The Mad God's Muse (The Eye of the Lion Saga Book 2)

by Matt Gilbert

  Thrun's eyes widened with surprise and humor. “Oh!” he shouted, slamming a fist into his palm as if he had scored a goal in a ball game. “She quit you!”

  Prandil heaved a great, dramatic sigh. “Indeed she did. I loved her quite completely, and I suppose I still do, after a fashion.”

  “So even Meites have to deal with being rejected now and then.”

  Prandil grew serious. “It was considerably more than my wounded pride. If it were just that, it would be so trivial.” He gazed at Thrun for long moments, remembering Alric. The boy had much of his father in him. He was thick and strong, and quite fearless. He was almost the right material to be trained, but the small lack was the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug. To try and fail was so much worse than to never have tried at all. “How much do you know of our order?”

  Thrun cocked his head, thinking. “Besides the fact that you're all crazy? Not much.”

  “That's quite a bit, actually. More than most understand.” Prandil steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “It is a sort of madness, a carefully cultivated one. We spend our lives denying reality, deciding what we feel based on what we want.” He heaved a great sigh and lowered his hands to his knees as he leaned forward. “What I am trying to say here is that while I remember my heart being broken, my soul utterly crushed, it was just a moment before I chose to see it another way, to realize I never cared very much for her at all, to see her as a dalliance I was well rid of.”

  “Yeah, that's the same advice I got my first heartbreak.”

  “You're not fully grasping what I'm saying here. I wasn't merely playing sour grapes. I believed it because I chose to. The same way that I can convince myself that physical laws are not real things. I can fly, Thrun. Anyone can. They just have to stop believing in gravity.”

  “Just like that,” Thrun said, snapping his fingers. “Stopped loving her. It's easier to imagine believing gravity isn't real.”

  “Just like that,” Prandil agreed. “A Meite defends his mind as a miser defends his gold. If something hurts us, we lash out. If that won't help, we choose to see it another way, one where we are the victor, or where we're merely biding our time, gulling our enemy into a false sense of security. Often enough, we get excited about some other matter and completely forget troubling issues. It's our way.”

  Thrun shifted, seeming uncomfortable, as he absorbed the idea. “So how does it play into this story?”

  “She didn't do that,” Prandil muttered. “She turned away from me, and then she turned away from everything.” Prandil paused, feeling unexpectedly haggard and mean. “And all because of that wretch. I should have murdered him when I had the chance.”

  “Who?”

  “I don't remember his name, if I ever even knew it. He was a commoner she took a fancy to for a brief period of time when she and I were split. She got pregnant, then tired of him. He didn't take it well.” Prandil paused a moment. Perhaps I ought not tell this part, but Elgar take it. “He forced his way into her home, and then into her bed. Into her, if you take my meaning.”

  “Wow!”

  “She was one of us before him, and he stole that from her.”

  Thrun's eyebrows arched in genuine shock. “She was a Meite? How the hell do you steal that?”

  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!”

  Prandil chuckled sadly. “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.” He ground his teeth a moment, then went on. “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 laughter. “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 outpace the lows.”

  “Then why? What made her change?”

  Prandil found his gaze wandering to the floor, and viciously 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 distant point over Thrun's shoulder, 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 shown the light. 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 obesient 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? I'm the patriarch. With a word. 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 seemed unimposing, but he was holding up quite well to the torture. The old sorcerer was hardly squeamish, but Ariano was being forced to become more creative with her efforts. Maranath found it easier not to
watch her work. Instead, he busied himself searching through the cultists’ 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 composed of the most stubborn and stupid cultists on Prima. The fools barely knew their own names, and they were fanatic enough to refuse even that information. Maranath tossed a useless sheaf of paper to the floor, cursing under his breath.

  “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! None of us will tell you anything!”

  Maranath heard a sharp crack, and the cultist screamed. Ariano heaved a sigh and 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.

  “Only a few left, you know,” he called over his shoulder. “Unless you intend to start on the women and children.”

  “Don't test me, Maranath!” Ariano hissed, not bothering to look at him.

  He spared her victim a sorrowful look. “I can't stop her, you know. If you don't give her what she want's, 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 a desk drawer to find nothing, and slammed it 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 cast about the room, looking for any sort of clue, and was just about ready to admit defeat when he spied a scrap of paper hanging from the edge of a book. It could be anything, of course. But it does look a little out of place. Without much hope, he removed it, to find a strange, coded missive written in a spiky handwriting. Maranath grunted, not wanting to get his hopes up. These idiots are paranoid. It could as easily be someone’s family bread recipe as anything useful.

  Their prisoner, however, seemed to think differently. His struggles turned violent as he roared something unintelligible. Maranath turned to see him, a bloody, half-dead corpse struggling against his bonds. His wide, mad eyes stared intently at Maranath as he sputtered. “Elgar!” he cried out. “Give me your power to stop these unbelievers!”

  Maranath eyed the note again. Perhaps he had something after all.

  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 their flesh. Yet something stayed his hand. There was a sense of wrong 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 a mixture of disgust and awe. His 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.”

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

  “I think so. We know as much as we’re likely to find. It’s very bad, Maranath. Indescribably so.”

  Maranath shook his head and grumbled in his throat. “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.”

  Maranath grunted. 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 eyes flashed fire and ice, 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 ground her teeth and 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 were filled with flame, now, 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 slave
s reported his visitors to him. His first thought was that, for good or ill, they had at last come around to discuss Davron's rebellion, and had welcomed them into his sitting room, but of course the good 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 fixed her with an icy stare. “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. There are dark forces at work. We have no idea how many cultists we're dealing with, but at least a hundred. If they have sorcery of their own....”

  Polus raised eye eyebrow in appreciation. “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.”