Brooks,Terry - Word 2 - A Knight Of The Word

Terry Brooks - A Knight of the Word

1998

PROLOGUE

He stands on a hillside south of the city looking back at the carnage. A long,

grey ribbon of broken highway winds through the green expanse of woods and

scrub to where the ruin begins. Fires burn among the steel and glass skeletons

of the abandoned skyscrapers, flames bright and angry against the washed-out

haze of the deeply clouded horizon. Smoke rises in long, greasy spirals that

stain the air with ash and soot. He can hear the crackling of the fires and

smell their acrid stench even here.

That buildings of concrete and iron will burn so fiercely puzzles him. It

seems they should not burn at all, that nothing short of jackhammers and

wrecking balls should be able to bring them down. It seems that in this

postapocalyptic world of broken lives and fading hopes the buildings should be

as enduring as mountains.

And yet already he can see sections of walls beginning to collapse as the

fires spread and consume.

Rain falls in a steady drizzle, streaking his face. He blinks against the

dampness in order to see better what is happening. He remembers Seattle as

being beautiful. But that was in another life, when there was still a chance

to change the future and he was still a Knight of the Word.

John Ross closes his eyes momentarily as the screams of the wounded and dying

reach out to him. The slaughter bas been going on for more than six hours,

ever since the collapse of the outer defences just after dawn. The demons and

the once-men have broken through and another of the dwindling bastions still

left to free men has fallen. On the broad span of the high bridge linking the

east and west sections of the city, the combatants surge up against one

another in dark knots. Small figures tumble from the heights, pinwheeling

madly against the glare of the flames as their lives are snuffed out.

Automatic weapons fire ebbs and flows.

The armies will fight on through the remainder of the day, but the outcome is

already decided. By tomorrow the victors will be building slave pens. By the

day after, the conquered will be discovering how Life can sometimes be worse

than death.

At the edges of the city, down where the highway snakes between the first of

the buildings that flank the Duwarnish River, the feeders are beginning to

appear. They mushroom as if by magic amid the carnage that consumes the city.

Refugees flee and hunters pursue, and wherever the conflict spreads, the

feeders are drawn. They are mankind's vultures, picking clean the bones of

human emotion, of shattered lives. They are the Word's creation, an enigmatic

part of the equation that defines the balance in all things and requires

accountability for human behaviour. No one is exempt; no one is spared. When

madness prevails over reason, when what is darkest and most terrible surfaces,

the feeders are there.

As they are now, he thinks, watching. Unseen and unknown, inexplicable in

their single-mindedness, they are always there. He sees them tearing at the

combatants closest to the city's edges, feeding on the strong emotions

generated by the individual struggles of life and death taking place at every

quarter, responding instinctively to the impulses that motivate their

behaviour. They are a force of nature and, as such, a part of nature's law. He

hates them for what they are, but he understands the need for what they do.

Something explodes in the centre of the burning city, and a building collapses

in a low rumble of stone walls and iron girders. He could turn away and look

south and see only the green of the hills and the silver glint of the lakes

and the sound spread out beneath the snowy majesty of Mount Rainier, but he

will not do that. He will watch until it is finished.

He notices suddenly the people who surround him. There are perhaps several

dozen, ragged and hollow-eyed figures slumped down in the midday gloom, faces

streaked with rain and ash. They stare at him as if expecting something. He

does not know what it is. He is no longer a Knight of the Word. He is just an

ordinary man. He leans on the rune-carved black staff that was once the symbol

of his office and the source of his power. What do they expect of him?

An old man approaches, shambling out of the gloom, stick-thin and haggard.

An arm as brittle as dry wood lifts and points accusingly.

I know you, he whispers hoarsely.

Ross shakes his head in denial, confused.

I know you, the old man repeats. Bald and white-bearded, his face is lined

with age and by weather and his eyes are a strange milky colour, their focus

blurred.

I was there when you killed him, all those years ago.

Killed who? Ross cannot make himself speak the words, only mouth them, aware

of the eyes of the others who are gathered fixing on him as the old man's

words are heard.

