Jack of Ravens (58 page)

Niamh was understandably happy to see him, yet underneath it Church sensed a deep unease. Lugh hugged Niamh and then greeted Church with surprising warmth, but his smile faded quickly.

‘Sister, dark days are drawing in across the Far Lands. The Enemy is growing in power, and their forces are making incursions into our territory. I fear war is imminent.’

‘I am sorry to hear that, brother, but it is not unexpected.’

‘Some of our people who have an affinity with the Fragile Creatures have fled here to the Fixed Lands. Those who remain refuse to acknowledge the threat.’

‘They still can’t see it?’ Church said. ‘They’ll be indulging themselves while their courts burn around them.’

‘As you are aware, Brother of Dragons, my people are slow to recognise the nature of reality beyond their own fields.’ He turned to Niamh. ‘My
sister, I ask you to return to the Far Lands to attend to the needs of your court. Defences must be established. The ruling council you left in place has neither the wisdom nor the popular support to do what is necessary.’

Niamh turned to watch the leaves falling from the tree to hide her conflicting emotions, though Church could see the sadness in her body language. ‘This is a beautiful place, brother, and there is an abiding peace, too, if one looks carefully. I understand my responsibilities to my court, but here—’

‘I understand, sister,’ Lugh interjected without judgment. ‘I wish you well and hope to see you again in more glorious times.’ He made to go, but then turned to Church. ‘Take care of my sister, Brother of Dragons. There is fragility even in the hearts of the Golden Ones.’ And with that he walked away until he was lost in a flurry of golden leaves, and when they had passed, he was lost to the Earth itself.

‘Why didn’t you go with him?’ Church asked.

Niamh’s eyes brimmed with tears. He had never seen her cry before. ‘You know why.’

‘Don’t do it for me, Niamh.’

‘That is what Fragile Creatures do, is it not? They make sacrifices for love.’

‘I—’

Niamh pressed a finger to his lips to silence him. ‘I know you do not love me. That is not the point. Love is not an arrangement that demands reciprocation. I know my heart, and I must be true to it, whatever the outcome.’

He stood beneath the tree amidst the falling leaves and watched her walk away, a small figure, lonely and sad, not a god at all.

12

Later he found her in her room, listening to the Beach Boys. ‘Pack your bag,’ he said. ‘We’re moving on.’

‘I thought you were happy here.’

‘This last year with you, just travelling and thinking, it’s been as close to idyllic as I’ve ever experienced in my life. But it’s time to get back to work.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Put some flowers in your hair. We’re heading west.’

13

San Francisco, October 1966

San Francisco was a city on the brink. A diaspora had swarmed across America to the city by the Bay, building their capital in just six blocks centred on Haight Street and Ashbury Street. In 1965, 15,000 people lived there. Within two years it had exploded to 100,000, with more arriving every day off the buses from the sticks, in their Swinging London miniskirts or Beatles haircuts, their denim and tie-die, and Victorian and Edwardian fashions raided from thrift stores. The freaks and the hippies had their own stores, their own newspapers, their own medical centres and legal advice, their own bands and their own currency, usually LSD and marijuana, but sometimes sex and food.

It was a place that hung between worlds. To the east was the poor, black Fillmore neighbourhood and to the west the wealthy Pacific Heights. To the north was the Panhandle, an idyllic green retreat that led to Golden Gate Park, and beyond that was the political activism of the University of San Francisco.

The minute Church stepped off the bus into the swarming crowd, most of them barely old enough to be out of high school, he could feel the influence of the Blue Fire. This wasn’t like Krakow when they had visited John Dee. There the atmosphere had been pure, invigorating and electric. Here it was conflicted, ebbing and flowing, and at times there was almost a sourness in the air that was suffocating the energy.

‘Can you feel it?’ he said to Niamh. ‘This place is gearing up to be a battlefield.’

