The Last Guardian of Everness (War of the Dreaming 1) (34 page)

Coldgrave squinted at the young tattooed man, “Angello, you drug- soaked punk, what are your animals going to do? Stay with me, or run away with Wentworth? You can’t even think straight, can you?”

Angello rose to his feet, brandishing his revolver. “My thinking is straight! The world’s bent. You two don’t know what’s going to happen with your men, do you? They’ve seen too much. They’ve seen the statues come to life, and they’ve been walking shoulder to shoulder with man-eating seals who dress up as men. Yeah, yeah: too much, too much. You don’t know what happens to people who see too much. Why do you think we forget what we did in our dreams when we wake up? You don’t know about the mist. The mist is coming. And there are people in the mists; people who don’t like us much.”

Coldgrave said, “You mean Pendrake? The Amnesia took him.”

Angello said, “He came back. I saw it when I was high. My brain can be in two places at once. It’s called drug lucidity. That’s why my gang is going to remember what happens here today, when
your
people, your soldier boys, and
your
people, your devil-worshipping nut-balls, are going to be carted off to the loony bin. Heh. You can use my old cell.”

Coldgrave’s face twitched with worry. He said, “Two of my people vanished, night before last. This was just before the dream came telling us to meet at the boy’s house. Pendrake might be alive. He might be following us.”

Wentworth said, “He is just one man.”

Coldgrave said, “You are a blabbering fool. Don’t you know who Pen- drake is? Don’t you know whose blood flows in his veins? Don’t you know what woman he stole from the fairy-king to be his wife? Some of my people had visions of Inquanok, where the basalt dome of the veiled king rises, and they knew who Oberon had imprisoned in that impregnable dome, guarded by Shantak birds. You and your equipment, your sensory deprivation tanks, your funded dream-research lab. You know nothing.”

Wentworth ignored him and spoke to Angello. He said, “Your gang is going to be cut to bits. Are you going to fall back when my men do and form a siege? We cannot take the mansion by direct assault. Not without Azrael.”

Angello sniffed, and sat back down on the grass. He shrugged nonchalantly. “They’re animals, man. Like he said. I can’t call ‘em back once their
blood is up. I stoked them up before they went in. Amazing thing you can do to people, if they trust you, with the right combination of chemicals. They feel no pain.”

Coldgrave said, “Then take your men, Wentworth, and go. The Dark Messiah will hear of your faithlessness when he returns in triumph.”

Wentworth frowned. “We need to contact the Necromancer. I can make a phone call to Nevada, and tell the dream-team at my base to go under . . .”

Angello laughed up at him. “You’re an idiot. Don’t you know where you are? This is Everness. This place is like me. Awake and asleep, asleep and awake, and you don’t need to be a half-breed half-human to see things here! Do you need to talk to Koschei? The Bone Man? Look! Look! There he is!”

When Angello pointed, the other two men saw, below them at the foot of the hill, where Coldgrave’s priestesses were watching the dead, a figure made of black mist, armored all in human bones, and wearing a crown of dead men’s fingernails. The apparition was walking slowly, silently around the priestesses, as if seeking a way within their circle. The being was huge and thin and black, with trailing robes of darkness slithering behind, and it should have been impossible, even in the dim light, not to see so huge and thin and black a figure: and yet, somehow, until the moment when the drug- addled Angello pointed his finger, neither Wentworth nor Coldgrave had seen the specter.

The creature turned its narrow-skulled head slowly toward them, and its eyesockets held two tiny points of cold light, like stars. It raised its thin, long-fingered hand, palm inward: a gesture to beckon them.

Wentworth said to Coldgrave, “We have to give him some of your men.” He indicated the corpses lying on the grass. “Otherwise he will not talk to us.”

Coldgrave sneered at him. “No matter what the Necromancer says, we continue the assault. It cannot be so hard to find another empty body for the Master to possess, can it?”

And he moved downhill to go bow and speak to Koschei.

IV

Angello’s teeth were chattering, and he hugged himself as if trying to hold back some internal pain or hunger that was gnawing at him.

