Mad God's Muse

by Matthew P Gilbert

  Polus laid a hand on Caelwen's shoulder and gripped it hard enough to hurt. “It's good to see you again. You had me worried for a bit, there.” Then, before Caelwen could even respond, Polus stepped back to make room for someone else.

  Caelwen was fairly certain his shock was written on his face as Kariana leaned over him, her waif-like face broadening in a grin. Her violet eyes peered down at him from behind her black tresses, twinkling with mischief. It must be mischief. It certainly wouldn't be tears for me. “It's good to have you back, Captain,” she said.

  Caelwen smiled weakly back at her. “Not rid of me yet, Empress.”

  Kariana giggled at this. “I thought maybe you had this in mind as your escape from me!” She swiped at what, for all the world, appeared to be actual tears in her eyes. “But your position is still secure. It seemed prudent to make sure I actually needed a new bodyguard before conducting interviews.” She looked at Polus and said, “I'll leave you two to catch up.”

  When the door had closed behind her, Polus stepped forward and extended a hand to Caelwen. Caelwen took it and grasped it as firmly as he could, but he felt very woozy still. “How long?”

  Polus reached for a decanter of water and poured a glass full. “Just the night.” He handed the glass to his son, careful to make certain Caelwen had a firm grasp before releasing it. “I hear you died well. Not many men get the chance to know how they will fall. Davron gave you quite a gift.”

  Caelwen drained the entire glass, then set it on a small table beside the bed. “You've seen him since?”

  “Aye. He sent you back slumped over your horse, accompanied by a few of his men, but I had to go to him to get the story. He's dug in and not coming out without a fight.”

  “I'm surprised to be alive. I thought certain he meant to kill me.”

  Polus waved a hand, dismissing the thought as foolish. “He dotes on you like you were his own. If you didn't have my chin, I'd wonder about him and your mother.” Polus almost smiled. “I've never heard him speak so well of anyone as he did you.”

  Caelwen laughed out loud at this. “You should have heard what he said about me last night. He was more than a little upset.”

  “Well, then, he shouldn't have taught you to be insufferable. It serves him right.”

  They both laughed at this, but Caelwen's humor was brief as he remembered other details. “What of Rithard?”

  Polus's expression grew grim. “Unknown. Davron won't speak of it. Personally, I suspect he's dead.”

  Caelwen nearly shouted his dismay. “How can you not know? Davron should be arrested for this!”

  “Mind your tone. I am still your father, even if it was Davron who most recently whipped you for insolence.” His mouth was stern, but his eyes still said otherwise. “Whose army do you propose I use to dig him out, if it came to that? Shall we ask him to lend us his men?”

  Caelwen snickered despite himself and the seriousness of the situation. “It's unseemly to do nothing.”

  “And it would be stupid to go off half cocked. Even if we could take him, we'd lose so many men that we couldn't keep order. Davron has all the cards, and more to the point, I'm not even convinced he is in the wrong.”

  Caelwen sighed and laid his head back on his pillow. He noticed the pain for the first time. His head and jaw throbbed with his pulse, though not as badly as he might have expected. Ah, they've drugged me, of course. That's why I'm woozy. He wondered idly who was even running the place, with Aiul gone berserk and Rithard dead or captured. “You suspect he's murdered Rithard, and you know for a fact he has kidnapped him. How is that 'not in the wrong'?”

  Polus chuckled at this. “Here you lie bruised and battered, and you still don't understand what I have tried to teach you your whole life. The law is what men of might and will say, nothing more. Davron has the might and the will. Unless the Meites choose to involve themselves, this is his hand to play.”

  “And the Meites? What say they?”

  Polus was silent for a moment before answering. “There have been...other developments that have distracted them.”

  Prandil watched as Maranath sighed and pushed back from the examining table, shaking his head in disgust. He's tired. We're all tired. Whatever dark power had driven the creature that lay before him, it was departed, and the thing was merely a corpse again, albeit a very well ventilated one. What hadn't been exposed to the air by sword had been finished by scalpel, but they were none the wiser for having done so. I would have expected to learn a bit more from opening the thing up and having a look.

