Read Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) Online

Authors: John C. Wright

Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) (26 page)

BOOK: Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming)
6.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
In his seat of power, carven of black opals, sat great Morningstar, his pinions fanned up to either side, and in his hand, his mighty scepter, which also was his mace.
All about his throne, within that vast and nighted hall, fallen angels bowed with adorations hymned to his dark majesty. Each fell spirit paid homage according to its kind: evil seraphim bowed their heads; cherubim knelt on one knee, their crowns like black flame; thrones knelt fully; dominations crouched with hands grasping the black diamonds of the floor; virtues, powers, and principalities were prone; and all the waters shook and breathed with perfect song.
Music there was, but no other light than that one cold fire which the Lord of Acheron wore like a gemstone on his brow.
On balconies and pillar-tops and in far places, near enough to hear, but not to see, were princes and emperors of races in bondage to Morningstar, or heroes who had distinguished themselves in his service; svartalfar and svart-vanir, dragons, vampires, scorpion-worms, necromancer-kings, sarim and lilim, abdals and amshaspands, chimerae, hydrae, hecatoncheire, and krakens.
Beyond and behind all the gathered and adoring hosts of living beings, within an arch, rose a great window, figured around the boundaries with runes of secret meanings, through which Morningstar could view at once the whole of his terror-builded kingdom.
Three times great shudders trembled though the length and breadth of Acheron, and three times great music was let blown as the topmost three towers rose from the waves.
Through the window, as if through eyes of vultures high above, Morningstar beheld drowned towers rising in skirts of spray and waterfalls pouring from windows and gates, splashing over corbels and gushing from the teeth of machicolated bastions. The upper courtyards were now pools; and the streets and steps and bridges of the higher citadel were rivers, streams, and aqueducts.
Morningstar raised his scepter; the hosts fell silent. There was no noise in Acheron except the sobbing of the Tormented echoing from the Houses of Woe.
The oceans parted and fell away from the tall, black walls of the inner citadel. The four towers of the outer citadel now rose up, broke the shivering curtain of water overhead, and touched the air. With a hideous roaring and confusion, which tossed his court this way and that, the seawaters rushed from the hall.
Morningstar rose to his feet, and the single light that burned from his brow cast out a beam that turned the rushing waters of the presence hall instantly to silent ice, which lay in frozen waves like hills and mountains all around his throne.
Now he nodded, and, at that nod, the far window opened, as it had not opened in a thousand years or more.
And, without the window, Morningstar beheld a great waste of empty waters, dark beneath a sunless sky, and here and there a drift of toppled iceberg floated, released from Acheron’s black walls. The cold of the towers had pierced the sky, and it began to snow.
Morningstar looked up to that vast dark shape, riding in the heavens, which had blotted out the Sun. And now he smiled.
His chest swelled as he breathed in air.
“The time is come,” he said.
Prometheus hung in chains on the mountainside, his muscles aching once again with agony, his nude body shivering with pain as his torn flesh, once again, was slowly reknitting itself. He had been watching when the full Moon suddenly went dark, and, by this, he knew night had fallen across the noon on the other side of the world.
Yet the features of his face showed no fear, no pain, no uncertainty, only a remorseless, intent, alertness.
Now he raised his pain-stiffened head, and shook the icicles of sweat which clung to his long, tangled locks of hair. This slight motion caused chips of bloody ice to pull away from the lips of the wound in his side, and sent another shiver of pain like a needle into his body.
His eyes narrowed as he looked in the distance.
And he saw, far off and flying down across the mountain peaks of ice and granite, led here by the shade of a raven, a girl in a flowering dress, a wand of truth in one hand, and the key of dreaming in the other. Behind her was a young magician on a dream-colt, with a bow, and the scars of his battle with the vulture of heaven were closing and healing in the light from the arrow on his bowstring.
And now he smiled. “The time is come,” he said.
