by Clive Barker
“Who have?”
The stream was cool and played against Jude's fingers, leaping up against her palm. “Don't be obtuse,” she said. “The Goddesses. They're here.”
“That's impossible. Even if they still existed—and Poppa told me they don't—why would they come here?”
Jude lifted a cupped handful of water to her lips and supped. It tasted sweet. “Perhaps somebody called them,” she said. She looked at Hoi-Polloi, whose face was still registering her distaste at what Jude had just done.
“Somebody up there?” the girl said.
“Well, it takes a lot of effort to climb a hill,” Jude said. “Especially for water. It's not heading up there because it likes the view. Somebody's pulling it. And if we go with it, sooner or later—”
“I don't think we should do that,” Hoi-Polloi replied.
“It's not just the water that's being called,” Jude said. “We are too. Can't you feel it?”
“No,” the girl said bluntly. “I could turn around now and go back home.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
Hoi-Polloi looked at the river running a yard from her foot. As luck would have it, the water was carrying some of its less lovely cargo past them: a flotilla of chicken heads and the partially incinerated carcass of a small dog.
“You drank that,” Hoi-Polloi said.
“It tasted fine,” Jude said, but looked away as the. dog went by.
The sight had confirmed Hoi-Polloi in her unease. “I think I will go home,” she said. “I'm not ready to meet Goddesses, even if they are up there. I've sinned too much.”
“That's absurd,” said Jude. “This isn't about sin and forgiveness. That kind of nonsense is for the men. This is ...” she faltered, uncertain of the vocabulary, then said, “This is wiser than that.”
“How do you know?” Hoi-Polloi replied. “Nobody really understands these things. Even Poppa. He used to tell me he knew how the comet was made, but he didn't. It's the same with you and these Goddesses.”
“Why are you so afraid?”
“If I wasn't I'd be dead. And don't condescend to me. I know you think I'm ridiculous, but if you were a bit politer you'd hide it.”
“I don't think you're ridiculous.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I just think you loved your Poppa a little too much. There's no crime in that. Believe me, I've made the same mistake myself, over and over again. You trust a man, and the next thing . . .” She sighed, shaking her head. “Never mind. Maybe you're right. Maybe you should go home. Who knows, perhaps he'll be waiting for you. What do I know?”
They turned their backs on each other without further word, and Jude headed on up the hill, wishing as she went that she'd found a more tactful way of stating her case.
She'd climbed fifty yards when she heard the soft pad of Hoi-Polloi's step behind her, then the girl's voice, its rebuking tone gone, saying, “Poppa's not going to come home, is he?”
Jude turned back, meeting Hoi-Polloi's cross-eyed gaze as best she could. “No,” she said, “I don't think he is.”
Hoi-Polloi looked at the cracked ground beneath her feet. “I think I've always known that,” she said, “but I just haven't been able to admit it.” Now she looked up again and, contrary to Jude's expectation, was dry-eyed. Indeed, she almost looked happy, as though she was lighter for this admission. “We're both alone now, aren't we?” she said.
“Yes, we are.”
“So maybe we should go on together. For both our sakes.”
“Thank you for thinking of me,” Jude said. “ “We women should stick together,” Hoi-Polloi replied, and came to join Jude as she resumed the climb.
To Gentle's eye Yzordderrex looked like a fever dream of itself. A dark borealis hung above the palace, but the streets and squares were everywhere visited by wonders. Rivers sprang from the fractured pavements and danced up the mountainside, spitting their climb in gravity's face. A nimbus of color painted the air over each of the springing places, bright as a flock of parrots. It was a spectacle he knew Pie would have reveled in, and he made a mental note of every strangeness along the way, so that he could paint the scene in words when he was back at the mystifs side.
But it wasn't all wonders. These prisms and waters rose amid scenes of utter devastation, where keening widows sat, barely distinguishable from the blackened rubble of their houses. Only the Eurhetemec Kesparate, at the gates of which he presently stood, seemed to be untouched by the fire raisers. There was no sign of any inhabitant, however, and Gentle wandered for several minutes, silently honing a fresh set of insults for Scopique, when he caught sight of the man he'd come to find. Athanasius was standing in front of one of the trees that lined the boulevards of the Kesparate, staring up at it admiringly. Though the foliage was still in place, the arrangement of branches it grew upon was visible, and Gentle didn't have to be an aspirant Christos to see how readily a body might be nailed to them. He called Athanasius' name several times as he approached, but the man seemed lost in reverie and didn't look around, even when Gentle was at his shoulder. He did, however, reply.
“You came not a moment too soon,” he said.
“Auto-crucifixion,” Gentle replied. “Now that would be a miracle.”
Athanasius turned to him. His face was sallow and his forehead bloody. He looked at the scabs on Gentle's brow and shook his head.
“Two of a kind,” he said. Then he raised his hands. The palms bore unmistakable marks. “Have you got these too?”
“No. And these”—Gentle pointed to his forehead— “aren't what you think. Why do you do this to yourself?”
“I didn't do it,” Athanasius replied. “I woke up with these wounds. Believe me, I don't welcome them.”
Gentle's face registered his skepticism, and Athanasius responded with vim.
“I've never wanted any of this,” he said. “Not the stigmata. Not the dreams.”
“So why were you looking at the tree?”
“I'm hungry,” came the reply, “and I was wondering if I had the strength to climb.”
