The Last Guardian of Everness

by John C. Wright

  “What is the name of this place?”

  “I have heard it called Wailing Blood.”

  Galen nodded, having suspected as much. The dream-colt had spoken in riddles, not quite lying. Wailing Blood was beyond the world’s edge, it was true; but only by the length of a chain.

  “Is Azrael of Everness confined there?”

  “As to that, young wisecraft, I cannot say, having never heard his scream nor any gasp of pain from him. It may be that he is not there. Or it may be that he does not cry out in pain. Four questions I have answered, and have answered all; but you have not asked, nor shall I answer, what the danger is of World’s Edge, nor what might save you should you fall.”

  And the wind was still.

  Galen struck the stones of the road below his feet. “Earth! Speak! From your yield came Adam, came Ash, came Erichthon and Typhon; yield now to me what tidings I require of this land upon your utmost brink.”

  And a voice like an earthquake stirred the ground underfoot, and he heard the words trembling through his bones: “Young fool, I feel the hoofbeat on my broad back of the knight who comes to slay you. Beware! He is upon you!”

  At that word, the clarion peals of a thousand light-voiced bells rose up strongly from the city down in the valley before him, and there was a moment of red twilight thrown across the sky. Suddenly, golden and enormous, the newborn sun filled the sky beyond the eastern towers.

  The great orb passed within a few hundred feet of the taller towers, and Galen saw their stones were burnt pale by the passage of that gigantic sphere, and the golden beams swept the morning streets as if with streams of purest fire.

  The forest around him, he now, in the blinding light, saw, was not made of pine trees at all. It was a graveyard of pillars, thin obelisks, and standing stones, only a few of which had been bare. The rest were braided and woven with many sticks and strands of incense, which, in the gloom, Galen had mistaken for pine needles. Arms of fire from the sun swept across the mountainside and ignited all this sacramental fume, so that the great sun rose in the midst of a forest fire of sacred smoke. Galen remembered only now that these were solar obelisks, which drew down the might of the sun.

  Tears streaming across the ashy blackness of his face, Galen, coughing, stumbled down the road, blinded, running without plan or purpose. Curling flame writhed and smoked, roaring on every side.

  Ahead of him on the road, coming suddenly into view amidst the smoke and smolder of the graveyard, appeared an armored knight upon a roan steed, flashing with dazzling reflections of the blinding dawn light. Smoke and steam came from him and from his ornaments, and a terrible heat like a furnace, and when he drew his sword, it burst into flame. This knight was dressed all in red, with designs of copper and red gold chased through the shining steel of his breastplate, and a proud plume of blood red flying from a ruby in his helm. His face was hidden; there may have been anything beneath that helm. On his blazing shield burned the image of a lark.

  The apparition called out in a loud voice: “Stand! I am the warrior of the dawn. This place is forbidden to mortal men, who live their lives blind to the great war all around them, and to servants of Darkness. All these buried here are those who tried to pass by me.”

  And he gestured with his sword far left and right. As far as the eye could see, the gravestones and monuments bore the legend SLAIN AT DAWN.

  “We serve one cause,” cried out Galen. “For I am loyal to Celebradon, the citadel of Light, and have spent all my life in its service.”

  “Loyal? Those who are loyal obey. Go back. You shall not pass.”

  “My world is in danger, and only Azrael might know the cause of it. I charge you stand aside and let me pass!”

  “Do you know any name or words so to command me? If not, then you have no authority to pass by me, no matter what need you pretend. Go back, or I will strike you!”

  Galen’s grandfather would have known the words, but Galen had not yet been taught them. Galen was alone.

  “Ha! Strike me? Me! I am one of the watchmen of Everness! I have powers you have not guessed, small spirit! I have defeated worse dreams than you!” Galen felt anger and pride blushing in his face, making his limbs tremble with strength.

  Without any further parley, the Red Knight clapped spurs to his roan horse, and, whirling his smoking sword in a great circle over his head, came rushing down upon Galen as if to trample him.

  But Galen pointed his spear at the charger, and shouted, “By the name which Adam gave the eldest sire of your race—Wynrohim, Rohir, Equus, Hippos! I compel you be still!”

