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

Maybe I marry her instead.
    “Her father, I have never met, very rich, very powerful lawyer in Washington, D.C. She says he does not like her to wed me. And we must elope, and she must lie about her age to get married because she is young. But she is so good. She can make the deer come and eat out of her hand, because of her goodness. They know she would not hurt any thing alive. She would not help kill any thing . . .”
    Raven stood up, frowning terribly. “Because she is so good, she has no drop of pity. She has a sense of justice like a sharp knife. My wife would never forgive anyone who had done wrong. She would never allow anyone who had done such an evil as this to come near to her again.”
    Raven turned. “Koschei! I cannot do what you have asked. . .” Koschei had to bow his head to step into the room, and his robes billowed throughthe open door like smoke. Entering, his body seemed to swell and fill the Emergency room, his eyes burning like malignant stars. “It is too late, son of Prometheus. Your second thoughts come too tardily. Behold.”
    And he pointed to the sword still in Raven’s grasp. The knots were stirring and swaying of their own accord, unwinding, untwirling, a slow and weightless dance of rope. The cords unknotted themselves, rippling free. The knots spread and fell open.
    Koschei’s hands were thin and gray, and his finger nails were yellow, longer than his fingers. With a slow sweep of his black sleeves, with a crackling rustle of his vambraces and paudrons, the deathless creature raised his arm, palm out, fingers spread.
    “Hand me now my weapon, mortal man.”
    Cold dread was in Raven. He knew what he did next could not be undone.
     
    III
     
    Raven, son of Raven, was abnormally aware of the Emergency room in which he stood, as if each tiny detail were viewed through a small, clear lens. It was a bright, modern, well-lit place, surrounded by doctors and nurses, men of learning and science whom Raven respected. Filling the doorway was a dark, ancient, evil spirit, a creature of whom Raven knew nothing; of whom, he feared, men, for all their wisdom, would never know more than nothing. The spirit, Koschei the Deathless, held out his hand for the sword Raven carried.
    “Yield to me my weapon,” Koschei’s voice, surrounded with echoes, rang out, “that I may take the life from this boy here and give it to your wife.”
    Raven’s thoughts were an aching pressure in his brain. He saw his hand rise up and proffer the sword to Koschei, extending it hilt first.
    “Hands! What are you doing?” he thought to himself. “Why are yougiving this terrible creature this sword? Do you want to be the hands of a murderer? Do you want to have blood on you?”
    Koschei drifted forward, his narrow face floating near the ceiling, cold and without expression; the two dots of light in the shadows of his eye sockets shone brightly.
    “It is not too late,” thought Raven. “Take back the sword before Koschei touches it! I will be innocent of wrong. I will not be a murderer. Wendy would be so proud of me . . .
    “And then Wendy will be gone. Gone, and my life goes with her.
    “Where is goodness? Shouldn’t goodness come to stop me? Some people say God in his high heaven is the source of goodness. But heaven is so far away. God should strike me dead with lightning before my hand gives this sword to Koschei! But God will not stop my hand. Some people say the source of goodness is the heart, that mercy and kindness prevent us from murdering each other. If my heart were to stop pumping blood this instant, my hand would turn all pale and fall off. Others say goodness is in the brain, and philosophers show how it is not ‘in our long-term best interest,’ (such a fine-sounding phrase!) not in our ‘enlightened self-interest,’ to murder. If my brain were to explode this second, the nerves in my hand would go limp, and I would avoid this guilt.
    “But there is no goodness to stop me. Not in my