patashoqua and the sea beyond the
shuttered window, turning its solid back to living water.  And breath,
blown into a closed fist; and the power breaking from it: all there, all
there.

N'ashap was disdainful of the sight.  Perhaps, in his heat, he didn't
even see it.  He had the mystif's head damped between his scarred hands
and was pushing the sharp tip of his member into its mouth.  Pie made no
objection.  Its hands hung by its side, until N'ashap demanded their
attention upon his shaft.  Gentle could bear the sight no longer.  He
pitched his mind across the room towards the Oethac's back.  Hadn't he
heard Scopique say that thought was power?  If so, Gentle thought, I'm a
mote, diamond-hard.  Gentle heard N'ashap gasp with pleasure as he
pierced the mystif's throat, then he struck the Oethac's skull.  The
room disappeared, and hot meat pressed on him from all sides,

but his momentum carried him out the other side, and he turned to see
Yashap's hands go from the mystif's head to his own, a shriek of pain
coming from his lipless mouth.

Pie's face, slack until now, filled with alarm as blood poured from
Yashap's nostrils.

Gentle felt a thrill of satisfaction at the sight, but the mystif rose
and went to the officer's assistance, picking up a piece of its own
discarded clothing to help staunch the flow.  Washap twice waved its
help away at first, but Pie's pliant voice softened him, and after a
time the Captain sank back in his cushioned chair and allowed himself to
be tended.  The mystif's cooings and caresses were almost as distressing
to Gentle as the scene he'd just interrupted, and he retreated,
confounded and repulsed, first to the door, and then through it into the
ante-chamber.

There he lingered, his sight fixed upon Aping's picture.  In the room
behind him, N'ashap had begun to moan again.  The sound drove Gentle
out, through the labyrinth and back to his room.  Scopique and Aping had
laid his body back on the bed.  His face was devoid of expression, and
one of his arms had slid from his chest and hung off the edge of the
boards.

He looked dead already.  Was it any wonder Pie's devotion had become so
mechanical, when all it had before it to inspire hope of recovery was
this gaunt mannequin, day in, day out?  He drew closer to the body,
half-tempted never to enter it again; to let it wither and die.  But
there was too much risk in that.  Suppose his present state was
conditional upon the continuance of his physical self?  Thought without
flesh was certainly possible - he'd heard Scopique pronounce on the
subject in this very cell - but not, he guessed, for spirits so
un evolved as his.  Skin, blood and bone were the school in which the
soul learned flight, and he was still too much a fledgling to dare
truancy.  He had to go, vile as that notion was; back behind the eyes.

He went one more time to the window, and looked out at the glittering
sea.  The sight of its waves beating at the

rocks below brought back the terror of his drowning.  He felt the living
waters squirming around him, pressing at his lips like N'ashap's prick,
demanding he open up and swallow.  In horror, he turned from the sight
and crossed the room at speed, striking his brow like a bullet.
Returning into his substance with the images of N'ashap and sea on his
mind he comprehended instantly the nature of his sickness.

Scopique had been wrong, all wrong!  There was a solid - oh so solid -
physiological reason for his inertia.  He felt it in his belly now,
wretchedly real.  He'd swallowed some of the waters and they were still
inside him, living, prospering at his expense.

Before intellect could caution him he let his revulsion loose upon his
body; threw his demands into each extremity.  Move!  he told them.

Move!  He fuelled his rage with the thought of Yashap using him as he'd
used Pie; imagining the Oethac's semen in his belly.  His left hand
found power enough to take hold of the bed-board, its purchase
sufficient to pull him over.

He toppled on to his side, then off the bed entirely, hitting the floor
hard.  The impact dislodged something in the base of his belly.  He felt
it scrabble to catch hold of his innards again, its motion violent
enough to throw him around like a sack full of thrashing fish, each
twist unseating the parasite a little more, and in turn releasing his
body from its tyranny.  His joints cracked like walnut shells, his
sinews stretched and shortened.  It was agony, and he longed to shriek
his complaint, but all he could manage was a retching sound.  it was
still music: the first sound he'd made since the yell he'd given as the
Cradle swallowed him up.  it was short-lived, however.  His racked
system was pushing the parasite up from his stomach.

He felt it in his chest, like a meal of hooks he longed to vomit up, but
could not for fear he turn himself inside out in the attempt.  it seemed
to know they'd reached an impasse, because its flailing slowed, and he
had time to draw a desperate breath through pipes half clogged by its
presence.  With his lungs as full as he had hope of getting

them, he hauled himself up off the ground by clinging to the bed, and
before the parasite had time to incapacitate him with a fresh assault he
stood to his full height, then threw himself face down.  As he hit the
ground the thing came up into his throat and mouth in a surge, and he
reached between his teeth to snatch it out of him.  it came with two
pulls, fighting to the end to crawl back down his gullet.  It was
followed immediately by his last meal.

Gasping for air he dragged himself upright and leaned against the bed,
strings of puke hanging from his chin.  The thing on the floor flapped
and flailed, and he let it suffer.  Though it had felt huge when inside
him it was no bigger than his hand: a formless scrap of milky flesh and
silver vein with limbs no thicker than strings but fully twenty in number.
It made no sound, except for the slap its spasms made in the bilious
mess on the cell floor.

Too weak to move, Gentle was still slumped against the bed when, some
minutes later, Scopique came back to look for Pie.  Scopique's
astonishment knew no bounds.  He called for help, then hoisted Gentle
back on to the bed, question following question so fast Gentle barely
had breath or energy to answer.  But sufficient was communicated for
Scopique to berate himself for not grasping the problem earlier.

"I thought it was in your head, Zacharias, and all the time - all the
time it was in your belly.

This bastard thing I'

Aping arrived, and there was a new round of questions, answered this
time by Scopique, who then went off in search of Pie, leaving the guard
to arrange for the filth on the floor to be cleaned up, and the patient
brought fresh water and clean clothes.

"Is there anything else you need?" Aping wanted to know.

"Food," Gentle said.  His belly had never felt emptier.

"It'll be arranged.  It's strange to hear your voice and see you move. I
got used to you the other way." He smiled.. "When you're feeling
stronger," he said, 'we must

find some time to talk.  I hear from the mystif you're a" painter." was,
yes," said Gentle, adding an innocent enquiry. "Why?  Are you?" Aping
beamed.. "I am," he said.

"Then we must talk," Gentle said.. "What do you paint?. "Landscapes.
Some figures.. "Nudes?  Portraits?" IC

children."

"Ah, children ...  do you have any yourself?"

A trace of anxiety crossed Aping's face.. "Later," he said, glancing out
towards the corridor, then back at Gentle.. "In private."

"I'm at your disposal," Gentle replied.

There were voices outside the room.  Scopique returning with Washap, who
glanced down into the bucket containing the parasite as he entered.
There were more questions, or rather the same rephrased, and answered on
this third occasion by both Scopique and Aping.  N'ashap listened with
only half an ear, studying Gentle as the drama was recounted, then
congratulating him with a curious formality.  Gentle noted with
satisfaction the plugs of dried blood in his nose.

We must make a full account of this incident to Yzordderrex," N'ashap
said.. "I'm sure it will intrigue them as much as it does me." So
saying, he left, with an order to Aping that he follow immediately.

"Our Commander looked less than well," Scopique observed.. "I wonder
why."

Gentle allowed himself a smile, but it went from his face at the sight
of his final visitor.

Pie'oh'pah had appeared in the door.

"Ah welil' said Scopique.. "Here you are.  I'll leave you two alone."

He withdrew, closing the door behind him.  The mystif didn't move to
embrace Gentle, or even take his hand.

Instead it went to the window and gazed out over sea upon which the sun
was still shining.

"Now we know why they call this the Cradle," it said.. "What do you
mean?. "Where else could a man give birthr

"That wasn't birth," Gentle said.. "Don't flatter it.. "Maybe not to
us,, Pie said.. "But who knows how children were made here in ancient
times?  Maybe the men immersed themselves, drank the water, let it grow

"I saw you," Gentle said.

"I know," Pie replied, not turning from the window.. "And you almost
lost us both an ally."

"N'ashap?  An ally?"

"He's the power here."

"He's an Oethac.  And he's scum.  And I'm going to have the satisfaction
of killing him."

"Are you my champion now?" Pie said, finally looking back at Gentle.

"I saw what he was doing to you.,

"That was nothing," Pie replied.. "I knew what I was doing.  Why do you
think we've had the treatment we've had?  I've been allowed to see
Scopique whenever I want.  You've been fed and watered.  And Washap was
asking no questions, about either of us.  Now he will.  Now he'll be
suspicious.  We'll have to move quickly before he gets his questions
answered:

"Better than you having to service him.. "I told you, it was nothing:

"It was to me," Gentle said, the words scraping in his bruised throat.
It took some effort, but he got to his feet so as to meet the mystif,
eye to eye.. "At the beginning, you talked to me about how you thought
you'd hurt me, remember?  You kept talking about the station at MarK,
and saying you wanted me to forgive you, and I kept thinking there would
never be anything between us that couldn't be forgiven or forgotten, and
that when I had the words again I'd say so.  But now I don't know.  He
saw you naked, Pie.  Why him and not me?  I think that's

maybe unforgivable, that you granted him the mystery but not me."

"He saw no mystery," Pie replied.. "He looked at me and he saw a woman
he'd loved and lost in Yzordderrex.  A woman who looked like his mother,
in fact.  That's what he was obsessing on.  An echo of his mother's
echo.  And as long as I kept supplying the illusion, discreetly, he was
compliant.  That seemed more important than my dignity."

"Not any more," Gentle said.. "If we're to go from here - together -
then I want whatever you are to be mine.  I won't share you, Pie.  Not
for compliance.  Not for life itself."

q didn't know you felt like this.  If you'd told m. "I couldn't.  Even
before we came here, I felt it, but I couldn't bring myself to say
anything."

"For what it's worth, I apologize.

"I don't want an apology."

"What then?"

"A promise.  An oath." He paused.. "A marriage." The mystif smiled.
"Really?"

"More than anything.  I asked you once, and you accepted.  Do I need to
ask again?  I will if you want me to."

"No need," Pie said.. "Nothing would honour me more.  But here?  Here,
of all places. "The mystif's frown became a grin.

"Scopique told me about a Dearther who's locked up in the basement.  He
could do the honours."

"What's his religion?"

"He's here because he thinks he's Jesus Christ."

"Then he can prove it with a miracle."

What miracle's that?"

"He can make an honest man of John Furie Zacharias."

The marriage of Eurhetemec mystif and the fugitive John Furie Zacharias,
called Gentle, took place that night in the depths of the asylum.
Happily their priest was passing through a period of lucidity, and was
willing to be

addressed by his real name, Father Athanasius.  He bore the evidence of
his dementia, however: scars on his forehead, where the crowns of thorns
he repeatedly fashioned and wore had dug deep, and scabs on his hands
where he'd driven nails into his flesh.  He was as fond of the frown as
Scopique of the grin, though the look of a philosopher sat badly on a
face better suited to a comedian: with its blob-nose that perpetually
ran, its teeth too widely spread, and eyebrows like hairy caterpillars,
that concertina-ed when he furrowed his forehead.  He was kept, along
with twenty or so other prisoners judged exceptionally seditious, in the
deepest part of the asylum, his windowless cell guarded more vigorously
than those of the prisoners on higher floors.  It had thus taken some
fancy manoeuvring on Scopique's part to get access to him, and the
bribed guard, an Oethac, was only willing to turn a hooded eye for a few
minutes.  The ceremony was therefore short, conducted in an ad hoc
mixture of Latin and English, with a few phrases pronounced in the
language of Athanasius's Second Dominion order, the Dearthers, the music
of which more than compensated for its unintelligibility.  The oaths
themselves were necessarily spare, given the constraints of time and the
redundance of most of the conventional vocabulary.

"This isn't done in the sight of Hapexamendios,"Athanasius said.. "Nor
in the sight of any God, or the agent of any God.

We pray that the presence of Our Lady may, however, touch this union
with her infinite compassion, and that you go together into the great
union at some higher time.  Until then, I can only be as a glass held up
to your sacrament, which is performed in your sight for your sake."

The full significance of these words didn't strike Gentle until later,
when, with the oaths made and the ceremony done, he lay down in his cell
beside his partner.

"I always said I'd never marry," he whispered to the mystif.

"Regretting it already?"

"Not at all.  But it's strange to be married and not have wife.. "You
can call me wife.  You can call me whatever you ant.  Reinvent me.
That's what I'm for.. "I didn't marry you to use you, Pie.. "That's part
of it, though.  We must be functions of each -her.  Mirrors, maybe." it
touched Gentle's face.. "I'll use 7u, believe me.. "For what. "For
everything.  Comfort, argument, pleasure.. "I do want to learn from
you.. "About what?" 

"How to fly out of my head again, the way I did this Iternoon.  How to
travel by mind.. "By mote," Pie said, echoing the way Gentle had felt as
e'd driven his thoughts through N'ashap's skull.. "Meanig: a particle of
thought, as seen in sunlight.. "It can only be done in sunlight?"

"No.  It's just easier that way.  Almost everything's easier i sunlight.

"Except this Gentle said, kissing the mystif, .  I've always preferred
the night for this .  .  ." He had come to their marriage bed determined
that he iould make love with the mystif as it truly was, allowing o
fantasy to intrude between his senses and the vision e'd glimpsed in
Washap's office.  That oath made him as ervous as a virgin groom,
demanding as it did a double ,nveiling.  Just as he unbuttoned and
discarded the lothes that concealed the mystif's essential sex, so he ad
to tear from his eyes the comfort of the illusions that y between his
sight and its object.

What would he feel then?  It was easy to be aroused by a creature so
totally econ figured by desire that it was indistinguishable from the
thing desired.  But what of the con figurer itself, seen aked by naked
eyes?

In the shadows its body almost feminine, its planes ere ne its surface
smooth, but there was an austerity in s sinew he couldn't pretend was
womanly; nor were its

buttocks lush, or its chest ripe.  It was not his wife, and though it
was happy to be imagined that way, and his mind teetered over and over
on the edge of giving in to such invention, he resisted, demanding his
eyes hold to their focus, and his fingers to the facts.  He began to
wish it were lighter in the cell, so as not to give ease to ambiguity.

When he put his hand into the shadow between its legs, and felt the heat
and motion there, he said. "I want to see," and Pie dutifully stood up
in the light from the window so that Gentle could have a plainer view.
His heart was pumping furiously, but none of the blood was reaching his
groin.  It was filling his head, making his face burn.  He was glad he
sat in shadow, where his discomfort was less visible, though he knew
that shadow concealed only the outward show, and the mystif was
perfectly aware of the fear he felt.  He took a deep breath, and got up
from the bed, crossing to within touching distance of this enigma.

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" Pie asked softly.. "Why not let
the dreams come?. "Because I don't want to dream you," he said.. "I came
on this journey to understand.  How can I understand anything if all I
look at is illusions?"

"Maybe that's all there is."

"That isn't true," he said simply.

"Tomorrow then," Pie said, temptingly.. "Look plainly tomorrow.  Just
enjoy yourself tonight.

I'm not the reason we're in the Imajica.  I'm not the puzzle you came to
solve."

"On the contrary," Gentle said, a smile creeping into his voice.. "I
think maybe you are the reason.  And the puzzle.  I think if we stayed
here, locked up together, we could heal the Imajica from what's between
us." The smile appeared on his face now.. "I never realized that till
now.  That's why I want to see you clearly, Pie, so there's no lies
between us." He put his hand against the mystif's sex.. "You could fuck
or be fucked with this, right?. "Yes."

"And you could give birth?" ,I haven't.  But it's been known.. "And
fertilize?. "Yes."

"That's wonderful.  And is there something else you can o?. "Like what?"

'it isn't all doer or done to, is it?  I know it isn't.  There's
amething else.. "Yes, there is.. "A third way.. "Yes.. "Do it with me
then."

"I can't.  You're male, Gentle.  You're a fixed sex It's a 3hysical
fact," Pie said.  it put its hand on Gentle's prick, till soft in his
trousers.. "I can't take this away.  You wouldn't want me to." it
frowned.. "Would you?" ,I don't know.

Maybe.. "You don't mean that."

if it meant finding a way, maybe I do.  I've used my 'ick every way I
know how.  Maybe it's redundant." Now it was Pie's turn to smile, but
such a fragile smile, .s though the unease Gentle had felt now burdened
the nystif instead.  It narrowed its shining eyes.  what are you
thinking?" Gentle said.

"How you make me a little afraid." of what?" 'of the pain ahead.  of
losing you."

"You're not going to lose me," Gentle said, putting his hand around the
back of Pie's neck, and stroking the nape with his thumb.. "I told you,
we could heal the Imajica from here.  We're strong, Pie."

The anxiety didn't go from the mystif's face, so Gentle coaxed its face
towards his, and kissed it, first discreetly, then with an ardour it
seemed reluctant to match.  Only moments before, sitting on the bed,
he'd been the tenta:I've one.  Now it was the other way about.  He put
his hand down to its groin, hoping to distract it from its

sadness with caresses.  The flesh came to meet his fingers, warm and
fluted, trickling into the shallow cup of his palm a moisture his skin
drank like liquor.  He pressed deeper, feeling the elaboration grow at
his touch.  There was no hesitation here; no shame or sorrow in this
flesh, to keep it from displaying its need, and need had never failed to
arouse him.  Seeing it on a woman's face was a certain aphrodisiac, and
it was no less so now.

He reached up from this play to his belt, unbuckling it with one hand.
But before he could take hold of his prick, which was becoming painfully
hard, the mystif did so, guiding him inside it with an urgency its face
still failed to betray.  The bath of its sex soothed his ache, immersing
him balls and all.  He let out a long sigh of pleasure, his
nerve-endings - starved of this sensation for months rioting.  The
mystif had closed its eyes, its mouth open.  He put his tongue hard
between its lips, and it responded with a passion he had never seen it
manifest before.  its hands wrapped around his shoulders, and in
possession of them both it fell back against the wall, so hard the
breath went from it into Gentle's throat.  He drew it down into his
lungs, inciting a hunger for more, which the mystif understood without
need of words, inhaling from the heated air between them and filling
Gentle's chest as though he were a just-drowned man being pumped back to
life.  He answered its gift with thrusts, its fluids running freely down
the inside of his thighs.  It gave him another breath, and another.  He
drank them all, eating the pleasure off its face in the moments between,
the breath received as his prick was given.  They were both entered in
this exchange, and enterer; a hint, perhaps, of the third way Pie had
spoken of, the coupling between unfixed forces that could not occur
until his manhood had been taken from him.  Now, as he worked his prick
against the warmth of the mystif's sex, the thought of relinquishing it
in pursuit of another sensation seemed ludicrous.  There could be
nothing better than this; only different.

He closed his eyes, no longer afraid that his imagination would put a
memory, or some invented perfection, in Pie's place, only that if he
looked at the mystif's bliss too much longer he'd lose all control. What
his mind's eye pictured, however, was more potent still: the image of
them locked together as they were, inside each other, breath and prick
swelling inside each other's skins until they could swell no further. He
wanted to warn Pie that he could hold on no longer but it seemed to have
that news already.  It grasped his hair, pulling him off its face, the
sting of it just another spur now, and the sobs too, coming out of them
both.  He let his eyes open, wanting to see its face as he came, and in
the time it took for his lashes to unknit, the beauty in front of him
became a mirror.  It was his face he was seeing, his body he was
holding.  The illusion didn't cool him.  Quite the reverse. Before the
mirror softened into flesh, its glass becoming the sweat on Pie's sweet
face, he passed the point of no return, and it was with that image in
his eye - his face mingled with the mystif's - that his body unleashed
its little torrent.  it was, as ever, exquisite and racking, a short
delirium followed by a sense of loss he'd never made peace with.

The mystif began to laugh almost before he was finished, and when he
drew his first dear breath it was to ask:

"What's so funny?"

"The silence," Pie said, suppressing its music so that Gentle could
share the joke.

He'd lain here in this cell hour after hour unable to make a moan, but
he'd never heard a silence such as this.  The whole asylum was
listening, from the depths where Father Athanasius wove his piercing
crowns, to N'ashap's office, its carpet indelibly marked with the blood
his nose had shed.  There was not a waking soul who'd not heard their
coupling.

"Such a silence," the mystif said.

As it spoke, the hush was broken by the sound of some394 one yelling in
his cell, a rage of loss and loneliness that went on unchecked for the
rest of the night, as if to cleanse the grey stone of the joy that had
momentarily tainted it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I pressed, Jude could have named a dozen men - lovers, uitors, slaves -
who'd offered her any prize she set her ,ieart upon in return for her
affections.  She'd taken several up on their largesse.  But her
requests, extravagant as some of them had been, were as nothing beside
the -ift she'd asked of Oscar Godolphin.  Show me Yzordderrex, s I he'd
said, and watched his face fill with trepidation.  He'd not refused her
out of hand.  To have done so would have crushed in a moment the
affection growing between them, and he would never have forgiven himself
that loss.  He listened to her request, then made no further mention of
it, hoping, no doubt, that she'd let the subject lie.  She didn't
however.

The blossoming of a physical relationship between them had cured her of
the strange passivity that had afflicted her when they'd first met.  She
had knowledge of his vulnerability now.  she'd seen him wounded.  She'd
seen him ashamed of his lack of selfcontrol.  She'd seen him in the act
of love, tender, and sweetly perverse.  Though her feelings for him
remained strong, this new perspective removed the veil of unthinking
acceptance from her eyes.  Now, when she saw the desire he felt for her
- and he several times displayed that desire in the days following their
consummation - it was the old Judith, self-reliant and fearless, who
watched from behind her smiles; watched and waited, knowing that his
devotion empowered her more by the day.  The tension between these two
selves - the remnants of the compliant mistress his presence had first
conjured, and the wilful, focused woman she'd been (and now was again) -
scourged the last dregs of dreaminess from her

system, and her appetite for Dominion-hopping returned with fresh
intensity.  She didn't shrink from reminding him of his promise to her
as the days went by, but on the first two occasions he made some polite
but spurious excuse so as to avoid talking further about it.  On the
third occasion her insistence won her a sigh, and eyes cast to heaven.

"Why is this so important to you?" he asked.. "Yzordderrex is an
overpopulated cesspit.  I don't know a decent man or woman who doesn't
wish they were here in England."

"A week ago you were talking about disappearing there forever.  But you
couldn't, you said, because you'd miss the cricket."

"You've got a good memory."

"I hang on your every word," she said, not without a certain sourness.

"Well, the situation's changed.  There's most likely going to be
revolution.  If we went now, we'd probably be executed on sight."

"You've come and gone often enough in the past," she pointed out, 'so
have hundreds of others.  Haven't they?  You're not the only one. That's
what magic is for: passing between Dominions." He didn't reply.. "I want
to see Yzordderrm Oscar," she said, 'and if you won't take me I'll find
a magician who will.. "Don't even joke about it."

"I mean it," she said fiercely.. "You can't be the only one who knows
the way."

"Near enough.. "There are others.  I'll find them if I have to."
"They're all crazy," he told her, 'or dead.. "Murdered?" she said, the
word out of her mouth before she'd fully grasped its implication.

The look on his face, however (or rather its absence: the willed
blankness), was enough to confirm her suspicion.  The bodies she'd seen
on the news being carted away from their games were not those of
burned-out

hippies and sex-crazed satanists.  They were possessors of true power;
men and women who'd maybe walked where she longed to walk: in the
Imajica.

"Who's doing it, Oscar?  It's somebody you know, isn't it?,

He got up and crossed to where she sat, his motion so swift she thought
for an instant he meant to strike her.  But instead he dropped to his
knees in front of her, holding her hands tight and staring up at her
with almost hypnotic intensity.

"Listen to me carefully," he said.

"have certain familial duties, which I wish to God I didn't have. They
make demands upon me I'd willingly shrug off if I could

"This is all to do with the Tower, isn't it?" 

"I'd prefer not to discuss that."

"We are discussing it, Oscar."

"It's a very private and a very delicate business.  I'm dealing with
individuals quite without any sense of morality.  If they were to know
that I've said even this much to you both our lives would be in the
direst jeopardy.  I beg you, never utter another word about this to
anyone.  I should never have taken you up to the Tower."

if its occupants were half as murderous as he was suggesting, she
thought, how much more lethal would they be if they knew how many of the
Tower's secrets she'd seen?

Promise me you'll let this subject alone ...  I he went on.

"I want to see Yzordderrex, Oscar."

Promise me.  No more talk about the Tower, in this house or out of it.
Say it, Judith."

"All right.  I won't talk about the Tower."

,in this house

-or out of it.  But Oscar-'

"What, sweet?"

,I still want to see Yzordderrex."

The morning after this exchange she went up to Highgate.  It was another
rainy day, and failing to find an unoccupied cab she braved the
Underground.  It was a mistake.  She'd never liked travelling by Tube at
the best of times - it brought out her latent claustrophobia - but she
recalled as she rode that two of those murdered in the spate of killings
had died in these tunnels: one pushed in front of a crowded train as it
drew into Piccadilly Station, the other stabbed to death at midnight,
somewhere on the Jubilee Line.  This was not a safe way to travel for
someone who had even the slightest inkling of the prodigies half-hidden
in the world; and she was one of those few.  So it was with no little
relief she stepped out into the open air at Archway Station (the clouds
had cleared) and began up Highgate Hill on foot.

She had no difficulty finding the Tower itself, though the banality of
its design, together with the shield of trees in full leaf in front of
it, meant few eyes were likely to look its way.

Despite the dire warnings issued by Oscar it was difficult to find much
intimidating about the place, with the spring sunshine warm enough to
make her slip off her jacket, and the grass busy with sparrows
quarrelling over worms raised by the rain.  She scanned the windows,
looking for some sign of occupation, but saw none.

Avoiding the front door, with its camera trained on the step, she headed
down the side of the building, her progress unimpeded by walls or barbed
wire.  The owners had clearly decided the Tower's best defence lay in
its utter lack of character, and that the less they did to keep
trespassers out the fewer would be attracted in the first place.  There
was even less to see from the back than the front.

There were blinds down over most of the windows, and those few that were
not covered let on to empty rooms.  She made a complete circuit of the
Tower, looking for some other way into it, but there was none.

As she returned to the front of the building she tried

to imagine the passageways buried beneath her feet - the books piled in
the darkness, and the imprisoned soul lying in a deeper darkness still -
hoping her mind might be able to go where her body could not.  But that
exercise proved as fruitless as her window-watching.  The real world was
implacable; it wouldn't shift a particle of soil to let her through.
Discouraged, she made one final circuit of the Tower, then decided to
give up.  Maybe she'd come back here at night, she thought, when solid
reality didn't insist on her senses so brutally.  Or maybe seek another
journey under the influence of the blue eye, though this option made her
nervous.  She had no real grasp of the mechanism by which the eye
induced such flights, and she feared giving it power over her.  Oscar
already had enough of that.

She put her jacket back on, and headed away from the Tower.  To judge by
the absence of traffic on Hornsey Lane, the Hill - which had been
clogged with traffic was still blocked, preventing drivers from making
their way in this direction.  The gulf usually filled with the din of
vehicles was not empty, however.  There were footsteps close behind her;
and a voice, that asked:

"Who are you?"

She glanced round, not assuming the question was directed at her, but
finding that she and the questioner a woman in her sixties, shabbily
dressed and sickly - were the only people in sight.  Moreover, the
woman's stare was fixed upon her with a near manic intensity.

Again, the question, coming from a mouth that had about it a
spittle-flecked asymmetry that suggested the speaker had suffered a
stroke in the past.

"Who are you?"

Already irritated by her failure at the Tower, Judith was in no mood to
humour what was plainly the local schizophrenic, and was turning on her
heel to walk on when the woman said. "Don't you know they'll hurt you?"

"Who will?" she said.

"The people in the Tower.  The Tabula Rasa.  What were you looking for?"

"Nothing."

"You were looking very hard for nothing."

"Are you spying for them?"

The woman made an ugly sound that Judith took to be a laugh.

"They don't even know I'm alive," she said.  Then, for the third time:

"Who are you?"

"My name's Judith."

"I'm Clara Leash," the woman said.  She cast a glance back in the
direction of the Tower.

"Walk on," she said.. "There's a church halfway up the Hill.  I'll meet
you there."

"What is all this about?"

"At the church, not here."

So saying, she turned her back on Judith, and walked off, her agitation
enough to dissuade Judith from following.  There were two words in their
short exchange which convinced her she should wait at the church and
find out what Clara Leash had to say, however.

Those words were Tabula Rasa.  She hadn't heard them spoken since her
conversation with Charlie at the Estate, when he'd told her how he'd
been passed over for membership in favour of Oscar.  He'd made light of
it at the time, and much of what he'd said had been blotted from her
mind by the violence and the revelations that had followed.  Now she
found herself digging for recollections of what he'd said about the
organization.  Something about the tainted soil of England; and her
saying tainted by what?; and Charlie making some comical reply.  Now she
knew what that taint was: magic.  In that bland Tower the lives of the
men and women whose bodies had been found in shallow graves or scraped
from the rails of the Piccadilly Line had been judged and found corrupt.
No wonder Oscar was losing weight, and sobbing in his sleep.  He was a
member of a Society formed for the express purpose of eradicating a
second, and diminishing, society, to which he also

-)elonged.  For all his self-possession he was a servant of wo masters:
magic and its despoiler.  It fell to her to help him by whatever means
she could.  She was his lover, and without her aid he would eventually
be crushed between contrary imperatives.  And he in his turn was her
ticket to Yzordderrex, without whom she would never see the glories of
the Imajica.  They needed each other, alive and sane.

She waited at the church for half an hour before Clara Leash appeared,
looking fretful.

out here's no good," she said.. "Inside."

They stepped into the gloomy building, and sat close to the altar so as
not to be overheard by the three noontime supplicants who were at their
prayers towards the back.  It was not an ideal place in which to have a
whispered

conversation; their sibilance carried even if the sense did

not, its echoes coming back to meet them off the bare

walls.  Nor was there much trust between them to begin

with.  To defend herself from Clara's glare Judith spent

the early part of their exchange with her back half -turned

to the woman, only facing her fully when they'd disposed A I

-of the circumlocutions and she felt confident enough to ask the
question most on her mind.

"What do you know about the Tabula Rasa?"

"Everything there is to know," Clara replied.. "I was a

member of the Society for many years."

"But they think you're dead?"

"They're not far wrong.  I haven't got more than a few

months left, which is why it's important I pass along what

I know -'

"To me?"

"That depends," she said.. "First I want to know what

you were doing at the Tower."

"I was looking for a way in."

"Have you ever been inside?"

"Yes and no."

"Meaning what?"     I

"My Mind's been inside even though my body hasn't,"

Judith said, fully expecting a repeat of Clara's weird little laugh in
response.  Instead, the woman said:

"This was the night of December the thirty-first.. "How the hell did you
know that

Clara put her hand up to Judith's face.  Her fingers were icy-cold.

"First, you should know how I departed the Tabula Rasa."

Though she told her story without embellishments, it took some time,
given that so much of what she was explaining required footnotes for
Judith to fully comprehend its significance.  Clara, like Oscar, was the
descendant of one of the Society's founding members, and had been
brought up to believe in its basic principles: England, tainted by
magic, indeed almost destroyed by it, had to be protected from any cult
or individual who sought to educate new generations in its corrupt
practices.  When Judith asked how this near destruction had come about,
Clara's answer was a story in itself.  Two hundred years ago this coming
midsummer, she explained, a ritual had been attempted that had gone
tragically awry.  Its purpose had been to reconcile the reality of earth
with those of four other dimensions.

"The Dominions," Judith said, dropping her voice, which was already low,
lower still.

"Say it out loud," Clara replied.. "Dominions!  Dominions!" She only
raised her voice to speaking volume, but after such a time whispering it
was shockingly loud.. "It's been a secret for too long," she said, 'and
that gives the enemy power."

"Who is the enemy?"

"There are so many," she said.. "In this Dominion, the Tabula Rasa and
its servants.  And it's got plenty of those, believe me, in the very
highest places."

"How?"

"It's not difficult, when your members are the descendants of
king-makers.  And if influence fails, you can

always buy your way past democracy.  It's going on all the time.. "And
in the other Dominions?"

"Getting information's more difficult, especially now.  I knew two women
who regularly passed between here and the Reconciled Dominions.  One of
them was found dead a week ago, the other's disappeared.

She may also have been murdered '- by the Tabula Rasa."

"You know a good deal, don't you?  What's your sourceT

Judith had known Clara would ask that question eventually, and had been
trying to decide how she would answer it.

Her belief in Clara Leash's integrity grew apace, but wouldn't it be
precipitous to share with a woman she'd taken for a bag lady only two
hours before a secret that could be Oscar's death warrant if known to
the Tabula Rasa?

"I can't tell you my source," she said.. "This person's in great danger
as it is."

"And you don't trust me." She raised her hand to ward off any protest.
"Don't sweet-talk me!" she said.. "You don't trust me and why should I
blame you?  But - let me ask this: is this source of yours a man?"

"Yes.  Why?"

"You asked me before who the enemy was and I said the Tabula Rasa. But
we've got a more obvious enemy.  The opposite sex."

"What?"

"Men, Judith.  The destroyers."

"Oh, now wait

"There used to be Goddesses throughout the i Dominions.  Powers that
took our sex's part in the cosmic drama.

They're all dead, Judith.  They didn't just die of old age.  They were
systematically eradicated by the enemy.. "Ordinary men don't kill
Goddesses."

"Ordinary men serve extraordinary men.  Extraordinary

men get their visions from the Gods.  And Gods kill Goddesses."

"That's too simple.  It sounds like a school lesson.. "Learn it then.
And if you can, disprove it.  I'd like that,

truly I would.  I'd like to discover that the Goddesses are all in
hiding somewhere

"Like the woman under the Tower?"

For the first time in this dialogue, Clara was lost for words.  She
simply stared, leaving Jude to fill the silence of her astonishment.

"When I said I've been into the Tower in my mind, that isn't strictly
true," Jude said.. "I've only been under the Tower.

There's a cellar there, like a maze.  It's full of books.  And behind
one of the walls there's a woman.  I thought she was dead at first, but
she isn't.  She's maybe close to it, but she's holding on."

Clara was visibly shaken by this account.

"I thought I was the only one who knew she was there," she said.

"More to the point, do you know who she is?"

"I've got a pretty good idea," Clara said, and picked up the story she'd
been diverted from earlier: the tale of how she'd come to leave the
Tabula Rasa.

The library beneath the Tower, she explained, was the most comprehensive
collection of manuscripts dealing with the occult sciences - but more
particularly the legends and lore of the Imajica - in the world.  it had
been gathered by the men who'd founded the Society, led by Roxborough
and Godolphin, to keep from the hands and minds of innocent Englishmen
the stain of things Imajical; but rather than cataloguing the collection
making an index of these forbidden books generations of the Tabula Rasa
had simply left them to fester.

"I took it upon myself to sort through the collection.  Believe it or
not I was once a very ordered woman.  I got it from my father.  He was
in the military.  At first I was watched by two other members of the
Society.  That's the law.  No member of the Society is allowed into the
library

alone, and if one judges the other to be in any way unduly interested or
influenced by the volumes they can be tried by the Society, and
executed.  I don't think it's ever been done.  Half of the books are in
Latin, and who reads Latin?  The other half - you've seen for yourself
they're rotting on their spines, like all of us.  But I wanted order,
the way that Daddy would have liked it.  Everything neat and tidy.  My
companions soon got tired of my obsession, of course, and left me to it.
And in the middle of the night I felt something ...  or somebody ...
pulling at my thoughts, plucking them out of my scalp one by one, like
hairs.  Of course I thought it was the books at first.  I thought the
words had got some power over me.  I tried to leave, but you know I
really didn't want to.  I'd been Daddy's repressed little daughter for
fifty years, and I was about ready to crack.  Celestine knew it too
"Celestine is the woman in the wall?"

"I believe it's her, yes."

"But you don't know who she is?"

"I'm coming to that," Clara said.. "Roxborough's house stood on the land
where the Tower now stands.  The cellar is the cellar of that house.
Celestine was - indeed still is - Roxborough's prisoner.  He walled her
up because he didn't dare kill her.  She'd seen the face of
Hapexamendios, the God of Gods.  She was insane, but she'd been touched
by divinity, and even Roxborough didn't dare lay a finger on her."

"How do you know all of this?"

"Roxborough wrote a confession, a few days before he died.  He knew the
woman he'd walled up would outlive him by centuries, and I suppose he
also knew that sooner or later somebody would find her.  So the
confession was also a warning to whatever poor, victimized man came
along, telling him that she was not to be touched.  Bury her again, he
said, I remember that very clearly, bury her again, in the deepest abyss
your wits may clevis. "Where did you find this confession?"

"In the wall, that night when I was alone.  I believe

Celestine led me to it, by plucking thoughts out of my head and putting
new ones in.  But she plucked too hard.  My mind gave up.  I had a
stroke down there.  I wasn't found for three days."

"That's horrible -'

"My suffering's nothing compared to hers.  Roxborough had found this
woman in London, or his spies had, and he knew she was a creature of
immense power.  He probably 71 realized it more clearly than she did, in
fact, because he says in the confession she was a stranger to herself.
But she'd seen sights that no human being had ever witnessed.  She'd
been snatched from the Fifth Dominion, escorted across the Imajica and
taken into the presence of Hapexamendios."

"Why?"

"It gets stranger.  When he interrogated her she told him she'd been
brought back into the Fifth Dominion pregnant."

"She was having God's child?"

"That's what she told Roxborough.,

"She could have been inventing it all, just to keep him from hurting
her."

"I don't think he'd have done that.  In fact I think he was half in love
with her.  He said in the confession he felt like his friend Godolphin.
I'm broken by a woman's eye, he said."

That's an odd phrase, Jude thought, thinking of the statue as she did
so.  Its stare; its authority.

"Well, Godolphin died obsessing on some mistress he'd loved and lost,
claiming he'd been destroyed by her.  The men were always the innocents,
you see.  Victims of female connivings.  I daresay Roxborough'd
persuaded himself walling Celestine up was an act of love.  Keeping her
under his thumb forever.. "What happened to the child? "Judith said.

"Maybe she can tell us herself," Clara replied.

"Then we have to get her out.. "Indeed."

"Do you have any idea how?"

"Not yet." Clara said.. "Until you appeared I was ready to despair.  But
between the two of us we'll find some way to save her."

It was getting late, and Jude was anxious that her absence not be noted;
so the plans they laid were sketchy in the extreme.  A further
examination of the Tower was clearly in order, this time - Clara
proposed - under cover of darkness.

"Tonight," she suggested.

"No, that's too soon.  Give me a day to make up some excuse for being
out for the night.. "Who's the watch-dog?" Clara said.

"Just a man.. "Suspicious?. "Sometimes.. "Well, Celestine's waited a
long time to be set free.

She can wait another twenty-four hours.  But please, no longer.  I'm not
a well woman."

Jude put her hand over Clara's, the first contact between them since the
woman had touched her icy fingers to Jude's cheek.. "You're not going to
die," she said.

"Oh yes I am.  It's no great hardship.  But I want to see Celestine's
face before I leave."

"We will," Judith said.. "If not tomorrow night, soon after."

She didn't believe what Clara had said about men pertained to Oscar.  He
was no destroyer of Goddesses, either by hand or proxy.  But Dowd was
another matter entirely.  Though his faade was civilized - almost prissy
at times - she would never forget the casual way he'd disposed of the
voiders' bodies, warming his hands at the pyre as though they were
branches not bones that were cracking in the flames.  And, as bad luck
would have it, Dowd was

back at the house when she returned, and Oscar was not, so it was his
questions she was obliged to answer if she wasn't to arouse his
suspicion with silence.  When he asked her what she'd done with the day,
she told him she'd gone out for a long walk along the Embankment.  He
then enquired as to whether the Tube had been crowded, though she'd not
told him she'd travelled that way.  She said it was.  You should take a
cab next time, he said.  Or better still, allow him to drive her.

I'm certain Mr Godolphin would prefer you to travel in comfort, he said.
She thanked him for his kindness.  Will you be planning other trips
soon?  he asked.  She had her story for the following evening already
prepared, but Dowd's manner never failed to throw her off-balance, and
she was certain any lie she told now would be instantly spotted, so she
said she didn't know, and he let the subject drop.

Oscar didn't come home until the middle of the night, slipping into bed
beside her as gently as his bulk allowed.  She pretended to wake.  He
murmured a few words of apology for stirring her, and then some of love.
Feigning a sleepy tone, she told him she was going to see her friend
Clem tomorrow night, and did he mind?  He told her she should do
whatever she wanted, but keep her beautiful body for him.  Then he
kissed her shoulder and neck, and fell asleep.

She had arranged to meet Clara at eight in the evening, outside the
church, but she left for that rendezvous two hours before in order to go
via her old flat.  She didn't know what place in the scheme of things
the carved blue eye had, but she'd decided the night before that it
should be with her when they made their attempt to liberate Celestine.

The flat felt cold and neglected, and she spent only a few minutes
there, first retrieving the eye from her wardrobe, then quickly leafing
through the mail - most of it junk - that had arrived since she'd last
visited.

These

tasks completed, she set out for Highgate, taking Dowd's advice and
hailing a taxi to do so.  it delivered her to the church twenty-five
minutes early, only to find that Clara was already there.

"Have you eaten, my girl?" Clara wanted to know.  Jude told her she had.
"Good," Clara said.. "We'll need all our strength tonight."

"Before we go any further," Jude said. "I want to show you something.  I
don't know what use it can be to us, but I think you ought to see it."
She brought the parcel of cloth out of her bag.. "Remember what you said
about Celestine plucking the thoughts out of your head?. "Of course."

"This is what did the same to me."

She began to unwrap the eye, a subtle tremor in her fingers as she did
so.  Three months and more had passed since she'd hidden it away with
such superstitious care, but her memory of its effect was undimmed, and
she half -expected it to exercise some power now.  It did nothing,
however, but lay in the folds of its covering looking so unremarkable
she was almost embarrassed to have made such a show of unveiling it.
Clara, however, stared at it with a smile on her lips.

"Where did you get this?" she said.

"I'd rather not say."

"This is no time for secrets," Clara snapped.. "How did you come by it?"

"It was given to my husband.  My ex-husband."

"Who by?"

"His brother."

"And who's his brother?"

She took a deep breath, undecided even as she drew it whether she'd
expel it again as truth or fabrication.

"His name's Oscar Godolphin," she said.

At this reply Clara physically retreated from Judith, almost as though
this name was proof of the plague.

"Do you know Oscar Godolphin?" she said, her tone appalled.

"Yes I do."

"Is he the watch-dog?, she said.

"Yes he is."

"Cover it up," she said, shunning the eye now.. "Cover it up and put it
away." She turned her back to Judith, running her crabbed hands through
her hair.. "You and Godolphin?" she said, half to herself.. "What does
that mean?

What does that mean?"

It doesn't mean anything," Jude said.. "What I feel for him and what
we're doing now are completely different issues."

"Don't be naY ve ' Clara replied, glancing back at Jude.. "Godolphin's a
member of the Tabula Rasa, and a man.  You and Celestine are both women,
and his prisoners -. "I'm not his prisoner," Jude said, infuriated by
Clara's condescension.. "I do what I want when I want."

"Until you defy history," Clara said.. "Then you'll see how much he
thinks he owns you: She approached Jude again, taking her voice down to
a pained whisper.. "Understand this," she said.. "You can't save
Celestine and keep his affections.  You're going to be digging at the
very foundations - literally, the foundations - of his family, and his
faith, and when he finds out - and he will, when the Tabula Rasa starts
to crumble - whatever's between you will mean nothing.  We're not
another sex, Judith, we're another species.  What's going on in our
bodies and our heads isn't remotely like what's going on in theirs.  Our
Hells are different.

So are our Heavens.  We're enemies, and you can't be on both sides in
the war."

"It isn't war," Jude said.. "If it was war I'd be angry, and I've never
been calmer."

"We'll see how calm you are, when you see how things really stand."

Jude took another deep breath.. "Maybe we should stop arguing and do
what we came to do," she said.  Clara looked at her balefully.

"I think "stubborn bitch" is the phrase you're looking for," Jude
remarked.

IV

"I never trust the passive ones," Clara said, betraying a trace of
admiration.

"I'll remember that."

The Tower was in darkness, and the trees clogged the lamplight from the
street, leaving the forecourt shadowy, and the route down the flank of
the building virtually lightless.  Clara had obviously wandered here by
night many times, however, because she went with confidence, leaving
Jude to trail, snared by the brambles and stung by the nettles it had
been easy to avoid in the sunshine.  By the time she reached the back of
the Tower her eyes were better accustomed to the murk, and she found
Clara standing twenty yards from the building, staring at the ground.

what are you doing back here?" Jude said.. "We know there's only one
way in."

"Barred and bolted," she said.. "I'm thinking there may be some other
entrance to the cellar under the turf, even if it's only a ventilation
pipe.  The first thing we should do is locate Celestine's cell.. "How do
we do that?. "We use the eye that took, you travelling," Clara said.

"Come on, come on, give it over. "I thought it was too tainted to be
touched.. "Not at all.. "The way you looked at it..."

"It's loot, my girl.  That's what repulsed me.  It's a piece of women's
history traded between two men."

"I'm sure Oscar didn't know what it was," she said, thinking even as she
defended him that this was probably untrue.

'it belongs to a great temple

"He certainly doesn't loot temples," Jude said, taking the contentious
item from her pocket.

"I'm not saying he does," Clara replied.. "The temples were brought down
long before the line of the Godol-

phins was even founded.  Well, are you going to hand it over or not?"

Jude unwrapped the eye, discovering in herself a reluctance to share it
she hadn't anticipated.  It was no longer as unremarkable as it had
been.  it gave off a subtle luminescence, blue and steady, by which she
and Clara could see each other, albeit faintly.

Their gazes met, the eye's light gleaming between them like the glance
of a third conspirator; a woman wiser than them both, whose presence -
despite the dull murmur of traffic, and jets droning through the clouds
above exalted the moment.

Jude found herself wondering how many women had gathered in the glow of
this light or its like down the ages; gathered to pray, or make
sacrifice, or shelter from the destroyer.  Countless numbers, no doubt,
dead and forgotten, but, in this brief time out of time, reclaimed from
anonymity; not named, but at least acknowledged by these new acolytes.
She looked away from Clara, towards the eye.  The solid world around her
suddenly seemed irrelevant - at best a game of veils, at worst a trap in
which the spirit struggled, and struggling, gave credence to the lie.
There was no need to be bound by its rules.  She could fly beyond it
with a thought.  She looked up again to confirm that Clara was also
ready to move, but her companion was glancing out of the circle, towards
the corner of the Tower.

"What is it? "Jude said, following the direction of Clara's gaze.

Somebody was approaching them through the darkness,, in his walk a
nonchalance she could name in a syllable.

"Dowd.. "You know him?" Clara said.

"A little," Dowd said, his voice as casual as his gait.. "But really,
there's so much she doesn't know."

Clara's hands dropped from Jude's breaking the charm of three.

"Don't come any closer," Clara said.

Surprisingly, Dowd stopped dead in his tracks, a few yards from the
women.  There was sufficient light from the eye for Jude to pick out his
face.  Something, or things, seemed to be crawling around his mouth, as
though he'd just eaten a handful of ants, and a few had escaped from
between his lips.

"I would so love to kill you both," he said, and with the words further
mites escaped and ran over his cheeks and chin.

"But your time will come, Judith.  Very soon.  For now, it's just Clara
...  it is Clara, isn't O. "Go to hell, Dowd,"Jude said.

"Step away from the old woman," Dowd replied.  Jude's response was to
take hold of Clara's arm.. "You're not going to hurt anybody, you little
shit," she said.

There was a fury rising in her the like of which she'd not felt in
months.  The eye was heavy in her hand; she was ready to brain the
bastard with it if he took a step towards them.

"Did you not understand me, whore?" he said, moving towards her as he
did so.. "I told you: step away!,

In her rage she went to meet his approach, raising her weighted hand as
she did so, but in the instant that she let go of Clara he sidestepped
her, and she lost sight of him.  Realizing that she'd done exactly as
he'd planned, she reeled round, intending to take hold of Clara again.
But he was there before her.  She heard a shout of horror, and saw Clara
staggering away from her attacker.  The mites were at her face already,
blinding her.  Jude ran to catch hold of her before she fell, but this
time Dowd moved towards her, not away, and with a single blovq struck
the stone from Jude's hand.  She didn't turn to reclaim it, but went to
Clara's aid.  The woman's moW' were terrible; so were the tremors in her
body.

"What have you done to her?" she yelled at Dowd.  . "Undone, lovely,
undone.  Let her be.

You can't hell her now."

Clara's body was light, but when her legs buckled s her

carried Jude down with her.  Her moans had become howls now, as she
reached up to her face as if to scratch out her eyes, for it was there
that the mites were at some agonizing work.  In desperation Jude tried
to feel for the creatures in the darkness, but either they were too fast
for her fingers, or they'd gone where fingers couldn't follow.  All she
could do was beg for a reprieve.

"Make them stop," she said to Dowd.. "Whatever you want, I'll do, but
please make them stop."

"They're voracious little sods, aren't they?" he said.

He was crouching in front of the eye, the blue light illuminating his
face, which wore a mask of chilling severity.  As she watched he picked
mites from around his mouth, and let them drop to the ground.

"I'm afraid they've got no ears, so I can't call them back," he said.
"They only know how to unmake.  And they'll unmake anything but their
maker.  In this case, that's me.  So I'd leave her alone, if I were you.

They're indiscriminate."

She turned her attention back to the woman in her arms.  Clara had given
up scratching at her eyes, and the tremors in her body were rapidly
diminishing.

"Speak to me -' Jude said.  She reached for Clara's face, a little
ashamed of how tentative Dowd's warning had made her.

There was no answer from the body, unless there were words in Clara's
dying moans.

Jude listened, hoping to find some vestigial sense there, but there was
none.  She felt a single spasm pass down Clara's spine, as though
something in her head had snapped, and then the whole system stopped
dead.  From the moment when Dowd had first appeared perhaps ninety
seconds had passed.  In that time every hope that had gathered here had
been undone.  She wondered if Celestine had heard this tragedy unfold,
another's suffering adding to her own sum.

"Dead, then, lovey," Dowd said.  Jude let Clara's body slip from her
arms into the grass.

"We should be going," he went on, his tone so bland they might have been

forsaking a picnic instead of a corpse.. "Don't worry about Clara.  I'll
fetch what's left of her later."

She heard the sound of his feet behind her, and stood up rather than be
touched by him.

Overhead, another jet was roaring in the clouds.  She looked towards the
eye, but it too had been unmade.

"Destroyer," she said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Gentle had forgotten his short exchange with Aping about their shared
enthusiasm for painting; but Aping had not.  The morning after the
wedding in Athanasius's cell, the Sergeant came to fetch Gentle, and
escorted him to a room at the other end of the buildings, which he had
turned into a studio.  It had plenty of windows, so the light was as
good as this region was ever likely to supply, and he had gathered over
the months of his posting here an enviable selection of materials.  The
products of this workplace were, however, those of the most uninspired
dilettante.  Designed without compositional skill and painted without
sense of colour, their only real point of interest lay in their
obsessive ness  There were, Aping proudly told Gentle, one hundred and
fifty-three pictures, and their subject was unchanging: his child
Huzzah, the merest mention of whom had caused the loving portraitist
such unease.  Now, in the privacy of his place of inspiration, he
explained why.

His daughter was young, he said, and her mother dead; he'd been obliged
to bring her with him when orders from Iahmandhas moved him to the
Cradle.

"I could have left her in L'Himby," he told Gentle.. "But who knows what
kind of harm she'd have come to if I'd done that?

She's a child.. "So she's here on the island?"

"Yes, she is.  But she won't step out of her room in the daytime.  She's
afraid of catching the madness, she says, I love her very much.  And as
you can see' - he indicated the paintings - 'she's very beautiful:

Gentle was obliged to take the man's word for it.. "Where is she now?"
he asked.

"Where she always is," Aping said.. "In her room.  She has very strange
dreams."

"I know how she feels," Gentle said.

"Do you?" Aping replied, with a fervour in his voice that suggested that
art was not, after all, the subject Gentle had been brought here to
debate.. "You dream too, then?. "Everybody does."

"That's what my wife used to tell me." He lowered his voice.. "She had
prophetic dreams.

She knew when she was going to die, to the very hour.  But I don't dream
at all.  So I can't share what Huzzah feels.. "Are you suggesting that
maybe I could?"

"This is a very delicate matter," Aping said.. "Yzordderrexian law
prohibits all prophetics.. "I didn't know that."

"Especially women, of course," Aping went on.. "That's the real reason I
keep her out of sight.  It's true, she fears the madness, but I'm afraid
for what's inside her even more."

"Why?"

"I'm afraid if she keeps company with anyone but me she'll say something
out of turn, and N'ashap will realize she has visions like her mother."

And that would be

"Disastrous!  My career would be in tatters.  I should never have
brought her." He looked up at Gentle.. "I'm only telling you this
because we're both artists, and artists have to trust each other, like
brothers, isn't that right?. "That's right," said Gentle.  Aping's large
hands were trembling, he saw.  The man looked to be on the verge of
collapse.. "Do you want me to speak to your daughter?  he asked.

"More than that.  .

"Tell me."

J

"I want you to take her with you, when you and the mystif leave.  Take
her to Yzordderrex."

"What makes you think we're going there - or anywhere, come to that?"

"I have my spies, and so does Washap.  Your plans are better known than
you'd like.  Take her with you, Mr Zacharias.  Her mother's parents are
still alive.  They'll look after her."

"It's a big responsibility to take a child all that way." Aping pursed
his lips.. "I would, of course, be able to ease your departure from the
island, if you were to take her."

"Suppose she won't go?" Gentle said.

"You must persuade her," he said simply, as though he knew Gentle had
long experience of persuading little girls to do what he wanted.

Nature had played Huzzah Aping three cruel tricks.  One, it had lent her
powers that were expressly forbidden under the Autarch's regime; two, it
had given her a father who, despite his sentimental dotings, cared more
for his military career than for her; and, three, it had given her a
face that only a father could ever have described as beautiful.  She was
a thin troubled creature of nine or ten, her black hair cut comically,
her mouth tiny and tight.  When, after much cajoling, those lips deigned
to speak, her voice was wan and despairing.  It was only when Aping told
her that her visitor was the man who'd fallen into the sea and almost
died that her interest was sparked.

"You went down into the Cradle?" she said.

"Yes, I did," Gentle replied, coming to the bed on which she sat, her
arms wrapped around her knees.

"Did you see the Cradle Lady?" the girl said.

"See who?" Aping started to hush her, but Gentle waved him into silence.
"See who?" he said again.

"She lives in the sea," Huzzah said.. "I dream about her

- and I hear her sometimes - but I haven't seen her yet.

I want to see her.. "Does she have a name?" Gentle asked.

Tish aluM Huzzah replied, pronouncing the run of the syllables without
hesitation.

"That's the sound the waves made when she was born," she explained.
"Tishalulli.. "That's a lovely name.. "I think so," the girl said
gravely.. "Better than Huzzah.. "Huzzah's pretty too," Gentle replied.

"Where I come from Huzzah's the noise people make when they're happy."

She looked at him as though the idea of happiness was utterly alien to
her, which Gentle could believe.  Now he saw Aping in his daughter's
presence he better understood the paradox of the man's response to her.
He was frightened of the girl.  Her illegal powers upset him for his
reputation's sake, certainly, but they also reminded him of a power he
had no real mastery over.  The man painted Huzzah's fragile face over
and over as an act of perverse devotion, perhaps, but also of exorcism.
Nor was the child much better served by her gift.  Her dreams condemned
her to this cell and filled her with obscure longings.  She was more
their victim than their celebrant.

Gentle did his best to draw from her a little more information on this
woman TishaluI16, but she either knew very little or was unprepared to
vouchsafe further insights in her father's presence.  Gentle suspected
the latter.  As he left, however, she asked him quietly if he would come
and visit her again, and he said he would.

He found Pie in their cell, with a guard on the door.  The mystif looked
grim.

"N'ashap's revenge," it said, nodding towards the guard.

"I think we've outstayed our welcome."

Gentle recounted his conversation with Aping, and the meeting with
Huzzah.

"So the law prohibits prophetics, does it?  That's a piece of
legislation I hadn't heard about."

"The way she talked about the Cradle Lady

"Her mother presumably."

"Why do you say that?"

"She's frightened and she wants her mother.  Who can blame her?  And
what's a Cradle Lady if it's not a mother?. "I hadn't thought of it that
way," Gentle said.. "I'd supposed there might be some literal truth to
what she was saying."

"I doubt it.. "Are we going to take her with us or not?. "It's your
choice, of course, but I say absolutely not.. "Aping said he'd help us
if we took her.. "What's his help worth, if we're burdened with a child?
Remember, we're not going alone.  We've got to get Scopique out too, and
he's confined to his cell the way we are.  N'ashap has ordered a general
clamp down "He must be pining for you."

Pie made a sour face.. "I'm certain our descriptions are on their way to
his headquarters even now.  And when he gets an answer he's going to be
a very happy Oethac, knowing he's got a couple of desperadoes under lock
and key.

We'll never get out once he knows who we are.. "So we have to escape
before he realizes.  I just thank God the telephone never made it to
this Dominion.. "Maybe the Autarch banned it.  The less people talk the
less they can plot.

You know, I think maybe I should try and get access to N'ashap.  I'm
sure I could persuade him to give us a freer rein, if I could just talk
with him for a few minutes.. "He's not interested in conversation, Pie,"
Gentle said.

"He'd prefer to keep your mouth busy some other way.. "So you simply
want to fight your way out?" Pie replied.

"Use pneuma against N'ashap's men?"

Gentle paused to think this option through.. "I don't think that'd be
too clever," he said.

"Not with me still

weak.  in a couple of days maybe we could take them on.

But not yet."

We don't have that long."

I realize that."

"And even if we did, we'd be better avoiding a face-to-face conflict.
Washap's troops may be lethargic, but there's a good number of them."

"Perhaps you should see him then, and try to mellow him a little.  I'll
talk to Aping, and flatter his pictures a little more." 'is he any
good?"

Put it this way: as a painter he makes a damn fine father.  But he
trusts me, with us being fellow artists and all."

The mystif got up and called to the guard, requesting a private
interview with Captain Washap.  The man mumbled something smutty, and
left his post, having first beaten the bolts on the door with his
rifle-butt to be certain they were firmly in place.  The sound drove
Gentle to the window, to stare out at the open air.  There was a
brightness in the cloud layer that suggested the sun might be on its way
through.  Pie joined him, slipping its arms around his neck.

"What are you thinking?"

Remember Efteet's mother, in Beatrix?"

Of course."

"She told me she'd dreamt about me coming to sit at her table, though
she wasn't certain whether I'd be a man or a woman."

"You were deeply offended, of course."

"I would have been once," Gentle said.. "But it didn't mean that much
when she said it.

After a few weeks with you, I didn't give a shit what sex I was.  See
how you've corrupted me?"

"My pleasure.  Is there any more to this story, or is that it?,

"No, there's more.  She started talking about Goddesses, I remember.
About how they were hidden away..."

"And you think Huzzah's found one?"

"We saw acolytes in the mountains, didn't we?  Why not a Deity?  Maybe
Huzzah did go dreaming for her mother.  .

but instead she found a Goddess."

"Yes.  TishaluU, out there in the Cradle, waiting to rise."

A.. "You like the idea, don't you?"

"Of hidden Goddesses?  Oh yes.  Maybe it's just the woman-chaser in me.
Or maybe I'm like Huzzah, waiting for someone I can't remember, wanting
to see some face or other, come to fetch me away.  .

"I'm already here," Pie said, kissing the back of Gentle's neck.. "Every
face you ever wanted."

"Even a Goddess?"

'.  .  .  ah.  .

The sound of the bolts being drawn aside silenced them.  The guard had
returned with the news that Captain N'ashap had consented to see the
mystif.

"If you see Aping," Gentle said to Pie as it left, 'will you tell him
I'd love to sit and talk painting with him?. "I'll do that."

They parted, and Gentle returned to the window.  The clouds had
thickened their de fences against the sun, and the Cradle lay still and
empty again beneath their blanket.  Gentle said again the name Huzzah
had shared with him, the word that was shaped like a breaking wave.

"TishalulM."

The Sea remained motionless.  Goddesses didn't come at a call.  At
least, not his.

He was just estimating the time that Pie had been away  If - and
deciding it was an hour or more - when Aping appeared at the cell door,
dismissing the guard from his post while he talked.

"Since when have you been under lock and key?" he asked Gentle.

"Since this morning."

"But why?  I understood from the Captain that you and the mystif were
guests, after a fashion.. "We were."

A twitch of anxiety passed over Aping's features.  'if you're a prisoner
here," he said stiffly, 'then of course the situation's changed.. "You
mean we won't be able to debate painting?. "I mean you won't be
leaving.. "What about your daughter?. "That's academic now.. "You'll let
her languish, will you?  You'll let her die.. "She won't die.. "I think
she will."

Aping turned his back on his temper.. "The law is the law," he said.

"I understand," Gentle replied softly.. "Even artists have to bow to
that master, I suppose."

"understand what you're doing," Aping said.. "Don't think I don't."

"She's a child, Aping."

"Yes.  I know.  But I'll have to tend to her as best I can.

"Why don't you ask her whether she's seen her own death?"

"Oh Jesu," Aping said, stricken.  He began to shake his head.. "Why must
this happen to me?"

"It needn't.  You can save her."

"It isn't so dear-cut, "Aping said, giving Gentle a harried look.. "I
have my duty." He took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped
hard at his mouth, back and forth, as though a residue of guilt clung
there, and he was afraid it would give him away.. "I have to think," he
said, going back to the door.. "It seemed so easy.  But now ...  I have
to think."

The guard was at his post again when the door opened, and Gentle was
obliged to let the Sergeant go without having the chance to broach the
subject of Scopique.

There was further frustration when Pie returned.

N'ashap had kept the mystif waiting two hours, but had

finally decided not to grant the promised interview.

"I heard him even if I didn't see him," Pie said.. "He sounded to be
roaring drunk:

"So both of us were out of luck.  I don't think Aping's going to help us
somehow.  If the choice is between his daughter and his duty he'll
choose his duty. "So we're stuck here.. "Until we plot another plot."
ISM."

Night fell without the sun showing itself, the only sound throughout the
building that of the guards proceeding up and down the corridors,
bringing food to the cells, then slamming and locking the doors until
dawn.

Not a single voice was raised to protest the fact that the privileges of
the evening - games of Horsebone, recitations of scenes from Quexos, and
Malbaker's Numbubo, works many here knew by heart - had been withdrawn.
There was a universal reluctance to make a peep, as if each man, alone
in his cell, was prepared to forgo every comfort, even that of praying
aloud, to keep himself from being noticed.

"N'ashap must be dangerous when drunk," Pie said, b

y way of explanation for this breathless hush.

"Maybe he's fond of midnight executions.. "I'd take a bet on who's top
of his list."

"I wish I felt stronger.  If they come for us, we'll fight, right?,

"Of course," Pie said.. "But until they do, why don't you sleep for a
while?. "You must be kidding.. "At least stop pacing about

"I've never been locked up by anybody before.  It makes me
claustrophobic

"One pneuma and you could be out of here," Pie reminded him.

Vj

"Maybe that's what we should be doing.. "If we're pressed.  But we're
not yet.  For Christ's sake, lie down."

Reluctantly, Gentle did so, and despite the anxieties that lay down
beside him to whisper in his ear, his body was more interested in rest
than their company, and he quickly fell asleep.  He was woken by Pie,
who murmured. "You've got a visitor."

He sat up.  The cell's light had been turned off remotely, and had it
not been for the smell of oil paint he'd not have known the identity of
the man at the door.

"Zacharias.  I need your help.. "What's wrong?"

"Huzzah is ...  I think she's going crazy.  You've got to come." His
whispering voice trembled.  So did the hand he laid on Gentle's arm.. "I
think she's dying," he said.

"If I go, Pie comes too.. "No, I can't take that risk.. "And I can't
take the risk of leaving my friend here," Gentle said.

"And I can't take the risk of being found out.  If there isn't somebody
in the cell when the guard passe. "He's right," said Pie.. "Go on.  Help
the child.. "Is that wise?"

"Compassion's always wise."

"All right.  But stay awake.  We haven't said our prayers yet.  We need
both our breaths for that."

"I understand."

Gentle slipped out into the passage with Aping, who winced at every
click the key made as he locked the door.  So did Gentle.  The thought
of leaving Pie alone in the cell sickened him.  But there seemed to be
no other choice.

"We may need a doctor's help," Gentle said as they crept down the
darkened corridors.  J suggest you fetch Scopique from his cell.. "Is he
a doctor?. "He certainly is.. "It's you she's asking for," Aping said.
"I don't know

why.  She just woke up sobbing, and begging me to fetch you.  She's so
cold."

With Aping's knowledge of how regularly each floor and passageway was
patrolled to aid them, they reached Huzzah's cell without encountering a
single guard.  The girl wasn't lying on her bed as Gentle had expected,
but was crouched on the floor, with her head and hands pressed against
one of the walls.  A single wick burned in a bowl in the middle of the
cell, her face unwarmed by its light.  Though she registered their
appearance with a glance, she didn't move from the wall, so Gentle went
to where she was crouching and did the same.  Shudders passed through
her body, though her fringe was plastered to her brow with sweat.

"What can you hear?" Gentle asked her.

"She's not in my dreams any more, Mister Zacharias," she said,
pronouncing his name with precision, as though the proper naming of the
forces around her would offer her some little control over them.

"Where is she?" Gentle enquired.

"She's outside.  I can hear her.  Listen:

He put his head to the wall.  There was indeed a murmur in the stone,
though he guessed its source was either the asylum's generator or its
furnace rather than the Cradle Lady.

"Do you hear?"

"Yes, I hear."

"She wants to come in," Huzzah said.. "She tried to come in through my
dreams, but she couldn't, so now she's coming through the wall."

"Maybe ...  we should move away then," Gentle said, reaching to put his
hand on the girl's shoulder.  She was icy.. "Come on, let me take you
back to bed.  You're cold.. "I was in the Sea," she said, allowing
Gentle to put his arms around her, and draw her to her feet.

He looked towards Aping and mouthed the word Scopique.  Seeing his
daughter's frailty, the Sergeant went from the door as obediently as a
dog, leaving his

Huzzah clinging to Gentle.  He set her down on the bed,

J

and wrapped a blanket around her.

"The Cradle Lady knows you're here," Huzzah said.

"Does she?"

"She told me she almost drowned you, but you wouldn't let her.. "Why
would she want to do that?"

"I don't know.  You'll have to ask her, when she comes in."

You're not afraid of her?" oh no.  Are you?"

"Well, if she tried to drown me..."

"She won't do that again, if you stay with me.  She likes me and if she
knows I like you she won't hurt you." That's good to know," Gentle said.
"What would she think if we were to leave here tonight?"

We can't do that."

Why not?" :I don't want to go up there," she said.. "I don't like it."
Everybody's asleep,, he said.. "We could just tiptoe away.  You and me
and my friends.  That wouldn't be so bad, would it?" She looked
unpersuaded.. "I think your Papa would like us to go to Yzordderrex.
Have you ever been there?"

When I was very little."

We could go again."

Huzzah shook her head.. "The Cradle Lady won't let us, she said.

, She might, if she knew that was what you wanted.  why don't we go up
and have a took?"

Huzzah glanced back towards the wall, as if she was expecting TishalulWs
tide to crack the stone there and then.  When nothing happened, she
said. "Yzordderrex is a very long way, isn't it?"

"It's quite a journey, yes."

"I've read about it in my books."

"Why don't you put on some warm clothes?" Gentle said.

Her doubts banished by the tacit approval of the Goddess, Huzzah got up,
and went to select some clothes from her meagre wardrobe, which hung
from hooks on the opposite wall.  Gentle took the opportunity to glance
through the small stack of books at the end of the bed.

MW Several were entertainments for children, keepsakes, perhaps, of
happier times; one was a hefty encyclopaedia by someone called
Maybellome, which might have made informative reading under other
circumstances, but was too densely printed to be skimmed and too heavy
to be taken along.  There was a volume of poems that read like nonsense
rhymes, and what appeared to be a novel, Huzzah's place in it marked
with a slip of paper.  He pocketed it when her back was turned, as much
for himself as her, then went to the door in the hope that Aping and
Scopique were within sighting distance.  There was no sign.  Huzzah had
meanwhile finished dressing.

"I'm ready," she said.. "Shall we go?  Papa will find us.. "I hope so,"
Gentle replied.

Certainly remaining in the cell was a waste of valuable time.  Huzzah
asked if she could take Gentle's hand, to which he said of course, and
together they began to thread their way through the passageways, all of
which looked bewilderingly alike in the semi-darkness.  Their progress
was halted several times when the sound of boots on stone announced the
proximity of guards, but Huzzah was as alive to their danger as Gentle,
and twice saved them from discovery.

And then, as they climbed the final flight of stairs that would bring
them out into the open air, a din erupted not that far from them.

They both froze, drawing back into the shadows, but they weren't the
cause of the commotion.  It was Washap's voice that came echoing along
the corridor, accompanied by a dreadful hammering.  Gentle's first
thought was of Pie, and before common sense could intervene he'd broken
cover, and was heading towards the source of the sound, glancing back
once to signal that Huzzah should stay where she was, only to

find that she was already on his heels.  He recognized the passageway
ahead.  The open door twenty yards from where he stood was the door of
the cell he'd left Pie in.  And it was from there that the sound of
Washap's voice emerged, a garbled stream of insults and accusations that
was already bringing guards running.  Gentle drew a deep breath,
preparing for the violence that was surely inevitable now.

"No further," he told Huzzah, then raced towards the open door.

Three guards, two of the Oethacs, were approaching from the opposite
direction, but only one of the two had his eyes on Gentle.  The man
shouted an order which Gentle didn't catch over N'ashap's cacophony, but
Gentle raised his arms, open-palmed, fearful that the man would get
trigger-happy, and at the same time slowed his run to a walk.  He was
within ten paces of the door, but the guards were there ahead of him.
There was a brief exchange with Washap, during which Gentle had time to
halve the distance between himself and the door, but a second order -
this time plainly a demand that he stand still, and backed up by the
guard's training his weapon at Gentle's heart - brought him to a halt.

He'd no sooner done so than N'ashap emerged from the cell, with one hand
in Pie's ringlets, and the other holding his sword, a gleaming sweep of
steel, to the mystif's belly.  The scars on Washap's swollen head were
inflamed by the drink in his system, the rest of his skin dead white,
almost waxen.  He reeled as he stood in the doorway, all the more
dangerous for his lack of equilibrium.  The mystif had proved in New
York it could survive traumas that would have laid any human dead in the
gutter.  But N'ashap's blade was ready to gut it like a fish, and
there'd be no surviving that.  The Commander's tiny eyes fixed as best
they could on Gentle.

"Your mystif's very faithful all of a sudden," he panted.. "Why's that?
First it comes looking for me, then it won't let me near it.  Maybe it
needs your permission, is that it?

So give it." He pushed the blade against Pie's belly.. "Go on.  Tell it
to be friendly, or it's dead:

Gentle lowered his hands a little, very slowly, as if in an attempt to
appeal to Pie.. "I don't think we have much choice," he said, his eyes
going between the mystif's impassive face and the sword poised at its
belly, putting the time it would take for a pneuma to blow N'ashap's
head off against the speed of the Captain's blade.  N'ashap was not the
only player in the scene, of course.  There were three guards already
here, all armed, and doubtless more on their way.

"You'd better do what he wants," Gentle said, drawing a deep breath as
he finished speaking.

Washap saw him do so, and saw too his hand going to his mouth.  Even
drunk, he sensed his danger, and loosed a shout to the men in the
passageway behind him, stepping out of their line of fire, and Gentle's,
as he did so.

Denied one target, Gentle unleashed his breath against the other.  The
pneuma flew at the guards as their trigger fingers tightened, striking
the nearest with such violence his chest erupted.  The force of the blow
threw the body back against the other two.  One went down immediately,
his weapon flying from his hand.  The other was momentarily blinded by
blood and a shrapnel of innards, but was quick to regain his balance,
and would have blown Gentle's head off had his target not been on the
move, flinging himself towards the corpse.  The guard fired once wildly,
but before he could fire again Gentle had snatched up the dropped weapon
and answered the fire with his own.  The guard had enough Oethac blood
to be indifferent to the bullets that came his way, till one found his
spattered eye, and blew it out.

He shrieked, and fell back, dropping his gun to clamp both hands to the
wound.

Ignoring the third man, still moaning on the floor, Gentle went to the
cell door.  Inside, Captain N'ashap stood face to face with Pie'oh'pah.
The mystif's hand was on the blade.  Blood ran from the sliced palm, but
the Commander was making no attempt to do further damage.  He was
staring at Pie's face, his own expression perplexed.

Gentle halted, knowing any intervention on his part would snap N'ashap
out of his distracted state.  Whoever he was seeing in Pie's place - the
whore who resembled his mother, perhaps?: another echo of TishaluU, in
this place of lost mamas - it was sufficient to keep the blade from
removing the mystif's fingers.

Tears began to well in N'ashap's eyes.  The mystif didn't move, nor did
its gaze flicker from the Captain's face for an instant.  It seemed to
be winning the battle between N'ashap's desire and his murderous
intention.  His hand 7 un knotted from around the sword.  The mystif
opened its own fingers, and the weight of the sword carried it out J of
the Captain's grip to the ground.  The noise it made striking the stone
was too loud to go unheard by Washap, however entranced he was, and he
shook his head violently, his gaze going instantly from Pie's face to
the weapon that had fallen between them.

The mystif was quick; at the door in two strides.  Gentle drew breath,
but as his hand went to his mouth he heard a shriek from Huzzah.

He glanced down the corridor towards the child, who was retreating
before two more guards, both Oethacs, one snatching at her as she fled,
the other with his sights on Gentle.  Pie seized his arm and dragged him
back from the door as Washap, still rising as he came, ran at them with
his sword.  The time to dispatch him with a pneuma had passed.  All
Gentle had space to do was seize the door-handle and slam the cell
closed.  The key was in the lock, and. he turned it as Washap's bulk
slammed against the other side.

Huzzah was running now, her pursuer between the second guard and his
target.  Tossing the gun to Pie, w!  Gentle went to snatch Huzzah up
before the Oethac took her.  She was in his arms with a stride to spare,
and he flung them both aside to give Pie a clear line of fire.  The
pursuing Oethac realized his jeopardy, and went for his own weapon.

Gentle looked round at Pie.

"Kill the fuckeff he yelled, but the mystif was staring at the gun in
its hand as though it had found shite there.. "Pie!  For Christ's sake!

Kill them!'

Now the mystif raised the gun, but still it seemed incapable of pulling
the trigger.

"Do it!" Gentle yelled.

The mystif shook his head, however, and would have lost them all their
lives had two clean shots not struck the back of the guards' necks,
dropping them both to the ground.

"Papa!" Huzzah said.

it was indeed the Sergeant, with Scopique in tow, who emerged through
the smoke.  His eyes weren't on his daughter, whom he'd just saved from
death.  They were on the soldiers he'd dispatched to do so.  He looked
traumatized by the deed.  Even when Huzzah went to him, sobbing with
relief and fear, he barely noticed her.  It wasn't until Gentle shook
him from his daze of guilt, saying they should get going while they had
half a chance, that he spoke.

"They were my men," he said.

"And this is your daughter," Gentle replied.. "You made the right
choice."

N'ashap was still battering at the cell door, yelling for help.  It
could only be moments before he got it.

"What's the quickest way out," Gentle asked Scopique.

"I want to let the others out first," Scopique replied.. "Father
Athanasius, Izaak, Squalling -'

"There's not time," Gentle said.. "Tell him, Pie!  We have to go now or
not at all.  Pie?  Are you with us?. "Yes .  .

"Then stop dreaming and let's get going:

Still protesting that they couldn't leave the rest under lock and key,
Scopique led the quintet up by a back way into the night air.  They'd
come out not on to the parapet but on to bare rock.

"Which way now?" Gentle asked.  There was already a proliferation of
shouts from below.

N'ashap had doubtless

been liberated, and would be ordering a full alert.. "We have to head
for the nearest landfall."

"That's the peninsula," Scopique said, redirecting Gentle's gaze across
the Cradle towards an arm of low lying land that was barely discernible
in the murk of the night.

That murk was their best ally now.  If they moved fast enough it would
cloak them before their pursuers even knew which direction they'd headed
in.  There was a beetling pathway down the island's face to the shore,
and Gentle led the way, aware that every one of the four who were
following was a liability: Huzzah a child, her father still racked by
guilt, Scopique casting backward glances, and Pie still dazed by the
bloodshed.  This last was odd in a creature he'd first encountered in
the guise of assassin, but then this journey had changed them both.

As they reached the shore Scopique said. "I'm sorry.  I can't go.  You
all head on.  I'm going to try and get back in and let the others out."

Gentle didn't attempt to persuade him otherwise.. "If that's what you
want to do, good luck," he said.. "We have to go.,

"Of course you do!  Pie, I'm sorry, my friend, but I couldn't live with
myself if I turned my back on the others.  We've suffered too long
together." He took the mystif's hand.. "Before you say it, I'll stay
alive.  I know my duty, and I'll be ready when the time comes."

"I know you will," the mystif replied, drawing the handshake into an
embrace.

"It will be soon," Scopique said.

"Sooner than I'd wish," Pie replied, then, leaving Scopique to head back
up the cliff-face, joined Gentle, Huzzah and Aping, who were already ten
yards from the shore.

The exchange between Pie and Scopique - with its intimation of a shared
agenda hitherto kept secret - had not gone un noted by Gentle; nor would
it go unquestioned.  But this was not the time.

They had at least half

a dozen miles to travel before they reached the peninsula, and there was
already a swell of noise from behind them, signa Iling pursuit.
Torch-beams raked the shore as the first of Washap's troops emerged to
give chase, and from within the walls of the asylum rose the din of the
prisoners, finally giving voice to their rage.  That, like the murk,
might confound the hounds, but not for long.

The torches had found Scopique, and the beams now scanned the shore he'd
been ascending from, each sweep wider than the one that preceded it.
Aping had picked Huzzah up, which speeded their progress somewhat, and
Gentle was just beginning to think that they might stand a chance of
survival when one of the torches caught them.  It was weak at such a
distance, but strong enough that its light picked them out.  Gunfire
followed immediately.

They were difficult targets, however, and the bullets went well wide.

"They'll catch us now," Aping gasped.. "We should surrender." He set his
daughter down," and threw his gun to the ground, turning to spit his
accusations in Gentle's face.. "Why did I ever listen to you?  I was
crazy."

"If we stay here they'll shoot us on the spot," Gentle replied.. "Huzzah
as well.  Do you want that?"

"They won't shoot us," he said, taking hold of Huzzah with one hand and
raising the other to catch the beams.. "Don't shoot!" he yelled.. "Don't
shoot!  Captain?  Captain!  Sir!  We surrender!'

"Fuck this," Gentle said, and reached to haul Huzzah from her father's
grip.

She went into Gentle's arms readily, but Aping wasn't about to
relinquish her so easily.

He turned to snatch her back, and as he did so a bullet struck the ice
at their feet.  He let Huzzah go, and turned to attempt a second appeal.
Two shots cut him short, the first striking his leg, the second his
chest.  Huzzah let out a shriek, and wrenched herself from Gentle's
hold, dropping to the ground at her father's head.

The seconds they'd lost in Aping's surrender and death

were the difference between the slimmest hope of escape and none.  Any
one of the twenty or so troops advancing upon them now could pick them
off at this distance.   Even Washap, who was leading the group, his
walk still unsteady, could scarcely have failed to bring them down.

"What now?" said Pie.

"We have to stand our ground," Gentle replied.. "We've got no choice."

That very ground, however, was no steadier than  4 Yashap's walk. Though
this Dominion's suns were in another hemisphere, and there was only
midnight from horizon to horizon, a tremor was moving through the frozen
Sea that both Pie and Gentle recognized from almost fatal experience.
Huzzah felt it too.  She raised her head, her sobs quietening.

"The Lady .  .  ." she murmured.. "What about her?" said Gentle.. "She's
near us."

Gentle put out his hand, and Huzzah took it.  As she got up she scanned
the ground.  So did he.  His heart had started to pound furiously, as
the memories of the Cradle's liquefaction flooded back.

"Can you stop her?" he murmured to Huzzah.

"She's not come for us," the girl said, and her gaze went from the still
solid ground beneath their feet to the group that Yashap was still
leading in their direction.

job Goddess.  Gentle said.

A cry of alarm was rising from the middle of the approaching pack.  One
of the torch-beams went wild: then another, and another, as one by one
the soldiers realized their jeopardy.  N'ashap let out a shout himself:
a demand for order amongst his troops that went un obeyed  It was
difficult to see precisely what was going on, but Gentle could imagine
it well enough.

The ground was softening, and the Cradle's silver waters bubbling up
around their feet.  One of the men fired into the air as the Sea's shell
broke beneath him; another two or three started back towards the island,
only to find their panic

excited a quicker dissolution.  They went down as if snatched by sharks,
silver spume fountaining where they'd stood.

Yashap was still attempting to preserve some measure of command, but it
was a lost cause.

Realizing this, he began to fire towards the trio, but with the ground
rocking beneath him, and the beams no longer trained on his targets, he
was virtually shooting blind.

"We should get out of here," Gentle said.  But Huzzah had better advice.

"She won't hurt us if we're not afraid," she said.

Gentle was half-tempted to reply that he was indeed afraid, but he kept
his silence and his place, despite the fact that the evidence of his
eyes suggested the Goddess had no patience with dividing the bad from
the misguided, or the unrepentant from the prayerful.  All but four of
their pursuers - N'ashap numbered amongst them - had already been
claimed by the Sea, some gone beneath the tide entirely, others still
struggling to reach some solid place.  Gentle saw one man scrambling up
out of the water, only to have the ground he was crawling up on to
liquefy beneath him with such speed the Cradle had closed over him
before he had time to screa

in

Another went down shouting at the water that was bubbling up around him,
the last sight of him his gun, held high and still firing.

All the torch-carriers had succumbed now, and the only illumination was
from the cliff-top, where soldiers who'd had the luck to be left behind
were training their beams on the massacre, throwing into silhouette the
figures of N'ashap and the other three survivors, one of whom was making
an attempt to race towards the solid ground where Gentle, Pie and Huzzah
stood.  His panic undid him.  He'd only run five strides when silvery
foam bubbled up in front of him.  He turned to retrace his steps, but
the route had already gone to seething silver.  in desperation he flung
away his weapons and attempted to leap to safety, but fell short, and
went from sight in an instant.

pi

One of the remaining trio, an Oethac, had fallen to his knees to pray,
which merely brought him closer to his executioner, who drew him down in
the throes of his imprecation, giving him time only to snatch at his
comrade's leg and pull him down at the same time.  The seething place
where they'd vanished did not cease to seethe, but redoubled its fury
now.  Washap, the last alive, turned to face it, and as he did so the
Sea rose up like a fountain, until it was half his height again.

"Lady .  .  ." Huzzah said.

It was.  Carved in water, a breasted body, and a face dancing with
glints and glimmers: the Goddess, or her image made of her native stuff,
then gone the same instant as it broke and dropped upon Washap.  He was
borne down so quickly, and the Cradle left rocking so placidly the
instant after, it was as though his mother had never made him.

Slowly, Huzzah turned to Gentle.  Though her father was dead at her
feet, she was smiling in the gloom, the first open smile Gentle had seen
on her face.

"The Cradle Lady came," she said.

They waited a while, but there were no further visitations.  What the
Goddess had done whether it was to save the child, as Huzzah would
always believe, or because circumstance had put within Her reach the
forces that had tainted Her Cradle with their cruelty - she had done
with an economy she wasn't about to spoil with gloating or sentiment.
She closed the Sea with the same efficiency she'd employed to open it,
leaving the place unmarked.

There was no further attempt at pursuit from the guards left on the
cliff, though they kept their places, torches piercing the murk.

"We've got a lot of Sea to cross before dawn," Pie said.. "We don't want
the suns coming up before we reach the peninsula."

Huzzah took Gentle's hand.

"Did Papa ever tell you where we're going in Yzordderrex?. "No," he
said.. "But we'll find the house."

She didn't look back at her father's body, but fixed her eyes on the
grey bulk of the distant headland, and went without a complaint,
sometimes smiling to herself, as she remembered that the night had
brought her a glimpse of a parent that would never again desert her.

T

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The territory that lay between the shores of the Cradle and the limits
of the Third Dominion had been, until the Autarch's intervention, the
site of a natural wonder universally held to mark the centre of the
Imajica: a column of perfectly hewn and polished rock to which as   f
many names and powers had been ascribed as there were shamans, poets and
storytellers to be moved by it.  There was no community within the
Reconciled Dominions that had not enshrined it in their mythology, and
found an epithet to mark it as their own.  But its truest name was also
perhaps its plainest: the Pivot.  Controversy had raged for centuries
about whether the Unbeheld had set it down in the smoky wastes of the
Kwern to mark the midpoint between the perimeters of the Imajica, or
whether a forest of such columns had once stood in the area, and some
later hand (moved perhaps, by Hapex    A

amen dios wisdom) had levelled all but this one.

Whatever the arguments about its origins, however, nobody had ever
contested the power that it had accrued standing at the centre of the
Dominions.  Lines of thought had passed across the Kwem for centuries,
carrying a freight of force which the Pivot had drawn to itself with a
magnetism that was virtually irresistible.  By the time the Autarch came
into the Third Dominion, having already established his particular brand
of dictatorship in Yzordderrex, the Pivot was the single most powerful
object in the Imajica.  He laid his plans for it brilliantly, returning
to the palace he was still building in Yzordderrex and adding several
features the purpose of which did not become apparent until almost two
years later when,

acting with the kind of speed that usually attends a coup, he had the
Pivot toppled, transported and set in a tower in his palace before the
blood of those who might have raised objections to this sacrilege was
dry.

Overnight, the geography of the Imajica was transformed.  Yzordderrex
became the heart of the Dominions.  Thereafter, there would be no power,
either secular or  M sacred, that did not originate in that city; there
would be no crossroads sign in any of the Reconciled Dominions that did
not carry its name, nor any highway that did not have upon it somewhere
a petitioner or penitent who'd turned their eyes towards Yzordderrex in
hope of salvation.  Prayers were still uttered in the name of the
Unbeheld, and blessings murmured in the forbidden names of the
Goddesses, but Yzordderrex was the true Lord now, the Autarch its mind
and the Pivot its phallus.

One hundred and seventy-nine years had passed since the day the Kwem had
lost its great wonder, but the Autarch still made pilgrimages into the
wastes when he felt the need for solitude.  Some years after the removal
of the Pivot he'd had a small palace built close to the place where it
had stood, spartan by comparison with the architectural excesses of the
folly that crowned Yzordderrex.  This was his retreat in confounding
times, where he could meditate upon the sorrows of absolute power,
leaving his Military High Command, the generals who ruled the Dominions
on his behalf, to do so under the eye of his once beloved Queen,
Quaisoir.  Lately she had developed a taste for repression that was
waning in him, and he'd several times thought of retiring to the palace
in the Kwem permanently and leaving her to rule in his stead, given that
she took so much more pleasure from it than he.  But such dreams were an
indulgence, and he knew it.  Though he ruled the Imajica invisibly - not
one soul outside the circle of twenty or so who dealt with him daily
would have known him from any other white man with a taste in good
clothes - his vision had shaped the

rise of Yzordderrex, and no other would ever competently replace it.

On days like this, however, with the cold air off the Lenten Way whining
in the spires of the Kwem Palace, he wished he could send the mirror he
met in the morning back to Yzordderrex in his place, and let his
reflection rule.  Then he could stay here, and think about the distant
past.  England in midsummer.  The streets of London bright with rain
when he woke, the fields outside the city peaceful, and buzzing with
bees.  Scenes which he pictured longingly when he was in elegiac mood.
Such moods seldom lasted long, however.  He was too much of a realist,
and he demanded truth from his memory.

Yes, there had been rain, but it had come with such venom it had bruised
every fruit it hadn't beaten from the bough.  And the hush of those
fields had been a battlefield's hush, the murmur not trees but flies,
come to find laying places.

His life had begun that summer, and his early days had been filled with
signs not of love and fruitfulness, but of Apocalypse.  There wasn't a
preacher in the park who didn't have Revelations by heart that year, nor
a whore in Drury Lane who wouldn't have told you she'd seen the Devil
dancing on the midnight roofs.  How could those days not have influenced
him: filled him with a horror of imminent destruction; given him an
appetite for order, for law, for Empire?  He was a child of his times,
and if they'd made him cruel in his pursuit of system was that his fault
or that of the age?

The tragedy lay not in the suffering that was an inevitable consequence
of any social movement, but in the fact that his achievements were now
in jeopardy from forces that - if they won the day - would return the
Imajica to the chaos from which he had brought it, undoing his work in a
fraction of the time it had taken for it to be achieved.  If he was to
suppress these subversive elements he had a limited number of options,
and after the events in Patashoqua, and the uncovering of plots

against him, he had retreated to the quiet of the Kwem

442 Palace to decide between them.  He could continue to treat the
rebellions, strikes and uprisings as minor irritations, limiting his
reprisals to small but eloquent acts of suppression, such as the burning
of the village of Beatrix, or the trials and executions at Vanaeph. This
route had two significant disadvantages.  The most recent attempt upon
his life, though still inept, was too close for comfort, and until every
last radical and revolutionary had been silenced or dissuaded, he would
be in danger.  Furthermore, when his whole reign had been dotted with
episodes that had required some measured brutalities, would this new
spate of purges and suppressions make any significant mark?

Perhaps it was time for a more ambitious vision.  Cities put under
martial law; Tetrarchs imprisoned so that their corruptions could be
exposed in the name of a just Yzordderrex; governments toppled, and
resistance met with the full might of the Second Dominion's armies.

Maybe Patashoqua would have to burn the way Beatrix had.  Or L'Himby,
and its wretched Temples.

If such a route were followed successfully, the slate would be wiped
clean.  If not - if his advisers had underestimated the scale of unrest,
or the quality of leaders amongst the rabble - then he might find the
circle closing, and the Apocalypse into which he'd been born that
faraway summer coming around again, here in the heart of his promised
land.  What then, if Yzordderrex burned instead of Patashoqua?  Where
would he go for comfort?  Back to England, perhaps?  Did the house in
Clerkenwell still stand, he wondered, and if so were its rooms still
sacred to the workings of desire; or had the Maestro's undoing scoured
them to the last board and nail?  The questions tantalized him.  As he
sat and pondered them he found a curiosity in his core - no, more than a
curiosity; an appetite - to discover what the Unreconciled Dominion was
like almost two centuries after his creation.

His musings were interrupted by Rosengarten, a name he'd bequeathed to
the man in the spirit of irony, for a

more infertile thing never walked.  Piebald from a disease caught in the
swamps of Loquiot in the throes of which he had unmanned himself,
Rosengarten lived for duty.  Amongst the Generals he was the only one
who didn't sin with some excess against the austerity of these rooms. He
spoke and moved quietly; he didn't stink of perfumes; he never drank; he
never ate kreauchee.  He was a perfect emptiness, and the only man the
Autarch completely trusted.

He had come with news, and told it plainly.  The asylum on the Sea of
Chzercemit had been the scene of a rebellion.  Almost all of the
garrison had been killed, under circumstances which were still under
investigation, and the bulk of the prisoners had escaped, led by an
individual called Scopique.

"How many were there?" the Autarch asked.

"I have a list, sir," Rosengarten replied, opening the file he'd brought
with him.. "There are fifty-one individuals unaccounted for, most of
them religious dissidents.. "Women?. "None."

"We should have had them executed, not locked them away

"Several of them would have welcomed martyrdom, sir.  The decision to
incarcerate them was taken with that in mind."

"And so now they'll return to their flocks and preach revolution all
over again.  This we must stop.  How many of them were active in
Yzordderrex?. "Nine.  Including Father Athanasius.. "Athanasius?  Who
was he?"

"The Dearther, who claimed he was the Christos.  He had a congregation
near the harbour.. "Then that's where he'll return presumably.. "It
seems likely.. "All of them'll go back to their flocks, sooner or later.

We must be ready for them.  No arrests.  No trials.  Just have them
quietly dispatched."

"Yes sir."

"I don't want Quaisoir informed of this."

"I think she already knows, sir."

"Then she must be prevented from anything showy.. "I understand."

"Let's do this discreetly."

"There is something else, sir."

"What's that?"

"There were two other individuals on the island before the rebellion . .

"What about them?"

"It's difficult to know exactly what to make of the report.  One of them
appears to have been a mystif.  The description of the other may be of
interest .  .

He passed the report to the Autarch, who scanned it quickly at first,
then more intently.

"How reliable is this?" he asked Rosengarten.

"At this juncture I don't know.  The descriptions were corroborated, but
I haven't interrogated the men personally.

"Do so."

"Yes, sir."

He handed the report back to Rosengarten.. "How many people have seen
this?"

"I had all other copies destroyed as soon as I read it.  I believe only
the interrogating officers, their Commander and myself have been party
to this information."

"I want every one of the survivors from the garrison silenced.
Court-martial them all, and throw away the key.  The officers and the
Commander must be instructed that they will be held accountable for any
leakage of this information, from any source.  Such leakage to be
punishable by death."

"Yes, sir."

"As for the mystif and the stranger, we must assume they're making their
way to the Second Dominion.  First Beatrix, now the Cradle.

Their destination must be Yzordderrex.  How many days since this
uprising?"

"Eleven, sir."

"Then they'll be in Yzordderrex in a matter of days, even if they're
travelling on foot.

Track them.  I'd like to know as much about them as I can." He looked
out of the window at the wastes of the Kwem.. "They probably took the
Lenten Way.  Probably passed within a few miles of here." There was a
subtle agitation in his voice.. "That's twice now our paths have come
close to crossing.  And now the witnesses, describing him so well.  What
does it mean, Rosengarten?  What does it mean?"

When the Commander had no answers, as now, he kept his silence: an
admirable trait.

"I don't know either," the Autarch said.. "Perhaps I should go out and
take the air.  I feel old today."

The hole from which the Pivot had been uprooted was still visible,
though the driving winds of the region had almost healed the scar.

Standing on the lips of the hole was a fine place to meditate on
absence, the Autarch had discovered.  He tried to do so now, his face
swathed in silk to keep the stinging gusts from his mouth and nostrils,
his long fur coat closely buttoned, and his gloved hands driven into his
pockets.  But the calm he'd always derived from such meditations escaped
him now.

Absence was a fine discipline for the spirit when the world's bounty was
a step away, and boundless.  Not so now.  Now it reminded him of an
emptiness that he both feared, and feared to be filled, like the haunted
place at the shoulder of a twin who'd lost its other in the womb.

However high he built his fortress walls, however tightly he sealed his
soul, there was one who would always have access, and that thought
brought palpitations.  This other knew him as well as he knew himself:
his frailties, his desires, his hie hest ambition.  Their business
together - most of it bloody had remained unrevealed and unrevenged for
two centuries, but he had never persuaded himself that it would remain
so forever.  it would be finished, at last; and soon.

Though the cold could not reach his flesh through his

coat, the Autarch shuddered at the prospect.  He had lived for so long
like a man who walked perpetually in the noonday sun, his shadow falling
neither in front of him nor behind.  Prophets could not predict him, nor
accusers catch his crimes.  He was inviolate.  But that would change
now.  When he and his shadow met - as they inevitably would - the weight
of a thousand prophecies and accusations would fall upon them both.

He pulled the silk from his face, and let the eroding wind assault him.
There was no purpose in staying here any longer.  By the time the wind
had remade his features he would have lost Yzordderrex, and even though
that seemed like a small forfeit now, in the space of hours it might be
the only prize he'd be able to preserve from destruction.

If the divine engineers who had raised the Jokalaylau had one night set
their most ambitious peak between a desert and an ocean, and returned
the next night and for a century of nights thereafter to carve its
steeps and sheers from foothills to clouded heights with lowly
habitations and magnificent plazas, with streets, bastions and pavilions
- and if, having carved, they had set in the core of that mountain a
fire that smouldered but never burned - then their handiwork, when
filled to overflowing with every manner of life, might have deserved
comparison with Yzordderrex.  But given that no such masterwork had ever
been devised, the city stood without parallel throughout the Imajica.

The travellers' first sight of it came as they crossed the causeway that
skipped like a well-aimed stone across the delta of the River Noy,
rushing in twelve white torrents to meet the sea.  it was early morning
when they arrived, the fog off the river conspiring with the uneasy
light of dawn to keep the city from sight until they were so close

to it that when the fog was snatched the sky was barely visible, the
desert and the sea no more than marginal, and all the world was suddenly
Yzordderrex.

As they'd walked the Lenten Way passing from the Third Dominion into the
Second, Huzzah had recited all she'd read about the city from her
father's books.  One of the writers had described Yzordderrex as a god,
she reported, a notion Gentle had thought ludicrous until he set his
eyes upon it.  Then he understood what the urban theologian had been
about, deifying this termite-hill.  Yzordderrex was worthy of worship;
and millions were daily performing the ultimate act of veneration,
living on or within the body of their Lord.  Their dwellings clung like
a million panicked climbers to the cliffs above the harbour, and
teetered on the plateaus that rose, her on her, towards the summit, many
so crammed with houses that those closest to the edge had to be
buttressed from below, the buttresses in turn encrusted with nests of
life, winged perhaps, or else suicidal.  Everywhere, the mountain
teemed, its streets of steps, lethally precipitous, leading the eye from
one brimming shelf to another: from leafless boulevards lined with fine
mansions to gates that let on to shadowy arcades, then up to the city's
six summits, on the highest of which stood the palace of the Autarch of
the Imajica.  There was an abundance of a different order here, for the
palace had more domes and towers than Rome, their obsessive elaboration
visible even at this distance.  Rising above them all, the Pivot Tower,
as plain as its fellows were baroque.  And high above that again,
hanging in the white sky above the city, the Comet that brought the
Dominion's long days and languid dusks: Yzordderrex's star, called
Gless, the Witherer.

They stood for only a minute or so to admire the sight.  The daily
traffic of workers who, having found no place of residence on the back
or in the bowels of the city, commuted in and out daily, had begun, and
by the time the newcomers reached the other end of the causeway

they were lost in a dusty throng of vehicles, bicycles, rickshaws and
pedestrians all making their way into Yzordderrex.

Three amongst tens of thousands.  A scrawny young girl wearing a wide
smile; a white man, perhaps once handsome but sickly now, his pale face
half lost behind a ragged brown beard; and a Eurhetemec mystif, its
eyes, like so many of its breed, barely concealing a private grief.  The
crowd bore them forward, and they went unresisting where countless
multitudes had gone before: into the belly of the city-god Yzordderrex.

CHAPTER THIRTY

When Dowd brought Judith back to Godolphin's house after the murder of
Clara Leash it was not as a free agent but as a prisoner.  She was
confined to the bedroom she'd first occupied, and there she waited for
Oscar's return.  When he came in to see her it was after a half-hour
conversation with Dowd (she heard the murmur of their exchange, but not
its substance), and he told her as soon as he appeared that he had no
wish to debate on what had happened.  She'd acted against his best
interests, which were finally - did she not realize this yet?  - against
her own too, and he would need time to think about the consequences for
them both.

"I trusted you," he said.. "More than I've ever trusted any woman in my
life.  You betrayed me, exactly the way Dowd predicted you would.  I
feel foolish, and I feel hurt.. "Let me explain.  .  ." she said.

He raised his hands to hush her.. "I don't want to hear," he said.
"Maybe in a few days we'll talk, but not now."

Her sense of loss at his retreat was almost overwhelmed by the anger she
felt at his dismissal of her.  Did he believe her feelings for him were
so trivial she'd not concerned herself with the consequences of her
actions on them both?  or worse: had Dowd convinced him that she'd been
planning to betray him from the outset, and she'd calculated everything
- the seduction, the confessions of devotion - in order to weaken him?
This latter scenario was the likelier of the two, but it didn't expunge
Oscar of guilt.  He had still failed to give her a chance to justify
herself.

She didn't see him for three days.  Her food was served

in her room by Dowd, and there she waited, hearing Oscar come and go,
and on occasion hints of conversation on the stairs, enough to gather
the impression that the Tabula Rasa's purge was reaching a critical
point.

More than once she contemplated the possibility that what she'd been up
to with Clara Leash made her a potential victim, and that day by day
Dowd was eroding Oscar's reluctance to dispatch her.  Paranoia perhaps;
but if he had any scrap of feeling for her why didn't he come and see
her?  Didn't he pine, the way she did?  Didn't he want her in his bed,
for the animal comfort of it if nothing else?  Several times she asked
Dowd to tell Oscar she needed to speak with him, and Dowd who affected
the detachment of a gaoler with a thousand other such prisoners to deal
with daily - had said he'd do his best, but he doubted that Mr Godolphin
would want to have any dealings with her.  Whether the message was
communicated or not, Oscar left her solitary in her confinement, and she
realized that unless she took more forcible action she might never see
daylight again.

Her escape plan was simple.  She forced the lock on her bedroom door
with a knife unreturned after one of her meals it wasn't the lock that
kept her from straying, it was Dowd's warning that the mites which had
murdered Clara were ready to claim her if she attempted to leave and
slipped out on to the landing.  She'd deliberately waited until Oscar
was home before she made the attempt, believing, perhaps naively, that
despite his withdrawal of affection he'd protect her from Dowd if her
life was threatened.  She was sorely tempted to seek him out there and
then.  But perhaps it would be easier to treat with him when she was
away from the house, and felt more like a mistress of her own destiny.
if, once she was safely away from the house, he chose to have no further
contact with her, then her fear that Dowd had soured his feelings
towards her permanently would be confirmed, and she would have to look
for another way to get to Yzordderrex.

She made her way down the stairs with the utmost caution, and, hearing
voices at the front of the house, decided to make her exit through the
kitchen.  The lights were burning everywhere, as usual.  The kitchen was
deserted.  She crossed quickly to the door, which was bolted top and
bottom, crouching to slide the lower bolt aside.  As she stood up Dowd
said. "You won't get out that way."

She turned to see him standing at the kitchen table, bearing a tray of
supper dishes.  His laden condition gave her hope that she might yet
out manoeuvre him, and she made a dash for the hallway.  But he was
faster than she'd anticipated, setting down his burden and moving to
stop her so quickly she had to retreat again, her hand catching one of
the glasses on the table.  it fell, smashing musically.

"Now look what you've done," he said, with what seemed to be genuine
distress.  He crossed to the shards, and bent down to gather them up.
"That glass had been in the family for generations.  I'd have thought
you'd have had some fellow feeling for it."

Though she was in no temper to talk about broken glasses, she replied
nevertheless, knowing her only hope lay in alerting Godolphin to her
presence.

"Why should I give a damn about a glass?" she said.

Dowd picked up a piece of the bowl, holding it up to the light.

"You've got so much in common lovey," he said.. "Both made in ignorance
of yourselves.

Beautiful, but fragile." He stood up.. "You've always been beautiful.
Fashions come and go, but Judith is always beautiful."

"You don't know a damn thing about me," she said.

He put the shards on the table beside the rest of the dirty plates and
cutlery.

"Oh but I do," he said.. "We're more alike than you realize."

He'd kept a glittering fragment back, and as he spoke he put it to his
wrist.  She only just had time to register what he was about to do
before he cut into his own flesh.

She looked away, but then - hearing the piece of glass dropped amongst
the litter - glanced back.  The wound gaped, but there was no blood
forthcoming; just an ooze of brackish sap.  Nor was the expression on
Dowd's face pained.  It was simply intent.

"You have a piffling recall of the past," he said.. "I have too much.
You have heat.  I have none.  You're in love.  I've never understood the
word.  But Judith: we are the same.  Both slaves."

She looked from his face to the cut to his face to the cut to his face,
and with every move her panic increased.  She didn't want to hear any
more from him.  She despised him.  She closed her eyes and conjured him
at the voiders' pyre, and in the shadow of the Tower, crawling with
mites, but however many horrors she put between them his words won
through.  She'd given up attempting to solve the puzzle of herself a
long time ago, but here he was, spilling pieces she couldn't help but
pick up.

"Who are you?" she said to him.

"More to the point: who are you?"

"We're not the same," she said.. "Not even a little.  I bleed.  You
don't.  I'm human.  You're not."

"But is it your blood you bleed?" he said.. "Ask yourself that."

"It comes out of my veins.  Of course it's mine.. "Then who are you?" he
said.

The enquiry was made without overt malice, but she didn't doubt its
subversive purpose.

Somehow Dowd knew she was forgetful of her past, and was pricking her to
a confession.

"I know what I'm not," she said, earning herself the time to invent an
answer.. "I'm not a glass.  I'm not fragile or ignorant.  And I'm not

What was the other quality he'd mentioned besides beauty and fragility?
He'd been stooping to pick up the pieces of broken glass, and he
described her some way or other.

"You're not what?" he said, watching her wrestle with her own reluctance
to seize the memory.

She pictured him crossing the kitchen.  Now look what A you've done,
he'd said.

Then he'd stooped (she saw him do so, in her mind's eye) and as he'd
begun to pick up the pieces, the words had come to his lips.  And now to
her memory too.

"That glass had been in the family for generations," he'd said.. "I'd
have thought you'd have had some fellow feeling for it."

"No,, she said aloud, shaking her head to keep the sense of this from
congealing there.  But the motion only shook up other memories: of her
trip to the Estate with Charlie, when that pleasurable sense of
belonging had suffused her and voices had called her sweet names from
the past, of meeting Oscar on the threshold of the Retreat, and knowing
instantly she belonged at his side, without question, or care to
question; of the portrait above Oscar's bed, gazing down on the bed with
such a possessive stare he had turned off the light before they made
love.

As these thoughts came, the shaking of her head grew wilder, the motion
possessing her like a fit.  Tears spat from her eyes.  Her hands went
out for help even as the power to request it went from her throat.
Through a blur of motion she was just able to see Dowd standing beside
the table, his hand covering his wounded wrist, watching her
impassively.  She turned from him, terrified that she'd choke on her
tongue or break her head open if she fell, and knowing he'd do nothing
to help her.  She wanted to cry out for Oscar, but all that came was a
wretched gargling sound.  She stumbled forward, her head still
thrashing, and as she did so saw Oscar in the hallway, coming towards
her.  She pitched her arms in his direction, and felt his hands upon
her, to pull her up out of her collapse.

He failed.        c

He was beside her when she woke.  She wasn't lying in the narrow bed
she'd been consigned to for the last few nights but in the wide
fourposter in Oscar's room, the bed she'd come to think of as theirs. It
wasn't, of course.  Its true owner was the man whose image in oils had
come back to her in the throes of her fit: the Mad Lord Godolphin,
hanging above the pillows on which she lay, and sitting beside her in a
later variation, caressing her hand and telling her how much he loved
her.  As soon as she came to consciousness, and felt his touch, she
withdrew from it.

"I'm ...  not a pet," she struggled to say.. "You can't just ...  stroke
me when ...  it suits you."

He looked appalled.. "I apologize unconditionally," he said in his
gravest manner.. "I have no excuse.  I let the Society's business take
precedence over understanding you and caring for you.  That was
unforgivable.  Then Dowd, of course, whispering in my ear ...  Was he
very cruel?. "You're the one who's been cruel."

"I've done nothing intentionally.  Please believe that at least."

"You've lied to me over and over again," she said, struggling to sit up
in bed.. "You know things about me that I don't.  Why didn't you share
them with me?  I'm not a child."

"You've just had a fit," Oscar said.. "Have you ever had a fit before?"

"No.,

"Some things are better left alone, you see."

"Too late," she said.. "I've had my fit, and I survived it.  I'm ready
to hear the secret whatever it is." She glanced up at Joshua.. "It's
something to do with him, isn't it?  He's got a hold on you."

"Not on me .  .

"You liar!  You liar!" she said, throwing the sheets aside

and getting on to her knees, so that she was face to face with the
deceiver.. "Why do you tell me you love me one moment and he to me the
next?  Why don't you trust me?"

"I've told you more than I've ever told anybody.  But then I find you've
plotted against the Society."

"I've done more than plot," she said, thinking of her journey into the
cellars of the Tower.

Once again, she teetered on telling him what she'd seen, but Clara's
advice was there to keep her from falling.  You can't save Celestine and
keep his affections, she'd said, you're digging at the foundations of
his family and faith.  It was true.  She understood that more clearly
than ever.  And if she told him all she knew, pleasurable as that
unburdening would be, could she be absolutely certain that he wouldn't
cleave to his history at the last, and use what he knew against her?
What would Clara's death and Celestine's suffering have been worth then?
She was now their only agent in the living world, and she had no right
to gamble with their sacrifices.

"What have you done?" Oscar said.. "Besides plot?  What have you done?"
"You haven't been honest with me," she replied.. "Why should I tell you
anything?. "Because I can still take you to Yzordderrex," he said.

"Bribes now?. "Don't you want to go any longer?. "I want to know the
truth about myself more." He looked faintly saddened by this.. "Ah .  .
He sighed.

"I've been lying for so long I'm not sure I'd know the truth if I
tripped over it.  Except .  .

"Yes?. "What we felt for each other.  .  he murmured.. "At least, what I
feel for you ...  that was true, wasn't it?. "It can't be much," Jude
said.. "You locked me away.

You left me to Dow. "I've already explained

"Yes, you were distracted.  You had other business.  So you forgot me."

"No," he protested. "I never forgot.  Never, I swear."

"What then?"

"I was afraid."

"Of me?"

"Of everything.  You, Dowd, the Society.  I started to see plots
everywhere.  Suddenly the idea of you being in my bed seemed too much of
a risk.  I was afraid you'd smother me, or.  .  ."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it?  How can I be sure who you belong to?"

"I belong to myself."

He shook his head, his gaze going from her face up to the painting of
Joshua Godolphin that hung above the bed.

"How can you know that?" he said.. "How can you be certain that what you
feel for me comes from your heart?. "What does it matter where it comes
from?  It's there.  Look at me."

He refused her demand, his eyes still fixed on the Mad Lord.

"He's dead," she said.

"But his legacy

"Fuck his legacy!" she said, and suddenly got to her feet, taking hold
of the portrait by its heavy, gilded frame and wrenching it from the
wall.

Oscar rose to protest, but her vehemence carried the day.  The picture
came from its hooks with a single pull, and she summarily pitched it
across the room.  Then she dropped back on to the bed in front of Oscar.

"He's dead and gone," she said.. "He can't judge us.  He can't control
us.  Whatever it is we feel for each other and I don't pretend to know
what it is - it's ours." She put her hands to his face, her fingers
woven with his beard.. "Let go of the fears," she said.. "Take hold of
me instead." He put his arms around her.

"You're going to take me to Yzordderrex, Oscar.  Not in

a week's time, not in a few days: tomorrow.  I want to go A tomorrow. Or
else -' Her hands dropped from his face.

"Let me go now.  out of here.  Out of your life.  I won't be your
prisoner, Oscar.  Maybe his mistresses would put up with that, but I
won't.

I'll kill myself before I'll let you lock me up again."

She said all of this dry-eyed.  Simple sentiments, simply put.  He took
hold of her hands and raised them to his cheeks again, as if inviting
her to possess him.  His face was full of tiny creases she'd not seen
before, and they were bringing tears.

"We'll go," he said.

There was a balmy rain falling as they left London the next day, but by
the time they'd reached the Estate the sun was breaking through, and the
parkland gleamed around them as they entered.  They didn't make any
detours to the house, but headed straight to the copse that concealed
the Retreat.  There was a breeze in the branches, and they flickered
with light leaves.  The smell of life was everywhere, stirring her blood
for the journey ahead.

Oscar had advised her to dress with an eye to practicality and warmth.
The city, he said, was subject to rapid and radical shifts in
temperature, depending on the direction of the wind.  If it came off the
desert then the heat in the streets could bake the flesh like unleavened
bread.  And if it swung, and came off the ocean, then it brought
marrow-chilling fogs and sudden frosts.  None of this daunted her, of
course.  She was ready for this adventure as for no other in her life.

"I know I've wittered on endlessly about how dangerous the city's
become," Oscar said as they ducked beneath the low-slung branches, 'and
you're tired of hearing

about it, but this isn't a civilized city, Judith.  About the only man I
trust here is Peccable.  If for any reason we were to be separated - or
if anything were to happen to me - you can rely upon him for help."

"I understand."

Oscar stopped to admire the pretty scene ahead,

ed sunlight falling on the pale walls and dome of the Retreat.. "You
know, I used only to come here at night," he said.. "I thought that was
the sacred time, when magic had the strangest hold.  But it's not true.
Midnight mass and moonlight is fine, but miracles are here at noon as
well; just as strong, just as strange." He looked up at the canopy of
trees.. "Sometimes you have to go away from the world to see the world,"
he said.. "I went to Yzordderrex a few years back and stayed - oh, I
don't know, two months, maybe two and a half - and when I came back to
the Fifth I saw it like a child.  I swear, like a child.  This trip
won't just show you other Dominions.  If we get back safe and sound

"We will."

"Such faith.  If we do, this world will be different too.  Everything
changes after this, because you'll be changed.. "So be it," she said.

she took hold of his hand, and they started towards the Retreat.
Something made her uneasy however.  Not his words - his talk of change
had only excited her - but the hush between them perhaps, which was
suddenly deep.

'is there something wrong?" he said, feeling her grip tighten.

"The silence..."

"There's always an odd atmosphere here.  I've felt it before.  A lot of
fine souls died here, of course.. "At the Reconciliation?. "You know all
about that, do you?"

"From Clara.  It was two hundred years ago this midsummer, she said.
Perhaps the spirits are coming back to see if someone's going to try
again."

He stopped, tugging on her arm.. "Don't talk about it, even in jest.
Please.  There'll be no Reconciliation, this summer or any other.

The Maestros are dead.  The whole thing's -'

"All right," she said.. "Calm down, I won't mention it again."

"After this summer it'll be academic anyway," he said, with a feigned
lightness, 'at least for another couple of centuries.  I'll be dead and
buried long before this hoopla starts again.  I've got my plot, you
know?  I chose it with Peccable.  it's on the edge of the desert, with a
fine view of Yzordderrex."

His nervous babble concealed the quiet until they reached the door; then
he let it drop.

She was glad of the fact.  The place deserved more reverence.  Standing
at the step it wasn't difficult to believe phantoms gathered here: the
dead of centuries past mingling with those she'd last seen living on
this very spot.  Charlie for one, of course, coaxing her inside, telling
her with a smile that the place was nothing special, just stone; and the
voiders too, one burned, one skinned, both haunting the threshold.

"Unless you see any just impediment," Oscar said. "I think we should do
this."

He led her inside, to the middle of the mosaic.

"When the time comes," he said.. "We have to hold on to each other. Even
if you think there's nothing to hold on to, there is, it's just changed
for a time.  I don't want to lose you between here and there. The In
Ovo's no place to go wandering."

"You won't lose me," she said.

He went down on his haunches and dug into the mosaic, pulling from the
pattern a dozen or so pieces of pyramidical stone and size of two fists,
which had been so designed as to be virtually invisible when set in
their places.

"I don't fully understand the mechanisms that carry us over," he said as
he worked.. "I'm not sure anybody does completely.  But according to
Peccable there's a sort of

common language into which anybody can be translated.  And all the
processes of magic involve this translation." He was laying the stones
around the edge of the circle as he spoke, the arrangement seemingly
arbitrary.. "Once matter and spirit are in the same language, one can
influence the other in any number of ways.  Flesh and bone can be
transformed, transcended

I - or transported?,

"Exactly."

Jude remembered how the removal of a traveller from this world into
another looked from the outside: the flesh folding upon itself, the body
distorted out of all recognition.

"Does it hurt?" she said.

"At the beginning, but not badly."

"When will it begin?" she said.

He stood up.. "It already has," he said.

She felt it, as he spoke: a pressure in her bowels and bladder; a
tightness in her chest, that made her catch her breath.

"Breathe slowly," he said, putting his palm against her breast-bone.
"Don't fight it.  Just let it happen.  There's no harm going to come to
you."

She looked down at his hand, then beyond it to the circle that enclosed
them, and out through the door of the Retreat to the sunlit grass that
lay just a few paces from where she stood.  Close as it was, she
couldn't return there.

The train she'd boarded was gathering speed around her.  It was too late
for doubts or second thoughts.  She was trapped.

"It's all right," she heard Oscar say, but it didn't feel that way at
all.

There was a pain in her belly so sharp it felt as though she'd been
poisoned; and an ache in her head, and an itch too deep in her skin to
be scratched.  She looked at Oscar.  Was he enduring the same
discomforts?  if so he was bearing them with remarkable fortitude,
smiling at her like an anaesthetist.

"It'll be over soon," he was saying.. "Just hold on .  it'll be over
soon."

He drew her closer to him, and as he did so she felt a tingling pass
through her cells, as though a rainstorm was breaking inside her,
sluicing the pain away.

"Better?" he said, the word more shape than sound.

"Yes," she told him, and smiling, put her lips to his, closing her eyes
with pleasure as their tongues touched.

The darkness behind her lids was suddenly brightened by gleaming lines,
falling like meteors across her mind's eye.  She lifted her lids again,
but the spectacle came out of her skull, daubing Oscar's face with
streaks of brightness.  A dozen vivid hues picked out the furrows and
creases of his skin; another dozen, the geology of bone beneath; and
another, the lineaments of nerves and veins and vessels, to the tiniest
detail.  Then, as though the mind interpreting them had done with its
literal translation and could now rise to poetry, the layered maps of
his flesh simplified.  Redundancies and repetitions were discarded, the
forms that emerged so simple and so absolute the matter they represented
seemed wan by comparison, and receded before them.  Seeing this show,
she remembered the glyph she'd imagined when she and Oscar had first
made love; the spiral and curve of her pleasure laid on the velvet
behind her eyes.  Here was the same process again, only the mind
imagining them was the circle's mind, empowered by the stones, and by
the travellers'  J

demand for passage.

Z

A motion at the door distracted her gaze momentarily.  The air around
them was close to dropping its sham of sights altogether, and the scene
beyond the circle was blurred.  But there was enough colour in the suit
of the man at the threshold for her to know him even though she couldn't
make out his face.  Who else but Dowd wore that absurd shade of apricot?
She said his name, and though she heard no sound from her throat Oscar
understood her alarm, and turned towards the door.

Dowd was approaching the circle at speed, his intention

t

perfectly clear: to hitch a ride to the Second Dominion.  She'd seen the
gruesome consequences of such interference before, on this very spot,
and she braced herself against Oscar for the coming shock.  Instead of
trusting to the circle to dispatch the hanger-on, however, Oscar turned
from her and went to strike Dowd.  The circle's flux multiplied his
violence tenfold, and the glyph of his body became an illegible scrawl,
the colours dirtied in an instant.  The pain she'd thought washed away
swept back over her.  Blood ran from her nose, and into her open mouth.
Her skin itched so violently she'd have brought blood to that too had
the pain in her joints not kept her from moving.

She could make no sense of the scribble in front of her until her glance
caught sight of Oscar's face, smeared and raw, screaming back at her as
he toppled from the circle.  She reached to haul him back, despite the
searing pain her motion brought, and took hold of his arm, determined
wherever they were delivered, to Yzordderrex or death, they'd go there
together.

He returned her grasp, seizing her outstretched arms and dragging
himself back on to the express.  As his face emerged from the blur
beyond the smile she realized her error.  It was Dowd she'd hauled
aboard.

She let go of her hold, in revulsion more than rage.  His face was
horribly contorted, blood streaming from his eyes, ears and nose.

But the mind of passage was already working on this fresh text,
preparing to translate and transport it.  She had no way of braking the
process, and t

o leave the circle now would be certain suicide.  Beyond it, the scene
was blurred, and darkening, but she caught sight of Oscar, rising from
the ground, and thanked whatever deities protected these circles that he
was at least alive.

He was moving towards the circle again, she saw, as though to dare its
flux a second time, but it seemed he judged the train to be moving too
swiftly now, because he retreated, arms up over his face.  Seconds later
the whole scene disappeared, the sunlight at the threshold

burning on for a heart-beat longer than the rest, then that too folding
away into obscurity.

The only sight left to her now was the matrix of lines which were the
translator's rendering of her fellow traveller, and though she despised
him beyond words she kept her eyes fixed upon them, having no other
point of reference.  All bodily sensation had disappeared.  She didn't
know if she was floating, falling or even breathing, though she
suspected she was doing none of these things.  She had become a sign,
transmitted between Dominions encoded in the mind of passage.  The sight
before her Dowd's shimmering glyph - was not secured by sight, but by
thought, which was the only currency valid on this trip.  And now, as if
her powers to purchase were increasing with familiarity, the absence
around her began to gain detail.  The In Ovo, Oscar had called this
place.  Its darknesses swelled in a million places, their skins
stretching until they gleamed and split, glutinous forms breaking out
and in their turn swelling and splitting, like fruit whose seeds were
sown inside each other, and nourished to corruption by their
predecessors' decay.  Repulsive as, this was, there was worse to come,
as new entities appeared, these no more than scraps from a cannibal's
table, sucked bloodless and gnawed; idiot doodles of life that didn't
bear translation into any material form.  Primitive though they were,
they sensed the presence of finished life-forms in their midst, and rose
towards the travellers like the damned to passing angels.  But they
swarmed too late.  The visitors moved on and away, the darknesses
sealing up their tenants, and receding.

Jude could see Dowd's body in the midst of his glyph, still
insubstantial, but brightening by the moment.  With the sight, the
agonies of ferriage returned, though not as sharply as those that had
pained her at the outset of the journey.  She was glad to have them if
they proved her nerves were hers a ain; surely it meant the journey was
9 almost over.  The horrors of the in Ovo had almost disappeared
entirely when she felt the faint heat on her face.

But it was the scent that heat raised to her nostrils which brought more
certain proof that the city was near: a mingling of the sweets and sours
she'd first smelt on the WInd that had issued from the Retreat months
before.

She saw a smile come over Dowd's face, cracking the blood already dried
on it; a smile which became a laugh in a beat or two, ringing off the
walls of the merchant Peccable's cellar as it grew solid around them.

She didn't want to share his pleasure, after all the harms he'd devised,
but she couldn't help herself.  Relief that the journey hadn't killed
her, and sheer exhilaration that after all this time she was here,
brought laughter on to her face, and with every breath between, the air
of the Second Dominion into her lungs.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Five miles up the Mountainside from the house in which Jude and Dowd
were taking their first gasps of Yzordderrexian air, the Autarch of the
Reconciled Dominions sat in one of his watchtowers and surveyed the city
he had inspired to such notorious excess.  It was three days since his
return from the Kwem Palace, and almost every hour somebody - it was
usually Rosengarten - had brought news of further acts of civil
defiance, some in regions of the Imajica so remote word of the mutinies
had been weeks in coming, some - these more disturbing - barely beyond
the Palace walls.  As he mused he chewed on kreauchee, a drug to which
he'd been addicted for some seventy years.  its side-effects were severe
and unpredictable for those unused to it.  Periods of lethargy
alternated with bouts of priapism and psychotic hallucination. Sometimes
the fingers and toes swelled to grotesque proportions.  But the
Autarch's system had been steeped in kreauchee for so many years the
drug no longer assaulted either his physique or his faculties, and he
could enjoy its capacity to lift him from dolour without having to
endure its discomforts.

Or at least such had been the case until recently.  Now, as if in league
with the forces that were destroying his dream below, the drug refused
to give him relief.  He'd demanded a fresh supply while meditating at
the place of the Pivot, only to get back to Yzordderrex to find that his
procurers in the Scoriae Kesparate had been murdered.  Their killers
were reputedly members of the Dearth, an order of renegade sham mists -
worshippers of the Madonna, he'd heard it rumoured who'd been

fomenting revolution for years, and had until now presented so little
threat to the status quo that he'd let them be for entertainment's sake.
Their pamphlets - a mingling of castration fantasies and bad theology
had made farcical reading, and with their leader Athanasius in prison
many of them had retreated to the desert to worship at the margins of
the First Dominion, the so-called Erasure, where the solid reality of
the Second paled and faded.  But Athanasius had escaped his custody and
returned to Yzordderrex with fresh calls to arms.  His first act of
defiance, it seemed, had been the slaughter of the kreauchee-pushers.  A
little enough deed, but the man was wily enough to know what an
inconvenience he'd caused with it.  No doubt he was touting it as an act
of civil healing, performed in the name of the Madonna.

The Autarch spat out the wad of kreauchee he was chewing, and vacated
the watchtower, heading off through the monumental labyrinth of the
palace towards Quaisoir's quarters in the hope that she had some small
supply he could filch.

To left and right of him were corridors so immense no human voice would
carry along them, each lined with dozens of chambers - all exquisitely
finished, all exquisitely empty - the ceilings of many so high thin
clouds formed there.  Though his architectural endeavours had once been
the wonder of the Dominions, the enormity of his ambition, and indeed of
his achievement, mocked him now.  He'd wasted his energies with these
follies when he should have been concerning himself with the shock-waves
his empire building had sent through the Imajica.  It wasn't the pogroms
he'd instigated that were causing these troubles, his analysts informed
him.  The present unrest was a consequence of less violent changes in
the fabric of the Dominions, the rise of Yzordderrex and its companion
cities being one of those changes, and perhaps its most significant. All
eyes had been turned towards the tinsel glories of those cities, and a
new pantheon had been created for tribes and communities that had long
since

lost faith in the deities of rock and tree.  Peasants had left their
dust-bowls in their hundreds of thousands to claim their slice of this
miracle, only to end up fermenting their envy and despair in hell-holes
like Vanaeph.

That was one way revolutionaries were made, the analysts said; not out
of ideologies, but out of frustration and rage.  Then there were those
who saw a chance to profit by anarchy, like the new species of nomad
that was making portions of the Lenten Way impassable - crazed and
merciless bandits who took pleasure in their own notoriety.  And finally
there were the new rich, the dynasties created by the boom in
consumption that had come with Yzordderrex's rise.  In the early days
they'd repeatedly turned to the regime for protection against the
acquisitive poor.  But the Autarch had been too busy building his
palace, and the help had not been forthcoming, so the dynasties had
formed private armies to police their lands, swearing their continued
allegiance to the Empire even as they plotted against it.  Now those
plots were no longer theory.  With their armies primed to defend their
estates the boom barons were announcing themselves independent of
Yzordderrex and its taxes.

There was, the analysts said, no evidence of collusion amongst these
elements.  How could there be?  They didn't have a single philosophical
notion in common.  They were neo-feudalists, neo-communists,
neo-anarchists; all enemies of the other.  it was purely coincidence
that had roused them to rebellion at the same moment.

Either that, or un fortuitous stars.

The Autarch barely listened to such assessments.  What little pleasure
he'd taken in politics at the beginning of his regime had quickly
staled.  It wasn't the craft he'd been born to, and he found it tiresome
and dull.

He'd appointed his Tetrarchs to rule over the four Reconciled Dominions
- the Tetrarch of the First doing so in absentia, of course - leaving
him to obsess upon making Yzordderrex the city to end all cities, and
the palace its glorious crown.  What he'd in fact created was a monument
to

purposeless ness which, when he was under the influence of kreauchee, he
would rail against as at some enemy.

One day, for instance, in visionary mood, he'd had all the windows in
the chambers facing the desert smashed, and great tonnages of rancid
meat laid on the mosaics.  Within a day, flocks of carrion birds had
forsaken the hot high winds above the sands, and were feasting and
breeding on tables and beds prepared for the royalty of the Dominions.
In another such mood he'd had fishes brought up from the delta and
housed in the baths.  The water was warm, the food plentiful, and they
proved so fecund he could have walked on their backs within weeks.  Then
they became overcrowded, and he spent many hours watching the
consequences: patricide, fratricide, infanticide.  But the cruel lest
revenge he wreaked against his folly was the most private.  One by one
he was using the high halls with their drizzling clouds as stages for
dramas in which nothing was feigned, not even death; and when the final
act had been performed he had each theatre sealed as elaborately as a
king's tomb, and moved on to another chamber.  Little by little, the
glorious palace of Yzordderrex was becoming a mausoleum.

The suite of chambers he was entering now was exempt from this process
however.

Quaisoir's bathrooms, bedrooms, lounges and chapel were a state unto
themselves, and he'd long ago sworn to her he would never violate them.
She'd decorated the rooms with any lush or luxurious item that pleased
her eclectic eye.  It was an aesthetic he himself had favoured, before
his present melancholia.  He'd filled the bedrooms now nested by carrion
birds with immaculate copies of baroque and rococo furniture; had
commissioned the walls to be mirrored like Versailles, and had the
toilets gilded.  But he'd long since lost his taste for such
extravagances, and now the very sight of Quaisoir's rooms nauseated him
so much that if he hadn't been driven by need he'd have retreated,
appalled by their opulence.

He called his wife's name as he went.  First through the

lounges, strewn with the leavings of a dozen meals.  All were empty.
Then into the state room, which was appointed even more grandly than the
lounges, but also empty.  Finally, to the bedroom.  At its threshold, he
heard the slap of feet on the marble floor, and Quaisoir's servant
Concupiscentia paddled into view.  She was naked, as always, her back a
field of multicoloured extremities each as agile as an ape's tail, her
forelimbs withered and boneless things, bred to such vestigial condition
over generations.  Her large green eyes seeped constantly, the feathery
fans to either side of her-face constantly dipping to brush the moisture
from her rouged cheeks.

"Where's Quaisoir?" he demanded.

She drew a coquettish fan of her tails over her lower face, and giggled
behind them like a geisha.  The Autarch had slept with her once, in a
kreauchee fugue, and the creature never let him by without a show of
flirtation.

"Not now, for Christ's sake," he said, disgusted at the display.. "I
want my wife!  Where is she?"

Concupiscentia shook her head, retreating from his raised voice and
fist.  He pushed past her into the bedroom.  if there was any tiny wad
of kreauchee to be had, it would be here, in her boudoir, where she
lazed away so many days, listening to Concupiscentia sing hymns and
lullabies.  The chamber smelt like a harbour bordello, a dozen sickly
perfumes draping the air like the veils that hung around the bed.

"I want kreauchee!" he said.. "Where is it?"

Again, a great shaking of the head from Concupiscentia, this time
accompanied by whimpering' Where he shouted.

"Where?"

The perfume and the veils sickened him, and he began to rip at the silks
and gossamers in his rage.  The creature didn't intervene until he
picked up the Bible lying open on the pillows, and threatened to rip out
its onion-leaf pages.

"Please ep!" she squealed.. "Please ep!  Shellem beat I if ye tau rat the
Book.  Quaisoir lo vat the Book."

It wasn't often he heard the gloss, the pidgin English of the islands,
and the sound of it - as misshapen as its source infuriated him even
more.  He tore half a dozen pages from the Bible, just to make her
squeal again.  She obliged.

"I want kreauchee!" he said.

"I have at  I have aw the creature said, and led him from the bedroom
into the enormous dressing room that lay next door, where she began to
search through the gilded boxes on Quaisoir's dressing table.  Catching
sight of the Autarch's reflection in the mirror, she made a tiny smile,
like a guilty child, before bringing a package out of the smallest of
the boxes.  He snatched it from her fingers before she had a chance to
proffer it.  He knew from the smell that stung his nostrils that this
was good quality, and without hesitating he unwrapped it and put the
whole wad into his mouth.

"Good girl," he told Concupiscentia.. "Good girl.  Now, do you know
where your mistress got it?"

Concupiscentia shook her head.. "She goallat alon unto the Kesparates,
many nights.

Sometimes shell em a goat beggar, sometimes shell em goat

"A whore."

"No, no.  Quaisoir isem a whore."

"Is that where she is now?" the Autarch said.. "Is she out whoring? It's
a little early for that, isn't it, or is she cheaper in the afternoonr

The kreauchee was better than he'd hoped; he felt it striking him as he
spoke, lifting his melancholy and replacing it with a vehement buzz.
Even though he'd not penetrated Quaisoir in four decades (nor had any
desire to), in some moods news of her infidelities could still depress
him.  But the drug took all that pain away.  She could sleep with fifty
men a day and it wouldn't take her an inch from his side.  Whether they
felt contempt or passion for each other was irrelevant.  History had
made them indivisible, and would hold them together till the Apocalypse
did them part.

"Shellem not whoring," Concupiscentia.  piped up, determined to defend
her mistress's honour.. "Shellem downer ta Scoriae.. "The Scoriae? Why?"

"Executions," Concupiscentia replied, pronouncing this word - learned
from her mistress's lips - perfectly.

"Executions?" the Autarch said, a vague unease surfacing through the
kreauchee's soothings.. "What executions?" Concupiscentia shook her
head.

"I din net knie," she said.. "Jest executions.  Allovat executions.  She
pray at tote "I'm sure she does."

"We all pray at far the sols, so ta go in tat the presence of the
Unbeheld washed -'

Here were more phrases repeated parrot fashion.  The kind of Christian
cant he found as sickening as the decor.  And, like the decor, these
were Quaisoir's work.  She'd embraced the Man of Sorrows only a few
months ago, but it hadn't taken her long to claim she was His bride.
Another infidelity, less syphilitic than the hundreds that had gone
before, but just as pathetic.

The Autarch left Concupiscentia to babble on, and dispatched his
bodyguard to locate Rosengarten.  There were questions to be answered
here, and quickly, or else it wouldn't only be the Scoriae where heads
would roll.

Travelling the Lenten Way, Gentle had come to believe that far from
being the burden he'd expected her to be, Huzzah was a blessing.  if she
hadn't been with them in the Cradle he was certain the Goddess Tish aluM
would not have intervened on their behalf; nor would hitchhiking along
the highway have been so easy if they hadn't had a winsome child to
thumb rides for them.  Despite the months she'd spent hidden away in the
depths of the

asylum (or perhaps because of them) Huzzah was eager to engage everyone
in conversation, and from the replies to her innocent enquiries he and
Pie gleaned a good deal of information he doubted they'd have come by
otherwise.  Even as they'd crossed the causeway to the city, she'd
struck up a dialogue with a woman who'd happily supplied a list of the
Kesparates, and even pointed out those that were visible from where
they'd walked.  There were too many names and directions for Gentle to
hold in his head, but a glance towards Pie confirmed that the mystif was
attending closely, and would have all of them by heart by the time they
reached the other side.

"Wonderful," Pie said to Huzzah when the woman had departed.. "I wasn't
sure I'd be able to find my way back to my people's Kesparate.  Now I
know the way."

"Up through the Oke T'Noon, to the Cararness, where they make the
Autarch's sweetmeats," Huzzah said, repeating the directions as if she
was reading them off a blackboard.. "Follow the wall of the Cararness
till we get to the Smooke Street, then up to the Viaticum, and we'll be
able to see the gates from there."

"How did you remember all that Gentle said, to which Huzzah somewhat
disdainfully asked how he could have allowed himself to forget.

"We mustn't get lost," she said.

"We won't," Pie replied.. "There'll be people in my Kesparate who'll
help us find your grandparents."

'if they don't it doesn't matter," Huzzah said, looking gravely from Pie
to Gentle.. "I'll come with you to the First Dominion.  I don't mind.
I'd like to see the Unbeheld.. "How do you know that's where we're
going?" Gentle said.

"I've heard you talking about it," she replied.. "That's what you're
going to do, isn't it?  Don't worry, I'm not scared.  We've seen a
Goddess, haven't we?  He'll be the same, only not as beautiful."

This unflattering notion amused Gentle mightily.

"You're an angel, you know that?" he said, going down

on his haunches and sliding his arms around her.  She'd put on a few
pounds in weight since they'd begun their journey together, and her hug,
when she returned it, was

strong-'I'm hungry," she murmured in his ear.

"Then we'll find somewhere to eat," he replied.. "We can't have our
angel going hungry."

They walked up through the steep streets of Oke T'Noon until they were
clear of the throng of itinerants coming off the causeway.  Here there
were any number of establishments offering breakfast, from stalls
selling barbecued fish to cafe that might have been transported from the
streets of Paris, but that the customers sipping coffee were more
extraordinary than even that city of exotics could boast.  Many were
species whose peculiarities he now took for granted: Oethacs and
Heratea; distant relatives of Mother Splendid, and Hammeryock; even a
few who resembled the one-eyed croupier from Attaboy.

But for every member of a tribe whose features he recognized, there were
two or three he did not.  As in Vanaeph, Pie had warned him that staring
too hard would not be in their best interests, and he did his best not
to enjoy too plainly the array of courtesies, humours, J lunacies,
gaits, skins and cries that filled the streets.  But it was difficult.
After a time they found a small cafe from 7@ which the smell of food was
particularly tempting, and Gentle sat down beside one of the windows,
from which he could watch the parade without drawing too much attention.

"I had a friend called Klein," he said as they ate.. "Back in the Fifth
Dominion.  He liked to ask people what they'd do if they knew they only
had three days to live."

"Why threeT Huzzah asked.

"I don't know.  Why three anything?  It's one of those numbers."

"In any fiction there's only ever room for three players," the mystif
remarked.. "The rest must be ...  Its flow faltered in mid-quotation.
agents, something and

something else.  That's a line from Pluthero Quexos."

"Who's he?"

"Never mind."

"Where was I. "Klein," said Huzzah.

"When he got round to asking me this question I told him: if I had three
days left I'd go to New York, because you've got more chance of living
out your wildest dreams there than anywhere.  But now I've seen
Yzordderre. "Not much of it," Huzzah pointed out.

"It's enough, angel.  If he asks me again I'm going to tell him: I'd
like to die in Yzordderrex."

"Eating breakfast with Pie and Huzzah," she said.

"Perfect."

"Perfect," she replied, echoing his intonation precisely.

"Is there anything I couldn't find here if I looked hard enough?"

"Some peace and quiet," Pie remarked.

The hubbub from outside was certainly loud, even in the cafe.

"I'm sure we'll find some little courtyards up in the palace," Gentle
said.

"Is that where we're going?" Huzzah asked.

"Now listen," said Pie.. "For one thing, Mr Zacharias doesn't know what
the hell he's talking about. "Language, Pie," Gentle put in.

And for another, we brought you here to find your grandparents, and
that's our priority.

Right, Mr Zacharias?. "What if you can't find them?" Huzzah said.

"We will," Pie replied.. "My people know this city from top to bottom."
"Is that possible?" Gentle said.. "I somehow doubt it.. "When you've
finished your coffee," Pie said. "I'll allow them to prove you wrong."

With their bellies filled, they headed on through the

streets, following the route they'd had laid out for them:

from Oke T'Noon to the Caramess, following the wall until they reached
Smooke Street.  In fact the directions were not entirely reliable.

Smooke Street, which was a narrow thoroughfare, and far emptier than
those they'd left, did not lead them on to the Viaticum as they'd been
told it would, but rather into a maze of buildings as plain as barracks.
There were children playing in the dirt, and amongst them wild rage my
an unfortunate cross between porcine and canine strains that Gentle had
seen spitted and served in MarK6, but which here seemed to be treated as
pets.  Either the mud, the children or the rage my stank, and their smell
had attracted zarzi in large numbers.

"We must have missed a turning," the mystif said.. "We'd be best to-'

It stopped in mid-sentence as the sound of shouting rose from nearby,
bringing the children up out of the mud and sending them off in pursuit
of its source.  There was a high unmusical holler in the midst of the
din, rising and falling like a warrior cry.  Before either Pie or Gentle
could remark on this Huzzah was following the rest of the children,
darting between the puddles and the rooting rage my to do so.  Gentle
looked at Pie, who shrugged, then they both headed after Huzzah, the
trail leading them down an alleyway into a broad and busy street, which
was emptying at an astonishing rate as pedestrians and drivers alike
sought cover from whatever was racing down the hill in their direction.

The hollerer came first: an armoured man of fully twice Gentle's height,
carrying in each fist scarlet flags that snaked behind him as he ran,
the pitch and volume of his cry undimmed by the speed at which he moved.
On his heels came a battalion of similarly armoured soldiers - none,
even in this troop, under eight feet tall - and behind them again a
vehicle which had clearly been designed to mount and descend the
ferocious slopes of the city with minimum discomfort to its passengers.
The wheels were the height of the hollerer, the carriage itself

low-slung between them, its body work sleek and dark, its windows darker
still.  A gull had become caught between the spokes of the wheels on the
way down the hill, and it flapped and bled there as the wheels turned,
its screeches a wretched but perfect complement to the cacophony of
wheels, engine and hollerer.

Gentle took hold of Huzzah as the vehicle raced past, though she was in
no danger of being struck.  She looked round at him, wearing a wide
grin.

"Who was that?" she said.

"I don't know."

A woman sheltering in the doorway beside them furnished the answer.

"Quaisoir," she said.. "The Autarch's woman.  There's arrests being made
down in the Scoriae.  More Dearthers."

She made a small gesture with her fingers, moving them across her face
from eye to eye, then down to her mouth, pressing the knuckles of first
and third fingers against her nostrils while the middle digit tugged at
her lower lip, all this with the speed of one who made the sign
countless times in a day.  Then she turned off down the street, keeping
close to the wall as she went.

"Athanasius was a Dearther, wasn't he?" Gentle said.. "We should go down
and see what's happening.. "It's a little too public," Pie said.

"We'll stay to the back of the crowd," Gentle said.. "I want to see how
the enemy works."

Without giving Pie time to object, Gentle took Huzzah's hand and headed
after Quaisoir's troops.  It wasn't a difficult trail to follow.

Everywhere along the route faces were once more appearing at windows and
doors, like anemones showing themselves again after being brushed by the
underbelly of a shark: tentative, ready to hide their tender heads again
at the merest sign of the shadow.  Only a couple of tots, not yet
educated in terror, did as the three strangers were doing and took to
the middle of the street, where the Comet's light was brightest.  They
were

quickly reclaimed for the relative safety of the doorways in which their
guardians hovered.

The ocean came into view as the trio descended the hill, and the harbour
was now visible between the houses, which were considerably older in
this neighbourhood than in the Oke T'Noon, or up by the Caramess.  The
air was clean and quick here; it enlivened their step.  After a short
while the domestic dwellings gave way to dock lands warehouses, cranes
and silos reared around them.  But the area was by no means deserted.
The workers here were not so easily cowed as the occupants of the
Kesparate above, and many were leaving off .  their labours to see what
this rumpus was all about.  They were a far more homogenized group than
Gentle had seen elsewhere, most a cross between Oethac and homo sapiens,
massive, even brutish men who in sufficient numbers could certainly trounce
Quaisoir's

nan.  Gentle hoisted Huzzah up to ride on his back as they joined this
congregation, fearful she'd be trampled if he didn't.  A few of the
dockers gave her a smile, and several stood aside to let her mount
secure a better place in the crowd.

By the time they came within sight of the troops again they were
thoroughly concealed.

A small contingent of the soldiers had been charged to keep onlookers
from straying too close to the field of action, and this they were
attempting to do; but they were vastly outnumbered, and as the crowd
swelled it steadily pushed the cordon towards the site of the
hostilities, a warehouse some thirty yards down the street, which had
apparently been laid siege to.

Its walls were pitted with bullet strikes, and its lower windows smoked.
The besieging troops - who were not dressed showily like Quaisoir's
battalion, but in the monochrome Gentle had seen paraded in L'Himby -
were presently hauling bodies out of the building.  Some were on the
second storey, pitching dead men - and a couple who still had life in
them out of the windows on to the bleeding heap

below.  Gentle remembered Beatrix.  Was this cairn building one of the
marks of the Autarch's hand?

"You shouldn't be seeing this, angel," Gentle told Huzzah, and tried to
lift her off his shoulders.  But she held fast, taking fistfuls of his
hair as security.

"I want to see," she said.. "I've seen it with Daddy, lots of times."

"Just d on't be sick on my head," Gentle warned.

"I won't," she said outraged at the suggestion.

