One thing was true, though: there was nothing he could do about it.
14
Church arrived back at the Palace of Glorious Light wet and cold and unable to shake the dark mood that had gripped him since he had looked into the Wish-Post. All he wanted was a hot bath and to be left alone with his thoughts. Instead, he had not even dismounted in the rain-lashed cobbled courtyard when Niamh breezed out of the entrance hall wrapped in a thick cloak. Her face was lost inside the heavy shadows of her hood until the flare of a torch revealed an expression that was more troubled than any Church had seen before.
Yet when she spoke her voice betrayed no flicker of emotion. ‘My brother Lugh is missing.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’ Church replied wearily. He jumped from the horse into a large puddle.
‘He has disappeared in your world. I can find no trace of him anywhere. That concerns me.’
‘Maybe he just wants to be alone.’
‘You will accompany me to the Fixed Lands and there we will search for my brother.’ She turned on her heel and marched back into the hall. Overhead the thunder boomed and the lightning crackled, and Church had the unmistakable impression of dark forces moving away in the distance.
Chapter Three
FRATRES DRACONUM
1
Eboracum, AD 306
Lamps guttered in windows across the city and water gushed from orange roof tiles into streets turned into a thick, brown swamp by the storm. The wind and rain drowned out all the sounds of the city, but the stink of human filth tossed out into the road could not be obscured even by the aromas of hundreds of evening meals.
Cursing the vile weather for June, Church kept close to the graffiti-scarred walls as he struggled to make his way in the gloom. The bathhouse, the forum and the basilica lay behind him. Now he was in the oppressive jumble of houses, inns and small shops that sprawled towards the fort where the Sixth Legion was billeted.
Eventually he located the tavern on one of the side streets and slipped into its cramped, musty interior. The beams were too low and it was filled with too many men crammed onto benches, talking animatedly about the day’s rumours. A few played dice, their eyes feverish, while others voraciously consumed plates of cheese and meat after the day’s hard labour.
Church loosened his dripping cloak and threw his hood from his head as he pushed his way to the bar. Nobody gave him a second glance. There at the fringes of the Empire they were used to strangers from far-flung parts.
‘New to Eboracum?’ the barman said gruffly.
‘I have travelled a long way. Wine.’
The barman poured a goblet of warmed red wine from a large jug. ‘This is the finest in the Empire,’ he said.
Church knew it would be a cheap stew from Crete, but it would take the edge off the night. He tossed a copper coin across the bar and felt a twinge of guilt that tomorrow the barman would find himself in possession of a shiny pebble once the glamour had worn off. ‘You have a room reserved for me,’ Church said. ‘A woman and her slave should be waiting.’
The barman nodded. ‘That slave scared my wife. What happened to him?’
‘He was badly burned in a fire at his mistress’s home.’ Church knew this would strike a chord: with torches, oil lamps and candles the only source of light, fire was a constant fear. ‘That is why he covers his face.’
And a good job, too. It is too monstrous for people to see.’ The barman led Church through a door and up a narrow, twisting stairway. The rooms were as cramped as the bar below and furnished sparsely with a bed, a chair and a table.
Church was ushered into one that reeked of the olive oil burning in the lamp on the window sill. Niamh waited there, wrapped in a voluminous cloak, the hood pulled low to obscure her identity. Jerzy sat on the floor in one corner. His head was swathed in cloth with two eye-holes cut out so that he resembled a latter-day Elephant Man.
‘Have you located him?’ Niamh asked once the barman had gone.
Church had seen cracks emerge in Niamh’s frosty demeanour since the night the Libertarian had penetrated what she’d believed to be unshakeable defences to give her a taste of a previously alien dish: mortality. The deaths of members of her guard had particularly affected her. Over the last few days, hitherto-unseen emotions had been emerging rapidly: unease, doubt, suspicion and perhaps the first nascent hints of fear.
‘I spoke to some of the hookers hanging around outside the curia. They hadn’t seen or heard anything, and in a place like this news travels as fast as syphilis.’ Church collapsed on the bed. He was wet, cold and exhausted, and surprised to find himself thinking warmly of the luxuries of the Court of the Soaring Spirit and the balmy climate of T’ir n’a n’Og.