The Last Guardian of Everness (War of the Dreaming 1) (15 page)

The sensation of hot anger surprised Azrael; he had not realized how proud he was of his great family, and of their eternal patience and faithfulness, of their power, and of their ancient tradition, till he saw this, one of his remote sons, an ignorant and unlettered traitor to that heritage. It surprised Azrael that such realizations still had such power to wound him.

The fairy-girl spoke to him and told everyone that he was not Galen Waylock. Being mortals, however, they ignored what the fairy said even though it had been spoken plain and clear in front of them. Azrael did not answer her (it is bad luck to challenge fairies) but waited until the cripple employed his dull ignorance to dismiss her.

After a farewell, the two of them were moving away together across the yard, with Azrael walking beside the cart-chair. Azrael regarded this beginning
of his return to Everness with grim pleasure. But he noted how, behind him, the bearded titan was regarding him with a curious stare.

VII

Peter Waylock was growing more worried about his son—more worried, more angry, more bewildered. When they had first gotten into Peter’s special handicapped-drivable van, Galen had been very slow and disoriented, asking whether there was some table to which these chairs were to be brought and then forgetting how to put on his safety belt when Peter reminded him to do it. When the engine started, Galen had flinched and snarled, grabbing at his left hip with his right hand, and then, when they pulled out into traffic, Galen sat stony faced, almost as if he were trying to control some unreasoning panic.

But then he seemed to relax and take an almost childish glee in the van ride, fumbling the window down and hanging his head out, awestruck and smiling, as if the conservative forty-five or fifty-five miles per hour Peter drove was a speed thrill like a roller-coaster ride. Once Galen made a comment on the “neat and steady hand” that had lettered the roadsigns.

At first Peter thought Galen was gazing at the passing street lamps and stoplights, but then a chilling thought struck him, and some of his impatience and anger drained away.

“I guess you haven’t seen what the world looks like since the season changed. Leaves still on the trees since you went to sleep,” said Peter. Something about it struck Peter as sad, almost horrifying. Gruffly he wiped his eyes, muttering a swearword to himself.

Galen pulled his head back in through the window, his expression blank, and looked carefully at Peter. “Plain to view, it is, I deem, that the world is much changed since last I walked awake on it. Any oddities of mine I trust you will excuse, my father.”

But Peter was brooding on some thought of his own, and did not answer.

They drove for a very long time in silence. Galen occasionally drew in his breath, as if startled or surprised, and Peter glanced up from his driving to see Galen staring at a billboard advertising bikinis or at the lights of a passing plane. But soon they were in the countryside, the road was bordered by nothing but trees, and Galen seemed calmer.

Eventually Peter said, “I’d be glad to. Excuse your odd things, I mean. You even talk different now. You picked that up from your Grampa, I know. He and I never got along. But I want you to know . . . well, all that stuff during the divorce, and stuff. . . damn it, boy, what I’m trying to say, is that, well, when you were laying there in bed, helpless as a baby . . .”

A remote, sorrowful look came into Galen’s eyes.

Peter resumed talking. “It reminded me of when you were just a baby. And, you know, you would spit up on me or poop in your pants, and just do things that babies do ‘cause they’re babies. And they didn’t get to me. Didn’t get on my nerves. Then, when you grew up, and I wasn’t around so much, you went off to live with your Grampa. And that got on my nerves. But I forgot, see? I forgot that, even when your babies grow up, it doesn’t matter what they do, you can’t stop,. . . well, you can’t stop caring about them. You understand?”

“I am not certain I do,” said Galen coldly. “Surely Grand Pa” (he pronounced it carefully, as if it were two words) “knew well the traditions and lore of our great house, and could thus well instruct me, since, as you say, you were gone away at the wars.” He watched Peter carefully for his reaction when he said this.

Beneath his watchfulness, Peter thought he could detect a hidden anger in his son; contempt and injured pride. “That’s what I’m trying to say, son. You did some things I didn’t like when you left me to live with Grampa and his money. But I realized I was wrong. There, I said it. Sorry; I was wrong.”

