"It doesn't have to be the last time," she said. "I can always dream you."

"And me, you," he said with the greatest fondness and courtesy.

She reached down between their bodies and slipped off his belt, then pulled his trousers open with some violence, unwilling to be delayed by his b.u.t.tons. What filled her hand was as silken as the fabric hiding it was rough: still only half engorged, but all the more entertaining for that. She stroked him. He sighed as he bent his head towards her, licking her tips and teeth, letting his chocolate-sweetened spittle run off his tongue into her mouth. She raised her hips and moved the groove of her s.e.x against the underside of his erection, wetting it. He started to murmur to her, terms of endearment, she presumed, though-like Concupis-centia's song-they were in no language she understood. They sounded as sweet as his spittle, however, and lulled her like a cradle song, as though to slip her into a dream within a dream. As her eyes closed she felt him raise his hips, lifting the thickness of his s.e.x from between her l.a.b.i.a, and with one thrust, hard enough to stab the breath from her, he entered, dropping down on top of her as he did so.

The endearments ceased; the kisses too. He put one hand on her brow, his fingers laced into her hair, and the other at her neck, his thumb rubbing her windpipe and coaxing sighs from it. She'd forbidden him nothing and would not rescind that invitation simply because his possession of her was so sudden. Instead, she raised her legs and crossed them behind his back, then started to whip him on with insults. Was this the most he could give her, the deepest he could go? He wasn't hard enough, wasn't hot enough. She wanted more. His thrusts speeded up, his thumb tightening against her throat, but not so much it kept her from drawing breath and expelling it again in a fresh round of provocations.

"I could f.u.c.k you forever," he said to her, his tone halfway between devotion and threat. "There's nothing I can't make you do. There's nothing I can't make you say. I could f.u.c.k you forever."

This was not talk she would have welcomed from a flesh-and-blood lover, but in a dream it was arousing. She let him continue in the same mode, opening her arms and legs beneath him, while he recited all that he would do to her, a litany of ambition that matched the rhythm of his hips. The room her dream had raised around them split here and there, and another seeped in through the cracks to occupy the same s.p.a.ce: this one darker than Quaisoir's veil-draped chamber and lit by a fire that blazed off to her left. Her dream lover didn't fade, however; he remained with her and in her, more frenzied in his thrusts and promises than ever. She saw him above her as if lit by the same flames that warmed her nakedness, his face knotted and sweaty, his index of desires coming between clenched teeth. She would be his doll, his wh.o.r.e, his wife, his G.o.ddess; he would fill every hole of her, forever and ever: own her, worship her, turn her inside out Hearing this, she remembered the images in Estabrook's book again, and the memory made her cells swell as if each was a tiny bud ready to burst, their petals pleasure, their scent the shouts she was making, rising off her to draw fresh adoration from him. It came, cruel and exquisite by turns. One moment he wanted to be her prisoner, bound to her every whim, nourished on her s.h.i.t and the milk he'd win from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with suckling. The next she was less than the excrement he'd hungered for, and he was her only hope for life. He'd resurrect her with his f.u.c.k. He'd fill her with a fiery stream, till her eyes were washed from her head and she drowned in him. There was more, but her cries of pleasure were mounting with every moment, and she heard less and less. Saw less too, closing her eyes against the mingled rooms, fire-lit and veiled, letting her head fill with the geometries that always attended pleasure, forms like her glyph unraveled and reworked.

And then, just as she was reaching the first of the peaks-a range of stratospheric heights ahead-she felt him shudder and his thrusts stop. She didn't believe he'd finished, not at first. This was a dream, and she'd conjured him to perform the way actualities never did: to go on when lovers of flesh and blood had spilled their promises and were panting their apologies beside her. He couldn't desert her now! She opened her eyes. The fire-lit chamber had gone, and the flames in Gentle's eyes had gone with it. He had already withdrawn, and all she felt between her legs was his fingers, dabbling in the dribble he'd supplied. He looked at,her lazily.

"You almost tempt me to stay," he said, "But I've got work to do."

Work? What work did dreams have besides the dreamer's commandments?

"Don't leave," she demanded.

"I'm done," he said.

He was getting off the bed. She reached for him, but even in sleep the languor of the pillow was upon her, and he was away between the veils before her fingers came close to catching hold. She sank back in a slow swoon, watching his figure become remoter as the layers of gossamer between them multiplied.

"Stay beautiful," he told her. "Maybe I'll come back for you when I've built the New Yzordderrex."

