Imajica 01 - The Fifth Dominion

23

Gentle dreamed that the wind grew harsher and brought snow down off the peaks, fresh minted. He nevertheless rose from the relative comfort of his place beside the ashes, and took off his coat and shirt, took off his boots and socks, took off his trousers and underwear, and naked walked down the narrow corridor of rock, past the sleeping doeki, to face the blast. Even in dreams, the wind threatened to freeze his marrow, but he had his sights set on the glacier, and he had to go to it in all humility, bare-loined, barebacked, to show due respect for those souls who suffered there. They had endured centuries of pain, the crime against them unrevenged. Beside theirs, his suffering was a minor thing.

There was sufficient light in the wide sky to show him his way, but the wastes seemed endless, and the gusts worsened as he went, several times throwing him over into the snow. His muscles cramped and his breath shortened, coming from between his numbed lips in hard, small clouds. He wanted to weep for the pain of it, but the tears crystallized on the ledge of his eye and would not fall.

Twice he stopped, because he sensed that there was something more than snow on the storm's back. He remembered Pie's talk of agents left in this wilderness to guard the murder site and, though he was only dreaming and knew it, he was still afraid. If these entities were charged to keep witnesses from the glacier, they would not simply drive the wakeful off but the sleeping too; and those who came as he came, in reverence, would earn their special ire. He studied the spattered air, looking for some sign of them, and once thought he glimpsed a form overhead that would have been invisible but that it displaced the snow: an eel's body with a tiny ball of a head. But it was come and gone loo quickly for him to be certain he'd even seen it.

The glacier was in sight, however, and his will drove his limbs to motion, until he was standing at its edge. He raised his hands to his face and wiped the snow from his cheeks and forehead, then stepped onto the ice. The women gazed up at him as they had when he'd stood here with Pie 'oh' pah, but now, through the dust of snow blowing across the ice, they saw him naked, his manhood shrunk, his body trembling; on his face and lips a question he had half an answer to. Why, if this was indeed the work of Hapexamen-dios, had the Unbeheld, with all His powers of destruction, not obliterated every last sign of His victims? Was it because they were women or, more particularly, women of power? Had He brought them to ruin as best He could— overturning their altars and unseating their temples—but at the last been unable to wipe them away? And if so, was this ice a grave or merely a prison?

He dropped to his knees and laid his palms on the glacier. This time he definitely heard a sound in the wind, a raw howl somewhere overhead. The invisibles had entertained his dreaming presence long enough. They saw his purpose and were circling in preparation for descent. He blew against his palm and made a fist before the breath could slip, then raised his arm and slammed his hand

against the ice, opening it as he did so.

The pneuma went off like a thunderclap. Before the

tremors had died he snatched a second breath and broke it

gainst the ice; then a third and fourth in quick succession,

striking the steely surface so hard that had the pneuma not

cushioned the blow he'd have broken every bone from

wrist to fingertip. But his efforts had effect. There were

hairline cracks spreading from the point of impact.

Encouraged, he began a second round of blows, but he'd delivered only three when he felt something take hold of his hair, wrenching his head back. A second grip instantly seized his raised arm. He had time to feel the ice splintering beneath his legs; then he was hauled up off the glacier by wrist and hair. He struggled against the claim, knowing that if his assaulters carried him too high death was assured; they'd either tear him apart in the clouds or simply drop him. The hold on his head was the less secure of the two, and his gyrations were sufficient to slip it, though blood ran

down his brow.

Freed, he looked up at the entities. There were two, six feet long, their bodies scantily, fleshed spines sprouting innumerable ribs, their limbs twelvefold and bereft of bone, their heads vestigial. Only their motion had beauty: a sinuous knotting and unknotting. He reached up and snatched at the closer of the two heads. Though it had no discernible features, it looked tender, and his hand had sufficient echo of the pneumas it had discharged to do harm. He dug his fingers into the flesh of the thing, and it instantly began to writhe, coiling its length around its companion for support, its limbs flailing wildly. He twisted his body to the left and right, the motion violent enough to wrench him free. Then he fell, a mere six feet but hard, onto slivered ice. The breath went from him as the pain came. He had time to see the agents descending upon him, but none in which to escape. Waking or sleeping, this was the end of him, he knew; death by these limbs had jurisdiction in both states.

