Bearers of the Black Staff

  Panterra stared at her, peering through the shadows to catch the reflection of her eyes, trying to see something of the truth he could not quite accept. “Then we have to tell that to Pogue Kray or Trow Ravenlock. Others have to know.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “That’s been tried. How much have you heard about its success?”

  Panterra looked away, thinking, and then turned back quickly. “Wait a minute. If he eliminates his enemies, aren’t you at risk, too? Aren’t you a bigger danger to him than Prue or I?”

  “If he goes after me, he will have to deal with my husband. He’s not yet willing to chance that sort of confrontation. Pogue might be under his influence, but he is not going to sit by and let me be harmed. I suspect he has made that clear already.”

  She paused. “Besides, I’m not viewed as being much more reliable than Sider Ament. I’m not held in high regard. Too quick to speak my mind, not so quick to recognize my place. I am indulged by my husband, and there are few who admire his patience or his wisdom where I am concerned. But my family is old and well placed, and they protect their own. Even me.”

  “Does Sider Ament know any of this?” Panterra pressed. “Is he really so ignorant of Skeal Eile’s ambitions?”

  “The Gray Man has no time for such nonsense. Know this, Panterra. Sider Ament is not what he seems. You’ve already had a glimpse of that. He is a warrior, a fighter of great strength and skill. He protects us all by patrolling the valley rim and keeping watch against the things that might come through from the outside world. When he tells you that those things are coming, you should believe him. When he tells you they are here, you should not doubt. We can do nothing about those who do, those fools who think that dogma equates with truth. Sider Ament knows this, too. He can’t change what is by speaking against it. Only the sort of confrontation you experienced below the heights of Declan Reach can do that.”

  “So we must run,” Panterra finished. “But where will we run to?”

  “You have friends and family in other places,” she answered. “Go to them.”

  “We could go to the Elves!” Prue exclaimed suddenly. “The Orullian brothers would help us! Didn’t Sider Ament say we should take his warning to the Elves, too?”

  Aislinne nodded approvingly. “A good plan. Just choose carefully who to tell, and be careful not to draw undue attention. The Elves will be less likely to doubt. They don’t embrace the teachings of the Children of the Hawk. Perhaps they’ll send a contingent of Elven Hunters up into the passes to see if the barrier still holds, or you can persuade them to come with you in search of Sider. You will have to find him now, and bring back some kind of physical proof to show the council. Until then, it won’t be safe for you here.”

  Panterra hunkered down in the darkness of his bedroom, dismayed. “I can’t believe any of this. All I did was what I have been trained to do.”

  “Nevertheless,” Aislinne said softly, and she let the word hang in the ensuing silence.

  Aislinne wouldn’t tell him to run if it weren’t necessary, Panterra knew. She was his friend; whatever she thought of his actions, she wouldn’t give him advice that she didn’t believe was in his best interests. Ever since she had befriended him, not long after his parents died, she had counseled him. She seemed to understand him, even without knowing precisely how he was gifted. Or maybe she had intuited his innate abilities; her own instincts were not to be underestimated.

  What to do? He thought back to the council meeting and the way Skeal Eile had looked at him. The memory did not give him a good feeling. He glanced at Prue. She was in as much danger as he was, given what Aislinne had said. She had seen everything he had and been firm in backing his story. Skeal Eile would have no use for her, either.

  Still, the idea of fleeing his home troubled him. There was a finality to it that was deeply unsettling. Trackers roamed far and wide and sometimes for long periods, but they always knew they could return when their tasks were completed. That would not be the case here.

  “I don’t know,” he said softly.

  “No one said it would be easy,” Aislinne began, leaning forward to take his hands in her own. “But sometimes—”

  “Hssst!” Prue said sharply, freezing them both in place. Her eyes were wide and bright in the darkness. “There’s someone out there!”

  She gestured toward the window that faced north, a vague, almost disconnected movement. Her eyes were fixed; she seemed to be seeing something hidden from them. Panterra knew that look. It was the near-trance she entered when she sensed that danger threatened.

  It was there and gone again in a moment, and she was looking right at Pan. “We have to get out of here!” she whispered. “Right now!”

  Panterra hesitated, just for a second, and in that momentary pause he heard a scuffling and a quick intake of breath, tiny sounds audible only to someone with hearing and instincts as keen as his own.

  Aislinne rose, then stood motionless in the dark. “Wait. Don’t move.” Seconds later there was a soft tapping at the back door. Three short raps, and then silence. “Come with me,” she said, starting for the stairs.

  They went down the steps together, moving slowly and silently through the shadows. Panterra strained to hear more, but there were no further sounds. The world outside the walls of his cottage stayed silent and dark.

  At the door, Aislinne motioned for them to stand behind her. She released the lock and cracked the door slightly. Then she opened it wide.

  Brickey was standing there, wrapped in a black cloak. “There’s been an accident,” he told them.

  Aislinne nodded as if she expected as much. “What sort of accident?”

