Mad God's Muse

by Matthew P Gilbert

  Prandil considered this a moment, then nodded. “It is a fair complaint. What shall we do to change that?”

  Narelki smiled at him. “Let’s start with something simple. I know a place that would make for a fine picnic.”

  Prandil’s face lit up at the notion. “And what shall I bring?”

  “Yourself. I’ll handle the rest.”

  “Generous. I presume you’ll be expecting something in return, eh?” He gave her a seductive glance.

  Narelki played to him. “Talk is crude.”

  “Indeed it is.” He leaned in closer, but Narelki pulled back.

  “There is one thing that concerns me, though,” she said.

  “Oh, and what could that be?”

  “Ariano.”

  Prandil stepped back, his smile gone. “Why bring her up? That quite ruins my mood.”

  “She frightens me, Prandil. She’s made threats.”

  “She makes lots of threats.”

  “Sadrina Veril? Maralena Prosin?”

  Prandil pursed his lips. “Sadrina, yes, and can you really blame her? Maralena, I have no idea. I suspected you, to be honest.”

  Narelki waved the idea aside as a nuisance. “She’s out of control.”

  Prandil’s eyes narrowed. “I should expect better of you. She is stronger, so she chooses.”

  “Perhaps I still hold out some hope that reason might some day enter into Meite philosophy.”

  Prandil laughed, not yet understanding how deadly serious she was. “I am shocked, absolutely shocked, to hear such heresy from you.”

  “I’m a failure, remember?” she snapped. It was stupid. She was losing her temper, and that was dangerous. But the old bitterness demanded release. “We lesser creatures are to be indulged, yes?”

  Prandil’s smile faded to an expression of great sorrow. He stepped forward and embraced her. There was no lust in his touch, simply compassion. “We did not cast you out. You are the victim of your own self doubt.”

  She was losing her resolve, but for the moment, she didn’t care. Here was Prandil, and he was strong, and she was so very, very weak. She buried her face against his chest and sobbed.

  He held her for a while, until she was able to master herself once again. Her timing was good. She was just getting herself presentable again when two figures descended from the sky and lit on Prandil’s veranda.

  Ariano spied them at once, and entered without bothering with the pleasantry of being invited. Maranath followed, looking a bit embarrassed.

  Ariano pointed at Prandil. “We need to talk.” She cast a glare of loathing at Narelki. “Leave us, weakling. This is not for your ears.”

  Prandil’s face darkened with anger. “This is my home! You have no right to dismiss my guests!”

  Ariano regarded him with a cool stare, her green eyes flaring with challenge. “I have all the right I shall ever need.”

  Maranath, even more embarrassed now, laid a hand on Ariano’s shoulder. “Power is no excuse for incivility. Haven't we just had to swallow that bitter lesson? We are guests in Prandil’s home.”

  Prandil snorted. “Uninvited guests, I might add.”

  Ariano shrugged. “Fair enough. If, in my passion, I occasionally step on people’s toes, so be it. I apologize to you, Prandil. But not to her.”

  Prandil shook his head in disgust. “And you continue to insult me by lashing out at my guests.”

  Narelki put a finger to his lips. “I’ll go. We’ll work out the details later.”

  Prandil shouted at the top of his lungs, “You will not treat me as a child in my own home, you wretched crone!”

  Ariano raged back, “If you were an adult, you would be more concerned about Elgar than your petty pride!”

  Maranath didn’t like the way things were going. Grousing and minor insults were fairly constant amongst Meites, but this was getting truly hostile. “Enough! Ariano, it is time for you to explain yourself.”

  Ariano looked hurt at the rebuke, but nodded. “Not in front of Prandil.”

  Maranath’s eyes grew wide. “We agreed on this! Why did we even come here if you’re…bah, this is just an excuse to avoid coming clean with me!”

  “It is not,” Ariano said. “It’s just that I remembered some events that he shouldn’t be privy to.”

  Prandil was incensed. “Mei! What is wrong with you? Can you do nothing without taking a stab at me?”

  “It’s your own arrogance that makes you think you’re important enough to be the issue, here!” Ariano shot back.

