Suddenly Conoran’s voice boomed, then receded as if he had radically shifted to another place, distant yet simultaneously near at hand. ‘You came to us with the sword of a god. Now you must fight to free yourself from the corrupting touch or be lost for all time.’
Church was shocked to realise he could no longer feel the corbels at his back. He was standing in the dark, possibly in the approach tunnel, though he had no sense of having moved. ‘Conoran?’ he called into the echoing gloom. There was no response.
Two other sensations hit Church sharply: he was now holding his sword, the blue glow providing a dim light by which he could see; and he could no longer feel the spider burrowing into his arm.
Cautiously, he reached out to touch the cold wall stones. The drum heartbeat and the whispering echoes of the bone flute were gone, too. A deep silence lay over everything.
Church took a hesitant step forward. If he could find the exit, he could discover where everyone had gone and what odd game Conoran was playing. His thoughts were interrupted by a rapid scuttling motion in the gloom ahead. He had a horrible feeling that he knew what was in the tunnel with him. His breath was taken away by the size of it, bigger even than him. He gripped the sword with both hands, the pounding of his heart filling his head.
More scurrying, the click-click-click of legs rattling on stone, oddly metallic. Church sensed the attack before he saw it. The spider launched from the dark, and he dropped to his knees, swinging the sword, cutting air. The spider swept over him, the size of a car, and disappeared into the shadows as quickly as it had come.
Church moved through the fogou trying to get his bearings, but it appeared to be much larger than he had imagined, with side tunnels branching into a labyrinthine network. Soon he couldn’t tell where the spider was, or whether he was hunting it, or it him. Long periods of silence were punctuated by the rattling of legs that sounded close at hand one moment, then far away a second later.
He rounded a bend and the light of his sword revealed it, gleaming with a black sheen, eyes turned on him, dark and maleficent. Its maw was open, toxins sizzling at the tips of razor-sharp fangs.
The spider struck with devastating speed, moving from floor to wall to ceiling, knocking Church to his knees with its bulk. The serrated edge on one of its legs tore through his shoulder and he cried out as the pain burned deep into him. When he swung the sword up sharply, the spider was already gone. The blade raised a shower of sparks as it clanged against the corbels.
For minutes that felt like hours, Church dived out of the creature’s way, tearing open knees and elbows on the stones, striking as fast as he could, but never fast enough. Occasionally he would nick its steely flesh, raising a venomous cry deep in his own head; and once he struck quickly and strongly enough to hack off a length of leg that twitched with a life of its own on the floor.
He hoped to carry on whittling the thing down, but as he ducked an attack, he turned his ankle and fell to the floor, his sword skidding out of his hand. The spider was on him in an instant, its bulk pinning him down so that he couldn’t reach the sword, its legs skewering his flesh. Its eyes hovered over his face. A thousand tiny Churches were reflected back.
It struck rapidly, driving its fangs into Church’s arm. The agony was excruciating as his flesh ruptured and the poison rapidly flooded his system. On his pale flesh, the thin blue veins began to turn black as the toxins moved inexorably towards his heart and head. A jarring whispering echoed deep in his skull. The words were alien and came and went like a badly tuned radio, but they carried with them images that threatened to overwhelm him with dread and despair. The spider’s consciousness had invaded his system along with the poison, a viral intelligence within the very molecular make-up of the toxin.
After a sickening, hanging moment, a black wave sucked Church along in its wake. The language infiltrating his skull was emotional, speaking of the end of everything, of a vast hole in Existence that pulled in all light, all matter, all hopes and dreams. Church found himself walking across a blasted landscape where ghost-images hovered before winking out. Church saw modern cities fallen into shadow, and Ruth filled with a crushing grief. There were other men and women he felt he should know but didn’t.
It would have been easy to give in to the deluge of hopelessness, but instead Church became more aware of qualities that had shaped him. He recalled his despair at the death of his girlfriend Marianne, and how he had overcome that to find some hope for the future. He uncovered a strength forged by hardship. And in that instant he felt the sword in his hand.
