Valedor, p.25
Valedor, page 25
‘The Fireheart has arrived, my brave warriors!’ he communicated to his men. ‘Prince Yriel is winning the battle in space. We must fight on!’
A rain of fire began, the burning debris of dead hive ships, bringing with it the stench of burnt meat.
Battle raged fiercely in the webway. The Iyandeni had advanced down the tunnel they had initially walked. Close to the webgate to Dûriel, tunnels branched in bewildering profusion. The swarm had been shattered, its intellect driven back into the shadows. Eldar in small groups fought with the splintered remnants in many of the tunnel mouths. ‘Leave none alive!’ shouted Taec. ‘The stain of the Dragon must be removed from the sacred labyrinth!’
Jetbikes screeched overhead, blasting apart a group of warrior creatures advancing on a gang of wyches. The bikes barrel-rolled, dodging through their Commorrite counterparts coming the other way. One of the Dark Kin came within paces of Taec, laughing insanely. Where Herinim was, he had no idea.
Another laugh caught his ear. He ignored it, thinking it to be that of another half-mad Commorrite. He grabbed at the arm of a Guardian and sent his squad down another tunnel where a glimmer of the hive mind lurked.
The mind of the aliens was coming apart, he sensed it. There had been many come into the labyrinth, but their leaders had been hacked down by the Phoenix Lords. Although the roar of the hive mind was deafening, its influence in the realm of the webway was much reduced. Cut off from the warp and real space, the creatures of Far Ranging Hunger were adrift from the Dragon’s psychic direction, and the small submind that had formed among the swarm was breaking down. The synaptic web of the aliens was close to folding in on itself completely.
‘Victory is only a few deaths away!’ he called.
Laughter again.
This time he turned to face it. He caught sight of bright cloth disappearing around a corner. On impulse, he followed.
An eldar in motley, her face hooded and masked in silver, waited for him. Taec stopped short of her in amazement.
‘You must come with me. The battle is nearly over, and your doom is not here.’
‘Who are you, Harlequin?’ said Taec. ‘I see from your garb that you are Shadowseer.’
‘That I am. Sylandri Veilwalker they call me.’ She curtseyed deeply, lifting imaginary skirts.
He drew himself up, trying to capture an authority he had never truly felt. He was wary of Cegorach’s dancers. ‘And why are you here?’
‘Why, to see what must be, is, and what must not be, isn’t.’ She giggled. ‘If you see what I mean. To wit, in this instance, to guide you to Dûriel. Your thread has taken an inopportune kink. A friend of mine told me it should be pushed back in the correct direction and trimmed.’
‘Only Morai-Heg can trim a thread.’
‘Or another god,’ she said with an equable shrug. ‘Morai-Heg is dead, after all.’
‘And if I do not come with you?’
She held thumb and forefinger together, making a circle. She held it up to her eye and made a show of peering through it.
‘We have many dooms, which do you want? You’re the farseer. You tell me. Look far!’
‘How do we leave?’ said Taec, avoiding her question. ‘I see no door.’
‘That is because you do not know where to look, Silvereye, far-seeing though you are. Now, choose. Come with me, or not. A useful death now, or a pointless one later?’
‘And what of my other death?’ he said, his mouth dry.
‘There is no “other death”, Taec Silvereye of House Delgari. Even eternity is a temporary affair. Only laughter lasts.’
She reached out a hand. Taec looked over his shoulder to the eldar behind him. They were intent on the battle. The screeches of dying aliens filled the webway.
‘Will you come or not? The fate of a world turns on your head, and the fate of our kind turns upon that.’
The vision of him dying, his waystone cracking in the heat, the waiting caresses of She Who Thirsts, rose unbidden in his mind.
He hesitated only a moment.
He nodded reluctantly and took her hand. She wore a soft glove of light green. There was no reassurance in her touch, only destiny.
‘My place is upon Dûriel,’ he said.
‘Then follow me, through a door where there is no door.’
