Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming)

by Wright, John C.

  “Well? Who is he, then?”

  “Don’t you see? The word ‘drake’ is another word for ‘dragon’.”

  Raven looked at Wendy across the hall, snuggling against her father for comfort and protection, not against her husband. The impulse to go to her was stifled by two things: the nervous, unarmed soldiers still outnumbered them considerably, and their weapons lay scattered on the floor, close to hand. Raven had seen beasts of prey at bay hesitating between the desire to flee and the desire to kill; any sudden motion might wake the soldiers to the realization that even starting the battle unarmed, they could overcome everyone here.

  The second scruple he had was this: Raven said to Lemuel, “We must get Galen out of dream-world. He is alone there, with evil angel Balphagor.”

  Lemuel was sweating. “I dare not flip the switch. Azrael is nearly all-powerful in the dream-world …”

  Azrael, meanwhile, was saying to Pendrake, “Foolish once not to have joined me when I sent my dreams far-ranging to all those men of greatness and great worth throughout this land. Now foolish twice to spend your life to buy my death! How dare you defy me, mortal man! Even now if you join me, even now, I will forget your presumption and grant you a place of power and preeminence among the lords of the world who will serve the new king when he comes to claim his kingdom!”

  “You’re joking. Free men never accept tyrants, Azrael. Certainly we won’t accept Morningstar as this new king of yours. Instead, you should surrender and pay for your crimes.”

  “Thrice fool and fool again! Did you actually think I wish to give this green world to Morningstar, the Lord of Fear and Darkness? Once the Key is mine, I will enslave the powers of hell and heaven both! It is the gods who now will pay for their long list of crimes against mankind; rapes, plagues, temptations, curses, tempests! The ghosts of all innocent firstborn children of Egypt slain by Moses’ magic; the world of all those who died in the Great Deluge; the sons of Atlantis; all these and more cry out for vengeance!”

  Peter said, “Enough talk! Dad, get ready to throw the switch after I blow away Azzy-boy here. Raven, zap all these guys when the magic turns back on. Any of them who don’t surrender, crisp them on deep-fat fry.”

  All the soldiers stiffened, and turned their eyes up toward Azrael. One or two soldiers had stealthily drawn bayonet knives or were beginning slowly to bend down toward their fallen weapons.

  Azrael said, “Men! Recall what spells I have put on you! Recall as well the promise made atop the pyramid of skulls we raised inside the solar obelisk you call Washington Monument! We can only seem to die! Whether I stand or fall, fight on! For I shall assist you, even if you do not see me anymore among you!”

  “Wait, Mr. Waylock,” said Pendrake. With his left hand, Pendrake drew a small black oblong out from beneath his cloak and, without turning his head, tossed it across the room to Raven. “Mr. Varovitch. Can your control over electricity allow you to duplicate the specific amperage generated by that machine in a field throughout the room? That device emits on the frequency combination that can stimulate the convulsive centers of the nervous system.”

  “Don’t know! Will try!” said Raven. Wendy turned her head to look at him when he spoke. It was the first time their eyes had met.

  Raven could not read her expression. He said, “Wendy My love, my darling! I am not knowing if you were lying to Azrael when you said you no care if I live or die. And I do not ask you for forgiveness …”

  “I should certainly hope not!” she snapped.

  Peter raised his rifle toward Azrael. “Are we all going to wait while the two lovebirds make up, or are we going to start shooting?”

  Raven said to Wendy, “ … but if I live through this battle, I will tell you the story of how I lost my name when I lost my love. And maybe you will tell me the story of how I get it back again, eh? I know you love happy endings.”

  She shouted through her tears, “You’re so silly sometimes! Of course I still love you!”

  Peter said, “Well, ain’t that special?” And he fired a burst of rounds into Azrael.

  Azrael de Gray, his chest a bloody mess, his skull opened and face caved in, his right arm torn from its socket by the power of the shells ripping through him, was thrown back against the far railing of the balcony, and then slumped forward, falling in a shower of red spray to the carpet of the balcony.

  The arm turned over and over as it fell from the balcony to the floor of the great hall. It struck with a dull, wet thud.

  The mass of soldiers shouted, and attacked in a huge rush.

