Bearers of the Black Staff

The boy looked uncertain. “Prue is more talented than I am.”


“It might seem so, but she’s not. And she is too young. She relies on you. You rely only on yourself. Yours are the greater skills. Even if you don’t think so, it is true.”

“Well, I don’t see—” The boy stopped midsentence and stared at Sider. “What’s the point of this conversation? What are you trying to say to me?”

“I am trying to tell you that I think you should be the next to bear this talisman.” He lifted the black staff a few inches, drawing the boy’s eyes to its rune-carved length. “I think you should become my apprentice and train with me to take my place when I am gone.”

Panterra Qu smiled and almost laughed. Sider watched the laugh surface and then disappear as the boy suppressed it. “I don’t want to carry the staff,” the boy said quickly. “I just want to be a Tracker.”

“You would be a Tracker still. You would keep your skills and use them often. But you would do much more, too. You would serve a higher cause than Trow Ravenlock and the people of Glensk Wood.”

“No, that’s enough for me. Besides, there’s Prue. I have to look out for her.”

Sider took a deep breath. There it was—the crux of the matter. He gave the boy a smile. “Yes, there’s Prue. You consider her your best friend, don’t you?”

“I do. You know that.”

“Do you love her?”

He hesitated, caught off guard by the question. Perhaps no one had ever asked it. Perhaps he hadn’t even considered it. He didn’t seem to know what to say. “As I would a sister, yes,” he replied finally.

“Nothing more?”

“Not as I think you mean.”

“Does she love you?”

Again, the hesitation. “In the same way. As a brother.”

“Then there is no difficulty in doing what I suggest. You do not have to stop loving each other as friends and siblings, and you can still be together as much as you choose. Nothing about bearing the black staff prevents this. But …”

He held up one hand, palm open toward the boy, as if to stop something he might be about to say. “But something else might prevent it. Not just if you become my successor and the next bearer of the staff, but even if you choose to remain a simple Tracker from Glensk Wood. What you had once envisioned for both of you is finished. That future is gone. It left with the collapse of the magic that warded the valley. It left when the doors opened to the outside world and our survival became a much more perilous undertaking.”

The boy gave him a look, and he smiled in spite of himself. “I know how that sounds. But I don’t say these things only because the protective wall is down and the passes are open. I say them because I met a man while I was outside the valley, and he told me what the world was like. He described it in detail, and it is not a place that will tolerate weakness or indecision. It is populated by dangerous creatures and infused with the residue of the poisons and the resultant mutations of the Great Wars. Those of the human Race that survived did so by being tougher and stronger than those who did not. The Trolls who besiege the valley are indicative of what’s out there. But they are only one example.”

He paused, letting the boy think it through. “It isn’t hard to see what I am trying to say, is it? A battle for survival is at hand, and it will require more than any of us have considered giving in the past. Life will not be as simple or safe. It will be hard and dangerous, and it will demand a great deal of everyone. You already have a better chance of doing something about that than most. But that chance will increase a hundredfold if you accept my offer. Not only for you, but for those whom you choose to protect.”

The boy was silent for a while longer, and then he shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I want to.”

Sider nodded. “I don’t know, either. Neither of us will know until the moment I pass the staff to you. All we can do until then is to try to prepare you for what having the staff means. We can talk about it. We can examine it. You can ask what questions you would, and I can answer them as best I know. This will give you a chance to see if it might be something that interests you—not in the abstract, but in the practice of it. I will try to convince you that you are the right man to bear it. But I will not force you to take it, and I will not expect you to force yourself. It has to be voluntary. You have to feel the need.”