Path of the Renegade

by Andy Chambers

  A distant part of her mind was screaming that this was relevant somehow and that falling demanded action, but the all-consuming bloodlust that had been unleashed in her soul blotted it out completely. She twisted and caught Lorys on her fangs to drag her close for a final, deadly embrace as the churning blades rushed up to meet them. Blood sprayed over her, embracing her in a crimson flood of joy. The last blood Xelian saw being shed was her own.

  CHAPTER 15

  A CONFESSION

  ‘I raised a pillar above Cyllidh’s city gate and I flayed all of the dracons who had revolted, and I hung the pillar with their skins. Some I sealed at the base of the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on barbs, and others I bound round about the pillar with chains of burning ice… And I cut the limbs of the officers, of the noble officers who had rebelled… Many captives I burned with fire and many others I took as living slaves into my own house. From some I took their fingers and toes, from others noses and tongues, of many I put out the eyes so that all might know the hand of Vect.’

  – Asdrubael Vect

  Yllithian hurried along through the secret ways beneath his palace, his mind racing furiously. He had been summoned by El’Uriaq, called like a slave to attend on his master. The thought provoked the taste of bile in his mouth but behind it lay the omnipresent taint of fear. Xelian and Kraillach both lay dead at the hands of their own retainers. It was no coincidence that both of his old, most trusted allies had suddenly succumbed to plots after centuries of leading their kabals. Fear of assassination had grown to encompass every moment of Yllithian’s waking life. Even his dreams were haunted by stealthy murderers that wore the faces of his most trusted servants.

  By all accounts El’Uriaq seemed to thrive on danger. In the months since his resurrection he had survived no less than fourteen attempts on his life without so much as a scratch. His assailants were able to claim no such happy condition. El’Uriaq wielded raw psychic power with an effortless ease that was as terrifying to witness for those around him as it was brutally effective at crushing any threat to his person. Many of his most fervent followers had taken to hailing him as a demi-god. Just how the old emperor of Shaa-dom could wield such powers while avoiding any repercussions from beyond the veil was a matter of great interest to Yllithian, but it was immaterial at present. The simple truth was that El’Uriaq was in control and seemingly unassailable. Whatever hand had struck down Kraillach and Xelian seemed unable to harm El’Uriaq and, for some reason, had passed Yllithian by.

  At first Yllithian had believed that Vect had become aware of their plot, that despite all possible precautions the tyrant had divined that El’Uriaq had returned. Then he began to fear that Vect was trying to turn El’Uriaq against him by deliberately targeting the others while leaving Yllithian himself conspicuously unchallenged. Lately Yllithian had come to the conclusion that El’Uriaq himself had to be behind the assassinations. His spies in the city had heard not a whisper, nor a breath of rumour that could betray El’Uriaq’s return in the months since his resurrection, nor any indication that Vect was aware of it.

  So it was that when El’Uriaq called for his presence, Yllithian, great and noble archon of the White Flames, came running. Yllithian had always prided himself upon, among other things, his clear insight. He could see the way that his allies had been swept away when they exhausted their usefulness and he was determined not to follow them into oblivion. For now he must play the devoted follower until he could find El’Uriaq’s weakness. Yllithian consoled himself that he already had reason to believe the old emperor of Shaa-dom was not quite as resourceful as recent events might indicate.

  Yllithian stopped short, pulled out of his ruminations to wonder at the sight before him. He’d heard that at El’Uriaq’s instruction slaves had been labouring to break open new areas of the catacombs beneath. Yllithian had given little thought to the reports when he heard them, imagining only that El’Uriaq sought to open up a little more living space for himself while he plotted Vect’s demise. It seemed the work being undertaken was more extensive than he had imagined.

  Where there had previously been only a narrow corridor, rock-cut galleries now rose out of sight on either side. In each gallery gangs of slaves were toiling beneath the lash to widen the excavations further. It was still a hole, of course, in comparison to the sweeping grandeur of High Commorragh, but it was hard to deny that El’Uriaq’s works radiated a crude strength and purpose not to be found in the glittering spires above.

