Jack of Ravens

by Mark Chadbourn

  The captain of the guard cantered up. He bowed his head to Niamh before eyeing Church coldly. ‘Your highness. You have brought a toy back for your entertainment, I see. Should we deliver him to the Court of the Final Word?’

  ‘No, Evgen. This Fragile Creature will accompany us as he is.’

  Evgen appeared puzzled by this direction, but did not question it. He bowed his head again and returned to the front of the caravan where he waited patiently for Niamh to climb into the back of the central wagon, helped by five beautiful handmaidens. Church made to follow, but Niamh waved him away without looking at him.

  ‘The rear wagon is reserved for your kind,’ she said.

  Church trudged to the back of the caravan and hauled himself into a wagon clearly rougher and less comfortable than Niamh’s. He had glimpsed cushions and silk hangings in her wagon; here there was only bare wood, an unpleasant smell of stale urine and one other occupant.

  This figure wore clothes of the gaudiest colours, reds and greens, golds, blues, oranges and purples, tight-fitting around the legs, but with a padded bodice and numerous scarves streaming from elbows, shoulders, wrists and ankles. His hair was long and curly and aquamarine in colour, which only made his face more ghastly. His skin was as white as chalk, with the texture of parchment, and his lips were drawn back in a permanent rictus so that he appeared to be laughing at everything he saw. Yet his eyes were at times filled with a terrible sadness, and at others with a soul-destroying horror.

  He cast Church one abject, fear-filled look, as if expecting Church to beat him, then buried his head beneath his arms.

  Church slumped into a corner as the wagon jerked into life. He allowed the rhythmic rocking motion to soothe him while he patched together his scattered thoughts. His primary concern was to find a foothold in this new version of reality that challenged all his preconceptions: a world of beings who believed they were gods, of parallel dimensions that could be accessed in the blink of an eye. Set against that was the more mundane but no less shocking acceptance that death could come just as suddenly. He recalled laughing and talking with Tannis, Owein and Branwen, his deepening understanding of Etain’s feelings, the expression on her face as she hurried to see the others. All so potent and affecting, all torn away while his back was turned, never to be experienced again.

  His grief coalesced into a physical pain in his chest, heightened by guilt: if they had not accompanied him to Boskawen-Un, and if he had not encouraged them to enter the hidden chamber, they would not have become Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, and he was convinced their role as champions had led to their murders.

  But the one thing he could not get out of his head was that single, ugly word scrawled on the wall of the roundhouse: SCUM. Wrapped in it was so much hatred, emphasised by the sheer brutality of the slaughter.

  SCUM. It resonated far beyond its simple alignment of letters. Church couldn’t escape the possibility that he was not alone in being cast back in time. But if the murderer was another refugee from the twenty-first century, why the hatred and brutality towards people who could not have been known to the killer?

  ‘You have not been sent to torment me, then?’

  Church stirred from his thoughts to see his fellow traveller sizing him up with a mixture of curiosity and fear. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘What are you?’ His tone was harsh; he didn’t care.

  The rictus grin gave the impression that the garish being was laughing at the question, but his eyes showed misery. ‘How hurtful! What am I, indeed. But that is what I have come to expect.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  The stranger searched Church’s face and appeared surprised that the apology was sincere. ‘I am called the Mocker, though my given name is Jerzy.’

  ‘Church. Also know as Jack the Giantkiller,’ he added bitterly. ‘Though I haven’t slain any giants of note for a while. You’re a prisoner, too?’

  ‘Prisoner. Entertainer of the masses. Figure of ridicule. Slave. Dancer, juggler, fire-eater, poet, bard, minstrel. Why, my titles are endless.’ His bitterness dwarfed Church’s.

  ‘You’ve tried to escape?’

  Jerzy looked horrified. ‘You do not escape the Golden Ones! Besides, where could I go with this new face they gifted to me?’

  ‘They did that to you?’ Now it was Church’s turn to be horrified.

  ‘Your face must fit your life. I was in my cups in the Hunter’s Moon, singing a ballad that, by my own admission, was so powerful it moved hardened warriors to tears, when I was spied by the queen’s advisors. If I had known they were there I would have kept myself to myself, I can tell you.’

