Mad God's Muse Read online

  Contents

  ALSO IN THE SERIES

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  1. The Changeling

  2. Voyage Interruptus

  3. The Dead God

  4. Commandos

  5. Repercussions

  6. Knight of Fear

  7. Ilaweh’s Will

  8. A Brief Thaw

  9. Voodoo Boots

  10. Pain as a Truth Serum

  11. The Hunter’s Tale

  12. Cyanide and Cheap Theatrics

  13. Captured

  14. The Hunters Converge

  15. Hairball

  16. Confessions and Consequences

  17. Walking Dead

  Epilogue

  ALSO IN THE SERIES

  FROM THE PUBLISHER

  ALSO IN THE SERIES

  You’ve already read: Dead God’s Due

  You’re reading: Mad God’s Muse

  Up next: War God’s Will

  Acknowledgments

  Many helped along the way. As before, some I have forgotten, and for that I apologize. Some have forgotten me, and for most of those, I make no apology.

  My wife, Jessica, for listening, suggesting, correcting, musing, and sharing the dream with me.

  Everyone who helped go over this until their eyes bled, or listened to me talk way too much about how cool it was and chose to continue our relationship despite knowing the risks.

  Paul Hetzer, whose timely encouragement made all the difference.

  Ilaweh teaches patience through frustration.

  Prologue

  One Millennium Past

  Am I a god? It was a strange question to ask oneself, and yet it was not the first time Alexander had done so. Each time he took the Eye in hand and crossed from the mundane world to the green, ethereal realm within, the questions came. Is this the true world? Have I lived my life in some sort of shadow up to now?

  That was one way to see it. The same people inhabited both realms. The terrain was unchanged. It was so very like his own world in shape and composition, and yet as different as a living, breathing man was from a skeleton. The world inside the Eye held so much more.

  Or perhaps it is simply me that is different. I can see so much more. That felt closer to the truth. To take up the Eye, to walk through the green, swirling mists, was to slip into the mind of an immense being, one completely unbound by earthly chains of gravity or the frailty of flesh. Gone were the limitations of space and time. He could go anywhere, even into the heads of others, with a simple thought. He could see everyone in the world, hear them speak, even speak back to them. Like his vision, his mind expanded as well. It was nothing to converse with hundreds as if each were his sole focus.

  I have put on a god's cloak, and now I have his vision and his burdens.

  For the moment, he had chosen a position miles above the ground, overlooking the many battles being fought at his direction. There had been no travel time, no journey. He had simply willed it, and arrived. Where his own eyes would have failed him at such distance, the Eye's vision was flawless: the simple desire to focus on a location showed him the most minute of details, even things he could only guess at as a mortal man.

  He could see intent, both in men and beasts, colored auras he had come to understand as a code: red was an enemy, green an ally, pink announced wounded, and black was for the dead. There were so many more, some colors Alexander could not even perceive with his own eyes, and each had its subtle meaning, but his goal was simple: everything should be green. That is my imperative.

  Satisfied with his understanding of the war, he began to issue orders, calling out through the ether to the hundreds receiving his instructions. Supplies will be needed here. Reinforcements are required on these fronts. Wounded need evacuation. Men everywhere needed to hear his voice to shore up their resolve. He could not lie to them, nor they him when he spoke through the Eye.

  And now I live as they do. I share their pain. It is the least I can do.

  He flitted from body to body, seeing the battle from each pair of eyes in turn. When his men triumphed, he felt their joy. When they fell, he lived their pain. How many blades had ripped through his guts this day? How many of his bones had shattered? How many cries of agony and fear had coursed through his mind?

  How many times have I died?

  It was becoming more and more difficult to know where he himself ended, and his men began. Within the embrace of the Eye, it felt more as if he, his soldiers, even his enemies were no more distinct than drops of water in the sea. We all spring from the same well. Our individuality is illusion, just like the distance between us.

  Still, each had different tasks. Some missions were more important than others. Alexander strained to isolate the one voice. There.

  “Forgive me, Alexander!” cried the soldier. “I have failed you.”

  Alexander was with him in an instant, blood jetting from their neck in a crimson stream from a vicious javelin wound. “Take heart. We are not finished yet.” Pink, fading to black. He fell, and that part of his vision went dark.

  “Who will stand for him?” Alexander cried out through the twisting nether. “Our need is great! He must not fall!”

  More voices called back, “I will.”

  Alexander felt the sickness in his gut as strongly as he had just felt the weapon in his throat. Choose one to die. Such decisions were for gods, not men. I have my duty, too. I will not shirk it.

  One pair of eyes closed. Another reopened. Alexander hauled the javelin from his neck, then withdrew. This one would complete his task on his own.

  From the dim, tiny perspective of his own eyes, he saw his Imperator, Xanthius, enter the command tent, crested helmet tucked under his arm. The old soldier's gray eyebrows arched downward toward his square, chiseled jaw in disapproval. He does not understand.

  Xanthius looked on his Emperor with a despair he tried desperately not to show, but it was a pointless endeavor. Alexander knew everything. That was the horror of it all.

