by Clive Barker
He heard the woman’s voice before he set eyes on her, emanating from a place where the restless dust was so thick it was like walking in a delta fog. Barely visible through it, a scene of sheer vandalism: books, scrolls, and manuscripts reduced to shreds or buried in the wreckage of the shelves they’d been laid upon. And beyond the rubble, a hole in the brick; and from the hole, a call.
“Is that Sartori?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Come closer. Let me see you.”
He presented himself at the bottom of the heap of rubble.
“I thought she’d failed to find you,” Celestine said. “Or else you’d refused to come.”
“How could I refuse a summons like this?” he said softly.
“Do you think this is some kind of liaison?” she replied. “Some secret tryst?”
Her voice was raw with the dust, and bitter. He liked the sound of it. Women who had anger in them were always so much more interesting than their contented sisters.
“Come in, Maestro,” she said to him. “Let me put you to rights.”
He clambered up over the stones and peered into the darkness. The cell was a wretched hole, as sordid as anything beneath his palace, but the woman who’d occupied it was no anchorite. Her flesh hadn’t been chastened by incarceration, but looked lush, for all the marks upon it. The tendrils that clung to her body extolled her fluency, moving over her thighs and breasts and belly like unctuous snakes. Some clung to her head and paid court at her honey lips; others lay between her legs in bliss. He felt her tender gaze on him and luxuriated in it.
“Handsome,” she said.
He took her compliment as an invitation to approach, but as he did so she made a murmur of distress, and he stopped in his tracks.
“What’s this shadow in you?” she said.
“Nothing to be afraid of,” he told her.
Some of the filaments parted, and longer tendrils, these not courtiers but part of her substance, uncurled from behind her, clinging to the rough wall and hauling her up.
“I’ve heard that before,” she said. “When a man tells you there’s nothing to be afraid of, he’s lying. Even you, Sartori.”
“I won’t come any closer if it bothers you,” he said.
It wasn’t respect for the woman’s unease that moved him to compliance, but the sight of the ribbons that had lifted her. Quaisoir had sprouted such appendages, he recalled, after her intimacies with the women of the Bastion of the Banu. They were evidence of some facility in the other sex he had no real comprehension of: a remnant of crafts all but banished from the Reconciled Dominions by Hapexamendios. Perhaps they’d seen a new, poisonous flowering in the Fifth in the time since he’d left. Until he knew the scope of their authority, he’d be circumspect.
“I’d like to ask a question, if I may?” he said.
“Yes?”
“How do you know who I am?”
“First, tell me where you’ve been all these years.”
Oh, the temptation he felt to tell her the truth, then, and parade his achievements in the hope of impressing her. But he’d come here in the guise of his other, and, as with Judith, he’d have to choose the moment of his unmasking carefully.
“I’ve been wandering,” he said. It wasn’t so untrue.
“Where?”
“In the Second Dominion, and occasionally the Third.”
“Were you ever in Yzordderrex?”
“Sometimes.”
“And in the desert outside the city?”
“There too. Why do you ask?”
“I was there once. Before you were born.”
“I’m older than I look,” he told her. “I know it doesn’t show—”
“I know how long you’ve lived, Sartori,” she replied. “To the very day.”
Her certainty nourished the discomfort bred by the sight of the tendrils. Could she read his thoughts, this woman? If so—if she knew what he was and all he’d done—why wasn’t she in awe of him?
There was no profit in pretending that he didn’t care that she seemed to know so much. Plainly but politely, he asked her how, preparing as he spoke a profusion of excuses if she was simply one of the Maestro’s casual conquests and accused him of forgetting her. But the accusation, when it came, was of another kind entirely.
“You’ve done great harm in your life, haven’t you?” she said to him.
“No more than most,” he protested mildly. “I’ve been tempted to a few excesses, certainly. But then hasn’t everybody?”
