Eldar Prophecy
Page 12
'Halt here,' said Scilti, directing his command to the pilot in the cockpit below. The Wave Serpent slid smoothly to a stop and dropped a fraction in height as the anti-grav impellers shifted down a phase. The others looked at him expectantly, but he ignored them and vaulted down off the open command deck onto the ramp in front of the transport. He walked to the edge of the ramp and peered down through the cables at the distant ground, leaning his weight against the wall of webbing. He looked at the expanse of the Faerulh Prairies, looking back along the Innis Straight as far as the domains of Eaochayn. Then he turned his head and looked at the towering wall of glittering, deep blue energy that was the Styhxlin Perimeter. It ran forever, like an infinite and eternal barrier through the very fabric of the craftworld. He gazed into its depths as though staring into an ocean. Up ahead, the web-enveloped ramp plunged into the perimeter like a lance into a waterfall: the Ula Pass. 'It's incredible, isn't it?' The dulcet voice of Khukulyn was suddenly right at his shoulder. The old warrior's tone was scented with an artist's appreciation of beauty.
Scilti had not heard or sensed his approach, but he showed no signs of surprise and left his gaze in the maelstrom of sha'iel. 'I have never been this close to it, Khukulyn,' he conceded, 'not here, not in this place.' There was an understanding silence. 'It is the same everywhere you see it, my lord,' said Khukulyn, addressing Scilti with an honour-title for the first time, 'and anyway... You are here now, Lord Scilti. That's what matters.'
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Nodding thoughtfully, Scilti gradually realised that he could see stars, planets and swirling nebulae glittering within the perimeter, as though it contained an entire galaxy. He knew that it was an optical and psychic trick, caused by the unusual properties of the sha'iel-rich space, but he also realised that it would please the Knavir eldar of the Sentrium to think that there was a whole galaxy of distance between them and the outer houses on his side of the Styhxlin. He suspected that some of them would have been hap- pier if the cataclysmic rift in the structure of Kaelor had never been repaired at all. Instead, the little Ula Pass existed as a thorn in their sides, like a tiny splinter of webway. 'What happens to those who fall into the breach?' asked Scilti, curious rather than afraid. 'Most fall out into the material space that you can see, although not even the seers of Yuthran have been able to tell us where that is,' replied Khukulyn, watching the heavenly display with profound appreciation. 'And the others?'
'The others are drawn into the sinews of sha'iel that lace the rift. They are lost from time and space. Legend has it that daemons of the Great Enemy lurk within those threads of warp, waiting for the glimmer of an eldar soul on which to feast.' Scilti shivered at the open mention of Slaanesh, especially on the eve of battle, but there was something perfect about the idea that the Great Enemy would have found a home in the heart of the craftworld: the best place to hide is under the nose of your enemy. A thought suddenly struck him. 'Khukulyn, how deep is the breach? How long is the Ula Pass?' 'The Ula Pass is two hundred metres in length, from portal to portal, but the Styhxlin Perimeter has no depth at all. If it were not there, you would be able to step across the tectonic crack that split through Kaelor during the Craftwars... except, of course, if the perimeter-field vanished, the craftworld would break in two and fall apart. If you tried to step across now, you would fall into the breach. There is no way around it, and there is no way through it except by using the webway architecture of passages like the Ula Pass. To attempt a crossing at any other point would be to place an infinite and possibly eternal distance between yourself and the other side,' explained Khukulyn, marvelling at the wondrous feat before them. Taking a last, long look at the oceanic barrier of sha'iel, Scilti turned back to Khukulyn and laid his hand on the veteran warrior's shoulder. He said nothing, but held the other's eyes for a moment, noticing the proud banners that fluttered above the convoy over the warrior's shoulder. Then he nodded and strode back towards the Wave Serpent, vaulting back up onto the command platform on its roof to join the others. They looked at him reassuringly, each with their own hypothesis for why he had drawn them to a halt at that particular point.
Little Ela looked up at him and saw the calm of resolution settling into his demeanour. She had not seen him so well focused since his last training fight against her brother in the Temple. Smiling distantly, Ela wondered whether her cousin had a part to play in the prophecy after all.
