Chapter 6

Legacy

Isaac frowned as he bent forward. Then he slowly shook his head.

“It’s broken, I know it is,” Micah said sourly.

“No. It’s swollen, but not broken,” Isaac replied. “He hit you hard but not that hard. A cold cloth will help reduce the swelling .. and quicken the healing of those two black eyes.”

Micah glared up at him. “You find this funny, don’t you?”

“Not in the least but, all things considered, you got off lightly. You could have died.” He saw the protest gather momentum. “Or have you forgotten there was a demon there as well?”

The protest disappeared.

The Legacy members had arrived back just before sunset. It had been a curiously silent trek. Micah, Simon and Jonah had been suffering from stung pride and pricked egos plus Micah had two black eyes and a hugely swollen nose, and Simon had a lumpy jaw and was missing a tooth. Isaac and Elias had been deep in thought.

Aggravation amongst the three junior members was still simmering but it was also blending with curiosity and wonderment. If Legacy members were to be attacked and beaten on, it seemed only right for it to be done by men who could .. do what those men had done. If a burning bush had spoken to them, they would’ve felt the same strange mix of emotions – disbelief and pride.

Isaac left Micah to get some sleep and went in search of his Precept. Elias looked up from his journal as the younger man came in.

“We were exactly right about them,” he declared. “They are assassins. Cold blooded killers.”

Isaac blinked but Elias laughed cheerfully.

“They are not aimed at us, Isaac, nor at any man innocent of evil. They kill God’s enemies.”

“And .. are they dead themselves?” Isaac inquired.

“Ghosts who walk by day ..?” Elias quoted. “I do not think so. I think – sit down, Isaac! – I think that is just another .. method of attack they can use. A strategy. If your enemy cannot see you, it is far more difficult for it to attack first. The Lord works in many mysterious ways .. and it seems He has recruited helpers.”

Isaac had sunk onto the bench. “So what do we do now, Elias?”

“We have been blind, my friend. Blind thru ignorance. We did not trust them. They told us we weren’t needed, to leave them alone and, most importantly, to keep out of their way. We got it all wrong. What we heard as threats were in fact truths and, to a degree, stern warnings. At least today we discovered why we were warned. As to what we do next …”

Elias fell silent, his mind still staggered by what he’d seen in the mountains.

“There are more questions to ask of these people. We need to debate with them, determine areas of exclusivity. If they are so profoundly equipped to fight demons in the desert, or the mountains, or wherever they exist, I believe we can safely leave them to it. And, in a similar way, if they should discover some mystery which they cannot solve .. or do not wish to solve, they could tell us about it. Friendship between the Legacy and the white haired people would be a fine and potent thing but we have not shown ourselves in a good light. We didn’t five years ago, and Micah, Simon and Jonah, thru ignorant zeal, didn’t help further our cause today. It is my fault.”

“How so?” Isaac asked.

“I could have told them about the white haired people. I could have mentioned what had happened in the past, shared our suspicions and hopes, alerted them to the fact that they might have been in the mountains with us. But I didn’t. The last time I shared my suspicions, Eli didn’t exactly approach with caution. We resolved to keep it to ourselves and not tell Eli. Somehow, that grew to not telling anyone. It was another error on my part. Tomorrow, I will put that right. As Precept of this house, I must put faith in my people.”

Isaac nodded. “A good idea. I know that, as Precept, you are privy to certain things which must be kept from the rest of us. I don’t believe that is always a good thing but ..if you temper the secrets with discretion, and share with us what you believe you can, we will trust you. With respect to Eli and his ruling house, what he feels we shouldn’t know isn’t always strictly accurate or relevant.”

“You speak my own thoughts, Isaac. Trust is earned as well as given. You, I trust implicitly. The others here are good men and deserve my trust. Eli .. is another matter.”

“So this house will be the first to extend a hand of .. alliance to the white haired people?”

“Maybe alliance is still too much for them to consider,” Elias sighed. “But a hand of .. respect and understanding, or a willingness to learn and understand, yes, definitely. We are Legacy members. We represent the entire society .. but, for now, this one house must be all the Legacy as far as they are concerned. Once we have grown a little closer to them, and earned a measure of .. reliability in their eyes, perhaps we can begin to educate the other houses.”

“We shall be ambassadors of goodwill.”

“Precisely,” Elias agreed, rubbing his hands together. “You do not know how .. uplifted and encouraged I feel, Isaac. I can see a bright new future ahead. One with infinite challenges to overcome and we will grow in how we learn to overcome them.”

