Valedor, p.4
Valedor, page 4
Hawk and Falcon rejoined, and he followed. A coming together.
The Avatar bellowed, his fury dancing across the timelines. A wall barred Taec: the Shadow in the Warp was directly before him. He wondered if it could sense his probing, if it had any inkling he were there. The strands balked at the dense alien being, ran around it, as if these lines of time and space were in fear of it. The skein twisted, went within the nexus; few strands escaped.
Taec was not to be denied. Summoning all his will and channelling it through the rapidly orbiting runes, he looked deep into this pivotal moment of time, smashing aside the blankness of the hive mind.
What Taec saw froze him to the core.
Two breeds of voidspawn came together as a world died; they fought in savage mating, Dûriel’s dying lands fertile fields for their joining. Hive fleets merged and new forms of death were their get.
‘Far Ranging Hunger joins with Starving Dragon, two become one, two become one!’ he half-sang to himself. Taec watched as the immense minds of the two fleets reached out towards each other, groping blindly across the streams of probability. The components of the hive minds were spiritually puny, whisper-thin lines generated by bestial minds. But with so many twisted together, they made a mighty cable of fate, dwarfing all other threads on the skein.
As the twin cables of the hive fleets’ consciousnesses drew near to one another, their strands unwrapped. Their writhing tendrils reached, grasped, and the two pulled into conjunction. As one they were monstrous. Taec had a glimpse far back along their ancient path. As Far Ranging Hunger’s fleets made many splinters of one larger consciousness, so the wholes of Far-Reaching Hunger and Starving Dragon were themselves only tendrils of something so vast it was beyond Taec’s scope to comprehend.
The psychic shock of the joining reverberated down through time. Sudden visions of many world-deaths crowded near-past, present and future. With a vertiginous rush, the ultimate doom of the eldar loomed into view over Taec, as a black and impenetrable mountain. This certainty of extinction was pricked by few lights of unreadable hope. Behind the black walls of the race-death lurked the pervasive presence of She Who Thirsts. Her lusts washed at Taec’s wards as the sea washes at the feet of cliffs, seeking to erode their foundations and bring them down.
Taec blocked the Great Enemy, muttering verses of focus to bring that part of his mind tasked with guarding his essence to greater alert, pushing the soul-threat from his mind. She had not taken him yet, and would not do so today.
No, what concerned him here was not the doom of the soul, but of the flesh.
He followed the eventuality of the hive fleets’ merging, watching the landscapes of possibility unfold through his third eye. Images flickered, the multiple paths of fate layered atop one another. He fought his way through confused futures, to discard the middling and inconsequential differences that clouded the truth, looking for a clearer vision.
Many futures sprang from the nexus, all dire. The psychic backwash was intense. Blood and war. Creatures made stronger by the genetic inflow of ork, human, and eldar, perfectly forged for the death of not only Taec’s kind, but the entire galaxy. The stars of hope in the black doom winked out one by one, the few threads of the skein stretched out to them unravelled. There was nothing beyond the blackness but the laughter of his people’s twisted daughter. The shades of the dead clamoured, pushing at the warp spiders. Their minds brushed his like cobwebs.
Another tremor rocked the skein and physical world both, bringing with it a tide of hatred and anger. The dead were invigorated by it. Taec despaired. So much rage was in the circuit now – where was the noble Iyanden of the past?
The hands of the departed grasped at his astral form. They meant him no harm. They would speak. Long practice as a farseer kept panic at bay. He redoubled the guard on his soul, but let the energies that touched him pour through the crystallising flesh of his earthly form. Around his body in the dome, more runes shot into the air from his pouch, burning with sudden heat. The orbits of those runes already airborne became faster. Each burned brighter and brighter, until a constellation of miniature suns circled him.
Taec suppressed his anguish as his mouth opened without his volition, driven by the necromantic energies of Iyanden’s overfull otherworld. The words of the dead seared his tongue, each one molten with the fires of wrath.
