5

 

Beyond the Gates
of
Greater Slumber

 

I

 

She was sound asleep, drugged, undreaming. And so she did not see nor dream of the thin shadow which stooped over her, did not feel the chill radiating from the dry bones of his armor, did not know with what pain and what reluctance he let go of the little crystal orb of beating flame, did not sense the little orb, warm as spring sunlight, drifting down, fragrant and soft, to touch her parted lips. But she smiled when the bubble popped, and warm spirits breathed into her smile, settling, bringing a rosy blush to her cheek. Her eyes moved beneath lids delicate as petals, for she had begun to dream.

With a hiss of malice and longing and envy and despair for that living light now gone (for he had so wanted to keep it for himself, despite that he could never use it, nor feel its warmth) the thin shadow of the necromancer now moved aside from her, stepped through the door, and, drawing mist about him, stood motionless.

Hands lax, face dead, without even the strength to gnaw on himself for spite, the necromancer waited and waited, hating the cold in his bones.

 

II

 

Wendy, lying in the hospital bed, was suddenly overcome with a sensation of great pleasure and well-being. The pains that had been in her body for these many weeks now, throbbed, ebbed, and departed.

She raised her arms and slid back her sleeves and looked at the flesh of her arms in the moonlight; they were clear and without bruises. Even the tiny scar on her arm for the intravenous needle had vanished.

The dull, cottony drowsiness in which the tranquilizers and painkillers had wrapped her had vanished; leaving only a clean, clear kind of restfulness.

Wendy looked out the window up at the moon, at the stars flying in the deep darkness of heaven above silvery clouds. “Whoever is up there watching me,” she said, “I’d like to thank you a lot, and I’d like to say I never lost faith in you. I always knew miracles happen, no matter what everyone says. I’ve seen them before. People are so silly when it comes to miracles. The ones that happen every day: sunrises, childbirth, love; people don’t think they’re miracles just because they happen every day. The ones that don’t happen every day: healings, flying; people don’t believe in them because they’ve never seen them just because they don’t happen every day.”

She snuggled down into the pillows. “But I always knew it could happen.”

 

III

 

It may have been only a moment later, or an hour, or an endless time, when Wendy saw a young man, dressed in silver armor and carrying a spear, with a web of starlight woven like a scarf in his helmet, step down through the window on a beam of moonlight.

“I must be asleep!” said Wendy.

The young man stared around the hospital room in bewilderment. “I must have passed through the Gates of Lesser Slumber. This looks like modern-day earth! Where’s my body?”

“Have you lost your body?”Wendy asked in a voice of concern. “That’s terrible. You’re not a ghost, are you? Poor thing!” And, after she thought a moment, one finger against her cheek, she said brightly, “If there’s anything I can do to help you get your body back, I’d love to help.”

The young man looked around the room, slow puzzlement growing on his features. “Why would I dream about a hospital? The woman who talks like a girl probably represents innocence, or maybe lost hopes. But a hospital? As if my hopes were dead or dying. That’s a scary thought.”

“I just got better,” offered Wendy helpfully. “Besides, I’m the one who’s dreaming you’.’

“I hate it when dreams say that.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, staring at the window with a brooding look. The bedsheet did not wrinkle nor did the bed depress where he sat, as if he were weightless. The spear, which he dangled idly in one hand, glistened like crystal, colors of predawn dew drops shivering along its slender blade.

“I really do hate it when dreams say that. But I guess it represents my desire to reach the real world again. I wish Grandpa would come upstairs to wake me up already. I’ve got to tell him what’s going on. Vindyamar is fallen; the sea-bell is cracked; the Black Ships of Nastrond are afloat. We’ve been betrayed. Damn it! I hate this symbolic junk! It’s easier in the Deeper Dreaming. The things there are more . . .” He waved his spear at the moon. “Sort of more ancient. More grand. Huge.”

Wendy said. “I had a dream I was talking to a flying pony. It looked sort of like a slender horse, with the head of a deer. Imagine a horse as a ballerina. That’s what it was like.”

He grunted unhappily. “Of course I’d have to dream about the dreamcolts. She told me she would bring me back to my body, but this doesn’t look like my house. She’s probably turned against us too. Where’s my house?”

Wendy said: “She told me there was a house called Everness, in the east. The forgotten last guardians of dreaming keep shut the gate between the waking world and the world of deep nightmare. She said the gate was broken, and the first servant of the Emperor of Night had entered our lands.” Wendy said. “But why did I dream it happened when I was a child?”

“Childhood memories are partway into the other world already,” the young man said absentmindedly. “The same reason why children and innocent madmen can talk to imaginary playmates. They’re actually reaching from the waking to a person in the dream.”

