The Dead God's Due (The Eye of the Lion Saga Book 1) (3 page)

Xanthius chuckled. “A
jest, Amrath. You said it yourself, we could use some good humor.”

“This is not the time.”

“You should have been
born a woman, Amrath. It would suit your moods better.”

Amrath glared at his old enemy
briefly, then softened and chuckled. “And you should have been
born a mole. It would suit your vision better.”

Xanthius shrugged, defeated.
“Fine. I confess, it’s disturbing. But what would you
have me do? Order an advance on their position?”

Amrath coughed in shock. “I
would not dare.”

“An unusual stance for a
Meite.”

“It is an unusual
circumstance.”

“You have not seen things
like this before?”

“If we could charm
beasts, we could charm men. Free will is precious, aye, but perhaps
it’s more the pity. What would the cost of a few minds be
compared to the blood we’ve shed?” He swept the sinful
idea aside with a wave of his hand. “This is something else,
something…primal.”

“The Torians?”

“I think not. I suppose
their methods could produce a beast master, but why would one be
here? And in any event, Torium was in no condition after….”
Amrath let the comment hang. “As I said, I will spare you the
details.”

Xanthius snorted in derision.
“More gods nonsense?”

Amrath waved a hand toward the
army of crows. “Explain it to me, then.”

Xanthius stood long moments,
watching them, considering. “In Prima, I once survived an
earthquake.” He stroked his chin in contemplation. “There’s
no warning, you know. Suddenly, the land just swats men and their
works aside like gnats. There is little you can do. You live or die
according to your luck and your reflexes. This seems like that.”

“Yes,” Amrath
murmured. “Implacable. Elemental. That is just how they felt,
in Torium.”

Xanthius sighed and clasped his
hands behind his back, trying to maintain an open mind. “You
truly believe you saw
gods
there?”

“Aye. I know we did.”

“But even if I accept
that there are gods, why would they be here?”

Amrath, suddenly haggard,
turned a weary gaze to Xanthius. “For the third time, I tell
you, I would spare you the nightmares.”

“And you should stop with
such foolishness. I am not a child.”

Amrath looked back at the army
of crows and heaved a long sigh. “Why would gods walk the
earth?” he asked softly, his voice almost a whisper. “
When
would they? It is not the beginning. What else can it be?”

Xanthius stood in grim silence,
staring at the sorcerer, his jaw clenched. A muscle beneath his
right eye began to twitch. “Madness.”

“Find me another answer,
then, if you can. I would welcome a pleasant delusion to warm me
against cold certainty.”

Xanthius pondered the question
for long moments, the rational part of his mind rejecting notions of
gods walking the earth, of the end of the world. And yet, as he
watched the silent, unmoving crows, he knew this was beyond his
experience. Amrath was the closest thing at hand to an expert on
such things.

“I have seen no gods,”
Xanthius said at last. “But if I do, and they would make war
on me, I will oblige them.”

“Bold,” Amrath
said, smiling. “Futile, but bold.”

“If I am to die, I would
as soon have it be as I have lived.”

“Aye,” Amrath said
with a nod. “It is the same for me.”

Al Asad’s cry cut through
the night, drawing their attention back to more immediate concerns.
It was not, Xanthius noted, a cry of pain. It was long and low, a
rumbling sigh of release, almost sexual.

Carsogenicus stood within the
flames, bound by thick ropes to a sturdy post, atop a hill of
burning wood. The flames were just beginning to lick at his flesh.
His boots were smoldering, and his ashen skin was darkening to an
almost healthy color.

“The road to oblivion is
warm!” he shouted. “This is no punishment! This is a
reward!”

One of the soldiers, an
Ilawehan, hurled a curse at the condemned man, and followed up with
a stone. The rock hit Carsogenicus in the forehead with a dull thud,
splitting the skin. White bone peeked from the ragged gash. Black,
dead blood ran down his cheeks like tears and dripped into the
flames, popping and spitting in defiance as Carsogenicus cackled
like a madman.

Xanthius shook his head in
consternation. He had to take control of the situation quickly,
before Carsogenicus could provoke his men further. A discipline
failure now could be the end of civilization, a fact that
Carsogenicus knew as well as Xanthius. The Monster might still take
them to the grave with him.
I
should have cut out his tongue
, Xanthius thought, cursing
the oversight under his breath as he moved quickly to the center of
the praetorium. “I will have order!” he roared in his
best battlefield voice. “The next man to break discipline will
join the Monster!”

