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

whispering most softly in thenight winds, and, here and there among the trees, were obelisks and standing stones taller than the treetops. Galen could not remember who had erected these silent monuments or what meaning they had, though he uneasily recalled that at one time he had known.
    He strode on foot up to the pass, and the only light came from the spear in his hand. Heavy shadows walked behind him among the rocks.
    At the crest of this pass between two of the taller mountains, Galen paused and looked down. Very dimly by starlight, he saw, or dreamed he saw, a wide valley cut by nine rivers. A walled city of slender towers rose on many bridges and piers above and around these rivers. In the towers were watchfires burning, yet burning with a strangely colored light, as if the wood they burned there were not earthly.
    Beyond the towers he saw only sky, for the world ended at a brink.
    “Wind! I call you by your secret names—Boreas, Eurus, Zephyrus, Notus—by the four winds, give me four tidings of this land beyond!” For he recalled that strange knowledge and secrets sometimes come to those who dream.
    A quiet voice from above his head spoke: “I hear the screams of the tormented, their shrieks and sobs and choked weepings; and I hear the laughter and gaiety of the righteous, and from their calls and speech, I know that the folk live lives of ease and virtue. I can hear the whisper of the waters running through wide nets, and I can guess the cause of their ease. Their fisher folk cast great nets woven of human hair across the mouths of the great waterfalls dashing off the world’s edge, and the current carries to their nets all the lost treasure of all the sea-wrecks of the world’s oceans, lost beyond the care of any worldly power to claim or recollect.
    “The cause of their virtue, I have heard, is that one of the Principalities of Mommur, the City Neverending, appointed them the jailers of those condemned or damned by the justice of the Timeless Realm. The continual and public reminder of supernatural justice urges them to honest practice and openheartedness.”
    “Tell me of these damned, spirit,” commanded Galen.
    “The method employed by the Tirioneese to discharge their duty is both simple and cruel. The damned are placed in cages, too small to allow the prisoner either to stand or to sit, made all of needle-studded bars. The cages are swung out on long chains or derricks suspended over the cliffside of the world’s edge. At certain times, depending on the period of the swinging of these pendulums, the cages are swung into the path of the falling water plunging in nine waterfalls from the brink. This both feeds and torments the prisoners, for, while they are half drowned, certain fish, falling weightless through the flood, attracted by the prisoners’ blood on the needles of the cage’s bars, will come to drink of their sores and wounds, and be impaled upon the selfsame needles, and the prisoner, if his hands are quick, may feed on the fish. During the morning, the water turns to steam to scald them, and during the evening, to ice.”
    “What is the name of this place?”
    “I have heard it called Wailing Blood.”
    Galen nodded, having suspected as much. The dream-colt had spoken in riddles, not quite lying. Wailing Blood was beyond the world’s edge, it was true; but only by the length of a chain.
    “Is Azrael of Everness confined there?”
    “As to that, young wisecraft, I cannot say, having never heard his scream nor any gasp of pain from him. It may be that he is not there. Or it may be that he does not cry out in pain. Four questions I have answered, and have answered all; but you have not asked, nor shall I answer, what the danger is of World’s Edge, nor what might save you should you fall.”
    And the wind was still.
    Galen struck the stones of the road below his feet. “Earth! Speak! From your yield came Adam, came Ash, came Erichthon and Typhon; yield now to me what tidings I require