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

by Matt Gilbert

  The decisions you make from now on will carry the same sort of impact. Choose wisely, or if not, at least choose willfully. The Great Father would have had it no other way.

  Rithard folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope, his vision blurring with tears he didn't fully understand. Such pride and quiet passion. I will do my best to be a worthy successor.

  He took another drink and considered The Papers. Such powerful information. And what connections will I be able to make that she only dreamed of?

  With a shrug, he undid the clasp and dove in head first.

  Chapter 17: Walking Dead

  Aiul woke to bright sunlight and even brighter pain. Every part of his body ached in some way or another, but his side was the worst. He supposed, briefly, that this had something to do with the impact of Logrus’s boot that even now was swinging toward him for another blow. The impact was hardly pleasant, but less than Aiul expected, considering the events of the previous night.

  “Get up!” Logrus shouted. “We finish this!”

  “Leave me alone,” Aiul groaned.

  “Bah! Get up! I am ready to kill you now!”

  “Too late,” Aiul mumbled. “I died sometime in the night.”

  Logrus chuckled, and moved back to the fire. “Good. Now I will make you into a zombie and have you carry my pack.”

  Aiul sat up over the course of several curses, and waited for his head to clear. “Any coffee?”

  Logrus shrugged, not bothering to look up from his cooking. “No pot.”

  Aiul blinked at this a moment, trying to decide if Logrus had made a joke on purpose, or if it was a completely straight line. “I suppose we should try to take better care of the next one we find, eh?”

  Logrus gestured to a pan of boiling water and shook his head sadly. “There will be coffee soon. You have no sense of humor.”

  Aiul had every intention of arguing this point, but the notion fled his mind as Logrus emptied the contents of another pan onto a plate and handed it to him. Aiul marveled at the fare: fluffy eggs, toast, and plump sausages like the ones he had loved since childhood. He looked up at Logrus in sheer wonder. “Mei! Where did you get these?”

  A sly, mischievous grin crept over Logrus’s face as he added more sausages to the pan for himself. “Last night, in the fighting, I found a supply tent. Your people travel well! I could not resist. I filled a sack and hid it in the bushes. I retrieved it while you slept late.”

  “Before you went back to killing everyone in sight, you mean?”

  Logrus gave him a scowl. “Only what was necessary. You were the berserker. You tried to kill me more than once. I can’t count how many of the fools you slew.”

  Aiul paused, a sausage raised halfway to his mouth, vague memories bouncing in his head. “I can barely remember it. It’s all mixed up in my head.”

  Logrus laughed, a single, sharp bark. “Lucky!”

  Aiul eyed his half eaten sausage a moment. “Why?”

  Logrus cracked eggs into the pan and shrugged. “It must be nice to forget.”

  Aiul grunted in agreement. “It must indeed.”

  They ate in silence. When he was finished, Aiul asked, “You spoke of zombies. A joke? That would make, what, the third in a month? It would be a new record.”

  Logrus, still chewing, eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then shook his head and swallowed. “Dead serious.”

  “And now a fourth!”

  Logrus’s face was somber, the picture of honesty. “I speak truth. I can raise the dead when necessary, but I would never do such to you.”

  Aiul marveled at this. “Impossible.”

  Logrus scowled at him. “Possible. For Elgar.”

  Aiul stared at Logrus for long moments, searching for signs of trickery, but saw none. As a physician, he had no choice but to see this process for himself. There could well be something to learn. “Show me.”

  Logrus stuffed his last sausage into his mouth and rose with a nod. He kicked dirt over the remains of the fire and gestured for Aiul to follow.

  It was not a long trek, though the snow made it more difficult. Within a half hour, they reached the site of the battle. It seemed different in the light, though the corpses lying about left no doubt that they were in the correct location.

  Aiul sighed in frustration. “Nothing left. We’re on foot in the snow.”

  “I have a plan for this,” Logrus told him. “Come. We must find one capable of speaking.”

  Aiul nodded. “Then we’ll need at least one lung, a throat, and an intact mouth I suppose.”

