Unfortunately not even Uverashki’s consummate skills in the arts of flesh-sculpting and excruciation could distract the archons from one another. The atmosphere crackled with an undercurrent of barely restrained tension. Bitter rivalries, murderous jealousies and long-running vendettas of such vehemence existed between the archons that they could snuff out suns and consign entire races to oblivion.
Among them there was Valossian Sythrac, the soul hunter who acted as archon of Vect’s own Black Heart kabal. He stalked impatiently back and forth as he awaited the call for action from his master. Nearby Archon Malixian of the Ninth Raptrex perched in his feathered cloak and beaked mask mournfully contemplating the destruction that the Dysjunction had wrought upon his beloved aviaries. Lady Aurelia Malys, archon of the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue, whispered conspiratorially with Archon Khromys of the Kabal of the Obsidian Rose, a renowned artificer and creator with a mind as sharp as the monomolecular blades she forged. Lord Xerathis, archon of the Kabal of the Broken Sigil, stood to one side gazing out of the atrium’s many slit-like windows. Xerathis was looking across the riven cityscape of Commorragh with a voracious expression, perhaps wishing that the damage done there had been by his own hand.
Such games as these great leaders were wont to play with one another had brought untold misery to countless billions in the past, but usually only outside the confines of the great port-city of Commorragh. Assassinations, ambushes, infiltrations, blackmail and kidnapping were the tools of choice within the eternal city, lest the supreme overlord should take issue with stronger measures being used. Now the archons were constrained to sit and wait upon the tyrant’s command while their home burned around them. Even among such paragons of ancient wickedness as these the strain of inaction was beginning to tell.
With the possible exception of Valossian Sythrac it would have been a mistake to think of the assembled archons as being Asdrubael Vect’s staunchest supporters. That would be to give them entirely too much credit. Personal loyalty was a coin of little value in Corespur or anywhere else in Commorragh. Rather these archons were the ones most fatally bound to Asdrubael Vect in one form or another – whether through his patronage, his protection, the threat of his retribution or because of secrets known only to themselves and Vect.
Over the centuries the supreme overlord had spun a web of subtle interdependencies through Commorragh to the point where he could command these particular archons with every confidence of being obeyed. Their kabals and their strength were reliant on the existing order in the eternal city and thus any threat to that order also represented a threat to them as individuals too. Not one of them could or would trust any of the others for a moment, but in the current crisis they would act in perfect concert to maintain their collective grip on the reins of power. Even traitorous murderers can be persuaded to work together in the presence of a greater threat.
As the finely etched doors of the scrying chamber swung open, all of the archons glanced expectantly towards it, each perhaps anticipating that Vect would be calling for them alone. The pallid slave that appeared found himself pinioned by the merciless, black gaze of a dozen individuals steeped in untold centuries of murder and torture. To his credit the slave swallowed only once before announcing in a quavering voice.
‘The supreme overlord calls for the lord Sythrac and the lady Malys.’
His words were greeted with a frosty silence. The two so named exchanged a calculating look before striding confidently into the scrying chamber. Behind them the remaining archons were left to contemplate one another and reassess their potential standings in the supreme overlord’s eyes.
‘So the faithful hound has returned just in time to heed his master’s call,’ Malys observed slyly as the doors swung shut behind them.
‘It only remains to be seen why the master calls for his bitch at the same moment,’ Sythrac shot back. Lady Malys smiled thinly at his crude response. In truth Vect’s desire for her had waned all too quickly. Malys’s quick wit and cunning mind – attributes the supreme overlord had once found so highly attractive – seemed only to irritate him now. Finding herself paired with Vect’s puppet kabal-master was a novel and not entirely reassuring development.
‘It was fortuitous that you escaped the moment of Dysjunction, Valossian, it was quite the most terrible I’ve witnessed at its height. How is it that you always have the good fortune to be away at just the right moment?’
