"We get these storms all the time," Inch observed.

"Much bigger than what we see in the valley," Sider said. "More impressive."

He was feeling more at ease than he had when the big man had brought him here. Sider didn't like being shut away, no matter what claims of safety were offered. He knew the history of the compounds during the Great Wars, where being shut away was a death sentence. He preferred open s.p.a.ces that offered several routes of escape. But Inch had a.s.sured him that the ruins possessed as many bolt-holes as anything they would find out in the open. The ruins, he advised, were filled with tunnels and pa.s.sages that honeycombed the walls from one end to the other. If anything invaded that they were not able to stand against, it was a simple matter to find a way out before they could be trapped.

It didn't hurt Sider's sense of confidence, either, that the staff's magic was working away at healing his wounds, and that even now he was feeling much stronger.

The two men sat side by side as the last of the light faded from the western sky and the night descended like a shroud. Overhead, clouds that hung on the fringes of the storm north hid stars and moon, and the night's blackness was thick and impenetrable. Inch still wore his black leather armor, the stays and fastenings undone here and there to allow for comfort. Sider was wrapped in the remains of his tattered cloak and soft tunic and pants, all of them torn and shredded and in places cut away entirely to allow for the bandages. They had eaten and drunk and were now settled as comfortably as conditions would allow on a broad section of battlements that faced out to the west.

"I found this place maybe five years ago," Deladion Inch said. "I had kept myself mostly west of here, just above the hardpan and toward the forests where there were communities that needed my services. But I was looking to keep moving east, to find what else was out there. This was what I found, maybe the last of its kind in this part of the world. Or anywhere. There are other ruins when you travel farther west, cities mostly, but those have collapsed into rubble and are overgrown to a point where you can hardly tell what they were. If I didn't know something of the history, I wouldn't be able to put a name to them."

"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 eyebrow. "I think I'd rather be doing what I'm doing. At least that makes sense."

Sider smiled. "Well, I don't know that what I'm doing makes much sense; I'll give you that. People are strange creatures, and they don't always have a clear eye toward how things stand."

"No different out here, my friend." Inch made a sweeping gesture toward the countryside. "That's our history, if you think about it. Look at how we got to where we are. The Great Wars killed almost everyone, and those they didn't kill they left homeless and disconnected. Everyone made new families. Everyone had to band together to survive. It wasn't easy. Or so the stories that got pa.s.sed down through the years tell us. It was pretty bad. Pretty terrible."

He hunched forward. "Here's what I know from the stories I've heard. The end of the Great Wars came in a series of huge explosions that tore up the land and poisoned everything in it for two hundred years. Almost no one survived. Those who did went north or south or hid out in places that escaped the worst of it. Some went underground. Some went deep into the mountains. Some stayed put and got lucky. Others turned into freaks and mutants and worse things than that. But there weren't many of any kind who made it. Most never got through the first five years."

He shrugged, looking off into the darkness. "It was a long time ago, Sider, and now it's just old stories. We live in the here and now, not the past. But the present's not so good, either. You wanted to know what things are like? All right, I'm going to tell you."

He paused, as if gathering his thoughts or searching for a starting point. "Well, there's no good place to begin. For about a hundred years after the end of the Great Wars, people lived like animals. Some still do, but almost everyone did then. They sc.r.a.pped and clawed to stay alive. They killed each other if they felt threatened. They ate each other, too, I'm told. Food was hard to find, and starvation was an everyday occurrence. Men who hadn't changed into something else and Men who had, they were all in the same situation. There was no longer anything resembling civilization, nothing of order or moral imperative or a sense of right and wrong. There must have been some who still held those values and tried to practice them, but most gave in to the demands of their environment and became what they needed to become to stay alive."

"I'd thought that might have been what happened," Sider said.

