Bearers of the Black Staff Read online

  So joshing and teasing with Rendelen and Dash came naturally, just three Elves of similar background and shared worldview, sitting around a fire and passing the time.

  Only one area was taboo. No mention was made of the King’s personal life or his young Queen. Even Elven Hunters were astute enough to know that this was forbidden territory when it came to Phryne Amarantyne.

  They slept soundly until the sunrise woke them, then set out to finish their journey. They climbed into the mountains, bright sunlight washing the landscape as yesterday’s weather moved on, the clouds and mists of early morning dissipating, the skies turning clear and blue. By midday, they had reached the slopes leading up to the pass and were met by sentries keeping watch. Within another hour, they had ascended the final section of their climb, moved into the near end of the pass, and could hear the sounds of construction ahead.

  The first thing Phryne noticed as they entered the split and saw the first of the staging areas was how close the fortifications were to the near end of the pass. Within minutes, she could see the defenses themselves, braced across a narrows where the cliff walls offered sheer drops of more than two hundred feet. She had envisioned the defenses being set farther in toward the far end of the pass, thinking the Elves would want to fight for every inch of the twisty passageway if the first set of defenses was breached. Clearly, someone had decided otherwise.

  She had her chance to discover whom as Tasha caught sight of her from where he was working on fashioning logs into buttresses for the walls and hailed her over.

  “Welcome, cousin!” he boomed, wrapping his big arms around her.

  A few mouths gaped as he embraced her, for she was a Princess and no one hugged a Princess like that without permission. But Tasha was Tasha, and she expected no less.

  “Good to see you, Tasha,” she greeted him, hugging back. “I’ve missed you.”

  “And me, as well, I hope,” said Tenerife, appearing at his brother’s side to claim his own hug. “Your father set you free again, I gather?”

  “He said he thought I had learned my lesson.”

  “Which lesson would that be, I wonder?” Tenerife gave her a wink. “How are things in Arborlon? How is Panterra doing without Prue?”

  She grimaced. “Must you keep reminding me about that?” She sighed. “Well enough, when he left. Sider Ament took him off to the south to visit the villages there and try to rally support for protecting the other passes. I haven’t seen him since. What about here?”

  “You can see for yourself, if you want,” Tasha offered. “We’ve gotten the better part of the defensive wall finished. Should be all the way done in three days. Is that why you’re here? To give your father a report?”

  “Of course not!” She tried to look offended. “I’m only here to see that both of you are safe and sound. But you seem well enough, so I might as well have a look around.”

  The brothers laughed, and Tasha took her arm and steered her toward the wall. “Come with us, cousin Princess, and see how the working Elves do their job.”

  With Tenerife in tow, he took her through piles of building supplies and equipment—logs and huge stones hauled up from the valley; chains, clamps, and latching forged by their smiths; and heavy ropes, block and tackle, and pulleys and hoists manufactured by their craftsmen. She looked at everything, still confused by the positioning of the wall. “Why did you build it so close to the near end of the pass?” she asked finally.

  Tasha laughed. “Seems like a mistake, doesn’t it? But only if you judge the choice without thinking it through. Let me explain.” He gestured at the cliffs to either side. “This is the narrowest point in the pass where the cliff walls cannot be climbed by attackers to bypass the fortifications. We’ve already eliminated some of the climbing paths and footholds farther in, sheering back the wall even farther. On this side, we’ve hewed out footholds that allow us to place defenders all along the upper stretches of the cliffs, back out of sight of those approaching. Archers will take those positions if we are attacked. Because of time constraints, we decided early on to build a single wall rather than a series. One good wall will have to be enough. We also chose this site based on something a little less obvious. Come over here.”

  He guided her to the wall, and together the three cousins climbed ladders to parapets and descended on the far side. Tasha led the way forward for perhaps two dozen yards and stopped, pointing up. “Now look up. There, in those clefts to either side.”

  She looked but didn’t see anything. “What am I looking for?”

  “What you’re not seeing, which is good. We don’t want the Trolls to see it, either. We’ve rigged pins linked to ropes on either side that hold back several tons of rock. If they are pulled, we create an avalanche that will bury anyone caught in the pass on the wrong side of the wall. A last resort, if the walls should be taken. The Trolls will be crowding forward, hundreds deep. There won’t be time or space to run. Most will die where they stand.”

  She nodded. “So you don’t think they will see the trap you’ve set?”

  Tenerife shrugged. “You didn’t. Are their eyes any sharper than yours?”

  “They might have more experience with these things than I do.”

  “They might be too busy trying to stay alive if they get this far to make a careful study of outcroppings several hundred feet up.”

  She nodded. It made sense. “Who designed all this?”

  Tasha cocked an eyebrow at her. “Ronan Caer. Remember him?”

  She shook her head. “But the name sounds familiar.”

  “It should. He broke your arm when you were five. You were playing with staves, pretending to fight each other. He pretended too hard or you pretended too little, and the result was your left arm in a splint for nine weeks. Do you remember now?”

