Word & Void 02 - A Knight of the Word (12 page)

Then he found the Fairy Glen and the ghost of Owain Glyndwr, the Welsh patriot, who appeared to him as a fisherman and persuaded him to come back at midnight so that he could see the fairies at play. Skeptical of the idea of fairies and a little frightened by the encounter, but captivated as well by the setting and the possibility that there was some truth to the fisherman’s words, he eventually did as he was asked. It was there, in the blackness of the new moon and the sweep of a thousand stars on a clear summer night, that the Lady appeared to him for the first and only time. She told him of her need for his services as a Knight of the Word. She revealed to him his blood link to Owain Glyndwr, who had served her as a Knight in his lifetime. She showed to him a vision of the future that would be if her Knights failed to prevent it. She persuaded him to accept her, to accept the position she offered him, to accept a new direction in his life.

To accept the way of the Word.

Now, to abandon that way, to sever the ties that bound him to the Word’s path, he decided he must return to her.

He bought a ticket, packed a single bag, and flew east. He arrived at Heathrow, boarded a train, and traveled west to Bristol and then across the border into Wales. He found the journey nostalgic and unsettling; his warm memories of the past competed with the harsh reality of his purpose in the present, and his emotions were left jumbled, his nerves on edge. It was late fall, and the countryside was beginning to take on a wintry cast as the colors of summer and autumn slowly drained away. The postage-stamp fields and meadows lay fallow, and the livestock huddled closer to the buildings and feeding troughs. Flowers had disappeared, and skies were clouded and gray with the changing weather.

He reached Betwys-y-Coed after expending several days and utilizing various forms of transportation, and he booked himself at a small inn. It began to rain the day he arrived, and it kept raining afterward. He waited for the rain to stop, spending time in the public rooms of the inn and exploring various shops he remembered from his visit before. A few of the residents remembered him. The village, he found, was substantially unchanged.

He spent time thinking about what he would say to the Lady when he came face-to-face with her. It would not be easy to tell her he could no longer be in her service. She was a powerful presence, and she would try to dissuade him from his purpose. Perhaps she would even hurt him. He still remembered how she had crippled him. After his return to his parents’ home in Ohio, her emissary, O’olish Amaneh, had come to him with the staff, and he had sensed immediately that his life would change irrevocably if he accepted it. His determination and conviction had been eroding steadily since his return from England, but now there was no time left to equivocate. The staff was thrust upon him, and the moment his hands touched the polished wood, his foot and leg cramped and withered, the pain excruciating, and he was bound to the talisman forever.

Would that change now? he wondered. If he was no longer a Knight of the Word, would his leg be healed, be made whole and strong again? Or would his decision to abandon his charge cost him even more?

He tried not to dwell on the matter, but the longer he waited, the harder it became to convince himself to carry through on his resolve. His imagination was working overtime after a week of deliberation, stimulated by the rain and the gray and his own fears, turned gloomy and despairing of hope. This was a mistake, he began to believe. This was stupid. He should not have come here. He should have stayed where he was. It was sufficient that he refused to act as a Knight of the Word. His decision did not require the Lady’s validation. He barely dreamed at all anymore, his dreams so indistinct by now that they lacked any recognizable purpose. They were closer to real dreams, to the ones normal people had that involved bits and pieces of events and places and people, all of it disjointed and meaningless. He was no longer being shown a usable future. He was no longer being given clues to a past he might act upon. Wasn’t that sufficient proof that he was severed from his charge as a Knight of the Word?

But in the end he decided that he was being cowardly. He had come a long way just to turn around and go home again, and he should at least give it a try. He put on a slicker and boots and hitched a ride out to the Fairy Glen. He went at midday, thinking that perhaps the daylight would lessen his trepidation. But it was a slow, steady rain that fell, turning everything gray and misty, and the world had taken on a hazy, ephemeral look in which nothing seemed substantive, but was all made of shadows and the damp.

His ride dropped him right next to the white board sign with black letters that read
Fairy Glen
. Ahead, a rutted lane led away from the highway and disappeared over a low rise, following a wooden fence. A small parking lot was situated on the left with a box for donations, and a wooden arrow pointed down the lane, saying
To the glen
.

