Jack of Ravens

6

During the month-long expedition, Church had seen many wonders of the Far Lands: a brass robot 100 feet high who guarded the treasures of ancient races; a city of mirrors that only appeared at sunrise and sunset; a pool where you could see your own dreams made flesh; a garden of sentient exotic blooms that lured unwary travellers to their doom; and a vast array of strange people and stranger creatures: the vampiric Baobhan Sith, cannibalistic boar-men, lizard-women whose song could send you to sleep for 100 years, wolf-men, sorcerers, inch-high men and women with homes in the trunks of trees, basilisks and manticores, flesh-eating unicorns and cats that were wiser than any human he had ever met.

He had sat beneath the billion, billion stars on a warm night looking out over a great plain to mountains that appeared to reach to the heavens. He had slipped into the silent, green depths of the preternatural Forest of the Night and skirted the edge of a burning desert.

During that time he had been forced to confront many threats both to himself and those who travelled with him, for the Far Lands were as dangerous as they were wonderful, and gradually tales of the great exploits of Jack the Giantkiller began to spread amongst the denizens of T’ir n’a n’Og. Though he didn’t realise it himself, he was passing into legend, in a place where legend was the currency of the great.

And so they came to what felt like the edge of the world, beyond the great desert where the sky was occasionally filled with swirling psychedelic colours. An inhospitable landscape of volcanic rock and glass and dusty plains stretched out as far as the eye could see.

The constant tolling of a bell told them when they were nearing their destination. Overhead flew clouds of the region’s strange carrion birds, their beaks and breasts white, the rest of them as black as oil.

Church crested the final ridge on his belly and wriggled to a good vantage point amongst the razor-sharp rocks. What he saw made his blood run cold. A massive city was being erected in the wasteland, but it was not like any city he had seen before: from a certain angle it appeared to be a giant insect squatting on the landscape, as big as London, yet while parts of it gleamed the shiny black of a carapace, other sections appeared to be constructed from spoiled meat. None of the architecture had any human dimension or design; there were promontories and spikes, domes and sheer faces that appeared to serve no purpose. A wall of the black meat at least 100 feet high ranged across the front of the city and continued around the back, where the incessant construction work was taking place.

‘Abomination.’ Jerzy had wriggled up beside Church. A scarf was wrapped across his frozen mouth to keep out the dust.

The outer surfaces of the city swarmed with figures involved in some unidentifiable activity. They reminded Church of the regimented movements of worker ants. On the plain before the wall marched a vast army, members of the Ninth Legion amongst its ranks.

Niamh appeared next to him, and Church quickly pulled her down before she could be seen. ‘Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?’ he said.

Niamh’s fragile features looked out of place in the cruel landscape. ‘No,’ she said simply, ‘for Existence has always protected my people.’

They crawled back down the slope to where Lucia was waiting with the horses. ‘It’s big,’ Church reported to her. ‘I don’t know how many of them there are inside, but if it grows much larger they could overrun this land in an instant.’

Lucia wiped a smear of black dust from Church’s sweaty brow. ‘Then all the reports were correct,’ she said. ‘Now we know where their forces are camped, we can strike swiftly-’

‘Must you continually molest him?’ Niamh said to her coldly.

‘You may have tricked him into being your slave, but you will never own his soul.’ Lucia’s eyes flashed defiantly.

Church stepped in to quell the tension that had been mounting between the two women throughout the journey. ‘We can tell your people to raise an army and return here,’ he said to Niamh.

‘There is no point,’ Niamh said. ‘It would take a great deal of negotiation simply to bring together the twenty great courts, and even then my people would never agree to a pre-emptive attack. The Golden Ones believe themselves to be so powerful that no one would dare strike against them. But if any ever do, they will respond with force.’

‘So we have to wait until those things get the first punch in?’ Church said.

‘Only then will the Golden Ones respond.’

‘By then it might be too late.’

She looked towards the distant horizon that hid her home. ‘Only then.’