She stepped towards the webway wall. The energy that defined it did not constrain her, and her foot slid through with barely a ripple. Taec went through, and disappeared once more from the host of Iyanden.
Taec and Sylandri traversed a tunnel so small that Taec had to stoop, his staff held out in front of him. The walls of the way touched his elbows as he went. When they did, shocks of power ran up the crystallised parts of his body, and he became uncomfortably aware of watching eyes on the other side.
‘I have never seen such a tight passageway,’ said Taec.
‘Few have,’ said Sylandri. ‘No eldar remembers truly the full extent of the webway, nor how to correctly use it. The dark ones, the exodites, the craftworlds, corsairs – outcasts all, they squander the legacy of our kind and the Old Ones through fear and hubris. No one knows it well, no one, except we of the wandering folk, and the Guardians of the Black Library, perhaps. But Cegorach knows all the tricks, and he teaches us generously.’
‘Why do you not share this knowledge? It would help bring us together again.’
‘Or drive us apart. The shattered kindreds are incautious in their senescence, old old old!’ she trilled, and laughed. ‘We keep the knowledge, we guard it. Upon the advent of a new generation, a strong generation, mayhap we will share, but the time of renewal is not yet on us.’
The tunnel became steep, twisting as it climbed. Sylandri stepped lightly along its undulations.
‘We are nearly there,’ said Sylandri. ‘Close to the peak of gods, where your efforts are most required.’
‘My efforts and my demise. You are my executioner, Veilwalker.’
Sylandri shrugged. ‘You are a seer as I am, you have seen what must be done for our kind to have a future. The end times approach, Taec Silvereye. You see that clearer than all. The great struggle of this age looms ever nearer.’ She looked at him over her shoulder, the rippling energies of the webway reflecting in her silvered mask. ‘Will you tell me it is not true?’ she said. ‘I will know whether you believe it yourself or not.’
He shook his head. ‘I would not attempt to mock the mockers.’
She laughed. ‘It matters not how skilfully the jest is woven, it is better to laugh in death’s face. We laugh, we prosper, and so our souls are safe.’
‘Mine is not.’
‘No,’ she said baldly. ‘But that is your doom, as to wear this mask is mine. I laugh, but you will never know if I am crying or not, for none shall see my face. Aha!’ she said brightly. ‘We are here.’
The tunnel narrowed to nothing. Ordinarily, the tunnels of the labyrinth seemed endless, but here was a tapered end.
‘This crevice?’
‘A crack of doom,’ she said gleefully. Somehow within the constrained space she managed a small dance that ended in a bow. She ushered him on. ‘Please. Go with the graces of what few gods remain.’
Taec set his face and stepped forwards.
‘I thank you, my executioner.’
A hand on the crook of his elbow stayed his progress. The silver-masked head shook. ‘What executioner would let their charge go free?’
‘And you would?’
‘You are free to go, if that is your choice. Your own feet carry you to your death, not mine, farseer.’
Taec stared into the mask for a moment, at his distorted reflection. He made to go, but the hand gripped him tighter.
‘I would apologise, but those who belong to the Laughing God do not sorrow for themselves or for others. Laughter is the best tonic, do you not think? Laughter will not come easily to you in the coming arcs, but one day, Silvereye, when all this is done and your torment is over, we will meet again under happier skies where we will laugh long and hard together. You can be sure of that. If you can hold onto that thought, think it often, and laugh in the face of our enemy. She really doesn’t like that very much.’
Then with a movement so swift it took him completely by surprise, Sylandri turned and shoved him, sending him headfirst into the fissure of energy. He shouted in alarm.
A soft laugh answered him.
Taec did not fall. He found stone under his feet, and a bitter scent on the air even through his helm’s filters. A stormy sky loomed over him, cliffs on many sides. He blinked, dislocated. He looked for Sylandri, but the Shadowseer had disappeared, and there was no sign of a webgate that he could detect with his mundane or uncanny senses.
