Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) (23 page)

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Authors: John C. Wright

BOOK: Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming)
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He heard Wendy’s voice call out, “You, too! Fate and War, I banish you!”
YOUR AUTHORITY EXTENDS ONLY SO FAR AS THE PRECINCTS OF THIS HOUSE, AND ONLY UNTIL MORNINGSTAR PLACES HIS BOOT UPON THE EARTH. WE ARE CONTENT TO WATT.
They vanished like nightmares.
Raven was next to Peter. Peter was petting the goat-monster, trying to get Raven’s coattails out of its teeth, going, “Good boy! Always teach your pets how to fetch! Okay! Let go, boy! We don’t want to have to ask Mr. Hammer to make you let go, do we, you dumb, stinking goat?! That’s a good boy!”
Pendrake did a flip over the balcony railing, hung by his hands for a moment, and dropped lightly to the floorboards. He walked up at about the same time Wendy floated down to Raven.
“Let’s make a plan,” said Pendrake.
Lemuel was staring up at the broken windows. “They’re out there.”
It was true. As if the funnels of tornadoes were to stand, looming between earth and sky, the three dark gods stood surrounding the house. War was to the West, with treetops around his ankles and floating chain ends writhing like blind arms. Death was to the north, one foot to either side of the range of hills in the distance. To the south was Fate, one foot on the land and one foot on the surface of the sea. All around them the twilight landscape was silent.
Pendrake said, “There’s nothing to the east.”
Lemuel said, “I suspect there is no need. The city of Acheron must be in that direction, rising from the bottom of the sea.”
Peter said, “Look! How long do we have? What have we got by way of bigger firepower? Aren’t there more magic ordinance hidden around this joint?”
Lemuel said, “Minutes only, I suspect. The Sun hid his face the moment the tallest tower of Acheron, the one called Despair, cleared the waves. The city is vast indeed, and it may take hours to rise up entirely; we may have until the planet Venus reaches the zenith. On the other hand, we may have minutes only.”
Pendrake said, “Venus doesn’t go to the zenith.”
Lemuel nodded, “Not heretofore. It shall hereafter, and if the prophecy is true, it will not sink again, but rise to become the new polestar.”
Raven said, “One question, eh? This Morningstar, you know, to get to Earth and put his foot on it. He has to walk through this house? Up from ocean, out front door?”
Lemuel said, “More or less. With the Silver Key you can make another spot with the same properties as this house.”
“Blow up house. Burn it.”
Lemuel shook his head. “After three days of dream deprivation, people begin to hallucinate; soon they die. We need the dream-world to survive, mankind does, the same way we need bread.”
Raven said, “Burn it, then remake it.”
Peter said, “What about reinforcements? The Fairy-Queen? The lios-alfar? Glinda, the Good Witch of the North?”
Lemuel said softly, “The time has come to wake the sleepers. In citadels of light they sleep, high above the Autumn Stars for these great ages of the world, prepared at last for this last day. We must blow the Last Horn Call. And perhaps Raven was right after all. We must burn and remake, if not this house, then perhaps the world.”
Silence held the group for a moment.
Lemuel said quietly, “You know, I have always hoped to be alive at these times. All the previous Guardians, I’m sure, wished for it, for their long watch against the darkness to draw to an end, to lay down the burden of the guardianship. In dreams they let me see from afar, as if from a mountainside, the shining fields and gardens that the Lords of Light will grant us as a new world to replace this lost old world. I have often wondered what it would be like to lie in those fields of clover, watching clouds roll by, in a long, golden dream, once more like it was when the world was young …”
“Maybe I can get my legs back then. Go dancing. Climb a mountain,” muttered Peter.
Pendrake said, “It will not happen.”
Like a man stirred from a dream, Lemuel said, “I beg your pardon?”
Peter said to Pendrake, “Look, pal, I didn’t believe all this shit till just a few days ago myself. But this is it. Curtain call, you know? We ain’t got what it takes to fight the big guys, these gods of darkness. Time to cut our losses and retreat to this new world.”
Wendy said, “Are you people crazy, or what? You can’t just go blowing trumpets and ending worlds like that! Let’s beat them up ourselves!”
Lemuel raised his hand, “I realize that you are not of this family, miss, and do not know the prophecies told in secret to the Guardians concerning the end of time, but we all know …”
“No.” They turned at the sudden voice. It was Galen.
Galen said, “No, we don’t. I don’t. Sorry, Grandpa, but they’re right. We have to find another way. We can’t blow the Final Horn Call.”
Lemuel smiled and said to Peter, “Perhaps we should have named him Roland.”
