‘Such things can only be known,’ Nyos said slowly, ‘because some of your kin have attempted it before. Tell me of them, tell me who can fill the gaping void that evidently exists in your knowledge.’
That barb struck true. Syiin’s discomfort stemmed from not wishing to admit that others knew more than he did. Nyos chuckled to himself; ever-reliable hubris was a weakness even among haemonculi it seemed. Perhaps especially among haemonculi. He waited to see if Syiin would try to lie outright and deny such a manifest fact.
Syiin squirmed under his relentless gaze before finally giving up a piece of information he would soon come to regret.
‘There is one among our brotherhood who has delved deep into such matters,’ Syiin admitted reluctantly, ‘a master by the name of Bellathonis. I understand he dwells in the Aviaries of Archon Malixian beyond Metzuh tier–’
Nyos silenced the haemonculus with an upraised hand, denying Syiin even the opportunity to save face by telling him more. ‘Go now, Syiin, your “assistance” is no longer required here,’ he said carelessly. He waited until Syiin had almost reached the threshold before calling out to him again.
‘One more thing, Syiin,’ said Nyos pleasantly. The haemonculus tensed at the archon’s words, but Nyos only smiled his most charming smile and said, ‘It goes without saying that you will not share this precious little moment of ours with others. I would hate to have to find a new chief haemonculus for my kabal.’
Syiin’s round face nodded silently in understanding of the implicit threat. Nyos consoled himself that it would have to suffice. Haemonculi were a notoriously clannish lot and having one of their number killed out of hand would sit poorly with the rest of that strange brotherhood. Instead Syiin would be left to scuttle back to his sunken maze of pain and contemplate his failure to adequately satisfy his archon.
After Syiin had left, Nyos took a stroll through the palace, his incubi bodyguard closing protectively around him and heralds scurrying ahead to ensure that everything possible was being done to avoid the archon’s displeasure. Nyos meandered through blazing weapons forges where sweating slaves laboured beneath the lash, he sniffed narcotic blooms in his pleasure gardens, toured exercise yards where his warriors practised their deadly skills and promenaded beneath erotic fractal sculptures that merged and coupled with a life of their own. At every turn a gratifying thrill of fear shot through his minions at his presence, enervating Nyos delightfully with their negative emotional energy. He distributed punishments and favours according to his whims, leaving a trail of pain, disruption and jealousy through his household.
Once he had satisfied himself that his earlier consultation with Syiin would be buried beneath a dozen other inconsequential reports from the tyrant’s spies he made his way to a docking port in the highest reaches of his domain. Here, the titanic vista of Commorragh beneath its circling crown of captive suns could be viewed in some small part. Impossibly high structures of metal, crystal, flesh, bone and polished stone rose at every side; thousand-metre images of kabalite archons seemed to battle against spiralling starscrapers that clawed their way upwards from the depths.
Barbed spires and blade-like spines were crowded together as if straining toward the light of the Ilmaea, each interconnected by a profusion of slender arches and jagged bridges that sprang impossibly across the dizzying void. Everywhere the air was filled by speeding grav vehicles, the winged figures of scourges high above and hellions recklessly careening on their skyboards far below.
‘I think I shall tour the city for a while,’ Nyos mused to no one in particular, his silent incubi bodyguard knowing better than to reply. ‘Ready my personal barque and rouse some of those worthless scourges to escort us.’
Nyos’s personal grav craft was a creation of quite stunning beauty. The curving armoured plates of its fiercely jutting prow were inlaid with ruby and alabaster depicting the White Flames. The graceful lines of its long, narrow-waisted hull swept majestically backwards before flaring to accommodate the pods containing gravitic engines at the rear. Nyos mounted the open platform at the centre of the barque and settled himself in a richly appointed throne that was twin to the one in his audience chamber. His incubi moved to take their positions at long-throated splinter cannon and disintegrators ranged on mountings around the hull. At a nod to his steersman Nyos’s craft smoothly ascended and slid away from the docking port.
