Wet and unkempt and with a grim expression, Totelun leapt from the Thunwing’s saddleless back. He removed his goggles as he approached the three raised thrones. Kasimir stood before them with a glint in his eye that said he wouldn’t stop this.
The Thunwing – he really needed to think of a name for it – roared at the gathered court, defiantly echoing round the shell hall. Totelun had found a kindred spirit.
‘Reunalis has a legend,’ he said evenly. He needed to make this sound good. ‘One day a man would come, with a heart so pure it was made of crystal.’ He signalled Kasimir, who still held the skull-sized crystal Totelun had cut from the Celestial. ‘Behold the crystal heart,’ he roared, making full use of the acoustics. Kasimir held the crystal aloft for all to see.
‘Put that down!’ snapped Opal.
Totelun gestured to the Thunwing. ‘Only a man without doubt or malice can tame the Thunwing.’ The beast roared again at the perfect moment.
Now for the last flourish of Naus-like audacity. He pointed at Opal. ‘You knew the legend, yet you doubted. You chose to test me, but I survived. You condemned those I travelled with to death. You would not accept the time had come.
‘I stand before you, proof of the legends of old. It is time to leave Reunalis.’
‘Quiet!’ shouted Opal, drawn to her feet in anger. ‘Arrest him!’ she shrieked. ‘This charlatan spews lies. Do not listen to him.’
No one moved. None of Kasimir’s soldiers, no courtiers.
Totelun stepped forward. ‘You have no more tests, Opal. No more lies. I have proven my intentions here.’
‘You brought Medusi into our city!’ she spat.
‘I brought you only the reality of the world outside Reunalis. You can longer pretend that there isn’t a world outside your city. Otherwise where did I come from? That world your ancestors fled is still full of Medusi. I have simply brought you truth.’
He thought of his own discovery that the world was so much bigger than his Floating Islands. He understood Opal’s fear. Fear of the unknown. She could not accept that something she had believed all her life was being proven wrong in front of her. It was the younger generation who would accept. Kasimir and those like him, whose minds had not yet been closed by tradition. It took much to give up on a life living a lie. Too much sometimes. But if your life was only short it was easier.
Pearl stood from her throne, looked deep into Totelun’s eyes, and then knelt, pressing her head to the floor. Behind her, Coral stood and did the same. Kasimir came forward, and held out the crystal heart, which Totelun replaced in the bag at his hip.
‘He is the one who will lead us,’ Kasimir shouted, pulling Totelun’s arm up. The courtiers all around them stood and bowed, and then rose in cheering. Kasimir knelt.
Yet another prophecy was coming true around him, coming true for these people. It was yet again one of Velella’s, but he felt he had manipulated it. Was this how all the prophecies would feel when they came true? He hoped he was around to see it.
A line came back to him from the prophecy Naus had shown him.
He will traverse all four corners of the world, hounded by the forces of evil, gathering allies to his cause.
It had never felt truer. What was this if not the farthest corner of the world, what were these if not his greatest force of allies so far? He had assumed that was just Naus, Aurelia, Chrysaora and Cassandra, but clearly there were more to come.
And he thought of the storm fast approaching. Hounded by the forces of evil.
‘Stand,’ said Totelun, ‘all of you.’ He had to make use of this, now. ‘Release my companion from the Nepenth, or I will destroy it myself. Medusi witch or not, she is my ally and innocent.’
*
Totelun followed a group of soldiers down to the Nepenth as quickly as he could persuade them to move. He had to leave the Thunwing lumbering behind, but he was followed by the entire court, all three Matriarchs, and hangers-on from across the city.
When he stood above the Nepenth, he watched as the handlers and cleaners of the sacred coral sprayed and stimulated the emerging fronds again, making the entrance sphincter dilate and tremble. Cassandra wouldn’t be passed through like a digested carcass, fertilizer for the corals and sea life; she would be coming out the way she came in.