But before they could find his flesh, and blind him, and unman him, he felt the shattered glacier beneath him shudder, and with a roar it rose, throwing him off its back into the snow. Shards pelted down upon him, but he peered up through their hail to see that the women were emerging from their graves, clothed in ice. He hauled himself to his feet as the tremors increased, the din of this unshackling echoing off the mountains. Then he turned and ran.

The storm was discreet and quickly drew its veil over the resurrection, so that he fled not knowing how the events he'd begun had finished. Certainly the agents of Hapexa-mendios made no pursuit; or, if they did, they failed to find him. Their absence comforted him only a little. His adventures had done him harm, and the distance he had to cover to get back to the camp was substantial. His run soon deteriorated into stumbling and staggering, blood marking his route. It was time to be done with this dream of endurance, he thought, and open his eyes; to roll over and put his arms around Pie 'oh' pah; to kiss the mystif's cheek and share this vision with it. But his thoughts were too confounded to take hold of wakefulness long enough for him to rouse himself, and he dared not He down in the snow in case a dreamed death came to him before morning woke him. All he could do was push himself on, weaker by the step, putting out of his head the possibility that he'd lost his way and that the camp didn't lie ahead but off in another direction entirely.

He was looking down at his feet when he heard the shout, and his first instinct was to peer up into the snow above him, expecting one of the Unbeheld's creatures. But before his eyes reached his zenith they found the shape approaching him from his left. He stopped and studied the figure. It was shaggy and hooded, but its arms were outspread in invitation. He didn't waste what little energy he had calling Pie's name. He simply changed his direction and headed towards the mystif as it came to meet him. It was the faster of the two, and as it came it shrugged off its coat and held it open, so that he fell into its luxury. He couldn't feel it; indeed he could feel little, except relief. Borne up by the mystif he let all conscious thought go, the rest of the journey becoming a blur of snow and snow, and Pie's voice sometimes, at his side, telling him that it would

be over soon.

"Am I awake?" He opened his eyes and sat up, grasping hold of Pie's coat to do so. "Am I awake?"

"Yes."

"Thank God! Thank God! I thought I was going to

freeze to death."

He let his head sink back. The fire was burning, fed with fur, and he could feel its warmth on his face and body. It took a few seconds to realize the significance of this. Then he sat up again and realized he was naked; naked and covered with cuts.

"I'm not awake," he said. "Shit! I'm not awake!"

Pie took the pot of herders' brew from the fire, and

poured a cup.

"You didn't dream it," the mystif said. It handed the cup over to Gentle. "You went to the glacier, and you almost didn't make it back."

Gentle took the cup in raw fingers. "I must have been out of my mind," he said. "I remember thinking: I'm dreaming this, then taking off my coat and my clothes... why the hell did I do that?"

He could still recall struggling through the snow and reaching the glacier. He remembered pain, and splintering ice, but the rest had receded so far he couldn't grasp it. Pie read his perplexed look.

"Don't try and remember now," the mystif said. "It'll come back when the moment's right. Push too hard and you'll break your heart. You should sleep for a while."

"I don't fancy sleeping," he said. "It's a little too much

like dying."

"I'll be here," Pie told him. "Your body needs rest. Let it do what it needs to do."

The mystif had been wanning Gentle's shirt in front of the fire, and now helped him put it on, a delicate business. Gentle's joints were already stiffening. He pulled on his trousers without Pie's help, however, up over limbs that were a mass of bruises and abrasions.

"Whatever I did out there I certainly made a mess of myself," he remarked.

"You heal quickly," Pie said. This was true, though Gentle couldn't remember sharing that information with the mystif. "Lie down. I'll wake you when it's light."

