‘What are you waiting for?’ hissed Urth from the back of the group.
Anthrom drew a deep breath.
‘Nothing. This way. You get to the kitchens through the back entrance.’ Staying low to the ground, he set off, with the children following behind.
He had made his peace with thralling, he tried to convince himself. The power that was promised was of a different magnitude to that offered by leading rebels. Actual magic. He could become like an Overlord.
The power he would gain was worth these children’s freedom.
And in his secret heart he knew, if he served her, he’d never have to face Noctiluca when she inevitably won. He would be standing by her side instead.
Maybe that leash was stronger than he realised.
Anthrom made a show of checking round for guards, and then opened the wooden door.
‘Why are there no guards?’ he heard Urth say. But he kept going.
Anthrom beckoned them all inside.
‘Wasn’t one of us going to keep watch?’ asked Wend.
‘Just come inside,’ urged Anthrom.
She frowned at him, but did as he said.
When the last was inside, the door shut behind them with a clang. The latch bolted and they were plunged into darkness. Some of the children screamed as half a dozen guards burst into the kitchen alcove where they had huddled. They each grabbed one of the children, rendering them unconscious quickly with a chemical cloth held over the mouth.
Anthrom had signalled the guard station before he’d even got to the palace grounds, letting them know of his return. They knew what he was doing, and who for.
Despite his doubts and deliberations, the decision had been made hours ago.
Chapter Twenty Six
Totelun
The Shaman’s cave held a number of wonders Totelun had not at first expected. Where he would have guessed they’d find talismans, totems and dreamcatchers, instead Cassandra came back from a short excursion into its deeper recesses with a mound of furs and skins to keep them warm as they slept.
[There’s more back there,] she wrote. [Maps and books, piles of fire wood and a large brazier set in the ground.] But most interesting of all was the third discovery. [At the very back is a strange contraption like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s like two halves of a walnut case, or the open shell of an oyster, made of wood, and braced with iron. It sits suspended above a deep chasm with some kind of pulley system.]
[It just hangs there?] Totelun asked. He did not want to investigate with her and be forced to take his eye from Ribuqa. He did not trust the man not to find a weapon and murder them. He wondered how he would be able to sleep.
[Yes. And I cannot see the bottom.]
When they awoke the next morning, Totelun realised he was exhausted enough to sleep without issue. Ribuqa was still there, trussed like a boar at a feast. Clearly, he couldn’t just escape and murder them, his bonds were too tight. They had moved further back into the cave, Ribuqa lying in front of the firepit, and Totelun and Cassandra wrapped in furs back by the wall.
Cassandra was full of stories for the first hour as Totelun dozed, waking intermittently to read her scrawled notes.
She related that Naus had been forced to make good his claims as Arcturus the storyteller and had told an epic in front of a barroom of strangers. And Crescen. An epic that, according to Cassandra, was for their ears as much as anyone there. [All the Cephean heard it,] she wrote. [Even the Medousa heard it.] Naus had related the tale of the War of the Overlords, how Eleutheria had battled each of the seven and what their powers had been, from Storms to Gravity and even the power to control the minds of others. He had told of his own betrayal of Eleutheria a thousand years ago. Not for the first or last time, Totelun wondered how old Naus really was, and how he came to be so long lived. A mystery for another day.
[I never knew he did that,] he wrote back when he had woken fully. He remembered when Naus had told him the story without any of the wider context. [He only told me that she killed his son, and grandchildren, not that he had then betrayed her in turn. He didn’t tell me the reason he betrayed her in the first place either, and we were right there in the ruins of Velella’s home.] He felt slightly affronted. Had he not yet trusted him? Totelun remembered he had been very dismissive of Eleutheria, someone Naus was tied to so implicitly.
[So if Eleutheria destroyed the Overlords, why does your prophecy say the Overlords will finally fall?] Cassandra had a point.
[Their power still exists somewhere, somehow,] Totelun replied. [Naus always suspected that. He also told me there are other versions of that story he has heard where Eleutheria is killed and doesn't destroy the Overlords at all.]