Then the young man straightened, turned to look at her, his eyes wide with shock. “Oh my God! You’re real! Don’t—don’t get up! Don’t move or try to turn on the light or anything. You’re in a half-awake state called somniloquism. You might jar yourself awake if you try to move. Now, if you write down everything, and I mean everything, right when you get up, and before you get out of bed or do anything else, then you might not forget this conversation. Will you promise to do that for me? Promise? It’s real important. Maybe the most important thing in the world.”

“I promise,” said Wendy solemnly. “But only if you tell me the whole story. You see,” she said in a confidential whisper, “I love stories.”

“Okay. Okay.” He blinked. “Uh. . . my name is Galen Waylock. I’m asleep right now in an old uncomfortable house in upstate Maine with no plumbing, on the coast, near Bath.”

“How do you do. My name is Wendy Ravenson. It actually says Wendy Varovitch on my driver’s license, but that’s sort of hard to say, don’t you think?”

“Okay. Sure. Uh . . . Okay, first there’s this horn, which is used to wake the sleeping guardians of the West. No, wait. Okay. The First Warden of Everness comes from when Zeno was Emperor and St. Hormidas was Pope. His people fought the Saxon at the battle of Badon Hill. The Saxon worshipped the Dragon-steeds who were the Cherubim and Charioteers of Morningstar, which were drawn into the world through the Tower of Vortigern. One dragon was white, and the other was red, and the Founder bound them up. No. Let me skip to the important stuff. The Founder is being punished because he betrayed his oath. He opened the postern gate to the Dream-realm and let a plague of insanities, soul thieves, and familiars into the souls of waking men. Throughout all the Dark Ages, the mass insanities, witch riots, villages getting up and dancing themselves to death, visions of ghosts and imps and demons, all that stuff, sprang out of his crime. The Second Warden, Donblais le Fay, seized control of the Tower after his father was locked away and drove the druids out of Avalon . . . Hold it. I have to back up. The Tower is where the Gate was. Is. It is the Tower of Time at the Center of the Seasons, with four wings and twelve porches. But you don’t know what Gate. Uh. Okay. In the old days, there wasn’t any barrier between mankind and the dream-world, and men were pretty much the slaves and playthings of the gods and faeries and spirits. So, in order to create a bicameral frame of consciousness, a boundary of mist was decreed to allow men to forget their fears and false hopes when they were in the sunlight; but one of the dream-lords rebelled out of Mommur, the City Never- ending, and drew a third part of the hosts of the greater powers with him. Their chief is named after the morning star, and he is also called the Emperor of Night, and he and his hordes fell into the deep of the sea, below where the beams of the sun can reach, in Acheron, a sunken city of imperishable metal, drowned in a black sea-chasm where their only light is from the pale glow of luminous monster-fish. The city is actually called Dis, but it is unlucky to say its name, so we call it after the river that springs from its barred windows, from the tears of those imprisoned there. Now, the Emperor of Night sent ambassadors to the nine races of the nine worlds, including the selkie of Heather Blether . . . no, wait. You don’t need to know that. Uh . . . the Regent of the Sun, Belphanes, at Oberon’s command, sent the unicorn as his messenger to the King of Logres. Eurynome the Unicorn established the Rule of the Order of Everness, and opened the gate between Pan’s and Morpheus’ realm, the realm of nature and the realm of dream. Morpheus . . . well, never mind who he is. Eurynome gave us the Horn, or maybe the Founder found the Horn by following her back to her own realm, which isn’t in this realm, or in the dream realm, but is supposed to be somewhere else entirely. Or it used to be. . . No . . . um . . .” He had stood and was pacing the room, his scale-mail jingling, waving his hands. Little shimmers of light traveled up and down the length of the spear, soft as moonlight, as he was waving it.

“You’re not very good at this, are you?” asked Wendy, batting her eyelashes innocently.

“Well! I don’t know where to start! Okay?”

“Okay,” she said primly, clasping her hands before her on the bedsheet. “Why don’t I ask you questions, and you can tell me one thing at a time?”

“Great,” muttered Galen. “Sounds just great.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No, no. Just go ahead your way.”

“First, why did I have my dream about something I remembered from childhood with the colt in it?”

He sat down, drawing a deep breath. Galen spoke with forced slow patience. “Your childhood memories were probably the only thing she could reach. Creatures like her can only speak to people who are on drugs or who are not quite right in the head. The Seventy-Third Warden, Albertus Way- lock, wrote a monograph on it, and his theory is that they are permitted to keep their memories of the hidden things because people won’t listen to them anyway, but just stick them into psycho wards or something. Say, what kind of hospital did you say this was?” Galen shot a skeptical glance at Wendy.

“Who is ‘she’?”

