Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

22

If coming to the moment of Reconciliation had been for Gentle a series of rememberings, leading him back to himself, then the greatest of those rememberings, and the one he was least prepared for, was the Reconciliation itself.

Though he'd performed the working before, the circumstances had been radically different. For one, there'd been all the hoopla of a grand event. He'd gone into the circle like a prizefighter, with an air of congratulation hanging around his head before he'd even worked up a sweat, his patrons and admirers a cheering throng at the sidelines. This time he was alone. For another, he'd had his eyes on what the world would shower on him when the work was done: what women would fall to him, what wealth and glory would come. This time, the prize in sight was a different thing entirely, and wouldn't be counted in stained sheets and coinage. He was the instrument of a higher and wiser power.

That fact took the fear away. When he opened his mind to the pfocess, he felt a calm come upon him, subduing the unease he'd felt climbing the stairs. He'd told Jude and Clem that forces would run through the house the likes of which its bricks had never known, and it was true. He felt them fuel his weakening mind, ushering his thoughts out of his head to gather the Dominion to the circle.

That gleaning began with the place he was sitting in. His mind spread to all compass points, and up and down, to have the sum of the room. It was an easy space to grasp. Generations of prison poets had made the analogies for him, and he borrowed them freely. The walls were his body's limits, the door his mouth, the windows his eyes: commonplace similitudes, taxing his power of comparison not a jot. He dissolved the boards, the plaster, the glass, and all the thousand tiny details in the same lyric of confinement and, having made them part of him, broke their bounds to stray farther afield.

As his imagination headed down the stairs and up onto the roof, he felt the beginnings of momentum. His intellect, dogged by literalism, was already lagging behind a sensibility more mercurial, which was delivering back to him similitudes for the whole house before his logical faculties had even reached the hallway.

Once again, his body was the measure of all things: the cellar, his bowels; the roof, his scalp; the stairs, his spine. Their proofs delivered, his thoughts flew out of the house, rising up over the slates and spreading through the streets. He gave passing consideration to Sartori as he went, knowing his other was out here in the night somewhere, skulking.

But his mind was quicksilver, and too exhilarated by its speed and capacity to go searching in the shadows for an enemy already defeated.

With speed came ease. The streets were no more difficult to claim than the house he'd already devoured. His body had its conduits and its intersections, had its places of excrement and its fine, dandified facades; had its rivers, moving from a springing place, and its parliament, and its holy seat, The whole city, he began to see, could be analogized to his flesh, bone, and blood. And why should that be so surprising? When an architect turned his mind to the building of a city, where would he look for inspiration? To the flesh where he'd lived since birth. It was the first model for any creator. It was a school and an eating house and an abattoir and a church; it could be a prison and a brothel and Bedlam. There wasn't an edifice in any street in London that hadn't begun somewhere in the private city of an architect's anatomy, and all Gentle had to do was open his mind to that fact and the districts were his, running back to swell the assembly in his head.

He flew north, through Highbury and Finsbury Park, to Palmer's Green and Cockfosters. He went east with the river, past Greenwich, where the clock that marked the coming of midnight stood, and on towards Tilbury. West took him through Marylebone and Hammersmith, south through Lambeth and Streatham, where he'd first met Pie 'oh' pah, long ago.

But the names soon became irrelevant. Like the ground seen from a rising plane, the particulars of a street or a district became part of another pattern, even more appetizing to his ambitious spirit. He saw the Wash glittering to the east, and the Channel to the south, becalmed on this humid night. Here was a fine new challenge. Was his body, which had proved the equal of a city, also the measure of this vaster geography? Why not? Water flowed by the same laws everywhere, whether the conduit was a groove in his brow or a rift between the continents. And were his hands not like two countries, laid side by side in his lap, their peninsulas almost touching, their landscapes scarred and grooved?

There was nothing outside his substance that was not mirrored within: no sea, no city, no street, no roof, no room. He was in the Fifth, and the Fifth in him, gathering to be carried into the Ana as a proof and a map and a poem, written in praise of all things being One..

In the other Dominions the same pursuit of similitude was under way.

From his circle on the Mount of Lipper Bayak, Tick Raw had already drawn into his net of dissolution both the city of Patashoqua and the highway that ran from its gates towards the mountains. In the Third, Scopique-his fears that the absence of the Pivot would invalidate his working allayed— was spreading his grasp across the Kwem towards the dust bowls around Maike". In L'Himby, where he was soon to arrive, there were celebrants gathering at the temples, their hopes raised by prophetics who'd appeared from hiding the night before to spread the word that the Reconciliation was imminent.

No less inspired, Athanasius was presently traveling back along the Lenten Way to the borders of the Third and skimming the ocean to the islands, while a self more tender trod the changed streets of Yzordderrex. He found challenges there unknown to Scopique, Tick Raw, or even Gentle. There were slippery wonders loose on the streets that defied easy analogy. But in inviting Athanasius to join the Synod, Scopique had chosen better than he knew. The man's obsession with Christos, the bleeding God, gave him a grasp of what the Goddesses had wrought that a man less preoccupied by death and resurrection would never have owned. In Yzordderrex's ravaged streets he saw a reflection of his own physical ravagement. And in the music of the iconoclastic waters an echo of the blood that ran from his wounds, transformed—by love of the Holy Mother he had worshiped—into a sublime and healing liquor.

Only Chicka Jackeen, at the borders of the First Dominion, had to work with abstractions, for there was nothing of a physical nature he could win similitudes from. All he had was the blank wall of the Erasure to set his mind on. Of the Dominion that lay beyond—which it fell to him to encapsulate and carry into the Ana—he had no knowledge.

He hadn't spent so many years studying the mystery without finding some means to tussle with it, however. Although his body offered no analogy for the enigma that lay on the other side of the divide, there was a place in him just as sealed from sight, and just as open to the inquiries made by dreaming explorers like himself. He let mind—the unbeheld process that empowered every meaningful action, that made the very devotion that kept him in his circle—be his similitude. The blank wall of the Erasure was the white bone of his skull, scoured of every scrap of meat and hair. The force inside, incapable of impartial self-study, was both the God of the First and the thoughts of Chicka Jackeen, bonded by mutual scrutiny.

After tonight, both would be free of the curse of invisibility. The Erasure would drop and the Godhead come back into view to walk the Imajica. When that happened, when the same Godhead who'd taken the Nullianacs into His furnace and burned their malice away, was no longer divided from His Dominions, there would be a revelation such as had never been known before. The dead, trapped in their condition and unable to find the door, would have a light to lead the way. And the living, no longer afraid to show their minds, would step from their houses like divinities,, carrying their private heavens upon their heads for all to see.

