The Last Guardian of Everness

by John C. Wright

  Raven heard birdsong. Going to the window, he saw the sky was pale, although the earth was still in night’s shadow. The sun was below the horizon, but eastern clouds were tinted pink against the fading stars.

  Dawn had woken him as it always did, despite his desire to sleep longer.

  “Doctor du Lake not back yet,” yawned Raven. “And where is wife? Where—ah?!” Now he peered through the window, one hand on the shoulder plate of the samurai, one hand on the sill.

  A section of brick wall had fallen to rubble. There were footprints, larger than an elephant’s tracks, leading through the dust and shards of broken brick.

  Raven hunched in the window like a hunting cat, and his nape hairs prickled. His eyes moved back and forth across the scene, but no other part of him moved, except, perhaps, the hairs of his mustache as he grimaced.

  Without a rustle of his gray cape, he slipped away from the window and left the room, moving quickly on silent feet. It was still as dark as night inside the house, but Raven had keen eyes and found his way. He descended a spiral stair half-hidden in an archway, and came into a chamber with roof- beams carven with silver stars and crescent moons.

  The tall windows at the far end were gray with faint light. Raven took a boar-spear down from the wall where it hung on pegs, then sharply turned his head.

  There were two statues flanking the four-poster bed: one of a man in chain mail, the other of a woman in helmet, kilt, and breatplate. The man had his foot on a snake that curled around his leg, and was stabbing the snake with a spear.

  Tom O’Lantern stood on the woman’s shoulder plate, tying a cloth around the woman statue’s head. The man statue likewise had already had a blindfold wound around his helmet.

  “Tom!” said Raven, his hand on the French doors. “Go find Wendy and make sure she is safe. Tell her I am going out. Have her watch sleeping Grampa! I must hunt. Something evil has climbed over the wall in the night.”

  “Has it, now? Something evil? Well, fancy that!”

  But Raven had gone.

  III

  Raven bent to touch his fingertips against the broken grass stems in the gardens. The footprint had been huge, larger than an elephant’s, round and toe- less, but manlike in its stride. Raven’s nostrils curled at a faint, strange odor.

  Uphill and downhill he traced the tracks, despite the dimness of the light, a dim shadow himself in his long gray cape, passing without a rustle through the grass. Had the tracks been less large and clear, he could not have followed them by fading starlight.

  Raven saw the steps were irregular; the creature had been wounded. When he saw, here and there, greenish-white droplets on the ground, he wondered at them. Taking up one from a leaf on a fingertip, he touched it to his tongue. The creature’s blood was made of bitter frost, salt like the sea, and smelled of copper. Because of the gloom (for the sun had not yet risen), Raven lost the trail across the lawn beyond the garden; but he continued in a straight line to the woods; and now he saw where branches and twigs two times his height had been shouldered aside, bent, and snapped.

  It was a trail too broad to miss. On he ran, spear in hand, and the half-cape of his coat fluttered at his shoulders, cold wind in his beard and hair.

  It grew darker. Wondering if somehow the dawn were turning backwards, Raven looked up. But no; a feather-light cold touched his face; first one drop, then another. It was beginning to snow, and clouds were smothering the coming dawn.

  Now it was black as pitch. Raven turned his head from side to side. In each direction, he heard birdsong, in each direction save one. In that direction, he heard birds cry out their danger calls, heard the flurry of wings. His sharp ears caught the sound of a hare thrumming its hind leg against the ground, the warning signal of its kind.

  On he went, feeling his way with his boar-spear as a blind man’s cane. Then, in the distance, he saw a light.

  It was a few more moments till he reached that light. Here he saw a strange scene.

  IV

  The wood bordered an asphalt road. In the ditch, two wheels aloft, was a van Raven recognized. One headlight was smashed and blinded; the other shot its beam up at a crazy angle into the falling snow. The front window was cracked, the roof dented and caved in.