“Euryale, daughter of Eurynome, one of the dream-colts who are the children of the unicorn. We ride them. They fly.”

“Why are you dressed like that?” Wendy waved her hand toward his silver-tinted scale-mail, the flowing garments of tissue that showed at the armor’s joints, at the lambrequin floating like mist from the peak of his conical helmet.

“It’s a uniform. It’s symbolic. This is armor. It stops pointed things from jabbing you. This here is a spear. You poke it into things. Are you going to ask me some real questions? There’s a creature who is coming across the mist trying to get into this world. It may be here already.”

Wendy wagged a finger at him. “Now, now. Let’s go in order. Where do you live?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!”

Wendy began plucking at her covers, “Well, if you won’t cooperate, I guess I’ll just wake up and try to put this silly dream behind me . . .”

“No no no! Don’t get up! Uh, you look really tired, like you need a nap, and I got to tell you what’s going on! I’ll answer your stupid questions. I mean, no, I didn’t mean they were stupid or anything. What was the question?”

Wendy said brightly, “I’d like to know where you live, dressed that way.” She giggled.

“Yeah. I live at Everness House. On earth, that’s at number 14 Rural Route AA, Sagadahoc County, Maine. In the dreaming, the High House is at the Shore of the Sea of Unquiet Dark, last bastion of the City Never- ending, on the First Sphere this side of Utgard and Nidvellir, where the silver towers of Tirion rise unfallen, below the Deeper Gate, at the center of the four moon’s quarters. Can’t miss it.”

“How did you find me?”

“Look. I wasn’t trying to find you. I went to go talk to the First Warden. He lives in the shadow of Tirion Unfallen, beneath the dark moon, where the ocean plunges forever into the Starlessness. There are nine waterfalls which fly off the brink of the Chasm Ultimate, and on the cliffsides below there is a place of torment called Wailing Blood. I went to him because a bird carrying an elf-lamp told me to. In a dream.”

“I know that that’s very important,” said Wendy. “But I’d really like to know something else first. What led you here?”

“There is a prayer to summon a dream-colt. A spell. They can fly across the sea from one moon to another, or ascend to other spheres.”

“And the dream-colt brought you here for no reason, instead of taking you home like you asked?”

“I see what you’re getting at. You and I must be connected in some way. A shared destiny or common link; otherwise, our dreams wouldn’t touch. The Forty-Third Warden wrote a treatise on it in the Library. He talked about. . . wait a minute . . . oh, God. Maybe I can’t go home. Maybe talking to you is the closest I can get. Maybe I’m d—uh. Hey, what day is it? What month? Omigod. What year?”

Wendy told him the date.

Grief and shock overtook Galen’s features. “I’ve been asleep for six months . . .”

He sat down on the bed, phosphorescent spear across his lap. Then, as slowly as a crumbling tower, he leaned forward and put his face in his hands.

Wendy reached and patted him gently on the knee. “There, there. Don’t be sad. Worse things happen at sea. I know. My husband used to go to sea, and worse things happened. Now straighten up. Draw a deep breath. Settle down and tell me what happened to you. You went to see the First Warden, the one who’s being punished for something, in the place by the waterfalls at the edge of the world in the dream-land. Tell me in order how you got there and what you talked to him about. What’s the first thing you said after you got there?”

“The first thing he said was that he was going to dump me into the abyss . . .”

 

IV

 

Galen, unnerved by the threat and trying to remember his boldness, looked Azrael de Gray in the eye, and held up his hand, to show the tiny scar in his palm. “See? I came for your message. I am here because I was summoned. You called, I remembered, I came. You have no right to threaten me. You have no cause to hate me.”

Only silence answered him.

An uncomfortable half-minute crept by. Galen plucked up his nerve and spoke again. “Uh . . . sir. I came because I heard the sea-bell toll. After all these years of waiting, our waiting is over.”

Silence.

Galen tried again: “You started our House! You set us all to waiting. We’ve done as you asked, my grandfather and great-grandfather and everyone all the way back. Doesn’t that count for something? And now everyone is in danger, everyone on Earth, and the hosts of the Darkness are marching. I came to you for help. You said you had something we needed to know. Even if you don’t care about your own family, doesn’t the whole Earth count for something?”

He spoke with as much dignity and force as he could muster. Moments passed, with Azrael looking on with steady, cold, supercilious gaze, and Galen began to feel stupid and small.

Azrael’s shadowy face showed no hint of softening, no flicker of compassion. Finally, he said in a quiet, icy voice, “No cause for hate, you say? Tell me, I challenge you, the names of those on Earth who recollect with praise my deeds, or even know that one such as I once lived. None has come here to offer even smallest ease of this great unceasing suffering, which, for their sakes, I endure.”