A flock of winged figures descended towards them, prompting the incubi to swing their cannon to menace the potential threat. They cared not that these scourges were a part of the Kabal of the White Flames, many an archon had fallen prey to his own supposedly loyal troops. Only the watchful incubi could ever be truly trusted, thanks to their monkish warrior codes of duty and honour; the loyalty of others had to be bought or imposed.
The scourges arrogantly dived past the craft before spiralling outwards to form a wheeling defensive sphere surrounding it. The hiss and snap of their altered wings was clearly audible through the layered shields protecting the barque. Many scourges had gone further than merely altering themselves to have wings of sculpted flesh, some had bird-like feet or heads of raptors, and the hands that gripped their weapons were often clawed. Each one had pursued their personal vision of taking flight – most with leathery pinions, but some with insectoid wings and many in hawk or eagle feathers.
‘Take us to Metzuh tier, let’s see what pleasures are to be found along the Grand Canal,’ Nyos said to the steersman and the craft dipped obediently. Jagged spires and barbed steeples whipped past in ever-greater profusion as the barque descended into the depths. The titanic spires now formed glittering canyon walls connected by bridges and arches that flashed towards them like giant blades. The steersman weaved expertly through the chaotic tangle, always descending into shadow. The scourges kept pace, their powerful wings beating lazily.
‘Faster,’ Nyos ordered.
The canyon walls became a blur, the giant blades leaping out of the gathering gloom without warning, and the steersman had to haul mightily to control the speeding craft. The scourges were working harder now, their great wings beating the air as they hurled themselves forwards to follow the barque’s descent. The faintest breeze blew through the barque’s protective fields from the rushing winds outside. Nyos gestured to the steersman, Faster.
Even the peerless dampening fields of the barque could not entirely shield its occupants at such speeds. The incubi braced themselves and swayed with the craft’s motion as they careened past obstacles close enough to touch. The scourges were truly racing now, with only the strongest keeping pace. Nyos chuckled at the sight of one slamming headlong into a razor-edged archway. The impact reduced it to nothing but a cloud of blood and a scattering of severed limbs.
The lower reaches of Commorragh were spreading out before them now, the spire canyons giving way to the old trade districts and docking spurs that clustered around the feet of High Commorragh. In the spires this was known as the Ynnealidh, the necropolis below, where the uncounted billions of the dark city laboured, sweated and died. Tiny stars of light picked out endless tangled streets and plazas. The fungus-like mat of a thousand different architectural styles marked the flesh markets and barter shops where the miserable underlife of Commorragh strove to eke out their existence.
It could be dangerous for one of Nyos’s status to enter Low Commorragh. It was easier for enemies to muster strong forces there where the streets were always so rife with agents and desperate mercenaries. The sudden, apparently unplanned arrival of Nyos’s retinue would help preclude such unpleasant surprises materialising, but he would still need to conclude his business quickly and be gone before assassins started crawling out of every hole and underpass.
Nyos’s craft was curving around the mountain-like flank of one particular spire now, rapidly dropping past Hy’kan tier to reach Metzuh tier at its very bottom. A thin black line running around Metzuh tier thickened into an oily-looking canal with a handful of brightly lit pleasure craft winking on its smooth, dark
expanse. The steersman braked to glide just above the pitch-black surface with evident relief.
‘Grand Canal, Metzuh tier, my archon,’ he intoned solemnly.
Nyos eyed the scourges circling above him with distaste.
‘I feel dissatisfied with the performance of our scourges, they seem lacklustre, do they not?’ Nyos opined aloud. The steersman was quick enough to pick up on the proffered opportunity to agree with him.
‘They do indeed, my archon, distinctly lacklustre,’ the steersman echoed obediently.
‘If only I could consult a worthy individual with expertise in the field,’ Nyos sighed and gazed out over the velvet expanse surrounding them, ‘I’m sure they would be invaluable in rectifying such matters.’ It was a gamble but the steersman was eager to please. Nyos waited to see if he would take the bait. He was not disappointed.
‘If I may offer a suggestion for the archon’s consideration?’ the steersman asked meekly. Nyos favoured him with a curt nod.
