Bearers of the Black Staff

Not so the boy and the girl.

Yet he must be careful here. He must be creative in his efforts to resolve the matter. Something out of the ordinary was required if he didn’t want to experience still another failure.

He was well back in the trees now, on the outskirts of the village. It was deeply wooded here, the path nearly nonexistent, the underbrush thick and tangled. He slipped through openings that few could find even in daylight, the way clear to him, as it would not be to others. Ahead, a small cabin appeared through the undergrowth, a dilapidated structure with a sagging porch and blacked-out windows that gave it the look of a dead thing. But there would be eyes watching. There always were.

Yet the eyes of the old man who met him at the door when he stepped up on the porch were as milky and blind as a cave bat’s, staring blankly at a point some six inches over Skeal Eile’s head.

“Who’s that?” the old man asked in a whisper.

“Tell him I’m here,” the Seraphic ordered, ignoring the question.

“Ah, it’s you!” the old man exclaimed in delight. He cackled and turned away. “Always a pleasure to see you. Always a joy! I’ll send him right out. Just one minute.”

Off he went, back into the darkened interior of the cabin. Skeal Eile did not try to follow. He had never been inside the cabin and had no wish to enter it now. He had a strong suspicion that he wouldn’t like it much in there. Not given what he knew of the occupants.

He waited a full five minutes for Bonnasaint to appear. By then, he was standing out in the tiny yard, studying the weeds and the bare ground and thinking of other things. The boy materialized silently, emerging from the darkness of the cabin interior, pausing momentarily in the doorway as if to take stock of things and then stepping down to confront the Seraphic.

“Your Eminence,” the boy greeted, bowing deeply. “How may I help you?”

There wasn’t a hint of irony in the other’s voice, only a clear expression of abiding respect. Skeal Eile had always liked that about the boy. Even when they’d first met and the boy was only twelve, that respect was evident. Now Bonnasaint was more than twenty, and their relationship was unchanged. Skeal Eile still thought of him as a boy because he looked barely older than one, his skin fair and unblemished, his features fine, his face beardless, and his limbs slender and supple. There was nothing of the man physically evident in the boy, but get below the skin and you found a creature that was very, very old indeed.

“I require your services,” the Seraphic said quietly, casting a quick glance at the cabin.

“He knows better than to listen in,” Bonnasaint advised, offering up a dazzling smile.

“I trust no one, not your father, not even you.”

“Not even me?” The smile disappeared. “I am hurt.”

“You are never hurt. You are as cold and hard as the stones of the mountains. That is why you are my favorite.”

“It has been a while since you came to see me, Eminence. I thought that perhaps I had fallen from favor.”

“I only come to you when I have a problem lesser men cannot solve. I have one now.”

The dazzling smile returned. The boyish face brightened. “Please enlighten me.”

Skeal Eile stepped close to him. “A boy and a girl. I want them to disappear.”





ELEVEN




PANTERRA AND PRUE WOKE TO A MORNING FROSTY with cold, the ground crystalline white and the lakes of the Eldemere shedding mist and dampness in the soft glow of the sun’s first light. The echo of birdcalls was sharp and ghostly, sounding out of the silence in forlorn reverberation across the wider expanse of the lakes before disappearing into the dark maze of the surrounding woods. Mist clung in thick blankets to the mountaintops. The air was sharp and clear, and you could see the details of clefts in the rocks of snow-cropped defiles that were miles away.

The boy and the girl didn’t bother with breakfast, not yet awake enough to need or enjoy food. Instead, they packed up their gear and set out walking among the meres, gathering their still sleep-fogged thoughts for the trek ahead.

The sun rose, the air warmed, and the morning changed its look and feel as first light turned to full sunrise and the silence of sleep gave way to the noises of waking. Breezes gusted across the meres and through the leaves of the trees in steady rustlings, the still waters of the meres began to lap against the shores, and the birdcalls were joined by animal scurrying and voices, distant and indistinct, suddenly become audible.

“Elves,” Panterra observed, referring to the voices, the first word either of them had spoken since waking.