Running with the Demon Part 12

"You know about the feeders, don't you?" he asked conversationally. "You know what draws them?" She nodded dully. "They are attracted to me because of the staff." She glanced over immediately, eyes fastening on its black, rune-scrolled walnut length. "The staff is a talisman, and its magic is very powerful. It was given to me when I entered into service to the Word. It is the weapon I carry into battle each and every day. It is also the ball and chain that binds me to my fate."

His words were muted and harsh, but strangely poetic as well, and Nest found herself looking at his face, seeing him anew. He did not look back, but continued to keep his gaze directed forward, away from her, away from the feeders.

"Are you a caretaker?" he asked after a moment. "Are you partnered with a sylvan to look after this park?"

The number of her questions doubled instantly, and she was confused all over again. "Yes. His name is Pick."

"I am a Knight of the Word," he said. "Has Pick told you of the Knights?"

She shook her head no. "Pick doesn't say much about anything that goes on outside of the park."

Ross nodded. They were even with the burial mounds now and turning in to the playground, stepping carefully over the low chain dividers. They moved across the twig-strewn gra.s.s beneath the hardwoods, solitary ghosts. Ahead, the baseball diamonds were filling with shadows and emptying of people. Nest could see lights beginning to come on in the houses of the subdivisions bordering the park and in the Sinnissippi Townhomes. Stars were beginning to appear in the darkening sky east, and a crescent moon hung suspended north across the river.

"Did you really know my mother?" Nest asked him, a twinge of doubt nudging at her, suspicious now of everything he had said.

He seemed not to have heard her. He said nothing for a moment, then slowed and looked over at her. "Why don't we sit somewhere and talk, and I'll tell you what I'm doing here."

She studied him carefully while he waited for her answer. "All right," she agreed finally.

They moved out of the hardwoods and away from the playground. The feeders that had been shadowing them fell away as they moved into the open again, unwilling to follow. They stayed on the west side of the road leading out of the park, away from the ball games that were ending and the players and fans packing up their blankets and gear, and moved to a picnic table just at the edge of a solitary spruce close by the crossbar.

They sat across from each other in the failing light, the girl and the man, and they might have been either confidants or combatants from the set of their shoulders and the positioning of their hands, and in the vast, empty s.p.a.ce of night and sky that closed about them, their words could not be heard.

"This is how I became a Knight of the Word," John Ross said softly, his green eyes steady and calm as they fixed on her.

And he told Nest Freemark his story.

Chapter Fourteen.

He was still a young man when he began his odyssey, noi yet turned thirty. He was drifting again, as he had been drifting for most of his life. He had earned an undergraduate degree in English literature (he had done his senior thesis on William Faulkner), and his graduation had marked the conclusion of any recognizable focus in his life. Afterward, he had migrated to a series of different schools and graduate programs, twice coming close to completing his masters, each time stepping back when he got too close. He was a cla.s.sic case of an academic unready and unwilling to confront the world beyond the cla.s.sroom. He was intelligent and intuitive; he was capable of finding his way. The problem with John Ross was always the same. The way never seemed important enough for him to undertake the journey.

He had always been like that. He had excelled in school from an early age, easily gaining honors recognition, effortlessly garnering high praise and enthusiastic recommendations. While he was attending school full-time, while he was required to be there, it was never necessary that he consider doing anything more. It was a comfortable, regimented, encapsulated existence, and he was happy. But with his graduation it became apparent that he must point toward something specific. He might have become a teacher, and thus remained within the cla.s.sroom, kept himself safe within an academic confinement, but teaching did not interest him. It was the discovery that mattered, the uncovering of truths, the deciphering of life's mysteries that drew him into his studies. And so he moved from college to university, from graduate studies in American literature to funded research in Greek history, all the while waiting for the light to s.h.i.+ne down the road his life must necessarily take.

