by C. S. Goto
STANDING AT THE tall, elliptical window-bay in his tower, Ahearn Rivalin looked down into the plaza below. The great assembly for the passing of Lady Ione was impressive, as it should be. The plaza was packed, and each of the tributary streets was congested with bodies for as far as he could see. Kaelorians had come from all over the immense, spacefaring craftworld; there were no longer enough resident in Sentrium to account for such large numbers. With some discomfort, the farseer saw the banners of Teirtu hoisted around the empty body of Ione, which lay across the silver anvil of his forebears. The double incongruity of a non-Rivalin on the anvil, and then of the vulgar Teirtu laying claim to the graceful Ione made him shiver.
As he gazed down, stooped over the railing but with his weight supported on his gnarled staff, he heard the main door to his personal chambers crack open behind him, but he had been anticipating his guest for some time and he made no effort to turn and greet him. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had been conscious of when the guards outside his room had halted the visitor and challenged his purpose.
The guards; Ahearn smiled to himself. Iden had told him that they were there for his own protection, but the farseer was under no illusions about his situation. He was not exactly a prisoner in his own palace, but his activities were being very carefully managed for him by the head of House Teirtu. Looking down at the Ceremony of Passing in the plaza below, Ahearn could not deny that he would have liked to be there, since the Lady Ione had been like a daughter to him. She had certainly been like a sheet of silk amongst the rough, sackcloth of the Teirtu. For a moment his thoughts turned to his actual daughter. He could see her down on the podium standing next to that Teirtu imbecile, Morfran, cradling his offspring in her priceless and perfect arms. His Oriana shone like a jewel amongst the crude and uncultivated eldar of that great house, and Ahearn furrowed his brow in displeasure at the way the Knavir of Kaelor had fallen so low that they must rely on these war mongering styhx-tann from beyond the Styhxlin Perimeter for their survival. Times had changed on Kaelor. The House Wars had left scars through the very fabric of the vast edifice of the ancient spacecraft that the eldar called a craft-world. Looking out of his window, Ahearn could hardly recognise the place. He noticed that none of the Knavir courtiers had been permitted to join the ceremony, and he wondered whether they were also watching the proceedings from a balcony in his palace, somewhere below him. 'Radiant farseer,' muttered a voice from behind him. It was quiet and deferential, but it betrayed no hint of nervousness. There was assertion underlying the show of humility. It was the voice of an accomplished warrior, something that Ahearn was only just beginning to recognise.
'Lhir of Teirtu,' said Ahearn, smiling as he put a name to the voice without turning around. 'How good of you to join me at this difficult time.'
'I bring a message from the Zhogahn, my radiance.' Lhir's manner was clipped, professional and formal. He used the honorific title for Iden, which Ahearn had bestowed on the head of House Teirtu after its victory in the House Wars. Zhogahn: the vanquisher of sin.
Ahearn turned slowly, clicking his staff against the polished floor as he shuffled his weight around. He inspected the Guardian before him. Lhir was bowing deeply, with one knee and the opposite fist touching the ground. His long, silk cloak had been gathered and flung over one shoulder, an ancient ceremonial touch designed to expose his gun-belt and to show that his intentions were peaceful.
The golden glint of a shuriken pistol was visible in the deep shadow at Lhir's waist. The young officer had quickly learnt the value and the limits of ceremonial gestures.
The farseer nodded, impressed by the perfection of the young warrior. Some of these styhx-tann have promise, he thought as his eyes glinted with new possibilities.
'Would you care for a drink, my immaculate young Lhir?' asked Ahearn, wondering how the Guardian would respond. 'I have some excellent Edreacian. Have you ever tasted it?' As he spoke, Ahearn shuffled over towards a plain-looking cabinet against the wall, with his staff clicking and scraping over the floor as he went. The cabinet opened with a dismissive gesture from the farseer, revealing a luxurious array of beverages and delicacies. A large carafe of simmering, blue liquid had pride of place. It was already half empty.
