She stood up. "That rather depends on your point of view," she said, borrowing an air of comedic fatalism from the man at her feet. It was a tone worth rehearsing. She might need it quite a bit in the next few hours, "Can you spare a cigarette?" she asked Monday.

Monday fished out his pack and lobbed it over. She took one and threw the pack back as she returned to the fire, stooping to pluck up a burning twig to light the tobacco.

"What happened to fella, m'lad?"

"He's dead."

"So what do we do now?"

What indeed? If ever a road divided, it was here. Should she prevent the Reconciliation-it wouldn't be difficult; the stones were at her feet-and let history call her a destroyer for doing so? Or should she let it proceed and risk an end to all histories, and futures too?

"How long till it's light?" she asked Monday.

The watch he was wearing had been part of the booty he'd brought back to Gamut Street on his first trip. He consulted it with a flourish. "Two and a half hours," he said.

There was so little time to act, and littler still to decide on a course. Returning to Clerkenwell with Monday was a cul-de-sac; that at least was certain. Gentle was the Unbeheld's agent in this, and he wasn't going to be diverted from his Father's business now, especially on the word of a man like Dowd, who'd spent his life a stranger to truth. He'd argue that this confession had been Dowd's revenge on the living: a last desperate attempt to spoil a glory he knew he couldn't share. And maybe that was true; maybe she'd been duped.

"Are we going to collect these stones or what?" Monday said.

"I think we have to," she said, still musing.

"What are they for?"

"They're . . . like stepping stones," she said, her voice losing momentum as a thought distracted her.

Indeed they were stepping stones. They were a way back to Yzordderrex, which suddenly seemed like an open road, along which she might yet find some guidance, in these last hours, to help her make a choice.

She threw her cigarette down into the embers. "You're going to have to take the stones back to Gamut Street on your own, Monday."

"Where are you going?"

"To Yzordderrex."

"Why?"

"It's too complicated to explain. You just have to swear to me that you'll do exactly as I tell you."

"I'm ready," he said.

"All right. So listen up. When I'm gone I want you to take the stones back to Gamut Street and carry a message along with them. It has to go to Gentle personally, you understand? Don't trust anybody else with it. Even Clem."

"I understand," Monday said, beaming with pleasure at this unlooked-for honor. "What have I got to tell him?"

"Where I've gone, for one thing."

"Yzordderrex."

"That's right."

"Then tell him"-she pondered for a moment-"tell him the Reconciliation isn't safe, and he mustn't start the working until I contact him again."

"It isn't safe, and he mustn't start the working-""-until I contact him again."

"I've got that. Is there any more?"

"That's it," she said. "Now, all I've got to do is find the circle."

She started to scan the mosaic, looking for the subtle differences in tone that marked the stones. From past experience, she knew that once they'd been lifted from their niches the Yzordderrexian Express would be under way, so she told Monday to wait outside until she'd gone. He looked worried now, but she told him she'd come to no harm.

"It's not that," he said, "I want to know what the message means. If you're telling the boss it's not safe, does that mean he won't open the Dominions?"

"I don't know."

"But I want to see Patashoqua and L'Himby and Yzordderrex," he said, listing the places like charms.

"I know that," she said. "And believe me, I want the Dominions opened just as much as you do."

She studied his face in the dying firelight, looking for some clue as to whether he was being placated, but for all his youth he was a master of concealment. She'd have to trust that he'd put his duties as a messenger above his desire to see the Imajica and relay the spirit of her warning, if not its precise text.

"You've got to make Gentle understand the danger he's in," she said, hoping this tack would make him conscientious.

"I will," he said, now faintly irritated by her insistence.

She let the subject lie and returned to the business of finding the stones. He didn't offer his a.s.sistance, but retreated to the door, from which he said, "How will you get back?"

She'd found four of the stones already, and the birds on the roof had set up a fresh cacophony, suggesting that they felt some tremor of change below.

"I'll deal with that problem when I get to it," she replied.

The birds suddenly rose up and, unnerved, Monday stepped out of the Retreat altogether. Jude glanced up at him as she dug out another stone. The fire between them had already been fanned into flame, and now its ashes were stirred up, rising in a s.m.u.tty cloud to hide the door from view. She scanned the mosaic, checking to see if she'd missed a stone, but the itches and aches she remembered from her first crossing were already creeping through her body, proof that the pa.s.sing place was about its work.

Oscar had told her, on this very spot, that the discomforts of pa.s.sage diminished with repet.i.tion, and his words proved correct. She had time, as the walls blurred around her, to glimpse the door through the swirling ash and realize, all too late, that she should have looked out at the world one last time before leaving it. Then the Retreat disappeared, and the In Ovo's delirium was oppressing her, its prisoners rising in their legions to claim her. Traveling alone, she went more quickly than she had with Oscar (at least that was her impression), and she was out the other side before the Oviates had time to sniff the heels of her glyph.

