The eldar gods had all been destroyed, so the story went, consumed by She Who Thirsts in the Fall: Asuryan, Khaela Mensha Khaine, Vaul, Kurnous, Lileath, all of them. Commorrite families of any breeding and history now venerated themselves, or rather their illustrious predecessors, instead of their contemptible failed gods. In High Commorragh the noble families erected kilometre-high statues to themselves and dedicated entire wings of their manses to the accumulation of the lore of their bloodline. Here on Hy’kran in the lower tiers the trueborn could not indulge themselves so fully in their necropoli and must perforce make do with humbler temples to their own vanity.
In the middle distance the knees of Azkhorxi tier rose above the rooftops, a jagged fence made of polished towers of obsidian and amethyst. Somewhere close to the foot of those towers, Bezieth had assured them, there would be access to the foundation layer and its vein-like substrata of tubes and capillaries. Kharbyr hoped she was right; he had an almost animalistic sense of being stalked through the mausoleums. The dark, open doorways seemed poised to suck him inside at any moment and trap him within their sterile luxury for all eternity.
Of course every trueborn lived with the avowed intent that no such house of the dead would ever be built for them. Through the intercession of the haemonculi any trueborn could return from death provided the smallest part of their mortal remains could be saved. Yet death still came for some: by all-consuming fire, by destroying energies, by deadly toxin, by enigmatic disappearance or plain perfidy over the centuries the number of monuments inexorably multiplied. The houses were decorated with trophies accumulated across centuries of reaving: the crystal encased skulls of notable enemies, the prows of captured ships, suits of barbaric armour, exotic weapons, statues and artworks stolen from a hundred thousand different worlds. Vainglorious inscriptions declared their achievements:
‘Quiver before the might that was Vylr’ak Ak Menshas who was called the Shrike Lord by his victims. So strong his blade that he would plunge it through three bodies at once, so swift his raider that in a thousand hunts not one slave ever evaded his grasp.’
‘See here arrayed the riches of Oxchradh Lyr Hagorach Kaesos, the Soul Thief. Young or old all submitted beneath his savage caresses in the end. On the world of Sharn a hundred settlements fell to him in a single night and he declared himself not yet sated.’
‘Witness the death house of Kassais, who needs no other name. Beneath a dozen suns his reavers did bloody work to his instruction, leaving slaves with one eye and one hand only to record his passing.
The only ghosts here were memories, yet Kharbyr could feel his nape-hairs rising as though a hungry gaze followed his progress. Amid all the background turmoil and horror of the city something was singling him out for its attention, something dreadful. He stopped and glanced back uncertainly at Bezieth and Xagor following a few paces behind him. His fears suddenly seemed too stupid and groundless to voice when he met the archon’s impatient gaze.
‘What is it?’ Bezieth hissed.
‘I… nothing, I just felt like I… like we were being watched,’ Kharbyr stammered.
‘I feel it too,’ the archon declared. ‘There’s something following us, has been since the park if not earlier.’
‘Do we try and catch it?’ Kharbyr said softly with a sense of relief. He’d begun to fear he was going mad. Bezieth shook her head.
‘No. Keep going, if it doesn’t want to tangle with us there’s no reason to tangle with it unless we have to. We’ll try and lose it in the shafts.’
Kharbyr nodded and crept stealthily onward. The boundary towers of Azkhorxi were much closer now, dominating even the tallest of the nearby Ynnealxias, a fact that was no doubt the source of great ire to the Hy’kran trueborn. The ground ahead sloped downward towards a row of angular buttresses protruding from the closely set towers. Between the buttresses could be seen the raised lips of three silver rings set into the ground, each wide enough to swallow a Raider whole. These would be vertical mouths of travel tubes that emerged into Hy’kran from beneath the core.
Kharbyr increased his pace a little, eager for a chance to quit the open skies for somewhere more comfortably enclosed. As he got closer a flicker of movement among the buttresses caught his attention. He silently dropped into a crouch and strained to pierce the shadows for several minutes, long enough for Bezieth to come crawling forward to look too. She cursed viciously.
‘Ur-ghuls,’ she spat.
The lip of the travel tubes was swarming with the whip-thin, troglodytic horrors. They were crawling up from below like an infestation of lice looking for a new host. Their blind heads quested back and forth as their rows of scent-pits tasted the air.
