The Last Guardian of Everness (War of the Dreaming 1) (38 page)

One of the eagles screamed, “Take up in defense of heaven’s light, and take as foes those wrathful and sullen giants whom that light awes! Vow to use in no unsober purpose, nor to set aside, nor to deliver to any agent of the enemy, until thy charge is passed, or until the King is come again, and excuses you your duty!”

The eagle cocked its head aside, staring at Peter with a yellow eye.

Peter asked the eagle several questions, but it did not speak again. Then he saluted the eagle with the hammer, saying, “I hereby swear to support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

And the eagle screamed and vanished. It did not disappear or fade; instead, like an image from dream, it simply became hard to recall that it was there, as if a mist hid it from sight and memory.

“Wow!” said Wendy. She looked up at the other eagle and waved. “Can I have the Moly Wand?” she asked.

Raven stepped forward. “Darling! Don’t touch that wand!”

“Why not?”

“I—I—I am not knowing how to say this, but, I think you will be very unhappy if you touch that wand! Remember, there is curse!”

“Oh, really? Are you saying I have fond illusions, Mr. Raven, son of Raven? You must think I hallucinate!” And she snorted, almost giggling.

Peter looked up from the hammer in his lap. “Hey. Maybe someone else should take that wand, you know? Someone already hardened and cynical. Disillusioned. Not a little pretty thing like you.”

Wendy just rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on!” And she began to reach for it.

“Wait!” Raven’s voice held a note of panic.

“Well, what?” asked Wendy.

“What if you no longer believed in fairy-tales, you touch that wand? What if you no longer believed in your father and mother?”

Wendy giggled. “Oh, Raven, don’t be so silly!”

“No! Listen! Stay away from that wand! It will make you lose your parents! You will realize the truth that they never exist! You will realize you never flew as a child! It was dream! Never hung in air outside kitchen window to wave at mother! No mother! It was dream! There are no miracles in life!”

Wendy arched her eyebrow (her favorite expression). “And I suppose I only pretended I got better in the hospital? That wasn’t a miracle, which happened only yesterday? Was that a dream, too, I suppose you think you’re going to say? Hah! Some people just don’t know anything about real life!”

Raven turned pale.

Wendy said, “Raven? What’s wrong? Aren’t you feeling all right?”

Peter, trying to distract her, said, “Say, Wendy. Raven might be right about getting the Ring instead of the bow and arrows.”

Wendy giggled. “But I’m not going to let him forswear love! Not while he’s
my
husband!”

“I was thinking of a guy named Wil. He’d be perfect. But where in the money would it be?”

Wendy said, “I know that! The wizard Franklin snared the lightning with a kite string, Galen said. I bet he keeps the Ring in Independence Hall. See there?” She pointed at the framed hundred-dollar bill, using the unicorn horn as a pointer.

Peter whispered to Raven, “What’re we going to do, pal? No one can use two talismans, that’s the rules. We need the Wand to fight the selkie. And the Moly Wand can only be used by the innocent. Are you innocent? I sure as hell ain’t. There’s no time to get anyone else.”

Raven looked out the windows. The armies of Azrael were drawn up in ordered hosts. The vast majority were selkie.

Peter said, “I know what you’re thinking, pal. Let the house get destroyed first, eh? But that ain’t going to happen. Look, you might like your wife just as much as now as when she gets sane . . .”

Raven sent Peter a dark look. “She will wither and perish without her dreams. To make her bitter? Ordinary? Without love or delight? I would kill before I would let. . .” And then he choked, realizing what he was saying.

When Raven had stepped over to talk to Peter, Wendy had stepped next to the eagle on the bedpost and whispered a few words to it.

Raven and Peter both flinched when the eagle screamed, “It is so!”

“See!” chirped Wendy. “The eagle says it’ll be all right. Don’t be such a worrywart. Besides, who says you men get a vote anyway?”

And before either of them could stop her, she picked up the Moly Wand.

“Wendy!” screamed Raven. “Put it down!” He started around the bed toward her. She said something to the eagle, which Raven did not hear, ending with, “. . . I promise.”

Raven noticed some of the light had gone. The other eagle, surrounded by a wreath of stars, had vanished.

He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Wendy! I told you not to . . .”

