Bearers of the Black Staff: Legends of Shannara (7 page)

He didn’t say anything for a time, mulling it over. “Maybe you’re right. But I can’t back down just because of the way people might see me afterward. Not when it’s this important. If even a few are persuaded that there might be something to what Sider Ament says, then that’s reason enough.”

She gave him a small smile. “I thought that’s what you’d say. I told Brickey as much. You know what he said? He said it would surprise him if you said anything else.”

Panterra reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. “Guess I’m becoming a little too predictable.”

She moved between his arms and hugged him. “Well, that’s not a bad thing, Pan. Not a bad thing, at all.”

N
IGHTFALL CAME SLOWLY
, the day dragging in spite of Pan’s anticipation. He thought afterward about what he had done during its long, seemingly endless hours, and could remember barely anything. He spent some of it with Prue, but a lot of it alone, thinking. He stopped by to reassure a dour Trow Ravenlock that he had not changed his mind and intended to make his report as promised. The latter just shook his head and turned away. He thought about visiting his oldest sister, who lived with her husband and two boys in the next village over, but rejected the idea out of hand. Visiting meant explaining and explaining meant a whole new round of arguments about the advisability of what he had decided to do.

So the day passed and dusk descended, and all of a sudden it was time.

He went looking for Prue and found her waiting for him at the end of the walk, just come from her own house. She was wrapped in warm furs and wore beneath them her Tracker’s leathers. She smiled cheerfully and took his arm. “Are you all ready?” she asked.

“Me? I thought you were the one who was going to tell them,” he joked, and gave her a shove.

They walked over to Council House, the village meeting hall and the building in which most community business was conducted. It was another longhouse, similar to the one in which the Trackers gathered, only much larger. This one could easily hold five hundred people, if you filled the balcony seats as well as the floor benches. Panterra had expected a reasonable turnout; meetings such as these were open to the public and always drew some interested parties. But he was surprised to find the hall packed to the rafters. Every seat was taken, and those who had come late were forced to stand in the back or on the sides against the walls, where they crowded in two- and three-deep.

Apparently word had gotten out that he intended to speak. Those attending had at least an inkling of his news. He saw in the looks directed at him and the whispers exchanged that they were not happy about it.

His gaze swept the hall swiftly, taking everything in. The room was hot with bodies crammed together and the fire that blazed out of the
massive stone hearth at the far end. Torches threw down pools of flickering yellow light from brackets affixed to the walls around the room. Great ceiling fans carried the smoke away through ceiling vents, their blades turning slowly on pulleys hand-operated by men in the corners. The ceiling itself was high and dark, and the rafters were dim forms in the shadows of the center beam’s vaulted peak.

Panterra glanced at Prue, who suddenly looked scared. She was a loner who preferred life lived outside villages in the wild, where she felt free and unencumbered. This was more people than she had seen in one place in years. Clearly, she didn’t like it.

“Don’t look at them,” he whispered to her, bending close. “Look at me, if you have to look at someone.”

They saw Trow, who beckoned them forward to chairs directly opposite the council table. Several members of the council were already gathered, chatting with one another until they caught sight of him; then conversation ceased momentarily as they stared. Pan didn’t like how that made him feel. He already sensed an undercurrent of discontent from those gathered. He kept reminding himself he was only the messenger, and the message was not his own.

But Panterra Qu was no fool. He knew this was not going to make any difference, that the message was going to become his the moment he voiced it.

Prue gripped his arm and hung on to it as he made his way forward. They sat down next to Trow, who nodded without speaking and looked away. Panterra felt a pang of disappointment in the Tracker leader. He should have been more supportive; he should have tried to do more for the men and women he led. It seemed to Pan that he had decided to do nothing, that he had made a conscious choice to distance himself from this entire business.

He looked around for Aislinne, but there was no sign of her. The only ally he might find at this gathering, and she wasn’t even there. He wanted to ask Trow where she was, but he resisted the impulse.

A little more time passed as other members of the community pushed into the packed hall, their voices raising the volume in the already noisy room. Panterra tried not to listen; he tried to calm himself in the way his mother had taught him—by thinking of other things. He fixed his eyes on the great hearth and its roaring fire, blazing up from
behind the huddled council members, and let himself disappear into the flames. He tried thinking of his family when he was young, of the happiness he had enjoyed growing up. When that didn’t work, he tried thinking of the woods and the mountains, of his life as a Tracker.

He was still working at staying calm and centered in his thoughts when Pogue Kray entered the hall from a side door and took his seat at the center of the council table. He was a big, burly man with a blacksmith’s arms and shoulders, his movements slow and ponderous. Once, he had been a formidable figure, all muscle and hard planes. But his belly had taken over as his predominant feature, and now he looked settled and soft. His bluff face was black-bearded and sun-scorched, and he had the look of someone eternally dissatisfied with life’s lot.

He was trailed by the Seraphic, Skeal Eile, wrapped in his white robes, his strong face held high and proud as he kept his eyes on a place just above the faces of all who turned to study him, unaffected by and distanced from their prying looks. He remained standing, placing himself just behind and to the right of Pogue Kray.

The council leader rapped his huge hand on the hard surface of the table and signaled for attention. Slowly but surely, the hall quieted to silence.

“This room will come to order and remain so,” the big man declared, sweeping the chamber with his black gaze. “The business of the council will not be interrupted by voices speaking out of turn or by ill-advised demonstrations. Should any of this come to pass, my keepers of the peace will act swiftly. Is that understood?”

Apparently, it was. No one said anything.