The old man cocks his head and lets his jaw drop, laughing softly, the sound

high and eerie, and with this simple gesture he reveals himself He is

unbalanced neither altogether mad nor completely sane, but something in

between. He lives in a river that flows between two worlds, shifting from one

to the other, a leaf caught by the current's inexorable tug, his destiny

beyond his control.

The Wizard! The old man spits, his voice rising brokenly in the hissing sound

of the rain. The Wizard of Oz! You are the one who killed him! I saw you!

There, in the palace he visited, in the shadow of the Tin Woodman, in the

Emerald City! You killed the Wizard! You killed him! You!

The worn face crumples and the light in the milky eyes dims. Tears flood the

old man's eyes and trickle down his weathered cheeks. He whispers, Oh God, it

was the end of everything!

And Ross remembers then, a jagged-edged, poisonous memory he had thought

forever buried, and he knows with a chilling certainty that what the old man

tells him is true.

John Ross opened his eyes to the streetlit darkness and let his memory of the

dream fade away. Where had the old man been standing, that he could have seen

it all? He shook his head. The time for memories and the questions they

invoked had come and gone.

He stood in the shadows of a building backed up on Occidental Park in the

heart of Pioneer Square, his breath coming in quick, ragged gasps as he fought

to draw the cool, autumn night air into his burning lungs. He had walked all

the way from the Seattle Art Museum, all the way from the centre of downtown

Seattle some dozen blocks away. Limped, really, since he could not run as

normal men could and relied upon a black walnut staff to keep upright when he

moved. Anger and despair had driven him when muscles had failed. Crippled of

mind and body and soul, reduced to an empty shell, he had come home to die

because dying was all that was left.

The shade trees of the park loomed in dark formation before him, rising out of

cobblestones and concrete, out of bricks and curbing, shadowing the sprawl of

benches and trash receptacles and the scattering of homeless and

disenfranchised that roamed the city night. Some few looked at him as he

pushed off the brick wall and came toward them. One or two even hesitated

before moving away. His face was terrible to look upon, all bloodied and

scraped, and the clothes that draped his lean body were in tatters. Blood

leaked from deep rents in the skin of his shoulder and chest, and several of

his ribs felt cracked or broken. He had the appearance of a man who had risen

straight out of Hell, but in truth he was just on his way down.

Feeders gathered at the edges of his vision, hunchbacked and beacon-eyed,

ready to show him the way.

It was Halloween night, All Hallows' Eve, and he was about to come face-to-

face with the most personal of his demons.

His mind spun with the implications of this acknowledgement. He crossed the

stone and concrete open space thinking of greener places and times, of the

smell of grass and forest air, lost to him here, gone out of his life as

surely as the hopes he had harboured once that he might become a normal man

again. He had traded what was possible for lies and half truths and convinced

himself that what he was doing was right. He had failed to listen to the

voices that mattered. He had failed to heed the warnings that counted. He had

been betrayed at every turn.

He stopped momentarily in a pool of streetlight and looked off into the

darkened spires of the city. The faces and voices came back to him in a rush

of sounds and images. Simon Lawrence. Andrew Wren. O'olish Amaneh. The Lady

and Owain Glyndwr. Nest Freemark. Stefanie.

His hands tightened on the staff, and he could feel the power of the magic

coursing through the wood beneath his palms. Power to preserve. Power to

destroy. The distinction had always seemed a large one, but he thought now

that it was impossibly small.

Was he still, in the ways that mattered, a Knight of the Word?

Did he possess courage and strength of will in sufficient measure that they

would sustain him in the battle that lay ahead? He could not tell, could not

know without putting it to the test. By placing himself in harm's way he would

discover how much remained to him of the power that was once his. He did not

think that it would be enough to save his life, but he hoped that it might be

enough to destroy the enemy who had undone him.

It did not seem too much to ask.

In truth, it did not seem half enough.

Somewhere in the distance a siren sounded, shrill and lingering amid the hard-

edged noises that rang down the stone and glass corridors of the city's

canyons.

