If Ashanthourus was convinced by the Shadowseer’s words he gave no sign of it. The High Avatar turned his grinning mask to gaze gloomily towards the keep and silently waited for nightfall.
Chapter Eight
Apogee / A Memorable Victory
The Confluence was packed to capacity. Many of Vyle’s guests were perforce squeezed into the entrance hall to wait while he made his decision of where to hold the night’s banquet. Vyle Menshas stood in the centre of the octagonal Confluence chamber apparently deep in thought. He was surrounded by rings of guards and slaves bearing polished metal platters, ornate salvers and fat-bellied tureens emitting delicious-smelling steam. They had already been kept waiting for over an hour.
Kassais stood discreetly to one side trying to read his cousin’s mood. This was one of Vyle’s little tests and everyone present knew it. Who would be foolhardy enough to try to prompt their archon into making a decision? Kassais could almost feel them all silently willing him to say something. No one else had the guts to try. The set of the Shrike Lord’s shoulders and the long, basket-hilted blade he was wearing at his hip tonight implied a degree of danger to Kassais that was sufficient to make him hold his tongue and wait with the rest.
After a seeming eternity Vyle finally looked up and glanced around the expectant faces surrounding him. The Shrike Lord’s brooding gaze fell on an elderly servant somewhat more finely dressed than the others, with a high collar and long, pointed shoes.
‘You. You were the Yegaras’ major-domo or chamberlain or some nonsense, weren’t you?’
‘I had that honour, my lord,’ the ancient one replied querulously. ‘I served five generations of the clan first as a guard, then as a scribe and finally as steward. If there is any help I can give or knowledge I can impart to assist your lordship’s ruminations I stand ready at your command.’
‘You can assist me by shutting your mouth and dying, you decrepit blowhard,’ Vyle sneered as he slowly drew his blade. The old steward blinked in surprise and then howled in alarm as the Shrike Lord slashed him across the chest without another word. The ranks of servants behind the steward scattered as best they could in a clattering deluge of falling trays and tumbling silverware.
Vyle ignored the endless cacophony as he pursued the old servant over the slippery piles of dropped food. Those of Vyle’s guests beyond the immediate reach of the fracas smiled and craned their necks to watch his cruelty with voracious appetite. Those at closer quarters, including Kassais, took care to avoid being on the wrong end of one of the Shrike Lord’s murderous strikes.
The Shrike Lord attacked expertly to prolong his victim’s agony, slashing and thrusting at extremities where no major veins or arteries lay. The old steward staggered to and fro trying to get away from the stinging, jabbing pain, but Vyle was merciless as he circled his victim. Inevitably the steward slipped in his own blood and fell to his knees. Still there was no mercy as Vyle cut again and again.
Gasping, the old steward began crawling away towards one of the mouths of the Confluence in a desperate, animal instinct to escape. Vyle followed at a leisurely pace and periodically stood astride the prone form, jabbing it again as its movements slowed down like worn-out clockwork. The steward finally shuddered and became still. After a moment Vyle looked up at the entrance that now stood before him. Tall doors inlaid with emerald, peridot and jade greeted his gaze. He nodded with satisfaction.
‘We’ll eat in here,’ the Shrike Lord muttered before pushing the doors open and proceeding inside. Kassais stepped sharply to catch up with him while the guards and servants were left behind to unravel the chaos created by Vyle’s impromptu murder-lust.
The hall beyond was rendered in a thousand different variations of the colour green. Jade flagstones beneath their feet were inset with olivine and green agate, polished pillars of dark green obsidian marched away along both walls. The roof was pierced by rosettes of pallid green crystal, swallow-tailed banners of viridian silk floated lazily in the breeze created by Vyle’s entrance.
‘That was an amusing way of making a choice,’ Kassais said airily, ‘if a little on the messy side.’
‘Daemon’s teeth, the drudgery of it,’ the Shrike Lord grumbled. ‘I find it hard to credit that this place is even worse than the last. But it is.’
