Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming)

by Wright, John C.

  Only a few of the birds fluttered to the hall floor and landed. They were safe when they turned into seals.

  The rest fell. Twisting, barking, screeching, their flippers flailing helplessly for purchase against the air, the enormous streamlined bodies crashed to the floor with sickening noise. Bones were broken, floorboards were broken, and the floor was soaked and splattered with life-blood.

  One gray seal, larger than the rest, lay on his belly, his great dark eyes weeping, and the gold crown fell from his streamlined white head and rolled among the corpses.

  The battle fell silent during this horrible scene as everyone paused to stare at the carnage. Because of this silence, they all heard Azrael de Gray’s indrawn, ragged gasp of breath.

  Lemuel and Galen looked. But Azrael was not staring down at the ruination of the selkie, but upward at the rafters. There was still a single bird roosting on the rafters, a bird of prey. This bird spread wing and floated across the air to land on the railing near Azrael. It was a Pigeonhawk.

  The Pigeonhawk cocked his fierce eye up at Azrael, and spoke out loud in a voice like a man’s. “How shall you redeem your lost name, Wizard? It is not their blood, but your tears, I need to wash the stain away!”

  Azrael stumbled backward out of the chariot-car, falling to the carpet of the balcony, his face distorted with grief, and guilt, black anger, wrath, and rage.

  “No! No!” he screamed. “All has been for the coming King! I had no choice! No choice! We are torn between the tyranny of heaven and Acheron’s oppression! What time have we for courtliness and law when those two loom to our pendant destruction? If the blood of guiltless babes must spill to preserve the kingdom, why, then! So must it be!” And he staggered to his feet, eyes blazing, maddened.

  The Pigeonhawk hopped a little ways away from him along the railing, and spoke in a voice of cold disdain, a voice which, strangely, was like of mirror of Azrael’s own. “For the King? Is this how you choose to prepare your house for his coming? Your pride has made you so blind, Wizard, that if the King were here, you would not see him; and when you saw him, you knew him not. You cannot earn his praise by doing deeds he holds in deep contempt; nor use injustices to work justice.”

  Azrael sneered. “You are the puppet-dream of the faerie’s false and faithless queen. Why should I heed her glozing lies?”

  “Hear your doom! Before the sun sets this day, if you take not up your name again, you will have no name forevermore, but be known only as a slave of Acheron.” And the Pigeonhawk spread his pinions, fell from the balcony, swept under it, and winged his way down the hall, through the open casement of a stained-glass window, and away.

  The soldiers, meanwhile, had watched this drama, dumbstruck; nor had anyone with Peter’s party acted. Now Lemuel shouted up to Azrael. “Surrender the Silver Key to us, Founder; for you know it belongs to Oberon, and he gave it to us in trust!”

  Azrael’s face grew cold with pride, and he climbed once more to stand in the car of his chariot. “If I am doomed not to have the power of the Key, then let the Darkness take it rather than bend knee to Oberon! Iotun, Kelpie, and Selkie have you overcome of mine? beware! I have powers greater!”

  Azrael held his hands overhead, thumbs touching, pinkies extended. He called out, “Morningstar! I call thy servants by your secret names to serve me! Phosphoros, Flammifer, Earendel, Nergal, Sammael! Come, Balphagor, Principality of Deepest Hell …”

  Galen shouted, “Stop him!”

  Peter leaned over, picked up a fallen machine gun, and emptied the clip into Azrael as he was speaking.

  The bullets had no effect.

  “ … Lord of Peor, Lord of Opening, I summon and conjure thee by thy secret name …”

  Lemuel held up his hands, palms together. “Uriel, Regent of the Sun, Lord of the Third Circle of Heaven, cherub, one of those seven who face the Supreme unblinking, I call and charge thee by thy vow uttered at the death of Phaeton …”

  Peter threw his Hammer at Azrael. One of the Kelpie-steeds, rearing, took the blow in its chest, and the hammer glanced aside without harm.

  “ … secret names Nisroc, Baal-Peor, Rutrem! Come!” Azrael drew apart his thumbs and flung a gesture at the floor.

