"It's a very private moment," the other replied, and stood back to let Gentle venture into the shadow.

It was like stepping back into the wastes of the Jokalaylau. Cold cut him to the marrow. His breath was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his lungs and appeared before him in a bitter cloud. Gasping, he turned his face to the power above him, his mind divided between the rational urge to study the phenomenon and the barely controllable desire to drop to his knees and beg it not to crush him. The heaven above him had five sides, he saw. One for each Dominion, perhaps. And like the hewn flanks, flickers of lightning appeared in it here and there. But it wasn't simply a trick of seam and shadow that gave the stone the look of a thundercloud. There was motion in it, the solid rock roiling above him. He threw a glance towards Sartori, who was standing at the door, casually putting a cigarette between his lips. The flame he struck to light it with was a world away, but Gentle didn't envy him its warmth. Icy as this shadow was, he wanted the stone sky to unfurl above him and deliver its judgment down; he wanted to see whatever power the Pivot possessed unleashed, if only to know that such powers and such judgments existed. He looked away from Sartori almost contemptuously, the thought shaping in his head that for all the other's talk of possessing this monolith, the years it had spent in this tower were moments in its incalculable span, and he and Sartori would have come and gone, their little mark eroded by those that followed, in the time it took the stone to blink its cloudy eye.

Perhaps it read that thought from his cortex and approved, because the light, when it came, was kind. There was sun in the stone as well as lightning, warmth as well as a killing fire. It brightened the mantle, then fell in shafts, first around him, then upon his upturned face. The moment had antecedents: events in the Fifth that had prophesied this, their parent's, coming. He'd stood on Highgate Hill once, when the city road was still a muddy track, and looked up to see the clouds drop glory down as they were doing now. He'd gone to the window of his room in Gamut Street and seen the same. He'd watched the smoke clear after a night of bombing-1941, the Blitz at its height-and seeing the sun burn through, had known in some place too tender to be touched that he'd forgotten something momentous, and that if he ever remembered-if a light like this ever burned the veil away-the world would unravel.

That conviction came again, but this time there was more than a vague unease to support it. The tone that had sounded in his skull had come again, attendant on the light, and in it, described by the subtlest variation in its monotony, he heard words.

The Pivot was addressing him.

Reconciler, it said.

He wanted to cover his ears and shut the word out. Drop to the ground like a prophet begging to be unburdened of some divine duty. But the word was inside as well as out. There was no escaping it.

The work's not finished yet, the Pivot said.

"What work?" he said.

You know what work.

He did, of course. But so much pain had come with that labor, and he was ill equipped to bear it again.

Why deny it? the Pivot said.

He stared up into the brightness. "I failed before, and so many people died. I can't do it again. Please. I can't."

What did you come here for? the Pivot asked him, its voice so tenuous he had to hold his breath to catch the shape of the words. The question took him back to Taylor's bedside, to that plea for comprehension.

"To understand ..." he said.

To understand what?

"I can't put it into words ... it sounds so pitiful...."

Say it.

"To understand why I was born. Why anybody's born."

You know why you were born.

"No, I don't. I wish I did, but I don't."

You're the Reconciler of Dominions. You 're the healer of the Imajica. Hide from that, and you hide from understanding. Maestro, there's a worse anguish than remembering, and another suffers it because you leave your work unfinished.

Go back into the Fifth Dominion and complete what you began. Make the many One. This is the only salvation.

The stone sky began to roil again, and the clouds closed over the sun. With the darkness, the cold returned, but he didn't relinquish his place in the Pivot's shadow for several seconds, still hoping some crack would open and the G.o.d speak a last consoling word, a whisper perhaps, of how this onerous duty might be pa.s.sed to another soul more readily equipped to accomplish it. But there was nothing. The vision had pa.s.sed, and all he could do was wrap his arms around his shuddering frame and stumble out to where Sartori stood. The other's cigarette lay smoking at his feet, where it had dropped from his fingers. By the expression on his face it was apparent that even if he'd not comprehended every detail of the exchange that had just taken place, he had the gist.

"The Unbeheld speaks," he said, his voice as flat as the G.o.d's.

"I don't want this," Gentle said.

"I don't think this is any place to talk about denying Him," Sartori said, giving the Pivot a queasy glance.

"I didn't say I was denying Him," Gentle replied. "Just that I didn't want it."

"Still better discussed in private," Sartori whispered, turning to open the door.

He didn't lead Gentle back to the mean little room where they'd met, but to a chamber at the other end of the pa.s.sageway, which boasted the only window he'd seen in the vicinity. It was narrow and dirty, but not as dirty as the sky on the other side. Dawn had begun to touch the clouds, but the smoke that still rose in curling columns from the fires below all but canceled its frail light.

