7

 

Wounded
of
Old Wars

 

I

 

Raven, his muscular arms folded over his stomach as if he felt a knotted pain there, his shoulders slumped, his eyes staring, walked slowly from the intensive care unit. His steps were slow.

“What have I done—by holy Katherine, what have I done . . .,” he muttered to himself over and over again in his native Georgian tongue.

Ahead of him in the white halls, Raven saw a young mother escorting a little daughter away from a counter where the mother had been signing papers and forms. The girl looked cheerful, although her face was pale. A bouquet of balloons was floating next to her head, tied by brightly colored ribbons to her wrist.

“There we go, sweetheart! Time to go home! Now we’re all better. Do you like your balloons?”

The little girl smiled a smile of innocent joy and bobbed her wrist furiously to make the colored balloons wiggle and dance.

Raven, drew away, unable to tolerate the sight. The halls felt stuffy and close about him. He pushed open a pair of doors and stepped out into the fresh nighttime air.

Raven staggered over to a bench overlooking the parking lot and sat down, breathing heavily, elbows on knees, head hanging.

“Tough night in there, eh?” said a rough voice.

Raven turned his head. Next to the bench, in a wheelchair, sat a heavyset man. He was balding, thick chested, with powerful biceps, neck, and shoulder muscles. His legs were absurdly thin and small by comparison. He wore a crew cut, and had an upright posture and level gaze. He had scars: one on his cheek, one on his hand, others perhaps hidden by his shirt. His face was lined and weathered: he looked to be in his fifties, perhaps a well- preserved sixty.

The man in the wheelchair pulled a metal flask out of his jacket. “Take a pull, son. Looks like you need it.” And he passed the flask to Raven, saying, “Careful. Strong stuff.”

Raven sniffed the open cap of the metal flask. Just the aroma of the alcohol was so strong that it stung his eyes. Deliberately, he tilted back his head and took a long, deep swallow of the potent, clear liquor.

It burned like raging fire in his throat. Raven neither coughed nor gasped, and he handed back the flask with a steady hand.

The man gave Raven a brief inspection and nodded with approval.

When the man sipped from the flask, he could not do so with Raven’s aplomb; he took a shallower drink and had to pull the flask away from his lips, gasping for breath, eyes watering.

Raven shook his head, smiling, and put out his hand, gesturing for the flask.

The other man silently handed it over, looking Raven eye-to-eye as he did so.

Raven took another pull, twice as long as before, drinking liquid fire into his throat. With a flourish, he returned the flask to the other man; his cheeks flushed, but showing no other outward sign of distress.

The man in the wheelchair, eyebrows raised, gave a long, low whistle of admiration.

Raven nodded, a modest gesture of thanks.

The other man smiled back, his smile a slight crease in an iron-harsh face. “Name’s Peter. Yours?”

“Raven.”

“Where’d you learn to hold your liquor like that, Dr. Raven?”

“I was sailor on Greek freighter, Peter. I sailed the seas.”

Peter grunted and nodded, taking another sip. “Good man.”

“Ah.” Raven’s smile fell. He turned his face away to stare broodingly out at the lights of the parking lot, at the textured darkness of the bushes and trees beyond. “But I am not a good man. Not a good man at all.”

“Mm? What’d you do?”

“I made a man to die,” said Raven softly. “To let a beautiful little woman live. One of them had to die.”

Peter passed him the flask. “Well, now. Doctors make those choices all the time. It’s hard. Damn hard, choices like that. Deciding who lives, who dies. I know.”

Raven wondered why Peter mistook him for a doctor then realized he was still wearing the white lab coat he had stolen from the laundry earlier that evening to sneak into his wife’s room.

“No,” said Raven. “It was not such a choice as that. The woman, she is my wife. The young man him, it is the same as if I have done murder. I murdered a man.” Raven drank and passed back the flask.

“Yeah, I know what that’s like. You get over it.” Peter took a final sip from the flask, and opened his coat to replace it in an inner pocket. When his coat was open, Raven could see a heavy, long-barreled pistol the man carried beneath his coat in a shoulder holster.

“But, let me tell you,” Peter continued. “No matter how bad it gets, no matter who lives and who dies, no matter how much you get hurt, you can take it. Your wife leaves? You can take it.

