The Last Guardian of Everness (War of the Dreaming 1) (20 page)

“Raven! Are you there? All the bad guys are coming over the wall! Selkie and giants and everything!”

Raven’s voice came back: “Hush! Hush! Be quiet!”

She heard a chair scrape and then the sound of Raven’s light footsteps across the floor (Wendy was proud of how quietly her husband could walk when he wanted to).

When the door opened, a strange, harsh light flooded out, and it picked Wendy up and flung her down the corridor.

Then she woke up.

IV

Wendy pulled her head off the pile of books where she had fallen asleep and blinked at the darkened library in surprise. Rushing to the window, she saw the little seawall beyond a line of trees. It was a brick wall, in places only shoulder high, or less. This little wall was neither wide nor sturdy, and, even as Wendy watched, the winds from the gathering storm toppled one or two loose bricks from a crumbling section. A few flakes of weathered stone fell silently to the grass.

There was a rumble of thunder. In the distance she heard a barking dog, yapping with joy, and a shrill noise, perhaps from a seagull disturbed in sleep, which only vaguely resembled a trumpet.

V

When she stood up, she saw a little light, dim but clear, like the light of a fallen star, burning in the shadows between two bookshelves. Stepping forward, she saw that there was an archway here, opening up widely into a chamber she had not seen before.

Here, tall pillars, like trunks of trees, held up a shadowy roof. Tall, narrow windows admitted starlight. One casement was open, and misty wind flapped into the room.

Overhead glinted the designs of crescent moons and many-pointed stars inscribed in silver. On the far side of the huge chamber, dimly, she saw what looked like two armored statues flanking a four-poster bed, on which, perhaps, a dark figure had been laid out.

The strange light was coming from the foot of the bed, a dot of argent rays surrounded by a dim halo. Was there a tiny figure there, crouched like a cat on the footboard?

“Maybe it’s an
elf!”
whispered Wendy, and tiptoed forward.

VI

Raven had taken a dagger from one of the armored figures guarding the windows, and, after making sure it was blunt, but not too blunt, he had cinched it to his chest with his belt, so that whenever he started to nod off, a sudden prick would startle him awake.

So Raven had sat in the gloom for many hours, red-eyed, face slack, posture painfully upright, watching Lemuel Waylock sleeping. Every now and again, he pulled back the covers to examine by lamplight the machines that monitored pulse, respiration, and blood pressure. And, as the doctor had repeatedly instructed, he never used his flashlight, and he always covered up the machines afterward.

However, the doctor had failed to instruct Raven where to find more lamp oil to refill the guttering lantern. Raven kept a mere spark burning, turning the lamp brighter only during his periodic checks of the sleeper.

The doctor had been vastly irked to find that Raven was not a physician after all, in what Raven had thought was an unjustified overreaction. Raven wondered what he was doing in a stranger’s house, watching a sick man sleep, instead of being home, in bed with his own wife. Where had she gotten to, anyway?

He told himself that this watch was neither as long nor as dangerous as watches he had stood aboard ship. But he wished he had some tatwork or macramé to keep his hands busy as the hours passed. Here, there was nothing to do.

At about three in the morning (so he judged by the position of the stars), the last spark of lamp fire went out. He checked the sleeping man once more, about an hour later, this time using the flashlight.

As hours passed, he watched the moonlight creep from the eastern windows, guarded by samurai, to the southern windows, guarded by Mamelukes.

A glimpse of the moon through the southern windows sent a stab of cold dread into his heart. The black areas of the moon seemed like seas indeed,
lifeless expanses of ocean rolling up against the shores of sterile, icy deserts of stone.

In his mind’s eye, he saw a windowless dome rearing high above a frozen tableland, surrounded by obelisks and blank-walled towers from which shrieks and dull moans of pain ceaselessly echoed. In his imagination, he saw a line of enormously fat men, pale as slugs, with gouged-out sockets instead of eyes, marching across the gray, snow-swept sands toward the black doors of that dome; and in their hands, they held up pincers and iron lashes, eye-spoons and disemboweling hooks, awls and branding irons; and when they heard the screams of torment, they smiled simpleminded smiles.

A poke in the chin prodded Raven awake.