‘It is … exciting.’ Niamh looked around at the strange faces and extravagant costumes with a faint sense of wonder. It reminds me of the Far Lands.’

San Francisco was filled with big, old Victorian houses where rooms could be cheaply rented. They found a place on Page, just up the street from a condemned mansion where Big Brother and the Holding Company and some of the other San Franciscan bands hung out. As Church stashed his clothes, he realised this was a lull before the ground started shifting under his feet. Big things were coming, events that had been 2,300 years in the making. He hoped he was up to it.

Police were everywhere, watching the colourfully dressed men and women with contempt and barely repressed aggression. As he moved through the streets, Church realised he was being watched, too. One cop followed him for half a block before making a phone call.

As they made their way to the newspaper offices to check the small ads, they came across a disturbance. A freckle-faced woman in a gold-starred
headband was raving about
monsters
that had killed her boyfriend in Golden Gate Park. Church wondered if she was having a bad trip, but she didn’t have the telltale disoriented look about her.

‘It’s started,’ Church said.

In the park, a group called the Diggers were handing out free food to the hungry kids, and leaflets urging the local businesses to distribute their profits to the community. One of them directed Church to a thick copse where a huddle of people had gathered.

The victim was young, probably still shy of his eighteenth birthday. His face was covered with weeping sores that looked like the latter stages of some plague. Fearful of infections, Church pulled Niamh away, but not before he had noticed something else: where the skin was peeling it looked as if there were scales just beneath the surface, and on his forehead two protrusions had broken through like horns.

Church caught one of the Diggers, a pale-faced man in a leather hat named Jerry. ‘I don’t know what’s going on around here any more, man,’ he said, concerned. He doled out a bowl of rice to a painfully thin girl. ‘People seeing far-out things—’

‘What kind of things?’

He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Monsters, they say.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just crazy talk, but … It’s not just one or two. Not the real freaks. A lot of regular guys. That chick said she saw something weird kill off her boyfriend. It’s like the
Outer Limits
, you know?’ He returned to the food, but Church could see he wasn’t alone in his uneasiness. The sour mood was visible in the faces of many who passed, jumping from one to another like a plague as the strange stories were passed on.

14

After two days of exchanging notes, Church and Niamh finally met up with Gabe and Marcy in the I-Thou Coffee Shop, a hippie hang-out filled with beatnik poets, polemicists, writers, musicians and other movers and shakers of the local scene. They were not alone. Tom was there, surly-eyed and suspicious, with a young woman with long, black hair and hypnotic grey eyes.

The first thing that struck Church was how much they had changed. Marcy’s delicate features only emphasised the hardness of her new militancy, with her Malcolm and Martin T-shirt, tight denims and biker boots. Gabe had grown his hair long and wore a Day-Glo ‘Never Trust a Prankster’ T-shirt. A camera hung around his neck. Tom, too, had embraced the hippie aesthetics. His prematurely greying hair was tied in a ponytail and he wore glasses with one red lens and one blue.

‘Better late than never,’ he muttered.

Gabe hugged Church warmly and Marcy kissed him on the cheek before fetching coffees. Tom introduced the other woman as Grace. He fixed Church with a stare: ‘A Sister of Dragons.’

Grace opened her eyes wide. ‘This is the one? The first?’

Church felt uncomfortable with Grace’s uncontained awe, but Tom said pointedly, ‘She recognises the important role you are supposed to be playing in events.’

‘I’m here now,’ Church snapped guiltily.

‘If it’s not too late. Things are already in motion.’ Tom contained himself and changed the subject. ‘Grace is a member of a coven up on Divisadero. Two weeks ago her use of the Craft started achieving astonishing results.’

Grace looked scared. ‘I had to leave the coven. I mean, there are more witches in San Francisco than musicians, but suddenly everyone started getting spooked out by me.’

‘She’s the first,’ Tom said. ‘We’ll find the others soon. This is the time, this is the place.’

