Naus stumbled over. ‘Wait,’ he shouted.
The Cleric turned and frowned when he saw who it was. ‘Did you decide you did want to be thralled, Artirus, was it?’
‘Release her.’
The Cleric looked from Naus to the woman. She had stopped struggling and was watching Naus with look that said don’t get yourself killed for me. The Cleric laughed.
Naus was upon him in a moment, the sword from under his robe unsheathed and the tip teasing a drop of blood from the Cleric’s chin.
‘Release her now.’ He could see it in the man’s eyes; the Cleric wasn’t going to see reason. The religious never do, Naus thought. He tried once more. ‘You shouldn’t test me. Whatever power she has, I guarantee your Goddess will not get here in time to stop this blade going through your skull.’
‘Maybe not,’ said the Cleric carefully, trying not to move his jaw, ‘but I’d risk it, rather than face her wrath afterward.’ He moved, but Naus was ready for him. He ended up slicing away half his neck, but the effect was the same. The Cleric slumped to the floor.
Naus knew what he had done was already being reported to every other Cephean on the Order’s vast network; he could almost sense the lips moving behind the gold masks of the two that held the woman. That was his mistake.
Theirs was reporting instead of reacting. Naus darted into them, shouldering one in the chest, and ripping his sword through the other’s head. The androgynous figure ducked the slice, but the sword went through the tube that connected him with his Medusi instead, collapsing the man in a heap. Naus whipped around, noting that the woman had been shoved clear, and his sword met the blade of the first Cephean.
Naus had no idea of the skills of the Order’s Clerics, acolytes or thralls, whether they were trained in esoteric martial arts deep in their temple lair, or whether they even had types of magic. He didn’t want to find out. He knocked the blade aside, caught a second swing, and recovered faster than his opponent, lunging in past their guard and impaling them through the chest. The dead thrall slid from the blade and crumpled, and Naus sliced straight through the Medusi that had been pulled own to waist level.
Kill them before they take another host, that was a rule to live by. Another was, Kill them before they thrall you. They had served him well for hundreds of years.
The second Medusi was floating towards the woman, darting about in pain as its thralling tentacle had been cut. It could still sting. He sliced it from the sky in two slimy pieces.
He’d caused a scene and he knew it. There were thralled onlookers everywhere, little blue lights hovering above their heads. They weren’t Cephean, so they weren’t part of the Order spy network, but it was too late for that to matter. There were mercenaries and therians, and horsemen. There were witnesses. And if he waited a moment longer there would be more Clerics complete with soldiers and weapons.
He took the woman by the hand, pulling her to her feet.
‘You killed them,’ she said.
‘That is very true.’
‘You saved me.’
‘What's your name, miss?’ he asked quickly.
‘Marlena.’
‘Can you walk, Marlena?’
She nodded.
‘Can you run?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then come on.’
Naus took off down the main street and straight into an alley, yanking Marlena along with him. He needed to put distance between them and the scene. And he needed to find somewhere where there’d be no Order. The only thing he could think with any clarity was that he wasn’t going to be visiting any bars any time soon.
Chapter Four
Anthrom Nectris
The walls of Theris palace were riddled with holes. Not just the outer walls, but the inner as well. Behind every other pillar lurked a doorway into the wall itself; secret corridors for the servants, and in centuries past slaves, to navigate the palace without the noble’s fragile gaze being disturbed by them. Past these dark tunnels lay even deeper spaces, excavated into the very walls themselves in order to spy on the occupants of the room beyond; Nobles spying on monarchs, ambitious children on their parents, slaves on their masters for the promise of coin. Subtly different brick and stonework belied the hidden areas inside. It seemed every bisecting wall enclosed within it a hidden crawlspace.
Prince Anthrom Nectris had a new appreciation for them.
And a new loathing.