It did not happen, though, and as he approached the age of thirty, he began to think that it never would. His parents, always supportive of him, were beginning to despair of his life. An only child, he had always been the sole focus of their expectations and hopes. They did not say so, but he could read their concerns for him in their studied silence. They no longer supported him - he had long since learned the art of securing scholars.h.i.+ps and grants - so money was not an issue. But his options for continued study were drawing to a close, and he was still nowhere close to choosing a career. What could he do with his English degree and his raft of almost completed esoteric studies? If he didn't choose to teach, what could he do? Sell insurance or cars or vacuum cleaners? Go into business? Work for the government? When none of it mattered, when nothing seemed important enough, what could he do?

He chose to go to England. He had saved some money, and he thought that perhaps a trip abroad might give him fresh insight. He had never been outside the United States, save for a brief trip into Canada in his teens and a second into Mexico in his early twenties. He had no experience as a tourist, barely any experience in life beyond the cla.s.sroom, but he was persuaded to take the plunge by his growing desperation. He would be going to an English-speaking country (well, of course), and he would be discovering (he hoped) something about his substantially English heritage. His one extracurricular activity throughout school had been hiking and camping, so he was strong and able to look after himself. He had some contacts at a few of the universities, and he would find help with lodging and shelter. Perhaps he would even find a smidgen of guest-lecturer work, although that was not important to him. What mattered was removing himself from his present existence in an effort to find his future.

So he applied for and was granted a pa.s.sport, booked his airline reservation, said good-bye to his parents, and began his journey. He had no timetable for his visit, no date in mind on which he would return, no particular expectation for what he would do. He drifted anew and with careless disregard for his plans to discover himself, traveling through England and Scotland, through London and Edinburgh, south to north and back again. He renewed old acquaintances from his American university days, visited briefly at the places he had marked off on his list of must-see items, and moved on. He walked when he could, finding it the best and most thorough way to see the countryside, saving his money in the not quite acknowledged but inescapable recognition that his travels seemed to be bringing him no closer to his goals.

In the late spring of the year following his summer arrival, the first twelve months of his visit coming to a rapid close, he traveled for the first time into Wales. His decision to go there was oddly precipitated. He was reading on the history of the Welsh and English kings, on Edward I and the iron ring of fortresses he had built to contain the Welsh in Snowdonia, and a friend to whom John Ross had mentioned his reading told him of a cottage her parents owned outside of Betws-y-Coed where he could stay for the asking. Having no better plan for the spending of his time and intrigued by the history he had been reading, he accepted his friend's offer.

So he traveled into Gwynedd, Wales, found the cottage, and began to explore the country surrounding Betws-y-Coed. The village sat in the heart of the Gwydir Forest at the juncture of the Conwy, Llugwy and Lledr valleys within the vast, sprawling wilderness of Snowdonia National Park. Snowdonia, which occupied much of Gwynedd, was mountainous and thickly forested, and his hikes into her wilderness proved long and arduous. But what he found was breathtaking and mysterious, a secretive world that had offered shelter and hiding, but little on which to subsist, to the Welsh during the siege of Edward Longshanks in the late 1200s. He took day trips to the castles, to Harlech, Caernarfon, Beaumaris, and Conwy and all the others that Edward had built, rebuilt, and garrisoned in the forging of his ring of iron. He visited the towns and villages scattered about, poking into their folklore as much as into their history, and he was surprised to discover that some whisper of purpose was drawing him on, that in indulging his curiosity about the past he was embracing an unspoken promise that a form of revelation on the future of his own life might somehow be possible. It was an irrational, unfounded hope, but one that was compelling in its hold over him. He pa.s.sed that spring and summer in Betws-y-Coed, and he did not think of leaving. He wondered now and again if he was overstaying his welcome, but neither his friend nor her parents contacted him and he was content to leave well enough alone.