Sythrac paused and looked her full in the face before answering. Malys was renowned as an astonishing, indeed bewitching, beauty even by the extreme aesthetics of High Commorrite society. Unsurprisingly Valossian Sythrac seemed entirely unmoved by the sight of her. He knew that the beautiful face was merely a mask over a cold, intricate intellect of cogs and gears. Her comradely observation was just a probe, a reconnaissance-by-fire to reveal weakness or self-doubt on his part. It was easy to rebuff as he had none to be revealed.
‘The webway was riven and the portals failed as soon as the Dysjunction occurred,’ Sythrac said flatly. ‘Finding my way back was… challenging. Had I delayed leaving the Sable Marches by even an hour I would have been completely trapped there. So tell me, Aurelia, if I knew what was about to occur why would I go hunting in some backwater and risk not being able to come back at all? Now, assuming that your pointless curiosity has been satisfied, I, for one, do not wish to keep our supreme overlord waiting any longer.’
Malys smiled radiantly and nodded indulgently to him as if to imply that their brief dalliance had been at Sythrac’s own behest. He paid her no heed and stalked away with the dangerous poise of a hunting cat. The scrying chamber was circular in plan. Its faceted walls rose high overhead until they came together into a central point lost in shadows. The floor of the chamber was almost entirely occupied by concentric rings of tall, irregular crystals, each flattened and polished on their inward-pointing face. At the centre of it all they found Vect poised like a spider in the middle of its web. The supreme overlord was seated in an ugly metal throne with his doppelgänger at his side and his Medusae squatting a discreet distance away.
Both Vect and his double wore identical dark, floor-length robes embossed with eye-twisting sigils of glossy black metal. The whole was topped by a high crown of curling obsidian horns. Sythrac recognised Vect’s regalia as one that he had frequently adopted in the earliest days of his tyranny after his overthrow of the old noble houses. In more recent times Vect had worn it occasionally as a reminder of the past. It was a costume that the supreme overlord affected only when there was momentous, bloody work to be done.
‘Don’t waste time squabbling over my favours, children,’ the supreme overlord observed coldly as they came into view, ‘there’ll be time enough for that later – and I can assure you that not a few disappointments will be entailed in the final reckoning. Now kneel before me.’
Malys and Sythrac knelt as Vect commanded, ritually casting their gaze downwards and exposing their necks as a sign of submission. It was a humiliating ritual and intentionally so, a reminder that even among the apex predators of Commorragh one alone ruled supreme.
Naturally it also offered the supreme overlord an excellent moment of vulnerability to seize or kill those that had displeased him. Long seconds passed for Sythrac and Malys but no blade fell from the shadows. Finally Vect bade them rise and directed their attention outwards to the scrying crystals before speaking. A thousand scenes of destruction, conflict and despair confronted them.
‘The kabals have been busy, they fight with the strength of desperation and so we win our city back step by step. I have watched their progress through the crystals, but that isn’t enough to satisfy me. The time is ripe to reassert control.’ Vect paused, inviting comment.
‘How may the Kabal of the Black Heart serve your wishes, supreme overlord?’ Sythrac said immediately. Both Vect and his duplicate smiled at the archon’s simple statement of loyalty.
‘Very simply, I want y
ou to push through Sorrow Fell to Ashkeri Talon and secure the docking ring. You have my authority to take over the White Flames fortress to use as a base of operations for the duration of the crisis. Tell Yllithian to come and complain to me if he has a problem with that. Kill anyone that attempts to resist your progress, lock down any gates you find that are still open. In a short time I will follow your forces and my Medusae will observe your progress. I hope you haven’t spent so much time hunting the slave races that you’ve lost your edge, Valossian, the city’s fate may rest in your hands. Now go.’
Valossian Sythrac straightened and bowed stiffly to the supreme overlord. He did not believe for a moment that the fate of the city rested in his hands. Sythrac knew Vect well enough to understand that the supreme overlord would never permit such a thing to happen. However, the mere fact that Vect had chosen to flatter him in such terms indicated that the tyrant was in an indulgent mood and at least a little reliant on Sythrac’s dutiful execution of the task in hand. Sythrac pursed his lips and then dared to ask a question.
