The Last Guardian of Everness

by John C. Wright

  Wendy said, “Oh, well!” and danced on past him to the door, put her hand on the knob, turned, pushed. She called out, “Hello! Hello! Anybody home?”

  “Wait. . .,” said Raven.

  The door swung silently open.

  Wendy paused in the darkened doorway, looking back over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised, a dimple twinkling at the edge of her half-smile. “Well?” she said in a husky whisper. “What now, big boy?”

  Raven knew it was futile to argue with Wendy when she was wearing her favorite supercilious expression. Nonetheless, he said, “Is not right to go into another man’s house when nobody is home.”

  “It wasn’t locked.”

  “Many people in county, far from city, are not needing to lock their doors at night.”

  “Galen wouldn’t mind!”

  “He is ghost.”

  “Well, Raven!” and now she stamped her foot, and tossed her hair. “Sometimes you are just so silly! Here we are worrying about breaking the law when the world might get invaded by the forces of the Empire of Darkness, Death, and Doom! And what’s the worst that can happen if we break in, is we might get shot or thrown in jail. Good grief! Sometimes I think you have no sense of proportion!”

  And she skipped on inside, flipping on lights and calling out cheerful hellos.

  V

  The lights in the house were on a circuit that was cut if any of the heavy blackout shutters were open. Wendy was amused by this and spent some moments yanking the shutters open and closed to make the lights flicker. “Just like the little lights in a refrigerator!” she said.

  The modern kitchen was separated by a countertop from the main room, which held several bookshelves, a large and expensive stereo set, and a folding couch. Blinking against the flickering light, Raven stepped out from a sliding door between two bookshelves. “Is gymnasium here. Full of old- fashioned weapons, spears, and swords. Also, practice saddle on a stand, and lances for jousting. But no horse.”

  Wendy, meanwhile, had left the shutters to find a little closet with a concrete floor, holding a washer and dryer. A door beyond this led to the garage, which was empty. A second door from the kitchen led to a bathroom with very extensive medical supplies that filled up three glass cabinets.

  “Only three rooms,” said Raven, picking up the alarm clock from the nightstand next to the couch. “Kitchen, gymnasium, library. Couch in library unfold into bed for sleeping. What does it mean?”

  Wendy said, “Two people could never live here. It means this isn’t the main house. Let’s go.”

  “A moment. There is one door beyond gymnasium I have not checked.”

  Beyond that door was a white room in which was some sort of water tank into which ran tubes and insulated wires. The wires were attached to medical recording instruments beside the tank. The shelves in this room were stacked with computer paper records of pulse, respiration, and EEG patterns.

  “Wendy, I am thinking this is very strange,” said Raven. Wendy, meanwhile, was spinning circles in the darkened gymnasium.

  “Just like my ballet class! Look, there are mirrors and bars and everything. Hm. I didn’t know fencers used shields. And this room is so clean and big! I bet he uses it as a meditation chamber. It feels the same as the Zen monastery I used to visit. This is a nice hardwood floor. Don’t you think it would make a good dance floor?”

  Raven had opened the water tank and was looking inside at a pallet made of floating cushions. The tank smelled of salt water. Wendy came to the door, wearing a wire-mesh fencing mask and carrying a morning star flail.

  “Ready to go?” she chirped.

  “Wendy, this is most strange. It is, what do you call? I do not know the words in English. KGB use to break prisoners, make them lose track of time and lose sense of reality.”

  “Sensory deprivation tank,” said Wendy. “I don’t think it’s so strange. This room is for him to learn how to dream; that room is to learn how to fight. It’s what you expect for someone whose life is spent fighting in the dream-realm, isn’t it? But if you want to see something really strange, I bet we should go to the main house!”

  VI

  They saw the High House of Everness as it should be seen, by night, with traces of mist hovering, mysterious, luminescent, in the foreground.

  The ground mists below and dark clouds above were tinged silver by the moon. The house was surrounded on both sides by the whispering massive shadows of the evergreens; there was a hint of fragrance in the air, a scent of herbs from a walled garden. The silence of the dark mansion was emphasized by the muffled, murmuring pounding of the sea.

