Imajica 01 - The Fifth Dominion

25

Twenty-two days after emerging from the icy wastes of the Jokalaylau into the balmier climes of the Third Dominion—days which had seen Pie and Gentle's fortunes rise dramatically as they journeyed through the Third's diverse territories—the wanderers were standing on a station platform outside the tiny town of Mai-ke, waiting for the train that once a week came through on its way from the city of lahmandhas, in the northeast, to L'Himby, half a day's journey to the south.

They were eager to be departing. Of all the towns and villages they'd visited in the past three weeks, Mai-ke had been the least welcoming. It had its reasons. It was a community under siege from the Dominion's two suns, the rains which brought the region its crops having failed to materialize for six consecutive years. Terraces and fields that should have been bright with shoots were virtually dust bowls, stocks hoarded against this eventuality critically depleted. Famine was imminent, and the village was in no mood to entertain strangers. The previous night the entire populace had been out hi the drab streets praying aloud, these imprecations led by their spiritual leaders, who had about them the air of men whose invention was nearing its end. The noise, so unmusical Gentle had observed that it would irritate the most sympathetic of deities, had gone on until first light, making sleep impossible. As a consequence, exchanges between Pie and Gentle were somewhat tense this morning.

They were not the only travelers waiting for the train. A fanner from Mai-ke" had brought a herd of sheep onto the platform, some of them so emaciated it was a wonder they could stand, and the flock had brought with them clouds of the local pest: an insect called a zarzi, that had the wing-span of a dragonfly and a body as fat and furred as a bee. It fed on sheep ticks, unless it could find something more tempting. Gentle's blood fell into this latter category, and the lazy whine of the zarzi was never far from his ears as he waited in the midday heat. Their one informant in Mai-ke, a woman called Hairstone Banty, had predicted that the train would be on time, but it was already well overdue, which didn't augur well for the hundred other pieces of advice she'd offered them the night before.

Swatting zarzi to left and right, Gentle emerged from the shade of the platform building to peer down the track. It ran without crook or bend to its vanishing point, empty every mile of the way. On the rails a few yards from where he stood, rats, a gangrenous variety called graveolents, toed and fro-ed, gathering dead grasses for the nests they were constructing between the rails and the gravel the rails were set upon. Their industry only served to irritate Gentle further.

"We're stuck here forever," he said to Pie, who was squatting on the platform making marks on the stone with a sharp pebble. "This is Hairstone's revenge on a couple of hoopreo."

He'd heard this term whispered in their presence countless times. It meant anything from exotic stranger to repugnant leper, depending on the facial expression of the speaker. The people of Mai-ke were keen face-pullers, and when they'd used the word in Gentle's company there was little doubt which end of the scale of affections they had in mind.

"It'll come," said Pie. "We're not the only ones waiting."

Two more groups of travelers had appeared on the platform in the last few minutes: a family of Mai'keacs, three generations represented, who had tugged everything they owned down to the station; and three women in voluminous robes, then" heads shaved and plastered with white mud, nuns of the Goetic Kicaranki, an order as despised in Mai-k6 as any well-fed hoopreo. Gentle took some comfort from the appearance of these fellow travelers, but the track was still empty, the graveolents, who would surely be the first to sense any disturbance in the rails, going about their nest building unperturbed. He wearied of watching them very quickly and turned his attention to Pie's scrawlings.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to work out how long we've been here."

"Two days in Mai-ke, a day and a half on the road from Attaboy—"

"No, no," said the mystif, "I'm trying to work it out in Earth days. Right from first arriving in the Dominions."

"We tried that in the mountains, and we didn't get anywhere."

"That's because our brains were frozen stiff."

"So have you done it?"

"Give me a little time."

"Time, we've got," Gentle said, returning his gaze to the antics of graveolents. "These little buggers'll have grandchildren by the time the damn train arrives."

The mystif went on with its calculations, leaving Gentle to wander back into the comparative comfort of the waiting room, which, to judge by the sheep droppings on the floor, had been used to pen entire flocks in the recent past. The zarzi followed him, buzzing around his brow. He pulled from his ill-fitting jacket (bought with money he and Pie had won gambling in Attaboy) a dog-eared copy of Fanny Hill—the only volume in English, besides Pilgrim's Progress, which he'd been able to purchase—and used it to flail at the insects, then gave up. They'd tire of him eventually, or else he'd become immune to their attacks. Whichever; he didn't care.

He leaned against the graffiti-covered wall and yawned. He was bored. Of all things, bored! If, when they'd first arrived in Vanaeph, Pie had suggested that a few weeks later the wonders of the Reconciled Dominions would have become tedious, Gentle would have laughed the thought off as nonsense. With a gold-green sky above and the spires of Patashoqua gleaming in the distance, the scope for adventure had seemed endless. But by the time he'd reached Beatrix—the fond memories of which had not been entirely erased by images of its ruin—he was traveling like any man in a foreign land, prepared for occasional revelations but persuaded that the nature of conscious, curious bipeds was a constant under any heaven. They'd seen a great deal in the last few days, to be sure, but nothing he might not have imagined had he not stayed at home and got seriously drunk.

Yes, there had been glorious sights. But there had also been hours of discomfort, boredom, and banality. On their way to Mai-ke, for instance, they'd been exhorted to stay in some nameless hamlet to witness the community's festival: the annual donkey drowning. The origins of this ritual were, they were told, shrouded in fabulous mystery. They declined, Gentle remarking that this surely marked the nadir of their journey, and traveled on in the back of a wagon whose driver informed them that the vehicle had served his family for six generations as a dung carrier. He then proceeded to explain at great length the life cycle of his family's ancient foe, the pensanu, or shite rooster, a beast that with one turd could render an entire wagonload of dung inedible. They didn't press the man as to who in the region dined thusly, but they peered closely at their plates for many days following.

