‘I have a plan,’ Kharbyr said smugly. ‘You just need to stick close and follow my lead when I make my move.’
Xagor looked at him uncertainly for a moment and then shrugged fatalistically. ‘Xagor will remain with the master’s gift. If need be this one must be on hand to retrieve it.’
‘Eh? What do you mean “retrieve it”?’
‘If Kharbyr dies, Xagor must retrieve the gift. The master indicated the gift would survive extremely high temperatures, entropic energies and significant crushing forces unharmed.’
‘Oh. Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
They had come to another shattered street, this one open above to a view of luridly tainted skies. Needle-fine streaks of fire and false lightning flared on high. Their passage traced battles taking place kilometres up in the air at a distance too great to discern the antagonists by anything other than their weapon discharges. Whoever was doing the fighting it seemed very lively up there, reflected Kharbyr. His plans for just stealing a jetbike or skyboard from somewhere and making off suddenly seemed less appealing. The plan had been vague on the where to go part anyway, but the hostile skies definitely weren’t the place to be right now.
The street ahead widened into an open space, a courtyard the width of a parade ground where broken fountains leaked sluggishly across the flagstones in several places. Three sides of the court held an assortment of tumbled buildings and blocked street entrances. The far side of the court was delineated by an iron-grey wall that rose for half a dozen metres up to a jagged, crenellated top. A good way beyond the fang-like merlons at the top of the wall another sloping face could be seen off in the distance, this one of deeply grooved silver that ran upwards until it vanished from sight. The grey wall had a suspiciously uniform-looking gap running along its base rather than a foundation, and no gate or bridge in evidence. On seeing this Kharbyr suddenly realised at once where they were.
‘Latiya’s steps,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It seems our archons knew what they were about after all.’
Latiya’s steps were an interconnected series of moving platforms that gave access to the higher tiers of Commorragh around Ashkeri Talon. The stories said that long ago Archon Latiya had been so deathly afraid of flying that she had caused the steps to be built to give herself easier access to the upper tiers. It was a farfetched tale but stranger things had happened in Commorragh in the past, and much worse legacies had been left behind by less mundane phobias. The steps were simply considered quaint and old fashioned in modern times, typically well guarded but seldom used for anything practical. Kharbyr had heard the steps operated by some kind of fluid metal under pressure moving the platforms. He’d never considered that they might still be working.
The survivors moved warily into the open space, spreading out instinctively to present a less tempting target for any lurking snipers. When they were part way across the court Kharbyr spotted a flicker of movement between the crenellations and shouted a warning. All nine survivors vanished behind pieces of shattered stonework in the twinkling of any eye. No matter how skilful a fighter was they all knew that a lance blast or disintegrator bolt could end their life in an instant.
Kharbyr was crouched behind a bitten-off half moon of fountain bowl. Xagor lay a few metres away behind a chunk of fallen rock barely big enough to hide him. The wrack poked out his ridiculous rifle to scan the battlements and Kharbyr watched with interest to see whether Xagor would get shot. Being armed with only a pistol he felt justified in hanging back out of sight for now. Not for the first time he regretted not picking up something heavier back at the processional, but it had looked like a lot of extra weight to be dragging around at the time. Xagor was not shot or even shot at. After a few seconds Kharbyr called softly to the wrack.
‘What can you see?’
‘Some few heads bobbing,’ Xagor said before adding unnecessarily. ‘No shoot yet.’
Kharbyr peeped over the rim of the bowl and caught sight of four helmeted heads and gun barrels between the battlements. Nothing bigger than a rifle was in evidence and they were all angled to point at no one in particular – either a good sign or part of a very elaborate trap. Kharbyr ducked back down and checked the streets behind him. A band of warriors (or truth be told even a band of small children) bursting out on them now would put the survivors into a deadly trap. Nothing could be seen or heard in that direction either, but a spot between Kharbyr’s shoulder blades that he’d learned to respect in the past still felt itchy. Something was surely amiss. Naxipael stood up in full view and called out in a commanding voice.
