The Last Guardian of Everness Read online

  Raven leaned forward.

  “By holy St. Katherine!” he breathed. “Is code! Morse code!”

  Raven spelled out the message: GALEN HELP ME I AM TRAPPED IN ACHERON.

  VII

  Galen help me I am trapped in Acheron Vindyamar has been taken when I went there the three queens were selkie and they took me to Nastrond then wrapped me in song and took me to Acheron I am in a cell five black towers outside they have cut off my hands so I cannot make the sign of Koth and I am hanging by hooks eels come in the windows to suck at my wounds when I tried to sing to summon a dream colt the water filled my throat and I could not make any noise and I forget what wholesome music sounds like they dragged me to Morningstar and he is so bright and beautiful that I could not stop answering his questions so I bit off my tongue Galen go to the sitting room behind the picture of Azrael find the horn blow it wake the sleepers in my cell I can feel the shaking Acheron is rising from the deep the worst has happened we are all lost find the horn blow the horn do not feel sorry for me these wounds will vanish when I wake and a new world has been promised us I keep telling myself its a nightmare I dont know if you are getting this message Galen so much of my waking life I have forgotten now and I dont know how long Ive been asleep Galen wake me up please god wake me up I am trapped in Acheron and the music of the fallen seraphim is taking away my will and heart I can hardly remember what you look like now Galen but go to the sitting room behind the picture blow the horn blow the horn blow the horn the wand to discover the selkie and rest of the talismans are in the country of gold the horn is behind the picture of the founder in the sitting room blow it and wake the sleepers Acheron is rising and darkness darkness covers all.

  VIII

  Raven found the stub of an old pencil in his pocket but nothing to write on except the back of the organ donor’s card in his driver’s license. He wrote in frantic haste, each letter microscopically small.

  As the message became clear, Raven began sweating and shaking. He did not know what these things were that Lemuel was trying to communicate, but when he told himself it was just the nightmares of a sick old man, he knew it was a lie.

  When he reached the point where Lemuel’s eye-motions were spelling out DARKNESS DARKNESS COVERS ALL, Raven heard footsteps in the hall outside the doors to the room, then a knock.

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

  Raven, forgetting for the moment that Lemuel could not wake up, said, “Hush! Hush! Be quiet!”

  Then he quickly went over to the door and opened it. There was no one there. Puzzled, Raven shined his flashlight up and down the corridor. He saw no place Wendy could have gone in the moment it had taken him to leap to the door.

  He returned swiftly to the bedside, but the moment had passed. Lemuel had fallen once more into a deeper sleep, and his eyes were still.

  Raven looked at the cramped little note in his hand, and said in a shaking voice. “Well, now. Well, now. Must be logical explanation for all this. I cannot think of it. Doesn’t mean is not there.”

  He drew several deep breaths to calm himself, and held up the little note to his face so that his nose almost touched it. “So where is this sitting room, eh? And how am I to know what founder looks like.”

  Then he straightened up, blinking.

  “Did she say giants were coming?”

  An angry voice came from the corridor outside the door. “Turn off that light! Are you mad?!”

  Raven snapped off the light. The doctor, carrying a lantern, walked into the room. He turned, put down the lantern, and turned again to confront Raven.

  “How dare you violate our rules?” snapped the doctor, eyes bright, his little mustache bristling.

  “Doctor,” said Raven slowly, “why did I not hear your footsteps on the corridor outside? Wood floor. You are wearing shoes.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me, my good man. What is that in your hand you were looking at?”

  “I would have heard. I have very good ear,” said Raven, and he held up his empty hand, since he had slipped the little card into his pocket when the doctor’s back had been turned.