Angello focused one eye on Wentworth. To distract himself from the shakes, he spoke. Slowly, he said, “Him, I understand. Father Ma-ligament. He needs someone to tell him how everything he does, all his sick, sick little habits, are all okay. And no real religion will tell him that, so he worships the devil instead, and the Warlock told him what he wants to hear. Me, I understand. I got nothing, I got nothing to lose. When I dream that a man in a bloody cage made of hooks tells me to go somewhere, do something, why not? I go and I do, and the dreams tell me how to get money and drugs and guns. But you. You got everything. Rich, good job. People salute you. You, I don’t understand.”

Wentworth said, “It’s not enough.”

“What’s not enough?”

“This country. This life. The way we live, in these days.”

“We live pretty good. Compared to, I dunno, Cuba. Even I got a cellphone.”

“If Napoleon were alive today, in America, what do you think he would be? Someone’s employee? That is all a politician is: the employee of the voters. And the press is like his nagging wife, a shrew he can never divorce and always must keep happy. Military brass work for the politicians. The rich man works for the tax man, really, if you think about it. Everyone bows to someone. And that is not enough.”

“What would be enough?” asked Angello. “I mean, for someone like you. Don’t you have, like, everything?”

Wentworth gave him a cool look and uttered a short sharp laugh. “Angello, do you believe in democracy? Well, I don’t. A mob that bites the hand that feeds it, spits on the warrior protecting it: that is all a democracy is. It’s not natural. There is supposed to be an order to the universe. The best should rule, and the rest should bow. I am very old-fashioned in that way.”

He raised a pair of binoculars and scanned the house in the distance.

“That house contains a door. A door to another world. A larger world than ours. Darker. Older. Less rational. There are things in that world who covet this world. Things that used to rule here. Things that ruled men back when men were toys in their hands, helpless. Well, I used to work for . . . call it an organization . . . that knew about those things. But the people I worked for lacked vision. They thought it would be better to keep the larger world out. But I, I found out that there was potential here. Potential for great things.

“The Gates of Everness were only guarded by one old man. Selkie had slipped past him, a handful, less than a dozen. I found them. They had talents useful to me. And they told me about Azrael.” Wentworth lowered his binoculars.

Angello said, “I found one, too. A seal-man. He ate my roommate. They like people like me, people no one will miss. He told me all sorts of stuff. He told me about HIM. D’you know, I saw HIM once. When I was out of my mind, back in the institution. When HE rises from the Deep, there is no reward coming for you. Only pain, endless pain, pain without death.”

Wentworth said, “The Warlock says he is preparing the way for a king, someone who will set this world in order. Someone strong enough to protect us from the other things in the Night-World. I intend to be on the best of terms in the new order.” He picked up his binoculars again, turning away from Angelo. “I was born to be a courtier. There is no place for me in this small world, among these foolish people.”

“And what if the Warlock lied, just the same way you lie to your men? Or what if the Warlock is dead?”

“Well, in that case, the door in that house will be my escape exit, won’t it? In either case, we have to take it. And then, once it is mine . . .I mean, once it is ours, of course . . .”

Angelo said to Wentworth, “You’re going to kill us both, first moment you get a chance, ain’t you? The Satan-priest and me, huh?”

Wentworth did not bother to contradict him.

V

“Uhhhnn . . . feel like shit. Where in hell am I?”

“Lay still, Peter,” came Raven’s voice. “You have bullet lodged in your shoulder, but bone is not broken. I find Doctor Lancelot’s bag hidden under bed, and I clean and dress the wound. Your blood pressure, it is steady; you would be losing blood pressure if there were massive internal bleeding, eh?”

“The punk was using a .22, wimpy-ass little shell. Hey—! Get that light out of my eyes.”

“You have had head trauma, but pupil response is normal.”

Peter pushed himself up on his elbows, saw his father lying on the bed next to him. “What’s that noise?”

“Hi there!” Wendy, standing behind Raven, was waving energetically and smiling.

Raven said, “Lie down! The statues have come to life and are fighting. Azrael de Gray fell into the sea. You are not well. Lie down!”

There was a noise from beyond the main doors, barking laughter, songs praising nightmares, darkness, and pain. It sounded as if a second group of seal-men had joined the first.

“Jesus! What the hell are those?” Peter was staring out the eastern windows, and his voice cracked.

