Mark Chadbourn - Jack of Ravens

‘Yeah, it does.’ Veitch stared back unflinchingly.

‘What about us?’ Shavi said in an attempt to calm the rising tension. ‘You said we used to be friends. Are you going to kill us, too?’

Veitch gnawed on a knuckle. ‘Ruth and Church are out of the picture. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons who came after you can’t remember a thing about who they are. But you know how things can be changed, so you’re a threat. I know what you’re like … the two of you could still screw everything up. That’s not going to be allowed.’ He weighed the knife in the palm of his hand. ‘I’m sorry, mate, I really am, but I haven’t got a choice.’

The constant churning of the spiders all around him was becoming a distant memory. Church was falling backwards down a long, dark tunnel, occasionally punctuated by starbursts of Blue Fire. It was a place of refuge, and he knew the deeper he could go the more he could escape the thinking and the feeling and the guilt and the sorrow.

Falling, falling, and then standing. He’d done it, broken the shackles, got away scot-free, and wherever his mind was telling him he was, it was better than where he had been before.

Everywhere was dark. He wandered around for an age, listening to distant voices come and go, louder and softer, like the sound of the blood in his head. He became aware of rock underfoot, a cavern of some kind. And then, across the dark, he glimpsed himself, although this was a younger Church, clean-shaven, shorter hair, face so surprisingly innocent and free of worry that he could barely remember being that way.

He convinced himself that he’d made his way to his own past, and he was taken by the urge to warn himself away from all the terrible things that lay ahead, that at the very least he could make sure he could take the one step that would change his current predicament.

His past self was staring at him, confused.

‘Is this it? Is this the right time?’ the modern Church said to his past-self. ‘You have to listen to me. This is a warning.’ He looked around, confused himself. ‘Is this the right place? Am I too late?’

‘Tell me what you have to say,’ his past-self said.

‘When you’re in Otherworld and they call, heed it right away. They’re going to bring him back. They’re-’

‘Calm down. You’re babbling,’ his past-self yelled. ‘Who is going to bring who back?’

Church had the unnerving sensation of a presence behind him. An irrational fear gripped him. In panic, he yelled, ‘Too late!’

And then he was running from himself and into the dark.

Church didn’t know how long it took for the blind panic to fade, but eventually he realised he could see a faint blue light ahead. He continued to run towards it until he saw it was a lantern with a blue flame flickering inside.

‘The Wayfinder guides your path as ever, Brother of Dragons.’ The lantern was being held aloft by a giant at least eight feet tall, with a thick beard and glowering eyes beneath overhanging brows. He wore a shift made of sackcloth fastened with a leather belt.

‘Who are you?’ Church asked.

‘I am the Caretaker. I keep a light burning in the darkest night. I serve all who come to me, whether their hearts are filled with hope or tainted by despair.’

‘Do you know me?’

‘We all know you, Brother of Dragons.’ The Caretaker stepped to one side and motioned for Church to pass by. Beyond was an entrance to a cave.

Inside a cauldron bubbled over a small fire. Two figures stood around it. One was a man in old, tattered clothes, one hand clutching a long staff that had been subtly worked into a particular shape. His grey hair formed a wild halo around his head. Beside him was a woman who could have been his sister. She was painfully thin and wore a long black dress stained with treebark green and white dust. Her skin was almost grey and barely hung on her bones. Her hair was also grey and wild. But her face was smeared black with dirt or grease so that her grey eyes stared out of it with terrifying intensity.

Church realised he had seen her before, when he lay close to death on the journey to Boskawen-Un. She had come to him in what he had thought was a dream or hallucination, while Etain and the others talked nearby.

While the Caretaker felt benign, these two unsettled him. He felt they would turn on him at any moment if he said the wrong thing.

‘Draw closer.’ The woman beckoned, cackling.

‘Who are you?’ Church asked. ‘Gods, like the Tuatha De Danann?’

‘We are intermediaries,’ the Caretaker said. ‘A conduit to higher powers.’

‘What higher powers?’ Church asked.

The wild-haired man looked as if he was about to fly into a rage, and Church fell silent.

‘Look into the cauldron,’ the woman said.

Church peered into the bubbling, greasy liquid and saw an image of himself as a child asleep in bed. Niamh watched over him, fading as the young Church woke.

Church understood. While he had been sleeping in the casket of spiders, time in the real world had marched on into the seventies and he had been born. His head spun trying to encompass the possibility that he could exist in two different places at the same time: as a grown man in the casket in the Far Lands, and as a young boy growing up in the seventies on Earth.

The image changed as he watched. There was Tom, growing older as he wandered America, revelling in the hippie subculture in which he had felt so at home.

Another change: Church again, growing older. He met and fell in love with a woman, Marianne, who was killed, and he was overcome with a crippling grief. It only began to clear when he met Ruth on that misty early morning near Albert Bridge, when the great adventure began.

In a Britain isolated by the Blue Fire, Church saw Tom, and Niamh, and Lugh, and many other Tuatha De Danann. He saw Laura and Shavi and Veitch join them, and how they became the kind of friends that everyone dreamed of having, the kind you would trust with your life and your dreams.

He saw a dark power pressing in on life, the Fomorii, the monstrous race-enemy of the Tuatha De Dannan, and within it were echoes of the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders. He saw battles and setbacks, victories and heartbreak. He saw himself once more wielding the sword Caledfwlch, which he had been carrying when he walked out of the mists and into the Iron Age.

But what followed was dark and mournful, and revealed to him the true depth of the scars he carried on his conscience. He watched as Tom sacrificed his own life to save Church from a brutal attack by the Enemy. He saw Niamh sacrifice herself for him, turning into a glorious cloud of golden moths as she disabled a weapon that could have destroyed all five of them. The grief he felt was compounded by the knowledge that they loved him and trusted him more than he did himself, and he had never really seen that.

And he saw that they had both known for a long time that events would culminate in their deaths, yet they had continued regardless. They were the true heroes, going to their fate with a resolute silence.

The image shifted again to an apocalyptic final battle: Church, Shavi, Ruth, Laura and Veitch against the embodiment of that dark power, a thing that Church could now see was but a minor aspect of the Void. In a black tower, they came together. The Enemy was defeated, but as it passed it tore open the fabric of Existence behind which the spiders swarmed.

And then Church saw what he had dreaded seeing for so long: the moment when he plunged a sword through Veitch, just before he was sucked into a rift and hurled back through time. He was as evil as Veitch had said. No hero at all. He bowed his head, unable to watch any more.