  And the horse stopped, stumbling as if it had struck an unseen wall. The Red Knight was thrown from his saddle headlong, and fell in a heap, but rose on one knee, holding up his red sword.

  “Base! Oh, basely done!” cried out the knight. ‘And will you fight me with a spear, I who have no equal weapon, but only sword in hand? Grant me quarter long enough to rise to my feet!”

  “Where was all this chivalrous talk when you were about to trample me?” shouted Galen. And he stabbed with his spear, a long lunge, guiding the blow with one hand and imparting power to the thrust with his other, as he had been taught.

  The Red Knight, rising to his feet, parried the blow once and twice with his smoking sword, but could deliver no counterthrust, as the length of Galen’s spear put him beyond reach.

  The Red Knight strode hugely forward, lashing with short, narrow sweeps of his sword at Galen’s swiftly darting spear. Sparks from the sword fell across splinters and gouges the sword shaved from the spear shaft, but it had not caught on fire yet. Galen was forced to step backward and backward to maintain the advantage of his reach; but he could not retreat for long, for the still-smoking rocks of the graveyard were behind him.

  When Galen stabbed right, the Red Knight parried with his sword; when he stabbed left, the knight’s shield deflected the blows.

  Galen, in anger and impatience, called out, “Excalibur! Galatine! Balmung! Nothung! I call upon the Four Kings of All Swords to curse this blade opposing me!”

  The Red Knight’s blade shattered in his gauntlet with a crack like thunder. As the fragments dropped from the broken sword hilt, Galen drove a blow through the knight’s guard on the right and struck him in the throat. His gorget was riven in; Galen’s glowing spearpoint pierced the chain links of his coif; the knight spat blood and fell prone.

  “Cowardly, traitorously, and unknightfully struck! Know ye that I am the Son of the Guardian of Tirion. My blood is from the race of Yudhishthira, most just of men, who was the son of Cosmic Law. That Law I call upon to work my dying curse, which else, had you been chivalrous, could not have touched you: your life is forfeit before the sunset of this day!”

  But the Red Knight’s voice was not coming from his body, which lay still, facedownward, in a spreading pool of blood, but from a point in midair above it.

  Galen stood above the corpse, mopping his face with his lambrequin. “I shall not fear your curse, ghost, for I know the arts to banish shadows . . .” but the words came out more uncertainly than he would have liked.

  He performed the ceremonies to allay the ghost, pouring out the wine, putting the proper herb into the corpse’s mouth, coins upon his eyes, and laid great stones over the body to restrict it. In the graveyard were many loose stones and crosses and fragments of cups and other things he needed for this purpose.

  It was now midmorning, and Galen could see, in the distance, the citizens of Tirion emerge onto the streets, wearing wide-brimmed hats and carrying parasols, garbed in robes of lightest silk.

  By noon the sun had dwindled and passed into the far west, a small, dim dot riding among gathering clouds, and Galen had traveled through the outer suburbia, and reached the city gates.

  The citizens, in this cooler time, were now wearing long coats; and the women going to the fountains, carrying tall jars upon their heads, hid their legs in long, flowing skirts of many colors.

  One of these women, with
polite words, proffered him a drink from her jar, which he took, sluicing his scarf and cleaning some of the smoke and stain from his armor. With a quiet laugh, the woman warned him not again to be caught by the power of the dawn.

  Her words seemed ominous to Galen. “And what about the sunset?”

  She smiled again and shook her head. “No citizen of Tirion has ever seen the dusk, for twilight fades to night here by imperceptible degrees. Before you is the Gate of Noon, with an Eye as bright as the Eye of Day. Whether you can pass that gate and live, we shall yet discover. But as for sunset, you will not see it!” And she pointed at the gate not far away, which Galen inspected, frowning. There were no guards here, but the arch and the gate were clearly magical.

  Galen turned to ask the woman another question; but she had vanished like a dream.