There were fresh brutalities unfolding below.  A survivor had been
dragged from the building and was kicked to the ground a few yards from
Quaisoir's vehicle, the doors and windows of which were still closed.
Another was defending himself as best he could from bayonet jabs,
yelling in defiance as his tormentors encircled him.  But everything
came to a sudden halt with the appearance on the warehouse roof of a man
wearing little more than ragged underwear, who opened his arms like a
soul in search of martyrdom and proceeded to harangue the assembly
below.

"That's Athanasiusl' Pie murmured in astonishment.

The mystif was far sharper sighted than Gentle, who had to squint hard
to confirm the identification.  It was indeed Father Athanasius, his
beard and hair longer than ever, his hands, brow and flank running with
blood.

"What the hell's he doing up there?" Gentle said.. "Giving a sermon?"

Athanasius's address wasn't simply directed at the troops and their
victims on the cobblestones below.  He repeatedly turned his head
towards the crowd, shouting in their direction too.  But whether he was
issuing accusations, prayers or a call to arms, the words were lost to
the wind.  Soundless, his display looked faintly absurd, and undoubtedly
suicidal.  Rifles were already being raised below, to put him in their
sights.

But before a shot could be fired the first prisoner, who'd been kicked
to his knees close to Quaisoir's vehicle, slipped custody.  His captors,
distracted by Athanasius's performance, were slow to respond, and by the
time they did so their victim was already dashing towards the crowd,
ignoring quicker escape routes to do so.  The crowd began to part,
anticipating the man's arrival in its midst, but the troops behind him
were already turning their muzzles his way.  Realizing they intended to
fire in the direction of the crowd, Gentle dropped to his M haunches,
yelling for Huzzah to clamber down.  This time she didn't protest.  As
she slipped from his shoulders several shots were fired.  He glanced up,
and through the mesh of bodies caught sight of Athanasius falling back
as if struck, and disappearing behind the parapet around the roof.

"Damn fool," he said to himself, and was about to scoop Huzzah up and
carry her away when a second round of shots froze him in his tracks.

A bullet caught one of the dockers a yard from where he crouched, and
the man went down like felled timber.  Gentle looked round for Pie,
rising as he did so.  The escaping Dearther had also been hit, but he
was still staggering forward, heading towards a crowd that was now in
confusion.  Some were fleeing, some standing their ground in defiance,
some going to the aid of the fallen docker.

It was doubtful the Dearther saw any of this.  Though the momentum of
his flight still carried him forward, his face too young to boast a
beard - was slack and expressionless, his pale eyes glazed.  His lips
worked as though to impart some final word, but a sharpshooter below
denied him the comfort.  Another bullet struck the back of his neck, and
appeared the other side, where three fine blue lines were tattooed
across his throat, the middle one bisecting his Adam's apple.  He was
thrown forward by the bullet's impact, the few men between him and
Gentle parting as he fell.  His body hit the ground a yard from Gentle,
with only a few twitches of life left in it.  Though his face was to the
ground his hands still moved making their way through the dirt towards
Gentle's feet, as if they knew where they were going.  His left arm ran

aid

out of power before it could reach its destination, but the right had
sufficient will behind it to find the scuffed toe of Gentle's shoe.

He heard Pie murmuring to him from close by, coaxing him to come away,
but he couldn't forsake the man, not in these last seconds.  He started
to stoop, intending to clasp the dying fingers in his palm, but he was
too late by seconds.  The arm lost its power, and the hand dropped back
to the ground lifeless.

"Now will you come?" Pie said.

Gentle tore his eyes from the corpse, and looked up.  The scene had
gained him an audience, and there was a disturbing anticipation in their
faces, puzzlement and respect mingled with the clear expectation of some
pronouncement.  Gentle had none to offer, and opened his arms to show
himself empty-handed.  The assembly stared on, unblinking, and he
half-thought they might assault him if he didn't speak, but a further
burst of gunfire from the siege-site broke the moment, and the starers
gave up their scrutiny, some shaking their heads as though waking from a
trance.  The second of the captives had been executed against the
warehouse wall, and shots were now being fired into the pile of bodies
to silence some survivor there.

Troops had also appeared on the roof, presumably intending to pitch
Athanasius's body down to crown the cairn.  But they were denied that
satisfaction.  Either he'd faked being struck, or else he'd survived the
wounding and crawled off to safety while the drama unfolded below.
Whichever, he'd left his pursuers empty-handed.

Three of the cordon-keepers, all of whom had fled for cover as their
comrades fired on the crowd, now reappeared to claim the body of the
escapee.  They encountered a good deal of passive resistance, however,
the crowd coming between them and the dead youth, jostling them.  They
forced their way through with well-aimed jabs from bayonets and
rifle-butts, but Gentle had time to retreat from in front of the corpse
as they did so.

He had also had time to look back at the corpse-strewn stage visible
beyond the heads of the crowd.  The door of Quaisoir's vehicle had been
opened, and with her elite guard forming a shield around her she finally
stepped out into the light of day.  This was the consort of the
Imajica's vilest tyrant, and Gentle lingered a dangerous moment to see
what mark such intimacy with evil had made upon her.

When she came into view the sight of her, even with eyes that were far
from perfect, was enough to snatch the breath from him.  She was human,
and a beauty.  Nor was she simply any beauty.  She was Judith.

Pie had hold of his arm, drawing him away, but he wouldn't go.

"Look at her.  Jesus.  Look at her, Pie.  Look!' The mystif glanced
towards the woman.

"It's Judith," Gentle said.

"That's impossible.. "It is!  It is!  Use your fucking eyes!  It's
Judith!'

As if his raised voice was a spark to the bone-dry rage of the crowd all
around, violence suddenly erupted, its focus the trio of soldiers who
were still attempting to claim the dead youth.  One was bludgeoned to
the ground, while another retreated, firing as he did so.  Escalation
was instantaneous.  Knives were slid from their sheaths; machetes
unhooked from belts.  In the space of five seconds the crowd became an
army, and five seconds later had claimed their first three lives.

Judith was eclipsed by the battle, and Gentle had little choice but to
go with Pie, more for the sake of Huzzah than for his own safety.  He
felt strangely inviolate here, as though that circle of expectant stares
had lent him a charmed life.

"It was Judith, Pie," he said again once they were far enough from the
shouts and shots to hear each other speak.

Huzzah had taken firm hold of his hand, and swung on his arm excitedly.

"Who's Judith?" she said.

"A woman we know," Gentle said.

"How could that be her?" The mystif's tone was as fretful as it was
exasperated.. "Ask yourself: how could that be her?

If you've got an answer, I'm happy to hear it.  Truly I am.  Tell me."

"I don't know how," Gentle said.. "But I trust my eyes."

"We left her in the Fifth, Gentle."

"If I got through, why shouldn't she?"

"And in the space of two months she takes over as the Autarch's wife?
That's a meteoric rise, wouldn't you say?" A fresh fusillade of shots
rose from the siege-site, followed by a roar of voices so profound it
reverberated in the stone beneath their feet.  Gentle stopped, walked
and looked back down the slope towards the harbour.    Mk

Olk

"There's going to be a revolution," he said simply.

"I think it's already begun," Pie replied.

"They'll kill her," he said, starting back down the hill.

"Where the hell are you going?" Pie said.

"I'm coming with you, "Huzzah piped up, but the mystif took hold of her
before she could follow.

"You're not going anywhere," Pie said.. "Except home to your
grandparents.  Gentle, will you listen to me?  It's not Judith."

Gentle turned to face the mystif, attempting a reasoning tone.

"If it's not her then it's her double, it's her echo.  Some part of her,
here in Yzordderrex."

Pie didn't reply.  It merely studied Gentle, as if coaxing him with its
silence to articulate his theory more fully.

"Maybe people can be in two places at one time," he said.  Frustration
made him grimace.

"I know it was her, and nothing you can say's going to change my mind.
You two go into the Kesparate.  Wait for me.  I'll

Before he could finish his instructions the holler that had first
announced Quaisoir's descent from the heights of the city was raised
again, this time at a higher pitch, to

be drowned out almost instantly by a surge of celebratory cheering.

"That sounds like a retreat to me," Pie said, and was

proved right twenty seconds later with the reappearance

of Quaisoir's vehicle, surrounded by the tattered rem- i

nants of her retinue.  The trio had plenty of time to step

out of the path of wheels and boots as they thundered I

4 up the slope, for the pace of the retreat was not as swift

as that of the advance.  Not only was the ascent steep but I

"A many of the elite had sustained wounds defending the

vehicle from assault, and trailed blood as they ran.

"There's going to be such reprisals now," Pie said.

Gentle murmured his agreement as he stared up the

slope where the vehicle had gone.

"I have to see her again," he said.

"That's going to be difficult," Pie replied.

"She'll see me," Gentle said.. "If I know who she is, then

she's going to know who I am.  I'll lay money on it."

Pie didn't take up the bet.  It simply said:

"What now?"

"We go to your Kesparate and we send out a search party to look for
Huzzah's folks.  Then we go up' - he

nodded towards the palace - 'and get a closer look at

Quaisoir.  I've got some questions to ask her.  Whoever

she is."

The wind veered as the trio retraced their steps, the relatively clear
ocean breeze giving sudden way to a blisteringly hot assault off the
desert.  The citizens were well prepared for such climatic changes, and
at the first hint of a shift in the wind scenes of almost mechanical,
and therefore comical, efficiency were to be seen high and low.

Washing and potted plants were gathered from window sills; rage my and
cats gave up their sun-traps and headed inside; awnings were rolled up
and windows

shuttered.  In a matter of a couple of minutes the street was emptied.

"I've been in these damn storms," Pie said.. "I don't think we want to
be walking about in one."

Gentle told it not to fret, and hoisting Huzzah on to his shoulders he
set the pace as the storm scourged the streets.

They'd asked for fresh directions a few minutes before the wind veered,
and the shopkeeper who'd supplied them had known his geography.  The
directions were good even if walking conditions were not.  The wind
smelt like flatulence, and carried a blinding freight of sand along with
ferocious heat.  But they at least had the freedom of the streets.  The
only individuals they glimpsed were either felonious, crazy or homeless,
into all three of which categories they themselves fell.  They reached
the Viaticum without error or incident, and from there the mystif knew
its way.  Two hours or more after they'd left the siege at the harbour
they reached the Eurhetemec Kesparate.  The storm was showing signs of
fatigue, as were they, but Pie's voice fairly sang when it announced:
"This is it.  This is the place where I was born."

The Kesparate in front of them was walled, but the gates were open,
swinging in the wind.

"Lead on," Gentle said, setting Huzzah down.

The mystif pushed the gate wide, and led the way into streets the wind
was unveiling before them as it fell, dropping the sand underfoot.  The
street rose towards the palace, as did almost every street in
Yzordderrex, but the dwellings built upon it were very different from
those elsewhere in the city.  They stood discrete from one another, tall
and burnished, each possessed of a single window that ran from above the
door to the eaves, where the structure branched into four overhanging
roofs, lending the buildings, when side by side, the look of a stand of
petrified trees.  In the street in front of the houses were the real
thing: trees whose branches still swayed in the dying gusts like kelp in
a tidal pool, their boughs so supple

and their tight white blossoms so hardy the storm had done them no harm.

it wasn't until he caught the tremulous look on Pie's face that Gentle
realized what a burden of fee line the mystif bore, stepping back into
its birthplace after the passage of so many years.  Having such a short
memory he'd never carried such luggage himself.  There were no cherished
recollections of childhood rites, not Christmas scenes or lullabies. His
grasp of what Pie might be feeling had to be an intellectual construct,
and fell - he was sure - well shy of the real thing.

"My parents' home," Pie said, 'used to be between the chianculi -'it
pointed off to its right, where the last remnants of sand-laden gusts
still shrouded the distance I -and the hospice." There, to its left, a
white-walled building.

"So somewhere near," Gentle said.

"I think so," it said, clearly pained by the tricks memory was playing.

"Why don't we ask somebody?" Huzzah suggested.

Pie acted upon the suggestion instantly, walking over to the nearest
house and rapping on the door.  There was no reply.

It moved next door, and tried again.  This house was also vacated.
Sensing Pie's unease, Gentle took Huzzah to join the mystif on the third
step.  The response was the same here: a silence made more palpable by
the drop in the wind.

"There's nobody here," Pie said, remarking, Gentle knew, not simply on
the empty houses but on the whole hushed vista.

The storm was completely exhausted now.  People should have been
appearing on their doorsteps to brush off the sand and peer at their
roofs to see they were still secure.  But there was nobody.  The elegant
streets, laid with such precision, were deserted from end to end.

"Maybe they've all gathered in one place," Gentle suggested.. "Is there
some kind of assembly place?  A church, or a Senate?"

"The chidnculi's the nearest thing," Pie said, pointing

towards a quartet of pale yellow domes set amid trees shaped like
cypresses but bearing Prussian blue foliage.  Birds were rising from
them into the clearing sky, their shadows the only motion on the streets
below.

"What happens at the chianculi?" Gentle said as they started towards the
domes.

"Ah!  In my youth," Pie said, attempting a lightness of tone it clearly
didn't feel, 'in my youth it was where we had the circuses."

"I didn't know you came from circus stock.. "They weren't like any Fifth
Dominion circus," Pie replied.. "They were ways we remembered the
Dominion we'd been exiled from."

"No clowns and ponies?" Gentle said.

No clowns and ponies," Pie replied, and would not be &a'wn on the
subject any further.

Now that they were close to the chianculi its scale and that of the
trees surrounding it became apparent.  It was fully five storeys high
from the ground to the apex of its largest dome.  The birds, having made
one celebratory circuit of the Kesparate, were now settling in the trees
again, chattering like mynah birds that had been taught Japanese.
Gentle's attenton was briefly claimed by the spectacle, only to be
grounded again when he heard Pie say. "They're not all dead."

Emerging from between the Prussian blue trees were four of the mystif's
tribe, Negroes wrapped in undyed robes like desert nomads, some folds of
which they held between their teeth, covering their lower faces.

There was nothing about their gait or garments which offered any clue to
their sex, but they were evidently prepared to oust trespassers, for
they came armed with fine silver rods, three feet or so in length and
held across their hips.

"On no account move or even speak," the mystif said to Gentle as the
quartet came within ten yards of where they stood.

"Why not?"

"This isn't a welcoming party.. "What is it then?. "An execution squad."

So saying, the mystif raised its hands in front of its chest, palms out,
then - breaking its own edict - it stepped forward, addressing the squad
as it did so.  The language it spoke was not English, but had about it
the same Oriental lilt Gentle had heard from the beaks of the settling
birds.  Perhaps they'd indeed been speaking in their owners' tongue.

One of the quartet now let the bitten veil drop, revealing a woman in
early middle age, her expression more puzzled than aggressive.  Having
listened to Pie for a time she murmured something to the individual at
her right, winning only a shaken head by way of response.  The squad had
continued to approach Pie as it talked, their stride steady; but now, as
Gentle heard the syllables Pie'oh'pah appear in the mystif's monologue,
the woman called a halt.

Two more of the veils were dropped, revealing men as finely boned as
their leader.  One was lightly moustached, but the seeds of sexual
ambiguity that blossomed so exquisitely in Pie were visible here.
Without further word from the woman, her companion went on to reveal a
second ambiguity, altogether less attractive.  He let one hand drop from
the silver rod he carried and the wind caught it, a ripple passing
through its length as though it was made not of steel but of silk.  He
lifted it to his mouth and draped it over his tongue.  It fell in soft
loops from his lips and fingers, still glinting like a blade even though
it folded and fluttered.

Whether this gesture was a threat or not Gentle couldn't know, but in
response to it Pie dropped to its knees, and indicated with a wave of
its hand that Gentle and Huzzah should do the same.  The child cast a
rueful glance in Gentle's direction, looking to him for endorsement.  He
shrugged, and nodded, and they both knelt, though to Gentle's way of
thinking this was the last position to adopt in front of an execution
squad.

"Get ready to run.  .  ." he whispered across to Huzzah, and she
returned a nervous little nod.

The moustachioed man had now begun to address Pie, speaking in the same
tongue the mystif had used.  There was nothing in either his tone or
attitude that was particularly threatening, though neither, Gentle knew,
was a foolproof indication.

There was some comfort in the fact of dialogue, however, and at a
certain point in the exchange the fourth veil was dropped.  Another
woman, younger than the leader, and altogether less amiable, took over
the conversation with a more strident tone, and waved her ribbon-blade
in the air inches from Pie's inclined head.  its lethal capacity could
not be in doubt.

it whistled as it sliced and hummed as it rose again, its motion, for
all its ripples, chillingly controlled.  When she'd finished talking the
leader apparently ordered them to their feet.  Pie obliged, glancing
round at Gentle and Huzzah to indicate they should do the same.

"Are they going to kill us?" Huzzah murmured.

Gentle took her hand.. "No they're not," he said.. "And if they try,
I've got a trick or two in my lungs.. "Please, Gentle -' Pie said.
"Don't even -' A word from the squad leader silenced its appeal, and Pie
answered the next question directed at it by naming its companions:
Huzzah Aping and John Furie Zacharias.  There then followed another
short exchange between the members of the squad, during which time Pie
snatched a moment to explain.

"This is a very delicate situation," it said.

"I think we've grasped that much.. "Most of my people have gone from the
Kesparate."

"Where?"

"Some of them tortured and killed.  Some taken as slave

labour."

"But now the prodigal returns.  Why aren't they happy

to see you?"

"They think I'm probably a spy, or else I'm crazy.  Either way, I'm a
danger to them.

They're going to keep me

here to question me.  It was either that or a summary execution.. "Some
homecoming."

"At least there's a few of them left alive.  When we first got here, I
thought .  .

"I know what you thought.  So did I.  Do they speak any English?. "Of
course.  But it's a matter of pride that they don't.. "But they'll
understand me?. "Don't, Gentl. "I want

t them to know we're not their enemies," Gentle'; said, and turned his
address to the squad.. "You already' know my name," he said.. "I'm here
with Pie'oh'p- AD because we thought we'd find friends here.

We're not; spies.  We're not assassins."

"Let it alone, Gentle," Pie said.

"We came a long way to be here, Pie and me.  All the way from the Fifth.
And right from the beginning Pie's dreamed about seeing its people
again.  Do you understand?  You're the dream Pie's come all this way to
find."

"They don't care, Gentle," Pie said..

"They have to care."

"It's their Kesparate," Pie replied.. "Let them do it their way."

Gentle mused on this a moment.. "Pie's right," he said.. "It's your
Kesparate, and we're just visitors here.  But I want you to understand
something." He turned his gaze on the woman whose ribbon-blade had
danced so threateningly close to the mystif's pate.. "Pie's my friend,"
he said.. "I will protect my friend to the very last."

"You're doing more harm than good," the mystif said.. "Please stop."

"I thought they'd welcome you with open arms, "Gentle said, surveying the
quartet's unmoved faces.. "What's wrong with them?"

"They're protecting what little they've got left," Pie said.. "The
Autarch's sent in spies before.  There've been purges and abductions.
Children taken.  Heads returned."

job Jesus." Gentle made a small, apologetic shrug.. "I'm sorry," he
said, not just to Pie but to them all.. "I just wanted to say my piece."

"Well, it's said.  Will you leave it to me now?  Give me a few hours and
I can convince them we're sincere." 'of course, if that's what it'll
take.  Huzzah and I can wait around until you've worked it all out."

"Not here," Pie said.. "I don't think that would be wise."

"Why not?"

"I just don't," Pie said, softly insisting.

"You're afraid they're going to kill us all, aren't you?"

"There is ...  some doubt ...  yes."

"Then we'll all leave now."

"That's not an option.  I stay and you leave.  That's what

they're offering.  It's not up for negotiation."

T

"I see."

"I'll be all right, Gentle," Pie said.. "Why don't you go back to the
cafe where we had breakfast?  Can you find it again?"

"I can," Huzzah said.  She'd spent the time of this exchange with
downcast eyes.  Now that they were raised, they were full of tears.

"Wait for me there, angel," Pie said, conferring Gentle's epithet upon
her for the first time.

"Both of you angels.. "If you're not with us by twilight we'll come back
and find you," Gentle said.  He threw his gaze wide as he said this, a
smile on his lips and threat in his eyes.

The mystif put out its hand to be shaken.  Gentle took it, drawing Pie
closer.

"This is very proper," he said.

"Any more would be unwise," Pie replied.. "Trust me."

"I always have.  I always will."

"We're lucky, Gentle," Pie said.

"How so?"

"To have had this time together."

Gentle met the mystif's gaze as it spoke, and realized there was a
deeper farewell beneath this formality, which he didn't want to hear.
For all its bright talk, the mystif

was by no means certain they would be meeting again.

"I'm going to see you in a few hours, Pie," Gentle said.. "I'm depending
on that.  Do you understand?  We have vows."

Pie nodded, and let its hand slip from Gentle's grasp.  Huzzah's
smaller, warmer fingers were there, ready to take its place.

"We'd better go, angel," he said, and led Huzzah back towards the gate,
leaving Pie in the custody of the squad.

She glanced back at the mystif twice as they walked, but Gentle resisted
the temptation.  It would do Pie no good to be sentimental at this
juncture.  Better just to proceed on the understanding that they'd be
reunited in a matter of hours, and drinking coffee in the Oke T'Noon. At
the gate, however, he couldn't keep himself from glancing down the
street of blossom-laden trees for one last glimpse of the creature he
loved.  But the execution squad had already disappeared into the
chiancuh, taking the prodigal with them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

With the long Yzordderrexian twilight still many hours from falling, the
Autarch had found himself a chamber close to the Pivot Tower where the
day could not come.  Here the consolations brought by the kreauchee were
not spoiled by light.

It was easy to believe that everything was a dream, and being a dream,
not worth mourning if - or -rather when - it passed.

In his unerring fashion Rosengarten had discovered the niche, however,
and to

it he brought news as disruptive as any light.  An attempt

to quietly eradicate the cell of Dearthers led by Father

Athanasius had been turned into a public spectacle by

Quaisoir's arrival.  Violence had flared, and was already

spreading.  The troops who had mounted the original

siege were thought to have been massacred to a man,

though this could not now be verified because the dock- wi

lands had been sealed off by makeshift barricades.

"This is the signal the factions have been waiting for,"

Rosengarten opined.. "If we don't stamp this out immediately every
little cult in the Dominion's going to tell its

disciples that the Day's come."

"Time for Judgement, eh?"

"That's what they'll say."

"Perhaps they're right," the Autarch replied.. "Why don't

we let them run riot for a while?  None of them likes each

"IT other.  The Scintillants hate the Dearthers, the Dearthers

hate the Zenetics.  They can all slit each other's throats."

"But the city, sir."

"The city!  The city!  What about the frigging city?  It's

forfeit, Rosengarten.  Don't you see that?  I've been sitting

here thinking: if I could call the Comet down on top of

it I would.  Let it die the way it's lived: beautifully.  Why so tragic,
Rosengarten?  There'll be other cities.  I can build another
Yzordderrex."

"Then maybe we should get you out now, before the riots spread."

"We're safe here, aren't we?" Autarch said.  A silence followed. "You're
not so sure."

"There's such a swell of violence out there."

"And you say she started it?"

"It was in the air."

"But she was the inspiring spark? "He sighed.. "Oh, damn her, damn her.
You'd better fetch the Generals.. "All of them?"

"Mattalaus and Racidio.  They can turn this place into a fortress." He
got to his feet.. "I'm going to speak with my loving wife."

"Shall we come and find you there?"

"Not unless you want to witness murder, no."

As before, he found Quaisoir's chambers empty, but this time
Concupiscentia - no longer flirtatious but trembling and dry-eyed, which
was like tears to her seeping clan knew where her mistress was: in her
private chapel.  He stormed in, to find Quaisoir lighting candles at the
altar.  . "I was calling for you," he said.

"Yes, I heard," she replied.  Her voice, which had once made every word
an incantation, was drab; as was she.

"Why didn't you answer?"

"I was praying," she said.  She blew out the taper she'd lit the candles
with, and turned from him to face the altar.  It was, like her chamber,
a study in excess.  A carved and painted Christ hung on a gilded cross,
surrounded by cherubim and seraphim.

"Who were you praying for?" he asked her.

"For myself," she said simply.

He took hold of her shoulder, spinning her round.. "What about the men
who were torn apart by the mob?  No prayers for them?"

"They've got people to pray for them.  People who loved them.  I've got
nobody.. "My heart bleeds," he said.

"No it doesn't," she replied.. "But the Man of Sorrows bleeds for me."

"I doubt that, lady," he said, more amused by her piety than irritated.

"I saw Him today," she said.

This was a new conceit.  He pandered to it.. "Where was this?" he asked
her, all sincerity.

"At the harbour.  He appeared on a roof, right above me.  They tried to
shoot Him down, and He was struck.  I saw Him struck.  But when they
looked for the body it had gone."

"You know you should go down to the Bastion with the rest of the
madwomen," he told her.. "You can wait for the Second Coming there. I'll
have all this transported down there if you'd like."

"He'll come for me here," she said.. "He's not afraid.  You're the one
who's afraid."

The Autarch looked at his palm.. "Am I sweating?  No.  Am I on my knees
begging Him to be kind?  No.  Acc se me of most crimes, and I'm probably
guilty.  But not fear.  You know me better than that."

"He's here, in Yzordderrex.,

"Then let Him come.  I won't be leaving.  He'll find me if He wants me
so badly.  He won't find me praying, you understand.  Pissing maybe, if
He could bear the sight.  The Autarch took Quaisoir's hand and tugged it
down between his legs.. "He might find He's the one who's humbled." He
laughed.. "You used to pray to this fellow, lady.  Remember?  Say you
remember."

"I confess it."

"It's not a crime.  It's the way we were made.  What are we to do, but
suffer it?" He suddenly drew close.. "Don't think you can desert me for
Him.  We belong to each other.  Whatever harm you do me you do yourself.
Think

about that.  if our dreams burn, we cook in them together."

His message was getting through.  She didn't struggle in his embrace,
but shook with terror.

"I don't want to take your comforts from you.  Have your Man of Sorrows
if He helps you sleep.  But remember how our flesh is joined.  Whatever
little sways you learned down in the Bastion, it doesn't change what you
are.. "Prayers aren't enough .  .  she said, half to herself.

"Prayers are useless."

"Then I have to find him.  Go to Him.  Show Him my adoration."

"You're going nowhere."

"I have to.  It's the only way.  He's in the city, waiting for me."

She pressed him away from her.

"I'll go to Him in rags," she said, starting to tear at her robes.. "Or
naked!  Better naked!'

The Autarch didn't attempt to catch hold of her again, but withdrew from
her, as though her lunacy was contagious, letting her tear at her
clothes and draw blood with the violence of her revulsion.  As she did
so she started to pray aloud, her prayer full of promises to come to
Him, on her knees, and beg His forgiveness.  As she turned, delivering
this exhortation to the altar, the Autarch lost patience with her
hysteria, and took her by the hair twin fistfuls of it drawing her back
against him.

"You're not listening!" he said, both compassion and disgust overwhelmed
by a rage even the kreauchee couldn't quell.. "There's only one Lord in
Yzordderrex!" He threw her aside and mounted the steps of the altar in
three strides, clearing the candles from it with one backward sweep of
his arm.  Then he clambered up on to the altar itself to drag down the
crucifix.  Quaisoir was on her feet to stop him, but neither her appeals
nor her fists

4 slowed him.  The gilded seraphim came first, wrenched from their
carved clouds and pitched behind him to the ground.  Then he put his
hands behind the Saviour's head,

and pulled.  The crown He wore was meticulously carved, and the thorns
punctured his fingers and palms, but the sting gave fire to his sinews,
and a snarl of splintered wood announced his victory.  The crucifix came
away from the wall, and all he had to do was step aside to let gravity
take it.  For an instant he thought Quaisoir intended to fling herself
beneath its weight, but a heartbeat before it toppled she stumbled back
from the steps and it fell amid the litter of dismembered seraphim,
cracking as it struck the stone floor.

The commotion had of course brought witnesses.  From his place on the
altar the Autarch saw Rosengarten racing down the aisle, his weapon
drawn.

It's all right, Rosengartenl' he panted.. "The worst is over."

"You're bleeding, sir."

The Autarch sucked at his hand.. "Will you have my wife escorted to her
chambers?" he said, spitting out the gold-flecked blood.. "She's to be
allowed no sharp instruments, nor any object with which she could do
herself any harm.  I'm afraid she's very sick.  We'll have to watch over
her night and day from now on."

Quaisoir was kneeling amongst the pieces of the crucifix, sobbing there.

"Please, lady," the Autarch said, jumping down from the altar to coax
her up.. "Why waste your tears on a dead man?

Worship nothing, lady, except in adoration..  He stopped, puzzled by
the words.  Then he took them up again.  in adoration of your True
Self."

She raised her head, heeling away the tears with her hands to stare at
him.

"I'll have some kreauchee found for you," he said.. "To calm you a
little."

"I don't want kreauchee," she murmured, her voice washed of all colour.
"I want forgiveness.. "Then I forgive you," he replied, with flawless
sincerity.

"Not from you," she said.

He studied her grief for a time.

"We were going to love and live forever," he said softly.

"When did you become so old?"

She made no reply, so he left her there, kneeling in the debris.
Rosengarten's underling Seidux had already arrived to take charge of
her.

"Be considerate," he told Seidux as they crossed at the door.. "She was
once a great lady."

He didn't wait to watch her removal, but went with Rosengarten to meet
Generals Mattalaus and Racidio.  He felt better for his exertion.

Though like any great Maestro he was untouched by age, his system still
became sluggish, and needed an occasional stirring up.  What better way
to do it than by demolishing idols?

As they passed by a window which gave on to the city the spring went
from his step, however, seeing the signs of destruction visible below.
For all his defiant talk of building another Yzordderrex, it would be
painful to watch this one torn apart, Kesparate by Kesparate.

Half a dozen columns of smoke were already rising from conflagrations
across the city.

Ships were burning in the harbour, and there were bordellos aflame
around Lickerish Street.  As Rosengarten had predicted, every
apocalyptic in the city would fulfill their prophecies today.

Those who'd said corruption came by sea were burning boats, those who
railed against sex had lit their torches for the brothels.  He glanced
back towards Quaisoir's chapel as his consort's sobs were raised afresh.

"It's best we don't stop her weeping," he said.. "She has good reason."

The full extent of the harm Dowd had done himself in his late boarding
of the Yzordderrexian Express did not become apparent until their
arrival in the icon-filled cellar beneath the merchant's house.  Though
he Id escaped being turned inside out, his trespass had wounded him

considerably.  He looked as though he'd been dragged face down over a
freshly gravel led road, the skin on his face and hands shredded, and the
sinew beneath oozing the L& meagre filth he had in his veins.  The last
time Jude had seen him bleed the wound had been self-inflicted, and he'd
seemed to suffer scarcely at all; but not so now.  Though he held on to
her wrist with an implacable grip, and threatened her with a death that
would make Clara's seem merciful if she attempted to escape him, he was
a vulnerable captor, wincing as he hauled her up the stairs into the
house above.

This was not the way she had imagined herself entering Yzordderrex.  But
then the scene she met at the top of the stairs was not as she'd
imagined either.  Or rather it was

all too imaginable.  The house - which was deserted E

was large and bright, its design and decoration almost depressingly
recognizable.  She reminded herself that this was the house of Oscar's
business partner Peccable, and the influence of Fifth Dominion
aesthetics was likely to be strong in a dwelling that had a doorway to
Earth in its cellar.  But the vision of domestic bliss this interior
conjured was depressingly bland.

The only touch of eroticism was the parrot sulking on its perch by the
window; otherwise this nest was irredeemably suburban, from the row of
family photographs beside the clock on the mantelpiece, to the drooping
tulips in the vase on the well-polished dining-room table.

She was sure there were more remarkable sights in the street outside,
but Dowd was in no mood, or indeed condition, to go exploring.

He told her they would wait here until he was feeling fitter, and if any
of the family returned in the meanwhile she was to keep her silence.

He'd do the talking, he said, or else she'd not only put her own life in
jeopardy but that of the whole Peccable clan.

She believed him perfectly capable of such violence, especially in his
present pain, which he demanded she help him ameliorate.  She dutifully
bathed his face using water and towels from the kitchen.  The damage was

regrettably more superficial than she'd initially believed, I and once
the wounds were cleaned he rapidly began to show signs of recovery.  She
was now presented with a dilemma.  Given that he was healing with
superhuman speed, if she was going to exploit his vulnerability and
escape it had to be soon.  But if she did - if she fled the house there
and then - she'd have turned her back on the only guide to the city she
had.  And, more import- M antly, she would be gone from the spot to
which she still IF hoped Oscar would come, following her across the In
Ovo.  She couldn't afford to take the risk of his

arriving and finding her gone into a city that from all reports was so
vast they might search for each other ten lifetimes and never cross
paths.

A wind began to get up after a while, and it carried a member of the
Peccable family to the door.  A gangling girl in her late teens or early
twenties, dressed in a long coat and flower print dress, who greeted the
presence of two strangers in the house, one clearly recovering from
injury, in a studiedly sanguine fashion.

"Are you friends of Papa's?" she asked, removing her spectacles to
reveal eyes that were severely crossed.

Dowd said that they were, and began to explain how they'd come to be
here, but she politely asked him if he'd hold off his story until the
house had been shuttered against the coming storm.  She turned to Jude
for help in this, and Dowd made no objection, correctly assuming that
his captive was not going to venture out into an unknown city as a storm
came upon it.  So, with the first gusts already rattling at the door,
Jude followed Hoi Polloi around the house, locking any windows that were
open even an inch, then closing the shutters in case the glass was blown
in.  Even though the sandy wind was already obscuring the distance, Jude
got a glimpse of the city outside.  It was frustratingly brief, but
sufficient to reassure her that when she finally got to walk the streets

of Yzordderrex her months of waiting would be rewarded with wonders.

There were myriad tiers of streets set on the slopes above the house,
leading up to the monumental walls and towers of what Hoi-Polloi
identified as the Autarch's palace, and just visible from the attic-room
window was the ocean, glittering through the thickening storm.  But
these were sights - ocean, rooftops and towers - she might have seen in
the Fifth.  What marked this place as another Dominion were the people
in the streets outside, some human, many not, all retreating from the
wind or the commotions it carried.  A creature, its head vast, stumbled
up the street with what looked to be two sharpsnouted pigs, barking
furiously, under each arm.  A group of youths, bald and robed, ran in
the other direction, swinging smoking censers above their heads like
bola A man with a canary-yellow beard and china-doll skin was carried,
wounded but yelling furiously, into a house opposite.

"There's riots everywhere," Hoi-Polloi said.. "I wish Papa would come
home.. "Where is he?" Jude asked.

"Down at the harbour.  He had a shipment coming in from the islands."
"Can't you telephone him?. "Telephone?" Hoi-Polloi said.

"Yes, you know, it's a

"I know what it is," Hoi-Polloi said testily.. "Uncle Oscar showed me
one.  But they're against the law."

"Why?"

Hoi-Polloi shrugged.. "The law's the law," she said.  She peered out
into the storm before shuttering the final window.

"Papa will be sensible," she said.. "I'm always telling him, be
sensible, and he always is."

She led the way downstairs to find Dowd standing on the front step, with
the door flung wide.  Hot, gritty air blew in, smelling of spice and
distance.  Hoi-Polloi ordered Dowd back inside with a sharpness that
made Jude fear

for her, but Dowd seemed happy to play the erring guest, and did as he
was asked.  She slammed the door, and bolted it, then asked if anybody
wanted tea.  With the lights swinging in every room, and the wind
rattling every loose shutter, it was hard to pretend nothing was amiss,
but Hoi-Polloi did her best to keep the chat trivial while she brewed a
pot of Daijeeling, and offered round slices of madeira cake.

The sheer absurdity of the situation began to amuse Jude.  Here they
were having a tea-party while a city of untold strangeness was racked by
storm and revolution all around.  If Oscar appears now, she thought,
he'll be most entertained.  He'll sit down, dunk his cake in his tea and
talk about cricket like a perfect Englishman.

"Where's the rest of your family?" Dowd asked Hoi Polloi when the
conversation once more returned to her absent father.

"Mama and my brothers have gone to the country," she said, 'to be away
from the troubles.. "Didn't you want to go with them?"

"Not with Papa here.  Somebody has to look after him.

He's sensible most of the time, but I have to remind him."

A particularly vehement gust brought slates rattling off

the roof like gun-shots.  Hoi-Polloi jumped.

"If Papa was here," she said. "I think he'd suggest we

had something to calm our nerves."   A

"What do you have, lovey?" Dowd said.. "A little brandy

I maybe?  That's what Oscar brings, isn't it?"  i

She said it was, and fetched a bottle, dispensing it to I

all three of them in tiny glasses.

"He brought us Dotterel too," she said.

"Who's Dotterel?" Jude enquired.

A

q

"The parrot.  He was a present to me when I was little.  J!

He had a mate but she was eaten by the rage my next

door.  The brute!  Now Dotterel's on his own, and he's not

happy.  But Oscar's going to bring me another parrot

soon.  He said he would.  He brought pearls for Mama

once.  And for Papa he always brings newspapers.  Papa loves
newspapers."

She babbled on in a similar vein with barely a break in the flow.
Meanwhile, the three glasses were filled, and emptied, and filled again
several times, the liquor steadily taking its toll on Jude's
concentration.  In fact she found the monologue, and the subtle motion
of the light overhead positively soporific, and finally asked if she
might lie down for a while.  Again, Dowd made no objection, and let
Hoi-Polloi escort Jude up to the guest bedroom, offering only a slurred
'sweet dreams, lovey' as she retired.

She lay her buzzing head down gratefully, thinking as she dozed that it
made sense to sleep now, while the storm prevented her from taking to
the streets.  When it was over her expedition would begin, with or
without Dowd.

Oscar was not coming for her, that much seemed certain.  He'd either
sustained too much injury to follow, or else the Express had been
somehow damaged by Dowd's late boarding.

Whichever, she could not delay her adventures here any longer.  When she
woke, she'd emulate the forces rattling in the shutters, and take
Yzordderrex by storm.

She dreamt she was in a place of great grief.  A dark chamber, its
shutters closed against the same storm that raged outside the room in
which she slept and dreamt and knew she slept and dreamt even as she did
so - and in this chamber was the sound of a woman sobbing.

The grief was so palpable it stung her, and she wanted to soothe it, as
much for her own sake as that of the griever.  She moved through the
murk towards the sound, encountering curtain after curtain as she went,
all gossamer-thin, as though the trousseaux of a hundred brides had been
hung in this chamber.  Before she could reach the weeping woman,
however, a figure moved through the darkness ahead of her, coming to the
bed where the woman lay, and whispering to her.

Kreauchee the other said, and through the veils Jude glimpsed the
lisping speaker.

No figure as bizarre as this had ever flitted through her dreams before.
The creature was pale, even in the gloom, and naked, with a back from
which sprawled a garden of tails.  Jude advanced a little to see her
better, and the Creature in her turn saw her, or at least her effect
upon the veils, for she looked around the chamber as if she knew there
was a haunter here.  Her voice carried alarm when it came again.

"There's som'ady here, ledy," it said.

"I'll see nobody.  Especially Seidux."

"It's no tat Seidux.  I sceat no'ady, but I feel at som'ady here st ell

The weeping diminished.  The woman looked up.  There were still veils
between Jude and the sleeper's face, and the chamber was indeed dark,
but she knew her own features when she saw them, though her hair was
plastered to her sweating scalp, and her eyes puffed up with tears.  She
didn't recoil at the sight, but stood as still as spirits were able amid
gossamer, and watched the woman with her face rise up from the bed.
There was bliss in her expression.

"He's sent an angel," she said to the creature at her side.
"Concupiscentia ...  He's sent an angel to summon me.. "Yes?"

"Yes.  For certain.  This is a sign.  I'm going to be forgiven."

A sound at the door drew the woman's attention.  A man in uniform, his
face lit only by the cigarette he drew upon, stood watching.

"Get out," the woman said.

"I came only to see that you were comfortable, Ma'am Quaisoir.. "I said
get out, Seidux.. "If you should require anything Quaisoir got up
suddenly, and pitched herself through the veils in Seidux's direction.
The suddenness of this

assault took Jude by surprise, as it did its target.  Though Quaisoir
was a head shorter than her captor she had no fear of him.  She slapped
the cigarette from his bps.

"I don't want you watching me," she said.. "Get out.  Hear me?  Or shall
I scream rape?"

She began to tear at her already ragged clothes, exposing her breasts.
Seidux retreated in confusion, averting his eyes.

"As you wish!" he said, heading out of the chamber.. "As you wish!'

Quaisoir slammed the door on him, and turned her attention back to the
haunted room.

"Where are you, spirit?" she said, moving back through the veils. "Gone?
No, not gone." She turned to Concupiscentia.. "Do you feel its
presence?" The creature seemed too frightened to speak.. "I feel
nothing," Quaisoir said, now standing still amid the shifting veils.
"Damn Seidux!  The spirit's been driven out!'

Without the means to contradict this, all Jude could do was wait beside
the bed, and hope that the effect of Seidux's interruption - which had
seemingly blinded them to her presence - would wear off now that he'd
been exiled from the chamber.  She remembered as she waited how Clara
had talked about men's power to destroy.  Had she just witnessed an
example of that, Seidux's mere presence enough to poison the contact
between a dreaming spirit and a waking one?  If so, he'd done it all
unknowing; innocent of his power, but no more forgivable for that.  How
many times in any day did he and the rest of his kind - hadn't Clara
said they were another species?  - spoil and mutilate in their unwitting
way, Jude wondered, preventing the union of subtler natures?

Quaisoir sank back down on the bed, giving Jude time to ponder the
mystery her face represented.  She hadn't doubted from the moment she'd
entered this chamber that she was travelling here much as she'd first
travelled to the Tower, using the freedom of a dream-state to move
invisibly through the real world.  That she no longer

needed the blue eye to facilitate such movement was a puzzle for another
time.  What concerned her now was to find out how this woman came to
have her face.  Was this Dominion somehow a mirror of the world she'd
left?  And if not - if she was the only woman in the Fifth to have a
perfect twin - what did that echo signify?

The wind was beginning to abate, and Quaisoir dispatched her servant to
the window to remove the shutters.  There was still a red dust hanging
in the atmosphere, but moving to the sill beside the creature Jude was
presented with a vista that, had she possessed breath in this state,
would have taken it away.  They were perched high above the city, in one
of the towers she'd briefly glimpsed as she'd gone around Peccable's
house with Hoi-Polloi, bolting and shuttering.  It was not simply
Yzordderrex that lay before her, but signs of the city's undoing.  Fires
were raging in a dozen places beyond the palace walls, and within those
walls, the Autarch's troops were mustering in the courtyards.  Turning
her dream-gaze back towards Quaisoir, Jude saw for the firs; time the
sumptuousness of the chamber in which she'd found the woman.  The walls
were tapes tried and there was no stick of furniture that did not
compete in its gilding.  If this was a prison, then it was fit for
royalty.

Quaisoir now came to the window, and looked out at   the panorama of
fires.

"I have to find Him," she said.. "He sent an angel to bring me to Him,
and Seidux drove the angel out.  So I'll have to go to Him myself.

Tonight.  .

Jude listened, but distractedly, her mind more occupied by the opulence
of the chamber, and what it revealed about her twin.  It seemed she
shared a face with a woman of some significance; a possessor of power,
now dispossessed and planning to break the bonds set upon her.  Romance
seemed to be her reason.  There was a man in the city below with whom
she desperately wanted to be reunited: a lover who sent angels to
whisper sweet

f

nothings in her ear.  What kind of man, she wondered?  A Maestro,
perhaps; a wielder of magic?

Having studied the city for a time Quaisoir left the window and went
through to her dressing room.

"I mustn't go to Him like this," she said, starting to undress.. "That
would be shameful."

The woman caught sight of herself in one of the mirrors and sat down in
front of it, peering at her reflection with distaste.  Her tears had
made mud of the kohl around her eyes, and her cheeks and neck were
blotchy.  She took a piece of linen from the dressing-table, sprinkled
some fragrant oil upon it, and began to roughly clean her face.

"I'll go to Him naked," she said, smiling in anticipation of that
pleasure.. "He'll prefer me that way."

This mystery lover intrigued Jude more and more.  Hearing her own voice
musky with talk of nakedness, she was tantalized.  Would it not be a
fine thing to see the consummation?  The idea of watching herself couple
with some Yzordderrexian Maestro had not been amongst the wonderments
she'd anticipated discovering in this city, but the notion carried an
erotic fris son she could not deny herself.

She studied the reflection of her reflection.  Though there were a few
cosmetic differences, the essentials were hers, to the last nick and
mole.  This was no approximation of her face, but the thing exactly,
which fact strangely excited her.  She had to find a way to speak with
this woman tonight.  Even if their twinning was simply a freak of nature
they would surely be able to illuminate each other's lives with an
exchange of histories.  All she needed was a clue from her doppelgiinger
as to where in the city she intended to go looking for her Maestro
lover.

With her face cleansed, Quaisoir got up from in front of the mirror and
went back into the bedroom.  Concupiscentia was sitting by the window.
Quaisoir waited until she was within inches of her servant before she
spoke, and even then her words were barely audible.

"We'll need a knife," she said.

The creature shook her head.. "They took at em all," she said.. "You seem
how ey look at and look at."

"Then we must make one," Quaisoir replied.. "Seidux will try to oppose
our leaving."

"You wish at to kill em?"

"Yes I do."

This talk chilled Jude.  Though Seidux had retreated before Quaisoir
when she'd threatened to cry rape, Jude doubted that he'd be so passive
if challenged physically.  Indeed what more perfect excuse would he need
to regain his dominance than her coming at him with a knife?  If she'd
had the means, she would have been Clara's mouthpiece now, and echoed
her sentiments on man the desolator in the hope of keeping Quaisoir from
harm.  It would be an unbearable irony to lose this woman now, having
found her way (surely not by accident, though at present it seemed so)
across half the Imajica into her very chamber.

"I cet shapas the knife," Concupiscentia was saying.

"Then do it," Quaisoir replied, leaning still closer to her fellow
conspirator.

Jude missed the next exchange, because somebody ca e her name. Startled,
she looked round the room, but before she'd half-scanned it recognized
the voice.  It was Hoi-Polloi, and she was rousing the sleeper after the
storm.

"Papa's her el Jude heard her say.. "Wake up, Papa's here!'

There was no time to bid farewell to the scene.  It was there in front
of her one moment, and replaced the next with the face of Peccable's
daughter, leaning to shake her awake.

"Papa -' she said again.

"Yes, all right," Jude said brusquely, hoping the girl would leave
without further exchanges coming between her and the sights sleep had
brought.  She knew she had scant moments to drag the dream into
wakefulness with her, or it would subside, and the details became hazy
the

J

deeper it sank.  She was in luck.  Hoi-Polloi hurried back down to her
father's side, leaving Jude to recite aloud all she'd seen and heard.

Quaisoir and her servant Concupiscentia; Seidux, and the plot against
him.  And the lover, of course.  She mustn't forget the lover, who was
presumably somewhere in the city even now, pining for his mistress,
locked up in her gilded -prison.  With these facts fixed in her head,
she ventured first to the bathroom then down to meet Peccable.

Well dressed and better fed, Peccable had a face upon which his present
ire sat badly.  He looked slightly absurd in his fury, his features too
round and his mouth too small for the rhetoric they were producing.
Introductions were made, but there was no time for pleasantries.

Peccable's fury needed venting, and he seemed not to care much who his
audience was, as long as they sympathized.  He had reason for fury.  His
warehouse near the harbour had been burned to the ground, and he himself
had only narrowly escaped death at the hands of a mob that had already
taken over three of the Kesparates, and declared them independent
city-states, thereby issuing a challenge to the Autarch.  So far, he
said, the palace had done little.  Small contingents of troops had been
dispatched to the Caramess, to the Oke T'Noon, and the seven Kesparates
on the other side of the hill, to suppress any sign of uprisings there.

But no offensive had been launched against the insurgents who had taken
the harbour.

"They're nothing more than rabble," the merchant said.. "They've no care
for property or person.  Indiscriminate destruction, that's all they're
good for!  I'm no great lover of the Autarch, but he's got to be the
voice of decent people like me in times like this!  I should have sold
my business a year ago.  I talked with Oscar about it.  We planned to
move away from this wretched city.  But I hung on and hung on, because I
believe in people.  That's my mistake," he said, throwing his eyes up to
the ceiling like a man martyred by his own decency.

"I have too much faith." He looked at Hoi-Polloi.. "Don't 1?"

"You do, Papa, you do."

"Well, not any more.  You go and pack our belongings, t sweet, we're
getting out tonight."

"What about the house?" Dowd said.. "And all the collectables
downstairs?"

Peccable cast a glance at Hoi-Polloi.. "Why don't you start packing
now?" he said, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of debating his
black-market activities in front of his daughter.  He cast a similar
glance at Jude, but she pretended not to comprehend its significance,
and remained seated.  He began to talk anyway.

"When we leave this house we leave it forever, "he said.. "There'll be
nothing left to come back to, I'm convinced of that." The outraged.

bourgeois of minutes before, appealing for civil stability, was now
replaced by an apocalyptic.. "It was bound to happen sooner or later.

They couldn't control the cults in perpetuity.. "They?" said Jude.

"The Autarch.  And Quaisoir." The sound of the name was like a blow to
her heart.

"Quaisoir?" she said.

"His wife.  The consort.  Our Lady of Yzordderrex; Ma'am Quaisoir. She's
been his undoing if you ask me.  He always kept himself hidden away,
which was wise; nobody thought about him much as long as trade was good,
and the streets were lit.  The taxes, of course, the taxes have been a
burden upon us all, especially family men like myself, but let me tell
you we're better off here than they are in Patashoqua or Iahmandhas. No,
I don't think he's done badly by us.  The stories you hear about the
state of things when he first took over: chaos! Half the Kesparates at
war with the other half.  He brought stability.  People prospered.  No,
it's not his policies, it's her: she's his undoing. Things were fine
until she started to interfere.  I suppose she thinks she's doing us a
favour, deigning to appear in public.. "Have you ... seen her then?"
Jude asked.

"Not personally, no.  She stays out of sight, even when

she attends executions.  Though I heard that she showed herself today,
out in the open.

Somebody said they'd actually seen her face.  Ugly, they said.  Brutish.
I'm not surprised.  All these executions were her idea.  She enjoys
them, apparently.  Well, people don't like that.

Taxes, yes.  An occasional purge, some political trials, well, yes,
those too, we can accept those.  But you can't make the law into a
public spectacle.  That's a mockery, and we've never mocked the law in
Yzordderrex."

He went on in much the same vein, but Jude wasn't listening.  She was
attempting to conceal the heady mixture of feelings that was coursing
through her.  Quaisoir, the woman with her face, was not some minor
player in the life of Yzordderrex, but one of its two potentates, and by
extension therefore, one of the great rulers of the Imajica.  Could she
now doubt that there was purpose in her coming to this city?  She had a
face which owned power.  A face that went in secret from the world, but
that behind its veils had made the Autarch of Yzordderrex pliant.  The
question was: what did that mean?  After so unremarkable a life on earth
had she been called into this Dominion to taste a little of the power
that her other took for granted?  Or was she here as a diversion, called
to suffer in place of Quaisoir for the crimes she'd supposedly
committed?  And if so, who was the summoner?  Clearly it had to be a
Maestro with ready access to the Fifth Dominion, and agents there to
conspire with.  Was Godolphin some part of this plot?  Or Dowd perhaps?
That seemed more likely.

And what about Quaisoir?  Was she in ignorance of the plans being laid
on her behalf, or a fellow plotter?

Tonight would tell, Jude promised herself.  Tonight she'd find some way
to intercept Quaisoir as she went to meet her angel-dispatching lover,
and before another day had gone by Jude would know whether she'd been
brought from the Fifth to be a sister or a scapegoat.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Gentle did as he'd promised Pie, and stayed with Huzzah at the cW where
they'd breakfasted until the Comet's arc took it behind the mountain,
and the light of day gave way to twilight.  Doing so tried not only his
patience but his nerve, because as the afternoon wore on the unrest from
the lower Kesparates spread up through the streets, and it became
increasingly apparent that the establishment would stand in the middle
of a battlefield by evening.  Party by party the customers vacated their
tables as the sound of rioting and gunfire crept closer.  A slow rain of
smuts began to fall, spiralling from ask which y was intermittently
darkened now by smoke rising from the burning Kesparates.

As the first wounded began to be carried up the street, indicating that
the field of action was now very near, the owners of several nearby
shops gathered in the caM for a short council, debating, presumably, the
best way to defend their property.

It ended in accusation, the insults an education to both Gentle and
Huzzah.  Two of the owners returned with weapons !\few minutes later, at
which point the manager, who introduced himself as Bunyan Blew, asked
Gentle if he and his daughter didn't have a home to go to?  Gentle
replied that they had promised to meet somebody here earlier in the day,
and they would be most obliged if they could remain until their friend
arrived.

"I remember you," Blew replied.. "You came in this morning, didn't you,
with a woman?. "That's who we're waiting for.. "She put me in mind of
somebody I used to know," Blew said. "I hope she's safe out there.. "So
do we," Gentle replied.

"You'd better stay then.  But you'll have to lend me a hand barricading
the place up."

Bunyan explained that he'd known this was going to happen sooner or
later, and was prepared for the eventuality.  There were timbers to nail
over the windows, and a supply of small arms should the mob try to loot
his shelves.  in fact, his precautions proved unnecessary.  The street
became a conduit for ferrying the wounded army from the combat zone,
which was moving up the hill one street east of the caM.  There were two
nerve-racking hours, however, when the din of shouting and shots were
coming from all compass points, and the bottles on Blew's shelves
tinkled every time the ground shook, which was often.  One of the
shopkeepers who'd left in high dudgeon earlier came beating at the door
during this siege, and stumbled over the threshold with blood streaming
from his head and tales of destruction from his mouth.  The army had
called up heavy artillery in the- last hour, he reported, and it had
practically levelled the harbour and rendered the causeway impassable,
thereby effectively sealing the city.  This was all part of the
Autarch's plan, he said.  Why else were whole neighbour hoods being
allowed to burn unchecked?  The Autarch was leaving the city to consume
its own citizens, knowing the conflagration would not be able to breach
the palace walls.

"He's going to let the mob destroy itself," the man went on, 'and he
doesn't care what happens to us in the meantime.

Selfish bastard! We're all going to burn, and he's not going to lift a
finger to help usl'

This scenario certainly fitted the facts.  when, at Gentle's suggestion,
they went up on to the roof to get a better view of the situation, it
seemed to be exactly as described.  The ocean was obliterated by a wall
of smoke climbing from the embers of the harbour; further flame shot
columns rose from two dozen neighbour hoods near and far; and through
the dirty heat coming off the Oke T'Noon's pyre the causeway was just
visible, its rubble damming the delta.  Clogged by smoke, the Comet shed

a diminished light on the city, and even that was fading as the long
twilight deepened.

"It's time to leave," Gentle told Huzzah.

"Where are we going to go?"

"Back to find Pie'oh'pah," he replied.. "While we still can."

It had been apparent from the roof that there was no safe route back to
the mystif's Kesparate.  The various factions warring in the streets
were moving unpredictably' A street that was empty one moment might be
thronged the next, and rubble the moment after that.  They would have to
go on instinct and a prayer, taking as direct a path back to where
they'd left Pie'oh'pah as circumstance allowed.  Dusks in this Dominion
usually lasted the length of an English midwinter day - five or six
hours - the tail of the Comet keeping traces of light in the sky long
after its fiery head had dropped beneath the horizon.  But the smoke
thickened as Gentle and Huzzah travelled, eclipsing the languid light
and plunging the city into a filthy gloom.  There were still the fires
to compensate, of course, but between the conflagrations, in streets
where the lamps hadn't been lit, and the citizens had shuttered their
windows and blocked their keyholes to keep any sign of occupation from
showing, the darkness was almost impenetrable.  In such thoroughfares
Gentle hoisted Huzzah on to his shoulders, from which vantage-point she
was able to snatch sights to steer him by.

It was slow going, however, halting at each intersection to calculate
the least dangerous route to follow, and taking refuge at the approach
of both governmental and revolutionary troops.  But for every soldier in
this war there were half a dozen bystanders, people daring the tide of
battle like beachcombers, retreating before each wave only to return to
their watching places when it receded; a sometimes lethal game.  A
similar dance was demanded of Gentle and Huzzah.  Driven off course
again and again they were obliged to trust to instinct as to their

direction, and inevitably instinct finally deserted them.

In an uncommon hush between clam ours and bombardments Gentle said:

"Angel?  I don't know where we are any more." A comprehensive fusillade
had brought most of the Kesparate around them down, and there were
precious few places of refuge amid the rubble, but Huzzah insisted they
find one; a call of nature that could be delayed no longer.  Gentle set
her down, and she headed off for the dubious cover of a semi-demolished
house some yards up the street.  He stood guard at the door, calling
inside to her and telling her not to venture too far.  He'd no sooner
offered this warning than the appearance of a small band of armed men
drove him back into the shadows of the doorway.  But for their weapons,
which had presumably been plucked from dead men, they looked ill suited
to the role of revolutionaries.  The eldest, a barrel of a man in late
middle age, still wore the hat and tie he'd most likely gone to work in
that morning, while two of his accomplices were barely older than
Huzzah.  Of the two remaining members, one was an Oethac woman, the
other of the tribe to which the executioner in Vanaeph had belonged: a
Nullianac, its head like hands joined in prayer.

Gentle glanced back into the darkness, hoping to hush Huzzah before she
emerged, but there was no sign of her.  He left the step and headed into
the ruins.  The floor was sticky underfoot, though he couldn't see with
what.  He did see Huzzah, however, or her silhouette as she rose from
relieving herself.  She saw him too, and made a little noise of protest,
which he hushed as loudly as he dared.  A fresh bombardment close by
brought shock-waves and bursts of light, by which he glimpsed their
refuge: a domestic interior, with a table set for the evening meal, and
its cook dead beneath it, her blood the stickiness under his heel.
Beckoning Huzzah to him, and holding her tight, he ventured back towards
the door, as a second bombardment began.  it drove the looters to the
step for cover,

e could retreat into shadow.  She let out a shout, and one of the and
the Oethac caught sight of Gentle before h

youths fired into the darkness where Gentle and Huzzah had stood, the
bullets spattering plaster and wood splinters in all directions. Backing
away from the door through which their attackers were bound to come,
Gentle ushered Huzzah into the darkest cover and drew a breath.  He
barely had time to do so before the trigger happy youth was at the
doorway, firing indiscriminately.  Gentle unleashed a pneuma from the
darkness, and it flew towards the door.  He'd underestimated his
strength.  The gunman was obliterated in an instant, but the pneuma.
took the door frame and much of the wall to either side of it at the
same time.

Before the dust could clear and the survivors come after them, he went
to find Huzzah, but the wall against which she'd been crouching was
cracked, and curling like a stone wave.  He yelled her name as it broke.

Her shriek answered him, off to his left.  The Nullianac had snatched
her up, and for a terrifying instant Gentle thought it intended to
annihilate her, but instead it drew her to it like a doll, and
disappeared into the dust-clouds.

He started in pursuit without a backward glance, an error that brought
him to his knees before he'd covered two yards of ground, as the Oethac
woman delivered a stabbing blow to the small of his back.  The wound
wasn't deep, but the shock drove his breath from him as he fell, and her
second blow would have taken out the back of his skull had he not rolled
out of its way.  The small pick she was wielding, wet with his blood,
buried itself in the ground, and before she could pull it free he hauled
himself to his feet and started after Huzzah and her abductor.  The
second youth was moving after the Nullianac, squealing with drugged or
drunken glee, and Gentle followed the sound when he lost the sight, the
chase taking him out of the wasteland and into a Kesparate that had been
left relatively untouched by the conflict.

There was good reason.  The trade here was in sexual

favours, and business was booming.  Though the streets were narrower
than in any other district that Gentle had passed through, there was
plenty of light spilling from the doorways and windows, the lamps and
candles arranged to best illuminate the wares lolling on step and sill.
Even a passing glance confirmed that there were anatomies and
gratifications on offer here that beggared the most dissolute backwaters
of Bangkok or Tangiers.  Nor was there any paucity of customers.  The
imminence of death seemed to have whipped up the consensual libido. Even
if the flesh-pushers and pill pimps who offered their highs as Gentle
passed never made it to morning, they'd die rich.

Needless to say, the sight of a Nullianac carrying a protesting child
barely warranted a look in a street sacred to depravity, and Gentle's
calls for the abductor to be stopped went ignored.

The crowd thickened the further down the street he ventured, and he
finally lost both sight and sound of those he was pursuing.  There were
alleyways off the main thoroughfare (its name - Lickerish Street daubed
on one of the bordello walls) and the darkness of any of them might be
concealing the Nullianac.  He started to yell Huzzah's name, but in the
come-ons and hagglings two shouted syllables were drowned out.  He was
about to run on when he glimpsed a man backing out of one of the
alleyways with distress on his face.  He pushed his way through to the
man, and took hold of his arm, but he shrugged it off and fled before
Gentle could ask what he'd seen.  Rather than call Huzzah's name again,
Gentle saved his breath, and headed down the alley.

There was a fire of mattresses burning twenty yards down it, tended by a
masked woman.

Insects had nested in the ticking, and were being driven out by the
flames, some attempting to fly on burning wings, only to be swatted by
the fire maker  Ducking her wild swings, Gentle asked after the
Nullianac, and the woman directed him on down the alley with a nod.  The
ground was seething with refugees from the mattress, and he broke a
hundred

shells with every step until he was well clear of the fumi-gator's fire.
Lickerish Street was now too far behind him to shed any light on the
scene, but the bombardment which the crowd behind him had been so
indifferent to still continued all around, and explosions further up the
city's slopes briefly but garishly lit the alleyway.  It was narrow and
filthy, the buildings blinded by brick or boarded up, the road between
scarcely more than a gutter, choked with trash and decaying vegetable
matter.  Its stench was sickening, but he breathed it deeply, hoping the
pneuma born of and on that foetid air would be all the more potent for
its foulness.  The theft of Huzzah had already earned her abductors
their deaths, but if they had done the least hurt to her he swore to
himself he'd return 'j that hurt a hundredfold before he executed t hem.

The alleyway twisted and turned, narrowing to a man's width in some
places, but the sense that he was closing on them was confirmed when he
heard the youth's whooping a little way ahead.  He slowed his pace a
little, advancing through shin-deep refuse, until he came in sight of a
light.  The alleyway ended a few yards from where he stood, and there,
squatting with its back to the wall, was the Nullianac.  The
light-source was neither  lamp nor fire, but the creature's head,
between the sides J of which arcs of energy passed back and forth.

By their flickers, Gentle saw his angel, lying on the ground in front of
her captor.  She was quite still, her I body limp, her eyes closed, for
which fact Gentle was grateful, given the Nullianac's present labours.
It had stripped the lower half of her body, and its long, pale hands
were busy upon her.  The whooper was standing a little way off from the
scene.  He was unzipped, his gun in one hand, his half-hard member in
the other.  Every now and then he aimed the gun at the child's head, and
another whoop came from his lips.  Nothing would have given Gentle more
satisfaction at that moment than unleashing a pneuma against them both
from where he stood, but he still wielded the power ineptly, and feared

that he'd do Huzzah some accidental harm, so he crept a little closer,
another explosion on the hill throwing its brutal light down on the
scene.  By it he caught a glimpse of the Nullianac's work, and then,
more stomach-turning still, heard Huzzah gasp.  The light withered as
she did so, leaving the Nullianac's head to shed its flickering gleam on
her pain.  The whooper was silent now, his eyes fixed on the violation.
Looking up, the Nullianac uttered a few syllables shaped out of the
chamber between its skulls, and reluctantly the youth obeyed its order,
retreating from the scene a little way.  Some crisis was near.  The arcs
in the Nullianac's head were flaring with fresh urgency, its fingers
working as if to expose Huzzah to their discharge.  Gentle drew breath,
realizing he would have to risk hurting Huzzah if he was to prevent the
certainty of a worse harm.  The whooper heard his intake, and turned to
peer into the darkness.  As he did so another lethal brightness dropped
around them from on high.  By it, Gentle stood revealed.

The youth fired on the instant, but either his ineptitude or his arousal
spoiled his aim.  The shots went wide.  Gentle didn't give him a second
chance.  Reserving his pneuma for the Nullianac, he threw himself at the
youth, striking the weapon from his hand and kicking the legs from under
him.  The whooper went down within inches of his gun, but before he
could reclaim it Gentle drove his foot down on the outstretched fingers,
bringing a very different kind of whoop from the kid's throat.

Now he turned back on the Nullianac, in time to see it raising its
fireful head, the arcs cracking like slapsticks.  Gentle's fist went to
his mouth, and he was discharging the pneuma when the whooper seized
hold of his leg.  The death-warrant went from Gentle's hand, but it
struck the Nullianac's flank rather than its head, wounding but not
dispatching it.  The kid hauled on Gentle's leg again, and this time he
toppled, falling into the muck where he'd put the whooper seconds
before, his punctured back striking the ground hard.  The pain blinded
him, and

when his sight returned the youth was up, and rummaging amongst the
arsenal at his belt.

Gentle glanced towards the Nullianac.  It had dropped against the wall,
its head thrown back and spitting darts of fire.  Their light was
little, but enough for Gentle to catch the gleam of the dropped gun at
his side.  He reached for it as the delinquent's hand fumbled with
another weapon, and he had it levelled before the youth could get his
cracked finger on the trigger.  He pointed not at the youth's head or
heart, but at his groin.  A littler target, but one which made the kid
drop his gun instantly.

"Don't do that, sirrah!" he said.

"The belt .  .  ." Gentle said, getting to his feet as the youth
unbuckled and unburdened himself of his filched arsenal.

By another blaze from above he saw the boy now full of tics and jitters;
pitiful and powerless.  There would be no honour in shooting him down,
whatever crimes he'd been responsible for.

"Go home," he said.. "If I see your face ever again

"You won't, sirrahl' the boy said.. "I swear!  I swear you won't!'

He didn't give Gentle time to change his mind, but fled as the light
that had revealed his frailty faded.  Gentle turned the gun and his gaze
upon the Nullianac.  It had raised itself from the ground, and slid up
the wall into a standing position, its fingers, their tips red with its
deed, pressed to the place where the pneuma.  had struck it.  Gentle
hoped it was suffering, but he had no way of knowing until it spoke.

When it did, when the words came from its wretched head, they were
faltering, and barely comprehensible.

"Which is it to be ...  ?" it said.. "You or her?  I will kill one of
you before I pass.  Which is it to be?"

"I'll kill you first," Gentle said, the gun pointed at the Nullianac's
head.

"You could," it said. "I know.  You murdered a brother of mine outside
Patashoqua."

"Your brother, huh?. "We're rare, and know each other's lives," it said.

"So don't get any rarer," Gentle advised, taking a step towards Huzzah
as he spoke, but keeping his eyes fixed on her violator.

"She's alive," it said.. "I wouldn't kill a thing so young.  Not
quickly.  Young deserves slow."

Gentle risked a glance away from the creature.  Huzzah's eyes were
indeed wide open, and fixed upon him in terror.

"It's all right, angel," he said.. "Nothing's going to happen to you.
Can you move?"

He glanced back at the Nullianac as he spoke, wishing he had some way of
interpreting the motions of its little fires.  Was it more grievously
wounded than he'd thought, and preserving its energies for healing?  Or
was it biding its time, waiting for its moment to strike?

Huzzah was pulling herself up into a sitting position, the motion
bringing little whimpers of pain from her.  Gentle longed to cradle and
soothe her, but all he'd dared do was drop to his haunches, his eyes
fixed on her violator, and reach for the clothes she'd had torn from
her.

"Can you walk, angel?. "I don't know," she sobbed.

"Please try.  I'll help you."

He put his hand out to do so but she avoided him, saying no through her
tears, and pulling herself to her feet.

"That's good, sweetheart," he said.  There was a reawakening in the
Nullianac's head, the arcs dancing again.. "I want you to start walking,
angel," Gentle said.. "Don't worry about me, I'm coming with you."

She did as he instructed, slowly, the sobs still coming.  The Nullianac
started to speak again as she went.

"Ah, to see her like that.  It makes me ache." The arcs had begun their
din again, like distant firecrackers.. "What would you do to save her
little soul?" it said.

"Just about anything," Gentle replied.

"You deceive yourself," it said.. "When you killed my brother, we
enquired after you, my kin and I.  We know how foul a saviour you are.
What's my crime beside yours?  A small thing, done because my appetite
demands it.  But you -you - you've laid waste the hopes of generations.
You've destroyed the fruit of great men's trees.  And still you claim
you would give yourself to save her little soul?"

This eloquence startled Gentle, but its essence startled him more. Where
had the creature plucked these conceits from, that it could so easily
spill them now?  They were inventions, of course, but they confounded
him nevertheless and his thoughts strayed from his present jeopardy for
a vital moment.  The creature saw him drop his gum and, and acted on the
instant.  Though it was no more than two yards from him, he heard the
sliver of silence J between the light and its report, a void confirming
how foul a saviour he was.  Death was on its way towards the child
before his warning cry was even in his throat.

He turned to see his angel standing in the alleyway some distance from
him.  She had either turned in anticipation, or had been listening to
the Nullianac's speech, because she stood full face to the blow coming
at her.  Still, time ran.  slow, and Gentle had several, aching moments
in which to see how her eyes were fixed upon him, her tears all dried,
her gaze unblinking.  Time too for that warning shout, in
acknowledgement of which she closed her eyes, her face becoming a blank
upon which he could inscribe any accusation his guilt wished to
contrive.

Then the Nullianac's blow was upon her.  The force struck her body at
speed, but it didn't break her flesh, and for an instant he dared hope
she had found some defence against it.  But its hurt was more insidious
than a bullet or a blow, its light spreading from the point of impact,
up to her face where it entered by every means it could, and down to
where its dispatcher's fingers had already pried.

He let out another shout, this time of revulsion, and

turned back on the Nullianac, raising the gun its words had made him so
forgetful of, and firing at its heart.  it fell back against the wall,
its arms slack at its side, the space between its skulls still issuing
its lethal light.  Then he looked back at Huzzah, to see that it had
eaten her away from the inside, and that she was flowing back along the
line of her destroyer's gaze, into the chamber from which the stroke had
been delivered.  Even as he watched, her face collapsed, and her limbs,
never substantial, decayed and went the same way.  Before she was
entirely consumed, however, the harm Gentle's bullet had done the
Nullianac took its toll.  The stream of power fractured, and failed.
When it did, darkness descended,

d for a time Gentle couldn't even see the creature's an body.  Then the
bombardment on the hill began afresh, its blaze brief but bright enough
to show him the Nullianac's corpse, lying in the dirt where it had
squatted.   IM

He watched it, expecting some final act of retaliation, but none came.
The light died, and left Gentle to retreat along the alleyway, weighed
down not only by his failure to save Huzzah's life, but by his lack of
comprehension of what had just happened.  In plain terms, a child in his
re had been slaughtered by her molester, and he'd ca failed to prevent
that slaughter.  But he'd been wandering in the Dominions too long to be
content with simple assessments.  There was more here than stymied lust
and sudden death.  Words had been uttered more appropriate to pulpit
than gutter.  Hadn't he himself called Huzzah his angel?  Hadn't he seen
her grow seraphic at the end, knowing she was about to die and accepting
that fate?  And hadn't he in his turn been dubbed a deficient saviour,
and proved that accusation true by failing to deliver her?  These were
high-flown words, but he badly needed to believe them apt, not so that
he could indulge Messianic fantasies, but so that the grief welling in
him might be softened by the hope that there was higher purpose here,
which in the fullness of time he'd come to know and understand.

A burst of fire threw light down the alleyway, and Gentle's shadow fell
across something twitching in the filth.  It took him a moment to
comprehend what he was seeing, but when he did he loosed a shout.

Huzzah had not quite gone.  Small scraps of her skin and sinew, dropped
when the Nullianac's claim upon her was cut short, moved here in the
rot.  None were recognizable; indeed had they not been moving in the
folds of her bloodied clothes he'd not even have known them as her
flesh.  He reached down to touch them, tears stringing his eyes, but
before his fingers could make contact, what little life the scraps had
owned went out.

He rose raging; rose in horror at the filth beneath his feet, and the
dead, empty houses that channelled it; and in disgust at himself, for
surviving when his angel had not.  Turning his gaze on the nearest wall,
he drew breath, and put not one hand but two against his lips, intending
to do what little he could to bury these remains.

But rage and revulsion were fuelling his pneuma, and when it went from
him, it brought down not one wall, but several, passing through the
teetering houses like a bullet through a pack of cards.  Shards of
pulverized stone flew as the houses toppled, the collapse of one
initiating the fall of the next, the dust cloud growing in scale as each
house added to its sum.

He started up the alleyway in pursuit of the pneuma, fearing that his
disgust had given it more purpose than he'd intended.  It was heading
towards Lickerish Street, where the crowds were still milling, oblivious
to its approach.  They were not wandering that street innocent of its
corruption, or course, but neither did their presence there deserve
death.  He wished he could draw the breath as he exhaled it; call the
pneuma back into himself.  But it had its head, and all he could do was
run after it as it brought down house after house, hoping it would spend
its power before it reached the crowd.

He could see the lights of Lickerish Street through the hail of
demolition.  He picked up his pace to try and out-

U

run the pneuma, and was a little ahead of it when he set eyes on the
throng itself, thicker than ever.  Some had interrupted their
window-shopping to watch the spectacle of destruction.  He saw their
gawping faces, their little smiles, their shaking heads: saw that they
didn't comprehend for an instant what was coming their way.  Knowing any
attempt to warn them verbally would be

TV lost in the furore, he raced to the end of the alleyway and flung
himself into their midst, intending to scatter them, but his antics only
drew a larger audience, who were in turn intrigued by the alleyway's
capitulation.

one or two had grasped their jeopardy now, their MW

expressions of curiosity become looks of fear; and finally, too late,
their unease spread to the rest, and a general retreat began.

The pneuma was too quick, however.  it broke through the last of the
walls in a devastating shower of rock shards and splinters, striking the
crowd at its densest place.  Had Hapexamendios, in a fit of cleansing
ire, delivered a judgement on Lickerish Street, He could scarcely have
scoured it better.  What had seconds before been a crowd of puzzled
sightseers was blood and bone in a heart-beat.

Though he stood in the midst of this devastation, Gentle remained
unharmed.  He was able to watch his terrible weapon work its work, its
power apparently undecayed despite the fact that it had demolished a
string of houses.  Nor, having cut a swathe through the crowd, was it
following the trajectory set at his lips.  It had found flesh, and
clearly intended to busy itself in the midst of living stuff until there
was none left to undo.

He was appalled at the prospect.  This hadn't been his intention, nor
anything like it.

There seemed to be only one option available to him, and that he
instantly took: he stood in the pneuma's path.  He'd used the power in
his lungs many times now - first against the Nullianac's brother in
Vanaeph, then twice in the mountains and finally on the island, when
they were making their escape from Vigor Washap's asylum - but in all
that time he'd

only had the vaguest impression of its appearance.  Was it like a
fire-breather's belch; or a bullet made of will and air, nearly
invisible until it did its deed?  Perhaps it had been the latter once,
but now, as he set himself in its path, he saw that it had gathered dust
and blood along its route, and from those essential elements it had made
itself a likeness of its maker.

It was his face that was coming at him, albeit roughly sculpted; his
brow, his eyes, his open mouth, expelling the very breath it had begun
with.  It didn't slow as it approached its maker, but struck Gentle's
chest the way it had struck so many before him.  He felt the blow, but
was not felled by it.  Instead the power, knowing its source, discharged
itself through his system, running to his fingertips and coursing across
his scalp.  its shock was come and gone in a moment, and he was left
standing in the middle of the devastation with his arms spread wide, and
the dust falling around him.

Silence followed.  Distantly, he could hear the wounded sobbing, and
half-demolished walls going to rubble, but he was encircled by a hush
that was almost reverential.  Somebody dropped to his knees nearby, to
tend, he thought, to one of the wounded.  Then he heard the hallelujahs
the man was uttering, and saw his hands reaching up towards him. Another
of the crowd followed suit, and then another, as though this scene of
their deliverance was a sign they'd been waiting for, and a
long suppressed flood of devotion was breaking from each of their hearts.

Sickened, Gentle turned his gaze away from their grateful faces, up the
dusty length of Lickerish Street' He had only one ambition now: to find
Pie and take comfort from this insanity in the mystif's arms.  He broke
from his ring of devotees, and started up the street, ignoring their
clinging hands and cries of adoration.  He wanted to berate them for
their naivety, but what good would that do?  Any pronouncement he made
now, however self deprecatory would probably be taken as the jotting for
some gospel.  Instead he kept his silence, and picked his

way over the stones and corpses, his head down.  The hosannas followed
him, but he didn't once acknowledge them, knowing even as he went that
his reluctance might Seem like divine humility, but unable to escape the
trap circumstance had set.

The wasteland at the head of the street was as daunting as ever, but he
started across it not caring what fires might come.  Its terrors were
nothing beside the memory of Huzzah's scrap, twitching in the muck, or
the hallelujahs which he could still hear behind him, raised in
ignorance of the fact that he - the saviour of Lickerish Street - was
also its destroyer, but no less tempting for that.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Every trace of the joy that the vast halls of the chianculi had once
seen - no clowns or ponies, but circuses such as any showman in the
Fifth would have wept to own had gone.  The echoing halls had become
places of mourning, and of judgement.  Today, the accused was the mystif
Pieloh pah; its accuser one of the few lawyers in Yzord-derrex the
Autarch's purges had left alive, an asthmatic and pinched individual
called Thes'reh'of.  He had an audience of two for his prosecution -
Pie'oh'pah, and the judge - but he delivered his litany of crimes as if
the hall was full to the rafters.  The mystif was guilty enough to
warrant a dozen executions, he said.  it was at very least a traitor and
coward, but probably also an informant and '2 a spy.  Worse, perhaps, it
had abandoned this Dominion for another without the consent of its
family or its teachers, denying its people the benefit of its rarity.
Had it forgotten in its arrogance that its condition was sacred, and
that to prostitute itself in another world (the Fifth, of all places; a
mire of un miraculous souls!) was not only a sin upon itself, but upon
its species?  It had gone from I this place clean and dared to return
debauched and corrupted, bringing a creature of the Fifth with it, and
then freely confessing that said creature was its husband.

Pie had expected to be met with some recriminations upon its return -
the memories of its people were long, and they clung strongly to
tradition as the only contact they had with the First Dominion - but the
vehemence of this catalogue was still astonishing.  The judge,
Culus'su'erai, was a woman of great age but diminished physique, who sat
bundled in robes as colourless as her

JN

skin, listening to the litany of accusations without once looking at
either accuser or accused.

When Thes'reh'of had finished, she offered the mystif the chance to
defend itself, and Pie did what it could.

"I admit I've made many errors," it said.. "Not least leaving my family
- and my people were my family - without telling them where I was going,
or why.  But the simple fact is: I didn't know.  I fully intended to
return, after maybe a year or so.

I thought it'd be fine to have travellers' tales to tell.  Now, when I
finally return, I find there's nobody to tell them to."

"What possessed you to go into the Fifth?" Culus asked.

"Another error," Pie said.. "I went to Patashoqua and I met a theurgist
there who said he could take me over to the Fifth.  Just for a jaunt.
We'd be back in a day, he said.  A day!  I thought this was a fine idea.

I'd come home having walked in the Fifth Dominion.  So I paid him

"In what currency?" said Thes'reh'of.

"Cash.  And some little favours.  I didn't prostitute myself if that's
what you're suggesting.

If I had maybe he'd have kept his promises.  Instead his ritual
delivered me into the In Ovo."

"And how long were you there?" Culus'su'erai enquired.

"I don't know," the mystif replied.. "The suffering there seemed endless
and unendurable, but it was perhaps only days."

Thes'reh'of snorted at this.. "Its sufferings were of its own making,
ma'am.  Are they strictly relevant?"

"Probably ) not," Cu us'su'erai, conceded.. "But you were claimed out of
the In Ovo by a Maestro of the Fifth, am I right?"

"Yes, ma'am.  His name was Sartori.  He was the Fifth's representative
in the Synod preparing for the Reconciliation.. "And you served him?" I
did.,

"In what capacity?"

"In any way he chose to request.  I was his familiar." Thes'reh'of made
a sound of disgust at this.  His response was not feigned, Pie thought.
He was genuinely appalled at the thought of one of his people -
especially .1 a creature so blessed as a mystif - serving the will of a
homo sapiens.

"Was Sartori, in your estimation, a good man?" Culus asked Pie.

"He was the usual paradox.  Compassion when it was least expected.
Cruelty the same.

He had an extraordinary ego, but then I don't believe he could have
carried the responsibility of the Reconciliation without one.. "Was he
cruel to you?" Culus enquired.

"Ma'am?. "Do you not understand the question?. "Yes.  But not its
relevance."

Culus growled with displeasure.. "This court may be much reduced in pomp
and ceremony," she said, 'and its officers a little withered, but the
authority of both remains undiminished.  Do you understand me, mystif?
When I ask a question I expect it answered, promptly and truthfully."
Pie murmured its apologies.

"So.  .  ." said Culus.. "I will repeat the question.  Was Sartori cruel
to you?"

"Sometimes," Pie replied.

"And yet, when the Reconciliation failed you didn't forsake his company
and return to this Dominion?. "He'd summoned me out of the In Ovo.  He'd
bound me to him.  I had no jurisdiction."

"Unlikely." Thes'reh'of remarked.. "Are you asking us to believe -. "Did
I hear you ask permission to question the accused again?" Culus snapped.

"No, ma'am.. "Do you request such permission?. "Yes, ma'am.. "Denied,"
Culus replied, and turned her eye back upon

Pie.. "I think you learned a great deal in the Fifth Dominion, mystif,"
she said.. "And you're the worse for it.  You're arrogant.  You're sly.

And you're probably just as cruel as your Maestro.  But I don't believe
you're a spy.  You're something worse than that.  You're a fool.

You turned your back on people who loved you and let yourself be
enslaved by a man responsible for the deaths of a great many fine souls
across the Imajica.  I can tell you've got something to say,
Thes'reh'of.  Spit it out, before I give judgement."

"Only that the mystif isn't here simply charged with spying, ma'am.  In
denying its people the benefits of its birthright it committed a
grievous crime against us." J don't doubt that," Culus said.. "And it
frankly sickens me to look on something so tainted that once had
perfectibility within its grasp.  But, may I remind you, Thes'reh'of,
how few we are?  The tribe is diminished to almost nothing.  And this
mystif, whose breed was always rare, is the last of its fine."

"The last?" said Pie.

"Yes, the last!" Culus replied, her voice trembling as it rose.. "While
you were at play in the Fifth Dominion our people have been
systematically decimated.  There are now fewer than fifty souls here in
the city.  The rest are either dead or scattered.  Your own line is
destroyed, Pie'oh'pah.  Every last one of your clan murdered or dead of
grief." The mystif covered its face with its hands, but Culus didn't
spare it the rest of her report.. "Two other mystifs survived the
purges," she went on, 'until just a year ago.  One was murdered here in
the chiancula, while it was healing a child.  The other went into the
desert the Dearth are there, at the edge of the First, and the Autarch's
troops don't like to go so near to the Erasure but they caught up with
it before it reached the tents.

They brought its body back and hung it on the gates." She stepped down
from her chair and approached Pie, who was sobbing now.. "So you see, it
may be that you did the

right thing for the wrong reasons.  If you'd stayed you'd  2 be dead by
now

"Ma'am, I protest," Thes'reh'of said.

"What would you prefer I did?" Culus said.. "Add this fool's blood to
the sea already spilt?

No.  Better we try and turn its taint to our advantage." Pie looked up,
puzzled.. "Perhaps we've been too pure.  Too predictable.  our
stratagems foreseen, our plots easily uncovered.  But you're from
another world, mystif, and maybe that makes you potent." She paused for
breath.  Then she said. "This is my judgement.  Take whomsoever you can
find amongst our number and use your tainted ways to murder our enemy.
If none will go with you, go alone.  But don't return here, mystif,
while the Autarch is still breathing."

Thes'reh'of let out a laugh that rang around the chamber.. "Perfect!" he
said.. "Perfect!'

"I'm glad my judgement amuses you," Culus replied.. "Remove yourself,
Thes'reh'of." He made to protest but she brought forth such a shout he
flinched as if struck.. "I said: remove yourself!'

The laughter fell from his face.  He made a small formal t bow,
murmuring some chilly words of parting as he did so, and left the
chamber.  She watched him go.

"We have all become cruel," she said.. "You in your way.  Us in ours."
She looked back at Pie'oh'pah.. "Do you know why he laughed, mystif?"

"Because he thinks your judgement is execution by another name?"

"Yes, that's precisely what he thinks.  And, who knows, perhaps that's
what it is.  But this may be the last night of the Dominion, and last
things have power tonight they never had before.. "And I'm a last
thing.. "Yes you are."

The mystif nodded."I understand, "it said. "And it seems just."

"Good," she said.  Though the trial was over, neither moved.. "You have
a question?" Culus asked.

"Yes I do.. "Better ask it now."

"Do you know if a shaman called Arae'kc'gei is still alive?"

Culus made a little smile.. "I wondered when you'd get to him," she
said.. "He was one of the survivors of the Reconciliation, wasn't he?"
"Yes."

I didn't know him that well, but I heard him speak of you.  He held on
to life long after most people would have given up, because he said
you'd come back eventually.  He didn't realize you were bound to your
Maestro, of course." She said all this disingenuously, but there was a
penetrating look in her rheumy eyes throughout.

"Why didn't you come back, mystif ?" she said.. "And don't spin me some
story about jurisdiction.  You could have slipped your bondage if you'd
put your mind to it, especially in the confusion after the failure of
the Reconciliation.  But you didn't.  You chose to stay with your
wretched Sartori, even though members of your own tribe had been victims
of his ineptitude."

"He was a broken man.  And I was more than his familiar, I was his
friend.  How could I leave him?"

"That's not all," Culus said.  She'd been a judge too long to let such
simplifications pass unchallenged.. "What else, mystif ?  This is the
night of last things, remember?  Tell it now or run the risk of not
telling it at all."

"Very well," said Pie.. "I always nurtured the hope that there would be
another attempt at Reconciliation.  And I wasn't the only one who
nurtured such a hope.. "Arae'kc'gei indulged it too, huh?"

"Yes he did."

"So that's why he kept your name alive.  And himself too, waiting
for-you to come back." She shook her head.. "Why do you wallow in these
fantasies?  There'll be no Reconciliation.  if anything, it'll be the
other way about.  The Imajica'll come apart at the seams, and every
Dominion will be sealed up in its own little misery."

"That's a grim vision.. "It's an honest one.  And a rational one."

"There are still people in every Dominion willing to try again.  They've
waited two hundred years, and they're not going to let go of their hope
now.. "Arae'kc'gei let go," Culus said.. "He died two years ago.. "I was
...  prepared for that eventuality," Pie said.. "He was old when I knew
him last."

"If it's any comfort your name was on his lips at the very end.  He
never gave up believing."

"There are others who can perform the ceremonies in his place."

"I was right." Culus said.. "You are a fool, mystif." She started
towards the door.. "Do you do this in memory of your Maestro?"

Pie went with her, opening the door and stepping out into a twilight
sharp with smoke.

"Why would I do that?" Pie said.

"Because you loved him," Culus said, her gaze accusatory.. "And that's
the real reason why you never came back here.  You loved him more than
your own people.. "Perhaps that's true," Pie said.. "But why would I do
anything in memory of the living?. "The living?"

The mystif smiled, bowing to its judge as it retreated from the light at
the door, fading into the gloom like a phantom.

"I told you Sartori was a broken man, not a dead one," Pie said as it
went.. "The dream is still alive, Culus'su'erai.  And so is my Maestro."

Quaisoir was waiting behind the veils when Seidux came in.  The windows
were open, and within the warm dusk came a din aphrodisial to a soldier
like Seidux.  He peered

at the veils, trying to make out the figure behind them.  Was she naked?
It seemed so.

"I have an apology to make," she said to him.

"There's no need."

"There's every need.  You were doing you duty, watching me." She paused.
When she spoke again, her voice was sinuous. "I like to be watched,
Seidux.  .

He murmured. "You do?. "Certainly.  As long as my audience is
appreciative.. "I'm appreciative," he said, surreptitiously dropping his
cigarette and grinding it out beneath the heel of his boot.

"Then why don't you close the door?" she said to him.. "In case we get
noisy.  Maybe you should tell the guards to go and get drunk."

He did so.  When he returned to the veils he saw that she was kneeling
up on the bed, her hand between her legs.  And yes, she was naked.  When
she moved the veils moved with her, some of them sticking momentarily to
the oiled gloss of her skin.  He could see how her breasts rode up as
she raised her arms, inviting his kisses there.  He put his hand out to
part the veils, but they were too abundant, and he could find no break
in them, so he simply pressed on towards her, half-blinded by their
luxury.

Her hand went down once more between her legs, and he couldn't conceal a
moan of anticipation at the thought of replacing it with his own.  There
was swelling in her fingers, he thought; some device she'd been
pleasuring herself with, most likely, anticipating his arrival; easing
herself open to accommodate his every inch.  Thoughtful, pliant thing
that she was.

She was even handing it to him now, as though in confession of her
little sin; thinking perhaps that he'd want to feel its warmth and
wetness.

She pushed it through the veils towards him, as he in turn pressed
towards her, murmuring as he went a few promises that ladies liked to
hear.

Between those promises he caught the sound of tearing

fabric, and, assuming that she was clawing her way through the veils in
her hunger to reach him, began to do the same himself, until he felt a
sharp pain in his belly.  He looked down through the layers that clung
about his face, and saw a stain spreading through the weave.

He let out a cry, and started to disentangle himself, catching sight of
her pleasuring device buried deep in him as he wrestled to be out of her
way.  She withdrew the blade, only to plunge it into him a second time,
and a third, leaving it in his heart as he fell backwards, his fingers
dragging the veils down with him.

Standing at one of the upper windows of Peccable's house, watching the
fires that raged in every direction, Jude shuddered, and looking down at
her hands saw them glistening, wet with blood.  The vision lasted only
the briefest time, but she had no doubt of what she'd seen, nor what it
signified.  Quaisoir had committed the crime she'd been plotting.

"It's quite a sight, isn't it?" she heard Dowd say, and turned to look
at him, momentarily disoriented.  Had he seen the blood too?  No; no. He
was talking about the fires.

"Yes it is," she said.

He came to join her at the glass, which rattled with each fusillade.
"The Peccables are almost ready to leave.  I suggest we do the same.

I'm feeling much renewed." He had indeed healed with astonishing speed.
The wounds on his face were barely visible now.

"Where will we go?" she said.

"Around the other side of the city," he said.. "Where I first trod the
boards.  According to Peccable the theatre is still standing.  The Ipse
it's called.  Built by Pluthero Quexos himself.  I'd like to see it
again.. "You want to be a tourist on a night like this?. "The theatre
may not be standing tomorrow.  in fact the whole of Yzordderrex could be
in ruins by daybreak.  I thought you were the one who was so hungry to
see it."

"If it's a sentimental visit," she said, 'maybe you should go alone."

"Why, have you got some other agenda?" he asked her.. "You have, haven't
you?"

"How could I have?" she protested lightly.. "I've never set foot here
before."

He studied her, his face all suspicion.. "But you always wanted to come
here, didn't you?

Right from the start.  Godolphin used to wonder where you got the
obsession from.  Now I'm wondering the same." He followed her gaze
through the window.. "What's out there, Judith?. "You can see for
yourself," she replied.. "We'll probably get killed before we reach the
top of the street.. "No," he said.

"Not us.  We're blessed.. "Are we?. "We're the same, remember?  Perfect
partners.. "I remember," she replied.

"Ten minutes, then we'll go.. "I'll be ready."

She heard the door close behind her, then looked down at her hands
again.  All trace of the vision had faded.  She glanced back towards the
door, to be certain that Dowd had gone, then put her hands to the glass
and closed her eyes.  She had ten minutes to find the woman who shared
her face; ten minutes before she and Dowd were out in the tumult of the
streets, and all hope of contact would be dashed.

"Quaisoir ...  she murmured.

She felt the glass vibrate against her palms, and heard the din of the
dying across the roofs.  She said her double's name a second time,
turning her thoughts to the towers that would have been visible from
this very window if the air between hadn't been so thick with smoke.

The image of that smoke filled her head, though she hadn't consciously
conjured it, and she felt her thoughts rise in its clouds, wafted on the
heat of destruction.

It was difficult for Quaisoir to find something discreet to wear amongst
garments she had acquired for their immodesty, but by tearing all the
decoration from one of her simpler robes she had achieved something like
seemliness.

Now she left her chambers and prepared for her final journey through the
palace.  She had already plotted her route once she was out of the
gates: back down to the harbour, where she'd first seen the Man of
Sorrows, standing on the roof.  If He wasn't there, she would find
somebody who knew His whereabouts.  He hadn't come into Yzordderrex
simply to disappear again.  S,

He would leave trails for His acolytes to follow, and trial no doubt,
for them to endure, proving in their endurance how much they desired to
come into His presence.  But first, she had to get out of the palace,
and to do so she took corridors and stairways that had not been used in
decades, familiar only to her, the Autarch, and the in masons who'd laid
these cold stones, cold themselves now.  Only Maestros and their
mistresses preserved their youth, and doing so was no longer the bliss
it had been.  She would have liked the years to show on her face when
she knelt before the Nazarene, so that He would know that she'd
suffered, and that she deserved His forgiveness.  But she would have to
trust that He would see through the veil of her perfection to the pain
beneath.

Her feet were bare, and the chill rose through her soles, so that by the
time she reached the humid air outside, her teeth were chattering.

She halted for a moment, to orient herself in the maze of courtyards
that surrounded the palace, and as she turned her thoughts from the
practical to the abstract she met another thought, waiting at the back
of her skull for j St such a turn.  She didn't doubt its source for a
moment.  1he angel that Seidux had driven from her chamber that
afternoon had waited at the threshold all this time, kowing she would
come at last, seeking guidance.  Tears started to her eyes when she
realized she'd not been forsaen- The son of David knew her agony, and
had this messenger whisper in her head.

"Ipse," it said.. "Ipse." She knew what the word meant.  She'd
patronized the Ipse many times, masked as were all the women of the haut
monde when visiting places of moral dubiety.  She'd seen all the works
of Pluthero performed there; and translations of Flotter; even, on
occasion, Koppocovi's farces, crude as they were.  That the Man of
Sorrows should have chosen such a place was certainly strange, but who
was she to question his purposes?

"I hear," she said aloud.

Even before the voice in her had faded, she was making her way through
the courtyards to the gate by which she would be delivered most readily
into the Deliquium Kesparate, where Pluthero had built his shrine to
artifice, soon to be reconsecrated in the name of Truth.

Jude took her hands from the window, and opened her eyes.  There had
been none of the clarity she'd experienced when asleep in this contact -
in truth she was not even certain she'd made it - but there was no time
left to try again.  Dowd was calling her, and so were the streets of
Yzordderrex, blazing though they were.  She'd seen blood spilt from her
place by the window; numerous assaults and beatings; troop charges and
retreats; civilians warring in rabid packs, and others marching in
brigades, armed and ordered.  In such a chaos of factions she had no way
of judging the legitimacy of any cause; nor, in truth, did she much
care.  Her mission was seek out her sister in this maelstrom, and hope
that she in her turn was seeking out Jude.

Quaisoir would be disappointed of course, if and when they finally met.
Jude was not the messenger of the Lord she was hurrying to find.

But then Lords divine or secular were not the redeemers and salvers of
the world legend made them out to be.  They were spoilers; they were
destroyers.  The evidence of that was out there, in the very streets
Jude was about to tread, and if she could only make Quaisoir share and
understand that vision,

then perhaps the promise of sisterhood would not be so unwelcome a gift
to bring to this meeting, which she could not help but think of as a
reunion.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Demanding directions, usually from wounded men, as he went, Gentle took
several hours to get from the hosannas of Lickerish Street to the
mystif's Kesparate, during which period the city's decline into chaos
quickened, so that he went half-expecting that the streets of straight
houses and blossom-clad trees would be ashes and rubble by the time he
arrived.  But when he finally came to the city-within-a-city he found it
untouched by looters or demolishers, either because they knew there was
little of worth to them here, or - more likely - because the lingering
superstition about a people who'd once occupied the Unbeheld's Dominion
kept them from doing their worst.

Entering, he went first to the chianculi, prepared to do whatever was
necessary - threaten, beg, cajole - in order to be returned into the
mystif's company.

The chianculi and all the adjacent buildings were deserted, however, so
he began a systematic search of the streets.  They, like the chianculi,
were empty, and as his desperation grew his discretion fled, until he
was shouting Pie's name to the empty streets like a midnight drunkard.

Eventually, these tactics earned him a response.  One of the quartet
who'd appeared to offer such a chilly welcome when he'd first come here
appeared: the moustached young man.  His robes were not held between his
teeth this time, and when he spoke he deigned to do so in English.  But
the lethal ribbon still fluttered in his hands, its threat undisguised.

"You came back," he said.

"Where's Pie?"

"Where's the girl-child?"

"Dead.  Where's Pie?"

"You seem different."

"I am.  Where's Pie?"

"Not here."

VWI   . "Where then?"

r

"The mystif's gone up to the palace," the man replied.

"Why?"

"That was the judgement upon it."

"Just to go?" Gentle said, taking a step towards the man.

"There must have been more to it than that."

Though the silk sword protected the man, Gentle came with a burden of
power that beggared his own, and sensing this he answered less
obliquely.

"The judgement was that it kill the Autarch," he said.

"So it's been sent up there alone?"

"No.  It took some of our tribe with it and left a few of us to guard
the Kesparate."

"How long ago since they went?"

"Not very long.  But you won't get into the palace.  Neither will they.
It's suicide."

Gentle didn't linger to argue, but headed back towards the entrance,
leaving the man to guard the blossoms and the empty streets.  As he
approached the gate, however, he saw that two individuals, a man and-a
woman, had just entered, and were looking his way.  Both were naked from
the waist up, their throats painted with the triple stripe he remembered
from the siege at the harbour, marking them as members of the Dearth. At
his approach, both acknowledged him by putting palm to palm, and
inclining their heads.  The woman was half as big again as her
companion, her body a glorious machine, her head shaved but for a
pony-tail set on a neck wider than her cranium, and, like her arms and
belly, so elaborately muscled the merest twitch was a spectacle.

"I said he'd be her el she told the world.

"I don't know what you want," he said.. "But I can't supply it."

"You are John Furie Zacharias?"

A

"Yes.. "Called Gentle?. "Yes.  But-'

"Then you have to come.  Please.  Father Athanasius sent us to find you.
We heard what happened to Lickerish Street and we knew it had to be you.
I'm Nikaetomaas," the woman said.. "This is Floccus Dado.  We've been
waiting for you since Estabrook arrived."

"Estabrook?" said Gentle.  There was a man he hadn't given a thought to
in many a month.

"How do you know him?"

"We found him in the street.  We thought he was the one.  But he wasn't.
He knew nothing."

"And you think I do?" Gentle said exasperated.. "Let me tell you, I know
fuck all!  I don't know who you think I am, but I'm not your man."

"That's what Father Athanasius said.  He said you were in ignorance
"Well he was right.. "But you married the mystif."

"So what?" said Gentle.. "I love it, and I don't care who knows it."

"We realize that," Nikaetomaas said, as though nothing could have been
plainer.. "That's how we tracked you.

"We knew it would come here," Floccus said.. "And wherever it had gone,
you would be.. "It isn't here," Gentle said.. "It's up in the pal ac "In
the palace?" said Nikaetomaas turning her gaze up towards the louring
walls.. "And you intend to follow it?. "Yes."

"Then I'll come with you she said.. "Mister Dado, go back to Athanasius.
Tell him who we've found and where we've gone."

"I don't want company," Gentle said.. "I don't even trust myself."

"How will you get into the palace without someone at your side?"
Nikaetomaas said.. "I know the gates.  I know the courtyards."

Gentle turned the options over in his head.  Part of him wanted to go as
a rogue, carrying the chaos he'd brought to Lickerish Street as his
emblem.  But his ignorance of palace geography could indeed slow him,
and minutes might make the difference between finding the mystif alive
or dead.  He nodded his consent, and the parties divided at the gate:
Floccus Dado back to Father Athanasius, Gentle and Nikaetomaas up
towards the Autarch's fortress.

The only subject he broached as they travelled was that of Estabrook.
How was he, Gentle asked: still crazy?

"He was almost dead when we found him," Nikaetomaas said.. "His brother
left him here for dead.  But we took him to our tents in the Erasure,
and we healed him there.  or, more properly, his being there healed
him.. "You did all this thinking he was me?"

"We knew that somebody was going to come from the Fifth, to begin the
Reconciliation again.  And of course we knew it had to be soon.  We just
didn't know what he looked like."

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that's twice i' you've got it
wrong.  I'm no more your man than Estabrook.. "Why did you come here
then?" she said.

That was an enquiry that deserved a serious reply, if not for her sake
then for his own.

"There were questions I wanted answering, that I couldn't answer on
Earth," he said.. "A friend of mine died, very young.  A woman I knew
was almost murdered Judith.,

"Yes, Judith."

"We've talked about her a great deal," Nikaetomaas said.. "Estabrook was
obsessed with her.. "Is he still?"

"I haven't spoken to him for a long time.  But you know he was trying to
bring her to Yzordderrex when his brother intervened."

"Did she come?"

"Apparently not," Nikaetomaas said.. "But AthanasiLIS believes she will
eventually.  He says she's part of the story of the Reconciliation."
"How does he work that out?"

"From Estabrook's obsession with her, I suppose.  The way he talked
about her, it was as though she was something holy, and Athanasius loves
holy women."

"Let me tell you, I know Judith very well, and she's no

Virgin."

"There are other kinds of sanctity amongst our sex," Nikaetomaas
replied, a little testily.

"I'm sorry.  I didn't mean any offence.  But if there's one thing Jude's
always hated it's being put on a pedestal.. "Then maybe it's not the
idol we should be studying, but the worshipper.  Athanasius says
obsession is fire to our fortress."

"What does that mean?"

"That we have to burn down the walls around us, but it takes a very
bright flame to do so.. "An obsession, in other words.. "That's one such
flame, yes."

"Why would we want to burn down these walls in the first place?  Don't
they protect us?"

"Because if we don't, we die inside, kissing our own reflections,"
Nikaetornaas said, the reply too well turned to be improvised.

"Athanasius again?" Gentle said.

"No," said Nikaetomaas.. "An aunt of mine.  She's been locked up in the
Bastion for years, but in here' - Nikaetomaas pointed to her temple
-'she's free."

"And what about the Autarch?" Gentle said, turning his gaze up towards
the fortress.

"What about him?"

"Is he up there, kissing his reflection?"

"Who knows?  Maybe he's been dead for years, and the state's running
itself."

"Do you seriously believe that?"

Nikaetomaas shook her head.. "No.  He's alive, behind his walls."
"What's he keeping out, I wonder?"

"Who knows?  Whatever he's afraid of, I don't think it breathes the same
air that we do."

Before they left the rubble-strewn thoroughfares of the Kesparate called
Hittahitte, which lay between the gates of the Eurhetemec Kesparate and
the wide Roman streets of Yzordderrex's bureaucratic district '
Nikaetomaas dug around in the ruins of a garret for some means of
disguise.  She found a collection of filthy garments which she insisted
Gentle don, then found some equally disgusting for herself.

Their faces and physiques had to be concealed, she explained, so that
they could mingle freely with the wretched they'd find gathered at the
gates.  Then they k, headed on, their climb bringing them into streets
lined with buildings of classical severity and scale, as yet un scorched
by the torches that were being passed from hand to hand, roof to roof,
in the Kesparates below.  They would not remain pristine much longer,
Nikaetomaas predicted.  When the rebels' fire reached these edifices the
Taxation Courts and the Bureaux of Justice it would leave no pillar
unblackened.  But for now the travellers moved between monoliths as
quiet as mausoleums.

On the other side, the reason for their donning of stinking and
louse-ridden clothes became apparent.  Nikaetomaas had brought them not
to one of the great gates of the palace, but to a minor opening, around
which a group dressed in motley indistinguishable from their own were
gathered.  Some of them carried candles.  By their fitful light Gentle
could see that there was not a single body that was whole amongst them.

"Are they waiting to get in?" he asked his guide.

"No.  This is the gate of Saint Creaze and Saint Evendown.  Have you not
heard of them in the Fifth?  I thought that's where they were martyred."
"Very possibly."

"They appear everywhere in Yzordderrex.  Nursery rhymes, puppet plays. .

"So what happens here?  Do the Saints make personal appearances?. "After
a fashion."

"And what are these people hoping for?" Gentle asked, casting a glance
among the wretched assembly.. "Healing?

They were certainly in dire need of such miracles.  Crippled and
diseased, suppurating and broken, some of them looked so weak they'd not
make it till morning.

"No," Nikaetomaas replied.. "They're here for sustenance..  I only hope
that the Saints aren't too distracted by the revolution to put in an
appearance."

She'd no sooner spoken than the sound of an engine chugging into life on
the far side of the gates pitched the crowd into frenzy.

Crutches became weapons, and diseased spittle flew, as the invalids
fought for a place close to the bounty they knew was imminent.

Nikaetomaas pushed Gentle forward into the brawl, where he was obliged
to fight, though he felt ashamed to do so, or else have his limbs torn
from their sockets by those who had fewer than he.  Head down, arms
flailing, he dug his way forward as the gates began to open.

What appeared on the other side drew gasps of devotion from all sides,
and one of incredulity from Gentle.  Trundling forward to fill the
breadth of the gates   --was a fifteen-foot study in kitsch: a sculpted
representation of the Saints Creaze and Evendown, standing

-7 shoulder to shoulder, their arms stretched out towards the yearning
crowd, while their eyes rolled in their carved sockets like those of a
carnival dummy, looking down on their flock as if affrighted by them one
moment, and up to heaven the next.  But it was their apparel that drew
Gentle's appalled gaze.  They were clothed in their largesse: dressed in
food from throat to foot.  Coats of meat, still smoking from the ovens,
covered their torsos; sausages hung in steaming loops around their necks
and wrists; at their groins hung sacks heavy with bread, while

547 the layers of their skirts were of fruit and fish.  The crowd
instantly surged forward to denude them, the brawlers merciless in their
hunger, beating each other as they climbed for their share.

The saints were not without defence, however; there were penalties for
the gluttonous.

Hooks and spikes, expressly designed to wound, were set amongst the
bountiful folds of skirts and coats.  The devotees seemed not to care,
but climbed up over the statues' skirts, disdainful of fruit and fish,
in order to reach the steaks and sausages above.  Some fell, doing
themselves bloody mischief on the way down, others - scrambling over the
victims - reached their goals with shrieks of glee, and set about
loading the bags on their backs.  Even then, in their triumph, they were
not secure.  Those behind either dragged them from their perches, or
pulled the has from 9 their backs and pitched them to accomplices in the
crowd, where they in turn were set upon and robbed.

Nikaetomaas held on to Gentle's belt so that they wouldn't be separated
in the m&&, and after much manoeuvring they reached the base of the
statues.  The machine had been designed to block the gates, but
Nikaetornaas now squatted down in front of the plinth, and her
activities concealed from the guards watching from above the gate - tore
at the casing that housed the vehicle's wheels.  It was beaten metal,
but it came away like cardboard beneath her assault, its rivets flying.
Then she ducked into the gap she'd created.  Gentle followed.

Once below the Saints, the din of the crowd became remoter, the thump of
bodies punctuating the general hubbub.  It was almost completely dark,
but they shimmied forward on their stomachs, the engine - huge and hot
dripping its fluids on them as they went.  As they reached the other
side, and Nikaetomaas began to prise away the casing there, the sound of
shouting became louder.  Gentle looked round.  Others had discovered
Nikaetomaas's handiwork and, perhaps thinking there were new treasures
to be discovered beneath the idols,

were following.  Not two or three now, but many.  Gentle began to lend
Nikaetomaas a hand as the space filled up with bodies, new brawls
erupting as the pursuers fought for access.  The whole structure,
enormous as it was, began to shudder, the combination of brawlers below
and above conspiring to tip it.  With the violence of the rocking
increasing by the moment, Gentle had sight of escape.  A sizeable
courtyard lay on the other side of the Saints, scored by the tracks of
the engine and littered with discarded food.

The instability of the machine had not gone unnoticed, and two guards
were presently forsaking their meal of prime steak and raising the alarm
with panicked shouts.  Their retreat allowed Nikaetornaas to wriggle
free unnoticed, then turn to haul Gentle after her.  The juggernaut was
now close to toppling, and shots were being fired on the other side as
the guards above the gate sought to dissuade the crowd from further
borrowings.  Gentle felt hands grasping at his legs, but he kicked back
at them as Nikaetomaas dragged him forward, and slid out into the open
air as several cracks, like sudden thunder, announced that the Saints
were tired of teetering and ready to fall.

Backs bent, Gentle and Nikaetomaas darted across the rind- and
crust-littered ground to the safety of the shadows, as with a great din
the Saints fell backwards like comic drunkards, a mass of their
adherents still clinging to arms and coats and skirts.  The structure
came apart as it hit the ground, pitching pieces of carved, cooked and
crippled flesh in all directions.

The guards were descending from the ramparts, now, t

to stem with bullets the flow of the crowd.  Gentle and Nikaetomaas
didn't linger to watch this fresh horror, but took to their heels, up
and away from the gates, the pleas and howls of those maimed by the fall
following them through the darkness.

"What's the din, Rosengarten?. "There's a minor problem at the Gate of
Saints, sir.. "Are we under siege?. "No.  It was merely an unfortunate
accident.. "Fatalities?. "Nothing significant.  The Gate's now been
sealed.. "And Quaisoir?  How's she?. "I haven't spoken with Seidux since
early evening.

"Then find out.. "Of course."

Rosengarten withdrew, and the Autarch returned his attention to the man
transfixed in the chair close by.

"These Yzordderrexian nights.  .  he said to the fellow, they're so
very long.  In the Fifth, you know, they're half this length, and I used
to complain they were over too soon.  But now.  .  ." he sighed now I
wonder if I wouldn't be better going back there, and founding a New
Yzordderrex.  What do you think?"

The man in the chair didn't reply.  His cries had long since ceased,
though the reverberations, more precious than the sound itself, and more
tantalizing, continued to shake the air, even to the ceiling of this
chamber, where clouds sometimes formed, and shed delicate, cleansing
rains.

The Autarch drew his own chair up closer to the man.  A sac of living
fluid the size of his head was clamped to the victim's chest, its limbs,
fine as thread, puncturing him, and reaching into his body to touch his
heart, lungs, liver and lights.

He'd summoned the entity, which was the shreds of a once much more
fabulous beast, the Renunciance, from the In Ovo, selecting it as a
surgeon might choose some instrument from a tray, to perform a delicate
and very particular task.  Whatever the nature of such summoned beasts
he had no fear of them.  Decades of such rituals had familiarized him
with every species that haunted the In Ovo, and while there were
certainly

some he would never have dared bring into the living world, most had
enough base instinct to know their master's voice, and would obey him
within the confines of their wit.  This creature he'd called Abelove
after a lawyer he'd known briefly in the Fifth, who'd been as leech-like
as this scrap of malice, and almost as foul smelling.

"How does it feel?" the Autarch asked, straining to catch the merest
murmur of a reply.

"The pain's passed, hasn't it?

Didn't I say it would?"

The man's eyes flickered open, and he licked his lips.  They made
something very close to a smile.

"You feel a kind of union with Abelove, am I right?  It's worked its way
into every little part.  Please speak, or I'll take it from you.  You'll
bleed from every hole it's made but that pain won't be anything beside
the loss you'll feel."

"Don't.  .  ." the man said.

"Then talk to me," the Autarch replied, all reason.. "Do you know how
difficult it is to find a leech like this?

They're almost extinct.  But I gave this one to you, didn't out, I?  And
all I'm asking is that you tell me how it feels.. "It feels ...  good."

"Is that Abelove talking, or you?"

"We're the same," came the reply.

"Like sex, is it?"

"No.,

"Like love, then?. "No.  Like I'm unborn again.. "In the womb?. "In the
womb.. "Oh God, how I envy you.  I don't

have that memory.

I never floated in a mother."

The Autarch rose from his chair, his hand covering his mouth.  It was
always like this when the dregs of kreauchee moved in his veins.  He
became unbearably tender at such times, moved to expressions of grief
and rage at the obscurest cue.

"To be joined with another soul," he said, 'indivisibly.  Consumed, and
made whole in the same moment.  What a precious joy." He turned back to
his prisoner, whose eyes were closing again.  The Autarch didn't notice.
"It's at times like this," he said. "I wish I were a poet.  I wish I had
the words to express my yearning.  I think that if I knew that one day -
I don't care how many years from I now, centuries even, I don't care -
if I knew that one day I was going to be united, indivisibly, with
another soul, I could begin to be a good man."

He sat down again beside the captive, whose eyes were completely closed.

"But it won't happen," he said, tears beginning to come.. "We're too
much ourselves.  Afraid of letting go of what we are in case we're
nothing, and holding on so tight we lose everything else." Agitation was
shaking the tears out of his eyes now.. "Are you listening to me?" he
said.  He shook the man, whose mouth fell open, a trickle of saliva
dribbling from one corner.. "Listen!" he raged.. "I'm giving you my pain
here!'

Receiving no response, he stood up and struck his captive across the
face so hard the man toppled over, the chair to which he was bound
falling with him.  The creature clamped to his chest convulsed in
sympathy with its host.

"I didn't bring you here to sleep!" the Autarch said.. "I want you to
share your pain with me."

He put his hands on the leech, and began to tear it from the man's
chest.  The creature's panic flooded its host, and instantly the man
began to writhe, the cords drawing blood as he fought to keep the leech
from being stolen.

Less than an hour before, when Abelove had been brought out of the
shadows and displayed to the prisoner, he'd begged to be spared its
touch.  Now, finding his tongue again, he pleaded twice as hard not to
be separated from it, his pleas swooping into screams when the
parasite's filaments, barbed so as to prevent their removal, were
wrenched from the organs they'd pierced.

As soon as they broke surface' they began to flail wildly, seeking to
return to their host or find a new one.  But the Autarch was unmoved by
the panic of either lover" and divided them like death itself, pitching
Abelove across the chamber, and taking the man's face in fingers sticky
with his infatuate's blood.

"Now," he said.. "How does it feel?. "Give it back .  .  .  please ...
give it back.. "Is this like being born?" the Autarch said.

"Whatever you say!  Yes!  Yes!  Just give it back!" The Autarch left the
man's side and crossed the chamber to the spot where he'd made the
summoning.  He picked his way through the spirals of human gut he'd
arranged on the floor as bait, and snatched up the knife still lying in
the blood beside the blindfolded head, returning at no more than an
amble to where the victim was lying.  There he cut the prisoner's bonds,
and stood back to watch the rest of the show.  Though he was grievously
wounded, his punctured lungs barely able to draw breath, the man fixed
his eyes on the object of his desire and began to crawl towards it.
Ashen, the Autarch let him crawl, knowing as he went that the distance
was too great, and the scene must end in tragedy.

The lover had advanced no more than a couple of yards when there was a
rapping on the door.

"Go away!" Autarch said, but the rapping came again,

this time accompanied by Rosengarten's voice.

"Quaisoir's gone, sir," he said.

The Autarch watched the crawling man's despair, and despaired himself.
Despite all his indulgences, the woman had deserted him for the Man of
Sorrows.

"Come in!"  he called.

Rosengarten entered, and made his report.  Seidux was dead, stabbed and
thrown from a window.  Quaisoir's quarters were empty, her servant
vanished, her dressing room overturned.  A search for her abductors was
already underway.

"Abductors?" the Autarch said.. "No, Rosengarten.  There are no
abductors.  She's gone of her own accord."

Not once as he spoke did he take his eyes off the lover, who had covered
a third of the distance between his chair and his darling, but was
weakening fast.

"It's over," the Autarch said.. "She's gone to find her Redeemer, the
poor bitch."

"Then shouldn't I dispatch troops to find her Rosengarten said.. "The
city's dangerous."

"So's she when she wants to be.  The women in the Bastion taught her
some unholy stuff."

"I hope that cesspit's been burned to the ground," Rosengarten said,
with a rare passion.

"I doubt it is," the Autarch replied.. "They've got ways of protecting
themselves."

"Not from me, they haven't," Rosengarten boasted.

"Yes, even from you," the Autarch told him.. "Even from me.  The power
of women can't be scoured away, however hard we try.  The Unbeheld
attempted it, but He didn't succeed.  There's always some corner

"Just say the word," the Commander broke in. "I'll go down there now.
Hang the bitches in the streets."

"No, you don't understand," the Autarch said, his voice almost
monotonous, but all the more sorrowful for that.. "The corner isn't out
there, it's in here." He pointed to his skull.. "It's in our minds.
Their mysteries obsess us, even though we put them out of sight.  Even
me.

God knows, I should be free of it.  I wasn't cast out like the rest of
you were.  How can I yearn for something I never had?  But I do." He
sighed.. "Oh, I do." He looked round at Rosengarten, whose expression
was uncomprehending.

"Look at him." The Autarch glanced back at the captive as he spoke.
"He's got seconds left to live.  But the leech gave him a taste and he
wants it again.. "A taste of what?"

of the womb, Rosengarten.  He said it was like being in the womb. We're
all cast out.

Whatever we build, wherever we hide, we're cast out."

As he spoke the prisoner gave a last, exhausted moan, and lay still. The
Autarch watched the body awhile, the only sound in the vastness of the
chamber the weakening motions of the leech on the cold floor.

"Lock the doors and seal them up," the Autarch said, turning to leave
without looking back at Rosengarten.. "I'm going to the Pivot Tower."

"Yes sir."

"Come and find me when it's light.  These nights, A.  g they're too
long.  Too long.  I wonder, sometimes.  .

But what he wondered had gone from his head before it could reach his
lips, and when he left the lover's torit, it was in silence.

fit

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Gentle's thoughts had not often turned to Taylor as he and Pie had
journeyed, but when, in the streets outside the palace, Nikaetoinaas had
asked him why he'd come to the Imajica, it had been Taylor's death he'd
spoken of first, and only then of Judith, and the attempt upon her life.
Now, as he and Nikaetomaas passed through the balmy, benighted
courtyards and up into the palace itself, he thought of the man again,
lying on his final pillow, talking about floating, and charging Gentle
to solve mysteries that he'd not had time to solve himself.

"I had a friend in the Fifth who would have loved this place," Gentle
said.. "He loved desolation."

It was here, in every courtyard.  Gardens had been planted in many of
them, and left to riot.  But riot took energy, and nature was weary
here, the plants throttling themselves after a few spurts, and withering
back into earth the colour of ash.  The scene was not so different once
they got inside, wandering map less down galleries where the dust was as
thick as the soil in the dead gardens, into forsaken annexes and
chambers laid out for guests who had breathed their last decades before.
Most of the walls, whether of chambers or galleries, were decorated:
some with tapestries, many others with immense frescoes, and while there
were scenes Gentle recognized from his travels Patashoqua under a
green-gold sky, with a flight of air balloons rising from the plain
outside its walls; a festival at the L'Himby temples the suspicion grew
on him that the finest of these images were of Earth, or more
particularly, of England.  Doubtless the Pastoral was a universal mode,
and shepherds wooed nymphs in

the Reconciled Dominions just as sonnets described them doing in the
Fifth, but there were details of these scenes that were indisputably
English: swallows swooping in mild summer skies; cattle drinking in
water-meadows while their herders slept; the Salisbury spire rising from
a bank of oaks, the distant towers and domes of London, glimpsed from a
slope on which maids and swains made dalliance; even Stonehenge,
relocated for drama's sake to a hill, and set against thunderheads.

"England," Gentle said as they went.. "Somebody here remembers England."

Though they passed these works by too fast for him to scrutinize them
carefully, he saw no signature on any.  The artists who'd sketched
England, and returned to depict it so lovingly, were apparently content
to remain anonymous.

"I think we should start climbing," Nikaetomaas suggested when by chance
their wanderings brought them to the foot of a monumental staircase.
"The higher we are the more chance we'll have of grasping the
geography." The ascent was five flights long - more deserted galleries
presenting themselves on every floor - but it finally delivered them on
to a roof from which they were able to glimpse the scale of the
labyrinth they were lost in.  Towers twice and three times the height of
the one they'd climbed loomed above them, while below the courtyards
were laid out in all directions, some crossed by battalions, but most as
deserted as every other corridor and chamber.  Beyond them lay the
palace walls, and beyond the walls themselves the smoke-shrouded city,
the sound of its convulsions dim at such a distance.

Lulled by the remoteness of this eyrie, both Gentle and Nikaetomaas were
startled by a commotion that erupted much closer by.  Almost grateful
for signs of life in this mausoleum, even if it was the enemy, they
headed in pursuit of the din makers back down a flight of stairs, and
across an enclosed bridge between towers.

"Hoods!" Nikaetomaas said, tucking her pony-tail back

into her shirt and pulling the crude cowl over her head.  Gentle did the
same, though he doubted such a disguise would offer them much protection
if they were discovered.

Orders were being given in the gallery ahead, and Gentle drew
Nikaetomaas into hiding to listen.  The officer had words of inspiration
for his squad, promising every man who brought a Eurheternec down a
month's paid leave.  Somebody asked him how many there were, and he
replied that he'd heard six, but he didn't believe it, because they'd
slaughtered ten times that number.  However many there are, he said -
six, sixty, six hundred they're outnumbered, and trapped.  They won't
get out alive.  So saying, he divided his contingent, and told them to
shoot on sight.

Three soldiers were dispatched in the direction of Nikaetomaas and
Gentle's hiding place.

They had no sooner passed than she stepped out of the shadows and
brought two of the three down with single blows.

The third turned to defend himself, but Gentle - lacking the mass or
muscle power that made Nikaetomaas so effective used momentum instead,
flinging himself against the man with such force he threw both of them
to the ground.  The soldier raised his gun towards Gentle's skull, but
Nikaetornaas took hold of weapon and hand, hauling the man up by his arm
until he was head to head with her, the gun pointing at the roof, the
fingers around it too crushed to fire.  Then she pulled his helmet off
with her free hand, and peered at him.

"Where's the Autarch?"

The man was too pained and too terrified to claim ignorance.

"The Pivot Tower," he said.

"Which is where?. "It's the tallest tower," he sobbed, scrabbling at the
arm he was dangling by, down which blood was running.

"Take us there," Nikaetomaas said.. "Please." Teeth gritted, the man
nodded his head, and she let

him go.  The gun went from his pulverized fingers as he struck the
ground.  She invited him to stand with a hooked finger.

"What's your name?" she asked him.

"Yark Lazarevich," he told her, nursing his hand in the crook of his
arm.

"Well, Yark Lazarevich, if you make any attempt - or I choose to
interpret any act of yours as an attempt - to alert help, I will swat
the brains from your pan so fast they'll be in Patashoqua before your
pants fill.  Is that plain?. "That's plain.. "Do you have children?"
"Yes.  I've got two."

"Think of them fatherless and take care.  You have a question?"

"No, I just wanted to explain that the Tower's quite a way from here.  I
don't want you thinking I'm leading you astray."

"Be fast then," she said, and Lazarevich took her at her word, leading
them back across the bridge towards the stairs, explaining as he went
that the quickest route to the Tower was through the Cesscordium, and
that was two floors down.

They had descended perhaps a dozen steps when shots were fired behind
them, and one of Lazarevich's two comrades staggered into view, adding
shouts to his gunfire to raise the alarm.  Had he not been groggy he
might have put a bullet in Nikaetornaas or Gentle, but they were away
down the stairs before he'd even reached the top, Lazarevich protesting
as he went that none of this was his doing, and he loved his children
and all he wanted to do was see them again.

There was the sound of running in the lower gallery, and shouts
answering those of the alarm-raiser above.  Nikaetornaas unleashed a
series of expletives which could not have been fouler had Gentle
understood them, and reached for Lazarevich, who ha red off down the
stairs

before she could snatch hold of him, meeting a squad of his comrades at
the bottom.

Nikaetomaas's pursuit had taken her past Gentle, directly into their
line of fire.  They didn't hesitate.  Four muzzles flared; four bullets
found their mark.  Her physique availed her nothing.

She dropped where she stood, her body tumbling down the stairs and
coming to a halt a few steps from the bottom.  Watching her fall, three
thoughts went through Gentle's head.  One, that he'd have these bastards
for this.  Two, that stealth was irrelevant now.  And three, that if he
brought the roof down on their murderous heads, and word spread that
there was another power in the palace besides the Autarch, that would be
no bad thing.  He'd regretted the deaths he'd caused in Lickerish
Street, but he would not regret these.  All he had to do was get his
hand to his face to tear away the cloth before the bullets flew.  There
were more soldiers converging on the spot from several directions.  Come
on, he thought, raising his hands in feigned surrender as the others
approached: come on, join the jubilee.

One of the gathering number was clearly a man of authority.  Heels
clicked together as he appeared, salutes were exchanged.  He looked up
the staircase towards his hooded prisoner.

"General Racidio," one of the captains said.. "We have two of the rebels
here."

"These aren't Eurhetemecs." His gaze went from Gentle to the body of
Nikaetomaas, then back up to Gentle again.. "I think we have two
Dearthers here."

He started up the stairs towards Gentle, who was surreptitiously drawing
breath through the open weave of the cloth around his face in
preparation for his unveiling.  He would have two or three seconds at
best.  Time perhaps to seize Racidio and use him as a hostage if the
pneuma failed to kill every one of the gunmen.

"Let's see what you look like," the Commander said., and tore the cloth
from Gentle's face.

The instant that should have seen the pneuma loosed

instead saw Racidio drop back in stupefaction from the features he'd
uncovered.  Whatever he saw was missed by the soldiers below, who kept
their guns trained on Gentle until Racidio spat an order that they be
lowered.  Gentle was as confounded as they, but he wasn't about to
question the reprieve.  He dropped his hands, and, stepping over the
body of Nikaetomaas, came to the bottom of the stairs.  Racidio
retreated further, shaking his head as he did so, and wetting his lips,
but apparently unable to find the words to express himself.  He looked
as though he was expecting the ground to open up beneath him; indeed,
was silently willing it to do so.  Rather than risk disabusing the man
of his error by speaking, Gentle summoned his guide Lazarevich forward
with the hooked finger Nikaetomaas had used minutes before.  The man had
taken refuge behind a shield of soldiers, and only came out of hiding
reluctantly, glancing at his Captain and Racidio in the hope that
Gentle's summons would be countermanded.  it was not, however.  Gentle
went to meet him, and Racidio uttered the first words he'd been able to
find since setting eyes on the trespasser's face.

"Forgive me," he said.. "I'm mortified."

Gentle didn't give him the solace of a response, but with Lazarevich at
his side took a step towards the knot of soliders at the top of the next
flight of stairs.  They parted without a word and he headed between
their ranks, fighting the urge to pick up his pace, tempting though it
was.  And he regretted too not being able to say his farewells to
Nikaetomaas.  But neither impatience nor

Joan sentiment would profit him now.  He'd been blessed, and maybe in
the fullness of time he'd understand why.  In the short term, he had to
get to the Autarch, and hope that the mystif was there also.

"You still want to go to the Pivot Tower?" Lazarevich said.

"Yes.. "When I get you there, will you let me go?" Again he said. "Yes."

There was a pause, while Lazarevich oriented himself at the bottom of
the stairs.  Then he said. "Who are you?. "Wouldn't you like to
know, "Gentle replied, his answer as much for his own benefit as that of
his guide.

There had been six of them at the start.  Now there were two.  One of
the casualties had been Thes'reh'of, shot down as he etched with a cross
a corner they'd turned in the maze of courtyards.  It had been his
inspiration to mark their route, and so facilitate a speedy exit when
they'd finished their work.

"It's only the Autarch's will that holds these walls up," he'd said as
they'd entered the palace.

"Once he's down, they'll come too.  We need to beat a quick retreat if
we're not to get buried."

That Thes'reh'of had volunteered for a mission his laughter had dubbed
fatal was surprising enough, but this further show of optimism teetered
on the schizophrenic.  His sudden death not only robbed Pie of an
unlooked-for ally, but also of the chance to ask him why he'd joined the
assault.  But then several such conundrums had accrued around this
endeavour, not least the sense of inevitability A that had attended
every phrase, as though this judgement had been laid down long before
Pie and Gentle had ever appeared in Yzordderrex, and that any attempt to
flout it would defy the wisdom of greater magistrates than Culus.

Such inevitability bred fatalism, of course, and though the mystif had
encouraged Thes'reh'of to plot their route of return, it entertained few
delusions about making that journey.  It wilfully kept from its mind the
losses that extinction would bring until its remaining comrade,
Lu'chur'chem - a pure-bred Eurheternec, his skin blueblack, his eyes
double-irised - raised the subject.  They were in a gallery lined with
frescoes that evoked the city

Pie had once called home.  The painted streets of London were depicted
as they'd been in the age into which the mystif had been born, replete
with pigeon-hawkers, mummers and dandies.

Seeing the way Pie gazed at these sights, Lu'chur'chem said. "Never
again, eh?. "Never again what?"

"Out in a street, seeing the way the world is some morning."

"No?"

"No," Lu'chur'chem said.. "We're not coming back this way and we both
know it."

"I don't mind," Pie replied.. "I've seen a lot of things.  I've felt
ever more.  I've got no regrets.. "You've had a long life?"

"Yes I have.. "And your Maestro?  He had a long life too?"

"Yes, he did," Pie said, looking again at the scenes on the walls.

Though the renderings were relatively unsophisticated, they touched the
mystif's memories awake, evoking the bustle and din of the crowded
thoroughfares it and its Maestro had walked in the bright, hopeful days
before the Reconciliation.  Here were the fashionable streets of
Mayfair, lined with fine shops and paraded by finer women, abroad to buy
lavender water and mantua silk and snow-white muslin.  Here was the
throng of Oxford Street, where half a hundred vendors clarnoured for
custom: purveyors of slippers, wildfowl, cherries and gingerbread, all
vying for a niche on the pavement and a space in the air to raise their
cries.  Here too was a fair, St Bar tholornew's most likely, where there
was more sin to be had by daylight than Babylon ever boasted by dark.

"Who made these?" Pie wondered aloud as they proceeded.

"Diverse hands, by the look of 'em," Lu'chur'chem

replied.. "You can see where one style stops and another starts."

"But somebody directed these painters; gave them the details, the
colours.  Unless the Autarch just stole artists from the Fifth
Dominion."

"Perfectly possible," Lu'chur'chem said.. "He stole architects.  He put
tribes in chains to build the place.. "And nobody ever challenged him?"

"People tried to stir up revolutions over and over again but he
suppressed them.  Burnt down the universities: hanged the theologians
and the radicals.  He had a st ran- J.  glehold.  And he had the Pivot,
and most people believe that's the Unbeheld's seal of approval.  if
Hapexamendios didn't want the Autarch to rule Yzordderrex, why did He
allow the Pivot to be moved here?  That's what they said.  And I don't
-' Lu'chur'chem stopped in his tracks, seeing that Pie had already done
so.. "What is it?"  he asked.

The mystif stared up at the picture they had come abreast of, its breath
quickened by shock.

"Is something wrong?" Lu'chur'chem said.

It took Pie a few moments to find the words.. "I don't think we should
go any further," it said.

"Why not?"

"Not together, at least.  The judgement fell on me, and I should finish
this alone."

"What's wrong with you?  I've come this far.  I want to have the
satisfaction."

"What's more important?" the mystif asked him, turning from the painting
it had been so fixated by.. "Your satisfaction, or succeeding in what we
came here to do?. "You know my answer to that."

"Then trust me.  I have to go on alone.  Wait for me here if you like
Lu'chur'chern made a phlegm-hawking growl, like Culus's growl, only
coarser.

"I came here to kill the Autarch," he said.

"No.  You came here to help me, and you've done that.

It's my hands that have to dispatch him, not yours.  That's the
judgement."

"Suddenly it's the judgement, the judgement!  I shit on the judgement! I
want to see the Autarch dead.  I want to look on his face."

"I'll bring you his eyes," Pie said.. "That's the best I can do.  I mean
it, Lu'chur'chem.  We have to part here." Lu'chur'chem spat on the
ground between them.. "You don't trust me, do you?" he said.

'if that's what you want to believe."

"Mystif shite!" he exploded.  'if you come out of this alive, I'll kill
you, I swear, I'll kill youl'

There was no further argument.  He simply spat again, and turned his
back, stalking off down the gallery, leaving the mystif to return its
gaze to the picture which had quickened its pulse and breath.

Though it was curious to see a rendering of Oxford Street and St
Bartholomew's Fair in this setting, so far in years and Dominions from
the scene that had inspired them, Pie might have suppressed the
suspicion growing in its belly while Lu'chur'chern talked of revolution
- that this was no coincidence, had the final image in the cycle not
been so unlike those that had preceded it.  The rest had been public
spectacles, rendered countless times in satirical prints and paintings.
This last was not.  The rest had been well-known sites and streets,
famous across the world.  This last was not.  It was an unremarkable
thoroughfare in Clerkenwell, almost a backwater, which Pie doubted any
artist of the Fifth had ever turned his pen or brush to depicting.  But
here it was, represented in meticulous detail: Gamut Street, to the
brick, to the leaf.  And taking pride of place in the-centre of the
picture, number twenty-eight, the Maestro Sartori's house.

It had been lovingly recreated.  Birds courted on its roof; on its step,
dogs fought.  And in between the fighters and wooers stood the house
itself, blessed by a dappled sunlight denied the others in the row.

The front door was closed, but the upper windows were flung wide, and
the

artist had painted somebody watching from one of them, his face too
deeply shadowed to be recognized.  The object of his scrutiny was not in
doubt, however: the girl in the window across the street, sitting at her
mirror with her dog on her lap, her fingers teasing from its bow the
ribbon that would presently unlace her bodice.  In the street between
this beauty and her doting voyeur were a dozen details that could only
have come from first-hand experience.

On the pavement beneath the girl's window a small procession of charity
children passed, wards of the parish, f,  dressed all in white and
carrying their wands.  They marched raggedly behind their beadle, a
brute of a man called Willis, whom Sartori had once beaten senseless on
that very spot for cruelty to his charges.  Around the far corner came
Roxborough's carriage, drawn by his favourite bay, Bellamare, named in
honour of the Comte de Saint Germain, who had swindled half the women of
Venice under that alias a few years before.  A dragoon was being ushered
out of number thirty-two by the mistress of that house, who entertained
officers of the Prince of Wales's regiment - the Tenth, and no other -
whenever her husband was away.

The widow opposite watched enviously from her step.

All these and a dozen other little dramas were being played out in the
picture, and there wasn't one Pie didn't remember seeing enacted
countless times.  But who was the unseen spectator, who'd instructed the
painters in their craft, so that carriage, girl, soldier, widow, dogs,
birds, voyeurs and all could be set down with such verisimilitude?

Having no solution to the puzzle, Pie plucked its gaze from the picture
and looked back along the immense length of the gallery.  Lu'chur'chem
had disappeared, spitting as he went.  The mystif was alone, the routes
ahead and behind similarly deserted.  It would miss Lu'chur'chem's
companionship, and bitterly regretted that it had lacked the wit to
persuade its comrade that it had to go on alone, without causing such
offence.  But

the picture on the wall was proof of secrets here it had not yet
fathomed, and when it did so it wanted no witnesses.  They too easily
became accusers, and Pie was weighed down with enough reproaches
already.  If the tyrannies of Yzordderrex were in some fashion linked
with the house on Gamut Street - and if Pie, by extension, was an
unwitting collaborator in those tyrannies then it wanted to learn of its
guilt unaccompanied.

As prepared as it could be for such revelations, it left its place in
front of the painting, reminding itself as it went of the promise it had
made to Lu'chur'chem.  If it survived this enterprise, then it had to
return with the eyes of the Autarch.  Eyes which it now didn't doubt had
once been laid on Gamut Street, studying it as obsessively as the
watcher at the painted window studied his ladylove, sitting across the
street in thrall to her reflection.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Like the theatre districts of so many great cities across the Imajica,
whether in Reconciled Dominions or the Fifth, the neighbourhood in
which the ipse stood had been a place of some notoriety in earlier
times, when actors of both sexes supplemented their wages with the old
five-  acter - hiring, retiring, seduction, conjunction and
remittance - all played hourly, night and day.

The centre of these activities had moved away, however, to the other
side of the city, where the burgeoning numbers of middle-class clients
felt less exposed to the gaze of their peers out seeking more
respectable entertainment.  Lickerish Street and its environs had sprung
up in a matter of months, and quickly became the third richest Kesparate
in the city, leaving the theatre district to decline into legitimacy.

Perhaps because it was of so little interest to people, it had survived
the traumas of the last few hours better than most Kesparates its size.
It had seen some action.  General Mattalaus's battalions had passed
through its streets going south to the causeway, where rebels were
attempting to build a makeshift bridge across the delta; and later a
party of families from the Caramess had taken refuge in Koppocovi's
Rialto.  But no barricades had been erected, and none of the buildings
burned.

The Deliquium would meet the morning intact.

its survival, however, would not be accorded to general disinterest,
rather to the presence at its perimeter of Pale Hill, a site which was
neither a hill nor pale, but a circle of remembrance in the centre of
which lay a well, used from time immemorial as a repository for the
corpses of executed men, suicides, paupers and, on occasion, romantics
who favoured rotting in such company.  Tomorrow's rumours

would whisper that the ghosts of these forsaken souls had risen to
defend their terrain, preventing the vandals and the barricade builders
from destroying the Kesparate by haunting the steps of the Ipse and the
Rialto, and howling in the streets like dogs maddened from chasing the
Comet's tail.

With her clothes in rags and her throat uttering one seamless
supplication, Quaisoir went through the heart of several battles quite
unscathed.  There were many such grief-stricken women on the streets of
Yzordderrex tonight, all begging Hapexamendios to return children or
husbands into their arms, and they were for the most part given passage
through the lines, their sobs password enough.

The battles themselves didn't distress her; she'd organized and viewed
mass executions in her time.  But when the heads had rolled she'd always
made a swift departure, leaving the aftermath for somebody else to
shovel up.  Now, she had to tread barefoot in streets that were like
abattoirs, and her legendary indifference to the spectacle of death was
overtaken by a horror so profound she had several times changed her
direction to avoid a street that stank too strongly of innards and
burned blood.

She knew she would have to confess this cowardice when she finally found
the Man of Sorrows, but she was so laden with guilt one more fault or
less would scarcely matter.

Then, as she came to the corner of the street at the end of which lay
Pluthero's playhouse, somebody called her name.  She stopped and looked
for her summoner.  A man dressed in blue was rising from a doorstep, the
fruit he'd been peeling in one hand, the peeling blade in the other.  He
seemed to be in no doubt as to her identity.

"You're his woman," he said.

Was this the Lord?  she wondered.  The man she'd seen on the rooftops at
the harbour had been silhouetted against a bright sky; his features had
been difficult to see.  Could this be him?

.T.

_P

r r

_mom

He was calling someone from the interior of the house on the steps of
which he'd been sitting, a sometime bordello to judge by its lewdly
carved portico.  The disciple, an Oethac, emerged with a bottle in one
hand, and the other ruffling the hair of a cretinous boy-child, naked,
and glistening.  She began to doubt her first judgement, but she didn't
dare leave until she had her hopes confirmed or dashed.

"Are you the Man of Sorrows?" she said.

The fruit-peeler shrugged.. "Isn't everybody tonight?" he said, tossing
the uneaten fruit away.  The cretin leapt down the steps and snatched it
up, pushing the entire thing into his mouth so that his face bulged, and
the juice ran from his lips.

"You're the cause of this," the peeler said, jabbing his knife in
Quaisoir's direction.  He glanced round at the Oethac.. "She was at the
harbour.  I saw her." Who is she?" the Oethac said.

The Autarch's woman," came the reply.. "Quaisoir." He took a step
towards her.. "You are, aren't you?"

She could no more deny this than she could take flight.  If this man was
indeed Jesu, she couldn't begin her pleas for forgiveness with a lie.

"Yes," she told him. "I'm Quaisoir.  I was the Autarch's woman."

"She's fucking beautiful," the Oethac said.

"What she looks like doesn't matter," the fruit-peeler told him.. "It's
what she's done that's important."

"Yes .  .  ." Quaisoir said, daring to believe now that this was indeed
the Son of David,

that's what's important.  What I've done."

the executions

"Yes."

'-the purges-'

"Yes."

I've lost a lot of friends, and you're the reason

"Oh Lord, forgive me," she said, and dropped to her knees.

"I saw you at the harbour this morning," Jesu said, approaching her as
she knelt.. "You were smilin. "Forgive me."

looking around and smiling.  And I thought, when I saw you He was three
paces away from her now.

- your eyes glittering -' His sticky hand took hold of her head.

I thought, those eyes He raised the knife have to go."

and brought it down again, quick and sharp, sharp and quick, pricking
out his disciple's sight before she could start to scream.

The tears that suddenly filled Jude's eyes stung like no tears she'd
ever shed before.  She let out a sob, more of pain than of grief,
pushing the heels of her hands against her sockets to stem the flow. But
it wouldn't cease.  The tears kept coming, hot and harsh, making her
whole head throb.  She felt Dowd's arm take hold of hers, and was glad
of it.  Without his support, she was certain she would have fallen.

"What's wrong?" he said.

The answer - that she was sharing some agony with Quaisoir - was not one
she could voice to Dowd.. "It must be the smoke," she said.

"I can barely see.. "We, re almost at the lpse," he replied.. "But we
have toti keep moving for a little while longer.  It's not safe in the
open air."

That was true enough.  Her eyes - which at present could only see
pulsing red - had been laid on enough atrocities in the last hour to
fuel a lifetime of nightmares.  The Yzordderrex of her longings, the
city whose spicy wind, blowing from the Retreat months before, had
summoned her like the call of a lover to bed, was virtually in ruins.
Perhaps that was why Quaisoir wept these burning tears.

They dried after a time, but the pain lingered.  Though she despised the
man she was leaning upon, without his support she would have dropped to
the ground and remained there.  He coaxed her on, step by step.

The Ipse was close now, he said; just a street or two away.  She could
rest there, while he soaked up the echoes of past glories.  She barely
attended to his monologue.  It was her sister who filled her thoughts,
her anticipation of their meeting now tinged with unease.  She'd
imagined Quaisoir would have come into these streets protected, and that
at the sight of her Dowd would simply retreat, leaving them to their
reunion.  But what if Dowd was not overtaken by superstitious awe, what
if instead he aggressed against one or both of them?  Would Quaisoir
have any defence against his mites?  She began to wipe at her streaming
eyes as she stumbled on, determined that she be clear-sighted when the
moment came, and primed to escape Dowd's leash.

His monologue, when it ceased, did so abruptly.  He

49 halted, drawing Jude to a stop at his side.  She raised her head. The
street ahead was not well lit, but the glow of distant fires found its
way between the buildings, and there, crawling into one such flickering
shaft, she saw her sister.  Jude let out a sob.  Quaisoir's eyes had
been stabbed out, and her torturers were coming in pursuit of her.

One was a child, one an Oethac.  The third, the most blood-spattered,
was also the most nearly human, but his features were twisted out of
true by the pleasure he was taking in Quaisoir's torment.  The blinding
knife was still in his hand, and now he raised it above his victim's
naked back.

Before Dowd could move to stop her, Jude screamed:

StoP

The knife was arrested in mid-descent, and all three of Quaisoir's
pursuers looked round at Jude.  The child registered nothing; its face
was an imbecilic blank.  The knife-wielder was equally silent, though
his expression.

was one of disbelief.  It was the Oethac who spoke, the words he uttered
slurred, but ripe with panic.