“Your son gets involved in drugs and weird cults? You can take it. Your father a nutcase? You can take it. You step on a landmine, and lose the use of both legs, no jogging, no rock climbing, no dancing, not anymore, not ever again? You can take it. Here’s the secret: as long as your conscience is clean, you can take it. Like you got three inches of armor plating between you and the world. Whatever goes on out there, long as your plating is intact, it’s never going to reach you inside, and you can take it. But if you do wrong, that ‘s it. Then the grenade is inside the armor plating, inside with you, to bounce all that shrapnel around inside there with you, and there’s no way to get out and get away from it, because you carry it with you. Man with a good conscience, even if he’s lost it all, he can take it; man with a bad conscience, even if he’s got everything in the world, he can’t take anything, and he’ll break. He’ll just break like a twig. You got me?”

Raven did not move or respond except that his gaze grew hollow and blank, and, beneath his beard, his cheek grew pale.

Peter said gruffly, “Tell me about this wife of yours you saved.”

 

II

 

Raven said, “My wife, she is crazy. Not sad or frightening crazy, but crazy just the same. Harmless crazy. She run around naked in the woods to see if she can remember how to fly. She talks to animals, and if you say animals no talk back, she laughs and says, well, that’s not their fault, is it? And she talks always about her father and mother.”

Raven continued: “To hear her talk, her mother is the most beautiful and wise woman in the world, gracious and kind, and never to get angry or cross. And her father, she says he is a man like no other, a clever lawyer, an inventor, a builder of houses and healer of sickness. Such a genius, her father is! And filled with so many stories about his great deeds! She tells me of him and promises to take me to meet him, where he lives in his great mansion in California, but always the trip is put off. She is so pleased with how much she loves her father, how much he loves her. She tells everyone and all; such happy boasting!

“I believed her, you know,” continued Raven. “Because I am thinking, this is America, after all. Land of Jefferson. Land of Edison. Are men brilliant at many things. Why not man like this, skilled at so much? Inventor, like Edison, architect, like Jefferson . . .”

Peter said gruffly, “Sounds like that fellow in California, what’s his name? That inventor-surgeon who got fed up with being sued all the time, and became a lawyer, and he got fed up with all his bad press, so he started his own newspaper chain. Real rags to riches story; a real hero. Funny; I can’t remember his name. Any relation?”

“I do not think any relation with anyone at all.”

“How’s that?”

“I tell you. I remember how Wendy invited many girls over from her university where she studies one day to have a bridal shower. I am not supposed to be there, you know, since I am a man. But one of the girls, her classmate, finds me before I am leaving, and asks me where the father is, of which she has heard so much. Such a great man! Will the father be at the wedding? And I do not know how to say. . .” Raven’s voice trailed off in misery.

“Father’s dead?” guessed Peter.

“No. Is worse. There is no father, no mother. No father who is genius; no mother of perfect beauty and sweetness. When I try to find the father before the wedding, I called on the phone to try to find him. To find records. No member of the bar as a lawyer; no medical school records; no architecture license. There is a mansion at the address Wendy knows, but no one has lived there for many years. I ask Wendy about these things, and she laughs and says her father is away, maybe visiting her mother. And after the wedding . . . after the wedding, Wendy says . . .”

“What?”

“Wendy says her father was at the reception (we had a reception to celebrate our elopement), that I shook his hand, that I spoke with him, and that I have forgotten it. I tell her, you know, she is an orphan, and maybe she is deluded. And she says, so what? Of course, I am mad little girl (she says), or why else is she marrying such a man like me and being ever so happy? That is what she said, how happy she was. How she laughed! So I do not look for the father anymore, since I am thinking, what does it matter?” Raven shook his head in sorrow.

“Who paid for her college?” asked Peter.

“Ah . . . strange. You know, I am not knowing how she pays for this. She owns many fine things, like a rich man’s daughter might own. I do not know. I do not know what to think about her. But I am very much in love with her. I would. . .” Raven was thinking of saying, I would do murder for her, but he could not say it.

“Just ‘cause someone’s crazy, don’t mean you stop caring about them,” said Peter. “I know. I got one in the family.”

