Mists of Everness

by John C. Wright

  Raven kicked at the thing, but his boot only sent wobbling ripples through the mounds of pale flesh. “You brag of beauty!” Raven shouted, “You are stinking pile of goo!”

  Thunder rolled angrily somewhere far above; but beneath the miles of iron and rock, all was calm as a tomb.

  His captor now lifted him overhead so that his leg lost purchase with the table.

  A glottal voice from the darkness answered. “We tolerate your difference; can you not return the courtesy? We make no judgments, for we cannot be deceived by outward appearances. Try to be a little more understanding.”

  His captor slammed him into the iron framework; a dozen sharpened slats and nails made shallow wounds all along his arms and legs, buttocks and back.

  He was held down by the hands of his captor. A dozen heads pushed up close, slavering and grunting, and began to lick his wounds with long, black tongues, their noses and fat cheeks pressed into his garments and scratched flesh.

  Raven spoke in a loud, calm voice. “Is this courtesy? Is this inner beauty?” His face was motionless, with a look of intense, quiet effort. As he spoke, the patter of rain on the dome so far above grew still, and the rolling thunder quieted.

  A voice said, “But we are starving!”

  Another said, “Selfish brute! You must give and we must have!”

  Another: “All must share their fellow man’s suffering. In times of desperation, when we are pale and weak with starvation, who would not steal from those who have to feed those who lack? Who would not eat another man to save himself? You have done the same, Galen tells us you ate him to feed your wife!”

  Raven spoke in a voice of steady strength. “That was evil deed. I will undo it. You will not stop me, Moon-creature!”

  A flabby hand pushed through the press to jab at Raven with a fork. The wielder said in self-righteous tones, “How will you stop us, you judgmental weakling? We have the strength of many men within us, for we consume the parts the selkie cast aside. They wish only for outward skins and shapes; we take inner selfishness and self away.”

  A final voice called out, “Eat his tongue first! You know how weak we grow when we know our own true … I mean, when lies and propaganda erode our resolve!”

  By that time, a dozen groping hands were holding the chains, ready to throw them across Raven; a dozen monstrous faces were nuzzling and licking him; the others, as far as he could tell in the gloom, were pressing forward, whining and complaining, fat folds pressed against their comrades, and, like baby piglets squeezing in to reach a teat, fought for a position to reach Raven’s flesh.

  Raven could only move his fingers; he put the hand which still held the ball of lightning, palm down, on the iron bars around him.

  Every monster in the room was either touching the metal bars or chains or touching someone who was. The fat limbs jerked and spasmed, and the huge monsters sagged aside, too round to fall. Some moaned; others gargled phlegm; others were silent.

  It now was utterly dark.

  “Galen! Was that your moan I heard?”

  A moan answered him, then the slithering scraping of a chain, three short scrapes, three long, three short—an SOS.

  Raven felt his way toward the source of the sound. His fingers found flesh, shackles and needles holding some mutilated body crucified to a wheel. He tried to find Galen’s neck and shuddered when his fingers discovered that the creatures had removed Galen’s tongue and teeth and lower jaw. There was some sort of tube and plunger leading from a cage to Galen’s throat so that whatever insect or animal had been in the cage could be forced living into his stomach.

  Raven’s hands shook, overcome by squeamishness.

  He did not want to discover whatever other horrors had been perpetrated on Galen’s body. He put the wolf-skin around Galen’s neck, shut the clasps.

  Whatever chains or clamps that had been meant to restrain human limbs had no hold on the slimmer, smaller body of the wolf, which fell to the ground and landed on its feet, barking happily.

  Raven bent immediately and fitted the courtier’s robe so prized by the selkie around the dog’s throat. Beneath his hands a naked man stood up.

  “Thank you, sir, whoever you are.”

  “My name is Raven, son of Raven.”

  The voice sounded young, and shook. “Darn! I was hoping you were someone from the waking world. But, I guess with a name like that, you’re from faerie-land, aren’t you?”

  10

  The Arrows of the Sun

  I

  Raven replied, “I am a man. Am not a magic being. I come to save you.”

