Church felt a mounting sense of dread coming off whatever lay inside, and a sense that it would destroy him, Ruth and everything in an instant. However much he tried to force himself in, it pressed back harder, and eventually it drove him off.
He circled the premises, aware of it squatting inside, watching him with loathing. It would never let him across the threshold.
Fearful for Ruth’s safety, he emerged from the reality of the Wish-Post in a cold sweat.
7
Church hurried back to find Jerzy and Rhiannon. During his two brief sessions at the Wish-Post, he felt he had come to understand the essential nature of his fellow Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, however deeply it had been buried so that the three of them could survive in the illusory situation in which they had been imprisoned. Shavi: calm, insightful, spiritual. Laura: prickly, iconoclastic, passionate. Ruth: empathic and introspective, someone who felt too much and was forced to pay the price for it.
They didn’t recall their heritage as Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, and they didn’t remember Church. Yet the truth was trying to break through. Church liked to think that the Pendragon Spirit was so strong that it couldn’t be contained for long, but perhaps it was also that the bonds they had shared were so powerful that they resonated across time and even the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders could not break them.
How terribly must Veitch have suffered to turn his back on that bond? Something as terrible as being murdered by his closest friend over a woman they both loved?
With that disturbing thought pressing at his mind, Church found Rhiannon and Jerzy in a tranquil room subtly scented with rose petals. Jerzy lay on a thick blanket thrown over a table. He appeared to be either sedated or in a deep trance.
‘Will you assist?’ Rhiannon asked. Church nodded. ‘Then take his hand. The procedure is invasive and he shall need the support of a friend. The Caraprix will have nestled itself within his hopes and dreams. It will be difficult to remove.’
She gently caressed the side of Jerzy’s head. Gradually a soft white light like mist began to appear at the point where her fingers touched his temple. As the light increased, it was clear that Rhiannon’s fingers were moving through flesh and bone and into the Mocker’s head.
The atmosphere grew tense. Rhiannon probed for ten long minutes, and Church could see from her increasingly concerned expression that it was not going well.
Finally she withdrew. ‘I cannot help him,’ she said. ‘The Caraprix is resisting my call.’ She appeared deeply troubled by this discovery, as though something fundamental had been radically altered. ‘I fear only the one who placed it there may remove it without damaging this one’s essence.’
Afterwards, Jerzy took the result with equanimity. ‘My existence has been one of suffering,’ he said. ‘I have my life and my freedom, in so far as these things are possible. And I have a good friend, and that is more valuable than anything.’
‘We’ll find a way to remove it, Jerzy,’ Church vowed, ‘even if it means we have to storm the gates of the Court of the Final Word to get it done.’
Jerzy was both touched and disturbed by this. Yet as they left the Court of Peaceful Days another thought struck Church. He had dismissed the Caraprix as just another of the strange things that existed in the Far Lands, but perhaps the creatures were much more important than that.
He had been told that the more fluid things were, the closer they were to the heart of Existence, and the Caraprix appeared to be endlessly mutable. What, then, did that mean?
8
Niamh pored over her cards laid out on a small, exquisitely carved table, with only the light of the crackling fire for illumination. She was lost to whatever the cards were telling her and was startled by Church’s approach.
‘Did you see your love?’ she asked.
He shook his head.
‘I am sorry. It must be a great burden to yearn so deeply and yet not be able to touch or speak of what lies in the heart.’
Church couldn’t begin to express his fears for Ruth and so turned his attention to the cards. ‘What do you see?’
‘The cards are confusing. They change constantly, as if what lies ahead and behind and all around is in a state of flux.’ Church could see the uncertainty scared her.
‘I can’t get my head around gods having gods.’
She shrugged. ‘The rules of Existence are plain to see. Seasons turn in a continuous cycle. Existence stretches out for ever. There is no beginning and no end. That is the rule. And there is no smallest and no largest. No boundaries anywhere. As the Golden Ones are above Fragile Creatures, so there are others above us. There is always something higher.’
A memory came to Church unbidden and he shivered: a face looming over him as he lay close to death en route to Boskawen-Un and his rendezvous with the Fabulous Beast. The thing saying to him, ‘Gods answer to gods answer to gods, and somehow the voice of Existence trickles through to men.’
Church peered at the cards more closely. ‘Am I in there?’
Niamh pointed to the Fool. ‘The Fool is on a journey of enlightenment. When he reaches the end of his path he returns to the start again, for there is always something new to learn.’
Church pulled up a chair and watched the logs crackle and spit. ‘Will Swyfte knew his position and what was expected of him, and he knew he had the abilities to deal with it. He didn’t want to be a spy, I could tell, but he accepted his responsibilities whatever the cost to himself. I wish I had his confidence.’
‘Existence chose you for a reason, Jack Churchill.’
Church looked up to see Niamh watching him tenderly. ‘I’m not going to be able to do this on my own.’
‘You have allies. My court stands with you.’
In her face Church saw a whole host of emotions that had gone unrecognised for a long time. The realisation shocked him, but consideration of the implications was something for another time.
‘I want your permission to travel to my own world,’ he said. ‘The fight back starts here, and I have a lot of things to put in place.’
Chapter Seven
1
England, 1 May 1851
Beneath a dreaming night sky, the massive bluestones of Stonehenge stood sentinel on the windswept Downs, their setting barely altered since they had first been raised 4,000 years earlier. Church knew all that was about to change. In a few short decades they would be packaged and presented for the modern world, swarmed over by tourists, imprisoned by roads and traffic and watched over by new buildings that were temples of mundanity.
For now Church could enjoy the circle as it was originally intended, part of an ancient landscape of tranquillity where the only sound was the wind across the grass.
‘Get a bloody move on. They’re only stones.’ Tom had grown bad-tempered on the long walk from where the carriage had dropped them off.
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘Losing your lamp has addled you. Can you not feel it?’ Tom rested one hand on the turf. ‘There’s barely a flicker under here. The Blue Fire has gone to sleep. What did you expect? This is the Age of Reason. People these days haven’t got any time for magic, if the journey here is anything to go by. They like big machines and stinking factories, and as much money as they can possibly make, and damn the consequences and the poorhouses.’
‘When I was looking into the Wish-Post, the Libertarian told Shavi that the earth energy was gone, and so were the Fabulous Beasts.’
‘Aye, well, maybe they are gone by then. Right now the energy’s just dormant. It’s linked to our unconscious. If we don’t want it around it dies down. And this is the first time in human history when things we make are more important than things we feel.’