Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

Their attempts to stand up again were defeated by the eddies and countercurrents its enthusiasm was generating, and it was only by chance that Hoi-Pollot—thrown against a dam of detritus that was choking part of the flow—was able to use its accrued bulk to bring herself to a halt and haul herself to her knees. The water broke against her with considerable vehemence as she did so, its will to carry her off undiminished, but she defied it, and by the time Jude was carried to the place, Hoi—Polloi was getting to her feet.

"Give me your hand!" she yelled, returning the invitation Jude had first offered when they'd stepped into the flood.

Jude reached to do so, half turning in the water to stretch for Hoi—Polloi's fingers. But the river had other ideas. As their hands came within inches of clasping, the waters conspired to spin her and snatch her away, their hold on her so tight the breath was momentarily squeezed out of her. She couldn't even yell a word of reassurance but was hauled off by the flood, up through a monolithic archway and out of sight.

Violent as the waters were, pitching her around as it raced through the cloisters and colonnades, she wasn't in fear of them; quite the opposite. The exhilaration was contagious. She was part of their purpose now, even if they didn't know it, and happy to be delivered to their summoner, who was surely also their source. Whether that summoner—be she Tishalulle or Jokalaylau or any other Goddess who might be resident here today—judged her to be a petitioner or simply another piece of trash, only the end of this ride would tell.

If Yzordderrex had become a place of glorious particulars—every color singing, every bubble in its waters crystalline—the Erasure had given itself over to ambiguity. There was no breath of wind to stir the heavy mist that hung over the fallen tents and over the dead, shrouded but unburied, who lay in their folds; nor did the comet have fire enough to pierce a higher fog, the fabric of which left its light dusky and drab. Off to the left of where Gentle's projection stood, the ring of Madonnas that Athanasius and his disciples had sheltered in was visible through the murk. But the man he'd come here to find wasn't in residence there, nor was there any sign of him to the right, though here the fog was so thick it blotted out everything that lay beyond an eight- or ten-yard range. He nevertheless headed into it, loath to try calling Chicka Jackeen's name, even if his voice had possessed sufficient strength. There was a conspiracy of suppression upon the landscape, and he was unwilling to challenge it. Instead he advanced in silence, his body barely displacing the mist, his feet making little or no impression on the ground. He felt more like a phantom here than in any of the other meeting places. It was a landscape for such souls: hushed but haunted.

He didn't have to walk blindly for long. The mist began to thin out after a time, and through its shreds he caught sight of Chicka Jackeen. He'd dug a chair and small table from the wreckage and was sitting with his back to the great wall of the First Dominion, playing a solitary game of cards and talking furiously to himself as he did so. We're all crazies, Gentle thought, catching him like this. Tick Raw half mad on mustard; Scopique become an amateur arsonist; Athanasius marking sacramental sandwiches with his pierced hands; and finally Chicka Jackeen, chattering away to himself like a neurotic monkey. Crazies to a man. And of all of them he, Gentle, was probably the craziest: the lover of a creature that defied the definitions of gender, the maker of a man who had destroyed nations. The only sanity in his life-burning like a clear white light—was that which came from God: the simple purpose of a Reconciler.

"Jackeen?"

The man looked up from his cards, somewhat guiltily. "Oh. Maestro. You're here."

"Don't say you weren't expecting me?"

"Not so soon. Is it time for us to go to the Ana?"

"Not yet. I came to be sure you were ready."

"I am, Maestro. Truly."

"Were you winning?"

"I was playing myself."

"That doesn't mean you can't win."

"No? No. As you say. Then yes, I was winning." He rose from the table, taking off the spectacles he'd been wearing to study his cards.

"Has anything come out of the Erasure while you've been waiting?"

"No, not come out. In fact, yours is the first voice I've heard since Athanasius left."

"He's part of the Synod now," Gentle said. "Scopique induced him to join us, to represent the Second."

"What happened to the Eurhetemec? Not murdered?"

"He died of old age."

"Will Athanasius be equal to the task?" Jackeen asked; then, thinking his question overstepped the bounds of protocol, he said, "I'm sorry. I've no right to question your judgment in this."

"You've every right," Gentle said. "We've got to have complete faith in each other."

"If you trust Athanasius, then so do I," Jackeen said simply.

"So we're ready."

"There is one thing I'd like to report, if I may."

"What's that?"

"I said nothing's come out of the Erasure, and that's true—"

"But something went in?"

"Yes. Last night, I was sleeping under the table here"— he pointed to his bed of blankets and stone—"and I woke chilled to the marrow. I wasn't sure whether I was dreaming at first, so I was slow to get up. But when I did I saw these figures coming out of the fog. Dozens of them."

"Who were they?"

"Nullianacs," Jackeen said. "Are you familiar with them?"

"Certainly."

"I counted fifty at least, just within sight of me."

"Did they threaten you?"

"I don't think they even saw me. They had their eyes on their destination—"

"The First?"

"That's right. But before they crossed over, they shed their clothes, and made some fires, and burned every last thing they wore or brought with them."

"All of them did this?"

"Every one that I saw. It was extraordinary."

"Can you show me the fires?"

"Easily," Jackeen said, and led Gentle away from the table, talking as he went. "I'd never seen a Nullianac before, but of course I've heard the stories."

"They're brutes," Gentle said. "I killed one in Vanaeph, a few months ago, and then I met one of its brothers in Yzordderrex, and it murdered a child I knew."

"They like innocence, I've heard. It's meat and drink to them. And they're all related to each other, though nobody's ever seen the female of the species. In fact, some say there isn't one."

"You seem to know a lot about them."

"Well, I read a good deal," Jackeen said, glancing at Gentle. "But you know what they say: Study nothing except in the knowledge—"

"—that you already knew it."

"That's right."

Gentle looked at the man with fresh interest, hearing the old saw from his lips. Was it so commonplace a dictum that every student had it by heart, or did Chicka Jackeen know the significance of what he was saying? Gentle stopped walking, and Jackeen stopped beside him, offering a smile that verged on the mischievous. Now it was Gentle who did the studying, his text the other man's face: and, reading, saw the dictum proved.

"My God," he said. "Lucius?"

"Yes, Maestro. It's me."

"Lucius! Lucius!"

The years had taken their toll, of course, though not insufferably. While the face in front of him was no longer that of the eager acolyte he had sent from Gamut Street, it was not marked by more than a tenth of the two centuries in between.

"This is extraordinary," Gentle said,

"I thought maybe you knew who I was, and you were playing a game with me."

"How could I know?"

"Am I really so different?" the other said, clearly a little deflated. "It took me twenty-three years to master the feit of holding, but I thought I'd caught the last of my youth before it went entirely. A little vanity. Forgive me."