  “Oh, god! Oh, god! Not another trick, I think. The Agoshkoi aren’t that subtle. Can you get your light back? It’s really hard to change light levels.”

  Raven made a lightning bolt appear in his hand.

  Galen stared at him; at his black beard and wild hair, the long Inverness cape he wore, magic ring on one finger, mirror in that hand, a crackling length of jagged lightning in the other, face of strange serenity.

  Galen laughed and said, “No, not a magic being at all! How silly of me to think so! Hahahahah!”

  He grabbed the mirror out of Raven’s hand and stared at it. “Jeez! I’m an old man!”

  In the glass, the reflection showed a silver-haired man with a heavy brow and wide cheekbones, jutting jaw emphasized by the beard he wore, streaked with black and silver.

  Fear twisted his face. Galen held up his hands, thumbs and pinkies touching, like a Boy Scout’s salute. “This is the body of Dylan of Njord! How do you come by it! Speak.” He gestured with both hands at Raven.

  Raven found his limbs locked in a strange paralysis. “I came because of Wendy.”

  “W—Wendy …” The sudden look of inexpressible hope that lit Galen’s features was a joy to see.

  “I am her husband.”

  Galen suddenly threw his arms about Raven and hugged him. Raven’s paralysis had passed. To his infinite embarrassment, he found a silver-haired man weeping in his arms, crying like a baby, and he patted him on the back with one hand, saying, “There, there!” The other hand he held back above his head, so the man he had rescued wouldn’t be electrocuted.

  Galen sobbed. “She—she was the only one—the only one who knew I was here … The only thing I thought … if she could tell Grampa … but I was fooling myself, some crazy lady in a hospital. People always forget their dreams, you know? Then when they cut my tongue, I thought I could only thank her by a touch of my hand … but then my hands were … my eyes, they dripped stuff in them, and they told me … I thought she would barf if she saw me, you know, just barf … and I couldn’t even, couldn’t even …”

  “Pull yourself together!” said Raven. “Stop acting like child!”

  “Heh—heh—that’s what started all this, you know. I wanted so much to prove to Grampa … How I was … How I could be trusted …”

  “Your grandfather in much worse place than this! He is in Acheron, Apollo god said! You must make yourself a man to save him! Stop crying! Listen, Wendy also in danger, maybe. Your father, Peter, was taken under the arrest when I was.”

  “Dad? Arrested for what?”

  “He killed two giants.”

  A look of wonder and joy overcame Galen. He threw his arms up in the air and spun around, whooping. “So Dad’s finally joined the party! Gramps will love it! Killed a giant? Two? That’s great! I bet he sure believes in magic now! How’d he do it?”

  “He took the Rod of Mollner when Wendy got the Moly Wand.”

  A sudden noise from overhead interrupted them. There came a roar like a great rushing of waters, and blood mixed with floating bits of bone and organs began to pour into the room through spouts in the walls.

  Raven and Galen jumped upon the table, watching the blood rise around them. Parts of the mass began to pulsate, and floating organs began to intertwine, growing complex.

  “This most gross thing I ever have been seeing … ,” said Raven, clutching his nostrils. A flicker of
lightning across the blood broke apart some of the organic masses. Others collected rapidly.

  The blood level rose. The fat, twitching bodies of the Eech-Uisge began to float, stirring as if the loathsome touch revived them.

  A cluster of eyeballs gathered together and glared up at Raven and Galen with insane hatred. Bones grew, forming jagged antlers and claws, and muscle tissues began to web the bones together.

  “Sorry, Galen,” said Raven. “I try to rescue, but this, I don’t know what to do. We be inside huge mouth full of teeth in a few seconds, I am thinking. Wait! You know magic stuff. Anything we can do?”

  Galen said, “The Agoshkoi are a type of kelpie. The only thing that stops them is the Bow of Belphanes. But I don’t know where …”

  “Maybe I can blast hole in ceiling … .”

  Lightning sputtered along the metal roof futilely. The lightning began to fail as fear and anger grew in Raven’s chest. Blood was lapping at their boots.

  One of the Eech-Uisge bobbed upright, lapping at the blood, and giggled.

