Imajica

by Clive Barker

  “Now will you come?” Pie said.

  Gentle tore his eyes from the corpse and looked up. The scene had gained him an audience, and there was a disturbing anticipation in their faces, puzzlement and respect mingled with the clear expectation of some pronouncement. Gentle had none to offer and opened his arms to show himself empty-handed. The assembly stared on, unblinking, and he half thought they might assault him if he didn’t speak, but a further burst of gunfire from the siege site broke the moment, and the starers gave up their scrutiny, some shaking their heads as though waking from a trance. The second of the captives had been executed against the warehouse wall, and shots were now being fired into the pile of bodies to silence some survivor there. Troops had also appeared on the roof, presumably intending to pitch Athanasius’ body down to crown the cairn. But they were denied that satisfaction. Either he’d faked being struck, or else he’d survived the wounding and crawled off to safety while the drama unfolded below.Whichever, he’d left his pursuers empty-handed.

  Three of the cordon keepers, all of whom had fled for cover as their comrades fired on the crowd, now reappeared to claim the body of the escapee. They encountered a good deal of passive resistance, however, the crowd coming between them and the dead youth, jostling them. They forced their way through with well-aimed jabs from bayonets and rifle butts, but Gentle had time to retreat from in front of the corpse as they did so.

  He had also had time to look back at the corpse-strewn stage visible beyond the heads of the crowd. The door of Quaisoir’s vehicle had opened, and with her elite guard forming a shield around her she finally stepped out into the light of day. This was the consort of the Imajica’s vilest tyrant, and Gentle lingered a dangerous moment to see what mark such intimacy with evil had made upon her.

  When she came into view the sight of her, even with eyes that were far from perfect, was enough to snatch the breath from him. She was human, and a beauty. Nor was she simply any beauty. She was Judith.

  Pie had hold of his arm, drawing him away, but he wouldn’t go.

  “Look at her. Jesus. Look at her, Pie. Look!”

  The mystif glanced towards the woman.

  “It’s Judith,” Gentle said.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It is! It is! Use your fucking eyes! It’s Judith!”

  As if his raised voice was a spark to the bone-dry rage of the crowd all around, violence suddenly erupted, its focus the trio of soldiers who were still attempting to claim the dead youth. One was bludgeoned to the ground while another retreated, firing as he did so. Escalation was instantaneous. Knives were slid from their sheaths, machetes unhooked from belts. In the space of five seconds the crowd became an army and five seconds later claimed its first three lives. Judith was eclipsed by the battle, and Gentle had little choice but to go with Pie, more for the sake of Huzzah than for his own safety. He felt strangely inviolate here, as though that circle of expectant stares had lent him a charmed life.

  “It was Judith, Pie,” he said again, once they were far enough from the shouts and shots to hear each other speak.

  Huzzah had taken firm hold of his hand and swung on his arm excitedly. “Who’s Judith?” she said.

  “A woman we know,” Gentle said.

  “How could that be her?” The mystif’s tone was as fretful as it was exasperated. “Ask yourself: How could that be her? If you’ve got an answer, I’m happy to hear it. Truly I am. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know how,” Gentle said. “But I trust my eyes.”

  “We left her in the Fifth, Gentle.”

  “If I got through, why shouldn’t she?”

  “And in the space of two months she takes over as the Autarch’s wife? That’s a meteoric rise, wouldn’t you say?”

  A fresh fusillade of shots rose from the siege site, followed by a roar of voices so profound it reverberated in the stone beneath their feet. Gentle stopped, walked, and looked back down the slope towards the harbor.

  “There’s going to be a revolution,” he said simply.

  “I think it’s already begun,” Pie replied.

  “They’ll kill her,” he said, starting back down the hill.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Pie said.

  “I’m coming with you,” Huzzah piped up, but the mystif took hold of her before she could follow.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Pie said, “except home to your grandparents. Gentle, will you listen to me? It’s not Judith.”