He didn’t know whether he had found it in the throes of his delirium, or if it had magically appeared there, but he acted instantly, thrusting upward where he remembered the spider being.
An echoing shriek filled his head and the black wave receded. When his mind cleared, Church lay with the spider’s body across his legs, ichor leaking all over him. But that impression faded just as quickly, and once more he was in the tiny nook at the end of the fogou with the heartbeat drums echoing through the ground. A dream within a dream within a dream.
And he was still dying.
9
What followed came in flashes as if he were viewing intermittent frames on a reel of film. Being carried out of the fogou, seeing the powder-blue and pink flush of a dawn sky, with a few stars and a ghost-moon still hovering. Lying next to the fire in a roundhouse with Etain leaning over him, tears in her eyes. A foul stench from a pot bubbling over the fire, and an anxious Conoran throwing unseen things into the brew. Tannis bowing before him, making some oath that Church couldn’t translate.
A long period of darkness followed, and when Church next came to consciousness, the fragmentary nature of reality had subsided but the pain and exhaustion in his limbs was near-unbearable. Church fumbled for where the spider had been embedded in his arm, felt nothing.
‘Death stalks you.’ Conoran loomed over Church, his pale eyes gleaming in the firelight. ‘Are you ready for the next step of your journey?’
‘Yes.’ Church’s voice sounded as if it came from a different person. ‘But I’m not ready to die.’
‘You must fan whatever flames lie within you if you are to pull your spark back from the dark.’
‘What do I have to do?’ Church found his strength creeping back, but he still could not lift his head.
Conoran considered his response. ‘You are to meet the god above gods and plead for your life.’
10
In the dark before dawn, Church found himself carted from the roundhouse and fastened to a stretcher of wood and straw harnessed to Tannis’s horse. They set off at a slow pace that still amplified every rut and bump in the main street, and was barely less uncomfortable when they passed onto the sweeping grassland. Church was vaguely aware of other riders accompanying him, but their identities remained unknown.
For a while he was transfixed by the stars and for a moment touched a sweeping sense of wonder rarely felt outside childhood. But after an hour or so, branches closed in overhead, bringing with them a feeling of claustrophobia and a dull background drone of dread.
Tannis clearly felt it, too, for he said quietly but insistently, ‘Go slow. We are no longer alone.’
The rocking motion became a crawl, the thud of hooves barely a whisper. Church could hear the breeze rustling through the upper branches and the tinkle of a nearby stream, but nothing else. It was too dark, and death increasingly tugged at his sleeve.
‘The dark powers do not want us to reach Boskawen-Un.’ It was Conoran’s voice.
‘They come for Jack, Giantkiller?’ Etain this time.
‘He is a threat to them. They recognise this. That is why the Poison-Spider was set in his body. They did not wish a direct confrontation,’ Conoran replied.
‘Then he must be a great warrior indeed, ‘Tannis said with awe.
Church faded out for a while, and when he fought his way back to consciousness the atmosphere had grown even more tense.
‘Where?
Towards the west?’ It was Etain’s friend Owein, cautious and intelligent.
‘No. Look north.’ Branwen, as flinty and insistent as ever.
‘What are they?’ A touch of horror in Etain’s voice. ‘Are they men or beasts?’
‘No time now to discuss their nature,’ Conoran said. ‘With the Giantkiller near death, we do not have the strength to fight them.’
‘Gods.’ Owein’s voice was scared. ‘See how they move through the trees? So fast and low. Surely they must have come from beneath the sea. Are they Fomorii?’
‘Enough talk!’ Conoran snapped. ‘Tannis, draw your slingshot.’
Church heard the creak of animal hide, and then the harsh clack of a flint being struck. A second later there was a whoosh and a crackle. A bright ball of light flared in the gloom before arcing across Church’s line of vision and disappearing into the trees. The tinder-dry summer wood flared up and quickly became a deafening roar. Above the crackling flames, Church heard a terrible sound, like furious pigs disturbed during feast.