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The Guardian did not move from his position, kneeling just inside the door. His head remained bowed towards the floor, but Ahearn could feel his hidden eyes tracking his movement across the room. 'I must inform his radiance that a detachment of Warp Spiders from the Temple of the domain of Ansgar are moving against the Court. Zhogahn Teirtu has dispatched a force of Teirtu House Guardians to repel the threat. They are making their stand outside the Gates of Rivalin, under the command of Yseult Teirtu-ann. They fight in your name, my radiance.' 'I see,' said Ahearn, pouring a small measure of the steaming blue liquid into a crystal glass. 'Are you sure that I cannot tempt you with a little drink, Lhir?'
'I take my leave, radiant farseer,' replied Lhir crisply, bowing his forehead until it touched the ground. As he rose to his feet, his cloak fell into cascades around him. He nodded once more to Ahearn, and then turned in an abrupt whirl of deep green fabric and strode out of the door.
The farseer watched him go, admiring the disciplined theatricality of the young officer. He could see why Iden had posted this particular Guardian to duty in the palace. There was very little to which even the Knavir courtiers could take offence in the cultivated manner of Lhir.
Rotating the shot of Edreacian thoughtfully, Ahearn wondered whether Lhir could be truly integrated into courtly life. In the myriad paths of the future, one always contains hope, thought Ahearn as he drained his glass. Returning to the window, Ahearn looked down in time to see the funeral procession pushing through the crowd towards the Shrine of Fluir-haern on the far side of the plaza. Lady Ione's body had been draped with the green and gold serpent of House Teirtu, and lines of house Guardians flanked the route to the sacred gates. While he stared, the scene faded into the background of his mind as his thoughts turned towards Lhir's message. The Warp Spiders again, he mused. It had not been so long ago that his own son, Kerwyn, had fallen into league with those Aspect Warriors during the period of escalation of the House Wars. Kerwyn had insisted that the warriors of that deceitful and secretive temple had been loyal to the farseer, but they had turned his mind against Iden and the Great House of Teirtu, and the consequences had nearly torn Kaelor apart. The Rivalin dynasty had become divided for the first time in its long, distinguished history. As a result, after he had routed the Ansgar and their treacherous allies, Iden had banished Kerwyn from the sanctity and sophistication of the Sentrium, sparing his life only out of respect for the farseer. Ahearn had never seen his treacherous and misguided son again. What could the Warp Spiders want on this day of all days? Down in the plaza, Ahearn saw the procession reach the gates of the shrine. There was a pause while the shrine-keepers performed the necessary purifications before they could permit the mourners into the sacred space within. In that moment, Ahearn saw the distance-diminished figure of Oriana turn her face away from the group and look directly up towards his window. Even though he knew that she was too far away to see him clearly, Ahearn saw something beseeching in her delicate manner that made him ache. In different ways, Iden had taken both of his children from him. It had been a high price to pay in exchange for the reimposition of stability and central power on Kaelor. Politics was a dirty and unpleasant business. THERE WAS A faint hiss, like air escaping through a pressure-crack in glass. Then there was a scream, accelerating towards Yseult at an impossible speed. She dropped instinctively and rolled, coming back to her feet just in time to see the Warp Spider burst back into material reality and lash into a spin with her powerblades, slicing through the space that had been occupied by her own neck just moments before.
Without hesitation, Yseult unsheathed her sword and flourished it into a striking pose, held vertically above her head even as she sunk low into a combat stance.