  She did, although she hadn’t thought of the incident in years, and she didn’t think she had seen Ronan Caer in almost that long. He had moved away from Arborlon when she was still little. “He designed all this?”

  “It seems he wasn’t wasting his time while he was away. He was studying architecture, particularly as it relates to creating defensive positions. He was exploring, as well. Knew the pass as well as we did. He set the positions right away. Haren knew his talent from before and called him up as soon as we arrived. Made things much easier.”

  Haren Crayel, captain of the Home Guard. A good man, one her father trusted implicitly. She hadn’t known he was up here, but it made sense that he would be placed in command.

  “Enough of ancient history,” Tasha declared, taking her arm. “We’ve got something else to show you besides the fortifications, something that isn’t quite so reassuring.”

  They left the staging areas and the defensive wall behind and proceeded through the pass. Soon even the noise of the construction had disappeared in a baffle of twists and turns that first distorted and then deadened the sound of the noise altogether. They wound deeper into the cut, approaching the wide opening where they had stumbled upon the dragon the last time she was up here.

  “Any sign of that …?”

  “Dragon?” Tenerife finished for her. “Haven’t seen it. Maybe it moved on to less crowded quarters. Maybe there wasn’t enough for it to eat in these mountains and it went in search of better feeding grounds.”

  “Maybe it’s waiting for you to get careless,” she suggested.

  “Maybe,” he agreed. “I’ve been known to do that, but not where dragons are concerned.”

  They crossed the broad opening, Phryne glancing skyward more than once, caught between wanting on the one hand to be safe and on the other to encounter the beast again. She could not forget the mix of exhilaration and fear she had felt on seeing it for the first time. But the dragon did not appear, and soon enough they were past the widening and back inside the narrows, moving ahead once more toward the far opening of the pass. It took them only a short time after that, and as they neared their destination she caught sight of a handful of Elven Hunters gat
hered just inside the cut. Sentries warding the mouth of the pass, she realized.

  “Any change?” Tasha asked as they came up to the group, glancing from face to face.

  “Nothing,” one replied. “Take a look for yourselves.”

  Wordlessly, the Orullians led Phryne forward the last few steps to where the pass opened out onto the foothills and plains beyond. As they neared the opening, Tasha looked over at her. “Look down on the plains, but don’t show yourself. Stay in the shadow of the cliff sides.”

  He motioned for her to go ahead of him, and she did so. When she reached the edge of the light, she stopped and stared out at the broad sweep of the landscape beyond. There were mountains all around, but in the distance, below a ragged clutch of scrub-littered foothills, were plains turned as barren and brown as the rock of their passageway, rolling off to the northwest until they disappeared in the haze of the distant horizon. She scanned from mountains to plains and back again. Nothing.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the Orullians. “Where should I look?”

  “There,” Tasha advised, coming up beside her and pointing.

  She peered out across the foothills and into the hazy air of the plains to the place he indicated. At first she saw nothing but a mix of dark and light terrain. Then she saw what looked like thin, barely noticeable columns of smoke rising out of the largest of the darker patches. She realized that there was movement within the patch, a rippling of life.

  “Taureq Siq’s army,” she said quietly.

  “Just so.” Tasha’s voice was equally soft. “Spread out for several miles on the flats. Been like that for three days now.”

  Both Orullians were standing next to her, one at either shoulder. Phryne glanced from one to the other. “What’s it doing here?”

  Tenerife shrugged. “Waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “What’s troublesome is that it hasn’t sent out scouts, not even into the foothills let alone these mountains,” Tasha interjected. “The Trolls don’t seem particularly interested in investigating. I thought when the army first appeared that it had come to claim the passes. But it hasn’t moved since setting up camp.”

  “Waiting,” Phryne repeated.

  They stood where they were for a long time as she peered out at the camp, trying to reason it out. The Trolls had struck their old camp and come here, presumably in preparation for their meeting with the leaders Panterra had promised them would come. But would they just sit there trusting to his word without trying to do more? They might, if they thought that his fear for Prue Liss was strong enough that he would do what they had demanded. But how could they be sure he would be able to persuade anyone to come out to meet with them?

  How could they be sure of anything?

  Something about all of this was deeply troubling, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Apparently her cousins hadn’t had any better success.

  “Have you gone down to have a look?” she asked.

  “And risk incurring the wrath your father visited on you?” Tenerife asked in mock horror. “Of course we have.”

  “There isn’t much to see, even up close,” his brother rumbled, easing back a step, as if his bulk made him more visible than the other two. “We saw it all from the rise the last time you were up here while we waited for our chance to rescue Panterra and Prue. Nothing’s changed but the location. The Trolls and the tents and all the rest look just the same.”

  Phryne shook her head. “I don’t understand it. Why aren’t they searching for a way in? Why aren’t they looking for the passes? They know we’re in these mountains somewhere.”

  Tasha snorted softly. “We’ll know soon enough. The full moon comes in ten days. If no one appears to negotiate, I’m pretty certain they’ll stop sitting around.”

