Eldar Prophecy

by C. S. Goto

  In full armour, with the emerald and gold cloak of Teirtu draped over his shoulder as smartly as he could manage, Morfran took up his position on the pedestal next to the ceremonial, silver anvil that occupied the centre of the plaza and marked the geometric heart of Kaelor itself. He had attempted to press a number of the Knavir into joining him in the plaza, but only Cinnia and Celyddon had bowed to his pressure.

  The others, led by Uisnech Anyon, had decided to boycott the reception. Instead, they stood aloof and separate from the silent crowd on their customary balcony overlooking the plazza. From a sense of duty that was buoyed by the presence of Cinnia and Celyddon, Oriana had reluctantly agreed to accompany Morfran, bringing the infant Farseer Turi in her arms, and for a moment Morfran had wondered what would happen to his own son if Ahearn returned with his father. The concern flickered fleetingly in his mind as he realised that he should be more worried about what was going to happen to him.

  С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»

  A powerful swell of silence rolled down the Tributary of Baharroth. It was oppressive and heavy, rolling like a dense and viscous liquid over the press of eldar that lined the boulevard, pushing just ahead of the solitary purple and green Wave Serpent as it slowly eased towards the palace. All of the onlookers knew the identity of the incumbent, and they bowed their heads out of a sullen mixture of respect, relief and dread. The banners of Teirtu were held horizontally by the periodic Guardians along the route in a mark of mourning and respect. Morfran hoped that Iden would not be coherent enough to notice how few the Guardians were. Despite the gravity of the sinking feeling that pressed down on Morfran, he found himself straining to see down the boulevard. He realised that there was a contrasting thrill of excited anticipation in his abdomen; this was potentially the moment that he had been waiting for. The premature death of Iden would open up a whole new range of futures for him, just as Cinnia had told him, and, if it was handled correctly, it could also open up new possibilities for Kaelor, once the old warrior's spirit stone was safely enshrined in the infinity circuit.

  This might be the moment at which the future became clear to them all. The Wave Serpent slid with deliberate slowness, dragging its morbid presence into the Plaza of Vaul. It passed through the corridor that had been kept clear by the crowd and drew to a standstill in front of Morfran's podium. The hatch on the back of the transport hissed open, folding down to the ground to form a ramp. After a long and silent pause, two Dire Avengers strode down the ramp. Behind them came a small, self-guiding anti-grav stretcher bearing the cloak-shrouded body of Iden. The golden serpent was curled on his chest, as though nestied into dormancy, but its lustre was dimmed and, despite the efforts of the Avengers to arrange the cloak tastefully for the benefit of delicate Knavir, it was speckled and stained with blood. Two more Aspect Warriors marched behind the stretcher, making an honour guard of only four for the farseer's first and last Zhogahn. Finally, hobbling noticeably and supported by his staff, the farseer himself shuffled down the ramp on his own. Before he reached the ground, he looked up at the group on the podium and nodded a weary greeting. There was a spark of something else in his eyes, which may have been gratitude, hope, or even resentment. The Dire Avengers led the stretcher around the edge of the Wave Serpent and past the front of Morfran's podium. They paused for a moment beneath the son of Teirtu, forcing Morfran to look down at his father's face, letting him see that his father's green eyes were open and staring, as though fixed on a distant horizon. Then they manoeuvred the stretcher so that it covered the silver anvil, cutting its power so that Iden's body lowered gently down onto the ancient, ceremonial monument, where once had lain the bodies of each of the Rivalin Farseers since Gwrih. Bracing himself, Morfran descended from the podium and approached the body. He looked down at the pain wracked face and saw the unfocused and massively dilated eyes, and the unnaturally white skin, drained by blood loss. A feeling of relief washed over him. There was no way that Iden was going to survive. Indeed, he realised quickly, there was not really any reason to wait for his death before performing the Ceremony of Passing. The thrill of victory buzzed through his mind at last. He peered down into his father's face and smiled. 'Now you are under my control,' he muttered, letting a droplet of saliva fall unseen into Iden's eye.