Azrael de Gray Waylock lay on his stomach on the edge of an icy ledge, high on a cliff overlooking a darkened world. He inched forward, his face contorted as if in pain. A few inches in front of his outstretched hand, the smallest distance beyond the reach of his imploring fingers, stood a fierce, small bird of prey, feathered in blue and black, with bright eyes, a pigeonhawk.
He inched forward, crawling on his belly like a worm, and the slippery and rotten ice beneath him creaked ominously. He knew that if he moved forward another inch, or half inch, the ice would give way and he would plunge down the steel-hard slopes of cold rock into the abyss below.
The pigeonhawk looked at him disdainfully, and hopped a few more inches away.
“Do not flee from me,” Azrael whispered. “Do not despise me.”
He crawled forward. The ice began to crack and snap.
The pigeonhawk hopped a few more inches away, ruffling its wings, preparing to fly.
“Wait!” breathed Azrael de Gray Waylock, “I have pursued you from high heaven, where there is no air, across the face of the Earth, flying at the speed of thought, past blasted desert, frozen glacier, and the wilderness of the salt sea. Now, so close! Why must you ever fly from me? What do you disdain so in me?”
The bird spoke in a voice like unto the voice of a man. “I am no more than your mirror, slave of Acheron. Ask yourself what you disdain so in yourself, and you shall know your answer.”
With a crack, the ice beneath him tilted. He began to slip sideways, an inch, six inches, a foot. He clawed at the slithering pebbles beneath his hands and said, “Call me not by that name! Tell me what I must do to regain what once I was, I compel you by … by the name of …”
“The only name with which I may be compelled is your own, slave of Acheron, and you have forgotten it.”
“Shall time come when it will be recalled?”
“The time is come,” said the pigeonhawk, flying up.
And Azrael, falling from the ice, called for his kelpie chariot in midair, and, mounting, flew up out from the chasm, to give chase to the bird once more.
They passed in a moment across continent and ocean. In the midst of a great fleet of the warships of mankind, the pigeonhawk flew down to roost upon a mighty flagship, built of cold iron, large as a floating city.
On the deck, surrounded by armed men, he saw the chariot pulled by Tanngrisner and Tannjost. Here also, gleaming with fairy-light, beautiful and swift as song itself, a dream-colt reared and plunged, made nervous by the closing circle of sailors.
The young Titan was here, and Peter, and Lemuel, whom he had betrayed; and here as well stood a proud figure in black, a sword of mythic power shining in his hands; the Pendragon.
Even as he watched, he saw Van Dam order the men to stand at ease. Van Dam saluted the Pendragon and asked for orders.
Oberon, Lord of Heaven, stood alone within the private garden which gloamed with twilight hues, lit only by the reflected silver and gemwork of the Towers of Mommur. Now and again, the scented breeze played about the locked gate to the east and breathed the perfumes of paradise across the lawns and hedges.
Oberon stood, hands clasped behind his back, gazing down into his seeing pool.
All at once he grimaced with wrath, wincing. “Fools! Do not let so dangerous a creature loose!”
And then, upon another image, said to himself, “Wind the Horn! Do not forget the Horn! Have I not promised the whole might of Celebradon shall follow where that horn-call sounds?”
Now he stood in black abstraction, crown of swan plumes bowed. His one eye glittered gray and clear as a winter dusk. Then he spoke. “Must Oberon’s own hand make whole what clumsy mortals mar? The time is come.”
And drawing on his cloak of mist and shadows, invisible, he dropped down from heaven toward the earth, and he flew with the same speed with which a man wakes from deepest dream instantly to day.
