Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) by John C. Wright Read Free Book Online Page B

yacht that’s capsized. This is after I walk down the corridor on my hands and beat up all the guards with my teeth.”
    Meadow Mouse shrugged. “Sorry.”
    “Your commanding officer didn’t bother to give you a briefing before they sent you out?”
    “Actually, no. Our commanding officer, as you call her, is dancing in the moonlight, weeping, because she can’t remember her name. You see, we do things differently where I come from.”
    “So I gathered.” Peter sighed and looked around the dungeon. He saw nothing to give him any ideas. Besides, it was a dream, so the shape of the stones and position of the chains and cobwebs changed from time to time.
    He glared at Meadow Mouse, who still stood on Peter’s chest. Mouse fingered his whiskers nervously.
    “So how the hell would you do things in fairy-land?”
    Meadow Mouse blinked his little black eyes. “Well, sir, we do things more spontaneously. More naturally. By instinct.”
    “Instinct. Great.”
    “Well, I am a mouse, you know. Instinct works fine for us.”
    “Give me an example.”
    “Well, now …” Meadow Mouse looked thoughtful. Then he asked, “Of all the people on Earth, whom would you most like to rescue?”
    “Me? My dad, of course … .” Peter’s voice turned glum. “Hate to see him kick off before I got a chance to say … well, you know. To tell him what’s on my mind.”
    “And where is your father now?”
    “Sick. In a coma.”
    “Where have his thoughts flown?”
    “Raven said he was in Acheron …”
    “Don’t say that name!” Meadow Mouse dropped his walking stick in alarm, clapping his paws over his round ears.
    Peter had sat up, and Meadow Mouse tumbled into his lap. Peter was saying excitedly, “Hey! He is the guy I’m supposed to rescue! He’s in Acheron, and Acheron is underwater!”
    A hideous great voice called out. “Three times you called the name of blackest woe! In service to that name, I come! With each time I am released, I grow! And I shall grow to swallow all the Earth when time is done!”
    The door of the dungeon was flung down from it hinges. There, in the doorframe, loomed the Beast, rearing upright on hind legs; and somehow the overcoat had fallen from its face to come around its shoulders, so that the Beast seemed a vast, cloaked being, larger than all things around it, larger than all outer space. Darkness and smoke seethed from its black fur and blood dripped from its terrible, huge claws. Its fangs and eyes were glittering white against the dark mass of its triangular and shaggy, bestial head.
    A distant bell rang six times as it stepped into the room.

4
    The Face of the Beast
    I
    As the dark creature lumbered into the room, Meadow Mouse leapt from Peter’s chest to the pallet near his shoulder, whispering into Peter’s ear, “Say its name!”
    “I don’t know its God-damned name!” Peter hissed back.
    “We don’t recognize people by what they look like where I come from. Looks change.”
    The monster stepped closer, its yellow eyes gleaming like mirrors in the gloom. Peter had heard that animals cannot tolerate to look a man in the eye, so he stared at the huge, black beast.
    The creature straightened, throwing back its shoulders and raising its blood-stained chin. Its eyes were wiser and deeper than any human eyes and so filled with majesty and terror that it was Peter who had to struggle to keep from lowering his gaze, not the Beast. In some way he could not define, Peter had the sense that the creature looked like a beast, not because it came from a level below humanity, but from above.
    And, as he looked, Peter’s stomach knotted with an old, old fear, and bile rose in the back of his throat. The creature’s fur stank of napalm and of burnt vegetation from some lush, rotten, and overripe dank jungle. Here, too, was the scent of burnt gunpowder, of gasoline, hot metal, human sweat, blood, and charred meat.
    “I know you,” said Peter, for he recognized and remembered those smells;