Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) Read Free Page A

trapped below the sea; and only one might free that one; but he is wounded and paralyzed and ensnared in evil sorcery and held prisoner in a dungeon by a Warlock.”
    Now Meadow Mouse was silent, his thoughts all scampering. He turned his beady, bright little eyes away from Pigeonhawk out to where the shining valley lay in the light. His eyes roamed the valley, and his gaze traveled from the Tower (which had perhaps once been a castle in the clouds) past the Weeping Willows, to the Old Oak, the Rushing Brook, and the Brook’s solemn older brother, Wandering Stream, and thence to Shadowy Lake where Gray Goose lived. Here was High Hill, and Flowering Dale, Hidden Coomb, and, next to Shadowy Lake, lay Wild Marsh where Stork’s nest was.
    A great love for the valley and all who lay within came into Meadow Mouse’s heart then, and so he said, “Pigeonhawk, now you must take me up in your dreadfully sharp claws and fly me over these mountains, I beg you, to wherever this man lies, whomever he is, so that I can do my part to save the Princess. I am only one small mouse, and I can only do what one small mouse can do, but that is more than if I do nothing, or wait for others to do my tasks.”
    “I will take you,” said Pigeonhawk. “I will bear you from this kingdom to that other place, a place so terrible and strange that all words fail. Nor can I tell you what you must do, nor can I warn you of the dangers there, for you have foolishly wasted your final question, and I may not speak beyond what is allowed.”
    Pigeonhawk opened up his terrible sharp talons, sharper than the sharpest thorns, crueler and larger even than Owl’s, and reached toward Meadow Mouse.
    “Wait!” said Meadow Mouse, shrinking back. “I want to tell my mother and my seven hundred brothers where I am going.”
    “You may not.”
    “But she’ll worry so! And I should pack something …”
    “If you hesitate, or look backward, the enchantment of this valley will make you forget your courage and resolve, and your delay will last forever; you will be trapped here, eternally resolved to go, eternally delayed by some further scruple. Come! Already it may be too late!”
    But he did not move his claws forward. The cruel talons hung in the air, half-open, poised above Meadow Mouse; and Pigeonhawk cocked his head aside, to glare down at Meadow Mouse with a large, fierce, yellow eye.
    Meadow Mouse plucked up his courage, and jumped up into the talons with a flourish of his tail. “Let’s be off, then!” he said, with only the smallest quiver in his voice.
    Pigeonhawk fell off the cliff, snapped out his wings, caught the wind, and soared. All the while, Meadow Mouse shrieked with terror. Then the glory of flight overcame him and his squeaks became squeaks of joy.
    Pigeonhawk flapped his wings, found rising air. The Valley fell away below. Meadow Mouse saw the Iron Mountains pass beneath him, peak and chasm, crag and cleft. And then, in a break between two mountains, a dark green glint of trees unknown, unnamed waterfalls plunging to alien rivers, and strange new fields beyond the fields he knew.
    “Pigeonhawk,” said Meadow Mouse, “if I encounter Death there, in that land, will I be permitted to come back here?”
    Pigeonhawk did not look down but kept his beak pointed at the far horizon. “That question, I truly wish I were allowed to answer. The knowledge is mine; I may not speak.”
    Strange lands and seas were below them, and a moon like none Meadow Mouse had ever seen rose up pale and full in the east.
    In the distance, where the sunset was spreading along great ranges of cloud, broader than any horizon Meadow Mouse’s valley had ever let him see, the Towers of Dusk rose up, gold minarets draped with purple, rose, and red, with the setting sun a fiery ball between them. Faint and far in the distance, Meadow Mouse’s ear caught hints of the music sung by the Hours and Seasons, and the harmonies of flute and lute and clash of cymbals that rose