Peter said, “Look, son, maybe you don’t understand the situation. This family, we’re guards on post. It’s a long war, so we got to wait a few hundred years before we’re called into action. But our orders are, when the enemy is sighted, tell headquarters, blow the damn horn, and call the goddamn cavalry. Then we haul our asses out of here and go enjoy some R and R in paradise.”
Galen said angrily, “You? I don’t need you to be telling me what this family is supposed to stand for! You’re the one who walked away, not me! And if all soldiers can do is obey orders without asking questions, then maybe I don’t want to be a soldier anymore!”
Lemuel looked a little surprised, but said quietly to Peter, “Son, he might be right. I seem to recall you said a very similar thing to me just a very little while ago.”
Raven said, “Look. Am not sure we is having so much time for family squabbling now, eh? Is there plan we can make for fighting Acheron?”
Peter said, “Hey, pal! We didn’t butt in when you were having your family squabble!”
Pendrake said, “Gentlemen, please. Let’s have a little order in our discussion. Destroying the Earth by calling this celestial cavalry should be out of the question until we exhaust all other possible remedies. It will be much more difficult to overthrow Oberon’s government if we are all trapped in his paradise; but a Pyrrhie victory might still be better than no victory, so we cannot rule out blowing the Last Horn Call entirely. Agreed? Next item: finding more magic talismans to fight these three gods of darkness. Lemuel? Where and what are they?”
“The Sword of the Just, called Calipurn, and the Chalice of Hope Renewed are hidden in the Country of Gold. The Country of Gold is a special hidden section of the dream-realm, recently created by the Freemason Illuminati, so that the American Guardians could hide the talismans where no other dream-creatures could reach. The theory was that the Old World beings do not understand the American Dream. And, yes, they erected the symbols around our money. For better or worse, that is what the root of our dreams are.”
Pendrake asked, “How does that work? I would think dreams are amorphous?”
Lemuel said, “Certain symbols and ideas are permanent; certain dreams do not die. A nation or a people can have a spirit, can have a dream, that endures while the nation endures. The American Dream is in the Country of Gold. This country is an artifact, a made thing, created by men who knew my arts, in much the same way Oberon and Titania have made landscapes and castles among the dreaming. These weapons we seek are older and deeper dreams, more permanent still: the dream of justice is as old as mankind.”
“Good. Wendy’s got the Key; we can get those two,” said Pendrake.
Lemuel said, “There is a price for those. No one can lift that Sword except someone worthy to rule the Earth; no one can hold the Chalice except his heart is pure and sinless. While you might be able to hold that Sword without it destroying you; I can tell you that I am certainly not worthy to touch such a Chalice.”
Pendrake looked surprised. “I was going to have someone else get the Sword. I’m not a politician. But how sinless does a man have to be to be considered sinless? Have you ever committed murder? Theft? Adultery?”
Lemuel said, “Of course not. But out of all King Arthur’s knights …”
Peter said, “They committed murders. They were soldiers. Soldiers kill people.”
Wendy said, “He’s right, you know! Also, I don’t think knights were Christians until after King Arthur converted them. So they must have had a lot of fornication, because pagans are more fun people than Christians. And I think you are perfect for getting the Chalice, Lemuel!”
Galen said, “Grandfather, it must be you. Who of us has been steady and unwavering enough to hold onto our hope without spilling a drop?”
Pendrake said, “That’s decided.”
Lemuel said, “Wendy, find a five-dollar bill; touch the Silver Key to the reverse.”
Pendrake said, “The Chalice is in the Lincoln Memorial?”
Lemuel said, “It’s actually in the Reflecting Pool before the monument. The president who freed the slaves and reunited the Union was given custody of the talisman of Hope.”
“And the Sword?” asked Pendrake, “Let me guess. Washington?”
Lemuel said, “Wendy, touch the one-dollar bill. There is a pyramid without a crown, the edifice for a nation that bows to no earthly monarch. The hidden capstone hides the Sword.”
Pendrake said, “Let’s discuss the next point before we do anything rash. What do these talismans do?”
Galen said, “The Sword of Justice conquers the Beast called Hate. I don’t know about the Chalice …”
“Hope of Life Renewed washes away our fear of Death,” said Lemuel.
“You never told me that, grandfather …” said Galen.
Lemuel said, “I was going to wait till you were older. The temptation to misuse that cup is very great. Koschei the Deathless used to be human, you know. He used to be one of our order, a mage in the court of the Byzantine emperor.”
Pendrake said, “Does anything repel the Fate goddess?”
Lemuel said, “Not to my knowledge.”
