by Terry Brooks
“Who are you?” Pan asked, leaning forward, but staying out of reach. Prue had taken a seat next to him. “Why were you trying to kill us?”
The man smiled. “You’ll forgive me, but I don’t think I’m going to answer either of those questions.”
“You won’t give us your name?”
“I won’t give you the time of day. Or night, in this case.”
“Or who sent you?”
“Or who didn’t.”
They stared at one another in silence then. “What should we do with him?” Prue asked finally.
“Why don’t you just let me go?” their prisoner asked. “I’ll go straight home and not come back. You have my word.”
“I’m sure your word is good, too,” Pan answered. “The word of an assassin. I have a better idea. Why don’t we just leave you tied up to this tree and see if anything interested in an easy meal finds you in—oh, I don’t know, say the next two weeks. I don’t know that anything will, but it might be better than starving. No one much comes into the meres, you know.”
The young man smiled. “You won’t do that. You won’t leave me.”
“I won’t?”
“You do, and you’ll never find out anything. Also, you’re not built that way. You don’t have it in you.”
Pan almost contradicted him, but Prue cut him off. “You’re right. We aren’t like that. So we have to take you to someone who knows what to do with you.”
She looked at Pan. “Since we are on our way to Arborlon, let’s take him there. We can give him to Tasha and Tenerife to guard and if they don’t want him they can give him to the Home Guard or even to the Queen.”
A flash of uneasiness appeared in their prisoner’s eyes.
“Tasha and Tenerife are all right, but the Queen?” Pan had seen the look in the other’s eyes and was just talking now to see what would happen.
“All we want is to keep this creature locked away until we find out more about him.” Prue cocked an eyebrow. “What does it matter where he’s kept or who’s doing the keeping?” She glanced over at their prisoner. “Tell you what, though. We can let Skeal Eile know what happened to you, if you like. Maybe he will decide to come see about getting you released.”
The young man was looking down at his hands now, refusing to meet their eyes. “I suppose you have to do what you think is best. But I’m still not going to tell you anything.”
Pan shrugged. “You don’t have to. We don’t care.” He got to his feet. “Better get some sleep, though. You still have to walk to where we’re going. Come on, Prue.”
He helped her stand and then made a show of walking her back to where their packs were, picking them up, and carrying them to a place just a little distance off from the bound man. Neither said anything as they spread their blankets on the ground and prepared to go to sleep.
“One minute,” their prisoner called out suddenly. “There is something you should know.”
Pan exchanged a quick glance with Prue. On his nod, they walked over together and stood in front of the prisoner, waiting.
“If you take me to Arborlon, I’ll be killed,” he said. He paused. “You won’t be safe, either.”
Prue shook her head. “That’s what you have to tell us?”
“No, there’s more. But first I want your promise that if I tell you what I know, you won’t take me to Arborlon.”
“We have friends in Arborlon,” Pan pointed out. “If someone wants to harm you, that’s your problem. No one wants to harm us.”
The young man looked disgusted. “You don’t know anything. You don’t even understand what’s happening. I do. Make the promise, and I’ll tell you.”
Pan looked at Prue for guidance. She shrugged. “I don’t believe him. Besides, we have to go to Arborlon. That’s where Phryne is. What happens to this one isn’t important.”
“You heard her,” Pan said to their prisoner. “Keep what you know to yourself.”
He turned away, Prue going with him.
This time their prisoner didn’t call them back.
PAN SLEPT LATE the following morning, not coming awake until the sun had crested the mountains and daybreak was long past. It might have been his exhaustion from the previous day’s flight and subsequent battle or the deep stillness of the meres or even the way the sunlight was absorbed by shadows and gloom as it tried to pass through the thick canopy of the trees that kept him sleeping longer than he normally would. But the result was the same—he was the last to wake and not at all unhappy about it.
He had kept watch while Prue slept deep into the night before waking her to take his place, and she was sitting where he had left her, eyes on their prisoner. The bound man was staring back.
“You’re blind,” he was saying to Prue. “I didn’t see that last night. But how can you be blind? You fought back like you could see me perfectly. You shouldn’t have been able to get away from me, but you did. How?”
The girl ignored him. “Morning, Pan. Breakfast in a few minutes.”
She set about pulling out bread, dried fruit, and a little cheese from her backpack, and then poured them cups of water from the pouch. Pan blinked awake as he sat watching her, yawning. “You should have woken me.”
“I should have done nothing of the sort.”
“You can see, can’t you,” their prisoner called out, unwilling to drop the subject. “You look like you can’t, but you can. Who are you? You aren’t what you seem, I know that much.”
“You aren’t, either,” Prue called back to him. “Here you are,” she said to Pan, handing him his food and water.
They sat side by side looking out at the lake while they ate, ignoring their prisoner, who continued on about her sight along with questions about his own meal and when he was going to get it. He seemed more agitated this morning, less patient with his captivity. There was an undercurrent of uneasiness that matched what they had seen in his eyes the night before when they had mentioned taking him to Arborlon.