  A vast sweep of black smoke billowed up out from underneath the hem of Pendrake’s black cloak, and he was lost to sight. There came six whispering hisses of his weapon; the six men closest to reloading their guns were dead.

  A soldier shouted, “Hold that switch! Without magic, we got ’em!”

  A thrown knife stabbed into Lemuel’s arm before he could pull the switch. He was shocked by the pain. Blindly, he groped for the switch with his other hand, but a soldier tackled him and knocked him from his feet.

  The three men jumping Peter were bullet-riddled corpses before their bloody bodies struck him and knocked him from his wheelchair. Next, a booted foot came down on Peter’s gun hand. Peter reached up with his other hand and did something horrible to that man’s groin. The man was writhing on the ground, and Peter raised his gun. Two more men died before he ran out of ammo. The man who stooped over him with a knife had a surprised look in his eyes when Peter broke his wrist, took the knife, and left it in his throat. Another soldier stood back, trying hurriedly to jam a new clip into his gun. Peter opened his belt buckle into a knife and flung it into the man’s forehead. The man’s eyes crossed as blood streamed down his nose and cheeks, almost as if he were looking at the knife quivering in his skull. He fell backward.

  Peter had no more weapons at hand. Three more men jumped on him. Several soldiers were shouting, “Hold that switch! Hold that switch!”

  The men near Raven apparently had no knives, for they merely tackled him in a mass. To his surprise, these men seemed to have no more strength than children; he broke limbs and snapped spines with ease, crushing skulls with his fingers; then he waded through the packed crowd of soldiers, ignoring those hanging off his arms, pulling along those clinging to his legs, and he came toward the switch one step at a time.

  The man clinging to his back made a swift motion. Raven felt a cold sensation across his neck, felt the blood pour out of his neck wound, and spread like a red bib across his shirtfront. He saw his vision dim. The strength left his arms and legs; he fell to his knees, reached over his back, and threw the man who had cut his throat into the wall with enough force to break his ribs and snap his spine.

  Then he fell to his face, and he was dying one heartbeat at a time.

  More voices took up the cry, “Hold the switch! Hold the switch!”

  When a squad of soldiers took out clips, reloaded, and shot into the spreading gas cloud, they did not see Wendy, her arms still tightly wrapped around Pendrake, shoot up out of the top of the cloud, trailing black mists. Pendrake dropped a grenade or three behind him as he left.

  Pendrake, swooping upward, held by his straining daughter, pointed his arm toward the switch. There was a dull cough, and a grapnel and wire shot out from his black sleeve, and caught a hook around the switch.

  Two soldiers pushed frantically on the switch, keeping it in place, and one slashed at the black metal wire of the grapnel with his knife. The whining motorized reel was only drawing Pendrake down through the air toward the soldiers.

  “Hold the switch! Hold the switch!” Nearly all the soldiers were shouting it now; it had become their battle cry.

  Meanwhile, another soldier, his elbow around Lemuel’s throat, hauled Lemuel up before him, putting his back to the switch. Pendrake did not have a clear shot. When he raised his weapon, the soldier with the knife yanked on the wire. Pendrake and Wendy swung widely through the air like a drunken kite.
/>   Wendy screamed, “Raven’s dying! We need Galen’s bow!”

  Pendrake slapped a quick-release catch and the motorized reel fell away out of its housing. Father and daughter, free of the line, bobbed suddenly up among the rafters.

  The soldiers cheered when Pendrake dropped his pistol. “The switch is ours! We held the switch! We’ve won!” Pendrake unscrewed one of the lightbulbs from the ceiling, reached into the socket with a thin metal implement he drew from his belt.

  The bulbs flickered as the circuit was shorted, and they all went dark.

  The man astride Peter, trying to strangle him, heard his whisper. “Mollner. Waste them.” That was the last thing that man heard.

  Raven stood up, huge, massive, blood still spurting from his throat, his face unnaturally calm, throwing the electrocuted and smoking corpses from his arms and shoulders. Sparks flickering in the blood that fell from his body. Lightning streamed from his eyes and mouth, and a ring of lightning flashed out from his body as he spread his arms.

  With a great, ragged, roaring gasp, he called out Wendy’s name. The stained-glass windows down the hall shattered, and the hall shook, when the echoes of her name reverberated down from the sky above, louder than any noise of earth.