'To the Ula Pass! To death and the future' he said, feeling the excitement of what was to come beginning to simmer in his thoughts as the Wave Serpent started to move once again. HE COULDN'T BELIEVE that they had left him behind. First they had promoted that weaker olderling Scilti, just because he had already passed through the Ritual of Tuireann. That arachnir - Adsulata - had not even cared that his cousin had cheated in order to win the bout. It was as though a conspiracy were spiralling around him, aiming to keep him locked away in the temple and out of the battles that roared within his dhamashir. It was a kind of torture, like keeping a warp-beast chained in a gilded cage. Naois felt that it sinned against his nature to be so constrained. The fury of Khaine howled in his mind constantly, just below the surface of his consciousness and it clawed at his thoughts, drawing invisible scars in his mind. Then the pathetic fools had rallied behind Scilti as though he were the heir to Ansgar! Were they blind as well as foolish? Could they not see the inferiority of his cousin's fighting spirit? He was nothing! Naois suddenly realised that he should have killed Scilti, instead of letting him loose in his father's domains. Scilti was little better than a selfish oaf, bathing in the reflected glory of the ruling house and seeking to shine in its light. He wanted little more than fame and power, and the return of the glory days of Ansgar with himself at the helm. He didn't fight with the taste of blood running over his teeth. He fought with the promise of rewards glittering in his mind. He might have been born a Teirtu! Snarling in the back of his mind, Naois heard a voice telling him that Scilti had run away. He had fled from the battle when Bedwyr had needed him most, leaving the patriarch to stand alone in Ula Pass, preferring to live to fight another day. When faced with the choice between life and death, there should be no choice: life ends, death begins. That is the way of Khaine. Without war there is no life for the eldar, there is only the slow, inevitable decay into decadence, affluence and flabby subsistence. Why was he the only one who could see that? Even Ela had gone with them. She should have known better. It should have been me! His thoughts echoed out of the arena and bounced around the corridors of the temple, searching for a
mind that might be open to them.
He kicked at the sand on the floor, scuffing up the intricate web-like pattern that Adsulata and Aingeal had made so much of a fuss about. They had looked so shocked and thrilled, and he had seen the unspoken questions forming in their minds. Even the austere and mighty exarch had been affected. They knew, and yet still they had acted as though they were blind. They had talked amongst themselves about the significance of
the sand patterns and the wraith-crystals that speckled through them, but they had said nothing to him, as though he could not possibly understand what was happening to him. They were treating him like an infant, like a precious, cursed and pathetic mornah that needed their protection. They thought he needed protecting from himself, when it was they who needed protecting from him.
They treated Ela differently. She scared them. He could see it in their manner as they skirted around her, trying to ignore her presence as a body of water might aspire to ignore the moon. They were drawn to her and repelled by her in equal measures, but
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they did not patronise her. They merely let her act as though she were nothing to do with them, as though she were sovereign of her own world, only temporarily or partially present in theirs. In fact, Naois realised, that was not far from the truth. They all knew why the Seer House of Yuthran had been desperate to off load the little female. They had called her the vaugnh, the abomination,
but none in Ansgar ever gave voice to those reasons. They had received her without questions and without words; there were not even any rumours about her. It was almost as though the eldar of Ansgar had decided to act as though Ela did not even exist. Her existence was simply too disturbing. She was amongst them and beyond them at the same time. What makes her so special? cursed Naois, letting his thoughts rattle around the arena like echoing sounds. In fact, he had never
once spoken in audible sounds, and even the thought of doing so filled him with a disgust that bordered on nausea. It seemed degrading and inappropriate for a son of Khaine. He wasn't even sure anymore whether it was possible for him to vocalise his words.
What makes her so special? he repeated, louder and more powerfully. He was one of the very few who knew the answer, but truth
and passion were uneasy comrades, and his mind was full of raw emotion. Why is she so free? As his mind lashed out, his silver eyes flashed.
He kicked at the sand in frustration, driving his foot through the dust and dragging it into the floor beneath. The metallic ground under the dust glowed for an instant, as though Naois's motion had heated it through sudden and intense friction. Almost instantaneously, something exploded against the back of the crescent doors that barred his way out of the temple. Looking down, he saw a trail of glass crystals defining the line between his foot and the explosion, where the lightning passage of the shard that he had gouged from the floor had superheated the sand and baked it instantly into mica. A low, shimmering thread of flame had ripped through the delicate web-patterns of sand on the arena floor. Naois threw back his head and yelled a psychic scream into the shadows around the perimeter of the arena, letting his frustration fill the space and saturate the edifice. His inaudible howl was turned back on him by the curving architecture, filling the arena with a mental cacophony and amplifying his aggravation. As the soundless rage bounced and ricocheted around him, Naois strode over to the sealed crescent doors and pushed against them, leaning his meagre weight against their ancient and ineffable strength. The doors had stood for countless eons, since before the House Wars had been even a hint in the myriad possible futures of Kaelor. They were studded with icons of power and runic seals that warded them from all conceivable intrusion. The crescent doors of the Warp Spiders could not be opened until their secrets had been unlocked. In its entire history, none had ever gained illicit entry to the temple. The seals also worked from the other side and once a tyro had been admitted into the temple for training, he would not be able to leave until he had learnt or been inducted into the secrets of the crescent doors. One or two would fail, and would remain within the temple as bound temple priests for the rest of their lives. Most would either learn the secret or die trying. As his frustration mounted, Naois could not find the patience that was expected of a Warp Spider. He banged his fists against the doors and kicked at them, trying to force them to part for him. The umbhala shafts that he had thrown through them in his last bout of rage were stuck fast, as though fused into their web-like structure. He gripped the ends of the shafts and tried to pry them apart, trying to use the leverage to spring the doors, but nothing moved. He cursed again, yanking at the umbhala with all his might until the shafts snapped off in his hands and he fell back onto the ground, seething. Springing back to his feet, Naois was about to start pounding at the doors with the remnants of the staff when he saw two delicate beams of light penetrating through the holes that the shafts had left. He peered at them curiously, noticing the microscopic move- ments of glittering fragments in the holes. As his breathing began to stabilise and return to normal, he leant in closer to inspect the tiny traces of activity. There were fleets of miniscule little spiders working their way across the holes in the doors, spinning thousands of shimmering webs across the cavities in chaotic coordination until, in only a matter of moments, the openings had been completely sealed once again and the light from outside had vanished utterly.