Kharbyr nodded. ‘They seem to be heading this way, it looks like that big pile of carrion back in the slave town has a claimant after all. There’s something weird about them, though, I think they’ve been warp-touched.’
Bezieth grunted and looked again. It was hard to tell at such a distance but there was something unusual about the creatures. It took her a few seconds to realise what it was. Some of the ur-ghuls were missing limbs, and all of them seemed torn up in some gruesome fashion or other.
‘Don’t they usually eat each other if they’re given half a chance?’ Kharbyr asked.
‘Cannibals, yes,’ Xagor chirped. ‘Somaphages.’
‘So why aren’t the ones with missing limbs in the bellies of the other ones,’ Bezieth said grimly.
‘More to the point how can we get through them? Will your blade carve through them like it did on the Grand Canal?’
‘No, and ur-ghuls are strong and fast enough that I’d normally hesitate to fight more than three at once without a squad of warriors at my back. There’s got to be more than thirty down there and more coming. I don’t think we can get through them, I think we have to get out of their way and hope they don’t scent us.’
Xagor wrung his hand and claw miserably. ‘Highly efficient olfactory organs,’ the wrack whispered fearfully. ‘Most effective hunters.’
‘Then we get into a doorway where they can only come a few at a time and… wait what’s that? Looks like we’re in luck, not everyone’s left yet.’
A sleek, angular shape had come drifting silently out of the shadows above the swarming ur-ghuls, a shape with a jutting, armoured prow that thrust out below bellying aether-sails of orange and green. It was a Raider with its narrow deck tightly packed with kabalite warriors. The ur-ghuls milled in confusion, their scent-pits flaring at the nearness of prey but as yet unable to locate its source.
‘What are they doing?’ Kharbyr said.
‘Having some fun cleaning up,’ Bezieth replied.
A shower of tiny objects dropped from the Raider into the seething mass, metal seeds that blossomed into fiery gouts of plasma wherever they landed. Whip-thin bodies flashed to fire in the sudden glare, then withered into ash in a heartbeat. Merciless fingers of splinter fire lashed down at the survivors, cratering flesh and splintering eyeless skulls.
The ur-ghul pack went wild, running and leaping in all directions with horrid agility. By some sixth sense several leaped directly up at the Raider, their hooked claws outstretched, but the Raider’s steersman had judged his height nicely and it bobbed just out of reach. The one-sided battle continued with the kabalites gunning down the ur-ghuls at their leisure. The pack was dispersing now, most trying to find places to hide even as some continued to hurl themselves pointlessly at their flying tormentor. The Raider turned to pursue a handful of ur-ghuls that were fleeing directly towards where Kharbyr, Bezieth and Xagor were hiding.
‘Something’s definitely sending good fortune our way,’ Bezieth murmured quietly. ‘Let’s not disappoint it. Xagor, do you think you can hit their steersman with that rifle of yours?’
Xagor shook his head frantically, hunching his shoulders helplessly as the Raider chased the berserk pack of ur-ghuls closer.
> ‘Let me rephrase that,’ Bezieth said coldly. ‘Xagor, you will hit the steersman with your first shot or I will gut you like a fish.’
CHAPTER 19
The Power of Misdirection
Motley did not stop running and stretched his lead ahead of Morr as they raced away through the rushing darkness. They dodged between broken walls of Lapis Lazuli and down blackened alabaster streets, wove between piles of scintillating rubble and across fields of shattered crystal, the harlequin’s gazelle-like agility always keeping him ahead of Morr’s pantherish, loping strides. After a time Motley perceived that Morr seemed to be content to follow, and had no trace of insane murder-lust in his eye. He dropped back to run alongside him, glancing up at the incubus’s exposed face.
‘Are you tired? We can rest a little if you like but we have to keep moving. Caraeis will be able to track us like a hound so we have to keep moving faster than they can catch up with us.’
‘I am well rested,’ Morr rumbled. ‘Those prancing fools gave me ample opportunity to regain my strength, it chafes my heart to leave them alive.’
‘They would shoot you full of holes first and you know it. So… you’re not mad at me for knocking you out like that? I confess I thought there would be more running and shouting involved before we made our peace.’
