“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.