Niamh visited Church and Jerzy one morning and it was clear she was troubled.
‘Bad news about Lugh?’ Church asked.
She shook her head. ‘My fears for my brother’s safety tear me apart, but there are so many other responsibilities …’ She chewed on a nail.
‘It’s never easy being a leader.’
‘It was easy,’ she said. ‘I had a pampered existence. Difficult decisions were few and far between. Now I feel I must take a lead in establishing my people’s opposition to the Enemy-’
‘Because no one else is.’ When she nodded, for the first time Church felt there might just be some common ground between them.
‘I have decided we must mount an expedition to the edge of the Far Lands to establish the extent of the Enemy’s force, and, if possible, discover who they are, and what they truly want.’
‘Who are you sending?’
‘It has to be people I can … rely upon. I hoped you would lead the expedition, and that you would join us, too, Mocker.’
‘Travel to the Enemy fortress?’ Jerzy whimpered.
‘All right,’ Church said, ‘but I want to take Lucia as well — she has some abilities I could use.’
‘Agreed. And I will accompany you.’
‘I don’t think that’s wise. It could be dangerous-’
Niamh’s eyes flashed. ‘I will not shirk my responsibilities.’
Church held up his hands. ‘Okay, you’re the boss. When I’m back on my feet there’s a lot I need to find out, starting with Janus’s role in all this. Why was he trying to suck the Pendragon Spirit out of me? The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders clearly needed me if they were prepared to transport me halfway across Europe to Janus’s temple, and if they managed to keep Veitch at bay, because I tell you, he was ready to slit my throat at a moment’s notice.’
‘You must have offended him a great deal, good friend,’ Jerzy said.
Inwardly, Church winced as he recalled what Veitch had told him on the ship. It set doubts crawling through his mind: would he really be prepared to kill a friend for the sake of Ruth’s love? He couldn’t believe it, but the nagging doubt still wouldn’t leave him.
As she left, Niamh appeared relieved that Church had agreed to lead the expedition and that also surprised him. Why hadn’t she just ordered him, as she had when she made him visit Eboracum to search for her brother? There were mysteries everywhere he turned.
As he recovered from his ordeal, Church felt a growing desire to see Ruth again, and to check on her safety and that of Shavi and Laura. And so, a week and a day after his return, he set off for the Court of Peaceful Days with Jerzy in tow, to view his own time through the Wish-Post. But the moment the court appeared in view, Church realised something was wrong. The martial banners that had fluttered over the red-tiled roofs were gone. Everywhere was still.
The gate was barred with twenty spears forced through the rails to prevent it from opening. A horse skull hung from the lock with the missing banners hanging between its jaws. The constant beat of the war-drum was gone, too, and an uneasy silence lay across the entire court. It appeared deserted.
Church recalled the court’s soldiers dying by the thousands on the moors near Eboracum, and regretted his own selfish motivation for visiting without a second thought for the tremendous sacrifice they had made.
Silently, he turned his horse away. He would leave Queen Rhiannon to her mourning. But his unresolved desire to discover what was happening to Shavi, Laura and Ruth cast a long shadow.
2
A thin grey haze over London trapped the exhaust fumes and heat in a sweltering stew that had still not dissipated by the time night fell. Ruth’s clothes clung to her as she made her way from the care home to the city centre. The physical discomfort only contributed to her unease. For several nights she had been troubled by a series of dreams that had a strange psychological intensity. They all featured snakes of various kinds, some coiled around a tree whispering words she could never remember when she woke, others as big as trains, rushing across the landscape, becoming rivers before they sank beneath the surface of the earth, where they glowed like blue veins.
Afterwards she was always left with a tremendous yearning, as if someone close to her had been lost at sea, and every day she waited for a return that never came.
The Embankment was strangely peaceful. No cabs or buses were on the road, and only the occasional pedestrian hurried by, keen to get home out of the heat. It would have been quicker to take the Tube, but increasingly she found that the presence of too many people set her on edge. Only on her own did she find peace and the space to probe her jumbled thoughts, but finding isolation in London was a task in itself. Everywhere she turned there was someone. Watching me, was always her first instinct, but recently she had decided to take a stand against the creeping paranoia for fear it would inevitably lead to the mental illness that always felt just one step away.
The haze muffled all sounds from the city, so when an owl hooted from a tree nearby, Ruth jumped as if a gun had been fired. It stared at her with large, intense eyes. She felt something odd tickling at the back of her mind, part memory, part an unnerving sense that it had intelligence. She would have laughed if it had not felt so eerie.
‘You going to spend all night looking up into the trees?’ Rourke was waiting for her beneath one of the lights not far from Blackfriars Bridge.
‘There’s an owl,’ she said, but when she went to point it out it was gone.
‘Enough with the bird-spotting. Are we going to hit the town or not?’ Rourke took her arm before she could answer and guided her towards the Tube.
The fact that she called him Rourke instead of his first name was just one of the anomalies of their nascent relationship. She had been seeing him socially for five weeks since their random meeting in the pub. A drink here, a meal there, a cinema trip. They had held hands and kissed once, on their last date as he dropped Ruth off at her flat.
The real anomaly was that she wasn’t wholly sure she liked him. Not that she disliked him, either — her feelings were a little like that foggy night: he passed through her life and left no impression. But he was charming and he always managed to say the right thing. It was a near-miraculous skill. He’d point out her favourite dish on the menu, or suggest they go to see one of her most-loved movies in the late-night screening at the independent cinema. Their conversation almost always seemed to be about things that were close to her heart, which was flattering, but it meant that if she had to admit it, she knew barely anything about him. He was just … there.
‘I noticed the strangest thing,’ she said as they reached the top of the stairs leading down into the Tube. ‘Four cars in a row had only one headlight working, and the fifth had none at all.’
‘Coincidence,’ Rourke replied easily.
‘It didn’t feel like it. It was as if it meant something.’ She laughed, embarrassed. ‘That’s silly, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is.’ He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘The human brain is conditioned to see meaning where there isn’t any. We fill in the gaps in reality because we can’t stand chaos or the fact that there is no underlying meaning.’
‘No pattern, then?’
‘No pattern.’
On the Tube, Ruth spent the first five minutes of their journey unburdening herself about her job, and wishing she had the time or the energy to consider a career change. But her work sucked everything out of her and left her able to do little more than head home to sleep.
‘Good job you’ve got me to brighten things up,’ Rourke said, and she had to admit that was true; in the bleakness that was her life, he at least provided some vibrancy and interest.