Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

Jude turned her gaze towards the Goddess of the High Snows. The particulars of Her form were more elusive than Tishalull?'s had been, but Jude was determined to know what She looked like, and fixed her gaze on the spiral of cold flame that burned in Her core, watching until it spat bright arcs out against the limits of Jokalaylau's body. The light of this collision was brief, but by it Jude got her glimpse. An imperious Negress, Her blazing eyes heavy-lid-den, hovered there, Her hands crossed at the wrist, then turned back on themselves to knit their fingers. She was not, after all, such a terrifying sight. But sensing that Her face had been found, the Goddess responded with a sudden transformation. Her lush features were mummified in a heartbeat, the eyes sinking away, the'lips withering and retracting. Worms devoured the tongue that poked between Her teeth.

Jude let out a cry of revulsion, and the eyes reignited in Jokalaylau's sockets, the wormy mouth gaping as hard laughter rose from Her throat and echoed around the temple.

"She's not so remarkable, sister," Jokalaylau said. "Look at her shake."

"Let her alone," Uma Umagammagi replied. "Why must You always be testing people?"

"We've endured because We've faced the worse and survived," Jokalaylau replied. "This one would have died in the snow."

"I doubt that," Urnagammagi said. "Sweet Judith—"

Still shaking, Jude took a moment to respond. "I'm not afraid of death," she said to Jokalaylau. "Or cheap tricks."

Again, Umagammagi spoke. "Judith," she said. "Look at Me."

"I just want Her to understand—"

"Sweet Judith ..."

"—I'm not going to be bullied."

"... look at Me."

Now Jude did so, and this time there was no need to pierce the ambiguities. The Goddess appeared to Jude without challenge or labor, and the sight was a paradox. Uma Umagammagi was an ancient, Her body so withered it was almost sexless, Her hairless skull subtly elongated, Her tiny eyes so wreathed in creases they were barely more than gleams. But the beauty of Her glyph was here in this flesh: its ripples, its flickers, its ceaseless, effortless motion.

"Do you see now?" Uma Umagammagi said.

"Yes, I see."

"We haven't forgotten the flesh We had," She said to Jude. "We've known the frailties of your condition. We remember its pains and discomforts. We know what it is to be wounded: in the heart, in the head, in the womb."

"I see that," Jude said.

"Nor would We have trusted you with knowledge of Our '? frailty, unless We believed that you might one day be among Us."

"Among You?"

"Some divinities arise from the collective will of peoples; some are made in the heat of stars; some are abstractions. But some—dare we say the finest, the most loving? — are the higher minds of living souls. We are such divinities, sister, and Our memories of the lives We lived and the deaths We died are still sharp. We understand you, sweet Judith, and We don't accuse you."

"Not even Jokalaylau?" Jude said.

The Goddess of the High Snows made Herself apparent to Her length and breadth, showing Jude Her entire form in a single glance. There was a paleness moving beneath Her skin, and Her eyes, that had been so luminous, were dark. But they were fixed on Jude. She felt the stare like a stab.

"I want you to see," She said, "what the Father of the father of the child in you did to My devotees."

Jude recognized the paleness now. It was a blizzard, driven through the Goddess's form by pain, and pricking every part of Her. Its drifts were mountainous, but at Jokalaylau's behest they moved and uncovered the site of an atrocity. The bodies of women lay frozen where they'd fallen, their eyes carved out, their breasts taken off. Some lay close to smaller bodies: violated children, dismembered babes.

"This is a little part of a little part of what He did," Jokalaylau said.

Appalling as the sight was, Jude didn't flinch this time, but stared on at the horror until Jokalaylau drew a cold shroud back over it.

"What are You asking me to do?" Jude said. "Are You telling me I should add another body to the heap? Another child?" She laid her hand on her belly. "This child?"

She hadn't realized until now how covetous she felt of the soul she was nurturing.

"It belongs to the butcher," Jokalaylau said.

"No," Jude quietly replied. "It belongs to me."

"You'll be responsible for its works?"

"Of course," she said, strangely' exhilarated by this promise. "Bad can be made from good, Goddess; whole things from broken."

She wondered as she spoke if They knew where these sentiments originated; whether They understood that she was turning the Reconciler's philosophies to her own maternal ends. If They did, They seemed not to think less of her for it.

"Then Our spirits go with you, sister," Tishalulle' said.

"Are You sending me away again?" Jude asked.

"You came here looking for an answer, and We can provide it."

"We understand the urgency of this," Uma Umagammagi said. "And We haven't held you here without cause. I've been across the Dominions while you waited, looking for some clue to this puzzle. There are Maestros waiting in every Dominion to undertake the Reconciliation—"

"Then Gentle didn't begin?"

"No. He's waiting for your word."

"And what should I tell him?"

"I've searched their hearts, looking for some plot—"

"Did You find any?"

"No. They're not pure, of course. Who is? But all of them want the Imajica whole. All of them believe the working they're ready to perform can succeed,"

"Do You believe it too?"

"Yes, We do," said Tishalulle. "Of course they don't realize they're completing the circle. If they did, perhaps they'd think again."

"Why?"

"Because the circle belongs to Our sex, not to theirs," Jokalaylau put in.

"Not true," Umagammagi said. "It belongs to any mind that cares to conceive it."

"Men are incapable of conceiving, sister," Jokalaylau replied, "Or hadn't You heard?"

Umagammagi smiled. "Even that may change, if We can coax them from their terrors."

Her words begged many^guestions, and She knew it. Her eyes fixed on Jude, and She said, "We'll have time for these works when you come back. But now I know you need to be fleet."

"Tell Gentle to be a Reconciler," TishatUll6 said, "But share nothing that We've said with him."

"Do I have to be the one to tell him?" Jude said to Umagammagi. "If You've been there once, can't You go again and give him the news? I want to stay here."

"We understand. But he's in no mood to trust Us, believe me. The message must come from you, in the flesh."

"I see," Jude said.

There was no room for persuasion, it seemed. She had the plain answer she'd come here hoping to find. Now she had to return to the Fifth with it, unpalatable as that journey would be.

"May I ask one question before I go?" she said.

"Ask it," said Umagammagi.

"Why did You show Yourselves to me this way?"

It was Tishalulle' who replied. "So that you'll know Us when We come to sit at your table or walk beside you in the street," She said."Will you come to the Fifth?"

"Perhaps, in time. We'll have work there, when the Reconciliation's achieved."

Jude imagined the transformations she'd seen outside wrought in London: Mother Thames climbing her banks, depositing the filth she'd been choked by in Whitehall and the Mall, then sweeping through the city, making its squares into swimming pools and its cathedrals into playgrounds. The thought made her light.

"I'll be waiting for you," she said and, thanking them, made her departure.

When she got outside the waters were waiting for her, the surf lush as pillows. She didn't delay, but went straight down the beach and threw herself into its comfort. This time there was no need to swim; the tide knew its business. It picked her up and carried her across the basin like a foamy chariot, delivering her back to the rocks from which she'd first taken her plunge. Lotti Yap and Paramarola had gone, but finding her way out of the palace would be easier now than when she'd first arrived. The waters had been at work on many of the corridors and chambers that ran around the basin, and on the courtyards beyond, opening up vistas of glittering pools and fountains that stretched to the rubble of the palace gates. The air was clearer than it had been, and she could see the Kesparates spread below. She could even see the harbor, and the sea at its walls, its own tide longing, no doubt, to share this enchantment.