  11

  The

  Five Names

  of

  Lesser Mystery

  I

  Peter Waylock swore softly as his roaring machine (and now Azrael de Gray was convinced it was a machine, for a subtle test had confirmed that it had no soul) pulled into the driveway before a large, low, one-story house. Azrael could not see what danger caused Peter to call down damnation from his gods. Though there was a beacon of light, brighter than the moon, shining from a nearby pole, a sight that inspired Azrael to awe and alarm; Azrael had thought these were ordinary objects in this world. Peter cursed some other thing, no doubt.

  But when he helped Peter dismount from the van, Azrael noticed five crows sleeping in a pine tree several fathoms away; three for a girl and two for a boy. He contrived to drop a bit of string from his pocket when he dismounted from the van. As he stooped to pick it up, he saw the string had curled twice widdershins: a sure sign that guests had come, and it was not the sign for strangers. The daisy next to which the string had dropped had six drooping petals. An even number: she loves me not. Someone inside, then, a woman with a man, a woman who was not a stranger and who had no love for Peter.

  “Damn!” muttered Peter. “Look at that. What the hell’s she doing here?” Then, turning his head toward Azrael: “Your mother’s here with that man of hers. His car’s blocking the drive. Probably to come make a fuss over you. Not that they ever came to see you when it counted. Hospital must’ve phoned them.”

  Azrael, who could see no chariots, nor anything else meant to be horse drawn, hid his amazement at Peter’s ability to read the signs. He had discovered more than Azrael, apparently with a quicker glance, obviously reading signs obscure to Azrael.

  Azrael walked around the large, glass-sided metal box on wheels blocking his path, and looked up at the stars and clouds and nearby trees to see where Peter had divined his clues. But he could detect nothing, other than the obvious (the house was not warded; there were deer in the woods, no wolves; someone would shed tears before the evening was over) and he reminded himself not to underestimate Peter again. Even if Peter had repudiated the blood of Everness, the ancient magic still ran strong and deep in him, and the powers of the world could not for long hold secrets from him.

  II

  Afterwards, Azrael de Gray would not be able to recall the names of the two people he met in the strange house. Azrael did not deem them to be important; he did not enchant their names with images nor place them anywhere in the many-roomed mansion of many powers he carried with him in his spirit.

  The first, his (or rather Galen’s) mother, was even more a traitor to Everness than was Peter, having left her lord and master to run off with some other man. Azrael at first misunderstood why she was here.

  He supposed, as she hugged and kissed him, and spoke many tender (albeit insincere) words of love over him, that remorse over the near death of her son had brought her out of hiding, and that she had been granted the mercy of seeing her son alive one last time before being turned over to the magistrates. But, no: apparently cuckolding her lord carried no legal penalty in this land.

  Of course, he next expected Peter to take the blond-haired man outside and kill him. Kill, not duel, since, unlike Peter, the blond-haired man did not carry a weapon and therefore was clearly not of the knightly class. Since the blond-haired man did not have the right to bear arms, he was a peasant, and he showed remarkable presumption and effrontery in the way he comported himself and his familiar fashion of address to Peter and to Azrael. Azrael concluded that Peter, through some weakness of character or lack of resolve, had permitted this obnoxious creature to live, and the peasant, emboldened by that, took full advantage of the liberty to flaunt his contempt for his betters.

  Azrael’s astonishment grew as they all se
ttled around a small table to eat, the peasant with the rest of them, and, more astonishingly, the peasant was given a place closer to the salt shaker than was Azrael.

  He had been waiting to dine, for there was a fireplace at the smaller end of the large room they were in. The fireplace seemed too small to cook in, and there were no hooks for kettles, but Azrael was impatient to look upon the shape and spirit of fire again; it could tell him more, and more swiftly, than many other forms of divination.

  But he was disappointed. They cooked their meal atop a metal box filled with lightning; the lightning was made to course in the sign of the Labyrinth, the spiral that guards the boundary between light and dark, and made a flameless heat to cook upon. Azrael thought then, for certain, that these people had discovered him and were merely toying with him. Why else would they go to such elaborate precautions to deny him sight of a fire?