"This isn't what I came for," Gentle said as he stared out at the murk. "I wanted answers."

"You've had 'em."

"I have to take what's mine, however foul it is?"

"Not yours, ours. The responsibility. The pain"-he paused-"and the glory, of course."

Gentle glanced at him. "It's mine," he said simply.

Sartori shrugged, as though this were of no consequence to him whatsoever. Gentle saw his own wiles working in that simple gesture. How many times had he shrugged in precisely that fashion-raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, looked away with feigned indifference? He let Sartori believe the bluff was working.

"I'm glad you understand," he said. "The burden's mine."

"You've failed before."

"But I came close," Gentle said, feigning access to a memory he didn't yet have in the hope of coaxing an informative reb.u.t.tal.

"Close isn't good enough," Sartori said. "Close is lethal. A tragedy. Look what it did to you. The great Maestro. You crawl back here with half your wits missing."

"The Pivot trusts me."

That struck a tender place. Suddenly Sartori was shouting.

"f.u.c.k the Pivot! Why should you be the Reconciler? Huh? Why? One hundred and fifty years I've ruled the Imajica. I know how to use power. You don't."

"Is that what you want?" Gentle said, trailing the bait of that possibility. "You want to be the Reconciler in my place?"

"I'm better equipped than you," Sartori raged. "All you're good for is sniffing after women."

"And what are you? Impotent?"

"I know what you're doing. I'd do the same. You're stirring me up, so I'll spill my secrets. I don't care. There's nothing you can do I can't do better. You wasted all those years, hiding away, but I used them. I turned myself into an empire builder. What did you do?" He didn't wait for an answer. He knew his subject too well. "You've learned nothing. If you began the Reconciliation now, you'd make the same mistakes."

"And what were they?"

"It comes down to one," Sartori said. "Judith. If you hadn't wanted her-" He stopped, studying his other. "You don't even remember that, do you?"

"No," Gentle said. "Not yet."

"Let me tell you, brother," Sartori said, coming face to face with Gentle. "It's a sad story."

"I don't weep easily."

"She was the most beautiful woman in England. Some people said, in Europe. But she belonged to Joshua G.o.dolphm, and he guarded her like his soul."

"They were married?"

"No. She was his mistress, but he loved her more than any wife. And of course he knew what you felt, you didn't disguise it, and that made him afraid-oh, G.o.d, was he afraid-that sooner or later you were going to seduce her and spirit her away. It'd be easy. You were the Maestro Sartori; you could do anything. But he was one of your patrons, so you bided your tune, thinking maybe he'd tire of her, and then you could have her without bad blood between you. It didn't happen. The months went by, and his devotion was as intense as ever. You'd never waited this long for a woman before. You started to suffer like a lovesick adolescent. You couldn't sleep. Your heart palpitated at the sound of her voice. This wasn't good for the Reconciliation, of course, having the Maestro pining away, and G.o.dolphin came to want a solution as badly as you did. So when you found one, he was ready to listen."

"What was it?"

"That you make another Judith, indistinguishable from the first. You had the feits to do it."

"Then he'd have one ..."

"And so would you. Simple. No, not simple. Very difficult. Very dangerous. But those were heady days. Dominions hidden from human eyes since the beginning of time were just a few ceremonies away. Heaven was possible. Creating another Judith seemed like small potatoes. You put it to him, and he agreed-"

"Just like that?"

"You sweetened the pill. You promised him a Judith better than the first. A woman who wouldn't age, wouldn't tire of his company or the company of his sons, or the sons of his sons. This Judith would belong to the men of the G.o.dolphin family in perpetuity. She'd be pliant, she'd be modest, she'd be perfect."

"And what did the original think of this?"

"She didn't know. You drugged her, you took her up to the Meditation room in the house in Gamut Street, you lit a blazing fire, stripped her naked, and began the ritual. You anointed her; you laid her in a circle of sand from the margin of the Second Dominion, the holiest ground in the Imajica. Then you said your prayers, and you waited." He paused, enjoying this telling. "It is, let me remind you, a long conjuration. Eleven hours at the minimum, watching the doppelgSnger grow in the circle beside its source. You'd made sure there was n.o.body else in the house, of course, not even your precious mystif. This was a very secret ritual. So you were alone, and you soon got bored. And when you got bored, you got drunk. So there you were, sitting in the room with her, watching her perfection in the firelight, obsessing on her beauty. And eventually-half out of your mind with brandy-you made the biggest mistake of your life. You tore off your clothes, you stepped into the circle, and you did about everything a man can do to a woman, even though she was comatose, and you were hallucinating with fasting and drink. You didn't f.u.c.k her once, you did it over and over, as though you wanted to get up inside her. Over and over. Then you fell into a stupor at her side."

