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Authors: John C. Wright

Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) (24 page)

BOOK: Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming)
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Var sat nodding in his threadbare but comfortable armchair in his small apartment, petting the cat that purred in his lap. He knew he had trouble staying awake nowadays, but, on this day of all days, he had set the two alarm clocks that stood clicking on the mantlepiece, ticking loudly in the quiet little room.
He had not shaved or cut his hair in many, many days, and now his hair lay like a blanket of snow across his shoulders, and the cat was batting at the long curls of the white beard.
The chair faced the window, outside of which there was a little park, the only spot of greenery to be found in acres of surrounding concrete, glass, and steel. Sometimes children played there. Var found it more interesting than television, which stood neglected in the corner where he had pushed it the last time it had broken.
The stove had also broken long ago. Atop the stove stood the electric hotplate and saucepan upon which he warmed the cans of soup he ate for his meals. At times, he got the impulse to walk down to the corner shop to drink a cup of coffee or eat a plate of scrambled eggs made by his friend Hezikiah; sometimes he was actually in his burly coat and pacing slowly down the sidewalk before he recalled that the corner shop had closed four years ago, and that Hezikiah had died five years ago.
Above the window was thumbtacked his calendar, which, page after page, he had waited through, crossing off the days until this one, the day circled in gold and overwritten and surrounded with small pictures and cartoons. Those pictures, during long, boring months and weeks, he had drawn to remind him of everything he had been told about this day.
Here were tiny drawings of black towers rising from the sea, drawn in the margins above the name of the month: there were pictures of flying goats drawing a chariot; a great ship; a heroic figure crucified upon a cliff, the chains that bound him parting; here was a girl with a key, floating in the air; and there was a wizard with the key now in his hands; and the sun going dark at noon.
When he was in the hospital this most recent time, and he saw the other old people dying around him, he knew the cause. They had nothing for which to live. They did not have the pictures. They did not have the awaited day, the day circled in gold.
Var, however, refused to die that time, and his stubbornness pulled him back.
Below the window was the radiator, upon which he had placed a board, draped in a red cloth; here was a picture, drawn in charcoal, now framed under glass, of his long-dead wife. Every day he replaced the flowers in the vases to either side. Almost every day. Sometimes he forgot.
He had been napping when the Sun went dark at noon; one moment, he was nodding in the sunlight; and the next, he jerked his head upright, seeing it was night. He knew, somewhere above the stinks and smokes of this city, the constellations would be all wrong; Autumn Stars shining in the spring.
Var sat with one hand on the telephone, counting down the seconds on his pocket watch. He remembered, about twenty years ago, losing the long speech he had written down in preparation for this day, and how frantically he had, over the next year or two, tried to remember and recreate the wording of that speech. Now he had only the notes he had jotted down four years ago, when he noticed the light of his memory beginning to dim.
He picked up the phone a second before it rang.
“My Son,” he said in his native language. “I was told you would call. This I was told when you were less than one year old, when I stood in the mountains, surrounded by snow, surrounded by enemies. Your real father was chained up on the mountainside before me. His love had killed your mother.
“Wait. I am explaining. You listen. She knew a baby born of such a father might be too big for her hips to bear. But she had seen him three times climbing the frozen mountains by herself. Very courageous woman, your mother. Afraid of nothing. I remember how the midwife, her hands all bloody, was all tears. Not your mother. Her eyes were clear, even while she was dying. And she said you must live, even if she were to die, because you would save the world and your children would heal it.
“Listen, Prometheus is chained on the cliffs 1,028 meters northeast-east from the highest point of Mount Kazbek in the Caucasus. But you will find it more swiftly if you take the road to it, which I took from it when I flew away. My daughter-in-law has a silver key, does she not? Prometheus said it would be in her hand. There is a doctor with a bow and arrows with you, is there not? A man who can heal all wounds? Yes. Listen; these are the instructions. I have waited thirty years to say them, so you must listen.
“The doctor must make your wife sleep; he must make her dream that she is standing beneath a high mountain. In the sky above is a raven fighting with a vulture. She must unlock the sky with her key, and the road will come down to her from the door which opens in the sky. There will be a creature guarding the beginning of that road. To that guard, she must say, Piotr Ivanovitch Vanko has lived without his name for thirty years; you must take me to the place where he had hidden it; and she must say these magic names; listen carefully; she must say, ‘I order you in the names of the saviors of mankind: by Prometheus, savior of fire; by Ducaleon, savior of flood, his son; by the blind poet Homer, who taught men to sing; by the wise fool Socrates, who taught men to question.’
