Bearers of the Black Staff

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 sleep.