by Gav Thorpe
Standing next to Saryengith, Aradryan was a little uneasy. Her reptilian mount leered at him with a black eye, ropes of saliva dripping from exposed fangs almost as long as his knife. The moonlight glistened on the creature’s scales, green and yellow, and its claws were sheathed with silvery metal studded with sharp jags of red and black gems, so that they appeared like serrated, jewelled carving knives. Its bulk was enough to intimidate Aradryan, who had seen cloud-whales in the gaseous domes of Alaitoc, but only ever from a considerable distance. The creature almost within reach was a mass of scaled muscle and tendon, its ferocious temperament only held in check by the chains of its reins in Saryengith’s gloved hands.
She wore a half-mask beneath her hood, shielding her eyes and the bridge of her nose. It was enamelled in red and black, the lenses made to look like flaming, daemonic eyes. A saddle pack was stowed across the back of her mount, just behind her throne-like seat. A longrifle was within reach, and a slender-barrelled fusion pistol hung amongst the baggage. Looking at the packs, Aradryan realised that everything that the pandita owned was in those bags; she would have lost home and possessions when the orks had overrun Hirith-Hreslain. For those on the craftworld, personal possessions were of little value except sentimental; lost or broken belongings were easy to replace, and fashions came and went quicker than seasons on Eileniliesh. For Saryengith, it would take considerable time and effort to fashion or purchase replacements for everything that had been destroyed or taken.
‘What word from the battle?’ asked Saryengith.
‘Selain is almost empty of foes, their dead piled high in the streets,’ Jair told her. Aradryan was content to allow his companion to speak. The journey back through the forest – after a hectic sweep of the streets close to the river to confirm that few, if any, orks had escaped – had been made in silence. Jair had seemed unwilling to talk about what had happened to Estrellian, and Aradryan thought that no good would come from forcing the issue.
The death of the ranger had brought about mixed emotions in Aradryan. He was sad to have witnessed another eldar die, especially at the hands of the brutish orks. Yet he did not feel as shocked or miserable as he thought he should; the fact that he was still alive outweighed his grief. As he had made his way between the trees, following Jair without conscious effort, Aradryan had relived the moment of Estrellian’s death several times. Etched into Aradryan’s memory was the cruel, angry glare of the ork and the brightness of the ranger’s blood as it had erupted from the flapping folds of his cloak. The rattle of bullets beside Aradryan had been no more than an arm’s-length away. If he had not stopped to speak with Jair on the stairwell, Aradryan might have been standing where Estrellian had died. Had the ork that shot Estrellian been the closest of the group, it would have been slain by the ranger’s pistols and the creature in front of Aradryan might have opened fire.
In such situations, it was the narrowest of margins, the most fickle circumstances of chance, which made the difference between life and death. The thought should have terrified Aradryan, to realise that he had been so close to death. His actual state of mind was the opposite. The forest around him was alive with sounds and smells and sights, teeming with life that still flowed through his body. His first encounter with an enemy had frozen Aradryan; his latest had let him free.
Aradryan was drifting back into a memedream of the event when he realised Jair was speaking to him.
‘The Exodites will ride out immediately, to push the advantage,’ the other ranger was saying.
Looking around, Aradryan saw that the host of Hirith-Hreslain, less than a hundred who had survived the initial attack, was moving out of the clearing. The ground shuddered beneath the tread of the megasaurs, each footfall sending reverberations that fluttered the leaves of the trees.
‘We can return to Irdiris if you wish,’ said Jair, watching the Exodites depart.
‘Not yet,’ replied Aradryan. ‘Let us see the battle to its end.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Never more so.’ Aradryan needed to return to Hirith-Hreslain, to see the orks destroyed. The town had been home to a vivid awakening for him, and he had to see how things would end. More than that, he needed to take part in that conclusion, to be an agent of the orks’ defeat. If he left now, he might never find any meaning in the things he had witnessed and experienced. ‘There are still orks to be killed.’
