Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming)

by Wright, John C.

  Galen said, “Grandpa never told me the spell …”

  Pendrake said, “Peter? Do you know it?”

  Peter had been watching the corpse-choked ocean, the angels of Acheron. He didn’t turn his head. “Course not! Hey, Dad. Help him make his damned bomb. We should have had all this talked out and set before we got here!”

  Pendrake said, “Fine. Take off. I’ll give you instructions about how to dismantle the warhead once you match course and speed …”

  Lemuel had put out his hand. “Give me the horn, Grandson.”

  Galen looked at his grandfather suspiciously. And he saw the wounded look on his grandfather’s face as that suspicion hung between them.

  Galen said, “You’re not going to blow the horn, right? You’re going to help Pendrake conjure his bomb?”

  Lemuel smiled. “I will do my duty as I see fit, Galen. Give me the horn. I thought you had learned your lesson about how you should listen to your elders’ wisdom. If you had listened to me at the beginning, none of this would have happened. Listen to me now. Trust me. Give me the horn.”

  Galen extended his hand toward Lemuel, the horn glimmering like white bone.

  Azrael said, “By Morpheus, stop! Hold your hand!”

  Galen’s hand tingled, went numb, and jerked the horn up away from Lemuel’s grasp. Galen grasped his possessed hand with his other hand, and said a name of power. The tingling stopped.

  Azrael stepped between Lemuel and Galen. “Fool! He intends to wind the horn and end the earth! See how the tangles of his hair make the Sephiroth Binah tangled with the rune Tiwaz! It is a sign of treason!”

  Oberon intoned. “We have had treasons and treasons enough!” and he raised his hand to the sky.

  A lightning bolt, called by Oberon, snapped down from the clouds, a white shaft of electricity, which struck toward Azrael; but Raven, forewarned by Prometheus, stepped in the way, and caught the lightning bolt in his hand.

  Galen said, “No! Stop it!”

  Lemuel said, “Son, I order you to give me that horn. There is no point now in doing otherwise. If your father had tended to his duties, he might know the charm. He doesn’t. He disobeyed the sacred trust of our family. I am very disappointed—very disappointed, mind you—that you also are toying with treason. But it doesn’t matter. This world is old, and tired, and its time is up. Give me the horn. We have always loved and trusted each other, even when the rest of the world laughed. Don’t leave me all alone now, at the last hour of time. Be a member of this family. Give me the horn. There is no one else to give it to!”

  Galen said, “I’m sorry, Grandfather. But I think the world is young and has a long way to go yet. And I’m not so sure anymore if I’d like paradise if it was just given to me. It wouldn’t really be mine, then, would it? And you’re wrong. There is someone else who knows how to use the horn. The founder who made the first tower of Everness.”

  And he turned and offered the horn toward Azrael.

  “I accept!” shouted Azrael, and his hand snatched the horn. But Galen did not let go. There they stood, both holding the horn, and Galen was staring Azrael in the eye.

  For some reason, it was Azrael’s gaze that faltered and wavered. He could not meet Galen’s eye, but lowered his head. Galen said, “I gave you my cloak off my back once, because I thought you were cold. Well, you were a lot colder than I thought. Take it.”

  Azrael yanked the horn to his chest, where he caressed it with both hands, staring at it. Then he looked up at Galen, a puzzled, guarded look in his eye. “You—you have given me the ultimate power over the earth and sky. All I can dream, now I can make real. Why?”

  Galen said, “You don’t want Oberon to win, or Morningstar. So you have to help Pendrake make his bomb.”

  Azrael said, “And thereafter, the world is mine to do with as I see fit, first, perhaps to revenge myself on the man who has stolen my wife and cuckolded me …”

  Oberon said, “You are not alone in that, Wizard. For such a purpose I would set aside my enmity with you, till Pendrake has been taught humility …”

  Azrael snarled and Oberon recoiled, drifting backward like a column of smoke in a slow wind.

  Galen said, “See? That’s what you don’t want to be like.”

  Azrael said darkly, “Boy, why do you so trust me?”