"You ...  keep ...  your distance," he said, his fearful glance going
back and forth between the wounded woman and this echo of her, whole and
strong.  The blinder found his voice now, and began to hush him, but the
Oethac rattled on.

"Look at her!"  he said.. "What the fuck is this?  Eh?  Look at her."

"Just shut your trap," the blinder said.. "She's not going to touch us."

"You don't know that," said the Oethac, picking up the child with one
arm and slinging it over his shoulder.. "It wasn't me," he went on, as
he backed away.. "I never laid a finger on her.  I swear.  On my scars,
I swear."

Jude ignored his weaslings and took a step towards Quaisoir.  As soon as
she moved, the Oethac fled.  The blinder, however, held his ground,
taking courage from his blade.

"I'll do you the same way," he warned.. "I don't care who the fuck you
are, I'll do you!'

From behind her, Jude heard Dowd's voice, carrying an authority she'd
never heard in it before.

"I'd leave her be if I were you," he said.

His utterance brought a response from Quaisoir.  She raised her head,
and turned in Dowd's direction, Her eyes had not simply been stabbed
out, but virtually dug from their sockets.  Seeing the holes, Jude was
ashamed to have been so troubled by the little ache that she felt in
sym-         F

,;

pa thy it was nothing beside Quaisoir's hurt.  Yet the woman's voice was
almost joyful.

"Lord?" she said.. "Sweet Lord.  Is this punishment enough?  Will you
forgive me now?"

Neither the nature of the error Quaisoir was making here, nor its
profound irony, was lost on Jude.  Dowd was I F, 5.

no Saviour.  But he was happy enough to assume that role, it seemed.  He
replied to Quaisoir with a delicacy as feigned as the sonority he'd
affected seconds before.

"Of course I'll forgive you," he said.. "That's what I'm here to do."

Jude might have been tempted to disabuse Quaisoir of her illusions there
and then, but that the blinder was usefully distracted by Dowd's
performance.

"Tell me who you are, child," Dowd said.

"You know who the fuck she is," the blinder spat.. "Quaisoir!  It's
fucking Quaisoirl'

Dowd glanced back at Jude, his expression one of comprehension rather
than shock.

Then he looked again at the blinder.

"So it is," he said.

"You know what she's done same as me, "the man said.. "She deserves worse
than this."

"Worse, you think?" Dowd said, continuing to advance towards the man,
who was nervously passing his knife from hand to hand, as though he
sensed that Dowd's capacity for cruelty outstripped his own a
hundredfold, and was preparing to defend himself if need be.

"What worse would you do?" Dowd said.

"What she's done to others, over and over.. "She did these things
personally, you think?. "I wouldn't put it past her," he said.. "Who
knows what the fuck goes on up there?  People disappear, and get washed
up again in pieces.  .  ." He tried a little smile, plainly nervous now.
You know she deserved it.. "And you?" Dowd asked.

"What do you deserve?. "I'm not saying I'm a hero," the blinder replied.
"I'm just saying she had it coming."

"I see," said Dowd.

From Jude's vantage-point what happened next was more a matter of
conjecture than observation.  She saw Quaisoir's maimer take a step away
from Dowd, repugnance on his face; then saw him lunge forward as if to
stab Dowd through the heart.  His attack put him in range of the mites,
and before his blade could find Dowd's flesh they must have leapt at the
blinder, because he dropped back with a shout of horror, his free hand
going up to

his face.  Jude had seen what followed before.  The man scrabbled at his
eyes and nostrils and mouth, his legs giving out beneath him as the
mites undid his system from the inside.  He fell at Dowd's feet, and
rolled around in a fury of frustration, eventually putting his knife
into his mouth and digging bloodily for the things that were unmaking
him.  The life went out of him as he was doing so, his hand dropping
from his face, leaving the blade in his throat as though he'd choked
upon it.

"It's over," Dowd said to Quaisoir, who had wrapped her arms around her
shuddering body and was lying on the ground a few yards from her
tormentor's corpse.. "He won't hurt you again.. "Thank you, Lord.. "The
things he accused you of, child ...  ?. "Yes.. "Terrible things.. "Yes."
"Are you guilty of them?. "I am," Quaisoir said.. "I want to confess
them before I die.  Will you hear me?"

"I will," Dowd said, oozing magnanimity.

After being merely a witness to these events as they unravelled, Jude
now stepped towards Quaisoir and her confessor, but Dowd heard her
approach and turned to shake his head.

"I've sinned, my Lord Jesu," Quaisoir was saying. "I've sinned so many
times.  I beg you to forgive me."

It was the despair Jude heard in her sister's voice rather than Dowd's
rebuff that kept her from making her presence known.  Quaisoir was in
extremis, and given that it was her clear desire to commune with some
forgiving spirit what right did Jude have to intervene?  Dowd was not
the Christ Quaisoir believed him to be, but did that matter?  What would
revealing the Father Confessor's true identity achieve now, besides
adding to the sum of her sister's suffering?

Dowd had knelt beside Quaisoir and had taken her up

into his arms, demonstrating a capacity for tenderness, or at least for
its replication, that Jude would never have believed him capable of. For
her part, Quaisoir was in bliss, despite her wounds.  She clutched at
Dowd's jacket, and thanked him over and over for doing her this
kindness.  He hushed her softly, saying there was no need for her to
make a catalogue of her crimes.

"You have them in your heart, and I see them there," he said.. "I
forgive them.  Tell me instead about your husband.

Where is he?  Why hasn't he also come asking for forgiveness?"

"He didn't believe you were here," Quaisoir said.. "I told him I'd seen
you down at the harbour, but he has no faith.. "None?"

"Only in himself," she said bitterly.

Dowd began to rock backwards and forwards as he plied her with further
questions, his focus so devoted to his victim he didn't notice Jude's
approach.  She envied Dowd his embrace; wished it were her arms Quaisoir
was lying in instead of his.

"Who is your husband?" Dowd was asking.

"You know who he is," Quaisoir replied.. "He's the Autarch.  He rules
the Imajica."

"But he wasn't always Autarch, was he?"

"No."

"So what was he before?" Dowd wanted to know.. "An ordinary man?"

"No," she said.. "I don't think he was ever an ordinary man.  I don't
remember exactly."

He stopped rocking her.. "I think you do," he said, his tone subtly
shifting.. "Tell me," he said.. "Tell me what he was before he ruled
Yzordderrex?  And what were you?"

"I was nothing," she said simply.

"Then how were you raised so high?"

"He loved me.  From the very beginning, he loved me."

"You did no unholy service to be elevated?" Dowd said.

She hesitated, and he pressed her harder.. "What did you do?" he
demanded.. "What?  What?"

There was a distant echo of Oscar in his tone; the servant speaking with
his master's voice.  Intimidated by this fury, Quaisoir replied. "I
visited the Bastion of the Banu many times," she confessed.. "Even the
Annex.  I went there too.. "And what's there?"

"Mad women.  Some who killed their spouses, or their child re "Why did
you seek such pitiful creatures out?. "There are ...  powers ...  hidden
amongst them." At this, Jude attended more closely than ever.. "What
kind of powers?" Dowd said, voicing the question she was silently
asking.

"I did nothing unholy," Quaisoir protested.. "I just wanted to be
cleansed.  The Pivot was in my dreams.  Every night, its shadow on me,
breaking my back.  I only wanted to be cleansed of it."

"And were you?" Dowd asked her.  Again she didn't answer at first, until
he pressed her, almost harshly.. "Were you?"

"I wasn't cleansed, I was changed," she said.. "The women polluted me. I
have a taint in my flesh and I wish it were out of me." She began to
tear at her clothes, till her fingers found her belly and breasts.. "I
want it driven out!" she said.. "It gave me new dreams, worse than
before."

"Calm yourself," Dowd said.

"But I want it out! I want it out!" A kind of fit had suddenly taken
her, and she flailed so violently in his

arms she fell from them.. "I can feel it in me now," she said, her nails
raking her breasts.

Jude looked at Dowd, willing him to intervene, but he simply stood up,
staring at the woman's distress, plainly taking pleasure in it.
Quaisoir's self-assault was not theatrics.  She was drawing blood from
her skin, still yelling that she wanted the taint out of her.  In her
agony, a

subtle change was coming over her flesh, as though she was sweating out
the taint she'd spoken of.  Her pores were oozing a sheen of
iridescence, and the cells of her skin were subtly changing colour. Jude
knew the blue she saw spreading from her sister's neck down over her
body, and up towards her contorted face.  It was the blue of the stone
eye.  The blue of the Goddess.

"What is this?" Dowd demanded of his confesses.

"Out of me! Out of me!. "Is this the taint?" He went down on his
haunches beside her.. "Is it?"

"Drive it out of me!' Quaisoir sobbed, and began assaulting her poor
body afresh.

Jude could endure it no longer.  Allowing her sister to die blissfully
in the arms of a surrogate divinity was one thing.

This self-mutilation was quite another.  She broke her vow of silence.

"Stop her," she said.

Dowd looked up from his study, drawing his thumb across his throat to
hush her.  But it was too late.  Despite her own commotion, Quaisoir had
heard her sister speak.  Her thrashings slowed, and her blind head
turned in Jude's direction.

"Who's there?" she demanded.

There was naked fury on Dowd's face, but he hushed her softly.  She
would not be placated, however.

"Who's with you, Lord?" she asked him.

With his reply he made an error that un knitted the whole fiction.  He
lied to her.

"There's nobody," he said.

"I heard a woman's voice.  Who's there?"

"I told you," Dowd insisted.. "Nobody." He put his hand upon her face.
"Now calm yourself.

We're alone.. "No, we're not."

"Do you doubt me, child?"Dowd replied, his voice, after the harshness of
his last interrogations, modulating with this question, so that he
sounded almost wounded by her lack of faith.  Quaisoir's reply was to
silently take his hand

from her face, seizing it tightly in her blue and bloody speckled
fingers.

"That's better," he said.

Quaisoir ran her fingers over his palm.  Then she said:

"No scars."

"There'll always be scars," Dowd said, lavishing his best pontifical
manner upon her.  But he'd missed the point of her remark.

"There are no scars on your hand," she said.

He retrieved it from her grasp.. "Believe in me," he said.. "No," she
replied.. "You're not the Man of Sorrows." The joy had gone from her
voice.  it was thick; almost threatening.. "You can't save me," she
said, suddenly flailing wildly to drive the pretender from her.
"Where's my Saviour?  I want my Saviour. "He isn't here," Jude told her.
"He never was." Quaisoir turned in Jude's direction.. "Who are you?" she
said.. "I know your voice from somewhere."

"Keep your mouth shut," Dowd said, stabbing his finger in Jude's
direction.. "Or so help me you'll taste the mites

"Don't be afraid of him," Quaisoir said.

"She knows better than that," Dowd replied.. "She's seen what I can do."

Eager for some excuse to speak, so that Quaisoir could hear more of the
voice she knew but couldn't yet name, Jude spoke up in support of Dowd's
conceit.

"What he says is right," she told Quaisoir.. "He can urt us both, badly.
He's not the Man of Sorrows, sister.

Whether it was the repetition of words Quaisoir had herself used several
times - Man of Sorrows - or the fact that Jude had called her sister, or
both, the woman's sightless face slackened, the bafflement going out of
it.  She lifted herself from the ground.

"What's your name?" she murmured.. "Tell me your name."

"She's nothing," Dowd said, echoing Quaisoir's own description of
herself minutes earlier.

"She's a dead   A

woman." He made a move in Jude's direction.. "You understand so little,"
he said.. "And I've forgiven you a lot for that.  But I can't indulge
you any longer.  You've spoiled a fine game.  I don't want you spoiling
any more." He put his left hand, its forefinger extended, to his lips.

"I don't have many mites left," he said, so one will have to do.  A slow
unravelling.  But even a shadow like you can be undone."

"I'm a shadow now, am P' Jude said to him.. "I thought we were the same,
you and I?

Remember that speech?. "That was in another life, lovey," Dowd said.
"It's different here.  You could do me harm here.  So I'm afraid it's
going to have to be thank you and good night."

She started to back away from him, wondering as she did so how much
distance she would have to put between them to be out of the range of
his wretched mites.  He t watched her retreat with pity on his face.

"No good, lovey," he said.. "I know these streets like the back of my
hand."

She ignored his condescension, and took another backward step, her eye
fixed on his mouth where the mites nested, but aware that Quaisoir had
risen, and was standing no more than a yard from her defender.

"Sister?" the woman said.

Dowd glanced round, distracted from Jude long enough for her to take to
her heels.  He let out a shout as she fled, and the blind woman lunged
towards the sound, grabbing his arm and neck, and dragging him towards
her.  The noise she made as she did so was like nothing Jude had heard
from human lips, and she envied it.  A cry to shatter bones like glass,
and shake colour from the air.  She was glad not to be closer, or it
might have brought her to her knees.

She looked back once, in time to see Dowd spit the lethal mite at
Quaisoir's empty sockets, and prayed her sister had better defence e man
who'd emptied them.  Whether or no, she could do little

to help.  Better to run while she had the chance, so that at least one
of them survived the cataclysm.

She turned the first corner she came to, and kept turning corners
thereafter, to put as many decisions as possible between herself and her
pursuer.  No doubt Dowd's boast was true; he did indeed know these
streets, where he claimed he'd once triumphed, like his own hand.

it followed that the sooner she was out of them, and into terrain
unfamiliar to them both, the more chance she had of losing him.  Until
then, she had to be swift, and as nearly invisible as she could make
herself.  Like the shadow Dowd had dubbed her; darkness in a deeper
dark, flitting and fleeting; seen and gone.

But her body didn't want to oblige.  It was weary; beset with aches and
shudders.  Twin fires had been set in her chest, one in each lung.

Invisible hands ripped her heels bloody.  She didn't allow herself to
slow her pace, however, until she'd left the streets of playhouses and
brothels behind her, and was delivered into a place that might have
stood as a set for one of Pluthero Quexos's tragedies: a circle a
hundred yards wide, bounded by a high wall of sleek, black stone.  The
fires that burned here didn't rage uncontrolled as they did in so many
other parts of the city, but flickered from the top of the walls in
their dozens, tiny white flames, like night-lights, that illuminated the
inclined pavement which led down to an opening in the centre of the
circle.  She could only guess at its function.  An entrance into the
city's secret underworld perhaps; or a well?  There were flowers
everywhere, most of the petals shed and gone to rot, slackening the
pavement beneath her feet as she approached the hole, obliging her to
tread with care.  The suspicion grew that if this was a well, its water
was poisoned with the dead.  There were obituaries scrawled on the
pavement - names, dates, messages, even crude illustrations - their
numbers increasing the closer to the edge she came.  Some had even been
inscribed on the inner wall of the well, by

mourners brave or broken-hearted enough to dare the drop.

Though the hole exercised the same fascination as a cliff -edge,
inviting her to peer into its depths, she refused its petitions, and
halted a yard or two from the lip.  There was a sickly smell out of the
place, though it wasn't strong.  Either the well had not been used of
late, or else its occupants lay a very long way down.

Her curiosity satisfied, she looked around to choose the best route out.
There were no less than eight exits - nine including the well - and she
went first to the avenue that lay opposite the one she'd come in by.  It
was dark, and smoky, and she might have taken it had there not been
signs that it was blocked by rubble some way down its length.  She went
to the next, and it too was blocked, fires flickering between fallen
timbers.  She was going to the third door when she heard Dowd's voice.
She turned.  He was standing on the far side of the well, with his head
slightly cocked and a put-upon expression on his face, like a parent
who'd caught up with a truant child.

"Didn't I tell you?" he said.. "I know these streets

"I heard you."

"It isn't so bad that you came here," he said, wandering towards her.
"It saves me a mite."

"Why do you want to hurt me?" she said.

"I might ask you the same question," he said.. "You do, don't you? You'd
love to see me hurt.  You'd be even happier if you could do the hurting
personally.  Admit it!. "I admit it."

"There.  Don't I make a good confessor after all?  And that's just the
beginning.  You've got some secrets in you I didn't even know you had."
He raised his hand and described a circle as he spoke.. "I begin to see
the perfection of all of this.  Things coming round, coming round, back
to the place where it all began.  That is: to her.  Or to you, it
doesn't matter really.  You're the same.. "Twins?" Jude said.. "Is that
it?"

"Nothing so trite, lovey.  Nothing so natural.  I insulted

you, calling you a shadow.  You're more miraculous than that.  You're
-'he stopped '- well, wait.  This isn't strictly fair.

Here's me telling you what I know, and getting nothing from you.. "I
don't know anything," Jude said.. "I wish I did." Dowd stooped and
picked up a blossom; one of the few underfoot that was still intact.
"But whatever Quaisoir knows you also know," he said.. "At least about
how it all -7 came apart."

"How what came apart?"

"The Reconciliation.  You were there.  Oh yes, I know you think you're
just an innocent bystander, but there's i nobody in this, nobody, who's
innocent.  Not Estabrook, not Godolphin, not Gentle or his mystif.
They've all got confessions as long as their arms."

"Even you?" she asked him.

"Ah well, with me it's different," he sighed, sniffing at the flower.
"I'm an actor chap pie  I fake my raptures.  I'd like to change the
world, but I end up as entertainment.  Whereas all you lovers -'he spoke
the word contemptuously, '- who couldn't give a fuck about the world as
long as you're feeling passionate, you're the ones who make the cities
burn and the nations tumble.  You're the engines in the tragedy, and
most of the time you don't even know it.  So what's an actor chap pie to
do, if he wants to be taken seriously?  I'll tell you.  He has to learn
to fake his feelings so well he'll be allowed off the stage and into the
real world.  It's taken me a lot of rehearsal to get where I am, believe
me.  I started small, you know; very small.

Messenger.  Spear-carrier.  I once pimped for the Unbeheld, but it was
just a one-night stand.

Then I was back serving lover. "Like Oscar.. "Like Oscar.. "You hated
him, didn't you?. "No, I was simply bored, with him and his whole
family.

He was so like his father, and his father's father, and so on, all the
way back to crazy Joshua.  I became impatient.

I knew things would come around eventually, and I'd have my moment, but
I got so tired of waiting, and once in a while I let it show.. "And you
plotted."

"But of course.  I wanted to hurry things along, towards the moment of
my ...

emancipation.  it was all very calculated.

But that's me, you see?  I'm an artist with the soul of an accountant."
"Did you hire Pie to kill me?"

"Not knowingly," Dowd said.. "I set some wheels in motion, but I never
imagined they'd carry us all so far.  I didn't even know the mystif was
alive.  But as things went on, I began to see how inevitable all this
was.

First Pie's appearance.  Then your meeting Godolphin; and falling for
each other.  it was all bound to happen.  It was what you were born to
do, after all.

Do you miss him, by the way?  Tell the truth.,

"I've scarcely thought about him," she replied, surprised by the truth
of this.

"Out of sight, out of mind, eh?  Ah, I'm so glad I can't feel love.  The
misery of it.  The sheer, unadulterated misery." He mused a moment, then
said. "This is so much like the first time, you know.  Lovers yearning,
worlds trembling.  Of course last time I was merely a spear carrier This
time I intend to be the prince."

"What do you mean, I was born to fall for Godolphin?  I don't even
remember being born."

"I think it's time you did," Dowd said, tossing away the flower as he
approached her.

"Though these rites of passage are never very easy, lovey, so brace
yourself.  At least you've picked a good spot.  We can dangle our feet
over the edge while we talk about how you came into the world."

"Oh no," she said.. "I'm not going near that hole."

"You think I want to kill you?" he said.. "I don't.  I just want you to
unburden yourself of a few memories.  That's not asking too much, is it?
Be fair.  I've given you a glimpse of what's in my heart.  Now show me
yours." He

took hold of her wrist.. "I don't take no for an answer," he said, and
drew her to the edge of the well.

She'd not ventured this close before, and its proximity was vertiginous.
Though she cursed him for having the strength to drag her here, she was
glad he had her in a tight hold.

"Do you want to sit?" he said.  She shook her head.. "As you like," he
went on.. "There's more chance of you falling, but it's your decision.
You've become a very self willed woman, lovey, I've noticed that.  You
were malleable enough at the beginning.  That was the way you were bred
to be, of course.. "I wasn't bred to be anything."

"How do you know?" he said.. "Two minutes ago you were claiming you
don't even remember the past.  How do you know what you were meant to
be?  Made to be?" He glanced down the well.. "The memory's in your head
somewhere, lovey.

You just have to be willing to coax it out.  If Quaisoir sought some
Goddess, maybe you did too, even if you don't remember it.  And if you
did, then maybe you're more than Joshua's Peachplum.  Maybe you've got
some place in the action I haven't accounted for."

"Where would I meet Goddesses, Dowd?"Jude replied.. "I've lived in the
Fifth; in London; in Notting Hill Gate.  There are no Goddesses there."

Even as she spoke she thought of Celestine, buried beneath the Tabula
Rasa's Tower.

Was she a sister to the deities that haunted Yzordderrex?  A
transforming force, locked away by a sex that worshipped fixedness?  At
the memory of the prisoner, and her cell, Jude's mind grew suddenly
light, as though she'd downed a whisky on an empty stomach.  She had
been touched by the miraculous, after all.  So if once, why not many
times?  If now, why not in her forgotten paso

"I've got no way back," she said, protesting the difficulty of this as
much for her own benefit as Dowd's.

"It's easy," he replied.. "Just think of what it was like to be born."

"I don't even remember my childhood."

"You had no childhood, lovey.  You had no adolescence.  You were born
just the way you are, overnight.  Quaisoir was the first Judith and you,
my sweet, are only her replica.  Perfect maybe, but still a replica."

I won't ...  I don't ...  believe you."

Of course, you must refuse the truth at first.  It's perfectly
understandable.  But your body knows what's true and what isn't.  You're
shaking, inside and out.  .

I'm tired," she said, knowing the explanation was pitifully weak.

"You're feeling more than weary," Dowd said.. "Admit it."

As he pried, she remembered the results of his last revelations about
her past: how she'd dropped to the kitchen floor, hamstrung by invisible
knives.  She dared not succumb to such a collapse now, with the well a
foot from where she stood, and Dowd knew it.

"You have to face the memories," he was saying.. "Just spit them out. Go
on.  You'll feel better for it, I promise you.,

She could feel both her limbs and her resolve weakening as he spoke, but
the prospect of facing whatever lay in the darkness at the back of her
skull - and however much she distrusted Dowd, she didn't doubt there was
something horrendous there - was almost as terrifying as the thought of
the well taking her.  Perhaps it would be better to die here and now,
two sisters extinguished within the same hour, and never know whether
Dowd's claims were true or not.  But then suppose he'd been lying to her
all along - the actor chap pie finest performance yet - and she was not
a shadow, not a replica, not a thing bred to do service, but a natural
child with natural parents; a creature unto herself; real, complete?
Then she'd be giving herself to death out of fear of self discovery and
Dowd would have claimed another victim

A,

The only way to defeat him was to call his bluff; to do as he kept
urging her to do, and go into the darkness at the back of her head ready
to embrace whatever relevat ions it concealed.  Whichever Judith she was,
she was; whether real or replica, natural or bred.  There was no escape
from herself in the living world.  Better to know the truth, once and
for all.

The decision ignited a flame in her skull, and the first phantoms of the
past appeared in her mind's eye.

oh, my Goddess..." she murmured, throwing back her head.. "What is this?
What is this?"

She saw herself lying on bare boards in an empty room, a fire burning in
the grate, warming her in her sleep, and flattering her nakedness with
its lustre.  Somebody had marked her body while she slept, daubing upon
it a design she recognized: the glyph she'd first seen in her mind's eye
when she'd made love with Oscar, then glimpsed again as she passed
between Dominions.  The spiralling sign of her flesh, here painted on
flesh itself in half a dozen colours.  She moved in her sleep, and the
whorls seemed to leave traces of themselves in the air where she'd been,
their persistence exciting another motion, this other in the ring of
sand that bounded her hard bed.  it rose around her like the curtain of
the Borealis, shimmering with the same colours in which her glyph had
been painted, as though something of her essential anatomy was in the
very air of the room.  She was entranced by the beauty of the sight.

"What are you seeing?" she heard Dowd asking her.

"Me," she said, 'lying on the floor ...  in a circle of sand.  .

"Are you sure it's you?" he said.

She was about to pour scorn on his question, when she realized its
impact.  Perhaps this wasn't her, but her sister.

"Is there any way of knowing?" she said.  "You'll soon see," he
told her.

So she did.  The curtain of sand began to wave more violently, as if
seized by a wind unleashed within the

r circle.  Particles flew from it, intensifying as they were thrown
against the dark air: motes of the purest colour rising like new stars,
then dropping again, burning in their descent, towards the place where
she, the witness, lay.  She was lying on the ground close to her sister,
receiving the rain of colour like a grateful earth, needing its
sustenance if she was to grow and swell and become fruitful.

"What am I?" she said, following the fall of colour to snatch a glimpse
of the ground it was falling upon.

The beauty of what she'd seen so far had lulled her into vulnerability.
When she saw her own unfinished

body the shock threw her out of the remembrance like a TM  blow.
Suddenly she was teetering on the wall's edge

again, with Dowd's hand the only check upon her falling.  Ice-water
sweat filled her pores.

"Don't let me go," she said.

"What are you seeing?" he asked her.

"Is this being born?" she sobbed.. "Oh Christ, is this being born?"

"Go back to the memory," he said.. "You've begun it now, so finish it!'
He shook her.. "Hear me?  Finish it!'

She saw his face raging before her.  She saw the well, yearning behind.
And in between, in the fire lit room awaiting her in her head, she saw a
nightmare worse than both: her anatomy, barely made, lying in a circle
of perverted enchantments, raw until the distillates of another woman's
body put skin on her sinew, and colour in that skin; put the tint in her
eyes and the gloss on her lips; gave her the same breasts, belly and
sex.  This was not birth, it was duplication.  She was a facsimile, a
likeness stolen from a slumbering original.

"I can't bear it," she said.

"I did warn you, lovey," Dowd replied.. "It's never easy,

reliving the first moments."

"I'm not even real," she said.

"Let's stay clear of the metaphysics," came the reply.

"What you are, you are.  You had to know sooner or later."

"I can't bear it.  I can't bear it."

"But you are bearing it," Dowd said.. "You just have to take it slowly.
Step by step.. "No more .  .

"Yes," he insisted.. "A lot more.  That was the worst.  It'll get easier
from now on."

That was a lie.  When memory took her again, almost without her inviting
it, she was raising her arms above her head, letting the colours congeal
around her outstretched fingers.  Pretty enough, until she let one arm
drop beside her, and her new-made nerves felt a presence a t her side,
sharing the womb.  She turned her head, and screamed.

"What is it?"  Dowd said.. "Did the Goddess come?" It was no Goddess.  It
was another unfinished thing, gaping at her with lidless eyes, putting
out its colourless tongue, which was still so rough it could have licked
her new skin off her.  She retreated from it, and her fear aroused it,
the pale anatomy shaken by silent laughter.  It too had gathered motes
of stolen colour, she saw, but it had not bathed in them; rather it had
caught them in its hands, postponing the moment it attired itself until
it had luxuriated in its flayed nakedness.

Dowd was interrogating her again.. "Is it the Goddess?" he was asking.
"What are you seeing?  Speak it out, woman!  Speak it-'

His demand was cut suddenly short.  There was a beat of silence, then a
cry of alarm so shrill her conjuring of the circle and the thing she'd
shared it with vanished.  She felt Dowd's grip on her wrist slip, and
her body toppled.

She flailed as she fell, and more by luck than design her motion threw
her sideways, along the rim of the well, rather than pitching her within
it.  Instantly, she began to slip down the incline, and clutched at the
pavement.  But the stone had been polished by years of

passage, and her body slid towards the edge as if the depths were
calling in a long-neglected debt.  Her legs kicked empty air, her hips
sliding over the well's lip while 589 her fingers sought some purchase,
however slight - a name etched a little deeper than the rest; a rose
-thorn, wedged between stones - that would give her some defence against
gravity.  As she did so she heard Dowd cry out a second time, and she
looked up to see a miracle.

Quaisoir had survived the mite.  The change that had come over her flesh
when she rose in defiance of Dowd was here completed.  Her skin was the
colour of the blue eye; her face, so lately maimed, was bright.  But
these were little changes, beside the dozen ribbons of her substance,
several yards in length, that were unravelled around her, their source
her back, their purpose to touch in succession the ground beneath her
and raise her up into a strange flight.  The power she'd found in the
Bastion was blazing in her, and Dowd could only retreat before it,
to the edge of the wall.  He kept his silence now, dropping to his
knees, preparing to crawl away beneath the spiralling skirts of
filament.

Jude felt what little hold her fingers had slip, and let out a cry for
help.

"Sister?" Quaisoir said.

"Here!" Jude yelled.. "Quickly."

As Quaisoir moved towards the well, the tendrils' lightest touch enough
to propel her forward, Dowd made his move, ducking beneath the tendrils.
He'd mistimed his escape, however.  One of the filaments caught his
shoulder, and spiralling around his neck pitched him over the edge of
the well.  As he went, Jude's right hand lost its purchase entirely, and
she began to slide, a final desperate yell coming from her as she did
so.  But Quaisoir was as

i I

swift in saving as dispatching.  Before the well's rim rose to eclipse
the scene above, Jude felt the filaments seize her wrist and arm, their
spirals instantly tightening around her.  She seized them in return, her
exhausted muscles quickened by the touch, and Quaisoir drew her up over
the edge of the well, depositing her on the pavement.

She rolled over on to her back, and panted like a

sprinter at the tape, while Quaisoir's filaments un knitted themselves,
and returned to serve their mistress.

It was the sound of Dowd's begging, echoing up from the well where he
was suspended, that made her sit up.  There was nothing in his cries she
might not have predicted from a man who's rehearsed servitude over so
many generations.  He promised Quaisoir eternal obedience and utter
self-abnegation if only she'd save him from this terror.  Wasn't mercy
the jewel in any heavenly crown, he sobbed, and wasn't she an angel?

"No," Quaisoir said.. "Nor am I the bride of Christ." Undeterred, he
began a new cycle of descriptions and egotiations.

What she was; what he would do for her, in perpetuity.  She would find
no better servant, no humbler acolyte.  What did she want?  His
manhood?; it was nothing; he would geld himself there and then.  She
only had to ask.

If Jude had any doubt as to the strength Quaisoir had gained, she had
evidence of it now, as the tendrils drew heir prisoner up from the well.
He gushed like a holed bucket as he came.

"Thank you, a thousand times, thank you In view now, Jude saw that he
was in double jeopardy, his feet hanging over empty air, and the
tendrils around his throat tight enough to throttle him had he not
relieved their pressure by thrusting his fingers between noose and neck.
Tears poured down his cheeks, in theatriical excess.

"Ladies," he said.. "How do I begin to make amends?" Quaisoir's response
was another question.

"Why was I misled by you?" she said.. "You're just a man.  What do you
know about divinities?"

Dowd looked afraid to reply, not certain which would be more likely to
prove fatal, denial or affirmation.. "Tell her the truth," Jude advised
him'

"I served the Unbeheld once," he said.. "He found me in the desert, and
sent me to the Fifth Dominion.. "Why?"

r

-a

A,

"He had business there.. "What business?"

Dowd began to squirm afresh.  His tears had dried up.

The drama had gone from his voice.

"He wanted a woman," he said, 'to bear Him a son in the Fifth.. "And you
found one?. "Yes I did.  Her name was Celestine.. "And what happened to
her?. "I don't know.  I did what I was asked to do, an. "What happened
to her?" Quaisoir said again, more forcefully.

"She died," Dowd replied, trailing that possibility to see if it was
challenged.  When it wasn't he took it up with fresh gusto.

"Yes, that's what happened.  She perished.  In childbirth, so I believe.
Hapexamendios impregnated her, you see, and her poor body couldn't bear
the responsibility."

Dowd's style was by now too familiar to deceive Jude.  She knew the
music he put into his voice when he lied, and heard it clearly now.

He was well aware that Celestine was alive.  There had been no such
music in his early revelations, however - his talk of procuring for
Hapexamendios - which seemed to indicate that this was indeed a service
he'd done the God.

"What about the child?" Quaisoir asked him.. "Was it a son or daughter?"

"I don't know," he said.. "Truly, I don't."

Another lie, and one that his captor sensed.  She loosened the noose,
and he dropped a few inches, letting out a sob of terror, and clutching
at the filaments in his panic.

"Don't drop me!  Please God, don't drop me!'

"What about the child?"

"What do I know?" he said, tears beginning again, only this time the
real thing.. "I'm nothing.  I'm a messenger.  A spear-carrier."

"A pimp," she said.

"Yes, that too.  I confess it.  I'm a pimp!  But it's nothing, it's
nothing.  Tell her, Judith!  I'm just an actor chap pie  A fucking
worthless actor chap pie "Worthless, eh?. "Worthless!. "Then
goodnight," Quaisoir said, and let him go.

The noose slipped through his fingers with such suddenness he had no
time to take a faster hold, and he dropped like a dead man from a cut
rope, not even beginning to shriek for several seconds, as though sheer
disbelief had silenced him until the iris of smoky sky above him had
closed almost to a dot.  When his din finally rose it was high-pitched,
but brief.

As it stopped Jude laid her palms against the pavement, and, without
looking up at Quaisoir, murmured her thanks, in part for her
preservation but at least as much for Dowd's dispatch.

"Who was he?" Quaisoir asked.

"I only know a little part of this," Jude replied.

"Little by little," Quaisoir said.. "That's how we'll understand it all.
Little ...  by ...  little."

Her voice was exhausted, and when Jude looked up she saw the miracle was
leaving Quaisoir's cells.  She had sunk to the ground, her unfurled
flesh withdrawing into her body, the beatific blue fading from her skin.
Jude picked herself up and hobbled from the edge of the hole.  Hearing
her footsteps, Quaisoir said. "Where are you going?"

"Just away from the well," Jude said, laying her brow and her palms
against the welcome chill of the wall.

"Do you know who I am?" she asked Quaisoir, after a little time.

"Yes.  .  ." came the soft reply.. "You're the me I lost.

You're the other Judith."

"That's right." She turned to see that Quaisoir was smiling, despite her
pain.

"That's good," Quaisoir said.. "If we survive this, maybe

you'll begin again for both of us.  Maybe you'll see the visions I
turned my back on.. "What visions?" Quaisoir sighed.

"I was loved by a great Maestro once," she said.. "He showed me angels.
They used to come to our table in sunbeams.

I swear.  Angels in sunbeams.  And I thought we'd live forever, and I'd
learn all the secrets of the sea.  But I let him lead me out of the sun.
I let him persuade me the spirits didn't matter.  Only our will
mattered, and if we willed pain, then that was wisdom.  I lost myself in
such a little time, Judith.  Such a little time." She shuddered.. "I was
blinded by my crimes before anyone ever took a knife to me." Jude looked
pityingly on her sister's maimed face.

"We've got to find somebody to clean your wounds," she said.

"I doubt there's a doctor left alive in Yzordderrex," Quaisoir replied.
"They're always the first to go in any revolution, aren't they? Doctors,
tax-collectors, poets .  .

"If we can't find anybody else, I'll do it," Jude said, leaving the
security of the wall and venturing back down the incline to where
Quaisoir sat.

"I thought I saw Jesus Christ yesterday," she said.. "He was standing on
a roof with his arms open wide.  I thought he'd come for me, so that I
could make my confession.  That's why I came here.  To find Jesu.  I
heard his messenger."

"That was me."

"You were ...  in my thoughts?"

"Yes."

"So I found you instead of Christos.  That seems like a greater
miracle." She reached out towards Jude, who took her hand.. "Isn't it,
sister?"

"I'm not sure yet," Jude said.. "I was myself this morning.

Now what am I?  A copy; a forgery."

The word brought Klein's Bastard Boy to mind: Gentle the faker, making
profit from other people's genius.  is

that why he'd obsessed upon her?  Had he seen in her some subtle due to
her true nature, and followed her out of devotion to the sham she was?

"I was happy," she said, thinking back to the good times she'd shared
with him.. "Maybe I didn't always realize I was happy, but I was.  I was
myself.. "You still are."

"No," she said, as close to despair as she could ever remember being.
"I'm a piece of somebody else."

"We're all pieces," Quaisoir said, 'whether we were born or made." Her
fingers tightened around Jude's hand.. "We're all hoping to be whole
again.  Will you take me back up to the palace?" she said.. "We'll be
safer there than here.. "Of course," Jude replied, helping her up.

"Do you know which direction to go?"

She said she did.  Despite the smoke, and the darkness, the walls of the
palace loomed above them, massive, but remote.

"We've got quite a climb ahead of us," Jude said.. "It may take us till
morning.. "The nights are long in Yzordderrex," Quaisoir replied.

"It won't last forever," Jude said.

"It will for me."

"I'm sorry.  That was thoughtless.  I didn't mea. "Don't be sorry,"
Quaisoir said.. "I like the dark.

I can remember the sun better.  Sun, and angels at the table.  Will you
take my arm, sister?  I don't want to lose you again."

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

In any other place but this, Gentle might have been frustrated by the
sight of so many sealed doors, but as Lazarevich led him closer to the
Pivot Tower the atmosphere grew so thick with dread that he was glad
whatever lay behind those doors was locked away.  His guide spoke
scarcely at all.  When he did it was to suggest that Gentle make the
rest of the journey alone.

"It's a little way now," he kept saying.. "You don't need me any more."

Gentle would remind him, nd

"That's not the deal    a Lazarevich would curse and whine, then head on
some distance in silence, until a shriek down one of the passages, or a
glimpse of blood spilled on the polished floor, made him halt and start
his little speech afresh.

At no point in this journey were they challenged.  If these titanic
halls had ever buzzed with activity - and given that small armies could
be lost in them Gentle doubted that they ever had - they were all but
deserted now.  Those few servants and bureaucrats they did encounter
were busy leaving, burdened with hastily gathered belongings as they
hurried down the corridors.  Survival was their foremost priority.

They gave this bleeding soldier and his ill-dressed companion scarcely a
look.

At last, they came to a door, this one unsealed, which Lazarevich
refused point blank to enter.

. "This is Pivot Tower," he said, his voice barely audible.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"Can't you feel it?"

Now it was remarked upon, Gentle did indeed feel a subtle sensation,
barely strong enough to be called a tingle, in his fingertips, testicles
and sinuses.

"That's the Tower, I swear," Lazarevich whispered.

Gentle believed him.. "All right," he said.. "You've done your duty,
you'd better go.,

The man grinned.. "You mean it?. "Yes.. "Oh, thank you.  Whoever you
are.  Thank you." Before he could skip away, Gentle took hold of his
arm, and drew him close.. "Tell your children," he said, 'not to be
soldiers.  Poets, maybe, or shoe-shiners.  But not soldiers.  Got it?"

Lazarevich nodded violently, though Gentle doubted he'd comprehended a
word.  His only thought was of escape, and he took to his heels the
moment Gentle let go of him, and was out of sight in two or three
seconds.  Turning to the beaten brass doors, Gentle pushed them a few
inches wider, and slipped inside.  The nerve-endings in his scrotum and
palms knew that something of significance was nearby - what had been
subtle sensation was almost painful now - even though his eyes were
denied sight of it by the murk of the room he'd entered.  He stood by
the door until he was able to grasp some sense of what lay ahead.  This
was not, it seemed, the Tower itself, but an ante-chamber of some kind,
as stale as a sick room.  Its walls were bare, its only furniture a
table upon which a canary cage lay overturned, its door open, its
occupant flown.  Beyond the table, another doorway, which he took, led
him into a corridor, staler still than the room he'd left.  The source
of agitation in his nerve-endings was audible now: a steady tone that
might have been soothing under other circumstances.  Not knowing which
direction it was coming from, he turned to his right, and crept down
the corridor.  A flight of stairs curved out of sight to his left.  He
chose not to take them, his instinct rewarded by a glimmer of light up
ahead.  The Pivot's tone insisted upon him as he advanced, suggesting
this route was a cul-de-sac, but he headed on towards the light to be
certain Pie was not being held prisoner in one of these ante-chambers.

As he came within half a dozen strides of the room

somebody moved across the doorway, flitting through his field of vision
too quickly to be seen.  He flattened himself against the wall, and
edged towards the room.  A wick, set in a bowl of oil on a table, shed
the light he'd been drawn to.  Beside it, several plates, containing the
remains of a meal.  When he reached the door he waited there for the man
- the night-watch, he supposed - to come back into view.  He had no wish
to kill him unless it was strictly necessary.  There'd be enough widows
and orphans in Yzordderrex by tomorrow morning without his adding to the
sum.

He heard the man fart, not once but several times, with the abandon of
someone who believed himself alone, then heard him open another door,
his footsteps receding.

Gentle chanced a glance round the door jamb.  The room was empty.  He
quickly stepped inside, intending to take from the table the two knives
that were lying there.  On one of the plates was an already rifled
assortment of candies.  He couldn't resist.  He picked the most
luscious, and had it to his mouth when the man behind said:

"Rosengarten?"

He looked round, and as his gaze settled on the face across the room his
jaw clenched in shock, breaking on the candy between his teeth.  Sight
and sugar mingled, tongue and eye feeding such a sweetness to his brain
he reeled.

The face before him was a living mirror.  His eyes, his nose, his mouth;
his hairline; his bearing; his bafflement; his fatigue.  In everything
but the cut of his coat and the muck beneath his fingernails, another
Gentle.  But not by that name, surely.

Swallowing the sweet liqueur from the candy, Gentle very slowly said:
"Who ...  in God's name ...  are you?" The shock was draining from the
other's face, and amusement replacing it.  He shook his head.

Damn kreauchee .  .

"That's your name?" Gentle replied.. "Damn Kreau598 chee?" He'd heard
stranger in his travels.  But the question only served to amuse the
other more.

"Not a bad idea," he replied.. "There's enough in my system.  The
Autarch Damn Kreauchee.  That's got a ring to it."

Gentle spat the candy from his mouth.. "Autarch?" he said.

The amusement fled from the other's face.. "You've made your point,
wisp.  Now fuck off." He closed his eyes.. "Get a hold of yourself," he
half-whispered.. "It's the fucking kreauchee.  It's happened before,
it'll happen again." Now Gentle understood.. "You think you're dreaming
me, don't you?" he said.

The Autarch opened his eyes, angered to find the hallucination still
hanging around.. "I told you -' he said.

"What is this kreauchee?  Some kind of alcohol?  Dope?  Do you think I'm
a bad trip?  Well, I'm not."

He started towards the other, who retreated in alarm.

"Go on," Gentle said, extending his hand.. "Touch me.  I'm real.  I'm
here.  My name's John Zacharias, and I've come a long way to see you.  I
didn't think that was the reason, but now I'm here, I'm sure it was."

The Autarch raised his fists to his temples, as if to beat this
drug-dream from his brain.

"This isn't possible," he said.  There was more than disbelief in his
voice; there was an unease that was close to fear.. "You can't be here.
Not after all these years."

"Well I am," said Gentle.. "I'm as confused as you, believe me.  But I'm
here."

The Autarch studied him, turning his head this way and that, as though
he still expected to find some angle from which to view the visitor that
would reveal him as an apparition.  But after a minute of such study he
gave it up, and simply stared at Gentle, his face a maze of furrows.

"Where did you come from?" he said slowly.

I think you know," Gentle replied.

The Fifth?"

"Yes."

"You came to bring me down, didn't you?  Why didn It I see it?  You
started this revolution!  You were out in the streets, sowing the seeds!
No wonder I couldn't root the rebels out.  I kept wondering: who is it?
Who's out there, plotting against me?  Execution after execution, purge
after purge, and I never got to the one at the heart of it.  The one who
was as clever as me.  The nights I lay awake thinking: who is it?  Who?
I made a list as long as my arm.  But never you, Maestro.

Never Sartori."

Hearing the Autarch name himself was shocking enough, but this second
naming bred utter rebellion in Gentle's system.

His head filled with the same din that had beset him on the platform at
MarK6, and his belly disgorged its contents in one bilious heave.  He
put his hand out to the table to steady himself, and missed the edge,
slipping to the floor where his vomit was already spattered. Floundering
in his own mess, he tried to shake the noise from his head, but all he
did was un knot the confusion of sounds, and let the words they concealed
slip through.

Sartori!  He was Sartori!  He didn't waste breath questioning the name.
it was his, and he knew it.  And what worlds there were in that naming:
more confounding than anything the Dominions had unveiled; opening
before him like windows blown wide and shattered, never to be closed
again.

He heard the name spoken out of a hundred memories.  A woman sighed it
as if she begged him back into her dishevelled bed.  A priest beat out
the syllables on his pulpit, prophesying damnation.  A gambler blew it
into his cupped hands to bless his dice.  Condemned men made prayers of
it; drunkards, mockery; carousers, songs.  Oh, but he'd been famous!  At
Bartholomew Fair there'd been troupes who'd filled their purses telling
his life as farce.  A bordello in Bloomsbury had boasted a sometime nun
driven to nymphomania by his touch, who would chant his conjurations (so
she said) as she was fucked.  He was

a paradigm of all things fabulous and forbidden: a threat to reasoning
men; to their wives, a secret vice.  And to the children - the children,
trailing past his house after the beadle - he was a rhyme:

Maestro Sartori,

Wants a bit o'glory,

He loves the cats,

He loves the dogs,

file

,

He turns the ladies into frogs,

He made some hats

Of baby rats,

But that's another story.

This chant, repeated in his head in the piping voices of parish orphans,
was worse in its way than the pulpit curses, or the sobs, or the
prayers.  It rolled on and on, in its famous way, gathering neither
meaning nor music as it went.  Like his life, without this name.  Motion
without purpose.

"Had you forgotten?" the Autarch asked him.

"On yes," Gentle replied, unbidden and bitter laughter coming to his
lips with the reply.. "I'd forgotten."

Even now, with the voices rebaptizing him with their clamour, he could
scarcely believe it.  Had this body of his survived two hundred years
and more in the Fifth Dominion, while his mind went on deceiving itself:
holding only a decade of life in its consciousness, and hiding the rest
away?  Where had he lived all those years?  Who had he been?  If what
he'd just heard was true, then this act of remembering was just the
first.  There were two centuries of memories concealed in his brain
somewhere, waiting to be discovered.  No wonder Pie had kept him in
ignorance.  Now that he knew, madness was very close.

He got to his feet, holding on to the table for support.

"Is Pie'oh'pah here?" he said.

q

!

"The mystif?  No.  Why?  Did it come with you from the Fifth?"

"Yes it did."

A twitch of a smile returned to the Autarch's face.

"Aren't they exquisite creatures?" he said.. "I've had one or two
myself.  They're an acquired taste, but once you've got it you never
really lose it again.  But no, I haven't seen it.. "Judith, then?"

"Ah," he sighed.. "Judith.  I assume you mean Godolphin's lady?  She
went by a lot of names, didn't she?  Mind you, we all did.  What do they
call you these days?. "I told you.  John Furie Zacharias.  Or Gentle."
"I have a few friends who know me as Sartori.  I'd like to number you
amongst them.  Or do you want the name back?"

"Gentle will do.  We were talking about Judith.  I saw her this morning,
down by the harbour."

"Did you see Christ down there?. "What are you talking about?"

"She came back here saying she'd seen the Man of Sorrows.  She had the
fear of the Lord in her.  Crazy bitch." He sighed.. "It was sad, really,
to see her that way.  I thought it was just too much kreauchee at first,
but no.  She'd finally lost her mind.  It was running out of her ears."

"Who are we talking about?" Gentle said, thinking one or other of them
had mislaid the path of the conversation.

"I'm talking about Quaisoir, my wife.  She came with me from the Fifth."
"I was talking about Judith.. "So was . "Are you sayin. "There are two.
You made one of them yourself, for God's sake, or have you forgotten
that too?. "Yes.  Yes, I'd forgotten.. "She was beautiful, but she
wasn't worth losing the Imajica for.  That was your big mistake.  You
should have served your hand and not your rod.  Then I'd never have been
born, and God would be in his heaven and you'd

be Pope Sartori.  Ha!  Is that why you came back?  To become Pope?  It's
too late, brother.  By tomorrow morning Yzordderrex: will be a heap of
smoking ash.  This is my last night here.  I'm going to the Fifth.  I'm
going to build anew empire there."

"Why?"

"Don't you remember the rhyme they used to sing?  For glory's sake."
"Haven't you had enough of that?"

"You tell me.  Whatever's in my heart was plucked from yours.  Don't
tell me you haven't dreamed of power.  You were the greatest Maestro in
Europe.  There was nobody could touch you.  That didn't all evaporate
overnight."

He moved towards Gentle for the first time in this exchange, reaching
out to lay his steady hand on Gentle's shoulder.

"I think you should see the Pivot, brother Gentle," he said.. "That'll
remind you what power feels like.  Are you steady on your feet?"
"Reasonably.. "Come on then."

He led the way back into the passage, to the flight of stairs Gentle had
declined to take.

Now he did so, following Sartori round the curve of the staircase to a
door without a handle.

"The only eyes laid on the Pivot since the tower was built are mine," he
said.. "Which has made it very sensitive to scrutiny."

"My eyes are yours," Gentle reminded him.

"It'll know the difference," Sartori replied.. "It'll want to probe
you." The sexual subtext of this wasn't lost on him.. "You'll just have
to lie back and think of England," he said.. "It's over quickly."

So saying he licked his thumb and laid it on the rectangle of
slate-coloured stone set in the middle of the door, inscribing a figure
in spittle upon it.  The door responded to the signal.  Its locks began
to grind into motion.

"Spit too, huh?" Gentle said.. "I thought it was just breath."

"You use pneuma?" Sartori said.. "Then I should be able to.  But I
haven't got the trick of it.

You'll have to teach me, and I'll ...  remind you of a few sways in
return.. "I don't understand the mechanics of it.. "Then we'll learn
together," Sartori replied.. "The principles are simple enough.  Matter
and mind; mind and matter.  Each transforming the other.  Maybe that's
what we're going to do.  Transform one another."

With that thought, Sartori put his palm on the door and pushed it open.
Though it was fully six inches thick it moved without a sound, and with
an extended hand Sartori invited Gentle to enter, speaking as he did SO.

"It's said that Hapexamendios set the Pivot in the J middle of the
Imajica so that His fertility would flow from it into every Dominion."
He lowered his voice, as if for an indiscretion.  'in other words," he
said, 'this is the phallus of the Unbeheld."

Gentle had seen this tower from the outside, of course; it soared above
every other pylon and dome in the palace.  But he hadn't grasped its
enormity until now.  It was a square stone tower, seventy or eighty feet
from side to side, and so tall that the lights blazing in the walls to
illuminate its sole occupant receded like cats' eyes in a highway till
sheer distance dimmed then erased them.  An extraordinary sight: but
nothing beside the monolith around which the tower had been constructed.
Gentle had been steeling himself for an assault when the door was
opened: the tone he'd heard in his skull as he'd crept along the passage
below rattling his teeth; the charge burning in his fingers.

But there was nothing - not even a murmur - which was in its way more
distressing.  The Pivot knew he was here in its chamber, but was keeping
its counsel, silently assessing him as he assessed it.

There were several shocks.  The first, and the least, how beautiful it
was, its sides the colour of thunderclouds, hewn so that seams of
brightness flowed in them like

hidden lightnin g.  The second, that it was not set on the ground, but
hovered, in all its enormity, ten feet from the floor of the tower,
casting a shadow so dense that the dark air was almost a plinth.

"Impressive, huh?" Sartori remarked, his cocky tone IMF

as inappropriate as laughter at an altar.. "You can walk underneath it.
Go on.  It's quite safe."

Gentle was reluctant, but he was all too aware that his other was
watching for his weaknesses, and any sign of fear now might be used
against him later.  Sartori had already seen him sickened, and down on
his knees; he didn't want the bastard to get another glimpse of frailty.

"Aren't you coming with me?" he said, glancing round at the Autarch.

"It's a very private moment," the other replied, and stood back to let
Gentle venture into the shadow.

it was like stepping back into the wastes of the Jokalaylau.  Cold cut
him to the marrow.

His breath was snatched from his lungs and appeared before him in a
bitter cloud.  Gasping, he turned his face to the power above him, his
mind divided between the rational urge to study the phenomenon, and the
barely controllable desire to drop to his knees and beg it not to crush
him.  The heaven above him had five sides, he saw.  One for each
Dominion perhaps.  And like the hewn flanks, flickers of lightning
appeared in it here and there.  But it wasn't simply a trick of seam and
shadow that gave the stone the look of a thundercloud.

There was motion in it, the solid rock roiling above him.  He threw a
glance towards Sartori, who was standing at the door, casually putting a
cigarette between his lips.  The flame he struck to light it with was a
world away, but Gentle didn't envy him its warmth.  Icy as this shadow
was, he wanted the stone sky to unfurl above him, and deliver its
judgement down; he wanted to see whatever power the Pivot possessed
unleashed, if only to know that such powers and such judgements existed.
He looked away from Sartori almost contemptuously, the thought shaping
in his head that for all the

other's talk of possessing this monolith, the years it had spent in this
tower were moments in its incalculable span, and that he and Sartori
would have come and gone, their little mark eroded by those that
followed, in the time it took the stone to blink its cloudy eye.

Perhaps it read that thought from his cortex, and approved, because the
light, when it came, was kind.  There was sun in the stone as well as
lightning; warmth as well as a killing fire.  It brightened the mantle,
then fell in shafts, first around him, then upon his upturned face.   f
The moment had antecedents: events in the Fifth that had prophesied
this, their parent's, coming.  He'd stood on Highgate Hill once, when
the city road was still a muddy track, and looked up to see the clouds
drop glory down as they were doing now.  He'd gone to the window of his
room in Gamut Street, and seen the same.  He'd watched the smoke clear
after a night of bombing - 1941 the Blitz at its height - and seeing the
sun burn through, had known in some place too tender to be touched that
he'd forgotten something momentous, and that if he ever remembered - if
a light like this ever burned the veil away the world would unravel.

That conviction came again, but this time there was more than a vague
unease to support it.  The tone that had sounded in his skull had come
again, attendant on the light, and in it, described by the subtlest
variation in its monotony, he heard words.  The Pivot was addressing
him.

"Reconciler," it said.

He wanted to cover his ears and shut the word out.  Drop to the ground
Ue a prophet begging to be unburdened of some divine duty.

But the word was inside as well as out.  There was no escaping it.

"The work's not finished yet," the Pivot said.

"What work?" he said.

"You know what work." He did, of course.  But so much pain had come with
that labour, and he was ill equipped to bear it again.

"Why deny it?" the Pivot said.

He stared up into the brightness.. "I failed before, and so many people
died.  I can't do it again.  Please.  I can't.. "What did you come here
for?" the Pivot asked him, its voice so tenuous he had to hold his
breath to catch the shape of the words.  The question took him back to
Taylor's bedside; to that plea for comprehension.

"To understand.  .  ." he said.

"To understand what?. "I can't put it into words ...  it sounds so
pitiful .  .

"Say it.. "To understand why I was born.  Why anybody's born.. "You know
why you were born.. "No, I don't.  I wish I did but I don't.. "You're
the Reconciler of Dominions.  You're the healer of the Imajica.  Hide
from that, and you hide from understanding.

Maestro, there's a worse anguish than remembering, and another suffers
it because you leave your work unfinished.  Go back into the Fifth
Dominion and complete what you began.

Make the many One.  This is the only salvation."

The stone sky began to roil again, and the clouds closed over the sun.
With the darkness, the cold returned, but he didn't relinquish his place
in the Pivot's shadow for several seconds, still hoping some crack would
open, and the God speak a last, consoling word; a whisper, perhaps, of
how this onerous duty might be passed to another soul more readily
equipped to accomplish it.  But there was nothing.

The vision had passed, and all he could do was wrap his arms around his
shuddering frame and stumble out to where Sartori stood.  The other's
cigarette lay smoking at his feet, where it had dropped from his
fingers.  By the expression on his face it was apparent that even if
he'd not comprehended every detail of the exchange that had just taken
place, he had the gist.

"The Unbeheld speaks," he said, his voice as flat as the God's.

J don't want this," Gentle said.

J don't think this is any place to talk about denying

opt

Him," Sartori said, giving the Pivot a queasy glance.

"I didn't say I was denying Him," Gentle replied.. "Just that I didn't
want it."

"Still better discussed in private," Sartori whispered, turning to open
the door.

He didn't lead Gentle back to the mean little room where they'd met, but
to a chamber at the other end of the passageway, which boasted the only
window he'd Seen in the vicinity.  It was narrow, and dirty, but not as
dirty as the sky on the other side.  Dawn had begun to touch the clouds,
but the smoke that still rose in curling columns from the fires below
all but cancelled its frail light.

"This isn't what I came for," Gentle said as he stared out at the murk.
"I wanted answers.. "You've had 'em.. "I have to take what's mine,
however foul it is?. "Not yours, ours.  The responsibility.  The pain. .
He paused.  and the glory, of course." Gentle glanced at him.. "It's
mine," he said simply.

Sartori shrugged, as though this were of no consequence to him
whatsoever.  Gentle saw his own wiles working in that simple gesture.

How many times had he shrugged in precisely that fashion - raised his
eyebrows, pursed his lips, looked away with feigned indifference?

He let Sartori believe the bluff was working.

"I'm glad you understand," he said.. "The burden's mine.. "You've failed
before."

"But I came close," Gentle said, feigning access to a memory he didn't
yet have in the hope of coaxing an informative rebuttal.

"Close isn't good enough," Sartori said.. "Close is lethal.

A tragedy.  Look what it did to you.  The great Maestro.

You crawl back here with half your wits missing.. "The Pivot trusts me."

That struck a tender place.  Suddenly Sartori was shouting:

"Fuck the Pivot!  Why should you be the Reconciler?  Huh?  Why?  One
hundred and fifty years I've ruled the Imajica.  I know how to use
power.  You don't.. "Is that what you want?" Gentle said, trailing the
bait of that possibility.. "You want to be the Reconciler in my place?"

"I'm better equipped than you," Sartori raged.. "All you're good for is
sniffing after women.. "And what are you?  Impotent?"

"I know what you're doing.  I'd do the same.  You're stirring me up, so
I'll spill my secrets.

I don't care.  There's nothing you can do I can't do better.  You wasted
all those years, hiding away, but I used them.  I turned myself into an
empire-builder.  What did you do?" He didn't wait for an answer.  He
knew his subject too well.. "You've learned nothing.  If you began the
Reconciliation now, you'd make the same mistakes.. "And what were they?"

"It comes down to one," Sartori said.. "Judith.  If you hadn't wanted
her.  .  ." Now he stopped, studying his other.. "You don't even
remember that, do you?. "No," Gentle said.. "Not yet."

"Let me tell you, brother," Sartori said, coming face to face with
Gentle.. "It's a sad story.. "I don't weep easily."

"She was the most beautiful woman in England.  Some people said, in
Europe.  But she belonged to Joshua Godolphin and he guarded her like
his soul.. "They were married?"

"No.  She was his mistress, but he loved her more than any wife.  And of
course he knew what you felt, you didn't disguise it, and that made him
afraid - oh God, was he afraid - that sooner or later you were going to
seduce her and spirit her away.  It'd be easy.  You were the Maestro
Sartori, you could do anything.  But he was one of your patrons, so you
bided your time, thinking maybe he'd tire of her, and then you could
have her without bad blood between you.  It didn't happen.  The months

went by, and his devotion was as intense as ever.  You'd never waited
this long for a woman before.  You started to suffer like a lovesick
adolescent.  You couldn't sleep.  Your heart palpitated at the sound of
her voice.  This wasn't good for the Reconciliation, of course, having
the Maestro pining away, and Godolphin came to want a solution as badly
as you did.

So when you found one, he was ready to listen.. "What was it?. "That you
make another Judith, indistinguishable from the first.  You had the
fe its to do it.. "Then he'd have one.  .

"And so would you.  Simple.  No, not simple.  Very difficult It.  Very
dangerous.  But those were heady days.  Dominions hidden from human eyes
since the beginning of time were just a few ceremonies away.

Heaven was possible.  Creating another Judith seemed like small
potatoes.  You put it to him, and he agree. "Just like that?. "You
sweetened the pill.  You promised him a Judith better than the first.  A
woman who wouldn't age, wouldn't tire of his company or the company of
his sons, or the sons of his sons.  This Judith would belong to the men
of the Godolphin family in perpetuity.  She'd be pliant, she'd be
modest, she'd be perfect."

"And what did the original think of this?. "She didn't know.  You
drugged her, you took her up to the Meditation Room in the house in
Gamut Street, you lit a blazing fire, stripped her naked and began the
ritual.  You anointed her, you laid her in a circle of sand from the
margin of the Second Dominion, the holiest ground in the Imajica.  Then
you said your prayers, and you waited." He paused, enjoying this
telling.  'it is, let me remind you, a long conjuration.  Eleven hours
at the minimum, watching the doppelgdnger grow in the circle beside its
source.  You'd made sure there was nobody else in the house, of course,
not even your precious mystif.  This was a very secret ritual.  So you
were alone, and you

soon got bored.  And when you got bored, you got drunk.  So there you
were, sitting in the room with her, watching her perfection in the
firelight, obsessing on her beauty.  And eventually - half out of your
mind with brandy you made the biggest mistake of your life.  You tore
off our clothes, you stepped into the circle, and you did y about
everything a man can do to a woman, even though

she was comatose, and you were hallucinating with fasting and drink. You
didn't fuck her once, you did it over and over, as though you wanted to
get up inside her.

Over and over.  Then you fell into a stupor at her side."

Gentle began to see the error looming.   Mir:

"I fell asleep in the circle?" he said.

"In the circle."

"And you were the consequence."   f

"I was.  And let me tell you, it was quite a birth.  People

say they don't remember the moment they came into the world, but I do! I
remember opening my eyes in the circle,

with her beside me, and these rains of matter coming

down on me, congealing around my spirit.  Becoming

bone.  Becoming flesh." All expression had gone from his face.. "I
remember," he said, 'at one point she realized she

wasn't alone and she turned, and saw me lying beside

her.  I was unfinished.  An anatomy lesson, raw and wet.

I've never forgotten the noise she made

"I didn't wake up through any of this?"

"You'd crawled away downstairs to douse your head,

and you'd fallen asleep.  I know because I found you, later

on, sprawled on the dining-room table."

"The conjuration still worked, even though I'd left the

circle?"

"You're quite the technician, aren't you?  Yes, it still

worked.  You were an easy subject.  It took hours to

decode her, and make her doppelgdnger.  But you were

incandescent.  The sway read you in minutes, and made

me in a couple of hours."

"You knew who you were from the beginning?"

"Oh yes.  I was you, in your lust.  I was you, full of

F

-.Mwim

drunken visions.  I was you, wanting to fuck and fuck, and conquer and
conquer.  But I was also you when you'd done your worst, with your balls
empty and your head empty, like death had got in, sitting there between
her legs trying to remember what it was you were living for.  I was that
man too, and it was terrifying to have both

those feelings in me at the same time." He paused a

moment, then said. "It still is, brother."

"I would have helped you, surely, if I'd known what

I'd done."

"Or put me out of my misery," Sartori said.. "Taken me

into the garden and shot me like a rabid dog.  I didn't

know what you'd do.  I went downstairs.  You were snoring like a
trooper.  I watched you for a long while, wanting

to wake you, wanting to share the terror I felt, but Godol-phin arrived
before I got up the courage.  It was just before A.  I

dawn.  He'd come to take Judith home.  I hid myself.  I

watched Godolphin wake you; I heard you talk together,

I saw you climb the stairs like two expectant fathers, and

go into the Meditation Room.  Then I heard your whoops

of celebration, and I knew once and for all that I wasn't

an intended child."

"What did you do?"

"I stole some money, and some clothes.  Then I made

my escape.  The fear passed after a time.  I began to realize

what I was.  The knowledge I possessed.  And I realized I

had this ...  appetite ...  your appetite.  I wanted glory."

"And this is what you did to get it?" Gentle said, turning

back to the window.  The devastation below was clearer

by the minute, as the Comet's light strengthened.. "Brave

work, brother," he said.

"This was a great city once.  And there'll be others, just

as great.  Greater, because this time there'll be two of us

to build it.  And two of us to rule."

"You've got me wrong," Gentle said.. "I don't want an i

empire."

"But it's bound to come," Sartori said, fired up with this

vision.. "You're the Reconciler, brother.  You're the healer

of the Imajica.  You know what that could mean for us both?  If you
reconcile the Dominions there'll have to be one great city - a new
Yzordderrex - to rule it from end to end.  I'll found it, and
administrate it, and you can be Pope.. "I don't want to be Pope.. "What
do you want then?"

"Pie'oh'pah for one.  And some sense of what all this means."

"Being born to be the Reconciler's enough meaning for anyone.  It's all
the purpose you need.  Don't run from it.. "And what were you born to
do?  You can't build cities forever." He glanced out at the desolation.
'is that why you ve destroyed it?" he said, 'so you can start again?. "I
didn't destroy it.  There was a revolution.. "Which you fuelled, with
your massacres," Gentle said.. "I was in a little village called
Beatrix, a few weeks ag. "Ah, yes.  Beatrix." Sartori drew a heavy
breath.. "It was you of course.  I knew somebody was watching me, but I
didn't know who.  The frustration made me cruel, I'm afraid.. "You call
that cruel?  I call it inhuman.. "It may take you a little time to
understand, but every now and again such extremes are necessary."  "IT
"I knew some of those people."

"You won't ever have to dirty your hands with that kind of
unpleasantness.  I'll do whatever's necessary." So will V said Gentle.

Sartori frowned.. "Is that a threat?" he said.

"This began with me, and it'll end with me.. "But which me, Maestro?
That one-' he pointed at Gentle '- or this?  Don't you see, we weren't
meant to be enemies.  We can achieve so much more if we work together."
He put his hand on Gentle's shoulder.. "We were meant to meet this way.
That's why the Pivot kept his silence all these years.  It was waiting
for you to come, and us to be reunited." His face slackened.. "Don't be
my enemy," he said.. "The thought of

A cry of alarm from outside the room cut him short.  He turned from
Gentle and started towards the door as a soldier appeared in the
passageway beyond, his throat opened, his hand ineptly staunching the
spurts.  He stumbled, and fell against the wall, sliding to the ground.

"The mob must be here," Sartori remarked, with a hint of satisfaction.
"It's time to make your decision, brother.  Do we go on from here
together, or shall I rule the Fifth

alone?"

A new din rose, loud enough to blot out any further exchange, and
Sartori left off his counselling, steppinstA out into the passageway.

"Stay here," he told Gentle.. "Think about it while you

wait."

A

Gentle ignored the instruction.  As soon as Sartori was

round the corner, he followed.  The commotion died away is

as he did so, leaving only the low whistle from the soldier's windpipe
to accompany his pursuit.  Gentle picked Al up his pace, suddenly
fearing that an ambush awaited his other.  No doubt Sartori deserved
death.  No doubt they both did.  But there was a good deal he hadn't
prised from his brother yet: especially concerning the failure of the
Reconciliation.  He had to be preserved from harm, at least until Gentle
had every clue to the puzzle out of him.  The time would come for them
both to pay the penalty for their excesses.

But it wasn't yet.

As he stepped over the dead soldier, he heard the mystif's voice.  The
single word it said was:

"Gentle."

Hearing that tone - like no other he'd heard or dreamt - all concern for
Sartori's preservation, or his own, was overwhelmed.  His only thought
was to get to the place where the mystif was; to lay his eyes on it, and
his arms around it.  They'd been parted for far too long.

Never again, he swore to himself as he ran - whatever edicts or
obligations were set before them, whatever malice to divide them - never
again would he let the mystif go.

He turned the corner.  Ahead lay the doorway that led

out into the ante-chamber.  Sartori was on the other side, partially
eclipsed, but hearing Gentle's approach he turned, glancing back into
the passageway.  The smile of welcome he was wearing for Pie'oh'pah
decayed, and in two strides he was at the door to slam it in his maker's
face.  Realizing he was out paced Gentle yelled Pie's name, but the door
was closed before the syllable was out, plunging Gentle into almost
total darkness.  The oath he'd made seconds before was broken; they were
divided again, before they could ever be reunited.

In his rage Gentle threw himself against the door, but like everything
in this tower it was built to last a millennium.  However hard he hit
it, all he got was bruises.  They hurt; but the memory of Sartori's leer
when he'd talked about his taste for mystifs stung more.  Even now, the
mystif was probably in Sartori's arms.  Embraced, kissed, possessed.

He threw himself against the door one final time, then gave up on such
primitive assaults.

Drawing breath, he blew it into his fist and slammed the pneuma against
the door the way he'd learned to do in the Jokalaylau.  it had been a
glacier beneath his hand on that first occasion, and-the ice had cracked
only after several attempts.  This time, either because his will to be
on the other side of the door was stronger than his desire to free the
women in the ice, or simply because he was the Maestro Sartori now, a
named man who knew at least a little about the power he wielded, the
steel succumbed at the first blow

4t and a jagged crack opened in the door.

He heard Sartori shouting on the other side, but he didn't waste time
trying to make sense of it.  instead he delivered a second pneuma
against the fractured steel, and this time his hand passed all the way
through the door as pieces flew from beneath his palm.  He put his fist
to his mouth a third time, smelling his own blood as he did so, but
whatever harm this was doing him it was not yet registered as pain.

He caught a third breath, and delivered it against the door with a yell
that wouldn't have shamed a samurai.  The hinges shrieked, and the

door flew open.  He was through it before it had struck the floor, only
to find the ante-chamber beyond deserted, at least by the living.  Three
corpses, companions to the soldier who'd raised the alarm, lay sprawled
on the floor, all opened with single slashes.  He leapt over them to the
door, his broken hand adding its drops to the pools he trod.

The corridor beyond was rank with smoke, as though,-, something half
rotted was burning in the bowels of the.  palace.  But through the
murk, fifty yards from him, he 14 saw Sartori and Pie'oh'pah.  Whatever
fiction Sartori had invented to dissuade the mystif from completing its
mission, it had proved potent.  They were racing from the tower without
so much as a backward glance, like lovers ii just escaped from death's
door.

Gentle drew breath, not to issue a pneuma this time, but a call.  He
shouted Pie's name down the passageway, the smoke dividing as his
summons went, as though the syllables from a Maestro's mouth had a
literal presence.  Pie stopped, and looked back.  Sartori took hold of
the mystif's arm as if to hurry it on, but Pie's eyes had already found
Gentle, and it refused to be ushered away.  Instead it shrugged off
Sartori's hold and took a step in Gentle's direction.  The curtain of
smoke divided by his cry had come together again, and made a blur of the
mystif's face, but Gentle read its confusion from its body.

It seemed not to know whether to advance or retreat.

"It's me!" Gentle called.. "It's me!'

He saw Sartori at the mystif's shoulder, and caught fragments of the
warnings he was whispering: something about the Pivot having hold of
their heads.

"I'm not an illusion, Pie," Gentle said as he advanced.. "This is me.
Gentle.  I'm real."

The mystif shook its head, looking back at Sartori, then again at
Gentle, confounded by the sight.

"It's just a trick," Sartori said, no longer bothering to whisper.
"Come away, Pie, before it really gets a hold.  It can make us crazy."

Too late, perhaps, Gentle thought.  He was close enough to see the look
on the mystif's face now, and it was lunatic: eyes wide, teeth clenched,
sweat making red rivulets of the blood spattered on its cheeks and brow.
The sometime assassin had long since lost its appetite for slaughter -
that much had been apparent back in the Cradle, when it had hesitated to
kill though their lives had depended upon it - but it had done so here,
and the anguish it felt was written in every furrow of its face.  No
wonder Sartori had found it so easy to make the mystif forsake its
mission.  It was teetering on mental collapse.

And now, confronted with two faces it knew, both speaking the voice of
its lover, it was losing what little equilibrium it had left.

its hand went to its belt, from which hung one of the ribbon blades the
execution squad had wielded.  Gentle heard it sing as it came, its edge
un dulled by the slaughter it had already committed.

Behind the mystif, Sartori said:

"Why not?  It's only a shadow."

I

Pie s crazed look intensified, and it raised the fluttering blade above
its head.  Gentle halted.  Another step and he was in range of the
blade; nor did he doubt that Pie was ready to use it.

"Go on!" Sartori said.. "Kill it!  One shadow more or less.  .

Gentle glanced towards Sartori as he spoke, and that tiny motion seemed
enough to spur the mystif.  It came at Gentle, the blade whining.  He
threw himself backwards to avoid the swipe, which would have opened his
chest had it caught him, but the mystif was determined not to make the
same error twice, and closed the gap between them with a stride.  Gentle
retreated, raising his arms in surrender, but Pie was indifferent to
such signs.  It wanted this madness gone, and quickly.

"Pie?" Gentle gasped.. "It's me!  It's me!  I left you at the Kesparate!
Remember that?" Pie swung again, not once but twice, the second slash

catching Gentle's upper arm and chest, opening the coat, shirt and flesh
beneath.  Gentle pivoted on his heel to avoid the following cut, putting
his already bloodied hand to the wound.  Taking another stumbling step
of retreat, he felt the wall of the passageway hard against his spine.
He had nowhere else to run.

"Don't I get a last supper then?" he said, not looking at the blade but
at Pie's eyes, attempting to stare past the slaughter fugue to the sane
mind that cowered behind it.. "You promised we'd cat together, Pie.
Don't you remember?  A fish inside a fish inside The mystif stopped. The
blade fluttered at its shoulder.

a fish." The blade fluttered on, but it didn't descend.

"Say you remember, Pie.  Please, say you remember." Somewhere behind
Pie, Sartori began a new round of exhortations, but to Gentle they were
just a din.  He continued to meet the mystif's blank gaze, looking for
some sign that his words had moved his executioner.  Pie drew a tiny,
broken breath, and the knots that bound its brow and mouth slipped.

"Gentle?" it said.

He didn't reply.  He just let his hand drop from his shoulder and stood
open-armed against the wall.

"Kill it!" Sartori was still saying.. "Kill it! It's just an illusionl'

Pie turned, the blade still raised.

"Don't -' Gentle said, but the mystif was already starting in the
Autarch's direction.  Gentle called after it again, pushing himself from
the wall to stop it.. "Piel Listen to me

The mystif glanced round, and as it did so Sartori raised his hand to
his eye and in one smooth motion snatched at it, extending his arm and
opening his fist to let fly what it had plucked.  Not the eye itself but
some essence of his glance went from the palm like a ball trailing
smoke.  Gentle reached for the mystif to drag it out of the sway's path,
but his hand fell inches short of Pie's back, and as

he reached again the sway struck.  The fluttering blade dropped from the
mystif's hand as it was thrown backwards by the impact, its gaze fixed
on Gentle as it fell into his arms.  The momentum carried them both to
the Jim ground, but Gentle was quick to roll from under the mystif's
weight, and put his hand to his mouth to defend them with a pneuma.
Sartori was already retreating into the smoke, however, on his face a
look that would vex Gentle for many days and nights to come.  There was
more distress in it than triumph; more sorrow than rage.

"Who will Reconcile us now?" he said, and then he was gone into the
murk, as though he had mastery of the smoke, and had pulled it around
him to duck away behind its folds.

Gentle didn't give chase, but went back to the mystif, who was lying
where it had fallen.  He knelt beside it.

"Who was he?" it said.

"Something I made," Gentle said.. "When I was a Maestro.. "Another
Sartori?" Pie said.

"Yes.. "Then go after him.  Kill him.  Those creatures are the most -,
J.

"Later."

before he escapes."

"He can't escape, lover.  There's nowhere he can go I won't find him."

Pie's hands were clutching at the place in the middle of its chest where
Sartori's malice had struck it.

"Let me see," Gentle said, drawing Pie's fingers away, and tearing at
the mystif's shirt.  The wound was a stain on its flesh, black at the
centre and fading to a pustular ye How at its edges.

"Where's Huzzah?" Pie asked him, its breath laboured.

"She's dead," Gentle replied.. "She was murdered, by a Nullianac.. "So
much death," Pie said.. "It blinded me.  I would have killed you, and
not even known I'd done it."

"We're not going to talk about death," Gentle said.

"We're going to find some way of healing you."

"There's more urgent business than that," Pie said.. "I came to kill the
Autarc. "No, Pie..."

"That was the judgement," Pie insisted.. "But now I can't finish it.
Will you do it for me?"

Gentle put his hand beneath the mystif's head, and raised Pie up.

"I can't do that," he said.

"Why not?  You could do it with a breath.. "No, Pie.  I'd be killing
myself.. "What?" The mystif stared up at Gentle, baffled.  But its
puzzlement was short-lived.  Before Gentle had time to explain, Pie let
out a long, sorrowful sigh, in the shape of three _J soft words. . "Oh
my Lord."

"I found him in the Pivot Tower.  I didn't believe it at first.  .

"The Autarch Sartori," Pie said, as if trying the words for their music.
Then, its voice a dirge, it said. "It has a ring.. "You knew I was a
Maestro all along, didn't you?. "Of course.. "But you didn't tell me."

"I got as close as I dared.  But I swore an oath never to remind you of
who you were.. "Who made you swear that oath?"

"You did, Maestro.  You were in pain, and you wanted to forget your
suffering.. "How did I come to forget?. "A simple felt.. "Your doing?"

Pie nodded.. "I was your servant in that, as in everything.  I swore an
oath that when it was done, when the past was hidden away, I would never
show it to you again.  And oaths don't decay."

"But you kept hoping I'd ask the right quest io "Yes."

invite the memory back in.. "Yes.  And you came close.. "In MarK6.  And
in the mountains."

"But never close enough to free me from my responsibility.  I had to
keep my silence."

"Well, it's broken now, my friend.  When you're healed.  .

"No, Maestro," Pie said.. "A wound like this can't be healed."

"It can and will," Gentle said, not willing to countenance the thought
of failure.

He remembered Nikaetomaas's talk of the Dearthers' encampment on the
margin of the Second and First Dominions, where she'd said Estabrook had
been taken.  Miracles of healing were possible there, she'd boasted.

"We're going to make quite a journey, my friend," he said, starting to
lift the mystif up.

"Why break your back?" it said to him.. "Let's say our farewells here."

"I'm not saying goodbye to you here or anywhere," Gentle said.. "Now put
your arms around me, lover.  We've got a long way to go together yet."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The Comet's ascent into the heavens above Yzordderrex, and the light it
shed upon the city's streets, didn't shame the atrocities there into
hiding or cessation; quite the other way about.  The city was ruled by
Ruin now, and its court was everywhere, celebrating the enthronement;
parading its emblems - the luckiest already dead and rehearsing its
rites in preparation for a long and inglorious reign.

Children wore ash today, and carried their parents' heads like censers,
still smoking from the fires where they'd been found.  Dogs had the
freedom of the city, and devoured their masters without fear of
punishment.  The carrion birds Sartori had once tempted off the desert
winds to feed on bad meat were gathered on the streets in garrulous
hordes, to dine on the men and women who'd gossiped there the day
before.

There were those survivors, of course, who clung to the dream of order,
and banded together to do what they could under the new regime, digging
through the rubble in the hope of finding survivors, dousing fires in
buildings that were whole enough to save, giving succour to the grieving
and quick dispatch for those too wounded to bear another breath.  But
they were easily outnumbered by the souls whose faith in sanity had been
shattered, and met the Comet's eye with dissolution in their hearts.  By
midmorning, when Gentle and Pie reached the gate that led out of the
city into the desert, many of those who'd begun the day determined to
preserve something from this calamity had given up and were leaving
while they still had their lives.  The exodus that would empty

Yzordderrex of much of its population within half a week had begun.

Beyond the vague instruction, gleaned from Nikaetomaas, that the
encampment to which Estabrook had been taken lay in the desert at the
limits of this Dominion, Gentle was travelling blind.  He'd hoped to
find somebody along the way to give him some better directions, but he
encountered nobody who looked fit enough, mentally or physically, to
lend him assistance.  He'd bound the hand he'd wounded beating down the
door of the Pivot Tower as best he could before leaving the palace.  The
stab wound he'd sustained when Huzzah had been snatched and the cut the
mystif's ribbon blade had opened were slight enough to cause him little
discomfort.  His body, possessed of a Maestro's resilience, had survived
three times a natural human span without significant deterioration, and
it was quick to begin the process of mending itself now.

The same could not be said for Pie'oh'pah's wounded frame.  Sartori's
sway was venomous, draining the mystif's strength and consciousness.  By
the time Gentle left the city, Pie was barely able to move its legs,
obliging Gentle to half -hoist it up beside him.  He only hoped they
found some means of transport before too long, or this journey would be
over before it was begun.  There was little chance of hitching a ride
with any of their fellow refugees.  Most were on foot, and those who had
transport - carts, car, runty mules - were already laden with
passengers.  Several overburdened vehicles had given up the ghost within
sight of the city gates, and those who'd paid for their ride were
arguing on the roadside.  But most of the travellers went on their way
with an eerie hush, I L

barely raising their eyes from the road a few feet in front of them, at
least until they reached the spot where that road divided.

Here a bottleneck had been created, as people milled around, deciding
which of the three routes available to

them they were going to take.  Straight ahead, through

a considerable distance from the crossroads, lay a mountain range as
impressive as the Jokalaylau.  The road to the left led off into greener
terrain and, not surprisingly perhaps, this was the most favoured way.
The least favoured, and for Gentle, s purposes the most promising, was
the road that lay to the right.  It was dusty and badly laid, the
terrain it wound through the least lush and therefore 7     the most
likely to deteriorate into desert.  But he knew

from his months in the Dominions that the terrain could change
considerably within the space of a few mile so and that perhaps out of
sight along this road lay ver , ant pastures, while the track behind

him could just as easily lead into a wilderness.  While he was standing
in

the mill of travellers debating with himself, he headrdusat high-pitched
voice, and peering through the caught sight of a small fellow - young,
spectacled, baret chested and bald - making his way owards him, arms
raised.

"Mr Zachariasi Mr Zacharias!'

He knew the face, but from precisely where he couldn't recall, nor could
he put a name to it.  But the man, perhaps used to being only
half-remembered, was quick to supply the information.

"Floccus Dado," he said.. "You remember?"

Now he did.  This was Nikaetomaas's comrade-in-arms.

Floccus snatched off his glasses and peered at Pie.. "Your lady friend
looks sick," he said.

"It's not a she.  It's a mystif.,

"Sorry.  Sorry," Floccus said, slipping his spectacles back on and
blinking violently.. "My error.  Sex was never my strong point.  Is it
very sick?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Is Nikae with your Floccus said, peering aroun. "Don't tell me she's
gone on ahead.  I told her I was going to wait for her here if we got
separated.. "She won't be coming, Floccus," Gentle said.

"Why in the Hyo not?"

I'm afraid she's dead."

Dado's nervous tics and blinks ceased on the instant.  He stared at
Gentle with a tiny smile on his face, as if he was used to being the
butt of jokes, and wanted to believe that this was one.

"No," he said.

"I'm afraid so," Gentle replied.. "She was killed in the palace."

Floccus took off his glasses again, and ran his thumb and middle finger
from the bridge of his nose along his lower lids.

"That's grim," he said.

"She was a very brave woman.. "She was that."

"And she put up a very spirited defence.  But we were outnumbered."

"How did you escape?" Floccus asked, the enquiry innocent of
accusation.

"That's a very long story," Gentle said.. "And I don't think I'm quite
ready to tell it yet."

"Which way are you heading?" Dado said.

"Nikaetomaas told me you Dearthers have an encampment of some kind, at
the margin of the First.  is that right?. "Indeed we do.. "Then that's
where I'm going.  She said a man I knew do you know Estabrook?  - was
healed there.  I want to heal Pie." my waiting here any longer.  Nikae's
spirit will have. "Then we'd best go together," Floccus said.. "It's no
use

passed by a long time ago.. "Do you have any kind of transport?"

"Indeed I do," he said, brightening.. "A very fine car I found in the
Caramess.  It's parked over there." He pointed through the crush.

"If it's still there," Gentle remarked.  may I help yo. "It's guarded,"
Dado said, with a grin.

with the mystif?" He put his arm beneath Pie, who had now lost
consciousness completely, then they started to make

their way through the crowd, Dado shouting to clear the route ahead. His
demands were almost entirely ignored, until he started
shouting 'Ruukassh!  Ruukassh!'which had the desired effect of dividing
the throng.

"What's Ruukassh?" Gentle asked him.

"Contagious," Dado replied.. "Not far now."

A few paces on, and the vehicle came into view.  Dado had good taste in
loot.  Not since that first, glorious trip along the Patashoqua Highway
had Gentle set eyes on a vehicle so sleek, so Polished, nor so wholly
inappropriate for desert travel.  It was powder-blue with silver trim,
its tyres white, its interior fur lined.  Sitting on the bonnet, its
leash tied to one of the wing mirrors was its guard and antithesis: an
animal related to the rage my - via the hyena - and boasting the least
pleasant attributes of both.  It was as round and Tardy as a pig, but
its back and flanks were covered with a coat of mottled fur.  Its head
was short snouted but heavily whiskered.  its ears pricked like a dog's
at the sight of Dado, and it set up a round of barks and squeals so high
they made Dado sound basso prof undo by contrast.

"Good girl!!  Good girl!" he said.

The creature was up on its stubby legs, shaking its rear in delight at
its master's return.  Its belly was laden with teats, which shook to the
rhythm of its welcome.

Dado opened the door, and there on the passenger seat was the reason the
creature was so defensive of the vehicle: a litter of five yapping
offspring, perfect miniatures of their mother.  Dado suggested Gentle
and Pie take the back seat, while Mama Sighshy, as he called her, sat
with her children.  The interior stank of the animals, but the previous
owner had been fond of comfort, and there were cushions to support the
mystif's head and neck.  When Sighshy herself was invited back into the
vehicle the stench increased tenfold, and she growled at Gentle in a
less than friendly manner, but Dado placated her

with baby-talk, and she was soon curled up on the seat beside him,
suckling her fat babes.

With the travellers assembled, they headed off towards the mountains.

Exhaustion claimed Gentle after a mile or two, and he slept, his head on
Pie's shoulder.  The road steadily deteriorated over the next few hours,
and the discomfort of the journey repeatedly brought him up to the
surface of sleep, with scraps of dreams clinging to him.  They were not
dreams of Yzordderrex, nor were they memories of the adventures he and
Pie had shared on their travels across the Imajica.  It was the Fifth
his mind was returning to in these fitful slumbers, shunning the horrors
and the murders of the Reconciled Dominions for safer territory.

Except that it wasn't safe any longer, of course.  The man he'd been in
that Dominion Klein's Bastard Boy, the lover and the faker - was a
fabrication, and he could never return to that simple, sybaritic life
again.  He'd lived a lie, the scale of which even the most suspicious of
his mistresses (Vanessa, whose abandoning of him had begun this whole
endeavour) could never have imagined; and from that lie, three human
spans of self-deceit had come.

Thinking of Vanessa, he remembered the empty mews house in London, and
the desolation he'd felt wandering it with nothing to show for his life
but a string of broken romances, a few forged paintings, and the clothes
he was wearing.  It was laughable now, but that day he'd thought he
could fall no further.  Such naivety!  He'd learned lessons in despair
since then numerous enough to fill a book, the bitterest reminder lying
in wounded sleep beside him.

Though it was distressing to conceive of losing Pie, he refused himself
the indulgence of denying the possibility.  He'd turned a blind eye on
the unpalatable too often in the past, with catastrophic results.  Now
the facts had to be faced.  The mystif was becoming frailer by the hour,
its skin icy, its breath so shallow that on occasion it was barely
discernible.  Even if all that Nikaetomaas had said

about the Erasure's healing powers proved correct, there would be no
miracle cure for such a profound malady.  Gentle would have to go back
to the Fifth alone, trusting

73 ;5 that Pie'oh'pah would be fit enough to follow after a

7  time.  The longer he delayed that return, the less opportunity he'd
have to muster assistance in the war against Sartori.  And that war
would come, he had no doubt of, it.  The

urge to conquer burned bright in his other, as it had perhaps once
burned in him, until desire and luxuri and

forgetfulness had dimmed it.  But where would he find such allies? Men
and women who wouldn't laugh, (the way

he'd have laughed, six months before) that he started to talk about the
Dominion-hopping hear done, and the jeopardy

the world was in with his face?  Certainly he wouldn t find imagination
from a man

s amongst his peer group supple enough to embrace the vistas he was
returning to describe.  They were fashiona*,",-disdainful of belief,
having had the flesh as star-stuff hopes of youth dashed by midnight
sweats and their morning reflection.  The most he'd heard any of them
confess to was a vague pantheism, and they'd deny even that when sober.

Of them all he'd only ever heard Clem espouse any belief

in organized religion, and those dogmas were as antithetica

to the message he was bringing from the Dominions as the tenets of a
nihilist.  Even if Clem could be persuaded from the Communion rail to
join Gentle, they would be an army of two against a Maestro who had
honed his powers until they could command Dominions.

There was one other Possibility, and that was Judith.

She would certainly- not mock his wanderer's tales, but I she'd been
treated so heinously from the start of this i

I tragedy that he dared not expect forgiveness from her, much less
fellowship.  Besides, who knew where her true sympathies lay?  Though
she might resemble Quaisoir to the last hair, she'd been made in the
same bloodless womb that had produced Sartori.  Was she not therefore
his spiritual sister?  Not born, but made.  If she had to choose between
the butcher of Yzordderrex and those

seeking to destroy him, could she be trusted to side with the
destroyers, when their victory would mean she'd lose the only creature
in the imajica who shared her condition?  Though she and Gentle had
meant much to each other (who knew how many liaisons they'd enjoyed over

when parting again, hemce tnotguertihs;r rien-itghneitfiinrsgt
theacidesire which had brought

forgetting they'd even met?), he had to treat her with the utmost
caution from this point on She'd been innocent in the dramas of an
earlier age; a toy in cruel and careless hands.  But the woman she'd
become over the decades was neither victim nor toy, and if (or perhaps
when) she became aware of her past she was perfectly capable of
revenging herself upon the man who'd made her, however much she'd
claimed to love him in the past.

Seeing that his passenger was now awake, Floccus gave Gentle a progress
report.  They were making good time, he said.

Within an hour they'd be in the mountains, on the other side of which
the desert lay.

"How long do you estimate to the Erasure?" Gentle asked him.

"We'll be there before nightfall," Floccus promised.. "How's the mystif
faring?. "Not well, I'm afraid."

"There'll be no cause to mourn," Floccus said brightly.. "I've known
people at death's door who were healed at the Erasure.

It's a place of miracles.  But then everywhere is, if we just knew how
to look.  That's what Father Athanasius taught me.

You were in prison with Athanasius, weren't you?. "I was never exactly
imprisoned.  Not the way he was.. "But you met him?. "Oh yes.  He was
priest at our wedding."

"You and the mystif, you mean?  You're married?" He whistled.. "Now you,
sir, are what I call a lucky man.  I've heard a lot about these mystifs,
and I never heard of one getting married before.  They're usually
lovers.  Heartbreakers." He whistled again.. "Well, that's wonderful,"
he

said.. "We'll make sure she makes it, sir, don't you worry.  I

Oh, I'm sorry.  She's not a she, is she?  I've got to get that

mean it - I see right.  It's just that when I look at her a she, You
know?  I suppose that's the wonder of them., . "It's part of it.. "Can I
ask you something?. "Ask away.. "When you look at her, what do you see?"
"I've seen all kinds of things," Gentle replied.. "I've seen women. I've
seen men.  I've even seen myself.. "But at the moment      I

Right now?, ut," Floccus said.. "What do you see

Gentle looked at the mystif.. "I see Pie," he said.. "I see the face I
love."

Floccus made no reply to this, and after such gushing enthusiasm Gentle
knew there had to be some significance in his silence.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"Do you really want to know?"    A

I

"I do.  We're friends, aren't we?  At least getting that way.  Tell me."

"I was thinking it's not good you care too much

about the way she looks.  The Erasure's no place to be in love with
things as they are.  People heal there, but they also change, you
understand?" He took both hands off the wheel to make cupped palms, like
scales.-There's got to be a balance.  Something given, something taken
away.. "What kind of changes?" Gentle said.

"Different from one to another," Floccus said.. "But you'll see for
yourself, very soon.

When we get close to the First Dominion, nothing's quite as it seems."

"Isn't that true of everything?" Gentle said.. "The more I live, the
less I seem to be certain about:

Floccus's hands were back on the wheel, his burst of sunny talk suddenly
overcast.. "I don't think Father Athanasius ever talked about that," he
said.. "Maybe he did.  I don't remember everything he said."

The conversation ended there, leaving Gentle to

wonder if in bringing the mystif back to the borders of the Dominion
from which its people had been exiled, returning the great transformer
to a land in which transformation was a commonplace, he was undoing the
knot Athanasius had tied in the Cradle of Chzercemit.

Jude had never been much impressed with architectural rhetoric, and she
found nothing in the courtyards or corridors of the Autarch's palace to
dissuade her from that indifference.  There were some sights that put
her in mind of natural splendours: smoke drifting across the forsaken
gardens like morning mist, or clinging to the cold stone of the towers
like cloud to a mountain spire.  But such punnish pleasures were few. It
was mostly bombast: everything built on a scale intended to be
awe-inspiring but to her eye merely monolithic.

She was glad when they finally reached Quaisoir's quarters, which for
all their absurd ornamentation were at least humanized by their
excesses.  And they also heard there the first friendly voice in many
hours, though its welcoming tones turned to horror when its owner,
Quaisoir's many-tailed handmaiden Concupiscentia, saw that her mistress
had gained a twin and lost her eyes in the night she'd spent looking for
salvation.  Only after a good deal of lamentation could she be persuaded
to tend to Quaisoir, which she did with trembling hands.

The Comet was by now making its steep ascent, and from Quaisoir's window
Jude had a panoramic view of the desolation.  She'd heard and seen
enough in her short time here to realize that Yzordderrex had been ripe
for the calamity that had overtaken it, and some in this city, perhaps
many, had fanned the fire that had destroyed the Kesparates, calling it
a just and cleansing flame.  Even Peccable - who hadn't got an
anarchistic bone in his body had intimated that Yzordderrex's time had
come.  But

Jude still mourned its passing.  This was the city she'd begged Oscar to
show her, whose air had smelt so temptingly spicy, and whose warmth,
issuing from the Retreat that day, had seemed paradisiacal.  Now she
would return to the Fifth Dominion with its ash on her soles, and its
smuts in her nose, like a tourist back from Venice with pictures of
bubbles in a lagoon.

"I'm so tired," Quaisoir said.. "Will you mind if I sleep. "Of course
not," Jude said.

"Is Seidux's blood still on the bed?" she asked Concupis cent ia

"It is, ma'am."

"Then I won't lie there, I think." She put out her arm.. "Lead me to the
little blue room.  I'll sleep there.  Judith, you should sleep too.
Bathe and sleep.  We've got so much to plan together."

"We do?"

"Oh yes, sister," Quaisoir said.. "But later.  .

She let Concupiscentia lead her away, leaving Jude to wander through the
chambers which Quaisoir had occupied all her years of power.  There was
indeed a little blood on the sheets, but the bed looked tempting
nevertheless, the scent of it dizzyingly strong.  She refused its lush
blandishments, however, and moved in search of a bathroom, anticipating
another chamber of baroque excess.  In fact it proved to be the only
room in the suite that came within shouting distance of restrained, and
she happily lingered there, running a hot bath and soaking some of the
ashes out of her body while contemplating her misty reflection in its
black tiles.

When she emerged, her skin tingling, the clothes she'd sloughed off -
which were filthy and stinking - revolted her.  She left them on the
floor, and instead, putting on the most subdued of the robes that lay
scattered around the bedroom, took to the scented sheets.  A man had
been killed here only a few hours before, but that thought which would
once have driven her from the room, let alone the bed -concerned her
not at all.  She didn't discount the possibility that this disinterest
in the bed's sordid past was in part the influence of the scents off the
pillow she lay her head upon.  They conspired with fatigue, and with the
heat of the bath from which she'd risen, to induce a languor she
couldn't have resisted had her life depended upon it.  The tension went
from her sinews and joints; her belly gave up its jitters.  Closing her
eyes, she let her sister's bed lull her into dreaming.

Even during his most despondent meditations at the Pivot pit, Sartori
had never felt the emptiness of his condition as acutely as he did now
that he was parted from his other.  Meeting Gentle in the Tower, and
witnessing the Pivot's call to Reconciliation, he'd sensed new
possibilities in the air; a marriage of self and self which would heal
him into wholeness.

But Gentle had poured contempt on that vision, preferring his mystif
spouse over his brother.

Perhaps he'd change his mind now that Pie'oh'pah was dead, but Sartori
doubted it.  If he were Gentle, and he was, then the mystif's death
would be obsessed upon and magnified, until such time as it could be
revenged.  The enmity between them was confirmed.  There'd be no
reunion.

He shared none of this with Rosengarten, who found him up in the gazebo,
guzzling chocolate and musing on his anguish.  Nor did he allow
Rosengarten to recount the disasters of the night (the Generals dead;
the army murdered or mutinied) for very long without stopping him.  They
had plans to lay together, he told the piebald man, and it was little
use fretting over what was lost.

"We're going to go to the Fifth, you and L' he informed Rosengarten.
"We're going to build a new Yzordderrex." It wasn't often he'd won a
response from the man, but he got one now.  Rosengarten smiled.    A

"The Fifth?" he said.

"I knew it many years ago, of course, but by all accounts it's naked
now.  The Maestros I knew are dead.  Their wisdoms are dishonoured.  The
place is defenceless.  We'll take them with such sways they won't even
know

A

life

they've given up their Dominion until the New Yzordderrex is in their
hearts, and inviolate." Rosengarten made a murmur of approval.

"Make any farewells you have to make," Sartori said.

"And I'll make mine.. "We're going now?. "Before the fires are out," the
Autarch said.

It was a strange sleep Jude fell into, but she'd travelled in the
country of the unconscious often enough to feel unintimidated there.
This time she didn't move from the room in which she lay, but luxuriated
in its excesses, rising and falling like the veils around the bed, and
on the same smoky breeze.  Once in a while she heard some sound from the
courtyards far below, and allowed her eyes to flutter open for the sheer
lazy pleasure of closing them again, and once she was woken by the sound
of Concupiscentia's reedy voice as she sang in a distant room.  Though
the words were incomprehensible, Jude knew it was a lament, full of
yearning for things that had passed and could never be again, and she
slipped back into sleep with the thought that sad songs were the same in
any language, whether Gaelic, Navajo or Patashoquanese.  Like the glyph
of her body, this melody was essential; a sign that could pass between
Dominions.

The music and the scent she lay upon were potent narcotics, and after a
few melancholy verses of Concupiscentia's song she was no longer sure
whether she was asleep and hearing the lament in her dreams, or awake,
but freed by Quaisoir's perfumes and wafted up into the folds of silks
above her bed like a dreamer.  Whichever it was, she scarcely cared. The
sensations were pleasurable, and she'd had too little pleasure of late.

Then came proof that this was indeed a dream.  A doleful phantom
appeared at the door, and stood watching her through the veils.

She knew him even before he drew close to the bed.  This was not a face
she'd thought of much in recent times, so it was somewhat strange that

she'd conjured him, but conjure him she had, and there was no denying
the erotic charge she felt at his dreamed presence.  It was Gentle,
perfectly remembered, his expression troubled the way it so often was,
his hands stroking the veils as though they were her legs, and could be
parted with caresses.

"I didn't think you'd be here," he said to her.  His voice was raw, and
his expression as full of loss as Concupiscentia's song.. "When did you
come back?. "A little while ago."

"You smell so sweet."

"I bathed."       r

cooking at you like this ...  it makes me wish I could take you with
me."

"Where are you going?"

"Back to the Fifth," he said.. "I've come to say goodbye.. "From such a
distance?" she said.

"J

I

His face broke into an immoderate smile, and she remembered, seeing it,
how easy seduction had always been for him: how women had slid their
wedding rings off and their knickers down when he shone this way.  But
why be churlish?  This was an erotic whimsy not a trial.  She dreamed
that he saw the accusation in her eyes, however, and was begging her
forgiveness.

"I know I've done you harm," he said.

"That's in the past," she replied magnanimously.

"Looking at you now.

"Don't be sentimental," she said.. "I don't want sentiment.  I want you
here."

opening her legs, she let him see the niche she had for him.  He didn't
hesitate any longer, but pulled the veil aside, and climbed on to the
bed, wrenching the robe from her shoulders as he put his mouth against
hers.  For some reason, she'd conjured him tasting of chocolate.

Another oddity but not one that spoiled his kisses.

She tugged at his clothes, but they were a dream invention - the dark
blue fabric of his shirt, its laces and buttons in fetishistic
profusion, covered in tiny scales, as through h

a family of lizards had shed their skins to clothe him.

She was tender from the bath, and when he let his weight descend on her,
and began to work his body against hers, the scales pricked her stomach
and breasts in the most arousing way.  She wrapped her legs around him,
and he acceded to her capture, his kisses becoming fiercer by the
moment.

"The things we've done," he murmured as she kissed his face.. "The
things we've done.  .

Her heart made her mind nimble; it leapt from memory to memory, back to
the book she'd found in Estabrook's flat all those months before - one
of Oscar's gifts from the Dominions - a manual of sexual possibilities
that had shocked her at the time.  Images of its couplings appeared in
her head now: intimacies that were perhaps only possible in the
profligacy of sleep, un knitting both male and female and weaving them
together again in new, and ecstatic, combinations.  She put her mouth to
her dream lover ear and whispered to him that she forbade him nothing;
that she wanted them to share the most extreme sensations they were
capable of inventing.  He didn't grin this time, which pleased her, but
raised himself up on his hands, which were plunged into the downy
pillows to either side of her head, and looked down at her with some of
the same sadness he'd had on his face when he'd first arrived.

"One last time?" he said.

"It doesn't have to be the last time," she said.. "I can always dream
you."

"And me, you," he said with the greatest fondness and courtesy.

She reached down between their bodies and slipped off his belt, then
pulled his trousers open with some violence, unwilling to be delayed by
his buttons.  What filled her hand was as silken as the fabric hiding it
was rough; still only half -engorged, but all the more entertaining for
that.  She stroked him.  He sighed as he bent his head towards her,
licking her lips and teeth, letting his

i

l chocolate-sweetened spittle run off his tongue into her mouth.  She
raised her hips, and moved the groove of her sex against the underside
of his erection, wetting it.  He started to murmur to her, terms of
endearment she presumed, though - like Concupiscentia's song - they were
in no language she understood.  They sounded as sweet as his spittle
however, and lulled her like a cradle song, as though to slip her into a
dream within a dream.  As her eyes closed she felt him raise his hips,
lifting the thickness of his sex from beneath her labia, and with one
thrust, hard enough to stab the breath from her, he entered, dropping
down on top of her as he did so.

The endearments ceased, the kisses too.  He put one hand on her brow,
his fingers laced into her hair, and the other at her neck, his thumb
rubbing her windpipe and coaxing sighs from it.  She'd forbidden him
nothing, and would not rescind that invitation simply because his
possession of her was so sudden.  instead she raised her legs and
crossed them behind his back, then started to whip him on with insults.
Was this the most he could give her, the deepest he could go?  He wasn't
hard enough, wasn't hot enough.  She wanted more.  His thrusts speeded
up, his thumb tightening against her throat, but not so much it kept her
from drawing breath, and expelling it again in a fresh round of
provocations.

"I could fuck you forever," he said to her, his tone halfway between
devotion and threat.

"There's nothing I can't make you do.  There's nothing I can't make you
say.  I could fuck you forever."

This was not talk she would have welcomed from a flesh and blood lover,
but in a dream it was arousing.  She let him continue in the same mode,
opening her arms

i

F and legs beneath him, while he recited all that he would do to her, a
litany of ambition that matched the rhythm of his hips.

The room her dream had raised around them split here and there, and
another seeped in through the cracks to occupy the same space: this one
darker than Quaisoir's veil-draped chamber, and lit by a fire that

blazed off to her left.  Her dream-lover didn't fade however; he
remained with her and in her, more frenzied in his thrusts and promises
than ever.  She saw him above her as if lit by the same flames that
warmed her nakedness, his face knotted and sweaty, his index of desires
coming between clenched teeth.  She would be his doll his whore, his
wife, his Goddess; he would fill every hole of her, forever and ever;
own her, worship her, turn her inside out.

Hearing this, she remembered the images in Estabrook's book again, and
the memory made her cells s well as if each was a tiny bud ready to
burst, their petals pleasure, their scent the shouts she was making,
rising off her to draw fresh adoration from him.  It came, cruel and
exquisite by turns.  One moment he wanted to be her prisoner, bound to
her every whim, nourished on her g.  shit and the milk he'd win from her
breasts with sucklin The next she was less than the excrement he'd
hungered for, and he was her only hope for life.  He'd resurrect her
with his fuck.  He'd fill her with a fiery stream, till her eyes were
washed from her head and she drowned in

A him.  There was more, but her cries of pleasure were mounting with
every moment, and she heard less and less.  Saw less too, closing her
eyes against the mingled rooms, fire lit and veiled, letting her head
fill with the geometries that always attended pleasure, forms like her
glyph unravelled and reworked.

And then, just as she was reaching the first of the peaks - a range of
stratospheric heights ahead - she felt him shudder, and his thrusts
stop.  She didn't believe he'd finished, not at first.  This was a
dream, and she'd conjured him to perform the way actualities never did;
to

la

go on when lovers of flesh and blood had spilled their promises, and
were panting their apologies beside her.  He couldn't desert her now!
She opened her eyes.  The fire lit chamber had gone, and the flames in
Gentle's eyes had gone with it.  He had already withdrawn, and all she
felt between her legs was his fingers, dabbling in the dribble he'd
supplied.  He looked at her lazily.

"You almost tempt me to stay," he said.. "But I've got work to do."

Work?  What work did dreams have besides the dreamer's commandments?

Don't leave," she demanded.

"I'm done," he said.

He was getting off the bed.  She reached for him, but even in sleep the
languor of the pillow was upon her, and he was away between the veils
before her fingers came close to catching hold.  She sank back in a slow
swoon, watching his figure become remoter as the laye rs of gossamer
between them multiplied.

"Stay beautiful," he told her.. "Maybe I'll come back for you, when I've
built the New Yzordderrex."

This made little sense to her, but she didn't care.  It was her own
wretched invention, and worthless.  She let it go, the figure seeming to
halt at the door as if for one backward glance, then disappearing
altogether.

Her mind had no sooner let him slip than it conjured a compensation,
however.  The veils at the bottom of the bed parted and the many-tailed
Concupiscentia appeared, her eyes bright with craving.  She didn't wait
for any word to pass between them, but crawled up on to the bed, her
gaze fixed on Judith's groin, her bluish tongue flicking as she
approached.  Jude raised her knees.  The creature put her head down, and
began to lick out what the dream-lover had left, her silky palms
caressing Jude's thighs.

The sensation soothed her, and she watched through the slits of her
drugged eyes as Concupiscentia bathed her clean.

Before she'd finished the dream grew dimmer, and the creature was still
at its caressing work when another veil descended, this s o dense she
lost both sight and sensation in its folds.

CHAPTER FORTY

Like galleons turned to the desert wind and in full sail like before it,
the tents of the Dearthers presented a pretty spectacle from a distance,
but Gentle's admiration turned to awe as the car drew closer, and their
scale became

4 apparent.  They were the height of five-storey houses and more,
billowing towers of ochre and scarlet fabric, the colours all the more
vivid given that the desert floor, which had been sandy coloured at the
outset, was now almost black, and the heavens they rose against were
grey, being the wall between the Second Dominion and the unknown world
haunted by Hapexamendios.  Floccus halted the car a quarter of a mile
from the perimeter of the encampment.

"should go ahead," he said, 'and explain who we are and what we're doing
here."

"Make it quick," Gentle told him.

Floccus was away like a gazelle, over ground that was no longer sand but
a flinty carpet of stone shards, like the clippings from some stupendous
sculpture.  Gentle looked at Pie, who lay in his arms as if in a charmed
sleep, its brow innocent of frowns.  He stroked its cold cheek.  How
many friends and loved ones must he have seen pass away in the two
centuries and more of his life on earth?  Though he'd wiped those griefs
from his conscious mind could he doubt they'd made their mark, fuelling
his terror of sickness, and hardening his heart over the years?  Perhaps
he'd always been a philanderer and plagiarist, a master of counterfeited
emotion, but was that so surprising in a man who knew in his gut that
the drama, however soul-searing, was cyclic?  The faces changed and

changed, but the story remained essentially the same.  As Klein had been
fond of pointing out: there was no such thing as originality.  it had
all been said before, suffered before.  If a man knew that, was it any
wonder love became mechanical, and death just a scene to be shunned?
There was no absolute knowledge to be gained from either.

Just another ride on the merry-go-round; another blurred scene of faces
smiling and faces grieved.

But his feelings for the mystif had been no sham, and with good reason.
In Pie's self-denials (I'm nothing and nobody, it had said at the
beginning) he'd heard an echo of the anguish he himself felt; and in its
gaze, so heavy with the freight of years, seen a comrade soul who
understood the nameless pain he carried.  It had stripped him of his
shams and chicanery, and given him a taste of the Maestro he'd been and
might be again.  There was good to be done with such power, he now knew.
Breaches to be healed, rights to be restored; nations to be roused and
hopes reawakened.  He needed his inspiration beside him if he was to be
a great Reconciler.

"I love you, Pie'oh'pah," he murmured.

"Gentle."

The voice was Floccus's, calling him from outside the window.

"I've seen Athanasius.  He says we're to come straight in."

"Goodl Goodl' Gentle threw open the door.

"Do you want help with Pie?"

"No.  I'll carry it."

He got out, then reached back into the car and picked up the mystif.

"Gentle, you do understand that this is a sacred place?" Floccus said as
he led the way towards the tents.

"No singing, dancing or farting, huh?  Don't look so pained, Floccus.  I
understand."

As they approached Gentle realized that what he'd taken to be an
encampment of closely gathered tents was in fact a continuum, the
various pavilions, with their

swooping roofs, joined by smaller tents to form a single golden beast of
wind and canvas.

Inside its body, the gusts kept everything in motion.  Tremors moved
through even the most tautly erected walls, and in the heights of the
roof swathes of fabric whirled like the skirts of dervishes, giving off
a constant sigh.  There were people up amongst the folds, some walking
on webs of rope as if they were solid board, others sitting in front of
immense windows opened in the roof, their faces turned to the wall of
the First World as though they anticipated a summons out of that place
at any moment.  If such a summons came, there's be no hectic rush.  The
atmosphere was as measured and as soothing as the motion of the dancing
sails above.

"Where do we find the doctor?" Gentle asked Floccus.

"There is no doctor," he replied.. "Follow me.  We've been given a place
to lie the mystif down.. "There must be some kind of medical
attendants.. "There's fresh water, and clothes.  Maybe some laudanum,
and the like.

But Pie's beyond that.  The uredo won't be dislodged with medications.
It's the proximity of the First Dominion that'll heal it."

"Then we should take Pie outside right now," he said.. "Get it closer to
the Erasure."

"Any closer than this would take more resilience than either you or I
possess, Gentle," Floccus said.. "Now follow me, and be respectful of
this place."

He led Gentle through the beast's tremulous body to a smaller tent,
where a dozen plain low beds were set, some occupied, most not.  Gentle
lay Pie down in one, and proceeded to unbutton its shirt while Floccus
went in search of cool water for Pie's now burning skin, and some
sustenance for Gentle and himself.  While he waited Gentle examined the
spread of the uredo, which was too extensive to be fully examined
without stripping Pie completely, which he was loth to do with so many
strangers in the vicinity.  The mystif had been covetous of its privacy
- it had been many weeks before Gentle had

glimpsed its beauty naked - and he wanted to respect that modesty, even
in Pie's present condition.  In fact, very few of those who passed by
even glanced their way, and after a time he began to feel the fear lose
its grip on him.  There was little more that he could do.  They were at
the edge of the known Dominions, where all maps stopped, and the enigma
of enigmas began.  What use was fear in the face of such imponderables?
He had to put it aside, and proceed with dignity and containment,
trusting to the powers that occupied the air here.

When Floccus returned with the means to wash Pie, Gentle asked if he
might be left alone to do so.

"Of course," Floccus replied.. "I've got friends here.  I'd like to seek
them out."

When he left, Gentle began to bathe the suppurating eruptions of the
uredo, which oozed not blood but a silvery pus, the smell of which
pricked his sinuses like ammonia.  The body it fed upon seemed not only
enfeebled, but somehow unfocused, as though its contours and musculature
were about to become a vapour, and the flesh disperse.  Whether this was
the uredo's doing, or simply the condition of a mystif when life, and
therefore its capacity to shape the sight of those gazing upon it, was
fading, Gentle didn't know, but it made him think back over the way this
body had appeared to him.

As Judith, of course; as an assassin, armoured in nakedness; and as the
loving androgyne of their wedding night in the Cradle, that had
momentarily taken his face, and stared back at him like a prophecy of
Sartori.  Now, finally, it seemed to be a form of burnished mist,
receding from his hand even as he touched it.

"Gentle?  Is that you?  I didn't know you could see in the dark."

Gentle looked up from Pie's body, to find that in the time he'd been
washing the mystif, half-mesmerized by memory, the evening had fallen.
There were lights burning at the bedsides of those nearby, but none near
Pie'oh'pah.  When he returned his gaze to the body he'd

r

been washing, it was barely discernible in the gloom.

"I didn't know I could either," he said, standing up to greet the
newcomer.

It was Athanasius, a lamp in his hand.  By its flames, which was as
subject to the wind's

whim as the canvas overhead, Gentle saw that he'd been wounded on the
fall of Yzordderrex.

There were several cuts on his face and neck, and a larger, livid injury
on his belly.

For a man

who'd celebrated Sundays by making himself a new crown of thorns these
were probably

welcome discomforts.

"I'm sorry I didn't come to welcome you earlier," he said.. "But with
such numbers of

casualties coming in I spend a lot of time administering last rites."

Gentle didn't remark on this, but the fear crept back up his spine.

"We've had a lot of the Autarch's soldiers find their way here, and that
makes me nervous.

I'm afraid we'll let in someone on a suicide mission, and he'll blow the
place apart.

That's the

way the bastard thinks.  If he's destroyed, he'll want to bring
everything down with him."

"I'm sure he's much more concerned with making his getaway," Gentle
said.

"Where can he go?  The word's already spread across the Imajica. There's
armed uprisings

in Patashoqua.  There's hand-to-hand combat on the Lenten Way.  Every
Dominion's shaking.

Even the First."

"The First?  How?"

"Haven't you seen?  No, obviously you haven't.  Come with me."

Gentle glanced back towards Pie.

"The mystif's safe here," Athanasius said.. "We won't be long."

He led Gentle through the body of the beast to a door that took them out
into the deepening

dusk.  Though Floccus had counselled against what they were doing,
hinting that the Erasure's

proximity could do harm, there

was no sign of any consequence.  He was either protected by Athanasius,
or resistant to any malign influence on his own account.  Either way, he
was able to study the spectacle laid before him without ill effect.

There was no wall of fog, or even deeper twilight, to mark the division
between the Second Dominion and the haunt of Hapexamendios, The desert
simply faded away into nothingness, like a drawing erased by the power
on the other side, first becoming unfocused, then losing its colour and
its detail.  This subtle removal of solid reality, the world wiped away
and replaced with nothing, was the most distressing sight Gentle had
ever set eyes on.  Nor was the similarity between what was happening
here and the state of Pie's body lost on him.

"You said the Erasure was moving," Gentle whispered.

Athanasius scanned the emptiness, looking for some sign, but nothing
caught his eye.

"It's not constant," he said.. "But every now and then ripples appear in
it.. "Is that rare?"

"There are accounts of this happening in earlier times, but this isn't
an area which encourages accurate study.  Observers get poetic here.
Scientists turn to- sonnets.  Sometimes literally." He laughed.. "That
was a joke, by the way.  Just in case you start worrying about your legs
rhyming."

"How does looking at this make you feel?" Gentle asked him.

"Afraid," Athanasius said.. "Because I'm not ready to be there."

"Nor am I," Gentle said.. "But I'm afraid Pie is.  I wish I'd never
come, Athanasius.  Maybe I should take Pie away now, while I still can."

"That's your decision," Athanasius replied.. "But I don't believe the
mystif will survive if you move it.  A uredo's a terrible poison,
Gentle.  if there's any chance of Pie being healed, it's here, close to
the First."

Gentle looked back towards the distressing abse the Erasure.

"Is going to nothing being healed?" he said.. "It more like death to
me."

"They may be closer than we think, death and healing Athanasius said.

"I don't want to hear that," Gentle said.. "Are you stayin out here?"

"For a while," Athanasius replied.. "If you do decide 4 go, come and
find me first, will you, so that we can sa,$ goodbye?. "Of course."

He left Athanasius to his void, watching, and went back inside, thinking
as he did so that this would be a fine time to find a bar and order up a
stiff drink.  As he started back in the direction of Pie's bed, he was
brought to a

halt by a voice too abrasive for this hallowed place, and sufficiently
slurred to suggest the speaker had found a

bar himself, and drunk it dry.

"Gentle, you old buggeff

Estabrook stepped into view, grinning expansively, though several of his
teeth were missing.

"I heard you were here and I didn't believe it." Gentle's hand and shook
it.. "But here you ar( life.  Who'd have thought it, eh?  The two of u
Life in the encampment had wrought its el Charlie.  He could scarcely
have been further grief wasted plotter Gentle had met on Kite Hill I e he
could almost have passed for a clown, with his motley pinstripe
trousers, tattered braces and unbuttoned tunic dyed half a dozen
colours, all crowned with bald head and gap-toothed smile.

"It's so good to see you!" he kept saying, his pleasure ' unalloyed. "We
must talk.  This is the perfect time.  They're, all going outside to
meditate on their ignorance, which is very fine for a few minutes, but
God!  it gets drab.  Come., with me, come on!  They've given me a little
nook of own, to keep me out of the way."

"Maybe later," Gentle said.. "I've got a friend here who's sick."

"I heard somebody talking about that.  A mystif ?  Is that the word?"
"That's the word."

"They're extraordinary, I heard.  Very sexy.  Why don't I come and see
the patient with you?."

Gentle had no wish to keep Estabrook's company for longer than he needed
to, but suspected that the man would beat a hasty retreat as soon as he
set eyes on Pie, and realized the creature he'd come to gawp at was the
same one that he'd hired to assassinate his wife.  They went back to
Pie's bedside together.  Floccus was there, with a lamp and an ample
supply of food.  Mouth crammed, he rose to be introduced, but Estabrook
barely noticed him.  His gaze was on Pie, whose head was turned away
from the brightness of the lamp in the direction of the First Dominion.

"You lucky bugger," he said to Gentle.. "She's beautiful." F

Floccus glanced at Gentle to see if he intended to remark on Estabrook's
error in sexing the patient, but Gentle made a tiny shake of his head.
He was surprised that Pie's power to respond to the gaze of others was
still intact, especially as his eyes saw an altogether more distressing
sight: the substance of his beloved growing more insubstantial as the
hours passed.  Was this a sight and understanding reserved for Maestros?
He knelt beside the bed and studied the fading features on the pillow.
Pie's eyes were roving beneath its lids.

"Dreaming of me?" Gentle murmured.

"Is she getting better?" Estabrook enquired.

"I don't know," Gentle said.. "This is supposed to be a healing place,
but I'm not so sure."

"I really think we should talk," said Estabrook, with the strained
nonchalance of a man who has something vital to impart, but is not able
to do so in present company.. "Why don't you pop along and have a quick
drink?  I'm

India,

sure Floccus will come and find you if anything untoward happens." .
Floccus chewed on, nodding in accord with this, and Gentle agreed to go,
hoping Estabrook had some insight into conditions here that would help
him to decide whether to go or stay.

"I'll be five minutes," he promised Floccus, and let Estabrook lead him
off through the lamp lit passages to what he'd earlier called his nook.

it was off the beaten track somewhat, a little canvas room which he'd
made his own with what few possessions he'd brought from earth.  A
shirt, its blood-stains now brown, hung above the bed like the tattered
standard from some noteworthy battle.  On the table beside the bed his
wallet, his comb, a box of matches and a roll of mints had been
arranged, along with several symmetrical columns of change, into an
altar to the spirit of the pocket.

"It's not much," Estabrook said.. "But it's home."

"Are you a prisoner here?" Gentle said as he sat in the plain chair at
the bottom of the bed.

"Not at all," Estabrook said.

He'd brought a small bottle of liquor out from under the pillow.  Gentle
recognized it from the hours he and Huzzah had lingered in the cafe in
the Oke T'Noon.  It was the fermented sap of a swamp flower from the
Third Dominion: kloupo.

Estabrook took a swig from the bottle, reminding Gentle of how he'd
supped brandy from a flask on Kite Hill.  He'd refused the man's liquor
that day, but not now.

"I could go anytime I wanted to," he went on.. "But I think to myself,
where would you go, Charlie?  And where would I go?"

"Back to the Fifth?"

"In God's name, why?"

"Don't you miss it, even a little?"

"A little, maybe.  Once in a while I get maudlin, I

suppose, and then I get drunk - drunker - and I have dreams."

"And what?"

"Mostly childhood things, you know.  Odd little details that wouldn't
mean a damn thing to anyone else." He reclaimed the bottle, and drank
again.. "But you can't have the past back, so what's the use of breaking
your heart?

When things are gone, they're gone." Gentle made a non-committal noise.

"You don't agree."

"Not necessarily."

"Name one thing that stays."

"I don't

"No, go on.  Name one

thing."

"Love."

"Ha!  Well that certainly brings us full circle, doesn't it?  Love!  You
know, I'd have agreed with you half a year ago.  I can't deny that.  I
couldn't conceive of ever being out of love with Judith.  But I am. When
I think back to the way I felt about her, it seems ludicrous.  Now, of
course, it's Oscar's turn to be obsessed by her.

First you, then me, then Oscar.  But he won't survive long.. "What makes
you say that?"

"He's got his fingers in too many pies.  It'll end in tears, you see if
it doesn't.  You know about the Tabula Rasa, I supposeT

"No.  .  ."

"Why should you?" Estabrook replied.. "You were dragged into this,
weren't you?  I feel guilty about that, I really do.

Not that my feeling guilty's going to do either of us much good, but I
want you to know I never understood the ramifications of what I was
doing.  If I had, I swear I'd have left Judith alone."

"I don't think either of us would have been capable of that," Gentle
remarked.

"Leaving her alone?  No, I don't suppose we would.  Our paths were
already beaten for us, eh?  I'm not saying I'm a total innocent, mind
you.  I'm not.  I've done some pretty

wretched things in my time; things I squirm to think or a about.  But
compared with the Tabula Rasa,   mad bastard like Sartori, I'm not so
bad.  And when I look out every morning, into God's Nowhere

"Is that what they call it?" l. "Oh hell no, they're much more
reverential.  That's my

little nickname.  But when I look out at it I think, well, it's going to
take us all one of these days, whoever we are: mad bastards, lovers,
drunkards, it's not going to pick and choose.  We'll all go to nothing
sooner or later.  And you know, maybe it's my age, but that doesn't
worry me any longer.  We all have our time, and when it's over, it's
over."

"There must be something on the other side, Charlie," Gentle said.

Estabrook shook his head.. "That's all guff," he said.. "I've seen a lot
of people get up and walk into the Erasure, prayin' and carrying on.
They take a few steps and they're gone.  it's like they'd never lived."

"But people are healed here.  You were."

"Oscar certainly made a mess of me, and I didn't die.  But I don't know
whether being here had much to do with that.

Think about it.  If God really was on the other side of that wall, and
He was so damn eager to heal the sick, don't you think He'd reach out a
little further and stop what's going on in Yzordderrex?  Why would He
put up with horrors like that, right under his nose?  No, Gentle.  I
call it God's Nowhere, but that's only half right.  God isn't there.
Maybe He was once..."

He trailed away, and filled the silence with another throatful of
kloupo.

"Thank you for this," Gentle said.

"What is there to thank me for?"

"You've helped me to make up my mind about something."

"My pleasure," Estabrook said.. "It's damn difficult to think straight,
isn't it, with this bloody wind blowing all

the time?  Can you find your way back to that lovely lady of yours, or
shall I go with you?. "I'll find my way," Gentle replied.

Gentle rapidly regretted declining Estabrook's offer, discovering after
turning a few corners that one larnplit passageway looked much like the
next, and that not only could he not retrace his steps to Pie's bedside,
he couldn't be certain of finding his way back to Estabrook either.  one
route he tried brought him into a kind of chapel, where several
Dearthers were kneeling facing a window that gave on to God's Nowhere.
The Erasure presented in what was now total darkness the same blank face
it had by dusk, lighter than the night, but shedding none upon it: its
nullity more disturbing than the atrocities of Beatrix or the sealed
rooms of the palace.  Turning his back on both window and worshippers,
Gentle continued his search for Pie, and accident finally brought him
back into what he thought was the room where the mystif lay.  The bed
was empty, however.  Disoriented, he was about to go and quiz one of the
other patients to confirm that he had the right room when he caught
sight of Floccus's meal, or what was left of it, on the floor beside the
bed: a few crusts; half a dozen well picked bones.  There could be no
doubt that this was indeed Pie's bed.  But where was the occupant?  He
turned to look at the others.  They were all either asleep or comatose,
but he was determined to have the truth of this, and was crossing to the
nearest bed when he heard Floccus running in pursuit, calling after him.

"There you are!  I've been looking all over for yo. "Pie's not in its
bed, Floccus."

"I know, I know.  I went to empty my bladder - I was away two minutes,
no more - and when I got back it had

gone.  The mystif, not my bladder.  I thought maybe you'd

come and taken it away."

"Why would I do that

"Don't get angry.  There's no harm going to come to it

here.  Trust me."

After his discussion with Estabrook, Gentle was by no I

rtain this was true, but he wasn't going to

means ce      waste time arguing with Floccus while Pie was
wandering.,-unattended.

"Where have you looked?" he asked.

L

"All around."

"Can't you be a little more precise."   I

"I got lost," Floccus said, becoming exasperated.. "All the

tents look alike."

"Did you go outside?"

"No, why?" Floccus's agitation sank from sight.  What

surfaced instead was deep dismay.. "You don't think it's

gone to the Erasure?"

"We won't know till we look," Gentle said.. "Which way

did Athanasius take me?  There was a door-'   A

"Wait!  Wait!" Floccus said, snatching hold of Gentle's

jacket.. "You can't just step out there

"Why not?  I'm a Maestro, aren't P'

"There are ceremonies

"I don't give a shit," Gentle said, and without waiting

for further objections from Floccus he headed off in what aim he hoped
was the right direction.

Floccus followed, trotting beside Gentle, opening new

arguments against what Gentle was planning with every

fourth or fifth step.  The Erasure was restless tonight, he

said, there was talk of ruptures in it; to wander in its

vicinity when it was so volatile was dangerous, possibly

suicidal; and besides, it was a desecration.  Gentle might

be a Maestro, but it didn't give him the right to ignore

the etiquette of what he was planning.  He was a guest,

invited in on the understanding that he obeyed the rules.

And rules weren't written for the fun of it.  There were

good reasons to keep strangers from trespassing there.

They were ignorant, and ignorance could bring disaster on everybody.

"What's the use of rules, if nobody really understands what's going on
out there?" Gentle said.

"But we do!  We understand this place.  It's where God begins."

"So if the Erasure kills me, you know what to write in my obituary.
Gentle ended where God begins.. "This isn't funny, Gentle.. "Agreed."
"It's life or death.. "Agreed.. "So why are you doing it?" 

"Because wherever Pie is, that's where I belong.  And I would have
thought even someone as half-sighted and short witted as you would have
seen that!. "You mean short-sighted and half-witted.. "You said it."

Ahead, lay the door he and Athanasius had stepped through.  It was open
and unguarded.

"I just want to say -' Floccus bega. "Leave it alone, Floccus."

it's been too short a friendship," the man replied, bringing Gentle to a
halt, shamed by his outburst.

"Don't mourn me yet," he said softly.

Floccus made no reply, but backed away from the open door, leaving
Gentle to step through it alone.  The night outside was hushed, the wind
having dropped to little more than a breeze.  He scanned the terrain,
left and right.  There were worshippers in both directions, kneeling in
the gloom, their heads bowed as they meditated on God's Nowhere.  Not
wishing to disturb them, he moved as quietly as he could over the uneven
ground, but the smaller shards of rock ahead of him skipped and rolled
as he approached, as though to announce him with their rattle and
clatter.

This was not the only response to his presence.  The air he exhaled,
which he'd turned to killing use to many times now, darkened as it left
his lips, the

ZFE

ML

b

cloud shot through with threads of bright scarlet.  They didn't
disperse, these breaths, but sank as though, weighed down by their own
lethality, wrapping around his torso and legs like funeral robes.  He
made no attempt to shrug them off, even though their folds soon
concealed the ground, and slowed his step.  Nor did he have to-j puzzle
much over their purpose.

Now that he was unaccompanied by Athanasius, the air was determined to
deny him the defence of walking here as an innocent, as a man in pursuit
of an errant lover.  Dressed in black and attended by drums, his
profounder nature was here revealed: he was a Maestro with a murderous
power at.  his lips, and there would be no concealing that fact from
either the Erasure or from those who were meditating upon it.

Several of the worshippers had been stirred from theivl contemplations
by the sound of the skipping stones, and now looked up to see that they
had an ominous figure I

I

in their midst.  One, kneeling alone close to Gentle's path, rose in
panic and fled, uttering a prayer of protection.

Another fell prostrate, sobbing.  Rather than intimidate 3 them further
with his gaze, Gentle turned his eyes on God's Nowhere, scouring the
ground close to the margin of solid earth and void for some sign of
Pie'oh'pah.  The sight of the Erasure no longer distressed him as it had
when he'd first stepped out here with Athanasius.

Clothed as he was, and thus announced, he came before the void as a man
of power.  For him to have attempted the rites of Reconciliation he must
have made his peace with this mystery.  He had nothing to fear from it.

By the time he set' eyes on Pie'oh'pah he was three or four hundred
yards from the door, and the assembly of meditators had thinned to a
brave few who'd wandered from the main knot of the congregation in
search of solitude.  Some had already retreated, seeing him approach,
but a stoical few kept their praying places, and let this stranger pass
by without so much as glancing up at him.  Now so folded in sable breath
he feared Pie would not

recognize him, Gentle began to call the mystif's name.  The call went
unacknowledged.

Though Pie's head was no more than a dark blur in the murk, Gentle knew
what its hungry eyes were fixed upon: the enigma that was coaxing its
steady step the way a cliff-edge might coax a suicide.  He picked up his
pace, his momentum moving steadily larger stones as he went.  Though
there was no sign that Pie was in any hurry, he feared that once it was
in the equivocal region between solid ground and nothingness, it would
be irretrievable.

"Pie!" he yelled as he went.. "Can you hear me?  Please, stop!'

The words went on clouding and clothing him, but they had no effect upon
Pie until Gentle turned his requests into an order.

"Pie'oh'pah.  This is your Maestro.  Stop."

The mystif stumbled as Gentle spoke, as though his demand had put an
obstacle in its way.  A small, almost bestial sound of pain escaped it.
But it did as its sometime summoner had ordered, and stopped in its
tracks like a dutiful servant, waiting until the Maestro reached its
side.

Gentle was within ten paces of it now, and saw how far advanced the
process of un knitting was.  Pie was barely more than a shadow amongst
shadows, its features impossible to read, its body insubstantial.  If
Gentle needed any further proof that the Erasure was not a place of
healing, it was in the sight of the uredo, which was more solid than the
body it had fed upon, its livid stains intermittently brightening like
embers caught by a gusting wind.

"Why did you leave your bed?" Gentle said, his pace slowed once again as
he approached the mystif.  Its form seemed so tenuous he feared any
violent motion might disperse it entirely.. "There's nothing beyond the
Erasure you need, Pie.

Your life's here, with me."

The mystif took a little time to reply.  When it did its voice was as
ethereal as its substance, a slender,

exhausted plea emerging from a spirit at the edge of total collapse. "I
don't have any life left, Maestro," it said.

"Let me be the judge of that.  I swore to myself I wouldn't let you go
again, Pie.  I want to look after you; make you well.

Bringing you here was a mistake, I see that now.  I'm sorry if it's
brought you pain, but I'll take you away -'

"It wasn't a mistake.  You found your way here for your own reasons."

"You're my reason, Pie.  I didn't know who I was till you found me, and
I'll forget myself again if you do."

"No, you won't," it said, the dubious outline of its head turning in
Gentle's direction.

Though there was no gleam to mark the place where its eyes had been,
Gentle knew it was looking at him.. "You're the Maestro Sartori.  The
Reconciler of the Imajica." It faltered for a long moment.  When its
voice came again it was frailer than ever.

"And you are also my master, and my husband, and my dearest brother ...
if you order me to stay, then I will stay.  But

go.,

The request could scarcely have been made more simply or more
eloquently, and had Gentle known without question there was an Eden on
the other side of the Erasure, ready to receive Pie's spirit, he would
have let the mystif go there and then, agonizing as it would be.  But he
believed differently, and was ready to say it, even in such proximity to
the void.

"It's not Heaven, Pie.  Maybe God's there, maybe not.  But until we
know..."

"Why not just let me go now, and see for myself?  I'm not afraid.  This
is the Dominion where my people were made.

I want to see it." In these words there was the first hint of passion
Gentle had so far heard.

"I'm dying, Maestro.  I need to lie down, and sleep."

"What if there's nothing there, Pie?  What if it's only emptiness?"

I'd prefer the absence to the pain."

The reply defeated Gentle utterly.. "Then you'd better go," he said,
wishing he could find some more tender way to relinquish his hold, but
unable to conceal his desolation with platitudes.  However much he
wanted to save Pie from suffering, his sympathy could not outweigh

v

the need he felt; not quite annul the sense of ownership which, however
un savoury was a part of what he felt towards this creature.

"I wish we could have taken this last journey together, Maestro," Pie
said.. "But you've got work to do, I know.

Great work."

"And how do I do it without you?" Gentle said, knowing tched gambit -
and half -ashamed of it this was a lie but unwilling to let the mystif
pass from life without voicing every desire he knew to keep it from
going.

"You're not alone," Pie said.. "You've met Tick Raw, and ique.  They
were both members of the last Synod, Scop and they're ready to work the
Reconciliation with you.. "They're Maestros?"

they're prepared now.  They'll work in their Dominion while you work in
the Fifth."

"They waited all this time?"

"They knew you'd come.  Or if not you, somebody in your place."

He'd treated them both so badly, he thought, Tick Raw especially.

"Who'll represent the Second?" he said.. "And the First?. "There was a
Eurheternec in Yzordde'rrex, waiting to work for the Second, but he's
dead.  He was old the last time, and he couldn't wait.  I asked Scopique
to find a replacement.. "And here?. "I'd hoped that honour might fall to
me, but now, you'll need to find someone in my place.  Don't look so
lost, Maestro.  Please, you were a great Reconciler-. "I failed.  How
great is that?"

if you love me, Gentle, then please ...  let ...  me .... "They are now.
They were novices the last time, but

"You won't fail again.,. "I don't even know the ceremonies.. "You'll
remember, after a time.. "How?"

"All that we did and said and felt is still waiting in Gamut Street. All
our preparations, all our debates.  Even me.. "Memory isn't enough,
Pie.. "I know.  .

"I want you real.  I want you ...  forever.. "Maybe, when the Imajica is
whole again, and the First Dominion opens, you'll find me."

There was some tiny hope in that, he thought, though whether it would be
enough to keep him from despair when the mystif had disappeared he
didn't know.

"May I go?" Pie said.

Gentle had never uttered a harder syllable than his next.

"Yes," he said.

The mystif raised its hand, which was no more than a five-fingered wisp
of smoke, and put it against Gentle's lips.  He felt no physical
contact, but his heart jumped in his chest.

"We're not lost," Pie said.. "Trust in that."

Then the fingers dropped away, and the mystif started from Gentle's side
towards the Erasure.  There were perhaps a dozen yards to cover, and as
the gap diminished Gentle's heart, already pounding after Pie's touch,
beat faster, its drum tolling in his head.  Even now, knowing he
couldn't rescind the freedom he'd granted, it was all he could do not to
pursue Pie and delay it just another moment: to hear its voice, to stand
beside it, to be the shadow of its shadow.

It didn't glance back, but stepped with cruel ease into the no-man's
land between solidity and nothingness.  Gentle refused to look away, but
stared on with a steadfastness more defiant than heroic.  The place was
well named.  As the mystif walked it was erased, like a sketch

V

that had served its creator's purpose and was no longer needed on the
page.  But unlike the sketch, which however fastidiously erased always
left some trace to mark the artist's error, when Pie finally disappeared
the vanishing was complete, leaving the spot flawless.  If Gentle had
not had the mystif in his memory - that unreliable book - it might never
have existed.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

When he returned inside, it was to meet the stares of fifty or more
people gathered at the door, all of whom had obviously witnessed what
had just happened, albeit at some distance.  Nobody so much as coughed
until he'd passed; then he heard the whispers rise like the sound of
swarming insects.  Did they have nothing better to do than gossip about
his grief ?  he thought.  The sooner he was away from here, the better.
He'd say his farewells to Estabrook and Floccus and leave immediately.

He returned to Pie's bed, hoping the mystif might have left some
keepsake for him, but the only sign of its presence was the indentation
in the pillow on which its beautiful head had lain.  He longed to lie
there himself for a little time, but it was too public for such an
indulgence.  He would grieve when he was away from here.

As he prepared to leave, Floccus appeared, his wiry little body
twitching like a boxer anticipating a blow.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," he said.

"I was coming to find you anyway," Gentle said.. "Just to say thank you,
and goodbye."

"Before you go," Floccus said, blinking maniacally. "I've a message for
you." He'd sweated all the colour from his face, and stumbled over every
other word.

"I'm sorry for my behaviour," Gentle said, trying to soothe him.. "You
did all you could have done, and all you got for it was my foul temper."
"No need to apologize."

"Pie had to go, and I have to stay.  That's the way of it."

"It's a pleasure to have you back," Floccus gushed.

"Really, Maestro, really." That Maestro gave Gentle a clue to this
performance.

"Floccus?  Are you afraid of me?" he said.. "You are, aren't you?"

"Afraid?  Ah, well, ah.  Yes.  In a manner of speaking.  Yes.  What
happened out there, you getting so close to the Erasure and not being
claimed, and the way you've changed -' The dark garb still clung about
him, he realized, its slow dispersal draping shreds of smoke around his
limbs.  '- it puts a different complexion on things.  I hadn't
understood, forgive me, it was stupid, I hadn't understood, you know,
that I was in the company of, well, such a power.  if L you know, caused
any offenc. "You didn't.. "I can be frivolous.. "You were fine company,
Floccus.. "Thank you, Maestro.  Thank you.  Thank you.. "Please stop
thanking me.. "Yes.  I will.  Thank you.. "You said you had a message."
"I did?  I did.. "Who from?. "Athanasius.  He'd like very much to see
you."

Here was the third farewell he owed, Gentle thought.. "Then take me to
him, if you would," he said, and Floccus, his face flooded with relief
that he'd survived this interview, turned and led him from the empty
bed.

In the few minutes it took for them to thread their way through the body
of the tent, the wind, which had dropped almost to nothing at twilight,
began to rise with fresh ferocity.  By the time Floccus ushered him into
the chamber where Athanasius waited, it was beating at the walls wildly.
The lamps on the floor flickered with each gust, and by their panicky
light Gentle saw what a melancholy place Athanasius had chosen for their
parting.  The chamber was a mortuary, its floor littered with bodies
wrapped in every kind of rag and shroud, some neatly parcelled, most
barely covered.  Further proof - as if it were needed - of how poor a
place of healing this was.

But that argument was academic now.  This was neither the time nor the
place to bruise the man's faith, not with the night-wind thrashing at
the walls, and the dead everywhere underfoot.

"Do you want me to stay?" Floccus asked Athanasius, clearly desperate to
be shunned.

"No, no.  Go by all means," the other replied.

Floccus turned to Gentle, and made a little bow.

"It was an honour, sir," he said, then beat a hasty retreat.

When Gentle looked back towards Athanasius, the man had wandered to the
far end of the mortuary, and was staring down at one of the shrouded
bodies.  He had dressed for this sombre place, the loose bright garb
he'd been wearing earlier discarded in favour of robes so deep a blue
they were practically black.

"So, Maestro .  .  ." he said.. "I was looking for a Judas in our midst
and I missed you.  That was careless, huh?" His tone was conversational,
which made a statement Gentle already found confusing doubly so.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"I mean you tricked your way into our tents, and now you expect to
depart without paying a price for your desecration."

"There was no trick," Gentle said.. "The mystif was sick, and I thought
it could be healed here.  And if I failed to observe the formalities out
there, you'll excuse me.  I didn't have time to take a theology lesson."

"The mystif was never sick.  Or if it was you sickened it yourself, so
you could worm your way in here.  Don't even bother to protest.

I saw what you did out there.  What's the mystif going to do: make some
report on us to the Unbeheld?"

"What are you accusing me of exactly?"

"Do you even come from the Fifth, I find myself wondering, or is that
also part of the plot?. "There is no plot."

"Only I've heard that revolution and theology are bad

bedfellows there, which of course seems strange to us.

How can one ever be separated from the other?  If you

want to change even a little part of your condition, you

must expect the consequences to reach the ears of divinities sooner or
later, and then you must have your reasons ready."

Gentle listened to all of this wondering if it might not be simplest to
quit the room and leave Athanasius to ramble.  Clearly none of this
really made any sense.  But he owed the man a little patience, perhaps,
if only for the words of wisdom he'd bestowed at the wedding.

"You think I'm involved in some conspiracy," Gentle said.. "Is that it?"

"I think you're a murderer, a liar, and an agent of the Autarch,"
Athanasius said.

"You call me a liar?  Who's the one who seduced all these poor fuckers
into thinking they could be healed here, you or me?  Look at them!" He
pointed along the rows.. "You call this healing?  I don't.  And if they
had the breath

He reached down and snatched the shroud up off the corpse closest to
him.  The face beneath was that of a pretty woman.  Her open eyes were
glazed.  So was her face: painted and glazed.  Carved, painted and
glazed.  He tugged the sheet further back, hearing Athanasius's hard,
humourless laugh as he did so.  The woman had a painted child perched in
the crook of her arm.  There was a gilded halo around its head, and its
tiny hand was raised in benediction.

"She may lie very still," Athanasius said, 'but don't be deceived. She's
not dead."

Gentle went to another of the bodies, and drew back its covering.
Beneath lay a second Madonna, this one more baroque than the first, its
eyes turned up in a beatific swoon.  He let the shroud drop from between
his fingers.

"Feeling weak, Maestro?" Athanasius said.. "You conceal your fear very
well, but you don't deceive me."

Gentle looked around the room again.  There were at least thirty bodies
laid out here.. "Are all of them   J Madonnas?" he said.

Reading Gentle's bewilderment as anxiety Athanasius said:

"Now, I begin to see the fear.  This ground is sacred to the Goddess."
"Why?"

"Because tradition says a great crime was committed against Her sex near
this spot.  A woman from the Fifth Dominion was raped hereabouts and the
spirit of the Holy Mother calls sacred any ground thus marked." He went
down on his haunches, and uncovered another of the statues, touching it
reverentially.. "She's with us here," he said.. "In every statue.  In
every stone.  In every gust of wind.  She blesses us, because we dare to
come so close to Her enemy's Dominion."

"What enemy?"

"Are you not allowed to utter His name without dropping to your knees?"
Athanasius said.

"Hapexamendios.  Your Lord, the Unbeheld.

You can confess it.  Why not?  You know my secret now, and I know yours.
We're transparent to each other.  I do have one question, however,
before you leave.  .

"What's that?"

