Valedor, p.31
Valedor, page 31
The Ritual of the Fourth Passing went on for two cycles. There was no climax – it ended as simply as it had begun, the seers departing the way they had come and still in song, their dead honour guard marching after them.
Iyanna was tired when they returned to the Dome of Final Contemplations, the centre of her path’s power. She underwent the rituals with her colleagues, and unmasked they embraced and wept all the harder for those they had not been able to save.
But Iyanna could not rest yet. There was still one spirit that needed to return home.
Althenian was waiting for Iyanna by the door to his shrine, patient as only the dead can be.
‘You are here,’ he said, his voice sepulchral as the rest of wraithkind. The fire that ordinarily set him apart from the others was absent. ‘I am gladdened by this, I thank you.’
‘I came,’ she agreed sadly.
He nodded his great head, the runes and charms depending from it jingling. Iyanna could not read what that nod meant. Whether he was pleased or in agreement with himself on some matter was impossible to discern; his blank face was inscrutable as it ever was.
The door to the shrine slid open at his touch.
‘We go in, both of us for the final time, not again. I reborn, this door closes to you always. No return. Do not come, the way will be perilous, this is truth.’
‘I am aware of this,’ she said. ‘Khaine’s wrath will scorch my soul.’
‘Fear for form. New dragons are often wild. Dangerous. Do not come. Not all encountered within, will be tame.’ He led the way, limping from damage to his wraithbone shell suffered in the battle.
The Shrine of the Fire’s Heart had changed greatly since their last visit. The dome had been landscaped with sharp ridges of volcanic rock. Cliffs reared up in front of them, razor-edged and ominous, obscuring the view of the shrine’s central temple. Basilisks grown from Iyanden’s biological databanks basked on stones overlooking cracks in the ground. These had a ruddy effulgence, and steam shot from them in short-lived blasts. It was hot, volcanically so, reminding Iyanna uncomfortably of the Fireheart’s activation.
‘See you here, destiny is hard at work, new Fire’s Heart,’ said Althenian.
‘All things are linked,’ she said. ‘No thread is spun in isolation of the others.’
‘This is so. Please watch your step, my lady, stone is sharp.’
He caught her looking at the reptiles. ‘Be at ease. Do not fear the basilisks, they are young. I guide you, I will protect you from them, they are weak.’
‘As you have protected me for so long.’
‘As always, and I will continue to, where I can. I swear this,’ he said. ‘Even after our bond is gone, I do so.’
They went through a maze of sharp formations of gneiss, black stone alight with the glitter of crystals. Althenian pointed out certain places where he would train his new followers, or particularly appealing formations. ‘All is here, all is as I remember it, to the last,’ he said.
‘It is as Iyanden remembers it,’ she said. Iyanna did not share his enthusiasm.
Boiling pools of mud surrounded the shrine temple, and Althenian mothered her along the correct path, much to her irritation. She was awhirl with emotion, close to snapping at him one moment, crying the next. She fought hard to regain her poise, knowing what she felt to be the foreshadowing of fresh grief.
The temple interior was cool after the broil outside its doors. Black sand coated its floors, and red light glowed from unseen sources. Grumbles and snapping sounds came from side passages, as if there were something living in hidden chambers, or perhaps the temple itself were alive. There was a strong, fiery presence to it that had been absent before. The Shrine of the Fire’s Heart truly had been reborn.
They passed from the open areas of the shrine, where those newly grasped by the dragon aspect of Khaine would be trained, to its inner precincts. The shrine’s long arming chambers had been filled with new battlesuits in the colours of the Fire’s Heart. Armour of deep orange plating and high crimson helms were racked upon stands, gleaming golden fusion guns by their sides. Althenian’s great head swung to and fro and he nodded appreciatively. ‘Fine weapons, I am honoured by those, on Vaul’s Path.’
When they reached the exarch’s chamber, Althenian’s pleasure increased. His sculpted body showed no sign of it, but Iyanna felt it, radiating off him in waves.
At the centre of the room was his armour, and by it a lengthy fusion pike.
