A demon emerges from the crush of bodies and rips the black staff from his hands. No one has ever been able to do this before, but that is because he has always had the magic to prevent it and now he does not. The demon studies the staff, its twisted face bristling with dark hair and pocked with deep hollows where the leathery skin has collapsed into the bone. It attempts to snap the staff in two, using its inhuman strength, but the staff resists its efforts. Frustrated, the demon throws it down and stamps on it, but the staff will not break. Finally, the demon burns it with magic, scattering the once-men who have gotten too close, leaving the staff charred and smoking within an outline of blackened earth.
They bear him from the clearing then, dozens of hands holding him fast as they move back through the woods toward the village. The demon follows, clutching the remains of the staff. He can hear anew the shrieks and moans of the injured and dying, of the people who first harbored him and then gave him up, guilty and innocent alike. Many will be dead before the day is done, and this time, he knows, he will be one of them. The thought of dying does not frighten him; he has lived with the possibility for too long to fear it now. Nor is he frightened of the pain. There are rents and tears in his skin, and his blood flows down his arms and legs, but he does not feel it. The pain he feels most lies deep inside his heart.
His captors bear him past the village through a ruined orchard and up a small rise to a country church. The church is smoldering from afire that has mostly burned itself out. The roof has collapsed, the walls are scorched, and the windows have been broken out. A clutch of once-men have brought a large wooden cross from within and laid it on the open ground. The brackets that secured it to the wall behind the altar are still attached, twisted and scarred. Once-men with hammers and iron spikes stand waiting, heads turning quickly at his approach.
Hands lower him roughly to the earth and hold him pinned against the wooden cross, arms outstretched, legs crossed at the ankles. They strip off his boots so that his feet will be unprotected. He does not struggle against them. There is no reason to do so. His time as a Knight of the Word is ended. He watches almost disinterestedly as the demon casts the ruined staff on the ground at his feet and the men with the hammers and spikes kneel beside him. They force one hand open and place the tip of a spike against his palm. He remembers a dream he had—long ago, when there was still hope—of being in this time and place, of hanging broken from a cross. He remembers, and thinks that perhaps the measure of any life is the joining of the past and the future at the moment of death.
Then a hammer rises and falls, and the spike is driven through the bones and flesh of his hand…
-=O=-***-=O=-
Ross awoke with a gasp, hands clenching the sheets and blankets, body rigid and sweating. He lay staring into the darkness of the room for several moments, trying to remember where he was. His dreams were always like this—so disturbing that waking from them left him feeling adrift and lost.
Then he felt Josie Jackson stir next to him, folding her body into his, and he remembered that he was in her house, in her bedroom, and had fallen asleep after lovemaking. A sliver of streetlight silvery with frost and cold glimmered through a gap in the window curtains. Josie put her arm around his chest, her fingers settling on his shoulder, smooth and warm. Her body heat infused him with reassurance and a sense of place.
But any contentment he felt was illusory. The dream had told him that his failure to save the gypsy morph, to breach its layers of self-protection, to discover the key to its magic and thereby bring it alive, was locking his future in place.