Files of slaves were now entering behind them carrying the surviving victuals. The distant shrieks of less fortunate individuals could be heard as they were whipped back down into the kitchens and sculleries below the Confluence to secure replacement dishes. No proper banquet table was present in the Emerald hall so furniture was dragged in from adjoining chambers to furbish it in a haphazard fashion.
A claw-footed throne of verdigris bronze caught Vyle’s attention and he had it set upon an impromptu dais before moodily taking up residence in it. Kassais secured a high-backed chair for himself and positioned himself close by. More guests and guards were entering the hall on the heels of the harried-looking slaves. They looked warily about and tried to find seats that were not too close to their lord and master but not too ostentatiously far away either. Kassais, on the other hand, was amused by their antics. He judged that the bloodletting and the ongoing chaos had raised the Shrike Lord’s gloomy spirits somewhat so he ventured to speak again.
‘Why not simply have the place gutted if it offends your sensibilities so?’ he asked innocently.
‘There’s a hundred other more pressing things to think about than interior decoration,’ Vyle sneered. ‘That’s the kind of hysterical nonsense that cost the Yegaras their inheritance in the first place.’
Kassais shrugged. ‘I simply mean that if this place displeases you we can provide a swift remedy for that issue.’
Vyle rewarded Kassais with a fierce grin. ‘Always ready to take pleasure in violence for violence’s sake, eh, Kassais? We’ll see how we fare after tonight and perhaps you’ll get your wish.’
As the guests and guards spread through the hall, Kassais could see that Vyle’s prophecy had been fulfilled. The varied costumes present clashed chaotically with the confines of the Emerald hall. There was none of the muted unity of the night before, rather the assembled company had the look of a pirate gang marooned in an undersea cavern seated on flotsam and jetsam. As they settled into place Vyle accepted a goblet and drank from it, signifying that the others could begin to partake of the feast. The tense atmosphere relaxed a little and quiet music struck up in the background to cover any hesitant gaps in the guests’ conversations.
‘And when do you think our other guests will arrive?’ Kassais mused.
‘Who’s to say they aren’t already here?’ a cheerful voice said in his ear.
Kassais twisted around – with another excruciating jerk of his injured shoulder – to see the Harlequin they had called Motley standing close enough to touch. The slight figure in his black and white diamonds and domino mask was incongruously propping up a long golden staff that seemed much too tall for him. Kassais realised with a start it was the same staff that had been carried by Ashanthourus in the previous night’s performance.
‘Where is your leader tonight?’ Vyle asked sharply. ‘I’m accustomed to dealing with the master, not his minions.’
Motley smirked and did not answer the Shrike Lord immediately, instead addressing himself directly to Kassais. ‘Are you ready for your performance tonight? Are you still willing to undertake it? Are you still able to do so?’
Kassais glanced over at Vyle and then nodded. ‘But first tell me what became of Olthanyr Yegara after the performance last night? I’ll wager you people know what happened to him.’
Motley frowned and cocked his head quizzically to one side. ‘Why would we know anything? He fled the hall and then we left immediately afterwards. Has he disappeared or some such? Vanished entirely from mortal ken?’
‘It seems so,’ grumbled Vyle from his verdigris throne, determined not to be ignored. ‘You
snapped his fragile mind, Harlequin, something I had been careful not to do – it was very careless of you to break my slave.’
Motley bowed at the waist, the golden staff in his hand wobbling alarmingly as he did so, before launching into a lengthy declamation.
‘Our apologies, but I believe that I can say without contradiction that Ashanthourus gave warnings not once but several times on matters of precisely this nature. A possibly impertinent observation on my part would be this – if, as master of the slave, in the face of such warnings you permitted his performance to go ahead then the responsibility for his breakage also surely falls upon you? As I understand it the slave is commonly relieved of such tiresome burdens as self-determination and choice.’
‘You talk too much,’ sneered Vyle dangerously. ‘As if words will protect you if you pile enough of them together. I can tell you that they won’t.’
‘Duly noted, my lord,’ Motley responded sadly with a level of enforced brevity that obviously pained him.
