He pauses to examine this phenomenon and decides he has changed dramatically from when he was a Knight of the Word. He is a Knight no longer, but he remembers when he was. Oddly, his memories are tinged with a wistfulness he can’t quite escape.
Before him, Seattle burns. By nightfall, it will have ceased to exist. Like his old life. Like the person he once was.
There are people huddled about him, and they glance at him fearfully when they think he is not looking. They are right to fiat him. He holds over them the power of life and death, They are his captives. They are his to do with as he chooses, and they are anxious to discover what he had planned for them. The exercise of such power is a curious feeling because it both attracts and repels him. He wonders in a vague sort of way how begot to this point in his life.
From the long, dark span of the high bride, bodies tumble into an abyss of smoke and fire like rag dolls. Their screams cannot be heard.
The old man approaches, as he has approached each time in the dream, and points his bony finger at Ross and whispers in his hoarse, ruined voice, “l know you.”
Get away from me, Ross orders in disgust and dismay, not wanting to hear the words he will speak.
“I know you,” the old man repeats, undeterred, the bright light of his madness shining in his strange, milky eyes. “You are the one who killed him. I was there.”
Ross stands his ground because he cannot afford to turn away. His captives are watching, listening, waiting for his response. They will measure his strength accordingly. The old man sways as if be were a reed caught in a stiff wind, stick-thin and ragged, his mind unbalanced, his laughter filled with echoes of his shattered life.
Get away from me, Ross says once more.
The Wizard of Oz! You killed him! I remember your face! I saw you there, in the glass palace, in the shadow of the tin woodman, in the Emerald City, on All Hallows’ Eve.” You killed the wizard of Oz! You killed him! You!
The words fade and die, and the old man begins to cry softly. Oh, God, it was the end of everything!
Ross shakes his head. It is a, familiar litany by now. He bas heard it before, and he turns away in curt dismissal. It is all in the past, and the past no longer matters to him.
But the old man, presses closer, insistent. I saw you. I watched you do it.I could not understand. He was your friend. There was no reason!
There was a reason, he thinks to himself though be cannot remember it now.
But, the young woman! The old man on his knees, his head hanging doglike between his slumped shoulders. What reason did you have for killing her?
Ross starts, shaken now. “what young woman?”
Couldn’t you have spared her? She was just trying to help. She seemed to know you . . .
Ross screams injury and shoves the old man away. The old man tumbles backward into the mud, ,gasping in shock. “Shut up.” Ross screams at him, furious, dismayed, because now he remembers this, as well, another part of the past he had thought buried, a truth he had left behind in the debris of his conversion . . .
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
The old man tries to crawl away, but he has crossed a line he should not have, and Ross cannot Forqive him his trespass. He strides to where the old man cringes, already anticipating the punisLment he will deliver and he lifts the heavy black staff and brings it down like a hammer. . .
Ross jerked upright in the darkness of his bedroom, eyes snapping open, body rigid, awash m terror. His breath came in quick, ragged gulps, and he could hear the pounding of his heart in his ears. Stef lay sleeping next to him, unaware of his torment. The bedside clock read five-thirty. He could hear a soft patter against the window glass. Outside, it was raining again.