"Happened for more than two centuries, and then things started to right themselves. The people who had escaped the worst of the plagues and poisons and firestorms had formed communities that were fortified and protected. Men armed themselves wherever they went, but at least they weren't afraid to go. Weapons were rudimentary for the most part. There were some flechettes and sprays and other leftovers from before the Great Wars, but most quit working or rusted up. Men forgot how to fix them and then how to use them and then forgot them altogether. The time for that kind of weapon was over. Men began making weapons in the old way, forging blades for swords and spears and javelins, shaping bows out of ash and tying flint to oak shafts for arrows, and they learned how to use them. They formed hunting parties and set watch over their women and children, and they stood up with some success against the predators and ravers that still roamed the land. The difference was that they were beginning to organize themselves."

"Still wasn't enough, though, was it?" Sider guessed.

Inch shook his head. "Not by a thirty-foot jump, it wasn't. There were battles fought all over the landscape, dozens every day, and whole communities were wiped out. Some of the mutants that grew out of the poisonous effects of the Great Wars had evolved into monsters that almost nothing could stop. Some were worse than the agenahls, but most of those couldn't breed and died out early on. There wasn't enough food for them, and they weren't smart enough to avoid eating things infused with poisons and chemicals. But that wasn't the worst of what was out there, Sider. You know what was? What still is?"

"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 pa.s.sage 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 repet.i.tion. 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 pa.s.s 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 properly-took on different forms and developed different languages, and they barely knew of one another until a little more than a century ago when they stopped living in caves and hideaways and came out for a closer look around. Instead of trying to band together in a common cause, they did the exact opposite. They created new barriers to any sort of joining, making clear to anyone who wasn't exactly like them that they didn't trust or need their kind. It was the past all over again. Just like always, men are their own worst enemies."

"Are you saying that what you've got out here is a smaller version of what we left behind five hundred years ago?" Sider stared at him. "That nothing has changed except the number of partic.i.p.ants?"

Inch nodded. "Pretty much. Sad, huh?"

Sider rocked back and looked off into the distance. It was dark and silent and peaceful, and there was nothing to indicate anything different. Yet there it was, the truth of things from someone who ought to know. The Great Wars might be over and the Races might have changed their look and makeup, but the hostilities that had plagued the world since day one continued. It would never change, he thought. No surprise, but it was hard to acknowledge nevertheless.

"How do you fit into all this, Inch?" he asked finally. "I know what you do, but how do you choose who you work for? You said it wasn't just the money; it was a freedom of choice. But how do you make that choice?"

"Oh, that." Deladion Inch shrugged. "It's not so hard, really. The communities are small, poorly trained, and not well educated, but they're tough-minded and determined. I find one that has a problem I can relate to and I offer to solve it. Sometimes I don't even make the offer; I just go ahead and do it. It depends on the situation. I want things to get better; this is how I make that happen. It's pretty clear to me, mostly."

Sider wasn't so sure it would be all that clear to him, but he let it go. Deladion Inch was a confident, self-a.s.sured man, and if he was any judge of ability, a dangerous one. He was probably more than a match for any two normal men and maybe more. Sider didn't think he ever wanted to find out.

Besides, as he had said to Inch earlier, he liked him.

"What about enemies that threaten everyone?" he asked. "Any of those still out there?"

The big man shook his head. "Maybe, but we don't know about them yet. The Trolls are the most populous people. Used to call themselves Lizards, but quit doing that a long time back. Something about wanting more respect. They live in tribes to the north. Thousands of them belong to each tribe; these are big communities. They did better after the Great Wars than the other Races, maybe because they were better protected by their mutations, maybe because they were farther away from the worst of things. In any case, they came out of it better and propagated quicker. I've been up that way a few times, met a few of their leaders, and seen their cities. They're smiths and ironworkers, for the most part. They make their own weapons and armor. No one in his right mind would go up against them.

"Other than that?" He furrowed his brow. "There are rumors ..." He trailed off. "But there are always rumors, aren't there? I haven't seen anything of the sort that you're asking about, and neither has anyone I've talked to."

"I was just wondering how big a threat those of us living in the valley might face from those of you who don't. If agenahls are the worst of it, maybe it isn't so bad, after all."