 

III

 

“They say you marry a woman like your mother. Not me. I tried to get the most practical, most hardheaded woman I could find. Emily’s her name. Practical. My old man is nuts, and I wanted to keep my son away from all nuttiness. Nuts but rich. When I was stationed overseas, Emily raised the kid all by herself. Months at a time. Years. Came time for the kid to go to boarding school and get some real schooling. Public schools in our part of the world were crap. We wanted to send him to a military academy, but it was expensive. Emily thought my dad could afford it; but Dad wouldn’t lend her the money unless she brought the kid and lived with him over the summers. I didn’t want my old man near the kid. I had standards. Not Emily. She was practical. And I was overseas. Nothing I could do about it.

“You know when kids go through a certain age, when they won’t listen to anything their parents tell them? They go around reading books that prove they don’t exist, or that everything is nothing, and they think no one ever thought about it before. Because they’re trying to form their own ideas. Maybe you don’t know. Usually it’s healthy. Usually. But my old man got him just at that age.

“Filled his head full of garbage. It’s his religion. Weird devil-worship, new age-type stuff. Our folks got chased out of England with the Pilgrims long time back. But they weren’t Puritans, no sir, not by a long shot.

“So the kid listens to my dad, and pretty soon he’s taking drugs and staring into crystals and studying books on witchcraft.

“Well, when I came home after my last tour, it was quite a scene. You see, I thought Emily’d side with me. But when I came home, it was without my legs working.

“All those years in the hellhole of Vietnam, and I come out fine; but then, when I go off to some stinking shit-hole in the middle east—not even in a combat zone!—I get my kneecaps blown off. Fuck it. Now I get to sit it out the rest of my life. Emily didn’t like that. She was younger than me, and some of her good looks weren’t worn off yet, and she didn’t want to be chained up to a cripple the rest of her life. You’d be surprised how often it happens.

“Me, I always thought you were supposed to stick by people. Stick by your men, stick by your friends, stick by your family. Stick by them even when it did you no good at all, even if you had to make a few sacrifices for it. Not Emily. She was practical. She hired a lawyer and gave me a divorce.

“Maybe she figured I wouldn’t put up much of a fight. Well, she figured that one right. Whole thing tore the heart right out of me. And me, a fighter!

“I don’t know where she got the money to hire that lawyer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dad put her up to it. ‘Cause she got the house and a healthy chunk of my veteran’s benefits, and custody of the kid. And then, of course, being young and pretty, she wanted to get married again, and didn’t want a teenage kid around the house to scare off any prospects. So he goes to live with Dad, getting further and further wrapped up in all this religious weirdness, until finally he ends up nutty as a fruitcake. And I can’t get him to come home. The judge told me that at the kid’s age, by the time I got back custody, the kid would be an adult anyway, if I tried to reopen the case. These things take years.”

Raven said, “It is terrible thing to be lonely, I am thinking.”

Peter nodded grimly. “It was months before anyone even informed me what was going on here.”

“Here?”

“At the hospital. They didn’t phone me. I didn’t even know he was here at first. Maybe I’m not on the records as the father anymore. My kid has been in a coma since this spring. In August, I used to come by every day and sit next to him. Talk, or read. They say that helps. Maybe he could hear. Maybe not. And he’d just lay there, hooked up to those machines. And I realized it don’t matter. His religion. His nuttiness. None of it mattered, you know? ‘Cause I wanted him to live. I wanted him to wake up again. Even if he hates me for the rest of his life ‘cause of how I treated him, I’d rather have him awake, alive, healthy. And I realized this didn’t matter. . .” He tapped his useless legs with his hands.

“I felt mighty sorry for myself for about a year after this happened. Maybe that’s one thing Emily couldn’t stand. Self-pity. But looking at the face of my little boy, laying in there, mostly dead, kept alive by a machine . . . Well, at least I was alive. I was up and about. I had more than my little boy. And you know what? Self-pity is just another name for selfishness. And I felt all that selfishness fall off of me when I sat there, day after day, looking at him. Know why? ‘Cause I would have traded places with my boy in a minute. I would have gone into a coma to let him live again. I would have done it for any of my men in the brush; why shouldn’t I do the same for my boy? And when you’re willing to give up your life for someone, you shouldn’t stop to bitch about his nutty ideas. You don’t have to see eye to eye with a person to love them. And I just wish my boy would wake up again so I could tell him that. That I love him. Just that.”

