Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

Gentle didn't see the fall and was glad of it. Only when the cry stopped did he retreat from the window and cover his face, while the circle of the sun blazed blue and green 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 for excess of it. Their matter was drab slough, their skitters and flights reduced to a wretched crawling retreat from the window.

"I've seen prettier turds," Gem 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 feits to protect his flesh.

They met Monday, who had heard the window breaking above, coming up the stairs as they descended.

"I thought you was a goner, boss," he said.

"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 an open window—"

"I don't think he's going to be flying anywhere."

"No, but the birds can get to him," Gentle said lightly. "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.

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 reveuants 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 turned into Gamut Street at a little past four o'clock contained 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 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 emerged from the car.

"We should both be careful," Gentle warned, as he climbed the steps. "Sartori left one of his Oviates inside, 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 practiced thief. Before the boy had even retreated down the steps again, Jude was over the threshold, braving the stale, cold air.

"Wait up," 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 staring 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 of—"

"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, you mean? Since when were you so damn perfect?" He made no reply, and she took his silence as further sign of his new high-mindedness. "Oh, so you're not going to stoop to mudslinging, is that it?"

"We'll debate it later," he said.

"Debate it?" she mocked. "What are you going to give 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."