About his own work, Gentle had little grasp of what his fellow Maestros were achieving, but the absence of alarm from the other Dominions reassured him that all was well. All the pains and humiliations he'd endured to reach this place had been repaid in the little hours since he'd stepped into the circle. An ecstasy he'd only known for the duration of a heartbeat suffused him, confounding the conviction he'd had that such feelings only came in glimpses because to know them for longer would burst the heart. It wasn't so. The ecstasy went on and on, and he was surviving it: more than surviving, burgeoning, his authority over the working stronger with every city and sea he retrieved into the circle where he sat.

The Fifth was almost there with him now, sharing the space, teaching him with its coming where the true power of a Reconciler lay. It wasn't a skill with feits and sways, nor was it pneumas, nor resurrections, nor the driving out of demons. It was the strength to call the myriad wonders of an entire Dominion by the names of his body and not be broken by the simile; to allow that he was in the world to its smallest degree, and the world in him, and not be driven to insanity by the intricacies he contained or else so enamored of the panoramas he was spread through that he lost all memory of the man he'd been.

There was such pleasure in this process that laughter began to shake him as he sat in the circle. His good humor wasn't a distraction from his purpose but instead made it easier still, his laugh-lightened thoughts running from the circle out to regions both bright and benighted and coming back with their prizes like runners sent with poems to a promised land, and returning with it on their backs, flowering as it came.

In the room above, Little Ease heard the laughter and capered in sympathy with the Liberatore's joy. What else could such a sound mean, but that the deed was close to being done? Even if it didn't see the consequences of this triumph, it thought, its last night in the living world had been immeasurably sweetened by all it had been a party to. And should there be an afterlife for such creatures as itself (although of this it was by no means certain), then its account of this night would be a fine tale to tell when it went into the company of its ancestors.

Anxious not to disturb the Reconciler, it gave up its dance of celebration and was about to return to the window and its duties as night watchman when it heard a sound its paddings had concealed. Its gaze went from the sill to the ceiling. The wind had got up in the last little while and was skittering across the roof, rattling the slates as it went, or so Ease thought, until it realized the tree outside was as still as the Kwem at equinox.

Little Ease didn't come from a tribe of heroes; quite the reverse. The legends of its people concerned famous apologists, humblers, deserters, and cowards. Its instinct, hearing this sound from above, was to be away downstairs as fast as its bandy legs knew how. But it fought what came naturally, for the Reconciler's sake, and cautiously approached the window in the hope of gaining a glimpse of what was happening above.

It climbed up onto the sill and, belly up, slid itself out a little way, peering up at the eaves. A mist dirtied the starlight, and the roof was dark. It leaned a little farther out, the sill hard beneath its bony back. From the window below, the sound of the Reconciler's laughter floated up, its music reassuring. Little Ease had time to smile, hearing it. Then something as dark as the roof and as dirty as the fog that covered the stars reached down and stopped its mouth. The attack came so suddenly Little Ease lost its grip on the window frame and toppled backwards, but its smotherer had too tight a hold on it to let it drop, and hauled it up onto the roof. Seeing the assembly there, Ease knew its errors in— : stantly. One, it had stopped its nostrils and so failed to smell this congregation. Two, it had believed too much in a theology which taught that evil came from below. Not so, not so. : While it had watched the street for Sartori and his legion, it '; had neglected the route along the roofs, which was just as ; secure for creatures as nimble as these.

There were not more than six of them, but then there .; didn't need to be. The gek-a-gek were feared among the feared; Oviates that only the most overweening of Maestros would have called into the Dominions. As massive as tigers, and as sleek, they had hands the size of a man's head and heads as flat as a man's hand. Their flanks were translucent in some lights, but here they had made a pact with darkness, and they lay—all but the smotherer—at the apex of the roof, their silhouettes concealing the Maestro until he rose and murmured that the captive be brought to his feet.

"Now, Little Ease," he said, the words too soft to be heard in the rooms below, but loud enough to make the creature evacuate its bowels in terror, "I want you to spill more than your shite for me."

It gave Sartori no satisfaction to watch Little Ease's life go out. The sense of exhilaration he'd felt at dawn when, having summoned the gek-a-gek, he'd contemplated the confrontation that lay a few hours off, had been all but sweated out of him by the heat of the intervening day. The gek-a-gek were powerful beasts and might well have survived the journey from Shiverick Square to Gamut Street, but no Oviate was fond of the light from any heaven, and rather than risk their debilitation, he'd stayed beneath the trees with his pride, counting off the hours. Only once had he ventured from their company and had found the streets deserted. The sight should have heartened him. With the area deserted he and the creatures would be unwitnessed when they moved on the enemy. But sitting in the silent bower with his dozing legion, undistracted by even the sound of a fly, his mind had been preyed upon by fears he'd always put away until now, fears fueled by the sight of these empty streets.

Was it possible that his revisionist purposes were about to be overwhelmed by some still greater revision? He realized his dreams of a New Yzordderrex were valueless. He'd said as much to his brother in the tower. But even if he wasn't to be an empire builder here, he still had something to live for. She was in the house in Gamut Street, yearning for him, he hoped, as he yearned for her. He wanted continuance, even if it was as Hell to Gentle's Heaven. But the desertion of this city made him wonder if even that was a pipe dream.

As the afternoon had crept on, he'd begun to look forward to reaching Gamut Street, simply for the signs of life it would provide. But he'd arrived to find precious little comfort here. The phantoms that lingered at the perimeters only reminded him of how uncharitable death really was, and the sounds that issued from the house itself (a girl's giggling from one of the lower rooms, and later full-throated laughter, his brother's, from the Meditation Room) only seemed to him signs of an idiot optimism.

He wished he could scour these thoughts from his head, but there was no escape from them except, possibly, in the arms of his Judith. She was in the house, that he knew. But with the currents unleashed inside so strong, he dared not enter. What he wanted, and what he finally got from Little Ease, was intelligence as to her state and whereabouts. He'd assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that Judith was with the Reconciler. She'd taken herself off to Yzordderrex, Little Ease said, and come back with fabulous tales. But the Reconciler had not been much impressed by them. There'd been a fracas, and he'd begun his working alone.

Why had she gone in the first place? he inquired, but the . creature claimed it didn't know and could not be persuaded to supply an answer even though its limbs were half twisted off and its brain pan opened to the gek-a-gek's tongue. It had died protesting its ignorance, and Sartori had left the pride to toy with the carcass, taking himself off along the roof to turn over what he'd learned.

Oh, for a wad of kreauchee, to subdue his impatience, or else make him brave enough to beat on the door and tell her to come out and make love among the phantoms. But he was too tender to face the currents. There'd come a time, — very soon, when the Reconciler, his gathering completed, would retire to the Ana. At that juncture the circle, its power no longer needed as a conduit to carry the analogues back into its reservoir, would turn off those currents and turn its attention to conveying the Reconciler through the In Ovo. There, in that window between the Reconciler's removal to the Ana and the completion of the working, he would act. He'd enter the house and let the gek-a-gek take Gentle (and any who rose to protect him) while he claimed Judith.

