Fabius sank to one knee, arms spread. They came gladly, and excitedly, a babble of eager voices. He listened to them all, and when they’d finished, sent them running back to their nursemaids or playmates. He rose as the crèche-master approached.
‘Pretty little pups, aren’t they?’ Zargad asked, as he nodded respectfully to Arrian. ‘Remind you of anyone?’ He was a narrow blade of a warrior, too tall and too thin to be confused for a normal human. Almost aeldari in appearance, though he’d butchered the last man to make such a comparison. Zargad’s features were androgynous and alien; mouth a shade too wide, nose a touch too small, and eyes like those of a felinoid. His scalp was shorn to the quick, which only emphasised the odd shape of his skull.
Fabius frowned. ‘Yes. There is a distinctly Chemosian flavour to their physiognomy.’
‘Most of them grow out of it in a few months. But more and more of them are retaining that look – pale hair and lavender eyes.’
‘A side effect of the gene-seed.’
Zargad grunted. ‘Possibly. We both know there’s a bit more than that to it.’
‘It doesn’t matter. So long as they meet or exceed expectations, a few cosmetic anomalies are within acceptable parameters.’ Fabius looked at him. ‘How goes it?’
‘They’re agitated. They can smell something on the wind.’ Zargad rubbed his scalp. ‘So can I, come to that.’ He looked at Fabius. ‘That’s why I wanted you to come down.’
‘What do you mean?’
Zargad glanced at Arrian. ‘Your daughter, Fabius,’ he said softly. ‘The children have been dreaming about Melusine.’
Igori awoke.
She lay still for a moment, trying to identify the sound that had disturbed her slumber. But whatever it was, it was done and gone, with not even an echo remaining. Slowly, she sat up, the blankets of beastkin hide sliding down. Her current paramours murmured but did not otherwise stir. Whatever she’d heard had escaped their equally keen senses. She climbed out from between them, as quietly as possible. Ancient though she was, she could still move as silent as a shadow when the mood took her.
She stood for a moment, listening. Seeking any hint of the sound that had woken her. But there was nothing. Only the murmur of the palace at night.
Sleep now well and truly banished, she dressed swiftly, pulling on battered fatigues and retrieving her knife from the stand near the bed. There were other weapons she could have taken, but the knife had always been her favourite. As she stepped into the chilly corridor, she could hear the shriekers hunting the heights, and the distant thump of beastkin drums. The creatures were agitated. They were always agitated, these days.
The Benefactor was up to something. That much was obvious. Then, he was always up to something. She padded down the broken corridor. Through the great rents in the walls, she could see the devastated city she and her pack-clan had decided to call home.
Somewhere past the edges of that territory were the facilities of the Benefactor. She had not visited them in almost a decade. Not since the day of schism. Reflexively, her hand fell to her knife and she stopped, looking out over her kingdom, crude as it was. Even now, the guilt festered. To turn against the Benefactor, to deny him, was anathema to her kind. They were not made to disobey. And yet, what else could they have done? What option had he left them? Left her?
She turned away. The schism had been bloody. Not all of the packs had turned from the Benefactor. Those who remained had been born in vats, rather than made from foundlings scavenged from war-ravaged worlds. She herself had been one of the latter, hundreds of years before. Her brothers and sisters as well. The Benefactor had found them and given them a home – a purpose.
A purpose she had abandoned. That was what those who remained had claimed. But it was a lie. Her purpose was the same as it had always been. The purpose the Benefactor had instilled in her. She was to be the mother of her race. She was to lead them out from his shadow, to stand on their own.
That was easier said than done, of course. And having started on the path, she was finding it harder going than she imagined. Or maybe she’d simply started too late. Maybe there was no future for them, save in the fevered imagination of their creator. The thought weighed heavily on her, as it did every day. It had been so easy to take control. It was what she had been made to do. But now that it was done, she found herself… lost. She was old and everything ached. And yet she persisted, unable to surrender. Another gift of the Benefactor.