  “I've no damned idea what I am doing here,” Maranath said quietly.

  Prandil stabbed his scalpel into the corpse's face and left it there like a planted flag. “None of us expected this. I am uncertain how to proceed.”

  Ariano, too, heaved a sigh and shook her head in defeat. “Cautiously.”

  Maranath looked at both of them. “Indeed. Of all the mistakes we could make, underestimating him is the easiest to avoid.”

  “We have no information,” Prandil groused. “We can't even begin to predict what he can throw at us. That juggernaut that tore through here was no man.”

  “No,” Ariano agreed. “That was the Dead God himself. I sensed his passing, even in my sleep.”

  “Perhaps he would be like the Fallen?” Prandil mused.

  Maranath scratched at his chin, considering a moment. “I've never heard of the Fallen raising undead. They were first and foremost warriors. They had minor sorcery at best compared to a Meite. Amrath doesn’t even mention specifics.”

  “He mentions brave soldiers fleeing in fear of them!”

  Maranath waved a hand to dismissal the notion. “That hardly means they were using sorcery. They were fearsome warriors. Wouldn’t you flee from someone who was going to chop off your head with a great hunk of steel?”

  Prandil hunched his shoulders and leaned in toward the old sorcerer. “I have read it many times, and I remember being told about it by my father before then. Amrath said the Fallen wore cloaks of fear.”

  “He said they were ‘cloaked in fear’,” Maranath nearly shouted. “It’s metaphor, you ass!”

  Prandil gaped at him a moment. No one is this ignorant. It must be senility. “Mei, it says no such thing!” he shouted. “It says ‘cloaks of fear’, and Amrath meant it literally! I can show you the passage right now!” He began casting about the room for a copy of the book.

  Ariano groaned and waved her hands between the two. “This is no time for trivia! We know enough!” She glared at the two of them briefly, then intoned, “This is the prophesy of Elgar: one thousand years do the gods grant for the Sleeper to dream.”

  Prandil nodded, taking up the verse. “One hundred decades does the Eye of the Lion lie sundered.”

  “Ten centuries does Torium rot and fester.” Maranath said, joining in. In unison, they spoke the rest from memory, “Then will the Sleeper awake, the Eye be made whole, and the chancre of Torium burst to spill its corruption upon the world. The scion of Elgar will rise from the blood of Tasinal, the Eye about his neck, in the City of Nothing, and the world shall become as ash. So says the Destroyer.”

  “We were such arrogant fools,” Prandil said softly. “Kariana was never the scion. She was the catalyst.”

  Ariano jabbed a bony finger at him. “You were wrong.” She shot Maranath a withering look as well. “The both of you. I've told you since the day he led that raid on her, it was Aiul.”

  “So you did,” Maranath conceded. “I suppose I didn't really want to believe it, so I chose not to.” He shook his head and cast his gaze to the ground. “How can you even think of this?” he whispered. “The boy—”

  “Don't!” Ariano's voice exploded in the small room like a bomb, complete with a shockwave. Trays full of surgical tools upended, sending scalpels flying like spears. Glass jars full of water, alcohol, and other, less identifiable liquids burst under the assault, scattering their contents about the room.

  Prandil
staggered backward from the impact, barely reacting in time to dodge the scalpels. A jar that might have been a potent acid burst right next to him. He caught a whiff of the acrid scent only briefly, as it quickly began to eat at his cloak before he could decide the vessel had held merely water. Not soon enough to save the cloak, though. She's a menace!

  Maranath was unmoved, of course. He's a pillar of stone. He was watching Ariano in silence, his face torn between anger and misery, his beard twitching. A scalpel, its blade bent in two from the impact against his forehead, clattered noisily to the floor.

  Ariano, chest heaving, returned his stare, her blazing eyes glowing a soft red, as if backlit. Her eyes cycled through the spectrum as she spoke, her voice more controlled, but in multiple, harmonic tones. Colored lights with no apparent source danced on the walls in rhythm with her words. “Don't you dare speak as if I don't appreciate the gravity of the decision, Maranath. Don't you dare!” When she was done speaking, she began to hum, or perhaps growl in the back of her throat, and the lights followed suit.

