And thereby witnessed a miracle.
AT DECLAN REACH, earlier that same day, the sun rose with a bright glow behind the wall of the mountains, bathing the lands west in a faint sheen of silvery light that just managed to chase back the last of the night’s shadows and illuminate the features of the battlefield where the dead lay in heaps. The demon, still wrapped in his Skeal Eile disguise, took a moment to look about at the carnage he had created. Acres of bodies spread away before him, stretching from the mouth of the pass for hundreds of yards downslope toward the empty flats and rough hill country beyond. The last of the Drouj survivors picked through the remains in search of spoils, gathering up bits and pieces of lives gone dark, carrion in search of an unspecified sustenance. Only Arik Siq stood apart, his gaze shifting between the Seraphic on the one hand and the dark mouth of the pass on the other. What he was looking for was difficult to say. Perhaps he was trying to make sense of things, realizing that in some way he had transgressed beyond even what he had thought himself capable of doing. Perhaps he was just trying to stay alert to whatever else might be coming his way.
Whatever he was doing, the demon thought, it wouldn’t save him from his fate. In the end, he was just another sacrifice waiting to be led to the altar and butchered.
The demon sat off to one side, away from the mangled corpses and the stench of death, consciously separating himself from these creatures he despised so thoroughly.
Even dead, they were an abomination. But he suffered them because they were the food on which he feasted and, in this instance, the lure that would bring to him the bearer of the black staff. The demon would suffer anything to get his hands on the bearer’s magic, and he would suffer it for as long as was necessary. The entire focus of his life, for the moment at least, was on waiting for that to happen.
It won’t take long. The bearer wil hear of this. He wil hear of it and he wil come. And I wil be waiting to put an end to him and to take from his lifeless hands the black staff he carries. And then the magic wil be mine.
He believed himself a simple creature with simple needs. There was nothing complicated about him. He was single-minded, and he was driven. He craved power and immortality—insofar as such things might be attained—and dominance over all living things. He understood this about himself, and he believed that what he craved was only what he deserved. He had made the pact required long ago so that this could come about when he shed his human skin. He thought nothing of the exchange in retrospect; he barely remembered making it. Travel down that road far enough and you forget entirely where you came from. The journey becomes the destination in a twisted sort of way.
The need to acquire more of everything, to possess as much as there was to possess, was insatiable.
He watched the Drouj some more, moving through the dead, gathering their precious trophies. Stupid creatures. Beasts of low cunning. Some were bleeding from wounds they had not even bothered to tend, so eager were they to gain possession of something they could point to as a remembrance of this day.
Arik Siq walked over to him, the flat, featureless face in sharp contrast with his own disgust-etched countenance. He saw the Troll hesitate and quickly smoothed away the offending wrinkles. Even so, he gave the other a cold, impatient look. “What is it?”
“We are done here,” the other said. “We should go, my Drouj and I. We’re too few to hold the pass, too few to do anything that matters. We need my father’s help.”
The demon brushed the demand aside with a wave of his hand. “You need nothing you don’t already have. You need only me.”
“But what is there to be accomplished …?”
The demon rose, standing so close to him that even though he was much bigger he took a quick step back.
“Are you questioning me?”
Arik Siq shook his head. “No. But I don’t see …”
“You don’t need to see. You just need to do what you’re told.”
The Troll stared at him and then shook his head. “I grow tired of this.”
The demon smiled. “Do you?”
“What game are you playing? Whatever game that is, I want no further part. The Drouj are strong enough without you. If you care nothing for the valley and only for the black staff, then there is little we can do to help each other more. You will gain the staff quick enough without my help.”
“But I like keeping you close,” said the demon, “so that I don’t have to worry about you. I’ve heard you are fond of poisoned darts fired from blowguns—that you favor long-distance killing weapons that allow the user to stay safely hidden.”
“I’ve had enough of you!” Arik Siq snapped. “I don’t care what you claim to be.