The Mad God's Muse (The Eye of the Lion Saga Book 2) (26 page)

As it turned out, he waved a
hand and the entire bed vaulted on edge and slammed into the wall,
smashing her lovely collection of intoxicants.
Mei!
Some of those were older than I am!
Kariana felt near
tears. “Really?” she shouted. “That was
unnecessary!”

Maklin looked her up and down,
and not in the way she preferred. It was as if he were searching for
someone worth talking to, looking for brain rather than boobs, and,
finding none, was confused. It was distinctly uncomfortable and
insulting. “I’ll decide what’s necessary,”
he muttered, and turned back to the wall.

Maklin reached to pull the
tapestry aside and recoiled at the scene. “People actually do
these sorts of things?”

Caelwen grunted. “
Some
people.”

Maklin looked as if he were
about to be ill. “How revolting.” He reached for the
tapestry again but paused. Was the old man squeamish about sex?

“It’s no wonder you
don’t have an heir,” Kariana spat.

Maklin turned back to her,
annoyed. “Now see here – ” he began, then, with a
look of surprise, asked, “Do you smell smoke?”

Kariana not only smelled it,
but could see the source. Her beautiful tapestry was burning! She
let out a wail of misery as Caelwen rushed forward to beat at the
flames.

Sadrik gave Kariana a
reproachful look. “These Meites are powerful creatures,
cousin. You would do well not to anger them.”

Maklin regarded Sadrik with a
snarky look, then shrugged and turned back to the wall. “Quite
right.”

Caelwen had managed to stop the
flames from spreading, but the tapestry was a total loss. Kariana
bit her lip in frustration, and resolved to say as little as
possible. Maklin obviously enjoyed destroying her favorite things,
so it would be best not to give him any more excuses.

Maklin brushed the charred
ruins of the tapestry aside to reveal the gaping hole in the
plaster. He turned back to Kariana in shock. “You just left it
here?”

“It’s not as if I
could lift it!” she shouted back in a shrill voice. Her
promise to be quiet had lasted all of ten seconds, if that.
Oh,
well, it’s hardly the first time.

Maklin chuckled softly and
elbowed Sadrik. “Oh, she’s feisty!” He turned back
to Kariana, the humor gone from his face as if it had never existed.
“Tell me how this happened. Leave nothing out. And be aware I
have not yet decided if you actually survived this encounter.”

Caelwen grunted. “You’re
late to the party, old man. Your friends already grilled us at
length, though we’re none the wiser ourselves about what we’re
mixed up in.”

Maklin glared at him. “You
assume much, boy! ‘Friends’ is the wrong word.” A
chair rose from the mess on the floor, righted itself, and took up a
position behind Caelwen. “Sit.”

Caelwen made no move to do so.
“My master has taught me much about will, too.”

Maklin laughed out loud at
this. “Oh, doubtless. But how many years do you think I have
on you, eh? It gets harder to swing a sword as you age. Not so with
my craft.” He accented the point with a jerking motion, and
the chair slammed into the back of Caelwen’s legs. Caelwen
fell to the seat with a huff. “‘Old man’ might be
an insult for your type, but for me, it’s a compliment.”
He turned to Kariana and grinned. “Do I really need to do this
twice?”

Kariana shook her head
vigorously and sat down on the floor.
Maybe
I should clamp a hand over my mouth, just in case.

Maklin nodded to himself,
pleased. “Now. Let’s hear it. And leave nothing out!”

For the third time, Kariana
told the story in exacting detail while the old sorcerer grunted and
groused. Caelwen refused to speak unless spoken too, proving once
and for all that he was, in fact, smarter than her. When it was
done, Maklin turned to Sadrik, worry etched on his face. “Why
would they not have told me?”

Sadrik shrugged and gave Maklin
a sour look. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it has something
to do with you being completely uninterested in anything but your
sketchbook and your laboratory? How are people supposed to know
what’s important to you if you never
speak
to them?”

Maklin stamped his foot.
“Insolent upstart! It’s hardly
that
bad!”