  The stunned and thunderstruck soldiers were falling like limp dolls.

  And Raven fell as well.

  II

  When his daughter fainted from the thunderclap, Pendrake managed to get an arm around her waist, and grab a passing roofbeam as he fell. There he dangled in air, half-fainting from his wounds, blinking at the bright sunlight that came unexpectedly from underfoot, until a pleasant warmth stole through his body and returned his strength.

  He looked down. The head of the gigantic, supernatural being whose wings filled the hall from side to side, was slightly below the level of the balcony, so that the balcony was cast in deep shadow from the rays of brilliant light spreading from the archangel’s crown. There was some motion on the balcony; he dimly saw the skeletal Kelpie-steeds backing away, kicking at and pushing the chariot awkwardly behind them. He was not sure what the other black shape, crisscrossed by a pale framework, might be; this shape was hunched down on the balcony near the chariot.

  Galen, standing near the foot of the great being, bent his bow and shot a shaft of sunlight into Raven’s fallen form. Raven said, “But Balphagor was …”

  Galen smiled and nodded upward, saying, “Driven back to Acheron by Apollo. I finished Grandpa’s invocation!”

  Pendrake’s command cut through their talk: “Gwendolyn next! We may have trouble up here!”

  Galen turned and raised his bow.

  In the sunlight shed from the burning shaft sinking into his daughter’s back, Pendrake could see the balcony. A thin, tall, humanoid shape, cloaked in billowing darkness and armored in knitted human bones, was bent over Azrael’s corpse. The torn ruination of Azrael’s bullet-ridden flesh had fallen open at the throat like a coat, and became no more than a torn white coat in fact. Beneath that coat was another body, whole and unhurt, which looked exactly like the first; and into this body the long razor fingernails of Koschei the Deathless were pushing a little ball of glowing light which flickered and shimmered like a burning butterfly.

  The little light was sinking into the chest.

  Pendrake said, “Wake up, Gwen! Daddy needs a free hand to shoot the bad guys! Wake up!”

  Galen shouted, “Just drop her! I’ll heal her if she breaks her legs!”

  Raven said, “Apollo! The god can reach her with his hand!” Pendrake let go of his daughter and reached under his cloak. Wendy, yawning and stretching, bobbed slowly through the air like a thistledown. Pendrake’s hand encountered three empty holsters, and his forth gun was holstered near the armpit of his free hand, so that when he drew the gun, it was awkwardly backward in his fingertips.

  Koschei stood, drifted backward in a billowing flutter. Azrael de Gray regained his feet from a prone position when an invisible, silent thrust of pressure set him slowly upright, with neither his knees nor waist bending at all.

  Pendrake flipped his wrist, caught the pistol grip, aimed, fired. No bullet touched Azrael.

  Azrael looked at Apollo, and raised his hands, wrists crossed, ring fingers curled. Azrael’s robes began to billow and float around him, and the constellations came out from the fabric, burning with eerie starlight, and made a circle in the air around Azrael.

  Galen shot a sunlit shaft into Lemuel, waking him. “Grandpa! Wake up! Big trouble!”

  “Wake your father … .” said Lemuel, rising to his knees.

  Peter had one arm around the neck of each goat-monster, who nuzzled him and drooled sparks, and, his legs dragging on the ground, they were stepping toward his wheelchair. “I’m awake!”

  Azrael said to Apollo, “As Guardian of Everness, I revoke your permission to be upon these my lands. Go.”

  Galen shouted up toward the balcony. “He’s not the Guardian! Grandpa is!”

  Lemuel said softly, “Not I. When Mannannan cast me out of the window, fair or unfair, that ended my guardianship. Your father passed it to you. You are the true Guardian of Everness, Grandson.”

  Galen drew a deep breath. He said, “Helion! Hyperion! I bid you to stay! I charge you and compel you in the name of the Unicorn, whose Key is in our keeping, and in the name of the head of dragons, from whom our charter comes!”

  Raven reached over and threw the switch; but the lightbulbs had all shattered when the windows had, broken by the noise of the thunderclap.

