Jack of Ravens (29 page)

‘Must you continually molest him?’ Niamh said to her coldly.

‘You may have tricked him into being your slave, but you will never own his soul.’ Lucia’s eyes flashed defiantly.

Church stepped in to quell the tension that had been mounting between the two women throughout the journey. ‘We can tell your people to raise an army and return here,’ he said to Niamh.

‘There is no point,’ Niamh said. ‘It would take a great deal of negotiation simply to bring together the twenty great courts, and even then my people would never agree to a pre-emptive attack. The Golden Ones believe
themselves to be so powerful that no one would dare strike against them. But if any ever do, they will respond with force.’

‘So we have to wait until those things get the first punch in?’ Church said.

‘Only then will the Golden Ones respond.’

‘By then it might be too late.’

She looked towards the distant horizon that hid her home. ‘Only then.’

7

Church led the way back into the Court of the Soaring Spirit as dusk was falling. Lanterns burning in a million windows transformed the oppressive architecture into a place of magic, and the streets were filled with the aroma of exotic spices from evening meals.

Niamh returned to her quarters immediately. Throughout the entire return journey, she had been brooding over the repercussions of their discovery of the enemy fortress. With each passing day she was less like the goddess who had enticed Church into the Otherworld. Her arrogance and confidence had been shattered and she stalked the corridors of her palace as if death were only one step behind.

The first thing Church did was to seek out Decebalus and Aula, who were drinking in the Hunter’s Moon. They had recently returned from their own expedition to explore the Far Lands to the east.

After Church explained about the enemy fortress, he said, ‘I have a job for you, if you’re up for it.’

Decebalus raised his flagon. ‘Anything, brother.’

Church told them of Veitch’s plan to murder any Brothers and Sisters of Dragons he could find. ‘If I’m allowed, I’m going to return to our world at regular intervals and bring back any of us I can find – and who are prepared to come.’

‘After they have carried out whatever mission Existence has planned for them in our world,’ Aula noted.

Church nodded. ‘I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or successful, but at least I’ll be able to save some of them from Veitch. We’ll also be able to build up a force, here in the city, for whatever fight we’ve got ahead of us.’

Decebalus nodded approvingly. ‘An army of Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.’

‘Well, maybe a squad …’ Church bent forward so he would not be overheard. ‘I want the two of you to look after them. Give them all the information they need. Find them somewhere safe to stay, either here or outside the city. And get them ready for whenever they’re needed. Will you do that?’

Decebalus grinned and drained his flagon.

‘There are worse jobs,’ Aula said before downing her own drink.

Church quickly returned to the Palace of Glorious Light where the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons had been given quarters in a tower that faced the setting sun. By accident or design, it was far removed from the main living quarters of Niamh’s staff.

Lucia had already turned her rooms into a reflection of her character, filled with obscure artefacts, talismans and strange objects she had located in the court’s markets and shops. One chamber had been set apart for practising her Craft, and it was there that the owl resided. Church had started to think it was less a bird than something else that had adopted the image as a disguise; it always looked at him with an unnerving intelligence.

Church had also come to realise Lucia’s potential. Somehow she was tapping directly into the energy that manifested as the Blue Fire. If she could truly manipulate it, she would be capable of anything.

‘Perhaps,’ she mused as they sat sipping wine while Jerzy practised his juggling, ‘we are all capable of drawing from that reservoir of power. We only need to find the right key to unlock the part of our mind that has the ability to direct it. For me it is the words of power, the correct hand movements, the rituals. For you—’

‘I need to find the lamp containing the missing part of my Pendragon Spirit,’ Church said. ‘Without that, I’m not going to be unlocking anything.’

‘She has it. I am sure of it.’ Lucia didn’t have to specify who
she
was. ‘She cannot be trusted. The gods have manipulated mortals since the world was formed. She has already manipulated you.’ A pause while she savoured her wine, and then a statement designed to appear throwaway: ‘Why do you indulge her?’

‘I don’t.’

‘You have not attempted to break her control over you.’

‘She’s agreed to release me if I find her brother.’

Another pause, another carefully considered statement: ‘She is developing a fascination for you.’

‘As a specimen, maybe. Not in the way you mean.’

Lucia smiled at Church’s naivety. ‘I have seen the way she looks at you when you are not aware. Whenever you speak, her attention is drawn to you. She does not treat you like chattel, though by any definition that is what you are.’

‘She’s a goddess.’ Church finished his wine. ‘And I’m a man. At the very best it would be social suicide.’

Lucia laughed and offered him more wine. Church declined and was surprised by the flicker of sadness in her eyes when he said he was heading back to his chamber.

As Church and Jerzy approached their quarters, Evgen was waiting for
them. Church did not trust Niamh’s guard captain. He was sure it was only Niamh’s patronage that prevented Evgen from eradicating him in an instant.

‘You have a visitor,’ Evgen said in a monotone. ‘He arrived at the gates of the court shortly after your return.’

‘I have no idea who that could possibly be.’

‘He says he knows you. He was a mortal … once.’ Evgen smiled nastily. ‘He is known in the Far Lands as the pet of the queen of the Court of the Yearning Heart. He has announced himself here as Thomas Learmont of Earlston. Also known as Thomas the Rhymer.’

8

‘Who is this Fragile Creature?’ Jerzy asked as they followed the echoes of Evgen’s boots down the winding stone steps.

