Shadow Over Avalon

Shadow Over Avalon

C.N. Lesley

www.kristell-ink.com

Copyright © 2013 by Elizabeth Anne Hull

Elizabeth Anne Hull asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this book

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Kindle ISBN 978-1-909845-25-1
Paperback ISBN 978-1-909845-24-4
Epub ISBN 978-1-909845-26-8

Cover art by Evelinn Enoksen

Cover design by Ken Dawson

E-book design by Book Polishers

Kristell Ink
An Imprint of Grimbold Books
4 Woodhall Drive
Banbury
Oxfordshire
OX16 9TY
United Kingdom

www.kristell-ink.com

This book is dedicated to my family, who put up with my scribblings over the years and offered their unfailing support.

Prologue

An ageless man sits in a cave, conjuring images in his fire. Weave a twist of fate there, pull the weft of compulsion here and the plan is ready to set into motion. He cares nothing about the misery and death he will bring to his victims; they are mere vessels to be used. A reincarnation will be born.

If only the original man had been more concerned with leaving an heir than with noble quests, equality for his knights, and the size of his round table, all the convoluted backtracking of genetic material would not have been necessary. Still, he, Emrys, was in the very best place to guide the process through generations. He laughed at those he ruled, momentarily disrupting the careful illusion of a cavern that he had formed for his own comfort.

Soon, yes, soon he would have a real cave and be done with this tireless task. Just one more generation to bring the one. An ageless man sits in a cave conjuring images in his fire. Weave a twist there; pull the weft of compulsion there and the plan is ready to set in motion. Fortune twists in the strongest hands.

Orb lights suspended over the buildings gave the plasglass dome of their ‘sky’ a blue glow against the fathoms of seawater pressing from above. Ordinary Submariners, people with real lives, hurried about their business like flows of tiny fish caught in a never-ending day. Initiate seers loitered at every junction. Serving as the eyes of the sentient computer, the Archive, these black-robed law keepers were as gloomy as their home, the dark towers of Sanctuary, which stood like rotted teeth amid the artificial brightness. Free at last from the grim place, if only for a short while, Arthur intended to enjoy his excursion into the city, his first since attaining the man-height needed to pose as an initiate.

He didn’t see why seers forbade him when most other acolytes could visit their families on occasion. Surely he must have some kinfolk, and he thought his friend Ector, an officer in the Elite corps, would know. Ector had gone quiet every time Arthur tried to quiz him inside Sanctuary; something was being hidden and Arthur stood a good chance of finding out by visiting Ector at home. Aside from kin, he wanted more information about Shadow, the Terran Outcast who worked with the Elite corps on the surface world. He ached to know more about the place and the woman with a psi rating so similar to his own.

Two initiates turned in his direction. He attempted to stroll through the plaza with confidence, all the while giving off a mental signature of authority and right to walk from Sanctuary without the escort acolytes required. Their gaze rolled over him, moving on. Arthur heaved a sigh of relief. Ten more steps to a side street.

A black-clad form stepped into view, blocking the way. Arthur altered his direction, but everywhere he looked a seer stood, all of them focused on him. As one, they closed in on him. How had they known he wasn’t allowed? He looked exactly the same as they did in his black robe.

Outflanked, his mind caught in the crushing grip of two initiates, Arthur marched back into Sanctuary to explain his unauthorized excursion into the city of Avalon. He was now too busy shielding his mental abilities from his captors to come up with a convincing lie to excuse what, in his opinion, shouldn’t be a crime.

The black doors of the inner sanctum hissed open to admit Arthur into the presence of a skeletal hag. As the matriarch of the seers, Evegena had the strongest mind of all. She didn’t need any guards protecting her when she could squash the mind of another.

She looked up from her work interface, gray brows forming a harsh line over her pale eyes. “Caught in the city without permission and I see from reports you have willfully declined to gift your breeding mistress with viable semen. Explain yourself.”

The power of her mind crashed against his barriers. Arthur adapted his outer thoughts to transmit frustration. “Why I can’t visit the city like other acolytes?”

“They have family to visit, while you do not, and you have not addressed your other sin.”

Hating her casual dismissal of his needs, Arthur shrugged. “Maybe I’m not fertile.”

“Raising your core temperature before visiting Circe would ensure you aren’t.” Evegena turned her monitor to face him. “Look at your acolyte progress charts. Excellent in martial arts, weapons training, and you hold the record for submersion breathing. And then there is this—Telepathy and telekinesis scores border on a retarded bandwidth, results which don’t match with your ability to destroy your own semen. Oh, and don’t bother to lie to me. I can sense your barriers even if I can’t penetrate them.” She swung the monitor back and began tapping on the keyboard.

Caught. He should have aimed at scoring in the midrange, but it was too late for regrets. “I don’t want to become a seer initiate. I want to join the military and use my powers to fight on the surface.”

