by Various
When Nysshea had danced in the jester’s train, her brother Edreach had danced with her. Before that, when she had danced the role of the fire-ghosts in Vaul’s train, he had mirrored her by dancing a water-sprite in the footsteps of Isha. Now that they had both been chosen for greater roles, he was balancing her again: as she took on the role of Isha, he became Eldanesh, the greatest hero of the mortal eldar, the champion upon whom Isha smiled, who went forth to do battle with bloody-handed Khaine and met his fated death. Deftly, elegantly, never falling out of the overarching rhythm, Edreach dipped low and plucked the Hero Mask from Sabila’s corpse, holding it high and proud. Others before him had interpreted Eldanesh as a doomed victim, even a fool, but Edreach revered him as one whose courage was exalted by the manner of his death.
Sheagoresh kept his vigil over the two mon-keigh corpses as the others broke the circle and reformed around him, coalescing around those in the troupe who held the ceremonial masks aloft, each Harlequin selecting a mask and shifting the colours of their dathedi to match it. In moments the Fire Mask was surrounded by flickering orange; the Mourning Mask by the gentle golden-green of sunrise over an orchard; the Hunter’s Mask by the dusk-dark shades of the green moon that was Kurnous’s totem; the Hero Mask by bright silver and gold.
And still more came, running swift-footed up the stairs or alighting from the shrouded air-sleds that took silent position at the building’s edges. When Dheresh’mel walked down the curved prow of her air-sled and stepped smoothly onto the roof, Sheagoresh rose and stepped back, muting his colours to yield to her. For many journeys Dheresh’mel had danced in the footsteps of Eldanesh, finding ways in every pageant they played, every war they fought, to interpret another telling of his story. But she had learned Eldanesh’s sagas from Ytheommel, the Great Harlequin of her old troupe whom the green beasts had laid low under the forest-spires of Toiryll, and whose name-element she had taken to carry his story on. Since that war her spirit had darkened. Her performances had become rougher, tinctured with anger. It had only been at their last resting that she had come to Sheagoresh and formally relinquished the Hero’s Mask. Now it was time to step into a new role, and cast her life-story through a new perspective.
Sheagoresh bowed as she walked forwards, silently, already moving as though she were in armour, and reached down to Crussman’s corpse. She straightened again holding the Blood Mask, the snarling face of Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Bloody-Handed God, lord of murder, whose wars had raged across heaven, slaying Eldanesh and binding the crippled and beaten Vaul to his anvil. There was silence and stillness as she carried the mask away. The mythic roles would pass around the troupe at every performance, but always there was one to lead and define them, and a new heart in the portrayal of Khaine would mean changes.
Sheagoresh looked over to the gantry base, to where Jann had been standing, at the one who was closer to him than any lover or sister could be. Ythoelle did not pick up the mask for herself: as the troupe’s Shadow Seer she wore the Mirror Mask, and would until her dying moments. But as he walked to her and past her he saw that she had taken up the Moon Mask from where the last of the thieving vermin had dropped it, the face of Lileath, the maiden-goddess, dreamer and prophetess, whose symbols were the white moon, the staff, the closed circle, the wind-chime. Her hood was forwards again; as he walked past he could see the Mirror Mask fading into and out of many faces. At least one of them, he knew, would be his own.
There was no one to wear the Moon Mask, not yet. Abhoraan, who had danced the part since she had first joined the troupe so many years ago on the dragon-steppes, had been one of the ones who had died when their air-sled could not outrun the storm.
Soon they would perform the elegy for Abhoraan and her companions, and it would fall to Sheagoresh to decide what form that would take, what performance, what elements of the great myths they would draw on to take this tragedy and weave into the fabric of their living stories, to give it meaning and closure. It was a task he did not expect to enjoy, but every tale had its songs of mourning as well as its dances of triumph, and the tale that was his life was no exception.
Shapes moved around him. His Harlequins bounded and swung up through the scaffold to the wreck of the air-sled, ready to free it so it could be carried with them when he gave the signal. Their colours and faces danced, each reflecting a role that the Harlequin felt it right to play at this task and at this stage in their own life narratives. He lifted his arm for silence and their forms stilled, their colours muted.