Carsogenicus howled in
amusement as the flames rose higher. His pants were afire now. More
black blood oozed from his split, charred legs to drip into the
fire. The flames hissed and surged with each drop, consuming the
liquid hungrily and lapping for more. Xanthius cursed himself for
ever agreeing to this madness. He should have known this would
happen. The man was already dead! There would be no passing out from
smoke or heat. The Monster would taunt them until his tongue burned
away, and the memory of this horror, this inhuman act, would haunt
them to their deaths.

Xanthius longed to turn away
from the sight, but he could not have his men see him deny the very
thing he had commanded them to do. Nor would he spare himself the
ugliness of watching his sentence carried out. A leader who flinched
from his own justice was not just at all. He ground his teeth and
made his face into a stone mask. He would not turn from this.

Amrath appeared at Xanthius’s
side and placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Strength,
soldier. It is nearly done.”

The smell of cooking meat
rolled over them, as tantalizing as it was foul. Xanthius was
ravenous, as were all his men. This great host, this prodigious
beast of destruction that Alexander had bound together with the Eye,
was now a headless monster, lashing out in its death throes. The
supply lines had been the first organs to fail. Since Alexander’s
fall, few had eaten well but the crows. This smell was as cruel a
revenge as any the Monster might have devised. The only good thing
it brought was perspective. The memory of months of butchery, the
rivers of blood they had spilled, made even this pale in comparison.
Truly, what was burning the Monster compared to Butchering the
World?

“Elgar!”
Carsogenicus screamed, his voice ragged but still manic. His
dreadlocks were beginning to burn now, the ends curling inward, tiny
bits of them breaking off and floating upward in the draft of the
fire. They spiraled above his head, fading as they drifted, like a
crown of falling stars. “Grant me prophesy, that I might show
these fools their fate!”

The response was immediate. The
crows, hundreds of thousands of them, took flight at once, the
beating of their wings and the sound of their cries pounding like a
hurricane. The army looked to the sky in awe and terror as the great
flight of crows rose, the individual birds losing shape as they
flocked, black dots melting into groups, groups into lines, and at
last formed a cohesive, moving, three dimensional image of a
clenched gauntlet in the sky above Carsogenicus. As Xanthius
watched, two other flocks shaped themselves into huge spikes and
flew at the gauntlet, penetrating it, locking the fingers into
place. The birds continued to twirl and spin in the air, holding the
pattern as they rose and dove.

“I believe you now,”
Xanthius muttered to Amrath.

“I see it!”
Carsogenicus cried in a wet, choking voice. His hair was gone now,
and the flesh on his face was melting and burning. The fire spit and
popped like water in boiling oil as the black blood rained down from
his ruined frame. His body was little but charred ruins, bone and
viscera blackening under the heat of the flame as he continued to
struggle against his bonds. He turned his face toward the heavens,
his cracked and bleeding lips twisting into a smile of sublime
elation.

“The years run before me
as the rivers!” he screamed. “I see it all! All your
deaths! All your works laid to ruin! A world of ash! All!
All
unmade!”

Carsogenicus’s body gave
a sudden spasm. His blackened teeth, no longer covered by flesh,
clicked together like a hammer on an anvil. The enamel shattered,
and the Monster screamed in horror.

“No! I served you well! I
was to rest! You promised me oblivion!”

The flames erupted suddenly,
shooting toward the sky, and Carsogenicus screamed again as they
burned the rest of his flesh away, leaving only a grinning skull
atop blackened bones.

“I submit to your will,
Elgar!” it cried, the voice no longer that of a man, but now
the keening wail of a banshee, shaped by forces other than flesh.
“Hear me, mortals! This is the prophesy of Elgar! One thousand
years do the gods grant for the Sleeper to dream! One hundred
decades does the Eye of the Lion lie sundered! Ten centuries does
Torium rot and fester! Then will the Sleeper awake, the Eye be made
whole, and the chancre of Torium burst to spill its corruption upon
the world! The scion of Elgar will rise from the blood of Tasinal,
the Eye about his neck, in the City of Nothing, and the world shall
become as ash! So says the Destroyer!”

The crows circling overhead
broke their pattern and dove downward toward the fire, the beating
of their wings pushing the flames back. A single crow leapt toward
Carsogenicus’s skull and hooked talons into an eye socket.
Another crow followed and took hold of the other socket. The pair
rose on dark wings, feathers smoldering from the heat, and lifted
the skull into the sky. One after another they came, dismantling
Carsogenicus’s skeleton bone by bone, then circled overhead,
waiting, as the others continued the process. When it was done, the
entire flock rose again, screaming as they bore their grisly cargo
southward into the night sky.

Amrath broke the stunned
silence. “That was quite a funeral procession,” he said.