He took a deep breath and gritted his teeth against the pain that racked his

body. With slow measured steps, he started forward once more.

Death followed in his shadow.

CHAPTER 1

It was dawn when she woke, the sky just beginning to brighten in the east,

night's shadows still draping the trunks and limbs of the big shade trees in

inky layers. She lay quietly for a time, looking through her curtained window

as the day advanced, aware of a gradual change in the light that warmed the

cool darkness of her bedroom. From beneath the covers she listened to the

sounds of the morning. She could hear birdsong in counterpoint to the fading

hum of tires as a car sped down Woodlawn's blacktop toward the highway. She

could hear small creaks and mutterings from the old house, some of them so

familiar that she remembered them from her childhood. She could hear the sound

of voices, of Gran and Old Bob, whispering to each other in the kitchen as

they drank their morning coffee and waited for her to come out for breakfast.

But the voices were only in her mind'', of course. Old Bob and Gran were gone.

Nest Freemark rose to a sitting position, drew up her long legs to her chest,

rested her forehead against her knees, and closed her eyes. Gone. Both of

them. Gran for five years and Old Bob since May. It was hard to believe, even

now. She wished every day that she could have them back again. Even for free

minutes. Even for five seconds.

The sounds of the house wrapped her, small and comforting, all part of her

nineteen years of life. She had always lived in this house, right up to the

day she had left for college in September of last year, a freshman on a full

ride at one of the most prestigious schools in the country. North-western

University. Her grandfather had been so proud, telling her she should remember

she had earned the right to attend this school, but the school, in turn, had

merited her interest, so both of them should get something out of the bargain.

He had laughed, his voice low and deep, his strong hands coming about her

shoulders to hold her, and she had known, instinctively that he was holding

her for Gran, as well.

Now he was gone, dead of a heart attack three days before the end of her first

year, gone in a moment, the doctor said afterward-no pain, no suffering, the

way it should be. She had come to accept the doctor's reassurance, but it

didn't make her miss her grandfather any the less. With both Gran and Old Bob

gone, and her parents gone longer still, she had only herself to rely upon.

But, then, she supposed in a way that had always been so.

She lifted her head and smiled. It was how she had grown up, wasn't it?

Learning to be alone, to be independent, to accept that she would never be

like any other child?

She ticked off the ways in which she was different, running through them in a

familiar litany that helped define and settle the borders of her life.

She could do magic-had been able to do magic for a long time. It had

frightened her at first, confused and troubled her, but she had learned to

adapt to the magic's demands, taught first by Gran, who had once had use of

the magic herself, and later by Pick. She had learned to control and nurture

it, to find a place for it in her life without letting it consume her. She had

discovered how to maintain the balance within herself in the same way that

Pick was always working to maintain the balance in the park.

Pick, her best friend, was a six-inch-high sylvan, a forest creature who

looked for the most part like something a child had made of the discards of a

bird's nest, with body and limbs of twigs and hair and beard of moss. Pick was

the guardian of Sinnissippi Park, sent to keep in balance the magic that

permeated all things and to hold in check the feeders that worked to upset

that balance. It was a big job for a lone sylvan, as he was fond of saying,

and over the years various generations of the Freemark women had helped him.

Nest was the latest. Perhaps she would be the last.

There was her family, of course. Gran had possessed the magic, as had others

of the Freemark women before her. Not Old Bob, who had struggled all his life

to accept that the magic even existed. Maybe not her mother, who had died

three months after Nest was born and whose life remained an enigma. But her

father . . . She shook her head at the walls. Her father. She didn't like to

think of him, but he was a fact of her life, and there was enough time and

distance between them now that she could accept what he had been. A demon. A

monster. A seducer. The killer of both her mother and her grandmother. Dead

now, destroyed by his own ambition and hate, by Gran's magic and his own, by

Nest's determination, and by Wraith.

Wraith. She looked out the window in the diminishing shadows and shivered. The

ways in which she had been different from other children began and ended with

Wraith.

She sighed and shook her head mockingly. Enough of that sort of rumination.

