‘No! Say it isn’t so!’ Razicik protested convincingly. ‘Oh my beloved archon, what cruel fate has befallen you?’
‘Sspare me your condolencess!’ the archon spat. Like every other member of my bloodline you are unworthy of the name Yllithian! Sslack, ssybaritic, sself-indulgement ingratess – every one of you! None of you are worthy to lead this housse!’’
‘I regret not conforming to your ideals better, archon,’ Razicik replied icily as Nyos’s rant subsided into a medley of hissing and hacking coughs. Razicik still carried his sword and pistol from hunting in the catacombs and the incubi had not thought to disarm him. He wondered how quickly he could cross the chamber and plunge the blade into the archon’s heart. Pretty quickly, he decided. He sidled a little to one side to get an angle around the table in the centre of the room. As he did so he noticed that there was a gleaming object on the table. It was a crown of dark metal with two points elongated so that they would protrude like horns on the wearer’s brow.
‘Yess, the crown,’ the archon said quietly. ‘You can kill me momentarily, but you musst hear of thiss firsst–’
‘Oh I don’t think so!’ Razicik cried, ripping out his sword and lunging forward. To his surprise the archon didn’t move, staying seated even as the point of the blade crunched home. The first thrust felt like it didn’t penetrate flesh at all, some kind of armour perhaps? Razicik didn’t waste time pondering it, he thrust again and again into the unyielding body. The thrill of murder-lust gripped him and he started hacking madly at the figure on the throne until it toppled over with a despairing hiss.
He stopped hacking and started laughing, panting and laughing again as his hands shook with the burst of adrenaline. He’d expected the incubi to come charging in at any second, but they hadn’t. Now he, Razicik, was archon and those incubi were his to command along with every other soul in the White Flames fortress. Where to begin? Gifts for his friends and retribution on his enemies would be a good start. He caught sight of the crown still lying on the table. Actually, that was a good place to start.
Razicik picked up the crown and felt its weight for a moment as he marvelled at its workmanship. Doubtless Nyos had intended to pass along a symbol of ancient rulership that would show the kabal that its new leader had his blessing. Razicik laughed again at the old archon’s hubris, fancy thinking that kind of thing even mattered any more. Still, as a trophy it had intrinsic value, and wearing it would always remind Razicik of this glorious moment. He slowly placed the crown on his head, feeling himself growing into the role of archon even as he did so. He would be a fearsome archon, fearsome and mighty and… memorable.
Unbearable pain lanced through Razicik’s temples, a searing hot whiteness that burned out all thought, all volition except for the need to scream. He frantically tore at the crown but it stayed firmly in place as if it had been welded onto his head. There was a wrenching sensation, deep rooted as though something at the very core of his being was twisted free. If Razicik could have still seen he would have witnessed twisting tendrils of light extending from his eyes and mouth to the fallen corpse of his archon at the foot of the throne. If he could have still discerned sounds he would have heard his own screaming rise to an indescribable intensity before falling suddenly and ominously silent.
The tendrils of light faded away, leaving the chamber in semi-darkness once more. Razicik swayed for long seconds, staggered abruptly but did not fall. He gazed about him uncomprehendingly for a moment and then cursed richly.
‘Thank you so much for doing absolutely nothing while the little bastard was stabbing me,’ he called out angrily.
The master haemonculus Bellathonis appeared from behind a hanging holding an over-sized syringe full of red fluid in one long-fingered hand and a curious looking helix-barrelled pistol in the other. Bellathonis showed no chagrin at the other’s outburst as he hooked the unused pistol back onto his waist harness, if anything faint amusement was playing around the Haemoculus’s withered lips.
‘I told you from the outset that the best chance for the device to function correctly was for the subject to don it voluntarily,’ the haemonculus said mildly. ‘I felt it probable he would still do so in his moment of triumph despite his rather egregious diversion off-script.’
‘Probable? Have you ever been stabbed, Bellathonis?’
‘Many times, my archon,’ Bellathonis murmured as he advanced and plunged the needle of the syringe deep into Razicik – now Nyos’s – neck and slowly depressed the plunger.
