Valedor, p.32
Valedor, page 32
Yriel withdrew the spear and set its butt upon the floor. The click of it, the audible acceptance of this new fate, acted as a trigger for rejuvenation, and his body flooded with new strength. He gasped as it filled him, the sound turning from surprise to one of genuine pleasure. He stood tall, taller than he had for many cycles. Warmth returned to him, his soul replenished. All his pains were swept away.
‘Well done, once-exile, well done indeed! The sacrifice of your friend was not after all in vain. Come, come!’ Sylandri backed away from him in a half bow, her pace a sinuous exaggeration of temptation. She kept one fist balled behind her back, as on the other hand she crooked her forefinger and beckoned. Shadow enveloped her as she left the cone of light fixed upon the empty cradle. Yriel glanced from it to the Harlequin.
‘This way, O prince!’ she said, now totally lost in the blackness. ‘Come with me, and set your feet upon the path of a new destiny!’
Yriel did not pause to think. Images of glory filled him, and that would once have driven him to accept alone, to swell his pride if nothing more. But far greater an impulse came from what he had glimpsed. Not war or power influenced his decision, but instead a flash of peace, brief, but unmistakable nonetheless.
Grasping the spear of his ancestor more tightly, Yriel stepped into the shadows after the seer, and was gone from Iyanden for many long cycles.
Epilogue
Moisture ran down the rippled walls of the dungeon. The mass of it was sculpted from living bone, raw and pink where the thick black slime growing on it had been scraped off. Tumorous lumps set into the wall ticked with the minute twitches of residual nerve activity. Veined membranes, stretched taut across apertures that would in any saner environment be windows, pulsated with agony. The pain of the building was on the air, a heady taste that fizzed on Hesperax’s senses. This lounge was intended for the relaxation and enjoyment of the Ebon Sting’s favoured clients, a demonstration of their arts in flesh sculpting. And, no doubt, to induce a little fear. This kind of place was uncanny even for a true eldar.
Hesperax thought it none of these things. She found it trite. What the Great Harlequin who accompanied her thought was as impenetrable as his sculpted smile. He lounged against the slimed wall as if he whiled away the hours in a corespur pleasure arcade, his pose not exactly insouciance, but perhaps an exact replica of it.
She ceased pacing the smooth floor, one giant sheet of skin that quivered with agony at her every step, and rounded upon the wrack left to attend her and the Great Harlequin.
‘How long will this take?’ she snapped. The wrack spread a selection of its many limbs and bowed in abject apology.
‘This haemacolyte pleads for your forgiveness, mistress,’ it said, its hands and instruments waving elaborately. ‘One cannot hurry the work of my masters. They are artists, and true art is planned meticulously no matter how swift its execution might be. Their examination will be done when it is done, Mistress Hesperax, and not before. This one cautions that it is not wise to disturb them.’
Hesperax growled softly at the back of her throat, her eyes narrowing. She was gratified with a slight flinch from the wrack. The wrack was more self-possessed than most, and the thing’s rebuff, no matter how servile, had her seething. She considered removing its head. In her mind’s eye she could see the masked face arcing away from its deformed shoulder, spouting whatever it had for blood – she fancied some dark, sweet liquid, looking at the black patterning of blood vessels under the exposed skin of its chest – but she restrained herself. Slaying the servants of the haemonculi in their lair was not done, even for one as exalted as her.
‘Very well,’ she said. She continued to stalk around the antechamber, letting the play of her armour’s fastening hooks in her flesh calm her with easy pain, and trying to ignore the milky eyes of the haemonculus’s wrack on her body. After a time, she could no longer bear his lascivious gaze, and stared at him until he scurried from the antechamber. The door, two thick curtains of flesh, opened with an audible moan. Musky air billowed from them as they slapped shut behind the wrack.
Hesperax turned to the Harlequin King. Why in the fifteen worlds he had insisted on accompanying her was a mystery, and his mocking, motley clad form, so at odds with the fleshy room, irritated her greatly. ‘You told me this would be a simple matter.’
The Harlequin arched supplely from the wall and bowed. His extravagantly collared coat was of many colours, his mask pure white. The mouth was fixed in a grotesque smile that put her in mind of Sarnak, the brows sharply arched, as if it enjoyed a pitiless joke. A single sapphire tear adorned one cheek, a high crest of hair that shifted colours curled over his head. He performed a complex mime.
She gaped in exasperation. ‘You said nothing, of course; very well, you conveyed to me that that would be the case. Does that satisfy your pedantry?’
The Harlequin gave another bow, accompanied by a teasing wave of its hand. There were two eldar in the immediate vicinity besides herself, and she would gladly see them both dead. The wrack she wished to kill out of spite, but the Harlequin King… Hesperax ached to test her blades on him. There were few in all the Great Wheel, the Labyrinth Dimension or the Othersea who could best her in combat. She had a sneaking suspicion that this Great Harlequin might be one of those rare individuals. As she imagined him fighting for his life in the arenas of the Cult of Strife, his motley stripped from him, his mask nailed to his face, she stared a little too long into his gemstone eyes.