She rose and walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower, let it run hot,

and stepped in. She stood with her eyes closed and the water streaming over

her, lost in the heat and the damp. She was nineteen and stood just under five

feet ten inches. Her honey-coloured hair was still short and curly, but most

of her freckles were gone. Her green eyes, dominated her smooth, round face.

Her body was lean and fit. She was the best middle-distance runner ever to

come out of the state of Illinois and one of the best in history. She didn't

think about her talent much, but it was always there, in much the same way as

her magic. She wondered often if her running ability was tied in some way to

her use of the magic. There was no obvious connection and even Pick tended to

brush the suggestion aside, but she wondered anyway. She had been admitted to

North-western on a full track-and-field scholarship. Her grades were good, but

it was her athletic skills that got her in. She had won several middle-

distance events at last spring's NCAA track-and-field championships. She had

already broken several college records and one world. In two years the summer

Olympics would be held in Melbourne, Australia. Nest Freemark was expected to

contend for a medal in multiple running events. She was expected to win at

least one gold.

She turned off the shower, stepped out onto the mat, grabbed a towel, and

dried herself off. She tried not to think about the Olympics too often. It was

too distant in time and too mindboggling to consider. She had learned a hard

lesson when she was fourteen and her father had revealed himself for what he

was. Never take anything in your life for granted; always be prepared for

radical change.

Besides, there were more pressing problems just now. There was school; she had

to earn grades high enough to allow her to continue to train and to compete.

There was Pick, who was persistent and unending in his demand that she give

more of her time and effort to helping him with the park - which seemed silly

until she listened to his reasoning.

And, right at the moment, there was the matter of the house.

She dressed slowly, thinking of the house, which was the reason she was home

this weekend when her time would have been better spent at school, studying.

With her grandfather's death, the house and all of its possessions had passed

to her. She had spent the summer going through it, room by room, closet by

closet, cataloguing, boxing, packing, and sorting what would stay and go. It

was her home, but she was barely there enough to look after it properly and,

Pick's entreaties notwithstanding, she had no real expectation of coming back

after graduation to live. The realtors, sensing this, had already begun to

descend. The house and lot were in a prime location. She could get a good

price if she was to sell. The money could be put to good use helping defray

her training and competition expenses. The real estate market was strong just

now, a seller's market. Wasn't this the right time to act?

She had received several offers over the summer, and this past week Allen

Kruppert had called from ERA Realty to tender one so ridiculously high that

she had agreed to consider it. She had come after classes on Friday, skipping

track-and-field practice, so that she could meet with Allen on Saturday

morning and look over the papers. Allen was a rotund, jovial young man, whom

she had met on several occasions at church picnics, and he impressed her

because he never tried to pressure her into anything where the house was

concerned but seemed content just to present his offers and step back. The

house was not listed, but if she was to make the decision to sell, she knew,

she would almost certainly list it with him. The papers he had provided on

this latest offer sat on the kitchen table where she had left them last night.

The prospective buyer had already signed. The financing was in place. All that

was needed was her signature and the deal was done.

She put the papers aside and sat down to eat a bowl of cereal with her orange

juice and coffee, her curly hair still damp against her face as golden light

spread through the curtained windows and the sun rose over the trees.

If she signed, her financial concerns for the immediate future would be over.

Pick, of course, would have a heart attack. Which was not a good thing if you

were already a hundred and fifty years old.

She was just finishing the cereal when she heard a knock at the back door. She

frowned; it was only eight o'clock in the morning, not the time people usually

came calling. Besides, no one ever used the back door, except . . .

She walked from the kitchen down the hall to the porch. A shadowy figure stood

leaning into the screen, trying to peer inside. Couldn't be, could it? But, as

she stepped down to unlatch the screen door, she could already see it was.

'Hey, Nest' Robert Keppler said.

He stood with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans and one

tennis shoe bumping nervously against the worn threshold. `You going to invite

me in or what?' He gave her one of his patented cocky grins and tossed back

the shoulder-length blond hair from his angular face..

She shook her head. `I don't know. What are you doing here, anyway?'

