Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  ‘The Black Descent also have something that you want,’ Kharbyr said. ‘Someone that you’ve been looking for ever since she disappeared.’

  Yllithian’s dark gaze bored into Kharbyr’s stolen face for a moment. The archon of the White Flames could not disguise his interest at the implication. Present him with a simple puzzle, Angevere had said, and Yllithian won’t be able to resist solving it. It seemed a roundabout route to go for getting vengeance on Bellathonis, but Angevere knew her way around a High Commorraghan courtly intrigue in ways that a thief and assassin like Kharbyr never could.

  ‘You’re inferring that the Black Descent have my dear old friend, Xelian,’ Yllithian said. ‘That’s an interesting theory. Sadly I can’t imagine that you have anything to back it up with.’

  ‘Xelian was one of your oldest and most powerful allies. With her back you could have the Blades of Desire on your side again and many of the biggest wych cults would follow. You can’t win against Vect without her.’

  ‘So you say,’ Yllithian grated dangerously. Kharbyr didn’t respond to the jab. Angevere had set things up so he could only make statements and not quibble over facts. Perhaps Yllithian could win against Vect on his own, but enough hints had dropped while they spied on him through the crystal that he was actively looking to recruit more allies. According to Angevere, Xelian was the biggest ally Yllithian had. Kharbyr plunged on with his script and tried to shake the feeling that he was digging himself into an ever-deeper hole.

  ‘If you just give me what I need I can lead your warriors into the heart of the Black Descent’s labyrinth,’ Kharbyr said. ‘You can retrieve Xelian and I can see my former coven-mates are repaid for inconveniencing me.’

  Yllithian smirked at the suggestion. ‘You would drain away my forces on the very eve of battle,’ he said, ‘to go on a wild hunt led only by your word, and no doubt you see yourself commanding this… expedition.’ The archon of the White Flames shook his head and looked skywards before continuing. There was a dense weaving of fire-trails high above the fortress. Razorwings and Voidravens glittered in the wan light of the Ilmaea as they pirouetted impatiently awaiting the orders to attack.

  ‘Vect’s lackeys are already at my gates demanding entry. Very soon they will muster their strength to try and crush the White Flames fortress. We will test Vect’s hordes against my readiness to receive them. You have come too late, haemonculus.’

  Kharbyr could feel his chances of success slipping away. The idea had been to get help from Yllithian for tracking down the real Bellathonis. Now it appeared that the archon of the White Flames didn’t care about being blackmailed by the Black Descent nor did he want to send any troops after Xelian. Kharbyr had run out of scripted inducements to offer. He decided to try something else.

  ‘Why not come yourself?’ Kharbyr said. ‘You could lead our expedition in person and be assured of its proper handling. Perhaps more importantly you could be absent from the fortress at the critical moment just in case your readiness proves to be less complete than that of Vect’s forces.’

  You fool! He’ll never agree to that!+ Angevere’s whisper was a hateful hiss, +Yllithian is too much of a coward to lead from the front.+

  ‘I could not leave my loyal followers at a time like this,’ Yllithian protested, yet Kharbyr found the claim unconvincing – the archon was considering the idea at least. Perhaps he really feared Vect’s hordes more than the labyrinth of the Black Descent.

  ‘You would be able to tell your warriors – in all honesty – that you were undertaking a dangerous mission to return your old ally, Xelian, to the fight,’ Kharbyr said. ‘If they are as loyal as you say they’ll welcome the news and cheer your progress. If you get stuck inside the fortress you’ll stop being able to influence the outcome of events outside it.’

  Yllithian cocked his head to one side for a moment as if he were listening to an invisible presence. The archon seemed to come to a decision and his dark eyes blazed with sudden purpose. ‘We must move quickly,’ Yllithian declared, ‘Sythrac is approaching through Sorrow Fell and his outriders have already thrown a cordon around the fortress. If we go now it will be possible to slip through before the main force arrives. Any later will be too late.’

