The Dead God's Due (The Eye of the Lion Saga Book 1) (8 page)

Lara rolled across the bed and
punched him lightly in his thigh. “What are you up to?”

“You doubt me,” he
answered, dancing out of her reach. “I must earn your trust.”

Garas, Aiul’s slave since
birth, was beginning to show a bit of gray in his hair, but was
otherwise unchanged by time since Aiul had known him: fat, jolly,
and red faced. He entered, carrying Aiul’s robe and a carafe
of water. “It seems you two are well,” he said with a
wry smile as he offered the robe to Aiul.

Aiul slipped into the robe,
then fixed Garas with a very serious gaze. “We are. But there
is something important we must discuss before small talk.”

“Oh, my, of course, my
lord. What is your will?”

“There will be no more
dancing in this house,” Aiul declared as he pointed a finger
at his slave. “None. Do you understand?”

Lara giggled and hid her face
beneath the sheets. “You’re mad!”

Garas regarded him quizzically.
“Dancing, you say?”

“Dancing. We’ll
have none of it here.”

Garas answered with a grave
nod. “We’ll dispense with dancing immediately, my lord.
I’ll have anyone caught dancing whipped.”

“Oh, no!” Lara
cried. “You will not!”

“Aye, I shall, and within
an inch of their life,” Garas told her. “Perhaps even
unto death, if it seems prudent.”

Lara waved a hand in dismissal.
“Mei, I will not be the cause of anyone’s beatings! Take
it back, Aiul! It’s cruel!”

Aiul put his hands on his hips
in feigned shock. “Such language, from a lady!”

Lara clapped a hand over her
mouth, embarrassed, then lowered it. “You see? I’ll
mortify you!”

“Oh, she’s taking
us far too seriously, Garas.”

Garas nodded. “Indeed she
is. I know the answer, master.”

“Do you ever not know the
answer?”

“Never,” Garas
said, and without warning, broke into a silly dance.

“Stop that at once!”
Aiul said, trying to suppress a grin. “Garas, do something
about it!”

Lara fell backward in the bed,
laughing out loud. “You’re both mad!”

Garas danced his way toward
where Lara lay beneath the bedclothes, still naked, and therefore
quite trapped. “Only a madman would dance when the master
ordered there be none! I’ll beat the ruffian into submission
and tie him up at once!” He began pounding his fists against
his own chest in rhythm, and Aiul followed by drumming on the foot
board with his hands.

“Are you sure you’re
beating him hard enough?” Aiul asked as Lara, tears streaming
from her eyes, pulled the sheet entirely over her head.

“Oh, aye, he’ll be
surrendering any minute now!”

“Get away from me, you
madmen, or I’ll scream!” Lara cried through peals of
laughter. She ducked from beneath the bedclothes and hurled a pillow
at Garas before retreating to hiding once again.

“Perhaps you should take
the miscreant out of the lady’s sight,” Aiul said.
“She’s very delicate sensibilities, you know.”

“Mei!” Lara cursed,
her voice muffled by the bedclothes over her head.

“Of course,” Garas
said, still doing his odd chest thumping jig as he sidled toward the
door.

Lara waited until she heard the
latch click before peeking out. “You’re simply dreadful,
you are! The both of you!”

“It lifted your mood,
didn’t it?” he asked, gazing gently at her. “We’ve
played that game many times, and it always did for me.”

Lara wiped tears from her eyes
and nodded. “It did.”

“Then listen. I’ve
told you I had a wonderful surprise. Are you ready to hear?”
He sat on the bed beside her, waiting for her to answer.

“Stop taunting me with
it! Tell me!”

Aiul kissed her quickly, then
held her face and gazed deeply into her eyes. “You are to be
nothing less than my wife, Lara. You will have slaves, and jewels,
and safety. And you will live in a home that befits our station. The
penthouse in the Cradle!”

Lara’s jaw dropped in
shock. “How can that be? Your mother relented?”