"How did you find out we worship the Goddess?  Was it Floccus told you,
or Nikaetomaas?"

"Nobody.  I didn't know and I don't much care." He started to walk
towards the man.. "I'm not afraid of your Virgins, Athanasius."

He chose one nearby, and unveiled her from starry crown to
cloud-threading toe.  Her hands were clasped in prayer.  Stooping, just
as Athanasius had, Gentle put his' hand over the statue's knitted
fingers.

"For what it's worth," he said.. "I think they're beautiful.

I was an artist once myself."

"You're strong, Maestro, I'll say that for you.  I expected 4 you to be
brought to your knees by Our Lady."

"First I'm supposed to kneel for Hapexamendios; now for the Virgin."
"One in fealty, one in fear.. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but my legs
are my own.

I'll kneel when I choose to.  if I choose to."

Now Athanasius looked puzzled.. "I think you half-believe that," he
said.

"Damn right I do.  I don't know what kind of conspiracy you think I'm
guilty of, but I swear there's none."

"Maybe you're more His instrument than I thou&t,l Athanasius said.
"Maybe you're ignorant of His purpose.. "Oh no," Gentle said.. "I know
what work I'm meant to do, and I see no reason to be ashamed of it.  If
I can Reconcile the Fifth I will.  I want the Imajica whole, and I'd
have thought you would too.  You can visit the Vatican.  You'll find
it's full of Madonnas."

As though inspired to fury by his words, the wind beat at the walls with
fresh venom, a gust finding its way into the chamber, raising several of
the lighter shrouds into the air, and extinguishing one of the lamps.

"He won't save you," Athanasius said, clearly believing this wind had
come to carry Gentle away.. "Nor will your ignorance, if that's what's
kept you from harm."

He looked back towards the bodies he'd been studying as Floccus
departed.

"Lady, forgive us," he said, 'for doing this in your sight." The words
were a signal, it seemed.

Four of the figures moved as he spoke, sitting up and pulling the
shrouds from their heads.  No Madormas these.  They were men and women
of the Dearth, carrying blades like crescent moons.  Athanasius looked
back at Gentle.

"Will you accept the blessing of Our Lady before you die?" he said.

Somebody had already begun a prayer behind him, Gentle heard, and
glanced round to see that there were another three assassins there, two
of them armed in the same lunatic fashion, the third - a girl no more
than Huzzah's age, bare-breasted, doe-faced - darting between

the rows uncovering statues as she went.  No two were alike.  There were
Virgins of stone, Virgins of wood, Vi irgins of plaster.  There were
Virgins so crudely carved they were barely recognizable, and others so
finely hewn and finished they looked ready to draw breath.

Though minutes before Gentle had laid his hand on one of this number
without harm, the spectacle faintly sickened him.  Did Athanasius know
something about the condition of Maestros that he, Gentle, didn't? Might
he somehow be subjugated by this image, the way in an earlier life he'd
been enthralled by the sight of a woman naked, or promising nakedness?

Whatever mystery was here, he wasn't about to let Athanasius murder him
while he puzzled it out.  He drew breath, and put his hand to his mouth
as Athanasius drew a weapon of his own, and started towards him at
speed.

The breath proved faster than the blade.  Gentle unleashed the pneuma,
not at Athanasius directly, but at the ground in front of him.  The
stones it struck flew into I

0 pieces, and Athanasius fell back as the fusillade hit him.

He dropped his knife and clamped his hands to his face, -yelling as much
in rage as in pain.  If there was a command in his clamour the assassins
missed or ignored it.  ' They kept a respectful distance from Gentle as
he walked towards their wounded leader, through an air still grey with
motes of pulverized stone.  Athanasius was lying on his side, propped on
his elbow.  Gentle went down on his haunches beside the man, and
carefully drew Athan-asius's hands from his face.  There was a deep cut
beneath his left eye, and another above his right.  Both were bleeding
copiously, as were a score of littler cuts.  None of them, however,
would be calamitous for a man who wore wounds the way others wore
jewellery.  They would heal, and add to his sum of scars.

"Call your assassins off, Athanasius," Gentle told him.

"I didn't come here to hurt anybody, but if you press me to it I'll kill
every last one of them.  Do you understand

me?" He put his arm beneath the man and hauled him to his feet.. "Now
call them off."

Athanasius shrugged himself free of Gentle's hold and scanned his
cohorts through a drizzle of blood.

"Let him pass," he said.. "There'll be another time." The assassins
between Gentle and the door parted, though none of them lowered or
sheathed his weapon.  Gentle stood up, and left Athanasius's side,
pausing only to offer one final observation.

"I wouldn't want to kill the man who married me to Pie'oh'pah," he said,
'so before you come after me again, examine the evidence against me,
whatever it is.  And search your heart.  I'm not your enemy.  All I want
to do is to heal the Imajica.  Isn't that what your Goddess wants too?"

if Athanasius had wanted to respond, he was too slow.  Before he could
open his mouth a cry rose from somewhere outside, and a moment later
another, then another, then a dozen: all howls of pain and panic,
twisted into drum-bruising screeches by the gusts that carried them.
Gentle turned back to the door, and the wind had hold of the entire
chamber, and even as he made to depart one of the walls rose as if a
titanic hand had seized hold of it, and was lifted up into the air.  The
wind, bearing its freight of screams, rushed in, flinging the lamps
over, their fuel spilled as they rolled before it.  Caught by the very
flames it had fed, the oil burst into bright yellow balls, by which
light Gentle saw scenes of chaos on all sides.  The assassins were being
thrown over like the lamps, unable to withstand the power of the wind.
One he saw impaled on her own blade.  Another was carried into the oil
and was instantly consumed by flame.

"What have you summoned?" Athanasius yelled.

"This isn't my doing," Gentle replied.

Athanasius screeched some further accusation, but it was snatched from
his lips as the rampage escalated.  Another of the chamber's walls was
summarily snatched

away, its tatters rising into the air like a curtain to unveil a scene
of catastrophe.  The storm was at work throughout the length of the
tents, disembowelling the glorious and scarlet beast Gentle had entered
with such awe.  Wall after wall was shredded or wrenched from the
ground, the ropes and pegs that had held them lethal as they flew.

And visible beyond the turmoil, its cause: the once featureless wall
of the Erasure, featureless no longer.  it roiled the way the sky Gentle
had seen beneath the Pivot had roiled, a maelstrom whose place of origin
seemed to be a hole torn in the Erasure's fabric.

The sight gave substance to Athanasius's charges.  Threatened by
assassins and Madormas, had he unwittingly summoned some entity out of
the First Dominion to protect him?  If j

I so, he had to find it and subdue it before he had more innocent lives
to add to the roster of those who'd perished because of him.

With his eyes fixed on the tear, he vacated the chamber and headed
towards the Erasure.

The route between was the storm's highway.  It carried the detritus of
its deeds j back and forth, returning to places it had already destroyed
in its first assault to pick up the survivors

and

pitch them into the air like sacks of bloody down, tearing them open
up above.  There was a red rain in the gusts,

which spattered Gentle as he went, yet the same authority that was
condemning men and women all around left him untouched.  It could not so
much as knock him off his feet.  The reason?  His breath, which Pie had
once called the source of all magic.  Its cloak clung to him as it had
before, apparently protecting him from the tumult, and, though it didn't
impede his steps, lent him a mass beyond that of flesh and bone.

With half the distance covered he glanced back to see if there was any
sign of life amongst the Madormas.  The place was easy to find, even
amid this carnage; the fire burned with a wind-fed fervour, and through
air thickened by blood and shards Gentle saw that several of the statues
had been raised from their stony beds and

r

j

now formed a circle in which Athanasius and several of his followers
were taking shelter.

They'd offer little defence against this havoc, he thought, but several
other survivors could be seen crawling towards the place, eyes fixed on
the Holy Mothers.

Gentle turned his back on the sight, and strode on towards the Erasure,
catching sight of another soul here weighty enough to resist the
assault: a man in robes the colour of the shredded tents, sitting
cross-legged on the ground no more than twenty yards from the fury's
source.  His head was hooded, his face turned towards the maelstrom. Was
this monkish creature the force he'd summoned, Gentle wondered.  If not,
how was this fellow surviving so close to the enigma of destruction?

He started to yell to the man as he approached, by no means certain that
his voice would carry in the din of wind and screams.  But the monk
heard.  He looked round at Gentle, the hood half-eclipsing his face.

There was nothing untoward about his placid features.  His face was in
need of a shave, his nose, which had been broken at some time, in need
of resetting, his eyes in need of nothing.  They had all they wanted, it
seemed, seeing the Maestro approach.  A broad grin broke over the monk's

,

face, and he instantly rose to his feet, bowing his head.

"Maestro," he said.. "You do me honour." His voice wasn't raised, but it
carried through the commotion.. "Have you seen the mystif yet?"

"The mystif's gone," Gentle said.  He didn't need to yell, he realized.
His voice, like his limbs, carried an unnatural weight here.

"Yes, I saw it go," the monk replied.. "But it's come back, Maestro.  it
broke through the Erasure, and the storm came after it."

"Where?  Where?" Gentle said, turning full circle.. "I don't see it!" He
looked accusingly at the man.. "It would have found me if it was here,"
he said.

"Trust me, it's trying," the man replied.  He pulled back his hood.  His
gingery curls were thinning, but there was

the vestige of a chorister's charm there.. "It's very close, Maestro."

Now it was he who stared into the storm; not to left and right, however,
but up into the labyrinthine air.  Gentle followed his gaze.

There were swathes of tattered canvas on the wind high above them,
rising and falling like vast wounded birds.  There were pieces of
furniture, shredded clothes, and fragments of flesh.  And in amongst
these clouds of dross, a darting form darker than either sky or storm,
descending even as he set his eyes upon it.  The monk drew closer to
Gentle.

That's the mystif," he said.. "May I protect you, Maestro?. "It's my
friend," Gentle said.. "I don't need protecting.. "I think you do," the
other replied, and raised his arms above his head, palms out as if to
deflect the approaching spirit.

4 It slowed at the sight of this gesture, and Gentle had time to see the
form above him plainly.  It was indeed the mystif, or the remains of
same.

Either by means of stealth or sheer force of will it had breached the
Erasure.  But its escape had brought it no comfort whatsoever.  The
uredo burned more venomously than ever, almost entirely consuming the
shadow body it had fixed upon and poisoned; and from the sufferer's
mouth, a howl that could not have been more pained had its guts been
drawn out of its belly in front of its eyes.

It had come to a complete halt now, and hovered above the two men like a
diver arrested in mid-descent, arms outstretched, head, or its traces,
thrown back.

"Pie?" Gentle said.. "Have you done this?" The howl went on.  If there
were words in its anguish, Gentle couldn't make them out.

I have to speak to it," Gentle said to his protector.  'if you're
causing it pain, for God's sake stop:

"It came out of the Margin howling like this," the man said.

"At least drop your de fences

it'll attack us.. "I'll take that risk," he replied.

The man let his shunning hands fall to his side.  The form above them
twisted and turned, but did not descend.  Another force had a claim upon
it, Gend e realized.  it was thrashing to resist a summons from the
Erasure, which was calling it back into the place from which it had
escaped.

"Can you hear me, Pie?" Gentle asked it.

The howl went on, unabated.

'if you can speak, do it!. "It's already speaking," the monk said.

I only hear howls," Gentle said.

"Past the howls," came the reply.. "There are words."

Drops of fluid fell from the mystif's wounds as its struggles to resist
the Erasure's power intensified.  They stank of putrescence, and burned
Gentle's upturned face, but their sting brought comprehension of the
words encoded in Pie's screeches.

"Undone.  .  ." the mystif was saying.. "We're...

undone..."

"Why did you do this?" Gentle asked.

"It wasn't ...  me.  The storm was sent to claim me back."

"Out of the First?. "It's ...  His will," Pie said.. "His ...  will
Though the tortured form above him resembled the creature he'd loved and
wed scarcely at all, Gentle could ere still hear fragments of Pie'oh'pah
in these replies, and hearing them wanted to raise his own voice in
anguish at the thought of Pie's pain.

The mystif had gone into the First to end its suffering; but here it
was, suffering still, and he was powerless to help it or heal it.  All
he could do by way of comfort was tell it that he understood, which he
did.  Its message was perfectly clear.  in the

w trauma of their parting Pie had sensed some equivocation in him.  But
there was none, and he said so.

"I know what I have to do," he told the sufferer.. "Trust

me, Pie.  I understand.  I'm the Reconciler.  I'm not going to run from
that."

At this, the mystif writhed like a fish on a hook, no longer able to
keep itself from being hauled in by the fisherman in the First.  It
started to scrabble at the air, as if it might gain another moment in
this Dominion b

Y I

catching hold of a mote in the air.  But the power that had sent such
furies in pursuit of it had too strong a hold, and the spirit was drawn
back towards the Erasure.  Instinctively Gentle reached up towards it,
hearing and ignoring a cry of alarm from the man at his side.  The
mystif reached for his hand, extending its shadowy substance to do so,
and curling grotesquely long fingers around Gentle's.  The contact sent
such a convulsion through his system he would have been thrown to the
ground but that his protector took hold of him.  As it was his marrow
seemed to burn in his bones, and he smelt the stench of rot off his
skin, as though death was coming upon him inside and out.

It was hard, in that agony, to hold on to the mystif, much less to the
words it was tryin 9 to say.  But he fought the urge to let go,
struggling for the sense of the few syllables he was able to grasp.
Three of them were his name.

"Sartori .  .

"I'm here, Pie," Gentle said, thinking perhaps the thing was blinded
now. "I'm still here." But the mystif wasn't naming its Maestro.

"The other," it said.. "The other.  .

"What about him?"

"He knows," Pie murmured.. "Find him, Gentle.  He knows."

With this command, their fingers separated.  Pie reached to take hold of
Gentle again, but with its frail

hold lost it was prey to the Erasure, and was instantly snatched towards
the tear through which it had appeared.  Gentle started after it, but
his limbs had been more severely traumatized by the convulsion than he'd
thought, and his legs simply folded up beneath him.  He

fell heavily, but raised his head in time to catch sight of the mystif
disappearing into the void.

Sprawled on the hard ground, he remembered his first pursuit of Pie,
through the empty, icy streets of Manhattan.  He'd fallen then too, and
looked up as he did now to see the riddle escaping him, unsolved.  But
it had turned that first time; turned and spoken to him across the river
of Fifth Avenue, offering him the hope, however frail, of another
meeting.  Not so now.  It went into the Erasure like smoke through a
draughty door, its cry stopping dead.

"Not again.  .." Gentle murmured.

The monk was crouching at his side.

"Can you stand," he asked, 'or shall I get help?" Gentle put his hands
beneath him, and pushed himself up into a kneeling position, making no
reply to the question.  With the mystif's disappearance, the malignant
wind that had come after it, and brought such devastation, was dropping
away, and as it did so the debris it had been keeping aloft descended in
a grim hail.

For a second time the monk raised his hands to ward off the descending
force.  Gentle was barely aware of what was happening.  His eyes were on
the Erasure, which was rapidly losing its roiling motion.  By the time
the rain of canvas, stones and bodies had stopped, every last trace Of
detail had gone from the divide, and it was once again an absence over
which the eye slid, finding no purchase.

Gentle got to his feet, and turning his eyes from the nullity, scanned
the desolation that lay in every other direction but one.  The circle of
the Madormas he'd glimpsed through the storm was still intact, and
sheltering in its midst were half a hundred survivors, some of them on
their knees sobbing or praying, many kissing the feet of the statues
that had shielded them, still others gazing towards the Erasure from
which the destruction that claimed all but these fifty, plus the Maestro
and monk, had come.

"Do you see Athanasius?" Gentle asked the man at his side.

"No, but he's alive somewhere," came the reply.. "He's like you,
Maestro; he's got too much purpose in him to die." q    . "I don't think
any purpose would have saved me if

you hadn't been here," Gentle remarked.. "You've got real power in your
bones."

"A little, maybe," the monk replied, with a modest smile. "I had a fine
teacher."

"So did U Gentle said softly.. "But I lost it."

Seeing the Maestro's eyes filling, the monk made to withdraw, but Gentle
said:

"Don't worry about the tears.  I've been running from them too long. Let
me ask you something.  I'll quite understand if you say no."

"What, Maestro?"

"When I leave here, I'm going back to the Fifth, to prepare for a
Reconciliation.  Would you trust me enough to join the Synod; to
represent the First?"

The monk's face broke into bliss, shedding years as he smiled.

"It would be my honour," Maestro," he said.

"There's risk in it," Gentle warned.

"There always was.  But I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you."

"How so?"

"You're my inspiration, Maestro," the man replied, inclining his head in
deference.

"Whatever you require of me, I'll perform as best I can.. "Stay here,
then.  Watch the Erasure, and wait.  I'll find you when the time comes."
He spoke with more certainty than he felt, but then perhaps the illusion
of competence was part of every Maestro's repertoire.

"I'll be waiting," the monk replied.

"What's your name?. "When I joined the Dearthers they called me Chicka
Jackeen.. "Jackeen?"

it means worthless fellow," the man replied.

"Then we've got much in common," Gentle said.  He took the man's hand,
and shook it.

"Remember me; Jackeen."

"You've never left my mind," the man replied.

There was some subtext here Gentle couldn't grasp, but this was no time
to delve.  He had two demanding and dangerous journeys ahead of him: the
first to Yzordderrex, the second from that city back to the Retreat.
Thanking Jackeen for his good offices, Gentle left him at the Erasure,
and picked his way back through the devastation towards the circle of
Madonnas.  Some of the survivors were leaving its shelter to begin a
search of the site, presumably in the hope - vain, he suspected - of
finding others alive.  it was a scene of grief and bewilderment he'd
witnessed too many times on his journey through the Dominions.  Much as
he would have liked to believe it was mere happenstance that these
scenes of devastation coincided with his presence, he couldn't afford to
indulge such self-delusion.  He was as surely wedded to the storm as he
was to Pie.  More so now, perhaps, with the mystif gone.

Jackeen's observation that Athanasius was too purPoseful a soul to have
perished was confirmed as Gentle drew closer to the circle.  The man was
standing at the centre of a knot of Dearthers, leading a prayer of
thanks to the Holy Mother for their survival.  As Gentle reached the
perimeter Athanasius raised his head.  One eye was closed beneath a scab
of blood and dirt, but there was enough hatred in the other to burn in a
dozen eyes.  Meeting its gaze, Gentle advanced no further, but the
priest dropped the volume of his prayer to a whisper anyway, preventing
the trespasser from hearing the terms of his devotion.  Gentle's ears
were not so dulled by the din he didn't catch a few of the phrases,
however.  Though the woman represented in so many modes around the
circle was clearly the Virgin Mary, she apparentry went by other names
here; or else had sisters.  He

heard her called Unia Umagammagi, Mother Imajica; and heard too the name
Huzzah had first whispered to him N.  in her cell beneath the mais on de
santi: Tishalulli.  There 77 was a third, though it took Gentle a little
time to be certain he'd understood the naming aright, and that was
Jokalaylau.  Athanasius prayed that she'd keep a place for them at her
side in the snows of paradise, which made Gentle wonder rather sourly if
the man had ever trodden those wastes, that he could think them a
heavenly place.

Though the names were strange, the inspiring spirit was not.  Athanasius
and his forlorn congregation were praying to the same loving Goddess at
whose shrines in the Fifth countless candles were lit every day.  Even
Gentle at his most pagan had conceded the presence of that woman in his
life, and worshipped her the only way he'd known how: with the seduction
and temporary possession of her sex.  Had he known a mother or a loving
sister he might have learned a better devotion than lust, but he hoped
and believed the Holy Woman would forgive him his trespasses, even if
Athanasius would not.  The thought comforted him.  He would need all the
protection he could assemble in the battle that lay ahead, and it was no
little solace to think that the Mother Imajica had her worshipping
places in the Fifth, where that battle would be fought.

With the ad hoc service over, Athanasius let his congregation go about
the business of searching the wreckage._-, For his part, he stayed in
the middle of the circle, where a few survivors who'd made it that far,
but perished, sprawled.

"Come here, Maestro," Athanasius said.. "There's son thing you should
see."

Gentle stepped into the circle, expecting Athanasian show him the corpse
of a child, or some fragile beauty, broken.  But the face at his feet
was male, and far from innocent.

"You know him, I think.,

"Yes.  His name was Estabrook."

Charlie's eyes were closed, his mouth too; sealed up in the moment of
his passing.  There was very little sign of physical damage.

Perhaps his heart had simply given out in the excitement.

"Nikaetomaas said you brought him here because you thought he was me."

"We thought he was a Messiah," Athanasius said.. "When we realized he
wasn't we kept looking, expecting a miracle.  instead -'

-you got me.  For what it's worth, you were right.  I did bring all this
destruction with me.

I don't quite know why, and I don't expect you to forgive me for it, but
I want you to understand that I take no pleasure in it.  All I want to
do is make good the damage I've done."

"And how will you do that, Maestro?" Athanasius said.  His one good eye
brimmed with tears as he surveyed the bodies.. "How will you make this
good?  Can you resurrect them with what's between your legs?  Is that
the trick of it?  Can you fuck them back into life?"

Gentle made a guttural sound of disgust.

"Well, that's what you Maestros think, isn't it?  You don't want to
suffer, you just want the glory.  You lay your rod on the land and the
land bears fruit.  That's what you think.  But it doesn't work that way.
It's your blood the land wants; it's your sacrifice.  And as long as you
deny that, others are going to die in your place.  Believe me, I'd cut
my throat now if I thought I could raise these people, but I've been
played a wretched trick.  I've the will to do it, but my blood's not
worth a damn.  Yours is.  I don't know why.  I wish it weren't.  But it
is."

"Would Uma Umagammagi like to see me bleed?, Gentle said.. "Or
Tishalulli?  Or Jokalaylau?  Is that what your loving mothers want from
this child?"

"You don't belong to them.  I don't know who you belong to, but you
didn't come from their sweet bodies.. "I must have come from somewhere,"
Gentle said, voicing that thought for the first time in his life.. "I've
got a purpose in me, and I think God put it there."

"Don't look too far, Maestro.  Your ignorance may be the only defence
the rest of us have got against you.  Give u p your ambition now, before
you find out what you're really capable of."

"I can't."

"Oh, but it's easy," Athanasius said.. "Kill yourself, Maestro.  Let the
land have your blood.

That's the greatest service you could do the Dominions now."

There was the bitterest echo in these words, of a letter he'd read
months ago, in another kind of wilderness.

Do this for the women of the world, Vanessa had written slit your lying
throat.

Had he really travelled the Dominions simply to have the advice he'd
been given by a woman whom he'd cheated in love returned to him?  After
all this striving for comprehension, was he finally as injurious and
fraudulent a Maestro as he was a lover?

Athanasius read the accuracy of this last dart off his target's face,
and with a feral grin hammered it home.

"Do it Soon, Maestro," he said.. "There are enough orphans in the
Dominions already, without you indulging your ambitions for another
day."

Gentle let these cruelties go.. "You married me to the love of my life,
Athanasius," he said.

"I won't ever forget that kindness."

"Poor Pie'oh'pah," the other man replied, grinding the point home.
"Another of your victims.  What a poison there must be in you, Maestro."

Gentle turned and left the circle without responding, with Athanasius
repeating his earlier advice to usher him on his way.

"Kill yourself soon, Maestro," he said.. "For you; for Pie; for all of
us.  Kill yourself soon."

It took Gentle a quarter of an hour to make his way through the
ravagement to open ground, hoping as he went that he'd find some vehicle
- Floccus's perhaps that he could commandeer for the return journey to

Yzordderrex.  If he found nothing, it would be a long trek on foot, but
that would have to be the way of it.  What little illumination the fires
behind him proffered soon dwindled, and he was obliged to search by
starlight, which would most probably have failed to show him the vehicle
had his path not been redirected by the squeals of Floccus Dado's
porcine pet Sighshy, who, along with her litter, was still inside.  The
car had been thrown over in the storm, and so he went to it simply to
let the animals out, planning to go on to find another.  But as he
struggled with the handle a human face appeared at the steamed up window.
Floccus was inside, and greeted Gentle's appearance with a clamour of
relief almost as high pitched as Sighshy's.  Gentle clambered up on to
the side of the car, and after much swearing and sweating wrenched the
door open with brute force.

"Oh, you're a sight to behold, Maestro," he said.. "I thought I was
going to suffocate in there."

The stench was piercing, and it came with Floccus when he clambered out.
His clothes were caked in the litter's excrement; and Mama's too.

"How the hell did you get in there?" Gentle asked him.

Floccus wiped a turd trail off his spectacles, and blinked at his
saviour through them.

"When Athanasius told me to summon you I thought: something's wrong
here, Dado.

You'd better go while you can.

I'd just got into the car when the storm started, and it was simply
turned over, with all of us inside.  The windows are unbreakable, and
the locks were jammed.  I couldn't get out."

"You were lucky to be in there."

"So I see," Floccus observed, surveying the distant vista of
destruction.. "What happened out here?"

"Something came out of the First, in pursuit of Pie'oh'pah."

"So the Unbeheld did this?"

so it would seem."

"Unkind," Floccus said softly, which was surely the understatement of
the night.

Floccus lifted Sighshy and her litter - two of which had perished when
their mother fell on them - out of the   vehicle, then he and Gentle
set to the task of putting it back on four wheels.  It took some doing,
but Floccus made up in strength what he lacked in height, and between
the two of them the job was done.  Gentle had made plain his intention
to return to Yzordderrex, but wasn't certain of Floccus's intentions
until the engine was running.  Then he said. "Are you coming with me?"

"I should stay," Floccus replied.  There was a fretful pause.. "But I've
never been much good with death.. "You said the same thing about sex."
"It's true.. "That doesn't leave much, does it?. "Would you prefer to go
without me, Maestro?"

"Not at all.  If you want to come, come.  But let's get going.  I want
to be in Yzordderrex by dawn."

"Why, what happens at dawn?-' Floccus said, a superstitious flutter in
his voice.

"It's a new day."

"Should we be grateful for that?" the other man enquired, as though he
sniffed some profound wisdom in the Maestro's reply but couldn't quite
grasp it.

"Indeed we should, Floccus, indeed we should.  For the day, and for the
chance.. "What ...  er ...  what chance would that be exactly?. "The
chance to change the world."

"Ah," said Floccus.. "Of course.  To change the world.  I'll make that
my prayer from now on."

"We'll compose it together, Floccus.  We've got to invent everything
from now on.  Who we are.  What we believe.  There's been too many old
roads taken.  Too many old dramas repeated.  We've got to find a new way
by tomorrow.. "A new way."

"That's right.  We'll make that our ambition, agreed?  To be new men by
the time the Comet comes up." Floccus's doubt was visible, even by
starlight.

"That doesn't give us very long," he observed.

True enough, Gentle thought.  In the Fifth, midsummer could not be very
far off, and though he didn't yet comprehend the reasons, he knew that
the Reconciliation could only be performed on that day.  There was a
fine

v irony.  Having frittered away lifetimes in pursuit of sensation, the
span he had left in which to make good the error of that waste could be
measured in terms of hours.

"There'll be time," he said, hoping to answer Floccus's doubts and
subdue his own, but knowing in his heart of hearts that he was doing
neither.

T

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Jude was stirred from the torpor Quaisoir's narcotic bed had induced in
her not by sound she'd long since become accustomed to the anarchy that
had raged unabated throughout the night - but by a sense of unease too
vague to be identified and too insistent to be ignored.  Something of
consequence had happened in the Dominion, and though her wits were
dulled by indulgence, she woke too agitated to return to the comfort of
a scented pillow.  Head throbbing, she heaved herself up

7 out of the bed and went in search of her sister.  ConcupisCent ia was
at the door, with a sly smile on her face.  Jude half-remembered the
creature slipping into one of her drugged dreams, but the details were
hazy, and the foreboding she'd woken with was more important now than
remembering the fantasies that had gone before.  She found Quaisoir in a
darkened room, sitting beside the window.

"Did something wake you, sister?" Quaisoir asked her.

"I don't quite know what, but yes.  Do you know what it was?"

"Something in the desert," Quaisoir replied, turning her head towards
the window, though she lacked the eyes to see what lay outside.
"Something momentous.  'is there any way of finding out what?"

Quaisoir took a deep breath.. "No easy way."

"But there is one?"

"Yes, there's a place beneath the Pivot Tower.  .

Concupiscentia had followed Judith into the room, but now, at the
mention of this place, she made to withdraw.

She was neither quiet nor fast enough, however.  Quaisoir summoned her
back.

"Don't be afraid," she told the creature.. "We don't need you with us
once we're inside.  But fetch a lamp, will you?  And something to eat
and drink.  We may be there a while."

it was half a day and more since Jude and Quaisoir had taken refuge in
the suite of chambers, and in that time any last occupants of the palace
had made their escape, doubtless fearing the revolutionary zeal that
would want the fortress cleansed of the Autarch's excesses down to the
last bureaucrat.  Those bureaucrats had fled, but the zealots hadn't
appeared in their place.  Though Jude had heard commotion in the
courtyards as she'd dozed, it had never come that close.  Either the
fury that had moved the tide was exhausted, and the insurgents were
resting before they began their assault on the palace, or else their
fervour lost its singu purpose a er, and the commotion she'd heard was
factions battling with each other for the right to plunder, which
conflicts had destroyed them all, left, right and centre.

Whichever, the consequence was the same: a palace built to house many
thousands of souls servants, soldiers, pen-pushers, cooks, stewards,
messengers, torturers and majordomos was deserted, and they went through
it, Jude led by Concupiscentia's lamp, Quaisoir led by Jude, like three
tiny specks of life lost in a vast and dark machine.  The only sounds
were their footsteps, and those that said machine made as it ran down.
Hot-water pipes ticking as the furnaces that fed them guttered out;
shutters beating themselves to splinters in empty rooms; guard dogs
barking on gnawed leashes, fearful that their masters would not come
again.  Nor would they.  The furnaces would cool, the shutters break,
and the dogs, trained to bring death, would have it come to them in
their turn.  The age of the Autarch Sartori was over, and no new age had
yet begun.

F

As they walked Jude asked for an explanation of the place to which they
were going, and by way of reply 06 Quaisoir offered first a history of
the Pivot.  Of all the Autarch's devices to subdue and rule the
Reconciled Dominions, she said - subverting the religions and
governments of his enemies; setting nation against natiow t - none would
have kept him in power for more than a decade had he not possessed the
genius to steal and to set at the centre of his empire the greatest
symbol of power in the Imajica.  The Pivot was Hapexamendios's marker,
and the fact that the Unbeheld had allowed the Architect of Yzordderrex
to even touch, much less move, His pylon, was for many proof that
however much they might despise the Autarch, he was touched by divinity
and could never be toppled.  What powers it had conferred on its
possessor even she didn't know.

"Sometimes," she said, 'when he was high on kreauchee, he'd talk about
the Pivot as though he was married to it, and he was the wife.  Even
when we made love he'd talk that way.  He'd say it was in him the way he
was in me.  He'd always deny it afterwards, of course, but it was in his
mind always.  It's in every man's mind." Jude doubted this, and said so.

"But they so want to be possessed," Quaisoir replied.. "They want some
Holy Spirit inside them.  You listen to their prayers."

"That's not something I hear very often."

"You will when the smoke clears," Quaisoir replied.. "They'll be afraid,
once they realize the Autarch's gone.  They may have hated him, but
they'll hate his absence more."

"If they're afraid they'll be dangerous," Jude said, realizing as she
spoke how well these sentiments might have come from Clara Leash's
mouth.. "They won't be devout." Concupiscentia halted before Quaisoir
could take up her account afresh, and began to murmur a little prayer of
her own.

"Are we here?" Quaisoir asked.

The creature broke the rhythm of her entreaty to tell her mistress that
they were.  There was nothing remarkable about the door in front of
them, or the staircases that wound out of sight to either side of it.
All were monumental, and therefore commonplace.  They'd passed through
dozens of portals like this as they'd made their way through the place's
cooling belly.

But Concupiscentia was plainly in terror of it, or rather of what lay on
the other side.

"Are we near the Pivot?" Jude said.

"The Tower's directly above us," Quaisoir replied.

"That's not where we're going?"

"No.  The Pivot would probably kill us both.  But there's

a chamber below the Tower, where the messages the Pivot collects drain
away.  I've spied here often, though he never knew it."

Jude let go of Quaisoir's arm and went to the door, keeping to herself
the irritation she felt at being denied the Tower itself.  She wanted to
see this power, which had reputedly been shaped and planted by God
Himself.  Quaisoir had talked of it as lethal, and perhaps it was, but
how was anyone to know until they'd tested themselves against it?
Perhaps its reputation was the Autarch's invention, his way of keeping
its gifts for himself.  Under its aegis, he'd prospered, no doubt of
that.  What might another do, if they had its blessing conferred upon
them?  Turn night to day?

She turned the handle and pushed open the door.  Sour and chilly air
issued from the darkened space beyond.  Jude summoned Concupiscentia to
her side, took the lamp from the creature, and held it high.

Ahead lay a small, inclined corridor, its walls almost burnished.

"Do I wait here, Lady?" Concupiscentia asked.

"Give me whatever you brought to eat," Quaisoir replied, 'and stay
outside the door.  If you hear or see anybody, I want you to come and
find us.  I know you don't like to go in there, but you must be brave.

Understand me, dear ling

"I understand Lady," Concupiscentia replied, handing to her mistress the
bundle and the bottle she'd carried with her.

Thus laden, Quaisoir took Jude's arm and they stepped into the passage.
One part of the fortress's machine was still operational, it seemed,
because as soon as they closed 4' the door after them a circuit, broken
as long as the door stood wide, was completed, and the air began to
vibrate, against their skin; vibrate and whisper.

"Here they are," Quaisoir said.. "The intimations."

That was too civilized a word for this sound, Jude thought.  The
passageway was filled with a quiet commotion, like snatches from a
thousand radio stations, all incomprehensible, coming and going as the
dial was flipped, and flipped again.  Jude raised the lamp to see how
much further they had to travel.  The passageway ended ten yards ahead,
but with every yard they covered the din increased - not in volume but
in complexity - as new stations were added to the number the walls were
already tuned into.  None of it was music.  There were  F multitudes of
voices raised as a single sound, and there were solitary howls; there
were sobs, and shouts, and words spoken like a recitation.

"What is this noise?" Jude asked.

"The Pivot hears every piece of magic in the Dominions.  Every
invocation, every confession, every dying oat...

"This is the Unbeheld's way of knowing what Gods are being worshipped
besides Him.

And what Goddesses too.. "He spies on deathbeds?" Jude said, more than
faintly disgusted by the thought.

"On every place where a mortal thing speaks to the divine, whether the
divinity exists or not, whether the prayer's answered or not, He's
there."

"Here too?" Jude said.

"Not unless you start praying," Quaisoir said.

"I won't."

They were at the end of the passage, and the air was busier than ever;
colder too.  The lamp's light illuminated

a room shaped like a colander, maybe twenty feet across, its curved
walls as polished as those of the passage.  In the floor was a grille,
like a gutter beneath a butcher's table, through which the detritus of
prayers, ripped from the hearts of those in grief, or washed up in tears
of joy, ran off into the mountain upon which Yzordderrex was built.  It
was difficult for Jude to grasp the notion of prayer as a solid thing -
a kind of matter to be gathered, analysed and sluiced away - but she
knew her incomprehension was a consequence of living in a world out of
love with transformation.  There was nothing so solid that it couldn't
be abstracted; nothing so ethereal that it couldn't find a place in the
material world.  Prayer might be substance after a time, and thought
(which she'd believed skull-bound until the dream of the blue stone) fly
like a bright-eyed bird, seeing the world remote from its sender; a flea
might unravel flesh if wise to its code, and flesh in its turn move
between worlds as a picture drawn in the mind of passage.  All these
mysteries were, she knew', part of a single system if she could only
grasp it: one form becoming another, and another, and another, in a
glorious tapestry of transformations, the sum of which was Being itself.

It was no accident that she embraced that possibility here.  Though the
sounds that filled the room were incomprehensible as yet, their purpose
was known to her, and it raised the ambition of her thoughts.

She let go of Quaisoir's arm, and walked into the middle of the room,
setting the lamp down beside the grille in the floor.

They'd come home for a specific reason, and she knew she had to hold
fast to that, otherwise her thoughts would be carried away on the swell
of sound.

"How do we make sense of it?" she said to Quaisoir.. "It takes time,"
her sister replied.

"Even for me.  But I marked the compass points on the walls.  Do you
see?" She did.  Crude marks, scratched in the sheeny surface.. "The
Erasure is north northwest of here.  We can narrow the possibilities a
little by turning in that direction."

She extended her arms, like a haunting spirit.. "Will you lead me to the
middle?" she said.

Jude obliged, and they both turned in the direction of the Erasure.  As
far as Jude was concerned, doing so did little good.  The din continued
in all its complexity.  But Quaisoir dropped her hands and listened
intently moving her head slightly from side to side as she did so.
Several minutes passed, Jude keeping her silence for fear an enquiry
would break her sister's concentration, and was rewarded for her
diligence, finally, with some murmured words.

"They're praying to the Madonna," Quaisoir said.

"Who are?"

"Dearthers.  Out at the Erasure.  They're giving thanks.-' for their
deliverance, and asking for the souls of the dead to be received into
paradise."

She fell silent again for a time, and now, with some clue as to what she
had to listen for, Jude attempted to sort through the intimations that
filled her head.  But although she was refining her focus, and could now
snatch words and phrases out of the confusion, she couldn't hold that
focus long enough to make any sense t, of what she heard.  After a time,
Quaisoir's body relaxed, and she shrugged.

"There's just glimpses now," she said.. "I think they're finding bodies.
I hear little sobs of prayers, and little oaths."       f

"Do you know what happened?"

"This was some time ago," Quaisoir said.. "The Pivot's, had these
prayers for several hours.

But it was some things calamitous, that's certain," she said.. "I think
there are a,, lot of casualties.. "It's as if what happened in
Yzordderrex is spreading," Jude said.

"Maybe it is," Quaisoir said.. "Do you want to sit dow1q and eat?. "In
here?. "Why not?  I find it very soothing." Reaching for Jude

t

to help her, Quaisoir squatted down.. "You get used to it after a time.
Maybe a little addicted.  Speaking of which ...  where's the food?" Jude
put the bundle into Quaisoir's outstretched hands.. "I hope the child
packed kreauchee."

Her fingers were strong, and having scoured the surface of the bundle,
dug deep, passing the contents over to Jude one by one.  There was
fruit, there were three loaves of black bread, there was some meat, and
- the finding enough to bring a gleeful yelp from Quaisoir a small
parcel which she did not pass over to Jude, but put to her nose.

"Bright thing," Quaisoir said.. "She knows what I need.. "Is it some
kind of drug?" Jude said, laying down the food.. "I don't want you
taking it.  I need you here, not drifting off."

"Are you trying to forbid me my pleasure, after the way you dreamed on
my pillows?" Quaisoir said.. "Oh yes, I heard your gasping and your
groaning.  Who were you imagining?. "That's my business."

And this is mine," Quaisoir replied, discarding the tissue in which
Concupiscentia had fastidiously wrapped the kreauchee.  it looked
appetizing, like a cube of fudge.. "When you've got no addiction of your
own, sister, then you can moralize," Quaisoir said.. "I won't listen,
but you can moralize."

With that, she put the whole of the kreauchee into her mouth, chewing on
it contentedly.

Jude, meanwhile, sought more conventional sustenance, choosing amongst
the various fruits one that resembled a diminutive pineapple, peeling it
to discover it was just that, its juice tart but its meat tasty.  That
eaten, she went on to the bread and slivers of meat, her hunger so
stimulated by the first few bites that she steadily devoured the lot,
washing it down with bitter water from the bottle.  The fall of prayers
that had seemed so insistent when she'd first entered the chamber could
not compete with the more immediate

r

sensations of fruit, bread, meat and water; the din became a background
burble which she scarcely thought about until she'd finished her meal.
By that time, the kreauchee was clearly working in Quaisoir's system.

She was swaying back and forth as though in the arms of some invisible
tide.

"Can you hear me?" Jude asked her.

Quaisoir took a while to reply.. "Why don't you join me?" she said.
"Kiss me, and we can share the kreauchee Mouth to mouth.  Mind to mind."

"I don't want to kiss you."

"Why not?  Do you hate yourself too much to make I

I

love?" She smiled to herself, amused by the perverse logic of this.
"Have you ever made love to a woman?"

"Not that I remember."

"I have.  At the Bastion.  It was better than being with a

man."       A

She reached out towards Jude, and found her hand with the accuracy of
one sighted.

"You're cold," she said.

"No, you're hot," Jude replied, moving to break the contact.

"You know what air makes this place so cold, sister?" Quaisoir said.
"It's the pit beneath the city, where the fake Redeemer went."

Jude looked down at the grille, and shuddered.  The dead were down there
somewhere.

"You're cold like the dead are cold," Quaisoir went on.. "Icy heart."
All this she said in a sing-song voice, to the rhythm of her rocking.
"Poor sister.  To be dead already.. "I don't want to hear any more of
this, "Jude said.  She'd preserved her equanimity so far, but Quaisoir's
fugue talk was beginning to irritate her.  'if you don't stop," she said
quietly. "I'm going to leave you here."

"Don't do that," Quaisoir replied.. "I want you to stay, and make love
to me."

"I've told you

"Mouth to mouth.  Mind to mind."

"You're talking in circles."

"That's the way the world was made," she said.. "Joined together, round
and round." She put her hand to her mouth, as if to cover it, then
smiled, with almost fiendish glee.. "There's no way in and there's no
way out.  That's what the Goddess says.  When we make love, we go roun
and round

She searched for Jude a second time, with the same unerring ease, and a
second time Jude withdrew her hand, realizing as she did so that this
repetition was part of her sister's egocentric game.  A sealed system of
mirrored flesh, moving round and round.  Was that truly how the world
was made?  If so, it sounded like a trap, and she wanted her mind out of
it, there and then.

"I can't stay in here," she said to Quaisoir.

"You'll come back?" her sister replied.

"Yes, in a while." The answer was more repetition.. "Youll come back."

This time Jude didn't bother replying, but crossed to the passageway,
and climbed back up to the door.  Concupiscentia was still waiting on
the other side, asleep now, her form delineated by the first signs of
dawn through the window on the A of which she rested.  The fact that day
was breaking surprised Jude; she'd assumed that there were several hours
yet before the Comet reared its burning head.  She was obviously more
disoriented than she'd thought, the time she'd spent in the room with
Quaisoir 7 listening to the prayers, eating and arguing not minutes but
hours.

She went to the window, and looked down at the dim courtyards.  Birds
stirred on a ledge somewhere below her and rose suddenly, heading into
the brightening sky, taking her eye with them, up towards the Tower.
Quaisoir had been unequivocal about the dangers of venturing there. But,
for all her talk of love between women, wasn't she still in thrall to
the mythologies of the man who'd made her Queen of Yzordderrex, and
therefore

bound to believe that the places he kept her from would do her harm?
There was no better time to challenge that mythology than now, Jude
thought, with a new day beginning, and the power that had uprooted the
Pivot and raised such walls around it gone.

She went to the stairs and started to climb.  After a few steps their
curve took her into utter darkness, and she was obliged to ascend as
blind as the sister she'd left below, her palm flat against the cold
wall.  But after maybe thirty stairs her outstretched arm encountered a
door, so heavy she first assumed it to be locked.  it required all her
strength to open, but her effort was well I rewarded.  On the other side
was a passageway lighter than the staircase she'd climbed, though still
gloomy enough to limit her sight to less than ten yards.  Hugging the
wall, she advanced with great caution, her route bringing her to the
corner of a corridor, the door that had once sealed it off from the
chamber at its end blown from its hinges and lying, fractured and
twisted, on the tiled floor beyond.  She paused here, in order to listen
for any sign of the wrecker's presence.  There was none, so she moved on
past the place, her gaze drawn to a flight of stairs that led up to her
left.  Forsaking the passage-way, she began a second ascent, this one
also leading into darkness, until she rounded a corner and a sliver of
light descended to meet her.  Its source was the door at the summit of
the stairs, which stood slightly  ajar.

Again, she halted a moment.  Though there was no I overt indication of
power here - the atmosphere was almost tranquil - she knew that the
force she'd come to confront was undoubtedly waiting in its silo at the
top of the stairs, and more than likely sentient.  She didn't discount
the possibility that this hush was contrived to soothe her, and the
light sent to coax.  But if it wanted her up there, then it must have a
reason.  And if it didn't

if it was as lifeless as the stone underfoot - then she had nothing to
lose.

"Let's see what you're made of," she said aloud, the challenge delivered
at least as much to herself as the Unbeheld's Pivot.

And so saying, she went to the door.

Though there were undoubtedly more direct routes to the Pivot Tower than
the one he'd taken with Nikaetomaas, Gentle decided to go the way he
half-remembered rather than attempt a short-cut and find himself lost in
the labyrinth.  He parted company with Floccus Dado, Sighshy and litter
at the Gate of the Twin Saints and began his climb through the palace,
checking on his position relative to the Pivot Tower from every other
window.

Dawn was in the offing.  Birds rose singing from their nests beneath the
colonnades and swooped over the courtyards, indifferent to the bitter
smoke that passed for mist this morning.  Another day was imminent, and
his system was badly in need of sleep.  He'd dozed a little on the
journey from his Erasure, but the effect had been cosmetic.  There was a
fatigue in his marrow which would bring him to his knees very soon now,
and the knowledge of that made him eager to complete the day's business
as quickly as possible.  He'd come back here for two reasons.  One, to
finish the task Pie's appearance and wounding had diverted him from: the
pursuit and execution of Sartori.  Second, whether he found his
doppelgdnger here or not, to make his way back to the Fifth, where
Sartori had talked of founding his New Yzordderrex.  it wouldn't be
difficult to get home, he knew, now that he was alive to his capacities
as a Maestro.  Even without the mystif to surreptitiously point the way,
he'd be able to dig from memory the means to pass between Dominions.

But first, Sartori.  Though two days had passed since he'd let the
Autarch slip, he nursed the hope that his other would still be haunting
his palace.  After all, removal from this self-made womb, where his
smallest word had

been law and his tiniest deed worshipful, would be painful.  He'd linger
awhile, surely.  And if h was going to finger anywhere, it would be
close to the object of power that had made him the undisputed master of
the Reconciled Dominions: the Pivot.

He was just beginning to curse himself for losing his

t

way when he came upon the spot where Pie had fallen He recognized it
instantly, as he did the distant door that led into the Tower.  He
allowed himself a moment of meditation at the spot where he'd cradled
Pie, but it wasn't their fond exchanges here that filled his head, it
was the mystif's last words, uttered in anguish as the force behind the
Erasure claimed it.

Sartori, Pie had said.  Find him ...  he knovw ...

Whatever knowledge Sartori possessed - and Gentle guessed it would
concern plots laid against the Reconciliation - he, Gentle, was
ready to do whatever was required in order to squeeze this information
from his other before he delivered the coup de grace.  There were no
moral niceties here.  If he had to break every bone Mi Sartori's body it
would be a little hurt set beside the crimes he'd committed as Autarch,
and Gentle would perform such duties gladly.      f

Thought of torture, and the pleasure he'd take in it, had tempted him
from his meditation entirely, and he gave up on his pursuit of
equilibrium.  Venom swilling in his belly, he headed down the corridor,
through the door and into the Tower.

Though the Comet was climbing towards midmorning, very little of its
light gained access to the Tower, but those few beams that did creep in
showed him empty passageways in all directions.  He still advanced with
caution; this was a maze of chambers, any one of which might conceal his
enemy.  Fatigue left him less light-footed than he'd have liked, but he
reached the stairs that curled up towards the silo itself without his
stumblings attracting any attention, and began to climb.

The door at the top had been opened, he remembered, with the key of
Sartori's thumb, and he'd have to repeat

fir

the felt himself in order to enter.  This was no great challenge.  They
had the same thumbs, to the tiniest whorl.

As it was, he needed no felt.  The door was open wide, and somebody was
moving about inside.  Gentle halted ten steps from the threshold and
drew breath.  He'd need to incapacitate his other quickly if he was to
prevent retaliation.  A pneuma to take off his right hand; another for
his left.  Breath readied, he climbed swiftly to the top of the stairs
and stepped into the Tower.

His enemy was standing beneath the Pivot, his arms raised, reaching for
the stone.  He was all in shadow, but Gentle caught the motion of his
head as he turned towards the door, and before the other could lower
his arms in defence, Gentle had his fist to his mouth, the breath rising
in his throat.  As it filled his palm his enemy spoke, and the voice
when it came was not his own, as he'd expected, but that of a woman.
Realizing his error, he clamped his fist around the pneuma to quench it,
but the power he'd unleashed wasn't about to be cheated of its quarry.
It broke from between his fingers, its force fragmented but no less
eager for that.  The pieces flew off around the silo, some darting up
the sides of the Pivot, others entering its shadow and extinguished
there.  The woman cried out in alarm, and retreated from her attacker,
backing against the opposite wall.  There the light found her
perfection.  It was Judith; or at least it seemed to be.  He'd seen this
face in Yzordderrex once already and been mistaken.

"Gentle?" she said.  'is that you?"

it sounded like her, too.  But then hadn't that been his promise to
Roxborough, that he'd fashion a copy indistinguishable from the
original?

"It's me," she said.. "It's Jude."

Now he began to believe it was, for there was more proof in that last
syllable than sight could ever supply.  Nobody in her circle of
admirers, besides Gentle, had ever called her Jude.  Judy, sometimes;
Juju, even; but never Jude.  That was his diminution, and to his certain
knowledge she'd never suffered another to use it.

He repeated it now, his hand dropping from his mouth as he spoke, and
seeing the smile spread across his face she ventured back towards him,
returning into the shadow of the Pivot as he came to meet her.

The move saved her life.

Seconds after she left the wall a slab of rock, blasted from the heights
of the silo by the pneuma, fell on the spot where she'd stood.  it
initiate a hard, lethal rain, shards of stone falling on all sides.
There was safety in the shelter of the Pivot, however, and there they
met and kissed and embraced as though they'd been parted a lifetime, not
weeks, which in a sense was true.  The din of falling rock was muted in
the shadow, though its thunder was only yards from where they stood.

When she cupped his face in her hands, and spoke, her whispers were
quite audible; as were his.

"I've missed you..." she said.  There was a welcome warmth in her voice,
after the days of anguish and accusation he'd heard.  I even dreamed
about you .  .. "Tell me," he murmured, his lips close to hers.

"Later, maybe," she said, kissing him again.. "I've so much to tell
you."

"Likewise," Gentle said.

"We should find ourselves somewhere safer than this," she said.

"We're out of harm's way here," Gentle said.

"Yes, but for how long?"

The scale of the demolition was increasing, its violence out of all
proportion to the force Gentle had unleashed, as though the Pivot had
taken the pneuma's power and magnified it.  Perhaps it knew - how could
it not?  - that the man it had been in thrall to had gone, and was now
about the business of shrugging off the prison Sartori had raised around
it.  Judging by the size of the slabs falling all around, the process
would not take long.  They were monumental, their impact sufficient to
open cracks in the floor of the Tower, the sight of which brought a cry
of alarm from Jude.

"Oh God, Quaisoiff she said.

"What about her?"

"She's down there!" Jude said, staring at the gaping ground.. "There's a
chamber below this!

She's in id. "She'll be out of there by now."

"No, she's high on kreauchee!  we have to get down there!'

She left Gentle's side and crossed to the edge of their shelter, but
before she could make a dash for the open door a new fall of rubble and
dust obliterated the way ahead.  It wasn't simply blocks of the Tower
that were falling now, Gentle saw.

There were vast shards of the Pivot itself in this hail.  What was it
doing?  Destroying itself, or shedding skins to uncover its core?
Whichever, their place in the shadow was more precarious by the second.
The cracks underfoot were already a foot wide, and widening, the
hovering monolith above them shuddering as if it was about to give up
the effort of suspension, and drop.  They

f

e

z

had no choice but to brave the rockfalls

He went to join Jude, searching his wits for a means of survival, and
picturing Chicka Jackeen at the Erasure, his hands high to ward of the
detritus dropped by the storm.  Could he do the same?  Not giving
himself pause to doubt, he lifted his hands above his head as he'd seen
the monk do, palms up, and stepped out of the Pivot's shadow.  One
heavenward glance confirmed both the Pivot's shedding and the scale of
his jeopardy.  Though the dust was thick, he could see that the monolith
was sloughing off scales of stone, the pieces large enough to smash them
both to pulp.  But his defence held.  The slabs shattered two or three
feet above his naked head, their smithereens dropping like a fleeting
vault around him.  He felt the impact nevertheless, as a succession of
jolts through his wrists, arms and shoulders, and knew he lacked the
strength to preserve the felt for more than a few seconds.  Jude had
already grasped the method in his madness, however, and stepped from the
shadow to join him beneath this flimsy shield.  There were perhaps ten
paces between where they stood and the safety of the door.

"Guide me," he told her, unwilling to take his eyes off the rain for
fear his concentration slip and the felt lose its potency.

Jude slipped her arm around his waist and navigated for them both,
telling him where to step to find clear ground and warning him when the
path was so heavily strewn they were obliged to stumble over stone.

It was a tortuous business, and Gentle's upturned hands were steadily
beaten down until they were barely above his head, but the felt held to
the door, and they slid through it together, with the Pivot and its
prison throwing down such a hail of debris neither was now visible.

Then Jude was off at speed, down the murky stairs.  The walls were
shaking, and laced with cracks as the demolition above took its toll
below, but they negotiated both the trembling passageway, and the second
flight of stairs down to the lower level, unharmed.  Gentle was startled
at the sight and sound of Concupiscentia, who was screeching in the
passageway like a terrified ape, unwilling to go in search of her
mistress.  Jude had no such qualms.

She'd already thrown open the door and was heading down an incline into
a lamp lit chamber beyond, calling Quaisoir's name to stir her from her
Stupor.  Gentle followed, but was slowed by the cacophony that greeted
him, a mingling of manic whispers and the din of capitulation from
above.  By the time he reached the room itself Jude had bullied her
sister to her feet.  There were substantial cracks in the ceiling, and a
constant drizzle of dust, but Quaisoir seemed indifferent to O the
hazard.

"I said you'd come back," she said.. "Didn't I?  Didn't I say you'd come
back?  Do you want to kiss me?  Please kiss me, sister."

"What's she talking about?" Gentle asked.

The sound of his voice brought a cry from the woman.  She flung herself
out of Jude's arms.

"What have you done?" she yelled.. "Why did you bring him here?"

"He's come to help us," Jude replied.

Quaisoir spat in Gentle's direction.

"Leave me alone!" she screeched.. "Haven't you done enough?  Now you
want to take my sister from me!  You bastard!  I won't let you!  We'll
die before you touch her!" She reached for Jude, sobbing in panic.
"Sister!  Sister!'

"Don't be frightened," Jude said.. "He's a friend." She looked at
Gentle.. "Reassure her," she begged him.. "Tell her who you are, so we
can get out of here.. "I'm afraid she already knows," Gentle replied.

Jude was mouthing the word what?  when Quaisoir's panic boiled up again.

"SartorV she screeched, her denunciation echoing around the room.. "He's
Sartori, sister!

Sartori!'

Gentle raised his hands in mock surrender, backing away from the woman.
"I'm not going to touch you," he said.

"Tell her, Jude.  I don't want to hurt her!'

But Quaisoir was in the throes of another outburst.. "Stay with me,
sister," she said, grabbing hold of Jude.. "He can't kill us both!'

"You can't stay in here," Jude said.

"I'm not going out!" Quaisoir said.. "He's got soldiers out there!
Rosengarten!  That's who he's got!  And his torturers!'

"It's safer out there than it is in here, "Jude said, casting her eyes up
at the roof.  Several carbuncles had appeared in it, oozing debris.. "We
have to be quickl'

Still she refused, putting her hand up to Jude's face and stroking her
cheek with her clammy palm: short, nervy strokes.

"We'll stay here together," she said.. "Mouth to mouth.  Mind to mind."

"We can't,"Jude told her, speaking as calmly as circumstance allowed. "I
don't want to be buried alive, and neither do you."

"If we die, we die," said Quaisoir.. "I don't want him touching me
again, do you hear?"

"I know.  I understand."

"Not ever!  Not ever!'

"He won't," Jude said, laying her own hand over uaisoir's, which was
still

stroking her face.  She laced

Q

her fingers through those of her sister, and locked them.. "He's gone,"
she

said.. "He won't be coming near either of us again."

Gentle had indeed retreated as far as the passageway, but even though

Jude waved him away he refused to go any further.  He'd had too many

reunions cut short to risk letting her out of his sight.

"Are you certain he's gone?"

"I'm certain."

art. "He could still be waiting outside for us."

"No, sister.  He was afraid for his life.  He's fled."

Quaisoir grinned at this.. "He was afraid?" she said.

"Terrified."

"Didn't I tell you?  They're all the same.  They talk like heroes, but
there's piss in their veins." She began to laugh out loud, as careless
now

as she'd been in terror moments before.. "We'll go back to my bedroom,"

she said when the outburst subsided, 'and sleep for a while."

"Whatever you want to do," Jude said.. "But let's do it soon."

Still chuckling to herself, Quaisoir allowed Jude to lift her up and
escort

her towards the door.  They had covered maybe half that distance, Gentle

standing aside to let them pass, when one of the carbuncles in the
ceiling

burst, and threw down a rain of wreckage from the Tower above.  Gentle

saw Jude struck and felled by a chunk of stone, then the chamber filled
with

an almost viscous dust that blotted out both sisters in an instant. With
his

only point of reference the lamp, the flame of which was just visible

through the dirt, he headed into the fog to fetch her, as a thundering
from

above announced a further escalation of the Tower's collapse.  There was

no time for protective fe its or for keeping his silence.  If he failed
to find

her in the next few seconds, they'd all be buried.  He started to yell
her

name through the rising

roar, and hearing her call back to him, followed her voice to where she
was lying, half buried beneath a cairn of rubble.

"There's time," he said to her as he began to dig.. "There's time.  We
can make it out."

With her arms unpinned she began to speed her own excavation, hauling
herself up out of the debris and locking her arms around Gentle's neck.
He started to stand, pulling her free of the remaining rocks, but as he
did so another commotion began, louder than anything that had preceded
it.  This was not the din of destruction, but a shriek of white fury.
The dust above their heads parted, and Quaisoir appeared, floating
inches from the fissured ceiling.  Jude had seen this transformation
before - ribbons of flesh unfurled from her sister's back and bearing
her up - but Gentle had not.  He gaped at the apparition, distracted
from thoughts of escape.

"She's mine!" Quaisoir yelled, swooping towards them with the same
sightless but unerring accuracy she'd poswssed in more intimate moments,
her arms outstretched, her fingers ready to twist the abductor's head
from his neck.

But Jude was quick.  She stepped in front of Gentle, calling Quaisoir's
name.  The woman's swoop faltered, the hungry hands inches from her
sister's upturned face.

"I don't belong to you!" she yelled back at Quaisoir. . "I don't belong
to anybody!  Hear me?"

Quaisoir threw back her head and loosed a howl of rage at this.  It was
her undoing.  The ceiling shuddered, and abandoned its duty at her din,
collapsing beneath the weight of rubble heaped behind it.  There was,
Jude thought, time for Quaisoir to escape the consequences of her cry.
She'd seen the woman move like lightning at Pale Hill, when she had the
will to do so.  But that will had gone.

Face to the killing dirt, she let the debris rain upon her, inviting it
with her unbroken cry, which didn't become alarm or plea, but remained a
solid howl of fury until the rocks broke and buried her.  it wasn't
quick.  She

went on calling down destruction as Gentle took Jude's hand and hauled
her away from the spot.  He'd lost all sense of direction in the chaos,
and had it not been for the screeching of Concupiscentia in the
passageway beyond they'd never have made it to the door.

But make it they did, emerging with half their senses A

deadened by dust.  Quaisoir's death-cry had ceased by now, but the roar
behind them was louder than ever, and drove them from the door as the
canker spread across the roof of the corridor.  They out-ran it,
however, Concupiscentia giving up her keening when she knew her

J

mistress was lost and overtaking them, fleeing to some

sanctuary where she could raise a song of lamentation.

Jude and Gentle ran until they were out from under any stone, roof, arch
or vault that might collapse upon them,

into a courtyard full of bees feasting on bushes that had chosen that
day, of all days, to blossom.  Only then did they

put their arms around each other again, each sobbing for their own
griefs and gratitudes, while the ground shook

under them to the din of the demolition they'd escaped.

in fact the ground didn't stop reverberating until they were well
outside the walls of the palace, and wandering in the

ruins of Yzord- derrex.  At Jude's suggestion they made their way back
at all speed to Peccable's house where, she

explained to Gentle, there was a well-used route between this Dominion
and the Fifth.

He put up no resistance to this.

Though he hadn't exhausted Sartori's hiding places by any means (could
he ever, when the palace was so vast?) he

had exhausted his limbs, his wits and his will.  If his other was still
here in Yzordderrex, then he posed very little

threat.  it was the Fifth that needed to be defended against him.  The
Fifth, that had forgotten magic, and could so

easily be his victim.

Though the streets of many Kesparates were little more than bloody
valleys between rubble mountains, there were sufficient landmarks for
Jude to trace her way back towards the district where Peccable's house
had stood.  There was no certainty, of course, that it would still be
standing after a day and night of cataclysm, but if they had to dig to
reach the cellar, so be it.

They were silent for the first mile or so of the trek, but then they
began to talk, beginning inevitably - with an explanation from Gentle as
to why Quaisoir, hearing his voice, had taken him for her husband.  He
prefaced his account with the caveat that he wouldn't mire it in apology
or justification, but would tell it simply, like some grim fable.  Then
he went on to do precisely that.  But the telling, for all its clarity,
contained one significant distortion.  when he described his encounter
with the Autarch he drew in Jude's mind the portrait of a man to whom he
bore only a rudimentary resemblance; a man so steeped in evil that his
flesh had been corrupted by his crimes.  She didn't question this
description.  She pictured an individual whose inhumanity seeped from
every pore; a monster whose very presence would have induced nausea.

Once he'd unravelled the story of his own doubling, she began to supply
details of her own.  Some were culled from dreams, some from clues she'd
had from Quaisoir; yet others from Oscar Godolphin.  His entrance into
the account brought with it a fresh cycle of revelations.

She started to tell Gentle about her romance with Oscar, which in turn
led on to the subject of Dowd, living and dying; thence to Clara Leash,
and the Tabula Rasa.

"They're going to make it very dangerous for you back in London," she
told him, having related what little she knew about the purges they'd
undertaken in the name of Roxborough's edicts.. "They won't have the
slightest compunction about murdering you, once they know who you are."

"Let them try," Gentle said flatly.. "Whatever they want

to throw at me, I'm ready.  I've got work to do, and they're not going
to stop me."

"Where will you start?"

"In Clerkenwell.  I had a house in Gamut Street.  Pie says it's still
standing.  My life's there, ready for the remembering.

We both need the past back, Jude.. "Where do I get mine from?" she
wondered aloud.

"From me, and from Godolphin.. "Thanks for the offer, but I'd like a
less partial source.

I've lost Clara, and now Quaisoir.  I'll have to start looking."

She thought of Celestine as she spoke, lying in darkness beneath the
Tabula Rasa's Tower.

"Have you got somebody in mind?" Gentle asked.

"Maybe," she said, as reluctant as ever to share that secret.

He caught the whiff of evasion.

"I'm going to need help, Jude," he said.. "I hope whatever's been
between us in the past good and bad - we can find some way to work
together that'll benefit us both."

A welcome sentiment, but not one she was willing to open her heart for.
She simply said. "Let's hope so," and In

left it at that.       

He didn't press the issue, but turned the conversation to lighter
matters.

"What was the dream you had?" he asked her.  She looked confounded for a
moment.. "You said you had a dream about me, remember?"

"Oh yes," she replied.. "It was nothing really.  Past history."

When they reached Peccable's house it was still intact,

jE

though several others in the street had been reduced to blackened rubble
by missiles or arsonists.  The door stood open, and the interior had
been comprehensively looted, down to the tulips and the vase on the
dining-room table.  There was no sign of bloodshed, however, except
those

cabby stains Dowd had left when he'd first arrived, so s she presumed
that Hoi-Polloi and her father had escaped unharmed.  The signs of
frantic thieving did not extend to the cellar, however.  Here, though
the shelves had been cleared of the icons, talismans and idols, the
removal had been made calmly and systematically.  There was not a rosary
remaining, nor any sign that the thieves had broken a single charm.  The
only relic of the cellar's life

in as a trove was set in the floor: the ring of stones that echoed that
of the Retreat.

"This is where we arrived," Jude said.

Gentle stared down at the design in the floor.. "What is it?" he said.
"What does it mean?. "I don't know.  Does it matter?  As long as it gets
us back to the Fifth .  .

We've got to be careful from now on," Gentle replied.. "Everything's
connected.  it's all one system.  Until we understand our place in the
pecking order, we're vulnerable." one system; she'd speculated on that
possibility in the room beneath the Tower: the Imajica as a single,
infi- K: nitely elaborate pattern of transformation.  But just as there
were times for such musings, so there were also times for action, and
she had no patience with Gentle's anxieties now.

"If you know another way out of here," she said, 'let's take it.  But
this is the only way I know.  Godolphin used it for years and it never
harmed him, till Dowd screwed it up."

Gentle had gone down on his haunches, and was laying his fingers on the
stones that bounded the mosaic.. "Circles are so powerful .  .  ." he
said.

Are we going to use it or not?"

He shrugged. "I don't have a better way," he said, still reluctant "Do
we just step inside?. "That's all."

He rose.  She laid her hand on his shoulder, and he reached up to clasp
it.

705     kL

"We have to hold tight," she said.. "I only got a glimpse of the in Ovo,
but I wouldn't want to get lost there.. "We won't get lost," he said,
and stepped into the circle.

She was with him a heart-beat later, and already the Express was getting
up steam.  The solid cellar walls and empty shelves began to blur.  The
forms of their translated

L

selves began to move in their flesh.

The sensation of passage awoke in Gentle memories of the outward
journey, when Pie'oh'pah had stood beside him as Jude was now.

Remembering, he felt a stab of inconsolable loss.  There were so many
people he'd encountered in these Dominions whom he'd never set eyes on
again.  Some, like Efreet Splendid and his mother, or Nikaetomaas, or
Huzzah, because they were dead.  Others, like Athanasius, because the
crimes Sartori had committed were his crimes now, and whatever good he
hoped to do in the future would never be enough to expunge them.  The
hurt of these losses was of course negligible beside the greater grief
he'd sustained at the Erasure, but he'd not dared dwell too much upon
that, for fear it would incapacitate him.  Now, however, he thought of
it, and the tears started to flow, washing the last glimpse of
Peccable's cellar away before the mosaic had removed the travellers from
it.

Paradoxically, had he been leaving alone the despair might not have cut
so deep.  But as Pie had been fond of saying, there was only ever room
for three players in any drama, and the woman in the flux beside him,
her glyph burning through his tears, would from this moment on remind
him that he had departed Yzordderrex with one of those three left
behind.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREI

One hundred and fifty-seven days after beginning his journey across the
Reconciled Dominions, Gentle once again set foot on the soil of England.
Though it wasn't yet the middle of June, spring had arrived prematurely,
and the season on its heels was at its height.  Flowers not due to
blossom for another month were already blowsy and heavy-headed with
seeds; bird and insect life abounded, as species that normally appeared
months apart flourished simultaneously.  This summer's dawns were
announced not with choruses but with full-throated choirs; by midday the
skies from coast to coast were cloudy with feeding millions, the wheels
slowing through the afternoon, until by dusk the din had become a music
(sated and survivors alike giving thanks for the day) so rich it lulled
even the crazy into remedial sleep.  if a Reconciliation could indeed be
planned and achieved in the little time before midsummer, then it would
be a burgeoning country that the rest of the Imajica would greet: an
England of bountiful harvests, spread beneath a melodious heaven.

It was full of music now, as Gentle wandered from the Retreat out across
the dappled grass to the perimeter of the copse.  The parkland was
familiar to him, though its lovingly tended arbours were jungles now,
and its lawns were veldt.

"This is Joshua's place, isn't it?" he said to Jude.. "Which way's the
house?"

She pointed across a wilderness of gilded grass.  The roof of the
mansion was barely visible above the surf of fronds and butterflies.

"F

"The very first time I saw you was in that house," he told her.. "I
remember ...  Joshua called you down the stairs he had a pet name you
despised.  Peachblossom, was it?  Something like that.  As soon as I set
eyes on you

"It wasn't me," Jude said, halting this romantic reverie.

A

"It was Quaisoir."

"Whatever she was then, you are now."

"I doubt that.  It was a long time ago, Gentle.  The house is in ruins,
and there's only one Godolphin left.  History isn't going to repeat
itself.  I don't want it to.  I don't want to be anybody's object."

He acknowledged the warning in these words with an almost formal
statement of intent.

"Whatever I did that caused you or anybody else harm," he said. "I want
to make good.

Whether I did it because I was in love, or because I was a Maestro and I
thought I was above common decency ...  I'm here to heal the hurt.  I
want Reconciliation, Jude.  Between us.  Between the Dominions.  Between
the living and the dead if I can do it.,

"That's a hell of an ambition."

"The way I see it, I've been given a second chance.  Most people don't
get that."

His plain sincerity mellowed her.. "Do you want to wander to the house,
for old times' sake?" she asked him.

"Not unless you do."

"No thanks.  I had my little fit of dija-vu when I convinced Charlie to
bring me here." Gentle had of course told her about his encounter with
Estabrook in the Dearthers' tents, and about the man's subsequent
demise.  She'd been unmoved.. "He was a difficult old bugger, you know,"
she now remarked.. "I must have known in my gut he was a Godolphin, or
I'd never have put up with his damn fool games."

"I think he was changed by the end," Gentle said.

"Maybe you'd have liked him a little more."

"You've changed too," she said, as they started to wander towards the
gate.. "People are going to be asking a lot of questions, Gentle.  Like:
Where you've been, and what you've been doing."

"Why does anybody even have to know I'm back?" he said.. "I never meant
that much to any of them, except Taylor, and he's gone.. "Clem, too."
"Maybe."

"It's your choice," she said.. "But when you've got so many enemies, you
may need some of your friends.. "I'd prefer to stay invisible," he told
her.. "That way nobody sees me, enemies or friends."

As the bounding wall came in sight the skies changed with almost eerie
haste, the few fluffy clouds that had been drifting in the blue minutes
before congregating into a louring bank that first shed a light drizzle
and a minute later was bursting like a dam.  The downpour had its

Fiat," advantages, however, sluicing from their clothes, hair and skin
all trace of Yzordderrexian dust.  By the time they'd clambered through
the mesh of timbers and convolvulus around the gate and trudged along
the muddied road to the village there to take shelter in the post office
they could have passed for two tourists (one with a somewhat bizarre
taste in hiking clothes) who'd strayed too far from the beaten track,
and needed help to find their way home.

Though neither of them had any valid currency in tliuir pockets Jude was
quick to persuade one of two lads who called into the post office to
drive them back into London, promising them a healthy fee at the other
end if he did so.  The storm worsened as they travelled, but Gentle
rolled down the window in the back and stared at the passing panorama of
an England he hadn't seen for half a year content to let the rain soak
him all over again.

Jude was meanwhile left to endure a monologue from their driver.  He had
a mutinous palate, which rendered every third word virtually
unintelligible, but the gist of his chatter was plain enough.  It was
the opinion of every weather-watcher he knew, he said, and these were
folk who lived by the land, and had ways of predicting floods and
droughts no fancy-talking meteorologist ever had, that the country was
in for a disastrous summer.

"We'll either be cooked or drowned," he said, prophesying months of
monsoons and heat-waves.

She'd heard talk like this before, of course; the weather was an English
obsession.  But having come from the ruins of Yzordderrex, with the
burning eye of the Comet overhead, and the air stinking of death, the
youth's casually apocalyptic chatter disturbed her.  it was as if he was
willing some cataclysm to overtake his little world, not comprehending
for a moment what that implied.

When he grew bored with predicting ruination, he started to ask her
questions about where she and her friend had been coming from or going
to when the storm had caught them.  She saw no reason not to tell him
they'd been at the Estate, so she did so.  Her reply earned her what
studied disinterest had failed to achieve for three-quarters of an hour:
his silence.

He gave her a baleful look in the mirror, and then turned on the radio,
proving, if nothing else, that the shadow of the Godolphin family was
sufficient to hush even a doom-sayer.  They travelled to the outskirts
of London without further exchange, the youth only breaking the silence
when he needed directions.

"Do you want to be dropped at the studio?" she asked Gentle.

He was slow to answer, but when he did it was to reply that yes, that's
where he wanted to go.  Jude furnished instructions to the driver, and
then turned her gaze back towards Gentle.  He was still staring out of
the window, rain speckling his brow and cheeks like sweat, drops hanging
off his nose, chin and eyelashes.

The smallest of

smiles curled the corners of his mouth.  Catching him unawares like
this, she almost regretted her dismissal of his overtures at the Estate.
This face, for all that the mind behind it had done, was the face that
had appeared to her while she slept in Quaisoir's bed; the dream-lover
whose imagined caresses had brought from her cries so loud her sister
had heard them two rooms away.  Certainly, they could never again be the
lovers who'd courted in the great house two centuries before.  But their
shared history marked them in ways they had yet to discover, and perhaps
when those discoveries were all made they'd find a way to put into flesh
the deeds she dreamed in Quaisoir's bed.

The rainstorm had preceded them to the city, unleashed its torrent, and
moved off, so that by the time they reached the outskirts there was
sufficient blue sky overhead to promise a warm, if glistening, evening.

The traffic was still dogged, however, and the last three miles of the
journey took almost as long as the previous thirty.

By the time they reached Gentle's studio their driver, used to the quiet
roads around the Estate, was out of sympathy with the whole endeavour,
and had several times broken his silence to curse the traffic and warn
his passengers that he was going to require very considerable recompense
for his troubles.

Jude got out of the car along with Gentle, and on the studio step - out
of the driver's earshot - asked him if he had sufficient money inside to
pay the man.  She was better off taking a taxi from here, she said,
rather than enduring his company any longer.  Gentle replied that if
there was any cash in the studio, it certainly wouldn't be sufficient.

It looks like I'm stuck with him then, "Jude said.. "Never mind.  Do you
want me to come up with you?  Have you got a key?"

"There'll be somebody in downstairs," he replied.

"They've got a spare."

"Then I suppose this is it." It was so bathe tic parting

like this after all that had gone before.. "I'll ring you when we've
both slept.. "The phone's probably been cut off.. "Then you ring me from
a box, huh?  I won't be at Oscar's, I'll be at home." The conversation
might have guttered out there, but for his reply.

"Don't stay away from him on my account," he said.

"What do you mean by that?. "Just that you've got your love affairs.  .

"And what?  You've got yours?"

"Not exactly."

"What then?"

"I mean, not exactly love affairs." He shook his head.

"Never mind.  We'll talk about it some other time."

' ;

"No," Jude told him, taking his arm as he tried to turn A- - !

from her.. "We'll talk about it now."

Gentle sighed wearily.. "Look, it doesn't matter," he said.

"If it doesn't matter, just tell me."   A

He hesitated for several seconds.  Then he said. "I got

married."

"Did you indeed?" she said, with feigned lightness.. "And

who's the lucky girl?  Not the kid you were talking about?"

"Huzzah?  Good God, no."

He paused for a tiny time, frowning deeply.

"Go on," she said.. "Spit it out."

"I married Pie'oh'pah."

Her first impulse was to laugh - the thought was absurd

but before the sound escaped her she caught the frown

on his face and revulsion overtook laughter.  This was no

joke.  He'd married the assassin; the sexless thing who

was a function of its lover's every desire.  And why was

she so stunned?  When Oscar had described the species to

her hadn't she herself remarked that it was Gentle's idea

of paradise?

"That's some secret," she said.

"I would have told you about it sooner or later."

Now she allowed herself a little laughter, soft and sour.

J

he said.

"Back there you almost had me believing there was something between us."

"That's because there was," he replied.. "Because there always will be."

"Why should that matter to you now?"

"I have to hold on to a little of what I was.  What I dreamed.. "And
what did you dream?"

"That the three of us .  .  ." He stopped, sighing.  Then: ...  That the
three of us would find some way to be together." He wasn't looking at
her, but at the empty round between them, where he'd clearly wanted his
9 beloved mystif to stand.. "It would have learned to love you -' he
said.

"I don't want to hear this," she snapped.

.

"It would have been anything you desired.  Anything.. "Stop," she told
him.. "Just stop.,

He shrugged.. "It's all right," he said.. "Pie's dead.  And we're going
our different ways.  It was just some stupid dream I had.  I thought
you'd want to know it, that's all.. "I don't want anything from you,"
she replied coldly.. "You can keep your lunacies to yourself from now
on!'

She'd long since let go of his ann, leaving him to retreat up the steps.
But he didn't go.  He simply stood watchin 9 her, squinting like a
drunkard trying to hook one thought to another.  It was she who
retreated, shaking her head as she turned her back on him and crossed
the puddled pavement to the car.  Once in, the door slammed, she told
the driver to get going, and the car sped from the kerb.

On the step Gentle watched the corner where the car turned long after
the vehicle had gone from sight, as though some words of peace might yet
come to his lips, and be carried from them to call her back.  But he was
out of persuasions.

Though he'd returned to his place as a Reconciler, he knew he'd here
opened a wound he lacked the gift to heal, at least until he'd slept and
recovered his faculties.

F

Forty-five minutes after she'd left Gentle on his doorstep Jude was
throwing open the windows of her flat to let in the late afternoon sun,
and some fresh air.  The journey from the studio had passed with her
scarcely being aware of the fact, so stunned had she been by Gentle's
revelation.  Married!  The thought was absurd, except that she couldn't
find it in herself to be amused.  Though it was now many weeks since
she'd occupied the flat (all but the hardiest of her plants had died
from loneliness, and she'd forgotten how the percolator and the locks on
the windows worked) it was still a place she felt at home in, and by the
time she'd downed a couple of cups of coffee, showered, and changed into
some clean clothes, the Dominion from which she'd stepped only hours
before was receding.  In the presence of so many familiar sights and
smells the strangeness of Yzordderrex wasn't its strength but its
frailty.

Without invitation her mind had already drawn a line between the place
she'd left and the one which she was now in, as solid as the division
between a thing dreamt and a thing lived.

No wonder -it Oscar had made a ritual of going up to his treasure room,
she thought, and communing with his collection.  It was a way of holding
on to a perception that was under constant siege by the commonplace.

With several jolts of coffee buzzing around her bloodstream the fatigue
she'd felt on the journey back into the city had disappeared, so she
decided to use the evening to visit Oscar's house.  She'd called him
several times since she'd got back, but the fact that nobody had
answered was not, she knew, proof of his absence or demise.  He'd seldom
picked up the telephone in the house - that duty had fallen to Dowd -
and more than once he'd stated his abhorrence of the machines.  In
paradise, he'd once said, the common blessed use telegrams and the
Saints have talking doves; all the telephones are down below.  She left
the flat at seven or so, caught a cab, and went to

Regent's Park Road.  She found the house securely locked, without so
much as a window standing ajar, which on such a clement evening surely
meant there was nobody home.  Just to be sure, she went round to the
rear of the house, and peered in.  At the sight of her, the three
parrots Oscar kept in the back room rose from their perches in alarm.
Nor did they settle, but squawked on in panic as she cupped her hands
over her brow and peered in to see if their seed and water bowls were
full.  Though their perches were too far from the window for her to see,
their level of agitation was enough to make her fear the worst.  Oscar,
she suspected, hadn't soothed their feathers in a long time.

So where was he?  Back at the Estate, lying dead in the long grass?  If
so, it would be folly to go back there now and look for him, with
darkness an hour away at most.  Besides, when she thought back to her
last glimpse of him, she was reasonably certain she'd seen

him rising to his feet, framed against the door.  He was robust, despite
his excesses.  She couldn't believe he was dead.  In hiding, more like;
concealing himself from the Tabula Rasa.  With that thought in mind she
returned to the front door and scribbled an anonymous note, telling him
she was alive and well, and slipping it through the letter-box.  He'd
know who'd penned it.  Who else would write that the Express had brought
her home, safe and sound?

A little after ten thirty she was preparing for bed when she heard
somebody calling her name from the street.  She went to the balcony, and
looked out to see Clem standing on the pavement below, hollering for all
he was worth.

It was many months since they'd spoken, and her pleasure at the sight of
him was tinged with guilt at her neglect.  But from the relief in his
voice at her appearance, and the fervour of his hug, she knew he hadn't
come to squeeze apologies out of her.  He needed to tell her something
extraordinary, he said, but before he did (she'd think he was crazy, he
warned) he needed a drink.

Could she get him a brandy?  She could, and did.  He fairly guzzled it,
then said. "Where's Gentle?"

The question, and his demanding tone, caught her off guard, and she
floundered.  Gentle wanted to be invisible, and furious as she was with
him, she felt obliged to respect that wish.  But Clem needed to know
badly.

"He's been away, hasn't he?  Klein told me he tried calling, but the
phone was cut off.  Then he wrote Gentle a letter, and it was never
answere. "Yes," Jude said.. "I believe he's been away.. "But he just
came back."

"Did he?" she replied, more puzzled by the moment.. "Maybe you know
better than I do."

"Not me," he said, pouring himself another brandy.. "Taylor."

"Taylor?  What are you talking about?"

Clem downed the liquor.. "You're going to say I in crazy, but hear me
out, will you?"

"I'm listening."

"I haven't been sentimental about losing him.  I haven't sat at home
reading his love-letters and listening to the songs we danced to.  I've
tried to get out, and be useful' for a change.  But I have left his room
the way it was.  I couldn't bring myself to go through his clothes or
even strip the bed.  I kept putting it off.  And the more I didn't do
it, the more impossible it seemed to be.  Then tonight, J I came in just
after eight, and I heard somebody talking." Every particle of Clem's
body but his lips was still as he spoke, transfixed by the memory.. "I
thought I'd left the radio on, but no, no, I realized it was coming from
upstairs, from his bedroom.  It was him, Judy, talking clear as day,
calling me up the way he used to.  I was so afraid I almost fled.
Stupid, isn't it?  There was me, praying and praying for some sign he
was in God's hands and as soon as it came I practically shit myself.  I
tell you, I was half an hour on the stairs, hoping he'd stop calling me.
And sometimes he did for a while, and I'd half convince myself

I'd imagined it.  Then he'd start again.  Nothing melodramatic.  Just
him trying to persuade me not to be afraid and come up and say hello. So
eventually, that's what I did." His eyes were filling with tears, but
there was no grief in his voice.. "He liked that room in the evening.
The sun fills it up.  That's what it was like tonight; full of sun.  And
he was there, in the light.

I couldn't see him but I knew he was next to me because he said so.  He
told me I looked well.  Then he said: "It's a glad day, Clem.  Gentle
came

e

vi

l,

back, and he's got the answers.". "What answers?" Jude said.

"That's what I asked him.  I said: What answers, Tay?  P, But you know
Tay when he's happy.  He gets delirious, like a child." Clem spoke with
a smile, his gaze on sights remembered from better days.. "He was so
full of the fact that Gentle was back, I couldn't get much more from
him." Clem looked up at Jude.. "The light was going," he said.. "And I
think he wanted to go with it.  He said that it was our duty, to help
Gentle.

That was why he was showing himself to me this way.  It wasn't easy, he
said.  But then neither was being a guardian angel.

And I said: why only one?  One angel when there's two of us?  And he
said: because we are one, Clem, you and I.  We always were and we always
will be.  Those were his exact words, I swear.  Then he went away.  And
you know what I kept thinking?"

"What?"

"That I wished I hadn't waited on the stairs, and wasted all that time I
could have had with him." Clem set down his glass, pulled a tissue from
his pocket and blew his nose.. "That's all," he said.

"I think that's plenty."

"I know what you're thinking," he said with a little laugh.. "You're
thinking, poor Clem.  He couldn't grieve so he's having hallucinations."

"No' she said, very softly.. "I'm thinking: Gentle doesn't know how
lucky he is, having angels like you two.. "Don't humour me."

V

I

"I'm not," she said.. "I believe everything you've just told me
happened.. "You do?. "Yes." Again, a laugh. "Why?. "Because Gentle came
home tonight, Clem, and I was the only one who knew it."

_T He left ten minutes later, apparently content to know that even if he
was crazy there was another lunatic in his circle he could turn to when
he wanted to share his insanities.  Jude told him as much as she felt
able at this juncture, which was very little, but she promised to
contact Gentle on Clem's behalf and tell him about Taylor's visitation.
Clem wasn't so grateful that he was blinded to her discretion.

"You know a lot more than you're telling me, don't you?" he said.

"Yes," she said.. "But maybe in a little while I'll be able to tell you
more."

"Is Gentle in danger?" Clem asked.. "Can you tell me that at least?"

"We all are," she said.. "You.  Me.  Gentle.  Taylor.. "Taylor's dead,"
Clem said.. "He's in the light.  Nothing can hurt him."

"I hope you're right," she said grimly.. "But please, Clem, if he finds
you again

"He will."

-Then when he does, tell him nobody's safe.  Just because Gentle's back
in the - back home - doesn't mean the troubles are over.  In fact
they're just beginning.. "Tay says something sublime's going to happen.
That's his word.

Sublime."

"And maybe it will.  But there's a lot of room for error.

And if anything goes wrong

She halted, her head filled with memories of the In Ovo, and the ruins
of Yzordderrex.

"Well, whenever you feel you can tell me," Clem said,

'we'll be ready to hear.  Both of us." He glanced at his watch.. "I
should be out of here.  I'm late."

"Party?"

"No, I'm working with a hospice for the homeless.  We're out most
nights, trying to get kids off the streets.  The city's full of them."

She took him to the door, but before he stepped out he said:

"You remember our pagan party at Christmas?" She grinned.. "Of course.
That was quite a shindig.. "Tay got stinking drunk after everybody had
gone.  He knew he wasn't going to be seeing most of them again.

Then of course he got sick in the middle of the night, so we stayed up
together talking about, oh I don't know, everything under the sun.  And
he told me how much he'd always loved Gentle.  How Gentle was the
mystery man in his life.

He'd been dreaming about him, he said: speaking in tongues."

"He told me the same thing," Jude said.

"Then, out of the blue, he said that next year I should have the
Nativity back, and go to Midnight Mass the way we used to, and I told
him I thought we'd decided none of that made much sense.  And you know
what he said to me?  He said light is light, whatever name you call it,
and it was better to think of it coming in a face you knew.

Clem smiled.. "I thought he was talking about Christ.  But now ...  now
I'm not so sure."

She hugged him hard, pressing her lips against his flushed cheeks.
Though she suspected that there was truth in what he said, she couldn't
bring herself to voice the possibility.  Not while knowing that the same
face Tay had imagined as that of the returning sun was also the face of
the darkness that might soon eclipse them all.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Though the bed Gentle had collapsed into the night before had been
stale, and the pillow beneath his head damp, he couldn't have slept more
soundly had he been rocked in the arms of Mother Earth Herself.  When he
woke, fifteen hours later, it was to a fine June morning, and the
dreamless time behind him had put new strength into his sinews.  There
was no gas, electricity, or hot water, so he was obliged to shower and
shave in cold water, which was respectively a bracing and bloody
experience.  That done, he took some time to assess the state of the
studio.  It had not remained entirely untouched in his absence.  At some
juncture either an old he'd girlfriend or a very particular thief had
come in left two of the windows open, so gaining access had presented no
difficulty - and the interloper had stolen both clothes and more private
bric-A-brac.  It was such a long time since he'd been here, however,
that he couldn't remember precisely what was missing.  Some letters and
postcards from the mantelpiece; a few photographs (though he'd not liked
to be recorded this way, for what were now obvious reasons); and a few
items of jewellery (a gold chain; two rings; a crucifix).  The theft
didn't much bother him.  He'd never been a sentimentalist, or a hoarder.
Objects were like glossy magazines; fetching for a day, then readily
discarded.

There were other, more disgusting, signs of his absence in the bathroom,
where clothes he'd left to dry before his departure had grown green fur,
and in the refrigerator, the shelves of which were scattered with what
looked like pupating zarzi, stinking of putrefaction.  Before he

could really begin to clean up he had to have some power in the house,
and to get it would require some politicking.  He'd had the gas,
telephone and electricity cut off in the past, when, in the lean times
between forgeries and sugar mamas, he'd ran out of funds.  But he had
the patter to get them turned back on again well honed, and that had to
be the priority of the hour.

He dressed in the freshest of his clothes and went downstairs to present
himself to the venerable but dotty Mrs Erskine, who occupied the
ground-floor flat.  It was she who'd let him in the day before,
remarking with her characteristic candour that he looked as though he'd
been kicked half to death, to which he'd replied that he felt the same
way.  She didn't question his absence, which was not surprising given
that his occupation of the studio had always been sporadic, but she did
ask him if he was going to be staying awhile this time.  He said he
thought so, and she replied that she was pleased at this, because during
these summer days people always got crazy, and since Mr Erskine's death
she was sometimes frightened.  She made tea while he availed himself of
her telephone, calling around the services he'd lost.  It turned out to
be a frustrating business.

He'd lost the knack of charming the women he spoke to into some action
on his behalf.

instead of an exchange of flatteries he was served a chilly salad of
officiousness and condescension.  He had unpaid bills, he was told, and
his supplies would not be reconnected until payment was forthcoming.  He
ate some toast Mrs Erskine had made, drank several cups of tea, then
went down into the basement and left a note for the caretaker that he
was now back in residence and could he please have his hot-water supply
turned on again.

That done, he ascended to the studio again and bolted the door behind
him.  One conversation for the day was enough, he'd decided.  He drew
the blinds at the windows, and lit two candles.  They smoked as their
dusty wicks first burned, but their light was kinder than the glare of
the day, and by it, he started to go through the snow-drift

of mail that had gathered behind the door.  There were bills in
abundance of course, printed in increasingly irate colours; plus the
inevitable junk-mail.  There were very few personal letters, but amongst
them were two that gave him pause.  Both were from Vanessa, whose advice
that he should slit his lying throat had found such a distressing echo
in Athanasius's exhortation at the Erasure.  Now she wrote that she
missed him, and a day didn't go by without her thinking of him.  The
second missive was even more direct.  She wanted him back in her life.
If he wanted to play around with other women she would learn to
accommodate that.  Would he not at least make contact with her?  Life
was too short to bear grudges, on either side.

He was buoyed up somewhat by her appeals, and even more so by a letter
from Klein, scrawled in red ink on pink paper.

Chester's faintly camp tones rose from the page as Gentle scanned it.

Dear Bastard Boy, Klein had written, Whose heart are you breaking, and
where?  Scores of forlorn women are presently weeping on my lap, begging
me to forgive you your trespasses, and invite you back into the bosom of
the family.  Amongst them, the delectable Vanessa.  For God's sake come
home, and save me from seducing her.

My groin is wet for you.

So Vanessa had gone to Klein; desperation indeed.  Though she'd met
Chester only once that Gentle could recall, she'd subsequently professed
to loathing him.  Gentle kept all three letters, though he had no
intention of acting upon their appeals.  There was only one reunion he
was eager for, and that was with the house in Clerkenwell.  He couldn't
face the idea of venturing out in the daylight, however.  The streets
would be too bright and too busy.

He'd wait until dark, when he could move across the city as the
invisible he aspired to be.  He set a match to the rest of the letters,
and watched them burn.  Then he went back to bed, and slept through the
afternoon in preparation for the I business of the night.

He waited until the first stars appeared in a sky of elegiac blue before
he raised the blinds.

The street outside was quiet, but given that he lacked the cash for a
cab he knew he'd have to brush shoulders with a lot of people before he
reached Clerkenwell.  On a fine evening like this, the Edgware Road
would be busy, and there'd be crowds on the Underground.

His best hope of reaching his destination un scrutinized was to dress as
blandly as possible, and he took some time hunting through his depleted
wardrobe for those clothes that would render him most invisible.  Once
dressed, he walked down to Marble Arch, and boarded the Underground.  it
was only five stations to Chancery Lane, which would put him on the
borders of Clerkenwell, but after two he had to get off, gasping and
sweating like a claustrophobic.  Cursing this new weakness in himself,
he sat in the station for half an hour while more trains passed through,
unable to bring himself to board.

What an irony!  Here he Was, a sometime wanderer in the wilds of the
Imajica, incapable of travelling a couple of miles by Tube without
panicking.  He waited until his shaking subsided, and a less crowded
train came along.  Then he reboarded, sitting close to the door with his
head in his hands until the journey was over.

By the time he emerged at Chancery Lane the sky had darkened, and he
stood for several minutes on High Holbom, his head thrown back, soaking
up the sky.  Only when the tremors had left his legs did he head up
Gray's Inn Road towards the environs of Gamut Street.  Almost all of the
property on the main thoroughfares had long since been turned to
commercial use, but there was a network of streets and squares behind
the barricade of darkened office buildings which, protected perhaps by
the patronage of notoriety, had been left untouched by the developers.

Many of these streets were narrow and mazy, their lamps unlit, their
signs missing, as though blind eyes had been turned to them over the
generations.

X

But he didn't need signs and lamps; his feet had trodden these ways
countless times.  Here was Shiverick Square, with its little park all
overgrown, and Flaxen Street and Almoth, and Sterne.  And in their
midst, cocooned by

anonymity, his destination.

He saw the corner of Gamut Street twenty yards ahead, and slowed his
pace to take pleasure in the moment of reunion.

There were innumerable memories awaiting him there, the mystif amongst
them.  But not all would be so sweet; nor so welcome.  He would have to
ingest them carefully, like a diner with a delicate stomach coming to a
lavish table.  Moderation was the way.  As soon as he felt a surfeit,
he'd retreat, and return to the studio to digest what he'd learned; let
it strengthen him.  only then would he return for a second helping.  The
process would take time, he knew, and time was of the essence.

But so was his sanity.  What use would he be as a Reconciler if he
choked on the past?

With his heart thumping hard, he came to the corner, and turning it,
finally laid his eyes upon the sacred street.  Perhaps, during his years
of forgetfulness, he'd wandered through those backwaters all unknowing,
and seen the sight before him now.  But he doubted it.  More likely, his
eyes were seeing Gamut Street for the first time in two centuries.  It
had changed scarcely at all, preserved from the city planners and their
hammer-wielding hordes by the fe its whose makers were still rumoured
here.  The trees planted along the pavement were weighed down with
unkempt foliage, but their sap's tang was sharp, the air protected from
the fumes of Holbom and Gray's Inn Road by the warren of thoroughfares
between.  Was it Just 4his fancy, or was the tree outside number
twenty-eight particularly lush, fed, perhaps by a seepage of magics from
the step of the Maestro's house?

He began towards them, tree and step, the memories already returning in
force.  He heard the children singing behind him, the song that had so
tormented him when the Autarch had told him who he was.  Sartori, he'd
said,

and this charm less ditty, sung by piping voices, had come in pursuit of
the name.  He'd loathed it then.  Its melody was banal; its words were
nonsense.  But now he remembered how he'd first heard it, walking along
this very pavement with the children in procession on the opposite
shore, and how flattered he'd been that he was famous enough to have
reached the lips of children who would never read or write, nor, most
probably, reach the age of puberty.

All of London knew who he was, and he liked his fame.  He was talked
about at court, Roxborough said, and should soon expect an invitation.

People who'd not so much touched his sleeve were claiming intimate
association.

But there were still those, thank God, who kept an exquisite distance,
and one such soul had lived, he remembered, in the house opposite: a
nymph called Allegra who liked to sit at her dressing-table near the
window with her bodice half unlaced, knowing she had an admirer in the
Maestro across the street.  She'd had a little curly-haired dog, and
sometimes in the evening he'd hear the piping voice summon the lucky
hound on to her lap, where she'd let it snuggle.  One afternoon, a few
paces from where he stood now, he'd met the girl out walking with her
mother, and had made much of the dog, suffering its little tongue on his
mouth for the smell of her sex in its fur.  What had become of that
child?  Had she died a virgin, or grown old and fat wondering about the
man who'd been her most ardent admirer?

He glanced up at the window where Allegra had sat.  No light burned in
it now.  The house, like almost all the buildings, was dark.  Sighing,
he turned his gaze towards number twenty-eight and, crossing the street,
went to the door.  It was locked, of course, but one of the lower
windows had been broken at some point and never repaired.  He reached
through the smashed pane, and unlocked it, then slid the window up and
himself inside.  Slowly, he reminded himself; go slowly.

Keep the flow under control.

it was dark, but he'd come prepared for that eventuality, with candle
and matches.  The flame guttered at first, and the room rocked at its
indecision, but by degrees it strengthened, and he felt a sensation he'd
not expected swelling like the light: pride.  In its time this, his
house, had been a place of great souls and great ambition, where all
commonplace debate had been banned.  If you wanted to talk politics or
little-tattle you went to the Coffee Ho use; if you wanted commerce, to
the Exchange.  Here, only miracles.  Here, only the rising of the
spirit.  And yes, love, if it was pertinent (which it was, so often),
and sometimes blood-letting.  But never the prosaic, never the trivial.
Here the man who brought the strangest tale was the most welcome.  Here
every excess was celebrated if it brought visions, and every vision
analysed for the hints it held to the nature of the Everlasting.

He lifted the candle, and, holding it high, began to walk through the
house.  The rooms there were many - were badly delapidated, the boards
creaking under his feet, weakened by rot and worm, the walls mapping
continents of damp.  But the present didn't insist upon him for long. By
the time he reached the bottom of the stairs memory was lighting candles
everywhere, their luminescence spilling through the dining-room door,
and from the rooms above.  It was a generous light, clothing naked
walls, putting lush carpets underfoot and setting fine furniture on
their pile.

Though the debaters here might have aspired to pure spirit, they were
not averse to comforting the flesh while still cursed with it.  Who
would have guessed, seeing the modest faade of the house from the
street, that the interior would be so finely furnished and ornamented?
And, seeing these glories appear, he heard the voices of those who'd
wallowed in that luxury.

Laughter first; the vociferous argument from somebody at the top of the
stairs.  He couldn't see the debaters yet - perhaps his mind, which he'd
instructed in caution, was holding the flood back - but he could put
names to both of them, sight unseen.  One was Horace Tyrwhitt, the

other Isaac Abelove.  And the laughter?  That was Joshua A Godolphin, of
course.  He had a laugh like the Devil's, full

and throaty.

"Come on then Gentle said aloud to the memories.

"I'm ready to see your faces."

And as he spoke, they came.  Tyrwhitt on the stairs, overdressed and
over powdered as ever, keeping his distance from Abelove in case the
magpie his pursuer was nursing flew free.

"It's bad hick Tyrwhitt was protesting.. "Birds in the house are bad
luckl'

"Luck's for fishermen and gamblers," Abelove replied.    . "One of these
days you'll turn

a phrase worth remern- bering," Tyrwhitt replied.. "Just get the thing
out before I wring its

neck." He turned towards Gentle.. "Tell him, Sartori."

Gentle was shocked to see the memory's eyes fixed so acutely upon him.

"It does no harm," Gentle found himself replying.. "It's one of God's
creatures."

At which point the bird rose flapping from Abelove's grasp, emptying its
bowels as it did so on the man's Wig

and face, which brought a hoot of laughter from Tyrwhitt.. "Now don't
wipe it off," he told Abelove as the magpie

fluttered away.. "It's good luck."

The sound of his laughter brought Joshua Godolphin, imperious as ever,
out of the dining room.

"What's the row?"

Abelove was already clattering after the bird, his calls merely alarming
it more.  It fluttered around the hallway

in panic, cawing as it went.

"Open the damned doorl' Godolphin said.. "Let the bloody thing outt'

"And spoil the sport?" Tyrwhitt said.

"If everyone would but calm their voices,"Abelove said, 'it would
settle."

"Why did you bring it in?" Joshua wanted to know.

rp

il

"It was sitting on the step," Abelove replied.. "I thought it was
injured."

'it looks quite well to me," Godolphin said, and turned his face,
ruddied with brandy, towards Gentle.. "Maestro," he said, inclining his
head a little. "I'm afraid we began dinner without you.  Come on in.
Leave these bird-brains to play."

Gentle was crossing to the dining room when there was a thud behind him,
and he turned to see the bird dropping to the floor beneath one of the
windows where it had struck the glass.  Abelove let out a little moan,
and Tyrwhitt's laughter ceased.

"There now!' he said.. "You killed the thingl. "Not me!' Abelove said.

"You want to resurrect i

t?"Joshua murmured to Gentle, -4 his tone conspiratorial.

"With a broken neck and wings?" Gentle mourned.  . "That wouldn't be
very kind."

"But amusing," Godolphin replied, with mischief in his puffy eyes.

"I think not," Gentle said, and saw his distaste wipe the humour off
Joshua's face.  He's a little afraid of me, Gentle thought; the power in
me makes him nervous.

Joshua headed into the dining room, and Gentle was about to step through
the door after him when a young man - eighteen at most, with a plain,
long face and chorister's curls - came to his side.

"Maestro?" he said.

Unlike Joshua and the others, these features seemed more familiar to
Gentle.  Perhaps there was a certain modernity in the languid, lidded
gaze, and the small, almost effeminate, mouth.  He didn't look that
intelligent, in truth, but his words, when they came, were well turned,
despite the boy's nervousness.  He barely dared look at Sartori, but
with those lids downcast begged the Maestro's indulgence.

"I wondered, sir, if you had perhaps considered the matter of which we
spoke?"

Gentle was about to ask: what matter?, when his tongue replied, his
intellect seizing the memory as the words spilled out.

"I know how eager you are, Lucius."

Lucius Cobbitt was the boy's name.  At seventeen he already had the
great works by heart, or at least their theses.  Ambitious, and apt at
politics, he'd taken Tyrwhitt as a patron (for what services only his
bed knew, but it was surely a hanging offence) and had secured himself a
place in the house as a menial.  But he wanted more than that, and
scarcely an evening went by without his politely plying the Maestro with
coy glances and pleas.

"I'm more than eager, sir," he said.. "I've studied all the rituals.
I've mapped the in Ovo, from what I've read in Flute's Visions.  They're
just beginnings, I know, but I've also copied all the known glyphs, and
I have them by heart."

He had a little skill as an artist, too; something else they shared,
besides ambition and dubious morals.

"I can help you, Maestro," he was saying.. "You're going to need
somebody beside you on the night."

"I commend you on your discipline, Lucius, but there Reconciliation's a
dangerous business.

I can't take the responsibilit. "I'll take that, sir."

"Besides, I have my assistant." The boy's face fell.. "You do?" he said.

"Certainly.  Pie'oh'pah." You'd trust your life to a familiar?. "Why
shouldn't 1?. "Well, because .  .  .  because it's not even human."
"That's why I trust it, Lucius," Gentle said.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you

"Could I at least watch, sir?  I'll keep my distance, I swear, I swear.
Everybody else is going to be there."

This was true enough.  As the night of the Reconciliation approached the
size of the audience swelled.  His patrons, who'd at first taken their
oaths of secrecy very

seriously, now sensed triumph, and had become indiscreet.  in hushed and
often embarrassed tones they'd admit to having invited a friend or a
relation to witness the rites, and who was he, the performer, to forbid
his paymasters their moment of reflected glory?  Though he never gave
them an easy time when they made these confessions, he didn't much mind.

Admiration charged the blood.  And when the Reconciliation had been
achieved, the more tongues there were to say they'd seen it done, and
sanctify the doer, the better.

"I beg you, sir," Lucius was saying.. "I'll be in your debt forever."
Gentle nodded, ruffling the youth's ginger hair.. "You may watch," he
said.

Tears started to the boy's eyes, and he snatched up Gentle's hand,
laying his lips to it.. "I am the luckiest man in England," he said.
"Thank you, sir, thank you." - Quieting the boy's profusions, Gentle
left him at the door, stepping through into the dining room.  As he did
so he wondered if all these events and conversations had actually
dovetailed in this fashion, or whether his memory was collecting
fragments from different nights and days, knitting them together so that
they appeared seamless.  If the latter was the case - and he guessed it
was then there were probably clues in these scenes to mysteries yet to
be unveiled, and he should try to remember their every detail.  But it
was difficult.  He was both Gentle and Sartori here, both witness and
actor.  It was hard to live the moments when he was also observing them,
and harder still to dig for the seam of their significance when their
surface gleamed so fetchingly, and when he was the brightest jewel that
shone there.  How they had idolized him!!  He'd been like a divinity
amongst

J them, his every belch and fart attended to like a sermon, his
cosmological pronouncements of which he was too fond greeted with
reverence and gratitude, even by the mightiest.

Three of those mighty awaited him in the dining room,

730 gathered at one end of a table, set for four but laden with
sufficient food to sate the street for a week.  Joshua was one of the
trio, of course.  Roxborough and his long-time foil Oliver McGann were
the others, the latter well in his cups, the former, as ever, keeping
his counsel, his ascetic features, dominated by the long hook of his
nose, always half-masked by his hands.  He despised his mouth, Gentle
thought, because it betrayed his nature, which despite his incalculable
wealth and his pretensions to metaphysics, was peevish, penurious and
sullen.

"Religion's for the faithful," McGann was loudly opining.. "They say
their prayers, their prayers aren't answered, and their faith increases.
Whereas magic -'He stopped, laying his inebriated gaze on the Maestro at
the TF

door.. "Ah!  The very man!  The very mar il Tell him, Sartori!  Tell him
what magic is."

Roxborough had made a pyramid of his fingers, the apex at the bridge of
his nose.

"Yes, Maestro," he said.. "Do tell."

"My pleasure," Gentle replied, taking the glass of wine McGann poured
for him, and wetting his throat before he provided tonight's
profundities.

"Magic is the first and last religion of the world," he said.. "It has
the power to make us whole.  To open our eyes to the Dominions, and
return us to ourselves." flatly.. "But

"That sounds very fine," Roxborough said, what does it mean?"

"It's obvious what it means," McGann protested.

"Not to me it isn't.. "It means we're born divided, Roxborough," t.

Maestro replied.. "But we long for union.. "Oh, we do, do we?. "I
believe so."

"And why should we seek union with ourselves?" Roxborough said.. "Tell
me that.  I would have thought we're the only company we're certain we
have."

There was a riling smugness to the man's tone, but

the Maestro had heard these niceties before, and had his answers well
honed.

"Everything that isn't us is also ourselves," he said.  He came to the
table, and set down his glass, peering through the smoky candle flames
at Roxborough's black eyes.. "We're joined to everything that was, is
and will be," he said.. "From one end of the Imajica to another.  From
the tiniest mote dancing over this flame to the Godhead Itself."

He took breath, leaving room for a retort from Rox- An., borough.  But
none came.

"We'll not be subsumed at our deaths," he went on.. "We'll be increased;
to the size of Creation."

"Yes..." McGann murmured, the word coming long and loud from between
teeth clenched in a tigerish smile.

"Magic's our means to that Revelation," the Maestro said, 'while we're
still in our flesh."

"And is it your opinion that we are given that Revelation?" Roxborough
replied.. "Or are we stealing it?. "We

were born to know as much as we can know.. "We were born to suffer in
our flesh," Roxborough said.

"You may suffer, I don't."

The reply won a guffaw from McGann.

"The flesh isn't punishment," the Maestro said.. "It's there for joy.
But it also marks the place where we end and the rest of Creation
begins.  Or so we believe.  It's our illusion, of course."

"Good..." said Godolphin,  I like that.. "So are we about God's business
or not?" Roxborough wanted

to know.

"Are you having second thoughts?"

"Third and fourth, more like," McGann said.

Roxborough gave the man at his side a sour glance.  "Did we swear an
oath not to doubt?" he said.

"I don't think so.  Why should I be castigated because I ask a simple
question?"

"I apologize," McGann said.. "Tell the man, Maestro.

We're doing God's work, aren't we?"

"Does God want us to be more than we are?" Gentle said.. "Of course.
Does God want us to love, which is the desire to be joined and made
whole?  Of course.  Does It want us in Its glory, for ever and ever?
Yes, It does.. "You always say It," McGann observed.. "Why's that?"
"Creation and its maker are one and the same.  True or false?"

"True."

"And Creation's as full of women as it is of men.  True or false?"

"Oh true, true."

"Indeed I give thanks for the fact night and day," Gentle said, glancing
at Godolphin as he spoke.. "Beside my bed and in it."

Joshua laughed his Devil's laugh.

"So the Godhead is both male and female.  For convenience, an It."

"Bravely saidl' Joshua announced.. "I never tire of hearing you speak,
Sartori.  My thoughts get muddy, but after I've listened to you awhile
they're like spring water, straight from the rockr

"Not too clean, I hope," the Maestro said.. "We don't want any Puritan
souls spoiling the Reconciliation.. "You know me better than that,"
Joshua said, catching Gentle's eyes.

Even as he did so, Gentle had proof of his suspicion that these
encounters, though remembered in one continuous stream, had not occurred
sequentially, but were fragments his mind was knitting together as the
rooms he was walking through evoked them.  McGann and Roxborough faded
from the table, as did most of the candlelight and the litter of
carafes, glasses and food it had illuminated.  Now there was only Joshua
and himself, and the house was still above and below.  Everyone asleep,
but for these conspirators.

"I want to be with you when you perform the working," Joshua was saying.
There was no hint of laughter now.  He looked harassed, and nervous.
"She's very precious to

me, Sartori.  If anything were to happen to her I'd lose my mind."

"She'll be perfectly safe," the Maestro said, sitting down at the table.

There was a map of the Imajica laid out in front of him, with the names
of the Maestros and their assistants in each Dominion marked beside
their places of conjuration.  He scanned them, and found he knew one or
two.  Tick Raw was there, as the deputy to Uter musky; Scopique was
there too, marked as an assistant to an assistant to Heratae Hammeryock,
the latter a distant relation, perhaps, of the Hammeryock Gentle and Pie
had encountered in Vanaeph.  Names from two pasts, intersecting here on
the map.

"Are you listening to me?" Joshua said.

"I told you she'd be perfectly safe," came the Maestro's repl. "The
workings are delicate but they're not dangerous."

"Then let me be there," Godolphin said, wringing his hands.. "I'll be
your assistant instead of that wretched mystif.,

"I haven't even told Pie'oh'pah what we're up to.  This is our business
and only ours.  You just bring Judith here tomorrow evening, and I'll
see to the rest."

"She's so vulnerable."

"She seems very self-possessed to me," the Maestro observed.. "Very
heated."

Goldolphin's fretful expression soured into ice.. "Don't parade it,
Sartori," he said.. "It's not enough that I've got Roxborough at my ear
all yesterday, telling me he doesn't trust you, I have to bear you
parading your arrogance."

"Roxborough understands nothing."

"He says you're obsessed with women, so he under- :1 stands that at
least.  You watch some girl across the street, he says

"What if I do?"

"How can you give yourself to the Reconciliation if you're so
distracted?"

734 't

F. "Are you trying to talk me out of wanting Judith?"

"I thought magic was a religion to you."

"So's she."

"A discipline, a sacred mystery:

"Again, so's she." He laughed.. "When I first saw her, it was like my
first glimpse of another world.  I knew I'd risk my life to be inside
her skin.  When I'm with her, I feel like an adept again, creeping
towards a miracle, step

by step.  Tentative, excited .  .

"Enough!'

"Really?  You don't want to know why I need to be

inside her so badly?"

Godolphin eyed him ruefully.. "Not really," he said.. "But

if you don't tell me, I'll only wonder.  .

"Because for a little time, I'll forget who I am.  Every- 3 thing petty
and particular will go out of me.  My ambition.

My history.  Everything.  I'll be unmade.  And that's when

I'm closest to divinity.,

"Somehow you always manage to bring everything

back to that.  Even your lust."

"It's all One."

"I don't like your talk of the One," Godolphin said.. "You i

sound like Roxborough with his dictums!  Simplicity is

j

strength, and all the rest .  .

i

"That's not what I mean and you know it.  it's just that

women are where everything begins, and I like - how

shall I put it?  - to touch the source as often as possible."

"You think you're perfect, don't you?" Godolphin said.

U;

"Why so sour?  A week ago, you were doting on my

every word."      0,

"I don't like what we're doing," Godolphin replied.. "I 4..

want Judith for myself."

"You'll have her.  And so will I.  That's the glory of this."

"There'll be no difference between them?"

"None.  They'll be identical.  To the pucker.  To the lash.,

"So why must I have the copy?"

"You know the answer to that.  Because the original

loves me, not you:

P,

"I should never have let you set eyes on her.. "You couldn't have kept
us apart.  Don't look so forlorn.  I'm going to make you a Judith
that'll dote on you and your sons, and your son's sons, until the name
Godolphin disappears off the face of the Earth.  Now where's the harm in
that?"

As he asked the question all the candles but the one he held went out,
and the past was extinguished with them.  He was suddenly back in the
empty house, a police siren whooping nearby.  He stepped back into the
hallway, as the car sped down Gamut Street, its blue light pulsing
through the windows.  Seconds later, another came howling after.  Though
the din of the sirens faded and finally disappeared, the flashes did
not.  They brightened from blue to white, however, and lost their
regularity.  By their brilliance he saw the house once more restored to
glory.  It was no longer a place of debate and laughter, however.  There
was sobbing above and below, and the animal smells of fear in every
corner.  Thunder t, rattled the roof, but there was no rain to soothe
its choler.

I don't want to be here, he thought.  The other  j memories had
entertained him.

He'd liked his role in the proceedings.  But this darkness was another
matter entirely.  it was full of death, and he wanted to run from it.

The lightning came again, horribly livid.  By it, he saw

Lucius Cobbitt standing halfway up the stairs, clutchin the banister as
though he'd fall if he didn't.  He'd bitten his tongue, or lip, or both,
and blood dribbled from his mouth and chin, made stringy by the spit
with which it was mingled.  When Gentle climbed the stairs he smelt
excrement.  The boy had loosed his bowels in his breeches.  Seeing
Gentle, he raised his eyes.

"How did it fail, Maestro?" he sobbed.. "How?" Gentle shuddered as the
question brought images flooding into his head, more horrendous than all
t scenes he'd witnessed at the Erasure.  The failure of th
Reconciliation had been sudden and calamitous, and h caught the Maestros
representing the five Dominions at

such a delicate time in the working that they'd been ill equipped to
prevent it.  The spirits of all five had already risen from their
circles across the Imajica, and carrying the analogues of their worlds,
had converged on the Ana, the zone of inviolability that appeared every
two centuries in the heart of the in Ovo.  There, for a tender time,
miracles could be worked, as the Maestros, safe from the In Ovo's
inhabitants, but freed and empowered by their immaterial state,
unburdened themselves of their similitudes, and allowed the genius of
the Ana to complete the fusing of the Dominions.  It was a precarious
time, but they'd been reaching its conclusion when the circle in which
the Maestro Sartori's physical body sat, its stones protecting the
outside world from the flux which let on to the In Ovo, broke.  Of all
the potential places for failure in the ceremonies, this was the
un likeliest tantamount to transubstantiation failing for want of salt
in the bread.  But fail it did, and once the breach was opened, there
was no way to seal it until the Maestros had returned to their bodies,
and mustered their fe its  In that time the hungry tenants of the In Ovo
had free access to the Fifth.  Not only to the Fifth, but to the exulted
flesh of the Maestros themselves, who vacated the Ana in confusion,
leading the hounds of the in Ovo back to their flesh.

Sartori's life would certainly have been forfeited along With all the
others had Pie'oh'pah not intervened.  When the circle broke, the mystif
was being forcibly removed from the Retreat on Godolphin's order, for
voicing a prophetic murmur of alarm, and disturbing the audience.  The
duty of removal had fallen to Abelove and Lucius Cobbitt, but neither
had possessed the strength to hold the mystif.  It had broken free,
racing across the Retreat and plunging into the circle, where its master
was visible to the assembly only as a blaze of light.  Pie had learned
well at Sartori's feet.  It had de fences against the flux of power that
roared in the circle, and had pulled the Maestro from under the noses of
the approaching Oviates.

The rest of the assembly, however, caught between the mystif's yells of
warning and Roxborough's attempts to maintain the status quo, were still
standing around in confusion when the Oviates appeared.

The entities were swift.  One moment the Retreat was a V7V bridge to the
transcendental.  The next, it was an abattoir.

Dazed by his sudden fall from grace, the Maestro had seen only snatches
of the massacre, but they were burned on his eyes, and Gentle remembered
them now in all their wretched detail.  Abelove, scrabbling at the
ground in terror as an Oviate the size of a felled bull, but resembling
something barely born, opened its toothless maw and drew him between its
jaws with tongues the length of whips; McGann, losing his arm to a
sleek, dark animal that rippled as it ran, but hauling himself away, his
blood a scarlet fountain, while the thing was distracted by fresher
meat; Flores - poor Flores, who'd come to Gamut Street the day before
carrying a letter of introduction from Casanova - caught by two beasts
whose skulls were as flat as spades, and whose translucent skin had
given Sartori a terrible glimpse of their victim's agony as his head was
taken down the throat of one while his legs were devoured by the other.

But it was the death of Roxborough's sister that Gentle remembered with
profoundest horror, not least because the man had been at such pains to
keep her from coming, and had even abased himself to the Maestro,
begging him to talk to the woman, and persuade her to stay away.  He'd
had the talk, but he'd knowingly made his caution a seduction - almost
literally in fact - and she'd come to see the Reconciliation as much to
meet the eyes of the man who'd wooed her with his warnings as for the
ceremony itself.  She'd paid the most terrible price.  She'd been fought
over like a bone amongst hungry wolves, shrieking a prayer for
deliverance as a trio of Oviates drew out her entrails and dabbled in
her open skull.  By the time the Maestro, with Pie'oh'pah's help, had
raised sufficient fe its to drive the entities back into the circle, she
was

A`%J

dying in her own coils, thrashing like a fish half filleted by a hook.

Only later did the Maestro hear of the atrocities visited on the other
circles.  It was the same story there as in the Fifth: the Oviates
appearing in the midst of innocents; carnage ensuing, which was only
brought to a halt when one of the Maestro's assistants drove them back.
With the exception of Sartori, the Maestros themselves had all perished.

"It would be better if I'd died like the others," he said to Lucius.

The boy tried to persuade him otherwise, but tears overwhelmed him.
There was another voice, however, rising from the bottom of the stairs;
raw with grief, but strong-'Sartori!  Sartoril'

He turned.  Joshua was there in the hallway, his fine powder-blue coat
covered with blood.  As were his hands.  As was his face.

"What's going to happen?" he yelled.. "This storm!  It's going to tear
the world apart!. "No, Joshual'

"Don't lie to me! There's never been a storm like this!  Ever. "Control
yourself .  .

"Jesus Christ our Lord, forgive us our trespasses.. "That's not going to
help, Joshua."

Godolphin had a crucifix in his hand, and put it to his lips.

"You Godless trashl Are you a demon?  Is that it?  Were you sent to have
our souls?" Tears were pouring down his crazed face.. "What Hell did you
come out of?. "The same as you.  The human hell."

"I should have listened to Roxborough.  He knewl He said over and over
you had some plan, and I didn't believe him, wouldn't believe him,
because Judith loved you, and how could anything so pure love anything
unholy?  But you hid yourself from her too, didn't you?  Poor,

F F sweet Judith I How did you make her love you?  How did AN I you do
it?"

"Is that all you can think of?" 7777T  . "Tell me!  How?"

Barely coherent in his fury, Godolphin started up the stairs towards the
seducer.

Gentle felt his hand go to his mouth.  Godolphin halted.

He knew this power.

"Haven't we shed enough blood tonight?" the Maestro said.

"You, not me," Godolphin replied.  He jabbed a finger in Gentle's
direction, the crucifix hanging from his fist.. "You'll have no peace
after this," he said.. "Roxborough's already talking about a purge, and
I'm going to give him every guinea he needs to break your back.  You and
all your works are damnedl'

A

"Even Judith?. "I never want to see that creature again.. "But she's
yours, Joshua," the Maestro said flatly, descending the stairs as he
spoke.. "She's yours for ever and ever.  She won't age.  She won't die.
She belongs to the family Godolphin until the sun goes out.. "Then I'll
kill her."

"And have her innocent soul on your blotted conscience?"

"She's got no soul!'

"I promised you Judith to the lash, and that's what she is.  A religion.
A discipline.  A sacred mystery.  Remember?" Godolphin buried his face
in his hands.. "She's the one truly innocent soul left amongst us,
Joshua.  Preserve her.  Love her as you've never loved any living thing,
because she's our only victory." He took hold of Godolphin's hands, and
unmasked him.. "Don't be ashamed of our ambition," he said.. "And don't
believe anyone who tells you it was the Devil's doing.  We did what we
did out of love."

"Which?" Godolphin said.. "Making her, or the Reconciliation

"It's all One," he replied.. "Believe that, at least." Godolphin claimed
his hands from the Maestro's grip.. "I'll never believe anything again,"
he said, and turning his back began his weary descent.

Standing on the stairs, watching the memory disappear, Gentle said a
second farewell.  He had never seen Godolphin again after that night.  A
few weeks later the man had retreated to his estate and sealed himself
up there, living in silent self mortification until despair had burst his
tender heart.

"It was my fault," said the boy on the stairs behind him.

Gentle had forgotten Lucius was still there, watching and listening.  He
turned back to the child.

"No," he said.. "You're not to blame."

Lucius had wiped the blood from his chin, but he couldn't control his
trembling.  His teeth chattered between his stumbling words.

"I did everything you told me to do.  .  ." he said, swear.  I swear.
But I must have missed some words from the rites ...

or ...  I don't know   maybe mixed up the stones.. "What are you talking
about?. "The stones you gave me, to replace the flawed stones.. "I gave
you no stones, Lucius."

"But Maestro, you did.  Two stones, to go in the circle.  You told me to
bury the ones I took, at the step.  Don't you remember?"

Listening to the boy, Gentle finally understood how the Reconciliation
had come to grief.

His other - born in the upper room of this very house - had used Lucius
as his agent, sending him to replace a part of the circle with stones
that resembled the originals (forging ran in the blood), knowing they
would not preserve the circle's integrity when the ceremony reached its
height.

But while the man who was remembering these scenes understood how all
this had come about, to Maestro Sartori, still ignorant of the other
self he'd created in the

womb of the doubling circle, this remained an unfathomable mystery.

"I gave you no such instruction," he said to Lucius.

"I understand," the youth replied.. "You have to lay the blame at my
feet.  That's why Maestros need adepts.  begged you for the
responsibility, and I'm glad to have  had it even if I failed." He
reached into his pocket as he spoke.. "Forgive me, Maestro," he said,
and drawing out a knife had it at his heart in the space of a
thunderclap.  As the tip drew blood the Maestro caught hold of the
youth's hand, and, wrenching the blade from his fingers, threw it down
the stairs.

"Who gave you permission to do that?" he said to Lucius.. "I thought you
wanted to be an adept?. "I did," the boy said.

"And now you're out of love with it.  You see humiliation and you want
no more of the business."

"No!" Lucius protested.. "I still want wisdom.  But I failed tonight."

"We all failed tonightl' the Maestro said.  He took hold of the
trembling boy, and spoke to him softly.. "I don't know how this tragedy
came about," he said.. "But I sniff more than your shite in the air.
Some plot was here, laid against our high ambition, and perhaps if I
hadn't been blinded by my own glory I'd have seen it.  The fault isn't
yours, Lucius.  And stopping your own life won't bring Abelove, or
Esther, or any of the others bac me."

k.

Listen to

"I'm listening."

"Do you still want to be my adept?. "Of course.. "Will you obey my
instructions now, to the letter?. "Anything.  Just tell me what you need
from me.. "Take my books, all that you can carry, and go as far from
here as you're able to go.  To the other end of the Imajica if you can
learn the trick of it.  Somewhere Roxborough and his hounds won't ever
find you.  There's a

hard winter coming for men like us.  it'll kill all but the cleverest.
But you can be clever, can't you?. "Yes."

"I knew it," the Maestro smiled.. "You must teach yourself in secret,
Lucius, and you must learn to live outside time.

That way, the years won't wither you, and when Roxborough's dead, you'll
be able to try again.. "Where will you be, Maestro?"

"Forgotten, if I'm lucky.  But never forgiven, I think.  That would be
too much to hope for.

Don't look so dejected, Lucius.  I have to know there's some hope, and
I'm charging you to carry it for me.. "It's my honour, Maestro."

As he replied Gentle was once again grazed by the dija VU he'd first
felt when he'd encountered Lucius outside the dining-room door.  But the
touch was light, and passed before he could make sense of it.

"Remember, Lucius, that everything you learn is already part of you,
even to the Godhead itself.  Study nothing except in the knowledge that
you already knew it.  Worship nothing except in adoration of your true
self.  And fear nothing -' there the Maestro stopped, and shuddered, as
though he had a presentiment, '- fear nothing except in the certainty
that you are your Enemy's begetter, and its only hope of healing.  For
everything that does evil is in pain.

Will you remember those things?" The boy looked uncertain.. "As best I
can," he said.

"That will have to suffice," the Maestro said.. "Now ...  get out of
here before the purgers come."

He let go of the boy's shoulders, and Cobbitt retreated down the stairs,
backwards, like a commoner from the King, only turning and heading away
when he was at the bottom.

The storm was overhead now, and with the boy gone, taking his sewer
stench with him, the smell of electricity was strong.  The candle Gentle
held flickered, and for an instant he thought it was going to be
extinguished, signal-

per ling the end of these recollections, at least for tonight.

But there was more to come.

"That was kind," he heard Pie'oh'pah say, and turned to see the mystif
standing at the top of the stairs.  it had

discarded its soiled clothes with its customary fastidiousness, but the
plain shirt and trousers it wore were all the

finery it needed to appear in perfection.  There was no face in the
Imajica more beautiful than this, Gentle thought,

nor form more graceful, and the scenes of terror and recrimination the
storm had brought were of little

consequence while he bathed in the sight of it.  But the Maestro he had
been had not yet made the error of losing

this miracle, and, seeing the mystif, was more concerned that his
deceits had been discovered.

"Were you here when Godolphin came?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then you know about Judith?"

"I can guess."

"I kept it from you because I knew you wouldn't .1 approve."

"It's not my place to approve or otherwise.  I'm not your wife, that you
should fear my censure."

"Still, I do.  And I thought, well, when the Reconciliation was done
this would seem like a little indulgence, and

you'd say I deserved it because of what I'd achieved.  Now, it seems
like a crime, and I wish it could be undone."

"Do you?  Truly?" the mystif said.

The Maestro looked up at it.

"No I don't," he said, his tone that of a man surprised by a revelation.
He started to climb the stairs.. "I suppose

I must believe what I told Godolphin, about her being our.  .

"Victory," Pie prompted, stepping aside to let its summoner step into
the Meditation Room.  It was, as ever,

bare.

"Shall I leave you alone?" Pie asked.

"No," the Maestro said hurriedly.  Then, more quietly:

"Please.  No."

He went to the window from which he had stood those many evenings
watching the nymph Allegra at her toilet.  The branches of the tree he'd
spied her through thrashed themselves to splinter and pulp against the
panes.

"Can you make me forget, Pie'oh'pah?  There are such fe its aren't
there?. "Of course.  But is that what you want?"

"No, what I really want is death, but I'm too afraid of that at the
moment.  So ...  it will have to be forgetfulness.. "The true Maestro
folds pain into his experience.. "Then I'm not a true Maestro," he
returned.. "I don't have the courage for that.  Make me forget, mystif.
Divide me from what I've done and what I am forever.

Make a felt that'll be a river between me and this moment, so that I'm
never tempted to cross it.. "How will you live?" The Maestro puzzled
over this for a few moments.. "In increments," he finally replied. "Each
part ignorant of the part before.

Well.  You can do this for me?. "Certainly."

"It's what I did for the woman I made for Godolphin.  Every ten years
she'll start to undo her life, and disappear.  Then she'll invent
another one, and live it never knowing what she left behind."

Listening to himself plot the life he'd lived, Gentle   iv; heard a
perverse satisfaction in his voice.  He had condemned himself to two
hundred years of waste, but he'd

known what he was doing.  He'd made the same arrangements; precisely for
the second Judith, and had contemplated every consequence on her behalf.
It wasn't just cowardice that made him shun these memories.  It was a
kind of revenge upon himself for failing, to banish his future to the
same limbo he'd made for his creature.

"I'll have pleasure, Pie," he said.. "I'll wander the world, and enjoy
the moments.  I just won't have the sum of them.. "And what about me?"

or

"After this, you're free to go,, he said.

"And do what?  Be what?. "Whore or assassin, I don't care," the Maestro
said.

The remark had been thrown off casually - surely not intended as an
order to the mystif.

But was it a slave's duty to distinguish between a command made for the
humour of it, and one to be obeyed absolutely?

No, it

.

was a slave's d duty to obey, especially if the dictate came, as did
this, from a beloved mouth.  Here, with a throwaway remark, the master
had circumscribed his servant's life for two centuries, driving it to
deeds it had doubtless abhorred.

Gentle saw the tears shining in the mystif's eyes, and felt its
suffering like a hammer pounding at his heart.  He hated himself then,
for his arrogance and his carelessness, for not seeing the harm he was
doing a creature that only wanted to love him and be near him.  And he
longed more than ever to be reunited with Pie, so that he could beg its
forgiveness for this cruelty.

"Make me forget," he said again.. "I want an end to this." The mystif
was speaking, Gentle saw, though whatever incantations its lips shaped
were spoken in a voice he couldn't hear.  The breath that bore them made
the flame he'd set on the floor flicker, however, and as the mystif
instructed its master in forgetfulness the memories went out with the
flame.

Gentle rummaged for the box of matches, and struck one, using its light
to find the smoking wick, and re-igniting it.

But the night of storm had passed back into history and Pie'oh'pah -
beautiful, obedient, loving Pie'oh'pah had gone with it.  He sat down in
front of the candle, and waited, wondering if there was some coda to
come.  But the house was dead, from cellar to eaves.

"So," he said to himself.. "What now, Maestro?"

He had his answer from his stomach, which made a little thunder of its
own.

"You want food?" he asked it, and it gurgled its reply.. "Me too," he
said.

He got up, and started down the stairs, preparing himself for a return
to modernity.  As he reached the bottom, however, he heard something
scraping across the bare boards.  He raised the candle, and his voice.

"Who's there?" Neither the light nor his demand brought an answer.

But the sound went on, and others joined it, none of

T

them pleasant.  A low, agonized moan; a wet, dragging  r sound; a
whistling inhalation.  What melodrama was his memory preparing to stage
for him, he wondered, that had need of these hoary devices?  They might
have inspired fear in him once upon a time, but not now.

He'd seen too many horrors face to face, to be chilled by imitations.

"What's this about?" he asked the shadows, and was somewhat surprised to
have his question answered.

"We've waited for you a long time," a wheezing voice told him.

"Sometimes we thought you'd never come home," another said.  There was a
fluting femininity in its tone.

Gentle took a step in the direction of the woman, and the rim of the
candle's reach touched what looked to be the hem of a scarlet skirt,
which was hastily twitched out of sight.  Where it had lain, the bare
boards shone with fresh blood.  He didn't advance any further, but
listened for another pronouncement from the shadows.  It came soon
enough.  Not the woman this time, but the wheezer.

"The fault was yours," he said.. "But the pain's been ours.  All these
years, waiting for you."

Though corrupted by anguish, the voice was familiar.  He'd heard its
lilt in this very house.

"Is that Abelove?" he said.

"Do you remember the maggot-pie' the man said, confirming his identity.
"The number of times I've thought: that was my error, bringing the bird
into the house.  Tyrwhitt would have no part of it, and he survived,
didn't he?  He died in his dotage.  And Roxborough, and Godolphin, and
you.  All of you lived and died intact.  But me,

F

I just suffered here, flying against the glass, but never hard enough to
cease." He moaned, and though his rebuke was as absurd as it had been
when first uttered, this time Gentle shuddered.. "I'm not alone, of
course,, Abelove said.. "Esther's here.  And Flores.  And ByamShaw.  And
Bloxham's brother-in-law.  Do you remember him?  So there'll be plenty
of company for you.. "I'm not staying," Gentle said.

"Oh but you are," said Esther.. "It's the least you can do.. "Blow out
the candle," Abelove said.

"Save yourself the distress of seeing us.  We'll put out your eyes, and
you can live with us blind."

"I'll do no such thing," Gentle said, raising the light so that it cast
its net wider.

They appeared at its furthest edge, their viscera catching the gleam.
What he'd taken to be Esther's skirt was a train of tissue, half flayed
from her hip and thigh.  She clutched it still, pulling it up around
her, seeking to conceal her groin from him.  Her decorum was absurd, but
then perhaps his reputation as a womanizer had so swelled over the
passage of the years that she believed he might be aroused by her, even
in this appalling state.  There was worse, however.  Byam-Shaw was
barely recognizable as a human being, and Bloxham's brotherin-law looked
to have been chewed by tigers.  But whatever their condition they were
ready for revenge, no doubt of that.  At Abelove's command they began to
close upon him.

"You've already been hurt enough," Gentle said.. "I don't want to hurt
you again.  I advise you to let me pass."

"Let you pass to do what?" Abelove replied, his terrible wounding
clearer with ever step he took.  His scalp had gone, and one of his eyes
lolled on his cheek.  When he lifted his arm to point his next
accusation at Gentle, it was with the little finger, which was the only
one remaining on that hand.. "You want to try again, don't you?  Don't
try and deny it!  You've got the old ambition in your headl'

"You died for the Reconciliation," Gentle said.. "Don't you want to see
it achieved?"

"It's an abominationl' Abelove replied.. "It was never meant to be!  We
died proving that.

You render our sacrifice worthless if you try, then fail again."

"I won't fail," Gentle said.

"No, you won't," Esther replied, dropping her skirt to uncoil a garrotte
of her gut.. "Because you won't get the chance."

He looked from one wretched face to the next, and realized that he
didn't have a hope of dissuading them from their intentions.  They
hadn't waited out the years to be diverted by argument.  They'd waited
for revenge.  He had no choice but to stop them with a pneuma,
regrettable as it was to add to their sum of suffering.  He passed the
candles from his right hand to his left, but as he did so somebody
reached around him from behind and pinned his arms to his torso.  The
candle went from his fingers, and rolled across the floor in the
direction of his accusers.  Before it could drown in its own wax,
Abelove picked it up in his one-fingered hand.

"Good work, Flores,"Abelove said.

The man clutching Gentle grunted his acknowledgement, shaking his prey
to prove he had it securely caught.  His arms were flayed, but they held
Gentle like steel bands.  Abelove made something like a smile, though on
a face with flaps for cheeks and blisters for lips it was a misbegotten
thing.

"You don't struggle," he said, approaching Gentle with the candle held
high.. "Why's that?

Are you already resigned to joining us, or do you think we'll be moved
by your martyrdom, and let you go?" He was very close to Gentle now. "It
is pretty," he said.  He cocked his eye a little, sighing.. "How your
face was loved," he went on.. "And this chestl How women fought to lay
their heads upon it!" He slid his stump of a hand into Gentle's shirt
and tore it open.. "Very pale!  And hairless!  It's not Italian flesh,
is it?"

"Does it matter?" said Esther.. "As Ion as it bleeds, what

do you care?"

"He never deigned to tell us anything about himself.  We had to take him
on trust because he had power in his fingers and his wits.  He's like a
little God, Tyrwhitt used to say.  But even little Gods have fathers and
mothers." Abelove leaned closer, allowing the candle flame within
singeing distance of Gentle's lashes.. "Who are you really?" Abelove
said.. "You're not an Italian.  Are you Dutch?  You could be Dutch.  Or
a Swiss.  Chilly and precise.  Huh?

Is that you?" He paused.  Then. "Or are you the Devil's child?"

"Abelove" Esther protested.

"I want to know," Abelove yelped.. "I want to hear him admit he's
Lucifer's son." He peered at Gentle more closely.. "Go on," he said.
"Confess it."

"I'm not," Gentle said.

"There was no Maestro in Christendom could match you forfeits  That
kind of power has to come from somebody.

Who, Sartori?"

Gentle would have gladly told, if he'd had an answer.  But he had none.

"Whoever I am," he said.. "And whatever hurt I've done

"Whatever, he saysl' Esther spat.. "Listen to him!  Whatever! Whatever!'

She pushed Abelove aside, and tossed a loop of her gut over Gentle's
head.  Abelove protested, but he'd prevaricated long enough.  He was
howled down from all sides, Esther's howls the loudest.

Tightening the noose around A Gentle's neck, she tugged on it, preparing
to topple him.  He felt rather than saw the devourers awaiting him when
he fell.  Something was gnawing at his leg; something else -4punching
his testicles.  It hurt like hell and he started to struggle and kick.
There were too many holds upon him, however - gut, arms and teeth - and
he earned himself not an inch of latitude with his thrashings.  Past the
red blur of Esther's fury, he caught sight of Abelove, crossing

himself with his one-fingered hand, then raising the candle to his
mouth.

"Don't!" Gentle yelled.  Even a little light was better than none.
Hearing him shout, Abelove looked up, and shrugged.

Then he blew out the flame.  Gentle felt the wet flesh around him rise
like a tide to claw him down.  The fist gave up beating at his testicles
and seized them instead.  He screamed with pain, his clamour rising an
octave as someone began to chew on his hamstrings.

"Down!" he heard Esther screech.. "Down!'

Her noose had cut off all but the last squeak of breath.  Choked,
crushed and devoured, he toppled, his head thrown back as he did so.
They'd take his eyes he knew, as soon as they could, and that would be
the end of him.  Even if he was saved by some miracle, it would be
worthless if they'd taken his eyes.  Unmanned, he could go on living;
but not blind.  His knees struck the boards, and Angers clawed for
access to his face.  Knowing he had seconds of sight left to him he
opened his eyes as wide as he could and stared up into the darkness
overhead, hoping to find some last lovely thing to spend it on.  A beam
of dusty moonlight; a spider's web, trembling at the din he raised.  But
the darkness was too deep.  His eyes would be thumbed out before he
could use them again.

And then, a motion in that darkness.  Something unfurling, like smoke
from a conch, taking fig mental shape overhead.

His pain's invention, no doubt, but it sweetened his terror a little to
see a face, like that of a beatific child, pour his gaze upon him.

"Open yourself to me," he heard it say.. "Give up the struggle and let
me be in you."

More cliche, he thought.  A dream of intercession to set against the
nightmare that was about to geld and blind him.

But one was real - his pain was testament to that so why not the other?

"Let me into your head and heart," the infant's lips said.

"I don't know how," he yelled, his cry taken up in parody by Abelove and
the rest.

"How?  How?  How?" they chanted.

The child had its reply.. "Give up the fight," he said.

That wasn't so hard, Gentle thought.  He'd lost it any

way.  What was there left to lose?  With his eyes fixed on

the child, Gentle let every muscle in his body relax.  His

hands gave up their fists; his heels their kicks.  His head

tipped back, mouth open.

"Open your heart and head," he heard the infant say

"Yes," he replied.

Even as he uttered this invitation, a moth's-wing doubt

A

fluttered in his ear.  At the beginning hadn't this smacked

of melodrama?  And didn't it still?  A soul snatched from

Purgatory by cherubim; opened, at the last, to simple

salvation.  But his heart was wide, and the saving clild

swooped upon it before doubt could seal it again.  He

tasted another mind in his throat, and felt its chill in his

veins.  The invader was as good as its word.  He felt his

tormentors melt from around him, their holds and howls

fading like mists.

He fell to the floor.  it was dry beneath his cheek,

though seconds before Esther's skirts had been seeping on

it.  Nor was there any trace of the creature's stench in the

air.  He rolled over, and cautiously reached to touch his

hamstrings.  They were intact.  And his testicles, which

he'd presumed nearly pulped, didn't even ache.  He

laughed with relief to find himself so whole, and while he

laughed scrabbled for the candle he'd dropped.  Delusionl

It had all been delusion!  Some final rite of passage

conducted by his mind so that he might supersede his

guilt, and face his future as a Reconciler unburdened.

Well, the phantoms had done their duty.  Now he was

free.

His fingers had found the candle.  He picked it up,

fumbled for the matches, struck one, and put the flame to

the wick.  The stage he'd filled with ghouls and cherubim

was empty from boards to gallery.  He got to his feet

Though the hurts he'd felt had been imagined, the fight

he'd put up against them had been real enough, and his

body - which was far from healed after the brutalities of Yzordderrex -
was the worse for his resistance.  As he hobbled towards the door, he
heard the cherub speak again.

"Alone at last," it said.

He turned on his heel.  The voice had come from behind him, but the
staircase was empty.

So was the landing, and the passageways that led off the hall.  The
voice came again, however.

"Amazing, isn't it' the put to said.. "To hear and not to see.  It's
enough to drive a man mad."

Again, Gentle wheeled, the candle flame fluttering at his speed.

"I'm still here," the cherub said.. "We'll be together for quite a time,
just you and I, so we'd better get to like each other.

What do you enjoy chatting about?  Politics?  Food?  I'm good for
anything but religion."

This time, as he turned, Gentle caught a glimpse of his tormentor.  it
had put off the cherubic illusion.  What he saw resembled a small ape,
its face either anaemic or powdered, its eyes black beads, its mouth
enormous.  Rather than waste his energies pursuing something so nimble
(it had hung from the ceiling minutes before) Gentle stood still, and
waited.  The tormentor was a chatterbox.  it would speak again; and
eventually show itself entirely.  He didn't have to wait long.

"Those demons of yours must have been appalling," it said.. "The way you
kicked and cursed.. "You didn't see them?. "No.  Nor do I want to.. "But
you've got your fingers in my head, haven't you?. "Yes.  But I don't
delve.  It's not my business.. "What is your business?. "How do you live
in this brain?  It's so small and sweaty.. "Your business ...  ?. "To
keep you company.. "I'm leaving soon.. "I don't think so.  Of course,
that's just my opinion .  .

"Who are you?. "Call me Little Ease.. "That's a name?"

"My father was a gaoler.  Little Ease was his favourite cell.  I used to
say, thank God he didn't circumcise for a living, or I'd b. "Don't."

"Just trying to keep the conversation light.  You seem very agitated.
There's no need.

You're not going to come to any harm, unless you defy my Maestro."
"Sartori."

"The very man.  He knew you'd come here, you see.  He'd said you'd pine
and you'd preen, and how very right he was.

But then I'm sure he'd have done the same thing.  There's nothing in
your head that isn't in his.  Except for me, that is.  I must thank you
for being so prompt, by the way.  He said I'd have to be patient, but
here you are, after less than two days.

You must have wanted these memories badly."

The creature went on in similar vein, burbling at the back of Gentle's
head, but he was barely aware of it.  He was concentrating on what to do
s way into him - Open your head and heart, it had said, and he'd done
just that, fool that he was; opened himself up to its possession - and
now he had to find some way to be rid of it.

"There's more where those came from, you know," it was saying.

He'd temporarily lost track of its monologue, and didn't know what it
was prattling about.

"More of what?" he said.

"More memories," it replied.. "You wanted the past, but you've only had
a tiny part of a tiny part.  The best's still to come."

"I don't want it," he said.

"Why not?  It's you, Maestro, in all your many skins.  You should have
what's yours.  Or are you afraid you'll drown in what you've been?"

He didn't answer.  It knew darm well how much damage the past could do
if it came over him too suddenly; he'd laid plans for that very
eventuality as he'd come to the house.  Little Ease must have heard his
pulse quicken, because it said. "I can see why it'd frighten you.
There's so much to be guilty for, isn't there?  Always, so much."

He had to be out and away, he thought.  Staying here, where the past was
all too present, invited disaster.

"Where are you going?" Little Ease said as Gentle started towards the
door.

"I'd like to get some sleep, "he said.  An innocent enough request.

"You can sleep here," his possessor replied.