  Galen spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “I don’t trust Azrael, not at all. But I trust Merlin. Merlin is the one who founded our family; and maybe he’s forgotten why he built his tower, or why he rebelled against heaven. May be he’s forgotten who he is. I haven’t forgotten. Look at that pigeonhawk you’ve been following around. A merlin is just another name for a pigeonhawk. I know who you are. I can read the signs. Maybe it’s a gift I get from my ancestor.”

  Galen now turned toward Lemuel. “Grandfather, I do want to be part of this family. But I think the family has been lied to somewhere along the line. I was told we were given the horn. Azrael says he stole it. Excuse me. I mean Merlin. It was not because of treason or failure that Merlin was in a cage in Tirion, it was only because of Oberon’s hatred. Oberon was just too weak or too scared to come take the horn once we had it; so he did the next best thing, and told our forefathers that we worked for him.”

  The wizard put the unicorn horn back into Galen’s hand. “It is simple to use. Wound yourself, and let your blood drip into the hollow of the horn. With the blood drops that reach the tip, trace the image and the lines of what you wish; touch both the drawing and the object the drawing represents with the horn; sleep with it beneath your pillow, and dream of the dream you wish to make real. In just this fashion, long ago, Oberon, a man, stole the dream-kingdom from Ouranos, the Demiurge who dreamed this world into being.”

  Oberon stepped forward, raising his hand. “I will with patient grace abide no longer this poor folly. Enough! Behold, I raise my hand and call on all powers of earth and sky …”

  Azrael reached out, touched the unicorn horn, said, “Coming, as you did, over the wall of Everness, I have power over thee. Thou art a man; I revoke the law of dreaming!” And pointed at Oberon.

  Oberon shrank to mortal stature, becoming solid and whole. His features were now plain to see; a handsome man, but not supernaturally so. He had weight; his knees made noise on the deck when he sank down; he cast a shadow. The glamour of unreality had fled.

  He clapped his hand to his empty right eye socket as if that pained him now. His splendid garbs and silks, now folded in absurd lengths across his too-small frame, were wilting and evaporating.

  Pendrake said, “Why don’t you just sit there till we decide what to do with you?”

  Galen said, “Do you give me this horn now, relinquishing your claim to and power over it?”

  The wizard had to draw a deep breath before he spoke. “I do. The power is no more mine.” And he looked sad for a moment.

  A pigeonhawk flew down from nowhere, landed on his shoulder, and immediately, the wizard was garbed in a great cloak of merlin feathers, dappled brown and white, with a hood of slate blue, which sprang, dreamlike, from the plumage of the bird. The black robes inscribed with constellations lay in a heap at Merlin’s feet, shed along with his old name.

  Peter landed at that moment, the cylindrical warhead carried across the shoulders of the irked goat-monsters pulling his wheelchair.

  “Now,” said Pendrake, “This should only take five minutes …”

  It actually only took four and a half. Curving bars of magnetic superconductors appeared around the warhead with the suddenness of a dream. Pendrake opened the casings, attaching drawings of machinery and circuits, which then unfolded and became solid. He made adjustments, altered his drawings. Galen stirred and muttered in his sleep, clutching the horn, waking, hearing instructions, and throwing himself immediately back to sleep with the secret names of Morpheus.

  Azrael, or, rather, Merlin Waylock, guided and directed each step of the process. Raven practiced generating perfect magnetic fields. Prometheus made suggestions and l
ooked eager. Van Dam brought up radiation suits and leaded glass goggles from a locker and passed them out. Wendy floated around, trying to help, and got in everyone’s way.

  Peter lashed his hammer to a heavy cable tied to the framework holding the warhead. “Ready? Come on, let me throw it. Not many men going to be able to say they threw a nuke. Ready? Goddamn it! I’m waiting around here, y’know!”

  “Ready,” said Pendrake.

  Galen passed out arrows. “In case this new radiation doesn’t listen to Prometheus.”

  Raven said, “Am ready.” He had a little picture on a piece of notebook paper in his palm, diagramming the internal structure of the cosmogenesis weapon, with concentric circular arrows in blue ink showing where and how he had to rotate the fields.

  Wendy hopped up and down with excitement, “Go, Daddy, go! Blast them to smithereens!”

