had lost someone or something very dear to her. He found he had warmed to her with remarkable speed; she appeared uncomplicated and uncorrupted by cynicism.
In the Court, they walked for ten minutes along corridors where the only sound was the soft tread of their feet. Eventually, they entered a large hall with a beamed ceiling and luxuriant tapestries hanging on the stone walls. Food and drink were laid out on the table — silver dishes and platters containing seafood, spiced meats, breads and fruit, and decanters of a deep red wine — but there was no sign of any servants.
'Not many people here,' he said.
'The Court of Peaceful Days is filled with life, but my subjects know I prefer silence to follow at my heels.' She gestured for Mallory to sit. 'Everything in my Court is given freely and without obligation.'
'Subjects?' You're the queen?' Mallory suddenly realised how hungry he was. He didn't know how long he had been out, but after the days of cathedral rations his stomach yearned for sophisticated food. He tore into the ham and bread, washing them down with a goblet full of red wine.
She took the seat at the head of the table but didn't touch the food, seemingly content to watch Mallory enjoy himself. 'That is my responsibility.'
'The queen of all Fairyland.'
She laughed silently at his name for the land. 'There are many Courts in the Far Lands, and each has its own queen or king, its own hierarchy, its rules and regulations, petty rivalries and intrigues, loves and vendettas.'
Once he had taken the edge off his hunger, Mallory sat back and looked at her in the light of the latest information. 'When everything went pear- shaped a while back, everyone was talking about gods carrying out miracles all over the place. That was your people?'
She nodded slowly. 'We were worshipped when your race was in its infancy. The tribes called us the Tuatha De Danann. We are known to ourselves, in your tongue, as the Golden Ones.'
'Why did everything change?'
She gestured dismissively as if it were a minor question. 'The seasons turned. It was time once again for an age of wonder, of magic. We returned to the land we knew, and that many of us loved.'
Mallory selected a sharp silver knife and began to quarter an apple. 'Your kind were supposed to be everywhere during the troubles, but since then there's hardly been any sign of you.'
'My people have detached themselves from Fragile Creatures once again. After the rigours of the Great Battle, when suffering and hardship were felt on all sides, the decision was taken to withdraw amongst ourselves, to concentrate on our own affairs. But we can no more leave Fragile Creatures alone than your kind, good Mallory, can leave the Golden Ones alone. Isolationism never works. We are all bound. We must find ways to exist together.'
Mallory poured himself another glass of wine. The velvety warmth of it was spreading through his limbs. 'I wouldn't hold your breath. My own people can't get on together.'
She stared introspectively into the warm shadows in the corner of the room. 'We are all bound, Mallory. Freedom to act independently is an illusion. Obligations and responsibilities tie our hands, as do love and friendship. And good men can no more turn their backs on need than cowards can face danger.'
Mallory finished his apple and pushed himself back from the table, replete. 'That's a very optimistic view of human nature.'
She rose without replying and he trailed behind her out of the room into another chamber, heavily carpeted and filled with sumptuous cushions. She stretched out, catlike, upon them. 'Threats lurk where you least expect them, Mallory,' she said.
He slipped into the cushions, cocooned by every aspect of that place; he didn't want to go back to the hardship of the cathedral, or of his world. He wanted to stay there for ever, listening to her voice, letting her take care of him.
'Your wounds were caused by something terrible,' she continued, 'even to my own people. It has no business being in the Fixed Lands, or the Far Lands, for that matter. It crawled up from the edge of Existence, where even worse things have been stirring. Your kind have been noticed.' This last comment sounded like a tolling bell.
'But that thing's been left behind,' he said. 'I'm never going to go within a million miles of it again.'
'Pick the pearls from my words, Mallory,' she warned. 'And beware.'
He pressed her further, but she would say no more. Her statement, though, remained with him, niggling at the back of his head, spoiling the comfort he felt. In a bid to forget, he questioned her about her kind. She told him of four fabulous cities that haunted her nomadic people's memories, an ancient homeland they could never return to and the terrible sadness that knowledge engendered in all of them. And she told of the wonders the Golden Ones had seen: astonishing creatures that soared on the sun's rays, breathtaking worlds where the very fabric changed shape with thought, the play of light on oceans greater than the Milky Way, the great sweep of Existence. Tears sprang to her eyes as the stories flowed from her, memories of amazement that cast a pall over her current life.
'We have lost so much, and I fear we will never regain it,' she said, and the terrible regret in her voice made Mallory's chest heavy.
At some point, her voice became like music, lulling him to sleep. He dreamed of worlds of colour and sound, bright and infinitely interesting, of nobility and passion and magic, and when he woke with tears in the corners of his eyes he resolved not to return to his world of bleakness and dismal low horizons.
The room was empty. He stretched, surprised at how wonderfully rested he felt. The corridor without had the stillness and fragrance of early morning. He wandered along it, searching for Rhiannon to ask her if he could stay at the Court, but the whole place appeared deserted; not even the guards were visible. He took branching corridors in the hope of finding some central area, but the building was like a labyrinth and he quickly became quite lost.
After a while, he came upon an atrium big enough to contain trees at least eighty feet tall. Sunlight streamed through the crystal glass high overhead, yet the space was cool and airy. A grassy banked stream babbled through the centre of the room, while birds sang in the branches and rabbits and squirrels ran wild amongst the trunks.
In the very heart of the atrium was a pillar of marble so white it glowed. Mallory felt oddly drawn to it, but as he approached, a disturbing whispering broke out on the edge of his consciousness. He couldn't quite make out what was being said, but still it unnerved him. He had an impression of strange intelligences, so alien he could barely comprehend what form they might take. Turn away, he told himself, fearing that his own mind would be burned by any further contact; but the pillar pulled him in.
Yet when he came within a foot of it, the subtle whispering faded away and there was only an abiding silence in his head. The marble was hypnotic in its blankness. As he stared at it he began to feel as if he was floating in a world of white with no up or down, no horizon. Peace descended on him.
He didn't know how long he was like that, but time had certainly passed when he realised he was seeing something in the nothingness. Shapes coalesced like twilight shadows on snow, taking on substance, clarity, depth and eventually context, until he realised with a shock that he was looking at Miller lying on a muddy trail, his dead, glassy eyes staring up at the grey sky.
His cry broke the spell. When he looked around, Rhiannon was standing at his shoulder. 'I just saw…'
She nodded slowly, her face grave.
The pillar was just white marble again. 'A hallucination? Or did I see what was really happening back on earth?'
'The Wish-Post looks into you as you look into it,' she said. 'What you saw is the road not travelled. You are thinking about not returning?'
He didn't answer, but she could see the truth in his face.
'Your vision showed you the state of Existence if you stay here.'
'Is it for real?'
She took his hand; her fingers were cool and calming.
'He was going to die sooner or later anyway,' he continued, without meeting her eyes.
'I know what happened to you, Mallory. What you did.' No accusation marked her face, only pity, and somehow that was worse. He turned away, sick at what had been laid bare.
Her fingers grew tighter, more supportive. 'As above, so below. As without, so within. The rules of Existence are simple, Mallory, and unyielding. To everything there is an opposite, though it may often remain hidden, and these opposites are continually at war. We choose our sides, make our stand and hope for the best.'
'How do you know what happened to me?' Briefly, he thought he might cry.