Deladion Inch was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on Sider. "Well, I wouldn't be too quick to make that presumption from anything that I've told you," he said finally. "Ask yourself this. Do your people have weapons and armor? Do they have training in the use of both? Do they know how to conduct themselves in a fight where the loser gets wiped out and the village gets burned back into the earth? If the answer is no, you're all in a lot of trouble."

Sider Ament didn't say anything in response. He nodded wordlessly and thought that the other man had an important point to make. He didn't know this world and its inhabitants, and any presumptions about what they might do or not do to his own community, once they found out about it, were reckless. The only thing he could be certain about was that if some of the former found their way into the valley and discovered some of the latter, it would happen again. The mists had dissipated, the protective walls were down, and his wards had been violated more than once. It was the beginning of the end of their old way of life and a signal that a new way must be found.

He wondered how the boy Panterra and his young friend were doing in convincing anyone in the village of Glensk Wood or in any other place they might choose to visit that this was true.

"You've given me a lot to think about," he said finally, looking over at Inch. "I thank you for doing so."

The big man smiled. "My pleasure. I hope it helped." He reached over and touched Sider gently on the arm. "One more thing. Something I have to ask. When you've healed sufficiently to leave here, will you go back to the mountains and your valley home? Back to where you came from?"

Sider nodded. "I expect I will."

"Do you have family there? A wife or children? I have none, so I have nothing to go back to and moving ahead is all I know. No ties of any sort. But is that so for you or is there someone back there who still means something to you? A loved one you think about when you're out alone and far away from your people?"

"No, no one." Sider hesitated. "Once, but not anymore. Not for a long time now."

Deladion Inch shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Doesn't change what I want to say. You speak of the way you watch over the people of your home, of the commitment that black staff requires of you once you choose to carry it. That sort of dedication, that's very rare. I don't know that I've ever seen it before. I just thought that maybe ..."

He trailed off, the sentence left unfinished. "Do yourself a favor. When you get there and you've told your people whatever you think you need to tell them, stay there. Keep your people there, too. Don't come out here again until you're better prepared for it. You haven't seen enough of what's out here. You've no idea how dangerous it is. I do. And I'm telling you that you're not ready for it."

"Maybe that's so," Sider acknowledged. "But maybe I won't have a choice in the matter."

The big man chuckled softly. "You always have a choice, Sider. Do what I say. Stay in your valley and stay safe."

After that, they were quiet for a long time.

TEN.

I DON'T LIKE IT THAT WE RAN AWAY," PANTERRA WAS saying as they climbed out of the valley in which Glensk Wood was now little more than a darker shading of color amid the green of the trees. "It makes it look like we did something wrong."

Prue, walking to his right and just ahead, gave him a look. "It doesn't matter what anyone thinks. What matters is the truth, and the truth is that we were just trying to help."

"You and I and Aislinne know that. But no one else does. No one else even heard me once I got to the part about the protective wall breaking down. No one wanted to hear that the things that killed Bayleen and Rausha were from outside that wall and might be just the first of an entire world of monsters trying to break in. Who can blame them? They're terrified of the possibility. Aren't you?"

"I'm fifteen. Everything terrifies me."

He laughed in spite of himself.

The sun was just cresting the jagged line of the mountains east, spearing the retreating dark with lances of gold and silver daylight, the clouds of the previous night dissipating and leaving only heavy fog that pooled in the gaps of the peaks. The boy and the girl had been walking steadily since they had left home during the night, heading east and north toward the Elven city of Arborlon. It was a two-day walk at best, but there was no reason for them to believe that anything ahead might obstruct their pa.s.sage or anyone behind find their carefully hidden tracks.

"Do you think they'll send someone after us?" Prue asked suddenly, as if reading his thoughts.

He shook his head. "Skeal Eile? No, I think he'll be content to have us gone. If we're not there, we can't repeat our story. Eile doesn't care about us specifically-only what we might do if we continue to stir things up. He might like to have some private time with us, maybe find a way to make us recant. But he won't waste time trying to track us down."

"What makes you think that?" She looked irritated at the idea. "He's already tried to kill us. Why do you think he'll stop there?"

