Jack of Ravens by Mark Chadbourn

Tudor, with black-stained wooden beams and dirty-grey stone, bottle-glass windows and crumbling chimneys on the point of collapse. It smelled of open sewers and stagnant water and the accumulated damp of centuries.
    The sounds, sights and smells combined to give an impression of whispered plotting and secret politics, of private struggles and misery heaped upon misery as residents attempted to fight their way up from the dark slums to a place where they could glimpse the sun.
    ‘Isn’t it a place of wonders.’ Jerzy sighed. Intentionally or not, his fixed grin coloured the statement with irony.
    Niamh’s grace and glamour were emphasised by the surroundings as she walked towards them from the head of the caravan. Church nodded to the broken-chain banner. ‘I thought your court stood for freedom.’ He didn’t attempt to hide his contempt.
    Niamh spoke as if addressing a child. ‘We are all prisoners, and we forge our own chains. The love that sets us free holds us fast. Our dreams and ambitions drag us from the wide vista to the prison of a single path. Every choice, every step, is a link in the chain. Every thought is a lock.’ She motioned to Jerzy. ‘He has been freed from all those things, from love, from the tyranny of choice and independent thought.’
    ‘But you control him.’
    ‘As I do you. Yet you are free to wander this city, free to receive sustenance without offering anything in return, free from concern about your choice of path and your future. I have taken that burden upon myself. And so you are free.’
    Jerzy gave a flamboyant bow. ‘And I thank you, your highness, from the bottom of my heart.’
    Church looked from Niamh’s icy smile to the sprawling, stinking city and finally realised the extent of his predicament.
    3
     
    Freed from obligation for the rest of the day, Jerzy led Church to an inn at the end of a shadowy alley. The Hunter’s Moon was a low, labyrinthine pub of numerous rooms and annexes, smoky and stinking of sour ale. The hubbub of voices never dipped. Church was mesmerised by the bizarre clientele: unfeasibly tall, unnervingly short, unnaturally thin and grotesquely fat, horns and tails, scales and wings. Church felt as if he was looking at a pop-up diorama in a nursery story book.
    He was introduced to a big, bearded hunter named Bearskin, who had the eyes and odour of an animal; to a tall, needle-thin man with a stovepipe hat who called himself Shadow John; and to a cackling mad old crone by the name of Mother Mary. Jerzy led him to the only vacant table in a nook beside the stone fireplace where a pile of logs blazed to dispel the damp.
    They each had a flagon of a potent ale that brought back painful memories of the nights Church had spent around the hearth in Carn Euny.
    ‘Drink up, good friend.’ The Mocker grinned humourlessly. ‘The first eight flagons are always the hardest.’
    ‘Is that the answer? Drown yourself in an alcoholic haze?’
    ‘There are few pleasures in life. Best to embrace them with open arms.’ Jerzy took a long draught. His surgically enhanced grimace made it a difficult task and ale flooded out of the corners of his mouth. ‘Excuse my manners.’ He wiped his face with the back of his hand.
    The barman collecting flagons slapped Jerzy on the back and bellowed, ‘Hey, it’s the Mocker! Tell us a joke!’
    Without missing a beat, Jerzy said, ‘There is no point. Life is meaningless. We strive and we suffer. We shed our tears, always expecting something good just around the corner, but it never materialises. And then we die.’
    The barman stared in confusion for a moment, until his gaze fell on Jerzy’s unflinching grin and he gave a burst of raucous laughter. ‘Good one, Mocker! And then you die! Good one!’
    When he had gone, Jerzy said, ‘You’ll find your little pleasures where you can in the Court of the Soaring Spirit. Steal your moments and hold them dear.’
    ‘I don’t intend to be around for long.’
    It was the