"You know him?"

"Not well. I know he came to the Erasure long before I did. In fact, I don't think anyone quite knew how long he'd been there. He's a strange fellow."

"If that were a disqualification, we'd both be out of a job," Gentle remarked.

"True enough."

With that, Gentle offered Athanasius his good wishes, and they parted-civilly if not fondly-Gentle turning his thoughts from Yzordderrex to the desert beyond. Instantly, the domestic interior flickered and was replaced seconds later by the vast wall of the Erasure, rising from a fog in which he dearly hoped the last member of his Synod was awaiting him.

The streams kept converging as the women climbed, until they were walking beside a flow that would soon be too wide to leap and too furious to ford. There were no embankments to contain these waters, only the gullies and gutters of the street, but the same intentionality that drew them up the hill also limited their lateral spread. That way the river didn't dissipate its energies, but climbed like an animal whose skin was growing at a prodigious rate to accommodate the power it gained every time it a.s.similated another of its kind. By now its destination would not be in doubt. There was only one structure on the city's highest peak-the Autarch's palace-and unless an abyss opened up in the street and swallowed the waters before they reached the gates it would be there that the trail would deliver them.

Jude had mixed memories of the palace. Some, like the Pivot Tower and the chamber of sluiced prayers beneath it, were terrifying. Others were sweetly erotic, like the hours she'd spent dozing in Quaisoir's bed while Concupiscentia sang and the lover she'd thought too perfect to be real had covered her with kisses. He was gone, of course, but she would be returning into the labyrinth he'd built, now turned to some new purpose, not only with the scent of him upon her (you smell of coitus, Celestine had said) but with the fruit of that coupling in her womb. Her hope of sharing wisdom with Celestine had undoubtedly been blighted by that fact. Even after Tay's disparagement and Clem's conciliation, the woman had contrived to treat Jude as a pariah. And if she, merely brushed by divinity, had sniffed Sartori on Jude's skin, then surely Tishalulle would sniff the same and know the child was there too. If challenged, Jude had decided to tell the truth. She had reasons for doing all that she'd done, and she would not make false apologies, but come to the altars of these G.o.ddesses with humility and self-respect in equal measure.

The gates were now in view, the river gushing towards them, its flood a whitewater roar. Either its a.s.sault or some previous violence had thrown both gates off their hinges, and the water surged through the gap ecstatically.

"How do we get through?" Hoi-Polloi yelled above the din.

"It's not that deep," Jude said. "We'll be able to wade it if we go together. Here. Take my hand."

Without giving the girl time to argue or retreat, she took firm hold of Hoi-Polloi's wrist and stepped into the river. As she'd said, it wasn't very deep. Its spumy surface only climbed to the middle of their thighs. But there was considerable force in it, and they were obliged to proceed with extreme care. Jude couldn't see the ground she was leading them over, the water was too wild, but she could feel through her soles how the river was digging up the paving, eroding in a matter of minutes what the tread of soldiers, slaves, and penitents had not much impressed in two centuries. Nor was this erosion the only threat to their equilibrium. The river's freight of alms, pet.i.tions, and trash was very heavy now, gathered as it was from five or six places in the lower Kesparates. Slabs of wood knocked at their hamstrings and shins; swaths of cloth wrapped around their knees. But Jude remained surefooted and advanced with a steady tread until they were through the gates, glancing back over her shoulder now and then to rea.s.sure Hoi-Polloi with a look or a smile that, though there was discomfort here, there was no great hazard.

The river didn't slow once it was inside the palace walls. Instead it seemed to find fresh impetus, its spume thrown ever higher as it climbed through the courtyards. The comet's beams were falling here in greater abundance than on the Kesparates below, and their light, striking the water, threw silver filigrees up against the joyless stone. Distracted by the beauty of this, Jude momentarily lost her footing as they cleared the gates and, despite a cry of warning, fell back into the river, taking Hoi-Polloi with her. Though they were in no danger of drowning, the water had sufficient momentum to carry them along, and Hoi-Polloi, being much the lighter of the two, was swept past Jude at some speed.

Their attempts to stand up again were defeated by the eddies and countercurrents its enthusiasm was generating, and it was only by chance that Hoi-Pollot-thrown against a dam of detritus that was choking part of the flow-was able to use its accrued bulk to bring herself to a halt and haul herself to her knees. The water broke against her with considerable vehemence as she did so, its will to carry her off undiminished, but she defied it, and by the time Jude was carried to the place, Hoi-Polloi was getting to her feet.

