Jack of Ravens

5

Church’s prison was as big as a city. He was free to roam it, like a convict sent out to the yard to exercise, and like the hero of some jailbreak movie he spent his time searching for an escape route. But the Court of the Soaring Spirit was surrounded by seemingly impenetrable defences, made even more stringent since Etain’s incursion. A forty-foot-thick stone wall that soared up the length of a football pitch was broken at regular intervals by watchtowers, and guards patrolled the top relentlessly.

Church had already identified a hierarchy amongst the Tuatha De Danann that he couldn’t quite comprehend. The Golden Ones of Niamh’s rank resembled humans, but were breathtakingly attractive with skin that appeared to radiate a faint golden light. Yet the gods who made up the guards and the more menial ranks had a touch of bland plasticity to their features, as if they were mannequins given life.

Though the Tuatha De Danann ruled the court, they were far from the only residents. The court was a seething cauldron of cultures, shapes, sizes and abilities. Church wandered the winding streets in a state of rapt wonder. He saw short, grizzled men with axes and hammers, complexions pale from being too long underground; women with serpents for hair; others with blazing red eyes that pierced his soul; humanoid creatures with leathery wings and scaly skin; monkeys that smoked and chatted. A new burst of astonishment around every corner, a new chill in every dark alley.

Occasionally he would stop and talk with shopkeepers who appeared more amazed by him than he was by them. Every nugget of information about the strange, twisted rules of that world was a piece of the key that would unlock his shackles. Yet every time he learned something new it only led to further conundrums, and the means of his escape remained elusively just out of reach. The one stark fact that struck him hardest was that only Niamh could release him from the obligation he had placed himself under when he had consumed her food and drink.

That realisation darkened his mood and his thoughts turned to Etain and Ruth, both of them lost to him by an unbridgeable gulf. Though he attempted bravado with Jerzy, he feared he was fated to die without ever seeing Ruth again, and that notion was almost more than he could bear.

Two weeks after his arrival in the Far Lands, Church made his way down Winding Gate Street in the direction of the Hunter’s Moon, which he had decided to make his base during his search for an escape. The route was filled with traders from the Market of Wishful Spirit, a travelling band of traders offering just about any object that could be desired, though Jerzy had warned him that the price was often more than anyone would be prepared to pay.

Occasionally, insistent figures in odd costumes that hinted at Elizabethan or Victorian styles tried to grab him from the cover of their stalls. Their voices were mesmerising, the artefacts they pushed towards him more so — dreams in a jar, new eyes that could see across Existence.

During his numerous jaunts around the city, Church had become adept at dodging them while keeping his eyes fixed firmly ahead. But this time he felt a heavy hand fall upon his shoulder. Before he could shake it off, a deep cold radiated from the fingers into the heart of him, and he realised with mounting distress that he could no longer move. Whoever was behind him leaned in to whisper barely audibly as he passed. The tone was urbane and laced with a hint of mockery. Church grew colder still when he realised what had been said: ‘Ruth will die.’

Unable to turn his head, Church had only a fleeting glimpse of a man in a dark overcoat, long, black hair trailing behind him as he weaved his way into the depths of the market crowd ahead.