SKEAL EILE TRIED to fight against what was happening, but he was powerless against the creature that held him. He knew it was a demon he fought against, and he understood what that meant. He even understood in general terms the nature of his inevitable fate.
He was going to die. He had crossed a line, and he was going to pay the price. At some point, he had lost his perspective completely by allowing this creature into his life, by embracing its cause as his own, by accepting it as an ally. Always so careful before, always making certain that he was the master and not the slave, this time he had forgotten himself.
He thought suddenly of Bonnasaint, whom he had not heard from since the other left on his hunt for Panterra Qu. What had become of him? No word at all, and nothing to suggest whether he had done what he was supposed to do.
He thought of the Drouj, Arik Siq, and found a sudden, perverse satisfaction in the fact that he would return with his people, and they would decimate the valley. What difference if he died now? The end was decided for all of them.
He thought of Isoeld—vain and ambitious and foolish—now Queen of the Elves and
thinking herself safe. Perhaps she was, for the moment. Perhaps her stepdaughter would come to a bad end, just as her husband had. Perhaps she would find a way to make that happen. Perhaps she would even find a way to escape the Drouj. But sooner or later, she would find herself on the receiving end of a long knife, dying in the same way her husband had, an expendable pawn in someone else’s schemes.
Then, suddenly, something was happening to him. He could feel himself being turned about so that he was facing away from the demon. He could feel the other pressing against him from behind. The pressure was intense, and then it was excruciating. He was being crushed. He tried to scream, but his vocal cords had been silenced and no sound came from his open mouth. He gasped and panted and drooled as the pressure increased to a point beyond bearable, and all he wanted to do was to make it stop.
“Good-bye, Seraphic,” he heard the demon whisper.
He experienced a strange sense of invasion, as if the other were reaching inside him to make room for himself. His body seemed to widen and stretch to allow for this, his organs pushed aside and his bones broken and shattered. He shrieked silently, but he could only hear the sounds he was making in his head. He begged for it to stop, to be over. He fought to keep himself together, but he was already beginning to disappear.
His thoughts scattered and his mind lost focus. Everything began to close down and turn fuzzy. The pain eased slightly, and a strange sense of listlessness replaced it. There was nothing left for him. Nothing.
At some point, he could feel the demon’s thoughts begin to intermingle with his own, as if the demon had gotten inside his head. In a few brief seconds, all of the demon’s dark memories were revealed to him. All the years spent hunting down humans, all the killings and destruction witnessed and perpetrated, all the terrible ravages that had led to the destruction of the old world—they were there in his mind.
He thought he would go insane, but before that happened his brain simply quit working and his world went dark.
WHEN IT WAS FINISHED, the ragpicker gave himself a moment to adjust to his new look. He hunched his shoulders and stretched his arms, testing the fit of his new skin, adapting to his new appearance. He walked over to the window and looked at his reflection in the glass. What he saw pleased him.
He was no longer the ragpicker. He was Skeal Eile.
But a better, stronger, more capable Skeal Eile, freed from the other’s mortal weaknesses and limitations.
The demon smiled. The Seraphic had served his purpose, but his usefulness was ended.
What was needed now he could best accomplish on his own.
What was needed was an event so shocking it would bring the bearer of the black staff running right to him.
WORD TRAVELED QUICKLY, AND BY THE END OF the day people were flocking to the village square in Glensk Wood to gather for the address that the Seraphic of the Children of the Hawk had announced he would deliver. They came not just from within the village proper, but from miles away, traveling by whatever means they could. It would be an announcement of cataclysmic proportions, it was rumored—one that promised to be life changing. No details were offered, not even to Pogue Kray and the members of the village council. The Seraphic had declared that all present would hear the announcement together so that there could be no mistaking its meaning. Those who could not come at once might hear of it later, but by then it would almost certainly be too late.
But too late for what? No one knew. They pondered those words, every last one of them, and then each determined individually to be in attendance and began making their plans on how they would do so.
Although curiosity brought some of them, mention of the Hawk brought many more.