[His search for answers must include what part of the Overlord’s power still exists.]
While they exchanged notes, Ribuqa woke abruptly. Totelun watched as the tied shaman manoeuvred himself so that he could see out the cave mouth. Totelun wondered what had woken him. He couldn’t hear their conversation written on velvet leaves.
‘That storm is coming on fast,’ the shaman said. Once it had been pointed out to him, Totelun could hear the driving rain, and the wind that howled through the cave like the cry of a dying crone. Somehow he hadn’t noticed it while engrossed in Naus’ story.
That storm is coming on fast…
Totelun felt ice water down his back as he remembered where he’d last heard that. [The storm is Abrax,] he wrote quickly. [Didn’t Naus mention one of the Overlords having power over storms. Heikriss? Their power lives on in others.]
[Where are you going?] she wrote.
[To confront him. I will never cower before that creature again. I made a promise to Naus to fight him every chance we had.]
Totelun hurried to extricate himself from the furs. He’d slept in his clothes for warmth and only had to find his daggers and strap them to his wrists before he was ready.
He strode out into the storm. The wind buffeted him, stronger than any they had faced on the climb. The rain pelted and stung his face. Lightning lit the clouds all around, and thunder rumbled through the darkness, echoing off the peak.
The sky had been free of clouds the night before, but now that they were close, Totelun discovered they were beneath him. The peak of Cartracia penetrated the Cloudsea churning before him.
The clouds broke a few hundred feet away, boiling off as something crested through them from below. A Celestial larger even than the one Totelun had hunted with his father all that time ago, was emerging. Its great ridged carapace breached the cloudscape, hard translucent rubbery flesh followed by the great light sensitive orbs just under the edge. The cloud receded from it, running off like swirling water from its body.
The Celestial continued to rise, its tentacles and mouthparts sliding out of the black miasma. Eventually its entire bell shape hung above the clouds, looking like an enormous disease riddled mushroom, its carapace the fleshy cap, the tentacles below, the stem.
The final stage to emerge was the small humanoid figure, dredged from below by a thin tentacle so different from the others that resembled trunks of ancient trees. The figure rose above the clouds, his wet robes snapping in the wind. He sunk down and landed on the outcrop of rock near the summit, some twenty feet from where Totelun stood.
The wind seemed to drop before he spoke.
‘Totelun Altanji.’
‘Abrax.’
His eyes burned with blue light, his skin grey and cracked like Cassandra’s. ‘We finally meet. You don’t have any explosives on you this time, I see.’
‘A great shame,’ Totelun shouted back. ‘I would have fed one to you.’
‘You are hardly in a position to make threats,’ said Abrax. He raised his arms up, framing the Celestial behind him. ‘I hold the high ground, and you have no weapons. This time you will not hide in a battle of thousands, this time you will not evade me with a harpoon shot.’
‘I have these,’ said Totelun, brandishing one of his piton daggers. ‘You wer
e confident before and I bested you then. You are even more arrogant now. What makes you think it won’t happen again?’ He tried to project a bravado he didn’t feel, bereft of ideas for how to survive this. Truth was he had no idea how to fight a Celestial and an Overlord, one-to-one.
Abrax ignored his taunt. ‘I wanted to talk to you before Harling destroys you.’
Totelun did not want to talk. What could he possibly have to say? He hoped Cassandra would stay hidden away. What could he hope for out of this? Could he convince Abrax to leave them alone? Was it the best he could do to delay the inevitable? His mind flitted to Velella’s prophecy. If I die now, your prophecy wasn’t worth anything.
‘I have tracked you all across these lands, Totelun.’ His voice was vibrant and deep, clear despite the churning weather. ‘You can never be free of me. From the edge of the steppe, to the coast and across the sea, from as far away as Theris, across the valley and up to the highest peak in the land. If I can find you here, I can find you anywhere. Do you think you will ever be free of me?’
