The Last Guardian of Everness

by John C. Wright

  There was a special class of conversations which Wendy called “backwards-going.” Her husband and the doctor were having a typically backwards-going conversation, which started out with the doctor wanting them to stay and stand watch over the grandfather (so that the doctor could get some sleep), and then the doctor saying he’d like them to leave the next day since they weren’t from the Historical Trust after all, and the doctor didn’t know who they were anyway (this, despite that Wendy had said her name quite loudly and clearly several times).

  Meanwhile, her husband started by agreeing to stay, but then wanting to know why this doctor (“And how am I to be knowing you are real doctor here anyway, eh?”) hadn’t taken the grandfather to a hospital, which would have been the responsible thing to do, and ended up by volunteering to leave, for the strange reason that, if the doctor were responsible, he would not entrust his patient into the hands of strangers. (“I am thinking a responsible physician, you know, would not put patient into caring of man he does not know, like me!” “But, my dear fellow, that very comment shows how conscientious you really are.”) But this plan would, of course, leave the grandfather alone, not in the hospital, which turned out to be an irresponsible thing to do after all.

  They were just about in the confused middle of the conversation, at a point where they both agreed that, because neither could trust the other, Raven and Wendy should be leaving, when Wendy took the lantern and went out to park her car and unpack a few things for an overnight stay.

  She had plenty of time. She knew that it would be another twenty minutes or so before the two men would move backwards through the conversation to the beginning and realize that Raven and Wendy were going to stay the night and watch the grandfather.

  Wendy was passing across the expanse of the darkened entry hall, her lamp showing no more than a circle of black-and-white tiled floor, when a glint of light off to her left caught her attention. A faint shimmer, and perhaps, a soft sound. Yes, it was certainly a sound: a few chords of soft music hovered in the air.

  “Maybe it’s an elf!” whispered Wendy. Her errand forgotten, she walked very softly across the floor toward the mysterious fluttering glimmer.

  IV

  Here was an archway, wooden pillars carved into the shape of two trees whose intertwining branches showed solemn owls and smiling dryads among a carven relief of oak and laurel leaves. Beyond the archway was a library, rows and rows of books in high shelves, each shelf inset with panels showing historic scenes. On the wall atop each shelf was a framed portrait of a king or queen of England; and, above them, signs and houses of the zodiac.

  Tall windows to the right admitted bright moonlight; one window hung open, and pale drapes fluttered in the breeze, reflecting moonlight across the room. This was the glimmer she had seen. When she moved to the window to close it, she saw that the music came from an arrangement of wind chimes, poles a foot or more in length, held in the hand of a marble statue in the garden: a winged man with puffed cheeks, dressed in furs, with a large bear and small bear, in bronze, behind him.

  Wendy closed the window and turned, breathless, expectant, knowing some great wonder was waiting to befall her.

  She loved books, storybooks particularly. Here was a shelf whose panels showed a great fleet of ships sinking in a storm, a queen being beheaded, battles. Above the shelf was a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I; atop the shelf was a bust of Shakespeare.

  She pulled down a book from this shelf, thinking that the stories in such books must be delightful if the pictures in the carvings were so interesting. The covers were of heavy brown leather, tooled with emblems of winged horses and crossed keys.

  Unfortunately, the handwriting on the worn and yellowed pages was in Latin, a language indecipherable to her. However, just behind the book, hidden between this book and the wall, was a little red volume in a modern binding. Peering behind one or two other books, she saw each book on the shelf had a small red volume hidden behind it.

  Now she took out a red book, putting the heavy black Latin book on its side, to mark the place on the shelf.

  She put her lantern on a table, and turned the small brass nozzle that increased the flow of oil to the wick. There were four small mirrors set around the sides of the table, reflecting the light on the tabletop and making it brighter. Here, after a moment’s delicious pause, she opened the red cover.

  As she had hoped, it was a storybook.

