The Last Guardian of Everness (War of the Dreaming 1) Read Online Free PDF

stars arose; till doomsday to give knights ceaseless glad repose. By crescent light was Vindyamar ordained to wander free; to watch over waves and guard fast the sea. By dark of moon was Tirion made, where, wailing, were sent, those who betrayed, or refused to repent. . .” Galen broke off at this point and, looking sternly at the dream-colt, said: “My memory is meant for ever. I recall that Tirion must be the place where Azrael de Gray is kept; and, since the silver towers of Tirion risebeneath the moon, they are not indeed beyond the world’s end, but under starry skies. Nor is this a place unlawful for mortal men to go by dream. Why do you hide this from me? Why do you say Azrael is elsewhere?”
    “He is not in Tirion but beyond it, in a place called Wailing Blood. I am not allowed to carry you to the nameless places; if you go into Wailing Blood, I must remain behind you.”
    “He is beyond the world’s edge? How far?”
    “Far, far is the distance between virtue and crime! It is a distance that I cannot bear you.”
    “Then carry me to Tirion; I call upon your ancient promise. This beyond, called Wailing Blood, I shall discover for myself.”
    “There is danger,” warned the dream-colt, shying back. “For those who fly too far high or too far low may lose themselves in dreaming, and forget how to return to flesh within the world of the day once more.”
    “I accept the risk.”
    She lowered her graceful head in sorrow. “Then the doom is put upon you; with thine own mouth thou hast said it. I can carry you to Tirion; thereafter, I must stay behind you.”
     
    III
     
    He mounted upon her back, and, swift as a falling star, she flew from the great wall. Her light was all around him as they rose into the purple gloom. Through gaps in the silver-touched, moonlit clouds, he saw the waters of the dream-sea far below, high waves, crowned with foam, moving across the face of the deep; and the moonlight danced like cold fire, and sparks and glints of light flickered across the wave crests.
    He spoke a word of power, and the moon passed behind a cloud, and, when the moon emerged again, it was a new moon, and held no light.
    Without light, the ocean was now a greater darkness beneath the texturedgloom of the clouds below, and the young man flew through the widening night.
    Once the two were attacked by storms; he calmed them with the names of the one storm-prince loyal to Everness. Once they were chased by winged nightmares; he employed a rune of warding, and his silver steed out- flew them. Once an airy phantasm came walking across the wind by starlight to harass them, long spider limbs flickering like smoke, eyes glimmering; but he made the Voorish sign; the entity was quailed and removed itself to other cycles and formations of the dreaming.
     
    IV
     
    They came to a place where a line of mountains rose up from the seas ahead, mountains taller than the clouds, and, dimly, in the wide, far spaces beyond, he could hear the ringing thunder and strange music of the cataracts of the world’s edge.
    The tops of the mountains were carved with colossal, brooding faces, narrow eyed, grim, gigantic. From one horizon to the other, as far as the mountains ranged, these vast dark countenances lowered above the clouds. In the starlight, shadows, distance, and mists hid those features from Galen’s gaze; he saw only glimpses of slanted eyes as large as lakes, the silhouettes of angular cheeks, of long-lobed ears, of darkened brows. One or two of the great faces perhaps wore many-towered crowns; or perhaps these were fortresses, either deserted for many ages or else manned by silent armies of some race that required neither light nor fire.
    Nor would the dream-colt fly beyond those mountains, for she said they were the sign of Oberon.
    Lightly she set down on the forest road in the shadow of two mountains. Here, the pass, like a saddle, rose up, then fell down into the civilized land beyond. On either side were pine trees,