"There's no bed.. "Then lie down on the floor.  I'll sing a lullaby."
"And there's nothing to eat or drink.. "You don't need sustenance right
now," came the reply.

"I'm hungry.. "So fast for a while."

Why was it so eager to keep him here?  he wondered.  Did it simply want
to wear him down with sleeplessness and thirst before he even stepped
outside?  Or did its sphere of influence cease at the threshold?  That
hope leapt in him, but he tried not to let it show.  He sensed that the
creature, though it had spoken of entering his head and heart, did not
have access to every thought in his cranium.  If it did then it'd have
no need of threats in order to keep him here.  It would simply direct
his limbs to be leaden, and drop him to the ground.  His intentions were
still his own, even if the entity had his memories at its behest, and it
followed therefore that he might get to the door, if he was quick, and
be beyond its grasp before it opened the flood-gates.  In order to
placate it until he was ready to make his move, he turned his back on
the door.

"Then I suppose I'll stay," he said.

"At least we've got each other for company," Little Ease

said.. "Though let me make it clear, I draw the line at any carnal
relations, however desperate you get.  Please don't take it personally.
It's just that I know your reputation and I want to state here and now I
have no interest in sex.. "Will you never have children?"

"Oh yes, but that's different.  I lay them in the heads of my enemies."

"Is that a warning?" he asked it.

"Not at all," it replied.. "I'm sure you could accommodate a family of
us.  It's all One, after all.  Isn't that right?" It left off its voice
for a moment, and imitated him perfectly.. "We'll not be subsumed at our
deaths, Roxborough, we'll be increased to the size of Creation.  Think
of me as a little sign of that increase, and we'll get along fine."
"Until you murder me." Why would I do that?" Because Sartori wants me
dead."

"You do him an injustice," Little Ease said.. "I've no brief as an
assassin.  All he wants me to do is keep you from your work, until after
midsummer.  He doesn't want you playing the Reconciler, and letting his
enemies into the Fifth.  Who can blame him?  He intends to build a new
Yzordderrex here, to rule over the Fifth from pole to pole.  Did you
know that?"

"He did mention it."

"And when that's done, I'm sure he'll embrace you as a brother."

"But until then-'

I have his permission to do whatever I must to keep you from being a
Reconciler.  And if that means driving

you insane with memories

I

- then you will.. "Must, Maestro, must.  I'm a dutiful creature

Keep talking, Gentle thought, as it waxed poetic describing its powers
of subservience.

He wouldn't make for the door, he'd decided.  It was probably double- or
treble-locked.  Better that he went for the window by

which he'd entered.  He'd fling himself through it if need be.  if he
broke a few bones in the process it'd be a small price to pay for
escape.

He glanced round casually, as if deciding where he was going to lay his
head, never once allowing his eyes to stray to the front door.  The room
with the open window lay ten paces at most from where he stood.

Once inside, there'd be another ten to reach the window.  Little Ease,
meanwhile, was lost in loops of its own humility.  Now was as good a
time as any.

He took a pace towards the bottom of the stairs as a feint, then changed
direction and darted for the door.  He'd made three paces before it even
realized what he was up to.

"Don't be so stupidl' it snapped.

He'd been conservative in his calculation, he realized.  He'd be through
the door in eight paces not ten, and across the room in another six.

"I'm warning you," it shrieked, then, realizing its appeals would gain
it nothing, acted.

Within a pace of the door Gentle felt something open in his head.  The
crack through which he allowed the past to trickle suddenly gaped.  In a
pace the rivulet was a stream; in two, white waters; in three, a flood.

He saw the window across the room, and the street outside, but his will
to reach it was washed away in the deluge of the past.

He'd lived nineteen lives between his years as Sartori

and his time as John Furie Zacharias, his unconscious programmed by Pie
to ease him out of one life and into another in a fog of self-ignorance
that only lifted when the deed was done, and he awoke in a strange city,
with

T

.

a name filched from a telephone book or a conversation.  He'd left pain
behind him, of course, wherever he'd gone.  Though he'd always been
careful to detach himself from

his circle, and cover his tracks when he departed, his   amid sudden
disappearances had undoubtedly caused great grief to everyone who'd held
him in their affections.  The

only one who'd escaped unscathed had been himself.  Until now.  Now all
these lives were upon him at once A and the hurts he'd scrupulously
avoided caught up with' him.  His head filled with fragments of his
past; pieces of the nineteen unfinished stories that he'd left behind,
all lived with the same infantile greed for sensation that had marked
his existence as John Furie Zacharias.

In every one of these lives he'd had the comfort of adoration.  He'd
been loved and lionized: for his charm, for his profile, for his
mystery.  But that fact didn't sweeten the flood of memories.  Nor did
it save him from the panic he felt as the little self he knew and
understood was overwhelmed by the sheer profusion of details that arose
from the other histories.

For two centures he'd never had to ask the questions that vexed every
other soul at some midnight or other. "Who am I?

What was I made for, and what will I be when I die?"

Now he had too many answers, and that was more   4 distressing than too
few.

He had a small tribe of selves, put on and off like masks.  He had
trivial purposes aplenty.  But there had never been enough years held in
his memory at one time to make him plumb the depths of regret or
remorse, and he was the poorer for that.  Nor, of course, had there been
the imminence of death, or the hard wisdom of mourning.  Forgetfulness
had always been on hand to smooth his frowns away, and it had left his
spirit unproved.

Just as he'd feared, the assault of sights and scenes was too much to
bear, and though he fought to hold on to some sense of the man he'd been
when he'd entered the house, it was rapidly subsumed.  Halfway between
the door and the window his desire to escape, which had been rooted in
the need to protect himself, went out of him.

The determination fell from his face, as though it were just another
mask.  Nothing replaced it.  He stood in the middle of the room like a
stoic sentinel, with no

flicker of his inner turmoil rising to disturb the placid symmetry of
his face.

M,

The night hours crawled on, marked by a bell in a distant steeple, but
if he heard it he showed no sign.  It wasn't until the first light of
day crept over Gamut Street, slipping through the window he'd been so
desperate to reach, that the world outside his confounded head drew any
response from him.  He wept.  Not for himself, but rather for the
delicacy of this amber light falling in soft pools on the hard floor.
Seeing it, he conceived the vague notion of stepping out into the street
and looking for the source of this miracle, but there was somebody in
his head, its voice stronger than the muck of confusion that swilled
there, who wanted him to answer a question before it would allow him out
to play.  It was a simple enough enquiry.

"Who are you?" it wanted to know.

The answer was difficult.  He had a lot of names in his

head, and pieces of lives to go with them, but which one 4 of them was
his?  He'd have to sort

through so many

fragments to get a sense of himself, and that was too wretched a task on
a day like this, when there were sunbeams at the window, inviting him
out to spy their father in Heaven.

"Who are you?" the voice asked him again, and he was obliged to tell the
simple truth. "I don't know," he said.

The questioner seemed content with this.

"You may as well go then," it said.. "But I'd like you to come back once
in a while, just to see me.  Will you do that?" He said that of course
he would, and the voice replied that he was free to go.  His legs were
still, and when he tried to walk he fell instead, and had to crawl to
where the sun was brightening the boards.  He played there for a time,
and then, feeling stronger, climbed out of the window into the street.

F

Had he possessed a cogent memory of the previous

night's pursuits he'd have realized, as he jumped down on to the
pavement, that his guess concerning Sartori's

agent had been correct, and its jurisdiction did indeed halt at the
limits of the house.  But he comprehended not at all the fact of his
escape.  He'd entered number twenty-eight the previous night as a man of
purpose, the Reconciler of the Imajica come to confront the past and be
strengthened by self knowledge  He left it undone by that same
knowledge, and stood in the street like a Bedlamite, staring up at the
sun in ignorance of the fact that its arc marked the year's progression
to midsummer, and thus to the hour when the man of purpose he'd been had
to act, or fail forever.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Although Jude had not slept well after Clem's visit (dreams of
light-bulbs, talking in a code of flickers she couldn't crack) she woke
early, and had laid her plans for the day by eight.  She'd drive up to
Highgate, she decided, and try and find some way into the prison beneath
the Tower, where the only woman left in the Fifth who might help empower
her languished.  She knew more about Celestine now than she had when
she'd first visited the Tower on New Year's Eve.  Dowd had procured her
for the Unbeheld, or so he claimed, plucking her from the streets of
London and taking her to the borders of the First.  That she'd survived
R

such traumas at all was extraordinary.  That she might be sane at the
end of them, after divine violation and centuries of imprisonment, was
almost certainly too much to hope for.  But mad or not, Celestine was a
much needed source of insight, and Jude was determined to dare whatever
she had to in order to hear the woman speak.

The Tower was so perfectly anonymous she drove past it before realizing
that she'd done so.  Doubling back, she parked in a side street, and
approached on foot.  There were no vehicles in the forecourt, and no
sign of life at any of the windows, but she marched to the front door
and rang the bell, hoping there might be a caretaker she could persuade
to let her in.  She'd use Oscar's name as a reference, she'd decided.
Though she knew this was playing with fire, there was no time for
niceties.  Whether Gentle's ambitions as a Reconciler were realized or
not, the days ahead would be charged with possibilities.

Things sealed were cracking; things silent were drawing breath to speak.

The door remained closed, though she rang and rapped several times.
Frustrated, she headed round the back of the building, the route more
choked by barbs and stings than ever.  The Tower's shadow chilled the
ground where Clara had dropped and died, and the earth, which was badly
drained, smelt of stag nancy  Until she walked here the thought of
finding any fragments of the blue eye had not occurred to her, but
perhaps it had been part of her unconscious agenda from the start.
Finding no hope of access on this side of the building she turned her
attention to seeking the pieces.  Though her recollections of what had
happened here were strong, she couldn't pinpoint with any accuracy the
place where Dowd's mites had devoured the stone, and she wandered around
for fully an hour, searching through the long grass for some sign.  Her
patience was finally rewarded, however.  Much further from the Tower
than she'd ever have guessed she found what the devourers had left.  It
was little more than a pebble, which anybody but herself would have
passed

over.  But to her eyes its blue was unmistakable, and

when she knelt to pick it up she was almost reverential.

it looked like an egg she thought, lying there in a nest of

grass, waiting for the warmth of a body to kindle the life

in it.

As she stood up she heard the sound of car doors slam-ming on the other
side of the building.  Keeping the stone I

tight in her hand she slipped back down the side of the Tower.  !.

There were voices in the forecourt: men and women

exchanging words of welcome.  At the corner, she had a

glimpse of them.  Here they were, the Tabula Rasa.  In her

imagination she'd elevated them to the dubious status of A Grand
Inquisitors, austere and merciless judges whose

cruelty would be gouged into their faces.  There was perhaps one amongst
this quartet - the eldest of the three

men - who would not have looked absurd in robes, but

the others had an insipidity about their features, and a

sloth in their bearing, that would have made them bathe tic in any garb
but the most bland.

None looked particularly happy with their lot.  To judge by their leaden
eyes, sleep had failed to befriend them lately.  Nor could their
expensive clothes (everything charcoal and black) conceal the lethargy
in their limbs.

She waited at the corner until they'd disappeared through the front
door, hoping the last had left it ajar.  But it was once again locked,
and this time she declined to knock.  While she might have brazened or
flattered her way past a caretaker, none of the quartet she'd seen would
have spared her an inch.  As she stepped away from the door another car
turned off the road and glided into the forecourt.  Its driver was a
male, and the youngest of the arrivers.

It was too late to dodge for cover, so she raised her hand in a cheery
way, and picked up her pace IF to a smart trot.  As she came abreast of
the vehicle it halted.  She kept on walking.  Once past it, she heard
the

car door open and a fruity, over-educated voice said: . "You there! What
are you doing?"

She kept up her trot, resisting the temptation to run even though she
heard his feet on the gravel, then another haughty holler as he came in
pursuit.  She ignored him until she was at the property line, and he was
within grasping distance of her.

Then she turned, with a pretty smile, and said. "Did you call?. "This is
a private ground," he replied.

"I'm sorry, I must have the wrong address.  You're not a gynaeco lo gist
are you?" Where this invention sprang from she didn't know, but it
coloured his cheeks in two pulses.. "I need to see a doctor, as soon as
possible."

He shook his head, covered in confusion.. "This isn't the hospital," he
spluttered.. "It's halfway down the hill." Lord bless the English male,
she thought, who could be reduced to near-idiocy at the very mention of
matters vaginal.

"Are you sure you're not a doctor?" she said, enjoying his discomfiture.
"Even a student?  I don't mind."

He actually took a step back from her at this, as though she was going
to pounce on him and demand an examination on the spot.

"No, I'm - I'm sorry."

"So am L' she said, extending her hand.  He was too baffled to refuse,
and shook it.. "I'm Sister Concupiscentia," she said.

"Bloxham," he replied.

"You should be a gynaecologist," she said, appreciatively.. "You've got
lovely warm hands," and with that she left him to his blushes.

There was a message from Chester Klein on the answering machine when she
got back, inviting her to a cocktail

party at his house that evening, in celebration of what he

called the Bastard Boy's return to the land of the living.

She was at first startled that Gentle had decided to make J

contact with his friends after all his talk of invisibility, AW

then flattered that he'd taken her advice.  Perhaps she'd

been over-hasty in her rejection of him.  Even in the short

time she'd spent in Yzordderrex the city had made her

think and behave in ways she'd never have countenanced in the Fifth. How
much more so for Gentle, whose

catalogue of adventures in the Dominions would have

filled a dozen diaries.  Now he was back in the Fifth, perhaps he was
resisting some of those more bizarre influences, like a man returned to
civilization from some lost I

tribe, sluicing off the war-paint and learning to wear

shoes again.  She called Klein back and accepted the invitation.

"My dear child, you are a sight for sore eyes," he said

when she appeared on his doorstep that evening.. "So

stylishly unnourishedl Malnutrition a la mode.  Perfection."

She hadn't seen him in a long time, but she didn't remember him ever
being so fulsome in his flattery before.  He kissed her on both cheeks
and led her through the house into the back garden.  There was still
warmth in the descending sun, and his other guests - two of whom she
knew, two of whom were strangers - were sipping cocktails on the lawn.
Though small and high walled the garden was almost tropically lush.
Inevitably, given Klein's nature, it was entirely given over to
flowering species, no bush or plant welcomed if it didn't bloom with
immoderate abandon.  He introduced her to the company one by one,
starting with Vanessa, whose face though much changed since they'd last
met - was one of the two she knew.  She had put on a good deal of
weight, and even more makeup, as though to cover one excess with
another.  Her eyes, Jude saw when she said hello, were those of a woman
who was only holding back a scr earn for decorum's sake.

"Is Gentle with you?" was Vanessa's first question.

"No, he's not," Klein said.. "Now have another drink and go and dally in
the rose-bushes."

The woman took no offence at his condescension, but made straight for
the champagne bottle, while Klein introduced Jude to the two strangers
in the party.  One, a balding young man in sunglasses, he introduced as
Duncan Skeet.

"A painter," he said.. "Or, more precisely, an impressionist.  Isn't
that right, Duncan?  You do impressions don't you?

Modigliani, Corot, Gauguin..

The joke was lost on its butt, though not on Jude.. "Isn't

4 that illegal?" she said.

"Only if you don't talk about it," Klein replied, which remark brought a
guffaw from the fellow in conversation with the faker: a heavily
moustached and accented individual called Luis.

"Who's not a painter of any persuasion.  You're not anything at all, are
you, Luis?"

"How about a Lotos-eater?" Luis said.  The scent Jude had taken to be
that of the blossoms in the borders was in fact Luis's after-shave.

,I'll drink to that," Klein said, moving Jude on to the last of the
company.  Though Jude knew the woman's

face she couldn't place it, until Klein named her - Simone

and she remembered the conversation she'd had at  A

Clem and Taylor's, which had ended with this woman

heading off in search of seduction.  Klein left them to talk f

72- while he went inside to break open another bottle of A

champagne.

"We met at Christmas," Simone said.. "I don't know if

you remembeff

"Instantly," Jude said.

"I've had my hair chopped since then and I swear half

my friends don't recognize me."

"It suits you.,

"Klein says I should have kept it, and had it made into

jewellery.  Apparently hair brooches were the height of

fashion at the turn of the century."

"Only as mementos mo?i," Jude said.  Simone looked

blank.. "The hair was usually from someone who'd died."

The woman's fizz-addled features still took a little time

to register what she was being told, but when she grasped

the point she let out a groan of disgust.

"I suppose that's his idea of a joke," she said.. "He has no

sense of fucking decency, that man." Klein was appearing

from the back door, bearing champagne.. "Yes, you!'

Simone said.. "Don't you take death seriously?"

"Have I missed something?" Klein said.    I

"You are a tasteless old fart sometimes' Simone went

on, striding towards him, and throwing the glass down

at his feet.

"What did I do?" Klein said.

Luis went to his assistance, cooing at Simone to calm

her.  Jude had no desire to get further embroiled.  She

retreated down one of the paths, her hand slipping into the deep pocket
of her skirt, where the egg of the blue eye was lying.  She closed her
palm around it, and stooped to sniff at one of the perfect roses.  It
had no scent; not even of life.

She thumbed its petals.  They were dry.  She stood up again, casting her
eyes over the spectacle of   V blossoms.  Fake, every last one.

Simone's caterwauling had ceased behind her, and now so did Luis's
chatter.  Jude looked round, and there at the back door, stepping out of
the house into the warm evening light, was Gentle.

"Save me," she heard Klein imploring, 'before I'm flayed alive."

Gentle smiled his sun-shamer, and opened his arms to Klein.

"No more arguments," he said, hugging the man.

"Tell Simone," Klein replied.

"Simone.  Are you bullying Chester?. "He was being a bastard."

"No, I'm the bastard.  Give me a kiss, and tell me you forgive him."

"I forgive him."

"Peace on earth, goodwill to Chester."

There was laughter from all parties, and Gentle passed through the
company with kisses, hugs and handshakes, reserving the longest, and
perhaps the cruel lest embrace for Vanessa.

"You're missing somebody," Klein said, and steered Gentle's glance
towards Jude.

He didn't lavish his smile upon her.  She was wise to his devices, and
he knew it.  Instead he offered her an almost apologetic look, and
raised the glass Klein had already put in his hand in her direction.
He'd always been a slick transformer (perhaps it was the Maestro in him,
surfacing as a trivial skill) and in the twenty-four hours or so since
she'd left him on his doorstep he'd made himself new.  The ragged locks
were trimmed, the grimy face washed and shaved.  Dressed in white, he
looked like

OF a cricketer returned from the crease, glowing with vigour and
victory.  She stared at him, searching for some sign of the haunted man
he'd been the evening before, but he'd put his anxieties entirely out of
sight, for which she could only admire him.  More than admire.  Tonight
he was the lover she'd imagined as she'd lain in Quaisoir's bed and she
couldn't help but be stirred by the sight of him.  Once before a dream
had led her into his arms, and the consequence, of course, had been pain
and tears.  it was a form of masochism to invite a repeat of that
experience, and a distraction from weightier matters.

And yet; and yet.  Was it perhaps inevitabk that they found their way
back into one another's arms sooner or later?  And if it was, then maybe
this game of glances was a greater distraction still, and they would
serve their ambitions better to dispense with the dalliance and accept
that they were indivisible.  This time, instead of being dogged by a
past neither of them had comprehended, they knew their histories, and
could build on solid ground.  That is, if he had the will to do so.

Klein was beckoning her, but she stayed in her bower of fake blossoms,
seeing how eager he was to watch the drama he'd engineered unfold.  He,
Luis and Duncan  t

I were merely spectators.  The scene they'd come to watch was the
Judgement of Paris, with Vanessa, Simone and herself cast as the
Goddesses, and Gentle as the hero obliged to choose between them.  It
was grotesque, and she was determined to keep herself from the tableau,
instead wandering up to the far end of the garden while the banter
continued on the lawn.

Close to the wall she came upon a strange sight.  A clearing had been
made in the artificial jungle, and a small rosebush real, but far less
sumptuous than the fakery surrounding it - had been planted there.  As
she was puzzling over this, Luis appeared at her side with a glass of
champagne.

"One of his cats," Luis said.. "Gloriana.  She was killed by a car in
March.  He was devastated.  Couldn't sleep.

Wouldn't even talk to anybody.  I thought he was going to kill himself."

"He's a strange one," Jude said, casting a glance back at M

Klein, who had his arm around Gentle's shoulder, and was laughing
uproariously.. "He pretends everything's a game

"That's because he feels everything too much," Luis replied.

"I doubt that," she said.

"I've been in business with him twenty-one, twenty-two years.  We have
fights.  We make up.  We have fights again.  He's a good man, believe
me.  But so afraid of feeling, he must make it all a joke.  You're not
English, huh?. "No, I'm English."

"Then you understand this," he said.. "You also have the little graves,
hidden away." He laughed.

"Thousands," she said, watching Gentle step back into the house.. "Would
you excuse me a moment?" she said, and headed back down the garden with
Luis in pursuit.  Klein made a move to intercept her but she simply
handed him her empty glass and went inside.

Gentle was in the kitchen, rooting through the refrigerator, peeling the
lids off bowls and peering into them.

So much for invisibility," Jude said.

"Would you have preferred it if I hadn't come?"

IM

caning that if I'd asked you'd have stayed away?" He grinned as he found
something that suited his palate.

"Meaning," he said, 'that the rest of them don't have a prayer.  I came
here because I knew you'd be here." He

plunged his first and middle fingers into the ramekin he'd brought out,
and laid a dollop of chocolate mousse

on his tongue.

"Want some?" he said.

She hadn't, until she saw the abandon with which he was devouring the
stuff.  His appetite was contagious.

She scooped a fingerful herself.  It was sweet and creamy.

"Good?" he said.

"Sinful," she replied.. "What made you change your mind?. "About what?"
"About hiding yourself away."

"Life's too short," he said, taking his laden fingers to his mouth
again.. "Besides, I just said: I knew you'd be here.. "You're a
mind-reader now?"

"I'm flourishing," he said, his grin more chocolate than teeth.  The
sophisticate she'd seen step out into the garden minutes before was here
a guzzling boy.

"You've got chocolate all around your mouth, "she said.

"Do you want to kiss it off?" he replied.

"Yes," she said, seeing no purpose misrepresenting her feelings. Secrets
had done them too much harm in the past.

"Then why are we still here?" he said.

"Klein'll never forgive us if we leave.  The party's in your honour."

"They can talk about us when we've gone," he said, setting down the
ramekin and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.  'in fact,
they'd probably prefer that.  I say we go now, before we're spotted.
We're wasting time aking conversation

when we could be making love.. "I thought I was the mind-reader," he
said.

As they opened the front door they heard Klein calling them from the
back, and Jude felt a pang of guilt, until she remembered the
proprietorial look she'd caught on Klein's face when Gentle had first
appeared and he'd known that he had the cast gathered for a fine farce.
Guilt turned to irritation, and she slammed the front door hard to make
sure he heard.

WA

As soon as they got back to the flat Jude threw open the windows to let
the breeze, which was still balmy though the night had long since
fallen, come and go.  News from the streets outside came with it of
course, but nothing momentous: the inevitable sirens; chatter from the
pavement; jazz from the club down the block, its windows

Er

also thrown open.  With the windows wide, she sat down on the bed beside
Gentle.  It was time for them to speak without any other agenda but the
truth.

"I didn't think we'd end up this way," she said.. "Here.  Together."
"Are you glad we have?. "Yes, I'm glad," she said, after a pause.. "It
feels right.. "Good," he replied.. "It feels perfectly natural to me
too." He slid around the back of her, and, threading his hands through
her hair, began to work his fingers against her scalp.  She sighed.

A

I

. "You like that?" he asked.

I like that.. "Do you want to tell me how you feel?. "About what?"
"About me.  About us.. "I told you, it feels right.. "That's all?. "No."
"What else?"

She closed her eyes, the persuasive fingers almost easing the words out
of her.

"I'm glad you're here because I think we can learn from one another. Maybe
even love each other again.  How does that sound?"

"Fine by me," he said softly.

"And what about you?  What's in your head?"

"That I'd forgotten how strange this Dominion is.  That I need your help
to make me strong.  That I'm afraid I may act strangely sometimes, make
mistakes, and I want

you to love me enough to forgive me if I do.  Will you?. "You know I
will," she said.

"I want you to share my visions, Judith.  I want you to see what's
shining in me, and not be afraid of it.. "I'm not afraid."

"That's good to hear," he said.. "That's so very good." He leaned
towards her, putting his mouth close to her ear.. "We make the rules from
now on," he whispered.. "And the world follows.  Yes?  There's no law
but us.

What we want.  What we feel.

We'll let that consume us, and the fire'll spread.  You'll see."

He kissed the ear into which he'd poured these seductions, then her
cheek, and finally her mouth.  She started to kiss him back, fervently,
putting her hands around his head as he had hers, kneading the flesh
from which his hair sprang, and feeling its motion against his skull. He
had his hands on the neck of her blouse, but he didn't bother to
unbutton it.  Instead he tore it open, not in a frenzy but rhythmically,
rent after rent, like a ritual of uncovering.

As soon as her breasts were bare his mouth was on them.  Her skin was
hot, but his tongue was hotter, painting her with spiral tracks of
spittle then closing his mouth around her nipples until they were harder
than the tongue that teased them.  His hands were reducing her skirt to
tatters in the same efficient way he'd torn open her blouse.  She let
herself drop back on to the bed, with the rags of blouse and skirt
beneath her.  He looked down at her, laying his palm at her crotch,
which was still protected from his touch by the thin fabric of her
underwear.

"How many men have had this?" he asked her, the question murmured
without inflection.

His head was silhouetted against the pale billows at the window, and she
could not read his expression.. "How many' he said, moving the ball of
his hand in a circular motion.  From any other source but this the
question would have offended or even enraged her.  But she liked his
curiosity.

"A few."

He ran his fingers down into the space between her legs, and worked his
middle fingers under the fabric to touch her other hole.. "And this?" he
said, pushing at the place.

She was less comfortable with this enquiry, verbal or digital, but he
insisted.. "Tell me," he said.. "Who's been in here?. "Just one," she
said.

"Godolphin?" he replied.

"Yes." He removed his finger, and rose from the bed.

"A family enthusiasm, "he remarked.

"Where are you going?"

"Just closing the curtains," he said.. "The dark's better for what we're
going to do." He drew the drapes without closing the window.. "Are you
wearing any jewellers' he asked her.

"Just my earrings.. "Take them off," he said.

"Can't we have a little light?"

"It's too bright as it is," he replied, though she could barely see him.
He was watching her as he undressed, that much she knew.  He saw her
slide her earrings from the holes in her lobes, and then take off her
underwear.  By the time she was completely naked so was he.

"I don't want a little part of you," he said, approaching the bottom of
the bed.. "I want all of you, every last piece.  And I want you to want
all of me.. "I do," she said.

"I hope you mean that.. "How can I prove it?"

His grey form seemed to darken as she spoke, receding into the shadows
of the room.

He'd said he'd be invisible, and now he was.  Though she felt his hand
graze her ankle, and looked down the bed to find him, he was beyond the
grasp of her eye.  But pleasure flowed from his touch nevertheless.

"I want this," he said as he caressed her foot.. "And this."

Now her shin, and thigh.. "And this-' Her sex.  '-as much as the rest,
but no more.  And this, and these." Belly, breasts.  His touch was on
them all, so he had to be very close to her now, but still invisible.
"And this sweet throat, and this wonderful head. "Now the hands slid away
again, down her arms.. "And these," he said.. "To the ends of your
fingers." The touch was back at her foot again, but everywhere his hands
had been - which was to say her entire body - trembled with anticipation
at the touch coming again.  She raised her head from the pillow a second
time in the hope of glimpsing her lover.

"Lie back," he told her.

"I want to see you."

"I'm here," he said, his eyes stealing a gleam from somewhere as he
spoke; two bright dots in a space that, had she not known it was
bounded, could have been limitless.  After his words, there was only his
breath.

She couldn't help but let the rhythm of her own inhalations and
exhalations fall in with his, a lulling regularity which steadily
slowed.

After a time, he raised her foot to his mouth, and licked the sole from
heel to toe in one motion.  Then his breath again, cooling the fluid
he'd bathed her with, and slowing still further as it came and went,
until her system seemed to teeter on termination at the end of each
breath, only to be coaxed back into life again as she inhaled.

This was the substance of every moment, she realized; the body never
certain if the next lungful would be its last - hovering for a tiny time
between cessation and continuance.  And in that space out of time,
between a breath expelled and another drawn, the miraculous was easy,
because neither flesh nor reason had laid their edicts there.  She felt
his mouth open wide enough to encompass her toes, and then, impossible
as it was, slide her foot into his throat.

He's going to swallow me, she thought, and the notion conjured once
again the book she'd found in Estabrook's study, with its sequence of
lovers enclosed in a circle of

consumption; a devouring so prodigious it had ended with mutual eclipse.
She felt no unease at the prospect.  This wasn't the business of the
visible world, where fear got fat because there was so much to win and
lose.  This was a place for lovers, where there was only ever gain.

She felt him draw her other leg up to his head, and immerse it in the
same heat; then felt him take hold of her hips, and use them as purchase
to impale himself upon her, inch by inch.  Perhaps he'd become vast: his
maw monstrous, his throat a tunnel; or perhaps she was pliant as silk,
and he was drawing her into him like a magician threading fake flowers
into a wand.  She reached up towards him in the darkness, to feel the
miracle, but her fingers couldn't interpret what buzzed beneath them.
Was this her flesh, or his?  Ankle or cheek?  There was no way of
knowing.

Nor, in truth, any need to know.

All she wanted now was to do as the lovers in the book had done, and
match his devouring with her own.

She reached for the edge of the bed, and turned herself half over,
bringing him down beside her.  Now, though her eyes were besotted by
darkness, she saw the outline of his body, folded into the shadows of
her own.  There was nothing changed about his anatomy.  Though he was
consuming her, his body was in no way distorted.  He lay beside her like
a sleeper.  She reached out to touch him a second time, not expecting to
make sense of his body now, but finding she could.

This was his thigh; this his shin; this his ankle and foot.  As she ran
her palm across his flesh a delicate wave of change came with it, and
his substance seemed to soften beneath her touch.  The scent of his
sweat was appetizing.  It quickened the juices in her throat and belly.
She drew her head towards his feet, and touched her lips to the
substance of him.  Then she was feeding; spreading her hunger around him
like a mouth and closing her mind on his glistening skin.  He shuddered
as she took him in, and she felt the thrill of his pleasure as her own.
He had already consumed her to the hips, but she quickly matched his
appetite, taking his legs

down into her, swallowing both his prick and the belly it lay hard
against.  She loved the excess of this, and its absurdity, their bodies
defying physics and physique, or else making fresh proofs of both as the
configuration closed upon itself.  Was anything ever so easy and yet so
impossible, besides love?  And what was this, if not that paradox laid
on a sheet?  He had slowed his swallows to allow her to catch up, and
now, in tandem, they closed the loop of their consumption, until their
bodies were figments, and they were mouth to mouth.

Something in the solid world - a shout in the street, a sour saxophone
chord - threw her back into the plausible world again, and she saw the
root from which their invention had flowered.  it was a commonplace
conjunction: her legs crossed around his hips, his erection high inside
her.  She couldn't see his face, but she knew he wasn't here in this
fugitive place with her.  He was still dreaming their devouring.  She
panicked, wanting to regain the vision but not knowing how.  She
tightened her grip on his body, and in so doing inspired his hips to
motion.  He began to move in her, breathing oh so slowly again nst her
face.  She forgot her panic, and let her rhythm once again slow until it
matched his.  The solid world dissolved as she did so, and she returned
to the place from which she'd been called to find that the loop was
tightening by the moment, his mind enveloping her head as she enveloped
his, like layers of an impossible onion, each one smaller than the layer
it concealed; an enigma that could only exist where substance collapsed
into the very mind which begged its being.

This bliss could not be sustained indefinitely, however.  Before long it
began once more to lose its purity, tainted by further sounds from the
outside world, and this time she sensed that Gentle was also
relinquishing his hold on the delirium.

Perhaps, as they learned to be lovers again, they'd find a way to
sustain the state for longer; spend nights and days, perhaps, lost in
the previous space between a breath expelled and another drawn.  But for

f,-A

now she would have to be content with the ecstasy they'd had.
Reluctantly, she let the tropic night in which they'd devoured each
other be subsumed into a simpler darkness, and without quite knowing
where consciousness began and ended, fell asleep.

When she awoke she was alone in the bed.  That disappointment apart, she
felt both lively and light.  What they'd shared was a commodity more
marketable than a cure for the common cold: a high without a hangover.
She sat up reaching for a sheet to drape around her, but before she
could stand she heard his voice in the predawn gloom.  He was standing
by the window, with a fold of curtain dipped between middle and
forefinger, his eye to the chink he'd opened.

"It's time for me to get working," he said softly.. "It's still early,"
she said.

"The sun's almost up," he replied.. "I can't waste time." He let the
curtain drop, and crossed to the bed.  She sat up and put her arms
around his torso.  She wanted to spend time with him, luxuriating in the
calm she felt, but his instinct was healthier.

They both had work to do.

"I'd prefer to stay here than return to the studio," he said.. "Would
you mind?. "Not at all," she replied.  'in fact, I'd like you to stay."
"I'll be coming and going at odd hours."

"As long as you find your way back into bed once in a while," she said.

"I'll be with you," he said, running his hand down from her neck to rub
her belly.. "From now on, I'll be with you night and day."

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Though Jude's memory of the night before was vivid, she had no
recollection of either herself or Gentle taking the telephone off the
hook, and it wasn't until nine thirty the following morning, when she
decided to call Clem, that she realized that one of them had done so.
She replaced the receiver, only to have the telephone ring seconds
later.  At the other end of the line was a voice she'd almost given up
expecting to hear again: Oscar.  At first she thought he was breathless,
but after a few stumbling sentences she realized his pantings were
barely suppressed sobs.

"Where have you been, my darling?  I've rung and rung since I got your
note.  I thought you were dead."

"The phone was off the hook, that's all.  Where are you?"

"At the house.  Will you come?  Please.  I need you here." He spoke with
escalating panic, as though she was punctuating his appeals with
refusals.  "We don't have much time.. "Of course I'll come," she told
him.

"Now," he insisted.. "You've got to come now."

She told him she'd be on his doorstep within the hour and he replied
that she'd find him waiting.  Putting off her call to Clem and putting
on a little makeup, she headed out.  Though it wasn't yet midmorning the
sun was blazing hot, and as she drove she remembered the monologue which
she and Gentle had been treated to on their ride back from the Estate.

Monsoons and heat waves all through the summer, the doom-sayer had
predicted; and how he'd relished his prophecies!

She'd

thought his enthusiasm grotesque at the time, a petty mind indulging in
apocalyptic fantasies.

But now, after the extraordinary night she'd had with Gentle, she found
herself wondering how these bright streets might be made to experience
the miracles of the previous midnight: sluiced of vehicles by an
almighty rain, then softened in the blaze of sun, so that solid matter
flowed like warm treacle and a city divided into public places and
private, into wealthy ghettos and gutters, became a continuum.  Was this
what Gentle had meant when he'd talked about her sharing his vision?  If
so, she was ready for more.

Regent's Park Road was quieter than usual.  There were no kids playing
on the pavement and, though she'd had a hellish time carving her way
through the traffic just two streets away, no vehicles parked within
half a mile of the house.  It stood shunned, but for her.  She didn need
to knock.  Before she'd even set her heel on the step the door was
opening, and there was Oscar, looking harried, beckoning her in.  He
answered the door dry eyed but as soon as it was closed, and locked, and
bolted, he put his arms around her, and the tears began, great sobs that
racked his bulk.  Over and over he told her how much he loved her,
missed her and needed her, now more than ever.  She embraced him, and
calmed him as best she could.

After a time he controlled himself, and ushered her through to the
kitchen.  The lights were burning throughout the house, but after the
blaze of the day their contribution looked jaundiced, and didn't flatter
him.  His face was pale, where it wasn't discoloured with bruises; his
hands were puffed and raw.  There were other wounds, she guessed,
beneath his unpressed clothes.  Watching him brew Earl Grey for them,
she saw a look of discomfort cross his face when he moved too fast.
Their talk, of course, rapidly turned to their parting at the Retreat.

"I was certain Dowd would slit your throat as soon as you got to
Yzordderrex

"He didn't lay a finger on me," she said.  Then added. "That's not quite
true.  He did later.

But when we arrived he was too badly hurt." She paused.. "So are you."

"I was in a pretty wretched state," he said.. "I wanted to follow you,
but I could barely stand.

I came back here, got a gun, licked my wounds a while, then crossed
over.  But by that time you'd gone.. "So you did follow?"

'of course.  Did you think I'd leave you in Yzordderrex?"

He set a large cup of tea in front of her, and honey to sweeten it with.
She didn't usually indulge, but she hadn't breakfasted, so she put
enough spoonfuls of honeyo into the tea to turn it into an aromatic
syrup.

"By the time I reached Peccable's house," Oscar went 0 n, 'it was empty.
There were riots going on outside.  I didn't know where to start looking
for you.  It was a nightmare."

"You know the Autarch was deposed?"

A

"No, I didn't, but I'm not surprised.  Every New Year, Peccable would
say: he'll go this year, he'll go this year.  What happened to Dowd, by
the way?"

"He's dead," she said, with a little smile of satisfaction.. "Are you
sure?  His type are difficult to kill, my dear, let me tell you.  I
speak from bitter experience.. "You were saying -'

"Yes.  What was I saying?"

"That you followed us and found Peccable's house empty.,

And half the city in flames." He sighed.. "It was tragic, seeing it
like that.  All that mindless destruction.  The I revenge of the proles.

Oh, I know, I should be celebrating a victory for democracy, but what's
going to be left?  My lovely Yzordderrex, rubble.  I looked at it and I
said: this is the end of an era, Oscar.  After this, everything'll be
different.  Darker." He looked up from the tea into which he'd been
staring.. "Did Peccable survive, do you know?,

"He was going to leave with Hoi-Polloi.  I assume he did.  He emptied
the cellar."

"No, that was me.  And I'm glad I did it." He cast a glance towards the
windowsill.

Nestling amongst the domestic bric-A-brac were a series of diminutive
figurines.  Talismans, she guessed; part of the hoard from Peccable's
cellar.  Some were looking into the room, others out.  They were all
little paradigms of aggression, with positively rabid expressions on
their garishly painted faces.

"But you're my best protection," he said.. "Just having

you here, I feel we've got some chance of surviving this in

ess." He put his hand over hers.. "When I got your note, and knew you'd
survived, I began to hope a little.  Then

filed

of course I couldn't get hold of you, and I began to imagine the worst."

She looked up from his hand, and saw on his plagued face a family
resemblance she'd never glimpsed before.  There was an echo of Charlie
in him; the Charlie of the Hampstead hospice, sitting at his window
talking about bodies being dug up in the rain.

"Why didn't you just come to the. flat she said.

"I couldn't leave here.. "Are you that badly hurt?"

"It's not what's in here that held me back," he said, putting his hand
to his chest.. "It's what's out there.. "You still think the Tabula
Rasa's going to come after you?"

"God, no.  They're the least of our worries.  I half thought of warning
one or two of them; anonymously, you know.  Not Shales or McGann, or
that idiot Bloxham.  They can fry in Hell.  But lionel was always
friendly, even when he was sober.  And the ladies.  I don't like the
idea of their deaths on my conscience.. "So who are you hiding from?"
"The fact is, I don't know," he admitted.. "I see images in the Bowl,
and I can't quite make them out." She'd forgotten the Boston Bowl, with
its blur of prophetic stones.  Now Oscar was apparently hanging on its
every rattle.

"Something's crossed over from the Dominions, my dear," he said.. "I'm
certain of that.  I saw it coming after you.  Trying to smother you .  .

He looked as though tears were going to overtake him again, but she
reassured him, lightly patting his hand as though he were some addled
old man.

"Nothing's going to harm me," she said.. "I've survived too much in the
last few days."

"You've never seen a power like this," he warned her.. "And neither's
the Fifth."

'if it came from the Dominions, then it's the Autarch's doing.. "You
sound very certain.. "That's because I know who he is."

"You've been listening to Peccable," he said.. "He's full of theories,
darling, but they're not worth a damn." His not-so-faint condescension
irritated her, and  she drew her hand out from under his.

"My source is a lot more reliable than Peccable,"  she said.

"Oh?" He realized he'd caused offence, and indulged her.. "Who's that?"

"Quaisoir."      J I

"Quaisoir?  How the hell did you get to her?"

His surprise seemed to be as genuine as his humouring had been feigned.

"Don't you have any idea?" she asked him.. "Didn't Dowd ever talk to you
about the old days?"

Now his expression became guarded; almost suspicious.

"Dowd served generations of Godolphins," she said.. "Surely you knew
that?  Right back to crazy Joshua.  In fact, he was Joshua's right-hand
man, if man's the word.. "I was aware of that," Oscar said softly.

"Then you knew about me too?"

He said nothing.

"Did you, Oscar?"

"I didn't debate you with Dowd, if that's what you mean."

"But you knew why you and Charlie kept me in the family?"

Now it was he who was offended; he grimaced at her vocabulary.

That's what it was, Oscar.  You and Charlie, trading me; knowing I was
bound to stay with the Godolphins.  Maybe I'd wander off for a while and
have a few romances, ut sooner or later I'd be back in the family." 1W

e both loved you," he said, his voice as blank as the look he now gave
her.. "Believe me, neither of us understood the politics of it.  We
didn't care.. "Oh really?" she said, her doubt plain.

"All I know is: I love you.  it's the one certainty left in   Nk% my
life."

She was tempted to sour this saccharine with chapter and verse of his
family's conspiracies against her, but what was the use?  He was a
fractured man, locked away in his house for fear of what the sun might
invite over his threshold.

Circumstance had already undone him.  Any further work on her part would
be malice, and though she didn't doubt that there was much in him to
despise - his talk of the revenge of the Proles had been particularly
unattractive - she'd shared too many intimacies with him, and been too
comforted by them, to be cruel.  Besides, she had something to impart
that would be a harder blow than any accusation.

"I'm not staying, Oscar," she said.. "I haven't come back here to lock
myself away."

"But it's not safe out there," he replied.. "I've seen what's coming.
It's in the Bowl.  You want to see for yourself?" He stood up.. "You'll
change your mind."

He led her up the stairs to the treasure room, talking as he went.

"The Bowl's got a life of its own since this power came into the Fifth.
it doesn't need anybody watching, it just

goes on repeating the same images.  It's panicking.  It knows what's
coming, and it's panicking."

She could hear it before they even reached the door: a din like the
drumming of hailstones on sun-baked earth.

"I don't think it's wise to watch it for too long," he warned.  'it gets
hypnotic."

So saying, he opened the door.  The Bowl was sitting in the middle of
the floor, surrounded by a ring of votive RI candles, their fat flames
jumping as the air was agitated by the spectacle they lit.  The
prophetic stones were moving like a swarm of enraged bees in and above
the Bowl, which Oscar had been obliged to set in a small mound of earth
to keep it from being thrown over by their violence.  The air smelt of
what he'd called their panic: a bitter odour mingled with the metallic
tang that came before lightning.  Though the motion of the stones was
reasonably contained, she hung back from the Bowl for fear a rogue found
its way out of the dance and struck her.  At the speed they were moving,
the smallest of them could have taken out an eye.  But even from a
distance, with the shelves and their treasures to distract her, the
motion of the stones was all-consuming.  The rest of the room, Oscar
included, faded into insignificance as the frenzy drew her in.

"It may take a little time," Oscar was saying.. "But the images are
there."

"I see," she said.

The Retreat had already appeared in the blur, its dome half-hidden
behind the screen of the copse.  Its appearance was brief.  The Tabula
Rasa's Tower took its place a moment after, only to be superseded by a
third building, quite different from the pair that had gone before,
except that it too was half-concealed by foliage, in this case a single
tree planted in the pavement.

"What's that house?" she asked Oscar.

"I don't know, but it comes up over and over again.  It's somewhere in
London, I'm certain of that."

"How can you be sure?"

A

The building was unremarkable: three storeys, flat fronted and, as far
as she could judge, in a dilapidated state.  It could have stood in any
inner city in England; or, for that matter, in Europe.

"London's where the circle's going to close," Oscar replied.. "It's where
everything began, and it's where everything'll end."

The remark brought echoes: of Dowd at the wall on Pale Hill, talking
about history coming round; and of Gentle and herself, mere hours
before, devouring each other into perfection.

"There it is again," Oscar said.    31;

The image of the house had briefly flickered out but now reappeared,
brightly lit.  There was somebody near the step, she saw, with his arms
hanging by his sides, and his head back as he stared up at the sky.

The resolution of the image was not good enough for her to make out his
features.  Perhaps he was just some anonymous sun worshipper but she
doubted it.  Every detail of this para de had its significance.  Now the
image decayed again, and the noonday scene, with its gleaming foliage
and its pristine sky, gave way to a rolling juggernaut of smoke, all
black and grey.

"Here it comes," she heard Oscar say.

There were forms in the smoke, rising, withering, and falling as ash,
but their nature defied her interpretation.  Scarcely aware of what she
was doing, she took a step towards the Bowl.

"Don't, darling," Oscar said.

"What are we seeing?" she asked, ignoring his caution.

"The power," he said.. "That's what's coming into the Fifth.  Or already
here.. "But that's not Sartori.. "Sartori?" he said.

"The Autarch." Defying his own warning, he came to her side, and again
said. "Sartori?  The Maestro?" She didn't look round at him.  The
juggernaut

demanded her utter devotion.  Much as she hated to admit it to herself,
Oscar had been right, talking of immeasurable powers.  This was no human
agency at work.  It was a force of stupendous scale, advancing over a
landscape she'd first thought covered by a stubble of grey grass, but
which she now realized was a city, those frail stalks buildings,
toppling as the power burned out their foundations and overturned them.

No wonder Oscar was trembling behind locked doors; this was a terrible
sight, and one for which she was unprepared.

However atrocious Sartori's deeds, he was just a tyrant in a long and
squalid history of tyrants; men whose fear of their own frailty made
them monstrous.  But this was a horror of another order entirely, beyond
curing by politics or poisonings.  A vast, unforgiving power, capable of
sweeping all the Maestros and despots that had carved their names on the
face of the world away without pausing to think about it.  Had Sartori
un leased this immensity?  she wondered.  Was he so insane that he
thought he could survive such devastation, and build his New Yzordderrex
on the rubble it left behind?  Or was his lunacy profounder still?  Was
this juggernaut the true city of which he'd dreamed: a metropolis of
storm and smoke that would stand to the World's End because that was its
true name?

Now the sight was consumed by total darkness, and she let go of the
breath she'd been holding.

"It isn't over," Oscar said, his voice close to her ear.

The darkness began to shred in several places, and through the gashes
she saw a single figure, lying on a grey floor.  it was herself; a crude
representation, but recognizable.

J warned you," Oscar said.

The darkness this image had appeared through didn't entirely evaporate,
but lingered like a fog, and out of it a second figure came, and sank
down beside her.  She knew before the action had unravelled that Oscar
had made an error, thinking this was a prophecy of harm.  The shadow

between her legs was no killer.  It was Gentle, and this scene was here
in the Bowl's report, because the Reconciler stood as a sign of hope to
set against the despair that had come before.  She heard Oscar moan as
the shadow-lover reached for her, putting his hand between her legs,
then raising her foot to his mouth to begin his devouring.

"It's killing you," Oscar said.

Watched remotely like this, that was a rational interpretation.  But it
wasn't death, of course, it was love.  And it wasn't prophecy, it was
history; the very act they'd performed the night before.  Oscar was
viewing it like a child, seeing its parents make love and thinking
violence was being done in the marital bed.  She was glad of his error,
in a way, saving her as it did from the problem of explaining this
coupling.

She and the Reconciler were quickly intertwined, the veils of darkness
attending on the act and deepening their mingled shadows, so that the
lovers became a single knot, which shrank, and shrank, and finally
disappeared altogether, leaving the stones to rattle on as an
abstraction.

It was a strangely intimate conclusion to the sequence.  From the
Temple, Tower and house to the storm had been a grim progression, but
from the storm to this vision of love was altogether more optimistic; a
sign, perhaps, that union could bring an end to the darkness that had
gone before.

"That's all there is," Oscar said.. "It just begins again from here.
Round and round."

She turned from the Bowl as the din of stones, which had quietened as
the love-scene was sketched, became loud again.

"You see the danger you're in?" he said.

"I think I'm just an afterthought," she said, hoping to steer him away
from an analysis of what had been   NMI, depicted.

"Not to me you're not," he replied, putting his arms

around her.  For all his wounds, he was not a man to be resisted easily.
"I want to protect you," he said.. "That's my duty.

I see that now.  I know you've been mistreated, but I can make
reparations for that.  I can keep you here, safe and sound."

"So you think we can hole up here and Armageddon will just pass over?"
"Have you got a better idea?. "Yes.  We resist it, at all costs."

"There's no victory to be had against the likes of that," he said.

She could hear the stones' thunder behind her, and knew they were
picturing the storm again.

"At least we've got some de fences here," he went on.

"I've got spirit-guards at every door and every window.

You saw those in the kitchen?  They're the tiniest.. "All male, are
they?"

"What's that got to do with it?"

"They're not going to protect you, Oscar."

"They're all we've got."

maybe they're all you've got

She slipped from his arms and headed for the door.  He followed her out
on to the landing, demanding to know what she meant by this, and
finally, inflamed by his cowardice, she turned and said. "There's been a
power under your nose for years.. "What power?  Where?. "Sealed up
beneath Roxborough's Tower.. "What the hell are you talking about?. "You
don't know who she is?. "No," he said, angered now.. "This is nonsense."
"I've seen her, Oscar.. "How?  Nobody but the Tabula Rasa gets into the
Tower.. "I could show her to you.  Take you to the very place." She
dropped her volume, studying Oscar's anxious, ruddy features as she
spoke.. "I think maybe she's some

kind of Goddess.  I've tried to get her out twice and failed.

I need help.  I need your help."

"It's impossible," he replied.. "The Tower's a fortress.  Now more than
ever.  I tell you, this house is the only safe place left in the city.
It would be suicide for me to step out of here."

"Then that's that," she said, not about to debate with such timidity.
She started down the stairs, ignoring his calls for her to wait.

"You can't leave me," he said, as though amazed.. "I love you.  Do you
hear me?  I love you."

"There's more important things than love," she returned, thinking as she
spoke that this was easy to say with Gentle awaiting her at home.  But
it was also true.  She'd seen this city overturned and pitched into
dust.  Preventing that was indeed more important than love, especially
Oscar's spineless variety.

"Don't forget to lock up after me," she said as she reached the bottom
of the stairs.. "You never know what's going to come knocking on the
door."

On the way home she stopped to buy groceries, which had never been her
favourite chore but was today elevated into the realms of the surreal by
the sense of foreboding she brought with her.  Here she was going about
the business of purchasing domestic necessities, while the image of the
killing cloud turned in her head.  But life had to go on, even if
oblivion waited in the wings.  She needed milk, bread and toilet paper;
she needed deodorant, and waste bags to line the bin in the kitchen.

It was only in fiction that the daily round of living was ignored so
that grand events could take centre stage.  Her body would hunger, tire,
sweat and digest until the final pall descended.  There was peculiar
comfort in this thought, and though the darkness gathering at the
threshold of

her world should have distracted her from trivialities, its presence had
precisely the reverse effect.  She was more pernickety than usual about
the cheese she bought, and sniffed at half a dozen deodorants before she
found a scent that pleased her.

The shopping done, she headed home through streets buzzing with the
business of a sunlit day, contemplating the problem of Celestine as she
went.  With Oscar plainly unwilling to aid her, she would have to look
for help elsewhere, and with her circle of trusted souls so shrunk, that
only left Clem and Gentle.  The Reconciler had his own agenda, of
course, but after the promises of the night before - the commitments to
be with each other, sharing the fears and the visions - he'd surely
understand her need to liberate Celestine, if only to put an end to the
mystery.  She would tell him all that she knew about Roxborough's
prisoner, she decided, as soon as possible.

He wasn't home when she got back, which was no surprise.  He'd warned
her that he'd be keeping odd hours as he laid the groundwork for the
Reconciliation.  She prepared some lunch, then decided she hadn't got an
appetite, and went to work on tidying the bedroom, which was still in
chaos after the night's traffic.  As she straightened the sheets she
discovered they had a tiny occupant: the blue stone (or, as she
preferred to think of it, the egg), which had been in one of the pockets
of her ravaged clothes.  The sight of it diverted her from her
bed-making, and she sat on the edge of the mattress, passing the egg
from hand to hand, wondering if perhaps it could deliver her, even
briefly, into the cell where Celestine was locked.

it had of course been much reduced by Dowd's mites, but even when she'd
first discovered it in Estabrook's safe it had been a fragment of a
greater form, and still possessed some jurisdiction.  Did it still?

"Show me the Goddess," she said, clutching the egg tight.. "Show me the
Goddess."

Spoken plainly that way, the notion of her mind's removal from the
physical world, and its flight, seemed

absurd.  That wasn't the way the world worked, except perhaps at
enchanted midnights.  Now it was the middle of the afternoon, and the
noise of day rose through the open window.  She was loath to go and
close it, however.  She couldn't exile the world every time she wanted
to alter her consciousness.  The street and the people in it the dirt
and the din and the summer sky - all had to be made part of the
mechanism for transcendence, or else she'd come to grief the way her
sister had, bound up and blind long before her eyes went from her head.

As was her wont, she began to talk to herself; coaxing the miracle.
"It's happened before," she said.. "It can happen again.

Be patient, woman." But the longer she sat, the stronger the sense of
her 47-own ludicrousness became.  The image of her idiot

devotion appeared in her mind's eye.  There she was, sitting on the
bed, staring at a piece of dead stone; a study in fatuity.

"Fool," she said to herself.

Suddenly weary of the whole fiasco, she got up from the bed.  In that
rising she realized her error.  Her mind's eye showed her the motion as
if it was detached from her, and hovering near the window.  She felt a
sudden pang of panic, and for the second time in the space of thirty
seconds called herself fool, not for wasting time with the egg, but for
failing to realize that the image she'd taken as evidence of her own
failure, that of herself sitting waiting for something to happen, was in
fact proof that it had.  Her sight had drifted from her so subtly she'd
not even known it had gone.

"The cell," she said, instructing her subtle eye.. "Show me the
Goddess's cell."

Though it was close to the window, and could have flown from there, her
eye instead rose at a sickening speed, till she was looking down at
herself from the ceiling.  She saw her body rock below her, as the
flight giddied her.  Then, her sight descended.  The top of her head
loomed like a planet beneath her, and she was plunged

into her skull, down, down into the darkness of her own body.  She felt
her own panic on all sides: the frantic Tabour of her heart, her lungs
drawing shallow breaths.  There was none of the brightness she'd found
in Celestine's body, no hint of that luminous blue the Goddess had
shared with the stone.  There was only the dark and its turmoil.  She
wanted to make the egg understand its mistake, and draw her mind's eye
up out of this pit, but if her Ups were making such pleas, which she
doubted, they were ignored, and her fall went on, and on, as though her
sight had become a flyspeck in a well, and would fall for hours without
reaching its bowels.

And then, below her, a tiny point of light, which grew as she
approached, to show itself not a point but a strip of rippling
luminescence, like the purest glyph imaginable.  What was this doing
inside her?  Was it some relic of the working that had created her?  A
fragment of Sartori's felt, like Gentle's signature hidden in the
brushwork of his forged canvases?  She was upon it now; or rather in it,
its brightness a blaze that made her mind's eye squint.

And out of the blaze, images.  Such imagesl She knew neither their
origins nor their purpose, but they were exquisite enough to make her
forgive the misdirection that had led her here rather than to Celestine.
She seemed to be in a paradisiacal city, half-overgrown with glorious
flora, the profusion of which was fed by waters that rose like arches
and colonnades on every side.  Flocks of stars flew overhead, and made
perfect circles at her zenith; mists hung at her ankles, laying their
veils beneath her feet to ease her step.  She passed through this I city
like a hallowed daughter, and came to rest in a large, airy room, where
water cascaded in place of doors, and the merest stab of sun brought
rainbows.  There she sat, and with these borrowed eyes saw her own face
and I breasts, so vast they might have been sculpted for a J temple,
raised above her.  Did milk seep from her nipples; and did she sing a
lullaby?  She thought so; but her attention strayed too quickly from
breasts and face to be sure,

her gaze turned towards the far end of the chamber.  Somebody had
entered: a man, so wounded and ill mended she didn't recognize him at
first.  it was only when he was almost upon her that she realized the
company she kept.  It was Gentle, unshaven, and badly fed, but greeting
her with tears of joy in his eyes.  if words were exchanged she didn't
hear them, but he fell to his knees in front of her, and her gaze went
between his upturned face and the monumental effigy behind her.  It was
not, after all, a thing of painted stone, but was in this vision made of
living flesh, moving, weeping, even glancing down at the worshipper she
was.

All this was strange enough, but there was stranger still to come, as
she looked back towards Gentle and saw him pluck from a hand too tiny to
be hers the very stone that had given her this dream.  He took it with
gratitude, his tears finally abating.  Then he rose, and as he made his
way back towards the liquid door, the day beyond it blazed, and the
scene was washed away in light.

She sensed that the enigma, whatever it signified, was passing away, but
she had no power to hold it.  The glyph in her core appeared before her,
and she rose from it like a diver from some treasure the deep would not
relinquish, up through the dark and out into the place she'd left.

Nothing had changed in the room; but a sudden squall was on the world
outside, its torrent heavy enough to drop a sheet of water between the
raised window and the sill.  She stood up, clutching the stone.  The
journey had left her light-headed, however, and she knew if she tried to
go to the kitchen and put some food in her belly her legs would fold up
beneath her, so she lay down and let the pillow have her head awhile.

She didn't think she slept, but it was as difficult to distinguish
between sleep and wakefulness as it had been in Quaisoir's bed.  The
visions she'd seen in the darkness of her own belly were as insistent as
some prophetic dream, and stayed with her, the music of the rain a
perfect accompaniment to the memory.  it was only when the clouds moved
on, taking their deluge south, and the sun appeared between the sodden
curtains, that sleep overcame her.

F7 When she woke, it was to the sound of Gentle's key in the lock.  It
was night, or close to it, and he switched on the light in the adjacent
room.  She sat up, and was about to call to him when she thought better
of it, and instead watched through the partially open door.  She saw his
face for only an instant, but the glimpse was enough to make her want
him to come into her with kisses.  He didn't.  instead he paced back and
forth next door, massaging his hands as though they ached, working first
at the fingers, then at the palms.

Finally, she couldn't be patient any longer, and got up, sleepily
murmuring his name.  He didn't hear her at first and she had to speak
again before he realized he was being called.  Only then did he turn,
and put on a smile for her.

"Still awake?" he said fondly.. "You shouldn't have stayed up."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes.  Yes, of course." He put his hands to his face.. "This is a hard
business, you know.  I didn't expect it to be so difficult:

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

"Some other time," he said, approaching the door.  She took his hands in
hers.. "What's this?" he said.

She was still holding the egg, but not for long.  He had it from her
palm with the ease of a pick-pocket.  She

wanted to snatch it back, but she fought the instinct, and let him study
his prize.

"Pretty," he said.  Then, less lightly. "Where did it come from?"

Why did she hesitate to answer?  Because he looked so weary, and she
didn't want to burden him with new mysteries when he had a surfeit of
his own?  It was that in part; but there was another part that was
altogether less clear to her.  Something to do with the fact that in her
vision she'd seen him far more broken that he was at present, wounded
and wretched, and somehow that condition had to remain her secret, at
least for a time.

He put the egg to his nose and sniffed it.

"I smell you," he said.

"No.  .

"Yes, I do.  Where have you been keeping it?" He put his empty hand
between her legs.. "In here?"

The thought was not so preposterous.  Indeed she might slip it into that
pocket when she had it back, and enjoy its weight.

"No?" he said.. "Well, I'm sure it wishes you would.  I think half the
world would like to creep up there if it could." He pressed his hand
against her.. "But it's mine, isn't it?. "Yes.. "Nobody goes in there
but me.. "No." She answered mechanically, her thoughts as much on
reclaiming the egg as on his proprietorial talk.

"Have you got anything we can get high on?" he said.

"I had some dope.... "Where is it?" 

"I think I smoked the last of it.  I'm not sure.  Do you want me to
look?. "Yes, please."

She reached up for the egg, but before her fingers could take hold of it
he put it to his lips.

"I want to keep it," he said.. "Sniff it for a while.  You don't mind,
do you?. "I'd like it back."

"You'll have it back," he said, with a faint air of condescension, as
though her possessiveness was childish.

"But I need a keepsake; something to remind me of you."

. "I'll give you some of my underwear," she said.

"It's not quite the same."

He laid the egg against his tongue, and turned it, coating it in his
spittle.  She watched him, and he watched her back.  He knew darm well
she wanted her toy, but she wasn't going to stoop to begging him for it.

"You mentioned dope," he said.

She went back into the bedroom, put on the lamp beside the bed, and
searched through the top drawer of her dresser where she'd last stashed
her marijuana.. "Where did you go today?" he asked her.. "I went to
Oscar's house.. "Oscar?. "Godolphin.. "And how's Oscar?  Alive and
kicking?. "I can't find the dope.  I must have smoked it all.. "You were
telling me about Oscar.. "He's locked himself up in his house.. "Where
does he live?  Maybe I should call on him.

Reassure him."

"He won't see you.  He won't see anybody.  He thinks the world's coming
to an end."

"And what do you think?"

She shrugged.  She was quietly raging at him, but she wasn't exactly
sure why.  He'd taken the egg for a while, but that wasn't a capital
crime.  If the stone afforded him a little protection, why should she be
covetous of it?  She was being petty, and she wished she could be other,
but without the heat of sex shimmering between them he seemed crass.  It
was not a flaw she expected to find in him.  Lord knows she'd accused
him of countless deficiencies in her time, but a lack of finesse had
never

been one of them.  If anything, he'd been too much the polished
operator, discreet and suave.

"You were telling me about the end of the world," he said.

"Was P. "Did Oscar frighten you?. "No.  But I saw something that did."

She told him, briefly, about the Bowl and its prophecies.  He listened
without comment, then said:

"The Fifth's teetering.  We both know that.  But it won't touch us."
She'd heard the same sentiments from Oscar, or near K---enough.  Both
these men, wanting to offer her a haven from the storm.  She should have
been flattered.  Gentle looked at his watch.

"I've got to go out again," he said.. "You'll be safe here, won't you?"
"I'll be fine."

"You should sleep.  Make yourself strong.  There's going to be some dark
times before it gets light again, and we're going to find some of that
darkness in each other.  it's perfectly natural.  We're not angels,
after all." He chuckled.. "At least, you may be, but I'm not." So
saying, he pocketed the egg.

"Go back to bed," he said.. "I'll be back in the morning.  And don't
worry, nothing's going to come near you but me.  I swear.  I'm with you,
Jude, all the time.  And that's not love talking."

With that, he smiled at her and headed off, leaving her to wonder what
it was he'd been talking, if it wasn't love.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

"And who the fuck are you?" the filthy, bearded face

4i,

demanded of the stranger who'd had the misfortune to stumble into its
bleary sight.

The man he was questioning, whom he had by the 4 neck, shook his head.
Blood had run from a crown of cuts and scrapes along his brow, where
he'd earlier beaten his skull against a stone wall to try and silence
the din of voices that echoed between his temples.  It hadn't worked.
There were still too many names and faces in there to be sorted out. The
only way he could answer his interrogator was with the shaking of his
head.  Who was he?

He didn't know.

"Well, get the fuck out of here," the man said.

There was a bottle of cheap wine in his hand, and its stench, mingled
with a deeper rot, on his breath.  He pushed his victim against the
concrete walls of this underpass, and closed upon him.

"You can't sleep where you fuckin' want.  If you want to He down you
fuckin' ask me first.

I say who sleeps here.  Isn't that right?"

He swung his bloodshot eyes in the direction of the tribe who'd
clambered from their beds of trash and newspapers to watch their leader
have his sport.  There'd be blood, for certain.  There always was when
Tolland got riled, and for some reason he was more riled by this
trespasser than by others who'd laid down their homeless heads without
his permission.

"Isn't that right?" he said again.. "Irish?  Tell him! Isn't that
right?"

The man he'd addressed muttered something incoherent.  The woman beside him, with a head of hair bleached to near
extinction, but black at the roots, came within striking distance of
Tolland - something only a very few dared to do - and said:

"That's right, Tony.  That's right." She looked at the victim without
pity.. "D'you think he's a Jew-boy?  He's got a Jewboy's nose." Tolland
took down a throatful of wine.

"Are you a fuckin' yid?" he said.

Someone in the crowd said they should strip him and see.  The woman, who
went by a number of names but Tolland called Carol when he fucked her,
made to do just that, but he aimed a blow at her and she retreated.

"You get your fuckin' hands off him,"Tolland said.. "He'll tell us. Won't
you, matey?  You'll tell us?  Are you a fuckin'yid or not?" He took hold
of the man by the lapel of his jacket.

"I'm waitin'," he said.

The victim dug for a word, and found:

Gentle.  .

"Gentile?" Tolland said.. "Yeah?  You a Gentile?  Well, I don't give a
fuck what you are!  I don't want you here."

The other nodded, and tried to detach Tolland's fingers, but his captor
hadn't finished.  He slammed the man against the wall, so hard the
breath went out of him.

"Irish?  Take the fuckin' bottle."

The Irishman claimed the bottle from Tolland's hands, and stepped back
to let him do his worst.

"Don't kill him," the woman said.

"What the fuck do you care?" Tolland spat, and delivered two, three,
four punches to the Gentile's solar plexus, followed by a knee-jab to
his groin.  Pinned against the wall by his neck the man could do little
to defend himself, but even that little he failed to do, accepting the
punishment even though tears of pain ran from his eyes.  He stared
through them with a look of bewilderment on his face, small exclamations
of pain coming with every blow.

"He's a head-case, Tony," the Irishman said.. "Look at him! He's a
friggin' head-case."

Tolland didn't glance the Irishman's way, or slow his beating, but
delivered a new fusillade of punches.  The Gentile's body now hung
limply from the pinion of his hand, the face above it blanker by the
blow.

"Youhearme,Tony'theirishmansaidHe'sanutter.

He's not feeling it."

"You keep the fuck out of this."

Why don't you leave him alone ...  ?"

"He's on the fuckin' patch," Tolland said.

dragged the Gentile away from the wall and swung

He him round.  The small crowd backed off to give their leader room to
play.  With Irish silenced, there were no objections raised from any
quarter.  Tolland was left to beat the Gentile to the ground.  Then he
followed through with a barrage of kicks.  His victim put his hands
around his head, and curled up to protect himself as best he could,
whimpering.  But Tolland wasn't about to let the man's face go unbroken.
He reached down and dragged the hands away, raising his boot to bring it
down.  Before he could do so, however, Tolland's bottle hit the floor,
spattering wine as it smashed.  He turned on Irish.

"What the fuck d'you that for?"

You shouldn't beat up head-cases," the man replied, by his tone already
regretting the breakage.

You going' to stop me?"

"All I'm sayin'-'

"Are you going' to try and fuckin' stop me?"

"He's not right in the head, Tony."

Is

o I'll kick some sense into him," Tolland replied.

He dropped his victim's arms, turning all his crazed attention on the
dissenter.

or do you want to do it?"  he said.

Irish shook his head.

"Go on," said Tolland.. "You do it for me." He stepped over Gentle in
the Irishman's direction.. "Go on.  .  he said again.. "Go on.

Irish began to retreat, Tolland bearing down on him.  The Gentile had
meanwhile turned himself over, and was starting to crawl away, blood
running from his nose and from the wounds reopened on his brow.

Nobody moved to help him.

When Tolland was roused, as now, his fury knew no bounds.  Anyone who
stepped in his way whether man, woman or child - was forfeit.  He broke
bones and heads without a second thought; had ground a broken bottle
into man's eye once, not twenty yards from this spot, for the crime of
looking at him too long.  There wasn't a cardboard city north or south
of the river where he wasn't known, and prayers said in the hope that
he'd not come visiting.

Before he could grab hold of Irish the man threw up his hands in defeat.

"All right, Tony, all right," he said.. "It was my mistake.

I swear, I'm sorry.. "You broke my fuckin' bottle.. "I'll fetch you
another.  I will.  I'll do it now."

IF

Irish had known Tolland longer than anyone in this circle, and was
familiar with the rules of placation.  Copious apology, witnessed by as
many of Tolland's tribe as possible.  it wasn't foolproof; but today it
worked.

"Will I be fetchin' you a bottle now?" Irish said.

"Get me two, you fuckin' scab."

"That's what I am, Tony.  I'm a scab."

"And one for Carol," Tolland said.     J

"I'll do that."

Tolland levelled a grimy finger at Irish.

"And don't you ever try crossin' me again, or I'll have your fuckin'
balls."

With that promise made, Tolland turned back to his victim.  Seeing that
the Gentile had already crawled some distance from him, he let out an
incoherent roar of fury, and those of the crowd who were standing within
a yard or two of the path between him and his target retreated.  Tolland
didn't hurry, but watched as the wounded Gentile laboriously got to his
feet, and began to make a

Y

staggering escape through the chaos of boxes and strewn bedding.

Up ahead, a youth of sixteen or so was kneeling on the ground, covering
the concrete slabs underfoot with designs in coloured chalk, blowing the
pastel dust off his handiwork as he went.  Engrossed in his art he'd
ignored the beating that had claimed the attention of the others, but
now he heard Tolland's voice echoing through the underpass, calling his
name. "Monday, you fuckhead!  Get hold of him!'

The youth looked up.  His hair was cropped to a dark fuzz; his skin
pockmarked, his ears sticking out like handles.  His gaze was clear,
however, despite the track En arks that disfigured his arms, and it took
him only a second to realize his dilemma.  If he brought down the
bleeding man, he'd condemn him.  If he didn't, he'd condemn himself.  To
gain a little time he feigned bafflement, cupping his hand behind his
ear as if he'd missed Tolland's instruction.

"Stop him!" came the brute's command.

Monday started to get to his feet, murmuring. "Get the fuck out of
here," to the escapee as he did so.

But the idiot had stumbled to a halt, his eyes fixed on the picture
Monday had been making.  it was filched from a newspaper photo of a
starlet, wide-eyed, posing with a koala bear in her arms.

Monday had rendered the woman with loving accuracy, but the bear had
become a patchwork beast, with a single, burning eye in its brooding
head.

"Didn't you hear me?" Monday said.

The man ignored him.

"It's your funeral," he said, rising now as Tolland approached, pushing
the man from the edge of his picture.

"Go on," he said, 'or he'll bust it up!  Get away!" He pushed hard, but
the man remained fixated.

"You're getting' blood on it, dickhead!'

Tolland yelled for Irish, and the man hurried to his side, eager to make
good.

"What, Tony?. "Collar that fuckin' kid."

Irish was obedient, and headed straight for Monday, taking hold of the
boy.  Tolland, meanwhile, had caught up with the Gentile, who hadn't
moved from his place on the edge of the coloured paving.

"Don't let him bleed on it!" Monday begged.

Tolland threw the youth a glance, then stepped on to the picture,
scraping his boots over the carefully worked face.  Monday raised a moan
of protest as he watched the bright chalk colours reduced to a
grey-brown dust.

"Don't, man, don't," he pleaded.

But his complaints only riled the vandal further.  Seeing Monday's
tobacco tin of chalks within reach of his boot, TO Hand went to scatter
them, but Monday, dragging himSelf out of Irish's grip, flung himself
down to preserve them.  Tolland's kick landed in the boy's flank, and he
was sent sprawling, rolled in chalk dust.

Tolland's heel booted the tin and its contents, then he came after its
protector a second time.

Monday curled up, anticipating the blow.  But it never landed.  The
Gentile's voice came between Tolland and his intention.

"Don't do that," he said.

Nobody had custody of him, and he could have made another attempt to
escape while Tolland went after Monday, but he was still at the edge of
the picture, his gaze no longer on it, but on its spoiler.

"What the fuck did you say?" Tolland's mouth opened like a toothed wound
in his matted beard.

"I said ...  don't ...  do .  .  .  that." Whatever pleasure Tolland had
derived from this hunt was over now, and there wasn't one amongst the
spectators who didn't know it.  The sport that would have ended with an
ear bitten off or a few broken ribs had become something else entirely,
and several of the crowd, having no stomach for what they knew was
coming, retired from their places at the ringside.  Even the hardiest of
them backed away a few paces, their drugged, drunken

or simply addled minds dimly aware that something far worse than
blood-letting was imminent.

Tolland turned on the Gentile, reaching into his jacket as he did so.  A
knife emerged, its nine-inch blade marked with nicks and scratches.  At
the sight of it, even Irish retreated.  He'd seen Tolland's blade at
work only once before, but it was enough.

There were no jabs or taunts now, just Tolland's drink rotted bulk
lurching towards his victim to bring the man down.  The Gentile stepped
back as the knife came, his eyes going to the designs underfoot.  They
were like the pictures that filled his head to overflowing: brightnesses
that had been smeared into grey dust.  But somewhere in the midst of
that dust he remembered another place like this.  A makeshift town, full
of filth and rage, where somebody or something had come for his life as
this man was coming, except that this other executioner had carried a
fire in his head, to burn the flesh away, and all that he, the Gentile,
had owned by way of defence was empty hands.

He raised them now.  They were as marked as the knife the executioner
was carrying, their backs bloodied from his attempt to stem the flow
from his nose.  He uncurled them, as he'd done many times before,
drawing breath as he chose his right over his left, and without
understanding why, put it to his mouth.

The pneuma flew before Tolland had time to raise his blade, hitting him
on the shoulder with such force he was thrown to the ground.

Shock took his voice away for several seconds, then his hand went to
his' gushing shoulder and he loosed a noise more shriek than roar.

The few witnesses who'd remained to watch the killing were rooted to the
spot, their eyes not on their fallen lord, but on his deposer.  Later,
when they told this story, they'd all describe what they'd seen in
different ways.  Some would talk of a knife produced from hiding, used,
and concealed again so fast the eye could barely catch it.  Others of a
bullet, spat from between the Gentile's teeth.

But nobody doubted that something remarkable had taken place in these
seconds.  A wonder-worker had appeared amongst them, and laid the tyrant
Tolland low without even touching him.

The wounded man wasn't bested so easily, however.  Though his blade had
gone from his fingers (and been surreptitiously swiped by Monday) he
still had his tribe to defend him.  He summoned them now, with wild
screeches of rage.

"See what he did?  What are you fuckin' waitin' for?  Take him!  Take
the fuckerl No one does that to me!  Irish?  Irish?  Where the fuck are
you?  Somebody help me!" It was the woman who came to his aid, but he
pushed her aside.

"Where the fuck's Irish?. "I'm here.. "Take hold of the bastard,"
Tolland said.

Irish didn't move.

"D'you hear me?  He used some fuckin' Jew-boy trick on me!  You saw him.
Some yid trick, it was.. "I saw him," said Irish.

"He'll do it again!  He'll do it to you!. "I don't think he's going' to
do anything to anybody.. "Then break his fuckin' head."

"You can do it if you like," Irish said.. "I'm not touching him."

Despite his wounding, and his bulk, Tolland was up on his feet in
seconds, and going at his sometime lieutenant like a bull, but the
Gentile's hand was on his shoulder before his fingers could get to the
man's throat.  He stopped in his tracks, and the spectators had sight of
the day's second wonder: fear on Tolland's face.  There'd be no
ambiguity in their reports of this.  When it went out across the city as
it did within the hour, passed from one asylum Tolland had spoiled with
blood to another the account, though embroidered in the telling, was at
root the same.  Drool had run from Tolland's mouth, it

said, and his face had got sweaty.  Some said piss ran from the bottom
of his trousers, and filled his boots.

"Let Irish alone," the Gentile told him.. "In fact ...  let us all
alone."

Tolland made no reply.  He simply looked at the hand laid on him, and
seemed to shrink.

it wasn't his wounding that made him so quiescent, nor even fear of the
Gentile attacking a second time.  He'd sustained injuries far worse than
the wound on his shoulder and simply been inflamed to fresh cruelties.
It was the touch he shrank from: the Gentile's hand laid lightly on his
shoulder.  He turned, and backed away from his wounder, glancing from
side to side -as he did so, in the hope that there would be somebody to
support him.  But everyone, including Irish and Carol, gave him a wide
berth.

"You can't do this.  .  he said when he'd put five yards between
himself and the Gentile.

"I've got friends, all over!  I'll see you dead, fucker.  I will.  I'll
see you dead!" The Gentile simply turned his back on this, and stooped
to claim from the ground the scattered shards of Monday's chalks.  This
casual gesture was in its way more eloquent than any counter-threat or
show of power, announcing as it did his complete indifference to the
other man's presence.

Tolland stared at the Gentile's bent back for several seconds, as if
calculating the risk of mounting another attack.  Then, calculations
made, he turned and fled.

"He's gone," said Monday, who was crouching beside the Gentile, and
watching over his shoulder.

"Do you have any more of these?" the stranger said, rocking the colours
in the cradle of his palm.

"No.  But I can get some.  Do you draw?" The Gentile stood up.
"Sometimes," he said.

"Do you copy stuff, like me?. "I don't remember.. "I can teach you, if
you want.. "No," the Gentile replied.. "I'll copy from my head." He

Ow

looked down at the crayons in his hand.. "I can empty it that way."

"Could you be doin' with paint as well?" Irish asked, as the Gentile's
gaze went to the grey concrete all around them.

"You could get paint?"

"Me an Caro ere, we can get anything.  Whatever you want, Gentile, we'll
get it for you.. "Then ...  I want all the colours you can find.. "Is
that all?  You don't want something to drink?" But the Gentile didn't
reply.  He was wandering towards the pillar against which Tolland had
first pinned him, and was applying a colour to it.

The chalk in his fingers was yellow, and with it he began to draw a
circle of the sun.

When Jude woke it was almost noon; eleven hours or more since Gentle had
come home, relieved her of the egg that had brought her a glimpse of
Nirvana, then headed out again into the night.  She felt sluggish, and
pained by the light.  Even when she turned the hot water in her shower
to a trickle, and let it run near cold, it failed to fully waken her.
She towelled herself half dry and padded through to the kitchen naked.
The window was open there, and the breeze brought goosebumps.  At least
this was some sign of life, she thought, negligible though it was.  She
put on some coffee, and the television, flipping the channels from one
banality to another, then letting it burble along with the percolator
while she dressed.  The telephone rang while she was looking for her
second shoe.  There was a din of traffic at the other end of the line,
but no voice, and after a couple of seconds the line went dead.  She put
down the receiver, and stayed by the phone, wondering if this was Gentle
trying to get through.  Thirty seconds later the phone rang again.  This

time there was a speaker: a man, whose voice was barely more than a
ragged whisper.

"For Christ's sake .  .

"Who is this?" '.  .  .  oh, Judith ...  God, God ...  Judith?  ... it's
Oscar .  .  .. "Where are you?" she said.  He was very clearly not
locked up in his house.

They're dead, Judith.. "Who are?. "Now it's me.  Now it wants me.. "I'm
not getting this, Oscar.  Who's dead?" Help me ...  you've got to help
me ...  Nowhere's safe.. "Come to the flat then.. "No ...  you come here
.  .

"Where's here?. "I'm at St Martin's-in-the-Field.  Do you know it?"
"What the hell are you doing there?. "I'll be waiting inside.  But
hurry.  it's going to find me.

It's going to find me."

The traffic around the Square was locked, as was often the case at noon,
the breeze that had brought gooseflesh an hour before too meek to
disperse the fog of countless exhausts, and the fumes of as many
frustrated drivers.  Nor was the air inside the church any less stale,
though it was pure ozone beside the smell of fear that came off the man
sitting close to the altar, his thick hands knitted so tightly the bone
of his knuckles showed through the fat.

"I thought you said you weren't going to leave the house," she reminded
him.

"Something came for me," Oscar said, his eyes wide.. "In the middle of
the night.  it tried to get in, but it couldn't.  Then this morning - in
broad daylight - I heard the parrots kicking up a din, and the back door
was blown off its hinges."

All

"Did you see what it was?"

"Do you think I'd be here if I had?  No; I was ready, after the first
time.  As soon as I heard the birds I ran for the front door.  Then this
terrible din, and all the lights went out -'

He divided his hands and took tight hold of her arm.. "What am I going
to do?" he said.

"It'll find me, sooner or later.  it's killed all the rest of them
"Who?"

"Haven't you seen the headlines?  They're all dead.  Lionel, McGann,
Bloxham.  Even the ladies.  Shales was in his bed.

Cut up in pieces in his own bed.  I ask you ...  what kind of creature
does that?. "A quiet one.. "How can you joke?"

"I joke, you sweat.  We deal with it the best way we know how." She
sighed.. "You're a better man than this, Oscar.  You shouldn't be hiding
away.  There's work to do."

"Don't tell me about your damn Goddess, Judith.  It's a lost cause.  The
Tower'll be rubble by now."

"If there's any help for us," she said, 'it's there.  I know it.  Come
with me, won't you?  I've seen you brave.  What's happened to you?"

"I don't know," he said. "I wish I did.  All these years I've been
crossing over to Yzordderrex, not giving a damn where I put my nose, not
caring whether I was at risk or not, as long as there were new sights to
see.

It was another world.  Maybe another me, too."   . "And here?"

He made a baffled face.. "This is England," he said, 'safe, rainy,
boring, England, where the cricket's bad and the beer's warm.  This
isn't supposed to be a dangerous place.. "But it is, Oscar, whether we
like it or not.  There's a darkness here worse than anything in
Yzordderrex.  And it's got your scent.  There's no escaping that.  It's
coming after you.  And me, for all I know.. "But why?"

"Maybe it thinks you can do it some harm.. "What can I do?  I don't know
a damn thing.. "But we could learn," she said.. "That way, if we're
going to die, at least it won't be in ignorance."

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Despite Oscar's prediction, the Tabula Rasa's Tower was still standing,
any trace of distinction it might have once owned eroded by the sun,
which blazed with noonday fervour at well past three.  Its ferocity had
taken its toll on the trees that shielded the Tower from the road,
leaving their leaves to hang like dish-rags from their branches.  If
there were any birds taking cover in the foliage, they were too
exhausted to sing.

"When were you last here?" Oscar asked Jude as they drove into the empty
forecourt.

She told him about her encounter with Bloxham, squeezing the account for
its humorous effect in the hope of distracting Oscar from his anxiety.

"I never much liked Bloxham," Oscar replied.. "He was so damn full of
himself.  Mind you, so were we all .  .  His voice trailed away, and
with all the enthusiasm of a man approaching the execution block, he got
out of the car and led her to the front door.

"There's no alarm ringing," he said.. "If there's anybody inside, they
got in with a key."

He'd pulled a cluster of his own keys out of his pocket, and selected
one.

"Are you sure this is wise?" he asked her.

"Yes I am."

Resigned to this insanity, he unlocked the door, and, after a moment's
hesitation, headed inside.  The foyer was cold and gloomy, but the chill
only served to make Jude brisk.

"How do we get down into the cellar?" she said.

"You want to go straight down there?" he replied.. "Shouldn't we check
upstairs first?

Somebody could be here."

F

Aa

"Somebody is here, Oscar.  She's in the cellar.  You can check upstairs
if you want to.  But I'm going down.  The less time we waste the sooner
we're out of here."

It was a persuasive argument, and he conceded to it with a little nod.
He dutifully fished through the bunch of keys a second time, and, having
chosen one, went over to the furthest and smallest of the three closed
doors ahead.

Having taken his time selecting the right key he now took even longer to
get it into the lock and coax it into turning.

"How often have you been down here?" she asked him while he worked.

"Only twice," he replied.. "It's a pretty grim place.. "I know," she
reminded him.

'on the other hand my father seemed to make quite a habit of exploring
down there.

There's rules and regurations, you know, about nobody looking through
the library on their own, in case they're tempted by something they
read.  I'm sure he flouted all that.  Ah!'The key turned.. "That's one
of them!" He selected a second key and started on the other lock.

"Did your father talk to you about the cellar?" she asked him.

"Once or twice.  He knew more about the Dominions than he should have
done.  I think he even knew a few as a cagey bugger.  But at t

fe its  I can't be sure.  He w   he

end, when he was delirious, he'd mutter these names.  Patashoqua, I
remember.  He repeated that over and over.. "Do you think he ever
crossed into the Dominions?" I doubt it.. "So you worked out how to do
that on your own?. "I found a few books down here, and smuggled them
out.  It wasn't difficult to get the circle working.  Magic doesn't
decay.  It's about the only thing -' he paused; grunted, forced the key
'- that doesn't." it began to turn, but not all the way.. "I think Papa
would have liked Patashoqua," he went on.. "But it was only ever a name
to him, poor sod."

"It'll be different after the Reconciliation," Jude said.. "I know it's
too late for him

"On the contrary," Oscar said, grimacing as he bullied the key.. "From
what I hear the dead are just as locked up as the rest of us.  There's
spirits everywhere, according to Peccable, ranting and raving.. "Even in
here?. "Especially in here," he said.

With that, the lock gave up its resistance, and the key turned.

"There," he said.. "Just like magic.. "Wonderful." She patted his back.
"You're a genius."

He grinned at her.  The dour, defeated man she'd found sweating in the
pews an hour ago had lightened considerably now there was something to
distract him from his death-sentence.  He withdrew the key from the
lock, and turned the handle.  The door was stout, and heavy, but it
opened without much resistance.  He preceded her into the darkness.

7. "If I remember right," he said, 'there's a light here.  No.

He patted the wall to the side of the door.. "Ah!  Wait!" A switch
flipped, and a row of bare bulbs, strung from a cable, illuminated the
room.  It was large, wood panelled and austere.

"This is the one part of Roxborough's house still intact, besides the
cellar." There was a plain oak table in the middle of the room, with
eight chairs around it.. "This is where they met, apparently: the first
Tabula Rasa.  And they kept meeting here, over the years, until the
house was demolished.. "Which was when?. "In the late twenties.. "So a
hundred and fifty years of Godolphin bums sat on one of those seats?"
"That's right.. "Including Joshua.. "Presumably.. "I wonder how many of
them I knewT

"Don't you remember?"

"I wish I did.  I'm still waiting for the memories to come back.

In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if they ever will.. "Maybe

you're repressing them for a reason?. "Why?  Because they're so

appalling I can't face them?

Because I acted like a whore; let myself be passed around

the table with the port, left to right?  No, I don't think ZA

that's it at all.  I can't remember because I wasn't really living.  I
was sleepwalking, and nobody wanted to wake me."

She looked up at him, almost defying him to defend his family's
ownership of her.  He said nothing, of course.  Instead he moved to the
vast grate, ducking beneath the mantelpiece, selecting a third key as he
went.  She heard him slot it in the lock, and turn it; heard the motion
of cogs and counter-weights its turning initiated; and finally, heard
the groan of the concealed door as it opened.  He glanced back at her.

"Are you coming?" he said.. "Be careful.  The steps are steep."

The flight was not only steep, but long.  What little light spilled from
the room above dwindled after half a dozen steps, and she descended
twice that number in darkness before Oscar found a switch below, and
lights ran off along the labyrinth.  A sense of triumph ran through her.
She'd put her desire to find a way into this underworld aside many times
since the dream of the blue eye had brought her to Celestine's cell; but
it had never died.  Now, finally, she was going to walk where her
dream sight had gone, through this mine of books with its seams to the
ceiling, to the place where the Goddess lay.

"This is the single largest collection of sacred texts since the library
at Alexandria," Oscar said, his museum-guide tone a defence, she
suspected, against the sense of   4, moment he shared with her.. "There
are books here even the Vatican doesn't know exist." He lowered his
voice, as though there might be other browsers here that he'd disturb if
he spoke too loudly.. "The night he died, Papa

Hi

ll

told The he found a book here written by the Fourth King.. "The what?"

"There were three Kings at Bethlehem, remember?  According to the
Gospels.  But the Gospels lied.  There were four.  They were looking for
the Reconciler.. "Christ was a Reconciler?. "So Papa said.. "And you
believe that?. "Papa had no reason to lie.. "But the book, Oscar; the
book could have lied."

"So could the Bible.  Papa said this Magi wrote his story because he
knew he'd been cut out of the Gospels.  It was this fellow who named the
Imajica.  Wrote the word down in this book.  There it was on the page
for the first time in history.  Papa said he wept."

Jude surveyed the labyrinth that spread from the foot of the stairs with
fresh respect.

"Have you tried to find the book since?"

"I didn't need to.  When Papa died I went in search of the real thing. I
travelled back and forth as though Christos had succeeded, and the Fifth
was reconciled.  And there they were, the Unbeheld's many mansions." And
there too, the most enigmatic player in this inter Dominional drama:
Hapexamendios.  If Christos was a Reconciler, did that make the Unbeheld
His Father?  Was the force in hiding behind the fogs of the First
Dominion the Lord of Lords, and if so, why had He crushed every Goddess
across the Imajica, as legend said He had?

One question begged another, all from a few claims made by a man who'd
knelt at the Nativity.  No wonder Roxborough had buried these books
alive.

"Do you know where your mystery woman's lurking?" Oscar said.

"Not really.,

"Then we've got a hell of a search on our hands."

"I remember there was a couple making love down here, near her cell. One
of them was Bloxham."

M,

"Dirty little bugger.  So we should be looking for some stains on the
floor, is that it?  I suggest we split up or we'll be here all summer."

They parted at the stairs, and made their separate ways.  Jude soon
discovered how strangely sound carried in the tunnels.  Sometimes she
could hear Godolphin's footsteps so clearly she thought he must be
following her.  Then she'd turn a corner (or else he would) and the
noise would not simply fade but vanish altogether, leaving only the pad
of her own soles on the cold stone to keep her company.  They were
buried too deeply for even the remotest mum ur from the street above to
penetrate; nor was there any suspicion of sound from the earth around
them.  No hum of cables; no sluicing of drains.

She was several times tempted to pluck one of the tomes from its shelf,
thinking perhaps serendipity would put her in reach of the diary of the
Fourth King.  But she resisted, knowing that even if she had time to
browse here, which she didn't, the volumes were written in the great
languages of theology and philosophy: Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit;
all incomprehensible to her.  As ever on this journey, she'd have to
beat a track to the truth by instinct and wit alone.  Nothing had been
given to her to illuminate the way, except the blue eye, and that was in
Gentle's possession now.  She'd reclaim it as soon as she saw him again;
give him something else as a talisman: the hair of her sex, if that's
what he wanted.  But not her egg; not her cool, blue egg.

Maybe it was these thoughts that ushered her to the place where the
lovers had stood; or maybe it was that same serendipity she'd hoped
might lead her hand to the King's book.  If so this was a finer leading.

Here was the wall where Bloxham and his mistress had coupled; she knew
it without a trace of doubt.  Here were the shelves the woman had clung
to while her ridiculous beau had laboured to fulfill her.  Between the
books they bore, the mortar was tinged with the faintest trace of blue.
She didn't call Oscar, but went to the shelves and took down

several armfuls of books, then put her fingers to the stains.  The wall
was bitterly cold, but the mortar crumbled beneath her touch, as though
her sweat was sufficient agent to unbind its elements.  She was shocked
at what she'd caused, and gratified, retreating from the wall as the
message of dissolution spread with extraordinary rapidity.  The mortar
began to run from between the bricks like the finest of sand, its
trickle becoming a torrent A in seconds.

"I'm here," she told the prisoner behind the wall.. "God knows, I've
taken my time.  But I'm here."

Oscar didn't catch Jude's words; not even the remotest echo.  His
attention had been claimed two or three minutes before by a sound from
overhead, and he'd climbed the stairs in pursuit of its source.  He'd
disgraced his manhood enough in the last few days, hiding himself away
like a frightened widow, and the thought that he might reclaim some of
the respect he'd lost in Jude's eyes by confronting the trespasser above
gave purpose to the chase.  He'd armed himself with a piece of timber
he'd found at the bottom of the stairs, and was almost hoping as he went
that his ears weren't playing tricks on him, and that there was indeed
something tangible up above.  He was sick of being in fear of rumours,
and pictures half-glimpsed in flying stones.  if there was something to
see, he wanted to see it, and either be damned in the seeing or cured of
fear.

At the top of the stairs he hesitated.  The light spilling through the
door from Roxborough's room was moving, very slightly.  He took his
bludgeon in both hands, and stepped through the door.  The room swung
with the lights, the solid table and its solid chairs giddied by the
motion.  He surveyed the room from corner to corner.

Finding every shadow empty, he moved towards the door that led out into
the foyer, as delicately as his bulk allowed.  The rocking of the lights
settled as he went, and they were still by the time he reached the door.
As he

stepped outside a perfume caught his nostrils, as sweet as the sudden,
sharp pain in his side was sour.  He tried to turn but his attacker dug
a second time.  The timber went from his hand, and a shout came from his
lips -'Oscar?"

She didn't want to leave the wall of Celestine's cell when it was
undoing itself with such gusto - the bricks were dropping on to each
other as the mortar between them decayed, and the shelves creaking,
ready to fall but Oscar's shout demanded her attention.  She headed back
through the maze, the sound of the wall's capitulation echoing through
the passageways, confounding her.  But she found her way back to the
stairs after a time, yelling for Oscar as she went.  There was no reply
from the library itself, so she decided to climb back up into the
meeting room.  That too was silent, and empty, as was the foyer when she
got to it; the only sign that Oscar had passed through was a block of
wood lying close to the door.  What the hell was he up to?  She went out
to see if he'd returned to the car for some reason, but there was no
sign of him in the sun, which narrowed the options to one: the Tower
above.

Irritated, but a little anxious now, she looked towards the open door
that led back into the cellar, torn between returning to welcome
Celestine and following Oscar up the Tower.  A man of his bulk was
perfectly capable of defending himself, she reasoned, but she couldn't
help but feel some residue of responsibility, given that she'd cajoled
him into coming here in the first place.

one of the doors looked to be a lift, but when she approached she heard
the hum of its motor in action, so rather than wait she went to the
stairs and began to climb.  Though the flight was in darkness, she
didn't let that slow her, but mounted the stairs three and four at a
time until she reached the door that led out on to the top floor.

As she groped for the handle she heard a voice from the suite beyond.
The words were indecipherable,

but the voice sounded cultivated; almost clipped.  Had one of the Tabula
Rasa survived after all?  Bloxham perhaps, the Casanova of the cellar?

She pushed the door open.  It was brighter on the other side, though not
by that much.  All the rooms along the corridor were murky pits, their
drapes drawn.  But the voice led her on through the gloom towards a pair
of doors, one of which was ajar.  A light was burning on the other side.
She approachd with caution, the carpet underfoot lush enough to silence
her tread.  Even when the speaker broke off from his monologue for a few
moments she continued to advance, reaching the suite without a sound.
There was little purpose in delay, she thought, once she was at the
threshold.  Without a word, she pushed open the door.

There was a table in the room, and on it lay Oscar, in a double pool.
One of light, the other of blood.  She didn't scream, or even sicken,
even though he was laid open like a patient in mid-surgery.  Her
thoughts flew past the horror to the man, and his agonies.  He was
alive.  She could see his heart beating like a fish in a red pool,
gasping its last.

The surgeon's knife had been cast on to the table beside him, and its
owner, who was presently concealed by shadow, said:

"There you are.  Come in, why don't you?  Come in." He put his hands,
which were clean, on the table. "It's only me, lovey.. "Dowd.  .

"Ah!  To be remembered.  It seems such a little thing, doesn't it?  But
it's not.  Really, it's not."

The old theatricality was still in his manner, but the mellifluous
quality had gone from his voice.  He sounded, and indeed looked, like a
parody of himself, his face a mask carved by a hack.

"Do join us, lovey," he said.. "We're in this together, after all."

Startled as she was to see him (though hadn't Oscar

warned her that his type was difficult to kill?) she didn't feel
intimidated by him.  She'd seen his tricks and deceits and performances;
and she'd seen him hanging over an abyss, begging for life.  He was
ridiculous.

"I wouldn't touch Godolphin, by the way," he said.

She ignored the advice, and went to the table.

"His life's hanging by a thread," Dowd went on.. "If he's moved, I swear
his innards will just drop out.  My advice is let him lie.  Enjoy the
moment."

"Enjoy?" she said, the revulsion she felt surfacing, though she knew it
was exactly what the bastard wanted to hear.

"Not so loud, sweetie," Dowd said, as if pained by her volume.. "You'll
wake the baby." He chuckled.. "He is a baby, really, compared to us.
Such a little life.  .

"Why did you do this?"

"Where do I begin?  With the petty reasons?  No.  With the big one.  I
did it to be free."

He leaned in towards her, his face a chiaroscuro jigsaw beneath the
lamp.

"When he breathes his last, lovey - which'll be very soon now - that's
the end of the Godolphins.  When he's gone, we're in thrall to nobody."

"You were free in Yzordderrex."

"No.  On a long leash maybe, but never free.  I felt his desires, I felt
his discomforts.  A little part of me knew I should be at home with him,
making his tea and drying between his toes.  In my heart, I was still
his slave!" He looked at the body again.. "It seems almost miraculous,
how he manages to linger."

He reached for the knife.

"Leave him!" she snapped, and he retreated with surprising alacrity.

She leaned towards Oscar, afraid to touch him for fear of shocking his
traumatized system further, and stopping it.  There were tics in his
face, and his white lips were full of tiny tremors.

"Oscar?" she murmured.. "Can you hear me?"

oh, look at you, lovey," Dowd cooed.. "Getting all doe eyed over him.
Remember how he used you.  How he oppressed you." She leaned closer to
Oscar, and said his name again.. "He never loved either of us," Dowd
went on.. "We were his goods and chattels.  Part of his .  .

Oscar's eyes flickered open.

inheritance," Dowd said, but the word was barely audible.  As the eyes
opened Dowd retreated a step, covering himself in shadow.

Oscar's white lips shaped the syllables of Judith's name, but there was
no sound to accompany the motion.

"Oh God," she murmured.. "Can you hear me?  I want you to know this
wasn't all for nothing.  I found her.  Do you understand.  I found her."

Oscar made a tiny nod.  Then, with agonizing delicacy, ran his tongue
over his lips, and drew enough breath to say: '.  .  .  It wasn't true.
.

She caught the words, but not their sense.

"What wasn't true?" she said.

He licked again, his face knotting up with the effort of speech.  This
time there was only one word.

'.  .  .  inheritance.  .  ." he said.

"Not an inheritance?" she said.. "I know that."

He made the very tiniest smile, his gaze going over her face from brow
to cheek, from cheek to lips, then back to her eyes, meeting them
unabashed.

"I ...  loved ...  you," he said.

"I know that too," she whispered.

Then his gaze lost its clarity.  His heart stopped beating in its bloody
pool; and the knots on his face slipped with its cessation.  He was
gone.  The last of the Godolphins, dead on the Tabula Rasa's table.

She stood upright, staring at the cadaver though it distressed her to do
so.  If she was ever tempted to toy with darkness, let this sight be a
scourge to that temptation.

There was nothing poetic or noble in this scene; only waste.

"So there it is," Dowd said.. "Funny.  I don't feel any different.  It
may take time of course.  I suppose freedom has to be learned, like
anything else." She could hear desperation beneath this babble, barely
concealed.

He was in pain.. "You should know something..." he said.

"I don't want to hear."

"No, listen, lovey, I want you to know ...  he did exactly this to me,
on this very table.  He gutted me in front of the Society.  Maybe it's a
pretty thing, wanting revenge, but then I'm just an actor chap pie ...
what do I know?"

"You killed them all for that?"

"Who?"

"The Society."

"No, not yet.  But I'll get to them.  For us both."

"You're too late.  They're already dead."

This hushed him for fully fifteen seconds.  When he began again, it was
more chatter, as empty as the silence he wanted to fill.

"It was that damn Purge, you know; they made themselves too many
enemies.  There's going to be a lot of minor Maestros crawling out of
the woodwork in the next few days.  it's quite an anniversary, isn't it?
I'm going to get stinking drunk.  What about you?  How will you
celebrate?  Alone, or with friends?  This woman you

I

found, for instance.  is she the partying type?

Jude silently cursed her indiscretion.

"Who is she?" Dowd went on.. "Don't tell me, Clara had a sister." He
laughed.. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but she was crazy as a coot,
you must see that now.  She didn't understand you.  Nobody understands
you but me, lovey, and I understand you

because we're the same."

"Exactly.  We don't belong to anybody any more.  We're our inventions.
We'll do what we want, when we want, and we won't give a fuck for the
consequences."

"Is that freedom?" she said flatly, finally taking her eyes off Oscar
and looking up at Dowd's misshapen form.

"Don't try and tell me you don't want it," Dowd said.. "I'm not asking
you to love me for this, I'm not that stupid, but at least admit it was
just.. "Why didn't you just murder him in his bed years ago?. "I wasn't
strong enough.  Oh, I realize I may not radiate health and efficiency
just at the moment but I've changed a lot since we last met.  I've been
down amongst the dead It was very ...

educational.  And while I was down there, it began to rain.  Such a hard
rain, lovey, let me tell you.  I never saw its like before.  You want to
see what fell on me?"

He pulled up his sleeve, and put his arm into the pool of light.  Here
was the reason for his lumpen appearance.  His arm, and presumably his
entire body, was a patchwork, with the flesh half-sealed over fragments
of stone which he'd slid into his wounds.  She instantly recognized the
iridescence which ran in the fragments, lending their glamour to their
wretched meat.  The rain that had fallen on his head was the sloughings
of the Pivot.

"You know what it is, don't you?"

She hated the ease with which he read her face, but there was no use
denying what she knew.

"Yes I do," she said.. "I was in the Tower when it started

to collapse." 1W

hat a God-send, eh?  It makes me slow, of course, carrying this kind of
weight, but after today I won't be fetching and carrying, so what do I
care if it takes me half an hour to cross the room?  I've got power in
me, lovey, and I don't mind sharing He stopped, and withdrew his arm
from the light.

"What was that?"

She'd heard nothing, but she did now: a distant rumbling from below.

"Whatever were you up to down there?  Not destroying the library I hope.
I wanted that satisfaction for myself.

Oh dear.  Well, there'll be plenty of other chances to play the
barbarian.  It's in the air, don't you think?" Jude's thoughts went to
Celestine.  Dowd was perfectly capable of doing her harm.  She had to go
back down and warn the Goddess; perhaps find some means of defence.  in
the meantime, she'd play along.

"Where will you go after this?" she asked Dowd, lightening her tone as
best she could.

"Back to Regent's Park Road, I thought.  We can sleep in our master's
bed.  Oh, what am I saying? Please don't think I want your body.  I know
the rest of the world thinks heaven's in your lap, but I've been
celibate for two hundred years and I've completely lost the urge.  We
can live as brother and sister, can't we? That doesn't sound so bad, now
does it?. "No,, she said, fighting the urge to spit her disgust in his
face.. "No, it doesn't.. "Well, look, why don't you wait for me
downstairs?

AL

I've got a bit of business left to do here.  Rituals have to be
observed.. "Whatever you say," she replied.

She left him to his farewells, whatever they were, and headed back to
the stairs.  The rumbling that had caught his attention had ceased, but
she hurried down the concrete flight with high hopes.  The cell was
open, she knew it.  in a matter of moments she'd set her eyes on the
Goddess, and perhaps as importantly, Celestine would set her eyes on
Jude.  In one sense, what Dowd had expressed above was true.  With Oscar
dead, she was indeed free from the curse of her creation.

It was time to know herself, and be known.

As she walked through the rooms of Roxborough's house, and started down
the stairs into the cellar, she sensed the change that had come over the
maze below.  She didn't have to search for the cell; the energy in the
air moved like an invisible tide, carrying her towards its source.  A nd
there it was, in front of her: the cell wall a heap of splinters and
rubble, the gap its collapse had made

rising to the ceiling.  The dissolution she'd initiated was still going
on.  Even as she approached, further bricks fell away, their mortar
turned to dust.  She braved the fall, clambering up over the wreckage to
peer into the cell.  it was dark inside, but her eyes soon found the
mummified form of the prisoner, lying in the dirt.

There was no movement in the body whatsoever.  She went to it, and fell
to her knees to tear at the fine threads that Roxborough or his agents
had bound Celestine with.  They were too tough for her fingers, so she
went at them with her teeth.  The threads were bitter, but her teeth
were sharp, and once one succumbed to her bites others quickly followed.

A tremor passed through the body, as if the captive sensed liberation.
As with the bricks, the message of unmaking was contagious, and she'd
only snapped half a dozen of the threads when they began to stretch and
break of their own volition, aided by the motion of the body they'd
bound.  Her cheek was stung by the flight of one, and she was obliged to
retreat as the un fettering spread, the threads describing sinuous
motions as they broke, their severed ends bright.

The tremors in Celestine's body were now convulsions, growing as the
ambition of the threads increased.  They weren't simply flying wildly,
Jude realized; they were reaching out in all directions; up towards the
ceiling of the cell, and to its walls.  Stung by them once, the only way
she could avoid further contact was by backing away to the hole through
which she'd come, and then out, Stumbling over the rubble.

As she emerged she heard Dowd's voice, somewhere in the labyrinth behind
her. "What have you been doing, lovey?' She wasn't quite sure, was the
truth.  Though she'd been the initiator of this unbinding, she wasn't
its mistress.  The cords had an urgency of their own, and whether it was
Celestine who moved them, or Roxborough who'd plaited into them the
instruction to destroy anyone who came seeking his prisoner's release,

they were not about to be placated or contained.  Some were snatching at
the edge of the hole, dragging away more of the bricks.  Others,
demonstrating an elasticity she hadn't expected, were nosing over the
rubble, turning over stones and books as they advanced.

job my Lord," she heard Dowd say, and turned to see him standing in the
passageway half a dozen yards behind her, with his surgeon's knife in
one hand and a bloody handkerchief in the other.  This was the first
sight she had of him head to foot, and the burden of Pivot shards he
carried was apparent.  He looked utterly maladroit, his shoulders
mismatched and his left leg turned inwards, as though a shattered bone
had been badly set.

"What's in there?' he said, hobbling towards her.. "Is this your
friend?. "I suggest you keep your distance," she said.

He ignored her.. "Did Roxborough wall something up? Look at those
things!  Is it an Oviate?. "No.. "What then? Godolphin never told me
about this.. "He didn't know.. "But you did?' he said, glancing back at
her as he 'i, advanced to study the cords, which were emerging all the
time.

"I'm impressed.  We've both kept our little secrets, haven't we?' One of
the cords reared suddenly from the rubble, and he jumped back, the
handkerchief dropping from his hand.  it unfolded as it fell, and the
piece of Oscar's flesh Dowd had wrapped in it landed in the dirt.

It was vestigial, but she knew it well enough.  He'd cut off the
curiosity, and carried it away as a keepsake.

She let out a moan of disgust.  Dowd started to stoop to pick it up, but
her rage - which she'd concealed for Celestine's sake - erupted.

"You scumbag!" she said, and went at him with both hands raised above
her head, locked into a single fist.

He was heavy with shards, and couldn't rise fast enough to avoid her
blow.  She struck the back of his

neck, a clout that probably hurt her more than him, but unbalanced a
body already too asymmetrical for its own good.  He stumbled, prey to
gravity, and sprawled in the rubble.  He knew his indignity, and it
enraged him.

"Stupid cow!" he said.. "Stupid, sentimental cow!  Pick it up!  Go on,
pick it up!  Have it if you want to.. "I don't want it.. "No, I insist.
It's a gift, brother to sister.. "I'm not your sister!  I never was and
I never will be!" Mites were appearing from his mouth as he lay on the
rubble, some of them grown fat as cockroaches on the power he carried in
his skin.  Whether they were for her benefit or to protect him against
the presence in the wall she didn't know, but seeing them she took a
step away from him.

"I'm going to forgive you this," he said, all magnanimity.. "You're
overwrought, I know." He raised his arm.. "Help me up," he said.. "Tell
me you're sorry, and it's forgotten.. "I loathe everything you are," she
said.

Despite the mites, it was self-preservation that made her speak, not
courage.  This was a place of power.  The truth would serve her better
here than a lie, however politic.

He withdrew his arm, and started to haul himself up.  As he did so she
took two steps forward, and picking up the bloodied handkerchief,
claimed with it the last of Oscar.  As she stood up again, almost guilty
at what she'd done, she caught sight of a motion in the wall.  A pale
form had appeared against the darkness of the cell, as ripe and rounded
a form as the wall that framed it was ragged.  Celestine was floating,
or rather was borne up as Quaisoir had been borne up, on ribbons of
flesh, the filaments that had once smothered her clinging to her limbs
like the remnants of a coat, and draped around her head as a living
hood.  The face beneath was delicately boned, but severe, and what
beauty it might have possessed was spoiled by the dementia that burned
in it.  Dowd was still in the process of rising, and turned to

FP_

follow Jude's astonished gaze.  When he set eyes on the apparition his
body failed him, and he fell back on to the rubble, belly down.  From
his mite-spawning mouth came one terrified word.

"Celestine?' The woman had approached the limits of her cell, and now
raised her hands to touch the bricks that had sealed her in for so long.

Though she merely brushed them, they seemed to flee her fingers,
tumbling down to join the rest.  There was ample room for her to emerge,
but she hung back, and spoke from the shadows, her pupils flicking back
and forth maniacally, her lips curling back from her teeth as though in
rehearsal for some ghastly revelation.  She matched Dowd's single
utterance with a word of her own. "Dowd.. "Yes .  .  ." he murmured,
it's me." So he'd been honest in some part of his biography at least,
Jude thought.  She knew him, just as he'd claimed to know her.

"Who did this to you?' he said.

"Why ask me?' Celestine said.. "When you were part of the plot?' in her
voice was the same mingling of lunacy and composure her body exhibited,
her mellifluous tones accompanied by a fluttering that was almost a
second voice, speaking in tandem with the first.

"I didn't know, I swear," Dowd said.  He craned his heavy head round to
appeal to Jude.

"Tell her," he said.  Celestine's oscillating gaze rose to Jude.

"You?' she said.. "Did you conspire against me?. "No' Jude said.. "I'm
the one who freed you.. "I freed myself.. "But I began it," Jude said.

"Come closer.  Let me see you better." Jude hesitated to approach, with
Dowd's face still a nest of mites.  But Celestine made her demand again,
and Jude obeyed.  The woman raised her head as she approached, turning
it this way and that, perhaps to coax her torpid muscles back into life.

"Are you Roxborough's woman?' she said.

"No.. "That's close enough," she told Jude.. "Whose then? Which one of
them do you belong to?. "I don't belong to any of them," Jude said.
"They're all dead.. "Even Roxborough?. "He's been gone two hundred
years." At last the eyes stopped flickering, and their stillness, now it
came, was more distressing than their motion.  She had a gaze that could
slice steel.

"Two hundred years," she said.  It wasn't a question, it was an
accusation.  And it wasn't Jude she was accusing, it was Dowd.. "Why
didn't you come for me. "I thought you were dead and gone," he told her.

"Dead.  No.  That would have been a kindness.  I bore A this child.  I
raised it for a time.  You knew this.. "How could I? It was none of my
business.. "You made me your business," she said.. "The day you took me
from my life and gave me to God.  I didn't ask for that and I didn't
want i. "I was just a servant."

"Dog, more like.  Who's got your leash now? This woman?. "I serve
nobody.. "Good.  Then you can serve me.. "Don't trust him," Jude said.

"Who would you prefer I trust?' Celestine replied, not deigning to look
at Jude.. "You? I don't think so.  You've got blood on your hands and
you smell of coitus." These last words were tinged with such disgust
Jude couldn't stem her retort.

"You wouldn't be awake if I hadn't found you.. "Consider your freedom to
go from this place my thanks," Celestine replied.. "You wouldn't wish to
know my company for very long." Jude didn't find that difficult to
believe.  After all the months she'd waited for this meeting, there were
no revelations to be had here: only Celestine's insanity, and the ice of
her rage.

Dowd, meanwhile, was getting to his feet.  As he did so, one of the
woman's ribbons unfurled itself from the, shadows, and reached towards
him.  Despite his earlier protests, he made no attempt to avoid it.  A
suspicious air of humility had come over him.  Not only did he put up no
resistance, he actually proffered his hands to Celestine M

for binding, placing them pulse to pulse.  She didn't sco, his offer.
The ribbon of her flesh wrapped itself around 4 his wrists, then
tightened, tugging at him to haul him ug,

the incline of brick.

"Be careful," Jude warned her.. "He's stronger than he looks.. "It's
all stolen," Celestine replied.. "His tricks, his deco rums his power.
None of it belongs to him.  He's an actor.  Aren't you?' As if in
acquiescence, Dowd bowed his head.  But as he did so he dug his heels
into the rubble and refused to be drawn any further.  Jude started to
voice a second warning; but before it was out of her mouth his fingers
closed In around the flesh and pulled hard.  Caught unawares, Celestine
was dragged against the raw edge of the hole, and before the rest of her
filaments could come to her aid Dowd had raised his wrists above his
head and casually snapped the flesh that bound them.  Celestine let out
a howl of pain, and retreated into the sanctuary of her cell, trailing
the severed ribbon.  He gave her no respite however but went in instant
pursuit, yelling to her as he stumbled up over the heaped rubble. "I'm
not your slav el I'm not your dogl And you're no fucking Goddess!  You're
a whore!' Then he was gone into the darkness of the cell, roaning.  Jude
ventured a few steps closer to the hole, but the combatants had
retreated into its recesses, and she saw nothing of their struggle.  She
heard it, however; the hiss' of breaths expelled in pain; the sound of
bodies pitched against the stone.  The walls shook, and books all along,

the passageway were thrown from their shelves, the tide of power
snatching loose sheets and pamphlets up to the air like birds in a
hurricane, leaving the heavier tomes to thrash on the ground,
broken-backed.

And then, suddenly, it was over.  The commotion in the cell ceased
utterly, and there were several seconds of motionless hush, broken by a
moan, and the sight of a hand reaching out of the murk to clutch at the
broken wall.  A moment later Dowd stumbled into view, his other hand
clamped to his face.  Though the shards he carried were powerful, the
flesh they were seated in was weak, and Celestine had exploited that
frailty with the efficiency of a warrior.  Half his face was missing,
stripped to the bone, and his body was more un knitted than the corpse
he'd left on the table above: his abdomen gaping, his limbs battered.

He fell as he emerged.  Rather than attempting to get to his feet -
which she doubted he was capable of doing - he crawled over the rubble
like a blind man, his hands feeling out the wreckage ahead.  Sobs came
from him now and then, and whimpers, but the effort of escape was
quickly consuming what little strength he had, and before

V he reached clear ground his noises gave out.

So, a little time after, did he.  His arms folded beneath him, and he
collapsed, face to the floor, surrounded by twitching books.

Jude watched his body for a count of ten, then moved back towards the
cell.  As she came within two yards of his body, she saw a motion, and
froze in her tracks.  There was life in him still, though it wasn't his.

The mites were exiting his open mouth, like fleas hastening from a
cooling host.  They came from his nostrils too, and from his ears.
Without his will to direct them they were probably harmless, but she
wasn't going to test that notion.  She stepped as wide of them as she
could, taking an indirect route up over the rubble to the threshold of
Celestine's asylum.

The shadows were much thickened by the dust that

F

danced in the air, an aftermath of the forces that had been unleashed
inside.  But Celestine was visible, lying crookedly against the far
wall.  He'd done her harm, no doubt of that.  Her pale skin was seared
and ruptured at thigh, flank and shoulder.  Roxborough's purgative zeal
still had some jurisdiction in his Tower, Jude thought.

She'd seen three apostates laid low in the space of an hour: one above
and two below.  Of them all, his prisoner Celestine seemed to have
suffered least.  Wounded though she was, she still had the will to turn
her fierce eyes in Jude's direction and say. "Have you come to crow?. "I
tried to warn you," Jude said.. "I don't want us to be enemies,
Celestine.  I want to help you.. "On whose command?. "On my own.  Why'd
you assume everybody's a slave or a whore, or somebody's damn dog?'
"Because that's the way the world is," she said.

"It's changed, Celestine.. "What? Are the humans gone then?. "It's not
human to be a slave.. "What would you know?' the woman said.. "I don't
sniff much humanity in you.  You're some kind of pretender, aren't you?
Made by a Maestro." It would have pained Jude to hear such dismissal
from any source, but from this woman, who'd been for so long a beacon of
hope and healing, it was the bitterest condemnation.  She'd fought so
hard to be more than a fake, forged in a man-made womb.  But with a few
words Celestine had reduced her to a mirage.

"You're not even natural," she said. "Nor are you," Jude snapped back.
"But I was once," Celestine said.. "And I cling to that.. "Cling all you
like, it won't change the facts.  No natural woman could have survived
in here for two centuries.. "I had my revenge to nourish me.. "On
Roxborough?. "On them all; all except one."

"Who?. "The Maestro ...  Sartori. "You knew him?. "Too little,"
Celestine said. There was a weight of sorrow here Jude didn't
comprehend, but she had the means to ameliorate it on her tongue, and
for all Celestine's cruelties Jude wasn't about to withhold the news.
"Sartori isn't dead," she said. Celestine had turned her face to the
wall, but now looked back at Jude. "Not dead?. "I'll find him for you if
you want," Jude said. "You'd do that. "Yes.. "Are you his mistress?'
"Not exactly?. "Where is he? Is he near?. "I don't know where he is.
Somewhere in the city.. "Yes.  Fetch him.  Please, fetch him." She
hauled herself up the wall.. "He doesn't know my name, but I know him."

"So who shall I tell him you are?. "Ask him ...  ask him if he remembers
Nisi Nirvana.. "Who?. "Just tell him.. "Nisi Nirvana?. "That's right."
Jude stood up, and returned to the hole in the wall, but as she was
about to step out Celestine called to her. "What's your name?' she
asked. Judith.,

"Well, Judith, not only do you stink of coitus, but you have in your
hand some piece of flesh which you haven't given up clutching.  Whatever
it is, let it go." Appalled, Jude looked down at her hand.  The
curiosity was still in her possession, half -hanging from her fist.  She
Pitched it away, into the dust.

A A

"Do you wonder I took you for a whore?' Celestine remarked. "Then we've
both made mistakes, "Jude replied, looking back at her.. "I thought you
were my salvation.. "Yours was the greater error," Celestine replied.
Jude didn't grace this last piece of spite with a reply, but headed out
of the cell.  The mites that had exited Dowd's body were still crawling
around aimlessly, looking for a new bolt-hole, but the flesh they'd
vacated had upped and gone.  She wasn't altogether surprised. Dowd was
an actor to his core.  He would postpone his farewell scene as long as
possible, in the hope that he'd be at centre stage when the final
curtain fell.  A hopeless ambition, given the fame of his fellow
players, and one Jude wasn't foolish enough to share.  The more she
learned about the drama unfolding around her, with its roots in the tale
of Christos the Reconciler, the more resigned she was to having little
or no role in it.  Like the fourth Magi, expunged from the Nativity, she
wasn't wanted in the Gospel about to be written; and having seen the
pitiful place a King's testament had come to, she was not about to waste
time writing her own.

A

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Clem's duties were done for the night.  He'd been out since seven the
previous evening, about the same business that took him out every night:
the shepherding of those amongst the city's homeless too frail or too
young to survive long on its streets with only concrete and card board
for a bed.  Midsummer Night was only two days away, and the hours of
darkness were short and relatively balmy, but there were other stalkers
besides the cold that preyed on the weak - all human - and the work of
denying them their quarry took him through the empty hours after
midnight, and left him, as now, exhausted, but too full of feeling to
lay down his head and sleep.  He'd seen more human misery in the three
months he'd been working with the homeless than in the four decades
preceding that.  People living in the extremes of deprivation within
spitting distance of the city's most conspicuous symbols of justice,
faith and democracy: without money, without hope, and many (these the
saddest) without much left of their sanity.  When he returned home after
these nightly treks, the hole left in him by Taylor's passing not filled
but at least forgotten for a while, it was with expressions of such
despair in his head that his own, met in the mirror, seemed almost
blithe. Tonight, however, he lingered in the dark city longer than
usual.  Once the sun was up he knew he'd have little or no chance of
sleeping, but sleep was of little consequence to him at the moment.  It
was two days since he'd had the visitation that had sent him to Judy's
doorstep with tales of angels, and since then there'd been no further
hint of Taylor's presence.  But there were other 835 hints, not in the
house but out here in the streets, that powers were abroad which his
dear Taylor was just one sweet part of. He'd had evidence of this only a
short time ago.  Just, after midnight a man called Tolland, apparently
mucw feared amongst the fragile communities that gathered to Glen sleep
under the bridges and in the stations of West minster, had gone on a
rampage in Soho.  He'd wounded two alcoholics in a back street, their
sole offence to be in his path when his temper flowed.  Clem had
witnessed none of this, but had arrived after Tolland's arrest to see,
if he could coax from the gutter some of those whose beds and belongings
had been demolished.  None would go with him, however, and in the course
of his vain persuasions one of the number, a woman he'd never seen
without tears on her face until now, had smiled at him and said he
should stay out in the open with them tonight rather than hiding in his
bed, because the Lord was, coming, and it would be the people on the
streets who' saw Him first.  Had it not been for Taylor's fleeting"
reappearance in his life, Clem would have dismissed the woman's blissful
talk, but there were too many imponderables in the air for him to
ignore the vaguest signpost, to the miraculous.  He'd asked the woman
what Lord this., was that was coming, and she'd replied, quite sensibly,
that it didn't matter.  Why should she care what Lord it was, she said,
as long as He came? Now it was an hour before dawn, and he was trudging
across Waterloo Bridge because he'd heard the psychopathic Tolland
had usually kept to the South Bank, and

something odd must have happened to drive him across the river.  A faint
clue, to be sure, but enough to keep Clem walking, though hearth and
pillow lay in the opposite direction. The concrete bunkers of the South
Bank complex had been a favourite Megrise of Taylor's, their ugliness
railed against whenever the subject of contemporary architecture came up
in conversation.  The darkness presently

concealed their drab, stained facades, but it also turned the maze of
underpasses and walkways around them into terrain no bourgeois would
tread for fear of his life or his wallet.  Recent experience had taught
Clem to ignore such anxieties. Warrens such as this usually contained
individuals more aggressed against than aggressive; souls whose shouts
were de fences against imagined enemies, and whose tirades, however
terrifying they might seem emerging from shadow, usually dwindled into
tears. in fact, he'd not heard a whisper from the murk as he descended
from the bridge.  The cardboard city was visible where its suburbs
spilled out into the meagre lamplight, but the bulk of it lay under the
cover of the walkways, out of sight, and utterly quiet.  He began to
suspect that the lunatic Tolland was not the only tenant who'd left his
plot to travel north, and stooping to peer into the boxes on the
outskirts had that suspicion confirmed.  He headed into shadow, fishing
his pencil torch from his pocket to light the way.  There was the usual
detritus on the ground: spoiled scraps of food, broken bottles, vomit
stains.  But the boxes, and the beds of newspaper and filthied blankets
they contained, were empty.  More curious than ever, he wandered on
through the rubbish, hoping to find a soul here too weak or too crazy to
leave, who could explain this migration.  But he passed through the city
without finding a single occupant, emerging into what the planners of
this concrete Hell had designed as a children's playground.  All that
remained of their good intentions were the grimy bones of a slide and a
climbing frame.  The paving beyond them, however, was covered in fresh
colour, and advancing to the spot Clem found himself in the middle of a
kitsch exhibition: crude chalk copies of movie-star portraits and
glamour girls every where underfoot. He ran the beam over the ground,
following the trail

of images.  It led him to a wall, which was also decorated, IM

but by a very different hand.  Here was no mere copyist's work.  This
image was on such a grand scale Clem had to

play his torch-beam back and forth across it to grasp its splendour.  A
group of philanthropic muralists had apparently taken it upon themselves
to enliven this underworld, and the result was a dream landscape, its
sky green, with streaks of brilliant yellow, the plain beneath orange
and red.  Set on the sands, a walled city, with fantastical spires.  The
torch-beams caught a glint off the paint, and Clem approached the wall
to discover that the muralists had only recently left off their labours.
Patches of the paint were still tacky.  Seen at close quarters, the
rendering was extremely casual, almost slap-dash.  Barely more than half
a dozen marks had been used to indicate the city and its towers, and
only a single snaking stroke to show the highway running from the gates.
Moving his beam off the picture to illuminate the way ahead, Clem
realized why the muralists had been so haphazard. They had been at work
on every available wall, creating a parade of brightly coloured images,
many of which were far stranger than the landscape with the green sky.
To Clem's left was a man with two cupped hands for a head, lightning
jumping between the palms; to his right a family of freaks, with fur on
their faces.  Further on was an alpine scene, fantasticated by the

addition of several naked women, hovering above the L

snows; beyond it a skull-strewn veldt, with a distant train belching
smoke against a dazzling sky, and beyond that again, an island set in
the middle of a sea disturbed by a single wave, in the foam of which a
face could be discovered.  All were painted with the same passionate
haste as the first, which fact lent them the urgency of sketches, and
simply added to their power.  Perhaps it was his exhaustion, or simply
the bizarre setting for this exhibition, but Clem found himself oddly
moved by the images.  There was nothing ingratiating or sentimental
about them.  They were glimpses into the minds of strangers, and he was
exhilarated to find such wonders there. With his gaze following the
journey of pictures, he'd

NIKE

lost all sense of his own direction, but when he turned out his torch to
look for the lamplight he saw a small fire burning up ahead, and for
want of any other beacon made his way towards it.  The fire-makers had
occupied a small garden laid amid the concrete.  it had perhaps once
boasted a rose-bed, or flowering shrubs; benches, perhaps, dedicated to
some dead city father.  But now there was only a pitiful lawn, which
barely greened the dirt it peered from.  Gathered upon it were the
tenants of the cardboard city, or some part of their number.  Most were
asleep, bundled up in their coats and blankets.  But five or six were
awake, standing around the fire and passing a cigarette between them as
they talked. A dread locked black squatted on the low wall beside the
garden's gate, and spotting Clem rose to guard the entrance. or anything
but calm in the garden beyond.  The sleepers did so quietly, their
dreams seemingly kind.  And the debaters around the fire spoke in
whispers.  When they laughed, which they did now and then, it wasn't the
hard, desperate noise he'd heard amongst those clans, but light. "Who
are you, man?' the black asked him. "My name's Clem.  I got lost.. "You
don't look like you been sleepin' rough, man.. "I haven't.. "So why you
here?. "Like I said: I got lost.' The man shrugged.. "Waterloo Station's
over in that direction," he said, pointing roughly back the way Clem had
come.. "But you got a long wait for the first train.' He caught Clem's
glance into the garden. "Sorry, man, you can't come in.  If you got a
bed, go to it.' Clem didn't move, however.  Something about one of the
men at the fire, standing with his back to the gate, ,N rooted him to
the spot. "Who is that, who's talking now?' he asked the guard. The man
glanced round.

"That's the Gentile," he said. "The Gentile?' he said.. "Surely you mean
Gentle.' He hadn't raised his voice in order to name the man, but the
syllables must have carried on the tranquil air, because as they went
from Clem's lips the speaker stopped talking, and slowly turned towards
the gate.  With the fire burning at his back his features were hard to
make out, but Clem knew he'd made no error.  The man turned back to his
fellow debaters, and said something to them Clem didn't catch. Then he
left their fire and walked down to the gate. "Gentle?' his visitor said.
"It's Clem.' The black stood aside, opening the gate to let the man he'd
called the Gentile step out of the garden.  There he stood, and studied
the stranger. "Do I know you?' he said.  There was no enmity in his
voice, but there was no warmth either.. "I do, don't P. "Yes you do, my
friend," Clem replied.. "Yes you do.'

They walked together along the river, leaving the sleepers and the fire
behind them.  The many changes in Gentle soon became apparent.  He was
of course far from certain         Jr who he was, but there were other
changes which were, Clem sensed, profounder still.  There was a
plainness about his speech, and about the expression on his face which
was by turns disturbing and calming. Something of i the Gentle he and
Taylor had known had gone, perhaps ned in forever.  But something was on
its way to being gai

its place, and Clem wanted to be there when it was; to be the angel
guarding that tender self. "Did you paint the pictures?' he asked. "With
my friend Monday," Gentle said.. "We made them together.. "I never saw
you paint anything like that before.. "They're places I've been," Gentle
told him. "And people I've known.  They start coming back to me when 've
got the colours.  But it's slow.  There's so much filling my head. . he
put his fingers to his brow, which bore a

series of ill-healed lacerations'. . . confusing me.  You call me
Gentle, but I've got other names.. "John Zacharias?. "That's one.  Then
there's a man in me called Joseph Bellamy, and another called Michael
Morrison, and one called Almoth, and one called Fitzgerald, and one
called Sartori.  They all seem to be me, Clem.  But that's not possible,
is it? I asked Monday, and Carol, and Irish, and they said people have
two names, sometimes three, but never ten.. "Maybe you've lived other
lives, Gentle, and you're remembering them.. "If that's true, I don't
want to remember.  It hurts too much.  I can't think straight.  I want
to be one man with one life.  I want to know where I begin and where I
end, instead of going on and on.. "Why's that so terrible?' Clem said,
genuinely unable to see the horror in such expansion. "Because I'm
afraid there'll be no end to it," Gentle replied.  He spoke steadily,
like a metaphysician who'd reached a precipice, and was calmly
describing the abyss below for the benefit of those who couldn't - or
wouldn't be with him there.. "I'm afraid I'm joined to everything else,"
he said.. "And then I'm going to be lost.  I want to be this man, or
that man, but not every man.  If I'm everyone I'm no one, and nothing.'
He stopped his even stride, and turned to Clem, putting his hands on
Clem's shoulders. "Who am P' he said.. "Just tell me. if you love me,
tell me. Who am P. "You're my friend.' It wasn't an eloquent reply, but
it was the only one Clem had.  Gentle studied his companion's face for a
minute or more, as if calculating the potency of this axiom against his
dread.  And slowly, as he scanned Clem's features, a smile plucked at
the corners of his mouth, and tears began to glisten in his eyes. "You
see me, don't you?' he said softly.

"Of 'course I see you.. "I don't mean with your sight, I mean with your
mind. I exist in your head.. "Clear as crystal," Clem said. That was
truer now than it had ever been.  Gentle nodded, and his smile spread.
"Somebody else tried to teach me this," he said.. "But I didn't
understand.' He paused, musing.  Then he said: it doesn't matter what
I'm called.  Names are nothing.  I am what I am in you.' His arms
slipped around Clem, in to an embrace.. "I'm your friend.' He hugged
Clem hard, then stood away, the tears clearing. "Who was it who taught
me that?' he wondered. "Judith, maybe?' He shook his head.. "I see her
face over and over," he said.. "But it wasn't her. it was somebody who
went away.. "Was it Taylor?' Clem said.. "Do you remember Taylor?. "He
knew me too?. "He loved you.. "Where is he now?. "That's a whole other
story.. "Is it?' Gentle replied.. "Or is it all one?'

They walked on along the river, exchanging questions and answers as they
went.  At Gentle's request Clem recounted Taylor's story, from life to
deathbed, from deathbed to light, and Gentle in his turn offered what
clues he had to the nature of the journey he'd returned from. Though he
could remember very few of the details, he knew that unlike Taylor's it
had not taken him into brightness.  He'd lost many friends along the way
- their names mingled with those of the lives he'd lived - and seen the
deaths of many others.  But he'd also witnessed the wonders he'd painted
on the walls.  Sunless skies that shimmered green and gold; a palace of
mirrors, like Versailles; vast, mysterious deserts and ice cathedrals
full

of bells.  Listening to these traveller's tales, the vistas of hitherto
unknown worlds spreading in all directions, Clem felt his earlier case
with the notion of an unbounded self, going into some limitless
adventure, falter.  The very divisions he'd happily tried to dissuade
Gentle from at the outset of this report looked tempting now.  But they
were a trap, and he knew it. Their comfort would smother and hobble him
eventually.  He had to unburden himself of his old, stale ways of
thinking if he was to travel alongside this man into places where dead
souls were light, and being was a function of thought. "Why did you come
back?' he asked Gentle after a time.. "I wish I knew," Gentle replied.
"We should find Judith.  I think maybe she knows more about this than
either of us.. "I don't want to leave these people, Clem.  They took me
in.. "I understand that," Clem said.. "But Gentle, they can't help you
now.  They don't understand what's going on.. "Nor do we," Gentle
reminded him.. "But they listened when I told my story.  They watched me
paint, and they asked me questions, and when I told them the visions I'd
had they didn't mock me.' He stopped, and pointed over the river towards
the Houses of Parliament.. "The lawgivers'll be coming there soon," he
said.. "Would you trust what I just told you to them? If we said to them
that the dead come back in sunlight, and there are worlds where the
sky's green and gold, what would they say?. "They'd say we were crazy.'
"Yes.  And throw us out into the gutter with Monday and Carol and Irish
and all the rest.. "They're not in the gutter because they had visions,
Gentle," Clem said.. "They're there because they've been abused, or
they've abused themselves.. "Which means they can't cover their despair
the way the rest can.  They've got no distractions from their pain.  So
they get drunk and crazy, and the next day they're even more lost than
they were the day before.  But I'd still

rather trust them than all the bishops and the ministers.  Maybe they're
naked, but isn't that a holy state?. "It's also a vulnerable one," Clem
pointed out.. "You can't drag them into this war.. "Who said there's
going to be a war. "Judith," Clem replied.. "But even if she hadn't,
it's in the air.. "Does she know who the enemy's going to be?. "No.  But
it'll be a hard battle, and if you care for these people you won't put
them in the front line.  They'll be there when the war's over.' Gentle
pondered this for a time.  Finally, he said. "So they'll be the
peacemakers.. "Why not? They can spread the good news.' Gentle nodded.
"I like that," he said.. "And so will they.. "So shall we go and find
Judith?. "I think that'd be nice.  But first, I have to say goodbye.'

The day came with them as they retraced their steps along the bank, and
by the time they reached the underpass the shadows were no longer black
but grey-blue.  Some of the beams had found their way through the
concrete bridges and barricades, and were edging towards the threshold
of the garden. "Where did you go?' Irish said, meeting his Gentile at
the gate.. "We thought you'd slipped away.. "I want you to meet a friend
of mine," Gentle said.. "This is Clem.  Clem, this is Irish, this is
Carol and Benedict.  Where's Monday?. "Asleep," said Benedict, the
sometime guard. "What's Clem short for?' Carol asked. "Clement.. "I've
seen you before," she said.. "Didn't you use to bring round soup? You
did, didn't you? I never forget faces.' Gentle led the way through the
gate and into the garden.  The fire was almost out, but there were
enough embers to thaw chilled fingers.  He squatted down beside the
fire, and poked at it with a stick to stir some flame,

beckoning Clem to warm himself.  But as Clem bent to do so he stopped.
"What is it?' Gentle said. Clem's eyes went from the fire to the bundled
forms still slumbering all around.  Twenty or more, still lost in
dreams, though the light was creeping over them. "Listen," he said. One
of the sleepers was laughing, so softly it was barely audible. "Who is
that?' Gentle said.  The sound was contagious, and brought a smile to
his face. "It's Taylor," Clem said. "There's no one here called Taylor,"
Benedict said. "Well, he's here," Clem replied. Gentle stood up, and
scanned the sleepers.  In the far corner of the garden Monday was lying
flat on his back, with a blanket barely covering his paint-spattered
clothes.  A beam of morning light had found its straight, bright way
between the concrete pillars, and was settled on his chest, catching his
chin and his pale lips.  As if its gilding tickled, he laughed in his
sleep. "That's the boy who made the paintings with me," Gentle said.
"Monday," Clem remembered. "That's right.' Clem picked his way through
the dormitory to the youth's side.  Gentle followed, but before he
reached the sleeper the laughter faded.  Monday's smile lingered,
however, the sun catching the blond hairs on his upper lip.  His eyes
didn't open, but when he spoke it was as if he saw. "Look at you,
Gentle" he said.. "The traveller returned.  No, I'm impressed, really I
am.' It wasn't quite Taylor's voice - the larynx that was shaping it was
twenty years too young - but the cadences were his; so was the sly
warmth. "Clem told you I was hanging around, I presume.. "Of course,"
Clem said.

"Strange times, eh? I used to say I'd been born into the wrong age.  But
it looks as though I died into the right one.  So much to gain. So much
to lose.. "Where do I begin?' Gentle said. "You're the Maestro, Gentle,
not me.. "Maestro, am P. "He's still remembering, Tay," Clem explained.
"Well, he should be quick about it," Taylor said.. "You've had your
holiday, Gentle.  Now you've got some healing to do.  There's a hell of
a void waiting to take us all if you fuck up.  And if it comes. . .' the
smile went from Monday's face '. . . if it comes there won't be any more
spirits in the light, because there won't be any light.  Where's your
familiar, by the way?. "Who?. "The mystif.' Gentle's breath quickened.
"You lost it once, and I went looking for it.  I found it too, mourning
its children.  Don't you remember?. "Who was this?' Clem asked. "You
never met it," Taylor said.. "If you had, you'd remember.. "I don't
think Gentle does," Clem said, looking at the Maestro's troubled face.
oh, the mystif's in there somewhere," Taylor said. "Once seen, never
forgotten.  Go on, Gentle.  Name it for me. It's on the tip of your
tongue.' Gentle's expression became pained. "It's the love of your life,
Gentle," Taylor said, coaxing Gentle on.. "Name it.  I dare you.  Name
it.' Gentle frowned, and mouthed silence.  But finally his throat gave
up its hostage. "Pie...' he murmured. Taylor smiled through Monday's
face. "Yes. . "Pie'oh'pah.. "What did I tell you? once seen, never
forgotten.'

Gentle said the name again, and again, breathing it as

though the syllables were an incantation.  Then he turned to Clem. "That
lesson I never learned," he said.  'it came from Pie.' -Where's the
mystif now?' Taylor asked.. "Do you have any idea?' Gentle went down on
his haunches beside Tay's sleeping host. "Gone," he said, closing his
hands around the sunlight. "Don't do that," Taylor said softly.. "You
only catch the dark that way.' Gentle opened his hand again, and let the
light lie on his palm. "You say the mystif's gone?' Tay went on. "Where,
for God's sake? How can you lose it twice?. "It went into the First
Dominion," Gentle replied.  'it died, and went where I couldn't follow.'
"I'm sorry to hear that.. "But I'll see it again, when I've done my
work," Gentle said. "Finally, we get to it," Tay said. "I'm the
Reconciler," Gentle said.. "I've come to open the Dominions.. "So you
have, Maestro," Tay said. on Midsummer Night.. "You're cutting it fine,"
Clem said.. "That's tomorrow.. "It can be done," Gentle said, standing
up again.  J know who I am now.  He can't hurt me any more.. "Who
can't?' Clem asked. "My enemy," Gentle replied, turning his face into
the sunlight.. "Myself.'

After only a few days in this city that enemy, the sometime Autarch
Sartori, had begun yearning for the languid dawns and elegiac dusks of
the Dominion he'd left.  The day came altogether too quickly here, and
was snuffed

Put;

alum. iL

t with the same alacrity.  That would have to change.

Amongst his plans for the New Yzordderrex would be a palace made of
mirrors, and of glass made possessive by fe its that would hold the
glory of these inkling dawns and protract them, so that they met the
glow of dusk coming in other directions.  Then, he might be happy here.
There would be, he knew, little in the way of resistance to his taking
of the Fifth, to judge by the ease with which    -4 the members of the
Tabula Rasa had succumbed to him.  All but one of them was now dead,
cornered in their burrows like rabid vermin.  Not one had detained him
more than minutes, but had given up their lives quickly, with few sobs
and still fewer prayers.  He wasn't surprised.  Their ancestors had been
strong-willed men, but even the most pungent blood thinned over
generations, and the children of their children of their children (and
so on)' were faithless cowards. The only surprise that he'd had in this
Dominion, and it was a sweet one, was the woman whose bed he was
returning to: the peerless and eternal Judith.  His first taste of her
had been in Quaisoir's chambers when, mistaking her for the woman he'd
married, he'd made love to her on the bed of veils.  Only later, as he'd
prepared to quit Yzorddeffex, had Rosengarten informed him of Quaisoir's
maiming, and gone on to report the presence of a doppelgdnger in the
corridors of the palace. That report had been Rosengarten's last as a
loyal commander.

s

When, a few minutes later, he'd been ordered to join him Autarch on the
journey to the Fifth, he'd secretly wanted to refuse. The Second was his
home, he said, and Yzordderrex his pride, and if he was to die then he
wanted it to be in sight of the Comet.  Tempted as he was to punish the
man for this dereliction of duty, Sartori had no desire to enter his new
world with blood on his hands.  He'd let the man go, and departed for
the Fifth believing the woman he'd made love to on Quaisoir's bed was
somewhere in the city behind him.  But no sooner had he

taken up the mask of his brother's life than he'd met her again, in
Klein's garden of scentless flowers. He never ignored omens, good or
bad.  Judith's reappearance in his life was a sign that they belonged
together, and it seemed that she, all unknowing, felt the same.  Here
was the woman for the love of whom this whole sorry catalogue of death
and desolation had been started, and in her company he felt himself
renewed, as though the sight of her reminded his cells of the self he'd
been before his fall.  He was being offered a second chance; an
opportunity to start again with the creature he'd loved, and make an
empire that would erase all memory of his previous failure. He'd had
proof of their compatibility when they'd made love.  A more perfect
welding of erotic impulses he could scarcely have imagined.  After it,
he'd gone out into the city about the business of murder with more
vigour than ever. it would take time, of course, to persuade her that
this was a marriage decreed by fate. She believed him to be his other,
and would be vengeful when he disabused her of this fiction.  But he
would bring her round in time.  He had to.  He had intimations, even in
this blithe city, of intolerable things: whispers of oblivion, that made
the foulest Oviate he'd ever dredged up look alluring.  She could save
him from that; lick off his sweats and rock him to sleep.  He had no
fear that she'd reject him.  He had a claim on her that would make her
put aside all moral niceties: his child, planted in her two nights
before.

It was his first.  Though he and Quaisoir had attempted to found a
dynasty many times, she'd repeatedly miscarried, then later corrupted
her body with so much kreauchee it refused to produce another egg. But
this Judith was a wonder.  Not only had she made surpassing love with
him, there was fruit from that coupling. And when the time came to tell
her (once the irksome Oscar Godolphin was dead, and the line for whom
she'd been made stopped) then she would see the perfection of their
union, and feel it, kicking in her womb.

Jude hadn't slept, waiting for Gentle to return from another night of
wanderings.  The summons she carried from Celestine was too heavy to
sleep with; she wanted it said and done, so she could put her thoughts
of the woman away.  Nor did she want to be unconscious when he returned.
The idea of his coming in and watching her sleep, which would have been
comforting two nights before, unsettled her now.  He was the egg-licker,
and its thief.  When she had her possession back, and he was gone off to
Highgate, she'd rest, but not before. The day was creeping up when he
finally returned, but there was insufficient light for her to read much
on his face until he was within a few yards of her, by which time he was
wreathed in smiles.  He chastised her fondly for waiting up.  There was
no need, he said; he was quite safe.  The pleasantries stopped here,
however.  He saw her unease, a nd wanted to know what was wrong. "I went
to Roxborough's Tower," she told him. "Not on your own, I hope.  Those
people can't be trusted.. "I took Oscar.. "And how's Oscar?' she was in
no mood to prettify.. "He's dead," she said. He looked genuinely
saddened at this.. "How did that happen?' he asked. "It doesn't matter.'
"It does to me," he insisted.. "Please.  I want to know.. "Dowd was
there.  He killed Godolphin.. "Did he hurt you?. "No.  He tried.  But
no.. "You shouldn't have gone up there without me.  What on earth
possessed you?' She told him, as plainly as she knew. "Roxborough had a
prisoner," she said.. "A woman he buried under the Tower.. "He kept that
little kink to himself," Gentle said.  She

thought there was something almost admiring in his tone, but she fought
the temptation to accuse him.. "So you went to dig up her bones, did
you?. "I went to release her.' Now she had every scrap of his attention.
"I don't follow," he said. "She's not dead.. "So she's not human.' He
made a curt little smile.. "What was Roxborough doing up there? Raising
wantons?. "I don't know what wantons are.. "They're ethereal whores.'
"That doesn't describe Celestine.' She trailed the bait of the name, but
he failed to bite. "She's human.  Or at least she was.. "And what is she
now?' Jude shrugged.. "Something ... else.  I don't quite know what.
She's powerful though.  She almost killed Dowd.. "Why?. "I think you're
better hearing that from her.. "Why should I want to?' he said lightly.
"She asked to see you.  She says she knows you.. "Really? Did she say
from where?. "No.  But she told me to mention Nisi Nirvana.' Gentle
chuckled at this. "Does it mean something to you?' Jude said. "Yes of
course.  It's a story for children.  Don't you know it?,

J

"No.'

