Armageddon's Children (30 page)

Two Bears, Angel thought, remembering. It was Two Bears who had come to her in the beginning to make her a Knight of the Word. It was Two Bears who acted as emissary to the Lady, the bearer of the black staff, the giver of the Word’s power as its champion. How long ago it seemed now.

“Am I to help this Knight of the Word?” she asked.

The tatterdemalion shook her head, her hair rippling like a length of blue silk. “He goes another way from you; his is a different quest. If he lives, you will see him when you are finished.”

If he lives. Sure. And if I live.

“So this talisman I’m being sent to find is not the gypsy morph?” she pressed. She knew the story of the gypsy morph and Nest Freemark. Two Bears had told it to her. She wasn’t sure she believed it, Ailie’s tale notwithstanding. “Then what sort of talisman is it?”

“It is an Elfstone.”

Now Angel was really lost. “An Elfstone?” she asked. “As in Elves?”

“Elves created it, long ago in the world of Faerie.”

Angel scowled, angry now. “
Elves
created it? You’re saying there are
Elves
out there? What does
that
mean? Look, I don’t know what any of this is about. I don’t know anything about Elves and their Stones. I’m a barrio girl, a street girl, never even been this far north before in my life, and this Elf stuff is just words that don’t mean anything. You want to tell me what you’re talking about?”

The tiny hands tightened on her own, surprisingly strong. “There are Elves in the world, Angel Perez. There have always been Elves in the world, even before there were humans. They were of the old people, in the time of Faerie, in the world as the Word conceived it before humans came into it. But the Faerie world faded, until only the Elves remained of the old people, and the Elves went into hiding. They have been in hiding ever since.”

Ailie pressed close. “But now they must come back into the world if they are to save themselves. They are threatened as humans are threatened, but their salvation lies in the recovery of an Elfstone called a Loden. The Loden is lost to them and must be found. It will give them a way to leave their hiding place and travel to where they will be safe. But the search for the Loden will be difficult and dangerous, and they lack the use of the magic that once would have protected them. They need a Knight of the Word to keep them safe, Angel.”

Angel was still coming to terms with the idea that there were Elves, beings she had always believed to be imaginary, creatures of storybooks and legends. What else was there in the world that she didn’t know about—what else that she wrongly assumed didn’t exist? Her world had always been one of concrete and steel, the ruins of cities and skyscrapers.

She looked off into the trees, then back at Ailie. Well, she thought, if you’d accepted that tatterdemalions were real, how big of a jump was it to believe in Elves?

“So? The Lady has asked that I do all this? She thinks I’m the right one to undertake this search? There is no one else better suited?”

Ailie smiled sadly. “There is no one else at all.”

Angel drew in a quick breath and exhaled sharply. “All of the Knights of the Word are gone?”

The tatterdemalion released her hands, folded her child’s arms across her chest, and hugged herself. “Will you go?”

Angel took a long moment to answer. She felt the world sliding away from her—the world of her childhood, the only world she had ever known—and it left her feeling bereft and hollow. Everything she knew of life aside from what she did—the rescue of children, the defense of the compounds—had been gone a long time. Now even the little she had been left was about to be taken away, too. It was difficult to accept, and she didn’t know if she could.

“What of these people I lead?” she asked. “These children and their protectors? They depend on me.”

“You may see them again in another place and time.” Ailie’s smile was a flicker of brightness. “But they travel too slowly for you, and their road leads another way. You must tell them to travel north to the Columbia River in the Cascade Mountains. Someone will find them there when it is time.”

Angel did not miss the evasiveness in Ailie’s response. You
may
see them again.
Someone
will find them. But not necessarily her because maybe she wouldn’t be alive to do so. Whispers of terrible danger echoed in Ailie’s words—unvoiced promises of confrontations and struggles that would end in someone’s death. She would have believed it in any event because she was a Knight of the Word and it was the nature of her life. But the tatterdemalion’s responses left no doubt.

She sighed and nodded. “
Muy bien.
How will I find these Elves? Where do I go?”

“I will take you,” Ailie answered.

“You will go with me?”

“I will be your guide and your conscience.”

Angel blinked. “My conscience?”

The tatterdemalion took a long moment before responding. “It may be that you will misplace your own. It may be that you will need a fresh one. It may be that what you encounter on a journey such as this will require it.”

Angel didn’t like the sound of this. The tatterdemalion was making a point of telling her that her conscience might become an issue for her. She would not do that if the Lady had not told her to do so. Ailie was acting under orders to prepare Angel for what lay ahead, so that she could not say later that she had not been warned. The implications were not encouraging: it suggested strongly that in the face of future events she might consider turning back.

She shook her head. “What training have you had in the conscience department? Why should I listen to you?”

“Sometimes you cannot hear your own voice clearly and need another to enable it to be understood,” the other responded. “I am to be that second voice, there when you need it. But I am not to make your decisions for you. You must do that for yourself.”

Angel nodded slowly, understanding the wisdom of this answer. She was being sent out alone; perhaps she would be alone for much of the time. It was not a good thing to have no one to talk to. Given what she was being asked to do, it made sense that the Lady would send someone with her of whom she could ask questions and seek advice. A tatterdemalion, a creature of Faerie, was not the worst choice.

