Mists of Everness Read online

  But his one eye still lingered where his queenly wife, her train, and all her beauty had departed in the moonlight.

  III

  A princess sat on a bench of carven ivory beneath a linden tree, dressed in a gown of green and gold which fell in long, smooth folds of cloth to the mingled grass and forget-me-nots of the King’s walled garden. There was a silver-basined fountain not far away, where a path bordered by hedges of red roses crossed a path boundaried by white lilies. Here and there within the garden were little statues of antic gnomes on pedestals of white marble; and she laughed whenever she saw one twitch or blink when honeybees or little wrens lit on them.

  There were many things to laugh at nowadays, little delights each twilight and each dusk. (It did not occur to her to wonder why it never was quite full daylight here in this lovely land, never noon-time.) The court went hawking and hunting, dressed as falcons or as whippet-hounds; and danced each night on hillsides, or deep forests, by fountains or by brooks; and once upon the sea-strands the court had held its gay celebrations, and mermaid music welled up from the waves.

  At times she played chess with the King, and she had made friends with the White Queen’s Knight, a little homunculus in armor with a helmet like a horse’s head.

  But her greatest joy was Tom. Tom had once been small, but, drinking from a magic spring at midnight deep in a hidden grot, had grown to human size, a tall, fine blond-haired lad, square-jawed and fresh of face. And now he flirted and paid her court with laughter and solemn grace, half-serious and deadly serious at once.

  She had put him off again, wondering if she should wed him as he asked. Each time she toyed with the idea of agreeing to the match, some hidden memory would trouble her, some formless doubt, and she would ask again of the King why her mother could not come to visit her here in Mommur.

  The King gave the answer he always gave and, to put her off, gave her, in trade for her horn of unicorn, a key to his secret, walled garden behind the palace. It was ever calm here, and only the music, which sprang, spontaneous, from the air, composed of drifting, lilting cords, attended her. It was lit at night with floating lights, and, by twilight, by the silver rainbow that issued from the castle’s silver-shingled roof. This was the King’s processional way, a road of moonlight leading at once to all parts of his kingdom, guarded by Hiemdall, a quiet, watchful spirit, with hair and beard of white, and eyes so bright no one but she could look directly in them without flinching.

  The greatest treasure of the hidden garden was the fountain; for it was a wellspring of knowledge.

  She had been playing with the mirror at the bottom of the pond, making it show her what she would look like garbed differently, or with different hair. Then, her fancy running free, she asked to see what she would look like if she were dusky-skinned, or Nubian, or from Cathay; or what she would look like ten years hence, or ten years past; or what she would look like as a red-lipped succubus from Hell. That image was alluring and frightening. Then she asked what she would look like as an angel from high heaven; and the solemn, beautiful face, crowned with living light, had looked back at her with such wisdom and such solemn pity, that she had shrunk back, certain she had done something not quite right, and frightened for the first time she could remember since …

  Since when … ?

  The King came gliding along the pathway, passing between tall, slim, cherry blossom trees, and the scarlet and indigo colors of the dusk striping the clouds above him with subtle hues, and the first fireflies flickering in clouds around him, giggling and whispering. The King’s one eye burned like a distant star.

  The King was dressed in twilight and moonlight, and wore dark fog for his cloak, and he was crowned with the wings of a black swan. In one hand a little gray bird was chirruping merrily.

  “A gift for you, Princess. A sad and heavy gift, but one that will make you glad.”

  The titmouse flew from his hand and landed near her. She reached out a shy hand to pet it. “That’s silly! How can it be both?”

  “This little bird has your soul in him.”

  And when she was done with weeping, and had dried her tears, the King came again, and sent away the maidens and jester-monkeys sent to comfort her. Now he pointed at the silver pool. “Tell me what you wish to see.”

  Wendy looked up. “Where’s Raven?”

  “Behold.” And the image in the pool showed Raven in a prison cell. His cheeks were drawn and pale; his gaze was haggard and haunted. In grim silence he fought with an ugly man who threatened him; not saying a word, Raven broke the man’s fingers one at a time.

  “My valley,” she said.

