Armageddon's Children

  He started away again, and this time Logan reluctantly followed. They moved out of the circle of the firelight and into the darkness. At first, Logan could barely see. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized that they were moving toward the river and the woods that bordered it. He could smell the sickness of the water, even here. The Rock River had gone bad on this stretch decades ago, poisoned first by chemicals and then by dead things.

  He glanced off through the trees, searching for hidden dangers, but found only skeletal trunks and limbs. Somewhere distant, he heard an owl. It surprised him. He seldom heard birds these days. Save for the carrion birds, he almost never saw them. Like the animals and fish, their populations had been decimated by the wars.

  “The Lady didn’t tell me why I was to come here,” he said, catching up to the other. “I assumed it was to be another demon hunt.”

  The big man nodded. “Your assumption was wrong. The truth, Logan, is that you can hunt and kill the demons until you are too old to walk, and they will still prevail. There are too many of them and too few of us. The world has been sliding down a steep slope for many years, and the climb back will be long and slow and painful. A new path must be found.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that killing demons will not restore the world. Humankind is fighting a war it cannot win.”

  They walked on without speaking for a time, their footfalls barely audible in the deep silence. Logan tried to absorb what he had just heard and could not make himself do so. Had he just been told that the human race was finished, that no matter what anyone did—the Knights of the Word included—it was over? He could not accept that, he decided. He could accept almost anything else, but not that.

  “Are you saying we should just give up?” he asked finally.

  The Sinnissippi glanced over at him. “If I tell you to give up, will you do so?”

  “No, not ever.”

  “Then I will not ask it of you.”

  They reached the bluffs overlooking the Rock. Below them the river wound through its broad channel, silvery and sleek in the moonlight, its clean look belying the reality of its condition. Stunted clumps of dead trees lined the banks on both sides. On the far side, houses sat dark and empty. Once people lived in those houses, families with pets and neighbors and friends, and on nights like these they would laugh and talk and watch television and then sleep peacefully, knowing that when they woke, their world would not have changed.

  Logan leaned on his staff. He was hot and stiff, impatient and tired. “What are you trying to tell me? Because I’m not understanding.”

  Two Bears sat cross-legged on the rocks at the edge of the bluff and peered out across the river. Logan hesitated, then joined him, setting the staff on the ground beside him.

  “Look around, Logan.” The big man made a sweeping gesture. “This park was beautiful once, a haven watched over and protected by a sylvan, a gathering place for creatures of magic. But it is dead and empty now. No sylvan watches over it. All the sylvans in the world are gone. They were destroyed along with their forests. What will it take to bring them back? What will it take to make the park beautiful again?”

  Logan waited a moment, then said, “Time.”

  “Rebirth.” Two Bears looked directly at him. “Do you know what lies in this park? My ancestors. Almost all of them, buried in the earth, right over there.”

  He pointed to a series of dark mounds visible through the trees not far from where they sat. Logan wondered where this was going.

  “I have strong memories of my people, but stronger memories still of a little girl who now also rests here. I met her in this park almost a hundred years ago, when I was younger than I am now.” He smiled. “She lived in a house close by the entrance. She was a friend to the sylvan who tended the park. The park was her playground. When she was in it, she was at her happiest. She was followed everywhere by a spirit creature, a huge wolf dog born of magic. The creature, it turned out, was a part of her. Bad and good, it was a part of her. She was the most important human being of her generation, but when I met her, she was still just a girl.”

  One eyebrow lifted quizzically. “Her name was Nest Freemark. Do you know of her?”

  Logan shook his head. “No.”

  “I found her first, but two others were searching for her, as well. One was a Knight of the Word named John Ross. The other was a demon. One had come to save her, the other to subvert her. She possessed great magic, Logan. She was the linchpin to the future of the world, able to change the course of history because of who she was and what she might do. She didn’t know any of it. She discovered a part of the truth of things over the course of the next fifteen years, but she did not ever know the whole of it.”

  “Why was she so important?” Logan caught sight of a pair of feeders lurking in the trees and forced himself to ignore them. “Is she the reason we’re here?”

  Two Bears nodded. “She rests in the cemetery just over the rise, behind the burial mounds of my people. She has been gone from the world for a long time now, but her legacy lives on in the form of a child born to her in the fall of her thirtieth year. It was her only child, a child she hadn’t even known she would produce. It was born of magic, a creature of enormous power, her gift to the world we now live in because it is that world’s best hope.”

  “Must be a rather old child by now,” Logan observed.

  “Almost eighty, but still only a child. It is not a human child—at least, not as we think of human children. It began life as a gypsy morph, a creature of a very powerful, wild magic. Gypsy morphs can assume any shape, take any form. No two have ever turned out exactly the same. Only a handful of morphs are conceived in a human lifetime, and most are never even glimpsed. But John Ross trapped this one on the Oregon coast, and after it had gone through its changes and taken the shape of a small boy, he took it with him to this town to find Nest Freemark. Its purpose in life was to become her child, born to her in the aftermath of the battle that took Ross’s life. The morph entered Nest Freemark in one form and emerged in another. Only she knew its origins and its secrets. Only she knew what it really was.”