‘So get on with it, Kassais has already said he’s willing. You’re keeping me waiting and that’s never a good plan.’
Motley shrugged, raised the golden staff and struck it on the jade flagstones at his feet. As he did so an ethereal shock ran through the banquet eliciting gasps of surprise from the guests. The walls of the Emerald hall shimmered as if in a heat haze while its roof seemed raised to impossible heights. Kassais looked up; it seemed as if he were gazing into a night sky with a scattering of stars. As he watched, the stars seemed to brighten as they descended, resolving into the forms of glowing people drifting majestically through the air.
Kassais smiled to himself at the Harlequins’ mummery. They must have been hiding in the eaves of the hall silently waiting for Vyle and his coterie to enter. That meant the Shrike Lord had also been play-acting all along. He glanced at Vyle for confirmation of the fact, but his host’s face was as immobile as a statue.
They were clad in multi-coloured light and held poses associated via myth and legend with the ancient eldar gods – the hunter, the smith, the maiden, the crone, the warrior. Motley began to speak, naming the gods as Ashanthourus had done on the previous night. Motley’s voice was higher and quicker than the troupe-master’s steady recitation, but it had an indulgent warmth that his predecessor had lacked.
‘Great Asuryan and his paramour Gia,
wise Hoec and Cegorach the trickster,
far-sighted Lileath, deadly Khaine,
industrious Vaul, the crone Morai-Heg…
and two that loved us best of all,
two from whom we sprang;
Isha of the harvest and Kurnous of the hunt.’
As they were named each of the Harlequins playing the different gods broke their pose and began to dip and soar over the audience’s heads. Their performances were more acrobatic than those of the previous night. They often came together in tight orbits and joined hands to spin like binary stars, twisting and tumbling fantastically around their shared centre of mass. The gods passed overhead as they surged from one end of the hall to the other, seemingly entirely engrossed in their intricate interactions. The combined effect they created was a scintillating tapestry of wonder.
Kassais saw not gods but eldar with personal holo-fields and grav-harnesses. He had seen both kinds of devices used on many occasions but seldom with the design merely to entertain and make spectacle rather than to intimidate and destroy. Some wych gladiators favoured grav-harnesses to assist in their more fantastically acrobatic fighting styles, while others eschewed them as inhibiting true artistry with the blade. Kassais found himself wondering how the Harlequins would fare in combat – they had certainly cultivated a fearsome reputation.
Two of the glittering airborne figures often dipped low and hovered above the Shrike Lord and his immediate guests. The masks of Kurnous and Isha gazed down on them beneficently as they passed overhead. They seemed to take pleasure in the comings and goings of the mortal eldar below. After a pause spent watching the distant gyrations of the other gods Isha drifted lower still and began to sing. The song lacked words but was conveyed as strains of pure emotion that shivered along the listeners’ nerves and echoed in their minds. A song of love and growth, a maternal desire for her offspring to prosper.
Even Vyle Menshas’s sharp, predatory features softened a little as he listened to the song of Isha. Kassais, who as befitted a trueborn Commorrite had never known unconditional love, felt for the first time in his life an inkling of what it was to be cherished. He found himself standing unbidden, the high-backed chair crashing back unheeded behind him. He was filled with the urge to share his deeds, to tell a tale that would impress the goddess floating before him, to prove his worth to her.
‘I’ll tell you of a mighty harvest I once took, great goddess!’ Kassais called lustily. ‘It’s an epic tale, grisly and uplifting by parts but with a fine outcome – for me at least!’
The audience chuckled appreciatively in anticipation and he began to warm to his task. Kassais felt a presence beside him and realised that Motley had sprung to his side, the great golden staff in his hands dipping drunkenly like a mast in a storm. The Harlequin spoke even more rapidly than he had before, the words virtually tripping over each other. It was almost as though he were desperate to get his line out before Kassais could say anything else.
‘Against this time of triumph, hear now one tale of cunning, perseverance and endeavour from a later age. Hear of one who has crossed the stars and returned with a story to tell. Heed his words and ask yourself if you would have acted differently!’