  His suspicions rested when he ate the dinner itself; it was the first meal he had eaten (save for raw fish) in countless turnings of the heavens.

  The plates were round as the moon and as fair and fairly made as anything Azrael had ever seen, but without a spot of decoration or glint of gold to add luster to them. Meat was served, even though, to Azrael’s memory, the calendar did not show a holiday; and fresh fruit, even though, to Azrael’s eye, it seemed to be early wintertime outside.

  Fair and fine as that dinner was, however, there were no bond maidens or cupbearers to wait on any of them, nor were there dogs to take the scraps. The lares, or hobgoblins of the house, must have put these people under a strict oath, since when he threw his scraps on the floor, the people made much ado, telling him he must have done it by accident (“spilled” was the word they used) and bent to clean it right away with torn segments of paper from a scroll. Why they should do such insult to the scroll, or from what library of an enemy it had been taken, was beyond Azrael’s power to divine. He did not see the paper clearly but saw it had a pattern of flowers laboriously inscribed into it, over and over: work it would have taken monks years to illuminate.

  But when they took all their scraps and waste and put them into a lidded vessel, it became clear: they feared to be hexed by some foe who might poison them by drawing runes on bones their lips had touched, and so had to dispose of the bones with such care and expense. Again, he reminded himself not to underestimate these folk.

  By now Azrael was impatient to begin his work. He had made many small and large mistakes during the meal, and their hesitations and searching looks showed that even the pretense that his memory had been damaged during his illness was wearing thin.

  The peasant took out a small white tube of paper and sucked on it, and then drew out a jewel and summoned fire out of the air. With the fire he burned the paper, and Azrael smelled incense, which the peasant inhaled. Azrael’s estimation of the whole evening was revised; the peasant, like many of his station, had clearly joined the priesthood. Thus he was forbidden to carry weapons and was immune from the code of dueling; and he had achieved some sort of mastery of fire.

  Azrael only had a chance to glance at the little flame before it was snuffed out. That glance was enough. First it told him the peasant was no kind of priest; he did not even have so much magic as an animal, no wards, no defenses. Second, the forces of the Empire of Night were moving against Everness this very evening. Third, that the fairy-girl and the Titan huntsman sent by Prometheus were at Everness even now. (How clever! While Azrael frittered away his time with these underlings, the forces of Oberon were maneuvering to consummate his defeat!) There was another creature at Everness, a being of great power, disguised as a priest. . . no, disguised as a doctor, who . . .

  But then the flame was out, and the peasant was breathing incense through his nostrils.

  Azrael stood and excused himself, saying he was very tired and that he wished to sleep. Galen’s mother escorted him to his room and spoke with him for a while. (She also was not warded, although signs told him she had spent at least one night asleep beneath the roof of Everness.)

  She spoke for what seemed a long time. Azrael was not certain what this strumpet wanted, nor did he much care. But suddenly it came to him. Although she would not say it, she was asking his forgiveness. She blamed herself for leaving him in the care of Galen’s grandfather, causing, so she imagined, what she thought was insanity and sickness.

  “Madame,” he said, “I am grateful that you abandoned me to Grand Pa’s care. It is true that the illness from which I have so recently recovered would not have occurred had you not left me there; you are wrong in thinking it has done me an ill turn. No, indeed, I am more pleased than I can say.”

  She said, “You know, your father was always the one abandoning us, going away on tours of duty for months and years. I always thought we were especially close. But I have nothing to apologize for! He was so abusive to me, did you know that? Not physical, of course, he would never raise a hand to me, but mentally abusive. He never cared about your education like I did. Your Grampa could afford such a fine school. It would look so good on your resumé. If you ever made up a resumé like I’ve been telling you.”

  Azrael could not follow the thrust of these ramblings. He guessed that her assertion she need not apologize meant the opposite; he assumed Peter’s lack of beatings had spoiled her; he was pleased she recognized the education Galen’s grandfather could give.