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p; Fiannah snapped to a halt, levelling her eyes and then her blades at the Guardian before her. She crossed her arms in front of her face and then lashed them down to her sides, as though shaking the blood of her kill from the blades that ran along her gauntlets. For an instant, the two warriors stood motionless in the impromptu arena between their two forces. They were lit dramatically by the flow of light that washed out of the legendary Rivalin Gates - the site of so many of the greatest battles of Kaelorian history - and it eased over the lines of house Guardians that stood ready to defend them. Darkness hung over the ground all around them. It was as though the light-phase of Kaelor was striving to frame them a heroic stage. Yseult shattered the tension. She lunged forwards suddenly, bringing her diresword down in a direct and simple strike towards the head of her opponent. The attack looked clumsy and obvious, but that was its purpose. As Fiannah easily sidestepped the blow, pushing out one gauntlet to parry the blade to a safe distance, Yseult let her strength fall out of the strike and used the force of the Warp Spider's parry to push her into a turn. Dropping almost to the ground, she swept out her leg and spun through a low sweep, catching the arachnir just before her weight had settled. The Warp Spider's legs lifted under the force of the sweep, sending her crashing backwards onto the ground. Before she could regain her feet, Yseult was upon her. Her foot crunched down against the chest of the Aspect Warrior, pinning her, and she raised her blade into both hands for a vertical thrust down into her opponent's neck. For a split second, the two warriors held each other's gaze, and then Yseult plunged down with her sword, forcing it down with all her strength and twisting her power into a scream of focus. At the last moment, Fiannah vanished again, blinking out of the material realm just before the tip of the diresword touched her neck, leaving a fizzling crack of energy that vanished almost instantly. Yseult's scream was arrested as her blade was driven down into the rough metallic ground, burying nearly a quarter of its length. Her balance was thrown for a moment, as she teetered forwards on the hilt of her sword.
From her position just behind the front line of the Warp Spiders, Exarch Aingeal watched her arachnir reappear behind the unbalanced Guardian. She sliced rapidly across Yseult's back with one set of powerblades and then kicked out into her spine with a powerful thrust of her hips. The impacts made Yseult shriek in sudden pain and then flip over the hilt of her grounded sword and skid across the floor under the force of the kick, leaving her blade still vibrating in the ground.
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The Teirtu Guardian sprang back to her feet, turning to face Fiannah with fury written across her features. With one hand, she reached round behind her to feel the deep slice that had been cut diagonally across her back, and with the other she tugged a short, black biting blade from her belt. A rapid flicker of her eyes betrayed her longing for the lost diresword. Satisfied with the performance of her arachnir, Aingeal made a quick check of the other Aspect Warriors in the line, and then she turned and strode back away from the battle. She had more important duties on that day than battling the honourable Yseult. The Lady Ione had done the Warp Spiders a great service on the day that she had pleaded for the life of the young Ansgar heir, Naois. She had given a voice to the great prophecy. She had placed hope in the byways of the future, and Aingeal would not be deprived of the opportunity to pay her last respects to the beloved Lady of Hidden Joy. Checking back over her shoulder towards the battle once again, the exarch activated her warp-pack and vanished from the scene. There had been no way that an entire detachment of Warp Spiders could have infiltrated the courtly sector of the Sentrium without detection - the sha'iel signatures around the Shrine of Fluir-haern were so closely monitored by the servants of the Rivalin Court - but a single warrior might yet pass unnoticed. Meanwhile, Yseult stalked into an arc, patrolling around Fiannah with her black blade almost hidden in the near-darkness. She tossed it easily from one hand to the other, as though testing its weight and balance. The Warp Spider turned on the spot, keeping her foe constantly in full view. She held her powerblades diagonally across her chest, and peered out from between them at the predations of the Guardian. Then, with a faint nod, an aura of energy pulsed around her and she vanished, leaving behind a purpling haze for a fraction of a moment. This time Yseult was ready. The Warp Spider had appeared in the same orientation after both of her last jumps, and only an ork would have fallen into the same trap three times. She waited for the crackle of white noise and the faint hiss of sha'iel escaping into material space through an abrupt breach. Then she darted through a tight circle, moving around behind herself. There was a sudden red haze and then Fiannah clicked into existence immediately in front of her, facing towards the point that Yseult had occupied only an instant before. Without a moment of hesitation, Yseult dashed forwards and thrust her dark blade into the Warp Spider's abdomen, forcing it under the warp-pack and into the arachnir's lower back.
