Nest looked away again. "He didn't say so."
"No, he wouldn't. He never does. He just shows up and talks about the future, how it is linked to the past, how everything is tied together; then he disappears again. It's always the same. But I think, from what I've heard, that maybe he is one of us."
They pushed through a tangle of brush that had overgrown the narrow trail, spitting out gnats that flew into their mouths, lowering their heads against the shards of sunlight that penetrated the shadows.
"Tell me something about Wraith," John Ross asked, trying to change the subject.
The girl shrugged. "You saw. I don't know what he is. He's been there ever since I was very little. He protects me from the feeders, but I don't know why. Even Gran and Pick don't seem to know. I don't see him much. He mostly comes out when the feeders threaten me."
She told him about her night forays into the park to rescue the strayed children, and how Wraith would always appear when the feeders tried to stop her. Ross mulled the matter over in his mind. He had never heard of anything like it, and he couldn't be certain from what Nest told him if Wraith was a creature of the Word or the Void. Certainly Wraith's behavior suggested his purpose was good, but Ross knew that where Nest Freemark was concerned things were not as simple as they might seem.
"Where are we going?" Ross asked her as they crested the rise and moved into the shadow of the deep woods.
"Just a little farther," she advised, easing ahead on the narrow path to lead the way.
The ground leveled and the trees closed about, leaving them draped in heavy shadow. The air was fetid and damp with humidity, and insects were everywhere. Ross brushed at them futilely. The trail twisted and wound through thick patches of scrub and brambles. Several times it branched, but Nest did not hesitate in choosing the way. Ross marveled at the ease with which she navigated the tangle, thinking on how much at home she was here, on how much she seemed to belong. She had the confidence of youth, of a young girl who knew well the ground she had already covered, even if she did not begin to realize how much still lay ahead.
They passed from the thicket into a clearing, and there, before them, was a giant oak. The oak towered overhead, clearly the biggest tree in the park, one of the biggest that Ross had ever seen. But the tree was sick, its leaves curling and turning black at the tips, its bark split and ragged and oozing discolored fluid that stained the earth at its roots. Ross stared at the tree for a moment, stunned both by its size and the degree of its decay, then looked questioningly at the girl.
"This is what I wanted you to see," she confirmed.
"What's wrong with it?"
"Exactly the question!" declared Pick, who materialized out of nowhere on Nest Freemark's shoulder. "I thought that you might know."
The sylvan was covered with dust and bits of leaves. He straightened himself on the girl's shoulder, looking decidedly out of sorts.
"Spent all morning foraging about for roots and herbs that might be used to make a medicine, but nothing seems to help. I've tried everything, magic included, and I cannot stop the decay. It spreads all through the tree now, infecting every limb and every root. I'm at my wits' end."
"Pick thinks it's the demon's work," Nest advised pointedly.
Ross looked at the tree anew, still perplexed. "Why would the demon do this?"
"Well, because this tree is the prison of a maentwrog!" Pick declared heatedly. Quickly, he told John Ross the tale of the maentwrog's entrapment, of how it had remained imprisoned all these years, safe beyond the walls of magic and nature that combined to shut it away. "But no more," the sylvan concluded with dire gloom. "At the rate the decay is spreading, it will be free before you know it!"
Ross walked forward and stood silently before the great oak. He knew something of the creatures that served the Void and particularly of those called maentwrogs. There were only a handful, but they were terrible things. Ross had never faced one, but he had been told of what they could do, consumed by their need to destroy, unresponsive to anything but their hunger. None had been loose in the world for centuries. He did not like thinking of what it would mean if one were to get loose now.
In his hand, the black staff pulsed faintly in response to the nearness of the beast, a warning of the danger. He stared upward into the branches of the ancient tree, trying to see something that would help him decide what to do.
"I lack any magic that would help," he said quietly. "I'm not skilled in that way."
"It's the demon's work, isn't it?" Pick demanded heatedly.
Ross nodded. "I expect it is."
The sylvan's narrow face screwed into a knot. "I knew it, I just knew it! That's why none of our efforts have been successful! He's counteracting them!"
Ross looked away. It made sense. The maentwrog would be another distraction, another source of confusion. It was the way the demon liked to work, throwing up smoke and mirrors to mask what he was really about.
Nest was telling Pick about the encounter with the demon in church that morning, and the sylvan was jumping up and down on her shoulder and telling her he'd warned her, he'd told her. Nest looked appalled. They began to argue. Ross glanced over at them, then walked forward alone and stood directly before the tree. The staff was throbbing in his hand, alive with the magic, hot with anticipation for what waited. Not yet. He reached forward with his free hand and touched the damaged bark gently. The tree felt slick and cold beneath his fingers, as if its sickness had come to the surface, coated its rough skin. A maentwrog, he thought grimly. A raver.
Ross studied the ground about him, and everywhere the earth was damp and pitted, revealing long stretches of the tree's exposed roots. No ants or beetles crawled upon its surface. There was no movement anywhere. The tree and its soil had become anathema to living things.
Ross sighed deeply. His inadequacy appalled him. He should be able to do something. He should have magic to employ. But he was a knight, and the magic he had been given to use could only destroy.
He turned back again. Nest and Pick had stopped arguing and were watching him silently. He could read the question in then- eyes. What should they do now? They were waiting, on him to provide them with an answer.
There was only one answer he could give. They would have to find the demon.
Which was, of course, like so many things, much easier said than done.
CHAPTER 21
After John Ross and Nest departed, Old Bob helped Evelyn clean up the remains of the picnic lunch. While his wife packed away the dishes and leftovers, he gathered together the used paper plates, cups, and napkins and carried them to a trash bin over by one of the cook stations. When they were done, they sat together on the blanket and looked out through the heat to where the sunlight sparkled off the blue waters of the Rock River in brilliant, diamond bursts.
She liked it when I called her Dark Eyes, he thought as he sat with his hand covering hers, remembering the sudden, warm look she had given him. It took him back to when they were much younger, when Caitlin was still a baby, before the booze and the cigarettes and all the hurt. He remembered how funny she had been, how bright and gay and filled with life. He glanced over at her, seeing the young girl locked deep inside her aging body. His throat tightened. If she would just let me get close again.
On the river, boats were drifting with the current, slow and aimless. Some carried fishermen, poles extended over the water, bodies hunched forward on wooden seats in silent meditation. Some carried sunbathers and swimmers on their way to the smattering of scrub islands that dotted the waters where they widened just west of the park and the bayou. There were a few large cruisers, their motors throbbing faint and distant like aimless bumblebees. Flags and pennants flew from their masts. A single sailboat struggled to catch a breeze with its limp triangular sail, hi the sunlight, birds soared from tree to tree, out over the waters and back again, small flickers of light and shadow.