“Take the staff,” he said quietly.
John Ross tried to step away, struggled to break free of the eyes that held him bound.
“Take the staff,” O’olish Amaneh repeated.
Ross brought his hands up obediently, and his fingers closed about the polished wood. Instantly, fire ripped through his body. Oh, God! His left foot began to cramp, pain seizing and locking about it, working its way down to the bone. Ross tried to scream, but found he could make no sound. The pain intensified, growing worse than anything he had ever experienced, than anything he had imagined possible. His hands fastened so tightly about the staff that his knuckles turned white. He felt as if his fingers were imprinting the wood. He could not make himself let go. His foot jerked and twisted, and the pain climbed up his leg, cramping his muscles, tearing his ligaments, setting fire to his nerves. It bore into his knee, and now his mouth was open wide and his head thrown back in agony.
Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the pain was gone. John Ross gasped in shock and relief, his head sagging on his chest. He leaned heavily on the black staff, letting it support him, relying on its strength to hold him erect. My God, my God!
Slowly O’olish Amaneh stepped away. “Now it belongs to you,” the Indian repeated. “You are bound to it. You are joined as one. You cannot give it up until you are released from your service. Remember that. Do not try to put it from you. Do not try to cast it away. Ever.”
Then O’olish Amaneh was gone, out the door and down the hall, as silent as a ghost. Ross waited half a breath, then took a quick step toward the door to close it. He collapsed instantly, his foot turning in, his leg unable to bear the weight of his body. He struggled back to his feet, leaning on the staff for support, and fell again. He sprawled on the floor, staring down at his leg. Once more he climbed to his feet, gritting his teeth, squeezing shut his eyes, so fearful of what had been done to him that he could barely breathe.
He was finally able to stand, but only with the aid of the staff. He was going to have to learn to walk all over again. He leaned against the wall and cried with rage and frustration.
Why has this been done to me?
He would have his answer that night when he dreamed for the first time of the future that was his to prevent.
“Penny for your thoughts, John Ross.”
It was evening, the daylight gone hazy and dim with twilight’s slow descent, the heat lingering in a thick blanket across the broad stretch of the park. Ross was sitting alone on the grass beneath an old hickory just back from where the band was setting up for the dance in the pavilion. People were milling about, watching the proceedings, eating popcorn, ice cream, and cotton candy and drinking pop, lemonade, and iced tea. Ball games were still under way on the diamonds, but the last of the organized races and the horseshoe tournament had come to a close. Ross had been lost momentarily in the past, in the days before he understood what the Lady required of him and what it meant to be a Knight of the Word.
The familiar voice brought him out of his reverie. He looked up and smiled at Josie Jackson. “A penny? I expect that’s more than they’re worth. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” She stood looking at him for a moment, openly appraising him. She was wearing a flower-print blouse with a scoop neck and a full, knee-length skirt cinched about her narrow waist. She had tied back her blond hair with a ribbon, and wore sandals and a gold bracelet. She looked fresh and cool, even in the stifling heat. “I missed you at breakfast this morning. You didn’t come in.”
He smiled ruefully. “My loss. I overslept, then went straight to church. The Freemarks invited me.” He drew up his good leg and clasped his hands about his knee. “I don’t get to church as much as I should, I’m afraid.”
She laughed. “So how was it?”
He hesitated, picturing in his mind the dark shapes of the feeders prowling through the sanctuary, Wraith stalking out of the gloom of the foyer, and the demon hiding somewhere farther back in the shadows. How was it? “It wasn’t quite what I remember,” he replied without a trace of irony.
“Nothing ever is.” She came forward a step. “Are you alone this evening?”
The expressive dark eyes held him frozen in place. He looked away to free himself, then quickly back again. Nest had gone off with her friends. Old Bob had taken Evelyn home. He was marking time now, waiting on the demon. “Looks that way,” he said.
“Do you want some company?” she asked, her voice smooth and relaxed.