  “Behold.” The Weeping Willows had been uprooted, piled into a bonfire, about which gibbering apelike things with heads like swine were leaping and cavorting. Rushing Brook was befouled with filth. Green Meadow was all trampled into bloody muck. Grinning seal-man sailors stood near a derrick, plucking feathers from dead birds. Armored wormlike things with crocodile heads writhed and slid along the ground, snarling, and belching burning sulfur.

  On the toppled ruins of the doorless tower, stood Azrael de Gray, dressed in robes of midnight blue and black, gazing out across the devastation. A conical cap begirt with constellations was on his head, and a floating scarf of palest blue drifted down across his back. Near him, plumes waving in the fiery breeze, stood two angels crowned in smoke and hell-flame, creatures of perfect handsomeness.

  One was speaking, “ … the legions still upon yon scarp encounter ever greater numbers of the enemy, and battle waxeth furious. More from Acheron must we summon, wizard.”

  The other angel spoke, a voice too beautiful and heartless for human voice: “It is our own forces we engage, O wizard. We are caught within the meshes of an enchantment.”

  Azrael de Gray held up his hand. “We are being overheard. I feel the pressure of a fairy’s gaze. Oberon! You shall not acquire the Silver Key! I call upon the four ruling cities of man, Jerusalem the holiest, Enoch the eldest, Agartha the hidden, and Rome the world’s crown, to witness my curse …”

  The King uttered a soft word, and the pool went dark.

  He said, “Now I wish to show you, not what you would, but what I would. Here is your world. This is Edoubi Kenzai of Ethiopia. She is starving. The baby she holds, for once, has stopped crying, and she is glad; she does not yet realize she holds a corpse. The babe is dead of malnutrition. This is Dmitri Varechenko. He has been imprisoned in a work camp in Siberia because he survived a battle. He was falsely accused of cowardice and treason. His official sentence expired long ago; but the records have been lost. He suffers because of a clerk’s mistake. Here is Alfred Anderson. He is dying of a cancer. This is Linda Severn. She was to be married this week; see how happily she displays her white dress in the looking glass? Her fiancé is a clerk in a bank who has just been murdered during a failed robbery. This pile of skulls is in a field in Cambodia, victims of conquest. Here are the faces of some of those widowed to make that monument. Here is Sigmund Idverrtsen. He is lost in the snow and shall perish. This is Alison Guicciardio. She is an inmate at an insane asylum. This is Alison’s sister Beatrice, who suffers nightmares created by her causeless guilt. This man is Hamir Cohen. He has murdered twelve people in a temple at prayer. This is Elizabeth Rienholt, who is lonely, this man, Henry Vandermer, would be perfect for her, and, if they wed, would cherish her with perfect tenderness and great love. They will never meet. Here is Raschid Washington, dying of a drug overdose, his pants dirtied by his own filth. Here is …”

  Wendy said, “This is really sad! Gross, too. Why are you showing me these things?”

  He turned to her. The eye of Oberon was deep, mysterious, and looking into it was not like looking at any human eye, but like looking into the infinite night sky. “I wish to show you the depth and fullness of human suffering. Know that for each one I have shown you here, a million others share horrors equal, if not in sudden flashes of red blood, then in long, gray days of blind misery.”

  �
�You just want the unicorn horn, I bet. I must have given it to you a million times when I didn’t know what it was. I guess those times don’t count. Do you like being sneaky?”

  “You know now my whole purpose in compassing your rescue, and the hidden reason for your happy exile in my palace of delight. The Silver Key of Everness, once mine, I wish to wield again. All these harms can be made hale, and starvation; pestilence, war, and murder can be banished. Even loneliness can be alleviated.”

  “If I give you the unicorn horn, right?”

  Oberon raised his hand and pointed. At the far end of the garden, a space of the wall that was deeply shadowed and hidden by overarching pines, now grew light. Between the pines Wendy now saw a barred gate of gold.

  Sunlight streamed through the bars. Wendy saw the green hills and blue pools, wide trees, and lush, bright flowers. The scent brought a freshness and forgotten memory to her, so that to breathe it was to smile.