  Prometheus said, “Actually, I just thought of a much more effective way of dopplering the field recurvature, if only we had a tetrahedron of neutronium point sources rotating around a common axis. Well … perhaps next time …”

  Lemuel said to Peter, “Throw it, Son. We watchmen have watched long enough. The foe is here; the watch is done. Now is the time to strike …”

  Peter threw his hammer in the air. The cable snapped taught. The warhead was yanked aloft.

  Peter pointed with his finger to a spot overtop Acheron, some twenty miles away. Raven was squinting at the picture in his hand.

  “Too late,” whispered Azrael Merlin Waylock,

  The clouds parted to reveal the wandering star at zenith …

  A fanfare began to blow from the citadel of Acheron. The gates swung open. The single beam of pale light began to swell and widen.

  “In position,” said Peter Waylock.

  Galen Waylock pointed the unicorn horn; “Laws be one, both waking and asleep; it is done!”

  “Say …,” said Wendy, looking back and forth, “where’d Oberon go?”

  “Now, Raven,” said Pendrake, “now!”

  Raven put his finger on the wiring diagram of the ignition circuit.

  21

  Morningstar

  I

  The imperial gates of Acheron swung open, and the processional which went before great Morningstar marched, singing, out into the waves; and the waters grew still as crystal beneath their angelic footsteps.

  Great Morningstar himself, taller than the tallest church steeple, heralded by the pallid light which shone and darted from his brow, stepped over the threshold, and paused, one foot upon the iron steps of Acheron, one foot on the water.

  His proud eyes viewed at once the whole of Earth, his promised kingdom, for the eyes of angels do not fail with distance, and are not deceived by the surfaces of things. He saw the whole business of mankind and all their works; and his mind, wiser and swifter than any mortal mind, instantly apprehended all the sins and woes of all humanity. And now his lip curled in disdain.

  The seraphim to his left were crowned in black Hell-fire, and wore vestments red as blood; the seraphim to his right wore crowns like the aurorae that appear over arctic snows, and their vestments were pale as corpses. Seven candlesticks of gold went before him, issuing smoke without light, held in the hands of the seven Virtues which were his handmaidens: Inhumanity, Despair, Infidelity, Madness, Blindness, Injustice, and Cowardice. And behind him came the great Archangel Mulciber, Prince of the Abyss, carrying the scroll wherein the doom of all the world was written; and the scroll was sealed with seven seals.

  Morningstar halted in his processional, and spoke to Mulciber, saying, “My house has not yet been prepared to receive me, for, behold, the vermin mankind still infests this green Earth. You have not yet opened the Seal of Doom, nor let free the utter destruction contained therein to cleanse this, my world, of that filth which the Thunderer dared to set before me in priority. Even now the fallen creatures conspire to direct a weapon against me; yet still they live. Where, in this, is wisdom?”

  Mulciber bowed low, saying, “Glory, glory, glory to you in the highest! Majesty, your own command allowed that those who worship you, and committed crimes in your name, would be permitted to live as slaves, forever condemned to die and deserving of death, yet forever spared. We cannot unleash undiscriminate devastations to rule, with horror, the Earth, till your loyal worshippers have been winnowed out from the body of mankind; to do otherwise would be to put a falsehood into the mouth of Morningstar, our brightest, and that cannot be.”

  Morningstar raised his head to gaze upon the darkened clouds and darkened sky. “Behold, their weapon ignites. Glory, and empire, hesitate. How shall we sponge away this blot upon our honor? For we have, with conquering footstep, set forth to receive the homage of the Earth, and yet we have trodden on a scorpion.”

  Mulciber spoke: “What are the weapons of creatures such as they to spirits such as we? No flame of man’s making can hinder pure and higher entities; only the sun can drive us back, and we have overcome and banished him. Mere men, I deem, cannot draw down the sun at their command from heaven!”

  Morningstar said, “Yet so they have done. Behold.”

  A white light appeared above their heads, and in the midst of that light, Hyperion, crowned in glory, whipped his chariot of fire down upon Acheron, and raised his bow of light.

  Morningstar stepped forth, swelling in an instant to a stature overtopping his own towers, and his wings, like winter storm clouds, spread hugely across the sky. Those Angels of Acheron who fled into his shadow were spared; those who did not were withered like autumn leaves in a fire.

