A Knight Of The Word

She missed Pick terribly. She hadn’t thought their separation would be so bad, but it was. He had been with her almost constantly from the time she was six years old; he was her best friend. She had been able to leave him to go off to school, but Northwestern University was only a three hour drive from Hopewell and it didn’t feel so far away. She supposed her grandfather’s death contributed to her discomfort as well; Pick was the last link to her childhood, and she didn’t like leaving him behind. It was also the first tune she had done anything involving the magic without him. Whatever the reason, not having him there made her decidedly uneasy.

The taxi driver had taken her to the Alexis Hotel, where she had booked a room the night before by phone. The Alexis was situated right at the north end of Pioneer Square, not far from the offices of Fresh Start. It was the best hotel in the area, and Nest had decided from the start that if she was going to travel to a strange city, she wanted to stay in a good place. She had been able to get a favourable rate on a standard room for the two-night stopover she had planned. She checked in at the front clerk, took the elevator to her room, dropped her bag on the bed, and looked around restlessly.

Despite the fact that she had been travelling all day, she was not tired. She unpacked her bag, glanced through a guide to Seattle, and walked to the window and looked out. The street below glistened with dampness, and the air was hazy with mist. All of the shops and offices she could see were closed. There were only a few cars passing and fewer people. It was just a little after eleven thirty.

She had decided to go for a walk.

Nest was no fool. She knew about cities at night and the dangers they presented for the unwary. On the other hand, she had gown up with the feeders in Sinnissippi Park, spending, night after night prowling the darkness they favoured, avoiding their traps, and surviving confrontations far more dangerous than anything she was likely to encounter here. Moreover, she had the magic to protect her, and while she hadn’t used it in a while and didn’t know what stage of growth it was in at the moment, she had confidence that it would keep her safe.

So she had slipped on her heavy windbreaker, ridden the elevator back down to the lobby, and gone out the door.

She was no sooner outside and walking south along First Avenue toward the banks of old-fashioned street lamps that marked the beginning of Pioneer Square than Ariel had appeared. The tatterdemalion materialized out of the mist and gloom, filling a space in the darkness beside Nest with her vague, transparent whiteness. Her sudden appearance startled Nest, but she didn’t seem to notice, her dark eyes cast forward, her silken hair flowing out from her body as if caught in a breeze.

“Where are you going?” she asked in her thin childlike voice.

“Walking. I can’t sleep yet. I’m too wound up.” Nest watched the shadows whirl and spin inside the tatterdemalion’s gauzy body. “How did you get here?”

Ariel didn’t seem to hear the question, her dark eyes shifting anxiously. “It isn’t safe,” she said.

“What isn’t safe?”

“The city at night.”

They had crossed from the hotel and walked into the next block. Nest looked around cautiously at the darkened doorways and alcoves of the buildings. There was no one to be seen.

“I remember about cities,” Ariel continued, her voice small and distant. She seemed to float across the pavement, a ghostly hologram. “I remember how they feel and what they hide. I remember what they can do to you. They are filled with people who will hurt you. There are places in which children can disappear in the blink of an eye. Sometimes they lock you away in dark places and no one comes for you. Sometimes they wall you up forever.”

She was speaking from the memories of the children she had been once, of the only memories she had., Nest decided she didn’t want to know about those memories, the memories of dead children.

“It will be all right,” she said. “We won’t go far.”

They walked quite a distance though, all the way down First Avenue under Pioneer Square’s turn-of-the-century street lamps past shuttered shops and galleries to where they could see the Kingdome rising up against the night sky in a massive hump. The mist thickened and swirled about them, clinging to Nest’s face and hands in a thin, cold layer of moisture. Nest drew her windbreaker tighter about her shoulders. When the character of the neighborhood began to change, the shops and galleries giving way to warehouses and industrial plants, Nest turned around again, with Ariel hovering close, and started back.

They were approaching a small, concrete triangular park with benches and shade trees fronting a series of buildings that included one advertising Seattle’s Underground Tour when the screams began.

They were so faint that at first Nest couldn’t believe she was hearing them. She slowed and looked around doubtfully. She was all alone an the streets. There was no one else in sight. But the screams continued, harsh and terrible in the blackness and mist.

“Something hunts,” Ariel hissed as she shimmered brightly, darting left and right.

Nest wheeled around, looking everywhere at once. “Where are they coming from?” she demanded, frantic now.

“Beneath us,” Aril said.

Nest looked down at the concrete sidewalk in disbelief. “From the sewers?”

Ariel moved close, her childlike face smooth and expressionless, but her eyes filled with terror. “There is an old city beneath the new. The screams are coming from there?”