Mad God's Muse

by Matthew P Gilbert

  Prandil nodded gravely. “Psychological trauma. A deep and personal violation. Something to shake her to her very soul and make her doubt herself.”

  “The rape? Mei! But that's crazy! She could have torn him to shreds!”

  “And now you see the tragedy, eh? She chose not to. That always irked me, honestly. She stabbed me more than once, you know, but her plaything, she couldn't bring herself to harm. Not until it was too late.” Prandil tapped his pen sharply against his desk several times. “Another Meite would have simply decided to enjoy it, to want it even, or at least look at it as indulging a pathetic creature. We change our minds like we change socks. It's whatever we want today, and yesterday be damned, typically. But she had a weak spot there, I suppose. She couldn't get past it.”

  “Rape is pretty traumatic, I guess.”

  Prandil dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. “It wasn't the rape. I've forced myself on her a time or two, just to prove a point. It was her reaction to it.”

  Thrun's face went from shocked credulity to sly amusement. “Mei! I thought you were serious. You're just jerking my chain.”

  “No, not at all. Meite relationships are stormy. I did mention she'd stabbed me on occasion, yes?”

  “For raping her?”

  Prandil snorted. “No, once for burning the toast, and another time because I was too drunk to service her properly. I don't actually recall what set her off the other times. And those are hardly the worst incidents, but there were damned fine times too, I assure you. The highs far exceed the lows.”

  “Then why? What made her change?”

  Prandil found his gaze wandering to the floor, and forced himself to maintain eye contact. “My best guess is that she couldn't bring herself to hurt him. Being defeated in battle is one thing. If he had actually been strong enough to take what he wanted, she would have respected him. It's our way, you understand.” He felt his eyes wandering again, to a shelf filled with ancient texts, and decided to let it stand. “We revere power. We acknowledge no master but ourselves, no morality but our own. But we do not waste. We capitulate to the stronger, usually. When we're stupid enough not to, someone usually ends up dead.”

  Thrun said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. “I never knew any of this.”

  “We've been remiss in training, to be frank. There are any number of things I ought to have explained to you, any number of students we ought to have taken and enlightened. But I fear we've grown too selfish.” Prandil shook his head in consternation. “I only recently decided to take one on. The boy who comes here, Jareth.”

  “He's your student? Honestly I thought...” Thrun grinned widely, almost snickering.

  Prandil paused in confusion a moment, then sneered at Thrun's subtle jab. “Oh, please. If my tastes ran that way, I'd have pushed you into some closet or another around here and had my way with you long ago. I'm sure you'd have enjoyed it.”

  Thrun placed a hand on his chest as if he'd been shot with an arrow. “Oh, ouch! I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult.”

  Prandil shot him a smug, patronizing grin. “Well, it's both, don't you think? I thought it was clever, telling you you were attractive while insinuating you were gay. I get paid well for that wit, you know.”

  “You deserve it, Prandil. You're the best, and everybody knows it. Including you. There, is that what you were fishing for?”

  “You've quite the acid tongue yourself these days. It's a terrible habit. Where could you have learned that from, I wonder?”

  Thrun shook his head, playing the obedient slave, but still grinning. “I wonder.”

  “Clever, handsome, and rude. You're the son I never had, Thrun. I think I'll make you my heir.”

  Thrun's eyebrows rose in genuine shock. “What? You can't do that.” He paused a moment, looking at Prandil with suspicion and curiosity. “Can you?”

  “Make a slave a full house member? With a word. I'm the patriarch. Happens all the time.”

  “Yeah, but not putting them in charge! It would be scandalous!”

  Prandil cackled like a madman and slapped his knee. “Oh, Mei forbid it, then! Which simply inclines me to do it.”

  Thrun shook his head in disbelief, clearly certain Prandil was pulling his leg. “You will not.”

  Prandil rose to his feet and inclined his head to look down his nose at Thrun. “Have you learned nothing from this conversation?”