‘Well it’s not something I enjoy, even with the vitrified flesh,’ Nyos Yllithian snarled.
Inwardly Nyos was thrilled to feel his lips and cheeks moving freely again, he grinned, frowned, yawned and snarled again in quick succession. It felt good despite the ongoing ache of the injection. Bellathonis finally withdrew the syringe and looked at Nyos’s new face appraisingly.
‘I would not have believed it when Razicik first entered the room,’ the master haemonculus opined, ‘but he really does look like you now. Something about the eyes.’
‘A sense of determination and the vaguest whiff of intellect, haemonculus, nothing more.’
Nyos bent down and scooped up Razicik’s sword from where it had fallen from his grasp. Having a weapon in his hand felt good too. He thrust it savagely into the fallen body that was now the repository of Razicik’s worthless soul. An agonised hiss emerged from it that was all too familiar to Nyos’s ears. He bent down to look into the ruined face of his old body.
‘Still with us Razicik? Good – I know you can hear me,’ Nyos murmured as he slowly twisted the blade. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll master being able to talk again in what little time you have left – or at the very least I guarantee you’ll master being able to scream.’
A wretched, hissing burble was all Razicik could manage at present. Lots of room for improvement there, Nyos thought to himself. He left the sword protruding from the body and turned back to the haemonculus with something like appreciation on his face. ‘Come with me,’ he said simply before turning to press down on one arm of the throne. A section of the wall slid up to reveal another, larger chamber behind it.
‘And what of the young pretender here?’ Bellathonis said, nudging the glassy mass with his foot.
‘Leave him for now – you can freeze him or something? Extend his life somehow?’
‘Of course, I’ll save him for you until you have the time for a proper audience,’ the master haemonculus said. He drew forth another vial, of greenish fluid this time, and fitted it into the syringe. Kneeling down, Bellathonis punched the needle into the vitrifying body in several spots.
‘Excellent. Now come – I must prepare myself.’
The room revealed beyond was much wider than the first, which was evidently little more than a vestibule to this one. It was so wide that the ceiling seemed low and its corners were lost in shadow. The only illumination came from one wall which was curved and made of glass-like bricks each a metre across laid many courses deep. The view it gave onto the outside appeared astoundingly clear, the light that was filtering in brightened and dimmed anarchically in time with lightning flickering outside. A mismatch of cabinets, divans, tables and other furnishings were revealed scattered rather forlornly around the space in a way that only served to emphasise its shadowy emptiness. What Bellathonis at first took to be ornamental pillars near the wall of glass proved to be a row of gnarled black trees with drooping fronds sitting in metallic urns.
Yllithian began stripping off his garments as he crossed to one of the cabinets. He stood naked as a newborn as he reached inside and drew out fresh clothing of unornamented black. Bellathonis stepped closer to the glass wall to look outside, just like they always did. Yllithian smiled to himself, it was all too easy.
‘What do you intend to do with yourself now?’ Yllithian asked casually as he dressed himself and watched the potted trees silently extending their fronds to
wards the haemonculus. ‘And be careful of the Black Eloh trees, by the way,’ he added maliciously at the last possible moment. ‘They bite.’
Bellathonis turned and batted away a questing tendril fondly. ‘Oh I’m well aware of the proclivities of the species, my archon. I am greatly impressed by the breadth of your accomplishments – I hadn’t taken you for a fellow enthusiast of carnivorous horticulture.’
Yllithian shrugged and waved away the compliment with unconvincing humility as he reflected that he had been right, the master haemonculus was never going to be caught out so easily. ‘Only a passion of my great-grandfather Zovas Yllithian,’ Nyos told Bellathonis. ‘I merely honour his memory by keeping them alive. To be honest they remind me of him a little – grasping and eternally hungry.’
