"I'm not saying goodbye to you here or anywhere," Gentle said. "Now put your arms around me, lover. We've got a long way to go together yet."

39

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."

"She won't be coming, Floccus," Gentle said.

"Why in the Hyo not?"

"I'm afraid she's dead."

Dado's nervous tics and blinks ceased on the instant. He stared at Gentle with a tiny smile on his face, as if he was used to being the b.u.t.t of jokes and wanted to believe that this was one. "No," he said.

"I'm afraid so," Gentle replied. "She was killed in the palace."

Floccus took off his gla.s.ses again and ran his thumb and middle finger from the bridge of his nose along his lower lids. "That's grim," he said.

"She was a very brave woman."

"She was that."

"And she put up a very spirited defense. But we were outnumbered."

"How did you escape?" Floccus asked, the inquiry innocent of accusation.

"That's a very long story," Gentle said, "and I don't think I'm quite ready to tell it yet."

"Which way are you heading?" Dado said.

"Nikaetomaas told me you Dearthers have an encampment of some kind, at the margin of the First. Is that right?"

"Indeed we do."

"Then that's where I'm going. She said a man I knew-do you know Estabrook?-was healed there. I want to heal Pie."

"Then we'd best go together," Floccus said. "It's no use my waiting here any longer. Nikae's spirit will have pa.s.sed by a long time ago."

"Do you have any kind of transport?"

"Indeed I do," he said, brightening. "A very fine car I found in the Caramess. It's parked over there." He pointed through the crush.

"If it's still there," Gentle remarked.

"It's guarded," Dado said, with a grin. "May I help you with the mystif?"

He put his arm beneath Pie, who had now lost consciousness completely; then they started to make their way through the crowd, Dado shouting to clear the route ahead. His demands were almost entirely ignored until he started shouting "Ruuka.s.sh! Ruuka.s.sh!" which had the desired effect of dividing the throng.

"What's Ruuka.s.sh?" Gentle asked him.

"Contagious," Dado replied. "Not far now."

A few paces on, and the vehicle came into view. Dado had good taste in loot. Not since that first glorious trip along the Patashoqua Highway had Gentle set eyes on a vehicle so sleek, so polished-or so wholly inappropriate for desert travel. It was powder-blue with silver trim, its tires white, its interior fur lined. Sitting on the hood, its leash tied to one of the wing mirrors, was its guard and ant.i.thesis: an animal related to the ragemy-via the hyena-and boasting the least pleasant attributes of both. It was as round and lardy as a pig, but its back and flanks were covered with a coat of mottled fur. Its head was short-snouted but heavily whiskered. Its ears p.r.i.c.ked like a dog's at the sight of Dado, and it set up a round of barks and squeals so high they made Dado sound ba.s.so profundo by contrast.

"Good girl!! Good girl!" he said.

The creature was up on its stubby legs, shaking its rear in delight at its master's return. Its belly was laden with teats, which shook to the rhythm of its welcome.

Dado opened the door, and there on the pa.s.senger seat was the reason the creature was so defensive of the vehicle: a litter of five yapping offspring, perfect miniatures of their mother. Dado suggested Gentle and Pie take the back seat, while Mama Sighshy, as he called her, sat with her children. The interior stank of the animals, but the previous owner had been fond of comfort, and there were cushions to support the mystifs head and neck. When Sighshy herself was invited back into the vehicle the stench increased tenfold, and she growled at Gentle in a less than friendly manner, but Dado placated her with baby talk, and she was soon curled up on the seat beside him, suckling her fat babes. With the travelers a.s.sembled, they headed off towards the mountains.

Exhaustion claimed Gentle after a mile or two, and he slept, his head on Pie's shoulder. The road steadily deteriorated over the next few hours, and the discomfort of the journey repeatedly brought him up to the surface of sleep, with sc.r.a.ps of dreams clinging to him. They were not dreams of Yzordderrex, nor were they memories of the adventures he and Pie had shared on their travels across the Imajica. It was the Fifth his mind was returning to in these fitful slumbers, shunning the horrors and the murders of the Reconciled Dominions for safer territory.

Except that it wasn't safe any longer, of course. The man he'd been in that Dominion-Klein's b.a.s.t.a.r.d Boy, the lover and the faker-was a fabrication, and he could never return to that simple, sybaritic life again. He'd lived a lie, the scale of which even the most suspicious of his mistresses (Vanessa, whose abandoning of him had begun this whole endeavor) could never have imagined; and from that lie, three human spans of self-deceit had come. Thinking of Vanessa, he remembered the empty mews house in London, and the desolation he'd felt wandering it with nothing to show for his life but a string of broken romances, a few forged paintings, and the clothes he was wearing. It was laughable now, but that day he'd thought he could fall no further. Such navete! He'd learned lessons in despair since then numerous enough to fill a book, the bitterest reminder lying in wounded sleep beside him.