Then, on a summer day filled with suns.h.i.+ne and the smell of gra.s.ses and wildflowers, he came out of a hike south beyond the Conwy Falls to a sign that said FAIRY GLEN. It was just a weathered board, painted white with black letters, situated at the entrance to a rutted dirt and gravel lane leading off the blacktop through trees and fences, over a rise and into shadow. There was a small parking lot for cars and a box for donations. There was nothing else. He stared at the sign, amused, then intrigued. Why would it be called Fairy Glen? Because it was magical, of course. Because it had a supposed connection to a fairy world. He smiled and turned down the lane. What could it hurt to see? He left a pound in the box and hiked back along the fence line, over the rise, and through a corridor of big trees to a barely recognizable opening in the fence that led toward the sound of rus.h.i.+ng water. He stepped through the opening, went down a winding pathway through trees and rocks to the source of the rus.h.i.+ng water, and found himself hi the glen.

For a long time he just stood there looking about, not moving, not thinking of anything. The glen was deep and shadowed, but streaked with bright sunlight and roofed by a cloudless blue sky. Ma.s.sive rocks, broken and cracked, littered the slopes and floor of the glen, as if in ancient, forgotten times a volcanic upheaval had ruptured and split the earth. The water spilled from a series of falls to his left, the rush of their pa.s.sage a low thunder against the silence. The stream broadened and narrowed by turns as it worked its way through channels formed by the positioning of the boulders, hi some places it ran fast and wild and in others it formed pools so calm and still you could see the riverbed as clearly as if it were covered over with gla.s.s. Colored rocks littered the bottom of the stream, visible through the crystalline waters, and wildflowers grew in cl.u.s.ters all along the banks and slopes. The Fairy Glen formed a cathedral of jumbled rocks and trees that closed in the sounds of the twisting waters and shut out the intrusions of the world. Within its sanctuary, you were alone with whatever G.o.d you embraced and whatever beliefs you held.

John Ross stepped forward to the water's edge after a moment, squatted, and touched the stream. The water was ice cold, as he had expected. He stared down into its rush for a moment, losing himself in time's pa.s.sage and the memories of his life. He looked at himself hi the water's s.h.i.+mmering reflection, sun-browned from his year of hiking through England, strong and fit, his gaze steady and a.s.sured. He did not look like himself, he thought suddenly. What had changed? He had spent another year drifting, accomplis.h.i.+ng nothing, arriving at no decision on his life. What was different?

He rose and walked along the jagged rock banks of the glen, working his way over the ma.s.sive boulders, finding footholds amid the eddies and pools that filled the gaps between. He squinted when he pa.s.sed through patches of bright sunlight, enjoying the warmth on his face, pausing in the shadows to look more closely at what might be hidden, wondering idly where the fairies were. He hadn't seen any so far. Maybe they were all on vacation.

"If it's magic you're looking for," a deep voice said, "you should come here at night."

John Ross nearly jumped out of his skin, teetering momentarily in midstep on the rocks, then righting himself and looking about quickly for the voice's source.

"It's more a fairy glen when the sun's down, the moon's up, and the stars lend their radiance."

He saw the man then, hunkered down just ahead in a heavy patch of shade, wrapped in a greatcoat and shadowed by a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his face. He held a fis.h.i.+ng pole loosely before him, the line dangling in a deep, still pool. His hands were brown and rough, crosshatched by tiny white scars, but steady and calm as they gently s.h.i.+fted the pole and line.

"You would like to see the fairies, wouldn't you?" he asked, tilting the brim of Ms hat up slightly.

John Ross shrugged uncomfortably. "I suppose so. At night, you say? You've seen them, have you?" He was trying to find something in their conversation that made sense, to frame a reply that fit.

The man's chuckle was low and deep. "Maybe I have. Maybe I've seen them come out of the falls, tumbling down the waters like tiny bright lights, as if they were stars spilling out of the heavens. Maybe I've seen them come out of the shadows where they hide by day, back there atop the falls, within the rocks and the earth - there, where the sun breaks through the trees."