  “A man has fallen on his knife. He was hunting mushrooms or perhaps night-blooming rashia in the trees, just in back of the cottage. He must have tripped.” He glanced past her at Panterra and Prue. “Good evening, friends. You’re up late. I hear that the council session was difficult.”

  A man hunting mushrooms had fallen on his knife? Panterra knew at once that the little man was lying, that what had happened had nothing to do with mushrooms. In all likelihood, an assassin had been sent to dispatch him, but had ended up being dispatched himself. He looked with new respect at Brickey, who somehow managed to look deeply saddened.

  “Dangerous work, night hunting,” Aislinne observed, as if she accepted what the little man was saying without question. “Will you see that his body is taken elsewhere?”

  Brickey bowed slightly. “Of course.” He paused. “This unfortunate death might bring unwanted attention. It might be well if all of you went somewhere else as soon as possible.”

  “We were just discussing that,” Aislinne observed. “Thank you, Brickey.”

  She closed the door and turned to the boy and the girl. “Pack what you need, Panterra, and then we’ll cross to Prue’s home and she will do the same. It will be safe enough now; another will not be sent in this man’s place right away. In any case, Brickey will continue to keep watch.”

  “I thought he was merely a thief,” Panterra observed. “It seems he is something more.”

  “Brickey is many things. But he keeps what he is to himself.” Aislinne motioned impatiently. “Pack, Panterra. You have to leave.”

  It took them only a short time to gather the clothes, weapons, and supplies they needed to set out. They were practiced at this, good at packing on short notice, efficient at collecting what was needed. Aislinne trailed after them, glancing outside now and then, studying the darkness as if to uncover its secrets. The rustle of their packing efforts were all the noise any of them made. They saw and heard nothing further of Brickey, who had faded back into the night. Panterra found himself wondering how much of the other’s interest in him was fostered by his relationship to Aislinne. How had the little man come to know Aislinne so well? He wanted to ask her, but decided against it.

  When they were ready, Aislinne walked them outside to the edge of the trees. All around them, the night provided a dark, silent cl
oaking. There were few lights in the windows of houses and no one about. Overhead, the sky was clear and filled with stars.

  “I’ll tell your parents, Prue, and anyone else who needs to know that you have gone to visit friends and will return in a week. If you don’t come back by then, I’ll make up something else to keep them from worrying. Try to convince the Elves to help you. Perhaps events will dictate when you’ll be able to come back again. It might not be very long at all if Sider is right; another intrusion from the outside world is more likely than not if the protective wall is failing. Still, we can’t count on that; we have to rely on our own resourcefulness.”

  She sounded as if she meant to place herself in their company, as if she shared the danger they faced. Panterra shook his head. He didn’t want Aislinne to do anything more for them, anything that might put her at further risk. But he knew she would do whatever she felt she must, and that his admonitions against doing so would be wasted effort.

  “We’ll get word to you,” he promised.

  “Walk softly,” she cautioned, and he was struck by the familiarity of that phrase: Sider Ament had used it as well.

  “Thank you for everything.” Prue embraced the tall woman and held her close. “We owe you so much.”

  Aislinne broke away. “You owe me nothing. Just keep safe until we meet again. Now go.”

  They moved into the trees. Panterra looked back and waved good-bye to her. She was already turning away.

  When he looked back again, she was gone.

  SEVEN

  AFTER LEAVING PRUE LISS AND PANTERRA, SIDER Ament set out to track down the second of the two creatures that had broken through his wards.

  He was struggling with a number of issues. The weightiest of these was accepting that after all these years, the barrier that had kept his valley home safe was crumbling. It wasn’t that he found the idea impossible to believe; it was that it felt so personal. It had been five centuries, and there had been dozens of others who had patrolled the valley before him, all descendants of the old Knights of the Word. In all that time, the mists that barred passage in or out had held firm against intrusion. But now, in his time, while it was his turn to bear the black staff of power, they were breaking down.

  He couldn’t know this for certain yet, even given what he believed to be clear evidence. But if the creature he tracked was attempting to get back to where it had come from, and if he failed to catch up to it before it succeeded, he would soon learn the truth. He supposed that he would find out in any case, because he had no choice now but to test the barrier no matter where he found the creature. The creature’s appearance might have been unexpected and hence unforeseeable, but that didn’t change the inevitable consequences. Depending on where it had come from, either the inhabitants of the valley were still safe from the outside world or they were not. Either life would go on as before or it would be changed forever.

  It was his realization of what this meant that was so overwhelming. Like most, he knew something of what had happened five hundred years earlier to bring their ancestors here. The Great Wars—the wars of power, the wars of science—had destroyed civilization. They had leveled governments and institutions, obliterated cities and entire nations, poisoned air and water and earth, and left the larger world virtually uninhabitable. No one who had come into the valley had ever been able to go back out again to see what that meant. But the stories had persisted—the old world was lost and it wasn’t coming back; the new world was the world they would make here, within the confines of the mountain walls and the protective mists.

  Yet the question persisted in the minds of everyone: What was it really like outside the valley?

