Word & Void 02 - A Knight of the Word (25 page)

The freeway took a long, sweeping turn up a hill past a sign announcing their arrival in West Seattle. Residential lights shone through the rain. Fog cloaked the wooded landscape, clinging in thick patches to the heavy boughs of the conifers. Nest peered into the deepening gloom as the city dropped away behind her. They crested the hill and passed through a small section of shops and fast-food outlets. Then there were only residences and streetlights, and the city disappeared entirely.

The taxi wound its way steadily down the far side of the hill, took a couple of wide turns, then straightened out along a broad, straight, well-lit roadway. Ahead, she could see the dark wall of her destination. Lincoln Park was south of West Seattle proper, bordering Puget Sound just above the Vashon Island Ferry terminal. She found it on the map while she was riding in the taxi, checking its location, situating herself so that she wouldn’t become turned around. When she was satisfied that she knew where she was, she stuck the map back in her pocket.

The taxi passed a park sign, then pulled into an empty parking area fronting a thick mass of trees. Nest could just make out the flat, earthen threshold of a trailhead next to it. There was no one in sight. Within the trees, nothing moved.

She paid the driver and asked him where she could call a taxi to get back into the city. The driver told her there was a pay phone at the gas station they had passed just up the road. He gave her a business card with the phone number of his company.

She stepped out into the mist and gloom, pulling up the hood of her windbreaker as the taxi drove away. Standing alone at the edge of the park, she glanced around uncertainly. For the first time that night, she began to have doubts.

Then Ariel was next to her, appearing out of nowhere. “This way, Nest! Follow me!”

The silken white image floated onto the trailhead, and Nest Freemark dutifully followed. They entered the wall of trees, and within seconds the parking lot and its lights disappeared behind them. Nest’s eyes adjusted slowly to this new level of darkness. There were no lights here, but the low ceiling of clouds reflected the lights of the city and its homes to provide a pale, ambient glow. Nest could pick out the shapes of the massive conifers—cedar, spruce, and fir—interspersed with broad-leaved madrona. Thick patches of thimbleberry and salal flanked the pathway, and fern fronds drooped in feathery clusters. Rain carpeted the grass and leaves in crystal shards, and mist worked its way through the branches and trunks of the trees in snakelike tendrils. The park was silent and empty-feeling. It could have been Sinnissippi Park on a cold, wet fall night, except that the limbs of the northwest conifers, unlike their deciduous midwest cousins, were still thick with needles and did not lift bare, skeletal limbs against the sky.

The trail branched ahead, but Ariel chose the way without hesitation, her slender childish body wraithlike in the gloom. Nest glanced right and left at every turn, her senses pricked for movement and sound, wary of this dark, misty place. The uneasiness she had felt earlier was still with her. At times like these, she wished she had Wraith to protect her. The big ghost wolf had been a reassuring presence. She did not think often of him these days, not since he had disappeared. She was surprised to discover now that she missed him.

The trail climbed and she went with it, working her way through heavy old growth, fallen limbs, and patches of thick scrub. Clearings opened every so often to either side, filled with dull, gray light reflected off the heavy clouds. The rain continued to mist softly, a wetness that settled on her face and hands and left the air tasting of damp earth and wood. Now and again, her shoes slipped on patches of mud and leaves, causing her to lose her balance. Each time, she righted herself and continued, keeping Ariel in sight ahead of her.

They topped a rise, and Nest could just make out the black, choppy surface of Puget Sound through the trees. They were atop a bluff that dropped away precipitously beyond a low rail fence. The trail they followed branched yet again, following the edge of the cliff both ways along the fence into the darkness.

Ariel turned left and led Nest to a small clearing with a rain-soaked wooden bench that looked out over the sound.

“Here,” she said, stopping.

Nest drew even with her and looked around doubtfully. “What happens now?”

Ariel was insistent. “We wait.”

The minutes ticked by as they stood in the chilly darkness, listened to the rain falling softly through the trees, and watched the mist float in and out of the damp, shiny trunks in shifting forms. Wind rustled the topmost branches in sudden gusts that showered them with water. Out on the sound, ferry boats and container ships steamed by, their lights steady and bright against the black waters.

