The masks, the grief, the madness, the deaths: Jann had little left to her now, but somewhere in the ruins there was still the survival urge, and the capacity for fear. She found her feet, turned, made to flee and hide before they could turn their attention to her.
It was standing behind her. Staring up, her gaze met the darkness of its hood.
This was not the horror that the simple mask had been. The darkness beneath the deep fold of cloth was a space. A neutrality. Her eye and mind could find no purchase in it.
Jann stood perfectly still. Her muscles seemed to relax, as though they understood that all this was finally ending.
The hooded figure’s cloak whispered as it took a step towards her. Its arms were held demurely in front of it, the hands folded below the cloak-folds of its chest. The hands were five-fingered, slender, longer than a human’s, and now they rose up to push back the hood.
“No,” Jann wanted to say. Nothing more than “no”. It was all she could think of. But the hood fell back.
It was Jann’s own face she was looking at, and it made her weep. The beautiful maiden-face, upturned to watch the white moon, the sacred circles shining on its skin. One of Jann’s own hands crept up and wonderingly traced the lines of her own features.
Then the face opposite her began to change. It stretched, deformed. It became a caricature of itself, an exaggerated travesty of grotesque eyes, canted cheekbones, a tapered chin and high forehead that mocked the lines of Jann’s own… her own…
…face.
Her hands pressed in on the side of her head. The figure opposite her did not move, except that now its features changed again. Now it became a bestial face, a vermin face. Crude and gawping, the features lumpy meaty, the eyes muddy, the mouth slack. A repulsive face. An alien face. The face she had carried all her life.
Jann’s fingers began to work. She dug them into herself, drawing blood with her broken and dirty nails. She found sweaty, gritty skin on which her fingers skidded, and smooth and cool skin with a firmness that her tovich did not recognise. She dug and gouged and a bright bolt of madness sheared through her. Her fingers seemed to slide into her very flesh and she could feel her skull soundlessly parting. Her thoughts whirled and swarmed out of her into the cooling air like moths. She felt herself split and part. There was a sensation of bone cracking, tissue tearing, but no sound, no blood, no physical pain.
The white mask landed softly at her feet.
And now there was no kinship left with any of these strangers, no familiarity. There was the stink of blood and offal where poor sweet slow-talking Heng lay dead, and the butchered body of twinkle-eyed Crussman, and here she stood, and what was her name now? What was her name?
She jerked and fell backwards, rolled, got her feet under her by nothing more than blind chance, and ran, shrieking and wailing, not a scrap of mind left in her anymore. She ran with nothing more than a merciful roaring void inside her, a perfect hollow, and her course took her away from the strangers, away from the gantry, towards the edge of the roof-deck. The rail was not high, and she hit it at a flat run.
Jann was still thrashing her limbs as she fell, trying to flee, but it was only a moment before the packed earth at the tower’s foot ended it.
Quietly, without haste, they assembled on the roof. They made their way up through the stunted, squalid spaces where the animals had lived. They moved in soft procession, angular and high-stepping like bright wading birds, moving through precise sequences of poses both careful and utterly relaxed. Their colours and masks flickered gently in the dusk. None of them spoke.
They made a circle around the roof, then the circle became a spiral, leading them inwards, until they broke the spiral and spread into a pattern that made the fire-rune, the rune of lost glory and the dream of rekindling, with Ehallech at its crux.
Ehallech carried a bright mask in his hands, the Fire Mask, the visage of Vaul. Ehallech was learning the craft of the weaponwright and the myths of the crippled god of the forge had great meaning for him. It was only right that he be the one to take the mask from Gallardi, whose corpse now lay next to Tokuin’s amid silenced machines below them.
