The Last Guardian of Everness Read online

  “I hope I didn’t do anything wrong . . .” said Lemuel.

  “Patience and Faithfulness; this your people swore, your people as well as mine swore it, bound with mighty oaths to the Neverending City. Where is patience that you dare to call me here before my time? Where is faithfulness? Once a mighty order were the guardians of Everness, many families, not just one, and a kingdom to call for its support. But now, how often does the Wall stand empty, unwatched? Your family knows the ancient words to call down powers from Celebradon, the Tower in the Autumn Stars, but to what use? Your people have forgotten us, or if they recall, do not practice the old forms, or do not believe. There is no faithfulness any more in Everness, I fear.”

  By this, Lemuel knew his brother had not ever called down a dream- colt, and he wondered, with sudden disorientation, almost fear, if his father ever had. Wasn’t there anyone who still believed?

  “I’m sorry. Really, I am. Wait! Don’t go! Look here; I brought you a present. See? It’s an apple. I snuck it out of the kitchen in my nightshirt.”

  She was silent a moment, nostrils twitching. “Most of those who pray for rain do not bring out umbrellas,” she said softly to herself, her voice warm and low. Aloud she said, “And what is that bundle under your pillow?”

  “My long coat.”

  “It is a summery night.”

  “But I thought, you know,” he said, suddenly shy, “it might get cold if we went up high.”

  The creature spoke in a voice of great beauty: “For your impatience there should be shame; therefore you must never boast to your brother nor tell your father I have been here. But for your faith, there should be reward. Mount up upon my back! And I will fly you to any land you can name, around the world and back here before the dawn. And yes, I can outpace the dawn, for I am more swift footed than the sun. Draw on your jacket.”

  His bare feet were cold on the windowsill as he climbed outside.

  Astride the dream-colt, belly tight with joy and trembling, Lemuel leaned forward to hug her tightly about the neck, pressing his cheek into the warm scented mass of her mane.

  “I wasn’t impatient,” he whispered. “It’s just you came too soon to let me show you I could wait. I would have waited. For you. I would have waited forever. Honest.”

  10

  Imprisoned

  in

  Acheron

  I

  Wendy pulled her head up sharply. She had been lying with her head on the books on the desk, she did not know for how long, and the lantern had gone out. Something had made her lift her head. A noise?

  Then she heard it again. There was a crash of sea wave against the cliffs outside, a ragged, drawn-out boom. And, beneath that, a swifter, sharper crash, a louder boom. Both noises were coming at the same time, and it was hard to distinguish them.

  Curious, Wendy climbed out the window. She saw the statue of Boreas and, behind him, the constellations of the Greater and Lesser Bears, shining in the light of a thumbnail moon.

  She shimmied up an elm tree to the sea wall. Wendy crept forward, startled by the sudden wind that tugged at her skirts and sent her hair flying like a black banner. High above were bright stars.

  This was a section of the wall she had not seen before, large and in good repair, with a wide, crenellated battlement set with embrasures and machicolations for defense, with tall stone towers at either end.

  Putting her hands on the stones to either side, Wendy peered between the merlons of the wall. Below she saw the sea, a wilderness of surging waves and foam. Rushing hilltops of black water, fringed with froth of white and green, thundered against the sea cliff.

  Below the water was a school of luminescent fish, horrid creatures of bulbous, staring eyes, and teeth like clusters of white knives. With them were jellyfish, shining with an eerie pallor, and glowing giant squids with wise eyes, whose coats were lambent with many colors.

  Beneath and between this swarm of fish, and in the glow shed by those cold bodies, two giants held a tree trunk as a ram. At the ebb, they drew back their mighty arms. When the sea waves crashed against the cliff below the wall, they sent the ram’s head lunging in a cloud of spray up at an angle to strike into the stones of the wall, crashing as the waves crashed.

  Sporting among their feet was a herd of seals, swimming and diving with gay abandon. Some of the seals floated with their heads above the water and were singing or barking hymns to praise the darkness.