Living in them was very different from using them to spy on hapless courtiers or his conniving siblings. He’d spent the past year in and out of the tunnels listening as the Captain of the Guard, Thaddeus of House Vestrigo, implicated himself in the Emperor’s death, hearing first hand that his sister Aurelia expected marriage proposals from not one but two suitors in the besieging armies. Or more recently finding Aurelia had hidden away her twin Cassandra inside a secret strong room after informing the rest of the court that she had perished. The tunnels led behind paintings in bedrooms, to holes under tables against the wall of an office or library, behind a tapestry in a large audience chamber. He had thrived there for a year, making a bid for power by unseating Aurelia.
It was very different now.
Now the Clerics of the Order roamed the halls of the palace, and he had taken to the tunnels to survive. Now he had to live inside the walls from dawn until dusk, and through the cold dark nights as well. He woke from darkness into darkness, with cobwebs in his mouth, with rats crawling over his hands and face; everything smelt of their droppings. His hours merged into each other, his belly protested at the lack of food, for he could not emerge, he would be found by the Clerics.
Sometimes he could hear Harling in the corridors of the palace. The High Cleric had spies out roaming the halls all through the day, sometimes even Cephean with their enhanced hearing; black shapes with blue lanterns above them silently melting through the palace.
They were looking for him. He knew because Harling wasn’t quiet about it. He stalked the passages alone, but he spoke to the walls, to the palace itself.
‘Prince Anthrom,’ he said, his voice a hiss, like the rush of air past fangs. He stepped slowly past Aurelia’s old chambers. ‘The Goddess knows you are here somewhere. She knows everything. You may not be able to hear me right now, but I will repeat myself all through the palace. Eventually you will hear my words. We know you are still in the palace. No one has seen or heard from you since we took the city.
‘You can come out, it’s safe now. You may have thought you were working with Stauros, but I suspect you knew all along he worked for the Order. You have been our man on the inside since the siege began. I just want to congratulate you. I only want to meet the one who helped us take the palace.
‘If you’re worried about retaliation over Stauros, you needn’t be. We don’t care that he’s dead, and we have the perpetrator under my control. No one blames you. We know and value our allies, Anthrom.’
So Stauros was dead. When the siege had been twisting disastrously askew from his plan, the King of Terracon had threatened to take his sword to Anthrom’s neck when he took the palace. The palace had been taken, and Anthrom had hidden from fear that the famously angry warmonger would catch and kill him. He had failed him after all, and Aurelia’s plans had succeeded.
But he was dead. Someone had killed him.
Anthrom would have left his secret hiding places, if the palace hadn’t subsequently been overrun with Clerics instead. They were just as worrying, with their honeyed words and veiled threats; the Order had made a thrall of his sister Cassandra, and he wasn’t about to let them do the same to him.
One time Harling brought a shackled Verismuss with him through the halls, followed by two thralled guardsman; Anthrom saw them as they moved about near the atrium balconies.
‘Prince Elect, please,’ said Harling. ‘Look, we are all allies now. Tell him, Verismuss.’
Verismuss said nothing. He had been Aurelia’s Grand Premier, the leader of the Premiers in Theris, and advisor to the Emp
ress. He and Anthrom had agreed that she was not right for the throne, though their reasons had been very different; their clandestine partnership had brought the siege to an end, and toppled Aurelia, but it had also brought the Order in her place.
Anthrom hid in the walls nearby. He caught a glimpse of his recent ally’s face in a shaft of light as they moved through the shadows. The once proud and severe man was a cowering ruin; bruised eyes, cuts on his cheeks and red raw skin around the neck like he’d had a rope there until recently.
One of the guardsmen hit Verismuss round the back of his head.
‘Tell him, Verismuss,’ said Harling. ‘The Premiers and the Order are friends now.’
‘The Premiers and…’ Verismuss croaked and trailed off. Then, stronger, ‘Anthrom don’t come out, whatever you do! Find some way out of the palace if you are still here. Before she gets-’ He bit his own tongue and choked off his words as the guard hit him again.