Pan shrugged. "I just do. All he worries about is protecting his place as leader of the Children of the Hawk. Last night is over and done with."

They walked on in silence, concentrating on the terrain ahead, their climb steepening as they approached the rim, their eyes lowering to avoid the rising sun's glare. The land about them was a mix of bare rock, tough mountain gra.s.ses, and small, st.u.r.dy conifers that could only live at great heights. Birds flitted past, and now and then a ground squirrel or chipmunk, but nothing bigger. Behind them, the valley that had been their home stretched away in a broad green sweep, its night-shrouded lines taking on clearer definition with the sun's rapid approach.

Once, a hawk pa.s.sed directly overhead, sailing out of the valley and toward the rim to which they were headed. They stopped as one and watched its progress as it flew east and disappeared.

"A good omen, don't you think?" Panterra said.

Prue frowned. "Maybe."

She didn't say anything more, and he let the conversation lapse. But his thoughts drifted to the legend of the Hawk, to the boy who had brought their ancestors out of the destruction of the Great Wars and into the safe haven of these connected valleys. He wished sometimes he could have been there to see it, although he had a feeling that he wouldn't have much liked the experience if he were living it. A lot of people had died, and the survivors had endured tremendous hardship. The transition from the old life to the new must have been difficult, as well. Nothing would have been easy, even after they were safely closed away.

But why he really wished he could have been there was that he might better understand how things had come to their present state of affairs. The Children of the Hawk had been formed originally to honor the father of all the generations of survivors who had followed after the first. It had been a celebration of life and love and the durability of the human spirit. When so many had died, these few had lived. It was a wonderfully inspiring story of the human condition.

And yet it had come to this: a cult that followed a dogmatic hard line of exclusion and repression, believed its teachings alone were the way that others must follow, and claimed special knowledge of something that had happened more than five centuries ago. It did nothing to soften its rigid stance, nothing to heal wounds that it had helped to create by deliberately shunning people of other Races, and nothing to explore the possibility of other beliefs. It held its ground even in the face of hard evidence that perhaps it had misjudged and refused to consider that it was courting a danger that might destroy everyone.

How could something so wrong grow out of something that had started out so right?

They climbed on until they reached the rim, the sun now well above the horizon and moving toward midday, and turned north where the rim flattened into a narrow trail that wound through cl.u.s.ters of rock and small stands of alpine. The air was cold, and the winds blew in sudden, unexpected gusts that required travelers to pay attention and mind the placing of their feet. But the boy and the girl had come this way many times before, and so they knew what was required.

By midday, they had reached a point where they were starting down the other side, and in the distance they could see the gathering of lakes that marked the Eldemere, the forested waterways that formed the western boundary of Elven country.

In the distance, a rain squall was blowing across the lakes and through the woods, a ragged gray curtain that hung from towering ma.s.ses of c.u.mulus clouds.

"I think we might get wet," Prue observed.

Panterra nodded. "I think we might also get some help from Mother Nature in covering our tracks."

She glanced over quickly. "I thought you said Skeal Eile wouldn't bother coming after us."

"I did. But in case I'm wrong, it doesn't hurt to have help."

Prue gave him a disgusted look. "In case you're wrong, huh."

"Not that it's likely, but even so."

She grimaced. "No wonder I'm afraid of everything."

They took some time to eat a quick lunch, watching the storm roll across the Eldemere, the clouds thick and roiling and deep. There was no lightning or thunder, and except for the sound of the wind gusting, it was oddly silent. There was movement in the leaves on the trees, from the bushes and gra.s.ses below, and on the surface of the water. The scudding clouds and breaks of sun that streamed over the canopy of the woods cast legions of moving shadows, an entire community of dark wraiths that lacked substance and purpose. The boy and the girl sat eating and watching, not quite mesmerized, but definitely captivated. It was moments like this that made them feel at home and welcome in the world. It was here in the wild, outside of walls and open to the elements, that they had always felt most at peace.

"What do you think the Elves will say when we give them Sider's message?" Prue asked.

Pan shrugged. "I don't know. I think they'll listen without calling us names and looking at us like we're bad people, though."