The last sealed compartment flowered open at his touch and he gave voice to a low, resonant song, a single sustained note from deep in his chest. Those around him took up the song and flared their colours in salute as he took out the Sun Mask, the face of Asuryan, the Phoenix King, Monarch of Heaven, the teacher of the six great Phoenix Lords. Sheagoresh took it, held it in both hands, stepped slowly back off the gantry. His flip belt engaged with a thought and he felt the shift as his weight all but vanished: he stretched out and turned as he fell, always keeping the mask above him, and touched down feather-light on the rockcrete pad, one knee bent, head bowed but shoulders square and proud, both paying fealty to the mask and claiming ownership of it.
He stayed there, muted his colours down and made his own face blank. There was only one mask left to collect.
All around him, the others knelt. Colours shut off into black and greys and faces became featureless. A jetbike, the bare off-grey of wraithbone given form but no colour, adorned only with a black swathe wrapping its tail vane, coasted to a silent halt in the middle of the landing pad and Sheyl’emmen stepped down from it.
Her face was in shadow, like Ythoelle’s, but unlike Ythoelle she made no move to shift her stiff, flaring hood. Hair cascaded from it, void-black and marble-white, and white silver chains twined around her hands and hung jingling from each fingertip. Vanes of wraithbone jutting from her shoulders caught the wind; at the sound of that moaning whistle every Harlequin shuddered and closed their eyes.
Sheyl’emmen did not look at any of them. Her step was steady and her sombre expression did not change. She walked with the careful stillness of a prisoner walking towards the scaffold. At the gantry she lengthened her step into a bound, and with her belt taking her weight away she sailed smoothly to stand on a crossbar before the ripped-open pannier. The other Harlequins turned in place to present their backs to her as she reached in and plucked out the mask that the last mon’keigh had glimpsed.
The mask did not glower or snarl, it had no artful changes to its scale or features. It was the face of an eldar, classic, genderless. There was no expression in the eyes, no set to the mouth. It was a blank face, blanker than the featureless grey hoods the Harlequins had taken on around it. It was a face that could place itself over any nightmare the beholding eye could imagine.
Sheyl’emmen the Solitaire picked up the Hell Mask and, like Sheagoresh before her, leapt off the platform, spreading her cloak out to cast its dread shadow into the heart of every eldar on the platform. She landed opposite the Great Harlequin and the two of them stepped and danced and spun together, neither visibly acknowledging the other. When a half-circle was complete and each stood where the other had a moment ago, they raised their masks in precise unison and donned them. Sun Mask, Hell Mask, Asuryan and Slaanesh, the two faces that the grubbing vermin had not soiled with their touch.
Then, shadow-fleet, Sheyl’emmen was gone: astride her jetbike with a single leap, then arrowing across the platform and away through the night, the vanes on her back shrieking in the slipstream. Sheagoresh leapt into the air then, head back, throwing his arms wide. Light came, a beautiful blaze from the Sun Mask driving back the night, bringing the Harlequins’ colours to joyous life as they capered and danced.
In that moment, each feature-shifting holographic face became the mask they all wore beneath every other, the Harlequin Mask, Cegorach the Laughing God, trickster and knower of secrets. Every face was diffe
rent, as every Harlequin’s imagining of the leader of their great dance was different, but as Cegorach’s features burst onto each of their faces every Harlequin burst into laughter. Some gave the coarse guffaws of an oaf who has seen a clumsy joke, some the elegant trill of a princess admiring the tumbling of her jester. There was the joyous laughter of tragedy from which a traveller has returned, and the wrenching laughter that casts a cloak of merriment over direst grief. Air-sleds and jetbikes left their holding positions and made interweaving circles, bright and laughing figures leaping up to catch hold and ride them, their colours leaving bright and shimmering mosaic-trails.
