Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2)

by Toby Andersen

  Inside the panic room, he could seal the access with another lever. There was a bed that dominated the space and a small table and chair. On the table he arrayed his pile of food, lit by the one candle he had found on his travels.

  The Order had shown no evidence that they knew the secret room existed, and for now he was safe. Anthrom slept and dreamt in comparative comfort. He woke and ate sparingly. He lost track of time again without a window, and was surprised awake when he heard High Cleric Harling’s voice in the chamber beyond.

  Had he been found? Had the candle’s light shown through a crack? Had the thralled maid given him up?

  ‘Prince Anthrom,’ said Harling, talking loudly and clearly this time, ‘This hunt has been both trying and engaging. I do respect an opponent who can stay ahead of me for three days.’

  Had it been that long? Anthrom wondered. He remembered the man talking to Aurelia, relishing opposition and defiance, and enjoying an argument. No wonder he’d let the hunt go on. Was he just toying with me?

  ‘But the time for games is over. Noctiluca, my Queen, arrives very soon now and I cannot still have you at large. It would bode ill on me to not have you ready to speak with her. I know she is desperate to meet you. She does so enjoy the young children.’

  If he’d just left that last bit out, thought Anthrom. But if he’d learnt anything from listening to Harling, it was that the man loved to coat his words in sharp barbs.

  ‘I have repeated this last entreaty throughout the palace, and will continue to do so in every room. This is your final chance. I do not say this lightly. Give yourself up, come out of wherever it is you are hiding, and meet the Goddess like a man. You will not like where this goes next.’ He fell silent, presumably giving Anthrom a chance to turn himself in. Anthrom sat on the large bed, feeling like a caged animal; he just wanted to dash out and attack Harling where he stood.

  ‘Then you give me no choice.’ Harling seemed to sigh. ‘I don’t want to do this, but you are forcing my hand. The next part is on you. I have a small creature that can find you, Anthrom, but I don’t want to use it. It can be very hard on the person it hunts, especially if it gets to them for too long before we can intervene. But alas, you leave me no choice.’ Whatever he proclaimed, Anthrom could tell he was enjoying this. ‘It’s currently in your old chambers, getting your scent. It’s an exceptional tracker, because once it has a scent, it will not rest until it finds its prey. Good night, and I’m sure we will be seeing each other very soon indeed.’

  Anthrom heard Harling leave the chamber, and the footfalls of more than one person. He must have had silent guards with him.

  He lay back biting his lip. The leader of the Order, the bio-engineers who had created the Cephea, had a creature that could track him down, and he wouldn’t like it when it found him. In his current state he couldn’t dredge his mind through the pages of his Bestiary to guess at what creature it was, or consequently how to counter it. He needed sleep, he needed more food, he needed a wash; he was beginning to smell quite pungent, and not at all like a young Prince. The creature would have no trouble finding him using scent, but he found his mind wandering away from the current danger as the hours wore on.

  This room had been the site of his last mistake in his sabotage of Aurelia’s war effort. He had worked with Verismuss to take the throne from her, to undermine each measure she took to win the siege with a measure of his own to counter it. Their father, Emperor Tiber had confided many times in his son that he intended Anthrom to rule after him, that he could only trust the throne to his male line. Anthrom had simply been trying to honour his father’s wishes after Aurelia had usurped the throne following Tiber’s death, early in the siege. He recalled with consternation Aurelia’s revelation, right here in this room, that his father hadn’t wanted him to rule after all. She claimed father had spoken to her before he died, and told her that Anthrom was not fit to rule, that his lust for power was really a weakness.

  Ridiculous, how could the ambition to take a throne be a weakness? No one would say Eleutheria was weak to forge a new city, and wrest power from the Overlords.

  As he swam in and out of sleep, he examined his reasoning. He regretted some of the measures he’d taken, but not the ultimate goal. And the measures were the best decisions possible at the time. Had he known how badly it would go, he might have tried a different method, but he would still have tried to take the throne.