Galen said, “Nothing except the Titan himself. That’s what Azrael told me. The Titan.”
Raven straightened up, a strange look in his eye. “Koschei called me son of Titan. Prometheus. My father saw on the mountainside. Titan of Fire. Gave to mankind. Fire. What is word in English? Enlightenment.”
Pendrake said, “Okay, we launch an expedition into the dream-lands and get the two missing talismans, find and free Prometheus. Can we do it from here? I had to go through a graveyard in Louisiana, back in my day.”
Galen said, “This house has special properties. When did you go to the dream-world?”
“It’s where I met my wife. I’ll tell the story some other time. Next, we have to discover where Acheron is specifically rising. I need to know the exact position. Do we have any magic method of finding out?”
Lemuel said, “The planetarium upstairs can tell us where any awakened magic in the world is centered. We can find Azrael’s chariot wherever it goes on Earth. But why do we want to know from what part of the sea Acheron will appear?”
Pendrake smiled. “Maybe these supernatural beings are pretty tough. Let’s see how the magic of modern science stands up to them. I have the presidential emergency launch device in my car, and can code in new targets. The bad guys foolishly disabled their own ability to override the launch signal. I can hit any spot on the planet. Let’s nuke Acheron.”
The Name of the Raven
Lemuel objected. “Such weapons are too dangerous to be used.”
Pendrake said coolly, “Really? More dangerous than Morningstar?”
Peter said, “Give it up, Dad. I’ve served with men whose lives were saved by dropping the A-bomb on Japan. Men who would have died storming the home islands. You can’t tell me you’d rather have the powers of Acheron overrunning the Earth than use a bomb. It’s just a bomb, just a tool.”
Lemuel said, “So is an electric chair a tool; so is a thumbscrew or a torture rack. It is an act of despair to say one has no choice but to use such means! Some third option will always present itself, if fate is gracious.”
Pendrake said, “And it is an act of injustice to condemn a world to hell, merely because the means to achieve victory are distasteful to you.”
Galen said, “Grandpa, fate is not on our side, this time. She works for the enemy.” He pointed out the windows at the iron-faced hag, a column of darkness that stretched from the leafless treetops of a dark earth to the black clouds in a starless heaven. “Besides, my bow might be able to cure any radiation poisoning in the area.”
Lemuel said, “What do you two say?”
Wendy shrugged. “You have to understand my daddy. He is a very serious person. He does serious things to people.”
Raven blinked. “Why are we talking? In Russia, we prayed you would blow up Moscow, prayed every day, and free us. Except, well, not allowed to pray. You know they burned the churches, killed the priests. Killed the farmers. Killed everyone. Millions die in famine that Stalin orders. My father tells me the stories. So many fewer people would have died, you Americans had blown up Moscow. But you never did. So, blow up Acheron; this seems like not such a bad idea, not to me. You have better idea, eh?”
Lemuel did not have a better idea.
Raven went up to the planetarium with Galen. Pendrake and Lemuel were with Wendy in the main tower, summoning their weapons from the dream-world. Peter, who had difficulty getting upstairs anyway, stayed in the main hall guarding the prisoners. When they had left him, Peter had been sitting near the enormous gray Seal-King, puffing on a cigarette, and then holding the butt up to the Seal-King’s whiskered muzzle. The seal would take a puff or two, and then Peter would take a puff. The seal had seemed melancholy, lying on his belly among so many corpses of his folk; but the tobacco seemed to give him a small cheer.
The door to the north tower was inscribed with zodiacal signs. To the right, hung a portrait of winged Eros embracing Psyche beneath a starry sky; a plaque beneath read, “Oh, be a fine girl, kiss me.” To the left, was a woodcut of a farmwife in a country kitchen, ladling jam out of a jar onto a slice of bread, with an eager little boy below tugging at her skirts, looking upward.
There was seven stairs of seven colors leading upward. The colored marble floor of the planetarium was inscribed with a polar projection map made perhaps two centuries ago, Latin inscriptions curled among the wind-roses; and the interiors of some of the oddly shaped continents were blank, or were drawn with mythic animals.
Seven great armatures rose like brass arches across the height of the dome above, and an intricate clockwork of cycles and epicycles held seven mirrors in the positions of the Sun, the Moon, and the planets between Saturn and Mercury.
Galen put on a white robe he found in a closet, took out a crystal orb from a locked cedar chest. This orb he put atop the tripod that stood atop the North Pole. Beneath the tripod he placed a golden lamp he took from the same chest. He said an invocation and lit a candle.
