Part 27 (2/2)

”Someday, if the mood strikes me. But the mood doesn't strike me just now. Now is the wrong time. Why don't you tell me something instead?”

She sighed. She could have guessed that it wouldn't be that easy. Dirk revealed what he knew of things only now and then. ”What would you like to know that you don't already know?”

”What do you intend to do now that you are back home again?”

”You sound like my father. He wants to know that, too. But I guess I haven't decided, so I don't have an answer to your question.”

”Perhaps you do. Perhaps you just need to consider the possibilities.”

She glared. ”Why don't you save us both a lot of time and list them for me. In fact, why don't you just tell me what you think I should do and save me the trouble of having to decide anything at all?”

The cat blinked and then began was.h.i.+ng himself. He took a long time in doing so, a rather deliberately slow process that she was certain was intended to aggravate her. But she held her tongue and waited.

Finally Dirk looked at her. ”It isn't my place to tell you what to do with your life. But I do think putting things off is not a good idea. Or leaving things undone. Cats never do that. They always finish what they start before going on to anything else. Cats understand the importance of completing what they start. They are easily distracted, as you know, so it is necessary for them to establish good life habits early so that they learn to focus.”

He paused. ”It might be true of young girls, as well. Although I do not pretend to understand young girls in the same way I understand cats.”

She studied him a moment, and then she nodded. ”I think you probably understand young girls pretty well. For a cat.”

Edgewood Dirk closed his eyes and then slowly opened them. ”Just the ones who merit understanding. And only once in a very great while.”

Suddenly she heard her father calling her, although later she could never be certain that she had heard anything at all, and she turned toward the castle to look for him.

When she turned back again, Edgewood Dirk was gone.

She stood staring at the spot he had occupied for a very long time, as if by doing so she could make him reappear. She could hear him speaking in her mind; she could hear his words quite clearly. They jumbled together at first and then they sorted themselves out, and suddenly she discovered she knew exactly what she was going to do. Maybe she had known all along, but just hadn't realized it. In any case, it hadn't taken any time at all to figure it out. It had just taken a few words of wisdom from a very unusual cat.

She started back to the castle. She would tell her parents at dinner. She would tell them that it was important to finish what you start and to make a habit of doing so. She would tell them that she had learned this from a rather unexpected source, and now she must act on it.

DeJa VU.

Vince stopped when he reached the aviary and stood looking for what he already knew wasn't there. He couldn't seem to help himself. Every day he came and every day he looked and every day it was the same thing. The bird was gone. The crow or whatever it was with the red eyes. After all these years, it had disappeared. Vanished. Just like that.

No one knew for sure what had happened. Most hadn't paid much attention to the bird for months-years, really, if you didn't count the ornithologists. Some still didn't realize it was gone. There were more important matters to occupy their working lives and dominate their conversations. But Vince was of a different mind. He didn't think there was anything more important than the disappearance of the bird. Even if he wasn't sure why, he sensed it.

That bird shouldn't have gotten free. Security should have taken greater care than they did when they opened the door and took those two madmen into custody. But they weren't paying attention to anything but the two men, and the crow would have been watching.

Just like it was always watching.

Vince knew, even if the others didn't. It gave him a creepy, uncomfortable feeling, thinking about it. But he knew.

Five weeks gone now, and things were pretty much back to normal. No one had forgotten that day, a day that had started out pretty much like every other. He wasn't the first one to notice the two men in the aviary, but he heard Roy shouting and rushed over to see what was happening, and there they were-these two guys, trapped in the aviary, kicking and hammering on the bars and shaking the cage in their efforts to get free. Odd pair of ducks-that was Vince's first thought when he saw them. They were wearing clothes of the sort you sometimes saw on those people who spent their weekends playing at being knights and fighting with swords. They didn't have any armor on, but they wore robes and tunics and scarves and boots and big belts with silver buckles. One was tall and skinny with a head that looked too big for the rest of his body, and the other was short like a dwarf and all wrinkled and whiskery. They did not look happy, their faces contorted and flushed with anger and frustration. They wanted out, but neither Vince nor Roy was about to help them. How they had gotten into the cage in the first place was hard to guess, considering that the cage door was still locked. But they had no business being there, whatever their excuse. At best, they were trespa.s.sing on city property, and it was likely that by interacting with the animals without authority they had broken a few more laws, as well.

Roy had already called security, so Vince and he stood side by side watching the two men rant and rave. Neither could understand anything the pair was saying. Roy thought they were speaking an Eastern European dialect, although how he would know that, being of Scottish descent, was a mystery to Vince. Vince thought it more likely that they were speaking Arabic. He thought the emphasis on the hard vowels suggested one of the Middle Eastern languages, and even if the big one was as pale as a ghost, it wasn't impossible that he might be an Arabic albino or something. He might have been raised in Egypt or Morocco, Vince thought-even though he had never been anywhere outside the state and didn't know the first thing about either of those countries.