‘The Voidspawn shall be cast into the abyss,’ he said, and the voices were of many, and none was his own. ‘To a dying flame shall the hungry ones be drawn.’ His body spasmed, learned though he was in the ways of the skein. His skin crawled. ‘There to meld with their kin. There to quicken the Great Change.’
A final flash, glimpses of many things. A lone eldar stood in silhouette before a red sea. A second red sea of molten rock. Two flaming hearts, one consumed by fire, the other emitting cleansing flame.
A blazing pillar roared up in front of Taec. He stood upon a shaking mountainside. A world burned around him. Taec reached for a giant’s hand and slipped. Plunging into searing lava, his body and his waystone were destroyed together.
He fell into the next life, a third sea of maddening energy. There the fires did not go out.
The Dark Prince laughed as Taec’s soul slipped into his grasp. The Bloody Hand of Khaine turned.
Psychic energy blasted out from Taec. He gasped, coming out of the skein quickly. Vitreous leaves rattled in the grove, setting up discordant, tinkling melodies in the aftermath of his scrying.
The runes orbiting him flared, then clattered upon the clear stone.
Peace returned.
Taec swallowed. His limbs shook. His thin, ancient skin burned. He looked down.
Five runes were before him, smoking and black, the Dragon Draoch-var at their centre. The Flame of Asuryan lay some distance from it, and between them was set the world-rune of Biel-Tan: the Rebirth of Ancient Days. At the end of the line was the Dying Fire, and a last rune, obscure and dark in portent – Llith’amtu Khlavh, the Knife That Stays The Blade.
A sixth caught his eye, away from the quintet of principal runes, but lying within the measure of influence. The Balance of Asuryan, canted. It lay on its side, imparting ambiguity to all. He looked for the other runes. They were all around him; some he had chosen, some he had not. They added inflection to the others. Perhaps. Most had come down too far for a sure reading. The crude rune denoting mankind, the Asurya, the Broken Tree Of Paradise Lost, and more.
Taec swept the first up, holding it in his hand. Draoch-var. This, at least, was clear.
‘The Great Devourer is not done with Iyanden,’ he said. Sorrow welled in his breast, of an intensity hard to bear.
A voice came to him, as from a great distance. The crystals of the dome thrummed as the soul of Farseer Kelmon Firesight whispered in his mind.
+Or Iyanden is not done yet with the Dragon.+
Taec nodded his agreement. Wearily, he pushed himself to his feet. He saw what must be done, but the others might not. The last century had been hard on his people. Three times had Iyanden been directly attacked: the Triple Woe. First, the Battle of the Burning Moon against Chaos, which had led to the destruction of House Arienal and the shaming of Prince Yriel, then the ravages of Far Ranging Hunger, finally war against the orks and another invasion of the craftworld’s sacred ground. Iyanden’s fleets were all but spent in wars with humans, orks, necrons and the infernal beings of the warp. Despite the great sorrow and fury of the living, there was little further appetite for conflicts far from home. In such times they did not seem… pressing.
Convincing Prince Yriel to fight on the far side of the galaxy would be easy; he remained wild and warlike, despite taking to the path again. The rest of the High Council might be difficult to convince. Iyanna certainly would not be lightly turned from her occult quest. She teetered on the brink of obsession, that one, and was becoming dangerous.
He needed a clearer reading. He needed aid.
Taec moved awkwardly as he pulled gloves over hands greying with the early signs of crystallisation. His limbs were stiffening. His time was drawing to a close. Soon he would set root here, amid the broken statues of his predecessors. He reached out his hand to his staff, floating some metres away. At his bidding it flew across the room to him, slapping quietly into his palm. He leaned on it, letting it draw him strength from the soul of Iyanden; quieter now its message was delivered, though heavy with expectation.
Unchecked wraithbone extrusions surrounded him, the product of the overcharged infinity circuit, swollen as it was with the souls of so many million dead. Throughout battered Iyanden the bonesingers coaxed the growths back, but here at the interface between Iyanden’s spiritual and physical aspects they would not be tamed. The signs of war were everywhere in the Dome of Crystal Seers, even as elsewhere they were smoothed away. The vitrified bodies of ancient seers were smashed, their pieces left where they had fallen. In places the stumps of shattered crystal trees outnumbered those whose branches still spread to frame the stars. The floor was pitted and cracked. And in this part of the forest the signs of destruction were not so pronounced; where Kelmon had perished the crystal had turned black, and no scrying could be made there. In the Dome of Crystal Seers the desolation of the worldship was plain for all to see and so it would remain forevermore.
