"The mob must be here," Sartori remarked, with a hint of satisfaction. "It"s time to make your decision, brother. Do we go on from here together, or shall I rule the Fifth alone?"
A new din rose, loud enough to blot out any further exchange, and Sartori left off his counseling, stepping out into the pa.s.sageway.
"Stay here," he told Gentle. "Think about it while you wait."
Gentle ignored the instruction. As soon as Sartori was around the corner, he followed. The commotion died away as he did so, leaving only the low whistle from the soldier"s windpipe to accompany his pursuit. Gentle picked up his pace, suddenly fearing that an ambush awaited his other. No doubt Sartori deserved death. No doubt they both did. But there was a good deal he hadn"t prized from his brother yet, especially concerning the failure of the Reconciliation. He had to be preserved from harm, at least until Gentle had every clue to the puzzle out of him. The time would come for them both to pay the penalty for their excesses. But it wasn"t yet.
As he stepped over the dead soldier, he heard the mystifs voice. The single word it said was: "Gentle."
Hearing that tone-like no other he"d heard or dreamt- all concern for Sartori"s preservation, or his own, was overwhelmed. His only thought was to get to the place where the mystif was; to lay his eyes on it and his arms around it. They"d been parted for far too long. Never again, he swore to himself as he ran. Whatever edicts or obligations were set before them, whatever malice sought to divide them, never again would he let the mystif go.
He turned the corner. Ahead lay the doorway that led out into the antechamber. Sartori was on the other side, partially eclipsed, but hearing Gentle"s approach he turned, glancing back into the pa.s.sageway. The smile of welcome he was wearing for Pie "oh" pah decayed, and in two strides he was at the door to slam it in his maker"s face. Realizing he was outpaced, Gentle yelled Pie"s name, but the door was closed before the syllable was out, plunging Gentle into almost total darkness. The oath he"d made seconds before was broken; they were divided again, before they could even be reunited. In his rage Gentle threw himself against the door, but like everything else in this tower it was built to last a millennium. However hard he hit it, all he got was bruises. They hurt; but the memory of Sartori"s leer when he"d talked about his taste for mystifs stung more. Even now, the mystif was probably in Sartori"s arms. Embraced, kissed, possessed.
He threw himself against the door one final time, then gave up on such primitive a.s.saults. Drawing a breath, he blew it into his fist and slammed the pneuma against the door the way he"d learned to do in the Jokalaylau. It had been a glacier beneath his hand on that first occasion, and the ice had cracked only after several attempts. This time, either because his will to be on the other side of the door was stronger than his desire to free the women in the ice, or simply because he was the Maestro Sartori now, a named man who knew at least a little about the power he wielded, the steel succ.u.mbed at the first blow, and a jagged crack opened in the door.
He heard Sartori shouting on the other side, but he didn"t waste time trying to make sense of it. Instead he delivered a second pneuma against the fractured steel, and this time his hand pa.s.sed all the way through the door as pieces flew from beneath his palm. He put his fist to his mouth a third time, smelling his own blood as he did so, but whatever harm this was doing him, it had not yet registered as pain. He caught a third breath and delivered it against the door with a yell that wouldn"t have shamed a samurai. The hinges shrieked, and the door flew open. He was through it before it had struck the floor, only to find the antechamber beyond deserted, at least by the living. Three corpses, companions to the soldier who"d raised the alarm, lay sprawled on the floor, all opened with single slashes. He leapt over them to the door, his broken hand adding its drops to the pools he trod.
The corridor beyond was rank with smoke, as though something half rotted was burning in the bowels of the palace. But through the murk, fifty yards from him, he saw Sartori and Pie "oh" pah. Whatever fiction Sartori had invented to dissuade the mystif from completing its mission, it had proved potent. They were racing from the tower without so much as a backward glance, like lovers just escaped from death"s door.
Gentle drew breath, not to issue a pneuma this time but a call. He shouted Pie"s name down the pa.s.sageway, the smoke dividing as his summons went, as though the syllables from a Maestro"s mouth had a literal presence. Pie stopped and looked back. Sartori took hold of the mystif s arm as if to hurry it on, but Pie"s eyes had already found Gentle, and it refused to be ushered away. Instead it shrugged off Sartori"s hold and took a step in Gentle"s direction. The curtain of smoke divided by his cry had come together again and made a blur of the mystif s face, but Gentle read its confusion from its body. It seemed not to know whether to advance or retreat.