“Elias, it is late. It’s been a very long two days. Get some sleep,” Isaac ordered. “The bright new future can wait till the morning.”

“You’re right, of course.” Elias closed his journal. “Have you considered this, my friend? All good things, things worth keeping and cherishing, are born in blood and pain. Today has seen the blood genesis of the Legacy and the white haired people. Our first battle. I doubt it will be the last, until we learn to resolve our differences with words. Till then, fists must suffice.”

“Are you advocating we fight them?” Isaac grinned.

“Having seen them fight .. I don’t think we’d get the chance. For some men, knowledge must be pounded in. So it was today. They asked, we didn’t listen, they hit us, then we saw and we understood. We may have to learn many such painful lessons before ignorance totally surrenders.”

He rose. So did Isaac.

“Even so .. I still anticipate the challenge,” Elias concluded with a smile. “And I will anticipate it even more tomorrow.”

*****

The morning was too soon in arriving and yet the night took forever to end. Elias had gone to his bed a revived, energized man while Isaac had been weary yet filled with a quiet awe. Isaac was the more practical and he knew the road Elias wanted to walk, while noble and good, was fraught with obstacles. Elias had been on an adrenaline induced surge.

Yet it was for Elias that the morning arrived too soon. He was stiff and sore with the unexpected exercise, and his head felt fogged as weariness caught up with him and the adrenaline was purged from his veins leaving him bumping along the bottom. Isaac thought the night would never end and he woke refreshed and more than ready to tackle all those obstacles.

The first obstacle, it seemed, was Elias himself.

“Whatever happened to anticipating the challenge?” Elias asked.

“I slept on it,” Elias replied and gave a deep sigh. “The future is – ”

“Bright and new,” Isaac cut in.

“Shadowed with problems. Where do we begin? How can we navigate this maze?”

Isaac pointed at the bench. “Sit.”

Elias’ knees gave way and his legs folded.

“Wait there. I’ll get the others.”

“Is that wise?” Elias fretted.

“You said last night you had made an error and that, today, you would put it right. If we are to .. navigate the maze, Elias – and not just this maze but every maze we find in the days to come – we have to do it as one team. First, we sit together and break our fast, then you and I will share what we know and, then, as one team, we start at the beginning.”

Elias slowly nodded.

“Wait there,” Isaac ordered, his voice stern.

He went to wake Jonah, Simon and Micah. As he walked, he reflected on his Precept’s strengths and weaknesses. Elias was a scholar. He had a keen eye and ear. He heard things which were not said or which were hinted at in between words. He noticed details other men might miss. As a man of decision, if he was faced with a definite situation, Elias could think quickly and choose wisely. Sometimes, he overlooked small particulars in the planning which was entirely due to a sense of excitement, but that was why Isaac was there. But when Elias had a situation which was like mist – unable to be defined, incapable of being grasped – he lost his way. Elias could figure out the answers to problems in scrolls and texts .. but, when it involved another’s motivations, he was stumped. And Isaac found that strange because Elias liked people. He could see into their hearts. He knew Isaac’s heart better than the man in whose chest it beat.

Maybe he is just tired. Maybe he needs to discover his focus on this. Maybe .. all I have to do is .. remind him what we saw in the mountains …

For a second, Isaac was overwhelmed by his own memory of the experience and he drifted away, lost in the images. The blood red of the rocks. The bright glare of the sun and the even whiter glare of a man who had so suddenly blazed with such a pure, clean light. The crackling scarlet and orange of a sword made of flame which didn’t burn the hand which held it. The spit and flare of lighting. The howls of pain and the destruction – so fast! – of a bitterly cruel enemy.

It literally robbed him of breath. Isaac stumbled and felt his heart racing. The glorious, wondrous images faded and left the world a slightly duller place, but he knew he’d have them forever and could call on them whenever his steps faltered or his courage grew dim.

The others roused, he herded them like stubborn sheep back to where Elias still sat, futility stamped on his face. Isaac drew in a breath but Micah spoke first.

“Precept, what are we going to do about those people? The demon was ours. We tracked it. We should have been the ones to kill it. We were prepared, ready to act. We are the Legacy. It is our duty to protect the innocent from such creatures. Are we going to allow them to interfere like that every time? Who are they anyway?”

Isaac’s gaze slid across to his Precept’s face. Elias slowly looked up.