  They parked, for two tall pillars, a black and a white, stood at the termination of the drive, too close-spaced to permit the car to enter. Wendy and Raven passed between the black and white pillars, and Wendy sighed and said, “Isn’t it wonderful? I feel like I’ve fallen asleep. Or fallen into a story! Can people go from being awake to being in a dream without going through sleep first?”

  Above them, a steep slate roof the color of gray iron rose up above frowning, doorless walls to a high peak. Above and beyond the roof rose a central tower of massive blocks, solid, and very ancient. Trellises of ivy, clinging rose, and grape vines clung to the sides of the tower, softening its outline into scented shadows. Gargoyles and gnomish faces peered down through leafy masses from the tower’s crown. At the highest point of the dome, a statue of a winged horse reared up in the starlight, pawing the air.

  To Raven’s left and right extended the west and south wings of the house, coming toward him across the lawn, so that the gatehouse and twin pillars were embraced in their angle. The west wing, to their left, terminated in what might have been a fortress, with crenellated walls and heavy doors barred with triple bands of iron. The windows here were mere slits for archers.

  There was no answer when they beat on those heavy doors, and Wendy, climbing on Raven’s shoulders, could see, through the window slits, collections of armor and spears, with swords on the wall spread like peacocks’ tails. But no people.

  To the right, the south wing opened into a huge greenhouse, whose glass roof and many panes shone in the starlight like a pagoda of crystal. Behind the expanses of glass, the shadows of branches and twigs could be glimpsed, like the veins in marble.

  They passed around the south wing and saw the herb gardens, arranged in symmetrical beauty beneath the moon, with a line of potted trees set against the crumbling black wall to the east. In some places the wall was shoulder high; in others, it had fallen. Over this wall came the smell and sound of the sea.

  “Well!” said Wendy, hands on her rounded hips. “This is more like it! I know a magical house when I see one!”

  Raven pulled at tall doors of cut glass at the south. They were locked. “Maybe people get in and out by magic, eh? Doors all locked. Maybe everyone has all gone home. I am thinking we should do the same? This is not a place for ordinary people to be living in.”

  Wendy took his hand and smiled. “Well, I don’t think you’re ordinary, no matter what Daddy says. Let’s check around the east wing. Okay?”

  Raven nodded glumly.

  Walking in silence between the glass walls of the arboretum and the herb garden, they came to a courtyard held in the angle between the south and east wings. Here was a still and quiet fountain surrounded by a ring of small statues. A pair of mighty doors flanked by pillars of tarnished copper overlooked the courtyard.

  To the right of these doors, the east wing terminated in what might have been a chapel. The structure had a heavy Celtic cross of stone on a steeple, lichen-stained above roofs of gray slate, and the brown brick walls were cut with narrow arches of stained glass, whose images caught glints of light from the distant moon. But it might not have been a chapel, since its upper story had three wide balconies overlooking the sea wall. Wendy said she saw people standing at the windows of this high balcony; and Raven saw motionless silhouettes with plumed helmets and tall spears looking out east and south.

&nb
sp; In the courtyard, Wendy walked lightly over to the silent fountain, her eyes wide and shining with delight. The rim of the fountain was sculpted into twelve statues. Wendy climbed up between a boy carrying a water jug and a centaur drawing a bow.

  “Raven, look!” she exclaimed, pointing. The bottom of the pool was plated as if with a smooth silvery mirror. “It’s me!”

  Raven, looking over the shoulder of a crouching lion, thought he saw a water-nymph, as pretty as his wife, but hovering upside down, with stars and silver-black clouds below her, tangled with her hair. Up from her hand flew a spinning penny, which, rising up, touched the penny Wendy had dropped. Both pennies disappeared the moment they touched, and the pretty upside- down woman, and her sky below her, quaked with concentric ripples, and vanished into chaos.

  9

  The Library

  of the

  Dream-Lords

  I

  The huge mahogany doors, inset with panels showing two-faced profiles of a double-headed man in Roman armor, were locked.