  Koschei’s icy, hideous voice floated from the balcony. “Great Lord Hyperion, seraph of the Third Circle of Heaven and universal chieftain of the armies of the daylight, have I your leave to address you?”

  Azrael said sharply, “Apply to me for such permission! Speak!”

  Koschei said nothing. Light danced along the walls when the titanic figure nodded his head crowned with glorious beams. Koschei spoke, “Great Lord Hyperion, Galen Amadeus Waylock, who is called by another name in higher realms, has perished. What you see before you is no more than a ghost. He cannot be the Guardian.”

  Pendrake, still hanging from the ceiling, said, “Your honor, I object! The same thing could be said of Azrael, who was shot to death just now! You cannot call Galen’s claim void unless you also, by the same logic, call Azrael’s claim void. Galen’s claim would therefore pass to his nearest living heir, who is Peter Waylock!”

  Pendrake kicked his legs and flung himself from one rafter to the next. Then he dropped down and landed lightly on the balcony on the far side of the bridge away from Azrael.

  Peter spoke up, “Hey! If I’m the Guardian here, my orders are to arrest Azrael, neutralize his magic, and obey Galen. Am I in command? I’m ordering you to ignore Azrael’s orders, Mr. Sun-God. So don’t leave!”

  Azrael stepped onto the back of the Kelpie-drawn chariot. He held up his left hand, first two fingers crossed. “I call upon the final rune to witness! Hyperion, Helion, Apollo, Uriel, I charge you to answer and to speak! Is not Galen Waylock truly past the day when the Book of Judgments records his death? Have I not the authority as Guardian of Everness to banish you?”

  The voice of Hyperion filled all the hall, and his breath was like a warm summer wind when he spoke: “Galen is past the day and hour of his death; the Hours who serve me have decreed it …”

  Azrael shouted, “When a god speaks your name, the ward is broken and permission is granted! Thanatos! Ares! Moira! Step forth! Into the daylit world you now may come!”

  The tall doors to the central tower swung open. There, where three great archways opened beneath three great images of the waxing moon, the full moon, and the waning moon, the three outer gods hovered, and in some way that stung and confused the eye, they seemed farther away than the walls behind them, larger than the world they stood upon.

  She in the middle was a tower of darkness, and a woman-featured mask of iron hung below her hood like a blood-red moon beneath a black cloud bank. In her han
d was a flail of chains.

  To her right hand was one who showed an ivory skull, now clearly seen, now fringed in the shadows of a hood, like a January moon seen full through weeping thunderheads. In one gauntlet hovered a reaping hook; in the other, a lantern imprisoning many little lights that fluttered like butterflies: the lights of many souls.

  To her left, standing upright, was a figure drenched with blood and stinking of smoke. The face beneath the hood was that of a saber-toothed tiger, whose fangs gleamed like crescents. There were chains around the apelike shoulders and the bearlike waist, but the links were loose, with unshackled chain ends floating in the air in all directions. A vast claw held a terrible red sword.

  Azrael said, “The pawns are swept away! Here is my knight, my tower, my queen! You have no defenses to oppose them! Pendrake! Order your daughter to yield the Key to me, or I unleash these things upon the world!”

  Fate spoke: WE NEED NOT YOUR PERMISSION LONGER, SLAVE OF ACHERON. THE TIME COMES NIGH FOR DARKNESS TO COVER ALL.

  Hyperion spoke. “Both claims are invalid, nor does Peter Waylock take. The guardianship reverts to the heir of the original grantor. I await for him to speak.”

  Everyone looked back and forth dumbly. Lemuel opened his mouth, looked up at Pendrake, and blinked, as if he had come to a conclusion of which he was unsure.

  Azrael said, “I call upon Chronos to sever the time of waiting! By the Final Sign I command a judgment!”

  Hyperion’s glance flung Azrael reeling to his knees, and the ring of constellations around the warlock broke and faded. Hyperion’s words rolled like thunder. “You have no power here, for you have been arrested by an authority, which, in this land, is paramount. Your claim to the guardianship is exhausted. Your name is not your own. The Key is not yours.”

  Hyperion pointed his finger at the unicorn horn where it had fallen from Azrael’s limp hand, and, turning, Hyperion raised a great shining hand toward Wendy. The unicorn horn slid through the air and hung before her.