The Last Guardian of Everness

by John C. Wright

  “This is no time for your little sayings. Shouldn’t we be doing something?” Galen knew the old man wanted him to leave. Gramps knew he couldn’t stand the smell of tobacco. Galen rose reluctantly to his feet.

  Grandfather Lemuel smiled calmly. “First thing; you go back to bed. I will go to the Chamber of Dreaming to sleep. Tonight I will dream of Vindyamar. I will dream of the Three Fair Queens whose charge is to guard the Great Bell, even as we are charged to guard the Horn, and so discover if it rang for a true cause. There was something strange about the sign you saw.”

  Galen said in a sullen voice, “You don’t believe me. But look at this . . .”

  And held up his left hand. There was a tiny blister in the palm, a burn. “We were summoned to Tirion. Here is the mark of the star-lantern I touched. The Founder is in Tirion.”

  Lemuel looked carefully at the mark in the young man’s palm. He took a candle from the mantelpiece and held it closely, peering. Even though the air was still in the room, the candle flame flickered.

  Lemuel nodded slowly. “It’s magic. Only the Blood of Everness can reach across the barriers like that and allow a dream-flame to create a waking burn. Whatever else was in that dream, the Raven came from the Founder, sure enough.” He straightened up and shook his head. “But that doesn’t change a thing, boy. We do not answer each and any summons which comes to us out from the night-world.”

  “But Grandfather. . .!”

  Grandfather Lemuel’s look of amusement died. “We don’t follow voices out of the night-world. That black sea-bird could have been a selkie wearing a gull skin. And yes, that lantern you touched was the Founder’s handicraft, no doubt. So what?”

  “So! The Founder called me to Tirion.”

  “No. He called me. And I’m not going. And the Founder does not live in Tirion; he is beyond the rim of the world, hanging in the darkness, in a cage. He betrayed his oath.” Lemuel pointed with his pipestem at the motto inscribed in stone above the mantel. “Maybe he was unfaithful. But maybe he was only impatient.”

  Galen understood the hint; reluctantly he turned to go.

  But then at the door he turned again, a young and rebellious spirit in hiseyes:

  “Where is the Horn, Grandfather Lemuel? Don’t you think it is time I knew?”

  “Patience. It’s not time for you to know.”

  “What if you don’t come back? Who will be left to blow the Horn?”

  “You are not the Guardian yet. Now, you go back to sleep. But do not answer the summons of the black sea-bird. Do not dream about Tirion. Recite the lesser key and go through the gate of lesser dreaming to some nice visions. Cockaygne, perhaps? Luilekkerland? Schlarraffenland?”

  Galen straightened. Wounded pride was clear on his face. “Schlarraffenland? That place is for kids! Grandfather Lemuel, I’ve have been places no other Guardian has ever dreamed. I have seen the trees of Arcadia and the groves that grow in the shadow of the Darkest Tower, I have tread the peaks of Zimiamvia and tasted from the ever-falling waters of Utterbol whose fountains are by the sea! I am the greatest dreamer this family has ever produced, and you know it! I am not afraid of the shadows of the dead. I can go to Tirion and return safely. The summons came to me!”

  Not without kindness, Grandfather Lemuel said, “You are talented. But, all boasting aside, you are still very young, Galen. And you know that fairy tales depict the rules in the dreaming the same way science describes our rules here. And no hero in any fairy tale ever ignored his Grandfather’s warning and escaped unpunished. Do not go to Tirion. Do not go to speak to the Founder. Is that clear?”

  And he lit his pipe with candle he held.

  Galen retreated to the door, defiantly snapped on the flashlight, and clomped away upstairs, muttering.

  Grandfather Lemuel’s smile faded as soon as Galen was out of the room. “A long flight tomorrow night. . .,” he whispered. He stared up at the carved image of the winged horse. “And a dangerous one. Will the dream-colt come for me, this time, now that the bell has tolled? Vindyamar tonight. But where tomorrow . . . ?”

  His gaze crossed the room to look at the painting of the stern-eyed man who held the skull. “Will you talk to me this time, old friend? And let me go again? It’s so cold beyond the world’s edge, and I am so old. . .”