The troupe broke after a moment and then silently formed around Lhusael, who carried the dark-green mask she had taken after her blades had killed Merelock. Lhusael was a devotee of her people’s most primal, heartfelt stories, the stories of their parents and progenitors. Already she had mastered the spirit of Isha, danced that role, sang the grieving-songs, learned the intricate blade katas that represented the harvest-mother’s tears. Now she was completing her grasp of those story-cycles by learning the role of Isha’s husband, silent Kurnous, the god of the hunt, whose face was in the Hunter’s Mask that had driven Merelock to prowl the dark paths with a spear in her hand. Behind her, moving in beautiful synchronicity, came Melechu, who had spent so long behind a bone mask dancing in the retinue of Nysshea the troupe’s death-jester. Now was the time to balance the role of death with the role of a life-giver: Melechu’s bridge into that role was Isha’s sacred grief, and so she had taken the Mourning Mask from Klaide, the visage of Isha of the harvest, weeping for her dead champion and her lost children.
When Nysshea had danced in the jester’s train, her brother Edreach had danced with her. Before that, when she had danced the role of the fire-ghosts in Vaul’s train, he had mirrored her by dancing a water-sprite in the footsteps of Isha. Now that they had both been chosen for greater roles, he was balancing her again: as she took on the role of Isha, he became Eldanesh, the greatest hero of the mortal eldar, the champion upon whom Isha smiled, who went forth to do battle with bloody-handed Khaine and met his fated death. Deftly, elegantly, never falling out of the overarching rhythm, Edreach dipped low and plucked the Hero Mask from Sabila’s corpse, holding it high and proud. Others before him had interpreted Eldanesh as a doomed victim, even a fool, but Edreach revered him as one whose courage was exalted by the manner of his death.
Sheagoresh kept his vigil over the two mon-keigh corpses as the others broke the circle and reformed around him, coalescing around those in the troupe who held the ceremonial masks aloft, each Harlequin selecting a mask and shifting the colours of their dathedi to match it. In moments the Fire Mask was surrounded by flickering orange; the Mourning Mask by the gentle golden-green of sunrise over an orchard; the Hunter’s Mask by the dusk-dark shades of the green moon that was Kurnous’ totem; the Hero Mask by bright silver and gold.
And still more came, running swift-footed up the stairs or alighting from the shrouded air-sleds that took silent position at the building’s edges. When Dheresh’mel walked down the curved prow of her air-sled and stepped smoothly onto the roof, Sheagoresh rose and stepped back, muting his colours to yield to her. For many journeys Dheresh’mel had danced in the footsteps of Eldanesh, finding ways in every pageant they played, every war they fought, to interpret another telling of his story. But she had learned Eldanesh’s sagas from Ytheommel, the Great Harlequin of her old troupe whom the green beasts had laid low under the forest-spires of Toiryll, and whose name-element she had taken to carry his story on. Since that war her spirit had darkened. Her performances had become rougher, tinctured with anger. It had only been at their last resting that she had come to Sheagoresh and formally relinquished the Hero’s Mask. Now it was time to step into a new role, and cast her life-story through a new perspective.
Sheagoresh bowed as she walked forwards, silently, already moving as though she were in armour, and reached down to Crussman’s corpse. She straightened again holding the Blood Mask, the snarling face of Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God, lord of murder, whose wars had raged across heaven, slaying Eldanesh and binding the crippled and beaten Vaul to his anvil. There was silence and stillness as she carried the mask away. The mythic roles would pass around the troupe at every performance, but always there was one to lead and define them, and a new heart in the portrayal of Khaine would mean changes.
Sheagoresh looked over to the gantry base
, to where Jann had been standing, at the one who was closer to him than any lover or sister could be. Ythoelle did not pick up the mask for herself: as the troupe’s Shadow Seer she wore the Mirror Mask, and would until her dying moments. But as he walked to her and past her he saw that she had taken up the Moon Mask from where the last of the thieving vermin had dropped it, the face of Lileath, the maiden-goddess, dreamer and prophetess, whose symbols were the white moon, the staff, the closed circle, the wind-chime. Her hood was forwards again; as he walked past he could see the Mirror Mask fading into and out of many faces. At least one of them, he knew, would be his own.