  Where he pointed a pentagram of brimstone flamed into existence, and an angel of darkness appeared, dressed in a dark breastplate, crowned in blackest glory. Some of the confused soldiers, staring upward, were looking the angel in the eyes when he appeared, and now these soldiers clawed at their eyes in panic, screaming horribly.

  “Balphagor! At my command, draw up Mount Pelion by its roots and drop it on the city of …”

  Lemuel reached to a secret panel in the wall, opened it, and pulled the big double throw switch inside.

  Electric lights hidden in the ceiling above the rafters came on, startling in brightness. Lemuel cried out, “I revoke all magic from these wards!”

  Azrael stood in an undrawn chariot, as the Kelpie-steeds were gone. Wendy floated near the ceiling. The surviving seals, lying along the floor, had vanished. The angel of darkness was nowhere to be seen.

  Azrael laughed. “Excellent! Take them, men!”

  Tanngjost and Tanngrisner had vanished. Peter was alone in his wheelchair in the middle of a ring of armed men. He called for his hammer. Nothing happened.

  Raven, rising to his feet, held up his ring. Nothing happened, except that a group of four men grabbed his arms and another man tackled him about the waist.

  Lemuel cried out, “Where’s Galen?” And then he put up his hands as a soldier waved a gun in his face.

  Azrael called out to Wendy, holding up the unicorn horn.

  “Yield me possession of the Silver Key or I will kill!”

  Wendy said back, “Who? Killing me won’t make me give in! You won’t kill your own family, will you?”

  “Your husband, then!” Azrael gestured. Raven was forced to his knees. A gunman put a barrel to his temple.

  Wendy laughed. “I don’t care. He deserves it. He killed Galen.”

  Raven sighed and tried to tilt his head to look up. He wanted the last thing he would see on earth to be the sight of his wife.

  The gunman snarled at him. “Keep your head down!”

  Raven wondered what the little red dot of light floating between the man’s eyes was.

  V

  A place in the wall, a little below where Lemuel’s peephole looked out, now splintered with a cough of noise. Raven’s sharp eyes caught the sight of the bullet hole cracking the wooden wainscoting. Because the weapon was almost silent, four of five soldiers had dropped before their comrades knew what was happening.

  Then came shouts and screams, as soldiers turned each direction, looking for the source of the unseen force slaying them. The doors that Raven, Galen, and Peter had charged through now swung wide open. A billowing cloud of black smoke swelled up in the doorway and began expanding into the hallway.

  Several soldiers fired into the black cloud.

  The men holding Raven’s arms were dead, neat bullet holes drilled with surgical precision into their heads and hearts. The explosion of blood from their ragged exit wounds had drenched everything around. Raven lay still, surrounded by corpses, hoping to be overlooked.

  From his position, Raven could see the thin beam of an aiming laser swinging through the edges of the black cloud, where the rare smoke caught the beam. From the angle of the beam, he guessed whoever was firing was still behind the door, shooting through the crack at the hinge. Meanwhile all the soldiers were directing their fire directly down the hall, now hidden by smoke, paved with Greek letters, where the sarcophagi stood.

  A captain shouted and called for a charge. He and his squad of four men ran into the smoke, shooting.

  A moment later their guns fell silent.

  When a figure appeared at the edge of the smoke, shrouded in black, the other squads outside the cloud all fired again and again into the form.

  The body waved its arms, shouting, and fell over in a wild sp
ray of blood. As it fell, the edge of the cape covering him fell free and was pulled back into the cloud. It had been, not the man in black, but the captain of the gunmen. The captain’s body feebly twitched and then rolled face downward in a spreading pool of blood.

  The men in the main hall, backing away from the spreading smoke, fingered their guns nervously.

  “Its nerve gas?” called a panicky voice.

  “We just shot Phillips! Who is in charge?”

  Azrael, down the hall and far above, was leaning on the rail, one eyebrow raised. He made a gesture with his fingers, then glanced upward in irritation.

  With a dull rush of noise, a small black cylinder shot out from the cloud, and rolled and bounced, erupting with black smoke as it came. There was now a cloud in the middle of the great hall, and as it swelled, the spreading smoke from the door began to mingle with it.

  Then a second cylinder shot out, this one farther down the hall, and began making another spreading pillar of opaque black smoke.

