Jack of Ravens (28 page)

Shavi didn’t know whether to believe the Bone Inspector’s story. From anyone else it would have sounded ludicrous, but coming from him, in that place, it rang true somehow. ‘If I am one of them,’ Shavi began, ‘who are the others?’

‘How should I know? You always find each other. The Pendragon Spirit calls to its own – that’s why you came here. But now, with everything changed, who knows? There might not be enough Blue Fire in the world to bring you all back together.’

‘If what you are saying is true, how did it get like this?’ Shavi mused.

The Bone Inspector wiped snot away with the back of his hand. ‘It’s not just the Blue Fire that’s gone. Where are the Fabulous Beasts?’

Shavi gave him a questioning look.

‘That’s right – scales, wings, breathe fire. They live in the earth, just as the old stories say. They keep the Blue Fire burning, and they feed on it. Some say they
are
it.’

‘They exist? Like the Chinese said – the spirits of the earth? I would very much like to see one.’

‘There used to be a big old bugger here …’ The Bone Inspector shook his head sadly. ‘You find the Fabulous Beasts, you’ll find the Blue Fire. Unless they’re all dead. We’d better get out of here. Now you know all this, they’ll be looking for you.’

‘The ones who run the world?’ Shavi said hesitantly.

‘Dead-eyed people, watching. Always watching. They want to keep things the way they are. They don’t want hope and wonder and magic loose – too dangerous. They want it this way so they can control it. Power for the powerful, and the rest of us be damned.’

They returned along the dark tunnel and at the Bone Inspector’s command the turf rose up to release them into the warm night. The minute Shavi stepped back onto the ancient West Kennet Avenue he knew something was wrong: the electricity had departed along with the heady rush of magic. Instead there was a faint buzzing like high-voltage power lines.

‘Shavi? What are you doing?’

Rourke stood to one side of the concrete markers, hands behind his back. Casually dressed, he looked at ease, as if bumping into Shavi there was the most natural thing in the world.

‘Why are you following me?’ Shavi asked.

‘I’m a friend. I want to look out for you.’

‘With all due respect, you are, at best, an acquaintance. And I really don’t need anyone to look out for me.’

The Bone Inspector tugged at Shavi’s sleeve. ‘’E’s one of ’em,’ he hissed. ‘Keep your distance.’

‘I’m worried that you’re getting into dangerous waters. Out here in the countryside, at night.’ Rourke tried to peer around Shavi at the Bone Inspector. ‘No doubt getting your head filled with all sorts of nonsense by unseemly types.’

Rourke appeared benign, but Shavi was picking up unmistakable signs of danger.

‘The car’s back at the road.’ Rourke jerked a lazy thumb over his shoulder. ‘I can give you a lift.’

‘I have transport.’

‘I’d like you to come with me, Shavi.’ Rourke’s voice had developed a hard core.

‘No.’ Shavi’s single word shattered all pretence.

Rourke approached quickly, but Shavi noted he did not step onto West Kennet Avenue. He kept just beyond the perimeter of the ancient sacred
site. ‘I told you not to make changes to your life,’ Rourke continued. ‘You had a good job, a regular income, stability. Now look at you. Frankly, I think all this crazy change has pushed you over the edge.’

Though he wasn’t sure why, Shavi turned to the Bone Inspector and whispered, ‘Stay within the site’s boundaries until we approach the village. We may then have an opportunity to get to my van.’

The Bone Inspector pushed past him. ‘You don’t know the place as well as I do. Keep up – and don’t wander off the path.’

He bounded off and Shavi followed. As he passed Rourke, Shavi caught sight of something that chilled him: Rourke’s face was altering. In the moonlight it looked as if lumps were rising all over it.

After a few more paces, Shavi glanced back: it hadn’t been a trick of the light. Rourke’s face had started to come apart, the skin splitting to reveal a black, wriggling mass beneath. His eyes burst and unfolded. His mouth gaped wider and wider as the jaw began to disintegrate. To Shavi, it was as if he had been looking at a life-sized photograph of Rourke that was slowly being stripped away to reveal what was hiding behind it.

As a large chunk of cheek disappeared, the face became black and Shavi saw what was really there. Spiders as big as his fist poured forth, with thousands of smaller ones tumbling behind. They drained from Rourke’s sleeves and trousers and flowed towards Shavi, until finally Rourke fell apart completely. As the spiders moved across the grass it charred and faded under them. A flat, dead path was left in their wake.