He cocked his head and waved a warning finger, shaking his head slowly. To her surprise, she experienced a small rush of fear. It only served to excite her. She wet suddenly dry lips, her tongue running over the stickiness of their reactive paints.
‘One day, you and I will dance together, king of fools.’
He shrugged in exaggerated fashion. As usual, his gestures carried overt mockery.
A movement in the air. Hesperax whirled around, her ponytail whipping with near lethal force, her knife leaping with preternatural speed into her hand. She stayed it as it pricked a bead of dark blood from the wrack’s throat. He held his arms up.
‘Do not approach me without warning!’ she shouted.
‘This one is sorry!’ the wrack babbled. ‘This one comes only to say that my masters are ready, come, please, come now, mistress!’
She pulled back her knife. The wrack nodded encouragingly. ‘This way, mistress, master, come!’ It beckoned them to the door, which opened with the same moan of pain.
She followed, the Harlequin silent behind her.
Down corridors formed of fused ribs they went, the gurgling systems of the building and the soft sounds of its constant pain always with them. They came to a stairway made of iron hooked deep into the living wall, from whose wounds thick blood welled, creating rank stalactites of clotted matter. The wrack beckoned them down this, to a storey of the tower floored in more conventional means, although the marble was puddled with the building’s excretions.
Here were the oubliettes of the Ebon Sting. Cries of pain competed with those of the building, emanating from tiny cells that were little more than blisters on the wall. Cages of ribs and thick cartilage contained larger specimens. Here was life taken from all over the galaxy, and all of it in pain. Horribly mutilated creatures of all kinds called to her, begging without exception for release from their suffering. Hesperax shuddered with pleasure; the intense nature of such distilled agony excited her deliciously.
The wrack took them to a portcullis of dark metal, retracted the grating into the ceiling with much irksome pantomime, then gestured for them to follow on.
They entered a cavern at the roots of the tower. There the living bone of the tortured edifice thrust deep into the spire it parasited. The floors and walls here were of more mundane materials, and crowded with the workstations of haemonculi. Shelters of skins held upon poles by scarred slaves kept the constant rain of effluvia off the haemonculi’s work. There was space for several to work together at once, but there were only two within, attended by half a dozen wracks or so, and twice that many slave creatures.
They were working around two of Hesperax’s prizes: a pair of living tanks, still within their hex cages, one with a red carapace, the other purple. The first was missing much of its face, the wounds that had carved it away surgical in nature. The other had had its giant crustacean’s claw cut open, exposing the workings within. Neither seemed much concerned by their vivisection.
‘What have you done to my trophies?’ hissed Hesperax. ‘How are they supposed to fight in the games?’
One of the haemonculi retreated behind the hex cages, pretending to be intent on its work. The other rose into the air, the thrum of its grafted grav-organs deliberately audible. It floated towards her, wizened feet trailing clawed nails.
‘Ah, Mistress Hesperax, welcome. Do not alarm yourself. We have ascertained the structure of these creatures. The vivisection is a necessary stage, but we are sure we can replicate as many as you might require. Their gene-weavings are delightfully simple.’
Hesperax jabbed a finger at the haemonculus. ‘That better be the case, Vral. I have paid you well for this work.’
‘It is not wise to threaten a haemonculus in his lair, Mistress Hesperax. Especially Vral Dulgyre.’
‘It is not wise to cheat the Cult of Strife,’ she retorted.
He spread his hands and shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But you will not be cheated. There are few cults of my brothers that could manage what you require, in the time you demand. But we shall. We work in concert, our coven. Art takes time, and many hands make light work.’ He lifted three of his own by way of emphasis. ‘Soon you will have your monsters, of that I assure you.’
She walked over to the cages and peered in. Vral followed after her, wringing his long fingers constantly together. The tyranids had a curious reek, almost oceanic, salt water and dimethyl sulphide, a savoury tang. She stared into their eyes. They watched back with bovine disinterest. Their eyes were animal, flat dead discs, devoid of the ferocious intelligence of the hive mind. She noticed racks of cylinders depending from booms over the cages, pipes leading from each to holes drilled into the creatures’ armour. She pointed.
‘You have drugged them?’
Vral nodded once. ‘Yes. They do not suffer. Their reactions to pain stimulus are merely reflexive, but they are extreme. To caress them with our full art would bring us no dark energy, and carry a significant risk to our laboratories.’
‘They are strong enough to break the cages?’
‘Oh, mistress, yes. They are strong enough.’