Thinking of her, and of the kreauchee he yearned for, he brought the blue egg out of his pocket and put it to his lips. He'd kissed its cool a thousand times in the last few hours; licked it; sucked it. But he wanted it deeper inside him, locked up in his belly as she would be when they'd mated again. He put it in his mouth, threw back his head, and swatlowed. It went down easily, and granted him a few minutes of calm while he waited for the hour of his deliverance.

Had Gem's head not had two tenants he might well have forsaken his place at the front door during the hours in which the Reconciler worked above. The currents which that process had unleashed had made his belly ache at the outset, but after a time their effect mellowed, suffusing his system with a serenity so persuasive he'd wanted to find a place to lie down and dream. But Tay had policed such dereliction of duty severely, and whenever Clem's attention strayed he felt his lover's presence—which was so subtly wed and interwoven with his thoughts it only became apparent when there was a conflict of interests—rousing him to fresh vigilance. So he kept his post, though by now it was surely an academic exercise.

The candle he had set beside the door was drowning in its own wax, and he had just stooped to wick the lip and let the excess flow off when he heard something hitting the step outside, the sound like that of a fish being slapped on a slab. He gave up his candle work and put his ear to the door. There was no further sound. Had a fruit fallen from the tree outside the house, he wondered, or was there some stranger rain tonight? He went from the door, through to the room where Monday had been entertaining Hoi-Polloi. They'd left it for some more private place, taking two of the cushions with them. The thought that there were lovers in the house tonight pleased him, and he silently wished them well as he crossed to the window. It was darker outside than he'd expected, and though he had a view of the step he couldn't distinguish between objects lying upon it and the designs that Monday had drawn there.

Perplexed rather than anxious, he went back to the front door and listened again. There were no further sounds, and he was tempted to let the matter alone. But he half hoped some visionary rain had indeed begun to fall, and he was too curious to ignore the mystery. He moved the candle from the door, the wax snuffing the flame as he did so. No matter. There were other candles burning at the bottom of the stairs, and he had sufficient light to find the bolts and slide them back.

In Celestine's room, Jude woke and raised her head from the mattress where she'd laid it an hour before. The conversation between the women had continued for some while after their peacemaking, but Jude's exhaustion had finally caught up with her, and Celestine had suggested she rest for a while, which, reassured by Celestine's presence, she'd gladly done. Now she stirred to find that Celestine had also succumbed, her head on the mattress, her body on the floor. She was snoring softly, undisturbed by whatever had woken Jude.

The door was slightly ajar, and a perfume was coming through it, stirring a faint nausea in Jude's system. She sat up and rubbed at the crick in her neck, then got to her feet. She'd slipped off her shoes before she lay down, but rather than search for them in the darkened room she went out into the hallway barefoot. The smell was much stronger now. It was coming from the street outside, its route plain. The front door was open, and the angels who'd been guarding it were gone.

Calling Clem's name, she crossed the hallway, her step slowing as she approached the open door. The candles at the stairs were bright enough to shed some light upon the step. There was something glistening there. She picked up her speed again, asking for the Goddesses to be with her and with Clem. Don't let this be him, she murmured, seeing that it was tissue glistening, and blood in a pool around it; please don't let this be him.

It wasn't. Now that she was almost at the threshold she saw the remnants of a face there and knew it: Sartori's agent, Little Ease. Its eyes had been scooped out, and its mouth, which had spewed pleas and flattery in such abundance, was tongueless. But there was no doubting its identity. Only a creature of the In Ovo could still twitch as this did, refusing to give up the semblance of life even if the fact of it had gone.

She looked beyond the trophy into the murk of the street, calling Clem's name again. There was no answer at first. Then she heard him, his shout half smothered. "Go back inside! For-God's-sake, go back!"

"Clem?" She stepped out of the house, bringing new cries of alarm from the darkness.

"Don't! Don't!"

"I'm not going back without you," she said, avoiding the

Oviate's head as she advanced.

She heard something let out a soft sound as she did so, like a creature growling with its maw full of bees. "Who's there?" she said.

There was no reply at first, but she knew it would come if she waited, and whose voice it would be when it did. She did not anticipate the nature of the reply, however, or its falling note.

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," Sartori said.

"If you've hurt Clem—"

"I've no wish to hurt anybody."

She knew that was a lie. But she also knew he'd do Clem no harm as long as he needed a hostage.

"Let Clem go," she said. "Will you come to me if I do?"

She left a decent pause before replying, so as not to seem too eager. "Yes," she said. "I'll come." "No, Judy!" Clem said. "Don't. He's not alone." She could see that now, as her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness. Sleek, ugly beasts prowled back and forth. One was up on its back legs, sharpening its claws on the tree. Another was in the gutter, close enough for her to see its innards through its translucent skin. Their ugliness didn't distress her. Around the fringes of any drama such detritus was bound to accrue: scraps of discarded characters, soiled costumes, cracked masks. They were irrelevancies, and her lover had taken them for company because he felt a kinship with them. She pitied them. But him, who'd been most high, she pitied more.

"I want to see Clem here on the step before I make a move," she said.

There was a pause, then Sartori said, "I'm going to trust you."

His words were followed by further sounds from the Oviates that paced in the murk, and Jude saw two of them slope out of the shadows, with Clem between them, his arms in their throats. They came close enough to the pavement for her to see the foam of appetite that rose from their lips; then they literally spat their prisoner free. Clem fell face down on the road, his hands and arms covered in their muck. She wanted to go to his aid there and then, but though the captors had retreated, the tree gouger had turned and lowered its shovel head, its eyes, black as a shark's, flickering back and forth in their bulbous sockets, hungry to have the frail meat on the road. If she moved she feared it would pounce, so she kept her place on the step while Clem hauled himself to his feet. His arms were blistered by the Oviate's spittle, but he was otherwise intact.

"I'm all right, Judy," he murmured. "Go back inside."

She stayed put, however, waiting until he was up and staggering across the pavement before she started down the steps.

"Go back!" he told her again.

She put her arms around him and whispered. "Clem. I don't want you to argue with this. Go into the house and lock the door. I'm not coming with you."

He started to speak, but she hushed him.

"No argument, I said. I want to see him, Clem. I want to ... be with him. Now, please, if you love me, go inside and close the door."

She felt reluctance in his every sinew, but he knew too much about the business of love, especially love that defied orthodoxy, to attempt to reason with her.

"Just remember what he's done," he said, as he let her go.

"That's all part of it, Clem," she said, and slipped past him.

It was easy to leave the light behind. The ache which the currents had woken in her marrow diminished with every yard she put between herself and the house, and the thought of the embrace ahead quickened her step. This was what she wanted, and what he wanted too. Though the first causes of this passion were gone—one to dust, one to divinity—she and the man in the darkness were its embodiments and could not be denied each other.