Xanthius glared at him briefly,
then shouted to him men, “The Monster is dead! But we are
still at war! All centurions will conduct readiness inspections in
one hour! Those centuries not passing will be disciplined severely!
Fall out and make ready!”

Xanthius nodded to himself in
satisfaction as his soldiers quickly dispersed and made themselves
busy. If they were a bit slower that usual, it made no matter. He
was proud of them. Even a prophesy from a god did little to sway
them from their discipline. Of course, those lacking that had died
in Prima. Survival was always a strong motivator.

“An inspection?”
Amrath asked, aghast. “At a time like this?”

“Most especially at a
time like this. Clear orders let them fall back on their training,
instead of their fear.”

“And us? Have you some
feat of leadership to blot this spectacle from our minds, as well?”

“We are leaders, Amrath.
We do not have the luxury of forgetting.”

“No,” Amrath
agreed. “We surely do not. This will all need to be considered
as we move forward.”

Xanthius looked at his former
enemy, and wondered just how much weight he should give to the
‘former’ part. As the Monster had noted, Amrath was
not
here to kneel. Certainly, for now, their interests were aligned, but
at some point, the sorcerer would want to resume his war against the
lawyers and politicians. He could no more lay down that cause than
Xanthius could take it up.

The war was far from over. That
much was certain.

Prelate Yazid Valerian, soldier
of Ilaweh, glowered at the bare, stone walls of the sparse reception
area, awaiting the arrival of his prince. He had long since passed
the point of anger at the delay. In other circumstances, he might
well have stormed out in an indignant huff, casting a few loud
curses in his wake to make his displeasure clear, but not this time.
His business was too urgent to permit such indulgence. It had taken
some measure of arm twisting, once quite literally, to arrange the
meeting, and he had no intention of allowing his pride to undo that
work.

Besides, it was becoming all
too clear that this wait was deliberate, and leaving now would be
surrender. Michael had been curiously unavailable since Yazid had
delivered his treatise three weeks prior, and almost certainly, this
situation was calculated to use up what little patience Yazid might
still retain. It was, he conceded, a damnably effective maneuver. He
tried to soothe his deep sense of urgency with the thought that this
was Ilaweh’s way of teaching him patience, but the truth had a
way of peeking through that bit of self delusion every few minutes,
to prod at him like a mean child with a wooden sword might torment a
caged beast.

Still, he had little choice,
and so he continued to wait, the seconds slouching by, shuffling and
dragging their feet in the sand instead of marching onward with
precision and grace. He stared out of the single, tiny window.
Below, the city of Bagdreme sprawled before him like a jewel, its
minarets gleaming in the bright sun, and beyond, the burning desert.
He tried to see things as a visitor might, to trick himself into
being fascinated by the solid, stoic architecture that had stood
against the sands of centuries, impressed by the solidity of their
fortifications, but it was useless. He was a native, and no amount
of clever thought would change that.

For a while, he passed the time
examining the few decorations in the room, but there were precious
few to take in. The Rock of Xanthia was a fine fortress, but it was
short on aesthetics, as it should be. Who could see a king who lived
in opulence as anything but a weakling who should be overthrown?
Yazid admired a well crafted sword that hung on one wall above a
long, wooden bench, noting with satisfaction that it was no simple
showpiece, but had seen actual combat. He tried searching for
inspiration in a painting of Xanthius that hung on the opposite
wall, telling himself that surely that proud warrior would have
stood here for a month, if that was what was necessary.

At last, he turned to examining
himself, cataloging the origins of the various dents and marks on
his own armor and sword, and the scars that he had earned over the
years. He was surprised, as he always was when he stopped to
consider them, at just how many there were, remembering how he had
received this one fighting a Laurean somewhere in Gruppenwald, and
that one when he had fallen under the heels of a horse and had
barely survived. There were hours of tales in those blemishes.

Hours, in fact, were just what
he needed. He waited three before he was finally rewarded. He broke
from his reminiscing at the sound of the latch, and shifted himself
to a parade rest stance, forcing his face to take on a passive,
disinterested expression, one more suitable for meeting with a
prince.

Michael entered without
ceremony. He was a fairly tall man, though not as tall as Yazid, and
rail thin, with the hawkish features and dark, brooding stare that
all his family bore. He was dressed only in simple black pants and
shirt, unarmed, his long dark hair loose and flowing halfway down
his back. His pointed, well trimmed beard fairly bristled as he
glared at Yazid with undisguised annoyance.

“You’re a tenacious
bastard, Yazid,” he said by way of greeting, and extended a
dark, calloused hand.