A reluctant handler was encouraged to make his precious Nepenth regurgitate, something he clearly did only under duress. He sprayed a noxious liquid into the flapping hole. Totelun felt the creature contract and tremble, his footing no longer stable as it shuddered and vibrated below. They were making it sick. Totelun knew full well just how unpleasant that could be. He didn’t want to imagine what was happening to the pod underneath, or to Cassandra inside it.
After only ten seconds or so, the Nepenth gave a great lurch and the pulsating hole dilated, vomiting up a scum-covered Cassandra, along with a fountain of acidic bile and foul detritus. She landed on the coral with a wet smack, but only from a few feet up. The smell made Totelun’s eyes water even as he went to her.
Cassandra was on her hands and knees, coughing and spluttering. The handler’s wife had more manners than her husband, bundling Cassandra in cloth and towelling fabric even before Totelun got to her.
Cassandra pulled the cloth down off her face, looked up into his eyes. Her skin was the same grey as before, still charred and burnt looking, but no more so for her few hours spent in one of the hundred stomachs of the Nepenth. She’d stayed out of the acid as much as possible, probably the regurgitation was the worst moment.
Even if she could, she didn’t need to speak. He had never seen a more grateful face in all his life. She knew he’d done everything he could to save her, it didn’t matter how. It was done. He wanted to embrace her, take her in his arms.
Kasimir was the one to break the moment. ‘Let’s get her cleaned up, new clothes. It’s the least we can do,’ he said. ‘These are new times.’
Totelun hadn’t even realised he held her hand until it slipped from his grasp. He looked at his own hand as she was guided away by the kindly woman – it was slick with acid, and it tingled almost immediately. He wiped it off with one of the cloths left behind.
He had one last thing to deal with before he demanded a bed to sleep in for a week. He looked over Kasimir’s shoulder to where the Matriarchs were huddled together talking in low tones. He strode over with Kasimir at his heels.
‘What happens now?’ he said, looking at Opal, who glared back for a moment, but then dropped her gaze. He made it sound expectant. He didn’t necessarily want Opal thrown into the chasm, or even better fed to the Nepenth, but he wasn’t sure he’d say no if they offered.
Pearl raised her chin, looking every bit in charge. ‘If you are referring to Opal, she is in disgrace. She has been publicly shamed by your achievements and her inability to accept clear omens of change. She was proven wrong.’ Pearl glanced at her fellow Matriarch. ‘She will be temporarily removed as part of the Matriarch triumvirate and must go into seclusion for no less than a month, possibly longer, where she will contemplate her transgressions. Only then will she be allowed to make decisions on behalf of Reunalis again.’
A relatively mild punishment by the standards he’d seen of Reunalis, especially compared to a month of digestion, or wrestling Thunwings over a magma chasm, but on reflection he supposed a month in solitary confinement would make him want to end it all, prophecy or none.
‘Is that to your satisfaction?’ Pearl asked.
He nodded. ‘It’s a start.’
Totelun would never have known standing under the constant spray of the waterfall, but it had begun to rain in the chasm beyond.
Chapter Forty One
Anthrom
Aurelia’s lines of fire and trenches of spikes had been nothing but a distraction, a temporary reprieve for a city that was already marked for enslavement and death. Anthrom was convinced her entire plan had consisted simply of as many means as possible of wasting time. Well no matter, he thought, they could coun
t their freedom in hours now.
He ordered the thralls to wait for the final fire boundary to die down before they crossed and charged for Argentor; the Medusi had no such trouble simply floating high over the flames and continuing their inexorable advance. From his vantage at the top of the ridge where Aurelia’s army had first stood, he could see the Medusi picking off the stragglers from her retreat. Soon the flames would die down and the thralls could advance as well.
The trench just below and in front of him was filled to the brim with the bodies of his coerced thrall army, the people of Theris mixed with Terracon horse lords and mercenaries. A strange melting pot of cultures, sadly depleted. He could see the tall sharp spikes jutting from the backs of the first over the ridge, could imagine the scene as yet more barrelled over the hill and piled into this mass grave, now ten thick on every one of a couple hundred vicious stakes.