“A few excesses?” she said. “I think you’ve done more than that. There’s evil in you, Sartori. I smell it in your sweat, the way I smelled coitus in the woman.”
Her mention of Judith—who else could this venereal woman be?—reminded him of the prophecy he’d made to her two nights before. They would find darkness in each other, he’d said; and that was a perfectly human condition. The argument had proved potent then. Why not now?
“It’s just the humanity in me you can sense,” he said to Celestine.
She was clearly unpersuaded. “Oh, no,” she replied. “I’m the humanity in you.”
He was about to laugh this absurdity off, but her stare hushed him.
“What part of me are you?” he murmured.
“Don’t you know yet?” she said. “Child, I’m your mother.”
Gentle led the way as they stepped into the cool of the tower’s foyer. There was no sound from anywhere in the building, above or below.
“Where’s Celestine?” he asked Jude. She led him to the door into the Tabula Rasa’s meeting room, where he told them all, “This is something for me to do, brother to brother.”
“I’m not afraid,” Monday piped up.
“No, but I am,” Gentle said with a smile. “And I wouldn’t want you to see me piss my pants. Stay up here. I’ll be out double quick.”
“Make sure you are,” Clem said. “Or we’re coming down to get you.”
With that promise as comfort, Gentle slipped through the door into what remained of Roxborough’s house. Though he’d felt nothing in the way of memories as he’d entered the tower, he felt them now. They weren’t as material as those that visited him in Gamut Street, where the very boards seemed to have recorded the souls that had trodden them. These were vague recollections of the times he’d drunk and debated around the great oak table. He didn’t allow nostalgia to delay him, however, but passed through the room like a man vexed by admirers, arms raised against their blandishments, and headed down into the cellar. He’d had this labyrinth and its contents (all spined and skin-bound, whether human or not) described to him by Jude, but the sight still amazed him. All this wisdom, buried in darkness. Was it any wonder the Imajical life of the Fifth had been so anemic in the last two centuries, when all the liquors that might have fortified it had been hidden here?
But he hadn’t come to browse, glorious as that prospect was. He’d come for Celestine, who’d trailed, of all things, the name Nisi Nirvana to bring him here. He didn’t know why. Though he vaguely remembered the name, and knew there was some story to go with it, he could neither remember the tale nor recall whose knee he’d first heard it at. Perhaps she knew the answer.
There was a wonderful agitation here. Even the dust would not lie down and die, but moved in giddy constellations, which he divided as he strode. He made no false turns, but the route from the steps to the place where Celestine lay was still a long one, and before he’d reached it he heard a cry. It wasn’t a woman’s cry, he thought, but the echoes disfigured it, and he couldn’t be certain. He picked up his speed, turning corner after corner, knowing as he went that his other had preceded him every step of the way. There were no further cries after the first, but as his destination came in view—it looked like a cave, raggedly dug from the wall; an oracle’s home—he heard a different sound: that of bricks, grinding their gritty faces together. There were small but constant falls of dried mortar from the ceiling, and a subtle trembling in the ground. He
started up over the litter of fallen rock, which was strewn like a battlefield with gutted books, to the inviting crack. Ashe did so he caught a glimpse of a violent motion inside, which had him to the threshold in a stumbling rush.
“Brother?” he said, even before he’d found Sartori in the gloom. “What are you doing?”
Now he saw his other, closing on the woman in the corner of the cave. She was almost naked, but far from defenseless. Ribbons, like the rags of a bridal train but made of her flesh, were springing from her shoulders and back, their power clearly more substantial than their delicacy implied. Some were clinging to the wall above her head, but the bulk were extended towards Sartori and wrapped around his head like a smothering hood. He clawed at them, working his fingers between them to get a better grip. Fluid ran from the gouged flesh, and cobs of matter came away in his fists. It could only be a matter of time before he released himself, and when he did he’d do her no little harm.