“Allow them ..? Allow them? They allowed us to watch! And we should be grateful, Micah! We shouldn’t complain about it!”

“But, Precept – ”

Isaac relaxed and began to eat his breakfast.

“Listen to me, all of you,” Elias cut in. “Isaac and I hoped they would be there. It was your first time of encountering them but Isaac and I have met them before. If you will hush, I will tell you what we learned that first time.”

Micah hushed. His face was still swollen and bruised, and Isaac thought it was probably the discomfort Micah felt which had urged him to speak with such force and such stupid shortsightedness.

Elias began to talk and he left nothing out. He spoke of Enoch, a great scholar of languages and how he had died in the pursuit of his studies. He told of Isaac’s visit to the town and his meeting with one of the white haired people, and of Isaac’s return and his suspicions. He spoke of their subsequent return to the town and the warnings they received, how they’d brought Eli into it and how that had been a mistake, how he’d overreacted and the outcome. And then he told how he and Isaac had reasoned it to a completely different conclusion, their decision not to inform Eli again should they meet any of the white haired people, and his hopes that they would in fact be in the mountains to fight the creature. At last, he fell silent.

“But, Precept,” Micah began again, and Isaac was surprised, “why did they let Enoch be killed yet they prevented us from fighting?”

Elias frowned. “That is a good question, Micah.”

“Precept, I have some ideas,” Isaac ventured and Elias nodded for him to continue. “We have not stayed the same as a result of our meeting them. I would suggest that they have changed too. I don’t know but, maybe, Enoch was the first Legacy member they had ever met to speak with. They did try to reason with him. They appear to be forbidden from harming the innocent – ”

“I disagree,” Micah interrupted and Simon nodded. The swelling on his jaw was markedly less but it still ached. “I was harmed.”

“I’m coming on to that,” Isaac agreed. “They appear to be forbidden from killing the innocent and we saw yesterday the extent and severity of the weapons they are trained to use. Enoch refused to listen and they had no choice but to leave him to his fate. That was then .. and they learned from the encounter. I believe that there are consequences if they should kill an innocent, even by accident, if they use those weapons. They have always made no secret of the fact that they do not want to hurt us and that we should not get in their way. They said before that people would die. We assumed it would be us. I think that’s incorrect. I think it would be them. One of them said yesterday that evil things would happen. I believe that, should they kill in error, they would be damned. Our presence must have terrified them. Paralyzed them until they knew how to deal with us. They had always been alone in this battle. Then the Legacy was born. Our mission specifically states our enemy is the same as theirs. So .. we listened to what they said but we did not understand. We would not speak openly because the Legacy is secret. They are a secret too, or people would have talked of them before. It’s possible that .. if we had known of them, the Legacy’s mission would be different. Our misunderstanding and their fear of such severe punishment caused a change in their tactics for dealing with us. They did not use their weapons on you, Micah. They used their hands and, I believe, they were gentle. If they had hit as hard as they could have done, your nose would be broken and, Simon, your jaw would be shattered. They only used their weapons once we were out of the way.”

Elias was nodding. “It all makes sense. Does it answer your question, Micah?”

Micah sighed and nodded too.

“I’m sorry you were hurt. And you, too, Simon,” Elias apologized. “I should have told you about them before. But the truth is that, after we last met them, five years ago, they vanished and we did not see them once in all that time. We hoped they would be there but we couldn’t rely on it. If they didn’t show up, we would have been forced to fight the demon ourselves.”

Jonah leaned forward. “Precept .. why did you hope they would be there? Was it just because you believe that was their purpose – to fight demons?”

Elias glanced at Isaac. “Isaac thought he recognized one of them in town, here, a few weeks ago. He followed her but he was mistaken. Or he believed he was mistaken. Now he believes he was right but that she has the ability to disguise herself, to trick the mind so we don’t see the white in their hair.”

There was silence for a moment.

“So .. what do we do now?” Simon asked.

“We must attempt to find them again,” Elias replied. “Difficult, I know. Almost impossible if they do not want to be found. But Isaac and I think that our future lays alongside theirs. Not intertwined but parallel, heading in the same direction. We need to debate with them, to .. establish some rules so that yesterday’s events are not repeated. Ultimately, it is my hope that we can be allies but that may take years to achieve. For now, we want to show them that the Legacy isn’t their enemy, that we want to learn and understand, that we are willing to try.”

“Ambassadors of goodwill,” Isaac added.