  A panicking soldier shot into one of these new clouds; the men on the other side shot back. Azrael’s shouts and commands could not be heard over the thunder of gunfire.

  A black figure appeared at the edge of the cloud advancing out from the Egyptian hallway. The soldiers hesitated, fearing to shoot one of their own in the confusion.

  For the briefest moment, Raven saw the figure step out from one black cloud bank and pass into another.

  It seemed to be a tall man, hidden in a vast black cape, face unseen beneath a wide-brimmed black hat, a weapon in either hand: in his left, a machine-gun pistol with a laser aiming device parallel to an elongated silencer; in his right, the large tube of a grenade launcher. In the shadow of the hat brim, came a metallic glint; perhaps he was wearing some sort of goggles.

  The dark figure raised his gun and shot three times; each time he fired, another man died. One man threw down his weapon and was spared; the final man was struck in the chest with a gas canister shot from the grenade launcher, throwing him headlong backward across the floor.

  Then the figure was somewhere inside the second gas cloud. Raven saw a grapnel and wire shoot up out of the top of the gas cloud, catch on a rafter; but the wire did not stiffen, as it would have had it been under tension.

  “Look out!” cried a voice from near or inside the gas cloud. “He’s trying to climb up! Aim high!” Raven recognized the voice as that of the man who had saved him from prison.

  A group of men ran in near the gas cloud and sprayed bullets into and through the tops of the cloud. Men on the far side of the cloud were shot, and fired back.

  Meanwhile, a dark-clad figure belly crawled from one gas cloud to the next. He now had pistols in both hands, and seemed to be as expert a shot with his left hand as with his right.

  There came a rapid staccato of clicks as the wildly firing men ran out of ammo. One man shouted, “Hold up! Squad Three, hold your fire! Squad Two, change clips …”

  The black-cloaked figure stepped from the gas cloud, raised his weapon, aimed, calmly shot the soldier giving orders, and faded back into the gas cloud.

  A corporal stared in horror at the fallen body; even though he was now the ranking man here, he uttered no orders.

  When two other men started giving orders, they were shot. A group of men, shouting, charged into the gas cloud. The shouting turned to coughs and screams and trailed into horrible silence.

  The squads ignored the orders concerning firing and reloading; the panicked soldiers clenched their triggers with white knuckles, and were surprised, after a moment of wild firing, to find their weapons empty.

  Silence fell. The soldiers looked at each other for a stupefied moment, and then started scrambling to get clips.

  Peter had gotten his hands on a machine gun when the men guarding him had died. He sat in his wheelchair somewhat down the hall, a look of contempt on his face.

  “Boy, you guys’ training sure sucks.”

  And he sent a short, controlled burst of gun fire into the bodies of the four men nearest him before they could turn around.

  The figure in black stepped out from the gas cloud, with wisps of black vapor billowing from his cloak and hat. With an unhurried motion of his arm, he raised his weapon and aimed at Azrael. Azrael looked with calm disdain at the red dot focused on his chest, his cold eyes showing no fear at all.

  “Throw down your weapons!” the black-cloaked figure’s calm voice echoed through the hall. “Or your leader dies!”

  There was a metallic clatter as machine guns, pistols, and rifles were dropped to the floor.

  Azrael de Gray leaned on the railing. “Who are you, sir? How dare you to interfere with these affairs?”

  The man, with his left hand, pulled off and threw aside his hat, gas mask, infrared goggles, and opened the cheek flaps of the Kevlar head armor he wore. He was a stern-eyed man of arresting handsomeness, straight of nose, with firm, deep lines to his cheeks and chin, and a mouth that was one sharp line of determination and pride. His hair was silver.

  Raven recognized him as the man who had saved him from prison; but also, strangely, Raven began to recall other times. At the wedding reception, at Wendy’s house, visiting on Wendy’s birthday …

  Inside his mind, Raven saw a whole section of his life, buried, forgotten, come to light again.

  “You! You cannot be here … .” whispered Azrael in horror.

  “The time has come for you to pay for your crimes, Sorcerer! You thought to destroy me when I would not join your evil organization, and to make the world forget me. But I have not forgotten you; nor did I need the world to encompass your downfall.”