"It"s me!" Gentle called. "It"s me!"
He saw Sartori at the mystif s shoulder and caught fragments of the warnings he was whispering: something about the Pivot having hold of their heads.
"I"m not an illusion, Pie," Gentle said as he advanced. "This is me. Gentle. I"m real."
The mystif shook its head, looking back at Sartori, then again at Gentle, confounded by the sight.
"It"s just a trick," Sartori said, no longer bothering to whisper. "Come away, Pie, before it really gets a hold. It can make us crazy."
Too late, perhaps, Gentle thought. He was close enough to see the look on the mystif s face now, and it was lunatic: eyes wide, teeth clenched, sweat making red rivulets of the blood spattered on its cheek and brow. The sometime a.s.sa.s.sin had long since lost its appet.i.te for slaughter-that much had been apparent back in the Cradle, when it had hesitated to kill though their lives had depended upon it-but it had done so here, and the anguish it felt was written in every furrow of its face. No wonder Sartori had found it so easy to make the mystif forsake its mission. It was teetering on mental collapse. And now, confronted with two faces it knew, both speaking with the voice of its lover, it was losing what little equilibrium it had left.
Its hand went to its belt, from which hung one of the ribbon blades the execution squad had wielded. Gentle heard it sing as it came, its edge undulled by the slaughter it had already committed.
Behind the mystif, Sartori said, "Why not? It"s only a shadow."
Pie"s crazed look intensified, and it raised the fluttering blade above its head. Gentle halted. Another step and he was in range of the blade; nor did he doubt that Pie was ready to use it.
"Go on!" Sartori said. "Kill it! One shadow more or less...."
Gentle glanced towards Sartori, and that tiny motion seemed enough to spur the mystif. It came at Gentle, the blade whining. He threw himself backwards to avoid the swipe, which would have opened his chest had it caught him, but the mystif was determined not to make the same error twice, and closed the gap between them with a stride. Gentle retreated, raising his arms in surrender, but the mystif was indifferent to such signs. It wanted this madness gone, and quickly.
"Pie?" Gentle gasped. "It"s me! It"s me! I left you at the Kesparate! Remember that?"
Pie swung again, not once but twice, the second slash catching Gentle"s upper arm and chest, opening the coat, shirt, and flesh beneath. Gentle pivoted on his heel to avoid the following cut, putting his already bloodied hand to the wound. Taking another stumbling step of retreat, he felt the wall of the pa.s.sageway hard against his spine. He had nowhere else to run.
"Don"t I get a last supper then?" he said, not looking at the blade but at Pie"s eyes, attempting to stare past the slaughter fugue to the sane mind that cowered behind it. "You promised we"d eat together, Pie. Don"t you remember? A fish inside a fish inside-"
The mystif stopped. The blade fluttered at its shoulder, "-a fish."
The blade fluttered on, but it didn"t descend. "Say you remember, Pie. Please say you remember." Somewhere behind Pie, Sartori began a new round of exhortations, but to Gentle they were just a din. He continued to meet Pie"s blank gaze, looking for some sign that his words had moved his executioner. The mystif drew a tiny, broken breath, and the knots that bound its brow and mouth slipped. "Gentle?" it said.
He didn"t reply. He just let his hand drop from his shoulder and stood open-armed against the wall.
"Kill it!" Sartori was still saying. "Kill it! It"s just an illusion!"
