Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) (31 page)

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Authors: John C. Wright

BOOK: Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming)
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They all climbed to their feet, looking around themselves at the devastation and wreckage. The aircraft carrier deck was dented with the footprint of Morningstar, and a light powder of snow lay across all surfaces. The aft of the great ship was locked within the mass of iceberg.
All around on the sea was blood, corpses of monsters, floating hulks of destroyed ships, ice-flows, and a scattered few lifeboats.
Overhead, like a crystal chandelier, hovered the lovely aethereal citadel of Celebradon, silent, hushed, and lovely, and with banners and pennants flying from its battlements. Tinted clouds rose hung in a great ring all around it.
The sky above was nighted and eclipsed. The Sun had not reappeared.
Galen said in a tired voice, “How come I don’t feel like cheering … ? Haven’t we won … ?”
Pendrake looked back and forth. “Where did Oberon get to?”
Wendy said, “No one noticed when I said that!”
Raven looked at the snow that ran in streaks across the deck; but the snow had fallen after Oberon had vanished, and he saw no footprints.
He looked up and down across the deck, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. He hesitated, looking again.
Wendy said, “Raven! Can you find him?”
Azrael Merlin said, “Look at how the stars come joyfully from behind the edges of retreating clouds; the shapes in the clouds form images of nestlings, flowers, elongated fingers. Oberon has already returned to Celebradon. But I do not know how.” Now Azrael Merlin’s nostrils flared, and he turned his head his head to look up at the eastern sky.
Raven pointed the other way across the deck. “Look!”
Galen said, “I don’t see anything.”
Raven nodded. “Where is dream-colt Lemuel riding to get here, eh? All dream-colts are belonging to Oberon, no?”
Then he turned his head to follow Azrael Merlin’s stare.
Wendy looked up, too. “Now what?”
Pendrake looked at a Geiger counter he held, then took off his radiation suit and threw it down. He raised a pair of complex-looking binoculars to his eyes.
Where the clouds had parted, in the far distance, they saw a moving point of light like a falling star. As it dropped closer, speeding toward them between cloud and sea, they saw a gleaming, slim chariot of lacy silver. The traces were a score of silk threads; the chariot was being drawn through the air by a cluster of cats, their furred, graceful bodies leaping through the air in long, curved lunges.
Closer still, they saw a slim and stately young woman leaned backward against the pull of the reins, skirts and train floating; and her hair was a dark cloud, wind-whipped back from her face. She was slight of build, like a girl in the first bloom of womanhood; but she carried herself with the carriage and dignity of an empress.
And even closer still, they saw the cryptic smile which touched those perfect lips, the smoldering gaze which gleamed mysterious from beneath those wide, dark lashes.
On her hand was a ring burning like a drop of blood, the twin of the mysterious fire opal on the hand of Pendrake.
The flying chariot circled the deck twice, and then came down for a landing. Slim chariot wheels spun blurring across the deck, as the queenly figure reined in her tiny steeds. The cats all landed on their feet, pulled the chariot to a stop with impatient shrugs of their little shoulders, and padded softly to a halt. There they sat and lay, some washing their whiskers, as dignified as pharaohs.
Wendy was hopping up and down with excitement as the chariot was circling. “Mommy! Mommy! It’s my mommy! Isn’t she pretty! Look, Raven, look! I bet you forgot what she looked like!”
And then when the chariot landed, Wendy, as if carried forward on a breeze, spun across the air and landed in the lady’s arms. They hugged each other fiercely, and the lady stroked Wendy’s hair and whispered to her. The mother seemed as young or younger than the daughter, if one did not see the ancient wisdom in her eyes.
Then Wendy was on her knees, surrounded by the cats. “Hello, Fluffy! Hello, Smudge! Can I pet you? Whiskers! Have you been a good girl? Look, Raven!” Cats were purring and crawling all over the giggling Wendy. Raven thought he had never seen his wife look so pretty.
Pendrake stepped forward and put his arms around the lady’s waist, and lifted her off the chariot car to the deck.