“I hope your child will recover and have good health,” said Raven. “It is more sad for the young to be sick, you know?”

“Yep. Few hours ago, they called me, said his condition had changed. New brainwave activity. Different from his old brainwave patterns. He went into a seizure. Started to wake up, but then his heart stopped. Took him to the emergency room. You might have seen him there. His name’s Galen. Galen Waylock.”

 

IV

 

Raven stood up, his expression full of horror. “He said it would be no one I knew! But now I know!” He hid his face in his hands and turned away from Peter.

“What’s wrong, buddy? Dr. Raven?” Peter put his hand on the wheels of his chair, twisting them in opposite directions, so that he turned to follow Raven.

Raven looked up from between his fingers in time to see the doors from the hospital fly open. There was Wendy, looking radiant and cheerful, dressed in her beige skirt and jacket, little black boots on her feet, one hand swinging the traveling case she had originally brought to the hospital with her. She was smiling, and the wind played with her long black hair, which was mussed and tousled.

Wendy danced up to Raven and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m all better! Stop crying. And, hey! Guess what?! We have to find the magic talismans to drive back the Dark powers from the nightmare kingdom before the world gets destroyed. A ghost was helping me, but he was carried off, so we’ve got to save him, too.” She turned toward Peter and said, “Hi there! My name’s Wendy!”

A very young and harassed-looking lady in a candy-striped shirt of pink and white appeared in the door, flourishing a handful of papers. With rapid steps, she chased after Wendy, calling out that she could not leave yet, as no doctor had examined her, and no tests had been performed to prove that she was healthy. Wendy gave the girl a pinch on the cheek, saying, “There, there! I feel fine, thank you. Now go back to the people who are really sick. Raven! They won’t let me leave without signing all this stuff. Tell her how much you hate paperwork.”

“Peter Waylock, ma’am. Pleased to meet you.”

“Do you believe in faith healing? Miracles? One just happened to me! Look!” Wendy spun in a circle, hair and skirt lifting, palms out, face tilted up.

“Ma’am, we really need . . .,” said the hospital worker.

Raven said, “Here look, I sign! There and there and there! In triplicate! Now, go!” He angrily scrawled his name at random across several of the papers.

The woman shrank back, cowed. “Er—yes, doctor . . .” She turned and fled.

“What’s up, Raven? Aren’t you happy to see me?!!” Wendy, with a little whoop of joy, threw her arms around her husband. Her husband was so tall compared to her that her feet left the pavement when she twined her arms around his neck.

Wendy kissed her husband’s furry cheek, and, with her bright eyes peering over his massive shoulder, looked at Peter. “Did you say Waylock? Your son came into my bedroom on a moonbeam. He told the most wonderful story! Are you going to help him save the world? Why is he a ghost?”

Peter said, “A ghost?!” His face was stiff as iron. “Dr. Raven, what is all this?”

Raven pushed his wife away and stepped back. Wendy stared at Raven with wide eyes, her red mouth forming an O of surprise. Raven was panting, his expression wild. He turned toward Peter. Raven spoke in a shaking voice: “Very sorry, I am. So sorry. It is about your son. There is bad news. Your son is dead.”

Raven held his breath.

“No, he isn’t,” said Peter in voice of calm impatience.

“But I fear he is dead,” said Raven. “I—I have—”

“He’s not dead,” said Peter. “There he is right behind you.”

Raven turned.

“Hi Galen! Remember me?” Wendy waved at the youth standing in the doorway. The young man stood with one door held lightly in either hand, looking back and forth, blinking rapidly.

Raven was clutching his own chest, a look of terrible confusion on his face. His eyes were red with unshed tears, but a look of wild hope began to dawn across his features. “It was all a lie. A sad dream. . . I have done no wrong. . .”

The gaze the young man turned toward Wendy was calm and remote. He spoke in a clipped and icy voice. “Madame, forgive me if I do not well recollect you. My long convalescence has obscured my memory, I fear.”

“But I just talked to you!”

“How is this possible, as I have only this hour woken from a long and troubling sickness?” The young man smiled with cool politeness.

