The slaves continued to carry Xagor along listlessly, too cowed and frightened to even raise their heads. The wound in the gut where Xagor had been stabbed felt numb and he started trying to concentrate on that in preference to the hotter pain in his extremities. As a wrack Xagor was well versed in both dispensing and receiving pain. The master was very insistent that a balance was maintained – those who felt no pain, Bellathonis had said, could scarcely be expected to apply it with any degree of finesse. Xagor felt bolstered by the thought and stoically bore the sickening jolts of travel as they merged into one long torture.
By the time they approached the court of Xhakoruakh both Bellathonis and Xagor were being dragged by collars held by silent mandrakes. The number of slaves in the mandrakes’ coffle had shrunk dramatically as they were mercilessly consumed by their captors. To Xagor it seemed as if the creatures were gorging themselves by feasting on as many of their captives as they could before they reached the shadow-king’s demesne. Bellathonis’s strident protests had saved Xagor from being slain, but now the wrack had to stagger along unassisted and do his best to keep up with the fluid movements of the mandrakes as they travelled down ever-darker paths. Xagor was tough but he was close to the end of his endurance.
Xhakoruakh had made his holdfast in what amounted to a great cathedral of darkness deep within the heart of Aelindrach, a true palace of shadow. From a distance the place gave the appearance of a titanic, dusky spider’s web – an image that recalled to Xagor his entry into the shadow-realm so clearly that it made him shudder. As they moved closer crooked columns of onyx, ebony and basalt resolved themselves from the darkness and could be sensed climbing upwards in anarchic fashion to unseen heights. The columns branched, crossed and re-crossed to support a haphazard profusion of floors, steps and walls. There was no internal logic to the construction; stairs climbed to nowhere, walls stood in splendid isolation or clung to floors with no visible means of support.
Xagor and Bellathonis were dragged inside without ceremony and entered a multi-dimensional maze that assailed the senses with its flagrant impossibilities. What had seemed anarchic and haphazard from the outside revealed itself inside as an inversion, a shadow of itself built of corners and crooked ways, a labyrinth of impossible angles that led elsewhere. At times the deep network of shadows seemed to be alive with slinking shapes and baleful eyes, or the air would pulsate with sinister whisperings. In other moments the great edifice seemed utterly desolate and empty. The mandrakes led them ever deeper through shadow-choked crossways and dusty rooms. Discarded trophies and forgotten treasures lay scattered in odd corners: corroding weapons and rent armour, torn clothes and mouldering bones, trinkets, children’s toys, books of forbidden lore and bejewelled caskets all tossed aside like garbage.
They found Xhakoruakh in an empty, echoing space carpeted with fleshless skulls and hung with countless narrow banners that drifted slowly in a spectral breeze. Forbidden runes blazed coldly from the banners in complex traceries of emerald witch-fire that hurt the eye and the mind. The shadow-king was squatting at the centre of it all, his muscular arms outstretched and his midnight flesh rippling with glowing runes that outshone the ones gleaming on the banners around him. The dark, faceless figure rose at their approach and it became apparent that it was a giant among its kind. It stood head and shoulders above the mandrakes that were accompanying the prisoners and possessed an aura of dark and terrible majesty.
The mandrakes had already forced the prisoners to their knees. Now at the shadow-king’s approach they too crouched and averted their ever-shifting faces fearfully as the towering figure spoke. Its voice was rich and timeless as if welling up from sombre depths, the tolling of lost bells drowned in the deep.
‘Petty morsels these – why have you disturbed my meditations with such slender offerings?’
Xagor had readily slumped to the ground with the other slaves, dumbly accepting of his fate. Bellathonis, however, struggled up and shrugged off his guard’s first attempt to drag him back down. ‘It’s a great honour to meet you again, Xhakoruakh,’ the haemonculus said quickly. ‘You’ve… ah… certainly grown since we last met in person. It’s me, Bellathonis, although I wouldn’t blame you for not recognising me at present.’
‘Bellathonis… I remember that name, but you are not him,’ the shadow-king ruminated slowly. ‘I had an arrangement with Bellathonis once. Slaves for services rendered. One hand fed the other and it was satisfying for a time. Such petty trade has no place now.’
