Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  Sindiel could not shake the sense that a lurking horror had manifested itself down here, and that it was growing stronger by the day. Although he often felt naïve and ignorant among the darkly brilliant citizens of the eternal city he was sure of one thing – that their psychic senses were dulled to the point of blindness. They saw the warp in terms of forces to be manipulated and refused to see that it was also manipulating them in return.

  The sound of approaching footsteps interrupted his troubling thoughts. He turned and fled into a darkened cross-passage before pressing himself into the shadows behind a mouldering buttress. The measured tread of two pairs of armoured feet steadily approached the cross-passage and halted briefly before moving on. Sindiel crept cautiously back to the main path in time to see the backs of two kabalite warriors disappearing in the direction he had just come from.

  He moved the opposite way, reflecting bitterly on how, once again, providence had demonstrated its habit of pitching him into situations he was ill prepared for. He had come to El’Uriaq’s lair with no clear objective in mind; only some vague notion of seeing how it felt, as if that would confirm or dispel his fears, with an underlying idea that he would improvise heroically from there. Now he had wandered inside an area that was being actively patrolled with no adequate explanation for what he was doing here. Destiny had left him with no choice but to sneak in further, if only to look for another way out.

  It always happened like this. Sindiel had never thought of himself as a renegade, indeed he felt he had laboured long and hard to try and find purpose in his life. He had come to believe that his being birthed on a craftworld was a matter of mischance and concluded that he had never really been intended for such a hard, narrow life until some hiccup in destiny had cast him into it. He had rebelled often and joyously against the strictures of the seers and moralising dogma of his companions, conceiving it as his adoptive destiny to mix things up a little.

  The few pranks he had played and the lessons he had attempted to teach to his moribund fellow travellers on the craftworld had done little to endear him to them or vice versa. Slowly but surely he had been expelled into the chilly outer darkness of social seclusion, there to watch others undertake their meaningless journeys along different paths; gardener, sculptor, entertainer, philosopher, artisan, warrior, on and on. It appeared to him that their aim was a lifetime of well-rounded mediocrity and he despised them for it.

  He had briefly flirted with the warrior path but found it to be the most tiresomely restrictive and ritualised of them all. Everything on the warrior path seemed focused on how to stop being a warrior, how to deny that part of the psyche that lusted for violence. When he was offered the opportunity to leave his beautiful prison and escape into the wider universe he’d jumped at the chance – even now he remembered the weary shrug the seer had given when Sindiel asked him what would happen if he chose not to go.

  For the most part the great and wonderful universe had proved to be nothing but mud and squalor warring with ignorance and stubbornness. His supposedly disaffected ranger companions proved to be merely tourists with a taste for the outdoors and a fondness for meddling in the affairs of others. None of them had the slightest intention of questioning their way of life or attempting to forge their own path. They were simply bored and disaffected so they took the prescribed craftworld path of life that was labelled ‘for the bored and the disaffected’. Sindiel had wanted more out of life than that.

  Well, he’d certainly found it now, and damned his immortal soul into the bargain. Listening to seers prattle about the perils of the warp and the spirit-self was one thing, entering the daemon-haunted ruins of Shaa-dom had been quite another. He found he now believed in the existence of his immortal soul as he had never done before.

  He could also blame Motley for that. Ever since Iron Thorn the grey one’s words kept coming back to haunt him. Sindiel had almost died of fright when his ankle was grabbed as he lay waiting near the gate, then grown furious when he saw the grinning half-masked face bending over him.

  ‘Don’t think that this is The End,’ the masked one had said. ‘You have more choices, more chances ahead of you than you can ever know. Your path will always be your own to make no matter what they tell you. Remember that it’s never too late to try and reclaim your soul.’