Nest hugged herself with her arms and dug the toe of her shoe into the wet earth, growing impatient.

Then a familiar shadow flitted across the darkness, appearing abruptly from out of the woods. It swept down to the bench in a long glide and settled on the back rest, folding into itself. It was an owl, and on its back rode a sylvan, twiggy legs and arms entwined within the feathers of the great bird’s neck.

The sylvan jumped off the owl with a quick, nimble movement, slid down the back rest, and stood facing her on the bench seat. She peered through the gloom in an effort to make out his features. He was younger than Pick, his wooden face not so lined, his beard not so mossy, and his limbs not so gnarled. He wore a bit of vine strapped about his waist, and from the vine dangled a small tube.

“You Nest?” he asked perfunctorily.

She nodded, coming forward several steps, closing the distance between them to six feet.

“I’m. Boot, and this is Audrey.” The sylvan indicated the owl. It was a breed with which she was not familiar, something a little larger and lighter colored than the barn owls she was used to. “We’re the guardians of this park.” “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

“You grew up in a park like this, I understand. You’re friends with another sylvan.”

“His name is Pick.”

“You can do magic, too. That’s unusual for a human. What sort of magic can you do?”

Nest hesitated. “I’m not sure I can do any magic. I haven’t used it for a while. I have some problems with it. It hurts me to use it sometimes.”

Ariel came forward, a delicate white presence in the night, dark eyes shifting from one to the other. “Tell her about the demon, Boot,” she whispered anxiously.

The sylvan nodded. “Don’t rush me. There’s plenty of time to do that. All night, if we need it, and we don’t. Where demons are concerned, you don’t want to rush things. You want to step carefully. You want to watch where you go.”

“Tell her!”

The sylvan harrumphed irritably. Nest thought of Pick. Apparently sylvans became curmudgeons at a young age.

Audrey ruffled her feathers against a rush of wind and damp, and resettled herself on the bench back, luminous round eyes fixing on Nest. Boot folded his skinny arms and muttered inaudibly into his beard and gave every appearance of refusing to say another word.

“I have a friend who is in danger from this demon,” Nest announced impulsively, not wanting to lose him to a mood swing. “Whatever you can tell me might help save his life.”

Boot stared at her. “All right. No reason not to, I guess. You’ve come a long way, haven’t you? Well, then.”

The arms unlocked and dropped to his sides. “The demon came to this park about three months ago. I’d never seen it before. I’d seen others from time to time, but they were always passing through on their way to somewhere else, and they were cloaked in their human guise and had been for a long time. But this one came deliberately. This one came with a purpose. It was night, midsummer, and it walked into the park just after sunset and came up to the cliffs and waited in the trees where the paths don’t go. It was hiding, waiting for something. I was patrolling the park on Audrey and saw it from the air. I knew what it was right away. So Audrey and I circled back behind it, keeping to the high limbs, and found a place to watch.”

“What did it look like?” Nest asked quickly.

“I’m getting to that, if you please,” the sylvan informed in a no-nonsense tone of voice. “Don’t rush me.” He cleared his throat. “It was a man. He was tall and thin, rather different looking—dark hair and small features. He wore a long coat, no hat. I got a good look at him through the scope.” He held up the tube tied to his waist. “Spyglass. Lets me see everything. Anyway, he stood there in the shadows for a long time. Maybe an hour or more. The park emptied out. It was a bright, moonlit night, so I could see what happened next very clearly.”

He paused meaningfully. “Another demon appeared. It crawled up the cliff face from somewhere below, from the shoreline. I don’t know where it came from before that. This one was huge, barely recognizable as human, its disguise sort of thrown together. It was thick-limbed and hunched over and all hairy and twisted. It looked more like an animal than a human, but a human is what it was trying to play at being, sure enough.

“So the first demon steps out from its hiding place to talk to the second. I have good ears, so I could hear them. ‘What are you doing here?’ the first one asks. ‘I’ve come to kill him,’ says the second. ‘You can’t kill him, he’s mine, he belongs to me, and I want him alive,’ says the first. ‘It doesn’t matter what you want. He’s too dangerous to be allowed to live, and besides, I want to taste his magic. I want to make it my own,’ says the second.

