Valedor, p.6
Valedor, page 6
‘True, true,’ said Ariadien. The light was so dim in the bar that his face was ghostly white. She thought a moment of the Dark Kin, and was revolted with herself for comparing her brother to them, no matter how tangentially. ‘I do not like being told what to do any more than you, dear sister.’ He put his goblet down unsteadily. The truth was that he worried for her. On one of his less bitter days he would have said so. Today was not one of those, and only their close link allowed her to feel what he felt. ‘Far they are supposed to see, but did old Kelmon spot the Triple Woe, or even the start of it? The merest part, the first? The Battle of the Burning Moon, where Kallorax destroyed all poor House Arienal and our saviour was sent away in shame.’
‘The Great Devourer was not the merest part, but the greater,’ said a voice from the darkness.
Ariadien turned around in his seat. ‘And so I said. Who cares for orks or reavers when the jaws of the Dragon are snapping closed? Unstopper your ears so you might eavesdrop more effectively. Who are you, to speak to me so?’
‘Your elder, child. I have walked a dozen paths. You? On your first, I think. You should ask yourself: who are you to speak to me so?’
Ariadien was not cowed by the stranger’s words. ‘Marvellous,’ he said, using a particularly insolent form of the word, his shoulders set in a way to rile the calmest eldar.
‘Don’t provoke him!’ said Neidaria.
The stranger tipped his glass towards Ariadien. ‘Listen to your sister, she is wiser than you. I am Gelthelion the Wave Shaper, although I leave that path soon. Khaine calls me to him. I try to wash away his blood here, but wine will not do. I know, the stars know, and now you know. Tomorrow I go to the shrines, to see which will choose me. I will take up arms again and revel in killing.’ Far from looking imbued with fury, Gelthelion appeared thoroughly miserable at the prospect.
Neidaria was suddenly afraid. ‘Should you not be in a shrine already, to keep your dark impulses separate from…’
‘…you?’ Gelthelion snorted and leaned backwards.
‘How are you here, then?’ said Ariadien, having the same thought as his sister, as is the way of the twin-born.
The older eldar, a grey smear in the purple gloom of the bar, stared at them with eyes like black pits. ‘Because it is not the first time. You have nothing to fear. I have my war mask already, and Khaine’s pleasures are shut behind, keeping me from striking you down for your impudence. I will not put it gladly on again, and yet I must. I must.’ He did not say why, but his manner revealed loss he could not speak of aloud. ‘You should leave, leave all who come here to the quiet that will fall in your absence. This is no place for you. Leave us to our sorrow, there are better venues for gaiety. Come back when Khaine takes your heart too, as he surely must, then we will welcome you. All Iyandeni will fall to wrath in the end, now that death has come to claim us all. But not now, young one. Be gone.’ He turned his head away, face down: a sign of obvious dismissal, laden with threat.
Neidaria yanked her brother to his feet before he could come out with some idiotic reply and dragged him out of the drinking room. When he made to complain, she kicked him hard. The subtle expression on her face told him all he needed to know; they were in danger. At his sister’s prompting, he glanced around without moving his head, looking into booths with his peripheral vision. There were several such as Gelthelion lurking in the dark, trying to damp down Khaine’s fires with wine and darkness.
Judging by the sparks in the eyes of the older eldar, they were failing.
Within the Dome of Crystal Seers, Taec took his place amongst his fellows. The forty-strong seer council of Iyanden were gathered together in three concentric circles. Not often were so many worthies gathered at once. Both the living and the dead attended; the circles were set so that the crystal forms of eight seers gone before were incorporated. Their spirits had been coaxed from deep in the circuit, and the statues glimmered uncannily.
Seven of the most active of the wraithseers had left their ghost halls to lend their strength to the seeing. Kelmon was among them, and Ydric the Wise, as was gifted Teluethiar, dead many arcs since. Their powers had diminished as their connection with the world had diminished, but with the blinds of life removed, their witchsight was far clearer than that of the living. These seven, all within the towering shells of wraithlords, formed the innermost circle. The nineteen greatest living seers sat in a circle around them, spiritseers and far-seers alternating, some places occupied by the crystal statues of those ancestors that yet remained whole. In this circle, Taec sat.