  Yllithian walked on more slowly, cultivating an air of bored disinterest as he observed the work in progress. The slaves were all fresh, their limbs hale and straight, their skins little marked by the sores and scars they soon accumulated. Yllithian wondered what had happened to all the previous gangs of slaves swallowed up by El’Uriaq’s lair. He moved deeper, pondering the latest nugget of information he had uncovered about Kraillach’s death.

  There was no doubt that Morr had been the one behind the fall of the Realm Eternal. Scandalously the incubus, a faithful servant since before anyone seemed able to remember, had turned on his master and his whole kabal. Yllithian’s spies had reported to him that the slaughter had been merciless. Kraillach’s kabal was a broken reed now, its scattered survivors staying but one step ahead of avaricious rivals intent on carving up their remaining assets. Kraillach himself had met True Death, his body utterly destroyed.

  Morr had subsequently vanished without trace. In Yllithian’s secret consultations with Angevere she had said that Morr had returned to the hidden shrine of Arhra, Father of Scorpions. It was a reference to the legendary place where all incubi were said to learn their killing arts. Yllithian set little store in the existence of such a mythical location and took her meaning to be a metaphorical one – Morr had sought shelter among the ranks of his fellow incubi. Yllithian would have given a great deal to know just why the incubi had chosen to overlook Morr’s blatant betrayal of their professed tenets of obedience and loyalty to their archons. Sadly that particular piece of information was also hidden from him, and if the crone knew more about it she refused to say.

  Nonetheless logic dictated that if Morr had acted at the behest of El’Uriaq, why had he not come forth to claim his reward? It was an altogether more likely scenario that Morr had slaughtered his archon for transgressing one of the incubi’s obscure ascetic beliefs. His flight to the incubi implied that some matter of honour was at stake. The Realm Eternal had been meekly falling in line with El’Uriaq’s machinations but now it was lost to him. That spoke to Yllithian of some other hidden hand at work. He could only hope that it was not the hand of Asdrubael Vect.

  Beyond the galleries the passage narrowed to the more familiar catacombs again, but even here new cross-passages had been made. Everywhere he could hear the buzz of low voices and the sound of hurried footsteps. Three times Yllithian was stopped by arrogant trueborn warriors and forced to explain his business there. When he named himself and his business they were deferential enough but the incidents chafed at Yllithian’s already raw temper even further. He carefully kept his emotions in check; Xelian’s recent fall from grace was still sharp in his mind.

  Opinions varied as to whether the Blades of Desire had survived as a kabal because of or despite the tyrant’s scrutiny at an especially vulnerable time. A new archon had been raised with a minimal amount of bloodletting after Xelian’s death. Dark rumours persisted of Xelian being seized by a fit of madness immediately before her demise but the extreme damage her body had sustained precluded any practical attempt at investigation. Her resurrection was proving unfeasibly prolonged for a variety of ill-explained reasons. It had reached a point where Yllithian was beginning to suspect Xelian’s haemonculi had been bribed to prevent, or at least delay, her return.

  Yllithian was regretting the loss of the services of Bellathonis, himself incarcerated in one of his own sarcophagi since he had displeased El’Uriaq. Apparently the master haemonculus had sustained dreadful injuries during the resurrection, his own sp
lintered bones piercing his organs in many places. Weeks of regrowth, Bellathonis’s wracks had told him, would be required and they refused to rouse their master ahead of time. Yllithian had sensed deception from the wracks, a fearful taint that they were hiding something. No doubt they too were in El’Uriaq’s employ.

  Bellathonis would have been able to get to the bottom of things, or at the very least get Xelian back in the running. To Yllithian’s practised eye the changeover at the Blades of Desire had been altogether too smooth, a sure sign that someone had worked hard behind the scenes to make it so. He had little doubt that the new archon of the Blades of Desire owed her allegiance to El’Uriaq body and soul. Xelian had so effectively eliminated rivals from her own bloodline that the remnants of her house were now helpless pawns and figureheads. It would be long – if ever – before House Xelian rose to any form of prominence in Commorragh again. In the old alliance of the noble houses that left only Yllithian and his White Flames free to act.

  As free as fear would allow.