As he sat rolling the hard pellets of sheep dung under his heel, Gentle turned his thoughts to the one high point in their journey across the Third. That was the town of Ef-fatoi, which Gentle had rechristened Attaboy. It wasn't that large—the size of Amsterdam, perhaps, and with that city's charm—but it was a gambler's paradise, drawing souls addicted to chance from across the Dominion. Here every game in the Imajica could be played. If your credit wasn't good in the casinos or the cock pits, you could always find a desperate man somewhere who'd bet on the color of your next piss if it was the only game on offer. Working together with what was surely telepathic efficiency, Gentle and the mystif had made a small fortune in the city—in eight currencies, no less—enough to keep them in clothes, food, and train tickets until they reached Yzord-derrex. It wasn't profit that had almost seduced Gentle into setting up house there, however. It was a local delicacy: a cake of strudel pastry and the honey-softened seeds of a marriage between peach and pomegranate, which he ate before they gambled to give him vim, then while they gambled to calm las nerves, and then again in celebration when they'd won. It was only when Pie assured him that the confection would be available elsewhere (and if it wasn't they now had sufficient funds to hire their own pastry chef to make it) that Gentle was persuaded to depart. L'Himby called.

"We have to move on," the mystif had said. "Scopique will be waiting."

"You make it sound like he's expecting us."

"I'm always expected," Pie said.

"How long since you were in L'Himby?"

"At least... two hundred and thirty years."

"Then he'll be dead."

"Not Scopique," Pie said. "It's important you see him, Gentle. Especially now, with so many changes in the air."

"If that's what you want to do, then we'll do it," Gentle had replied, "How far is L'Himby?"

"A day's journey, if we take the train."

That had been the first mention Gentle had heard of the iron road that joined the city of lahmandhas and L'Himby: the city of furnaces and the city of temples.

"You'll like L'Himby," Pie had said. "It's a place of meditation."

Rested and funded, they'd left Attaboy the following morning, traveling along the River Fefer for a day, then, via Happi and Omootajive, into the province called the Ched Lo Ched, the Flowering Place (now bloomless), and finally to Mai-ke, caught in the twin pincers of poverty and puritanism.

On the platform outside, Gentle heard Pie say, "Good."

He raised himself from the comfort of the wall and stepped out into the sunshine again. "The train?" he said.

"No. The calculations. I've finished them." The mystif stared down at the marks on the platform at its feet. "This is only an approximation, of course, but I think it's sound within a day or two. Three at the most."

"So what day is it?"

"Take a guess."

"March... the tenth."

"Way off," said Pie. "By these calculations, and remember this is only an approximation, it's the seventeenth of May."

"Impossible."

"It's true."

"Spring's almost over."

"Are you wishing you were back there?" Pie asked.

Gentle chewed on this for a while, then said, "Not particularly. I just wish the fucking trains ran on time."

He wandered to the edge of the platform and stared down the line.

"There's no sign," Pie said. "We'd be quicker going by doeki."

"You keep doing that—"

"Doing what?"

"Saying what's on the tip of my tongue. Are you reading my mind?"

"No," said the mystif, rubbing out its calculation with its sole.

"So how did we win all that in Attaboy?"

"You don't need teaching," Pie replied.

"Don't tell me it comes naturally," Gentle said. "I've got through my entire life without winning a thing, and suddenly, when you're with me, I can do no wrong. That's no coincidence. Tell me the truth."

"That is the truth. You don't need teaching. Reminding, maybe...." Pie gave a little smile.

"And that's another thing," Gentle said, snatching at one of the zarzi as he spoke.

Much to his surprise, he actually caught it. He opened his palm. He'd cracked its casing, and the blue mush of its innards was oozing out, but it was still alive. Disgusted, he flicked his wrist, depositing the body on the platform at his feet. He didn't scrutinize the remains, but pulled up a fistful of the sickly grass that sprouted between the slabs of the platform and set about scrubbing his palm with it.

"What were we talking about?" he said. Pie didn't reply. "Oh, yes... things I'd forgotten." He looked down at his clean hand. "Pneuma," he said. "Why would I ever forget having a power like the pneuma?"

"Either because it wasn't important to you any longer—"

"Which is doubtful."

"—or you forgot because you wanted to forget."

There was an oddness in the way the mystif pronounced its reply which grated on Gentle's ear, but he pursued the argument anyway.

"Why would I want to forget?" he said.

Pie looked back along the line. The distance was obscured by dust, but there were glimpses through it of a clear sky.

"Well?" said Gentle.

"Maybe because remembering hurts too much," it said, without looking around.

The words were even uglier to Gentle's ear than the reply that had preceded it. He caught the sense, but only with difficulty.

"Stop this," he said.

"Stop what?"

"Talking in that damn-fool way. It turns my gut."

"I'm not doing anything," the mystif said, its voice still distorted, but now more subtly. "Trust me. I'm doing nothing."

"So tell me about the pneuma," Gentle said. "I want to know how 1 came by a power like that."

Pie started to reply, but this time the words were so badly disfigured, and the sound itself so ugly, it was like a fist in Gentle's stomach, stirring the stew there.

"Jesus!" he said, rubbing his belly in a vain attempt to soothe the churning. "Whatever you're playing at—"

"It's not me," Pie protested. "It's you. You don't want to hear what I'm saying."

"Yes, I do," Gentle said, wiping beads of chilly sweat from around his mouth. "I want answers. I want straight answers!"

Grimly, Pie started to speak again, but immediately the waves of nausea climbed Gentle's gut with fresh zeal. The pain in his belly was sufficient to bend him double, but he was damned if the mystif was going to keep anything from him. It was a matter of principle now. He studied Pie's lips through narrowed eyes, but after a few words the mystif stopped speaking.