Gentle put his head on the small heap of hides Pie had made as a pillow and let the mystif pull his coat up over him.

"Dream of sleeping," Pie said, laying a hand on Gentle's face. "And wake whole."

When Pie shook him awake, what seemed mere minutes later, the sky visible between the rock faces was still dark, but it was the gloom of snow-bearing cloud rather than the purple black of a Jokalaylaurian night. He sat up feeling wretched, aching in every bone.

"I'd kill for coffee," he said, resisting the urge to torture his joints by stretching. "And warm pain au chocolat"

"If they don't have it in Yzordderrex, we'll invent it," Pie said.

"Did you brew up?"

"There's nothing left to burn."

"And what's the weather like?"

"Don't ask."

"That bad?"

"We should get a move on. The thicker the snow gets, the more difficult it'll be to find the pass."

They roused the doeki, which made plain its disgruntle-ment at having to breakfast on words of encouragement rather than hay, and, with the meat Pie had prepared the day before loaded, left the shelter of the rock and headed out into the snow. There had been a short debate before they left as to whether they should ride or not, Pie insisting that Gentle should do so, given his present delicacy, but he'd argued that they might need the doeki's strength to carry them both if they got into worse difficulties, and they should preserve such energies as it still possessed for such an emergency. But he soon began to stumble in snow that was waist high in places, his body, though somewhat healed by sleep, not equal to the demands upon it.

"We'll go more quickly if you ride," Pie told him.

He needed little persuasion and mounted the doeki, his fatigue such that he could barely sit upright with the wind so strong, and instead slumped against the beast's neck. He only occasionally raised himself from that posture, and when he did the scene had scarcely changed.

"Shouldn't we be in the pass by now?" he murmured to Pie at one point, and the look on the mystif s face was answer enough. They were lost. Gentle pushed himself into an upright position and, squinting against the gale, looked for some sign of shelter, however small. The world was white in every direction but for them, and even they were being steadily erased as ice clogged the fur of their coats and the snow they were trudging through deepened. Until now, however arduous the journey had become, he hadn't countenanced the possibility of failure. He'd been his own best convert to the gospel of their indestructibility. But now such confidence seemed self-deception. The white world would strip all color from them, to get to the purity of their bones.

He reached to take hold of Pie's shoulder, but misjudged the distance and slid from the doeki's back. Relieved of its burden the beast slumped, its front legs buckling. Had Pie not been swift and pulled Gentle out of harm's way, he might have been crushed beneath the creature's bulk. Hauling back his hood and swiping the snow from the back of his neck, he got to his feet and found Pie's exhausted gaze there to meet him.

"I thought I was leading us right," the mystif said.

"Of course you did."

"But we've missed the pass somehow. The slope's getting steeper. I don't know where the fuck we are, Gentle."

"In trouble is where we are, and too tired to think our way out of it. We have to rest."

"Where?"

"Here," Gentle said. "This blizzard can't go on forever. There's only so much snow in the sky, and most of it's already fallen, right? Right? So if we can just hold on till the storm's over, and we can see where we are—"

"Suppose by that time it's night again? We'll freeze, my friend."

"Do we have any other choice?" Gentle said. "If we go on we'll kill the beast and probably ourselves. We could march right over a gorge and never know it. But if we stay here... together... maybe we're in with a chance.'*

"I thought I knew our direction."

"Maybe you did. Maybe the storm'll blow over, and we'll find ourselves on the other side of the mountain." Gentle put his hands on Pie's shoulders, sliding them around the back of the mystif's neck. "We have no choice," he said slowly.

Pie nodded, and together they settled as best they could in the dubious shelter of the doeki's body. The beast was still breathing, but not, Gentle thought, for long. He tried to put from his mind what would happen if it died and the storm failed to abate, but what was the use of leaving such plans to the last? If death seemed inevitable, would it not be better for him and Pie to meet it together—to slit their wrists and bleed to death side by side—rather than slowly freeze, pretending to the end that survival was plausible? He was ready to voice that suggestion now, while he still had the energy and focus to do so, but as he turned to the mystif some tremor reached him that was not the wind's tirade but a voice beneath its harangue, calling him to stand up. He did so.