He felt his throat tighten. He was tired of being alone. What harm could it do to spend a little time with her, to give a little of himself to a pretty woman? “Sure,” he told her.
“Good.” She sat down next to him, a graceful movement that put her right up against him. He could feel the softness of her shoulder and hip. She sat without speaking for a moment, looking at the people gathered about the pavilion, her gaze steady and distant. He studied the freckles on her nose out of the corner of his eye, trying to think of something to say.
“I’m not much of a dancer,” he confessed finally, struggling to read her thoughts.
She looked at him as if amazed that he would admit such a thing, then gave him a quirky smile. “Why don’t we just talk, then?”
He nodded and said nothing for a moment. He looked off toward the pavilion. “Would you like an ice cream or something to drink?”
She was still looking at him, still smiling. “Yes.”
“Which?”
“Surprise me.”
He levered himself to his feet using the staff, limped over to the food stand, bought two chocolate ice-cream cones, and limped back again, squinting against the sharp glare of the setting sun. It was just for a little while, he told himself. Just so that he could remember what it was like to feel good about himself. He sat down beside her again and handed her a cone.
“My favorite,” she said, sounding like she meant it. She took a small bite. Her freckled nose wrinkled. “Hmmmm, really good.” She took another bite and looked at him. “So tell me something about yourself.”
He thought a moment, staring off into the crowds, then told her about traveling through Great Britain. She listened intently as he recounted his visits to the castles and cathedrals, to the gardens and the moors, to the hamlets and the cities. He liked talking about England, and he took time to give her a clear picture of what it was like there—of the colors and the smells when it rained, which was often; of the countryside with its farms and postage-stamp fields, walled by stone; of the mist and the wildflowers in the spring, when there was color everywhere, diffused and made brilliant in turn by the changes in the light.
She smiled when he was done and said she wanted to go someday. She talked about what it was like to run a coffee shop, her own business, built from scratch. She told him what it was like growing up in Hopewell, sometimes good, sometimes bad. She talked about her family, which was large and mostly elsewhere. She did not ask him what he did for a living or about his family, and he did not volunteer. He told her he had been a graduate student for many years, and perhaps she thought he still was one. She joked with him as if she had known him all his life, and he liked that. She made him feel comfortable. He thought she was pretty and funny and smart, and he wanted to know her better. He was attracted to her as he had not been attracted to a woman in a very long time. It was a dangerous way for him to feel.
At one point she said to him, “I suppose you think I’m pretty forward, inviting myself to spend the evening with you.”
He shook his head at once. “I don’t think that at all.”
“Do you think I might be easy?” She paused. “You know.”
He stared at her, astonished by the question, unable to reply.
“Good Heavens, you’re blushing, John!” She laughed and poked him gently in the ribs. “Relax, I’m teasing. I’m not like that.” She grinned. “But I’m curious, and I’m not shy. I don’t know you, but I think I’d like to. So I’m taking a chance. I believ
e in taking chances. I think that if you don’t take chances, you miss out.”
He thought of his own life, and he nodded slowly. “I guess I agree with that.”
The sun had dropped below the horizon, and darkness had fallen over the park. The band had begun playing, easing into a slow, sweet waltz that brought the older couples out onto the dance floor beneath the colored lamps that had been strung about the pavilion. Out in the grass, small children danced with each other, mimicking the adults, taking large, deliberate steps. John Ross and Josie Jackson watched them in silence, smiling, letting their thoughts drift on the music’s soft swell.
After a time, he asked her if she would like to take a walk. They climbed to their feet and strolled off into the darkened trees. Josie took his free arm, and moved close to him, matching his halting pace. They walked from the pavilion toward the toboggan slide, then down through the trees toward the river. The music trailed after them, soft and inviting. The night was brilliant with stars, but thick with summer heat, the air compressed and heavy beneath the pinpricked sky. It was dark and silent within the old hardwoods, and the river was a gleaming, silver-tipped ribbon below them.
