Over the centuries Commorragh has incorporated many other little pearls into its bubble, encrusting itself with a hundred stolen realities to be enslaved and exploited. Ripples in the surface of the membrane can also dislodge these satellites realms, setting them free to drift and realign chaotically.
These phenomena are collectively known to the inhabitants of Commorragh as a ‘Dysjunction’, and most rightly feared. This tale revolves around the Dysjunction the noble’s schemes accidentally brought about, its effects and its resolution.
So, now you know all that brought the tale to this point. Invaluable knowledge that will pay dividends later, I feel sure, although I promise there will be no quizzes. And who am I? Player or narrator or both, I don’t doubt that it will become readily apparent as the drama unfolds. For the present it would be boorish to take centre stage if only for fear you might think this tale is about me. The correct questions for you to address to yourself at this time are these: What do I want? How will I get it? What stands in my way?
CHAPTER 1
CONSEQUENCES
The colony had existed forever. Cradled in darkness the feeders lurked awaiting the call to hunt, the breeders quietly gestated future generations after receiving the caustic seed of the patriarch. The younglings suckled and worried at the feeder’s veins in blind hunger while they impatiently grew and grew to become something other.
The colony lived in eternal night, a soft umbral world made in equal parts from their environment and the woven excrescence of generation after generation of feeders and breeders living and dying. Beneath the colony flowed the river of life, a viscous and unchanging ribbon that gurgled along between the walls of the universe. Food came via the river, sometimes cold and soft as it drifted just beneath the surface, at other times warm and upright as it waded in the gentle current. The feeder’s sensitive spiracles scented every morsel, living or dead, and their ultrasonic shrieks summoned their broodmates to come join the feast before it left the colonies’ world.
Recently, for the first time in uncounted generations, change had come upon the colony. It was something unknown even to the patriarch with all his long-digested wisdom. The breeders trembled with fear and trepidation. The feeders fluttered angrily this way and that, seeking the source of disruption, but the source lay beyond their world and seemingly beyond the walls of the universe. Those seemingly impenetrable walls shook like a birthing breeder and strange, alien sensations swept through the densely clustered bodies of the colony. Food was becoming plentiful, particularly the cold and soft kind, but the colony was not thriving. Madness had gripped some of its members and sent them fleeing into the great unknown. The remainder clustered more tightly than ever, their fear bringing them closer together in the patriarch’s sinewy embrace.
Now a new stimulus had entered the colony’s consciousness. Lights bobbed and slid along the river of life. Light, that hateful invader, meant only one thing – that it was time for the feeders to broach forth in a fluttering wave and quench it with their leathery bodies and their hooked claws. Sometimes light brought food: hot blood to be drunk and raw flesh to be torn and consumed. Other lights were hard and inedible, useless to the colony and only a source of distress until the river bore them away into the great unknown. In either case the feeders would clutch and worry at the source until it was gone and the comforting darkness closed in once more. Individuals mattered not at all – the continuation of the colony was everything.
The powered edge of the blade was inactive but its inherent weight and molecule-sharp edge still sheared through flesh and bone as though it was little more than wet tissue paper. The victim gave a last, despairing high-pitched shriek as it tumbled to its death. This small drama did not serve to silence the speaker for moment.
‘Really? This is the only way out of Commorragh that you could think of on short notice? Even in the midst of an imminent Dysjunction there must be better paths to follow.’
‘Your presence is not required,’ the towering incubus named Morr grunted in response. The incubus viciously swatted at another gloomwing with his great double-handed blade, his klaive to use its correct title. Morr was very keen on being correct, Motley knew, and that was probably the only thing that was preventing the incubus from attacking him. The tunnel was wide but the ceiling was low – Morr could have laid a gauntleted hand flat against the filth-encrusted roof without stretching. Even so the incubus wielded his two-metre long blade in the constricted space with consummate skill and precision, keeping it in constant motion as he tracked his elusive attackers.