  The nagging idea that he could still do… something to recover himself had stayed with him ever since. He’d thought himself committed to the dark path, that he’d finally spat in the face of the universe once and for all and sworn himself to win power by any means. Now he had it he found that the power he’d sought was meaningless. He could feel the first tendrils of the empty hunger of the Commorrites kindling inside him and he did not like it one bit. He was starting to understand the unremitting fury of the dark city and its need to consume everything that it touched. If they stopped for even a moment the yawning void that was constantly at their heels would engulf them all. Now that an eternal life of parasitism and exploitation was laid out before him he found the idea repellent.

  So, Sindiel the fool had come wandering into the monster’s lair without a plan, as if a single idiotic act could redeem the murder of companions and the betrayal of secrets he had sworn to keep for all eternity. It struck him that perhaps he was being motivated by some self-destructive urge to court death in an effort to assuage his guilt. He found the idea oddly cheering and pushed on with a lighter step.

  By now his feet had carried him to a bell-shaped chamber with three other passages leading out of it. Down the left passage he could hear distant sounds like shrieks or skirling music or some mixture of both. From directly ahead blew warm, moist air that was heavy with the sickly-sweet scents of roasting meat. Neither sounds, smells nor lights emanated from the right-hand path, and after a moment’s hesitation Sindiel turned and went in that direction.

  The passage twisted and sloped downwards, the rough-hewn walls occasionally lit by a dully-gleaming light gem. The walls sweated moisture that dribbled down into a small rivulet that was slowly eroding a channel in the centre of the passage. Sindiel avoided the sluggish liquid with distaste, trying not to think about what manner of effluvia might have seeped its way down here over the millennia.

  He already felt he could confirm his worst fears. There was definitely a pervasive sense of wrongness in the catacombs, and it was more than just paranoia that was making Sindiel fear some hideous monstrosity lurked in every shadow. He stopped in his tracks, trying to make out the blurred form he could just see up ahead. The corridor appeared to open out and there was… something just visible where the light grew dimmer. It looked uncomfortably like an uneven, vaguely conical boulder made of flesh.

  Sindiel turned to retreat but a sound made him stop short. Thin and distant, it plucked at his consciousness, sounding as much in his mind as in his ears. His first flush of terror drained away as he listened. It was a song being sung without words. There was nothing insidious or threatening about it as he had first feared, it was no net for the mind or soul except in the subtlest sense. It was a song filled with sadness and longing, with a faint but lingering undercurrent of hope.

  Sindiel’s mind staggered. Surely only one soul in Commorragh could give voice to its suffering so poignantly as this. A pure heart. He had convinced himself that she had been killed and her soul devoured in some hideous orgy by Yllithian and his cohorts long ago, never quite knowing if he should hope that the worldsinger was really dead or not. He had not heard the worldsinger’s voice since Linthis had first introduced them at the World Shrine on Lileathanir. Happier times, of course, before he had decided to sell her into slavery for his own gain.

  It had all seemed like a game at first, with Sindiel destined to be the winner. He couldn’t believe his luck when he’d found the message sphere, apparently dropped in haste during the aftermath of a sharp skirmish with the dark kin. Lately he found he wondered about that seemingly chance discovery, knowing the depths of Commor
rite cunning as he did now. Without really knowing why he’d concealed the smooth sphere of chalcedony from his companions and began to study it without their knowledge. After much secret experimentation he’d found the sphere allowed him to communicate with an earnest-seeming prince from the dark city, a semi-legendary place of wickedness and depravity that had always exerted a deadly fascination on Sindiel.

  Archon Yllithian had made Commorragh seem romantically dangerous and alluring. He made no attempt to conceal the fierce competition and the high stakes, nor the boldness and determination needed to thrive there. It had all been music to Sindiel’s jaded ears – freedom at last! An opportunity to live life to the full! Sindiel bitterly realised now that Yllithian had been artfully manipulating him, stringing him along with hints of the forbidden pleasures that came with mastery over others as he decried the dull, monastic strictures of the craftworlds.