Standing with their feet in the swirling ocean waves, silhouetted against clouds, now tinted pink and pearl-gray with the promise of coming dawn, rose two cloaked and hooded figures, huge, black and hideous, taller than the funnels of tornadoes. And their hooded faces were bowed, gazing down at the House and sea cliffs. One had a woman’s face made of iron, and she carried a flail; the other had a skull made of black ivory, and it carried a sickle. They loomed up in the eastern windows, as unnatural and huge as if dark constellations from some alien zodiac had sprung to life and stepped down from the sky.

“Down! You are not well,” said Raven.

Wendy held up her spiral ivory wand, capped with a point of silver.
“This is the Silver Key. I wanted to heal you with it, but Raven wouldn’t let me. I think it’s magic! It makes the pictures in the house here talk. Do you know how to work it? Can’t we blast them with it?”

“Sorry, little lady. I slept that day in school. Galen could probably tell you the little poem I used to know. Tum de dum dum, the key of dreaming, something, something, gate of waking, gate of seeming . . . but. . . Galen’s gone, now . . .”

“No!” said Wendy. “That was Azrael!”

Peter shook himself. “Is that door barred? Good! There’s doors to the left and right, hidden behind those panels. You can’t lock them, but the rooms beyond have heavy doors . . .”

Raven said, “Lie down. Is all taken care of. We found the hidden doors. There are selkie in the north hallway too, beyond the room with the panels. South hall is better. Is one silver knight with bleeding sword in hallway beyond the atlas room, but hall is filling up with smoke. We locked doors in paneled room and atlas room. I think greenhouse in south wing burned down; fire spreading slowly. South still best way to escape, though, I think.”

Wendy said, “Let’s call the dream-colts and fly away!”

Peter looked out the east windows at the titanic robed figures, taller than mountains, that loomed there, motionless. “I ain’t laying down, and we ain’t gonna fall back while we can hold this position. I don’t know what happens if the enemy takes this House, but I think it’s something real bad, like the end of the world or something. There’s this trumpet we’re supposed to find and blow on. Calls down the wrath of God or something.”

“No,” said Wendy, “blowing the trumpet ends the world. I think we should fly away instead. It would be more fun. Besides, Lancelot flew away. On a horse. He was dead, and they took him away up into the stars.” And she sounded very sad when she said that.

“You said the statues came to life?” said Peter brusquely. “That’s the second defense of Everness. I just can’t remember what the final defense is. We got to wake up Dad. Touch him with the horn, Wendy! Apollo, Hyperion, Helion, Day!”

“I
told
you it was for curing things!” whispered Wendy to Raven, leaning over and lightly touching Lemuel with the white wand.

But Lemuel did not wake.

Raven showed Peter the little card and the message from the grandfather in Acheron.

Peter read it in silence. Then he said, “There’s a crown of laurel leaves hanging in the central rotunda behind the statue of Apollo. If we get that and say the whole rhyme, it might, I don’t know, have more power or something. Then we gotta send someone into the country of gold to search.”

Wendy said, “Little room in the south wing, next to a tapestry of a dragon? I just came from there. Couldn’t find any magic talismans.” She smiled and shrugged.

“Any pictures?”

“No. Not really. I mean, there were framed things on the walls, but. . .”

There came a roaring noise from the north, a
crack,
a scream, and the fragments of a broken lion statue were flung into view from around the garden wall. From around the corner, a giant, pale shadow, twice the height of a man, glided forward in a spreading pool of frost.

Behind the giant jogged men with guns, their breath steaming, their collars turned up against the cold.

Firelight was dancing through the southern windows. A cloud of hissing steam boiled up from the sea, lurid, and a great hand, clutching a torch, still burning like magnesium despite that it was drenched, came up over the seawall and caught a small tree in the crook of its huge elbow. A face angry beyond all sanity came up over the seawall, beard and mane like smoke, eyes like coals.

Peter said, “Get the pictures off the walls in the country of gold room, get the laurel garland off the wall behind Apollo, come back here.”

Raven said, “Who, me?”

A faint look of disgust came into Peter’s face “Okay, pal. Who’d you wanna send instead?”

Wendy said, “I’ll go!”

Raven had just begun to start to feel the tension in his neck and shoulders unwinding. Now it knotted up again, tightly, and he could feel the pulse pounding in his temples. He thought it odd that the fear of danger hadn’t bothered him when he was in danger, only now, when he had a moment’s breathing space to reflect on it.