They followed the Exodites along the road as the dragon riders took to the night skies. The timing of their arrival was vital to the success of the plan laid out by the seers and autarchs. The Alaitocii and such rangers that had travelled on their battleships had slain the orks in Selain and were encircling the enemy left in Hresh. Through careful manoeuvring, the orks were being pushed back onto one of the main thoroughfares through the settlement, with only one seeming escape route. It was here that the Exodites would close the encirclement, dooming any orks that remained. If the warriors of Hirith-Hreslain arrived too early, the orks would realise their peril and try to break out into other parts of their town; come too late and the aliens would be able to escape into the forests.
Aradryan marvelled at his companions and their scaled mounts. The Exodites looked like other eldar, perhaps a little shorter and broader than the Alaitocii, but still possessed of the same slender build, sloping eyes and pointed ears. It was in their dress and mannerisms that they were most different. Aradryan could see the delicate stitching on their robes, made by hand, and the polished scale armour and shields that protected them had similarly been fashioned by manual labour. They bore spears and swords in addition to their rifles and laser lances: weapons of honed metal, chased with inscribed runes but with no energy source for a power field or whirling chainblade teeth.
The Exodites wore knee-high boots, heavily strapped with buckles, and their hands and forearms were clad in gloves of the same heavy hide-like material, knuckles and fingertips reinforced with dark grey metal. Some wore surplices, bound with wide belts and pierced by metal rings. Their helms were tall and pointed, like those of a Guardian, with open faces. Many wore long, elaborately embroidered scarves around their necks and across their mouths.
As they approached Hirith-Hreslain, the sights and sounds of fighting stirred Aradryan from a half-reverie. He could see nothing of the battle from where he was, but the flare of guns and missile launchers punctuated the silhouetted landscape in front, and the wind carried the bark of guns and the whine of shurikens.
One of the Exodites at the front of the column rose up in his stirrups, standing high with his laser lance held aloft. He turned to look back at the following warriors.
‘The enemy are cornered and their fate awaits them!’ he cried out. ‘The time to attack is upon us. Ready your weapons and steel your hearts. Slay those that must be slain, but take no pleasure in it. Guard against the lusts of Khaine, for they are no more than an iron voice giving word to the lies of She Who Thirsts. All desire is a trap, so kill without joy and strike down the vermin that have despoiled our homes. We will triumph and we will rebuild.’
‘Hirith-Hreslain!’ The Exodites raised their weapons in salute.
No sooner had the speech been made than ear-splitting screeches split the night air. Monstrous winged shapes dropped down from the clouds, silhouetted against the setting moons. Blasts of multicoloured lasers stabbed into the orks as the Exodite dragon riders plunged into the attack.
With a chorus of ground-shaking bellows and rasping cries, the Exodites’ war-beasts entered the battle. Surging along the main road, the megasaurs and lithodons charged into the orks retreating from the attacks of the Alaitocii. There was nothing the orks could do against this new threat, though some turned their crude guns on the gigantic forces of nature bearing down upon them.
Jair and Aradryan followed as swiftly as they could, occasionally pausing to snap off shots at orks that were trying to lurk amongst the ruins, shouting warnings up to the crew of a nearby megasaur to direct their fire against alien mobs skulking in the s
hattered buildings. Lascannon and scatter laser and fusion lance fire erupted from the howdahs of the enormous beasts, screaming down like lightning from a storm of wrath.
Clearing the street and surrounding buildings with their first thrust, the Exodites pressed on, driving the orks back into the guns and blades of the pursuing Aspect Warriors. With laser lances and fusion pikes, the Exodites closed, determined to exact revenge for the destruction of the town and the deaths of their kin.
It was fitting that the autarchs and farseers had granted the warriors of Hirith-Hreslain the opportunity to deliver the killing blow to the occupiers of their town. They settled the bloody score with grim faces and dispassionate eyes.
Pulses of white fire and burning lasers strobed through the orks, cutting down a score in one salvo. The dragons soared above, their riders raining down more las-fire and showers of plasma grenades. Against the fury of the Exodites, the orks did not survive for long. They were cut down in short order, the wounded crushed beneath the feet of the advancing behemoths.