  ‘They dragged you off?’

  ‘I was offered a position of tremendous responsibility. How could I refuse?’ Tears welled in his eyes and he blinked them away. ‘I was immediately dispatched to the Court of the Final Word for this …’ he motioned to his white, grinning face … and to receive my little friend.’ He tapped his head.

  Church made a gesture of puzzlement.

  ‘A Caraprix!’

  ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘You don’t know very much at all, do you?’ Jerzy surveyed Church as if he might be dangerously stupid. ‘A Caraprix is …’ He searched for the right word. ‘An associate of the Golden Ones. A small thing—’

  ‘A pet?’

  ‘No, no, no, no! Do not say such things! A Caraprix is small, but can change its shape into anything. No one knows how much they think for themselves, but the Golden Ones need their Caraprix. And by turn, I think, the Caraprix need their Golden Ones.’

  Church struggled to comprehend. ‘And you have one?’

  ‘Oh, not in the same way. They put one in my head. It wraps itself around my mind and drinks my thoughts and dreams. If I want to go left it can make me go right. If I want to wake it can make me sleep.’ Jerzy read the disgust in Church’s face. ‘Oh, it is an honour, no doubt.’ He didn’t sound convinced. ‘Very few get to encounter a Caraprix so personally. It is only gifted to those considered very important in the grand scheme.’

  ‘I understand … I think. They use it to control you. So why are you so important?’

  ‘Because I am a bard!’ Jerzy replied incredulously. ‘And like any intelligent beings, the Golden Ones know that stories and songs have power. Why, you can change the way things are, and the way they will be, with a few well-chosen words. You can’t have a power like that wandering around without control.’

  Church decided he liked the strange character; there was suffering aplenty, but also resilience and spirit. Over the following half-hour, Church explained his own situation, while the Mocker spoke of the Far Lands, how the Golden Ones were the most powerful, but only one of a multitude of races, kinds and types. As Jerzy described some of them, Church realised these were the things that had populated mankind’s dreams and nightmares since the beginning.

  And Jerzy told Church of the Golden Ones’ homes, the twenty great courts, each with their own kings, queens, minor royalty, aristocracy and arcane rules and regulations. Each court was characterised by a particular mood or way of thinking, and while there was some friction between the individual courts, only the Court of the Final Word evinced an abiding fear.

  Jerzy was about to tell Church why this was so when the wagon ground to a halt and the flap at the rear was thrown to one side. Evgen, the captain of the guard, ordered Church and Jerzy out onto stone flags, where Church was greeted by a sight that took his breath away.

  2

  The Court of the Soaring Spirit was bigger than any Earthly city Church had ever seen. The caravan had come through a fortified entrance gate at the head of a valley, and the city filled the dale ahead for as far as the eye could see. Despite its name there was something oppressive about the court. The streets were tiny, winding amongst buildings that soared up in every architectural style imaginable, with upper storeys overhanging the lower so that from street level any view of the sky would be minimal. It was a town planner’s nightmare
, a jumble of roofs pitched this way and that, the buildings so twisted and deformed they looked decrepit with age. From one view it appeared medieval, from another Tudor, with black-stained wooden beams and dirty-grey stone, bottle-glass windows and crumbling chimneys on the point of collapse. It smelled of open sewers and stagnant water and the accumulated damp of centuries.

  The sounds, sights and smells combined to give an impression of whispered plotting and secret politics, of private struggles and misery heaped upon misery as residents attempted to fight their way up from the dark slums to a place where they could glimpse the sun.

  ‘Isn’t it a place of wonders.’ Jerzy sighed. Intentionally or not, his fixed grin coloured the statement with irony.

  Niamh’s grace and glamour were emphasised by the surroundings as she walked towards them from the head of the caravan. Church nodded to the broken-chain banner. ‘I thought your court stood for freedom.’ He didn’t attempt to hide his contempt.