"Tell me!" Gentle said, determined to have Pie obey him even if he could make no sense of the words. "What have I done that I want to forget so badly? Tell me!"

Its face all reluctance, the mystif once again opened its mouth. The words, when they came, were so hopelessly corrupted Gentle could barely grasp a fraction of their sense. Something about power. Something about death.

Point proved, he waved the source of this excremental din away and turned his eyes in search of a sight to calm his belly. But the scene around him was a convention of little horrors: a graveolent making its wretched nest beneath the rails; the perspective of the track, snatching his eye into the dust; the dead zarzi at his feet, its egg sac split, spattering its unborn onto the stone. This last image, vile as it was, brought food to mind. The harbor meal in Yzordderrex: fish within fish within fish, the littlest filled with eggs. The thought defeated him. He tottered to the edge of the platform and vomited onto the rails, his gut convulsing. He didn't have that much in his belly, but the heaves went on and on until his abdomen ached and tears of pain ran from his eyes. At last he stepped back from the platform edge, shuddering. The smell of his stomach was still in his nostrils, but the spasms were steadily diminishing. From the corner of his eye he saw Pie approach.

"Don't come near me!" he said. "I don't want you touching me!"

He turned his back on the vomit and its cause and retired to the shade of the waiting room, sitting down on the hard wood bench, putting his head against the wall, and closing his eyes. As the pain eased and finally disappeared, his thoughts turned to the purpose behind Pie's assault. He'd quizzed the mystif several times over the past four and a half months about the problem of power: how it was come by and—more particularly—how he, Gentle, had come to possess it. Pie's replies had been oblique in the extreme, but Gentle hadn't felt any great urge to get to the bottom of the question. Perhaps subconsciously he hadn't really wanted to know. Classically, such gifts had consequences, and he was enjoying his role as getter and wielder of power too much to want it spoiled with talk of hubris. He'd been content to be fobbed off with hints and equivocation, and he might have continued to be content, if he hadn't been irritated by the zarzi and the lateness of the L'Himby train, bored and ready for an argument. But that was only half the issue. He'd pressed the mystif, certainly, but he'd scarcely goaded it. The attack seemed out of all proportion to the offense. He'd asked an innocent question and been turned inside out for doing so. So much for all that loving talk in the mountains.

"Gentle..."

"Fuck you."

"The train, Gentle..."

"What about it?"

"It's coming."He opened his eyes. The mystif was standing in the doorway, looking forlorn.

"I'm sorry that had to happen," it said.

"It didn't have to," Gentle said. "You made it happen."

"Truly I didn't."

"What was it then? Something I ate?"

"No. But there are some questions—"

"That make me sick."

"—that have answers you don't want to hear."

"What do you take me for?" Gentle said, his tone all quiet contempt. "I ask a question, you fill my head with so much shit for an answer that I throw up, and then it's my fault for asking in the first place? What kind of fucked-up logic is that?"

The mystif raised its hands in mock surrender. "I'm not going to argue," it said.

"Damn right," Gentle replied.

Any further exchange would have been impractical anyway, with the sound of the train's approach steadily getting louder, and its arrival being greeted by cheers and clapping from an audience that had gathered on the platform. Still feeling delicate when he stood, Gentle followed Pie out into the crowd.

It seemed half the inhabitants of Mai-ke had come down to the station. Most, he assumed, were sightseers rather than potential travelers; the train a distraction from hunger and unanswered prayers. There were some families here who planned to board, however, pressing through the crowd with their luggage. What privations they'd endured to purchase their escape from Mai-ke could only be imagined. There was much sobbing as they embraced those they were leaving behind, most of whom were old folk, who to judge by their grief did not expect to see their children and grandchildren again. The journey to L'Himby, which for Gentle and Pie was little more than a jaunt, was for them a departure into memory.

That said, there could be few more spectacular means of departure in the Imajica than the massive locomotive which was only now emerging from a cloud of evaporating steam. Whoever had made blueprints for this roaring, glistening machine knew its earth counterpart—the kind of locomotives outdated in the West but still serving in China and India—very well. Their imitation was not so slavish as to suppress a certain decorative joie de vivre—it had been painted so gaudily it looked like the male of the species in search of a mate—but beneath the daubings was a machine that might have steamed into King's Cross or Marylebone in the years following the Great War. It drew six carriages and as many freight vehicles again, two of the latter being loaded with the flock of sheep.

Pie had already been down the line of carriages and was now coming back towards Gentle.

"The second. It's fuller down the other end."

They got in. The interiors had once been lush, but usage had taken its toll. Most of the seats had been stripped of both padding and headrests, and some were missing backs entirely. The floor was dusty, and the walls—which had once been decorated in the same riot as the engine—were in dire need of a fresh coat of paint. There were only two other occupants, both male, both grotesquely fat, and both wearing frock coats from which elaborately bound limbs emerged, lending them the look of clerics who'd escaped from an accident ward. Their features were minuscule, crowded in the center of each face as if clinging together for fear of drowning in fat. Both were eating nuts, cracking them in their pudgy fists and dropping little rains of pulverized shell on the floor between them.

"Brothers of the Boulevard," Pie remarked as Gentle took a seat, as far from the nut-crackers as possible.

Pie sat across the aisle from him, the bag containing what few belongings they'd accrued to date alongside. There was then a long delay, while recalcitrant animals were beaten and cajoled into boarding for what they perhaps knew was a ride to the slaughterhouse and those on the platform made their final farewells. It wasn't just the vows and tears that came in through the windows. So did the stench of the animals, and the inevitable zarzi, though with the Brothers and their meal to attract them the insects were uninterested in Gentle's flesh.

