Imajica

"What did I tell you? Once seen, never forgotten."

Gentle said the name again and again, breathing it as though the syllables were an incantation. Then he turned to Clem.

"That lesson I never learned," he said. "It came from Pie."

"Where"s the mystif now?" Taylor asked. "Do you have any idea?"

Gentle went down on his haunches beside Tay"s sleeping host. "Gone," he said, closing his hands around the sunlight.

"Don"t do that," Taylor said softly. "You only catch the dark that way." Gentle opened his hand again and let the light lie on his palm. "You say the mystifs gone?" Tay went on. "Where, for G.o.d"s sake? How can you lose it twice?"

"It went into the First Dominion," Gentle replied. "It died and went where I couldn"t follow."

"I"m sorry to hear that."

"But I"ll see it again, when I"ve done my work," Gentle said.

"Finally, we get to it," Tay said.

"I"m the Reconciler," Gentle said. "I"ve come to open the Dominions..."

"So you have, Maestro," Tay said.

"... on Midsummer Night."

"You"re cutting it fine," Clem said. "That"s tomorrow."

"It can be done," Gentle said, standing up again. "I know who I am now. He can"t hurt me any more."

"Who can"t?" Clem asked.

"My enemy," Gentle replied, turning his face into the sunlight. "Myself."

After only a few days in this city that enemy, the sometime Autarch Sartori, had begun yearning for the languid dawns and elegiac dusks of the Dominion he"d left. The day came altogether too quickly here and was snuffed out with, the same alacrity. That would have to change. Among his plans for the New Yzordderrex would be a palace made of mirrors, and of gla.s.s made possessive by feits, that would hold the glory of these inkling dawns and protract them, so that they met the glow of dusk coming in other directions. Then he might be happy here.

There would be, he knew, little in the way of resistance to his taking of the Fifth, to judge by the ease with which the members of the Tabula Rasa had succ.u.mbed to him. All but one of them was now dead, cornered in their burrows like rabid vermin. Not one had detained him more than minutes; they had given up their lives quickly, with few sobs and still fewer prayers. He wasn"t surprised. Their ancestors had been strong-willed men, but even the most pungent blood thinned over generations, and the children of their children of their children (and so on) were faithless cowards.

The only surprise he"d had in this Dominion, and it was a sweet one, was the woman whose bed he was returning to: the peerless and eternal Judith. His first taste of her had been in Quaisoir"s chambers when, mistaking her for the woman he"d married, he"d made love to her on the bed of veils. Only later, as he"d prepared to quit Yzordderrex, had Rosengarten informed him of Quaisoir"s maiming and gone on to report the presence of a doppelganger in the corridors of the palace. That report had been Rosengarten"s last as a loyal commander. When, a few minutes later, he"d been ordered to join his Autarch on the journey to the Fifth, he"d unconditionally refused. The Second was his home, he said, and Yzordderrex his pride, and if he was to die then he wanted it to be in sight of the comet. Tempted as he was to punish the man for this dereliction of duty, Sartori had no desire to enter his new world with blood on his hands. He"d let the man go and departed for the Fifth, believing the woman he"d made love to on Quaisoir"s bed was somewhere in the city behind him. But no sooner had he taken up the mask of his brother"s life than he"d met her again, in Klein"s garden of scentless flowers.

He never ignored omens, good or bad. Judith"s reappearance in his life was a sign that they belonged together, and it seemed that she, all unknowing, felt the same. Here was the woman for the love of whom this whole sorry catalogue of death and desolation had been started, and in her company he felt himself renewed, as though the sight of her reminded his cells of the self he"d been before his fall. He was being offered a second chance: an opportunity to start again with the creature he"d loved and make an empire that would erase all memory of his previous failure. He"d had proof of their compatibility when they"d made love. A more perfect welding of erotic impulses he could scarcely have imagined. After it, he"d gone out into the city about the business of murder with more vigor than ever.

It would take time, of course, to persuade her that this was a marriage decreed by fate. She believed him to be his other and would be vengeful when he disabused her of this fiction. But he would bring her around in time. He had to. He had intimations, even in this blithe city, of intolerable things: whispers of oblivion that made the foulest Oviate he"d ever dredged up look alluring. She could save him from that, lick off his sweats and rock him to sleep. He had no fear that she"d reject him. He had a claim on her that would make her put aside all moral niceties: his child, planted in her two nights before.

It was his first. Though he and Quaisoir had attempted to found a dynasty many times, she"d repeatedly miscarried, then later corrupted her body with so much kreauchee it refused to produce another egg. But this Judith was a wonder. Not only had she made surpa.s.sing love with him, there was fruit from that coupling. And when the time came to tell her (once the irksome Oscar G.o.dolphin was dead, and the line for whom she"d been made stopped), then she would see the perfection of their union and feel it, kicking in her womb.

Jude hadn"t slept, waiting for Gentle to return from another night of wanderings. The summons she carried from Celestine was too heavy to sleep with; she wanted it said and done, so she could put her thoughts of the woman away. Nor did she want to be unconscious when he returned. The idea of his coming in and watching her sleep, which would have been comforting two nights before, unsettled her now. He was the egg licker, and its thief. When she had her possession back and he was gone off to Highgate, she"d rest, but not before.

