Jack of Ravens

1

Niamh laid out the Tarot cards on the small table next to the roaring fire. Tom watched her intently. From the shadow that crossed her face, he knew the answer before he asked the question. ‘Still nothing?’

‘There is a wall across what lies ahead. Beyond it exists only darkness.’ She turned over another card: the Nine of Ravens. ‘I try to summon the Messengers of Existence, but there are shadow-ripples flowing back from that wall, disrupting my pleas, perverting their answers. Changing everything.’

‘So the powers won’t respond?’

‘They do what they can, but even they are insignificant compared to what lies ahead.’

Tom took out a brown leather pouch and began to roll himself a smoke. ‘And there’s still no little ray of sunshine ahead for you and me?’

Niamh shook her head gravely. ‘Our time is nearly done. Soon we will make our choices to shuffle off the board.’

Tom nodded as he crimped the paper and took out his flint. ‘That’s what I see. That’s what I’ve always seen. An ending, like a black cloud on the horizon. We go, but the world keeps turning.’

Niamh turned another card: the Lovers. ‘It seems so futile, for even with our sacrifice the wall still stands,’ she said bitterly.

‘No one knows how it all fits together,’ Tom said. ‘Existence is complex and we see only one dog-eared corner of the vast pattern. Through cause and effect, one simple action can change the world.’ He lit his roll-up and inhaled the blue smoke deeply.

‘But it can change,’ she said hopefully. ‘Things can change. Nothing is fixed, anywhere. You know that. Existence is mutable. The structure can be altered by events … or will.’

‘And our friend lies at the heart of that.’

Niamh moved her fingers over the cards. ‘It says here that if he chose me over the Sister of Dragons I would survive-’

‘You are a god and he is a mortal.’ Tom fixed a searching eye on Niamh as she mulled over the cards. ‘One would think it would not be difficult to bring about that end.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘His love would be meaningless if it were forced. I stand or fall by what lies in his heart.’

‘You love him very deeply.’

‘More than I can bring myself to believe. By doing nothing apart from being himself, he has altered my world completely. When I peer into my deepest thoughts I am not the same person I was before I met him. Far from it. He has awakened many great things in my heart, and though I have experienced wish-pain for the first time, I would not have it any other way.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I exist in hope that he will return my love.’

Tom nodded, but could give her no reassurance. ‘And do you see his future in the cards? I fear greatly for what lies ahead for him. I see-’

He was interrupted by a knock at the door, and then Church entered. He was in unusually high spirits.

‘Well, you have the smile of a winner,’ Tom noted.

‘And with good reason. The crystal skull is destroyed. The Anubis Box has been taken. The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders can’t entrap any more gods. I’d call that a result.’

‘Unless they have already trapped everyone they need,’ Tom pointed out.

Church plucked an apple from a fruit display and pulled up a chair. You’re a real glass-half-empty kind of person, aren’t you?’

‘I’d call it pragmatic.’

‘Okay, we don’t know how many gods they’ve got on their side: Janus, Apollo and Loki for definite …’He shifted uneasily when he thought of Loki’s ferocity. ‘All right, they’re pretty terrifying and I wouldn’t want to face one of them on my own again. But we’ve got twenty courts here to oppose them. That weights things in our favour, I think.’ He crunched on the apple. Have you heard of Robin Goodfellow?’

‘Stay away from the Puck,’ Niamh interjected. ‘He is dangerous.’

‘I don’t know why he decided to focus on me, but he really messed things around. Changing his appearance, shepherding me this way and that-’

‘The Puck has his own agenda,’ she warned.

‘This time it coincided with ours. I would never have destroyed the crystal skull without his help. Okay, he absconded with the Anubis Box, but-’

‘And you call that a success?’ Tom said. ‘An artefact of such power in the hands of something so unpredictable?’

Church shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, I think things are turning in our favour.’

Tom hesitated before saying, ‘I believe I have found a way into the Court of the Final Word.’

‘See? That’s great,’ Church said. ‘So the next thing is to get the lamp and my Pendragon Spirit back.’ He didn’t see Tom share a dark glance with Niamh. ‘I’ve put things in place to get Shavi, Laura and Ruth together in the future. Trust me. Everything is going to be fine.’