‘I am Lord Naxipael of the Venom Brood. Who is it that speaks for you? Come down and join us, our strength must be combined.’
There was a pause before a shout came back – not from one of the exposed warriors, Kharbyr noted wryly, but from someone keeping out of sight. He wondered how many more of them were hidden behind the wall.
‘Venom Brood is lower courts dreck, you shouldn’t even be out of Metzuh,’ came the sneering response.
That was interesting and said a lot about the respondent. Not from Metzuh or affiliated with the lower courts, that was for sure. The tier rivalry sounded like something Hy’kranite, they always had special contempt for Metzuh being directly beneath them, just as Azkhorxi had nothing but contempt for Hy’kran and so on all the way up to Sorrow Fell and Corespur. Just as importantly, the hidden speaker didn’t feel strong enough to face a petty archon or command him to leave, a fact that was not lost on Naxipael. He laughed cynically.
‘You can’t come down, can you? You’re stuck up there because the controls are locked. Guess who has the key?’
A faint horizontal line had appeared on the silver slope beyond the battlements, descending at a deceptively unhurried pace, thickening and darkening swiftly as it came. Naxipael saw it and jabbed a finger towards the approaching apparition.
‘You’d best join me while you still can, you’ve got company coming,’ Naxiapel shouted merrily. ‘Or perhaps they’ll turn out to be more amenable to using common sense in a crisis.’
Curses and the rattle of armoured figures running sounded behind the wall as the helmeted heads vanished. The descending line had resolved into another battlemented wall, this one gunmetal in colour and lined with warriors. The sharp crack of splinter fire intermingled with the throatier bark of disintegrators indicated that there was going to be no negotiation with the newcomers. The answering fire from their superior location was immediate and intense.
‘All right!’ the voice shouted with a new edge of desperation to it. ‘Help us and we’ll join you!’
Naxipael sang out five oddly twisting words and, after a slight quiver, the whole iron-grey wall began to descend. First the gap at its base narrowed and vanished, while the battlements kept sliding downwards until they became little more than a row of sharp teeth across the courtyard that could be stepped between. Beyond the row Kharbyr could see a dozen bronze and green warriors crouching behind scanty barricades they had thrown up from fallen rubble. The gunmetal wall was still a dozen metres up, the underside of it clearly showing where its risers connected to the grooved slope.
‘Everybody on!’ ordered Naxipael. The survivors scrambled to obey – except Kharbyr and Xagor. They hesitated for a moment, each looking at the other. This would be the ideal time to split from Naxipael and Bezieth’s clique before they got into another pointless fight at bad odds. On the other hand Xagor was right, just two of them left alone on daemon-haunted Metzuh tier might not stand much of a chance.
‘You two! Come on or I’ll kill you myself!’ Naxipael shouted, already waiting at the first row of battlements with his blastpistols leveled meaningfully. The momentary thoughts of escape vanished and Kharbyr ran over to the archon with Xagor close behind. The moment they passed between the crenellations Naxipael called out four words and the iron-grey platform began to ascend. High velocity splinters were tearing chi
ps from the scant cover available on the platform, a dark lance beam flashed and shriveled a warrior along with the stone he hid behind in its awful glare of anti-light.
The distance to the top of the gunmetal wall was shrinking rapidly as their platform rose to meet it. Kharbyr guessed that it had already halved, just a few more seconds and they would come level. Grenades flew back and forth seeding bright blossoms of plasma fire on both sides of the wall. With three metres to go Kharbyr ran forward, dodging and leaping for all he was worth as envenomed splinters and rageing energy bolts hissed around his ears. Two metres to go and he could see their enemies clearly now, Azkhorxi warriors in black and purple, their helms crested with a half moon of silver. Kharbyr rolled aside from a burst of splinters and darted for a point on the wall where a grenade had just detonated on the far side. One metre to go and Kharbyr leapt up, springing nimbly between the sharp teeth and hoping fervently that he wasn’t the only one doing so.