Though it was distressing to conceive of losing Pie, he refused himself the indulgence of denying the possibility. He'd turned a blind eye on the unpalatable too often in the past, with catastrophic results. Now the facts had to be faced. The mystif was becoming frailer by the hour, its skin icy, its breath so shallow that on occasion it was barely discernible. Even if all that Nikaetomaas had said about the Erasure's healing powers proved correct, there would be no miracle cure for such a profound malady. Gentle would have to go back to the Fifth alone, trusting that Pie'oh'pah would be fit enough to follow after a time. The longer he delayed that return, the less opportunity he'd have to muster a.s.sistance in the war against Sartori.

That war would come, he had no doubt of it. The urge to conquer burned bright in his other, as it had perhaps once burned in him, until desire and luxury and forgetfulness had dimmed it. But where would he find such allies? Men and women who wouldn't laugh (the way he'd have laughed, six months before) when he started to talk about the Dominion-hopping he'd done and the jeopardy the world was in from a man with his face? Certainly he wouldn't find imaginations among his peer group supple enough to embrace the vistas he was returning to describe. They were fashionably disdainful of belief, having had the flesh-as-star-stuff hopes of youth dashed by midnight sweats and their morning reflection. The most he'd heard any of them confess to was a vague pantheism, and they'd deny even that when sober. Of them all he'd only ever heard Clem espouse any belief in organized religion, and those dogmas were as ant.i.thetical to the message he was bringing from the Dominions as the tenets of a nihilist. Even if Clem could be persuaded from the Communion rail to join Gentle, they would be an army of two against a Maestro who had honed his powers until they could command Dominions.

There was one other possibility, and that was Judith. She would certainly not mock his wanderer's tales, but she'd been treated so heinously from the start of this tragedy that he dared not expect forgiveness from her, much less fellowship. Besides, who knew where her true sympathies lay? Though she might resemble Quaisoir to the last hair, she'd been made in the same bloodless womb that had produced the Autarch. Was she not therefore his spiritual sister: not born, but made? If she had to choose between the butcher of Yzordderrex and those seeking to destroy him, could she be trusted to side with the destroyers, when their victory would mean she'd lose the only creature in the Imajica who shared her condition? Though she and Gentle had meant much to each other (who knew how many liaisons they'd enjoyed over the centuries; reigniting the desire which had brought them together in the first place, then parting again, forgetting they'd even met?) he had to treat her with the utmost caution from this point on. She'd been innocent in the dramas of an earlier age, a toy in cruel and careless hands. But the woman she'd become over the decades was neither victim nor toy, and if (or perhaps when when) she became aware of her past she was perfectly capable of revenging herself upon the man who'd made her, however much she'd claimed to love him once.

Seeing that his pa.s.senger was now awake, Floccus gave Gentle a progress report. They were making good time, he said. Within an hour they'd be in the mountains, on the other side of which the desert lay.

"How long do you estimate to the Erasure?" Gentle asked him.

"We'll be there before nightfall," Floccus promised. "How's the mystif faring?"

"Not well, I'm afraid."

"There'll be no cause to mourn," Floccus said brightly, "I've known people on death's door who were healed at the Erasure. It's a place of miracles. But then everywhere is, if we just knew how to look. That's what Father Athanasius taught me. You were in prison with Athanasius, weren't you?"

"I was never exactly imprisoned. Not the way he was."

"But you met him?"

"Oh, yes. He was priest at our wedding."

"You and mystif, you mean? You're married?" He whistled. "Now you, sir, are what I call a lucky man. I've heard a lot about these mystifs, and I never heard of one getting married before. They're usually lovers. Heartbreakers." He whistled again. "Well, that's wonderful," he said. "We'll make sure she makes it, sir, don't you worry. Oh, I'm sorry. She's not a she, is she? I've got to get that right. It's just that when I look at her-I mean it-I see a she, you know? I suppose that's the wonder of them."

"It's part of it."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Ask away."

"When you look at her, what do you see?"

"I've seen all kinds of things," Gentle replied. "I've seen women. I've seen men. I've even seen myself."

"But at the moment," Floccus said. "What do you see right now?"

Gentle looked at the mystif. "I see Pie," he said. "I see the face I love."

Floccus made no reply to this, and after such gushing enthusiasm Gentle knew there had to be some significance in his silence.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"Do you really want to know?"

"I do. We're friends, aren't we? At least getting that way. Tell me."

"I was thinking it's not good you care too much about the way she looks. The Erasure's no place to be in love with things as they are. People heal there, but they also change, you understand?" He took both hands off the wheel to make cupped palms, like scales. "There's got to be a balance. Something given, something taken away."

"What kind of changes?" Gentle said.

"Different from one to another," Floccus said. "But you'll see for yourself, very soon. When we get close to the First Dominion, nothing's quite as it seems."

"Isn't that true of everything?" Gentle said. "The more I live, the less I seem to be certain about."

Floccus' hands were back on the wheel, his burst of sunny talk suddenly overcast. "I don't think Father Athanasius ever talked about that," he said. "Maybe he did. I don't remember everything he said."

The conversation ended there, leaving Gentle to wonder if in bringing the mystif back to the borders of the Dominion from which its people had been exiled, returning the great transformer to a land in which transformation was a commonplace, he was undoing the knot Athanasius had tied in the Cradle of Chzercemit.

