by C. S. Goto
С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»
CHAPTER TWO: SCILTI
A PSYCHIC SCREAM echoed through the interior of the Shrine of Fluir-haern, ricocheting between the wraithbone statues and interweaving with the intricate webs of sha'iel that glistened impossibly in the darkness. The sound spoke of agonising frustration. It also contained pain, but overriding all the other emotions was a crescendo of violent rage. It sent ripples and Shockwaves pulsing around the temple, making the glittering matrices shiver and quake. The tall, powerful figure of Iden Teirtu stood before the Tetrahedral Altar and howled curses into the sacred space around him. Holding his arms out to his sides in a cruciform, he roared with fury, leaning his head back to give his voice full reign over his body.
He railed until his was the only voice audible near the shrine. All of the eldar in the Plaza of Vaul outside the gates were silent, listening intently to the anger of the great patriarch. His fury seeped into them like a faceless contagion, and unrest began to flicker through the crowd like an indignity. The emotions curdled into their grief, and before long the assembly felt wronged and affronted, without any idea of why. The Kaelorians of the Sentrium knew only that something had disturbed the ritual purity of the Ceremony of Passing. They knew only that Lady Ione's last moments in the material realm had been blighted, and they shared instinctively in the rage of their Zhogahn. Iden's rant finally subsided. He dropped his arms to his sides and lowered his gaze back down to the cortege that stood around Ione's shrouded body, just inside the doorway to the shrine. His rotund son, Morfran, gazed back up at him with a wet smile gleaming over his face. His eyes shone with a touch of hysteria, as though his father's anger had thrilled him to the point of excitement. His rich, green robes were ill-adjusted, and his exposed skin shone with ornamental graftings and piercings. Despite his fury, Iden felt a faint wave of revulsion towards his kin. He couldn't help it; Morfran's physical presence, which was such an affront to the austere warrior ideals of House Teirtu, made him physically sick. The delicate Oriana stood next to him, looking up at Iden with shock and fear written into her exquisite features. At her feet, the crumpled shrine-keeper suddenly groaned and twitched, alive but in pain, but Oriana hardly noticed the suffering next to her. Her wide eyes shone with disbelief and she had turned her slender body slightly away from the Zhogahn so that the infant in her arms was partially shielded from him. Fury was more appalling than pain. As for the others in the party, Iden didn't even spare them a glance. He could sense their shock at his reaction to the sight of the Warp Spider in the shrine, but there was nobody there worth his attention. There was nobody to whom he had to explain himself. Only Oriana's gaze demanded anything from his conscience. Iden composed himself for her benefit. He smoothed down his heavy robes and straightened his dark jade cloak. Then he gathered his long, silver hair and arranged it over one shoulder, in the manner of the Circular Court. He smiled sadly and nodded, as though acknowledging Oriana's right to judge him. Despite everything that had happened over the last several years, despite even his victory in the House Wars that had brought his great house to such prominence in the Sentrium itself, Iden still felt the innate superiority of the Rivalin line. No matter what he did, he would always see the eyes of Oriana or her father watching him critically.
She simply stared back, her horror undiminished. Am I really so abhorrent to her, wondered Iden? Are the ways of my house really so brutal? His eyes drifted back to Morfran's excitable features, and not for the first time he saw the incongruity of the couple. It was simply impossible to imagine two more different eldar on all of Kaelor. In the contrast between them, as they looked up at him from the central aisle of the Shrine of Fluir-haern, framed between the corpse of one shrine-keeper and the twitching remains of another, he saw himself as the Knavir eldar of the palace must see him. He wondered whether their cultivated sensitivities would even appreciate the difference between him and his son. He even makes me sick, he thought. A heavy sadness sunk into Iden's soul, a type of profound loneliness. Standing on the steps before the Tetrahedral Altar, in the most ancient and sacred heart of Kaelor, he looked down on the daughter of the farseer, standing side-by-side with his own son. Such had been the stuff of his dreams during the long and bloody down-phases of the House Wars, but now the scene left him cold, as though something in the universe conspired to reject the situation. It felt offensive. He realised that he offended himself.
