‘Everybody on!’ ordered Naxipael. The survivors scrambled to obey – except Kharbyr and Xagor. They hesitated for a moment, each looking at the other. This would be the ideal time to split from Naxipael and Bezieth’s clique before they got into another pointless fight at bad odds. On the other hand Xagor was right, just two of them left alone on daemon-haunted Metzuh tier might not stand much of a chance.
‘You two! Come on or I’ll kill you myself!’ Naxipael shouted, already waiting at the first row of battlements with his blast pistols leveled meaningfully. The momentary thoughts of escape vanished and Kharbyr ran over to the archon with Xagor close behind. The moment they passed between the crenellations Naxipael called out four words and the iron-grey platform began to ascend. High velocity splinters were tearing chips from the scant cover available on the platform, a dark lance beam flashed and shriveled a warrior along with the stone he hid behind in its awful glare of anti-light.
The distance to the top of the gunmetal wall was shrinking rapidly as their platform rose to meet it. Kharbyr guessed that it had already halved, just a few more seconds and they would come level. Grenades flew back and forth seeding bright blossoms of plasma fire on both sides of the wall. With three metres to go Kharbyr ran forward, dodging and leaping for all he was worth as envenomed splinters and raging energy bolts hissed around his ears. Two metres to go and he could see their enemies clearly now, Azkhorxi warriors in black and purple, their helms crested with a half moon of silver. Kharbyr rolled aside from a burst of splinters and darted for a point on the wall where a grenade had just detonated on the far side. One metre to go and Kharbyr leapt up, springing nimbly between the sharp teeth and hoping fervently that he wasn’t the only one doing so.
CHAPTER 13
ASCENSION
The sculpted face of the shrine of Arhra rose before Morr and Motley like a cliff. Tier upon crusted tier of frowning archways were shadowed by thickly clustered columns. Steeply sloping flights of steps interwove among crumbling plinths weighed down with a wide variety of grotesque statuary. The shrine was built of darkly lustrous obsidian that seemed to suck up the light falling upon it. A riot of foliage was festooned around the lower reaches of the shrine, a green wave frozen at the point of breaking across a black mountain. The fleshy looking creepers and bright blooming lianas softened the brooding edifice somewhat, but their verdant fecundity contrasted so sharply with the lightless stone that it lent the whole an alien, intrusive air that sickened the stomach.
Motley expected some kind of final challenge as Morr approached, but the towering incubus mounted the first steps without incident. The shrine was silent as a tomb, even the natural sounds of the surrounding swamps seemed muted in its presence. The sense of brooding watchfulness he had sensed from far off was overwhelming this close, as though every shadowed archway hid a silent sentinel. As Motley placed his first foot on the steps he felt an empathic chill run up his spine. Passion and murder-lust were etched into the very stones of this place, an echo of millennia of bloodshed and violence being honed to an artform with the kind of depth and clarity that only the eldar race could achieve.
Morr climbed steadily, seemingly confident of where he was going as he passed the first tier of archways and kept moving upwards. Motley forced himself to follow, passing plinths with their crouching beasts and towering warriors. There was a strong preference for low slung, multi-legged monstrosities that Motley assumed were scorpions from different worlds and realities. Some exhibited disturbingly humanoid characteristics: hands instead of claws, saucer-eyed faces. Unlike just about every other shrine Motley had ever seen all of the statues faced inward towards the structure itself, rather than out to the world.
Three tiers up and Morr vanished inside one of the archways without so much as a backward glance. As the incubus disappeared from sight a bell tolled once from deep within the shrine, the dolorous tone of it seeming to hang in the still air. Motley hurried up but then paused on the threshold despite himself, poised for a moment between the world of light outside and the darkness within. A cold breath seemed to blow into his face, a thing welling up from deep in the underworld and before him lay only shadows. Motley finally screwed up his courage and stepped inside the archway. No peal of the great bell greeted him, which was a fact he found to be disquieting and reassuring in more or less equal measure.
