‘Who are you sending?’
‘It has to be people I can … rely upon. I hoped you would lead the expedition, and that you would join us, too, Mocker.’
‘Travel to the Enemy fortress?’ Jerzy whimpered.
‘All right,’ Church said, ‘but I want to take Lucia as well – she has some abilities I could use.’
‘Agreed. And I will accompany you.’
‘I don’t think that’s wise. It could be dangerous—’
Niamh’s eyes flashed. ‘I will not shirk my responsibilities.’
Church held up his hands. ‘Okay, you’re the boss. When I’m back on my feet there’s a lot I need to find out, starting with Janus’s role in all this. Why was he trying to suck the Pendragon Spirit out of me? The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders clearly needed me if they were prepared to transport me halfway across Europe to Janus’s temple, and if they managed to keep Veitch at bay, because I tell you, he was ready to slit my throat at a moment’s notice.’
‘You must have offended him a great deal, good friend,’ Jerzy said.
Inwardly, Church winced as he recalled what Veitch had told him on the ship. It set doubts crawling through his mind: would he really be prepared to kill a friend for the sake of Ruth’s love? He couldn’t believe it, but the nagging doubt still wouldn’t leave him.
As she left, Niamh appeared relieved that Church had agreed to lead the expedition and that also surprised him. Why hadn’t she just ordered him, as she had when she made him visit Eboracum to search for her brother? There were mysteries everywhere he turned.
As he recovered from his ordeal, Church felt a growing desire to see Ruth again, and to check on her safety and that of Shavi and Laura. And so, a week and a day after his return, he set off for the Court of Peaceful Days with Jerzy in tow, to view his own time through the Wish-Post. But the moment the court appeared in view, Church realised something was wrong. The martial banners that had fluttered over the red-tiled roofs were gone. Everywhere was still.
The gate was barred with twenty spears forced through the rails to prevent it from opening. A horse skull hung from the lock with the missing banners hanging between its jaws. The constant beat of the war-drum was gone, too, and an uneasy silence lay across the entire court. It appeared deserted.
Church recalled the court’s soldiers dying by the thousands on the moors near Eboracum, and regretted his own selfish motivation for visiting without a second thought for the tremendous sacrifice they had made.
Silently, he turned his horse away. He would leave Queen Rhiannon to her mourning. But his unresolved desire to discover what was happening to Shavi, Laura and Ruth cast a long shadow.
2
A thin grey haze over London trapped the exhaust fumes and heat in a sweltering stew that had still not dissipated by the time night fell. Ruth’s clothes clung to her as she made her way from the care home to the city centre. The physical discomfort only contributed to her unease. For several nights she had been troubled by a series of dreams that had a strange psychological intensity. They all featured snakes of various kinds, some coiled around a tree whispering words she could never remember when she woke, others as big as trains, rushing across the landscape, becoming rivers before they sank beneath the surface of the earth, where they glowed like blue veins.
Afterwards she was always left with a tremendous yearning, as if someone close to her had been lost at sea, and every day she waited for a return that never came.
The Embankment was strangely peaceful. No cabs or buses were on the road, and only the occasional pedestrian hurried by, keen to get home out of the heat. It would have been quicker to take the Tube, but increasingly she found that the presence of too many people set her on edge. Only on her own did she find peace and the space to probe her jumbled thoughts, but finding isolation in London was a task in itself. Everywhere she turned there was someone. Watching me, was always her first instinct, but recently she had decided to take a stand against the creeping paranoia for fear it would inevitably lead to the mental illness that always felt just one step away.
The haze muffled all sounds from the city, so when an owl hooted from a tree nearby, Ruth jumped as if a gun had been fired. It stared at her with large, intense eyes. She felt something odd tickling at the back of her mind, part memory, part an unnerving sense that it had intelligence. She would have laughed if it had not felt so eerie.
‘You going to spend all night looking up into the trees?’ Rourke was waiting for her beneath one of the lights not far from Blackfriars Bridge.
‘There’s an owl,’ she said, but when she went to point it out it was gone.