Word & Void 02 - A Knight of the Word (7 page)

One of them, he discovered, was a blond, blue-eyed little boy named Teddy.

He saw all of their pictures in magazines, and he read their stories in papers for weeks afterward. The horror of what had happened enveloped and consumed him. It haunted his sleep and destroyed his peace of mind. He could not function. He sat paralyzed in motel rooms in small towns far away from San Sobel, trying to regain his sense of purpose. He had experienced failures before, but nothing with consequences that were so dramatic and so personal. He had thought he could handle anything, but he wasn’t prepared for this. Fourteen lives were on his conscience, and he could hardly bear it. He cried often, and he ached deep inside. He replayed the events over and over in his mind, trying to decide what it was he had done wrong.

It was weeks before he realized his mistake. He had assumed that the demon who sought to inspire the killings had relied on the kidnappers alone. But it was the police who had killed the children. Someone had yelled at them to shoot, had prompted them to fire, had put them on edge. It took only one additional man, one further intent, one other weapon. The demon had seduced one of the police officers as well. Ross had missed it. He hadn’t even thought of it.

After a time, he began to question everything he was doing in his service to the Word. What was the point of it all if so many small lives could be lost so easily? He was a poor choice to serve as a Knight of the Word if he couldn’t do any better than this. And what sort of supreme being would permit such a thing to happen in the first place? Was this the best the Word could do? Was it necessary for those fourteen children to die? Was that the message? John Ross began to wonder, then to grow certain, that the difference between the Word and the Void was small indeed. It was all so pointless, so ridiculous. He began to doubt and then to despair. He was servant to a master who lacked compassion and reason, whose poor efforts seemed unable to accomplish anything of worth. John Ross looked back over the past twelve years and was appalled. Where was the proof that anything he had done had served a purpose? What sort of battle was it he fought? Time after time he had stood against the forces of the Void, and what was there to show for it?

There was a limit to what he could endure, he decided finally. There was a limit to what he could demand of himself. He was broken by what had happened in San Sobel, and he could not put himself back together again. He no longer cared who he was or what he had pledged himself to do. He was finished with everything.

Let someone else take up the Word’s cause.

Let someone else carry the burden of all those lives.

Let someone else, because he was done.

A
riel paused, and Nest found that she couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “You mean he quit?” she demanded incredulously. “He just quit?”

The tatterdemalion seemed to consider. “He no longer thinks of himself as a Knight of the Word, so he has stopped acting like one. But he can never quit. The choice isn’t his to make.”

Her words carried a dark implication that Nest did not miss. “What do you mean?”

Ariel’s childlike face seemed to shimmer in the midday sun as she shifted her stance slightly. It was the first time she had moved, and it almost caused her to disappear.

“Only the Lady can create a Knight of the Word, and only the Lady can set one free.” Ariel’s voice was so soft that Nest could barely hear her. “John Ross is bound to his charge. When he took up the staff that gives him his power, he bound himself forever. He cannot free himself of the staff or of the charge. Even if he no longer thinks of himself as a Knight of the Word, he remains one.”

Nest shook her head in confusion. “But he isn’t doing anything to be a Knight of the Word. He’s given it all up, you said. So what difference does it make whether or not he really is a Knight of the Word? If he’s not only stopped thinking of himself as a Knight, but he’s stopped functioning as one, he might as well be a bricklayer.”

Ariel nodded. “This is what John Ross believes, as well. This is why he is in so much danger.”

Nest hesitated. How much of this did she really want to know? The Lady hadn’t sent Ariel just to bring her up to date on what was happening to John Ross. The Lady wanted something from her, and where Ross was concerned, she wasn’t at all sure it would be something she wanted to give. She hadn’t seen or heard from Ross in five years, and they hadn’t parted under the best of circumstances. John Ross had come to Hopewell to accomplish one of two things—to help thwart her father’s intentions for her or to make certain she would never carry them out. He had seen her future, and while he would not describe it to her, he made it clear that it was dark and horrific. So she would live to change it or she would die. That was his mission in coming to Hopewell. He had admitted it at the end, just before he left. She had never quite gotten over it. This was a man she had grown to like and respect and trust. This was a man she had believed for a short time to be her father—a man she would have liked to have had for a father.