The armour was exquisite, its plating most artfully made. Red light lit it from below. Sockets for spirit stones waited all over its breast and vambraces. Althenian walked over to it and looked down on it. She sensed his impatience.
‘Now I lose you,’ she said.
He turned back to where she stood in the chamber’s doorway.
‘Yes you do,’ he replied. ‘I have long been lost to Khaine, Iyanna. I change not, this is no transformation, this changing. I return, back to my rightwise being, Iyanna. I am sad. There is sadness for us both, Iyanna. Also joy, the phoenix risen again’s promise. Do not weep. Iyanna, fair Iyanna not for me, it must be. You know it, my soul was forfeit to Khaine, for so long. It is now, five thousand passes since I fell, to the wrath. Iyanna, you offered me respite, it was good. For this boon, I can never repay you, to my shame. Remember, my war rages eternal, ’twas ever thus.’
‘You need offer no repayment,’ she said, and then turned from the wraithlord so that he would not see her tears.
‘Do not weep, if there were anything to give, Iyanna, only you, ever would I give it to, and gladly. Do not weep, Lady Arienal great seer, do not weep.’ He took two limping steps across the floor. With surprising tenderness, he knelt and embraced her in his long arms, the mounts for his weapons snagging in her robes. She rested her cheek on the hard panels of his pauldron for a while, and then he withdrew.
‘It is time,’ he said. ‘Do quickly what must be done, I beg you.’ He bowed his head and a seam opened in the front of his smooth helmet, dividing it in two, the twin dragons in opposition turning from each other for the last time. The great head of the wraithlord swung open, revealing layers of armour of various kinds: hard plastics, ablative soft gels, cunningly woven composites in strata like those within rock.
Under it all was a compartment, crafted with care and beauty. Within it were seven spirit stones, each set in its own recess. Six lesser surrounding one greater; those eldar that had fallen to Khaine, become exarchs and joined their essence to that of the original Althenian. Iyanna reached out carefully and removed these smaller six, leaving the greatest till last. They offered no resistance, almost falling into her hands in the same manner ripe fruit is easily plucked from the tree. She placed the six into a velvet bag at her belt, then reached out and took Althenian’s greatest spirit stone, that which housed the soul of the eldar who had originally borne his name, into her hands.
Althenian was warm to her touch, the gem of his dwelling flawless, perhaps even more so than other waystones. The light within it was a fiery orange, and this brought a smile to her lips even as she cried.
She carried the stones carefully to the waiting armour. She sang the ritual song of the Fourth Passing, homecoming, the same one she had sung in the infinity core that same day, as she installed the waystones into their mountings, although the words were different, for Althenian went to no rest. She left Althenian’s primary stone until last, holding it up in both hands, took one final look into its flickering depths, and slid it into position in the recess on his breastplate.
The stone clicked, and she stood back. Dancing orange light glowed bright in all seven spirit stones, then died back to the faintest glimmer as Althenian slipped back into dormancy, awaiting new life.
‘Goodbye for now, dear Althenian,’ she said.
She turned and walked past the kneeling wraithlord shell, and left the shrine as quickly as she could.
Once more Yriel was upon the beach of bones. It had finally become dusk, and he could not tell if the dark sea was still of blood or had become water. It tossed in front of him, white caps slapping noisily into one another with extravagant sprays of luminescent foam glowing white in the gathering dark. A stink of iron was on the air, and of fire, but the wind from the sea blew fresh and strong, carrying the scents of war away, and replacing them with the smell of salt oceans and of life.
He sank to his knees, absent-mindedly running the bone sand through his fingers. He was so tired, even in his dreams he was tired, deriving from sleep none of the refreshment that slumber should bring. With his nightmares came the revelation of another kind of tiredness, deeper and spiritual in nature, behind the petty weariness of the body. Prince Yriel suffered from an exhaustion of the spirit.
He waited disinterestedly for tonight’s tableau of horror to assail his senses. The whole thing was boringly predictable to him. He was so weary he no longer had any care for his own soul. All he desired was an end.