‘By great good fortune we are very close to the Aviaries of Malixian, my archon. It’s said that Archon Malixian has an unsurpassed passion for all creatures of the air and many scourges in his kabal. Malixian the Mad some call him,’ the steersman added in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Without doubt he would be a worthwhile consultant in such matters.’
‘Fascinating. Dispatch some of our worthless escort to the Aviaries immediately. Instruct them to convey my compliments to the noble Malixian and most humbly seek an audience with him.’ The steersman’s carefully composed face twitched a little with surprise at that but he complied without question. Almost immediately a smaller group of scourges broke away from the wheeling flock above and disappeared along the canal. The steersman hauled his ornate tiller bar and brought the barque around to follow them a few seconds later.
The Grand Canal twisted around the base of Metzuh tier, bounded by the outer wardings on one bank and the notorious pleasure palaces of Metzuh on the other. There were stories that the canal had once been filled with a pure, sweet-smelling narcotic oil acquired in limitless quantities from some enslaved alien world. Now it was a black morass of nameless excreta, wastes and compounds that some swore had gained a strange, sluggish sentience of its own. Even the mists emitted by the weirdly altered substance were hallucinogenic, and its touch brought madness or oblivion. Commorragh’s jaded denizens still came by their thousands in pursuit of hedonism in the flesh shops and drug dens along its serpentine course. Metzuh’s main claim to fame was that it formed a natural crossroads of sorts thanks to its possession of several of the larger dimensional gates leading to the satellite realms of Commorragh.
Nyos always contemplated the satellite realms with some ambivalence. Commorragh had originally been just one of the extradimensional enclaves made by the eldar. There had been numerous other port-cities, fortresses and private estates created. Over the centuries Commorragh had reached out across the webway and subsumed one after another of them like a slowly spreading parasitic growth. The conquered satellite realms were slaved to Commorragh, their gates locked permanently open to allow the eternal city to plunder their contents at will. Shaa-dom was one of the few that had raised a creditable attempt at secession, but the tyrant was too strong and too ruthless to let anything go once it was in his grasp.
The satellite realms seemed to breed a special kind of madness notable even in the dark city. Those at the fringes of Commorragh appeared most readily afflicted by the medium surrounding it, the limitless energies of the warp breeding strange obsessions and weirdly altered states of being down the centuries. In Aelindrach the very shadows flowed and writhed with a life of their own, in Maelyr’Dum the spirits of the dead could return to confront their killers, and in Xae’Trenneayi time itself jumped back and forth with scant regard for subjective continuity. The archons of the periphery were contemptuously regarded as idiot yokels by those of High Commorragh, fools saddled with unproductive domains, but they were also unpredictable and surprisingly powerful.
After he seized control Vect’s laws demanded only the mightiest should rule the kabals, his cynical attempt to wipe away the nobility and replace it with some grubby meritocracy. Beaten and bloodied by Vect’s betrayal the noble houses had dutifully transformed themselves into kabals but even under that guise the purest blood came to the fore.
The house of Yllithian lived on through the White Flames, just as their ancient allies of Xelian and Kraillach lived on through the Blades of Desire and the Realm Eternal. Among the satellite realms no such genteel rules of privilege and status existed; raw ambition and deadly ability drove their archons to the fore and struck them down just as readily. ‘Mad’ Malixian had outlasted most of his contemporaries and fed plenty of his rivals to his famed collection of airborne predators.
The most public entrance to Malixian’s realm lay over a slender silver bridge across the canal that terminated at the Beryl Gate. The hedonists and epicureans that thronged the Grand Canal often frequented the Aviaries of Malixian to marvel at his exotic collection of avians brought together at unthinkable cost from every part of the Great Wheel. Some visitors had the great fortune to see the majestic white rukhs or darting shaderavens in their famed hunts, some of the less fortunate visitors in their turn became the hunted instead. Malixian had a well-deserved reputation for having a capricious nature even by the warped standards of Commorragh. The tyrant often indulged the mad archon in his insane vendettas for his own amusement, the volatile nature of Malixian making him an ideal tool of retribution when one was needed.
Beneath the steersman’s sure hand the Beryl Gate soon slid into view as the barque rose silently to the level of the bridge to meet it.