Aurelia had done well with her short window to defend a city. The rivers of burning pitch had taken thousands of his Medusi, and the pits hundreds of his thralls. He wished they had been able to take the city by surprise, but it had not been possible. Not with Harling’s taunting mission to the Argentori Premiers and not with the way his army lit up the land wherever they went. Theirs was no longer the route of stealth, only of sheer overwhelming numbers.
Though he could have paused while a bridge was made over the pit, it was quicker to simply walk over the corpses, however unpleasant. He called for his palanquin and climbed inside. He wouldn’t be the one to walk over the grisly bodies, his bearers would.
‘Contact Noctiluca,’ he said to the nearest Cephean. Thankfully not Malik this time. ‘The defenders are in disarray, they are retreating. It is time to thrall the city.’ The Cephean nodded; Noctiluca would have heard his words directly. Within a few moments, Medusi were streaming forward on all sides, their shrieks silenced for the moment. His palanquin was lifted and he followed his army, as he still thought of it, over the next hill to Argentor.
The climb down to the city was bumpy, the bearers having trouble with the stepped paddy fields that covered the slopes. Eventually they found a path. Through the curtains he could see the wash of Medusi flowing into the city like rainwater collecting at the bottom of a ravine after a huge downpour.
Like his sisters, he had hardly been outside the palace in his entire life, let alone to foreign city-states. This was the first time he had seen Argentor and he was struck by how beautiful it was; piled up terracotta buildings covered in roof terraces and balconies for residents to survive the warm climate, gardens and trees incorporated into the walls of buildings that had grown up with them. The river that bisected its centre, sported a profusion of piers and docks with steam powered loading systems; the aqueduct that supplied the irrigation for the paddy fields was a fluted engineering marvel that he was genuinely impressed by.
The people of Argentor were ingenious and had been for centuries; their city had grown wealthy and comely steering clear of war and politics until the last few decades.
To simply be thralled like this was a terrible fate for the city. This wasn’t like delivering a few innocent street children to Noctiluca, this was much more. This was a hundred thousand human beings enslaved, wholesale fodder to expand the great machine-like army that flowed around him, to ever greater proportions.
He wondered, not for the first time, if he was on the right side of history.
But at least he was on the right side of her.
He felt a wave of pride and satisfaction to go with his mixed guilt at the fate of the city; he had prevailed in his first command, his first battle. The defenders had been routed and they had broken for the city. The cost had been great, countless Medusi and thralls sacrificed just to reach the next valley. But he had won. He thought of Aurelia’s warnings and jibes. What was she thinking now? Probably running for her life through those streets, trying to find yet another way to fight back. It was hopeless for her.
He genuinely hoped she didn’t die. He wanted to see her one last time, to pour scorn on her doubt of his power and position. To deliver her to Noctiluca. He could hardly wait.
He was watching his Medusi stream into the streets, when he saw the first explosion. A huge echoing report and a rumble through the ground even he could feel, the clatter of rubble falling. He jumped from the palanquin for a better look; a great gout of flame and smoke had erupted not far into the city, raining debris on nearby buildings. He hated explosions, remembering the one in the palace that had almost killed him and he thought had claimed his sister.
Another went off as he watched, just a few streets further in, making him start, then another around to the west. He felt the shuddering of the ground travel up his spine, ending at the thralling tube. They have set traps in the streets, he reasoned, and the Medusi are setting them off. Better them than me. He would need to be careful.
There were maybe two dozen more by the time he reached the city himself. He hated to think of the destruction still being wrought on Noctiluca’s forces, but there was nothing for it. More of Aurelia’s hastily put together defences.
