Bearers of the Black Staff

His hands tightened about the black staff that marked him for who and what he was, conscious of the deep carving of its runes and the pulse of the magic they commanded. He did not call upon the power much these days, did not have cause to do so, but it was comforting to know that it was there. The Word’s magic was given to him by his predecessor and before that by his, and so on over a span of five centuries. He knew the story of its origins; all those who carried the staff knew. They passed it on dutifully. Or when time and events did not allow for an orderly passage, they learned it another way. The Gray Man was not familiar with the experiences of those others who had borne the staff; he knew only his own. He had never been visited by the Lady who served as the voice of the staff’s maker. She had never come to him in his dreams as she had sometimes come to others.

Ahead, the trees thinned as the valley slope lifted toward a tall, narrow gap in the cliff face farther up. There, hidden within the rocks, the pass at Declan Reach opened through to the larger world. He had stood in its shelter at the edge of his and looked past into the gray nothingness beyond, wondering what that world might look like if he could pass through. He had attempted passage once or twice in the beginning, when he was young and not yet convinced that things were as everyone claimed. But his efforts were always rebuffed; the mists turned him around and sent him back again, no matter how straight he believed the path on which he had set his feet, no matter how determined his attempt. The magic was inexorable, and it refused all equally.

But now he had the dreams to consider, and the dreams told him that five centuries of what had once seemed forever were coming to a close.

He left the trees and began to climb. Fresh snow had fallen a day earlier, and its white carpet was pristine and unmarked. But he sensed something nevertheless, a presence hidden below, just out of sight. He could not tell what it was yet, but it was nothing he recognized. He quickened his pace, suddenly worried. He climbed swiftly through the rocky outcroppings and narrow defiles, testing the air as he went, trailing his hands across the rocks. Something had passed this way, descending from the heights. Two, perhaps three days ago, it had made its way down into the valley. Down, not up.

But down from where?

His worst fears were realized as he reached the entrance to the pass and found his wards not simply broken, but shredded. The wards had been strong, a network of forbidding he had placed there himself not a month earlier. Wards of the same strength and consistency he used at every such passage leading into the valley, wards intended to warn him of breaches in the wall, wards meant to keep the inhabitants safe from the unthinkable.

And now the unthinkable was here.

He knelt to study the area surrounding the tattered remains that still clung to the rocks where he had attached them. He took a long time, wanting to make certain of what he was sensing. There was no mistake. Something had come through from the larger world, from beyond his valley. More than one something, he revised. Two, he judged—a hunting pair come in search of food, huge, dangerous creatures from the size and depth of the claw marks on the rocks and the apparent ease with which they had destroyed the wards.

He stood up, shaking his head at the irony of it. Even as he had tried to measure the time allotted before the dreams would come to pass, they had arrived full-blown. In the blink of an eye, the past was upon them.

He looked out from his vantage point high upon the snow line to the spread of the valley. Mist and clouds hid much of it this morning, and it would be midday before that haze burned off enough to permit a view of even the closest of the communities. To which of these would the intruders go? It was impossible to say. They might stay high up on the protective slopes of the mountains. Whatever their choice, he would have to hunt them down and dispatch them before it was too late.

Which it might already be.

He turned back into the pass and with the aid of his staff began to rebuild the wards. He summoned the magic, holding out the staff before him and using the words of power and small movements of his hands. The runes began to glow, luminous against the still-dark early morning, pulsing softly in response to his commands. He felt the power flow from the staff into his body, and as always he was transported to another plateau of sensation, one that was too close to euphoria for comfort, a warning of an addiction he had already embraced too closely. The magic was an elixir, each time giving him such fulfillment, such satisfaction, that he could barely stand the thought of letting it go. But he had learned what the lure could result in, and by now, he knew the ways in which to keep from falling prey.

Or so he told himself.

He layered the pass with the wards, preventing the creatures that had broken through from escaping the valley without his knowing. It took him a while to complete the task, for he understood the importance of being thorough. But when at last he finished, the wards were set. He let the magic retreat back into the staff. The brightness of the runes faded, the glaze of the magic’s euphoria dissipated, and the world returned to normal.