And he had come to kill her if he couldn’t save her. The truth was shattering. He was not a demon, as her real father had been, but he was close enough that she was still unable to come to terms with how she felt about him.

“The difficulty for John Ross is that he cannot stop being a Knight of the Word just because he chooses to,” Ariel said suddenly.

She had moved to within six feet of Nest. Nest hadn’t seen her do that, preoccupied with her thoughts of Ross. The tatterdemalion was close enough that Nest could see the shadowy things that moved inside her semitransparent form like scraps of stray paper stirred by the wind. Pick had told her that tatterdemalions were made up mostly of dead children’s memories and dreams, and that they were born fully grown and did not age afterward but lived only a short time. All of them took on the aspects of the children who had formed them, becoming something of the children themselves while never achieving real substance. Magic shaped and bound them for the time they existed, and when the magic could no longer hold them together, the children’s memories and dreams simply scattered into the wind and the tatterdemalion was gone.

“But the magic John Ross was given binds him forever,” Ariel said. “He cannot disown it, even if he chooses not to use it. It is a part of him. It marks him. He cannot be anything other than what he is, even if he pretends otherwise. Those who serve the Word will always know him. More importantly, those who serve the Void will know him as well.”

“Oh, oh,” muttered Pick, sitting up a little straighter.

“He is in great danger,” Ariel repeated. “Neither the Word nor the Void will accept that he is no longer a Knight. Both seek to bind him to their cause, each in a different way. The Word has already tried reason and persuasion and has failed. The Void will try another approach. A Knight who has lost his faith is susceptible to the Void’s treachery and deceit. The Void will seek to turn John Ross through subterfuge. He will have begun to do so already. John Ross will not know that it is happening. He will not see the truth of things until it is too late. It does not happen all at once; it does not happen in a recognizable way. It will begin with a single misstep. But once that first step is taken, the second becomes much easier. The path is a familiar one. Knights have been lost to the Void before.”

Nest brushed at a few stray strands of hair that had blown into her eyes. Clouds were moving in from the west. She had read that rain was expected later in the day. “Does he know this will happen?” she asked sharply, almost accusatorily. She was suddenly angry. “How many years of his life has he given to the Word? Doesn’t he at least deserve a warning?”

Ariel’s body shimmered, and her eyes blinked slowly, flower petals opening to the sun. “He has been warned. But the warning was ignored. John Ross no longer trusts us. He no longer listens. He believes himself free to do as he chooses. He is a prisoner of his self-deception.”

Nest thought about John Ross, picturing him in her mind. She saw a lean, rawboned, careworn man with haunted eyes and a rootless existence. But she saw a fiercely determined man as well, hardened of purpose and principle, a man who would not be easily swayed. She could not imagine how the Void would turn him. She remembered the strength of his commitment; he would die before he would betray it.

Yet he had already given it up, hadn’t he? By shedding his identity as a Knight of the Word, he had given it up. She knew the truth of things. People changed. Lives took strange turns.

“The Lady sent me to ask you to go to John Ross and warn him one final time.”

Ariel’s words jarred her. Nest stared in disbelief. “Me? Why would he listen to me?”

“The Lady says you hold a special place in his heart.” Ariel said it in a matter-of-fact way, as if Nest ought to know what this would mean. “She believes that John Ross will listen to you, that he trusts and respects you, and that you have the best chance of persuading him of the danger he faces.”

Nest shook her head stubbornly. “I wouldn’t know what to say. I’m not the right choice for this.” She hesitated. “Look, the truth is, I’m not even sure how I feel about John Ross. Where is he, anyway?”

“Seattle.”

“Seattle? You want me to go all the way out to Seattle?” Nest was aghast. “I’m in school! I’ve got classes tomorrow!”