The laughter pealed out from the top of the tower like bells, and hung in the air behind the line of jetbikes and air-sleds like the wake of a boat. Deep in the wasteland beyond where the mon-keigh travelled they would slip into the webway, and soon they would be breathing the fragrant air of a maiden world, rich with spices and flower-perfumes, dancing in warm water across delicate coral sand while the waves chuckled in amongst the roots of the mangrove towers and the moons danced and pinwheeled overhead.
They would mourn their dead, and re-enact the greatest of their myths: the Dream of Lileath, the Veil of Isha, the War in Heaven, the Doom of Eldanesh, the Fall. With the tale-telling they would reconsecrate their precious ritual masks, the heart of the troupe, and then they would roam again, roam up from the coral oceans to the great sighing seas of grass. They would find the camps of their cousins and steal in amongst their tents and tethered dragons, dazzling and bemusing them with shadow and laughter, and then they would make themselves known, step into the light, and dance for them. Perhaps they would tell one of the great stories, perhaps they would tell one of the lesser, perhaps one of the younger stories of the Devourer or the bestial wars about the great Gate.
Or perhaps they would dance a newer story still. A story of strays and travellers, forced by the decay of their old paths to leave the safety of their webway and make quick and secret passage across a world of crackling dunes and bloody, moonless skies. A story of a monstrous storm that not even these swift travellers could outrun. A story of the search for what the storm had taken from them, something more precious to them than the features of their own faces. A story of ugly, upstart animals who had meddled with something they should never have seen, a story of insolence punished, thievery justly rewarded, desecration turned back on itself. A story of how the great tales would try to play themselves out even through such lumpen mockeries of minds.
That was the power of the tales. That was the power of the masks. It was a story Sheagoresh had never imagined when he left his old troupe and wrought a new cast of great masks to form the core of a new one, but now they had lived it, the story was part of theirs, to tell and reinterpret and dance for themselves and for others all down the coming years.
The wind picked up, dust-cloud and nightfall drew curtains across the desert. Dull emergency lights glowed in the tower corridors, control telltales sparkled on the operations deck, a vox-alarm squawked unanswered. Nothing moved, and Pipeline Maintenance Depot 347-South-East was swallowed by the desert night.
Beneath The Flesh
Andy Smillie
‘I am His vengeance as He is my shield. I will deliver death to His enemies as He brings deliverance to my soul.’
Noise filled his world. An incessant thrum reverberated under his feet. The metal and ceramite around him squealed as angry thrusters were pushed to their tolerance. Bolts and arc-welded plates rattled as their construction was tested. A thunderous staccato of impacts rang like bolter fire against the hull around him. Yet in his mind, there was only silence: a sanctifying stillness, in preparation for battle. He would not be distracted from the consecration, his weapons would be ready.
‘Brother Maion, ready yourself.’
Maion lifted his head at his sergeant’s command and touched the blade of his chainsword to his temple, finishing the rite. He sheathed his weapon, and pulled the combat harness over his head, activating the mag-lock. ‘Ready, brother-sergeant.’
The Stormraven gunship powered through the void, its crimson hull charred and pitted from hundreds of recent atmospheric entries. The serrated black symbol on the gunship’s wing was almost indistinguishable from the scorch marks emblazoned on its flanks, eroded by the vengeful impacts of dense minerals and debris clusters. Flames licked the Stormraven’s surface, tracing a searing thread along its squat outline. It dived lower, pushing into Arere’s embrace.
The planet’s twin arid continents were turning from the system’s single sun. Had any of Arere’s citizens still been alive to gaze skyward, they would have marvelled at the descending gunship. The brightest light in the sky, Arere’s dead populace would have mistaken the Stormraven for yet another meteor, destined to crash into the desert-earth and forever change the maze of ravines punctuating the landscape.
+Entry achieved++ The pilot-serf’s mechanical voice crackled across the vox-link.