  Yllithian passed beneath what had been a low opening that was now an arch three stories high. Beyond it the way opened into an amphitheatre with a tall throne on a stepped dais at its centre. Yllithian followed a wide ramp down to the floor of the amphitheatre, noting how crude and unfinished everything looked; the ramp was rough and uneven, the angles of the stepped terraces mismatched. Slaves were scattered everywhere chipping miserably at the rock while being alternately harassed, goaded or abused by scores of guards with nothing better to do with their time. Messengers dashed in and out vying for attention with extravagantly costumed victuallers that were intent on displaying their wares: spice wines and stem meads that had been distilled from whole settlements, the cured flesh and pickled organs of extinct species, or the last living examples of endangered ones. Jewels and the richest finery lay in heaps like a mythical dragon’s horde.

  At the centre of this great constellation of activity was El’Uriaq himself. His personal gravity was such that it made every occurrence in the wide amphitheatre orbit around him. The guards abused the slaves for his pleasure, the piles of treasure were his tribute, the messengers clamoured for his ear, the hustlers showed their goods to win his favour. Yllithian approached the dais feeling lonely and vulnerable, a dark-clad non-entity in the multitude. As the proud archon of the White Flames he had already had to accept that his only protection against El’Uriaq was his continued usefulness. If that ever failed him neither guards nor walls would keep him safe, as Kraillach and Xelian had discovered to their cost. Even so it was still a test for his nerve to appear before the old emperor of Shaa-dom shorn of any such artifices and depend solely on El’Uriaq’s good favour not to be killed on a whim.

  El’Uriaq wore an open-fronted robe of pale silver over a suit of shining bronze-coloured body armour. His head bore a crown adorned with eight stars of shifting hues and his hand bore a sceptre carved from a single ruby. So had high archons appeared in the days before the rise of Vect, a wordless claim to nobility of a lost age – a time that Shaa-dom in point of fact was never a part of. Such panoply left little doubt as to El’Uriaq’s ambitions to rule Commorragh in the tyrant’s stead. Despite the crowd El’Uriaq sensed Yllithian’s arrival immediately, turning to him with a delighted expression as if at the return of an old friend that had been long absent.

  ‘Nyos! My thanks for accepting my invitation, I’m so glad you could come!’ El’Uriaq called, his rich voice full of warmth and welcome.

  ‘It was my honour, El’Uriaq, to be invited to your hidden kingdom,’ Yllithian said as he looked about him pointedly. ‘Your security is not a concern any more, I assume?’

  ‘Fear not, everyone here can be trusted to take their own life before revealing my secrets to our enemies.’

  ‘Reassuring. I would include myself in that pool of happy martyrs, of course.’

  ‘Your devotion to our common cause is beyond question, Nyos, I know that,’ El’Uriaq replied with heartfelt conviction. What did he know that Yllithian didn’t? The thought was chilling.

  ‘Which is why I have invited you here to come and share your thoughts about the unfortunate demise of Kraillach.’

  Yllithian’s mind went through an instantaneous flip. El’Uriaq was asking him for theories on Kraillach’s murder? Perhaps the plan was to entrap him with a false accusation of complicity?

  ‘I understand that Kraillach’s own chief executioner, an incubus named Morr, was behind the heinous crime in question. He has evaded justice ever since as best I know.’

  El’Uriaq was watching him carefully, weighing the truth or falsehood behind every word.

  ‘Yes, that much is common gossip, so I hear,’ said El’Uriaq lightly. ‘The burning question is why the executioner slew his master. Why do you think he did it, Nyos? What was the motive?’

  ‘I had assumed he was in the employ of our enemies,’ Yllithian lied, noting that El’Uriaq didn’t seem to require any theories about Xelian’s passing. He decided to risk a probe in that direction. ‘Perhaps this was an attempt to weaken our alliance, given the recent… disruption within the Blades of Desire. Our enemies sought to remove the Realm Eternal as a viable power block too.’

  El’Uriaq did not rise to the bait, still seeming to weigh Yllithian’s answer. No doubt El’Uriaq already knew more than Yllithian did about Kraillach’s death and was feeling him out. No theories were really needed, merely an insight into how much Yllithian knew or guessed at. The true question now was whether an excess of knowledge or ignorance would be the fatal factor on Yllithian’s part.

