Mists of Everness Read online

  Then there came a moment of emerald light, and then a crash of noise and freedom. Lemuel clung to the god’s back as the vast, winged figure flung himself skyward out of the ocean, and a circle of glittering foam and spray rushed up from them and fell away.

  Then they were in the blue heavens, drinking the brisk Spring sea winds, squinting in the glitter and gleam of sunlight dancing on the sea, marveling at clouds, and laughing, laughing with great joy. Lemuel hugged the god with his full strength, feeling pins and needles of life returning into his numb hand.

  “Alive again!” shouted Lemuel. “Alive again, and free! I feel so young!”

  Apollo slung his bow and tossed the old man up into the air so that he shrieked, and the young god caught him again, laughing with golden tones.

  “Again! Again!” gasped Lemuel.

  “You are too fresh to fly, my fledgling; though the Judge who waits at the gates of my world weaves wings you one day there shall wear. For each good deed, he fits another feather to the frame; for each ill, he sadly plucks, and lets fall fluttering away. The blessed and damned alike are cast from the same cliff on judgment day, and only some shall soar. Be of good cheer; for he tells me your wings already are longer than a condor’s, with plumage thick and rich!”

  Lemuel said, his eyes shining, “Come with me to earth, Father, and help set right what’s gone wrong there!”

  “No. Morningstar smote me as I fled; a single drop of my ichor is falling toward my grandmother Earth; where it lands, there will be deadliest and all-destroying fire. He whom you call Azrael prays to have that drop on the city of angels in the West; the Pendragon seeks to turn it to another course. If my smallest touch can work such harm, how then if my whole foot should step on Earth? I will not repeat poor Phaethon’s well-meant mistake, or make a next Sahara.”

  “That blood was shed for my sake,” said Lemuel, “Tell me how to make restitution, and I will do it.”

  “You say so, even if you do not know the price?”

  “I say so. It doesn’t matter to me what it is; I can’t have people suffer for my sake.”

  “Well said.” Apollo smiled. “I hear the rustle now of another plume being threaded to your wings. So be it! The quest I put on you is to save the girl who holds your grandson’s life within herself. Because you asked, am I allowed to tell you what to do.”

  “And what must I do?”

  “Think clearly. Logic is a weapon fairies cannot wield.”

  And at that word, the god, his pinions streaming, reached down his hand to place Lemuel atop a grassy mountain overlooking the sea in a place where the laurel bushes and sunflowers had all turned and spread their petals toward the god as he approached.

  Lemuel’s foot touched the grass, and he found nothing in his arms but a beam of sunlight.

  He spread his arms, looking upward. “Thank you,” he said.

  III

  And then he woke up. A figure was bent over him.

  “Galen … ?”

  “No, Dad. Sorry to disappoint you. It’s me, Peter.”

  IV

  He was in a hospital room. The bed was pushed away from the wall so that sunlight falling through the window shone across the white sheets. Peter sat in a wheelchair next to the bed, two canes across his lap. In one callused hand Peter held a supernatural weapon shaped like an iron hammer. Steam was coming from the hammerhead. In the other hand he held the small, brown corpse of a mouse. Peter’s face was grizzled with beard-stubble, his eyes lined and darkened with fatigue.

  The hammer vibrated. “What is it, boy?” whispered Peter, talking to the weapon. Without bothering to get up, Peter tossed the weapon in an overhead arc through the window, saying, “Snipers on the roof opposite! Get their guns only! Trash the engines of any moving vehicles, then come on back. Through the window this time! No more holes in the walls.”

  There was a whistling noise outside, shouts, explosions. Peter rubbed his chin and sighed. “Great little toy, that Mollner. If I tell it to hit the nearest target, it’ll wag its tail when they move nearer. Smart weapon. Fucking smart weapon. Heh. Oh, by the way, we’re trapped.”

  “What year is it?” asked Lemuel. “Galen’s trapped. I saw him in Nastrond. When I went to Vindyamar to consult with the Three Queens, I was snared by the selkie. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep without someone watching me, but you weren’t … there wasn’t anyone around once Galen got in trouble. The Archangel Uriel saved me from Acheron. He said we had to save the girl who holds Galen’s soul within herself, and that logic, which is a weapon fairies cannot use, will allow us to save her.”