Wearied by the hours of waiting and wrung out by his nausea, Gentle dozed and finally fell into so deep a sleep that the train's long-delayed departure didn't stir him, and when he woke two hours of their journey had already passed. Very little had changed outside the window. Here were the same expanses of gray-brown earth that had stretched around Mai-ke, clusters of dwellings, built from mud in times of water and barely distinguishable from the ground they stood upon, dotted here and there. Occasionally they would pass a plot of land—either blessed with a spring or better irrigated than the ground around it—from which life was rising; even more occasionally saw workers bending to reap a healthy crop. But generally the scene was just as Hairstone Banty had predicted. There would be many hours of dead land, she'd said; then they would travel through the Steppes, and over the Three Rivers, to the province of Bern, of which L'Himby was the capital city. Gentle had doubted her competence at the time (she'd been smoking a weed too pungent to be simply pleasurable, and wearing something unseen elsewhere in the town: a smile) but dope fiend or no, she knew her geography.

As they traveled, Gentle's thoughts turned once again to the origins of the power Pie had somehow awakened in him. If, as he suspected, the mystif had touched a hitherto passive portion of his mind and given him access to capabilities dormant in all human beings, why was it so damned reluctant to admit the fact? Hadn't Gentle proved in the mountains that he was more than willing to accept the notion of mind embracing mind? Or was that co-mingling now an embarrassment to the mystif, and its assault on the platform a way to reestablish a distance between them? If so, it had succeeded. They traveled half a day without exchanging a single word.

In the heat of the afternoon, the train stopped at a small town and lingered there while the flock from Mai-ke disembarked. No less than four suppliers of refreshments came through the train while it waited, one exclusively carrying pastries and candies, among which Gentle found a variation on the honey and seed cake that had almost kept him in Attaboy. He bought three slices, and then two cups of well-sweetened coffee from another merchant, the combination of which soon enlivened his torpid system. For its part, the mystif bought and ate dried fish, the smell of which drove Gentle even farther from its side.

As the shout came announcing their imminent departure, Pie suddenly sprang up and darted to the door. The thought went through Gentle's head that the mystif intended to desert him, but it had spotted newspapers for sale on the platform and, having made a hurried purchase, clambered aboard again as the train began to move off. Then it sat down beside the remains of its fish dinner and had no sooner unfolded the paper than it let out a low whistle.

"Gentle. You'd better look at this."

It passed the newspaper across the aisle. The banner headline was in a language Gentle neither understood nor even recognized, but that scarcely mattered. The photographs below were plain enough. Here was a gallows, with six bodies hanging from it, and, inset, the death portraits of the executed individuals: among them, Hammeryock and Pontiff Farrow, the lawgivers of Vanaeph. Below this rogues' gallery a finely rendered etching of Tick Raw, the crazy evocator,

"So," Gentle said, "they got their comeuppance. It's the best news I've had in days."

"No, it's not," Pie replied.

"They tried to kill us, remember?" Gentle said reasonably, determined not to be infuriated by Pie's contentiousness. "If they got hanged I'm not going to mourn 'em! What did they do, try and steal the Merrow Ti' Ti'?"

"The MerrowTi' Ti' doesn't exist."

"That was a joke, Pie," Gentle said, dead pan.

"I missed the humor of it, I'm sorry," the mystif said, unsmiling. "Their crime—" It stopped and crossed the aisle to sit opposite Gentle, claiming the paper from his hands before continuing. "Their crime is far more significant," it went on, its voice lowered. It began to read in the same whisper, precising the text of the paper. "They were executed a week ago for making an attempt on the Autarch's life while he and his entourage were on their peace mission in Vanaeph—"

"Are you kidding?"

"No joke. That's what it says."

"Did they succeed?"

"Of course not." The mystif fell silent while it scanned the columns. "It says they killed three of his advisers with a bomb and injured eleven soldiers. The device was... wait, my Omootajivac is rusty... the device was smuggled into his presence by Pontiff Farrow. They were all caught alive, it says, but hanged dead, which means they died under torture but the Autarch made a show of the execution anyway."

"That's fucking barbaric."

"It's very common, particularly in political trials."

"What about Tick Raw? Why's his picture in there?"

"He was named as a co-conspirator, but apparently he escaped. The damn fool!"

"Why'd you call him that?"

"Getting involved in politics when there's so much more at stake. It's not the first time, of course, and won't be the last—"

"I'm not following."

"People get frustrated with waiting and they end up stooping to politics. But it's so shortsighted. Stupid sod."

"How well do you know him?"

"Who? Tick Raw?" The placid features were momentarily confounded. Then Pie said, "He has... a certain reputation, shall we say? They'll find him for certain. There isn't a sewer in the Dominions he'll be able to hide his head in."

"Why should you care?"

"Keep your voice down."

"Answer the question," Gentle replied, dropping his volume as he spoke.

"He was a Maestro, Gentle. He called himself an evocator, but it amounts to the same thing: he had power."

"Then why was he living in the middle of a shithole like Vanaeph?"

"Not everybody cares about wealth and women, Gentle. Some souls have higher ambition."

"Such as?"

"Wisdom. Remember why we came on this journey? To understand. That's a fine ambition." Pie looked at Gentle, making eye-to-eye contact for the first time since the episode on the platform. "Your ambition, my friend. You and Tick Raw had a lot in common."

"And he knew it?"

"Oh, yes...."

"Is that why he was so riled when I wouldn't sit down and talk with him?"

"I'd say so."

"Shit!" "Hammeryock and Farrow must have taken us for spies, come to wheedle out plots laid against the Autarch."

"But Tick Raw saw the truth."

"He did. He was once a great man, Gentle. At least... that was the rumor. Now I suppose he's dead or being tortured. Which is grim news for us."

"You think he'll name us?"

"Who knows? Maestros have ways of protecting themselves from torture, but even the strongest man can break under the right kind of pressure."

"Are you saying we've got the Autarch on our tails?"

