Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [41]
“You have any one place you call home?” Sider asked.
The big man’s smile was barely visible in the darkness. “Don’t stay anywhere long enough for that. You should know, Sider. What you do, I imagine you don’t have a home, either, do you?”
The Gray Man shook his head, wondering what it was that Inch thought he did. “Not since I was a boy. My parents had a small farm up in the high country. I left when I was sixteen.”
He shifted positions on the blankets, searching for a more comfortable one. “We haven’t really talked about what it is we do, you and I. You seem to think we do the same thing. But I’m not so sure.”
“No?”
“Let me try this out on you. You’re what they used to call a mercenary. You hire out for a price—maybe the highest price, maybe not. But you’ve got skills everyone needs, so you’re in demand. Have I got that much right?”
He could hear Inch chuckle softly. “Partly. I do have skills and everyone wants them, so finding work is easy. But I have a lot of different skills, ones that no one else has. That makes what I can do unique. So sometimes I don’t work for anyone; sometimes, I’m my own employer. Sometimes the price is coin or goods, and sometimes it’s just what I feel like doing. It’s a harsh world, Sider, and I stay sane in it by making sure all the choices are mine and not someone else’s.”
Sider nodded. “You don’t want to wake up the next morning knowing you made a bad one.”
“Something like that.” Deladion Inch took a long drink of his ale. It was bitter stuff, Sider found, but after a while it grew on you. “I like finding people and causes that need a strong hand to set things right. I like making my own judgments about who’s bad and who’s good. If I get paid, fine. If not, that’s fine, too. We’re all stuck in this world, and none of us made it the way it is. We don’t like much about it, and I think if you want to live in it with some sense of responsibility, you have to find ways to keep it this side of becoming too insane. It wasn’t like that for too many years. It’s still dangerous, but at least it’s understandable.”
He took another pull on the ale. “So isn’t that what you do? You sound like maybe it might not be. Do you think a different way about things than me?”
Sider shook his head. “I just don’t follow the same calling, Inch. Mine comes from a long way back in time and tracks a different path. It’s the staff’s legacy, really. You wanted to know more about it? Well, here’s something I can tell you. You don’t inherit this staff; you earn the right to carry it. It is bequeathed to you along with a set of rules about how it’s to be used. The primary obligation of its bearer is to protect those for whom it was created, way back when the Great Wars were just a possibility. When it was given to me, when I was chosen by my predecessor, it was with the understanding that I would carry on the work of all those men and women who bore the staff before me.”
“What sort of work? It’s not like mine?”
Sider shrugged. “I don’t know enough yet about the specifics of your work to be able to judge. But I’m not for hire, and I don’t get to choose my path. I am the protector of a group of people who escaped the Great Wars and haven’t come back out into the world again since. Except that now they might have to because the world is threatening to intrude on them. I’ve kept them safe and patrolled the perimeter of their safehold since it was given to me to do so, and I see it beginning to crumble. They always knew there would come a time when this would happen, when they would have to come back into your world, their old world. But knowing it and accepting it are two different things. Now that it’s happening, they won’t necessarily believe it or trust me to make the call for them.”
“So you work for free and you don’t get any respect from those you serve.” Inch arched one