She glanced back towards the house once only, to see that Clem was lingering on the step. She didn't waste time trying to persuade him to go inside, but simply turned back to the shadows.

"Where are you?" she said.

"Here," her lover replied, and stepped from the folds of his legion.

A single strand of luminescent matter came with him, fine enough to have been woven by Oviate spiders, but clotted here and there with beads like pearls, which swelled and dropped from the filaments, running down his arms and face and mottling the ground where he walked. The light flattered him, but she was too hungry for the truth of his face to be deceived, and piercing the glamour with her stare found him much reduced. The shining dandy she'd first met in Klein's plastic garden had gone. Now his eyes were heavy with despair, his mouth drawn down at the corners, his hair awry. Perhaps he'd always looked like this, and he'd simply used some piffling sway to mask the fact, but she doubted it. He was changed on the outside because something had changed within.

Though she stood before him defenseless, he made no move to touch her, but hung back like a penitent in need of invitation before he approached the altar. She liked this new fastidiousness.

"I didn't hurt the angels," he said softly.

"You shouldn't even have touched them."

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," he said again.

"The gek-a-gek were clumsy. They dropped some meat from the roof."

"I saw."

"I was going to wait until the power subsided and come for you in style." He paused, then asked, "Would you have let me take you?"

"Yes."

"I wasn't certain. I was a little afraid you'd reject me, and then I'd become cruel. You're my sanity now. I can't go on without you,"

"You went on all those years in Yzordderrex."

"I had you there," he said, "only by a different name."

"And you were still cruel."

"Imagine how much cruder I would have been," he said, as if amazed at the possibility, "if I hadn't had your face to mellow me."

"Is that all I am to you? A face?"

"You know better than that," he said, his voice dropping " to a whisper.

"Tell me," she said, inviting his affections.

He glanced back over his shoulder, towards the legion. If he spoke to them she didn't hear it. They simply retreated, cowed by his glance. When they were gone, he put his hands to her face, his little fingers just beneath the line of her jaw, his thumbs laid lightly at the corners of her mouth. Despite the heat that was still rising from the cooked asphalt, his skin was chilly.

"One way or another," he said, "we don't have very long, so I'll keep this simple. There's no future for us now. Maybe there was yesterday, but tonight..."

"I thought you were going to build a New Yzordderrex."

"I was. I have the perfect model for it, here." His thumbs went from the corners of her mouth to the middle of her lips and stroked them. "A city made in your image, built in place of these miserable streets."

"But now?"

"We don't have the time, love. My brother's about his work up there, and when he's finished"—he sighed, his voice dropping lower still—"when he's finished—"

"What?" she said. There was something he wanted to share, but he was forbidding himself.

"I hear you went back to Yzordderrex," he said.

She wanted to press him to complete his earlier explanation, but she knew better than to push too hard, so she answered him, knowing his earlier doubts could surface again if she was patient. Yes, she said, she had indeed been to Yzordderrex, and she'd found the palace much changed. This sparked his interest.

"Who's taken it over? Not Rosengarten? No. The Dearthers. That damn priest Athanasius—"

"None of those."

"Who then?"

"Goddesses."

The web of luminescence fluttered around his head, shaken by his distress.

"They were always there," she told him. "Or at least one was, a Goddess called Uma Umagammagi. Have you ever heard of Her?"

"Legends—"

"She was in the Pivot."

"That's impossible," he said. "The Pivot belongs to the Unbeheld. The whole of the Imajica belongs to the Unbeheld."

She'd never heard of a breath of subservience in him before, but she heard it now.

"Does He own us too?" she asked him.

"We may escape that," he said. "But it'll be hard, love. He's the Father of us all. He expects to be obeyed, even to the very end." Again an aching pause, but this time a request on its heels. "Will you embrace me?" he asked her.

She answered with her arms. His hands slid from her face and through her hair to clasp behind her.

"I used to think it was a godlike thing to build cities," he murmured. "And if I built one fine enough it would stand forever, and so would I. But everything passes away sooner or later, doesn't it?"

She heard in his words a despair that was the inverse of Gentle's visionary zeal, as though in the time she'd known them they'd exchanged their lives. Gentle the faithless lover had become a dealer in heavens, while Sartori, the sometime maker of hells, was here holding out love as his last salvation.

"What is God's work," she asked him quietly, "if it's not the building of cities?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Well... maybe it's none of our business," she said, pretending a lover's indifference to matters of moment. "We'll: forget about the Unbeheld. We've got each other. We've got the child. We can be together for as long as we like."

There was enough truth in these sentiments, enough hope in her that this vision might come true, that using it for manipulative purpose sickened her. But having turned her: back on the house and all it contained, she could hear in her lover's whispers echoes of the same doubts that had made her an outcast, and if she had to use the feelings betweea them as a way to finally solve the enigma, so be it. Her queasiness at her deceit wasn't soothed by its effectiveness. When Sartori let out a tiny sob, as he did now, she wanted to confess her motives. But she fought the desire and let him suffer, hoping that he'd finally purge himself of all he knew, — even though she suspected he'd never dared even shape these thoughts before, much less speak them.

"There'll be no child," he said, "no being together."

"Why not?" she said, still striving to keep her tone optimistic. "We can leave now, if you want. We can go anywhere and hide away."

"There are no hiding places left," he said.

"We'll find one."

"No. There are none."

He drew away from her. She was glad of his tears. They. were a veil between his gaze and her duplicity.

"I told the Reconciler I was my own destroyer," he said. "I said I saw my works, and I conspired against them. But then I asked myself, Whose eyes am I seeing with? And you know what the answer is? My Father's eyes, Judith. My Father's eyes...."

Of all the voices to return into Jude's head as he spoke, it was Clara Leash's she heard. Man the destroyer, willfully undoing the world. And what more perfect manhood was there than the God of the First Dominion?

"If I sec my works with these eyes and want to destroy them," Sartori murmured, "what does He see? What does He want?"

"Reconciliation," she said.

"Yes. But why? It's not a beginning, Judith. It's the end. When the Imajica's whole, He'll turn it into a wasteland."

She drew away from him. "How do you know?"

"I think I've always known."

"And you said nothing? All your talk about the future—"

"I didn't dare admit it to myself. I didn't want to believe I was anything but my own man. You understand that. I've seen you fight to see with your own eyes. I did the same. I couldn't admit He had any part of me, until now." "Why now?"

"Because I see you with my eyes. I love you with my heart. I love you, Judith, and that means I'm free of Him. I can admit... what... I... know."

He dissolved in grief, but his hands kept hold of her as he shook.

"There's nowhere to hide, love," he said. "We've got a few minutes together, you and I: a few sweet moments. Then it's over."

She heard everything he said, but her thoughts were as much with what was going on in the house behind her. Despite all she'd heard from Uma Umagammagi, despite the zeal of the Maestro, despite all the calamities that would come with her interference, the Reconciliation had to be halted.