“Let go of me, silly! I’m all right! And yes, I still remember my parents, and I still believe in fairies, and I still believe in miracles . . .”

Her voice trailed off.

Raven let go of her shoulders and backed away, his eyes filling with fear, the back of his hand against his mouth. “No . . .” he said.

A look of wisdom, of memory, of thought flowed into Wendy’s blue eyes, and they looked like deep pools of clear water. She said, “I guess it wasn’t a miracle, was it? Koschei said I could have another person’s life if only I would agree. But I didn’t agree. But someone must have agreed, or else Koschei would not have been able to get Azrael’s life out of Galen’s hand and put it in Galen’s body. Galen was drawn to me because I had his life in
me, didn’t I? You told Peter his son was dead. Why would you have said a thing like that?”

She looked at her husband intently.

“It was not my doing. . .,” Raven said. “I did not know that it really would work.”

“Silly! Then why’d you do it?”

He said nothing.

She said, “My daddy says strong men at least can admit what they’ve done. I used to brag about how strong you were, you know?”

Raven was silent. The sinking, cold ache in his heart, forgotten for a time, now chilled him.

“Don’t you have anything you want to tell me, Raven Varovitch?” She spoke in a clear, crisp tone of voice.

Peter said, “What the hell’s going on?What the hell’s she talking about?”

Raven said in a pleading voice, “You were dying!”

She shrugged. “I was afraid, at first. Then I got over it. Why couldn’t you? Couldn’t you have been brave? For me?”

“But you were
dying!”

“You sound like a broken record. But at least I wasn’t killing anyone.”

Peter said, “What’s all this about?! Wendy!”

Wendy said, “Tell him, Raven. Tell the truth. The angels hear you when you tell the truth, and the devils hear you when you lie, that’s what Mommy says. And she should know.”

But Raven backed up further, his expression one of misery and anger, and said nothing.

“Wendy?” said Peter.

Wendy said softly, “I think my husband helped a demon kill your son.”

Peter looked at Raven with a look Raven knew the men Peter had killed on the battle field had seen before they died. “You’re a dead man, Varovitch, if she’s telling the truth.”

“Wendy—” Raven tried to sound strong, but it emerged as a sob. “I did not mean to—I thought—He said it would be a stranger!”

Her face grew cold. A look of angry sorrow, of contempt, came into her eyes.

Raven shouted, “I did it for you!”

The look of contempt faded into a blank stare of indifference, as if she were looking at someone she did not know.

The church bells fell silent.

II

At that moment there came such a howl of wind, such an explosion of lightning and thunder, that Raven once more grabbed his wife, pulling her further from the windows, his other hand raised as if to ward off a blow.

Through the gaps in the wall they saw three flying figures, winged with storm clouds, falling, swooping, and diving, like three hawks fighting. Winds and thunder and lightning darted from their every gesture and glance. Great sweeps of black cloud swirled around them, stirred to hurricanic wrath by the battle in the air.

The battle passed over the house. Falling and flying, black as a crow in his waistcoat, his lace a spot of electric white at his throat, Fulgrator shook his dreadful javelin, smiling and fierce. With a whine of bagpipes and a clash of blade on shield, his brothers plunged across the gulf of air toward him, and their footsteps echoed with thunder.

Soil and shrubs and sections of wall were thrown into the air; lightning danced across the gathered horde, slaying a score; thunder dazed and maddened another so that the horses of those kelpie still on land reared and plunged, trampling friends. Seal-men, gunmen, and thrown riders fell under reddened hoofs.

In the next moment, the three storm-princes were whirled aloft, fluttering like leaves in an October gale, thrown high into the yellow-red sky. They were small, darting shapes seen in the wide spaces opening between the
piled towers of black cloud, and flashes of lightning and wild tumult followed them.

The beam of lightning no longer swayed atop the central tower. Fulgrator, it may be, had gathered all his power high above to struggle with his brothers.

When the storm-princes flew high, the earth below grew calm again. Azrael’s forces were in disarray, for the kelpies’ ordered retreat had turned to chaos, and the giant of fire stepped out from his cloud of smoke and lashed out against them with his two torches, setting galloping horses afire.

The forces to the north of the courtyard, however, were not in disarray. Here was the ice-giant, the remainder of the squad of gunmen dressed as soldiers, and an innumerable horde of selkie marines.