The gusts would have blown him over had Pie not stood up with him, and his eyes would have missed the figures in the drifts but that the mystif caught his arm and, putting its head close to Gentle's, said, "How the hell did they get out?"

The women stood a hundred yards from them. Their feet were touching the snow but not impressing themselves upon it. Their bodies were wound with cloth brought from the ice, which billowed around them as the wind filled it. Some held treasures, claimed from the glacier: pieces of I their temple, and ark, and altar. One, the young girl whose corpse had moved Gentle so much, held in her arms the head of a Goddess carved in blue stone. It had been badly vandalized. There were cracks in its cheeks, and parts of its nose, and an eye, were missing. But it found light from somewhere and gave off a serene radiance.

"What do they want?" Gentle said,

"You, maybe?" Pie ventured.

The woman standing closest to them, her hair rising half her height again above her head, courtesy of the wind, beckoned."I think they want us both to go," Gentle said.

"That's the way it looks," Pie said, not moving a muscle.

"What are we waiting for?"

"I thought they were dead," the mystif said.

"Maybe they were."

"So we take the lead from phantoms? I'm not sure that's wise."

"They came to find us, Pie," Gentle said.

Having beckoned, the woman was turning slowly on her toe tips, like a mechanical Madonna that Clem had once given Gentle, which had played "Ave Maria" as it turned.

"We're going to lose them if we don't hurry. What's your problem, Pie? You've talked with spirits before."

"Not like these," Pie said. "The Goddesses weren't all forgiving mothers, you know. And their rites weren't all milk and honey. Some of them were cruel. They sacrificed men."

"You think that's why they want us?"

"It's possible."

"So we weigh that possibility against the absolute certainty of freezing to death where we stand," Gentle said.

"It's your decision."

"No, this one we make together. You've got fifty percent of the vote and fifty percent of the responsibility."

"What do you want to do?"

"There you go again. Make up your own mind for once."

Pie looked at the departing women, their forms already disappearing behind a veil of snow. Then at Gentle. Then at the doeki. Then back at Gentle. "I heard they eat men's balls."

"So what are you worried about?"

"AH right!" the mystif growled, "I vote we go."

"Then it's unanimous."

Pie started to haul the doeki to its feet. It didn't want to move, but the mystif had a fine,turn of threat when pressed, and began to berate it ripely.

"Quick, or we'll lose them!" Gentle said.

The beast was up now, and tugging on its bridle Pie led it in pursuit of Gentle, who was forging ahead to keep their guides in sight. The snow obliterated the women completely at times, but he saw the beckoner glance back several times, and knew that she'd not let her foundlings get lost again. After a time, their destination came in sight. A rock face, slate-gray and sheer, loomed from the murk, its summit lost in mist.

"If they want us to climb, they can think again," Pie yelled through the wind.

"No, there's a door," Gentle shouted over his shoulder. "See it?"

The word rather flattered what was no more than a jagged crack, like a bolt of black lightning burned into the face of the cliff. But it represented some hope of shelter, if nothing else.

Gentle turned back to Pie. "Do you see it, Pie?"

"I see it," came the response. "But I don't see the women."

One sweeping glance along the rock face confirmed the mystifs observation. They'd either entered the cliff or

floated up its face into the clouds. Whichever, they'd removed themselves quickly.

"Phantoms," Pie said, fretfully.

"What if they are?" Gentle replied. "They brought us to shelter."

He took the doeki's rein from Pie's hands and coaxed the animal on, saying, "See that hole in the wall? It's going to be warm inside. Remember warm?"

The snow thickened as they covered the last hundred yards, until it was almost waist deep again. But all three— man, animal, and mystif—made the crack alive. There was more than shelter inside; there was light. A narrow passageway presented itself, its black walls encased in ice, with a fire flickering somewhere out of sight in the cavern's depths.