Yazid extended his own even
darker and larger hand, and gripped Michael’s firmly. “Ilaweh
teaches us patience through frustration,” he said with a
smile, pleased with his victory

Michael withdrew his hand with
a nod, and took up his own parade rest stance. “What is it you
want, Prelate?”

“You are avoiding me.”

“So I am. But only
because I have no time, and your wild fantasies take away from more
important things.”

Yazid nodded toward Michael
with a scowl. “That much is clear from your dress. What could
be more pressing that my ‘fantasy’, as you would call
it? Is not warfare a matter of import with you, these days?”

“Aye, warfare is of
greatest import.
Real
warfare, not this half-baked prophesy of dead gods and emperors
walking the earth again.” Micheal’s gaze shifted to the
window a moment, his eyes scanning the burning sands as if searching
for hidden enemies. “You know damned well that the Jacynth
issue is at a boiling point. If my father does not act soon—“

“It is a matter of
proportion, surely.”

“Proportion?”
Michael snapped his attention back to Yazid. “I’ll tell
you about proportion. The women are in revolt! My own wife has
banned me from our marriage bed as a coward. She’ll not have
me return while a single Jacynthi dog still rules!” Michael
pounded his fist against his chest to emphasize his point. “And
I am a prince! Never mind that the Jacynthi are evil and
deserve
what they get. What will you do to sway the masses of sex-starved
soldiers?” He turned away and began pacing, glaring at the
floor, the walls, his gaze anywhere but on Yazid. “I tell you,
it’s inevitable, and it will be
soon
.
My father knows it, and still he drags his feet. It’s
madness!”

Yazid drew in a deep breath and
let it out slowly, determined not to be drawn off topic. “Michael,
you
must
listen!
This is not some fevered zealotry, it is hard fact! These are not
religious writings I put before you, they are historical documents!
Xanthius
himself
wrote of this!”

“You interpret them
zealously,” Micheal said with a snort. He continued pacing for
long moments. Yazid’s heart seemed loud in his ears as he
waited, hoping against hope, but it was in vain. Michael stopped
pacing, looked him in the eye, and declared, “This is a fool’s
errand.”

Yazid opened his mouth to
protest, but Michael stopped him with a raised hand and a face of
stone. “My decision is made. If you are set to go traipsing
off to Prima on a wing and a prayer, most likely to die, then you’ll
do it on your own, with your own men. Xanthia’s soldiers are
all
needed here.”

“You could spare a single
century!”

“I cannot. They would be
noticed leaving, and it would raise questions that I cannot address
at the moment.”

“But Michael—“

“Enough!” Michael
shouted. He slashed his hand through the air in a gesture of
dismissal. “Try not to break anyone else’s arm on your
way out, Prelate.”

With that, Michael turned and
left, leaving the door open behind him.

Yazid struggled to constrain
his anger, and failed. He smashed a mailed fist into the bench,
splintering the wood, then, as an afterthought, lifted the bench
into the air and hurled it against the wall, sending debris flying
in all directions.

For long moments Yazid stood,
chest heaving, tears of frustration welling in his eyes, when
suddenly, he heard movement from the doorway. He spun, instinctively
reaching for his sword, to find himself face to face with a second
chance.

Philip, Michael’s
brother, stood in the door frame, armed and armored, hair bound and
tucked against his head as was proper for a warrior, his expression
grim. He was considerably larger and more powerfully built than
Michael, but shared the same features, the same smoldering stare,
the same skin colored halfway between Yazid’s and that of a
Laurean. “It must be important, indeed, that your passion
would move you to destroy my furniture.”

Yazid bowed his head in shame.
“Forgive me, my prince,” he said softly. “I insult
your home. I will repay you ten times for it, I swear.”

“It’s nothing.”
Philip strode into the room, his feet sounding heavily on the
stonework, and closed the door behind him. “And I am no
politician. I leave that to my brother. If you must use an
honorific, I prefer Imperator.”

“Imperator,” Yazid
said with a nod. “I thought you were—“

“In Erikar, yes. I was,
but matters here require my presence.” Philip looked toward
the painting of Xanthius, his eyes clouded and distant, and he said,
half to himself, “My father is becoming an impediment that
Xanthia can ill afford.”

Yazid nodded his understanding.
“He is of the old ways. He provokes you deliberately.”

“Aye.” Philip
allowed himself a slight smile. “Still, it is a difficult
thing to raise my hand against him.” Philip's expression grew
wistful, and his eyes distant. “The beatings he gave me as a
boy when I dared such things. He will always be a titan in my mind,
I think, even after this.” He grew somber once again as he
focused on Yazid. “But that is not why I am here with you.”