Dawn found Jair and Aradryan picking through the ruins, searching for wounded eldar and surviving orks with the rest of the rangers and squads of Aspect Warriors. They met up again with Athelennil, and Aradryan was pleased to see her, though he realised with some guilt that he had not thought about his lover throughout the battle. On reflection, his lack of thought concerning her wellbeing had been to his advantage, for he did not know if he would have been able to cope worrying about her life as well as his own.
Here and there they would find a casualty of one side or the other; the eldar were taken to the healers, the orks despatched with pinpoint shots.
‘You know that Thirianna fought here,’ Athelennil told Aradryan as the two of them climbed down a broken wall from a ruined upper storey, having assured themselves that it was empty.
‘And I trust that she is unharmed,’ said Aradryan.
‘That is all?’
Aradryan dropped down to the street, landing next to the sprawled body of an ork, one of its arms missing, bite and claw marks across its back.
‘What else would I think? Thirianna and I are friends, if that.’
‘So, you have no urge to return to Alaitoc with her?’ Athelennil wrinkled her lip upon seeing the dead ork. ‘Are you sure this is the life you wish to choose?’
Aradryan looked around. There were alien bodies everywhere, and smoke rising from dozens of fires. The stink of fumes and orks was all-pervading, and the glare of Eileniliesh’s sun was harsh. Death hung like a shroud over Hirith-Hreslain, but it was not death that occupied his thoughts.
‘It was fear of death that drove me to Lacontiran,’ he said, grasping Athelennil’s hand. ‘I cannot let that fear rule my life. I have learnt here that death will come to us all, so it is in life that we must pursue our dreams and chart our own course. I cannot return to Alaitoc, for Thirianna or any other reason. There is no life there. Where there is no risk of death, life has no meaning.’
‘Yet, death is so much closer out here,’ said Athelennil. She reached out with her other hand and prodded a gloved finger against Aradryan’s spirit stone. ‘All that you are could be ended, far from home and friends.’
‘If I am to die, it will be out here,’ said Aradryan. ‘Out amongst the stars where I belong.’
Beginnings
The Black Library of Chaos – Deep in the weft and folds of the webway is a craftworld unlike any other. It was to here that the Laughing God, Cegorach, first travelled when he escaped the clutches of She Who Thirsts. The scholars who dwelt upon the craftworld were surprised to see the god appearing amongst them, but he stilled their excitement and related to them his tale, and that of what had happened to the other gods. The Laughing God finished his narrative and disappeared, instructing the scholars and their protectors not to forget what he had told them. Thus was the Black Library founded, and the first of the Harlequins created. From the Black Library the followers of Cegorach travel far and wide, searching for all knowledge of the power of Chaos and the manner of the dark gods of the Othersea. Artefacts of Chaos are brought here, for study and destruction, and within thousands of grimoires and tomes and volumes and tracts has been gathered an unprecedented literature concerning the warp and its denizens.
‘Madness!’ said Aradryan, his gaze moving from one companion to the next, unable to believe what he had heard.
They were barely ten cycles out from Eileniliesh, where the hunt for orks in the wilderness still continued; Aradryan had left with some reluctance. Of all the places he would have chosen for their next destination, the Chasm of Desires would have been last. The thought was horrifying. At one moment he had been considering the boundless possibilities of his new life, the experiences he could seek out; at the next, his shipmates had announced that they intended to delve into the heart of the Great Enemy itself.
‘It is not madness,’ said Caolein. ‘Other outcast ships have done it before.’
‘Where do you think that came from,’ said Jair, jabbing a finger at the waystone brooch on Aradryan’s chest. ‘The Tears of Isha fell only upon the crone worlds.’
‘But why now?’ said Aradryan. ‘What about the winterfalls? The Mosaic of Kadion? Another Exodite world, perhaps? There are others who will throw away their lives for the Tears of Isha, we do not have to be numbered among them.’
‘We do not even know if it can be done,’ said Athelennil. ‘It is an idea, nothing more.’
