Imajica

  “Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing . . .”

  But before he’d completed the second dictum, the phrase was taken up by a mellifluous voice from above.

  “. . . except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing . . .”

  The figment of Lucius Cobbitt faded as Gentle continued to climb, but the voice became louder.

  “. . . except in the certainty that you are your enemy’s begetter and its only hope of healing.”

  And with the voice came the realization that the wisdom he’d bestowed on Lucius had not been his at all. It had originated with the mystif. The door to the Meditation Room was open, and Pie was perched on the sill, smiling out of the past.

  “When did you invent that?” the Maestro asked.

  “I didn’t invent it, I learned it,” the mystif replied. “From my mother. And she learned it from her mother, or her father, who knows? Now you can pass it on.”

  “And what am I?” he asked the mystif. “Your son or your daughter?”

  Pie looked almost abashed. “You’re my Maestro.”

  “Is that all? We’re still masters and servants here? Don’t say that.”

  “What should I say?”

  “What you feel.”

  “Oh.” The mystif smiled. “If I told you what I feel we’d be here all day.”

  The gleam of mischief in its eye was so endearing, and the memory so real, it was all Gentle could do to prevent himself crossing the room and embracing the space where his friend had sat. But there was work to be done—his Father’s business, as Jude had called it—and it was more pressing than indulging his memories. When Little Ease had been ousted from the house, then he’d return here and search for a profounder lesson: that of the workings of the Reconciliation. He needed that education quickly, and the echoes here were surely rife with exchanges on the subject.

  “I’ll be back,” he said to the creature on the sill.

  “I’ll be waiting,” it replied.

  He glanced back towards it, and the sun, catching the window behind, momentarily ate into its silhouette, showing him not a whole figure but a fragment. His gut turned, as the image called another back to mind, with appalling force: the Erasure, in roiling chaos, and in the air above his head, the howling rags of his beloved, returned into the Second with some words of warning.

  “Undone,” it had said, as it fought the claim of the Erasure. “We are . . . undone.”

  Had he made some placating reply, snatched from his lips by the storm? He didn’t remember. But he heard again the mystif telling him to find Sartori, instructing him that his other knew something that he, Gentle, didn’t. And then it had gone, been snatched away into the First Dominion and silenced there.

  His heart racing, Gentle shook this horror from his head and looked back towards the sill. It was empty now. But Pie’s exhortation to find Sartori was still in his head. Why had that been so important? he wondered. Even if the mystif had somehow discovered the truth of Gentle’s origins in the First Dominion and had failed to communicate the fact, it must have known that Sartori was as much in ignorance of the secret as his brother. So what was the knowledge the mystif had believed Sartori possessed, that it had defied the limits of God’s Kingdom to spur him into pursuit?

  A shout from below had him give up the enigma. Jude was calling out to him. He headed down the stairs at speed, following her voice through the house and into the kitchen, which was large and chilly. Jude was standing close to the window, which had gone to ruin many years ago, giving access to the convolvulus from the garden behind, which having entered had rotted in a darkness its own abundance had thickened. The sun could only get pencil beams through this snare of foliage and wood, but they were sufficient to illuminate both the woman and the captive whose head she had pinned beneath her foot. It was Little Ease, his oversized mouth drawn down like a tragic mask, his eyes turned up towards Jude.

  “Is this it?” she said.

  “This is it.”

  Little Ease set up a round of thin mewling as Gentle approached, which it turned into words. “I didn’t do a thing! You ask her, ask her please, ask her did I do a thing? No, I didn’t. Just keeping out of harm’s way, I was.”

  “Sartori’s not very happy with you,” Gentle said.

  “Well, I didn’t have a hope,” it protested. “Not against the likes of you. Not against a Reconciler.”

  “So you know that much.”

  “I do now. ‘We have to be whole,’ “ it quoted, catching Gentle’s tone perfectly. “ ‘We have to be reconciled with everything we ever were—‘ “

  “You were listening.”

  “I can’t help it,” the creature said. “I was born inquisitive. I didn’t understand it, though,” it hastened to add. “I’m not spying, I swear.”

  “Liar,” Jude said. Then to Gentle, “How do we kill it?”

  “We don’t have to,” he said. “Are you afraid, Little Ease?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Would you swear allegiance to me if you were allowed to live?”

  “Where do I sign? Show me the place!”

  “You’d let this live?” Jude said.

  “Yes.”

  “What for?” she demanded, grinding her heel upon it. “Look at it.”

  “Don’t,” Little Ease begged.

  “Swear,” said Gentle, going down on his haunches beside it.

  “I swear! I swear!”

  Gentle looked up at Jude. “Lift your foot,” he said.

  “You trust it?”

  “I don’t want death here,” he said. “Even this. Let it go, Jude.” She didn’t move. “I said, let it go.”

  Reluctance in every sinew, she raised her foot half an inch and Little Ease scrabbled free, instantly taking hold of Gentle’s hand.

  “I’m yours, Liberatore,” it said, touching its clammy brow to Gentle’s palm. “My head’s in your hands. By Hyo, by Heretea, by Hapexamendios, I commit my heart to you.”