“Your guidance and counseling will be welcome,
amiguita mía,
” she said to Ailie. “You and I, we will do what we can for these Elves. We will travel to where they live and then take them to find their Elfstone. But,” she held up one finger, “when we are done, I will come back for these children and their protectors and take them to where they, too, will be safe. Agreed?”

“Once the Loden is found, the Lady says you are free to do whatever you wish,” the tatterdemalion said. “But nothing will change who you are. You will still be a Knight of the Word.”

Angel shook her head and brushed back her dark hair. “I don’t want to be anything else, Ailie.”
Not since Johnny died.
“What happens now?”

Ailie looked skyward, as if searching for something in the clouds and mist. “We leave. We go north.”

Angel sighed. “Not until I tell someone what’s happening. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

SHE WENT TO
find Helen Rice because she couldn’t think of anyone else to talk to about what she intended. She was still struggling to accept that she had agreed to undertake a search for Elves—
for Elves, ¡dios mío!
—and for a magic that would protect them from the world’s destruction. But what choice did she have? The world’s misery was an unbearable weight, an accumulation of sorrows and horrors that would in a time fast approaching bury them all. If she could do something more than what she was doing to change things, she could hardly refuse the chance. Still, it didn’t make things any easier that what she was being asked to do was almost impossible for her to understand.

Elves and Elfstones. Faerie creatures and their magic.

She found Helen standing apart from the children, who were eating a hasty breakfast before the caravan set out. Already the trucks were lined up for boarding, supplies stacked for loading. The hoods of the trucks were raised as mechanics installed fresh solar-charged batteries. Apparently, someone had been thinking ahead after all.

“Angel, where have you been?” her friend asked, turning to greet her. Helen’s face was dirt-smudged and her eyes tired. “Get something to eat while you can.”

Angel shook her head. “I’m not going with you. I have something else I must do. It will take me far away from you and the children. You’ll have to go on without me and protect yourselves as best you can until I come back. Can you do this?”

Helen stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “I can do anything I have to do.” She paused. “Can you tell me what this is about?”

“It’s something I have been given to do as a Knight of the Word. It will mean helping others who need it even more than you and the children. But I won’t forget you. Take everyone north to the Columbia River and wait at the edge of the Cascade Mountains. Do you know the way?”

Helen nodded. “Others traveling with me know it better than I do. We will find our way.”

“Be careful. The once-men will follow you north; they will try to trap you somewhere along the way. You must not underestimate them. If they find you on the Columbia, go farther north and seek shelter in the compounds there.”

“But you will come for us?”

Angel took a deep breath and promised what she shouldn’t have. “I will come for you.”

Helen reached out for her and hugged her close. Her thin body was shaking, and her usually steady voice sounded strained and broken. “You have done so much for us. You are the backbone of our courage, and we can’t afford to lose you. Please be careful.”

Angel hugged her back. “Care for the children,
amiga mía. Confíoenti.
I’m relying on you.”

She kissed Helen Rice on the cheek and broke away when she felt the other woman start to cry.

L
OGAN TOM WAS
almost all the way across the Great Plains and in sight of the dark wall of the Rocky Mountains when he encountered the Preacher. He had been driving west for almost two days, following the highway that the finger bones of Nest Freemark had set him upon more than a week earlier. He hadn’t slept in two days. He hadn’t even tried the first night, after fleeing the fiery ruins of the compound and its monsters. On the second night, terrifying dreams and sudden awakenings plagued him, and he was consumed by an unshakable sense that fate was overtaking him and nothing he did would turn it aside.

His surroundings did not comfort or reassure him. The plains were a dry and empty sweep of land that stretched away from horizon to horizon, a vast dusty carpet that looked frayed at the edges. He encountered no other human beings—not in the towns he occasionally turned in to to explore for supplies, and not on the highway itself. Once or twice, he saw things moving in the distance, but they were too far away to identify. He felt as if he were the last living creature on earth and wondered from time to time if that might not be best. No humans would want to live on a world like this, he told himself.

So it was a surprise and something of a revelation when he stumbled upon the Preacher and his strange flock.

It was nearing dusk at the end of the second day, and he had been driving for more than ten hours. His muscles were cramped and sore, and he was looking for a safe place to spend the night. The land about him seemed empty, but you could never be sure and you never took chances. So when he spied the little town off to his left, he left the highway just past the collapsed interchange and drove through the hardpan fields until he reached its edge.

He stopped then and got out, peering among the ramshackle houses and sheds to the cluster of buildings that formed the town center. One street led in and out. Windblown pieces of paper and old leaves were piled against the walls, and broken branches and scraps of tar paper lay scattered about. A few of the roofs had collapsed in on the houses, and most of the window glass was gone. Derelict cars, trucks, and even tractors sat rusting away in yards and in the surrounding fields. A farm town, probably close to three hundred years old, its life ended perhaps twenty years ago, it sat waiting for someone to reclaim it. But no one ever would.