‘And yet war has not done with Iyanden,’ he said.
As if in answer, another tremor rolled out.
‘The Avatar stirs.’
Taec took a sky-runner across Iyanden. His celebrity was such that he was noticed wherever he went. He was so shaken he could not bear the eyes of his fellows on him, and avoided the public spear-cars and transitways.
House Haladesh was close to the Dome of Crystal Seers, both being towards the aft of Iyanden, but the way between the two had become as crooked as that of the skein. Many of the lesser domes were still without atmosphere. Perhaps in less troubled times their like would have been let loose to float away into space, and new ones raised in their place. But Iyanden in flight was far from any star that might consume them, and the council were wary of leaving a breadcrumb trail for the Great Dragon to follow. Furthermore, so great had the damage been to the craftworld, that those bonesingers who oversaw the skeleton of Iyanden feared that to lose so much mass from the remainder at once could lead to unforeseen gravitic stressing. And so the broken areas of Iyanden remained attached, grim reminders to a people who needed no reminding of their suffering.
In places where many had died, bizarre wraithbone forests had sprung up, the uncanny trees each seizing an unclaimed spirit stone. These were haunted areas, where spirits had turned wicked in their pain. Taec avoided them. Transit tubes were broken, doors healed shut with thick growths of wraithbone like scars upon wounds. In parts, power was erratic, and the fluctuating artificial gravity of the craftworld tossed his skiff about as if a tempest raged. In other places too much energy was expressed, and those lights that had not exploded shone like the trapped suns of the domes.
And everywhere there was ruin. House Arienal was a blasted wasteland, scorched lifeless by cyclonic torpedoes in the Battle of the Burning Moon, first of the Triple Woes. The psychic shock at so many deaths had been of such magnitude that all but one of the Arianelani had died, their spirits fleeing into their waystones the instant their kin perished.
Taec sped over blackened remnants of palaces and parks. Twilight reigned here, light coming only from the stars and from cracks in the fabric of the worldship wherein the raw infinity circuit sparkled. In the ruins of a palace he saw a gathering of wraithkind, but no other movement. Even the walking dead of Arienal were few in number, and the whispers of unquiet spirits were all around him.
How Iyanna Arienal had not been driven mad with grief was a mystery.
Talks on the restoration had begun shortly before Far Ranging Hunger had attacked. The seals had been reinstated in preparation, but now, in all probability, the dome would stay ruined.
He left the shattered house by the forward tubes, thrusting down a highway that once was full of bright, darting craft, but was now traversed by only him. He passed into the Endless Forest, seven great domes run one into the other to create a huge wilderness. The forest harboured artful ecosystems engineered from the life forms of a hundred thousand worlds. The Great Dragon had fought hard for this delectable morsel, and the scars of its assault were to be seen everywhere, the earth scraped down to the raw wraithbone core in places. The bonesingers and wilderers would be occupied for many arcs to come.
The signs of war became lighter as Taec entered House Haladesh. The council, with him as its reluctant head, had directed restoration efforts to be concentrated where the most eldar still lived. He flew over rebuilt villages empty of people, through domes whose biomes were being laboriously reconstructed. Eventually he saw other eldar, small groups at first, and then in increasing numbers. If anything his sense of isolation grew as he came across them.
Taec came to Urhaithanalish, House Haladesh’s main city, set in its own dome at the junction between nine others like the heart of a flower. Near its centre he alighted from the sky-runner. He strode with purpose through an empty tunnel from the landing site. All was pristine, no mark of war in these parts. House Haladesh had been spared the worst of fate’s caprice, and what damage there was had been largely sung away. But there were no scions of that house abroad here. Always populous, the numbers of Haladesh’s folk were still great compared to the others of Iyanden’s peoples, but many had died, and lesser roads such as the one he trod were oftentimes free of traffic.