Aiul cackled and shook his
head. “The heartless statue wouldn’t budge. But Ariano
will speak for me! Isn’t it amazing?”

Lara nodded in excitement,
momentarily speechless.

Aiul raised an eyebrow at her
silence. “Well, woman, does it please you or not?”

“Yes!” she gasped
at last. “Yes, it pleases me!” She pushed her lips
forward against his and took her own kiss, a longer, deeper one.
The, suddenly, she pulled back, a look of horror on her face.

“Mei, I really
will
embarrass you!”

“You will if you use that
kind of language in polite places,” he said with a chuckle

“I’m serious, Aiul!
I truly know nothing! I don’t even know your father’s
name!”

“Neither do I,”
Aiul said. “He was a commoner that mother dismissed. You don’t
need to know the names, anyway, as long as you know a generation or
two of houses.” He gestured to himself with a grin. “Amrath
being the most important. Me, you, our child, my Mother, and my
Grandfather are all of House Amrath, so that’s simple enough.”
Aiul rubbed a hand against his forehead, his brow wrinkling in
thought. “Mother’s mother was House Freth, as I recall.
I never knew her, to be honest. She died giving birth to Mother. By
the time I came along, Grandfather Lothrian had taken up with
Ariano.”

“He’s the great
villain, yes?”

Aiul nodded, a sour look on his
face. “A sorcerer. Tasinalt put him to death for it.”

Lara tried to process this, but
it made no sense. She squirmed, not wanting to contradict him, but
she needed to understand.. “She seems so young to have done
so.”

Aiul raised an eyebrow,
confusion written on his face. “Ah,” he said after a
moment, nodding and smiling now. “I see, you’re
confusing father and daughter Not Tasinalt-a, just Tasinalt. They
like to use the house name as a kind of title for the position, but
they add letters on the end as it suits them.”

“Why?”

Aiul’s face was perfectly
blank for a moment. “I don’t really know.” He
raised an eyebrow, thinking, then shrugged again. “Arrogance,
I suppose.”

“Tasinalt,” Lara
repeated. “Tasinalt-a’s father. And he was the lich
emperor?”

Aiul’s eyes grew wide in
shock. “Mei, no! You really don’t know anything, do
you?” He shook his head in wonder. “Fine, fine, that’s
what we’re fixing, isn’t it?
Tasinal
was the lich
emperor.” He fixed her with a grave stare. “
He
was the founder of house Tasinal, as Amrath was the founder of my
own house. Make sure, if nothing else, you get both of those names
correct.”

Lara giggled at his serious
tone, and poked him in the chest. “Then why are you not
Amrathal or Amrathor instead of Aiul, I wander?”

Aiul held his serious face a
moment longer, then cracked a broad grin. “Because house
Tasinal has the greater claim on arrogance, I suppose,” he
said with a laugh.

Lara, still naked, felt a
sudden chill. She wrapped her arms about herself and shivered. “It’s
horrid, all of it, you know? Lich emperors and wicked sorcerers. You
must all have nightmares most every night.”

Aiul chuckled. “Three or
four times a week is about average for a noble, I suppose.”

Lara could barely conceive of
such madness. “How could anyone follow a lich emperor? It’s
insane!” The very thought made her feel as if spiders were
crawling over her skin. “He’d have sat on the throne,
all rotting, and not a single person would be allowed to scream or
run away.”

“Well, he wasn’t
rotten to start with, you know,” Aiul said, looking a bit
wounded.
I’ve insulted him! I am such a fool!
“He
started out just fine.” Aiul lay back on his
pillows and sighed, smiling again now. “I don’t even
know that he was rotten by the end, but it was six hundred years, so
I suspect he was indeed worse for wear. I wouldn’t know. He
disappeared four hundred years ago.”

Lara gasped in shock. “He
rotted away to dust?”

Aiul rose up on his elbow and
turned toward her, shaking his head back and forth. “You and
this rotting! No, he simply couldn’t be found.”