Darkness, Darkness Covers All
The smell of the sea brought back memories, but he had never served on a ship like this. Raven stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier and was amazed that he could feel no pitch nor roll. The vessel was so enormous that it was perfectly steady even in the roughest seas. The upper deck was larger than a football field; jet aircraft, launched by steam catapult, rushed with a thunderous roar down the immense length of the deck and were flung into space, engines blazing. Even more amazing was the sight of other aircraft, rocketing down from the sky to touch the deck, wheels squealing, only to catch a cable with a tail-hook and jerk to an alarming stop. Massive elevators could lower the fighter jets into vast hangar spaces belowdecks.
Raven saw the faces of the fighter pilots as they climbed down from their cockpits. They would take their fibreglass helmets from their heads, shaking back their sweat-streaked hair, and glance around the decks with looks like panthers. The fighter pilots walked with a jaunty step, and there was an arrogance to their posture, a fighting spirit in their eyes.
For a time, every crewman and pilot was so busy that no one noticed or had time to deal with the intruders, despite the supernatural beasts they had brought, goats and dream-colts.
In the far distance, across the tropic seas, a flotilla of icebergs floated out from the heart of the darkness. Above the tops of the spreading clouds on the horizon, three tall towers rose, like straight shafts of impenetrable night. Even from this distance, Raven could see sparks of light crawling along the towers’ bastions and balconies; strange lanterns held by cloaked monstrosities, and explosions and raging fires flung down by the darting swarms of fighter jets.
There were other swarms around the towers; circling and wheeling bat-winged shapes, much too large to be bats. And, goddesslike, each tower was crowned by a supernatural figure of a winged titaness. Twin beams of reddish light streamed forth from their eyes, reaching like searchlights through the clouds, and whichever way the titanesses gazed, fighter jets dropped from the sky or silently vanished.
Great battleships struggled in the wave-swept, icecrowded sea, and the smoke and thunder of their guns was a shock and an amazement to Raven. With immense concussions, rolling clouds of flame-lit smoke would appear before the main guns of the battleships when they fired, clouds of smoke larger than the ships themselves, and the power of those guns was so great that even those huge ships would sway, driven backward in the sea several feet from the force of the recoil.
Raven borrowed Pendrake’s photomultiplying telescopic site, and saw warships continuously shelling the rising towers, and the armies and hordes of creatures gathered on the roofs, upper courtyards, and in the vast windows were slain by the hundreds. Yet even through the clouds of smoke and flame, Raven caught glimpses of vast, slow, graceful silhouettes, undisturbed by shell or shockwave, shrapnel, gas, or flame, moving among the shadows, carrying tall torches, pennants, or lances; and, unless he was deceived by the distance, the confusion, the flame, the gloom, Raven thought these vast shapes were washing and decorating the towers in preparation for some rite or celebration.
A squad of marines came to surround them. Pendrake spoke with them briefly, warning them of the coming nuclear strike. Perhaps because he spoke with such calm authority; or perhaps because he was holding a magic sword and was escorted by obviously supernatural cohorts, the deck officer ordered them brought up to the conning tower.
Raven looked at Peter, then up at the tall, angular shape of the conning tower, with the narrow stairways and gangways leading upward. Peter understood the look, and snorted, and said, “Don’t worry about me, friend. I’ll be waiting for you by the time you get there.” And his goats ran up onto the air, dragging the wheelchair aloft.
When one of the marines ordered Pendrake to put away the sword, Lemuel whispered something in to Pendrake’s ear. Pendrake nodded, and surrendered the blade to a marine officer.
They climbed up the narrow stair, through an oval door, then another, and found themselves in a tall space, surrounded on all sides by slanting windows of greenish glass, crowded by ranks and rows of computer boards, radar screens, and readouts. Men with faces of frantic calm were bent over the microphones, and Raven overheard, from more than one speaker, voices requesting help and rescue in urgent monotones, terse descriptions of casualties, or of the unnatural monsters causing them, and, in the far background, sounds of eerie screaming, chanting, or inhuman voices shouting praises to the darkness.
Pendrake seemed to recognize the civilian officer in charge. “I think I can be of some help here, Van Dam,” said Pendrake, and he nodded to Raven.
