Terry Brooks - Bearers of the Black Staff (Legends of Shannara)

B Y T ERRY B ROOKS

S HANNARA
First King of Shannara
The Sword of Shannara
The Elfstones of Shannara
The Wishsong of Shannara

T HE H ERITAGE OF S HANNARA
The Scions of Shannara
The Druid of Shannara
The Elf Queen of Shannara
The Talismans of Shannara

T HE V OYAGE OF THE J ERLE S HANNARA
Ilse Witch
Antrax
Morgawr

H IGH D RUID OF S HANNARA
Jarka Ruus
Tanequil
Straken

G ENESIS OF S HANNARA
Armageddons Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Legends of Shannara
Bearers of the Black Staff
The World of Shannara

T HE M AGIC K INGDOM OF L ANDOVER
Magic Kingdom for SaleSold!
The Black Unicorn
Wizard at Large
The Tangle Box
Witches Brew
A Princess of Landover

T HE W ORD AND THE V OID
Running with the Demon
A Knight of the Word
Angel Fire East

Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

FOR STUART FINNIE

Courage Under Fire

Contents

ONE

B LACK ICE COATED EARTH FROZEN HARD BY NIGHT temperatures that had dropped below freezing, a thin skein of slickness that challenged the grip of his toughened-rawhide boot soles. Yet the Gray Man stepped with grace and ease across the treacherous smoothness, not oblivious to the danger so much as accustomed to it. He passed through the woods along the snow line close by the valleys rim, only slightly less transparent than the wraiths to which he was so often compared. Amid the dark of the trunks and limbs and the deep green of the conifer needles, he was another of nights shadows.

Until you got close enough to realize he wasnt a figment of the imagination, but as substantial as the rumors that tracked him in whispers and long silences, and then he was something much more.

Through the nights slow retreat he passed, watching daybreak lighten the sky above the eastern rim of the valley, so far away it was little more than a hazy glow. He had been walking for several hours, his sleep ended early. Each day found him someplace else, and even though he followed the same route over and over, tracking the rim of the valley from mountain peak to barren ridge to escarpment and back again, he was never bothered by time or speed; only with order. It was given to him to navigate the heights from one mountain pass to another, one valleys passage to the next, always in search of an opening that led outor in. The mists that had sealed the valley since the time of the Hawk had not yet receded, but that would change and it would do so in his lifetime.

His dreams had told him so.

The wall that kept the survivors of the Great Wars safely sealed in, and the things that roamed the world beyond locked out, would not hold forever, although there were many who thought differently. The wall was a conjuration of power unlike any he could imagine, although he wielded considerable power of his own. But nothing was permanent; all things must change. And no matter the beliefs of some and the wishes of others, life had a way of surprising you.

A hawk screamed from somewhere high above, soaring across the snowfields and rocky promontories, and something in the sound of that cry reminded the Gray Man that time slipped away and the past was catching up.

He quickened his pace, moving silently through the deep woods, his tattered robes trailing from his lean form. He did not stride through the trees so much as flow, a spectral creature formed of bits and pieces of color and smoke, of aether and light. He touched things as he went, small brushings and tiny rubs of fingertips, nothing more, reading from each something of the world about him. He sniffed the air and studied the look of the tiny ends of branches. Everything spoke to him. A Koden had passed here. There was fresh springwater not far away over there. Fledgling ravens had departed the nest last summer and flown off to breed families of their own. A family of black squirrels lived within that stand of blue spruce, perhaps watching him as he passed. It was all there for those who might read it, but he was one of only a handful who could.

After all, it was in his blood.

He was tall and rangy in the way of mountain men and long-range Trackers from the communities of Men and Elves alike, and broad-shouldered and hard in the way of the Lizards, though not burdened with the armor of their skin. He was quick when he needed to be and slow when quickness could get you killed. He was dangerous all the time. There were stories about him in every settlement, every village, every safehold and way station, and he had heard them all. Some were partly true, though none told all his tale. He was one of a kind and the last, as wellunless he found the next bearer. It was something he thought of now and then. But time allowed for little deviation from his duty, least of all seeking out and training the successor whom he fervently hoped he would not need for some years to come.

His hands tightened about the black staff that marked him for who and what he was, conscious of the deep carving of its runes and the pulse of the magic they commanded. He did not call upon the power much these days, did not have cause to do so, but it was comforting to know that it was there. The Words magic was given to him by his predecessor and before that by his, and so on over a span of five centuries. He knew the story of its origins; all those who carried the staff knew. They passed it on dutifully. Or when time and events did not allow for an orderly passage, they learned it another way. The Gray Man was not familiar with the experiences of those others who had borne the staff; he knew only his own. He had never been visited by the Lady who served as the voice of the staffs maker. She had never come to him in his dreams as she had sometimes come to others.

Ahead, the trees thinned as the valley slope lifted toward a tall, narrow gap in the cliff face farther up. There, hidden within the rocks, the pass at Declan Reach opened through to the larger world. He had stood in its shelter at the edge of his and looked past into the gray nothingness beyond, wondering what that world might look like if he could pass through. He had attempted passage once or twice in the beginning, when he was young and not yet convinced that things were as everyone claimed. But his efforts were always rebuffed; the mists turned him around and sent him back again, no matter how straight he believed the path on which he had set his feet, no matter how determined his attempt. The magic was inexorable, and it refused all equally.

But now he had the dreams to consider, and the dreams told him that five centuries of what had once seemed forever were coming to a close.

He left the trees and began to climb. Fresh snow had fallen a day earlier, and its white carpet was pristine and unmarked. But he sensed something nevertheless, a presence hidden below, just out of sight. He could not tell what it was yet, but it was nothing he recognized. He quickened his pace, suddenly worried. He climbed swiftly through the rocky outcroppings and narrow defiles, testing the air as he went, trailing his hands across the rocks. Something had passed this way, descending from the heights. Two, perhaps three days ago, it had made its way down into the valley. Down, not up.

But down from where?

His worst fears were realized as he reached the entrance to the pass and found his wards not simply broken, but shredded. The wards had been strong, a network of forbidding he had placed there himself not a month earlier. Wards of the same strength and consistency he used at every such passage leading into the valley, wards intended to warn him of breaches in the wall, wards meant to keep the inhabitants safe from the unthinkable.

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 judgeda 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.