  Even in his deathly state, Morfran could see his father's rage build. He could see the realisation that Morfran had lost the battle with the Ansgar and that his own efforts to recover the farseer were now in vain. His death would be for nothing. Nobody would know about the duel with Aingeal. They would merely remember the broken and bleeding old warrior lying like a corpse on the silver anvil of Vaul, waiting for death to take him. Ione had prophesied that he would die after a heroic victory. She had said that he would pass into the spirit pool of Kaelor in the Shrine of Fluir-haern, in a great and stately public ceremony. She had said that he would become the sire of the next farseer and that the Teirtu and Rivalin lines would blend. That was why he had spared the abomination, Ela of Ashbel, and the hateful runt, Naois Ansagr. That was why he had permitted Kerwyn Rivalin to live in exile. Unable to speak or even to make his dwindling thoughts heard by another, Iden glared up at his son's gloating and bloated face. His green eyes flashed with hatred. He hated Morfran for his incompetence, his repulsive decadence, and for the very fact that he was still alive. He hated that Morfran would take over House Teirtu when he died. He hated himself for being so blinded by emotion and hungry for glory that he had not properly considered all the possible meanings of Ione's prophecy. He hated Ione for leading him into a future that contained his doom. Why would she betray him so profoundly? Did she see something in the future that was more important, or was she simply in league with the Ansgar? He had heard the rumours at court about her relationship with Bedwyr, but had paid them no heed. He hated Kaelor: the twisted emotional politics, the duplicitous commitment to eternal peace under the perpetual threat of war, the shocking and destructive disparities between the life styles of the Knavir and the rest of the craftworld, and the incredible, short-sighted obliviousness of the Ohlipsean, which continued as though the system was working perfectly. The whole set-up seemed to be deliberately designed to support and heighten the indulgences of the courtiers, as though they were some kind of hideous, anachronistic pleasure cult. As he stared up at the hateful and obnoxious face of Morfran, he realised for the first time what he should have been doing with his power. Just as he had been duped by the beloved Lady Ione, so too, he had been duped by Kaelor. Rather than expending his life, energy and warriors in the name of the corrupt and decadent institutions of Kaelor, rather than attempting to bolster the ancient regime of the Rivalin and to rule as their legitimate champions, he should have been trying to overthrow the Rivalin and its Ohlipsean altogether.

  Instead of fighting against the Ansgar, he should have formed an alliance with the honourable Bedwyr and transformed Kaelor into a warrior society, disciplined and glorious like the legendary Biel-Tan. For the first time, he realised that he had permitted the pompous Knavir to divide the warrior houses of the outer realms, making him feel inferior, making him feel as though he should crave and be grateful for the patronage of the farseer, as though Kaelor itself was inconceivable without the Rivalin dynasty at the helm.

  С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»

  He had thought that the Knavir were naive and incapable of understanding the power of the sword, when in fact they had been shrewd and conniving, harnessing the bloodlust of others to fight their battles for them so that they could remain in undiminished luxury. They did genuinely disdain the warriors, but Iden had been wrong to think that the Knavir had failed to understand their importance.

  It had all been a trick, and with his last moments of lucidity Iden raged against the atrocities that he had committed in the name of the farseer. With his last breath, he saw Bedwyr's face flicker through his mind, and he realised that the patriarch of Ansgar had been the finest eldar that he had ever known. Then he looked up at the drooling and th
rilled face of Morfran and saw the shape of the future that he had forged for Kaelor. All he could feel was hatred.

  THE RIVALIN GATES that barred the main route into the Sentrium were closed. Beyond them, through their mysteriously translucent structure, Naois could see the glittering lights and splendour of the Farseer's Court. It was as though light itself resided on the other side of those gates. In the dimness of the distant past, Naois had been led to believe that the whole of Kaelor had looked like that: radiant and glorious, like a living icon to the majesty of the galaxy-spanning eldar empire. Now, the contrast with the territories through which the Ansgar had marched to get there was stark. The domains of Ansgar were atrophied and decaying after years of hardship and oppression, and even the less disfavoured and more central domain of Eaochayn showed signs of the same hemorrhaging of wealth and prosperity. Kaelor was gradually being bled dry.

  The Sentrium glittered like a diamond in the heart of Kaelor, radiant and pristine as though untouched by the turmoil and suffering that had wracked the craftworld since before the onset of the House Wars. Somehow it had managed to preserve its stately grandiosity, despite the blood-soaked ruination that riddled the rest of the craftworld. As Naois drew his army to a standstill about a hundred metres from the gates, holding up his fist to indicate the halt as he stood proudly under his banner on the gun platform at the head of the force, he could imagine how other eldar had become intoxicated by that sight: the vision of beauty and perfection, of cultivation and civilisation. There was a sense in which it might seem so vastly superior to the lifestyle and living conditions of the outer realms, and he understood intuitively that part of the eldar dhamashir craved those things.