“In time, if we are consistent and reliable, and provided we don’t cause them any further trouble, I hope they will learn that we can be trusted. And, once we arrive at that point, we can begin to educate the other Legacy houses about our new .. neighbors. Until then, it must be only this house. We have so much ground to make up. Because of us, those people were dispossessed of home and hearth. They do not like us but we can bring them round if we are patient. I want you to remember this,” Elias told the three junior members. “The Legacy has been in existence ten years. They may have been around for a lot longer. If nothing else, we should respect them and trust them for their skills in battle. If we don’t, we can’t expect them to respect and trust us for our expertise and skills.”

They nodded slowly, their faces solemn.

“Place no blame on them for what they did yesterday, because what they did saved all our lives. I can’t tell you how to go about finding them,” Elias concluded. “Just .. go about your business and be courteous to all. Perhaps .. they will come looking for us.”

*****

Isaac went about his business as a Legacy house used copious quantities of vellum and ink. He had his own ideas on how to find the white haired people but he didn’t consider it worthwhile sharing them. Elias would have understood but the others hadn’t spent any real time amongst the white haired people, so saying that they were lean yet muscular in their body shape, that they moved with the natural grace of a hunter killer, and they possessed an understated air of confidence in everything they did would not have helped Micah, Simon and Jonah. So Isaac watched carefully everyone he saw as he went to order vellum and inks, and he placed each person against the mental image he had to see how they measured up. Some had a lean build, some were muscular, and a few were both, but all possessed a heavy tread. Some moved with grace but lacked the build. Hardly any had the confidence. Isaac would, once, have been disappointed but not today. He told himself that patience was needed, that rash impetuosity would only set them back again. Finding the white haired people and reaching a calm, secure place in any relationship with them, was like chipping away at a mountain. It would not be leveled in a single day.

It was a month later, when Isaac was collecting his order of vellum and inks, that he felt a hand on his arm and he turned.

“Your name is Isaac,” she said. “Mine is Ruth. We have met before in another place and it is time we talked again.”

His mouth had dried so he could only nod.

“Shall I come with you?” she asked.

“Of course. I know Elias would be honored. We have many questions .. and I’m sure you do as well.” He set off, trying hard not to stride. “Do you come with the knowledge of the others? Do they know you’re here?”

“No. I’m acting alone,” Ruth replied. “I walk the difficult path because I believe it is the good path.”

“Will you get into trouble?” Isaac asked, glancing at her.

“My brother will find it hard to accept but he will come round. I will pick the moment to tell him. He marries within the week. When he is wed and a happy man, I will tell him.”

Isaac led the way to the Legacy house and showed her to a reception room. “Please, wait here. I will fetch the others. Would you care for wine? Water? Please, sit down.”

“Water, thank you,” Ruth smiled.

Isaac bowed his head and retreated. Then, in a fluster of nervous excitement, he ran to find Elias.

“Precept, you must come! Now, at once! I have one of them.”

“Where?” Elias demanded, standing immediately.

“Here! In our house!”

Elias became as flustered as Isaac. “Find the others. Quickly! When you say you have one, tell me you did not bring them by force.”

Isaac looked shocked. “Never, Elias.”

“I will meet with him,” Elias nodded.

“Her,” Isaac corrected. “Her name is Ruth. She is the girl we spoke to at the well. She remembers us.”

Elias fussed with his clothes as he hurried, then slowed as he entered the room. Ruth looked round with a smile.

“We have met,” he began in a warm voice. “I recognize the girl who has grown into a woman. I am Elias, the leader of this house. Isaac tells me your name is Ruth.”

“It is,” she nodded.

“You honor us. I am grateful that you trust us enough to come here.” Slowly, he sat down, his eyes riveted by the white streak in her glossy black hair. “May I ask a question?”

“Every time we kill a beast or destroy evil, one hair turns silver white. The harder we work, the more white hair we have. We hope to have a head of snowy white by the time we die, or are killed.”

Elias blinked and leaned a little closer. “Do you read my thoughts?”

Ruth laughed brightly. “No, Elias. You were looking at the mark of victory and you wanted to ask a question. I guessed, that’s all.”

“The mark of victory … ” he echoed, gazing at her hair again, then his gaze lowered to her face. “Do you have a name for yourselves? We have called you the white haired people because we did not know any better.”

“We do have a name,” she replied, “but I cannot tell you what it is. It was given to us .. a long time ago and is a sign of commitment, on both sides, to a cause. I am sorry, Elias, that I cannot share it with you.”