He bent to kiss her, but she turned her cheek and looked at Azrael Merlin. Pendrake took her chin in his fingers and turned it back toward him. “What is this?”
She said, “It may not be polite, Anton. Not in front of my old husband … .” Her voice was husky and musical, delightful to the ear.
Pendrake snorted. “Titania! I’m not going to falsify reality for him, or any man. If he doesn’t want to see, he can close his eyes.”
“No … Anton … Mm … no …” She shrugged her shoulder and tried to pull away from his grasp. Her bent her backward over his arm, his fingers tightening in the fragrant masses of her hair, and pulled her tightly to his chest. She could not escape, and, beneath his fierce kiss, whatever murmur of protest she had been speaking softened into a warm moan in her throat, like the purr of a kitten.
Raven, embarrassed, turned his gaze away. He saw the look of deadly hate burning like fire in Azrael Merlin’s narrowed gaze.
When they straightened up, Titania had both her arms twined around her husband’s arm, leaning her head against his shoulder; and she was smiling a soft, triumphant smile. She never moved far from his side thereafter, but kept herself pressed close to him.
Raven stepped forward, but stood gaping, unable to think of what to say. Lemuel at that moment also stepped forward, bowing low, his hands held out, palms up. Lemuel intoned a phrase in an ancient language, perhaps Egyptian, perhaps Babylonian.
Titania smiled, looked out from under dark lashes, and arched one eyebrow high. (Raven was surprised to recognize Wendy’s favorite expression.) She said to Lemuel in English, “You are polite, sir, and recall the old ways other men forget. But a lady doesn’t like to be reminded of her age.”
Lemuel said in English, “Great Mother Isis, I rely upon your bounteous good nature to mend any fault of mine.”
She said, “Pour one drop from the Grail you hold into the sea, and all this blood, these miles of corpses, shall be cleansed away, and the waters made sweet again.”
Raven found his voice, and said, “I know you … don’t I? From at the reception …”
She laughed, a sultry, musical laugh deep in her throat. “I should be dismayed you forget me, son-in-law, did I not blame the Mists of Everness. Once, long ago, the Earth was all heat and volcanic passion, and the sky was nothing but cloud, and Heaven had never been seen. The clouds parted for my first husband, so that he could come down to earth to see me. The spirits of earth were amazed when they first saw the stars. Earth and sky now saw each other; and they were married. Lightning, his weapon, now yours, caressed the seas, and brought forth life. The world thereafter was utterly changed, due to the coming of heaven. For you, now, Raven, and for mankind, the Mists of Forgetfulness which cloak the Earth now part; and you will see the wonder, deep, sublime, and ancient, which stands beyond what you thought formed the boundary of the world. The world will be changed again, profoundly.”
Azrael Merlin said in a voice that cracked and snapped with hate: “Indeed the world shall change; it shall be ice from pole to pole; and every herb and grass shall die in darkness; for the Sun is fallen and shall not rise again.”
Titania turned, looking at him sidelong from the corner of her eyes, and smiled a slow, languid smile. “How so? Oberon already is in Celebradon with the Cauldron of Rebirth. He merely awaits that you revoke the curse you spoke, to resume his power, that he may work the cauldron to reignite the Sun. It is a miracle, I know, but one which will not try him; hasn’t he done it every dawn?”
“And if I do not revoke my curse?” Azrael Merlin stood with his arms crossed, his head thrown back, his eyes blazing.
Titania turned to Pendrake, and she said, “I came to tell you, Anton, that you had no time to tarry here; already the servants of evil seek to reap the grain their masters, defeated by you, have sown. Even if the battle among the gods is suspended, the battle among men is not, and may continue for many years before the wounds are bound up and forgiven. You must go immediately to the Capitol Building and stop them before a state of martial law is proclaimed. It is cold there, and you should wear something heavier than that black cape of yours. And are you wearing a flak jacket? You know how I hate it when you go out without a flak jacket.”
