Mists of Everness

by John C. Wright

  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?”

  VI

  The dream-road writhed like smoke and was gone, leaving him bewildered. His name and memory escaped him; he was lost in icy wilderness, alone. A man in black, carrying the Great Sword Calipurn, had sent him here. Where?

  He found himself atop a black, snow-streaked crag of rock, with the august crowns of mountains looming over him, cloud-touched abysses and deep chasms dropping away underfoot. They were so high, those peaks, that the crystalline singing of the stars came faintly to his ear, like an echo of far choirs, remote, wondrous. A sense of holy dread beat in his heart.

  Perhaps he had been here a long time, mazed in these mountain passes, l
ost in this bleak and freezing place. Or perhaps (and this seemed more likely to him) this was a dream, and the rocks here were saturated with time, bathed in aeons, so that the ground itself inspired a sense of eternity.

  A vast voice rose up from the cliffside underfoot, a cry of desolation and anguish. It was not a human voice, but was as if a mountainside were crying aloud in pain.

  The young man restrained his impulse to rush forward to the aid of whatever so cried out. He recalled he had been in such a place as this before, a place of cliffs, a place of punishments.

  The young man said to himself, “I recall this much. I am a Great Dreamer. I stand within my place of power. Now, patience! If I am patient, the way will be made clear.”

  With his bowstaff, he drew, in the snow, a circle inscribed in a square, and, when this reminded him of the signs of the wardens of the four quadrants, their four weapons, their gates, he drew their four seals, and their four galleries. In the gallery of air were seven paintings of English hunting scenes, each hung below the zodiacal sign of a wandering star. Beneath the sigil of Saturn, the Sphinx sat couchant, in the dappled shadow of a bush. On the back of the Sphinx, the mother of memory, he had placed a child in armor, carrying a balance scale and a padlock.

  When he opened the padlock, he remembered his name.

  “Weigh—lock,” muttered Galen. “Very funny.”

  The lock had a white key in it. The key-ring was shaped like a mirror set above a cross, the symbol for Venus. In the mirror was an image of a high-heeled shoe with a pair of little raven wings springing from the heels.

  “I don’t wear high heels!” exclaimed Wendy in exasperation. She walked forward, hips swaying, high heels clattering on the stones. “And I certainly wouldn’t wear them mountain climbing!”

  “Sorry. I just put them on you ’cause that’s how I remember … um … so you wouldn’t get lost, or forgotten,” said Galen. “It’s my magic …”

  “Oh, right!” she snorted skeptically. “And these fishnets? And this miniskirt?! It’s so tasteless! I think I know what you remember about me. Look at this! Hmph. Men!”

  Wendy had hiked up the skirt and extended her leg, clad in black nylon, as if to display the tastelessness of her garb. Galen stared, then tried not to stare, smiled, tried not to smile, looked apologetic; then tried to look serious, blinking, his mouth open, but with nothing to say. “Uhh … Well … That is …”

  “And what are we here for again?” She tossed her head to fling her hair out of her eyes, and looked, wide-eyed, up at the huge granite peaks towering vastly up out of the clouds to either side.

  “Yeah. I’m about to remember,” said Galen, plucking a raven’s feather, and brushing it over the circle in the snow he had drawn. When he touched the Greater Sign of the Guardian of the Quadrant of the East, it turned into an eagle’s feather in his hand.

  A piercing, shrill scream echoed from the mountain peaks, the deadly cry of a bird of prey, but deep in its note, as if the eagles uttering that scream were vast, vast beyond all measure of earthly birds.

  “Oops,” said Galen, his eyes round. “Now I remember …”

  He bowed to his longbow. The staff bent. He strung it. A golden arrow glittered like fire beneath his fingertips as he drew the fletching to his cheek. Bow drawn, he stood with his legs spread, his head back, scanning the starry black sky.

  From around the shoulder of a peak all blue with snow it came, its wings, as large as sails, spread wide to ride the streaming winds. Its claws, like crooked thunderbolts, dangled below the pillars of muscles which were its legs. The streamlined head was naked like a vulture’s, and the two bright eyes gleamed with malice, self-righteousness, and bitter hate.

  The giant vulture lowered like a storm cloud, and its cold shadow fell across the crags, darkening the landscape. Wingtip to wingtip, it seemed to fill all the sky above the mountain. The eagle screamed, and its voice was the voice of the thunderclap.

  Galen saw the bloodstains on its claws and beak, and the streaks and stains along the sleek sides of its head, as if it were wont to thrust that head into some living flesh to tear at it. But the blood was light, golden in hue, not red or brown, as if, perhaps, it were not the blood of mortal man at all, but the ichor of the immortal.

  He thought in fear: this eagle is an ancient symbol, torn from the deepest heart of mankind. It is the punishment the world visits on the genius, on the idealist, on those who are martyred when they seek, as Prometheus sought, to better men’s fate. The forces of Enlightenment, everyone since Socrates and Galileo onward, have always been crushed by worldly power. Here is mankind’s darkest nightmare, enemy of hope and light—the old, cynical fear that virtue’s only reward in life is crucifixion.

