‘Ah yes, your gracious eminence, but in my incompetence I have failed to communicate the critical ending of one part of the story – the quieting of the world spirit on Lileathanir. It was an event of such magnitude that it brought the active phase of the Dysjunction to an end!’
Vect’s gaze was hooded. ‘You’re using too many words again,’ the tyrant said, raising a warning figure when Motley opened his mouth to reply, ‘and don’t test my patience by telling me that you’re supplying details. You’re not. Give me the facts without the dramatic embellishments. I need only to look out of the windows, little clown, to be fully appraised of the gravity of the situation.’
Motley nodded and chose his next words carefully. ‘One of the original kidnappers, an incubus named Morr, went back to Lileathanir to confront the world spirit in the hopes of appeasing it. He succeeded, partially, and was confronted by an agent of Tzeentch. A craftworlder warlock named Caraeis had been tainted – I don’t know how long ago – but when the time came he nearly, very nearly, acted as a conduit for a Scion of the Opener. If it had fully manifested as intended it would have consumed Lileathanir’s world spirit and pulled the entire planet into the Realm of Chaos. The Dysjunction would still be happening now if it were not for Morr’s sacrifice.’
‘All very tragic and very heroic. I’ll build a memorial to him,’ Vect said sarcastically. ‘And if we assume for a moment that everything you’ve said is true, I’ll grant you’ve tenuously connected a Chaotic influence to the occurrence of the Dysjunction, but not to Commorragh itself.’
Vect was toying with him now, Motley was certain of it, squeezing him for exactly what he knew. The Harlequin prattled on, nonsensically counting points off on his gloved fingers as though he were playing a game.
‘No agent of the Weaver can be revealed without it unravelling part of a larger scheme. The raid on Lileathanir and the kidnapping of the worldsinger were opening moves on the great game board, ones that would bring the Scion to Lileathanir when the time was ripe, but that wasn’t all. In Commorragh itself Tzeentch’s agents were whistling up a storm and then they planted a lightning rod in the city to receive it. Exactly why they did so or whether they even knew what the outcome would be we can only guess at, but I’m certain that they did it under the influence of the Architect of Fate.’
Vect gazed at the Harlequin for a moment before he turned and stalked away to the tall windows to gaze out over his city. Motley was momentarily taken aback by the turnabout and then skipped quickly to catch up to the tyrant, feeling like a chastened child. The guards in the shadows shifted warningly at the sudden movement before freezing again, statue-like. The tyrant was silent for so long that Motley jumped slightly when Vect suddenly spoke to him again.
‘I take it you have no proof for your supposition that the plague lord, Nurgle, is involved,’ the tyrant said flatly.
‘Only that the two, weaver and destroyer, are never far apart. Where one appears the other must follow.’
Vect grunted in a muted acceptance of the Harlequin’s statement. ‘There have been signs,’ the supreme overlord admitted finally, ‘unusual but not unique. I had thought them thoroughly crushed, but now I see I must look again and make sure. Tell me about these supposed agents in the city. Name them to me.’
Motley hesitated for an instant. Naming names to a monster like Vect was in effect handing out death sentences. However, the Harlequin found that he could bite back his moral compunctions readily enough. Redirecting Vect’s ire at deserving targets was an infinitely worthy cause, on top of which two of the three names he knew belonged to individuals that were already dead. The last was thoroughly deserving of death.
‘I learned from Morr that three archons were behind the scheme to raise El’Uriaq – Morr’s own master, Kraillach, Xelian and Yllithian. Of the three Yllithian was portrayed as the ringleader.’
Vect nodded slightly, leaving Motley with the impression that he had just passed some sort of test. The tyrant turned his gaze back to the roiling, fire-lit clouds below before speaking again.
‘So you’re here on some harebrained scheme to save Commorragh, root out the wicked people and protect all the precious innocents,’ Vect murmured. ‘I don’t think you represent anyone at all, little clown, just yourself, a big bag of suspicions and an overwhelming desire to meddle in other people’s business.’
