He shook his head as if his own denial would prevent what she was saying from being true.
'You are the first, Mallory.'
'That's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous it's laughable. Me, a champion?'
The concept was absurd in so many different ways he couldn't begin to tell her.
'There is a need for you, Mallory. A great need. And you will be ready for it, though there may be more forging necessary. Existence does not choose its champions unwisely. You are a Brother of Dragons.'
'A Brother of Dragons,' he repeated with a disbelieving laugh. 'OK, I'll bite. For now.'
She gave him a scabbard, which he fastened to his belt, and then she motioned for him to follow her again. Mallory's mind was racing. He'd just about accepted that he was nowhere on earth, that he was in a place that had slipped into folklore as Fairyland and that the woman with him was of a race that simpler people had come to call fairies. But where he really was, and what she truly was, escaped him. What made him uneasy was the realisation that since the Fall the world was not simply at the mercy of isolated supernatural predators that looked as if they'd wandered in from Grimm's Fairy Tales. There were other powers, perhaps higher powers, that had some interest in humanity; mankind was no longer in control of its own future.
As they moved back through the trees towards the Court, he put his tumbling thoughts to one side and said, 'Why are you helping me?'
'You were brought to me, and I never turn away a creature in need.' She appeared to consider this for a while before adding, 'My people have always had a relationship with your kind, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, but always there.'
An owl broke through the branches and circled her until she held out an arm for it to land. Her skin remained unscathed under its claws. She leaned towards it, apparently listening, as it made a series of strange sounds deep in its throat. 'There is food and drink on the table if you wish to refresh yourself,' she said as it took flight.
On the way back to the Court, Mallory thought he could sense a deep sadness underneath her calm, as if she had lost someone or something very dear to her. He found he had warmed to her with remarkable speed; she appeared uncomplicated and uncorrupted by cynicism.
In the Court, they walked for ten minutes along corridors where the only sound was the soft tread of their feet. Eventually, they entered a large hall with a beamed ceiling and luxuriant tapestries hanging on the stone walls. Food and drink were laid out on the table — silver dishes and platters containing seafood, spiced meats, breads and fruit, and decanters of a deep red wine — but there was no sign of any servants.
'Not many people here,' he said.
'The Court of Peaceful Days is filled with life, but my subjects know I prefer silence to follow at my heels.' She gestured for Mallory to sit. 'Everything in my Court is given freely and without obligation.'
'Subjects?' You're the queen?' Mallory suddenly realised how hungry he was. He didn't know how long he had been out, but after the days of cathedral rations his stomach yearned for sophisticated food. He tore into the ham and bread, washing them down with a goblet full of red wine.
She took the seat at the head of the table but didn't touch the food, seemingly content to watch Mallory enjoy himself. 'That is my responsibility.'
'The queen of all Fairyland.'
She laughed silently at his name for the land. 'There are many Courts in the Far Lands, and each has its own queen or king, its own hierarchy, its rules and regulations, petty rivalries and intrigues, loves and vendettas.'
Once he had taken the edge off his hunger, Mallory sat back and looked at her in the light of the latest information. 'When everything went pear- shaped a while back, everyone was talking about gods carrying out miracles all over the place. That was your people?'
She nodded slowly. 'We were worshipped when your race was in its infancy. The tribes called us the Tuatha De Danann. We are known to ourselves, in your tongue, as the Golden Ones.'
'Why did everything change?'
She gestured dismissively as if it were a minor question. 'The seasons turned. It was time once again for an age of wonder, of magic. We returned to the land we knew, and that many of us loved.'
Mallory selected a sharp silver knife and began to quarter an apple. 'Your kind were supposed to be everywhere during the troubles, but since then there's hardly been any sign of you.'
'My people have detached themselves from Fragile Creatures once again. After the rigours of the Great Battle, when suffering and hardship were felt on all sides, the decision was taken to withdraw amongst ourselves, to concentrate on our own affairs. But we can no more leave Fragile Creatures alone than your kind, good Mallory, can leave the Golden Ones alone. Isolationism never works. We are all bound. We must find ways to exist together.'
Mallory poured himself another glass of wine. The velvety warmth of it was spreading through his limbs. 'I wouldn't hold your breath. My own people can't get on together.'
She stared introspectively into the warm shadows in the corner of the room. 'We are all bound, Mallory. Freedom to act independently is an illusion. Obligations and responsibilities tie our hands, as do love and friendship. And good men can no more turn their backs on need than cowards can face danger.'
Mallory finished his apple and pushed himself back from the table, replete. 'That's a very optimistic view of human nature.'
She rose without replying and he trailed behind her out of the room into another chamber, heavily carpeted and filled with sumptuous cushions. She stretched out, catlike, upon them. 'Threats lurk where you least expect them, Mallory,' she said.
He slipped into the cushions, cocooned by every aspect of that place; he didn't want to go back to the hardship of the cathedral, or of his world. He wanted to stay there for ever, listening to her voice, letting her take care of him.
'Your wounds were caused by something terrible,' she continued, 'even to my own people. It has no business being in the Fixed Lands, or the Far Lands, for that matter. It crawled up from the edge of Existence, where even worse things have been stirring. Your kind have been noticed.' This last comment sounded like a tolling bell.