Kariana had a brief, terrified
moment where she caught herself nodding in agreement with Sadrik.
Fortunately, Sadrik himself seemed to have become increasingly
stupid in the last few moments, and was currently the target of the
Meite’s attention. Kariana tried to communicate with Sadrik
via telepathy.
Shut up, you
idiot! He’s going to kill you!

If Sadrik received her message,
he gave no sign of heeding it. “Oh, I should say so! Why, if
half the continent were to split off and fall into the ocean, you’d
care not a whit as long as you were on the dry half.”

To Kariana’s surprise,
Maklin actually began to laugh at this. “Well, you have to
admit, it would get rid of a hell of a lot of idiots.”

Sadrik raised an eyebrow in
appreciation of this point. “That it would.”

Maklin grew crabby again, as if
he had suddenly remembered he was annoyed with Sadrik. “Besides,
who are you to talk? At least I apply my sorcery at practical
things. What do you do with yours other than assassinating people
and acting mysterious, hmm?”

Sadrik’s eyebrows seemed
to leap off the top of his head a moment. “Listen here, you!
How is assassination not a practical matter?”

Kariana felt her jaw lower of
its own accord. She looked across at Caelwen to see him wearing a
dumbfounded look that almost certainly was the mirror of her own.
“Mei! Sadrik!
You’re
a Meite?” she cried.

Sadrik and Maklin turned back
from their conversation, both looking a little unfocused and
sheepish. Maklin coughed and rubbed his nose. “It’s
always polite to speak when spoken to, you know.”

Sadrik shot him a withering
glare. “Oh, let’s not pretend I was the one who let the
cat out of the bag.”

Maklin waved a hand in
dismissal. “So they know. What are they going to do about it,
hmm?”

Kariana shouted again,
“Sadrik!”

Sadrik rolled his eyes. “You
had no need to know, cousin. And I’m hardly the only one with
secrets around here. You kept this thing with the Eye under wraps
far too long! By now, Ariano and Maranath may damned well be
assembling the thing!”

Maklin waved a hand at her.
“Just so!”

Caelwen gave a shudder and
groaned, the look of surprise on his face intense enough to make
Kariana wonder if he had been stung by a bee. “Mei! Did you
kill Maralena Prosin?”

Maklin struck an accusatory
pose, one eye closed and face twisted in mock fury, a gnarled finger
pointed at Sadrik. He only held it for a moment, then burst into
laughter. “Look how
indignant
he is!”

Sadrik folded his arms and
turned a face seemingly carved from stone toward Caelwen. “As
a matter of fact, I did.”

Kariana felt as if her head
were being crushed in a vise. “You said it was
friends
!”

Maklin was choking between
laughs at this point. Sadrik shook his head and gave him a clap on
the back. “There, you see? If you ever want to kill him, you
need only make him laugh until he dies. As for ‘friends’,
I find I get on quite well with myself.”

Kariana suddenly realized there
was more to this tale than she preferred to come out. “Don’t
you say it!”

Sadrik boggled at her. “You
just
did
, fool!”

Maklin, now red faced, cackled
in glee. “Mei!” he gasped. “It’s like that
tapestry! Who’s fucking who, and who’ll end up pregnant?
Shall I tell her about that too?”

Sadrik answered with stony
silence, and Maklin’s laughter ebbed, then subsided. The old
man cleared his throat and turned back to the other two, somber now.
“I suppose I needn’t mention this should stay between
us?”

Caelwen rose to his feet. “I
shall have to inform my father.”

Maklin made a scrunched face
and mouthed Caelwen’s words in mockery. “I’ll tell
him myself, boy. You’ll be with me. It’s where we’re
going next. If Maranath and Ariano have gone rogue, I’ll want
Polus and Davron behind us all the way. But this cannot leave the
circle of elders. It’s too explosive. Am I understood?”

Caelwen nodded assent. “We’ll
let my father be the judge of it, then.”

“Agreed.” Maklin
looked at Sadrik. “We need to think about how to handle
Prandil.”

Kariana suddenly brightened.
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll be any problem.”

Sadrik looked at her with
suspicion. “And what makes you think that?”

Kariana shrugged and tried to
look meek and compliant. “Just a feeling,” she squeaked.