  At one of the nearer ponds, a stately lion lay couchant, with lambs and rabbits nibbling the grass between his paws.

  “Oh my!” she said, “How long have we been away … ?”

  “All your race recalls, perhaps in dreams, this golden age.”

  “It’s the Garden of Eden! Oh, how lovely!”

  “Come, child. Let us walk closer.” And they strode across the twilight lawns of the King’s walled garden to the gate. Wendy put her hands on the bars, closed her eyes, drawing deep breaths. Then she opened them again, looking at the wide champaigns, the stately arbors, and, midmost in the garden, two tall trees atop a high, green hill.

  She giggled. “How come paradises always look so much like earth?”

  “Ask, rather, why earth so closely resembles paradise. The Demiurge created the daylit world to have all of heaven’s glories in her; many of your wild places, untouched by man, have not yet forgotten fairest heaven.”

  “Can we go in? Oh, please, can we? I won’t mess anything up or eat any apples or anything. Please? Pretty please.”

  Oberon put his head down near her ear, whispering, “The Silver Key can unlock that gate. One wave of the Unicorn Horn, and this dream can step full formed into the waking world. The bounty of the earth can cure all hunger with her abundance.”

  Wendy tilted her head aside. “I guess that would be nice …” She wore her favorite expression, one eyebrow cocked high, her mouth pursed in a skeptical moue.

  Oberon raised his hand. In the garden beyond the gates, all the flowering trees put forth fruit, the grasses grain, with the suddenness of dream. “See, the Earth puts forth her full abundance without stint. There can be no hunger here. Nor shall any war or murder go unavenged, not while my well of wisdom, Hlidskjalf, shows me all human secrets. Look at that herb which grows on yon leafy bank; it is called panacea, and it cures all bodily ills, plagues, cancers. Look at that tree round which the mighty and wise serpent curls. Here are the apples of Hesperides, which restore the aged to youth.”

  He turned to her, drawing himself erect. “Even as we speak, men die. Those deaths we can prevent, once the unicorn horn is mine. Ask what questions you may have for me. I will lay my heart bare.”

  “Why doesn’t Azrael want you to have the Key?”

  “He is an evil man, proud and selfish.”

  “Can people build houses in paradise? My daddy is an architect, and sometimes the zoning people won’t let him built the way he wants to.”

  “Human art shall glorify nature rather than demean, and masons shall labor only in moderation. Beautiful houses only shall be allowed, for ugliness is pain: quaint cottages of wood, noble castles of stone; but not so far as will do forest or mountain harm.”

  “How about factories? Can we build factories in Eden? Daddy was really proud of one factory he designed in California.”

  “Industriousness and honest work bring joy, and on those we smile. But smoke and poison belched out from drab work-houses? We will not allow a man’s momentary love for gold to commit eternal desecration on the earth. There will be no need for all this hurly-burly and commerce if all men are fed and sheltered at the hand of the fairy-king. My coffers cannot run dry.”

  “And what would inventors do in paradise? My daddy is an also an inventor. He made a special lightweight armor alloy, and it’s also really really heat resistant, so it can be used for super-high-speed engine parts …”

  “Earth, wind, and wave will be made all obedient to my will, and elves shall do all things nature must be persuaded to do, whether to swim, or fly, or carry, raise and lower tides, or calm the giddy thunderstorm. What need, in paradise, to build hulking machines to compel the earth to do what otherwise she would do freely?”

  “My daddy is also a lawyer …”

  Oberon smiled thinly. “Human wisdom shall not be called upon to render justice. The judgment of immortals need not entertain lies and rhetoric.”

  “What about the Second Amendment? My daddy owns a lot of guns. He wins contests.”

  “What need for arms? The King’s officers shall wield the lightning bolt to smite transgression.”

  “Great. If we don’t like your administration, can we vote you out? Or are we stuck for good? My daddy ran for public office once, but he didn’t win.”

  “Patience will teach those who do not understand my ways. The child cannot wrest the rod from his father’s hand.”

  “Okay. I have one more question. Can you make your paradise so that people like you showed me in the pool can come here to get healed, or to rest, but people like my daddy don’t have to come if they don’t want? A paradise where people can leave if they don’t like it?”