Many of the Knavir had refused to join the Ceremony of Passing, despite their obvious affection for Ione. She had been the one member of his house who had been truly accepted as an equal amongst the courtiers. She had been trained in the ancient Seer House of Yuthran, and had come to him in his home domains in the years before the House Wars, speaking of a prophecy that would see his house rise to new heights of power. She had arrived in the pledge-lands of Teirtu at the turning of the tide, when the eldar of the neighbouring sectors had been close to starvation. They had turned to Iden for aid, calling on him to oppose what they called the tyranny of the Rivalin Court, which they claimed had siphoned off the wealth and sustenance of the outer domains for long years, merely to feed its own taste for luxury. Iden had heard the calls of his kinsmen and neighbours in open sessions, but it had been the private counsel of the Lady Ione that had finally inspired him to take his courage in his hands. When House Teirtu had first arisen as the sword of the Farseer's Court in the outer reaches of Kaelor, Iden had led the fight against the rebels with Ione at his side.
That was when it had all begun. That was when military power had stealthily crept onto the political stage of Kaelor for the first time since the Craftwars. After eons of peace following the coming of Gwrih the Radiant and the establishment of the Ohlipsean, power seemed to be shifting away from the ceremonial grandeur of the Circular Court and towards the less cultivated great houses of the outer reaches. For the first time in its long and glorious history, the Rivalin Dynasty needed more than symbolic authority
С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»
over Kaelor. It needed military force to keep the increasingly discomforted craftworld in line. In hindsight, the process was obvious. At the time, it had been unthinkable. It was still unthinkable to many of the Knavir courtiers. Iden tried to hold Oriana's gaze for a moment, but the young Rivalin averted her eyes almost immediately. She despises me, he thought, and she has good reason. She was part of the price that old Ahearn had paid to retain the power and the service of House Teirtu. She was the promise of their future in the court; the child of Morfran and Oriana would be both Teirtu and Rivalin. Yet the match had not brought acceptance. It had merely served to emphasise the Morfran's vulgarity. Only Ione had been accepted. None had been able to deny her a place on even the highest of tables. The farseer himself had taken counsel from her on many occasions. She had been loved. Morfran was despised. Iden himself despised him. Now, Ione was gone, and the Knavir of Kaelor held the Teirtu in such contempt that they had not even bothered to participate in her Ceremony of Passing. At the last, despite her popularity and integrity during life, she had been damned by association. He had seen them during the congregation in the plaza, up on their balcony in the palace, watching the proceedings with disapproval. He could only imagine the way that they would talk about the thousands of styhx-tann eldar that had crowded in the Plaza of Vaul for a last view of Ione's husk. They were above such things. By Khaine, fumed Iden, his ire raised yet again by his unspoken chain of thought, the arrogance of the eldar! It caused such incredible suffering and inequality. Even the cyclical and ostensibly egalitarian Eldar Path could not mitigate it. Because the Knavir could control aesthetic standards, it was also up to them to determine the best path for the best dhanir to follow, and it was not the dhanir of the warrior, that was for sure! Although the Knavir may no longer be in touch with the realities of military power on Kaelor, they still managed to hold on to moral and aesthetic authority, and, given the character of the eldar, this was ultimately more important.
Iden exhaled deeply, brin
ging his thoughts under control. None of these things should be permitted to ruin the Passing of Ione. He would not be responsible for raining the ceremony and he would not be responsible for providing the Knavir with further evidence of the vulgarity of House Teirtu. Things had gone so smoothly until that cursed Warp Spider had shown up in the shrine and disturbed the elegance with flecks of death and reminders of the House Wars. He nodded towards the cortege, as though to signal that everything was under control, and then turned around to face the altar. He changed his hair from one shoulder to the other, just as he should, and then dropped to his knees, quieting his mind into a rever- ential meditation. He began the prayer of purity in a barely audible whisper, preparing the way for the passage of Ione's dhamashir into Fluir-haern. With the shrine-keepers incapacitated, he would perform the rite himself, as he had done for fallen warriors many times before.
Just as his mind was at rest, he saw a small tablet resting against the foot of the altar, as though it had been placed there as an offering in advance of the ceremony. It was a small, metallic disc, and it glinted faintly in the half-light of the shrine. Furrowing his brow as the object broke his concentration, Iden tilted his head to one side so that he could see the little icon more clearly. An instant later, he sprang to his feet and ripped the long, heavy sword from its holster on his back. He was crying with renewed fury as he swung the broad, coruscating blade around his head in a giant arc, smashing it through dozens of delicate, glittering wraith-webs and shattering them into dust. The blade seemed to thrill at the discharge of destructive energy, as though it were feeding on his bloody intent.