‘It depends if he is who he says he is,’ Church replied. ‘Thomas the Rhymer is a figure from the myths of my people, like King Arthur – very much like Arthur, in fact. Both of them were supposed to sleep under a hill until the darkest hour when their people would need them again.’

‘So he was a great warrior?’

‘Not in the same way. According to the old stories, Thomas was kidnapped by the Faerie Queen while he slept under a hawthorn tree. He stayed with the Fair Folk for a while and was given two great gifts: the power of prophecy and the Tongue that Cannot Lie. If you can actually call that a gift. True Thomas, they called him. When he returned home to Scotland he made his mark, achieved legendary status and then disappeared back to Faerie. But that might not have happened yet. Or maybe this is it happening now. I can’t get my head around the whole time-not-being-linear thing.’

‘Perhaps he simply ran out of friends in the Fixed Lands because of all that truth-telling,’ Jerzy said.

Evgen led them into a large chamber in the castle’s guard-tower where a man sat alone, swathed in a cloak with a hood pulled over his head. Evgen nodded to Church and left.

The man stood and removed his hood to reveal a dour face and lank brown hair. Intelligent but troubled grey eyes surveyed them forensically. ‘This is it, then.’ His Scottish accent softened his irritable tone. ‘A naïf and a fool.’

‘What winning ways,’ Jerzy said drolly. ‘We must introduce you to the queen.’

‘I’ve been teaching him the humour of our world,’ Church said. ‘He particularly likes irony and sarcasm.’

‘I am glad you are using your time wisely,’ the stranger said. ‘After all, you could simply be fighting for humanity and the whole of Existence.’

Church tried to read how much the stranger knew, but his eyes gave nothing away.

‘I have been
gifted
–’ Thomas enunciated the word venomously ‘– with the ability to see into the future. We are fated to walk the same road, at least for a while.’

‘Friends, then,’ Church said.

‘Oh, I would not go that far.’ Thomas the Rhymer smiled tightly.

9

Jerzy raised his flagon. The Hunter’s Moon was as packed as ever. ‘Well, then, Tom—’

‘Thomas.’

Jerzy’s grin was challenging. ‘No, I think it has to be Tom.’ He winked at Church. Tom shook his head wearily. ‘I raise my glass to a hero in the making. A
legend.’

‘I think,’ Tom said pointedly to Church, ‘your monkey has had more than enough lessons in irony.’

Church raised his own flagon ironically. ‘You are, then, Thomas Learmont.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it happened as the story said: you were taken by the Faerie court—?’

‘The queen of the Court of the Yearning Heart entertained me until she grew bored with my ways.’

‘And she gave you the two gifts?’

‘Curses, not gifts. It was an act of punishment.’

‘Punishment for what?’

‘For not being … entertaining enough. The gods grow bored easily.’

Jerzy’s mood dampened. ‘Though it irks me, I fear we have much in common. The Golden Ones like to act as patrons, sometimes friends, even lovers, but they are cruel masters and they have only their own best interests at heart.’

‘But being able to see the future—’ Church began.

Tom shook his head. ‘To see the misery of growing old, the indignities, the countless occasions of pain and suffering that lie ahead for yourself, your loved ones, your friends? To see your own death? To know when and how and have it haunt your dreams? There is a reason why man was made to drift through his days in ignorance.’

Church could now understand the bitterness he sensed in Tom. ‘What
incentive is there to do anything if you know exactly what’s going to happen?’ he asked.

‘Ah, it is not as simple as that, as if anything is. I see static images laid out before me, not live in all their multifaceted glory. It is like walking through an endless gallery where each painting shows a different scene of something that lies ahead. I have no idea how they relate, how any of them come to be. I know not if they are true representations or a warped perspective of what is yet to come. Yet they haunt me still.’

‘But what you saw led you to seek us out?’

‘To seek
you
out.’

Church weighed up whether he really wanted to ask the question. ‘What did you see?’

Tom weighed his reply just as carefully. ‘A stark choice: between humanity being freed of its shackles, or being confined to the mud for evermore. A war that could destroy men and gods. And you as the deciding factor.’

‘That’s the big picture. What did you see for me?’

For the first time there was a glimpse of sympathy in Tom’s eyes. ‘I think you know the answer to that,’ he said.

The lull that followed was heavy, and it felt as if the whole of the bar had grown still. Jerzy clapped an arm around Church’s shoulders. ‘Hope, good friend, is the key that unlocks many a door, and we carry it around with us always.’

‘All right,’ Church said to Tom. ‘You’re the man with the answers. What do we do now?’

‘Now,’ Tom said, ‘we prepare to take the upper hand in the coming war.’

1

Venice, 26 December 1586

Fog blanketed the city by the lagoon, but even its chilly, damp embrace could not douse the hot emotions. The carnival was in full swing. Music swept out across Venice from the Piazza San Marco where hundreds of costumed and masked revellers danced in wild abandon or engaged in the subtle art of seduction. Before the Basilica of St Mark the Evangelist, with its towers and dome reaching up to the sky to denote God’s glory, men drank wine by the bottle and laughed loudly enough to drown out the fiddle players. Further into the shadows of the ornate building, couples kissed and slipped their hands beneath the folds of each other’s clothes, their masks hiding their identities even from themselves.