Gentle had let slip the doeki's reins, and the wise animal was already heading away down the passage, the sound of its hooves echoing against the glittering walls. By the time Gentle and Pie caught up with it, a slight bend in the passage had revealed the source of the light and warmth it was heading towards. A broad but shallow bowl of beaten brass was set in a place where the passage widened, and the fire was burning vigorously in its center. There were two curiosities, however: one, that the flame was not gold but blue; two, that it burned without fuel, the flames hovering six inches above the bottom of the bowl. But oh, it was warm. The cobs of ice in Gentle's beard melted and dropped off; the snowflakes became beads on Pie's smooth brow and cheek. The warmth brought a whoop of pure pleasure to Gentle's lips, and he opened his aching arms to Pie 'oh' pah.

"We're not going to die!" he said. "Didn't I tell you? We're not going to die!"

The mystif hugged him in return, its lips first pressed to Gentle's neck, then to his face.

"All right, I was wrong," it said. "There! I admit it!"

"So we go on and find the women, yes?"

"Yes!" it said.

A sound was waiting for them when the echoes of their enthusiasm died. A tinkling, as of ice bells.

"They're calling us," Gentle said.

The doeki had found a little paradise by the fire and was not about to move, for all Pie's attempts to tug it to its feet.

"Leave it awhile," Gentle said, before the mystif began a fresh round of profanities. "It's given good service. Let it rest. We can come back and fetch it later."

The passage they now followed not only curved but di- vided many times, the routes all lit by fire bowls. They chose between them by listening for the sound of the bells, which didn't seem to be getting any closer. Each choice, of course, made the likelihood of finding their way back to the doeki more uncertain.

"This place is a maze," Pie said, with a touch of the old unease creeping back into its voice. "I think we should stop and assess exactly what we're doing."

"Finding the Goddesses."

"And losing our transport while we do it. We're neither of us in any state to go much farther on foot."

"I don't feel so bad. Except for my hands." He raised them in front of his face, palm up. They were puffy and bruised, the lacerations livid. "I suppose I look like that all over. Did you hear the bells? They're just around the corner, I swear!"

"They've been just around the corner for the last three quarters of an hour. They're not getting any closer, Gentle. It's some kind of trick. We should go back for the animal before it's slaughtered."

"I don't think they'd shed blood in here," Gentle replied. The bells came again. "Listen to that. They are closer." He went to the next corner, sliding on the ice. "Pie. Come look."

Pie joined him at the corner. Ahead of them the passageway narrowed to a doorway.

"What did I tell you?" Gentle said, and headed on to the door and through it.

The sanctum on the other side wasn't vast—the size of a modest church, no more—but it had been hewn with such cunning it gave the impression of magnificence. It had sustained great damage, however. Despite its myriad pillars, chased by the finest craft, and its vaults of ice-sleek stone, its walls were pitted, its floor gouged. Nor did it take great wit to see that the objects that had been buried in the glacier had once been part of its furniture. The altar lay in hammered ruins at its center, and among the wreckage were fragments of blue stone, matching that of the statue the girl had carried. Now, more certainly than ever, they were standing in a place that carried the marks of Hapexa-mendios' passing.

"In His footsteps," Gentle murmured.

"Oh, yes," Pie murmured. "He was here."

"And so were the women," Gentle said. "But I don't think they ate men's balls. I think their ceremonies were more loving than that." He went down on his haunches, running his fingers over the carved fragments. "I wonder what they did? I'd like to have seen the rites."

"They'd have ripped you limb from limb."

"Why?"

"Because their devotions weren't for men's eyes."

"You could have got in, though, couldn't you?" Gentle said. "You would have been a perfect spy. You could have seen it."

"It's not the seeing," Pie said softly, "it's the feeling."

Gentle stood up, gazing at the mystif with new comprehension. "I think I envy you, Pie," he said. "You know what it feels like to be both, don't you? I never thought of that before. Will you tell me how it feels, one of these days?"

"You'd be better off finding out for yourself," Pie said.

"And how do I do that?"