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CHAPTER FIVE: YSEULT
THE RAIN OF fire hadn't started immediately. Instead, there had been an eerie and tense silence as the Ansgar convoy had progressed to the middle of the Ula Pass. Then, without a visible signal, streams of shuriken and laser bolts had started to hail down on them from above. At the same time, the portal behind the convoy at the entrance to the pass had hissed shut, sealing them it. A moment later and the portal at the far end of the pass had slid open to reveal a rank of Teirtu Wraithguard, resplendent in their green and gold psycho-plastic armour. Without hesitation or ceremony, the Wraithguard had levelled their Wraithcannons and unleashed a withering barrage of fire into the prow of Scilti's Wave Serpent. It was only then that Scilti really understood how lethal the Ula Pass could be. Looking up towards the origin of the hail of lasfire and shuriken, he could see only the void of space, replete with stars and swirling nebulae. The weapons platforms from which the furious tirade of fire was being unleashed were utterly invisible through the singular optical and psychic oddities of the Styhxlin Perimeter, in which they were now trapped. Despite the furious volleys of return fire that arose out of the convoy, the Ansgar had no way of telling whether they were hitting anything, or even whether it was possible to fire up through the void. Only the road beneath the convoy seemed solid and real, albeit impossibly flimsy and thin. The infinite expanse of deep space stretched to both sides, above, below and behind. The sensation of standing on a paper-thin gangplank in the midst of the galaxy would have been enough to have driven a mon-keigh to insanity. Aside from the path itself, the only point that seemed fixed in the concrete space of the material realm was the portal at the far end of the pass. It shone like a circular beacon, enticing and real. But arrayed across it, blocking the steady, heavy light of Kaelor, a detachment of wraithguard stood in dramatic silhouette, unleashing continuous pulses of warp-space distortions from their weapons. They stood like colossal gate-keepers, barring the way out of the lost reaches of space as well as the passage from the outer domains of Kaelor into the Sentrium. Although the twin-linked shuriken cannons and catapults on the pincers at the nose of the Wave Serpent erupted into life as soon as the wraithguard appeared, the gunners seemed to have difficulty fixing their aim through the mire of sha'iel-infused space, and the sheets of shuriken fire rattled past the wraithguard without causing much damage. At the same time, the Wave Serpent was absorbing an incredible amount of damage, not only from the distortion weaponry of the wraithguard but also from the continuous hail of fire from the invisible emplacements above. After only a few moments, the transport started to shudder and quake under the relentless onslaught. Because of the narrowness of the pathway, the vehicle had no room for manoeuvre, making it effectively a static target.
Realising that the Wave Serpent was as good as dead, Scilti and the others vaulted down off its roof and took a moment to shelter behind it while they formulated their plan of attack. Then the pilot opened the throttle and powered the transport through the pass, leaving its cannons clicked to auto-fire as it accelerated towards the wraithguard that blocked the exit. As the distance closed, the Wave Serpent's cannons began to find their marks, and two of the wraithguard suddenly stuttered and broke apart as twin lines of close-range shuriken fire raked through them. The others stood their ground, as though immune to fear. An instant later, the Wave Serpent convulsed as the onslaught of fire intensified even more. Fiery cracks spread rapidly over its fuselage as its anti-grav units started to detonate inside. Even as the engines failed, its momentum carried it forwards, careening into the wraithguard just as it erupted into a fireball. The inferno filled the portal at the far end of the pass, engulfing the wraithguard and billowing back along the pathway. Taking advantage of the explosion, Scilti and Khukulyn were already storming along the road in its wake. As they plunged into the blossoming flames, Khukulyn whipped his twin witchblades from over his shoulders, spinning them into readiness. Scilti pumped his deathspinner from side to side as he ran, as though driving himself faster with the rhyt
hmic motion. Both of them raced to be the first into the fray.