This made little sense to her, but she didn't care. It was her own wretched invention, and worthless. She let it go, the figure seeming to halt at the door as if for one backward glance, then disappearing altogether. Her mind had no sooner let him slip than it conjured a compensation, however. The veils at the bottom of the bed parted and the many-tailed Concupiscentia appeared, her eyes bright with craving. She didn't wait for any word to pa.s.s between them but crawled up onto the bed, her gaze fixed on Judith's groin, her bluish tongue flicking as she approached. Jude raised her knees. The creature put her head down and began to lick out what the dream lover had left, her silky palms caressing Jude's thighs. The sensation soothed her, and she watched through the slits of her drugged eyes as Concupiscentia bathed her clean. Before she'd finished the dream grew dimmer, and the creature was still at its caressing work when another veil descended, this so dense she lost both sight and sensation in its folds.

4.

Like galleons turned to the desert wind and in full sail before it, the tents of the Dearthers presented a pretty spectacle from a distance, but Gentle's admiration turned to awe as the car drew closer and their scale became apparent. They were the height of five-story houses and more, billowing towers of ocher and scarlet fabric, the colors all the more vivid given that the desert floor, which had been sand-colored at the outset, was now almost black, and the heavens they rose against were gray, being the wall between the Second Dominion and the unknown world haunted by Hapexamendios.

Floccus halted the car a quarter of a mile from the perimeter of the encampment. "I should go ahead," he said, "and explain who we are and what we're doing here."

"Make it quick," Gentle told him.

Floccus was away like a gazelle, over ground that was no longer sand but a flinty carpet of stone shards, like the clippings from some stupendous sculpture. Gentle looked at the mystif, lying in his arms as if in a charmed sleep, its brow innocent of frowns. He stroked its cold cheek.

How many friends and loved ones must he have seen pa.s.s away in the two centuries and more of his life on earth? Though he'd wiped those griefs from his conscious mind, could he doubt they'd made their mark, fueling his terror of sickness and hardening his heart over the years? Perhaps he'd always been a philanderer and plagiarist, a master of counterfeited emotion, but was that so surprising in a man who knew in his gut that the drama, however soul-searing, was cyclic? The faces changed and changed, but the story remained essentially the same. As Klein had been fond of pointing out, there was no such thing as originality. It had all been said before, suffered before. If a man knew that, was it any wonder love became mechanical and death just a scene to be shunned? There was no absolute knowledge to be gained from either. Just another ride on the merry-go-round, another blurred scene of faces smiling and faces grieved.

But his feelings for the mystif had been no sham, and with good reason. In Pie's self-denials ("I'm nothing and n.o.body," it had said at the beginning) he'd heard an echo of the anguish he himself felt; and in Pie's gaze, so heavy with the freight of years, seen a comr'ade soul who understood the nameless pain he carried. It had stripped him of his shams and chicanery and given him a taste of the Maestro he'd been and might be again. There was good to be done with such power, he now knew: breaches to be healed, rights to be restored, nations to be roused, and hopes reawakened. He needed his inspiration beside him if he was to be a great Reconciler.

"I love you, Pie 'oh' pah," he murmured.

"Gentle."

The voice was Floccus', calling him from outside the window.

"I've seen Athanasius. He says we're to come straight in."

"Good! Good!" Gentle threw open the door.

"Do you want help?"

"No. I'll carry Pie." He got out, then reached back into the car and picked up the mystif.

"Gentle, you do understand that this is a sacred place?" Floccus said as he led the way towards the tents.

"No singing, dancing, or farting, huh? Don't look so pained, Floccus. I understand."

As they approached, Gentle realized that what he'd taken to be an encampment of closely gathered tents was in fact a continuum, the various pavilions, with their swooping roofs, joined by smaller tents to form a single golden beast of wind and canvas.

Inside its body, the gusts kept everything in motion. Tremors moved through even the most tautly erected walls, and in the heights of the roof swaths of fabric whirled like the skirts of dervishes, giving off a constant sigh. There were people up among the folds, some walking on webs of rope as if they were solid board, others sitting in front of immense windows opened in the roof, their faces turned to the wall of the First World as though they antic.i.p.ated a summons out of that place at any moment. If such a summons came, there'd be no hectic rush. The atmosphere was as measured and soothing as the motion of the dancing sails above.

"Where do we find the doctor?" Gentle asked Floccus. "There is no doctor," he replied. "Follow me. We've been given a place to lay the mystif down."

"There must be some kind of medical attendants." "There's fresh water and clothes. Maybe some laudanum and the like. But Pie's beyond that. The uredo won't be dislodged with medications. It's the proximity of the First Dominion that'll heal it."

"Then we should go outside right now," he said. "Get Pie closer to the Erasure."

"Any closer than this would take more resilience than either you or I possess, Gentle," Floccus said. "Now follow me, and be respectful of this place."'