They stopped on a rise within a stand of elm to stare down at it, still listening to the strains of the distant music, to the jumbled sounds of conversation and laughter, to the buzz of the locusts far back in the woods. On the river, a scattering of boats bobbed at anchor, and from farther out in the dark, over on the far bank of the Rock River, car lights crawled down private drives like the eyes of nocturnal hunters.
“I like being with you, John,” Josie told him quietly. She squeezed his arm for emphasis.
He closed his eyes against the ache her words generated within him. “I like being with you, too.”
There was a long silence, and then she leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek. When he turned to look at her, she kissed him on the mouth. He put caution aside and kissed her back.
She broke the embrace, and he saw the bright wonder in her eyes. “Maybe, just this once,” she whispered, “I’m going to be a little more forward than I thought.”
It took a moment for the import of the words to register, and then another for the familiar chill to run through him as the memories began to scream in the silence of his mind.
When he sleeps the night after O’olish Amaneh has given him the black walnut staff with its strange rune markings and terrible secret, he dreams for the first time of the future the Lady had prophesied. It is not a dream of the sort that he has experienced before. The dream is not fragmented and surreal as dreams usually are. It is not composed of people and places from his life, not formed of events turned upside down by the workings of his subconscious. The dream is filled with the sounds, tastes, smells, sights, and feelings of life, and he knows in a strange and frightening way that what he is experiencing is real.
He is not simply dreaming of the future; he is living in it.
He closes his eyes momentarily against the feelings this revelation generates within him. Then he opens them quickly to look about. The world in which he finds himself is nightmarish. It is dark and misted and filled with destruction. He is on a hillside overlooking the remains of a city. The city was once large and heavily populated; now it lies in ruins, empty of life. It does not smolder or steam or glow with fading embers; it has been dead a long time. It sits lifeless and still, its stones and timbers and steel jutting out of the flattened earth like ravaged bones.
After a time, he begins to see the feeders. There are only a few, prowling the ruins, dark shapes barely visible in the gloom, eyes yellow and gleaming. He knows instinctively what they are. They are far away, down within the rubble, and they do not seem aware of him. He feels a twinge in his right hand, and looks down to find that he holds the black staff. Where he grips it, light pulses softly. The light signals the readiness of the staff’s magic to respond to his summons. The magic is his to wield in his service to the Word. It is vast and formidable. It enables him to withstand almost anything. It gives him the power to destroy and to defend. It is the Word’s magic, drawn from deep within the earth. It whispers to him in seductive tones and makes him promises it cannot always keep. His immediate response is to want to cast the staff away, but something rooted deep within forbids him from doing so.
He feels exposed on the hillside, and starts to move tentatively toward the shelter of some trees. When he does so, he finds that he no longer limps, that his leg is healed. He is not surprised; he knew it would be so.
When he reaches the trees, the Lady is waiting for him. She is a small, faint whiteness within the dark, as ethereal as gossamer. She looks at him, smiles, and then fades. She is not real after all, he realizes; she is not even there. She is a memory. He has been to this place before, in another, earlier time, before the destruction, and coming here again has triggered the memory.
He begins to understand now. He is living in the future, but only in his sleep. It is the cost of the magic he wields, the title he bears, and the responsibility he shoulders. He will live his life henceforth in two worlds—the present when awake, the future when asleep. The images come in a rush, like the waters of a river overflowing its banks in a flood. He is a Knight of the Word, and he must prevent the future in which he stands. But he needs the knowledge the future can give him in order to do so. He must learn from the future of the mistakes and missed opportunities of the past. If he can discover them, perhaps he can correct them. Each time he sleeps, he has another chance to learn. Each time he sleeps, the future whispers secrets of the past. But the future is never the same because the past advances and alters it. Nor does his sleep lend order, coherence, or chronology to what he witnesses. The future comes to him as it will and reveals itself as it chooses. He cannot control it; he must simply abide it.