Gentle didn’t call to his brother a second time. What was the use? The man was deafened. Instead, he crossed the cave at a stumbling rush and took hold of Sartori from behind, dragging his brother’s arms from their maiming work and pinning them to his sides. As he did so he saw Celestine’s gaze go between the two figures in front of her, and either the shock of what she was witnessing or her exhaustion took its toll on her strength. The wounded ribbons loosened and fell in wreaths around Sartori’s neck, uncovering the other face and confirming Celestine in her distress. She withdrew the ribbons entirely, gathering them into her lap.
With his sight returned, Sartori wrenched his head around to identify his captor. Seeing Gentle, he instantly gave up his struggle to free himself and stood in the Reconciler’s arms, quite pacified.
“Why do I always find you doing harm, brother?” Gentle asked him.
“Brother?” said Sartori. “Since when was it brother?”
“That’s what we are.”
“You tried to kill me in Yzordderrex, or have you forgotten? Has something changed?”
“Yes,” said Gentle. “I have.”
“Oh?”
“I’m ready to accept our . . . kinship.”
“A fine word.”
“In fact, I accept my responsibility for everything I was, am, or will be. I’ve got your Oviate to thank for that.”
“That’s good to hear,” Sartori said. “Especially in this company.”
He looked back at Celestine. She was still standing, though it was plainly the filaments hugging the wall that held her up, not her legs. Her eyes were flickering closed, and there were tremors running through her body. Gentle knew she needed aid, but he could do nothing while he was burdened with Sartori, so he turned and pitched his brother towards the cave door. Sartori went from him like a doll, only raising his arms to break his fall at the very last.
“Help her if you want,” he said, staring back at Gentle with slackened features. “It’s no skin off my nose.”
Then he lifted himself up. For an instant Gentle thought he intended some reprisal, and drew breath to defend himself.
But the other simply said, “I’m on my belly, brother. Would you harm me here?”
As if to prove how low he’d fallen and was willing to stay, he began to slink over the earth, like a snake driven from a hearth.
“You’re welcome to her,” he said, and disappeared into the brighter murk beyond the door.
Celestine’s eyes had closed by the time Gentle looked back, her body hanging limply from the tenacious ribbons. He went towards her, but as he approached her lids flickered open.
“No . . .” she said. “I don’t want . . . you . . . near . . . me.”
Could he blame her? One man with his face had already attempted murder, or violation, or both. Why should she trust another? Nor was this any time to be pleading his innocence; she needed help, not apology. The question was, from whom? Jude had made it clear on the way up that she’d been sent from this woman’s side the same way he was being sent. Perhaps Clem could nurse the woman.
“I’ll send somebody to help you,” he said, and headed out into the passageway.
Sartori had disappeared: lifted himself off his belly and taken to his heels. Once again Gentle went in his footsteps, back towards the stairs. He’d covered half that distance when Jude, Clem, and Monday appeared. Their frowns evaporated when they saw Gentle.
“We thought he’d murdered you,” Jude said.
“He didn’t touch me. But he’s hurt Celestine, and she won’t let me near her. Clem, will you see if you can help? But be careful. She may look sick, but she’s strong.”
“Where is she?”
“Jude’ll take you. I’m going after Sartori.”
“He’s gone up the tower,” Monday said.
“He didn’t even look at us,” Jude said. She sounded almost offended. “He just stumbled out and up the stairs. What the hell did you do to him?”
“Nothing.”
“I never saw an expression like that on his face before. Or yours, come to that.”
“Like what?”
“Tragic,” said Clem.
“Maybe we’re going to win a quicker victory than I thought,” Gentle said, starting past them to the stairs.
“Wait,” Jude said. “We can’t tend to Celestine here. We need to take her somewhere safer.”
“Agreed.”
“The studio, maybe?”
“No,” Gentle said. “There’s a house I know in Clerkenwell where we’ll be safe. He drove me out of it once. But it’s mine, and we’re going back to it. All of us.”