“You heard our
conversation?”

Philip nodded. “And I
read your treatise. I find it compelling.”

“Would that I had known
you were here. I would have placed it in your hands instead of
Michael’s.”

“No matter. It comes to
the same end. My brother is right. He can ill afford to have any
appearance of instability when we…convince my father to
retire.” Philip paused, staring out the window as his brother
had just done, contemplating the same matters. For a moment, Yazid’s
heart sank, certain that he had already seen the end of this play.
“But he is also ignorant of some things,” Philip
continued, and Yazid dared to hope. “Your treatise rings true
to me. In Erikar, we encountered a small village of Elgar cultists,
who spouted much the same things you note in your work.”

“Indeed? What did they
say?”

“The end of the
millennium, Elgar rising, that sort of thing.”

“Xanthius wrote of
Carsogenicus saying the same things before his execution,”
Yazid said, excited now. “‘The scion of Elgar will rise
from the blood of Tasinal, the Eye about his neck, in the City of
Nothing, and the world shall become as ash.’ Can there be any
doubt, now?”

Philip answered with a grunt.
“There is always doubt.” He drummed his fingers against
the windowsill, his square jaw working as he considered. “Knowledge
is a weapon, and I am a warrior. I will have all the weapons I can
find. If I give you the century you asked for, will you lead it?”

“I will! I will leave
this very moment! But how will you avoid the questions Michael
worries about?”

“I have men in Aviar, my
personal retinue, on leave since we returned. You will not find
finer soldiers or more devout servants of Ilaweh in all of Xanthia.
And you will, as you say, go now. I will prepare a letter. I expect
you to depart within the day, and be quiet about it. I can beat my
brother into agreement if he hears of our arrangement, but I’d
prefer to avoid it.” Philip flashed a broad, honest grin. “He
hits damned hard, even as thin as he is. He’s quick.”

“I will tell no one until
I reach Aviar,” Yazid promised.

Philip turned as if to leave,
then paused, and turned back. “Perhaps Michael is right, and
this is a fool’s errand. So be it. I will expect a map of the
entire coast of Prima. But if he is wrong, I will expect more.”
He began counting on his fingers as he spoke, tapping each one as he
listed his points. “I will expect a map of this ‘city of
nothing’, and I will expect troop strengths, defenses, the
disposition of the civilian populace, the strength of their resolve,
how much hardship they will endure in defending their city. I will
know the political factions, who they hate, who they are allied
with. I will know the weapons they can bring to bear.”
Finished with his counting, Philip pointed a single finger at Yazid.
“And understand this: you are all expendable, save the man who
brings me that information. Do not waste your lives, but do not
hesitate to give them up if necessary. Ilaweh be with you.”

“Ilaweh is great,”
Yazid said with a nod. He hammered a fist against his breastplate,
and left without another word.

The desert sun gathered him in
a warm, friendly embrace as he exited the long, narrow entrance of
the Rock of Xanthia. His young acolyte, Ahmed Justinius, was waiting
for him on the steps outside, prowling back and forth like a caged
lion, his white tunic darkened and clingy with sweat. Hard muscle
rippled beneath his almost black skin as he paced, impatience
radiating from him like heat wavering on the sand. His right hand
hovered close to the hilt of the sword he wore at his belt, as if
battle might be joined at any moment.
We will fight soon enough,
boy.

But, no, that was the wrong
word anymore. Yazid felt both the swell of pride and the emptiness
of loss in his chest to look upon his young ward, the sense of
inevitability as his heart acknowledged what his eyes could not
deny: the boy he had raised was truly gone forever. Here, in his
place, was as strong a warrior as Ilaweh had ever caused to spring
from the sands. It was a good exchange, a wise one, Yazid knew, but
surely, it was a painful one as well. And it seemed so sudden.
No,
it is just the right time. He is needed now. Ilaweh is great.

Yazid’s sense of loss
passed quickly into wry amusement as he realized he was not the only
one contemplating Ahmed’s physique. Near the bottom of the
stairs, three young women, resplendent and alluring in sheer,
revealing silks, had gathered to admire his student, considerably
less conflicted than Yazid in their appreciation. The strike Michael
had mentioned would be taking its toll upon them as well as the men.
They struck poses, competing to see which would first attract their
target’s attention, but it was in vain. Ahmed continued to
pace, jaw clenched, oblivious, brooding. After a few moments, they
turned back toward the forum, clearly disappointed. Doubtless, their
diatribes against the Jacynthi would have an even more savage edge
this afternoon when they had their turn to speak.