Galen nodded sternly, and his expression seemed to soften. “It is well you are contrite. I know you reject the deep traditions of our House, and have forgotten the oath of patience and faithfulness, which we, true watchmen
at our posts, must obey. But the tradition of Everness sounds a call to which all of our blood return, soon or late. . .” Now Galen sank into a reverie; and for a moment, a look of guiltiness and remorse seemed to soften the stern expression of his features.

For a moment they sat in the van together, not looking at each other, their expressions identical, their heads tilted forward at the same angles, the troubled looks in their eyes seeming the same.

“I figure,” said Peter, “that I didn’t get mad when you spit up on me. So I shouldn’t get mad at things smaller than that. I’m trying to tell you that I realized that I still love my son. I still love you.”

A haunted, guilty look grew in Galen’s eyes. His lips trembled, and he spoke. “I, too, have a confession. It is a terrible one. But not until I saw the face of one of my own family again did I realize the true depth of what I have done. I had not realized the true meaning of what it means to be a traitor to our house. But we face terrible foes, and there is none I can trust with my councils. Your son is not dead. I am not your son.”

Peter stiffened. “Here I am trying to apologize and you go say a thing like that! Your Grampa said something just like that to my face once. You’re no son of mine, he said. But he didn’t call me a traitor! Traitor to what?! A bunch of stupid craziness and phoniness!”

Galen’s tone was lofty, sharp, and cold: “Indeed? Perhaps I misunderstood the thrust of your apology.”

“I not saying I’m sorry I left all that nuttiness behind me. I’m not saying it’s not nuttiness. I know you really believe that stuff.”

“Indeed I do,” Galen said softly, a hint of a smile at his lips.

“All I’m saying is that I’m sorry I got on you about it. See? That it’s okay by me if you want to live your life waiting for King Arthur to come back, staying up nights with your Gramps listening for sea-bells to warn you about the destruction of the world. Go ahead and wait.” Peter drew a deep breath, and visibly calmed himself. He continued in a low voice, “All I’m saying is that I can put up with it now. It won’t change how I feel about you.”

Galen said sardonically, “So you do not trouble to serve the honor of
our family, but you will no more curse your own son for obeying laws you cast aside? You will forgive him for his faithfulness and constancy? Thank you for your toleration!” He gave a bark of sarcastic laughter and fell silent.

Such anger seized on Peter, then, that he grew red in the face, and he could feel his heartbeat throbbing in his cheeks and temples. But he controlled himself, and he spoke in a quiet voice: “I thought in the hospital that I might lose you. I don’t want to lose you. I want things to be right between us. You got to stick by your family.”

Galen was silent, withdrawn. Then Galen laid his hand on Peter’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You are right that loyalty to family is all we have, alone in a wilderness of enemies and false friends. We are of one blood, you and I, and that is a bond not to be broken. We may offend each other again. In days to come, you may hate me. But even if we must fight, let us hope that the love of father and son will survive the turmoil.” Peter patted the hand on his shoulder, a warmth in his heart.

“Okay, son. But let’s not fight.”

“Let us be in a holiday mood, you and I! We return to our ancestral seat. It is one place, I know, which would not have changed since I slept.”

“Boy, your Grampa really messed up the way you talk. You got it from those books of his.”

“How long till we arrive at Everness House?”

“We’re not going there.”

Galen seemed to relax, his expression quiet, his eyes glittering with a dangerous thoughtfulness. “No? And yet we grow ever closer to the House’s center of power.”

“Well, son, I sort of thought you and I would stay at Emily’s house. It used to be mine. She’s never there; she lives at Wilbur’s now. They said I could stay there while I was visiting you. Like it was a big favor to let a man stay in his own house.” He snorted in contempt.

Galen said in a careful voice. “Surely my Grand Pa wishes also to see me again. To reassure himself of my good health.”

“We won’t be that far away,” said Peter. “Maybe you’ll see him.” He
spoke in a tone of voice that made it clear Peter would do everything in his power to prevent that from happening.

Galen laid his hand on the dashboard, as if feeling the powerful vibrations of the van in motion, as if listening to the muttered roar of the engine like the noises of an alien and incomprehensible beast, and he looked at the complex, swift motions by which Peter was guiding the huge vehicle. There was a solemn look in his eye, a strangeness, as if the lights and dials of the dashboard were illegible to him, a mystery beyond his powers.