“Son—” Peter spoke in a voice that trembled. “They said they got your heart started again, but that you wouldn’t be awake till tomorrow. They said you wouldn’t be able to walk.”

The young man studied Peter’s face with a careful, even stare. “Ah, father. It pleases me well to see you once again.” He stepped forward, letting the doors swing shut behind him. “Come, father, let us away. I would have no more of this place, for it troubles me. Let us return to Everness House, I pray you.”

Wendy strode after him a few steps, and said fiercely, “You’re Azrael de Gray, aren’t you! You tricked Galen into carrying your soul out of the cage, and sent him to where the seal-men could make a coat out of him for you to wear!”

The gaze the young man turned toward her was so cold, so reptilian, that Raven automatically stepped forward into the way. The young man said nothing, but turned and looked at Peter, who sat blinking in impatient confusion.

Peter met Raven’s gaze, and nodded. “See what you meant, pal.” He tapped his finger to his temple. “Harmless, huh? But kinda cute.”

The young man, motionless, watched Peter from beneath lowered eyelids.

“Come on,” said Peter, turning to the boy, “let’s go.” Back over his shoulder, he said, “Nice meeting both of you . . .”

They started away across the parking lot.

Wendy said softly to Raven, “We’ve got to follow them.”

“Wha-aa-at? Why is this, my little bird?”

“Because that’s not Galen!” she whispered loudly. “Someone took his soul and put someone else in his body!”

Raven stroked his beard and squinted over at the youth strolling away under the streetlamps with Peter. Then he looked back down at his wife, puzzlement in his eyes.

 

V

 

Many were the wonders and splendors which, during his unnaturally long life, Azrael de Gray Waylock had beheld in the kingdoms of deep dreaming. He had seen from afar the glory of sunrise over Zimiamvia, where immortals live; he had survived the stench and horror of the vaults of Zin; he had seen the coasts of Nastrond, where selkie frolic amidst the heaped-up bones of men; he had walked the golden streets of Celebradon, and, through eyes tear-blurred by the brilliance of the winged beings who pass in unearthly silence down those avenues, he had seen the hushed pleasances, the shaded walks, the quiet gardens and cathedrals of that sleeping, star-crowned city.

Azrael de Gray Waylock was one of the three fully human persons who had ever beheld the windowless domes of the torture-city of Uhnuman on its plateau on the far side of the moon. He was one of the two men who had ever visited the vast onyx citadel of the Great Ones that broods atop the unknown mountain in the twilit, cold wasteland to the north of the dream-world, and he knew the reason for their remote and august reticence, and why, though fallen from Mommur, they are not loyal to Acheron. And he was the only man who knew where lay the shining meadows where walks the lonely Unicorn, where her graceful footstep stirs the meads of eternal and unwithering fair flowers; where she dwells amidst gentle beauty which cannot allay her sorrow.

Despite his wisdom in the dream-lore and all his knowledge, gained with such horrid price, and his deep experience, Azrael de Gray Waylock was astounded when he came forth from the houses of healing, once more to breathe the night airs of the waking world, wrapped in the cloak of a young man’s skin.

 

VI

 

The sights were strange and filled with wonder beyond all his expectation.

The surface underfoot was black and hard like the tar flows of volcanolit Inquanok, but crisscrossed with a geometric pattern of white lines, like the cunning handiwork of the Nidvellir. Overhead, burning with a splendid glory, slender poles or spears of some unknown elfish metal held up lanterns of crystal in which motionless pure fires lived. The light from these white fires was so bright that Azrael was at first not certain if it were day or night. He had seen similar fires hovering in the ceilings of the healing house, where they murmured to themselves in a strange language of hisses, buzzing like bees.

Beneath the spears, here and there crouching on the black ground, were groups of metal sheds or boxes, held off the ground by cylinders. Each of these sheds was short, too short for normal men to dwell in, but was decorated with huge panels of splendid crystal; this glass was so pure and extensive that Azrael could not calculate the cost; and so clear that the insides of the sheds could be distinguished. Inside these sheds were benches or seats, set too close together to sit in, and all facing the same direction, as if they had been stacked together. Many of the seats had litter flung across them.

Beyond this yard rose a thin strip of trees, beyond which was a river of moving lights, shining and flashing like falling stars. A continuous roar and murmur came from this river, like the voices of many beasts, growling.