  The road for a dozen yards around the van was slick with caked ice. Icicles hung from glittering branches, and snow touched all with frost. But only nearby; further off, the road was clear.

  A huge bulk loomed in the gloom behind the van, gleaming white. For a moment, as it rounded the van, the reflections from the single headlight illumined it; though the thing would not step into the beam itself, but raised a broken tree branch as a club, to shatter the light.

  Raven saw a monstrous thing, twice as tall as a tall man, or more, with hide that glistened like pale ice. What he thought at first were whiskers were no more than the clustered icicles flowing down from the mouth slit of the neckless, domelike skull that crowned the apparition. There was no face; or, rather, the faceplate of thick ice was broken only by two slits for eyes; a wider slit, as if for a mouth, below.

  Then the headlight was gone. Immediately the taillights blinked on. Now only the periodic yellow flickers from the taillight’s emergency blinkers lit the scene. A gunshot rang out, but Raven’s heart leapt for joy, for he knew Peter was still alive inside his van.

  A dim, huge shadow, the giant glided back. Now came a noise like rushing arctic wind, and cold struck Raven that was so bitter that tears came to his eyes, and he gasped for breath.

  The yellow light blinked off, then on, then off. It was dark, then dim, then dark again. Raven squinted at the huge rounded silhouette, at the pale clouds streaming out from its faceplate. The giant was breathing on the van, and flurries of snow grew on everything in the area: the broken van, the road, the grass, the trees.

  Raven waited for a moment of darkness, and dashed across the road on silent feet, entering the woods on the far side. It was the work of a few moments (dark, then dim, then dark again) for him to move through tangled brush and dry twigs to a point somewhat behind the squat bulk of the monster, and he made no more noise than a hunting fox.

  Behind the giant, Raven was out of the wind it blew, and while he was still cold, it no longer hurt his lungs to breathe. He knew Peter, at the heart of that wind, could not survive the blast for long.

  The yellow light blinked off. Raven rushed out from the trees, boar- spear in both hands, silently running, his gray half-cape like wings. The light returned; he braced his legs; he roared; he struck.

  The spear blade skittered off icy plates armoring the monster’s huge rounded back, but skipped up and lodged within the armpit.

  It was dark. Raven, shouting, threw his weight behind the spear and drove the point home.

  The monster made no noise, but it turned its domelike head with massive slowness. Raven saw the creature’s noseless profile; then it was dark; then he saw the faceless face. The thing’s head turned like an owl’s.

  Dark; Raven’s palms stung as the giant swatted the spear out of his hands with a sweep of its club. He heard the spear haft snap.

  Light; the spear point was still lodged in the armpit. One arm hung limp and useless; the other raised the huge wooden truncheon.

  Dark; Raven stepped back, slipped, caught himself on his fingertips, his knees not quite on the ground, his movements making noise. No blow came yet.

  Light; for a moment, the blank eyeslits looked down at where Raven crouched on snowy grass. Raven stared back up at that featureless, inhuman face. There was a long hiss as the giant drew in its breath.

  Raven felt backward with his foot, found a rock not slippery with snow. “Now I know how Wendy’s elf must feel, I think.”

  Dark; the blast of freezing wind from the giant’s mouth slit struck Raven with shocking cold. He heard the truncheon whistling toward him.

  Raven jumped, pushing off the rock, and the blow missed him, but caught the long tails of the cape he wore, throwing Raven from his feet
and sending him across the icy road.

  Light; the giant, massive and quiet as an iceberg, drifted across the road toward him, truncheon raised. Raven scrambled for the ditch, his fingers clawing icy road.

  Dark; Raven fell into the ditch beneath the van, where, he hoped, the giant could not reach him.

  Silence.

  Light; the giant was in the middle of the road, truncheon lowered, tilting its huge, faceless head as if listening.

  Dark; Raven waited in the cold for huge hands to topple the van or to sweep under the wheels like a man sweeping under the couch with a broomstick to kill a mouse hiding there.