  Somewhere in his species-memory, he knew that the very first eldar to reach for the stars, at the very birth of the galaxy, had done so out of faith that the stars would bring them affluence and comfort in the future. The first eldar to plunge into the warp and start the construction of the webway had thought mostly about the material affluence that would be brought by instantaneous travel through space. They had thought about the possibilities for leisure that were offered by such monumental advances. They had thought about the pleasures in which they could indulge their tastes with all the saved time, and all the delicacies that could be summoned from the new parts of the galaxy that would suddenly be within their reach. There was a certain propensity for intoxication lurking in the eldar psyche that made them weak in the face of temptation. That was why they had fallen in the first place. The Fall was historical proof of his hypothesis, as though proof were necessary. The Sentrium spoke of the same afflictions, but on a rather more minor scale. There Naois saw the decadence of a sub-cultural group - he might even call it a cult - and not of an entire craftworld or an entire species. Its repulsiveness was manifest to him. It represented the collapse of all the disciplinarian values of the Aspect Temples and even of the Ihnyoh Eldar Path. It was anathema to him. It was an aberration. It made him feel unclean. Looking across at the gates, he could see the sentinel gun emplacements near the top, where the edge of the gates met the underside of the floor of the level above. In fact, the Sentrium was one of the few places in all of Kaelor that had no levels above it. It was somehow excluded from the odd spatial effects of the construction method that made it almost impossible to find an outer layer of the craftworld, which meant that all the various levels above and below the Rivalin Gates simply ended in an abrupt and impenetrable wall when they reached the space occupied by the Sentrium. One of the most famous artisans in Kaelorian history, Nurior the Sound, had once gone insane trying to locate and map those walls. He had never managed to do it, and it remained the case that nobody knew for sure where the other levels bordered against the great, radiant dome of the Sentrium, or even whether there were any such borders. Making the boundaries of your domain utterly incomprehensible to nearly anyone who might be interested in entering it was a brilliant and effective way of keeping people out, better than any gun, cannon or blade. Nonetheless, two bright lances were mounted into emplacements at the top of the gates along with an old-fashioned distort cannon, which was presumably one of the additions made to the defences by Iden. It was certainly not elegant enough to have been installed by the Knavir. The gate was speckled with auto-tracking shuriken cannons, disguised artfully as parts of the intricate carvings that graced the surface. He could just about make out the jittering movements of eldar in the gun boxes, and he could feel their nervousness. They knew that Naois, the Ansgar and the Warp Spiders had dismantled Morfran's army and penetrated through the Ula Pass in pursuit of the retreating Teirtu army. They knew that the Pdvalin Gates offered little resistance to them, and that the hundred-strong army of the Wraith Spider could take the gates at any time. The impressive gunnery was more show than substance. The forces of the Ansgar were arrayed in a spearhead behind Naois's platform. The armour on the Warp Spiders' tanks and the Ansgar transports was laser scored and riddled with the indentations of shuriken fire. The silver and blue jetbikes were dented and scratched, and the Guardians looked even scruffier than they had when they had set out, but the tanks had been decorated with the trophies of war: green helmets and armoured plates hung from every fixing. The Teirtu serpent adorned the side one of the Wave Serpents, where it had been ripped off an enemy transport; and a Teritu banner was displayed from an antenna on the back of one of the jetbikes. It was engulfed in flames and was burning slowly and eternally in a cool, psychic fire. Finally, laid across the front

  С. S. Goto « Eldar Prophecy»

  of Naois's weapons platform like an elaborate fender was the armoured shell of one of the Soulguard, one of Iden's own prized wraithguard.

  The overall impression of the army was that of a ragtag band of merciless and barbaric mercenaries. They might have been darkling pirates from the hideous reaches of Commorragh. It was not at all impressive in any of the terms that the Knavir of the Sentrium would understand, and that was why Naois knew that it would fill the court with dread. He came as an uncultivated and unapologetic warrior soul, and he brought with him death, unsanitised and unadorned. It was just death.

  Satisfied with the atmosphere of fear that his presence was generating amongst those that peered out of the Sentrium at his army, Naois vaulted down off the anti-grav platform that he shared with Ela, Scilti and Adsulata, and then thrust the umbhlala shaft of his own Lhykosidae banner into the deck. He marked his territory.

