The Last Guardian of Everness

by John C. Wright

  Now Raven pointed. “Third group goes toward north wing, there. Twenty men, five women. Second group goes south wing, there. Ten men. First group goes straight ahead down this road. Thirty-five men, two of them carrying heavy burdens. If I was having more light, I could tell you more.”

  “God, I wish I had had a man like you when I was out on patrol.”

  “Also, there, a group of tracks leaves main body. Six men go off, seven men come back. New man is young, wearing sneakers, has robe or cape which brushes the ground, walks with a walking stick. But he walks, you know, stately. He is leader. Is Azrael.”

  Peter said, “We can’t just go straight in if they left a perimeter patrol. But we’re dealing with a mixed command, probably not in radio contact with each other, and they’re attacking a fortified position.”

  “Your house is fortified?”

  “No, but if they’re smart they’ll act like it is. That means their attention will be forward; they’ll be trying to stop people from getting out, not people from getting in. Also, if their communication is bad, their fronts may overlap or have gaps. We gotta find one of those gaps. We should try the spot between the north and east wing, a place called the Chamber of Middle Dreaming. There’s an entrance there, but it’s not a main door, where, my guess is, the enemy will be concentrating their firepower.”

  “You forget, though. Azrael or Galen know house as well as you know.”

  To their right, south of the house, silhouetted between themselves and the spreading flames, they saw something huge walking slowly—something gigantic, with torches in either hand.

  Raven doused the light.

  Peter drew out his gun and swore. “I can’t get ‘em without giving away our position.” He gestured off through the chest-high bushes.

  “Let’s go that way. If you’re strong enough to get me through the brush, do it. Otherwise, leave me, and I’ll get to the house on my own.”

  “Ha! Strength is one thing I do not lack!” And he picked up the wheelchair, Peter and all, and crashed though the bushes.

  He pushed the wheelchair across the lawn but could not travel at any very quick rate, and the wheels became tangled as they sank into the long grass.

  Peter said, “Leave me. I’m slowing you up.”

  Raven heard the slight tremor in his voice as he said it, as if this admission were the most difficult and heartbreaking to utter.

  Raven said, “I—”

  Then he heard a scream from the house, his wife’s voice, calling his name.

  “Sorry, Peter!” And he sprinted away.

  “Damn you! Take the gun!” Peter shouted. And then he clapped his hand over his mouth.

  Running over the lawns to the north of the house, Raven made no more noise than a leaf blowing across the grass. He vaulted over a low wall with a swirl of his cape, landing in the garden beyond, out of Peter’s sight.

  There was a movement in the shadows near Peter, a rustling from the bushes behind him. But Raven had disappeared with the lantern, and he could not see what was coming.

  II

  In the garden, near the garden gate, Raven came across tracks of six men going one direction, seven men the other. Here was where Azrael had met the leaders from the three groups.

  He risked a moment of light, saw tangled and bloody leaves. Strange. Here were additional tracks, converging on the first set; creatures with webbed claws, or wearing square-toed, ill-fitting shoes. From the way the weight was distributed in the shoe print, Raven knew whatever foot had been forced into these shoes was not human. These creatures had come stealthily upon the group with Azrael, meeting them in the grove beyond the rhododendron bushes.

  There were tiny hoofprints also, as if from a deer which appeared in the middle of the dirt path, prints appearing as if the deer had come out of nowhere. Raven looked again and found small spots of rich purple blood in the dirt, but no other deer tracks leading up or leading away; Azrael’s track led away from the place the deer appeared; but not toward. Another mystery.

  He doused the light, crept forward, parted the bushes before him.

  He saw a black, narrow shadow dressed in dead man’s bones, stinking of grave dirt, crowned with severed hands. Koschei’s back was toward Raven, and Koschei was bent over the bloody, skinless corpses of six men strewn in pools of fresh blood across the grass.

  The men’s veins and muscles stood out on their flayed flesh, and blood welled up from between their bones and organs. The corpses were heaped in postures of agony and terror, as they had been when they died.

