Eldar Prophecy

by C. S. Goto

  integrity and security. I am the vanquisher of sin! We fight for the farseer, and we manifest his will on the battlefield... whether or

  not he remains fully conscious of the content of his own will. We are charged with keeping his intent consistent and his will

  strong. The banner has not been stolen out of the palace by thieves and then hoisted over our forces as a tactic or deceit. The

  banner of Rivalin is ours!

  There was a hint of hysteria in Iden's tone that made Yseult step back away from him. His long, silver hair had been pulled back into a tight knot, giving his uneven, elliptical face a raw severity that matched his mood. As his thoughts raced, his ancient sword flashed with energy over his shoulder, calling out for blood. The psychic light that coruscated around the blade danced tiny stars into his flashing green eyes.

  Yseult could see his passion and his unmoving faith, even as it teetered on the brink of insanity. It was contagious enough for her to be willing to give her lord the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, doubting her lord would itself be unbecoming of a servant in his debt. If the Zhogahn told her that she marched in the name of the farseer, then she marched in the name of the farseer. She owed them both at least that much faith.

  'We must make our stand at the Styhxlin Perimeter,' said Yseult, vocalising properly so that the Guardians around them would not grow too uncomfortable about the secrecy of the obviously heated debate between the two of them. This was not the time for her troops to doubt the unity of their command. At the sudden noise, Morfran looked up abruptly from his stupor, as though startled by an unexpected interruption. He said nothing, but grinned happily, his mind elsewhere. 'The Innis Straight meets the Perimeter at the Ula Pass. Although our greater numbers will count for less in such restricted territory, that will be the simplest place to arrest the advance of the rebels. They must cross the pass if their destination is the Sen-

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  trium, and we can defend it with overwhelming strength.' As she spoke, Yseult watched the holographic charts flick through a sequence of images in time with her explanation, scanning along the Innis Straight all the way to the narrow, curving Ula Pass that swept over the great gaping canyon of the Styhxlin Perimeter. There were still a number of gunnery-emplacements operational on the Sentrium side of the pass, which were remnants of the expansive defensive ring put in place around the Sentrium in the closing stages of the House Wars.

  What about Lairgnen and his Dire Avengers? asked Iden. He should come to our aid if I summon him in our time of need.

  Yseult looked up from the charts and saw the maniacal glint still shining in Iden's eyes. His emotions were running away with his thoughts, and he was losing focus on the reality of the problem. Had he been anyone else, Yseult would have slapped him to remind him of the pain of the present.

  Not for the first time in her long acquaintance with the patriarch of Teirtu, Yseult found herself wondering how long it had been since he had last endured the discipline of the Path of the Warrior in one of the Aspect Temples. She knew that Iden had been a fine Dire Avenger in his youth, but was not aware of his passing through the dhanir of Khaine after that. Looking at the delicacy of the thread that seemed to tie him to sanity and keep his mind dangling out of the darkest and most bloody reaches of his soul, Yseult saw clearly that Iden was in need of guidance from one of the Shrines of Asurmen. The demands of political machinations had kept him from heeding the call of his own nature for too long. Whilst he disdained the material decadence of the Knavir, this kind of neglect was also a kind of decadence. There is no need to call on the Avengers, my lord, replied Yseult in an honest appraisal of the situation. Our numbers are

  overwhelming, and the battlefield is of our choosing. Besides, we seek to repel an attack, not launch a programme of

  extermination. This would be overkill, Zhogahn.

  'You are wrong, child. The Ansgar and those treacherous Warp Spiders need to be taught a lesson. I should have exterminated them ages ago, but my mercy has returned to torture me...' Iden was mumbling audibly, as though talking to himself. 'This is not about repelling them, it's about annihilating them once and for all. It's about finishing what Ione prevented me from completing before.'

  The Avengers will not fight for you, my lord. Yseult's thoughts were urgent and pressing as she tried to prevent Iden from

  continuing his rambling violence in front of the grinning Morfran and the other Guardians. Lairgnen will not breach the Covenant of the Asurya's Helm, and nor should he. You know this, Iden of Teirtu. The Aspect Temples must not get involved.

  'They are already involved, you fool!' snapped Iden, drawing suddenly closer to Yseult and drawing the anxious attention of all the eldar in the hall. 'That witch Aingeal has already smashed the covenant. If Lairgnen refuses, he does it because he wishes ill to befall the House of Teirtu. Do you hear me, Avenger Yseult?' He was mocking her. 'Failing to stand with us would be to breach the Helm of Asurya!'