“The middle of the road is guarded by the mists of forgetfulness; only one of the men from the tower of four moons, the tower of forever, can pass through. The terminus of the road is guarded by the king of vultures. Only a dream can banish a nightmare.
“Are you writing this down, Raven? Write it down.
“You are wondering the name you were born under, no? What do you mean, you don’t want to hear this thing? I tell you even so. You are called Vasil Piotrovitch Vanko, and you will be the father of a race of kings.
“There is no more time. Listen and do not speak! There is a warrior with you, a man with a cart pulled by flying goats? When your wife goes to free Prometheus, you must not wait, but go at once to the great ship which is in the ocean where the black towers rise. There, you must unleash the power of the sun. The Lord of the Black Tower must come himself to face you; and when that happens, you must be ready to blow the horn … What? What is that terrible noise? Raven? My Son?”
Var blinked sadly at the phone. Then he slowly replaced it in the cradle. He petted his cat, saying, “And I have been waiting all these years to tell you, that, even if another man is your father, you have always been my own true son, and I have always been very proud of you. That what you did on that lifeboat you had to do, and I never blamed you for that. I never blamed your mother for what she had to do. And you may miss me when I am gone, but I am very tired now, and would like to rest.”
A few years ago, he had saved up enough money to move to a place outside of the city, away from the seacoast. But when the time came to move, it did not seem worth the effort, and the savings money had been lost in trickles of little expenses.
At the bottom margin of the calendar, in one corner, was a drawing of the great sea-wave crashing over the Empire State Building. Slightly above it, was a doodle of a man stepping onto a long road leading up to the clouds, with a winged angel pointing the way.
Funny. He had never drawn what was at the end of the road. As soon as the cat moved off his lap, Var decided, he would go get his pencil, and draw in a little picture of his wife.
Raven was falling, flung from his feet as the marble world cracked underfoot, and the dome of the sky overhead was hurled up and away into space. Wheels and broken gears, torn from the receding dome, showered through the air, and streamers of brick and rock and dust. Raven, on his back, saw the dome turning end over end high above before it disintegrated into shards of masonry.
His fear made lighting and thunder race through heaven. In a lightning flash he saw the enormous black hands of Death, which had ripped away the dome, descending, and the five bloodstained nails gleamed like five icebergs; and the palm, as it came, was like a storm cloud, blotting out the stars as it grew larger, closer. The little telephone spun away out of his grip before his father had finished speaking; it dropped from his hand and was lost in the darkness.
In the gloom, Galen seemed maimed; but three shafts of sunlight streamed from his bow, and at this the light, he straightened, whole and unhurt. One beam of light touched Raven; the other glanced across the billowing dark cape of Pendrake in the air.
Pendrake had jumped upward off the balcony to escape the eruption of brick as the dome was shattered, and he hung for a moment in midair, falling, weightless. Behind him, larger than an October moon, the beast-face of War came toward him, half-obscured by swathes and clouds of cloaking darkness.
Pendrake twisted in midair and raised the sword to strike, and a flash of light, curled and mazed in the intricate hilt, gleamed forth and shivered along the mirror-blade.
The Beast, roaring, was flung backward across the whole length of the sky, twisting in midair like a cat, paws out as if to land on its feet; but where it landed could not be seen, for it fell beyond the horizon. The words it roared still echoed in the air: “I go now to a hidden place! You shall not overcome me until you discover it!”
Raven was blinded by a white, pure light; he squinted in the glare.
There was Lemuel, standing atop the headless remnant of the broken stairs that once had led to the planetarium. Lemuel’s hands were folded in prayer; the Chalice swam and hovered in the air before him, and the light which gushed, living, from that bowl, played against the vast form of Death like searchlights, or as if columns of burning butterflies had been released; and where they touched that form, the huge being was gone like smoke.
Death shrank, spinning through the air like streams of autumn leaves blown by a gale. The streams of darkness passed around Lemuel’s shoulders and gathered behind him, forming the cloaked figure again, albeit smaller, man-sized.
The Chalice beat with illumination, red from the body of the Chalice, white and silvery from the mouth of the bowl, till all the air was light, and a white rainbow of perfect light haloed the cup in radiance. Where that light was, there was no place for Death to be; and Death became Lemuel’s shadow, clinging to his feet.
But Lemuel did not look behind him, and paid no heed to the shadow at his heels. Raven scrambled to his feet. Rock and debris covered the tilted marble floor between himself and where the staircase hung out over nothing. “Behind you!” Raven shouted, “Is behind you! Death is behind you!”
