Jack of Ravens

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?