  V

  “I, John Dee, magus and ghostly counselor to her most gracious majesty, Regina Elizabeth the Virgin Queen, having returned this last day of Virgo at the time of the New Moon, a fortnight since the Great Victory over the Spanish Armada won by the tempest summoned up from the Gold Ring and mirror of Sir F. Drake wherein the greatest Armament ever seen in Christendom was utterly whelmed and ruined by the Storm-Prince Fulgratorian to the great and abiding glory of our Queen, when as did I return to Everness House, beneath changing moon abiding, the house of true dreams, at Her Majesty’s request to put down the unlawful sprites who were stirred up by Sir F. Drake’s conjuring, for which Her Majesty, of our coven Queen, did bestow upon me three hairs from the head of Bran, champion of Annuwin, which the crows guard below the Tower of London, which ever shall forefend this realm from invasion and from the foot of enemy keep safe. And these hairs were a great treasure. The first I put into the fire; the second threw into the sea, as is elsewhere writ, the third I put below mine pillow as I slept, with my familiar E. Kelley beside me to calm my fever and recall my soul should I over-reach myself while I slept, for he had the laurel leaf with him.

  “The dream I had that night (being when Mercury was in Virgo and in opposition to the Morningstar) was the continuation and sequel of the dream dreamt by the Twenty-Forth Warden of Everness (Quod vide Oneirolibrum Anno 871) which in turn was the sequel of the dream begun by the Seventh Warden (Anno 599) whose account appears in those volumes of this library writ by them.

  “Here is set down the conclusion of that dreaming, wherein is found what the true name of the King of Ireland’s Son might be, and how the Giant of the Twin Brands was overthrown, and the Curse unmade and lifted from the Seven Brothers,. . .”

  By this time, Wendy was quite absorbed, and snuggled down in her chair to read.

  VI

  When she finished the story written by John Dee, Wendy, curious, looked up the writings of the Twenty-Forth Warden, Alfwise the Great, and the Seventh Warden, Corbenec of Carabas. These men had dreamt the second part and beginning of the same story. Moreover, the tantalizing glimpses she had of other volumes as she searched for the beginning of the story of the King of Ireland’s Son showed her that all the books in the library, every one, were dream diaries. And not of ordinary dreams, not the boring dreams most people have, of coming to work naked or running down corridors without getting anywhere. No: these were the dreams of great dreamers.

  In these dreams were monsters from the dark places of the world, creatures of lonely fens, dim caves, and windy wastelands. The monsters bowed and prayed to a drowned and sunken citadel of imperishable metal that rose among the bitterly cold hills of mud and filth in a crevasse at the bottom of the sea. The master of that citadel had been the greatest of the noble princes in service to the armies of the Light, brightest before he fell, but now he dwelt in greatest darkness and bent the whole of his great spirit, genius, and power onto thoughts of malice and revenge. In the pith of darkness, he brooded on hatred.

  But there were champions opposing that great evil. Wendy, turning pages here and there, pulling out books and putting them carefully back in place, glimpsed words and phrases and fragments of great dreams, of the mighty wars, trials, sacrifices, and tragedies of the dream-lords.

  She read a paragraph describing a duel with the King of the Wood at Nemi; she read the riddle-game between a knight of Everness and a man- eating Dragon; she read a brief description of the discovery of the Lost Grail in a wasteland of salty desert; another Warden followed the sound of the sea-bell through darkne
ss and sea wave to discover the floating elf-city of Vindyamar.

  She read of the tail end of a war where a young squire and an old knight overthrew a seven-headed giant in the land of Ar, and built the Tower of Ar-Mennar into the giant’s empty armor, with bricks made out of limestone ground from the giant’s bones.

  She wasn’t sure, but, from the description, Wendy thought that the squire might be Galen. Could the old knight have been Lemuel?

  In curiosity, Wendy looked at the first volume on the first bookshelf, the one beneath woodcarvings showing a sword driven through an anvil, a round table, a wizard asleep beneath the roots of an oak tree, mistletoe and ivy in his hair, and a battle at Stonehenge.

