Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  Salvation inverted, for one who passes from light into darkness,+ she whispered before touching another and then another. +In the skein of desire: freedom, meaning transcendence and victory. In the place of the enemy stands the rune of mastery. You seek to overthrow your master.+

  Nyos bridled at the description of the great tyrant as his master, but could not deny it.

  ‘Simple guesswork any street entertainer could mimic. If you wish to continue your miserable existence you must do better, crone,’ he said, and drew his fine, keen sword. The crone appeared to ignore him as she continued fondling the scattered runes.

  Here in the line of kinship are pleasure inverted to denote suffering or pain, and generosity inverted to indicate the miser. Both are touching the rune of brotherhood. You have two allies that share your goals sufficiently to trust, at least until the objective is achieved.+

  That was interesting, Nyos thought to himself. The crone had accurately divined traits of his two strongest supporters, confirming Nyos’s premonition that this little interchange could only end one way once he had all the information he needed.

  ‘Very good, or very lucky,’ Nyos sneered. ‘Now tell me what I came here to find out. How can I fulfil my heart’s desire and rid my people of Asdrubael Vect?’

  The crone hissed at that name, although whether in pain or anger Nyos could not tell. She turned her face to him for the first time, silken hair falling back to reveal a visage out of a fevered nightmare. The face was gaunt and deeply lined. Its eyes and lips were crudely stitched shut, but he still felt the weight of her blind eyes gazing upon him. Nyos had witnessed many greater horrors, and inflicted not a few of them himself, but his spine still conveyed an icy stab of fear as she mind-spoke to him again.

  And what horrors would you unleash to rid yourself of him?+ The crone’s mind-voice seemed stronger now, an unwelcome pressure against his thoughts. ‘How far will your lust for power carry you in your endeavour? Vect has slain all that opposed him. You stand amid the ruin he makes of his enemies!’

  Nyos replied with fervour. ‘Vect is a parasite, bloated on the blood of the true people. I would gladly break the Great Wheel itself if I could bury him in its downfall!’ He had seldom dared to utter such words while in Commorragh, even while dealing with the most solicitous of his allies, and it felt deliciously liberating to speak them now. The crone remained silent but seemed to approve, the spider hands stretched out again to gather up the little runes into her gnarled fist.

  Click, clack. The runes fell to the ground once more. The crone moved to touch them but drew back suddenly as if they burned her hand. A tiny wail of distress keened through Nyos’s consciousness.

  ‘What is it? What do you see?’ Nyos demanded, placing the flat of his keen blade upon her shoulder for emphasis. A simple flick of his wrist and she would be a head shorter.

  With shaking hands she reached out to the runes again. Reluctantly they moved from one rune to another as her scratchy mind-voice intoned the symbolic meanings before her.

  The end of your heart’s desire is beyond sight, unachievable with your current means, but the pathway towards it is littered with many portents. Here is the Solitaire, the rune of the soulless, sign of the living dead but also the symbol of hope or rescue when inverted. Connected with it are the runes of the world spirit and history, symbols of the forgotten and of escape, these in turn point to the runes of phoenix for renewal or rebirth, salvation and then freedom again–+

  ‘Then my heart’s desire will be achieved somehow,’ Nyos said bluntly, ‘Why do you hesitate? Advise me of the course I must take succinctly and immediately, I grow weary of your endless prevarication.’

  Even with death at her throat the crone hesitated before replying. +The line you follow eventually leads to the rune of Dysjunction – unthinkable entropy and change will come about should you follow this path. Commorragh will be torn asunder and remade.+

  The crone’s hands hovered above the rune as if fearing to touch it. Nyos pondered finding such a calamitous portent. Beyond the metaphysical implications the concept of Dysjunction had a very real meaning for the denizens of Commorragh. Their city rested in a delicate balance between the material and immaterial worlds. Dysjunctions had occurred in the past when reality rippled and the unthinking energies of the warp crowded in close to bend themselves to the unmaking of the eternal city. Chaos and disaster attended such events, and only through the most strenuous efforts had Commorragh and its sub-realms avoided sharing the fate of Shaa-dom. Nyos concluded that the crone was trying to frighten him and brushed aside such thoughts as more psyker mummery.

