The Last Guardian of Everness

by John C. Wright

  When what seemed like Galen’s hand fell away as a glove, Wendy slipped free of the Wizard’s grasp, shouting, “He’s not Galen and cannot cross the wards!”

  Raven felt power return to his limbs: Azrael’s spell was broken. He leapt to his feet.

  Wendy was balanced for a moment on the broken rim of the balcony, arms windmilling. Then she fell back out of sight, screaming.

  The giant’s fist, radiating a terrible heat, crashed in through the windows on the southern side, sending the bed flying into splinters. But Peter had pulled his father and rolled them both to one side, and neither was crushed. On his back, in a tangle of limbs with his unconscious father, Peter flung the hammer left-handed.

  The hammer flew fair and true and struck the giant between the eyes with such force that, for a moment, his two eyes faced each other across a widening crater of blood. The skull caved in with a roar and a flash of fire, and the huge body at once became a pillar of ash, strangely without substance, that disintegrated silently on the wind.

  “Raven!” shouted Peter. “Ring! Electrocute them!”

  The look of fear was on Peter’s face again as the hammer slammed back in through the wall. It struck his left arm, and he was thrown back sliding across the floor, where he lay, unconscious or dead.

  Wendy’s scream changed into a whoop of joy, and she floated back up into view, lighter than a thistledown, her skirts and hair flapping about her, weightlessly.

  Only Azrael was not dumbstruck.

  “Servant of Oberon!” Azrael called. “Return the Silver Key or I destroy your husband!” And he pointed his tall walking stick at Raven. With his other hand, he clutched the amulets at his throat.

  “Oberon? We work for Galen!” said Wendy.

  “Galen . . . ?” Azrael paused as if in sudden thought.

  She laughed. Oddly, it seemed as if her laugh were as bright and gay as ever it had been. She said brightly, “Gravity doesn’t need to weigh us down, do you know that? I’ve been under that illusion my whole life. Now do you think you can weigh me down? You and your silly threats? You sound so goofy when you say things like that! There’s no battle here; that’s just an illusion. What good are the gates of Everness to you without the Key? Fine! Go ahead and win your battle! I’ll just fly away with the Key now, thank you! Maybe I’ll go off into my mother’s kingdom, now that I remember the way there.”

  “You scoff at my threat?”

  “You won’t hurt Peter or Lemuel. They’re your family. Your threats are an illusion.”

  “And your husband?”

  Wendy looked over to where Raven stood. She looked him in the eye. She said, “I guess that was just an illusion, too. I have no husband.”

  And she turned her head away, putting her face in her elbow, and let the wind sweep her up lightly out over the coast.

  She blew like a leaf past the ships of the selkie, away through the air toward the massive clouds, whose towers and folds of distant white were stained in deep, rich colors by the sunrise.

  One of the gunmen raised his rifle as if to shoot; but his gaze became slack and fixed, as if the sight of the flying girl were too strange for him to see.

  Raven said tonelessly, “Franklin, hand me the ring. I promise to use it well and not to give it to another.”

  Azrael turned, “By Morpheus! Stop!” But he was on the balcony outside the house, and Raven was within, and his magic did not reach across the wards.

  Raven looked down at the ring in his palm, but he was afraid to put it on. Was he willing to forswear love forever . . . ?

  He stepped behind the ghost of Ben Franklin. That the apparition was still here told him the spell was not complete. He had not yet taken possession of the ring; the curse had not yet fallen. Also, the gunmen in black uniforms seemed unable to focus their eyes on Franklin, as if the sight of a Founding Father’s Spirit were too strange for them to be allowed to see.

  Azrael said, “Bromion!”

  The Roman storm-prince said, “In places touched with sacred quiet are forbidden thunder and riot.”

  Raven was panting as if he were struggling under a great weight. His wife had left him, why not give up love? Was it worse than Peter losing all four limbs?

  There was writing on the inside of the white gold band: Tempestos Attonitus, Fulmenos! Ave et Salve! Venire et Parere! Obviously, magic words to control the storm-princes. He could sweep the enemy away with blasts of lightning and call the winds to blow his wife back to him. Except, if the curse were fact, he would no longer want her when she came.

  Raven knew he must put on the ring. It would be only a moment before Azrael woke his gunmen or thought of some clever trick of magic or. . .

  But to put on the ring would be to extinguish all hope.

  Azrael said, “Koschei, you have the souls of the giants? You can resurrect them?”

  “Not in daylight. But the storm-prince still may overcome the son of the mountains.”

  “How may this be?”

  Koschei said, “He is a murderer, and the blood that streams from his hands has polluted the sacred precincts. The footsteps of Uriel, angelregent of the Sun, cross this room, it is true, but this murderer does not follow in them.”

  Raven looked up with tired eyes. He knew, dimly, that he should flee or fight, or do something. But all he said was, “Wendy . . .”

  The storm-prince clashed sword against shield, and the noise, louder than any other noise on earth, sent jolts of numbness through his limbs so that Raven fell headlong. At the second clash, Raven was dumb and could not speak. At the third, his wits scattered, turned to chaos by wild noise, and his senses fled.

  Raven was thunderstruck. Overcome by sorrow and misery, overcome by magic, he fell into darkness and knew no more.

  Here Ends the First Part of

  The War of the Dreaming;

  The Tale Continues in Part Two

  MISTS OF EVERNESS.