Shadow Over Avalon Read online

  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.

  Chapter 1

  Earth Date 3892

  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.

  *

  Dressed in a clean black robe, Arthur stepped into the corridor. Like his sleeping area, no ornament, unnecessary furnishing, nor window relieved the bland grayness of a metallic thoroughfare designed to focus acolytes’ thoughts inward. On the right and left, the doors of other sleeping rooms appeared at regular intervals. He ignored them, striding for a larger door at the end that gave access to Sanctuary proper. Air changers stirred to life with a soft whoosh, spewing dusty, dry puffs of air that made him cough, unlike the rich aromas of the dreamed surface world. The smoothness of his robe recalled memories of different textured clothes he wore in his nightmares.

  He knew of one little-used outlet and headed there, not that the Archive had a physical presence. The sentient intelligence occupied all the data systems of Avalon, and was everywhere at once. Punishment for unauthorized access was the Hakara chamber, a pain amplifier known for breaking the spirits of its victims. But they’d have to catch him first.

  Heart pounding, Arthur raised the hood of his robe to cover his head, aware that low psi-rated guards protected the privacy of seers during the resting time from the thoughts of others intruding on their sleep. The cowl shadowed his face to give him the anonymity he needed. If he were caught . . . well, he didn’t want to think about that.

  At the final intersection, before the corridor to the outlet, Arthur paused, caught with the thought that the Archive might hold no records of his parentage. Sanctuary might elect to hold paper copies rather than risk a raid by one such as himself. If that were so, he would have wasted his time. All he needed was a few minutes to browse records while the Archive’s attention was elsewhere. It shouldn’t take notice of an illused console with everything else it accomplished.

  But then a new idea formed: rather than wasting the risky encounter with the omnipotent and invisible entity at a console location if the Archive was monitoring all outlets, a study of Shadow, the Outcast he had intended to ask Ector about, might confirm whether the reality of the surface world was in any way like his dream images. He knew she had first come to Avalon in the year of his birth. Maybe she knew of his parents. Arthur figured one or both might have been members of the Elite and therefore she would know. Questions about her couldn’t worry anyone. Damn Evegena, he’d fight the invaders even if he had to steal a submersible to get there.

  A cockroach skittered across the floor. Arthur caught the thing underfoot as it streaked to a small crack between the floor and wall. It crushed under his heel while he reflected on the Outcast, who represented an intriguing enigma for all acolytes. A surface dweller, the only one with cyborg implants and ranking in the Elite corps, made for a fascinating mystery, and then there was her psi power, unknown among Terrans. Maybe he could join her surface fighters?

  He came to the door leading to the Archives, hesitating on the brink of sin, one step away from no return. The memory of his rapid capture outside Sanctuary returned to haunt him. Was it the Archive’s doing? Please let the thing be focused elsewhere. His hand snaked around the open aperture to jam a thin probe behind the frame of a light switch, shorting out the circuit. Illumination activated by his entry died. A faint glow from the Archive console relieved the darkness.

  “Welcome,” the Archive’s disembodied voice announced. “State your need.” The doors slid shut.

  Damn, he hadn’t reckoned on the sentient being monitoring this output outside of waking hours for seers – so much for his plans to raid the database for his ancestry. On to his second option. “The Outcast. Why is she pivotal in this war with the aliens?” The question hung in the air of a darkened room – not one that he reckoned could give away his real intent. Against a far wall, a control panel gave enough light to stretch the shadow of a chair. Arthur, the lone corporeal presence, held his breath, willing the Archive to give him access.

  “Change of pattern in most wars can be traced to one single act, which results in a cumulative displacement of events.” The Archive’s now sibilant whisper hissed around the room, seeping into every corner.

  “Just one?” Could a war start from such simple beginni
ngs?

  A sphere of light formed, suspended at head height and positioned three feet in front of him. It lit his seer’s hooded black robe, but not his features, hidden deep within the cowl.

  Don’t breathe. Don’t give it any chance to sample essence fragments.

  “The extent varies according to the action.” The machine’s answer spread outward in waves of sound.

  The sphere reformed itself into a resemblance of his face, floating at head height. Deeps. A sonic probe. Oh squid shit. The Archive projected full size holo-images of four potential matches, eliminating all except that of a young man of average height and build, high cheekbones and strong chin, deep-set violet eyes, and a straight nose. Dark brown hair fell to his shoulders in waves. Caught again, and furious, Arthur awaited the inevitable. He turned to repair the light source control, more as an escape from reality than for amends.

  “Records indicate you are Arthur, a seer acolyte.” The Archive speech pattern normalized. “There is no research permit issued to any acolyte at this time.”

  “I didn’t ask. What’s the point when the answer will be no?” He wanted to smash something, anything, to relieve his frustration. He wouldn’t spend the rest of his life as a vehicle for the Archive in this sterile tomb of a place, like most of the initiate seers.

  “Why make repairs when there are others more skilled in this task?” Curiosity colored the Archive’s usually monotone mechanical voice.

  “It’s something to do while I wait for security.”

  “You intend to reduce the punishment by performing reparation?”

  “Evegena”—he spat out the name of the seer leader—“does not clutter her mind with an acolyte’s small doings.”

  Repairs to the light source completed, Arthur faced the general direction of his antagonist. “What meaning can the concept of punishment possibly have for a non-corporeal?” This outlet looked the same as any other console, a metallic gray back-plate, except all the touch controls shone like rows of parallel eyes. In this small room, even allowing for the reflective surfaces of the slick walls, the feeling of being a specimen preserved for study behind glass grew stronger.