The Last Guardian of Everness (War of the Dreaming 1) Read Free Page A

He inscribed the four wings, placing a different phase of the moon in each, a different element, and a different season. About it he erected statues and symbols, gardens and arbors, walkways and walls, each with its own name and hidden meaning. In a few moments the imaginary mansion was as real around him as the mansion he slept in. He whispered the Second Secret Name of Morpheus and stepped into that mansion, rose from the body on the bed onwhich he slept there, and walked out the doorway that represented today’s phase and season.
    In an imaginary garden pagoda, a torch made of narthex reeds held up a light of pure white fire. An imaginary vulture on a stand was gnawing a driblet of red liver. one arch of the pagoda led to stairs which climbed up to the huge black sea-wall to the east. Inscribed on the pagoda walls to either side of this arch, in letters of silver, burned the words of the spell to call a dream-colt from the deeper dreaming.
    He looked at the words, wondering whether to speak them or not. Even now, he was still only half asleep: he could feel the heaviness in his limbs, dimly sense the pillows and bedsheets around him, like a little mountainous countryside of folds and wrinkles. Grandfather Lemuel had taught him never to call even a lesser power of the night without someone standing by to wake him up in case of trouble.
    And a dream-colt was not one of the lesser powers.
    “Gramps will notice in the morning if I’m not back by then,” Galen tried to tell himself.
    He had one last thought before he drifted off to sleep, forgot his slumbering body, and entered fully into the dream: “I’m not a frightened boy.”

 
    2
     
    A Life for a Life
     
    I
     
    A husband and wife sat in the sunlight. He sat on the bed and held her hands in his. She sat back on the pillows, eyes bright and cheerful as always. He was a big, burly man with thick black eyebrows and a forked black beard.
    Where he was large and bulky, she was small and graceful, and her face was always in motion, now smiling, now blinking, now pouting thoughtfully, now glancing back and forth with a curious gaze. Her hair was long and very dark and her eyes were very blue.
    “I’m so sad!” she exclaimed cheerfully. Her voice was as bright as a bubbling stream, and those who heard it felt refreshed.
    “Aha. And what makes her sad, my little wife, eh?” He tried to smile,but there was an undercurrent of sorrow in his deep voice. He had a thick Russian accent.
    “All the stories seem to be going out of the world. Drying up!” She held up her hands, fingers spread, and shrugged, as if to indicate a mysterious vanishment. “No one listens to them, or tells them anymore. They just watch TV My Daddy calls it the ‘Boob tube.’ I don’t know if that’s because of shows like
Baywatch
or if only boobies watch it. Except sometimes mothers read books to their children to sleep.” She sighed and suddenly looked very sleepy herself. Her eyelids drooped. Like a light going out, all the animation seemed to leave her face.
    He leaned forward, his face blank with fear, and touched her forehead with the back of his hand. “Wendy?” he whispered.
    Wendy’s eyes opened. “Tell me a story,” she said.
    “I am not good with the stories, my wife. I only know the one of my father, and that one I told to you long ago, when we were engaged. The night on the lake, you remember, eh?”
    She sighed and snuggled down into the pillows more deeply. “I said I’d marry you because you were the only man I ever met who was in a fairy tale story. It was such a good idea! I’m so glad I thought of it.”
    “You thought? It was I who asked you, my wife.”
    “Yes, well, and a long time you were getting around to it, too!” She laughed in delight, and then said, “Tell it to me again!”
    “Well. Father lived in the Caucasus mountains and hated the Russian government men with a deep hatred . . .”
    “No, no, no! That’s not right! It starts with, ‘I am Var