Motley’s smile was sickly as he realised that Vect had seen through his little ruse. It was unfair to say that the Harlequin was entirely without resources – the other members of his troupe would come, or rather they might come, if he called on them. Motley had not done so because in the magnitude of something as awful as the Dysjunction striking Commorragh they were as effective as a thimbleful of water in a forest fire. Not to mention that few of the Harlequins in the troupe could be relied upon to be as enthusiastic in saving the dark kin from themselves as was Motley himself.
Motley saw the tyrant was grinning wickedly at him and was evidently well aware of his discomfort. The tyrant of Commorragh appeared to be reading his mind even though such a feat was patently impossible. The Harlequin spread his hands apologetically.
‘Not everyone hates Commorragh and wishes to see it fall,’ Motley said.
‘But most do,’ Vect shot back. ‘Do the craftworlds send their condolences and offer me their aid? They do not. Do the Exodites grieve for our loss? They do not – in fact they would rejoice if they knew of it. The sensibilities of our various backward cousins in the greater universe remain what they have always been – an irrelevance. Commorragh does not need them and I would reject any such overtures anyway, or better yet I would accept them and enslave all of the simpering fools that came here crying their false tears of conciliation. Commorragh stands alone as it has always done and I will destroy any fool that preaches otherwise.’
‘As the supreme overlord that is your right, in accordance with the diktats you made on your ascension to power,’ Motley agreed sadly. ‘The loyalty of your subjects must remain unquestioning.’
‘Just so,’ Vect pinioned the Harlequin with his merciless gaze. ‘You treat the words like an indictment, but you know that you speak the truth. While others may weep or cringe or wring their hands in the midst of disaster I live for these times of challenge. This is why I rule here, because I will always endure and this city will endure with me no matter the cost.’
The tyrant fell silent for a moment and then, unexpectedly, he smiled at the Harlequin disarmingly. Motley was more shocked by the sight than anything else he had seen so far. Vect had played at being the monstrous tyrant from the moment the Harlequin had arrived. Now he smiled as if that had all been a tiresome but necessary piece of play-acting between old friends.
‘You’ve performed a great service to myself and my city at no small risk to yourself,’ the tyrant said agreeably, ‘now tell me what you would take as your reward.’
The reversal was so complete that it made Motley feel a little giddy. The Harlequin sensed a more dangerous trap waiting for him now than at any point previously in the conversation. A cold, forbidding tyrant was one thing to deal with, a suddenly generous one was quite another. Motley had always rather prided himself on his measure of headlong foolhardiness but he instinctively shied away from claiming any rewards. Vect might take any request and twist it into some heinous crime or ironic punishment on a whim.
‘I ask only the permission to move freely through the city so that I can investigate further,’ Motley smiled before bowing again with a flourish. Vect appeared to weigh the request for a moment before replying.
‘Very well, though I will supply you with neither transportation nor protection beyond the boundaries of Corespur. You might join me in following the progress of Valossian – he’s pushing further into Sorrow Fell even as we speak – or stay here until things become a little safer.’ The supreme overlord’s eyes glittered with malicious humour at that and Motley understood tha
t Vect believed staying in Corespur was the very last thing he should think about doing.
‘Supreme and overwhelming mightiness, it is my wish to set out forthwith so that I need trouble your monumentalness no further,’ Motley said and struck a heroic pose. ‘I go to seek our enemies wherever they may lurk.’
‘Enemies are everywhere,’ Vect said as he waved a hand to dismiss the Harlequin. ‘Wisdom comes from knowing which ones to eliminate first.’
Chapter 6
THE COURT OF THE SHADOW-KING
Sliding sidewise through the cracks and crevices in his reality Kheradruakh crept forth from his ossuary of skulls. He followed his altered senses outwards on the trail of the wrongness that was leaking into his lair. Confusion and anarchy greeted him, a billion fractured blades of other realities writhing in delectable torment. With his nostrils flaring and tongue flickering, the Decapitator tried to make sense of the tumult.