  There were lights like the glimmer of fireflies coming from Koschei’s hand. This and the light from the pinpoints of his eyes were the only light illuminating the scene. Raven, from his angle, could see twin circles of pale, ghastly light caressing the corpses, shining wherever Koschei turned his head.

  With his fingernail, Koschei slit open a dead man’s leg and drew out the thighbone, which he began to attach to the breastplate of his armor.

  He bent down and began to slice open the man’s chest with long, smooth strokes of his fingernails.

  “Cold! Always so cold . . .” The hissing, solemn voice murmured to itself: “Why should they have the warmth of their marrowbones inside them? Why does that warmth never sink into me? I need more bones. More bones. The bones of the little Wendy girl are rich with warmth and joy . . .I must have their living warmth to cloak me from my infinite, deep cold. . .”

  Another voice from the small trees opposite: “Ar! Ye jackal! No cloak can warm you when your bones are ice.”

  A manlike creature came forth from the trees, carrying a bloody burden. He was dressed in a seaman’s coat of splendid cut, with double rows of glinting buttons climbing his broad chest and crossed twin sashes holding cutlass and flintlock. Atop his powered wig he wore an admiral’s bicorne hat with a ruff of feathers along the crest. He had a whiskered face of black fur, eyes of a beast, white, sharp teeth.

  He dropped his load: the carcass of a seal pup, rolling on the ground.

  “Mannannan the Seal King be here, in some disguise or other. No one else of our kind is supposed to kill our kind. ‘Tis him indeed! Look at the size of those teeth marks deep in the neck.”

  “What is that to me, shape-thief ?”

  The seal-man kicked Koschei with his foot, and the shadowy being fell in a clatter of bones to crouch at his feet like a monstrous spider or an angular pool of darkness.

  The seal-man said, “Hoy! Ha, ha! Perhaps our good Mannannan does not want any of us to know he’s here, you grave-robbing carrion. You despoil my friend’s body here, and where’s the evidence? All are innocent where no evidence can be trusted, that’s our law. Mannannan might like that, I think.”

  “The White Hart Slayer has said Mannannan should not be at this battle.”

  “Garn! Him? He ha’ain’t even pierced the wards yet, while we’ve got a man inside already, I hear. Ha har! Him with a drop of the North Star’s Blood in his pocket, and he can’t even throw a hex over a threshold unless those inside ask him.”

  “The wards are but the first of the three defenses of Everness, shape- stealer.”

  “Shut your yap, bone-licker, tomb-robber, corpse-eater! Not a word of power has been spoken yet by those inside, and there’s not many of those, I hear, except the pretty little lass the Seal King wants. They don’t know how to wake the lightning or make the rocks get up and dance, no sir! They’ve all forgotten! Ha! We selkie-folk will trick those wards, you’ll see, and be feasting in the main hall while the Wizard is still scratching at windows begging to be invited in! Ha Har! We’ll cook our feast on bonfires made of wizard’s books! Burn them books and burn our records clean; there be no past, and no crimes neither, once all memories of it be gone.”

  Another fit of barking laughter. Then the seal-man said: “Hark! Is that the girl screaming? ‘Tis the Seal-King, I’ll warrant. He’s none too gentle in his love play, and might give the wench a few nips before he takes her, ha ha!”

 
; Raven heard Wendy’s voice again, shrill and frightened, calling his name. He had no weapons, and he did not know where the doorway was from this part of the garden. He needed Peter to show him the way.

  Raven, silent as a passing shadow, crept away and slid back over the wall and ran, heart bursting with fear and anger, across the lawn to where he had left Peter.

  There was no one there.

  III

  There was no way to hide the tracks from a wheelchair. Raven bent to the grass, risking showing the flashlight, and ran.

  He went back to the main road, were all the booted feet had dragged the wheelchair, turned off the light, went forward.

  Raven slipped on hands and knees through the hedge next to the front doors of the west wing. Here a group of four helmeted figures armed with automatic rifles, wearing bulky fatigues, was guarding the door. One of them had a lantern.

  Raven put his head down and crept closer. He could hear, but leaves blocked his view.