  The gate held a black pillar on the right and a white pillar on the left, and the keystone of the gateway arch was inscribed with the Vedic Eye. The other stones of the archway were marked with the five signs of the five Pandavas. Galen attempted to pass the gate but found he could not, for a hostile will radiating from the Vedic Eye held him back.

  Galen was not unwise in the lore of dreams. He turned and walked back all the miles to where the corpse of the Red Knight lay. It took an hour to unbury him. The wounds of the corpse burst into fresh blood at his approach. With some difficulty, he removed the red cloak and performed again the ceremonies and the burial he had done that morning.

  Then he doffed his own cloak (which was a heavy silver gray with a collar of fur) and rolled it in a bundle. Galen took the red cloak and drew it around himself. He raised the hood to hide his face. The bloodstains were not conspicuous among the scarlets, reds and red-brown dyes of the cloak.

  All the miles back he went. This time he passed the gate with no difficulty.

  Galen walked in among the tall buildings, museums, halls, and cathedrals of the inner parts of Tirion. The time was now late afternoon, and the westering sun was a dim spot, merely one brighter star among the many that now began to appear in the deepening dark blue of heaven. Snow was falling through the air, and the people of Tirion seemed to have little business to attend to as the afternoon darkened and deepened.

  Galen saw boys in fur caps going to skate on frozen public fountains and older youths riding in gilded carriages and sleds to some ball or high festivity, held by candlelight in their great halls. The men were all garbed in long, black, heavy coats and tall hats, and the women were swathed in furs, delicate hands hidden in muffs, and their laughing faces, red with cold or with pleasure, were hidden in the shadows of deep fur hoods. Galen glimpsed their lovely faces only as soft shadows, with the hint of a smile or flutter of bright and merry eyes caught in the light of colored lamps carried by linkboys escorting them to their rendezvous.

  As he walked, more candles appeared behind more windows of stained glass among the tall crowded mansions. But, walking further, he came to an area where the mansions were very tall and very dark indeed, and the museums were empty, and the temples were shut up and closed.

  As the dusk grew deeper, it grew colder; he discarded the red cloak on the stairs before an empty temple, and he donned his own thicker and warmer cloak of silver gray.

  The streets he walked along were grand, gloomy, and impressive. Galen saw grim, great statues standing in the empty squares or looming from tall pillars in deserted courtyards. The forbidding faces of the statues were like those of the mountainscapes in the land outside: narrow eyed and high cheeked, with strange, long-lobed ears. More and more of these statues were in postures of war, with sword and shield, or stood with hand upraised, all of them facing the direction Galen faced as he walked to the edge of the world.

  He passed a line of statues standing with grim solemnity atop a row of pillars at the end of the avenue. To the left and right, dimly seen by starlight, the tall, black stone figures rose, hands and weapons raised, all facing outward toward the dark.

  Galen stepped a few feet outward along a dark bridge that passed between two of these pillars; but he realized he was not upon a bridge, but a pier, which protruded out into midair and broke off without any lip or railing.

  He took another step forward.

  A sensation of dread entered Galen’s heart, and he froze. He looked left and right carefully, seeking the source of his fear. Then he turned.

  Behind him, there was a shadow among the statues, robed and hooded, who stood without motion. The hood was facing Galen. Galen slowly raised his star-shining spear.

  The figure still did not move. Galen, one cautious step at a time, drew closer. The light from his speartip fell across the fabric of the hooded being’s robe.

  It was the same red and bloodstained robe Galen had despoiled from the corpse of the Red Knight.

  Now a soft voice came from the hood. Galen could not tell if it were a man’s voice or a woman’s. “I see into the World of Judgment even as you see into the World of Dreams, and you cannot hide your crimes from me, any more than I can hide my dreams from you.”

  Galen said, “Who are you?”

  The voice replied: “I and my race are appointed to guard against traffic from dishonest Nastrond even as Everness is set to stand watch against the invasion of nightmarish Acheron. Yet, my race was here before there was a city of Tirion, for all this place was created to hold one single traitor damned by Oberon. All those imprisoned afterward were given to us only because this prison already existed. That prisoner also is of the House of Everness. Also a traitor.”

  “I’m not a traitor,” said Galen.

