Valedor, p.29
Valedor, page 29
Eldar were everywhere fleeing to their transports, or hurling themselves into webway portals. In the chaos, no one noticed the wych cult trapping their beasts.
‘Some of each, as I commanded, and the largest too. Very good,’ she said. Khulo Khale smiled with pleasure at her praise. He banked the Venom around, bringing it to hover a safe distance over the island of rock. The others went lower, taking position over the cages, grappling arms latching onto those that were already occupied.
The last creatures were lured by leaping wyches into their cages, blasted with high voltage goads where they strayed away. Hesperax laughed as one of the goaders was crushed by a crab-like claw. Lapilli rained on her warriors, burning unprotected skin. Their fear was quite delicious.
‘Quickly now! I will have my prizes and I will have them intact! We do not have much time, this world is finished!’
Other eldar took the place of the dead wych. A stream of anaesthetic crystals were shot into the creature’s vulnerable mouth, and finally it was herded into the cage. The runes on the bars flared, the spars of the door flowed, melding seamlessly with the cage.
The wyches looked at her expectantly. She nodded.
They leapt into action, running for their transports. No doubt they were relieved. They were weak. The Raiders picked up the last few cages with supple claws, then rose high.
‘We are successful, my mistress,’ came the voice of Uriqa in her ear-beads.
The skimmers retreated upwards from the unbearable heat of the lava.
‘A good hunt, my mistress,’ said Khulo Khale.
It had been a good hunt, but Hesperax did not answer her lover to agree. She was imagining what she was going to do to Khale by way of celebration. The anticipation of his screams made her smile. If his pain pleased her, she might resurrect him and do it all over again.
‘Away to home! We return to the dark city in triumph!’
The wych craft rushed for the safety of the webway as red-hot rock fountained into the air behind them.
Giant winged creatures dived at the Curse of Yriel, scoring its armour with their diamond claws. They came in a line, each one attempting to hit the same mark and slice through to the wraithbone core beneath, but the Curse of Yriel was too quick for them and their blades bit all over, wounding the machine only superficially. A chance hit cut into the infinity conduit running down its left arm, and light leaked from it. It retaliated, blasting the creature’s fragile wings to pieces as it flew by, sending it spinning into the magma.
Lava erupted into the air on three sides of the Titans. The land was cracked and hellish with red light. Only the mountain to their backs remained dark.
+We must depart, defend me!+ the triple voice of the Phantom pilots sounded in Ariadien’s mind. The Phantom lifted its wounded arm. The clasps of its pulsar retracted, and it jettisoned the broken weapon.
Ariadien was numb from the soul outwards, and obeyed without thought. He sprayed rapid pulsar fire across the rupturing landscape, gunning down the few beasts left capable of hurting them. The greatest threat came from the sky, but the increasingly violent geysers of lava vomiting from the ground kept the airspace close by free of the enemy. Nevertheless, he could spare little attention for the Titan as it went to the fallen Silent Scream. It reached out one long finger to a panel in the downed Revenant’s chest. A large gem rose up in a housing, and the Phantom plucked it free, then reached forward and wrenched the Titan’s corroded head from its neck mounting.
+The dead are retrieved,+ the Titan said. The ground screamed. A fresh crevasse opened up between it and the Sound of Sunlight and sheets of steam whistled into the sky, lit orange from below. +We must depart.+
The Phantom Titan’s jump jets flared, and it bounded up the mountainside. Sparing one final glance for the ruined form of his sister’s mount, Ariadien followed.
They leapt up from rock to cliff. The entire mountain shook, boulders rolled free from their seats, and more than once Ariadien almost lost his footing. But the triplet exarchs of the Curse of Yriel were swift and sure, and he followed the larger Titan closely. By this way they came to the summit of the mountain. Vaul’s Caress awaited them, struggling to maintain position in the hurricane of fire sweeping over the planet. The main webgate flashed over and again as eldar craft streamed into it.
They ran leaning into the wind, their long legs carrying them over the ground in few strides. The captain of Vaul’s Caress saw them coming, and the ship rotated on the spot, opening its doors to them.
