Jack of Ravens(147)

On a crystal as big as he was, every facet revealed a different view of reality – in his own world, in the Far Lands, and in other places he did not recognise. An orb contained within it a tiny boiling galaxy. A machine cut a door shape in the air, and then opened the door a minute fraction before it slammed shut. Then the process would begin all over again. There were arcs of coruscating energy, and shimmering beams of light, and whirring blades. A system of mirrors filled Church with a devastating dread when he glanced into it, but he blacked out before his mind would reveal what it had seen. When he came around, he moved quickly away, no longer sure whether he could complete his mission.

But then he came to a long corridor with windows on either side and the mood became profoundly different. The queasy sense of dread diminished and he felt oddly uplifted, almost heady. When he glanced out of the window, he realised why: it was like looking into starless space, with crackling bursts of Blue Fire illuminating holes darker than the surrounding space. And from these holes Fabulous Beasts appeared to be birthing. Their sinuous forms rolled and turned joyously as they soared on their leathery wings, their scales glimmering like miniature suns. At times they appeared to be made entirely of the blue energy.

Church watched them for a while, mesmerised. For those moments he felt an abiding peace that he had not experienced since childhood. It was with great reluctance that he continued to the door at the end of the corridor.

This new room was dark, and unlike the rest of the court had walls of studded iron. In the centre hovered a globe formed from interconnecting blue lines, which shifted every now and then so that the globe took on new dimensions and warped perspectives. After Church had studied it for a while, he decided it was a representation of how the Blue Fire ran through reality.

And there, on a platform scattered with instruments whose use Church couldn’t divine, sat the lamp. Church felt an ache in his heart as it tugged him towards it.

‘You may take it.’

Church started at the voice. Behind him stood a red-robed figure with aristocratic features, a high forehead, piercing grey eyes and a Roman nose. His long, grey hair was tied in a ponytail. Church could sense his authority.

‘You’re Dian Cecht.’ Church cautiously lowered his hand to Llyrwyn, knowing that if he chose to fight he would not escape the court alive.

‘That is the name by which I was known by the tribes of your people.’ He smiled warmly. It was difficult to reconcile his benign appearance with the horrors Church had witnessed.

‘You can’t be allowed to carry on with what you’re doing here,’ Church said.

‘And how far would your kind go if you were faced with the annihilation of your race?’

‘Don’t tell me this is all a response to the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders. You’ve been doing this for a long time.’

‘A race can die in many ways. By annihilation in one devastating attack or by the slow attrition of stagnation.’ He motioned to the lamp. ‘Your kind were chosen to be the receptacle of the Pendragon Spirit, not mine. We, who have always been at the heart of Existence, were not considered to be champions of Existence. At the moment you are Fragile Creatures, but soon you will supplant us. And what then for the Golden Ones?’

‘So you’re going to torture us? Try to stop us reaching our potential, is that it?’

‘Here in the Court of the Final Word we try to understand what makes a Fragile Creature so valuable to Existence. What is Existence? And can we shape it to our will?’

‘The simple fact of what you’re doing here shows you will never understand.’

Dian Cecht considered this for a moment as he searched Church’s face.

‘There is a more pressing problem. The Enemy has changed everything that lies ahead – nothing now is fixed. Soon, very soon, your people will be enslaved, the rising and advancing of their spirit halted. And my own people will be eradicated. That cannot be allowed to happen.’

‘Then you have to find a way to work with us.’

‘Perhaps.’ Dian Cecht smiled. ‘Take the lamp. I had hoped to plumb the depths of the Pendragon Spirit, but its mysteries still elude me.’

Keeping a wary eye on Dian Cecht, Church took the lamp. It felt warm and soothing to his touch.

‘You still do not trust me. That is understandable.’ The god went over to a stone column that reminded Church of the Wish-Post in the Court of Peaceful Days, but this one glowed with capillaries of blue energy. The Blue Fire lies behind everything we know … behind time and space, which are but the thin skin stretched across it,’ Dian Cecht continued. By moving into the medium of the blue energy, it is possible to alter everything. To reconstruct reality from the smallest particle.’