His unwanted companion, a slight figure dressed in stylish, if archaic-appearing grey, skipped nimbly to one side as the flying gloomwing flopped into the viscous sludge flowing around Morr’s ankles in two neatly bisected pieces. It joined the pieces of at least a dozen other hook-winged predator-scavengers that had already whirled out of the darkness to attack and found Morr’s klaive waiting for them instead. The simple beasts seemed not to realise the dangerous nature of the prey they were trying to drag down with their numbers so they simply kept coming. What light there was showed an incessant flutter of dark wings circling determinedly just out of reach.
‘Oh come come,’ said the one in grey. ‘We’re on the verge of becoming such fast friends. It would be truly tragic to cut short our glittering association now, surely?’
Morr reversed his klaive and whirled it with both hands, grunting as he slashed out at another darting shape. Traditionally all klaives feature an impaling spike or disembowelling hook projecting forward a hand’s span or so from their flat tip. Morr used his klaive’s hook to snag the gloomwing and drag it within range for a lightning-quick downward stroke. The unfortunate creature tumbled to join its bisected fellows in the muck.
The incubus’s companion swayed negligently to one side to avoid another diving gloomwing but never stopped talking. ‘I confess I’m a little hurt by that, Morr, I mean after all we’ve been through together you might at least indulge me with a verbal response rather than grunting at me…’
The incubus ignored the speaker and waded forwards, slashing left and right in a continuous figure of eight. The other skipped after him keeping up a continuous chatter. ‘I came all this way, after all. Found you in that dank hole you were hiding in and warned you we had to get out while we still could. The thanks I get is you stomping off into what can only be described as a sewer without a word… besides which, you still need my help. Who else can testify on your behalf when there were no other witnesses to Kraillach’s death?’
Morr paused and turned to face the grey-clad figure, swinging his klaive without a glance to skewer another leather-winged assailant as it flew at his back. Morr’s blank-faced helm regarded his companion with unmistakable malevolence. When viewed at close quarters it became clear that the other’s clothing was not grey but a form of motley, tiny diamond panes of black and white that endlessly repeated. The too-mobile face below the domino mask was bright and smooth like that of a painted doll.
In contrast the incubus was covered in dark armour from head to foot with scant decoration saving short horns and tusks curving from its sinister, narrow-slotted helm. There was something about the incubus’s resolutely taciturn nature that implied that, by extension, he found this loquacious individual irritating in the extreme. Morr’s klaive twitched involuntarily as if he were only barely manageing to suppress the urge to strike down his companion through a heroic exertion of willpower. For once the armoured warrior broke his customary silence in what amounted, for him, to a lengthy declamation.
‘I cannot prevent you accompanying me… Motley, and I do owe you… a debt,’ Morr admitted reluctantly, ‘but do not imagine I need you or want you to help me again. The hierarchs shall be the final judge of my actions and they will hear no testimony but my own.’
Motley frowned sadly. ‘I’m afraid that despite your cogent disputations destiny has yet to have her wicked way with us both.
Even were we parted I feel positive we would be cast back together again momentarily until the Dysjunction is resolved – you know it’s no coincidence that the masque sent me to you in your hour of need.
‘All is not lost, Morr, but only if we play out our roles in the drama together. There are forces that you do not, indeed cannot, know of in the greater universe that are moving speedily towards a resolution that will bode very ill indeed for Commorragh if it transpires as they would have it. If you’ll just accept my help again I can guide you to a better future.’
The incubus gazed at Motley silently for a moment more before turning and stomping away through the ooze without further comment. The sudden movement scattered a handful of gathering gloomwings like leaves. The motley-clad one pursed full red lips beneath its domino-mask and then followed with a sigh. Further back along the tunnel, unnoticed by either the incubus or his unwanted companion, stealthy figures dogged their steps.
