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

listened.”
    “What does he want in the house?”
    “A key. A silver key.”
    “What does it open?”
    “I don’t know. Something that needs to be kept shut. Peter’s family has been guarding it since forever. I wonder if Peter changed his mind and believes in this stuff now. Do you think he went to the mansion and got involved in the battle? They’d capture him, right? They wouldn’t kill him, would they? He’s a cripple, for God’s sake! They wouldn’t kill him!”
    The dark figure did not answer.
    Then she said, “Is my son really dead? Really?”
    The man in black said, “There are those who count me dead, yet I live. Do not despair. The world is more strange than first it seems, and there are many things hidden. Yet the rules of logic cannot change. If Azrael is a ghost, and is yet a conscious being, able to act and move, this means death is not final.”
    Emily said, “If death is not final, then you can’t kill him. The Warlock; you cannot defeat him!”
    The voice spoke softly, perhaps with a hint of cool humor: “Ma’am, I was not planning to step out into the open and shoot him in the head.”
    “There is no way to fight him. No human power can touch him. You didn’t see his eyes. Staring out from my little boy’s face! I can’t move! He did this! All he has to do is look at you.”
    “He will not see me.”
    “How can you fight him, then? You can’t!”
    “Evil acts toward its own defeat. There is a force in the universe, a selective amnesia that hates magic and tries to hide it from men. A mist. It clouds men’s minds. Every man the Warlock confounds with magic is sent into the mist, and from the mist I recruit my allies: my organization grows larger the farther the Warlock’s power reaches. When the time is right, we forgotten men will come forth from the mists, and strike.”
    He held up his black glove once more before her eyes, and the mysterious stone in his ring seemed to pulse and writhe with crimson, rose, and scarlet gleams. “Stare into the burning eye of my fire opal. See into its utmost depth! It is the color of the rising Sun, of approaching day. The numbness that possesses you is an illusion; your limbs are whole and full of vigor! As you wake, you will realize that whatever hypnotic spell you are under has ended with the suddenness of a dream!”
    And she did wake up then, yawning and stretching in the middle of the floor.
    “Oh, thank you!” she started to say. But then she noticed that no one was in the room with her. She blinked, rubbing her head. “Strange. I could have sworn I was talking to some … but it must have been a dream. Must have been … ?” Because the strange conversation was already becoming vague and shadowy in her memory.
    But when she woke up Wil a few moments later, and he told her that he had almost jumped off the side of the reservoir last night, she started to pack.
    It was less than fifteen minutes later, they were in the car, speeding down the road. Wil was still arguing.
    “But where are we going?” asked Wil. “This is crazy!”
    “On vacation,” she snapped. “Anywhere. We’ll decide when we get to the airport.”
    “This is so crazy!”
    “This is perfectly sensible,” she said. “Something we can’t explain and we can’t fight has tried to kill you once. They—whoever they are—know where the house is. If you can’t explain it, and you can’t fight it, and it’s trying to kill you, you run. You run the hell away. It’s just common sense.”
    Wil stared off behind him into the rising Sun. Then he said the last thing she’d have ever expected. “But, if we do this, we’ll never find out what happens …”
    Something in the sadness of his tone touched her heart, too. Almost, she felt the impulse to turn around, to join whatever mysterious supernatural struggle was going on between her family and the forces of darkness. Almost.
    “Be practical!” she snapped angrily. And she pressed down on the