Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

"If you'll wait on the shore," said Uma Umagammagi, "we'll speak together again in a little while."

From the moment that the Goddess had talked of Jude's returning to the Fifth, she'd known this parting would come. But she hadn't prepared herself to leave the Goddess's embrace so soon, and now that she felt gravity claiming her again, it was an agony. There was no help for it, however. If Uma Umagammagi knew what she suffered- and how could She not? — She did nothing to ameliorate the hurt, but folded Her glyph back into the matrix, leaving Jude to fall like a petal from a blossom tree, lightly enough, but with a sense of separation worse than any bruising. The forms of the women she'd passed through were still unfolding and folding below, as exquisite as ever, and the water music at the door was as soothing, but they could not salve the loss. The melody that had sounded so joyous'when she'd entered was now elegaic, like a hymn for harvest home, thankful for the gifts bestowed but touched by fears for a colder season to come.

It was waiting on the other side of the curtain, that season. Though the children still laughed on the shore, and the basin was still a glorious spectacle of light and motion, she had gone from the presence of a loving spirit and couldn't help but mourn. Her tears astonished the women at the threshold, and several rose to console her, but she shook her head as they approached, and they quietly parted to let her go her way alone, down to the water. There she sat, not daring to glance back at the temple where her fate was being decided, but gazing out over the basin.

What now? she wondered. If she was called back into the presence of the Goddesses to be told she wasn't fit to make any decision concerning the Reconciliation, she'd be quite happy with the judgment. She'd leave the problem in surer hands than hers and return to the corridors around the basin, where she might after a time reinvent herself and come back into this temple as a novice, ready to learn the way to fold light. If, on the other hand, she was simply shunned, as Jokalaylau clearly wanted, if she was driven from this miraculous place back into the wilderness outside, what would she do? Without anyone to guide her, what knowledge did she possess to help choose between the ways ahead? None. Her tears dried after a time, but what came in their place was worse: a sense of desolation that could only be Hell itself, or some neighboring province, divided from the main by infernal jailers, made to punish women who had loved immoderately and who had lost perfection, for want of a little shame.

In his last letter to his son, written the night before he boarded a ship bound for France—his mission to spread the gospel of the Tabula Rasa across Europe—Roxborough, the scourge of Maestros, had set down the substance of a nightmare from which he'd just woken.

I dreamed that I drove in my coach through the damnable streets of Clerkenwell, he wrote, I need not name my destination. You know it, and you know too what infamies were planned there. As is the way in dreams, I was bereft of self-government, for though I called out many times to the driver, begging him, for my soul's sake, not to take me back to that house, my words had no power to persuade him. As the coach turned the corner, however, and the Maestro Sartori's house came in sight, Bellamare reared up affrighted and would go no further. She was ever my favorite bay, and I felt such a flood of gratitude towards her for refusing to carry me to that unholy step that f climbed from the coach to speak my thanks into her ear.

And lo! as my foot touched the ground the cobbles spoke up like living things, their voices stony but raised in a hideous lamentation, and at the sound of their anguish the very bricks of the houses in that street, and the roofs and railings and chimneys, all made similar cry, their voices joined in sorrowful testament to Heaven. I never heard a din its like, but I could not stop my ears against it, for was their pain not in some part of my making? And I heard them say:

Lord, we are but unbaptized things and have no hopes to come into your Kingdom, but we beseech you to bring some storm down upon us and grind us into dust with your righteous thunder, that we may be scoured and destroyed and not suffer complicity with the deeds performed in our sight.

My son, I marveled at their clamor, and wept too, and was ashamed, hearing them make this appeal to the Almighty, knowing that I was a thousand times more accountable than they. O! how 1 wished my feet might carry me away to some less odious place! I swear at that moment I would have judged the heart of a fiery furnace an agreeable place, and lain my head there with hosannahs, rather than be where these deeds had been done. But I could not retreat. On the contrary, my mutinous limbs carried me to the very doorstep of that house. There was foamy blood upon the threshold, as though the martyrs had that night marked the place so that the Angel of Destruction might find it, and cause the earth to gape 'neath it, and commit it to the Abyss. And from within was a sound of idle chatter as the men I had known debated their profane philosophies.

I went down on my knees in the blood, calling to those within to come out and join me in begging forgiveness of the Almighty, but they scorned me with much laughter, and called me coward and fool, and told me to go on my way. This I presently did, with much haste, and did escape the street with the cobbles telling me I should go about my crusade without fear of God's retribution, for I had turned my back on the sin of that house.

That was my dream. I am setting it down straightway, and will have this letter sent post haste, that you may be warned what harm there is in that place and not be tempted to enter Clerkenwell or even stray south of Islington while I am gone from you. For my dream instructs me that the street will be forfeit, in due course, for the crimes it has entertained, and 1 would not wish one hair of your sweet head harmed for the deeds I in my delirium committed against the edicts of Our Lord. Though the Almighty did offer His only begotten Son to suffer and die for our sins, I know that He would not ask that same sacrifice of me, knowing that I am His humblest servant, and pray only to be made His instrument until I quit this vale and go to Judgment.

May the Lord God keep you in His care until I embrace you again.

The ship Roxborough boarded a few hours after finishing this letter went down a mile out of Dover harbor, in a squall that troubled no other vessel in the vicinity but overturned the purger's ship and sank it in less than a minute. All hands were lost.

The day after the letter arrived, the recipient, still tearful with the news, went to seek solace at the stables of his father's bay, Bellamare. The horse had been jittery since her master's departure and, though she knew Roxborough's son well, kicked out at his approach, striking him in the abdomen. The blow was not instantly fatal, but with stomach and spleen split wide, the youth was dead in six days. Thus he preceded his father, whose body was not washed up for another week, to the family grave.

Pie 'oh' pah had recounted this sorry story to Gentle as they'd traveled from L'Himby to the Cradle of Chzercemit in search of Scopique, It was one of many tales the mystif had told on that journey, offering them not as biographical details, though of course many of them were precisely that, but as entertainment, comedic, absurd, or melancholy, that usually opened with: "I heard about this fellow once ..."

Sometimes the stories were told within a few minutes, but Pie had lingered over this one, repeating word for word the text of Roxborough's letter, though to this day Gentle didn't know how the mystif had come by it. He understood why it had committed the prophecy to memory, however, and why it had taken such trouble to repeat it for Gentle. It had half believed there was some significance in Roxborough's dream, and just as it had educated Gentle on other matters pertaining to his concealed self, so it had told this tale to warn the Maestro of dangers the future might bring.