“He finally collapsed
into a heap of bones like he should have, and Elgar take him!”

Aiul sighed and lay back on the
pillow. “Well, I’m sure Elgar will take all the souls he
can lay hands on.”

She knew she should leave it
here. If she kept going, she would surely anger him, but it was all
so alien, so much to think about
.
If I don’t talk it out, I’ll never get it
down.
“Sorcery! It’s horrid, like the things you all
eat! And your own
grandfather
!
You knew him, right?”

Aiul nodded again, but said
nothing, just stared back at her.
Green. He’ll have more
soon.

She stared at him a moment,
grinning, feeling green herself. “Horrid!” she repeated,
almost squeaking in distaste. “Was he very wicked, then? I
suspect he must have done horrible things. Did any slaves go
missing?”

Aiul laughed out loud at this.
“I am surprised you commoners aren’t in charge, with
such active imaginations as that! No, no slaves went missing.”
His gaze moved to her breasts, and he ran a hand over her thigh.
“And as for wicked, he never seemed so to me. Well, except for
when he took a strap to me for insolence.” He paused and
smiled briefly. “Which happened more often than I should care
to admit.”

Lara laughed. “You’re
bad enough. But I would have expected you to have a whipping boy or
some such.”

Aiul sneered at the notion.
“Maybe House Veril has such idiocy, but in House Amrath,
insolent children are whipped, noble or not.” He ran his hand
up her back, then paused. “That’s not a problem, I
assume?”

Lara chuckled at this briefly
and shook her head, but her humor suddenly vanished. She felt her
eyes swelling in her head as she made a connection. “Mei, the
woman speaking for us, Ariano? She fucked a sorcerer!” Lara
feigned convulsions, then scratched at her arms as if they were
covered with bugs. “
Horrid
!”

Aiul grinned wickedly at her.
“You’d better stop making fun of my people or I’ll
have them serve something particularly disgusting at the wedding.
Snails, perhaps?”

“Mei, don’t you
dare
! I could
never eat a snail!”

“Ah, but you’d have
to, at least on that day. You’d have to show yourself worthy
of being a nobleman’s wife!”

Lara shuddered and stuck out
her tongue. “Fine, I’ll say no more. It’s all
perfectly normal, the sorcery, the lich emperors, but snails, I
simply cannot tolerate.”

“Then we shall ban
snails,” Aiul chuckled. He pressed her back into the pillow.
“I’ll quiz you on all of this tomorrow, you know.”

“I think I can remember.”

“Good. Because right now
I have other things on my mind.”

As they entwined once again,
Lara felt something different, something softer, deeper, and
multifaceted. She could see it, hear it, feel it, something more
beautiful than she could ever have imagined, but she could find no
words to describe it.

It’s red.

Ahmed knew one thing very well:
he hated the sea. Oh, it was all good and well to look at it from
the shore, but to ride upon it was another thing entirely.

Yazid and the Prince's men
called their vessel a ship, but to Ahmed it was a cage, a prison
without walls that was like as not to sink like a stone into the
ever-shifting water, leaving him to drown. They promised him it was
a good ship, that it would float even through a hurricane, but Ahmed
had doubts, and no way of knowing the truth. This was the first ship
he had ever seen. It was made of wood. It had sails. What else was
there to know about ships?

Then there was the sickness. It
had begun the first day he boarded the floating prison, and he had
been a laughingstock for a week before it had eased. Even now,
months into their voyage, the feelings of queasiness still rose in
him when the sea was rough, and it was all he could do to keep
whatever meal he had last eaten. At least he had grown better at
hiding it. Of all the torturous aspects of sea travel he had
encountered, being mocked was the worst by far.

“Ahmed!” Yazid
called in a stern voice. “Come!”