He stepped out from behind a rock, and into the end of the world. The skies were red, as in his vision, choked with life alien to the world. Lightning flickered within them. A strong, hot wind scoured the surface, the scent of acid and vinegary putrefaction thick upon it. The very rock groaned with pain, what little was left of the world spirit gnawing in agony on itself. Flights of eldar vehicles sped through the tortured heavens. Screeches of alien nightmares sounded endlessly, along with the distant thunder of many weapons.
He looked upon the place of his doom. ‘Dûriel,’ he said.
He was on the Godpeak as promised, some way from the main webgate.
Vaul’s Caress hung over the mountaintop, its gravity engines whining loudly against the pull of the planet. The Titans of Iyanden stalked from its holds; lesser doors had opened, and a stream of Guardians in blue and yellow were emerging to bolster those of Biel-Tan guarding the peak. Tall among them was the building-sized Fireheart, a tower floating on repulsor fields, shepherded by robed eldar who moved with final purpose.
As Taec walked down the hillside to the rocky plateau, Vaul’s Caress finished its rapid deployment and shot off into the sky, guns vaporising airborne tyranids that dared its power. Clouds streamed over its sleek hull, and it disappeared.
He watched the hole it had punched in the sky for a moment, then walked to join the seer council of Biel-Tan.
‘The Fireheart must be set here,’ Kellian was saying. ‘The signs are quite clear.’
‘The geological survey is not, however,’ Altariec replied. ‘Our senses say here, our sensors say there, where the old volcano’s principal vent was.’ He pointed to a cave in a crag a few hundred paces away.
‘There, brothers,’ said Taec, walking into their midst. He pointed to another pinnacle of stone. The seer council started, because he had approached them unheard and unseen; shielded still by the glamours of Cegorach, perhaps. ‘That outcrop there is close to the last active fault upon this mountain, and also to a crystal branching of the dead world spirit. Place it there, and the Fireheart will consume the planet and its dead soul. This is why the portents and mundane knowledge differ.’
Kellian nodded. Altariec went away to direct the technicians and seers bringing the great device into place.
‘How came you here?’ said Kellian. ‘Where are the forces of Iyanden?’
Taec walked to his side with slow steps. His limbs were stiffer than they had ever been. ‘I came by another path. The others will arrive soon. The webway was infested. Only by the efforts of the Dark Kin wych cult, our Phoenix Host and the Phoenix Lords was disaster averted.’
‘The five…?’ whispered Kellian.
Taec nodded. ‘All of them, Asurmen at the fore.’
Kellian looked upwards, arms spread. ‘So much is obscured. We are blind and deafened by the noise of the Great Dragon! Great things are happening here.’
‘More I suspect than we shall ever know, Kellian of Biel-Tan,’ said Taec.
There was a mighty bang as the Fireheart reached its position, and its repulsor field was shut off.
Kellian looked to the towering construct. ‘I remain here. The Inner Command must direct the fight still, glean what little the skein can show us.’
‘And I must go,’ said Taec. ‘I am needed for the activation.’
They exchanged a profound, wordless farewell, and walked their own path away from each other.
Taec entered the circle of seers. Despite the clamour of battle ringing from the valley at the mountain’s feet, a strange peace settled on them. Taec looked up at the Fireheart. It was old, as old as the ancient empire. The architecture of it was neither that of Commorragh nor that of the craftworlds, but somewhere between the two – sharply fluted sides sweeping up to an angular parapet that resembled a crown. Held in the arms of the summit was a gem so large five eldar would be needed to link arms around its girth. This gem, and the many that ran up the fluting of the sides, were milky and without spark of life. Otherwise it was a deep, glossy green so dark as to be near black, and without other adornment.
The seers gathered around it, twenty-four of them in total, the greatest Biel-Tan had to offer. Taec was humbled by their sacrifice, one from which Biel-Tan might never recover. He was taking the eyes and ears of that worldship for the fulfilment of his plan, and he felt sick even though he was certain it must be done.
Without signal, the seers rested the butts of their staffs butts upon the ground, dipped their heads, and thrust the staff heads forward, the runes dangling from them chiming. They stood a moment in silence, the wind soughing over them, stirring their robes in the dust.