  One regret still scratched at him below the surface. He wished he had never tried to kill Cassandra. He had loved Cassandra, his kind sister. She had never been the overbearing, patronising, arrogant brat that Aurelia was; instead she had kind words for him. She was the one who tried to incorporate him into their games, but the twins had a world all their own – their strange telepathic language which he was forever excluded from – and it never worked for long.

  Fratricide was an ugly word, but that’s what he had attempted. He had found her hidden away in this very room, killed his old nursemaid getting in, and then put a pillow over Cassandra’s comatose face. He thought it would be easy, but she had suddenly woken as he held the cushion firm. Aurelia had rushed into the room and they had fought like beasts; she punched and kicked him, knocked him to the floor, tore a great gauge from his cheek with her nails. He touched a hand to it now, scabbed over and ridged. He would have a scar because of her. He hadn’t meant to kill Cassandra, events had just got out of hand. The only thing he was grateful for now was that he had not succeeded.

  He glanced up at the crack high on the wall above the bed. He had been spying from the gap beyond, between the walls, when he’d first discovered that Cassandra was here. As he looked at it, the hole seemed to move, the shadow flickering. Anthrom came all the way awake.

  What was that?

  A small sharp head the size of a fist suddenly poked out from the crack, and a tiny eyeball stared at him. Two little scaly arms followed, and then the creature was trying to squeeze into the room.

  Anthrom shrieked. He couldn’t help himself. The thing screeched back at him, its tongue flicking, its fangs visible and outstretched. It was a kind of rare winged nightmare lizard, a Xantusi.

  With a crumbling of the stonework, the Xantusi dived into the room and hit the bed. It recovered immediately, taking flight and sticking to the wall on the far side of the room. Anthrom was on his feet, but he had nothing to fend the thing off with. It screeched again, then went for him. Anthrom tried to bash it as it attacked him, but he missed, and the Xantusi scratched at his face, knocking him down and biting into his neck. This is what Harling meant by it being hard on the person it hunts. The Xantusi’s teeth opened his throat near the collarbone and though Anthrom tried to fight he had fallen badly and his arms were wedged. The creature latched on, worrying his flesh, drinking his blood. Anthrom’s yelled for all he was worth, all thought for secrecy gone.

  Shouts from outside the room, guards, steel clashing, Harling’s voice, but he was far away. Anthrom was losing blood.

  Suddenly there were men in the tiny room with him; one ripped the Xantusi off his throat, and broke its neck. The other lifted Anthrom, and dragged him out through the low doorway. He registered faintly that there was wood smashed all around.

  Harling leaned over him. ‘Prince Anthrom, I wish it hadn’t come to this, but I told you, you wouldn’t like it if I had to come get you.’ He turned to his men. ‘Get him to a Healer. Now.’

  Chapter Five

  Totelun

  Totelun rose slowly into the full glare of consciousness, bright and disorienting. His thoughts swam around him, darting just out of range like a shoal of tiny minnows, before coalescing into a form he could finally grasp. He hated fighting for consciousness; it always reminded him of being inside the Celestial.

  Light came from a mirror suspended above him, reflecting a diffuse beam from a strange apparatus across the dark room. It involved a candle, a prism and a cradle of mirrors; Totelun had never seen anything quite like it.

  He didn’t know
where he was; a dark chamber, apart from the beam of light. Totelun couldn’t make out the walls nor the dimensions; he could have been in an auditorium, or a tiny shed. He had the disconcerting feeling of being blind in the darkness, and blinded by the light at the same time.

  A contraption held him flat on his back, but facing diagonally upright, his face into the beam of light. When he tried to move he found he was strapped in with leather belts at wrists and ankles, waist and neck.

  It all came flooding back. Torture, at the hands of the Order. He had no idea what they knew, or what they wanted to know. All he knew was what Naus had told him of them. A religious fundamentalist cult dedicated to thralling human to Medusi, run by a cadre of Clerics; an organization which traded military secrets in return for concessions and political power at court via spies and eavesdroppers in the houses of the nobility.

  That about summed them up.