Bellathonis was a haemonculus who had emerged from the benighted torture pits beneath the corespur of Commorragh centuries ago to make his own way in the city above. Thus far his skills had sufficed to find him patronage with a variety of archons including, most recently, the Archon Malixian of the Ninth Raptrex. The haemonculi covens below continually dogged him to align with one or another of them on a permanent basis, muttering darkly about the disrespect shown by his dilettante pursuit of the arts of flesh. Bellathonis professed to care nothing for their criticisms, although he had found it necessary to take increasing steps to ensure his privacy and safety of late.
Archon Malixian’s generous offer of a tower within his satellite realm for Bellathonis’s personal use had done a great deal to ease both issues, sparking something akin to gratitude in the master haemonculus’s withered black heart. So when Bellathonis received a summons to attend to Archon Malixian he came forth willingly enough even though he anticipated another interminable discussion on the virtues of differing flight musculature.
Bellathonis instructed his assistants to shut down the apparatus he was testing and made his way up from the torture laboratories in the base of his tower. Outside a grav skiff manned by Malixian’s kabalite warriors awaited him. He mounted and gripped on tightly as the warriors shot skywards with a bone-cracking jolt of acceleration. Bellathonis’s modest tower lay on the outskirts of the Aviaries of Malixian and even at such speeds it would take several minutes to reach Malixian’s eyrie at the centre. Titanic cages and enclosures reared up higher and higher as they flew up towards the heart of Malixian’s realm, the lean grav skiff straining for height with every ounce of its considerable power.
The cages of the Aviaries swam past in a baroque panoply. Simple pagoda-like cages of gilded bars shouldered against immense wire spheres, leaded glass cubes and cones of interwoven bone. Their numbers belied their scale, each one a skyscraper-sized habitat for a unique winged life form plucked from some far-off world. Breaching through the mass was Malixian’s eyrie, a single spike of silver rearing up to scrape the heavens. As the grav craft strained higher the tip of the spike resolved itself into a silver sphere, a pierced bead a hundred paces across, more empty space than metal but with landing points and railless walkways for the convenience of those that strode upon two legs.
/> As they swept in to land Bellathonis noted an unfamiliar and rich-looking grav vessel already docked at the eyrie. He regarded it more closely as he disembarked, and saw the symbol displayed on its bow. Malixian had company it seemed, and Bellathonis recognised the kabalite icon at once. The White Flames were a High Commorragh kabal that had remained rich and powerful thanks to their noble origins, and the noble kabals were forever scheming against the Supreme Overlord Asdrubael Vect. Intrigued, Bellathonis made his way along the curving pathways of the eyrie to its heart.
The master haemonculus was momentarily confused when he beheld Malixian talking with another eldar dressed in simple black. Beside Malixian in his spun-gold raptor mask and his feathered cloak of semi-sentient eyes – one of Bellathonis’s finer creations, he noted proudly – the interloper looked like a mere warrior. The eldar in black turned to gaze at Bellathonis and in that moment he understood. The stranger’s eyes declared him to be the archon he evidently was – proud, cynical, utterly ruthless and accustomed to absolute obedience. More than that, the newcomer’s glance was lit with a kind of visionary fervour and radiant sense of command as if he were already wearing an invisible crown. This one had great ambition for certain, Bellathonis thought to himself as he lowered his eyes deferentially.
‘Ah, here is my master flesh-sculptor now,’ Malixian trilled on catching sight of him. ‘Come forward, Bellathonis, and meet the noble Archon Yllithian!’
Aside from his chalk-white skin the master haemonculus Bellathonis appeared physically different to Syiin in almost every way. Where Syiin was permanently stooped Bellathonis stood rigidly upright. In place of Syiin’s moon-like face Bellathonis’s features were angular and sharp. Syiin’s loose hide robes were replaced with Bellathonis’s glossy black ribbed skinsuit. It was their eyes that marked their brotherhood: Bellathonis’s eyes were black and glittering orbs that had drunk in torments of unimaginable cruelty and malice.
Path of the Renegade Page 4