Down in the main aisle, Morfran's eyes widened with excitement as he watched Iden's rage explode ruinously around the interior of the shrine. He eyed the great sword with almost sensual pleasure, recognising it as Dhamashir-dhra, the Soul-Slayer, the ancient blade that had been presented to Iden by one of the eldar rangers that had fought the rearguard action against a tyranid splinter that had pursued Kaelor for several years before the House Wars. Those battles against the tyranids had yielded much of benefit to House Teirtu, including the trust of the farseer, and the great sword was both a symbol of Iden's mastery of war and a potent weapon in its own right. The legend said that it had been fashioned out of organic material reaped from the chitinous bodies of slain tyranids and then infused with wraithbone by the peripatetic Bonesinger Yureelj, forging a blade that seemed to come alive at the touch of its master. In reality, the exquisite blade had been wrought entirely from wraithbone, but its appearance was so close to that of a tyranid bonesword that the rumours of its alien origin had taken on a life of their own. This in itself was testament to the skill of Yureelj. Once or twice, Morfran had even caught Iden talking to the blade, as though it were a living creature. With a swift step, Iden moved down from the altar and into the aisle, letting the weight of his blade turn him as he descended. Dhamashir-dhra fizzed as it swept through the shadowy air, bleeding a trail of psychic energy in its wake. Then, as Iden's cry grew into an abrupt scream, the blade struck squarely into the base of the Tetrahedral Altar, provoking an explosion of dark-light that pulsed out from the altar in concentric shock-waves. Despite herself, Oriana screamed in shock and fear, seeing the manic hysteria of the old warrior's soul laid bare for the first time. Then she turned, clutching her child, and ran back along the aisle, bursting out into the light of the Plaza of Vaul like a drowning youth struggling to the surface for air. Breathing hard, with his long hair hanging in ripped curtains over his face, Iden watched Oriana flee. His billowing cloak was speckled with the shards of shattered wraith-webs, and a strong gust of faerulh whipped through the shrine, as though fleeing in solidarity with Oriana. Even as he looked down the aisle and out of the doors at the pressing congregation in the plaza outside, Iden's sword was still held out behind him, pressed against the side of the altar where it had struck, glowing and chittering with psychic force. Just beneath the tip of the blade, at the base of the still unblemished altar, the runic-icon of the Warp Spiders lay shattered and disintegrated.
Biting down on his anger, Iden looked straight past his son at the shrouded husk of Ione and spoke to as though to the dead. 'Mark this, the Warp Spiders will pay for the ruination of this sacred day, and if I find that the old athesdan farseer has made the same mistake as his son, there will be none to plead mercy at my feet. Not even you can save him from my blade, my lost lady'
С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»
THE UMBHALA STAFF flashed through a tight crescent, arcing directly towards Naois's head. He had learnt the folly of parrying a staff many times before - the staff has two ends, and you cannot block them both - so he dropped his weight under the tip and smacked his own staff up behind it, accelerating the strike beyond its intended focus. Overreaching slightly, Scilti felt his balance shift. This was a new tactic from Naois, but Scilti was not about to be bested by a cheap trick. He let his balance fail, and then, just on the point of falling, he sprang, cycling through a roll and flipping over Naois's dropping form.
Both tyro-combatants regained their feet simultaneously, turning immediately to face each other with their staffs held before them like swords, defining their striking distances. Their eyes met and their gazes locked as they patrolled around each other like predators, waiting for a glitch or an opening for the next attack. They feinted and faked, twisting through the various set pieces they had learnt in years of hard training, but neither seemed able to gain the advantage. Each gesture from one provoked the perfect counter from the other, so neither was willing to follow through. Abruptly, Naois stopped moving and lowered the tip of his staff, letting it click down into the thin layer of sand on the hard floor. He let his shoulders relax, rolling them a couple of times to loosen the tension, but his silver eyes retained their glint of menace as he tracked Scilti's still prowling figure. There was a measure of physical resemblance between the two warriors. They had similar builds, and they both had the shaven heads of temple acolytes, but Scilti was a full head taller than his younger cousin, and his shoulders were broader. He carried his staff like a weapon rather than a toy, and his fiercely set eyes spoke of a profound hunger that was yet unknown to Naois. It was as though a longing for death had touched his soul with a bloody hand. He circled slowly, half turning his face away from Naois so as to keep his quarry on the edge of his sight, caught by the more sensitive receptors of peripheral vision. Naois remained motionless. His head was angled towards the ground, but the glint of his eyes betrayed an alert awareness. The tip of his staff defined tiny, imperceptible circles in the sand, as though he was doodling. Despite Scilti's physical advantage, Naois gave no sign of being intimidated. He was simply waiting, knowing that his older cousin would have to make his move.