The Mad God's Muse (The Eye of the Lion Saga Book 2) (14 page)

To Aiul’s surprise, the
remaining man seemed unmoved by his companion’s demise. If
anything, he seemed more resolute.

“I serve the Dead God,”
he said. “I do not fear your blade.”

“Shall I kill you, too,
then? Or will you leave me to my rest?”

“I am sent to fetch you,
Lord. Elgar commands it, and I obey.”

“Bah!” Aiul sneered
and wiped his blade on Torch’s robe. “Before you said
you were here to fetch some Dark Lord, and now you’re here for
me? Can’t you even get your story straight?”

Torch nodded toward his
companion, who was still busy dying, and said, “You are the
Dark Lord, surely. Elgar speaks to us of a tall, white haired, thin
man from the city of demon men.” He licked his lips, a look of
uncertainty briefly crossing his features, then vanishing as he
seemed to push aside some nagging doubt. “You are
he
,
Lord! There can be no doubt! Is this a test?”

Aiul stared at the blood on his
hands as the anger ebbed away, growing more troubled as his mind
cleared. He could not explain his actions, but he knew that he had
quite willfully killed a man for nothing more than his tone.

“These hands once
healed,” he murmured, ignoring Torch’s question. “Now
I am a murderer.”

“The Dead God's works are
wondrous to behold,” the other man noted, his face beaming
with fervor.

“Fool!” Aiul
shouted at him. “Villain! Can you not see the evil in this?”

“Aye,” Torch
whispered, nodding reverently. “It is beautiful, Lord!”

Aiul stood gaping, unable to
decide if the man was serious, or if he were mocking him. Either
way, it was a disgusting display. He struggled against the urge to
kill Torch as well.

“Leave here,” Aiul
told him, and began to close the door, but Torch stepped forward and
grabbed his arm.

“Dark Lord, you
must
come with me!” he pleaded. “The Dead God
commands
it!”

Aiul looked at the man’s
flat, alien features, considering. He seemed sincere, but it was all
so
insane
. Still,
he had to concede Logrus and these people’s versions of
reality fit the facts, whereas his own did not. Perhaps, if nothing
else, he would find some answers.

“Fine,” he said.
“I’ll come.”
Wait.
Did he say ‘white hair’?
The thought was
appalling! “In my own time. Wait here.” He pushed Torch
away from the door and slammed it in his face.

He needed a moment to have a
look in the mirror before he left.

Aiul followed Torch through the
tent city, wary of the throngs of Elgar's lackeys. He ran his
fingers through his now bone-white hair, idly noting it didn't
feel
any different.
I've been branded, marked like cattle,
though to what end I have no idea.

Hundreds of the cultists,
perhaps thousands, meandered about, young and old, men and women,
all dressed in the same dirty, black robes. Some talked or ate,
ignoring the Nihlosian, but most turned and stared at him with
sinister elation, their eyes lit with zealous fervor.

“Make way for the Dark
Lord!” Torch shouted as they passed through the throngs.
Ahead, Aiul could see a lone building rising above the makeshift
dwellings, an island of permanence in a sea of transient squalor.
The place was newly built of roughly-hewn lumber, triangular and
single storied. Various blasphemous sigils, many bordering on the
pornographic, were carved into the sides of the place. Foot long
metal spikes jutted upward from the corners of the roof, like
rotting fangs from a lower jaw. The moon, orange and swollen,
hovered above, a single, unblinking eye over the teeth. Smoke curled
from an unseen vent in the roof.

Torch led him to the entrance,
a heavy wooden door, also covered in sigils, and stopped. “I
can go no further,” he said. “Only those chosen by Elgar
himself may enter the tabernacle.”

Aiul glared at the cultist for
a moment, his mind racing, suspicious of a trap. “Fine,”
he growled at last, and opened the door.

A wave of heat poured from the
opening, accompanied by the sound of chanting voices. Soft,
flickering candlelight illuminated a short passage that ended in a
heavy curtain. Resigned to whatever fate awaited him, Aiul pulled
the door closed behind him and moved down the corridor, shoving the
curtain aside as he passed.

