The Mad God's Muse (The Eye of the Lion Saga Book 2) (24 page)

“But why did he kill the
man?”

“He was angry with him,”
Logrus said. “It was another man who came to see my mother. I
think he may have hurt her, or stole from her.” He shrugged.
“I was very young. I just remember that he told me it was
necessary. He said that as her son, it was my duty.”

“And this man raised
you,” Aiul guessed.

“No,” said Logrus.
“He went away when I was nine. To war. He never came back. I
missed him. But that did not change things.

“I was thirteen when my
mother died.”

He had made her tea and toast.
Usually, she awoke earlier and did the same for him, so it had
seemed a kind gesture.

With eyes still a bit clouded
from sleep, Logrus did not understand at first, why she was so cold,
so stiff. He shook her, panic growing within him, and drew back the
thin quilt. It was then that he saw the dark bruises around her
throat, and understood.

The dishes in his hand fell,
taking hours to reach the floor, as his scream of horror and pain
echoed from the drafty timbers of the tiny cottage.

Time, it seemed, had lost its
meaning. He had no idea how much had passed as he sat by her bed,
holding her cold hand. Only the urgency in his bladder served to
mark the passing of time. He ate and drank, he relieved himself, he
returned to her side, over and over, until there was nothing left.
Then he had no reason to move at all.

A part of him understood that
he needed to go out, to find food, or at least water, but the fear
in him was overpowering. What else would change if he allowed his
attention to waver, his guardianship to lapse? It was unthinkable.

The world grew smaller and
smaller for him, keeping time with the shrinking of his own body and
soul. His lips grew cracked. His throat became a desert. Yet he
remained at vigil, as if his mother might return to her body, as
long as it was kept safe.

There came a point where he
knew he would not survive, that he was too weak to change his mind
and seek sustenance, even if he chose to do so. The knowledge came
as a relief. The vigil was too hard, his fear too overpowering.
Death would be a welcome lifting of his burden.

It was then, in the darkness,
surrounded by the stench of his mother’s rotting corpse, that
he first heard the voice.

It was like none he had ever
heard, a comforting, warm, fatherly voice. It seemed to stroke his
cheek with compassion, and drive away the fear in his heart.

“How long will you suffer
here, child?” it asked.

Logrus waited in the darkness,
unable to respond. His throat refused to form any words. The fear
soon returned, but somehow, it seemed weaker, his hunger and thirst
more noticeable.

Time passed unmarked for him.
He no longer had the means to measure it, though he knew that he had
been in and out of consciousness. He longed to hear the voice again.
He became convinced that it was a herald of his death, his release
from suffering, and he hoped fervently for its return.

“Blood calls for blood,”
the voice said at last, the same voice, but different in form. It
was not warm, now, but cold, the scream of winter wind, the clatter
of hailstones on a roof, the bite of water so icy that it can kill
in seconds.

Logrus struggled to speak, but
his body would not cooperate. Despair welled within him as he
struggled with his last reserves of energy to answer, to ask the
voice for help, but he was simply too weak. At last, he felt the
darkness close in as his body slipped towards death.

He had not thought the dead
would dream.

He was in a tiny room without
windows or even a door. The walls were smooth, dull metal that
turned the slightest sound into a symphony of echoes. The light was
dim, without a source, as if the walls themselves emitted some tiny
luminescence. Fear gnawed at his gut, vague, undefined, fear of
nothing in particular, of everything in general. The world was
simply too much for him, and thus, he preferred the box. How he had
come there was, to him, a meaningless question. He had always been
there, and he had no desire to leave, no need to understand. Cold
comfort was the best he could hope for.

After an eternity, or perhaps
only a few moments, he was startled by an alien sound, a click,
followed by a grating. There was scarcely time for him to
contemplate it before a door sized section of the blank wall opened,
flooding the room with searing, brilliant white light.

Logrus turned his head away,
the pain in his eyes so intense that he was momentarily blinded.
Metal rang on metal as someone, or something, entered the room. The
grinding sound came again, and another click.