  Gentle turned to face the mystif, attempting a reasoning tone. “If it’s not her then it’s her double; it’s her echo. Some part of her, here in Yzordderrex.”

  The mystif didn’t reply. It merely studied Gentle, as if coaxing him with its silence to articulate his theory more fully.

  “Maybe people can be in two places at one time,” Gentle said. Frustration made him grimace. “I know it was her, and nothing you can say’s going to change my mind. You two go in to the Kesparate. Wait for me. I’ll—”

  Before he could finish his instructions, the holler that had first announced Quaisoir’s descent from the heights of the city was raised again, this time at a higher pitch, to be drowned out almost instantly by a surge of celebratory cheering.

  “That sounds like a retreat to me,” Pie said, and was proved right twenty seconds later with the reappearance of Quaisoir’s vehicle, surrounded by the tattered remnants of her retinue.

  The trio had plenty of time to step out of the path of wheels and boots as they thundered up the slope, for the pace of the retreat was not as swift as that of the advance. Not only was the ascent steep but many of the elite had sustained wounds in defending the vehicle from assault and trailed blood as they ran.

  “There’s going to be such reprisals now,” Pie said.

  Gentle murmured his agreement as he stared up the slope where the vehicle had gone. “I have to see her again,” he said.

  “That’s going to be difficult,” Pie replied.

  “She’ll see me,” Gentle said. “If I know who she is, then she’s going to know who I am. I’ll lay money on it.”

  The mystif didn’t take up the bet. It simply said, “What now?”

  “We go to your Kesparate, and we send out a search party to look for Huzzah’s folks. Then we go up”—he nodded towards the palace—“and get a closer look at Quaisoir. I’ve got some questions to ask her. Whoever she is.”

  III

  The wind veered as the trio retraced their steps, the relatively clear ocean breeze giving sudden way to a blisteringly hot assault off the desert. The citizens were well prepared for such climatic changes, and at the first hint of a shift in the wind, scenes of almost mechanical, and therefore comical, efficiency were to be seen high and low. Washing and potted plants were gathered from windowsills; ragemy and cats gave up their sun traps and headed inside; awnings were rolled up and windows shuttered. In a matter of minutes the street was emptied.

  “I’ve been in these damn storms,” the mystif said. “I don’t think we want to be walking about in one.”

  Gentle told it not to fret, and hoisting Huzzah onto his shoulders, he set the pace as the storm scourged the streets. They’d asked for fresh directions a few minutes before the wind veered, and the shopkeeper who’d supplied them had known his geography. The directions were good even if walking conditions were not. The wind smelt like flatulence and carried a blinding freight of sand, along with ferocious heat. But they at least had the freedom of the streets. The only individuals they glimpsed were either felonious, crazy, or homeless, into all three of which categories they themselves fell.

  They reached the Viaticum without error or incident, and from there the mystif knew its way. Two hours or more after they’d left the siege at the harbor they reached the Eurhetemec Kesparate. The storm was showing signs of fatigue, as were they, but Pie’s voice fairly sang when it announced, “This is it. This is the place where I was born.”

  The Kesparate in front of them was walled, but the gates wer
e open, swinging in the wind.

  “Lead on,” Gentle said, setting Huzzah down.

  The mystif pushed the gate wide and led the way into streets the wind was unveiling before them as it fell, dropping sand underfoot. The streets rose towards the palace, as did almost every street in Yzordderrex, but the dwellings built upon it were very different from those elsewhere in the city. They stood discreet from one another, tall and burnished, each possessed of a single window that ran from above the door to the eaves, where the structure branched into four overhanging roofs, lending the buildings, when side by side, the look of a stand of petrified trees. In the street in front of the houses were the real thing: trees whose branches still swayed in the dying gusts like kelp in a tidal pool, their boughs so supple and their tight white blossoms so hardy the storm had done them no harm.

