The Measure of the Magic (26 page)

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.

I
T WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT BY NOW AND TIME FOR HARD-WORKING
men and women to be in bed and asleep, but the ragpicker had an appointment to keep. The one thing he had learned over the long years of his life—the one thing that had served him well in his demon work—was that humans were duplicitous. Skeal Eile was no exception; he might have been worse than most, in fact. So the ragpicker had known better than to trust much of anything he had to say. The Seraphic might promise he would secure the black staff from its newest holder—this boy, Panterra Qu—but it was more likely than not that even if he did so he would not relinquish it once he had hold of it. A man like the Seraphic was hungry for power, and he would already know the staff would give him command of magic beyond anything he possessed.

So Skeal Eile would keep the staff for himself.

Or at least, he would try.

The ragpicker had been careful not to tell the Seraphic either his suspicions or his real intentions. The other might believe that the ragpicker
trusted him to secure the staff and would simply wait around for that to happen. He might believe the ragpicker wanted the Seraphic to do the work for him. But the ragpicker had learned long ago that if you wanted something done, it was never a good idea to rely on others. Others were never as committed to achieving your goals as you were.

So let Skeal Eile think what he wanted to. Let him believe he had value. Don’t reveal the truth about what he was really needed for. Don’t tell him that when he provided information, he revealed far more than he knew. So much so he would have been appalled, had his understanding of what was happening not been deflected just enough to cloud his memory. Best if he remembered only certain things. Best if he didn’t think too carefully on what was going to happen next.

The ragpicker’s plans for the Seraphic, in fact, were complex and far reaching, and they would work best if the latter remained ignorant of true goals. Trusting the truth with such a man was a fool’s game. The ragpicker had spent sufficient time during the past few days learning about the Seraphic and his order, about how the people of his village regarded him and how he conducted himself as the self-appointed leader of his sect, to know what to expect. It was enough to enable the ragpicker to take the measure of the man and to determine accurately what was needed to secure his cooperation. Just enough, not too much—that was the key to what the Seraphic needed to know.

That way he wouldn’t realize he was doing the ragpicker’s work until it was too late.

But first things first. Having made contact with the Seraphic and given him reason to know he was being watched, he could turn his attention to more important things. Let Skeal Eile believe the demon was only interested in the black staff. Let him believe he could manipulate and deceive with impunity. He would learn the truth quickly enough.

The ragpicker was a harsh taskmaster.

He worked his way through the sleeping village to the council hall, intent on paying a visit next to the Drouj prisoner locked away in the building’s basement storeroom.

It took him only minutes to reach his destination. Once there, he stood in the shadows, hidden from prying eyes, searching for the
guards on duty. There would be two, he had learned—one keeping watch from without and one stationed at the door to the makeshift prison in the basement. A double measure of protection, it was said, against any sort of escape attempt.

When he was satisfied there was no one in the building save the guards and their prisoner, the ragpicker detached himself from the shadows and walked to the main entrance. The first guard was sitting in the shadows against the veranda wall. He waited until the ragpicker had started to climb the steps before calling out to him to stop. The old man gestured vaguely, muttered something about his weary bones, and continued on until he had reached the top riser. He stopped there, stretching his arms and muttering on aimlessly.

When the guard walked over to escort him back down again, the ragpicker seized the man by the front of his tunic and cut his throat with a single swipe of his hunting knife.

Dragging the man inside, the ragpicker left him slumped in a corner of the room, bleeding out his life. It would have been quicker and less messy simply to crush his windpipe and leave him to strangle, but that form of killing wouldn’t have suited his purposes in this business.

The ragpicker walked through the hall to the basement stairway and started down the steps. A voice called out to him—the other guard presumably—but he made no response. The second guard met him at the bottom of the stairs and had only just started to ask him his business when the ragpicker swiped his blade across this man’s throat, too.

Amateurs
, he thought.

Without bothering to move the body, the ragpicker reached down to extract the storeroom keys, stepped carefully around the spreading pools of blood, and walked over to the storeroom door. Two tries with two different keys and he heard the lock give and pulled open the door.