Yllithian fought with the urge to strike the renegade. The easy familiarity he spoke with and his professed ignorance were insults a kabalite would have suffered grievously for. Yllithian quelled his feelings carefully before responding. The whelp was fresh and it was not the proper time to begin his re-education.
‘I shall make enquiries from sources that may prove more educational,’ he said acidly. ‘For the present it is my belief that we must proceed with the next phase of my plan immediately. Between this Motley character and the guards that escaped you in Iron Thorn we must assume that the tyrant has heard of your mission by now.
‘Therefore we must act before Vect can start imagining what uses we might have for a captive worldsinger. He need only demand her as tribute and the whole scheme is ruined. In order to prevent the plan being further compromised it’s my intention to use the group of you for this next phase. With the exception of Xyriadh you are not of my kabal and I cannot compel you to go on what will certainly be another dangerous mission, but know that your perseverance will be repaid a thousandfold should you succeed.’
Yllithian paused and looked around at the agents levelly before continuing. ‘Also know that if you refuse to go you will earn my eternal displeasure.’ Morr was the first to break the resulting pall of silence.
‘When will Archon Kraillach be restored?’ he said.
‘Bellathonis tells me that he cannot begin the process until the second phase of the plan is completed.’
‘And what does that entail?’ Sindiel asked, earning himself a sharp look from Yllithian.
‘The recovery of a relic,’ Morr said, ‘from a highly dangerous place. That is all you need to know.’
‘Just so,’ said Yllithian smoothly. ‘Preparations have been made that will ensure your success. There is no cause for delay.’
‘I will go,’ Morr said immediately, to Yllithian’s surprise.
‘In your case you might better serve your archon by ensuring the Realm Eternal doesn’t tear itself apart in your continued absence.’
‘Unnecessary. I will issue orders to my brothers in Kraillach’s service and they will keep the peace until I return with my archon restored.’
One by one the others assented to go: Xyriadh out of loyalty, Aez’ashya out of curiosity, Sindiel and the rest out of fear of Yllithian’s displeasure.
‘Very well then.’ Yllithian gestured and his guards brought forward a slim black case. He opened it to reveal a row of silver amulets. Each comprised a simple chain holding a smooth gem in an ornate, clawed mounting. Soft inner lights swam in the depths of the gems and they exuded the unmistakable allure of captured souls.
‘Spiritstones…’ Sindiel whispered in dismay.
‘Just so,’ replied Yllithian, openly enjoying the renegade’s discomfort before shutting the case with a snap. ‘Attuned so that their contents will mask your presence and completely protect you from the… influences of the place where you must go. My guards will guide you to the appropriate portal as soon as you are fit to travel. Mind that you do not tarry here overlong.’
Yllithian swept out, leaving the case of amulets and a dozen kabalite trueborn to ‘guide’ the agents on the next part of their journey. He wondered briefly whether the half-finished amulets he was pressing into service would actually prove to be of any help whatsoever when put to the test. It was a gamble, only the latest in a succession of gambles he was being forced to make. He consoled himself that if the amulets only persuaded his agents to enter Shaa-dom by convincing them that they stood a chance of survival then they had served a substantial part of their purpose.
Kraillach stared hungrily down at the white form on the slab below him with his regrown eyes. His raw-meat hands grasped for her warmth but met only cold, unyielding crystal now fouled by his own pale blood. He sensed a thin etheric twist of life and energy emanating from her, squeezed out by her trepidation and discomfort.
Kraillach lapped thirstily at the psychic stream, aching for the full richness of life he could sense contained in the frail body below. In his weakened state it seemed like the promise of paradise lay there, a warm and sensuous ocean into which he ached to plunge and achieve rebirth. He beat his raw-meat fists uselessly against the crystal in frustration, croaking feeble imprecations. The black-clad haemonculus and his scurrying wrack servants paid him no heed.
‘What made all these scratches on the walls? They’re everywhere.’
‘Daemons. The archon of Talon Cyriix tried making a pact with daemons to help him overthrow the tyrant. The tables were turned when he got trapped in here with them.’
