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...