  It wasn’t until he caught the tremulous look on Pie’s face that Gentle realized what a burden of feeling the mystif bore, stepping back into its birthplace after the passage of so many years. Having such a short memory, he’d never carried such luggage himself. There were no cherished recollections of childhood rites, no Christmas scenes or lullabies. His grasp of what Pie might be feeling had to be an intellectual construct and fell—he was sure—well shy of the real thing.

  “My parents’ home,” the mystif said, “used to be between the chianculi”—it pointed off to its right, where the last remnants of sand-laden gusts still shrouded the distance—“and the hospice.” It pointed to its left, a white-walled building.

  “So somewhere near,” Gentle said.

  “I think so,” Pie said, clearly pained by the tricks memory was playing.

  “Why don’t we ask somebody?” Huzzah suggested.

  Pie acted upon the suggestion instantly, walking over to the nearest house and rapping on the door. There was no reply. It moved next door and tried again. This house was also vacated. Sensing Pie’s unease, Gentle took Huzzah to join the mystif on the third step. The response was the same here, a silence made more palpable by the drop in the wind.

  “There’s nobody here,” Pie said, remarking, Gentle knew, not simply on the empty houses but on the whole hushed vista.

  The storm was completely exhausted now. People should have been appearing in their doorsteps to brush off the sand and peer at their roofs to see they were still secure. But there was nobody. The elegant streets, laid with such precision, were deserted from end to end.

  “Maybe they’ve all gathered in one place,” Gentle suggested. “Is there some kind of assembly place? A church or a senate?”

  “The chianculi’s the nearest thing,” Pie said, pointing towards a quartet of pale yellow domes set amid trees shaped like cypresses but bearing Prussian blue foliage. Birds were rising from them into the clearing sky, their shadows the only motion on the streets below.

  “What happens at the chianculi?” Gentle said as they started towards the domes.

  “Ah! In my youth,” the mystif said, attempting a lightness of tone it clearly didn’t feel, “in my youth it was where we had the circuses.”

  “I didn’t know you came from circus stock.”

  “They weren’t like any Fifth Dominion circus,” Pie replied. “They were ways we remembered the Dominion we’d been exiled from.”

  “No clowns and ponies?” Gentle said.

  “No clowns and ponies,” Pie replied, and would not be drawn on the subject any further.

  Now that they were close to the chianculi, its scale—and that of the trees surrounding it—became apparent. It was fully five stories high from the ground to the apex of its largest dome. The birds, having made one celebratory circuit of the Kesparate, were now settling in the trees again, chattering like myna birds that had been taught Japanese.

  Gentle’s attention was briefly claimed by the spectacle, only to be grounded again when he heard Pie say, “They’re not all dead.”

  Emerging from between the Prussian blue trees were four of the mystif’s tribe, negroes wrapped in undyed robes like desert nomads, some folds of which they held between their teeth, covering their lower faces. Nothing about their gait or garments offered any clue to their sex, but they were evidently prepared to oust trespassers, for they came armed with fine silver rods, three feet or so in length and held across their hips.

  “On no account move or even speak,” the mystif said to Gentle as the quartet came within ten yards of where they stood.

  “Why not?”

  “This isn’t a welcoming party.”

  “What is it then?”

  “An execution squad.”

  So saying, the mystif raised its hands in front of its chest, palms out, then—breaking its own edict—it stepped forward, addressing the squad as it did so. The language it spoke was not English but had about it the same oriental lilt Gentle had heard from the beaks of the settling birds. Perhaps they’d indeed been speaking in their owners’ tongue.

  One of the quartet now let the bitten veil drop, revealing a woman in early middle age, her expression more puzzled than aggressive. Having listened to Pie for a time, she murmured something to the individual at her right, winning only a shaken head by way of response. The squad had continued to approach Pie as it talked, their stride steady; but now, as Gentle heard the syllables Pie ‘oh’ pah appear in the mystif’s monologue, the woman called a halt. Two more of the veils were dropped, revealing men as finely boned as their leader. One was lightly mustached, but the seeds of sexual ambiguity that blossomed so exquisitely in Pie were visible here. Without further word from the woman, her companion went on to reveal a second ambiguity, altogether less attractive. He let one hand drop from the silver rod he carried and the wind caught it, a ripple passing through its length as though it were made not of steel but of silk. He lifted it to his mouth and draped it over his tongue. It fell in soft loopsfrom his lips and fingers, still glinting like a blade even though it folded and fluttered.

