Damn you, Simon, he swore silently, resolutely, a litany meant to empower. Damn you to hell.
When he reached the staff, he rose again to his knees and wiped his bloodstained palms on his pants. Then he took the staff finely in his hands and levered himself back to his feet.
He stood there for a moment, swaying unsteadily. When the dizziness passed, he moved to an empty bench in the center of the hall, seated himself, slipped off the greatcoat, then the tattered shirt, and used the shirt to bind his ribs and chest in a mostly successful effort to slow the flow of his blood. He sat staring into space after that, trying to gather his strength. He didn’t think anything was broken, but he had lost a lot of blood. He could rat continue without help, and the only help he could count on now would have to come from within.
Hard-eyed and ashen-faced, he leaned forward on the bench, wrapped in the tatters of his shirt, his upper torso mostly bare and red-streaked with his blood. He straightened with an effort and tightened his grip on the staff, his abandoned choices swirling around him like wraiths, his decision of what he must -do fully embraced. He no longer cared about consequences or dreams. He could barely bring himself to think on the future beyond this night. What he knew was that he had been driven to his knees by something so foul and repulsive he could not bear another day of life if he did not bring an end to it.
So he called forth the magic of the staff, called it with a certainty that surprised him, called it with full acceptance of what it meant to do so. He renounced himself and what he had become. He renounced his stand of the past year and took up anew the mantle he had shed. He declared himself a Knight of the Word, begged for the right to become so once more, if only for this single night, if only for this solitary purpose. He armoured himself in his vow to become the thing he had tried so hard to disclaim, accepting as truth the admonitions of Owain Glyndwr and O’olish Amaneh. He bowed in acknowledgement to the cautions of the Lady as delivered by Nest Freemark and her friends, giving himself over once more to the promises he had made fifteen years earlier when he had taken up the cause of the Word and entered into His service,
Even then, the magic did not come at once, for it lay deep within the staff, waiting for the call to he night, for the prayer to be sincere. He could sense it, poised and heedful, but recalcitrant. He strained to reach it, to make it feel his need, to draw it to him as he would a reluctant child. His eyes were closed and his brow furrowed in concentration, and the pain that racked his body became a white-hot fury at the core of his heart.
Suddenly, abruptly, the lady was before him, there in the darkness of his mind, white-gowned and ephemeral, her hands reaching far him. Oh, my brave Knight Errant, would you truly come bark to me? Would you serve me as you once did, without reservation or guilt, without doubt or fear? Would you be mine as you were? her words filtered like the slow meandering of a forest stream through rocks and mud banks, soft and rippling. He cried at the, sound of her voice, the tearsfilling his lids and leaking down his bloodied~face. I would. l will. Always. Forever.
Then she was gone, and the magic of the staff stirred and gathered and came forth in a swan, steady river, climbing out of the polished black walnut into his arms and body.” filling him with its healing power.
Silver light enfolded the Knight of the Word with bright radiance, and he was alive anew.
And dead to what once he had hoped so, strongly he might be.
John Ross lifted his head in recognition, feeling the power of the magic flow through him, rising acct of the staff, anxious to serve. He let it strengthen him as nothing else could, not caring what it might cost him. For the cost was not his to measure. It would be measured in his dreams, when they returned. It would be measured in the time he would spend unprotected in the future he had sworn to prevent and, as a Knight of the Word once more, must now return to.