  Acheron was destroyed; the flames cast fragments of the broken towers, hugely crumbling, cloaked with smoke, into the steaming sea and up on high into the bright, burning air.

  Morningstar strode gigantically up into the sky, slaying the steeds of the sun-chariot with the first sweep of his scepter. Hyperion, his wings of gold fanning out to grip the air, toppled from the wreckage to the chariot, drawing his great sword Adustus as he fell.

  The second blow from the scepter of Morningstar broke the sword in fragments, shattered Hyperion’s golden breastplate, and struck the Sun-God to the heart.

  II

  Raven pulled the leaded goggles over his eyes and looked up the moment he triggered the ignition.

  A sphere of perfect white light appeared in the air above Acheron, surrounded instantly by a shock wave of electricity and Saint Elmo’s Fire, which fled like sparks across the sea as the sphere reddened and expanded. Ripples of blue-white and silvery light flickered across the face of the sphere as it swelled; and the seascape behind the sphere to either side vibrated and twisted, as if the light near the explosion were bent aside, or as if space itself were bending.

  The towers of Acheron melted like wax. The sea and the huge rebounding fragments of blasted towers flew up into the expanding explosion as if gravity were suspended in the immediate radius.

  A dark fragment, surrounded by smoke and darkness, larger than the rest, pierced through the center of the sphere.

  The sphere popped like a soap bubble, and a wash of heat and fire flashed across the seascape from horizon to horizon, and a mighty mushroom cloud, knotted like a turbulent great fist, thundered upward, red light cooling and swallowed in black.

  The light became darkness as the fire of the explosion was consumed by the rising, all-consuming clouds.

  The sound and shockwave shook the ship.

  Raven cried out, “Look!”

  III

  In the midst of the explosion, stepping forth from the smolder and cloud-mass of which he seemed a part, rose a vast figure of perfect angelic beauty, his dark visage stern and contemptuous beneath the single pale light which burned like a third eye upon his coronet, his black wings like smoke spreading the cloud far out across the heavens. And in those arms was the dead body of a golden angel, withered laurel leaves dropping from his golden head, broken sword and snapped bow dropping from his relaxed fingers.

  As the after light of the
explosion faded from the sky, Morningstar, with a contemptuous thrust of his arm, dropped the corpse into the sea, where it floated, face downward, sodden wings collapsed crookedly upon the waves like two islands.

  Morningstar strode across the surface of the sea, and put one foot upon the deck of the aircraft carrier. Such was his size that his heel and toe covered the forward part of the deck from port to starboard; and the pressure of his step overcame the power of the engines, so that the laboring propellers churned the sea without effect.

  The pale light from the supreme angel’s brow gathered itself into a beam and glanced down at the deck, as Morningstar looked down. Lemuel yanked the cover off his Chalice and spilled the living light into the air all around him, so that, while Pendrake, Raven, Galen, and the others were sickened, robbed of all strength and beaten prone by that light, they were not instantly slain. They lay on their faces, shivering, limbs cold.

  Morningstar raised his great scepter, and the muscles of his upraised arm were like the pillars that hold up the world. The ship was in the shadow of his arm, and of his scepter.

  Snow began to drift gently down from the clouds that had gathered in the shadow of his measureless, vast wings.

  Only Prometheus was on his feet, and even his size was nothing compared to Morningstar’s; he was as a tall pine tree growing the shadow of a vast mountain-glacier. But Prometheus was not even looking upward; he had taken the engine out of the wreckage of a helicopter, and was holding it in one hand, taking it apart with the other, fascinated.

  Raven was looking at where his wife’s face was pressed into the deck not far from his own. There were tears in her eyes; she was frightened. Through blue and shivering lips, she whispered feebly, “Raven! Do something! I’m scared!”

  Raven feebly twitched and put his hands under him. Morningstar’s perfect and beautiful voice floated down from heaven. “Prometheus Loki. Bow down to me, trickster, and yield me homage, and, even now, I will spare the filthy race you have created. Bow! Or I send the tidal wave to swallow the cities of mankind, one for each minute you resist.” He opened and closed his wings, and great waves gathered on the far horizons and fled away across the sea.