  “That would be Wendy Ravenson. So Uriel saved you, huhn? I guess everything I did was just extra. So you’re welcome anyway.” Lemuel reached up and felt the crown of laurel leaves around his head; and he saw the laurel leaves, sunflowers, and birchleaves tied in garlands arranged along the foot of his bedspread.

  Lemuel started to get up, “I’m glad that, after all these years, you have returned to your appointed duties as Guardian of Everness. But men only get thanked for doing what is above and beyond what the minimum …”

  Peter thrust himself one-handed out of the wheelchair, grabbed Lemuel’s shoulder, and they both fell to one side of the bed and to the floor.

  “Son! What the …”

  A smoke canister smashed into the window, emitting fumes, and sailed through the air above the bed, clattering off the far wall. A rifle shot also cracked through the air. At that noise, Lemuel started violently, uttering an involuntary shriek of panic. He had, after all, never heard a gun go off near him before.

  Peter carefully put the mouse corpse in his shirt pocket, said, “Shut up. Heads down. Mollner, back to my hand. Fast!”

  A whistling roar tore the air. The smoking hammer, wet with machine oil and gasoline, slapped into Peter’s upraised hand. “Kill the fucker who just took a potshot at us,” he said. “But golf that gas shell out of the window first.”

  And he threw it.

  Lemuel, in a heap on the floor, took a moment to regain his breath. He rubbed one hand across his bald head, amazed at how frightened he was. He said, “The Rod is meant for giants! You mustn’t use the powers to kill other men!”

  “Watch me.”

  The hammer, dripping blood, sailed lightly back in through the window and landed in Peter’s palm.

  A voice, electronically amplified, roared in from outside: “Peter Waylock! You’re only making it worse! You know you can’t get away! We have armored reinforcements coming …”

  Peter said, “Knock that bullhorn out of his hands, don’t hit him, come back. Use the window. Wait. Use the door, go down the corridor, don’t hit anybody along the way. They must be watching the window to see when I throw. You got all that, boy? Good boy. Go!” And he threw the hammer.

  The door was smashed to flinders. The hammer turned the corner and rocketed down the corridor.

  “So you believe in magic now, I take it?”

  “Gloat if you want, Dad. But makes you look like a dumb-ass.”

  “And the mouse?”

  Peter lightly touched his shirt pocket. “Saved my fucking life. Couldn’t help the little guy; couldn’t get the doctors here to do shit for it. All I could do was Morpheus-zap it so it was asleep when it went, not in pain.”

  The electronic voice fell silent with a snarled shriek. Peter shouted in a loud voice: “Hey! You out there! We still got sick people in here! You gas this place, lot of sick people going to kick off!”

  The hammer shot back in through the window and landed in Peter’s hand.

  There was no reply, but there was motion, voices murmuring in fear. “They’re up to something …” snarled Peter.

  Lemuel whispered, “Where is the Key?”

  Peter grunted, “Wendy’s got it. Don’t know where she is. She flew off. Galen got killed by a guy named Raven. Nice guy. Wendy’s husband. I’m going to hate to have to kill him.”

  “You talk about killing a lot, son.”

&
nbsp; “He murdered Galen, or helped someone murder him, and let all this shit, all these nightmare-things, into the world.”

  “Still, to speak so lightly of killing, my son. That’s not good.”

  “What the hell do you know about good, Dad? You had this magic stuff all these years, and you never used it. I’m not even going to ask you about my legs again. If I had just had this hammer when I was in the field, do you know how many of my people would still be alive?”

  “I won’t open an old argument, son, but you know I could do nothing about your paralysis. The day after we argued, the day after you left for the last time, I had a dream that night that Oberon himself said we could not use the magic except for our high cause …”

  “Shut up about your fucking high cause! There’s riots in the street right now. Chicago is in flames! So’s LA. They got tanks on the highways blowing up trucks ’cause some truckers shot at some roadblocks! Don’t you get it? This ain’t America anymore! We’re some bumfucked Third World banana republic. We’re about to have a civil war.”