  ‘I should expect so,’ Nyos replied impatiently. ‘Interpret the rest of this mess or I’ll have your head.’ Some of Nyos’s fellow archons held that threats were a crude and inelegant form of inducement to employ, but in Nyos’s experience they were highly effective providing that the promised retribution materialised in a timely fashion. He twitched his blade back in anticipation.

  You must look to the past,+ the crone whispered. +Return the one that challenged Vect so closely that the most desperate measures were used to destroy him. To destroy Vect you must rebirth the shade of Archon El’Uriaq, the emperor of Shaa-dom–+

  ‘Impossible, El’Uriaq was consumed when his fortress was destroyed,’ Nyos snapped, but he found there was doubt in his words. The eldar of Commorragh had discovered many ways to conquer death. Over the centuries the cult of haemonculi, the artist-surgeons and torture-scientists of the dark city, had perfected unnatural methods to preserve themselves against the tide of years and to be remade from even the smallest morsel of their flesh. True death was a rarity among the highborn, and all the more feared because of it. Who knew what the practitioners of the arts of flesh might be able to achieve?

  No. A part of him still dwells in his ruined domain. A pure heart could still call him back from the abyss.+

  Nyos lowered his blade as his mind weighed the possibilities. El’Uriaq had failed to topple Vect, but he had come so very close that the tyrant had been forced to destroy an entire satellite realm to thwart him. The secret pacts and alliances El’Uriaq had made among the kabals were ancient history now, but the legend of Vect’s retribution upon Shaa-dom formed a substantial part of the invisible web of intrigue that protected the tyrant to this day. The re-emergence of Vect’s old rival would be a crippling blow to Vect’s prestige. The intellect and experience of such a co-conspirator would be worth legions of troops in its own right.

  ‘It sounds far-fetched, Angevere. Where might I find this part of El’Uriaq and the pure heart? Your seeings are useless without that knowledge.’

  El’Uriaq lies at the breach where he fell. A pure heart you will not find here nor anywhere else in Commorragh. Beyond that I cannot say, the way is hidden.+

  ‘I see. Presumably you’ve divined how our little consultation is going to end, Angevere?’

  Her reply was reluctant. +Yes.+

  ‘And you’re saying you can tell me no more?’

  You will bring about a Dysjunction. Turn aside from your path before it is too late.+

  ‘I think not. Farewell, Angevere.’ Nyos flicked his wrist and the crone’s head smoothly parted company from her body as the monomolecular blade swished through her neck. Nyos felt only the very slightest shiver of her passing soul and looked down in bemusement at the severed head where it lay among the scattering of runes in a spreading pool of blood.

  The stitched mouth still writhed and the eyes rolled sluggishly beneath their sutured lids, eliciting an admiring grunt from Nyos. He reached down and carefully retrieved the head by its now blood-slicked black locks. The crone might have further uses after all.

  The sickly sweet caress of She Who Thirsts was still sucking at his soul, piling up subjective years of ageing. It was time to leave.

  Outside the crone’s dwelling ancient, unseen eyes watched Nyos Yllithian flee fr
om Shaa-dom. They followed his progress with unnatural intensity and an unspeakable humour. The first piece was in place, the first motion had begun. Threads of fate were tightening towards an act of vengeance three millennia in the making, their mesh becoming inescapable. All that remained was to save what could be saved and destroy the rest. Beyond the veil hungry predators began to gather in anticipation of the feast to come.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE ARTS OF FLESH

  ‘So many believe that pain is inflicted only by the physical application of torment. Blades, hooks, chains, racks – these are all crude physical tools that serve their part in mortifying the flesh. Anticipation, repetition, conciliation and hope – these are the finer instruments to be wielded when it comes to the mortification of the soul.’

