Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [43]
“I guess I don’t.”
“Demons that survived along with the humans and other creatures. There weren’t many, but there were a few. They escaped in the same way everything else escaped—by being somewhere other than the worst of the destruction. But they were still what they always had been when it was over, and they went right back to doing what they had been doing all along—working hard at wiping out everything but their own kind. They subverted what creatures they could and turned them to their own uses. It wasn’t like before; their numbers were small and their reach short. They were starting over, just like everyone else. But it was enough.”
“Wait one minute.” Sider held up one hand. “I’ve heard the stories about demons fomenting the madness of the Great Wars and forming armies to wipe out the human race. I only half believed them. But you’re saying it’s the truth? And you’re saying there are still demons out here? Demons of the sort that destroyed—well, almost destroyed—humankind in the first place?”
Deladion Inch rocked back slightly. He was sitting cross-legged now, his cloak wrapped close as the air grew cool with the deepening of night. His smile was ironic, filled with mirth but lacking in warmth, and when he stared off into the darkness it was as if he were seeing and hearing things that his companion could not.
“Sider, here’s the truth of things. After all that’s happened since the Great Wars, after time’s passage these past five centuries, nothing much has changed. Oh, the old world’s gone, right enough. All those cities and factories and war machines and everything else that the old sciences created to make the world a better place have disappeared, and we’ve got nothing worth talking about to show for it. They might as well never have existed, any of them. Centuries of enlightenment and progress vanished virtually overnight because Men couldn’t find a way to use it wisely and purposefully. Gone, the whole of it, and to what end? Was there a lesson learned? Was there a fresh perspective reached that might somehow help avoid it all happening again? You show it to me.”
Sider shrugged. “History repeats itself, Inch. It’s an old lesson, but no one ever seems able to put it to use.”
The big man grunted. “Well, there it is, then. You take my point. Change comes in the form of repetition. We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two, in any case. It’s been so in the past, it’s so now, and I would be willing to bet it’ll be so forever.”
Sider shook his head, more in puzzlement than disagreement. “I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don’t forget. A few things that stick with us. It’s just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn’t live through it, they don’t view it the same way we do. If you don’t experience something firsthand, it’s a lot harder to accept.”
He sighed. “But demons? Now, that’s something I didn’t think anyone would ever forget, given all the damage they did, the hurt and the destruction they caused. I wouldn’t think the survivors of the Great Wars would ever let that lesson be lost, even if all the others were.”
“Oh, they didn’t forget it themselves, I don’t think, and they taught it to their children.” Deladion Inch drank again from his cup of ale. “But things like demons don’t come around the same way each time. They’re like nightmares; they take on new shapes and come at you from different places. They’re changelings and shape-shifters, and they have the consistency and presence of ghosts.”
He gave a quick warning gesture. “Don’t misunderstand me. Demons might be the most dangerous enemy, but they’re not the only worry. Not from what I’ve seen. The larger worry is the unsettled state of the different kinds of people who were the survivors of the Great Wars. Those people—those Races, more