"We can still stop Him," she said to Sartori.

"It's too late," he replied. "Let Him have His victory. We can defy Him a better way. A purer way."

"How?"

"We can die together."

"That's not defying Him. It's defeat."

"I don't want to live with His presence in me. I want to lie down with you and die. It won't hurt, love."

He opened his jacket. There were two blades at his belt. They glittered by the light of the floating threads, but his eyes glittered more dangerously still. His tears had dried. He looked almost happy.

"It's the only way," he said.

"I can't."

"If you love me you will."

She drew her arm from his grasp. "I want to live," she said, backing away from him.

"Don't desert me," he replied. There was warning in his voice as well as appeal. "Don't leave me to my Father. Please. If you love me don't leave me to my Father. Judith!" .

He drew the knives out of his belt and came after her, offering the handle of one as he came, like a merchant selling suicide. She swiped at the proffered blade, and it went from his grasp. As it flew she turned, hoping to the Goddess that Clem had left the door open. He had; and lit every can—die he could find, to judge by the spill of light onto the step. She picked up her pace, hearing Sartori's voice behind her as she went. He only spoke her name, but the threat in it was unmistakable. She didn't reply—her flight from him was answer enough—but when she reached the pavement she glanced back at him. He was picking up the dropped knife, and rising.

Again he said, "Judith—"

But this time it was a warning of a different order. Off to her left a motion drew her glance. One of the gek-a-gek, the sharpener, was coming at her, its flat head now wide as a manhole and toothed to its gut.

Sartori yelled an order, but the thing was rogue and came on at her unchecked. She raced for the step, and as she did so heard a whoop from the door, Monday was there, naked but for his grimy underwear: in his hand, a homemade bludgeon, which he swung around his head like a man possessed. She ducked beneath its sweep as she made the step. Clem was behind him, ready to haul her in, but she turned to call Monday to retreat, in time to see the gek-a-gek mounting the step in pursuit. Her defender didn't retreat, but brought the weapon down in a whistling arc, striking the gek-a-gek's gaping head. The bludgeon shattered, but the blow sheared off one of the beast's bulbous eyes. Though wounded, its mass was still sufficient to carry it forward, and one of its freshly honed claws found Monday's back as he turned to dodge it. The boy shrieked and might have fallen beneath the Oviate's attack if Clem hadn't grabbed his arms and all but thrown him into the house.

The half-blinded beast was a yard from Jude's feet, its head thrown back as it raged in pain. But it wasn't the maw she was watching. It was Sartori. He was once again walking towards the house, a knife in each hand, and a gek-a-gek at each heel. His eyes were fixed on her. They shone with sorrow.

"In!" Clem yelled, and she relinquished both sight and step to pitch herself back over the threshold.

The one-eyed Oviate came after her as she did so, but Clem was fast. The heavy door swung closed, and Hoi-Pot-loi was there to fling the bolts across, leaving the wounded beast and its still more wounded master out in the darkness.

On the floor above, Gentle heard nothing of this. He had finally passed, via the circle's good offices, through the In Ovo and into what Pie had called the Mansion of the Nexus, the Ana, where he and the other Maestros would undertake the penultimate phase of the working. The conventional life of the senses was redundant in this place, and for Gentle being here was like a dream in which he was knowing but unknown, potent but unfixed. He didn't mourn the body he'd left in Gamut Street. If he never inhabited it again it would be no loss, he thought. He had a far finer condition here, like a figure in some exquisite equation that could neither be removed nor reduced but was all it had to be—no more, no less—to change the sum of things.

He knew the others were with him, and though he had no sight to see them with, his mind's eye had never owned so vast a palette as it did now, nor had his invention ever been finer. There was no need for cribbing and forgery here. He had earned with his metempsychosis access to a visionary grasp he'd never dreamt of possessing, and his imagination brimmed with correlatives for the company he kept.

He invented Tick Raw dressed in the motley he'd first seen the man wear in Vanaeph, but fashioned now from the wonders of the Fourth. A suit of mountains, dusted in Jokalaylaurian snow; a shirt of Patashoqua, belted by its walls; a shimmering halo of green and gold, casting its light down on a face as busy as the highway. Scopique was a less gaudy sight, the gray dust of the Kwem billowing around him like a shredded coat, its particles etching the glories of the Third in its folds. The Cradle was there. So were the temples at L'Himby; so was the Lenten Way. There was even a glimpse of the railroad track, the smoke of its locomotive rising to add its murk to the storm.:

Then Athanasius, dressed in a clout of dirty cloth and carrying in his bleeding hands a perfect representation of Yzordderrex, from the causeway to the desert, from the harbor to Ipse, The ocean ran from his wounded flank, and the crown of thorns he wore was blossoming, throwing petals of rainbow light down upon all he bore. Finally, there was Chicka Jackeen, here in lightning, the way he'd looked two hundred midsummers before. He'd been weeping, then, and waxen with fright. But now the storm was his possession, not his scourge, and the arcs of fire that leapt between his fingers were a geometry, austere and beautiful, that solved the mystery of the First, and in unveiling it made perfection the new enigma.

Inventing them this way, Gentle wondered if they in turn were inventing him, or whether his painter's hunger to see was an irrelevancy to them, and what they imagined, knowing he was with them, was a body subtler than any sight. It would be better that way, he supposed, and with time he'd learn to rise out of his literalisms, just as he'd shrug off the self that wore his name. He had no attachment to this Gentle left, nor to the tale that hung behind. It was tragedy, that self; any self. It was a marriage made with loss, and had he not wanted one last glimpse of Pie 'oh' pah, he might have prayed that his reward for Reconciliation would be this state in perpetuity.

He knew that wasn't plausible, of course. The Ana's sanctuary existed for only a brief time, and while it did so it had more ecumenical business than nurturing a single soul. The Maestros had served their purpose in bringing the Dominions into this sacred space, and would soon be redundant. They would return to their circles, leaving Dominion to meld with Dominion, and in so doing drive the In Ovo back like a malignant sea. What would happen then was a matter of conjecture. He doubted there'd be an instant of revelation—all the nations of the Fifth waking to their unfettered state in the same moment. It would most likely be slow, the work of years. Rumors at first, that bridges wreathed in fogs could be found by those eager enough to look. Then the rumors becoming certainties, and the bridges becoming causeways, and the fogs great clouds, until, in a generation or two, children were born who knew without being taught that the species had five Dominions to explore and would one day discover its own Godhood in its wanderings. But the time it took to reach that blessed day was unimportant. The moment the first bridge, however small, was forged, the Imajica was whole; and at that moment every soul in the Dominion, from cradle to deathbed, would be healed in some tiny part and take their next breath lighter for the fact.