‘It was Bellathonis that freed you from Zykleiades’s trap in the labyrinth of the Black Descent and I’ll wager you’ve never told anyone about that,’ the haemonculus insisted. ‘I know because I’m Bellathonis in another form, I’ve changed just like you’ve changed.’
The giant raised its arms again so that the glowing runes set into its flesh writhed with unholy power. ‘The past is gone. The shadows spread and consume all. Old agreements are empty words in the new kingdom that I rule.’
‘Oh? So you’ve defeated your brother already? Then I presume the mandrake pack that attacked us before your loyal subjects came along must simply have been disobedient or insane.’
Xhakoruakh’s arms dropped and his shifting, featureless head was downcast. ‘Treacherous Azoruakh still defies me from the throne he stole,’ the shadow-king grumbled. ‘Just as my kingdom has grown, so has his.’
‘Well if our old agreement is null let us make a new one. I will help you to defeat your brother.’
The dusky giant immediately became wary and Bellathonis knew that the mandrake-king had accepted that the haemonculus was who he said he was. ‘What price would you exact for your services this time?’ Xhakoruakh said.
‘Only the tools and materials I require,’ the haemonculus said lightly, ‘basic protection and a place to work without any disturbance. Such a little cost to gain an individual with my talents and you’ll get so much in return. I’ll craft minions for you that will make your brother’s deluded followers flee in terror.’
The great ebon head of the shadow-king nodded slowly as it considered Bellathonis’s offer, but Xhakoruakh’s next words were troubled.
‘Strange for you to come to me now – I had not foreseen it in the shadow-skein nor was it shown by the carven ones. I know all, I see all and yet you are a mystery to me. How can this be?’
Bellathonis found the giant’s demeanour increasingly disturbing. The creature he had released from the patriarch noctis’s lair had been whip-thin and hungry, a quick-witted and infinitely dangerous entity. This being seemed to be almost literally drunk on power, bloated and engorged with it. Its mind seemed to be fevered or deranged in some way and Bellathonis found himself wondering what strange influences the Dysjunction might have had in the already half-unreal environment of Aelindrach.
‘The Dysjunction has made Commorragh too dangerous for me to stay in for the present,’ Bellathonis said, deciding to forego mentioning the assassin-machines that had been sent in pursuit of him, ‘so I naturally thought of you and the welcoming land of Aelindrach as a good place to wait out the aftermath.’
Xhakoruakh’s booming laughter rang horribly in the sepulchral silence of his palace. ‘The Dysjunction. Of course, such glorious terror, such rampant fear. No wonder I could not see you in it. I think no one before you has ever come to the shadow-realm seeking safety. Inversions, all is inversions.’
The shadow-king pointed at the mandrakes and spoke commandingly. ‘Release this one and take him to a place where he can do his work. Bring him whatever he needs. I care not from whence it comes – steal, scavenge, strip bare if you must. Bellathonis’s creations will join with my other weapons and then… oh Azoruakh, my murderous, treacherous, beloved sibling… Azoruakh, you will be utterly destroyed just as I have foreseen.’
Bellathonis tried to bow at the waist as best he could before he gave up and flexed his tightly bound arms helplessly. A razor-sharp blade wh
ispered within a hair’s-breadth of his flesh and the cords fell away. The haemonculus indicated his distinctly sickly-looking wrack.
‘Thank you, my archon. I’ll need Xagor too, of course…’ Bellathonis began to say. But the arrival of the haemonculus had already been forgotten by the mandrake-king. Xhakoruakh turned away to gaze up at the forest of floating, rune-etched banners with sightless eyes.
A dreadful premonition sprang into Bellathonis’s ever-active mind. Power of the kind suffusing Xhakoruakh, Bellathonis knew, had to come from somewhere. It might be channelled, stored, amplified or redirected but it had an origin. Perhaps the expansion of the shadow-realm had fed its kings directly as Xhakoruakh claimed, or perhaps not. As he and Xagor left the shadow-king’s chamber Bellathonis could not stop wondering about the other ‘weapons’ that Xhakoruakh had alluded to, and what manner of beings were crafting them.