  My lord, you are not yourself, counseled Yseult, reeling slightly under the sudden shift in Iden's ire. She stared into his wild, green

  eyes and saw the paranoia spreading like a disease in his soul. She watched him glance rapidly around the hall, as though searching for invisible or hidden assassins in the shadows. Being in the Sentrium for so long had changed this once magnificent warrior, and Yseult felt the pain of loss. It was clear to her that he needed to step back from his political ambitions, machinations and responsibilities. He needed to return to the outer domains of Teirtu and plunge himself back into the disciplined existence of the Dire Avengers. He needed to rebalance his soul before he became lost to himself. For his sake, as well as for the sake of those around him, Yseult needed to get Iden back to the shrine. My lord, perhaps you should leave this battle to me. You need your rest. When it is over, we can pay a visit to the Temple of the

  Dire Avengers together. We can talk with Lairgnen.

  'You! Even you would rather be without me!' snarled Iden, firing his accusation at his champion. 'You seek this victory for yourself!'

  With an almost impossibly swift motion, Yseult slapped the Teirtu Zhogahn across his face, striking him flatly on his pale, angular cheek. For an instant, an unspeakable violence flared in Iden's eyes, and Yseult thought he was going to strike her back, but then the flames cooled suddenly and his gaze softened. I am sorry, Yseult. It has been so long since I was last in a battle. I think that I am losing myself in the suspicions and complexities

  of this place. I was not made for this life, and I exhaust myself in rebellion against it, even as it rebels against me. We will fight

  together, you and I, side by side. We will be rejuvenated in the flames of combat and given new sustenance by the blood of our

  enemies. It will be like the old days once again.

  Willing to give her lord her faith, as demanded by her sense of duty, Yseult nodded crisply. Perhaps war would be enough of a remedy for what ails him, she thought. Then the two warriors stooped over the holographic charts once again, studying the best way to deploy the Teirtu Guardians. At the same time, Morfran seemed to realise that the entertainment was over. He rose idly to his feet and strolled back towards the interior of the palace, bumping past a number of Guardians as he went and mumbling something about checking whether the Harlequins were still there. RIDING ON THE open top of the converted Wave Serpent at the head of the Ansgar column, Scilti turned back to view the convoy behind him. It had grown since they had pushed out of the domains of Ansgar with twenty kinsmen and a single squad of Warp Spiders. A number of eldar from the outer realms had rallied to their banners, seeing in the procession a glimmer of hope and the echoes of former glories.

  The number of supporters had been small, but some of the veteran warriors that had once fought at Bedwyr's side had emerged from their ramshackle habitation-units with immaculately shining and preserved weapons, as though they had polished and cleaned them in the shadows of every down-phase since the war, waitin
g. As Scilti's ragtag convoy had passed through their sector, some of the old warriors had seen a chance to escape from the humdrum dhanir of their half-hidden, sedentary and

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  humiliating post-war existence. The call of Khaine had never left them. They had merely suppressed it out of fear of retribution from the Teirtu, and now they finally saw a chance for the cry of battle to rekindle the embers in their withering souls. Nonetheless, Scilti knew that his army was no more than a pathetic echo of the mighty forces that had marched with Bedwyr into the epic battles of the House Wars. He had been there himself as a young and inexperienced warrior, more passionate than able. He had ridden with the patriarch at the head of great Ansgar forces, feeling the very fabric of Kaelor trembling beneath their might. He knew the spirit of war. He had felt it engulf him like a storm. The clouds of violent defiance that gathered around his convoy were not the stuff of great tempests or raging maelstroms. There was fury and there was the parched thirst for blood, but the epic emotions of the House Wars were simply absent. It was as though there were no mythic heroes marching to battle. It was as though this fight would pass unnoticed, never to be dramatized in a glorious eldar cycle. In these sectors of Kaelor, the space was wide and open, as though echoing the expansive plains of the home worlds of the Eldar Knights, but here the Faerulh Prairies were barren and metallic. In the peaceful days before the House Wars, these sectors would have been bustling with eldar travelling to and from the Sentrium. The Innis Straight passed through the prairies before rising several levels to cut through the fabled Styhxlin Perimeter at the Ula Pass. This had been one of the first crossing points to be established after the terrible cataclysm that had cracked Kaelor in two during the Craftwars with the bellicose craftworlders of Saim-Hann, and it had remained a central artery through Kaelor ever since. Legend said that the pass had been held intact by the sheer power of Warlock Ula Ansgar's will for nearly a year in the last phases of the Craftwar. It was said that she had held the vast mass of Kaelor together in her mind, using the wraithway of the pass to tie the styhx-tann sectors to the Sentrium. Local folklore claimed that she had expended so much of her life-force performing this incredible feat that she had eventually become utterly absorbed in the wraithpath that finally formed part of the intricate web of multidimensional bonds that saved Kaelor from cracking completely into two. The path was built across the breach as a bridge. Ula's Pass was the pass that had been made out of Ula. Over the centuries, a thriving economy had been sustained along the Innis Straight, with merchants and rest-keepers sprinkled throughout the plains. It had been hard to travel without encountering many fellow travellers, or many lying in wait for them. It had also been the road on which Bedwyr had chosen to make his last stand. House Teirtu had already become firmly ensconced in the Sentrium, and they had fortified the narrow Ula Pass from their side. Of the various approaches to the Farseer's Court, Ula Pass was clearly the most heavily defended, and Iden had been certain that it was impregnable. The pass was narrow and sweeping, making it almost impossible to muster a large force through it, and the defensive fortifications were elevated along its length, effectively transforming the restricted corridor into a slaughter-zone. Bedwyr had known all of this just as well as Iden had, and yet he had personally led his army along the Innis Straight and up into the pass, with the banners of Ansgar and Rivalin flying proudly on either side of his Vyper. The rune-singers of Ansgar tell of how Bedwyr chose that route knowing that it would be his doom. They say that he knew his war was already lost and that a seer of Yuthran had prophesied victory for Ansgar in an honourable death.