As he spoke he came forward, leaving footprints in the snow. Totelun realised now, that instead of Abrax projecting his voice, he had manipulated the wind and rain; the peak of Cartracia, maybe even just the outcrop beyond the cave, was in the eye of the storm.
Ignoring the question, Totelun asked his own. ‘How do you track me? From one hunter to another.’
‘I can sense you, Totelun. Like a predator and its prey. You are like a beacon, pulsing in the night, bright like a star. I can feel you always.’ He paused as if considering how much to say, and then deciding he didn’t care. ‘The crystal you carry is a nexus of unrealised power. And you know nothing of its importance.’
‘I know a little,’ he bluffed. ‘Harling said the same. He intended to use it.’
‘And he will, I’m sure. In one of his little experiments.’ His voice changed, harder now that he spoke of his master and tormentor. Totelun remembered those experiments. Abrax had been Harling’s test subject for many years. He wondered if there wasn’t a thread there he could pull on.
‘You think you're taking me back there?’ he shouted. ‘I would rather die than become one of his experiments again.’
Abrax smiled. ‘I understand that, truly. But if you fight me, you will die. I was only tasked with finding you. Bringing you back alive is optional.’
Totelun didn’t believe that, but let him say what he wished. He had what he needed.
‘If you have such freedom, you could choose to just let me go. Pretend you didn’t find me. You don’t want to obey him any more than I want to go.’ An idea struck him. ‘Take the crystal. Say you did kill me and give the crystal to Harling as proof. You and I go our separate ways, and Harling won’t punish you for letting me go. But you don’t have to obey him.’
He didn’t mention the Goddess. Her power was absolute in the way Harling’s was not. Harling’s was a power over Abrax himself, his sense of self.
‘I am not his slave,’ said Abrax.
Totelun piled on the argument. ‘You are like a dog doing his master’s bidding. Harling controls you.’
‘Harling has nothing to do with this.’ Abrax lifted his arms and thunder boomed in the clouds below them. Lightning crackled and snapped, alternately illuminating the mountainside. ‘I know what the prophecies say about you, Totelun, and I choose to believe they are true. If I let you live you will someday discover how to kill more Medusi, maybe even all of them. But the prophecy allows that you might not succeed. I cannot let you take the power I now have. The power of Heikriss himself!’ With his arms aloft he drew a fork of electricity from the sky, smashing it into the mountain. It connected with a gnarled tree clinging to the side of the outcrop. In a second it was blackened and burnt, ripped in two. It fell, its roots shrivelled and disintegrated. ‘I am the Overlord reborn!’ Abrax shouted, as the storm’s ferocity intensified.
Well, I succeeded in making him angry, thought Totelun.
‘I answer to no man, I answer to no mortal!’ Abrax said, rising from the ground. ‘And I can’t leave you alive to take this power from any one. I will not allow you to take magic from this world.’ He lifted one arm above him and the other pointed at Totelun. Electricity once again crackled down his arm, bunching and building in his core, ready to fire from his outstretched hand.
Totelun heard a crunch from behind him and turned to see Cassandra step into the eye of the storm. She held her fighting staff like a spear with a sharp and deadly point. With a second running step, she launched it at Abrax. Totelun watched the javelin sail through the air, unhindered by the wind in that bubble of stillness. After a long heavy moment where nothing seemed to move except the spear, it struck true, hitting Abrax in the shoulder and embedding to the shaft. His aim was thrown askew at the same moment as the bolt of lightning shot from his hand. It crackled through the air, hitting Totelun in the side, ripping through him, just below his ribcage, and burning his skin across the chest. Totelun was thrown back, hitting the snow with a heavy crunch.
Abrax recoiled around his wound, the Celestial’s tentacles shrivelling, enclosing round him like an instinctive protective shell against attack.
Totelun grabbed his side. He could feel the hole in his flesh, feel the burnt muscle beneath seared skin. Then the pain hit and he screamed in agony. He felt himself losing consciousness immediately, going to that place he’d visited too many times now, somewhere between awake and asleep, somewhere to linger before death. The treacle-like world inside the Celestial’s gelatinous body.