Jude waited in the hall long enough to be sure that Monday wasn't dead; then she headed towards the stairs. The currents which had induced such discomforts were no longer circling in the system of the house: sure sign that some new phase of the working—possibly its last—was under way above. Clem joined her at the bottom of the stairs, armed with another two of Monday's homemade bludgeons.

"How many of these creatures are there out there?" he demanded.

"Maybe half a dozen."

"You'll have to watch the back door then," he said, thrusting one of the weapons at Jude.

"You use it," she said, 'pressing past him. "Keep them out for as long as you can."

"Where are you going?"

"To stop Gentle."

"Stop him? In God's name, why?"

"Because Dowd was right. If he completes the Reconciliation we're dead."

He cast the bludgeons aside and took hold of her. "No, Judy," he said. "You know I can't let you do that."

It wasn't just Clem speaking, but Tay as well: two voices and a single utterance. It was more distressing than anything she'd heard or seen outside, to have this command issue from a face she loved. But she kept her calm.

"Let go of me," she said, reaching for the banister to haul herself up the stairs.

"He's twisted your mind, Judy," the angels said. "You don't know what you're doing."

"I know damn well," she said, and fought to wrest herself free.

But Clem's arms, despite their blistering, were unyielding. She looked for some help from Monday, but he and Hoi-Polloi had their backs to the door, against which the gek-a-gek were beating their massive limbs. Stout as the timbers were, they'd splinter soon. She had to get to Gentle before the beasts got in, or it was all over.

And then, above the din of assault, came a voice she'd only heard raised once before.

"Let her go."

Celestine had emerged from her bedroom, draped in a sheet. The candlelight shook all around her, but she was steady, her gaze mesmeric. The angels looked around at her, Clem's hands still holding Jude fast.

"She wants to—"

"I know what she wants to do," Celestine said. "If you're our guardians, guard us now. Let her go."

Jude felt doubt loosen the hold on her. She didn't give the angels time to change their mind, but dragged herself free and started up the stairs again. Halfway up, she heard.a shout and glanced down to see both Hoi-Polloi and Monday thrown forward as the door's middle panel broke and a prodigious limb reached through to snatch at the air.

"Go on!" Celestine yelled up to her, and Jude returned to her ascent as the woman stepped onto the bottom stair to guard the way.

Though there was far less light above than below, the details of the physical world became more insistent as she climbed. The flight beneath her bare feet was suddenly a wonderland of grains and knotholes, its geography entrancing. Nor was it simply her sight that filled to brimming. The banister beneath her hand was more alluring than silk; the scent of sap and the taste of dust begged to be sniffed and savored. Defying these distractions, she fixed her attention on the door ahead, holding her breath and removing her hand from the banister to minimize the sources of sensation. Even so, she was assailed. The creaks of the stairs were rich enough to be orchestrated. The shadows around the door had nuances to parade and called for her devotion. But she had a rod at her back: the commotion from below. It was getting louder all the time, and now—cutting through the shouts and roars—came the sound of Sartori's voice.

"Where are you going, love?" he asked her. "You can't leave me. I won't let you. Look! Love? Look! I've brought the knives."

She didn't turn to see, but closed her eyes and stopped her ears with her hands, stumbling up the rest of the stairs blind and deaf. Only when her toes were no longer stubbed, and she knew she was at the top, did she dare the sight again. The seductions began again, instantly. Every nick in every nail of the door said, Stop and study me. The dust rising around her was a constellation she could have lost herself in forever. She pitched herself through it, with her gaze glued to the door handle, and clasped it so hard the discomfort canceled the beguilings long enough for her to turn it and throw the door open. Behind her Sartori was calling again, but this time his voice was slurred, as though he was distracted by profusion.

In front of her was his mirror image, naked at the center of the stones. He sat in the universal posture of the meditator: legs crossed, eyes closed, hands laid palms out in his lap to catch whatever blessings were bestowed. Though there was much in the room to call her attention—mantelpiece, window, boards, and rafters—their sum of enticements, vast as it was, could not compete with the glory of human nakedness, and this nakedness, that she'd loved and lain beside, more than any other. Neither the blandishments of the ., walls—their stained plaster like a map of some unknown country—nor the persuasions of the crushed leaves at the ^ sill could distract her now. Her senses were fixed on the : Reconciler, and she crossed the room to him in a few short ; strides, calling his name as she went.

He didn't move. Wherever his mind wandered, it was too far from this place—or rather, this place was too small a part of his arena—for him to be claimed by any voices here, however desperate. She halted at the edge of the circle. Though there was nothing to suggest that what lay inside was in flux, she'd seen the harm done to both Dowd and his voider when the bounds had been injudiciously breached. From down below she heard Celestine raise a cry of warning. There was no time for equivocation. What the circle would do it would do, and she'd have to take the consequences.

Steeling herself, she stepped over the perimeter. Instantly, the myriad discomforts that attended passage afflicted her—itches, pangs, and spasms—and for a moment — she thought the circle intended to dispatch her across the In Ovo. But the work it was about had overruled such functions, and the pains simply mounted and mounted, driving her to her knees in front of Gentle. Tears spilled from her knitted lids, and the ripest curses from her lips. The circle hadn't killed her, but another minute of its persecutions and it might. She had to be quick.

She forced open her streaming eyes and set her gaze on Gentle. Shouts hadn't roused him, nor had curses, so she didn't waste her breath with more. Instead she seized his shoulders and began to shake him. His muscles were lax, and he lolled in her grasp, but either her touch or the fact of her trespass in this charmed circle won a response. He gasped as though he'd been drawn up from some airless deep.

Now she began to talk.

"Gentle? Gentle! Open your eyes! Gentle. I said, Open your fucking eyes!"

She was causing him pain, she knew. The tempo and volume of his gasps increased, and his face, which had been beatifically placid, was knotted with frowns and grimaces. She liked the sight. He'd been so smug in his messianic mode. Now there had to be an end to that complacency, and if it hurt a little it was his own damn fault for being too much his Father's child.

"Can you hear me?" she yelled at him. "You've got to stop the working. Gentle! You've got to stop it!"

His eyes started to flicker open.

"Good! Good!" she said, talking at his face like a school-marm trying to coax a delinquent pupil.

"You can do it! You can open your eyes. Go on! Do it! If you won't, I'll do it for you, I'm warning you!"

She was as good as her word, lifting her right hand to his left eye and thumbing back the lid. His eyeball was rolled back into its socket. Wherever he was, it was still a tong way off, and she wasn't sure her body had the strength to resist its harrowment while she coaxed him home.

Then, from the landing behind her, Sartori's voice.

"It's too late, love," he said. "Can't you feel it? It's too late."

She didn't need to look back at him. She could picture him well enough, with the knives in his hands and elegy on his face. Nor did she reply. She needed every last ounce of will and wit to stir the man in front of her.

