Mad God's Muse by Matthew P. Gilbert

Author:Matthew P. Gilbert [Gilbert, Matthew P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2019-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

Narelki looked up from her desk in the library as Slat opened the doors. “You have a visitor, Mistress,” he told her.

Kariana, seeming even shorter standing next to Slat, gave Narelki a look of grudging surrender.

Narelki nodded to Slat. “You may leave us.” She waited until the doors were closed before addressing her uninvited guest. “Did you truly imagine you could summon me like a slave?”

Narelki was expecting rage, petulance, or perhaps even feigned long suffering nobility, but she was taken aback by what she saw on Kariana's face: sheer terror.

Kariana's eyes darted back and forth, as if searching for spies. “I felt safer in the palace, and I couldn't trust a messenger. I'll just have to hope Amrath's Library keeps its secrets.”

Narelki was tempted to simply eject Kariana and go back to her treatise. This is such an obvious production. Still, it wouldn't do not to find out what the child was up to. She was possessed of a certain low cunning that could prove troublesome if not watched carefully. “Nihlos would have fallen long ago if the Library of Amrath were not inviolate. Speak whatever lie you came to tell and begone.”

Kariana began to blink quickly, her features trembling as if her brain were being overloaded. Ah, there. A little more pressure at that crack, I think, will prove telling, or at least amusing. “It's more than one thing,” she stammered.

You are absolutely infuriating with your idiocy. “Then perhaps you ought start with the first, hmm, then proceed on to the others?”

“Okay, okay! I'm just trying to figure out which is first.” Kariana fidgeted like the child she was for long moments as Narelki's patience unraveled even further, but at last she blurted out, “They're going to kill Aiul!”

Narelki felt a brief chill, the natural reaction to hear one's child is in danger, before she considered the source of the information. She gave Kariana a patronizing look. “Who?”

“The Meites!”

The chill in her gut rose again, briefly. They are indeed capable of it, but why would they? She pushed it down again, feeling her lips purse in annoyance. Kariana was a habitual liar and a crude manipulator. This story was likely the hook for something, though precisely what remained to be seen. Still, there was something in her demeanor, her choice of words, that made hearing her out seem worthwhile. Narelki offered Kariana a cold, calculated glare. “Let us say for the moment that you had fooled me with this pathetic attempt at deception. How did you come by this knowledge and continue breathing?”

Slowly, with copious amounts of hand waving and self aggrandizing, Kariana trotted out her obviously rehearsed back story. There I was, just minding my own business, thinking only pure thoughts, when suddenly yadda yadda. Youth are so arrogant, imagining their plodding, mundane attempts at cleverness are unique or even very effective. A zombie no one else had seen was convenient, and Kariana's feigned noblesse oblige was sickening, her bravery in going to demand answers from powerful sorcerers absolutely ridiculous.

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