  Yllithian decided he would rather be damned for knowing too much than too little, adding: ‘Of course for an incubus, especially one of Morr’s standing, such a betrayal is virtually unprecedented. And if one such as he betrayed us to our enemies how can we still be at liberty to be having this conversation? Vect’s castigators would already be at our door.’

  ‘Quite,’ El’Uriaq nodded.

  ‘So if not at the behest of Vect, then who?’

  ‘Just so, Nyos, there are other forces at work here. The tyrant is still ignorant of my return, I’m sure of that, but I confess that Kraillach’s passing is troubling to me.’

  ‘With the perpetrator apparently vanished I’m afraid that I find it difficult to suggest a productive course of action.’

  ‘Wheels are in motion, Nyos. My foes will find me harder to be rid of this time around.’ El’Uriaq smiled lightly as he said the words but Yllithian caught a dangerous light glowing in his eyes.

  ‘But let us lay aside such grim talk. There is another matter I wished to speak with you about, a lighter one than the tragic demise of Kraillach. The time has come for a gathering of forces, for the conspirators to take binding oaths together and dedicate themselves fully to the cause.’ El’Uriaq’s gaze was far away, as though he saw another time and place in his mind’s eye.

  ‘Three days hence I will call together our chief supporters for a celebratory banquet, a show of strength so that they may take heart at their numbers and also a warning when they witness the fate of the traitors I’ve discovered among them. You will attend I hope, Yllithian. I owe you so much that it simply wouldn’t be the same without you.’

  El’Uriaq’s solicitous invitation seemed so coy that Yllithian wondered if he were being mocked. ‘Of course, it’ll be my great pleasure to attend,’ he replied mechanically as he wondered if he was being invited to his own public execution.

  ‘Wonderful, it really was too kind of you to come and visit in person. You must forgive the disarray, there’s still so much to do.’

  Yllithian recognised that he was being politely invited to leave. He bowed. ‘My thanks for finding the time to speak with me, El’Uriaq. It was an illuminating experience, as ever.’ El’Uriaq nodded and smiled, and Yllithian backed away until the old emperor was swallowed up again by his constellation of followers. He swallowed dryly, but the taste of bile wouldn’t leave the back of his throat.

  Yllithian hurrie
d up the ramp and out into the tunnels before his sense of impotent rage overwhelmed his discipline. Having to virtually abase himself before the creature he had helped to create vexed him sorely. He was so wrapped in his own thoughts that he barely gave heed to the crooked figure that followed him from the amphitheatre. He wound his way past the tirelessly working slave gangs to places where the sound of their tools and snap of whips receded into the distance. The walls of passages gradually narrowed to little more than shoulder-width and the turnings became fewer. The sepulchral quiet of the deep catacombs reasserted itself as his feet carried him automatically along memorised paths towards his palace above.

  Only there, when he was upon paths seldom trod by guards and slaves, did he become aware that he was no longer alone. He turned at once and laid a hand on the hilt of his blade as he called a challenge.

  ‘Who are you that dares to dog the steps of an archon? Come out and show yourself!’

  A crooked figure limped painfully out of the shadows and into the light of a solitary gem overhead. It was a gaunt, black scarecrow-like figure that was bent unnaturally in back and limb.

  ‘It is I, Bellathonis, my archon, and I would have words with you.’

  ‘Bellathonis?’ Yllithian exclaimed in disbelief. ‘But your wracks told me that you were in the process of rebirth!’

  ‘Forgive the deception, my archon,’ the master haemonculus wheezed as he came closer. ‘I have forgone more permanent restitution of bodily function for the present. There simply seemed too much to do and being thought of as… unavailable has allowed me freedoms I might otherwise have not enjoyed.’

  Yllithian looked at the haemonculus more carefully. A host of slender rods had been drilled through his flesh into his bones. These were being held immobile by external clamps to brace his shattered limbs. A small pharmacopoeia made up of canisters and bags hung about his neck with lines running from it to feed needles pushed beneath his grey, waxy-looking skin. Pale blood oozed from the wounds and the haemonculus’s eyes were fever-bright.