“Very well.” Kray was satisfied. “We are here at the request of one of Trow Ravenlock’s Trackers, who has asked to give us his report personally. Is that Tracker present and ready?”

He looked at Trow, who got to his feet. “He is, Council Leader.”

“Then let him speak.”

All eyes fixed on Panterra as he rose. He glanced about quickly, but there was still no sign of Aislinne. He didn’t hesitate further; he started talking at once—before he had a chance to lose his courage—relating the events of the previous day. He kept his eyes on Pogue Kray as he spoke and did not look at Skeal Eile, aware that the Seraphic was studying him intently from behind the council leader’s
chair. He tried not to hurry his report or to make it too sensational, but to keep it straightforward and accurate. He started with how Prue and he had come across the tracks of the creatures—tracks they could not identify—and begun following them. He continued with their discovery of the remains of Bayleen and Rausha, their efforts at further tracking their friends’ killers, the ambush and attack by the creatures, and their rescue at the hands of the Gray Man.

He closed by repeating the latter’s warning, and when he finished the entire assembly broke out in a wild cacophony of voices shouting and crying out in a mix of anger and doubt and fear.

Pogue Kray rose to his feet, his giant frame looming over everyone. He gave it only a moment, and then roared for silence, pounding his fist on the table once again. The quieting took longer this time, but eventually the room was still once more.

“There will be no more of that!” the council leader snapped, looking from face to face, eyes dark and fierce. “I told you what would happen, and if there is another such outburst I will empty the room and the rest will be heard by the council alone!”

“Perhaps that is best in any case?” Skeal Eile suggested in his low, compelling voice from over the other’s shoulder.

Pogue Kray shook his head. “This session will continue as before. Young man. Panterra Qu, isn’t it? You seem certain of your story. But its parts are both clear and yet still vague in my mind. Enlighten me on a few of its points. How is it that Sider Ament came to find you when he hasn’t been seen in the valley in months?”

“He had been tracking the creatures, too—from where he found they had breached the mists,” Panterra answered. “He caught up to us just in time to keep us from being killed.”

“You and this young lady,” the big man said. He turned to Prue. “Is this boy’s story as you remember it? Or are there things you wish to add or subtract?”

Prue rose to stand next to Pan. “Everything happened exactly as he said it did. I would change nothing.”

“Still, it is an incredible tale, with ramifications that I don’t think either of you appreciate,” Pogue Kray pointed out. “Perhaps you need further time to consider the reliability of your memories.”

Skeal Eile stepped forward once more. “Your advice is well given,
Council Leader,” he said. “These are young people with little experience in the world. They tell a wild tale, one that suits their age and inexperience but strains belief. What they remember might not be exactly what they saw at the time. Is there any physical proof of what they tell us?”

Pogue Kray nodded at Panterra. “Answer him.”

Panterra shook his head reluctantly. “No, we have no physical proof. The swamp swallowed the creature that was killed. The other escaped. Sider Ament went after him.”

“The wild man who lives as a hermit on the high slopes of our valley, the man who disdains the company of other men and pretends at being our guardian, carrying a relic that may or may not have come from another time.” He shook his head in dismay. “No one has ever seen this staff do the things you say you saw it do, young Panterra. Things of magic from out of the old world, things no one has seen in centuries. Not even the Elves. Isn’t it possible that you are mistaken in what you saw?”

Panterra shook his head. “I know what I saw. I am a Tracker. I am not easily deceived.”

“But you admit that deception is a possibility, even for a Tracker as skilled as you?” Skeal Eile stepped in smoothly, eyes locking on Panterra. “I know your reputation. You have special talent. But all of us can be tricked by our own senses and the deliberate deceptive efforts of others. That could have happened here.”

Without waiting for Pan’s response, Skeal Eile turned to the assembled members of the community, raising his hands to draw their eyes and hold them.

“Listen to me, now. Listen carefully. This story lacks foundation in the teachings of the Hawk. It goes contrary to everything we know to be true. For centuries, we have been kept safe by following those teachings, by studying them as we would the rules of life, by keeping them close to our hearts. To dismiss them now, to toss them aside as if they meant nothing, would be a travesty beyond understanding. And all on the word of a boy and a girl who rely heavily on what they heard and saw while in the company of a man whose origins and purposes are suspect in the extreme?”

His hands swept the air and came down again. “We are the Children of the Hawk, and we know what the Hawk promised us. We
know that he led us here to keep us safe and that when it is time to go out into the larger world again, when it is safe for us to do so, he will come for us. He will come as a sign or in the flesh reborn, but he will come. There will be no ending of the mists, no falling down of the protective wall, no intrusion of the world left behind, until the madness shut outside our homeland is dispelled forever. And he will be the one to bring us this message, not some hermit who has no better sense than to spread wild rumors.”

A slow muttering had grown to a low chanting that filled the room and drew together the assemblage. Panterra glanced around uneasily, not able to quite grasp the words, but disliking their tone. Prue took his arm to catch his attention and shook her head, apparently thinking he was about to do something. Was he? He turned back to Pogue Kray.

“What if he’s right?” he asked the council leader, lifting his voice so that everyone could hear it. “What if Sider Ament speaks the truth?”

“Careful, boy,” Skeal Eile said quickly. “Your words verge on blasphemy. You risk your salvation as a Child of the Hawk.”

Again the voices rose to shouts, sprinkled now with epithets that were clearly audible. Pogue Kray rose yet again, and yet again slammed his fist on the table.

The crowd quieted, but the dark looks remained.