“Well, honestly, sir, uh. . . I don’t think anyone on Earth knows who you are.” Galen, as soon as these words left his mouth, winced. He thought: Stupid, stupid! Wrong thing to say.

He followed lamely with, “Except me and my Grampa, of course.”

There was another long silence, while Galen, standing uneasily on the chain, squirmed inwardly beneath the dark, majestic, dispassionate stare of the elder Waylock. The ancient being’s face was an angular mass of shadows; Galen could see little more than square cheekbones beneath a thundercloud of hair, framing twin pools of greater darkness underneath black brows, and, below, craggy lines of bitterness and sternness gathered around a hint of a scowl.

Galen thought to himself in anxiety and surprise: What great deeds? I thought this guy was a traitor, someone who trafficked with the enemy.

Words came from the cage: “It was I who first brought the Silver Key out from Mommur, despite that Oberon and all his faerie knights rose up in silver light to hinder and oppose me; proud Morningstar and all his hellish crew pursued my flight even to the utmost gates of day, preferring damnation to retreat. The blood of immortals was shed to win the Key to Earth; and, by its virtue, all the gates to hell and alien dream-lands were locked shut, yes, with incalculable expense of patience, bravery, and pain. My sacrifice not praised, you say? Forgotten? By all? Does none recall where now the Key is hid?”

“Key? What Key. . .?”

A note of slight surprise: “The Silver Key of Everness, of course, Clavargent, which locks and unlocks the Gate you guard: the Key by which dream-figments can be made to stand solid and cast shadows beneath the waking sun. The Key by which all sane and solid things can be made to fade at once to mist and dreams. The Key which is the source of all the power of Everness and the only hope for the victory of mankind. Have you truly never heard of it?”

Galen reluctantly shook his head.

The figure sagged slightly. The shoulders slipped down. Galen could see scars and bloodstains where iron thorns had cut his arms and shoulders. “Then you are not the Guardian.” The voice was bitter, heavy with defeat.

“N-no. My Grandfather Lemuel is the Guardian. But your bird landed on me. I heard the message. I came. He will not come.”

A low chuckle. “How kind. A youth who is not the Guardian, and has no power and no authority, will listen to my warning (which he will prove too weak and foolish and young to act upon) and will hear my plan (which he will not be able to carry out). How supreme a kindness your attention gives me! Had you not come, I should have been forced to impart my learning to passing sea-birds or crawling lice. To tell them would do as much good!”

Galen felt anger, like bile, in his throat. “I’m here. I can do something.”

“Indeed? And has the Guardian told you why he will not come? No? Do you know what power has commanded him from answering me? No, again? And you were never told where the Silver Key was hidden, were you?”

Galen tried to speak with dignity, but he felt his face grow warm. “He . . . doesn’t tell me much . . .”

“Your pride is offended, is it not, youth?” The voice from the darkness of the cage was gentler now. There was a note of kindness in it. And yet the bloodstained arm still gripped the chain.

“It’s like he doesn’t trust me or something.”

“You are below the twenty years and four, and not yet in your majority.”

“I’m an adult!”

“Adult enough to hold the Silver Key which could, unwisely used, render all the Earth to irredeemable destruction?”

Galen was silent. A sigh of cold wind came up from underfoot, making him shiver. He pulled his gray fur cloak more tightly about him, wondering from what places that wind had come, or what was the strange odor he smelled on it.

He wondered what this Silver Key was, or where it was hidden.

Azrael said: “Perhaps you may prevail upon your grandfather, my remote descendant, to entrust you with the secret lore of Everness, if you prove yourself gallant, wise, and worthy. Some notable feat to the defense of Everness might enflame his admiration.”

This was so near Galen’s unvoiced, hidden hope that he could not dare to speak. He nodded, wondering if he were so transparent.

Galen shivered again in the wind, and then, with a feeling almost of guilt, he drew the strings of his cloak. Galen folded the warm fabric into a bundle, and gingerly extended it toward the cage.

“Here,” he said. “You must be cold.”

The figure in the cage did not stir.

“Come on! Take it!” Galen wiggled the bundle in the direction of the bars.

“Thrust your cape through these cruel bars to me, and I shall thank you with good thanks.”

Galen hesitated.

“Or do you fear to come within arm’s grip of me?”

“You could just reach up with your hand,” answered Galen in a loud voice. “What’s the matter? Afraid to let go of the chain? You’re willing to throw me into the abyss but not willing to accept a gift?”

Silence.

“Fine!” shouted Galen. “That’s just fine! I was going to make you barter for this cloak, so you’d have to tell me this message and this plan of yours, who was invading and how to stop it, before I’d give it to you, but instead I thought I’d be a nice guy and just give it to you. But if you’re so unwilling to give your own flesh and blood a break—! Well! Well, that’s just fine with me!” And he flung the cloak in a flapping swirl of fabric at the cage.

