Barker, Clive – Imajica 01 – The Fifth Dominion. Part 5

“Not bad at all,” he heard Pie say. “We did it, Gentle. I didn’t think we were going to make it for a moment, but we did it!”

Gentle raised his head, as Pie pulled him to his feet by the strap that joined them.

“Up! Up!” the mystif said. “It’s not good to start a journey on your knees.”

It was a bright day here, Gentle saw, the sky above his head cloudless, and brilliant as the green-gold sheen of a peacock’s tail. There was neither sun nor moon in it, but the very air seemed lucid, and by it Gentle had his first true sight of Pie since they’d met in the fire. Perhaps out of remembrance for those it had lost, the mystif was still wearing the clothes it had worn that night, scorched and bloodied though they were. But it had washed the dirt from its face, and its skin gleamed in the clear light.

“Good to see you,” Gentle said.

“You too.”

Pie started to untie the belt that bound them, while Gentle turned his gaze on the Dominion. They were standing close to the summit of a hill, a quarter of a mile from the perimeters of a sprawling shantytown, from which a din of activity rose. It spread beyond the foot of the hill and halfway across a flat and treeless plain of ocher earth, crossed by a thronged highway that led his eye to the domes and spires of a glittering city.

“Patashoqua?” he said.

“Where else?”

“You were accurate, then.”

“More than I dared hope. The hill we’re standing on is supposed to be the place where Hapexamendios first rested when He came through from the Fifth. It’s called the Mount of Upper Bayak. Don’t ask me why.”

“Is the city under siege?” Gentle said.

“I don’t think so. The gates look open to me.”

Gentle scanned the distant walls, and indeed the gates were open wide. “So who are all these people? Refugees?”

“We’ll ask in a while,” Pie said.

The knot had come undone. Gentle rubbed his wrist, which was indented by the belt, staring down the hill as he did so. Moving between the makeshift dwellings below he glimpsed forms of being that didn’t much resemble humanity. And, mingling freely with them, many who did. It wouldn’t be difficult to pass as a local, at least.

“You’re going to have to teach me, Pie,” he said. “I need to know who’s who and what’s what. Do they speak English here?”

“It used to be quite a popular language,” Pie replied. “I can’t believe it’s fallen out of fashion. But before we go any farther, I think you should know what you’re traveling with. The way people respond to me may confound you otherwise.”

“Tell me as we go,” Gentle said, eager to see the strangers below up close.

“As you wish.” They began to descend. “I’m a mystif; my name’s Pie ‘oh’ pah. That much you know. My gender you don’t.”

“I’ve made a guess,” Gentle said.

“Oh?” said Pie, smiling. “And what’s your guess?”

“You’re an androgyne. Am I right?”

“That’s part of it, certainly.”

“But you’ve got a talent for illusion. I saw that in New York.”

“I don’t like the word illusion. It makes me a guiser, and I’m not that”

“What then?”

“In New York you wanted Judith, and that’s what you saw. It was your invention, not mine.”

“But you played along.”

“Because I wanted to be with you.”

“And are you playing along now?”

“I’m not deceiving you, if that’s what you mean. What you see is what I am, to you.”

“But to other people?”

“I may be something different. A man sometimes. A woman others.”

“Could you be white?”

“I might manage it for a moment or two. But if I’d tried to come to your bed in daylight, you’d have known I wasn’t Judith. Or if you’d been in love with an eight-year-old, or a dog. I couldn’t have accommodated that, except..,”—the creature glanced around at him—”. . . under very particular circumstances.”

Gentle wrestled with this notion, questions biological, philosophical, and libidinous filling his head. He stopped walking for a moment and turned to Pie.

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