  “I am not fallen yet …” hissed Azrael.

  “I hereby place you under citizen’s arrest, according to the laws and principles of this nation.”

  Lemuel picked himself up off the floor where he had been lying during the firefight. He stared back and forth in confusion. Peter met his gaze from across the room, a question in his eye. Lemuel shook his head and shrugged.

  Wendy floated down from up above. Her voice was shrill with excitement and pride. “Daddy! Oh, Daddy!” Then: “It’s my Daddy! I knew he would come! Isn’t he neat … ?”

  16

  A Dying of the Light

  I

  Raven stood. He noticed that the figure in black, arm still straight, still holding Azrael in the aim of his weapon, was nevertheless swaying on his feet. Spots of blood were appearing on the floor beneath the black hem of the cloak, splattering to the floorboards between the black boots.

  One of the soldiers said uncertainly, “If we all rush him at once …”

  Wendy’s father turned his head to stare that soldier in the eye. When that man fell silent, he returned his unwavering gaze to Azrael. “You have been defeated, wizard!”

  Azrael said coldly, “I will give you the shadow, Anton Pendrake, and take the substance; for I have the pith of victory like wine in my mouth; and you have the rind.”

  Lemuel put his hand on Raven’s elbow, and whispered, “You did not tell me your wife’s maiden name!”

  “Pendrake,” said Raven. “Gwendolyn Moth Pendrake. So what is this? How does this matter?”

  Lemuel said, “There has always been an heir to the power of Logres, a power to bring justice to mankind. The head of Bran was brought to America when the English kings became tyrants; that’s why America has never been invaded successfully. We lost all touch with the bloodline long ago! Mordred’s heirs did not all share his wickedness, but even those heirs have forgotten who they are! This is a miracle!”

  “What is miracle? What is all this things?” whispered Raven, rolling his eyes.

  Wendy landed behind Anton Pendrake and wound her arms around his chest, pressing her cheek against his back, smiling.

  Anton Pendrake did not turn his head, but kept his narrow gaze along his black-clad arm toward Azrael. “Careful, Gwendolyn! Don’t spoil Daddy’s aim.”

  “I won’t, Daddy. Is Mommy coming, t
oo?”

  “Sweetheart, you know your mother can’t come out when the sun is up. Now, dear, can you call the Silver Key to your hand the same way you did the magic wand?”

  Azrael’s face blushed dark when Wendy’s mother was mentioned, and the hiss of detestation that escaped his lips was audible to those below. Now he spoke. “Your daughter’s claim to Clavargent is without effect and force! Her possession is not lawful; founder of this house am I, and the Silver Key is mine, supreme against all other claims, except the present Guardian!”

  Peter said, “That would be my dad over there, pal … Or maybe it’s me. The Key is ours. Cough it up.”

  Azrael spoke in a cold voice. “The present Guardian is absent; the claims of yourself and your father to the guardianship of this great house have lapsed! Now, Pendrake, do you see? Death comes to claim Galen Waylock’s ghost; even now it comes. Without him, you have no power over me. Nor have you Belphanes’ Bow to heal your wounds. He cannot be in this house until the lights here are quenched and this house is reunited to its counterpart in the world of dreams. Now I raise my hand. At my signal all my men will assault you in one rush. Perhaps you can kill one or two. You cannot kill all.”

  Peter said to Anton; “Shoot him. Shoot him now.”

  Azrael raised his hand. He stood on the high balcony bridge, an upright figure in robes of woven stars and constellations. “If I perish, my hand must fall.”

  Anton Pendrake spoke. “Is that what you really want, sorcerer? Picture the future where both of us are dead and Acheron rules the world. You lose. Morningstar wins. Is that what you want?” Pendrake’s arm never wavered; the red dot of the aiming laser was steady on Azrael’s chest above his heart, but more drops of Pendrake’s blood pattered to the floor at his feet.

  Raven whispered to Lemuel, “Explain this! Where does Azrael know Wendy’s father from?”

  Lemuel said, “I don’t think Azrael knows who Pendrake really is. I doubt if Pendrake knows. I heard the voice cry out to me in a dream, and saw the three queens in their barge, rowing the coffin far out to sea …”