`You mean like, "here at eight o'clock in the morning;" or like, here in

Hopewell as opposed to Palo Alto"? You're wondering if I was tossed out of

school, right?'

`Were you?'

`Naw. Stanford needs me to keep its grade point average high enough to attract

similarly brilliant students. I was just in the neighbourhood and decided to

stop by, share a few laughs, maybe see if you're in the market for a

boyfriend: He was talking fast and loose to keep up his confidence. He glanced

past her toward the kitchen. `Do I smell coffee? You're alone, aren't you? I

mean, I'm not interrupting anything, am I?'

'Jeez, Robert, you are such a load' She sighed and stepped back. `Come on in'

She beckoned him to follow and led him down the hall. The screen door banged

shut behind them and she winced, remembering how Gran had hated it when she

did that.

`So what are you really doing here?' she pressed him, gesturing vaguely in the

direction of the kitchen table as she reached for the coffee-pot and a cup.

The coffee steamed in the morning air as she poured it.

He shrugged, giving her a furtive look. `I saw your car, knew you were home,

thought I should say hello. I know it's early, but I was afraid I might miss

you'

She handed him the coffee and motioned for him to sit down, but he remained

standing. `I've been waiting to hear from you,' she said pointedly.

`You know me, I don't like to rush things' He looked away quickly, unable to

meet her steady gaze. He sipped gingerly from his cup, then made a face. `What

is this stuff?'

Nest lost her patience. `Look, did you come here to insult me, or do you need

something, or are you just lonely again?'

He gave her his hurt puppy look. `None of the above: He glanced down at the

real estate papers, which were sitting on the counter next to him, then looked

up at her again. `I just wanted to see you. I didn't see you all summer, what

with you off running over hill and dale and cinder track:

`Robert, don't start . .

`Okay, I know, 1 know. But it's true. I haven't seen you since your

grandfather's funeral:

And whose fault is that, do you think?'

He pushed his glasses further up on his nose and screwed up his mouth. 'Okay,

all right. It's my fault. I haven't seen you because I knew how badly I messed

up:

`You were a jerk, Robert'

He flinched as if struck. `I didn't mean anything.'

`You didn't?' A slow flush worked its way up her neck and into her cheeks. 'My

grandfather's funeral service was barely finished and there You were, making a

serious effort to grope me. I don't know what that was all about, but I didn't

appreciate it one bit'

He shook his head rapidly. `I wasn't trying to grope you exactly'.

`Yes, you were. Exactly. You might have done yourself some good, you know, if

you'd stuck around to apologise afterward instead of running off

His laugh was forced. `I was running for my life. You just about took my head

off.

She stared at him, waiting. She knew how he felt about her, how he had always

felt about her. She knew this was difficult for him and she wasn't making it

any easier. But his misguided attempt at an intimate relationship was strictly

one-sided and she had to put a stop to it now or whatever was left of their

friendship would go right out the window.

He took a deep breath. `I made a big mistake, and I'm sorry. I guess I just

thought you needed . .. that you wanted someone to . . . Well, I just wasn't

thinking, that's all.' He pushed back his long hair nervously. 'I'm not so

good at stuff like that, and you, well, you know how I feel.. ' He stopped and

looked down at his feet. `It was stupid. I'm really sorry.'

She didn't say anything, letting him dangle in the wind a little longer,

letting him wonder, He looked up at her after a minute, meeting her gaze

squarely for the first time. `I don't know what else to say, Nest. I'm sorry.

Are we still friends?'

Even though he had grown taller and gotten broader through the shoulders, she

still saw him as being fourteen. There was a little-boy look and sound to him

that she thought he might never entirely escape.

'Are we?' he pressed.

She gave him a considering look. `Yes, Robert, we are. We always will be, I

hope. But we're just friends, okay? Don't try to make it into anything else.

If you do, you're just going to make me mad all over again:

He looked doubtful, but nodded anyway. `Okay: He glanced down again at the

real estate papers. Are you going to sell the house?'

`Robert!