“Then they begin shrieking at each other, making threatening gestures, calling each other names.” Boot shook his leafy head. “Well, you can imagine. I’m watching all this and wondering what in the world is going on. Two demons fighting over a human! I’d never heard of such a thing! Why would they do that when there’s a whole world full of them, and more than a few ready, willing, and eager to be made victims?”

The sylvan came forward to the very edge of the bench, head inclined conspiratorially. “So then the first demon says, ‘You have no right to interfere in this. The Knight belongs to me. His magic and his life are mine.’ Well, now I know what they’re talking about. They’re quarreling over a Knight of the Word. For some reason, they seem to think there’s one out there waiting to be claimed! I’ve heard of this happening. Rarely, but now and then. But I don’t know about this Knight. I don’t know much of anything that happens outside the park, so I’m a little surprised to hear about this. I pay close attention.”

Boot glanced around at the darkness as if someone else might be listening. “So this is what happens next. The second demon pushes the first and says, ‘I was sent to make certain of him I tracked him before you, in other cities and other towns. You stole him from me. I want him back.’ The first demon backs away. ‘Don’t be stupid! You don’t have a chance with him! I’m the one who can turn him, I can make him one of us! I have already started to do so!’

“But the second demon isn’t listening. Its hair is bristling and its eyes are narrowed and hard. I can feel Audrey trembling next to me, her talons digging into the limb from which we watch. ‘He has made you weak and foolish. You think like the humans you pretend to be,’ says the second demon, advancing again on the first. ‘You are not strong enough to do what is needed. I must do it for you. I must kill him myself.’

“Then the second demon pushes the first demon hard and sends it sprawling into the brush.”

Nest felt the skin on the back of her neck crawl with the idea of two demons fighting over possession of John Ross. She should have taken the time to find him and bring him with her. He should be listening to this. If he were, he would be hard-pressed to argue that he wasn’t in any real danger.

Boot nodded, as if reading her mind. “It was a bad moment. The first demon gets back to his feet and says, ‘All right, he’s yours. Take him. I don’t care anymore.’ The second demon grunts and sneers at the first, then turns and moves off down the path. The first demon waits until the second is out of sight, then starts to undress. It takes off its coat and the clothes underneath. Then it begins to transform into something else. It happens quickly. I have heard of creatures like this, but I have never seen one—a changeling, a special kind of demon, able to shift from one form to another in moments where it takes the others days or even weeks to assume a new disguise.”

The sylvan took a deep breath. “It becomes a four-legged creature, a monster, a predator like nothing I’ve ever seen. It has these huge jaws and this massive neck and shoulders. A hellhound. A raver. It lopes off into the brush after the second demon. Audrey and I take to the air and follow, watching. The changeling catches up to the second demon in seconds. It doesn’t hesitate. It attacks instantly, charging out of the brush. It knocks the second demon to the ground despite its size and holds it there with its body weight. It tears the bigger demon’s head from its shoulders, then rips its body down the middle and fastens on the dark thing inside that is its soul. There is a horrible shriek, and the second demon thrashes and goes limp. It begins to dissolve. It turns to ash and blows away in the summer’s night breeze.

“The first demon says—growls, actually, and I can hear it even from atop the trees where Audrey and I watch it begin to change again—‘He belongs to me, he is mine.’ ”

Rain gusted suddenly through the trees, blown on a fresh wind, and Nest started as the cold droplets blew into her face. The weather was worsening, the mist turning to a steady downpour. Nest tried to make sense of what the sylvan was telling her, why it was that the first demon would be so desperate to protect its interest in John Ross, to keep him alive so that he could be subverted. Something in the back of her mind nudged at her, a memory of something that had happened before, but she could not quite manage to identify it.

Ariel floated past her in the dark, her childlike form looking frail and exposed against the rush of wind and rain. “Is that all?” she asked Boot. “is that the end of the story?”

“Not quite,” replied the sylvan, dark eyes bright. “Like I said, the demon begins to change again, but—it’s the strangest thing—this time it changes into …”