The cloak slipped down and fell across the bloody arm, and the cloak ends flapped in the air, hanging to either side of the chain.

“No wonder they don’t come to ease your ‘ceaseless suffering,’ you act like this all the time . . .” muttered Galen.

Slowly, the blackened and scarred fingers unknotted from the chain link and drew the cloak in through the bars, carefully, and Azrael paused to work free each snag whenever the fabric was pricked by a needle or caught up on a hook.

Azrael said, “I thank you. Nor would I sell my wisdom for a cloak, no matter what the torment of cold which nightly oppresses me. Not for a kingdom have I altered myself, how much less for a garment? But I do thank you. I will tell you my secrets, youth.”

 

V

 

Azrael spoke, and his words floated in the cold, wide, windy night around them. Night sky was above them, and night sky was below.

“You know as you have been taught. Oberon and the Children of Light could not maintain a watch post on the stained and sinful world of Earth, yet neither did they wish for patient Morningstar to gain easy possession by merely waiting for his mortal foes to die. Neither could mortal men be completely trusted to maintain a watch against the Foe. Some men, great champions and knights, were webbed into enchanted sleep, their vigor and purity preserved, so that passing time would give no advantage to Earth’s timeless Foe. Others, those who held the Silver Key, had no choice but to stand watch against the coming of the Dark, for only they could wake the sleepers once again.”

“I know. We’re supposed to sound the Horn and wake the sleepers.”

“Ah. But did you know the price? The sleepers do not sleep on Earth, but in Celebradon. When Everness wakes the Sleeping King and all his Knights, Celebradon will come triumphant down from the circle of the Autumn Stars, and angels and lios-alfar upon the battlements will fly pale banners and sing the praises of Oberon. The weapons that have been stored up for the Final Battle, forged in the armories of heaven, will come forth from hiding to destroy the servants of the Dark. The battle shall rage so hot that both Earth and Sky shall shatter and burn, and, after Oberon’s victory, he shall call up a world based on mankind’s finest dreams, or perhaps based on Oberon’s inclination, and create the world anew for men loyal to him to possess.”

Galen nodded. “Yes. I’ve heard this. We were promised a place in that new world.”

“The servants of Light are treated more kindly than the servants of the Dark. The lesser slaves who serve the black tower of Acheron fear and hate the prospect of Darkling triumph as desperately as we. The Final War spells doom for those who prosper during the time before the war, spies and sneaks and traitors.”

“You mean the shape-stealers.”

“I mean the shape-stealers. The selkie. They are an untrusty crew, and they fear and hate their master Morningstar as much or more than you. The Master of black Acheron will have no use for spies and selkie should Darkness triumph, and, should he fail, the selkie will be scalded by the Light. There is one who knows this, one among the selkie-race, who has promised us aid.

“The traitor among them has spoken to me, and tells how Acheron will surely send its lesser slaves to battle on the Earth before the Outer Gods or evil Seraphim are sent, for Morningstar cannot know when or where the Sleepers in Celebradon will wake. The traitor, who is in the vanguard sent ahead to be consumed in war, promises he will betray the efforts of the Darkness and make the early vanguard fail, if those in Everness merely can display that they possess the weaponry of Otherworld. Merely the rumor and the image of those weapons will drive off the weaker slaves of Acheron; if this is done, the traitor vows lies and deception will exaggerate all victories of the Light, and that his voice will poison the councils of Acheron, dishearten them, creating a retreat, and, if not victory, then peace.”

“What weapons are these?”

“The Nine Talismans. Do you truly know nothing, boy?”

Galen was silent, ashamed of his ignorance, telling himself he had no cause to feel ashamed, but feeling so nonetheless.

Azrael was silent a moment, and then said softly, “To combat the nine great evils spawned in sunken Acheron, seven great talismans were brought from Otherworld to Caer Leon. Three were kept in Caer Leon by His Majesty, the Pendragon; two sent to His Holiness, the Pope in Rome; one sent to the Emperor in unconquerable Constantinople, Caesar’s home. All were mighty, six talismans of memory, but the seventh and mightiest of these, was Clavargent, the Silver Key. Nor king nor pope nor emperor was trusted with the Silver Key; it was to Everness given, made hidden, forgotten in the house of memory.”

Azrael fell silent. Galen waited, wondering if there was more.

Then Galen said, “Well, we don’t have a king anymore. The pope is still there, still in Rome. But we’re not Catholic. Maybe he’d still help. And I don’t even know who the emperor is supposed to be. And they changed the name of Constantinople to Istanbul.”