Ahmed was inclined to refuse,
but he did not relish a beating, and that was just what insolence
would buy him. If he were well, he would try Yazid, beating or no,
and surely do some beating himself in return, but this sickness
crippled him. A beating well earned was honorable enough, but he was
certain to vomit the moment he took a punch to the gut, and that
would be humiliating.

He followed Yazid into the skin
of the ship, silent, to the ward room. The place was dark, lit only
by a single oil lantern, and smelled of hemp, oil, and tobacco.
Brutus Samir, a Tribune of Prince Philip’s legions, sat at a
heavy, wooden table with Centurion Sandilianus al Rashid, and the
ship’s navigator, Tahir. All three were as different as night
and day. Brutus was dark skinned, bald, and powerfully built, while
Sandilianus was pale, thin and wiry, with sharp features, smoldering
eyes, and long, raven hair. Tahir was stranger still, his features
similar to Brutus’s, but lighter, and his hair was almost red.
By Ahmed’s reckoning, Tahir was a half-breed, a mongrel cross
of true men and barbarians. Ahmed disliked him intensely, not merely
for his barbarian heritage, but for his frequent blasphemies. Were
it not for the seasickness, Ahmed would have offered Tahir a beating
on more than one occasion.

Brutus nodded to Yazid, and
cast a wary eye at Ahmed. “Why bring the boy? What good is he
besides fucking?”

Yazid’s laughter was
honest and deep. “Perhaps not even that. But he has his uses.”

“You say it like you
don’t know,” Brutus said with a leer. “I find that
hard to believe. Surely you have sampled the goods from time to
time?”

Yazid laughed again. “Oh,
no, it is not that way with us. Ahmed is like a son to me. But even
so, we are not so fortunate as you. Our tastes are for women.”

Ahmed cocked his head and
grinned. “If he wanted to challenge me, I would let him fuck
me anyway, if he could take what he wanted by force.” He laced
his fingers together and cracked his knuckles, the muscles in his
arms like iron bands. “And if he couldn’t, then I would
fuck him, eh, just because it was my due!”

Sandilianus doubled over in his
seat and grunted, feigning a reaction to a gut punch as Yazid burst
into howls of laughter. Tahir smiled wryly, but said nothing.

Brutus raised his eyebrows and
grinned in shocked admiration. “There
is
more to this one than meets the eye!” he said. “I would
take your challenge, boy, and show you a thing or two about fists
and fucking, but you are tainted with woman’s weakness. I
cannot insult my body with such, not even second hand.”

Ahmed raised an eyebrow.
“Perhaps I have yet to lie with a woman.”

Sandilianus snorted and leaned
back in his chair against the smooth, polished wood of the bulkhead.
“Then it would be a moot point. With your looks, if women have
not set upon you in a pack and carried you off to have their way
with you, you have no dick.”

Even quiet Tahir chuckled at
this one. Brutus slapped his hand hard on his own knee as the others
howled in laughter once again. “You hear that, boy? If you
want to fight me, you must show us you are dickless! It will be all
the same to me, as long as you have no pussy.”

Ahmed nodded, a look of defeat
on his face as the others laughed, then, with a quick motion, lifted
his tunic and dropped his pants. He twirled his manhood in the air,
accompanied by screams of laughter, and sighed, “I am
defeated, Tribune.”

After long moments, Brutus
managed to control himself and gasped out, “That is the wrong
sword for war, boy. Put it away so we are not distracted from
Ilaweh’s work.”

Ahmed took a bow and covered
himself again, and they all wiped tears from their eyes as the
laughter faded to chuckles, then smiles, and at last to somber nods
that it was time to get down to real business. Brutus rose and bowed
his head in benediction. “By Ilaweh’s grace, we shall
begin.”

Yazid, Ahmed, and Sandilianus
said in unison, “Ilaweh is great.” Tahir remained
silent, but rolled his eyes in derision. With some effort, Ahmed
suppressed the sudden urge to throttle the halfbreed.
There will
be a reckoning between us later, dog.