Galen extinguished his lantern, so that the golden lamp was the only light in the room. Smoke from the lamp made an intricate pattern of smudges across the lower hemisphere of the crystal ball. Rays of light from the upper hemisphere of the ball touched the prisms and mirrors that formed the major stars and the planets on the dome above. Thin, colored rays of red and cerise, blue and blue-green reached down from the dome’s heaven. Dots of tinted light rested on the world map. In places where the rays, shining down at different angles from the different planetary mirrors, overlapped, at these spots the light was white.
Galen consulted an almanac, said another set of invocations, and turned the handles of the clockwork to shift the planets into proper positions. Then, with a measuring rod, he paced off the longitude and latitude to where the colored rays formed one or two white dots.
Galen frowned down at the notebook where he had written his results, puzzled. Raven, who thought he had guessed how this magic worked, pointed up at the silver mirror representing Venus, and said, “Venus out of orbit right now, eh?”
Galen smiled in surprise.
They went out on the balcony, measured the height of Venus with an astrolabe, and then Galen carefully raised the mirror to a new calculated position on the dome with a pole.
Galen pointed at the silvery spot trembling in the mountains of Peru. “I think that smaller light there is Azrael. And see this spot up here on the coast of Maine? That’s us.”
“And this large one, eh?”
“The stronghold of the enemy. Acheron.”
Raven squatted down and looked at where the very bright white fleck of light now hovered on the floor. “Marianas Trench,” he said. “Middle of Pacific. Deepest sea trench in world.”
Neither of them had noticed Pendrake at the door until he spoke. “Get the coordinates. The aircraft carrier USS
Harry S. Truman
is in those waters; now we know why Azrael’s people ordered it there. They would have used a carrier group out of San Diego, had they not lost control of the Pacific Fleet to mutiny. The mid-Pacific! Good fortune for us; if Acheron had chosen to surface in the Aral Sea, or nearer to the Asiatic coast, our actions would start the first atomic world war.”
Raven turned, and his eyes grew wide when he saw the sword Pendrake carried, hand on hilt, naked blade against his shoulder. All the haft twinkled with diamond sparks, myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work with subtlest jewelry. The blade itself was polished to a mirror shine, so that a man would see his own face in it, were the blade close enough to strike him; and the letters etched into the blade spelled out: TAKE ME UP.
Pendrake said, “What about Prometheus?”
Raven pointed glumly to the carven map of western Russia underfoot. No glints of light were there. “We see nothing,” said Raven.
Galen said, “The gate to the dream-world must still be shut, there.”
Raven said, “Where is Wendy, eh?”
Pendrake said, “Lemuel wanted to talk to her alone. He came back from the dream-world with the Chalice, but it was covered by a white cloth, and he doesn’t want to show it to anyone. I asked him what happened when he got the cup, but he seemed really shaken up, and wouldn’t talk about it. ‘Shaken up’ isn’t quite the right word. Amazed; reverent. He only made a comment that time in the dream-world is not the way it is here, and that years can pass in a moment of dreaming.”
“And you? What did you see?” asked Galen.
Pendrake said, “I was standing at twilight on a marshy moor, with no path nor track to be seen, and up in front of me, there rose a topless pyramid of thirteen blocks. And the twilight was not coming from the sun, for there was no sun in that land, but from the eye of God, which hung above the pyramid …”
At that moment, there came a sound of drums crashing and trumpets braying, high up from outside, from the Eastern sky. The noise resolved itself into a tritonal chord, and the source of the eerie music passed from west to east in the heavens, diminished in the distance, and was gone.
Raven was clutching his ears, looking upward at the dome’s ceiling, eyes staring and mouth a-gape. Galen started to draw his bow and then lowered it with shaking hands. The arrow fell from his string and lay gleaming on the marble.
Pendrake frowned thoughtfully. “Mr. Waylock? Galen … ?”
Galen whispered, “They were the seven Amshaspands of Acheron; Taurvi, Zairicha, Khurdad, Murdad, and two others. They are released from the tower called ‘Injustice’ to herald the coming of the empire of darkness; the drums they beat are made from the hides of apostate martyrs. It means that the tops of three of the towers, those of the central keep, must be above water at this point, though the gates should still be under. We have a lot less time than Grandpa thought.”
Pendrake said, “Let’s move it.”
Raven said, “How are we finding Prometheus?”
Pendrake said, “Your father is still alive?”
Raven blinked. “Sure. Lives in New York City. He …”
“Call him. He knows where the Titan is.”
Galen said, “No phones in this old place. And my cabin out there is trashed.”
Pendrake, without speaking, took a matte black cellular phone out from a cloak pocket, unfolded it with a flick of his wrist, tossed it to Raven.