  He had tried to imagine it on more occasions than he could remember. He had tried to extrapolate, from the fragments of memories passed down through the years, what a world cast into chaos might be like five hundred years later. Would anything have survived? Was there any sort of population? There had been mutants at the end; some of them had come into the valley with Men and Elves. The Lizards and the Spiders were the largest part of these. But wouldn’t there have been others, too—others that were left behind or developed later, like the creature he tracked? Wouldn’t there be things he could not begin to imagine, born of life twisted into new shapes and forms?

  It would all be so different from what any of them knew. There would be an entire world to discover, to interpret, and ultimately to embrace.

  But few, he added quickly, would be eager to do so.

  Certainly not the Children of the Hawk, who would regard as anathema any form of assimilation that did not hew to their teachings.

  Not the larger population of Men. Whether they were members of the sect or not, they had always been inclined to stay put, to resist movement even beyond the boundaries of their own communities.

  Not the Lizards or the Spiders, who were so reclusive and mistrustful of others to begin with.

  Only the Elves would embrace this opportunity—which was ironic, if you knew their history. The Elves had once been the most reclusive of all, a Faerie people come from so far in the distant past that they witnessed the birth of the Race of Men. But their choice to isolate themselves from Men had come at a price. Men procreated much more quickly than did the Elves, and eventually the latter began to see their numbers diminish by comparison. A stubborn insistence on isolationism had only pushed them farther from the rest of the world. Had it not been for the Great Wars and the concerted efforts of the Void and its demons to annihilate their Race, they might have been lost completely.

  It was a lesson that had not escaped the ones who survived. Having found their way into this valley, they had chosen to pursue a greater involvement with their new home, embracing the teachings of the members of the Belloruus family who had served as their Kings and Queens for nearly the whole of the first four centuries. Much more so than the other Races, they were committed to sharing with others the opportunity that had been given to them. Instead of returning to a life of isolation, they had chosen to dedicate themselves to the restoration and nurture of their world and its creatures. It was a commitment they had made repeatedly not only to the valley but also to whatever lay beyond. And so they talked openly about what would happen when they could go out into the larger world once more.

  But still, nothing would be as they had imagined, and coming to grips with the truth of things—even for those who were willing to try—would not be easy.

  The Gray Man walked on through the afternoon and early evening, passing out of the woods that concealed the swamp and its battleground to the open slopes of the foothills and the mountains beyond. He climbed steadily through scrub brush and tall grasses to the beginnings of the mountain’s open rock with its patches of lichen and scattering of tiny conifers. By sunset, he was nearing the snow line where it formed a threshold leading into the pass.

  There he lost the creature’s trail.

  He had been tracking it without difficulty all that time, simply by following the droplets of blood. Even after the blood began to diminish—the wounds closing over, he supposed—markings remained from the passage that read clear to him. Then all of a sudden there was nothing, even after he had scoured the ground thoroughly. Because it was growing dark and he could no longer be certain that he wasn’t missing something, he decided to stop and make camp for the night.

  Although the path of the tracks clearly pointed toward the pass at the head of Declan Reach, he could not assume that this was where the creature had gone. His greatest fear was that it had somehow circled back and gotten behind him, perhaps even backtracked down into the villages. Wounded or not, it was still much too dangerous to be confronted by anyone but him. But for now there was nothing he could do. He would have to wait until morning.

  He sat within the sparse shelter of a small grove of spruce and boulders, black staff cradled in his lap. He ate his meal cold, deciding against a fire, wrapped himself in his tattered cloak and the one blanket he allowed himself, and went to sle
ep.

  He dreamed that night, something he seldom did these days, and the dreams were filled with dark images and fleeting shadows that lacked specific identity or purpose, but whispered of secrets. He tracked after them, using all his skills, but somehow they were always quicker than he was, always smarter. And at some point, he came to the terrifying realization that his efforts were failing because it was the images and shadows that were tracking him.

  When he woke, the sun was cresting the horizon of jagged mountain peaks in a wash of crimson light and he was bathed in his own sweat.

  He set out at once.

  He swept the area in all four directions, but his search yielded nothing. He found himself wishing he had that boy with him—what was his name? Panterra? He might have found something with his young eyes that Sider, with his old, had not. A talented youth, with good instincts and skills and not afraid even when that beast came right at him. He liked the girl, too. The pair made a good match. He wished there were more like those two, but he knew there weren’t.

  Too bad he had to send them back down into Glensk Wood without him. They would not have been received well by the Seraphic and his followers. Maybe not by anyone. But it had to be done. Even if their efforts failed. Even if almost everyone refused to believe, there would be one or two who would. Word of mouth would spread, and eventually someone in a position to do so would act. It was the most he could expect, and it would have to be enough.

  He abandoned his sweeping search of the lower slopes, deciding that no creature could hide its passing on such soft ground and so the one he tracked must have gone up into the rocks. He struck out in a deliberately straight line, looking to cut the creature’s trail at some point between where he was and the head of the pass or, failing that, to find its tracks inside the pass itself. He went quickly, climbing steadily with the sun’s rising, pushing aside the lingering memories of last night’s dreams.