And then inspiration! Her hand went from his face to his groin, from his eyelid to his testicles. Surely there was enough of the old Gentle left in the Reconciler to value his manhood. The flesh of his scrotum was loose in the warmth of the room. His balls were heavy in her hand, heavy and vulnerable. She held them hard.

"Open your eyes," she said, "or so help me I'm going to hurt you."

He remained impassive. She tightened her grip. "Wake up," she said.

Still nothing. She squeezed harder, then twisted. "Wake up!"

His breath quickened. She twisted again, and his eyes suddenly opened, his gasps becoming a yell which didn't stop until there was no breath left in his lungs to loose it on. As he inhaled his arms rose to take hold of Jude at the neck. She lost her grip on his balls, but it didn't matter. He was awake and raging. He started to rise and, as he did so, pitched her out of the circle. She landed clumsily, but began harassing him before she'd even raised her head.

"You've got to stop the working!"

"Crazy .,. woman ..." he growled.

"I mean it! You've got to stop the working! It's all a plot!" She hauled herself up. "Dowd was right, Gentle! It's got to be stopped,"

"You're not going to spoil it now," he said. "You're too late."

"Find a way!" she said. "There's got to be a way!"

"If you come near me again I'll kill you," he warned. He scanned the circle, to be certain it was still intact. It was. "Where's Clem?" he yelled. "Clem?"

Only now did he look beyond Judith to the door, and beyond the door to the shadowy figure on the landing. His frown deepened into a scowl of revulsion, and she knew any hope of persuading him was lost. He saw conspiracy here.

"There, love," said Sartori. "Didn't I tell you it was too late?"

The two gek-a-gek fawned at his feet. The knives gleamed in his fists. This time he didn't offer the handle of either one. He'd come to take her life if she refused to take her own.

"Dearest one," he said, "it's over."

He took a step and crossed the threshold.

"We can do it here," he said, looking down at her, "where we were made. What better place?"

She didn't need to look back at Gentle to know he was hearing this. Was there some sliver of hope in that fact?

Some persuasion that might drop from Sartori's lips and move Gentle where hers had failed?

"I'm going to have to do it for us both, love," he said. "You're too weak. You can't see clearly."

"I don't... want... to die," she said.

"You don't have any choice," he said. "It's either by the Father or the Son. That's all. Father or Son."

Behind her, she heard Gentle murmur two syllables.

"Oh, Pie."

Then Sartori took a second step, out of the shadow into the candlelight. When he did, the obsessive scrutiny of the room fixed him in every wretched morsel. His eyes were wet with despair, his lips so dry they were dusty. His skull gleamed through his pallid skin, and his teeth, in their array, made a fatal smile. He was Death, in every detail. And if she recognized that fact—she who loved him—then so, surely, did Gentle.

He took a third step toward her and raised the knives above his head. She didn't look away, but turned her face up towards him, daring him to spoil with his blades what he'd caressed with his fingers only minutes before.

"I would have died for you," he murmured. The blades were at the top of their gleaming arc, ready to fall. "Why wouldn't you die for me?"

He didn't wait for an answer, even if she'd had one to give, but let the knives descend. As they came for her eyes she looked away, but before they caught her cheek and neck the Reconciler howled behind her, and the whole room shook. She was thrown from her knees, Sartori's blades missing her by inches. The candles on the mantelpiece guttered and went out, but there were other lights to take their place. The stones of the circle were flickering like tiny bonfires flattened by a high wind, flecks of their brightness racing from them to strike the walls. At the circle's edge stood Gentle. In his hand, the reason for this turmoil. He'd picked up one of the stones, arming himself and breaking the circle in the same moment. He clearly knew the gravity of his deed. There was grief on his face, so profound it seemed to have incapacitated him. Having raised the stone he was now motionless, as if his will to undo the working had already lost momentum.

She got to her feet, though the room was shaking more violently than ever. The boards felt solid enough beneath ; her, but they'd darkened to near invisibility. She could see only the nails that kept them in place; the rest, despite the light from the stones, was pitch black, and as she started towards the circle she seemed to be treading a void.

There was a noise accompanying every tremor now: a , mingling of tortured wood and cracking plaster, all underscored by a guttural boiling, the source of which she didn't comprehend until she reached the edge of the circle. The darkness beneath them was indeed a void—the In Ovo, opened by Gentle's breaking of the circle—and in it, al— , ready woken by Sartori's dabblings, the prisoners that connived and suppurated there, rising at the scent of escape.

At the door, the gek-a-gek set up a clamor of anticipation, sensing the release of their fellows. But for all their power they'd have few of the spoils in the coming massacre. There were forms appearing below that made them look kittenish: entities of such elaboration neither Jude's eyes nor wits could encompass them. The sight terrified her, but if this was the only way to halt the Reconciliation, then so be it. History would repeat itself, and the Maestro be twice damned.

He'd seen the Oviates' ascent as clearly as she and was frozen by the sight. Determined to prevent him from reestablishing the status quo at all costs, she reached to snatch the stone from his hand, so as to pitch it through the window. But before her fingers could grasp it he looked up at her. The anguish went from his face, and rage replaced it.

"Throw the stone away!" she yelled.

His eyes weren't on her, however. They were on a sight at her shoulder. Sartori! She threw herself aside as the knives came down and, clutching the mantelpiece, turned back to see the brothers face to face, one armed with blades, the other with the stone.

Sartori's glance had gone to Jude as she leapt, and before he could return it to his enemy Gentle brought the stone down with a two-handed blow, striking sparks from one of the blades as he dashed it from his brother's fingers. While the advantage was his, Gentle went after the second blade, but Sartori had it out of range before the stone could connect, so Gentle swung at the empty hand, the cracking of his brother's bones audible through the din of Oviates and boards and cracking walls.

Sartori made a pitiful yell and raised his fractured hand in front of his brother, as if to win remorse for the hurt. But as Gentle's eyes went to Sartori's broken hand, the other, whole and sharp, came at his flank. He glimpsed the blade and half turned to avoid it, but it found his arm, opening it to the bone from wrist to elbow. He dropped the stone, a rain of blood coming after, and as his palm went up to stem the flow Sartori entered the circle, slashing back and forth as he came.

Defenseless, Gentle retreated before the blade and, arching back to avoid the cuts, lost his footing and went down beneath his attacker. One stab would have finished him there and then. But Sartori wanted intimacy. He straddled his brother's body and squatted down upon it, slashing at Gentle's arms as he attempted to ward off the coup de grace.

Jude scoured the unsolid boards for the fallen knife, her gaze distracted by the malignant forms that were everywhere turning their faces to freedom. The blade, if she could find it, would be of no use against them, but it might still dispatch Sartori. He'd planned to take his own life with one of these knives. She could still turn it to such work, if she could only find it.

