Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

"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 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 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 smelled of what he'd called their panic: a bitter odor mingled with the metallic tang that came before lightning. Though the motion of the stones was reasonably contained, she hung back from the bowl lest a rogue find its way out of the dance and strike 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 The Tabula Rasa's tower took its place a moment after, only to be superseded by a third building, quite different from the pair that had gone before, except that it too was half concealed by foliage, in this case a single tree planted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?"

The building was unremarkable: three stories, 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 around, and of Gentle and herself, mere hours before, devouring each other into perfection.

"There it is again," Oscar said.

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 worshiper, but she doubted it. Every detail of this parade had its significance.

Now the image decayed again, and the noonday scene, with its gleaming foliage and its pristine sky, gave way to a roiling juggernaut of smoke, all black and gray.

"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 around 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 gray 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 unleashed 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 gray floor. It was herself: a crude representation, but recognizable.

"I 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 unraveled 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, this 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 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 quieted 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 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."