"I think we'd know it if we had. We've come a long way from Vanaeph. The trail's probably cold by now."

"And maybe they didn't arrest Tick, eh? Maybe he escaped."

"They still caught Hammeryock and the Pontiff. I think we can assume they've got a hair-by-hair description of us."

Gentle laid his head back against the seat. "Shit," he said. "We're not making many friends, are we?"

"All the more reason that we don't lose each other," the mystif replied. The shadows of passing bamboo flickered on its face, but it looked at him unblinking. "Whatever harm you believe I may have done you, now or in the past, I apologize for it. I'd never wish you any hurt, Gentle. Please believe that. Not the slightest."

"I know," Gentle murmured, "and I'm sorry too, truly."

"Shall we agree to postpone our argument until the only opponents we've got left in the Imajica are each other?"

"That may be a very long time."

"AH the better."

Gentle laughed. "Agreed," he said, leaning forward and taking the mystif s hand. "We've seen some amazing sights together, haven't we?"

"Indeed we have."

"Back there in Mai-ke I was losing my sense of how marvelous all this is."

"We've got a lot more wonders to see."

"Just promise me one thing?" "Ask it."

"Don't eat raw fish in eyeshot of me again. It's more than a man can take."

From the yearning way that Hairstone Banty had described L'Himby, Gentle had been expecting some kind of Khat-mandu—a city of temples, pilgrims, and free dope. Perhaps it had been that way once, in Banty's long-lost youth. But when, a few minutes after night had fallen, Gentle and Pie stepped off the train, it was not into an atmosphere of spiritual calm. There were soldiers at the station gates, most of them standing idle, smoking and talking, but a few casting their eyes over the disembarking passengers. As luck had it, however, another train had arrived at an adjacent platform minutes before, and the gateway was choked with passengers, many hugging their life's belongings. It wasn't difficult for Pie and Gentle to dig their way through to the densest part of the crowd and pass unnoticed through the turnstiles and out of the station.

There were many more troops in the wide lamplit streets, their presence no less disturbing for the air of lassitude that hung about them. The uncommissioned ranks wore a drab gray, but the officers wore white, which suited the subtropical night. All were conspicuously armed. Gentle made certain not to study either men or weaponry too closely for fear of attracting unwelcome attention, but it was clear from even a furtive glance that both the armaments and the vehicles parked in every other alleyway were of the same elaborately intimidating design as he'd seen in Beatrix. The warlords of Yzordderrex were clearly past masters in the crafts of death, their technology several generations beyond that of the locomotive that had brought the travelers here.

To Gentle's eye the most fascinating sight was not the tanks or the machine guns, however, it was the presence among these troops of a subspecies he'd not encountered hitherto. Oethacs, Pie called them. They stood no taller than their fellows, but their heads made up a third or more of that height, their squat bodies grotesquely broad to bear the weight of such a massive load of bone. Easy targets, Gentle remarked, but Pie whispered that their brains were small, their skulls thick, and their tolerance for pain heroic, the latter evidenced by the extraordinary array of livid scars and disfigurements they all bore on skin that was as white as the bone it concealed.

It seemed this substantial military presence had been in place for some time, because the populace went about their evening business as if these men and their killing machines were completely commonplace. There was little sign of fraternization, but there was no harassment either.

"Where do we go from here?" Gentle asked Pie once they were clear of the crowds around the station.

"Scopique lives in the northeast part of the city, close to the temples. He's a doctor. Very well respected,"

"You think he may be still practicing?"

"He doesn't mend bones, Gentle. He's a doctor of theology. He used to like the city because it was so sleepy."

"It's changed, then."

"It certainly has. It looks as though it's got rich."

There was evidence of L'Himby's newfound wealth everywhere: in the gleaming buildings, many of them looking as though the paint on their doors was barely dry; in the proliferation of styles among the pedestrians and in the number of elegant automobiles on the street. There were a few signs still remaining of the culture that had existed here before the city's fortunes had boomed: beasts of burden still wove among the traffic, honked at and cursed; a smattering of facades had been preserved from older buildings and incorporated—usually crudely—into the designs of the newer. And then there were the living facades, the faces of the people Gentle and Pie were mingling with. The natives had a physical peculiarity unique to the region: clusters of small crystalline growths, yellow and purple, on their heads, sometimes arranged like crowns or coxcombs but just as often erupting from the middle of the forehead or irregularly placed around the mouth. To Pie's knowledge, they had no particular function, but they were clearly viewed as a disfigurement by the sophisticates, many of whom went to extraordinary lengths to disguise their commonality of stock with the undecorated peasants. Some of these stylists wore hats, veils, and makeup to conceal the evidence; others had tried surgery to remove the growths and went proudly about unhatted, wearing their scars as proof of their wealth.

"It's grotesque," Pie said when Gentle remarked upon this. "But that's the pernicious influence of fashion for you. These people want to look like the models they see in the magazines from Patashoqua, and the stylists in Patashoqua have always looked to the Fifth for their inspiration. Damn fools! Look at them! I swear if we were to spread the rumor that everyone in Paris is cutting off their right arms these days, we'd be tripping over hacked-off limbs all the way to Scopique's house."

"It wasn't like this when you were here?"

"Not in L'Himby. As I said, it was a place of meditation. But in Patashoqua, yes, always, because it's so close to the Fifth, so the influence is very strong. And there's always been a few minor Maestros, you know, traveling back and forth, bringing styles, bringing ideas. A few of them made a kind of business of it, crossing the In Ovo every few months to get news of the Fifth and selling it to the fashion houses, the architects, and so on. So damn decadent. It revolts me."

"But you did the same thing, didn't you? You became part of the Fifth Dominion."

"Never here," the mystif said, its fist to its chest. "Never in my heart. My mistake was getting lost in the In Ovo and letting myself be summoned to earth. When I was there I played the human game, but only as much as I had to."