Fiannah threw her head back and shrieked in shock and pain, but Yseult cut off the cry by ripping the blade out of her foe's flesh, springing onto her back and then dragging the biting blade across her throat. While the Warp Spider fell like a dead weight, crashing onto her face on the ground, Yseult kicked free of the collapsing corpse, springing away towards her diresword and tugging it out of the ground. By the time the front line of Warp Spiders realised that their arachnir had been killed, Yseult was already brandishing her ancient blade and calling her Guardians into battle. There was a brief moment of calm, and then the Guardians charged forwards towards the Aspect Warriors, with the light of the farseer bursting radiantly behind them. Before they had crossed even five metres of ground, the Warp Spiders blinked into their midst, deathspinners and powerblades flashing. The Rites of Commencement were over.
THE INTERIOR OF the shrine was lit by a matrix of light-beams that criss-crossed the majestic space like an elaborate web. Despite the urgency and peril of her position, Aingeal smiled as she looked up out of the shadows that draped against a sweeping side-wall. She had only been inside the Shrine of Fluir-haern once before, but even then she had felt the power of the place. It was the oldest space on Kaelor, and the very first chamber of the vast craftworld to be built in the ancient and forgotten past before the Fall. She knew the legends that suggested that the lattice of light was actually fashioned out of threads of sha'iel, constructed by the tiny, crystalline creatures that lived within Kaelor's Fluir-haern, its Spirit Pool, the infinity circuit itself. The threads appeared as luminous strands of a variant of wraithbone. It was said that if a place were saturated with the psychic presence of a sufficient number of souls for long enough, then the tiny creatures would begin to spill through into the material realm, hopping in and out of material existence and leaving microscopic crystalline fragments in their wake. After uncountable eons, these fragments could build into breathtaking webs, just as single drips of calcium carbonate could build into stalactites and stalagmites. In her own temple, out in the domains of Ansgar, those tiny creatures were called warp spiders, and it was perhaps because of this that she felt so much at ease in the most sacred of all places on Kaelor. Outside the heavy doors, Aingeal could feel the presence of the crowds in the plaza. They were almost silent, but such a tremendous concentration of eldar dhamashir-souls sent out powerful ripples through the immaterial dimensions. The exarch had skirted the concentrations, moving around the almost deserted edges of the Sentrium on her way to the shrine after invisibly breaching the Rivalin Gates.
Finally, she had approached the building itself from the off-side, not using any of the tributary avenues that arced around into the Plaza of Vaul. She had made seven or eight warp-jumps to get there, and she was certain that her presence would have been detected were it not for the immense warp-disruption caused by the grieving masses in the Sentrium and by the battle raging in front of the fabled gates. Not for the first time in her long life, Aingeal praised Isha for the psychic resonance of the eldar soul. The very same communal forces that had once given birth to the Great Enemy could also
conjure a roiling maelstrom of interference. The Warp Spiders had learnt to hide in the shadows cast by the flaws of their brethren, the Sons of Asuryan. There was movement outside. Aingeal could feel the approach of the cortege, and she realised that she had no time to linger in the glorious tranquility of the shrine. She realised immediately that she had leapt into the wrong part of the shrine, her route to the altar blocked by hundreds of strands of glistening thread. Surveying the interior of the shrine carefully, she took mental note of the exact location of each of the columns, the statues, and the sub-altars that were arrayed in deliberately symbolic patterns. As she stared, she noticed two cloaked and hooded figures for the first time. At first she thought they were statues, standing guard symbolically on either side of the main aisle facing the doors, silent in their perfect stillness. Then she observed the way the light
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fell against the fabric of their cloaks, and she noticed a faint glow reflected from their hidden eyes: shrine-keepers. They had not yet noticed her intrusion.