Azrael raised his staff and waved it in a great circle: the signal for the advance. Seal-men in the shape of men, armed with belaying pins, pikes, marlin spikes, and pickaroons, gave forth a cheer and stormed the house.

A large group ran up the half-fallen balcony as if it were a ramp, coming toward the gap in the wall. In their midst glided the ice-giant; and the shouting faces of the marines were at the level of its waist, so that it seemed it waded among them. In one great hand it held a truncheon; the other hung limp at its side. Snow and freezing rain from its deadly breath swept the air before and after it.

Behind the giant, marching in an ordered wedge, came a squad of gunmen. They had donned heavy coats over their flak jackets, collars turned up; some of the men worked the actions of their rifles with mittened hands to prevent the metal parts from freezing to each other.

Wendy, in Raven’s arms, slapped him. He stumbled back across the room so that he was near the ruins of the door.

Behind Raven, a sly Irish voice said softly, “Have ye not reckoned why yer lassy knows so much of the House so suddenly? So unnaturally?”

Raven was the only one who turned his head. Peter and Wendy were staring out the windows.

Where the fall of the balcony had torn away the wall, three selkie officers in red coats and white wigs led a chuckling crowd of able seamen, brandishing truncheons. The three officers, noses high, raised flintlock pistols in their paws and fired, while their men gave a ragged cheer. The figures disappeared behind a wash of black-powder smoke, while poorly aimed lead pistol balls rang from the stone or pitted the wood of the house. A hammering thunder erupted through the air when Peter emptied his machine-gun into the selkie crowd. A dozen were slain; the rest cowered back, some throwing themselves from the third-story balcony to escape. Why the bullets were able to strike them, but not touch the giants nor the kelpie, was not clear.

Wendy shouted, “The giants are coming!”

Peter tossed the empty rifle aside and raised the hammer in his hand, hefting its weight, aiming . . .

Raven looked up. Atop a roof beam sat Tom O’Lantern in his red cap, his little eyes glittering with malice and hate. “Galen’s life is in her body, it is, put there by yourself, ye murderer. Now that life struggles to come out, and it speaks through her. It’ll eat the poor lass up, and then ye’ll be a twice murderer. But look! Here is the American Wizard Franklin who tamed Jove’s bolt with Yankee know-how!”

It was true. An apparition looking like Benjamin Franklin stood in the room next to Raven. There were bifocals on his nose, a wry smile of jolly good humor at his lips, and an absurd-looking raccoon-skin cap on his head. On the chain of his pocket watch, dangling over the slope of his plump vest, hung a ring of palest gold.

Meanwhile, at the gap, the selkie fell aside, shouting encouragement. The ice-giant appeared at the top of the slanting balcony, faceplate of ice gleaming. There was a hiss as it drew in its breath.

Peter threw the hammer with a powerful sweep of his arm. The muscles in Peter’s arm stood out like knots of iron.

“Take the ring!” Tom O’Lantern hissed at Raven. “Forswear the lady’s sweet love! Ye are not worthy of it anyway!”

The skull of the frost-giant exploded in a spray of ice and brains, and
pale-blue ichor. The huge body toppled backwards, crushing gunmen and selkie, and any splashed with fluid from the falling corpse were burned with cold, frostbitten, or killed, as if they had been splashed with liquid nitrogen.

When the giant corpse hit the ground, strangely, it shattered like a hollow sculpture.

Wendy cheered and clapped.

Through the eastern windows, Raven saw for a moment, two storm- princes whirl by, a flutter of kilt and coat, arms knotted about each other, gleaming javelin tangled in bagpipe flutes. The third prince was stalking down through the corridors of air, descending toward the house, horsehair plume of his helmet snapping in the wind, and footsteps booming in midair.

“Or will ye do naught to help your friends?” whispered Tom O’Lantern, voice thick with hate.

Selkie dressed as sailors were at the gap, but they threw themselves on their faces when the hammer Mollner, flung by some invisible force, yanked itself out of the shattered skull of the frost-giant and flew by overhead toward Peter’s upraised hand.

A look of fear appeared on Peter’s face just before the hammer struck his hand. He was bowled out of the bed on which he sat and flung to the floor.

“My hand!”

A mob of selkie rushed into the room, waving their pikes and bludgeons, jumped over the bed, laughing for joy.