Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [120]
“Oh,” she said suddenly, turning back. “You have something at the corner of your mouth. A smear of color. Are you bleeding?”
Teonette’s hand flew to his mouth, rubbing quickly. But when he looked at his fingers, there was nothing there. Phryne smiled brightly when he looked back her. “I think you got it, First Minister. Good day to you.”
And she sauntered away, humming to herself.
TWENTY-THREE
WHEN THE OLD MAN RETURNS, ONLY A WEEK has passed, and yet to the boy it looks as if his mentor has aged a lifetime. He is grayer than before, weary around the eyes, and sad to the bone. The boy doesn’t need to ask if the old man’s visit was successful. He can tell at once that it was not.
“He would not heed me,” the old man tells him. “He barely listened to my advice and did not give even the smallest indication that what I said mattered. He smiled and changed the subject and without saying so dismissed me as surely as if I were no longer relevant.”
The old man shakes his head. “He has gone too far inward in his mind. He no longer sees the world as it is or even himself as he has become. He no longer understands what it means to carry the staff. He has forgotten the oath he took and the cause he embraced. He does not say so; he gives no hint of this. But it is there in his distancing, in the small span of his attention, and in his look. I cannot reach him.”
“What will happen now?” the boy asks.
The old man pauses, looking down at his hands and at the black staff he carries. “Nothing we can prevent,” he answers finally.
He says nothing more after that. The boy thinks to ask him of the details of what happened, but he knows the old man does not wish to speak of it. They go back to things the way they were before the old man left. The old man returns to teaching and mentoring, and the boy returns to his studies. The days pass as they once did, and life settles back to what it was.
Until, on a day so bright and clear it suggests that the boundaries of the valley no longer exist and the layers of mist and clouds and rain have dissipated forever, the bearer of the other black staff, the one who would not listen, comes to find them.
The boy and the old man are sitting on a hillside looking out over the valley, talking anew of the way that the power of the staff can alter the bearer’s thinking, a subject that seems to be ever present in the thoughts of the boy’s mentor these days. Power corrupts, and if not watched carefully, if not kept under control, it will come to dominate the user. This is the risk of wielding it; it is always a danger to the bearer. Caution is necessary, even in the smallest usages, because the power of the staff’s magic is an elixir that will build within the body and break down all resistance. Tolerance is possible, but a ready welcoming of the feeling it generates is anathema. It may not seem that there is any danger, especially in times like these, when use of the power is so seldom required. But an understanding of what it means to invoke the staff’s power will help keep the bearer safe and alive.
The old man finishes, looks off into the distance toward a forest down the hillside from where they have climbed, and gets to his feet.
“He is here,” he says.
At first, the boy does not know who he means. But seconds later a figure emerges from the trees, a gaunt specter bearing a black staff, and there is no longer any question. The Elf has the look of a man returned from the dead, clothes ragged and dirty, features scratched and bruised, shoulders bent as if he bears the weight of his own tomb. The boy stares in disbelief for a moment, not quite able to grasp yet what this unexpected appearance means. But his mentor already knows, and he is advancing to meet the other man, his own staff held at port arms before him.
“Greetings, brother!” shouts the tattered Elf, his voice as ragged and worn as the rest of him. He seems casual and relaxed, an old friend come to visit. But the boy senses instinctively that this isn’t