  Raven, with a look of self-anger, surprise, and sudden memory illuminating his face, took a crumpled dollar bill out of his pocket, fumbling with the hand that wasn’t full of lightning. “In here! How stupid of me not to remember, eh? Is here! In country of gold! Look on back! Great Seal! Arrows in eagle’s claw!”

  Galen reached for the bill, a sudden light in his eyes. At that same moment, a tentacle grabbed Raven by the leg. He sent a jolt of failing lightning into it. It jerked and released him.

  In the darkness, an Eech-Uisge tittered.

  Galen spoke. “As was foretold, the day is come; let the Horn blow doom and open the City of Gold. I vow by the light in my soul to use this weapon only for such deeds as sunlight will be proud to shine upon, full, faithfully, and well, as befits right reason and the light of truth; nor shall I cast them aside or surrender them to any enemy till battle’s end. With pride but without vainglory I take; yield them to me, Spirit.”

  Golden sunlight came into the room, and the rays formed themselves into a solid length of wood in Galen’s hands. Other rays fell at his feet, golden arrows quivering in the wood of the tabletop.

  The blood drew away from him.

  One of the Eech-Uisge screamed and fled, clawing at the walls and floor for some escape, splashing waves of red muck around him as he wallowed. Most backed up, wondering at the heat they felt.

  One screamed, “Foolish child! Only those free of vainglory can draw that bow! Pull with all your strength! It will not flex an inch!”

  Galen said, “You will be the first to feel its might, foul spirit.” He did not even try to put his leg to the bow to bend and string it. Instead, he put the longbow’s heel on the tabletop on which he stood, and he bowed, saying, “Good greetings to you. I ask you humbly for your aid in this good cause, most merciful of all weapons. I bow my head, but I do not grovel, nor is my spirit broken. Can you not do the same?”

  The wooden length bowed to him. Galen slipped the bowstring around the bow. Then Galen straightened, saying, “I stand again, back straight and proud, but not so stiff that I snap aside all restraint put on me. Can you not do the same?”

  The bow flexed, and the bowstring hummed with tension. Particles of light streamed from the bow, golden, luxurious, warm.

  The Eech-Uisge floated backward through the muck, failing their ungainly limbs, hissing and whispering.

  Raven, looking wildly around him at the limbs and teeth and horns growing up out of the swampy mass surrounding them, said, “Can that hurt the blood-gook?”

  Galen lifted an arrow and fitted it to the string. He drew the bow in a strange fashion, holding it overhead as if saluting an unseen sun, standing with legs braced, then drawing the string down to his ear. There was something vaguely Oriental in the gesture.

  Galen said in a happy, calm voice, “Don’t worry about their soup. They tried to get me to dissolve into it a dozen times. They think all their servants get stronger if they grind them all together into one common pool. But all they get is a pool of blood. It’s actually just one huge wound.”

  “But arrows can hurt it?”

  Galen directed the Bow of Belphanes downward. “No. These arrows never hurt anyone.”

  He fired an arrow into the blood, and the bloody mass pulled itself instantly through vents and grates up out of the room.

  In the distance Raven could hear faint cheers and cries of hope.

  “We are still stronger than a score of men!” cried the Eech-Uisge, who had dared Galen to draw the bow.

  Galen shot him. The man blinked, and his eyes appeared in his head.

  In a sarcastic voice, Galen said, “Look at yourself! You’re fat, and you’re filthy.”

  The man stared at his leprosy-streaked hands, at the pale lumps of fat dangling from his arms, his eyes wide, his bloated face a soft mask of horror and surprise. And then his legs failed, as if his muscles could no longer support his enormous mass.

  “It’s all lies!” cried another. “It’s not true if we don’t admit it!” He was the one Galen shot next, and the Eech-Uisge knelt, unable to bear his own weight, weeping with his new eyes.

  In a moment, all the other bloated men lay aghast upon the floor. One cried out, “But why didn’t they tell us! How were we to know?”

  “What is that cheering?” asked Raven.