It was all as he remembered.

The car drove away, and he was left alone. The forest about him on both sides of the road was deep and silent and empty of movement. He could see no houses. Fences ran along the road at various points, bent with its curves, and disappeared into the gray. He took a long moment to stare at the signs, the donation box, the parking lot, and the rutted lane, and then at the countryside about him, recalling what it had been like when he had come here for the first time. It had been magical. Right from the beginning, he had felt it. He had been filled with wonder and expectation. Now he was weary and uncertain and burdened with a deep-seated sense of failure. As if all he had accomplished had gone for nothing. As if all he had given of himself had been for naught.

He walked up the rutted lane to find the break in the fence line that would lead him down into the glen. He walked slowly, placing his feet carefully, listening to the patter of the rain and the silence behind it. The branches of the trees hung over him like giants’ arms, poised to sweep him up and carry him off. Shadows moved and drifted with the clouds, and his eyes swept the haze uneasily.

At the opening in the fence, he paused again, listening. There was nothing to hear, but he kept thinking there should be, that something of what he remembered of his previous visit would reveal itself. But everything seemed new and different, and while the terrain looked as he remembered, it didn’t feel the same. Something was missing, he knew. Something was changed.

He went through the gate in the fence and started down the pathway that wound into the ravine. Leaning heavily on his staff, he worked his way slowly ahead. The Fairy Glen was a jumble of massive boulders and broken rock and isolated patches of wildflowers and long grasses. A waterfall tumbled out of the high rocks to become a meandering stream of eddies and rapids, with pools so clear and still he could see the colored pebbles they collected. Rain dripped from the trees and puddled on the trail and ran down the steep sides of the ravine in rivulets that eroded the earth in intricate designs. No Birdsong disturbed the white noise of the water’s rush or the fall of the rain. No movement disrupted the deep carpet of shadows.

As he reached the floor of the ravine, he glanced back to where the waterfall spilled off the rocks, but there was no sign of the fairies. He slowed and looked around carefully. The Lady was nowhere to be seen. The Fairy Glen was cloaked in shadow and curtained by rain, and it was empty of life. It was as he remembered, but different, too. Like before, he decided, when he had stood at the gate opening, it seemed changed. He took a long moment to figure out what the nature of that change might be.

Then he had it. It was the absence of any magic. He couldn’t feel any magic here. He couldn’t feel anything.

His hand tightened on the staff, searching. The magic failed to respond. He stood staring at the Fairy Glen in disbelief, unable to accept that this could be so. Were the Lady and the fairies gone from the glen? Was that why he could not sense the magic? Because the magic was no longer here?

He walked along the rugged bank of the rain-choked stream, picking his way carefully over the litter of broken rock and thick grasses. On a flat stone shelf, he knelt and peered down into a still pool. He could see his reflection clearly. He looked for something more, for something different, for a sign. Nothing revealed itself. He watched the rain pock his reflection with droplets that sent glistening, concentric rings arcing away, one after the other. His image grew shimmery and distorted, and he looked quickly away.

When he lifted his head, a fisherman was standing on the opposite shore a dozen yards away, staring at him. For a moment, Ross couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He had convinced himself that the Fairy Glen was abandoned; he had given up hope of finding anyone here. But he recognized the fisherman instantly. His clothes and size and posture were unmistakable. And his look. Because he was a ghost and was not entirely solid, his body shifted and changed as the light played over it. When he tilted his head, as he did now, a slight movement of his broad-brimmed hat, his familiar features were revealed. It was Owain Glyndwr, his ancestor, the Welsh patriot who had fought against the English Bolingbroke, Henry IV—Owain Glyndwr, dead now for hundreds of years, but given new life in his service to the Lady. He looked just as he had years earlier, when Ross had first come upon him in the Fairy Glen.

Seeing him like this, materialized unexpectedly, would have startled John Ross before, but not now. Instead, he felt his heart leap with gratitude and hope.

