Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

"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 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 became a backbreaking trudge, especially for Jude, who felt as though she were 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 onto 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 Kwem 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 Kwem 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 his 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 handmade 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 gray and black and bloody," he said.

"Well, it's fucking 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?'1

"Nope," she said again, speaking on behalf of her little tribe.

"Does anybody know?"

"Nope."

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 the temptation to lie down in some tranquil spot grew with every stride they took. 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 Gentle envied, 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 were 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 a 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. "I mean, you are glad?"

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 among 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 doubt that the presences which charged the air and earth 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.