  Half boy, half man, Alexander sat atop a cot, haggard and slumped against the tent's central pole, his face lit by an eerie, green glow Xanthius knew all too well. Alexander's long, brown hair hung partly over his face, unkempt and lifeless. His skin was pale and sickly, though at least it bore no sores. Yet. They will come, though, if he continues to neglect proper hygiene.

  Alexander stirred slightly. His gaze shifted slowly toward Xanthius, unfocused and distant, as if he were drugged and unaware, though Xanthius understood enough now to know that was illusion. The boy clutched at the Eye of the Lion with skeletal hands, the skin covering them thin as parchment. The bright metal of the small lion's head glowed a soft green, reflecting the light from its normally amber eyes. Alexander gazed into the distance, his own eyes glowing the same soft green as the accursed thing he held.

  Can you not see it is killing you, child?

  Xanthius had watched this slow death, this degeneration of Alexander's body and soul for months. When they had begun this venture, the Emperor had been healthy and whole, trained well by Ilawehan fighting men. His goal had been noble: avenge his father, retake the crown, and drive the Meite rebels and their wretched 'free men' from the halls of power.

  Freedom. A mad illusion. I have my master, as do all men. Even Alexander, it is plain to see.

  Alexander turned toward Xanthius, and the glow faded both from his eyes and the lion's, but dark clouds hung behind his vision, still. “We are at war. Sacrifices must be made.” He offered a thin smile. “You, too, looked better when we set out.”

  Xanthius felt the sudden urge to abandon a lifetime of duty, to simply leap forward and seize the poisonous thing from Alexander's hands. The boy was far too weak to resist.

&nb
sp; “Would you take it for yourself?” Alexander mused.

  “Damn you! Can I have no thought to myself these days?”

  Alexander shook his head, his face drawn and weary. “Nor can I. I am not thin because of any poison. I feel their hunger. Our men, their men. If I am sick, it is at the thought of eating when they cannot. I take only what I must, what I need to continue our mission.”

  He's deflecting me. If he knows my thoughts, he's chosen not to answer the most important question. Xanthius set his jaw and stood erect, hands clasped behind his back. “Since you speak of it, Emperor, what is that mission? What are our victory parameters?”

  If Alexander noted the use of his title over his own name, he gave no sign. He took up the Eye again and turned away. “I see further, now,” he sighed.

  Decorum be damned. I can endure no more of this. “What will satisfy you, Alexander?” Xanthius shouted. “Must every man in the world bend a knee or die?”

  Alexander was silent, gazing into the distance for so long that Xanthius turned to leave. “That will not be enough,” Alexander called in a voice not his own, but that of an unearthly choir, beautiful and chilling like an approaching blizzard.

  Xanthius spun in surprise to see that Alexander had risen and stood facing him, arms raised high and wide as if to encircle the world, the Eye dangling from a chain gripped in his frail hand. The Lion seemed to wink and leer at Xanthius in the eldritch glow.

  Alexander's eyes blazed with green fire, and his face shone with a powerful emotion Xanthius could not quite recognize.

  The choir spoke again, setting Xanthius's teeth on edge.

  “They must join us.”

  We were conquerors here.

  Tasinal knew he should be more focused on the conversation between Amrath and Noril. A strategic discussion ought to have the nominal leader of the Meite order actually participating, but in truth he understood little about complex details of large scale battle. Personal combat he knew well enough, but that was not the topic at hand. Besides, it wasn't as if he would actually make the decisions on the matter. Amrath would do that, as he had always done. I am a figurehead, a face to present to the public, nothing more. I'll fight when he tells me to. If that call ever comes.

  Which was, of course, the central problem: Amrath, as yet, had not chosen to fight at all since the initial uprising, preferring to leave the actual war to the newly liberated masses. It was not a popular decision, neither with the weaker folk who resented the lack of sorcerous aid, nor with the Meites themselves, who, now that they had had a taste of blood, found they liked it well enough.

  Ah, that first taste had been sweet, indeed.

  Tasinal sneered at the offensively opulent structure that housed them, the Great Hall of Aristodemos and his pack of jackals, lawyers, and whores. But I repeat myself. It was a mighty edifice, certainly, brick and stone and marble; high, strong walls to hide behind and count the treasure extracted from the people and not have to hear them wail under the burden. It had done just fine against the oppressed and the weak.

  The Council of Twelve had walked through those walls as if they were paper, and left a trail of blood and retribution the likes of which Laurea had never seen. Sic semper tyrannis.

  Few had escaped their wrath, and that went for the furniture and building as well. Talus, the artist of the Twelve, had demanded they leave the scene as it was, declaring that the destruction itself was a monument to what had occurred here. “Let it serve as a reminder to the next would-be tyrant.” He had wanted them to leave the corpses as well, but Amrath had drawn the line at that, Mei be thanked. The reek it would have sent up in high summer would have been enough to test the will even of Meites.

