Free The Last Guardian of Everness (War of the Dreaming 1) by John C. Wright

Founder found the Horn by following her back to her own realm, which isn’t in this realm, or in the dream realm, but is supposed to be somewhere else entirely. Or it used to be. . . No . . . um . . .” He had stood and was pacing the room, his scale-mail jingling, waving his hands. Little shimmers of light traveled up and down the length of the spear, soft as moonlight, as he was waving it.
    “You’re not very good at this, are you?” asked Wendy, batting her eyelashes innocently.
    “Well! I don’t know where to start! Okay?”
    “Okay,” she said primly, clasping her hands before her on the bedsheet. “Why don’t I ask you questions, and you can tell me one thing at a time?”
    “Great,” muttered Galen. “Sounds just great.”
    “Do you have a better idea?”
    “No, no. Just go ahead your way.”
    “First, why did I have my dream about something I remembered from childhood with the colt in it?”
    He sat down, drawing a deep breath. Galen spoke with forced slow patience. “Your childhood memories were probably the only thing she could reach. Creatures like her can only speak to people who are on drugs or who are not quite right in the head. The Seventy-Third Warden, Albertus Way- lock, wrote a monograph on it, and his theory is that they are permitted to keep their memories of the hidden things because people won’t listen to them anyway, but just stick them into psycho wards or something. Say, what kind of hospital did you say this was?” Galen shot a skeptical glance at Wendy.
    “Who is ‘she’?”
    “Euryale, daughter of Eurynome, one of the dream-colts who are the children of the unicorn. We ride them. They fly.”
    “Why are you dressed like that?” Wendy waved her hand toward his silver-tinted scale-mail, the flowing garments of tissue that showed at thearmor’s joints, at the lambrequin floating like mist from the peak of his conical helmet.
    “It’s a uniform. It’s symbolic. This is armor. It stops pointed things from jabbing you. This here is a spear. You poke it into things. Are you going to ask me some real questions? There’s a creature who is coming across the mist trying to get into this world. It may be here already.”
    Wendy wagged a finger at him. “Now, now. Let’s go in order. Where do you live?”
    “Oh, for Pete’s sake!”
    Wendy began plucking at her covers, “Well, if you won’t cooperate, I guess I’ll just wake up and try to put this silly dream behind me . . .”
    “No no no! Don’t get up! Uh, you look really tired, like you need a nap, and I got to tell you what’s going on! I’ll answer your stupid questions. I mean, no, I didn’t mean they were stupid or anything. What was the question?”
    Wendy said brightly, “I’d like to know where you live, dressed that way.” She giggled.
    “Yeah. I live at Everness House. On earth, that’s at number 14 Rural Route AA, Sagadahoc County, Maine. In the dreaming, the High House is at the Shore of the Sea of Unquiet Dark, last bastion of the City Never- ending, on the First Sphere this side of Utgard and Nidvellir, where the silver towers of Tirion rise unfallen, below the Deeper Gate, at the center of the four moon’s quarters. Can’t miss it.”
    “How did you find me?”
    “Look. I wasn’t trying to find you. I went to go talk to the First Warden. He lives in the shadow of Tirion Unfallen, beneath the dark moon, where the ocean plunges forever into the Starlessness. There are nine waterfalls which fly off the brink of the Chasm Ultimate, and on the cliffsides below there is a place of torment called Wailing Blood. I went to him because a bird carrying an elf-lamp told me to. In a dream.”
    “I know that that’s very important,” said Wendy. “But I’d really like to know something else first. What led you here?”
    “There is a prayer to summon a dream-colt. A spell. They can fly across the sea from one moon to another, or ascend to other spheres.”
    “And the dream-colt brought you here for