Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

"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?"

"This is Your fire, Father. This is Your fire, coming around 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 unknitting 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 unsolid. 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 judgment 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 fetal 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 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 loh' pah in the maelstrom. But it seemed Hapexamendios' 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 going back the way the fire had come. As he flew, the sheer enormity of what was under way 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 to the modest streets of Clerkenwell. They were drab, of course, after the brilliance of the metropolis he'd 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 Holborn 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 28 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 warning 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 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 onto 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 quieted; 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 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.