The remainder of the seers formed a broad circuit outside. This third circle would shape the seeing, but would not see. They were younger seers, and those of paths less concerned with foresight: warlocks, wayseers, dreamsingers, bonesingers, Isha’s Maids, and those fresh on the witch path sat in small groups around the periphery, sinking into trances and readying themselves should their psychic gifts be needed to shore up the efforts of the council. At a discreet distance, the autarchs, princes and other potentates of the Iyandeni watched the ceremony from a raised pier of wraithbone.
Yriel was among them, the doom about him so thick that all eldar, whether seer or not, could taste it. As one of the High Council with Iyanna and Taec, he had been apprised of the situation before all others. Already decided on the fight, he impatiently awaited the seers’ judgement to sway those of his peers less eager for conflict.
Below the pier stood another wraithlord, this one unlike any other, its body coloured deep orange detailed with yellow. The head, limbs and tabard were emblazoned with the runes of an extinct aspect shrine: the Fire’s Heart, smashed to flinders by the cyclonic torpedoes of the Chaos raiders Yriel had so singularly failed to stop. This spirit was Exarch Althenian Armourlost, bodyguard and constant companion of Iyanna Arienal, the Angel of Iyanden.
Iyanna left her consultation with Althenian, and walked to her place by Taec. She did not sit. Like all the seers, she wore ornate robes, over which were laid the delicate, geometric patterns of rune armour. An eldar maiden on the Path of Service stood behind her, carrying Iyanna’s ghosthelm. Iyanna was as beautiful as the songs said, but her face was cold, carved from frostmarble. Unassuage-
able grief had frozen her heart.
‘Taec Silvereye is our most gifted seer, the greatest of the Iyandeni, if not of all eldar,’ she said. Her voice was quiet, that of one who is used to dealing with the dead, but her manner was forceful, and all present listened intently. ‘He has seen that which we have not seen. Wraithseer Kelmon has seen it also, a message from our dead kin – slaughter and blood, the time of our ending brought upon us quickly. We, together, will set free our minds from the cages of flesh and seek the truth of what is said, to see what the dead would warn us of. Much we have suffered, we sorrowful few of Iyanden. We will not suffer again, not while it is within our power to predict and prevent.’ She took her helm, and held it in arms outstretched above her. ‘Today we gather as if girded for war, for to look through the shadow of the Dragon is to go into battle.’ She placed the ornate helmet over her head. It hissed as its seals moulded themselves to her flesh. ‘We begin.’
Iyanna sat down beside Taec. Runes rose up all around the circles – a hundred, two hundred. They sailed gracefully to their stations above the seers, orbiting one another in the complex minuets of fate. Under the stately precessions of the runes, the seers within the second circle joined hands. As one, they slipped into the world of the infinity circuit.
The infinity circuit was in spiritual tumult, full of so many recent dead, many of whom were vibrant with rage at their deaths. It throbbed with power; a bitter irony that Iyanden’s halls were so empty, and yet the world itself had become so potent. Many centuries would pass before the dead’s energies would fade and they passed into peaceful slumbers. The dead clustered around the seers as they sank into the skein, phantoms who glowered at them, demanding action, release, vengeance! Taec was aware of something half-formed moving in the depths. Iyanna insisted this to be Ynnead, her new god and the salvation of the eldar. Others were sceptical.
+Make way, make way!+ Iyanna’s soul-voice called, as beautiful as she. +Clear a path, O dead, let us see what you would show!+
The throng of the dead paid heed to her, for she was known to them, and they parted. The skein opened before the seer choir.
+We seek the spoor of the Great Dragon. We seek those who were taken,+ said Spiritseer Hestarlia. One of the fifth rank, as the spiritseers reckoned such things among themselves.
Taec felt sorrow as they groped through the void, seeking the residual psychic anguish of those eldar who had been absorbed by Far Ranging Hunger during the Battle of Iyanden. Sensitive to all things beyond the veils of the dead, the spiritseers found the trail quickly, when Taec, counted amongst the greatest of farseers, could sense nothing. So the path differentiated those of talent into the roles best suited to them.