Archon Aez’ashya stood upon a narrow path of silver above the kilometres-deep caldera of the volcano-like arena of the Blades of Desire. The thin, cold air of High Commorragh blew chill against her exposed flesh and the captive suns, the Ilmaea, circling above seemed to give little warmth. The uppermost edges of the arena were etched with gleaming white stone terraces where she could see a sparse-looking gathering of shivering spectators. Distance and the size of the arena made the numbers deceptive at first glance. In reality hundreds of kabal members had come to see the challenge in person, and many more were watching by indirect means. She could feel their presence hovering around her like a pack of silent, hungry ghosts.
The silver path ran from one edge of the rim to the other, leaping arrow-straight over the centre of the hollow cone at the heart of the fortress. Anything falling from here would have an unbroken plunge until it hit monofilament nets strung above the forges, cell blocks and practice areas at the bottom of the pit. At its mid-point the path widened into a disc no wider than Aez’ashya’s outstretched arms from its centre to its periphery. Her challenger was already waiting there for her with readied weapons gleaming. Aez’ashya strode out confidently and brusquely acknowledged the cheers of her followers on the terraces. The cheers of her loyal kabalites seemed somewhat muted and in this case it wasn’t only the distance that was to blame.
Aez’ashya had no illusions – she was archon of the Blades of Desire only because another had made it so. There were plenty who doubted her ability to hold onto the position, and some who hoped to gain it in her stead. To truly rule the kabal Aez’ashya knew she was going to have to prove herself over and over again. The very smallest beginning of that was disposing of her immediate challengers, three so far, four including her current opponent, Sybris.
Sybris had been member of the clique of hekatrix bloodbrides who were present at Archon Xelian’s ‘accidental’ death. Previously Sybris had been well favoured, well enough to aspire to replacing Aez’ashya as succubus until Xelian’s sudden fall had frustrated her ambitions. That frustration had quickly flared into open antagonism when Aez’ashya was thrust into the position of archon in Xelian’s stead. Aez’ashya knew Sybris well, they had sported together both on the battlefield and off it in the past. In fact Aez’ashya knew enough about Sybris’s style and methods to have a small qualm of doubt about the upcoming bout.
Sybris favoured two half-moon shaped blades that she used with a hip-swinging, straight-armed, momentum-driven technique she’d learned from Quist disciples in Port Carmine. The blades were heavy enough to smash through a parrying blade and Sybris was agile enough to snap them outward to catch a would-be dodge with eye-blurring speed. But it wasn’t her enemy’s weapons that particularly concerned Aez’ashya. It wasn’t even Sybris’s lustrous, wire-strung braid of hair. The braid was tricked out as a flexible weapon some two-metres long and tipped with barbs and blades. Aez’ashya knew that Sybris could seamlessly work strikes with that braid into her other attacks. One flick of her neck just so and Sybris could cripple or kill an opponent. An unexpected slash from the side or below… those half-moon blades whirling up for a decapitating strike and it was all over. But that wasn’t what was giving Aez’ashya doubts either.
Before every other challenge someone had sent Aez’ashya advice on how to defeat her opponent: a weakness pointed out, a poison suggested, a habitual manoeuvre to avoid. This time there had been nothing, no sly messenger with words of wisdom and so Aez’ashya was truly on her own. She repeated to herself that it didn’t matter, and that it didn’t mean that Sybris had received a message of her own that revealed the secret of how to defeat Aez’ashya.
It didn’t matter. Aez’ashya was wearing a pair of hydra gauntlets, skin-tight armoured gloves that sprouted a profusion of lethal crystalline blades from fists, forearms and elbows. She could feel the sharp tingle of the drug serpentin coursing through her veins, the mélange of hormonal extracts heightening awareness and sharpening her already preternaturally quick reflexes even further. She would overcome this challenge with or without outside help.
All these thoughts had raced through Aez’ashya’s mind as she walked out along the narrow silver path. Now she was within a dozen strides of the centre disk and Sybris raised her twin moon-blades in salute. The movement seemed a little awkward, shading just beneath the fluidity and poise that could be expected of a hekatrix bloodbride. Aez’ashya kept her face in a cold, haughty sneer but she laughed warmly inside. Others might be unwilling to help but she still had her own tricks to deploy, as Sybris would discover to her dismay very soon.