  On the seafloor still further below, a cavalcade of drowned knights stood in ranks, spears held at identical angles. Each of their horses was suffering from some different and disfiguring disease, swollen with sores; and the knights were surrounded by floating clouds of blood.

  In the air above the sea, surrounded by dark clouds, stood a figure with long and wild hair, dressed in kilt and long coat of coal-black and steel-gray, and his coattails streamed in the wind like the wings of a bat. In his hands was a bagpipe, and from the pipe came streamers of rushing cloud.

  Behind him stood a second figure, dressed in Greek armor, armed with a tall spear and a shield as round and burnished as the moon. When this figure clashed his spear against his shield, there came a roll and rumble of thunder through the length and breadth of heaven.

  Even in the few moments Wendy watched, storm clouds began to gather, like a flotilla of vast black ships. Here and there among the clouds came ships indeed, sailing without lanterns, rank on rank of billowing sails like clipper ships. And from these ships came calls and song, woven amidst the thunder.

  Behind them all, on the horizon, wading the ocean the way a child might wade a shallow pond, came vast, dark figures, with sea waves billowing around their upper legs and waists. It was too far to distinguish any details except that the hooded figure in the center carried a lamp in which were trapped many beautiful small lights, flickering like butterflies of flame.

  The battering ram crashed into the stones of the wall, surrounded by flying spray.

  The winds were shrieking as if in pain.

  Wendy turned and fled, her footsteps uncertain in the sudden wind.

  II

  Once and twice she fell to her hands and knees as the wall trembled beneath titanic blows. The blocks beneath her groaned; there was a trickle of dust in the air, pulled from cracking masonry by rising storm winds.

  She fell or flew down a long flight of stairs to the courtyard. In the deep pool, circled by luminous constellations, images of the sky were shattered by concentric circles that appeared each time the ground jumped. The trees in the garden creaked and tossed huge their green heads back and forth in the winds.

  Behind her, a huge block fell with the noise of an earthquake. There was a thunderclap and calls of barking seals, as well as screams of joy from down below, and a triumphant shrill of trumpets.

  The doors nearest her were locked. But she suddenly found herself on the sill of a high window, without remembering whether she had jumped or climbed or floated up to it with a single step.

  The window was unlocked. In she went.

  Inside, the corridor was dark and silent.

  III

  In the moment it took for Wendy’s eyes to adjust to the gloom, she leaned with her back to the window jamb, palms on the wall to either side of her, breathing softly.

  “Have I remembered how to fly?” she asked. “After all this time? Maybe I just climbed up and only think I remembered how to fly. On the other hand, maybe I just flew and only think I climbed up.” Then she said, “Maybe this house is magic after all. Why can’t I hear the noises anymore?”

  It was true. The earthshaking battering, the scream of the wind, were not to be heard. Wendy looked around her and began walking down the strange corridor, lightly brushing her fingers against the wall hangings and door jambs she passed.

  Each door had a number of white crows carven into its lintels, as if a murder of crows had decided to roost along the upper doorways. Some doors had more, and others had fewer crows. The tapestries showed scenes that co
uld only be glimpsed in the gloom, and then only if they were opposite a window lit with the light from the gibbous moon: a little girl playing in a garden, two little boys running, a funeral, a quartet of women toasting with raised cups, a juggler spinning coins in the air.

  Wendy tried to find her way back to the grandfather’s bedroom where her husband was. A while later, having tried several doors and wandered down several other corridors, all decorated oddly, Wendy found herself in a countinghouse, where the dim moonlight showed framed dollar bills above chests of coins. There was a small door hidden behind a closet leading to a short curved set of stairs, which led her back up to the corridor decorated with ravens, just opposite a tapestry of a dragon curled around a heap of treasure, its scorpionlike tail touching its smoldering nostrils. The door jamb next to it held six ravens.

