by Terry Brooks
Skeal Eile felt a chill run up his spine. He could feel it clearly: she was already planning on eliminating her lover, putting one more layer of protection between herself and discovery. Was there any reason to believe she would not seek to eliminate him, as well?
“We had an agreement, as I recall,” he said instead. “I was to remove those who stood between you and the throne, and you were to give me free access to the Elven people in order to seek new converts to the Children of the Hawk. I fulfilled my end of that agreement. Why do you now fail to honor yours?”
“Come, come, Skeal Eile,” she soothed, moving right up against him, placing her hands on his shoulders, pressing herself against him. “Don’t be like this. Things are more complicated than I imagined. I need a little more time. But consider the rewards of your patience. Teonette might lack backbone and common sense, but you do not. I might have need of a new lover and adviser. The position could open up any day now. Why should you not apply?”
He thought about it for exactly the time it took him to remove her hands and back away. “I think I will stay on the other side of that line, Elven Queen. Tempting though the offer is, I prefer my own company.”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Well, if you are that sort, then I understand. Suit yourself.”
“But I still intend to hold you to your bargain.” He gave her a smile. “Perhaps this would be a good time for you to tell me when and how you intend to honor it—your difficulties with the High Council and the Trolls notwithstanding.”
She turned away. “As I said, it will take time. There has been an unexpected setback to our plans. The Princess—dear little Phryne—has escaped. I don’t know how she managed it, but she got free. So now I must find her and eliminate her. Her escape does serve a purpose, of course. It suggests she is guilty as charged and might provide the excuse I need to have her killed when she resists being brought back to face her accusers. My men are out hunting her. They will find her sooner or later.”
Skeal Eile shook his head. “You let her escape?”
She wheeled on him angrily. “I didn’t let her do anything. She managed it with help from the outside. Her cousins, the Orullians, perhaps. It doesn’t matter. She has nowhere to go that I cannot find her. It won’t take long.”
“Of course it won’t,” he chided. “No more than a few hours, I imagine.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “It might go more quickly if you gave me the use of your assassin again. He seems able enough. Perhaps he could track her down and arrange another accident?”
Skeal Eile shook his head. “He is otherwise engaged.” He walked over to the sofa where he had spent his time waiting on her and sat down anew, leaning back into the cushions. “Besides, you haven’t finished paying for his previous use. I see no reason to lend him to you again.”
“No, I suppose you don’t.” She stood where she was, studying him. “Very well. I shall arrange for you to be presented to the High Council in a week’s time. Afterward, a public forum will be held in which you will be given an opportunity to speak of your work and of the sect. Would that suit you?”
He nodded slowly. “It will do for a beginning. At least, it would show good faith on your part.”
She walked over and sat down next to him on the couch. For a moment, he was afraid she would put her hands on him again, perhaps renew her plea for services beyond what he was prepared to offer. But she kept herself at arm’s length as she studied his face.
“You and I are more alike than you might care to admit,” she said. “We may not be compatible in all of the ways that would make things interesting, but we do share a craving for power and its uses. You would rule the Children of the Hawk and through them, your people. I would rule the Elves. Both of us will not hesitate to remove any obstacles that stand in our way. Both of us use subterfuge, deception, and cunning to advance our interests. Other people are of no importance except insofar as they can help us achieve our goals. I do not fool myself that anything I seek is done with a righteous and noble mind-set. I do not pretend at being honorable or considerate in any way. I was poor and dismissed by everyone for years, and I will not let that happen again.”
She paused. “The Trolls that besiege our valley will eventually find a way to get through our defenses—if not those of my Elves, who are skilled fighters, then certainly those of your humans, who are not. When that happens, an escape will be necessary for both of us. We cannot remain if the Trolls seize the valley. We are no match for them.”
“Do not presume to speak for me,” Skeal Eile warned.
“But I do presume,” she said at once. “I know of your small magic. Yet I have something far more powerful. I have magic born of the Faerie world and brought over into this one. I have Elfstones, Seraphic, and I can stand against anything.”
Skeal Eile had heard of Elfstones, though he had never seen any. It was said that no one had seen them in many, many years—that no one even knew where they were at this point.
“You have possession of these?”
She smiled. “They were hidden by Phryne’s grandmother, but their hiding place will be revealed to me soon enough, and then they will be mine.”
He grimaced. “Will they, now? Then why is it I worry that your expectations might be unrealistic?”
“Because you do not have the faith of your convictions,” she said. “And I do. I know how to get what I want. You would do well to keep me as your ally instead of threatening me with reprisals. We are both faced with a dangerous situation that could turn around on us at any moment—if not through the invasion of the Trolls, then through the interference of our own peoples.”
He held her gaze for a moment without speaking. “I think that perhaps I am better prepared to face dangerous situations than you are.”
Her eyes glittered. “You might do well to hope that you don’t have to find out.”