He pointed, and John Ross looked in spite of himself, peering through a glaze of sunlight across the jumble of rocks to where the falls fell in a dazzling silver sweep. Bits of light danced atop the surface of the water, and behind the s.h.i.+mmering curtain shadows seemed to move...

Ross turned back suddenly to the man, anxious to know more. But the man was gone. Ross stared for a moment in disbelief, then glanced hurriedly from one bank to the other, from one place to the next. He searched the shadows and the sunny patches with equal care, but the man was nowhere to be found.

Shaken, he left the glen and walked back up the dirt and gravel lane to the blacktop, and from there back to the village. That night he pondered what he had seen, hunched over his dinner in an alehouse close to his lodgings, nursing a pint of Welsh beer and trying to make sense of it all. There was no way the fisherman could have disappeared so swiftly, so utterly. There was no place for him to go. But if he hadn't disappeared, then he wasn't there in the first place, and Ross wasn't prepared to deal with that.

For several days he refused to return to the glen, even though he wanted to. He thought about going at night, as the fisherman had urged, but he was afraid. Something was waiting for him, he believed. What if it was something he was not prepared to face?

Finally, three days later, he went back during the day. It was gray and overcast, the clouds threatening more of the rain that had already fallen intermittently since dawn. Again, the parking lot was deserted as he made his way off the blacktop and down the ratted lane. Cows looked at him from the pasture on his left, placid, disinterested, and remote. He tightened his rain slicker against the damp and chill, pa.s.sed through the opening in the fence, and started down the trail. He was thinking that it was a mistake to do this. He was thinking that it was something he would come to regret.

He continued on anyway, stubbornly committed. Almost immediately he saw the fisherman. It was the same man; there was no mistaking him. He wore his broad-brimmed hat and greatcoat and was fis.h.i.+ng with the same pole and line. He sat somewhat farther away from the falls than he had the previous day, as if thinking to find better fis.h.i.+ng farther downstream. Ross walked carefully across the rocks to reach him, keeping close watch as he approached, making sure that what he was seeing was real.

The fisherman looked up. "Here you are again. Good day to you. Have you done as I suggested? Have you come at night?"

Ross stopped a dozen yards away from him. The man was sitting on a flat rock on the opposite bank, and there was no place close at hand to cross over. "No, not yet."

"Well, you should, you know. I can see in your eyes that you want to. The fairies mean something to you, something beyond what they might mean to an average man. Can you feel that about yourself?"

Ross nodded, surprised to find that he could. "I just..." He stopped, not knowing where to go. "I find it hard..."

"To believe," the other finished softly.

"Yes."

"But you believe in G.o.d, don't you?"

Ross felt a drop of rain nick the tip of his nose. "I don't know. I guess so."

The man adjusted the pole and line slightly. "Hard to believe in fairies if you don't believe in G.o.d. Do you see?"

Ross didn't, but he shook his head yes. Overhead, the clouds were darkening, closing in, screening out the light. "Who are you?" he asked impulsively.

The man didn't move. "Owain. And you?"

"John Ross. I'm, uh, traveling about, seeing a little of the world. I was in graduate studies for a number of years, English and Ancient Civilizations, but I, uh... I needed..."

"To come here," the man said quickly. "To come to the Fairy Glen. To see if the fairies were real. That was what you needed. Still need, for that matter. So will you come, then? As I suggested? Come at night and see them for yourself?"

Ross stared at him, groping for an answer. "Yes," he said finally, the word spoken before he could think better of it.

The man nodded. "Come in two nights, when the moon is new. Then's the best time for catching them at play; there's only the starlight to reveal them and they are less wary." His face lifted slightly, just enough so that Ross could catch a glimpse of his rough, square features. "It will be a clear night for viewing. A clear night for seeing truths and making choices." '

Rain was spattering on the rocks and earth, on the surface of the stream. Shadows were deepening within the glen, and there was a rumble of thunder. "Better take shelter now," the man said to John Ross.