Raven wondered why a strange sense of nervousness began to crawl over him as he started to dial.
Wendy followed Lemuel into a small room paneled in carven woodcuts. He carried no lantern; the pulse of rosy light breathing out from underneath the large, white veil that draped the chalice cast a fog of light about his feet as he walked, and shadows played along the ceiling.
Wendy watched as Lemuel carefully slid shut the panel behind him. She said, “Okay! I’m ready. What do I have to do?”
Lemuel bent his stiff knees with a grunt, and motioned for Wendy to kneel. Wendy whispered, “Is this going to be religious?”
Lemuel smiled sadly. “It might be easier if it were. I was hoping we would not fall so far if we fainted. But perhaps that is why people knelt when they saw holy things to begin with.”
He put the Chalice carefully down on the floor between them, and the veil stirred and its edges rippled weightlessly, as if the pressure of the light were living in it.
“Now, Wendy, you are a very nice girl, and this should be no problem for you … not … not like I had … don’t be nervous …”
Wendy could not think of anything he could have said that would have made her more nervous. A tremble went up her spine.
Lemuel closed his eyes for a long moment, as if he were praying. Then he opened them slowly and looked deeply into Wendy’s eyes, and he said, “Wendy, please keep in mind that everything we do and say in this life, and even everything we think, is being watched and judged. Judged to see if we will abide by that law which is written into every man’s heart from the day he is born. This law has two parts. Men have thoughts and reason, to tell them about the world we know, and any rational man knows he must treat others as he himself wishes to be treated. That is the Golden Rule and it is the law of this world.”
He continued, “Men also have feelings and intuitions to tell them that, even if this world we know does not enforce this law, some other world, some next world, a world we don’t know, ought to enforce it. We don’t know what happens after death. Where we don’t know, we can only hope, or despair. We either hope, without evidence, that there is a life after death; or we fear, equally without evidence, that there is not.”
Then he said, “Remember what you say is being judged. And tell me whether you have hope in life after death.”
Wendy laughed.
She said, “Well, of course! Don’t be silly!”
Lemuel licked his lips. He said, “Yes …? And why?”
Wendy rolled her eyes, as if he had asked her the most obvious thing in the world. “If there is nothing after this life, then nobody’s story, not a single person’s, would have a happy ending, right? And every story with a happy ending would just be a lie. And then there wouldn’t be any point in going on with the story, would there? There wouldn’t be any point in anything.”
Now she smiled like sunshine: “But we all know what happy endings are. We’ve always known, everybody. Happiness is real. It’s the only thing that really is, isn’t it?”
Lemuel looked slightly puzzled, and perhaps fearful, as if this were not the answer he’d expected; but his fear turned unexpectedly to joy when he saw the veil stirring and lifting.
Silently, with no hand to touch it, the white cloth floated up, dancing, away from the Chalice, made buoyant by the streams and pulses of light that now inundated the room.
Lemuel’s eyes began to water from the brightness of it; but he dared not look away. Wendy, her face transfixed with joy beyond all smiling, looked down at the Chalice.
It was a simple cup with a broad bowl, deep and generous, standing on a square stem, and it was made all of smooth ivory, so that the light that beat through the sides and smoky stem dyed all things rosy red. But the light itself within was diamond and prismatic, for it was a pool of pearls and flock of burning butterflies.
Wendy had seen such a light before; in Galen’s hand or being pushed by Raven’s breathe back into Galen’s body. It was the light of living souls, a multitude of abundant lights. She wondered what great spirit, or what man, had put so much, a living force equal to so many lives, into this cup of hope, that others might one day drink of it.
Where that light fell, the wooden carving on the wall immediately burst into the buds and flowers of each type of tree from which those planks had come. Her cotton skirt put forth bolls and cotton flowers. She giggled when she saw her patent leather shoes grow hair.
Then, her face all solemn, and her eyes all shining with delight, without waiting to be asked, Wendy put down her head and drank her fill.
Strangely, the more she drank, the more the cup seemed to hold, until it overflowed the brim.
When she and Lemuel left the little closet, there was a sapling growing up in the spot where the cup had spilled, and the little closet was filled with leaves and springtime air.
Because Wendy went skipping and floating up ahead of him, laughing for joy and kicking away her shoes, Lemuel was left behind; and he was alone when he heard the monstrous drum beats thunder from the east, and the shriek of strange trumpets pass by overhead, traveling west.
His face was pale with fear, which the rosy light from the Chalice could not blush red again. Lemuel tucked the cup, swathed in its long white veil, beneath his arm as he ran upstairs.

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