CHAPTER 13
Ascension
The sculpted face of the shrine of Arhra rose before Morr and Motley like a cliff. Tier upon crusted tier of frowning archways were shadowed by thickly clustered columns. Steeply sloping flights of steps interwove among crumbling plinths weighed down with a wide variety of grotesque statuary. The shrine was built of darkly lustrous obsidian that seemed to suck up the light falling upon it. A riot of foliage was festooned around the lower reaches of the shrine, a green wave frozen at the point of breaking across a black mountain. The fleshy looking creepers and bright blooming lianas softened the brooding edifice somewhat, but their verdant fecundity contrasted so sharply with the lightless stone that it lent the whole an alien, intrusive air that sickened the stomach.
Motley expected some kind of final challenge as Morr approached, but the towering incubus mounted the first steps without incident. The shrine was silent as a tomb, even the natural sounds of the surrounding swamps seemed muted in its presence. The sense of brooding watchfulness he had sensed from far off was overwhelming this close, as though every shadowed archway hid a silent sentinel. As Motley placed his first foot on the steps he felt an empathic chill run up his spine. Passion and murder-lust were etched into the very stones of this place, an echo of millennia of bloodshed and violence being honed to an artform with the kind of depth and clarity that only the eldar race could achieve.
Morr climbed steadily, seemingly confident of where he was going as he passed the first tier of archways and kept moving upwards. Motley forced himself to follow, passing plinths with their crouching beasts and towering warriors. There was a strong preference for low slung, multi-legged monstrosities that Motley assumed were scorpions from different worlds and realities. Some exhibited disturbingly humanoid characteristics: hands instead of claws, saucer-eyed faces. Unlike just about every other shrine Motley had ever seen all of the statues faced inward towards the structure itself, rather than out to the world.
Three tiers up and Morr vanished inside one of the archways without so much as a backward glance. As the incubus disappeared from sight a bell tolled once from deep within the shrine, the dolorous tone of it seeming to hang in the still air. Motley hurried up but then paused on the threshold despite himself, poised for a moment between the world of light outside and the darkness within. A cold breath seemed to blow into his face, a thing welling up from deep in the underworld and before him lay only shadows. Motley finally screwed up his courage and stepped inside the archway. No peal of the great bell greeted him, which was a fact he found to be disquieting and reassuring in more or less equal measure.
Within a few steps from the archway the path twisted and darkness became complete, Motley could barely see his own hand when he fluttered it in front of his eyes. The urge to kindle a light was strong, almost overwhelming, and yet it felt as if it would be somehow… profane and unwelcome to do so. An oppressive presence hung in the darkness and some deeply primal part of Motley had no wish to see it revealed. He decided this was a wise piece of counsel and perforce had to feel his way forward as the path twisted and twisted again between pillars. Sometimes the stone beneath his feet was level, sometimes it sloped roughly downward, but never up. The only sounds were of clattering, verminous things that scuttled or slithered amid the shadows, giving way ahead of Motley and trailing faithfully behind.
The sensory deprivation made it feel like hours were passing when it could only be minutes. An unmistakeable sensation began to seize Motley that he was descending into an open grave, a charnel house with no escape. The taint of death was so pervasive it felt as if it were burying him alive. After what seemed an interminable period Motley perceived a faint vertical line of light ahead of him. A feeble spray of photons was manageing to edge past an obsidian pillar and give relief to the inky blackness.
Motley eagerly took a step towards the light before a slight breeze against his face stopped him short of taking another. He looked down. A pit gaped at his feet, a headlong fall into darkness for any that rushed forward at this particular point, complete with superfluous-looking spikes glinting a long way down at the bottom.
‘Rather mean,’ Motley complained as he sprang across without difficulty and, coming to the pillar he had seen, found himself looking out into a long hall.