  Maranath cringed as Ariano’s victim screamed in agony. The small, ugly man, currently pinned to the dirt floor by Ariano’s will, seemed unimposing, but he was holding up quite well to the torture. Maranath was hardly squeamish, but his partner was being forced to become more creative with her efforts, and he found it easier not to watch her work. Instead, he busied himself searching through the cultists’ meagre personal effects, hoping to discover some shred of information that might make the interrogation moot.

  It was, he knew, perhaps a bit too hopeful, but then, so was this entire misadventure, a complete shot in the dark. Apparently the one cell that Ariano knew of was comprised of the most stubborn and stupid cultists on Prima. The fools barely knew their own names, and they were fanatical enough to refuse even that information.

  The whole tiny village didn’t seem to have a pot to piss in. The buildings barely qualified as shacks, ramshackle, single story huts with dirt floors and a few sleeping mats. The one they occupied seemed special, a gathering hall of some sort, so they had made it their target. It had a fireplace and even a makeshift chimney, though the walls had enough leaks that Maranath had to wonder if the fire actually did much to ward off the cold. I suppose the roof at least keeps the snow off.

  Maranath pulled a desiccated severed human hand from a rucksack and tossed it to the floor in disgust, cursing under his breath. It was hardly the first body part he had found, and Mei knew what the fools kept them for, or how they were obtained. Most likely, the usual way, by lopping them off some unfortunate.

  Outside, he could hear more wails, cries of fear rather than pain, presumably from the women and children who had fled his and Ariano’s assault. He shook his head in dismay. He had expected to deal harshly with the cultists, of course, but children? Why were they even here? Do they really make a family business of murder and mayhem?

  “You think this is suffering?” the victim gasped, his words slurred but defiant. “When our lord strikes at you, you will beg for such tender mercies! I will tell you nothing!”

  Maranath heard a sharp crack, and the cultist screamed again. Ariano muttered, “I gather such is the general consensus.”

  She’s flagging. And well she should be. Ten corpses, covered in dancing shadows of the torchlight, littered the room. She’s running out of them.

  “He’s the last one, you know,” Maranath called over his shoulder. “Unless you intend to start on the women and children.”

  “Don't test me, Maranath!” Ariano hissed.

  He spared her victim a sorrowful look. “I can't stop her, you know. If you don't give her what she wants, she'll go there next.”

  “Just so,” Ariano said to her victim.

  Maranath turned back to his own business. She's not foolish enough to think I will tolerate it if it comes to that, but let the fool believe it is true. He jerked open another bag to find a rotting foot, and hurled the container against a wall in disgust.

  “Kill us all!” the cultist cackled. “I long to feel my lord’s dark embrace! Let my blood be spilled in Elgar’s name, and that of my children, too!”

  “Oh, let’s not hurry,” Ariano told him. “I do so enjoy a visit with a handsome young man like yourself.” The cultist screamed again.

  Maranath was just about ready to admit defeat when he spied a lump beneath one of the sleeping mats. His intuition sang, and he snatched the mat aside to reveal a small backpack, partially buried, as if someone had tried to hide it in a great hurry.

  He worked at the buckles, not wanting to get his hopes up. It could just as easily be someone�
�s cock and balls as anything useful. To his surprise, he opened it to reveal not more body parts, but a small book that looked to be a journal of some sort.

  As he began to flip through it, the prisoner’s struggles turned violent and he roared something unintelligible. Maranath turned to see him, a bloody, half-dead corpse struggling against invisible bonds. His wide, mad eyes stared intently at Maranath as he sputtered. “Elgar! Give me your power to stop these unbelievers!”

  Maranath held up the journal to Ariano as the prisoner screeched in fury. The old woman smiled, then turned back to the cultist. “It seems I may have no further need of you.”

  The old woman smiled sweetly at the cultist as she tended his broken arm. She was harmless and kind, just the sort that he most enjoyed causing suffering.

  “There!” she chirped. “It will heal now. In a few months, it will be good as new!”