Morr laughed, a peal of manic sound that was lost in the battering winds. ‘Little clown, you have moved among us in the eternal city yet you are still blind to our ways. That trick is so old that it has its own name. It is called a Roc’chsa when two slaves turn on one another in order to gain favour with their new master. I approved of your quick thinking.’
‘Oh. I never thought of it like that,’ Motley said, slightly perturbed. ‘I suppose that should make me feel better about it, but somehow it doesn’t.’
‘Why do you not simply make a gate now as you did in the shrine?’
‘The warlock, Caraeis, would sense it instantly, and he could block its formation for long enough for the Dire Avengers to reach us.’
‘So where do we run to?’
‘A permanent gate, I think, is somewhere close by. If we can reach that and enter the webway I can get us to Lileathanir.’
‘Surely the warlock will hold that shut against us also.’
‘It will be much harder for him to do with a permanent gate. You’ll have to allow me some leeway here, I’m sort of inventing this as I go.’
‘Then tell me who attacked the craftworlders and by what happy coincidence they came to help our escape.’
That… is my little secret to keep for now, just know that we have friends as well as enemies in this particular production.’
‘Gone!’ Caraeis snarled. He kicked at the broken shackles angrily and fought with a desire to tear off his masked helm so that he could fill his lungs and scream into the howling winds in frustration. Aiosa, the Dire Avengers exarch stood to one side watching him rage, her own impassive mask coolly inscrutable beneath its tall crest.
‘Calm yourself,’ she said to him with mindspeech. ‘Your passion has no place here, remember your path!’
The warlock tried to check his emotions and fought to breathe more calmly. Caraeis’s personal investment in this mission had become like a living thing dwelling inside his chest, gnawing to break free. He ran through the thousand and one mantras he had been taught about the hideous dangers that were inherent to uncontrolled passions for a psyker.
The runes, the mask, the Path of the Seer itself, all were ways of insulating him against the perils of the warp and lending him enough protection to safely wield the limitless power it represented. If his underlying will lacked focus and discipline it meant that nothing could protect him. If his connection with the warp became too personal, if he bared his soul even once to the daemons then he was lost and his time on the Path of the Seer would be over. He quieted the beast within his breast only with great difficulty.
‘Why was no guard left behind?’ he asked eventually, his tone remarkably steady in his own ears.
‘I instructed you to remain on guard,’ Aiosa replied. ‘Why did you not do so?’
‘I… that is not what I heard,’ Caraeis said in confusion. ‘I heard you instruct me to follow.’
Aiosa gazed at him silently, waiting for an explanation with not a shred of doubt in her demeanour that Caraeis had made an error. Caraeis searched his memory carefully, Aiosa’s mind-speech had seemed a little garbled at the time but he had put it down to the confusion of the firefight. He had definitely had the strong impression of the word ‘follow’ being in it, although now he came to analyse it, he was unsure precisely who had said it. A cornerstone of Caraeis self-assurance crumbled perceptibly – was it possible he had been duped? As he wrestled with the implications a Dire Avenger approached and dropped several objects into the dust at Aiosa’s feet with evident disgust.
‘Exarch, we found these at the battle site. dark kin were here.’
A barbed, wicked-looking pistol and a tall, dark helm surmounted by a crescent moon lay in the drifting dust. Both showed signs of recent damage, shurikens had torn into the helm and the pistol had a broken barrel.
‘Nothing else?’ Aiosa asked. ‘No blood, no bodies?’
‘Nothing, exarch, no tracks either – although the ground was unsuitable for them.’
‘Very well, return to overwatch positions.’
Aiosa turned back to Caraeis. ‘Well?’ she asked as if no interruption had occurred.
‘Someone told me to follow, but I don’t think it was you. I was tricked.’
‘I see,’ the exarch said clinically. ‘Tell me your opinion of these artefacts.’ Caraeis had a momentary impression that he was being addressed by an automaton, that if he peered inside Aiosa’s armoured suit he would find it empty. He shook his head and tried to focus on the helm and pistol, he held a gloved hand over them, cautiously feeling for their psychometry. He shivered unexpectedly and pulled his hand back.
‘There is no doubt that they are of Commorrite manufacture. The pistol has been fired recently, before it was broken. The impressions were… too chaotic to read anything beyond that. What do you think?’