  Light; the giant had turned and was slowly gliding away off down the road. It was dark again, then light. The giant was lost in the darkness, hidden in the curtain of falling snow. But Raven saw its slow, painful movement, and wondered how severe its wound had been.

  Darkness; the blinkers had been shut off.

  A flashlight beam came down from overhead. “Hope you’re okay.”

  “Am okay.”

  “Good. You got to help me out. Lost one cane, and my forklift won’t come off the back at this crazy angle.”

  V

  Raven stood up, bruised, aching, but miraculously unhurt. Through shattered windows he saw Peter on his belly, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other. The hand that held the flashlight had a metal cane dangling from one wrist.

  “Thanks. Saved my life. Won’t forget it. Just in time, too.”

  “What is happening? What are these strange things happening?”

  “Well, Big Whitey there pushed my van off the road with its hands when I ran into it. Broke my drive train. But it could not get into the van unless I invited it (I guess it thought the van was a type of house), but it whacked out my windows and was waiting for me to freeze.”

  “But what is that giant thing?”

  “A giant.”

  “Oh.” Raven stroked his beard. “Why did spear hurt it, but bullets bounce off ?”

  “Don’t know. My guess is, it knew what spears were, not bullets. Believed in spears. Something like that. Don’t know why it left when it was winning, either. You going to help me down or stand there jawing?”

  By the time Raven had carried Peter out of the wrecked van, put him down, gotten out the wheelchair, picked him up, and put him in it, a dot of flickering yellow light coming toward them through the forest became clear; it was a man, carrying fire in one hand.

  As he came closer, Raven saw it was Galen Waylock, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, with a purple bedsheet tied around his shoulders like a cape. On a string around his neck he wore six tiny metal disks that looked like parts taken out of a machine. In one hand was a broomstick; in the other, a frying pan held burning rags that smelled of oil. It was from this the firelight came. Galen glanced at it every few moments as he came forward, lips pursed in concentration.

  Now he looked up. “Father, the High House is under attack. We must go to it. Have I your permission?”

  “The house can go to the devil for all I care!”

  Galen blinked. “You renounce your claim to it, then?”

  Raven laid a warning hand on Peter’s shoulder and started to speak, but Peter said angrily, “The house can go jump into the sea for all I care! I want to know what you think you were doing with Emily!”

  Raven said softly in his ear, “Is not Galen! Man named Azrael de Gray is taken over his body!”

  “Eh? How do you know?” he whispered back.

  “Wendy said so! You know, my crazy wife.”

  “That’s good enough for me!” grunted Peter, and he started to draw his gun.

  Galen pointed with his broomstick. “Morpheus! Somnus!” Peter’s right hand went numb, and he dropped the gun, yawning. He dropped the flashlight and held up his left hand, middle fingers curled, pinky and forefinger extended. The light struck pavement and went out. Peter was yelling, “Apollo! Hyperion! Helion!”

  Raven, unafraid, meanwhile, rushed forward across the road, hands up, ready to take the boy in a flying tackle.

  Galen threw the frying pan into the snow. The light extinguished, all was utterly black. Raven swept the area with his arms, but felt nothing.

  Raven crouched, listening. No one can walk in snow without making noise; yet he heard no one.

  But by the time Peter found his dropped flashlight and turned it back on, Galen was gone.

  Peter said, “How soon till sun up?”

  Raven sniffed the air. “This time of year? Half an hour, maybe less. Why?”

  “His power will be weakest at dawn, especially dawn on a Sunday. He must be in a dreadful hurry. He’s got to get into the house in the next half hour. I think he’s got other people with him, other human beings, I mean. We gotta get there first. You got good legs?”

  And then they were rushing down the road. Raven was sprinting at top speed, his legs pumping like pistons, pushing the wheelchair, its wheels humming, while Peter sat leaning forward, arms straight out before him, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, its beam twinkling in the falling snow.

  Then Raven said, “Wendy!”

  And he ran even faster.

