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The man let his shu
"Can you hear me, Pie?" Gentle asked it.
The howl went on, unabated.
"If you can speak, do it!"
"It's already speaking," the monk said.
"I only hear howls," Gentle said.
"Past the howls," came the reply, "there are words."
Drops of fluid fell from the mystif s wounds as its struggles to resist the Erasure's power intensified. They stank of putrescence and burned Gentle's upturned face, but their sting brought comprehension of the words encoded in Pie's screeches.
"Undone," the mystif was saying. "We're... undone...."
"Why did you do this?" Gentle asked.
"It wasn't... me. The storm was sent to claim me back."
"Out of the First?"
"It's... His will," Pie said. "His... will...."
Though the tortured form above him resembled the creature he'd loved and wed scarcely at all, Gentle could still hear fragments of Pie 'oh' pah in these replies and, hearing them, wanted to raise his own voice in anguish at the thought of Pie's pain. The mystif had gone into the First to end its suffering; but here it was, suffering still, and he was powerless to help it or heal it. All he could do by way of comfort was tell it that he understood, which he did. Its message was perfectly clear. In the trauma of their parting Pie had sensed some equivocation in him. But there was none, and he said so.
"I know what I have to do," he told the sufferer. "Trust me, Pie. I understand. I'm the Reconciler. I'm not going to run from that."
At this, the mystif writhed like a fish on a hook, no longer able to keep itself from being hauled in by the fisherman in the First. It started to scrabble at the air, as if it might gain another moment in this Dominion by catching hold of a mote. But the power that had sent such furies in pursuit of it had too strong a hold, and the spirit was drawn back towards the Erasure. Instinctively Gentle reached up towards it, hearing and ignoring a cry of alarm from the man at his side. The mystif reached for his hand, extending its shadowy substance to do so, and curling grotesquely long fingers around Gentle's. The contact sent such a convulsion through his system he would have been thrown to the ground but that his protector took hold of him. As it was his marrow seemed to burn in his bones, and he smelled the stench of rot off his skin, as though death were coming upon him inside and out. It was hard, in that agony, to hold on to the mystif, much less to the words it was trying to say. But he fought the urge to let go, struggling for the sense of the few syllables he was able to grasp. Three of them were his name.
"Sartori..."
"I'm here, Pie," Gentle said, thinking perhaps the thing was blinded now. "I'm still here."
But the mystif wasn't naming its Maestro. "The other," it said. "The other..." "What about him?"
"He knows," Pie murmured. "Find him, Gentle. He knows."
With this command, their fingers separated. The mystif reached to take hold of Gentle again, but with its frail hold lost it was prey to the Erasure and was instantly snatched towards the tear through which it had appeared. Gentle started after it, but his limbs had been more severely traumatized by the convulsion than he'd thought, and his legs simply folded up beneath him. He fell heavily, but raised his head in time to catch sight of the mystif disappearing into the void. Sprawled on the hard ground, he remembered his first pursuit of Pie, through the empty, icy streets of Manhattan. He'd fallen then, too, and looked up as he did now to see the riddle escaping him, unsolved. But it had turned that first time; turned and spoken to him across the river of Fifth Avenue, offering him the hope, however frail, of another meeting. Not so now. It went into the Erasure like smoke through a drafty door, its cry stopping dead.
"Not again," Gentle murmured.
The monk was crouching at his side. "Can you stand," he asked, "or shall I get help?"
Gentle put his hands beneath him and pushed himself up into a kneeling position, making no reply to the question. With the mystif s disappearance, the malignant wind that had come after it, and brought such devastation, was dropping away, and as it did so the debris it had been keeping aloft descended in a grim hail. For a second time the monk raised his hands to ward off the descending force. Gentle was barely aware of what was happening. His eyes were on the Erasure, which was rapidly losing its roiling motion. By the time the rain of canvas, stones, and bodies had stopped, every last trace of detail had gone from the divide, and it was once again an absence over which the eye slid, finding no purchase.
Gentle got to his feet and, turning his eyes from the nullity, sca
"Do you see Athanasius?" Gentle asked the man at his side.
"No, but he's alive somewhere," came the reply. "He's like you, Maestro; he's got too much purpose in him to die."
"I don't think any purpose would have saved me if you hadn't been here," Gentle remarked. "You've got real power in your bones."
"A little, maybe," the monk replied, with a modest smile. "I had a fine teacher."
"So did I," Gentle said softly. "But I lost it." Seeing the Maestro's eyes filling, the monk made to withdraw, but Gentle said, "Don't worry about the tears. I've been ru
"What, Maestro?"
"When I leave here, I'm going back to the Fifth to prepare for a Reconciliation. Would you trust me enough to join the Synod; to represent the First?"
The monk's face broke into bliss, shedding years as he smiled, "It would be my honor, Maestro," he said.
"There's risk in it," Gentle warned.
"There always was. But I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you."
"How so?"
"You're my inspiration, Maestro," the man replied, inclining his head in deference. "Whatever you require of me, I'll perform as best I can."
"Stay here, then. Watch the Erasure and wait. I'll find you when the time comes." He spoke with more certainty than he felt, but then perhaps the illusion of competence was part of every Maestro's repertoire.
"I'll be waiting," the monk replied.
"What's your name?"
"When I joined the Dearthers they called me Chicka Jackeen."
"Jackeen?"
"It means worthless fellow," the man replied.
"Then we've got much in common," Gentle said. He took the man's hand and shook it. "Remember me, Jackeen."
"You've never left my mind," the man replied.
There was some subtext here Gentle couldn't grasp, but this was no time to delve. He had two demanding and dangerous journeys ahead of him: the first to Yzordderrex, the second from that city back to the Retreat. Thanking Jackeen for his good offices, Gentle left him at the Erasure and picked his way back through the devastation towards the circle of Mado