  Sindiel wondered how many other disaffected eldar had been drawn in by the siren call of Commorragh in similar ways down the centuries. Many, it seemed. Commorragh seethed with teeming multitudes more numerous than a thousand craftworlds, a million. From Sindiel’s perspective it seemed as if his entire race was gathered in this one city, the craftworlds and Exodites merely country cousins that were indulged despite their introverted ways. The proud remnants of eldar power and majesty resided firmly in Commorragh, dark though it might be.

  When Yllithian had asked for something it was always a trifle, merely warnings of where the rangers travelled to avoid accidentally clashing with his warriors or news on where the resource-starved city could find certain ores and minerals it required. In exchange Yllithian took Sindiel into his confidence and explained his hopes of reuniting the disparate branches of the eldar; a process that must be begun by confronting the cruel and terrible tyrant that ruled Commorragh, Asdrubael Vect, and making him mend his wicked ways.

  One day Yllithian had told him that the dark city needed a sacrifice to usher in the new age, a sacrifice that they could not make themselves. Commorragh needed a martyr to break its chains and only he, Sindiel, had the strength and clarity to help his enslaved brethren in their hour of need. From there Sindiel had done most of the work by convincing himself that one life being sacrificed to save billions was a small price to pay. At the time it had seemed an absurdly simple conclusion to reach, so clear. Only later did Sindiel, fool that he was, begin to understand the dark schemes he’d become ensnared in.

  He’d thought they had killed the worldsinger in some daemon’s bargain to bring back El’Uriaq. But the worldsinger was alive, at least in some sense of the word. Sindiel wondered with sick horror whether she had been transformed into the lump of flesh ahead of him. That was apparently exactly the kind of twisted thing the haemonculi did with their spare time.

  It took a long time for Sindiel to screw up enough courage to move forwards and investigate. He could think of a hundred reasons to retreat and only one to go on, but that one beat the rest hands down. He simply had to know. Eventually he drew his pistol for a little moral support and crept down the passage. He reached a point where he could see that the passage became a causeway across a darkly glistening pool. In the distance a single, broad pillar wider than a tower reared up to support a ceiling lost in the shadows above.

  The fleshy boulder he had seen sat halfway between Sindiel and the pillar. He realised with a rush of relief that it seemed as if the singing was coming from beyond, from the tower-like pillar in the distance. Watching the disturbing object before him more closely Sindiel became convinced that it was a creature of some kind, a guardian sculpted by the haemonculi from living flesh. He could make out scarred skin stretched over bunched shoulders and thick haunches. The thing was squatting in the centre of the causeway, head tucked down and out of sight beneath slab-like arms. A miniature forest sprouted from its thick spine, rows of syringes and bio-pumps that were burbling quietly as they circulated whatever acidic ichor had been used to replace its blood. Sindiel felt absurdly relieved that he couldn’t see the thing’s face.

  Sindiel edged out on to the causeway, his courage growing slightly when the thing didn’t react to the movement. He walked closer slowly, placing each foot carefully to produce not a whisper of sound. The guardian-creature shifted slightly and Sindiel froze. The worldsinger’s lament continued to weave through the still air, telling of a place where all life came together within the world spirit, where all anguish was eased and all enmities forgotten. Several deep breaths huffed from beneath the creature’s arms before the thing settled down again into what Sindiel hoped was a deeper slumber.

  There was barely enough room on either edge of the causeway to squeeze past the creature without touching it but Sindiel wasn’t prepared to try wading into the pool instead. Something about the dark, still expanse seemed more dangerous to him than the guardian squatting before him on the causeway. The enigmatic tower and the plaintive sounds of the worldsinger’s song drew him onwards.

  He moved with painstaking precision, mastering his fear to walk softly past the thing. He reached the halfway point safely and drew a little courage from that, horribly aware of the animal warmth and closeness of the guardian. He had just stepped onto the causeway beyond the creature when the singing stopped. Sindiel froze again, willing himself to become invisible.

  The mountain of flesh beside him erupted with a roar, its tree-trunk arms flailing at the causeway with hammer-like blows. A face masked in black iron glared out at Sindiel from beneath hulking shoulders, its red, soulless eyes aflame with hatred of all living things. Sindiel shrieked and leapt backwards, his heels skidding at the brink of the sinister pool.