'But that thing's been left behind,' he said. 'I'm never going to go within a million miles of it again.'
'Pick the pearls from my words, Mallory,' she warned. 'And beware.'
He pressed her further, but she would say no more. Her statement, though, remained with him, niggling at the back of his head, spoiling the comfort he felt. In a bid to forget, he questioned her about her kind. She told him of four fabulous cities that haunted her nomadic people's memories, an ancient homeland they could never return to and the terrible sadness that knowledge engendered in all of them. And she told of the wonders the Golden Ones had seen: astonishing creatures that soared on the sun's rays, breathtaking worlds where the very fabric changed shape with thought, the play of light on oceans greater than the Milky Way, the great sweep of Existence. Tears sprang to her eyes as the stories flowed from her, memories of amazement that cast a pall over her current life.
'We have lost so much, and I fear we will never regain it,' she said, and the terrible regret in her voice made Mallory's chest heavy.
At some point, her voice became like music, lulling him to sleep. He dreamed of worlds of colour and sound, bright and infinitely interesting, of nobility and passion and magic, and when he woke with tears in the corners of his eyes he resolved not to return to his world of bleakness and dismal low horizons.
The room was empty. He stretched, surprised at how wonderfully rested he felt. The corridor without had the stillness and fragrance of early morning. He wandered along it, searching for Rhiannon to ask her if he could stay at the Court, but the whole place appeared deserted; not even the guards were visible. He took branching corridors in the hope of finding some central area, but the building was like a labyrinth and he quickly became quite lost.
After a while, he came upon an atrium big enough to contain trees at least eighty feet tal
l. Sunlight streamed through the crystal glass high overhead, yet the space was cool and airy. A grassy banked stream babbled through the centre of the room, while birds sang in the branches and rabbits and squirrels ran wild amongst the trunks.
In the very heart of the atrium was a pillar of marble so white it glowed. Mallory felt oddly drawn to it, but as he approached, a disturbing whispering broke out on the edge of his consciousness. He couldn't quite make out what was being said, but still it unnerved him. He had an impression of strange intelligences, so alien he could barely comprehend what form they might take. Turn away, he told himself, fearing that his own mind would be burned by any further contact; but the pillar pulled him in.
Yet when he came within a foot of it, the subtle whispering faded away and there was only an abiding silence in his head. The marble was hypnotic in its blankness. As he stared at it he began to feel as if he was floating in a world of white with no up or down, no horizon. Peace descended on him.
He didn't know how long he was like that, but time had certainly passed when he realised he was seeing something in the nothingness. Shapes coalesced like twilight shadows on snow, taking on substance, clarity, depth and eventually context, until he realised with a shock that he was looking at Miller lying on a muddy trail, his dead, glassy eyes staring up at the grey sky.
His cry broke the spell. When he looked around, Rhiannon was standing at his shoulder. 'I just saw…'
She nodded slowly, her face grave.
The pillar was just white marble again. 'A hallucination? Or did I see what was really happening back on earth?'
'The Wish-Post looks into you as you look into it,' she said. 'What you saw is the road not travelled. You are thinking about not returning?'
He didn't answer, but she could see the truth in his face.
'Your vision showed you the state of Existence if you stay here.'
'Is it for real?'
She took his hand; her fingers were cool and calming.
'He was going to die sooner or later anyway,' he continued, without meeting her eyes.
'I know what happened to you, Mallory. What you did.' No accusation marked her face, only pity, and somehow that was worse. He turned away, sick at what had been laid bare.
Her fingers grew tighter, more supportive. 'As above, so below. As without, so within. The rules of Existence are simple, Mallory, and unyielding. To everything there is an opposite, though it may often remain hidden, and these opposites are continually at war. We choose our sides, make our stand and hope for the best.'
'How do you know what happened to me?' Briefly, he thought he might cry.
'Some of us have the ability to peer into Fragile Creatures. But your essence, Mallory, is so raw that any of us could see. There is a battle raging in your heart, the same battle that sweeps through all Existence. Which side you take is within your control, but you will pay the consequences of your choice.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'There is no need to lie to me, Mallory.' Her voice was so gentle that his feelings surged again. He had the sudden, aching desire to put his head in her lap so she could stroke his hair, tell him of good and noble things. 'Your bitterness and despair consume you. Do not let them.'
'What do you know?' he said defensively. He made to break free from her hand, but couldn't bring himself to do it.
'Let me show you something else.' She turned him so he was once again staring into the Wish-Post. He had obviously become attuned to the object for he quickly fell into the swirling whiteness. He dreaded seeing Miller's dead face again, but this time the snowstorm fell away to show a woman leading a pack of ragtag travellers along a muddy track. It was Sophie Tallent.
'Why are you showing me this?' he asked.
'You know, Mallory.'
As Sophie and her band crested a rise, a dark smudge appeared on the horizon, and though it appeared insubstantial, Mallory knew instantly it was the thing they had faced at Bratton Camp.