‘That’s… that’s, gods, that’s awful. Did everyone die?’
Aez’ashya snorted. ‘Only the lucky ones.’
Sindiel absorbed that piece of information in silence. The worming passages they were following had seemed claustrophobic before and they felt doubly so now. He was starting to realise that the wisdom of Commorragh, such as it was, was entirely communicated through grisly tales of failed plots and successful ones, incautious leaders and vengeful families. Their lore was to be found in a dark tapestry of plots and counter-plots that had been weaving through the city for ten thousand years.
He had been doing his best to befriend Aez’ashya. Initially it had been out of sheer cupidity. No eldar female he’d ever met was as alive and passionate as she was and it kindled a feeling in him he’d never encountered before – the desire to possess something and deny it to all others. Aez’ashya knowingly welcomed his attentions, getting seemingly endless pleasure out of alternately encouraging him and mocking his virginal awkwardness. That had bothered Sindiel at first until he noticed that she acted in almost exactly the same way towards any male, including the hard-faced youth, Kharbyr, and the terrifying incubus, Morr. She assiduously ignored the ugly servant that hung around with Kharbyr as if he were beneath her attention, which was entirely possible given the way the servant grovelled to her all the time.
Aez’ashya was a mine of information on the realities of living in the dark city and seemed to actively enjoy educating Sindiel. However he was beginning to find all of her answers about Commorragh quite predictably coloured by an underlying ethos.
When he asked why they didn’t use a portal or a flyer to reach Talon Cyriix she’d laughed at him. ‘If we want everyone in the city to know where we’re going there’d be easier ways to announce it. Yllithian’s enemies would try to interfere with us just on principle. All craft leaving the White Flames’ fortress are watched and all portals are guarded, so we walk. That’s just the way it is.’
That’s just the way it is. Even the rich and powerful had to live like hunted animals, because they truly were hunted by those with less power than themselves. The entire hierarchy of the dark city seethed constantly as those on top repressed those below, while those below rebelled in every fashion they could.
Aez’ashya’s personality was as smooth and as impenetrable as a river-smoothed stone. She apparently lived entirely in the moment with no thoughts of the future beyond the immediate consequences of her actions, and that only in a limited sense. As best Sindiel could tell she was motivated by a kind of restlessness that would culminate in her sticking knives in people if she drummed her heels for too long. She was constantly looking for the next fix of adrenaline. Sindiel’s attraction to her had begun to fade but he still found he liked her.
‘So… this place where we’re going now, it’s supposed to be worse than here?’
‘Much worse. They say that after Vect wrecked Shaa-dom the daemons never left it.’
There was a breathless moment of cold and then a rush of sultry heat. Yllithian’s agents found themselves standing at the edge of a thoroughfare. Blackened flagstones lay beneath their feet and the twisted remnants of trees and statues clawed at the roiling skies. Warp-taint hung heavy in the air and reality itself had a sickly, greasy feel to it. The horizon was lit by unearthly fires and flakes of ash drifted in the air.
Kharbyr could barely make o
ut the shell the protective amulet cast about him, it was a faint sheen that barely flickered on the edge of perception and failed to engender much confidence. He looked around at the others and found them all glancing around nervously with the exception of Morr. He seemed as imperturbable as ever regardless of the freakishness of his environment.
‘The palace of El’Uriaq lies at the heart of the conflagration,’ the incubus rumbled. ‘We must move swiftly before our arrival is noticed.’
‘Do we have anything even resembling a plan?’ asked Sindiel with shaky levity.
‘Get to the palace without being torn apart by daemons, after that we wing it,’ Aez’ashya told him sweetly.
Their course was not hard to set; the invisible heat of the breach beat upon their faces even at a distance, and the eternal fires lit their way. The group made their way cautiously along ruined thoroughfares and boulevards trying to balance speed and stealth. The way became progressively more difficult as they moved forwards, and they increasingly had to backtrack from rubble-choked streets as they sought a clear path. The ravaged city appeared to be deserted but the sensation of being watched remained unshakeable.