Nevertheless, the two speculated on the matter until security got there and hauled the interlopers out of the cage in handcuffs and tossed them into one of those holding pens on wheels they used when the animals needed to be moved to a new enclosure. Shut the doors and took them away, and that was the last anyone had heard of either one. Vince guessed the authorities would try to find out where they came from and send them back. But he heard later that they didn't have any identification on them, and no one could figure out what language they were speaking. That last was especially puzzling. In this day and age, with people all over the world moving here and there at the drop of a hat, you would think they could find someone someone close by who could speak any language in existence. close by who could speak any language in existence.

But not in this case, apparently. So the pair had ended up in the hands of the Homeland Security people to determine if they might be terrorists. But if no one could understand them or figure out where they came from, what could Homeland Security do?

It was odd that the two men had appeared just like the crow with the red eyes. Exactly the same way: not there one day, there the next, and no explanation for how they got there. It was as if animal shelters and aviaries were some sort of transport devices, like in that TV show Star Trek Star Trek. Beam me up, Scotty. Maybe the madmen and the bird had been beamed up from another planet.

Staring at the aviary now, in the aftermath of all the excitement, Vince shrugged his disinterest. What did it matter? If there were answers to be had, they weren't going to be given to him. They were gone, all three of them, and they likely weren't coming back. The crow with the red eyes especially. It wasn't coming back for sure. Any fool who had watched it as he had could tell you that. Now that it was free, it was long gone. It wouldn't be caught again, either. Not that bird.

He wondered where it would go. Somewhere far away, he hoped. He didn't like that bird. He didn't want to see it again. Better if it were someone else's problem.

That bird was trouble waiting to happen.

Coming from Del Rey: Bearers of the Black Staff First book in the Legends of Shannara saga

Bearers of the Black Staff returns to Shannara at a strange and dangerous time in history. The Genesis of Shannara trilogy- returns to Shannara at a strange and dangerous time in history. The Genesis of Shannara trilogy-Armageddon's Children, The Elves of Cintra, and The Gypsy Morph The Gypsy Morph-charted the fall of our own world into the hands of once-men and demons and the escape of a few humans and those of other races into a remote mountain valley walled in by impenetrable magic. For five hundred years the survivors have lived peacefully, learning to coexist and to build a new world with the limited resources and skills available to them. Now the magic that kept them safe for so many centuries is wearing down. Frightening creatures are penetrating the barriers and wreaking havoc on the valley within. It is time for the four peoples to stand together-or for all of them to fall. In this excerpt from Bearers of the Black Staff Bearers of the Black Staff-coming from Del Rey in August 2010-Sider Ament, last of the Knights of the Word, meets an unexpected ally.

Sider Ament regained consciousness slowly. He rose out of his slumber in a lethargic waking that seemed to take forever. But the pain and his memories of what had brought him to this state helped speed his efforts, and mustering what strength of body and will he could, he dragged himself back into the light.

He opened his eyes and looked around.

The first thing he saw was the corpse of his attacker, its body blown open and bloodied, its head thrown back and gone rigid in its death throes. He stared at it a moment, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, to imagine what sort of weapon could do such damage.

Then he noticed the splints and bandages that wrapped various parts of his own body. His tattered gray robes had been cut away in several places, exposing part of his torso and his damaged left arm. The bulk of the pain he was experiencing seemed centered on those two places in particular, but the rest of him had not been spared.

His pack lay to one side, untouched.

His right hand still gripped his black staff.

”Awake at last, are you?” a voice boomed. ”Welcome back to the land of the living!”

A man moved into view from behind him. He was big and powerfully built, his face bronzed by sun and wind, his features crosshatched with scars and his hands missing several fingers. It was difficult to determine his age, but he had clearly seen the years of his youth come and go awhile back. He was dressed in black, his clothing a mix of thick leather and heavy metal fastenings, the material as scarred and beaten as he was.

He smiled cheerfully at Sider and knelt down next to him, long black hair falling down about his face in tangled hunks. ”I thought maybe you wouldn't wake up. I thought maybe my bandaging job wasn't enough to save you.”

Sider wet his lips. ”Good enough, thanks. Do you have any water?”

The big man rose and walked back to where the other couldn't see him and then returned carrying a soft leather pouch. He held it up to Sider's lips and let the water trickle down his throat. ”Just a little,” he said. ”Until I'm sure your injuries aren't any worse than what they seem, we don't want to rush things.”

Sider nodded and drank gratefully.

”There, that's enough,” the other said, taking the skin away. He rocked back on his heels. ”You ought to be dead, you know. Even with my help. I saw what that beastie did to you. Ugly stuff. But you took a couple of blows that would have crushed an ordinary man and barely flinched. So you must not be so ordinary, huh?”

Sider closed his eyes. ”What do you call that thing I killed? Does it have a name?”

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