The Eye of the Hunter (Mithgar Series (Chronological), #13)

by Dennis L. McKiernan

And then came that dreadful day. Riatha was striding up from the fields, returning from a day of scything, when she was whelmed unto her knees, her skin afire, her heart hammering, a dread horror washing over her. And through eyes not her own, she saw the face of what appeared to be a Man, a narrow, pale, wolfish face with yellow gaze, laughing madly, the face of a fiend. And in a long-fingered hand was a thin-bladed flaying knife. Stoke! came a wordless message. Pain started at the soles of her feet and lanced up her legs, as if flesh were being stripped from her. She shrieked in agony, her hands covering her face, and other Lian rushed to aid her, yet they could do nought. Unbearable pain ripped upward, from her feet and ankles to her legs to her thighs as her flesh was rent from her, from her back, from her shoulders and arms, from her hands; then flesh was torn from her forehead and face and neck, ripping down her chest, her stomach. Yawling, shrieking, screaming, she was flayed alive, agony exploding throughout her entire being. Mewling, she fell down and down into a bubbling, blood-red Hèl, her mind erupting with horror and fear and hatred and fury and unbearable pain. And then she was pierced through, impaled, a hideous instrument bursting outward from her abdomen. A final drawn-out cry flared silently in her mind: Stoke…! And then no more. The pain gone. The horror remaining. And the hatred and fury. And Riatha wept and raged and cried out in anguish and desolation...

“Will they remember us, Aravan? Will Mankind remember us at all?” “Mayhap, Gwylly, mayhap. Mayhap in their legends and fables. Mayhap in nought but their dreams.”

Throughout the following years, Faeril continued to live in Arden, in the cote that she and Gwylly had shared. Her life, though not as long as those of other Warrows, was gentle and filled with love. And through the years as her long, dark hair slowly changed to blend with her silver lock, many friends came to visit with this golden-eyed damman, this last of the Lastborn Firstborns. She was eighty-eight that final summer’s eve, the eve of the autumnal equinox. And after the ceremonies in the glade, after the festivities in the Elven hall, after saying good night to one and all, she came back through the dark green pines and across the meadow to sit before the cote in the soft night, listening to the crickets, the stars wheeling above, the full platinum Moon overhead. And as the silvery Tumble gurged quietly in the gorge below, Faeril thought she heard a soft footstep and looked up to see— “Oh my buccaran, I knew you would come for me.” And she reached up and took his hand.