Activating her warp-pack, Aingeal leapt from the shadows in the ambulatories directly into the central aisle that led up to the farseer's Tetrahedral Altar, where the original and only legitimate access point to Fluir-haern was housed. She appeared directly behind the shrine-keepers and, without hesitation, she reached forwards and snapped the neck of the nearest before he had even turned. The other spun in surprise and Aingeal saw the fear widen in his tranquil eyes just before she struck him in the throat. His eyes rolled back under the blow and he lost consciousness immediately, slumping into a cloak-covered pile on the ground. Aingeal knelt to check that he was still alive and then glanced up towards the towering doors before her, as though to reassure herself that they had not yet begun to open. Then she turned and dashed along the aisle, stopping three steps before the podium on which the altar rested, and dropping to her knees. Muttering a poem of ceremonial purification, Aingeal lifted her head and admired the flawless craftsmanship of the altar. It was said that the perfectly smooth block of wraithbone had been fashioned by the peerless eldar smiths of Jauin-zur in a time when the Children of Isha had lived on the surface of planets, before the Fall. Although it looked like a regular tetrahedron from every side, it had in fact been constructed so that the centre point, from which all the vertices were always equidistant, was not located in material space at all, but rather was locked into the immaterial realm, anchored in the infinity circuit. The symbolism was clear: Fluir-haern was the virtual vertex, always equidistant from every point on Kaelor, no matter how the craftworld might grow or change. The optical result was that it was almost impossible to behold the altar completely. It seemed to defy close inspection, as though the pressure of a gaze were enough to make its form slip and alter. The unique and matchless design also served a practical function: because the altar existed partially outside the material space of the shrine, it also provided a bridge between the substantial world of Kaelor and its spirit pool. A small, tear-shaped socket in the front face provided a point of access to the bridge, and it was into this that the spirit stones of fallen eldar would be placed for the Transference of Dhamashirs. This was the destination of Lady Ione's spirit stone. The destiny of her undying soul lay within the Fluir-haern, where it would join tens of thousands of her forebears in pristine sanctity. In a moment of reverence, Aingeal considered her memories of the Lady of Hidden Joy. She could still remember watching her standing at the side of Iden Teirtu on the balcony of the Farseer's Palace, overlooking the Plaza of Vaul at the end of the House Wars. In the square, next to the silver anvil, Bedwyr Ansgar stood with Kerwyn Rivalin and the Ansgar marshals, held at lance- point by the victorious Teirtu Guardians. Standing before their father, hardly old enough to stand unsupported, were the childlings, Naois and the tiny Ela. Just as Iden had raised his hand to signal the executions, the fair Lady Ione had interceded, dropping to her knees on the balcony before all of Kaelor and pleading for the lives of the infants. She talked of mercy and dignity. She talked of grand purposes and fateful destinies. She talked of the greatness of House Teirtu being measured not by the death and destruction that it brought to Kaelor, but by the life and rebirth that it held within its power. She gave voice to the prophecy. At that moment the eldar of Kaelor had taken the Lady of Hidden Joy into their souls as an icon of hope for the future. Iden himself had paused, uncertain and confused by the sudden actions of his consort. He had been unable to deny her, and the childlings were dragged away from the plaza by their hair, leaving their father to face the executioners with his loyal warriors. Just as Bedwyr had died without uttering a word of remorse or fear, the childlings had passed out of the plaza in eerie silence. Not long after that, the lady had made the long journey to the ruined domains of Ansgar and laid the sleeping Naois on the steps of the Temple of the Warp Spiders, leaving the orphaned heir to Aingeal's care. A crack of sound jolted the exarch back into the present. Behind her, the doors to the shrine were opening slowly. Without hurrying, Aingeal bowed forwards and touched her helmet to the face of the Tetrahedral Altar, and then rose to her feet and bowed sharply once again. As the doors finally opened behind her, she reached forwards and placed a small runic icon on the altar as an offering to the Fluir-haern, whispering an incantation of the Warp Spiders' esteem and gratitude for Lady Ione. The exarch could hear the rushing of feet and the bracing of weapons as the Teirtu Guardians spotted her and dashed through the open doors, hastening into the interior of the shrine. Unhurried, Exarch Aingeal of the Warp Spiders turned to face the intruders. A spread of Guardians had secured the only exit, and she could see the banner-draped husk of Ione being held in the doorway by the honour guard. Ahead of them, flanked by his personal bodyguard, Iden Teirtu stepped forwards along the aisle towards the altar. Then he stopped and looked up into the eyes of Aingeal, with furious hatred written in his gaze. Then Aingeal vanished.