The Measure of the Magic (46 page)

Aislinne was stunned. “He’s just abandoning us? He’s not even sending some of his soldiers?”

Brickey shook his head. “Time to go. We need to get out of here before the new and improved Skeal Eile thinks to send someone to dispose of you. He has no reason to keep you alive now. The people are with him, howling at the moon like wild animals, infused with the spirit of their new leader’s words. With Pogue dead, he commands them all, and you haven’t much protection against whatever he might decide to do with you. Come.”

He took her arm and steered her toward the door. She did not speak against what he was doing or resist the pull in his hand. She could barely make herself think straight in the face of this latest
news—Pogue dead, Esselline not coming, the people of her village—people she had known all her life—driven to a desperation and madness that could only end badly for everyone involved.

And Skeal Eile—that hateful, venomous snake, feeding the resultant frenzy with his poisonous words—was at the forefront of it all.

“Hurry, Aislinne,” Brickey urged, pulling open the door.

She was right behind him as he went through the opening and came face-to-face with Skeal Eile.

T
HE SUDDEN ENCOUNTER CAUGHT ALL THREE BY
surprise. For one endless second they froze, locked in place as if they had turned to stone. Even the sounds of wildness and passion from without seemed to go silent.

Then Aislinne Kray, staring directly into Skeal Eile’s face, saw his eyes change from a soft brown to blood red, and she recoiled.

What are you?

The Seraphic’s features were unmistakable, but there was something else, too: something that peered through those red eyes and shadowed that twisted face.

“Going somewhere?” he whispered.

Brickey reacted instantly, launching himself at Skeal Eile and propelling the Seraphic backward into the hallway. Tough and tenacious, he attacked with the ferocity of a wild animal, driving into the other’s midsection until both were off their feet and tumbling onto the hard earthen floor in a tangle of arms and legs.

“Run, Aislinne!” the little man shouted.

She did as she was told, charging past the combatants as they thrashed, catching just a flash of Brickey’s knife as it rose and fell, burying itself over and over again in the Seraphic’s body. She could hear the latter’s grunts as the blade struck, could hear the sound of his breathing change. But his efforts to free himself did not cease, and she had a terrible, unshakable premonition that the knife wasn’t doing any damage.

By then she was past them and racing up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time until she reached the hallway, the entry, the door, and finally the world outside where the night was soft and velvet and welcoming. A crowd was still milling about in the aftermath of the earlier gathering, but she pushed through them without stopping, breaking clear of the hands that reached for her. She breathed deeply the forest air as she burst into the open, a sense of freedom filling her with hope for the possibility of escape. She never slowed. She kept running, down forest paths, down lesser byways, heading for her house. She might not have been thinking as clearly as she should, but at least she was thinking. She knew where she was going. She knew what she needed to find. She realized the importance of not being seen and recognized.

What she couldn’t seem to fix on was where she would go once she was clear of Glensk Wood.

She allowed herself a moment to think one last time of Brickey, whom she already knew she would never see again. Brave friend, she thought. He had given his life for hers.

Abruptly, she changed her mind. It had been her intention to go to her home, retrieve a travel cloak and weapons, and flee south to one of the other villages. But there was no time for the former and the latter was the obvious choice—and she could not afford to make a mistake. Instead, she veered north toward the deep woods and the high country. Sider’s country. She would go there. She knew it well enough to find her way. She would go to his childhood home, abandoned now, fallen into disrepair, and find what she needed.

She ran hard, and soon her breath was ragged and her muscles aching. She had left the village behind, the madness and chaos consuming it. But even escape could not free her from her sense of disbelief and shock.

That—that
thing
—inhabiting Skeal Eile’s body wasn’t the Seraphic.
Old stories recalled themselves—stories of the time when the Hawk led his people into the valley. They had been pursued by many evils, but chief among them were the demons.

And now one was in their midst, disguised as Skeal Eile. She had no doubt this was what she and Brickey had faced. And suddenly she stopped where she was, appalled.

That old man, the ragpicker, trying to charm her into revealing what she knew about Sider and his talisman. That old man, who had threatened her in his chillingly soft-voiced, terrifyingly confident way, letting her know that if she crossed him she would live to regret it. She could still feel herself wilting under the force of his words, only just managing to hold on.

Skeal Eile was only a pawn in this, not the instigator she had thought him to be. The eyes gave away the demon within; there was no mistaking it. But the demon had not always been there; if it had, she would have noticed. Sider would have noticed. The demon was new, and it had taken the Seraphic’s form, which was why it had been able to kill her husband so easily, why it could charm the people of her village as the real Seraphic had never been able to do, why it had upended everyone’s lives in a single night with false promises and twisted dreams. He was the reason Arik Siq was free and she was made to appear responsible. He was the cause of everything twisted and bad that had happened.

She almost collapsed with the weight of her revelation. It was a struggle even to continue to walk, to put one foot in front of the other.

She forced herself to start moving faster. She could not afford to be recaptured.

She reached a stretch of deep woods just outside the village and plunged in without slowing, intent on getting through quickly and making her way to higher ground. She was tiring now, no longer able to run, to find the reserves of strength she knew she would need if she were pursued. Once, when she was younger, she could have run all day. Once, when she was with Sider, she had done so, matching him stride for stride, as strong and able as he was, a match for him in every way. What she had lost was a pain she had carried with her ever since. But now, fleeing from the demon, it surfaced with fresh intensity and made her weep.