  “If I wished, these stone statues would rise to life and rend you limb from limb. Yet I will not hinder you. You go forward to a doom far worse that any to which my justice would condemn you. Go! All which you have done shall return to you, and your guardianship invaded by one who wears your cloak, even as you, by wearing my son’s cloak, came into mine.”

  The cloak fell to the ground in a heap, empty. Perhaps it had never been full.

  “Wait!” cried out Galen. “Guardian of Tirion, listen to me! I fought only because I was attacked! I came here only because I was summoned! I am loyal to the cause of Light!”

  But he was only calling into empty air. He looked left and right, but there was nothing to be seen. Galen prodded the cloak with the tip of his spear, but there was no reaction, and the voice did not come again.

  Galen said the words he had been taught to mitigate curses. But the words came dull and slow to his lips, and he did not know if there were any effect. Should he continue onward? There seemed no reason to delay. Uncertainly, he walked back along the stone bridge.

  Where the stone brink of the bridge he stood upon fell away to open air, three dozen rings or more, each a dozen feet in diameter, held huge links, as large as any Galen had ever seen or dreamed, curving away down into the dark, giant chains gleaming in the starlight. From the very central ring, one chain dropped down larger and straighter, farther into the gloom below, than any of the others.

  He had passed over the brink of the cliff of the world’s edge without realizing it; this half-bridge was cantilevered over the abyss. Underfoot was only air.

  This was not a good sign. When had he passed beyond the world’s edge? When the Guardian of Tirion had cursed him? Before? This was a bad place to be. Things here, even a few feet beyond the world’s boundary, were not bound by worldly rules. The Powers and Dominions to which he prayed might not be in range to hear him now, and ordinary objects might not recall their true names. His prayer meant to deflect the curse might have been meaningless.

  And yet there was no reason to wait.

  He knelt at the edge of the half-bridge he stood on, put his feet on the huge links of the long central chain he found there, and swung himself over the edge.

  V

  With no memory of an arduous climb, Galen next found himself to be standing, balanced like a wire walker on the links of a great chain, leading to a ring embedded in the icicles and ice stala
ctites of a frozen waterfall. Depending from that ring, entwined and half buried in thick icicles, hung a grisly cage all made of spikes and needles.

  To either side and high above were other iron cages of the Unforgiven, hanging still and silent in midair or caught midswing and frozen in the ice. Nine broad avenues of ice ran down the titanic cliffside on which Galen found himself. The place was like a bay embracing an abyss, for to his left and right Galen could see the tremendous cliffs, larger than mountains, which thrust rocky spurs out into midair, with, here and there, small shelves or crevasses in which blown seeds had planted wiry grass or isolated trees.

  Underfoot were a few solitary clouds, a scattering of stars, and, below them, unending darkness.

  Nearer at hand, however, and above him, were many bloodstained cages; it was on the chain of the lowest and longest-chained of all the cages that he stood. The cage had been at the apex of its swing when it had been caught in the evening snows, and had become embedded in the walls of the waterfall.

  A little water still trickled from the icicles to drool upon the black figure crouched within the cage. A drop splattered noisily upon the bowed head, and, at that, the figure stirred and raised his head. He was bent over within the cage, which was not large enough to permit him to stand.

  Through tangled strands of hair peered eyes dark and kingly, though made hollow by long suffering; the nose was hooked, the lips cruel and set, the whole expression, bitter, pitiless, and stern. He wore the tattered rags of some once-festive lacy garments, as if he had been arrested during a festival and not allowed to change. His skin was crisscrossed with many scars and puncture wounds, and blackened with frostbite and ugly burns.

  “I am Azrael de Gray Waylock,” said the man, his voice solemn and low. And he reached through the bars to put his hand on the chain. “You, who dare to interrupt my meditations here, know, that should I wish it, a convulsion of my hand can topple you into the unbottomed dark, beyond the scope of dreaming; nor will your flesh on earth wake evermore. Now, speak, and persuade me to hold my hand unmoving.” And blood ran down his arm and hand, for he had torn his flesh on the hooks and iron claws of the cage’s bars.