Within a few steps from the archway the path twisted and darkness became complete, Motley could barely see his own hand when he fluttered it in front of his eyes. The urge to kindle a light was strong, almost overwhelming, and yet it felt as if it would be somehow… profane and unwelcome to do so. An oppressive presence hung in the darkness and some deeply primal part of Motley had no wish to see it revealed. He decided this was a wise piece of counsel and perforce had to feel his way forward as the path twisted and twisted again between pillars. Sometimes the stone beneath his feet was level, sometimes it sloped roughly downward, but never up. The only sounds were of clattering, verminous things that scuttled or slithered amid the shadows, giving way ahead of Motley and trailing faithfully behind.
The sensory deprivation made it feel like hours were passing when it could only be minutes. An unmistakeable sensation began to seize Motley that he was descending into an open grave, a charnel house with no escape. The taint of death was so pervasive it felt as if it were burying him alive. After what seemed an interminable period Motley perceived a faint vertical line of light ahead of him. A feeble spray of photons was managing to edge past an obsidian pillar and give relief to the inky blackness.
Motley eagerly took a step towards the light before a slight breeze against his face stopped him short of taking another. He looked down. A pit gaped at his feet, a headlong fall into darkness for any that rushed forward at this particular point, complete with superfluous-looking spikes glinting a long way down at the bottom.
‘Rather mean,’ Motley complained as he sprang across without difficulty and, coming to the pillar he had seen, found himself looking out into a long hall.
The floor was sunken, with steps leading down to it on all four sides. Many of its slabs appeared to have fallen into a chamber below, creating an irregular pattern of smooth-sided pits throughout the hall. Motley was willing to bet they all had spikes at the bottom too. There were many other archways leading into the hall, open mouths of darkness lurking behind a forest of black stone pillars. More massive columns supported a roof that was lost in shadow. The only light came from a scattering of tallow candles on the steps, simple things that would have been in keeping with stone knives and bearskins. In their fitful illumination two things were apparent: First that Morr was there, standing facing away from Motley and towards the far end of the hall. Second, that the far end of the hall was dominated by the enormous figure of what could only be Arhra.
The legend stood easily a hundred metres tall in his many-bladed helm and ancient armour, a great klaive held at the ready to destroy. The statue’s gigantic ruby eyes gleamed down from high above, the tiny, moving flames of the candles lending them a frightful semblance of life. Motley paused, unwilling to precipitate any violence by his sudden appearance. He was about to clear his throat to politely to announce his presence when Morr spoke.
‘You may enter here, little clown,’ the incubus said. ‘This is the hall of testing. By tradition it is open to any worthy supplicant. You have already proved yourself worthy to tread these stones.’
Motley stepped into the hall and approached warily. Something was amiss, the incubus’s words were edged with bitterness. This was apparently not the homecoming Morr had sought.
‘Where are the hierarchs?’ Motley ventured.
‘Where indeed?’ rumbled Morr. ‘A worthy supplicant would be received by them in this place, a wandering incubus of the brotherhood would be welcomed here by the hierarchs no matter what shrine he hailed from. For me: Nothing. They hide from me.’
‘So… what now?’
; ‘I will go to the inner sanctum and confront them,’ Morr said with icy deliberation. ‘I’ll tear down this shrine stone by stone if I must. Their cowardice insults the Dark Father and proves them unworthy to carry forward his creed.’ Morr took a step forward and then stiffened. Within the flicker of a candle flame a figure had appeared in the hall, or perhaps been revealed where it hid in plain sight all along.
A tall warrior in segmented and bladed amour of an ancient pattern now stood between Morr and the statue. The newcomer was armed with the metre-long hooked-tipped double swords that the incubus call demi-klaives, held now loosely at his sides.
‘Stay back!’ Morr warned Motley. ‘Raise no weapon if you value your life!’
Although the incubus barring Morr’s path stood perfectly motionless there was a poised readiness to his attitude that spoke of explosive action less than a heartbeat away.
‘What’s happening here?’ Motley whispered. ‘Who’s that?’
‘He has no name for he never speaks. We call him Drazhar – the living sword,’ Morr said with something like reverence. ‘He is the deadliest of our brotherhood, the undefeated, the true master of blades.’