  “I think it’s all a fraud. First it was not for Narelki’s ears. Now it’s not for mine?”

  Ariano hunched her shoulders. “Two different things, pup!”

  “So you say, but you’ve been deceiving me all along.”

  Ariano was at volcanic levels at this point, her voice rising to a shriek. “I can’t tell you, fool! I swore it! I can’t tell anyone.”

  “Anyone except Maranath, eh?”

  Ariano lowered her volume, her voice a multi-harmonic growl that communicated well just how far Prandil had pushed her. “Including Maranath. It’s just that his being able to best me will at least be an excuse. You know, pup? Waste not, bend a knee to superiors? You don’t meet that bar!”

  Prandil, too, grew quiet and stern. “You’re very smug in your superiority. Shall we put it to the test?”

  Maranath stamped his foot, and the building shook with a tremor strong enough to rattle the glass in the windows. “That is enough, Prandil! Unless you would put me to the same test! How do you think you will fare, eh?” He turned to Ariano. “And from you, too. Since when do you do as you’re told?”

  Ariano snorted, her nostrils flaring. “It depends on the teller, doesn’t it? The one who told me is capable of crushing the lot of us like bugs, so I do as he says.”

  Prandil’s eyes grew wide in shock and disbelief as he first mouthed the name, then spoke it. “Tasinal? He lives?”

  Ariano nodded, looking much aggrieved. “He certainly still did when Lothrian and I made our little raid on Torium.”

  Prandil raised his hands to the sides of his head as if he were physically restraining it from exploding. “You did what? How many secrets do you have, you wicked witch?” Ariano, for once, was not inclined to meet his gaze. He turned to Maranath and asked, “Did you know about this?”

  Maranath nodded. “But not about any encounter with Tasinal.”

  Ariano’s chagrin was short lived. “It’s not as if he came to honor me! He just felt the threat would be more clear if he delivered it in person.”

  Prandil’s anger seemed quenched by the thought. He began to laugh softly, almost in sympathy for her. “That must have been quite awkward.”

  Ariano scowled at him, then looked at the floor. “Lothrian didn’t survive the mess we made, and Tasinal cleaned it up. Did you really think Tasinalt had Lothrian put to death?” She shook her head in regret, her eyes haunted with the memories. “As if he had the power.”

  Prandil waved aside the notion. “Of course not. It was obviously a cover up, but I had no idea of what.” The bitterness began to creep back into his voice as he groused, “I was clearly not valued enough to be trusted with the truth.”

  Maranath laughed softly. “A couple of your elders had already demonstrated they couldn’t be trusted.”

  Ariano pursed her lips, obviously not pleased to be on display. “Exactly. I’m not the one who made the decision to keep you or anyone else in the dark. I’m the one who provoked it. No need to hate me for it.”

  Prandil frowned, but he seemed to at least understand the situation. “Go on, then. I’ll just stay here and play mushroom.”

  Ariano sneered at him and spat, “No, you’ll be diddling the weakling, no doubt.”

  Prandil’s eyes blazed with reignited fury. “Better than diddling you, you wretched crone! Assuming your crotch hasn’t closed up from lack of use!” Prandil’s face suddenly went bright red and he turned to the elder sorcerer and stam
mered briefly. “I apologize for that. But she started it.”

  Maranath laughed out loud. “As irritable as she is, I should think everything must be functioning just fine.”

  Ariano, trembling with fury, seemed unable to find any words. She glared at one, then the other, then looked up at the ceiling. Prandil groaned as the boards above his head bent and buckled outward, then exploded in a hail of flinders and debris, leaving a gaping hole to the sky. Ariano shot up and out of it.

  Maranath looked at Prandil and shrugged. “I always thought you had a way with women. Couldn't tell from that display, though.”

  “You should put yours on a leash!”

  Maranath gave him a scowl of disapproval. “She’s very upset by all of this. Something happened all those years back, something she never spoke of, but it haunts her. She is convinced this all ties together, but she won’t explain why.” He looked up at the hole Ariano had left and sighed. “Your prodding just makes it worse.”