He led Gentle through the beast's tremulous body to a smaller tent, where a dozen plain low beds were set, some occupied, most not. Gentle laid the mystif down in one and proceeded to unb.u.t.ton its shirt while Floccus went in search of cool water for its now-burning skin and some sustenance for Gentle and himself. While he waited, Gentle examined the spread of the uredo, which was too extensive to be fully examined without stripping Pie completely, which he was loath to do with so many strangers in the vicinity. The mystif had been covetous of its privacy-it had been many weeks before Gentle had glimpsed its beauty naked-and he wanted to respect that modesty, even in Pie's present condition. In fact, very few of those who pa.s.sed by even glanced their way, and after a time he began to feel the fear lose its grip on him. There was very little more that he could do. They were at the edge of the known Dominions, where all maps stopped and the enigma of enigmas began. What use was fear in the face of such imponderables? He had to put it aside and proceed with dignity and containment, trusting to the powers that occupied the air here.

When Floccus returned with the means to wash Pie, Gentle asked if he might be left alone to do so.

"Of course," Floccus replied. "I've got friends here. I'd like to seek them out."

When he left, Gentle began to bathe the suppurating eruptions of the uredo, which oozed not blood but a silvery pus, the smell of which p.r.i.c.ked his sinuses like ammonia. The body it fed upon seemed not only enfeebled but somehow unfocused, as though its contours and musculature were about to become a vapor, and the flesh disperse. Whether this was the uredo's doing or simply the condition of a mystif when life, and therefore its capacity to shape the sight of those gazing upon it, was fading, Gentle didn't know, but it made him think back over the way this body had appeared to him. As Judith, of course; as an a.s.sa.s.sin, armored in nakedness; and as the loving androgyne of their wedding night in the Cradle, that had momentarily taken his face and stared back at him like a prophecy of Sartori. Now, finally, it seemed to be a form of burnished mist, receding from his hand even as he touched it.

"Gentle? Is that you? I didn't know you could see in the dark."

Gentle looked up from Pie's body to find that in the time he'd been washing the mystif, half mesmerized by memory, the evening had fallen. There were lights burning at the bedsides of those nearby, but none near Pie 'oh' pah. When he returned his gaze to the body he'd been washing, it was barely discernible in the gloom.

"I didn't know I could either."

He stood up to greet the newcomer. It was Athanasius, a lamp in his hand. By its flame, which was as subject to the wind's whim as the canvas overhead, Gentle saw he'd been wounded in the fall of Yzordderrex. There were several cuts on his face and neck and a larger, livid injury on his belly. For a man who'd celebrated Sundays by making himself a new crown of thorns, these were probably welcome discomforts.

"I'm sorry I didn't come to welcome you earlier," he said. "But with such numbers of casualties coming in I spend a lot of time administering last rites."

Gentle didn't remark on this, but the fear crept back up his spine.

"We've had a lot of the Autarch's soldiers find their way here, and that makes me nervous. Fm afraid we'll let in someone on a suicide mission, and he'll blow the place apart. That's the way the b.a.s.t.a.r.d thinks. If he's destroyed, he'll want to bring everything down with him."

"I'm sure he's much more concerned with making his getaway," Gentle said.

"Where can he go? The word's already spread across the Imajica. There's armed uprising in Patashoqua. There's hand-to-hand combat on the Lenten Way. Every Dominion's shaking. Even the First."

"The First? How?"

"Haven't you seen? No, obviously you haven't. Come with me."

Gentle glanced back towards Pie.

"The mystif's safe here," Athanasius said. "We won't be long."

He led Gentle through the body of the beast to a door that took them out into the deepening dusk. Though Floccus had counseled against what they were doing, hinting that the Erasure's proximity could do harm, there was no sign of any consequence. He was either protected by Athanasius or resistant to any malign influence on his own account. Either way, he was able to study the spectacle laid before him without ill effect.

There was no wall of fog, or even deeper twilight, to mark the division between the Second Dominion and the haunt of Hapexamendios. The desert simply faded away into nothingness, like a drawing erased by the power on the other side, first becoming unfocused, then losing its color and its detail. This subtle removal of solid reality, the world wiped away and replaced with nothing, was the most distressing sight Gentle had ever set eyes on. Nor was the similarity between what was happening here and the state of Pie's body lost on him.

"You said the Erasure was moving," Gentle whispered.

Athanasius scanned the emptiness, looking for some sign, but nothing caught his eye.

"It's not constant," he said. "But every now and then ripples appear in it.""Is that rare?"

"There are accounts of this happening in earlier times, but this isn't an area that encourages accurate study. Observers get poetic here. Scientists turn to sonnets. Sometimes literally." He laughed. "That was a joke, by the way. Just in case you start worrying about your legs rhyming."

"How does looking at this make you feel?" Gentle asked him.

"Afraid," Athanasius said. "Because I'm not ready to be there."

"Nor am I," Gentle said. "But I'm afraid Pie is. I wish I'd never come, Athanasius. Maybe I should take Pie away now, while I still can."

"That's your decision," Athanasius replied. "But I don't believe the mystif will survive if you move it. A uredo's a terrible poison, Gentle. If there's any chance of Pie being healed, it's here, close to the First."