Brutus reached into a box
beside his chair and withdrew an ancient, brittle tube of rolled
parchment. He unrolled it, spread it on the table and weighted down
the edges with tumblers. “Here is the most recent map we have
of Prima. We have puzzled over it for long, but have come to no real
agreement. As first order of business, let us settle once and for
all the direction on the map, and where we expect our enemy to make
his home.”

Ahmed studied the map before
him. It depicted, in faded outline, an unfamiliar landmass. Brutus’s
source of confusion was clear. The map bore a stylized arrow to
indicate North. Below this, another arrow, smaller and more
rudimentary, pointed in the opposite direction, with the word
“North” scribbled alongside in spiky handwritten
letters.

Tahir reached across the table
and turned a knob on the oil lamp, raising the wick higher and
brightening the room. “It’s taken some time, but we have
done enough mapping to come up with what I think is a match,”
he said. Ahmed gritted his teeth at the annoying, nasal sound of
Tahir's voice. The navigator produced his own roll of paper, a
partial outline of the coast, and flattened it beside the ancient
map, orienting it to match. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but close
enough to leave no doubt as to the correct orientation. “We’re
about a third of the way around the continent so far, and it’s
clear the handwritten change is the correct orientation.”

Yazid scowled, his lips pressed
flat like coins as he studied the two maps. Tahir noticed his
displeasure. “You disagree, Prelate?”

Yazid shook his head slowly. “I
do not. Which is why I am disturbed.”

Brutus looked at the others,
then back at Yazid and laughed. “You are disturbed that we can
find our asses without a compass?”

“You’ve had much
experience with that!” Ahmed said with a grin, and the rest
laughed heartily.

Brutus grabbed at his crotch
and jerked at it. “Aye, but we need only one pointer,”
he said, sparking more laughter form everyone but Yazid. Brutus
quickly grew somber once more. “What is it, Prelate?”

The older man sighed, his face
still troubled. “It would be fine if the handwritten version
were the incorrect one. But the mapmaker was wrong? It’s
bizarre.”

Sandilianus absently polished a
brightwork handhold with his sleeve. “Perhaps he was a fool.”

“A fool whose work
survived an eon, then,” Yazid said. “It seems unlikely.”

Tahir rolled his eyes once
more, a gesture that Ahmed had begun to loathe. “What matter?
Perhaps it was custom to indicate South in that time, rather than
North. The point is, we are oriented and can make our plans.”

“Aye, ‘tis so,”
Brutus declared. “Let us move on to that. Where would our
enemy make his home?”

Yazid’s humor seemed all
used up. His face was stern and hard. “We do not know that
these people are our enemies. It has been a thousand years. Surely,
enmity died with those who bore it?”

Brutus sat up in his seat,
serious now. “We should be just as careful that we not think
of them as friends,” he noted. “In my experience,
strangers are more like to be enemies. But as you wish, Prelate. We
shall call them whatever you like.”

“They called themselves
Meites at one time,” Yazid said. “It is a good enough
name, I think, until we find a better one.”

Brutus nodded in assent. “So,
where would these Meites have likely settled, that is our mystery.”

“Coastal, of course,”
Tahir noted. “At the mouth of a river. They would have had the
land to themselves, so I’d suppose we should look for the most
prime spot.”

Everyone nodded in agreement,
but Yazid shook his head. “I think not.”

Sandilianus heaved a sigh and
turned from his polishing with a wry smile. “Do you truly
think so, or is it habit now to tell us what fools we are?”

“Truly, I think so,”
Yazid said, returning the smile. “The Meites would have been
very fearful at the time. They had no way of knowing when they would
be attacked once again, and they were surely as war-weary as the
Laureans.” Yazid walked to a porthole and looked out over the
waves, taking in a great breath of fresh, salty air. “More
importantly, they were powerful sorcerers. The legends say the
Council of Twelve were like unto demigods, capable of facing entire
armies. They would not need to settle on a river. They could have
diverted one to their chosen spot.” He took his seat again,
considering the map. “I say defensibility would be their
primary concern.”