Taec reached a wider way that took him to a market square, and there something of Iyanden’s old glory was evident. Eldar of all ages and paths went on their business, in thinner crowds than before the Triple Woe to be certain, but the hum of conversation settled Taec’s troubled spirit after the ominous silence of the desolation. Underpinned though it was by sorrow and less vital than of old, there was cause for hope in the chatter, and in the wares displayed in the square by those on artisanal paths.
He found it hard to admit to himself, but he was unnerved. He told himself that the terrible fate that awaited him was by no means a certainty, and that all the runes of Khaine delighted in showing their users’ vilest ends. Somehow, he felt that this was different. Ever heedful of his inner feelings, Taec was greatly perturbed. He desired to halt, to take wine and engage in talk of something other than dark destinies, but he did not. The other eldar did not bother him, but he knew they saw him, and that many itched to approach him.
And so the single indulgence he allowed himself was to proceed on foot at brisk pace. Time was of the essence, but he required time to think, to calm himself, and to formulate his words well. He drew upon his experiences upon the Path of the Playwright, dim though his recollections were, as he pushed on through Haladesh. Simplicity, he thought, not adorned phrases. One had to be direct when speaking with the dead.
He passed from the city into Haladesh’s lake and woodlands. As blessed as it was, in Haladesh too there were domes laid waste by the wars, although here most had been restored to bare spaces awaiting restocking. He went across arching bridges over deep fissures in the craftworld, protected from the void only by thin energy sheaths. He walked through the tightly packed streets of lesser townships. Thousands of homes were empty in Iyanden; every eldar living could have claimed a palace should he have wished, but many desired close proximity to one another, needing the buzz of life after so much death. Crammed settlements were much in vogue. The echoing halls and domes left empty were wastelands of the soul.
On he went, taking up another public sky-runner to cross Haladesh’s large central desert. He swooped over the grasslands at its edge, putting herds of scarlet ungulates to flight, then ran with the birds out over the sands. He passed over the Hidden Gorge, that jewel in the desert’s heart, a chasm that split the sands as far as the crystal bedrock of the craftworld. Cliffs of bright rock made up its upper reaches, a wide lake at their head. The thunder of waterfalls pouring from the lake boomed, and Taec looked down into the canyon, misty and broad, thick with the verdure of uncounted star systems. In the deeps a wide river glowed with the light of the exposed infinity circuit at its bed. Then he was over it, and the thunder receded as if it never was, and the sand glared at him. The dome was hot, its beauty was a hard one. In the sands he saw the tents of those who had withdrawn from community, following the Path of Solitude.
Mourning, Solitude, Wandering, Lament, Eulogy, Forgetting, Remembrance, Dreaming; many eldar of Iyanden had taken to these paths in recent days. Others flocked to the aspect shrines, their rage unsleeping after their participation in the craftworld’s battles. Aspect shrines long-dormant rose again, and no bad thing. The wisdom of their exarchs was required lest the kindled fury of the Iyandeni send them off down the dark road of their ancestors, a worrisome future that occupied much of Taec’s thoughts.
Taec left the runner by a tether at the dome’s edge, and walked from blistering heat into cool galleries. Tiered and dimly lit, they looked out over the void. Iyanden was far away from any system, making all speed across interstellar space from the tyranid-beset Eastern Fringe. The stars shone coldly upon the craftworld, flintily unsympathetic to its fate.
The galleries ran on for several thousand paces. Taec passed lovers whispering in the dark, small groups staring into space, sole eldar weeping in secret nooks. He ignored them all. He listened, form, mind and being, for further stirrings of the Avatar, but the shattered god offered no more disturbance.
‘Hoi hoi!’ a voice called him. Taec glanced over. A young eldar was sat in a drinking den recessed into the worldward wall of the galleries, a dark place serving bitter wines to doleful drinkers. His voice was mocking, his body language spoke of callowness and cynicism. ‘Taec Silvereye is abroad in House Haladesh! What business has he here? With whom will he speak: the living, or the dead?’
