‘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.
‘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.