Despite their baggy and by now well-crumpled clothes, both Pie and Gentle were bare-headed and smooth-skulled, so they attracted a good deal of attention from envious poseurs parading on the pavement. It was far from welcome, of course. If Pie's theory was correct and Ham-meryock or Pontiff Farrow had described them to the Autarch's torturers, their likenesses might very well have appeared in the broadsheets of L'Himby. If so, an envious dandy might have them removed from the competition with a few words in a soldier's ear. Would it not be wiser, Gentle suggested, if they hailed a taxi, and traveled a little more discreetly? The mystif was reluctant to do so, explaining that it could not remember Scopique's address, and their only hope of finding it was to go on foot, while Pie followed its nose. They made a point of avoiding the busier parts of the street, however, where cafe customers were outside enjoying the evening air or, less frequently, where soldiers gathered. Though they continued to attract interest and admiration, nobody challenged them, and after twenty minutes they turned off the main thoroughfare, the well-tended buildings giving way within a couple of blocks to grimier structures, the fops to grimmer souls.

"This feels safer," Gentle said, a paradoxical remark given that the streets they were wandering through now were the kind they would have instinctively avoided in any city of the Fifth: ill-lit backwaters, where many of the houses had fallen into severe disrepair. Lamps burned in even the most dilapidated, however, and children played in the gloomy streets despite the lateness of the hour. Their games were those of earth, give or take a detail—not filched, but invented by young minds from the same basic materials: a ball and a bat, some chalk and a pavement, a rope and a rhyme. Gentle found it reassuring to walk among them and hear their laughter, which was indistinguishable from that of human children.

Eventually the tenanted houses gave way to total dereliction, and it was clear from the mystif s disgruntlement that it was no longer sure of its whereabouts. Then, a little noise of pleasure, as it caught sight of a distant structure.

"That's the temple." Pie pointed to a monolith some miles from where they stood. It was unlit and seemed forsaken, the ground in its vicinity leveled. "Scopique had that view from his toilet window, I remember. On fine days he said he used to throw open the window and contemplate and defecate simultaneously."

Smiling at the memory, the mystif turned its back on the sight.

"The bathroom faced the temple, and there were no more streets between the house and the temple. It was common land, for the pilgrims to pitch their tents."

"So we're walking in the right direction," Gentle said. "We just need the last street on our right."

"That seems logical," Pie said. "I was beginning to doubt my memory."

They didn't have much farther to look. Two more blocks, and the rubble-strewn streets came to an abrupt end.

"This is it."

There was no triumph in Pie's voice, which was not surprising, given the scene of devastation before them. While it was time that had undone the splendor of the streets they'd passed through, this last had been prey to more systematic assault. Fires had been set in several of the houses. Others looked as though they'd been used for target practice by a Panzer division.

"Somebody got here before us," Gentle said.

"So it seems," Pie replied. "I must say I'm not altogether surprised."

"So why the hell did you bring us here?"

"I had to see for myself," Pie said. "Don't worry, the trail doesn't end here. He'll have left a message."

Gentle didn't remark on how unlikely he thought this, but followed the mystif along the street until it stopped in front of a building that, while not reduced to a heap of blackened stones, looked ready to succumb. Fire had eaten out its eyes, and the once-fine door had been replaced with partially rotted timbers; all this illuminated not by lamplight (the street had none) but by a scattering of stars.

"Better you stay out here," Pie 'oh' pah said. "Scopique may have left defenses."

"Like what?"

"The Unbeheld isn't the only one who can conjure guardians," Pie replied. "Please, Gentle... I'd prefer to do this alone."

Gentle shrugged. "Do as you wish," he said. Then, as an afterthought, "You usually do."

He watched Pie climb the debris-covered steps, pull several of the timbers off the door, and slip out of sight. Rather than wait at the threshold, Gentle wandered farther along the row to get another view of the temple, musing as he went that this Dominion, like the Fourth, had confounded not only his expectations but those of Pie as well. The safe haven of Vanaeph had almost seen their execution, while the murderous wastes of the mountains had offered resurrections. And now L'Himby, a sometime city of meditation, reduced to gaud and rubble. What next? He wondered. Would they arrive in Yzordderrex only to find it had spurned its reputation as the Babylon of the Dominions and become a New Jerusalem?

He stared across at the shadowy temple, his mind straying back to a subject that had occupied him several times on their journey through the Third: how best to address the challenge of making a map of the Dominions, so that when they finally returned to the Fifth Dominion he could give his friends some sense of how the lands lay. They'd traveled on all kinds of roads, from the Patashoquan Highway to the dirt tracks between Happi and Mai-ke; they'd wound through verdant valleys and scaled heights where even the hardiest moss would perish; they'd had the luxury of chariots and the loyalty of doeki; they'd sweated and frozen and gone dreamily, like poets into some place of fancy, doubting their senses and themselves. All this needed setting down: the routes, the cities, the ranges, and the plains all needed laying in two dimensions, to be pored over at leisure. In time, he thought, putting the challenge off yet again; in time.

He looked back towards Scopique's house. There was no sign of Pie emerging, and he began to wonder if some harm had befallen the mystif inside. He walked back to the steps, climbed them, and—feeling a little guilty—slid through the gap between the timbers. The starlight had more difficulty getting in than he did, and his blindness put a chill in him, bringing to mind the measureless darkness of the ice cathedral. On that occasion the mystif had been behind him; this time, in front. He waited a few seconds at the door, until his eyes began to make out the interior. It was a narrow house, full of narrow places, but there was a voice in its depths, barely above a whisper, which he pursued, stumbling through the murk. After only a few paces he realized it was not Pie speaking but someone hoarse and panicked. Scopique, perhaps, still taking refuge in the ruins?