‘Not a hierarch then?’ Motley asked a little hopefully.
‘No. Drazhar has slain hierarchs but he does not claim their place. Some say he is Arhra reborn and yet he slays those who attempt to venerate him. Drazhar exists only to kill.’
Motley made a silent ‘O’ of dismay. Morr addressed the silent warrior directly.
‘Drazhar! You bar my path but you do not attack. Have the hierarchs sent you to keep me from their door?’
A miniscule tilt of the horned helm of the incubus affirmed that he had been sent for precisely that purpose.
‘Morr! Don’t take the bait!’ Motley hissed urgently. ‘They want you to destroy yourself. It’d make a tidy solution to a problem they don’t want!’
Morr hesitated; the Harlequin was right. The hierarchs were against him, and so by extension his whole brotherhood of bloody-handed killers. His life was truly over.
If anything the hot coal of rage he had nourished in his heart for his entire existence burned even brighter at the thought. It was a monstrous injustice for the hierarchs to turn their faces from him when had held absolutely true to the central tenets of Arhra’s teachings.
The reek of political expediency clung to the hierarch’s actions, or rather the want of any action at all: to punish Morr for destroying his Chaos-corrupted archon would be to fly in the face of everything that Arhra had taught to the incubi – even at the cost of his own mortal existence. To exonerate Morr would send a tacit message to every archon in Commorragh that the day could come when their own incubi bodyguards could turn against them, citing the edicts of a long-dead Phoenix Lord as justification.
The entire relationship of the incubi to the myriad other entities in Commorragh’s power structure would be irrevocably altered in either case, the brotherhood would be weakened, fractured by the schisms already becoming apparent. Better if the problem simply didn’t exist at all, then the hierarch’s judgment could never be questioned.
‘I see it now,’ Morr said to Motley. ‘To save the brotherhood I must be destroyed. Not for the sake of honour or vengeance, but for convenience.’
‘Oh Morr,’ Motley replied sadly. ‘You’ll always find such noble concepts as honour become increasingly rare as you ascend through the ranks. The pursuit of power virtually requires the abandonment of resolution for pragmatism, cooperation for coercion and principle for convenience. Sadly it’s the way of these things.’
Morr tore his gaze away from the figure of Drazhar, still patiently waiting, to regard the slight figure in motley beside him.
‘Now will you please come with me to Lileathanir?’ Motley asked somewhat petulantly. ‘You did agree to do it if you survived coming to the shrine and look – here were we are, surviving.’
After a moment Morr turned back to face the master of blades. ‘Survival alone is not enough,’ Morr said slowly. ‘I learned this on Ushant before I ever saw the wider universe. Life without purpose has no intrinsic value.’
‘You have a purpose! You can save Commorragh from the Dysjunction!’
‘No.’ Morr intoned as his blank-faced helm swiveled back to Motley. The bloodstone tusks of Morr’s helm suddenly flared with ruby energy that burst upon the unsuspecting Harlequin in a tsunami of red-edged pain. Caught completely unawares by the treacherous strike Motley fell to the flagstones twisting in agony. Every nerve was jangling as if fire raced along it. Paralysed, Motley could only look on with anguished horror as the towering incubus bent over him.
‘My path is clear to me now. Farewell, Motley.’
Kharbyr shot the first black and purple figure he saw then ran forward to plunge his blade into another that was leaning over the battlements to shoot. He caught sight of Bezieth hacking her way into a group of three, the gore flying from her djin-blade as it sheared through armour and flesh. He just had time to think that they had the numbers over the Azkhorxi before one of them almost skewered him with rifle-blade. He twisted aside from the thrusting point and shot the owner in the face. Murder-lust gripped Kharbyr as he jammed the curved half-metre of razor sharp metal that was his own blade up under the warrior’s chin and into their brain. He pulled the blade free in a shower of crimson before plunging it beneath the warrior’s chest plate again and again.