  “Few enough of those. You were busy.”

  “Shut up!”

  It was a bit ghoulish, rolling the corpses over and checking them, but it was hardly unfamiliar work to Aiul. What was distressing to see was how many had severe head trauma from a blunt instrument.

  Logrus noticed this too. “See? You have a style to your fighting. This is your work, certainly.”

  “Do we really need to talk about it? It disturbs me!”

  Logrus shrugged and rolled another corpse over, then beamed with satisfaction. “This one will do.”

  Aiul looked at the dead man. He had been stabbed cleanly in the heart, and surely had at least one lung intact. “Your work?” he asked.

  Logrus shrugged again. “I was not the only man with a blade. It could be me. Perhaps your people, perhaps the foreigners.”

  “The what?”

  “Never mind.”

  Was Logrus hiding something? Aiul grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “No, not ‘never mind’. What foreigners?”

  Logrus eyed him for a moment, seeming to mull over his answer. “You are all foreigners to me,” he said at last. “Do you wish to see me raise a zombie or not?”

  Aiul nodded, more than willing to allow Logrus to change the subject. “If you can.”

  “Elgar can,” Logrus corrected, giving him an admonishing glare. “Pay attention.” He crouched on one knee over the corpse, and raised his hand, fingers splayed over its chest. “It is difficult. You must reach out to Elgar.”

  “How?”

  “Remember when he came to you. How it felt.”

  “A strange way to work magic,” Aiul said doubtfully.

  Logrus turned back to Aiul, annoyance on his face. “I do not work magic,” he snapped. “Elgar works miracles through my faith.”

  Aiul raised an eyebrow, nodding. “I know nothing of either. Only science. It's strange even to think about. I still only half believe you can do this.”

  Logrus turned back to the corpse. “You will see. Look.”

  Logrus took a deep breath and held it. As Aiul watched, emotion flickered over his companion’s normally placid face. Aiul remembered the tale Logrus had told him of his mother, and knew these must be the images in Logrus’s mind. It was, then, a costly and difficult thing for him to do, indeed.

  Logrus lowered his hand to touch the corpse’s chest. “Rise, flesh, and remember,” he murmured.

  Aiul gasped in shock as the corpse twitched, then rose with a mechanical jerkiness and stood slack jawed, wobbling on unsteady feet. Cold, sunken eyes turned to look at Logrus, a mixture of fear and awe glinting from beneath the glaze of death. A low moan issued from its pale blue lips.

  “Be silent, and speak only when spoken to,” Logrus commanded the zombie.

  Aiul shook his head in amazement. “Mei!”

  Logrus shot him another angry look. “Elgar!”

  “It’s an oath, not a credit you know.”

  Logrus shrugged. “If it will quiet you, I will agree.”

  Aiul rolled his eyes and heaved a theatrical sigh, but said nothing. Logrus watched him a moment, wary of a trick or joke, then turned back to the zombie.

  “Flesh, heed me. Your group had horses?”

  The zombie looked at him, seeming confused and uncertain of its capabilities. At last, its jaw opened, and it hissed, “Yes. Some.”

  Logrus nodded. “Show us. We are in need of them.�
��

  It was a fairly long and unpleasant trek through the snow to their camp, made all the more so by the zombie’s slow, staggering gait, but well worth the effort.

  “Mei,” Aiul gasped, scarcely able to believe his eyes. The zombie had led them to a small, sheltered copse. Four horses were tethered there, along with several packs.

  Logrus stepped forward to examine the packs. “Food. Water. Everything we might need.”

  Aiul nodded, surprised at how he felt. “This was Elgar’s doing. He sent them with this.”

  Logrus nodded. “And to help us escape. It is the only way the fools can serve. They do not understand, but they are, on occasion, useful. As now.” He gestured to the zombie. “But now his use is at an end. We must return him to his rest.”

  “Eh? Kill him?”

  “Destroy it, yes. It cannot be killed. It is already dead.”