Due to the rubble and debris strewn across the streets, he was forced to abandon the palanquin after only a few roads and continue on foot. Scowling and impatient, he led a knot of Cephean, no longer really directing the course of the battle, just following Anthrom, hoping he knew the best course. The Medusi had been let off the leash. Anthrom supposed he should be more fearful, but the creatures were uninterested in their own army; he and the rest of the Cepheans were thralled already. He made for the vague direction of the river and from there maybe the court.
Everything was obscured by thick grey smoke that wafted across the squares and through the narrow, cobbled streets, between buildings that climbed atop each other. Anthrom couldn’t see anything. Medusi would loom out of the murk, diffuse blue light suddenly coalescing into a frantic moving predator, searching for victims.
‘We need to get above this smoke,’ he barked, as another explosion sounded further into the streets ahead. And we need to be careful of setting more traps off, he thought. They were blowing apart their own city, anything to avoid the Medusi. He did not want to be caught in one.
Anthrom found a building where part of the wall had been demolished and edged inside. There was no-one inside hiding, no sign of life. The group of Cephean followed him in. He’d lost track of Malik during the battle – they all looked alike – but he was here again, watching him. Reporting on him. He could feel him as if it were Noctiluca’s eyes on his back. He was telling her everything that was going wrong. Towards the back of the building there was access to the roof and a terrace on a third storey. Anthrom stepped out into more cloying smoke, but at least most of it was below him. From the roof, he took stock of the situation.
White and black smoke curled around every building he could see; below him he could see Medusi rushing from building to building through the haze. He could hear their shrieks, but he couldn’t hear the human responses. He didn’t see any with newfound thralls. They weren’t stopping to attack.
By this point the city should have been screaming. They should have been witnessing the thralling of the Argentori citizens in their thousands. He’d expected more fighting, a slow march through, taking captives as soldiers and Primes fell, and then allowing the Medusi to take them.
But there was nothing.
Where was the sound of fighting, the shouts of men in battle? The clash of steel? And the screams of fear? Even the Medusi were silent, denied any prey to hunt.
His own thralls fanned out across the city, but met nothing in the way of resistance. Where was the opposition, the enemy? Where were Aurelia’s forces that they had followed after the fires died on the hill?
Malik was at his side, only just recognisable as human with his golden mask. Anthrom wished he had his own for the smoke. ‘What is happening? The Goddess demands a report,’ he said in his tinny voice.
‘Can’t you see for yourself,’ Anthrom snapped. It didn’t p
ay to upset Noctiluca, but he was panicking.
There was no one here. What magic was this?
Anthrom made his way back down to street level. With another hour of slow creeping forward – expendable thralls going ahead to check for traps – he had reached the river and the nearby market district. To his left were ornate gardens and courtyards choking on the smoke. There had been another half-dozen explosions since the rooftop, each one further and further away as the Medusi reached the edges of the city on all sides. To his right was the noble’s quarter with its tall mansions, most now damaged beyond repair.
Anthrom stopped in the central plaza, surrounded by ruined buildings on all sides. What was happening? The certain victory he thought he had grasped, was passing through his fingers like sand.
Medusi milled about the square, no longer enflamed by the hunt. Where had everyone gone? There was no one here to thrall.
A scout ran up to him, bowed.
‘Report!’ barked Anthrom.
‘We gave chase, my lord. But as soon as the enemy’s forces reached the city they melted away, into buildings, into the ground.’ He shrugged, looking lost. For a moment, Anthrom wondered at trickery, an illusion like those he could conjure about himself, but this was not what the young scout meant. ‘Whenever we followed, we would trigger explosions and be forced back. The same was happening above, Medusi activating trip wires and causing buildings to come crumbling down on the lead ranks.’
‘What about the population itself, the peasants?’
‘Every building we check is empty, my lord. Vacated hours ago, fires are cold, embers dark.’
Anthrom watched Malik turn away and begin speaking in low tones to himself. Reporting back to Noctiluca.
‘What are you telling me?’ Anthrom asked the scout, impatiently.
Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2) Page 56