  This is explosive! Prandil addressed them softly, wary of making himself a target. “Stop it. Remember what we're here for.”

  “She intends to kill Aiul, you imbecile!” Maranath growled, his gaze still locked with Ariano's.

  “I am not quite the dolt you imagine,” Prandil retorted in an acid tone, his caution evaporating in a flash of annoyance. “I worked that out on my own.” He raised his hands in a placatory gesture, struggling to regain his calm. “The problem I have right now is whether or not she intends to kill the both of us as well.”

  Maranath grunted at this. “Good question.” He nodded toward Ariano. “Do you?”

  “It is my decision to make!” she said, her voice still more song than words. “Not yours!”

  “Then make it when you must! Don't make it now, when there might be another way!”

  Ariano continued growling for a moment. The room seemed to hum and vibrate as she considered, the lights growing more chaotic. Then, all at once, everything faded. Ariano herself seemed to shrink a bit, like a deflating balloon. “Fine,” she answered, her voice now sullen and tired. “But when that time comes, you will accept the decision I make. Are we clear?”

  “Agreed,” Maranath said. “The question is, where do we go from here?”

  “We have nothing to go on,” Prandil noted.

  “We might,” Ariano said. “There are a number of Elgar cults on Prima. I try to keep track of them, but they are unstable by nature. I know of one nearby.”

  Prandil waved a hand in dismissal. “What will those fools know? I doubt Elgar consults with them on his plans.”

  “Perhaps more than you might imagine,” Maranath said. “If we're looking at the fulfillment of a prophesy, he'll likely want minions.”

  Prandil nodded. “I suppose that's true.”

  Ariano's wrinkled faced tightened into a cruel smile. “If they know anything, we'll pry it from them.”

  Alone in her quarters, Kariana sat on her bed, brooding. She had sent for the Meites as soon as she had heard the news from her guards. One of their own had been turned into a murderous zombie, and had come after them. What she had turned over to Maranath was a fairly poor specimen, but at least she would not be blamed for hiding anything from them.

  They had asked for privacy, and she had given it to them, in the form of a small examining room where she often received her own medical treatments. She had waited hours before finally concluding that she would only get answers by demanding them. She hadn't meant to eavesdrop. Not that she was above such a thing, it was just that she'd had no chance. They had been screaming at each other loud enough that she might as well have been in the same room.

  Just the one thing had been enough to turn her around and resolve to pretend she had never come: “She intends to kill Aiul, you imbecile!” Knowing that bit of information could be fatal, if they were aware of her knowledge.

  So she plotted, staring at a lovely, pornographic tapestry she'd had placed over the gaping hole Aiul had left in the wall. She contemplated the exaggerated anatomy of the figures it depicted as she brooded, imagining scenario after scenario, searching for the one that would end with the Meites choking on their own blood. So many possibilities, so many variables! But there had to be a way. There was always a way. She was not going to let them kill Aiul, not if she could stop them.

  A knock on the door startled her from her fantasy. “Come,” she called out.

  A guard she didn't recognize opened the door and leaned into the room. He was young, and more than a little nervous. “Empress, a visitor from House Prosin is here for you.”

  “Prosin?” she shouted. “Execute them at once!”

  The guard blinked at her a moment. “Execute...ahh?”

  “It's a joke,” she assured him, and gave him The Smile that melted all men. Well, all men except Caelwen. “I never execute anyone without knowing who they are first.” Except when I've been drugged and tricked. She waited for some response from the man, but he said nothing, seeming even more bewildered. “Well, who is it?”

  The guard stammered and finally answered, “I don't know. The slaves just told me it was a visitor from House Prosin. I'm really sorry!”

  It was Kariana's turn to be confused. “Um, for what?”

  The guard took a knee and bowed, “If I offended you somehow. I didn't know I was supposed to find that out. I didn't even know I was supposed to come up here and tell you about visitors until the slaves told me.”

  Kariana tittered at this. “That's because it's their job, and they're taking advantage of you.”