Time passed, nothing happened. No presence came. The sound of the waves began to relax him. The smell of war gave way entirely to that of life. The evening was refreshingly cool, the beach warm from the day’s sunlight. After a time, Yriel felt his eyelids grow heavy, and lay down on the sand, letting the heat of the powdered bone soothe his limbs. He filled his hand with the bone, let it run through his hands close to his face. When he looked hard, trying to see the tiny skulls trapped in the eldritch beach, all he saw was rounded grains of sand.
Yriel slept, the rush and boom of the waves his lullaby.
Yriel awoke long before Iyanden’s artificial dawn. For the first time since he had taken up the Spear of Twilight, he was calm. His palsy was stronger than ever; his pains clawed at his innards, competing with the horror at Yaleanar’s death. But although his weariness remained, it was of that good, clean kind that is born of a worthy task finally done, that sort which purifies the soul, and Yriel felt at peace.
The spear called to him, and he answered, going to its cradle and staring at it. What emanated from it now was gentler.
‘It is time, is it not,’ Yriel said to it, crooning the words almost, as if he breathed them direct into his lover’s ear. ‘My last battle has been fought, our work together is over.’
He spent a portion of the night kneeling by the spear’s cradle in his palace, eyes closed in silent contemplation.
At the conclusion of his vigil, Yriel dressed himself extravagantly, an attempt he supposed to recapture in funereal splendour the dash of his more carefree days. If he was to die tonight, he would die looking like the prince he was, not the walking corpse he had become. He did not call for his servants, but walked his extensive chambers alone, taking what he needed. He had always prized his freedom; dependency sickened him.
He painted his face, coloured his hair a deep blue. He put on a shimmering body suit patterned with interlocking flames of two dark blues. He donned high boots. Next he went to his armoury, and took out his armour, his life-support unit with its high pennants and his war-belt with its holsters and sheaths, and into this he put his weapons. From his rooms of armoires he took his finest chains from their boxes. Over it all went his high-collared admiral’s coat. Finally, from its stand in the centre of the armoury, he took the Eye of Wrath and locked it into place over his blood-red eye.
He examined himself in his mirror hall, inspecting every angle of his body. ‘Every inch the general,’ he said wryly.
For the final time, he took up the spear, the tingling in his hand flaring up as he did so as if in acknowledgement of his tragic errand.
He left his chambers without word. There would be few abroad at this hour, and any who challenged him he would simply pass by, or such was his intention. He spoke no farewells, passing through his house without comment from the few of his servants about their work. Upon reaching the wide boulevards of House Ulthanash no other seemed to see him either. As he passed more and more of his fellows in his finery without a single one seeing him, he realised he moved through them as if in a dream, that he was invisible to them. Such things had long ago ceased to surprise him, and he was glad of his easy passage.
So it went as he traversed predawn Iyanden; none noticed him. Not revellers or lovers abroad, or friends walking. Not even a pair of seers who knew him well. He glanced at the spear, hot in his hand. Doubtless it was the cause. At Red Moon’s New Birthing there were three eldar in private prayer at the shrines around the walls. They too were unaware, and he walked through the energy field to the Shrine of Ulthanash unseen.
Yriel trod the precincts of the shrine slowly this time. Iyanden was quiet, perpetually in mourning, the Shrine of Ulthanash as deathly still as it had been that fateful day ten passes ago when he had taken up the Spear of Twilight.
His journey had taxed him. He was so weak, his soul spent. Pain was his constant companion; that, and guilt. His bones were like ice in his flesh, snapping agonies chased up and down his nerve endings. It was all he could do not to use the spear as a walking stick, like some decrepit mon-keigh in the last cycles of its short life. He did not, but unknowingly he let the shaft droop behind him, so that his unsteady footprints were joined for short spaces by a wavering line in the dust of the halls.
His walk through the shrine seemed an age in duration, although the light of a new cycle had still yet to be born. He regained a little of his strength as he approached the heart of the shrine; the dais with its pedestal and empty rest, the weeping statues of Ulthanash’s sisters either side.