Chapter 7
THE TEARS OF SORROW FELL
We sweep together through Sorrow Fell, we are a tidal wave of terror, a firestorm of fear. Long lines of Raiders and Ravagers loaded with Black Heart kabalites stretch all the way back up to Corespur. We slide down from Vect’s unassailable fortress-mountain like a mass of iron filings following lines of magnetic force, the vast fleet of grav-craft weaving around jutting spires and barbed steeples as they seek out the living and the damned. This close to Corespur resistance to the Black Heart’s advance has been virtually non-existent. Most of the survivors that catch sight of the approaching armada either flee or give themselves over to singing loud and obvious praises to the coming of the supreme overlord. Where fighting does flare up the weaving lines of force converge momentarily to annihilate it in a flickering blaze of dire energies. Valossian Sythrac is chafing at the easy progress being made so far. He finds it insufferably dull.
I am well protected as I ride to war. We are aboard a floating ziggurat in the midst of the Black Heart kabalite armada. Thick walls of metal and invisible boundaries of force enfold us protectively, energy cannon and warriors guard the parapets of our moving fortress. The air thrums with a soft, insistent babble of voices reporting, ordering, observing, speculating. Our view of the city comes to us through remote feeds and photon-woven windows that are poor cousins to the scrying crystals of Corespur, but they suffice under the circumstances. From Vect’s throne I see all as we drift between the fuming spires. I see the tiny, far-off figures of once-proud archons standing covered in blood and ashes shaking their gory weapons aloft in salutation to Asdrubael Vect. I see Black Heart warriors crucifying prisoners as a warning to others of the price of resistance. I see scourges and hellions racing along the cliff-like flanks of spires looking for loot and plunder.
Valossian Sythrac paces like a caged animal. He is longing for something worthy of his attention. I secretly hope that his frustration will build to the point where he will leave, but Sythrac is too loyal and conscientious to give in to the desire just yet. If serious trouble begins he will be best placed to learn about it here in the central hub and he knows it. Still he chafes, stomping up and down in his baroque armour with its captive menagerie of souls. It’s said that his armour is inhabited by ten thousand ghosts, their strength enslaved by spirit-engines to serve their hunter. I would like to ask Sythrac to explain the process to me in more detail, yet I feel constrained not to by the presence of an outsider in our midst.
This outsider calls himself Motley and I do not like him at all. His gaze is too direct and too clever. He was brought to the ziggurat after we left Corespur and seemed surprised to see me at first. Now I catch him glancing at me with ineffable sadness as if he has realised what I truly am. The outsider constantly makes jokes and offers suggestions in a friendly way, but I think he has really come to watch and listen. Much like Sythrac, this Motley character would rather be somewhere else (and I wish he would go), but he feels that he must stay – for now at least – and continue to spy.
At least my friend is here with me. His silent presence beside the throne is oddly reassuring as he takes in all the sights with me. I have never witnessed so much change in the city before. For me it has always been a timeless place completely unaltered by the lives of the beings passing through it. Now I see that so much can change so quickly… and I find I am excited by the idea.
I turn to my friend, the Medusae. The jelly-like clusters of the exposed brains carried atop the host are engorged and trembling as the Medusae’s expanded consciousness flits to and fro gathering raw emotions and impressions from all the minds it can reach. Grape-like fruits are swelling up on the host’s neck and along its spine as the Medusae secretes the choicest collected memories of its experiences into the host’s adapted nervous system. I reach down and tenderly pluck one of the smaller fruit from the host’s back. I tell myself that it is a slight indulgence in order to perfectly maintain my disguise as the supreme overlord. The self-told lie is almost as exciting as the act itself.