  Then insight came. This woman, unfaithful as she was, still loved and cared for her little boy, whose place Azrael had cruelly usurped. And who was he, with his black crimes behind him, and worse crimes still in contemplation, to judge a woman’s weakness? She had betrayed her lord, it was true, but what was that compared to the treason of Azrael?

  He took her hands in his and bowed his head. “Perhaps there is forgiveness for all of us, my mother. I pray that it is so. For otherwise there is nothing but darkness ahead; darkness to cover us all.”

  She rose, kissing the top of his bowed head. “Don’t be so gloomy! The positive-thinking book I read told me never to give up hope. I kept visualizing how you’d come home from the hospital and be well, and look! Now you’re back. Even if your father doesn’t care about you, I’m glad you’re back. Get some sleep!”

  And she walked out.

  He had seen the lines on the palms of her hands as he held them, and he knew, beneath all her complaint and idle talk, that she dearly loved her son, a boy who was, albeit many generations removed, Azrael’s son as well.

  He blinked, and he wondered to find that the tears he had prophesied for this evening were his own.

  III

  Wilbur Randsom, was, in general, a happy man, happier than he deserved, he thought. At his age, he had never expected a young and pretty woman to love him. And, after the marriage, he never expected her to be so clever with the checkbook and family finances. She was always thinking ahead, always shopping for the best deal, and she tried, and succeeded, to make his life comfortable, pleasant, and happy.

  Only a few things marred that happiness. One was the hulking brute who formed her ex-husband. Wil should have known a woman like Emily was too good a catch not to have other men interested in her, including her ex. Another blemish was her lunatic son. Wil tried his best to make sure that no one ever guessed how much he loathed the gawking, mumbling, shy, and dreamy figure of Galen slouching around the house, or how much he rejoiced when the kid was shipped off to the grandfather.

  But he never showed it. No, Wil always treated the kid with a friendly older-brother heartiness he was sure hid his true feelings. There was nothing he didn’t do for that kid. Wil was sure everyone was fooled.

  If the kid knew how he felt, the sullen anger and distaste that hung about the kid like a bad smell would be justified, but since he didn’t, it wasn’t. The kid was just unfair. A spoiled brat. Which justified, Wil thought, Wil’s hatred of him.

  As Wil was coming back from the bathroom, not five minutes after Galen had excused himself to go to sleep (when he obviously wasn’t tired, the little liar
), he heard the noise of argument and rancor building up in the den at the end of the hall. Emily’s voice was shrill, growing toward shouts, and Peter’s sarcastic grunts were swelling with it like counterpoint.

  At that point, Wil was even with Galen’s bedroom, and a line of light was showing under the door. It wasn’t that he was a coward; it was just that Wil wanted to avoid a scene like the last one. Besides, it was a good time to go in and say hello to the boy.

  “Hey, sport! How ya been, boy? You asleep in there . . .uh. . .”

  It seemed for a moment as if Galen were asleep in midair, armored knights made of silvery light to either side of him, in some vast presence- chamber made all of moonlight and shadows, whose pale roof, carven with images of crescent moons and many-rayed stars, was upheld by mighty silver pillars, and whose wide windows and balconies opened out onto a wild, wide sea; an ocean made of shadow and silver waves. Only Galen, fully clothed, sleeping with his head toward Wil, atop a four-poster bed, had color.

  Then Wil realized he was looking at the mirror that had been on the back of the closet door, now propped up above the Galen’s bed, covered with lines and shadings in some white crayon. It was a delicate, complex drawing, all in perfect perspective, like an architect’s conceptual plan. Galen was on his bed, atop his covers, his head toward the door, eyes closed, arms crossed, so that his reflection was perfectly framed in the line drawing of the four-poster hovering in the glass above him.

  And yet, for a long, strange moment, Wil was convinced the figure on the bed before him was the reflection, and that the figure reclining on the four-poster was the reality.