She stood abruptly, giving him a dazzling smile. “I think you should go now. We have an understanding. You will hear from me within the week—an official invitation to visit Arborlon and speak to the High Council and the Elven people, as promised.”
He started to get up, but she quickly motioned him back again. “Oh, I don’t think you should walk out with me, Seraphic. We don’t want to create an appearance of impropriety. Let me send someone to escort you out.”
“That’s very kind,” he replied with a smile. He motioned toward her face with a slow, vague gesture. “By the way, I wouldn’t let those scratches go unattended. They look rather nasty.”
She smiled back. “Accidents happen, Seraphic. You might want to bear that in mind.”
Then she turned and was out the door before he could respond. But it didn’t stop him from thinking that he would have given anything in that moment to be able to strangle her.
HE WALKED BACK through the city to the small inn at which he was staying, one frequented by non-Elven travelers, and retired to his room to brood. He could not remember the last time he had been this unhappy. What made his situation even worse was he lacked a way to change that. How could he bring Isoeld Severine to heel? He couldn’t expose her by revealing her part in the death of the King without revealing his own. He couldn’t send Bonnasaint after her because killing her gained him nothing; it just put him further away from his goal of persuading the Elven people to his cause. And threats were pointless. A woman like Isoeld was immune to any threats that he might muster.
He needed something else, another way to get to her, a form of leverage that would force her to do what he wanted. He had believed wrongly that he had gained that leverage by giving her what she wanted—her husband dead and herself poised to gain the throne. Where was her gratitude for that? Nowhere in sight.
What troubled him even more was her failure to take control of things when she’d had the chance. The Elven people were in shock over losing the King; they would have rallied to her at once if she had demanded it. Instead, she had dithered about with her stepdaughter’s fate an
d tried to handle it discreetly. She might have intended to kill the girl, but she had failed to carry out the act. Now it might be too late. In spite of what the Queen thought, the girl would not be easily found. She had family and friends and allies, people who didn’t like the baker’s daughter who had married their King. They would help her. They would hide her. It could take weeks before anything further happened.
Weeks that none of them had. The Drouj wouldn’t sit idle while the Elves worked out their internal problems. They didn’t care about the Children of the Hawk or the Seraphic. Both were nothing more than obstacles to be eliminated when they invaded the valley.
Which they would do very soon, be believed. By now, they had probably found one of the passes, and that was all the help they needed. An army of Trolls of the magnitude described by Sider Ament would be more than a match for the people of the valley. They would attack and they would crush any opposition, and that would be the end of everything.
He went down to the tiny dining room and ate dinner at the common table, but spoke to no one. When he was done, he went straight to bed. He would return to Glensk Wood and await word from Bonnasaint on his efforts to eliminate the boy. At least he could count on that much. Bonnasaint wouldn’t dare fail him again—not after failing him once already. Kill the boy, take his staff, and tighten his hold on the followers of the Children of the Hawk—that would put him in a better mood. It was bad enough when Sider Ament was still alive and walking the land. It was intolerable that this boy, Panterra Qu—a mere child—had taken his place and was already presuming that simply by virtue of carrying the black staff he could summon, rally, and lead the people of the valley. He had no right to make that assumption. He had no right to anything.
Once he was dead and gone, Skeal Eile would take over and the order of things would be reconfigured.
He slept late in spite of his uneasiness, and it was nearing noon before he left for his village. He borrowed a horse from a family he knew to be committed to his order and rode it hard all day and through the twilight hours. It was dark by the time he reached Glensk Wood, and he still didn’t have an answer for Isoeld Severine’s defiance.
But I will have that answer before this is done, he promised himself.
He gave the horse to the boy who kept watch over the animals in his small stable and trooped up to the building where he made his home—a large, blocky structure with a meeting hall on the first floor, and his living quarters and offices above. There were no lights on or people about. The door was locked, but he used a key and was inside quickly enough. He stood listening to the silence, a habit he had developed over the years, an exercise in caution he had never quite managed to put aside.
He heard nothing.
He walked through the meeting hall and climbed the stairs to his living quarters. The door leading in was locked. He used another key, pushed the door open, and walked inside.
“I thought perhaps you weren’t coming back, Seraphic,” a voice greeted him.
He managed not to cry out, but only barely. He looked around, searching the darkness, but couldn’t see anything. He wondered for a moment if it might be Bonnasaint, since only he would be this daring, would risk violating his personal quarters by entering uninvited. But it wasn’t Bonnasaint’s voice.
“I’m over here,” the voice said.
A flame appeared, and a candle was lit. The candle sat on a table next to a padded chair, and a man sat in the chair. Skeal Eile could only just make him out—tall, thin, pinch-faced, and craggy. Old, and not in a good way. Weathered and worn down from the inside out. But not weak. Not vulnerable, for all his appearance might suggest. Skeal Eile could tell.
“Who are you?” he asked, managing to put some iron in his voice. “Who let you into my rooms?”