Galen sighed and sank back into his seat. “Ah, well. Perhaps you can teach me how to speak more like mine old self before I visit Grand Father.”

But Peter was not listening. He was staring at the rearview mirror. “Someone’s following us. That car’s been with us for more than an hour.”

8

The Strange
and
Ancient House
Unchanging

I

Raven sat in the passenger’s seat, watching the reflections of the streetlights on the car hood flow by, one after another. Wendy was telling him all about Galen Waylock’s adventures in a dream-city at the edge of the world. Raven could not follow the logic of the story, and did not try. He was tired (he had gotten up, as was his wont, at dawn, and he let the words roll over him like a warm and pleasant sea-wave one cannot swim against.

Every now and again, he found himself nodding off, and in his half- dreams, inspired by Wendy’s words, strange images floated behind his eyes.

He saw a line of warriors in conical helms and garbed in silver scale- mail, armed with spears of starlight, standing watch on the battlements of a vast, dark wall overlooking the turbulent sea. Far below these knights, in the
bitter waves of the sea, were black seal-creatures with luminous eyes, silently floating below the waves, waiting, watching. Far down, below the seal-men, was an abyss; and, in the abyss, the outline of seven towers made of black diamond, crusted with barnacles, adrip with seaweed. And in the topmost tower was a light, bright as the morning star, rising from the deep.

As Raven nodded, he saw again the knights stationed on the wall, but they were fewer now. There were a score of knights; a dozen; a few. Then there were only two; a young boy and an old man, alone upon the titanic wall, the last defenders left.

And the tide was rising. With every wave, the creatures in the sea grew closer.

Raven imagined what it would look like if the seal-men began to climb the slippery rock to the battlement, chortling to each other with throaty coughs and barks of laughter. Some of them were dressed in water-soaked rags of dead sailor’s clothing; some had masks made of flayed human skin, carefully cut from the faces of corpses, worn across their whiskered muzzles.

When Wendy was describing the horrible huge hand that had come to seize Galen and drag him away, Raven, half-asleep, saw images of a giant figure, robed in wings of darkness, hooded, immense, striding hugely across the nighted world, stepping over trees and cottages, carrying in one hand a reaping hook of black iron and, in the other, a cage which held a flickering shimmer of fading light. Beneath the hood there was nothing, and from this nothing came, every now and then, a glint of feeble rays of light, like moonlight seen through smog. And where this gray and feeble light touched, trees withered, grass faded, and the small scurrying animals by the roadside fell and did not rise again.

The hooded, giant figure stepped over the wall, dislodging stones, and waded the ocean, leaving a wake of floating fish where the shadow of its cloak fell. When it reached the edge of the world, it strode up the steps of a giant ziggurat which perched on the cliffside and made a gesture toward its feet.

There was another figure, dressed in armor made of dead men’s bones,
standing by the giant’s ankles, who called out across the darkness in a thin, cold voice: “Sulva, where fell sprites abide! Heave up your icy horns to me, your sterile plains, your lifeless sea, that I may journey to your hidden, farther side! I know the cause of your inconstancy, and why your light ebbs and fails; I know a planetary angel where sin prevails. Last to fall, lowest sphere of all, put shame aside; unhide yourself to me.”

As Koschei said these words, the globe of the Moon rose up, huge, lifeless, like a skull in the sky, many times more enormous than Raven had ever seen it before; so close to the Earth that the giant, with a vast, slow sweep of its cloak-billowing arm, was able to throw the caged light it held onto the barren lunar surface.

Immediately, a horde of obese, blind lepers, with tears of pus running down their flabby cheeks from empty eye sockets, waddled out from craters and pits to seize the cage, which they chained to a cart and began dragging across the mountains and craters to the moon’s far side. One of the blind, grotesquely fat men raised a scabby, heavy arm and pointed down at Raven, hooting with alarmed, choked noises.

Koschei turned and looked at Raven. “There is a dreamer here, from Earth. I think he has heard every word of what we are saying.”