She staggered to a halt finally, stopping to listen to the stillness. Though she tried, she heard nothing. The night was deep and empty of sound; not even the night birds called out. She took deep breaths to steady herself, thinking that perhaps she had lost him, had left him behind—the demon that pretended at being Skeal Eile, the monster she had feared would continue to track her.

But maybe not. Maybe not.

She swallowed hard and started out again, setting a fresh pace, slow but steady. She was in thick woods and heavy grasses, and she could not go any faster. But perhaps this was fast enough.

“Aislinne? Are you there? You are, aren’t you? I can smell you.”

She felt herself tighten with fear, but she kept going.

“There’s no point in running from me. There’s nowhere you can go that I can’t find you. Why not just put an end to this?”

Somehow, it had managed to find her trail. Somehow, it had closed the gap she thought she had opened between them. She had run so hard, so fast, and yet here it was, almost on top of her. She felt fresh tears run down her cheeks, but she stayed silent, working her way through the trees.

“I will make it quick, if you simply wait for me to come to you. Just give me a word or a sign to let me know you prefer it that way. Your little friend isn’t here to help you anymore. Nor is your foolish husband. Nor the man who carried the black staff until he died at the hands of the Drouj. They’re all gone. You’re all alone.”

She wanted to scream, to shatter his bones with the force of her rage. But she could do nothing to him. She wasn’t even carrying a weapon.

“Aislinne, are you listening? I know you can hear me.”

There was no escaping this creature, yet she must find a way. She tightened her resolve and pressed on, sliding ghostlike through the trees, stepping carefully, silently.
Leave no trace of your passing. Leave no footprint or sign. Stay focused on what is needed. Do not let yourself be swayed by his words. They are only words, and they cannot hurt you
.

Yet they did. They cut like knives.

She was deep in the woods now, so far in that she could only barely find her way from one sliver of moonlight to the next, everything gone stifling and dark, layered with shadows. She was infused with a sense
of need for haste that she knew she must resist. One step at a time, she told herself. The demon had gone silent, but she knew it was back there, following doggedly, determined to catch her and put an end to her.

If she was lucky. Much worse, if she was not.

Then a shadow crossed her path just ahead, a glimmer of something unlike real shadows, something not wholly dark but lit from within. She gasped in spite of herself and almost gave way to the fear pressing down on her. But then the shadow disappeared, and she turned away from it.

She blinked uncertainly. She must have imagined it. It wasn’t there now, had barely been there before. Yet something about it—something in the way it moved—was familiar.

“Aislinne?”

The demon again, but farther off now, its voice more distant.

She moved ahead carefully, waiting for something more. Abruptly, the shadow was there in front of her again, a faint glimmer, a forest wraith come out of nowhere to intercept her. She veered away once more, hurrying just a little faster now to get clear of it. It was there before her only an instant and then gone. Just as before, it seemed no more than a vision her imagination had conjured.

But this time she had the odd impression that it mimicked something of Sider Ament.

On she went, working her way through a tangle of trunks and grasses, ruts and gnarled roots, the shadow appearing and fading again at regular intervals, each time causing her to veer in a new direction, each time reminding her in faint ways of Sider.

She only heard the demon once more. It called her name from what seemed like a great distance, and then she didn’t hear it again.

It was nearing dawn when she found her way clear of the forest and started upcountry toward Sider’s old home. The night air was cold on her skin; she wore only the clothes she’d had on while imprisoned, not having had time to find anything more, and she shivered in the predawn chill. But she kept moving to keep warm, to reach her destination, and after a time she didn’t notice the cold so much.

She thought about the ghost in the woods, the shadowy form with the inner-burning light, and she decided that it wasn’t her imagination
or a hallucination. It was something else entirely. It was Sider reaching out to her, keeping her safe, even after death. She didn’t know if she believed such a thing was possible, but that was what she felt.

She trekked out of the forested valley floor and began to climb toward the scattering of homes on the upper slopes. Although Sider’s home was abandoned, another farmer had taken over management of his parents’ fields and farmed them as part of his own. Sider had never said anything to the man and his wife about wanting compensation, but had simply let it go. The farmer and his wife already lived nearby when Sider departed with the former bearer of the black staff. After his parents died, the house was left vacant—already beginning to fall into ruin. Sider had never returned, so far as anyone knew. But that was like him, she thought. He had never come back to anything. The past was never his concern.

But on this occasion, it would be hers.

If she could be safe anywhere, it would be here.

Still keeping a sharp eye out for the demon, still afraid it might find her, she worked her way steadily upslope to the beginnings of Sider’s old homestead and from there around the early plantings in the fields to where the remains of his house stood abandoned. She approached cautiously, aware that she was unarmed and woefully deficient in fighting skills. But the building was dark and silent and, in the end, empty. Mice and rats and a few nesting birds had made a home within, but nothing more dangerous was in evidence.

She stepped inside through the open doorway, the door itself long since gone, and stood looking into the darkness as her eyes adjusted. She listened to the sounds of wings beating and paws scurrying, and then she moved through the tiny living area, past the little kitchen space, and into the room at the back of the house that had been Sider’s.

Once within that room, she stopped again. Moonlight flooded through the open window, illuminating a bed, a chest at its foot, and a small table and chair. There was nothing else, and what remained was splintered and broken and empty of anything useful. Bones from another life, the skeleton of better times—it made her cry all over again.