Ariel stared at her in silence, and suddenly Nest was aware of how foolish she sounded. The tatterdemalion was telling her John Ross was in danger, his life was at risk, she might have a chance to help him, and she was busy worrying about missing a few classes. It was more than that, of course, but it hadn’t come out sounding that way.

“This is a lot of nonsense!” Pick stormed suddenly, leaping to his feet on her shoulder. “Nest Freemark is needed here, with me! Who knows what could happen to her out there! After what she went through with her father, she shouldn’t have to go anywhere!”

“Pick, relax,” Nest soothed.

“Criminy!” Pick was not about to relax. “Why can’t the Lady go herself? Why can’t she speak to Ross? She’s the one who recruited him, isn’t she? Why can’t she send one of her other people, another Knight, maybe?”

“She has already done what she could,” Ariel answered, her strange voice calm and distant, her slight form ephemeral in the changing light. “She has sent others to speak for her. He ignores them all. He is lost to himself, locked away by his choice to abandon his charge, and given over to his doom.” Her childlike hand gestured. “There is only Nest.”

“Well, she’s not going!” Pick declared firmly. “So that’s it for John Ross, I guess. Thanks for coming, but I think you’d better be on your way.”

“Pick!” Nest admonished, surprised at his vehemence. “Be nice, will you?” She looked at Ariel. “What happens if I don’t go?” she asked.

Ariel’s strange eyes, clear as stream water, locked on her own. “John Ross has had a dream. The events of the dream will occur in three days. On the last day of October. On Halloween. Ross will be a part of these events. To the extent that he is, there is a very great chance he will become ensnared by the Void and will begin to turn. The Lady cannot know this for certain, but she suspects it. She will not let that happen. She has already sent someone to see that it doesn’t.”

Nest felt a chill sweep through her.
Like she sent Ross to me, five years ago. If Ross is subverted, he will be killed. Someone has been sent to see to it
.

“You are his last chance,” Ariel said again. “Will you go to him? Will you speak to him? Will you try to save him?”

Her thin voice drifted on the autumn breeze and was lost in a rustle of dry leaves.

Nest walked back through the park, lost in thought. Pick rode her shoulder in silence. The afternoon was lengthening out from midday, and the park was busy with fall picnickers, hikers, a few stray pickup ballplayers, and parents with kids and dogs. The blue skies were still bright with sunshine, but the sun was easing steadily west toward a large bank of storm clouds that were rolling out of the plains. Nest could smell the coming rain in the soft, cool air.

“What are you going to do?” Pick asked finally.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You’re seriously thinking about going, aren’t you?” “I’m thinking about it.”

“Well, you should forget about it right here and now.”

“Why do you feel so strongly about this?” She slowed in the shadow of a large oak and looked down at him. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”

Pick’s wooden face twisted in an expression of distaste, and his twiggy body contorted into a knot. His eyes looked straight ahead. “Nothing.”

She waited, knowing from experience that there would be more.

“You remember what happened five years ago,” Pick said finally, still not looking at her. “You remember what that was like—with John Ross and your grandparents and your … You remember?” He shook his head. “It wasn’t any of it what it seemed to be at first glance. It wasn’t any of it what you thought it was. There were things you didn’t know. Things I didn’t know, for that matter. Secrets. It was over before you found out everything.”

He paused. “It will be like that with this business, too. It always is. The Word doesn’t reveal everything. It isn’t His nature to do so.”

Something was being hidden from her; Pick could sense it, even if he couldn’t identify what it was. Maybe so. Maybe it was even something that could hurt her. But it didn’t change what was happening to John Ross. It didn’t change what was being asked of her. Did she have the right to use it as a reason for not going?

She tried a different tack. “Ariel says she will go with me, that she will help me.”

Pick snorted. “Ariel is a tatterdemalion. How much help can she be? She’s made out of air and lost memories. She’s only alive for a heartbeat. She doesn’t know anything about humans and their problems. Tatterdemalions come together mostly by chance, wander about like ghosts, and then disappear again. She’s a messenger, nothing more.”

“She says she can serve as a guide for me. She says that the Lady has sent her for that purpose.”