  Aiul felt staggered to hear Logrus speak so frankly, and in front of the creature to boot! “Why would you give a man his life back, and then take it again?”

  Logrus shook his head in vehement denial. “No. You do not understand. It is cruel to them. This is not life. It is suffering. It will always be cold. It will never know warmth, or comfort, or the satisfaction of a meal, the smell of the breeze. It is dead. I have seen this many times. They all seek destruction in the end.”

  Aiul considered the zombie. It stared at the ground, still swaying slightly. There was not a trace of joy about it. Surely, it looked about as miserable as possible.

  “I would hear it from the creature itself,” Aiul said at last.

  Logrus nodded. “Flesh, you may speak, if you would.”

  The zombie did not bother to look at them. It croaked a single word. “Cold.”

  Aiul asked, “Would you rest, then? As Logrus says?”

  To Aiul’s surprise, the zombie turned to face him. It spoke slowly, every word slurred, more hiss than speech. “Elgar is pleased?”

  Aiul cast an uncertain look at Logrus. Logrus shrugged, gestured at the horses, and nodded.

  “Yes,” Aiul told the zombie. “Elgar is pleased.”

  “Rest, then,” the zombie rasped. “Cold. Tired. Cold.”

  Logrus nodded. “Go and gather firewood.”

  As the zombie shambled off in pursuit of wood, Logrus began loading the packs onto the extra horses. “You understand, now? It is cruel to ask them to remember, but sometimes necessary. If you tell them to forget, then they are mindless and do not suffer.”

  Aiul shrugged. “Why tell me?”

  Logrus chuckled as he cinched a belt around the horse. “You can do this thing, too.”

  “Bah.”

  “No, truly. It is a gift Elgar gives to all of his knights.”

  Raise the dead? What madness was that? And yet, how could he not explore such a thing? It was a wonderful power, an incredible testament that death itself might be cured. If he could learn this first step, perhaps, with study, he could go further, perfect the process to truly restore life. He would be the physician who conquered death!

  “I would try this!” he exclaimed, excited now that he had embraced the idea.

  Logrus hauled another pack onto the waiting horse. “Let us finish with the one. Then we will raise as many as we can. We will need them in this Torium, if it is as you say. Come and help me with this while we wait.”

  Before long, the zombie had piled up a considerable stack of wood, enough for a great fire. A bonfire.

  Logrus gathered some kindling and soon had a blaze. The warmth was pure pleasure on Aiul’s skin. Logrus, too, smiled as he heaped wood atop the flames.

  Only the zombie was unmoved. “Cold,” it muttered.

  Logrus nodded. “I know. Just a bit more.” He added the rest of the wood and waited for it to catch, then nodded to the zombie. “Go. Be warm.”

  The zombie said not another word, but strode immediately into the flames. Aiul winced to watch such a thing, a man walking into a fire. But it is not a man. It is something altogether different. It stood in the flames, unmoving, but Aiul was almost certain that, as the flesh melted from its bones, the creature was smiling. Then, even the bones were aflame, and shortly after, it was nothing but ashes.

  Logrus nodded approval. “Now for the others.”

  Aiul gestured to the fire. “If this gets out of control, we’ll bake ourselves as like as not in a forest fire.”

  Logrus shrugged and began digging at the snow, heaving hands full into the fire. Aiul joined him, and in short order, the fire was out.

  Logrus gestured back to the site of the battle. “Come.”

  Aiul followed, huddling deeper into his cloak. The wind seemed all the more chill now that the fire was gone. “What will we do? How do we go about it?”

  “We find some bodies that are in good shape, and raise a few. We can command them to find others.”

  “What constitutes ‘good shape’?”

  “Few broken bones.”

  Aiul nodded. It made sense. “What about eyes?”

  Logrus stopped in place and turned to Aiul, a strange look upon his face. “I had never considered that. But I have seen even headless zombies do work.” He began walking again, shaking his head. “I do not know how they do it.”

  It was, Aiul thought, a rather preposterous sort of conversation. “I don’t really know how I feel about this. I’ve always heard necromancy is evil work.”