  “Ah! I understand now,”Wendy said to herself. “This is a memory mansion. It’s all mnemonics. These things are all put here to be kept in memory, just like the book said the Lady of the Lake would keep them in. No wonder they’re not allowed to move them at all. This corridor is a nursery rhyme. Let’s see . . .

  One crow brings a girl,

  Two bring a boy,

  Three bring sorrow,

  Four bring joy,

  Five bring silver,

  Six bring gold,

  Seven bring a secret,

  Never to be told. . . .

  Wendy paused, looking back and forth at the tapestries. She found the one next to the door jamb holding three ravens at the end of the corridor, which showed a funeral. Through this door, down a short, curved passage, she found the central circular corridor. She came out next to the statue of the helmeted figure who held a pomegranate.

  “I thought so!” she said. “There are four wings of the house. Earth, water, air, fire. South, east, north, west. Each with its own Greek god. Hades, the god of funerals, stands for earth, I guess. Is Apollo supposed to be fire?”

  When she had been here before, with a lantern, the statues had been visible in the distance. Now they were not. The moonlight was coming in at strange angles through little windows set high in the walls, illuminating the frescoes on the ceiling, which showed patterns of birds in flight.

  Wendy looked up. “I’ve got the hang of this now!” Above Hades’ statue, a flock of crows was shown, with only a few birds otherwise, a falcon, an eagle, a seagull. Wendy followed the line of seagulls till she came upon a flock of them. When she drew her eyes down, there was the statue of Poseidon blowing on a conch.

  Through a small window above the sea-god, she saw a full moon; which she thought was strange, for she clearly remembered seeing the moon as three-quarters when she had been in the south wing, in the crow corridor, and she thought she recalled it had been a crescent when she looked out the library windows.

  She passed by the statue. The corridor beyond, for some reason, seemed confused and full of shadows, and Wendy could not find the large doors to the end. Then she noticed the ships that appeared in the decorations, in paintings or as little models mounted on pedestals. A dingy had one sail; a sloop had two; a yawl had three; a schooner had four.

  She found a picture of a Yankee Clipper between two pictures, one of the Dawn Treader, the other of the Nagfar. Turning, she saw the large doors, flanked by tridents, beneath the image of an open eye.

  There was a crack of white, harsh light beneath the door. Something was strange about the light, and it made Wendy dizzy to look too closely at it. She knocked.

  “Raven! Are you there? All the bad guys are coming over the wall! Selkie and giants and everything!”

  Raven’s voice came back: “Hush! Hush! Be quiet!”

  She heard a chair scrape and then the sound of Raven’s light footsteps across the floor (Wendy was proud of how quietly her husband could walk when he wanted to).

  When the door opened, a strange, harsh light flooded out, and it picked Wendy up and flung her down the corridor.

  Then she woke up.

  IV

  Wendy pulled her head off the pile of books where she had fallen asleep and blinked at the darkened library in surprise. Rushing to the window, she saw the little seawall beyond a line of trees. It was a brick wall, in places only shoulder high, or less. This little wall was neither wide nor sturdy, and, even as Wendy watched, the winds from the gathering storm toppled one or two loose bricks from a crumbling section. A few flakes of weathered stone fell silently to the grass.

  There was a rumble of thunder. In the distance she heard a barking dog, yapping with joy, and a shrill noise, perhaps from a seagull disturbed in sleep, which only vaguely resembled a trumpet.

  V

  When she stood up, she saw a little light, dim but clear, like the light of a fallen star, burning in the shadows between two bookshelves. Stepping forward, she saw that there was an archway here, opening up widely into a chamber she had not seen before.

  Here, tall pillars, like trunks of trees, held up a shadowy roof. Tall, narrow windows admitted starlight. One casement was open, and misty wind flapped into the room.

  Overhead glinted the designs of crescent moons and many-pointed stars inscribed in silver. On the far side of the huge chamber, dimly, she saw what looked like two armored statues flanking a four-poster bed, on which, perhaps, a dark figure had been laid out.

  The strange light was coming from the foot of the bed, a dot of argent rays surrounded by a dim halo. Was there a tiny figure there, crouched like a cat on the footboard?