Maklin sighed. “Does it
really matter? We’d best just leave him out of it. He might be
with them, and then we’d have a mess.” He gestured to
Caelwen and Sadrik. “You two, come with me.” He started
toward the door, Caelwen and Sadrik in tow.

Caelwen called over his
shoulder as they departed, “Try not to do anything stupid
until I get back, will you?”

Kariana snatched a broken
bottle from the floor and hurled it at him. She missed by a good
three feet, and the missile shattered against a wall.

She heard Maklin chuckle.
“Feisty, indeed.”

Prandil breathed in the night
air. It was crisp and cool, enough to make a couple prefer to be
close without being miserable. Narelki had chosen the spot well, the
remains of an old brewery that had burned a year before and had yet
to be rebuilt. The roof was open to the air, but the cobblestone
walls still stood. It was in a secluded enough area that passersby
were unlikely, but if one were to happen along, he'd not notice them
unless they were too loud.

It had been some time since
Prandil had entertained the foolish notions running through his
head. He had long ago cast aside the notion of love as a fool's
errand. Once, eons past, some version of him had believed in such
fantastic notions as soul mates and true love, but that was someone
else, a man who had died, not this one.

And yet here he was, a century
later, looking across at the one woman he had ever imagined his
equal, his soul mate. She had come back to him after all this time,
and the rushing in of old feelings, old beliefs cast aside, made his
chest feel as if it would burst trying to contain them all.

Mei, this is the true
purpose of life, is it not? To dream, to fight, to love. To heal.

It was a thought he dared not
speak. It was like wishing for the dead to return to life. There was
no known case of anyone recovering from a fall. It was simply
impossible to rethread a soul once its tapestry came unraveled. The
irony of being a Meite was knowing this truth, and still having the
arrogance to believe he could change it, that he could do what no
one else could, defeat the invincible.

I can bring her back.

He
was missing so much of what she was saying, sipping at his glass of
wine, doubtlessly very expensive, tasting nothing. He was lost,
looking into her eyes. They were clear again, where they had been
clouded. Was it the moonlight? No, it was
real
.
She
was
still in
there, passion blazing away.

“
– my son!” she finished.

Now I've done it. She's
caught me with my pants down, almost literally.
“I'm
sorry, my love. I was lost in your beauty. I'm afraid I missed what
you were saying.”

Narelki's
normally placid face grew pinched in annoyance, and Prandil marveled
at this, too. Everything about her was truly amazing, even her anger
at his distraction.
My ice princess, come back to me for
my fire at long last.

“I'm sorry, Prandil,”
she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“Don't be. It was both of
us. We—”

He saw the flash of her hand
just before the impact. He was slow, so very, very slow.
It can't
be true.
But it was.
The
heavy bottle of wine smashed into his temple, and his head filled
with light, pain and the sound of shattering glass.

She seems to have taken my
distraction considerably harder than I would have expected.

Moments later, he felt a blade
penetrate deep into his back, cold, steel violation, surely every
bit as traumatic as any rape. He screamed in horror, in agony, in
pure rage at having been so artfully gulled, so indescribably
stupid.

“Elgar take you,
traitor!” she roared at him. The blade bit deep into him
again, and the knowledge in his mind bit deeper still.
Mei, she
didn't bring me here for a romantic dinner. She brought me here to
murder me.

The
realization of that truth was almost enough to make him lie down and
accept it. He was already on his knees, his face in the dirt,
humiliated and blind. The roaring in his head was almost too loud to
hear her cursing him as she wound up for another strike. It was
difficult to remember who he was even fighting.

One hundred eighty seven and
still vigorous enough to thrash a strapping young lad like you!
He
heard his own words to Thrun echo in his mind, and felt a surge of
strength. The pain drew back a bit, enough for him to find a
handhold on the world.
I've been a blind fool, but I'll
not die today. Not if I can help it.

He
swept his hand backward, brushing at a gnat. He felt the impact,
knew at once it was too much, too hard, even as he heard the crunch
of bone and felt his target fold like a rag doll and take to the
air.

What have I done?