  “It is evil work if you tell them to remember, or if you murder men for their bodies.”

  “Even so, it’s disrespect for the dead.”

  Logrus shot him a bemused look over his shoulder. “The dead are dead. Respect is only meaningful to the living.”

  “I should think you might feel different if it was someone you knew. What if your mother were used so?”

  Logrus laughed out loud at this. “My mother was used long before she died. She understood necessity. At any rate, she is not the flesh. Her spirit is gone wherever spirits go. Elgar does not say. But the flesh? It is nothing. It is like a snake’s shed skin.”

  “Then how can you command them to remember?”

  Logrus shrugged again, his face showing annoyance, now. Obviously, the conversation was going on overlong for his tastes. He answered in an exasperated tone, “I do not know these things, Aiul. Perhaps it calls the spirit back. If so, it is even more cruel. I only do it when necessary, and I release them as soon as possible. You should do likewise.”

  Aiul decided it would be a kindness to give Logrus a rest, and walked on without asking any more questions. In some ways, simply moving made the time pass more quickly. Perhaps Logrus had some good ideas after all.

  Aiul realized they were back upon the battlefield when he literally tripped over a corpse buried in the snow.

  Logrus looked back at him. “What condition is it in?”

  Aiul did a quick survey of the body. “Another stabbing, it seems. The limbs are intact.”

  “Good. We will start with that one. I do not relish rooting through this snow any more than we must.” He slogged back through the drift to join Aiul. “You will try, yes?”

  Aiul nodded, suddenly feeling a bit squeamish. Mei, as if you’ve never handled a corpse before! “Yes. What must I do?”

  “Do as I did.” Logrus held out his hand, fingers splayed, to demonstrate. “Then, in your mind, go to Elgar. Connect to him, let him flow through you. Once you do this, you can command the flesh to rise.”

  Aiul scooped snow from the ground, enough so that he had a place to kneel over the corpse. He held out his hand over the chest, looking to Logrus. Logrus nodded. So far so good.

  “Now,” Logrus said. “Reach out to Elgar.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Close your eyes. Think back to when you first felt Elgar’s touch. That is where you two connect. You must feel those feelings, relive them.”

  Aiul, eyes closed, let his mind drift to the dream of Elgar, the sound of the voice in his cell. What had he felt then? Agony, misery, de
spair, and hopelessness. Were those things the path? It seemed wrong.

  He tried anyway. It was no difficult task to feel miserable. All he had to do was lower the barriers he had built of late. The pain would come, and come it did. He watched Kariana stabbing Lara over and over in his mind, let it build in him until it was a tidal wave of grief, then opened his eyes. “Rise,” he whispered.

  Logrus shot him a glare. “And forget!”

  Aiul nodded and wiped at a tear with his free hand. “Rise and forget.”

  He waited long anxious moments, but the corpse remained motionless. “Something is wrong.”

  Logrus scratched at his beard as he considered. “You have not touched Elgar, I think. Did you feel the connection?”

  Aiul grunted. “How should I know?”

  “You would know. There would be no doubt.”

  Aiul heaved a sigh of frustration and sat back on his heels. “Perhaps you’re simply mistaken, and I don’t have the ability.”

  Logrus shook his head in denial. “No. I do not think so. Tell me, what did you think of when you tried to reach Elgar?”

  “What you told me, the things I felt when he first came to me. Grief, despair, defeat.”

  Logrus looked at him with an odd gaze. “That cannot be correct. Those things are not of Elgar.”

  “I can only go by what you told me.”

  “No. I think you are wrong.” Logrus stared at Aiul for long moments, then said, “Will you trust me? I think I know the answer.”

  Aiul felt uncertain. Such a request seemed to foreshadow a nasty surprise. “I suppose,” he said.

  Logrus leapt toward him and hammered a fist into his face. Aiul, caught off guard, fell over backward in shock, howling in pain.

  Logrus was not done. He followed up with a savage kick to Aiul’s ribs that felt as if it came within inches of breaking bone.