  Niamh spoke as if addressing a child. ‘We are all prisoners, and we forge our own chains. The love that sets us free holds us fast. Our dreams and ambitions drag us from the wide vista to the prison of a single path. Every choice, every step, is a link in the chain. Every thought is a lock.’ She motioned to Jerzy. ‘He has been freed from all those things, from love, from the tyranny of choice and independent thought.’

  ‘But you control him.’

  ‘As I do you. Yet you are free to wander this city, free to receive sustenance without offering anything in return, free from concern about your choice of path and your future. I have taken that burden upon myself. And so you are free.’

  Jerzy gave a flamboyant bow. ‘And I thank you, your highness, from the bottom of my heart.’

  Church looked from Niamh’s icy smile to the sprawling, stinking city and finally realised the extent of his predicament.

  3

  Freed from obligation for the rest of the day, Jerzy led Church to an inn at the end of a shadowy alley. The Hunter’s Moon was a low, labyrinthine pub of numerous rooms and annexes, smoky and stinking of sour ale. The hubbub of voices never dipped. Church was mesmerised by the bizarre clientele: unfeasibly tall, unnervingly short, unnaturally thin and grotesquely fat, horns and tails, scales and wings. Church felt as if he was looking at a pop-up diorama in a nursery story book.

  He was introduced to a big, bearded hunter named Bearskin, who had the eyes and odour of an animal; to a tall, needle-thin man with a stovepipe hat who called himself Shadow John; and to a cackling mad old crone by the name of Mother Mary. Jerzy led him to the only vacant table in a nook beside the stone fireplace where a pile of logs blazed to dispel the damp.

  They each had a flagon of a potent ale that brought back painful memories of the nights Church had spent around the hearth in Carn Euny.

  ‘Drink up, good friend.’ The Mocker grinned humourlessly. ‘The first eight flagons are always the hardest.’

  ‘Is that the answer? Drown yourself in an alcoholic haze?’

  ‘There are few pleasures in life. Best to embrace them with open arms.’ Jerzy took a long draught. His surgically enhanced grimace made it a difficult task and ale flooded out of the corners of his mouth. ‘Excuse my manners.’ He wiped his face with the back of his hand.

  The barman collecting flagons slapped Jerzy on the back and bellowed, ‘Hey, it’s the Mocker! Tell us a joke!’

  Without missing a beat, Jerzy said, ‘There is no point. Life is meaningless. We strive and we suffer. We shed our tears, always expecting something good just around the corner, but it never materialises. And then we die.’

  The barman stared in confusion for a moment, until his gaze fell on Jerzy’s unflinching grin and he gave a burst of raucous laughter. ‘Good one, Mocker! And then you die! Good one!’

  When he had gone, Jerzy said, ‘You’ll find your little pleasures where you can in the Court of the Soaring Spirit. Steal your moments and hold them dear.’

  ‘I don’t intend to be around for long.’

  It was the Mocker’s turn to stare before breaking into laughter. When he saw Church was not joking, the sadness returned to his eyes. ‘There is no escape from the Golden Ones. If you try, if you attempt anything that brings you under suspicion, they will place a Caraprix in your head. And then your life is over. Besides, where would you go?’

  ‘There’s a woman waiting for me a long way from here—’

  ‘A love? A true love?’

  ‘Yes. And I’m going to get back to her. Nothing’s going to stand in the way of that. Not two thousand years … not some overambitious species that think they’re gods … not monsters or brain-worms or secret assassins.’

  Though Church’s face was expressionless, his voice was taut with a passion that brought a surprising tear to Jerzy’s eye. ‘Why,’ the Mocker said, his voice cracking, ‘that is the most remarkable and beautiful thing I have heard in all of the Far Lands. I remember … I remember someone … before all this …’ His eyes welled up and he wiped them dry with his ale-sticky hand. ‘I am sorry, my friend. There are many wonders in the Far Lands, but much that has been forgotten, and one of those things is that pure and powerful love of which you speak. We are all bereft here, and I think we all know it, which is why we hide it so well. There is a reason why so many of the races of the Far Lands are attracted to your world.’ He sniffed loudly, then blew his nose into a red silk scarf. This calls for a song. A ballad to break hearts—’

  ‘No.’ Church held up his hand as the Mocker prepared to sing. ‘Not a sad song. Something to raise the spirits. To say that I’m getting out of this place.’ He smiled as inspiration came. ‘There’s a singer in my time … dead now, but he had a fantastic voice and a lot of style. Some might have said he was unfashionable, but to me he had old-fashioned class, and that’s a quality you just can’t manufacture.’