He did not hesitate this time, but walked straight to the dais to replace the spear. The light came on as he approached, and he held the spear out crosswise in front of him, meaning to slot it back into place. He bowed his head in silent prayer to devoured Asuryan, trembling with the effort of holding out the weapon where before he had done so effortlessly.
‘Mighty lord of us all,’ he thought, ‘I thank you for the use of this gift. I now return it.’
He felt the last few particles of his being slipping into the spear as the sands in a glass run out. His waystone was dull, no resonance from his spirit to make it shine, just like poor Yaleanar’s. Soon he would pass – the moment he replaced the spear, he would die. He wondered what would become of him.
‘There will be no rest in the infinity circuit for Prince Yriel,’ he said. He closed his eyes as he lowered the spear to its cradle, anticipating his death not unhappily.
A hand on his shoulder stayed him. He looked up to find his face reflected in the smooth silver mask of a Shadowseer.
The Harlequin shook her head slowly before springing away and laughing. Coruscating patterns of diamonds followed her movements, filling the shrine with light.
‘There will be no rest anywhere for the Prince Yriel of House Ulthanash, not yet, not for ever so long.’
‘Veilwalker?’ he said.
The Harlequin bowed. ‘The very same! Come to tell you, O scion of the defeated one, that your labours are not yet done. Fire and night come upon us, the skein is quirked. You are needed yet, no night for the prince, no rest. Not yet.’
There was a hiss from the tubes on the Veilwalker’s back, a fleeting perfume. Then the shrine flickered as if lit by a fire, sheets of light and shadowplay leaping into life all around the dais. They grew in clarity, taking on form, until all around Yriel the walls danced with images.
And such things he saw.
‘What is this?’ he breathed.
‘The skein in living colour for you to see, no gnomic pronouncements from me, my friend. See the galaxy to come, see it burn. Would you leave it now, abashed, head bowed? Where is the proud son of Ulthanash when war calls?’
Gods walked the earth. Gods long thought dead. Legions of daemons fought the ranked majesty of dozens of craftworlds fighting side by side. He glimpsed exodites, the Dark Kin, a troupe of Harlequins of unprecedented size that filled a battlefield with their glittering fields and garish costumes; all branches of their shattered race reunited. The blue and yellow of Iyanden was prominent among them, and the green and white of Biel-Tan. Armies of mankind and other lesser creatures fought alongside them too. He could not see what was happening clearly; he would look at one image to have his attention snatched away to another.
‘The Rhana Dandra,’ he said. ‘The final battle.’
Then he saw himself, swollen with power, the Eye of Wrath blazing with energies its mechanisms alone could not produce. Atop a pile of broken daemons, he whirled the Spear of Twilight over his head, a flaming sword in his other hand. The image faded, its place taken by another.
‘This is the future?’ he asked.
Sylandri stopped her prancing. Legs crossed at the ankle, she placed a finger against her mask, a caricature of thought. ‘Maybe, maybe not. One future, a good one, a bad one. Who knows really, other than the Laughing God? Perhaps you would like to choose one? They are all here to see, if you but know where to look.’
‘I am no seer,’ he said. He spoke without venom, all his anger bled away. The calm he had felt when he awoke had grown; indeed, he was calmer than he had been for a long time. He simply stated a fact.
‘One does not need to be a seer, O prince, to see an empire born anew. It waits in the dawn of possibility, on the other side of night’s chaos. The stage is set, shall you provide the cue to call it from the wings?’ She pointed to another image. Iyanna, bloodied, pulling a glowing stone from the hand of a necrontyr in the throes of terminal malfunction. ‘She will find it, the last one of Morai-Heg’s tears, and then we shall see who thirsts the most!’ Sylandri laughed. ‘See, O prince, that what has withered can grow strong again!’
She bowed, holding out her hand in extravagant gesture, pointing to his arm.
Yriel looked at his right hand. He still held the spear over its cradle, as he had been doing since Veilwalker had grasped him. He was astounded at the steadiness of his hand.
‘How is this possible?’
‘It simply is, why question? Do you accept, O prince? Once more a choice is laid before you, the cup is poured, now will you sup?’