  But Bedwyr had emerged from the slaughter of the Ula Pass with the bloodied remnants of six of his honour guard. With death pouring from his weapons and seeping from his skin, and with his life dripping away from him, the Ansgar patriarch had fought through hundreds of Teirtu Guardians, penetrating deep into the Sentrium until he had reached the Plaza of Vaul. There he had dropped to his knees before the Palace of the Farseer and accepted his fate. As Scilti looked across the Faerulh Prairies before him, he could see the glow of the interference-aura that gushed continuously out of the Styhxlin breach. It spread out along the vanishing point on the edge of his vision, defining a line of shimmering, midnight blue like a horizon. The eerie light pulsed through the immaterium, letting the glimmer of sha'iel bleed through from the immaterial dimensions, contaminating the whole area with nightmares. They are ready for us. The thoughts were calm and unmoving.

  Looking down to his side, Scilti saw the small, child-like figure of Ela'Ashbel standing at the front of the Wave Serpent peering ahead into the energy rupture. He had not asked her to accompany him, and he would not have done so. However, she had taken up her position on the leading transport so naturally and calmly that none had thought to oppose her. Her presence was simply inevitable.

  The Exarch Aingeal, the Guardian Khukulyn and the Teirtu traitor, Lhir stood with the two of them on the viewing platform on the control vehicle. The five of them had ridden in silence for most of the journey, letting the fluttering banners of Ansgar, Rivalin and the Warp Spiders speak for their common intent. There was little else to be said. 'Can you tell how many?' asked Scilti, following Ela's gaze but unable to see anything in the haze of light and warp energy that curdled along the vanishing point ahead. He supposed that she could not see anything with her eyes either. Many. The answer was simple and fully anticipated. But it does not matter. What has begun must be brought to its conclusion.

  The future rests on this. Victory lies beyond this horizon, not on it.

  They have already taken the pass, added Aingeal. They must have known of our route significantly in advance to be so well

  prepared.

  'How could I have known?' countered Lhir, aware of the accusation implied by the exarch. The very presence of the Warp Spider in such close proximity was enough to put the Guardian on edge, and that made him even more sensitive to slights that might have been directed at him. 'I did not know how you would react to his radiance's message, and I could not have known your route.' 'There was no accusation, Teirtu-ann,' said Scilti, although his tone remained edged with disdain. 'Marshal Yseult would have anticipated our route, I am sure.' There was a hint of admiration in his voice when he spoke of Yseult. Lhir paused for a moment, weighing up the sincerity of his uneasy allies. The mention of the marshal had affected a change in his emotional state. Whilst he was finding it easier and easier to justify the defection of his loyalties from Iden and Morfran to the radiant farseer himself, from Teirtu to Rivalin, the mention of Marshal Yseult gave him cause to reconsider his position once again. Even this Ansgar rebel spoke of her with respect.