  He paused. “Knowing what it was, she kept it apart from the rest of the world, living mostly alone. It stayed with her for a time—we don’t know how long exactly—and then it disappeared. I kept waiting for it to resurface, but its time had not yet come. By then, the world was drifting toward anarchy and the seeds of the Great Wars had begun to take root. I searched for the child without success; wherever it was, it was well hidden. Very few can hide from me, but this one did. I could not track its magic because I could not define what it was. The magic of each gypsy morph, like the morph itself, is unlike that of any other. Wild magic is unpredictable; it may turn out to be either good or evil. The demons sought to capture and make use of this morph, aware of its potential. But Nest Freemark saved it.”

  Logan looked out across the river. “You’re about to tell me that it’s reappeared, aren’t you?”

  Two Bears nodded. “Its time is now, after all these years. Its purpose is known. The Lady has divined it. But it is still a child, still in a child’s form with a child’s mind. It will know what to do when it is time, but not how to survive until then. It must have help for that. It must have a protector.”

  Logan sighed. “That would be me?”

  “Whoever goes to the aid of this child will be attacked from all sides. The demons will do anything to destroy it or to stop it from fulfilling its purpose. I know of no one better able to withstand the demons than you, Logan. The Lady has made her choice. I think she has chosen well.”

  The owl hooted softly, closer now. Sylvans had once ridden owls, Logan remembered. Six-inch-tall fairy creatures with long life spans and tiny bodies made of sticks and moss, their given task was to care for trees and plants. He had never seen one. Were they really all gone?

  “What makes this child so important? What is it supposed to do?”

  Two B
ears leaned forward and rested his elbows on his crossed legs. His copper face dipped into shadow. “It is going to save humankind, Logan.”

  “That’s a tall order.” He tried to keep the incredulity from his voice. “How is it going to do that?”

  The Sinnissippi considered his answer for a moment. “I told you earlier that the climb out of the abyss would be long and difficult. What I did not tell you is that only a few would make that climb. Most will perish in the effort. The demons have won their war against the old world, and no amount of retribution is going to change that. The evil has penetrated to the core of civilization. A fire is coming, huge and engulfing. When it ignites, most of what is left of humanity will vanish. It will happen suddenly and quite soon.”

  “Sounds biblical.” Logan shifted his weight toward the other man. “You’re telling me the demons have managed to get their hands on nuclear weapons and intend to use them? On a massive scale?”

  The black eyes glittered from out of the shadow of the heavy brow. “What the demons either do not appreciate or do not care about is that it will prove indiscriminate in its destructiveness. Bad and good alike will be consumed. Most of the demons will perish, too.”

  “That part sounds pretty good. But the morph can prevent all this in some way?”

  “No one can prevent it. Nothing can stop it. But the morph has the means to survive it, the means to transcend the destruction and allow a handful of the world’s inhabitants to start anew.”

  “How is it going to do that?”

  The Sinnissippi rocked backward slowly. “By opening a door that leads to a safe place.”

  “For a chosen few?”

  “For a scattering of men, women, and children who will find their way to you.”

  “The remnants of humankind.”

  “Some. Not all will be human.”

  Logan hesitated on hearing that, but decided not to pursue it. “Where will the child find this door?”

  “The child will know.”

  Logan felt a keen sense of frustration. Nothing about any of this seemed very clear. “One problem. If you can’t find this child, how am I supposed to? I don’t have the skills for that.”

  “You won’t need them. You will have its mother’s help.” He climbed to his feet. “Come, Logan. We will walk some more.”

  He led the way through the trees and past the burial mounds toward the remains of a wire fence that had long since rusted away into orphan posts and twisted ends. Logan followed the Sinnissippi in silence, but his eyes kept scanning their surroundings. He was still unconvinced that they were as safe as the big man seemed to think. He had spent too many years looking over his shoulder ever to think of himself as being safe. The habits of his lifetime could not be put aside easily.

  On the other side of the fence, they found the cemetery. Rows of stone markers in various stages of decay poked up through heavy weeds. Some of the markers had fallen over completely. Many had been vandalized, their inscriptions so badly defaced that they were unreadable. Logan didn’t know how cemeteries were supposed to look. No one had used cemeteries since before he was born. But he could envision how this one would have appeared if it had been kept up. It made him sad, thinking of so many lives forgotten. Still, he supposed, you carried your memories of the dead in your heart. That was the safest place for them.

  Two Bears took him onto the bluffs, into a smaller section of the cemetery that was divided from the larger by a cracked and buckled blacktop road. They walked through the weeds and grasses and marble and granite stones to a pair of massive oaks. A plain, unadorned marker sat by itself in front of the trees.

  The big man stopped and pointed at the marker. Logan stared at the writing. It read:

  MARION CASE

  Born September 2, 1948

  Died March 21, 2018

  “Who is Marion Case?” Logan asked.

  In response, Two Bears swept his hand in front of the stone, and the old writing melted away to reveal new.