  “Is deserted,” said Raven, looking up at the dark and silent mansion.

  “It can’t be! That would be terrible! Without the grandfather we can’t find the magic things!”

  “Look at weeds on path; leaves gathered on doorstep. Hinges rusted. I am thinking, no one step here for a long time.”

  There were no lights showing in the windows: no noise, no motion.

  Wendy, standing on tiptoe, had her face against the stained glass cheek of a saint, as if she were kissing him, with her hands forming little blinders around her eyes. “I see something. A little light bobbing up and down. Maybe it’s an elf!”

  Wendy and Raven waited in silence before the locked and darkened doors. They held hands. Raven’s face was grim, but Wendy was smiling, almost hopping with excitement. Raven, seeing his wife’s joy, squeezed her hand, and, when she looked at him, a slow smile began to crack his grimness, and curved up beneath his mustache.

  “What are we doing here again?” he asked. “I’ve forgotten.”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed breathily. “We have to find the magic to drive back the Dark. Galen didn’t know where they were, the key and the horn and stuff, but the grandfather should know. And as soon as he’s found out what’s gone wrong, we can set everything straight, and save Galen!”

  Then they were silent again as they heard movement behind the door. The silence lengthened.

  A moment passed.

  The door opened very slowly, rusted hinges creaking. “Listen to that!” said Wendy. “Just like in the movies!”

  The man who opened the door held a smoking lantern in one hand, and he was blinking, obviously trying to puzzle out the meaning of Wendy’s last comment.

  He was an upright, dignified figure, with thick hair turned salt-and- pepper with gray. His eyebrows and mustache were black and angular, giving him a sardonic, devilish look. His goatee was white, streaked with black hairs at the corners of his mouth. He wore a long coat with a half-cape, like something a Civil War officer might wear, and had turned his collar up against the cold. The raised collar gave him a stiff, old-fashioned look, and Raven at first thought he might be a minister.

  The man raised the lantern, and with his other hand drew up a pair of half-moon-shaped pince-nez glasses he wore on a chain around his neck. He perched the glasses on his nose and inspected Wendy and Raven carefully before he spoke.

  “You have been sent, then?” He had a clipped British accent, a nasal and saturnine tone of voice. The dimness of his eye, the uncertainness of his footing, led Raven to believe the man was very weary.

  Wendy nodded vigorously. “We came from the hospital!”

  The man looked at Raven’s white coat. “No time to change, then? It’s all very well. I have been standing a long watch; two days now without sleep, and I need some relief. Walk this way. And please do not turn on that flashlight.”

  With slow footsteps the man led them through a chamber larger than the lantern could show. Dim glints overhead hinted at the presence of a chandelier. Rounded metallic shadows in the distance implied suits of armor stood against the far wall.

  The man led them up a broad stair to the balcony.

  “What’s your name? I’m Wendy! Your first name, I mean,” said Wendy. “I can’t call you Grampa.”

  They came to a wide hallway that circled to the left and right, as if embracing the central tower. The man turned right and walked.

  To their left was blank stone wall; to their right, tall archways guarded by tall statues. Before them was a bearded figure with a trident blowing into a sea-conch. Around the circle, at the next archway, sat a king on a throne of eagles with a crooked scepter like a lightning bolt in his hand. Farther around the circle was a figure shrouded in a heavy robe, its face invisible beneath a heavy black helmet. Beyond him, guarding the archway adjacent the trident-wielder, stood a youth with a harp and a bow. In the lamplight’s moving shadows, the figures’ blank eyes seemed to turn and watch them.

  “You may call me Dr. Du Lake. I shan’t tell you my first name, since I can’t abide Camelot jokes.”

  Turning into the archway guarded by the trident-bearer, they passed into a corridor decorated with woodcuts of ships and sea-monsters. The roofbeams had seagulls and ospreys cut into them.

  “Then, wait! You’re not Galen’s grandfather? Mr. Waylock?” Wendy asked in a surprised, woebegone voice.

