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A Knight of the Word
Copyright � August 1998 by Terry Brooks
Prologue
He stands on a hillside south of the city looking back at the carnage.
A long, gray 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 has been going on for more than six
hours, ever since the collapse of the outer defenses 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 Duwamish 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 behavior. 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 behavior. 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 center 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 the only 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, raged 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 color,
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
center 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 hope he had harbored 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.
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