He felt himself being dragged through the snow. His head lolled back and he saw it was Cassandra, her hands under his armpits. She managed to get him inside the cave as the storm resumed lashing everything in sight. Thunder rumbled and what seemed a tornado began to work at the cave mouth. The scant furniture, furs and maps fluttered and shifted, being drawn out into the maelstrom. Cassandra pulled him in deeper. Each time he blinked it felt like multiple seconds passed. A bolt of lightning flashed into the cave, striking the firepit and sending burning logs, debris and kindling in every direction.
Ribuqa’s clothing was on fire. He was shouting and cursing into the storm, but Totelun could hardly hear him. ‘Don’t leave me here!’ he thought he heard, but he had no words for the shaman. He could feel himself babbling in delirium.
When next he opened his eyes as pain racked his body, Cassandra had pulled him into the deepest part of the cave. Did she think this would stop Abrax? Maybe because he could not get in, thralled and tethered as he was to the Celestial? No, he would simply destroy the peak of the mountain.
Instead of waiting, Cassandra bundled him into the strange contraption she had described the night before. It was like a hollowed-out walnut shell, he realised. She clambered in next to him, moving quickly but trying not to hurt him. Totelun drifted in and out of consciousness as she brought the top half of the walnut orb down around them and locked it tight.
There was a rope in the lid that held the orb in place. Totelun could feel his dagger being used to slice it. Cassandra grabbed Totelun and held him tight as she cut through. He was conscious enough to feel himself turn weightless as the orb plummeted down the great empty shaft in the mountain. Their bodies rose up as if they could suddenly fly.
When they came crashing down, the walnut submerged. Water began to pour in through the rope hole, and Cassandra tried to dam the flow with her hands. They spun and spun, knocking into rocks under the water.
The last thing Totelun knew was smashing his head on the walnut’s interior wall, and the world going black for good.
Part Four
Chapter Twenty Seven
Aurelia
The dark throne room was not the same one she had seen in Cassandra’s memories; she realised now this was the one below the palace in Theris, the one Anthrom had claimed for his own when he styled himself the King Under the City. She was becoming more and more certain that she was being given a glimpse of the future. Somehow the Goddess now
resided there, resplendent on a throne of darkest obsidian.
Bright sconces lit the path through the chamber and the cloaked figure approached just as before, their feet obscured by the long hem of their robe. She was more aware this time, more focussed. Now that she knew it was a vision, possibly of the future, she could see through the haze that had obfuscated the first few nightmares. Did she recognise the cloak, it’s cut? How tall was the figure? Dammit, was it someone she knew? She understood Cassandra’s frustration. Even if she knew, would she be able to affect anything?
Was this how Cassandra saw the visions of her, always hidden behind a veil? Was the person who stood over her impossible to see?
The figure reached the foot of the throne and stopped. The Medousa rose to her feet in silhouette against the vibrant blue of the Medusi above and behind her.
I knew you’d come, said the Goddess.
She felt it like a bright flash inside her head, scouring her skull. Her mind screamed for her to wake up. She held on, watching.
The figure reached up and removed their hood.
Aurelia woke with a lurch. Her nose was bleeding, the taste of sharp iron in her mouth. She cupped her face and rushed to the basin.
So strong, she thought. Medusi magic could reach such distance, even a vision of Noctiluca’s power could be enough to feel her magic as if it were happening directly to her. She washed her face with a refreshing splash of water, tried to dispel the dream’s hold. She swilled it round her mouth and spat.
The blood in the basin brought back the events of the week before. Verismuss’ mutilated corpse tumbling across the Premier’s council table. The congealed scarlet morass that came with it, the metallic stench.
Harling’s maniacal grin.
He’d left the city now, probably on his way back to Theris. The Premiers had shuttered and closed the Citadel, rolled up and hidden themselves away like pill-bugs at the scent of threat. She had found herself on the street again within minutes, and there had been nothing Ennius could do to stop it.
Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2) Page 37