Evegena finished with the interface, splaying her fingers wide to stretch out the webbing between each digit. “As a ward of Sanctuary, you will follow the path I have chosen. You have ten days to bring your mental skills up to an acceptable level. During this time you will also provide viable semen. Should you decline, there will be consequences.” She waved him out with a flick of her hand.

“I’m eighteen in two weeks, Matriarch. Legal age, and then you can’t stop me.” Damn her to the deeps. He looked down at her diminutive figure, his fury building.

Evegena’s eyes narrowed, the gray-colored irises so light she appeared blind. “Don’t imagine you can evade your fate.”

Arthur bowed from the waist, his long seer’s robes hiding his clenched fists from her as he departed.

*

A terrified scream wrenched Arthur through layers of sleep into heart-pounding darkness. At his side lay Circe, her naked body twitching in time with her nightmare; her ragged breathing warred with the thud and hiss of air changers in the corridor outside his room. Circe didn’t get nightmares. Not ever.

A frightening, guilt-ridden possibility washed through him, since they had never spent the whole night together. Arthur had just woken from his regular nightmare. What if his sleeping thoughts bled into hers? He didn’t want her hurt with his burden. Breaking all seer protocols, he pushed his thoughts past her mind’s privacy barrier.

Breath scorching through labored lungs. Heartbeats thudding louder than footfalls. Darkness presses closer with wolves not far behind. The mournful wail of a hunter’s horn sets the pack howling.

The faint light of a fire shines through dense forest. In the mouth of a cavern, a robed figure sits cross-legged beside the blaze. Within the depths of a cowl are eyes so black they reflect none of the flames, a predator’s hypnotic link with cornered prey.

The dank smell of stagnant water mingles with wood smoke and lupine odor. The pack close for the kill, but the figure gestures, sending them slinking away into the night.

By the deeps! She continued the thread of his nightmare. His psi factor had slipped out of his control in sleep. What would the seer elders do if they discovered the product of a breeding program was defective? Keep alive the bits they needed and eliminate the rest?

He reached out with his mind to levitate an illuminator switch on his desktop across the room. A soft, golden glow lighted his simple acolyte cubicle and cast long shadows from his clothes chest. Light reflected through the plasglass surface of the table and chair. Circe lay curled, her hands over her wavy blonde hair. A single tear escaped to run down her flawless cheek.

Gently, he roused her, holding her tight in his arms as she awakened in a panic. “Now you know why I prefer to sleep alone.” Arthur focused on the gray metallic ceiling of his cubicle, his lips set in a thin line. “I’ve had that dream every night for months.”

Circe looked up at him with a frown, her blue eyes still wide with shock. “You raided my mind!”

“I don’t like to see you suffering.”

She stirred in his arms, shuddering. “Stop reviewing vids of the surface and maybe you won’t invent nightmares around the place. Acolytes don’t get permission to visit that primitive desolation, so why bother?”

“I haven’t watched any vids. How can I dream up images of a place I haven’t seen?” He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Circe, I’m in someone else’s body when I run from that pack.”

“Racial memories? Thoughts from your time in gestation?” Some of the tension left her face.

Her delicate hands cupped his cheeks, and the soft webbing between her digits began to excite him. Arthur fought down the untimely urge. “Now do you see what you get for sneaking in here after hours?”

“I didn’t have to sneak.” Circe brushed her soft lips against his. “Had you accepted my invitation, we would be in my quarters, in my bed, with my cleansing unit a few steps away. Instead, we are in this bare room with no facilities.” She grabbed the thin bed cover to rub him down. “And you stink.”

He pushed her hands away, frowning and offended. “Go back to your room. You got what you came for.”

“Did I? I felt the increase in your core temperature. I know I didn’t get viable seed. Is this evasion an attempt to prolong your fun?”

Arthur stared, hurt that she would think he used her.

“Tell me about the dreams, then. Have you asked your parents if they run in your family?”

Harsh laughter burst from him. “Didn’t you do your research? I have no parents—some nameless sire and a breeding mistress dam. The records are closed to me.”

Her hands flew to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. When Evegena gave me this assignment, she said she had already done the compatibility ratings.”

“Our seer matriarch pokes her scrawny finger into my life yet again. Do you know how it feels to be an experiment in eugenics?”

Circe sat up, backing away from him. “Get an answer from the Archive. Acolytes have the right to access data.”

“Easy words. We are permitted to research set subjects in the presence of a full initiate.”

“You all wear robes of the same cut and color.” She shrugged. “Who is to know if you are an initiate or not?”

He had managed to breach security earlier in the day, and no one would be expecting a second attempt so soon. Arthur smiled and reached for her in a gentle, loving way, putting every ounce of the skills she had taught him into the kiss he gave her. Circe responded for a few moments before she succumbed to the sleep command he slid into her mind. If he got caught by whoever spied on him the last time, he didn’t want her blamed in any way.