There was no one to wear the Moon Mask, not yet. Abhoraan, who had danced the part since she had first joined the troupe so many years ago on the dragon-steppes, had been one of the ones who had died when their air-sled could not outrun the storm.
Soon they would perform the elegy for Abhoraan and her companions, and it would fall to Sheagoresh to decide what form that would take, what performance, what elements of the great myths they would draw on to take this tragedy and weave into the fabric of their living stories, to give it meaning and closure. It was a task he did not expect to enjoy, but every tale had its songs of mourning as well as its dances of triumph, and the tale that was his life was no exception.
Shapes moved around him. His Harlequins bounded and swung up through the scaffold to the wreck of the air-sled, ready to free it so it could be carried with them when he gave the signal. Their colours and faces danced, each reflecting a role that the Harlequin felt it right to play at this task and at this stage in their own life narratives. He lifted his arm for silence and their forms stilled, their colours muted.
The last sealed compartment flowered open at his touch and he gave voice to a low, resonant song, a single sustained note from deep in his chest. Those around him took up the song and flared their colours in salute as he took out the Sun Mask, the face of Asuryan, the Phoenix King, Monarch of Heaven, the teacher of the six great Phoenix Lords. Sheagoresh took it, held it in both hands, stepped slowly back off the gantry. His flip belt engaged with a thought and he felt the shift as his weight all but vanished: he stretched out and turned as he fell, always keeping the mask above him, and touched down feather-light on the rockcrete pad, one knee bent, head bowed but shoulders square and proud, both paying fealty to the mask and claiming ownership of it.
He stayed there, muted his colours down and made his own face blank. There was only one mask left to collect.
All around him, the others knelt. Colours shut off into black and greys and faces became featureless. A jetbike, the bare off-grey of wraithbone given form but no colour, adorned only with a black swathe wrapping its tail vane, coasted to a silent halt in the middle of the landing pad and Sheyl’emmen stepped down from it.
Her face was in shadow, like Ythoelle’s, but unlike Ythoelle she made no move to shift her stiff, flaring hood. Hair cascaded from it, void-black and marble-white, and white silver chains twined around her hands and hung jingling from each fingertip. Vanes of wraithbone jutting from her shoulders caught the wind; at the sound of that moaning whistle every Harlequin shuddered and closed their eyes.
Sheyl’emmen did not look at any of them. Her step was steady and her sombre expression did not change. She walked with the careful stillness of a prisoner walking towards the scaffold. At the gantry she lengthened her step into a bound, and with her belt taking her weight away she sailed smoothly to stand on a crossbar before the ripped-open pannier. The other Harlequins turned in place to present their backs to her as she reached in and plucked out the mask that the last mon-keigh had glimpsed.
The mask did not glower or snarl, it had no artful changes to its scale or features. It was the face of an eldar, classic, genderless. There was no expression in the eyes, no set to the mouth. It was a blank face, blanker than the featureless grey hoods the Harlequins had taken on around it. It was a face that could place itself over any nightmare the beholding eye could imagine.
Sheyl’emmen the Solitaire picked up the Hell Mask and, like Sheagoresh before her, leapt off the platform, spreading her cloak out to cast its dread shadow into the heart of every eldar on the platform. She landed opposite the Great Harlequin and the two of them stepped and danced and spun together, neither visibly acknowledging the other. When a half-circle was complete and each stood where the other had a moment ago, they raised their masks in precise unison and donned them. Sun Mask, Hell Mask, Asuryan and Slaanesh, the two faces that the grubbing vermin had not soiled with their touch.
Then, shadow-fleet, Sheyl’emmen was gone: astride her jetbike with a single leap, then arrowing across the platform and away through the night, the vanes on her back shrieking in the slipstream. Sheagoresh leapt into the air then, head back, throwing his arms wide. Light came, a beautiful blaze from the Sun Mask driving back the night, bringing the Harlequins’ colours to joyous life as they capered and danced.