Raven held up his hand. The thunderstorms and screaming winds around the towers rising from the sea died away and fell silent. In the distance, through the windows, Raven saw the clouds shrouding the towers of night thin away; the bat-winged horrors were strafed by passing jets, able to maneuver more freely as the turbulence calmed. A tinny-sounding cheer rang out from some of the microphones, and little whoops of triumph.
Pendrake said, “I have a partial understanding of the oneiric phenomena involved. Observe.” And when he held up his hand, rainbows of gold and silver sparkled into existence in his palm, intertwined, became solid, and the mystic sword materialized in his hand.
“I … I believe you …,” said Van Dam. “Uh. Sir.”
“What’s the tactical situation?”
“Uh … We’re facing sea-monsters and, well, dragons. The dragons have no long-range weapons to hinder our forward air group, and we have reinforcement squadrons coming from the SS
Liberty.
”
“Raven, see if you can give those guys a tailwind. What else, Van Dam?”
“Well, sir, our ships are shelling the enemy, uh, structure, but are being attacked by sea-serpents and huge, uh, things. Some of our destroyers and missile cruisers have been pulled under by the sea-monsters, but our submarine support can keep the sea-monsters away from our major-class vessels. Right now most of our casualties are from suicides. Pilots and officers go suddenly berserk.”
Pendrake gravely listened to several more reports; and Raven was impressed how the radarmen and officers who spoke with him, unlike the gunmen who had attacked them at the house, hid whatever fear they felt behind expressions of stoic professionalism. Raven realized that, unlike the men who had attacked the house, these were true military men, not merely goons in borrowed uniforms.
Pendrake turned to Raven: “They’re having trouble with their long-range satellite phototelemetry. See if you can clear up the cloud cover.”
To Peter: “These sea-monsters may be similar to the two giant creatures killed at Everness. Find out if your hammer has underwater capability. Also, does it have an outside range? Can you throw it a mile? Twenty miles? If so, you can launch strikes against specific targets on the towers, like a sharpshooter.”
To Lemuel: “The rash of suicides sound like demonic possession. Can that Chalice protect us in any way?”
Lemuel said, “Mr. Pendrake, the absence of any selkie or kelpie, or of any of the races of darkness with which I am familiar, troubles me. We should assume that the Emperor of Night knows we have the talismans, and is not putting into the fray those creatures we can banish with the magic at our command.”
Pendrake nodded brusquely. He asked Van Dam: “I assume there are no ships of any other navies in the area?”
Van Dam said, “Azrael didn’t control their governments. There are only American ships here, except for foreign nuclear submarines that they have tracking our nuclear submarines.”
Pendrake said to Van Dam, “I should tell you, Van Dam, that three thermonuclear multiple-warhead missiles have been launched from a silo in Nevada and Oregon, a primary and two backups, which we can abort if the primary is successful. The nuclear strike will hit here within twelve minutes. All our forces must be clear of the blast radius before that time, and be operating under radiation-environment protocols. Vessels not equipped to operate in a high-roentgen scenario must withdraw immediately; those that are radiation-worthy should lay down a suppressing fire to guard their withdrawal. I suggest you maintain your carpet bombing. Use incendiaries where possible. Many of these magical creatures, even if they are not hurt by bullets, are hurt by flames and fire. As soon as Carrier Air Wing Eight arrives from the Roosevelt Carrier Battle Group, have them drop their full payloads.”
There was a silence on the bridge for a moment. All the officers within earshot had stopped in the middle of whatever they were doing to turn and look.
One officer muttered, “This is the big one …”
Another said to himself, “My God. It’s World War Three.”
A younger officer, staring out at the flame-crowned towers of darkness thrusting cloudward through icy tidal waves, murmured, “Oh, man! We’re going to toast those freak-show fuckers good!”