Pie turned, the blade still raised. "Don"t!" Gentle said, but the mystif was already starting in the Autarch"s direction. Gentle called after it again, pushing himself from the wall to stop it. "Pie! Listen to me-"
The mystif glanced around, and as it did so Sartori raised his hand to his eye and in one smooth motion s.n.a.t.c.hed at it, extending his arm and opening his fist to let fly what it had plucked. Not the eye itself but some essence of his glance went from the palm like a ball trailing smoke. Gentle reached for the mystif to drag it out of the sway"s path, but his hand fell inches short of Pie"s back, and as he reached again the sway struck. The fluttering blade dropped from the mystif"s hand as it was thrown backwards by the impact, its gaze fixed on Gentle as it fell into his arms. The momentum carried them both to the ground, but Gentle was quick to roll from under the mystif s weight and put his hand to his mouth to defend them with a pneuma. Sartori was already retreating into the smoke, however, on his face a look that would vex Gentle for many days and nights to come. There was more distress in it than triumph; more sorrow than rage.
"Who will reconcile us now?" he said, and then he was gone into the murk, as though he had mastery of the smoke and had pulled it around him to duck away behind its folds.
Gentle didn"t give chase but went back to the mystif, lying where it had fallen. He knelt beside it.
"Who was he?" Pie said.
"Something I made," Gentle said, "when I was a Maestro."
"Another Sartori?" Pie said.
"Yes."
"Then go after him. Kill him. Those creatures are the most-"
"Later."
"Before he escapes."
"He can"t escape, lover. There"s nowhere he can go I won"t find him."
Pie"s hands were clutching at the place in mid-chest where Sartori"s malice had struck.
"Let me see," Gentle said, drawing Pie"s fingers away and tearing at the mystif"s shirt. The wound was a stain on its flesh, black at the center and fading to a pustular yellow at its edges.
"Where"s Huzzah?" Pie asked him, breath labored.
"She"s dead," Gentle replied. "She was murdered by a Nullianac."
"So much death," Pie said. "It blinded me. I would have killed you and not even known I"d done it"
"We"re not going to talk about death," Gentle said, "We"re going to find some way of healing you."
"There"s more urgent business than that," Pie said. "I came to kill the Autarch-"
"No, Pie...."
"That was the judgment," Pie insisted. "But now I can"t finish it. Will you do it for me?"
Gentle put his hand beneath the mystifs head and raised Pie up.
"I can"t do that," he said.
"Why not? You could do it with a breath."; "No, Pie. I"d be killing myself.""What?"
The mystif stared up at Gentle, baffled. But its puzzle ment was short-lived. Before Gentle had time to explain.
Pie let out a long, sorrowful sigh, in the shape of three soft words.
"Oh, my Lord."
"I found him in the Pivot Tower. I didn"t believe it at first...."
"The Autarch Sartori," Pie said, as if trying the words for their music. Then, its voice a dirge, it said, "It has a ring."
"You knew 1 was a Maestro all along, didn"t you?"
"Of course."; "But you didn"t tell me."
"I got as close as I dared. But I had sworn an oath never to remind you of who you were."
"Who made you swear that oath?"
"You did, Maestro. You were in pain, and you wanted to forget your suffering."
"How did I come to forget?"
"A simple feit."
"Your doing?"
Pie nodded. "I was your servant in that, as in everything. I swore an oath that when it was done, when the past was i^ifidden away, I would never show it to you again. And oaths don"t decay."
"But you kept hoping I"d ask the right questions-"
"Yes."
"-and invite the memory back in."
"Yes. And you came close."
"In Maike. And in the mountains."
"But never close enough to free me from my responsibilty. I had to keep my silence."
"Well, it"s broken now, my friend. When you"re nealed-"
"No, Maestro," Pie said. "A wound like this can"t be healed."
"It can and will," Gentle said, not willing to countenance the thought of failure.
He remembered Nikaetomaas1 talk of the Dearthers" encampment on the margin of the Second and First Dominions, where she"d said Estabrook had been taken. Miracles of healing were possible there, she"d boasted.
"We"re going to make quite a journey, my friend," he said, starting to lift the mystif up.
"Why break your back?" it said to him. "Let"s say our farewells here."
"I"m not saying goodbye to you here or anywhere," Gentie said. "Now put your arms around me, lover. We"ve got a long way to go together yet."
3.
