Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [103]
He nods again.
“Do you defend yourself at the cost of your attacker’s life in each case? Or do you simply try to disable your attacker?”
“That would depend.”
“What would it depend upon?”
“On how threatened I felt. On whether I believed my life was in such danger that only my attacker’s death would save me.”
“Is the price for both usages the same?”
He hesitates.
“Does the price differ depending on the attacker?”
“I think it might.”
“What would determine the cost of using the magic in each case?”
Again, he hesitates.
The old man nods his approval. “Your hesitation is warranted. The answer is uncertain. The answer can only be discovered by use of the magic, and sometimes that is not a good thing. Understanding that there is a difference is important. Causing injury or death to monsters is different than it is to humans. It differs with species, as well. The emotional drain it exacts determines that cost. Each time you use the magic to harm or kill, you take away something from yourself. The ways in which you are connected to whom or what you attack determine how much is lost. Is this attack personal? Do you know anything about the attacker’s circumstances and background? Do you have a history with the attacker? Is the attack quick and clean or drawn-out and messy? Have you reacted too quickly or too severely? Have you acted out of need or reacted out of fear and doubt? It all matters, young one. It all tallies in determining the cost, in exacting the price.”
He understands, but at the same time he doesn’t. He has no personal experience with what he is being taught. He is never given the staff to use in combat; he is not allowed to test its power against anything living. Everything is explained, but little experienced. He tries to extrapolate, but there is no substitute for the real thing. He chafes under the restraints placed upon his education. He listens and learns, but he continues to wonder what it will feel like when the staff and its magic belong to him.
Sometimes he thinks that the talisman will never be his, that the old man is simply keeping him on as a companion. He is aged and worn, but steady in his life. Nothing seems to threaten, nothing surfaces that would cause either of them to believe that a need to gift the black staff will ever be more than a distant possibility against which they both guard. It distresses the boy to think that he gave up his dream of a life with the girl he loved so much for a promise that may never be fulfilled. It eats at him like a cancer that he may have sold himself so cheaply.
Then one day, three years into his apprenticeship, the old man takes him aside from their daily routine and walks him down the hillside to a stream running below the cabin that serves as their present home. For the past six months, they have lived up along the ridgeline fronting the western peaks, occupying a campsite that has been used for years by trappers. It is an idyllic, pristine setting, carpeted with meadows grown thick with wildflowers in spring and covered deep with unblemished acres of snow in winter. The sun shines often here, as it does not in other parts of the valley where the mists hang in thick draperies and the clouds brush the peaks. Sider likes this place and wishes they could stay here longer, even knowing from experience that they will soon be leaving.
But today the old man does not speak to him of his lessons and their choice of camps.
“There is something we haven’t talked about before,” he tells the boy. “Something that we have to talk about now. There is another besides myself who bears the black staff. Another who is descended from the old Knights of the Word.”
He has the boy’s full attention as he pauses to gather his thoughts.
“An Elf,” he says finally. He looks off across the countryside, as if across the span of his years. “There were two who came into the valley, who survived the Great Wars, carrying their staffs. Both were of the Race of Man, but one married an Elf girl; their