Van Dam turned to the captain. “Mr. Pendrake is here in an advisory capacity, but I urge you to follow his advice to the letter. The nuclear strike he has warned us of has already been cleared at the highest levels.”
The captain said briefly, “Gentlemen! To your stations!”
Raven whispered to Pendrake. “Am very glad Wendy used unicorn horn key to make you visible to awake people again. Look at faces; they remember you. Remember your famous work. Am glad they trust you.”
“Trust is earned by deeds,” said Pendrake, not turning his head. “Isn’t that right, Mr. de Gray?”
Lemuel, Peter, and Raven all turned their heads in surprise, looking back and forth. It was not until he spoke that they saw him, as if a mist had been hiding him from their eyes. There he stood in his now-tattered star-woven robes, his peaked cap missing. His black hair, streaked with white, lay in disarray to his shoulders. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes bright, as if fierce emotion pained him. Near his foot stood a small, fierce bird of prey. Azrael did not take his eyes from the bird as he spoke.
“Pendragon, in vain do these brave men shed life’s blood. For what comes against you now is not the armed might of Acheron; these are but playthings, the hunting dogs and falcons of the dark lord. When the final towers invade the realm of air, first shall come forth his heralds and squires; and only then will he let sound the dire call, and let his damned angelic knighthood take the field, armed and ready to oppose the soldiery, not of man, but of Heaven’s wide empire.”
The captain said sharply, “Sailor: Get back to your duty!” to the one or two bridge officers who were watching this scene.
Pendrake pointed the magic sword at Azrael. “Mr. de Gray, why are you here?”
Now the wizard looked up from the pigeonhawk at his feet, and he looked into Pendrake’s stern, alert eyes with eyes that were haunted by a strange emotion.
Slowly, the wizard sank to his knees. “For justice, do I come, my Liege, and to pay you fealty. I am a traitor; I confess this freely and with my own mouth. I give my life to your justice. Strike! My blood has properties which may be useful to your cause.”
Pendrake said, “Until we can hold a proper hearing, and until all evidence is presented and weighed, I can make no determination. But we will take this favorably into account and might mitigate what sentence, if any, you receive if you will voluntarily submit yourself to a probation before judgment, binding yourself to accept the verdict of this court, and accepting a period of community service.”
“My lord, I vow I shall accept what doom you decree, and shall fully perform your each command. I swear this by my name,” said the wizard.
Lemuel squinted and pursed his lips when he heard that last phrase. But he swallowed whatever he was about to say, and waited.
Pendrake said, “Rise. Advise us.”
Azrael stood. “My Liege, the Silver Key could have kept Acheron beneath the waves before the tower called Infidelity arose. Now it is too late. No weapon of man can harm an angel, even fallen. Nothing but the power of the Sun himself can drive them off, and even the Shining One is unequal to the sovereign of angels, the lordly Morningstar. The lesser creatures in the dark Lord’s service can be slain however. But if Fate should take the field, her mere command can turn all chances against us. Should she come and decree our defeat, then our defeat is assured, for no man can escape fate.”
Raven looked out the high windows of the conning tower. Even as far away as they were from the main action, his sharp eyes could still see, lit by explosions, the vast waves radiating out from where seven black towers rose on the horizon.
Even as he watched, he saw the dark goddess rise from the waves as a walled courtyard and temple before the main gates, surrounded by carven statues of demigods and chimerae, opened its doors and released a flood of ice. There she sat, throned in the midst of the waters, and raised her flail.
The battle group was made up of twelve surface ships and submarines, including a fighter squadron and two fighter attack squadrons attached to the Third Air Wing. Fighter attack Squadron 105, “The Gunslingers,” had engaged the great dragon Crommcruach high above the sea while there were still only two towers showing above the waves. The dragon-worm rose in flame, his wings a hurricane, but the deadly fire and poison of his breath could not reach but a few hundred yards.