  Oberon stepped back so that he was no longer in the light shed from the locked gates of paradise. His face was a shadow, and Wendy could not see his features.

  The voice of Oberon came from his silhouette. “Titania’s curse compels me speak. Listen: Bread must be baked before it can be eaten. That is the law of your world. So, too, in this world, dreams must be dreamt before they can be enjoyed. It is the great of the world I must have in my kingdom, not the weak; it is their sacrifice that will sustain the poor and helpless.”

  “Hmph. I think I see what kind of sacrifice you’re talking about. It’s my daddy’s life, isn’t it? You’re going to take away everything that makes his life worth living. You just want to kill people like him, don’t you? People who make their own dreams come true without any help from you! I’ll bet you’re jealous!”

  Oberon grew to twice his normal size, and there was a murmur of thunder in the echoes of his voice. “It is but one life balanced against so many others!”

  “Would you give up your own life?”

  “Certainly not! Don’t be absurd. But among men it is the great who must be sacrificed to the weak. The Pendragon must shed his blood to feed the earth, that the earth might feed all mankind! It is your modern conceit that kings must no more pay the ancient price that renders your earth so sterile and barren. You recoil?”

  “You’re talking about human sacrifice! Yeach! Are you crazy?”

  “There are worse things. Recall the horror of the faces in the pool! Their suffering is real! Are you utterly without pity? You would not spend one life to save a million?”

  “It’s not yours to spend! You’re just another Koschei the Deathless, except bigger! Now tell me who this Pendragon fellow is. And don’t tell me he’ll be someone I don’t know!”

  “You know him.”

  The sky overhead turned black. Oberon looked up in a posture of surprise. The constellations were fighting. Even as they watched, Orion with his bow shot Scorpio, and the stars all turned to meteoric streaks of falling light.

  The earth and sky began to shake, and comets appeared, as planetary spheres jarred against each other.

  Volcanoes erupted on the horizon. Against their lurid light, rank on rank, and cloud on cloud of dark angels shined, rising above the storm-winds. To their rear rose leviathans and chimerae, basilisks of more than titan size, brazen scolopendra, medusa
shaking snaky locks, and krakens rising like swollen moons, reaching out with many arms like fire.

  In the vanguard was a giant with a hundred arms, and on the crest of his huge helmet was a howdah, large as a citadel of iron. On the balconies of that citadel, was a figure too small in the distance to be seen. By some intuition, Wendy knew it was Azrael de Gray.

  Oberon stamped his foot; the earthquakes fell silent. “Mother Earth! Raise this my city of Mommur a thousand leagues above the plain; allow my three mighty, all-encircling walls, of copper, of tin, and of orichalcum, to likewise grow.”

  Suddenly the pure aether was around them, and the constellations equal with the level of the outer wall, or underfoot.

  Oberon said aloud: “Eli! Send old age in a fusillade of years among the attacking crew, to render instantly any not of immortal blood withered hulks. My faerie court, attend to me!”

  There came a rustle in the air, and princely knights garbed in green and silver knelt now at their sovereign’s feet.

  “Where is Hiemdall? Why did his all-seeing eye not spy the foe from afar?”

  One dressed in winged helm, winged shoes, and holding a wand spiraled by two snakes answered: “Slain, my lord, by treason, and his sword, Hofud, was still sheathed. One came upon him in disguise. I suspect Tom Lanthorn, who has fled.”

  “Where is Vidar the Silent?”

  A one-handed man carrying a sword so sharp that it was painful to look upon it spoke. “From the south came a mighty wolf, whose lower jaws scraped the earth while his upper scraped the sky. Vidar said no word, but went to wrestle with the beast.”

  “Who else is absent from my call?”

  A huge man dressed in a lion’s skin and carrying a club of oak now spoke: “Lord Freyr is dead, burnt by the giant Surtvitnir. The weapon destined to destroy him is in the hands of Galen Waylock’s father, a mortal whose name I cannot recall. Also, Cu Chulainn in wrath leapt from the walls to grapple with the giant Enceladus.”