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  Of all the eldar that he was betraying in House Teirtu, Lhir realised that only Yseult would probably understand his reasons, and yet none would confront him more passionately than her. Only she would see the courage and heroic tragedy of this hopeless Ansgar march through the Ula Pass. She would have stood with them, in a different life, but in this life she would fight until every last one of them was dead. For the first time in his life, Lhir saw the tragedy of Kaelor's hereditary system of houses. Yseult should not have been born into the domains of Teirtu. For a people with such a sophisticated sense of destiny and time, it seemed to Lhir that a hereditary system was peculiarly unwise in an eldar society. 'Besides,' added Scilti, seeing the confused emotions in Lhir's eyes, 'these sectors have been running with Teirtu rangers and spies for years.'

  'The Zhogahn has been diligent in his ongoing suspicion of the other outer houses, especially of the Ansgar' added Khukulyn bitterly.

  The anti-grav Wave Serpent banked gently as it started a smooth turn, pushing up the slight incline that rose out of the plain and inclined up towards the Ula Pass. Behind them, the other vehicles in the convoy fell into line. In this narrow stretch before the pass, the Innis Straight was barely wide enough for a single-file formation of Wave Serpents or Falcon
grav-tanks. Two Vypers could just about squeeze through side by side if necessary, but it would be a precarious manoeuvre. Jetbikes two abreast were pos- sible. The narrowness of the pass was a deliberate defensive device, making it almost impossible to muster a significant assault through the Innis Straight.

  The slope rose gently at first, but then it swept into a graceful curve and inclined more steeply, arcing up towards the distant ceiling level. About half way up the ramp, the deck stopped being supported by columns underneath it, holding it up above the Faerulh Prairies, and it began to be suspended by fine, long cables from the ceiling above. The effect was to make the path less stable, allowing it to sway slightly because of the motion on top of it, but it also made the route more restrictive, since the cables overlapped and interwove like giant webs on either side of the ramp, effectively enclosing the incline into a long, curving corridor, flanked on both sides by webbed walls.

  'How far to the pass?' asked Lhir, looking around in discomfort. The reality of his situation was gradually sinking in. He was a single Teirtu Guardian in a pathetic convoy of desperate Ansgar rebels heading up into an impregnable, highly fortified, and incredibly restrictive killing zone. He was riding to his death beneath an enemy banner. Yet something in his dhamashir thrilled at the choices he had made. He felt honest and uncomplicated for the first time in his life. Given a choice between life and death, the warrior should choose death every time.

  'The Innis Straight curves up another two levels through these webs before it meets the portal of Ula on the fringe of the perimeter,' said Khukulyn. He had been there before. Scilti nodded seriously, accepting the knowledge of the veteran warrior. He looked through the lattice of webwork briefly, seeing the ramp curving up towards the dark, glittering, immaterial substance of the Sty-hxlin Perimeter ahead of them. Then he looked down over the edge of the decking beneath the Wave Serpent. They had already climbed a hundred metres, and the Faerulh Prairies were rapidly dropping away beneath them, featureless and barren like a great metallic desert. He had not been along this route since that fateful march of the Ansgar at the close of the House Wars when Bedwyr had drawn his glorious convoy to a halt at precisely the point where the ceiling web reached down to cradle the ramp. Scilti could still remember the great warrior's glittering, silver eyes as Bedwyr had turned to him, placed his hand on his shoulder and told him that he could go no further. The great patriarch had drawn a line and sent all those that had not yet lived through seven dhanir back down to the Prairies below, telling them that this was not their fight, that this was not their time to die. He had told them all that they would have other chances, and that one day they would march through the Ula Pass themselves, triumphant under the ban- ners of Ansgar and Rivalin. He had chosen death, so that his heirs might one day find life on Kaelor. Like an infant-coward, Scilti had gone back down as he had been ordered. He had not travelled with his lord into the killing-zone of the Pass. He had not witnessed the legendary carnage of that day, and he had not been there when Bedwyr had staggered out of the other side of the pass, defiant and gored, with only six warriors of his once majestic army remaining at his side. Khukulyn had been there, and he was here again. Scilti was here now. Bedwyr had told him that he would return, and thus he had returned. Like his lord before him, Scilti had now passed through the Rites of the Warp Spider, and he stood at the head of an Ansgar army under the banner of the farseer. There had been no question about where he would launch his attack. The Ula Pass was the rite of passage, the test of history and it loomed in the future like destiny itself, a single, narrow resolution of the myriad possibilities that stretched out into the temporal distance. He would either emerge as the victorious heir of Ansgar, or he would die in a glorious echo of his lord. Choose death, but be prepared to live.