“Grim news. The talismans are scattered, then. Scattered, for they cannot be destroyed. And only the Three Queens might know where now they lie.” Azrael was silent for a time. With stiff, slow movements, he wrapped Galen’s cloak around himself. “No emperor? Ah, but that is grim news.”

Another long silence.

Galen said, “Well, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do to find these talismans?”

Azrael was silent in deep thought for a time, as if remembering an old lesson. Then he said: “Mortals are not meant to use them, for each one is cursed. This is why I said they must be displayed, not employed. Each one combats a different evil of the Nine whose coming the sea-bell of Vindyamar foretells. Listen. Listen with care, and in the mansion of your memory, place each of these things into a central nave, pillar, post, or window, that you may recall it when you wake. Pay heed; I cannot say it twice.”

 

VI

 

Azrael spoke:

“The first of the nine knows the necromantic art; he surrendered his humanity and hollowed out his heart. No talisman is needed to keep this shade at bay; only men who grant him arms will fall beneath his sway.”

“The second are giants of frost and flame; great is their power and great their fame. The Rod of Mollner they cannot withstand; but the weapon returns to the wielder’s hand to smite him a blow dread and sure, which no man who fears it can endure.

“The third are the Storm Lords, the riotous three; but one was snared with a kite string and key. The wizard Franklin did this deed, and lightning serves our house at need. The Two who ride the tumult of heaven are Thunder and Wind; their brother is Levin. The Niflungar Ring is the talisman blessed to quell their distempers and set them at rest. One must renounce love and passion, to vow to take up the Ring to which these lords bow.

“The fourth are laughing Selkie, the princes of deceit. They steal the shapes of mortal men, their senses snare and cheat. They turn to their true shapes upon the lightest touch of Moly. Honest hands must wield this wand, or innocent, or holy; for mortals suffer great travail when all their fond illusions fail: when Truth is known, severe and plain, is then the time for tears and pain.

“The fifth are the Kelpie, steeds and bearers of disease, who prey on sinful weaknesses, but fear the Bow of Belphanes. Strength and pride can never bend this bow: it is meant for the humble, not unwilling to bow low.

“The sixth is the Beast whose name is War and Hate. Chained by the gods, he is often set free by men who woo his daughter, the maiden Victory. Only one thing the wrath of war will sate: bright Calipurn, the Sword of the Just. The Beast will submit at sight of the Sword, found in such hands as are worthy of trust. That Sword is deeply buried, long unseen by men, not again to shine, till one worthy of his kingly line shall come in triumph once again.”

 

VII

 

Azrael had fallen silent. The wind howled in the darkness underfoot, and the chain swayed slightly. Galen, carefully balanced, and intent on every word, waited further, but the silence lengthened.

Galen was now doubly embarrassed. He had, after all, heard of these talismans before; he had known of them his whole life, but called by a different name. The Seven Signs of Vindyamar (as he had been taught to know them) were inscribed on the walls of the Tower called Two Dragons, which was the oldest part of the Mansion at Everness, and called the Heart of the House. Carvings in the intricate gothic style depicted several monsters, seal- men and giants, each holding the Sign which heralded them: a hammer, a ring, a wand, a bow, a sword. And then two other signs Azrael had not yet mentioned: a grail and, of course, the Horn.

Galen had never known or suspected that these Signs were depictions of real weapons. He had been taught they served another purpose. He tried to think of some way casually to mention that he had known all along what these talismans were, to show Azrael that he was not as ignorant as he appeared. But he had to bring it up in such a way that it would not like vain boasting.

Galen said: “Well? That’s only six bells. Five talismans. What of the Grail? The Horn?”

“No talisman save the Titan himself is set to face what rises from the sea at seven strokes. And if the eighth or the final sea-bell tolls, what comes is beyond your strength. You could not wield the talismans for them. Tell me, watcher, how many times did it toll?”

“It was going on and on.”

“Was the count forty-and-five? This is the sum of all evils the sea-bell warns against. If so, Acheron itself, the citadel of Morningstar, makes ready to rise up from the unfathomable deep.”

“I—I don’t know. It might have been that many . . .”

“Have the Guardians of Everness forgotten the art of counting? It is not difficult to master, for one who has fingers, for numbers lesser than ten, and has toes, a score. No matter. What sign did the Watch of Vindyamar dispatch?”

“I saw a black seagull, holding the lantern of the elfs.”

“That was mine, caught and tamed by me, and with a lantern only my art could craft, to show he came by me. Can you not see my sign came not from Vindyamar? The Watch of Vindyamar would surely have sent to you a warning dream, and Nimue held up from the bosom of the waves a token of what talisman to ready, sword or ring or wand or cup, according in what form the attack would show itself, whether by war, or wind, by deceit or death. What sign were you shown? Are you not a Watchman of Everness? Were you not watching?”