Hesperax stared at them, ignoring the wracks bustling around their strange instruments. She gave a sudden laugh. ‘Then they will gather me much glory.’
‘And dark energy, mistress. Oh, not from them, but imagine the terror they will generate in our combatants! Imagine the thrill of the crowd!’
Hesperax nodded. She could imagine just that, taste the bloodlust, hear their shouts as she stood upon one of these dead creatures, the audience chanting her name!
‘We can manipulate them, grow more.’ Vral sank lower, closer to her, his thick breath washing over her face. ‘Meld them with other creatures to create unheard-of exotica!’
Her head snapped round. ‘Never mind that now, what of what I requested? Can it be done?’
‘Oh, yes, mistress!’ Vral smiled around pointed teeth and a black tongue. ‘The two strains can be combined very easily.’ He inspected his pointed nails. ‘Child’s play. The creatures’ genetic strands are designed to be easily assimilated and altered. Our flesh vats are more than adequate for the task. The resulting menagerie will be the talk of the corespur!’
Musical laughter came from behind them. Taken aback by the sound, the succubus turned.
The Great Harlequin was chuckling, the first sound she had ever heard him make. Hesperax narrowed her eyes, went for her knives, but before her hands touched the hilts he performed a deep bow, blew her a kiss, then flipped backwards into the shadows. Hesperax was sure she could see a second figure waiting for him, its face a smooth, mirrored bowl. They vanished into the dark together.
She sprinted over to the far side of the cavern. When she got there, the shadows were empty.
Iyanna stood alone in the Shrine of Asuryan, lost in contemplation. The shrine was dark, still scarred by the attack of Kallorax at the start of the Triple Woe. Once it had been a beacon of hope for the eldar, not merely those of Iyanden. Eldar from many worlds had come there to see the Fire of Creation. Lit from the shrine at the heart of the old empire, it had burned since the time of the Fall in the great malachite bowl at the heart of the temple. It was a symbol of Asuryan’s endurance, and of the eventual rebirth of the eldar race. It was Iyanden’s great shame that they had failed in its guardianship.
Now no one came. The dome was restored, but the scars of the attack remained. The architecture was blackened by the fires of cyclonic torpedoes, and the one fire that they wished to maintain had been blown out. The altar had been cold and inert since the battle all those passes ago. All attempts at rekindling it had failed, for nothing present in the material realms was sufficient to fuel it.
Iyanna looked at the broken floors, the shattered statues. The shrine’s desolation was a metaphor for the fate of Iyanden’s people. She came here when she felt doubt; looking at the dead shrine drove it out, making it clear to her that only Ynnead’s embrace offered any hope of salvation. The old gods were dead. The coldness of the chamber was proof of that.
Thinking on the flame had her thoughts turn to Asuryan’s chosen, Yriel. No one had seen Yriel for more than thirty cycles; he had vanished in the dead of night from his bedchamber, taking the Spear of Twilight with him. She was certain he still lived, but the threads of his fate were so tangled that not one of the craftworld’s farseers could divine what had befallen him. Iyanna did not greatly regret Yriel’s absence, for she had always found him aggressive, rude, and arrogant. He had opposed her plans as often as he had supported her. He was so obsessed with proving himself he did not see the real struggle, nor that it could not be won by force of arms. If he had ever perceived her true plans, doubtless his objections would have become difficult to surmount, especially now that Taec was gone. But Yriel’s arrogance had blinded him more surely than the spear had, and he had thankfully remained ignorant to the last.
However, Iyanna could not deny that his loss had diminished Iyanden and their race. She reminded herself that it was in his nature to disappear and then return when needed, something of a double-edged blade.
With one last look around the shrine, Iyanna turned to leave. Only one tear of Morai-Heg yet remained unaccounted for, and a group of rangers in from the Winter Gulf insisted they had promising news of its location. There was much to be accomplished before Ynnead could be awoken and She Who Thirsts finally thwarted.
Iyanna’s footsteps receded, her heels clicking on the shattered marble of the shrine’s floor, leaving only echoes.
Silence persisted but briefly.
A disturbance swirled the air above the bowl of the altar. The hangings of the fane over the bowl wafted with it. A guttering sound came from within, made louder by the bowl’s perfect acoustics.
There was no one to hear and no one to see as the Fire of Creation flared into sudden, brilliant life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Guy Haley is the author of the Space Marine Battles novel Death of Integrity, as well as Baneblade, Valedor, The Last Days of Ector and the Warhammer novel Skarsnik. He worked for many years on magazines, including Games Workshop’s White Dwarf. Since 2009 he has been a wandering writer, working in both magazines and novels.
For the members of The Quota, without whom this book would not exist.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
Cover illustration by Cheol Joo Lee.
Internal illustrations by Helge C. Balzer, John Michelbach and Pedro Nunez.
© Games Workshop Limited 2014. All rights reserved.
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