"This isn't the time—"

"Tell me."

"Well, mystifs have their rites, just like men and women. Don't worry, I won't make you spy on me. You'll be invited, if that's what you want."

The remotest twinge of fear touched Gentle as he listened to this. He'd become almost blase about the many wonders they'd witnessed as they traveled, but the creature that had been at his side these many days remained, he realized, undiscovered. He had never seen it naked since that first encounter in New York; nor kissed it the way a lover might kiss; nor allowed himself to feel sexual towards it. Perhaps it was because he'd been thinking of the women here, and their secret rites, but now, like it or not, he was looking at Pie 'oh' pah and was aroused.

Pain diverted him from these thoughts, and he looked down at his hands to see that in his unease he'd made fists of them and reopened the cuts in his palms. Blood dropped onto the ice underfoot, shockingly red. With the sight of it came a memory he'd consigned to the back of his head.

"What's wrong?" Pie said.

But Gentle didn't have the breath to reply. He could hear the frozen river cracking beneath him, and the howl of the Unbeheld's agents wheeling overhead. He could feel his hand slamming, slamming, slamming against the glacier and the thorns of ice flying up into his face.

The mystif had come to his side. "Gentle," it said, anxious now. "Speak to me, will you? What's wrong?"

It put its arms around Gentle's shoulders, and at its touch Gentle drew breath.

"The women..." he said.

"What about them?"

"It was me who freed them.'1

"How?"

"Pneuma. How else?"

"You undid the Unbeheld's handiwork?" the mystif said, its voice barely audible. "For our sake I hope the women were the only witnesses."

"There were agents, just as you said there'd be. They almost killed me. But I hurt them back."

"This is bad news."

"Why? If I'm going to bleed, let Him bleed a little too."

"Hapexamendios doesn't bleed."

"Everything bleeds, Pie. Even God. Maybe especially God. Or else why did He hide Himself away?"

As he spoke the tinkling bells sounded again, closer than ever, and glancing over Gentle's shoulder Pie said, "She must have been waiting for that little heresy."

Gentle turned to see the beckoning woman standing halfway in shadow at the end of the sanctum. The ice that still clung to her body hadn't melted, suggesting that, like the walls, the flesh it was encrusted upon was still below zero. There were cobs of ice in her hair, and when she moved her head a little, as she did now, they struck each other and tinkled like tiny bells.

"I brought you out of the ice," Gentle said, stepping past Pie to approach her.

The woman said nothing.

"Do you understand me?" Gentle went on, "Will you lead us out of here? We want to find a way through the mountain."

The woman took a step backwards, retreating into the shadows.

"Don't be afraid of me," Gentle said. "Pie! Help me out here."

"How?"

"Maybe she doesn't understand English."

"She understands you well enough."

"Just talk to her, will you?" Gentle said.

Ever obedient, Pie began to speak in a tongue Gentle hadn't heard before, its musicality reassuring even if the words were unintelligible. But neither music nor sense seemed to impress the woman. She continued to retreat into the darkness, Gentle pursuing cautiously, fearful of startling her but more fearful still of losing her entirely. His additions to Pie's persuasions had dwindled to the basest bargaining.

"One favor deserves another," he said.

Pie was right, she did indeed understand. Even though she stood in shadow, he could see that a little smile was playing on her sealed lips. Damn her, he thought, why wouldn't she answer him? The bells still rang in her hair, however, and he kept following them even when the shadows became so heavy she was virtually lost among them. He glanced back towards the mystif, who had by now given up any attempt to communicate with the woman and instead addressed Gentle.

"Don't go any further," it said.

Though he was no more than fifty yards from where the mystif stood, its voice sounded unnaturally remote, as though another law besides that of distance and light held sway in the space between them.

"I'm still here. Can you see me?" he called back, and, gratified to hear the mystif reply that it could, he returned his gaze to the shadows.