In that moment, each feature-shifting holographic face became the mask they all wore beneath every other, the Harlequin Mask, Cegorach the Laughing God, trickster and knower of secrets. Every face was different, as every Harlequin’s imagining of the leader of their great dance was different, but as Cegorach’s features burst onto each of their faces every Harlequin burst into laughter. Some gave the coarse guffaws of an oaf who has seen a clumsy joke, some the elegant trill of a princess admiring the tumbling of her jester. There was the joyous laughter of tragedy from which a traveller has returned, and the wrenching laughter that casts a cloak of merriment over direst grief. Air-sleds and jetbikes left their holding positions and made interweaving circles, bright and laughing figures leaping up to catch hold and ride them, their colours leaving bright and shimmering mosaic-trails.
The laughter pealed out from the top of the tower like bells, and hung in the air behind the line of jet-bikes and air-sleds like the wake of a boat. Deep in the wasteland beyond where the mon-keigh travelled they would slip into the webway, and soon they would be breathing the fragrant air of a maiden world, rich with spices and flower-perfumes, dancing in warm water across delicate coral sand while the waves chuckled in amongst the roots of the mangrove towers and the moons danced and pinwheeled overhead.
They would mourn their dead, and re-enact the greatest of their myths: the Dream of Lileath, the Veil of Isha, the War in Heaven, the Doom of Eldanesh, the Fall. With the tale-telling they would reconsecrate their precious ritual masks, the heart of the troupe, and then they would roam again, roam up from the coral oceans to the great sighing seas of grass. They would find the camps of their cousins and steal in amongst their tents and tethered dragons, dazzling and bemusing them with shadow and laughter, and then they would make themselves known, step into the light, and dance for them. Perhaps they would tell one of the great stories, perhaps they would tell one of the lesser, perhaps one of the younger stories of the Devourer or the bestial wars about the great Gate.
Or perhaps they would dance a newer story still. A story of strays and travellers, forced by the decay of their old paths to leave the safety of their webway and make quick and secret passage across a world of crackling dunes and bloody, moonless skies. A story of a monstrous storm that not even these swift travellers could outrun. A story of the search for what the storm had taken from them, something more precious to them than the features of their own faces. A story of ugly, upstart animals who had meddled with something they should never have seen, a story of insolence punished, thievery justly rewarded, desecration turned back on itself. A story of how the great tales would try to play themselves out even through such lumpen mockeries of minds.
That was the power of the tales. That was the power of the masks. It was a story Sheagoresh had never imagined when he left his old troupe and wrought a new cast of great masks to form the core of a new-one, but now they had lived it, the story was part of theirs, to tell and reinterpret and dance for themselves and for others all down the coming years.
The wind picked up, dust-cloud an
d nightfall drew curtains across the desert. Dull emergency lights glowed in the tower corridors, control telltales sparkled on the operations deck, a vox-alarm squawked unanswered. Nothing moved, and Pipeline Maintenance Depot 347-South-East was swallowed by the desert night.
UNITY
James Gilmer
The black bird perched easily on the corpse’s chin. The thing pecked again and opened a fresh wound in the Imperial Guardsman’s face, just below the left eye, and Tam felt Gesar’s hand close around his wrist and force his pistol downwards. “No noise.”
“We can’t let a Guardsman lie like that. It’s not right.”
The Astartes squared off in front of Tam and stared him down. Gesar’s helmet had been lost in the fighting. Blood caked up around the cut along his chin and cracked open as he talked.
“It doesn’t matter what he was when he was alive. He’s dead now and we’re not. We will push on for Emperor and Throne. Your job is to live and kill the xenos scum that did this. You will do your duty, not shoot a bird because it offends you for following its nature.”
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