  “I thank you,” the cultist said, licking his lips as he imagined the taste of her blood. She and the old man were weak. He could kill them both, if he wanted. Perhaps he would. Surely, Elgar would reward him with power! That they were of the Demon Men simply added to the satisfaction he would have in flaying them. Yet something stayed his hand. There was a sense of wrongness about this pair.

  “Who did this to you?” the old man asked.

  “A false prophet,” the cultist spat. “He will suffer for his blasphemies. My lord Elgar sent him to his death in Torium!”

  The old pair’s eyebrows rose in unison, and the cultist immediately regretted his remark. Damn do-gooders! They would probably try to aid the heretic! There was no question, now. They would have to die. Yet he could not put aside the sense that there was more to them than met the eye. Perhaps it would be best if he had help, just to be safe.

  “I must return to my people,” he said, gesturing toward the camp. He struggled for a moment, trying to think of an appropriate lie. “To get money,” he said finally, with a wicked grin. “To repay you for your help.”

  His smile faded as he looked into stone faces of the crone and her companion. All pretense of kindness was gone from their bottomless, brilliant eyes.

  “No, my dear,” the old woman said, her voice no longer a warbling twitter, but a commanding, rich, mellifluous tone. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  He did not hear her voice after that, but he felt it slash into his head like a knife. And then he felt no more.

  Maranath stared at the remains of the cultist in disgusted awe. The young fellow’s head had simply…exploded in a fine, pink mist. It was gone. “Mei! Not how I would have handled it, but I won’t argue the effectiveness. It would do a damned site on anyone else watching, too. You should have tried that on one of the first lot. We might have gotten here sooner.”

  Ariano kicked the corpse, then spat on it for good measure. “They would have welcomed a quick death. Though I suppose I could have drawn the process out a bit, thrown in some effects.” She shrugged. “Some noblewoman or another is always claiming to have revolutionary techniques, but the truth is simple: the old, brutal methods work best. Everything else is salesmanship and psychology.”

  Maranath shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ll leave that to you women.”

  “Men are so squeamish.”

  And women are so cruel, you doubly so. Perhaps that's why I love you. “Are we done here?”

  “I think so. We got lucky with this one. Surely his ‘false prophet’ is Aiul, on his way to Torium with a piece of the eye.”

  “You have some theory on what it means?”

  “It’s very bad, Maranath. Indescribably so.”

  Maranath shook his head and grumbled, “Why not go ahead and try to describe it anyway? Humor an old man.”

  Ariano’s eyes were full of fear as she looked back up at him. “I swear to you, once I have worked it all out, I will tell you everything. But for now it’s just pieces, red flags, alarm bells.”

  And bad memories, no doubt. “Fine. I’ll give you a little more rope. But my patience is growing short. If I get the notion you’re holding out on me, things will proceed in a very different direction. Am I clear?”

  Ariano glared at him, but she said nothing. It was a normal thing by Maranath’s reckoning, Ariano simultaneously outraged and smitten with him. How alike we are, two sides of the same coin. She was not the sort of woman to want a man she could rule. The only concern Maranath had was to be alert for the odd bit of crockery or surgical equipment she threw at him from time to time. He shrugged, and repeated, “Am I clear?”

  Ariano, still angry, nodded. “We need to return to Nihlos at once. We’ll have Polus send men to capture him.”

  This, Maranath found surprising. “You don’t think we can handle it on our own?”

  “I should rather have overwhelming force. I want to take him alive.”

  “If we can. So you see things my way now?”

  Ariano’s eyes filled with flame, and her voice rose to a shout. “It will be my decision, Maranath, and if you try otherwise, we’ll test your theory of who is the stronger. Am I clear?”

  Maranath nodded. “You are.”

  Ariano gave him one last withering glare, then shot like a bolt into the sky. Ah, well, she knows her way home.

  As for himself, Maranath preferred things slow. Measure by measure, he reminded himself why gravity did not affect him, and why it should be plain to any fool. As it became an ever more compelling argument, he felt himself lighten until he was barely a feather hovering above the ground. He pushed up with his toes and sailed into the air, and it occurred to him that his toes were much stronger than he had realized. His speed increased as the truth sank in, that his launch must have been quite powerful indeed.

