Bearers of the Black Staff

He sounds so grown-up when he says it, as if he is the elder speaking to a young listener. The old man smiles. “Good advice. But that is not the reason I have come to you.”


Sider studies the other quizzically. “Am I missing something?”

“Everything. But I find no fault in you for that. Why should you see so clearly in a matter of minutes what I have lived with for years? It will not be easy for you now or later. It will never be easy. But it will be important. It will matter.”

He stops where he is and turns to face the boy. “This,” he says, holding out the black staff, “is why I have come to you.”

Sider looks at the staff, and then looks at the old man again. There is something in the other’s eyes that borders on dangerous, but mostly there is that immense weariness, deep and abiding.

“Take it,” the old man tells him. When Sider hesitates, he adds, “It will not harm you. But I want you to see what it feels like to hold it. There is a reason for this. Please do as I ask.”

Sider is not afraid, but he is wary. He does not know the old man well enough to trust him completely. Nevertheless, he does not feel threatened by the request and does not want to refuse when there is no solid reason for doing so. He reaches out his hand and takes the staff.

As he does so, strange things begin to happen almost immediately. They are not so frightening or intimidating that he releases his grip, but they are both startling and unexpected. When he takes the staff from the old man, he finds it immensely heavy, as if it were cast in iron rather than carved from wood. But its weight changes almost immediately to something much lighter and more manageable. His grip, when he first grasps the staff, is uncertain and feels odd. But that changes, as well, and within seconds it feels comfortable, as if the staff is an old friend, as if it’s something he has carried around for years and can’t imagine being without.

Stranger still is the sudden reaction of the thousands of markings carved into the surface of the wood. He has not noticed them before, but when he takes the staff he can feel them. Now they flare to life, the etchings become bright with a pulsating light that outlines each against the dark surface of the wood. All up and down the staff, the markings glow as if alive with an inner fire. And there is heat—not one that scorches or burns, but a heat that warms first the palms of his hands and then spreads from his hands into his arms and then his body, filling him with something that approaches reassurance and comfort. It is hard to describe and harder still to accept. He flinches slightly, but still keeps his hold on the staff, letting the sensations wash through him, entranced now, enraptured, eager for more.

“Do you feel it?” the old man asks eagerly, recognizing the look on the boy’s face. “The warming?”

Sider nods, speechless. He is looking down at the black staff with its markings, noting that their light has grown brighter, more insistent. The warmth is all through him now, and the staff feels so much a part of him that for one confusing instant he believes it now belongs to him and he will not be able to give it up. Magic, he thinks. There is a life to the staff fueled by magic. They say the old man wields it as the Knights of the Word once did, but until this moment he has never believed that it was so.

“What am I to do?” he asks the old man, uncertain of what is expected, of why this is happening.

The answer comes in three soft-spoken words. “Close your eyes.”

He does so, relaxed now, reassured, and the images begin to flood his mind almost immediately. He sees a world he does not recognize, filled with huge buildings and strange objects that travel very fast and carry many people, some on the ground, some over water, and some in the air. He sees vast fields and valleys in which crops grow, covering miles of ground in all directions. He sees thousands upon thousands of people, some clustered close together in small spaces, some spread out over vast areas. He sees animals and plants and bodies of water and all of it is bright and shining and filled with life and color.

Then, in what seems an instant, it is all shattered. Explosions of unimaginable proportions obliterate everything in blinding flashes. Sickness and poison turn living things to dead husks. The air and earth and water turn foul and blackened. Everything fades, and he senses it happening not all at once, but over a period of time. What is left is wasteland. What remains are creatures both feral and desperate, hunter and hunted, and no law or behavioral code governs either. There is only a need to survive and the ways of making it happen. None of it promises anything good. None of it suggests that life will ever be the same.

The images disappear, and he opens his eyes. The old man is looking at him intently. “Did you see?”

He nods. “What was it?”

“The old world. A world that once existed and then ended and led to our migration to this valley. A world that will one day soon begin to intrude on our own and to which we must return.”