Xyriadh was the first to spot one of the soulless. It was a wretchedly emaciated figure squatting on the curb ahead of them, arms locked around knees and rocking gently.
It raised its face at their approach, its luminous, hungry eyes searching hopelessly, slack jaw working mindlessly. It could sense a presence nearby but did not seem able to perceive them properly. It whined in frustration as it cast about seeking the souls it could feel nearby. They edged around the creature and moved onwards with many backward glances from Sindiel.
‘That’s what happens if your soul is taken by… Her… isn’t it?’ he whispered to Aez’ashya.
‘If you’re lucky,’ she replied. ‘That one must have had some shred of intelligence left to it. Most don’t have so much self-possession.’
Sindiel shuddered. At the edge of his consciousness he could sense a dull, keening wail that seemed caught forever on the verge of rising to a shriek. His sense of vulnerability constantly left him weak at the knees as he trudged onwards. He couldn’t shake the idea from his mind that the times of the Fall must have been something like this, only infinitely worse. The feelings of bravado that had driven him here had evaporated and now he clung to his sinister companions desperately, terrified of being left behind.
Soon they encountered more soulless wretches wandering aimlessly through the streets, clustering in small groups here and there. The structures around them were becoming more ruinous as they wormed their way into the guts of the slaughtered city; increasing numbers of them were just empty shells staring hollow-eyed across blasted lots. The flames on the horizon were closer now, forming an eerie blue-green aurora that covered half the sky.
Many of the soulless seemed to be pathetically re-enacting parts of their lost lives, strolling with dead friends, visiting destroyed bazaars. As the warp-taint blew stronger reality flickered with fragments of memory: clean white streets, multi-coloured minarets, children at play. The vision blew away like smoke just as quickly as it came, scraps of it stuttering and recurring again and again in a hundred variations.
Morr had led them with certainty thus far, but now he stopped, seemingly confounded by the twisting realities. The sky cracked and fragments of twisted stone whirled past above them in striated bands. Shadow-forms in the crackling atmosphere above erected palaces and towers in mockery of the shattered street beneath, the dark stones flowing together and spinning apart to reform again in a thousand different shapes.
‘Something’s happening up ahead,’ gasped Xyriadh.
‘Handmaiden,’ Morr warned.
The soulless were gathering, seeming to ooze from the shadows. They were clustering about a lambent figure at a crossroads, kneeling and fawning before it. The entity moved among them enveloped in a golden glow, astral fires chasing across its limbs and brow. It was a perfectly formed eldar female in shape and stature, but its shining eyes spoke of nothing mortal. Tiny sparks of light dripped from its extended fingers, sending the soulless into paroxysms of ecstasy. It gestured beatifically with a cruel half-smile on its lips as it scattered its bounty, exactly like a farmer feeding their livestock.
The agents froze in place, melding themselves into whatever cover they could find. The shining eyes swept languidly in their direction and away again. Long moments dragged past before the glowing figure moved away and disappeared from sight still trailed by a body of soulless supplicants.
‘Handmaiden?’ Sindiel whispered fearfully.
‘A corrupted vessel,’ Morr answered. ‘There are said to be seven of them if the legends are to be believed. They minister to the outer precincts.’
‘How do we fight them?’
‘We do not unless we have to.’
‘And if we have to?’
‘We must destroy their bodies completely.’
‘Is that why you made me bring this?’ Sindiel hefted a stubby-looking blaster he carried that seemed to be entirely constructed of hooks and blades. Xyriadh had also exchanged her splinter rifle for a monomolecular shredder, a similarly dangerous looking weapon that projected clouds of monofilament mesh.
‘Excessive questioning, in particular on the subject of the obvious, becomes tiresome. Be silent.’
The agents proceeded in silence, bypassing the crossroads where they had seen the Handmaiden and cutting through a rubble-choked alley. Reality shuddered again and for an instant they found themselves walking beneath balconies garlanded with flowers. Noble lords and ladies called languidly down to them with offers of entertainment and companionship. The bubble of unreality burst as quickly as it had come and they found themselves back beneath crumbled walls and a bruised-looking sky. They came to a great crack that spread across the street from building to building, almost three metres wide at its narrowest point and unguessably deep. Blue and purple vapours rose from the depths, twisting unnaturally together into half-formed faces or limbs that chased one another upwards until they were obliterated by the invisible pressures of the breach.