Her absent wandering carried her through the corridors of her palace, as if she were a ghost in her own home. She could hear the trilling calls of the sentries as they alerted one another to her presence, and the faint grumble of generators far below her feet. The palace was not yet a fortress, though in time it might become one. Or perhaps they would simply leave and find a more hospitable world to claim. Far from the Benefactor or the schemes of daemons and aeldari. The thought did not comfort her.
She found herself in the throne room. Her throne room. The throne was a barbaric thing, made from scrap and bones. She had not asked for it, but her followers had fashioned it for her regardless. She found it somewhat embarrassing and wondered if this was how the Benefactor felt, when the mutants bowed to him, or sang hymns to his glory.
Igori paused before the throne, and took in the skulls that sat piled at its base. The skulls of her kin. Her brothers and sisters. Her rivals. Their packs were hers now. The strongest ruled, so that the weak might survive. That was what the Benefactor had taught her. That was what he’d taught them all – or tried to.
She folded her hands and bowed to the dead. Though she had slain them, and eaten their flesh, they had still been her littermates. They had hunted and killed together. Their names were carved into her throne, as her own would be one day. When someone worthy came along to replace her.
That too was a lesson she had learned from the Benefactor.
‘Children learn by example.’
Igori spun, her knife flying from her fingers towards the speaker. It whipped across the space between them, and buried itself in a cracked pillar with a dull thwack. The speaker studied it for a moment, and then turned back to Igori.
‘If I were still mortal, I might have died.’
Igori was already moving as the words left the intruder’s mouth. Her hair was white and her bones ached, but she still moved with a leopard’s killing grace. Fingers hooked like claws, she leapt.
The intruder’s hand closed about her throat, stopping her in mid-lunge. ‘You never make it, you know. In a hundred iterations of this moment, some earlier, some later, you never make it. But not once do you hesitate to leap. Curious.’
Igori gave a strangled snarl as she clawed at her captor’s forearm. She was forced back, her feet dangling above the floor. The intruder was no taller than she, but was horned and hoofed like a beast. She wore loose robes of iridescent silk over limbs the colour of honeyed milk, and her face was at once familiar and strange.
‘Never once do you hesitate,’ the intruder continued softly. ‘Never once do you fail to follow your instincts. Did he make you thus out of pragmatism – or out of fear?’ Eyes like golden lamps fixed on Igori’s face, drinking her in. ‘Maiden, mother, crone,’ she crooned. ‘Beginning and ending in one.’
‘Release me,’ Igori growled. She aimed a kick at her captor’s torso. It was like kicking stone shrouded in gossamer. The intruder smiled and let her drop to the floor.
‘All you had to do was ask, sister.’
Igori scrambled to her feet. She rubbed her throat and peered at the being before her. ‘Who are you?’
The horned head tilted. ‘Do you not know me, sister? We have walked together often, though my substance has changed somewhat since then.’
‘I…’ Igori hesitated, a denial on her lips. ‘Melusine?’
Melusine. The first and most favoured of all of the Benefactor’s children. Mad
e from his own genetic material, and stolen by the Dark Gods. It was a story all Gland-hounds knew, and told to their young to teach them of the duplicity of the gods.
Melusine’s smile was at once gentle and ravenous. ‘Yes, you do know me. And I know you, sweet sister. We have reached the same moment at last.’ She looked around. ‘Sometimes it feels as if this instant has stretched about me for a thousand years, and now at last it begins to fray.’
‘My dreams…’ Igori began. She’d had so many dreams over the years, many of them hard to recall. But some stood out more than others. She stopped. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I told you. We have reached the moment. The moment it all comes apart and flies away.’ Melusine clopped up onto the dais and trailed her claws across the throne as she circled it. ‘The centre cannot hold. Did he ever teach that one?’
‘Yes.’
Melusine frowned. ‘Yes. He taught me so much. Too much. Taught me to see past his half-truths and gentle lies. I know him, as you know him now. You see him for what he is… and what he is not.’