The Curse of Yriel was in first, jumping clean into the hold. The ship dipped as the Titan landed inside, then again as Ariadien jetted in after it. The ship began to rise even as they positioned themselves for restraint, their mounts struggling to maintain their balance.
Only when the Sound of Sunlight was strapped into its transit throne and deactivated, did Ariadien allow his tears to fall.
The world disintegrated around Aloec Sunspear. Vaul’s Caress and the smaller ships hovered near to the Fireheart, its shields absorbing a punishing barrage of volcanic ejecta. The land as far as he could see to the north, west and east was covered in lava, that to the south riven with cracks, molten rock boiling from the mantle as the world began its final convulsions. The Fireheart pulsed, its subsonics shaking his bones, its psychic resonance his mind. Thunder cracked as lightning stabbed the melting surface of Dûriel.
Eldar fled. Those of the craftworlds went both ways, rushing in and out of the gates, trying to evacuate as many of the warriors as possible. The Dark Kin carried their more wholesome cousins from the field too, although they did not return once they had departed. Bravest of all were the spiritseers riding grav-vehicles, snatching up waystones before they could be consumed by the molten rock. The shrill psychic screams of those whose stones were breached came often, chilling shrieks against the ever-present mind-roar of the voidspawn.
Sunspear’s Falcon came back down. The ramp opened. Warriors beckoned to him. ‘My autarch, we must go! We have to leave now!’
Sunspear did not listen. Dûriel died in a tempest of fire, and yet the despair that filled his mind and heart was the greater storm. He sank to his knees.
‘We must go now! They are about to seal the gates!’ Hands reached out to him, humble Guardians and ancient exarch alike shouted his name. Beyond the tank, the gates to Dûriel winked out one by one, sealed forever against the death of the world. The forces at work here would gravely damage the webway, should the gates remain open.
‘I cannot leave,’ he whispered. His eyes dropped. ‘I die here with my failure.’
A loud bang had his eyes searching the boiling clouds.
That was no thunder.
Nine Razorwings hurtled through the clouds, weaving their way through the globs of lava falling through the air. Their pilots’ skill was breathtaking. They were heading for the capillary towers.
‘They are too few, they cannot do it…’ whispered Sunspear, tortured by hope. His warriors had ceased calling to him, they watched too. All held their breath. The ribbed tubes of the capillary towers pulsed, pushing the chyme of Dûriel’s biomass towards the waiting stomachs of the hive craft.
The Dark Kin’s fighter craft did not open fire. In perfect formation, they flew directly for the tubes and accelerated. Sunspear’s hand clenched into fists.
With a supersonic scream, the Razorwings hit the tubes with their sharp, forward-swept wings. The flesh of the capillary towers’ oesophagi parted easily, sending a shower of acidic gruel spurting out in all directions. In rains it fell upon the rising flood of molten stone, in steam it rose, obscuring the capillary towers.
The ground rocked mightily. Slabs of crust thrust upwards, tilted vertical, then slid under the seething orange sea of fire.
‘Now, autarch!’
Sunspear nodded, and stood. The despair receded. They had won. He dashed for his Falcon grav-tank. The door eased shut, and the craft sped for the waiting holds of Vaul’s Caress.
‘Go! Go, my friends!’ shouted Taec. He sent a powerful psychic impulse to wake the seers from their trance. ‘Your work is done! Save yourselves,’ he said.
Kelmon stared down at him. ‘You remain.’
‘I remain,’ said Taec. ‘The Fireheart will cease to operate if we all depart. One must stay to the end. It is my doom.’ He tried a smile. It was a lie on his lips.
‘We have both seen it,’ agreed Kelmon. He said no more; there was nothing else to say, for destiny’s will is inviolable in the end, no matter how hard one seeks to change it. ‘Farewell, Taec Silvereye of House Delgari.’
Liquid stone fell brightly behind Taec, framing his ancient face.
‘Farewell, Wraithseer Kelmon Firesight of House Haladesh. May we meet again when the gods return.’
Kelmon went, following the still-singing seers into the hold of a waiting void-runner. Taec watched them go, he felt their sorrow and horror at his fate as the ship departed. But most of all he felt their relief that it was he and not they that would face She Who Thirsts.