Taec let himself be carried by the minds of the spiritseers. Across vast distances they travelled, cutting through the warp where the bounds of reality have no meaning. Taec saw the world-as-is – that of the material realm – sweep by. Stars, planetary systems, clusters of light where stellar nurseries clotted gas into new life. After a time that could have been a pass or a cycle, he caught the trail that the spiritseers followed: the pain and sorrow of eldar souls drawn thin, warped to fit new bodies. The implacable presence of the Dragon’s shadow hung over it all. A rush of anger at this sight buffeted his soul, Iyanden’s fury finding an outlet through him.
The seers followed this slick of pain ever quicker, until starlight streaked and the blackness of space coloured with stretched light.
They stopped. A collective cry went up from the spiritseers. One by one Taec felt their presences drop away.
In front of their warp senses, a world spun, and it was dying. The fleets of the Dragon had converged here. As in his vision, the world was red with death, the creatures who feasted on it purple and pale coloured. Beyond the curve of the planet’s nightside was another fleet, another aspect of the Dragon. Smaller, swifter, more dispersed, these vessels too made their way towards the beleaguered world. With the heart of the perturbation in the skein before him, the blocking of the hive mind had a lesser effect. Taec, bolstered by his comrades, saw clearly.
+The mating of the Dragon,+ he said, and the chorus of seers moaned in horror. +Two become one, to destroy all in their path.+
Taec led the seers back down Dûriel’s thread, and there they saw the past. A verdant world, lovingly brought to life by their ancestors, a sun tamed. A system of beautiful garden planets, inhabited by the eldar of the days of greatness.
A True Star yet far from the hub of the empire, the eldar of Dûriel were untouched by the depravity that grew in the eldar heart, but they were not free of the consequences. Taec flinched at the echo-memory of the Fall, eldar dropping dead where they stood as the birthing of Slaanesh wrenched their souls from their bodies.
Its people consumed, empty cities stood eerie, much like Iyanden now. +So the cycle repeats,+ thought Taec.
+Its name was Dûriel,+ came Iyanna’s voice, many others speaking with her.
+Lambent flame,+ said Kelmon.
+To a dying flame shall the hungry ones be drawn,+ spoke Farseer Teuthis.
+The prophecy, the prophecy!+ said Wraithseer Ydric.
Time moved swiftly. The rude ships of mankind came to Dûriel. They settled. Doggedly, they set about the ruination of the world’s beauty, tearing down the ever-living cities of the departed eldar, tipping the balance of nature with their ugliness and filth. Billions dwelled in the system, each verdant world polluted unto death, and still mankind swarmed in verminous multitude, crowding their ugly cathedrals, raising praise to their corpse-god.
War, death, disease – the cruelties of man inflicted on his fellow men. Seas dried, forests died, mountains were toppled. And now this. Leviathan came, a terrifying swarm of ships grown fat on the life-codes of orks and men.
The scene flickered, ripples from the pain of Iyanden. Taec saw himself and the others not long after the battle, when they were pursued still by Far Ranging Hunger’s vessels. The hive fleet pursued the crippled craftworld doggedly, until he and the remaining seers had channelled the rage and the pain of their world through their minds, ripping the fabric of space and time and casting this second tendril of Far Ranging Hunger into the hell-dimensions of warp space.
Taec saw himself, he felt his own satisfaction. He, like the others, did not think it an unjust punishment for Iyanden’s suffering. Pride. It always began with pride.
+Here, we will start here,+ said Taec.
Seer voices mumbled over one another, each scrying as best they could, an overlaid babble, mingling with the thoughts of Iyanden’s unquiet dead.
+Consequences, always there are consequences. Move here, the skein will ripple there,+ Farseer Ukallior spoke. As he did so, the skein quirked, multiple futures leaping into life before settling back into the one Taec sought.
From out of the warp Far Ranging Hunger’s tendril came, the last of their kind, cast out far into the galactic south by an intermittent warp phenomenon on the edge of the Dûriel system: one the humans called the Vortex of Despair.
+I sense the hand of the Great Enemy,+ Taec said grimly. +This was no chance ejection.+
Taec guided the others, the majority of them working to keep the Great Dragon’s shadow clear from the seeing. He looked forward. +Far Ranging Hunger comes from out of the tides of the warp; first it fights, and then it merges, as I have foreseen,+ said Taec. He relived his vision of death and destruction, sharing it with the company, although his own fate he kept hidden.