  Naus claimed to have been trying to infiltrate them for hundreds of years, and hadn’t been able. He also suspected that the figure in the tentacles, the man who was thralled to the Celestial that had chased them across the world, was in league with them.

  Thinking of Naus made him think of rescue. He wished someone was here to get him out of this mess, but this wasn’t the stories his uncle told, where a hero always showed up in the nick of time. He would have to bear this torture, even if it killed him, and he would have to bear it on his own.

  He hoped Naus and Aurelia, and Cassandra and Chrysaora were far away from here.

  I got myself into this, he realised. I shouldn’t have killed Stauros, that was when this all went wrong. Or at least I shouldn’t have admitted it.

  He’d become important to important people.

  Totelun never thought of himself as important. But he seemed to be a keen interest of the Order of the Medousa. They didn’t like people who opposed them. And to Sorkhanis, he remembered. He’d killed Mengu, the apprentice Shaman, in his cell before, but the man seemed to be there on the orders of Sorkhanis. What did the Shaman Lord want with him? Why had Mengu tried to kill him?

  There was too much time to think strapped to a torture device.

  He heard a metal door crank open and struggled against his bonds, but he couldn’t see anyone there. The door closed again with a clang. And then locked.

  ‘I’m glad you’re finally awake,’ said a voice he recognised. It was the High Cleric who had singled him out in the dungeons. ‘It was getting tiresome checking on you.’

  ‘How long have I been out?’

  ‘Oh, half a day, give or take.’ He sounded like a wolf. ‘Now, let me introduce myself. We met before, but just for a moment. I am Harling, High Cleric of the Order of the Medousa.’ He slid through the darkness until he stood before the apparatus. The angles of his face caught the light, but his eyes remained in shadow. His robe was so black that his face seemed to float in the air. ‘And you are the boy who would destroy the Medusi. Totelun Altanji.’ He looked down his hooked nose. ‘You mutter in your sleep.’

  ‘Maybe I told you what you need to know and this torture is no longer necessary,’ Totelun said, channelling some of Naus’ sarcasm.

  Harling’s flash of teeth told him everything he needed to know. The torture would happen no matter what he said. ‘You said a few things, but not nearly enough to make our little chat obsolete. I want to know about the prophecy, Totelun. It intrigues me a great deal how you think you can possibly succeed.

  ‘I could release you right now, let you attempt to what, bring down every Celestial, kill every thrall in the whole world, clear the entire continent of wild Medusi, and somehow defeat Noctiluca? But I don’t think you have a single clue how you would go about it.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Totelun, honestly. The how of the matter genuinely was not clear to him. He’d accepted his fate, but what did you do to actually make it happen?

  ‘Clearly, but I want to know what you do know. It might be more than you realise. Any suspicions you have, or clues, as to how it might be accomplished. We still need to test this machine. I had it brought all the way from the temple, and I wouldn’t want to waste a chance to use it.

  ‘I want to take the measure of you, Totelun. The boy who would destroy everything I have worked for. I’m intrigued, you understand? The very idea is absurd.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘I don’t know what Velella was snorting, but she must have been high if she thought a boy like you could stand against the Order. Maybe she didn’t know the Order would exist, but if that’s the case, then the entire prophecy is brought into question.

  ‘I could have you killed right here on this machine. I will wait until my Queen arrives, but still, you could be dead very soon. Then where does the prophecy stand. Part of me wants to do it, just to prove that mad witch’s prophecies were so much bullshit. What part of the prophecy showed you here in my power?’

  Totelun smiled. ‘Would you believe the prophecy if I were to somehow get out of here before you kill me?’

  Harling scowled, his eyes darting to Totelun’s restraints. There it was. Self-doubt. Harling talked a good game, but it was easy to penetrate right through his falsehoods. He was worried about Totelun; he truly wanted to kill him immediately because he was scared of him. The only thing that stopped him was the imminent arrival of Noctiluca, the Queen of the Medusi, the real head of the Order, who he was more scared of.