Now that he was closer to the glass wall Bellathonis could truly see outside the spire that formed the White Flames’ fortress. The view was astonishing. Ashkeri Talon stretched out far below him, its sharp angles and innumerable jutting spines vanishing off into the distance. The point where it joined the artificial horizon formed by the city’s immense docking ring was virtually lost in the gloom yet it still showed as a pale line to the unaided eye. Three kilometres below him the juncture between talon and spire was covered with the leprous districts of Low Commorragh growing over each other like competing patches of fungus. Despite the sweeping curve of the glass wall no other High Commorragh spires were visible from this angle, which was probably the only reason such a structural weak spot had been permitted to exist.
Ordinarily the vista below would be bustling: ships moving to and fro on the docking spines, shipments of slaves being brought into the city and raiding forces heading outward in endless caravan. Now the only things moving were fires burning out of control. In the multi-hued void a thousand more rosettes of flame burned brightly – the hulls of shattered ships being consumed by their own fusion fires as they drifted helplessly. The insipid light cast by the Ilmaea over the scene was shifting constantly as if they were obstructed by clouds where no clouds could possibly be. Some part of Bellathonis hesitated to look up to see what was making the fluctuations and he obeyed the instinct, fixing his gaze outward instead.
The shifting veil of the void beyond the wardings was normally diaphanous, sometimes opalescent but most commonly dark with only a hint of shifting, nacreous colour. Now it was vivid and poisonous looking, a storm-wracked sky filled with angry, competing thunderheads of blue and deep green interspersed with spears of flickering, multi-dimensional lightning. The ominous thunderheads seemed to be rolling ever closer, piling up above the height of the spire, above all of High Commorragh and above the entire city like a frozen tidal wave… Bellathonis realised that Yllithian had stopped part way through pulling on a pair of iron-grey sabatons and was waiting for his answer.
‘Forgive my distraction, my archon, the scenes outside are rather… dramatic. With your permission I had hoped to remain in the comfortable, and safe, environs of your fortress for a while.’
‘Oh did you now?’ Yllithian smiled. ‘That hadn’t really crossed my mind. I suppose you could always take over Syiin’s old quarters temporarily. If I gave my permission, of course.’
‘Of course.’
Yllithian lifted a black, glossy cuirass from a stand and fitted around his torso. The armour sighed lightly as it gently enfolded him and moulded itself perfectly to the contours of his body. ‘There’s been no sign of Syiin for quite some time,’ Yllithian remarked idly. ‘A curious business, that.’
Bellathonis failed to rise to the bait. Both of them knew full well that Yllithian’s previous haemonculus, Syiin, had been murdered by none other than Bellathonis himself. However High Commorrite etiquette, after countless centuries of scheming and backstabbing, had come to eschew outright commentary on such things as a sign of being excessively gauche or obtuse.
‘It would seem unlikely that he will turn up again at this point,’ Bellathonis mused, still gazing distractedly outside. One of Bellathonis’s favourite personal modifications had been to implant a pair of stolen eyes into his bony shoulder blades. By concentrating on a corner of his mind he could enjoy a fully panoramic view of his surroundings and so keep an eye on Yllithian even while he looked out at the destruction. The scenes below were no doubt being replicated a thousand times over around Commorragh. An almost palpable sense of suffering was in the air and Bellathonis found it was most intoxicating.
He stroked another questing Eloh frond under its ventral vein to make it curl up involuntarily as he considered his options. Yllithian was fishing for more information about the clash between himself and Syiin, a line of inquiry that seemed unlikely to be in Bellathonis’s own best interests. On the other hand Yllithian could grant security for the immediate future on a whim, or, if it came down to it, he could simply summon a fortress full of retainers to exercise his will. Bellathonis decided it was probably wise to give the archon something.
‘It is perhaps possible,’ Bellathonis said, ‘that Syiin’s jealousy over my association with your noble self drove him into a fit of madness, causing him to undertake acts eventually harmful to himself.’
Yllithian was attaching the second of two barbed pauldrons to his shoulders. He pulled on a pair of gauntlets attached to hooked vambraces that covered his arms from wrist to elbow. ‘It’s true that Syiin seldom seemed to have the best interests of his archon at heart,’ Yllithian said. ‘I have wondered if his coven had some hand in his disappearance. He was a member of the Black Descent wasn’t he? Just like you?’