  “Indeed not.” Dr. Du Lake paused before a tall door at the end of the corridor, flanked with tridents. The capstone at the arch of the door was sculpted into the image of a watching eye. By Raven’s calculation, they were in the east wing overlooking the sea.

  Du Lake turned and inspected Wendy. “Who sent you?” he said.

  “Galen sent us! Who sent you?”

  The doctor said, “I was sent by Her Majesty’s Royal Historical Preservation Trust.”

  “Then you don’t know where the magic talismans are hidden that can drive back the agents of the Empire of Night and save the world?”

  The doctor blinked, and his glasses fell off his nose, to dangle on their slim chain. “I had not been aware the world was in danger, miss. Aside from the ordinary ones, I mean. Have there been new developments?”

  The doctor was looking at them with a bland, quiet smile Raven was sure held mocking suspicion. Stiffly, Raven said, “I am sorry. I do not think it is right for us to be here. I do not know if it is legal. . .”

  The doctor nodded. “That may be so, my good man. Unfortunately, there is no one else right now.”

  Raven was confused. “What?”

  “The HistoricalTrust told me that on no account was Mr. Waylock to be moved from his room, except during the day. The instructions were specific, and in accordance, as I understand it, with Mr. Waylock’s written directions.”

  “Wait—” said Raven. “Mr. Waylock did not invite you here?”

  “No more than you, it seems,” replied the doctor.

  “Then we are all trespassers,” said Raven.

  The doctor smiled tiredly. “I would offer to summon the constables for you, my good man, but there is no telephone in this house. But I do need your help if you are friends of Mr. Waylock. I have been watching him for some time now, and I need to be spelled.”

  Wendy said, “Of course we’ll help! What do you need us to do?”

  “Wait a moment,” Raven rumbled, “I am thinking that maybe, if something is wrong here, someone should do something. Call police. Call hospital.”

  Wendy slapped him impatiently on the shoulder. “Oh, get serious! Since when do you trust government people?! What do we need to do, doctor?”

  “Among other things, you’ll have to remove your car to beyond line of sight from the house. Those instructions were also explicit. You can park it by one of the outbuildings. If you want to help, you must follow all the instructions with great patience and faithfulness, even if they seem arbitrary. And I do need help. Help looking after my patient.”

 
; “Patient?!” said Wendy in alarm.

  The doctor pushed open the door.

  II

  The room had broad windows facing north, east, and south, with suits of armor held on racks before each window, facing outward, weapons ready. Each of the four walls of the room was decorated in an entirely different style, with ornaments from the Orient against the far wall, Chinese dragons and lacquered furniture framing the samurai armor facing that window. To the left were Viking totems and woodworks, and a horned helmet faced that window; to the right, barbaric ornaments of gold from northern Africa surrounded the plumed, helmeted turban and silk-draped mail guarding that window. (Raven recognized this as the figure they had seen from the courtyard.) The door through which they entered was flanked by racks holding plate mail, surcoated with dragons of Welsh heraldry. The suit of armor to the left was rusted, as if it had been there for a long time; that on the right was polished and dented, as if new and recently put to use.

  In the center of the room was a four-poster bed, on which a figure rested that did not move. His bald head shone in the moonlight, and bushy white eyebrows rose up from his wrinkled face like tufts of cloud.

  Wendy came forward, silent, solemn. She stared at the sleeping figure, examining his nose and chin.

  “It looks like Galen,” she said. She reached out a tentative hand, prodded the sleeping man. She saw that there were tubes and electrodes running to his chest and arms, all hidden beneath the covers so that they could not been seen from the room.

  “It’s no use,” said the doctor. “He cannot wake up.”

  III

  Wendy went skipping down the stairs, the lantern in her hand swinging and bobbing, and the flame was flickering, blazing, and sputtering with the enthusiasm of her descent. Massive shadows jumped and swayed overhead as she passed by, cometlike, and she left an irregular trail of pale translucent smoke lingering in the air behind her. She thought she was in the north wing, taking a short cut.