There were twenty some odd
cultists in the room, all chanting and mumbling. They rocked back
and forth on their knees, muttering their dark songs and offering
supplication toward a makeshift throne of skulls. Two bloodstained
altars sat on either side of the room, each bearing a gagged, bound,
terrified woman. Their eyes locked with his and pleaded silently for
aid as they struggled vainly against their bonds.

Upon the throne sat a girl of
no more than six. Blood oozed from a hideous gash in her throat, a
wound that Aiul’s practiced eye recognized as quite fatal. And
yet the child moved, turning eyes black as midnight upon him as he
entered. Steam rose from her skin in tiny wisps, creating a ghostly
halo about her.

“The scion has come,”
the girl said, her voice, like her body, that of a small child.

“What is the meaning of
this?” Aiul barked.

“Enlightenment,”
the girl said, her voice no longer her own, but the now all too
familiar assault on the senses that characterized Elgar’s
speech. As the images and sensations ripped through the room, the
cultists cried out in terror and pain, but Aiul stood fast,
weathering the storm as a grizzled sea captain stands against a
gale.

“You have much to
answer!” Aiul spat, his hands balling into fists without
conscious effort on his part.

“There can be no answers
until you have shown your loyalty to me,” the child said, the
voice once again sweet and innocent. “There must be blood shed
in my name.”

“To hell with your
barbaric rituals!” Aiul spat. “You will give me answers
now
.”

The child shook her head in
sadness. “I cannot guide any but my true followers,” she
said. “You must show yourself to be mine before I can aid
you.”

“I will not kill for you,
fiend!” Aiul said.

The child shook her head again,
her black eyes conveying both profound disappointment and
sympathetic understanding. “You are not yet ready,” she
declared. “These creatures are here to assist you.” She
gestured to the cultists and their victims. The voice of the Dead
God roared from the impossibly tiny body, “Show him the way!”

The five cultists on the left
side of the room rose as one, grinning despite Elgar’s vocal
assault. They moved to the altar on their side, and began viciously
beating the woman bound there. One fumbled with dirty fingers,
finally tearing the gag from her mouth, letting her cries of pain
fill the room.

“Stop it!” Aiul
shouted. He looked about the room, unable to fully appreciate what
he was seeing. The cultists on the floor continued to chant as if
nothing were happening, their song seeming more and more like the
beating of a heart. The throne of skulls stared at Aiul with empty,
black eyes, as did its occupant. Aiul blinked, and his vision
blurred, then focused again, but the image before him had changed.
There was now a huge, blackened mace propped against the stacked,
grinning bones, the girl’s tiny hands caressing the hilt of
the weapon like a favored pet. The head, resting on the dirt floor,
was shaped like a mailed fist. Spikes circled the gauntlet, jutting
out several inches from the fingers, like nails driven through to
keep it clenched forever. It was a brutal weapon, without doubt, as
tall as the girl on the throne, and heavier than any Aiul had ever
seen.

“Make them stop!”
Aiul shouted at the girl, ignoring the sudden presence of the
weapon. Perhaps, if he paid no attention the fact that he seemed to
be losing his mind, he could recover from such insanity. Still, it
was difficult to ignore. He was beginning to feel dizzy. Blood was
pounding in his temples, and the entire room seemed hazy,
indistinct, slightly veiled by a thin, red mist. The chanting seemed
louder now, or was that the pounding in his temples? He could no
longer distinguish them.

“They will show you the
way,” the girl said sweetly.

The cultists had begun raping
their victim as well. They cackled at her misery and her cries.

“Think back,” the
girl said. “There is a bright place in your mind. Try to
remember.”

“No!” Aiul
insisted. “I will not join in this, monster! Stop it!”

Elgar’s roar of
incoherent fury ripped through the room, a cry of rage that
stretched on and on. To Aiul, the Dead God’s voice was now
little more than a slap, but it was not so for the others. They
began screaming immediately. After ten seconds, their clothes began
smoking. After twenty, they were desperately trying to beat out the
flames on their garments. After thirty, two produced blades from
their belts and began digging out their own ears.