The floor was sunken, with steps leading down to it on all four sides. Many of its slabs appeared to have fallen into a chamber below, creating an irregular pattern of smooth-sided pits throughout the hall. Motley was willing to bet they all had spikes at the bottom too. There were many other archways leading into the hall, open mouths of darkness lurking behind a forest of black stone pillars. More massive columns supported a roof that was lost in shadow. The only light came from a scattering of tallow candles on the steps, simple things that would have been in keeping with stone knives and bearskins. In their fitful illumination two things were apparent: First that Morr was there, standing facing away from Motley and towards the far end of the hall. Second, that the far end of the hall was dominated by the enormous figure of what could only be Arhra.
The legend stood easily a hundred metres tall in his many-bladed helm and ancient armour, a great klaive held at the ready to destroy. The statue’s gigantic ruby eyes gleamed down from high above, the tiny, moving flames of the candles lending them a frightful semblance of life. Motley paused, unwilling to precipitate any violence by his sudden appearance. He was about to clear his throat to politely to announce his presence when Morr spoke.
‘You may enter here, little clown,’ the incubus said. ‘This is the hall of testing. By tradition it is open to any worthy supplicant. You have already proved yourself worthy to tread these stones.’
Motley stepped into the hall and approached warily. Something was amiss, the incubus’s words were edged with bitterness. This was apparently not the homecoming Morr had sought.
‘Where are the hierarchs?’ Motley ventured.
‘Where indeed?’ rumbled Morr. ‘A worthy supplicant would be received by them in this place, a wandering incubus of the brotherhood would be welcomed here by the hierarchs no matter what shrine he hailed from. For me: Nothing. They hide from me.’
‘So… what now?’
‘I will go to the inner sanctum and confront them,’ Morr said with icy deliberation. ‘I’ll tear down this shrine stone by stone if I must. Their cowardice insults the Dark Father and proves them unworthy to carry forward his creed.’ Morr took a step forward and then stiffened. Within the flicker of a candle flame a figure had appeared in the hall, or perhaps been revealed where it hid in plain sight all along.
A tall warrior in segmented and bladed amour of an ancient pattern now stood between Morr and the statue. The newcomer was armed with the metre-long hooked-tipped double swords that the incubus call demi-klaives, held now loosely at his sides.
‘Stay back!’ Morr warned Motley. ‘Raise no weapon if you value your life!’
Although the incubus barring Morr’s path stood perfectly motio
nless there was a poised readiness to his attitude that spoke of explosive action less than a heartbeat away.
‘What’s happening here?’ Motley whispered. ‘Who’s that?’
‘He has no name for he never speaks. We call him Drazhar – the living sword,’ Morr said with something like reverence. ‘He is the deadliest of our brotherhood, the undefeated, the true master of blades.’
‘Not a hierarch then?’ Motley asked a little hopefully.
‘No. Drazhar has slain hierarchs but he does not claim their place. Some say he is Arhra reborn and yet he slays those who attempt to venerate him. Drazhar exists only to kill.’
Motley made a silent ‘O’ of dismay. Morr addressed the silent warrior directly.
‘Drazhar! You bar my path but you do not attack. Have the hierarchs sent you to keep me from their door?’
A miniscule tilt of the horned helm of the incubus affirmed that he had been sent for precisely that purpose.
‘Morr! Don’t take the bait!’ Motley hissed urgently. ‘They want you to destroy yourself. It’d make a tidy solution to a problem they don’t want!’
Morr hesitated; the harlequin was right. The hierarchs were against him, and so by extension his whole brotherhood of bloody-handed killers. His life was truly over.
If anything the hot coal of rage he had nourished in his heart for his entire existence burned even brighter at the thought. It was a monstrous injustice for the hierarchs to turn their faces from him when had held absolutely true to the central tenets of Arhra’s teachings.
The reek of political expediency clung to the hierarch’s actions, or rather the want of any action at all: to punish Morr for destroying his Chaos-corrupted archon would be to fly in the face of everything that Arhra had taught to the incubi – even at the cost of his own mortal existence. To exonerate Morr would send a tacit message to every archon in Commorragh that the day could come when their own incubi bodyguards could turn against them, citing the edicts of a long-dead Phoenix Lord as justification.
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