A glimmer of light, no brighter than the dimmest star, led him to a door through which he had sight of the speaker. Pie was standing in the middle of the blackened room, turned from Gentle. Over the mystif s shoulder Gentle saw the light's fading source: a shape hanging in the air, like a web woven by a spider that aspired to portraiture, and held aloft by the merest breeze. Its motion was not arbitrary, however. The gossamer face opened its mouth and whispered its wisdom.

"—no better proof than in these cataclysms. We must hold to that, my friend, hold to it and pray... no, better not pray... I doubt every God now, especially the Aboriginal. If the children are any measure of the Father, then He's no lover of justice or goodness."

"Children?" said Gentle.

The breath the word came upon seemed to flutter in the threads. The face grew long, the mouth tearing.

The mystif glanced behind and shook its head to silence the trespasser. Scopique—for this was surely his message— was talking again.

"Believe me when I say we know only the tenth part of a tenth part of the plots laid in this. Long before the Reconciliation, forces were at work to undo it; that's my firm belief. And it's reasonable to assume that those forces have not perished. They're working in this Dominion, and the Dominion from which you've come. They strategize not in terms of decades, but centuries, just as we've had to. And they've buried their agents deeply. Trust nobody, Pie 'oh' pah, not even yourself. Their plots go back before we were born. We could either one of us have been conceived to serve them in some oblique fashion and not know it. They're coming for me very soon, probably with voiders. If I'm dead you'll know it. If I can convince them I'm just a harmless lunatic, they'll take me off to the Cradle, put me in the maison de sante. Find me there, Pie 'oh' pah. Or if you have more pressing business, then forget me; I won't blame you. But, friend, whether you come for me or not, know that when I think of you I still smile, and in these days that is the rarest comfort."

Even before he'd finished speaking the gossamer was losing its power to capture his likeness, the features softening, the form sinking in upon itself, until, by the time the last of his message had been uttered, there was little left for it to do but flutter to the ground.

The mystif went down on its haunches and ran its fingers through the inert threads. "Scopique," it murmured.

"What's the cradle he talked about?"

"The Cradle of Chzercemit. It's an inland sea, two or three days' journey from here."

"You've been there?"

"No. It's a place of exile. There's an island in the Cradle which was used as a prison. Mostly for criminals who'd committed atrocities but were too dangerous to execute."

"I don't follow that."

"Ask me another time. The point is, it sounds like it's been turned into an asylum." Pie stood up. "Poor Scopique. He always had a terror of insanity—"

"I know the feeling," Gentle remarked.

"—and now they've put him in a madhouse."

"So we must get him out," Gentle said very simply.

He couldn't see Pie's expression, but he saw the mystifs hands go up to its face and heard a sob from behind its palms.

"Hey," Gentle said softly, embracing Pie. "We'll find him. I know I shouldn't have come spying like that, but I thought maybe something had happened to you."

"At least you've heard him for yourself. You know it's not a lie."

"Why would I think that?"

"Because you don't trust me," Pie said.

"I thought we'd agreed," Gentle said. "We've got each other and that's our best hope of staying alive and sane. Didn't we agree to that?"

"Yes."

"So let's hold to it."

"It may not be so easy. If Scopique's suspicions are correct, either one of us could be working for the enemy and not know it."

"By enemy you mean the Autarch?"

"He's one, certainly. But I think he's just a sign of some greater corruption. The Imajica's sick, Gentle, from end to end. Coming here and seeing the way L'Himby's changed makes me want to despair."

"You know, you should have forced me to sit down and talk with Tick Raw. He might have given us a few clues."

"It's not my place to force you to do anything. Besides, I'm not sure he'd have been any wiser than Scopique."

"Maybe he'll know more by the time we speak with him."

"Let's hope so."

"And this time I won't take umbrage and waltz off like an idiot."

"If we get to the island, there'll be nowhere to waltz to,"

"True enough. So now we need a means of transport."

"Something anonymous."

"Something fast."

"Something easy to steal."

"Do you know how to get to the Cradle?" Gentle asked.

"No, but I can inquire around while you steal the car."

"Good enough. Oh, and Pie? Buy some booze and cigarettes while you're at it, will you?"

"You'll make a decadent of me yet."

"My mistake. I thought it was the other way round."

They left L'Himby well before dawn, in a car that Gentle chose for its color (gray) and its total lack of distinction. It served them well. For two days they traveled without incident, on roads that were less trafficked the farther from the temple city and its spreading suburbs they went. There was some military presence beyond the city perimeters, but it was discreet, and no attempt was made to stop them. Only once did they glimpse a contingent at work in a distant field, vehicles maneuvering heavy artillery into position behind barricades, pointing back towards L'Himby, the work just public enough to let the citizens know whose clemency their lives were conditional upon.

By the middle of the third day, however, the road they were traveling was almost entirely deserted, and the flat-lands in which L'Himby was set had given way to rolling hills. Along with this change of landscape came a change of weather. The skies clouded; and with no wind to press them on, the clouds thickened. A landscape that might have been enlivened by sun and shadow became drear, almost dank. Signs of habitation dwindled. Once in a while they'd pass a homestead, long since fallen into ruin; more infrequently still they'd catch sight of a living soul, usually unkempt, always alone, as though the territory had been given over to the lost.

And then, the Cradle. It appeared suddenly, the road taking them up over a headland which presented them with a sudden panorama of gray shore and silver sea. Gentle had not realized how oppressed he'd been by the hills until this vista opened in front of them. He felt his spirits rise at the sight.

There were peculiarities, however, most particularly the thousands of silent birds on the stony beach below, ail sitting like an audience awaiting some spectacle to appear from the arena of the sea, not one in the air or on the water.