  – Master haemonculus Bellathonis

  Nyos Yllithian returned by secret ways to his fortress-palace on Corespur, deep among the soaring central spires of High Commorragh. Yllithian’s domain was an ancient one, an heirloom of his noble house that had been doggedly carved out and protected against usurpers since before the Fall. Nyos’s ancestor, Dralydh Yllithian, had first expanded and fortified his family’s spire-top manse by seizing the adjacent levels and incorporating them into his holdfast. After six centuries’ worth of skirmishing, intriguing and intimidating, Nyos’s great-grandfather, Zovas Yllithian, completed the conquest of the whole spire by driving out the last of the Archon Uziiak’s poisonous kabal from the lower levels. The fortress had been the White Flames’ exclusive territory ever since. Petty archons might have to rub shoulders with one another by sharing territory within a single tier but not Archon Yllithian of the White Flames.

  The sloping, armoured eaves of the fortress’s precipitous rooftops overhung a three-kilometre drop on two sides to where its gnarled foundations abutted onto Ashkeri Talon and the docking ring. Two of the three closest spires were controlled by kabals Yllithian rated as vassals or allies to his own. The remaining spire, a skeletal affair of dark metal, was home to Archon Uziiak’s surviving offspring and a number of other petty archons hostile to Yllithian.

  He was little troubled by their proximity. Decorative barbs, columns, rosettes and statues scattered artfully across the surface of the White Flames’ palace concealed a profusion of detection arrays and extremely potent weaponry. The palace was continuously patrolled by kabalite warriors and a hundred invisible eyes followed every occurrence inside its precincts, whispering constantly to Yllithian about what they saw.

  Secure again on the White Flames’ tier of the city amidst his warriors and slaves Nyos Yllithian rapidly recouped the strength he’d lost in Shaa-dom through the suffering of his minions. No doubt the spies of the great tyrant that Nyos suspected to be in his household reported on his brief absence but he had few concerns about that. He kept his activities secretive as a matter of course just as all archons did. Assassination by ambitious underlings or jealous rivals was a risk so commonplace that it was seen as a form of natural selection in the eternal city.

  Some days after his return Nyos summoned the chief of the haemonculi in service to the White Flames kabal, a twisted individual known as Syiin. Nyos ordinarily had little to do with haemonculi save to secure the pacts required to ensure rebirth in the unfortunate event of his death. He found the delicate artistry of the practitioners of the arts of flesh too dispassionate and academic to truly admire and too time-consuming to usefully employ. Nonetheless it was a foolish archon that did not keep haemonculi in their employ.

  Syiin was deep in the bowels of the White Flames’ fortress when he received the archon’s summons. He and his underlings dwelled in a saw-edged spiral labyrinth of cells and torture-surgeries where they pursued their art. Here dozens of strangely altered captives howled, screamed, tittered and mewled within their razor-lined oubliettes, a bizarre cross-section of practice subjects and ongoing experiments. At the time Syiin was in the process of completing a new face he had sculpted for himself by extending his bones to stretch the pallid skin into a taut, flat circle. Like all haemonculi Syiin had made many alterations to himself in the lifelong pursuit of his art. His abnormally lengthened limbs would have made him tall were it not for a curving spine that bent him almost double. Instead he tended to the appearance of some four-limbed creature walking on its hind legs with elbows to knees and a leering, moon-like face twisted to look up from beneath an impressively hunched back.

  He hurriedly garbed himself in the traditional stitched hides of his victims to present himself properly before Archon Yllithian. The garment comprised hundreds of soft vellum-like patches sewn together to make a mosaic of past suffering, all keepsakes from victims driven to a perfect pitch of agony. Donning it helped to settle his concerns a little, for it was rare for the archon to consult him directly and not a little worrisome to receive such a summons. He went as quickly as his bent body would allow by narrow, twisting walkways lit by corpse-eyes, worming up from the depths like an obscene insect wriggling its way out of a rotting log.