  He tamped out his pipe against the mantelpiece. He was not in the mood for a smoke after all. His thoughts were somber. “Suppose you do not let me back through the mist to the sunlight this time? If I don’t wake up, who is left? One frightened boy?”

  V

  Galen, who had made a deal of noise clattering up the stairs, knew his Grandfather Lemuel’s habit of talking to himself and had crept quickly and quietly downstairs again, flashlight extinguished. He was crouched in the hall beside the parlor door and was in time to hear his Grandfather Lemuel’s last comment.

  Later, lying awake in bed and watching the play of the shadows of branches in the moonlight above his bed, Galen came to a stern resolution.

  “The first of the watchers is still being punished for his dereliction of duty,” Galen thought to himself. “But Gramps still goes to talk to him. He risks it. It put him in a coma when I was in sixth grade. I remember that’s what the doctors called it. A ‘coma.’ “ He grunted to himself. Contempt was all he felt for modern doctors.

  “The First Watcher’s summons came to me. Me. The dream-colts come every time I call, but they have only come three times for Grampa. He might not even be able to get to Tirion.

  “And if I go tonight and brave the danger myself, he won’t need to go tomorrow.”

  In his mind’s eye, he drew the circle to build the Tower of Time his Grandfather Lemuel had taught him how to keep in his mind. He inscribed the four wings, placing a different phase of the moon in each, a different element, and a different season. About it he erected statues and symbols, gardens and arbors, walkways and walls, each with its own name and hidden meaning. In a few moments the imaginary mansion was as real around him as the mansion he slept in. He whispered the Second Secret Name of Morpheus and stepped into that mansion, rose from the body on the bed on which he slept there, and walked out the doorway that represented today’s phase and season.

  In an imaginary garden pagoda, a torch made of narthex reeds held up a light of pure white fire. An imaginary vulture on a stand was gnawing a driblet of red liver. one arch of the pagoda led to stairs which climbed up to the huge black sea-wall to the east. Inscribed on the pagoda walls to either side of this arch, in letters of silver, burned the words of the spell to call a dream-colt from the deeper dreaming.

  He looked at the words, wondering whether to speak them or not. Even now, he was still only half asleep: he could feel the heaviness in his limbs, dimly sense the pillows and bedsheets around him, like a little mountainous countryside of folds and wrinkles. Grandfather Lemuel had taught him never to call even a lesser power of the night without someone standing by to wake him up in case of trouble.

  And a dream-colt was not one of the lesser powers.

  “Gramps will notice in the morning if I’m not back by then,” Galen tried to tell himself.

  He had one last thought before he drifted off to sleep, forgot his slumbering body, and entered fully into the dream: “I’m not a frightened boy.”

  2

  A Life for a Life

  I

  A husband and wife sat in the sunlight. He sat on the bed and held her hands in his. She sat back on the pillows, eyes bright and cheerful as always. He was a big, burly man with thick black eyebrows and a forked black beard.

  Where he was large and bulky, she was small and graceful, and her face was always in motion, now smiling, now blinking, now pouting thoughtfully, now glancing back and forth with a curious gaze. Her hair was long and very dark and her eyes were very blue.

  “I’m so sad!” she exclaimed cheerfully. Her voice was as bright as a bubbling stream, and those who heard it felt refreshed.

  “Aha. And what makes her sad, my
little wife, eh?” He tried to smile, but there was an undercurrent of sorrow in his deep voice. He had a thick Russian accent.

  “All the stories seem to be going out of the world. Drying up!” She held up her hands, fingers spread, and shrugged, as if to indicate a mysterious vanishment. “No one listens to them, or tells them anymore. They just watch TV My Daddy calls it the ‘Boob tube.’ I don’t know if that’s because of shows like Baywatch or if only boobies watch it. Except sometimes mothers read books to their children to sleep.” She sighed and suddenly looked very sleepy herself. Her eyelids drooped. Like a light going out, all the animation seemed to leave her face.

  He leaned forward, his face blank with fear, and touched her forehead with the back of his hand. “Wendy?” he whispered.

