Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [77]
“Don’t let them bother you,” John Ross told her quietly, his voice soft and calm. “They’re not here because of you. They’re here because of me.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that for a moment the words didn’t register. Then she looked at him in surprise and whispered, “You can see them?”
He nodded without looking at her, without appearing to look at anything. “As clearly as you can. It’s why I’m here. It’s why I’ve come. To help, if I can. I’m in service to the Word.”
Nest was stunned. They continued to walk down the darkening roadway through the masses of feeders as if taking a garden stroll, and Nest fought to collect her thoughts.
“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 grass 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 space 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