Jude had never been much impressed with architectural rhetoric, and she found nothing in the courtyards or corridors of the Autarch's palace to dissuade her from that indifference. There were some sights that put her in mind of natural splendors: smoke drifting across the forsaken gardens like morning mist, or clinging to the cold stone of the towers like cloud to a mountain spire. But such punnish pleasures were few. It was mostly bombast: everything built on a scale intended to be awe-inspiring but to her eye merely monolithic.

She was glad when they finally reached Quaisoir's quarters, which for all their absurd ornamentation were at least humanized by their excesses. And they also heard there the first friendly voice in many hours, though its welcoming tones turned to horror when its owner, Quaisoir's many-tailed handmaiden, Concupiscentia, saw that her mistress had gained a twin and lost her eyes in the night she'd spent looking for salvation. Only after a good deal of lamentation could she be persuaded to tend to Quaisoir, which she did with trembling hands. The comet was by now making its steep ascent, and from Quaisoir's window Jude had a panoramic view of the desolation. She'd heard and seen enough in her short time here to realize that Yzordderrex had been ripe for the calamity that had overtaken it, and some in this city, perhaps many, had fanned the fire that had destroyed the Kesparates, calling it a just and cleansing flame. Even Peccable-who hadn't got an anarchist bone in his body-had intimated that Yzordderrex's time had come. But Jude still mourned its pa.s.sing. This was the city she'd begged Oscar to show her, whose air had smelled so temptingly spicy, and whose warmth, issuing from the Retreat that day, had seemed paradisiacal. Now she would return to the Fifth Dominion with its ash on her soles and its s.m.u.ts in her nose, like a tourist back from Venice with pictures of bubbles in a lagoon.

"I'm so tired," Quaisoir said. "Will you mind if I sleep?"

"Of course not," Jude said.

"Is Seidux's blood still on the bed?" she asked Concupiscentia.

"It is, ma'am."

"Then I won't lie there, I think." She put out her arm. "Lead me to the little blue room. I'll sleep there. Judith, you should sleep too. Bathe and sleep. We've got so much to plan together."

"We do?"

"Oh, yes, sister," Quaisoir said. "But later..."

She let Concupiscentia lead her away, leaving Jude to wander through the chambers which Quaisoir had occupied all her years of power. There was indeed a little blood on the sheets, but the bed looked tempting nevertheless, the scent off it dizzyingly strong. She refused its lush blandishments, however, and moved in search of a bathroom, antic.i.p.ating another chamber of baroque excess. In fact it proved to be the only room in the suite that came within shouting distance of restraint, and she happily lingered there, running a hot bath and soaking some of the ashes out of her body while contemplating her misty reflection in its black tiles.

When she emerged, her skin tingling, the clothes she'd sloughed off-which were filthy and stinking-revolted her. She left them on the floor and, instead, putting on the most subdued of the robes that lay scattered around the bedroom, took to the scented sheets. A man had been killed here only a few hours before, but that thought-which would once have driven her from the room, much less the bed-concerned her not at all. She didn't discount the possibility that this disinterest in the bed's sordid past was in part the influence of the scents off the pillow she laid her head upon. They conspired with fatigue, and with the heat of the bath from which she'd risen, to induce a languor she couldn't have resisted had her life depended upon it. The tension went from her sinews and joints; her belly gave up its jitters. Closing her eyes, she let her sister's bed lull her into dreaming.

Even during his most despondent meditations at the Pivot pit, Sartori had never felt the emptiness of his condition as acutely as he did now that he was parted from his other. Meeting Gentle in the tower and witnessing the Pivot's call to Reconciliation, he'd sensed new possibilities in the air: a marriage of self and self which would heal him into wholeness. But Gentle had poured contempt on that vision, preferring his mystif spouse over his brother. Perhaps he'd change his mind now that Pie'oh'pah was dead, but Sartori doubted it. If he he were Gentle-and he was-the mystifs death would be obsessed upon and magnified until such time as it could be revenged. The enmity between them was confirmed. There'd be no reunion. were Gentle-and he was-the mystifs death would be obsessed upon and magnified until such time as it could be revenged. The enmity between them was confirmed. There'd be no reunion.

He shared none of this with Rosengarten, who found him up in the gazebo, guzzling chocolate and musing on his anguish. Nor did he allow Rosengarten to recount the disasters of the night (the generals dead, the army murdered or mutinied) for very long without stopping him. They had plans to lay together, he told the piebald man, and it was little use fretting over what was lost.

"We're going to go to the Fifth, you and I," he informed Rosengarten. "We're going to build a new Yzordderrex."

It wasn't often he'd won a response from the man, but he got one now. Rosengarten smiled.

"The Fifth?" he said.

"I knew it many years ago, of course, but by all accounts it's naked now. The Maestros I knew are dead. Their wisdoms are dishonored. The place is defenseless. We'll take them with such sways they won't even know they've given up their Dominion until the New Yzordderrex is in their hearts and inviolate."

Rosengarten made a murmur of approval.

"Make any farewells you have to make," Sartori said. "And I'll make mine."

"We're going now?"

"Before the fires are out," the Autarch said.