MIDDAY CAME AND WENT, and in the lengthening shadows of the Cintra the afternoon crawled toward another lank, gray evening. Findo Gask stood at the edge of the skrail encampment and watched the sun slide toward the wall of the mountains west. Fifty of his once-men were engaged in cleaning up the mess behind him, diligent servants under the whip and blade of a pair of his newly promoted demon lieutenants. With Delloreen dead and the Klee still in search of the gypsy morph, he had need of new subordinates, of creatures anxious to move up in the pecking order, to take the place of those he had favored before. They lasted only a short while, for the most part, and then they were gone and there were others. They all had the same ambitions, the same central goal—to fawn for his favor while they schemed to replace him. They all wanted the same thing—his power, his status, his rule.
Except for the Klee—which wanted nothing but the opportunities he provided for it—they were all alike.
He thought momentarily of Delloreen. Unlike most of the others, he genuinely regretted losing her. Certainly, he would have had to kill her before much longer in any event, but he had admired her grit and determination. He had enjoyed their verbal sparring; staying alert to her endless machinations had helped keep him sharp. There was no one among the present crop who could scheme as she did and be prepared to back it up with savagery and cruelty, which even he had trouble matching.
The demon called Dariogue wandered over, slouching in that peculiar way it had developed, one leg shorter than the other, neck twice broken and reset, face all smashed in. Findo Gask didn’t like Dariogue much and didn’t trust him at all, but he was the most capable of the bunch.
“It’s done, Master,” his subordinate offered, gesturing vaguely.
“All of them?”
“All, Master.”
“Do we know anything more than we did before about what happened to the boy?”
“No, Master, nothing.”
Findo Gask was not pleased. Not that he had expected Dariogue to be any more successful than himself at finding out how the Elf boy had escaped. Not that he didn’t already have a pretty good idea.
“Let’s have a look, then.”
They started off toward the grove of skeletal trees north of the clearing. Findo Gask was already thinking ahead to his pursuit of the Elf boy. It didn’t matter how he had escaped—or with whom. The end result would be the same. He would track the boy, find him, and extract from him the truth about the whereabouts of the Loden. The boy would have it near him or know where it was; he would have to if he expected to save his people. Culph had been quite clear about how the Elfstone worked. His ideas of manipulating the user remained valuable even though he himself was dead and gone.
Gask frowned on thinking of the deaths of his spies—the old man and the Tracker. How had the boy managed to kill not one, but two demons? He must have access to a magic Findo Gask did not yet know of; he would have to be cautious. The boy was capable of more than any of them had believed. The boy was dangerous.
“Here, Master,” Dariogue advised, breaking into his musings.
He looked to where the other was pointing. The broken bodies of the minder and twenty-five skrails dangled from the limbs of the trees to which they had been nailed. They looked vaguely like bats. Or strange decorations for a pagan celebration.
The old man studied them with his cold, empty eyes, and was satisfied. Failure of the sort that had occurred here would not be tolerated.
“We’re leaving,” he said to Dariogue. “Send me something that can track the boy. Blood soaks or huntrys should do. Then bring up the rest of the army. March them by these trees so that they can see what happens when I am disappointed.”
An object lesson, he thought as he brushed the other off with a wave of his hand. But it was nothing compared with the lesson he intended to teach the Elf boy.
TWENTY-TWO