“If that is so, then we
are lost,” Brutus said with a sigh. “If it is not
coastal, we could circumnavigate the entire continent and never find
them.”

“Aye, but Ilaweh is with
us. Now you will see why I have brought the boy.” Yazid turned
to Ahmed. “You must use your gift, child.”

Ahmed’s belligerent mood
fell away in an instant.
Not in front of these men! They will
think me a freak!
“ Must I, Master?”

“You must. On the old
map.”

Brutus’s face went from
confused to amazed as he came to a sudden realization. “He has
the sight?”

Yazid nodded. “He is
modest about it.”

“Modest?” Brutus
chuckled. “This same boy who was waving his dick about like a
flag?” He turned to Ahmed. “Are you mad, boy? You are
touched by Ilaweh more than any of my kind to have such a gift!”

Ahmed swallowed hard. “I
fear it. You don’t understand.”

“I understand that it is
the hand of Ilaweh,” Brutus answered. “That is all any
of us need to know. Show us.”

Tahir ran a hand over his face,
obviously unimpressed. “A hundred swords says he finds
nothing.”

Brutus cast a baleful glare at
Tahir. “Why not a thousand, heathen?”

“You don’t have a
thousand swords to lose.”

Brutus continued his stare down
a moment, then nodded. “A hundred swords, then.”

“Do not risk your money
on me!” Ahmed gasped.

Brutus laughed out loud. “On
you? Bah! On Ilaweh! And to shame this dog. His few rare words are
blasphemies.”

“Why not simply beat him,
then?” Ahmed suggested.

Sandilianus flashed a cruel
grin at this. “Tahir has no soul. He cannot feel pain like a
man would. But part him from his gold and he’ll squeal like a
little girl.”

Tahir’s eyes narrowed in
annoyance, but his lips curled up in a smile, refusing to cooperate
with the rest of his face. “The way I see it, I can’t
lose. Either I take Brutus’s gold, or I get to go home
sooner.”

Brutus punched the red-haired
navigator in the arm hard enough to stagger him. “I will buy
myself a hard, young boy with your gold, Tahir, and fuck him in
front of you just to make you ill! Eh? Will you wager that, too?”

“Only if, when you lose,
you fuck my woman for me while I go out whoring,” Tahir
chuckled.

Brutus gave an exaggerated
shudder of revulsion. “You are a monster!”

“Where is your faith,
Brutus? Surely Ilaweh will save your masculinity, eh?”

“Sandi had the right of
you. You have no soul.”

Tahir gave Brutus a wicked leer
but said nothing.

Brutus struggled with his pride
a moment, then slammed a fist on the table and shouted, “Aye!
Done!” He turned to Ahmed. “Do
not
fuck this up, boy!”

Ahmed felt bile rising in his
throat as he lay his hands on the old map, reaching out
for…something. It was a feeling for which there were no
words, his gift. At times, it seemed purely guessing, at others,
sure knowledge. This time? Who could know the will of Ilaweh until
it was done?

He ran his hands over the old
parchment, searching, feeling the grain of the material.
It is
just paper. There is nothing here...no...wait...there.
He
felt his hands drawn toward a point. He moved slowly, the
pull growing stronger, now strong hands grasping his wrists and
yanking them. The paper beneath his hands grew warm, then hot, then
searing like molten lava. Visions of horror tore into his mind like
daggers, brutal, unspeakable acts. Cries of agony rang in his ears.

Ahmed screamed as his hands
burned and his vision flew elsewhere, showing him unspeakable
things: monsters with tentacles and gibbering mouths ripping the
flesh from screaming victims, blood pouring in rivers, cold,
lifeless eyes glazed in unending horror. It was too much! He tore
his hands from the map. “There!” he cried. He pounded a
finger on the spot, feeling the heat and corruption each time his
fingertip touched the parchment. “There!
There
!”