The woman had disappeared however. Cursing, he plunged on towards the place where she'd last stood, his sense that this was equivocal terrain intensifying. The darkness had a nervous quality, like a bad liar attempting to shoo him off with shrugs. He wouldn't go. The more it trembled, the more eager he became to see what it was hiding. Sightless though he was, he wasn't blind to the risk he was taking. Minutes before he'd told Pie that everything was vulnerable. But nobody, not even the Unbeheld, could make darkness bleed. If it closed on him he could claw at it forever and not make a mark on its hideless back.

He heard Pie calling behind him now: "Where the hell are you?"

The mystif was following him into the shadows, he saw.

"Don't come any further," he told it.

"Why not?"

"I may need a marker to find my way back."

"Just turn around."

"Not till I find her," Gentle said, forging on with his arms outstretched.

The floor was slick beneath him, and he had to proceed with extreme caution. But without the woman to guide them through the mountain, this maze might prove as fatal as the snows they'd escaped. He had to find her.

"Can you still hear me?" he called back to Pie.

The voice that told him yes was as faint as a long-distance call on a failing line.

"Keep talking," he yelled.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Anything. Sing a song."

"I'm tone deaf."

"Talk about food, then."

"All right," said Pie, "I already told you about the ugi-chee and the bellyful of eggs—"

"It's the foulest thing I ever heard," Gentle replied.

"You'll like it once you taste it."

"As the actress said to the bishop."

He heard Pie's muted laughter come his way. Then the mystif said, "You hated me almost as much as you hated fish, remember? And I converted you."

"I never hated you."

"In New York you did."

"Not even then. I was just confused. I'd never slept with a mystif before."

"How did you like it?"

"It's better than fish but not as good as chocolate."

"What did you say?"

"I said—"

"Gentle? I can hardly hear you."

"I'm still here!" he replied, shouting now. "I'd like to do it again sometime, Pie."

"Do what?"

"Sleep with you."

"I'll have to think about it."

"What do you want, a proposal of marriage?"

"That might do it."

"All right!" Gentle called back. "So marry me!"

There was silence behind him. He stopped and turned. Pie's form was a blurred shadow against the distant light of the sanctum.

"Did you hear me?" he yelled.

"I'm thinking it over."

Gentle laughed, despite the darkness and the unease it had wrung from him. "You can't take forever, Pie," he hollered. "I need an answer in—" He stopped as his outstretched fingers made contact with something frozen and solid. "Oh, shit"

"What's wrong?"

"It's a fucking dead end!" he said, stepping right up to the surface he'd encountered and running his palms over the ice. "Just a blank wall."

But that wasn't the whole story. The suspicion he'd had that this was nebulous territory was stronger than ever. There was something on the other side of this wall, if he could only reach it.

"Make your way back," he heard Pie entreating.

"Not yet," he said to himself, knowing the words wouldn't reach the mystif. He raised his hand to his mouth and snatched an expelled breath,

"Did you hear me, Gentle?" Pie called.

Without replying he slammed the pneuma against the wall, a technique his palm was now expert in. The sound of the blow was swallowed by the murk, but the force he unleashed shook a freezing hail down from the roof. He didn't wait for the reverberations to settle but delivered a second blow, and a third, each impact opening further the wounds in his hand, adding blood to the violence of his blows. Perhaps it fueled them. If his breath and spittle did such service, what power might his blood contain, or his semen?

As he stopped to draw a fresh lungful, he heard the mystif yelling, and turned to see it moving towards him across a gulf of frantic shadow. It wasn't just the wall and the roof above that was shaken by his assault: the very air was in a furor, shaking Pie's silhouette into fragments. As his eyes fought to fix the image, a vast spear of ice divided the space between them, hitting the ground and shattering. He had time to raise his arms over his face before the shards struck him, but their impact threw him back against the wall.

"You'll bring the whole place down!" he heard Pie yell as new spears fell.

"It's too late to change our minds!" Gentle replied. "Move, Pie!''