Anthrom was touched that Verismuss would risk anything to warn him like that, and his opinion of the man was altered. Not much, but a little. He was clearly a prisoner, probably kept in the dungeons below the palace along with Thaddeus. Anthrom was the only one of the three collaborators who was still free.
Verismuss didn’t speak up again. Harling continued to prowl the halls, but he left Verismuss to rot.
‘I think when I do find you,’ said Harling, hours later, creeping past Anthrom’s secluded alcove, ‘we will make a Cephean of you. You know how we make a Cephean, don’t you? It can be hard on the young child but ultimately very rewarding.’
Anthrom didn’t want anything to do with the process. He’d heard the horror stories, he’d read about the process in detail in his favourite volume, An Arceth Bestiary, by Amphithaus Potisf III. The victim, because there was no way it could be done willingly, could only be thralled in a state of total panic and fear.
No ends justified those means.
Harling was still talking in the corridor outside. ‘You aren’t too old. Usually we do prefer them younger, but your sister Cassandra was fifteen when she went through it, same as you are now. With the noble families we try to get them younger than ten, it helps with the bonding to their new mistress.’ He was rambling now, Anthrom was sure that during the last few days of talking to empty halls, Harling had long ago disassociated with the fact that at any time, Anthrom could actually be listening. He was simply talking to himself now.
‘First the subject is isolated for a day and a night, in complete darkness, no food, no stimuli of any kind, in a tiny room no larger than two feet square.’
Not that different to my world right now, thought Anthrom. You’ll have to try harder than that.
‘Once the subject is deemed pliable, the Cephea is released into the small space. Some fight, but often that only results in hands and arms being stung. Most shy away and curl up in a ball, unable to function, overcome with fear. The Cephea’s tentacles numb them all over, driving their relaxing nerve-deadening poison into the subject’s body until they are completely helpless.’
Anthrom couldn’t quite believe that Cassandra had gone through that. The whole thing made him sick. He would never allow himself to be thralled. He thought in a similar situation, he would dash his brains out on the walls. He’d rather die.
‘Eventually the thralling tentacle finds the top of the spinal column and stabs. I have been told that that is the most excruciating moment, but almost immediately it is followed by an intense pleasure as the Cephea and the subject become one. The ultimate reunion of the separated races.’
Anthrom tried hard not to move or breathe as Harling walked directly past where he hid, in the wall beside a tapestry that delineated the length of one whole corridor; it depicted the final battles in the War of the Overlords. He could see the High Cleric through the threads of silk, his cavernous face, his eyes dark and sunken. Harling was old, older than father had been. Older even than the pictures of some of Anthrom’s ancestors.
‘We still have time, you and I,’ said Harling to the empty hall. ‘But soon I will have to present you to Noctiluca. She will arrive in two more days. She is the Goddess of the Medusi, Anthrom, the greatest of the thralled, the source of all and as ancient as time itself. She will be very interested to meet you.’
Anthrom shuddered at the thought. There were very few folktales about the Medousa, but there were enough to scare a fifteen-year-old boy; many doubted she existed at all, but Ennius’ library and his own pilfered stock said otherwise. One tale told of her penchant for the flesh of drugged children plucked from their parents and served to her under a cloche made of a child’s ribcage, but Anthrom doubted the source was more than a glorified bard spreading his own fairy tales.
Real information about her didn’t exist.
He knew enough of the Order and their ways that he didn’t need corroborating legends to tell him their leader was to be feared. He had always assumed, as had Ennius, that she was just a figurehead, and that the cult was run by the High Clerics. They needed something to worship, like an idol or a statue, but the way they spoke of her now, in person, brought into sharp focus the possibility that she was real.
Stauros might be dead, but something far worse had replaced him in Anthrom’s nightmares.
Never had Anthrom felt more powerless, more like a child, than he did sandwiched in the gap between the walls as Harling stalked away. He felt warm tears wet his cheeks. How am I going to survive this? Why is this happening to me, I’m the Prince Elect! He should be safe and well, pampered and served, not hiding for his life with the rats and the spiders.