Raven reached out and shook the sleeping old man by the arm. “I did not kill your grandson! I did not mean to kill him! I had to! It was for my wife! Why should I be sorry for you when I have my wife still alive, eh? Tell me that, eh?”

But then his voice sank to a sorrowful whisper. “But I know. You love your grandson, I am thinking, as much as I love my wife.”

He stood and paced over to the window, leaning wearily against the armored shoulder of a paynim. He turned his eyes away from the moon and stared down. There in the courtyard was a silvery pool, surrounded by twelve statues of zodiacal figures.

“Hey, you in the pool down there,” he whispered. “Maybe my wife did not make a wish when she threw in her penny, no? Maybe I can make wish for her. I wish to know how to set right what I have done. Is too much, I am thinking, for a penny to pay for? Is not enough of your water in the world, I am thinking, little pond, to wash this blood from my hands. But that is my wish anyway.”

When he sat back down next to the sleeping man, he turned on his flashlight and checked the machines. The pulse and respiration were up. In that bright light, he noticed Lemuel Waylock’s eyes were moving back and forth beneath his eyelids. Raven might not have noticed this by the dim lamplight.

“He is dreaming,” muttered Raven. “I wonder what he dreams about.”

Raven held the flashlight directly up near the man’s eyes, but he did not wake up.

“He is looking at something in his dreams,” said Raven. The doctor had told him that Lemuel still had REM sleep once or twice a night, but that he could not be woken even during these periods. “Look at him—back, forth, back, back . . . left, left, right, pause, right, left.”

Raven leaned forward.

“By holy St. Katherine!” he breathed. “Is code! Morse code!”

Raven spelled out the message: GALEN HELP ME I AM TRAPPED IN ACHERON.

VII

Galen help me I am trapped in Acheron Vindyamar has been taken when I went there the three queens were selkie and they took me to Nastrond then wrapped me in song and took me to Acheron I am in a cell five black towers outside they have cut off my hands so I cannot make the sign of Koth and I am hanging by hooks eels come in the windows to suck at my wounds when I tried to sing to summon a dream colt the water filled my throat and I could not make any noise and I forget what wholesome music sounds like they dragged me to Morningstar and he is so bright and beautiful that I could not stop answering his questions so I bit off my tongue Galen go to the sitting room behind the picture of Azrael find the horn blow it wake the sleepers in my cell I can feel the shaking Acheron is rising from the deep the worst has happened we are all lost find the horn blow the horn do not feel sorry for me these wounds will vanish when I wake and a new world has been promised us I keep telling myself its a nightmare I dont know if you are getting this message Galen so much of my waking life I have forgotten now and I dont know how long Ive been asleep Galen wake me up please god wake me up I am trapped in Acheron and the music of the fallen seraphim is taking away my will and heart I can hardly remember what you look like now Galen but go to the sitting room behind the picture blow the horn blow the horn blow the horn the wand to discover the selkie and rest of
the talismans are in the country of gold the horn is behind the picture of the founder in the sitting room blow it and wake the sleepers Acheron is rising and darkness darkness covers all.

VIII

Raven found the stub of an old pencil in his pocket but nothing to write on except the back of the organ donor’s card in his driver’s license. He wrote in frantic haste, each letter microscopically small.

As the message became clear, Raven began sweating and shaking. He did not know what these things were that Lemuel was trying to communicate, but when he told himself it was just the nightmares of a sick old man, he knew it was a lie.

When he reached the point where Lemuel’s eye-motions were spelling out DARKNESS DARKNESS COVERS ALL, Raven heard footsteps in the hall outside the doors to the room, then a knock.

“Raven, are you there? All the bad guys are coming over the wall! Selkie and giants and everything!”

Raven, forgetting for the moment that Lemuel could not wake up, said, “Hush! Hush! Be quiet!”

Then he quickly went over to the door and opened it. There was no one there. Puzzled, Raven shined his flashlight up and down the corridor. He saw no place Wendy could have gone in the moment it had taken him to leap to the door.

He returned swiftly to the bedside, but the moment had passed. Lemuel had fallen once more into a deeper sleep, and his eyes were still.

Raven looked at the cramped little note in his hand, and said in a shaking voice. “Well, now. Well, now. Must be logical explanation for all this. I cannot think of it. Doesn’t mean is not there.”