‘Ride with the wind beneath you!’ Conoran bellowed.
Church was rushed along, bouncing so wildly he was convinced he would be jolted unconscious any moment. Somehow his delirium preserved him, and after ten minutes he dreamed a river took him to a night-land where a single boatman waited.
Eventually they came to a halt. He could only guess that their pursuers had fallen back. Someone lit a fire, which drove some of the aching chill from his bones, but its red light was uncommonly thin and he felt as though he was looking at it down a long tunnel. The others must have wandered away to forage for food, for their voices retreated to a distant tremor.
For a long time Church hovered in that limbo until the overwhelming odour of engine oil mysteriously appeared. An old woman’s face loomed over him, eyes red-rimmed in a face so filthy it looked as though the grime had been accumulating for decades. Her wiry hair was greasy and matted, and her breath was so foul it made Church gag.
‘Gods answer to gods, answer to gods,’ she whispered in a voice like rending metal, ‘and somehow the Voice of Existence trickles through to men.’ Church felt as if he was lying next to a massive generator; the atmosphere was distorted, infused with such an overpowering dread that he felt he might go insane with the intensity of emotion. ‘Hold hard. You must see the dawn,’ the woman continued.
And then she was gone in the blink of an eye, leaving Church unsure whether she had really been there.
11
‘It comes.’ Conoran’s voice made Church start; he had been convinced he was alone.
‘What comes?’ Church said weakly.
Conoran appeared in Church’s frame of vision. ‘You fight hard, Jack, Giantkiller. I was certain you would be dead before the dawn. But look, its first rays break. All is not lost.’
Tannis and Owein freed Church from the stretcher and propped him up. A thin line of silver lay to the east. In the firelight, Church could see they were sitting on a grassy bank, looking down on a thick forest of gorse. Just visible beyond it was a circle of scrubby yellowing grass, worn by many a foot. Several ghosts stood inside the circle, immobile. It took Church a few seconds to realise they were standing stones, glowing spectrally in the first glimmer of light.
‘Boskawen-Un,’ Conoran said reverently. ‘We must get you into the circle before the sun comes up.’
Tannis and Owein helped Church to his feet. His head spun and he couldn’t stand without their support.
‘What was hunting us?’ Church’s thready voice was almost lost to the breeze.
‘There will be time for that later.’ Conoran looked over his shoulder to the north. ‘If you survive what is to come, they will be waiting.’
Other outlying stones became visible around the central circle as Tannis and Owein helped Church down the slope to a thin path through the protecting gorse.
Once they were in the circle, Church was surprised to feel a potent atmosphere suck the tension from his limbs. It was the same sensation he felt whenever he held his sword.
Conoran turned to face the golden sun now half-risen above the horizon and bowed his head. ‘For too long the days have been dark,’ he said. ‘Let it be so no longer.’
‘Look at him – a weak, straggly thing,’ Branwen said harshly of Church. ‘He does not have the strength to endure what lies ahead.’
‘He has more strength than you, or I, or any of us.’ Etain marched forward defiantly and kissed Church on the lips. When she pulled back, tears rimmed her eyes. ‘I would give you my life if it were enough,’ she said so only he could hear. ‘But only your own heart will suffice.’
When she backed away, Conoran began to lead Church towards the circle’s westernmost stone, the only one made of white quartz.
‘I don’t think I can make it,’ Church said. The darkness was closing in around him again.
‘You will,’ Conoran said sharply. ‘This is no longer just about you. It is about the people of this land, and their survival into the long days to come.’
‘You are sure?’ Owein said. ‘This is what the gods spoke of.’
‘This is what the gods fear.’
Conoran directed Tannis and Owein to haul Church to the white quartz stone, where they left him clinging on with the last of his strength. He felt as though the remnants of his life were trickling out of him, the trickle growing faster by the moment.
‘Ruth,’ he whispered into the returning delirium. ‘I love you.’