  Harling shifted, regaining himself. ‘I suppose so. Hypothetically, if you were to magically get out of this machine and escape, I’d have to put some stock in the prophecy after all.’ He paused for a long moment, watching Totelun. ‘But it doesn’t seem like you have that power. Any reason you are not escaping?’

  ‘I don’t feel like it right now.’ Totelun tried to sound tough, brash, like Naus always managed. But Naus had centuries of practice. Aurelia wouldn’t bow to this Harling either. He needed their strength now. ‘I want to see what this torture device actually does.’

  ‘We’ll get to that.’ Harling began to stroll slowly around the machine, hands behind his back. Totelun couldn’t follow him, because of the neck restraint. How many times had he been restrained since he fell to the surface world, twice, three times now? ‘I would like you to understand a few things before we begin.’

  ‘You’re telling me things now?’ asked Totelun.

  ‘I want you to know your situation, so that when it comes to the torture, you won’t hold anything back. It’s an exercise in mind conditioning. Just listen. I’m going to tell you a story.’

  ‘Are all old men storytellers? Or just boring?’ It was Naus’ favourite pastime too, and his uncle Kamal’s job.

  ‘Totelun, you try my patience. Shut up. It won’t take long, or would you prefer to get to the torture sooner?’

  ‘Take as long as you need.’ It was possible he really would just give up and start on whatever it was he was going to do. Totelun decided to just listen. It was possible he would learn something interesting. He knew Naus would kill to get a few moments with the High Cleric.

  ‘About ten years ago, a boy arrived at the temple of the Order. He was young, on the cusp of manhood, same as you. His name was Abrax. I came down to meet him. He told me that he was responding to a call. This is what we look for in most acolytes, the sensitivity to the call of the Goddess. It is a subtle pull towards the temple, responding to Noctiluca’s magic.

  ‘Before he could become an acolyte he had to complete the initiation. One of the things we test in our young acolytes is their ability to withstand the Medusi. Their strength of mind for example, to remain themselves after thralling. Abrax it turned out, had an amazing tolerance to Medusi stings. He could be stung repeatedly for hours and not succumb to the effects. He could be kept on a particular dosage and function normally. He would only fall into a coma after prolonged exposure, and even then he woke within minutes. By far the strongest acolyte I ever worked with.’

  Harling broke off and wheeled over a table with a strange contraption on it. Made of wood and metal, it came up
from the table like an arm, but instead of a hand there was a cluster of needles. Small curved tubes ran from behind the needles and down into the table. Harling pushed the table up to sit flush with Totelun’s feet, and the arm came up over his body; the needles hung above his chest.

  ‘One of my longest running experiments over the decades, has been to find someone with the ability to join with a Celestial, to withstand that incredible influence and gain power and magic like an Overlord.’

  ‘I thought no one could,’ Totelun asked. He knew otherwise, he’d seen the figure in the tentacles. He’d fought him. He suspected he had some idea where this story was going now.

  ‘We've spread that story for centuries, one of our most successful propaganda measures. You don't want someone to realise that kind of power that you don't control.

  ‘So we continued the tests. Abrax had already proven to be one of the strongest acolytes we had ever come across. The next tests revolved around thralling. Of course, you can only test thralling so much without major harm to your subject and I did not want to kill my star acolyte. He needed to be strong, for what I had in mind.

  Totelun found he was interested despite himself. ‘I thought it was impossible to be unthralled?’

  ‘If that is genuinely all you know then maybe I have even less to worry about from you than I thought. Of course you can be unthralled, but it is a dangerous process.’

  ‘How is it done?’ Totelun was thinking of Chrysaora and Cassandra. If he ever did manage to work out how to destroy all Medusi, he didn’t want to kill his friends. If there was a way to safely separate them from their Medusi, he wanted to know it.

  Harling flashed his teeth again, in a smile like a tiger. ‘I will not be the one to tell you such secrets. I ask the questions here, not you.’ He continued. ‘Suffice to say Abrax passed the tests. He was broken and rebuilt by the process, and though his strength remained, his mind began to fray. I told him of my plan. He was desperate to please the Goddess, her influence on him was so strong. He agreed to my plan.