The Staff of Naught by Tom Liberman Page A

day the boy made his visits and already swirled around the rocky point where he often launched attacks against them. The aggressive little Grayband Scrub-jays began to dive at him even before he got to the point but he brought along a long stick that he used to keep them at bay. This kept him from his normal attacks and eventually they forced him around to the west side of the leap where a large overhang protected him from the birds but also provided a poor angle of attack.
    For a day or two he was able sneak up on their nests and raid eggs but most of them had hatched by now and the fun quickly evaporated in any case. So now he spent a few hours swinging from one rock to the next he legs dangled over the chasm and otherwise occupying himself. On this occasion his sister joined him and sat away to the opposite side of the leap and painstakingly worked with string and needle to apply the lessons that Lousa tried to drill into her.
    “Come on Ariana!” shouted Unerus as he flipped himself up over the lip of the cliff and spotted his sister sitting in the sun. “Forget about stupid knitting and let’s see if we can find those foxes!”
    The girl looked at the long needle in her hand and ground her teeth together for a moment before she looked up at him, “If I don’t do it she’ll just make me stay up all night, and it’s hard in the dark.”
    “You’re no fun anymore!” shouted the boy and dashed off down the hill his eyes darting back and forth.
    Ariana busied herself with the needles again their clacks somehow soothed her and now that her brother was gone the endless cacophony of the jays receded into a more normal pattern. She found her thoughts drift to those stolen moments with the Staff of Naught when no one else was in the cave. The thing drew her to it; she had to admit it, in an unnatural way. At first she convinced herself that it was normal curiosity, after all the thing was a powerful relic possibly of the Old Empire. But, each time she held it she more deeply remembered the power over the skeletons that she briefly had, how they moved away to allow her to pass, how some of them even attempted an awkward sort of bow. “I could have ordered them around I bet,” she said out loud glad to be away from everyone in the cramped cave. Then had come last night; the others were asleep and she felt it call to her in a more persistent way, as if the voice wasn’t her own mind but someone else’s.
    It was where it always was, in the back side of the cave around the corner where people didn’t have to look at it, didn’t have to think about it. She slipped off her covers after making sure she heard the rhythmic breath of everyone in the cave. Her brother was a light sleeper but she knew the sounds he made from endless nights together. Lousa made a funny little snore noise, not loud and gross but soft and almost pretty, just like the woman. Hazlebub snored like a grown man from the far end of the cave. As for the Ghost, it seemed to vanish for longer and longer periods these days. She darted her eyes in all directions and looked for the tell-tale blue aura of the creature. Even when the spirit was in the wall or ceiling, which sometimes it forgot that it was, its aura often gave it away. She supposed Khemer might hide deep inside the wall of the cave but she wasn’t sure it could see through so much dense rock. The exact nature of the spirit puzzled her, how it moved through material like a hand through water but how somehow stayed attached to the ground at the same time. She asked Khemer once why he didn’t just sink into the ground but the ghost didn’t have a ready answer. It was a puzzle for certain but none of that was on her mind last night as she crept around the corner to where the staff waited.
    There was something different about it last night. For a moment, when she first rounded the corner it was as if the clawed hand held an object. A black, lustrous round rock. It gleamed although there was only