Gentle looked back towards the distressing absence of the Erasure.

"Is going to nothing being healed?" he said. "It seems more like death to me."

"They may be closer than we think, death and healing," Athanasius said.

"I don't want to hear that," Gentle said. "Are you staying out here?"

"For a while," Athanasius replied. "If you do decide to go, come and find me first, will you, so that we can say goodbye?"

"Of course."

He left Athanasius to his void-watching and went back inside, thinking as he did so that this would be a fine time to find a bar and order up a stiff drink. As he started back in the direction of Pie's bed, he was brought to a halt by a voice too abrasive for this hallowed place, and sufficiently slurred to suggest the speaker had found a bar himself and drunk it dry.

"Gentle, you old b.u.g.g.e.r!"

Estabrook stepped into view, grinning expansively, though several of his teeth were missing.

"I heard you were here and I didn't believe it." He seized Gentle's hand and shook it. "But here you are, large as life. Who'd have thought it, eh? The two of us, here."

Life in the encampment had wrought its changes on Charlie. He could scarcely have been further from the grief-wasted plotter Gentle had met on Kite Hill. Indeed, he could almost have pa.s.sed for a clown, with his motley of pinstripe trousers, tattered braces, and unb.u.t.toned tunic dyed half a dozen colors, all crowned with bald head and gap-toothed smile.

"It's so good to see you!" he kept saying, his pleasure unalloyed. "We must talk. This is the perfect time. They're all going outside to meditate on their ignorance, which is fine for a few minutes, but G.o.d! it gets drab. Come with me, come on! They've given me a little nook of my own, to keep me out of the way."

"Maybe later," Gentle said. "I've got a friend here who's sick."

"I heard somebody talking about that. A mystif? Is that the word?"

"That's the word."

"They're extraordinary, I heard. Very s.e.xy. Why don't I come and see the patient with you?"

Gentle had no wish to keep Estabrook's company for longer than he needed to, but suspected that the man would beat a hasty retreat as soon as he set eyes on Pie and realized the creature he'd come to gawk at was the same he'd hired to a.s.sa.s.sinate his wife. They went back to Pie's bedside together. Floccus was there, with a lamp and an ample supply of food. Mouth crammed, he rose to be introduced, but Estabrook barely noticed him. His gaze was on Pie, whose head was turned away from the brightness of the lamp in the direction of the First Dominion.

"You lucky b.u.g.g.e.r," he said to Gentle. "She's beautiful."

Floccus glanced at Gentle to see if he intended to remark on Estabrook's error in s.e.xing the patient, but Gentle made a tiny shake of his head. He was surprised that Pie's power to respond to the gaze of others was still intact, especially as his eyes saw an altogether more distressing sight: the substance of his beloved growing more insubstantial as the hours pa.s.sed. Was this a sight and understanding reserved for Maestros? He knelt beside the bed and studied the fading features on the pillow. Pie's eyes were roving beneath the lids.

"Dreaming of me?" Gentle murmured.

"Is she getting better?" Estabrook inquired.

"I don't know," Gentle said. "This is supposed to be a healing place, but I'm not so sure."

"I really think we should talk," Estabrook said, with the strained nonchalance of a man who had something vital to impart, but was not able to do so in present company. "Why don't you pop along with me and have a quick drink? I'm sure Floccus will come and find you if anything untoward happens."

Floccus chewed on, nodding in accord with this, and Gentle agreed to go, hoping Estabrook had some insight into conditions here that would help him to decide whether to go or stay.

"I'll be five minutes" he promised Floccus, and let Estabrook lead him off through the lamp-lit pa.s.sages to what he'd earlier called his nook.

It was off the beaten track somewhat, a little canvas room he'd made his own with what few possessions he'd brought from Earth. A shirt, its bloodstains now brown, hung above the bed like the tattered standard from some noteworthy battle. On the table beside the bed his wallet, his comb, a box of matches, and a roll of mints had been arranged, along several symmetrical columns of change, into an altar to the spirit of the pocket.

"It's not much," Estabrook said, "but it's home."

"Are you a prisoner here?" Gentle said as he sat in the plain chair at the bottom of the bed.

"Not at all," Estabrook said.

He brought a small bottle of liquor out from under the pillow. Gentle recognized it from the hours he and Huzzah had lingered in the cafe" in the Oke T'Noon. It was the fermented sap of a swamp flower from the Third Dominion: kloupo. Estabrook took a swig from the bottle, reminding Gentle of how he'd supped brandy from a flask on Kite Hill. He'd refused the man's liquor that day, but not now.

"I could go anytime I wanted to," he went on. "But I think to myself, Where would you go, Charlie? And where would I go?"

"Back to the Fifth?"

"In G.o.d's name, why?"

"Don't you miss it, even a little?"