Galen was almost in agony of embarrassment. Of all things, of all people, the one he wanted most to have think well of him was Azrael de Gray, the founder of his family, his house, and his order.

His grandfather had told him that there should have been a sign from Vindyamar, where the sea-bell was kept in a crystal harbor. Instead, thinking the black gull was the sign, he came here, only to be told, now, by the Founder, that Grandfather had been right all along.

But then that embarrassment turned to dread.

“Sign? There was no sign.”

“Ah. Then Vindyamar has been taken by the enemy.” There was something very cold in the way he spoke, a glitter in his eye Galen did not like. “This is cause for dread. The Watch of Vindyamar surely would not have failed to send a sign, upon which so much depends. Only treason could have undone them; only the Enemy has strength enough to overcome their virtue. The Three Queens must surely, by now, have been taken. To Nastrond, to horrible Nastrond, the shores made of murderer’s bones . . .”

The cold voice trailed into silence.

“Well—well—what do I do?”

Azrael bowed his proud head.

“There is nothing to do. The cause has failed. Return home and compose yourself how to perish gracefully and with aplomb. Suicide is nobler than the torture pits of Acheron.”

“There must be something we can do!”

“Only a display of the Talismans will frighten the vanguard of the Darkness. If the vanguard should prevail, nothing is left except to wake the Sleepers and call the end of time on Earth. Do you know where the Talismans of Otherworld are kept?”

“N—no.”

“Nor do I.”

“Who does know?”

“The Three Queens of Vindyamar. Who, if they have not sent you a token calling you to war, we must presume taken, or slain.”

Galen stood on the chain for a long time, staring down between his feet. A dizzying, vast nothingness, darker than midnight, sank endlessly down away from him.

It did not seem any darker, any deeper than the sinking feeling inside of himself. The words of Azrael de Gray echoed in his imagination: taken or slain. . .

Galen suddenly looked up. “If they were taken, where would they be taken to?” He had straightened up; his voice was clear and sharp. “If they are prisoners, who is guarding them? Where?”

Azrael said softly, ‘Aha. Now the youth asks a question worthy of a man.”

 

VIII

 

Azrael spoke in a low, solemn voice, so that Galen had to lean close to hear him. “Few know where Nastrond lies, which is the harbor and waymeet of the dreaded selkie-folk: but that hidden place is known to me. No matter where next they might take the Three Queens who are their prisoners, whether to sunken and sunless Acheron beneath the sea, or to the frozen northern atolls of Heather Blether, or to the windowless domes atop the bleak plateaus of Uhnuman on the far side of the moon, the seal-men would first take any captives, fair or foul, to Nastrond’s shore. For they go by secret routes into countries beyond the sphere of the moon, into the forbidden upper night, where mankind may not go, not even in dreams; and to this end, the Selkie must propitiate and praise the bloodthirsty and inhuman gods that guard the realms where sane men dare not venture, and bribe them to overlook that forbidden voyaging. Each captive must be prepared, woven into song like a caterpillar in its silks, so that the song of the selkie, full of horror as it may be, will keep the victim’s ears clogged with sounds to drown out the singing of that which lives beyond the ordered sphere of fixed stars. (They say no man has heard the inhuman music from beyond, and returned sane from such overreaching wayward dreaming, except the dreamer Kuranes, and even he was not permitted to return to his body back on earth, which died, but was given the timeless and enduring citadel of Celephais in the clouds above in the inland sea for his kingdom, both as consolation and reward for the brave resisting power of his soul and sanity.)

“And how I came to know this brings me no happiness to tell, for I spoke with a creature only somewhat human and made terrible bargains with him, and this creature came to me because I saw a thing in the darkness.

“I have seen a thing unknown to any others, be they men awake or men wrapped in dreams, or men passed into the greater dreaming of true death; for the malice of the jail keepers of Tirion puts my small cage upon a longer chain by far than all the others, so that, by dawn, I am thus so much nearer to the burning breath of sun when he comes up from underfoot, and so that, by dusk, I am thus so much farther from his warmth, and deeplier dipped into the cold abyss below.

“By this, I have seen farther down into the gulfs beyond the world’s end, farther even than my fellow prisoners here, farther, I suspect, even than the nadir-astronomers who peer so timidly athwart the brink above us with their telescopes and mirrors. They are too near the sun to see full ways into the gloom. In dark solitude, dark wisdom grows. For I have seen from whence the Black Ships come.