When they had finished their breakfast, Prue took food and drink over to their prisoner and hand-fed him, refusing his requests that he be freed so that he could feed himself. In the end, he ate quietly and drank down his cup of water in one long series of gulps. He studied her face in a way that she found disconcerting, but she was careful to mask her emotions. With someone like this, you never wanted to reveal what you were thinking or feeling.
While she was engaged with their prisoner, Pan packed up their supplies and tied up their blankets in preparation for setting out. Even though he had slept longer than he had planned, they still had plenty of time to reach their destination before nightfall. He was already thinking about what they would do once they reached Arborlon and rid themselves of their prisoner. First they needed to find Tasha and Tenerife, and together they could figure out what to do about Phyrne.
They were almost ready to depart when their prisoner, still bound to the tree, called out. “I’ve changed my mind,” he told them. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. If that is what it takes to keep you from marching me off to Arborlon, why not? I have to do something to save you from yourselves.”
Pan, kneeling beside his backpack, glanced over. “That’s very kind of you.”
“Kinder than you know.” He sighed and shook his head, much as if he were dealing with small children. “All right, then. Listen. You were right about me. I have special skills, talents that are of use at times to others. I am for hire to those who have the coin. But mostly only to one man.”
“Skeal Eile?” Pan suggested.
“I would appreciate it if you would come close enough to look me in the eye while I am telling you this. Is that asking too much?”
Pan got up and walked over, but didn’t sit, waiting to see if this was going to be worth his time. Prue sidled up beside him.
“Thank you, Excellencies.” The young man inclined his head in a gesture of mock gratitude. “You won’t regret listening to what I have to tell you, I promise.”
“First tell us your name,” Pan demanded.
“I am called Bonnasaint,” the other answered immediately.
“From Glensk Wood?”
“Same as you. But I do not live in the village. I live on the far eastern edge, away from other people. You wouldn’t have seen me before.”
“Why shouldn’t we take you to Arborlon, Bonnasaint?” Prue asked him. “Why would you be in danger there?”
“What you should be asking yourselves,” the other answered, “is why you would be in danger.”
“And are you going to give us the answer?”
He nodded. “I was hired by the Queen, Isoeld Severine, to kill her husband. It was done under circumstances that made it appear that the Princess had killed her own father. That way the Queen could ascend the throne and the Princess could be locked away. If you take me back and she finds out, she will not chance that I might say something. She will have me killed. If you were her, wouldn’t you?”
Pan guessed he would. He guessed there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do if he had arranged and carried out a murder of this sort.
“What about us?” Prue asked him. “Why do you keep saying we’re not safe, either?”
“The Queen will take no chances. Once she discovers it was you who brought me back, she will wonder how much you know. She will not want to take the risk that I told you anything.”
He paused, letting the words sink in. Panterra and Prue looked at each other. Though neither spoke, they were both thinking the same thing.
Bonnasaint said it aloud. “She will have you killed, too.”
AFTER LOSING THE GIRL HE HAD PURSUED THROUGH the fortress ruins, the demon disguised as a ragpicker had reemerged and turned east toward the mountains from which the now deceased Grosha claimed she had come. He had dismissed the Trolls he’d pressed into his service, sending them back to wherever it was they had come from, bearing the corpse of their unfortunate leader. The demon felt no regrets about killing the latter; in fact, he imagined he had done any number of other humans a great favor. Other than his father, who was undoubtedly blinded by paternal love or perhaps something less noble, there were few who would miss such a creature. A few weeks’ time, and hardly anyone would even remember who he was.
But the girl—now, there was someone who deserved further consideration.
The demon was still trying to decide what had occurred at the fortress when he had chased her down and brought her to bay. There shouldn’t have been any escape for her; she should have been his to do with as he wanted. Yet someone or something more powerful than he had come to her assistance and spirited her away. Why? Why would anyone bother with this girl? What did she have to offer that mattered so much?
Of course, there was her relationship with the man who bore the black staff. She was important to him, even if she claimed otherwise. Nor was he dead, as she also claimed. That was just a ploy to throw him off, and a bad one at that. He would have known if the bearer of the staff were dead; he would have sensed it in the same way he had sensed the other’s presence all those weeks ago when he had first come looking for him. No, the bearer was alive, and the girl knew where he was.
But he didn’t think it was the bearer who had saved her. Possession of one of the Word’s talismans created a formidable opponent, but it did not invest the user with magic capable of transporting another human from one place to another. No human whom he had ever encountered or even heard about possessed magic that strong. Not even the legends told of anyone with that sort of power. This was something else, he believed. This was a Faerie creature, an ancient one in service to the Word.
Yet why had it bothered with this girl?
He thought about it at length as he walked away from the fortress toward the mountains, climbed the foothills to the lower slopes and then the slopes toward places where he would likely find passage through to whatever valleys lay beyond. He considered the possibilities, but nothing helpful suggested itself. The problem was that he didn’t know enough to make an educated guess. There was a background to all of this to which he was not privy. Not yet, anyway. That would change once he found the girl again.
