The Measure of the Magic (55 page)

He didn’t like thinking of that possibility. It was painful enough already just accepting that she was gone.

He took a moment to look north, peering through the moonlit darkness as if he might learn what had become of her and the dragon. There was nothing to see, of course, but he couldn’t help wondering what had happened to them. He no longer heard the sounds of a battle being fought, the sounds he had heard yesterday long since gone and replaced by a deep, abiding silence. Whatever conclusion had been reached, it was over and done now. Her part in the outcome of things was decided; his was still to be played out.

He experienced a fresh pang of disappointment thinking back once more on how they had separated. The fact was she had left him behind, and he did not like how it made him feel. She had said the dragon would not take them both, but he had wondered about that from the moment she had said it. He had helped her leave him, knowing she genuinely believed her people needed her more than he did. It wasn’t his place to second-guess her choice. Not even if his doubts proved to be valid.

He looked east again. He could argue this with himself all night, and had pretty much done so. But his own problems were more pressing than his wounded pride and damaged heart. He might love her; he might even one day see something come of that love. But just now, it didn’t really matter. Just now, it was a small thing.

Putting any further debate aside, he started walking. It was still dark, dawn an hour or so away, but he would reach the pass by then and discover how things stood. Phryne Amarantyne had troubled him from that first day when they had climbed out of the valley toward Aphalion Pass, and he expected she would continue to do so for some time to come. Prue would have known what to say to him, had she been there. Prue always knew what to say.

But Prue wasn’t there, of course, and the best he could hope for was that he would find her again before another day passed.

He trekked on, wending his way over rough hills and down twisty
gullies, stirring up dust as he walked through country that felt as dead as his hopes for remaining a Tracker. That dream was over—for both Prue and himself. Things would never be the same for them again, and that was a pain he felt more keenly than anything related to Phryne Amarantyne. He wished there was something he could do to change what had happened to Prue, but he knew there wasn’t. She had made the choice that had diminished her sight; it had never been his to make. She’d had a chance to help keep him safe, and he understood it was a chance she would take every time it was offered regardless of the price extracted. Prue was like that. Loyalty and sacrifice were qualities she valued and understood. Particularly where it involved those she was close to and especially with him.

He wondered where she was.

He wondered what had happened to her.

Moonlight shone out of a cloudless sky, the barren world about him as silent and lifeless as a cemetery, he continued walking, searching for a way he could find out.

P
RUE LISS AND AISLINNE KRAY CROUCHED
in the concealment of a cluster of rocks at the head of the pass leading out from Declan Reach, as silent as shadows. The man they had left behind had whispered of killing and madness, his voice hoarse and barely audible, his wounds grievous enough that he could not continue farther, and they had left him there for others to find. And eventually others had come, though only a handful, stumbling out from the killing field in ones and twos, ragged figures in the darkness, bloodied and despairing, the last of those who had gone with Skeal Eile to die on the flats beyond.

“All dead,” one woman had gasped as she came up to them and they caught her in their arms. “Killed, every one of them. Killed by him, by the Seraphic! He lied to us. He deceived us all.”

Another had repeated the words, bitter and enraged and devastated by what had happened. That one, too, had gone on. Aislinne had given each of them water to drink and a bit of food and told them to wait inside the pass for help to come. Where it would come from, she had no idea. But it was all Prue or she could do. The scarlet dove flew
on, and they were committed to following it to where they would find Panterra Qu and whatever fate awaited them all.

Now they were in hiding at the far end of the pass and had seen for themselves the source of the horrific stories related by the ragged people they had encountered earlier. Not a hundred yards from where they crouched the killing field began, a span of several acres covered by the mingled corpses of Drouj and people from Glensk Wood alike sprawled everywhere across the slopes. Neither she nor Aislinne had ever seen so many dead people before, and the enormity of it was appalling. Human men, women, and children and Drouj soldiers, their blood dark and stiff on their skin and clothing, their limbs twisted and fixed, their eyes blank and staring. Many of these were people they had known; some had been friends and neighbors. None had deserved this.

In the midst of this carnage, Skeal Eile sat waiting, his back to them and his eyes on the countryside beyond. They had seen his features clearly when they had crept through the shadows of the defile to their hiding place, not daring to come any closer than they were. He had been moving about then, glancing this way and that, his nose lifting as if he were testing the air for scent. They knew he wasn’t who he seemed—he wasn’t Skeal Eile at all, but the demon that had tracked them both. They could feel what he was in their bones—Prue in particular, her instincts screaming at her, shivers running up and down her spine. They looked at each other, their breathing labored and harsh in their throats, and they knew.