Something slammed into Kharbyr’s shoulder, instantly knocking the breath out of him. Pain lanced through his nervous system like white fire, ripping a horrific scream from his lungs. Kharbyr wheeled around to see another warrior in black and purple calmly shooting into the melee from a short distance away. Kharbyr’s pistol hand shook as if he were palsied, but he raised it and shot back wildly in desperation. The warrior collapsed as if poleaxed – cut down by either Kharbyr’s uncertain rounds or someone else’s blind shot in the whickering crossfire. Suddenly it seemed there were no more black and purple warriors left standing. Naxipael’s ragtag clique had triumphed again. Kharbyr’s knees buckled beneath him as poison raced through his veins.
Xagor was at his side almost before he could draw breath for another scream. The wrack still laid his stupid rifle down with the most infuriating care before looking at Kharbyr’s wound. Xagor’s bird-like metal claw clamped onto Kharbyr’s shoulder authoritatively and elicited a blistering series of imprecations from him.
‘Kharbyr squirms like a child,’ Xagor admonished. ‘Only splinter-kissed, no major tissue loss.’
‘Poison you idiot!’ Khabryr shrieked. ‘I’m poisoned!’
Xagor had produced an ugly-looking metal syringe in his gloved hand. The wrack made a disparaging noise as he dug its thick needle around in the wound.
‘Bloodsong and sournyl – neurotoxins like faerun, but cheap and nasty,’ the wrack said with elaborate disdain. ‘Easily fixed.’
The fire in Kharbyr’s veins was abruptly washed away as if by a dash of ice water. In the aftermath of it his limbs started trembling and his shoulder began to ache abominably. The wrack sprayed some sort of sealant over the wound to prevent it bleeding.
‘Xagor thinks Kharbyr needs to wear armour in future,’ Xagor suggested. Kharbyr treated him to a withering look in return.
‘Armour won’t save you from anything that’ll kill outright,’ Kharbyr replied through gritted teeth. ‘Being quick on your feet will!’ It was something of a personal philosophy for him, but it was rapidly assuming the dimensions of a full and comprehensive explanation for his dislike of being weighed down. Xagor made the disparaging noise again.
‘Kharbyr trusts his skills too much, skill cannot protect against luck. Fate is stronger.’
The wrack picked up his rifle and hurried off to tend more of the injured. Kharbyr sat up cautiously and looked about him. The meeting of the two sections of the steps had formed another broad courtyard with a row
of gun metal teeth across it. To either side broad archways led away into parkland. Judging by the scatter of bodies the Hy’kranii had taken the worst of the casualties in the Azkhorxi attack. The survivors from Metzuh had lost just one of their number, some nameless warrior lay nearby torn in two by a disintegrator blast. The archons Bezieth and Naxipael had a prisoner, or rather an enemy who hadn’t died of his injuries yet. Kharbyr edged a little closer to better overhear their questioning.
‘Who holds the other steps?’ Bezieth shouted, one foot on the prisoner’s chest.
‘Take a ride up and find out!’ the prisoner managed to spit before his voice rose in a yell of agony. ‘I don’t know! Archon Jhyree sent us to seize the lower steps from the Hy’kranii.’
‘Oh? And why should she do that?’ Naxipael asked almost gently. ‘Was she under orders from Corespur?’
‘Ask him why!’ the prisoner shrieked, gesturing towards Kharbyr. Both archons glanced at him with disturbing intensity as he struggled to make sense of the accusation. He realised that the prisoner was indicating not him but a Hy’kranii warrior in ornate armour standing nearby. Judging by his green and bronze battle gear this was a dracon or at least a trueborn kabalite. He was probably the one in charge of the guards on the first step that had joined themselves to Naxipael. The Venom Brood archon arched his brows inquiringly. The dracon, if such he was, shuffled his feet a little uncomfortably at all the attention he was suddenly getting.
‘Well?’ Naxipael prompted. ‘And why is it we should we ask you, Sotha?’
Dracon Sotha shrugged expansively. ‘Archon Osxia held the view that Metzuh was already lost and had plans afoot to quarantine the whole tier.’
‘Hmm, quarantine sounds like a nice euphemism doesn’t it?’ Naxipael mused to Bezieth. ‘We can safely assume Osxia means “lock it down until everyone inside is dead” by that.’
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