Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [2]
And now the unthinkable was here.
He knelt to study the area surrounding the tattered remains that still clung to the rocks where he had attached them. He took a long time, wanting to make certain of what he was sensing. There was no mistake. Something had come through from the larger world, from beyond his valley. More than one something, he revised. Two, he judged—a hunting pair come in search of food, huge, dangerous creatures from the size and depth of the claw marks on the rocks and the apparent ease with which they had destroyed the wards.
He stood up, shaking his head at the irony of it. Even as he had tried to measure the time allotted before the dreams would come to pass, they had arrived full-blown. In the blink of an eye, the past was upon them.
He looked out from his vantage point high upon the snow line to the spread of the valley. Mist and clouds hid much of it this morning, and it would be midday before that haze burned off enough to permit a view of even the closest of the communities. To which of these would the intruders go? It was impossible to say. They might stay high up on the protective slopes of the mountains. Whatever their choice, he would have to hunt them down and dispatch them before it was too late.
Which it might already be.
He turned back into the pass and with the aid of his staff began to rebuild the wards. He summoned the magic, holding out the staff before him and using the words of power and small movements of his hands. The runes began to glow, luminous against the still-dark early morning, pulsing softly in response to his commands. He felt the power flow from the staff into his body, and as always he was transported to another plateau of sensation, one that was too close to euphoria for comfort, a warning of an addiction he had already embraced too closely. The magic was an elixir, each time giving him such fulfillment, such satisfaction, that he could barely stand the thought of letting it go. But he had learned what the lure could result in, and by now, he knew the ways in which to keep from falling prey.
Or so he told himself.
He layered the pass with the wards, preventing the creatures that had broken through from escaping the valley without his knowing. It took him a while to complete the task, for he understood the importance of being thorough. But when at last he finished, the wards were set. He let the magic retreat back into the staff. The brightness of the runes faded, the glaze of the magic’s euphoria dissipated, and the world returned to normal.
The Gray Man stood where he was for long moments afterward, savoring the memories, and then he turned his back on the pass and the wards and set out along the valley rim, tracking the creatures.
It was not difficult to do so. They were big and slow, and their tracks were distinct where imprinted in muddy patches on the rocks and within the snowfield. They were moving west now, opposite the direction from which he had come. They followed the snow line for only a short distance before dropping down to the deep woods and their protective cover. They were hunting still, the Gray Man guessed, but keeping close to the safety of the heights and some assurance of the way back. They were thinking creatures, though he doubted their ability to reason overrode their primal instincts. They were brutes, and they would react as such. A lack of caution did not make them any less dangerous. If anything, it made them more so. He would need to find them quickly.
He considered for a moment the ramifications of their presence. It meant that after all these years, the wall was failing and their time of isolation was at an end. This would be difficult for many of the valley’s inhabitants to accept—Men, Elves, Lizards, Spiders, and those singular creatures that lacked a group identity. It would be impossible for some. The sect of Men who called themselves the Children of the Hawk, and who awaited the return of the leader who had