‘It’s a suicidal whim, that is what it is!’ Aradryan folded his arms defiantly. ‘There is a reason it is called the Well of Sins, the Gulf of Utter Darkness, the Void of Eternal Damnation.’
‘And despite those titles, it is also where the greatest rangers have gone before, to bring back the Tears of Isha so that future generations can avoid the hunger of She Who Thirsts. You wanted adventure, Aradryan. What greater adventure could we set upon?’
‘I think I am prepared to aim a little lower, this early in my life as an outcast,’ said Aradryan. He turned to Lechthennian, who had said nothing since Caolein had announced his intent to dare the Eye of Terror. ‘What do you think of this insanity?’
Lechthennian had a lap-harp, which he strummed distractedly. He looked up at the mention of his name, shaking his head.
‘I travel with the ship, nothing more,’ he said. ‘I do not choose its course.’
‘You do not care where you go?’ said Aradryan, frowning at the answer he had received. ‘It has been suggested that we venture into the greatest warp storm in the galaxy, the physical embodiment of the bane of our entire people, and you don’t have an opinion?’
His fingers picking out a jaunty four-note refrain, Lechthennian shook his head.
‘We are not committed yet,’ said Jair, reaching out a placating hand towards Aradryan. ‘It may be impossible, or too difficult at least, as you say. We will not know until we reach Khai-dazaar. When we are there, you will be able to choose what you wish to do.’
‘Khai-dazaar? I have never heard of it. What will I have to decide there?’
Athelennil sat down next to Aradryan, but he leaned away from her, disappointed that she would argue against him.
‘Khai-dazaar is an interspace in the webway, where we can find those who would guide us to the crone worlds. If we are successful, you can always choose to remain there, or perhaps leave with another ship.’
‘Leave? Would it come to that?’
‘If we wish to go, we are not beholden to your view,’ said Jair. ‘There will be others willing to come with us, your presence is not required. Do not think like a Path-wrapped. Your destiny is no more attached to this ship than any other. Irdiris is but a vessel, its crews coming and going as they wish. It is not special, we are not special, and neither are you. You are outcast now, enjoy the freedom of choice that is laid before you.’
‘From a maiden world to a crone world,’ Aradryan murmured. ‘Or abandoned to fend for myself. Madness.’
Sitting at the piloting console next to C
aolein, Aradryan laid his hands upon the semicircular arrangement of jewel-like interfaces. It was not the first time he had steered the Irdiris since coming aboard, but he still felt a thrill as his fingers lightly touched the guide-gems. The contact brought a moment of communion with the energy of the ship’s psychic network: formless sentience derived from the spirits of past eldar. Aradryan allowed himself a moment to settle, attuning his thoughts to the rhythm and flow of the vessel’s pulse.
The display sphere in front of him showed the webway tunnel curving gently down and to the right, realised in the glowing globe as an ethereal passageway of gold and silver. The Irdiris was quite capable of navigating the stretch on its own, so Aradryan sat back, feeling the control vanes of the starship adjusting to take in the sweep of the curve.
‘Not far now,’ said Caolein. ‘Are you sure you’re ready?’
‘This might be the only chance I have to do this,’ replied Aradryan. ‘If you are intent on leaving me here.’
Ahead, the webway opened out into the interspace of Khai-dazaar. Dozens of webway passages intersected, forming a near-globular arrangement more than three times the size of Alaitoc’s largest domes. The settlement that had grown up on the interspace looked like an inverted city, spires rising up from the artificial fieldwalls that kept the interspace together, pointing towards a glowing false sun at the centre. Bridges and concourses criss-crossed Khai-dazaar, forming a maze of quays and walkways, arcing over and looping around the turrets and towers that soared like gigantic stalactites. Lights of every hue shone from slender windows, and guiding lanterns blinked red and blue to form rainbow causeways between the labyrinth of structures.
A craftworld had landing protocols and the guiding hand of its infinity circuit to steer an arriving ship to its correct berth; Khai-dazaar was a free-for-all of ships coming and going, steering about each other on seemingly random courses. Small skyrunners cut past stately liners, while silver-hulled sky barges floated serenely from tower to tower.