‘Supreme overlord, may I ask something that is pertinent to my assignment?’
Vect looked at him sharply. The hard, black eyes of the tyrant were an almost palpable force as they swept across Sythrac’s face. The archon of the Black Heart could sense Malys looking at him too, cat-like and inscrutable as she tried to determine if Sythrac had lost his mind. After a moment Vect smiled thinly and said:
‘Very well, Valossian, I shall indulge you by listening to your question, but I will be the judge of the pertinence of your query and whether it deserves an answer. Speak.’
Sythrac bowed his head. ‘I’ve heard it said before that even whilst they are unpredictable no Dysjunction affects the city without cause. Whether it be wars between the Ruinous Powers, ill-starred experiments, sorcerous happenstance or plain perfidy, all Dysjunctions happen for a reason. What was the reason for this occurrence?’
‘An investigation into that matter is under way,’ Vect replied sharply, ‘and its results will be for me alone to know, although I will tell you one thing: the preliminary indications are that this Dysjunction was instigated by a person – or more likely several persons – within the city itself. This was a self-inflicted wound. Now go.’
Sythrac’s eyes burned with cold fire as he nodded his understanding and turned on his heel to leave. The archon of the Kabal of the Black Heart was a remorseless hunter. His sport was the pursuit of famous, and even legendary, souls from among the slave races: heroes, leaders, philanthropists, healers, warriors. Sythrac hunted them all and trapped their souls so that the slave races would always know that their greatest achievers were mere footnotes in a history dictated by the dark city of Commorragh.
The slightest scratch from Sythrac’s deadly huskblade was enough to turn a victim’s body to dust. With its mortal form destroyed the quarry’s soul was left naked to be devoured by the archon’s voracious spirit-traps. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of souls had been captured within Sythrac’s armour, where complex bio-harmonics diverted their stolen energies to invigorate his ancient body. Now Sythrac was determined to turn his skills to the relentless pursuit of those that had threatened his home.
Lady Malys remained silent until Sythrac was out of earshot. She eyed the two Vects speculatively as she tried to decide which of them was the fake. The one sitting in the throne had done all the talking yet that of itself meant nothing. The whole point of a geldling was that it could flawlessly impersonate the original. The two of them seemed to sense her indecision and smiled maliciously at her.
‘I see you have a question of your own,’ the standing one said.
‘It’s written all over that minx-face of yours,’ the one in the throne said.
Malys gave up trying to guess and simply addressed them both. ‘I was going to ask you why you invited both me and Valossian into the chamber together. Then I realised why when you were talking to Valossian – it was just to keep the other archons outside guessing, wasn’t it? You’ll have them all in here in pairs so they will be afraid to plot because you’re so obviously up to something yourself. You really can’t help yourself. It all just comes so naturally to you.’
The Asdrubael Vect that was standing beside the throne shrugged negligently, the one sitting smiled and said carelessly, ‘One does not rule Commorragh for six millennia without gathering many pearls of wisdom, dear heart. Here’s another that I that will dispense to you free of charge – for now anyway – simple precautions cost little and sometimes reap huge rewards. You should learn from this and understand that much like the crystals in this chamber the Asdrubael Vect you see before you is only a single face of a multi-faceted entity.’
Malys kept her serene smile in place while she dissected Vect’s words. He could be implying that both of the individuals she was seeing as Vect were geldlings, and that the real Vect was elsewhere scheming with other forces to win back the city. Equally Vect could be trying to keep her off balance by planting the seeds of doubt in her mind. Machinations came as naturally to the supreme overlord as eating or breathing were performed by others. In either case Vect was successfully dictating the direction of their encounter and that was something she felt constrained to counterattack. Perhaps she could even shake loose some useful information from the old monster.