The walls of the merchant Peccable's cellar were brighter than she remembered them. The reason: a lamp which burned on the floor a yard from the circle and beyond it a figure, its face a blur, which came at her with a bludgeon and laid her unconscious on the floor before she'd uttered a word of explanation.

18.

The mantle of night was falling on the Fifth Dominion, and Gentle found Tick Raw near the summit of the Mount of Lipper Bayak, watching the last dusky colors of day drop from the sky. He was eating while he did so, a bowl each of sausage and pickle between his feet and a large pot of mustard between these, into which meat and vegetable alike were plunged; Though Gentle had come here as a projection-his body left sitting crosslegged in the Meditation Room in Gamut Street-he didn't need nose or palate to appreciate the piquancy of Raw's meal; imagination sufficed.

He looked up when Gentle approached, unperturbed by the phantom watching him eat.

"You're early, aren't you?" he remarked, glancing at his pocket watch, which hung from his coat on a piece of string. "We've got hours yet."

"I know. I just came-"

"-to check up on me," Tick Raw said, the sting of pickle in his voice. "Well, I'm here. Are you ready in the Fifth?"

"We're getting there," Gentle said, somewhat queasily.

Though he'd traveled this way countless times as the Maestro Sartori-his mind, empowered by feits, carrying his image and his voice across the Dominions-and had reacquainted himself with the technique easily enough, the sensation was d.a.m.n strange.

"What do I look like?" he asked Tick Raw, remembering as he spoke how he'd attempted to describe the mystif on these very slopes.

"Insubstantial," Tick Raw replied, squinting up at him, then returning to his meal. "Which is fine by me, because there's not enough sausage for two."

"I'm still getting used to what I'm capable of."

"Well, don't take too long about it," Tick Raw said. "We've got work to do."

"And I should have realized that you were part of that work when I was first here, but I didn't, and for that I apologize."

"Accepted," Tick Raw said.

"You must have thought I was crazy."

"You certainly-how shall I put this? - you certainly confounded me. It took me days to work out why you were so d.a.m.n obstreperous. Pie talked to me, you know, tried to make me understand. But I'd been waiting for somebody to come from the Fifth for so long I was only listening with half an ear."

"I think Pie probably hoped my meeting with you would make me remember who the h.e.l.l I was."

"How long did it take?"

"Months."

"Was it the mystif who hid you from yourself in the first place?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, it did too good a job. That'll teach it. Where's your flesh and blood, by the way?"

"Back in the Fifth."

"Take my advice, don't leave it too long. I find the bowels mutiny, and you come back to find you're sitting in s.h.i.te. Of course, that could be a personal weakness."

He selected another sausage and chewed on it as he asked Gentle why the h.e.l.l he'd let the mystif make him forget.

"I was a coward," Gentle replied. "I couldn't face my failure."

"It's hard," Tick Raw said. "I've lived all these years wondering if I could have saved my Maestro, Uter Musky, if I'd been quicker witted. I still miss him."

"I'm responsible for what happened to him, and I've no excuses."

"We've all got our frailties, Maestro: my bowels; your cowardice. None of us is perfect. But I presume your being here means we're finally going to have another try?"

"That's my intention, yes."

Again, Tick Raw looked at his watch, doing a mute calculation as he chewed. "Twenty of your Fifth Dominion hours from now, or thereabouts."

"That's right."

"Well, you'll find me ready," he said, consuming a sizable pickle in one bite.

"Do you have anyone to help you?"

His mouth full, all Tick could manage was: "on't 'eed un." He chewed on, then swallowed. "n.o.body even knows I'm here," he explained. "I'm still wanted by the law, even though I hear Yzordderrex is in ruins."

"It's true."

"I also hear the Pivot's quite transformed," Tick Raw said. "Is that right?"

"Into what?"

"n.o.body can get near enough to find out," he replied. "But if you're planning to check on the whole Synod-"

"I am."

"Then maybe you'll see for yourself while you're in the city. There was a Eurhetemec representing the Second, if I remember-"

"He's dead."

"So who's there now?"

"I'm hoping Scopique's found someone."

"He's in the Third, isn't he? At the Pivot pit?"

"That's right."

"And who's at the Erasure?"

"A man called Chicka Jackeen."

"I've never heard of him," Tick Raw said. "Which is odd. I get to hear about most Maestros. Are you sure he's a Maestro?"

"Certainly."

Tick Raw shrugged. "I'll meet him in the Ana then. And don't worry about me, Sartori. I'll be here."

"I'm glad we've made our peace."

"I fight over food and women but never metaphysics," Tick Raw said. "Besides, we've joined in a great mission. This time tomorrow you'll be able to walk home from here!"

Their exchange ended on that optimistic note, and Gentle left Tick to his night watch, heading with a thought towards the Kwem, where he hoped to find Scopique keeping his place beside the site of the Pivot. He would have been there in the time it took to think himself over the border between Dominions, but he allowed his journey to be diverted by memory. His thoughts turned to Beatrix as he left the Mount of Lipper Bayak, and it was there rather than the Kwem his spirit flew to, arriving on the outskirts of the village.