Fear welled in Logrus’s
chest, strangling him, but with it came hope. Perhaps this was the
end. That was the only comfort he could imagine. He closed his eyes
and prayed for a blow, but none came. The newcomer remained silent,
the stillness broken only by the sound of Logrus’s panicked
breath and an intermittent dripping sound.

“End me,” he
begged.

“I am not come for that.”
It was the voice again! Yet, in the dream, he could not remember
where he had heard it before. He only knew that it was an anchor in
a world that seemed to be slipping from beneath him.

“Speak again,” he
pleaded.

“What would you hear,
child?”

“Anything,” Logrus
sobbed. “It makes the fear go away.”

“Look upon me.”

Logrus shook his head in
denial.

“Look upon me, child!”
The voice was changed, now, a hammer striking against an anvil, a
command that brooked no defiance.

Logrus opened his eyes, and
raised his head slowly, his lips quivering with fear and other, less
identifiable emotions. The figure before him was a tall man in
battered armor, powerfully built. Cold, black eyes stared at him
from a familiar face. Logrus struggled to remember where he had seen
the sharp features before, and with a shock, realized that they were
his own. They were older, with lines that did not yet exist in his
own smooth skin, and with a pointed beard that he could not yet
grow, but there was no denying that he was staring up at himself.

Logrus could not understand,
but neither could he tear his gaze from the figure before him.

“It is not your time,
child,” the figure said. “You see this, now, do you
not?”

Logrus buried his face in his
hands, unable to bear the undeniable truth the man spoke. “How
can I go on?” he croaked. “I am afraid!”

“It is necessary,”
said the newcomer.

“Who are you to say so?”
Logrus asked, angry now despite his terror.

The man stared at him, his
black eyes seeming to bore into Logrus’s very soul. “I
have many names,” the elder Logrus answered. “Destroyer.
Violator. Monster. Hater. Elgar.”

Logrus shuddered at the words.
Yet, again, he knew, without understanding why, that they were true.
“I know the name,” he gasped. “What do you want of
me?”

“There are few who can
understand,” Elgar said. He knelt beside Logrus and touched a
hand to his cheek. Logrus gasped at the warmth, the compassion that
flowed through him, driving out the crippling fear in his heart.
“Those precious few, I am permitted to aid. Those who are
cheated.” Logrus saw, in his mind, his mother’s cold,
agonized form, stilled forever by a callous hand. “Abused.”
He saw, as if he were there, her murderer choking the life from her,
heard her strangled cries as she struggled against the inevitable.
“Abandoned.” His vision was of a half boy, half man,
lying in his own filth beside a rotting corpse, too dehydrated even
to shed tears.

Elgar grasped at something, and
Logrus felt a wrenching sensation deep within his chest. As Elgar
drew his hand away, he seemed to draw something out of the boy. A
wispy, shimmering, barely visible streamer hung from his hand. It
was like a living creature, with tentacles like an octopus, nearly
liquid, and as it struggled vainly in Elgar’s grasp, it became
more visible, turning a putrescent, mottled yellow and red. Logrus
stared at it with loathing. There was a malevolence about the thing
that Logrus had no words to describe. He hated it, wanted to destroy
it, but, with a shock, he realized he did not fear it.

He did not fear anything at
all.

Elgar shook the viscous, slimy
thing once, and it changed form, oozing into a flat, diaphanous
sheet. He shook it again, and it changed substance, becoming a
simple black cloak.

“I take the fear from
your heart, and forge armor for you,” Elgar said. He stepped
forward and draped the cloak over Logrus’s shoulders. To his
surprise, Logrus found the garment warm and comforting.

“Is there a price?”
Logrus asked.

“A small one,”
Elgar said. “What you do in my name, I would have you record.”
Logrus felt a sudden weight in pocket of the cloak. He reached in
and withdrew a small book. The cover was red leather, embossed in
black with a mailed fist shot through with spikes. He flipped
through the pages, but they were all blank.

Logrus looked at Elgar,
confused. “What am I to do in your name?”