Raven was shocked when he saw Pendrake, smiling grimly, swat Titania on the bottom. She squealed, her pose of queenly dignity forgotten, and danced away from him, her palms on the bustle of her dress.
Titania laughed like a little girl, shrugging her shoulders and tossing back her hair. “You had best be as quick to smite the evil ones as you are to smite your wife, Anton. Take my chariot and my daughter and go! There is not time to spend even on a kiss!”
Pendrake stepped over, put his arms around her, dipped her, and kissed her till she was breathless. He said in a voice of fierce calm, “I shall conquer them as easily and absolutely as I have conquered you, my dear.”
She lay curved gracefully back over his arm, and whispered through parted lips, “Oh, yes.”
He put his lips to her ear and whispered something. She stood erect, dignified once more, and with a gentle hand pushed Pendrake back. She said, “You must go. I need to have a word with Merlin Azrael in private. Go! What happens hereafter you may learn in time.”
Azrael Merlin said, “What words would I have to spend on thee, Queen of Witches?” But he did not walk away, but stood glowering.
Pendrake stepped up onto the car of the cat-drawn chariot, and took up the silk reins in his hands. “Raven, I may need your help, too. Wendy, come along. Van Dam, you come too; if what I think is happening is happening, I may need your help. Prometheus, I’m afraid you won’t fit …”
The titan did not look up from the partly disassembled helicopter, but said, “If you curled your rotor blades at the tip, you would avoid the turbulence caused when the outer part of the lifting surface goes supersonic.”
“Right,” said Pendrake, who turned back. “Titania, I’m assuming you think Peter and his goats can’t take us because they are going somewhere else?”
She turned to Lemuel. “The house of Everness has been destroyed by Morningstar as he passed through it to the sea. In less than a week, all mankind shall perish, for, without their dreams, men go slowly mad, hallucinate, and die. You must go at once and make what reparations you might.”
Lemuel turned and bowed to Pendrake. “Mr. Pendrake, I need your permission to do this work.”
“Certainly, you have it,” said Pendrake, hiding whether he felt any puzzlement.
“Then touch me on the shoulder with your sword.”
Pendrake snorted as if he thought the idea was mildly absurd, and it was somewhat awkward raising the enchanted blade with two people crowded around him on the chariot car. But, leaning out, he touched Lemuel on the shoulder with the flat of the gleaming blade.
Then, with no more ado, Pendrake snapped the ribbons holding the cats, shouting, “Hey up, Whiskers, Muffin, Snuggles! On Smudge, on Frisky! On Fluffy!”
Several cats turned and regarded Pendrake with looks of infinite dignity and infinite disdain. One yawned, her little pink tongue flicking in the air. Another began to wash her paws.
“I hate cats … ,” muttered Pendrake, then, louder, “Titania, can you get your pets to move their tails?”
Titania nodded and pointed to the East, and immediately the tiny, furry figures were leaping into the air. The chariot was yanked skyward in one long, dizzying swoop of motion. Pendrake wrestled with the reins, his black cape flapping around him. To his left and right Van Dam and Raven clung to the slim, silver rails with both hands. Wendy was flying in the midst of the cluster of cats, sometimes on her face, sometimes on her back with her fingers twined behind her head.
Pendrake said to Raven over the noise of the wind, “There is a navigational instrument in my weapons harness under my right armpit, could you get it for me? I don’t have a free hand. Do you see the coil of fiber-optic of my television periscope? It’s a little black box in the holster just under that.”
“Everything here is little black box! Is it this?”
“No, that’s my radar jammer. Leave that on anyway; it will make sure we don’t get shot down. The Loran box is right there under my right arm. Do you see the line of grenades on a bandolier? Okay, moving up the belt, you should see three pockets, one with a filter mask, one with an ultraviolet lamp, and then …”
“I have it.”
“Can you give me a reading?”
“Yes, is same as we use aboard ship.” And he read off their longitude and latitude, and gave the bearing the instrument showed.
“I should hope it is considerably smaller than the Loran you have aboard ship,” said Pendrake.

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