‘I still serve him.’
‘No. You want to, though. Even as I do. You see what is best for him, though he does not. That is the curse of being his child. Whether made in blood, or in sweat, all children come to see the frailties of their parent. It is up to them, then, to decide how to proceed.’
Igori went to the pillar and wrenched her knife free. She wondered why none of her sentries had responded to the noise.
‘They only see what I wish them to see,’ Melusine said. Igori turned, and Melusine was sitting on her throne.
‘Get up,’ Igori said. ‘That is not your place.’
‘Oh, but it is. Or will be.’ Melusine reclined back. ‘When all is said and done and the guns are silent, we will sit here together.’
‘Did you come here just to spit riddles at me?’
‘I came to show you what is coming, so that you can be prepared. So that you are able to do what must be done.’ Melusine rose and sprang down the dais, causing Igori to step back. She brandished her knife as the daemoness drew close. ‘It all comes down to us, you know. In the end. We must be there, or all this is for naught.’
‘All of what?’
‘All of the tests. All of the preparation.’ Melusine pushed the knife aside. ‘He cannot go forward and he cannot go back. That is the only way he survives the conflagration to come.’
‘The Benefactor, you mean.’
‘Yes.’
Igori shook her head. ‘He will not accept my help. And I do not know that I would be able to give it, even if he would.’
‘Why?’
Igori said nothing.
Melusine leaned close. ‘I could show you why he left, if you wished. Would you like to see?’
‘No. I know why he left.’
‘Are you angry because he did not take you?’ Melusine turned. She gestured, and the dust on the floor and in the air began to shimmer and coalesce. ‘I was often angry, because he would not take me on his expeditions. Instead, he left me in the care of his assistants. Sometimes it was Malachi and Marag. Or Oleander and Arrian. Zocor and poor Chort. Some of them were good with children. Others were not.’
‘I am not a child,’ Igori said, watching the dust thin and swell. There were shapes in its ripples, like images glimpsed behind static.
‘To him, you are but an infant. You will always be an infant. That is why you left. To prove yourself.’
‘No.’
Melusine looked at her. ‘No?’
Igori sheathed her knife. ‘No. I – we – left because there was no place for us there. After the Urum facilities were lost, I realised that we would be divvied up among them. Made into pets or worse. So I left, before we lost our way.’
‘And what is your way, hmm? What is the purpose of a Gland-hound, without a master?’ Melusine gestured again, and the dust quivered. The shapes within it became more solid, more visible. Tall structures, spires edged like sword blades, stretching towards an orrery of false suns.
Commorragh. She recognised it without ever having seen it.
The Benefactor had abandoned them, to go to Commorragh. At first, she’d thought it a punishment for their failures. Only later did she realise that it had nothing to do with them at all. That, in fact, very little of what the Benefactor did had anything to do with his creations, whatever he claimed.
She spat into the dust and replied, ‘The same as it has always been. To hunt.’
‘But for whom do you hunt?’
‘We hunt for ourselves,’ Igori said, still watching the dust. ‘We are no longer hounds. We are wolves. And we will make our own purpose.’
‘Too late for that, I fear. Your fate was decided long ago.’ Melusine stroked the dust, causing the image to contort. Figures now, rather than buildings. Capering, dancing shapes. ‘They decided it for you.’ The shapes became daemons, and then clowns.
Igori growled softly. ‘No one decides my fate but me.’
‘That is what they want you to say. The story doesn’t work, unless the characters are fools. It is a tragedy, after all.’ The clowns danced in a circle around a central figure that Igori would have recognised anywhere. The Benefactor. He was facing something that loomed over him, an indistinct shape that seemed to change moment by moment.
‘What are you showing me?’ Igori demanded. ‘What is this?’
‘The story never ends. It goes round and round, through infinite permutations. Each one closer to perfect than the last. The moment you see before you has already happened, and will happen again and again and again. Because the gods are easily bored, and forget what they’ve seen. Like children, they demand to be told the same story over and over.’