  Wendy’s eyes opened. “Tell me a story,” she said.

  “I am not good with the stories, my wife. I only know the one of my father, and that one I told to you long ago, when we were engaged. The night on the lake, you remember, eh?”

  She sighed and snuggled down into the pillows more deeply. “I said I’d marry you because you were the only man I ever met who was in a fairy tale story. It was such a good idea! I’m so glad I thought of it.”

  “You thought? It was I who asked you, my wife.”

  “Yes, well, and a long time you were getting around to it, too!” She laughed in delight, and then said, “Tell it to me again!”

  “Well. Father lived in the Caucasus mountains and hated the Russian government men with a deep hatred . . .”

  “No, no, no! That’s not right! It starts with, ‘I am Var Varovitch,’ which means Raven the son of Raven in your language. ‘This is the story of how I came by this name.’ “

  “Hah! Who is telling this story, you or I? Now be quiet and let me talk to you. I am Var Varovitch. In your language I am called Raven, the son of Raven. This is the story of how I came by this name.”

  “Almost right,” she allowed. “The next part goes, ‘My father had climbed throughout all the mountains, in places even the goats did not go, and such was his fame as a trapper and trails man, that. . .’”

  “Quiet, now. When the government people wanted a guide, they came to my father and offered him their paper rubles, which were worthless, for they had no gold to back them, and a government order from the Georgia S.S.R. apparat, which was also worthless, but which had the guns and soldiers from the Tbilisi garrison to back it. For himself, he had no fear. But for me, he had fear. For I had taken my mother’s life when I came into this world, and there were no doctors to save her, for she was Georgian, not Russian, and had no friends in the capital to have a doctor assigned by the government. And I was but a babe in the crib at this time, and had never seen the green grass, since I was born in the winter, and the spring had not yet come.”

  “I love that part.”

  “Quiet. Father feared they might burn the village if he refused to take the expedition up the slopes of Mount Kazbek. He knew the place where they wished to go, even though it was not the place shown on any of their maps. But he asked them why they could not wait till spring. Did they not recall how the Russian winter had destroyed the invasion of Hitler’s armies less than a handful of years ago? But no, they must go to the spot where it said on their maps. The scientist there in charge of the expedition said they must go, since the glory of the Soviet peoples commanded it, and only a traitor would cause delay.

  “Well, father said he could not leave his little baby with no mother, since he had only the milk to drink of wild she-wolves father caught in the snow. . .”

  “That’s you! I bet you were cute. But you forgot a part. ‘The winter was so bitter that the cows gave ice, and the bird song froze in the air, and it was not until spring thawed the notes free, that all the birdsong sprang up over the green earth . . . ‘ “

  “No, that is from different story. So, now. The expedition had been traveling for many days, blinded by snow, on short rations . . .”

  “Wait. The government scientist made your father take you with him. You were bundled up on his back in a wrapper of wolfskin.”

  “Yes, that too.”

  “And you forgot about the part where they all laughed at him for carrying a bow and arrows when they had guns, and then later their guns froze.”

  “That part is coming. Where was I? There was nothing in the sky but one black vulture, and all about them ice crags and chasms of the mountains. Father pointed at the black vulture . . .”

  “You forgot something.”

  “Yes, yes. The-stupid-scientist-thought-they-were-lost-and-the-soldier- threatened-to-kill-father. okay? okay! Listen: Father pointed at the black vulture and said they need but follow the bird to find what, in the midst of the empty mountains, that bird found to eat.

  “He led them to where there was a naked man chained to the mountain, a man so tall that he was taller than the steeple of a church. He was chained with chains of black iron, and frost clung to his chains, and red icicles spread like a fan from the great wound in his side, all down along the bloodstained cliff where he was chained. His face was calm and grave, like the face of the statue of a king; but all full of suffering, like the face of a saint in an icon.

  “ ‘What do you see?’ asked my father. For he knew the Russian men were not like those of us from Georgia, and cannot see what is right before their faces.

  “ ‘I see ice,’ said one soldier.

  “ ‘I see rock,’ said another soldier.

  “ ‘What do you hear?’ asked my father.