‘It’s blocked! We’ll have to turn back and find another way!’ said Sindiel with some relief. Something about the vapours was deeply disturbing to him, altogether too reminiscent of the hungry flames of a funeral pyre.
Morr merely glanced at him contemptuously before backing up a few paces and running forwards. He leapt across the yawning gulf and landed on the other side with an echoing crash, the vapours writhing in agitation about him as he stood. Aez’ashya was close behind, executing a flip halfway across as she made light work of the jump. Kharbyr and Xyriadh were less certain, in particular Kharbyr took an excessively long run-up before he made his leap. Xagor hurled himself at the jump resignedly, evidently expecting to plummet to his doom. The wrack jumped too soon and landed right at the crumbling edge of the precipice. His arms flailed hopelessly for a moment as he teetered backwards on the edge, his companions watching dispassionately to see if he fell. At the last possible moment Kharbyr seemed to relent and leaned forwards to grasp Xagor by the shoulder to pull him to safety.
Sindiel was left on the wrong side of the crack, wondering how long the others would wait for him. If his understanding of Aez’ashya was anything to go by it would not be long. Once again the terrors of being alone in this daemon-haunted place drove him forwards. His legs pumped maniacally as he sprinted forwards, determined not to repeat Xagor’s mistake by jumping too soon. Instead he almost left it too late; as he pushed off from the near edge he felt the stones crumbling away beneath his feet, robbing him of the vital push he needed to cross the gap. The multi-coloured vapours issuing from the crack hissed and spluttered about him, tangling his limbs and miring his thoughts. There was a timeless moment as he realised he wasn’t going to make it, and his mind filled with giggling, whispering, insinuating voices that were not his own.
The far edge of the crack rose up and smashed him in the midriff, knocking th
e wind out of him. His hands scrabbled desperately for grip among the broken stones as he slid backwards, his legs kicking into empty space devoid of any footholds.
‘Help me!’ he gasped to the others, the words contorting the vapours around him into mocking, screaming faces. No one moved. Sindiel slipped a few centimetres further as he tried to lever himself forwards with his elbows. Still no one moved to help him and Sindiel suddenly understood a new truth about the dark city. None of them, not even Aez’ashya, valued him enough to take the small risk involved in pulling him to safety. They would stand and watch him die, feeding on his desperation to the last moment rather than lift a finger to help him.
Sindiel cursed and kicked out to one side, catching his feet at last. Little by little he managed to scrabble over the edge in an undignified heap, experiencing a horrible sensation of vertigo at the last moment as he feared he was about to push himself back into the chasm by accident. He lay on his back panting, feeling the bright torch of hate truly kindle in his heart for the first time. He’d felt a spark of it before when he killed Linthis, a quick pulse as he excised all his anger at her in a single blow that saved his own life by taking hers. This was different: deeper, more affecting. He had sold his soul to join these people, given everything to be with them, little realising how twisted they truly were or how little value they placed on him. He nurtured his hate and allowed it into his heart, the heat of it anchoring him amidst the swirling madness. After a moment he wordlessly picked himself up and rejoined the others, still feeling the pitiless intensity of their gaze upon him.
The agents had emerged onto the edge of an open space, perhaps once a wide promenade or a parade ground but now only a wilderness of cracked stone and windblown dust. Soulless wandered here and there among the ruins, picking listlessly at the bones of their lost world. In the distance to their right the twisted remnants of a mighty palace clawed out of the earth, its melted towers of quartz tilted over sagging walls of obsidian and alabaster. Strains of weird music drifted from the place, a convocation of shrieking laughter and sobbing misery. Above it loomed a horrible black cloud ripped by bursts of multi-coloured fire, writhing snakelike and revealing sudden flashes larger than lightning.
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