“Hello, Owain,” he greeted with an anxious wave of his hand.

The fisherman nodded, a spare, brief movement. “Hello, John. How are you?”

Ross hesitated, suddenly unsure of what he should say. “Not well. Something’s happened. Something terrible.”

The other man nodded and turned away, working his line carefully through the rapids that swirled in front of where he stood. “Terrible things always happen when you are a Knight of the Word, John. A Knight of the Word is drawn to terrible things. A Knight of the Word stands at the center of them.”

Ross adjusted the hood of his slicker to ward off the rain that blew into his eyes. “Not any longer. I’m not a Knight of the Word anymore. I’ve given it up.”

The fisherman didn’t look at him. “You cannot give it up. The choice isn’t yours to make.”

“Then whose choice is it?”

The fisherman was silent.

“Is she here, Owain?” Ross asked finally, coming forward to the very edge of the rock shelf on which he stood. “Is the Lady here?”

The fisherman gave a barely perceptible nod. “She is.”

“Good. Because I couldn’t feel her, couldn’t feel anything of the magic when I walked down.” Ross groped for the words he needed. “I suppose it’s because I’ve been away for so long. But … it doesn’t feel right.” He hesitated. “Maybe it’s because I’m here in the daylight, instead of at night. You told me, the first day we met, that if it was magic I was looking for, if I wanted to see the fairies, it was best to come at night. I’d almost forgotten about that. I don’t know what I was thinking I’ll come back tonight—”

“John.” Owain’s soft voice stopped him midsentence. “Don’t come back. She won’t appear for you.”

John Ross stared. “The Lady? She won’t? Why not?” The fisherman took a long time before answering. “Because the choice isn’t yours to make.”

Ross shook his head, confused. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Which choice? The one for her to appear or the one for me to stop being a Knight of the Word?”

The other man worked his pole and line without looking up. “Do you know why you can’t feel the magic, John? You can’t feel it because you don’t admit that it’s inside yourself anymore. Magic doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t just appear. You have to believe in it.”

He looked over at Ross. “You’ve stopped believing.”

Ross flushed. “I’ve stopped believing in its usefulness. I’ve stopped wanting it to rule my life. That’s not the same thing.”

“When you become a Knight of the Word, you give yourself over to a life of service to the Word.” Owain Glyndwr ran his big, gnarled hands smoothly along the pole and line. Shadows from passing clouds darkened his features. “If it was an easy thing to do, anyone would be suitable to the task. Most aren’t.”

“Perhaps I’m one of them,” Ross argued, anxious to find a way to get his foot in the door the Lady had apparently closed on him. “Perhaps the Word made a mistake with me.”

He paused, waiting for a response. There was none. This was stupid, he thought, arguing with a ghost. Pointless. He closed his eyes, remembering San Sobel. “Listen to me, Owain. I can’t go through it anymore. I can’t live with it another day. The dreams and the killing and the monsters and the hate and fear and all of it endless and purposeless and stupid! I can’t do it. I don’t know how you did it.”

The big man turned to face him again, taking up the pole and line, looking away from the stream. “I did it because I had to, John. Because I was there. Because maybe there was no one else. Because I was needed to do it. Like you.”

Ross clenched his hands on the walnut staff. “I just want to return the staff,” he said quietly. “Why don’t I give it to you?”

“It doesn’t belong to me.”

“You could give it to the Lady for me.”

The fisherman shook his head. “If I take it from you, how will you leave the Fairy Glen? You cannot walk without the staff. Will you crawl out on your hands and knees like an animal? If you do, what will you find waiting for you at the rim? When you became a Knight of the Word, you were transformed. Do you think you can be as you were? Do you think you can forget what you know, what you’ve seen, or what you’ve done? Ever?”

John Ross closed his eyes against the tears that suddenly welled up. “I just want my life back. I just want this to be over.”

He felt the rain on his hands, heard the sound of the drops striking the rocks and trees and stream, small splashes and mutterings that whispered of other things. “Please, help me,” he said quietly.

But when he looked up again, the ghost of Owain Glyndwr was gone, and he was alone.