  The first lines of the first book read: “For the glory of the Lady in the Earth who makes to turn the circles of the Earth, by whose hand the Earth is born each spring and perishes each winter, and for the glory of the Lord in Heaven, whose spear is the thunder which punishes the wicked, I, Bleys of Avalon, here write in the letters of the Romans, the practices of my student Merlin, and especially of the tower which he had three times seen in dreams, whereunder two dragons, a white and a red, did coil and struggle in great fierce combat, so as to make the tower topple in defiance of all attempts to set it aright. For the King has ordered a tower built alike in each particular to that which Merlin has dreamt, wherefore I must write of the dimensions and furniture of the tower of the four moons which my student Merlin has seen. And the Lady of the Lake has prophesied or promised that her particular blessing will be bestowed upon that tower, so long as it is kept in memory, that the tower and grounds around it shall be the same in dreaming and waking. Amen, Amen. Here follows the account of the dream. . . .”

  VII

  In that story, Wendy came across several references to someone called “The Grantor,” who had given the tower of Everness to the students of Merlin, Donbleys and Alfcynnig, and who charged them to keep eternal watch against the coming invasion. But there it did not say who this grantor was; the author evidently thought this was too obvious to mention.

  Though she was now yawning terribly, Wendy found the final book on the shelf, beneath a portrait of Neal Armstrong standing, flag in hand, on the cratered desolation of the moon.

  It was a slim volume, locked with a padlock, which Wendy worried with a hairpin till it opened. “I hope no one minds!” she exclaimed. “But people shouldn’t lock things up like that when they know it will just make some folks curious!”

  It was the diary of Galen’s grandfather.

  She nodded as she read, comfortable in her chair, half-awake and half- asleep, so she was not certain if she were reading about his boyhood, or seeing it, recalling it from his memories, or dreaming it. . .

  VIII

  Galen’s grandfather was named Lemuel Waylock. He had been born and raised in a time he now thought of as simpler, more polite, more slow and careful, less subject to change, less full of comforts and conveniences, perhaps, but richer in other things. He recalled a time when men walking down the streets tipped their hats to a lady; it was a time of dignity, restraint, hard work, honor, and respect. Nowadays they didn’t even wear hats.

  At thirty-two, his inheritance came as an unmitigated surprise. After his father’s funeral, he found himself in an airlessly hot room with his brothers and their wives, plus the older of several nephews, everyone dressed in their sober, churchgoing best; the men with stiff starched collars, the women with flowers in their hats. He remembered it was a sunny and hot July morning, and no one had thought to leave the windows open.

  The attorney, who had steamed over from England, had appropriated his father’s study’s desk, which was half-hidden beneath stacks of paper. Some were new, typewritten; others were old, very old indeed, written on parchment and vellum, stamped with wax seals, adrip with faded ribbons, and inscribed with names Lemuel recognized from history books.

  One of the papers was father’s last will and testament. The attorney read it in a dry, crisp, unemotional voice, and announced (even years later, Lemuel wondered why) that he, Lemuel, was to receive the allowance and title to the Old House by the sea.

  Lemuel, the third of ten brothers, was neither the smartest nor the strongest in his family (Thomas had gone to university abroad; George worked as a foreman on a neighboring farm, and was muscled like a horse); nor was he the most obedient (Abraham never crossed father, never argued); nor even the bravest (young Theodore had saved the lives of all hands aboard the fishing trawler he worked when it was caught in a nor’easter off the coast of Maine).

  Furthermore, Lemuel had always supposed the patrimony would go to the youngest in the family, Benjamin, the way it happened in old bible stories.

  But the honor was his. His brothers and their families slowly left the stuffy room, the womenfolk retiring to the kitchen to prepare a sumptuous brunch. Lemuel was left alone with the attorney, who carefully explained about fees in entail, conditions and covenants, and limitations on his ownership of the old house.

  He could not sell the house except to a family member; nor could he sell, or even change the location within the house of any of the objects or furnishings; none of the plates on the mantelpiece, cups in the museum, or books in the library could be moved, even across the room. Any damage must be restored and rectified to its exact original appearance out of an escrow fund set aside for that purpose. There could be no changes nor additions to the house.

