Jack of Ravens

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.