  Galen said, “All the blood and strength they stole has been returned to its true owners when I healed it. Hah! And speaking of blood, I’ve been waiting for this! Glad I have my mouth back!”

  He put the bow behind and above him, so that the golden light cast his shadow before and below him. Galen knelt and kissed his shadow. Then he said, “My blood has been spilled upon the ground and cries out for vengeance.”

  The shadow stood up, swelling with darkness. “Speak your blood-curse. The ground below, and those who dwell there, heed. All who drank of your blood are in your shadow now, and you have power over them.”

  Raven, who had been quite unnerved by this whole procedure, said, “Quick! Speak your curse, blast the city, and let’s go!”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Raven, I was impatient once. Now I’d like to think this out before I do anything. First, let’s get all the prisoners out of the dome and heal them.”

  Raven fell silent, humbled. For he remembered the fortress he had electrocuted in a single indiscriminate wash of lightning. He had not checked for prisoners, noncombatants, innocent bystanders.

  “What about snakes?” Asked Raven.

  “Snakes?”

  “Tun-you-to-stone snakes!”

  “Ah. Wait. I think I have a spell behind the bathroom mirror in the west wing … Let me remember. Yeah, I open it and there is a garden beyond, not medicine, and three women sewing …”

  “What are you doing?”

  “My memory is organized like my house. It’s real handy because you can’t take pencil and paper with you when you dream. Here. Watch.” And Galen held up the mirror, saying, “Maiden, Mother, Crone! All things revere you once they’re grown!”

  And the tiny mirror swelled like a moon growing till it was larger than a shield and twice as bright.

  “Here,” Galen handed the mirror to Raven. “The Basilisks and stuff have the same problem these guys do; they can’t stand to see themselves.”

  Less than an hour later, Galen stood on a hill outside the ruins of the city of Uhnuman; and the beautiful, naked people, handsome men and fair women, who danced in the sand and rock below the hill, sang praise of Galen and thanked him that they had been healed of all the scars and horror of the tortures they had endured. They danced among statues of cock-headed snakes, whose stone heads were all gap-mouthed, as if hissing and crowing at a terrible reflection.

  Galen had taken a thread from Raven’s cloak and uttered, “Spin, thread, weave all on your own! And I believe you’ll be the best garb I’ll own! Arachne, Penelope, Urth!” And put on the splendid white chlamys that gushed from his fingers.

/>   Raven said over the sound of singing, “Shouldn’t we go back to Earth now?”

  Galen said, “Only takes a moment. Don’t want to be stupid again. Like, what are these guys going to eat? What about the other Agoshkoi cities on this planet?”

  He held up his hand. The freed slaves fell silent. “Your nightmares are over!” cried Galen.

  They cheered.

  “Help me now to cure this world! Pray with me to the Sun, which is the source of all life, and to the Almighty Hand that fashioned the stars, the source of life beyond life!”

  Everyone knelt, except for Galen, who was drawing his bow and pointing it at the Earth between his feet; and except for Raven, who thought this was silly, and fought to maintain his all-important calm.

  Galen, his brow furrowed in terrible concentration, shot the arrow into the soil. Immediately it took root and sprouted leaves.

  “Now what?” said Raven.

  “Now I utter my blood-curse,” said Galen. By this time, the arrow had grown into a sapling taller than a man.

  Galen raised his bow and looked at the stars shining in the black sky near the blazing Sun.

  A black shadow rose up beside him.

  The shadow said, “What is your curse?”

  By this time, the tree was full grown, and they stood within a small grove of saplings.

  Galen said, “I curse them with forgiveness. Let them eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and let that knowledge never pass from them, no matter what blindness they try to wish upon themselves. Let each passing year deepen and widen their understanding, until they are creatures of great sympathy and wisdom, and so that each thing they see will remind them of their crimes and stir their consciences. And I call upon the Archangel Raphael to come to this sphere to minister to them and govern them until three generations have passed, whereupon the Archangel may dwell here or return to the empyrean of the thrones, as he wishes. Look! I deliver the angel to this sphere with the stroke of this bow!”

  And he fired an arrow into the air. It rose into the air, and rose and rose, till it was lost to sight.