The Door into Sunset by Diane Duane

later in the dream, he remembered that Lang was dead, fallen off the trail over the Scarp near Bluepeak. But in the dream, Lang’s appearance was some kind of good omen, so he let it pass: they were too busy to bother with small business at the moment, it would wait. Then suddenly they were in an inn somewhere—so he thought, anyway: a small crowded room full of shouting people. No, not shouting—singing. Over the singing, as if he had his head bent to catch an intimate conversation quite nearby, he could hear two people talking together softly.
    “What was the problem?”
    “Dear one, I seem to be pregnant.”
    “That’s news! Will you be all right?”
    “For a few months, at least. But—”
    And then a pause as he realized this was not an inn at all, but some kind of cave, in which some sound was echoing and hissing so that it sounded like many voices talking at once. It might be the sea, outside. That would make sense, for he could smell salt air. He headed for the shadowy walls of the place, hunting a doorway, while the voices began to argue.
    “Wait a minute! What do you mean, you’re pregnant? I’m pregnant!”
    “That’s ludicrous! What have you been doing to get pregnant?”
    “The same thing you have!”
    Lorn began to laugh quietly to himself as he went, because it occurred to him suddenly in the dream that one of the two people arguing was male. He walked on, into the stony shadows, and then began to wonder whether he was going in the right direction. The seacrash was dwindling away into silence.
    He paused, stood still, feeling nervous. The last sound faded away, leaving him standing in silence and darkness.
    Moonlight there was, lying faint in long parallelogram-shapes upon the patterned floor. He went by it, touching a familiar doorframe here, turning a corner there, now knowing surely where he was going, for he had walked these pillared halls by night and day for sixteen years of his life. The old almeries and chairs and presses looked at him calmly as he went by in the moonlight, and the stairway up to his old room spread itself broad for him, though he couldn’t go up there just now. He had other business; they were waiting for him. He found the great curtained archway in the white marble walls that led to the hall he was looking for, the place where they were waiting. He put out his hand to touch the embroidery-stiffened velvet of the curtain, feeling acutely the touch of the gold wire under his fingertips. He moved to push the curtain aside.
    And then he heard it, that low awful moaning sound, and barely had time to turn and flee before it burst out from the curtains behind him—the pale thing. He had seen it often enough before, it had been chasing him seemingly for his whole life, and he didn’t need to turn to know what it looked like. He didn’t even need to turn to see it. Fleeing, all his attention fixed ahead of him as he ran pounding down the tiles and looking for some place to hide, he could still see it clearly coming behind him, with that same doubled vision of the Blackcastle courtyard. A huge thing, scabrous, pallid, with a shape that never stayed the same for long, but flowed and changed like some glowing corruption. But mostly it had a broad pale body—of a deadly paleness, like something leprous—and long soft grabbing arms, and a wet white toothless maw that drooled pus and slime, and huge chill vacant eyes like sick moons that refused to stay in one place like eyes should. He ran, he ran, but it did him no good—it never did. It would get its claws into him and his blood would run with its corruption, he would feel the poison stink of its breath in his face as it lowered its mouth to his and—
    —the door, oh blessed Goddess, there was the door out into the garden! He ran for it in horror, tugged at its iron handle, it was stuck, hammered helplessly at the oaken, iron-nailed width of it, then yanked again in crazed desperation as he heard that evilly longing moan