Kassais grinned broadly at the idea that he had somehow thrown the Harlequin’s performance into disarray by acting too early. Good, let them work around him. Only then did it strike him that Motley’s rushed and formulaic introduction had sounded like a joke – a joke being made at Kassais’s expense. He glared around at the little clown but Motley had already skipped back out of reach, the golden staff in his hands wagging ludicrously above his head. Isha’s song drew Kassais’s attention back upwards and the momentary vexation with Motley was forgotten.
‘We sailed through the ether, three ships together spearing the blackness,’ Kassais called out to Isha. ‘We set forth to snatch a few delicacies, a few slaves and entertainment from here and there before we turned our keels back for Commorragh and home. But then we found a prize worthy of our efforts. Full-bellied with glittering flanks like a fat golden sow, she was. An ungainly beast of burden sent floating hither by the slave races and virtually begging for our knives.’
Beyond Isha’s comely shoulder the complex skeins of light described by the orbits of the other gods were drifting closer. Kassais could see the gods’ masked faces increasingly turned towards him with seeming disapproval. He cared not at all, he had the full attention of lovely Isha and desired nothing more than to continue his story of piracy.
‘She had two guard dogs with her, so valuable was the prize. They were as lean and grey as winter but no match for our hard-driven cannon. As the hounds fell away in flames Akir Heliaq rushed in to be first onboard and she tore the belly from his ship with neutronium fangs. Myself and Dhorun of the Broken Circle nipped at her heels and pulled her teeth until we could more cautiously approach.
‘We chased and she fled hopelessly, unthinkingly before us. Soon she was brought to bay and we grappled her like an unwilling lover. Her crew fought but they were children, mere babes in arms, compared to our hard-driven blades. The decks ran red… and the screams! Oh! How they echoed in those tight metal confines of the sow! We made such music as we slew that some of those we fought went mad at the sound of it. I–’
Kassais’s tale was cut short by a giant blade of gleaming fire that swept down between where he stood and where the moon-goddess floated. Part of him knew that it must be another one of the Harlequins’ illusions; light, given the appearance of substance as it flashed past his eyes. But by now
Kassais was thoroughly enmeshed in the psychic weavings of Cylia and her chorus of fellow Shadowseers. Also the faint, exotic spice of hallucinogen gas was in his nostrils; so he heard the blade rushing down and he felt the heat of it on his skin.
Kassais sprang back and looked up to see the armoured helm of Khaine, the war-god, glaring down on him from above the blade. For all his bravado Kassais quailed in that moment as any mortal must quail before a god. Yet the fiery sword was withdrawn and Kassais looked up again to see the god Kurnous remonstrating with Khaine while the armoured warrior-god laughed in his face. Beyond them both Isha was floating away, with many a backward glance, to join the court of other gods. Kassais was bereft.
‘Don’t be sad,’ Motley whispered in his ear. ‘She can’t help it – see there, Asuryan, the Phoenix King in the centre of it all, he’s ruled that the gods can have no more contact with mortal kind.’
‘But…why?’ Kassais cried. ‘I had barely begun my tale!’
‘There, there. You’ll get to finish it, I promise you,’ Motley said consolingly. ‘As to why – you see the Maiden up there beside Asuryan? Lileath, she had a dream that the eldar would be responsible for the destruction of Khaine one day. On hearing that, Khaine swore to destroy the eldar race in its entirety. He only relented when Isha pleaded with Asuryan on our behalf. The price of our survival was that there could be no more contact between gods and mortals. Now watch what happens next.’
The majestic skeins of light being described by the gods’ gyrations resumed. They were perhaps more straitened or chastened than before and definitely more distant. Over time the courses of Isha, her paramour Kurnous and Vaul, the smith-god, intersected more closely. Kassais watched without comprehension as Vaul withdrew to hammer at his anvil for a time before returning to bestow some sort of gift on Isha. On the moon-goddess’s next circuit she scattered gleaming lights in her wake that resolved into bright snowflakes drifting down to each eldar in the hall.
The Masque of Vyle Page 8