Beyond this river and afar rose up tall towers hung with pure, unwinking lights, towers so tall that Azrael de Gray first mistook them for cliffsides. These places were taller than the towers of Nineveh, or of great Babylon. And when, beneath his jacket, half-turned away from the others, he made the sign of Koth above his heart, there came no answering signal or presence; and by this he knew those towers had been built not by gods or by immortal elves but by men. And he smiled coldly to himself when that knowledge came to him.

Without the doors of the healing house were three figures; a young titan in a black beard, not yet grown beyond human height, garbed in white like a priest; a girl of the fairy race; and a cripple in a cunning cart shaped like a chair. The purpose of this cart was obvious; it would carry the cripple about in it with its wheels. Azrael admired the handiwork.

Azrael recognized the bearded one in white must be from the Caucasus Mountains, where the handsomest of mortal men dwell. The sign of fire on his brow indicated he had once been in the presence of one of the eternal and ancient powers of the world, some power older than a god. Since the only such power from the Caucasus mountains was Prometheus, the creator of mankind, Azrael guessed that this young titan, still so young and still so short that his height could pass unnoticed among humans, had been sent as an agent to stop the plans of Azrael.

A night-fly buzzed in the air above the titan, making the triple sign widdershins; a clear signal that this was a hunter who dwelt in the depth of the great forests and knew the lore of tracking and pursuit.

Azrael had expected hunters, but not to come upon him so suddenly. But then he saw the paleness of the bearded titan’s right hand, and knew he had touched the sword of Koschei the Deathless. It was a signal of weakness, of a curse. Because of this, Azrael was almost ready to dismiss the bearded titan as a threat. Almost.

When the fairy-girl jumped in the air to hug the titan (evidently they were husband and wife), Azrael watched her feet carefully, trying to see how quickly or slowly her shadow leapt back toward her feet when she dropped to the ground again. The shadows of her feet seemed to reach out reluctantly to grab her feet when she touched ground again. It was a sign; she knew the secret of flight.

Strangely, the little dandelions growing in a small strip of grass near the door did not react when the fairy-girl stepped on them. Azrael was puzzled. Perhaps the fairy blood in her was impure?

Certain prognosticative signs had led him to know that he would be led to the House of Everness by one waiting for him here. Which of the three was destined to take him to the House?

As he stood there, Azrael clenched shut his eyes till he saw the light of Muspel, colorless and metallic, floating in the darkness. Then, blinking rapidly, he looked at each of the three figures in turn, to see what shadows they might cast in that light.

Looking them from face to face, Azrael recognized himself in the slant of the eyes and shape of the chin of the cripple; this man was of the blood of Waylock. By looking at the colors of the afterimage hovering in his eye when he blinked, and seeing the fans of powers radiating out from the man in each direction, Azrael discovered that this was not just any Waylock, but was the Guardian of Everness himself.

And yet, how could this wounded man be the heir to the Silver Key? He looked too young to be the grandfather of whom Galen had spoken. Furthermore, in Azrael’s imagination, he saw a picture of the man with blood on his hands, and a crowd of black shadows, bleeding from mortal wounds, hovering thick behind him, weeping for vengeance. By this he knew the man to be a warrior in service to bloodthirsty Ares.

Oddly, however, when he stared at the man, he did not feel a cold sensation, nor did his nape hairs prickle, which meant the man was not surrounded by any of the wards or protective spirits that the Guardians of Everness, by right, can call up from the Waters. There were some dust motes floating in the air behind the man; from the way they stirred and danced, Azrael knew the man had cold iron beneath his jacket a weapon of great power that the man regarded as a talisman, but a mortal weapon only, one possessed of no spiritual strength.

Contempt surged in Azrael’s brain. Since this man had been invested with the guardianship, that meant the grandfather must have fallen into depths beyond the reach of sunlight. But this man was an apostate, ignorant of the High Arts, wandering the earth helpless as a babe, without even a silver knife to ward off night-hags or salt to banish imps, much less having any of the mightier talismans or creatures, his by right, that were able to drive back the more ancient champions of Darkness.

