Gentle did his weary best to explain, astonishing and appalling Chicka Jackeen by turns.
"So Hapexamendios is dead?"
''Yes, he is. And everything in the First is His body. And it's rotting to high heaven."
"What happens when the Erasure decays?"
"Who knows? I'm afraid there's enough rot to stink out the Dominion."
"So what's your plan?" Chicka Jackeen wanted to know.
"I don't have one."
The other looked confounded at this. "But you came all the way here," he said. "You must have had some notion or other."
"I'm sorry to disappoint you," Gentle replied, "but the truth is, this was the only place left for me to go." He stared at the Erasure. "Hapexamendios was my Father, Lucius. Perhaps in my heart of hearts I believe I should be in the First with Him."
"If you don't mind me saying so, boss—" Monday broke in.
"Yes?"
"That's a bloody stupid idea."
"If you're going to go in, so am I," Chicka Jackeen said. "I want to see for myself. A dead God's something to tell your children about, eh?"
"Children?"
"Well," said Jackeen, "it's either that or write my memoirs, and I haven't got the patience for that."
"You?" Gentle said. "You waited two hundred years for me, and you say you haven't got patience?"
"Not any more," came the reply. "I want a life, Maestro."
"I don't blame you."
"But not before I've seen the First."
They'd reached the Erasure by now, and while Chicka Jackeen went among his colleagues to tell them what he and the Reconciler were going to do, Monday once again piped up with his opinion on the venture.
"Don't do it, boss," he said. "You've got nothing to prove. I know you were pissed off that they didn't throw a party in Yzordderrex, but fuck 'em, I say—or, rather, don't. Let 'em have their fish."
Gentle laid his hands on Monday's shoulders. "Don't worry," he said. "This isn't a suicide mission."
"So what's the big hurry? You're dead beat, boss. Have a sleep. Eat something. Get strong. There's all of tomorrow not touched yet."
"I'm fine,'1 Gentle said. "I've got my talisman."
"What's that?"
Gentle opened his palm and showed Monday the blue stone.
"A fuckin' egg?"
"An egg, eh?" Gentle said, tossing the stone in his hand. "Maybe it is."
He threw it up into the air a second time, and it rose, far higher than his muscle had propelled it, way up above their heads. At the summit of its ascent it seemed to hover for a beat and then returned into his hand at leisure, defying the claim of gravity. As it descended it brought the faintest drizzle down with it, cooling their upturned faces.
Monday cooed with pleasure. "Rain out of nowhere," he said. "I remember that."
Gentle left him bathing the grime from his face and went to join Chicka Jackeen, who had finished explaining his intentions to his colleagues. They all hung back, watching the Maestros with uneasy stares.
"They think we're going to die," Chicka Jackeen explained.
"They may very well be right," Gentle said quietly. "Are you certain you want to come with me?"
"I was never more certain of anything." — With that they started towards the ambiguous ground that lay between the solidity of the Second and the Erasure's vacancy. As they went, one of Jackeen's friends began to call after him, in distress at his departure. The cry was taken up by several others, their shouts too mingled to be interpreted. Jackeen halted for a moment and glanced back towards the company he was leaving. Gentle made no attempt to urge him on. He ignored the shouts and picked up his speed, the Erasure thickening around him and the smell of the devastation that lay on the other side growing stronger with every step he took. He was prepared for it, however. Instead of holding his breath, he drew the stench of his Father's rot deep into his lungs, defying its pungency. There was another shout from behind him, but this time it wasn't one of Jackeen's friends, it was the Maestro himself, his voice colored more by wonder than alarm. Its tone piqued Gentle's curiosity, and he glanced back over his shoulder to seek Jackeen out, but the nullity had come between them. Unwilling to be delayed, Gentle forged on, a purpose in his stride he didn't comprehend. His enfeebled legs had found strength from somewhere; his heart was urgent in his chest.
Ahead, the blinding murk was stirring, the first vague forms of the First's terrain emerging. And from behind, Jackeen again.
"Maestro? Maestro! Where are you?"
Without slowing his stride, Gentle returned the call.
"Here!"
"Wait for me!" Jackeen gasped. "Wait!" He emerged from the void to lay his hand on Gentle's shoulder.
"What is it?" Gentle said, looking around at Jackeen, who as if in bliss had dropped the toll of years and was once again a young man, sweaty with awe at the way of feits.
"The waters," he said.
"What about them?"
"They've followed you, Maestro. They've followed you!"
And as he spoke, they came. Oh, how they came! They ran to Gentle's feet in glittering rills that broke against his ankles and his shins and leapt like silver snakes towards his hands—or, rather, towards the stone he held in his hands. And seeing their elation and their zeal, he heard Huzzah's laughter and felt again her tiny fingers brushing his arm as she passed the blue egg on to him. He didn't doubt for a moment that she'd known what would come of the gift. So, most likely, had Jude. He'd become their agent at the last, just as he'd become his mother's, and the thought of that sweet service brought an echo of the child's laughter to his lips.
From above, the egg was calling down a drizzle to swell the waters swirling underfoot, and in the space of seconds the patter became a roar, and a deluge descended, violent enough to sluice the murk of the Erasure out of the air. After a few moments, light began to break around the Maestros, the first light this terrain had seen since Hapexamendios had drawn the void over his Dominion. By it, Gentle saw that Jackeen's exhilaration was rapidly turning to panic.
"We're going to drown!" he yelled, fighting to stay on his feet as the water deepened.
Gentle didn't retreat. He knew where his duty lay. As the surf broke against their backs, the tide threatening to drag them under, he raised Huzzah's gift to his lips and kissed it, just as she had done. Then he mustered all his strength and threw the stone out, over the landscape that was being uncovered before them. The egg went from his hand with a momentum that was not his sinews' work but its own ambition, and instantly the waters went in pursuit of it, dividing around the Maestros and taking their tides off into the wasteland of the First.
It would take the waters weeks, perhaps even months, to cover the Dominion from end to end, and most of that work would go unwitnessed. But in the next few hours, standing at their vantage point where the City of God had once begun, the Maestros were granted a glimpse of their labor. The clouds above the First, which had been as inert as the landscape beneath, now began to churn and roil and shed their anguish in stupendous storms, which in turn swelled the rivers that were driving their cleansing way across the rot.
Hapexamendios' remains were not despised. With the purpose of the Goddesses fueling their every drop, the waters turned the slaughterhouse over and over and over, scouring the matter of its poisons and sweeping it up into mounds, which the exhilarated air festooned with vapors.
The first ground that appeared from this tumult was close to the feet of the Maestros and rapidly became a ragged peninsula that stretched fully a mile into the Dominion. The waters broke against it constantly, bringing with every wave another freight of Hapexamendios' clay to increase its flanks. Gentle was patient for a time and stayed at the border. But he could not resist the invitation forever, and finally, ignoring Jackeen's words of caution, he set off down the spine of land to better see the spectacle visible from the far end. The waters were still draining from the new earth, and here and there lightning still ran on the slopes, but the ground was solid enough, and there were seedlings everywhere, carried, he presumed, from Yzordderrex. If so, there would be abundant life here in a little while.