"Give me your hand!" she yelled, returning the invitation Jude had first offered when they'd stepped into the flood.

Jude reached to do so, half turning in the water to stretch for Hoi-Polloi's fingers. But the river had other ideas. As their hands came within inches of clasping, the waters conspired to spin her and s.n.a.t.c.h her away, their hold on her so tight the breath was momentarily squeezed out of her. She couldn't even yell a word of rea.s.surance but was hauled off by the flood, up through a monolithic archway and out of sight.

Violent as the waters were, pitching her around as it raced through the cloisters and colonnades, she wasn't in fear of them; quite the opposite. The exhilaration was contagious. She was part of their purpose now, even if they didn't know it, and happy to be delivered to their summoner, who was surely also their source. Whether that summoner-be she Tishalulle or Jokalaylau or any other G.o.ddess who might be resident here today-judged her to be a pet.i.tioner or simply another piece of trash, only the end of this ride would tell.

If Yzordderrex had become a place of glorious particulars-every color singing, every bubble in its waters crystalline-the Erasure had given itself over to ambiguity. There was no breath of wind to stir the heavy mist that hung over the fallen tents and over the dead, shrouded but unburied, who lay in their folds; nor did the comet have fire enough to pierce a higher fog, the fabric of which left its light dusky and drab. Off to the left of where Gentle's projection stood, the ring of Madonnas that Athanasius and his disciples had sheltered in was visible through the murk. But the man he'd come here to find wasn't in residence there, nor was there any sign of him to the right, though here the fog was so thick it blotted out everything that lay beyond an eight- or ten-yard range. He nevertheless headed into it, loath to try calling Chicka Jackeen's name, even if his voice had possessed sufficient strength. There was a conspiracy of suppression upon the landscape, and he was unwilling to challenge it. Instead he advanced in silence, his body barely displacing the mist, his feet making little or no impression on the ground. He felt more like a phantom here than in any of the other meeting places. It was a landscape for such souls: hushed but haunted.

He didn't have to walk blindly for long. The mist began to thin out after a time, and through its shreds he caught sight of Chicka Jackeen. He'd dug a chair and small table from the wreckage and was sitting with his back to the great wall of the First Dominion, playing a solitary game of cards and talking furiously to himself as he did so. We're all crazies, Gentle thought, catching him like this. Tick Raw half mad on mustard; Scopique become an amateur arsonist; Athanasius marking sacramental sandwiches with his pierced hands; and finally Chicka Jackeen, chattering away to himself like a neurotic monkey. Crazies to a man. And of all of them he, Gentle, was probably the craziest: the lover of a creature that defied the definitions of gender, the maker of a man who had destroyed nations. The only sanity in his life-burning like a clear white light-was that which came from G.o.d: the simple purpose of a Reconciler.

"Jackeen?"

The man looked up from his cards, somewhat guiltily. "Oh. Maestro. You're here."

"Don't say you weren't expecting me?"

"Not so soon. Is it time for us to go to the Ana?"

"Not yet. I came to be sure you were ready."

"I am, Maestro. Truly."

"Were you winning?"

"I was playing myself."

"That doesn't mean you can't win."

"No? No. As you say. Then yes, I was winning." He rose from the table, taking off the spectacles he'd been wearing to study his cards.

"Has anything come out of the Erasure while you've been waiting?"

"No, not come out. In fact, yours is the first voice I've heard since Athanasius left."

"He's part of the Synod now," Gentle said. "Scopique induced him to join us, to represent the Second."

"What happened to the Eurhetemec? Not murdered?"

"He died of old age."

"Will Athanasius be equal to the task?" Jackeen asked; then, thinking his question overstepped the bounds of protocol, he said, "I'm sorry. I've no right to question your judgment in this."

"You've every right," Gentle said. "We've got to have complete faith in each other."

"If you trust Athanasius, then so do I," Jackeen said simply.

"So we're ready."

"There is one thing I'd like to report, if I may."

"What's that?"

"I said nothing's come out of the Erasure, and that's true-"

"But something went in?"

"Yes. Last night, I was sleeping under the table here"- he pointed to his bed of blankets and stone-"and I woke chilled to the marrow. I wasn't sure whether I was dreaming at first, so I was slow to get up. But when I did I saw these figures coming out of the fog. Dozens of them."

"Who were they?"

"Nullianacs," Jackeen said. "Are you familiar with them?"

"Certainly."

"I counted fifty at least, just within sight of me."

