The Mad God's Muse (The Eye of the Lion Saga Book 2) (21 page)

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 slaves 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.”

Polus balled his hand into a
fist and slammed it into his palm. “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. Or how I do.”

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

Polus folded his arms over his
chest. “I have 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 in a nervous fit. 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
eyed 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 raised an eyebrow and
leered at her. “You’re worked up. What have you screwed
up now?”

Kariana actually reached for a
decanter of liquor, but caught herself halfway to hurling it at
Sadrik’s head. She poured herself a drink to make things seem
as if she had planned it that way all along. “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!”

Kariana looked at the ceiling,
then at the floor. “I lost the Eye.”

Sadrik’s jaw went from
locked to wide open in less than a second. His eyes bugged so
profoundly that Kariana thought surely his head must be about to
explode, and how would she ever clean up that mess? Well, the
question was really how her slaves would clean it, since Sadrik was
certainly about to murder her.

“You
what
?”
he managed to choke out. “
How
?”

“It was Aiul! He took it
when he was…you know, invulnerable and really scary!”