Gentle began to see the error looming. "I fell asleep in the circle?" he said.

"In the circle."

"And you were the consequence."

"I was. And let me tell you, it was quite a birth. People say they don't remember the moment they came into the world, but I do. I remember opening my eyes in the circle, with her beside me, and these rains of matter coming down on me, congealing around my spirit. Becoming bone. Becoming flesh." All expression had gone from his face. "I remember," he said, "at one point she realized she wasn't alone and she turned and saw me lying beside her. I was unfinished. An anatomy lesson, raw and wet. I've never forgotten the noise she made-"

"I didn't wake up through any of this?"

"You'd crawled away downstairs to douse your head, and you'd fallen asleep. I know because I found you, later on, sprawled on the dining room table."

"The conjuration still worked, even though I'd left the circle?"

"You're quite the technician, aren't you? Yes, it still worked. You were an easy subject. It took hours to decode Judith and make her doppelganger. But you were incandescent. The sway read you in minutes and made me in a couple of hours."

"You knew who you were from the beginning?"

"Oh, yes. I was you, in your l.u.s.t. I was you, full of drunken visions. I was you, wanting to f.u.c.k and f.u.c.k, and conquer and conquer. But I was also you when you'd done your worst, with your b.a.l.l.s empty and your head empty, like death had got in, sitting there between her legs trying to remember what it was you were living for. I was that man too, and it was terrifying to have both those feelings in me at the same time."

He paused a moment.

"It still is, brother."

"I would have helped you, surely, if I'd known what I'd done."

"Or put me out of my misery," Sartori said. "Taken me into the garden and shot me like a rabid dog. I didn't know what you'd do. I went downstairs. You were snoring like a trooper. I watched you for a long while, wanting to wake you, wanting to share the terror I felt, but G.o.dolphin arrived before I got up the courage. It was just before dawn. He'd come to take Judith home. I hid myself. I watched G.o.dolphin wake you; I heard you talk together, I saw you climb the stairs like two expectant fathers and go into the Meditation Room. Then I heard your whoops of celebration, and I knew once and for all that I wasn't an intended child."

"What did you do?"

"I stole some money and some clothes. Then I made my escape. The fear pa.s.sed after a time. I began to realize what I was, the knowledge I possessed. And I realized I had this ... appet.i.te. Your appet.i.te. I wanted glory."

"And this is what you did to get it?" Gentle said, turning back to the window. The devastation below was clearer by the minute, as the comet's light strengthened. "Brave work, brother."

"This was a great city once. And there'll be others, just as great. Greater, because this time there'll be two of us to build it. And two of us to rule."

"You've got me wrong," Gentle said. "I don't want an empire."

"But it's bound to come," Sartori said, fired up with this vision. "You're the Reconciler, brother. You're the healer of the Imajica. You know what that could mean for us both? If you reconcile the Dominions there'll have to be one great city-a new Yzordderrex-to rule it from end to end. I'll found it and administrate it, and you can be pope."

"I don't want to be pope."

"What do you want then?"

"Pie 'oh' pah for one. And some sense of what all this means."

"Being born to be the Reconciler's enough meaning for anyone. It's all the purpose you need. Don't run from it."

"And what were you born to do? You can't build cities forever." He glanced out at the desolation. "Is that why you've destroyed it?" he said. "So you can start again?"

"I didn't destroy it. There was a revolution."

"Which you fueled, with your ma.s.sacres," Gentle said. "I was in a little village called Beatrix, a few weeks ago-"

"Ah, yes. Beatrix." Sartori drew a heavy breath. "It was you, of course. I knew somebody was watching me, but I didn't know who. The frustration made me cruel, I'm afraid,"

"You call that cruel? I call it inhuman."

"It may take you a little time to understand, but every now and again such extremes are necessary."

"I knew some of those people."

"You won't ever have to dirty your hands with that kind of unpleasantness. I'll do whatever's necessary."

"So will I," said Gentle.

Sartori frowned. "Is that a threat?" he said.

"This began with me, and it'll end with me."

"But which me, Maestro? That one"-he pointed at Gentle-"or this? Don't you see, we weren't meant to be enemies. We can achieve so much more if we work together." He put his hand on Gentle's shoulder. "We were meant to meet this way. That's why the Pivot kept silent all these years. It was waiting for you to come, and us to be reunited." His face slackened. "Don't be my enemy," he said. "The thought of-"

A cry of alarm from outside the room cut him short. He turned from Gentle and started towards the door as a soldier appeared in the pa.s.sageway beyond, his throat opened, his hand ineptly staunching the spurts. He stumbled and fell against the wall, sliding to the ground.