  “Of course, they could be searching without our realizing it,” Tenerife mused. “They were pretty good at creeping up on our Tracker friends without them knowing, and not many are able to do that.”

  “No,” Tasha said, frowning. “We would have seen something. We’ve had eyes trained on the approach from the day we arrived to begin work on the defenses, and no one has come into the mountains.”

  “Could they have found another of the passes?” Phryne asked. “Farther south?”

  The brothers thought it over for a moment. “If they knew where we were and how to get to us, why bother with requesting a meeting? No, I don’t think they know a way in just yet. I think that’s what they’re waiting for. I just don’t know where they think the information is coming from if they don’t search it out.”

  They talked it over awhile longer, but when Phryne was satisfied that she had seen all there was to see, they retreated into the pass. A short time later they had regained the barricades and were observing the progress of the construction once more.

  “Will you stay the night?” Tenerife asked as they climbed down from the ladders on the far side.

  She nodded. “I want to look around a bit more.” She paused. “Did you send anyone to tell my father about the Trolls?”

  Tasha shook his head. “Haren decided not to bother. Nothing to tell, he said. It’s not as if it’s a surprise that they’re here. We knew they were coming. If they do something worth reporting, we’ll send word then. You can tell your father yourself when you return to the city.”

  She didn’t like it that it had been left to her to do something the captain of the Home Guard should have done, but she guessed it was his decision, not hers.

  She spent the rest of the day studying the barricades and listening to the builders explain why they believed them strong enough to repel any attack. She was briefed on the defensive positions and the strategy that Haren Crayel intended to employ if the attack came. Afterward, she had dinner with her cousins and the Elves they were closest to, back to telling stories and sharing ale.

  It was late when she rolled into her blankets near a fire they had built for her, the mountain air cold and the wind gusting through the pass. She was tired enough to begin drifting off right away, even though she was still thinking about the reason that the Trolls were making no effort to search for a way through the mountains. Odd, she kept repeating to herself, that they should come so near Aphalion Pass and then do nothing to find it.

  If Arik Sarn were there, perhaps he could explain it. She thought of him sitting in the gardens and drawing flowers, and it made her smile. He was pretty odd himself. He would understand the behavior of the Drouj and Taureq Siq better than any of them.

  She had almost fallen asleep when the first hint of the answer she had been searching for came to her as a sharp-edged possibility that until that moment she had never considered. Doing so now, she went cold all the way down to her bones.

  Within seconds she was shaking Tasha and Tenerife awake.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TRUE TO HIS WORD, ON REACHING GLENSK WOOD at midday two days earlier, Sider Ament left Panterra behind and continued on alone for Declan Reach. He took time to reassure the boy that he would do whatever was necessary to recover Prue safely from the Troll camp and would bring her back as quickly as possible. He could read the dissatisfaction and frustration in the boy’s face. The boy wanted to go with him and be a part of whatever rescue effort he intended. But Sider had already determined that it would be more dangerous for all three of them if the boy came along and would add nothing to have him there.

  “Just do as I asked you,” he repeated. “Tell Aislinne what has happened and make sure your report reaches Pogue and the other members of the village council. Confirm that the effort to fortify the pass is under way and if for some reason it isn’t, do what you can to change that. Wait for me there if you wish; I’ll come through on my return.”

  Then he was gone, moving quickly away, fading into the trees and not looking back.

  He walked the remainder of the day, ascending the steeper mountain slopes
toward Declan Reach. By nightfall, he had reached a place at the upper edges of the thinning woods where he could see the entrance. He considered entering the pass itself. In the black silence of the night, he could hear the murmur of voices and see the dim flicker of fires burning within the cut. Someone was camped there, presumably those who had been sent to begin work on the fortifications, and he could have joined them. But he was by nature solitary, and he preferred to keep his own company.

  So he stayed where he was, finding a spot where he could make his camp and keep watch. He ate his meal cold, did not start a fire, and long before midnight had wrapped himself in his cloak and blanket to ward against the night’s chill and was asleep.

  His sleep was deep and dreamless, the first time in a long time, and he woke refreshed and reassured that he was doing the right thing. He hadn’t told the boy, but he had a plan. It wasn’t fully formed and it depended on the efforts of someone other than himself, but he believed it had a chance to work. Without it, in any case, there was probably little hope for the girl. He had not shared any of this, not wanting to give the boy anything further to think about, hoping his efforts with the fortifications would help take his mind off the matter.

  Probably that wouldn’t happen, he acknowledged. Probably there was no diminishing the pain of what he was going through.

  He departed at sunrise for the pass, gratified to discover that a sizable workforce was in the process of constructing the needed fortifications, a mix of Trackers and builders under the command of Trow Ravenlock. He stopped long enough to make a quick report to the Tracker leader and to reassure himself that Skeal Eile was not doing anything to interfere with his efforts at summoning help from the other communities, and then he moved on. Ravenlock wanted to know where he was going, but he said only that he was going out to scout the movements of the Troll army and left things at that.