And he would find her. He would find her as surely as the sun rose at the beginning and set at the end of the day. He would find her as surely as he would find the bearer of the black staff. However long it took, whatever he had to do to make it happen, he would find them both.
So he walked for several days, taking his time, singing his songs and humming his tunes, at peace with the wasteland around him. He passed through stretches of ruined earth, decimated forests, blackened hills, and scorched grasslands, and he was pleased. This was what he had worked so hard for, what all those who had shed their humanity had sought—a landscape devoid of living things, barren and blasted, empty of nature’s troublesome creatures. He could control this sort of world, and control was paramount to his reworked personality. Control was power, and power was sustenance. All the things he had once thought so important—things he could no longer even remember in the specific, but only in the general—had been left by the wayside in favor of the one absolute—power over life and death.
Had he stopped to think it through, he might have asked himself what his world would be like if he and those like him were the only creatures living in it. But such speculations seemed counterproductive to his purpose.
The words to a new tune came unbidden:
Ragpicker, ragpicker, walking through the land.
Make yourself a wish as quick as you can.
Ahead there’s a valley where the children play.
But your demon’s fire can sweep them away.
He frowned. It wasn’t very good, really. Children were of no interest to him. To other demons, yes, those whose lives were dedicated to making human children into a more interesting species. But those demons were gone, swept away in the apocalypse of five centuries earlier. So much had been lost in that time. Demons of all forms, their followers and armies, everything they had been on the verge of achieving. Still, it was never too late to start anew. That was what he told himself every day, and every day he found reason to believe it. Humans were still possessed of the same weaknesses that had brought about their destruction in the old days. Theirs was a race destined to be short-lived. They would find new ways to destroy themselves or to enable the demons and their servants to destroy them. It was inevitable. They just didn’t know it.
He wondered how many were living in the valley the girl had come from. He wondered how many more valleys hid similar enclaves. He hoped there were more than a few. He didn’t want to end this hunt until his appetite was sated. Surely, there were more bearers of the black staff. Surely there were other talismans and forms of magic to be found and claimed. It was a big world, and you couldn’t expect to find everything right away. Not even he could do that.
It took him three days to locate the nearest pass after climbing into the mountains, an undertaking at which he did not work overly hard, acknowledging the limitations of his human body, the ragpicker’s body of which he had grown quite fond. He still bore his bundle of rags on his back, a burden he was happy to carry. His trophies, the reminders of his conquests, still meant something to him. He liked to take them out at night when he was alone and look through them, matching each to his memory of its previous owner, remembering who that owner had been and how he or she had died. At my hands, the demon always added silently. All of them, at my hands. Isn’t that marvelous?
Once, during his ascent, he encountered one of the agenahls, a huge tank of a beast lumbering along just above him in the rocks. It spied him quickly enough and swung toward him, sensing the possibility of a quick meal. But then it caught his scent, identified what he was, and backed away quickly. The demon let it go. He appreciated the fact that animals were often much smarter than humans, and he thought that one day they might fill in the gap that would be left when the last of the humans were gone.
He reached the pass leading into the valley shortly bef
ore sunset on the third day of searching, when night’s gloom was settling in and its shadows were lengthening. He saw the remains of Trolls scattered about outside the pass and then again in the pass itself, the latter mixed with the bodies of humans. The scavengers had gotten to some of them, but not all. Four-footed scavengers were wary of confined spaces like this one, and preferred to do their hunting elsewhere. Mostly, it was the predatory birds that had begun to pick the bodies apart, and these were already gone for the day when he arrived.
A battle of some sort had been fought here, probably by Trolls from the same tribe as those he had encountered at the ruins and residents of the valley into which he was heading. Their numbers were small, but the fighting had been intense. It didn’t appear that much of anyone had survived. He wondered if the girl knew about it. He wondered if the bearer of the black staff had been involved.
He threaded the narrow defile, a twisting passageway that widened and narrowed by turns, its walls rising well over two hundred feet. The sky was a narrow strip of gray turning darker as sunset approached. He took note of the numbers of the dead, idly pausing to reconstruct what he thought might have happened and to admire the carnage. Already, he was thinking of what he would do once he was within the valley and had taken the measure of its people. Already, he was considering ways of flushing out of hiding the one who carried the black staff so that he could dispose of him quickly and claim his talisman.
At the far end of the pass, he came upon the abandoned defenses and the larger numbers of dead from both camps. He climbed a ladder to gain the far side, still counting bodies, feeling better now about his prospects. Finding the bearer of the staff could not be all that difficult given the obvious conflict taking place between humans and Trolls. Wherever the fighting was thickest, that was where the bearer would be. The ragpicker needed only to generate the sort of conflict that would bring the bearer out of hiding—something at which he was very good.
“I shall create a little confusion,” he said aloud. “I shall cause disturbances great and small. I shall sow dissension and unrest and create mayhem and murder. I shall give the human inhabitants cause for fear and turn them against one another. I shall release the beast that each of them thinks is safely locked within.”