He began the song again. His voice faltered, and so he started over. Lifting his staff over his head, he forced every iota of psychic might he possessed into his voice. Runes whipped out of his pouch, orbiting his head in one final, complex pattern.
The void-runner shot off at speed, heading for the horizon like an arrow, then climbing vertically until suddenly it pierced the clouds. Scores of smaller craft followed in its wake. A thrum announced the departure of Vaul’s Caress; it turned and presented its prow to the sky, then it too accelerated to enormous speed in the blink of an eye and vanished. The remaining ships followed slowly, holds still open, welcoming in the last of the fleeing eldar.
Mercifully, the ships departed without further loss, their shields and armour weathering the worst the planet had to throw at them. Taec felt the terrible despair of the last few eldar on the world, followed swiftly by their deaths, and the crack of their spirit stones.
The skein resounded to the triumphant laughter of She Who Thirsts. She was waiting for him now. Her presence pushed aside the limitless mind of the voidspawn. The horrors of the flesh had been displaced by that of the spirit.
He would die the true death, and know unending torment.
Still he sang.
The throbbing of the Fireheart beat quicker and quicker. The mountaintop shook as the device’s voice became a single note, rising in pitch until it screamed like a dying god.
With a cataclysmic detonation, three pillars of fire erupted from the Godpeak, sending plumes of molten rock spuming thousands of paces into the air. The world shook violently, and this earthquake did not cease, but built in intensity as Dûriel’s tectonic plates tore themselves one from the other in final convulsion.
The air ignited, billows of fire rocketed around the planet. Protected by the Fireheart’s exclusion field, Taec saw this. He was still there when the core, influenced by the Fireheart’s deadly harmonics, ruptured.
The Godpeak exploded. The Fireheart, its work done, finally succumbed to the fury it had unleashed, and toppled into ruin.
Taec lived outside the field for less than a second before his body was incinerated. His flesh turned black and then to ash in an eyeblink, his crystallising limbs melting like glass. His death was mercifully short and painless.
The same could not be said for the aftermath. His waystone glowed, then shattered. He was pulled from this world. Before Slaanesh dragged him to her embrace, he saw the skein as he never had before, free of form’s material trammels. It stretched away in all directions, a multiplicity of universes and futures. There, ahead of him, he saw the future of his race.
Taec Silvereye’s soul sparkled with joy before She Who Thirsts pulled him into her thrall.
Vaul’s Caress rushed from the planet, its engines pushed to the limit by its steersmen. From the epicentre of the Godpeak, a blast of fire radiated around the planet as the atmosphere caught fire. Pillars of lava chased the eldar ships through the burning air into orbit.
The ships broke from the gravity well and accelerated, leaving the final death throes of Dûriel behind, heading towards the combined warfleet of the three kindreds. The hive ships of Starving Dragon were also breaking from the planet, but they were too slow to avoid the debris flung out when the planet’s core detonated. Two-thirds of the planet disintegrated, cast out as continent-sized lumps into space. The leading edge of Starving Dragon was decimated, hive ships smashed to pieces by the thousand.
The eldar were quicker, and outpaced the asteroid storm that had been Dûriel.
For fourteen cycles after the war, the husk of Dûriel glowed dimly in the long night of space, becoming briefly the lambent flame of Taec Silvereye’s cryptic prophecy, long enough to light the destruction of Dûriel’s orphaned moon by the wreckage of its parent.
Only then did it burn out. Dûriel was no more.
Wherever he was met within Vaul’s Caress, Aloec was formally but sincerely congratulated. Eldar of all kindreds crowded the corridors, soot-stained and weary. The craftworlders avoided conversation, centring themselves in private meditations to avoid the extremes of sorrow and triumph victory brought. The Dark Kin and Aspect Warriors had no such qualms, and openly celebrated their victory. To see the followers of Khaine, still wearing their war masks, celebrate so was right and proper, but the Commorrites disgusted Sunspear. They gloated about their survival, laughing over the deaths of their unfortunate companions. Worst of all, they appeared rejuvenated, glowing eyes betraying souls fat and sleek on the suffering of those who had not survived. Sunspear could not look at them; his awareness was keen that but for them he would have failed. Such ignominy was too much for his pride to bear and he grew more withdrawn with every passing cycle.