  With a shudder at the thought, Tasinal returned to the present. Amrath, weary and haggard, sat in the ruins of Aristodemos's throne, his normally animated face creased with worry, his green eyes dull and lifeless as Noril, standing at a table before the throne, continued his stoic report of their growing losses. Amrath's blonde hair hung partially over his eyes, unkempt and listless like its owner. Tasinal struggled not to turn his eyes to the stained and cracked marble floor. It is too painful a sight, to see him defeated like this.

  Defeated he was, though, and Noril was flagging as well. Noril's clean-shaven jaw bulged, and his short-cropped, graying hair bristled. He looks quite like Xanthius. I wonder if they are related somewhere along the lines? “How many more lives will we sacrifice in a lost cause?” Noril demanded. “It is time for us to take to the field ourselves.”

  Amrath heaved a deep sigh, part frustration, part despair. “If the people do not win their own victory, what have we bought them?” He swept a hand about him indicating the ruined halls of power they had made their headquarters. “Did we begin this rebellion to be their masters, or to help them throw the yoke from their own shoulders?”

  “We did not plan to contend with gods, Amrath!”

  “No,” Amrath said, casting Tasinal a pointed look. “We did not.”

  Tasinal could feel his cheeks burning, but said nothing. I think I'll just shut up and let them do this. No need to make a target of myself, after all.

  Noril offered him a wry smile. “I would have kept the weapon, too, Tasinal.”

  Amrath shrugged, as if words were not needed, then seemed to decide otherwise. “We all would have. But he made the decision, so he feels the pain. It's a burden of leadership.”

  I said I was going to shut up, but apparently that will not be possible at this time. “You argued to go to Torium! And you named me leader. No one is confused about who really runs things!”

  Amrath raised an eyebrow in appreciation of such insolence. His face brightened a shade. “Are you my puppet?”

  Bastard! But it was a fair point. “Nay. You speak truth. The decision was mine.”

  “Then own it.”

  “I do own it! How was I to know he would give it to our enemies if we chose not to let him take it away? I may have to accept the consequences, but I'll accept no blame from anyone for it, not even you!”

  “Well said,” Amrath replied. “It's as I told you, you've made a fine leader.”

  Noril folded his arms over his chest and stood straight, as if issuing a command from on high. “We need to act, Amrath.”

  Amrath pursed his lips. “If we cannot win, we must submit.”

  Noril looked as if his head might explode at this. “Submit?” he roared, his voice echoing off the shattered tiles. “It would be better we all die than leave him with that thing!”

  Amrath leapt to his feet, fury burning in his eyes. The lion was never asleep, just resting. “Don't you think I know that?” he shouted, pounding a fist against the arm of the throne. The arm split from the seat with the force of his blow and hit the floor with a report like a whipcrack. The marble beneath Amrath’s feet split in a lengthening spiderweb shape that grew directly at Noril. “Have you talked to Yorn? Do you understand what that damned thing is?”

  Noril slowly lowered his gaze to the crack in the floor at his feet and scoffed. He looked back at Armath in defiance. “I understand well enough. Torian black sorcery, mind control!”

  Amrath's energy seemed to drain as quickly as it had come. He sank slowly back into the throne, once again defeated and miserable. “So your answer is 'no', then. Because it is much, much worse than that.”

  “How can it be worse?”

  “It's not mind control,” Amrath spat. “It's a collective. They are volunteers. They want what is happening to them.”

  Noril's rage fled him in an instant, and his face began to tremble as he tried and failed to conceal his horror at such a concept. “You can't know that,” he muttered.

  “I do know it.”

  “How?”

  Amrath waved the question aside with a listless hand. “It doesn't matter. What is important is that we seize the Eye from him at all costs.”

  “A moment ago, you were talking surrender. One does not make demands from his knees.”

&n
bsp; Amrath nodded slowly, and rose to his feet. The misery on his face was gone, replaced by grim purpose. “I don't intend to make any demands. I intend to surrender. I also intend to kill a man and take from him something that should never have existed. They will both happen at the same time.”

  Despite knowing silence was a better choice, Tasinal could not contain his shock or his words. “Are you suggesting what I think? Treachery? Under a flag of truce?”

  Amrath gave Tasinal an icy stare. “I am not confused about what I propose.”

  Noril shouted, “It's a confession of pure weakness!” He pointed an accusing finger at Amrath. “To yourself!”

  Amrath turned gaze to Noril, frowning. “So it is, and not something I do easily. But lying to myself is worse. In the face of this abomination, we are all weak. Will we compound weakness with cowardice and flinch from what we know must be done?”

  For long moments, none of them spoke. At last, Tasinal asked in a soft voice, “It could trigger a collapse, yes?”

  Amrath nodded, the weariness once again creeping into the corners of his eyes. “It's hazardous terrain, but not insurmountable. We must all keep our reasons for this well in mind, remember our priorities. As for me, I am convinced that it is not weakness to use whatever means I must. It is not death we face. It's being robbed of all we are.”

  Noril shuddered visibly. “Absorbed into the collective.”

  Tasinal shook his head in vehement denial. “Better to suffer a collapse!”

  Amrath nodded back at them. “Just so. One would still at least have the ability to disagree, to deny, even if he lacked the power to resist.”