  Kharbyr was a little stunned by the archon’s turnabout. He had only thought to introduce a little time pressure and now he was suddenly being swept up by it. The plan had been to ingratiate himself gradually and gain power by dangling tempting bait in front of Yllithian. A full-on rescue mission hunting for Xelian in the trap-filled depths of the Black Descent’s labyrinth had never been the point – but that was apparently precisely what Kharbyr was going to get.

  Child, what have you done?+ Angevere sighed bitterly inside his mind.

  Chapter 9

  GROTESQUERIES

  The Decapitator was a patient hunter, indeed there were none more so. He had tracked individuals for decades across scores of different worlds, he had lain patiently in wait for weeks at a time awaiting the perfect moment to take his prize. He waited while the prey that thought it was not prey fought a mandrake pack to a standstill. He had witnessed another pack arrive and take their prize for themselves. Intrigued, he descended afterwards to examine the marks the packs had left behind.

  Kheradruakh found the shaky bastardisations of the bloodline marks the two mandrake packs had left behind. He knew the signs of old, two brother-kings with a bitter, long-standing rivalry that was of no interest to the Decapitator. The outsiders, though, had left marks of their own declaring fealty to one of the brothers. This additional wrongness only served to irritate Kheradruakh further. Creatures from the outer realm were prey to be hunted, not rivals or brood-mates to be dallied with.

  His instinct had drawn him onwards, as it always did, towards his most perfect prizes. He had trailed the mandrake pack and its shrinking coffle of slaves until they reached the stronghold of one of the brothers. Now he waited again and patiently listened to the whispers on the night breeze.

  Xagor dragged another corpse across the uneven floor and dumped it into the flesh pit with a satisfied grunt. He lifted a long iron paddle and pushed the cadaver beneath the bubbling slurry. The stench was indescribable but to a wrack like Xagor it was simply the smell of industry in motion and of raw materials being prepared for work. In his own strange way he was the happiest he had been since coming to Aelindrach. The place the master had chosen for his newest temporary home was low and cave-like; the pits in the floor were irregular scoops where tailored microorganisms rendered down the corpse-flesh into a malleable tallow. With the proper stimuli, Xagor knew, this basic clay could then be reshaped into bone, muscle, tissue and even (if one were skilled enough in the arts of flesh-sculpting as his master was) the most complex of the internal organs.

  To one side of the pits there was a mismatched array of crude, upright sarcophagi ranged along the wall of the cave. They were a far cry from the ornate, crystal-fronted regenerative chambers used by the Commorrite elite to restore themselves. These sarcophagi were formed from slabs of roughly shaped bone joined by glistening strips of gristle. They stood up to three metres tall, and a snaking mass of tubes and conduits connected the flesh pits to the occupants of each one. The occupants themselves were monstrous, hulking brutes almost as wide as they were tall. Their features were obscured by a clinging membrane across the front of the sarcophagi, but the shapes pressing on the membranous wall from the inside suggested a substantial amount of sinew, corded muscle and jagged bone featured in their physiognomy.

  Bellathonis was there beside the sarcophagi, checking on each of them with the maternal concern of a broody hen. He was clad in robes of black hide, and had blanched his skin so that it more closely approached the haemonculi’s personal ideal of pure milk-white. It made Xagor particularly happy that his master seemed more and more like his old self. The loss of Kharbyr made Xagor a little bit sad but he consoled himself that the loss of the master w
ould have made him much, much sadder.

  The master looked troubled, however, as he constantly re-examined one sarcophagus with a lens-like apparatus he held up to one eye. At length he approached Xagor as the wrack was hauling another body across the floor towards the pits.

  ‘Kindly tell me, Xagor,’ the haemonculi asked with a fatherly smile, ‘how many of these ur-ghuls you’ve placed in the pits and where you put them.’

  ‘Seven, master,’ Xagor replied as he pointed out the pits he had used.

  Bellathonis struck him in the face just as he finished pointing. The blow was precisely aimed to crunch Xagor’s iron mask against his nose with eye-watering effect. Something popped inside Xagor’s face and he felt hot blood start to cascade over his lips immediately. He fought with an urge to tear off his mask, or (in some deeply buried part of himself) to strike back. Instead he bowed his head miserably before his master’s inexplicable wrath.