Even as she spoke, she realized why, but it was Gentle who voiced the
reason. "Of course you don't," he said.. "You were never a child, were
you?' She studied his face, wishing she could be certain he meant to be
cruel, but still not sure that the indelicacy she'd sensed in him, and
now sensed again, wasn't a newfound naivety. "So will you go to her?'
"Why should I? I don't know her.'

"But she knows you.. "What is this?' he said.. "Are you trying to palm
me off with another woman?' He took a step towards her, and though she
tried to conceal her reluctance to be touched, she failed. "Judith," he
said.. "I swear I don't know this Celestine.  It's you I think about
when I'm not her. "I don't want to discuss that now.. "What do you
suspect me of ?' he said.. "I've done nothing.  I swear.' He laid both
his hands on his chest.. "You're hurting me, Judith. I don't know if
that's what you want to do, but you are.  You're hurting me.' . "That's
a new experience for you, is it?. "Is that what this is about? A
sentimental education? If it is, I beg you, don't torment me now.  We've
got too many enemies to be fighting with each other.. "I'm not fighting.
I don't want to fight.. "Good," he said, opening his arms.. "So come
here.' She didn't move. "Judith.. "I want you to go and see Celestine. I
promised her that I'd find you, and you'll make a liar of me if you
don't go.,

"All right, I'll go," he said.. "But I'm going to come back,       Ai
love, you can depend on that.  Whoever she is, whatever she looks like,
it's you I want.' He paused.. "Now more than ever," he said. She knew he
wanted her to ask him why, and for fully ten seconds she kept her
silence rather than satisfy him.  But the look on his face was so
brimming she couldn't keep her curiosity from putting the question on
her tongue. "Why now?' she said. "I wasn't going to tell you yet. .
"Tell me what?. "We're going to have a child, Judith.' She stared at
him, waiting for some further explanation: that he'd found an orphan on
the street, or was

bringing a babe from the Dominions.  But that wasn't what he meant at
all, and her pounding heart knew it.  He meant a child born from the act
they'd performed; a consequence. "It'll be my first," he said.. "Yours
too, yes?' She wanted to call him liar.  How could he know when she
didn't? But he was quite certain of his facts. "He'll be a prophet," he
said, 'you'll sec.' She already had, she realized.  She'd entered its
tiny life when the egg had plunged her consciousness down into her own
body.  She'd seen with its stirring spirit: a jungle city, and living
waters; Gentle, wounded, and coming to take the egg from tiny fingers.
Had that perhaps been the first of its prophecies. "We made a kind of
love no other beings in this Dominion could make," Gentle was saying.
"The child came from that.'

"You knew what you were doing?'

"I had my hopes.. "And didn't I get a choice in the matter? I'm just a
womb, am P. "That's not how it was.. "A walking womb!. "You're making it
grotesque.. "It is grotesque.. "What are you saying? How can anything
that comes from us be less than perfection?' He spoke with almost
religious zeal.. "I'm changing, sweet.  I'm discovering what it is to
love and cherish, and plan for the future.  See how you're changing me?'
"From what? From the great lover to the great father? Another day,
another Gentle?' He looked as though he had an answer on his tongue, but
bit it back. "We know what we mean to each other, "he said.'Th ere should
be proof of that.  Judith, please -' His arms were still open, but she
refused to go into them.. "When I came

AM

here I said I'd make mistakes, and I asked you to forgive me if I did.
I'm asking you again now.' She bowed her head, and shook it.. "Go away,"
she said. "I'll see this woman if you want me to.  But before I go, I
want you to swear something to me.  I want you to

mall                 swear you won't try and harm what's in you.. "Go to
hell.. "It's not for me.  It's not even for the child.  It's for you. If
you were to do any harm to yourself because of something I did, my life
wouldn't be worth living.. "I'm not going to slit my wrists, if that's
what you think.' it's not that.. "What then?. "If you try to abort the
child, it won't go passively.  It's got our purpose in it; it's got our
strength.  It'll fight for its life, and it may take yours in the
process.  Do you understand what I'm saying?' She shuddered. "Speak to
me.. "I've got nothing to say to you that you want to hear.  Go talk to
Celestine.. "Why don't you come with me?. "Just.  Go.  Away.' She looked
up.  The sun had found the wall behind him, and was celebrating there.
But he remained in shadow.  For all his grand purpose, he was still made
to be fugitive; a liar and a fraud. "I want to come back," he said. She
didn't answer. "If you're not here, I'll know what you want from me.'
Without a further word he went to the door, and let himself out. Only as
she heard the front door slam did she shake herself from her stupor and
realize he'd taken              the egg with him as he went.  But then
like all mirror lovers he was fond of symmetry, and it probably pleased
him to have that piece of her in his pocket, knowing she had a piece of
him in a deeper place still.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Even though Gentle had known the tribe of the South Bank only a few
hours, parting from them wasn't easy.  He'd felt more secure in their
company for that short time than he'd felt with many men and women he'd
known for years.  They, for their part, were used to loss - it was the
theme of almost every life story he'd heard - so there were no
histrionics or accusations; just a heavy silence.  Only Mon day, whose
victimization had first stirred the stranger from his passivity, made
any attempt to have Gentle linger. "We've only got a few more walls to
paint," he said, 'and we'll have covered them all.  A few days.  A week
at the most.. "I wish I had that long," Gentle told him.. "But I can't
postpone the work I came back to do.' Monday had of course been asleep
while Gentle talked with Tay (and had woken much confounded by the
respect he got) but the others, especially Benedict, had new words to
add to the vocabulary of miracles. "So what does a Reconciler do?' he
asked Gentle.. "If you're going' off to the Dominions, man, we want to
be comin' with you.. "I'm not leaving Earth.  But if and when I do,
you'll be the first to know about it.. "What if we never see you again?'
Irish said. "Then I'll have failed.. "And you're dead and gone?. "That's
right.. "He won't fuck up," Carol said.. "Will you, love?. "But what do
we do with what we know?' Irish said, clearly troubled by this burden of
mysteries.. "With you gone, it won't make sense to us.'

"Yes it will," Gentle said.. "Because you'll be telling other people, and
that way the stories will stay alive until t

the door to
the Dominions is open.'

"So we should tell people?'

"Anyone who'll listen.'

There were murmurs of assent from the assembly.  Here at least was a
purpose; a connection with the tale they'd heard, and its teller.

f you need us for anything," Benedict purred, 'you know where to find
us.'

"Indeed I do," Gentle said, and went with Clem to the gate.

"And what if anybody comes looking for you?' Carol called after them.

"Tell 'em I was a mad bastard and you kicked me over the bridge.'

This earned a few grins.

"That's what we'll say, Maestro," Irish sai. "But I'm tellin' you, if you
don't come back for us one of these days, we're going' to come lookin'
for you.'

The farewells over, Clem and Gentle headed up on to Waterloo Bridge in
search of a cab to take them across the city to Jude's place. it wasn't
yet six, and though the     2 flow of northbound traffic was beginning
to thicken as the first commuters appeared, there were no taxis to be
had, so they started across the bridge on foot in the hope of finding a
cab on the Strand.

Of all the company to have found you in," Clem t.,

remarked as they went, 'that has to be the strange. "You came looking
for me there," Gentle pointed out, so you must have had some inkling.'

"I suppose I must.'

"And believe me, I've kept stranger company.  A lot stranger.'

"I believe it.  I'd like you to tell me about the whole journey one day
soon.  Will you do that?'

"I'll do my best.  But it'll be difficult without a map.  I

kept telling Pie I'd draw one, so that if I ever passed through the
Dominions again, and got lost. . you'd be found.. "Exactly.. "And did
you make a map. "No.  There was never time, somehow.  There always
seemed to be something new to distract me.. "Tell me as much as - Whoa!
I see a cab!' Clem stepped out into the street and waved the vehicle
down.  They both got in and Clem supplied the driver with directions. As
he was doing so the man peered into his mirror and said. "Is that
someone you know?'

They looked back along the bridge to see Monday pelting towards them.
Seconds later the paint-smeared face was at the taxi window, and Monday
was begging to join them.

"You've got to let me come with you, Boss. it's not fair if you don't. I
gave you my colours, didn't I? Where would you be without my colours?'
"I can't risk you getting hurt," Gentle said.

"If I get hurt it's my hurt and it's my fault.'

"Are we going, or what?' the driver wanted to know. "Let me come, Boss.
Please.' Gentle shrugged, then nodded.  The grin, which had gone from
Monday's face during his appeal, returned in glory, and he clambered
into the cab, rattling his tobacco tin of chalks like a juju as he did
so.

I brought the colours," he said, 'just in case we need I

em. You never know when we might have to draw a quick Dominion or
something, right?'

Though the journey to Judith's flat was relatively short, there were
signs everywhere - mostly small, but so numerous their sum became
significant - that the days of venomous heat and un cleansing storm were
taking their toll on the city and its occupants.  There were vociferous
a Itercations at every other corner, and some in the

middle of the street; there were scowls and furrows on every passing
face.

"Tay said there was a void coming," Clem remarked as they waited at an
intersection for two furious motorists to be stopped from making nooses
of each other's neckties.. "Is this all part of it?" 

"It's bloody madness is what is it," the cabbie chimed in. "There's been
more murders in the last five days than in all of last year.  I read
that somewhere.  And it's not just murders, neither, it's people toppin'
themselves.  A mate of mine, a cabbie like, was up the Arsenal on
Tuesday and this woman just throws herself in front of his cab. Straight
under the front wheels. Bloody tragic.' The fighters had finally been
refereed, and were being escorted to opposite pavements. "I don't know
what the world's coming to," the cabbie said.. "It's total madness.' His
piece said, he turned on the radio as the traffic began moving again,
and began whistling an out-of-tune accompaniment to the ballad that
emerged. "Is this something we can help stop?' Clem asked Gentle.. "Or
is it just going to get worse?. "I hope the Reconciliation will put an
end to it.  But I can't be certain.  This Dominion's been so sealed up
for so long, it's poisoned itself with its own shit.. "So we just have
to pull down the soddin' walls," Monday said with the glee of a born
demolisher.  He rattled his tin of colours again.. "You mark 'em," he
said, 'and I'll knock 'em down.  Easy.'

The child, Gentle had told Jude, had more purpose in it than most, and
she believed him.  But what did that mean, besides the risk of its fury
if she tried to un house it? Would it grow faster than others? Would she
be big with it by dusk, and her waters ready to break before morning?

She lay in the bedroom now, the day's heat already weighing on her
limbs, and hoped all the stories she'd heard from radiant mothers were
true, and that her body wou Id pour palliatives into her bloodstream to
ease the traumas of nurturing and expelling another life. when the
doorbell rang her first instinct was to ignore it, but her visitors,
whoever they were, kept on ringing, and eventually began to shout up at
the window.  One called for Judy; the other, more oddly, for Jude.  She
sat up, and for a moment it was as though her anatomy had shifted.  Her
heart thumped in her head, and her thoughts had to be dragged up out of
her belly to form the intention to leave the room and go down to the
door.  The voices were still summoning her from below, but they pete red
out as she headed down the stairs, and she was ready to find the
doorstep empty when she got there.  Not so.  There was an adolescent
there, besmirched with colour, who upon sight of her turned and hollered
to her other visitors, who were across the street, peering up at her
flat. "She's here!' he yelled.. "Boss? She's her el They started back
across the road towards the step, and as they came her heart, still
beating in her head, took up a suicidal tempo.  She reached out for some
support as the man at Clem's side met her eyes, and smiled.  This wasn't
Gentle. At least it wasn't the egg-thief Gentle who'd left a couple of
hours before, his face flawless. This one hadn't shaved for several
days, and had a brow of scabs.  She backed away from the step, her hand
failing to find the door though she wanted to slam it. "Keep away from
me," she said. He stopped a yard or two from the threshold, seeing the
panic on her face.  The youth had turned to him, and the imposter
signalled that he should retreat, which he did, leaving the line of
vision between them clear. "I know I look like shit," the scabby face
said.. "But it's me, Jude.' She took two steps back from the blaze in
which he

stood (how the light liked him! Not like the other, who'd been in shadow
every time she'd set eyes on him), her sinews fluttering from toes to
fingertips, their motion escalating as though a fit was about to seize
her.  She reached for the banister and took hold of it to keep herself
from falling over. "It can't be," she said. %          This time the man
made no reply. it was his accomplice in this deceit - Clem, of all
people - who said. "Judy.  We have to talk to you.  Can I come in. "Just
you," she said.. "Not them.  Just you.. "Just me.'

He came to the door, approaching her slowly, palms out. "What's happened
here?' he said. "That's not Gentle," she told him.. "Gentle's been with
me for the last two days.  And nights. That. . . I don't know who.' The
imposter heard what she was telling Clem.  She could see his face over
the other man's shoulder, so shocked the words might have been blows.
The more she tried to explain to Clem what had happened, the more she
lost faith with what she was saying.  This Gentle, waiting outside, was
the man she'd left on the studio step, standing bewildered in the sun as
he was now.  And if this was he, then the lover who'd come to her, the
egg-licker, and fertilizer, was some other; some terrible other. She saw
Gentle make the man's name with his lips. "Sartori.' Hearing the name
and knowing it was true - knowing that the butcher of Yzordderrex had
found a place in her bed, heart and womb - the convulsions threatened to
overtake her completely.  But she clung to the solid, sweaty world as
best she could, determined that these men, his enemies, should know what
he'd done.

"Come in," she said to Gentle.. "Come in and close the door.' He brought
the boy with him, but she didn't have the will to waste on objecting. He
also brought a question. "Did he harm you?. "No," she said.  She almost
wished he had; wished he'd given her a glimpse of his atrocious self..
"You told me he was changed, Gentle," she said.. "You said he was a
monster; he was corrupted, you said.  But he was exactly like you., She
let her rage simmer in her as she spoke, working its alchemy on the
abhorrence she felt and turning it . nto purer, wiser stuff.  Gentle had
misled her with his descriptions of his other, creating in her mind's
eye a man so tainted by his deeds he was barely human.  But there'd been
no malice in his deception; only the desire to be utterly divided from
the man who'd shared his face.  Now he knew his error, and was plainly
ashamed.  He hung back, watching her while the tremors in her body
slowed.  There was steel in her sinew, and it held her up; lent her the
strength to finish the account.  There was no sense in keeping the last
part of Sartori's deceit from either Gentle or Clem.  It would be
apparent soon enough.  She laid her hand on her belly. "I'm pregnant,"
she said.. "His child.  Sartori's child.' In a more rational world she
might have been able to interpret the expression on Gentle's face as he
received the news, but its complexity defied her.  There was anger in
the maze, certainly; and bafflement too. But was there also a little
jealousy? He hadn't wanted her company when they'd returned from the
Dominions; his mission as Reconciler had scourged his libido.  But now
that she'd been touched by his other, pleasured by him - did he see that
guilt somewhere on her face, as ineptly buried as his jealousy - he was
feeling pangs of possessiveness.  As ever with their story, there was no
sentiment untainted by paradox.  It was Clem, dear, comforting Clem, who
opened his arms now, and said:

. "Any chance of a hug?. "Oh God, yes," she said.. "Every chance.' He
crossed to her, and wrapped his embrace around her.  They rocked
together. "I should have known, Clem," she said, too quietly for Gentle
or the boy to hear. "Hindsight's easy," he said, kissing her hair.. "I'm
just glad you're alive.. "He never threatened me.  He never laid a
finger on me that I didn't . . ask for?. "I didn't need to ask," she
said.. "He knew.' The sound of the front door reopening made her raise
her head from Clem's shoulder. Gentle was stepping out into the sun
again, with the youth following.  Once outside, he looked up, cupping
his hand over his brow to study the sky at its zenith.  Seeing him do
so, Jude realized who the sky-watcher she'd glimpsed in the Boston Bowl
had been.  It was a small solving, but she wasn't about to spurn the
satisfaction it provided. "Sartori is Gentle's brother, is that right?'
Clem said. "I'm afraid I'm still hazy on the family relations.. "They're
not brothers, they're twins," she replied.. "Sartori is his perfect
double.. "How perfect?' Clem asked, looking at her with a small, almost
mischievous smile on his face. "Oh ... very perfect.. "So it wasn't so
bad, his being here?' She shook her head.. "It wasn't bad at all," she
replied. Then after a moment. "He told me he loved me, Clem.. "Oh Lord.'
"And I believed him.. "How many dozens of men have told you that. "Yes,
but he was different . . "Famous last words.' She looked at the
sun-watcher for a few seconds, puzzled by the calm that had come over
her.  Was the

mere memory of his commitment to her enough to assuage every dread?
"What are you thinking?' Clem asked her. "That he feels something Gentle
never did," she replied.. "Maybe never could.  Before you say it, I know
the whole thing's repulsive. He's a destroyer.  He's wiped out whole
countries.  How can I be feeling anything for him?. "You want the
cliches?. "Tell me.. "You feel what you feel.  Some people go for
sailors, some people go for men in rubber suits and feather boas.  We do
what we do. Never explain, never apologize.  There.  That's all you're
getting.' Her hands went to his face.  She cupped it, then kissed it.
"You are sublime," she said.. "We're going to survive, aren't we?'
"Survive and prosper," he said.. "But I think we'd better find your
beau, for everybody's -'He stopped as her grip on him tightened.  All
trace of joy had gone from her face.. "What's wrong?. "Celestine.  I
sent him up to Highgate to Roxborough's Tower.. "I'm sorry I'm not
following this.. "It's bad news," she said, leaving his embrace and
hurrying to the front door. Gentle relinquished his zenith-watching at
her sumMons, and returned to the step as she repeated what she'd just
told Clem. "What's up in Highgate?' he said. "A woman who wanted to see
you.  Does the name Nisi Nirvana mean anything to you?' Gentle puzzled
over this for a moment. "It's something from a story," he said. "No,
Gentle.  She's real.  She's alive.  At least she was!

it hadn't been sentiment alone that had moved the Autarch Sartori to
have the streets of London depicted in such loving detail on the walls
of his palace.  Though he'd spent only a little time in this city - no
more than weeks, between his birth and his departure for the Reconciled
Dominions - Mother London and Father Thames had educated him right
royally.  Of course the metropolis visible from the summit of Highgate
Hill, where he stood now, was vaster and grimmer than the city he'd
wandered back then, but there were enough signs remaining to stir some
poignant and pungent memories.  He'd learned sex in these streets, from
the professional ladies around Drury Lane.  He'd learned murder at the
riverside, watching the bodies washed up in the mud on a Sunday morning
after the slaughters of Saturday night. He'd learned law at Lincoln's
Inn Field, and seen justice done at Tyburn.  All fine lessons, that had
helped to make him the man he was.  The only lesson he couldn't remember
learning, whether in these streets or any other, was how to be an
architect.  He must have had a tutor in that, he presumed, at some time
or other.  After all, wasn't he the man whose vision had built a palace
that would stand in legend, even though its towers were now rubble?
Where, in the furnace of his genes, or in his history, was the kindling
spark of that genius? Perhaps he'd only discover the answer in the
raising of his new Yzordderrex. if he was patient, and watchful, the
face of his mentor would sooner or later appear in its walls. There
would have to be a great demolishing, however, before the foundations
were laid, and banalities like the Tabula Rasa's Tower, which he now
came in sight of, would be the first to be condemned.  He crossed the
forecourt to the front door, whistling as he went, and wondering if the
woman Judith had been so insistent he meet - this Celestine - could hear
his trill.  The door stood open, but he doubted any thief, however
opportunist,

had dared enter.  The air around the threshold fairly pricked with
power, putting him in mind of his beloved Pivot Tower. Still whistling,
he crossed the foyer to a second door, and stepped through it into a
room he knew.  He'd walked these ancient boards twice in his life, the
first time the day before the Reconciliation, when he'd presented
himself to Roxborough here, passing himself off as the Maestro Sartori
for the perverse pleasure of shaking the hands of the Reconciler's
patrons before the sabotage he'd planned took them to Hell.  The second
time, the night after the Reconciliation, with storms tearing up the
skies from Hadrian's Wall to Land's End.  On this occasion he'd come
with Chant - his new familiar - intending to kill Lucius Cobbitt, the
boy he'd made his unwitting agent in the sabotage.  Having searched for
him in Gamut Street and found him gone, he'd braved the storm - there
were forests uprooted and lifted in the air, and a man struck by
lightning burning on Highgate Hill - only to discover that Roxborough's
house was empty.  He'd never found Cobbitt.  Driven from the safety of
Gamut Street by his sometime Maestro, the youth had probably fallen prey
to the storm, as so many others had that night. Now, the room stood
silent, and so did he.  The Lords who'd built this house, and their
children, who'd raised the Tower above, were dead.  It was a welcome
hush; in it, there'd be time for dalliance.  He wandered over to the
mantelpiece, and headed down the stairs, descending into a library he'd
never known existed until this moment.  He might have been tempted to
linger, perusing the laden shelves, but the pricking power he'd felt at
the front door was stronger than ever, and drew him on, more intrigued
with every yard.

He heard the woman's voice before he set eyes on her, emanating from a
place where the restless dust was so thick it was like walking in a
delta fog.  Barely visible through it, a scene of sheer vandalism:
books, scrolls and manuscripts reduced to shreds, or buried in the
wreckage

V

A

A

of the shelves they'd been laid on.  And beyond the rubble, a hole in
the brick; and from the hole, the call.

"Is that Sartori?"

"Yes," he said.

"Come closer.  Let me see you."

He presented himself at the bottom of the heap of rubble.

"I thought she'd failed to find you," Celestine sai. "Or else you'd
refused to come."

"How could I refuse a summons like this' he said softly.

"Do you think this is some kind of liaison?" she replied.. "Some secret
tryst?"

Her voice was raw with the dust, and bitter.  He liked the sound of it.
Women who had anger in them were always so much more interesting than
their contented sisters.

"Come in, Maestro," she said to him.. "Let me put you to rights."

He clambered up over the stones and peered into the darkness.  The cell
was a wretched hole, as sordid as anything beneath his palace, but the
woman who'd occupied it was no anchorite.  Her flesh hadn't been
chastened by JJ incarceration, but looked lush, for all the marks upon
it.  The tendrils that clung to her body extolled her fluency, moving
over her thighs and breasts and belly like unctuous snakes.  Some clung
to her head, and paid court at her honey lips; others lay between her
legs in bliss.  He

felt her tender gaze on him, and luxuriated in it.

P

"Handsome," she said.

He took her compliment as an invitation to approach, but as he did so
she made a murmur of distress, and he stopped in his tracks.

"What's this shadow in you?" she said.

"Nothing to be afraid of," he told her.

Some of the filaments parted, and longer tendrils, these not courtiers
but part of her substance, uncurled from behind him, clinging to the
rough wall, and hauling her up.

A

"I've heard that before," she said.. "When a man tells you there's
nothing to be afraid of, he's lying.  Even you, Sartori."

"I won't come any closer if it bothers you," he said.

it wasn't respect for the woman's unease that moved him to compliance,
but the sight of the ribbons that had lifted her.  Quaisoir had sprouted
such appendages, he t i recalled, after her intimacies with the women of
the Bastion of the Banu.  They were evidence of some facility in the
other sex he had no real comprehension of; a remnant of crafts all but
banished from the Reconciled Dominions by Hapexamendios.  Perhaps they'd
seen a new, poisonous flowering in the Fifth in the time since he'd
left.  Until he knew the scope of their authority, he'd be circumspect.

"I'd like to ask a question, if I may?" he said.

"Yes?"

"How do you know who I am?. "First, tell me where you've been all these
years?"

Oh, the temptation he felt to tell her the truth then, and parade his
achievements in the hope of impressing her.  But he'd come here in the
guise of his other, and, as with Judith, he'd have to choose the moment
of his unmasking carefully.

"I've been wandering," he said.  It wasn't so untrue.

"Where?"

"In the Second Dominion, and occasionally the Third.. "Were you ever in
Yzordderrex?. "Sometimes.. "And in the desert outside the city?. "There
too.  Why do you ask?. "I was there once.  Before you were born."

"I'm older than I look," he told her.. "I know it doesn't show

"I know how long you've lived, Sartori," she replied.

"To the very day."

Her certainty nourished the discomfort bred by the sight of the
tendrils.  Could she read his thoughts, this

r

woman?  If so - if she knew what he was and all he'd done - why wasn't
she in awe of him?

There was no profit in pretending that he didn't care that she seemed to
know so much.

Plainly, but politely, he asked her how, preparing as he spoke a
profusion of excuses if she was simply one of the Maestro's casual
conquests, and she accused him of forgetting her.  But the accusation,
when it came, was another kind entirely.

"You've done great harm in your life, haven't you?" she said to him.

"No more than most," he protested mildly.. "I've been tempted to a few
excesses, certainly.

But then hasn't everybody?"

"A few excesses?" she said.. "I think you've done more than that.
There's evil in you, Sartori.  I smell it in your sweat, the way I smelt
coitus in the woman."

Her mention of Judith - who else could this venereal woman be?  -
reminded him of the prophecy he'd made to her two nights before.  They
would find darkness in each other, he'd said; and that was a perfectly
human condition.  The argument had proved potent then.  Why not now?

"It's just the humanity in me you can sense," he said to Celestine.

She was clearly unpersuaded.

job no," she replied.. "I'm the humanity in you."

He was about to laugh this absurdity off, but her stare hushed him.

"What part of me are you?" he murmured.

"Don't you know yet?" she said.. "Child, I'm your mother."

Gentle led the way as they stepped into the cool of the Tower's foyer.
There was no sound from anywhere in the building, above or below.

"Where's Celestine?" he asked Jude, and she led him to the door into the
Tabula Rasa's meeting room, where he

told them all. "This is something for me to do, brother to brother."
"I'm not afraid," Monday piped up.

"No, but I am," Gentle said with a smile.. "And I wouldn't want you to
see me piss my pants.

Stay up here.  I'll be out double quick."

"Make sure you are," Clem said.. "Or we're coming down to get you."

With that promise as comfort, Gentle slipped through the door into what
remained of Roxborough's house.  Though he'd felt nothing in the way of
memories as he'd entered the Tower, he felt them now.  They weren't as
material as those that visited him in Gamut Street, where the very
boards seemed to have recorded the souls that had trodden them.  These
were vague recollections of the times he'd drunk and debated around the
great oak table.  He didn't allow nostalgia to delay him, however, but
passed through the room like a man vexed by admirers, arms raised
against their blandishments, and headed down into the cellar.  He'd had
this labyrinth and its contents (all spined and skin-bound, whether
human or not) described to him by Jude, but the sight still amazed him.
All this wisdom, buried in darkness.  Was it any wonder the Imajical
life of the Fifth had been so anaemic in the last two centuries, when
all the liquors that might have fortified it had been hidden here?  But
he hadn't come to browse, glorious as that prospect was.  He'd come for
Celestine, who'd trailed, of all things, the name Nisi Nirvana to bring
him here.  He didn't know why.  Though he vaguely remembered the name,
and knew there was some story to go with it, he could neither remember
the tale nor recall whose knee he'd first heard it at.  Perhaps she knew
the answer.

There was a wonderful agitation here.  Even the dust would not lie down
and die, but moved in giddy constelrations, which he divided as he
strode.  He made no false turns, but the route from the steps to the
place where Celestine lay was still a long one, and before he'd reached

4.

it he heard a cry.  It wasn't a woman's cry, he thought, but the echoes
disfigured it, and he couldn't be certain.  He picked up his speed,
turning corner after corner, knowing as he went that his other had
preceded him every step of the way.  There were no further cries after
the first, but as his destination came in view - it looked like a cave,
raggedly dug from the wall; an oracle's home he heard a different sound:
that of bricks, grinding their gritty faces together.  There were small
but constant falls of dried mortar from the ceiling, and a subtle
trembling in the ground.  He started up over the litter of fallen rock,
which was strewn like a battlefield with gutted books, to the inviting
crack.  As he did so he caught a glimpse of a violent motion inside,
which had him to the threshold in a stumbling rush.

"Brother?" he said, even before he'd found Sartori in the gloom.. "What
are you doing?"

Now he saw his other, closing on the woman in the corner of the cave.
She was almost naked, but far from defenceless.

Ribbons, like the rags of a bridal train, but made of her flesh, were
springing from her shoulders and back, their power clearly more
substantial than their delicacy implied.  Some were clinging to the wall
above her head, but the bulk were extended towards Sartori, and wrapped
around his head like a smothering hood.  He clawed at them, working his
fingers between them to get a better grip.  Fluid ran from the gouged
flesh, and cobs of matter came away in his fists.  it could only be a
matter of time before he released himself, and when he did he'd do her
no little harm.

Gentle didn't call to his brother a second time; what was the use, the
man was deafened.

Instead he crossed the cave at a stumbling rush, and took hold of
Sartori from behind, dragging his brother's arms from their maiming work
and pinning them to his side.  As he did so he saw Celestine's gaze go
between the two figures in front of her, and either the shock of what
she was witnessing, or her exhaustion, took its toll on her

strength.  The wounded ribbons loosened, and fell in wreaths around
Sartori's neck, uncovering the other face and confirming Celestine in
her distress.  She withdrew the ribbons entirely, gathering them into
her lap.

With his sight returned, Sartori wrenched his head round to identify his
captor.  Seeing Gentle, he instantly gave up his struggle to free
himself and stood in the Reconciler's arms, quite pacified.

"Why do I always find you doing harm, brother?" Gentle asked him.

"Brother?" said Sartori.. "Since when was it brother?. "That's what we
are."

"You tried to kill me in Yzordderrex, or have you forgotten?  Has
something changed?. "Yes," said Gentle.. "I have.. "Oh?. "I'm ready to
accept our ...  kinship.. "A fine word."

"In fact, I accept my responsibility for everything I was, am or will
be.  I've got your Oviate to thank for that.. "That's good to hear,"
Sartori said.. "Especially in this company."

He looked back at Celestine.  She was still standing, though it was
plainly the filaments hugging the wall that held her up, not her legs.
Her eyes were flickering closed, and there were tremors running through
her body Gentle knew she needed aid, but he could do nothing while he was
burdened with Sartori, so he turned and pitched his brother towards the
cave door.  Sartori went from him like a doll, only raising his arms to
break his fall at the very last.

"Help her if you want," he said, staring back at Gentle with slackened
features.. "It's no skin off my nose."

Then he lifted himself up.  for an instant Gentle thought he intended
some reprisal, and drew breath to defend himself.

But the other simply said. "I'm on my belly, brother.  Would you harm me
here?" And as if to prove how low he'd fallen, and was willing to stay,
he

began to slink over the earth, like a snake driven from a hearth.

"You're welcome to her," he said, and disappeared into the brighter murk
beyond the door.

Celestine's eyes had closed by the time Gentle looked back, her body
hanging limply from the tenacious ribbons.  He made towards her, but as
he approached her lids flickered open.

"No.  .  ." she said, I don't want ...  you ...  near A ...  me."

Could he blame her?  One man with his face had already attempted murder,
or violation, or both.  Why should she trust another?  Nor was this any
time to be i pleading his innocence; she needed help not apology.

The question was, from whom?

Jude had made it clear on the way up that she'd been sent from this
woman's side the same way he was being sent.  Perhaps Clem could nurse
the woman.

"I'll send somebody to help you," he said, and headed out into the
passageway.

Sartori had disappeared; lifted himself off his belly and taken to his
heels.  Once again Gentle went in his footsteps, back towards the
stairs.  He'd covered half that distance when Jude, Clem and Monday
appeared.

Their frowns evaporated when they saw Gentle.

"We thought he'd murdered you," Jude said.

"He didn't touch me.  But he's hurt Celestine, and she won't let me near
her.  Clem, will you see if you can help?  But be careful.  She may look
sick, but she's strong.. "Where is she?. "Jude'll take you.  I'm going
after Sartori.. "He's gone up the Tower," Monday said.. "He didn't even
look at us," Jude said.

She sounded almost offended.. "He just stumbled out and up the stairs.
what the hell did you do to him?"

"Nothing."

"I never saw an expression like that on his face before.

Or yours, come to that."

"Like what?. "Tragic," said Clem.

"Maybe we're going to win a quicker victory than I thought," Gentle
said, starting past them to the stairs.

Wait, "Jude said.. "We can't tend to Celestine here.  We need to take
her somewhere safer.. "Agreed.. "The studio, maybe?"

"No," Gentle said.. "There's a house I know in Clerkenwell, where we'll
be safe.  He drove me out of it once.  But it's mine and we're going
back to it.  All of us."

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

The sun that met Gentle in the foyer put him in mind of

Taylor, whose wisdom, spoken through a sleeping boy, had begun this day.
That dawn already seemed an age ago, the hours since then had been so
filled with journeys and revelations.  It would be this way until the
Reconciliation, he knew.

The London he'd wandered in his first years, brimming with possibilities
- a city Pie had once said hid more angels than God's skirts - was once
again a place of presences, and he rejoiced in the fact.  It gave heat
to his heels as he mounted the stairs, two and three at a time.  Strange
as it was, he was actually eager to see Sartori's face again; to speak
with his other, and know his mind.

Jude had prepared him for what he'd find on the top floor: bland
corridors leading to the Tabula Rasa's table, and the body sprawled
there.  The scent of Godolphin's undoing was there to meet him as he
stepped into the

passageway, a sickening reminder, though he scarcely needed one, that
revelation had a grimmer face, and that those last halcyon days, when
he'd been the most lauded metaphysician in Europe, had ended in
atrocity.  It would not happen again, he swore to himself.  Last time
the ceremonies had been brought to grief by the brother waiting for him
at the end of this corridor, and if he had to commit fratricide to
remove the danger of a recurrence, then so be it.  Sartori was the
spirit half of his own imperfections made flesh.  To kill him would be a
cleansing, and welcome; perhaps to them both.

As he advanced along the corridor the sickly smell of Godolphin's
putrefaction grew stronger.  He held his breath against it, and came to
the door in utter silence.

it nevertheless swung open as he approached, as his own voice invited
him in.

"There's no harm in here, brother; not from me.  And I don't need you on
your belly to prove your good intentions."

Gentle stepped inside.  All the drapes were drawn against the sun, but
even the sturdiest fabric usually let some trace of light through its
weave.  Not so here.  The room was sealed by something more than
curtains and brick, and Sartori was sitting in this darkness, his form
visible only because the door was ajar.

"Will you sit?" he said.. "I know this isn't a very wholesome slab

The body of Oscar Godolphin had gone, the mess of his blood and rot
remaining in pools and smears.

but I like the formality.  We should negotiate like civilized beings,
yes?"

Gentle acceded to this, walking to the other end of the table and
sitting down, content to demonstrate good faith unless or until Sartori
showed signs of treachery.  Then he'd be swift, and calamitous.

"Where did the body go?" he asked.

"It's here.  I'll bury it after we've talked.  This is no place for a
man to rot.  Or maybe it's the perfect place, I don't know.

We can vote on it later.. "Suddenly you're a democrat.. "You said you
were changing.  So am . "Any particular reason?. "We'll get to that
later.  First He glanced towards the door, and it swung closed, plunging
them both into utter darkness.

"You don't mind, do you?" Sartori said.. "This isn't a conversation we
should have looking at ourselves.  The mirror's bad enough.  .

"You didn't mind in Yzordderrex."

"I was incarnate there.  Here I feel ...  immaterial.  I was really
impressed by what you did in Yzordderrex, by the way.

One word from you and it just crumbled away."

"Your handiwork, not mine."

oh don't be obtuse.  You know what history'll say.  It

won 't give a fuck about the politics.  it'll say the Reconciler
arrived and the walls came tumbling down.  And you're not going to argue
with that.  it feeds the legend; it makes you look Messianic.  That's
what you really want, isn't it?  The question is: if you're the
Reconciler, what am I?

"We don't have to be enemies."

"Didn't I say the very same thing in Yzordderrex?  And

didn't you try and murder me?"

J had good reason."

"Name one."

"You destroyed the first Reconciliation."

"It wasn't the first.  There've been three other attempts to my certain
knowledge."

"It was my first.  My Great Work.  And you destroyed it."

"Who did you hear that from?"

"From Lucius Cobbitt," Gentle replied.

There was a silence then, and in it Gentle thought he heard the darkness
move, a sound like silk on silk.  But his head was never quite silent
these days, and before he could clear a path through the whispers
Sartori had recovered his equilibrium.

So Lucius is alive," he said.

j   just in memory.  In Gamut Street."

"That fuckhead Little Ease let you have quite an education, didn't he?
I'll have his guts." He sighed.  J miss Rosengarten, you know.

He was so very loyal.  And Racidio, and Mattalaus.  I had some good
people in Yzordderrex.

People I could trust; people who loved me.

It's your face, I think; it inspires devotion.  You must have noticed
that.  is it the divine in you, or is it just the way we smile?  I
resist the notion that one's a symptom of the other.  Hunchbacks can be
saints and beauties perfect monsters.  Haven't you found that?"

"Certainly."

"You see how much we agree?  We sit here in the dark and we talk like
friends.  I truly think if we never again stepped out into the light we
could learn to love each other, after a time.. "That can't happen. "Why
not?"

"Because I've work to do, and I won't let you delay me."

"You did terrible harm last time, Maestro.  Remember that.  Put it in
your mind's eye.

Remember how it looked, seeing the In Ovo spilling out .  .

By the sound of Sartori's voice, Gentle guessed that the man had risen
to his feet.  But again it was difficult to be certain, when the
darkness was so profound.  He stood up himself, his chair tipping over
behind him.

"The In Ovo's a filthy place," Sartori was saying.. "And believe me, I
don't want it dirtying up this Dominion.  But I'm afraid that may be
inevitable."

Now Gentle was certain there was some duplicity here.  Sartori's voice
no longer had a single source, but was being subtly disseminated
throughout the room, as though he was seeping into the darkness.

"If you leave this room, brother - if you leave me alone there'll be
such horror unleashed on the Fifth.. "I won't make any errors this
time."

"Who's talking about error?" Sartori said.. "I'm talking about what I'll
do for righteousness's sake, if you desert me."

"So come with me."

"What for?  To be your disciple?  Listen to what you're saying!  I've
got as much right to be called Messiah as you.  Why should I be a
piddling acolyte?  Do me the courtesy of understanding that, at least."
"So do I have to kill you?. "You can try."

"I'm ready to do it, brother, if you force me.. "So am I.  So am U

There was no purpose in further debate, Gentle

thought.  If he was going to kill the man, as it seemed he must, then he
wanted to do it swiftly and clearly.  But he needed light for the
deed.  He moved towards the door,

ouched intending to open it, but as he did so something t

d up to snatch it away, but it had his face.  He put his han

iling.  What defence already gone, flitting towards the ce

when he'd entered was this?  He'd sensed no living thing the room, other
than Sartori.  The darkness had been inert.  Either it had now taken on
some illusory life as an extension of Sartori's will, or else his other
had used the darkness as a cover for some summoning.  But what?  There'd
been no evocations spoken, no hint of a felt.  If he'd managed to call
up some defender, it was flimsy, and witless.  He heard it flapping
against the ceiling like a blinded bird.

"I thought we were alone," he said.

"Our last conversation needs witnesses, or how would the world know I
gave you a chance to save it?. "Biographers, now?"

"Not exactly .  .

what then?" Gentle said, his outstretched hand reaching the wall and
sliding along it towards the door.. "Why don't you show me?" he said,
his palm closing around the handle.. "Or are you too ashamed?"

With this, he pulled not one but both doors open.  The phenomenon that
followed was more startling than dire.  The meagre light in the
passageway outside was drawn into the room in a rush, as though it were
milk, sucked from day's teat to feed what waited inside.  It flew past
him, dividing as it went, going to a dozen places around the room,
high and low.  Then the handles were snatched from Gentle's grip, and
the doors slammed.

He turned back to face the room, and as he did so heard the table being
thrown over.

Some of the light had been drawn to what lay beneath.  There was
Godolphin, gutted, his entrails splayed around him, his kidneys laid on
his eyes, his heart at his groin.  And skittering around his body, some
of the entities this arrangement had called

forth, carrying fragments of the light stolen through the door.  None of
them made much sense to Gentle's eye.  They had no limbs recognizable as
such; nor any trace of features; nor, in most cases, heads upon which
features might have sat.  They were scraps of nonsense, some strung
together like the cloggings of a drain, and mindlessly busy, others
lying like bloated fruit, splitting, and splitting, and showing
themselves seedless.

Gentle looked towards Sartori.  He hadn't taken any light for himself,
but a loop of wormy life hung over his head, and cast its baleful
brightness down.

"What have you done?" Gentle asked him.

"There are workings a Reconciler would never stoop to know.  This is
one.  These beasts are Oviates.  Peripeteria.  You can't raise the
weightier beasts with a corpse that's cold.  But these things know how
to be compliant, and that's all either you or I have ever really asked
for from our abettors, isn't it?  Or our loved ones, come to that."
"Well, you've shown me them now," Gentle said.. "You can send them
home."

oh no, brother.  I want you to know what they can do.  They're the least
of the least, but they've got some maddening tricks."

Sartori glanced up, and the loop of wretchedness above him went from its
cherished place, moving towards Gentle then to the ground, its target
not the living but the dead.  It was around Godolphin's neck in moments,
while in the air above it an alliance of its fellows formed, congealing
into a peristaltic cloud.  The loop tightened like a noose, and rose,
hauling Godolphin up.  The kidneys fell from his eyes; they were open
beneath.  The heart dropped from his groin; there was a wound where his
manhood had been.  Then the remaining innards spilled from his carcass,
preserved in a jelly of cold blood.

The peripeteria overhead offered themselves as a gallows for the
ascending noose, and having it in their midst, rose again, so that the
dead man's feet were pulled clear off the ground.

"This is obscene, Sartori," Gentle said.. "Stop it."

"It's not very pretty, is it?  But think, brother, think what an army of
them could do.  You couldn't even heal this little horror, never mind
this a thousand fold

He paused, then, with genuine enquiry in his voice said:

"Or could you?  Could you raise poor Oscar?  From the dead, I mean.
Could you do that?"

He left his place at the other end of the room and began towards Gentle,
the look on his face, lit by the gallows, one of exhilaration at this
possibility.

'if you could do that," he said. "I swear I'd be your perfect disciple.
I would."

He was past the hanged man now, and coming within a yard or two of
Gentle.

"I swear," he said again.

"Let him down."

"Why?"

"Because it's pointless and pathetic."

"Maybe that's what I am," Sartori said.. "Maybe that's what I've been
from the beginning, and I never had the wit to realize it."

This was a new tack, Gentle thought.  Five minutes before the man had
been demanding due respect as an aspirant Messiah; now he was wallowing
in sell-abnegation.

"I've had so many dreams, brother.  Oh, the cities I've imagined!  The
empires!  But I could never quite remove the niggling doubt, you know?
The worm at the back of the skull that keeps saying: it'll come to
nothing, it'll come to nothing.  And you know what, the worm was right.
All I ever attempted was doomed from the beginning, because of what we
are to each other."

Tragic, Clem had said, describing the look on Sartori's face as he'd
fled the cellar.  And perhaps in his way he was.  But what had he
learned, that had brought him so low?  It had to be goaded out of him,
now or never.

"I saw your empire," Gentle replied.. "It didn't fall apart

because there was some judgement on it.  You built it out of shit.
That's why it collapsed."

"But don't you see, that was the judgement?  I was the architect, and I
was also the judge who found it unworthy.  I was set against myself from
the beginning, and I never realized it.. "But you realize it now?. "It
couldn't be plainer."

"Why?  Do you see yourself in this filth?  Is that it?. "No, brother,"
Sartori said.. "It's when I look at yo. "At me?"

Sartori stared at him, tears beginning to fill his eyes.

"She thought I was you.  .  ." he murmured.

"Judith?,

"Celestine.  She didn't know there were two of us.  How could she?  So
when she saw me she was pleased.  At first, anyway."

There was a weight of pain in his speech Gentle hadn't anticipated, and
it was no pretence.

Sartori was suffering like a damned man.

"Then she smelt me," he went on.. "She said I stank of evil, and I
disgusted her."

"Why should you care?" Gentle said.. "You wanted to kill her anyway:

"No," he protested.. "That wasn't what I wanted at all.  I wouldn't have
laid a finger on her if she hadn't attacked me."

"You're suddenly very loving.. "Of course.. "I don't see why.. "Didn't
you say we were brothers?. "Yes."

"Then she's my mother too.  Don't I have some right to be loved by her?"
"Mother?"

"Yes.  Mother.  She's your mother, Gentle.  She was raped by the
Unbeheld, and you're the consequence.,

Gentle was too shocked to reply.  His mind was gathering puzzles from
far and wide - all of them solved by this revelation - and the solving
filled him to brimming.

Sartori wiped his face with the heels of his hands.

"I was born to be the Devil, brother," he said.. "Hell to your Heaven.
Do you see?  Every plan I ever laid, every ambition I ever had, is a
mockery, because the part of me that's you wants love and glory and
great works, and the part of me that's our Father knows it's shite, and
brings it down.  I'm my own destroyer, brother.  All I can do is live
with destruction, until the end of the world."

In the foyer six storeys below, Celestine's rescuers had, after much
coaxing, persuaded the woman out of the labyrinth and into the light.
Weak though she'd been when Clem had entered her cell, she'd resisted
his

consolations for a good while, telling him that she wanted no 1!

part of them.  She preferred to remain underground, she said, and perish
there.  His experience on the streets had given him a way with such
recalcitrance.  He didn't argue 41 with her, but nor did he leave.  He
bided his time at the threshold, telling her she was probably right,
there was nothing to be gained from seeing the sun.  After a while she
balked at this, telling him that wasn't her opinion at all, and if he
had any decency about him he'd give her some comfort in her distress.
Did he want her to die like an animal, she said, locked away in the
dark?  He allowed that the fault was his, and if she wanted to be taken
up into the outside world, he'd do what he could.

with his tactic successful, he sent Monday off to bring Jude's car to
the front of the Tower, and then began the business of getting Celestine
out.  There was a delicate moment at the door of the cell when the
woman, setting eyes on Jude, almost recanted her desire to leave, saying
she wanted no truck with this tainted woman.  Jude kept her silence, and
Clem, tact personified, sent her up to fetch blankets from the car while
he escorted Celestine to the stairs.  it was a slow business, and
several times she asked him to stop, holding on to him fiercely and
telling

Aw

him that she wasn't trembling because she was afraid, but because her
body was unused to such freedom, and that if anybody, particularly the
tainted woman, was to remark on these tremors, he was to hush them.

Thus, clinging to Clem one moment, then demanding he not lean on her the
next, slowing at times then rising up with preternatural strength in her
sinews the instant after, Roxborough's captive quit her prison after two
centuries of incarceration, and went up to meet the day.

But the Tower's sum of surprises, whether above or below, was not yet
exhausted.  As Clem escorted her across the foyer, he stopped, his eyes
on the door ahead, or rather on the sunlight that poured through it.

It was laden with motes: pollen and seeds from the trees and plants
outside; dust from the road beyond.  Though there was scarcely a breeze
outside, they were in lively motion.

"We've got a visitor," he remarked.

"Here?" Jude said.

fill",

"Up ahead."

She looked at the light.  Though she could see nothing that resembled a
human form in it, the particles were not moving arbitrarily.  There was
some organizing principle amongst them, and Clem, it seemed, knew its
name.

"Taylor," he said, his voice thick with feeling.. "Taylor's here."

He glanced across at Monday, who without being told stepped in to take
Celestine's weight.  The woman had been hovering on unconsciousness
again, but now she raised her head, and watched, as did they all, while
Clem started to walk towards the light-filled door.

"It's you, isn't it? he said softly.

In reply, the motion in the light became more agitated.

"I thought so," Clem said, coming to a halt a couple of yards from the
edge of the pool.

"What does he want?" Jude said.. "Can you tell?"

Clem glanced back at her, his expression both awed and afraid.

"He wants me to let him in," he replied.. "He wants to be here." He
tapped his chest.. "Inside me."

Jude smiled.  The day had brought little in the way of good news, but
here was some: the possibility of a union she'd never have believed
possible.  Still Clem hesitated, keeping his distance from the light.

"I don't know if I can do it," he said.

"He's not going to hurt you," Jude said.

I know," Clem said, glancing back at the light.  its gilded dust was
more hectic than ever.

"It's not the hurt .  .

"What then?"

He shook his head.

,I did it, man," Monday said.. "Just close your eyes and think of
England."

This earned a little laugh from Clem, who was still staring at the light
when Jude voiced the final persuasion.. "You loved him," she said.

The laugh caught in Clem's throat, and in the utter hush that followed
he murmured:

"I still do."

"Then be with him."

time, and smiled.  Then

He looked back at her one last the stepped into the light.

To Jude's eyes there was nothing so remarkable about the sight.  It was
just a door, and a man stepping through it into sunlight.  But there was
a significance in it now she'd never understood before, and as she stood
witness a warning of Oscar's returned to her head, spoken as they'd
prepared to leave for Yzordderrex.  She'd come back changed, he'd said,
seeing the world she'd left with clearer eyes.

Here was the proof of that.  Perhaps sunlight had always been numinous,
and doorways signs of a greater passage than that of one room to
another.  But she'd not seen it, until now.

Clem stood in the beams for perhaps thirty seconds, his hands palm up in
front of him.

Then he turned back towards her, and she saw that Taylor had come with
him.  if she'd been asked to name the places where she saw his

presence, she couldn't have done so.  There was no change in his
physiognomy; no

particular in which they could be seen, unless it was in signs so subtle
the angle of his head, the fixedness of his mouth - that she couldn't
distinguish them.  But he was there, no doubt of it.  And so was an
urgency that had not been in Clem a minute before.

"Take Celestine out of here," he said to Jude and Monday.. "There's
something terrible going on upstairs." He left the doorway, heading for
the stairs.. "Do you want help?" Jude said.

"No.  Stay with her.  She needs you."

At this, Celestine uttered her first words since leaving the cell.

"I don't need her," she said.

Clem reeled round on one heel, coming back to the woman and putting his
nose an inch from hers.

"You know I'm finding you hard to like, lady," he snapped.

Jude laughed out loud, hearing Tay's irascible tones so clearly.  She'd
forgotten how his and Clem's natures had dovetailed, before sickness had
taken the piss and vinegar out of Tay.

"We're here because of you, remember that," Tay said.. "And you'd still
be down there picking the fluff from your navel if Judy hadn't brought
us."

Celestine narrowed her eyes.. "Put me back then," she said.

"Just for that .  .  Tay said.  Jude held her breath.  He wouldn't,
surely?  - .  I'm going to give you a big kiss and ask you very politely
to stop being a cantankerous old bag." He kissed her, on the nose.. "Now
let's get going," he said to Monday, and before Celestine could summon a
reply he headed to the stairs and was up therh and out of sight.

Exhausted by his outpouring of pain, Sartori turned from

Gentle and began to wander back to the chair where he'd

been sitting at the start of their interview.  He idled as he went,
kicking over those servile scraps that came to dote on him, and pausing
to look up at Godolphin's gutted body, then setting it in motion with a
touch, so that its bulk eclipsed and uncovered him by turns, as he went
to his little throne.  There were peripeteria gathered around c horde,
but Gentle didn't wait for him to in a sycophanti order them against
him.  Sartori was no less dangerous for the despair he'd just expressed;
all it did was free him from any last hope of peace between them.  It
freed Gentle too.  This had to end in Sartori's dispatch, or the Devil

he'd decided to be would undo the Great Work all over

again.  Gentle drew breath.  As soon as his brother turned

he'd let the pneuma fly, and be done.

"What makes you think you can kill me, brother?" Sar

tori said, still not turning.. "God's in the First Dominion  and
Mother's nearly dead downstairs.  You're alone.  All

you have is your breath." Godolphin's body continued to swing between
them,

but the man kept his back turned.

"And if you unknit me, what do you do to yourself in

thought about that?  Kill me, and the process?  Have you through maybe you
kill yourself."

Gentle knew Sartori was capable of planting such

doubts all night.  It was the complementary to his own lost skill with
seduction: dropping these possibilities into

promising earth.  He wouldn't be delayed by them.  His pneuma readied,
he started after the man, pausing only

for the swing of Godolphin's corpse; then stopping on the other side of
it.  Sartori still refused to show his face, and

Gentle had no option but to waste a little of the killing

breath with words.

"Look at me, brother," he said.

do so in Sartori's body.  A

He read the intention to

dig in his heels and torso and head.  But motion begin

sound behind before his face came in sight Gentle heard a him, and
glanced back to see the third actor here - the

dead Godolphin - dropping from his gallows.  He had time

to glimpse the Oviates in his carcass, then it was upon him.  It should
have been easy to stand aside, but the beasts had done more than nest in
the corpse.  They were busy in Godolphin's rotted muscle, engineering
the resurrection Sartori had begged Gentle to perform.  The corpse's
arms snatched hold of him, and its bulk, all the vaster for the weight
of parasites, bore him to his knees.  The breath went out of him as
harmless air, and before he could take another his arms were caught, and
twisted to breaking point behind his back.

"Never turn your back on a dead man," Sartori said, finally showing his
face.

There was no triumph in it, though he'd incapacitated his enemy in one
swift manoeuvre.

He turned his sorrowful eyes up to the host of peripeteria that had been
Godolphin's gallows, and with the thumb of his left hand, described a
tiny circle.

They took their cue instantly, the motion appearing in their cloud.

"I'm more superstitious than you, brother," Sartori said, reaching
behind him and throwing over his chair.  it didn't lie where it fell,
but rolled on around the room as though the motion overhead had some
correspondence below.. "I'm not going to lay my hand on you," he went
on.. "In case there is some consequence for a man who takes his other's
life." He raised his palms.. "Look, I'm blameless," he said, stepping
back towards the draped windows.. "You're going to die because the world
is coming apart."

As he spoke the motion around Gentle increased, as the peripeteria took
their summoner's cue.  They were insubstantial as individuals, but en
masse they had considerable authority.  As their circling speeded up it
generated a current strong enough to lift the chair Sartori had
overthrown into the air.  The light fixtures were sheared off the walls,
taking cobs of plaster with them; the handles were ripped from the
doors, and the rest of the chairs snatched up to join the tarantella,
smashed to firewood as they collided with each other.  Even the table,

it was, began to move.  At the eye of this

enormous as

storm Gentle struggled to free himself from Godolphin's

cold embrace.  He might have done so given time, but the

circle and its freight of shards closed on him too quickly.

Unable to protect himself, all he could do was bow his

head against the hail of wood, plaster and glass, the J

breath pommelled from him by the assault.  Only once I

the storm.

did he lift his eyes to look for Sartori through

His brother stood flat against the wall, his head thrown

back as he watched the execution.  If there was any feeling

on his face, it was that of a man offended by what he

saw, a lamb obliged to watch helplessly as his companion

was pulped.

It seemed he didn't hear the voice raised in the corridor jr

outside, but Gentle did.  It was Clem, calling the Maestro's A i

name and beating on the door.  Gentle didn't have the J.  z

strength left to reply.  His body sagged in Godolphin's

arms as the fusillade increased, striking his skull and rib- cage and
thighs.  Clem, God love him, didn't need an

answering call.  He slammed himself against the door

repeatedly, and the lock suddenly burst, throwing both

doors open at once.

There was more light outside than in, of course, and

just as before it was drawn into the darkened room at a

rush, sweeping past the astonished Clem.  The peripeteria

were as desperate as ever to have a sliver of illumination

for themselves, and their swirling ranks fell into confusion at the
appearance of the light.  Gentle felt the hold

on him loosen as those Oviates who'd quickened Godol- phin's corpse left
off their labours and went to join the

m&6e.  With the energies in the room diverted, the circling wreckage
began to lose momentum, but not before

a piece of the splintered table struck one of the open

doors, shearing it off at the hinges.  Clem saw the collision

coming, and retreated before he too was struck, his shout

of alarm stirring Sartori.

Gentle looked toward s his brother.  He'd left off his

sham of innocence, and was studying the stranger in the

hallway with gleaming eyes.  He didn't leave his place at the wall,
however.  A rain of wreckage was falling now, littering the room from
end to end, and he clearly had no desire to step into it.  Instead he
reached up to snatch a uredo from his eye, intending to strike Clem down
before he could intervene again.

Godolphin's bulk was doubling Gentle over, but he strained to raise
himself from beneath it, yelling a warning to Clem, who was back at the
threshold now, as he did so.  Clem heard the shout, and saw Sartori
snatch at his eye.  Though he had no knowledge of what the gesture
meant, he was quick to defend himself, ducking behind the surviving door
as the killing blow flew his way.  In the same instant, Gentle heaved
himself to his feet, throwing off Godolphin's body.  He glanced in
Clem's direction to be certain the man had survived, and, seeing that he
had, started towards Sartori.  He had breath in his body now, and might
easily have dispatched a pneuma at his enemy.  But his hands wanted more
than air in them.  They wanted flesh; they wanted bone.

Careless of the trash under foot and falling from the air, he ran at his
brother, who sensed his approach and turned his way.  Gentle had time to
see the face before him smile a feral welcome, then he was upon his
enemy.  His momentum carried them both back against the drapes.  The
window behind Sartori shattered, and the rail above him broke, bringing
the curtain down.

This time the light that filled the room was a blaze, and it fell
directly on Gentle's face.

He was momentarily blinded, but his body still knew its business.  He
pushed his brother to the sill, and hauled him up over it.  Sartori
reached for a handhold, and snatched at the fallen drape, but its folds
were of little use.  The cloth tore as he tipped backwards, carried over
the sill by his brother's arms.  Even then he fought to keep himself
from falling, but Gentle gave him no quarter.  Sartori flailed for a
moment, scrabbling at the air.  Then he was gone from Gentle's

hands, his scream going with him, down and down and down.

Gentle didn't see the fall, and was glad of it.  Only when the cry
stopped did he retreat from the window and cover blue and green his
face, while the circle of the sun blazed and red behind his lids.  When
he finally opened his eyes, it was to devastation.  The only whole thing
in the room was Clem, and even he was the worse for wear.  He'd picked
himself up and was watching the Oviates, who 'd fought so vehemently for
a piece of light, withering from gh, their skitters excess of it.  Their
matter was drab slou

retched crawling retreat from and flights reduced to a w the window.

"I've seen prettier turds," Clem remarked.

Then he started around the room pulling all the rest of the drapes down,
the dust he raised making the sun solid as it came and leaving no shadow
for the peripeteria to retreat to.

"Taylor's here," he said, when the job was done.

'in the sun?"

"Better than that," Clem replied.  'in my head.  We think you need
guardian angels, Maestro."

so do I," said Gentle.. "Thank you.  Both."

He turned back to the window, and looked down at the wasteland into
which Sartori had fallen.  He didn't expect to see a body there; nor did
he.  Sartori hadn't survived all those years as Autarch without finding
a hundred fe its to protect his flesh.

They met Monday coming up the stairs as they descended, having heard the
window breaking above.  oss," he said.

"I thought you was a goner, B

"Almost," came the reply.

what do we do about Godolphin?" Clem said as the trio headed down
together.

"We don't need to do anything," Gentle said.. "There's

I don't think he's going an open window

g to be flying anywhere."

"No, but the birds can get to him," Gentle said lightl. "Better to
fatten birds than worms.. "There's a morbid sense in that, I suppose,"
Clem said.. "And how's Celestine?" Gentle asked the boy.. "She's in the
car, all wrapped up and not saying very much.  I don't think she likes
the sun."

"After two hundred years in the dark, I'm not surprised.  We'll make her
comfortable once we get to Gamut Street.

She's a great lady, gentlemen.  She's also my mother.. "So that's where
you get your bloody-mindedness from," Tay remarked.

"How safe is this house we're going to? "Monday asked.

'if you mean how do we stop Sartori getting in, I don't think we can."

They'd reached the foyer, which was as sun-filled as ever.

"So what do you think the bastard's going to do?" Clem wondered.

"He won't come back here, I'm sure of that," Gentle said.. "I think
he'll wander the city for a while.  But sooner or later he'll be driven
back to where he belongs.. "Which is where?" Gentle opened his arms.
"Here," he said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

There was surely no more haunted thoroughfare in London that blistering
afternoon than Gamut Street.  Neither those locations in the city famous
for their phantoms, nor those anonymous spots - known only to psychics
and children - where revenants gathered, boasted more souls eager to
debate events in the place of their decease as that backwater in
Clerkenwell.

While few human eyes, even those ready for the marvelous (and the car
that ur o'clock con turned into Gamut Street at a little past fourteened
several such eyes) could see the phantoms as solid entities, their
presence was clear enough, marked by the cold, still places in the
shimmering haze rising off the road, and by the stray dogs that gathered
in such numbers at the corners, drawn by the high whistle some of the
dead were wont to make.  Thus Gamut Street cooked in a heat all of its
own, its stew potent

with spirits.

Gentle had warned them all that there was no comfort to be had at the
house.  It was without furniture, water or electricity.  But the past
was there, he said, and it would be a comfort to them all, after their
time in the enemy's

Tower.

"I remember this house," Jude said as she emer ed from

the car.

"We should both be careful," Gentle warned, as heed the steps. "Sartori
left one of his Oviates inside climb and it nearly drove me crazy.  I
want to get rid of it before

we all go in."

"I'm coming with you," Jude said, following him to the door.

"I don't think that's wise," he said.. "Let me deal with Little Ease
first.. "That's Sartori's beast?. "Yes."

"Then I'd like to see it.  Don't worry, it's not going to hurt me.  I've
got a little of its Maestro right here, remember?" She laid her hand
upon her belly.. "I'm safe."

Gentle made no objection, but stood aside to let Monday force the door,
which he did with the efficiency of a practised thief.  Before the boy
had even retreated down the steps again, Jude was over the threshold,
braving the stale, cold air.

"Wait," Gentle said, following her into the hallway.

"What does this creature look like?" she wanted to know.

"Like an ape.  Or a baby.  I don't know.  It talks a lot, I'm certain of
that much.. "Little Ease .  .

"That's right.. "Perfect name for a place like this." She'd reached the
bottom of the stairs, and was starij up towards the Meditation Room.

"Be careful.  .  ." Gentle said.

"I heard you the first time.. "I don't think you quite understand how
powerful I was born up there, wasn't I?" she said, her tone as chilly as
the air.  He didn't reply; not until she swung around and asked him
again. "Wasn't I?. "Yes." Nodding, she returned to her study of the
stairs.

"You said the past was waiting here," she said.

"Yes.. "My past, too?. "I don't know.  Probably.. "I don't feel
anything.  It's like a bloody graveyard.  A few, vague recollections,
that's all.. "They'll come.. "You're very certain."

'we have to be whole, Jude.. "What do you mean by that?"

"We have to be ...  reconciled ...  with everything we ever were, before
we can go on."

"Suppose I don't want to be reconciled?  Suppose I want to invent myself
all over again, starting now?"

"You can't do it," he said simply.. "We have to be whole before we can
get home."

"If that's home," she said, nodding in the direction of the Meditation
Room, 'you can keep it." ,I don't mean the cradle."

"What then?"

"The place before the cradle.  Heaven."

"Fuck Heaven.  I haven't got Earth sorted out yet."

"You don't need to."

"Let me be the judge of that.  I haven't even had a life I could call my
own, and you're ready to slot me into the grand design.  Well, I don't
think I want to go.  I want to be my own design."

"You can be.  As part o. "Part of nothing.  I want to be me.  A law unto
myself.,

"That isn't you talking.  it's Sartori."

"What if it is?"

"You know what he's done," Gentle replied.. "The atrocities.  What are
you doing taking lessons from him?" . "When I should be taking them from
you, y u mean?

made no

Since when were you so damn perfect?" He reply, and she took his silence
as further sign of his new high-mindedness.. "Oh, so you're not going to
stoop to mud-slinging, is that it?"

1V

"We'll debate it later," he said.

ebate it?" she mocked.  What are you going to give

"D us, Maestro, an ethics lesson?  I want to know what makes you so damn
rare."

"I'm Celestine's son," he said, quietly.

She stared at him, agog.. "You're what?"

"Celestine's son.  She was taken from the Fifth

"I know where she was taken.  Dowd did it.  I thought he'd told me the
whole story:

"Not this part?"

"Not this part."

"There were kinder ways to tell you.  I'm sorry I didn't find one."

"No.  .  ." she said.. "Where better?"

Her gaze went back up the stairs.  When she spoke again, which was not
for a little time, it was in a whisper.

"You're lucky," she said.. "Home and Heaven are the same place."

"Maybe that's true for us all," he murmured.

"I doubt it."

A long silence followed, punctuated only by Monday's

forlorn attempts to whistle On the step outside.  At last, Jude said:

"I can see now why you're so desperate to get all this right.  You're
...  how does it go?  ...

you're about your Father's business.. "I hadn't thought of it quite like
that ...

"But you are."

"I suppose I am.  I just hope I'm the equal of it, that's all.  One
minute I feel it's all possible.

The next.  .  ." He studied her, while outside Monday attempted the tune
afresh.

"Tell me what you're thinking," he said.

"I'm thinking I wish I'd kept your love-letters," she replied.

There was another aching pause, then she turned from him and wandered
off towards the back of the house.  He lingered at the bottom of the
stairs, thinking that he should probably go with her, in case Sartori's
agent was hiding there, but he was afraid to bruise her further with his
scrutiny.  He glanced back towards the open door, and the sunlight on
the step.  Safety wasn't far from her, if she needed it.

"How's it going?" he called to Monday.

"Hot," came the reply.. "Clem's gone to fetch some food

and beer.  Lots of beer.  We should have a party, Boss.  We fuckin'
deserve it, don't we?"

"We do.  How's Celestine?"

"She's asleep.  Is it o kay to come in yet?" A

"Just a little while longer," Gentle replied.. "But keep up the
whistling, will you?  There's a tune in there

somewhere."

Monday laughed, and the sound, which was utterly commonplace of course,
yet as unlikely as whale-song, pleased him.

If Little Ease was still in the house, Gentle thought, his malice could
do no great harm on a day as miraculous as this.

Comforted, he set off up the stairs, wondering as he went if perhaps the
daylight had shooed all the memories into hiding.

But before he was halfway up the flight he had proof that it hadn't. The
phantom

lit

form of Lucius Cobbitt, conjured in his mind's eye, appeared beside him,
snotty, tearful, and desperate for wisdom.

Moments later came the sound of his own voice,

oy that last, terrible offering the advice he'd given the b night.

study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship
nothing.  .

But before he'd completed the second dictum, the phrase was taken up by
a mellifluous voice from above.

...  except in adoration of your true self.  And fear nothing.  .

c

The figment of Lucius Cobbitt faded as Gentle continued to climb, but
the voice became louder.

...  except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter, and its
only hope of healing."

And with the voice came the realization that the wisdom he'd bestowed on
Lucius had not been his at all.  It had originated with the mystif.  The
door to the Meditation Room was open, and Pie was perched on the sill,
smiling out of the past.

"When did you invent that?" the Maestro asked.

"I didn't invent it, I learned it," the mystif replied.. "From

IF

71- my mother.  And she learned it from her mother, or her father, who
knows?  Now you can pass it on.. "And what

am I?" he asked the mystif.

"Your son or your daughter?"

Pie looked almost abashed.. "You're my Maestro," it said.

"Is that all?  We're still masters and servants here?  Don't say that."

"What should I say?,

"What you feel."

"Oh.  .  ." The mystif smiled.. "If I told you what I feel we'd be here
all day."

The gleam of mischief in its eye was so endearing, and the memory so
real, it was all Gentle could do to prevent himself crossing the room
and embracing the space where his friend had sat.  But there was work to
be done - his Father's business, as Jude had called it - and it was more
pressing than indulging his memories.  When Little Ease had been ousted
from the house, then he'd return here and search for a profounder
lesson: that of the workings of the Reconciliation.  He needed that
education quickly,

and the echoes here were surely rife with exchanges on   f @j that
subject.

"I'll be back," he said to the creature on the sill.. "I'll be waiting," it
replied.

He glanced back towards it, and the sun, catching the window behind it,
momentarily ate into its silhouette, showing him not a whole figure but
a fragment.  His gut turned, as the image called another back to mind,
with appalling force: the Erasure, in roiling chaos, and in the air
above his head, the howling rags of his beloved, returned into the
Second with some words of warning.

"Undone," it had said, as it fought the claim of the Erasure, 'we are
...  undone."

Had he made some placating reply, snatched from his lips by the storm?
He didn't remember.  But he heard again the mystif telling him to find
Sartori, instructing him that his other knew something that he, Gentle,

didn't.  And then it had gone; been snatched away into the First
Dominion and silenced there.

acing, Gentle shook this horror from his

His heart r

head and looked back towards the sill.  it was empty now.

But Pie's exhortation to find Sartori was still in his head.

Why had that been so important?  he wondered.  Even if the mystif had
somehow discovered the truth of Gentle's origins in the First Dominion,
and had failed to communicate the fact, it must have known that Sartori
was as L

much in ignorance of the secret as his brother.  So what was the
knowledge the mystif had believed Sartori possessed, that it had defied
the limits of God's Kingdom to spur him into pursuit?

A shout from below had him give up the enigma.  Jude was calling out to
him.  He headed down the stairs at speed, following her voice through
the house and into the kitchen, which was large and chilly.  Jude was
standing close to the window, which had gone to ruin many years ago,
giving access to the convolvulus from the garden behind, which having
entered had rotted in a darkness its own abundance had thickened.  The
sun could only get pencil beams through this snare of foliage and wood,
but they were sufficient to illuminate both the woman and the captive
whose head she had pinned beneath her foot.  it was Little Ease, his
oversized mouth drawn down like a tragic mask, his eyes turned up
towards Jude.

Is this it?" she said.

"This is it."

Little Ease set up a round of thin mewling as Gentle approached, which
it turned into words.

I didn't do a thing!  You ask her, ask her please, o I didn't.  Just
keeping out of ask her did I do a thing?  N

harm's way, I was."

"Sartori's not very happy with you," Gentle said.

"Not against

"Well, I didn't have a hope," it protested.

the likes of you.  Not against a Reconciler."

"So you know that much."

"I do now.  We have to be whole," it quoted, catching Gentle's tone
perfectly.. "We have to be reconciled with eve? anything we ever were-'

"You were listening."

"I can't help it," the creature said.. "I was born inquisitive.  I
didn't understand it though," it hastened to add.. "I'm not spying, I
swear." "Liar," Jude said.  Then to Gentle. "How do we kill it?. "We
don't have to," he said.. "Are you afraid, Little Ease?. "What do you
think?"

"Would you swear allegiance to me if you were allowed to live?"

"Where do I sign?  Show me the placel. "You'd let this live?" Jude said.

"Yes."

"What for?" she demanded, grinding her heel upon it.. "Look at it."

"Don't," Little Ease begged.

"Swear," said Gentle, going down on his haunches beside it.

"I swear!  I sweaff

Gentle looked up at Jude.. "Lift your foot," he said.

"You trust it?"

"I don't want death here," he said.. "Even this.  Let it go, Jude." She
didn't move.. "I said, let itgo."

Reluctance in every sinew, she raised her foot half an inch and Little
Ease scrabbled free, instantly taking hold of Gentle's hand.

"I'm yours, Liberatore," he said touching his clammy brow to Gentle's
palm.. "My head's in your hands.  By Hyo, by Heratea, by Hapexamendios,
I commit my heart to you.. "Accepted," Gentle said, and stood up.

"What should I do now, Liberatore?"

"There's a room at the top of the stairs.  Wait for me there."

"For ever and ever."

"A few minutes will do." It backed off to the door, bowing woozily, then
took to

its heels.

"How can you trust a thing like that?" Jude said.

"I don't.  Not yet.. "But you're willing to try.. "You're damned if you
can't forgive, Jude.. "You could forgive Sartori, could you?" she said.

"He's me, he's my brother and he's my child," Gentle replied.. "How
could I not?"

With the house made safe, the rest of the company went off to scour
moved in.

Monday, ever the scavenger, w the neighbouring houses and streets in
search of whatever he could find to offer some modicum of comfort.  He
bounty, the third time taking returned three times with

etumed half an hour later with Clem off with him.  They r two
mattresses, and armfuls of bed linen, all too clean to have been found
abandoned.

"I missed my vocation," Clem said, with Tay's mischief in his features.
"Burglary's much more fun than banking." At this juncture Monday
requested permission to borrow Jude's car and drive back to the South
Bank,

behind in his  7 there to collect the belongings he'd left   haste to
follow Gentle.  She told him yes, but urged him

to return as fast as possible.  Though it was still bright on the street
outside, they would need as many strong arms and wills as they could
muster to defend the house when night fell.  Clem had settled Celestine
in what had been the dining room, laying the larger of the two
mattresses on the floor, and sitting with her until she slept.  When he
emerged Tay's feisty presence was mellowed, and the man who came to join
Jude on the step was serene.

"Is she asleep?" Jude asked him.

"I don't know if it's sleep or a coma.  Where's Gentle?"

"Upstairs, plotting."

"You've argued."

"That's nothing new.  Everything else changes, but that remains the
same."

Mr_

He opened one of the bottles of beer sitting on the step,

and drank with gusto.

"You know, I catch myself every now and then wondering if this is all
some hallucination.

You've probably got a better grasp of it than I have - you've seen the
Dominions, you know it's all real - but when I went off with Monday to
get the mattresses, there were people just a few streets away, walking
around in the sun as though it was just another day, and I thought,
there's a woman back there who's been buried alive for two hundred
years, and her son whose father's a God I never heard o. "So he told you
that."

"Oh yes.  And thinking about it, I wanted to just go home, lock the door
and pretend it wasn't happening.. "What stopped you?"

"Monday, mostly.  He just takes everything in his stride.  And knowing
Tay's inside me.

Though that feels so natural it's like he was always there.. "Maybe he
was," she said.. "Is there any more beer?. "Yep."

He handed over a bottle, and she struck it on the step the way he had.
The top flew; the beer foamed.

"So what made you want to run?" she said, when she'd slaked her thirst.

"I don't know," Clem replied.. "Fear of what's coming, I suppose.  But
that's stupid, isn't it?

We're here at the beginning of something sublime, just the way Tay
promised.  Light coming into the world, from a place we never even
dreamed existed.  it's the Birth of the Unconquered Son, isn't it?"

"Oh, the sons are going to be fine," Jude said.. "They usually are."

"But you're not so sure about the daughters?"

"No, I'm not," she said.. "Hapexamendios killed the Goddesses throughout
the Imajica, Clem, or at least tried to.  ow I find He's Gentle's
father.  That doesn't make me feel too comfortable about doing His
handiwork.. "I can understand that."

"Part of me thinks - - ." She let her voice trail into the silence, the
thought unfinished.

"What?" he asked.. "Tell me."

"Part of me thinks we're fools to trust either of them.  Hapexamendios,
or His Reconciler.

If He was such a loving God, why did He do so much harm?  And don't tell
me He moves in mysterious ways, because that's so much horse shit and we
both know it."

"Have you talked to Gentle about this?"

"I've tried, but he's got one thing on his mind -. "Two," Clem said.
"The Reconciliation's one.  Pie'oh'pah's the other."

"Oh yes, the glorious Pie'oh'pah."

"Did you know he married it?"

"Yes, he told me."

'it must have been quite a creature."

"I'm a little biased, I'm afraid," she said drily.  'it tried to kill
me."

"Gentle said that wasn't Pie's nature."

"No?"

"He told me he ordered it to live its life as an assassin and a whore.
it's all his fault, he said.  He blames himself for everything."

"Does he blame himself or does he just take responsibility?" she said.
"There's a difference."

"I don't know," Clem said, unwilling to be drawn on such niceties. "He's
certainly lost without Pie."

She kept her counsel here, wanting to say that she too was lost, that
she too pined, but not trusting even Clem with this admission.

"He told me Pie's spirit is still alive, like Tay's," Clem was saying,
'and when this is all over

I t

"He says a lot of things," Jude cut in, weary of hearing Gentle's
wisdoms repeated.

"And you don't believe him?"

"What do I know?" she said, flinty now.. "I don't bel on in this Gospel.
I'm not his lover and I won't be his disciple."

A sound behind them, and they turned to find Gentle standing in the
hallway, the brightness bounced up from the step like footlights.

There was sweat on his face, and his shirt was stuck to his chest.  Clem
rose with guilty speed, his heel catching his bottle.  It rolled down
two steps before Jude caught it, spilling frothy beer as it went.

"It's hot up there," Gentle said.

"And it's not getting any cooler," Clem observed.

"Can I have a word?"

Jude knew he wanted to speak out of her earshot, but Clem was either too
guileless to realize this, which she doubted, or unwilling to play his
game.  He stayed on the step, obliging Gentle to come to the door.

"When Monday gets back," he said. "I'd like you to go to the Estate, and
bring back the stones in the Retreat.  I'm going to perform the
Reconciliation upstairs, where I've got my memories to help me."

"Why are you sending Clem?" Jude said, not rising or even turning.. "I
know my way, he doesn't.  I know what the stones look like, he doesn't."

"I think you'd be better off here," Gentle replied.

Now she turned.. "What for?" she said.. "I'm no use to anyone.  Unless
you simply want to keep an eye on me.. "Not at all."

"Then let me go," she said.. "I'll take Monday to help me.  Clem and Tay
can stay here.

They're your angels, aren't they?"

"If that's the way you'd prefer it,"he said.. "I don't mind." "I'll come
back, don't worry," she said derisively, raising her beer bottle.. "If
it's only to toast the miracle."

A little while after this conversation, with the blue tide of dusk
rising in the street, and lifting the day to the rooftops, Gentle left
off his debates with Pie and went to sit with Celestine.  Her room was
more meditative than the one he'd left, where the memories of Pie had
become easy to conjure it was sometimes hard to believe the so mystif
wasn't there in the flesh.  Clem had lit candles beside the mattress
upon which Celestine was sleeping, nd their light showed Gentle a woman
so deeply asleep a that no dreams troubled her.  Though she was far from
emaciated, her features were stark, as though her flesh was halfway to
becoming bone.  He studied her for a time, wondering if his own face
would one day possess such severity, then he returned to the wall at the
bottom of the bed and sat on his haunches there, listening to the slow
cadence of her breath.

His mind was reeling with all that he'd learned, or recollected, in the
room above.  Like so much of the magic he'd become acquainted with, the
working of the Reconciliation was not a great ceremonial.  Whereas most
of the dominant religions of the Fifth wallowed in ritual in order to
blind their flocks to the paucity of their understanding the liturgies
and requiems, chants and sacraments all created to amplify those tiny
grains of comprehension the holy men actually possessed such theatrics
were redundant when the ministers had truth in their grasp, and with the
help of memory, he might yet be one such minister.

The principle of the Reconciliation was not very difficult to grasp,
he'd discovered.  Every two hundred years, it seemed, the In Ovo
produced a kind of blossom: a five-petalled lotus which floated for a
brief time in those lethal waters, immune to either their poison or t
heir inhabitants.

This sanctuary was called by a variety of names, but most simply, and
most often, the Ana.  In it, the Maestros would gather, carrying there
analogues of

the Dominions they each represented.  Once the pieces were assembled
the process had its own momentum.

The analogues would fuse, and empowered by the Ana, burgeon, driving the
in Ovo back and opening the way between the Reconciled Dominions and the
Fifth.

"The flow of things is towards success," the mystif had said, speaking
from a better time.

"It's the natural instinct of every broken thing to make itself whole.
And the Imajica is broken until it's Reconciled."

"Then why have there been so many failures?" Gentle had asked.

"There haven't been that many," Pie had replied.. "And they were always
destroyed by outside forces.

Christos was brought down by politics.  Pineo was destroyed by the
Vatican.  Always people from the outside, destroying the Maestro's best
intentions.  We don't have such enemies."

Ironic words, with hindsight.  Gentle could not afford such complacency
again.  Not with Sartori still alive, and the chilling image of Pie's
last, frantic appearance at the Erasure still in his head.

It was no use dwelling on it.  He put the sight away as best he could,
settling his gaze on Celestine instead.  It was difficult to think of
her as his mother.  Maybe, amongst the innumerable memories he'd
garnered in this house, there was some faint recollection of being a
babe in these arms; of putting his toothless mouth to these breasts and
being nourished there.  But if it was there, it escaped him.

Perhaps there were simply too many years, and lives, and women, between
now and that cradling.

He could find it in him to be grateful for the life she'd given him, but
it was hard to feel much more than that.

After a time the vigil began to depress him.  She was too like a corpse,
lying there, and he too much a dutiful but loveless mourner.  He got up
to go, but before he quit the room halted at her bedside, and stooped to
touch her cheek.  He'd not laid his flesh to hers in twenty-three or
four decades, and perhaps, after this, he wouldn't do so

again.  She wasn't chilly, as he'd expected her to be, but  it warm, and
he kept his hand upon her longer than he'd intended.  Somewhere in the
depths of her slumber she felt his touch, and seemed to rise into a
dream of him.  Her austerity softened, and her pale lips said:

"Child?"

He wasn't sure whether to answer, but in the moment of hesitation she
spoke again, the same question.  This time he replied. "Yes, Mama?"
"Will you remember what I told you?"

What now?  he wondered.. "I'm ...  not certain," he told her.. "I'll
try."

"Shall I tell you it again?  I want you to remember, child."

"Yes, Mama," he said.. "That would be good.  Tell me again."

She smiled an infinitesimal smile, and began to repeat a story she'd
apparently told many times.

"There was a woman once, called Nisi Nirvana.

She'd no sooner started, however, than the dream she was having lost its
claim on her, and she began to slip back into a deeper place, her voice
losing power as she went.

"Don't stop, Mama," Gentle prompted.. "I want to hear.  There was a
woman..."

yes.  .

called Nisi Nirvana."

yes.  And she went into a city full of iniquities, where no ghost was
holy and no flesh was whole.  And something there did a great hurt to
her.  .

Her voice was getting stronger again, but the smile, even that tiniest
hint, had gone.

"What hurt was this, Mama?"

"You needn't know the hurt, child.  You'll learn about it one day, and
on that day you'll wish you could forget it.  Just understand that it's
a hurt only men can do to women."

"And who did this hurt to her?" Gentle asked.

"I told you, child, a man."

"But what man?"

"His name doesn't matter.  What matters is that she escaped him, and
came back into her own city, and knew she must make a good thing from
this bad that had been done to her.  And do you know what that good
thing was?"

"No, Mama."

"It was a little baby.  A perfect little baby.  And she loved it so much
it grew big after a time, and she knew it would be leaving her, so she
said: I have a story to tell you before you go.  And do you know what
the story was?  I want you to remember, child."

"Tell me."

"There was a woman called Nisi Nirvana.  And she went into a city of
iniquitie. "That's the same story, Mama."

where no ghost was holy

You haven't finished the first story.  You've just begun again."

and no flesh was whole.  And something there.... "Stop, Mama," Gentle
said.. "Stop." ...  did a great hurt to her .  .

Distressed by this loop, Gentle took his hand from his mother's cheek.
She didn't halt her recitation, however; at least not at first.  The
story went on exactly as it had before: the escape from the city; the
good thing made from the bad; the baby, the perfect little baby.  But
with the hand no longer on her cheek Celestine was sinking back into
unthinking slumber, her voice steadily growing more indistinct.  Gentle
got up and backed away to the door, as the whispered wheel came full
circle again.

so she said: I have a story to tell you before you go.,

Gentle reached behind him and opened the door, his eyes fixed on his
mother as the words slurred.

"And do you know what the story was?" she said.. "I want ...  you ... to
...  remember ...  child."

He went on watching her as he slipped out into the hallway.  The last
sounds he heard would have been nonsense to any ear other than his, but
he'd heard this story often enough now to know that she was beginning
again as she dropped into dreamless ness

"There was a woman once..

On that, he closed the door.  For some inexplicable reason he was
shaking, and had to stand at the threshold for several seconds before he
could control the tremor.  When he turned, he found Clem at the bottom
of the stairs, sorting through a selection of candles.

'is she still asleep?" he asked as Gentle approached.

"Yes.  Has she talked to you at all, Clem?"

"Very little.  Why?"

"I've just been listening to her tell a story in her sleep.  Something
about a woman called Nisi Nirvana.  Do you know what that means?"

"Nisi Nirvana.  Unless Heaven.  Is that somebody's name?"

"Apparently.  And it must mean a lot to her, for some reason.  That's
the name she sent Jude with to fetch me.. "And what's the story?"

"Damn strange," Gentle said.

"Maybe you liked it better when you were a kid."

"Maybe.  .

'if I hear her talking again, do you want me to call you down?"

"I don't think so," Gentle said.. "I've got it by heart

already."

He started up the stairs.

"You're going to need some candles up there," Clem said, 'and matches to
light 'em with."

"So I am," Gentle said, turning back.

Clem handed over half a dozen candles, thick, stubby and white.  Gentle
handed one of them back.

agic number," he said.

"Five's the m

"I left some food at the top of the stairs," Clem said as Gentle started
to climb again.. "It's not exactly haute cuisine, but it's sustenance.

And if you don't claim it now it'll be gone as soon as the boy gets
back."

Gentle called his thanks back down the flight, picked up the bread,
strawberries and bottle of beer waiting at the top, then returned to the
Meditation Room, closing the door behind him.  Perhaps because he was
still preoccupied with what he'd heard from his mother's lips, the
memories of Pie were not waiting at the threshold.  The room was empty;
a cell of the present.  It wasn't until Gentle had set the candles on
the mantelpiece, and was lighting one of them, that he heard the mystif
speakin 9 softly behind him.

"Now I've distressed you," it said.

Gentle turned into the room, and found Pie at the window, where it so
often loitered, with a look of deep concern on its face.

"I shouldn't have asked," it went on.. "It's just idle curiosity.  I
heard Abelove asking the boy Lucius a day or two

ago, and it made me wonder."    Virginia,

"What did Lucius say?"

"He said he remembered being suckled.  That was the first thing he could
recall.  The teat at his mouth."

Only now did Gentle grasp the subject under debate here.  Once again his
memory had found some fragment of conversation between himself and the
mystif pertinent to his present concerns.  They'd talked of childhood
memories in this very room, and the Maestro had been plunged into the
same distress which he felt now; and for the same reason.

"But to remember a story," Pie was saying.. "Particularly one you didn't
like

"It wasn't that I didn't like it," the Maestro said.. "At least, it
didn't frighten me, the way a ghost story might have done.  it was worse
than that .  .

"We don't have to talk about this," Pie said, and for a moment Gentle
thought the conversation was going to

fizzle out there.  He wasn't altogether certain he'd have minded if it
had.  But it seemed to have been one of the unwritten rules of this
house that no enquiry was ever fled from, however discomfiting.

"No, I want to explain if I can," the Maestro said.. "Though what a
child fears is sometimes hard to fathom.. "Unless we can listen with a
child's heart," Pie said.. "That's harder still.. "We can try, can't we?
Tell me the story."

"Well ...  it always began the same way.  My mother would say: I want
you to remember, child, and I'd know as soon as she said that what was
going to follow.  There was a woman called Nisi Nirvana, and she went
into a city full Of iniquities-'

Now Gentle heard the story again, this time from his own lips, told to
the mystif.  The woman; the city; the crime; the child, and then, with a
sickening inevitability, the story beginning again with the woman and
the city and the crime.

"Rape isn't a very pretty subject for a nursery tale," Pie observed.

"She never used that word."

"But that's what the crime is, isn't it?" 

"Yes," he said softly, though he was uncomfortable with the admission.
This was his mother's secret; his mother's pain.  But, yes, of course
Nisi Nirvana was Celestine, and the city of terrors was the First
Dominion.  She'd told her child her own story, encoded in a grim little
fable.  But more bizarrely than that, she'd folded the listener into the
tale, and even the telling of the tale itself, creating a circle
impossible to break because all of its constituent elements were trapped
inside.  Was it that sense of entrapment that had so distressed him as a
child?  Pie had another theory, however, and was voicing it from across
the years.

"No wonder you were so afraid," the mystif said, 'not knowing what the
crime was, but knowing it was terrible.

I'm sure she meant no harm by it.  But your imagination must have run
riot."

Gentle didn't reply; or rather couldn't.  For the first time in these
conversations with Pie he knew more than history did, and the
discontinuity fractured the glass in which he'd been seeing the past. He
felt a bitter sense of loss, adding to the distress he'd carried into
this room.  It was as though the tale of Nisi Nirvana marked the divide
between the self who'd occupied these rooms two hundred years before,
ignorant of his divinity, and the man he was now, who knew that the
story of Nisi Nirvana was his mother's story, and that crime she'd told
him about was the act that had brought him into being.  There could be
no more dallying in the past after this.  He'd learned what he needed to
know about the Reconciliation, and he couldn't justify further
loitering.  It was time to leave the comfort of memory, and Pie with it.

He picked up the bottle of beer, and struck off the cap.  it probably
wasn't wise to be drinking alcohol at this juncture, but he wanted to
toast the past before it faded from view entirely.  There must have been
a time, he thought, when he and Pie had raised a glass to the
millennium.  Could he conjure such a moment now, and join his intention
with the past one last time?  He raised the bottle to his lips, and as
he drank heard Pie laughing across the room.  He looked in the mystif's
direction, and there, fading already, he caught a glimpse of his lover,
not with a glass in hand but a carafe, toasting the future.  He lifted
the beer bottle to touch the carafe, but the mystif was fading too fast.
Before past and present could share the toast, the vision was gone.  It
was time to begin.

Downstairs, Monday was back, talking excitedly.  Setting the bottle down
on the mantelpiece, Gentle went out on to the landing to find out what
all the furore was about.  The boy was at the door, in the middle of
describing the state of the city to Clem and Jude.  He'd never seen a
stranger Saturday night, he said.  The streets were

practically empty.  The only thing that was moving was

the traffic lights.

"At least we'll have an easy trip," Jude said.

"Are we going somewhere?"

She told him, and he was well pleased.

"like it out in the country," he said.. "We can do-what J

the fuck we like."     I

"Let's just make it back alive," she said.. "He's relying on

us."

"No problem," Monday said cheerily.  Then, to Clem,

"Look after the Boss-man, huh?  If things get weird, we

can always call on Irish and the rest."

"Did you tell them where we are?" Clem said.

"They're not going to fetch up lookin' for a bed, don't Dow worry,"
Monday said.. "But the way I reckon it, the more

friends we got, the better." He turned to Jude.. "I'm ready

when you are," he said, and headed back outside.

"This shouldn't take more than two or three hours,"

Jude told Clem.. "Look after yourself.  And him."

She glanced up the stairs as she spoke, but the candles

at the bottom threw up too frail a light to reach the top,

and she failed to see Gentle there.  It was only when she'd

gone from the step, and the car was roaring away down

the street, that he made his presence known.

"Monday's come back," Clem said.

"I heard."

"Did he disturb you?  I'm sorry."

"No, no.  I was finished anyway."

"The night's so hot," Clem said, gazing up at the sky.

"Why don't you sleep for a while?  I can stand guard."

"Where's that bloody pet of yours?"

"He's called Little Ease, Clem, and he's on the top floor,

keeping watch."

"I don't trust him, Gentle."

"He'll do us no harm.  Go and lie down."

"Have you finished with Pie?"

"think I've learned what I can.  Now I've got to check

on the rest of the Synod."

"How'll you do that?. "I'll leave my body upstairs, and go travelling."
"That sounds dangerous."

"I've done it before.  But my flesh and blood'll be vulnerable while I'm
out of it.

"As soon as you're ready to go, wake me.  I'll watch over you like a
hawk.. "Have an hour's kip first."

Clem picked up one of the candles and went to look for a place to lie
down, leaving Gentle to take over his post at the front door.  He sat on
the step with his head laid against the door-frame, and enjoyed what
little breeze the night could supply.  There were no lamps working in
the street.  It was the light of the moon, and the stars in array around
it, that picked out the details in the house opposite, and caught the
pale undersides of th leaves when the wind lifted them.  Lulled, he fell
into a doze, and missed the shooting stars.

"Oh, how beautiful," the girl said.  She couldn't have been more than
sixteen, and when she laughed, which her beau had made her do a lot
tonight, she sounded even younger.  But she wasn't laughing now.  She
was standing in the darkness staring up at the meteor shower, while
Sartori looked on admiringly.

He'd found her three hours earlier, wandering through the Midsummer Fair
on Hampstead Heath, and had easily charmed himself into her company. The
Fair was doing poor business, with so few people out and about, so when
the rides closed down, which they did at the first sign of dusk, he
talked her into coming into the city with him.  They'd buy some wine, he
said, and wander; find a place to sit and talk and watch the stars.  it
was a long time since he'd indulged himself in seduction Judith had been
another kind of challenge entirely - but the tricks of the trade came
back readily enough, and the satisfaction of watching her resistance
crumble, plus the wine he imbibed, did much to assuage the pain of
recent defeats.

The girl - her name was Monica - was lovely, and compliant.  She met his
gaze only coyly at first, but that was all part of the game, and it
contented him to play it for a while, as a diversion from the coming
tragedy.  Coy as she was, she didn't reject him when he suggested they
take a stroll around the fields of demolished buildings at the back of
Shiverick Square, though she made some remark about wanting him to treat
her carefully.  So he did.  They walked together in the darkness until
they found a spot where the undergrowth thinned and made a kind of
grove.  The sky was clear overhead, and she had a fine, swooning sight
of the meteor shower.

it always makes me feel a little bit afraid," she told him in charm less
Cockney.. "Looking at the stars, I mean." why's that?"

"Well ...  we're so small, aren't we?"

He'd asked her earlier to tell him about her life, and she'd volunteered
scraps of biography, firstly about a boy called Trevor, who said he'd
loved her but had gone off with her best friend; then about her mother's
collection of china frogs, and how much she'd like to live in Spain,
because everybody was so much happier there.  But now, without
prompting, she told him she didn't care about Spain or Trevor, or the
china frogs.  She was happy, she said; and the sight of the stars, which
usually scared her, tonight made her want to fly, to which he said that
they could indeed fly, together, if she just said the word.

At this she looked away from the sky with a resigned sigh.

"I know what you want," she said.. "You're all the same.  Flying.  Is
that your fancy word for it then?"

He said she'd misunderstood him completely.  He hadn't brought her here
to fumble and fuss with her.  That was beneath them both.

"What then?" she said.

He answered her with his hand, too swiftly to be contradicted.  The
second primal act, after the one she'd thought he'd brought her here to
perform.  Her struggles

were almost as resigned as her sigh, and she was dead on the ground in
less than a minute.

Overhead, the stars continued to fall in an abundance he remembered from
this time two hundred years before.  An unseasonal rain of heavenly
bodies, to presage the business of tomorrow night.

He dismembered and disembowelled her with the greatest care, and laid
the pieces around the grove in time-honoured fashion.  There was no need
to hurry.  This working was better completed in the bleak moments before
dawn, and they were still some hours away.  When they came, and the
working was performed, he had high hopes for it.  Godolphin's body had
been cold when he'd used it, and its owner scarcely an innocent.  The
creatures he'd tempted from the In Ovo with such unappetizing bait had
therefore been primitive.  Monica, on the other hand, was warm, and had
not lived long enough to ben t much soiled.  Her death would open a
deeper crack i he In Ovo than Godolphin's, and through it he hoped

to draw a particular species of Oviate uniquely suited for the work
tomorrow would bring.  A sleek, bitter-throated kind, that would help
him prove, by tomorrow night, what a child born to destruction could do.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

After all that Monday had said about the state of the city, Jude had
expected to find it completely deserted, but this proved not to be the
case.  in the time between his returning from the South Bank and their
setting out for the Estate, the streets of London, which were as devoid
of romancing tourists and par tiers as Monday had claimed, had become the
territory of a third, and altogether stranger tribe: that of men and
women who had simply got up out of their beds and gone wandering. Almost
all of them were alone, as though whatever unease had driven them out
into the night was too painful to share with their loved ones.

Some were dressed for a day at the office - suits and ties, skirts and
sensible shoes.  Others were wearing the minimum for decency; many
bare-foot, many more bare-chested.  All wandered with the same languid
gait, their eyes turned up to scan the sky.

As far as Jude could see, the heavens had nothing untoward to show them.
She caught sight of a few shooting stars, but that wasn't so unusual on
a dear summer night.  She could only assume that these people had in t
their heads the idea that revelation would come from on high, and having
woken with the irrational suspicion that such revelation was imminent,
had gone out to look for

of so different when they re ached the

The scene wasn suburbs.  Ordinary men and women in their night clothes,
standing at street corners or on their front lawns, watching the sky.
The phenomenon petered out the further from the centre of London - from
Clerkenwell, perhaps they travelled, only to reappear when they reached
the outskirts of the village of Yoke, where, just a few days

J

before, she and Gentle had stood soaked in the Post Office.  Passing
down the lanes which they'd trudged in the rain reminded her of the
naive ambition she'd returned into the Fifth bearing: the possibility of
some reunion between Gentle and herself.  Now she was returning along
the same route with all such hopes dashed, carrying a child that
belonged to his enemy.

Her two-hundred-year courtship with Gentle was finally, and
irredeemably, over.

The undergrowth around the Estate had swelled monstrously, and it took
more than the switch Estabrook had wielded to clear a way to the gates.
Despite the fact that it was flourishing, the greenery smelt rank, as if
it was decaying as quickly as it was growing, and its buds would not be
blossoms but rot.  Thrashing to left and right with his knife, Monday
led the way to the gates, and through the corrugated iron into the
parkland beyond.  Though it was an hour for moths and owls, the park was
swarming with all manner of daylight life.  Birds circled the air as
though misdirected by a change in the poles, and blind to their nests.
Gnats, bees, dragonflies and all the ma zing species o a summer's day
flitted in desperate confusion through the moonlit grass.

Like the sky-gazers in the streets they'd passed through, Nature sensed
imminence, and could not rest.

Jude's own sense of direction served her well, however.  Though the
copses scattered ahead of them looked much the same in the blue grey
light, she fixed upon the Retreat and they trudged towards it, slowed by
the muddy ground and the thickness of the grass.  Monday whistled as he
went, with that same blissful indifference to melody that Clem had
remarked upon a few hours before.

"Do you know what's going to happen tomorrow?" Jude asked him, almost
envious of his strange serenity.

"Yeah, sort of," he said.. "There's these Heavens, see?  And the Boss is
going to let us go there.  It's going to be amazin'."

"Aren't you afraid?" she said.

"What of?. "Everything's going to change."

"Good," he said.  I'm fucked off with the way things are."

Then he picked up the thread of his whistle again, and headed on through
the grass for another hundred yards, until a sound more insistent than
his din silenced him.

"Listen to that."

The activity in the air and grass had steadily increased as they
approached the copse, but with the wind blowing in the opposite
direction the din of such an assembly as was gathered there had not been
audible until now.

"Birds and bees," Monday remarked.. "And a fuck of a lot of 'em."

As they continued their advance the scale of the parliament ahead
steadily became more apparent.  Though the moonlight did not pierce the
foliage very deeply, it was dear that every branch of every tree around
the Retreat, to the tiniest twig let was occupied with birds.  The smell
of their massing pricked their nostrils; its din, their ears.

"We're going to get our heads right royally shit on,, Monday said.
"Either that or we'll get stung to death."

The insects were by now a living veil between them and the copse, so
thick that they gave up attempting to flail it aside after a few
strides, and bore the deaths on their brows and cheeks, and the
countless flutterings in their hair, in order to pick up speed and dash
for their destination.  There were birds in the grass now, commoners
amongst the parliament, denied a seat on the branches.  They rose in a
squawking cloud before the runners, and their alarm caused consternation
in the trees.

A thunderous ascent began, the mass of life so vast that he violence of
its motion beat the tender leaves down.  By the time Jude and Monday
reached the corner of the copse they were running through a double rain:
one green, and falling, the other rising, and feathered.

Picking up her pace Jude overtook Monday, and

headed round the Retreat - the walls of which were black with insects -
to the door.  At the threshold, she halted.  There was a small fire
burning inside, built close to the edge of the mosaic.

"Some bugger got here first," Monday remarked.    IF

"I don't see anyone."

He pointed to a bundle lying on the floor beyond the fire.  His eyes,
more accustomed than hers to seeing life in rags, had found the
fire-maker.  She stepped into the Retreat, knowing before he raised his
head who this creature was.  How could she not?  Three times before -
once here, once in Yzorddeffex, and once, most recently, in the Tabula
Rasa's Tower this man had made an unexpected arrival, as though to prove
what he'd claimed not so long ago: that their lives would be perpetually
interwoven, because they were the same.

"Dowd?"

He didn't move.

"Knife," she said to Monday.

He passed it over, and armed, she advanced across the E

Retreat towards the bundle.  Dowd's hands were crossed on his chest, as
though he expected to expire where he lay.  His eyes were closed, but
they were the only part of his face that was.  Almost every other inch
had been laid open by Celestine's assault, and despite his legendary
powers of recuperation he'd been unable to make good the damage done. He
was unmasked to the bone.  Yet he breathed, albeit weakly, and moaned to
himself now and then, as though dreaming of punishment or revenge.  She
was half-tempted to kill him in his sleep, and have this bitter business
brought to an end on the spot.  But she was curious to know why he was
here.  Had he attempted to return to Yzo'rdderrex, and failed, or was he
expecting someone to come back this way and meet him here?  Either could
be significant in these volatile times, and though in her present
venomous state she felt perfectly capable of dispatching him, he'd
always been an agent in the dealings of greater souls, and might still
have some

fragment of use as a messenger.  She went down on her haunches beside
him and spoke his name, above the din of birds coming back to roost on
the roof.  He opened his eyes only slowly, adding their glisten to the
wetness of his features.

"Look at you," he said.. "You're radiant, lovey." It was a line from a
boulevard comedy, and despite his wretched condition he spoke it with
8an.. "I, of course, look like ordure.  Will you come closer to me?  I
don't have the energy for volume."

She hesitated to comply.  Though he was on the verge d boundless
capacity for malice in of extinction, he ha him, and with the Pivot's
sloughings still fixed in his flesh, the power to do harm.

"I can hear you perfectly well where I am," she said.

"I'm good for a hundred words at this volume," he bar gained.. "Twice
that at a whisper."

"What have we got left to say to each other?"

"Ah," he said.. "So much.  You think you've heard every-body's stories,
don't you?  Mine, Sartori's, Godolphin's.

Even the Reconciler's, by now.  But you're missing one."

A

"Oh am I?" she said, not much caring.. "Whose is that?" .

"Come closer."

"I'll hear it from here or not at all."

He looked at her beadily.. "You're a bitch, you really are."       i

"And you're wasting words.  If you've got something to say, say it.
Whose story am I missing?"

He bided his time before replying, to squeeze what little drama he could
out of this.  Finally, he said:

"The Father's."

"What father?"

"Is there more than one?  Hapexamendios.  The Aboriginal.  The
Unbeheld.  He of the First Dominion."

"You don't know that story," she said.

He reached up with sudden speed, and his hand was clamped around her arm
before she could move out of range.  Monday saw the attack and came
running, but she

halted him before he ploughed into Dowd, and sent him back to sit by the
fire.

"It's all right," she told him.. "He's not going to hurt me.  Are. you?"
She studied Dowd.

"Well are you?" she said again. "You can't afford to lose me.  I'm the
last audience you'll have, and you know it.  If you don't tell this
story to me, you're not going to tell it to anybody.  Not this side of
Hell."

The man quietly conceded her point.

"True," he said.

"So the 11.  Unburden yourself." He drew a laborious breath, then he
began.

"I saw Him once, you know," he said.. "The Father of the Imajica.  He
came to me in the desert."

"He appeared in person did He?" she said, her scepticism plain.

"Not exactly.  I heard Him speaking out of the First.  But I saw hints,
you know, in the Erasure.. "And what did He look like?. "Like a man,
from what I could see.. "Or what you imagined.. "Maybe I did," Dowd
said.. "But I didn't imagine what He told me

"That He'd raise you up.  Make you His procurer.  You've told me all
this before, Dowd."

"Not all of it," he said.. "When I'd seen Him, I came back to the Fifth,
using fe its He'd whispered to me to cross the In Ovo, and I searched the
length and breadth of London for a woman to be blessed amongst women."
"And you found Celestine?"

"Yes.  I found Celestine; at Tyburn, as a matter of fact, watching a
hanging.  I don't know why I chose her.  Perhaps because she laughed so
hard when the man kissed the noose, and I thought she's no
sentimentalist, this woman; she won't weep and wall if she's taken into
another Dominion.  She wasn't beautiful, even then, but she had a
clarity, you know?  Some actresses have it.  The great ones, anyway.  A
face that could carry extremes

of emotion, and not look bathe tic  Maybe I was a little infatuated with
her.  He shivered.

"I was capable of that when I was younger.  So ...  I made myself known
to her, and told her I wanted to show her a living dream, the like of
which she'd never forget.  She resisted at first, but I could have
talked the face off the moon in those days, and she let me drug her with
sways, and take her away.  it was a hell of a journey.  Four months,
across the Dominions.

But I got her there eventually; back to the Erasure .  .

"And what happened?. "It opened.. "And?. "I saw the City of God."

Here at last was something she wanted to know about.. "What was it
like?" she said.

"It was just a glimpse -'

Having denied him her proximity for so long, she leaned towards him and
repeated her question inches from his ravaged face.

"What was it like?. "Vast, and gleaming and exquisite.. "Gold?"

"All colours.  But it was just a glimpse.  Then the walls seemed to
burst, and something reached for Celestine, and took her."

"Did you see what it was?"

"I've tried to remember, over and over.  Sometimes I think it was like a
net; sometimes like a cloud; I don't know.

Whatever it was, it took her."

"You tried to help her, of course," Jude said.

"No, I shit my pants, and crawled away.  What could I do?  She belonged
to God.  And in the long run, wasn't she the lucky one?"

"Abducted and raped?"

"Abducted, raped and made a little divine.  Whereas I, who'd done all
the work, what was P'

"A pimp."

xxe

"Yes.  A pimp.  Anyway, she's had her revenge," he said."

sourly.. "Look at me!  She's had more than enough." That was true.  The
life both Oscar and Quaisoir had failed to extinguish in Dowd, Celestine
had virtually put  out.

A

"So that's the Father's Tale? "Jude said.. "I've heard most of it
before."

"That's the tale.  But what's the moral?"

"You tell me."

He shook his head slightly.. "I don't know whether you're mocking or
not."

"I'm listening aren't I?  Be grateful for small mercies.  You could be
lying here without an audience.  I

"Well, that's part of it, isn't it?  I'm not.  You could have come here
when I was dead.  You could maybe not have come here at all.  But our
lives have collided one last time.  That's fate's Way of telling me to
unburden myself.. "Of what?"

"I'll tell you." Again, a laboured breath.. "All these years, I've
wondered: why did God pluck a scabby little actor chap pie up out of the
dirt, and send him across three Dominions to fetch Him a woman?"

"He wanted a Reconciler."

"And He couldn't find a wife in his own city?" Dowd said.. "Isn't that a
little odd?  Besides, why does He care whether the Imajica's Reconciled
or not?"

Now that was a good question, she thought.  Here was a God who'd sealed
Himself away in His own city, and showed no desire to lower the wall
between His Dominion and the rest, yet went to immense lengths to breed
a child who would bring all such walls tumbling down.

"It's certainly strange," she said.    . "I'd say so."

"Have you got any answers to any of this?" Not really.  But I think He
must have some purpose, don't you, or why go to all this trouble?"

"A plot.  .

"Gods don't plot.  They create.  They protect.  They proscribe.. "So
which is He doing?"

That's the nub of it.  Maybe you can find out.  Maybe the other
Reconcilers already did.. "The others?"

"The sons He sent before Sartori.  Maybe they realized what He was up
to, and they defied Him." There was a thought.

"Maybe Christos didn't die saving mortal man from his sins.  .

but from his Father?"

"Yes."

She thought of the scenes she'd glimpsed in the Boston Bowl - the
terrible spectacle of the city, and most likely the Dominion,
overwhelmed by a great darkness - and her body, that had been driven to
fits and convulsions by the torments visited upon her, grew suddenly
still.  There was no panic, no frenzy; just a deep, cold dread.

What do I do?"

,I don't know, lovey.  You're free to do whatever you

like, remember?" A few hours before, sitting on the step with Clem, her
on had lack of a place in the Gospel of Reconciliati depressed her
spirits.  But now it seemed that fact offered her some frail thread of
hope.  As Dowd had been so eager to claim at the Tower, she belonged to
no one.  The Godolphins were dead, and so was Quaisoir.  Gentle had gone
to walk in the footsteps of Christos, and Sartori was either out
building his New Yzordderrex or digging a hole to die in.  She was on
her own, and in a world in which everyone else was blinded by obsession
and obligation, that was a significant condition.  Perhaps only she
could see this story remotely now, and make a judgement unswayed by
fealty.

"This is some choice," she said.

"Perhaps you're better forgetting I even spoke, lovey," phrase, Dowd
said.  His voice was becoming frailer by the

but he preserved as best he could his jaunty tone.. "It's just gossip
from an actor chap pie "If I try and stop the Reconciliation

"You'll be flying in the face of the Father, Son and probably the Holy
Ghost as well.. "And if I don't?. "You take the responsibility for
whatever happens."

"Why?"

"Because.  .  the power in his voice was now so diminished the sound
of the fire he'd built was louder ...  because I think only you can stop
it .  .  As he spoke his hand lost its grip on her arm.  '.  .  .  well.
.  ." he said, '.  .  .  that's done.  .  His eyes began to flicker
closed.

...  One last thing, lovey?" he said.

"Yes?"

'.  .  .  It's maybe asking too much .  .

"What is?"

I wonder ...  could you ...  forgive me?  I know it's absurd ...  but I
don't want to die with you despising me.  .

She thought of the cruel scene he'd played with Quaisoir, when her
sister had asked for some kindness.  While she hesitated, he began
whispering again.

We were ...  just a little ...  the same, you know?" At this, she put
her hand to touch him, and offer him what comfort she could, but before
her fingers reached him, his breath stopped, and his eyes flickered
closed.  She let out a tiny moan.  Against all reason, she felt a pang
of loss at his passing.

"Is something wrong?" Monday said.

She stood up.. "That rather depends on your point of view," she said,
borrowing an air of comedic fatalism from the man at her feet.

It was a tone worth rehearsing.  She might need it quite a bit in the
next few hours.. "Can you spare a cigarette?" she asked Monday.

Monday fished out the packet and lobbed it over.  She took one, and
threw the packet back as she returned to

the fire, stooping to pluck up a burning twig to light the tobacco.

"What happened to fella m'lad?. "He's dead.. "So what do we do now?"

What indeed.  If ever a road divided, it was here.  Should she prevent
the Reconciliation it wouldn't be difficult, the stones were at her feet
- and let history call her a destroyer for doing so?  or should she let
it proceed, and risk an end to all histories, and futures too?

"How long till it's light?" she asked Monday.

The watch he was wearing had been part of the booty he'd brought back to
Gamut Street on his first trip.  He consulted it with a flourish.

"Two and a half hours," he said.

There was so little time to act, and littler still to decide on a
course.  Returning to Clerkenwell with Monday was a culde-sac, that at
least was certain.  Gentle was the Unbeheld's agent in this, and he
wasn't going to be diverted from his Father's business now, especially
on the word of a man like Dowd, who'd spent his life a stranger to
truth. He'd argue that this confession had been Dowd's revenge on the
living: a last, desperate attempt to spoil a glory he knew he couldn't
share.

And maybe that was true; maybe she'd been duped.

"Are we going to collect these stones or what?" Monday said.

J think we have to," she said, still musing.

"What are they for?"

"They're ...  like stepping stones," she said, her voice losing momentum
as a thought distracted her.

indeed they were stepping stones.  They were a way back to Yzordderrex,
which suddenly seemed like an open road, along which she might yet find
some guidance, in these last hours, to help her make a choice.

She threw her cigarette down into the embers, then said:

"You're going to have to take the stones back to Gamut Street on your
own, Monday.. "Where are you going. "To Yzordderrex."

"Why?"

"It's too complicated to explain.  You just have to swear to me that
you'll do exactly as I tell you."

"I'm ready," he said.

"All right.  So listen.  when I'm gone I want you to take the stones
back to Gamut Street, and carry a message along with them.  It has to go
to Gentle personally; you understand?  Don't trust anybody else with it.

Even Clem."

"I understand," Monday said, beaming with pleasure at this unlooked-for
honour.. "What have I got to tell him?. "Where I've gone, for one
thing.. "Yzordderrex.. "That's right."

"Then tell him.  .  she pondered for a moment'.  .  .  tell him the
Reconciliation isn't safe, and he mustn't start the working until I
contact him again."

"It isn't safe, and he mustn't start the working.  .

I

until I contact him again.. "I've got that.  Is there any more?. "That's
it," she said.. "Now, all I've got to do is find the circle."

She started to scan the mosaic, looking for the subtle differences in
tone that marked the stones.  From past experience she knew that once
they'd been lifted from their niches the Yzordderrexian Express would be
underway, so she told Monday to wait outside until she'd gone.  He
looked worried now, but she told him she'd come to no harm.

"It's not that,, he said.  J want to know what the message means.  If
you're telling the Boss it's not safe, does that mean he won't open the
Dominions?. "I don't know."

"But I want to see Patashoqua and L'Himby and Yzordderrex," he said,
listing the places like charms.

"I know that," she said.. "And believe me, I want the Dominions opened
just as much as you do."

She studied his face in the dying firelight, looking for clue as to
whether he was being placated, but for some

all his youth he was a master of concealment.  She'd have to trust that
he'd put his duties as a messenger above his desire to see the Imajica,
and relay the spirit of her warning, if not its precise text.

"You've got to make Gentle understand the danger he's in," she said,
hoping this tack would make him conscientious.

"I will," he said, now faintly irritated by her insistence.

She let the subject lie, and returned to the business of finding the
stones.  He didn't offer his assistance, but retreated to the door, from
which he said:

"How will you get back?"

She'd found four of the stones already, and the birds on the roof had
set up a fresh cacophony, suggesting that they felt some tremor of
change below.

"I'll deal with that problem when I get to it," she replied.

The birds suddenly rose up, and unnerved, Monday stepped out of the
Retreat altogether.

Jude glanced up at him as she dug out another stone.  The fire between
them had already been fanned into flame, and now its ashes were stirred
up, rising in a smutty cloud to hide the door from view.  She scanned
the mosaic, checking to see if she'd missed a stone, but the itches and
aches she remembered from her first crossing were already creeping
through her body, proof that the passing place was about its work.

Oscar had told her, on this very spot, that the discomforts of passage
diminished with repetition, and his words proved correct.  She had time,
as the walls blurred around her, to glimpse the door through the
swirling ash, and realize, all too late, that she should have looked out
at the world one last time before leaving it.  Then the

T

Temple disappeared, and the In Ovo's delirium was oppressing her, its
prisoners rising in their legions to claim her.  Travelling alone, she
went more quickly than she had with Dowd (at least that was her
impression) and she was out the other side before the Oviates had time
to sniff the heels of her glyph.

The walls of the merchant Peccable's cellar were brighter than she
remembered them.

The reason, a lamp which burned on the floor a yard from the circle, and
beyond it a figure, its face a blur, which came at her with a bludgeon
and had laid her unconscious on the floor before she'd uttered a word of
explanation.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

The mantle of night was falling on the Fifth Dominion, and Gentle found
Tick Raw near the summit of the Mount of Lipper Bayak, watching the
last, dusky colours of day drop from the sky.  He was eating while he
did SO, a bowl each of sausage and pickle between his feet, and a large
pot of mustard between these, into which meat ere plunged.  Though
Gentle had and vegetable alike w come here as a projection - his body
left sitting cross legged in the Meditation Room in Gamut Street - he
didn't need nose or palate to appreciate the piquancy of Raw's meal;
imagination sufficed.

He looked up when Gentle approached, unperturbed by the phantom watching
him eat.

"You're early, aren't you?" he remarked, glancing at his 4 pocket watch,
which hung from his coat on a piece of -1 string.. "We've got hours
yet."

,I know.  I just came

to check up on me," Tick Raw said, the sting of pickle- I in his voice.
"Well, I'm here.  Are you ready in the Fifth?" Gentle said, somewhat

Though he'd travelled this way countless times as than Maestro Sartori -
his mind, empowered by fe its carryi -and h his image and his voice
across the Dominions

the technique easily enough

9W, reacquainted himself with the sensation was damn strange.

"What do I look like?" he asked Tick Raw, remembering-'I as he spoke how
he'd attempted to describe the mystif on these very slopes.

ting up at him

insubstantial," Tick Raw replied, squin

714P

"We're getting there queasily.

F

then returning to his meal.. "Which is fine by me, because there's not
enough sausage for two."

"I'm still getting used to what I'm capable of."

"Well, don't take too long about it," Tick Raw said.. "We've got work to
do."

"And I should have realized that you were part of that work when I was
first here, but I didn't, and for that I apologize."

Accepted, "Tick Raw said.

"You must have thought I was crazy."

"You certainly - how shall I put this?  - you certainly confounded me.
It took me days to work out why you went so damn obstreperous.  Pie
talked to me, you know; tried to make me understand.  But I'd been
waiting for somebody to come from the Fifth for so long I was only
listening with half an ear."

"I think Pie probably hoped my meeting with you would make me remember
who the hell I was.. "How long did it take?"

"Months."

"Was it the mystif who hid you from yourself in the

I first place?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well it did too good a job.  That'll teach it.  Where's your flesh and
blood, by the way?"

"Back in the Fifth."

"Take my advice, don't leave it too long.  I find the bowels mutiny, and
you come back to find you're sitting in shite.  Of course, that could be
a personal weakness." He selected another sausage, and chewed on it as
he asked Gentle why the hell he'd let the mystif make him forget.

"I was a coward," Gentle replied.. "I couldn't face my failure:

"It's hard," Tick Raw said.. "I've lived all these years wondering if I
could have saved my Maestro Uter Musky if I'd been quicker witted.  I
still miss him."

"I'm responsible for what happened to him, and I've no excuses."

"We've all got our frailties, Maestro.  My bowels.  Your cowardice. None
of us is perfect.

But I presume your being here means we're finally going to have another
try?. "That's my intention, yes." Again, Tick Raw looked at his watch,
doing a mute he chewed.. "Twenty of your Fifth calculation as Dominion
hours from now, or thereabouts."

"That's right."

well, you'll find me ready," he said, consuming a sizeable pickle in
one bite.

"Do you have anyone to help you?" His mouth full, all Tick could manage
was: "On'teed n." He chewed on, then swallowed.

"Nobody even

u knows I'm here," he explained.  I am still wanted by the law, even
though I hear Yzordderrex is in ruins.. "It's true."

"I also hear the Pivot's quite transformed," he said.. "Is that right?"

"Into what?"     he replied.

"Nobody can get near enough to find out. "But if you're planning to
check on the whole Synod

"I am."

ourself, while you're in the

"Then maybe you'll see for y city.  There was a Eurhetemec representing
the Second, if I remember. "He's dead." so who's there now?" ,I'm hoping
Scopique's found someone.. "He's in the Third, isn't he?  At the Pivot
pit?. "That's right.. "And who's at the Erasure?. "A man called Chicka
Jackeen.. "I've never heard of him," said Tick Raw.. "Which is odd I get
to hear about most Maestros.  Are you sure he's a Maestro?"

"Certainly."

Tick Raw shrugged.. "I'll meet him in the Ana then.  And don't worry
about me, Sartori.

I'll be here."

"I'm glad we've made our peace."

"I fight over food and women, but never metaphysics, "Tick Raw said.
"Besides, we've joined in a great mission.  This time tomorrow you'll be
able to walk home from here!'

Their exchange ended on that optimistic note, and Gentle left Tick to
his night-watch, heading with a thought towards the Kwern, where he
hoped to find Scopique keeping his place beside the site of the Pivot.

He would have been there in the time it took to think himself over the
border between Dominions, but he allowed his journey to be diverted by
memory.

His

I

thoughts turned to Beatrix as he left the Mount of Lipper i.  Bayak, and
it was there rather than the Kwem his spirit

flew to, arriving on the outskirts of the village.

It was night here too, of course.  Doeki lowed softly on the dark slopes
around him, their neck-bells tinkling.  Beatrix itself was silent,
however, the lamps that had flickered in the groves around the houses
gone, and the children who'd tended them gone too: all extinguished.

4 Distressed by this melancholy sight Gentle almost fled the

village there and then, but he glimpsed a single light in

the distance, and advancing a little way saw a figure he recognized
crossing the street, his lamp held high.  It was Coaxial Tasko, the
hermit of the hill who'd granted Pie and Gentle the means to dare the
Jokalaylau.

Tasko paused, halfway across the street, and raised his lamp, peering
out into the darkness.

'is there somebody there?" he asked.

Gentle wanted to speak - to make his peace, as he had with Tick Raw, and
to talk about the promise of tomorrow - but the expression on Tasko's
face forbade him.  The hermit wouldn't thank him for apologies, Gentle
thought, or for talk of a bright new day.  Not when there were so many
who'd never see it.  if Tasko had some inkling of his visitor, he also
judged a meeting pointless.

He simply shuddered, lowered his lamp, and moved on about his business.

the, but turned his Gentle didn't linger another minu face up towards
the mountains and thought himself away, not just from Beatrix but from
the Dominion.  The village vanished, and the dusty daylight of the Kwem
appeared around him.  Of the four sites where he hoped to find his
fellow Maestros - the Mount, the Kwem, the Eurhetemec Kesparate and the
Erasure - this was the only one he hadn't visited in his travels with
Pie, and he'd been prepared to have some difficulty locating the spot.
But Scopique's presence was a beacon in this wasteland.  Though the wind
raised blinding clouds of dust, he found the man within a few moments of
his arrival, squatting in the shelter of a primitive hide, constructed
from a few blankets hung on poles which were stuck in the grey earth.
Uncomfortable though it was, Scopique had suffered worse privations in
his life as a seditionist not least his incarceration in the mais on de
santi - and when he rose to meet Gentle it was with the brio of a fit
and contented man.  He was dressed immaculately in a three-piece suit
and bow-tie, and his face, despite the peculiarity of his features (the
nose that was barely two holes in his head; the popping eyes) was much
less   A,

V

pinched than it had been, his cheeks made florid by the gritty wind.
Like Tick Raw, he was expecting his visitor.

"Come in!  Come in!" he said.. "Not that you're feeling the wind much,
eh?"

Though this was true (the wind blew through Gentle in the most curious
way, eddying around his navel) he joined Scopique in the lee of his
blankets, and there they sat down to talk.  As ever, Scopique had a good
deal to say, and poured his tales and observations out in a seamless
monologue.  He was ready, he said, to represent this Dominion in the
sacred space of the Ana, though he wondered how the equilibrium of the
working would be affected by the absence of the Pivot.

It had been set at the centre of the Five Dominions, he reminded Gentle,
to be

a conduit, and perhaps an interpreter, of power through the Imajica. Now
it was gone, and the Third was undoubtedly the weaker for its removal.

"Look," he said, standing up and leading his phantom visitor out to the
tip of the pit.. "I'm left conjuring beside a hole in the groundl'

"And you think that'll affect the working?"

"Who knows?  We're all amateurs pretending to be experts.  All I can do
is cleanse the place of its previous occupant, and hope for the best."

He directed Gentle's attention away from the pit, to the smoking shell
of a sizeable building, which was only occasionally visible through the
dust.

"What was that?" Gentle asked.

"The bastard's palace."

"And who destroyed it?"

"I did, of course," Scopique said.. "I didn't want his handiwork looming
over our working!

This is going to be a delicate operation as it is, without his filthy
influence fucking it up.  It looked like a bordeflot' He turned his back
on it.. "You know we should have had months to prepare for this, not
hours."

"I realize that -'

"And then there's the problem of the Second.  You know Pie charged me
with finding a replacement?  I'd have liked to discuss all of this with
you, of course, but when we last met you were in a fugue state, and Pie
forbade me to acquaint you with who you were, though may I be honest?"

"Could I stop you?"

"No.  I was sorely tempted to slap you out of it." Scopique looked at
Gentle fiercely, as though he might have done so now, if Gentle had been
material enough.. "You caused the mystif so much grief, you know, "he
said.. "And like a damned fool it loved you anyway."

"I had my reasons," Gentle said softly.. "But you were talking about
this replacement

"An yes!  Athanasiusl'

"Athanasius?"

"He's now our man in Yzordderrex, representing the Second.  Don't look
so appalled.  He knows the ceremony, and he's completely committed to
it."

"There's not a sane bone in his body, Scopique.  He thought I was
Hapexamendios's agent.. "Well, of course, that's nonsens. "He tried to
kill me with Madormas.  He's crazy!. "We've all had our moments, SartorU
"Don't call me that.. "Athanasius is one of the most holy men I've ever
met.. "How can he believe in the Holy Mother one moment, and claim he's
Jesu the next?"

"He can believe in his own mother, can't he?. "Are you seriously saying
-'

that Athanasius is literally the resurrected Christos?  No.  if we have
to have a Messiah amongst us, I vote for you." He sighed.

"Look, I realize you have difficulties with Athanasius, but I ask you,
who else was I to find?

There aren't that many Maestros left, Sartori."

"I told you

"Yes, yes, you don't like the name.  Well, forgive me, but for as long
as I live you'll be the Maestro Sartori, and if you want to find
somebody else to sit here instead of me, who'll call you something
prettier, find him."

"Were you always this bloody-minded?" Gentle replied.

"No," said Scopique.. "It's taken years of practice."

Gentle shook his head in despair.

"Athanasius.  it's a nightmare."

"Don't you be so sure he hasn't got the spirit of Jesu in him, by the
way," Scopique said.

"Stranger things have been known."

"Any more of this," Gentle said, 'and I'll be as crazy as he is.
Athanasiusl This is a disaster!'

Furious, he left Scopique at the hide and moved off through the dust,
trailing imprecations as he went, the optimism with which he'd set out
on his journey severely bruised.  Rather than appearing in front of
Athanasius with

his thoughts so chaotic, he found a spot on the Lenten Way to ponder.
The situation was far from encouraging.  Tick Raw was holding his
position on the Mount as an outlaw, still in danger of arrest.  Scopique
was in doubt as to the efficacy of his place now that the Pivot had been
removed.  And now, of all people to join the Synod, Athanasius, a man
without the wit to come out of the rain.

"Oh God, Pie," Gentle murmured to himself.. "I need you now."

The wind blew mournfully along the highway as he loitered, gusting
towards the place of passage between the Third and Second Dominions, as
if to usher him with it, on towards Yzordderrex.  But he resisted its
coaxing, taking time to examine the options available to him.  There
were, he decided, three.  One, to abandon the Reconciliation now, before
the frailties he saw in the system were compounded, and brought on
another tragedy.  Two, to find a Maestro who could replace Athanasius.
Three, to trust Scopique's judgement, and go into Yzordderrex to make
his peace with the man.  The first of these options was not to be
seriously countenanced.

This was his Father's business, and he had a sacred duty to perform it.
The second, the finding of a replacement for Athanasius, was impractical
in the time remaining.  Which left the third.  It was unpalatable, but
it seemed to be unavoidable.  He'd have to accept Athanasius into the
Synod.

The decision made, he succumbed to the message of the gusts, and at a
thought went with them, along the straight road, through the gap between
the Dominions, and across the delta into the city - God's entrails.

"Hoi-Polloi?"

Peccable's daughter had put down her bludgeon and was kneeling beside
Jude with tears pouring from her crossed eyes.

"I'm sorry, I'm so Sorry," she kept saying.. "I didn't know.

I didn't know."

Jude sat up.  A team of bell-ringers was tuning up between her temples,
but she was otherwise unharmed.

"What are you doing here?" she asked Hoi-Polloi.. "I thought you'd gone
with your father."

"I did," she explained, fighting the tears.. "But I lost him at the
causeway.  There were so many people trying to find a way over.  One
minute he was beside me and the next he'd vanished.  I stayed there for
hours, looking for him, then I thought he'd be bound to come back here,
to the house, so I came back too

"But he wasn't here."

"No," she started to sob again, and Jude put her arms around her,
murmuring her condolences.

"I'm sure he's still alive," Hoi-Polloi said.. "He's just being sensible
and staying under cover.

It's not safe out there." She cast a nervous glance up towards the
cellar roof.. "If he doesn't come back after a few days, maybe you can
take me to the Fifth, and he can follow."

"It's no safer there than it is here, believe me.. "What's happening to
the world?" Hoi-Polloi wanted to know.

"It's changing," Jude said.. "And we have to be ready for the changes,
however strange they are."

"I just want things the way they were.  Poppa, and the

i business, and everything in its plac. "Tulips on the dining-room
table.. "Yes."

"It's not going to be that way for quite a while," Jude said.. "In fact,
I'm not sure it'll ever be that way again."

She got to her feet.

"Where are you going?" Hoi-Polloi said.. "You can't leave."

"I'm afraid I've got to.  I came here to work.  If you want

to come with me, you're welcome, but you'll have to be responsible for
yourself." Hoi-Polloi sniffed hard.. "I understand," she said.

"Will you come?. "I don't want to be alone," she replied.. "I'll come."

Jude had been prepared for the scenes of devastation awaiting them
beyond the door of Peccable's house, but not for the sense of rapture
that accompanied them.  Though there were sounds of lamentation rising
from somewhere nearby, and that grief was doubtless being echoed in
innumerable houses across the city, there was another message on the
balmy, noonday air.

"What are you smiling all Hoi-Polloi asked her.

She hadn't been aware that she was doing so, until the girl pointed it
out.

"I suppose because it feels like a new day," she said, aware as she
spoke that it was also very possibly the last.

Perhaps this brightness in the city's air was its acknowledgement of
that: the final remission of a sickened soul before decline and
collapse.

She voiced none of this to Hoi-Polloi, of course.  The girl was already
terrified enough.  She walked a step behind Jude as they climbed the
street, her fretful murmurs punctuated by hiccups.  Her distress
would have been profounder still if she'd been able to sense the
confusion in Jude, who had no due, now that she was here, where to find
the instruction she'd come in search of.

The city was no longer a labyrinth of enchantments, if indeed it had
ever been that.  It was a virtual wasteland, i its countless fires now
guttering out but leaving a pall

4 overhead.  The Comet's light pierced these grimy skirts in several
places, however, and where its beams fell won colour from the air, like
fragments of stained glass shimmering in solution above the griefs
below.  Having no better place to head for, Jude directed them towards
the nearest of these spots, which was no more than half a

mile away.  Long before they'd reached the place a faint drizzle was
carried their way by the breeze, and the sound of running water
announced the phenomenon's source.

The street had cracked open and either a burst water main or a spring
was bubbling up through the tarmac.  The sight had brought a number of
spectators from the ruins, though very few were venturing close to the
water, their fear not of the uncertain ground, but of something far
stranger.  The water issuing from the crack was not running away down
the hill, but up it, leaping the steps that occasionally broke the slope
with a salmon's zeal.  The only witnesses unafraid of this mystery were
the children, several of whom had wrested themselves from their parents'
grip and were playing in the law-defying stream, some running in it,
others sitting in the water to let it play up over their legs.  In the
little shrieks of pleasure they uttered Jude was sure she heard a note
of sexual pleasure.

"What is this?" Hoi-Polloi said, her tone more offended than astonished,
as though the sight had been laid on as a personal affront to her.

"Why don't we follow it and find out?" Jude replied.

"Those children are going to drown," Hoi-Polloi observed, somewhat
primly.

"In two inches of water?  Don't be ridiculous."

with this, Jude set off, leaving Hoi-Polloi to follow if she so wished.
She apparently did, because she once again fell into step behind Jude,
her hiccups now abated, and they climbed in silence until, two hundred
yards or more from where they'd first encountered the stream, a second
appeared, this from another direction entirely and large enough to carry
a light freight from the lower slopes.  The bulk of the cargo was debris
- items of clothing, a few drowned graveolents, some slices of burned
bread but amongst this trash were objects clearly set upon the stream to
be carried wherever it was going.  Boatmissives of carefully folded
paper; small wreaths of woven grass, set with tiny flowers; a doll laid
on a little flood in a

shroud of ribbons.  Jude plucked one of the paper boats out of the water
and unfolded it.  The writing inside was smeared, but legible.

Tishalulli, the letter read.  My name is Cimarra Sakeo.  send this
prayer for my mother and for my father, and for my brother, Boem, who is
dead.  I have seen you in dreams, Tishalulli, and know you are good.

You are in my heart.  Please be also in the heart of my mother and
father, and give them your comfort.

Jude passed the letter over to Hoi-Polloi, her gaze following the course
of the married streams.

"Who's Tishalul.16?" she asked.

Hoi-Polloi didn't reply.  Jude glanced round at her, to find that the
girl was staring up the hill.

"Tishalulli," Jude said again.

"She's a Goddess," Hoi-Polloi replied, her voice lowered although there
was nobody within earshot.  She dropped the letter on to the ground as
she spoke, but Jude stooped to pick it up.

"We should be careful of people's prayers," she said, refolding the boat
and letting it return to its voyage.

"She'll never get it," Hoi-Polloi said.. "She doesn't exist.. "Yet you
refuse to say her name out loud.. "We're not supposed to name any of the
Goddesses.

Poppa taught us that.  It's forbidden."

"There are others then?"

"Oh yes.  There's the sisters of the Delta.  And Poppa said there's even
one called Jokalaylau, who lived in the mountains.. "Where does
TishalulM come from?" The Cradle of Chzercernit, I think.  I'm not
sure.. "The Cradle of what?"

"It's a lake in the Third Dominion." This time, Jude knew she was
smiling.

"Rivers, snows and lakes," she said, going down on he

haunches beside the stream and putting her fingers into it.. "They've
come in the waters, Hoi-Polloi.. "Who have?"

The stream was cool, and played against Jude's fingers, leaping up
against her palm.

"Don't be obtuse," Jude said.. "The Goddesses.  They're here."

"That's impossible.  Even if they still existed - and Poppa.  told me
they don't - why would they come here?"

Jude lifted a cupped handful of water to her lips, and supped.  It
tasted sweet.

"Perhaps somebody called them," she said.

She looked up at Hoi-Polloi, whose face was still registering her
distaste at what Jude had just done.

"Somebody up there?" the girl said.

"Well, it takes a lot of effort to climb a hill," Jude said. "Especially
for water.  it's not heading up there because it likes the view.
Somebody's pulling it.  And if we go with it, sooner or later

"I don't think we should do that," Hoi-Polloi replied.

"It's not just the water that's being called," Jude said.. "We are too.
Can't you feel O'

"No," the girl said bluntly.. "I could turn round now and go back home."

"Is that what you want to do?"

Hoi-Polloi looked at the river running a yard from her foot.  As luck
would have it the water was carrying some of its less lovely cargo past
them: a flotilla of chicken heads, and the partially incinerated carcass
of a small dog.

"You drank that," Hoi-Polloi said.

"It tasted fine," Jude said, but looked away as the dog went by.

The sight had confirmed Hoi-Polloi in her unease.

"I think I will go home," she said.. "I'm not ready to meet Goddesses,
even if they are up there.  I've sinned too much."

"That's absurd," said Jude.. "This isn't about sin and forA2 give ness
That kind of nonsense is for the men.  This is she faltered, uncertain
of the vocabulary; then said: this is user than that.. "How do you
knowr Hoi-Polloi replied.. "Nobody really

understands these things.  Even Poppa.  He used to tell me he knew how
the Comet was made, but he didn't.  it's the same with you and these
Goddesses."

"Why are you so afraid?"

"If I wasn't I'd be dead.  And don't condescend to me.  I know you think
I'm ridiculous, but if you were a bit politer you'd hide it."

"I don't think you're ridiculous:

"Yes you do."

"No, I just think you loved your Poppa a little too much.  There's no
crime in that.  Believe me, I've made the same mistake myself, over and
over again.  You trust a man, and the next thing.  .  ., She sighed,
shaking her head.. "Never mind.

Maybe you're right.  Maybe you should go home.  Who knows, perhaps he'll
be waiting for you.  What do I know?"

They turned their backs on each other without further word, and Jude
headed on up the hill, wishing as she went that she'd found a more
tactful way of stating her case.  She'd climbed fifty yards when she
heard the soft pad of Hoi-Polloi's step behind her, then the girl's
voice, its rebuking tone gone, saying. "Poppa's not going to come home,
is he?"

Jude turned back, meeting Hoi-Polloils cross-eyed gaze as best she
could.

"No," she said.. "I don't think he is." Hoi-Polloi looked at the cracked
ground beneath her feet.. "I think I've always known that," she said,
'but I just haven't been able to admit it." Now she looked up again, and
contrary to Jude's expectation, was dry-eyed.  Indeed she almost looked
happy, as though she was lighter for this admission.. "We're both alone
now, aren't we?" she said.

"Yes, we are."

"So maybe we should go on together.  For both our sakes.. "Thank you for
thinking of me," Jude said.

"We women should stick together," Hoi-Polloi replied, and came to join
Jude as she resumed the climb.

To Gentle's eye Yzordderrex looked like a fever dream of itself.  A dark
Borealis hung above the palace, but the streets and squares were
everywhere visited by wonders.  Rivers sprang from the fractured
pavements and danced up the Mountainside, spitting their climb in
gravity's face.  A nimbus of colour painted the air over each of the
springing places, bright as a flock of parrots.  It was a spectacle he
knew Pie would have revelled in, and he made a mental note of every
strangeness along the way, so that he could paint the scene in words
when he was back at the mystif's side.

But it wasn't all wonders.  These prisms and waters rose amid scenes of
utter devastation, where keening widows -i sat, barely distinguishable
from the blackened ubble o. "I their houses.  Only the Eurhetemec
Kesparate, at the gates of which he presently stood, seemed to be
untouched by the fire-raisers.  There was no sign of any inhabitant,
however, and Gentle wandered for several minutes, silently honing a
fresh set of insults for Scopique, when he caught sight of the man he'd
come to find.  Athanasius was standing in front of one of the trees that
lined the boulevards of the Kesparate, staring up at it admiringly.
Though the foliage was still in place, the arrangement of branches it
grew upon was visible, and Gentle didn't have to be an aspirant Christos
to see how readily a body might be nailed to them.  He called
Athanasius's name several times as he approached, but the man seemed
lost in reverie, and didn't look round, even when Gentle was at his
shoulder.

He did, however, reply:

"You came not a moment too soon," he said.

"Auto-crucifixion," Gentle replied.. "Now that would be a miracle."

Athanasius turned to him.  His face was sallow, and his forehead bloody.
He looked up at the scabs on Gentle's brow, and shook his head.

"Two of a kind," he said.  Then he raised his hands.  The palms bore
unmistakable marks.

"Have you got these too?"

"No.  And these -' he pointed to his forehead

aren't what you think.  Why do you do this to yourself?"

"I didn't do it," Athanasius replied.. "I woke up with these wounds.
Believe me, I don't welcome them:

Gentle's face registered his scepticism, and Athanasius responded with
vim.

"I've never wanted any of this," he said.. "Not the stigmata.  Not the
dreams."

"So why were you looking at the tree?"

"I'm hungry," came the reply, 'and I was wondering if I had the strength
to climb."

The gaze directed Gentle's attention back to the tree.  Amongst the
foliage on the higher branches were clusters of Comet-ripened fruit,
like zebra tangerines.

"I can't help you, I'm afraid," Gentle said.. "I don't have enough
substance to catch hold of them.  Can't you shake them down?"

"I tried.  Never mind.  We've got more important business than my belly

"Finding you bandages for one," Gentle said, his susPicions chastened
out of him by this misunderstanding, at least for the moment.. "I don't
want you bleeding to death before we begin the Reconciliation."

"You mean these?" he said, looking at his hands.. "No, it stops and
starts whenever it wants.

I'm used to it.. "Well, then we should at least find you something to
eat.  Have you tried any of the houses?. "I'm not a thief."

"don't think anybody's coming back, Athanasius.  Let's find you some
sustenance before you pass out."

They went to the nearest house, and after a little encouragement from
Gentle, who was surprised to find such moral nicety in his companion,
Athanasius kicked open the door.  The house had either been looted, or
vacated in haste, but the kitchen had been left untouched, and was well
stocked.  There Athanasius daintily prepared himself a sandwich with his
wounded hands, bloodying the bread as he did so.

"I've such a hunger on me," he said.. "I suppose you've been fasting,
have you?"

"No.  Was I supposed to?"

"Each to his own," Athanasius replied.. "Everybody walks to Heaven by a
different road.  I knew a man who couldn't pray unless he had his loins
in a zarzi nest." Gentle winced.. "That's not religion, it's masochism."
"And masochism isn't a religion?" the other replied.. "You surprise me."

Gentle was startled to find that Athanasi us had a capacity for wit, and
found himself warming to the man as they chatted.

Perhaps they could profit from each other's company after all, though
any truce would be

asure and all that had cosmetic if the subject of the Er happened there
wasn't broached.

"I owe you an explanation," Gentle said.

"Oh?"

"For what happened at the tents.  You lost a lot of your people, and it
was because of me."

"I don't see how you could have handled it much differently," Athanasius
said.. "Neither of us knew the forces we were dealing with."

"I'm not sure I do now."

Athanasius made a grim face.. "The mystif went to a good deal of trouble
to come back and haunt you," he said.

"It wasn't a haunting."

"Whatever it was, it took will to do it.  Pie'oh'pah must

have known what the consequences would be, for itself, and for my
people. "It hated to cause harm.. "So what was so important that it
caused so muchr

"It wanted to make certain I understood my purpose.. "That's not reason
enough," Athanasius said.

"It's the only one I've got," Gentle replied, skirting the other part of
Pie's message, the part about Sartori.  Athanasius had no answers to
such puzzles, so why vex him with them?

J believe there's something going on we don't understand," Athanasius
said.. "Have you seen the waters?. "Yes."

"Don't they perturb you?  They do me.  There are other powers at work
here besides us, Gentle.  Maybe we should be seeking them out, taking
their advice."

"What do you mean by powers?  Other Maestros?. "No.  I mean the Holy
Mother.  I think she may be here in Yzordderrex.. "But you're not
certain.. "Something's moving the waters."

"If she was here, wouldn't you know it?  You were one of her high
priests."

"I was never that.  We worshipped at the Erasure because there was a
crime committed there.  A woman was taken from that spot into the
First."

Floccus Dado had told Gentle this story as they'd driven

all

o

w across the desert, but with so much else to vex and excite him, he'd
forgotten the tale; his mother's, of course.. "Her name was Celestine,
wasn't it?"

"How do you know?"

"Because I've met her.  She's still alive, back in the Fifth."

The other man narrowed his eyes, as though to sharpen his gaze, and
prick this if it was a lie.  But after a few moments a tiny smile
appeared.

"So you've had dealings with holy women," he said.

"There's hope for you yet."

"You can meet her yourself, when all this is over." "I'd like that."

"But for now, we have to hold to our course.  There can be no
deviations.  Do you understand?  We can go looking for the Holy Mother
when the Reconciliation's done, but not before.. "I feel so damn naked,"
Athanasius said.

"We all do.  It's inevitable.  But there's something more inevitable
still.. "What's that?"

"The wholeness of things," Gentle said.. "Things mended.  Things healed.
That's more certain than sin, or death, or darkness."