Then the skies opened and the rain poured down. Instinctively Ross lowered his head and pulled up the hood to his slicker, covering himself. When he looked back again, the fisherman was gone.

The rain continued all the rest of that day and into the next. John Ross was paralyzed with indecision. He told himself that he would not go back to the Fairy Glen, that he would not put himself at such obvious risk, that what was at stake was not simply his life but possibly his soul. It felt that way to him. He stayed within his rooms reading, trying not to think, and when thinking became inescapable, he went to the pubs and drank until he slept. He would have run if there had been any place left to run to, but he had exhausted his possibilities for running long ago. He knew that he had come as far as he could go that way, and that all that was left to him was to stand. But did standing entail going to the glen or staying clear? He drifted in increasingly smaller circles as the hours pa.s.sed and the time of his summoning drew closer, and he despaired of his life. What had he done to bring himself to this end, to a strange and unfamiliar land, to a ghost who drew him as a flame did a moth, to a fairy glen in which magic might be possible, to the brink of madness?

After a tune, he came to believe that whatever waited in the Fairy Glen was inextricably bound to him, a fate that could not be avoided and therefore must be embraced. With acceptance of this came a sort of peace, and he found himself wondering on the day of his appointed summoning if what had drawn him here and made him feel that self-discovery was at hand was linked in some way to what would happen that night in the glen.

When it was dark and he had eaten his dinner, he put on his warm clothing, his hiking boots, and his slicker, pocketed a flashlight, and went out the door of his cottage. He hitched a ride for part of the distance, then walked the rest. It was nearing midnight when he turned up the dirt and gravel lane past the sign that read FAIRY GLEN. The night was still and empty-feeling, but the skies were clear of clouds and filled with stars, just as the fisherman had foreseen. Ross breathed in the night air and tried to stay calm. His eyes adjusted to the darkness as he moved along the road, through the fence, and down the trail into the glen.

It was darker here, the starlight failing to penetrate much beyond the overhanging branches of the trees. The glen was a world apart, a rush of tumbling water and a jumble of broken rocks. Ross made his way over the ma.s.sive boulders and along the stream banks to where he had twice seen the fisherman. There was no sign of him now. Within the moss and vine-grown walls of the glen, there was no movement. Belatedly, Ross thought of his failure to advise anyone of his plans. If he should disappear, no one would know where to look for him. No one would know where he might be found.

He reached an open s.p.a.ce on the near bank between two huge boulders, a place where the starlit sky was clearly visible overhead. He glanced back at the falls, but he could not see them, could only hear the sound of the water spilling off the rocks. He stood there waiting, not knowing what he should look for, not certain yet if he should stay or run.

The minutes slipped past. He glanced about expectantly, emboldened by the fact that nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing was going to happen. Perhaps the fisherman had played a joke on him, on a gullible American, leading him on about magic and fairies...

"John Ross."

The sound of his name was a silvery whisper in the silence, spoken so softly that it might have come from inside him. He stood perfectly still, afraid even to breathe.

"John Ross, I am here."

He turned then, and he saw her standing at the water's edge across from him, not quite in the stream and not quite out of it either. She seemed to be balanced between water and earth, qn the brink of falling either way. She was young and beautiful and so ethereal in the bright starlight that she was almost not there. He stared at her, at her long hair, at her gown, at her slender arms raised toward him.

"John Ross, I have need of you," she said.

She moved slightly, and the light s.h.i.+fted about her. He saw then that she was not real, not solid, but made of the starlight and the shadows, made of the night. She was the ghost he had thought the fisherman to be - still thought he might be now. He swallowed hard against the tightness in his throat and could not speak.

"You were summoned to me by Owain Glyndwr, my brave Owain, as he in his time was summoned by another in my service. I am the Lady. I am the Light. I am the voice of the Word. I have need of you. Will you embrace me?"

