Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

Reassured that she was neither alone nor unwelcome here, she began to advance into the temple. The promise of eroticism she'd first felt as she gazed into the pool was now realized. She felt the forms of her own body spreading like milk dropped into the fluid air and grazing the bodies of those she was passing between. Musings, most no more than half formed, mingled with the sensation. Perhaps she would dissolve here and flow out through the walls to join the waters around the islands; or perhaps she was already in that sea, and the flesh and blood she thought she'd owned was just a figment of those waters, conjured to comfort the lonely land. Or perhaps... or perhaps... or perhaps. These speculations were not divorced from the brushing of form against form but were part of the pleasure, her nerves bearing these fruits, which in turn made her more tender to the touches of her companions.

They were falling away as she advanced, she realized. Her progress was taking her up into the heights of the temple. If there had been solid ground beneath her feet, she'd lost all sense of it as she crossed the threshold and rose without effort, her stuff possessed of the same law-defying genius as had been the waters below. There was another motion ahead and above her, more sinuous than the forms she'd met at the door, and she rose towards it as if summoned, praying that when the moment came she'd have the words and lips to shape the thoughts in her head. The motion was getting clearer and if she'd had any doubt below as to whether these sights were imagined or seen, she now had such dichotomies swept away.

She was both seeing with her imagination and imagining she saw the glyph that hung in the air in front of her: a Mobius strip of light-haunted water, a steady rhythm passing through its seamless loop and throwing off waves of brilliant color, which shed bright rains around her. Here was the raiser of springs; here was the summoner of rivers; here was the sublime presence whose strength had brought the palace to rubble and made a home for oceans and children where there'd only been terror before. Here was Uma Umagammagi.

Though she studied the Goddess's glyph, Jude could see no hint of anything that breathed, sweated, or corrupted in it. But there was such an emanation of tenderness from the form that, faceless as the Goddess was, it seemed to Jude she could feel Her smile, Her kiss, Her loving gaze. And love it was. Though this power knew her not at all, Jude felt embraced and comforted as only love could embrace and comfort. There'd never been a time in her life, until now, when some part of her had not been afraid. It was the condition of being alive that even bliss was attended by the imminence of its decease. But here such terrors seemed absurd. This face loved her unconditionally and would do so forever.

"Sweet Judith," she heard the Goddess say, the voice so charged, so resonant, that these few syllables were an aria. "Sweet Judith, what's so urgent that you risk your life to come here?"

As Uma Umagammagi spoke, Jude saw her own face appearing in the ripples, brightening, then teased out into a thread of light that was run into the Goddess's glyph. She's reading me, Jude thought. She's trying to understand why I'm here, and when She does She'll take the responsibility away. I'll be able to stay in this glorious place with Her, always.

"So," said the Goddess after a time. "This is a grim business. It falls to you to choose between stopping this Reconciliation or letting it go on and risking some harm from Hapexamendios—"

"Yes," Jude replied, grateful that she'd been relieved of the need to explain herself. "I don't know what the Unbeheld is planning. Maybe nothing ..."

"... and maybe the end of the Imajica."

"Could He do that?"

"Very possibly," said Uma Umagammagi. "He's done harm to Our temples and Our sisters many, many times, both in His own person and through His agents. He's a soul in error, and lethal."

"But would He destroy a whole Dominion?"

"I can no more predict Him than you can," Umagammagi said. "But I'll mourn if the chance to complete the circle is missed."

"The circle?" said Jude. "What circle?"

"The circle of the Imajica," the Goddess replied. "Please understand, sister, the Dominions were never meant to be divided this way. That was the work of the first human spirits, when they came into their terrestrial life. Nor was there any harm in it, at the beginning. It was their way of learning to live in a condition that intimidated them. When they looked up, they saw stars. When they looked down, they saw Earth. They couldn't make their mark on what was above, but what was below could be divided and owned and fought over. From that division, all others sprang. They lost themselves to territories and nations, all shaped by the other sex, of course; all named by them. They e,ven buried themselves in the Earth to have it more utterly, preferring worms to the company of light. They were blinded to the Imajica, and the circle was broken, and Hapexamendios, who was made by the will of these men, grew strong enough to forsake His makers and so passed from the Fifth Dominion into the First—"

"—murdering Goddesses as He went."

"He did harm, yes, but He could have done greater harm still if He'd known the shape of the Imajica. He could have discovered what mystery it circled and gone there instead."

"What mystery's that?"

"You're going back into a dangerous place, sweet Judith, and the less you know the safer you'll be. When the time comes, we will unravel these mysteries together, as sisters. Until then take comfort that the error of tire Son is also the error of the Father, and in time all errors must undo themselves and pass away."

"So if they'll solve themselves," Jude said, "why do I have to go back to the Fifth?"

Before Uma Umagammagi could resume speaking, another voice intruded. Particles rose between Jude and the Goddess as this other woman spoke, pricking Jude's flesh where they touched, reminding her of a state that knew ice and fire.

"Why do you trust this woman?" the stranger said.

"Because she came to us openhearted, Jokalaylau," the Goddess replied.

"How openhearted is a woman who treads dry-eyed in the place where her sister died?" Jokalaylau said. "How openhearted is a woman who comes into Our presence without shame, when she has the Autarch Sartori's child in her womb?"

"We have no place for shame here," Umagammagi said.

"You may have no place," Jokalaylau said, rising into view now. "I have plenty."

Like her sister, Jokalaylau was here in Her essential form: a more complex shape than that of Uma Umagammagi, and less pleasing to the eye, because the motions that ran in it were more hectic, Her form not so much rippling as boiling, shedding its pricking darts as it did so.

"Shame is wholly appropriate for a woman who has lain with one of Our enemies," she said.

Despite the intimidation Jude felt from the Goddess, she spoke out in her own defense.

"It's not as simple as that," she said, her courage fueled by the frustration she felt, having this intruder spoil the congress between herself and Uma Umagammagi. "I didn't know he was the Autarch."

"Who did you imagine he was? Or didn't you care?"

The exchange might have escalated, but that Uma Umagammagi spoke again, her tone as serene as ever.

"Sweet Judith," she said, "let me speak with my sister. She's suffered at the hands of the Unbeheld more than either Tishalulle" or myself, and She'll not readily forgive any flesh touched by Him or His children. Please understand Her pain, as I hope to make Her understand yours."

She spoke with such delicacy that Jude now felt the shame Jokalaylau had accused her of lacking: not for the child, but for her rage.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That was ... inappropriate."