Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

"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?

"I 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 worshiped 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 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 I," 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 know 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, we'd both be out of a job," Gentle remarked.

"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 leap and too furious to ford. 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 would 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 Tishalulle 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, 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 whitewater roar. Either its assault or some previous violence had thrown both 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 surface 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; swaths 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. Instead it 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 warning, fell back into the river, taking Hoi-Polloi with her. Though they were in no danger of drowning, 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.