Further forward into the future. Tyranids of new and terrible kinds rampaged through the stars, unstoppable, growing stronger with every conquest. +The genius of Iyanden, the mental power of our kind, wedded to the resilience of the ork, fed by the seething mass and vitality of humanity.+
+Doom,+ said Kelmon.
+Disaster,+ said Jaekherian Castdart.
+Extinction!+ said Iyanna. +It is not yet time! The new god is not ready. This cannot come to pass, or all will be lost.+
Dissent clouded their conjoined minds. Not all believed in Iyanna’s obsession.
+It will not,+ said Taec. The council decided unanimously. The skein immediately rearranged itself, the super-tyranids dissolving back into a sea of possibilities as something else took their place. War, such as had not been seen in long ages; the green and white of Biel-Tan beside the yellow and blue of Iyanden. A host of resurrected warriors. A fiery end.
Taec gasped as fire burned him. He alone saw this, that he was at the heart of Dûriel’s end. In terror, he watched his spirit stone crack and heard again the triumphant howl of She Who Thirsts.
They came out of the skein, the third circle seers singing them home. Taec rose and turned to face the pier whereupon the war council stood. Yriel leaned forwards onto the railing. Hollow-eyed and wan, there was a fell look to him, his red eye sinister. He held a fruit in his hand, and he bit into it nervously. Juice dribbled from his chin.
‘What is our action, what does the council decide?’ the prince said.
Even as the memory of agonising death and his damnation threatened to overwhelm him, even as he knew their decision could bring his vision to pass, Taec spoke decisively. ‘The seer council is unanimous. Iyanden will fight.’
Yriel nodded, a small movement. ‘And the Lady Iyanna? You and I have been at odds often. What say you? Will you support me in this war?’
Iyanna got to her feet elegantly, and unclasped her helm. She shook out the long braid of her hair and stared her rival in the eyes. ‘Unanimous means unanimous, Prince Yriel. You will have your war.’
Yriel clenched his fist in triumph. ‘Ready my fleet. We strike now.’
‘Wait!’ called Teuthis, also rising. The rest of the council followed suit. Standing with a rustle of robes, the seers and wraithseers all turned to face the pier. Runes criss-crossed the air around them still. ‘The danger is far from here. Dûriel the world is known by the human usurpers as Valedor. It is not our fate to strike the first blow. It is too far. Even were we to depart now, we would not arrive in time. We must call for aid.’
‘A play for time? Who? Who will aid us? The times of our mastery of the stars are long gone, or have you forgotten?’ Autarch Yaleanar spoke, Yriel’s chief lieutenant and also of the House of Ulthanash. Yriel’s shadow, he was called. His words were often hard; it was no wonder he had left the craftworld to pursue the life of a corsair. Wild as his master, thought Taec, and still not fully tamed by the path.
‘Biel-Tan. It is to Biel-Tan we must turn,’ said Iyanna. ‘They are not far from dying Dûriel.’
Yaleanar snorted. ‘The warmongers? Allies they were once to us, but they long ago eschewed our wisdom in favour of spending their lives and blood freely.’
‘And yet it is they who persist, and we who teeter upon extinction,’ said Iyanna.
Yaleanar leaned on the railing next to the prince. ‘They are so bloodthirsty, my lady, that my lord Yriel appears restrained by comparison. If it is to them we go, then we truly are without all hope.’
As Yriel moved to talk, a great howl of rage interrupted him. On and on it went, a roar of terrifying magnitude, lengthy as the waning of the stars, furious as their birth. Every eldar on the craftworld felt it, no tremor this time, but a full-blooded, atavistic shout that touched the hearts and souls of them all.
Lights coloured red. The craftworld shook. The fury of Khaine pounded in the temples of every Iyandeni; an undeniable call to war.
The roaring stopped, leaving in its wake a more terrible silence. The eldar looked to one another, shocked.
‘The Avatar awakens,’ said Yriel, when the shockwaves subsided. He took another bite of his fruit, uncouthly talking around the pulp. ‘We have no choice but to fight.’