The gaze directed Gentle's attention back to the tree. Amid the foliage on the higher branches were clusters of comet-ripened fruit, like zebra tangerines.
“I can't help you, I'm afraid,” Gentle said. “I don't have enough substance to catch hold of them. Can't you shake them down?”
“I tried. Never mind. We've got more important business than my belly.”
“Finding you bandages, for one,” Gentle said, his suspicions chastened out of him by this misunderstanding, at least for the moment. “I don't want you Weeding to death before we begin the Reconciliation.”
“You mean these?” he said, looking at his hands. “No, it stops and starts whenever it wants. I'm used to it.”
“Well, then, we should at least find you something to eat. Have you tried any of the houses?”
“I'm not a thief.”
“I don't think anybody's coming back, Athanasius. Let's find you some sustenance before you pass out.”
They went to the nearest house, and after a little encouragement from Gentle, who was surprised to find such moral nicety in his companion, Athanasius kicked open the door. The house had either been looted or vacated in haste, but the kitchen had been left untouched and was well stocked. There Athanasius daintily prepared himself a sandwich with his wounded hands, bloodying the bread as he did so.
“I've such a hunger on me,” he said. “I suppose you've been fasting, have you?”
“No. Was I supposed to?”
“Each to their own,” Athanasius replied. “Everybody walks to Heaven by a different road. I knew a man who couldn't pray unless he had his loins in a zarzi nest.”
Gentle winced. “That's not religion, it's masochism.”
“And masochism isn't a religion?” the other replied. “You surprise me.”
Gentle was startled to find that Athanasius had a capacity for wit, and found himself warming to the man as they chatte
d. Perhaps they could profit from each other's company after all, though any truce would be cosmetic if the subject of the Erasure and all that had happened there wasn't broached.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said.
“Oh?”
“For what happened at the tents. You lost a lot of your people, and it was because of me.”
“I don't see how you could have handled it much differently,” Athanasius said. “Neither of us knew the forces we were dealing with.”
“I'm not sure I do now.”
Athanasius made a grim face. “Pie 'oh' pah went to a good deal of trouble to come back and haunt you,” he said.
“It wasn't a haunting.”
“Whatever it was, it took will to do it. The mystif must have known what the consequences would be, for itself and for my people.”
“It hated to cause harm.”
“So what was so important that it caused so much?”
“It wanted to make certain I understood my purpose.”
“That's not reason enough,” Athanasius said.
“It's the only one I've got,” Gentle replied, skirting the other part of Pie's message, the part about Sartori. Athanasius had no answers to such puzzles, so why vex him with them?
“I believe there's something going on we don't understand,” Athanasius said, “Have you seen the waters?”
“Yes.”
“Don't they perturb you? They do me. There are other powers at work here besides us, Gentle. Maybe we should be seeking them out, taking their advice.”
“What do you mean by powers? Other Maestros?”
“No. I mean the Holy Mother. I think she may be here in Yzordderrex.”
“But you're not certain.”
“Something's moving the waters.”
“If She was here, wouldn't you know it? You were one of her high priests.”
“I was never that. We worshiped at the Erasure because there was a crime committed there. A woman was taken from that spot into the First.”
Floccus Dado had told Gentle this story as they'd driven across the desert, but with so much else to vex and excite him, he'd forgotten the tale: his mother's of course.
“Her name was Celestine, wasn't it?”
“How do you know?”
“Because I've met her. She's still alive, back in the Fifth.”
The other man narrowed his eyes, as though to sharpen his gaze and prick this if it was a lie. But after a few moments a tiny smile appeared.
“So you've had dealings with holy women,” he said. “There's hope for you yet.”
“You can meet her yourself, when all this is over.”
“I'd like that.”
“But for now, we have to hold to our course. There can be no deviations. Do you understand? We can go looking for the Holy Mother when the Reconciliation's done, but not before.”
“I feel so damn naked,” Athanasius said.
“We all do. It's inevitable; But there's something more inevitable still.”
“What's that?”
“The wholeness of things,” Gentle said. “Things mended. Things healed. That's more certain than sin, or death, or darkness.”
“Well said,” Athanasius replied. “Who taught you that?”
“You should know. You married me to it.”
“Ah.” He smiled. “Then may I remind you why a man marries? So that he can be made whole: by a woman.”
“Not this man,” Gentle said.
“Wasn't the mystif a woman to you?”
“Sometimes....”
“And when it wasn't?”
“It was neither man nor woman. It was bliss.”
Athanasius looked intensely discomfited by this. “That sounds profane to me,” he remarked.
Gentle had never thought of the bond between himself and the mystif in such terms before, nor did he welcome the burden of such doubts now. Pie had been his teacher, his friend, and his lover, a selfless champion of the Reconciliation from the very beginning. He could not believe that his Father would ever have sanctioned such a liaison if it were anything but holy.
“I think we should let the subject lie,” he told Athanasius, “or we'll be at each other's throats again, and I for one don't want that.”
“Neither do I,” Athanasius replied. “We'll not discuss it any further. Tell me, where do you go from here?”
“To the Erasure.”
“And who represents the Synod there?”
“Chicka Jackeen.”
“Ah! So you chose him, did you?”
“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 assimilated 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 Goddesses 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 assault 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, petitions, 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 reassure 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.