‘Yet this multi-faceted entity doesn’t know who caused the Dysjunction?’ she retorted with breathtaking boldness, ‘I find it surprising that your omnipresent spies have failed you so badly.’
She knew was taking her life in her hands to speak to Vect so, but she was quite prepared to gamble that the supreme overlord would be willing to play at least for a little while. The fate of the city must surely be weighing heavily on his shoulders by now, what harm a little diversion verbally fencing with an old flame?
The Vect standing beside the throne had hissed at her challenge while the seated one smiled indulgently for a moment and then stood. The two exchanged places, with the one previously seated moving to stand behind the throne while the other seated himself. Malys felt as if she were watching a charlatan’s parlour trick being played out as a strange form of performance art.
‘You would be surprised by what I know,’ the now-sitting Vect said evenly. ‘Suffice it to say that there are complexities beyond those needed by the loyal, straightforward Valossian Sythrac to do his job. The individuals who were responsible for this Dysjunction had outside help. They also benefited from great good fortune and supreme opportunism in equal measure.’
‘Those all sound dangerously like excuses, Asdrubael, or are you just trying to be mysterious with me as well?’
‘I’m giving you what little information you need to perform your role at my dictation,’ the standing Vect said as though he were speaking to an obstreperous child.
‘Surely then you would include the identity of these suspected outsiders that have had a hand in so wounding our beloved city,’ Malys replied, ‘I’ll need to be on the lookout for them, won’t I?’
Both Vects smiled disconcertingly and Malys sensed a shared joke was being made at her expense. The ‘outsiders’ Vect was referring to must be pretty obvious in the flesh – or perhaps they weren’t, and that was the source of the joke. The list of suspects was pretty short anyway; it could only be other eldar or entities from beyond the veil. The slave races lacked both the knowledge and the means to attempt to manipulate the warp in ways that could bring about a Dysjunction.
‘I have a task for you in the lower levels,’ the standing Vect said. ‘Something that will require your skills of both violence and discretion.’
‘Oh goody,’ Malys smiled sweetly, ‘I am yours to command, as Valossian would say. Tell me more.’
‘Go to the Valzho Sinister and bring anyone you find there back to me – alive.’
Malys arched her perfect eyebrows before pouting. ‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘I feel as if you’re trying to get me out of the way for a while. Why would you want to do that, Asdrubael?’
‘You underestimate the importance of the task you’re being given,’ the seated Vect replied sharply. ‘Be on your way before you try my patience. A Dysjunction is a time of change. It means renewal as well as destruction for the city, a clearing of the dead wood to permit new growth. Be mindful which side of that equation you play to, Aurelia, or you may be consumed by the fires when the time comes.’
The audience was over and Malys decided not to try and push her luck any further. Valzho Sinister was deep inside Low Commorragh and despite her flippancy she knew that reaching it during the current crisis would be no small feat… one that would be matched and exceeded by bringing back its inhabitants alive. She smiled to the Vects and turned on her heel with her mind already processing what forces and weaponry to take with her, the feints and disinformation to spread to the other archons about her route and destination.
She caught sight of Vect’s Medusae squatting apparently forgotten a short distance from the throne. The creature’s current host was a grey-skinned, gangling specimen of the slave races. The Medusae itself clung to the host’s head and spine like obscene bunches of fruit, the individual brains of the Medusae collective pulsating gently as they drank in the sensations their host provided them with. Later, Vect had only to pluck one of those obscene fruit and taste of it to relive everything that happened here through the Medusae’s expanded perceptions.
What would the supreme overlord conclude when he reviewed all his meetings with the archons he was relying on for support? Some might well be consigned to the fire if Vect detected any wavering in their loyalty. As Malys left she passed through the circles of scrying crystals and saw the agonies of Commorragh being played out again in flickering silence. Behind her she heard the supreme overlord call out for Malixian and Xerathis to be sent in next. Malys cursed as she caught herself wondering if that meant Vect was going to speak with Archon Khromys alone – no doubt just as he’d intended she would.
Path of the Dark Eldar Page 69