Jack of Ravens(181)

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.

The Caretaker rested a hand on Church’s shoulder. ‘Things are not always as they appear.’

Filled with guilt and self-loathing, Church ignored him. The Caretaker gently urged Church to look back into the cauldron. ‘Ryan Veitch was in the grip of other powers. Both the Tuatha De Dannan and the agents of the Devourer of All Things manipulated him. The Caraprix in his head attempted to steer him towards disaster.’

‘I knew?’

‘You knew. You had no choice but to kill him.’

‘Then Veitch is a victim, too.’

‘You may say that. He does not see it so. Others might not see it so, either.’

Church looked back into the cauldron. The days moved on after he had fallen back in time. He saw Ruth mourning him, thinking he was dead. He saw the Blue Fire becoming stronger due to the events Church and the others had set in motion when they defeated the Fomorii.

But in their victory were the seeds of the crisis to come, for they had awoken a power that slept beyond the edge of the universe, and then the Void came to put the world back the way it had been. The Tuatha Dé Danann were destroyed. The next five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were stifled – only Hal escaped into the medium of the Blue Fire where he would attempt to bring Church back into the fray. And then the world was remade. Magic, hope and wonder were swept aside. Money and power and violence and despair became the common currency, all the things that the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders had spent the last 2,000 years putting into place.

In America, the word of power ‘Croatoan’ echoed across the landscape and the spiders rose up from their hiding place to spread across the world, corrupting and controlling.

‘And that was when the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders began to move back through time, attempting to eradicate anything that might bring hope or change things in the modern time,’ Church said.

‘They sowed the seeds of despair wherever they went, but the power of Existence is everywhere – in a song, in laughter, in a dream, in the caress of lovers. It cannot be destroyed, only contained.’

‘But it’s so bleak,’ Church said. ‘Why does it have to be this way?’

‘It does not.’ The woman cackled as she gave the cauldron a stir.

‘Nothing is fixed in the Fixed Lands.’ The Caretaker smiled.

‘You’re saying things can be changed, even though they’ve happened?’

‘What is happened?’ The woman cackled again.

Church’s mind experienced a sudden, radical shift and he was briefly back in Timothy Leary’s study talking about the structure of reality, and the spiders moving behind the scenes to keep the world a certain way.

And then he was in the Court of the Final World with the strange globe of interconnecting blue lines in Dian Cecht’s inner sanctum, watching as one slight movement changed the position of all the other intersections without altering the globe’s integrity. And Dian Cecht was telling him that Church was the Blue Fire, one and the same: You are the key. Once you discover how to turn the lock, anything is possible. You could save my people by altering what is to come.

Church was back in the cave. I could still change things?’

‘He does not yet have the ability to alter much,’ the wild-haired man shouted.

‘A tug here. A push there. Little changes make big changes.’ The woman laughed hysterically.

There was a nightmarish quality to the moment that made Church queasy. The Caretaker caught his arm to steady him. ‘What would you change?’