Church’s world shrank to the ring of stones and the white quartz pillar, the whisper of the wind on the grass, the fragrance of the yellow gorse blossom.
‘You place too great a burden on him. It is not just.’ Etain’s sad, angry voice came from somewhere behind him, a world away.
‘Existence has placed the burden,’ Conoran replied, an anxious edge to his voice. ‘Existence has chosen its vessel. All lies within this man’s grasp, if he can but rise to the challenge.’
The words fanned a spark within Church. He gripped the quartz stone tighter and attempted to haul himself upright. He no longer knew where he was, or why he was, or what was expected of him.
‘Look.’ Branwen’s hushed voice was laced with fear. ‘They have found us. There is no escape now.’
Church forced himself to peer beyond the limits of the circle. The surrounding countryside was alive with movement; red glimmered in the wan light eking above the skyline – some kind of uniform.
‘Then our survival lies with this one,’ Conoran stated.
‘This cannot be right,’ Branwen persisted.
‘Do not question him.’ Tannis’s voice was steady. In the fields beyond rose up the rhythmic beat of a hundred voices chanting a low war call.
Warm breath tingled Church’s ear and he smelled Etain’s fragrance. ‘I hold you in my heart, Jack, Giantkiller,’ she whispered. ‘You will save us all.’
And then the sun crested the horizon and the world caught fire.
It wasn’t the ruddy fire of a homestead hearth, but the brilliant blue of a summer sky. At first Church thought it was another hallucination, yet when he let go of the quartz stone the image faded, returning with a blaze when he grasped the rock again.
When the sun touched the quartz stone, lines of licking sapphire flames ran out from the stone circle in all directions, interconnecting at various points to create a vast network and echoing the dream that had come to Church in the fogou. Other lines soared up into the sky over the stone circle, forming a glowing cathedral of light. The blackness of the poison gradually ebbed away and strength began to return to Church’s limbs. He was amazed to see a filigree of blue lines on his own skin, like the meridians used by acupuncturists. The same network, within and without.
Church had an impression of the lines of force running out along the spine of Cornwall, across the Somerset Levels to Glastonbury, to Stonehenge and Avebury, and beyond, across the entire world. And more, Church could see the Blue Fire stretching out across the vast gulf of the
years, connecting the future and the past. There and here, then and now, all linked; time and space united.
The force of the vision shook Church to the core. It had the familiarity of a returning memory, and Church couldn’t decide whether he and every other human being had always known about the Blue Fire, encoded in the genes, or if it was peculiar to his own lost memory.
Once the euphoria had ebbed and Church discovered he now had the strength to stand upright, he peered beyond the circle’s comforting perimeter once more. The azure incandescence revealed the approaching threat in stark relief. Moving rapidly across the countryside was a small army of inhuman creatures, squat and brutish with greenish skin, long black hair and monstrous features. It wasn’t their supernatural aspect that shocked Church, but the fact that the uniforms he had thought he glimpsed earlier were human skin and body parts worn as clothes.
‘Redcaps,’ he said, half-remembering the legends of the creatures that had once stalked the border counties.
‘What now, Giantkiller?’ Conoran said with concern.
Church fought back the poison still licking at the edges of his consciousness and wondered why everyone was suddenly relying on him.
‘Knock three times if you want in.’
Church started at the unfamiliar voice emerging as if from the air around him. None of the others showed they had heard it; they were fixated on the rampaging Redcaps, fear evident in their faces. Only Etain looked at Church with pleading eyes.
Church’s head swam. The voice had been in modern English. Another hallucination?
The Redcaps were already crashing into the circle of spiky gorse, their low war chant turning hungry as they scented blood.
Church reacted instinctively, slapping one hand three times on the white quartz stone.
Instantly there was a rumbling beneath his feet as a section of turf tore open in the centre of the circle. It rose up like a gaping maw in a shower of earth and stones. The Redcaps hesitated in confusion.
Jack of Ravens Page 4