"Well said," Athanasius replied.. "Who taught you that?. "You should
know.  You married me to it.. "Ah .  .  He smiled.. "Then may I remind
you why a man marries?  So that he can be made whole: by a woman.. "Not
this man," Gentle said.

"Wasn't the mystif a woman to you?. "Sometimes .  .

"And when it wasn't?. "It was neither man nor woman.  It was bliss."
Athanasius looked intensely discomfited by this.

"That sounds profane to me," he remarked.

Gentle had never thought of the bond between himself and the mystif in
such terms before, nor did he welcome the burden of such doubts now. Pie
had been his teacher, his friend, and his lover; a selfless champion of
the Reconciliation from the very beginning.  He could not believe that
his Father would ever have sanctioned such a liaison if it were anything
but holy.

"I think we should let the subject lie," he told Athanasius.. "Or we'll
be at each other's throats again, and I for one don't want that."

"Neither do L' Athanasius replied.. "We'll not discuss it any further.
Tell me, where do you go from here?. "To the Erasure."

"And who represents the Synod there?"

"Chicka Jackeen.. "Ah!  So you chose him, did you?. "You knew him?"

"Not well.  I know he came to the Erasure long before I did.  In fact, I
don't think anyone quite knew how long he'd been there.  He's a strange
fellow."

"If that were a disqualification then we'd both be out of a job," Gentle
remarked.

al. "True enough."

With that, Gentle offered Athanasius his good wishes, and they parted -
civilly if not fondly - Gentle turning his thoughts from Yzordderrex to
the desert beyond.  Instantly, the domestic interior flickered, and was
replaced seconds later by the vast wall of the Erasure, rising from a
fog in which he dearly hoped the last member of his Synod was awaiting
him.

The streams kept converging as the women climbed, until they were
walking beside a flow that would soon be too wide to be leapt and too
furious to be forded.  There were no embankments to contain these
waters, only the gullies and gutters of the street, but the same
intentionality that drew them up the hill also limited their lateral
spread.  That way the river didn't dissipate its energies, but climbed
like an animal whose skin was growing at a prodigious rate to
accommodate the power it gained every time it assimilated another of its
kind.

By now its destination could not be in doubt.  There was only one
structure on the city's highest peak - the Autarch's palace and unless
an abyss opened up in the street and swallowed the waters before they
reached the gates it would be there that the trail would deliver them.

Jude had mixed memories of the palace.  Some, like the Pivot Tower and
the chamber of sluiced prayers beneath it, were terrifying.

Others were sweetly erotic, like the

hours she'd spent dozing in Quaisoir's bed while Concupiscentia sang,
and the lover she'd thought too perfect to be real had covered her with
kisses.  He was gone, of course, but she would be returning into the
labyrinth he'd built, now turned to some new purpose, not only with the
scent of him upon her (you smell of coitus, Celestine had said) but with
the fruit of that coupling in her womb.  Her hope of sharing wisdom with
Celestine had undoubtedly been blighted by that fact.  Even after Tay's
disparagement and Clem's conciliation the woman had contrived to treat
Jude as a pariah.  And if she, merely brushed by divinity, had sniffed
Sartori on Jude's skin, then surely TishaluI16 would sniff the same, and
know the child was there too.  if challenged, Jude had decided to tell
the truth.  She had reasons for doing all that she'd done, and she would
not make false apologies for it, but come to the altars of these
Goddesses with humility and self-respect in equal measure.

The gates were now in view, the river gushing towards them, its flood a
white water roar.

Either its assault, or some previous violence, had thrown both the gates
off their hinges, and the water surged through the gap ecstatically.

"How do we get through?" Hoi-Polloi yelled above the din.

"It's not that deep," Jude said.. "We'll be able to wade it if we go
together.  Here.  Take my hand."

Without giving the girl time to argue or retreat, she took firm hold of
Hoi-Polloi's wrist and stepped into the river.  As she'd said, it wasn't
very deep.  Its spumy surf ace only climbed to the middle of their
thighs.

But there was considerable force in it, and they were obliged to proceed
with extreme care.  Jude couldn't see the ground she was leading them
over, the water was too wild, but she could feel through her soles how
the river was digging up the paving, eroding in a matter of minutes what
the tread of soldiers, slaves and penitents had not much impressed in
two centuries.  Nor was this erosion the only threat to

their equilibrium.  The river's freight of alms, petitions and trash was
very heavy now, gathered as it was from five or six places in the lower
Kesparates.  Slabs of wood knocked at their hamstrings and shins,
swathes of cloth wrapped around their knees.  But Jude remained
surefooted, and advanced with a steady tread until they were through the
gates, glancing back over her shoulder now and then to reassure
Hoi-Polloi with a look or a smile that, though there was discomfort
here, there was no great hazard.

The river didn't slow once it was inside the palace walls.  It instead
seemed to find fresh impetus, its spume thrown ever higher as it climbed
through the courtyards.  The Comet's beams were falling here- in greater
abundance than on the Kesparates below, and their light, striking the
water, threw silver filigrees up against the joyless stone.  Distracted
by the beauty of this, Jude momentarily lost her footing as they cleared
the gates, and, despite a cry of warming, fell back into the river,
taking Hoi-Polloi with her.  Though they were in no danger of being
drowned, the water had sufficient momentum to carry them along, and
Hoi-Polloi, being much the lighter of the two, was swept past Jude at
some speed.  Their attempts to stand up again were defeated by the
eddies and counter-currents its enthusiasm was generating, and it was
only by chance that Hoi-Polloi - thrown against a dam of detritus that
was

choking part of the flow - was able to use its accrued bulk   Sir to
bring herself to a halt, and haul herself to her knees.  The

water broke against her with considerable vehemence as he did so, its
will to carry her off undiminished, but she defied it, and by the time
Jude was carried to the place, Hoi-Polloi was getting to her feet.

"Give me your handl' she yelled, returning the invi- It

tat ion Jude had first offered when they'd stepped into the flood.

Jude reached to do so, half turning in the water to stretch for
Hoi-Polloi's fingers.  But the river had other ideas.  As their hands
came within inches of clasping, the

waters conspired to spin her, and snatch her away, their

ari

hold on her so tight the breath was momently squeezed out of her.  She
couldn't even yell a word of reassurance, but was hauled off by the
flood, up through a monolithic archway, and out of sight.

Violent as the waters were, pitching her around as it raced through the
cloisters and colonnades, she wasn't in fear of them; quite the other
way about.  The exhilaration was contagious.  She was part of their
purpose now, even if they didn't know it, and happy to be delivered to
their summoner, who was surely also their source.

Whether that summoner - be she Tishalulli, or Jokalaylau, or any other
Goddess who might be resident here today -judged her to be a petitioner,
or simply another piece of trash, only the end of this ride would tell.

If Yzordderrex had become a place of glorious particulars - every colour
singing, every bubble in its waters crystalline the Erasure had given
itself over to ambiguity.  There was no breath of wind to stir the heavy
mist that hung over the fallen tents, and over the dead, shrouded but
unburied, that lay in their folds; nor did the Comet have fire enough to
pierce a higher fog, the fabric of which left its light dusky and drab.
Off to the left of where Gentle's projection stood, the ring of Madormas
that Athanasius and his disciples had sheltered in was visible through
the murk.

But the man he'd come here to find wasn't in residence there, nor was
there any sign of him to the right, though here the fog was so thick it
blotted out everything that lay beyond an eight- or ten-yard range.  He
nevertheless headed into it, loth to try calling Chicka Jackeen's name,
even if his voice had possessed sufficient strength.  There was a
conspiracy of suppression upon the landscape, and he was unwilling to
challenge it.  instead he advanced in silence, his body barely
displacing the mist, his feet making little or no impression on the
ground.  He felt more like a phantom here than in any of the other
meeting-places.  It was a landscape for such souls; hushed, but haunted.

He didn't have to walk blindly for long.  The mist began to thin out
after a time, and through its shreds he caught sight of Chicka Jackeen.
He'd dug a chair and small table from out of the wreckage, and was
sitting with his back to the great wall of the First Dominion, playing a
solitary game of cards and talking furiously to himself as he did so.
We're all crazies, Gentle thought, catching him like this.  Tick Raw
half-mad on mustard; Scopique become an amateur arsonist; Athanasius
marking sacramental sandwiches with his pierced hands; finally Chicka
Jackeen, chattering away to himself like a neurotic monkey.  Crazies to
a man.  And of all of them he, Gentle, was probably the craziest: the
lover of a creature that defied the definitions of gender, the maker of
a man who had destroyed nations.  The only sanity in his life - burning
like a clear white light - was that which came from God; the simple
purpose of a Reconciler.

"Jackeen?"

The man looked up from his cards, somewhat guiltily.

"Oh.  Maestro.  You're here."

"Don't say you weren't expecting me?. "Not so soon.  is it time for us
to go to the Ana?. "Not yet.  I came to be

sure you were ready.. "I am, Maestro.  Truly."

"Were you winning?"

"I was playing myself."

"That doesn't mean you can't win."

"No?  No.  As you say.  Then yes, I was winning."

He rose from the table, taking off the spectacles he'd been wearing to
study his cards.

"Has anything come out of the Erasure while you've been waiting?"

"No, not come out.  In fact, yours is the first voice I've heard since
Athanasius left."

r

"He's part of the Synod now," Gentle said.. "Scopique induced him to
join us, to represent the Second.. "What happened to the Eurhetemec? Not
murdered?. "He died of old age."

"Will Athanasius be equal to the task?" Jackeen asked, then, thinking
his question overstepped the bounds of protocol, said. "I'm sorry.  I've
no right to question your judgement in this."

"You've every right," Gentle said.. "We've got to have complete faith in
each other."

"If you trust Athanasius then so do I," Jackeen said simply.

"So we're ready."

"There is one thing I'd like to report, if I may."

"What's that?"

"I said nothing's come out of the Erasure, and that's true

but something went in?"

"Yes.  Last night, I was sleeping under the table here He pointed to his
bed of blankets and stone.. "And I woke chilled to the marrow.  I wasn't
sure whether I was dreaming at first, so I was slow to get up.

But when I did I saw these figures coming out of the fog.  Dozens of
them.. "Who were they?"

"Nullianacs," Jackeen said.. "Are you familiar with them?"

"Certainly."

"I counted fifty at least, just within sight of me."

"Did they threaten you?"

"I don't think they even saw me.  They had their eyes on their
destination

"The First?"

"That's right.  But before they crossed over, they shed their clothes,
and made some fires, and burned every last thing they wore, or brought
with them."

"All of them did this?"

"Every one that I saw.  It was extraordinary."

"Can you show me the fires?"

"Easily," Jackeen said, and led Gentle away from the table, talking as
he went.

"I'd never seen a Nullianac before, but of course I've heard the
stories."

"They're brutes," Gentle said.. "I killed one in Vanaeph, a few months
ago, and then I met one of its brothers in Yzordderrex, and it murdered
a child I knew."

"They like innocence, I've heard.  It's meat and drink to them.  And
they're all related to each other, though nobody's ever seen the female
of the species.  In fact, some say there isn't one.. "You seem to know a
lot about them."

"Well, I read a good deal," Jackeen said, glancing at Gentle.. "But you
know what they say: Study nothing except in the knowledge '- that you
already knew it.. "That's right."

Gentle looked at the man with fresh interest, hearing the old saw from
his lips.  Was it so commonplace a dictum that every student had it by
heart, or did Chicka Jackeen know the significance of what he was
saying?  Gentle stopped walking, and Jackeen stopped beside him,
offering a smile that verged on the mischievous.  Now it was Gentle who
did the studying, his text the other man's face.  And reading, saw the
dictum proved.

"My God he said.. "Lucius?"

...

"Yes, Maestro.  It's me."

"Lucius!  Lucius!'

The years had taken their toll of course, though not insufferably. While
the face in front of him was no longer that of the eager acolyte he'd
sent from Gamut Street, nor was it marked by more than a tenth of the
two centuries in between.

"This is extraordinary," Gentle said.

"I thought maybe you knew who I was, and you were playing a game with
me."

"How could I know?"

"Am I really so different?" the other said, clearly a little

two,

deflated.. "It took me twenty-three years to master the felt of holding,
but I thought I'd caught the last of my youth before it went entirely. A
little vanity.  Forgive me.. "When did you come here?"

it seems like a lifetime, so it probably is.  I wandered back and forth
through the Dominions first, studying with one evocator after another,
but I was never content with any of them.  I had you to judge them by,
you see.  So I was always dissatisfied."

"I was a lousy teacher," Gentle said.

"Not at all.  You taught me the fundamentals, and I've lived by them and
prospered.

Maybe not in the world's eyes, but in mine."

"The only lesson I gave you was on the stairs.  Remember, that last
night?"

"Of course I remember.  The laws of study, workings and fear.
Wonderful."

"But they weren't mine, Lucius.  The mystif taught them to me.  I just
passed them along."

"Isn't that what most teachers do?"

"I think the great ones refine wisdom, they don't simply repeat it.  I
refined nothing.  I thought every word I uttered was perfect, because it
was falling from my lips.. "So my idol has feet of clay?"

"I'm afraid so."

"You think I didn't know that?  I saw what happened at the Retreat.  I
saw you fail, and it's because of that I've waited here."

"I don't follow."

"I knew you wouldn't accept failure.  You'd wait, and you'd plan, and
some day, even if it took a thousand years, you'd come back to try
again."

"One of these days I'll tell you how it really happened, and you won't
be so impressed."

"However it went, you're here," Lucius said.. "And I have my dream at
last."

"Which is what?"

"To work with you.  To join you in the Ana, Maestro to

Maestro." He grinned.. "God is in His Heaven today," he said.. "If I'm
ever happier than this, it'll kill me.  Ah!  There, Maestro!" He stopped
and pointed to the ground a few yards from them. "That's one of the
Nullianacs' fires."

The place was blasted, but there were some remains of the Nullianacs'
robes amongst the ashes.  Gentle approached.

"I don't have the wherewithal to sort through them, Lucius.  Will you do
it for me?"

Lucius obliged, stooping to turn over the cinders and pluck out what
remained of the clothes.  There were fragments of suits, robes and coats
in a variety of styles, one finely embroidered, after the fashion of
Patashoqua, another barely more than sackcloth, a third with medals
attached, as if its owner had been a soldier.

"They must have come from all over the Imajica," Gentle said.

"Summoned," Lucius replied.

"That seems like a reasonable assumption.. "But why?" Gentle mused a
moment.

"I think the Unbeheld has taken them into His furnace, Lucius.  He's
burned them away. "So He's wiping the Dominions clean?. "Yes, He is. And
the Nullianacs knew it.  They threw off their clothes like penitents,
because they knew that they were going to their judgement. "You see,"
Lucius said, 'you are wise.. "When I'm gone, will you burn even these
last pieces?. "Of course."

_. "It's His will that we cleanse this place."

"I'll start right away."

"And I'll go back to the Fifth, and finish my preparations.. "Is the
Retreat still standing?. "Yes.  But that's not where I'll be.  I've
returned to Gamut Street.. "That was a fine house:

r

"It's still fine in its way.  I saw you there on the stairs only a few
nights ago."

"A spirit there and flesh here?  What could be more perfect?"

"Being flesh and spirit in the whole of Creation," Gentle said.

"Yes.  That would be finer still."

"And it'll happen.  It's all One, Lucius."

"I hadn't forgotten that lesson."

"Good."

"But if I may ask

"Yes?"

"Would you call me Chicka Jackeen from now on?  I've lost the bloom of
youth, so I may as well lose the name.. "Maestro Jackeen it is."

"Thank you."

"I'll see you in a few hours," Gentle said, and with that put his
thoughts to his return.

This time there were no diversions or loiterings, for sentiment's sake
or any other.  He went at the speed of his intention back through
Yzordderrex and along the Lenten Way, over the Cradle and the benighted
heights of the Jokalaylau, passing across the Mount of Lipper Bayak, and
Patashoqua (within whose gates he had yet to step), and finally
returning into the Fifth, to the room he'd left in Gamut Street.

Day was at the window, and Clem was at the door, patiently awaiting the
return of his Maestro.  As soon as he saw a flicker of animation in
Gentle's face he began to speak, his message too urgent to be delayed a
second longer than it had to be.

"Monday's back," he said.

Gentle stretched, and yawned.  His nape and lumbar regions ached, and
his bladder was ready to burst, but at least he hadn't returned to
discover his bowels had given out, as Tick Raw had predicted.

"Good," he said.  He got to his feet, and hobbled to the

mantelpiece, clinging to it as he kicked some life back into his
deadened legs.. "Did he get all the stones?"

"Yes, he did.  But I'm afraid Jude didn't come back with him.. "Where
the hell is she?"

"He won't tell me.  He's got a message from her, he says, but he won't
trust it to anyone but you.  Do you want to speak to him?  He's
downstairs, eating breakfast."

"Yes.  Send him up, will you?  And if you can, find me something to eat.
Anything but sausages."

Clem headed off down the stairs, leaving Gentle to cross to the window,
and throw it open.  The last morning that the Fifth would see
Unreconciled had dawned, and the temperature was already high enough to
wilt the leaves on the tree outside.  Hearing Monday's feet clattering
up the stairs, Gentle turned to greet the messenger, who appeared with a
half-eaten hamburger in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette in the
other.

"You've got something to tell me?" he said.

"Yes, Boss.  From Jude.. "Where did she go?"

"Yzordderrex.  That's part of what I'm supposed to tell you.  She's gone
to Yzordderrex.. "Did you see her go?"

"Not exactly.  She made me stand outside while she went, so that's what
I did.. "And the rest of the message?"

"She told me .  .  ." he made a great show of concentration now to tell
you where she'd gone, and I've

done that, then she said to tell you that the Reconciliation isn't safe,
and that you weren't to do nothing until she contacted you again."
"Isn't safe?  Those were her words?. "That's what she said.  No
kiddin'.. "Do you know what she was talking about?"

"Search me, Boss." His eyes had gone from Gentle to the darkest corner
of the room.. "I didn't know you had a monkey," he said.. "Did you bring
it back with you?"

Gentle looked to the corner.  Little Ease was there, starstro fretfully,
having presumably crept ing up at the Mae

oom sometime during the down into the Meditation R

night.

"Does it eat hamburgersr Monday said, going down on

his haunches.

"You can try," Gentle said, distractedly.. "Monday, is that all Jude
said: it isn't safe?. "That's it, Boss.  I swear.. "She just arrived at
the Retreat and told you she wasn't

coming back?"

Oh no, she took her time," Monday said, pulling a face as the creature
he'd taken to be an ape skulked from its corner and started towards the
proffered hamburger.

He made to stand up, but it bared its teeth in a grin of such ferocity
he thought better of doing so, and simply extended his arm as far as he
could to keep the beast from his face.  Little Ease slowed as it came
within sniffing distance, and instead of snatching the meal claimed it
from Monday's hand with the greatest delicacy, pinkies raised.

"Will you finish the story?" Gentle said.

"Oh yeah.  Well, there was this fella in the Retreat when we got there,
and she had a long jaw with him.. "This was somebody

she knew?"

"Oh yeah."

"Who?"

"I forget his name," Monday said, but seeing Gentle's brow frown
protested. "That wasn't part of the message, Boss.  If it had

been I'd have remembered."

"Remember anyway," Gentle said, beginning to suspect

conspiracy.

"Who was he?"

Monday stood up and drew nervously on his cigarette.  I don't recall.
There were all these birds, you know, and bees an' stuff.

I wasn't really listening.  It was something short, like Cody or Coward
or-'

"Dowd."

"Yeah!  That's it.  It was Dowd.  And he was really fucked up, let me
tell you.. "But alive.. "Oh yeah, for a while.  Like I said, they talked
together.. "And it was after this that she said she was going to
Yzordderrex?"

"That's right.  She told me to bring the stones back to you, and the
message with 'em.. "Both of which you've done.  Thank you."

"You're the Boss, Boss," Monday said.. "Is that all?  If you want me I'm
on the step.  It's going to be a scorcher." He thundered off downstairs.

"Shall I leave the door open, Liberatore?" Little Ease said, as he
nibbled on the hamburger.

"What are you doing here?. "I got lonely up there," the creature said.

"You Promised obedience," Gentle reminded it.

"You don't trust her, do you?" Little Ease replied.. "You think she's
gone off to join Sartori.,

He hadn't, until now.  But the notion, now that it was floated, didn't
seem so improbable.

Jude had confessed what she felt for Sartori in this very house, and
clearly believed that he loved her in return.  Perhaps she'd simply
slipped again from the Retreat while Monday's back was turned, and had
gone to find the father of her child.  if that was the case, it was
paradoxical behaviour, to seek out the arms of a man whose enemy she'd
just helped towards victory.  But this was not a day to waste analysing
such conundrums.  She'd done what she'd done, and there was an end to
it.

Gentle hoisted himself up on to the sill, from which perch he'd often
planned his itinerary, and attempted to push all thoughts of her
defection out of his head.  This was a bad room in which to try and
forget her, however.  It was after all the womb in which she'd been
made.  The boards most likely still concealed motes of the sand that had
marked her circle, and stains, deep in their grain, of the liquors he'd
anointed her nakedness with.  Try as he

might to keep the thoughts from coming, one led inevitably to another.
Imagining her naked, he pictured his hands upon her, slick with oils.
Then his kisses.  Then his body.  And before a minute had passed he was
sitting on the sill with an erection nuzzling against his underwear.

Of all the mornings to be plagued with such distraction!  The
beguilements of the flesh had no place in the work ahead of him.  They'd
brought the last Reconciliation to tragedy, and he would not allow them
to lead him from his sanctified path by a single step.  He looked down
at his groin, disgusted with himself.

"Cut it off," Little Ease advised.

if he could have done the deed without making an invalid of himself,
he'd have done so there and then, and gladly.  He had nothing but
contempt for what rose between his legs.  it was a hot-headed idiot, and
he wanted rid of it.

"I can control it," he replied.

"Famous       q last words," the creature said.

A blackbird had come into the tree, and was singing blithely there.  He
looked its way, and beyond, up through the branches into the burnished
blue sky.  His thoughts abstracted as he studied it, and, by the time he
heard Clem coming up the stairs with food and drink, the spasm of
carnality had passed, and he greeted his angels with a cooling brow.

"So now we wait," he told Clem.

"What for?"

"For Jude to come back.. "And if she doesn't?"

Gentle replied.. "This is where she was b

"She will,       orn.

it's her home, even if she wishes it weren't.  She'll have to make her
way back here eventually.  And if she's conspired against us, Clem - if
she's working with the enemy then I swear I'll draw a circle right here
-' he pointed to the boards '- and I'll unmake her so well it'll be as
though she never drew breath."

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

The law-defying waters were compassionate.  Though they carried Jude
through the palace at some considerable speed, roaming through corridors
their passage had already stripped of tapestries and furnishings, they
treated their cargo with care.  She wasn't thrown against the walls or
the pillars, but was borne up on a ship of surf that neither faltered
nor foundered, but hurried, remotely helmed, to its destination.  That
place could scarcely be in doubt.  The mystery at the heart of the
Autarch's maze had always been the Pivot Tower, and though she'd
witnessed the beginning of the Tower U

s undoing, it was still, surely, her place of debarkation.

Prayers and petitions had gone there for an age, attracted by the
Pivot's authority.  Whatever force had replaced it, calling these
waters, it had set its throne on the rubble of the fallen Lord.

And now she had proof of that, as the waters carried her out of the
naked corridors and into the still severer environs of the Tower,
slowing to deliver her into a pool so thick with detritus it was almost
solid.

Out of this wreckage rose a staircase, and she hauled herself from the
debris and lay on the lower steps, gidded but exhil ar ated.  The waters
continued to surge around the staircase like an eager spring tide, and
their clear desire to be up the flight was contagious.  She got to her
feet after a little time, and proceeded to climb.

Although there were no lights burning at the top, there was plenty of
illumination spilling down the stairs to meet her, and like the light at
the springing places, it was prismatic, suggesting there were more
waters ahead that had

come into the palace via other routes.  Before she was even halfway up
the flight two women appeared and stared down at her.  Both were dressed
in simple, off white shifts, the fatter of the pair, a woman of
gargantuan proportions, unbuttoned to bare her breasts to the baby she
was nursing.  She looked almost as infantile as her charge, her hair
wispy, her face, like her breasts, heavy and sugar-almond pink.  The
woman beside her was older , her skin substantially darker than that of
and slimmer her companion, her grey hair unbraided, and combed out to
her shoulders like a cowl.  She wore gloves, and glasses, and regarded
Jude with almost professorial detach men "Another soul saved from the
flood," she said.

Jude had stopped climbing.  Though neither woman had made any sign that
she was forbidden entry, she wanted to come into this miraculous place
as a guest, not a trespasser.

"Am I welcome?"

of course," said the mother.. "Have you come to meet the Goddesses?"

"Yes."

"Are you from the Bastion, then?"

Before Jude could reply, her companion supplied the

answer.

of

course not!  Look at her!'

"But the waters brought her

ho dares.  The

"The waters'll bring any woman wy brought us, didn't they?"

"Are there many others?" Jude asked.

"Hundreds," came the reply.. "Maybe thousands by

now."

Jude wasn't surprised.  if someone like herself, a stranger in the
Dominions, had come to suspect that the Goddesses were still extant, how
much more hopeful must the women who lived here have been, living with
the legends of Tishalulli and Jokalaylau?

When Jude reached the top of the stairs, the be spec-  an introduced
herself:

tacled worn

"I'm Lotti Yap.. "I'm Judith.,

"We're pleased to see you, Judith," the other woman said.. "I'm
Paramarola.  And this fellow'- she looked down at the baby - 'is Billo."
"Yours?" Jude asked.

"Now where would I have found a man to give me the likes of this?"
Paramarola said.

"We've been in the Annex for nine years," Lotti Yap explained.. "Guests
of the Autarch."

"May his thorn, rot and his berries wither," Paramarola added.

"And where have you come from?" Lotti asked.

"The Fifth," Jude said.

She was not fully attending to the women now, however.  Her interest had
been claimed by a window that lay across the puddle-strewn corridor
behind them; or rather, by the vista visible through it.  She went to
the sill both awed and astonished, and gazed out at an extraordinary
spectacle.  The flood had cleared a circle half a mile wide or more in
the centre of the palace, sweeping wall and pillars and roofs away, and
drowning the rubble.

Alkl that was left, rising from the waters, were islands of roe where
the taller towers had stood, and here and there a corner of one of the
palace's vast amphitheatres, preserved as if to mock the overweening
pretensions of its architect.  Even these fragments would not stand for
much longer, she suspected.  The waters circled this immense basin
without violence, but their sheer weight would soon bring these last
remnants of Sartori's masterwork down.

At the centre of this small sea was an island larger than the rest, its
lower shores made up of the half-demolished chambers that had clustered
around the Pivot Tower, its rocks the rubble of that Tower's upper half,
mingled with vast pieces of its tenant, and its height the remains of
the Tower itself, a ragged but glittering pyramid of rubble in which a
white fire seemed to be burning.  Looking at the

Transformation these waters had wrought, eroding in a at the Autarch had
matter of days, perhaps hours, wh taken decades to devise and build,
Jude wondered that she'd reached this place intact.  The power she'd
first encountered on the lower slopes as an innocent, if wilful, brook
was here revealed as an awesome force for change.

"Were you here when this happened?" she asked Lotti

Yap.

'we saw only the end of it," she replied.. "But it was quite a sight,
let me tell you.  Seeing the towers fall. "We were afraid for our lives,"
Pararnarola said.. "Speak for yourself," Lotti replied.. "The waters
didn't set us free just to drown us.

We were prisoners in the en the door cracked open, and the

Annex, you see.  Th   ed the walls away." waters just bubbled up, and
wash

"We knew the Goddesses would come, didn't we?" Paramarola said.. "We
always had faith in that.. "So you never believed They were dead?. "Of
course not.  Buried alive, maybe.  Sleeping.  Even lunatic.  But never
dead."

"What she says is right," Lotti observed.. "We knew this day would
come."

"Unfortunately, it may be a short victory," Jude said.

"Why do you say that?" Lotti asked.. "The Autarch's gone."

"Yes, but his Father hasn't."

"His Father?" said Paramarola.  thought he, was a bastard."

"Who's his father then?" said Lotti.

"Hapexamendios."

Paramarola laughed at this, but Lotti Yap nudged her in her well-padded
ribs.

"It's not a joke, Rola.". "It has to be," the other protested.

laughing?" Then, to Jude. "Do

"Do you see the woman you have any evidence for this?"

"No, I don't

"Then where'd you get such an idea?"

Jude had guessed it would be difficult to persuade people of Sartori's
origins, but she'd optimistically supposed that when the moment came
she'd be possessed of a sudden lucidity.  Instead she felt a rage of
frustration.  If she was obliged to unravel the whole sorry history of
her involvement with the Autarch Sartori to every soul who stood between
her and the Goddesses, the worst would be upon them all before she was
halfway there.  Then, inspiration.

"The Pivot's the proof," she said.

"How so?" said Lotti, who was now studying this woman the flood had
brought to their feet with fresh intensity.

"He could never have moved the Pivot without his Father's
collaboration."

I Param-'But the Pivot doesn't belong

to the Unbeheld, arola said.. "It never did."

Jude looked confounded.

"What Rola says is true," Lotti told her.. "He may have used it to
control a few weak men.

But the Pivot was never his.. "Whose then?. "Uma Umagammagi was in it."
"And who's that?"

"The sister of Tishalulli and Jokalaylau.  Half-sister of the daughters
of the Delta.. "There was a Goddess in the Pivot?. "Yes.. "And the
Autarch didn't know it?"

"That's right.  She hid Herself there to escape Hapexamendios when He
passed through the Imajica.  jokalayp lau went into the snow, and was
lost there.  TishalulM in the Cradle of Chzercemit," Jude said.

"Yes indeed," said Lotti, plainly impressed.

"And Uma Umagammagi hid Herself in solid rock," Paramarola went on,
telling the tale as though to a child,

C 'thinking He'd pass over the place not seeing Her.  But He

A chose the Pivot as the centre of the Imajica, and laid His

power upon it, sealing Her in."

thought. The

This was surely the ultimate irony, Jude architect of Yzordderrex had
built his fortress, indeed his entire Empire, around an imprisoned
Goddess.  Nor was the parallel with Celestine lost on her.  it seemed
Roxborough had been unwittingly working in a grim tradition when he'd
sealed Celestine up beneath his house.

"Where are the Goddesses now?" Jude asked Lotti.

"On the island.  We'll all be allowed into Their presence in time, and
we'll be blessed by Them.  But it'll take days.. "I don't have days,"
Jude said.. "How do I get to the island?"

"You'll be called when your time comes."

"That has to be now," Jude said.. "Or it'll be never." She looked left
and right along the passageway.. "Thank you for the education," she
said.. "Maybe I'll see you again." Choosing right over left she made to
leave, but Lotti took hold of her sleeve.

"You don't understand, Judith," she said.. "The Goddesses have come to
make us safe.

Nothing can harm us here.

Not even the Unbeheld."

"hope that's true," Jude said.. "To the bottom of my heart, I hope
that's true.  But I have to warn Them, in

case it isn't."

"Then we'd better come with you," Lotti said.. "You'll never find your
way otherwise."

"Wait," Paramarola said.. "Should we be doing this?  She

may be dangerous."

"Aren't we all?" Lotti replied.. "That's

why They locked

us away in the first place, remember?"

If the atmosphere of the streets outside the palace had

suggested some post-apocalyptic carnival - the waters

vonine - then

dancing, the children laughing, the air pa

that sense was a hundred times stronger in the passageways around the
rim of the flood-scoured basin.  There were children here too; their
laughter more musical than ever.  None was over five or so, but there
were both boys and girls in the throng.  They turned the corridors into
playgrounds, their din echoing off walls that had not heard such joy
since they'd been raised.  There was also water of course.  Every inch
of ground was blessed by a puddle, a rivulet or a stream, every arch had
a liquid curtain cascading from its keystone, every chamber was
refreshed by burbling springs and roof-grazing fountains.  And in every
tinkling trickle there was the same sentience that Jude had felt in the
tide that had brought her up here: water as life, filled to the last
drop with the purpose of the Goddesses.  Overhead, the Comet was at its
height, and sent its straight white beams through any chink it could
find, turning the humblest puddle into an oracular pool, and plaiting
its light into the gush of evermyespinouall The women in these
glittering corridors shapes and sizes.  Many, Lotti explained, were like
themselves former prisoners of the Bastion or its dreaded Annex; others
had simply found their way up the hill following their instincts and the
streams, leaving their husbands, dead or alive, below.

"Are there no men here at all?. "Only the little ones," said Lotti.

"They're all little ones," Paramarola observed.

"There was a Captain at the Annex who was a brute," Lotti said, 'and
when the waters came he must have been emptying his bladder, because his
body floated by our cell with his trousers unbuttoned

and you know, he was still holding on to his manhood," Paramarola said.
"He had the choice between that and swimming

and instead of letting go, he drowned," Lotti said.

This entertained Paramarola no end, and she laughed so hard the baby's
mouth was dislodged from her teat Milk spurted in the child's face,
which brought a further

round of merriment.  Jude didn't ask how Paramarola came to be so
nourishing when she was neither the mother of the child nor, presumably,
pregnant.  It was just one of the many enigmas this journey showed her;
like the pool that clung to one of the walls, filled to brimming with
luminous fish; or the waters that imitated fire, J; from which some of
the women had made crowns; or the immensely long eel she saw carried
past, its gaping head on a child's shoulder, its body looped between
half a dozen women, back and forth across their shoulders ten times or
more.  if she'd requested an explanation for any of these sights she'd
have been obliged to enquire about them all, and they'd never have got
more than a few yards down the corridor.

The journey brought them, at last, to a place where the waters had
carved out a shallow pool at the edge of the main basin, served by
several rivulets that climbed through rubble to fill it to brimming, its
overflow running into the basin itself.  In it and around it were
perhaps thirty women and children, some playing, some talking, but most,
their clothes shed, waiting silently in the pool, gazing out across the
turbulent waters of the basin to Uma Umagammagi's island.  Even as Jude
and her guides approached the place a wave broke against the lip of the
pool and two women, standing there hand in hand, went with it as it
withdrew, and were carried away towards the island.  There was an
eroticism about the scene, which in other circumstances Jude would
certainly have denied she felt.  But here, such priggishness seemed
redundant, even ludicrous.

She allowed her imagination to wonder what it would be like to sink into
the midst of this naked-i ness, where the only scrap of masculinity was
between the legs of a suckling infant; to brush breast to breast and
let her fingers be kissed, and her neck be caressed, and kiss and caress
in her turn.

"The water in the basin's very deep," Lotti said at he' I side.. "It
goes all the way down into the mountain."

What had happened to the dead, Jude wondered,

970 whose company Dowd had found so educative?  Had the waters sluiced
them away, along with the invocations and entreaties that had dropped
into that same darkness from beneath the Pivot Tower?  Or had they been
dissolved into a single soup, the sex of dead men forgiven, the pain of
dead women healed, and - all mingled with the prayers - become part of
this indefatigable flood?  She hoped so.  If the powers here were to
have authority against the Unbeheld then they would have to reclaim
every forsaken strength they could.  The walls between Kesparates had
already been dragged down, and the plashing streams were making a
continuum of city and palace.  But the past had to be reclaimed as well,
and whatever miracles it had boasted - surely there'd been some, even
here - preserved.  This was more than an abstract desire on Jude's part.
She was, after all, one of those miracles, made in the image of the
woman who'd ruled here with as much ferocity as her husband.

"Is this the only way of getting to the island?" she asked Lotti.

"There aren't ferries, if that's what you mean.. "I'd better start
swimming, then," Jude said.

Her clothes were an encumbrance, but she wasn't yet so easy with herself
that she could strip off on the rocks and go into the waters naked, so
with a brief thanks to Lotti and Paramarola she started to climb down
the tumble of blocks that surrounded the pool.

"I hope you're wrong, Judith," Lotti called after her.

"So do L' Jude replied.. "Believe me, so do U Both this exchange and her
ungainly descent drew the puzzled gaze of several of the bathers, but
none made any objection to her appearing in their midst.  The closer she
got to the waters of the basin the more anxious she became about the
crossing, however.  It was several years since she'd swum any distance,
and she doubted she'd have the strength to resist the currents and
eddies if they chose to keep her from her destination.  But they
wouldn't drown her, surely.  They'd borne her all the

-Mow,

Aw!

way up here after all, sweeping her through the palace unharmed.  The
only difference between this journey and that (though it was a profound
one, to be sure) was the depth of the water.

Another wave was approaching the lip of the pool, and

there was a woman and child floating forward to take

MP off

it.  Before they could do so, she took a running jJu the boulder she was
perched on clearing the heads of the bathers below by a hair's breadth,
and plunging into the tide.  It wasn't so much a dive as a plummet, and
it took her deep.  she flailed wildly to right herself, opening her eyes
but unable to decide which way was up.  The waters knew.  They lifted
her out of their depths like a cork, and threw her up into the spume.
She was already twenty yards or more from the rocks, and being carried
away at speed.  She had time to glimpse Lotti searching for her in the
surf, then the eddies turned her round, and round again, until she no
longer knew the direction in which the pool lay.  instead she fixed her
eyes on the island, and began to swim as best she could towards it.

d content to supplement her efforts The waters se erne with energies of
their own, though they were describing a spiral around the island, and
as they carried her closer to its shore they also swept her in a
counter-clockwise motion around it.

The Comet's light fell on the waves all around her, and its glitter kept
the depths from sight, which she was glad of.

Buoyed up though she was, she didn't want to be he put all her will into
reminded of the pit beneath her.  S the business of swimming, not even
allowing herself to her body.  Such enjoy the roiling of the waters
against as she'd

luxury, like the questions she'd wanted to ask

walked with Lotti and Paramarola, was for another day.

ithin fifty yards of her now, but her

The shore was w

he strokes became increasingly irrelevant the closer to t island she
came.  As the spiral tightened, the tide became more authoritative, and
she finally gave up any attempt at self propulsion and surrendered
herself utterly to the

hold of the waters.  They carried her around the island twice before she
felt her feet scraping the steeply inclined rocks beneath the surge,
presenting her with a fine, if giddying, view of Uma Umagammagi's
temple.  Not surprisingly, the waters had been more inspired here than
in any other spot she'd seen.  They'd worked at the blocks of which the
Tower was built, monumental though they were, eroding the mortar between
them, then eating at them top and bottom, replacing their severity with
a mathematics of undulation.  Slabs of stone the height of the masons
who'd first carved them were no longer locked together but balanced like
acrobats, one corner laid against another, while radiant water ran
through the cavities and carried on its work of turning the
once impregnable Tower into a wedded column of water, stone and light.
The eroded motes had run off in the rivulets, and been deposited on the
shore as a fine, soft sand, in which Jude lay when she emerged from the
basin, given a giggling welcome by a quartet of children playing nearby.

She allowed herself only a minute to catch her breath, then she got to
her feet and started up the beach towards the temple.  its doorway was
as elaborately eroded as the blocks, a veil of bright water concealing
the interior from those waiting nearby.  There were perhaps a dozen
women at the threshold.  One, a girl barely past pubescence, was walking
on her hands; somebody else seemed to be singing, but the music was so
close to the sound of running water that Jude couldn't decide whether a
voice was flowing or some stream was aspiring to melody.  As at the
pool, nobody objected to her sudden appearance, nor remarked on the fact
that she was weighed down by water-logged clothes while they were in
various states of undress.  A benign languor was on them all, and had it
not been for Jude's will-power she might have let it claim her too.

She didn't hesitate, however, but stepped through the water door without
so much as a murmur to those waiting at the threshold.

Inside, there was no solid sight to greet her.  Instead the

air was filled with forms of light, folding and unfolding as though
invisible hands were performing a lucid origami.  They weren't working
towards petty resemblance, ut transforming their radiant stuff over and
over, each new shape on its way to becoming another before it was fixed
She looked down at her arms.  They were still visible, but not as flesh
and blood.

They'd learned the trick of the light already, and were blossoming into
a multiplicity of

order to join the play.  She reached out to touch forms in one of her
fellow visitors with her burgeoning fingers, and brushing her, caught a
glimpse of the woman from whom this origami had emerged.  She appeared
the way a body might if a damp sheet billowed against it, momentarily
clinging to the shape of her hip, her cheek, her breast, then billowing
again, and snatching the glimpse away.

But there'd been a smile there, she was certain of

that.

Reassured that she was neither alone nor unwelcome here, she began to
advance into the temple.  The promise of eroticism she'd first felt as
she gazed into the pool was now realized.  She felt the forms of her own
body spreading like milk dropped into the fluid air, and grazing the
bodies of those she was passing between.

Musings, most no more than half formed mingled with the sensation.
Perhaps she would dissolve here, and flow out through the walls to join
the waters around the islands; or perhaps she was already in that sea,
and the flesh and blood she thought she'd owned was just a figment of
those waters, conjured to comfort the lonely land.  Or perhaps, or
perhaps, or perhaps.  These speculations were not divorced from the
brushing of form against form, but part of the pleasure, her nerves
bearing these fruits, which in turn made her more tender to the touches
of

her companions.

They were falling away as she advanced, she realized.  Her progress was
taking her up into the heights of the temple.

if there had been solid ground beneath her feet she'd lost all sense of
it as she crossed the threshold,

and rose without effort, her stuff possessed of the same law-defying
genius as had been in the waters below.  There was another motion ahead
and above her, more sinuous than the forms she'd met at the door, and
she rose towards it as if summoned, praying that when the moment came
she'd have the words and lips to shape the thoughts in her head.  The
motion was getting clearer, and if she'd had any doubt below as to
whether these sights were imagined or seen, she now had such dichot
ornies swept away.

She was both seeing with her imagination and imagining she saw the glyph
that hung in the air in front of her: a moebius strip of light-haunted
water, a steady rhythm passing through its seamless loop and throwing
off waves of brilliant colour, which shed bright rains around her.  Here
was the raiser of springs; here was the summoner of rivers; here was the
sublime presence whose strength had brought the palace to rubble and
made a home for oceans and children where there'd only been terror
before.  Here was Uma Umagammagi.

Though she studied the Goddess's glyph, Jude could see no hint of
anything that breathed, sweated or corrupted in it.

But there was such an emanation of tenderness from the form that,
faceless as the Goddess was, it seemed to Jude she could feel Her smile,
Her kiss, Her loving gaze.  And love it was.  Though this power knew her
not all, Jude felt embraced and comforted as only love could embrace and
comfort.  There'd never been a time in her life, until now, when some
part of her had not been afraid.  It was the condition of being alive
that even bliss was attended by the imminence of its decease.  But here
such terrors seemed absurd.  This face loved her unconditionally, and
would do so forever.

"Sweet Judith,, she heard the Goddess say, the voice so charged, so
resonant, that 'these few syllables were an aria.

"Sweet Judith, what's so urgent that you risk your life to come here?"
As Uma Umagammagi spoke Jude saw her own face

appearing in the ripples, brightening, then teased out into a thread of
light that was run into the Goddess's glyph.  She's reading me, Jude
thought.  She's trying to understand why I'm here, and when She does
She'll take the responsibility away.

I'll be able to stay in this glorious p lace with Her, always.

"So," said the Goddess after a time.. "This is a grim business.  it
falls to you to choose between stopping this Reconciliation or letting
it go on, and risking some harm

from Hapexamendios."

"Yes," Jude replied, grateful that she'd been relieved of the need to
explain herself.. "I don't know what the

Unbeheld is planning.  Maybe nothing..." and maybe the end of the
Imajica."

"Could He do that?"

"Very possibly," said Urna Umagammagi.. "He's done harm to our temples
and our sisters many, many times, both in His own person and through His
agents.  He's a soul in error, and lethal."

hole Dominion?"

"But would He destroy a w

"I can no more predict Him than you can," UmagamMagi said.. "But I'll
mourn if the chance to complete the circle is missed."

"The circle?" said Jude.. "What circle?"

"The circle of the Imajica," the Goddess replied.. "Please understand,
sister, the Dominions were never meant to be divided this way.  That was
the work of the first human spirits, when they came into their
terrestrial life.  Nor was there any harm in it, at the beginning.  it
was their way of learning to live in a condition that intimidated them.
When they looked up, they saw stars.  When they looked down, they saw
earth.  They couldn't make their mark on

what was above, but what was below could be divided, and owned, and
fought over.  From that division, all others sprang.

They lost themselves to territories and nations, all shaped by the other
sex, of course; all named by them.  They even buried themselves in the
earth to have it more utterly, preferring worms to the company

of light.  They were blinded to the Imajica, and the circle was broken,
and Hapexamendios, who was made by the will of these men, grew strong
enough to forsake His makers, and so passed from the Fifth Dominion into
the First              m

u

r

d

e

ri

n

g

G

o

d

d

e

s

s

e

s

a

s

H

e

w

n

n the shape of the Imajica.  He could stil'lHief d1ide'hdarkmnoywes, but
He could have done greater harm

have discovered what mystery it circled, and gone there f

instead.. "What mystery's that?"

"You're going back into a dangerous place, sweet Judith, and the less
you know the safer you'll be.  When the time comes, we will unravel
these mysteries together, as sisters.  Until then take comfort that the
error of the Son is also the error of the Father, and in time all enors
must Undo themselves and pass away."

have to go back to the Fifth?,

"So if they'll solve themselves," Jude said, 'why do I

Before Unia Umagarmnagi could resume speaking, another voice intruded.
Particles rose between Jude and the Goddess as this other woman spoke,
pricking Jude's flesh where they touched, reminding her of a state that
knew ice and fire.

"Why do you trust this woman?" the stranger said.

"Because she came to us open-hearted, Jokalaylau,"the Goddess replied.

"How open-hearted is a woman who treads dry-eyed in the place where her
sister died?"Jokalaylau said.. "How openhearted is a woman who comes
into Our presence without shame, when she has the Autarch Sartori's
child in her womb?"

"We have no place for shame here," Umagammagi said.

"You may have no place," Jokalaylau said, rising into view now. "I have
plenty."

Like Her sister, Jokalaylau was here in Her essential form: a more
complex shape than that of Uma UmagarnMagi, and less pleasing to the
eye, because the motions

that ran in it were more hectic, Her form not so much

rippling as boiling, shedding its pricking darts as it did so.

"Shame is wholly appropriate for a woman who has

lain with one of our enemies," She said.

Despite the intimidation Jude felt from the Goddess,

she spoke out in her own defence.

"It's not as simple as that," she said, her courage fuelled

by the frustration she felt, having this intruder spoil the

congress between herself and Uma Umagammagi.. "I

didn't know he was the Autarch."

"Who did you imagine he was?  Or didn't you care?"

The exchange might have escalated, but that Uma

Umagammagi spoke again, Her tone as serene as ever.

"Sweet Judith," she said, 'let me speak with my sister.

She's suffered at the hands of the Unbeheld more than

either TishaluU6 or myself, and She'll not readily forgive

any flesh touched by Him or His children.  Please under- I

stand Her pain, as I hope to make Her understand yours."

She spoke with such delicacy that Jude now felt the

shame Jokalaylau had accused her of lacking: not for the

child, but for her rage.

A

"I'm sorry," she said, 'that was ...  inappropriate."

"If you'll wait on the shore," said Uma Umagammagi,

'we'll speak together again in a little while."

From the moment that the Goddess had talked of

Jude's returning to the Fifth, she'd known this parting

would come.  But she hadn't prepared herself to leave the

Goddess's embrace so soon, and now that she felt gravity f

claiming her again, it was an agony.  There was no help,,

for it, however.  if Uma Umagammagi knew what she

suffered - and how could She not?  - She did nothing to

ameliorate the hurt, but folded Her glyph back into the

matrix, leaving Jude to fall like a petal from a blossom- tree, lightly
enough, but with a sense of separation worse

than any bruising.  The forms of the women she'd passed

through were still unfolding and folding below, as exquisite as ever,
and the water music at the door was as soothing, but they could not
salve the loss.  The melody that

had sounded so joyous when she'd entered was now elegiac.  Like a hymn
for harvest home, thankful for the gifts bestowed but touched by fears
for a colder season to come.

It was waiting on the other side of the curtain, t

hat season.  Though the children still laughed on the shore, and the
basin was still a glorious spectacle of light and motion, she had gone
from the presence of a loving spirit, and couldn't help but moum.  Her
tears astonished the women at the threshold, and several rose to comfort
her, but she shook her head as they approached, and they quietly parted
to let her go her way alone, down to the water.  There she sat, not
daring to glance back at the temple where her fate was being decided,
but gazing out over the basin.

What now, she wondered.  If she was called back into the presence of the
Goddesses to be told she wasn't fit to make any decision concerning the
Reconciliation, she'd be quite happy with the judgement.  She'd leave
the problem in surer hands than hers, and return to the corridors around
the basin, where she might after a time reinvent herself, and come back
into this temple as a novice, ready to learn the way to fold light.  If,
on the other hand, she was simply shunned, as Jokalaylau dearly wanted,
if she was driven from this miraculous place back into the wilderness
outside, what would she do?  Without anyone to guide her, what knowledge
did she possess to help choose between the ways ahead?  None.  Her tears
dried after a time, but what came in their place was worse; a sense of
desolation that could only be Hell itself, or some neighbouring
province, divided from the main by infernal gaolers, and made to punish
women who had loved immoderately, and had lost perfection for want of a
little shame.

am

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

In his last letter to his son, written the night before he boarded a
ship bound for France - his mission to spread the gospel of the Tabula
Rasa across Europe - Roxborough, the scourge of Maestros, had set down
the substance of a nightmare from which he'd just woken.

I dreamed that I drove in my coach through the damnable streets of
Clerkenwell, he wrote.

I need not name my destination.  You know it, and you know too what
infamies were planned there.  As is the way in dreams, I was bereft of
self government for though I called out many times to the driver,
begging him, for my soul's sake, not to take me back to that de him.

As the coach house, my words had no power to persua turned the corner,
however, and the Maestro Sartori's house came in sight, Bellamare reared
up afftighted, and would go no further.  She was ever my favourite bay,
and I felt such a flood of gratitude towards her for refusing to carry
me to that anks unholy step that I climbed from the coach to speak my th

into her ear.

And lo!  as my foot touched the ground the cobbles spoke up I like
living things, their voices stony but raised in a hideous lamentation,
and at the sound of their anguish the very bricks

s and of the houses in that street, and the roofs and railing chimneys
all made similar cry, their voices joined in sorrowful testament to
Heaven.  I never heard a din its like, but I couldn't stop MY ears
against it, for was their pain not in some part of my making?  And I
heard them say:

Lord, we are but unbaptized things, and have no hopes to come into your
Kingdom, but we beseech you to bring some storm down upon us and grind
us into dust with your righteous thunder, that we may be scoured and
destroyed, and not suffer complicity with the deeds performed in our
sight.

My son, I marvelled at their clamour, and wept too, and was

ashamed, hearing them make this appeal to the Almighty, knowing that I
was a thousand times more accountable than they.  O!  how I wished my
feet might carry me away to some less odious place.  I swear at that
moment I would have judged the heart of a fiery furnace an agreeable
place, and lain MY head there with hosannas, rather than be where these
deeds had been done.  But I could not retreat.  On the contrary, my
mutinous limbs carried me to the very doorstep of that house.  There was
foamy blood upon the threshold, as though the martyrs had that night
marked the place so that the Angel of Destruction might find it, and
cause the earth to gape 'neath it, and commit it to the Abyss.  And from
within was a sound of idle chatter as the men I had known debated their
profane philosophies.

I went down on my knees in the blood, calling to those within to come
out and join me in begging forgiveness of the Almighty, but they scorned
me with much laughter, and called me coward and fool, and told me to go
on my way.  This I presently did, with much haste, and did escape the
street with the cobbles telling me I should go about my crusade without
fear of God's retribution, for I had turned my back on the sin of that
house.

That was my dream.  I am setting it down straightaway, and will have
this letter sent post haste, that you may be warned what harm there is
in that place, and not be tempted to enter Clerkenwell nor even stray
south of Islington while I am gone from you.  For my dream instructs me
that the street will be forfeit, in due course, for the crimes it has
entertained, and I would not wish one hair of your sweet head harmed for
the deeds I in my delirium committed against the edicts of Our Lord.
Though the Almighty did offer His only begotten Son to suffer and die
for our sins, I know that He would not ask that same sacrifice of me,
knowing that I am His humblest servant, and pray only to be made His
instrument until I quit this vale and go to Judgement.

May the Lord God keep you in His care until I embrace you again.

The ship Roxborough boarded a few hours after finishing this letter went
down a mile out of Dover harbour,

in a squall that troubled no other vessel in the vicinity, but
overturned the purger's ship and sank it in less than a minute.  All
hands were lost.

The day after the letter arrived, the recipient, still tearful with the
news, went to seek solace at the stables of his father's bay, Bellamare.
The horse had been jittery since her master's departure, and, though she
knew Roxborough's son well, kicked out at his approach, striking him in
the abdomen.  The blow was not instantly fatal, but with stomach and
spleen split wide, the youth was dead in six days.  Thus he preceded his
father, whose body was not washed up for another week, to the family
grave.

Pie'oh'pah had recounted this sorry story to Gentle as they'd travelled
from L'Himby to the Cradle of Chzercemit in search of Scopique.  it was
one of many tales the mystif had told on that journey, offering them not
as biographical details, though of course many of them were

precisely I that, but as entertainment, comedic, absurd or melancholy,8
that usually opened with. "I heard about this fellow once

Sometimes the stories were over and done within a few minutes, but Pie
had lingered over this one, repeating word for word the text of
Roxborough's letter, though to this day Gentle didn't know how the
mystif had come by it.  He understood why it had committed the prophecy
to memory, however, and why it had taken such trouble to repeat it for
Gentle.  it had half-believed there was some significance in
Roxborough's dream, and just as it had educated Gentle on other matters
pertaining to his concealed self, so it had told this tale to warn the
Maestro of dangers the future might bring.

That future was now.  As the hours since Monday's return crept on, and
Jude still didn't return, Gentle was reduced to picking his
recollections of Roxborough's letter apart, looking for some clue in the
purger's words as to what threat might be coming to the doorstep.  He
even wondered if the man who'd written the letter was

numbered amongst the revenants who by midmorning could be glimpsed in
the heat-haze.

Had Roxborough come back to watch the demise of the street he'd called
damnable?  If he had - if he listened at the step the way he had in his
dream he was most likely as frustrated as the occupants, wishing they'd
get on with the work he hoped would invite calamity.

But however many doubts Gentle harboured concerning Jude, he could not
believe she would conspire against the Great Work.  if she said that it
was unsafe then she had good reason for so saying, and, though every
sinew in Gentle's body raged at inactivity, he refused to go downstairs
and bring the stones up into the Meditation Room, for fear their very
presence tempt him into warming the circle.  Instead he waited, and
waited, and waited, while the heat outside rose and the air in the
Meditation Room grew sour with his frustration.  As Scopique had said, a
working like this required months of preparation, not hours, and now
even those hours were being steadily whiled away.  How late could he
afford to postpone the ceremony before he gave up on Jude, and began?
Until six?  Until nightfall?  It was an imponderable.

There were signs of unease outside the house as well as in.  Scarcely a
minute went by without a new siren being added to the chorus of whoops
and walls from every compass point.  Several times through the morning
bells began chiming from steeples in the vicinity, their peals neither
summons nor celebration but alarm.  There were even cries occasionally:
shouts and screams from distant streets carried to the open windows on
air now hot enough to make the dead sweat.

And then, just after one in the afternoon, Clem came up the stairs, with
his eyes wide.  It was Taylor who spoke, and there was excitement in his
voice.

"Somebody's come into the house, Gentle.. "Who?"       a

"A spirit of some kind, from the Dominions.  She's downstairs."

is it Jude?"

"No.  This is a real power.  Can't you smell her?  I know you've given
up women, but your nose still works, doesn't it?"

He led Gentle out on to the landing.  The house lay quiet below.  Gentle
sensed nothing.

"Where is she?" Clem looked puzzled.  she was here a moment ago, I

swear."       A Gentle went to the top of the stairs, but Clem held him

back.

"Angels first," he said, but Gentle was already beginning his descent,
relieved that the torpor of the last few hours was over, and eager to
meet this visitor.  Perhaps she carried a message from Jude.

The front door stood open.  There was a pool of beer glinting on the
step, but no sign of Monday.

"Where's the boy?" Gentle asked.

"He's outside, sky-watching.  He says he saw a flying saucer."

Gentle threw his companions a quizzical look.  Clem didn't reply, but
laid his hand on Gentle's shoulder, his eyes going to the door of the
dining room.  From inside came the barely audible sound of sobbing.

"Mama," Gentle said, and gave up any caution, hurrying down the rest of
the flight with Clem in pursuit.

By the time he reached Celestine's room the sound of her sobs had
already disappeared.

Gentle drew a defensive breath, took hold of the handle, and put his
shoulder to the door.  It wasn't locked, but swung open smoothly,
delivering him inside.

The room was ill lit, the drooping, mildewed curtains still heavy enough
to keep the sun to a few dusty beams.  They fell on the empty mattress
in the middle of the floor.  Its sometime occupant, whom Gentle had not
expected to see standing again, was at the other end of the room, her
tears subsided to whimpers.  She had brought one of the sheets from her
bed with her, and seeing her son enter, drew it up to her breastbone.

Then she turned her attention back towards the wall she was standing
close to, and studied it.

A pipe had burst somewhere behind the brick, Gentle supposed.  He could
hear water running freely.

"It's all right, Mama," he said.. "Nothing's going to hurt you.,

Celestine didn't reply.  She'd raised her left hand in front of her face
and was looking at the palm, as if into a mirror.

"It's still here," Clem said.

"Where?" Gentle asked him.

He nodded in the direction of Celestine, and Gentle instantly left his
side, opening his arms as he went to offer the haunted air a fresh
target.

"Come on," he said.. "Wherever you are.  Come on." Halfway between the
door and his mother he felt a cool drizzle strike his face, so fine it
was invisible.  Its touch was not unpleasant.  In fact it was
refreshing, and he let out an appreciative gasp.

"It's raining in here," he said.

"It's the Goddess," Celestine replied.

She looked up from studying her hand, which Gentle now saw was running
with water, as though a spring had appeared in her palm.

"What Goddess?" Gentle asked her.

"Uma Umagammagi," his mother replied.

"Why were you crying, Mama?. "I thought I was dying.  I thought She'd
come to take me.. "But She hasn't.. "I'm still here, child.. "Then what
does She want?" Celestine extended her arm to Gentle.

"She wants us to make peace," she said.. "Join me in the

waters, child."

Gentle took hold of his mother's hand, and she drew him towards her,
turning her face up towards the rain as she did so.  The last traces of
her tears were being washed

d

dearly.

away, and a look of ecstasy appeared where there had been grief.  Gentle
felt

it too.  His eyes wanted to flicker closed; his body wanted to swoon.
But he

resisted the rain's blandishments, tempting as they were.  if it carried
some

message for him he needed to know it quickly, and end these delays
before

they cost the Reconciliation

"Tell me .  .  he said, as he came to his mother's side, ...  whether
you're here

to stay, tell me .  .

But the rain made no reply; at least none that he could grasp.  Perhaps
his

mother heard more than he did, however, because there were smiles on her

glistening face, and her grip on Gentle's hand became more possessive.
She

let the sheet she'd held to her bosom drop, so that the rains could
stroke her

breasts and belly, and Gentle's gaze took full account of her nakedness.
The

wounds she'd sustained in her struggles with Dowd and Sartori still
marked

her body, but they only served to prove her erfection, and although he
knew

the felony here, he p

couldn't stem his feelings.

She put her free hand up to her face and with thumb and forefingers

emptied the shallow pools of her sockets, then once again opened her
eyes.

They found Gentle too quickly for him to conceal himself, and he felt a
shock

as their looks met, not just because she read his desire, but because he
found

the same in her face.

He wrested his hand from hers, and backed away, his tongue fumbling

with denials.  She was far less abashed than he.  Her eyes remained
fixed on

him, and she called him back into the rain with words of invitation so
soft

they were barely more than sighs.  When he continued to retreat, she
turned

to more specific exhortations:

"The Goddess wants to know you," she said.. "She needs to understand

your purpose."

"My ...  Father's ...  business," Gentle replied, the words as much
defence as

explanation, shielding him from this seduction with the weight of his

purpose.

But the Goddess, if that was what this rain really was,

wouldn't be shaken off so easily.  He saw a look of distress cross his
mother's face as the va pours deserted her to move in pursuit of him

They passed through a spear of sun as they came, and threw out rainbows.

"Don't be afraid of Her," Gentle heard Clem say behind him.. "You've got
nothing to hide."

Perhaps this was true, but he kept on retreating nevertheless, as much
from his mother as from the vapour, until he felt the comfort of his
angels at his back.

"Guard me," he told them, his voice tremulous.  Clem wrapped his arms
around Gentle's shoulders.. "It's a woman, Maestro," he murmured. "Since
when were you afraid of women?"

"Since always," Gentle replied.. "Hold on, for Christ's sake."

Then the rain broke against their faces, and Clem let out a sigh of
pleasure as its languor enclosed them

Gentle seized hard hold of his protector's arms, his fingers digging
deep, but if the rain had the sinew to detach him from Clem's embrace it
didn't attempt to do so.  It lingered around their heads for no more
than thirty seconds, then simply passed away through the open door.  As
soon as it had gone Gentle turned to Clem.

"Nothing to hide, eh?" he said.. "I don't think She believed you.,

"Are you hurt?"

"No, She just got inside my head.  Why does every damn thing want to get
inside my head?"

"It must be the view," Tay remarked, grinning with his lover's lips.

"She only wanted to know if your purpose was pure, child," Celestine
said.

"Pure?" Gentle said, staring at his mother venomously.

"What right has She got to judge me?"

"What you call your Father's business is the business of every soul in
the Imajica."

She had not yet claimed her modesty from the floor, and as she
approached him, he averted his eyes.

"Cover yourself, Mother," he said.. "For God's sake,

cover yourself."

Then he turned and headed out into the hallway, calling after the
intruder as he went.

"Wherever you are," he yelled. "I want you out of this house!  Clem,
look downstairs, I'll go up."

He pelted up the flight, his fury mounting at the thought of this spirit
invading the Meditation Room.  The door stood open.  Little Ease was
cowering in the corner

when he entered.

"Where is She?" Gentle demanded.. "Is She here?"

"Is who here?"

Gentle didn't reply, but went from wall to wall like a prisoner, beating
his palms against them.  There was no sound of running water from the
brick, however, nor any drizzle, however fine, in the air.  Content that
the room was free of the visitor's taint, he returned to the door.

"If it starts raining in here," he said to Little Ease, 'yell

blue murder.. "Any colour you like, Liberatore."

Gentle slammed the door and headed along the landing, searching all the
rooms in the same manner.  Finding them empty he climbed the last flight
and went through 4 the rooms above.  Their air was bone-dry.  But as he
started back down the stairs he heard laughter from the street.  It was
Monday, though the sound he was making was lighter than Gentle had ever
heard from his lips before.

Suspicious of this music he picked up the speed of his descent, meeting
Clem at the bottom of the stairs telling him the rooms were empty below,
then racing across the hallway to the front door.

Monday had been busy with his chalks since Gentle had last crossed the
threshold.  The pavement at the bottom of the steps was covered with his
designs: not copies of glamour girls this time but elaborate
abstractions that spilled over the kerb and on to the sun softened
tarmac.  The artist had left off his work, however, and was now standing
in the middle of the street.  Gentle

T

recognized the language of his body instantly.  Head thrown back, eyes
closed, he was bathing in the ai r.

"Monday!'

But the boy didn't hear.  He continued to luxuria the in this unction,
the water running over his close-cropped skull like rippling fingers,
and he might have gone on bathing until he drowned in it had Gentle's
approach not driven the Goddess off.  The rain went from the air in a
heartbeat, and Monday's eyes opened.  He squinted against the sky, his
laughter faltering.

"Where'd the rain go?" he said.

"There was no rain."

"What do you call this, Boss?" Monday said, proffering arms from which
the last of the waters still ran.

"Take it from me, it wasn't rain."

"Whatever it was, it was fine by me," Monday said.  He hauled his sodden
T-shirt up over his head, and used it as a mop to wipe his face.. "Are
you all right, Boss?" Gentle was scanning the street, looking for some
sign of the Goddess.

"I will be," he said.. "You go back to work, huh?  You haven't decorated
the door yet."

"What do you want on it?"

"You're the artist," Gentle said, distracted from the conversation by
the state of the street.

He hadn't realized until now how full of presences it had become, the
revenants not simply occupying the pavement, but hovering in the wilted
foliage like hanged men, or keeping their vigils on the eaves.  They
were benign enough, he thought.  They had good reason to wish him well
in this endeavour.  Half a year ago, on the night he and Pie had left on
their travels, the mystif had given Gentle a grim lesson in the pain
that the spirits of this and every other Dominion suffered.

"No spirit is happy," Pie had said.. "They haunt the doors, waiting to
leave, but there's nowhere for them to go." But hadn't there been some
hope mooted then, that at the end of the journey ahead lay a solution to
the anguish

of the dead?  Pie had known that solution even then, and must have
longed to call Gentle Reconciler, and tell him that the wit lay
somewhere in his head to open the doors at which the dead stood waiting,
and let them into Heaven.

"Be patient," he murmured, knowing the revenants heard.. "It'll be soon,
I swear.  It'll be soon."

is f

The sun was drying the Goddess's rain from h  ace,

and, happy to stay out in the heat until he was dry, he wandered away
from the house, while Monday resumed his whistling on the step.  What a
place this had become, Gentle thought.  Angels in the house behind him,
lascivious rains in the street, ghosts in the trees.  And he, the
Maestro, wandering amongst them, ready to do the deed that would change
their worlds forever.  There would never be such a day again.

His optimistic mood darkened, however, as he approached the end of the
street, for other than the sound of his footsteps, and the shrill noise
of Monday's whistle, the world was absolutely quiet.  The alarms that
had raised such a din earlier in the day were now hushed.  No bell rang,
no voice cried out.  It was as if all life beyond this thoroughfare had
taken a vow of silence.  He picked up his pace.  Either his agitation
was contagious, or else the revenants that lingered at the end of the
street were more jittery than those closer to the house.  They milled
around, their numbers, and perhaps their unease, sufficient to disturb
the baked dust in the gutter.  They made no attempt to impede his
progress, but parted like a cold curtain, allowing him to step over the
invisible boundary 111 of Gamut Street.  He looked in both directions.
The dogs that had gathered here for a time had gone; the birds had
fled every eave and telephone wire.  He held his breath, 4 and listened
through the whine in his head for some evidence of life: an engine, a
siren, a shout.  But there was nothing.  His unease now profound, he
glanced back into Gamut Street.  Loath though he was to leave it, he
supposed it would be safe while the revenants remained

at the perimeter.  Though they were too insubstantial to protect the
street from attackers, it was doubtful that anyone would dare enter
while they milled and churned at the corner.  Taking that small comfort,
he headed towards Gray's Inn Road, his walk becoming a run as he went.
The heat was less welcome now.  It made his legs heavy and his lungs
burn.  But he didn't slacken his pace until he reached the intersection.
Gray's Inn Road and High Holborn were two of the citys major conduits.

Had he stood at this corner on the coldest December midnight there would
have been some traffic upon one or the other.

But there was nothing now; nor was there a murmur from any street,
square, alleyway or circus within earshot.  The sphere of influence that
had left Gamut Street untrammelled for two centuries had apparently
spread, and if the citizens of London were still in residence they were
keeping clear of this harrowed terrain.

And yet, despite the silence, the air was not un freighted  There was
something else upon it, which kept Gentle from turning on his heel and
wandering back to Gamut Street: a smell so subtle that the tang of
cooking asphalt almost overwhelmed it, but so unmistakable he could not
ignore even the traces that came his way.

He lingered at the corner, waiting for another gust of wind.  It came
after a time, confirming his suspicions.  There was only one source for
this sickly perfume, and only one man in this city - no, in this
Dominion - who had access to that source.

The In Ovo had been opened again, and this time the beasts that had been
called forth were not the nonsense stuff he'd encountered at the Tower.
These were of another magnitude entirely.  He'd seen and smelt their
like only once, two hundred years before, and they'd done incalculable
mischief.  Given that the breeze was so languid, their scent could not
be coming all the way from Highgate.

Sartori and his legion were considerably closer than that.  Perhaps ten
streets away; perhaps two; perhaps about to turn the corner of Gray's
Inn Road and come in sight.

There was no time left for prevarication.  Whatever danger Jude had
discovered, or believed she'd discovered, it was notional.  This scent,
on the other hand, and the entities that oozed it, were not.  He could
not afford to delay his final preparations any longer.  He forsook his
watching place, and started back towards the house as though these
hordes were already on his heels.  The revenants scattered as he rounded
the corner and raced down the street.  Monday was working on the door,
but he dropped his colours as he heard the Maestro's

summons.

"It's time, boy!" Gentle yelled, mounting the steps in a single bound.
"Start bringing the stones upstairs.. "We're starting?"

"We're starting."

Monday grinned, whooped and ducked into the house, leaving Gentle to
pause and admire what now adorned the door.  it was just a sketch as
yet, but the boy's draughtsmanship was sufficient for his purpose.  He'd
drawn an enormous eye, with beams of light emanating from it in all
directions.  Gentle stepped into the house, pleased at the thought that
this burning gaze would greet anyone, friend or toe, who came to the
threshold.  Then he closed the door, and bolted it.  When I next step
out, he thought, the work of my Father will be done.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Whatever debates and quarrels went on in Uma Urnagarmnagi's temple while
Jude waited on the shore, they brought the procession of postulants to a
halt.  The tide carried no more women or children to the shore, and
after a time the waters became subdued, and finan y becalmed, as if
their inspiring forces were so preoccupied that all other matters had
become inconsequential.  Without a watch Jude could only guess at how
long a time passed while she waited, but occasional glances up at the
Comet showed her that it was to be measured in hours rather than
minutes.  Did the Goddesses fully comprehend how urgent a business this
was, she wondered, or had the ages They'd spent in captivity and exile
so slowed Their sensibilities that Their debate might last days and They
not realize how much time had passed?

She blamed herself for not making the urgency of this more plain to
Them.  The day would be creeping on in the Fifth, and even if Gentle had
been persuaded to postpone his preparations for a time, he would not do
so indefinitely.

Nor could she blame him.  All he had was a message - brought by a less
than reliable courier - that things were not safe.  That wouldn't be
enough to make him put the Reconciliation in jeopardy.  He hadn't seen
the horrors she'd seen in the Boston Bowl, so he had no real
comprehension of what was at stake here.  He was, in her own words,
about his Father's business, and the possibility that such business
might mark the end of the Imajica was surely very far from his mind.

She was twice distracted from these melancholy thoughts.  The first time
when a young girl came down to the shore to offer her something to eat
and drink, which she gratefully accepted.  The second when nature

called and she was obliged to scout around the island for a sheltered
place to squat and empty her bladder.  To be shy about passing water in
this place was of course absurd and she knew it, but she was still a
woman of the Fifth, however many miracles she'd seen.  Maybe she'd learn
to become blithe about such functions eventually, but it would take
time.

As she returned from the place she'd found amongst the rocks, lighter by
a bladderful, the song at the temple door, which had dropped away to a
murmur and disappeared a long time before, began again.  Instead of
going back to her place of vigil she headed on round the temple to the
door, her stride lent spring by the sight of the waters in the basin,
which were stirring from their inertia and once again breaking against
the shore.  it seemed the Goddesses had made Their decision.  She wanted
to hear the news as soon as possible, of course, but she couldn't help
but feel a little like an accused woman returning into a courtroom.

There was an air of expectancy amongst those at the door.  Some of the
women were smiling, others looked grim.  If they had any knowledge of
the judgement they were interpreting it in radically different ways

"Should I go in? "Jude asked the woman who'd brought her food.

The other nodded vigorously, though Jude suspected she simply wanted to
expedite a process which had delayed them all.  Jude stepped back
through the water curtain and into the temple.  it had changed.  Though
the   4 sense that her inner and outer sights were here united was as
strong as ever, what they perceived was far less reassuring than it had
been.  There was no sign of the 4 origami light, nor of the bodies these
forms had been I derived from.  She was, it seemed, the sole
representative of the fleshly here, and scrutinized by an incandescence
far less tender than Uma Umagammagi's gaze had been.

She squinted against it, but her lids and lashes could do little to
mellow a light that burned in her head rather

than her cornea.  Its blaze intimidated her, and she wanted to retreat
before it, but the thought that Uma Umagammagi's consolation lay
somewhere in its midst kept her from doing so.

"Goddess?" she ventured.

"We're here," Umagammagi said.

"We're here together," came the reply. "Jokalaylau, TishalulM and
myself."

As the roll was called Jude began to distinguish shapes within the
brilliance.  They were not the inexhaustible glyphs she'd last seen in
this place.  What she saw suggested not abstractions but sinuous human
forms, hovering in the air above her.

This was a strange turnabout, she thought.  Why, when she'd previously
been able to share the essential natures of Jokalaylau and Urna
Umagammagi, was she now being presented with lowlier faces?  It didn't
augur well for the exchange ahead.  Had They clothed Themselves in
trivial matter because They'd decided she wasn't worthy to lay eyes on
the truth of Them?  She concentrated hard to grasp the details of Their
appearance, but either her sight wasn't sophisticated enough, or They
were resisting her.  Whichever, she could hold only impressions in her
head: that They were naked, that Their eyes were incandescent, that
Their bodies tan with water.

"Do you see Us?" Jude heard a voice she didn't recognize - TishalulWs,
she presumed - ask.

"Yes, of course," she said.. "But not ...  not completely.. "Didn't I
tell you?" Uma Urnagammagi said.

"Tell me what? "Jude wanted to know, then realized the remark wasn't
directed at her, but at the other Goddesses.

"It's extraordinary," said TishaluU.

The pliancy of Her voice was seductive, and as Jude attended to it Her
nebulous form became more particular, the syllables bringing sight along
with them.  Her face was Oriental in cast, and without a trace of colour
in cheek or lip or lash.

Yet what should have been bland was instead exquisitely subtle, its
symmetry and its curves delineated

by the light that flickered in Her eyes.  Below its calm, Her body was
another matter entirely.

Her entire length was covered by what Jude at first took to be tattoos
of some kind, following the sweep of Her anatomy.  But the more she
studied the woman - and she did so without embarrassment - the more she
saw movement in these marks.  They weren't on Her, but in Her; thousands
of tiny flaps opening and closing rhythmically.  There were several
shoals of them, she saw, each swept by independent waves of motion.  One
rose up from Her groin, where the inspiration of them all had its place,
others swept down Her limbs, out to Her fingertips and toes, the motion
of each shoal converging every ten or fifteen seconds, at which point a
second substance seemed to spring from these slits, forming the Goddess
afresh in front of Jude's astonished eyes.

"I think you should know that I've met your Gentle," TishaluU said.. "I
embraced him, in the Cradle."

"He's not mine any longer," Jude replied.

"Do you care, Judith?"

"Of course she doesn't care," came Jokalaylau's response.. "She's got
his brother to keep her bed warm.  The Autarch.  The butcher of
Yzordderrex."

Jude turned her gaze towards the Goddess of the High Snows.  The
particulars of Her form were more elusive than Tishalul16's had been,
but Jude was determined to know what She looked like, and fixed Her gaze
on the spiral of cold flame that burned in Her core, watching until it
spat bright arcs out against the limits of Jokalay lau's body.  The
light of this collision was brief, but by it Jude got her glimpse.  An
imperious Negress, Her blazing eyes heavy-lidded, hovered there, Her
hands crossed at the wrist then turned back on themselves to knit their
fingers.  She was not, after all, such a terrifying sight.

s But sensing that Her face had been found, the Goddes responded with a
sudden transformation.  Her lush features were mummified in a
heart-beat, Her eyes sinking

away, Her lips withering and retracting.  Worms devoured the tongue that
poked between Her teeth.

Jude let out a cry of revulsion, and the eyes re-ignited in Jokalaylau's
sockets, the wormy mouth gaping as hard laughter rose from Her throat
and echoed around the temple.

"She's not so remarkable, sister," Jokalaylau said.. "Look at her
shake."

"Let her alone," Uma Umagammagi replied.. "Why must You a ways be
testing people?"

"We've endured because We've faced the worst and survived," Jokalaylau
replied.. "This one would have died in the snow."

"I doubt that," Uma Umagammagi said.. "Sweet Judith Still shaking, Jude
took a moment to respond.

"I'm not afraid of death," she said to Jokalaylau.. "Or cheap tricks."
Again, Uma Umagammagi spoke.

"Judith," she said, 'look at Me.. "I just want her to under stan "Sweet
Judith.  .

I'm not going to be bullied." ...  look at Me."

Now Jude did so, and this time there was no need to pierce the
ambiguities.  The Goddess appeared to Jude without challenge or labour,
and the sight was a paradox.  Uma Umagammagi was an ancient, Her body so
withered it was almost sexless, Her hairless skull subtly elongated, Her
tiny eyes so wreathed in creases they were barely more than gleams.  But
the beauty of Her glyph was here in this flesh: its ripples, its
flickers, its ceaseless, effortless motion.

"Do you see, now?" Uma Umagammagi said.

"Yes, I see.. "We haven't forgotten the flesh We had," She said to Jude.
"We've known the frailties of your condition.  We remember its pains and
discomforts.  We know what it is

to be wounded: in the heart, in the head, in the womb.. "I see that,"
Jude said.

"Nor would We have trusted you with knowledge of Our frailty, unless We
believed that you might one day be amongst Us.. "Amongst you?"

"Some divinities arise from the collective will of peoples; some are
made in the heat of stars; some are abstractions.  But some - dare we
say the finest, the most loving?  - are the higher minds of living
souls.  We are such divinities, sister, and Our memories of the lives We
lived and the deaths We died are still sharp.  We understand you, sweet
Judith, and We don't accuse you.

"Not even Jokalaylau?" Jude said.

The Goddess of the High Snows made Herself apparent in Her length and
breadth, showing Jude Her entire form in a single glance.  There was a
paleness moving beneath Her skin, and Her eyes, that had been so
luminous, were dark.

But they were fixed on Jude.  She felt the stare like A a stab.

"I want you to see," she said, 'what the Father of the father of the
child in you did to My devotees.,

Jude recognized the paleness now.  It was a blizzard, driven through the
Goddess's form by pain, and pricking every part of Her.  Its drifts were
mountainous, but at Jokalaylau's behest they moved, and uncovered the
site of an atrocity.

The bodies of women lay frozen where 1A they'd fallen, their eyes carved
out, their breasts taken off.  Some lay close to smaller bodies:
violated children, dismembered babies.

"This is a little part of a little part of what He did," Jokalaylau
said.

Appalling as the sight was, Jude didn't flinch this time, but stared on
at the horror until Jokalaylau drew a cold shroud back over it.

"What are you asking me to do?" Jude said.. "Are you telling me I should
add another body to the heap?

Another child?" She laid her hand on her belly.. "This child?"

She hadn't realized until now how covetous she felt of the soul she was
nurturing.

'it belongs to the butcher," Jokalaylau said.

"No," Jude quietly replied.. "It belongs to me."

"You'll be responsible for its works?"

"Of course," she said, strangely exhilarated by this promise.. "Bad can
be made from good, Goddess; whole thin s from broken."

She wondered as she spoke if They knew where these sentiments
originated; whether They understood that she was turning the
Reconciler's philosophies to her own maternal ends.  if They did, They
seemed not to think less of her for it.

"Then Our spirits go with you, sister," TishaluI16 said.. "Are You
sending me away again?" Jude asked.. "You came here looking for an
answer, and we can provide it."

"We understand the urgency of this," Uma Umagammagi said.. "And We
haven't held you here without cause.  I've been across the Dominions
while you waited, looking for some clue to this puzzle.  There are
Maestros waiting in every Dominion to undertake the Reconciliatio. "Then
Gentle didn't begin?"

"No.  He's waiting for your word."

"And what should I tell him?"

"I've searched their hearts, looking for some plot

"Did you find any?"

"No.  They're not pure, of course.  Who is?  But all of them want the
Imajica whole.  All of them believe the working they're ready to perform
can succeed.. "Do You believe it too?"

"Yes, We do," said Tishalulli.. "Of course they don't realize they're
completing the circle.

If they did, perhaps they'd think again."

"Why?"

"Because the circle belongs to our sex, not to theirs," Jokalaylau put
in.

"Not true," Uma Umagammagi said.. "It belongs to any mind that cares to
conceive it."

"Men are incapable of conceiving, sister," Jokalaylau replied.  'or
hadn't you heard?"

Uma Umagammagi smiled.. "Even that may change, if We can coax them from
their terrors."

Her words begged so many questions, and She knew it.  Her eyes fixed on
Jude, and She said:

"We'll have time for these works, when you come back.  But now, I know
you need to be fleet."

"Tell Gentle to be a Recondler," Tish aluM said.. "But share nothing that
We've said with him."

"Do I have to be the one to tell him?" Jude said to Uma Umagammagi.. "If
You've been there once, can't You go again and give him the news?  I
want to stay here.. "We understand.  But he's in no mood to trust Us,
believe Me.

Th e message must come from you, in the flesh."

"I see," Jude said.

There was no room for persuasion, it seemed.  She had the plain answer
she'd come here hoping to find.  Now she had to return to the Fifth with
it, unpalatable as that journey would be.

"May I ask one question before I go?" she said.

"Ask it," said Uma Umagammagi.

"Why did You show Yourselves to me this way?" it was TishalulM who
replied:

"So that you'll know Us when We come to sit at your table, or walk
beside you in the street," she said.

"Will you come to the Fifth?. "Perhaps, in time.  We'll have work there,
when the Reconciliation's achieved."

Jude imagined the transformations she'd seen outside wrought in London:
Mother Thames climbing her banks, depositing the filth she'd been choked
by in Whitehall and the Mall, then sweeping through the city, making

its squares into swimming pools, and its cathedrals into playgrounds.
The thought made her light.

"I'll be waiting for you," she said, and, thanking Them, made her
departure.

When she got outside the waters were waiting for her, the surf lush as
pillows.  She didn't delay, but went straight down the beach, and threw
herself into its comfort.  This time there was no need to swim; the tide
knew its business.  It picked her up and carried her across the basin
like a foamy chariot, delivering her back to the rocks from which she'd
first taken her plunge.  Lotti Yap and Paramarola had gone, but finding
her way out of the palace would be easier now than when she'd first
arrived.

The waters had been at work on many of the corridors and chambers that
ran around the basin, and on the courtyards beyond, opening up vistas of
glittering pools and fountains that stretched to the rubble of the
palace gates.  The air was clearer than it had been, and she could see
the Kesparates spread below.  She could even see the harbour, and the
sea at its walls, its own tide longing, no doubt to share this
enchantment.

She made her way back to the staircase, to find that the waters that had
carried her here had receded from the bottom, leaving heaps of flotsam
and jetsam behind.  Pi eking through it, like a beachcomber granted her
paradise, was Lotti Yap, and sitting on the lower steps, chatting to
Paramarola, Hoi-Polloi Peccable.

After they'd greeted each other, Hoi-Polloi explained how she'd
prevaricated before committing herself to the river that had separated
her from Jude.  Once she jumped in, however, it had carried her safely
through the palace and delivered her to this spot.  Minutes later it had
been called to other duties, and disappeared.

"We'd pretty much given up on you," said Lotti Yap.  She was busy
plucking the petitions and prayers from amongst the trash, unfolding
them, scanning them, then pocketing them.. "Did you get to see the
Goddesses?. "Yes I did."

"Are They beautiful?" Paramarola asked.

"In a way.. "Tell us every detail." I haven't time.  I have to get back
to the Fifth.. "You got your answer then," Lotti said.

"I did.  And we've got nothing to fear."

"Didn't I tell you?" she replied.. "Everything's well with the world."

As Jude started to pick her way through the debris, Hoi-Polloi said:
"Can two of us go?"

"I thought you were going to wait with us," Paramarola said.

"I'll come back and see the Goddesses," Hoi-Polloi replied.. "I'd like
to see the Fifth before everything changes.  it is going to change,
isn't it?"

Yes, it is," Jude said.

Do you want something to read on your travels?" Lotti asked them,
proffering a fistful of petitions.. "It's amazing what people write."

"All those should go to the island," Jude said.. "Take them with you.
Leave them at the temple door."

"But the Goddesses can't answer every prayer," Lotti said.. "Lost
lovers, crippled children .  .

."

"Don't be so sure," Jude told her.. "It's going to be a new day- Then,
with Hoi-Polloi at her side, she made the hour's second round of
farewells, and headed away in the general direction of the gate.

"Do you really believe what you said to Lotti?" Hoi Polloi asked her when
they'd left the staircase far behind.. "Is tomorrow going to be so
different from today?. "One way or another," Jude said.

The reply was more ambiguous than she'd intended, but then perhaps her
tongue was wiser than it knew.  Though she was going from this holy
place with the word of powers far more discerning than she, Their
reassurance could not quite erase the memory of the Bowl in Oscar's

treasure room, and the prophecy of dust it had shown her.

She silently admonished herself for her lack of faith.  Where did this
seam of arrogance come from, that she could doubt the wisdom of Unia
Umagaminagi Herself?  From now on, she had put such ambivalence away.
Maybe tomorrow, or some blissful day after, she'd meet the Goddesses on
the streets of the Fifth and tell Them that even after Their comforts
she'd still nursed some ridiculous nub of doubt.

But for today she'd bow to their wisdoms, and return to the Reconciler
as a bearer of good news.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Gentle wasn't the only occupant of the house in Gamut Street who'd smelt
the In Ovo on the late afternoon breeze; so had one who'd once been a
prisoner in that hell between Dominions: Little Ease.  When Gentle had
returned to the Meditation Room having set Monday the task of bringing
the stones up the stairs, and sent Clem around the house securing it, he
found his sometime tormentor up at the window.

There were tears on its cheeks, and its teeth were chattering
uncontrollably.

"He's coming, isn't he?" it said.. "Did you see him, Liberatore?"

"Yes he is and no I didn't," Gentle said.. "Don't look so terrified,
Easy.  I'm not going to let him lay a finger on you." The creature put
on its wretched grin, but with its teeth in such motion the effect was
grotesque.

"You sound like my mother," it said.. "Every night she used to tell me:
nothing's going to hurt you, nothing's going to hurt you.. "I remind you
of your mother?"

"Give or take a tit," Little Ease replied.. "She was no 3.  beauty, it
has to be said.  But all my fathers loved her." There was a din from
downstairs, and the creature jumped.

"It's all right," Gentle told him.. "It's just Clem closing the
shutters."

"I want to be some use.  What can I do?. "You can do what you're doing.
Watch the street.

If you see anything out there. "I know.  Scream blue murder."

With the windows shuttered below, the house was

thrown into a sudden dusk, in which Clem, Monday and

Gentle laboured without word or pause.  By the time all the stones had
been fetched up the stairs the day outside had also dwindled into
twilight, and Gentle found Little Ease leaning out of the window,
stripping fistfuls of leaves from the tree outside and flinging them
back into the room.  When he asked what it was up to it explained that
with evening fallen, the street was invisible through the foliage, so it
was clearing it away.

"When I begin the Reconciliation maybe you should keep watch from the
floor above," Gentle suggested.

"Whatever you suggest, Liberatore," Little Ease said.  it slid down from
the sill and stared up at him.. "But before I go, if you don't mind, I
have a little request," it said.

"Yes?. "It's delicate.. "Don't be afraid.  Ask it."

"I know you're about to start the working, and I think this may be the
last time I have the honour of your company.  When the Reconciliation's
achieved you'll be a great man.  I don't mean to say you're not one
already it added hurriedly, '- you are, of course.  But after tonight
everyone will know you're the Reconciler, and you did what Christos
Himself couldn't do.  You'll be made Pope, and you'll write your memoirs
-' Gentle laughed '- and I'll never see you again.  And that's as it
should be.  That's right and proper.  But before you become hopelessly
famous and fed, I wondered, would you ...  bless me?"

"Bless you?"

Little Ease raised its long-fingered hands to ward off the rejection it
thought was coming.

"I understand!  I understand!" it said.. "You've already been kind to me
beyond measure

"It's not that," said Gentle, going down on his haunches in front of the
creature the way he had when its head had been beneath Jude's heel. "I'd
do it if I could.  But Ease, I don't know how.  I'm not a Messiah.  I've
never

had a ministry, I've never preached a gospel, or raised the dead."
"You've got your disciples," Little Ease said.

"No.  I've had some friends who've endured me, and some mistresses
who've humoured me.

But I've never had the power to inspire.  I frittered it away on
seductions.  I don't have the right to bless anybody." Fm sorry," the
creature said.. "I won't mention it again." Then it did again what it
had done when Gentle had set it free: took his hand, and laid its brow
upon his palm.. "I'm ready to die for you, Liberatore."

m hoping that won't be necessary." Little Ease looked up.

"Between us," it said, 'so am U its oath made, it returned to gathering
up the leaves it had deposited on the floor, putting plugs of them up
its nose to stop the stench.  But Gentle told it to let the rest lie.
The scent of the sap was sweeter than the smell that would permeate the
house if, or rather when, Sartori arrived.  At the mention of the enemy,
Little Ease hoisted itself back up on to the sill.

"Any sign?" Gentle asked it.

"Not that I see."

"But what do you feel?. "Ah," it said, looking up through the canopy of
leaves.. "It's such a beautiful night, Liberatore.

But he's going to try and spoil it.. "I think you're right.  Stay here a
while longer, will you?  I want to go round the house with Clem.  if you
see anythin. "They'll hear mein' L'Himby," Ease promised.

The beast was as good as its word.  Gentle hadn't reached the bottom of
the stairs when it set up a din so loud it brought dust from the
rafters.  Yelling for Monday and Clem to make sure all the doors were
bolted, Gentle started up the stairs again, reaching the summit in time.
to see the door of the Meditation Room flung open and Little Ease

ever warning the creature was trying to offer, it was incomprehensible.
Gentle didn't try and interpret it, but raced towards the room, drawing
his breath in readiness to drive Sartori's invaders out.  The window was
empty when he entered, but the circle was not.  Within the ring of
stones two forms were un knotting themselves.  He'd never seen the
phenomenon of passage from this perspective before, and he stood as much
aghast as awed.  There were too many raw surfaces in this process for
comfortable viewing.  But he studied the forms with mounting excitement,
certain long before they were reconstituted that one of the travellers
was Jude.  The other, when she appeared, was a cross-eyed girl of
seventeen or so, who fell to her knees sobbing with terror and relief
the moment her muscles were her own again.  Even Jude, who'd made this
journey four times now, was shaking violently, and would have fallen
when she stepped from the circle had Gentle not caught her up.

"The In Ovo.  .  ." she gasped, '.  .  .  almost had us.  .  Her leg had
been gouged from knee to ankle.

felt teeth in me .  .

"You're all right," Gentle said.. "You've still got two legs.

Clem!  Clem!' He was already at the door, with Monday in pursuit.

"Have we got something to bind this up?" Of course!  I'll go

"No," said Jude.. "Take me down.  This is no floor to bleed

on."

Monday was left to comfort Hoi-Polloi,while Clem and Gentle carried Jude
to the door.

"I've never seen the In Ovo like that before," she said.  crazy .  .

"Sartori's been in," Gentle said.. "Finding himself an

army.. "He certainly stirred them up.. "We were about to give up on
you," Clem said.

Jude raised her head.  Her skin was waxen with sho,

and her smile too tentative to be joyful.  But it was there, at least.

"Never give up on the messenger," she said.. "Especially  if she's
got good news."

It was three hours and four minutes to midnight, and there wasn't time
for a lengthy exchange, but Gentle wanted some explanation however brief
- of what had taken Jude to Yzordderrex.  So she was made comfortable in
the front room, which Monday's scavengings had furnished with pillows,
foodstuffs and even magazines, and there, while Clem bound her leg and
foot, she did her best to encapsulate all that had happened to her since
she'd left the Retreat.

it didn't make easy telling, and there were a couple of occasions when
she attempted to describe scenes in Yzordderrex, and simply gave up,
saying that she knew no words to describe what she'd witnessed and felt.
Gentle listened without once interrupting her, though his expression
grew grimmer when she told of how Uma Umagammagi had passed through the
Dominions, seeking out the Synod to be certain their motives were pure.

When she was finished he said:

"I was in Yzordderrex too.  It's changed quite a bit."

"For the better," Jude said.

"I don't like ruin, however picturesque it is," Gentle replied.

Jude eyed him strangely at this, but she said nothing.

"Are we safe here?" Hoi-Polloi said, addressing nobody in particular.
"It's so dark."

"Course we're safe," Monday said, putting his arm around the girl's
shoulders.. "We got the whole fuckin'

place sealed up.  He's not going to get in, is he, Boss?"

1W

Ito?" Jude asked.

"Sartori," said Monday.

'is he somewhere in the vicinity?"

Gentle's silence was reply enough.

"And you think a few locks are going to keep him out?"

"Won't they?" said Hoi-Polloi.

"Not if he wants to get in," Jude said.

"He won't," Gentle replied.. "When the Reconciliation begins there's
going to be a flow of power through this house ...  my Father's power.

.

The thought was as distasteful to Jude as Gentle assumed it would be to
Sartori, but her response was subtler than revulsion.

"He's your brother," she reminded him.. "Don't be so sure he won't want
a taste of what's in here.  And if he does, he'll come and get it." He
stared hard at her.

"Are we talking about power here, or you?" Jude took a moment before
replying.  Then she said. "Both.,

Gentle shrugged.. "If that happens you'll make your decision," he said.
"You've made them before, and you've been wrong.  Maybe it's time to
have a little faith, Jude." He stood up.. "Share what the rest of us
already know," he said.

"And what's that?"

"That in a few hours we'll be standing in a legendary place."

Monday softly said. "Yeah," and Gentle smiled.

"Take care down here, all of you," he said, and headed to the door.

Jude reached for Clem, and with his help hauled herself to her feet.  By
the time she reached the door Gentle was already on the stairs.

She didn't say his name.  He simply stopped for a moment and without
turning said:

"I don't want to hear."

Then he continued his ascent, and she knew by the slope of his shoulders
and weight of his tread that for all his prophetic talk there was a
little worm of doubt in him just as there was in her, and he was afraid
that if he turned and saw her, it would fatten on their look, and choke
him.

The scent of sap was waiting for him on the threshold, and as he'd hoped
it masked the sourer smell from the darkened streets outside.

Otherwise his room, in which he'd lounged and laughed and debated the
conundrums of the cosmos, offered no solace.  It suddenly seemed to him
a stagnant place, too well feited and swayed for its own good; the last
place on earth to perform his work.  But then hadn't he berated Jude
just moments ago, for not having sufficient faith?  There was no great
power in

4, geography.  It was all rooted in the Maestro's faith in the
miraculous, and in the will that sprang from that faith.

In preparation for the work ahead he undressed.  Once naked, he crossed
to the mantelpiece, intending to fetch the candles off it and set them
around the circle.  But the sight of their flames in flickering array
made him think instead of worship, and he dropped to his knees in front
of the empty grate to pray.  The Lord's Prayer came most readily to his
lips, and he recited it aloud.  its sentiments had never been apter, of
course.  But after tonight it would be a museum piece, a relic of a time
before the Lord's Kingdom had come and His will been done, on Earth and
in Heaven.

A touch on the back of his neck brought this recitation to a halt.  He
opened his eyes; raised his head; turned.  The room was empty, but his
nape still tingled where the touch had come.  This wasn't memory, he
knew.  it was something more delicate than that; a reminder of the other
prize that lay at the end of this night's work.  Not glory; not the
gratitude of the Dominions: Pie'oh'pah.  He looked up at the stained
wall above the mantelpiece and seemed for a moment to see the mystif's
face there, changing with each flicker of the candlelight.

Athanasius had called the love he felt for the mystif profane.  He
hadn't believed it then, and he didn't now.  The purpose that was in him
as Reconciler, and the desire he felt for reunion, were part of the same
plan.

The prayer was gone from his tongue.  No matter, he thought; I'm its
executor now.  He got up, took one of

the candles from the mantelpiece, and, smiling, stepped over the
perimeters of the circle, not as a simple traveller, but as a Maestro,
ready to use its engine to miraculous end.

Lying on the cushions in the lounge below, Jude felt the flow of
energies start.  They ached in her chest and belly, like mild dyspepsia.

She rubbed her stomach, in the hope of soothing the discomfort, but it
did little good, so she got to her feet and hobbled out, leaving Monday
to entertain Hoi-Polloi with his chatter and his handiwork.  He'd taken
to drawing on the walls with the smoke from one of the candles,
enhancing the marks with his chalks.  Hoi-Polloi was much impressed, and
her laughter, the first Jude had ever heard from the girl, followed Jude
out into the hallway, where she found Clem standing guard beside the
locked front door.  They stared at each other in the candlelight for
several seconds before she said:

"Do you feel it too?"

"Yep.  It's not very pleasant is it?"

"I thought it was only me," she said.

"Why only you?. "I don't know, some kind of punishment.... "You still
think he's got some secret agenda, don't you?. "No," Jude said, glancing
up the stairs.. "I think he's doing what he believes is best.  In fact I
know it.  Urna Umagammagi got inside his head

"God, he hated that."

"She gave him a good report whether he hated it or not."

"So.  .  .  ?,

"So there's still a conspiracy somewhere."

"Sartori?"

"No.  It's something to do with their Father, and this damn
Reconciliation." She winced as the discomfort in her belly became more
severe.. "I'm not afraid of Sartori.  It's what's going on in this house
.  .  she gritted her

teeth as another wave of pain passed through her system that I can't
quite trust."

She looked back at Clem, and knew that, as ever, he'd listen as a loving
friend, but that she could expect no support from him.  He and Tay were
the angels of the Reconciliation, and if she pressed them to decide
between her welfare and that of the working she'd be the loser.

The sound of Hoi-Polloi's laughter came again, not as feathery as
before, but with an undertow of mischief Jude knew was sexual.  She
turned her back on the sound, and on Clem, and her gaze came to rest on
the door of the one room in this house she'd never entered.  it stood a
little ajar, and she could see that candles were burning inside.  Of all
the company to seek out when she was in need of comfort, Celestine's was
the least promising, but all other avenues were closed to her.

She crossed to the door and pushed it open.  The mattress was empty, and
the candle beside it was burning low.  The room was too

A# large to be illuminated by such a fitful flame, and she had to study
the darkness until she found its occupant.  Celestine was standing
against the far wall.

"I'm surprised you came back," she said.

Jude had heard many exquisite speakers since she'd last heard Celestine,
but there was still something extraordinary in the way the woman mingled
voices: one running beneath the other, as though the part of her
touched

by divinity had never entirely married with a baser self.

fl.  . "Why surprised?"

t

"Because I thought you'd stay with the Goddesses."

"I was tempted," Jude replied.

"But finally, you had to come back.  For him."

"I was a messenger, that's all.  I've got no claims on

Gentle now."

"I didn't mean Gende..."

"I see."

"I meant-'

"I know who you meant."

"Can't you bear to have his name spoken?"

Celestine had been staring at the candle flame, but now she looked up at
Jude.

"What will you do when he's dead?" she asked.. "He u411 die, you realize
that?  He has to.

Gentle'll want to be magnanimous, the way victors are supposed to be;
he'll want to forgive all his brother's trespasses.  But there'll be too
many demands for his head."

Until now Jude hadn't contemplated the possibility of Sartori's demise.
Even in the Tower, knowing Gentle had gone in pursuit of his brother
intending to stop his malice, she'd never believed he'd die.  But what
Celestine said was undoubtedly true.  There were countless claims upon
his head, both secular and divine.  Even if Gentle was forgiving,
Jokalaylau wouldn't be; nor would the Unbeheld.

"You're very alike, you know; you and he," Celestine said.. "Both copies
of a finer original."

"You never knew Quaisoir," Jude replied.. "You don't know whether she
was finer or not."

"Copies are always coarser.  It's their nature.  But at least your
instinct's good.  You and he belong together.  That's what you're pining
for, isn't it?  Why don't you admit it?. "Why should I pour out my heart
to you?. "Isn't that what you came in here to do?  You won't get any
sympathy out there.. "Listening by the door now?"

"I've heard everything that's gone on in this house since I was brought
here.  And what I haven't heard, I've felt.  And what I haven't felt,
I've predicted.. "Like what?" 

"Well, for one thing that child Monday will end up coupling with the
little virgin you brought back from Yzordderrex.. "That scarcely takes
an oracle.. "And the Oviate isn't long for this world.. "The Oviate?"
"It calls itself Little Ease.  The beast you had under your

heel.  It asked the Maestro to bless it a little while ago.

It'll murder itself before daybreak."

"Why would it do that?"

"It knows when Sartori perishes it'll be forfeit too,

how-VF ever much allegiance it's sworn to the

winning side.  It's

sensible.  It wants to choose its moment."

"Am I supposed to find some lesson in that?. "I don't think

you're capable of suicide," Celestine said.

"You're right.  I've got too much to live for."

"Motherhood?"

"And the future.  There's going to be a change in this city.  I've seen
it in Yzordderrex already.  The waters will rise.  .

...  and the great sisterhood will dispense love from on high."

"Why not?  Clem told me what happened when the Goddess came.  You were
in ecstasies, so don't try and deny it."

"Maybe I was.  But do you imagine that's going to make you and I
sisters?  What have we got in common, besides our sex?"

The question was meant to sting, but its plainness made Jude see the
questioner with fresh eyes.  Why was Celestine so eager to deny any
other link between them but womanhood?  Because another such link
existed, and it was at the very heart of their enmity.  Nor, now that
Celestine's contempt had freed Jude from reverence, was it difficult to
see where their stories intersected.  From the beginning Celestine had
marked Jude out as a woman who stank of coitus.  Why?  Because she too
stank of coitus.

And this business with the child, which came up again and again: that
had the same root.  Celestine had also borne a baby for this dynasty of
Gods and demi-gods.  She too had been used, and had never quite come to
terms with the fact.  When she raged against Jude, the tainted woman who
would not concede her error in being sexual, in being fecund, she was
raging against some fault in herself.

And the nature of that fault?  It wasn't difficult to guess; nor to put
into words.  Celestine had asked a plain question.  Now it was Jude's
turn.

"Was it really rape?" she said.

Celestine glanced up, her look venomous.  The denial that followed,
however, was measured.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," she said.

"Well now," Jude replied, 'how else can I put it?" She paused.. "Did
Sartori's father take you against your will?" The other woman now put on
a show of comprehension; followed by one of shock.

"Of course He did," she said.. "How could you ask such a thing?"

"B ut you knew where you were going, didn't you?  I realize Dowd
drugged you at the start, but you weren't in a coma all the way across
the Dominions.  You knew something extraordinary was waiting at the end
of the trip."

"I don't.  .

'.  ..  remember?  Yes, you do.  You remember every mile of it.  And I
don't think Dowd kept his mouth shut all those weeks.  He was pimping
for God, and he was proud of it.  Wasn't he?" Celestine offered no
riposte.  She simply stared at Jude, daring her to go on, which Jude was
happy to do.. "So he told you what lay ahead, didn't he?  He said you
were going to the Holy City, and that you were going to see the Unbeheld
Himself.  Not just see Him, but be loved by Him.  And you were
flattered.. "It wasn't like that."

"How was it then?  Did He have His angels hold you down while He did the
deed?  No, I don't think so.  You lay there and you let Him do what the
hell He wanted, because it was going to make you into the bride of God
and the mother of Christ

"Stop."

"If I'm wrong, tell me how it was.  Tell me you screamed and fought and
tried to tear out His eyes." Celestine continued to stare, but said
nothing.

"That's why you despise me, isn't it?" Jude went on.. "That's why I'm
the woman who stinks of coitus.

Because I lay down with a piece of the same God that you did, and you
don't like to be reminded of the fact." Celestine suddenly shouted:
"Don'tjudge me, woman!'

"Then don't you judge me!  Woman.  I did what I wanted with the man I
wanted and I'm carrying the consequences.  You did the same.  I'm not
ashamed of it.  You are.  That's why we're not sisters, Celestine."

She'd said her piece, and she wasn't much interested in a further round
of insults and denials, so she turned her back and had her hand on the
door when Celestine spoke.  There were no denials.  She spoke softly,
half lost to memory.

"It was a city of iniquities," she said, 'but how was I to know that?  I
thought I was blessed amongst women, to have been chosen.  To be God's.
.

"Bride?" Jude said, turning back from the door.

"That's a kind word," Celestine said.. "Yes.  Bride." She drew a deep
breath.. "I never even saw my husband.. "What did you see?"

"Nobody.  The city was full, I know it was full, I saw shadows at the
window, I saw them close up the doors when I passed, but nobody showed
their faces.. "Were you afraid?"

"No.  It was too beautiful.  The stones were full of light, and the
houses were so high you could barely see the.  sky.  It was like nothing
I'd ever seen.  And I walked, and I walked, and I kept thinking: He'll
send an angel for me' soon, and I'll be carried to His palace.  But
there were no angels.  There was just the city, going on and on in every
direction, and I got tired after a time.  I sat down, just to rest for a
few minutes and I fell asleep."

"You fell asleep?"

"Yes.  Imagine!  I was in the City of God, and I fell asleep.  And I
dreamed I was back at Tyburn, where Dowd had found me.  I was watching a
man being hanged, and I

dug through the crowd until I was standing under the gallows." She
raised her head.. "I remember looking up at him, kicking at the end of
his rope.  His breeches were unbuttoned, and his rod was poking out."
The look on her face was all disgust, but she drove herself on to finish
the story.. "And I lay down under him.  I lay down in the dirt in front
of all these people, with him kicking, and his rod getting redder and
redder.

And as he died he spilled his seed.  I wanted to get up before it
touched me, but my legs were open, and it was too late.  Down it came.
Not much.  Just a few spurts.  But I felt every drop inside me like a
little fire, and I wanted to cry out.  But I didn't, because that was
when I heard the voice.. "What voice?. "It was in the ground beneath me.
Whispering.. "What did it say?. "The same thing, over and over again.
Nisi Nirvana.  Nisi Nirvana.  Nisi ...  Nirvana."

in the process of repeating the words, tears began to flow copiously.
She made no attempt to stem them, but the repetition faltered.

"Was it Hapexamendios talking to you?" Jude asked.

Celestine shook her head.. "Why should He speak to me?  He had what He
needed.  I'd laid down and dreamed while He dropped His seed.  He was
already gone, back to His angels."

"So who was it?"

"I don't know.  I've thought about it over and over.  I even made it
into a story, to tell the child, so that when I'd gone, he'd have the
mystery for himself.  But I don't think I ever really wanted to know.  I
was afraid my heart would burst if I ever knew the answer.  I was afraid
the heart of the world would burst."

She looked up at Jude.

"So now you know my shame," she

said.

"I know your story," said Jude.. "But I don't see' any reason for shame."

Her own tears, which she'd been holding back since

r

Celestine had begun to share this horror with her, fell now, flowing a
little for the pain she felt and a little for the doubt that still
churned in her, but mostly for the smile that came on to Celestine's
face when she heard Jude's reply, and for the sight of her opening her
arms, and crossing the room to embrace her like a loved one who'd been
lost and found again before some final fire.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

if coming to the moment of Reconciliation had been for Gentle a series
of rememberings, leading him back to himself, then the greatest of those
rememberings, and the one he was least prepared for, was the
Reconciliation itself.

Though he'd performed the working before, the circumstances had been
radically different.  For one, there'd been all the hoopla of a grand
event.  He'd gone into the circle like a prize-fighter, with an air of
congratulation hanging around his head before he'd even worked up a
sweat, his patrons and admirers a cheering throng at the sidelines. This
time he was alone.

For another, he'd had his eyes on what the world would shower on him
when the work was done: what women would fall to him, what wealth and
glory would come.  This time, the prize in sight was a different thing
entirely, and wouldn't be counted in stained sheets and coinage.  He was
the instrument of a higher and wiser power.

That fact took the fear away.  When he opened his mind to the process,
he felt a calm come upon him, subduing the unease he'd felt climbing the
stairs.  He'd told Jude and Clem that forces would run through the house
the likes of which its bricks had never known, and it was true.  He felt
them fuel his weakening mind, ushering his thoughts out of his head to
gather the Dominion to the circle.

That gleaning began with the place he was sitting in.  His mind spread
to all compass points, and up, and down, to have the sum of the room. It
was an easy space to grasp.  Generations of prison poets had made the

analogies for him, and he borrowed them freely.  The walls were his
body's limits, the door his mouth, the windows his eyes.

Commonplace similitudes, taxing his power of comparison not a jot.  He
dissolved the boards, the plaster, the glass and all the thousand tiny
details in the same lyric of confinement, and having made them part of
him, broke their bounds to stray further afield.

As his imagination headed down the stairs, and up on to the roof, he
felt the beginnings of momentum.  His intellect, dogged by literalism,
was already lagging behind a sensibility more mercurial, which was
delivering back to him similitudes for the whole house before his
logical faculties had even reached the hallway.

Once again, his body was the measure of all things.  The cellar, his
bowels; the roof, his scalp; the stairs, his spine.  Their proofs
delivered, his thoughts flew out of the house, rising up over the slates
and spreading through the streets.  He gave passing consideration to
Sartori as he went, knowing his other was out here in the night
somewhere, skulking.  But his mind was quicksilver, and too exhilarated
by its speed and capacity to go searching in the shadows for an enemy
already defeated.

With speed came ease.  The streets were no more difficult to claim than
the house he'd already devoured.  His body had its conduits and its
intersections, had its places of excrement and its fine, dandified
faades; had its rivers, moving from a springing place, and its
parliament, and its holy seat.

The whole city, he began to see, would be analogized to his flesh, bone
and blood.  And why should that be so surprising?  When an architect
turned his mind to the building of a city, where would he look for
inspiration?  To the flesh where he'd lived since birth.  It was the
first;' model for any creator.  It was a school, and an eating house and
an abattoir and a church; it could be a prison and a brothel and Bedlam.
There wasn't an edifice in any street in London that hadn't begun
somewhere in the private city of an architect's anatomy, and all Gentle
had

to do was open his mind to that fact and the districts were his, running
back to swell the assembly in his head.

He flew north through Highbury and Finsbury Park, to Palmer's Green and
Cockfosters.

He went east with the river, past Greenwich, where the clock that marked
the coming midnight stood, and on towards Tilbury.  West took him
through Marylebone and Hammersmith, south through Lambeth and Streatham,
where he'd first met Pie'oh'pah, long ago.

But the names soon became irrelevant.  Like the ground seen from a
rising plane, the particulars of a street or a district became part of
another pattern, even more appetizing to his ambitious spirit.  He saw
the Wash glittering to the east, and the Channel to the south, becalmed
on this humid night.  Here was a fine new challenge.

Was his body, which had proved the equal of a city, also the measure of
this vaster geography?  Why not?  Water flowed by the same laws whether
the conduit was a groove in his brow or a rift between continents.  And
were his hands not like two countries, laid side by side in his lap,
their peninsulas almost touching, their landscapes scarred and grooved?

There was nothing outside his substance that was not mirrored within. No
sea, no city, no street, no roof, no room.

He was in the Fifth, and the Fifth in him, gathering to be carried into
the Ana as a proof and a map and a poem, written in praise of all things
being One.

In the other Dominions the same pursuit of similitude was underway.

From his circle on the Mount of Lipper Bayak, Tick Raw had already drawn
into his net of dissolution both the city of Patashoqua and the highway
that ran from its gates towards the mountains.  In the Third, Scopique
his fears that the absence of the Pivot would invalidate his workings
allayed - was spreading his grasp across the Kwem towards the dust-bowls
around MarK6.

In L'Himby, where he was soon to arrive, there were

celebrants gathering at the temples, their hopes raised by prophetics
who'd appeared from hiding the night before to spread the word that the
Reconciliation was imminent.

No less inspired, Athanasius was presently travelling back along the
Lenten Way to the borders of the Third, and skimming the ocean to the
islands, while a self more tender trod the changed streets of
Yzordderrex.  He found challenges there unknown to Scopique, Tick Raw or
even Gentle.  There were slippery wonders loose on the streets that
defied easy analogy.  But in inviting Athanasius to 11 join the Synod
Scopique had chosen better than he knew.  The man's obsession with
Christos, the bleeding god, gave him a grasp of what the Goddesses had
wrought that a man less preoccupied by death and resurrection would
never have owned.  In Yzordderrex's ravaged streets he saw a reflection
of his own physical ravagement.  And in the music of the iconoclastic
waters an echo of the blood that ran from his wounds, transformed - by
love of the Holy Mother he had worshipped - into a sublime and healing
liquor.

Only Chicka Jackeen, at the borders of the First Dominion, had to work
with abstractions, for there was nothing of a physical nature he could
win similitudes from.  All he had was the blank wall of the Erasure to
set his mind on.  Of the Dominion that lay beyond - which it fell to him
to encapsulate and carry into the Ana - he had no knowledge.

He hadn't spent so many years studying the mystery without finding some
means to tussle with it, however.  Although his body offered no analogy
for the enigma that lay on the other side of the divide, there was a
place in him just as sealed from sight, and just as open to the
enquiries made by dreaming explorers like himself.  He let mind - the
un beheld process that empowered every meaningful action, that made the
very devotion that kept him in his circle - his similitude.  The blank
"Wall of the Erasure was the white bone of his skull, scoured of every
scrap of meat and hair.

The face inside, incapable of

impartial self -study, was both the God of the First and the thoughts of
Chicka Jackeen, bonded by mutual scrutiny.

After tonight, both would be free of the curse of invisibility.  The
Erasure would drop, and the Godhead come back into view to walk the
Imajica.  When that happened, when the same Godhead who'd taken the
Nullianacs into His furnace, and burned their malice away, was no longer
divided from His Dominions, there would be a revelation such as had
never been known before.  The dead, trapped in their condition and
unable to find the door, would have a light to lead the way.  And the
living, no longer afraid to show their minds, would step from their
houses like divinities, carrying their private Heavens upon their J
heads for all to see.

J

About his own work, Gentle had little grasp of what his fellow Maestros
were achieving, but the absence of alarm from the other Dominions
reassured him that all was well.  All the pains and humiliations he'd
endured to reach this place had been repaid in the little hours since
he'd stepped into the circle.  An ecstasy he'd only known for the
duration of a heart-beat suffused him, confounding the conviction he'd
had that such feelings only came in glimpses because to know them for
longer would burst the heart.  It wasn't so.  The ecstasy went on and
on, and he was surviving it.

More than surviving, burgeoning, his authority over the working stronger
with every city and sea he retrieved into the circle where he sat.

The Fifth was almost there with him now, sharing the space, teaching him
with its coming where the true power of a Reconciler lay.  it wasn't a
skill with fe its and sways, nor was it pneumas, nor resurrections, nor
the driving out of demons.

It was the strength to call the myriad wonders of an entire Dominion by
the names of his body, and not be broken by the simile.  To allow that
he was in the world to its smallest degree, and the world in him, and
not be driven to insanity by the intricacies

he contained, or else so enamoured of the panoramas he was spread
through that he lost all memory of the man he'd been.

There was such pleasure in this process that laughter began to shake him
as he sat in the circle.  His good humour wasn't a distraction from his
purpose, but instead made it easier still, his laugh-lightened thoughts
running from the circle out to regions both bright and benighted, and
coming back with their prizes like runners sent with poems to a promised
land, and returning with it on their backs, flowering as it came.

in the room above, Little Ease heard the laughter, and capered in
sympathy with the Liberatore's joy.  What else could such a sound mean,
but that the deed was close to being done?  Even if it didn't see the
consequences of this triumph, it thought, its last night in the living
world had been immeasurably sweetened by all that it had been a party
to.  And should there be an afterlife for such creatures as itself
(although of this it was by no means certain) then its account of this
night would be a fine tale to tell when it went into the company of its
ancestors.

Anxious not to disturb the Reconciler, it gave up its dance of
celebration, and was about to return to the window and its duties as
night-watchman when it heard a sound its paddings had concealed.  its
gaze went from the sill to the ceiling.

The wind had got up in the last little while, and was skittering across
the roof, rattling the slates as it went, or so Ease thought until it
realized the tree outside was as still as the Kwern at Equinox.

Little Ease didn't come from a tribe of heroes; quite the reverse.  The
legends of its people concerned famous" apologists, humblers, deserters
and cowards.  its instinct, hearing this sound from above, was to be
away downstairs as fast as its bandy legs knew how.  But it fought

what came naturally, for the Reconciler's sake, and cautiously
approached the window in the hope of gaining a glimpse of what was
happening above.

it climbed up on to the sill, and belly up slid itself out a little way,
peering up at the eaves.

A mist dirtied the starlight, and the roof was dark.  It leaned a little
further out, the sill hard beneath its bony back.  From the window
below, the sound of the Reconciler's laughter floated up, its music
reassuring.  Little Ease had time to smile, hearing it.  Then something
as dark as the roof and as dirty as the fog that covered the stars
reached down and stopped its mouth.  The attack came so suddenly Little
Ease lost its grip on the window frame and toppled backwards, but its
smotherer had too tight a hold on it to let it drop, and hauled it up on
to the roof.  Seeing the assembly there, Ease knew its errors instantly.
One, it had stopped its nostrils, and so failed to smell this
congregation.  Two, it had believed too much in a theology which taught
that evil came from below.  Not so; not so.  While it had watched the
street for Sartori and his legion it had neglected the route along the
roofs, which was just as secure for creatures as nimble as these.

There were not more than six of them, but then there didn't need to be.
The gek-a-gek were feared amongst the feared; Oviates that only the most
overweening of Maestros would have called into the Dominions.

As massive as tigers, and as sleek, they had hands the size of a man's
head, and heads as flat as a man's hand.  Their flanks were translucent
in some lights, but here they had made a pact with darkness, and they
lay - all but the smotherer - at the apex of the roof, their silhouettes
concealing the Maestro until he rose, and murmured that the captive be
brought to his feet.

"Now, Little Ease .  .  ." he said, the words too soft to be heard in
the rooms below, but loud enough to make the creature evacuate its
bowels in terror, I want you to

spill more than your shite for me."

It gave Sartori no satisfaction to watch Little Ease's life go out.  The
sense of exhilaration he'd felt at dawn when, having summoned the
gek-a-gek, he'd contemplated the confrontation that lay a few hours off,
had been all but sweated out of him by the heat of the intervening day.
The gek-a-gek were powerful beasts, and might well have survived the
journey from Shiverick Square to Gamut Street, but no Oviate was fond of
the light from any Heaven, and rather than risk their debilitation, he'd
stayed beneath the trees with his pride, counting off the hours.  Only
once had he ventured from their company, and had found the streets
deserted.  The sight should have heartened him.  With the area deserted
he and the creatures would be unwitnessed when they moved on the enemy.

But sitting in the silent bower with his dozing legion, un distracted by
even the sound of a fly, his mind had been preyed upon by fears he'd
always put away until now; fears fuelled by the sight of these empty
streets.  Was it possible that his revisionist purposes were about to be
overwhelmed by some still greater revision?

He realized his dreams of a New Yzordderrex were valueless.  He'd said
as much to his brother in the Tower.  But even if he wasn't to be an
empire-builder here, he still had something to live for.  She was in the
house in Gamut Street, yearning for him, he hoped, as he yearned for
her.  He wanted continuance, even if it was as Hell to Gentle's Heaven.
But the desertion of this city made him wonder if even that was a
pipe-dream.

As the afternoon had crept on, he'd begun to look forward to reaching
Gamut Street, simply for the signs of life it would provide.  But he'd
arrived to find precious little comfort here.  The phantoms that
lingered at the perimeters only reminded him of how uncharitable death
really was, and the sounds that issued from the house itself (a girl's
giggling from one of the lower rooms, and later full-throated laughter,
his brother's, from the Meditation Room) only seemed to him signs of an
idiot optimism.

He wished he could scour these thoughts from his head, but there was no
escape from them except, possibly, in the arms of his Judith.

She was in the house; that he knew.  But with the currents unleashed
inside so strong, he dared not enter.  What he wanted, and what he
finally got from Little Ease, was intelligence as to her state and
whereabouts.  He'd assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that Judith was
with the Reconciler.  She'd taken herself off to Yzordderrex, Little
Ease had said, and come back with fabulous tales.  But the Reconciler
had not been much impressed by them.  There'd been a fracas, and he'd
begun his working alone.

Why had she gone in the first place, he'd enquired, but the creature had
claimed it didn't know, and could not be persuaded to supply an answer
even though its limbs were half twisted off, and its brain pan opened to
the gek-a-gek's tongue.  it had died protesting its ignorance, and
Sartori had left the pride to toy with the carcass, taking himself off
along the roof to turn over what he'd learned.

Oh, for a wad of kreauchee, to subdue his impatience, or else to make
him brave enough to beat on the door and tell her to come out and make
love amongst the phantoms.  But he was too tender to face the currents.
There'd come a time, very soon, when the Reconciler, his gathering
completed, would retire to the Ana.  At that juncture the circle, its
power no longer needed as a conduit to carry the analogues back into its
reservoir, would turn off those currents and turn its attention to
conveying the Reconciler through the In Ovo.  There, in that window
between the Reconciler's removal to the Ana and the completion of the
working, he would act.  He'd enter the house, and let the gek-a-gek take
Gentle (and any who rose to protect him) while he claimed Judith.

Thinking of her, and of the kreauchee he yearned for, he brought the
blue egg out of his pocket, and put it to his lips.  He'd kissed its
cool a thousand times in the last

few hours; licked it; sucked it.  But he wanted it deeper inside him;
locked up in his belly as she would be when they'd mated again.  He put
it in his mouth, threw back his head, and swallowed.  It went down
easily, and granted him a few minutes of calm while he waited for the
hour of his deliverance.

Had Clem's head not had two tenants he might well have forsaken his
place at the front door during the hours in which the Reconciler worked
above.  The currents which that process had unleashed had made his belly
ache at the outset, but after a time their effect mellowed, suffusing
his system with a serenity so persuasive he'd wanted to find a place to
lie down and dream.  But Tay had policed such dereliction of duty
severely, and whenever Clem's attention strayed he felt his lover's
presence - which was so subtly wed and interwoven with his thoughts it
only became apparent when there was a conflict of interests rousing him
to fresh vigilance.  So he kept his post, though by now it was surely an
academic exercise.

The candle he had set beside the door was drowning in its own wax, and
he had just stooped to nick the lip and let the excess flow off when he
heard something hitting the step outside, the sound like that of a fish
being slapped on a slab.  He gave up his candle-work and put his ear to
the door.  There was no further sound.  Had a fruit fallen from the tree
outside the house, he wondered, or was there some stranger rain tonight?
He went from the door, through to the room where Monday had been
entertaining Hoi-Polloi.  They'd left it for some more private place,
taking two of the cushions with them.  The thought that there were
lovers in the house tonight pleased him, and he silently wished them
well as he crossed to the window.  It was darker outside than he'd
expected, and though he had a view of the step he couldn't distinguish
between objects lying upon it and the designs that Monday had drawn
there.

Perplexed rather than anxious, he went back to the

front door and listened again.  There were no further sounds, and he was
tempted to let the matter alone.  But he half-hoped some visionary rain
had indeed begun to fall, and he was too curious to ignore the mystery.
He moved the candle from the door, the wax snuffing the flame as he did
so.  No matter.  There were other candles burning at the bottom of the
stairs, and he had sufficient light to find the bolts and slide them
back.

In Celestine's room Jude woke, and raised her head from the mattress
where she'd laid it an hour before.  The conversation between the women
had continued for some while after their peace-making, but Jude's
exhaustion had finally caught up with her, and Celestine had suggested
she rest for a while, which, reassured by Celestine's presence, she'd
gladly done.

Now she stirred to find that Celestine had also succumbed, her head on
the mattress, her body on the floor.  She was snoring softly,
undisturbed by whatever had woken Jude.

The door was slightly ajar, and a perfume was coming through it,
stirring a faint nausea in Jude's system.  She sat up, and rubbed at the
crick in her neck, then got to her feet.  She'd slipped off her shoes
before she lay down, but rather than search for them in the darkened
room she went out into the hallway barefoot.  The smell was much
stronger now.  It was coming from the street outside, its route plain.

The front door was open, and the angels who'd been guarding it were
gone.

Calling Clem's name, she crossed the hallway, her step slowing as she
approached the open door.  The candles at the stairs were bright enough
to shed some light upon the step.  There was something glistening there.
She picked up her speed again, asking for the Goddesses to be with her,
and with Clem.  Don't let this be him, she murmured, seeing that it was
tissue glistening, and blood in a pool around it, please don't let this
be him.

It wasn't.  Now that she was almost at the threshold she saw the
remnants of a face there, and knew it: Sartori's

r

agent, Little Ease.  its eyes had been scooped out, and its mouth, which
had spewed pleas and flattery in such abundance, was tongueless.  But
there was no doubting its identity.  Only a creature of the In Ovo could
still twitch as this did, refusing to give up the semblance of life even
if the fact of it had gone.

She looked beyond the trophy into the murk of the street, calling Clem's
name again.

There was no answer at first.  Then she heard him, his shout
half-smothered.

"Go back inside!  For - God's - sake go back!. "Clem?"

she stepped out of the house, bringing new cries of alarm from the
darkness.

"Don't!  Don't!'

"I'm not going back without you," she said, avoiding the Oviate's head
as she advanced.

She heard something let out a soft sound as she did so: like a creature
growling with its maw full of bees.

"Who's there?" she said.

There was no reply at first, but she knew it would come if she waited,
and whose voice it would be when it did.  She did not anticipate the
nature of the reply, however; or its falling note.

Sartori

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way ...  said.

if you've hurt Clem.  .  ." she said.

ve no wish to hurt anybody."

She knew that was a lie.  But she also knew he'd do Clem no harm as long
as he needed a hostage.

Let Clem go," she said.

"Will you come to me if I do?"

She left a decent pause before replying, so as not to seem too eager.

"Yes," she said.. "I'll come."

"No, Judy!" Clem said.. "Don't.  He's not alone."

She could see that now, as her eyes became more accustomed to the
darkness.  Sleek, ugly beasts prowled back and forth.  One was up on its
back legs, sharpening.

its claws on the tree.  Another was in the gutter, close enough for her
to see its innards through its translucent skin.  Their ugliness didn't
distress her.  Around the fringes of any drama such detritus was bound
to accrue: scraps of discarded characters; soiled costumes; cracked
masks.  They were irrelevancies, and her lover had taken them for
company because he felt a kinship with them.  She pitied them.  But him,
who'd been most high, she pitied

f more.

"I want to see Clem here on the step before I make a move," she said.

There was a pause, then Sartori said. "I'm going to trust you."

His words were followed by further sounds from the Oviates that paced in
the murk, and Jude saw two of them slope out of the shadows, with Clem
between them, his arms in their throats.  They came close enough to the
pavement for her to see the foam of appetite that rose from their lips,
then they literally spat their prisoner free.

Clem fell face down on the road, his hands and arms covered in their
muck.  She wanted to go to his aid there and then, but though the
captors had retreated, the tree gouger had turned and lowered its shovel
head, its eyes, black as a shark's, flickering back and forth in their
bulbous sockets, hungry to have the frail meat on the road.  If she
moved she feared it would pounce, so she kept her place on the step
while Clem hauled himself to his feet.  His arms were blistered by the
Oviate's spittle, but he was otherwise intact.

"I'm all right, Judy .  .  ." he murmured.. "Go back inside.  .

She stayed put, however, waiting until he was up and staggering across
the pavement before she started down the steps.

"Go back!" he told her again.

She put her arms around him, and whispered:

"Clem, I don't want you to argue with this.  Go into the house and lock
the door.  I'm not coming with you."

He started to speak, but she hushed him.

"No argument, I said.  I want to see him, Clem.  I want to ...  be with
him.  Now, please, if you love me, go inside and close the door."

She felt reluctance in his every sinew, but he knew too much about the
business of love, especially love that defied orthodoxy, to attempt to
reason with her.

"Just remember what he's done," he said as he let her go.

"That's all part of it, Clem," she said, and slipped past him.

it was easy to leave the light behind.  The ache which the currents had
woken in her marrow diminished with every yard she put between herself
and the house-and the thought of the embrace ahead quickened her step.
This was what she wanted, and what he wanted too.

Though the first causes of this passion were gone - one to dust, one to
divinity - she and the man in the darkness were its embodiments, and
could not be denied each other.

She glanced back towards the house only once, to see that Clem was
lingering on the step.

She didn't waste time trying to persuade him to go inside, but simply
turned back to the shadows and said. "Where are you?. "Here," her lover
said, and stepped from the folds of his legion.

A single strand of luminescent matter came with him, fine enough to have
been woven by Oviate spiders, but clotted here and there with beads like
pearls, which swelled and dropped from the filaments, running down his
arms and face and mottling the ground where he walked.  The light
flattered him, but she was too hungry for the truth of his face to be
deceived, and, piercing the glamour with her stare, found him much
reduced.  The shining dandy she'd first met in Klein's plastic garden
had gone.  Now his eyes were heavy with despair, his mouth drawn down at
the corners, his hair awry.  Perhaps he'd always looked like this, and
he'd simply used some piffling sway to mask the fact, but she doubted
it.  He was changed on the outside because something had changed within.

Though she stood before him defenceless, he made no move to touch her,
but hung back like a penitent in need of invitation before he approached
the altar.  She liked this new fastidiousness.

"I didn't hurt the angels," he said softly.

"You shouldn't even have touched them."

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," he said again.. "The gek-a-gek
were clumsy.  They dropped some meat from the roof.. "I saw."

"I was going to wait until the power subsided, and come for you in
style." He paused; then asked. "Would you have let me take you?"

"Yes."

"I wasn't certain.  I was a little afraid you'd reject me, and then I'd
become cruel.  You're my sanity now.  I can't go on without you."

"You went on all those years in Yzordderrex."

"I had you there," he said.. "Only by a different name."

"And you were still cruel."

"Imagine how much crueller I would have been," he said, as if amazed at
the possibility, 'if I hadn't had your face to mellow me."

"Is that all I am to you?  A face?"

"You know better than that," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

"Tell me," she said, inviting his affections.

He glanced back over his shoulder, towards the legion.  If he spoke to
them she didn't hear it.  They simply retreated, cowed by his glance.
When they were gone, he put his hands to her face, his little fingers
just beneath the line of her jaw, his thumbs laid lightly at the corners
of her mouth.  Despite the heat that was still rising from the cooked
asphalt, his skin was chilly.

"One way or another," he said, 'we don't have very

long, so I'll keep this simple.  There's no future for us . "We may
escape that," he said.. "But it'll be hard, love.  now.  Maybe there was
yesterday, but tonight ...  He's the Father.  He wants to be obeyed,
even to the verI thought you were going to build a New Yzordderrex?"

I was.  I have the perfect model for it, here." His thumbs went from the
corners of her mouth to the middle of her lips, and stroked them.. "A
city made in your image, built in place of these miserable streets.

"But now?"

s

"We don't have the time, love.  My brother's about his

work up there, and when he's finished.  .  ." he sighed, his voice
dropping lower still'.  .  .

when he's finished.  .

"What?" she said; There was something he wanted to share, but he was
forbidding himself.

"I hear you went back to Yzordderrex," he said.

She wanted to press him to complete his earlier explanation, but she
knew better than to push too hard, so she answered him, knowing his
earlier doubts could surface again if she was patient.  Yes, she said,
she had indeed been to Yzordderrex, and she'd found the palace much
changed.  This sparked his interest.

"Who's taken it over?  Not Rosengarten?  No.  The Dearthers.  That damn
priest Athanasius.

.

"None of those."

"Who then?"

"Goddesses."

The web of luminescence fluttered around his head, shaken by his
distress.

"They were always there," she told him.  'or at least one of them was. A
Goddess called Uma Umagammagi.  Have you ever heard of Her?"

"Legends.  .

"She was in the Pivot.. "That's impossible," he said.. "The Pivot
belongs to the Unbeheld.  The whole of the Imajica belongs to the
Unbeheld."

She'd never heard a breath of subservience in him before, but she heard
it now.

"Does He own us too?" she asked him.

end.  .  ."Again, an aching pause.  But this time, a request on its
heels.. "Will you embrace me?" he asked her.

She answered with her arms.  His hands slid from her fac e and through
her hair to clasp behind her.

used to think it was a God-like thing to build cities," he murmured.
"And if I built one fine enough it would stand forever, and so would I.
But everything passes away sooner or later, doesn't it?"

She heard in his words a despair that was the inverse of Gentle's
visionary zeal, as though in the time she'd known them they'd exchanged
their lives.  Gentle the faithless lover had become a dealer in heavens,
while Sartori, the sometime maker of hells, was here holding out love as
his last salvation.

"What is God's work," she asked him quietly, 'if it's not the building
of cities?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Well ...  maybe it's none of our business," she said, pretending a
lover's indifference to matters of moment.. "We'll forget about the
Unbeheld.  We've got each other.  We've got the child.  We can be
together for as long as we like."

There was enough truth in these sentiments, enough hope in her that this
vision might come true, that using it to manipulative purpose sickened
her.  But having turned her back on the house and all it contained, she
could hear in her lover's whispers echoes of the same doubts that had
made her an outcast, and if she had to use the feelings between them as
a way to finally solve the enigma, so be it.  Her queasiness at her
deceit wasn't soothed by its effectiveness.  When Sartori let out a tiny
sob, as he did now, she wanted to confess her motives.  But she fought
the desire, and let him suffer, hoping that he'd finally purge himself
of all he knew, even though she suspected he'd never dared even shape
these thoughts before, much less speak them.

"There'll be no child.  .  ." he said, together .  .

"Why not?" she said, still striving to keep her tone optimistic.. "We
can leave now, if you want.  We can go anywhere, and hide away.. "There
are no hiding places left," he said.

"We'll find one.. "No.  There's none." He drew away from her.  She was
glad of his tears.  They were a veil between his gaze and her duplicity.

"I told the Reconciler I was my own destroyer.  .  ." he said.  I said I
saw my works and I conspired against them.  But then I asked myself:
whose eyes am I seeing with?  And you know what the answer is?  My
Father's eyes, Judith.  My Father's eyes.  .

Of all the voices to return into Jude's head as he spoke, it was Clara
Leash's she heard.

Man the destroyer, wilfully undoing the world.  And what more perfect
manhood was there than the God of the First Dominion?

If I see my works with these eyes and want to destroy them.  .  ."
Sartori murmured, what does He see?  What does He want?"

"Reconciliation," she said.

"Yes.  But why?  It's not a beginning, Judith.  It's the end.  When the
Imajica's whole, He'll turn it into a wasteland." She drew away from
him.

"How do you know?. "I think I've always known."

"And you said nothing?  All your talk about the future

"I didn't dare admit it to myself.  I didn't want to believe I was
anything but my own man.

You understand that.  I've seen you fight to see with your own eyes.  I
did the same.  I couldn't admit He had any part of me, until now.. "Why
now?"

"Because I see you with my eyes.  I love you with my heart.  I love you,
Judith, and that means I'm free of Him.  I can admit ...  what ...  I
...  know."

no being

He dissolved in grief, but his hands kept hold of her as he shook.
"There's nowhere to hide, love," he said.. "We've got a few minutes
together, you and I; a few, sweet moments.  Then it's over."

She heard everything he said, but her thoughts were as much with what
was going on in the house behind her.  Despite all she'd heard from Uma
Umagarnmagi, despite the zeal of the Maestro, despite all the calamities
that would come with her interference, the Reconciliation had to be
halted.

"We can still stop Him," she said to Sartori.

"It's too late," he replied.. "Let Him have his victory.  We can defy
Him a better way.  A purer way."

"How?"

"We can die together."

"That's not defying Him.  It's defeat."

"I don't want to live with 9 s presence in me.  I want to lie down with
you and die.  It won't hurt, love."

He opened his jacket.  There were two blades at his belt.  They
glittered by the light of the floating threads, but his eyes glittered
more dangerously still.  His tears had dried.  He looked almost happy.

"It's the only way," he said.

"I can't."

"If you love me you will."

She drew her arm from his grasp.

"I want to live," she said, backing away from him.

"Don't desert me," he replied.  There was warning in his voice as well
as appeal.. "Don't leave me to my Father.  Please.

if you love me don't leave me to my Father."

He drew the knives out of his belt, and came after her, offering the
handle of one as he came, like a merchant selling suicide.  She swiped
at the proffered blade, and it went from his grasp.  As it flew she
turned, hoping to the Goddess that Clem had left the door open.  He had;
and lit every candle he could find to judge by the spill of light on to
the step.  She picked up her pace, hearing Sartori's voice behind her as
she went.  He only spoke her name,

but the threat in it was unmistakable.  She didn't reply her flight from
him was answer enough - but when she reached the pavement she glanced
back at him.  He was picking up the dropped knife, and rising.  Again,
he said. "Judith - I

But this time it was a warning of a different order.  Off to her left a
motion drew her glance.  One of the gek-agek, the sharpener, was coming
at her, its flat head now wide as a manhole, and toothed to its gut.

Sartori yelled an order, but the thing was a rogue, and came on at her
unchecked.  She raced for the step and as she did so heard a whoop from
the door.  Monday was there, naked but for his grimy underwear.  In his
hand, a home-made bludgeon, which he swung around his head 4 like a man
possessed.  She ducked beneath its sweep as she made the step.  Clem was
behind him, ready to haul her in, but she turned to call Monday to
retreat, in time to see the gek-a-gek mounting the step in pursuit.  Her
defender didn't retreat, but brought the weapon down in a whistling arc,
striking the geka-gek's gaping head.  The bludgeon shattered, but the
blow sheared off one of the beast's bulbous eyes.  Though wounded, its
mass was still sufficient to carry it forward, and one of its freshly
honed claws found Monday's back as he turned to dodge it.  The boy
shrieked, and might have fallen beneath the Oviate's attack if Clem
hadn't grabbed his arms and all but thrown him into the house.

The half-blinded beast was a yard from Jude's feet, its head thrown back
as it raged its pain.  But it wasn't the maw she was watching.  It was
Sartori.  He was once again walking towards the house, a knife in each
hand, and a gek-a-gek at each heel.  His eyes were fixed on her.  They
shone with sorrow.

"In!" Clem yelled, and she relinquished both sight and step to pitch
herself back over the threshold.

The one-eyed Oviate came after her as she did so, but Clem was fast. The
heavy door swung closed, and Hoi Polloi was there to fling the bolts
across, leaving the

wounded beast and its still more wounded master out in the darkness.

On the floor above, Gentle heard nothing of this.  He had finally
passed, via the circle's good offices, through the in Ovo and into what
Pie had called the Mansion of the Nexus, the Ana, where he and the other
Maestros would undertake the penultimate phase of the working.  The
conventional life of the senses was redundant'in this place, and for
Gentle being here was like a dream, in which he was knowing but unknown,
potent but unfixed.  He didn't mourn the body he'd left in Gamut Street.
If he never inhabited it again it would be no loss, he thought.  He had
a far finer condition here, like a figure in some exquisite equation
that could neither be removed or reduced, but was all it had to be - no
more, no less to change the sum of things.

He knew the others were with him and, though he had no sight to see them
with, his mind's eye had never owned so vast a palette as it did now,
nor had his invention ever been finer.  There was no need for cribbing
and forgery here.  He had earned with his metempsychosis access to a
visionary grasp he'd never dreamt of possessing, and his imagination
brimmed with correlatives for the company he kept.

He invented Tick Raw dressed in the motley he'd first seen the man wear
in Vanaeph, but fashioned now from the wonders of the Fourth.  A suit of
mountains, dusted in Jokalayaurian snow; a shirt of Patashoqua, belted
by its walls; a shimmering halo of green and gold casting its light down
on a face as busy as the Highway.

Scopique was a less gaudy sight, the grey dust of the Kwem billowing
around him like a shredded coat, its particles etching the glories of
the Third in its folds.  The Cradle was there.  So were the temples at
L'Himby; so was the Lenten Way.

There was even a glimpse of the railroad track, the smoke of its
locomotive rising to add its murk to the storm.

Then, Athanasius, dressed in a clout of dirty cloth, and carrying in his
bleeding hands a perfect representation of Yzordderrex, from the
causeway to the desert, from the harbour to Ipse.  The ocean ran from
his wounded flank, and the crown of thorns he wore was blossoming,
throwing petals of rainbow light down all he bore.  Finally, there was
Chicka Jackeen, here in lightning, the way he'd looked two hundred
midsummers before.  He'd been weeping then, and waxen with fright.  But
now the storm was his possession not his scourge, and the arcs of fire
that leapt between his fingers were a geometry, austere and beautiful,
that solved the mystery of the First, and in unveiling it made
perfection the new enigma.

Inventing them this way, Gentle wondered if they in turn were inventing
him, or whether his painter's hunger to see was an irrelevancy to them,
and what they imagined, knowing he was with them, was a body subtler
than any sight.  It would be better that way, he supposed, and with time
he'd learn to rise out of his literalisms, just as he'd shrug off the
self that wore his name.  He had no attachment to this Gentle left, nor
to the tale that hung behind.  It was tragedy, that self; any self.  It
was a marriage made with loss, and had he not wanted one last glimpse of
Pie'oh'pah, he might have prayed that his reward for Reconciliation
would be this state of perpetuity.

He knew that wasn't plausible, of course.  The Ana s sanctuary existed
for only a brief time, and while it did so it had more ecumenical
business than nurturing a single soul.  The Maestros had served their
purpose in -4 bringing the Dominions into this sacred space, and would
soon be redundant.  They would return to their circles, leaving Dominion
to meld with Dominion, and in so doing drive the In Ovo back like a
malignant sea.  What -1' would happen then was a matter of conjecture.
He doubted there'd be an instant of revelation - all the nations of the
Fifth waking to their unfettered state in the same moment.  it would
most likely be slow; the work

of years.  Rumours at first, that bridges wreathed in fogs could be
found by those eager enough to look.  Then the rumours becoming
certainties, and the bridges becoming causeways, and the fogs great
clouds, until, in a generation or two, children were born who knew
without being taught that the species had five Dominions to explore, and
would one day discover its own Godhood in its wanderings.

But the time it took to reach that blessed day was unimportant.  The
moment the first bridge, however small, was forged, the Imajica was
whole, and at the moment every soul in the Dominion from cradle to
deathbed would be healed in some tiny part, and take their next breath
lighter for the fact.

Jude waited in the hall long enough to be sure that Monday wasn't dead,
then she headed towards the stairs.  The currents which had induced such
discomforts were no longer circling in the system of the house; sure
sign that some new phase of the working - possibly its last - was
underway above.  Clem joined her at the bottom of the stairs, armed with
another two of Monday's home-made bludgeons.

"How many of these creatures are there out there?" he demanded.

"Maybe half a dozen."

"You'll have to watch the back door then," he said, thrusting one of the
weapons at Jude.

"You use it," she said, pressing past him.. "Keep them out for as long
as you can."

"Where are you going?"

"To stop Gentle."

"Stop him?  In God's name, why?"

"Because Dowd was right.  If he completes the Reconciliation we're
dead."

He cast the bludgeons aside and took hold of her.

"No, Judy," he said.. "You know I can't let you do that." it wasn't just
Clem speaking, but Tay as well.  Two voices and a single utterance.

It was more distressing than

anything she'd heard or seen outside, to have this command issue from a
face she loved.  But she kept her calm.

"Let go of me," she said, reaching for the banister to haul herself up
the stairs.      Al

"He's twisted your mind, Judy," they said.. "You don't know what you're
doing."

know damn well," she said, and fought to wrest herself free.  But his
arms, despite their blistering, were unyielding.  She looked for some
help from Monday, but he and Hoi-Polloi had their backs to the door,
against which the gek-a-gek were beating their massive limbs.  Stout as
the timbers were, they'd splinter soon.  She had to get to Gentle before
the beasts got in, or it was all over.