‘Speak sense. What does this have to do with anything?’
Melusine swept her hands out, causing the dust to dissipate with a loud hiss. ‘Nothing. And everything. I cannot speak sense because there is no sense to it.’ She looked at Igori. ‘You just have to trust me, sister.’
‘Trust you about what?’
‘That when the time comes, I will be there for you. And for him.’ Melusine extended her hand. ‘For if we are not, who in all the galaxy will be?’ She paused. ‘Hsst. Listen. They are watching us now.’ She turned, her eyes peering into the shadows. ‘They have always been watching us. Prodding us. Moving makeshift pieces across a broken board.’ She smiled. ‘Come out, come out, little clowns.’ Her smile faded. ‘But no. They will not introduce themselves. They know better. We are our father’s daughters after all.’
‘Clowns?’ Igori turned slowly, hackles raised. ‘The Harlequins?’ The alien clowns were, to her mind, responsible for much of what had gone wrong of late. They had haunted her life, and the Benefactor’s, for centuries. Their schemes had set him on course for Commorragh, though she could see no reason for it.
In the darkness, something laughed. A quick sound, cut short, as if its creator had been suddenly shushed. She considered calling for aid, but a look at Melusine convinced her otherwise. ‘Why are they here?’ she asked softly.
‘They are everywhere. Wherever the webway stretches, so too do Cegorach’s disciples dance. These worlds were once theirs, and may well be again.’ Melusine flexed her claws and took a step towards a pool of shadows. ‘But not yet. For now, it belongs to the Dark Prince – and you are not welcome here.’
There was a rustling noise, like that of startled birds. Then only silence.
Melusine straightened. ‘Fly away, fly away, little clowns,’ she sang softly, and shook her head. ‘Too many stories, too many threads, too many moments. It’s all unspooling before us. We must be strong – the worst is yet to come.’ She looked at Igori, and for a moment, her expression was that of a child. A lost girl, seeking comfort.
Then, the girl was gone, swallowed by the daemon she had become. Sly and oh so hideously
wise. She sprang and had Igori’s wrists in her grasp before the latter could move. ‘Listen to me, sister – listen! When the time comes, you must ignore your instincts, those wonderful, beautiful instincts that tell you to obey him. You must, else it all tumbles down and us with it. He is the centre, and without you, he cannot hold.’
Igori tried to pull free. Melusine’s face twitched and she caught a glimpse of the truth beneath the mask. Whatever she had been, she was something else now. No longer mortal by any stretch of the definition. And yet, there was still something of the Benefactor in her, as it was in all of them. Whatever life made of them, the marks of his tools were still on them. His signature, etched on their bones.
She saw something else there as well, as Melusine gazed at her. Envy and yearning all wrapped up into one poisonous bundle. She realised with a start that it was directed at her. Melusine was… jealous. Of her, or perhaps her closeness to the Benefactor. Or maybe something else entirely.
Their gazes met, and Igori felt an electric pulse.
For an instant that stretched for days, she was elsewhere. A place of silver grasses and golden trees, where the skirl of pipes touched the air. She smelled incense and blood and felt something in her quiver, as hounds – or things like hounds – bayed in pursuit.
She was running as fast as she could, the silver grasses tearing at her legs. Her breath was heavy in her lungs, and the smoke of a thousand gilded braziers stung her eyes and all but blinded her as she stumbled through the arteries of a dead city. Behind her, the hound-master slithered in pursuit, singing softly in a language she did not recognise.
He called out her name in a voice that was achingly familiar and his hounds sped towards her, on two legs or four or none at all. Some looked like men, obscene sigils carved where their eyes had been, and their mouths sealed in fanged muzzles of silver. Others resembled daemonic courtesans, dancing and pulling playfully against their leashes. And some resembled nothing she recognised at all. A wild hunt, and she was their prey.
Manflayer - Josh Reynolds Page 5