  “Maybe it’s an elf!” whispered Wendy, and tiptoed forward.

  VI

  Raven had taken a dagger from one of the armored figures guarding the windows, and, after making sure it was blunt, but not too blunt, he had cinched it to his chest with his belt, so that whenever he started to nod off, a sudden prick would startle him awake.

  So Raven had sat in the gloom for many hours, red-eyed, face slack, posture painfully upright, watching Lemuel Waylock sleeping. Every now and again, he pulled back the covers to examine by lamplight the machines that monitored pulse, respiration, and blood pressure. And, as the doctor had repeatedly instructed, he never used his flashlight, and he always covered up the machines afterward.

  However, the doctor had failed to instruct Raven where to find more lamp oil to refill the guttering lantern. Raven kept a mere spark burning, turning the lamp brighter only during his periodic checks of the sleeper.

  The doctor had been vastly irked to find that Raven was not a physician after all, in what Raven had thought was an unjustified overreaction. Raven wondered what he was doing in a stranger’s house, watching a sick man sleep, instead of being home, in bed with his own wife. Where had she gotten to, anyway?

  He told himself that this watch was neither as long nor as dangerous as watches he had stood aboard ship. But he wished he had some tatwork or macramé to keep his hands busy as the hours passed. Here, there was nothing to do.

  At about three in the morning (so he judged by the position of the stars), the last spark of lamp fire went out. He checked the sleeping man once more, about an hour later, this time using the flashlight.

  As hours passed, he watched the moonlight creep from the eastern windows, guarded by samurai, to the southern windows, guarded by Mamelukes.

  A glimpse of the moon through the southern windows sent a stab of cold dread into his heart. The black areas of the moon seemed like seas indeed, lifeless expanses of ocean rolling up against the shores of sterile, icy deserts of stone.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw a windowless dome rearing high above a frozen tableland, surrounded by obelisks and blank-walled towers from which shrieks and dull moans of pain ceaselessly echoed. In his imagination, he saw a line of enormously fat men, pale as slugs, with gouged-out sockets instead of eyes, marching across the gray, snow-swept sands toward the black doors of that dome; and in their hands, they held up pincers and iron lashes, eye-spoons and disemboweling hooks, awls and branding irons; and when they heard the screams of torment, they smiled simpl
eminded smiles.

  A poke in the chin prodded Raven awake.

  Raven reached out and shook the sleeping old man by the arm. “I did not kill your grandson! I did not mean to kill him! I had to! It was for my wife! Why should I be sorry for you when I have my wife still alive, eh? Tell me that, eh?”

  But then his voice sank to a sorrowful whisper. “But I know. You love your grandson, I am thinking, as much as I love my wife.”

  He stood and paced over to the window, leaning wearily against the armored shoulder of a paynim. He turned his eyes away from the moon and stared down. There in the courtyard was a silvery pool, surrounded by twelve statues of zodiacal figures.

  “Hey, you in the pool down there,” he whispered. “Maybe my wife did not make a wish when she threw in her penny, no? Maybe I can make wish for her. I wish to know how to set right what I have done. Is too much, I am thinking, for a penny to pay for? Is not enough of your water in the world, I am thinking, little pond, to wash this blood from my hands. But that is my wish anyway.”

  When he sat back down next to the sleeping man, he turned on his flashlight and checked the machines. The pulse and respiration were up. In that bright light, he noticed Lemuel Waylock’s eyes were moving back and forth beneath his eyelids. Raven might not have noticed this by the dim lamplight.

  “He is dreaming,” muttered Raven. “I wonder what he dreams about.”

  Raven held the flashlight directly up near the man’s eyes, but he did not wake up.

  “He is looking at something in his dreams,” said Raven. The doctor had told him that Lemuel still had REM sleep once or twice a night, but that he could not be woken even during these periods. “Look at him—back, forth, back, back . . . left, left, right, pause, right, left.”