  “Accepted,” Gentle said, and stood up.

  “What should I do now, Liberatore?”

  “There’s a room at the top of the stairs. Wait for me there.”

  “For ever and ever.”

  “A few minutes will do.”

  It backed off to the door, bowing woozily, then took to its heels.

  “How can you trust a thing like that?” Jude said.

  “I don’t. Not yet.”

  “But you’re willing to try.”

  “You’re damned if you can’t forgive, Jude.”

  “You could forgive Sartori, could you?” she said.

  “He’s me, he’s my brother, and he’s my child,” Gentle replied. “How could I not?”

  II

  With the house made safe, the rest of the company moved in. Monday, ever the scavenger, went off to scour the neighboring houses and streets in search of whatever he could find to offer some modicum of comfort. He returned three times with bounty, the third time taking Clem off with him. They returned half an hour later with two mattresses and armfuls of bed linen, all too clean to have been found abandoned.

  “I missed my vocation,” Clem said, with Tay’s mischief in his features. “Burglary’s much more fun than banking.”

  At this juncture Monday requested permission to borrow Jude’s car and drive back to the South Bank, there to collect the belongings he’d left behind in his haste to follow Gentle. She told him yes, but urged him to return as fast as possible. Though it was still bright on the street outside, they would need as many strong arms and wills as they could muster to defend the house when night fell. Clem had settled Celestine in what had been the dining room, laying the larger of the two mattresses on the floor and sitting with her until she slept. When he emerged Tay’s feisty presence was mellowed, and the man who came to join Jude on the step was serene.

  “Is she asleep?” Jude asked him.

  “I don’t know if it’s sleep or a coma. Where’s
Gentle?”

  “Upstairs, plotting.”

  “You’ve argued.”

  “That’s nothing new. Everything else changes, but that remains the same.”

  He opened one of the bottles of beer sitting on the step and drank with gusto. “You know, I catch myself every now and then wondering if this is all some hallucination. You’ve probably got a better grasp of it than I have—you’ve seen the Dominions; you know it’s all real—but when I went off with Monday to get the mattresses, there were people just a few streets away, walking around in the sun as though it was just another day, and I thought, There’s a woman back there who’s been buried alive for two hundred years, and her son whose Father’s a God I never heard of—”

  “So he told you that.”

  “Oh, yes. And thinking about it, I wanted to just go home, lock the door, and pretend it wasn’t happening.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “Monday, mostly. He just takes everything in stride. And knowing Tay’s inside me. Though that feels so natural it’s like he was always there.”

  “Maybe he was,” she said. “Is there any more beer?”

  “Yep.”

  He handed over a bottle, and she struck it on the step the way he had. The top flew; the beer foamed.

  “So what made you want to run?” she said, when she’d slaked her thirst.

  “I don’t know,” Clem replied. “Fear of what’s coming, I suppose. But that’s stupid, isn’t it? We’re here at the beginning of something sublime, just the way Tay promised. Light coming into the world, from a place we never even dreamed existed. It’s the Birth of the Unconquered Son, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, the sons are going to be fine,” Jude said. “They usually are.”

  “But you’re not so sure about the daughters?”

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “Hapexamendios killed the Goddesses throughout the Imajica, Clem, or at least tried to. Now I find He’s Gentle’s Father. That doesn’t make me feel too comfortable about doing His work.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “Part of me thinks . . .” She let her voice trail into the silence, the thought unfinished.

  “What?” he asked. “Tell me.”

  “Part of me thinks we’re fools to trust either of them, Hapexamendios or His Reconciler. If He was such a loving God, why did He do so much harm? And don’t tell me He moves in mysterious ways, because that’s so much horse shit and we both know it.”

  “Have you talked to Gentle about this?”

  “I’ve tried, but he’s got one thing on his mind—”

  “Two,” Clem said. “The Reconciliation’s one. Pie ‘oh’ pah’s the other.”

  “Oh, yes, the glorious Pie ‘oh’ pah.”

  “Did you know he married it?”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  “It must have been quite a creature.”

  “I’m a little biased, I’m afraid,” she said dryly. “It tried to kill me.”

  “Gentle said that wasn’t Pie’s nature.”

  “No?”

  “He told me he ordered it to live its life as an assassin or a whore. It’s all his fault, he said. He blames himself for everything.”

  “Does he blame himself or does he just take responsibility?” she said. “There’s a difference.”

  “I don’t know,” Clem said, unwilling to be drawn on such niceties. “He’s certainly lost without Pie.”

  She kept her counsel here, wanting to say that she too was lost, that she too pined, but not trusting even Clem with this admission.

  “He told me Pie’s spirit is still alive, like Tay’s,” Clem was saying. “And when this is all over—”

  “He says a lot of things,” Jude cut in, weary of hearing Gentle’s wisdoms repeated.

  “And you don’t believe him?”

  “What do I know?” she said, flinty now. “I don’t belong in this Gospel. I’m not his lover, and I won’t be his disciple.”