It wasn't until Pie and Gentle reached the perimeter of this roosting multitude and got out of the car that the reason for their inactivity became apparent. Not only were they and the sky above them immobile, so was the Cradle itself. Gentle made his way through the mingled nations of birds—a close relation of the gull predominated, but there were also geese, oyster catchers, and a smattering of parrots—to the edge, testing it first with his foot, then with his fingers. It wasn't frozen—he knew what ice felt like from bitter experience—it was simply solidified, the last wave still plainly visible, every curl and eddy fixed as it broke against the shore.

"At least we won't have to swim," the mystif said.

It was already scanning the horizon, looking for Sco-pique's prison. The far shore wasn't visible, but the island was, a sharp gray rock rising from the sea several miles from where they stood, the maison de santi, as Scopique had called it, a cluster of buildings teetering on its heights.

"Do we go now or wait until dark?" Gentle asked.

"We'll never find it after dark," Pie said. "We have to go now."

They returned to the car and drove down through the birds, who were no more inclined to move for wheels than they'd been for feet. A few took to the air briefly, only to flutter down again; many more stood their ground and died for their stoicism.

The sea made the best road they'd traveled since the Patashoquan Highway; it had apparently been as calm as a millpond when it had solidified. They passed the corpses of several birds who'd been caught in the process, and there was still meat and feathers on their bones, suggesting that the solidification had occurred recently.

"I've heard of walking on water," Gentle said as they drove. "But driving... that's a whole other miracle."

"Have you any idea of what we're going to do when we get to the island?" Pie said.

"We ask to see Scopique, and when we've found him we leave with him. If they refuse to let us see him, we use force. It's simple as that"

"They may have armed guards."

"See these hands?" Gentle said, taking them off the wheel and thrusting them at Pie. "These hands are lethal." He laughed at the expression on the mystif s face. "Don't worry, I won't be indiscriminate." He seized the wheel again. "I like having the power, though. I really like it. The idea of using it sort of arouses me. Hey, will you look at that? The suns are coming out."

The parting clouds allowed a few beams through, and they lit the island, which was within half a mile of them now. The visitors' approach had been noticed. Guards had appeared on the cliff top and along the prison's parapet. Figures could be seen hurrying down the steps that wound down the cliff face, heading for the boats moored at its base. From the shore behind them rose the clamor of birds.

"They finally woke up," Gentle said.

Pie looked around. Sunlight was lighting the beach, and the wings of the birds as they rose in a squalling cloud.

"Oh, Jesu," Pie said.

"What's wrong?"

"The sea—"

Pie didn't need to explain, for the same phenomenon that was crossing the Cradle's surface behind them was now coming to meet them from the island: a slow shock wave, changing the nature of the matter it passed through. Gentle picked up speed, closing the gap between the vehicle and solid ground, but the road had already liquified completely at the island's shore, and the message of transformation was spreading at speed.

"Stop the car!" Pie yelled. "If we don't get out we'll go down in it."

Gentle brought the car to a skidding halt, and they flung themselves out. The ground beneath them was still solid enough to run on, but they could feel tremors in it as they went, prophesying dissolution.

"Can you swim?" Gentle called to Pie.

"If I have to," the mystif replied, its eyes on the approaching tide. The water looked mercurial, and seemed to be full of thrashing fish. "But I don't think this is something we want to bathe in, Gentle."

"I don't think we're going to have any choice."

There was at least some hope of rescue. Boats were being launched off the island's shore, the sound of the oars and the rhythmical shouts of the oarsmen rising above the churning of the silver water. The mystif wasn't looking for hope from that source, however. Its eyes had found a narrow causeway, like a path of softening ice, between where they stood and the land. Grabbing Gentle's arm, it pointed the way.

"I see it!" Gentle replied, and they headed off along this zigzag route, checking on the position of the two boats as they went. The oarsmen had comprehended their strategy and changed direction to intercept them. Though the flood was eating at their causeway from either side, the possibility of escape had just seemed plausible when the sound of the car upending and slipping into the waters distracted Gentle from his dash. He turned and collided with Pie as he did so. The mystif went down, falling on its face. Gentle hauled it back onto its feet, but it was momentarily too dazed to know their jeopardy.

There were shouts of alarm coming from the boats now, and the frenzy of water yards from their heels. Gentle half hoisted Pie onto his shoulders and picked up the race again. Precious seconds had been lost, however. The lead boat was within twenty yards of them, but the tide was half that distance behind, and half again between his feet and the bow. If he stood still, the floe beneath him would go before the boat reached them. If he tried to run, burdened with the semiconscious mystif, he'd miss his rendezvous with his rescuers.

As it was, the choice was taken from him. The ground beneath the combined weight of man and mystif fractured, and the silver waters of the Chzercemit bubbled up between his feet. He heard a shout of alarm from the creature in the nearest boat—an Oethac, huge-headed and scarred—then felt his right leg lose six inches as his foot plunged through the brittle floe. It was Pie's turn to haulhim up now, but it was a lost cause: the ground would support neither of them.

In desperation he looked down at the waters that he was going to have to swim in. The creatures he'd seen thrashing were not in the sea but t>/the sea. The wavelets had backs and necks; the glitter of the spume was the glitter of countless tiny eyes. The boat was still speeding in their direction, and for an instant it seemed they might bridge the gap with a lunge.

"Go!" he yelled to Pie, pushing as he did so.

Though the mystif flailed, there was sufficient power in its legs to turn the fall into a jump. Its fingers caught the edge of the boat, but the violence of its leap threw Gentle from his precarious perch. He had time to see the mystif being hauled onto the rocking boat, and time too to think he might reach the hands outstretched in his direction. But the sea was not about to be denied both its morsels. As he dropped into the silver spume, which pressed around him like a living thing, he threw his hands up above his head in the hope that the Oethac would catch hold of him. All in vain. Consciousness went from him, and, uncaptained, he sank.