  Lemuel went pale, and he whispered to himself aloud: “‘The falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed …’”

  “That a spell?”

  “I wish it were. Yeats. He had second sight.”

  “Can you Morpheus the guys out there shooting at us? I don’t know their names.”

  “Easily. I could do it with a magnet out of the phone there. But I won’t. We are supposed to be maintaining the barrier between worlds, not weakening it.”

  “Listen, Dad. Have you ever thought that maybe your orders were out of date?”

  “What?”

  “Your HQ gave you a certain post to guard, right? King Arthur or someone, right? Have you ever guarded a real post in real life? No? Well, I have. When the wire is cut, and your lines are breached, and the enemy is already in the camp, you don’t fucking stay at the gatehouse. You get your piece and start blowing the bad guys away.”

  “But these are men outside. They have been deceived by the Enemy.”

  “Listen. You think the troopers I fought in Southeast Asia and South America weren’t deceived by the enemy? Kids too young to shave, farm-boys drafted from some stone-age village in the middle of the jungle, probably after their family’s one cow was collectivized by the Reds. Brainwashed, told lies, and handed a gun. You think the young Jap boys they welded into their cockpits to go nosedive into a Yankee warship for the glory of the emperor weren’t deceived, or the Arab kids the Mullahs wrap up in belts of dynamite to go blow up some Jewish old folk’s home for the glory of Allah aren’t deceived? I fucking know they’re deceived. And I’m trying to be nice to these guys, nicer than it’s smart to be. But the rule is: someone shoots at you; you shoot back.”

  Lemuel flinched again when he heard a loud noise outside. His heart was hammering. But he saw the calm, hard look on his son’s face, and his heart expanded with an unexpected pride. Here, on the bloody battlefield, was his son’s place.

  “I’m sorry, Son. Sorry for a lot of things. Who is guarding the house?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry too, Dad. For a lot of things. Azrael de Gray’s men have the house.”

  “If he gets the Silver Key as well, the world is doomed. How far from the house are we?”

  “Texas. You got some magic way of getting from Texas to Maine real fast?”

  “No. But you do. Smite the hammer on the ground and call out these names three times: Tanngrisner and Tanngjost.”

  “Who they hell are they?”

  Another rifle shot rang out. Peter threw the hammer and it came back blood caked.

  Lemuel was saying, “ … like the dream-colts but from the world of Vanir. They will serve whoever holds the Rod of Mollner.”

  “Great. Snooze these guys before the reinforcements arrive. If we still had free press in this country, they wouldn’t be taking shots at us. These aren’t cops. Soon as they decide the sick people here are expendable, they’ll gas us.”

  Lemuel said, “What happened to the press?”

  Peter said, “For the duration of the emergency. They passed a law. I think your goblins hypnotized Congress, or replaced them with look-alikes or something.”

  Lemuel said in a voice of quiet horror, “Selkie murder and flay the men they impersonate. If the selkie replaced them, those men are dead.”

  “Then there is a lot of dead guys in the government these days, in the press, and anywhere else anybody starts asking questions. I bet half these officers out here are seals, and I don’t mean Special Forces. If you don’t want me to hammer ’em, find us a way to get the hell outta here.”

  Lemuel crawled along the floor, pulled on the phone cord, and the phone dropped into his hand. “North Star’s blood! On thee I call, let all below your unblinking eye now understand; they are in your power; you are in my hand …”

  Meanwhile, Peter struck the floor and called the names.

  He didn’t expect the roof of the corridor to collapse.

  Out of the wreckage, shouldering their way through the doorfame, came two goats. Their eyes were made of flame, and they chewed on sparks of lightning-bolts, and fire spurted from their hooves when they stepped, breaking floorboards underfoot. Straps of a harness made of bone and woven hair crisscrossed their shoulders.

  “Shit!” shouted Peter, when one of the beasts put its horns below the bed and flung the whole huge weight across the room with a toss of its neck. Lemuel, scrambling to his feet, dodged out of the way, and the toppling bed missed him.