And then, above the din of assault, a voice she'd only heard raised once
before.

"Let her go."

Celestine had emerged from her bedroom, draped in a sheet.  The
candlelight shook all around her, but she was steady, her gaze mesmeric.
The angels looked round at her, their hands still holding Jude fast.

"She wants to

"I know what she wants to do," Celestine said.  'if you're our
guardians, guard us now.  Let her go."

Jude felt doubt loosen the hold on her.  She didn't give the angels time
to change their mind, but dragged herself free, and started up the
stairs again.  Halfway up, she heard a shout and glanced down to see
both Hoi-Polloi and Monday thrown forward as the door's middle panel
broke, and a prodigious limb reached through to snatch at the air.

"Go on!" Celestine yelled up to her, and Jude returned to her ascent as
the woman stepped on to the bottom stair to guard the way.

Though there was far less light above than below, the details of the
physical world became more insistent as she climbed.

The flight beneath her bare feet was suddenly a wonderland of grains and
knot-holes, its geography entrancing.  Nor was it simply her sight that
filled to brimming.  The banister beneath her hand was more alluring
than silk, the scent of sap and the taste of dust begged to be sniffed
and savoured. Defying these distractions, she fixed her attention on the
door ahead, holding her breath and removing her hand from the banister
to minimize the sources of sensation.  Even so, she was assailed.  The
creaks of the stairs were rich enough to be orchestrated.  The shadows
around the door had nuances to parade, and called for her devotion.  But
she had a rod at her back: the commotion from below.  It was getting
louder all the time, and now cutting through the shouts and roars - came
the sound of Sartori's voice.

"Where are you going, love?" he asked her.. "You can't leave me.  I
won't let you.  Look!

Love?  Look!  I've brought the knives."

She didn't turn to see, but closed her eyes and stopped her ears with
her hands, stumbling up the rest of the stairs blind and deaf.  Only
when her toes were no longer stubbed, and she knew she was at the top,
did she dare the sight again.  The seductions began again, instantly.
Every nick in every nail of the door said: stop, and study me.  The dust
rising around her was a constellation she could have lost herself in
forever.  She pitched herself through it with her gaze glued to the
doorhandle, and clasped it so hard the discomfort cancelled the
beguilings long enough for her to turn it and throw the door open.
Behind her Sartori was calling again, but this time his voice was
slurred, as though he was distracted by profusion.

In front of her was his mirror image, naked at the centre of the stones.
He sat in the universal posture of the meditator: legs crossed, eyes
closed, hands laid palm out in his lap to catch whatever blessings were
bestowed.  Though there was much in the room to call her attention
mantelpiece, window, boards and rafters - their sum of enticements, vast
as it was, could not compete with the glory of human nakedness, and this
nakedness, that she'd loved and lain beside, more than any other.  The

blandishments of the walls - their stained plaster like map of some
unknown country - or the persuasions of the crushed leaves at the sill,
could not distract her now.  Her senses were fixed on the Reconciler,
and she crossed the room to him in a few short strides, calling his name
A as she went.

He didn't move.  Wherever his mind wandered it was too far from this
place - or rather, this place was too small a part of his arena for him
to be claimed by any voices here, however desperate.  She halted at the
edge of the circle.  Though there was nothing to suggest that what lay
inside was in flux, she'd seen the harm done to both Dowd and his voider
when the bounds had been inj U_ diciously breached.  From down below she
heard Celestine raise a cry of warning.  There was no time for
prevarication.  What the circle would do it would do, and she'd have to
take the consequences.

Steeling herself, she stepped over the perimeter.  Instantly, the myriad
discomforts that attended passage afflicted her - itches, pangs and
spasms - and for a moment she thought the circle intended to dispatch
her across the In Ovo.  But the work it was about had overruled such
functions, and the pains simply mounted and mounted, driving her to her
knees in front of Gentle.  Tears spilled from her knitted lids, and the
ripest curses from her lips.  The circle hadn't killed her, but another
minute of its persecutions and it might.  She had to be quick.

She forced open her streaming eyes, and set her gaze on Gentle.  Shouts
hadn't roused him, nor had curses, so she didn't waste her breath with
more.  Instead she seized his shoulders and began to shake him.  His
muscles were lax, and he lolled in her grasp, but either her touch or
the fact of her trespass in this charmed circle won a response.  He
gasped as though he'd been drawn up from some airless deep.

Now she began to talk.

"Gentle?  Gentle!  Open your eyes!  Gentle.  I said: open your fucking
eyes!'

She was causing him pain, she knew.  The tempo and volume of his gasps
increased, and his face, which had been beatifically placid, was knotted
with frowns and grimaces.  She liked the sight.  He'd been so smug in
his Messianic mode.  Now there had to be an end to that complacency, and
if it hurt a little it was his own damn fault for being too much his
Father's child.

"Can you hear me?" she yelled at him.. "You've got to stop the working.
Gentle!  You've got to stop it!'

His eyes started to flicker open.

"Good!  Good!" she said, talking at his face like a schoolmarm trying to
coax a delinquent pupil.

"You can do it!  You can open your eyes.  Go on!  Do it!  if you won't
I'll do it for you, I'm warning you!'

She was as good as her word, lifting her right hand to his left eye and
thumbing back the lid.  His eyeball was rolled back into his socket.
Wherever he was, it was still a long way off, and she wasn't sure her
body had the strength to resist its harrowment while she coaxed him
home.

Then, from the landing behind her, Sartori's voice:

"It's too late, love," he said.. "Can't you feel it?  It's too late."

look back at him.  She could picture

She didn't need to him well enough, with the knives in his hands and
elegy on his face.  Nor did she reply.  She needed every last ounce of
will and wit to stir the man in front of her.

And then inspirationl Her hand went from his face to his groin; from his
eyelid to his testicles.  Surely there was enough of the old Gentle left
in the Reconciler to value his manhood.  The flesh of his scrotum was
loose in the warmth of the room.  His balls were heavy in her hand;
heavy, and vulnerable.  She held them hard.

"Open your eyes," she said.. "Or so help me I'm going to hurt you."

He remained impassive.  She tightened her grip.

"Wake up," she said.

Still nothing.  She squeezed harder, then twisted.

"Wake up!'

His breath quickened.  She twisted again, and his eyes suddenly opened,
his gasps becoming a yell which didn't stop until there was no breath
left in his lungs to loose it on.  As he inhaled his arms rose to take
hold of Jude at the neck.  She lost her grip on his balls, but it didn't
matter.  He was awake, and raging.  He started to rise, and as he did so
pitched her out of the circle.  She landed clumsily, but began
haranguing him before she'd even raised her hand.

"You've got to stop the working!' ...  Crazy woman .  .  ." he growled.

"I mean it!  You've got to stop the working!  It's all a plot!" She
hauled herself up.. "Dowd was right, Gentle!  it's got. to be stopped."

"You're not going to spoil it now," he said.. "You're too late.. "Find a
wayl' she said.. "There's got to be a way!. "If you come near me again
I'll kill you," he warned.  He scanned the circle, to be certain that it
was intact.  It was.. "Where's Clem?" he yelled.. "Clem?"

Only now did he look beyond Judith to the door, and beyond the door to
the shadowy figure on the landing.  His frown deepened into a scowl of
revulsion, and she knew any hope of persuading him was lost.  He saw
conspiracy here.

"There, love," said Sartori.. "Didn't I tell you it was too late?"

The two gek-a-gek fawned at his feet.  The knives gleamed in his fists.
This time he didn't offer the handle of either one.  He'd come to take
her life if she refused to take her own.

"Dearest one," he said.. "It's over." He took a step, and crossed the
threshold.

"We can do it here," he said, looking down at her.

"Where we were made.  What better place?" She didn't need to look back
at Gentle to know he was

hearing this.  Was there some sliver of hope in that fact?  Some
persuasion that might drop from Sartori's lips and move Gentle where
hers had failed?

"I'm going to have to do it for us both, love," he said.. "You're too
weak.  You can't see clearly.. "I don't ...  want ...  to die," she
said.

"You don't have any choice," he said.. "It's either by the Father or the
Son.  That's all.  Father or Son." Behind her, she heard Gentle murmur
two syllables.

"Oh, Pie..."

Then Sartori took a second step, out of the shadow into the candlelight.
When he did, the obsessive scrutiny of the room fixed him in every
wretched morsel.  His eyes were wet with despair, his lips so dry they
were dusty.

His skull gleamed through his pallid skin, and his teeth, in their
array, made a fatal smile.  He was Death, in every detail.  And if she
recognized that fact - she who loved him - then so, surely, did Gentle.

He took a third step towards her, and raised the knives above his head.
She didn't look away, but turned her face up towards him, daring him to
spoil with his blades what he'd caressed with his fingers only minutes
before.

"I would have died for you," he murmured.  The blades were at the top of
their gleaming arc, ready to fall.. "Why wouldn't you die for me?"

He didn't wait for an answer, even if she'd had one to 'give, but let
the knives descend.  As they came for her eyes she looked away, but
before they caught her cheek and neck the Reconciler howled behind her,
and the whole room shook.  She was thrown from her knees, Sartori's
blades missing her by inches.  The candles on the M mantelpiece
guttered, and went out, but there were other lights to take their place.
The stones of the circle were flickering like tiny bonfires flattened by
a high wind, flecks of their brightness racing from them to strike the
walls.  At the circle's edge stood Gentle.  in his hand, the reason for
this turmoil.  He'd picked up one of the stones, arming himself and
breaking the circle in the same

moment.  He clearly knew the gravity of his deed.  There was grief on
his face, so profound it seemed to have incapacitated him.  Having
raised the stone he was now motionless, as if his will to undo the
working had already lost momentum.

She got to her feet, though the room was shaking more violently than
ever.  The boards felt solid enough beneath her, but they'd darkened to
near invisibility.  She could see only the nails that kept them in
place; the rest, despite the light from the stones, was pitch black, and
as she started towards the circle she seemed to be treading a void.

There was a noise accompanying every tremor now: a mingling of tortured
wood and cracking plaster, all underscored by a guttural boiling, the
source of which she didn't comprehend until she reached the edge of the
circle.  The darkness beneath them was indeed a void: the In Ovo, opened
by Gentle's breaking of the circle.  And in it, already woken by
Sartori's dabblings, the prisoners that connived and suppurated there,
rising at the scent of escape.

At the door, the gek-a-gek set up a clamour of anticipation, sensing the
release of their fellows.  But for all their power they'd have few of
the spoils in the coming massacre.  There were forms appearing below
that made them look kittenish; entities of such elaboration neither
Jude's eyes nor wits could encompass them.  The sight terrified her, but
if this was the only way to halt the Reconciliation, then so be it.
History would repeat itself, and the Maestro be twice damned.

He'd seen the Oviates' ascent as clearly as she, and was frozen by the
sight.  Determined to prevent him from reestablishing the status quo at
all costs, she reached to snatch the stone from his hand, so as to pitch
it through the window.

But before her fingers could grasp it he looked up at her.  The anguish
went from his face, and rage replaced it.

"Throw the stone away!" she yelled.

4k

His eyes weren't on her, however.  They were on a sight at her shoulder.
Sartori!  She threw herself aside as the knives came down, and clutching
the mantelpiece turned back to see the brothers face to face, one armed
with blades, the other with the stone.

Sartori's glance had gone to Jude as she leapt, and, before he could
return it to his enemy, Gentle brought the stone down with a two-handed
blow, striking sparks from one of the blades as he dashed it from his
brother's fingers.  While the advantage was his Gentle went after the
second blade, but Sartori had it out of range before the stone could
connect, so Gentle swung at the empty hand, the cracking of his
brother's bones audible throug the din of Oviates and boards and
cracking walls.

Sartori made a pitiful yell, and raised his fractured hand in front of
his brother, as if to win remorse for the hurt.  But as Gentle's eyes
went to Sartori's broken hand, the other, whole and sharp, came at his
flank.

He glimpsed the blade, and half-turned to avoid it, but it found his
arm, opening it to the bone from wrist to elbow.  He dropped the stone,
a rain of blood coming after, and as his palm went up to stem the flow
Sartori entered the circle, slashing back and forth as he came.

Defenceless, Gentle retreated before the blade, and arching back to
avoid the cuts lost his footing and went down beneath his attacker.  One
stab would have finished him there and then.  But Sartori wanted
intimacy.  He straddled his brother's body and squatted down upon it,
slashing at Gentle's arms as he attempted to ward off the coup de grdce.

Jude scoured the in solid boards for the fallen knife, her gaze
distracted by the malignant forms that were everywhere turning their
faces to freedom.  The blade, if she could find it, would be of no use
against them, but it might still dispatch Sartori.  He'd planned to take
his own life with one of these knives.  She could still turn it to such
work, if she could only find it.

But before she could do so, she heard a sob from the

r PI

circle, and glancing back saw Gentle sprawled beneath his brother's
weight, horrendously wounded, his chest sliced open, his jaw, cheek and
temples slashed, his hands and arms crisscrossed with cuts.  The sob
wasn't his, but Sartori's.  He'd raised the knife, and was uttering this
last cry before he plunged the blade into his brother's heart.

His grief was premature.  As the knife came down Gentle found the
strength to thrash one final time, and instead of finding his heart the
blade entered his upper chest below his clavicle.  Slickened, the handle
slipped through Sartori's fingers.

But he had no need to reclaim it.  Gentle's rally was over as suddenly
as it had begun.  His body uncurled, its spasms ceased, and he lay
still.

Sartori rose from his seat on his brother's belly, and looked down at
the body for a time, then turned to survey the spectacle of the void.
Though the Oviates were close to the surface now, he didn't hurry to act
or retreat, but surveyed the whole panorama at the centre of which he
stood, his eyes finally coming to rest on Jude.

"Oh, love .  .  ." he said softly.. "Look what you've done.  You've
given me to my Heavenly Father."

Then he stooped and reached out of the circle to take hold of the stone
that Gentle had removed, and with the finesse of a painter laying down a
final stroke, put it back in place.

The status quo wasn't instantly restored.  The forms below continued to
rise, seething with frustration as they sensed that their route into the
Fifth had been sealed.  The fire in the stones began to go out, but
before the last gutterings Sartori murmured an order to the gek-a-gek
and they sloped from their places at the door, their flat heads skimming
the ground.

Jude thought at first they were coming for her, but it was Gentle they'd
been ordered to collect.  They divided around the circle and reached
over its perimeter, taking hold of the body almost tenderly and lifting
it out of their Maestro's way.

"Down the stairs," he told them, and they retreated to

the door with their burden, leaving the circle in Sartori's sole
possession.

A terrible calm had descended.  The last glimpses of the in Ovo had
disappeared; the light in the stones was all but gone.

In the gathering darkness she saw Sartori find his place at the centre
of the circle, and sit.

"Don't do this..." she murmured to him.

He raised his head, and made a little grunt, as though

he was surprised she was still in the room.  it's already done," he
said.. "All I have to do is hold the circle till midnight."

She heard a moan from below, as Clem saw what the Oviates had brought to
the top of the stairs.  Then came the thump, thump, thump as the body
was thrown down the flight.  There could only be seconds before they
came back for her; seconds to coax him from the circle.  She knew only
one way, and if it failed then there could be no further appeal.

I love you," she said.

It was too dark to see him, but she felt his eyes.

"I know," he said, without feeling.. "But my Heavenly Father will love
me more.  It's in His hands now."

She heard the Oviates moving behind her, their breaths chilly on her
neck.

"I don't ever want to see you again," Sartori said.

"Please call them off," she begged him, remembering the way Clem had
been apprehended by these beasts, his arms half -swallowed.

"Leave of your own volition, and they won't touch you," he said.. "I am
about my Father's business.. "He doesn't

love you .  .

"Leave."

"He's incapable..

"Leave."

She got to her feet.  There was nothing left to say or do.  As she
turned her back on the circle the Oviates pressed their cold flanks
against her legs and kept her trapped between them until she reached the
threshold, to be

certain she made no last attempt on their summoner's life.  Then she was
allowed to go unescorted on to the landing.  Clem was halfway up the
stairs, bludgeon in hand, but she instructed him to stay where he was,
fearful that the gek-a-gek would claw him to shreds if he climbed
another step.

The door to the Meditation Room slammed behind her, and she glanced back
to confirm what she'd already guessed: that the Oviates had followed her
out and were now standing guard at the door.  Still nervous that they'd
land some last blow, she crossed to the top of the flight as though she
was walking on eggs, and only picked up speed once she was on the
stairs.

There was light below, but the scene it illuminated was as grim as
anything above.  Gentle was lying at the bottom of the stairs, his head
laid on Celestine's lap.  The sheet she'd worn had fallen from her
shoulders, and her breasts were bare, bloodied where she'd held her
son's face to her skin.

"Is he dead?" Jude murmured to Clem.

He shook his head.. "He's holding on."

She didn't have to ask what for.  The front door was open, hanging
half-demolished from its hinges, and through it she could hear the first
stroke of midnight from a distant steeple.

"The circle's complete," she said.

"What circle?" Clem asked her.

She didn't reply.  What did it matter now?  But Celestine had looked up
from her meditation on Gentle's face, and the same question was in her
eyes as on Clem's lips, so Jude answered them as plainly as she could.

"The Imajica's a circle," she said.

"How do you know?" Clem asked.

"The Goddesses told me."

She was almost at the bottom of the stairs, and now that she was closer
to mother and son she could see that Gentle was literally holding on to
life, clutching at Celestine's arm, and staring up into her face.  Only
when Jude

i r sank down on to the bottom stair did Gentle's eyes go to her.

never knew," he said.

i I know," she replied, thinking he was speaking of Hap- examen dios
plot.. "I didn't want to

believe it either." Gentle shook his

head.

4. "I meant the circle.  .  ." he said, I never knew it

was a circle.  .

"It was the Goddesses' secret," Jude said.

Now Celestine spoke, her voice as soft as the flames that lit her lips.

"Doesn't Hapexamendios know?" i Jude shook her head.

"So whatever fire He sends.  .  ." Celestine murmured, ...  will burn
its way round the circle."

Jude studied her face, knowing there was some profit in this knowledge
but too exhausted to make sense of it.  Celestine looked down at
Gentle's face.

"Child?" she said.

"Yes, Mama."

"Go to Him," she said.. "Take your spirit into the First and find your
Father."

I

The effort of breathing seemed almost too much for Gentle, never
mind a journey.  But what his body was incapable of, maybe his spirit
could achieve.  He lifted his fingers towards his mother's face.  She
caught hold of them.

"What are you going to do?" Gentle said.

"Call His fire," Celestine said.

Jude looked towards Clem to see if this exchange made any more sense to
him than it did to her, but he looked completely perplexed.  What was
the use of inviting death, when it was going to come anyway, and all too
quickly?

"Delay Him," Celestine was telling Gentle.. "Go to Him as a loving son,
and hold His attention for as long as you can.

Flatter Him.  Tell Him how much you want to see His face.  Can you do
that for me?"

IF

"Of course, Mama."

"Good."

Content that her child would do as he was charged,

Celestine lay Gentle's hand back upon his chest, and slid

her knees out from beneath his head, lowering it tenderly

to the boards.  She had one last instruction for him.

I

"When you go into the First, go through the Do-minions.  He mustn't know
that there's another way, do

you understand?"

"Yes, Mama."

"And when you get there, child, listen for the voice.  It's

in the ground.  You'll hear it, if you listen carefully.  It

says

"Nisi Nirvana."

z

"That's right."

"I remember," Gentle said.. "Nisi Nirvana."

As if the name were a blessing, and would protect him

as he went on his way, he closed his eyes, arid took his

leave.  Celestine didn't indulge in sentiment, but rose,

pulling the sheet up around her as she crossed to the

bottom of the stairs.

"Now I have to speak to Sartori."

"That's going to be difficult ' Jude said.. "The door's

locked and guarded."

"He's my son," Celestine replied, looking up the flight.

"He'll open it for me.

And so saying, she ascended.

CHAPTER SIXTY

Gentle's spirit went from the house not thinking of the Father that
awaited him in the First Dominion, but of the mother he was leaving
behind.  In the hours since his return from the Tabula Rasa's Tower
they'd shared all too brief a time together.  He'd knelt beside her bed
for a few minutes while she'd told him the story of Nisi Nirvana.  He'd
held on to her in the Goddesses' rain, ashamed of the desire he felt,
but unable to deny it.  And finally, moments ago, he'd laid in her arms
while the blood seeped out of him.  Child; lover; cadaver.  There was
the arc of a little LIFE there, and they'd have to be content with it.

He didn't entirely comprehend her purpose in sending him from her, but
he was too confounded to do anything but obey.  She had her reasons, and
he had to trust them, now that the work he'd laboured to achieve had
soured.

That too he didn't entirely comprehend.  it had happened too fast.  One
moment he'd been so remote from his body he was almost ready to forget
it entirely, the next he was back in the Meditation Room, with Jude's
grip earning his screams, and his brother mounting the stairs behind
her, his knives gleaming.  He'd known then, seeing death in his
brother's face, why the mystif had torn itself to shreds in order to
make him seek Sartori out.  Their Father was there, in that face, in
that despairing certainty, and had been all along, no doubt.  But he'd
never seen it.  All he'd ever seen was his own beauty, twisted out of
true, and told himself how fine it was to be Heaven to his other's Hell.

What a mockery that was!  He'd been his Father's dupe; His agent, His
fool; and he might never

have realized it if Jude hadn't dragged him raw from the Ana, and showed
him in terrible particulars the destroyer in the mirror.

But the recognition had come so late, and he was so ill-equipped to undo
the damage he'd done.  He could

d only hope that his mother understood better than he where the little
hope left to them lay.

In pursuit of it, he'd be her agent now, and go into the First to do
whatever he could at her behest.

He went the long way round, as she'd instructed, his path L taking him
back over the territories he'd travelled when he'd sought out the Synod,
and though he longed to swoop out of the air and pass the time of a new
day with the others, he knew he couldn't linger.

He glimpsed them as he went, however, and saw that they'd survived the
last hectic minutes in the Ana, and were back in their Dominions,
beaming with their triumph.  On the Mount of Lipper Bayak, Tick Raw was
howling to the heavens like a lunatic, waking every sleeper in Vanaeph,
and stirring the guards in the watchtowers of Patashoqua.  In the Kwem,
Scopique was clambering up the slope of the Pivot pit where he'd sat to
do his part, tears of joy in his eyes as he turned them skyward.  In
Yzordderrex, Athanasius was on his knees in the street outside the
Eurheternec Kesparate, bathing his hands in a spring that was leaping up
at his wounded face like a dog that wanted to lick him well.

And on the borders of the First, where Gentle's spirit slowed, Chicka
Jackeen was watching the Erasure, waiting for the blank wall to dissolve
and give him a glimpse of Hapexamendios's Dominion.

His gaze left the sight, however, when he felt Gentle's presence.

"MaestroT he said.

More than any of the others, Gentle wanted to share something of what
was afoot with Jackeen, but he dared not.  Any exchange this close to the
Erasure might be

monitored by the God behind it, and he knew he'd not be able to converse
with this man, who'd shown him such devotion, without offering some word
of warning, so he didn't tempt himself.  instead he commanded his spirit
on, hearing Jackeen call his name again as he went.  But before the
appeal could come a third time he passed through the Erasure, and into
the Dominion beyond.  In the blind moments before the First appeared,
his mother's voice echoed in his head.

"She went into a city of iniquities," he heard her saying, 'where no
ghost was holy, and no flesh was whole."

Then the Erasure was behind him, and he was hovering on the perimeters
of the City of God.

No wonder his brother had been an architect, he thought.  Here was
enough inspiration for a nation of prodigies, a labour of ages, raised
by a power for whom an age was the measure of a breath.  Its majesty
spread in every direction but the one behind, the streets wider than the
Patashoquan Highway, and so straight they only disappeared at their
vanishing point, the buildings so monumental the sky was barely visible
between their eaves.  But whatever suns or satellites hung in the
heavens of this Dominion, the city had no need of their illumination.
Cords of light ran through the paving stones, and through the bricks and
slabs of the great houses, their ubiquity ensuring that all but the most
vapid shadows were banished from the streets and plazas.

He moved slowly at first, expecting to soon encounter one of the city's
inhabitants, but after passing over half a dozen intersections and
finding no soul on the streets, he began to pick up his speed, slowing
only when he glimpsed some sign of life behind the faqades.  He wasn't
nimble enough to catch a face, nor was he so presumptuous as to enter
uninvited, but he several times saw curtains moving, as though some shy
but curious citizen was retiring from the sill before he could return
the scrutiny.  Nor was this the only sign of such presences.  Carpets
left hanging over balustrades still shook, as if their beaters

had just retired from their patios; vines dropped their leaves down as
fruit-gatherers fled for the safety of their rooms.

it seemed that however fast he travelled - and he was moving faster than
any vehicle - he couldn't overtake the rumour that drove the populace
into hiding.  They left nothing behind.  No pet, no child, no scrap of
litter, nor stroke of graffiti.

Each was a model citizen, and kept his or her life out of sight behind
the drapes and the closed doors.

Such emptiness in a metropolis so clearly built to teem might have
seemed melancholy had it not been for the structures themselves, which
were built of materials so diverse in texture and colour, and were lent
such vitality by the light that ran in them, that, even though they were
deserted, the streets and plazas had a life of their own.

The builders had banished grey and brown from their palette, and in
their place had found slate, stone, paving and tiles of every
conceivable hue and nuance, mingling their colours with an audacity no
architect of the Fifth would have dared.  Street after street presented
a spectacle of glorious colour: faades of lilac and amber; colonnades of
brilliant purples; squares laid out in ochre and blue.  And everywhere
amid the riot, scarlet, of eye pricking intensity, and a white as
perfect; and here and there, used more sparingly still, flicks and
snippets of black: a tile, a brick, a seam in a slab.

But even such beauty could pall, and after a thousand such streets had
slipped by - all as heroically built, all as lushly coloured - the sheer
excess of it became sickening, and Gentle was glad of the lightning that
he saw erupt from one of the nearby streets, its brilliance sufficient
to bleach the colour from the faades for a flickering time.  In search
of its source he redirected himself, and came into a square at the
centre of which stood a solitary figure, a Nullianac, its head thrown
back as it unleashed its silent bolts into the barely glimpsed sky.  Its
power was man y orders of magnitude greater than anything Gentle had

witnessed from its like before.  It, and presumably its brothers, had a
piece of the God's power between the palms of its face, and its capacity
for destruction was now stupendous.

Sensing the approach of the wanderer, the creature left off its
rehearsals, and floated up from the square as it searched for this
interloper.  Gentle didn't know what harm it could do to him in his
present condition.

If the Nullianacs were now Hapexamendios's Elite, who knew what
authority they'd been lent?  But there was no profit in retreat.  If he
didn't seek some direction he might wander here forever and never find
his Father.

The Nullianac was naked, but there was neither sensuality nor
vulnerability in that state.

its flesh was almost as bright as its fire, its form without visible
means of procreation or evacuation; without hair, without nipples,
without navel.  it turned, and turned, and turned again looking for the
entity whose nearness it sensed, but perhaps the new scale of its
destructive powers had made it insensitive, because it failed to find
Gentle until his spirit hovered a few yards away.

"Are you looking for me?" he said.

it found him now.  Arcs of energy played back and forth between the
palms of its head, and out of their cracklings the creature's
unmelodious voice emerged.

"Maestro," it said.

"You know who I am?"

"Of course," it said.. "Of course."

its head wove like that of a mesmerized snake as it drew closer to
Gentle.

"Why are you here?" it said.

"To see my Father.. "Ah.. "I came here to honour Him.. "So do we all."
"I'm sure.  Can you take me to Him?. "He's everywhere," the Nullianac
said.. "This is His city, and He's in its every mote."

"So if I speak to the ground I speak to Him, do 1?" The Nullianac mused
on this for a few moments.. "Not the ground..." it said.. "Don't speak
to the ground."

"Then what?  The walls?  The sky?  You?  Is my Father in you?" The arcs
in the Nullianac's head grew more excitable.

"No," it said.. "I wouldn't presume

"Then will you take me to where I can do Him devotion?  There isn't much
time."

it was this remark more than any other which gained the Nullianac's
compliance.  It nodded its death-laden head.

"I'll take you," it said, and rose a little higher, turning from Gentle
as it did so.. "But as you say, we must be swift.  His business cannot
wait long."

Though Jude had been loath to let Celestine climb the stairs alone,
knowing as she did what lay at the top, she also knew that her presence
would only spoil what little chance the woman had of gaining access to
the Meditation Room, so she reluctantly stayed below, listening hard -
as did they all - for some clue to what was transpiring in the shadows
of the landing.

The first sound that they heard was the warning growls of the gek-a-gek,
followed by Sartori's voice, telling the trespasser that their life
would be forfeit if they attempted to enter.

Celestine answered him, but in a voice so low that the sense of what she
said was lost before it reached the bottom of the flight, and as the
minutes passed - were they minutes?  perhaps only dreadful seconds,
waiting for another eruption of violence - Jude could resist the
temptation no longer, and, snuffing out the candles closest to her,
started a slow ascent.

She expected the angels to make some move to stop

her, but they were too preoccupied with tending to Gentle's body, and
she climbed unhindered by all but her caution.  Celestine was still
outside the door, she saw, but the Oviates were no longer blocking her
way.  At the instruction of the man inside they'd shrunk away, and were
waiting, bellies to the ground, for a cue to do mischief.  Jude was now
almost halfway up the flight, and she was able to catch ragments o the
exchange that was underway between mother and son.  It was Sartori's
voice she heard first: a wasted whisper.

It's over, Mama.  .

"I know, child," Celestine said.  There was conciliation in her tone,
not rebuke.

"He's going to kill everything.  .

"Yes.  I know that too."

I had to hold the circle for Him ...  it's what He wanted."

"And you had to do what He wanted.  I understand that, child.  Believe
me, I do.  I've served Him too, remember?  It's no great crime."

At these words of forgiveness, the door of the Meditation Room clicked
open, and slowly swung wide.  Jude was too low down the staircase to see
more than the rafters, lit either by a candle or the halo of Oviate
tissue that had attended on Sartori when he was out in the street.  With
the door open his voice was much clearer.

"Will you come in?" he asked Celestine.

"Do you want me to?"

"Yes, Mama.  Please.  I'd like us to be together when the end comes."

A familiar sentiment, Jude thought.  Apparently he didn't much care what
breast he lay his sobbing head on, as long as he wasn't left to die
alone.  Celestine put up no further show of ambivalence, but accepted
her child's invitation, and stepped inside.  The door didn't close, nor
did the gek-a-gek creep back into place to block it.  Celestine was
quickly gone from sight, however, and Jude was sorely tempted to
continue her ascent and watch what

F

unfolded inside, but she was afraid that any further advance would be
sensed by the Oviates, so she gingerly sat down on the stairs, halfway
between the Maestro at the top and the body at the bottom.  There she
waited, listening to the silence of the house; of the street; of the
world.

in her mind, she shaped a prayer.

Goddess ...  she thought  This is your sister, Judith.  There's a
fire coming, Goddess.  It's almost upon me, and I'm afraid ...

From above, she heard Sartori speak, his voice now so low she could
catch none of his words even with the door open.  But she heard the
tears that they became, and the sound broke her concentration.  The
thread of her prayer was lost.  No matter.  She'd said enough to
summarize her feelings:

The fire's almost upon me, Goddess.  I am afraid.  What was there left
to say?

The speed at which Gentle and the Nullianac travelled didn't diminish
the scale of the city they were passing through.  Quite the other way
about.  As the minutes passed, and the streets continued to flicker by,
thousand upon thousand, their buildings all raised from the same ripely
coloured stone, all built to obscure the sky, all laid to the horizon,
the magnitude of this labour began to seem not epic but insane.

However alluring its colours were, however satisfying its geometries and
exquisite its details, the city was the work of a collective madness; a
compulsive vision that had refused to be placated until it had covered
every inch of the Dominion with monuments to its own relentlessness. Nor
was there any sign of any life on any street, leading Gentle to a
suspicion that he finally voiced, not as a statement but as a question.

"Who lives here?" he said.

"Hapexamendios."

"And who else?"

"It's His city," the Nulfianac said.

"Are there no citizens?. "It's His city."

The answer was plain enough.  The place was deserted.  The shaking of
vines and drapes he'd seen when he'd first arrived had either been
caused by his approach, or more likely been a game of illusions the
empty buildings had devised to while away the centuries.

But at last, after travelling through innumerable streets that were
indistinguishable from each other, there were finally subtle signs of
change in the structures ahead.  Their luscious colours were steadily
deepening, the stone so drenched it must soon surely ooze and run.

And there was a new elaboration in the faades, and perfection in their
proportions, that made Gentle think that he and the Nulhanac were
approaching the first cause, the district of which the streets they'd
passed through had been imitations, diluted by repetition.

Confirming his suspicion that the journey was nearing its end, Gentle's
guide spoke.

"He knew you'd come," it said.. "He sent some of my brothers to the
perimeter to look for you.. "Are there many of you?"

"Many," the Nullianac said.. "Minus two." It looked in Gentle's
direction.. "But you know this, of course.  You killed them."

"They would have killed me if I hadn't."

"And wouldn't that have been a proud boast for our tribe?" it said.. "To
have killed the Son of God."

It made a laugh from its lightning, though there was more humour in a
death-rattle.

"Aren't you afraid?" Gentle asked it.

"Why should I be afraid?"

"Talking this way when my Father may hear you?. "He needs my service,"
came the reply.

"And I do not need to live." It paused, then said. "Though I would miss
burning the Dominions."

Now it was Gentle's turn to ask why.

t

A. "Because it's what I was born to do.  I've lived too long, waiting
for this."

"How long?"

"Many thousands of years, Maestro.  Many, many thousands."

It silenced Gentle, to think that he was travelling beside an entity
whose span was so much vaster than his own, and that had anticipated
this imminent destruction as its life's reward.  How far off was that
prize?  he wondered.  His sense of time was impoverished without the
tick of breath and heart-beat to aid it, and he had no clue as to
whether he'd vacated his body in Gamut Street two minutes before, or
five, or ten.  It was in truth academic.  With the Dominions reconciled,
Hapexamendios could choose His moment, and Gentle's only comfort was the
continued presence of his guide, who would be, he suspected, gone from
his side at the first call to arms.

y

As the street ahead grew denser, the Nullianac's speed and height
dropped, until they were hovering inches

above the ground, the buildings around them grotesquely elaborate now,
every fraction of their brick and stone-work etched and carved and
filigreed.  There was no beauty in these intricacies, only obsession.
Their surfeit was more morbid than lively; like the ceaseless, witless
motion of maggots.  And the same decadence had overcome the colours, the
delicacy and profusion of which he'd so admired in the suburbs.  Their
nuances were gone.

Every colour now competed with scarlet, the mingled show not brightening
the air but bruising it.  Nor was

there light here in the same abundance as there'd been at the outskirts
of the city.  Though seams of brightness still flickered in the stone,
the elaboration that surrounded them devoured their glow, and left these
depths dismal.

"I can go no further than this, Reconciler," the Nullianac said.. "From
here, you go alone."

"Shall I tell my Father who found me?" Gentle said, hoping that the
offer might coax a few more tit bits from

the creature before he came into Hapexamendios's presence.

"I have no name," the Nullianac replied.. "I am my brother and my
brother is me.. "I see.  That's a pity."

"But you offered me a kindness, Reconciler.  Let me offer you one."
"Yes?"

"Name me a place to destroy in your name, and I'll make it my business
to do so.  A city.

A country.  whatever.. "Why would I want that Gentle said.

"Because you're your Father's Son," came the reply.

"And what your Father wants, so will you."

Despite all his caution, Gentle couldn't help but give the destroyer a
sour look.

"No?" it said.

"No.

"Then we're both without gifts to give," it said, and turning its back,
rose and went from Gentle without not her word.

He didn't call after it for directions.  There was only one way to go
now, and that was on, into the heart of the metropolis, choked though it
was by gaud and elaboration.  He had the power to go at the speed of
thought, of couL se but he wished to do nothing that might alarm the
Unbeheld, so took his spirit into the garish gloom like a pedestrian,
wandering between edifices so fraught with ornament they could not be
far from collapse.

As the splendours of the suburbs had given way to decadence, so
decadence had, in its turn, given way to pathology; a state that drove
his sensibilities beyond distaste or antipathy to the borders of panic.
That mere excess might squeeze such anguish out of him was a revelation
in itself.  When had he become so rarefied?  He, the crass copyist.  He,
the sybarite, who'd never said enough, much less too much.  What had he
become?  A

phantom aesthete driven to terror by the sight of his Father's city.

Of the architect himself, there was no sign, and rather than advance
into complete darkness Gentle stopped, and simply said. "Father?"

Though his voice had very little authority here, it was loud in such
utter silence, and must surely have gone to every threshold within the
radius of a dozen streets.  But if Hapexamendios was in residence behind
any of these doors, He made no reply.

Gentle tried again.

"Father.  I want to see you."

As he spoke he peered down the shadowy street ahead, looking for some
sign, however vestigial, of the Unbeheld's whereabouts.  There was no
murmur; no motion.  But his study was rewarded by the slow comprehension
that his Father, for all His apparent absence, was in fact here in front
of him; and to his left, and to his right, and

above his head and beneath his feet.  What were those gleaming folds at
the windows, if they weren't skin?;

what were those arches if they weren't bone?; what was this scarlet
pavement, and this light-shot stone, if it wasn't flesh?

There was pith and marrow here.  There was tooth and lash and nail.  The
Nullianac hadn't been speaking of spirit when it had said that
Hapexamendios was everywhere in this metropolis.  This was the City of
God; and God was the city.

Twice in his life he'd had presentiments of this revelation.  The first
time when he'd entered Yzordderrex, which had been commonly called a
city-god itself, and had been, he now understood, his brother's
unwitting attempt to recreate his Father's masterwork.  The second when
he'd undertaken the business of similitudes, and had realized, as the
net of his ambition encompassed London, that there was no part of it,
from sewer to dome, that was not somehow analogous to his anatomy.

Here was that theory proved.  The knowledge didn't

strengthen him, but instead fuelled the dread he felt, thinking of his
Father's immensity.  He'd crossed a continent and more to get here, and
there'd been no part of it that was not made as these streets were made,
his Father's substance replicated in unimaginable quantities to become
the raw materials for the masons and carpenters and hod-carriers of His
will.  And yet, for all its magnitude, what was His city?  A trap of
corporeality, and its architect its prisoner.

"Oh, Father.  .  ." he said, and perhaps because the formality had gone
from his voice, and there was sorrow in it, he was finally granted a
reply.

"You've done well for Me," the voice said.

Gentle remembered its monotony well.  Here was the same barely
discernible modulation he'd first heard as he'd stood in the shadow of
the Pivot.

"You've succeeded where all the others failed," Hapexamendios said.
"They went astray, or let themselves be crucified.

But you, Reconciler, you held to your course."

I'

"For your sake, Father."

"And that service has earned you a place here," the Gosaid.. "In My
city.  In My heart."

"Thank you," Gentle replied, fearful that this gift was going to mark
the end of the exchange.

If so, he'd have failed as his mother's agent.  Tell Him you want to see
His face, she'd said.

Distract Him.  Flatter Him.

An yes, flatteryl

"I want to learn from you now, Father," he said.. "I want to be able to
carry your wisdom back into the Fifth with me."

"You've done all you need to do, Reconciler," Hapexamendios said.. "You
won't need to go back into the Fifth, for your sake or Mine.  You'll
stay with Me, and watch My work.. "What work is that

You knowwhatwork,"came the God's reply."Iheardyou speak with the
Nullianac.  Why are you pretending ignorance?" The inflexions in His
voice were too subtle to be interpreted.  Was there genuine enquiry in
the question, or a fury at His son's deceit?

"I didn't wish to presume, Father," Gentle said, cursing himself for
this gaffe.. "I thought you'd want to tell me yourself."

d I tell you what you already know?" the God

"Why would said, unwilling to be persuaded from this argument until He
had a convincing answer.. "You already have every knowledge you need-'

"Not every one," Gentle said, seeing now how he might divert the flow.

"What do you lack?" Hapexamendios said.. "I'll tell you everything."

"Your face, Father."      . "My

face?  What about My face?"

M

"That's what I lack.  The sight of Your face."

"You've seen My city," the Unbeheld replied.. "That's My

Jace."

"There's no other?  Really, Father?  None?. "Aren't you

content with that?Hapexamendios said.. "Isn't it perfect

enough?  Doesn't it shine?"

"Too much, Father.  it's too glorious."

"How can a thing be too glorious?"

"Part of me's human, Father, and that part's weak.  I

look at this city, and I'm agog.  It's a masterwork-'

"Yes it is."

"Genius."

"Yes it is."

"But, Father, grant me a simpler sight.  Show a glimpse

of the face that made my face, so that I can know the part

of me that's You."

He heard something very like a sigh in the air around

him.

"It may seem ridiculous to You -' Gentle said, '-but I've

followed this course because I wanted to see one face.

One loving face." There was enough truth in this to lend

his words real passion.  There was indeed a face he'd

hoped to find at the end of his journey.. "Is it too much o ask?" he
said.

There was a flutter of movement in the dingy arena ahead, and Gentle
stared into the murk, in the expectation of some colossal door opening.
But instead Hapexamendios said. "Turn your back, Reconciler.. "You want
me to leave?. "No.  Only avert your eyes."

Here was a paradox; to be told to look away when sight was requested.
But there was something other than an unveiling afoot.  For the first
time since entering the Dominion, he heard sounds other than a voice: a
delicate rustling, a muted patter, creaks, and whirrings stealing on his
ear.  And all around him, tiny motions in the solid street, as the
monoliths softened, and inclined towards the mystery he'd turned his
back upon.  A step gaped, and oozed marrow.  A wall opened where stone
met stone, and a scarlet deeper than any he'd seen, a scarlet turned
almost black, ran in rills as the slabs yielded up their geometry,
lending themselves to the Unbeheld's purpose.  Teeth came down from an
un knitted balcony above, and loops of gut unravelled from the sills,
dragging down curtains of tissue as they came.

As the deconstruction escalated, he dared the look he'd been forbidden,
glancing back to see the entire street in gross or petty motion; forms
fracturing, forms congealing, forms drooping and rising.  There was
nothing recognizable in the turmoil, and Gentle was about to turn away
when one of the pliant walls tumbled in the flux, and for

a heart-beat, no more, he glimpsed a figure behind it.     FPO,"- 7 The
moment was long enough to know the face he saw, and have it in his
mind's eye when he looked away.  There was no face its equal in the
Imajica.  For all the sorrow on it, for all its wounds, it was
exquisite.

Pie was alive, and waiting there, in his Father's midst, a prisoner of
the prisoner.  It was all Gentle could do not to turn there and then and
pitch his spirit into the tumult,

demanding that His Father give the mystif up.  This was his teacher,
he'd say, his renewer, his perfect friend.  But he fought the desire,
knowing such an attempt would end in calamity, and instead turned away
again, doting on the glimpse he'd had while the street behind him
continued to convulse.  Though the mystif's body had been marked by the
hurts it had suffered, it was more whole than Gentle had dared hope.
Perhaps it had drawn strength from the land on which Hapexamendios' city
was built; the Dominion its people had worked their fe its upon, before
God had come to raise this metropolis.

e

But how should he persuade his Father to giv the mystif up?  With pleas?
With further flattery?  As he chewed on the problem, the ructions around
him began to subside, and he heard Hapexamendios speak behind him.

"Reconciler?"

"Yes, Father?"

"You wanted to see My face.. "Yes, Father?"

"Turn and look."

He did so.  The street in front of him had not lost all semblance of a
thoroughfare.  The buildings still stood, their doors and windows
visible.  But their architect had claimed from their substance
sufficient pieces of the body He'd once owned to recreate it for
Gentle's edification.  The Father was human, of course, and had perhaps
been no larger than His son in His first incarnation.  But He'd re-made
Himself three times Gentle's height and more, a teetering giant that was
as much borne up by the street He'd racked for matter as of it.

For all His scale, however, His form was ineptly made, as if He'd
forgotten what it was like to be whole.  His head was enormous, the
shards of a thousand skulls claimed from the buildings to construct it,
but so mismatched that the mind it was meant to shield was visible
between the pieces, pulsing and flickering.  One of His arms was vast,
yet ended in a hand scarcely larger than Gentle's, while

the other was wizened, but finished with fingers that had three dozen
joints.  His torso was another mass of misalliances, His innards
cavorting in a cage of half a thousand ribs, His huge heart beating
against a breastbone too weak to contain it, and already fractured.  And
below, at His groin, the strangest deformation: a sex that He'd failed
to conjure into a single organ, but which hung in rags, raw and useless.

"Now.  .  ." the God said.. "Do you see?" The impassivity had gone from
His voice, its monotony replaced by an assembly of voices, as many
larynxes, none of them whole, laboured to produce each word.

"Do you see.  .  ." He said again, the resemblance?" Gentle stared at
the abomination before him, and for all its patchworks and disunions,
knew that he did.  It wasn't in the limbs, this likeness, or in the
torso, or in the sex.

But it was there.  When the vast head was raised, he saw his face in the
ruin that clung to his Father's skull.  A reflection of a reflection of
a reflection perhaps, and all in cracked mirrors.  But oh!  it was
there.  The sight distressed him beyond measure, not because he saw the
kinship, but because their roles seemed suddenly reversed.  Despite its
size, it was a child he saw, its head foetal, its limbs untutored.

It was eons old, but unable to slough off the fact of flesh, while he,
for all his naivety, had made his peace with that disposal.

"Have you seen enough, Reconciler7 Hapexamendios said.

"Not quite.. "What then?" Gentle knew he had to speak now, before the
likeness was undone again, and the walls were re-sealed.

"I want what's in you, Father.. "In Me?. "Your prisoner, Father.  I want
your prisoner.. "I have no prisoner.. "I'm your Son," Gentle said.. "The
flesh of your flesh.  Why do you lie to me?"

The unwieldy head shuddered.  The heart beat hard against the broken
bone.

'is there something you don't want me to know?" Gentle said, starting
towards the wretched body.. "You told me I could know everything." The
hands, great and small, twitched and jittered.. "Everything you said,
because I've done You perfect service.  But there's something You don't
want me to know.. "There's nothing.. "Then let me see the mystif.  Let
me see Pie'oh'pah."

At this the God's body shook, and so did the walls around it.  There
were eruptions of light from beneath the flawed mosaic of His skull:
little raging thoughts that cremated the air between the folds of His
brain.  The sight was a reminder to Gentle that, however frail this
figure looked, it was the tiniest part of Hapexamendios's true scale. He
was a city the size of a world, and if the power that had raised that
city, and sustained the bright blood in its stone, was ever allowed to
turn to destruction, would beggar the Nullianacs.     it

Gentle's advance, which had so far been steady, was now halted.  Though
he was a spirit here, and had thought no barrier could be raised against
him, there was one before him now, thickening the air.  Despite it, and
the dread he felt when reminded of his Father's powers, he didn't
retreat.  He knew that if he did so the exchange would be over and
Hapexamendios would be about His final business, His prisoner
unreleased.

"Where's the pure, obedient son I had?" the God said.

"Still here," Gentle replied.. "Still wanting to serve you, if you'll
deal with me honourably."

A series of more livid bursts erupted in the distended skull.  This
time, however, they broke from its dome and rose into the dark air above
the God's head.  There were: images in these energies.  Fragments of
Hapexamendios's thoughts, shaped from fire.  one of them was Pie.

"You've no business with the mystif," Hapexamendios said.

"It belongs to Me."

"No, Father."

"To Me."

"I married it, Father."

The lightning was quieted momentarily, and the God's pulpy eyes
narrowed.

t made me remember my purpose," Gentle said.  'it 11 made me remember
to be a Reconciler.  I wouldn't be here I wouldn't have served you - if
it weren't for Pie'oh'pah."

Maybe it loved you once.  .  ." the many throats replied.. "But now I
want you to forget it.

Put it out of your head forever

"Why?"

In reply came the parent's eternal answer to a child who asks too many
questions.

"Because I tell you to," God said.

But Gentle wouldn't be hushed so readily.  He pressed on.

"What does it know, Father?"

"Nothing."

"Does it know where Nisi Nirvana comes from?  Is that what it knows?"

The fire in the Unbeheld's skull seethed at this.

"Who told you that?" He raged.

There was no purpose served by lying, Gentle thought.

"My mother," he said.

Every motion in the God's bloated body ceased, even to its
cage-battering heart.  Only the lightning went on, and the next word
came not from the mingled throats, but from the fire itself.  Three
syllables, spoken in a lethal voice.

"Cel.  Est.  Inc."

"Yes, Father."

"She's dead," the lightning said.

"No, Father.  I was in her arms a few minutes ago." He lifted his hand,
translucent though it was.. "She held these fingers.

She kissed them.  And she told m. "I don't want to hear!'

to remind you

Where is she?

of Nisi Nirvana."

Where is she?  Where?  Where?"

He had been motionless, but now rose up in His fury' lifting His
wretched limbs above His head as if to bathe them in His own lightning.

"Where is she?" He yelled, throats and fire making the

- i

demand together.. "I want to see her!  I want to see her!" i

On the stairs below the Meditation Room, Jude stood up.

The gek-a-gek had begun a guttural complaint, that was in its way more
distressing than any sound she'd ever heard from them.  They were
afraid.  She saw them sloping away from their places beside the door
like dogs in fear of a beating, their spines depressed, their heads
flattened.

She glanced at the company below: the angels still kneeling beside their
wounded Maestro, Monday and Hoi-Polloi leaving off their vigil at the
step and coming back into the candlelight, as though its little ring
could preserve them from whatever power was agitating the air.

"Oh, Mama..." she heard Sartori whisper.

"Yes, child?"

"He's looking for us, Mama."

"I know."

"You can feel it?"

"Yes, child, I can."     i

"Will you hold me, Mama?  Will you hold me?"   j!

"Where?  Where?" the God was howling, and in the arcs above His skull
shreds of His mind's sight appeared.

Here was a river, serpentine; and a city, drabber than His metropolis
but all the finer for that; and a certain street; and a certain house.
Gentle saw the eye Monday had scrawled on the front door, its pupil
beaten out by the Oviate's attack.  He saw his own body, with Clem
beside it; and the stairs; and Jude on the stairs, climbing.

And then the room at the top, and the circle in the

W7 t

room, with his brother sitting inside it, and his mother, kneeling at
the perimeter.

"Cel.  Est.  Me," the God said.  Icel.  Est.  Me!'

It wasn't Sartori's voice that uttered these syllables, but it was his
lips that moved to shape them.  Jude was at the top of the stairs now,
and she could see his face clearly.  It was still wet with tears, but
there was no expression upon it whatsoever.  She'd never seen features
so devoid of feeling.  He was a vessel, filling up with another soul.

"Child?" Celestine said.

"Get away from him," Jude murmured.

Celestine started to rise.. "You sound sick, child," she said.

The voice came again: this time, a furious denial.

"I Am Not.  A.  Child."

"You wanted me to comfort you," Celestine said.. "Let me do that."

Sartori's eyes looked up, but it wasn't his sight alone that fixed on
her.

"Keep.  Away,"he said.

"I want to hold you," Celestine said, and instead of retreating stepped
over the boundary of the circle.

on the landing the gek-a-gek were in terror now, their sly retreat
became a dance of panic.

They beat their heads against the wall as if to hammer out their brains
rather than hear the voice issuing from Sartori; this desperate,
monstrous voice that said over and over. "Keep.  Away.  Keep.  Away."

But Celestine wouldn't be denied.  She knelt down again, in front of
Sartori.  When she spoke, however, it wasn't to the child, it was to the
Father, to the God who'd taken her into this city of iniquities.

"Let me touch you, love," she said.. "Let me touch you, the way you
touched me."

"No!" Hapexamendios howled, but His child's limbs refused to rise and
ward off the embrace.

The denial came again and again, but Celestine ignored

it, her arms encircling them both, flesh and occupying spirit in one
embrace.

This time, when the God unleashed His rejection, it was no longer a word
but a sound, as pitiful as it was terrifying.

In the First, Gentle saw the lightning above his Father's head congeal
into a single, blinding flame, and go from Him, like a meteor.

In the Second, Chicka Jackeen saw the blaze brighten the Erasure, and
fell to his knees on the flinty ground.  A signal fire was coming, he
thought, to announce the moment of victory.

In Yzordderrex, the Goddesses knew better.  As the fire broke from the
Erasure and entered the Second Dominion, the waters around the Temple
grew quiescent, so as not to draw death down upon them.  Every child was
hushed, every pool and rivulet stilled.  But the fire's malice wasn't
meant for them, and the meteor passed over the city leaving it unharmed,
out-blazing the Comet as it went.

With the fire out of sight Gentle turned back to his Father.

"What have you done?" he demanded.

The God's attention lingered in the Fifth for a little time, but as
Gentle's demand came again He withdrew His mind from His target, and His
eyes regained their animation.

"I've sent a fire for the whore," He said.  It was no longer the
lightning that spoke, but His many throats.

"Why?"

"Because she tainted you ...  she made u want love .

YO

"Is that so bad?"

"You can't build cities with love," the God said.. "You can't make great
works.  It's weakness."

"And what about Nisi Nirvana?" Gentle said.. "Is that a weakness too?"

He dropped to his knees, and laid his phantom palms on the ground.  They
had no power here, or else he'd have

started digging.  Nor could his spirit pierce the ground.  The same
barrier that sealed him from his Father's belly kept him from looking
into His Dominion's underworld.  B ut he could ask the questions.

"Who spoke the words, Father?" he asked.. "Who said: Nisi Nirvana?"

"Forget you ever heard those words," Hapexamendios replied.. "The whore
is dead.  It's over."

In his frustration Gentle made fists of his hands, and beat on the solid
ground.

"There's nothing there but me," the many throats went on.. "My flesh is
everywhere.  My flesh is the world, and the world is my flesh

On the Mount of Lipper Bayak Tick Raw had given up his triumphal jig,
and was sitting at the edge of his circle waiting for the curious to
emerge from their houses and come up to question him, when the fire
appeared in the Fourth.  Like Chicka Jackeen, he assumed it was some
star of annunciation, sent to mark the victory, and he rose again to
hail it.  He wasn't alone.  There were several people on the Mount below
who'd spotted the blaze over the Jokalaylau, and were applauding the
spectacle as it approached.  When it passed overhead it brought a brief
noon to Vanaeph, before going on its way.  It lit Patashoqua just as
brightly, then flew out of the Dominion through a fog that had just
appeared beyond the city, marking the first passing place between the
Dominion of green-gold skies and that of blue.

Two similar fogs had formed in Clerkenwell, one to the south-east of
Gamut Street and the other to the northwest, both marking doorways in
the newly reconciled Dominion.  It was the latter that became blinding
now, as the fire sped through it from the Fourth.  The sight was not
unwitnessed.  Several revert ants were in the vicinity, and though they
had no clue to what this signified, they sensed some calamity and
retreated before the radiance,

returning to the house to raise the alarm.  But they were too sluggish.
Before they were halfway back to Gamut Street the fog divided, and the
Unbeheld's fire appeared in the benighted streets of Clerkenwell.

Monday saw it first, as he forsook the little comfort of the candlelight
and returned to the step.  The remnants of Sartori's hordes were raising
a cacophony in the darkness outside, but even as he crossed the
threshold to ward them off, the darkness became light.

From her place on the top stair Jude saw Celestine lay her lips against
her son's, and then with astonishing strength lift his dead weight up
and pitch him out of the circle.  Either the impact or the coming fire
stirred him, and he began to rise, turning back towards his mother as he
did so.  He was too late to reclaim his place.  The fire had come.

The window burst like a glittering cloud and the blaze filled the room.
Jude was flung off her feet, but clutched the banister long enough to
see Sartori cover his face against the holocaust, as the woman in the
circle opened her arms to accept it.  Celestine was instantly consumed,
but the fire seemed unappeased, and would have spread to raze the house
to its foundations had its momentum not been so great.  It sped on
through the room, demolishing the wall as it went.  On, on, towards the
second fog that Clerkenwell boasted tonight.

"What the fuck was that?" Monday said in the hallway below.

"God," Jude replied.. "Coming and going."

In the First, Hapexamendios raised His misbegotten head.  Even though He
didn't need the assembly of sight that gleamed in His skull to see what
was happening in His Dominion - He had eyes everywhere - some memory of
the body that had once been His sole residence made Him turn now, as
best He could, and look behind Him.

"What is this?" He said.

Gentle couldn't see the fire yet, but he could feel whispers of its
approach.

"What is this?" Hapexamendios said again.

Without waiting for a reply, He began to feverishly unknit His
semblance, something Gentle had both feared and hoped He'd do.  Feared,
because the body from which the fire had been issued would doubtless be
its destination, and if it was too quickly undone, the fire would have
no target.  And hoped, because only in that undoing would he have a
chance to locate Pie.  The barrier around his Father's form softened as
the God was distracted by the intricacies of this dismantling, and
though Gentle had yet to get a second glimpse of Pie he turned his
thought to entering the body, but for all His perplexity Hapexamendios
was not about to be breached so readily.  As Gentle approached, a will
too powerful to be denied seized hold of him.

"What is this?" the God demanded a third time.

Hoping he might yet gain a few precious seconds' reprieve Gentle answered with the truth.

"The Imajica's a circle," he said.

"A circle' 2'

"This is your fire, Father.  This is your fire, coming round again."

Hapexamendios didn't respond with words.  He understood instantly the
significance of what He'd been told, and let His hold on Gentle slip
again in order to turn all His will to the business of un knitting
Himself.

The ungainly body began to unravel, and in its midst Gentle once again
glimpsed Pie.

This time, the mystif saw him.

Its frail limbs thrashed to clear a way through the turmoil between
them, but before Gentle could finally wrest himself from his Father's
custody the ground beneath Pie'oh'pah grew in solid  The mystif reached
up to take hold of some support in the body above, but it was decaying
too fast.  The ground gaped like a grave, and with one last, despairing
look in Gentle's direction, the mystif sank from sight.

Gentle raised his head in a howl, but the sound he made was drowned out
by that of his Father, who - as if in imitation of His child - had also
thrown back His head.  But His was a din of fury rather than sorrow, as
He wrenched and thrashed in His attempts to speed His unmasking.

Behind Him now, the fire.  As it came Gentle thought he saw his mother's
face in the blaze, shaped from ashes, her eyes and mouth wide as she
returned to meet the God who'd raped, rejected and finally murdered her.
A glimpse, no more, and then the fire was upon its maker, its judgement
absolute.

Gentle's spirit was gone from the conflagration at a thought, but his
Father - the world His flesh; the flesh His world could not escape it.
His foetal head broke, and the fire consumed the shards as they flew,
its blaze cremating His heart and innards and spreading through His
mismatched limbs, burning them away to every last fingertip and toe.

The consequence for His city was both instantly felt and calamitous.
Every street from one end of the Dominion to the other shook as the
message of collapse went from the place where its first cause had
fallen.

Gentle had nothing to fear from this dissolution, but the sight of it
appalled NI him nevertheless.  This was his Father, and it gave him
neither pleasure nor satisfaction to see the body whose child he was now
reel and bleed.  The imperious towers began to topple, their ornament
dropping in rococo rains, their arches forsaking the illusion of stone
and falling as flesh.  The streets heaved, and turned to meat; the
houses threw down their bony roofs.  Despite the collapse around him,
Gentle remained close to the place where his Father had been consumed,
in the hope that he might yet find Pie'oh'pah in the maelstrom.  But it
seemed Hapexamendios's last voluntary act had been to deny the lovers
their reunion.  He'd opened the ground and buried the mystif in the pit
of His decay, sealing it with His will to prevent Gentle from ever
finding Pie again.

There was nothing left for the Reconciler to do but leave the city to
its decease, which in due course he did, not taking the route across the
Dominions, but back the way the fire had come.  As he flew, the sheer
enormity of what was underway became apparent.  If every living body
that had passed a span on earth had been left to putrefy here in the
First the sum of their flesh would not begin to approach that of this
city.  Nor would this carrion rot into the ground, and its decomposition
feed a new generation of life.  It was the ground; it was the life. With
its passing, there would only be putrescence here.

Decay laid on decay laid on decay.  A Dominion of filth, polluted until
the end of time.

Ahead now, the fog that divided the city's outskirts from the Fifth.
Gentle passed through it, returning gratefully into the modest streets
of Clerkenwell.  They were drab, of course, after the brilliance of the
metropolis held left.  But he knew the air had the sweetness of summer
leaves upon it, even if he couldn't smell that sweetness, and the
welcome sound of an engine from Holbom or Gray's Inn Road could be
heard, as some fleet fellow, knowing the worst was past, got about his
business.  it was unlikely to be legal work at such an hour.  But Gentle
wished the driver well, even in his crime.  The Dominion had been saved
for thieves as well as saints.

He didn't linger at the passing place, but went as fast as his weary
thoughts would drive him, back to number twenty-eight and the wounded
body that was still clinging to continuance at the bottom of the stairs.

At the top, Jude hadn't waited for the smoke to clear before venturing
into the Meditation Room.  Despite a warnin g shout from Clem she'd gone
up into the murk to find Sartori, hoping that he'd survived.  His
creatures hadn't.  Their corpses were twitching close to the threshold,
not struck by the blast, she thought, but laid low by their summoner's
decline.  She found that summoner easily enough.  He was lying close to
where Celestine had

pitched him, his body arrested in the act of turning towards the circle.

It had been his undoing.  The fire that had carried his mother to
oblivion had seared every part of him.  The ashes of his clothes had
been fused with his blistered back, his hair singed from his scalp, his
face cooked beyond tenderness.  But like his brother, lying in ribbons
below, he refused to give up life.  His fingers clutched the boards, his
lips still worked, baring teeth that were still as bright as a
death's-head smile.  There was even power in his sinews.

When his blood-filled eyes saw Jude he managed to push himself up, until
his body rolled over on to its charred spine, and he used his agonies to
fuel the hand that clutched at her, dragging her down beside him.

"My mother..."

"She's gone."

There was bafflement on his face.. "Why ...  he said, shudders
convulsing him as he spoke.. "She seemed ...  to want it.

Why?"

"So that she'd be there when the fire took Hapexamendios," Jude replied.

He shook his head, not comprehending the significance of this.

"How ...  could that ...  be?" he murmured.

"The Imajica's a circle," she said.  He studied her face, attempting to
puzzle this out.. "The fire went back to the one who sent it."

Now the sense of what she was telling him dawned.  Even in his agony,
here was a greater pain.

"He's gone?" he said.

She wanted to say: I hope so, but she kept that sentiment to herself,
and simply nodded.

"And my mother too?" Sartori went on.  The trembling quietened; so did
his voice, which was already frail.. "I'm alone," he said.

The anguish in these last few words was bottomless, and she longed to
have some way of comforting him.  She

was afraid to touch him for fear of causing him still greater
discomfort, but perhaps there was more hurt in her not doing so.  With
the greatest delicacy she laid her hand over his.

"You're not alone," she said.. "I'm here."

He didn't acknowledge her solace; perhaps didn't even hear it.  His
thoughts were elsewhere.

"I should never have touched him," he said softly.. "A man shouldn't lay
his hands on his own brother."

As he squeezed out these words there was a moan from the bottom of the
stairs, followed by a yelp of pure joy from Clem, and then Monday's
ecstatic whoops:

"Boss oh Boss oh Boss'

"Do you hear that?" Jude said to Sartori.  ...  Yes.  .

"I don't think you killed him after all." A strange tic appeared around
his mouth, which after a moment she realized was the shreds of a smile.
She took it to be pleasure at Gentle's survival, but its source was more
bitter.

"That won't save me now," he said.

His hand, which was laid on his stomach, began to knead the muscles
there, its clutches so violent that his body began to spasm.  Blood
bubbled up between his lips, and he moved his hand to his mouth, as if
to conceal it.  There, he seemed to spit his blood into his palm.  Then
he removed his hand and offered its grisly contents to her.

"Take it," he said, uncurling his fist.

She felt something drop into her hand.  She didn't glance at his gift,
however, but kept her eyes fixed on his face as he looked away from her,
back towards the circle.  She realized, even before his gaze had found
its resting place, that he was looking away from her for the final time,
and she started to call him back.  She said his name; she called him
love; she said she'd never wanted to desert him, and never would again,
if he'd only stay.  But her words were wasted.  As his eyes found the
circle, the life

went from them, his last sight not of her but of the place where he'd
been made.

in her palm, bloody from his belly and throat, lay the blue egg.

After a time, she got up and went out on to the landing.  The place at
the bottom of the stairs where Gentle's body had lain was empty.  Clem
was standing in the candlelight with both tears and a broad smile on his
face.  He looked up at Jude as she started down the stairs.

"Sartori?" he said.

"He's dead."

"What about Celestine?"

"Gone," she said.

"But it's over, isn't it?" Hoi-Polloi said.. "We're going to live."

"Are we?"

"Yes we are," said Clem.. "Gentle saw Hapexamendios destroyed."

"Where is Gentle?"

"He went outside," Clem said.. "He's got enough life in him

for another life?"

"For another twenty, the lucky bugger," came Tay's reply.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs she put her arms around Gentle's
protectors, then went out on to the step.  Gentle was standing in the
middle of the street, wrapped in one of Celestine's sheets.  Monday was
at his side, and he was leaning on the boy as he stared up at the tree
that grew outside number twenty-eight.  Hapexamendios's fire had charred
much of its foliage, leaving the branches naked and blackened.  But
there was a breeze stirring the leaves that had survived, and after such
a long motionless time even these shreds of wind were welcome: final,
simple proof that the Imajica had survived its perils and was once again
drawing breath.

She hesitated to join him, thinking perhaps he'd prefer to have these
moments of meditation uninterrupted.  But

1084 1W

his gaze came her way after half a minute or so, and though there was
only starlight, and the last, guttering flames in the fretwork above to
see him by, the smile was as luminous as ever, and as inviting.  She
left the step, but slender, and II

as she approached saw that his smile was

the wounds he'd sustained deeper than cuts.

"I failed," he said.

"The Imajica's whole," she replied.. "That isn't failure." He looked
away from her, down the street.  The

darkness was full of agitation.

"The ghosts are still here," he said.. "I swore to them d find a way
out, and I failed.  That was why I went with Pie in the first place, to
find Taylor a way out.  .

"Maybe there isn't one," came a third voice.

Clem had appeared on the doorstep, but it was Tay who spoke.

"I promised you an answer," Gentle said.

"And you found one.  The Imajica's a circle, and there's no way out of
it.  We just go round and round.  Well, that's not so bad, Gentle.  We
have what we have."

Gentle lifted his hand from Monday's shoulder, and turned away from the
tree, and from Jude, and from the angels on the step.  As he hobbled out
into the middle of the street, his head bowed, he murmured a reply to
Tay too quiet for any but an angel's ear.

"It's not enough," he said.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

For the living occupants of Gamut Street the days that followed the
events of that midsummer were as strange in their way as anything that
had gone before.  The world that returned to life around them seemed to
be totally ignorant of the fact that its existence had hung in the
balance, and if it now sensed the least change in its condition it
concealed its suspicion very well.  The monsoons and heat waves that had
preceded the Reconciliation were replaced the next morning with the
drizzles and tepid sunshine of an English summer, its moderation the
model for public behaviour in subsequent weeks.  The eruptions of
irrationality which had turned every junction and street corner into a
little battleground summarily ceased; the night-walkers Monday and Jude
had seen watching for revelation no longer strayed out to peer
quizzically at the stars.

in any city other than London perhaps the mysteries now present in its
streets would have been discovered and celebrated.  If such fogs as
lingered in Clerkenwell had appeared instead in Rome, the Vatican would
have been pronouncing on them within a week.  Had they appeared in
Mexico City the poor would have been through them in a shorter time
still, desperate for a better life in the world beyond.

But England; oh!  England.  It had never had much of a taste for the
mystical, and with all but the weakest of its evocators and felt-workers
murdered by the Tabula Rasa, there was nobody to begin the labour of
freeing minds locked up in dogmas and utilities.

The fogs were not entirely ignored, however.  The animal life of the
city knew something was afoot, and came

to Clerkenwell to sniff it out.  The runaway dogs who'd gathered in the
vicinity of Gamut Street when the revenants had come, only to be
frightened off by Sartori's horde, now returned, their noses twitching
after some piquant scent or other.  Cats came too, yowling in the trees
at dusk, curious but casual.  There were also visitations by bees, and
birds, who twice in the three days following Midsummer Night gathered in
the same stupefying numbers as Monday and Jude had witnessed at the
Retreat.

in all these cases the packs, swarms and flocks disappeared after a
time, having discovered the source of the perfumes and poles which had
directed them to the district, and gone into the Fourth to have a LIFE
under different skies.

But if no two-legged traffic passed into the Fourth, there was certainly
some in the opposite direction.  A little over a week after the
Reconciliation Tick Raw arrived on the doorstep of number twenty-eight
and, having introduced himself to Clem and Monday, asked to see the
Maestro.  He came into a house that was a good deal more comfortable
than his quarters in Vanaeph, furnished as it was from a score of recent
burglaries by Monday and Clem.  But the atmosphere of domesticity was
cosmetic.  Though the bodies of the gek-a-gek had been removed, and
buried along with their summoner beneath the long grass in Shiverick
Square; though the front door had been mended and the bloodstains mopped
up; though the Meditation Room had been scoured and the stones of the
circle individually wrapped in linen, and locked away, the house was
charged with all that happened here: the deaths, the love scenes, the
reunions and revelations.

"You're living in the middle of a history lesson," Tick Raw said when he
sat himself down beside the bed in which Gentle lay.

The Reconciler was healing, but even with his extraordinary powers of
recuperation it would be a lengthy business.  He slept twenty hours or
more out of every

twenty-four, and barely ventured from his mattress when he was awake.

"You look as though you've seen some wars, my friend," Tick Raw said.

"More than I'd like," Gentle replied wearily.

"I sniff something Oviate.. "Gek-a-gek," Gentle said.. "Don't worry,
they're gone.. "Did they break through during the ceremony?. "No.  It's
more complicated than that.  Ask Clem.  He'll tell you the whole story."

"No offence to your friends," Tick Raw said, fetching a jar of pickled
sausage from his pocket.. "But I'd prefer to hear it from you."

"I've thought about it too much as it is," Gentle said.. "I don't want
to be reminded."

"But we won the day," Tick Raw said.. "Doesn't that merit a little
celebration?"

"Celebrate with Clem, Tick.  I need to sleep."

As you like.  As you like," Tick Raw said, retreating to the' door. "Oh.
I wonder?  Do you mind if I stay here for a few days?  There's a lot of
parties in Vanaeph who want the grand tour of the Fifth, and I've
volunteers d to show them the sights.  But as I don't yet know them
myself .  .

"Be my guest," Gentle said.. "And forgive me if I don't brim with
bonhomie."

"No apology required," Tick Raw said.. "I'll leave you to sleep."

That evening, Tick did as Gentle had suggested, and plied both Clem and
Monday with questions until he had the full story.

"So when do I meet the mesmeric Judith?" he asked when the tale was
told.

"I don't know if you ever will," Clem said.. "She didn't come back to
the house after we buried Sartori.. "Where is she?"

"Wherever she is," Monday said dolefully. "Hoi-Polloi's 71    with her.
Just my fuckin' luck."

"Well, now listen," Tick Raw said.. "I've always had a

way with the ladies.  I'll make you a deal.  If you show me this city,
inside out, I'll show you a few ladies the same way."

Monday's palm went from his pocket, where it'd been stroking the
consequence of Hoi-Polloi's absence, and seized hold of Tick Raw's hand
before it was even extended.

"You're a gentleman an' a squalor," Monday said.. "You got yourself a
tour, mate."

"What about Gentle?" Tick Raw said to Clem.. "Is he languishing for want
of female company?. "No, he's just tired.  He'll get well."

"Will he?" said Tick Raw. "I'm not so sure.  He's got the look of a man
who'd be happier dead than alive.. "Don't say that."

"Very well.  I didn't say it.  But he has, Clement.  And we all know
it."

The vigour and noise Tick Raw brought into the house only served to
emphasize the truth of that observation.  As the days passed and turned
to weeks, there was little or no improvement in Gentle's mood.  He was,
as Tick Raw had said, languishing, and Clem began to feel the way he had
during Tay's final decline.  A loved one was slipping away, and he could
do nothing to prevent it.  There weren't even those moments of levity
that there'd been with Tay, when good times had been remembered and the
pain superseded.  Gentle wanted no false comforts, no laughter, no
sympathy.  He simply wanted to lie in his bed, and steadily become as
bland as the sheets he lay upon.  Sometimes, in his sleep, the angels
would hear him speaking in tongues, the way Tay had heard him talk
before.  But it was nonsense that he muttered; reports from a mind that
was rambling without map or destination.

Tick Raw stayed in the house a month, leaving with Monday at dawn and
returning late having had another day seeing the sights and acquiring
the appetites of this

F

new Dominion.  His sense of wonder was boundless, his capacity for
pleasure prodigal.  He found he had a taste for eel pie and Elgar, for
Speaker's Corner at Sunday noon and the Ripper's haunts at midnight; for
dog-races, for jazz, for waistcoats made in Savile Row and women hired
behind King's Cross Station.  As for Monday, it was clear from the face
he wore whenever he returned that the hurt of Hoi-Polloi's desertion was
being kissed away.  When Tick Raw finally announced that it was time for
him to return to the Fourth, the boy was crestfallen.

"Don't worry' Tick told him.. "I'll be back.  And I won't be alone."

Before he departed, he presented himself at Gentle's bedside, with a
proposal.

"Come to the Fourth with me," he said.. "It's time you saw Patashoqua."

Gentle shook his head.

"But you haven't seen the Merrow TV TiV Tick protested.

"I know what you're trying to do, Tick," Gentle said.. "And I thank you
for it, really I do, but I don't want to see the Fourth again."

"Well, what do you want to see?"

The answer was simple. "Nothing."

"Oh now stop this, Gentle," Tick Raw said.. "It's getting damn boring.
You're behaving as though we lost everything.

We didn't."

I did.,

"She'll come back.  You'll see."

"Who will?"

Judith.,

Gentle almost laughed at this.

"It's not Judith I've lost," he said.

Tick Raw realized his error then, and came as near to dumbfounded as he
ever got.  All he could manage was:

"All  .

For the first time since Tick Raw had appeared at the

bedside the month before, Gentle actually looked at his guest.

"Tick," he said. "I'm going to tell you something I've told nobody
else.. "What's that. "When I was in my Father's City..." He paused, as
though the will to tell was going from him already, then began again.
"When I was in my Father's City I saw Pie'oh'pah.. "Alive?. "For a
time.. "Oh, Jesu.  How did it die?. "The ground opened up beneath it."
"That's terrible; terrible.. "Do you see now why it doesn't feel like a
victory?. "Yes, I see.  But Gentl. "No more persuasions, Tick."

there are such changes in the air.  Maybe there are the miracles in the
First, the way there are in Yzordderrex.  It's not out of the question:

Gentle studied his tormentor, eyes narrowed.

"The Eurhetemecs were in the First long before Hapexamendios, remember,"
Tick went on.

"And they worked wonders there.  Maybe those times have returned.  The
land doesn't forget.  Men forget.  Maestros forget.  But the land?
Never:

He stood up.

"Come with me to a passing place," he said.. "Let's look for ourselves.
Where's the harm?

I'll carry you on my back if your legs don't work."

"That won't be necessary," Gentle said, and throwing off the sheets, got
out of bed.

Though the month of August had yet to begin, the early months of summer
had been marked by such excesses that the season had burned itself out
prematurely, and when Gentle, accompanied by Tick and Clem, stepped out
into Gamut Street, he met the first chills of autumn

on the step.  Clem had found the fog that let on to the First Dominion
within forty-eight hours of the Reconciliation, but had not entered it.
After all that he'd heard about the state of the Unbeheld's city he'd
had no wish to see its horrors.  He led the Maestros to the place
readily enough, however.  It was little more than half a mile from the
house, hidden in a cloister behind an empty office building: a bank of
grey fog no more than twice the height of a man, which rolled upon
itself in the shadowed corner of the empty yard.

"Let me go first," Clem said to Gentle.. "We're still your guardians."

"You've done more than enough," Gentle said.. "Stay here.  This won't
take long."

Clem didn't contradict the instruction, but stepped aside to let the
Maestrosenter the fog.

Gentle had passed between Dominions many times now, and was used to the
brief disorientation that always accompanied such passage.  But nothing,
not even the abattoir nightmares that had haunted him after the
Reconciliation, could have

Allen,," prepared him for what was waiting on the other side.  Tick Raw,
ever a man of instant responses, vomited as the stench of putrescence
came to meet them through the fog, and though he stumbled after Gentle,
determined not to leave his friend to face the First alone, he covered
his eyes after a single glance.

The Dominion was decayed from horizon to horizon.  Everywhere rot, and
more rot.

Suppurating lakes of it, and festering hills.  Overhead, in the skies
Gentle had barely seen as he passed through his Father's city, clouds
the colour of old bruises half-hid two yellowish moons, their light
falling on a filth so atrocious the hungriest kite in the Kwem would
have starved rather than feed here.

"This was the City of God, Tick," Gentle said.. "This was my Father.
This was the Unbeheld."

in a sudden fury, he tore at Tick's hands, which were clamped to the
man's face.

"Look, damn you, look!  I want to hear you tell me about the wonders,
Tick!  Go on!  Tell me!  Tell me!'

Tick didn't go back to the house when he and Gentle emerged from the
passing place, but with some murmured words of apology headed off into
the dusk, saying he needed to be on his home turf for a while, and that
he'd come back when he'd regained his composure.  Sure enough, three
days later he reappeared at number twenty-eight, still a little queasy,
still a little shame-faced, to find that Gentle had not returned to his
bed but was up and about.  The Reconciler's mood was brisk rather than
blithe.  His bed, he explained to Tick, was not the refuge it had
previously been.  As soon as he closed his eyes he saw the
slaughterhouse of the First in every atrocious detail, and could now
only sleep when he'd driven himself to such exhaustion that there was no
time between his head striking the pillow and oblivion for his in and to
dwell on what he'd witnessed.

Luckily, Tick had brought distractions, in the form of a party of eight
tourists (he preferred excursionists) from Vanaeph who were relying upon
him to introduce them to the rites and rarities of the Fifth Dominion.

Before the tour began, however, they were eager to pay their respects to
the great Reconciler, and did so with a succession of painfully
overworked speeches, which they read aloud before presenting Gentle with
the gifts they'd brought: smoked meats, perfumes, a small picture of
Patashoqua rendered in zarzi wings; a pamphlet of erotic poems by
Pluthero Quexos's sister.

The group was the first of many Tick brought in the next few weeks,
freely admitting to Gentle that he was turning a handsome profit from
his new role.  Have a Holy Day in the City of Sartori was his pitch, and
the more satisfied customers who returned to Vanaeph with tales of eel
pies and Jack the Ripper the more signed on to take the excursion.  He
knew the boom-time couldn't last, of course.  In a short while the
professional tour operators

in Patashoqua would start trading, and he'd be unable to compete with
their slick packages, except in one particular regard: only he could
guarantee an audience, however brief, with the Maestro Sartori himself.

The time was coming, Gentle realized, when the Fifth would have to face
the fact that it was Reconciled, whether it liked it or not.  The first
few sightseers from Vanaeph and Patashoqua might be ignored; but when
their families came, and their families' families - creatures in shapes,
size and assemblies that demanded attention - the people of this
Dominion would be able t 0 overlook them no longer.  it would not be
long before Gamut Street became a sacred highway, with travellers
passing down it in not one but both directions.  When it did, living in
the house would become untenable.  He, Clem and Monday would have to
vacate number twenty-eight, and leave it to become a shrine.

When that day arrived - and it would be soon - he would be forced to
make a momentous decision.  Should he seek out some sanctuary here in
Britain, or leave the island for a country where none of his lives had
ever taken him?

Of one thing he was certain: he would not urn into the Fourth, or any
Dominion beyond it.  even Though it was true that he'd never seen
Patashoqua, there had only ever been one soul he'd wanted to see it
with, and that soul was gone.

Times were no less strange or demanding for Jude.  She'd decided to
leave the company in Gamut Street on the spur of the moment, expecting
that she'd return there in due course.  But the longer she stayed away
the harder it

P

became to return.  She hadn't realized, until Sartori was gone,- how
much she'd mourn.

Whatever the source of the feelings she had for him, she felt no
regrets.  All she felt was loss.  Night after night she'd wake up in the
little flat she and Hoi-Polloi had rented together (the old place was
too full of memories) shaken to tears by the same terrible dream.  She
was climbing those damn stairs in

Gamut Street, trying to reach Sartori as he lay burning at the top, but
for all her toil never managing to advance a single step.  And always
the same words on her lips when Hoi-Polloi woke her:

"Stay with me.  Stay with me."

Though he'd gone forever, and she would have to make her peace with that
eventually, he'd left a living keepsake, and as the autumn months came
it began to make its presence felt in no uncertain fashion, its kicking
keeping her awake when the nightmares didn't.  She didn't like the way
she looked in the mirror - her stomach a glossy dome, her breasts
swelling and tender - but Hoi Polloi was there to lend comfort and
companionship whenever it was needed.  She was all Jude could have asked
for during those months: loyal, practical and eager to learn.  Though
the customs of the Fifth were a mystery to her at first, she soon became
familiar with its eccentricities, and even fond of them.  This was not,
however, a situation that could continue indefinitely.  If they stayed
in the Fifth, and Jude had the child there, what could she promise it? A
rearing and an education in a Dominion that might come to appreciate the
miracles in its midst some distant day, but would in the meantime ignore
or reject whatever extraordinary qualities the child was blessed with.

By the middle of October she'd made up her mind.  She'd leave the Fifth,
with or without Hoi-Polloi, and find some country in the Imajica where
the child, whether it was a prophetic a melancholic or simply priapic,
would be allowed to flourish.  In order to take that journey, of course she would have to return to Gamut Street or its environs, and
though that was not a particularly attractive prospect, it was better to
do so soon, she reasoned, before many more sleepless nights took their
toll, and she felt too weak.  She shared her plans with Hoi-Polloi, who
declared herself happy to go wherever Jude wished to lead.  They made
swift preparations, and four days later

it left the flat for the last time, with a small collection of valuables
to pawn when they got to the Fourth.

The evening was cold, and the moon, when it rose, had a misty halo.  By
its light the thoroughfares around Gamut Street were iridescent with the
first etchings of frost.  At Jude's request they went first to Shiverick
Square, so that she could pay her last respects to Sartori.  Both his
grave and those of the Oviates had been well disguised by Monday and
Clem, and it took her quite a while to find the place where he was
buried.  But find it she did, and spent twenty minutes there while
Hoi Polloi waited at the railings.  Though there were revenants in the
nearby streets, she knew he would never join their ranks.

He'd not been born, but made, the stuff of his life stolen.  The only
existence he had after his decease was her memory, and in the child. She
didn't weep for that fact, or even for his absence.  She'd done all she
could, weeping and begging him to stay.  But she did tell the earth that
she'd loved what it was heaped upon, and charged it to give Sartori
comfort in his dreamless sleep.

Then she quit the graveside, and together she and Hoi Polloi went looking
for the passing place into the Fourth.  It would be day there, bright
day, and she'd call herself by another name.

Number twenty-eight was noisy that night, the cause a celebration in
honour of Irish, who'd that afternoon been released from prison, having
served a three-month sentence for petty theft, and had arrived on the
doorstep with Carol, Benedict and several cases of stolen whisky to
toast his release.  The house was by now a trove of treasures - all
gifts to the Maestro from Tick Raw's excursionists - and there was no
end to the drunken fooling these artifacts, many of them total enigmas,
inspired.  Gentle was feeling as facetious as Irish, if not more so.
After so many weeks of abstinence the substantial amounts of whisky he'd
imbibed had his head spinning, and he resisted Clem's attempts to engage
him in

bib-serious conversation, despite the latter's insistence that the
matter was urgent.  Only after some persuading did he follow Clem to a
quieter place in the house, where his an gels told him that Judith was
in the vicinity.  He was somewhat sobered by the news.

"Is she coming here?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Clem said, his tongue passing back and forth over
his lips as though her taste was upon them.. "But she's close."

Gentle didn't need further prompting.  With Monday in tow he went out
into the street.

There were no living creatures in sight.  Only the revenants, listless
as ever, their joylessness made all the more apparent by the sound of
merry-making that emanated from the house.

"I don't see her," Gentle said to Clem, who had followed them out as far
as the step.. "Are you sure she's here?"

It was Tay who replied.. "You think I wouldn't know when Judy was near?
Of course I'm certain.. "Which direction?" Monday wanted to know.

Now Clem again, cautioning. "Perhaps she doesn't want to see us.

"Well I want to see her," Gentle replied.. "At least a drink, for old
times' sake.  Which direction, Tay?"

The angels pointed, and Gentle headed off down the street, with Monday,
bottle in hand, close on his heels.

The fog that let on to the Fourth looked inviting a slow wave of pale
mist that turned and turned on itself, but never broke.  Before she and
Hoi-Polloi stepped into it Jude took a few moments to look up.  The
Plough was overhead.  She wouldn't be seeing it again.  Then she said:
"That's enough goodbyes," and together they took a step into the mist.

As they did so Jude heard the sound of running feet in the alleyway
behind them, and Gentle, calling her name.  She'd been aware that their
presence might be detected, and had schooled them both in how best to
respond.  Neither woman turned.  They simply picked up their pace,

and headed on through the mist.  It thickened as they went, but after a
dozen steps daylight began to filter through from the other side, and
the fog's clammy cold gave way to balm.  Again, Gentle called after her,
but there was a commotion up ahead, and it all but drowned out his call.

Back in the Fifth, Gentle came to a halt at the edge of the fog.  He'd
sworn to himself that he'd never leave the Dominion again, but the drink
swilling in his system had weakened his resolve.  His feet itched to go
after her into the fog.

"Well, Boss," Monday said.. "Are we going or aren't we?. "Do you care
either way?. "Yes, as it happens.. "You'd still like to get your hands
on Hoi-Polloi, huh?. "I dream about her, Boss.  Cross-eyed girls, every
night.. "Ah well," Gentle said.  'if we're chasing dreams, then I think
that's good reason to go.. "Yeah?. "In fact it's the only reason."

He grabbed hold of Monday's bottle, and took a healthy swig from it.

"Let's do it," he said, and together they plunged into the fog, running
over ground that softened and brightened as they went, paving stones
becoming sand, night becoming day.

They caught sight of the women briefly, grey silhouettes against the
peacock sky ahead, then lost them again as they gave chase.  The gleam
of day grew, however, and so did the sound of voices, which rose to the
din of an excited crowd as they emerged from the passing place.  There
were buyers, sellers and thieves on every side, and disappearing into
the throng, the women.  They followed with renewed fervour, but the tide
of people conspired to keep them from their quarry, and after half an
hour of fruitless pursuit, which finally brought them back to the fog
and the commercial hubbub which

surrounded it, they had to admit that they'd been out -manoeuvred.

Gentle was tetchy now, his head no longer buzzing but aching.

"They're away," he said.. "Let's give up on it.. "Shit.

"People come, people go.  You can't afford to get attached to anyone."
"It's too late," Monday said dolefully.. "I am."

Gentle squinted at the fog, his lips pursed.  It was a cold October on
the other side.

"I tell you what," he said after a little-time.. "We'll wander over to
Vanaeph, and see if we can find Tick Raw.  Maybe he can help us." Monday
beamed.. "You're a hero, Boss.  Lead the way." Gentle went on tiptoe,
attempting to orient himself.. "Trouble is, I haven't a bloody clue
where Vanaeph is," he said.

He collared the nearest passer-by, and asked him how to get to the
Mount.  The fellow pointed over the heads of the crowd, leaving the Boss
and his boy to burrow their way to the edge of the market, where they
had a view not of Vanaeph but of the walled city that stood between them
and the Mount of Lipper Bayak.  The grin reappeared on Monday's face,
broader than ever; and on his lips, the name he'd so often breathed like
an enchantment. "Patashoqua?. "Yes.. "We painted it on the wall
together, d'you remember?. "I remember.. "What's it like inside?" Gentle
was peering at the bottle in his hand, wondering if the peculiar
exhilaration he felt was going to pass with the headache that
accompanied it.

"Boss?. "What?. "I said: what's it like inside?"

"I don't know.  I've never been.. "Well, shouldn't we?" Gentle thrust
the bottle at Monday, and sighed; a lazy, easy sigh that ended in a
smile.

"Yes, my friend," he said.. "I think maybe we should."

Thus began the last pilgrimage of the Maestro Sartori called John Furie
Zacharias, or Gentle, the Reconciler of Dominions across the Imajica.

He hadn't intended it to be a pilgrimage at all, but having promised
Monday that they would find the woman of his dreams, he couldn't bring
himself to desert the boy and return to the Fifth.  They began their
search of course, in Patashoqua, which was more prosperous than ever
these days, with its proximity to the newly reconciled Dominion creating
businesses every day.  After almost a year of wondering what the city
would be like, Gentle was inevitably somewhat disappointed once he got
inside its walls, but Monday's enthusiasm was a sight in itself, and a
poignant reminder of his own astonishment when he and Pie had first
entered the Fourth.

Unable to trace the women in the city, they went on to Vanaeph, hoping
to find Tick.  He was off travelling, they were told, but one
sharp-sighted individual claimed to have seen two women who fitted the
description of Jude and Hoi-Polloi hitching a ride at the edge of the
Highway.  An hour later, Gentle and Monday were doing the same thing,
and the pursuit that was to take them across the Dominions began in
earnest.

For the Maestro it was a very different journey from those that had
preceded it.  The first time he'd made this trek he'd travelled in
ignorance of himself, failing to comprehend the significance of the
people he'd met and the places he'd seen.

The second time he'd been a phantom, flying at the speed of thought
between members of the

Synod, his business too urgent to allow him to appreciate the myriad
wonders he was passing through.  But now, finally, he had both the time
and the comprehension to make sense of his pilgrimage, and, having begun
the journey reluctantly, he soon had as much taste for it as his
companion.

Word of the changes in Yzordderrex had spread even to the tiniest
villages, and the demise of the Autarch's Empire was everywhere cause
for jubilation.  Rumours of the Imajica's healing had also spread, and
when Monday told people where he and his quiet companion came from
(which he was wont to do at the vaguest cue) they were plied with drinks
and grilled for news of the paradisiacal Fifth.  Many of their
questioners, knowing that the door into that mystery finally stood open,
were planning to visit the Fifth, and wanted to know what gifts they
should take with them into a Dominion that was already so full of
marvels.  When this question was put, Gentle, who usually let Monday do
the talking during these interviews, invariably spoke up:

"Take your family histories," he'd say.. "Take your poem s.  Take your
jokes.  Take your lullabies.  Make them understand in the Fifth what
glories there are here." People tended to look at him askance when he
answered in this fashion, and told him that their jokes and their family
histories didn't seem particularly glorious, to which Gentle would
simply say:

"They're you.  And you're the best gift the Fifth could be given."

"You know, we could have made a fortune if we'd brought a few maps of
England with us," Monday remarked one day.

"Do we care about fortunes?" Gentle said.

"You might not, Boss," Monday replied.. "Personally, I'm much in
favour."

He was right, Gentle thought.  They could have sold a thousand maps
already, and they were only just entering

the Third.  Maps which would have been copied, and the copies copied,
each transcriber inevitably adding their own felicities to the design.
The thought of such proliferation led Gentle back to his own hand, which
had eldom worked for any purpose other than profit, and which for all
its labour had never produced anything of lasting value.  But unlike the
paintings he'd forged, maps weren't cursed by the notion of a definitive
original.  They grew in the copying, as their inaccuracies were
corrected, their empty spaces filled, their legends re-devised.  And
even when all the corrections had been made, to the finest detail, they
could still never be cursed with the word finished, because their
subject continued to change.

Rivers widened and meandered, or dried up altogether; islands rose, and
sank again; even mountains moved.  By their very nature, maps were
always works in progress, and Gentle - his resolve strengthened by
thinking of them that way - decided after many months of delay to turn
his hand to making one.

occasionally along the road they'd meet an individual who, in ignorance
of his audience, would boast some association with the Fifth's most
celebrated son, the Maestro Sartori, and would proceed to tell Gentle
and Monday about the great man.

The accounts varied, especially when it came to talk of his companion.
Some said he'd had a beautiful woman at his side; some his brother,
called Pie; others still (these the least numerous) told of a mystif. At
first it was all Monday could do not to blurt out the truth, but Gentle
had insisted from the outset that he wanted to travel incognito, and
having been sworn to secrecy the boy was as good as his word.  He kept
his silence while wild tales of the Maestro's doings were told:
marriages celebrated on the ceiling; copses springing up overnight where
he'd slept; women made pregnant drinking from his cup.  The fact that
he'd become a figment of the popular imagination amused Gentle at first,
but after a time it began to weigh on

him.  He felt like a ghost amongst these living versions of himself,
invisible amongst the listeners who gathered to hear tales of his
exploits, the details of which were embroidered and embellished with
every telling.

There was some comfort in the fact that he was not the only character
around whom such parables occurred.  There were other fables alive in
the air between the ears and tongues of the populace, which the pilgrims
were usually told when they asked after Jude and Hoi-Polloi: tales of
miraculous women.  A whole new nomadic tribe had appeared in the
Dominions since the fall of Yzordderrex.  Women of power were abroad,
rising to the occasion of their liberation, and rites they'd only
practised at the hearth and cot were now performed in the open air for
all to see.  But unlike the stories of the Maestro Sartori, most of
which were pure invention, Gentle and Monday saw ample evidence that the
stories concerning these women were rooted in truth.  In the province
around MarK6, for instance, which had been a dust-bowl during Gentle's
first pilgrimage, they found fields green with the first crop in six
seasons, courtesy of a woman who'd sniffed out the course of the
underground river, and had coaxed it to the surface with sways and
supplications.  In the temples of L'Himby a sibyl had carved from a
solid slab - using only her finger and her spittle - a representation of
the city as she prophesied it would be in a year's time, her prophecy so
mesmeric that her audience had gone out of the temple that very hour and
had torn down the trash that had disfigured their city.  In the Kwem
where Gentle took Monday in the hope of finding Scopique they found
instead that the once shallow pit where the Pivot had stood was now a
lake, its waters crystalline but its bottom hidden by the congregation
of life that was forming in it.  Birds mostly, which rose in sudden,
excited flocks, fully feathered, and ready for the sky.

Here they had a chance to meet the miracle-worker, for the woman who'd
made these waters (literally, her

acolytes said; it was the pissing of a single night) had taken up
residence in the blackened husk of the Kwem Palace.  In the hope of
gleaning some clue to Jude and Hoi-Polloi's whereabouts, Gentle ventured
into the shadows to find the lake-maker, and though she refused to show
herself she answered his enquiry.  No, she hadn't seen a pair of
travellers such as he described, but yes, she could tell him where
they'd gone.  There were only two directions for wandering women these
days, she explained: out of Yzordderrex and into it.

He thanked her for this information, and asked her if there was anything
he could do for her in return.  She told him that there was nothing that
she wanted from him personally, but that she'd be very glad of the
company of his boy for an hour or two.  Somewhat chagrined, Gentle went
out and asked Monday if he was willing to chance the woman's embrace for
a while.  He said he was, and left the Maestro to find himself a seat by
the bird-breeding lake while he ventured into its maker's boudoir.  It
was the first time in Gentle's life that any woman in search of sexual
attentions had passed him over for another.  If ever he'd needed proof
that his day was done, it was here.

When, after two hours, Monday reappeared (with a flushed face and
ringing ears) it was to find Gentle sitting at the lakeside, long ago
tired of working on his map, surrounded by several small cairns of
pebbles.. "What are these?" the boy said.

"I've been counting my romances," Gentle replied.

"Each one of them is a hundred women."

There were seven cairns.

'is that them all?" Monday said.

"It's all that I remember."

Monday squatted down beside the stones.

"I bet you'd like to love them all over again," he said.

Gentle thought about this for a little time, and finally said:

"No.  I don't think so.  I've done my best work.  It's time to leave it
to the younger men."

He tossed the stone he had in his hand out into the middle of the
teeming lake.

"Before you ask," he said.. "That was Jude."

A  There were no diversions after that, nor any need to

pursue rumours of women hither and thither.  They knew where Jude and
Hoi-Polloi had gone.  Having left the lake, they were on the Lenten Way
within a matter of hours.  Unlike so much else, the Way hadn't changed.
It was as busy and as wide as ever: an arrow, driving its straight way
into the hot heart of Yzordderrex.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

In the Fifth, winter came; not suddenly, but certainly.  Halloween was
the last time people chanced the night air without coats, hats and
gloves, and it saw the first substantial visitation of Londoners to
Gamut Street - revellers who'd taken the spirit of All Hallows' Eve to
heart, and come to see if there was any truth in the bizarre rumours
they'd heard about the neighbourhood.  Some retreated after a very short
time, but the braver amongst them stayed to explore, a few lingering
outside number twenty-eight, where they puzzled over the designs on the
door, and peered up at the carbonized tree that shaded the house from
the stars.

After that evening the cold's nip became a bite, and the bite a gnaw,
until by late November the temperatures were low enough to keep even the
most ardent torn-cat at the fire.  But the flow of visitors - in both
directions didn't cease.  Night after night ordinary citizens appeared
in Gamut Street to brush shoulders with the excursionists who were
coming in the opposite direction.  Some of the former became such
regular visitors that Clem began to recognize them, and was able to
watch their investigations grow less tentative as they realized that the
sensations they felt here were not the first signs of lunacy.  There
were wonders to be found here, and one by one these men and women must
have discovered the source, because they invariably disappeared. others,
perhaps too afraid to venture into the passing places alone, came with
trusted friends, showing them the street as though it were a secret
vice, talking in whispers then laughing out loud

when they found their loved ones could see the apparitions too.

Word was spreading.  But that fact was the only pleasure those bitter
days and nights provided.  Though Tick Raw spent more and more time in
the house, and was lively company, Clem missed Gentle badly.  He hadn't
been altogether surprised at his abrupt departure (he'd known, even if
Gentle hadn't, that sooner or later the Maestro would leave the
Dominion) but now his truest company was the man with whom he shared his
skull, and as the first anniversary of Tay's death approached the mood
of both grew steadily darker.  The presence of so many living souls on
the street only served to make the revenants who'd occupied it through
the summer months feel further disenfranchised, and their distress was
contagious.

Though Tay had been happy to stay with Clem through the preparations for
the great work, their time as angels was over, and Tay felt the same
need as those ghosts who roamed outside the house: to be gone.

As December came, Clem began to wonder how many more weeks he could keep
his post, when it seemed every hour the despair of the ghost in him
grew.  After much debate with himself he decided that Christmas would
mark the last day of his service in Gamut Street.  After that he'd leave
number twenty-eight to be tramped around by Tick's excursionists, and go
back to the house where a year before he and Tay had celebrated the
Return of the Unvanquished Sun.

Jude and Hoi-Polloi had taken their time crossing the Dominions, but
with so many roads to choose between, and so many incidental joys along
the way, going quickly seemed almost criminal.  They had no reason to
hurry.  There was nothing behind them to drive them on, and nothing in
front summoning them.  At least, so Jude pretended.  Time and time
again, when the issue of their A  ultimate destination cropped up in
conversation, she avoided talking about the place she knew in her heart
of hearts they would eventually reach.

But if the name of that city wasn't on her lips, it was on the lips of
almost every other woman they met, and when Hoi-Polloi mentioned that it
was her birthplace questions from fellow travellers would invariably
flow thick and fast.  W as it true that the harbour was now filled at
every tide with fish that had swum up from the depths of the ocean;
ancient creatures that knew the secret of the origins of women, and who
swam up the riveted streets at night to worship the Goddesses on the
hill?  Was it true that the women there could have children without any
need of men whatsoever, and that some could even dream babies into being
?  And were there fountains in that city that 9 made the old young, and
trees on which every fruit was new to the world?  And so on, and so
forth.

Though Jude was willing, if pressed, to supply deSCriptions of what
she'd seen in Yzordderrex, her accounts of M how the palace had been
re-fashioned by water, and of streams

that defied gravity, were not particularly remarkable in the face of
what rumour was claiming about Yzordderrex.  After a few

conversations in which she was urged to describe marvels she had no
knowledge of as though the questioners were willing her to

invent prodigies rather than disappoint them - she told Hoi-Polloi she'd
not be drawn into any further debates on the subject.  But her

imagination refused to ignore the tales it heard, however preposterous,
and with every mile they travelled along the Lenten Way the

idea of the city awaiting them at the end of their journey grew more
intimidating.

She fretted that perhaps the blessings bestowed on

her there would be valueless after all the time she'd spent away from
the place.  Or that the Goddesses knew that she'd told Sartori - in

all truth - that she loved him, and that Jokalaylau's condemnation of
her would carry the day if she ever went back into their temple.

Once they were on the Lenten Way, however, such fears became academic.
They were not going to turn back now, especially as both of them were
becoming steadily more exhausted.  The city called them out of the fogs
that lay between Dominions, and they would go into it together, and face
whatever judgements, prodigies and deep-sea fish were waiting there.

Oh, but it was changed.  A warmer season was on the Second than when
Jude had last been here, and with so much water running in the streets
the air was tropical.  But more breath-taking than the humidity was the
growth it had engendered.  Seeds and spores had been carried up from the
seams and caverns beneath the city in vast numbers, and under the
influence of the Goddesses' fe its had matured with preternatural speed.
Ancient forms of vegetation, most long believed extinct, had greened the
rubble, turning the Kesparates into luxuriant jungle.  In the space of
half a year Yzordderrex had come to resemble a lost city, sacred to
women and children, its desolation salved by flora.  The smell of
ripeness was everywhere, its source the fruits that glistened on vine
and bough and bush, the abundance of which had in turn attracted animals
that would never have dared Yzordderrex under its previous regime.

And running through this cornucopia, feeding the seeds it had raised
from the underworld, the eternal waters, still flowing up the hillsides
in their riotous way, but no longer carrying their fleets of prayers.
Either the requests of those who lived here had been answered, or else
their baptisms had made them their own healers and restorers.

Jude and Hoi-Polloi didn't go up to the palace the day they arrived. Nor
the day after, nor the day after that.  Instead they searched for the
Peccable house, and there made themselves comfortable, though the tulips
on the dining-room table had been replaced by a throng of blossoms that
had erupted through the floor, and the roof had become an aviary.  After
so long a journey in which

they'd not known from night to night where they were going to lay their
heads, these were minor inconveniences, and they were grateful to be at
rest, lulled to sleep by cooings and chatterings in beds that were more
like bowers.  When they woke, there was plenty to eat.  Fruit that could
be picked off the trees, water that ran clear and cold in the street
outside, and in some of the larger streams, fish, which formed the
staple diet of the clans that lived in the vicinity.

There were men as well as women amongst these extended families, some of
whom must have been members of the mobs and armies that had run so
brutally riot on the night the Autarch fell.  But either gratitude at
having survived the revolution, or the calming influence of the growth
and plenitude around them, had persuaded them to better purpose.  Hands
that had maimed and murdered were now employed rebuilding a few of the
houses, raising their walls not in defiance of the jungle, or the waters
that fed it, but in league with both.  This time, the architects were
women, who'd come down from their baptisms inspired to use the wreckage
of the old city to create a new one, and everywhere Jude saw echoes of
the serene and elegant aesthetic that marked the Goddesses' handiwork.

There was no great sense of urgency attending these constructions, nor,
she thought, any sign of a grand design being adhered to.  The age of
Empire was over, and all dogmas, edicts and conformities had gone with
it.  Each solved the problems of putting a roof over their heads in
their own way, knowing that the trees were both shady and bountiful in
the meantime, the houses that resulted as different as the faces of the
women who supervised their construction.  The Sartori she'd met in Gamut
Street would have approved, Jude thought.  Hadn't he touched her cheek
during their penultimate encounter, and told her he'd dreamed of a city
built in her image?  If that image was woman then here was that city,
rising from the ruins.

So by day they had the murmuring canopy, the bubbling rivers, the heat,
the laughter.

And by night, slumbers beneath a feathered roof, and dreams that were
kind, and uninterrupted.  Such was the case, at least, for a week.  But
on the eighth night, Jude was woken by Hoi-Polloi, who called her to the
window and said:

"Look."

She looked.  The stars were bright above the city, and ran silver in the
river below.  But there were other forms in the water, she realized;
more solid, but no less silver.  The talk they'd heard on the road was
true.

Climbing the river were creatures that no fishing boat, however deep it
trawled, would ever have found in its nets.

Some had a trace of dolphin in them, or squid, or manta-ray, but their
common trait was a hint of humanity, buried as deep in their past (or
future) as their homes were in ocean.  There were limbs on some of them,
and these few seemed to leap the slope rather than swim it.

Others were as sinuous as eels, but had heads that carried a mammalian
cast, their eyes luminous, their mouths fine enough to make words.

The sight of their ascent was exhilarating, and Jude stayed at the
window until the entire shoal had disappeared up the street.  She had no
doubt of their destination, nor indeed of her own, after this.

"We're as rested as we're ever going to be," she said to Hoi-Polloi.

"So it's time to go up the hill?. "Yes.  I think it is."

They left the Peccable house at dawn in order to make as much of the
ascent before the Comet climbed too high, and the humidity sapped their
strength.  it had never been an easy journey, but even in the cool early
morning it had become a back-breaking trudge, especially for Jude, who
felt as though she was carrying a lead weight in her womb rather than a
living soul.  She had to call a halt to the climb several times, and sit
in the shade to catch her breath but on the fourth such occasion she
rose to find

her gasps becoming steadily shallower, and a pain in her belly so acute
she could barely hold on to consciousness.  Her agitation - and
Hoi-Polloi's yelps - drew helping hands, and she was being lowered back
on to a knoll of flowering grasses when her waters broke.

A little less than an hour later, not more than half a mile from where
the Gate of the Twin Saints Creaze and Evendown had stood, in a grove
busy with tiny turquoise birds, she gave birth to the Autarch Sartori's
first and only child.

Though Jude and Hoi-Polloi's pursuers had left the lake maker in the
Kwern with clear directions, they still reached Yzordderrex six weeks
later than the women.  This was in part because Monday's sexual appetite
was significantly depleted after his liaison in the Palace, and he set a
far less hectic pace than he had hitherto, but more particularly because
Gentle's enthusiasm for cartography grew by leaps and bounds.  Barely an
hour would go by without him remembering some province he'd passed
through, or some signpost he'd seen, and whenever he did so the journey
was interrupted while he brought out his hand-made album of charts, and
religiously set down the details, rattling off the names of uplands,
lowlands, forests, plains, highways and cities like a litany while he
worked.  He wouldn't be hurried, even if the chance of a ride was
missed, or a good drenching gained in the process.  This was, he told
Monday, the true great work of his life, and he only regretted that he'd
come to it so late.

These interruptions notwithstanding, the city got closer day by day,
mile by mile, until one morning, when they raised their heads from their
pillows beneath a hawthorn bush, the mists cleared to show them a vast
green mountain in the distance.

"What is that place?" Monday wondered.

Astonished, Gentle said:

"Yzordderrex."

"Where's the palace?  Where's the streets?  All I can see is trees and
rainbows."

Gentle was as confounded as the boy.

"It used to be grey and black and bloody," he said.

"Well, it's fuckin' green now."

It got greener the closer they came, the scent of its vegetation so
sweetening the air that Monday soon lost his scowl of disappointment,
and remarked that perhaps this wouldn't be so bad after all.  If
Yzordderrex had turned into a wild wood, then maybe all the women had
become savages, dressed in berry-juice and smiles.  He could suffer that
awhile.

What they found on the lower slopes, of course, were scenes more
extraordinary than Monday's most heated imaginings.

So much of what the inhabitants of the New Yzordderrex took for granted
- the anarchic waters, the primeval trees - left both man and boy agog.
They gave up voicing their awe after a time and simply climbed through
the lavish thicket, steadily sloughing off the weight of baggage they'd
accrued on their journey and leaving it scattered in the grass.

Gentle had intended to go to the Eurhetemec Kesparate in the hope of
locating Athanasius, but with the city so transformed it was a slow and
difficult trek, so it was more luck than wit that brought them, after an
hour or more, to the gate.  The streets beyond it were as overgrown as
those they'd come through, the terraces resembling some orchard that had
been left to riot, its fallen fruit the rubble that lay between the
trees.

At Monday's suggestion, they split up to search for the Maestro, Gentle
telling the boy that if he saw Jesus somewhere in the trees then he'd
discovered Athanasius.  But they both came back to the gate having
failed to find him, obliging Gentle to ask some children who'd come to
play swinging games on the gate if any of them had seen the man who'd
lived here.

One of the number, a

girl of six or so with her hair so plaited with vines she looked as
though she was sprouting them, had an answer.. "He went away," she said.

"Do you know where?. "Nope.. "Does anybody know?. "Nope," she said,
speaking on behalf of her little tribe.

Which exchange brought the subject of Athanasius to a swift halt.

"Where now?" Monday asked, as the children returned to their games.

"We follow the water," Gentle replied.

They began to ascend again, while the Comet, which had long since passed
its zenith, made the contrary motion.

They were both weary now, and with every stride they took the temptation
to lie down in some tranquil spot grew.  But Gentle insisted they go on,
reminding Monday that Hoi-Polloi's bosom would be a far more comfortable
place to lay his head than any hummock, and her kisses more invigorating
than a dip in any pool.  His talk was persuasive, and the boy found an
energy  Al Gentle envied him, bounding on to clear the way for the
Maestro, until they reached the mounds of dark rubble that marked the
walls of the palace.  Rising from them, the columns from which had once
hung an enormous pair of gates, turned to playthings by the waters,
which climbed the right pillar in rivulets and threw themselves across
the gap in a drizzling arch that squarely struck the top of the left. it
was the most beguiling spectacle, and one that claimed Gentle's
attention completely, leaving Monday to head between the columns alone.

After a short time his shout came back to fetch Gentle, and it was
blissful.

"Boss?  Boss!  Come here!'

Gentle followed where Monday's cries led, through the warm rain beneath
the arch and into the palace itself.  He found Monday wading across a
courtyard, fragrant with the lilies that trembled on its flood, towards
a figure

standing beneath the colonnade on the other side.  It was Hoi-Polloi.
Her hair was plastered to her scalp, as though she'd just swum the pool,
and the bosom upon which Monday was so eager to lay his head was bare.

"So, you're here at last," she said, looking past Monday towards Gentle.

Her eager beau lost his footing halfway across, and lilies flew as he
hauled himself to his feet.

"You knew we were coming?" he said to the girl.

"Of course," she replied.. "Not you.  But the Maestro.  We knew the
Maestro was coming."

"But it's me you're glad to see, right?" Monday spluttered.  J mean, you
are gladT She opened her arms to him.

"What do you think?" she said.

He whooped his whoop, and splashed on towards her, peeling off his
soaked shirt as he went.  Gentle followed in his wake.  By the time he
reached the other' side Monday was stripped down to his underwear.

"How did you know we were coming here?" Gentle asked the girl.

"There are prophetics everywhere," she said.. "Come on.  I'll take you
up:

"Can't he go on his own?" Monday protested.

"We'll have plenty of time later," Hoi-Polloi said, taking his hand.
"But first, I have to take him up to the chambers."

The trees within the ring of the demolished walls dwarfed those outside,
inspired to unprecedented growth by the almost palpable sanctity of this
place.  There were women and children in their branches, and amongst
their gargantuan roots, but Gentle saw no men here, and supposed that if
Hoi-Polloi hadn't been escorting them they'd have been asked to leave.
How such a request would have been enforced he could only guess, but he
didn't U)if tt epresenceswnic c arge t eairan cart here had their ways.
He knew what those presences were.  The promised Goddesses, whose
existence he'd first heard

mooted in Beatrix, while sitting in Mother Splendid's kitchen.

The journey was circuitous.  There were several places where the rivers
ran too hard and deep to be forded, and Hoi Polloi had to lead them to
bridges or stepping stones, then double back along the opposite bank to
pick up the track again.

But the further they went, the more sentient the air became, and though
Gentle had countless questions to ask he kept them to himself rather
than display his naivety.  There were tit bits from Hoi-Polloi once in a
while, so casually dropped they were enigmas in them selves.  The fires
are so comical .  she said at one point, as they passed a pile of
twisted metalwork that had been one of the Autarch's war machines.  And
at another lace, where a deep blue pool housed fish the size of P men,
said: Apparently they have their own city ...  but it's so deep in the
ocean I don't suppose I'll ever see it.  The children will, though.
That's what's wonderful.  .  .

Finally, she brought them to a door that was curtaine;i with running
water, and turning to Gentle said. "They're waiting for you."

Monday went to step through the curtain at Gentle's side, but Hoi-Polloi
restrained him with a kiss on his neck.

"This is just for the Maestro," she said.. "Come along.  We'll go
swimming.. "Boss?"

"Go ahead," Gentle told him.. "No harm's going to come to me here."

"I'll see you later then," Monday said, content to have Hoi-Polloi tug
him away.

Before they'd disappeared into the thicket Gentle turned to the door,
dividing the cool curtain with his fingers and stepping into the chamber
beyond.  After the riot of life outside, both its scale and its
austerity came as a shock.  it was the first structure he'd seen in the
city that preserved something of his brother's lunatic ambition.

Its vastness was uninvaded by all but a few shoots and tendrils, and the
only waters that ran here were at the door

behind him and those falling from an arch at the other end.  The
Goddesses had not left the chamber entirely unmarked, however.  The
walls of what had been built as a windowless hall were now pierced on
all sides, so that for all its immensity the place was a honeycomb,
penetrated by the soft light of evening.  There was only one item of
furniture: a chair, close to the distant arch, and seated upon it, with
a baby on her lap, was Judith.  As Gentle entered she looked up from the
child's face and smiled at him.

"I was beginning to think you'd lost your way," she said.

Her voice was light; almost literally, he thought.  When she spoke, the
beams that came through the wall flickered.

"I didn't know you were waiting," he said.

"It's been no great hardship," she said.. "Won't you come closer?"

As he crossed the chamber towards her, she said:

"I didn't expect you to follow us at first, but then I thought: he will,
he will, because he'll want to see the child."

"To be honest ...  I didn't think about the child:

"Well, she thought about you," Jude said, without rebuke.

The baby in her lap could not be more than a few weeks old, but, like
the trees and flowers here, was burgeoning.  She sat on Jude's lap
rather than lay, one small, strong hand clutching her mother's long
hair.

Though Jude's breasts were bare, and comfortable, the child had no
interest in nourishment or sleep.  Her grey eyes were fixed on Gentle,
studying him with an intense and quizzical stare.

"How's Clem?" Jude asked when Gentle stood before her.

"He was fine when I last saw him.  But I left suddenly, as you know.  I
feel rather guilty about that.  But once I'd started .  .

r

I know.  There was no turning back.  it was the

r  same for me."

Gentle went down on his haunches in front of Jude, and offered his hand,
palm up, to the child.  She grasped it instantly.

"What's her name?" he said.

"I hope you won't mind.

ML   . "What?"

I .

 .  I called her Huzzah."

Gentle smiled up at Jude.. "You did?" Then back at the baby, called by
her scrutiny.

"Huzzah?" he said, leaning his face towards her.. "Huzzah.  I'm Gentle."

"She knows who you are," Jude said without a trace of doubt.. "She knew
about this room before it even existed.

And she knew you'd come here, sooner or later."

Gentle didn't enquire as to how the child had shared her knowledge.  It
was just one more mystery to add to the catalogue in this extraordinary
place.

"And the Goddesses?" he said.

"What about Them?"

"They don't mind that she's Sartori's child?"

"Not at all," Jude said, her voice daintier at the mention F F of
Sartori.. "The whole city ...  the whole city's here to

prove how good can come from bad.. "She's better than

good, Jude," Gentle said.  She smiled, and so did the

child.. "Yes, she is."

Huzzah was reaching for Gentle's face, ready to topple  Al from Jude's
lap in pursuit of her object.

"I think she sees her father," Jude said, lifting the child back into
the crook of her arm, and standing up.

Gentle also stood, watching Jude carry Huzzah to a litter of playthings
on the ground.  The child pointed and gurgled.

"Do you miss him?" he said.

"I did in the Fifth," Jude replied, her back still turned.9 while she
picked up Huzzah's chosen toy.. "But I don'V' here.  Not since Huzzah. I
never felt quite real till she

appeared.  I was a figment of the other Judith." She stood up again,
turning to Gentle.. "You know I still can't really remember all those
missing years?  I get snatches of them once in a while, but nothing
solid.

I suppose I was living in a dream.  But she's woken me, Gentle." Jude
kissed the baby's cheek.. "She's made me real.  I was only a copy until
her.  We both were.  He knew it and I knew it.  But we made something
new." She sighed.. "I don't miss him," she said.. "But I wish he could
have seen her.  Just once.  Just so he could have known what it was to
be real too."

She started to cross back to the chair, but the child reached out for
Gentle again, letting out a little cry to emphasize her wishes.

"My, my," Jude said.. "You are popular."

She sat down again, and put the toy she'd picked up in front of Huzzah.
It was a small blue stone.

"Here, darling," she cooed.. "Look.  What's this?  What's this?,

Gurgling with pleasure, the child claimed the plaything from her
mother's finger with a dexterity far beyond her tender age.  The gurgles
became chuckles as she laid it to her lips, as if to kiss it.

"She likes to laugh," Gentle said.

"She does, thank God.  Oh, now listen to me.  Still thanking God.,

"Old habits .  .

"That one'll die," Jude said firmly.

The child was putting the toy to her mouth.

"No, sweetie, don't do that .  .  ." Jude said.  Then, to Gentle. "Do
you think the Erasure'll decay eventually?  I have a friend here called
Lotti, she says it will.  It'll decay, and then we'll have to live with
the stench from the First every time the wind comes that way.. "Maybe a
wall could be built.. "By whom?  Nobody wants to go near the place."
"Not even the Goddesses?. "They've got Their work here.  And in the
Fifth.  They want to free the waters there too."

"That should be quite a sight.. "I've seen it.  I know what's there."
"Yes, it should.  Maybe I'll go back for that ...

There was a pause.  Then Jude said: Huzzah's laughter had subsided
during this exchange. "Did Celestine ever tell you her story?

She did, didn't

and she was once again studying Gentle, reaching up she?"

towards him from her mother's lap.  This time her tin. "The one about

Nisi Nirvana?"

hand was not open, but clutching the blue stone.. "Yes.  She told it to

me too, the night before the Rec. "I think she wants you to have it,"
Jude said.

onciliation.  Did

you understand it?,

He smiled at the child, and said: . "Not really."

"Thank you.  But you should keep it." . "Ah."

Her gaze became more intent at this, and he was cert ai "Why?"

she understood every word he was saying.  Her hand stil. "It's just that
I

didn't either, and I thought maybe .  .

proffered its gift, determined he should take it.    she shrugged

I don't know what I thought.,

"Go on," Jude said.      She was at the archway now, and the child was
peering

As much at the behest of the eyes as at Jude's words, over her shoulder
at somebody who'd appeared behind

Gentle reached down and gingerly took the stone from the veil of water.
The visitor was not, Gentle thought,

Huzzah's hand.  There was some considerable strength in

quite human.

her.  The stone was heavy; heavy and cool.

"Hoi-Polloi mentioned our other guests, did she?" Jude

"Now our peace is really made," Jude said.

said, seeing his astonishment.. "They came up out of the

"I didn't know we'd been at war," Gentle replied.

ocean, to woo us." She smiled.. "Beautiful, some of them.

"That's the worst kind, isn't it?" Jude said.. "But it's over

There's going to be such children.  .

now.  It's over forever."

The smile faltered, just a little.

There was a subtle modulation in the plush of the

"Don't be sad, Gentle," she said.. "We had our time."

water-curtained arch behind her, and she glanced round.

Then she turned from him, and took the child through

Her expression had been grave, but when she looked

the curtain.

He heard Huzzah laugh to see the face that

back at Gentle she had a smile on her face.

"I have to go," she said as she stood.    awaited them on the other
side, and saw its owner put

his silvery arms around mother and child.  Then the light IF The child
was chuckling, and clutching the air.

"Will I see you again?" Gentle said.    in his eyes brightened, running
in the curtain, and when

it dimmed the family had gone.

Jude shook her head slowly, looking at him almost

indulgently.      Gentle waited in the empty chamber for several

minutes, knowing Jude wasn't going to come back, nor

"What for?" she murmured.. "We've said all we have to

say.  We've forgiven each other.  it's finished." even certain that he
wanted her to, but unable to depart

until he had fixed in his memory all that had passed

"Will I be allowed to stay in the city?"

between them.  Only then did he return to the door and

"Of course," she said with a little laugh.. "But why would

you want to?"       step out into the evening air.  There was a
different kind

of enchantment in the wild wood now.  Soft blue mists

"Because I've come to the end of the pilgrimage."

"Have you?" she said, turning from him to pad towards drooped from the
canopy, and crept up from the pools.

The mellifluous songs of dusk-birds had replaced those

the arch.. "I thought you had one Dominion left."

A,

NW.

of noon, and the busy drone of pollinators had given way to breath-wing
moths.

He looked for Monday, but failed to find him, and although there was
nobody to prevent him loitering in

Ow.

4V this idyll, he felt ill at ease.  This was not his place n By day it
was too full of life, and by night, he guessed, too full of love.  It
was a new experience for him to feel so utterly immaterial.  Even on the
road, hanging back from the fires while nonsense tales were told, he'd
always known that if he'd simply opened his mouth and identified himself
he would have been fed, encircled, adored.

Not so here.  Here he was nothing; nothing and nobody There were new
growths, new mysteries, new marriages.

Perhaps his feet understood that better than his head, because before
he'd properly confessed his redundancy o himself they were already
carrying him away, out

t

under the water-clad arches and down the slope of the city.  He didn't
head towards the delta, but towards the desert, and though he'd not seen
the purpose in this journey when Jude had hinted at it, he didn't now
deny his feet their passage.

When he'd last emerged from the gate that led out into the desert he'd
been carrying Pie, and there'd been a throng of refugees around them.
Now he was alone, and though he had no other weight to carry besides his
own he knew the trek ahead of him would exhaust what little sum of will
was left to him.  He wasn't much concerned at this.  If he perished on
his way, it scarcely mattered.  Whatever Jude had said, the pilgrimage
was at an end.

As he reached the crossroads where he'd encountered Floccus Dado, he
heard a shout behind him, and turned to see a bare-chested Monday
galloping towards him through the dwindling light, mounted on a mule, or
a striped variation thereof.

"What were you doing, going without me?" he demanded when he reached
Gentle's side.

"looked for you, but you weren't around.  I thought you'd gone off to
start a family with Hoi-Polloi."

"Nah!" said Monday.. "She's got funny ideas, that girl.  She said she
wanted to introduce me to some fish.  I said I wasn't too keen on fish,
'cause the bones get stuck in your throat.  Well, that's right, in nit

People choke on fish, regular.  Anyhow, she looks at me like I just
farted, and says maybe I should go with you after all.  An' I said, I
didn't even know you was leaving.  So she finds me this ugly little fuck
-' he slapped the hybrid's flank, '- an' points me in this direction."
He glanced back at the city.. "I think we're well out of there," he
said, dropping his voice.. "There was too much water, if you ask me.
D'you see it at the gate?  A great fuckin' fountain.. "No I didn't.

That must be recent."

"See?  The whole place is going to drown.  Let's get the fuck out of
here.  Hop on.. "What's the beast called?"

"Tolland," Monday said with a grin.. "Which way are we headed?"

Gentle pointed towards the horizon.

"I don't see nothin'.. "Then that must be the right direction."

Ever the pragmatist, Monday hadn't left the city without supplies.  He'd
made a sack of his shirt and filled it to bursting with succulent
fruits, and it was these that sustained them as they travelled.  They
didn't halt when night came, but kept up their steady pace, taking turns
to walk beside the beast so as not to exhaust it, and giving it at least
as much of the fruit as they ate themselves, plus the piths, cores and
skins of their own portions.

Monday slept much of the time that he rode, but Gentle, despite his
fatigue, remained wide awake, too vexed by the problem of how he was
going to set this wasteland down in his book of maps to indulge himself
in slumber.  The stone Huzzah had given him was constantly in his hand,
coaxing so much sweat from his pores that several times a little pool
gathered in the cup of his palm.

Discovering this, he would put the stone away, only to find that a few
minutes later he'd taken it out of his pocket without even realizing
that he'd done so, and that his fingers were once again making play with
it.

Now and then he'd cast a backward glance towards Yzordderrex, and it
made quite a sight, the benighted flanks of the city glittering in
countless places, as though the waters in its streets had become perfect
mirrors for the stars.  Nor was Yzordderrex the only source of such
splendour.  The land between the gates of the city and the track that
they were following also gleamed here and there, catching its own
fragments of the sky's display.

But all such enchantments were gone by the first sign of dawn.  The city
had long since disappeared into the distance behind them, and the
thunderheads in front were louring.  Gentle recognized the baleful
colour of this sky from the glimpse he and Tick Raw had snatched of the
First.  Though the Erasure still sealed Hapexamendios's pestilence from
the Second, its taint was too persuasive to be obliterated, and the
bruisy heavens loomed vaster as they travelled, lying along the entire
horizon, , and climbing to their zenith.

There was some good news, however: they weren alone.  As the wretched
remains of the Dearthers' tents appeared on the horizon, so too did a
congregation of God-spotters, thirty or so, watching the Erasure.

One of them saw Gentle and Monday approaching, and the word of their
arrival passed through the small crowd, until it reached one who
instantly pelted in the travellers' direction.

ecstasy to see Gentle, though after the initial flood oV, greetings the
talk became grim.

"What did we do wrong, Maestro'he wanted to know.

"This isn't the way it was meant to be, is it?"

t. "Maestro!  Maestro!" he yelled as he came.

It was Chicka Jackeen, of course, and he was in a fair, ."

Gentle did his weary best to explain, astonishing and appalling Chicka
Jackeen by turns.

"So Hapexamendios is dead?"

"Yes, He is.  And everything in the First is His body.  And it's rotting
to high heaven.,

"What happens when the Erasure decays?"

"Who knows?  I'm afraid there's enough rot to stink out the Dominion."

"So what's your plan?" Chicka Jackeen wanted to know.

"I don't have one."

The other looked confounded at this.. "But you came all the way here,"
he said.. "You must have had some notion or other."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," Gentle replied, 'but the truth is: this
was the only place left for me to go." He stared at the Erasure.
"Hapexamendios was my Father, Lucius.  Perhaps in my heart of hearts I
believe I should be in the First with Him."

"If you don't mind me saying so, Boss -'Monday b

broke in.

"Yes?"

"That's a bloody stupid idea.. "If you're going to go in, so am L'
Chicka Jackeen said.  want to see for myself.  A dead God's something to
tell your children about, eh?"

"Children?"

"Well .  .  ." said Jackeen, it's either that or write my memoirs, and I
haven't got the patience for that."

"You?" Gentle said.. "You waited two hundred years for me and you say
you haven't got patience?"

"Not any more," came the reply.. "I want a life, Maestro.. "I don't
blame you."

"But not before I've seen the First."

They'd reached the Erasure by now, and while Chicka Jackeen went amongst
his colleagues to tell them what he and the Reconciler were going to do,
Monday once again piped up with his opinion on the venture.

"Don't do it, Boss," he said.. "You've got nothing to prove.  I know you
were pissed off that they didn't throw a party in Yzordderrex, but fuck
'em, I say, or rather don't.  Let 'em have their fish

Gentle laid his hands on Monday's shoulders.

"Don't worry," he said.. "This isn't a suicide mission."

"So what's the big hurry?  You're dead beat, Boss.  Have

a sleep.  Eat something.  Get strong.  There's all of

tomorrow not touched yet."

"I'm fine," Gentle said.. "I've got my talisman."

"What's one of them?"

Gentle opened his palm and showed Monday the blue stone.

"A fuckin' egg?"

"An egg, eh?" Gentle said, tossing the stone in his hand.

"Maybe it is."

He threw it up into the air a second time, and it rose, far higher than
his muscle had propelled it, way up above their heads.  At the summit of
its ascent it seemed to hover for a beat, and then returned into his
hand at leisure, defying the claim of gravity.  As it descended it
brought the faintest drizzle down with it, cooling their upturned faces.

Monday cooed with pleasure.. "Rain out of nowhere," he said.. "I
remember that."

Gentle left him bathing the grime from his face, and went to join Chicka
Jackeen, who had finished explaining his intentions to his colleagues.
They all hung back, watching the Maestros with uneasy gazes.

"They think we're going to die," Chicka Jack een explained.

"They may very well be right," Gentle said quietly.. "Are you certain
you want to come with me?"

"I was never more certain of anything."

With that they started towards the ambiguous ground that lay between the
solidity of the Second and the Erasure's vacancy.  As they went, one of
Jackeen's friends began to call after him, in distress at his departure.
The

cry was taken up by several others, their shouts too mingled to be
interpreted.  Jackeen halted for a moment, and glanced back towards the
company he was leaving.  Gentle made no attempt to urge him on.  He
ignored the shouts and picked up speed, the Erasure thickening around
him, and the smell of the devastation that lay on the other side growing
stronger with every step he took.  He was prepared for it, however.
Instead of holding his breath, he drew the stench of his Father's rot
deep into his lungs, defying its pungency.

There was another shout from behind him, but this time it wasn't one of
Jackeen's friends, it was the Maestro himself, his voice coloured more
by wonder than alarm.  Its tone piqued Gentle's curiosity, and he
glanced back over his shoulder to seek Jackeen out, but the nullity had
come between them.  Unwilling to be delayed, Gentle forged on, a purpose
in his stride he didn't comprehend.  His enfeebled legs had found
strength from somewhere; his heart was urgent in his chest.

Ahead, the blinding murk was stirring, the first vague forms of the
First's terrain emerging.  And from behind, Jackeen again:

"Maestro?  Maestro!  Where are your

Without slowing his stride, Gentle returned the call.

"Here, Lucius!'

"Wait for me!" Jackeen gasped.. "Waid', and now emerged from the void to
lay his hand on Gentle's shoulder.

I

What is it?" Gentle said, looking round at Jackeen, who as if in bliss
had dropped the toll of years, and was once again a young man, sweaty
with awe at the way of fe its

"The waters .  .  ." he said.. "What about them?. "They've followed you,
Maestro.  They've followed you." And as he spoke, they came.  Oh, how
they came!  They ran to Gentle's feet in glittering rills that broke
against his ankles and his shins, and leapt like silver snakes

f,

late

towards his hands.  Or rather, towards the stone he held in his hands.
And seeing their elation, and their zeal, he heard Huzzah's laughter,
and felt again her tiny fingers brushing his arm as she passed the blue
egg on to him.  He didn't doubt for a moment that she'd know what ould
come of the gift.  So, most likely, had Jude.  He'd

w become their agent at the last, just as he'd become his mother's, and
the thought of that sweet service brought

an echo of the child's laughter to his lips.   i t From above, the egg
was calling down a drizzle to swell

the waters swirling underfoot, and in the space of seconds the patter
became a roar, and a deluge descended, violent enough to sluice the murk
of the Erasure out of the air.  After a few moments light began to break
around the Maestros, the first light this terrain had seen since
Hapexamendios had drawn the void over His Dominion.  By it, Gentle saw
that Jackeen's exhilaration was rapidly turning to panic.

"We're going to drown!" he yelled, fighting to stay on his feet as the
water deepened.

Gentle didn't retreat.  He knew where his duty lay.  As the surf broke
against their backs, the tide threatening to drag them under, he raised
Huzzah's gift to his lips and kissed it, just as she had done.  Then he
mustered all his strength and threw the stone out, over the landscape
that was being uncovered before them.  The egg went from his hand.  with
a momentum that was not his sinews' work but its own ambition, and
instantly the waters went in pursuit of it, dividing around the Maestros
and taking their tides off into the wasteland of the First.

It would take the waters weeks, perhaps even months, to cover the
Dominion from end to end, and most of that work would go unwitnessed.
But in the next few hours, standing at their vantage-point where the
City of God had once begun, the Maestros were granted a glimpse of their
labour.  The clouds above the First, that had been as inert as the
landscape beneath, now began to churn, and

roil, and shed their anguish in stupendous storms, which in turn swelled
the rivers that were driving their cleansing way across the rot.

Hapexamendios's remains were not despised.  With the purpose of the
Goddesses fuelling their every drop, the waters turned the
slaughterhouse over, and over, and over, scouring the matter of its
poisons, and sweeping it up into mounds, which the exhilarated air
festooned with va pours

The first ground that appeared from this tumult was close to the feet of
the Maestros, and rapidly became a ragged peninsula that stretched fully
a mile into the Dominion.  The waters broke against it constantly,
bringing with every wave another freight of Hapexamendios's clay to
increase its flanks.  Gentle was patient for a time, and stayed at the
border.  But he could not resist the invitation forever, and finally,
ignoring Jackeen's words of caution, he set off down the spine of land
better to see the spectacle visible from the far end.  The waters were
still draining from the new earth, and here and there lightning still
ran on the slopes, but the ground was solid enough, and there were
seedlings everywhere, carried, he presumed, from Yzordderrex.  If so,
then there would be abundant life here in a little while.

By the time he'd reached the end of the peninsula the clouds overhead
were beginning to dear somewhat, lighter for their furies.  Further off,
of course, the process he'd been privileged to witness was just
beginning, as the storms spread in all directions from their point of
origin.  By their blazes he glimpsed the snaking rivers, going about
their work with undiminished ambition.  Here on the promontory, however,
there was a benigner light.  The First Dominion had a sun, it seemed and
though it wasn't yet warm, Gentle didn't wait for ba'Imier weather to
begin his last labours, but took his album and his pen from his jacket,
and sat down on the marshy headland to work.  He still had the map of
the desert between the gates of Yzordderrex and the Erasure to set down,
and

though these pages would doubtless be the barest in the album, they had
to be drawn all the more carefully for that fact: he wanted their very
spareness to have a beauty of its own.

After perhaps an hour of concentrated work he he and Jackeen behind him.
First a footfall, then a question:

"Speaking in tongues, Maestro?"

Gentle hadn't even been aware of the inventory he was rattling off until
his attention was drawn to it: a seamless list of names that must have
been incomprehensible to anyone other than himself.  The stopping places
of his pilgrimage, as familiar to his tongue as his many names.

Are you sketching the new world?" Jackeen asked him, hesitating to come
too close to the artist while he worked.

"No, no," said Gentle.. "I'm finishing a map." He paused, then corrected
himself.. "No, not finishing.  Starting."

"May I look?"

"If you like."

Lucius went down on his haunches behind Gentle and peered over his
shoulder.  The pages that depicted the desert were as complete as Gentle
could make them.  He was now attempting to delineate the peninsula he
was sitting on, and something of the scene in front of him.  It would be
little more than a line or two, but it was a beginning.

"I wonder, would you fetch Monday for me?"

"Is there something you need?"

"Yes, I want him to take these maps back into the Fifth 4 with him, and
give them to Clem.. "Who's Clem?"      P. "An angel.. "Ah.. "Would you
bring him here?. "Now?. "If you would," Gentle said.. "I'm almost done."
Ever dutiful, Jackeen stood up and started back

towards the Second, leaving Gentle to work on.  There was very little
left to do.  He finished making his crude rendering of the promontory,
then he added a line of dots along it to mark his path, and at the
headland placed a small cross at the spot where he was sitting.  That
done, he went back through the album, to be certain that the pages were
in proper order.

it occurred to him as he did so that he'd fashioned a self-portrait.
Like its maker, the map was flawed, but, he hoped, redeemable; a rudimentary thing that might see finer versions in the fullness of time; be
made, and remade, and made again, perhaps forever.

He was about to set the album down beside the pen when he heard a hint
of coherence in the surf that was beating against the slope below.
Unable to quite make sense of the sound, he ventured to the edge.

The ground was too newly made to be solid, and threatened to crumble
away beneath his weight, but he peered over as far as he could, and what
he saw and what he heard were enough to make him retreat from the edge,
kneel down in the dirt, and with trembling hands start scribbling a
message to accompany the maps.

It was necessarily brief.  He could hear the words clearly now, rising
from the surge of waves.  They distracted him with promises.

Nisi Nirvana.  .  ." they said, Nisi Nirvana .

By the time he'd finished his note, laid down the album and the pen
beside it, and returned to the edge of the promontory, the sun of this
Dominion was emerging from the storm-clouds overhead, and it shed its
light on the waves below.  The beams placated them for a time, soothing
their frenzy and piercing them, so that Gentle had a glimpse of the
ground that they were moving over.  It was not, it seemed, an earth at
all, but another sky, and in it was a sphere so majestic that to his
eyes all the bodies in the heavens of the Imajica - all stars, all
moons, all noonday suns could not in their sum have touched its glory.
Here was the door that his Father's city had

been built to seal; the door through which his mother's name in fable
had been whispered.  It had been closed for millennia, but now it stood
open, and through it a music of voices was rising, going on its way to
every wandering spirit in the Imajica and calling them home to rapture.

in its midst was a voice Gentle knew, and before he'd even glimpsed its
source his mind had shaped the face that called him, and his body felt
the arms that would wrap him round and bear him up.  Then they were
there those arms, that face rising from the door to claim him, and he
needed to imagine them no longer.

"Are you finished?" he was asked.

"Yes," he replied.. "I'm finished.. "Good," said Pie'oh'pah, smiling.
"Then we can begin."

The congregation Chicka Jackeen had left at the perimeter of the First
had steadily begun to venture along the peninsula as their courage and
curiosity grew.  Monday was of course amongst them, and Jackeen was just
about to call the boy and summon him to the Reconciler's side when
Monday let out a cry of his own, pointing back along the promontory.
Jackeen turned, and fixed his eyes as did they all - on the two figures
standing on the 9 headland embracing.  Later there would be much
discussion between these witnesses as to what they'd actually seen.  All
agreed that one of the pair was the Maestro Sartori.  As to the other,
opinions differed widely.  Some said they saw a woman, others a man,
still others a cloud, with a piece of sun burning in it.  But whatever
these ambiguities, what followed was not in doubt.  Having embraced,
the two figures advanced to the limit of the promontory, where they
stepped out into the air and were gone.

Two weeks later, on the penultimate day of a cheerless December, Clem
was sitting in front of the fire in the dining room of number
twenty-eight - a spot from which

he'd seldom risen since Christmas - when he heard a

hectic beating on the front door.  He was not wearing a watch - what did
time matter now?  but he assumed that it was long after midnight. Anyone
calling at such an hour was likely to be either desperate or dangerous,
but in his present bleak mood he scarcely cared what There was

harm might await him in the street outside.

nothing left for him here: in this house; in this life.  Gentle had
gone, Judy had gone, and so, most recently, had Tay.  It was five days
since he'd heard his lover whisper his name, and say:

"Clem ...  I have to go."

"Go?" he'd replied.. "Where to?"

"Somebody opened the door," came Tay's reply.. "The dead are being
called home.  I have to go."

They wept together for a while, tears pouring from Clem's eyes while the
sound of Tay's anguish racked him from within.

But there was no help for it.  The call had come, and though Tay was
grief-stricken at the thought of parting from Clem, his existence
between conditions had become unbearable, and beneath the sorrow of
parting was the joyful knowledge of imminent release.  Their strange
union was over.  It was time for the living and the dead to part.

Clem hadn't known what loss really was until Tay left.  The pain of
losing his lover's physical body had been acute enough, but losing the
spirit that had so miraculously returned to him was immeasurably worse.
It was not possible, he thought, to be emptier than this, and still be a
living being.  Several times during those dark days he'd wondered if he
should simply kill himself, and hope that he would be able to follow his
lover through whatever door now stood open.  That he didn't was more a
consequence of the responsibility he felt than lack of courage.  He was
the only witness to the miracles of Gamut Street left in this Dominion.
If he departed, who would there be to tell the tale?

But such imperatives seemed frail things at an hour like this, and as he
rose from the fire, and crossed to the

front door, he allowed himself the thought that if these midnight
callers came with death in their hands perhaps I he would not refuse it.
Without asking who was on the other side, he slid back the bolts and
opened the door.  To his surprise he discovered Monday standing in the
driving sleet.  Beside him stood a shivering stranger, his thinning I

curls flattened to his skull.

"This is Chicka Jackeen," Monday said as he hauled his sodden guest over
the threshold.. "Jackie, this is Cl em: eighth wonder of the world.
Well, am I too wet to get a hug?"

Clem opened his arms to Monday, who embraced him with fervour.

"I thought you and Gentle had gone forever," Clem said.

"Well, one of us has," came the reply.

"I guessed as much," Clem said.. "Tay went after him.

And the revenants too."

"When was this?"

"Christmas Day."

Jackeen's teeth were chattering, and Clem ushered him through to the
fire, which he had been fuelling  A

with sticks of furniture.  He threw on a couple of chair legs and
invited Jackeen to sit by the blaze and thaw out.  The man thanked him,
and did so.  Monday, however, was made

at

of sterner stuff.  Availing himself of the hi sky that's uthfuls into his
beside the hearth, he put several mo system, then set about clearing the
room, explaining as ed he dragged the table into the corner that they
need some working space.  With the floor cleared, he opened his jacket
and pulled Gentle's gazetteer from beneath his J

arm, dropping it in front of Clem.

What's this?. "It's a map of the Imajica," Monday said.

"Gentle's work?. "Yep." Monday went down on his haunches and flipped the

album open, taking out the loose leaves and handing the cover back up to
Clem.

"He wrote a message in it," Monday said.

While Clem read the few words Gentle had scribbled on the cover, Monday
began to arrange the sheets side by side on the floor, carefully
aligning them so that the maps became an unbroken flow.  As he worked,
he talked, his enthusiasm as unalloyed as ever.

"You know what he wants us to do, don't you?  He wall we can wants us to
draw this map on every fuckin'

find!  On the pavements!  On our foreheads!  Anywhere and everywhere."

"That's quite a task," said Clem.

"I'm here to help you," Chicka Jackeen said, 'in whatever capacity I
can."

He got up from the fire, and came to stand beside Clem, where he could
admire the pattern that was emerging on the floor in front of them.

"That's not the only thing you've come to do, is it?" Monday said.. "Be
honest."

"Well, no," said Jackeen.. "I'd also like to find myself a wife.  But
that will have to wait."

"Damn right!" said Monday.. "This is our business now." He stood up, and
stepped out of the circle which the pages of Gentle's album had formed.
Here was the Imajica, or rather the tiny part of it which the Reconciler
had seen.  Patashoqua and Vanaeph; Beatrix and the mountains of the
Jokalaylau; Mai-M, the Cradle, L'Himby and the Kwem; the Lenten Way, the
Delta and Yzordderrex.  And then the crossroads outside the city, and
the desert beyond, with a single track leading to the borders of the
Second Dominion.  On the other side of that border, the pages were
practically empty.  The wanderer had sketched the peninsula he'd sat on,
but beyond it he'd simply written: This is a new world.

In t is, sai Jackeen, stooping to indicate the cross at the end of the
promontory, 'is where the Maestro's pilgrimage ended."

'is that where he's buried?" Clem said.

"Oh no," Jackeen said.. "He's gone to places that'll make this life seem
like a dream.  He's left the circle, you see.. "No, I don't," said Clem.
"If he's left the circle, then where's he gone?  Where have they all
gone?. "Into it," Jackeen said.

Clem began to smile.

"May P' said Jackeen, rising and claiming from Clem's fingers the sheet
which carried Gentle's last message.

My friends, he'd written, Pie is here.  I am found.  Will yoi show these
pages to the world, so that every wanderer may find their way home?

"I think our duty is plain, gentlemen," Jackeen sai( He stooped again to
lay the final page in the middle the circle, marking the place of
spirits to which d Reconciler had gone.. "And when we've done that due
we have here the map that will show us where v c must go.  We'll follow
him.  There's nothing more certain.  We'll all of us follow him, by and
by."