The slave’s fingers had been cut down to little more than stumps. Burn tissue on its hands and face made it look like it had been a necessary surgical procedure, but most probably it wasn’t. Kharbyr still found himself vaguely admiring the deft agility the slave demonstrated in chopping and weighing powders, the thick stumps gripping the narrow blade and handling the thin twists of paper with easy familiarity. Kharbyr looked at the slave’s horribly burnt face disinterestedly for a moment and yawned, wondering when his contact would arrive. He was waiting beneath an awning fashioned in the appearance of trailing orchids of silver and gold outside a drug den on the Grand Canal and his patience was rapidly running out.
Once upon a time a wide promenade of polished stone tiles a hundred strides across had separated the black, sinuous loop of the Grand Canal from the lower palaces of Metzuh tier. Over time the drug dens and flesh halls of Metzuh had sprawled out to clutter the open space with furnishings, slave cages, awnings and apparatus. Each expansion had been the subject of a bitterly fought turf war between neighbouring establishments, forming an untidy patchwork of feuds and vendettas as varied as the objects themselves. The slave’s little hutch off to one side of the entrance had probably cost a thousand lives in duels and murders over the years, the silver and gold awning had been around for so long that it had probably cost a million.
The battles for ownership of the banks of the Grand Canal were a crucible that had done much to form the network of petty kabals making up the current power structure of lower Metzuh. Eventually a point of equilibrium had been reached where no one dared to claim the last twenty paces up to the canal’s edge for fear of upsetting one or other of the self-proclaimed lords of lower Metzuh. The uneasy peace was normally good for business yet right now the slave was bereft of customers. The miserable creature still kept cutting, re-cutting and weighing its wares with all the eagerness of a pet performing a trick. Kharbyr, for his part, had already sampled all that the slave had on offer and decided he would rather stay sober.
He glanced up and down the empty canal bank for the hundredth time and considered whether to bother keeping his rising anger in check any longer. There was no sign of anyone watching him right now, but that meant nothing. There had been an indefinable sense of someone or something following him for days now, and Kharbyr had taken elaborate measures to shake off any stealthy bloodhounds on his way to the meeting. The fact he could sense nothing now could just
mean they were being more careful. It didn’t help that the wrack he was here to meet was late, again, and his choice of meeting place was a reminder of past transgressions that Kharbyr had worked hard to overlook. He had a dozen other places to be that all promised better entertainment and profit than this particular corner of Commorragh. The only thing keeping him here was that the wrack, Xagor, only ever ran errands on his master’s account and that meant it was probably important to find out what he wanted.
Most of the epicureans were out holding a noisy processional along the open space at the bank of the Grand Canal. It was partially a diversion for bored pleasure seekers and partially a display of power – an implicit warning to the adjacent districts not to mess with lower Metzuh. The city had been tense of late, taut with anticipation of… something. There was change in the air, a forest-fire scent of imminent disaster that the inhabitants of Commorragh were always quick to sense and react to. Rumours were rife about murders and skulduggery up in High Commorragh and it was said that the great tyrant was distracted by sinister machinations even his castigators could not seem to fathom. In back alleys and hidden souks soothsayers and rune casters muttered of dire portents. The desperate and the dispossessed were gathering in dark corners and plotting how to seize advantage in the coming troubles.
So it was that the Epicurean Lords had summoned their coteries for a show of strength. All over Commorragh similar scenes were being played out as restless cults, covens and kabals gathered to promote their claims to dominance in the prevailing climate uncertainty. Kharbyr could have confirmed a lot of their worst fears based on what he’d witnessed in person over the past weeks, but he chose to stay in the shadows and smirk at their posturing instead.
Path of the Dark Eldar Page 37