Bearers of the Black Staff

“Do you think they’ll send someone after us?” Prue asked suddenly, as if reading his thoughts.

He shook his head. “Skeal Eile? No, I think he’ll be content to have us gone. If we’re not there, we can’t repeat our story. Eile doesn’t care about us specifically—only what we might do if we continue to stir things up. He might like to have some private time with us, maybe find a way to make us recant. But he won’t waste time trying to track us down.”

“What makes you think that?” She looked irritated at the idea. “He’s already tried to kill us. Why do you think he’ll stop there?”

Pan shrugged. “I just do. All he worries about is protecting his place as leader of the Children of the Hawk. Last night is over and done with.”

They walked on in silence, concentrating on the terrain ahead, their climb steepening as they approached the rim, their eyes lowering to avoid the rising sun’s glare. The land about them was a mix of bare rock, tough mountain grasses, and small, sturdy conifers that could only live at great heights. Birds flitted past, and now and then a ground squirrel or chipmunk, but nothing bigger. Behind them, the valley that had been their home stretched away in a broad green sweep, its night-shrouded lines taking on clearer definition with the sun’s rapid approach.

Once, a hawk passed directly overhead, sailing out of the valley and toward the rim to which they were headed. They stopped as one and watched its progress as it flew east and disappeared.

“A good omen, don’t you think?” Panterra said.

Prue frowned. “Maybe.”

She didn’t say anything more, and he let the conversation lapse. But his thoughts drifted to the legend of the Hawk, to the boy who had brought their ancestors out of the destruction of the Great Wars and into the safe haven of these connected valleys. He wished sometimes he could have been there to see it, although he had a feeling that he wouldn’t have much liked the experience if he were living it. A lot of people had died, and the survivors had endured tremendous hardship. The transition from the old life to the new must have been difficult, as well. Nothing would have been easy, even after they were safely closed away.

But why he really wished he could have been there was that he might better understand how things had come to their present state of affairs. The Children of the Hawk had been formed originally to honor the father of all the generations of survivors who had followed after the first. It had been a celebration of life and love and the durability of the human spirit. When so many had died, these few had lived. It was a wonderfully inspiring story of the human condition.

And yet it had come to this: a cult that followed a dogmatic hard line of exclusion and repression, believed its teachings alone were the way that others must follow, and claimed special knowledge of something that had happened more than five centuries ago. It did nothing to soften its rigid stance, nothing to heal wounds that it had helped to create by deliberately shunning people of other Races, and nothing to explore the possibility of other beliefs. It held its ground even in the face of hard evidence that perhaps it had misjudged and refused to consider that it was courting a danger that might destroy everyone.

How could something so wrong grow out of something that had started out so right?

They climbed on until they reached the rim, the sun now well above the horizon and moving toward midday, and turned north where the rim flattened into a narrow trail that wound through clusters of rock and small stands of alpine. The air was cold, and the winds blew in sudden, unexpected gusts that required travelers to pay attention and mind the placing of their feet. But the boy and the girl had come this way many times before, and so they knew what was required.

By midday, they had reached a point where they were starting down the other side, and in the distance they could see the gathering of lakes that marked the Eldemere, the forested waterways that formed the western boundary of Elven country.

In the distance, a rain squall was blowing across the lakes and through the woods, a ragged gray curtain that hung from towering masses of cumulus clouds.

“I think we might get wet,” Prue observed.

Panterra nodded. “I think we might also get some help from Mother Nature in covering our tracks.”

She glanced over quickly. “I thought you said Skeal Eile wouldn’t bother coming after us.”

“I did. But in case I’m wrong, it doesn’t hurt to have help.”

Prue gave him a disgusted look. “In case you’re wrong, huh.”

“Not that it’s likely, but even so.”