Isaac led the others in.

“I understand,” Elias murmured. “Let me introduce you to the members of my house. Isaac, you already know. This is Micah. And Jonah. And this young man is Simon. This is Ruth, a representative of .. our neighbors.”

Heads dipped in polite greeting and Isaac gave Ruth a horn cup of water.

“To business then. Why are you here?” Elias asked, as they settled themselves.

“Because I am not in favor of the idea that it must be a common threat which yokes us together. That path leads only to unrest and mistrust, and, eventually, outright hostility. It will push us apart. I believe the path we should both be treading is that of common understanding, something which will draw us closer together. As yet,” Ruth added, “I am a lone voice .. but someone must grasp the torch and shine it into the darkness.”

Elias felt the tension slide from his shoulders. “We believe the same. Common understanding. We are willing to learn more and make the effort, and you have shown me that there is hope.”

“What is the common threat?” Simon ventured.

“That, if you talk about us, we will talk about you. Our secrets and your secrets would no longer be a private matter. It is a trust of sorts,” she replied, “but it is a dark one. Shallow and short lived. It gives rise to suspicion.”

Isaac leaned forward. “What can you tell us .. about what you do, who you are. I will offer that .. none of us here are gifted in the same way as your people. We do have gifts, yes, certain talents. As to what we do, we .. are basically scholars.”

She considered her response. “We are old. Our ancestors were given the ability to fight evil two thousand years ago. We have seen other sects rise and fall again. We learned of the scholars – as we named you – soon after your sect was formed. We had no argument with you, provided you kept to your studies of the mysteries. It was only when you began to venture into our killing grounds that we foresaw trouble.”

Ruth paused, smiling slightly. “You were not the first to go where you shouldn’t. We have had to work around many others, take account of them. That, in itself, is no hardship. Shepherds in the desert, nomads, we can distract them, divert them before they stray into danger. So it was in Beersheba which was where we first encountered the Legacy boldly marching toward death.

“Our weapons are with us all the time, in our heads. We .. think them into existence and send them away again when we no longer need them. We have few rules. Our duty is to fight and destroy evil, that is all. Evil is a very powerful enemy. It is strong, and not always subtle. Our weapons are the same and they are a formidable responsibility. If we harm or kill an innocent with our weapons, even by accident, we are punished instantly with eternal damnation. So .. the day we met Enoch in the desert … We tried so hard to get him to leave, to retreat even temporarily, but he wouldn’t listen. We watched him die.”

“Why didn’t you force him to leave?” Micah frowned.

“Because we are not the Lord God and we cannot dictate how others live. We can attempt persuasion but we cannot order. God allows choice. Enoch chose to remain and to die. But his death served a purpose. It told us a name – the Legacy – and it warned us that we were no longer alone in fighting this war. We had to consider the Legacy as a growing, spreading influence, and we had to learn new strategies to cope.”

“And that was to .. teach us a lesson,” Isaac smiled.

Ruth smiled too. “Our first thought was to fight a war of words .. but that failed. We spoke and you did not understand. So we decided to fight a war of example and a war of punishment. A battle on two fronts. We would show you what we did and, if you persisted in getting between us and our prey, we would use our hands. We would fight .. an ordinary war if it was the only way to get you to safety and to make you see.”

“It worked,” Micah remarked, rubbing a hand across his nose.

“You must understand, we didn’t want to hurt you. We had tried to make you go away. When you refused .. you left us little choice. None of us want to be damned forever because of a silly accident. We could see that happening. We still can. It is always a fear for us. A brawl seemed the easiest way.” She shifted slightly. “May I ask a question?”

“Oh, of course,” Elias invited. “Anything. You’ve been very open with us, it is the least we can do in return.”

She turned to Isaac. “How did you see me and my brother in the desert when you were not there?”

Isaac flushed. “I .. I have the sight. Visions. They come to me without warning. I had been to your town and returned home. We were in two minds, Elias and myself, about your motives. Elias favored the benign, I was more suspicious. And .. I saw Enoch in the desert, and then I saw you and your brother. That vision told me .. you were somehow connected to Enoch’s death. Believe me, I have yearned for another vision to tell me where I might find you and the others .. but I have been denied.”

Ruth slowly nodded. “It explains much to me. Another of our gifts is the ability to know a man’s words to be true or false. I knew you had not been there yet you told the truth when you said you had seen me. I was very confused.”