  Whether this gesture was a threat or not Gentle couldn’t know, but in response to it the mystif dropped to its knees and indicated with a wave of its hand that Gentle and Huzzah should do the same. The child cast a rueful glance in Gentle’s direction, looking to him for endorsement. He shrugged and nodded, and they both knelt, though to Gentle’s way of thinking this was the last position to adopt in front of an execution squad.

  “Get ready to run,” he whispered across to Huzzah, and she returned a nervous little nod.

  The mustachioed man had now begun to address Pie, speaking in the same tongue the mystif had used. There was nothing in either his tone or attitude that was particularly threatening, though neither, Gentle knew, were foolproof indications. There was some comfort in the fact of dialogue, however, and at a certain point in the exchange the fourth veil was dropped. Another woman, younger than the leader and altogether less amiable, was taking over the conversation with a more strident tone, waving her ribbon blade in the air inches from Pie’s inclined head. Its lethal capacity could not be in doubt. It whistled as it sliced and hummed as it rose again, its motion, for all its ripples, chillingly controlled. When she’d finished talking, the leader apparently ordered them to their feet. Pie obliged, glancing around at Gentle and Huzzah to indicate they should do the same.

  “Are they going to kill us?” Huzzah murmured.

  Gentle took her hand. “No, they’re not,” he said. “And if they try, I’ve got a trick or two in my lungs.”

  “Please, Gentle,” Pie said. “Don’t even—”

  A word from the squad leader silenced the appeal, and the mystif answered the next question directed at it by naming its companions: Huzzah Aping and John Furie Zacharias. There then followed another short exchange between the members of the squad, during which time Pie snatched a moment to explain.

  “This is a very delicate situation,” Pie said.

  “I think we’ve grasped that much.”

  “Most of my people have gone from the Kesparate.”

  “Where?”

  “Some of the
m tortured and killed. Some taken as slave labor.”

  “But now the prodigal returns. Why aren’t they happy to see you?”

  “They think I’m probably a spy, or else I’m crazy. Either way, I’m a danger to them. They’re going to keep me here to question me. It was either that or a summary execution.”

  “Some homecoming.”

  “At least there’s a few of them left alive. When we first got here, I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. So did I. Do they speak any English?”

  “Of course. But it’s a matter of pride that they don’t.”

  “But they’ll understand me?”

  “Don’t, Gentle.”

  “I want them to know we’re not their enemies,” Gentle said, and turned his address to the squad. “You already know my name,” he said. “I’m here with Pie ‘oh’ pah because we thought we’d find friends here. We’re not spies. We’re not assassins.”

  “Let it alone, Gentle,” Pie said.

  “We came a long way to be here, Pie and me. All the way from the Fifth. And right from the beginning Pie’s dreamed about seeing you people again. Do you understand? You’re the dream Pie’s come all this way to find.”

  “They don’t care, Gentle,” Pie said.

  “They have to care.”

  “It’s their Kesparate,” Pie replied. “Let them do it their way.”

  Gentle mused on this a moment. “Pie’s right,” he said. “It’s your Kesparate, and we’re just visitors here. But I want you to understand something.” He turned his gaze on the woman whose ribbon blade had danced so threateningly close to the mystif’s pate. “Pie’s my friend,” he said. “I will protect my friend to the very last.”

  “You’re doing more harm than good,” the mystif said. “Please stop.”

  “I thought they’d welcome you with open arms,” Gentle said, surveying the quartet’s unmoved faces. “What’s wrong with them?”