  At some point, he would probably choose to believe otherwise on both counts. But he was far too old to let such contradictions bother him.

  Polus had found himself quite surprised when his slaves reported Maranath’s and Ariano’s arrival. His first thought was that, for good or ill, they had at last come around to discuss Davron's rebellion, and he had welcomed them into his sitting room, but of course the welfare of Nihlos hadn't been their concern. They wanted something.

  “A hundred men?” he asked Maranath “To capture a single man?”

  Maranath nodded gravely. “More, if you can spare them.”

  “I can't field even that many and maintain order. In case you've forgotten, we have factions in open rebellion.”

  Ariano hissed at him. “You've plenty of men! At least five hundred, perhaps as many as a thousand!”

  Polus gripped the arms of his chair tightly as if throttling someone’s throat, a small, invisible act of violence instead of the more blatant one that briefly occurred to him. “Had. The Southlanders killed twenty, then Maralena Prosin killed nearly a hundred more, and you two killed at least a hundred beyond that. Another two hundred or thereabouts have decided that guard work is no longer a field in which they wish to labor. We've had to fill in with men from the military forces, whose loyalties are not to me.”

  Ariano shrank back in her seat, momentarily vanquished. Maranath sucked at his teeth a moment, absorbing the hard facts. “We need those men, Polus,” he said at last.

  Polus shrugged. “And? They are not mine to give. You'll have to discuss it with Davron, and I think you left that situation poorly.” He paused, waiting for a response, but the two Meites were remarkably quiet for once. Like shamed children, contrite for the moment, but soon to be back at mischief, I'll warrant. “At any rate, why do you need men? Why can't you handle this on your own? I've never known Meites to beg for martial support.”

  Ariano found her voice and muttered, “We're in uncharted territory. This is the Dead God’s doing. We have no idea how many cultists we're dealing with, but at least a hundred. If they have sorcery of their own...”

  Polus relaxed his grip on his chair and tapped a finger against it instead, considering. “If it frightens the two of you, I'll take it as a given that it's serious.” />
  “It's every bit the threat to Nihlos that Davron's rebellion is.”

  Polus slammed his fist against the chair arm. “Mei! Then why do you not apologize to him and get on with what needs doing?”

  Maranath looked at him, seeming both amused and indignant at the same time. “For what? Taking his bait? He started this fiasco by kidnapping Aiul.”

  Polus shook his head slowly. “That's not how he sees it. Nor how I do.”

  Ariano glared at him through narrowed eyes. “Explain that accusation.”

  Polus folded his arms over his chest. “I made no accusation. Quite deliberately so, whatever my private thoughts. Davron, on the other hand, has very strong opinions on the matter. I am sure he will be happy to discuss them with you in great detail if you were to pay him a visit. That's really the only way to get what you need here.”

  Kariana lay on her bed, struggling not to bite her nails. Where was Sadrik? She had sent for him almost an hour ago.

  It was another half hour before his knock finally came. He entered, scowling as usual, but his eyes grew wide as he noticed her new tapestry. “Lovely.” He contemplated it for a moment, then turned back to business. “What’s this emergency?”

  Kariana considered throwing something at him, but felt fairly certain her cousin would catch it and throw it back. “What took you so long?” she snapped.

  Sadrik looked her up and down with a cool air. “You’re worked up. What have you screwed up now?”

  Kariana grabbed a decanter of liquor from her nightstand, but caught herself halfway to hurling it at Sadrik’s head. She poured herself a drink to make it seem as if she never planned to bash his skull in with the bottle. “Well, now that you mention it…” She knocked the drink back. “Screwed is a mild word. I think we could say I’ve fucked up so completely even you won’t know what to do.”

  Sadrik’s jaw clenched, and his eyebrows knitted in annoyance. “Well, go on! Out with it!”