But they had not spoken of it. Not once. At first, it had been too risky with the demon threading his way through the dead, turning this way and that, searching. It was dangerous enough being this close to him. Later, when he had settled down and taken up his current place of watch, they had still kept silent, an unspoken agreement. Once, Aislinne had gestured to suggest that perhaps they should retreat farther back into the pass. But Prue had pointed to where the scarlet dove had come to roost in the rocks overhead. It was no longer leading them, she indicated. It had found what it was looking for. It was waiting here for Panterra Qu, and she and Aislinne must wait with it.

By gesturing and mouthing words, she made her point, and even though Aislinne could not see the dove, she had understood, nodded in agreement, and settled back with her bow and arrows clutched close.
If this was where the matter was to be decided, Aislinne Kray would take a stand, as well. Prue knew what she was thinking, how she had made up her mind that it would all end here. Both of them had come searching for a resolution to the madness that had been threatening all of them ever since the demon had found his way into the valley, and now both believed that no resolution could be found without Panterra Qu. He was coming, and the demon was waiting for him. There was no other explanation for what was happening. The dead were meant to draw the bearer of the black staff, and the demon would wait for as long as it took for that to happen.

But Prue and Aislinne would wait with him. They could be patient, too.

Aislinne shifted closer to Prue and put her lips to the girl’s ear.

I could kill him from here
.

Prue looked at her.

One shot, through the heart. A second to join it, if I am lucky. It might be worth trying. We could end it all
.

Prue shook her head.
You can’t kill him that way
.

We don’t know that
.

I know it. The King of the Silver River said Pan must confront the demon to put an end to him. We must wait for that
.

Aislinne studied her face for a long time, and then nodded and settled back once more.

On the slopes leading up to the pass where the demon sat amid the dead, the darkness was beginning to draw back.

T
HE DEMON WAS A PATIENT CREATURE
. Waiting did not trouble it. Even waiting days or weeks did not distress it. It had learned how to wait, helped in part because its life span was so long and time was so unimportant. It was easy to wait in this instance, where it would yield such rich rewards. There were many things not worth waiting for and times when patience was wasted, but it was not the case here. The demon had already been waiting centuries. It had not even come close to laying hands upon one of the black staffs since the collapse of the old world and the destruction of the last of the Knights of the Word.
The possibility of it happening now was exciting and compelling, and his need for it was overwhelming. Possession of power drew the demon now as always—power over life and death. That power would soon be his, and the satisfaction he would feel when it was his to wield was worth any wait.

So he sat there in the killing field, the smell of death all around him, sharp and pungent in the night air. He drank it in out of habit, but barely gave it a thought as he did so. He had drunk it in so often, been surrounded by it so endlessly, that it no longer held much interest. The dead that lay at his feet were worth nothing in any case. It was the bearer’s life that had real value.

It was his anticipation of what it would feel like to take that life that mattered.

Had he been less immersed in the intoxicating smell and taste of death and less obsessed by his craving for the power of the black staff, he might have sensed the presence of Prue Liss, who was hidden little more than a hundred yards away. He might have caught a whiff of her strange magic or a whisper of her companion’s soft breathing. But on this night, in this place, and with his thoughts directed on other matters, he failed to do so.

Time slipped away, and once or twice he thought he heard stirrings from within the shadows of the entrance to the pass. But he gave it almost no thought, assuming it was one of those unfortunates who had managed to crawl from the heaps of dead in a futile effort to reach safety in Glensk Wood. Such safety was an illusion, given what he had planned for those who lived within the valley. And even if it was something or someone who thought to do him harm, he didn’t care because nothing that humans and their like possessed could threaten him. He had already seen the best of what they had, and it was nothing.

Only the bearer of the staff could do him harm, and he would make swift work of that one, once he surfaced. A newly endowed bearer of magic was no match for someone like him, a practiced wielder, a skilled user, and a creature comfortable with death.

He watched the darkness slowly fade, watched dawn’s light surface from behind the mountains east, watched the shadows draw back and begin, one by one, to vanish. The new day had arrived, and it held the promise of something wonderful.

Then suddenly he saw the solitary figure moving across the foothills west, slowly taking shape as it emerged from the gloom. A man carrying a black staff. He could hardly believe his good fortune.

Anticipation coursing through him, he watched the man draw closer.

P
ANTERRA SMELLED THE DEAD
long before he saw them; the breeze wafting down out of the mountains carried the stench to where he trudged through the early-morning light. The slopes ahead were crumpled and riven by gullies and ravines, and the shadows hid the bodies until he was no more than a hundred yards off. He was struck at once by their numbers. Hundreds littered the landscape—perhaps thousands—twisted and layered in death, intertwined in a complicated weaving of limbs and bodies. He couldn’t tell who they were and couldn’t begin to guess what had brought them there, so close to the mouth of the pass at Declan Reach that they almost certainly must have come from within the valley. Refugees, perhaps, fleeing some horror that had taken place in his absence.