"Did they threaten you?"

"I don't think they even saw me. They had their eyes on their destination-"

"The First?"

"That's right. But before they crossed over, they shed their clothes, and made some fires, and burned every last thing they wore or brought with them."

"All of them did this?"

"Every one that I saw. It was extraordinary."

"Can you show me the fires?"

"Easily," Jackeen said, and led Gentle away from the table, talking as he went. "I'd never seen a Nullianac before, but of course I've heard the stories."

"They're brutes," Gentle said. "I killed one in Vanaeph, a few months ago, and then I met one of its brothers in Yzordderrex, and it murdered a child I knew."

"They like innocence, I've heard. It's meat and drink to them. And they're all related to each other, though n.o.body's ever seen the female of the species. In fact, some say there isn't one."

"You seem to know a lot about them."

"Well, I read a good deal," Jackeen said, glancing at Gentle. "But you know what they say: Study nothing except in the knowledge-"

"-that you already knew it."

"That's right."

Gentle looked at the man with fresh interest, hearing the old saw from his lips. Was it so commonplace a dictum that every student had it by heart, or did Chicka Jackeen know the significance of what he was saying? Gentle stopped walking, and Jackeen stopped beside him, offering a smile that verged on the mischievous. Now it was Gentle who did the studying, his text the other man's face: and, reading, saw the dictum proved.

"My G.o.d," he said. "Lucius?"

"Yes, Maestro. It's me."

"Lucius! Lucius!"

The years had taken their toll, of course, though not insufferably. While the face in front of him was no longer that of the eager acolyte he had sent from Gamut Street, it was not marked by more than a tenth of the two centuries in between.

"This is extraordinary," Gentle said, "I thought maybe you knew who I was, and you were playing a game with me."

"How could I know?"

"Am I really so different?" the other said, clearly a little deflated. "It took me twenty-three years to master the feit of holding, but I thought I'd caught the last of my youth before it went entirely. A little vanity. Forgive me."

"When did you come here?"

"It seems like a lifetime, so it probably is. I wandered back and forth through the Dominions first, studying with one evocator after another, but I was never content with any of them. I had you to judge them by, you see. So I was always dissatisfied."

"I was a lousy teacher," Gentle said.

"Not at all. You taught me the fundamentals, and I've lived by them and prospered. Maybe not in the world's eyes, but in mine."

"The only lesson I gave you was on the stairs. Remember, that last night?"

"Of course I remember. The laws of study, workings, and fear. Wonderful."

"But they weren't mine, Lucius. The mystif taught them to me. I just pa.s.sed them along."

"Isn't that what most teachers do?"

"I think the great ones refine wisdom, they don't simply repeat it. I refined nothing. I thought every word I uttered was perfect, because it was falling from my lips."

"So my idol has feet of clay?"

"I'm afraid so."

"You think I didn't know that? I saw what happened at the Retreat. I saw you fail, and it's because of that I've waited here."

"I don't follow."

"I knew you wouldn't accept failure. You'd wait, and you'd plan, and someday, even if it took a thousand years, you'd come back to try again."

"One of these days I'll tell you how it really happened, and you won't be so impressed."

"However it went, you're here," Lucius said. "And I have my dream at last."

"Which is what?"

"To work with you. To join you in the Ana, Maestro to Maestro." He grinned. "G.o.d is in His Heaven today," he said. "If I'm ever happier than this, it'll kill me. Ah! There, Maestro!" He stopped and pointed to the ground a few yards from them. "That's one of the Nullianacs' fires."

The place was blasted, but there were some remains of the Nullianacs' robes among the ashes. Gentle approached.

"I don't have the wherewithal to sort through them, Lucius. Will you do it for me?"

Lucius obliged, stooping to turn over the cinders and pluck out what remained of the clothes. There were fragments of suits, robes, and coats in a variety of styles, one finely embroidered, after the fashion of Patashoqua, another barely more than sackcloth, a third with medals attached, as if its owner had been a soldier.

"They must have come from all over the Imajica," Gentle said.

"Summoned," Lucius replied.

"That seems like a reasonable a.s.sumption."

"But why?"

Gentle mused a moment. "I think the Unbeheld has taken them into His furnace, Lucius. He's burned them away."

"So He's wiping the Dominions clean?"

"Yes, He is. And the Nullianacs knew it. They threw off their clothes like penitents, because they knew that they were going to their judgment."

"You see," Lucius said, "you are wise."

"When I'm gone, will you burn even these last pieces?"