Her voice whispered in the deep night silence, low and compelling, vast and unalterable, the sum of all that could ever be. He knew her for what she was instantly, knew her for her power and her purpose. He went to his knees before her on the crushed rock bed of the glen's damp floor, his eyes fixed on her, his arms clutching his body in despair. Behind her, where the waterfall tumbled away in the darkness, lights began to twinkle and s.h.i.+mmer against the black. One by one they blinked on, then soared outward on the cool air, on gossamer wings that glimmered faintly with color, like fireflies. He knew they were the fairies he had come to find, and tears sprang to his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he whispered finally. "I'm sorry I didn't believe."

"You do not believe yet," the Lady sang, as if the words were cotton and the air a net in which they were to be caught and held up for admiration. "You lack reason to believe, John Ross. But that will change when you enter into my service. All will change. Your life and your soul will be transformed. You will become for me, as Owain Glyndwr Owain Glyndwr once was, as others have been, a Knight of the Word. Stand now." once was, as others have been, a Knight of the Word. Stand now."

He rose and tried to gather up his scattered thoughts. Owain Glyndwr. The fisherman? Was he that that Owain Glyndwr, the Welsh patriot and warrior? He had read of him. Owain Glyndwr had fought the English Bolingbroke, Henry IV, in the early 1400s. For a time he had prevailed over Henry, and the Welsh were made free again. No one could stand against him, not even the vaunted Prince of Wales, who in time would be Henry V, and the Welsh armies under Glyndwr's command marched into England itself. Then he simply disappeared - vanished so completely that there was no record of what had become of him. And the English marched back into Wales once more. Owain Glyndwr, the Welsh patriot and warrior? He had read of him. Owain Glyndwr had fought the English Bolingbroke, Henry IV, in the early 1400s. For a time he had prevailed over Henry, and the Welsh were made free again. No one could stand against him, not even the vaunted Prince of Wales, who in time would be Henry V, and the Welsh armies under Glyndwr's command marched into England itself. Then he simply disappeared - vanished so completely that there was no record of what had become of him. And the English marched back into Wales once more.

"It is so," said the Lady, who, though he had not given voice to his thoughts, seemed to have heard them anyway.

"He was in your service?" John Ross whispered. "Owain Glyndwr?"

"For many years." The Lady s.h.i.+mmered with movement as she pa.s.sed to another point, closer to where the fairies spilled down off the waterfall in a shower of light. "He chose service to me over service to his country, a new life and commitment in exchange for an old. My need for him was greater. He understood that. He understood that only he would do. He sacrificed himself. He was valiant and strong in the face of terrible danger. He was one of the brave. And more. Look closely on his face, John Ross."

One arm gestured, and the fisherman reappeared, standing close beside her. His cloak and broad-brimmed hat were gone, replaced by chain mail and armor plate. His fis.h.i.+ng pole was gone as well, and he held instead a broadsword. He looked on John Ross, his face fully revealed by the starlight, and in that face Ross saw himself.

"You carry his blood in your veins." The Lady's voice floated on a whisper of night breeze. "That is why you are summoned to me. What was best in him six hundred years ago reflects anew in you, born of the time and the need, by my will and my command."

The Fairy Glen echoed with her words, the sounds reverberating off the rush of the water, off the s.h.i.+mmer of the light from stars and fairies. John Ross was frozen with fear and disbelief, so petrified he could not move. A part of him thought to run, a part to stand, and a part to scream, to give voice to what roiled within. This was all wrong; it was madness. Why him? .Why, even if he was Owain Glyndwr's kin? He was no warrior, no fighter, no leader, no man of courage or strength. He was a failed scholar and a drifter with no purpose or conviction. He might have thought to find himself by coming here, but not in this way, and surely not in whatever cause it was the Lady championed.

"I cannot be like him," he blurted out in despair. "Look at me!"

"Watch," she whispered in reply, and brushed at the air before him with a feathery touch.