  “I suppose. Then what do you recommend?”

  “Besides shutting up? Not much.”

  “Then why did you even come here?”

  Maranath shrugged. “Just to tell you we’re off again. The two of you have a way of complicating very simple things.”

  Chapter 11

  The Hunter’s Tale

  Aiul rode slump shouldered and head down, as if he had died in the saddle, swaying as the great, black horse beneath him walked ever eastward. He wore his robe’s hood over his face in a vain attempt to hide the steady flow of tears, but he felt certain that Logrus saw, and was secretly laughing at him.

  They had been traveling for three days, through snow covered plains and sparse woodlands, a wall of silence between them. Logrus, Aiul knew, had little to say, and Aiul, for his part, had no desire to share his thoughts with a stoic killer. Yet silence left him with little to do but think, to remember horrors and pains that the action of late had pushed from his mind. He was falling into a black spiral of depression from which there seemed no escape.

  The gaping, putrefying wound in his soul, born of Lara being torn from him as she was, was always present, a constant sword through his gut. His hatred for Kariana, for all of Nihlos, was not merely an emotion, but a way of life. And yet he had weathered these torments for months. They had not dulled, but at least the outlines of their scars were mapped. Men have the capacity to adjust their expectations of life, to adapt to a known horror, and Aiul had done just that, lowering them to just what was necessary to survive. The old Aiul, the doctor, the husband, the lover, had slipped away in the prison, died screaming, welcoming with open arms the cold embrace of oblivion, leaving in its place a new Aiul, who lived only for revenge and had no need for anything else. Enough time had passed that he had become familiar with his new self.

  His actions of late were another matter. Aiul closed his eyes, remembering slashing Banger’s throat in casual contempt. But it was the sheer euphoria that had come over him during his killing spree amongst the cultists, the complete satisfaction he had felt in the act, that stung him most. He had lived so long as a healer, and now, without really understanding why, he was a murderer with a growing list of victims. That they deserved it was little comfort. He did not mourn them. He mourned himself.

  Logrus rode beside him astride a twin of Aiul’s mount, seemingly unaware that he even had a traveling companion until he shattered the illusion by speaking. “Why do you cry?” he asked, his words jarring Aiul after so much silence.

  Aiul glared at him, then returned to staring at nothing. “You say not a word to me for days,” he growled. “My shame amuses you when nothing else penetrates.”

  “No,” Logrus answered, without a hint of guilt. “I am curious. It seems strange to me.”

  “Mei!” Aiul spat. “You treat me like baggage, and now you would hear my secrets, as if I were a friend?”

  Logrus shrugged, confusion on his face.

  “Are you really such a fool?” Aiul wondered. “You expect me to believe you see nothing uncivil in responding to every attempt at conversation with grunts and gestures?”

  “I had nothing to say,” Logrus told him.

  “No doubt,” Aiul said. He huddled deeper into his robe, longing for warmth, envying Logrus’s casual indifference to the weather. “Better to be thought a fool then speak and prove it.”

  Something akin to rage crossed Logrus’s features and passed in an instant. He turned his gaze back to the road and took a deep breath. “You know nothing of me.”

  “Nor could I,” Aiul shot back.

  Logrus rode on in silence, retreating back into his self-imposed isolation. As the hours passed, however, Aiul noticed with grim satisfaction that Logrus’s normal air of arrogant indifference seemed more like Aiul’s own brooding.

  Just before dark, Logrus stopped to make camp, selecting a small copse of needled trees where the snow was thin on the ground. They tied their horses, and Logrus busied himself with preparations for the night. Aiul resolved to give him no assistance until it was asked for. His spiteful game did not go unnoticed, but Logrus refused to play, eventually setting up the entire camp alone.

  Aiul took a seat by the fire and rummaged through his pack for something to eat, studiously ignoring Logrus. It was, in the end, something that kept his mind from wandering to darker places.

  Logrus took a seat on the ground across from Aiul, his face shimmering in the rising heat of the flames, angry. It took him several minutes to speak, and when he did, it was with some difficulty. “I could kill you in an instant, with whatever I could lay my hands on,” he said. “Should I despise you for your weakness?”