The smooth-skinned bulb bursts in my mouth as I bite into it. The taste is bittersweet and releases a heady rush of sensations directly into my consciousness:
In my mind’s eye the jagged maws of shattered windows now flash past only centimetres away as I whip my skyboard into a tight turn. A hundred metres away I can see a body half hanging out of a window with its dead hands still clutching an ornate-looking heat lance that fires my mind with avarice. I dive as I hear the snap of the scourges’ wings closing in behind me and my heart sings with the thrill of the chase…
…The memory fades and now instead I experience the agonised wailing of a runaway slave as it is hoisted up by Vect’s soldiers to die twisting on barbs of merciless iron…
…The shrieking gives way to the triumphant howling of gore-slicked, exhausted warriors as they salute the endless black stream of dagger-like craft passing overhead…
The visions fade and I find myself back inside the ziggurat seated in Vect’s dark throne, smiling wistfully at the memory. I, too, would like to leave this place and wander the city, to see with my own eyes the things I have experienced vicariously, yet I know it cannot be. I must stay here playing my role like a puppet on a stage. The others can leave but I may not, until my puppet master whisks me to a new location to try and draw out the assassin’s blade. Sythrac abruptly stops pacing and lifts his head like a hound catching a scent – the background babble of voices has altered slightly. We give our attention to the displays and see our first real challenge set before us.
The grand processional called the Alzos’Querion Vha had become a carpet of bones. Above the charnel house the skies rained with livid, actinic fires and around it kilometres-high spires of glittering onyx, silver and crystal belched clouds of filthy black smoke like the chimneys of some infernal industrial complex. The processional had become the main battleground in a multi-cornered war between kabals in the adjacent spires. The most likely victors were set to be the Kabal of the Flayed Mask and the Kabal of the Twisted Sword. These two kabals held twin spires that stood like bastions at the far end of the Alzos’Querion Vha. In more peaceful times they had enjoyed exercising the privileges of their position with great frequency. They extracted tithes and enacted ambushes on all the traffic passing between their monumental flanks on its way up from the docking ring to the higher slopes of Sorrow Fell.
With the advent of the Dysjunction the most immediate neighbours of the Twisted Sword and the Flayed Mask had seized the opportunity to rid themselves of the avaricious pair forever. The fighting that ensued had turned into a bloodbath. Armies of slaves armed with improvised weapons had been hurled across the processional to be slaughtered in their tens of thousands. Above them armadas of aerial craft locked in combat so fierce that their progress could be marked by the constant rain of burning wreckage and plummeting bodies.
The turf war between the kabals had quickly spiralled into a self-sustaining conflagration that dragged more of the surrounding spires into the flames. Allies were summoned from elsewhere in the
ruined city and mercenaries sprang up as if by magic to offer their services to all sides. Matters were further enlivened by the random arrival of daemons attracted by the scent of slaughter. Within hours the proud architecture and towering statuary of the Alzos’Querion Vha had been torn into rubble and the spires had taken on the appearance of shot-scarred fortresses battled over for months at a time.
Such was the scene when Valossian Sythrac’s heralds first arrived. The ebon-winged scourges from Corespur spiralled down slowly into the conflict bearing the icon of the Black Heart on swallow-tailed gonfalons of fluttering purple silk. The winged warriors called with their screeching, altered voices for the combatants to put up their arms and declare their fealty to the supreme overlord. In the roar and crash of battle their calls had no more impact than the cry of gulls over a storm-wracked ocean. Almost inevitably when the first of the heralds dipped low enough to be seen they were fired upon. The surviving scourges turned tail to flee back to their masters and the forces that were even now approaching the head of the processional.
It was doubtful that any of the kabals involved in the fighting set out with the intention of defying Asdrubael Vect. Their conflict was purely with one another, but the scourge-heralds reported back with tales of treachery and wilful anarchy. In the confusion of the fighting no kabalite authority could be found in time to try and avert the approaching disaster.
Sythrac needed no more encouragement than the first reports of serious resistance. He immediately issued a string of orders to the Black Heart forces. Within moments a wave of Voidraven bombers escorted by a mass of Razorwing jetfighters swept overhead to begin softening up the area. Closer at hand the lazily twisting lines of Raiders coming from Corespur reformed into serried ranks as they prepared for battle. Soon a veritable wall of barbed grav-craft stood poised at the head of the processional like a frozen tsunami. Reavers, hellions and scourges raced ahead of the mass and fanned out to seek the boundaries of the constantly shifting battlefield. The warring factions were going to be sealed off and then annihilated.
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