What he witnessed next was unspeakable. A black hole opened, and suddenly he stood in a world of such bleak landscape and dark despair that he knew instinctively it lacked even the faintest semblance of hope. What moved through it was unrecognizable - things that looked vaguely human, but walked on all fours, creatures dark and scaled, shadows with blunted, scarred features and eyes that reflected with a fiat, harsh light. They moved through the debris of a ruined civilization, through remnants of buildings and roads, the consequences of a catastrophe of monumental proportions. The creatures seemed part of that landscape, wedded to it in the way that ash is to fire, and were one with the shadows that cloaked everything.

The setting s.h.i.+fted. John Ross stood within the camps in which the survivors of the holocaust were penned, imprisoned to live out their lives in servitude to those who had been like them, but had embraced the madness that had destroyed their world. Both showed themselves, victors and victims, born of the same flesh and blood; both had been transformed into something barely recognizable and impossibly sad.

There was more, scene after scene of the destruction, of its aftermath, of the madness that had consumed everything. Ross felt something s.h.i.+ft inside him, a lurching recognition, and even before she spoke the words that came next, he knew what they would be.

"It is the future," she said softly, her words as delicate as flower petals. "It approaches."

The vision disappeared. The black hole closed. Ross stood again before her, surrounded by the fairies and the night. Once more, he found his voice. "No," he said. "No, it will never be like that. We would never allow ourselves to become like that. Never."

She floated on the surface of the stream now, balanced on the night air. "Would you change the future, John Ross? Would you be one of those who would forbid it? Then do as Owain Glyndwr once did, as all the others did who entered into my service. Embrace me."

She approached him slowly, a wraith in the starlight, advancing without apparent motion. "This is what is required of you. You must become one of my champions, my paladins, my knights-errant. You must go forth into the world and do battle with those who champion the Void. The war between us is as old as time and as endless. You know of it, for it is revealed by every tongue and written in every language. It is the confrontation between good and evil, between creation and destruction, between life and death. There are warriors that serve each of us, but only a handful like you. You have long sought after yourself, John Ross, searching for the way that you were meant to travel in your life. You have come to me for that reason. Your way lies through me. I am the road that you must take."

Ross shook his head anew. "I can't do this. I haven't the... I'm not strong enough, not..."

"Give me your hand."

She held forth her own, s.h.i.+mmering like quicksilver in the starlight. Ross flinched away, unwilling to do as she asked. His eyes lowered, and he tried to hide. The Lady waited, her hand held forth, her body still. She had approached to within a yard of him now, so close that he could feel the heat of her, an invisible fire that burned somewhere deep within. Although he tried not to, he could not help himself. He looked at her.

"Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d," he whispered in awe and fear.

"Give me your hand," she repeated.

He did so then, compelled by the force of her voice and the recognition that he could not escape what was about to happen. He placed his hand of flesh and blood within her own of heat and light, and the shock of the contact dropped him instantly to his knees. He threw back his head and tried to scream what he was feeling, but no sound would come from his mouth. He closed his eyes and waited to die, but found instead that it was not death that had come to claim him, but life. Strength filled him, drawn from the well of his heart. Visions flooded his mind, and he saw himself as he could be, as he must be, a man become new again, a man reborn. He saw his future in the Lady's service, saw the roads he would travel down and the journeys he would make, saw the people whose lives he would change and those he might save. In the mix of pa.s.sion and heat that twisted and built within the core of his being, he found the belief the Lady had foreseen.

She released him then, and he sagged forward, gasping for air, feeling the cool dampness of the earth against his knees and palms, feeling the power of her touch rush through him.

"Rise," she whispered, and he did, surprised to find that he could do so, that there was within him, sparking like flint on stone, the promise that he could do anything.

"Embrace me," she whispered, and he did that as well, without hesitation or deliberation, casting off his doubt and fear and taking on the mantle of his newfound certainty and belief, reaching for her, committing himself irrevocably and forever to her service.