The sensation of hot anger surprised Azrael; he had not realized how proud he was of his great family, and of their eternal patience and faithfulness, of their power, and of their ancient tradition, till he saw this, one of his remote sons, an ignorant and unlettered traitor to that heritage. It surprised Azrael that such realizations still had such power to wound him.

The fairy-girl spoke to him and told everyone that he was not Galen Waylock. Being mortals, however, they ignored what the fairy said even though it had been spoken plain and clear in front of them. Azrael did not answer her (it is bad luck to challenge fairies) but waited until the cripple employed his dull ignorance to dismiss her.

After a farewell, the two of them were moving away together across the yard, with Azrael walking beside the cart-chair. Azrael regarded this beginning of his return to Everness with grim pleasure. But he noted how, behind him, the bearded titan was regarding him with a curious stare.

 

VII

 

Peter Waylock was growing more worried about his son—more worried, more angry, more bewildered. When they had first gotten into Peter’s special handicapped-drivable van, Galen had been very slow and disoriented, asking whether there was some table to which these chairs were to be brought and then forgetting how to put on his safety belt when Peter reminded him to do it. When the engine started, Galen had flinched and snarled, grabbing at his left hip with his right hand, and then, when they pulled out into traffic, Galen sat stony faced, almost as if he were trying to control some unreasoning panic.

But then he seemed to relax and take an almost childish glee in the van ride, fumbling the window down and hanging his head out, awestruck and smiling, as if the conservative forty-five or fifty-five miles per hour Peter drove was a speed thrill like a roller-coaster ride. Once Galen made a comment on the “neat and steady hand” that had lettered the roadsigns.

At first Peter thought Galen was gazing at the passing street lamps and stoplights, but then a chilling thought struck him, and some of his impatience and anger drained away.

“I guess you haven’t seen what the world looks like since the season changed. Leaves still on the trees since you went to sleep,” said Peter. Something about it struck Peter as sad, almost horrifying. Gruffly he wiped his eyes, muttering a swearword to himself.

Galen pulled his head back in through the window, his expression blank, and looked carefully at Peter. “Plain to view, it is, I deem, that the world is much changed since last I walked awake on it. Any oddities of mine I trust you will excuse, my father.”

But Peter was brooding on some thought of his own, and did not answer.

They drove for a very long time in silence. Galen occasionally drew in his breath, as if startled or surprised, and Peter glanced up from his driving to see Galen staring at a billboard advertising bikinis or at the lights of a passing plane. But soon they were in the countryside, the road was bordered by nothing but trees, and Galen seemed calmer.

Eventually Peter said, “I’d be glad to. Excuse your odd things, I mean. You even talk different now. You picked that up from your Grampa, I know. He and I never got along. But I want you to know . . . well, all that stuff during the divorce, and stuff. . . damn it, boy, what I’m trying to say, is that, well, when you were laying there in bed, helpless as a baby . . .”

A remote, sorrowful look came into Galen’s eyes.

Peter resumed talking. “It reminded me of when you were just a baby. And, you know, you would spit up on me or poop in your pants, and just do things that babies do ‘cause they’re babies. And they didn’t get to me. Didn’t get on my nerves. Then, when you grew up, and I wasn’t around so much, you went off to live with your Grampa. And that got on my nerves. But I forgot, see? I forgot that, even when your babies grow up, it doesn’t matter what they do, you can’t stop,. . . well, you can’t stop caring about them. You understand?”

“I am not certain I do,” said Galen coldly. “Surely Grand Pa” (he pronounced it carefully, as if it were two words) “knew well the traditions and lore of our great house, and could thus well instruct me, since, as you say, you were gone away at the wars.” He watched Peter carefully for his reaction when he said this.

Beneath his watchfulness, Peter thought he could detect a hidden anger in his son; contempt and injured pride. “That’s what I’m trying to say, son. You did some things I didn’t like when you left me to live with Grampa and his money. But I realized I was wrong. There, I said it. Sorry; I was wrong.”

Galen nodded sternly, and his expression seemed to soften. “It is well you are contrite. I know you reject the deep traditions of our House, and have forgotten the oath of patience and faithfulness, which we, true watchmen at our posts, must obey. But the tradition of Everness sounds a call to which all of our blood return, soon or late. . .” Now Galen sank into a reverie; and for a moment, a look of guiltiness and remorse seemed to soften the stern expression of his features.