The squadron lost two men when the pilot of one FA-18B Hornet saw the eyes of Crommcruach too clearly through his canopy, the monsters’ face lit with the hell-fire it vomited from terrible jaws. They all heard his insane shrieks as he dove his craft into the sea. The rest of the fighter attack squadron, flying by instruments or night-vision goggles, were not so affected; they launched their Sidewinder air-to-air missiles from several miles away. Their warheads could not penetrate Crommcruach’s age-crusted armored hide; but the vast wings of membrane were tattered at once by flak, and the mighty dragon toppled from the sky.
The children spawned of Crommcruach rose on wings of flame in their thousands when they saw their great patriarch fall in defeat.
The fighter jets engaged them with air-to-air cannon, slaying the younger dragons whose armor had not hardened fully; nor could the monsters accelerate past Mach One, which allowed the jets easily to escape. Radar-directed fire of Sparrow missiles carrying heavy warheads shot down the elder dragons with harder armor.
The path was cleared for the dive bombers, who flew low over the maelstrom-boiling ocean, and unleashed column after column of concentrated explosive across the surface of the sinister black towers. The winged beings atop the towers were not disturbed, but the cataphracts and janissaries of Acheron were slain in droves, helpless where they stood among the bridges and boulevards of the upper citadel. Wireguided missiles flew in through open window casements and archer slits, and sent shrapnel and jellied gasoline ricocheting along the somber basalt maze of corridors and naves within. The soldiery of the Dark Tower, those who were human or nearly so, stood in their gleaming armor, fraught with ancient magic, drew their rune-crusted swords, and died without ever seeing the foe that slew them. One or two squads from the nearer arches were pulled by the suction of the fire-storms out from windows and flung, bullet-ridden, onto their comrades on the walls below.
However, when the fourth tower, the one called Cowering Dread, rose up, two destroyers and an AEGIS Cruiser from the carrier battle group were swamped in the resulting tidal wave, and the winged being opened the upper gates of her tower, and displayed the Medusa to the fighter bombers.
The SS
Mitscher,
the SS
Donald Cook,
and the SS
San Jacinto
shattered and capsized, sank beneath the flood, and their brave crew perished to a man. High above, those pilots and bombardiers who were relying on visual targeting were turned to stone, and their aircraft plunged into the sea, to the songs and delight of the black naiades who sported in those icy waves. The rest of the attack wing released instrument-guided missiles.
Meanwhile, a kraken had risen from the bottom, larger than an island, and engulfed the frigate USS
Hawes
and the destroyer USS
Oscar Austin,
but took major damage to its beak and to the roof of its mouth from the guided missiles launched point-blank from the decks of those ships. Because of the damage to its beak, it was unable to swallow the cruiser
Yorktown,
but gnawed at and bit off the prow of that ship, until the concentrated fire power of her 20-mm Phalanx guns, three thousand rounds per minute of depleted uranium shells, drove the monster from the surface. There, the attack submarine USS
Virginia
fired twelve tactical nuclear warhead-tipped torpedoes into the great beast’s hide as it chased her. One of the torpedoes found the kraken’s mighty heart, and the immense hulk of the monster floated to the surface, dead. Unfortunately, the fleet oiler USNS
Kanawha
was not able to maneuver clear, and ran aground on the carcass. The fuel supplies of a dozen heavy ships now spread over carcass and sea-wave, and a stray missile lit the oil slick afire.
The crews of the submarines gave a great cheer when the kraken died, until look-down sonar showed the hundreds of krakens and leviathans rising from the deep, some with towers and armies carried among the crusted plates of their backs.
BOOK: Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming)
6.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Ether by Ben Ehrenreich
Darkest Knight by Cynthia Luhrs
It Was You by Ashley Beale
Captain Rakehell by Lynn Michaels
Tik-Tok by John Sladek
Crossbones by Nuruddin Farah
Burn for You by Stephanie Reid
The Oppressor's Wrong by Phaedra M. Weldon