And survive. For he is hunted by the demons and their allies, by the once-men who serve them, and by the things that are given over to the Void. Few remain who can resist them. He is one. They hunt him every night of his life. They have caught him more than once. They have killed him, he thinks, but he does not know for sure. The future changes each night. Perhaps it changes his fate as well.
He recalls all of it now. He has his memories of the past to fill in the gaps, so that even though it is his first night, he is a veteran of his dreams already. The truths rise up and confront him. He is crippled so that he will not ever give up the staff. Without the staff, he has no magic. Without the staff, he is helpless. If he cannot walk without the staff to aid him, he is far less likely to be careless with it. After all, it is his only protection. He is crippled so that he will remember.
So it has been settled on him. His past is linked to his future. If he fails in his mission of service to the Word, the future he resides in each night will come to pass. He will be whole again, but he will inherit the destruction and ruin he surveys. And he will pay a further price. Magic summoned in the present will be lost to him in the future. Each time he uses the magic in his former life, he is deprived of it in the latter for an indeterminate amount of time. He must use the magic wisely and effectively when he invokes it, or one day, at a time or place not of his choosing, in a situation when he needs it most, he may find himself weaponless.
He stands alone within the trees on the hillside above the ruined city and ponders what it means for him to sleep and why he must always keep solitary and apart …
“Josie,” he said softly, searching for the right words.
There was sudden movement in the shadows, the sound of rushing footsteps and heavy breathing. Ross turned as the shadows closed on him, swift and menacing. He stepped away from Josie, trying to place her behind him. He heard her gasp in surprise, saw the masked faces of the men who reached for him. He struggled to comprehend their muttered threats, and then they were upon him.
They bore him backward toward the crest of the rise, reaching for his arms and shoulders, trying to tear the staff from his hands. He cried out to them, No, wait, what are you doing
? He fought to free himself, wrenching the staff away, shielding it. One took a swing at him, trying to hit him in the face, but he ducked aside. He could not move quickly, could not run with his bad leg. He was forced to stand. He heard one of them call him names, ugly and crude, heard another call him “spy” and “company pig.” I’m not! he tried to explain. Josie shouted at them, furious, What are you doing? Stop it! Get away from him! He was in danger of going down. He braced himself against the rush and swung the high end of the staff sharply at the nearest attacker. He felt the wood connect with bone, and the man grunted and staggered back. He used the lower end to hammer the shins of another man, and that one howled openly in pain.
Then they were all over him, bearing him to the ground. Fists struck at him as he slammed into the earth. Someone was kicking at his ribs. He heard Josie scream, saw her rush forward to try to protect him, arms flailing. A boot slammed into his head, bringing pain and bright light. He tried to throw off the ones who held him down, tried to regain his feet. The staff had been pushed aside so that he could no longer bring it to bear. They were still trying to wrench it from his hands, to take away his only protection. He felt the blows rain down on him, felt blood fill his mouth. It was getting harder to breathe. Josie was still screaming, but her voice was hoarse, and it sounded as if a hand had been clamped over her mouth.
A boot pinned his left wrist to the earth. Don’t do this! he wanted to scream at them, but could not make himself. He fought in silent, futile desperation to break free. They were wrenching at the staff, tearing at his fingers, leaving him no choice …
Stop, please!
The runes carved into the polished black surface began to pulse with light. A fiery heat burned its gnarled length.
No!
The magic exploded from the staff in a rush of white brilliance, detonating with such fury that it seemed to consume the air itself, a whirlwind of power unleashed. It was not summoned, but came alive on its own, reacting to its master’s need. With a single incendiary burst, it flung John Ross’s attackers into the night. They flew from him as if they were paper cutouts, weightless in a high wind, and he was free once more. He lay gasping for breath in the aftermath, the magic gone as swiftly as it had appeared. In the darkness, his attackers climbed dazedly to their feet and stumbled away, their resolve shattered, their purpose forgotten, their confusion profound.