Aelindrach was altering, shifting its wavering boundaries outwards to encompass new territories. Many of the hunting grounds of old had already been absorbed into the ancient heartland of the shadow-realm, disrupting its still, icy perfection with their brash addition. Mandrakes and their kindred raced through the bloated realm slaughtering one another with an unholy fervour, mewling prey fluttered hither and yon with life-sparks so feeble that they were as valueless as ashes.
Among it all Kheradruakh caught an alien scent. It was the scent of something that was neither prey nor mandrake, life-sparks from the outer realm at large in Aelindrach. Kheradruakh was intrigued enough to seek them out. Cross-currents and undertows conspired to obscure the scent but Kheradruakh was indefatigable. He found the prey that believed itself not prey near the boundary of the outer realm. It stood at bay with mandrake hunters already circling – just a single pack closing in for the kill. The Decapitator lurked deep in the shadows and watched with unseeing eyes as events unfolded.
A blood-chilling howl cut through the darkness and was answered from afar. Xagor shivered involuntarily at the sound. It was a bestial sound, a sound that mingled hunger and rage as it tore itself free from the throats of their pursuers. They were getting closer now. The master had chosen the place for them to make their stand, a coffin-shaped declivity with a narrow entryway. There was no exit save by the way they had entered and that, Bellathonis had confidently assured Xagor, meant that their pursuers would have to come at them from the front. Xagor would have preferred somewhere with a way to retreat, but he was wise enough to hold his tongue.
Time crawled by in frigid silence as Bellathonis and Xagor waited. They clutched the weapons they had brought to Aelindrach like talismans. The haemonculus held the long knife and a skeletal-looking splinter pistol that had been the favoured weapons of Kharbyr, while Xagor had the heavy-barrelled hex-rifle that he had looted from the ruins of the Lower Metzuh at the beginning of the Dysjunction. It was a sparse enough selection of armaments with which to confront mandrakes, but Xagor at least had faith in his hex-rifle. He had seen its mutagenic bolts rip apart even the warp-infused flesh of daemons. He told himself that skulking mandrakes would soon come to fear its bite.
A thin rime of frost had begun to spread across every surface, the tiny crackling sounds of its progress as loud and sinister as footsteps in the enclosed space. A darker shadow suddenly flitted across the entrance and Xagor gripped his rifle tighter. The shape reappeared and Xagor thought he caught a glimpse of needle-sharp teeth being bared in the blackness outside. Xagor fired instinctively and the shape vanished so quickly that for a moment he thought he’d just imagined it. Then – a hissing shriek from outside that rose to an agonised pitch before being abruptly silenced.
‘Good shot, Xagor,’ Bellathonis murmured quietly, ‘that’s one down. Now get back into that angle like I showed you.’
Xagor obeyed and squeezed himself into one corner of their tiny redoubt so that he couldn’t see the entrance any more. The haemonculus’s wisdom was vindicated an instant later when the entrance was lashed by blasts of cold fire. The air was already freezing but now became life-sapping in its own right as the temperature plummeted. If any flesh had been directly exposed to the mandrakes’ balefire it would have shattered like glass.
Bellathonis sprang out of his hiding place and fired several shots from his pistol without taking the time to aim. The haemonculus was relying on the vicious whine of the impacting splinters to make their enemies outside duck back. Xagor mirrored the movement a split second later and stepped out with his hex-rifle levelled. He strained his senses to pierce the swirling shadows and find a target but his teeth were chattering so much that he could barely focus. A flicker of movement in the deeper blackness caught his eye and the wrack loosed a half-blind shot at the area before darting back into safety.
An uneasy peace settled for a moment. It seemed their pursuers faced an impasse where they either dared not or could not attempt to overwhelm Xagor and Bellathonis with a frontal attack. The haemonculus had gambled that this would be the case, but he had little data to use in predicting what would happen next. The mandrakes might wait them out, call for reinforcements or simply leave. The difficulty came in trying to determine what they had actually done rather than what they could do – to assume that they had left could be both embarrassing and fatal if the mandrakes subsequently reappeared and sank their icy claws into Bellathonis and Xagor’s backs. They could only watch and wait for the mandrakes’ next move.