Shavi didn’t wait any longer. He ran as fast as he could through the gate and back over the road to the embankment. At the top he looked back and saw the spiders moving almost as fast as he could run.

When he reached the far side of the stone circle, the Bone Inspector was waiting for him. ‘Where the bloody hell were you? I was just about to go off on my own.’

‘This way.’ With a twinge of unease, Shavi broke out of the circle and ran towards the pub. The Bone Inspector followed him into the van, cursing. Through the side window, Shavi could see the spiders streaming towards him. A stone wall fell apart before them as if they had eaten their way through it, but Shavi felt it was more than that: it had been erased.

‘Come on, you bloody idiot!’ The Bone Inspector bounced up and down in the passenger seat.

The van lurched forward with a screech of tyres. Soon they were speeding through the maze of night-dark country lanes that surrounded Avebury.

Shavi glanced into the rear-view mirror. ‘We have left them behind.’

‘Don’t you believe it. They’ll find you again. That’s what they do.’

‘What do we do now?’ Shavi gripped the wheel tightly.

‘Aye, well,’ the Bone Inspector replied, ‘that’s the question.’

5

Ruth allowed Rourke to guide her back to her flat with a brief detour to the local for a steadying drink. Her vision of the giant with the lantern obsessed her, but Rourke adamantly denied seeing anything.

Feeling a bit woozy after the three vodkas she’d downed in rapid succession, Ruth stumbled on the way up the stairs. Rourke caught her and wrapped his arms around her.

‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I’ll look after you.’

The sentiment was absurdly appealing. Ruth felt so disoriented, depressed and detached from the world that it would be a relief for somebody else to carry the heavy weight of her life for a while.

At her door, Rourke hugged her. ‘Are you going to be okay?’ he asked, concerned.

‘I’m fine, really.’ She wasn’t, and she thought Rourke knew that, too.

He kissed her gently on the lips. She hesitated and then kissed him back with passion. After a moment of hesitation, he returned the embrace with force.

Heat rose inside her. ‘Do you want to come in?’

Within moments they were writhing on the sofa, their hands all over each other’s bodies. After so long feeling numb, when Rourke brought his hand to her breast and gently squeezed her hard nipple the rush was almost delirious in its intensity. She felt the hardness in his trousers grind into her groin and she spasmed in response. She wanted him inside her. She wanted to feel again. She wanted to love and be loved. She wanted colour in her life, and music, and surges of wild emotion that would make her accept that she was really, truly alive. She didn’t want to be trapped in a monochromatic existence any longer, where every experience was cotton-wool padded and it didn’t matter to anyone, let alone her, whether she lived or died.

But as soon as the notion entered her head she realised it wasn’t Rourke she wanted; it was anyone. Just a warm human body from which she could leach some life and return from the dead.

‘I’m sorry.’ She gently eased him off her. ‘I can’t do this now. I didn’t mean to lead you on. I’m just a mess. It’s probably not good for you to be with me. Or for anyone to be with me, for that matter.’

Rourke straightened his clothes and Ruth was relieved to see he wasn’t offended or angry. ‘Don’t worry.’ He smiled. ‘I want it to be the right time for both of us.’

The sentiment was correct, but there was something calculated about it that was not reflected in his expression. She realised obliquely that while they had been in the throes of passion, it had almost been as if he was running through the motions. The word that came to mind was
hollow
.

After he had gone, she sat on her bed, hugging her knees and feeling so desperately lonely that her stomach ached. She had the strangest feeling that her life was just a role being conducted for hidden cameras; that the real Ruth Gallagher was someone quite different, living an existence that was filled with love, passion and most of all meaning. And more, she felt that in that life there
was
someone else who was more important to her than life itself, someone whose face she could almost see if she just concentrated hard enough …

Ruth jerked out of her reverie. She had the oddest sense that the wardrobe door had opened a little, barely perceptibly, but she was sure she had registered movement. The crack was wider than a finger and she could see the darkness within. Gooseflesh ran up her arms for no reason that she could understand.

She tried to recall what she had been considering, but the thought was gone. She went to the kitchen to make herself a herbal tea, and when she returned to the bedroom later she didn’t notice that the wardrobe door was shut once more.

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—’