'Now you're trying to tell me that if I don't go back, she'll die too?' he said acidly. 'You really do want me out of here.'
'No.' Rhiannon pulled him gently away from the pillar; it felt as if white tendrils were withdrawing from his mind. 'It is important that you are free to weigh what lies within you, and to make your choices accordingly.
Good or bad, the choice is the important thing. But it is also important you have all the information to make your decision.'
Following the flight of a bird, Mallory let his gaze rise up to the crystal roof. The way the sunlight shimmered through the glass brought a tremendously evocative memory of his childhood rushing up from deep within him with such force that it literally took his breath away. He was at his grandparents' farm just outside Worcester on a sun-drenched summer Sunday morning, with the light forming starbursts through the branches of the trees as they swayed in the breeze. The air was heavy with the fruity farmyard smell and he could still taste the saltiness of the home-cured bacon on his tongue. His parents were back in the house with his little sister, but he'd gone walking with his grandfather. It was one of his favourite pastimes. The old man with the lantern jaw and snowy hair had told vivid country tales with a rich Worcestershire accent, filling Mallory with an appreciation of the seemingly mystical power of nature, of the epic cycles of the seasons and the strangely intelligent actions of the animals and birds that surrounded the farm.
On that morning, they had walked the ancient cart track to the thick wood clustering the hillside where his grandfather had once terrified him by telling him that all the trees had spirits, and they watched him as he passed. In the middle of the track they had come across a chaffinch writhing in the dust and grass seed. It might have been clipped by a car on the road down in the valley or winged by a raptor, but it was undoubtedly dying. The seven-year-old Mallory had been deeply upset by its death throes, more so when his grandfather had told him there was nothing they could do to save it. Yet his grandfather had gently picked up the bird and held it securely, stroking its head with his thumb.
'Grandpa, you're getting blood on your shirt,' Mallory had pointed out. But his grandfather had ignored the needless stain, only whistling soothingly to the bird, still stroking its head until it eventually passed away. When he finally laid it to rest in the shade of a hedgerow, Mallory had been shocked to see deep scratches in the old man's palms where the bird's talons had clawed out their fear.
'Why did you let it hurt you?' Mallory had asked. 'It was going to die anyway.'
His grandfather had leaned down until he could look deeply into Mallory's face, and what Mallory saw in his blue eyes had been strange and mysterious. 'Every second is as valuable as the one that went before, lad, and we do our best to prove that. We've got no other job in this world,' he had said, smiling, not really caring if Mallory understood or not.
And Mallory hadn't understood, but there in the Court of Peaceful
Days he had the overwhelming yet incomprehensible belief that it was more important than anything else he had ever been told. Desperately, he grasped for the meaning, but it was as elusive as the shimmer of the sunbeams through the glass, and eventually the memory retreated to its hiding place.
'This place,' he began, 'it's affecting me… making me remember things…'
'Peace has that effect.'
'How long before I have to make my decision?' he said.
'As long as you require. Time here is not the same as in your land. The breath between seconds can be an uncrossable gulf. Centuries can pass in the blink of an eye.' She led him out of the atrium into the cool, shady corridor beyond.
'Then I could stay here for ever and what you showed me might never happen,' he said desperately.
Her sad smile told him that was not an option.
She left him alone to wander out into the lawned area that ran down to the thick wood surrounding the Court. The sun was pleasantly warm before the full heat of the day set in and the air was vibrant with birdsong. He found a grassy b
ank next to a stream and lay back with his hands behind his head, watching the clouds drifting across the blue sky. After a while, he realised it was spoilt: he couldn't appreciate the tranquillity, for his mind had been made up for him and it was already turning to what lay ahead.
An hour later, he trudged back to the Court with heavy legs. Rhiannon was waiting for him; she already appeared to know what his decision had been.
The kitchens prepared him a meal of bread, cheese and fruit, which he stored in his haversack, and then Rhiannon led him into a large entrance hall he hadn't seen before. It had stone flags and wooden beams, and appeared home to as many birds and woodland animals as the atrium. In the centre, two blue and green globes hovered in mid-air, seemingly substantial, yet occasionally passing through each other as they spun.
Mallory was surprised how heavy his heart felt. He had been deeply moved after only a few hours in a strange place with a strange woman; it made no sense.
As they approached the large oaken door, it swung open of its own accord, revealing a winding path leading through a white gate before crossing green meadows that stretched to the horizon.
'Follow that path and it will lead you back to your world,' Rhiannon said.
He considered asking how this could be, before accepting that the question was as pointless as everything else in his life. Instead, he asked the only question that mattered to him. 'Would you mind if I came back here? One day?'
'The Court of Peaceful Days will always be here for you, Mallory. When you've walked your road and shed your burden, there will be peace waiting for you.'
The words 'Goodbye, Mum' popped into his head and he only just escaped the embarrassment of saying them aloud. Instead, he let his hand close around the dragon handle of his sword for comfort, and then he stepped over the threshold.
'Dark times lie ahead for you, Mallory,' Rhiannon said. 'You will find yourself in a labyrinth of opposing views, with peril on every side. Look to learning to understand the conflict.'
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