Magic Time: Ghostlands by Robert Charles Wilson, Marc Scott Zicree

palm-worn. This weapon had seen use.
    He reached out, seized it in his hand. The grooves and creases worn into the hilt by sweaty usage fit his palm. It was his palm that had made them.
    As he drew it out, the light danced liquid on the blade, flashed a Rorschach of half-glimpsed living things in its silver-gold. Around him, the cries rose and blended to a single keening of raw need and pain. Holding the sword high, he knew what he must do.
    But still he hesitated.
    And here the dream added a new detail, one that tore freezing dead fingers into his heart.
    In the light from the sword, Cal could make out one of the figures beside him in the darkness, a frail, delicate form with hair fine as spiderweb and eyes a scorching blue….
    It was his sister, it was Tina.
    And others dim beyond her, among the multitude of souls, barely discernible, crying out to him, begging …
    Colleen. Doc. Goldie.
    Words surged from within him, a reply ripped from his throat, his soul, screaming above their screams.
    “IT WILL KILL HER!”
    He did nothing, knowing they would die.
    All of them were torn shrieking away by the Blackness, the Dark, the Storm….
    Their cries were drowned in thunder that rent the universe apart.
    Cal awoke to the sound of his own sobbing.
     
    Far miles away, in the sea of mists, leaning his great pebbled arms against the railing of what some might have been deceived into calling a bridge, the distant, familiar one thought of the dream he’d had again.
    Dead-a-thousand-years black…
    He never saw himself in the dream, never could discern what role he might play. But he saw others there, ones he knew, enemies, those who wished him harm, never friends.
    But then, he had no friends.
    No, strike that. He had one.
    A fragile thing to pin your hopes on, a dream of chaos and an old man blind as a stone.
    Even so, he admitted, it beat getting a real job….
    His dragon’s laughter, resonant and grating as a body being dragged over gravel, boomed out across the fraudulent sea and counterfeit sky…and was even heard by the Thing that ruled dragon, and sea, and sky.
     
    “Penny for your thoughts.”
    Finishing his shift on sentry duty, Doc Lysenko found Cal Griffin sitting at the far edge of roof, peering out at the clouds, and the night, and the drifting snow.
    “You’ve said that before,” Cal said, not looking at him.
    “I’m a man of simple habits, Calvin. I find what works and I repeat it.”
    “Not a bad trait for a doctor.”
    “No…” Doc concurred. He crouched against the raised lip at the edge and faced Cal. “‘I could be bounded up in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I had bad dreams….’”
    “ Hamlet, act two, scene two,” Cal said.
    “I’m impressed.”
    “Blame my mother…and public TV. What’s your point?”
    “You’re a worrier.”
    “Shouldn’t I be?”
    “Oh, indeed, I would never presume to separate you from your angst. I’m merely offering a sympathetic ear.”
    Cal said nothing.
    “You have a golden opportunity for complaining here,” Doc added. “Don’t waste it.”
    Cal smiled at that, a weary smile, the weight of the world in it. “Oh, Doc, I am so not the man I need to be.”
    “How many called to leadership feel they are? At least, the deserving ones? The megalomaniacs rarely have such doubts.”
    Doc looked into the darkness to the uncertain future, then from memory quoted, “‘If only the men truly up to this challenge, the moral giants, were here to assume this mantle. But failing their appearance on the scene, we ourselves must take it up, though we are woefully inadequate to the task.’ You know who said words to that effect?”
    “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
    “It was John Adams, just before your country’s Revolution. So I’m afraid, Calvin, that your qualms are anything but unique.”
    “Doc—”
    “Don’t ‘Doc’ me. You inspire others to transcend themselves. That is a rare power, Calvin,