“The Legacy has a .. a motto, I suppose you could call it,” Elias said. “Faith has need of the whole truth. Do you ever lie?”

“All the time,” Ruth grinned. “It is one of our main defenses against detection.”

“But you are telling the truth today?” he wondered, suddenly uneasy.

“Yes, Elias. Understanding has need of the whole truth as well. Too long, the Legacy and my people have suffered hardship thru misunderstanding. It has to end.”

“Good. I am very pleased to hear you say so. Well, to be truthful in return .. this is my hope for the future – that we can, one day, become allies. I realize this is a long and rocky path, fraught with problems and obstacles, but, to this end, I pledge my house, these members here, to represent the entire Legacy and offer a hand of goodwill. We will show you that you can trust us, but I beg you to understand that, while we represent the Legacy, for now, you should restrict yourselves to contact with only this house. We, the people in this room, do want to learn about you. The rest of the Legacy .. they still see you – ”

“As demon worshippers and assassins?” she suggested.

“So it seems,” Elias sadly agreed. “Eli .. the man who came to your father’s workshop and made such terrible threats .. he is now the man in control of every house, even this one, but we have decided not to tell him we have made contact with you again. We .. mistrust his reaction. So .. a small beginning. Your people in this town and my people in this house, yet great things could grow from it. Together, we can each learn about the other, about what is acceptable and what isn’t. We can .. debate areas of expertise. Possibly even assist each other.”

Ruth was frowning. “I understand your words, Elias, but .. I cannot see any way of assisting you, or you assisting us. To be blunt, we do not need your help.”

“Oh, but there are ways,” Isaac replied. “For instance, if we are on a trip into the desert to research something and we see signs of a devil or demon, we can tell you what we’ve found and then leave you to deal with it. And if you discover a mystery you cannot solve, you can pass it to us.”

“We do not investigate mysteries,” Ruth said, rather baldly. “Our sole purpose is to fight and destroy evil.”

“But you must see things you don’t understand,” Simon blurted out. “Even if you walk by it and never return to it, you must see things.”

Slowly, Ruth nodded.

“Then we would like to know,” Jonah commented. “We would like to look at it and try to make sense of it.”

“We’d like to examine the places where you kill demons,” Isaac went on. “For you, the job would be over but there may be clues there which could tell us how the demon got into this world. If we could understand that, we might find a way to stop them ever returning.”

“And then there is demon venom,” Micah continued. “With enough study, we may be able to formulate some kind of cure, or at least something to ease the pain.”

“This is exactly the kind of thing I mean,” Elias interrupted. “Learning about each other.”

“I have an idea,” Simon announced. “It may not be workable but .. having seen your people at work, I know I would not protest at being accompanied by one of them if I have to go into a potentially risky place. A shield, almost.”

Ruth stared at him. “I don’t think I could get my father to agree to that. We have been doing this work for two thousand years. He would see it as a reduction to servant.”

“It’s an idea,” Simon repeated calmly. “Enoch was trying to read words on a wall in a risky place. He died. It was needless. Cooperation would have been a much better solution.”

“Yes, it would,” Ruth agreed. “Your other ideas .. yes, they have merit. Allow me some time, Elias, and I will raise them with the others. An agreement between this Legacy house and my people in this town to .. cooperate as much as we both can .. could be the way forward.”

She rose, so did the Legacy men.

“I must go now. My husband will wonder where I am and my son needs me. I will visit you again.”

*****

Six weeks later, Elias opened the door to Jacob and a smiling Ruth.

“Elias, this is my father Jacob, the Elder of our community,” she began.

Elias looked up slightly and recognized the man as the one who had blazed with light the day the demon was killed. He bowed his head. After a spare moment’s hesitation, Jacob nodded as well.

“Welcome to our house. Please, come in,” Elias invited. “Whatever questions you have, I will do my best to answer openly and honestly.”

“Ruth has answered my questions,” Jacob replied. “She has represented you well, Elias.”

Elias blinked in surprise. “Forgive me but .. why then are you here?”

“To discuss the terms of .. the agreement between my people and your house,” Jacob said. “But perhaps agreement is too strong a word now, at the beginning. Agreement is something to work towards. For now, we want to establish a mutual cooperation pact so that .. violence can be avoided and accidents never happen.”

Elias drew in a breath. “Of course,” he said, his voice admirably steady. “This way, Jacob, and may today be recorded in history as .. significantly remarkable. Today, we plant a seed. With care and encouragement, who knows how tall and strong this tree will grow?”

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