  With a motion almost too quick to see the thing grabbed for him with spade-like hands. Sindiel tried to hurl himself to one side but couldn’t make his limbs move fast enough to evade the rampaging creature. It seized him and pulled him close to its scarred chest in a bone-crushing embrace. Iron-fanged jaws scraped through his rich clothing to reveal the fine mesh armour he wore beneath. A few seconds more and the clashing fangs would bite through into his flesh.

  Sindiel’s pistol had flown from his hand in the instant he was grabbed. Now in desperation he tried to punch forwards with his pinned arm. The feeble impact of his knuckles barely scuffed the iron-hard flesh that they struck, but the device still bound to his wrist was infinitely more effective. Invisible strands of gossamer wire shot out of the concealed weapon, slipping through his sleeve, through the creature’s scarred hide and into its flesh as easily as if they were all made of water. The guardian roared again and dropped Sindiel, bruised and bleeding, onto the causeway so that it could clutch at the tiny wound he’d succeeded in making in its side. Syringes in its spine hissed as they began automatically injecting coagulants to seal the minor breach and stimulants to provoke the grotesque guardian into a berserker frenzy.

  But the wound was deceptive. Sindiel’s hidden weapon was Motley’s parting gift to him in Iron Thorn: an ancient type seldom seen in the later ages of the eldar, called a Harlequin’s kiss. In the brief instant that the kiss touched the guardian’s flesh, metres-long monomolecular filaments were sent looping throughout its body. As tough as it was the altered creature could not survive having its insides reduced to the consistency of soup by the unfurling wires. The hulking guardian sagged and then toppled from the causeway with a final, despairing groan, disappearing into the dark pool with barely a ripple.

  Sindiel lay where he had fallen, gasping for breath. He waited helplessly for a rush of running feet and hands roughly seizing him, but no one came. Slowly his heart stopped hammering and he began to recover his wits. He cautiously moved his limbs one by one to find if any of them were broken. Wrenched and painful as they all were everything seemed to be fully functional, although his ribs were aflame with agony at every breath he took. After some minutes he rolled over and cautiously levered himself upright. He stood gazing along the remaining strip of causeway to the tower, wondering if the un
seen worldsinger had deliberately tried to bring about his death. He tottered forwards, unsure whether he now sought absolution or vengeance.

  A rough stair had been hacked out of the dull stone of the pillar. The stair rose in a precipitous spiral from its base and quickly disappeared from sight. Sindiel wearily began to climb upwards almost on hands and knees, his torn clothes flapping about him.

  After a seemingly endless climb the stair opened onto a low landing that had been made by widening a great horizontal crack in the pillar. Many lamps were hung within, illuminating the grotto-like crack with a wash of soft white light. Of the few furnishings to be found there the only one of note was a richly carved bed of dark wood, or more accurately its occupant. The worldsinger Laryin sat in the bed watching Sindiel struggle up the last few steps into view. She was bound at the neck by a metal collar with a chain attached that was in turn stapled to the wall. Otherwise she appeared unharmed, though her eyes seemed like limpid pools of misery. All thoughts of vengeance fled from him at the sight.

  ‘It’s you,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right, me. The one that got you into this. I–’ Sindiel fell silent, unable to meet her eyes. He had rehearsed many scenarios in his mind but found them all in tatters now that he had reached the moment of truth.

  ‘I–I’m sorry,’ was all he could think to say.

  To his surprise she laughed, not with bitterness or mockery but with a pure sound of joy that seemed like a breath of spring in that dark place. Sindiel blinked at her in surprise and that made her laugh again. He wondered if she had been driven insane by her experiences.

  ‘After all you’ve done you’re still an innocent,’ she said at last. ‘That gives me hope. You’re wondering if I’ve gone mad – no I haven’t. They can hurt me but they can’t touch me.’