Bearers of the Black Staff

“How did the two of you become so close, Pan? She’s not related to you, is she?”


He shook his head. “No, we just grew up together, played together when we were little because we lived next door to each other. Our families were friends. We had the same interests, liked the same things. Being outside and exploring was what mattered to us.” He smiled, thinking back on it. “She was special.”

“Tasha says she can sense danger before she sees it. Before anyone sees it. Is that so?”

“It is. She’s always had that gift.”

“A useful gift. What’s yours?”

“Maybe I don’t have one.” He shrugged. “I’m not anyone special, Phryne. I’m just someone who likes being a Tracker.”

She linked her arm in his, pulling them close. “I don’t think that’s so, and I’m not usually wrong about these things. There is something different about you; I sensed it right away. I see the way my cousins defer to you at times, how they look to see what your response might be. I see how they talk to you. They think you’re special. Tell me why.”

He gave her a grin. “There isn’t anything to tell.”

“Tell me, Pan.”

She wasn’t going to give up. He sighed. “I’m good at tracking.”

“Better than good, perhaps?” She cocked an eyebrow.

“Better than good. I can find sign where no one else can. I can sense it sometimes. I don’t know why it is, but just like Prue knows of danger she can’t see, I know of sign I can’t see. I guess it’s instinct.”

She released his arm and went back to walking at his side without touching him. He missed it right away. “Tasha was right about you,” she said. “You are more Elf than human. You should be one of us.”

They walked on, stopping finally at midday for lunch at the edge of one of the larger meres, sitting on a grassy patch and watching the big fishing birds swoop and glide above the surface of the waters. They talked a little about what they were going to do when they got up into the mountains and reached Aphalion Pass, but mostly Tasha told stories, although Tenerife, who had heard them all before, was less enthralled than the others.

“Everyone knows about Kirisin Belloruus,” Tasha said, beginning a fresh story as lunch was ending and the last of the ale was being consumed. “At least, everyone who is an Elf or has made even a cursory study of Elven history. He was the spiritual leader of the Elves when they came into this valley, the founder of the practice of accepting a commitment from birth on to maintaining and healing the land, and dedicated to the restoration of ancient magic lost sometime after the end of Faerie. He was the seminal force behind the Elven nation’s evolution for many years. They say he’d made a pact with the shades of our ancestors to recover the lost arts and practices, which in large part had been forgotten. But who present knows of his sister?”

Tenerife raised his hand. “Besides you, enlightened one,” Tasha amended. “And Phryne, of course. Who else?”

Neither Panterra nor Prue knew anything at all about a sister, although both had heard the story of Kirisin Belloruus countless times.

“Her name was Simralin, wasn’t it?” Phryne offered.

“It was.” Tasha beamed at her as a teacher might an exceptionally bright student, although Pan suspected that as the daughter of the King, she was at least as well versed as Tasha in Elven history. “A forgotten figure to some extent, but an equally important one. She was older than he was and something of a warrior. She fought against the demons and their minions countless times and helped in the recovery of what up until then had been the missing Elfstones.”

“Aren’t they still missing?” Phryne interrupted.

“The blue ones, the seeking-Stones, yes,” Tasha agreed. “Although the Loden Elfstone remains in the possession of the royal family, as you well know.” He gave her a look. “Can I finish my story now? Because it deals with that very subject.”

He waited for her nod, and then continued. “She fell in love with a Knight of the Word, from the old order, one of the last. When they found their way here, she bound herself to him in the Elven way, and they lived together until he died. She took his staff then and gave it to his son. It was said that he instructed her to do so when he was gone, and so she did. His son, in turn, passed it on, and so things proceeded for generations until it was destroyed. Do you know how it was destroyed?”