  'You're not going to attack the gates?' asked Scilti, jumping down to stand at Naois's shoulder. He was bloodied from the battle with the Teirtu, and he could feel the fire of Khaine still burning in his veins. He was impatient for more death, and he couldn't believe that Naois had stopped before reaching the tower of the farseer. For a moment Naois did not even look at his cousin, but kept his eyes fixed on the glamorous vision before them. Then he turned his silver and black eyes on Scilti, letting him see the horror that lurked within him. What purpose would it serve? In there we will find nothing but the end of our times. There are no battles to be won, only prizes to

  be taken.

  'We have come so far, Naois! How can we stop now, when we could take the Sentrium for our own? Look at it, Naois! Look at it. Isn't this what your father fought for? Wouldn't he have wanted you to take the extra step? Imagine that glittering prize for the House of Ansgar!'

  Yes, he would have attacked the gates, you are right. The reply was flat and blunt, like a hammer. But I am not Bedwyr, and you

  are not his heir, Scilti Ansgar-ann. There are more important matters to be attended to than the sacking of the Sentrium.

  Exasperated and stung, Scilti turned and looked up at Adsulata and Ela, who stared blankly back at him. 'Then I shall attack the gates for you, son of Bedwyr,' he replied. 'I will need two squads of Guardians and one of the Falcons.' There will be no attack on this day, replied Naois in a tone that brooked no argument. It was as though he had looked into the

  future and knew for a fact that neither he nor Scilti would attack befor
e the next up-phase of laetnys. It was not an order, it was merely a fact.

  'We did not come all this way only to falter at the last,' said Scilti, hardly able to contain his frustration. 'I did not come here to look at those radiant gates and not to touch them!' Naois looked at him for a moment and then turned away without another word. It was a patronising glance, as though he were disgusted. Then he strode back past the anti-grav platform on which Ela and Adsulata were still standing, without looking up. The Guardians behind the platform parted quickly to let him through, and he strode briskly through their ranks as though with a purpose, pushing out of the other side of the formation behind the lines. The others watched him go without a word, but each of them had the same question on their minds. ELA'ASHBEL WATCHED her brother thunder his banner into the ground before the Rivalin Gates, claiming the main tributary to the Sentrium for the Wraith Spider. She noted that he used his own golden banner, shot through with black webbing, rather than plant- ing the colours of Ansgar or those of the Warp Spiders. There was something unspeakable about his manner that made her uneasy. He seemed somehow unnaturally pure of purpose, as though he was no longer exercising the faculty of free will but was rather incarnating the judgments of some higher force. He emitted no aura of consciousness. There were no decisions. As her brother turned and walked away, brushing past her and moving towards the back of the lines, Ela realised that he was not focused on the Sentrium at all. It was of almost no concern to him. Instead, his thoughts were elsewhere, back at the ruined Temple of the Warp Spiders and with the broken Exarch Aingeal. Like all the other eldar that had fought in the battle before the Ula Pass, Ela had felt the shockwave of the temple's destruction. Unlike most of them, she had known what it was, and she had felt the aftershocks resounding in Naois's mind. She had seen his fury rise and watched him crash into a rampage through the Teirtu. But the Wraith Spider was no Dire Avenger. The legends say that it returns to Kaelor in moments of great peril as the incarnation of the Fluir-haern. It does not fight for itself or for vengeance. There is no room in its will for the petty impulses of revenge. Ela could see the battle raging in Naois's dhamashir, as he fought to reconcile his own personal desires for the greatness of his father's house against the overwhelming force of inexorable destiny. She could see that it was a battle he was losing. Even before his outrage in the arena of the temple, when Scilti had finally bested him, even before his fury at being left behind in Scilti's battle against the Guardians of the Reach, even before the wraith-tendrils of Fluir-haern had captured his soul in their tightly woven web, Naois had struggled against his nature and his fate. It was as though he had been the reluctant participant in a gradual process of metastasis since the moment he was born. The Wraith Spider's host was given no choice, he was chosen. Lady Ione had seen it, just as she had seen Ela's own unusual path. The seers of Yuthran had seen the dangers right at the start, and they had expelled little Ela from their sisterhood, calling her the vaugnh - the abomination, but they had done nothing more than to cast her from their sight, as though scared of the possible consequences of action against her, as though the future held too many contending hells and they could not decide between them. In the end, they had simply opted for refusing to accept respon- sibility for the little aberration in their midst, and they had thrown her out to fend for herself. They must have known that this would send her back to the domains of Ansgar, and back to Naois. 'Where is he going?' called Scilti. His gaze followed Naois's back, but his words were addressed to Ela. He goes to perform the Rituals of Remembrance, answered Adsulata. He offers honour to the fallen exarch of his temple.