In the performance area at the side of the floor, a poet was chanting, ‘The doors of perception are opening,’ over and over again.

‘But first,’ Tom said, ‘we have to make you whole.’

15

In the twilight, the mist rolled up the streets from the bay. For once the Haight was unnaturally still. Inside, the atmosphere was tense. The ambience had been designed for introspection with candles, incense and soft, ethnic music in the background. Gabe and Marcy had agreed to retreat to Niamh’s room; they appeared to have been arguing. Grace had pushed the furniture back in the lounge so she could mark out in salt her sacred space. Tom, Niamh and Church sat at three of the cardinal points and in the centre of the circle was the lamp.

‘So, like, do we get a genie if we rub it?’ Grace said.

‘Something like that.’ Church had yearned for the missing Pendragon Spirit to be a part of him for so long, but now it was about to happen he was apprehensive. Once he was whole again he would be out of excuses. ‘You know that once it’s inside me again I’ll light up like a flare in the Enemy’s perception.’

‘You can still turn away from this,’ Niamh said.

Tom had been watching Church all afternoon as if he expected that very thing. ‘Sooner or later you’re going to have to take a stand. Might as well be sooner.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

Grace completed her ablutions and began the ritual. For ten minutes she chanted and whispered, and just when Church thought nothing was going to happen, the atmosphere in the room altered perceptibly: the shadows lengthened and the temperature dropped several degrees. Their breath clouded as webs of frost formed on the inside of the window.

Grace sat silently for a moment, and then blue sparks began to crackle around the lamp, building in intensity. They became tiny jagged lines of lightning until suddenly a column of Blue Fire roared up from the lamp’s spout. In the flames, Church saw a familiar face.

‘You made it, Church,’ Hal said. ‘I could have told you everything you needed to know to get to this place, but you did it yourself. And on the way you learned a lot about who you are that will help you in the trials ahead.’

‘Haven’t you been bored sleeping in that lamp all this time?’

The flames shimmered as Hal laughed silently. ‘You’re still seeing things from your perspective. To me, all time is happening at the same moment, remember? While I’m talking to you now, I’m also talking to you in Rome and in the space you entered through the circle at Boskawen-Un.’

‘That must be confusing.’

‘To a human. I’m not one of those any more, which is kind of a relief.’

‘If all times are happening now from your perspective, you know exactly what’s going to happen to us in the future. So what’s the point?’

‘It’s not like that. Reality isn’t fixed. It’s just a house that’s been built for us to live in. Knock out a few walls here and there and the whole configuration changes, past, present and future. Don’t go thinking of it as cause and effect – that’s all pre-quantum stuff.’

Church looked around the circle. Tom, Niamh and Grace were entranced by the column of fire, their expressions beatific.

‘The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders have already changed what
did
happen considerably,’ Hal continued. ‘You can change it, too. People who will die in the current version of events don’t have to. In the time when I made my sacrifice, nearly all the Tuatha Dé Danann had been eradicated. That doesn’t have to happen. Remember, people who sacrifice themselves don’t have to die.’ The comment was pointed, though Church didn’t know at whom it was aimed. ‘The thing is, Church, it’s all down to you. If you don’t stumble, if you stay true to yourself, you have the power to change everything. And I mean
everything.’

‘No pressure, then.’ Church steeled himself and asked the question he had dreaded voicing: ‘You’re telling me I can save Ruth?’

‘Ruth’s not dead, but she’s in a very bad place.’

‘I saw—’

‘You can never be certain about what you see. Everything depends on perspective, and whatever information you have to hand. In the moment that you’re talking about she’s alive, Church, but she’s hanging by a thread.’

The euphoria that rushed through Church was so powerful he almost bounded from the circle and shouted aloud.

‘Keep it together, Church. This is a crucial time. The closer you get to home the more powerful the Enemy becomes. They still recognise you and what you represent as a threat to them, but they won’t take the path of least resistance any more. See you, Church – in time.’