Light-footed, even on this lethal ground, the mystif dodged through the ice towards Gentle's voice. Before it was even at his side, he turned to attack the wall afresh, knowing that if it didn't capitulate very soon they'd be buried where they stood. Snatching another breath from his lips he delivered it against the wall, and this time the shadows failed to swallow the sound. It rang out like a thunderous bell. The shock wave would have pitched him to the floor had the mystif s arms not been there to catch him. "This is a passing place!" it yelled

"What does that mean?"

"Two breaths this time," was its reply. "Mine as well as yours, in one hand. Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

He couldn't see the mystif, but he felt it raise his hand to

its mouth.

"On a count of three," Pie said. "One."

Gentle drew a breathful of furious air.

"Two."

He drew again, deeper still.

"Three!"

And he expelled it, mingled with Pie's, into his hand. Human flesh wasn't designed to govern such force. Had Pie not been beside him to brace his shoulder and wrist, the power would have erupted from his palm and taken his hand with it. But they flung themselves forward in unison, and he opened his hand the instant before it struck the wall. The roar from above redoubled, but it was drowned out moments later by the havoc they'd wrought ahead of them. Had there been room to retreat they'd have done so, but the roof was pitching down a fusillade of stalactites, and all they could do was shield their bare heads and stand their ground as the wall stoned them for their crime, knocking them to their knees as it split and fell. The commotion went on for what seemed like minutes, the ground shuddering so violently they were thrown down yet again, this time to their faces. Then, by degrees, the convulsions slowed. The hail of stone and ice became a drizzle, and stopped, and a miraculous gust brought warm wind to their faces.

They looked up. The air was murky, but light was catching glints off the daggers they lay on, and its source was somewhere-up ahead. The mystif was first to its feet, hauling Gentle up beside it.

"A passing place," it said again.

It put its arm around Gentle's shoulders, and together they stumbled towards the warmth that had roused them. Though the gloom was still deep, they could make out the vague presence of the wall. For all the scale of the upheaval, the fissure they'd made was scarcely more than a man's height. On the other side it was foggy, but each step took them closer to the light. As they went, their feet sinking into a soft sand that was the color of the fog, they heard the ice bells again and looked back, expecting to see the women following. But the fog already obscured the fissure and the sanctum beyond, and when the bells stopped, as they did moments later, they lost all sense of its direction.

"We've come out into the Third Dominion," Pie said.

"No more mountains? No more snow?"

"Not unless you want to find" your way back to thank them."

Gentle peered ahead into the fog. "Is this the only way out of the Fourth?"

"Lord, no," said Pie. "If we'd gone the scenic route we'd have had the choice of a hundred places to cross. But this must have been their secret way, before the ice sealed it up."

The light showed Gentle the mystif s face now, and it bore a wide smile.

"You did fine work," Pie said. "I thought you'd gone crazy."

"I think I did, a little," Gentle replied. "I must have a destructive streak. Hapexamendios would be proud of me." He halted to give his body a moment's rest. "I hope there's more than fog in the Third."

"Oh, believe me, there is. It's the Dominion I've longed to see more than any other, while I've been in the Fifth. It's full of light and fertility. We'll rest, and we'll feed, and we'll get strong again. Maybe go to L'Himby and see my friend Scopique. We deserve to indulge ourselves for a few days before we head for the Second and join the Lenten Way."

"Will that take us to Yzordderrex?"

"Indeed it will," Pie said, coaxing Gentle into motion again. "The Lenten Way's the longest road in the Tmajica, It must be the length of the Americas, and more."

"A map!" said Gentle. "I must start making that map."

The fog was beginning to thin, and with the growing light came plants: the first greenery they'd seen since the foothills of the Jokalaylau. They picked up their pace as the vegetation became lusher and scented, calling them on to the sun.

"Remember, Gentle," Pie said, when they'd gone a little way, "I accepted."

"Accepted what?" Gentle asked.

The fog was wispy now; they could see a warm new world awaiting them.

"You proposed, my friend, don't you remember?"

"I didn't hear you accept."

"But I did," the mystif replied, as the verdant landscape was unveiled before them. "If we do nothing else in this Dominion, we should at the very least get married!"