The Comet"s ascent into the heavens above Yzordderrex, and the light it shed upon the city"s streets, didn"t shame the atrocities there into hiding or cessation; quite the other way around. The city was ruled by Ruin now, and its court was everywhere: celebrating the enthronement, parading its emblems-the luckiest already dead-and rehearsing its rites in preparation for a long and inglorious reign. Children wore ash today, and carried their parents" heads like censers, still smoking from the fires where they"d been found. Dogs had the freedom of the city and devoured their masters without fear of punishment. The carrion birds Sartori had once tempted off the desert winds to feed on bad meat were gathered on the streets in garrulous hordes, to dine on the men and women who"d gossiped there the day before.
There were those survivors, of course, who clung to the dream of Order and banded together to do what they could under the new regime, digging through the rubble in the hope of finding survivors, dousing fires in buildings that were whole enough to save, giving succor to the grieving and quick dispatch for those too wounded to bear another breath. But they were easily outnumbered by the souls whose faith in sanity had been shattered and met the comet"s eye with dissolution in their hearts. By midmorning, when Gentle and Pie reached the gate that led out of the city into the desert, many of those who"d begun the day determined to preserve something from this calamity had given up and were leaving while they still had their lives. The exodus that would empty Yzordderrex of much of its population within half a week had begun.
Beyond the vague instruction, gleaned from Nikaetomaas, that the encampment to which Estabrook had been taken lay in the desert at the limits of this Dominion, Gentle was traveling blind. He"d hoped to find somebody along the way to give him some better directions, but he encountered n.o.body who looked fit enough, mentally or physically, to lend him a.s.sistance. He"d bound the hand he"d wounded beating down the door of the Pivot Tower as best he could before leaving the palace. The stab wound he"d sustained when Huzzah had been s.n.a.t.c.hed and the cut the mystif s ribbon blade had opened were slight enough to cause him little discomfort. His body, possessed of a Maestro"s resilience, had survived three times a natural human span without significant deterioration, and it was quick to begin the process of mending itself now.
The same could not be said for Pie "oh" pah"s wounded frame. Sartori"s sway was venomous, draining the mystif s strength and consciousness. By the time Gentle left the city, the mystif was barely able to move its legs, obliging Gentle to half-hoist it up beside him. He only hoped they found some means of transport before too long, or this journey would be over before it was begun.
There was little chance of hitching a ride with any of their fellow refugees. Most were on foot, and those who had transport-carts, cars, runty mules-were already laden with pa.s.sengers. Several overburdened vehicles had given up the ghost within sight of the city gates, and those who"d paid for their ride were arguing on the roadside. But most of the travelers went on their way with an eerie hush, barely raising their eyes from the road a few feet in front of them, at least until they reached the spot where that road divided.
Here a bottleneck had been created, as people milled around, deciding on which of the three routes available to them they were going to take. Straight ahead, though a considerable distance from the crossroads, lay a mountain range as impressive as the Jokalaylau. The road to the left led off into greener terrain, and, not surprisingly perhaps, this was the most favored way. The least favored, and for Gentle"s purposes the most promising, was the road that lay to the right. It was dusty and badly laid, the terrain it wound through the least lush and therefore the most likely to deteriorate into desert. But he knew from his months in the Dominions that the terrain could change considerably within the s.p.a.ce of a few miles, and that perhaps out of sight along this road lay verdant pastures, while the track behind him could just as easily lead into a wilderness. While he was standing in the mill of travelers debating with himself, he heard a high-pitched voice and, peering through the dust, caught sight of a small fellow-young, spectacled, bare-chested, and bald-making his way towards him, arms raised.
"Mr. Zacharias! Mr. Zacharias!"
He knew the face, but from precisely where he couldn"t recall, nor could he put a name to it. But the man, perhaps used to being only half remembered, was quick to supply the information.
"Floccus Dado," he said. "You remember?"
Now he did. This was Nikaetomaas" comrade-in-arms.
Floccus s.n.a.t.c.hed off his gla.s.ses and peered at Pie. "Your lady friend looks sick," he said.
"It"s not a she. It"s a mystif."
"Sorry. Sorry," Floccus said, slipping his spectacles back on and blinking violently. "My error. s.e.x was never my strong point. Is it very sick?"
"I"m afraid so."
"Is Nikae with you?" Floccus said, peering around. "Don"t tell me she"s gone on ahead. I told her I was going to wait for her here if we got separated."