  Syiin blinked when he emerged into the unaccustomed light and space of the upper palace. There seemed to be more warriors than he had recalled seeing before. Everywhere he looked he saw black-armoured figures poised on guard or patrolling the corridors. The final ascent to the archon’s audience chamber was up a long flight of steps carved of an alabaster-like stone so pure it seemed to glow with an inner light. Every third step was occupied by pairs of guards armed with ceremonial lances hung with icons of the White Flames. Syiin found himself wondering whether this show of power was being made for his benefit but dismissed the thought. Archon Yllithian was scarcely likely to be trying to impress his chief haemonculus with a show of force. Syiin decided that the rumours he’d heard of the archon’s absence of late must have some substance to them and that he was none-too-subtly reasserting his authority over the palace. The bent-backed haemonculus laboured up the steps as swiftly as he could, filled with foreboding at what such signs might portend for him personally.

  One of the Ilmaea, Commorragh’s captive suns, was casting a wan, poisonous light through the wide embrasures of the archon’s audience chamber as it slowly died in its distant sub-realm high above. Elegantly twisted pillars of polished porphyry marched in a double rank along both sides of the processional, casting purple-black shadows across the exquisite mosaic floor. At the head of the processional Nyos Yllithian lounged upon a bladed throne forged by Zovas Yllithian from the broken weapons of his enemies. The archon appeared distracted and was viewing the scene outside with apparent disinterest as Syiin entered the chamber.

  Blank-helmed incubi regarded the haemonculus from both sides, their great curved klaives held upright before them ready to end his life at the merest twitch of Yllithian’s finger. Brightly garbed courtiers drew a menagerie of exotic beasts on gilded leashes into the shadows: snuffling, whip-thin ur-ghuls whined piteously, sinuous haemovores writhed as their lamprey-like mouths quested for blood and golden-eyed androgynes watched with inhuman interest. A coterie of sensuously painted Lhamaean concubines, each ritually bathed in aconite and perfumed with extract of hellebore, giggled languidly at Syiin as he approached to a respectful distance from his archon and abased himself before the throne.

  Nyos ignored the kneeling haemonculus and continued to gaze outside. Syiin stole a glance towards what seemingly occupied his archon’s attention. Beyond the black sun multi-coloured veils could be seen betraying the presence of the outer wardings that protected the city. They formed a shifting canvas of faerie fire criss-crossed by the drive flares of distant star craft. Nothing unusual was to be seen there, so Syiin settled himself to wait.

  In the case of any other minion Yllithian would have heightened their discomfort by keeping them waiting longer before deigning to acknowledge their presence. He knew that such subtleties were wasted on haemonculi, however, as they valued patience to a degree that most true eldar found perverse. Instead he addressed his assembled court.


  ‘Leave us,’ Nyos said. ‘The words I speak are for Syiin’s ears only.’ His command started a small, but richly appointed avalanche of warriors, concubines, pets and slaves hurriedly leaving the audience chamber. The incubi were the last to leave, only removing themselves after they had assured that the archon’s orders had been obeyed. Once they were alone and the gilded doors had silently closed Nyos turned his attention to the haemonculus cowering before him.

  ‘I have questions pertaining to the arts of flesh for you to answer,’ Nyos said without preamble. ‘If you cannot answer them I will require you to find me someone that can, do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Absolutely, my archon, how may I assist you?’ Syiin’s tone was respectful, even obsequious; but his words implied Nyos would owe him a debt for answering, a concept the archon did not relish.

  ‘You will not “assist” me, you will obey me by answering my questions or seek service elsewhere,’ he snapped.

  ‘Apologies, my archon. How may I serve you?’ Syiin fawned.

  ‘Better. Now tell me: how would you remake a highborn who had been lost for a very long time – centuries, perhaps even millennia?’

  Syiin’s taut face creased in a slight frown as he weighed up how far he could lie. ‘A complex process, my archon. The fresher the remnant the more quickly and safely regeneration of the whole can be achieved.’

  ‘I see. Without a “fresh remnant”, as you put it, what conditions would be most conducive to success?’

  Syiin’s thin lips puckered with distress. Discussing such secrets even with an archon made him uncomfortable.

  The haemonculus’s distress was an unexpected pleasure for Nyos. He rose from his bladed throne and stalked toward Syiin to savour the sensation more closely.

  ‘The more potent the – ah – catalyst the better the chances, my archon, but to bring back one who was lost thousands of years ago…’