The response was mild. “No one. I let myself in. I needed to speak with you, and I saw no point in waiting outside like one of your supplicants. As for who I am, I leave it to you to determine that. A man possessed of your skills and singular talents should have no trouble recognizing me.”
He moved the candle off the tabletop and close to his face. Skeal Eile saw his features clearly, the same features he had made out before in the room’s dimness. The candlelight sharpened and defined those features, but did not reveal the identity of the speaker. Some old itinerant dressed in ragged clothes. What was that next to him? A bundle of rags?
“I don’t know you,” he told the other.
“Look more closely. Look into my eyes.”
Skeal Eile almost didn’t. Something in the other’s voice told him that he wouldn’t like what he found there, that he might even be putting himself in danger. But he was still angry at the intrusion, and he wanted to reclaim the high ground in this confrontation, so he looked closely at the other’s eyes and watched with terrible fascination as they changed from something human to something that wasn’t.
He felt his throat tighten and his mouth go dry. He had some magic at his command and thus some insights into things that weren’t known by the average man and woman. He had never seen a demon before, though he had heard about them in stories told of the old world, and he knew he was seeing one now.
“I do know you,” he said.
“I thought you might. Men of your sort usually do. They see themselves in me. Or something of what they wish they were.”
Skeal Eile swallowed hard. “Why are you here? What do you want with me? I didn’t summon you, so you must think I have something you want. But I’ve got nothing to offer you.”
“Perhaps you do,” the other said. “But more to the point, I have something to offer you. Would you like to hear what it is?”
Even though he wasn’t at all sure that he would, there was only one answer to a question like that. Skeal Eile nodded wordlessly.
“I know something about you,” the demon said. “I spent most of the day learning about you, discovering who you are and what you do. I talked to people in the village about you. They were surprisingly willing to tell me things. I know all about the Children of the Hawk. I know all about your place in the community, about your ambitions and hopes, about your small talents. People are in awe of you. They fear and respect you, though not in equal measure.”
He paused. “Men like you—ambitious and controlling—want much more than what they have. What is it that you want, Seraphic? Tell me. Tell me about yourself. Tell me everything.”
The demon’s eyes found and held his, and suddenly Skeal Eile was telling him everything. He simply started talking and found himself unable to stop. The words tumbled out of his mouth with such eagerness that he couldn’t even be sure what he was saying. He might have been speaking in tongues for all he could tell. But he could see the demon smiling and nodding, and he knew that whatever he was saying was making the other happy.
“I want to be recognized as undisputed leader of all of the Children of the Hawk,” he finished, exhausted. “I want the number of those who believe to increase tenfold. I want to take them from this valley, take them away and find them a new home in which to live. I want them to accept me as their spiritual adviser and mentor. I want no interference of any kind while I accomplish this.”
The demon nodded. “Not so much to ask for, considering. Very well. I can give you that. I will give it all to you, if you will help me in return. Repay me for my kindness, you could say. Offer up a trade for my invaluable services. You would be willing to do this, wouldn’t you?”
He didn’t wait for a reply. “I came here looking for a man who carries a black staff. I caught his scent from a long way off, knew instantly of his presence and tracked him to this village. Now I discover he is dead, killed a few days back at a place called Declan Reach. Sider Ament was his name. What I have not been able to discover is what happened to the staff. The woman Aislinne Kray seems to know, but she refused to tell me. So now I am asking you. Where is it?”
Skeal Eile exhaled the breath he had been holding. Still stunned and frightened by the way in which the
demon had forced him to reveal himself, he found in the other’s question a glimmer of hope, a chance to turn things around. “Sider Ament gave it to a boy called Panterra Qu. He appointed the boy its new bearer.”
“Where is this boy?”
The Seraphic hesitated. “I am in the process of finding that out. I have a man tracking him—a man with instructions to kill the boy and bring the staff to me. I could give it to you when he returns, if you want.”
“If you keep your word, I will give you everything you want.”
Skeal Eile was confused. “I don’t understand. How can you make people follow me?”
The old man smiled crookedly. “You don’t want to ask me that. Let me ask you something instead. Is there a girl who travels with this boy? Young, small. Do you know anyone like that?”
Skeal Eile shook his head. “The boy travels alone. There was a girl, but the Trolls have her.”
The smile broadened. “Life plays so many tricks on us, Seraphic. So many.” The smile died away. “I want that boy, and I want that staff. I am depending on you to produce both. If you fail me, I will abandon you. Is that understood? Do not disappoint me.”
Do not disappoint me—the exact words that Skeal Eile had used in his warning to Bonnasaint on dispatching him to hunt down Panterra Qu. Was it coincidence? The demon could not possibly know this. He felt a chill ripple through him. “I won’t,” he whispered.
The demon got to his feet. “You should go to bed. You look exhausted. I’ll be back when you have the staff in hand.”
“But how will you …?”
“Know? I just will. Good night.”
The demon walked out of the room and disappeared down the stairs. His descent was soundless. Skeal Eile stood looking after him, listening to the silence.
He stood listening for a long time.