Lemuel, his eyes still downcast, lifted up a cloth and covered over the floating Chalice. “No,” he said.
“Is there! Is right there!” Raven pointed.
Lemuel shook his head. “No more for me than for any other man. While we live, we must cast shadows. Don’t worry, Mr. Varovitch.”
“But—”
“It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
Galen walked across the broken slabs, shining bow in hand, his eyes turned away to where the figure of Fate still loomed, taller than a whirlwind, the uppermost clouds of the twilight sky wreathing her shoulders. Her iron mask rode above the clouds.
Galen spoke, not taking his eyes from the goddess of darkness: “Grandfather, I think I saw Pendrake fall. But why hasn’t Fate attacked? We don’t have a charm against her …”
“I’m up here,” came Pendrake’s voice from overhead. He was clinging to the back of Peter’s wheelchair, which flew down and landed; and the two goat-monsters kicked irritably at the marble floor, cracking chips and tossing fragments of the walls hundreds of feet away into the air.
After Peter calmed his steeds, he said, “Mannannan told me an attack was coming …”
Raven asked, “What? What is this? Told how?”
“How the hell do I know how this magic stuff works? A human voice came out of his mouth though, and warned me. He said he could feel the power of Acheron increasing; strong enough to break into our wards.”
Lemuel said, “Where is he now?”
“I let him go.”
Galen said, “Dad! You did what?”
“Watch my lips. I let him go. We ain’t got a man to spare for prisoner detail; I had to fly out the window and deflect the hilltop joyboy there was throwing on the house.”
Raven said, “Hill?”
Peter said, “Knocked it out to sea with my hammer. None of you saw it? Oh, fuck it. My moment of glory, and no one saw it.”
Wendy floated up over the edge of the roof and landed lightly with one toe atop a toppled marble wallslab. “Hi, there! Is everyone okay?”
“Wendy? How do you have this growing from your dress? Flowers?” asked Raven.
“Aren’t they the
cutest
things? Lemuel gave them to me!”
“Look there,” said Pendrake, pointing west with the sword. The huge, celestial figure of Fate had darkened and faded, shimmering as if it were sinking below rippling water. She became fog, turned, and vanished over the horizon.
Galen said, “We can’t track their movements with the planetarium destroyed.”
Pendrake said thoughtfully, “This was a desperation attack; they must have been trying to stop us from acquiring the Sword and Chalice …”
Peter said, “Don’t think so. They picked up and threw a real goddam hill on us. They wanted to flatten this place. You see what that means? They got another place besides Everness to come through into the waking world.”
Lemuel said, “Acheron itself is such a place. As soon as it is fully above the waves, it can open its great gates and allow the Hosts of Evil to oversweep the world.”
Galen said, “If you’re right, Dad, they would not have tried to smash the house unless they were dead sure Acheron was going to make it all the way to the surface.”
Pendrake said, “No. Excuse me, and I admit I don’t know about this dream-science of yours, but aren’t they already convinced that they must succeed? We don’t have anything to oppose whatever motion is bringing this dark tower to the surface. They were trying to destroy something else.”
Wendy said, “The trumpet!”
Pendrake asked, “What’s that, sweetie?”
Lemuel said, “We have the horn to sound the last horn-call, to waken the knights from Celebradon. It is the one thing Morningstar fears.”
Peter said, “Hey I just thought of something. Why did the big fate-wench poof and go vanish when Wendy here popped up? Why were they sticking around the house until just now?”
Raven said, “Quiet, all of you! There is no time for talk. My father told me that Prometheus foresaw all this, in exact detail. There is one thing we can do to overcome the dark. He says Wendy must take Key and fly to Mount Kazbek to release Prometheus; we must go to ship on ocean near Acheron. Must go now.” And he told them in a few words what his father had said.
Wendy said, “Wow! You really are from a fairy-tale. I always knew you had it in you!” And she gave her husband a hug.
Galen stepped forward. “I can send us both to sleep with a magic word. Only take a second. With the Silver Key, we can go there in the flesh, and come out again at Prometheus’s mountain.”
Wendy said, “Shouldn’t we get the trumpet and bring it with us? Just in case?”
Lemuel said, “The Horn will be there by the time you meet us there.”
Pendrake said, “And the rest of us have to get to the
Harry S. Truman
as soon as possible. Before we leave, let me get the emergency launch device from the car.” He stroked his chin for a moment, looking right and left. “Ah … Am I the only one here who can’t fly?”
BOOK: Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming)
3.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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