The day was creeping up when he finally returned, but there was insufficient light for her to read much on his face until he was within a few yards of her, by which time he was wreathed in smiles. He chastised her fondly for waiting up. There was no need, he said; he was quite safe. The pleasantries stopped here, however. He saw her unease and wanted to know what was wrong.

"I went to Roxborough"s tower," she told him.

"Not on your own, I hope. Those people can"t be trusted."

"I took Oscar."

"And how"s Oscar?"

She was in no mood to prettify. "He"s dead," she said.

He looked genuinely saddened at this. "How did that happen?" he asked.

"It doesn"t matter."

"It does to me," he insisted. "Please. I want to know."

"Dowd was there. He killed G.o.dolphin."

"Did he hurt you?"

"No. He tried. But no."

"You shouldn"t have gone up there without me. What on earth possessed you?"

She told him, as plainly as she knew: "Roxborough had a prisoner," she said. "A woman he buried under the tower."

"He kept that little kink to himself," came the reply. She thought there was something almost admiring in his tone, but she fought the temptation to accuse him. "So you went to dig up her bones, did you?"

"I went to release her."

Now she had every sc.r.a.p of his attention. "I don"t follow," he said.

"She"s not dead."

"So she"s not human." He made a curt little smile. "What was Roxborough doing up there? Raising wantons?"

"I don"t know what wantons are."

"They"re ethereal wh.o.r.es."

"That doesn"t describe Celestine." She trailed the bait of the name, but he failed to bite. "She"s human. Or at least she was."

"And what is she now?"

Jude shrugged. "Something... else. I don"t quite know what. She"s powerful, though. She almost killed Dowd."

"Why?"

"I think you"re better off hearing that from her."

"Why should I want to?" he said lightly.

"She asked to see you. She says she knows you."

"Really? Did she say from where?"

"No. But she told me to mention Nisi Nirvana."

He chuckled at this.

"Does it mean something to you?" Jude said.

"Yes, of course. It"s a story for children. Don"t you know it?"

"No."

Even as she spoke, she realized why, but it was he who voiced the reason.

"Of course you don"t," he said. "You were never a child, were you?"

She studied his face, wishing she could be certain he meant to be cruel.

"So will you go to her?"

"Why should I? I don"t know her."

"But she knows you."

"What is this?" he said. "Are you trying to palm me off on another woman?"

He took a step towards her, and though she tried to conceal her reluctance to be touched, she failed.

"Judith," he said. "I swear I don"t know this Celestine. It"s you I think about when I"m not here-"

"I don"t want to discuss that now."

"What do you suspect me of?" he said. "I"ve done nothing. I swear." He laid both his hands on his chest. "You"re hurting me, Judith. I don"t know if that"s what you want to do, but you are. You"re hurting me."

"That"s a new experience for you, is it?"

"Is that what this is about? A sentimental education? If it is, I beg you, don"t torment me now. We"ve got too many enemies to be fighting with each other."

"I"m not fighting. I don"t want to fight."

"Good," he said, opening his arms. "So come here."

She didn"t move.

"Judith."

"I want you to go and see Celestine. I promised her I"d find you, and you"ll make a liar of me if you don"t go."

"All right, I"ll go," he said. "But I"m going to come back, love, you can depend on that. Whoever she is, whatever she looks like, it"s you I want." He paused. "Now more than ever," he said.

She knew he wanted her to ask him why, and for fully ten seconds she kept her silence rather than satisfy him. But the look on his face was so br.i.m.m.i.n.g she couldn"t keep her curiosity from putting the question on her tongue.

"Why now?" she said.

"I wasn"t going to tell you yet..."

"Tell me what?"

"We"re going to have a child, Judith."

She stared at him, waiting for some further explanation: that he"d found an orphan on the street or was bringing a babe from the Dominions. But that wasn"t what he meant at all, and her pounding heart knew it. He meant a child born from the act they"d performed: a consequence.

"It"ll be my first," he said. "Yours too, yes?"

She wanted to call him liar. How could he he know when know when she she didn"t? But he was quite certain of his facts. didn"t? But he was quite certain of his facts.

"He"ll be a prophet," he said. "You"ll see."

She already had, she realized. She"d entered its tiny life when the egg had plunged her consciousness down into her own body. She"d seen with its stirring spirit: a jungle city, and living waters; Gentle, wounded, and coming to take the egg from tiny fingers. Had that perhaps been the first of its prophecies?

"We made a kind of love no other beings in this Dominion could make," Gentle was saying. "The child came from that."

"You knew what you were doing?"

"I had my hopes."

"And didn"t I get a choice in the matter? I"m just a womb, am I?"

"That"s not how it was."

"A walking womb!"

"You"re making it grotesque."

"It is is grotesque." grotesque."

"What are you saying? How can anything that comes from us be less than perfection?" He spoke with almost religious zeal. "I"m changing, sweet. I"m discovering what it is to love, and cherish, and plan for the future. See how you"re changing me?"

"From what? From the great lover to the great father? Another day, another Gentle?"

He looked as though he had an answer on his tongue but bit it back. "We know what we mean to each other," he said. "There should be proof of that. Judith, please-" His arms were still open, but she refused to go into them. "When I came here I said I"d make mistakes, and I asked you to forgive me if I did. I"m asking you again now."

She bowed her head and shook it. "Go away," she said.

"I"ll see this woman if you want me to. But before I go, I want you to swear something to me. I want you to swear you won"t try and harm what"s in you."