  How can I fight such a fear? How can I, I alone, overcome that evil dream?

  With leaden arms, as if he were mired in the mud (for this was one of those dreams where motion was all but impossible), Galen raised the mighty bow. The arrow at his cheek burned like a ray of sunlight.

  VII

  The same moment as the arrow left the string, Wendy said, “But wait! Won’t those arrows just heal it? You know, just make it better …?”

  The arrow was away. It sped, blazing like a comet, a small, golden light shooting toward the overwhelming darkness of the eagle’s breast.

  The eagle was touched by the gold light. It shrieked in triumph, a terrifying noise, as it swelled in size, growing in strength, and it folded its vast wings, like a storm cloud narrowing into a tornado. Like a thunderbolt, it fell.

  “Oops,” said Galen. The shadow of the swooping monster fell across him; the shadow spread out from him in each direction.

  He dropped the longbow, yanking a length of string from his pocket. With a flip of his wrist, he tied a quick loop. “Father Time! I snare your fleeing foot! Patience bridles time!”

  The bird froze in midair. The loop jerked and trembled in Galen’s fingers as if massive and invisible forces were struggling with the knot.

  Galen said to Wendy, “I don’t know how long I can hold the slow-time frustration dream, so listen! I’m going to hand you my life and my arrows. Fly away from the skyfather-eagle. Come back, heal my body with the arrows, put my life back inside. Got it?”

  “But—but—” stammered Wendy, looking scared.

  “There is no time! I was impatient, and I used the wrong symbol; you don’t use enlightenment on tyrants, and you don’t try to reason with unreasoning force; it only encourages them and makes them stronger …” Galen’s fingers began to slip on the knot. “You’re just going to have to save me again, okay?”

  “Okay!” said Wendy. “But don’t make a habit of this!”

  Galen rolled his eyes back so that only the whites showed. In a strange voice he said, “Thanatos! Tartaros! Hades, and Dis! Unwind the ties of Orpheus! I call on Hercules, who conquered Hell, and ask you, if I am slain, to answer this, my final spell, and find me my soul and memory again. Let Koschei’s rune, which I, alone of living men have seen, render me again as I and I alone have been, both living and unliving, both seen and unseen! Sator! Arepo! Tenet! Opera! Rotas!”

  Galen threw back his head and made a horrid choking noise. A crystalline orb, a flicker of living flame pulsing and beating within it, began to come out of his mouth, large as an egg. He dropped the string. With one hand he reached up to pull the egg forth, and filmy flickers of light danced along his fingertips. With his other hand, he plucked a golden shaft from his quiver. With both hands he extended his treasures toward Wendy, swaying on his feet, his mouth lax, his face empty, his eyes extinguished. Wendy caught up the crystal flutter of life quickly, even as Galen dropped it; and she grasped the blazing arrow. Her eyes were wide with horror, for his fingers were as cold as the fingers of a corpse.

  The bit of string writhed; the knot snapped open. Galen’s lifeless body began to fall. Wendy, light as thistledown, whirled away, thrown weightlessly aside by the winds that swept from the monster-wings.

  Like the
fall of the hammer of a Titan, the storm-eagle struck.

  Blood flew everywhere.

  Floating high above the mountain peak, looking down, Wendy could see the skyfather-eagle in the cleft between the peaks, ravaging, clawing: a writhing black shape of inexpressible fury. To her tear-blurred eyes, it seemed as if a whirlwind, winged with storm and clawed with lightning, were churning and swirling in that space between the mountains. The noise was terrifying.

  When it was all over, and the eagle had sailed away like vanishing thunderheads, Wendy spent a long, horrid, silent time trying to gather the scattered limbs and severed head, the shreds of meat, the wads of blood, which had once been the young man. Into the bloody heap she thrust the arrow.

  A soft miracle came, and the corpse lay whole, undefiled, and silent. Galen’s face was gray and cold and calm beneath the cold, gray skies.

  Wendy stood, a gleaming light fluttering in her folded hands, and, for a time, she looked down at that still form.

  She tried to force the light back into Galen’s lips, tried to thrust it into his chest, but to no avail.

  She knew there was something she ought to do, some clever thing perhaps to do with the Moly Wand or the Silver Key, or maybe some way to call or summon the Chalice of Hope. But her mind was blank; she was sad and weary; she could think of nothing.

  She wept.

  “Hey, little lady,” came a cheerful, rough voice behind her, “What’s the matter?”

  Wendy turned. “Hello,” she said.

  The stranger was hugely muscled, his upper arms bulky knots, the breadth of his chest magnificent. On his head he wore the tawny skull of a lion, the fur and ears and teeth still attached, and the lion skin was thrown across his vast shoulders like a loose robe, with the giant claws tied in front. The nails were made of black iron.

  In his right fist the muscular man held a club of oak. His hair was black and long, unkept, and his smile was huge and cheerful.