Fifteen
I
THE SUN THAT MET Gentle in the foyer put him in mind of Taylor, whose wisdom, spoken through a sleeping boy, had begun this day. That dawn already seemed an age ago, the hours since then had been so filled with journeys and revelations. It would be this way until the Reconciliation, he knew. The London he’d wandered in his first years, brimming with possibilities—a city Pie had once said hid more angels than God’s skirts—was once again a place of presences, and he rejoiced in the fact. It gave heat to his heels as he mounted the stairs, two and three at a time. Strange as it was, he was actually eager to see Sartori’s face again: to speak with his other and know his mind.
Jude had prepared him for what he’d find on the top floor: bland corridors leading to the Tabula Rasa’s table, and the body sprawled there. The scent of Godolphin’s undoing was there to meet him as he stepped into the passageway: a sickening reminder, though he scarcely needed one, that revelation had a grimmer face and that those last halcyon days, when he’d been the most lauded metaphysician in Europe, had ended in atrocity. It would not happen again, he swore to himself. Last time the ceremonies had been brought to grief by the brother waiting for him at the end of this corridor, and if he had to commit fratricide to remove the danger of a recurrence, then so be it. Sartori was the spirit of his own imperfections made flesh. To kill him would be a cleansing, and welcome, perhaps, to them both.
As he advanced along the corridor the sickly smell of Godolphin’s putrefaction grew stronger. He held his breath against it and came to the door in utter silence. It nevertheless swung open as he approached, his own voice inviting him in.
“There’s no harm in here, brother; not from me. And I don’t need you on your belly to prove your good intentions.”
Gentle stepped inside. All the drapes were drawn against the sun, but even the sturdiest fabric usually let some trace of light through its weave. Not so here. The room was sealed by something more than curtains and brick, and Sartori was sitting in this darkness, his form visible only because the door was ajar.
“Will you sit?” he said. “I know this isn’t a very wholesome slab”—the body of Oscar Godolphin had gone, the mess of his blood and rot remaining in pools and smears—“but I like the formality. We should negotiate like civilized beings, yes?”
Gentle acceded to this, walking to the other end of the table and sitting down, content to demonstra
te good faith unless or until Sartori showed signs of treachery. Then he’d be swift and calamitous.
“Where did the body go?” he asked.
“It’s here. I’ll bury it after we’ve talked. This is no place for a man to rot. Or maybe it’s the perfect place, I don’t know. We can vote on it later.”
“Suddenly you’re a democrat.”
“You said you were changing. So am I.”
“Any particular reason?”
“We’ll get to that later. First—”
He glanced towards the door, and it swung closed, plunging them both into utter darkness.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Sartori said. “This isn’t a conversation we should have looking at ourselves. The mirror’s bad enough.”
“You didn’t mind in Yzordderrex.”
“I was incarnate there. Here I feel . . . immaterial. I was really impressed by what you did in Yzordderrex, by the way. One word from you, and it just crumbled away.”
“Your handiwork, not mine.”
“Oh, don’t be obtuse. You know what history’ll say. It won’t give a fuck about the politics. It’ll say the Reconciler arrived, and the walls came tumbling down. And you’re not going to argue with that. It feeds the legend; it makes you look messianic. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? The question is: if you’re the Reconciler, what am I?”
“We don’t have to be enemies.”
“Didn’t I say the very same thing in Yzordderrex? And didn’t you try and murder me?”
“I had good reason.”
“Name one.”
“You destroyed the first Reconciliation.”
“It wasn’t the first. There’ve been three other attempts to my certain knowledge.”
“It was my first. My Great Work. And you destroyed it.”
“Who did you hear that from?”
“From Lucius Cobbitt,” Gentle replied.
There was a silence then, and in it Gentle thought he heard the darkness move, a sound like silk on silk. But his head was never quite silent these days, and before he could clear a path through the whispers Sartori had recovered his equilibrium.