Then they began to sing.
One by one, each added his voice to the choir, a complex song of interwoven melody that, when all the seers had begun voice, told twenty-four stories at once. Upon the skein, their minds reached for one another. They were fireflies in the face of the vast presence of the hive mind, glowing motes beneath its contempt. The attention of the Great Dragon, its two consciousnesses nearly blended, was elsewhere.
+The Great Dragon is a predator, and fights those who dare to fight back. Great it may be, and ancient, but it is also weak in its single-mindedness,+ thought Taec, and the others shared his thoughts.
+We are not weak,+ they thought back. +We will see the ancient days reborn.+
They bent their mental might to one point, interfacing with the psychic circuitry of the Fireheart. Gems lit, starting at the ground, the light rushing up all of them until the great gem at the top glowed from milky white to a dull red.
Responding to their mental touch, the Fireheart activated.
The machine directed their minds and amplified them, pushing their strength down, down into the rock. Taec and the seers went with the Fireheart as its semi-sentient core sought the fault that had once fed the eruptions of the Godpeak. It thrust down, past a domed magma chamber empty of heat, through plugged tubes that had once rushed with molten rock, down, down to the mantle, whose currents of molten stone were as yet unperturbed by the war on the surface.
And on, on to the core, a ball of iron as large as a moon, spinning quickly, the seat of life of all Dûriel, and the centre of the world’s essence.
The Fireheart took the seers’ minds, moulded them into a hand, reached for the liquid metal of the core and, as one might take the temperature of a bath, perturbed its tranquillity.
Under the seers’ feet, a faint tremble troubled the rock. They sang louder.
Chapter Fourteen
The Final Battle
Yriel’s crew cheered as the last of the hive ships died, the matter of its body breaking up in a fiery end.
‘Full power to all engines! Let full sail!’ the admiral ordered.
Behind the flagship, the squadrons keeping the Kraken vessels at bay broke off their fight. Three remained. The low orbit of Dûriel was choked with shattered shell fragments and the bloody chunks of dead voidspawn. Amid the slaughter’s aftermath floated delicate flinders of wraithbone.
‘The attack has not been without cost, Prince Admiral,’ said Yaleanar. ‘Endless Glory has lost two-thirds of its number, and we have suffered five other wrecks among the other squadrons.’
‘A fair price,’ said Yriel levelly.
‘What of the remaining three tyranid ships?’ Yaleanar said. He brought them up on a viewing orb with a thought. The holographic image showed them close, curved shells like those of sea beasts or ram’s horns, their wide, fluted apertures alive with writhing tentacles tens of thousands of paces long.
Yriel gave the image a cursory glance. ‘Leave them. They are slow. They are too close to Dûriel. They will not break free before the destruction of the planet.’ He ran his hands over targeting jewels, selecting vessels of priority in the greater part of Far Ranging Hunger that Sarnak and the others kept at bay. ‘Look at them,’ he said. ‘Weak, lumbering things. It is in space that the Great Dragon is at its weakest. These are vessels suited for long travel, not war. They may move quickly between systems, but once within sight of their prey they are vulnerable.’
‘Yes, my prince,’ agreed Yaleanar. “But still, there are a great many of them.’
‘That is their only advantage, my shadow,’ said Yriel. ‘Steersmen! Take us on around Dûriel!’
‘Prince, is this wise?’ said Yaleanar. ‘That will take us right into Starving Dragon’s fleet.’
‘You are the only one who dares to question me, brave Yaleanar, but you will never make a voidsman.’ System cartography blinked up, pushing the various bubbles of visual feed aside. ‘We drive past them, not into them. They come for us; if we sweep under their noses, they will chase.’
‘I see,’ said Yaleanar, not seeing.
‘Predators and fast targets, my friend,’ explained Yriel. ‘The hive mind will be unable to resist. But we are by far the quicker. We will be past them before they can close, and they will follow us around the planet, taking a longer road than the one they are currently upon. They will catch nothing, we will be gone.’
