Ghost warrior, p.29
Ghost Warrior, page 29
She had no idea to whom the stranger was talking but there was no reply and she spied no sign of any other inhabitant.
‘What’s the point?’ he cried out. His voice echoed back from the vaulted ceiling of the main shrine, diminishing with each return.
She saw him again, as he strode to the mezzanine at one side of the chamber, overlooking the temple floor a distance below. To his left was a tall carving of a wise-looking figure in red and grey stone, on one knee, with a hand outstretched towards the balcony. Water trickled from his hand into the pool, symbolic of… something. Faraethil did not know who the deity was.
The stranger had a dead look in his eye as he ascended, seeing nothing of his surroundings, perhaps confronting a vision from the catastrophe. Faraethil knew the feeling; many nights she had spent staring at the ceiling, reliving the moment when a crowd twenty thousand strong had died in terror and agony as she had carved apart another gladiatrix for their amusement.
The stranger climbed onto the stone balustrade, steadying himself with a hand on the wall. He looked at the stern but caring face of the statue, tears glimmering like blood drops in the ruddy light.
Faraethil knew what was going to happen; an instinct, or something stronger. A connection, the delicate mental touch of one eldar and another, a sharing of common consciousness that had been repressed for so long for fear of being vulnerable, of an inner truth being discovered.
‘Why? Why carry on?’ the other whispered. He glared at the statue. ‘Show me you still care.’
Faraethil was running before she had even decided to intervene, though whether to save the stranger for his sake or simply to keep a connection to another eldar she did not know.
He stepped off the rail.
She grabbed the back of his ragged robe just in time, but his momentum swung him in Faraethil’s iron grip, causing him to slam heavily into the wall beneath the stone rail. She looked down into a face aged by more than the simple turning of the world, though he was at least twice her age even without the care-lines and haunted gaze. His limbs trembled with fatigue, there was dirt and blood smeared across his face and arms, and broken fingernails scrabbled ineffectually at the stone for a few heartbeats.
She took hold of him with her other hand and hauled. Lifted up, he grabbed the rail and helped, pulling himself back to the mezzanine where he slumped to the floor, eyes vacant.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked. It seemed an odd question but Faraethil didn’t know what else to say.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he replied, shaking his head.
‘I followed you in, thought it looked safe. You looked safe. That was a very stupid thing to do.’
‘Was it?’ He sat up, pushing her aside. ‘And who are you to judge?’
‘I’m Faraethil. And you’re welcome.’
‘You’re not,’ he growled back, standing up. ‘This is my home, I didn’t invite you.’
It took every effort not to let the rejection become anger. Fighting the urge to lash out, Faraethil turned and ran, heading back to the open air, the shrine suddenly bitterly chill and claustrophobic and dark and full of pain.
She stumbled into the street and gulped down hot air. There was no salvation here.
Faraethil survived. Barely.
Life became a continuous nightmare of flight and paranoia, listening to the screams of the dying and the victorious howls, the chill cries of the daemonic things that had seized their world. An interminable time of scavenging and skulking in shadows to eke out an existence barely worth calling a life.
But eke it she did.
The civilisation of the eldar had prided itself on its lack of personal labour. Intricate machines and carefully devised irrigation, seeding and harvesting systems had supplied all of the city’s needs for generations. Though much had changed and all was falling to ruin, if one was daring and knew where to look there was clean water and food to be found – snatched from beneath the noses of the gangs that now guarded farms and aquifers as they had once stood sentry at cult fortresses and narcotic dens.
Less than one in a thousand had survived the initial disaster, one in ten thousand even. Spread across the city they had been scarce, but time brought them together, as prey or companions, but Faraethil desired to be neither. She had seen what lay down that route in the blood-dancers – servility and death for the majority, politics and the ever-present threat of rebellion and usurpation for those whose viciousness took them briefly to the summit of the misery.
And then even the cults disappeared, moving to the webway between dimensions to avoid the increasing encroachment of immaterial fiends that desired dominion over the mortal realm. With each day the world of Eidafaeron slipped further and further into the warp, bringing ever closer the edge of madness that would consume her forever.
It was desperation – a need to hunt and roam on familiar ground – that eventually forced her back towards the racing tracks and arenas of the Kurnussei. She even dared the armoury to retrieve a weapon. A mistake. She was unsuccessful, and worse, roused the hornets’ nest against her. Now a very different kind of desperation forced Faraethil to run for her life, the blood-dancers of the Master just behind like hounds on a scent.
She turned left and right without purpose at first, hoping raw speed and guile could outpace them. Yet there was something different, something enhanced about these pursuers. The way they had come upon her so quickly, the means by which they trailed her through the winding alleys, bounding over walls, leaping through windows and across rooftops.
Without conscious decision her route took her back towards the shrines. If she could put just enough distance between her and the blood-dancers she might slip into the great temple where the stranger lived. It was her only salvation for the moment, and she cared nothing for the consequences of leading her pursuers to the stranger’s home. Given his mood when she had left, it was unlikely the suicidal eldar even lived there, though the thought of finding his corpse, someone dead by their own hand, gave her a momentary pause despite the hundreds that had died by hers in the past.
She came to the column where the lock was hidden and the side door opened with a click that resounded back from the great space of the temple.
The sound of feet on the steps behind warned that she had not been swift enough. She let the door close behind her, hoping they would not find the catch.
She felt a surge of anger before she saw the stranger sweeping down the stairs towards her. He looked different. Bigger, healthier. His hands formed fists as he ran down the stairs. He slowed and stopped, rage dissipating when he reached the entrance hall and looked upon her. Pity. She saw pity in his eyes.
The others came in cautiously, wary of the rarefied air of the temple. The tranquillity confounded them and they approached slowly, sniffing the air like dogs. Clad in scraps of armour and clothing, long blades in their hands, hooks and barbs passed through skin and flesh as ornamentation.
One of them, a female with red-dyed hair slicked up in spines, snarled then, eyes wild with madness and hunger.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded, pointing her curved dagger at the stranger.
The stranger looked at Faraethil and then back at the witch-leader.
‘Asurmen.’
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