  The guard nodded back, the expression on his face one of great enlightenment. Clearly, we are not one of Caelwen's sharpest tools, are we?

  “Tell the visitor I will attend them shortly.” By which she meant 'longly'. House Prosin had no business expecting to be received at all, much less in a timely manner.

  An hour seemed about right. She spent the time perfecting her makeup and hair. When at last she sauntered to her reception room, she was feeling quite beautiful. She would dazzle a man, and intimidate a woman.

  That view of the world was dashed against the ground at first sight of her visitor. The woman was tall and well curved, ruby lips and raven hair such that men might kill for. Kariana self-consciously folded her arms across her chest, as if to hide herself from the much more amply endowed Prosin woman. I look like a little boy next to her. “What business could House Prosin have with me that doesn't involve poison?”

  The woman gave a disarming laugh, seemingly honest. She's Prosin. Everything they do is manipulation. Never forget it!

  “I see you've met some of my house. But, no, I am here for something entirely different.” The humor faded from her face as she continued. “My name is Teretha, and you saved my son's life. I am here to offer my gratitude and my service.”

  Kariana could barely suppress her shock. “I what?”

  Teretha laughed again “Rithard, of House Amarath. Had you not sent Caelwen as a witness, I think he might have been found dead along some roadside in the undercity, instead of being taken prisoner.”

  “Well, that's novel. It's the first time I've had Prosin visitors who weren't threatening me.”

  Teretha's expression grew somber. “Maralena, yes? I doubt I liked her any better than you did. It would seem some Meites liked her even less. One of them did the both of us a favor, hmm?” She flashed a knowing smile.

  Kariana nodded, not trusting this a bit, but not wanting to make another enemy. “I'm listening.”

  Teretha took a deep breath, preparing her pitch. “Maralena made threats. I make friends. Let's be friends, you and I, hmm?”

  “Oh, how lovely! We can make pretend tea and play with our dollies! Oh, and brush each other's hair!”

  Teretha smiled gamely at the barb, then answered smoothly, “I was thinking of a different sort of friends. The sort who tell each other secrets, and warn each other of trouble.”

&
nbsp; Kariana gave a grunt of disdain at this. “I've never had any friends like that. Well, except for the one I stabbed because she was a Prosin spy.”

  Teretha nodded, her expression filled with loathing and disgust. “Again, Maralena's doing, not mine.”

  “So you say.”

  “I bring a gift, to show my sincerity. It was Narelki who sent men to attack Lara and started the whole mess. She stood by and let Aiul think it was you.”

  Kariana shrugged, pleased to see the Prosin woman's disappointment. “Old news. Maralena told me that just to hurt me, to make me feel guilty for stabbing Marissa.”

  Teretha's expression darkened at this. “I see. Did she also tell you it was my son Rithard who deduced it?”

  Kariana stared at her for a moment, considering the implications, hearing Caelwen's words in her memory, “He has very special talents!” “No,” she answered at last. “No, she most definitely did not mention that.”

  Teretha extended a hand, gravely serious now. “Maralena was a disgrace to our House, and made an enemy of you for no reason but pride and arrogance. I would undo that. We share a common enemy in Narelki. I propose an alliance.”

  Kariana shrugged again, ignoring Teretha's outstretched hand. “Narelki will get what she deserves, but she's hardly my most pressing problem. The Meites are.”

  Teretha nodded, even as she lowered her hand with an air of resignation. “ I have a plan for that, and it involves Narelki. She is my problem. She wants my son dead.”

  “Well, then, I suppose Davron's holding him prisoner works in your favor, doesn't it?” Kariana tittered. “They don't care much for each other, Davron and Narelki.”

  Teretha's jaw clenched as she bit back a retort. “I'm negotiating for his release, but it is less than useless if Narelki can still strike at him. Rithard will never be safe as long as she remains a threat.”

  “So we know what you get. What’s my benefit?”

  Teretha smiled again. This was where she wanted the conversation to go, it seemed. “My plan would deal with the Meites and Narelki in one fell stroke. Help me, and you gain the loyalty not only of House Prosin, but Amrath as well.”