  A sound behind them, and they turned to find Gentle standing in the hallway, the brightness bouncing up from the step like footlights. There was sweat on his face, and his shirt was stuck to his chest. Clem rose with guilty speed, his heel catching his bottle. It rolled down two steps, spilling frothy beer as it went, before Jude caught it.

  “It’s hot up there,” Gentle said.

  “And it’s not getting any cooler,” Clem observed.

  “Can I have a word?”

  Jude knew he wanted to speak out of her earshot, but Clem was either too guileless to realize this, which she doubted, or unwilling to play his game. He stayed on the step, obliging Gentle to come to the door.

  “When Monday gets back,” he said, “I’d like you to go to the estate and bring back the stones in the Retreat. I’m going to perform the Reconciliation upstairs, where I’ve got my memories to help me.”

  “Why are you sending Clem?” Jude said, not rising or even turning. “I know the way; he doesn’t. I know what the stones look like; he doesn’t.”

  “I think you’d be better off here,” Gentle replied.

  Now she turned. “What for?” she said. “I’m no use to anyone. Unless you simply want to keep an eye on me.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then let me go,” she said. “I’ll take Monday to help me. Clem and Tay can stay here. They’re your angels, aren’t they?”

  “If that’s the way you’d prefer it,” he said, “I don’t mind.”

  “I’ll come back, don’t worry,” she said derisively, raising her beer bottle. “If it’s only to toast the miracle.”

  III

  A little while after this conversation, with the blue tide of dusk rising in the street and lifting the day to the rooftops, Gentle left off his debates with Pie and went to sit with Celestine. Her room was more meditative than the one he’d left, where the memories of Pie had become so easy to conjure it was sometimes hard to believe the mystif wasn’t there in the flesh. Clem had lit candles beside the mattress upon which Celestine was sleeping, and their light showed Gentle a woman so deeply asleep that no dreams troubled her. Though she was far from emaciated, her features were stark, as though her flesh was halfway to becoming bone. He studied her for a time, wondering if his own face would one day possess such severity; then he returned to the wall at the bottom of the bed and sat on his haunches there, listening to the slow cadence of her breath.

  His mind was reeling with all that he’d learned, or recollected, in the room above. Like so much of the magic he’d become acquainted with, the working of the Reconciliation was not a great ceremonial. Whereas most of the dominant religions of the Fifth wallowed in ritual in order to blind their flocks to the paucity of their understanding—the liturgies and requiems, charts and sacraments all created to amplify those tiny grains of comprehension the holy men actually possessed—such theatrics were redundant when the ministers had truth in their grasp, and with the help of memory he might yet become one such minister.

  The principle of the Reconciliation was not very difficult to grasp, he’d discovered. Every two hundred years, it seemed, the In Ovo produced a kind of blossom: a five-petaled lotus which floated for a brief time in those lethal waters, immune to either their poison or their inhabitants. This sanctuary was called by a variety of names but most simply, and most often, the Ana. In it, the Maestros would gather, carrying there analogues of the Dominions they each represented. Once the pieces were assembled, the process had its own momentum. The analogues would fuse and, empowered by the Ana, burgeon, driving the In Ovo back and opening the way between the Reconciled Dominions and the Fifth.

  “The flow of things is towards success,” the mystif had said, speaking from a better time. “It’s the natural instinct of every broken thing to make itself whole. And the Imajica is broken until it’s Reconciled.”

  “Then why have there been so many failures?” Gentle had asked.

  “There haven’t been that many,” Pie had replied. “And they were always destroyed
by outside forces. Christos was brought down by politics. Pineo was destroyed by the Vatican. Always people from the outside, destroying the Maestro’s best intentions. We don’t have such enemies.”

  Ironic words, with hindsight. Gentle could not afford such complacency again, not with Sartori still alive and the chilling image of Pie’s last frantic appearance at the Erasure still in his head.

  It was no use dwelling on it. He put the sight away as best he could, settling his gaze on Celestine instead. It was difficult to think of her as his mother. Maybe, among the innumerable memories he’d garnered in this house, there was some faint recollection of being a babe in these arms, of putting his toothless mouth to these breasts and being nourished there. But if it was there, it escaped him. Perhaps there were simply too many years, and lives, and women, between now and that cradling. He could find it in him to be grateful for the life she’d given him, but it was hard to feel much more than that.

  After a time the vigil began to depress him. She was too like a corpse, lying there, and he too much a dutiful but loveless mourner. He got up to go, but before he quit the room he halted at her bedside and stooped to touch her cheek. He’d not laid his flesh to hers in twenty-three or -four decades, and perhaps, after this, he wouldn’t do so again. She wasn’t chilly, as he’d expected her to be, but warm, and he kept his hand upon her longer than he’d intended.

  Somewhere in the depths of her slumber she felt his touch and seemed to rise into a dream of him. Her austerity softened, and her pale lips said, “Child?”

  He wasn’t sure whether to answer, but in the moment of hesitation she spoke again, the same question. This time he replied.

  “Yes, Mama?” he said.

  “Will you remember what I told you?”

  What now? he wondered. “I’m . . . not certain,” he told her. “I’ll try.”