Elgar smiled, and raised his
hand to Logrus’s cheek again. “What is necessary,”
said the Dead God. “You will know. I swear a pact to you, this
day. Your flesh will not fail you while you do my work.
Our
work. You will not know defeat.”

Logrus nodded. “So be
it,” he said.

Elgar smiled, and waved his
hand. The walls of the room shimmered, and vanished. Blinding light
shot through Logrus as if he stood in the heart of the sun itself.
He felt his flesh melt from his bones, the agony beyond anything he
had ever known. There was nothing but light.

And yet he endured.

Logrus woke with a start. Time
was once again flowing normally. The small cottage reeked of rot and
filth, and his stomach was howling with hunger.

He struggled to his feet,
staggering with weakness. Something slipped from his lap and
clattered to the floor as he did do. With supreme effort, he bent to
retrieve the book he had seen in his dreams, marveling that it could
be here. The dream had, at least in some way, been real. He lit a
candle and looked about for the cloak, but it was nowhere in sight.
He shrugged. Perhaps the cloak was just part of the dream.

Whatever the case, he was clear
minded, now. He knew precisely what he needed to do. With a wistful
smile, he looked on his mother one last time, seeing her not as she
was, but how she had been. He laid the burning candle to her
bedclothes and left.

As he staggered away from the
burning cottage, he paused briefly, staring back at the
conflagration. He would have liked to stay, to watch until it was
truly done, but hunger and thirst gnawed at him with terrible
urgency, stronger even than the fear that had ruled him before. He
had to find food and water immediately.

There was a stream nearby,
where he usually fetched water. He drank until he felt he would
burst, and it still seemed too little, but the thirst faded to a
dull throbbing in the back of his mind. Now, he had to find food.

He set off down the worn,
rutted road to town. He had no money, and knew no one. How he would
eat there was a mystery, but it was the only place to go. The three
miles seemed more like three months, but Logrus was determined. Had
Elgar not promised that his flesh would not fail? He endured the
pain and hunger, because there was no alternative. At least there
was moonlight, so that he did not stumble from blindness as well as
weakness.

The town was a tiny hamlet of
no more than two hundred citizens. Its few buildings huddled about
the road like vagabonds at a campfire, their aging walls barely
shelter against the wind. A small cemetery stood outside the town
limits, the final destination for most of the townspeople, who lived
and died all within a few miles of where they started.

Logrus felt a change within him
as he neared the graves, an urgency that dulled his hunger. Images
crowded into his mind unbidden, gray visions of peaceful death in
sleep; of disease wracked, final throes; of precipitous falls that
ended in darkness. Each of these, while jarring, gave him little
pause.

But one was different. Through
a red haze, he saw the pair, a girl his age and an older man. She
was gasping for breath as he held a pillow over her face, the
muscles in his arms corded in effort. More images tore through his
mind like lightening strikes: the girl being raped by the man, over
and over, through many years; brutal beatings and dire threats of
consequences if she spoke; a whispered conversation with another
woman. Logrus closed his eyes, staggered at the train of horrific
images, praying that they would end. He felt himself drawn into the
cemetery, at last settling before a particular grave. The ground and
tombstone glowed red, pulsing as if in time with his heartbeat.

Logrus nodded. He pulled the
book from his pocket and opened it. A black stylus, depending from a
silver chain, fell from the pages and hung in the air, waiting, as
pained, whispering voices filled his ears with names. Logrus took
the stylus and wrote:

“It is necessary that
Jerado Arvina die for his crimes.”

Aiul, fairly drunk, nearly fell
over as he gaped in shock at Logrus’s tale. “Mei!”
he slurred, catching himself. “Did you kill him?”

Logrus nodded. “Ate his
food, too,” he said with a slight smile.

Aiul shook his head and
chuckled, then grew somber. “I would never have guessed you
had such depth,” he said. “Did you hunt down the man who
killed your mother?”

“I tried,” Logrus
told him. “But he had fled town the night before.”
Logrus sighed as he contemplated what was clearly a long-standing
source of frustration. “I have tracked him off and on over the
years, but there is always something that comes up.”