His mind turned to food. After the first day and night, his rumbling stomach told him he wasn’t going to survive for long without food and water. He was already hungry, but he didn’t want to leave the safety of the tunnels the Clerics had not yet found. They moved so quietly, slipping down the halls like shadows without a sound; he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t encounter one immediately upon leaving his sanctuary. But he also worried his stomach’s growls would give him away just as a Cleric walked past.
Eventually hunger and thirst drove him to act.
Most of the palace had been deserted since the battle, the upper levels simply the territory of the highest ranks of the Clerics. As he ventured lower the number of people grew slowly, until on the ground level he sighted servants and even a few maids.
He crept silently from the tunnels as close to the kitchens as they would allow. There was a short stretch where no tunnels connected to the pantries and large kitchens of the palace, and he would need to steal across it to have any hope of sustenance.
When he saw his chance, he moved fast, straight across the corridor into the kitchens. The rooms were eerily silent, and no food was being prepared. He wouldn’t find anything cooked or hot, the ovens were cool to the touch. In the pantries and storerooms he found strips of dried meat and jerky, a sack of seeds and grains, a heel of hard bread, biscuits, raisins and sultanas. These he emptied into his pockets and shoved down his tucked-in shirt. He needed to carry as much as possible; he knew he didn’t have the courage to do this again. He filled an empty wine bottle from a basin of previously boiled, but certainly not fresh water. It would have to do. His hands were shaking. Just as he was deciding if he was hungry enough for the cheese that had green furry growths, but mostly looked intact, he heard a noise.
People, guards by the sound of it, entering the kitchens.
And blue light.
It was an effort not to scream in fright. Medusi. Thralled. And here he was exposed! Anthrom took control of himself and dropped to the floor inside the pantry, pulling the door almost to. Holding all his pilfered supplies close to his chest, he peered through the dark metal keyhole.
His first thought was that he had chosen the worst time possible. Just a first minutes earlier and he would have been gone. Now the room was being lit at the torches around the walls, the braziers and ovens. Clerics followed the three or so thralled guardsmen, pulling along with them
people Anthrom actually recognised, though they had been thoroughly changed. Cooks and maids, the same staff who had run this kitchen only a few days ago, were brought in and returned to their stations. Only now they were thralled, every last one of them. A glowing blue Medusi hung in the air above each shambling maid, each swaying cook; a minder to keep them in line. The Clerics had clearly gone into the city and found them, intending to make the palace functional again.
But the palace staff were thralls now, and not cognisant like the bitch bodyguard that had thrown in with Aurelia, still aware and in control; these were automatons, their eyes glazed and vacant. They set to work bringing the kitchen back to life, but they were all but dead.
He just about gasped in relief when both the Clerics and the guardsmen left the rooms. He didn’t know how aware these thralls were, or how aware their Medusi were, but it was better odds than it had been moments before. If he wanted to leave, it was now or never.
Anthrom slipped from the pantry, and staying low and crouched, moved back to the kitchen doors. The thralls stayed at their stations. As he reached the door, he glanced back. One of the thralls was staring right at him, a maid in a dirty apron, her blonde hair dishevelled and lank. The Medusi hung above her, ominous and present. Anthrom stared back, caught like a wild animal in the open. The maid didn’t move, just looked at him. No, through him, he realised. After maybe five breaths had passed she blinked and turned back to her station where she was chopping carrots. Anthrom hadn’t even noticed she had been brandishing a knife.
He fled.
*
Anthrom eked out a small home for himself in the secret strong room that adjoined Aurelia’s old chambers. She wasn’t coming back to them, and no Cleric had deemed themselves important enough to claim them. The room was reached not by the tunnels, but only by working a hidden lever in the adjacent chamber which opened a doorway disguised by a low bookcase. He noticed the body of Lesevia, the nursemaid he’d killed in the chamber had been removed, but a dark scarlet stain remained, that gave the bedchamber a distinct tang of iron. Maybe that was why no Cleric had claimed it.
Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2) Page 7