  ‘Class,’ Jerzy repeated.

  ‘Here, let me hum you a few bars. Then I’ll teach you the words.’

  It wasn’t long before Jerzy’s powerful, emotive voice filled the Hunter’s Moon. The first verse failed to penetrate the rumble of voices, but then a wave of silence rolled out until it encompassed the entire inn, every drinker rapt. When the song ended, a deafening cheer demanded more, and by the time Jerzy had run through it three times whole sections of the inn were singing along to ‘Come Fly With Me’, ruminating about the wonders of going down ‘Acapulco way’ and to ‘Llama land’, while a being with a horse’s head brayed that ‘weather-wise, it’s such a lovely day’.

  Church laughed heartily at the hilarious incongruity of the scene, and for a while his laughter masked sharper feelings as the song reminded him of a world that may as well have been on the other side of the universe.

  When Church and Jerzy finally stumbled out of the Hunter’s Moon, night had fallen and a full moon lit up the clouds in a sliver of sky above the ramshackle, overhanging buildings that turned the street into a chasm. At street level, only irregular, guttering torches provided islands of illumination.

  They were both worse for alcohol, and Church mused continually about heading for the city walls and making a break for freedom. Eventually, he gave in to Jerzy’s common sense and allowed himself to be led towards Niamh’s residence, the Palace of Glorious Light, where a chamber was being prepared for him.

  In the distance thunder rumbled and soon fat drops of summer rain were finding their way between the eaves to splatter on the cobbles. The shower quickly became a downpour that gushed from the gutters in torrents. Church and Jerzy sheltered in a wooden porch beside bunches of garlic and lavender hung to dry.

  ‘You’d think in Fairyland someone would have been able to magic away the rain,’ Church muttered. Jerzy found this amusing and snickered for a full minute.

  Church silenced him with a hand to his mouth. A deep cold had materialised in the pit of his stomach: a warning sign, though there was no movement and no sound beyond the driving rain.

  ‘What is wrong?’ Jerzy hissed.

&nb
sp; ‘Something’s coming.’ Church clutched at the dry, ancient wood of the porch wall.

  Jerzy looked out past the water sheeting off the porch roof. As if on cue, the staccato clip-clop of hoofs on the cobbles rose up. Church’s heart was pounding so hard he thought it would burst. Blue sparks fizzed around his fingers and when he removed his hand from the wall an imprint was burned in the wood. Jerzy’s white face glowed in the gloom. Now he could feel it, too. He clearly wanted to ask Church what was approaching, but the words would not come.

  The steady hoof-beats drew nearer. It was the sound of a rider taking his time, surveying the area. From around a sharp bend came a shape darker than the surrounding shadows. Church held his breath as it approached the first circle of torchlight.

  The horse appeared first, a strong black stallion liveried in black leather, but with armour on its head and around its eyes, though much of it was crusted with brown rust. The rider too was swathed in black. A sodden cloak hung like bat-wings, and beneath it was a long black tunic, though it was so terribly tattered it appeared to have been stitched together from rags. Underneath that, Church could just glimpse dull flashes of armour, all of it rusted. The cowl of the cloak was pulled low over the rider’s head to keep off the driving rain.

  Though he did not know why, Church buried himself in the depths of the porch next to Jerzy’s now-trembling body.

  When the rider was just a few feet away, he reined in his mount so that both man and beast were stock still, listening, smelling, sensing.

  He wants me, Church thought. He can feel the Pendragon Spirit in the same way I can feel whatever drives him.

  And then the rider looked in Church’s direction and it felt as if the world was falling away.

  It was Etain, her dead, mouldering face accusing him of betrayal. Her eyes burned across the gulf between them, and they spoke of a deep, abiding hatred that even the grave could not soothe.