And there it was. Not a difficult thing to find out, but it proved that Yllithian had been doing his homework. Bellathonis began to worry that he had underestimated Yllithian’s resourcefulness. He turned to look at the archon directly. Yllithian was now resplendent in full war armour and vermillion cloak, with a tall helm held in the crook of one arm, a sword at his side and the horned crown on his head. Bellathonis had to admit that he looked every inch an archon. Yllithian’s steady gaze held no hint of softness, indecision or mercy as he awaited Bellathonis’s answer.
‘I parted ways with the Black Descent quite some time ago, my archon,’ Bellathonis said carefully. ‘It was the subject of some acrimony at the time – a trifling business really. I suppose it’s possible that the Black Descent eliminated Syiin in retribution for his association with me. I understand that he did draw your attention to my abilities in the first place.’
Yllithian watched the haemonculus’s face carefully as he spoke, trying to judge his veracity through the mask-like distortions of countless surgeries. Not an outright lie, Yllithian thought, but a half-truth at best. Bellathonis certainly seemed to think the Black Descent had some hand in the matter, which was an interesting fact that Yllithian mentally filed away for later examination. Right now more pressing matters demanded his attention, even more pressing than vengeance on the haemonculus that had crippled his former body. The thrice-cursed Supreme Overlord Asdrubael Vect could not be kept waiting.
‘Very well, you have my permission to occupy Syiin’s quarters until further notice,’ Yllithian said, waving away the haemonculus’s grateful bow. ‘I must go to Corespur and attend to the Supreme Overlord’s wishes. Ensure that you are still here when I return, we will have more to discuss.’
Yllithian ignored Bellathonis’s acquiescing bow and stalked out of the conservatory with his cloak billowing impressively. The haemonculus hurried to exit close at his heels – perhaps fearing to be trapped inside the hidden chamber. A sudden thought struck Yllithian as he reached the vestibule.
‘What became of the crone’s head, Bellathonis? I carried the damned thing to El’Uriaq’s banquet as you suggested but I left it there. Do you know where it is?’
‘I do not, my archon,’ Bellathonis replied just a shade too quickly. ‘I could initiate a search for it if you wish, although I fear it will have been destroyed in the Dysjunction.’
Lie. Lie. L
ie. Yllithian felt radiantly good, as if his machinatory powers were returning to him in blazing flashes of insight. There was no doubt in his mind that Bellathonis still held the crone, Angevere, within his power. By extension that meant she was still in Yllithian’s power too.
CHAPTER 11
The Many Blades of Arhra
Motley was the first to sense something wrong. In truth a sick feeling of disquiet had crept into his belly after the first duel and stayed there. The bloody-handed code of honour of the incubi had seemed somehow laudable within the confines Commorragh, but out in the webway it seemed a very different thing. It was like seeing some predatory undersea creature that can be admired for its deadly beauty in its own environment. When that same creature is removed and examined under the harsh light and differing pressure of the world above it is revealed as something foul and monstrous, an aberration.
The harlequin found himself wondering if the sub-realm of the shrine was really a sub-realm at all, or the dreams of Arhra made solid. What Motley truly knew of Arhra could be comfortably inscribed on a napkin while leaving enough room for a sonnet or two, but he mentally reviewed the little he did know. Arhra, so the legends recounted, was one of the legendary Phoenix Lords that had appeared in the immediate aftermath of the Fall. As the scattered, pitiful remnants of the eldar race struggled to survive in a hostile universe the Phoenix Lords had come to teach them the ways of war.
Different branches of the eldar told different tales of the origins of the Phoenix Lords. Some believed them to be the last fragments of the gods, driven like Khaela Mensha Khaine into taking mortal form to escape the depredations of Slaanesh, the entity that the eldar call She Who Thirsts. Others maintain the Phoenix Lords were the ancestor spirits of the mightiest eldar warriors to ever live, called forth to save their people once more. Yet others believe they were something new, beings sprung from those that lived through the Fall and became something greater. Gods, demi-gods or ghosts, the Aspect Warriors they trained never spoke of their mysteries.
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