  17

  The

  Slaying

  of the

  Unicorn

  I

  Wendy found the room she was sure was the right one; it seemed just perfect for a sitting room. Here were large, comfortable chairs, a low table, a couch. Above the huge fireplace was a coat of arms of a winged horse atop crossed keys. Opposite was a portrait of a stern-eyed, harsh-faced, dark- haired man, holding a skull in his lap. This skull was as delicate as a deer’s, with a single spiral horn rising slender from its center.

  The portrait seemed screwed to the wall, and, holding up the miniature lamp, Wendy searched in vain for some hidden catch or latch. But the silver light showed no such thing.

  Wendy was stumped. She went to the corner and stood on her head, her skirts falling up about her shoulders. After her face was red, she righted herself and sat with her face screwed up, fingers tapping her temples.

  “I’ve got it!” Her eyes popped open. “The talisman must be beyond the picture in the dream-realm. I’ve got to go to sleep and step into the picture in the dream realm to get the things! (I always get such good ideas if my brain feels all filled up.)”

  Even though she was very tired, she thought a fire would cheer up the room. It took her only a few minutes to find faggots of firewood piled in a strange little closet down the hall, as well as a tinder box. The fire starter was shaped like a grinning dragon.

  In a few more minutes, she was curled up before a blazing fire. Wendy had pulled up the bearskin rug; the fur was heavy, warm, and soft.

  As she lay on the couch, staring up at the dark-eyed man, his frightening eyes seemed to shift and stir in the firelight. Wendy turned around on the couch and put her head on the other arm rest, so that she was looking at the winged horse instead.

  The lantern burned like a star on the mantelpiece. “Wonder how you turn that thing off ?” she yawned. “Gee, I wish I had brought a book to read from the library.”

  Then she said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if Raven found me like this? ‘Vife, vat you doink, sleepink on de job like dis?’ ‘Gee, Raven, I was searching for the talismans!’ Heh, heh.”

  Her eyes half closed, and her unbound hair lay spread across the white bearskin fur. “I wish Raven were here to tuck me in, to kiss and cuddle me. He’s so strong! He can pick me up in one hand. Mm. And hold me down in one hand so I can’t get away. My Raven!”

  And then she was asleep.

  II

  Wendy got up and found the curved metal hook that held the picture to the wall, even though she had searched that place before. But there it was now, glinting in the firelight. She undid the hook, and the picture swung open on hinges.

  III

  Beyond was a forest of slim, silvery trees, with slender leaves as white as snow; a forest as beautiful and pale as a grove of cher
ry trees in blossom, and scented with subtle perfumes; and the air was cool and fresh to make every breath a delight. Bright as broadest daylight, but without shadows, was the light, so that everything was clear and pristine to the eye; and, nonetheless, the stars above showed clear as diamond points.

  It was no forest known to Earth.

  And all things, the trees, the grass, the outcroppings of precious stones, seemed each and every one to be most perfect, being each one as it was truly meant to be, as if its shadows down on Earth were no more than reflections or reminders, intended to recall to human eyes the things the human soul knew could exist in higher worlds, the way a picture in a locket was intended to remind one of one’s true love, when that love was far away, but had promised to return.

  Wendy had walked a short way into that forest of pure beauty when her happiness turned to horror and dread. The sky went dark, as if blotted out by clouds, and the petals of the pure white leaves began to turn and fall. Like maple leaves in autumn, these white leaves turned red as blood in midair, and soon the grass was covered as if with rubies.

  And somehow, Wendy knew, this autumn would never find a spring; that, unlike earthly trees, which perish and return each year, these trees, intended for eternal spring, would pass into unending icy winter, never to wake again.

  Wendy fell weeping, shedding tears as thick as falling leaves.

  As the leaves turned and fell, Wendy began to see a delicate shape outlined against the nearby trees, invisible erenow against a background which had been unstained white, now becoming more clear as more leaves bled from naked twigs.