Maion juddered in his harness as the gunship knifed downwards, turbulent crosswinds breaking against the hull. Next to him, Harahel sat immobile, a massive eviscerator held across his lap. Maion smiled; it was a fitting weapon. Harahel was from Taci, a province of their home-world Cretacia. The region was well known for the broad, well muscled and aggressive individuals it bred, traits further amplified when they underwent the physiological enhancements required to transform them into Space Marines. Brother Amaru had replaced Harahel’s harness with one normally used to secure warriors in Terminator armour, in order to accommodate the Assault Marine’s bulk.
‘Bring up the tactical hololith.’ Sergeant Barbelo was on his feet, clasping an overhead assault-rail with a gauntleted hand. His face and shaven head were a mess of re-grafted skin and thick, serpentine scars.
‘A moment, brother.’ Amaru extended a bundle of data cables from his armoured-forearm and plugged them into a control slot in his seat. The Techmarine muttered something to the gunship’s machine-spirit and closed his left eye. The glowing bionic that replaced his right continued to shine like a targeting reticule.
The compartment’s luminators dimmed as a three-dimensional overview of Arere’s primary continent appeared in the middle of the deck, the blue-hued landscape hololithically projected by an optical lens mounted in the ceiling. With a thought, Amaru narrowed the focus on a line of canyons towards the north-east. A series of fortified buildings resolved out of the map.
‘Substation 12BX sits between the two walls of this canyon.’ The area changed colour to a deep crimson as Amaru continued, ‘The approach to the main entrance is overshadowed by a narrow gorge and high spires, landing improbable.’ The Techmarine paused as he calculated an approach. ‘We can land here.’ Amaru manipulated the image again and an octagonal courtyard sprang into view.
‘What of the enemy?’ Barbelo’s brow furrowed as his thoughts turned to battle, turning the deep lines of his forehead into shadowy ravines.
The image oscillated and zoomed out, the substation receding into the distance to glow faintly among the canyons. ‘We do not have real-time data but estimates would place enemy forces here.’ Amaru indicated the black mass surrounding the substation, representing the disposition of the Archenemy army on Arere.
Maion stared at the display, his muscles tensing instinctively at the mention of the Archenemy. Their forces had dispersed from their landing zones like an aggressive cancer, brutalising their way across the globe. The outpost was the last bastion of sanctity.
‘We have less than two hours until they reach the substation,’ Amaru stated plainly.
‘And if the worse has happened and our brothers are as we fear?’ Maion voiced what he knew the others were thinking.
‘That should be time enough to retrieve their gene-seed,’ Nisroc touched his narthecium in emphasis. The Sanguinary Priest’s gleaming white armour was in stark contrast to the deep crimson and black worn by Maion and the others.
Barbelo scowled. ‘That is not our primary mission Apothecary. We must understand what happened on Arere, we must retrieve the compound’s data files.’
Nisroc felt his jaw tighten. ‘The Chapter is on the brink of extinction, recovering the gene-seed is paramount. I am bound by duty–’
‘Brothers…’ Amaru paused as one of the gunship’s many auspexes drew his attention. ‘We are closing on their augur range,’ the Techmarine looked expectantly at Barbelo. ‘We need to do it now.’
Barbelo glared at Nisroc. He knew as well as the Apothecary that the Chapter’s supply of gene-seed was critical. But the data files held vital information. Without them, they risked losing the entire Itan sector to the Archenemy. ‘They are our orders, and you will follow them.’
The Apothecary said nothing.
The sergeant took his seat and turned to Amaru. ‘You are sure this will work, Techmarine?’
Amaru nodded, ‘I sanctified this vessel myself. Its spirit is strong. It will not fail us.’
‘Very well, relieve the pilot.’
The hololith stuttered and dissolved as Amaru disengaged his cables and assumed the cockpit.
‘Prepare yourselves,’ Barbelo activated the mag-lock on his harness and clamped his helmet down over his head.
‘Emperor’s strength be with us,’ to his right, Nisroc locked his own helm in place.
‘Emperor’s strength,’ Maion joined the rest of the squad as they repeated the Apothecary’s words and donned their helmets. He felt his pulse quicken as hissing pressure seals locked his helmet to his armour, readying him for war.