  ‘Why must I be constantly surrounded by idiots?’ Bellathonis hissed as he raised his hand to strike again. ‘Diseased! All of them! We shall have to empty the infected pits and start them over. The grotesques linked to them are ruined – riddled with parasites and pathogens the like of which I’ve never seen! How could you not notice the materials were tainted?’

  The haemonculus’s disappointment stung Xagor more than the blow had done. He had given little thought to examining the corpses, merely collected them from where they were dumped outside and dragged them to the pits. It was pure chance he had noticed how many of the whip-thin ur-ghuls had gone into the stew at all. Most of the bodies had been of slave races, with a few bloodied Commorrites, a handful of coal-black mandrakes and some weird, nameless things that Xagor had never seen before mixed in. Desperate to redeem himself Xagor blurted out the only other pertinent information he knew about ur-ghuls.

  ‘The ur-ghuls we saw in Commorragh were diseased too. This one thought nothing strange when their bodies arrived part-rotten, imagining that to be their natural state of being, like those of above.’

  Bellathonis stopped, hand still raised to strike, and stared at Xagor intently. ‘What did you just say about the ur-ghuls in Commorragh? Repeat it to me exactly.’

  ‘T-The ur-ghuls we saw in Commorragh were diseased too?’ Xagor stammered uncertainly.

  Bellathonis lowered his hand slowly. ‘That would seem to be more than a coincidence to me,’ the haemonculus murmured to himself as he turned back towards the flesh pits Xagor had indicated. The lens device was produced again and the bubbling slurry was subjected to Bellathonis’s scrutiny for a long time. Eventually the haemonculus drew a long, thin stylus from his sleeve and touched it to the surface of the foul-smelling mess with exaggerated caution. He withdrew it and examined the glistening drop clinging to the tip of the stylus through his lenses for several more minutes before dropping both it and the stylus back into the pit.

  The haemonculus sucked in a long, rasping breath before speaking again. ‘Xagor, I believe we have some jars of denaturant on hand, run along and fetch them for me. Quickly now.’

  Xagor hurried to haul out the jars Bellathonis had indicated from a niche at one side of the cave. The smooth stone the containers were made of was one of the few substances in the universe that could withstand sustained contact with their contents. Unfortunately it also made the jars exceeding heavy for a single wrack to move. Xagor was reduced to dragging them one by one over to where Bellathonis stood deep in thought. Although the jars were carefully sealed the air around them was tainted by a sharp, astringent scent that cut through Xagor’s bloodied nose and straight to his sinuses to make his eyes water again. By the time Xagor had dragged over the last jar he had also plucked up the courage to ask a question of the master.

  ‘Master… this one wishes to ask what is going on?’ Xagor ventured.

  Bellathonis turned and lifted the last jar from Xagor’s hands with a surprising show of strength before answering. The haemonculus’s deft fingers busied themselves with breaking the seals as he responded. Xagor was disturbed to see that Bellathonis had now donned a face mask, a unique occurrence in the wrack’s experience of his master.

  ‘The sickness present in those corpses is not one of a… usual nature,’ Bellathonis said. ‘It is a creation every bit as specific as the glass plague and just as unnatural in origin.’

  The haemonculus tipped the jar’s contents into the closest pit. The thick, amber fluid that poured out of it produced clouds of smoke as it mixed with the flesh-slurry. The noisome mass in the pit boiled and bubbled spectacularly for a few seconds before collapsing into a black, tar-like mass.

  ‘Unnatural?’ Xagor repeated uncomfortably. For a haemonculus to use such a word indicated that something was truly and spectacularly out of the ordinary.

  ‘It’s my belief that it is an instance of the sort of plague we most commonly associate with daemons and other entities from beyond the veil. It is an infection capable of corrupting not just the body of the host but also the soul as well.’

  Xagor crouched fearfully watching the master moving back and forth destroying the contents of the tainted pits. The foul stench already present in the cave soon became positively toxic. A daemonic plague was something new to Xagor; he was far more used to the concept of a plague of daemons.

  ‘Must we flee from Aelindrach?’ Xagor asked finally. ‘Where will we go?’