  From inside, Raven could hear the tramp of booted feet, the noise of wood and glass being smashed, hoarse voices calling out.

  Peter was here, arguing. Raven could only hear Peter’s voice, which carried.

  “What kind of Federal Military Police? No such thing. . . Yeah . . . Well, where’s your warrant?. . . Don’t have a warrant, eh? Yeah? Arrested for what? . . . It wasn’t concealed, I had it in my God damned hand! Besides, since when is that a federal crime?. . . I’ll say I’ll talk to your superior! And to my congressman, and maybe to your undertaker! Okay! Give me your names!. . . I’m a U.S. citizen, and I’ve made a lawful request! How do I know you’re not just hoodlums dressed up, till you show me some God damned ID?!”

  Then he heard Peter’s voice, softer: “Morpheus! Spirits of the world, witness they have rendered me their names! Knock them out!”

  And so when Raven stood up, he saw Peter leaning out of his wheelchair, lifting the rifles out of the hands of the unconscious men snoring on the ground around him.

  IV

  Raven saw four figures prone on the ground, snoring. Closer, he saw they were dressed in heavy, black riot gear, with slabs of Kevlar material strapped to their chest and back. They carried M-16’s. Their helmets were blue. Letters on the back of their jackets read MORS. They did not have badges, nametags, shoulder patches, or any other insignia. Oddly, they all carried ragged-looking brown leaves tucked in their front shirt pockets, and one man had a wreathe of the shaggy leaves.

  “Who are this men here?” asked Raven. “Riot police? Soldiers?”

  “No. Crooks of some sort, dressed up. This is America. Soldiers don’t arrest noncombatants on U.S. soil. Look, there, just below his collarbone, where his shirt does not cover. See that?”

  “Burn mark?”

  “Witch mark. Some of the screwy stuff my dad made me remember, way back when. There was a little rhyme for each type of mark. Anyway, this is the kind of mark made when a person swears to a warlock.”

  “What is? What does this mean, eh?”

  “It means they volunteered. They signed a blood-contract thing. Here. You know how to use one of these?”

  “No, but I know pistols.”

  Peter tossed a pistol to him.

  “Catch! And pick up that necklace of leaves that one guy is wearing— it must be some sort of magic IFF.”

  Raven sniffed it. “I know this smell. What is you call this? Eye-eff-eff ? This is tobacco.”

  “Identify friend or foe. Like a password. Tobacco leaf cures elf-curse. Okay! Inside!”

  Raven pulled Peter’s chair up the stairs and through the shattered doors. Raven put the wheels of Peter’s chair back on the floorboards, and took the push handles of the chair back in his hands. Then they were off, wheels humming, moving at a quick trot through a vast hall decorated with spears and swords.

  “Peter! You are knowing how to wake the three defenses of Everness, yes?”

  “Shit, no. There’s one for earth, one for air, one for fire. That’s all I remember. I think the air one is a magic ward that keeps all the nasties out.”

  They came into a hall with many doors and corridors leading off it. Some of the corridors were merely wall decorations, shallow illusions carved only a few inches into the wall. The light was dim; dawn was still fifteen or twenty minutes away.

  “Which way?”

  “Look up! Follow anything with a sea motif, sea birds, ships, that sort of thing. It’ll get us into the east wing.”

  “The monsters not get in till the wards break.”

  “I’m not worried about the goddamned monsters. I’m worried about the make-believe infantry. They may be imposters, but they’ve got at least some training, and they move and cover each other like—”

  The noise of gunfire echoed through the house, shockingly loud.

  Raven started sprinting, pushing the wheelchair. Peter was saying, “Damn! That’s a thirty-ought-six! Wasn’t what the infantry were carrying; must be one of the other groups. That heavy slug will go through these walls like nothing!” And he worked the action on the two automatic rifles he was carrying, one in either hand, first one, then the other. The third rifle was lying across his lap, with spare clips tucked into his shirt pockets.

  They came to stairs leading up past a cluster of windows on a landing, to the next floor.

  “Go on ahead!” shouted Peter.