Shame clawing him, he retreated to the quarters loaned him by the Iyandeni whenever he could. By day he attended council after council. Great good had come from the victory, no matter how it was bought; part of him saw that. The hive mind had retreated. The future of Taec’s vision had been averted. New vistas of possibility were opening up on the skein, the renewed alliance between the craftworlds of Iyanden and Biel-Tan a fulcrum upon which fate could be swung in the eldar’s favour. The Fireheart too could be replicated, much to the councils’ surprise, and already there was talk of deploying it again, a bold scheme to present the approaching hive fleets with a desert of scorched worlds. Where once such grand strategy would have enthused Sunspear, appealing to his sense of manifest destiny, he felt instead a little sick; the eldar no longer had the power to bring life to worlds, but they once more had the power to inflict death upon them.
Those were conversations for the day. He did not sleep. At night he bade the others of the craftworlds’ councils goodnight, and went to the ship’s small shrine. The night was for him and him alone. The night was when Aloec Sunspear knelt before the idols of dead gods.
He could not shake the feeling of shame. It gnawed at him. He, the greatest general of the Swordwind, had demonstrated his limitations most publicly, once certainly, and twice as he saw it. This feeling of inadequacy grew from a seed to a tree of despair. He went to the shrine in an increasingly vain attempt to uproot its dark boughs from his soul, but the tree only grew under the sunlight of his anxiety.
On the night of the third cycle, he went into the shrine once more. He entered head down, long fingers worrying his chin as he brooded on his failures. It was not until he had walked the length of the chapel that he realised he was not alone.
A spiritseer in the robes of Iyanden, clean but marked with burns, stood facing away from him, her long braid falling the length of her back.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought to find the chapel unoccupied.’
The spiritseer did not turn, but continued to regard the statuettes of the gods in their niches.
‘It has been kept clear for you, Autarch Sunspear,’ she said. ‘Please, continue your meditations. I mean not to disturb you, but to help.’ She turned her head.
‘Iyanna Arienal?’ Sunspear took a step back. She was as beautiful as they said – more so – and he almost blurted this out. A kernel of self-deprecatory humour surfaced through his shame, that he of all people should be struck this way. She had a burn on her chin, dark blisters on her cheek from the hot ash of Dûriel, but these imperfections highlighted her beauty rather than diminished it. It was a cold, hard beauty. There was nothing of joy in her features, it was as if they had ossified, and she were a memorial to herself. He was not surprised, knowing what he did of her family history.
She nodded. ‘We have not been formally introduced.’
Sunspear recovered. ‘Your efforts on the battlefield at the side of my warriors are all the introduction I need, my lady.’
She laughed at that, a sudden, bright sound as swift in passing as a breeze through leaves, gone as quick as it came, no less glorious for its brevity. ‘You of Biel-Tan are so formal. Do you know this is what we think of you?’
He gave a little bow of acquiescence. ‘Ours is a martial world, lady.’
She smiled, again quickly. There was a hint of mischief to it, and he wondered what kind of woman she had been before her family had been slain, laughter had left her and she had taken up with the dead. ‘Please, autarch. My title or name will suffice.
‘As you wish… Spiritseer Iyanna.’
She gave a sharp nod, and turned back to the statues.
‘We thought you were dead,’ he said.
‘I very nearly joined my charges, it is true. I was not evacuated with the seer councils, but returned with the other spiritseers. My duties and injuries prevented me from rejoining the High Council, until today.’
‘Injuries that appear almost healed, I am glad to say.’
‘Your healers are proficient.’
‘They have much practice,’ he said. ‘You gathered many waystones?’
‘Not enough. Over five hundred souls were lost to She Who Thirsts, and I do not know how many of the Dark Kin were consumed. They are black-hearted, scoundrels at the best, evil at the worst. But they are eldar nonetheless, and I mourn their spirits’ loss.’