  Every night of the year, each night of his life, without exception, some member of the family, or a properly trained replacement, must sleep beneath the roof of the house in a room whose windows overlooked the sea.

  The house would pass in fee tail to his survivors, according to the rule of strict primogeniture, without division or dower, if he should die, should be disabled by illness, should attempt to alter or sell the house or its contents, or should become an insomniac.

  The lawyer concluded in a uninflected voice: “The grant is revocable at will by the original grantor, or one whom he should appoint, until such time as announced in the original charter and grant, such time being either the end of the established Earth, or the coming again of the King into the world.”

  The original charter was inscribed on a plate of gold, which the attorney unlocked from a massive case, and written in parallel scripts in Latin, Old English, French, and Welsh. Lemuel inspected the name carved into the bottom of the document:

  ARTHURUS PENDRAGON REX QUONDAM ET REX QUE FUTURUS

  IX

  But deep in his heart, beneath the layer of surprise, Lemuel had always been certain the old house was destined for him.

  One summer day when he was nine, Lemuel and his eldest brother Andrew had trespassed onto a neighbor’s land to climb the tallest pine on the tallest hill in the area. According to schoolyard wisdom, it was the very acme of the tree-climbing art to attempt this tree, for pine branches are needled and close-set; there was, furthermore, the added glamor of the danger of getting caught on old man Teeldrum’s land.

  Eventually, covered with sap, clothes permanently stained, the two boys clung to the topmost branches of the pine, pretending a casual lack of fear whenever passing breezes made their perches creak and sway alarmingly.

  All the fields and hills they knew by name were there, far beneath their feet, yellow and green in the sunlight; and further, fields they did not know, and the line of a mysterious brown road they were not sure where it led.

  For a time, the boys argued geography, trying to decide if the haze on the horizon, was, in fact, the sea. (Schoolyard legend had it that the ocean could indeed be seen from this height.) And then a subtle, inching rivalry began, with each brother attempting to worm a few more dangerous toeholds higher. Young Lemuel, being lighter, dared further out on the bending branch than his more cautious older brother.

  To ensure the stability of propriety and to reaffirm the principle that younger brothers can never win victories over older ones, Andrew disdainfully announced he had learned night-magic from fat
her, secrets Lemuel was too young to be entrusted with, which would allow Andrew to go much higher still, should he condescend to use them.

  By taunts, Lemuel drew out Andrew’s secret, and, before they had descended, Andrew had taught him the song to summon the dream-colt.

  That night, after saying his prayers, Lemuel carefully whispered the song he’d been taught, softly, so as not to wake his brother in the next bed.

  Eager, wide-eyed, he lay in darkness, staring at the North Star through his open window. And he flinched with hope each time he heard a night wind scrape a tree branch against the house, for he was certain, with a little boy’s certainty, that this was the sound of hoofbeats on the roof.

  Between midnight and dawn, between waking and sleeping, moonlight gathered like frost on the open panes, and, in the light, a fawnlike head reached in through the window and stared at Lemuel with wide, dark, liquid eyes. Her coat gleamed like nighttime snow, yet it was wonderfully warm to the touch when Lemuel reached up shyly to pet her nose. He realized, since his window was on the second story, that she must be standing in midair.

  She spoke in a woodwind voice: “So young? So young to have called me down from high Celebradon. In that star-surrounded citadel I stand, forever unsleeping, and watch and guard my master, forever asleep, counting years until the trumpet call shall startle him awake, and he will take up his arms and armor and leap upon my back and cry, ‘Away! For Acheron is rising from the sea! The final battle calls and all the Earth is at hazard!’“ She threw back her head and gave a wild and spirited whinny.

  Lemuel was openmouthed.

  Now the dream-colt dipped her head and said in a solemn voice: “I may leave my vigil only when the guardians of Everness, in dire need, call out to me. In dire need I go, and not for pleasure, or for pride, or for play. Now you have shamed me, little boy, for I am absent from my post without good cause. What if the Last Horn Call should sound while I am thus away? Shall my master walk afoot to Rangnarok?”