  The other goat put its head through the concrete blocks of the wall, and was knocking bricks out with sweeps of its horns, as if trying to bring the wall down.

  Peter raised the hammer. “Mollner! Smash them!” But both goats dropped to their knees when he said that and bowed their fiery heads.

  It was silent outside now, except for an occasional snore.

  Lemuel said, “They won’t let anyone on their backs. But they will pull a chariot. I don’t know where to find a …”

  “Use the wheelchair. You can sit in my lap.”

  Lemuel helped drag Peter over. The goats snorted sparks and lowered their horns when they saw someone touching Peter, but Peter waved them back by threatening them with the hammer.

  Lemuel said softly, “Think you can handle them?”

  “No worse than any raw recruits. Here! Tanngjost! Come here or I’ll whap your fucking face off! Good boy. Hey, you like to be scratched behind the ear?” He ran his nails through the hair of the demonic creature, who snorted happily, drooling sparks on the broken floor. “Now, let me hook your harness here up to … uh, the chair arms I guess. Dad? You know how to drive a chariot?”

  “Yes. That’s the guide strap. No, the other one. Don’t use the arms; tie the yoke straps under here. Look. I’ll stand on the back of the wheelchair and hang on. Keep one hand free to hold the hammer.”

  “This ain’t going to work.”

  Lemuel put his feet on the little metal crossbar at the base of the wheelchair and tied himself in place with his belt. Then he put a gentle hand on his son’s broad shoulder. “We had best pray it does work, my son. The glad fact that I am here among the living is a bad omen. Very bad. It means Acheron is rising. We have less than a day left. Once the City of Hideous Night raises its towers into the air of Earth, the Morningstar will rise to the zenith, the Sun will fail, and only those whom it amuses the Emperor of Darkness to preserve as pets will be spared.”

  “Giddyup. Take off, boys. Hey! Tanngrisner! You want me to stick this hammer up your ass?”

  The goats ran forward, struck down the wall with their horns, and leapt into the air. Peter felt the wheelchair begin to fall, and he put the Hammer underneath his seat. The same force that propelled the hammer and allowed it to change course in midair now gently held up the wheelchair.

  A five-story drop opened up beneath them. Lemuel, face green, watched the b
ricks and rubble toppling slowly into the alleyway underfoot.

  Then they were above the level of the buildings, in some small, widespread suburbia Lemuel had never seen before. Beyond was desert. The streets surrounding the hospital were crowded with sleeping soldiers and armored vehicles, and a pair of sharpshooters lay in pools of blood on a rooftop falling away below.

  Fog obscured the view; then they were above the clouds. “Where to?” shouted Peter, back over the roar of the wind.

  “Everness! All forces of light and dark must be gathering there! Whoever has the Key must go there to use it; and maybe we can get there in time to save this Wendy. And … Well. Thank you for saving me, Son.”

  “No sweat, Dad. Let’s go.” But Peter was beaming.

  Now Peter shouted at the goats: “Faster, boys! You wimps! A lame moose could crawl faster than this! Come on! Hyah! Giddup! Show me something to make your mamas proud!”

  The two demon creatures roared in wrath, belching fire and smoke, put down their shaggy heads, and ran across the tops of the clouds. The screaming pressure of the wind grew and grew.

  It grew suddenly, strangely silent when they passed the speed of sound.

  13

  In the Court of the Faerie King

  I

  Once, within a midnight grove, a pavilion as lightly built and silvery-fair as falling water stood, and, to either side, climbed trellises of white and dusky roses, and their dew-touched petals breathing perfumes. Behind this fair pavilion stood rank on rank of sober and silent trees, ancient as the world, heavily cloaked in green, heavily shadowed, and before the pavilion, a small, clear pool had captured the image of the Moon within its marble circle.

  Reclining on a couch within the pavilion was a dark-haired beauty raimented in a tight-bodiced, puff-shouldered gown of mingled emerald and forest greens hugging her with lightest silks. Little silver chains circled her neck and hips; and on her finger was a girasol like a spot of blood.