The silence when it was over
was marred by three more cultists, who did not stop screaming, and
would not, for the remainder of their brief lives.

“
Show
him the way
!” Elgar roared again. His voice tasted
of copper, smelled of ozone, thundered like a hurricane, splattered
like drops of blood from a slashing blade. Cultists leapt from their
knees and drew blades, and rushed at both of the struggling
captives.

Aiul saw the indescribable
symbol once more in his mind, could almost understand what it meant,
and why. It beckoned to him to hate, to destroy, and suddenly, all
was clear.

With a cry of abandon bordering
on madness, Aiul rushed forward to the throne and seized the weapon.
He swung it around in a fluid motion and brought it crashing into
the child’s head. Her tiny skull flattened and exploded
beneath the force of the vicious mace, scattering fragments of gore
over Aiul and across the throne. Yet Aiul was certain that he had
seen the child’s dead lips turn upward in a satisfied grin
even as the weapon had wiped everything away.

The cultists gasped and froze,
too shocked even to begin formulating any sort of response. They
gaped in silent horror as Aiul slowly turned from the ruins of the
host body. Blood and gore dripped from his face and hands. His chest
heaved with excitement. He hefted the mace as if it were a feather
and stared back at them, eyes blazing with blood lust and madness.
“You want blood?” he roared. “Take your fill!”

One of the bound women
screamed.

And then he was among them, the
vicious black mace swinging like a scythe. For a moment, they stood,
confused, but panic quickly ensued as Aiul killed one, then another,
and another still. They trampled each other as they scrambled to
reach the door, and Aiul waded forward, striking them down from
behind as they grappled with one another. All in all, three managed
to escape the building. They barred the door behind them, leaving
their former companions to Aiul’s depredations.

Some raised their arms in
feeble attempts to ward off his blows, while others tried to grapple
with him, but he had the strength and stamina of a madman. He swung
the enormous mace over and over, splintering bone and splitting
flesh, until all of them were dead.

Even then, he was not finished,
not satisfied. For long minutes, he dashed frantically back and
forth about the room, smashing twitching corpses, pounding them over
and over until they were nothing but bloody chunks of meat hanging
from bones and rags.

Finally, the madness released
its grip on him, and slowly, he began to tire, faltering in his
swings, staggering as he moved, until at last he fell to his knees
amidst the gore, gasping for breath. As the pounding in his temples
gradually receded, he slowly became aware of a quiet sobbing, and
the intermittent dripping of blood from the ceiling.

Spent as he was, he still
struggled to his feet and looked about for the source of the
weeping. One of the women still lived, and had somehow, in the
chaos, managed to free herself from her bonds. She was huddled
against the door, scratching with weak arms against its bulk. As he
approached, she turned her face to him, eyes growing wide in alarm.

“It’s all right,”
he said to her in as gentle a voice as he could muster, though it
still came out as little better than a croak. He dropped the mace to
the ground and held up his hands. “I’m a doctor.”

The woman stared at him in
horror as he knelt before her and considered the several stab wounds
she had received. They were superficial, but one on her arm would
definitely need stitches. He reached for her, and she began
screaming.

“It’s all right,”
he told her. “I can help.”

The woman paid him no heed, her
screams growing hysterical as he took her wrist. He tried to hold
on, but she was frantic, struggling against his grasp. He released
her before she did herself further damage.

Aiul knew that he should be
more patient, that he should appreciate that the woman was in shock,
but it was all too much for him. Proper bedside manner was simply
too much to ask at the moment.

“I am not the villain
here!” he shouted down at her, but his words were wasted. She
simply continued her vain attempts to open the door, screaming all
the while.

It was useless. He was too
tired to help her at the moment. Exhaustion rolled over him in black
waves, and his legs were suddenly weak. With a groan, he reached
down and retrieved the mace. It made a fine crutch for him, bearing
some of his suddenly enormous weight as he staggered to the throne.
He collapsed into it with a sigh, feeling as if he might never rise
again. He closed his eyes to the gruesome scene, and waited.

The woman stopped screaming
after a while, and Aiul fell into fitful sleep.