  “ ‘I hear nothing but the wind,’ said one soldier.

  “ ‘I hear your brat squalling!’ said another soldier.

  “But the scientist looked up, and said, ‘I hear a great deep voice, asking us to shoot the vulture which torments him.’

  “But the soldier’s guns had frozen and could not shoot the great black vulture.”

  Wendy chimed in happily, “But your father shot him with the bow!”

  Raven nodded. “Just so. Down and down the great bird plunged, and the great voice told my father that, even though the bird would live again as soon as the sun came up, for that day, the torture had been stopped. And because he had done this thing, he could ask for any wisdom in the world.”

  Wendy said, “But the scientist made him ask . . .”

  “Yes, yes. The scientist made my father talk to the titan. ‘The Americans have a bomb which they have made from splitting the atom. This is a fire too dangerous for mortals to control, unless it is the Supreme Soviet.’ This is what the scientist made him say.”

  “And about the rockets.”

  “Yes. ‘The Americans have taken the German rocket scientists from Peenamünde. And they will learn a secret of the fires of heaven, which is how to launch a great missile, greater than the V-I and V-2 rockets. We must launch a satellite before the Americans, to show the glory of Soviet science to the world. Our great leader Stalin has commanded this thing.’ “

  Raven paused. “You are not too tired for this story? It is almost time when time is up.” He looked at his watch and frowned.

  “What happened next?”

  “The giant looked down at Father with wise and sad eyes, and said, ‘Son of the mountains, I will tell these men who have enslaved you all you ask of me. And yet in my heart I hate all slavery, for man was not created to be a servant. You know this is true. Creatures made for servitude, cattle and sheep, who crawl with their faces forever in the ground, they do not yearn for liberty; only mankind. I will tell you a secret thing unknown to all others, upon your promise never to tell anyone, not even your own son. For there is a way out of these mountains, across to the other side, past all the patrols, over the walls and past the guard posts, into the lands of freedom to the west. I will tell you this way if you will promise instantly to take it and go.’

  “ ‘What must I give you in return, eldest grandfather?’ asked my father.

  “ ‘To be free, you must give up all fear. Neither you nor your s
on shall ever know fear again. To begin life anew, you must give up your old name. You may call yourself Raven, for he is a wise bird, and he knows the boundaries between life and death; and if any ask you how you climbed down the impassable mountains or escaped past the guards and fences, you may tell them you flew as a Raven.’

  “And that is all my father told me of how we came to this country when I was a boy, and I never learned the truth of it, though I know he would not tell a child the names of those who had helped smuggle him out, and that only secrecy would keep the way open for others. All he would say is that he flew like a Raven away from a land filled with death and corpses.”

  II

  Raven was silent a moment and took his wife’s hands in his. “And then I came and fell in love with you, my beautiful strange little Wendy.”

  “Do you want to hear my story again? The one I told you when you proposed? It all about flying, too. I used to have dreams about flying, and I wondered why I could never remember how to do it when I woke up. Then, when I was nine years old, I was home, sick from school, and I was playing with one of my mother’s cats, Simples, and suddenly I remembered. You just stand on one foot, both at the same time, so that each foot thinks the other one is on the ground. I flew up out the window and over my school down the street, and I stopped to rest on top of the flagpole. But the funny thing was, no one could see me, no matter how I shouted. I remember I wished I had brought something to drop on the kids playing in the playground. Not even my Nanny, when I went past the window of the kitchen on the way back, could see me. I went down to tell my Nanny what I had done, but she just fed me chicken soup and told me to go back to bed. After I got better, I tried it again. But I could never get it to do it again. Once in college, in a gym class, I started to get a floaty feeling, which might have been the same thing. But no one ever believed me. They tried to tell me I made it up, even though I remembered all clearly. Why do people do that? Just because they never heard about something like that before, they pretend it never happened to me, just because it never happened to them! Adults just forget the good part about being a kid. Why? Why not be a kid and a grown-up at the same time and just take the best of both halves? Kids aren’t afraid of dying. They’re not afraid of anything. Except monsters. And adults aren’t afraid of those. See?”