‘That someone is trying to mislead us again by laying a false trail back to the dark city. We were left these clues to find.’
‘That seems very convoluted,’ Caraeis said dubiously.
‘We were not attacked by dark kin, our supposed foes went out of their way to avoid harming us.’
‘Then who?’
‘The answer is obvious. The harlequin called in more members of his masque and they led us in a merry dance while he escaped with our quarry.’
‘What?’ Caraeis spluttered, animal outrage scratching inside his chest again. ‘That’s monstrous! Why would they favour the dark kin so flagrantly? They’re supposed to be jealous of their beloved neutrality!’
‘You told the harlequin that he was also your prisoner. I believe they could convincingly argue that you committed the first affront and they acted only to rectify it.’
Caraeis fell silent. Aiosa was correct, in his hubris he had given the harlequin grounds to argue he’d been compelled to accompany them against his will. Caraeis had been so sure that his path would lead straight to the council chamber on Biel-Tan that he hadn’t stopped to consider that someone would work so actively to divert him. He felt shock that events, so neatly mapped out in previous rune castings, were spiralling out of control.
‘If an entire masque is against us our mission will fail unless we declare war,’ Aiosa said flatly. ‘And that I will not do.’
‘There’s no evidence of that being the case,’ Caraeis retorted with something of his old assurance. ‘We-we must reassess the situation based on what we know, not just what we suppose. The prisoner has escaped us temporarily, but I do not sense that he has left this world as yet. He has accomplices but he hasn’t gone far. The incu
bus can be recaptured with the forces we have on hand. The harlequin knows he cannot intercede directly without entering the conflict and now we know that too.’
Aiosa’s mask stared back inscrutably at him as if suggesting that she had known that particular fact all along.
The Raider slewed alarmingly as its steersman exploded messily across its stern. The fleeing ur-ghuls, somehow sensing the sudden change, immediately turned and leapt up at the wallowing grav-craft like grotesque frogs. In a flash a trio of the needle-toothed horrors were scrambling over the gunwales and clutching at the kabalite warriors aboard. Stabbing combat blades and point blank range splinter shots hurled off the creatures in short order, but not before their combined weight had tilted the Raider so that it sank even lower to the ground. More ur-ghuls leapt aboard and the Raider’s blood-slicked deck quickly became a struggling mass of hook-clawed fiends and bronze-armoured warriors fighting for survival.
Bezieth led Kharbyr and Xagor in a silent rush towards the stricken craft. An ur-ghul hissed and turned on her with rows of scent pits flaring. Bezieth’s djin-blade crunched through the creature’s dome-like skull without her even breaking stride. Aboard the Raider a warrior made a desperate leap to grasp its curving tiller bar and bring the craft under control. He was instantly tackled by the frenzied grey-green shape of an ur-ghul and the struggling pair tumbled overboard to fall to the ground with a bone-snapping crunch.
Kharbyr made an agile leap that put even the ur-ghuls to shame, swinging himself up onto one of the Raider’s blade-like outriggers. Xagor was plying his hex-rifle indiscriminately, kabalites and ur-ghuls were swelling and popping obscenely left and right. Kharbyr ran along the outrigger and jumped across to the narrow deck near the stern. A Hy’kran kabalite, wheeling to face him in surprise, met Kharbyr’s curved blade as it crunched point-first into his throat. Kharbyr wrenched his knife free and hacked off a clutching, hook-clawed hand even as he turned and sprang for the tiller bar with the speed of desperation.
Bezieth thrust her keening djin-blade through another disgusting, whip-thin body with such ferocity that it virtually sheared the ur-ghul in twain. Another leapt at her and she cut it out of the air in twitching fragments. Axhyrian’s spirit was obedient in her hands, the djin-blade light as a wand as she cut and thrust. She glanced up to see Kharbyr braced at the tiller bar with it clamped beneath one arm as if he were steering the Raider through a storm. Kharbyr heaved the curving control bar hard over to tilt the wallowing grav-craft almost onto its side. Kabalite warriors and ur-ghuls, unprepared for the sudden shift, came tumbling off the deck in shrieking clumps. Bezieth grinned appreciatively and ran forward to catch at a tilted railing, hurling herself aboard the Raider as Kharbyr brought the craft upright again.
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