  “Hang on to your chair! I carry you up!”

  “You can’t! With this chair I weigh a ton!”

  “Watch me!” Raven knelt down backwards, put his hands on the handles of the wheelchair, leaned forward, stood. His face was dark with exertion, his eyes bright, his teeth like a glint of lightning in the darkness of his beard.

  “I don’t know about this . . . Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Watch the head!”

  And Raven turned and ran up the stairs, in huge, lunging, lumbering steps, carrying Peter on his back.

  Suddenly, from overhead came a rumble, and beams of torchlight from outside played along the walls.

  Peter shouted, “Something at the window behind us! Look out!”

  But Raven did not slow his massive, lumbering run. The noise of gunfire from a foot above his ear was deafening, and the recoil made the chair kick and jump on his shoulders. Peter fired in short, controlled bursts; glass shattered; the torchlight went dark, and screams echoed from outside.

  The recoil knocked Raven forward; he stumbled on the last two stairs. The wheelchair flew from his grasp, slid across the landing, but stayed upright, rolling to a crash against the balcony rails.

  Raven picked himself up off his face. “You all right?”

  Peter, smoking rifle in one hand, twisted his wheels with the other, turning around away from the cracked balcony. “Just fine, pal.”

  “What the hell was that?” The torn and shattered windows on the balcony below were dripping shards of glass. Whatever had been there was gone now.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Where now?”

  The corridor stretched before them. To their left, three glass doors opened out onto a musicians’ gallery overlooking a huge chamber with stars and moons carven into the roof. There was fire light coming in from the ground-floor windows below, cries and calls from a huge crowd, invisible from this angle.

  The fire light illuminated the two statues beside the bed.

  “Aw, shit!”

  “What is wrong, Peter?”

  “Someone’s blindfolded the statues!”

  “Little elf did this. Is bad?”

  “That’s St. George and what’s her name, the Red War Queen. It’s part of the House defense. Wait! Come back here!”

  But Raven had already gone through the doors and was vaulting over the edge of the balcony to fall down to the floor below. He landed lightly as a cat in a great flutter of dark cape and raced across the room toward the statues. In his memory were ringing the words: “The terror of my sword shall hold back the monsters of the night, if God so wills, while St. George and Maelin the Red
War Queen watch over me.”

  Raven ripped the blindfold off the first statue’s eyes, whispering, “You can see again, St. George! Watch over him once more!”

  A figure sleeping on the bed, unseen in the dark shadows cast by the torchlight, moaned and stirred.

  Raven heard Wendy scream once more, sounding almost directly overhead. “Tom! No! Get back in here!”

  Peter’s voice, from the balcony across the room: “Bad shit happening.” And he heard the click-clack as Peter worked his bolt.

  Raven turned.

  Outside, in front of him, he saw through the broad windows was a scene from nightmare. A rout of monsters and evil things were capering, waving torches, seal-men and stern knights with dripping swords, giants, other creatures. Down from some unseen balcony above, climbing down a rope, came a small elf, holding Lemuel Waylock’s sleeping body by the collar of his nightshirt, somehow, impossibly, carrying the whole weight with his tiny hand.

  From overhead and behind him, Raven heard guttural human voices: “Hey, look! An old fucker with a gun! Waste him!”

  Raven turned in time to see Peter framed in the balcony doors, with rifles in both hands, firing on full auto, down the corridor to the right at some target invisible to Raven. Screams rose above the deafening sound of gunfire. The recoil kicked Peter’s wheelchair backwards to the left, and Raven heard the terrible noise of Peter and his chair falling down stairs.

  The voice of Azrael de Gray, from some place outside, thundered across the area: “Spirits of the world! Lemuel Waylock has not slept this full night in the place appointed! His claim to the guardianship is forfeit! Peter Waylock has renounced his claim! I, Galen Waylock, now claim all the rights, powers and perquisites of the Guardianship! I anoint myself the Guardian of Everness!”

  A trumpet blew.

  Wendy shouted from overhead, but Raven could not hear the words. Raven called out. “Peter! Are you alive?”