  NEST FREEMARK

  Born January 8, 1983

  Died July 29, 2062

  FAST RUNNER

  “I disguised it after the wars began, to hide it from those who might do damage even to the dead,” the Sinnissippi said quietly. “Even in her bones, there is great power. Power that should not fall into the hands of the wrong creatures.”

  Logan glanced over. “What does the inscription mean? Fast Runner?”

  “She was an Olympic champion in the middle-distance events. She won many times. Even though it wasn’t her most important legacy, it had special meaning for her. I came back after she died, buried her, and set this stone in place. I knew her work wasn’t finished. But this is where she belongs. Sit with me.”

  He lowered himself to the ground over the grave site, crossed his legs, and folded his arms. Glancing about first, Logan followed. “What are we doing?”

  O’olish Amaneh didn’t answer. Instead, he put a finger to his lips to signal for silence. Then he closed his eyes and went very still. Logan watched him, waiting to see what would happen. After a moment, the big man began to chant softly in a tongue that was unfamiliar to Logan and must have been the language of his people. The chant rose and fell, filling the silence with its rolling cadences and sharp punctuation. Logan picked up his staff and held it in front of him, ready for anything. He had no idea what to expect. He worried that the sound of the chanting would bring things he would just as soon avoid.

  But nothing appeared, not even the feeders he had seen earlier. After a few anxious moments, he began to relax.

  Then tiny lights rose out of the earth, out of the grave itself, and danced on the air before him. The dance went on, the lights spinning and whirling and forming intricate patterns. The dance grew frenetic, and suddenly the lights flared a brilliant white, dropped to the earth like stones, and disappeared. The chanting stopped. Two Bears continued to sit without moving, his breathing quick and labored.

  Logan blinked to regain his sight, blinded by that final surge of light. When he could see again, Two Bears was looking over at him. “It is done. She has given us what we need.”

  He reached down, scooped a scattering of white sticks from the grave, and slipped them into his pocket before Logan could determine what they were. Then he rose and started away. Again, Logan followed obediently.

  They returned to the fire and the picnic table, where they seated themselves across from each other. The intensity of the fire had not diminished, even though neither of them had been there to feed it. Logan glanced around the clearing. Everything was as they had left it.

  “This is how you will find the child,” Two Bears said suddenly.

  He laid a piece of black cloth on the surface of the table, spreading it out and smoothing it over. When he had the wrinkles brushed out and the material squared, he reached into his pocket and removed the white sticks, holding them out for Logan to see.

  The white sticks were human bones.

  “The bones of Nest Freemark’s right hand,” O’olish Amaneh said softly. “Take them.”

  Logan decided not to ask the other how he had gotten the bones out of the coffin and the body of Nest Freemark. Some secrets you didn’t need to solve. Instead, he did as he was asked, accepting the bones and holding them cupped in the palm of his hand. He was surprised at how light and fragile they felt. He studied them a moment, then glanced questioningly at the big man.

  “Now cast them onto the cloth,” the other ordered.

  Logan hesitated, then scattered the bones over the cloth. For a moment, nothing happened. The bones lay in a jumble, their whiteness stark against the dark surface. Suddenly they began to jerk and twist, and then to slide across the cloth and link together at the joints to form fingers and a thumb.

  When they were still again, all five digits were stretched out in the same direction, pointing west.

  “That is where you will find the child, Logan,” Two Bears said softly. “Somewhere west. That is where you must go.”
>
  He gathered up the bones, wrapped them in the black cloth, and gave the bundle to Logan. “The bones will lead you to the child. Cast them as often as you need to. When you have found the child, give it the bones of its mother and it will know what to do from there.”

  Logan stuffed the cloth and the bones into his jacket. He wasn’t sure if he believed all this or not. He guessed he did. The world was a strange place now, and strange things were a regular part of it.

  “After I find the child and give it the bones, then what?” he pressed.

  “You are to go with it wherever you must. You are to protect it with your life.” The Sinnissippi’s eyes were strangely kind and reassuring. “You must remember what I said and believe. The child is humankind’s last hope. The child is humankind’s link to the future.”

  Logan stared at him a moment, then shook his head. “I’m only one man.”

  “When in the history of the human race has one man not been enough, Logan?”

  He shrugged.

  “You will have help. Others will find their way to you. Some will be powerful allies—perhaps more powerful than you. But none will be better suited to what is needed. You are the protector the child requires. Yours is the greatest courage and the strongest heart.”

  Logan smiled. “Pretty words.”

  “Words of truth.”

  “Why don’t you do this, Two Bears? Why bother with me? You are stronger and more powerful than any Knight of the Word. Wouldn’t you be better suited to this task?”

  O’olish Amaneh smiled. “Once, I might have been. Before the Nam and the breaking of my heart. Now I am too old and tired. I am too soft inside. I no longer want to fight. I am filled with the pain and sadness of my memories of the battles I have already fought. The history of my people is burden enough. I am the last, and the last carries all that remains of those who are gone.”

  Logan folded his scarred hands and placed them on the table. “Well, I will do what I can.”