But before she could do so, she heard a sob from the circle and, glancing back, saw Gentle sprawled beneath his brother's weight, horrendously wounded, his chest sliced open, his jaw, cheeks, and temples slashed, his hands and arms crisscrossed with cuts. The sob wasn't his, but Sartori's.. He'd raised the knife and was uttering this last cry before he plunged the blade into his brother's heart.

His grief was premature. As the knife came down, Gentle found the strength to thrash one final time, and instead of finding his heart the blade entered his upper chest below his clavicle. Slickened, the handle slipped through Sartori's fingers. But he had no need to reclaim it. Gentle's rally was over as suddenly as it had begun. His body uncurled, its spasms ceased, and he lay still.

Sartori rose from his seat on his brother's belly and looked down at the body for a time, then turned to survey the spectacle of the void. Though the Oviates were close to the surface now, he didn't hurry to act or retreat, but surveyed the whole panorama at the center of which he stood, his eyes finally coming to rest on Jude.

"Oh, love," he said softly. "Look what you've done. You've given me to my Heavenly Father."

Then he stooped and reached out of the circle to take hold of the stone that Gentle had removed and, with the finesse of a painter laying down a final stroke, put it back in place.

The status quo wasn't instantly restored. The forms below continued to rise, seething with frustration as they sensed that their route into the Fifth had been sealed. The fire in the stone began to go out, but before their last gutterings Sartori murmured an order to the gek-a-gek and they sloped from their places at the door, their flat heads skimming the ground. Jude thought at first they were coming for her, but it was Gentle they'd been ordered to collect. They divided around the circle and reached over its perimeter, taking hold of the body almost tenderly and lifting it out of their Maestro's way.

"Down the stairs," he told them, and they retreated to the door with their burden, leaving the circle in Sartori's sole possession.

A terrible calm had descended. The last glimpses of the In Ovo had disappeared; the light in the stones was all but gone. In the gathering darkness she saw Sartori find his place at the center of the circle and sit.

"Don't do this," she murmured to him.

He raised his head and made a little grunt, as though he was surprised she was still in the room.

"It's already done," he said. "All I have to do is hold the circle till midnight."

She heard a moan from below, as Clem saw what the Oviates had brought to the top of the stairs. Then came the thump, thump, thump as the body was thrown down the flight. There could only be seconds before they came back for her, seconds to coax him from the circle. She knew only one way, and if it failed there could be no further appeal.

"I love you," she said.

It was too dark to see him, but she felt his eyes.

"I know," he said, without feeling. "But my Heavenly Father will love me more. It's in His hands now."

She heard the Oviates moving behind her, their breaths chilly on her neck.

"I don't ever want to see you again," Sartori said.

"Please call them off," she begged him, remembering the way Clem had been apprehended by these beasts, his arms half swallowed.

"Leave of your volition, and they won't touch you," he said. "I am about my Father's business."

"He doesn't love you...."

"Leave."

"He's incapable...."

"Leave,"

She got to her feet. There was nothing left to say or do. As she turned her back on the circle the Oviates pressed their cold flanks against her legs and kept her trapped between them until she reached the threshold, to be certain she made no last attempt on their summoner's life. Then she was allowed to go unescorted onto the landing. Clem was halfway up the stairs, bludgeon in hand, but she instructed him to stay where he was, fearful that the gek-a-gek would claw him to shreds if he climbed another step.

The door to the Meditation Room slammed behind her, and she glanced back to confirm what she'd already guessed: that the Oviates had followed her out and were now standing guard at the threshold. Still nervous that they'd land some last blow, she crossed to the top of the flight as though she were walking on eggs and only picked up her speed once she was on the stairs.

There was light below, but the scene it illuminated was as grim as anything above. Gentle was lying at the bottom of the stairs, his head laid on Celestine's lap. The sheet she'd worn had fallen from her shoulders, and her breasts were bare, bloodied where she'd held her son's face to her skin.

"Is he dead?" Jude murmured to Clem.

He shook his head. "He's holding on."

She didn't have to ask what for. The front door was open, hanging half demolished from its hinges, and through it she could hear the first stroke of midnight from a distant steeple.

"The circle's complete," she said.

"What circle?" Clem asked her.

She didn't reply. What did it matter now? But Celestine had looked up from her meditation on Gentle's face, and the same question was in her eyes as on Clem's lips, so Jude answered them as plainly as she could.

"The Imajica's a circle," she said.

"How do you know?" Clem asked.

"The Goddesses told me."

She was almost at the bottom of the stairs, and now that she was closer to mother and son she could see that Gentle was literally holding on to life, clutching at Celestine's arm and staring up into her face. Only when Jude sank down onto the bottom stair did Gentle's eyes go to her.

"I... never knew," he said.

"I know," she replied, thinking he was speaking of Hapexamendios' plot. "I didn't want to believe it either."

Gentle shook his head. "I mean the circle," he said. "I never knew it was a circle...."

"It was the Goddesses' secret," Jude said.

Now Celestine spoke, her voice as soft as the flames that lit her lips. "Doesn't Hapexamendios know?"

Jude shook her head.

"So whatever fire he sends," Celestine murmured, "will burn its way around the circle."

Jude studied her face, knowing there was some profit in this knowledge but too exhausted to make sense of it. Celestine looked down at Gentle's face.

"Child?" she said.

"Yes, Mama."

"Go to Him," she said. "Take your spirit into the First and find your Father."

The effort of breathing seemed almost too much for Gentle, never mind a journey. But what his body was incapable of, maybe his spirit could achieve. He lifted his fingers towards his mother's face. She caught hold of them.

"What are you going to do?" Gentle said.

"Call His fire," Celestine said.

Jude looked towards Clem to see if this exchange made any more sense to him than it did to her, but he looked completely perplexed. What was the use of inviting death when it was going to come anyway, and all too quickly?

"Delay Him," Celestine was telling Gentle. "Go to Him as a loving son, and hold His attention for as long as you can. Flatter Him. Tell Him how much you want to see His face. Can you do that for me?"

"Of course, Mama."

"Good."

Content that her child would do as he was charged, Celestine laid Gentle's hand back upon his chest, and slid her knees out from beneath his head, lowering it tenderly to the boards. She had one last instruction for him.

"When you go into the First, go through the Dominions. He mustn't know that there's another way, do you understand?"

"Yes, Mama."

"And when you get there, child, listen for the voice. It's in the ground. You'll hear it, if you listen carefully. It says—"

"Nisi Nirvana."

"That's right."

"I remember," Gentle said. "Nisi Nirvana."

As if the name were a blessing and would protect him as he went on his way, he closed his eyes and took his leave.

Celestine didn't indulge in sentiment but rose, pulling the sheet up around her as she crossed to the bottom of the stairs. "Now I have to speak to Sartori."

"That's going to be difficult," Jude said. "The door's locked and guarded."

"He's my son," Celestine replied, looking up the flight. "He'll open it for me."

And so saying, she ascended.