“Do I need to tell you of the Black Ships, young man? Every seaport in the lands of dream has been visited by them at one time or another; seaports made of crystal or of cloud, elf ruled, loyal to Mommur, next to oceans of light; and seaports made of brick and wood, inhabited by what we would recognize as men; and the great fortified iron headlands of Nidvellir, next to oceans made of boiling rock; all these, through all the cycles and aeons of recorded time, have feared the Black Ships, and never known from what quarter of the world they hail, or what level of the dreaming. But I know. They come not from earth, but beyond it.

“Once and twice and thrice I have seen them, monstrously huge, sailing up toward earth from this chasm, weightless as thunderclouds, their expanse of sails adrip with ice and swollen with nameless winds from far below. Their lanthorns burn with elf-light marsh gas, or the glow which fireflies carry in their tails, as they rise up. And across the gulfs of night air, sometimes I would hear lonely wailing voices raised in song, hymns to darkness and pain, paeans to the joy one finds in other’s sufferings; and this singing from the ships was interspersed with eerie barking laughter, harsh commands, and the cracks of whips and cries of pain; and no voice of them was human in its tone or timbre.

“Whenever any of these ships rose up, she would reach a certain height below the level of the world’s brink, and would at once all douse her lights and singers gag; and silenter than moths would float, by careful courses plotted to ascend through the night sky only by the darkest zone, far from constellations, that her passage might not occlude any star, nor give a warning of her silent running to the militia in Tirion below.

“Made bold by desperation or despair, I began to sing the uncouth hymns I had heard when next I saw a Black Ship rising up; nor did I fall silent when the Ship doused all her lights, but louder called forth, shouting blasphemies upward toward my slumbering jailers.

“The Black Ship struck sail and hung adrift, lamps black, off the southern point of Orion, past Rigel, which even then was level with the world’s horizon. A pilot boat was lowered, and dark hunched shapes, bent over muffled oars, rowed this boat across the gloomy air down toward me.

“The pilot boat came to where my cage hung in midair, and I saw the tall shape in the stern was manlike but had no human face. Above his lace cravat and below his tricorn hat, I saw his nose was whiskered like a cat, his eyes were liquid, large and dark; merry, beastlike eyes, full of cruelty and laughter; his pelt was black and shone. And when he spoke, his sharp fangs were white and clean like the teeth of a fox. His warm breath smelled of fish chewed raw.

“He raised a hand in greeting, and I saw, out from the lace cuff of his heavy seaman’s coat, a clawed paw, black and furry on the back, pale of palm, with webs of black membrane stretched between the finger joints.

“He chuckled and snorted when he saw the cruel torture of my imprisonment, and lightly touched the jagged teeth which line these bars, and said, ‘The folk above are fishing. They have left you dangle here as bait to the leviathans which lumber in the unnamed nether oceans into which these icy waters plunge. But I think you are too small a morsel to tempt those jaws to swallow up these many hooks. Hah! Are you so friendly with the fishermen above that you must squeak and squall when we are preparing our nice surprise to penetrate their rude blockades? You must be discreet, my scrawny mouthful, or the kindly men who put you here will lose the opportunity to fish with live bait.’

“I told him scornfully that one such as he should not dare to threaten me. He laughed, describing the tortures to which he would put me, and leaned toward the bars with his saber. The weapon came within my reach.

“The next boat out from the ship carried a higher-ranking officer of their race and kept a respectful distance while they treated with me. I will not trouble you to tell you what oaths were sworn that night, nor to what dreadful powers; but I will confide that much secret intelligence I gained, greatly to the good of my cause, were I able to reveal it to my people. And the sea-men allowed me keep the saber and the seal-coat of my first visitor, nor did they dare come near enough to take his body down from where it hung on the cage bars. I ate well for nearly a month.”

Galen, listening, now looked at the bloodstains on the cage bars with new horror.

And then Azrael said softly to Galen: “Come closer.”

 

IX

 

Galen realized that he could turn and go away this moment and put himself far out of reach of this caged man, return to his grandfather, and have no more to do with these dark matters. And yet, if Galen did not even attempt to rescue the Three Queens of Vindyamar, if he did nothing, how could he ever be worthy of the Guardianship?

Galen leaned closer. The bloodstained hand of Azrael reached up and gripped his shoulder. Galen was astonished at how cold the fingers were, and how strong. The cold hand drew him down till his cheek almost touched the thorns of the bars. Galen stared at the hooks and saw teeth hanging inches from his eyes.

Azrael whispered, “The traitor is the Seal-King himself. His secret name is Mannannan. His emissary and go-between is Dylan of Njord, whom you shall recognize by such tokens as I shall describe. They would not dare to have harmed these Queens of ancient Vindyamar. The Seal-King will release the Three Queens to you; you shall discover the location of the Talismans from them. You will disguise yourself as a selkie using a dark art I have learned. Draw on this coat I give you; now you shall become a selkie yourself. . .”