For a moment they sat in the van together, not looking at each other, their expressions identical, their heads tilted forward at the same angles, the troubled looks in their eyes seeming the same.

“I figure,” said Peter, “that I didn’t get mad when you spit up on me. So I shouldn’t get mad at things smaller than that. I’m trying to tell you that I realized that I still love my son. I still love you.”

A haunted, guilty look grew in Galen’s eyes. His lips trembled, and he spoke. “I, too, have a confession. It is a terrible one. But not until I saw the face of one of my own family again did I realize the true depth of what I have done. I had not realized the true meaning of what it means to be a traitor to our house. But we face terrible foes, and there is none I can trust with my councils. Your son is not dead. I am not your son.”

Peter stiffened. “Here I am trying to apologize and you go say a thing like that! Your Grampa said something just like that to my face once. You’re no son of mine, he said. But he didn’t call me a traitor! Traitor to what?! A bunch of stupid craziness and phoniness!”

Galen’s tone was lofty, sharp, and cold: “Indeed? Perhaps I misunderstood the thrust of your apology.”

“I not saying I’m sorry I left all that nuttiness behind me. I’m not saying it’s not nuttiness. I know you really believe that stuff.”

“Indeed I do,” Galen said softly, a hint of a smile at his lips.

“All I’m saying is that I’m sorry I got on you about it. See? That it’s okay by me if you want to live your life waiting for King Arthur to come back, staying up nights with your Gramps listening for sea-bells to warn you about the destruction of the world. Go ahead and wait.” Peter drew a deep breath, and visibly calmed himself. He continued in a low voice, “All I’m saying is that I can put up with it now. It won’t change how I feel about you.”

Galen said sardonically, “So you do not trouble to serve the honor of our family, but you will no more curse your own son for obeying laws you cast aside? You will forgive him for his faithfulness and constancy? Thank you for your toleration!” He gave a bark of sarcastic laughter and fell silent.

Such anger seized on Peter, then, that he grew red in the face, and he could feel his heartbeat throbbing in his cheeks and temples. But he controlled himself, and he spoke in a quiet voice: “I thought in the hospital that I might lose you. I don’t want to lose you. I want things to be right between us. You got to stick by your family.”

Galen was silent, withdrawn. Then Galen laid his hand on Peter’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You are right that loyalty to family is all we have, alone in a wilderness of enemies and false friends. We are of one blood, you and I, and that is a bond not to be broken. We may offend each other again. In days to come, you may hate me. But even if we must fight, let us hope that the love of father and son will survive the turmoil.” Peter patted the hand on his shoulder, a warmth in his heart.

“Okay, son. But let’s not fight.”

“Let us be in a holiday mood, you and I! We return to our ancestral seat. It is one place, I know, which would not have changed since I slept.”

“Boy, your Grampa really messed up the way you talk. You got it from those books of his.”

“How long till we arrive at Everness House?”

“We’re not going there.”

Galen seemed to relax, his expression quiet, his eyes glittering with a dangerous thoughtfulness. “No? And yet we grow ever closer to the House’s center of power.”

“Well, son, I sort of thought you and I would stay at Emily’s house. It used to be mine. She’s never there; she lives at Wilbur’s now. They said I could stay there while I was visiting you. Like it was a big favor to let a man stay in his own house.” He snorted in contempt.

Galen said in a careful voice. “Surely my Grand Pa wishes also to see me again. To reassure himself of my good health.”

“We won’t be that far away,” said Peter. “Maybe you’ll see him.” He spoke in a tone of voice that made it clear Peter would do everything in his power to prevent that from happening.

Galen laid his hand on the dashboard, as if feeling the powerful vibrations of the van in motion, as if listening to the muttered roar of the engine like the noises of an alien and incomprehensible beast, and he looked at the complex, swift motions by which Peter was guiding the huge vehicle. There was a solemn look in his eye, a strangeness, as if the lights and dials of the dashboard were illegible to him, a mystery beyond his powers.

Galen sighed and sank back into his seat. “Ah, well. Perhaps you can teach me how to speak more like mine old self before I visit Grand Father.”

But Peter was not listening. He was staring at the rearview mirror. “Someone’s following us. That car’s been with us for more than an hour.”