Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) (55 page)
Read Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) Online
Authors: T.O. Munro
Odestus
moved slowly through the narrow crevasse. The yellow sun shone down from its purple sky with a heat he had not felt in weeks, not since he last ventured into this place. He had discarded his thick cloak before stepping through the gate, he wished he had chosen a thinner robe as well. Still, not long to go.
The cleft in the rock turned sharply left and then became a tunnel into the mountain side. Though not tall he had to duck down, bending almost double to walk along the passageway, and then it opened into a huge vaulted chamber
nearly half a mile across, the hollowed out heart of a volcano.
Water had collected in its centre forming a deep lake. The
re was an eerie glowing quality to the walls, from their lining of luminescent lichen. The effect was to light the hollow as brightly as day. Two shallow bottomed skiffs were being sculled across the lake. Figures in the bow dangled lines to catch the sightless fish. Creatures living at the top of a food chain which was driven by residual volcanic heat and the tiny organisms that could fashion raw thermal energy into organic life.
At one end of the lake was a small collection of stone huts and it was here that Odestus directed his footsteps. He trod carefully through fields cultivated with giant mushrooms and returned the cheerful wave of one of the
fishermen on the lake as he went.
The huts were arranged either side of a single street, with a larger building at its head. Odestus stopped by the second one on the right, bending down to listen as he knocked at the fibrous material of the door.
A low voice made a sound which Odestus recognised as an invitation to enter. He pushed open the unbarred door and crept inside.
“Gud Tog, Odestus,” the low voice said. “Please be seated.”
“Gud Tog, Vlyndor,” the wizard replied as he slid gratefully onto a stone stool. “How have things been in Grithsank?”
Vlyndor
blinked at the wizard, his H shaped pupils thickening within the yellow eyes, perched on the sides of his scaled head. Odestus knew he was not an attractive man, but felt sure in Vlyndor he had a potential competitor he would always beat in those village beauty contests they used to hold when he was a child. Provided, of course that the contest did not take place in Grithsank.
Vlyndor was
an elder of the Karib people, but he was little taller than a twelve year old human child. His scaled skin was a dazzling mix of greens and purples and reds and he wore a rough tunic of woven reeds. The simple stool allowed him to curl his tail around so that it covered his three toed feet and he rested his three fingered hands lightly on his knees.
When a moment’s silence had passed without Vlyndor answering his question, Odestus tried to draw a further answer. “Not been troubled by dragons I hope.”
Vlyndor shook his head. “No, Odestus. Dragons always stay far North of here. We’ve not been troubled by dragons, no.”
“Bu
t you are troubled by something?”
Vlyndor blinked a little faster. “You not come for long time, Odestus, very long time.”
“I’m sorry,” Odestus replied. “I tried to, but it is not always easy.”
Vlyndor barked. The wizard jumped, always at the sound of
Karib laughter. “Look at you, Odestus, you not change at all, me I get old, old and fat.”
In truth, Odestus found it hard to spot the signs of ageing in the
Karibs, a deeper mottling of the skin perhaps, a slight slowing in the flicking of their tongues, but the bald facts were that Vlyndor had it right. Time for Odestus was passing more slowly than for the Karib leader, thirty times more slowly.
“What is it that’s worrying you, Vlyndor?” Odestus asked.
“Best you see, see for yourself.”
They shuffled
outside and worked their way around the back of the building. Odestus paused at a little row of five egg shells, each big enough to have housed an ostrich chick. All were laid out on their own patch of stone with a carved inscription beneath it. Vlyndor saw the wizard’s nod of approval. “We do this for all of them, Odestus. A child should know where it comes from.”
Odestus nodded, and stroked a finger down the last of the egg shells. Vlyndor was hastening on to the edge of the water where the splashing told of excited children at play. There were four of them, playing a
simple game, a game that transcended all barriers of plane and species. Chasing each other round and round until one was caught and made to be “it” and then had to chase the others. Three of the youngsters were Karibs, smaller versions of Vlyndor, one was not, but it was the odd one out who was winning all the time.
Each time one of the fleeing
Karibs looked back at the alien child, they would stop absolutely still and she would catch up with them and tag them and run away, and it would be some moments before the tagged Karib youngster unflexed their limbs and resumed the chase.
“You see what I mean, Odestus
?”
Odestus nodded, dry mouthed. “I’m sorry, I should have come sooner. Is it just with the children?”
Vlyndor shrugged. “Small animals too. It seems to be a matter of size, but she is growing and she is changing.”
“Send the others away, call her over.”
Vlyndor issued a number of clicking commands and the little group dispersed. The three
Karibs ran towards their houses. The other child strolled more reluctantly towards Vlyndor and Odestus. The wizard watched her carefully. She was a human child, a girl of perhaps seven or eight years of age. Her hair was scraped back over her skull and she wore a reed tunic like Vlyndor’s but otherwise she would not been out of place amongst any gang of street urchins in the Salved kingdom.
She stopped on the way to them, her attention seized by something on the ground. She bent down to pick it up, a tiny object perched on her finger. She looked at it intently, cupped it in her hands and then came running over to show them. As she drew closer Odestus could see the strange ridged quality to her hair as though it had been carved upon her head, in thick
braided bands, bands which even now seemed to flex barely perceptibly. The ends of each band were tapered into blunt lozenge shapes which lifted slightly with a non-existent breeze. That was new too.
She held out her hands and looked up at Odestus with eyes of such piercing blue. “Look Uncle Odestus,” she said. “Look what I brought you.”
Odestus had to blink before he could break the eye contact and look at the object in her palm. It was a tiny perfect stone butterfly.
“It’s very pretty
,” he said.
She giggled with childish pride and threw it up in the air.
Then she tried to catch it, but it fell faster than she expected, its solid stone wings unfit for the business of fluttering. When she missed its fall, it crashed to the ground and shattered into many pieces.
She started to cry.
Odestus drew something from his pocket and handed it to her; it was a black gauze eye mask. “Persapha,” he said. “I want you to wear this always from now on. It was your mother’s.”
Afterword
Niarmit’s story began life a long time ago. Plotting it out in my head helped to fill dull moments of exam invigilation and provided a welcome relief from other exam hall diversions, such as counting up left-handers and right-handers or playing chicken with other invigilators as we walked down the narrow aisles between the desks.
Changing work pressures and patterns, together with some seemingly unresolvable plot problems led to me set the story aside for a ten year hiatus. I restarted with the support of my youngest daughter for whom each instalment became a rather atypical bedtime story. Tess remains the book’s first and best beta-reader.
However, it became clear some 100,000 words into the story and about a quarter of the way through the plot that the
“book” was heading for a trilogy.
At 160,000 words, this
second book has been longer than I might have expected at the outset, but I did not feel that I could have put a break in any earlier. John Finnemore is a comedian and a writer who I greatly admire. He once said that a good cliff-hanger should be about resolving all the key questions in the one story and in so doing set up new questions for the next. I hope you have found some pleasure and some resolution in this middle part of the trilogy.
“Master of the
Planes” should, all being well, follow before the end of 2014.
In the meantime, the interest and support of readers is a great motivator to pick up the pace of writing. All feedback is gratefully received.
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