He drew several deep breaths to calm himself, and held up the little note to his face so that his nose almost touched it. “So where is this sitting
room, eh? And how am I to know what founder looks like.”

Then he straightened up, blinking.

“Did she say giants were coming?”

An angry voice came from the corridor outside the door. “Turn off that light! Are you mad?!”

Raven snapped off the light. The doctor, carrying a lantern, walked into the room. He turned, put down the lantern, and turned again to confront Raven.

“How dare you violate our rules?” snapped the doctor, eyes bright, his little mustache bristling.

“Doctor,” said Raven slowly, “why did I not hear your footsteps on the corridor outside? Wood floor. You are wearing shoes.”

“Perhaps you didn’t hear me, my good man. What is that in your hand you were looking at?”

“I would have heard. I have very good ear,” said Raven, and he held up his empty hand, since he had slipped the little card into his pocket when the doctor’s back had been turned.

11

The
Five Names
of
Lesser Mystery

I

Peter Waylock swore softly as his roaring machine (and now Azrael de Gray was convinced it was a machine, for a subtle test had confirmed that it had no soul) pulled into the driveway before a large, low, one-story house. Azrael could not see what danger caused Peter to call down damnation from his gods. Though there was a beacon of light, brighter than the moon, shining from a nearby pole, a sight that inspired Azrael to awe and alarm; Azrael had thought these were ordinary objects in this world. Peter cursed some other thing, no doubt.

But when he helped Peter dismount from the van, Azrael noticed five crows sleeping in a pine tree several fathoms away; three for a girl and two for a boy. He contrived to drop a bit of string from his pocket when he dismounted
from the van. As he stooped to pick it up, he saw the string had curled twice widdershins: a sure sign that guests had come, and it was not the sign for strangers. The daisy next to which the string had dropped had six drooping petals. An even number: she loves me not. Someone inside, then, a woman with a man, a woman who was not a stranger and who had no love for Peter.

“Damn!” muttered Peter. “Look at that. What the hell’s she doing here?” Then, turning his head toward Azrael: “Your mother’s here with that man of hers. His car’s blocking the drive. Probably to come make a fuss over you. Not that they ever came to see you when it counted. Hospital must’ve phoned them.”

Azrael, who could see no chariots, nor anything else meant to be horse drawn, hid his amazement at Peter’s ability to read the signs. He had discovered more than Azrael, apparently with a quicker glance, obviously reading signs obscure to Azrael.

Azrael walked around the large, glass-sided metal box on wheels blocking his path, and looked up at the stars and clouds and nearby trees to see where Peter had divined his clues. But he could detect nothing, other than the obvious (the house was not warded; there were deer in the woods, no wolves; someone would shed tears before the evening was over) and he reminded himself not to underestimate Peter again. Even if Peter had repudiated the blood of Everness, the ancient magic still ran strong and deep in him, and the powers of the world could not for long hold secrets from him.

II

Afterwards, Azrael de Gray would not be able to recall the names of the two people he met in the strange house. Azrael did not deem them to be important; he did not enchant their names with images nor place them anywhere in the many-roomed mansion of many powers he carried with him in his spirit.

The first, his (or rather Galen’s) mother, was even more a traitor to
Everness than was Peter, having left her lord and master to run off with some other man. Azrael at first misunderstood why she was here.

He supposed, as she hugged and kissed him, and spoke many tender (albeit insincere) words of love over him, that remorse over the near death of her son had brought her out of hiding, and that she had been granted the mercy of seeing her son alive one last time before being turned over to the magistrates. But, no: apparently cuckolding her lord carried no legal penalty in this land.

Of course, he next expected Peter to take the blond-haired man outside and kill him. Kill, not duel, since, unlike Peter, the blond-haired man did not carry a weapon and therefore was clearly not of the knightly class. Since the blond-haired man did not have the right to bear arms, he was a peasant, and he showed remarkable presumption and effrontery in the way he comported himself and his familiar fashion of address to Peter and to Azrael. Azrael concluded that Peter, through some weakness of character or lack of resolve, had permitted this obnoxious creature to live, and the peasant, emboldened by that, took full advantage of the liberty to flaunt his contempt for his betters.