They came without warning. Their attacking rush was utterly silent as the entrance suddenly filled with surging forms. Xagor heard Bellathonis’s pistol shooting and fired his own weapon by reflex. An instant later a saw-toothed sickle of bone was flashing down at his skull. He hauled his heavy rifle up just in time to block the descending blade and caught a glimpse of an inky, shifting face framed by pallid hair. Xagor swung the stock of the hex-rifle around in an effort to smash it into the face of his adversary, but the shadow-skinned mandrake oozed away from the clumsy blow before it could connect.
Xagor was distracted by the sight of his master clashing blades with another pair of the slinking shades. The wrack dared not fire again at such close quarters for fear of hitting Bellathonis, so he was reduced to fighting with what amounted to an ungainly club. Xagor’s own assailant came surging back before Xagor could even move forward to Bellathonis’s aid. The saw-toothed sickle swung down again, this time searching for his neck.
Xagor tried to block the attack with his rifle but the swing became a looping thrust that sank into his midriff. He gasped and dropped his rifle as a biting wave of cold from the wound threatened to freeze his heart. He wavered for a moment, grunted and grabbed at the wrist holding the sickle in an effort to stay upright. Xagor felt icy, corded muscle ripple beneath his grip and glimpsed the mandrake’s face again – this time with its jaws opening like a fresh wound to display rows of needle-sharp teeth glimmering in the gloom.
‘Xagor, your master is in peril! Help me!’ The sound of Bellathonis’s voice snapped across Xagor’s fading consciousness like a jolt of electricity. He smashed his masked face into the mandrake’s grinning visage with all the remaining strength he could muster. The ink- skinned fiend sagged beneath the blow and lost its grip on the sickle still protruding from Xagor’s guts. The wrack twisted the creature’s wrist savagely as it fell, evoking a bubbling hiss, and then stamped on its vertebrae in an effort to snap its neck.
To Xagor’s surprise the mandrake simply came apart in his hands, instantaneously transforming into runnels of ichor-like shadow that slipped between his fingers and vanished into the stuff of Aelindrach. The wrack turned and staggered again as he tried to leap to the defence of Bellathonis. He realised what the problem was, stopped and absentmindedly pulled the mandrake’s saw-toothed sickle out of himself. He ignored the crimson splatter of blood that came out with it as he tried to advance with a more measured tread.
The two remaining mandrakes were swirling about Bellathonis lik
e wolves, snapping and worrying at the haemonculus’s defences as he fought to keep them at bay. Xagor swung awkwardly at the closest shifting blur and felt the sickle connect with something solid. His knees gave way and he fell, still clutching at the saw-toothed sickle and feeling it tearing through insubstantial flesh as he did so.
There was a hiss and Xagor dimly glimpsed Bellathonis thrusting his blade through his other attacker’s throat. As he slithered to the ground Xagor’s rapidly dimming mind decided that since he could no longer trust his legs he should crawl away and find his rifle so that he could at least shoot. He had dragged himself less than a metre before greyness closed in around him and provoked a final, panicked thought that he would be lost in the shadow-realm forever.
Xagor awoke to waves of excruciating pain alternating with the sensation of swaying. His wrists and ankles were bound to a pole being carried none too gently between two slaves. He sensed Bellathonis nearby and felt the reassuring presence of the haemonculus looming over him.
‘Be still now, Xagor, everything’s perfectly fine,’ Bellathonis murmured quietly to him. ‘Xhakoruakh’s followers found us in time. They’re taking us to him now. They seemed impressed by our little performance, hulp–’
The haemonculus was abruptly dragged away by a collar around his throat. A thin line of black cord connected to the collar was being held by a mandrake nearby. The shadow-skinned creature jerked it vigorously to bring Bellathonis to heel. Xagor saw that the haemonculus’s arms were also bound behind his back with more cords as he was yanked away. Xagor loyally snarled and thrashed at the sight of his master being treated like a slave, but that only served to send further waves of pain down his legs and arms.
Path of the Dark Eldar Page 74