'Well, that's what it looks like:

`I don't care what it looks like, it's none of your business!' Irritated at

herself for being so abrupt, she added, `Look, I haven't decided anything yet'

He put his coffee cup in the exact centre of the papers, making a ring. `I

don't think you should sell'

She snatched the cup away. `Robert . .''

`Well, I don't. I think you should let some time pass before you do anything:

He held up his hands in a placating gesture. `Wait, let me finish. My dad says

you should never make any big changes right after someone you love dies. You

should wait at least a year. You should give yourself time to grieve, to let

everything settle so you know what you really want. I don't thinly he's right

about much, but I think he might be right about this'

She pictured Robert's father in her mind, a spectacled, gentle man who was

employed as a chemical engineer but spent all his free time engaged in

gardening and lawn care. Robert used to call him Mr. Green Jeans and swore

that his father would have been happier if his son had been born a plant.

`Robert; she said gently, `that's very good advice'

He stared at her in surprise.

`I mean it. I'll give it some thought'

She put the coffee cups aside. Robert was annoying, but she liked him anyway.

He was funny and smart and fearless. Maybe more to the point, she could depend

on him. He had stood up for her five years earlier when her father had come

back into her life. If not for Robert, her grandfather would never have found

her trussed up in the caves below the Sinnissippi Park cliffs. It was Robert

who had come after her on the night she had confronted her father, when it

seemed she was all alone. She had knocked the pins out from under him for his

trouble, leaving him senseless on the ground while she went on alone. But he

had cared enough to follow.

She felt a momentary pang at the memory. Robert was the only real friend she

had left from those days.

`I have to go back to school tonight; she said. `How long do you have?'

He shrugged. 'Day after tomorrow:

'You came all the way home from California for the weekend?'

He looked uncomfortable. 'Well..

`To visit your parents?'

`Nest..'

`You cant say it, can you?'

He shook his head and blushed. `No'

She nodded. `Just so you don't think I can't see through you like glass. You

just watch yourself, buster'

He looked down at his feet, embarrassed. She liked him like this-sweet and

vulnerable. `You want to walk over to Gran and Grandpa's graves with me, put

some flowers in their urns?'

He brightened at once. `Sure'

She was already heading for the hall closet. `Let me get my coat, Mr. Smooth'

`Jeez' he said.

CHAPTER 2

They went out the porch door, down the steps, across the yard, and through the

hedgerow that marked the back end of the Freemark property, then struck out

into Sinissippi Park. Nest carried a large bundle of flowers she had purchased

the night before and left sitting overnight in a bucket of water on the porch.

It was not yet nine, and the air was still cool and the grass slick with damp

in the pale morning light. The park stretched away before them, broad expanses

of lush, new-mown grass fading into distant, shadowy woods and ragged curtains

of mist that rose off the Rock River. The bare earth of the base paths,

pitcher's mounds, and batting boxes of the ball diamonds cornering the central

open space were dark and hard with moisture and the night's chill. The big

shade trees had shed most of their leaves, the fall colours carpeting the

areas beneath them in a patchwork mix of red, gold, orange, and brown. Park

toys dotted the landscape like weird sculpture, and the wooden trestle and

chute for the toboggan slide glimmered with a thin coating of frost. The

crossbar at the entrance was lowered, the fall hours in effect so that there

was no vehicle access to the park until after ten. In the distance, a solitary

walker was towed in the wake of a hard-charging Irish setter that bounded

through the haze of soft light and mist in a brilliant flash of rust.

The cemetery lay at the west end of the park on the other side of a chain-link

fence. Having grown up in the park, they had been climbing that fence since

they were kids-Robert and Cass Minter and Brianna Brown and Jared Scott and

herself. Best friends for years, they had shared adventures and discoveries

and hopes and dreams. Everything but the truth about who Nest was.

Robert shoved his bare hands in his pockets and exhaled a plume of white

moisture. 'We should have driven,' he declared.

He was striding out ahead of her, taking the lead in typical Robert fashion,

Brooks, Terry - Word 2 - A Knight Of The Word

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