  Bellathonis shook his head. ‘We could not set one foot outside Xhakoruakh’s palace without his minions seizing us and dragging us back. That, plus where we would go, is a separate, insoluble and entirely valid question in its own right. If what I’m theorising is correct, nowhere will be safe…’

  ‘Because of the daemon-plague, master? Can it not be cured?’

  ‘The only real cure is the death of the host, but even then the corrupt soul – despite the supposed immortality souls are alleged to exhibit – will continue in a blighted existence enslaved to the plague’s maker. In short – no, there is no cure that I can imagine. Fire and lots of it would be my favoured prescription.’

  ‘Then what will we do?’ Xagor whined. The master’s evident disturbance was making the wrack increasingly fearful. Xagor’s entire world was built on the concept of Bellathonis’s nigh-omniscience in all matters pertaining to flesh. Seeing the master balking before such a well-known foe as disease made no sense to him. A virus, a bacterium, a plague, a pathogen or a parasite were all simply more factors to manipulate for a master haemonculus… weren’t they?

  ‘We will do the only thing that we can, Xagor,’ Bellathonis said. ‘We will present Xhakoruakh with our findings and see what he has to say.’

  Bellathonis and Xagor made their way slowly through the shadowed paths of Xhakoruakh’s palace seeking the mandrake-king. It was easier said than done, for much like the realm of Aelindrach itself the palace was not fixed and permanent. Its internal dimensions shifted constantly; solid walls of blackness appeared to block old routes while rents and tears in previously impenetrable shadow opened new paths. The two of them had to find their way as best they could, blundering through the shadow-etched crypts and darkened passageways, feeling their way up stairs and down spiral ramps. They were still treated as outsiders and shunned by the lurking mandrakes that infested the seemingly infinite space in ever greater numbers. No shadow-skinned denizens barred their path but none offered guidance either.

  At length they found their way into a space that gave the impression of a grandly vaulted gallery of such length that its far end passed beyond perception. Here they found Xhakoruakh at last holding court beneath cressets of burning green witch-fire that served only to deepen the shadows around him. A clutch of nightfiends were abasing themselves before the giant figure of the mandrake-king, more evidence of the forces he was gathering to go to war against Azoruakh.

  ‘Bellathonis, my master of monstrosities and fiends,’ the shadow-king boomed, ‘what brings you before Xhakoruakh?
Is your work completed already?’

  ‘Alas no, my archon,’ Bellathonis replied. ‘The grotesques are still maturing at present, though, and they will soon be ready to join your followers. I’ve come before you because we’ve run into a problem that I felt you should be informed about immediately…’

  Bellathonis paused awkwardly as he studied the nightfiends that had now moved to cluster around Xhakoruakh’s knees like a brood of soot-skinned waifs. Each of the nightfiends would be the leader of a mandrake pack, a fearsome hunter and stalker in their own right, yet they seemed oddly quiescent, almost animal-like, in the shadow-king’s presence. The forbidden runes etched into the fiends’ coal-black hides shared the same sickly emerald hue as those on Xhakoruakh himself.

  ‘Perhaps it would be best to discuss the issue in private?’ Bellathonis pleaded, ‘I would not wish to detain your eager followers from their duties with my dull domestic worries.’

  ‘There is no privacy in Aelindrach,’ Xhakoruakh rumbled. ‘Every whisper ever made can be found caught somewhere in the shadow-skein. Every secret can be ferreted out by the patient hunter – for where else would secrets come to hide but within the realm of shadow?’

  ‘Yes… quite,’ Bellathonis said. ‘Well, nonetheless, it’s one thing to have to ferret out a secret and quite another to lay it out in the open for all to see.’

  Xhakoruakh shrugged and gestured. The nightfiends scattered into the deeper shadows of the gallery and vanished without a sound. The shadowy giant folded his long arms and waited expectantly.

  ‘Some of the raw materials supplied for my production of the grotesques were tainted,’ Bellathonis began, ‘specifically the bodies of ur-ghuls sent to the flesh pits bore highly contagious plagues. These have already spoiled several of my creations and I’m very close to thinking we should terminate the whole batch and start again.’