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"No, why?" Floccus' agitation sank from sight. What surfaced instead was deep dismay. "You don't think it's gone to the Erasure?"
"We won't know till we look," Gentle said. "Which way did Athanasius take me? There was a door—"
"Wait! Wait!" Floccus said, snatching hold of Gentle's jacket. "You can't just step out there."
"Why not? I'm a Maestro, aren't I?"
"There are ceremonies—"
"I don't give a shit," Gentle said, and without waiting for further objections from Floccus, he headed off in what he hoped was the right direction.
Floccus followed, trotting beside Gentle, opening new arguments against what Gentle was pla
"What's the use of rules, if nobody really understands what's going on out there?" Gentle said.
"But we do! We understand this place. It's where God begins."
"So if the Erasure kills me, you know what to write in my obituary. 'Gentle ended where God begins.' "
"This isn't fu
"Agreed."
"It's life or death."
"Agreed."
"So why are you doing it?"
"Because wherever Pie is, that's where I belong. And I would have thought even someone as half-sighted and short-witted as you would have seen that!"
"You mean shortsighted and halfwitted."
"You said it."
Ahead lay the door he and Athanasius had stepped through. It was open and unguarded.
"I just want to say—" Floccus began.
"Leave it alone, Floccus."
"—it's been too short a friendship," the man replied, bringing Gentle to a halt, shamed by his outburst.
"Don't mourn me yet," he said softly.
Floccus made no reply, but backed away from the open door, leaving Gentle to step through it alone. The night outside was hushed, the wind having dropped to little more than a breeze. He sca
Several of the worshipers had been stirred from their contemplations by the sound of the stones and now looked up to see they had an ominous figure in their midst. One, kneeling alone close to Gentle's path, rose in panic and fled, uttering a prayer of protection. Another fell prostrate, sobbing. Rather than intimidate them further with his gaze, Gentle turned his eyes on God's Nowhere, scouring the ground close to the margin of solid earth and void for some sign of Pie 'oh' pah. The sight of the Erasure no longer distressed him as it had when he'd first stepped out here with Athanasius. Clothed as he was, and thus a
By the time he set eyes on Pie 'oh' pah he was three or four hundred yards from the door, and the assembly of meditators had thi
"Pie!" he yelled as he went. "Can you hear me? Please, stop!"
The words went on clouding and clothing him, but they had no effect upon Pie until Gentle turned his requests into an order.
"Pie 'oh' pah. This is your Maestro. Stop."
The mystif stumbled as Gentle spoke, as though his demand had put an obstacle in its way. A small, almost bestial sound of pain escaped it. But it did as its sometime summoner had ordered and stopped in its tracks like a dutiful servant, waiting until the Maestro reached its side.
Gentle was within ten paces, now, and saw how far advanced the process of unknitting was. The mystif was barely more than a shadow among shadows, its features impossible to read, its body insubstantial. If Gentle needed any further proof that the Erasure was not a place of healing, it was in the sight of the uredo, which was more solid than the body it had fed upon, its livid stains intermittently brightening like embers caught by a gusting wind.
"Why did you leave your bed?" Gentle said, his pace slowed once again as he approached the mystif. Its form seemed so tenuous he feared any violent motion might disperse it entirely. "There's nothing beyond the Erasure you need, Pie. Your life's here, with me."
The mystif took a little time to reply. When it did its voice was as ethereal as its substance, a slender, exhausted plea emerging from a spirit at the edge of total collapse.
"I don't have any life left, Maestro," it said.
"Let me be the judge of that. I swore to myself I wouldn't let you go again, Pie. I want to look after you, make you well. Bringing you here was a mistake, I see that now. I'm sorry if it's brought you pain, but I'll take you away—"
"It wasn't a mistake. You found your way here for your own reasons."
"You're my reason, Pie. I didn't know who I was till you found me, and I'll forget myself again if you go."
"No, you won't," it said, the dubious outline of its head turning in Gentle's direction. Though there was no gleam to mark the place where its eyes had been, Gentle knew it was looking at him. "You're the Maestro Sartori. The Reconciler of the Imajica." It faltered for a long moment. When its voice came again, it was frailer than ever. "And you are also my master, and my husband, and my dearest brother. ... If you order me to stay, then I will stay. But if you love me, Gentle, then please ... let... me ... go."
The request could scarcely have been made more simply or more eloquently, and had Gentle known without question there was an Eden on the other side of the Erasure, ready to receive Pie's spirit, he would have let the mystif go there and then, agonizing as it would be. But he believed differently and was ready to say it, even in such proximity to the void.