  “It’s hardly the same,” Aiul groused. “Combat is a skill that is years in the learning. I have only the most basic training.”

  “It is just the same with me and talking,” said Logrus.

  “That’s ridiculous. You’d have to have lived you life in isolation!”

  “Not my whole life,” Logrus said. “Just most of it.”

  Aiul was stunned. He could think of nothing to say. After several moments of silence, Logrus waved a dismissive hand and rose to leave.

  “Because I hate what I have become,” Aiul said quickly, answering Logrus’s earlier question. “I cry for what I have lost. Which is pretty much everything I valued.”

  Logrus stared at him a moment, then sat again, nodding. He dug through his own pack and found some bread, took a bite of it, and chewed while he considered his response. “What were you, before?”

  Aiul stared at the ground, unwelcome memories tearing at him, summoned by Logrus’s question. He had hoped to hold back his demons a bit longer, but now that they were upon him, perhaps speaking of them would sap their strength. He fingered the strange amber talisman he wore about his neck, surprised that it was warm despite the near freezing temperature. “Just a man,” he sighed. “A man who healed, not killed.”

  Logrus listened intently, but without any sign of emotion, as Aiul told him of recent history. At times, Aiul paused for long minutes, sobbing, choking, unable to shape his words, and Logrus waited in patient silence as Aiul mastered himself. The story poured from him like water from a collapsing dam: a slow trickle of his fragile, naive life; more forceful outpourings of the ill-fated assault, his impressions of the Southlanders, the fury of the Meites; the thunderous crash of rage, horror, and despair as his life shattered before his eyes; and the trickling away of his will to live within Davron's prison.

  “This Nihlos is, as I have always heard, a city of evil,” Logrus said. He held one of his curved blades at eye level, staring at it a moment, letting the firelight glint from it. “There is no good enemy in your tale, no one person to strike down and have revenge upon.”

  Aiul wiped his sleeve over his eyes for what seemed the thousandth time. His skin felt raw from the contact. As fresh tears welled in his eyes, he looked at Logrus, grim, serious, sincere, and could not help laughing, even through his tears. He grew somber again before responding. “It
is all Nihlos who will pay. I would kill them all, if I could.”

  “Truly?” Logrus asked, his eyes widening in shock. “Your hate is that great?”

  “Greater. I just don't have the words to describe it.”

  “But surely there are those who are innocent in the city,” Logrus said.

  Aiul stared into the flames of their campfire, the jagged thing in his mind stabbing viciously at what few vestiges of his humanity remained. “No,” he whispered. “They must all die for what they did to my Lara. Those who acted, and those who allowed them to act. All of them.”

  “I cannot condemn your hate,” Logrus told him. “Righteous hate is good, and Elgar is pleased by it. But I do not understand it. What you propose seems…” He paused, searching for words. “Unnecessary.”

  “What do I care about necessary?” Aiul growled. “Nihlos is an organism. If a man kills with his right hand, do you spare his left as innocent?” Aiul rose and stalked about the fire, shaking his fist at the heavens, and shouted, “I would kill the world if I had the power!”

  “I believe you,” Logrus told him.

  A long silence passed between them, and then Logrus went into his pack and began searching. “I have something for you,” he said, producing a large bottle full of clear, amber liquid. He handed it to Aiul.

  “What is it?” Aiul asked, opening the bottle. He sniffed it, recognizing the potent smell of alcohol.

  “Strong,” Logrus said with the ghost of a smile.

  Aiul nodded and turned up the bottle, grimacing as he swallowed a mouthful. Logrus had told the truth. It was potent, indeed. He passed the bottle back to Logrus, and once again fingered the charm about his neck. “Is this for healing?” he asked.

  Logrus shrugged and took a long drink from the bottle.

  “I thought you must have given it to me while I was feverish,” Aiul said. “Do you know where it came from?”

  “You had it when I found you,” Logrus told him as he passed the bottle. “Here, this will be easier,” he said. A look of mischief crossed his face as he produced another, identical bottle of liquor.